Digital Rage: Recent Episodes
Jeff Byer
Jeff Byer & guests talk about all things internet. From SEO to Social Media, Marketing to Technology, Design to Development, we will discuss the latest topics and interview leaders in the industry.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about using Descript to record this episode and its impact on podcast production, he reviews a new agency website built with Nuxt.js, and he discusses more JAMstack options he is considering for his customers.
Descript podcast software https://spatzek.studio/ https://www.getpostman.com/ https://buttercms.com/ https://snipcart.com/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/
Transcript
Digital Rage
[00:00:00]Jeff Byer: [00:00:02] Welcome to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer, and today we have a special episode because I am testing a new tool. So, this will be a podcast about podcasting and, the technology that I'm using to record podcasts.
[00:00:29] So. Today, we're using D script and I am recording directly into D script. I added my intro music and did a little volume editing and envelope editing there, but, now I'm recording directly into the app. So this feels a little strange. What I'm. What I use for all the previous episodes is I have my, my hardware setup, which I described last time.
[00:00:58] Is my microphone plugged in [00:01:00] to a Scarlet to it, to USB interface. And this now is me talking into my microphone directly into the D script app to downloadable app. they have a great tutorial that teaches you how to go through and get started recording a podcast episode. And editing the text.
[00:01:23] We'll edit the audio, which is really cool. So, as I'm recording this, I don't know exactly how this is going to turn out, but we're gonna go through and, see if we can produce a whole episode within the D script app. Okay. So previously here was my production process. I would set up the microphones.
[00:01:44] So there was a digital input, which had been, internet based, mostly Skype, sometimes Hangouts, and sometimes an actual telephone call through FaceTime. Then that would record as two separate tracks [00:02:00] into logic and logic is a pro audio. A nonlinear editing system or software pro level software for Mac.
[00:02:12] And that's what I use to record a lot of music and music production, things like that. So, I'm familiar with all the pro level tools and I do a minimum amount of pro level audio editing within logic. Very little effects, anything like that. It's mostly raw. I didn't want to, I wanted to make the production of the podcast as simple and smooth as possible so that it wasn't a huge production.
[00:02:40] Time-suck which most podcasts, producers all agree is the best, the best, philosophy, which is make it simple, keep it simple and try and automate as much as you can. So the biggest benefit to D script is that it does a [00:03:00] automated transcript as you'd go. Ah, I can't see it as I'm talking, but it does process it on the backend, and then it will, provide it into this project so that I can edit, once it's all done.
[00:03:14] So back to my old process in logic, I would record both tracks. The one track would be me, the other track would be anything from external resources. So that's where my interviews would show up. And what I usually do would do is do record the intro. Break the audio, put a music over the break so that it introduces the next segment, which is the interview.
[00:03:44] And then we go into the interview. So I have music playing in the intro, music playing at the transition to the section, the new, interview section, and then a outro. Outro music with [00:04:00] my voiceover of, where to find podcasts, notes and things like that. And then I would bounce the whole thing to an MP three file and post it in Dropbox.
[00:04:13] From there. I log into WordPress and create a new episode based on, you know, our naming convention. That's now just the episode number guest, and then a highlight topics, which I, I somewhat use as keywords. And then, upload it into WordPress. WordPress automatically sends it to cast dos, which is our, audio hosting provider.
[00:04:46] Casios will then automatically do a transcription, and then I would create the post. I would put in all the, manual show notes that I had, links and mentions and things like that. [00:05:00] And then on the bottom of the page is the transcript. Now the dose transcript is also automated. And it's not very clean at all.
[00:05:12] And so, I do a little bit of editing on the transcript, but I don't go through the whole thing cause episodes are usually 30 to 45 minutes. And, it's just not efficient for me to go through and read all that text. So I basically take, for the most part, what they give me, paste it into WordPress.
[00:05:30] Set the the schedule to post on Monday morning and that's it. On Monday morning, WordPress will, we'll publish the post. The post will get published to the RSS feed and all of the podcatchers, including iTunes or Apple podcasts now would grab the new episode. From the RSS feed and feed it through their channels.
[00:06:00] [00:05:59] So it's pretty efficient, but still a kind of production heavy. So here is the advantage that I'm hoping is going to be, I'm going to make this process easier if I keep using D script. So I'm hoping that the automated transcripts are better. I'm hoping I can keep this platform as a template so that all I need to do is come in and plug in, you know, new recordings and export them.
[00:06:35] Everything gets saved to the cloud automatically. So, I don't need to worry about, you know, using resources on my computer. And don't need to worry about transferring files from my computer bouncing out to another platform. So, all that said, this is totally experimental and I don't know how this is going to go.
[00:07:00] [00:06:59] So that is that for now. That's why this episode is going to sound a little bit different. And I think next week I will give my. Full rundown on how the experience was and if it saved me any time in my podcast production. So on with the show, a today is going to be more, in real life type of, type of data, things that I've been working on this week that are interesting and hopefully the, audience can, can, speak about and comment about.
[00:07:32] So. First thing is on communication arts. they send, you know, inspiration emails and stuff, and they sent this website for a, a, a creative studio. And the, the website address is spat sec.studio. And so anytime a, a studio or an agency posts a a. A portfolio site. I like to go in [00:08:00] and take a look and see what they're doing.
[00:08:02] So they built this site on Nuxe and the first thing I did is like, okay, perfect. I can see what SEO impact that using knucks directly in, in a live environment is going to do for their SEO. And sure enough, I pull it into SEMrush and there is no organic SEO, nothing cause you can't see their content.
[00:08:27] It is all client side rendered and not server-side rendered. So they're not using a, a static site generator. So obviously Nuxe native, you know, that just confirms that that would not be a good solution for any type of Project that requires some sort of SEO or organic traffic, but that said, I believe that that's not one of their requirements because they are getting a ton of backlinks and a ton of attention from the [00:09:00] design community just based on the design and functionality of the website itself.
[00:09:05] So that's something to keep in mind. for me, since I do sell, you know, their, their agency is strictly creative and my agency is a more functional, real world SEO, building, building functional sites that accomplish business objectives. So they don't necessarily need that. So that being said, they're getting a ton of attention in the design world.
[00:09:29] So they've, you know, they're designers for designers and, and you know, their real world clients are, they look like pretty big brands that don't really need the, the big time SEO exposure. So. Just, a little interesting perspective that I had, based on this site. One other thing that I noticed about this site, it may be just because it's getting a ton of attention right now and, and it's getting a lot of simultaneous users, but it is very slow.
[00:09:59] It takes forever [00:10:00] to load. They've got humongous graphics in there, and I can tell that they did do a good bit of optimization on the images, but it's just, it's totally render blocking. Every page is blank with text that says, loading. While each page and each section is loading. It's actually a one page project.
[00:10:22] They changed the URLs and they have the content structured into different pages and sections, but it behaves as a one page site. It doesn't refresh. It loads asynchronously as you click through the project. So, yeah, that was just intro. A little interesting thing. brings up another point that, Google Chrome is going to start putting badges, speed badges on, on websites.
[00:10:50] So if it's a slow loading page, you're gonna get a little speed badge thing that it's, it typically is loading slow on your specific device. [00:11:00] I haven't seen one yet. I'm going to dig it a little bit further and see if it's actually. W you know, when it's coming out officially and, and when we'll start seeing that I do performance audits on every one of my sites.
[00:11:12]I know which specific sites that I have now that, that do need a performance upgrade. it's, it's one of my highest priorities is performance. That's why I'm so into static rendered sites. So. I'm not worried too much about my clients, but it is, interesting to see that they're doing this.
[00:11:33] And you know, native WordPress users that didn't do any WordPress optimization are definitely gonna get hit by this. So Google has been saying, this is. Not their, they don't point to it as a ranking factor, but it's a usability factor and it uses speed is an issue that does come up when SEO is talked about because it's, [00:12:00] it's not the, it's a symptom of bad SEO, but it's not a cause.
[00:12:03] There is not a a factor. So. speed will come up and be lot of very much more important, in 2020. So something to be looking out for. there is, let's see, I still got the SEMrush listing up, so I'm just looking at all of their, Oh, it looks like they're getting traffic from awards.
[00:12:27]68 designs.net. lapa.ninja. I don't know what that is, but they've got a ton of backlinks to them. So, you know, interesting little case study on, on, agency portfolio. next I've been looking at the platform for one of our new sites. We're going to go full cloud and jam stack with.
[00:12:48] And so they're asking for budgets for next year, based on websites. So hosting and, and platform specific stuff and what their monthly, monthly, [00:13:00] recurring costs are going to be to manage the new site. And so original plan was everything cloud-based using AWS resources and, AWS RDS database.
[00:13:13] And, Well, CloudFront CDN and things like that. And the thing about AWS is it's all based on, on usage and bandwidth. So it's a sliding scale. And until we're actually up and running, there's no way to know what the exact cost is. So I started looking at, full service solutions that offer headless CMS and API, cloud storage, you know, everything all included.
[00:13:39] Yeah. And the three that I have, a little bit of experience with our net lo-fi sanity and butter, CMS. So butter, CMS, I'm just getting started with, so I don't know a lot about it. Let's start with nullify. Net low-fi is $45 a month. And it is a, it's [00:14:00] amazing how simple it is just to, just to, you know, get up and running and their free tier is pretty generous.
[00:14:08] So they offer the cloud storage, the connection to get repositories through get hub. And you know, all the, all the automation and they have a command line interface and, and things like that. So everything to make a JAMstack development easy. And so $45 a month, you would get, enough resources that I could run this client project on.
[00:14:36] And then sanity is for this project would end up being $200 a month. And so sanity does come with its own CMS and a bunch of prebuilt project templates so that if you wanted to start a blog, it's, you know, click and you've got a blog. I'm still looking at, do you know how the design [00:15:00] integration works with these platforms?
[00:15:02] But. For now of just doing a little bit of research and finding out if one of these all in one platforms is going to be either cost effective or efficient production wise, you know, anything that can save time and money is, is what we're looking at. So a butter CMS, so to run this project on butter CMS, we're looking at $249 a month.
[00:15:28] And so it's. It's the most feature rich. It has a cloud-based CMS interface that you can use to, to run the whole site. It's got a builtin API and they have examples on how to, to, And you know, test API endpoints and they use this app called postman. So postman is basically just an API end point [00:16:00] tester and it's, they provide it a interface through a few different languages.
[00:16:06] You can write whatever language you want to access the the API and grab the data back and see if it's the data that you suggest you requested. So looking at this, it's probably going to be a tool that I'm going to use for my current projects that I'm using the WordPress API with. And so what I've been finding is using the native WordPress API on a traditional web server to raise the response time from the API is really slow, too slow for production.
[00:16:37] So we're looking into different. Options for that. I have my developer create a small plugin on my WordPress based blog that is now saving all of the post data, which is just HTML, just the text and and references. Basically, it's taking the, [00:17:00] the raw, posts. API, converting it to Jason and then uploading it to my S three bucket.
[00:17:10] And so I can make requests directly to the S three bucket, not through well to the CDN, and the CDN connects to the bucket. So I can request the Jason file through the CDN and bring the data in. So what it doesn't, what it's not doing currently, which I have to add. ask the developer to add is.
[00:17:34] It's not exporting the media. Jason file media API, Jay on file. It's only doing the data. So just the posts. So when I linked to the featured image, the featured image gets an ID in the Jason file and then it goes to the media API, looks up the ID, and then [00:18:00] grabs the image from there. So I think my next step is to export the media, Jason, to the S three bucket as well, and translate the, the S three you know, somehow get the media to the S three bucket so that the Jason file references.
[00:18:25] The, the CDN version of the image and not the hosted version of the image. So all that is coming. Initial speed tests are a little off because of that image, solution. So I'm going to try just testing. The API with just data and not images and see how fast that data shows up. And if it's, if it's what I expect, and it'd be, you know, a lot faster to grab the data, then I'll start building the plugin to get the media and the images in there, and then we'll do another full [00:19:00] test on a full blog page that's filled with content.
[00:19:05] So more to come on that. So postman is the tool for that. It's really cool. so we already talked about butter CMS. we're also looking at adding a JAMstack shopping cart to this new project. The client is, B2B customer, and they've never had this functionality before. So we're going to add the functionality for a couple of their project products that get reordered on a regular basis.
[00:19:37] We're going to try and add some sort of a e-commerce to that so that they can just ship these things out and not have to go through the whole quoting and contact and, you know, add all those different layers of, of purchasing they can just purchase directly and get it shipped out. So snip cart is an interesting, a little jam cat Jack.
[00:19:58] Sorry, I'm [00:20:00] flubbing JAMstack shopping cart that I'm kinda looking at and seeing, what support and developer support there is. the pricing on a snip cart. Install, is transaction based. So they're taking 2% per transaction, which is, you know, I'd have to get approval on the customer to go through that, but that seems like a barrier to entry to me.
[00:20:27] They'd say that this actually takes off. Then you know, it's, it's going to end up to be a lot. So I'm not sure this is the actual solution. I'm still researching, but this was interesting that, you know, there's a lot of options that are coming up that are everything based on, you know, cloud-based jam stack based.
[00:20:52] Solutions, especially in e-commerce. look at this. So I just got a pop up on their pricing page saying [00:21:00] those exact words from their, from their modal box. 2% isn't working for your high volume sales. 54% of users who reach out end up picking one of our adapted plans. So adapted plan, obviously they're going to customize the pricing.
[00:21:16] So that's a good thing to offer is to tell my client that instead of 2%, they're going to take a, some sort of a flat fee. Right? So I might reach out to him, not sure yet. And that's pretty much it. I ordered, so this is the big news. I ordered my 16 inch Mac book pro that just got released this week, last week as you, as you hear this published, and, if you're listening to this far in the future, this is, I'm recording this on Friday, November 15th.
[00:21:51] And the new Mac pro came out on a Tuesday, November 12th so a 16 [00:22:00] inch with expanded Ram, expanded storage, and it's set to be delivered first week of December. So I've got a limp along on this computer until that gets done. This computer is freezing on me. Every time there's a data transfer up or down, for big data.
[00:22:23] So, and since I'm dealing with large files all the time, one of the, advertising files that I just delivered this week. Just the Photoshop file alone was over two gigs, and when that file had to be sent to Dropbox for the client, my computer was basically useless. I couldn't even type or move my mouse so.
[00:22:47] I am hoping praying that that issue is fixed when I get the new computer. this computer that I'm using now is from 2013 and it's got a one terabyte SSD [00:23:00] drive. And I've been trying to clear out as much space as possible on the, on the parent drive, just to, you know, have things run smoother, having the extra space for, for, you know, extra temporary storage and things like that.
[00:23:15] I cleared out all of my old browsing data and cookies and everything, and. So limping along with this computer. So, that's pretty much it for this episode. Not too much. Hopefully next week, some of these guests will come through and we'll be able to post a full episode again. And in the meantime, if you have any questions for me, I'm jeff@byer.co and you can review the show notes at digitalrage.fm And we are digitalragefm on all the major social media channels.
[00:23:51] And. Please sit through your podcatcher. If you can a rate and review us, that would be great. If you have any ideas for, [00:24:00] future shows, please let us know and I will talk at you next week.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about backlinks inspired by the Search Engine Journal Show with Julie Joyce, training your brain to remember inspired by Thomas Oppong, and more tech talk.
Show Links
Julie Joyce on Paid Links, Top Tools, Cheap Link Building Ideas & More [PODCAST] How to Train Your Brain to Remember Almost Anything Rode NT-USB Versatile Studio-Quality USB Cardioid Condenser Microphone MENS GV 005 Samsung QN65Q70RAFXZA Flat 65-Inch QLED 4K Q70 Series Ultra HD Smart TV with HDR and Alexa Compatibility (2019 Model) Rode RODECaster Pro Podcast Production Studio NETGEAR Nighthawk AX12 12-Stream Wifi 6 Router (RAX200) - AX11000 Tri-Band Wireless Speed (Up to 10.8 Gbps)
Transcript
Jeff Byer 00:06 Welcome to digital rage the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and today we do not have a guest. Again reached out to a few people, , lots of, you know, too busy to talk, couple of non responses, you know, so, , I don't have all day to do guest outreach so I apologize. But a, this'll be another, , what's going on and what am I working on type of episode. So, , what , happened this week, we hired a couple more people, a designer and a, a Shopify developer and great contrast. The designer is really slow and turning out terrible work and the Shopify developer is fast and awesome. So, , really happy with that because the Shopify good. Shopify developers are kind of like good web WordPress developers. There are a ton out there, but when you find a good one, you got to keep them.
Jeff Byer 01:08 So I mean, I'm paying a premi, but he's very good. So that guy is doing great for me. He is, , is turning out stuff, you know, basically today he did a ton of stuff already, , which would have taken a week with my previous developers. So very happy with that. , the designer, not so much, , going back to my trusted designer that, , is a little slower but much more detailed and a much more on-brand. , so, and this designer, , I got this guy on Upwork and , he's, , he's a premi designer. His, his prices is, , right around $40 an hour. , which you know, is relatively not high at all if you're going to think about hiring somebody or getting a senior level designer. But my, I've, you know, I've got my, my print process designer that's doing it for $16 an hour and, , I have other offers for people that turn out some really good work at $24.
Jeff Byer 02:13 So paying this guy $40 for super slow turnaround and not that great at work. , I believe I'm just going to cut them loose and go to the next person on my short list. So that's what's going on at Jeff buyer inc. , so a couple of things. , listen to a podcast this week. , Julie Joyce was the, was the guest and she owns a backlink company. And I loved what she was saying. And, , one of the things that I took away from it was that it's w that was a big truck. Sorry if you heard that. One of the things I took away from it was that she said, even though backlinks paid backlinks are against Google's guidelines, they still work. And I've heard this countless times, they still work, you know, private blogging networks, very forbidden. And if, you know, if they're obvious, they're going to get shut.
Jeff Byer 03:16 You know, Google is going to be able to recognize him and penalize him. But the newer ones that are well done, that have quality content, they're working. And there's several use cases out there. I don't, I'm not suggesting that you follow these tactics. I'm not suggesting it for my clients and I'm not doing them for my clients. But it was very interesting and I wanted to talk to her about it cause she, she disclaims to every one of her backlink customers that this is against Google guidelines and they still proceed anyway. , so that's how she got into this specialty and niche of backlinks because her clients, even though she said she doesn't advise it, her clients said we want it anyway. Very interesting business to be in. So I wanted to talk to her about that. She got back to me, said she's super busy and we should reconnect in January.
Jeff Byer 04:14 So then I saw a medi article titled, let me just pull it up so I can give you the title, how to train your brain to remember almost anything by Thomas APO. So Thomas, I reached out to him and he hasn't gotten back to me, but , I really found this article interesting and wanting to learn more about the process and how he came about learning all of this. , so one method that he talks about, I'm sorry, I'm having an indigestion problem. , one method he talks about is spaced repetition, which is just repeating what you, what you took in. And so, , in, in also in small chunks. But what I, I've kind of been doing that with audio books that I really love and would love to just have automatic recall for a lot of business process books and, and things like that.
Jeff Byer 05:15 So I keep, I re, you know, several times a year I will re reread on audible a book that I, that is on my short list of ones that I really want to remember. So, , he says that's one of the things that you can do, but the other is a 50, 50 rule. The 50, 50 rule. Very interesting. And probably going to be where the, where my , my content process goes from here on out deciding what to write on, what to, what to talk about the time that you have dedicated to learn a new skill. 50% of the time is learning and then the other 50% of the time is teaching somebody else or explaining it to somebody else. And that's what I just did with this article because I was explaining it poorly. And then I went to the article and just said, Oh, the 50, 50 rule, learn it and then teach it.
Jeff Byer 06:11 And so that is something, you know, not only is repetition a way to stimulate your memory, but being able, having to recall it and teach it, especially in a podcast or any video or especially on a, on a long form blog post, it's going to be, , going to be detailed and referenced and cited, you know, citing all of your resources and stuff. You're definitely going to take that in to your longterm memory. So explains the, the, the biology that once you listen to a audio book for instance, and you'd take the information in and it's there for a limited time. And if you don't actually do anything with it, it'll just go away. And so I can't tell you how many times I've taken, , a course on a new, on a new programming language or something. And you know, in the while I'm in the course and I'm working with it, I recall the things that I learned in previous chapters and I'm like, okay, now I'm recalling it, now I'm doing it.
Jeff Byer 07:21 And by the end of it it's like, all right, got it. If I don't use it, then I go back to square one. It's like, okay, how do we start? What's the, you know, the little stuff, just like the context, like, you know, HTML was easy for me because once I learned it, I just kept hammering on it and hammering on it. And you know, back then there was no, no templates or are bootstrapping or anything like that. You had to actually type in the HTML tag in the beginning of your header or beginning of your docent to build an HTML page. So going from that level of detail, from starting out, you know, that's where I, I got my gain, my skills and in HTML. And then, , one of the first adopters for CSS, I had to learn CSS by scrap, by scratch.
Jeff Byer 08:12 , you know, Java script, vanilla Java script was, was the way everybody was doing things back in the day. So, , so the, this, , the ways that he's explained in this article on how to retain information into longterm memory, they're starting to make sense to me because after reading about all of these different ways to do it, I've realized that the things that I've retained from my career in the past have been following these different guidelines and these different roles. So I thought it was a very interesting read. And as soon as I find something like this that's inspirational or, , something that, that I'd like to talk about on the podcast, I reach out to the author to see if they're willing to come on. So that's what I did. I haven't heard back, , Lily Ray just posted something on Twitter. So why don't I bring that up because that was completely relevant to what we're talking about right now.
Jeff Byer 09:12 Let me go to my notifications cause she liked the comment. Okay. So she said, , Google says Twitter as the best place to go for SEO updates or at to ask questions. And she also heard this week, I hear several newer SEOs saying they're too afraid to put themselves out there on Twitter. And so there was a bunch of comments about, you know, why we're such an open, you know, ask us anything. You know, and my comment to her was, so much is changing in SEO. Nobody could possibly know everything. When you find a thought provoking post, reach out to the author. I do. And I get to speak one on one with awesome people like Lilly. And so she liked that and she said she enjoyed our talk and that type of stuff. But this is an example of, of how I live my life.
Jeff Byer 10:06 I hear something, read something, , something interests me, something changes my life, anything like that, I want to reach out to the two, you know, show gratitude and, and show appreciation for the person that posted it for wherever I got the information. But I also like to share it. So that's where, , most of that thinking came from. , so let's talk about products because I dug a little bit of that it a little bit into it on the last episode. , I'm looking, obviously I talked about, you know, iPhone, getting the new iPhone. That one's going to be a no brainer. I'm just, I just want to , wait and I'm just waiting. That's all I'm doing. , the new MacBook pro, I've already decided that, , you know, the configuration that I want, it's gonna end up almost $5,000, but it, as long as my current 2013 has lasted, , the investment is worth it, especially if it is going to save me time and stop hanging up wind.
Jeff Byer 11:15 I upload things so hoping that could fixed, , upgraded to a Photoshop and illustrator 20 and things are going great there. It didn't copy over my plugins. I'm not sure my tiny P and G plugin is going to work anymore. , it was shady on the, on the, on version 19. Anyway. , if I had a large file open and there wasn't enough scratch disc disc space for the plugin to work, it would shut down Photoshop completely. So I was always afraid to use it. And if it's not updated for Photoshop 20, Oh well find a new plugin or I will just keep using their web API to do my compressions. , so my, my brother Rob who's been on the show, he is going to start recording product demos and he wanted suggestions for what type of setup that he would a microphone set up specifically.
Jeff Byer 12:20 And I've looked into, you know, I listened to a lot of podcasts about podcasts and I read a lot of blogs about podcasts, people setups and learn a lot about it. So he asked me what microphone he would suggest and he asked specifically for a USB microphone. I never really thought about this, but this is a whole nother level of, of, of w w what I knew, what I know and what I've researched before and what I could write about and could talk about that just today I realized, Oh my God, I've got a ton of stuff to talk about. , if I take it in this context of people just asking me questions. So by Rob asking me this question, I went down this whole rabbit hole of, of you know, audio quality microphones and I admit I do not have the best set up.
Jeff Byer 13:09 I basically just scrapped together the best setup that I could based on what I already had. I have not purchased any equipment for podcasting as of yet. I will, and I'm going to get to that later. , so I asked him, I asked him, you know, do you really want a USB Mike? Because that's really not the best way to go. The best way to go is again, an XLR Mike and plug it into an audio interface. And he said, whatever it is, I don't want to spend 200 bucks. And I said, okay, direct to computer. It is so USB Mike and I sent him the road. Let me just grab the link really quick where, Oh, it's already open. Okay. So I whooped, that's not Rob. There he is. I sent him the road. N T U S B studio quality, USB cardioid condenser microphone. So basically it was the best reviewed.
Jeff Byer 14:09 I love road microphones even though I'm using a Sher S M 58, but, , they're, they've got super high reviews and I've seen it on other bloggers and podcast lists people that that do, , you know, mobile setups and they don't want to bring around a, , a USB interface like the, , focus, right Scarlet , which is what I use right now. So I said that would be the best plug and play. It's got all, it comes with a windscreen built in and it has all of the, the vole and gain knobs on the side of it. So it's very easy to use and probably the best solution if you're just going to record audio directly into your video application. So he's going to get that. I'm sure. , I'll, I'll get him to send me some videos so that we can hear the examples of, of how that goes.
Jeff Byer 15:04 But, , that is a telemarketer, so we're gonna not take that call. , so the next is, , text marketing. I'm on Gary V's text list and he just texts out a, , a message saying that his new case with were out and he was sending it to the texts community first. So he sent a video of himself as, , with inspiration, sent another video saying his O fives were out and go get him, send another link to his blog post where he posted the link to the O fives. I clicked the link to the O fives from the interface. It looked like my size was available. Click up my size, added it to cart. And once you get to the cart, the right side of the cart says it's there and then the left side of the cart says it's out of stock. And so basically everything was out of stock and the system just couldn't keep up with the demand.
Jeff Byer 16:04 So within minutes of getting the text message there were sold out. So he basically sold out, , a new line of shoes in minutes from a text message. So that's a very interesting thing to, , to consider, especially when you're dealing with, , large personalities, , personalities with a following, influencers, things like that. They've got to, they've got to consider this text platform as a, as a way to, to move whatever they're trying to move. So with my celebrity endorsed products, we're going to, , experiment with getting this in their hands, getting them using it, , you know, not only for their own purposes, but for what I do, which is try and optimize their online sales and online marketing for the best performance possible. So we're going to look into that. I also signed up for Tony Hawk's text messages and, , because he was offering three free skateboard decks.
Jeff Byer 17:13 So I want those skateboard decks. So I signed up with Tony Hawk. And so it's fun because it's text messages that look like they're coming from the real person. So when I look at my text history, Oh Gary V and Tony Hawk texts me, it's novelty, but still probably something that people look at saying, Oh this is, this is fun. And they want to sign up for as many celebrity text messages as possible so that they're, they can feel good when their phones are in there and they have celebrities texting him. So there is that novelty portion of it that that works as well. So definitely something that I am going to pitch to my celebrity back clients. , and let's look at my wishlist here. So on my wishlist, I have a couple of things that are, you know, not really relevant. I'm looking, I told my wife we are going to replace our old crmy TV that takes eight years.
Jeff Byer 18:14 It's a Vizio and if for some reason it takes for ever to turn on, you turn it on and it's just blank for, you know, the, the light, the white led on the front comes on and then you're waiting for what seems like forever, it's probably 30 seconds, which is a pretty long time to turn a electronic appliance on. And I don't know what it's doing or what it's trying to do, but it's annoying and it's old. So I said, all right, black Friday deals, we're going to research them, do whatever, but we are getting a new TV. And so what I settled on was the Samsung Q led 65 inch Q 70 series TV. So my mom just upgraded hers. , she ended up with the LG, which is definitely, you know, it's, I would say they're better TVs, but they're almost a thousand dollars more. So, , I, I don't watch a lot of TV, so any upgrade is, is good enough for me.
Jeff Byer 19:20 I'm not, I don't need the best. And so this for me is a $1,200 TV middle of the road, but it has everything that, that we want and it has Alexa built in. So you can walk into the living room and say, Alexa, turn on my TV and it'll turn on the TV. So looking forward to that. So, , that's on my, with my list. It's not a anything business or marketing related, but that's, you know, we're in shopping season. So just wanted to let you know and I'm looking at a new pair of shoes, not interested. Oh, the road road, caster pro. So I was listening to a podcast about podcasts and there was a professional podcaster who swore by it. So when this originally came out, it did not get good reviews. There were audio files that were talking about how the quality was bad.
Jeff Byer 20:17 There's no EEQ and it's hard to, to, you know, these little intricate detail things. And I think that they're missing the point that this was meant to be the easiest one stop shop for podcasters to use, , some sort of a mixing device, , and interface desktop interface that would allow multichannel and split channels from, from a microphone to a different audio channels from the computer. So, , I am going to get one, I think it's going to be, cause right now I'm just got too much junk on my, on my desk right now. That is, you know, I've got the, the , I've got the, , the headphone amplifier. The headphone and flier is also acting as a mixer. So I've, it's a crazy setup that I have right now, but I have two and you know, the two, I too has the two inputs.
Jeff Byer 21:21 My first input is the microphone microphone goes directly to the computer. My second input is I've got, I'm going out of the headphone Jack on the to I to bear with me. I know this is going to be complicated and I'm just thinking it through my head and it's super hard for me to, to describe, but I'm just going to do it quickly. My second input is I go out of the two I to headphone Jack into the input on the headphone amplifier and then out of one of the headphone amplifier channels back into the second input of the two ITU. So I'm basically just doing this big loop and all it does is it removes the microphone but grabs everything that's coming out of the computer and puts it into the second. So if I've got a Skype interview or , anything like that, any, any sounds from the computer are going to be recorded into that second input.
Jeff Byer 22:23 So, , that set up is not ideal obviously because I'm kind of hacking it around to get what I want and I would rather have something direct. So what the road cast approach is going to allow me to do separate everything out. , I've got to buy additional additional software to get it done, but , in the end, much better, much easier to manage. So the software that does all of the audio track splitting is called Reaper, , at interface, not very advanced. Their website's not very good, but as long as I can get separate audio sources split into separate tracks and be able to use the road caster pro interface to control them, boom. Done. I'm ready. Let's go. I'm going to get it, but I'm not going to get yet. I'm going to wait. And the same thing with the Mac pro MacBook pro.
Jeff Byer 23:17 I've got to wait. There's a big, a bonus payment coming on a onetime project towards the end of the month. And so that will pay for the TV, the road cast or pro. And the net gear Nighthawk, a X 1212 stream wifi, six router R a X 200 a X 11,000 try band wireless speed up to 10.8 gigabits per store. GERD cannot wait for this thing. Oh my gosh. So just this morning we have it. We had a power outage at the office. , I got here around 4:30 AM and by 4:45 AM power went pack on. So everything rebooted. I've got the, the, the , fiber optic O N T on my desk. And so I can manage the LEDs in and make sure everything's up and running. And then I have my 7,200, , Nighthawk on my desk as well that runs all the, all the wifi and other wired resources.
Jeff Byer 24:31 So I get back online and, and you know, lights are on powers on, everything's booted up. I go to run my speed test and I'm getting about 300 megabits per second down. And, , I was, I consistently get 500 on my fiber. I can't get any more than that because I'm on a, a busy branch up the street. And you know, long story short, I ordered a gigabit and they sent the guy down. He went through all my equipment. He says, I don't think I'm going to get you a gig, but I'll try. And the fastest that I got was six 80 and I was like, all right, I'm not going to pay for a gig if I'm only getting six 80 so that's how I ended up at 500 and 500 so with that explanation out of the way, I was only getting three 60 so I got on the, on the horn with them and chatted and so bypassed the, the old night Hawk and went directly to the ONT.
Jeff Byer 25:33 Sure enough it was 500 and 500 then that old Nighthawk was just being clogged with something. I dunno, but it is an old Nighthawk. So the new Nighthawk is gonna give us faster wifi. So the wifi speed that I can get on, on the iMac across, across from my desk is about 400 over wifi, which, which is kind of, you know, exceeding my expectations on a five gigahertz band. So I'm on a 2.4 gigahertz band. We're getting about a gig in or about a mag and that's about it. , you know, not super reliable but good for the, for the people in the building that are siphoning my guest wifi. , but there's new one is a bad boy. I cannot wait for this thing. This is going to make my wireless life at least easier. , you know, wired my wired speeds on my main computer are not going to change.
Jeff Byer 26:32 There's still going to be maxed out at 500 by 500. So, , that's just gonna make my life a lot easier. So, , what I also have in my list is a focus right Scarlet for I four, I was going to replace my Scarlet to I two until the road cast are pro got such a great review on the podcast about podcasts. And so now I don't need the four by four, because I can just use the road caster pro for everything. , I also have in my list a bidet day, toilet seat. , a bunch of photography stuff that is either discontinued or out of stock. , a Filbert, Phil Sonicare, diamond clean toothbrush. I have the Sonic care now, but this is the, you know, the bad bad boy, one and a cannon F 700 to 200 millimeterF 2.8 I S I U S M telephoto lens.
Jeff Byer 27:36 This is a bad boy telephoto lens and it is also no longer available. So I do have some wishlist cleaning up to do, but that is a, that's pretty much everything that I wanted to talk about today. I, I'm hoping to get you a guest or get you something more interesting than me telling you about what technology is going on and how, how my projects are going. , but again, if you're listening to this, if you're, if you're my designer on Upwork and you know that I was talking about you, I apologize, but this is kinda your fault. So, , we'll talk to you later. , but developer, you're doing awesome. Keep up the good work. I'm sure you will. , we're going to launch those two projects this month no matter what and I'm going to rely heavily on you, so keep doing a great job. All right then. Thank you very much for listening. As always, you can follow me on Twitter. I am at global Jeff, and you can view the show notes@digitalrage.fm. You can tweet me, you can email me, you can call me, you can text me whatever you want to do. I'm here for you. Ask me questions. What do you guys want to hear? , reach out to me, let me know and , and we'll get some, some better ideas other than me talking about my week
Speaker 2 29:10 every week. All right. Thank you very much. Talk to you next week for show notes and information. Go to the digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at bam. And please give us a rating. Review is clearly appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about his experiment with workspaces in Chrome Dev Tools, the Shopify universe, upcoming project launches, real-world project issues, and tech talk.
Show Links
Chrome Dev Tools - Workspaces https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-chrome-workspace/
CCPA - https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa Fact Sheet, pdf
Transcript
Jeff Byer 00:06 Welcome to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and I know last episode I have promised you guests but uh, that didn't happen. You know, people are busy, things are happening and uh, you know, just didn't get around to it. I did have an interview scheduled, we had our
Jeff Byer 00:30 and there was a misunderstanding. This a, I believe a the person involved was expecting some sort of a uh, you know, get to know ya. Uh, cause I sales call and I was expecting it to be an interview. So a little bit of a miscommunication. But um, anyway, I do have a ton of things to talk about. So this will be an episode full of stuff. I like to say stuff because some of it is crap set of, some of it's not. So let's get right into it. First thing is I was playing around and in Chrome and, and the dev tools and just futzing around and came across the workspaces in dev tools and thought, okay, this is interesting. Why would, why would they have a, you know, invite somebody to put their file structure inside of Chrome dev tools if it doesn't actually make any live, live edits as you go.
Jeff Byer 01:41 Because as most developers know, whenever you get to a live website and you go into dev tools, you can modify all of the code you want and change the display of, of that website. You know, change the content, anything you want, run experiments, even if it's not your site but only you can see it. And as soon as you close dev tools or refresh the page, all those edits are gone. And it goes back to the way it is on the live server. And I do use that sometimes to one. If I'm trying to get a screenshot and I want to modify things for the actual screenshot, I'll go in, remove modules, remove ads and stuff like that. But on my own sites, I use it just to play around and see, you know, if there's something visually or content wise that I want to accomplish, how fast it would be to make that adjustment and just kind of play around in dev tools before I open up, uh, you know, my editor editing environment and go ahead and go through with the change.
Jeff Byer 02:45 It also helps me to, to create estimates on what it's going to take to accomplish certain things requested by my client. So I get into this and I've read a couple of articles and I go through the Google tutorial on how to use Chrome tools and the whole time, uh, I'm going through these tutorials and obviously it says, okay, you know, it's, you'll be able to save the changes if you use it in, in your local environment and you add your local pho folder for that environment. So I was like, okay, that's fine, but it, uh, it's very limited and uh, I didn't see any way if you are going to use a SAS or any type of, of pre compiler that it just didn't have a way to really integrate those unless you had another third party script going. So the whole time I'm going through this tutorials, like who the hell would use this?
Jeff Byer 03:47 It's just basic. If you had a basic site with no preprocessing prop, pre-processing, no minification and uh, just static something, I don't even know what, um, that's what you'd use. So I went down a rabbit hole on that and found myself completely disappointed. So moving on. Um, so today I added another team member to my Shopify partner program. Uh, another developer that's going to help me launch these two big projects that we're launching this month. And so the month of November is going to be a huge month here for us. And so we needed to bring on extra help. And the way Shopify partners, the partner system on Shopify works is that if, uh, I'm going to take on a new client that has an existing store, I go find the existing stores, my Shopify address, then I request access to that through my partner portal. And then the owner of that store is able to verify and then, uh, I get, I gain access through the partner portal.
Jeff Byer 05:05 If the customer just puts in my email address and sends me access, even if it's the exact same address, it does not, uh, it's not available in my portal. So it's, uh, it's just a little quirky thing. I'm sure there's plenty of reasons on the back end or privacy issues or security issues or anything like that that, that takes that into account I guess. Because you know, anybody can put in anybody's email address and then you can accept and, and, but not really have access. I don't really understand the details of why it's separate, but it's separate. So, um, with adding a new team member, um, you know, I take privacy and my accounts very, very seriously, especially when hiring outsourced developers. So I create account specific for them, you know, server accounts, user accounts, things like that. And for this one, um, the developers first request was just to send me the access and what that assumes is that he wanted to log in as me through my account and take a look at everything.
Jeff Byer 06:20 And that doesn't really sit with me very well, uh, for plenty of different reasons. Obviously security and, and you know, my, my customers who are, the admins can see my logins. And so if something happens while I'm logged in or near anything, it's just, I don't want it on me personally as, as a, you know, possible vulnerability. But the great thing is through the partner program, all of my, all of my accounts are in my partner program and when I log in, it shows that it's my company that's locked in, a representative of my company that's in there doing changes. And that's much better as far as, uh, my clients are concerned and I'm concerned. So the, the great thing was it the easy way to, there's an easy way to add people. You just add staff members to your partner portal, then each of those staff members, you can define their access but then they have access to all of your partners sites.
Jeff Byer 07:24 And this hire today was not for for one specific type but for three of them that are in my partner portal. And so it was very convenient that I just had to get his Shopify email address, the email address that he uses for Shopify and he now has access to uh, to make changes to all of my customer accounts, which is, which is very convenient for me because it's one single point of access. He can access all of them. Now if something happens or if I don't like the worker or if I'm just moving on to a different developer, remove him and he wrote it, he doesn't have any access to them anymore and if he's going to ask them, access them currently he has to go through my partner portal. So a very cool thing. Uh, just thought that was really interesting cause it's, it's kind of backwards from how you access how you grant access to a customer's store rather than through a partner in, through my company.
Jeff Byer 08:27 So that was fun. Um, another piece of information, uh, was regarding the, the California consumer consumer privacy act CC P a. So this is coming on January 1st and uh, I'm making sure that all of my, all of my accounts are aware of this and so that they're prepared and know that it's coming. And so digging into the fact sheet of the CCPA, the here's the requirements. So, uh, E not a lot of my customers actually require this, but for the ones that do, I'm just confirming cause I don't know the ins and outs of everything that they do. Uh, I have web stats and that's it. I don't know how the business is run specifically. I don't know revenue numbers cause they're mostly private businesses. But here are the, here's the, the requirements. So businesses are subject to the CCP. A, if one or more of the following, our true has gross Avenue S sorry, I'm having trouble speaking today.
Jeff Byer 09:47 Let's try this again. If the following are true, has gross annual revenues in excess of $25 million, um, buys, receives or sells the personal information of 50,000 or more customers, households or devices. So that one's interesting because when I first skimmed through it and I said, Oh, buy and sells information, that's, you know, none of my customers do that. But then receives and absolutely all of my customers receive information and checking databases on that information. Is, is only part of what the law entails. This is pretty much everything. So I need to verify that with all my customers because 50,000 consumers on, you know, a site that's been 10 years old, that's a pretty easy number to hit. So, uh, even for a small business, so I'm confirming that, uh, all the information that they have is, is w, you know, if it's over that number or under that number, if it's over that number, then we have to start looking into being compliant.
Jeff Byer 11:05 And the last, the last one, which I already kind of hinted to but derives 50% or more of annual revenues from selling consumers' personal information. So since I don't deal with companies that sell personal information, uh, not really concerned about that one, but receiving, so the 25 million annual revenue and receiving information of 50,000 or more consumers, those are the two key metrics that I'm interested in, uh, as far as this lobbying applied. So that warning is going out to all of my customers and that, that, you know, I'm pretty sure we're are either close or will qualify and we're to, uh, start planning on, uh, being compliant with that as of January one. And the one customer that I know is going to be effected by this law were already in the process of a full redesign and we started this process with them back in March.
Jeff Byer 12:11 So, uh, we will be compliant when we, when we relaunch at the, at the end of this year. So, uh, California consumer privacy act that is, uh, it's a little bit, if you're, if you're not yet compliant with GDPR, then you're definitely not compliant with CCPA. So something to look into. And, uh, if you're listening to this show and you have customers that qualify, then you definitely want to start that conversation. So I thought, ah, since I don't have a guest, we talk about things, you know, real world, uh, business issues and technical issues that, uh, I'm working on right now. And, um, I could always use advice and consumer or, uh, and listener advice or anybody that's dealt with any of these specifically. But, uh, I'm, I'm always open to, to learning and here are some issues right now that I'm specifically working on. So I have three.
Jeff Byer 13:18 I manage three Shopify stores that are going to need California proposition 65 warnings for certain products. Now, if you're not familiar with California proposition 65, it's basically a warning label that goes on, products that will be shipped imported into California and California, uh, put this law into place so that consumers are warned if a product that they are purchasing has any elements that the state of California deems related to causing cancer. And so when you go to Disneyland, you see signs when you enter saying that there are elements in this park that, that are known to, the state of California is just causing cancer. So it's, it's commonly accepted by most large businesses, public entities, people that offer public access. If they, you know, if there's anything like lead based paint or, or, uh, uh, anything, if they use something that contains lead or, or they use cleaning products that contain a certain chemical that's linked to cancer, then they have to have these warnings.
Jeff Byer 14:34 So it's pretty commonplace and mostly, you know, it's part of the landscape at, at Disneyland and, and, uh, most restaurants and things like that. And they're just basically ignored. Uh, for e-commerce though, the solutions that I've been finding to this are pretty invasive. So the first place that I looked was Amazon and seeing how Amazon, uh, approaches it. And I wouldn't say that Amazon's approach is specifically compliant. I don't know the legalities, but it's very, I would say not really. You know, it's, it's hidden almost where they just have a link that says, view all of, uh, product warnings here on this page. And they have one page that encompasses every product warning, including California prop 65 warnings. So, um, and they've been, they've been critic criticized about the, their approach to this online. And, uh, I don't know that if there's any, any penalties or litigation against them as far as the way that they're handling this, but from what I've seen as far as, uh, you know, plugins and, and, and other sites that are, that are, uh, following compliance or plugins that offer these compliance, they're pretty annoying.
Jeff Byer 16:02 Um, the one plugin that I've, that I've got installed for top-up high right now, and it's called, uh, you have, it's called product warnings and it has a free version. And basically if you add a product to, to your shopping cart before it adds to the shopping cart, a modal comes up with the actual warning and, and you have to click accept on the modal to add it to your shopping cart. And the free version is it does it for everybody no matter where you live or where you're shipping. And it really only specifically applies to if the product is being shipped to California. Thing about that is if you offer guests checkouts or if they're not logged in, you don't really know where they are or where they're shipping. And so this plugin has a paid feature that will use the IP address of the user.
Jeff Byer 17:02 And if the IP address is in California, then they show the warning. And if it's not, they don't. So it's not a perfect solution but at least gets it closer so that you're not showing it to everybody. Um, the issue with this is without sh, uh, I'm trying to figure out a way that one, you don't use a modal and you can just use a regular warning that's on either the product page or the cart page. I'm getting clarification if we can actually show it in the cart and to how to show it for specifically only people that are shipping to California. From what I understand from the law is that if you can't show the warning after it's in a, a eCommerce shopping cart, you need to show it in the shopping cart before the purchase process. And you usually, the shipping address is one of the final pieces of information you've put in through the checkout process. And was Shopify specifically, uh, if you, unless you have a Shopify plus account, which is, you know, starting at $2,000 a month, you don't have any access to the checkout process at all. Um, just content updates but you know, text updates and things like that, but you can't access shipping or, you know, put a warning into the process itself.
Jeff Byer 18:33 So that's the process. That's the thing I'm trying to work out right now is one if it, you know, if showing it to everybody is the only way to be fully compliant with the law, then I've got to present that to my clients. But to not doing it through a modal and doing it through just a, uh, uh, line item either in the cart or on the product page as if if the person's in California. So problems I'm working out there and then that brought it up. The other issue is that does, does the plugin itself, you know, does using a plugin and paying a monthly fee makes sense? Or does it make sense to just create my own plugin and be able to install it on my three sites? Possibly making the plugin a product of my company and charging for it. So these are all questions that I will be answering most likely this month and get this underway for, for my three clients that require it.
Jeff Byer 19:41 Um, next thing I'm working on a, I know there's plugins for this, but the, what I'm working on is trying to make the fastest WordPress based blog. If performance server performance user performance wise, the fastest one you know in the world basically. So finding out what the perfect setup is. If you're using WordPress as a backend for your blog, and this is specific to blogs, this isn't front end, you know, this isn't CMS, this isn't WooCommerce e-commerce or anything like that. This is just blocked. This is just retrieving information, displaying it to, to the user on the front end. So I have my two experience experiments running now. Uh, the first one is using the, uh, the API through accessing it through PHP. So the server rendering and accessing through PHP is slow. The, the WordPress API is slow. It depends on the WordPress host.
Jeff Byer 20:49 It's, it's, it spits out Jason, but on demand, Jason, so it's got a render that Jason file and then spits it out. And then it allows you to access it and do that. So it's almost a second round trip that not, you know, anywhere near acceptable as far as if you're going to, you know, try and provide the fastest solution possible. It's somewhat acceptable on, on a, on a regular website, on a small, smaller use, low access website. But for me, just across the board, not accessible or not, not possible cause it just takes way too long to do. So the JavaScript API version was a little bit better and uh, it probably cut the time and half but still 500 milliseconds to, to just access the content before displaying the page is still not, not ideal. And if you await, if you wait for, if you just load the page and then let the defer the, the API access, then your user's looking at a blank page.
Jeff Byer 22:03 And, and the, the experience itself, at least the visual experience itself is not very friendly and uh, and it'll have issues if you're running Java script on page load, that act that needs to either modify the interface or do some sort of a function on load and you'd have to defer that after the API. And it just, it becomes this long string of waiting and waiting and waiting. So that's not an option. So the thing that I'm looking at now is, uh, is a plugin that will export a flat Jason file to a cloud service. Every time there is a change to the content in WordPress on the WordPress back end. Uh, I th this plugin does actually exist. Um, S somebody built one and I, I, I wish I could give them credit right now because, uh, I can't remember who it is, but, uh, I do love this because I've, right now I'm running a, uh, AWS CDN at for my own blog, which isn't up yet, but when it is, I'll, I'll share all the details on how it works.
Jeff Byer 23:19 And so this would take this, this plugin a step further and be able to export the Jason file to AWS and then put it on, uh, on, on the cloud AWS cloud, so on cloud front so that this content is spread out, accessible on local servers and then do my test again as far as being able to access the Jason and display Jace on data using cloud services and a CDN. So that's the next experiment. Um, I don't know if I'm going to use by this existing plugin and for the experiment or just go ahead and try and create it myself and with, you know, hard coding, my specific AWS bucket and, and keys and all that stuff. So I'll keep you updated on that. But that is another, uh, issue that I'm working on. And the last one that I'm currently working on is related to SEO.
Jeff Byer 24:26 And Google's mentioning through their site rate or guidelines of, uh, eat a spirit experience authoritativeness and trust. So a lot of my clients are, are having issues with this is how do we verify that we're experts in the field that we're talking about on our website? And if you are experts, how do we allow, how do we give Google enough information so that they can verify that the person who is publicly responsible for the content on the website is actually, uh, an authority and is trustworthy? So this is coming into being specific about my, my supplement clients, health supplements. And so there's very strict laws about how, what claims you can make and how those claims can be made. And and proving that those claims are possible. But we're also running a content marketing and blogs on these sites and the blogs are written by industry experts.
Jeff Byer 25:33 Um, and we now have content coming in, nutrition, content, content coming in from a PhD. So now what I am trying to figure out, and I'm kind of doing trial and error here, is uh, how can we verify that the person who has PhD connected to their name is actually a PhD. I'm going to link to other publications that they've been published in, which are, you know, well-respected authorities and do well on health content in Google search results. So I know that those, those pages are respected. Uh, those sites are respected and they're, they're by default respecting the content that this person writes. So having an authorship pay page for these specific authors on our site that link out to all of the other places that the author is, is published on top of that is finding some way to verify that our PhD author is to verify the existence of his PhD and how the PhD was, would be verified.
Jeff Byer 26:46 So we're looking into that. A, I'm not sure that Google would, even if, if their algorithm even takes that into account, anything like that. But I'm just looking at it from specifically what the quality radar guidelines say is that a quality Raider comes on a site that's making a health claim. They look at the author, they link to the author's bio, and they see not only other places that they've written, but can actually verify the credentials of the person, not only their writing experience, but their credentials. That's probably the best possible scenario for a quality rater to say, yes, this person is qualified to make this claim, therefore we deemed this, this content as a trustworthy and authoritative. So those are the real world problems I'm solving, trying to solve. And uh, I'll keep you updated on that as well. So the next thing, uh, Google has achieved quantum supremacy and quantum computing is one of the hot topics, uh, besides Bert, which I talked about Burt all last episode.
Jeff Byer 28:01 So no need to bring that up again. But, uh, quantum computing, uh, it's a funny thing about quantum computing is that there is no real world use for it. And taking that into account, does any there milestone that they've hit, what does it actually mean? It's kind, kinda like STEM cell research. It's, it's, you know, what's the real world scenario? I guess there's more real world scenarios for STEM. So, but quantum computing, um, it's still remains to be seen whether this is going to be something that's useful or maybe, you know, 20, 50 years down the road when you're like, Oh, now we get it. This is what this, this quantum computing can do. But, uh, their study also got a lot of, a lot of kickback is, um, you know, in achieving quantum supremacy and they're saying some, uh, the, I don't remember the exact, so this is just, this is just, uh, off the top of my head and it's definitely not accurate, so don't, don't take me to task on this.
Jeff Byer 29:09 But, um, the, the calculation that the quantum computer, the quantum computer was trying to solve would have taken the best, uh, processor CPU, combo computer. Uh, something like a hundred years to do and it did it in two and a half minutes or something. And that's what the benchmark to achieve quantum
Jeff Byer 30:58 So one thing that I'm going to talk about now, which I never really get into, uh, on the show, but, uh, it's more of a tech tech talk type of a section. There's a ton of other technology people out there writing about technology, blogging about technology, doing technology podcasts. But for me specifically, uh, regarding digital marketing and SEO, uh, website development, their specific tech that, uh, that I look into on a daily basis. And it's something that, uh, that's worth talking about. So, um, the first thing that that's been coming up in tech talk is the Amazon exploding batteries. So Amazon's a white label brand of batteries are, are, uh, inexpensive. Um, and so now people are complaining that the batteries are actually exploding in their devices. And there's been a lot of knocks on these batteries for a long time, uh, as far as how long they last.
Jeff Byer 32:06 And you know, they're just not up to the quality there. They're inexpensive for a reason and so, but this now brings a whole new aspect to it. It's like, okay, the cheaper they make these batteries, the more dangerous they are. And so, uh, I thought it was a interesting take, but I have never bought Amazon batteries. Um, I don't really buy cheap batteries because I, when I replaced batteries in something, I don't want to be doing it all the time. So, uh, I buy fresh and, uh, a good quality battery next. Oh, the ear pod pros. Um, I always, I did have a lot of questions about these and got answered on a, on a podcast today. Uh, let's see if I can find which episode that was. Um, I believe it was the, uh, tech meme ride home for, for yesterday. Anyway, the, what's interesting to me is the air pod pro has 10 audio cores that are running an enormous amount of data hundreds of times a second.
Jeff Byer 33:19 And I was like, that's amazing. And it's all based on, on their, uh, noise canceling algorithm and knowing your voice and knowing what's coming out of the ear pods themselves and counseling out what's coming out from coming in, uh, you know, comp complicated stuff and they're smaller. So what is the battery life like on those? If they're constantly, if they're powering up 10 audio cores and running that much data per second while they're on a, it's kind of an insane thing to think about in such a small device. And so, uh, it's something interesting. Um, I'm very happy with my current version of my EarPods and I'm not gonna upgrade, but it's, uh, it's definitely something to consider is how much power do you actually need in a pair of earbuds. So, uh, and now, uh, on a personal note, uh, my, my current MacBook pro, let me just see what this is.
Jeff Byer 34:33 So this is a late 2013 15 inch MacBook pro. Uh, it has a 2.3 gigahertz Intel core, I seven. It's running 16 gigabytes of DDR, three 1600 megahertz memory. Uh, it's got a one terabyte SSD hard drive. It's got an Invidia G force GT, seven 50 M with two gigabytes of a video memory, uh, and it is failing quickly. So I, I need to upgrade my whole program here. So I started down the, down the road of researching what am I going to get and when the iMac pro came out, cause I do have an, uh, a five K iMac that I bought for my home computer. So I didn't max it out. I didn't get a bunch. It's got it's running I five, uh, it's on the guy who 500 gigabyte a SSD, you know, and I put some added Ram in it so that I could run, you know, my apps from home when I needed to, but, uh, everything, I stored everything on the cloud.
Jeff Byer 35:53 So I didn't really need the, the hard drive space and all that stuff. So, uh, I, but I love the format of the, I especially love the five K display and now that Apple doesn't sell displays anymore, the iMac just for the display alone is a really huge selling point. So, um, you know, I've got expensive displays hooked up to my MacBook pro, but they're nothing like the five K IMAX. So I looked at the iMac pro and Holy moly, they are expensive. I priced out what my, not even my top of the line fully loaded one is I just priced out what would be acceptable to me, you choosing specifically the lowest Ram option because I can upgrade the Ram cheaper aftermarket than I can when I buy the new one from Apple. And it still ended up at just shy of $8,000 the way I had it configured.
Jeff Byer 36:52 So I'm like, Oh man, that's going to be a huge expense. So then I said, okay, well what if I get the new MacBook pro? And of course it doesn't have a Deion processors and everything, but it's got a I nine. It's, it's a huge upgrade from what I'm currently using and it has the, it has a, a storage capacity up to a four terabyte SSD, which, which, you know, really makes me happy because, uh, my one terabyte is constantly filling and I'm constantly offloading projects to the cloud or to my, my, uh, Thunderbolt drives to, to just get them off the main hard drive because filling up the main hard drive definitely affects performance. And so I'm constantly doing that. And now my computer has the nasty habit of whenever it's sinking to either the, the, uh, Thunderbolt drives or to the cloud, my computer just freezes, it seizes up and, uh, it's starting to affect the audio quality of my audio recordings.
Jeff Byer 38:02 It'll seize during audio recording and you'll hear these little blips. So, uh, it's definitely time to upgrade. And so I'm looking into most likely going with Mac book pro just because iMac pro is such a huge cost difference. So the, the, back to what I was saying is so about $8,000 to upgrade to the iMac pro and right around, you know, 4,000 4,500 to get the MacBook pro. So that's leaning me towards the MacBook pro. Now also have an iPhone eight plus, which is is great because it has a home button and I know the home button, uh, you know, I've heard mixed reviews on, on face detection and how that works. And so I've, I've been using my friends and my cousins iPhone tens just kind of playing around seeing, you know, okay, now I get it. Now you don't press the, you don't press the home button, you just swipe up to get home.
Jeff Byer 39:04 And so as the way everything's going, I've got to give up my, my home button. So what I am looking at getting is the iPhone 11 pro of course pay and you're going into the store and paying full retail is not the way I like doing things. So now I'm looking around at different, uh, different options to, to get the best deal. You know, they've got the trade in and you know, my phone is still in perfect condition cause it's always had a case. So trade in values. Good on that. But I'm not sure I want to trade it in. We'll see. Uh, but yeah, iPhone 11 pro is probably going to be the next purchase. And finally the Mac O S Catalina upgrade. Uh, I, I've been hearing horror stories about it, especially for late 2013 MacBook pros, which is what my main computer is. So I am not upgrading this computer to Catalina.
Jeff Byer 40:06 Uh, people who have posted their horror stories have said they'd have, they'd had to re-install completely re-install their Adobe suite and losing days of production, having to overcome a bunch of issues. And, uh, I, so what I did is I upgraded the five K, uh, core, I five iMac, cause I don't rely on it. It's more of a, a backup computer and it's newer. So, uh, it could, it could, it's better able to handle the upgrade and upgrade went fine. There's a few things, but a Adobe suite updated fine. Uh, the, uh, Photoshop 20 installed perfectly. And the one thing is that I, I use a tiny P and G for compressing images for the web and I have a Photoshop plugin that's been, it's been spotty at best. If I have, if I'm using a huge amount of, of memory or scratched disc on a, on a file that's open or if I have multiple art boards or anything, the plugin just crashes, Photoshop completely.
Jeff Byer 41:19 So I only use it on small projects or one off images that I need. Otherwise I have to go to the website and, and use the, the website services for the, for the tiny P and G squishing. Um, so on, when I updated the iMac, the first thing I did was created an image and I wanted to export it through tiny B and G. and sure enough, the plugin isn't compatible, error message can't do it. It didn't crash Photoshop, it just refused to run the plugin. So, uh, I had to compress it manually through the website. And that image is actually up on my Instagram at global Geoff. It's just basically the Catalina waterproof picture or a wallpaper picture of Catalina Island that just says it's, you know, my stuff is working. So if you go to my Instagram you'll see that. But uh, I'm pretty sure that this MacBook is not going to get upgraded to Catalina anytime soon cause I am too busy and I've got too much going on. So that is it for today's episode. If you have any questions, comments, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram. I am at global. Jeff, you can go to buyer.co for any information or if you want to contact me about anything, episode ideas, you can go to digital rage dot F M and if you rate and review us in any of your pod catchers, we would sincerely appreciate it. Thank you very much for listening.
Jeff Byer 43:01 Talk to next week for show notes and information. Go to digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at bam and please give us a rate and review is zero. Lee, appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about the abundance of posts and information regarding Natural Language Processing and the BERT update.
About Natural Language Processing & the BERT Update
Bill Slawski @bill_slawski retweeted this article from Ibrahim Sharaf ElDen as an introduction to Natural Language Processing https://t.co/Xct8wP3BIX?amp=1
I just reread this article by @ajkohn from 1 year ago and it's quite possibly the most relevant article about BERT and #SEO on the internet right now.https://t.co/PCbCAOdQ1D
— Jon Henshaw (@henshaw) October 27, 2019 Justin Briggs@justinrbriggs article about how to write for natural language processing On-page SEO for NLP post
Kevin Indig quoting a Fortune article. I am embedding the tweet to show the comments and expose that this is not "new" as the article title might be misleading.
👀 “Language understanding is key to everything we’re doing on search,” said Pandu Nayak, Google fellow and vice president of search. “This is the single, biggest, most positive change we’ve had in last five years.”https://t.co/3LVXGjFu0e pic.twitter.com/jRzeTb7OC3
— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) October 25, 2019
Transcript
processing...
Jeff Byer 00:08 Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer. Today's episode, I do not have a guest and I wasn't planning on recording an episode. This was going to be the first episode that I skipped since, , end of January, 2019. But, , I'm gonna call this the accidental episode because I came across so much, , tweets and posts about natural language processing and the so-called Bert update that, , I had to, , throw in my 2 cents and provide you the audience with everything that I've, I've been following and watching and learning and, and how all of this affects search moving forward. So let's get started with how this, you know, so when it comes to natural language processing and, , language itself, I look to bill Slawsky and his study on how Google has, , published their patents on language processing and Bill's breakdown of those patents and how they relate from patent to real life search results.
Jeff Byer 01:26 So he, so bill retweeted an article from Ibraham Sharif El den as an introduction to natural language processing. And so I started digging in there and started realizing that different variations of natural language processing are taking a a sentence basically and breaking it down into its primary parts with the nouns, the adjectives and verbs and taking a, a word, a word that that is meant to be. I don't want to use the word keyword here because it's completely in different contexts. The contents here is, it's basically the root word of the sentence and how many jps from the root word backwards. Can you put the word into context and choose its actual meaning based on that. So in natural language processing and previous iterations of that, those, those jps from that, that main word in the sentence, we're, we're toward the beginning of the sentence and not many hops from the, from that word to the end of the sentence.
Jeff Byer 02:45 And now what I understand this Bert update or Bert is supposed to do is it is supposed to take the, the words that are not on it's bi-directional means not only the w taking the context words before the main word, but after the main word and going further after the main word. So that all the, everything, all the possible data can be taken into account. So that the understanding of the context of the root word and all of the contextual words found in short jps from that root word will provide an actual context. And based on that context, you will, a search engine would then provide the appropriate response in context. So what that means for SEOs and content writers is, , a system that, , that you w a system of writing or a style of writing that if you're writing for SEO, you want those words to be relatively close to each other and provide as much context as possible for what the sentence that you are building is trying to convey.
Jeff Byer 04:09 And if there is any, , ambiguous is there, if it's an ambiguous term, , the term can mean many different things. There's so many different ways that it can be interpreted. So your answer needs to be as clear and sustained as possible and put in all of the relevant information possible to give Google or any, , natural language processing algorithm with algorithm. The best opportunity to understand in full the context of what you're writing and what you're saying. And you know, in turn what you're basically doing is providing the, the searcher with the most informative and complete answer to a query that you could possibly offer. So, , what I've been finding in a lot of these writing guides for, , natural language processing and what the style of, of writing would be is that, , you'd need to, you know, it's, it's not as creative writing and it's not super technical.
Jeff Byer 05:27 Writing is writing for understanding. , and so natural language processing is trying to take the natural progression of speech into account. But for people like me who find it difficult to explain technical concepts, simply, I just find it difficult to speak in general, which is why I do a podcast to become better at it. But when I've start explaining something technical and I get into details, my, my sentences tend to get longer and longer and longer, and it becomes harder for the listener to connect those dots. As an example. That sentence that I just said, the, the explanation took way too many words. And so if I was to rewrite that sentence over, I would get more to the point and say, this is, this is the problem, this is the solution. And that's it. So, , as I've been researching and digging more into it, , a tweet by Jon Henshaw, he re posted an article from AGA cone from a year ago.
Jeff Byer 06:40 And what he tweeted was, I just re-read this article by J cone from one year ago, and it's quite possibly the most relevant article about Bert and SCO on the internet right now. And so what I did is, , I went to that original tweet and, , I'll have it in the show notes so that you can reference it and see the context of how my learning on this subject progressed. So the Bert update, , is basically, it's been used for a long time and there, and I've, we get into this later in the, in in my learnings, but it just seems like this wasn't much of an update because it's been happening for a while. And so this article came out a year ago right after the medic update and we've talked about the medic update, , in several of our past episodes. So, , if you need to catch up on that, I can put links to where we talked about it and specifically how it affected, , one of my client's sites and, and how it corrected and all linked also to a recent tweet from Kevin indig, which I'll get into in a second.
Jeff Byer 07:56 But basically the, , here is the original tweet. , here's the quote reading article reading the article by aJ cone one year ago about natural language processing. Burt its relation to the medic update, what went wrong with the update and how it was corrected. So this, after reading through the article in detail and it said that the medic update was actually not medic at all, but it was a, a attempt, an initial attempt at a improving the natural language processing, , for, for search and , mainly for content so that, , for search results. So this started the whole discussion, you know, as in the quality greater guidelines about, , experience authoritativeness and which is eat and SEOs now have to consider all of this because Google is now considering all of this information. And in this article he explains that the, the , medic update initially got it wrong and was, was not understanding the context of a lot of, of medical, , information and how it would relate to searchers. So a lot of medical information sites, which is how this update got the, the term medic.
Jeff Byer 09:33 , it was basically nay natural language processing error in the update itself. And it only affected, you know, the medical, your money, your life categories. This is based on this article. So I know that the update had a lot more going on, but specifically to natural language processing, this is how the medic update was, was seen, applied and reversed. So this, the, , example in the article uses it uses a SERP analysis. I'm just looking at back up again so I can, I can tell you exactly. , so the OG in the article, it States the audit August 1st error, , that, that the new content ranking didn't match the intent of the queries. And so by October of 2018, rankings came back because there was a reversal in how the syntax was calculated in, , on pay for a natural language posts, how it was being processed and how it was being rated as you know, better or worse for a query.
Jeff Byer 11:00 So taking out any ambiguity in your answers to Google is has always been something that people have been talking about for a long time, especially since we're starting to get into voice searches and searches that that we can't and we can't rely on the searchers to put intent or put context into their searches because most searches are going to be as fast as possible, as little skis, keystrokes as possible or shortest questions as possible. And that's just the natural part of it. So the query itself will not have context. Your answer has to, and Google is going to use everything they can to ant to, to anticipate what the searcher's request means. Put that in context based on any historical data that they have on the, on the searcher, on their previous searches or you know, anything related to what they have searched recently and are now searching, trying to get in depth.
Jeff Byer 12:06 So all you can do as a content provider, as an SEO is make sure that your answer, using those root words has as much context as possible and putting those contextual definitions as close to the root word as possible. And using proper sentence structure. So big long run-ons is going to, , not process very well because you're gonna end up getting so far away from the root word that the context and the semantics are not going to match up or they're going to get diluted. And the way that natural language processing works is that if there's too many jps, then it's, it's diluting the context and the meaning. So that's it, at least my understanding of all of this. Now. , so let's get back to my rundown here.
Jeff Byer 13:10 And so, , in the article in this, , Bert update article from a year ago, , in the article, , just in Briggs article about how to write for natural language processing was linked. And so in reading this article, I got a lot more information about what, what a proper sentence structure is according to a natural language processing algorithm and how to write for it. And what, , , lemmatization refers to, , w word dependencies. So the example that they use in the word to set dependencies is a, is a search term that says safe temperature for chicken. So that can mean a lot of things. Well, it can mean a very few things, but if, you know, there's probably one thing that comes to your mind, but the, there's the whole point of this th this specific, , term is to match the searcher's intent. And so if your answer is process is structured properly, it will have, you know, is looking for a temperature so that temperature could be in Fahrenheit or Celsius.
Jeff Byer 14:31 So you've got in your, in your answer, you should define which temperature you are referring to. , you've gotta, you've gotta asse the, the search processing, the language processing. It's going to asse that this has something to do with cooking because a walking around chicken, nobody really cares what their internal temperature is when they're alive. It's not that, that's not something that we should be, you know, concerned about on a global level. But as far as a search intent, they're probably talking about cooking. So the, the, the proper, , answer structure that they have used is the safe internal temperature for cooked chicken is 165 degrees Fahrenheit. That is as complete of an answer as you can give to that, to that, , query con, it's a concise answer and all the word dependencies are very few hops away from each other. So, , internal temperature, , is exactly what you're looking for when you're cooking.
Jeff Byer 15:40 External temperature doesn't matter as much as internal temperature, , cooked chicken, you know, chicken and then one hot backward is cooked. And then for 165, there's a degree symbol that they use, which also has context and natural language processing. So you can use the use of the word or the symbol. And then Fahrenheit is the definition of the scale that they're using to get the temperature. So it is very, , it's a very simple and to the point answer. And so the only way that this could be more thorough is if you offered the, , Celsius alternative to Fahrenheit, but that would be more links away from, you know, or it would re answer the question a little further down. And natural language processing would put that as secondary. It would take your first temperature reading first in that context. So, , it's very interesting.
Jeff Byer 16:42 And dissecting your current content and looking for those root words and how many hops away the context defining words are from it is going to tell you a lot about how, how , natural language processors are reading your content and understanding its context. I just had this, , a client created a page and wrote all the content for this one page that were struggling to get ranked because when you look at the, the results that it's given there, they're trying to rank on a, , a fairly competitive term, but they serve a specific niche in that term. So we're not going to ever rank highly for organic for the general term because it, we, for the majority of searches, we're not the right solution for that search. We'd have to go deeper into understanding more context of the search. So it's, it's type of a type of measurement that we're doing, but it's specific to a industry or a specific to a, another type of measurement.
Jeff Byer 17:59 So, , the, the main term is not our target. Adding words to that main term is getting us closer to that target. But then they also are using a, a product name that is a, a standard name that is also being misunderstood. So we're getting results all over the place about the T. so it's becoming clear that Google doesn't know if this product is a car or it's a measuring device or it's a part or it's , has, , an animal. , it's having really a really difficult time understanding the context. So once I brought that to the customer's attention, they had said they, you know, light bulb went off and said, Oh, okay, now we need to put this in context. So now we need a separate page describing taking the, the, the root term as a starting point, but narrowing it down and covering all different facets of how the, you know, two, we're not going to rank for the actual term itself, but any of these added words on top of that, we're going to give it context.
Jeff Byer 19:23 So we're answering a lot of questions on our new content page. We're talking about a lot of industries where this product is used and we're relating all of it back to that product. So in our context under our domain and the links that are coming into that product from other domains such as distributors and things like that, that we're giving as much context to this product as possible so that the product name alone does not end up hurting us. So, , it's, it's really interesting all of the natural language processing and, and I'm starting to reevaluate all of our content and how we, how we're using, , you know, names and root words and the different, how, how many hops it takes from a root word to understand its context and the meaning that we're trying to give it. , it's very fun. I'm going to link to all of this information in the show notes.
Jeff Byer 20:25 , but it's, it's a great read and great to understand natural language processing and how Google is, is using all this information and trying to come up with the best possible solution based on reading your content and understanding the intent of the searcher. So there's a ton to, to dissect there. And, , if you have any questions, you can always email me or tweet me. I'm on twitter@globaljeffandiamjeffatbuyer.co. If you need any other information or you want me to link to any other different sources. So that's it. That's the accidental episode. I've already reached out to a couple of people for interviews this week, so next Monday will be a fault episode, so I apologize, but at least I got this one out there. It's a little late, but it is out. So, , thank you very much for listening. As always, if you, , enjoy the episode, please rate and review on your pod catcher of choice. And if you have any ideas for future episodes, just let us know. Thank you very much for listening. Talk to you next week for show notes and information. Go to digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at bam. And please give us a rating review is sincerely appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks with Rachelle Golden about the Supreme Court's decision to not hear Domino's petition on whether its website is accessible to the disabled, and what it means for website accessibility litigation moving forward.
About Rachelle Golden
Rachelle handles labor and employment law and litigation. She defends employers before state, federal, and administrative agencies and provides counsel regarding all aspects of human resource issues and compliance to help clients avoid penalties and litigation.
- Hatmaker Law Group
- Rachelle T. Golden LinkedIn
Robles v. Dominos
Bloomberg Law Article by Alexis Kramer CNBC Article by Tucker Higgins Mashable Article by Siobhan Neela-Stock
Transcript
Jeff Byer 00:07 Welcome to to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer. Today I had a good discussion with Rachelle Golden choosing an attorney at ha maker law group and she specializes in accessibility and equal access for people with disabilities. She's, , got firsthand information about the,
Jeff Byer 00:33 , domino Roblis vs Domino's case, which, , two weeks as you, two weeks ago as you listen to this was, , the Supreme court denied an appeal to, , they, okay. So what happened is we explained the case in the interview and how the case came about and where the case stands today. But, , what happened recently, which triggered me contacting Rochelle is the U S Supreme court's decision to not hear Domino's petition on whether its website is accessible to the disabled. So a very interesting discussion and, , it was awesome to get the details and understand the impact and how this is, this case has the, the opportunity to define website access moving forward. We also discussed that a worst case scenario is that Domino's settles the case and we don't get any resolution in the courts to decide what is an acceptable level of accessibility for websites.
Jeff Byer 01:41 One of the main takeaways that we got from our conversation, or I get from my conversations with Rachelle, is that if you have offline access, , ADA compliance, accessibility, , guidelines to follow, then that should also be duplicated on your website. So if you sell Rochelle's example is that if you sell gift cards within your store, then you should be able to buy gift cards on your online store. And if anybody with disabilities has special access that they, they have to buy those gift cards in the store, that same access needs to be provided online. , she also said that in this wikag 2.0 AA and you know, basically WCAG 2.1 moving forward is not going to cover everybody. , disabilities have such wide ranging, , you know, symptoms and how people use assistive technologies to, , get information with their disabilities that it's never gonna cover everybody.
Jeff Byer 02:58 And it's not gonna be possible that every single individual is going to have equal access and a digital property. All we're looking for is what is going to avoid litigation and complaints in the courts. You know, keep this, keep this not illegal issue and give us standards that we need to meet. And , and so that's what this court case could possibly do. But for now it's back to the lower courts and it's at a standstill. So that's all I got for now. I'm going on vacation. That's why I'm posting this short episode early. But this is a very important episode and lots of very quality content in here. You can reach me. I am on Twitter at global. Jeff please, if you have the opportunity and the time please rate and review us on any of your pod catchers. It really helps and I'd love to hear any feedback that you have about the show.
Jeff Byer 03:57 And we are , there was a request online the to go into more static website hosting and and a static website rendering. We are going to get into that in the future. , right now I am working on a WordPress plugin that's going to be able to give you the fastest possible load times using WordPress as a backend. , and we're cause all of my tests using the API are taking way too long to render. So we're moving forward with the static version. So I am going to give you my recipe for static versions most likely in the next episode. So stay tuned. Thank you for listening. And here is Rochelle golden
Jeff Byer 04:52 All right. Today we have for shell golden for shell is an attorney, a court with hatmaker law group. , Rachelle, will you briefly just explain, , you what you do and what your specialty is?
Rachelle Golden 05:05 Yeah, sure. So, , I'm an ADA defense attorney. I represent businesses all grow up the state and state and federal courts and, , I am a proactive consultant with various businesses as well to make sure that they become compliant with the, not only construction-related access laws, but as well as the website guidelines that are produced by the worldwide web consorti. , and so I do, like I said, defense, litigation and then proactive consultant as well as employment litigation as well for various businesses.
Jeff Byer 05:39 Excellent. So, , the topic that we're going to just discuss today, which I sent you, was the, , Supreme court's decision to not hear Domino's petition on, , the
Rachelle Golden 05:58 So I'm mr O bliss is a blind individual and or a sight impaired individual and he sued dominoes because he said that he was unable to access the online services to order a pizza. And at the time, , there was no banner on the website, so there was no, you know, if you're having difficulty call us or call our 24 hour hotline at such and such nber, , that, that wasn't in existence. And so he sued dominoes for at website accessibility and said that because there was no, , coding on the back end that met the out worldwide web consorti guidelines, which is the, , website content accessibility guidelines, WCA G, , he said that because it wasn't coded that way, that it was a barrier to accessibility and a violation under the Americans with disabilities act. And so that's how it started. , last year. Correct.
Rachelle Golden 07:02 , I believe it was in 2017. Okay. I believe it was in June. I think the, I think the complaint was filed in 2017 and so that originally the district court, which was the first court to hear it, the first federal court to hear it, , dismiss the case because the, , because dominoes then after the complaint was filed, put up this banner that said, call us 24 hours for assistance. And the court said, that's sufficient. You've effectively remediated the issue because there's a 24 hour, one, 800 hotline that people could call an accident, access the same services, , for ordering pizza if you have a site in permits. Well of course Mr. Robles didn't like that decision. And so he appealed it to the ninth circuit court of appeal and the ninth circuit court of appeals said, , not only did you not comply with a website content accessibility guidelines, , that banner didn't exist at the time.
Rachelle Golden 08:02 And so there was a right case for, , for the case to continue. And ultimately the ninth circuit court of appeals said, , setting aside the ban or issue or you know, we're not going to really focus on that. We're going to focus on whether this website needs to be coated with the would gag, the website content accessibility guidelines 2.0 AA or higher in order for it to be, , provide effective access. And the ninth circuit said yes, in order for there to be the remedy for the injunctive remedy for website accessibility is to have, , the website coated to comply with those guidelines. , and it needs to comply in order for there to be equivalent access for persons with disabilities. But the catch was, it said in order for
Speaker 4 08:56 a website to need to be in compliance with those webs, with those website guidelines, the website must have a nexus. There must be a direct correlation between the product and services that are offered on the website to the brick and mortar of the business. And since Domino's has brick and mortar locations that somebody could walk into and go order pizza, and they also have one site prevalence, they need to ensure that they are coded properly to meet those guidelines.
Jeff Byer 09:27 Yeah, and I remember the first time that you talk to you brought that up is that it's got a, the accessibility online has to match the accessibility offline. That was one of the key takeaways I took away from that. That's right. , so, , so now Supreme court, , based on those guidelines said that they say can continue. , so, so the, , the petition, what was the petition about?
Speaker 4 09:57 So, , Domino's then said, we don't really like that response from the court. So they did a petition for Ori up to the United States Supreme court and asked them to hear whether, , the, the WCG guidelines are the appropriate guidelines for relief to have a, an injunctive remedy. And so what the court, the ninth circuit said is because the wikag guidelines are not codified under the code of federal regulations because there's no specific statute or lot implementing those guidelines. That's not the standard for accessibility, but it is certainly a way to remediate accessibility barriers. So they got around it and that's how they phrased it, , to make sure that they weren't creating some sort of standard that wasn't codified in the law anywhere. And the Supreme court said, yep, we're not going to touch that. You know, we were, doesn't seem to be that there's a split in the circuits, , about these decisions. Most circuits now say that there must be a nexus to the brick and mortar that, you know, if your coated into, to be compliant with the WIC ad guidelines, that that's effective relief for injunctive relief action. And so we're gonna leave it alone so they didn't hear it.
Jeff Byer 11:16 Quick little break here because our phones got disconnected. Hi Rochelle.
Speaker 4 11:22 Hi. I think I lost ya. No,
Jeff Byer 11:24 I could hear you perfectly. I heard everything you said. , you just couldn't hear me for some reason. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. No, no problem. , you know, it's technology. What can you do? Okay, so, , so back to the appeal. And so, , so now, , wikag is, is not codified in any way, which means that the Supreme court can't rule, , in favor of that being a being a guideline because it's not actually a law.
Speaker 4 12:02 So how I see this playing out is that if you'll recall last time we spoke, the house of representatives have asked the department of justice to make the standard. Just codify it. If you're going to hold people to being in compliance with the guidelines as the effective remedy, just say so formally to go, at least everybody's on the same page. And unfortunately they said, no, we're not gonna do that. , we're gonna leave it up to the business owner to really determine how they want to provide access on their digital platforms. But this is kind of what we recommend. Okay. So that's what the department of justice the is. And so the Supreme court didn't say, , yes, wikag is the guideline. , they didn't, you know, they didn't, they didn't make that ruling and neither did the ninth circuit court of appeal. The United secret court of appeal just said, you have to provide access, digital access per person with persons with visual impairments. And in order to do that, you know, the wicked guidelines are the universally accepted standards. So that seems like a good, a good measure for relief. And the Supreme court left it alone and said, yeah, we, we essentially agree with that. , and so it's not, wikag is not the law, it's just a measure in which accessibility can be, , implemented if you use those particular guidelines as your, as your website coding.
Jeff Byer 13:40 Okay. So, so, , this all goes back to what we, what we had talked about originally is that if you're, if your offline experience has a level of accessibility than your online experience, , must have the same level of accessibility. , your, your example in our last episode was that, , if you can apply for a job, , at, at a location and you can't do it on the website, that's a mismatch of, , of access that would, that would, , , allow somebody to file a complaint.
Speaker 4 14:19 Right. If you could, if I can go into, you know, ABC restaurant and buy a gift card than I should and they have a website where they sell gift cards, I need to be able to buy that same gift card online as I would inside the brick and mortar.
Jeff Byer 14:35 Okay. And so with, with all that said, does this move the needle in either way as far as, , online accessibility going forward?
Speaker 4 14:48 Yeah, basically. , there's, there's going to be an, in my just professional opinion, , and kind of the consensus in the community, the legal community is that, , if you're a business and you have a brick and mortar and you offer interactive services on your website, , you better get ready because it basically gave the green light for plaintiffs to bring these lawsuits, , at nause. There's really no way to get around the well, it, there's no, no, it's, it's not there. I guess there could be an argent to get around the nexus argent, but, but that's not going to be something that you're going to be able to get out of at the first pleading stage. It's going to be something that you're going to have to litigate on. So it's gonna be costly. So this is even, , of, of more significance for businesses to look at their websites, see what they can do to make them as, as, as accessible as possible.
Speaker 4 15:48 , if it's out of your reach, you know, if it's going to cost you 10 grand to do an audit and to, to remediate, then you know, maybe you need to hire one of those 24 hour, , phone service companies that can take a call over the phone and leave a message for what have you, even if it's after hours. , because if you provide 24 hour access to buy gift cards online, you still need to provide 24 access to buy gift cards over the telephone essentially. , and some in some, , visually impaired advocates would say that's not sufficient. It's still different. So, but that hasn't been decided as of yet. No court has, , that I'm aware of. No court has taken up that issue as to whether, specifically whether having a 24 hour telephone nber is actually an equivalent to having 24 hour access online. They've, from, from everything that I've read, , through New York, , Florida, California, Arizona, all the courts have kind of punted that issue. They haven't gotten into the nitty gritty of that. So that certainly still an argent that can be made on the advocacy side.
Jeff Byer 16:56 Okay. And so, , so I'm, I'm going through, , I, I, I a P certification right now. Okay. And great. And, , it's, you know, this brings up a ton of points. , obviously, you know, comparing online offline experience across the board, , using accessibility like, , surfaces like accessibility three 60 to do a full and complete audit. , cause there is really no, no, , audit made automated way to do it. So, so is this robust case, is there still, , more action to be taken? , in, in regards to what like is, is, is, has, has there been a full trial, has there been, , word given, anything
Speaker 4 17:50 like that? No, this case is just incomplete. It's just in the initial pleading phase. So no discovery has been taken. No depositions have been taken that the motion to dismiss was the first pleading that Domino's filed in the original case. And it was granted because they had already put up that 24, seven telephonic banner on their website. And so the court, so that was enough and then it went up to the ninth circuit and then it went up, you know, to appeal to the United States. Supreme court got denied. So now it's been kicked back to the district court to hear the remainder of the case. And so at this point in time, I'm not aware of whether the case is settled. I'm not aware, you know, I would imagine that it's still in litigation. I haven't seen any, any dismissals as of yet. So it's still left to be seen how the case is going to resolve because it's now back down to the district court level.
Speaker 4 18:43 So Domino's deciding to settle with that, would you see that as , as a disappointment because we won't actually get a ruling? Yes, I would be, I would be really bmed out if they decided to just settle the case without actually going into the nitty gritty of, okay, so let's, now we do have this banner. Is it, is that, could you, could you access the same goods and services as you would if you were using the website or going into the brick and mortar? I think that that's a question that should be litigated and I think because everybody, not everybody, but, , the consensus in the disabled community is that communication barriers vary. They're so different from person to person based on whether their cognitive, visual or hearing, , that accessibility for communication barriers is really tailored to that individual. It's not like a wheelchair where if you have a ramp at a certain slope, yeah, you're going to, you're going to capture the vast majority of the audience.
Speaker 4 19:49 You know, or if you have a restroom that's 60 and turning radius, most wheelchairs are going to be able to do a three 60 turn. You know, it's a pretty standard, , communication barriers or not that way. Communication disabilities are not that way. There are so nuanced. And so I think it would be a disservice, , to this issue to not litigate that into really take it through all the way to, you know, motion for smary judgment or to trial to really see what the issues are and what the, what the results are from those issues that pop up throughout trial. So that way we have some guidance. You know, we really, we really, those of us in the community who are really trying to, , help our clients be proactive and to really make sure that they're doing things the right way so that they are providing access.
Speaker 4 20:35 And so they're also protecting their bottom line. You know, we're kinda shooting in the dark here of like, okay, well we need to comply with what GAD guidelines, but what does that really mean? Does that mean every single technical thing throughout the need to be adhered to? Or are there certain things that are easier to do that can kind of capture the biggest amount of, of persons who need those types of, , you know, that sort of technical compliance, that would be a great starting point for those businesses who maybe can't do a complete robust, full change of their website. You know, how does this really play out? So I would really like it. See it litigated.
Jeff Byer 21:13 Yeah. Cause this, this, so basically this has the potential to be the case that defines, defines a future of, , online accessibility. That's right. Okay. And , so nothing has really happened since, since this, , this, , , this was, , sorry I'm completely lost. So since the petition has been denied, there has been no activity. No. Okay. And so the next, the next phase is that, , either, you know, what would be the logical next step cause Domino's is basically saying, okay, , you know, we do have the complaint and it is it up to the plaintiff to, to continue.
Speaker 4 22:00 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Until there's a settlement or a dismissal or until there's another motion that's filed, maybe a motion for smary judgment after discovery has taken place and discovery meaning written questions between the two sides and depositions where you know they actually get the plaintiff in the room and start asking Mr. Robles questions about his, his experience with the website and what those barriers if any. There really were. And you know, just because it doesn't comply doesn't necessarily mean there was a barrier that he accessed. So and that's what we see a lot with the construction related access to the same that okay. Yeah. Just because it didn't technically comply with the California building code doesn't mean that there was an actual barrier there that you person, you plaintiff actually experienced. So while it may be technically not compliant, there still has to be, he still has to prove Mr. Robles has to prove that there was some sort of barrier to access to him that made the website more difficult or unable for him to use it in the way that other people who were cited could use it.
Jeff Byer 23:01 So barrier barriers is interesting language because if something was purposely blocking his access to make a phone call,
Speaker 4 23:13 no, it would be, it would be, let's say that he, , he could have used the website as it was without calling a telephone nber, but maybe he had to, maybe he cited to a certain degree. Cause just because you have the visual impairment doesn't mean you're wholly blind. There are a lot of people that can use magnifiers on the screen that will blow up, you know, the font so they can read what's on the screen. So based on what his site limitations are, whether he's wholly blind or whether he just has a visual, I mean, you know, it says that he's blind in the pleading papers, but there's been no discovery on what, to my knowledge, to what extent he's actually visually impaired. And that's what I mean by it really is going to depend upon his particular disability and how he uses websites and what he needs in order to access the website, , to, you know, order a pizza and his experience might not necessarily be the same as somebody else's.
Jeff Byer 24:14 Right. And like you were explaining, there's unique circstances for every type of disability and providing access isn't, isn't universal. That's right. That's right. Okay. So barrier doesn't mean that something goes purposely keeping them from, from, , performing the task. It was that there just wasn't a way in this, in the way that they were trying to gain access. There just wasn't a way to do it with their specific disability
Speaker 4 24:44 and it doesn't. And, and, and that's the other thing that's so, , frustrating for four defendants is a barrier doesn't mean wholly prohibited from a barrier, just means extra difficulty or, , not as easily usable. Okay. Okay. So, so if there was a barrier, it doesn't mean that he couldn't order a pizza at all. Maybe it was just that he had to squint harder in order to see his magnifier to access the screen. That could be considered a difficulty. So, so, you see what I mean? It's so, it's so individualized and that's what even even, you know, website, , remediation companies will tell you is that even if you are wicked compliant, that doesn't mean that you're accessible to everybody because you've just, you know, you can't, you can't capture everybody based on one set of guidelines.
Jeff Byer 25:40 So with, with this case specifically moving forward, , is, is it possible that in the, in a a suit or, , with, , a next complaint, the based on the wood wood wick act 2.0 AA a B, the assed standard or it's still not, not, ,
Speaker 4 26:06 no WCAG 2.0 AA would be the most commonly accepted, , in forced standard from the courts across the country. So if you're, if you're at an AA level, , and let's say you haven't gone to the, the, the 2.1 level, , most courts, I've not seen any court in, , enforce anything different or use any, any other standard to, to provide injunctive relief. Okay.
Jeff Byer 26:36 And so, , exceeding that standard going into 2.1 or anything like that would show an extra effort so that it minimize any, any future litigation because you've done as much as what the agree beyond what the agreeable standard is, even though it's not law and it's, it's not, it's just something that's been used as a benchmark in previous cases.
Speaker 4 27:03 That's right. Yeah. And you know, for the 2.1 standard, and I, and I will do this with my client signs now, even though it's not, you know, it's kinda the, the, if, if they're gonna do it and you've got a really strong mobile app presence and that's how you're getting most of your traffic, which, , I would, I would guess most, most companies are just do the 2.1 standard. I mean, you're already spending the money and if and if, and then 2.1 is, is more compatible with mobile applications. So why not just do it anyway? I mean, why go to the 2.0 AA and then, Oh wait, now we need to go to the 2.1 because our, our app isn't connecting properly and things like that. Don't waste your money. Just go all in. I mean go big or go home at this point you're already neck deep, you know, you might as well just go the extra, the extra mile and really just say I'm 2.1 thank you for visiting our mobile application. If you can't access it, there's nothing more that I can possibly do for you. And I'm sorry, I'm happy to answer any questions you have over the telephone. Give us a call.
Jeff Byer 28:01 Yeah, I completely understand that. And so offering as much as possible is, is a where most people should be since they're going through the process anyway. But if you're, if you're trying to, if you're trying to retrofit something, , you know, and there should be no real difference between just retrofitting for a 2.08 and 2.1 that's right. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, thank you very much for that clarity. , it's, , it's always helpful to understand what this means moving forward and, and you know, how, how this keeps coming up and it keeps being brought up into the spotlight. And so it's something that, you know, with, with me going through this certification, I want to keep up on current events. Sure. Is there a way that this case can be tracked publicly?
Speaker 4 28:58 , there's several different blogs out there, so like if you just Google, , like
Jeff Byer 30:10 Okay. Yeah. So unless something is, is unless there's a public filing, , there's no real way to track it. So I'll, I'll link to a blog, a blog that I find, , has valuable information in the show notes. So, yeah. All right. Excellent. , so where can people find you? , what do you have to, , tell the audience?
Speaker 4 30:34 , people can find me at Hatmaker, H I T M a K E R Hatmaker law.com. Again, my name is Rochelle golden. You can find me there. You can email me directly from the website, , which is Rochelle, , at Hatmaker law.com. Or you can simply just give me a call. I'm happy to answer any calls that I receive and I will answer any email that I receive. I'm not going to guarantee you within 24 hours, but, but I will certainly get back to you. My telephone number is (559) 374-0077.
Jeff Byer 31:08 All right. Excellent. Thank you very much for your time today and we were, we really appreciate it and , looking forward to speaking with you again soon. Absolutely. I'm, I'm available anytime for ya. All right, thanks for
Speaker 1 31:22 Bye. Bye.
For show notes and information. Go to digitalrage.fm Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digitalragefm. And please give us a rating review we sincerely appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks with Geoff Atkinson (@geoffatkinson), Founder and CEO of Huckabuy. We talk dynamic rendering, automated schema markup, cloud serving dynamic renderers, and Google's perfect world when it comes to websites and their content.
About Geoff Atkinson
Geoff Atkinson @geoffatkinson CEO of http://Huckabuy.com, former http://Overstock.com SVP, online marketing, search, SEO, skiing, biking, golfing https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-atkinson-7311872/ https://huckabuy.com/seo-company/geoff-atkinson/
Episode Links and Mentions
New article: "Identifying site structure weaknesses"
"Site structure" is one of the most loosely used terms in SEO.
That's why I attempt to clarify how Internal linking, Taxonomy, Click depth, and URL structure play together and how to optimize them.https://t.co/31h2YXJ55g
— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) October 9, 2019
Transcript
Jeff Byer 00:07 Welcome to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and today we are featuring an interview I did with Jeff Atkinson. He's the founder and CEO at HUC buy and we talk about dynamic rendered sites, static sites, search for Google, Google's perfect world and what they really like to see and respect
Jeff Byer 00:33 when it comes to , crawling websites and website content. So dynamic rendering, cloud rendering of a of a large website is the key to what his company does and they take large, , constantly changing sites and serve them through a cloud system as far as what I understand. They serve it through a cloud based system that does cloud-based rendering of their site and gives Google a perfectly static rendered version of the site that is quickly crawlable and indexable so that there are no barriers to Google being able to get the structure, the content and list in search results. So very fun. We also talk about dynamic, , schema markup. So there's a few tools out there. I found one called in links that , that kinda does the same thing. It'll go through your content and it'll find all the opportunities that your, your HTML has to add schema markup to it.
Jeff Byer 01:50 I don't, I looked at the results and what it, what it picked out as being, , able to have a, have structured data connected to it and it wasn't completely accurate. It uses keywords and tries to, , tries to automatically select a topic based on your HTML content and it's not completely accurate. It had a few, a few things that were out of the scope of what the content was. And we're off topic as far as what the website as a whole is about. So the, at least this tool in links takes a lot of customization and hand holding to make sure that it, that you get it right. But Jeff's tool at Huckaby is much more, much more one on one and does, , you know, it does a better job of identifying schema, , in HTML and served as static version with the scheme so that Google is very happy and can index easily.
Jeff Byer 03:02 So that no content is missed specifically. It's, it's good for very large sites that change very often. So the Google can keep up with it. And the faster that you can deliver that information to Google, the faster that it gets indexed and added to the knowledge graph. So, so that's that. , other news is there was a Supreme court ruling for a ruling. Basically Domino's appealed the decision, the judgment that they had against them last year where a blind person sued them for ADA compliance because they couldn't order a pizza from the website. So the Supreme court decided not to hear Domino's appeal. And we talk about, we're going to talk about what this means for the future of, , ADA compliance and accessibility laws regarding digital properties for large corporations. And you know, basically everybody is that this is, this is something that's going to become more common and it's time now for everybody to assess their websites and make sure that they are up to speed on accessibility and that they meet the requirements for accessibility.
Jeff Byer 04:24 I'm S I'm in the process of getting certified right now, , as WebEx, web accessibility expert at IAP. So, , once I have that, I'll, I'll keep you updated on everything that you need to know as far as being certified, getting certified training courses, things like that. But next week we are talking to Rachelle golden who is an accessibility attorney. She's been on the show before and she is going to talk us through the details of what this decision means and what it could mean moving forward for , corporations and accessibility in general. So keep on the lookout for that. My specific portion of this accessibility topic is going to stick to what my audience mostly wants to know is all of the technical requirements and technical aspects that go into being WCAG 2.1 compliant. So, , look forward to that and we will, , you know, lead by example and reach out to all the sites that we've worked on for the past 10 years and let them know what's involved, how their site fares as far as ADA compliance and what will be required to make it compliant and give them the opportunity to opt out.
Jeff Byer 05:54 So the opt out is important because if any judgment comes or any complaints are filed against a website for ADA compliance, that it can't be assed that it was part of the original project that it had to be opted into and you need to opt out of it if you don't want it done. So just something that we are moving forward with and hopefully by the end of the year, most of our large sites that do have a ADA compliance in their brick and mortar are going to also be accessible through their website. So that is that. Let's get into the interview with Jeff Atkinson and if you have any questions or suggestions for topics or interviewees, please let us know. You can hit me up on Twitter. I'm at global. Jeff, you can go to the website, digital rage.fm and leave comments on the show notes. , anywhere where, , you can email me, , show@digitalrage.fm and I think that's all I have to tell you about. So let's get into the interview with Jeff Atkinson.
Jeff Byer 07:21 Hey Jeff. Hey Jeff with a G. Hey, doing good. How are you? I'm good, thanks. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. , so I usually just start recording and, you know, edit in whatever at any time. , perfect. So, , the way that I described my show is it's a
Jeff Byer 07:42 digital marketing for digital marketers, so feel free to, to get in the weeds, use acronyms, you know, talk, that type of stuff. So cool. Yeah, for sure. , so to start out, let's, , I'll, why don't you introduce yourself and introduce your company? Okay. Right now, just go for it. Yeah.
Geoff Atkinson 08:04 Cool. , so yeah, I'm Jeff Atkinson. I'm the founder and CEO of HUC by , formally the SVP of marketing@overstock.com. And Huckabee is a SEO software company, performance driven SEO software that does automated structured data markup as well as we have a product called SEO cloud that takes advantage of dynamic rendering on Google. So that's, that's me.
Jeff Byer 08:29 Very cool. , I was reading through the, the white paper that, , that got sent that did a little bit of the, , the overview of what your company does. I'm really intrigued, so I completely agree with, you know, the Google perfect world, the way that I build my websites is, is exactly like that. Lots of , static rendered HTML, , for speed and for ease of crawling. So yup,
Geoff Atkinson 08:54 I heard that on your last podcast
Jeff Byer 08:56 and was super impressed. I pretty rarely hear about people building this way. So, , yeah, I was like, boy, this guy gets it. , let's build in static HTML. Let's give the bots what they want. , so yeah, I think we are going to, we speak the same language. Yeah, definitely. And so, , one of the new sites that I was building just related to this was a, we were going to build it using a react, but get react to, , export through Gatsby so that Gatsby creates everything, takes all the dynamic content and creates, , , just one big static site with all the resources compressed and an image, , manipulation and everything. So yeah,
Geoff Atkinson 09:39 that's great. So, you know, we find a lot of, a lot of companies just simply can't do that necessarily because of business requirements, you know, put onto the website that they wanted to interact with users in a certain way. And so that's really what our SEO cloud product is around, is allowing them to sort of do whatever they want on the front end and still have this perfect crawl experience for, for bots.
Jeff Byer 10:04 Yeah. So, , explain that, explain the, , the, , the cloud rendering, , portion of your product.
Geoff Atkinson 10:12 Yeah, for sure. So, , there's this sort of concept known as dynamic rendering, which basically means that sites load dynamically based on what called them. , the simple example is if I go to a website on my mobile phone, I'll get one experience by go on my desktop, I'll get a slightly different experience and that's all well and good. It's best practice. Google supports it. What they've really changed though is they said, well now you can actually give an experience just for us and that's , opened the door for us to basically create SEO cloud. Now you still have to have all the same content. You can't, you can't do any sort of tricks, you can't keyword stuff or you know, alter the page in a way still has to be the same content and information, literally the same site as the user experience. But you can now que ups or this what we call Google's perfect world.
Geoff Atkinson 11:02 So we do much like what you're doing with Gatsby but it a little bit different level where we're taking a site that has quite a bit of dynamic content, whether it has dynamic content or not and translating into a flat HTML version. And that flat HTML version is usually, you know, 30% on average, the size of the previous page. And if you actually look at it, it looks identical. , you know, the, the, the way that it renders and the way that it actually looks and fields is it identical kind of shows how much code bloat you know, is actually out there on these websites. Right? We then take that, that light version and hosted it in a caching layer. So we use, we have a partnership with CloudFlare to provide edge delivery, , for this sort of HTML version. We then obviously add structured data, , world-class structured data to the top of the page and sort of queue up this perfect Google crawl experience.
Geoff Atkinson 11:56 So this is a product that, , SAP uses. , a lot of kind of enterprise customers that have very complicated sites with lots of business requirements are now able to sort of have this fantastic crawl experience. And one of the things that we've noticed that's interesting is a lot of, a lot of websites have more, , index issues than they actually know about. You know, if they have a very big site that's relatively slow, you know, a lot of their content, even though they'll have a big contest, right, it actually isn't even getting accessed index correctly. So this sort of frees up all those issues. It takes care of a lot of issues and, and really allows a complicated website to get properly called index and, you know, get sort of the search attention that it deserves.
Jeff Byer 12:39 Now is that related to amp in any way or are you serving amp pages?
Geoff Atkinson 12:43 You know, that's a great question. This product actually started as an amp product. So we, our first intention was, all right, let's build, you know, have it have a sort of automated amp, , you know, version of a page. Then we kind of figured out that Google, despite them saying that they would index and crawl any type of amp page, certain bots are really the only ones looking for amp pages. So when your SAP or someone like that, the type of bots that are hitting that site actually aren't looking for amp links. And so it almost kind of made the product look a bit useless. So then we got into sort of the dynamic rendering world, so it does not create amp versions of the page. , I think, you know, as Google includes more and more, you know, page types in there amp index, , that could be a very viable product.
Geoff Atkinson 13:36 , but for now it much more as around just building the flat HTML version and sort of this perfect crawl experience for Google, , rather than, , amp pages. It'll be interesting to see sort of how amp plays out and how much, you know, cause developers hate it. Google obviously loves, it's very strategic for them to be kind of hosting the internet. , and so it'll be kinda interesting to see how, how amp ends up playing out across industries. I think obviously it's been, , somewhat of a success, or at least it's very well adopted in sort of the news and publishing arena. But to see if it actually gets into the mainstream. And other industries like B2B software, e-commerce I think kind of remains to be seen. There's just so much functionality that's stripped out that I think you'll have a lot of business users sort of pushing back on whether amp works for them or not.
Jeff Byer 14:30 Yeah. And so that's the other thing about, , serving a, a site that's, that's not dynamic or serving static HTML is that amp can make it amp by just removing the tags that they don't want. So Google has the power to do this on their own, but their first attempt was making the developers convert over to it. And that obviously hasn't gone very well if it goes well for new sites and people who want their content scraped and served elsewhere. But, , yeah, I I did not adopt app a amp because none of my sites are really news sources. We have content strategies, but amp wasn't, wasn't a good solution. And you know, every report I see online is for, from SEOs perspective is that, , amp does nothing for their rankings.
Geoff Atkinson 15:19 Yeah. I think it has been a bit of a failure outside of the, the news industry. They, they certainly could do it themselves. Although they typically take this approach of accessing developers first. You need to think about their Chrome and chromi product, the way that they render pages and the way that they've sort of taken over the way that the internet is literally, , rendered and served through Chrome browsers. , they're the ones that get to decide, you know, whether flash for example, the viable language or not. , and they kind of did that surreptitiously. I don't think many people realize how powerful their, their sort of takeover of the browser world via Chrome and the way that they render a using Chrome and chromi. , so they typically do go in this way, you know, trying to, to get adoption within developers. I just don't think they expected so much pushback. , they made it so rigid and, and nonfunctional that, , you know, they, they, I think the most upset, you know, probably yourself included are our actual developers that are, that are coding pages and creating websites. They're just like, no, this doesn't work for me.
Jeff Byer 16:25 Right. If we could easily dp out our current content into an amp page and, and serve it that way, that'd be fine. But there's so much else that goes into it because with most of my clients, the goal is some sort of interaction or you know, some conversion action that's not possible.
Geoff Atkinson 16:43 Yeah. That the cart a form fill out. , you know, exactly. They need some, some S some sort of interaction with the page that allows that customer to, , to convert. And that an amp is very, , difficult to do any kind of work like that with.
Jeff Byer 17:00 So your clients there, they're already, you've got a pretty large sites, some dynamics. I'm not. , and you, so from what I gather, you're scraping the content and putting it in a more packageable format for Google and S and serving it on cloud.
Geoff Atkinson 17:20 Yeah. So we actually have our own renderer. , so it's a little bit less about scraping and more about actually rendering each page converting, , stripping out and non-important, you know, aspects of the page that Google doesn't care about converting anything that's dynamic into flat HTML and whether it's dynamic or not, the way to be able to sort of lighten up the page, make it a lot faster and then host it. You know, using a partnership with CloudFlare at edge delivery just has great, you know, performance aspects to it. , Google just kind of can cruise through a very big site in a very short amount of time and that's really what they're looking for. That's really ideal for them, is to be able to, to, you know, if you think about how much time and resources, which is, you know, money that Google is spending, waiting for pages to load, for them to be able to understand websites, it's gotta be infuriating.
Geoff Atkinson 18:16 People always think, you know, when we talk about page B, I'm like, how many times does Google have to yell from the mountain tops? That page speed's important until people start listening. And it's really not just their main motivation I really don't think is actually the user experience. It is when it comes to mobile. Right? You do need to be fast for mobile to really work, especially as, as they grow in the, really their, their growth. Now it's in the third world getting people online, you got to have that fast page speed because the connection speeds are low, but there are selfish reasons are that they waste a ton of money waiting for sites to load. So it's like having the lights on but no one's home. , they're just sort of sitting there waiting for a page to load when they want to be downloading and indexing information and content. So, , it's just incredibly, probably frustrating for them. And that's why they reward sites that are fast because they're able to access the information in a timely way.
Jeff Byer 19:06 Yeah. It makes their bots more efficient. So how do you handle a canonical ization across, , cloud sides?
Geoff Atkinson 19:16 , in terms of like category pages where there's multiple canonicals just
Jeff Byer 19:21 if there's a front end, front end facing site and then this, this cloud-based site is how do you, is is Google able to differentiate that or do you have to canonical lies everything.
Geoff Atkinson 19:34 so you actually can tell them what the server response. So you'll say, you know, Google will come in and they'll say, you know, user agent is a Google bot and we'll recognize that and say, okay, this is the version for you to come crawl the way that they kind of can just or verify that the site is accurate. And the same as the user experience is stuff using like they're, , they're evergreen bot and they're their JavaScript bots that will come in and actually look at that dynamic content. That's how we sort of theoretically think that they, you know, can, can check the, the actual user site to make sure everything is matching up. We don't actually see them doing it very often. They really do enjoy having this, you know, , dynamic version or dynamically rendered version. , so, , there isn't any sort of a, it's all done server-side through the communication of the bot when they come make a request and we, we talk to them at that point and say there's an a Google friendly version of this site and that's, that's what they go into and crawl. And I'm sure they can, if they want hit the actual user site, they have many ways to do that, but we just don't see them doing it very much.
Jeff Byer 20:47 So is the
Geoff Atkinson 20:48 implementation for this on a customer to customer basis depending on technologies that their original website is built with? Yes. , it's, you know, most sites have some sort of a, either caching Lehrer, you know, Akamai or CloudFlare. So we have modules that, that, , can implement a site with. You know, that covers maybe 90% of the internet. And then there's the sort of one off ones that are sort of unique that we have to figure out a way to integrate. What's exciting though about this cloud player partnership is , in the future and about a couple months we'll actually just have a marketer can just go in and change their DNS, , settings and literally in two minutes they'll be live on SEO cloud. They'll also get, , the sort of optimal CloudFlare optimization of their user site as well. So that's really our, our big product that we're working on now is like you're not just going to get the perfect crawl experience, , for Google in this sort of edge delivery for Google.
Geoff Atkinson 21:57 You're also an edge delivery just, I dunno how much your audience knows about it but, but essentially edge delivery is just saying that, you know, instead of having to call to a server and that server responds and you know, works through all this stuff, there's actually distributed servers around the world that are based on locations that each have the, all the information that's necessary to serve a page right there located and in memory. So that say a bot comes from China, it's still going to be instantly available in China as it is. It doesn't have to make the laps around the world, I guess is the best way to say it. It's right there, available at the edge. , and so this, this partnership with, , CloudFlare is exciting for the implementation purposes cause it's just a very simple DNS change. And then actually they don't just get SEO cloud, they actually get this very, you know, 30 to 50% improvement in page speed just to everybody, which is pretty exciting.
Jeff Byer 22:51 Yeah. So, , we've been implementing CDNs for a while now and, , it, it does help a lot. I mean there's, there's, , you know, pluses and minuses, the implementation and the, and the distribution of assets to the servers, which, you know, you want to make, , as, as seamless as possible. But, , yeah, we do understand that the, , the benefits of a CDN, especially on sites that need to perform internationally.
Geoff Atkinson 23:20 Yeah. I mean, just listening and researching what, what you're doing, , you're doing it exactly right. I mean, you think about page speed and delivery and how to sort of have a site be optimized for what Google wants. You know what we always say, you know, Google is actually pretty open and honest about what they're looking for out of these websites. And if you could give it to them, you get some real nice benefits.
Jeff Byer 23:43 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we will monitor all that for our clients. Our clients are usually small to medi size businesses. We do have a, a couple of medi to large size, , international B2B manufacturers. But for the most part we, we try and keep it simple and make sure that what we're putting out into, , into the, the web is, is very clean HTML structured properly and has clear signals to Google's structured data, everything like that to what it is, what it's, you know, how to use it, how to crawl it and who's responsible for it, which is now a big thing with the EIT.
Geoff Atkinson 24:22 That's fantastic. And I hope your customers, , understand what they're getting because, , it's pretty rare that even in the enterprise size or small and medi, it's pretty rare to have someone be able to provide that. And you're obviously doing that. So I hope they appreciate you.
Jeff Byer 24:38 Thank you. And my clients have absolutely no clue. I keep the taking stuff out of it, out of the art conversation.
Geoff Atkinson 24:46 You can play that clip back and put it on the website, whatever you want.
Jeff Byer 24:50 Very nice. , so, , do you mind if we get in the weeds a little bit, a little bit of the yeah. , how the product was built for sure. , what, , what kind of, , development stack are you using to, , to implement this?
Geoff Atkinson 25:08 So, , the main application layer runs on Google cloud, , which is a phenomenal product. So just a warning. I am not a developer, you're more experienced than I am. I happen to have a fantastic CTO who's brilliant and, , really has, has built this thing. , I know that we've almost finished my garage and completely on the Google cloud. , Google cloud is incredible in terms of what it can do. I think it's a real disruptor and it's going to sort of take down AWS and a bunch of other, these sort of, , storage and application layer providers. So yeah, almost the entire application runs, , in Google cloud. And then obviously our edge delivery and how we're actually serving a site is, , is done through this partnership with cloud player, which also is just amazing. , so, you know, my background goes back to, you know, overstock and, and the days where, you know, storage was expensive and all these, all these, you know, just the amount that we spent on tech was kind of just for storing things and serving the site was just sort of mind boggling.
Geoff Atkinson 26:18 You know, I remember we had like server farms in Utah here and , to think what you can do now, , is just sort of mind blowing. , a lot of these technologies too aren't really getting leveraged yet. Like the, the CloudFlare edge delivery, we're one of the very first, if not the first partners are leveraging this for actual business reasons and intentions. And the, when I every, you know, every week when I had my one on one with our CTO and is describing what Google cloud is capable of, I'm just like, this is insane. And their, their prices are so low. And so yeah, almost everything is between Google cloud and CloudFlare.
Jeff Byer 26:57 Okay. Yeah. And we've been, , we've been experimenting with a lot of different , cloud based services as well. , so in the, in the Google cloud is your main application and the application, , the client sends the DNS through the application, the application is able to do all the translation in the cloud.
Geoff Atkinson 27:22 Yeah. So it does the actual rendering of the site and into an SEO cloud version of the site. And that's done through, , Google cloud.
Jeff Byer 27:32 So is the proprietary portion of this is how the app decides what is required and what is not.
Geoff Atkinson 27:40 Yeah. So it's the translation of the page and the conversion of the page from whatever it is today into that flat edge, that light plat, HTML version. That's really the big chunk of the proprietary technology.
Jeff Byer 27:53 And so does it, does it do the same thing like on a lighthouse report when you see that you have unused CA CSS and the lighthouse report, is it something similar to that where you can actually strip out on UC CSS?
Geoff Atkinson 28:07 , I believe so. This is getting a little bit more technical than I know about the product, but I believe, yes, it's, it's include CSS that's being used that's actually, you know, serving the, you know, helping the page load. , and look the way it does. But unused CSS and things of that nature, I'm quite certain are being stripped out and taken out of the page.
Jeff Byer 28:28 Okay. And so have you handled any, , like, you know, having to translate through WordPress or any other, , of the, the major open source platforms?
Geoff Atkinson 28:41 Yup. Yes, we're pretty platform agnostic. , cause we're really just looking at the front end. So WordPress is a, , it's actually quite a guilty party when it comes to page speed and the amount of sort of code bloat that goes on. I think it's a, it's a fantastic, , you know, we're on WordPress on a ton of software companies around WordPress just because of its flexibility. And also it's relatively SEO friendly. There's a lot of nice plugins and such. , but yes, we do find that a lot of WordPress sites have a lot of these issues where there's, , just slow page speed, a lot of code bloat, you know, oftentimes a lot of dynamic stuff going on. So SEO cloud can help a WordPress sites quite a bit.
Jeff Byer 29:23 Yeah, I've been experimenting with, , accessing WordPress through the API and translating the API server side so to the, to spits out a static HTML. And right now the first implemation implementation I've I have right now is through PHP. So it uses the PHP connection to render it server side. So it does cause a little bit of a delay. So my next, , the next thing I'm going to try is doing a server side cashed solution so that the content is always there and it only updates the API when the, when the site changes, when something saved. So trying to try to make a, give the client a WordPress back end that they're familiar with, but serve ultimately static files on the front end. So
Geoff Atkinson 30:15 that's brilliant. I think that's a really, that's a really great way to approach it. , we haven't gotten to the level of like actual integrations with CMS, which it sounds like, you know, what you're heading down, where the user can actually still interact with the CMS at their choice, but they're going to get this really nice, you know, quick site. , we're more taking whatever that CMS spits out and then translating that into a faster site. But I like the way that you're thinking about it.
Jeff Byer 30:42 Yeah. I haven't been able to avoid it. I would tell my customers, you know, the, the pluses and minuses to WordPress and it definitely has pluses for them cause they can edit their own content but minus his performance. , if you rely on any third party plugins, , that's a huge, huge issue there. I've had sites taken down, there's one right now that we're having to completely rebuild because one of the third party plugins, , just stop being supported.
Geoff Atkinson 31:11
Jeff Byer 32:10 Yeah. And, , you know, with any open source platform or even even hosted platform like, like a Shopify, if you depend on a third party plugin, you better make sure that you've, you know, who's behind it and, and that they're, they can be reliable. So, , I'm a big, I'm a big fan of, of your solution. I liked the, , you know, the rendering in the cloud. What are some of the, , big success stories that you've had with your, with your solution?
Geoff Atkinson 32:39 So if you think about just structured data in and of itself, that product has gotten us a long way and it's gotten our customers along the way. So our average customer that's using the structure data product, and this is funny, how about, I remember Matt Cutts always talking when structured data first came around about how structured data doesn't influence rankings or doesn't influence traffic. Our average customer just on structured data product grows 62% in 12 months, which is pretty incredible. So structured data definitely moves the needle. If you just think about how much Google understands with a site with very good structured data versus a site that doesn't have structure data take about like an SAP. You know, here's a really complicated website. It's not organized like an eCommerce site. There's not product pages that are all structured. There's not category pages that are all the same.
Geoff Atkinson 33:30 It's very complicated product, very important site, very high domain authority. , when they come to a site that's like that, it's relatively hard for them to figure out what's going on. , so if you layer structure like world-class structured data across the entire site and you're saying, you know, this is a software application and it integrates with this and here's the pro, you know, those types of clues. Google wants that information so badly. So if you go from SAP as a HTML or worse, it's very dynamic site two, you're actually sort of spoonfeeding Google all of this information per page be a structured data. This, the amount that they understand about SAP jps through the roof. So these, you know, really great success stories. And one of the things I love the most about sort of our direction is I think it's really aligned with where Google's going.
Geoff Atkinson 34:26 , structured data is getting used more and more. It's getting adopted more and more, almost every algorithm update over the last five years has somehow pushed structure data deeper and deeper into the algorithm. It's the same with mobile, right live in the last 10 years. Every algorithm update in some way, shape or form is getting more mobile, mobile friendly. So those are kinda the two things that we focus on. Mobile, you know, mobile, which was page speed and being, being responsive, , as well as, , the importance of really good structure data and they're changing it a lot. So we root for algorithm updates. , you know, I know the industry can be very scared of algorithm updates, but, , I would say with every algorithm update, you know, some of the sites do worse and some of the sites actually do better. And we want to be on the side of the sites that do better during algorithm updates.
Geoff Atkinson 35:15 And typically that's the case because we're aligned with what they're looking for these websites. So yeah, our average customer grows 62% in 12 months. I mean, some of the success stories are kind of incredible. Concur is a fantastic customer that's kind of growing like crazy, but we work with companies of all sizes. , we have some S you know, startups that know that SEOs are their path to revenue to medi sized businesses that depend on, you know, want to really crank up their sales channel and online, you know, inbound leads, , B organic search all the way up to, you know, your sales forces of the world. So, , it's, it's cool. The thing I'm most proud of when I started this thing, it was like there isn't a ton of performance-based SEO software. You know, the SEO space is mainly services driven. A lot of agencies, a lot of consultants, , that the software side of things is almost all analytical. So a lot of rank trackers and site crawlers and things like that. So to have something that you can actually turn live and it's gonna help the site drive growth is a pretty rare thing. And for that growth to be 62%, it's something that I'm really proud of. , my background at overstock is in growing, you know, very large organic search channel and, , we love to see that happen for our customers. So really moves the needle and, , those performance nbers we're very proud of.
Jeff Byer 36:39 And so is the structured data service that you offer, is that , somehow automated or is that by hand?
Geoff Atkinson 36:47 That's automated? Yeah. So it's, , it's a, we, we populated Jason LD packet of structured data across the entire site as they change content or add products or whatever it happens to be. The structure data automatically, , picks up the new information as Google also changes their requirements. , we do have to make a change when that happens, but it happens really quickly and it goes across every single customer. So 50 plus customers say, you know, , event markup change just to like in the last month, everybody's fixed within 24 hours. While the rest of the internet, you know, kind of lags behind. So, , yeah, the automation of it and the depth of our structured data is really what sort of the differentiator. , it's very in depth and it , it is automated students a big box to check for sites to just not have to worry about it anymore.
Jeff Byer 37:40 Yeah. So, , we've been doing all of our, , all of our structure data by hand and I can tell you know, anybody who is a developer or who is starting to look into structured data on your own, the schema keeps changing constantly and they're adding more categories and then they're adding more identifiers to each of the categories. And you can spend months going down this rabbit hole of scheme of this, give me that, give me that, you know, everything. So having an automated solution, being able to recognize what the content is, is, , is definitely valuable. So I see a really high value in that product.
Geoff Atkinson 38:17 Yeah, thanks. We, we think of it as something that lends itself to outsourcing because it really is almost like a full time job. If you want to do it really in depth, , in house, you almost didn't need like a developer working on it almost all the time. And, , that's just one that you can find a developer that cares enough about structured data to so want that job or, or to do it is a hard thing to do. , so the automation piece really helps our customers for sure.
Jeff Byer 38:42 Yeah. And , what was I gonna say regarding that? , Oh, ah, back to what you mentioned about, , Google saying the structure data doesn't help with rankings. , so they'd say that because it's not a direct ranking factor. What it is is you telling them what your content is and that content is ends up being your ranking factor. So they, they always say that this is not a ranking factor, but there's things that are ancillary to what you're doing that are, and so structured data is huge because all you're doing is providing information to Google that they maybe previously didn't have and that increases your rankings.
Geoff Atkinson 39:21 It's a great way to put it. Yeah. And the, and the other piece, like one thing that we see happen, right, you know, very quickly is you start ranking for a lot new, a lot of new keywords and specifically mid detail terms that are sort of like the bread and butter of any great SEO campaign. , you start making positive and authoritative connections to these mid and tail terms that just weren't there. You know, even if the keyword was in some sort of metadata or HTML, it's not authoritative. A metadata is really suggested with structured data. It's authoritative. So the connections that are made to new keywords that our average customer in 12 months, their nber of ranking keywords in the top hundred of Google on average grows 91%. So it, that's really the, the first step is that you just get these as positive associations with a whole bunch of great keywords that just weren't there before.
Jeff Byer 40:10 Yeah, it is a great, great way to, , to expose different content to different audiences and find those low funnel keywords that are directly related to your client and your sales. , so w, , just finishing up here, what are the tools you use on a day to day basis?
Geoff Atkinson 40:31 , me personally, it's nothing. It's super exciting. You know, we're a Slack company. We rely on Slack all the time. You mean like SEO tools or are you talking about like
Geoff Atkinson 41:20 We use Google keyword planner cause it sort of, I find it to be the best, you know, suggesting new keywords and actual voles and then kicking it over to a Moz or an AA reps and sort of get the keyword difficulty scores. , we leverage, , Google search council API. So we have a dashboard that's in beta right now that's pulling in a lot of statistics from Google search console from a reps and actually w as they have sort of minimized and gotten rid of the old Google search console. , and kinda don't show as many crawl stats and crawl information. We actually are the loan company that can provide that information cause we're actually monitoring the crawls and what, how, you know, SEO cloud is interacting with Google, which is pretty exciting. So, , starting the LeBron, you know, we never really did it any reporting, like a dashboard type of reporting and that's a new product that's, that's part of our product now that people can log in and see really cool SEO statistics that are kinda going away. , so leveraging some, some cool API. As in SEMrush, API erupts, Google search console, those are, , and then cloud player. Of course, those are the sort of the hot hot tools, certain in products around Huckabee right now.
Jeff Byer 42:37 Nice. So, , Huck by.com is , where the, where the information is. How do people, , get in touch with you, follow you, ask you questions, bother you.
Geoff Atkinson 42:51 Yeah. , so one promise I've made for podcasts that I've been on is if you, if you go to our site and fill out a contact us form and put in it that you heard me on your podcast or whatever, I'll actually make sure I talked to you personally, which is cool. So that's probably the best way. If you want to have a conversation either about Huckabee or just learn more. , and then , you know, typical LinkedIn, Twitter, , pretty easy to find cause it's Geoff with a G, G O, F, F and , Jeff of the day and then Jeff with a J. So, , that's the one way you can remember it. And then, , yeah, I'm pretty, , I'm not super active on Twitter, but I do answer questions there quite a bit. And , and yeah, just your typical ways and you're always welcome to email me and just Jeff at G O F F at
Jeff Byer 43:36 Great. Well thank you very much for your time and , and providing more information about your, your products and your services. Really, , really interested in, I really like what you're doing, so
Geoff Atkinson 43:47 thanks Jeff. Likewise man. It's cool to talk. Pretty rare for me to talk to someone that with your level attic, your Dollage about what we do is probably even a little bit higher than my own, which is a, doesn't really happen that often, but you're
Jeff Byer 44:07 Of course. Thank you. We'll talk to you too. Talk soon. Thanks for show notes and information. Go to digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks with Scott Desmond Dahlgren about the past, present, and future of advertising as well as the transition from digital to traditional to omnichannel media sales.
About Scott Desmond Dahlgren
West Coast Digital Sales & Programmatic Lead Xandr (Formerly DIRECTV) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdahlgren/
Transcript
Jeff Byer 00:07 Welcome to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer. Today we have our first in studio guests. My cousins, Scott Desmond Dahlgren. He does media sales, at Xandr. Xandr is a division of AT&T and he, uh, explains the combination of data from each one of 18
Jeff Byer 00:33 they're advertising audiences, but they can, uh, try and keep track of them as well. And, uh, he talks about the differences between online and offline targeting and reporting. So very fun conversation, especially for a this audience, which is strictly online digital marketing and how traditional TV and, uh, and the media that he sells is, it differs from what we do, uh, for PPC on a day to day basis. Uh, and we talk about my history with, with him creating digital and uh, and all the following him with all the companies that he's worked with and done sales for. And he uses me as a creative resource, which I always very much appreciate. Um, so, uh, beyond that, uh, not much else is going on in the, uh, in the, in the Jeff buyer inc realm. Uh, lots of, lots of proposals out, lots of, uh, work going on.
Jeff Byer 01:37 Um, the, you know, PPC specifically it, we're doing a bunch of rebuilding and I'm trying to clear off a lot of, uh, lower, lower level stuff off my plate. Get mostly outsourced and get, uh, the bigger projects started. Uh, we got a huge project build a, a relaunch of a, uh, a celebrity brand name that's coming at the end of the year. So once it's done, I will announce it on the podcast. You guys can check out my work. But for now, the site that's up is somebody else's work and it, uh, quite frankly is not very good. So, uh, we're gonna have that fixed by the end of the year and we're launching probably mid November and then a brand new, uh, celebrity and indoors product brand is also going to launch at that same time too. So we're going to have two pretty large launches, uh, within the next month, month and a half. So, uh, be look beyond the lookout for that. And I will definitely, if you follow me on any social media, best way, best place to follow me is on Twitter. I am at global. Jeff and I will announce all of our product launches there and, uh, you can ask me any questions. Uh, go to byard.co for, uh, anything related to business and contact information as far as website design and SEO. So let's talk with my first cousin Scott Desmond.
Jeff Byer 03:05 Doug. So today we have Scott doll Graham who goes by guy. He's my cousin. She works for Zander and uh, he does a lot of advertising, but Dez, why don't you tell us what you actually do? Scott Dahlgren Hi, Jeff. Jeff, my first cousin. Uh, my name is Scott Desmond Dahlgren and I work for Zander, which is a part of that
Scott Dahlgren 03:31 at T and, T, which also owns direct TV and AppNexus and Warner media. So it's a large media conglomerate. Uh, and I have 15 years of digital advertising experience where I worked at AOL, Disney interactive and a startup called GumGum. So I've been working in the digital advertising industry for quite some time now. Yes. And, uh, thank you for bringing me along and all these ventures. It's fun doing work for you with all these companies. Yes, Jeff's been, uh, very helpful, uh, with creative and other things that I've needed over the course of the last 10 or 15 years. So it works great. You, you're the creative genius behind the ads that I sell.
Jeff Byer 04:12 I didn't, you know, I don't think of the creative teams, but I liked being, uh, being included. So, um, today I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the, uh, some of the, uh, the terms that you use on a daily basis and, and what you, what, um, acronyms that, cause I remember talking to you one night at a, at your place and you've used a bunch of acronyms and I'm like, do you just speak in complete acronyms at work?
Scott Dahlgren 04:41 Yeah, the digital video and just digital advertising ecosystem has really changed a lot in the last 15 years. Um, when I first started at AOL, um, about, like I said, 15 years ago, we were primarily selling digital, uh, banner inventory, you know, banners that are referred to by their sizes and pixels. So four 68 by sixty's or seven 28 by nineties. Uh, and it was really the emphasis infancy of the digital advertising sort of revolution. Um, you know, and over the past 15 years it's gotten a lot more complex. So now instead of just selling banner or display mentory, we're selling things like native ads also, banner still exist. Um, but more rich media, uh, video in the form of pre-roll and mid-roll. Um, and that sort of refers to where the video actually takes place in the content, either before the content, during the content or after the content.
Scott Dahlgren 05:39 Um, and then of course we have things like, you know, linear television, uh, advertising, which are kind of the spots that you've seen, you know, for the last 30 years on television sets. Um, and now those are also getting more digital. So they're turning into things like addressable advertising. So the really changed over the last 15 to 20 years and it, and it's poised to change even more over the next 10 years. Um, so I can kind of talk a little bit about how it's going to change and then, you know, share some of the acronyms as well. Um, but it's probably better to lay a little bit of foundation in terms of how it's all coming together and how people are using it.
Jeff Byer 06:17 Yeah. Cause this, this, uh, audience for digital rage is digital marketer marketers. So it's people doing mostly online, uh, PPC or anything using digital properties. So, um, one thing that's come up is how much, how much is programmatic and how much is, is, uh, manual placement. How much programmatic do you do?
Scott Dahlgren 06:41 Uh, well when I joined, uh, direct TV about five years ago, we did very little to no programmatics. So primarily we were selling at that point, addressable television, uh, against direct TV's, addressable television audience. So to put it in context, direct TV is the largest pay TV service in the United States. Uh, at T and T is the second largest wireless service in the United States. And then
Scott Dahlgren 07:40 Um, so we sell programmatic inventory against that product and also against our other OTT products. Things like watch TV, which is yet another OTT service that we offer with at and T wireless subscriptions. And then yet a third service called DirecTV now, which is sort of a, uh, you know, basically a direct TV light. It's for people who don't want the satellite dish on their roof, don't want the set top box, but still want access to the direct TV programming. Uh, people who maybe have a sling or a Hulu account, but are typically cord cutters and cord nevers, they would sign up for that service. So on all three of those services, watch TV, direct TV, now TV everywhere we sell pre-roll and mid-roll advertising. So these are 15 or 30 seconds video spots, um, that you can buy across the 75 networks that we insert those spots on 'em.
Scott Dahlgren 08:29 And you can buy that in either a direct IO fashion, which is kind of your old contract based transaction or programmatically, which is a more auction based environment. So we started selling in, this is sort of a long winded answer to your question, but it gets to kind of how it all kinda came into place in the first place. Uh, we sell against those, uh, those video properties in those two ways on a direct IO basis or a programmatic basis in each one of those ways. Different kind of benefits to them, um, depending on pricing and how you want your inventory to fill, um, you know, and targeting. But, uh, essentially those are the two modalities that we sell. Digital video again,
Jeff Byer 09:09 that's true. And are the big brands doing any type of live testing or do their videos already go through focus groups? And what you get is final, final across all media.
Scott Dahlgren 09:20 Typically we'll, you know, being one of the largest advertising companies in the world where we're working with fortune 500 companies who generally have their creative figured out, they understand who they want to reach from a targeting perspective and they're coming to us to, um, you know, see how we can reach that target. Um, and that's where things get even more complex because we kind of differentiate ourselves in the marketplace with respect to our data. So we have, as the, you know, us as biggest TV service, the second largest wireless, third largest broadband, we have basically a 170 million people across the United States who have a billing subscriber relationship with us. So that gives us tremendous first party deterministic targeting capabilities. And when we say first-party and deterministic, we basically mean we know these people, they give us their billing information, we know their address, we know how many people are in their household.
Scott Dahlgren 10:19 Some basic credit credit information. Um, and so we basically use those 170 million targeting relationships to create ID graphs. So things around geolocation data from U a T and T wireless device. Where are you aware, have you been, uh, viewership data? What are you watching on direct TV? Uh, and then we can also target by mobile search and browsing history. So what have you looked up on your at and T wireless devices? So if you imagine combining all three of those different targeting variables, you can get really specific. You know, if you're looking for, if you're Alexis and you're looking to target somebody who's in market for a new car, one target could be people who've looked up luxury cars on their cell phone for the last three months. That's simple enough for us to do a, but then a whole nother target could be, well, we want to target people who've looked up luxury cars at least three times in the last 30 days and also have been to a dealer lot. Well, that could be a whole different targeting segment for somebody who's much further down the purchasing funnel. Um, so we can create a lot of really specific and powerful targeted targeting segments based on our subscriber relationships in first party.
Jeff Byer 11:25 Are you using, so this is a thing that Google started implementing. Are you using geotargeting based on cell phone location too to verify business visits?
Scott Dahlgren 11:37 There are a lot of different ways that we can use geolocation. Uh, we used to outsource it to companies like placed or place IQ, um, who basically use apps on phones to make a determination on where people are or have been. Uh, now we don't have to, since we're a third of the wireless population, we basically have geolocation data across a third of the wireless population, which is huge. It's over a hundred million us citizens. So, uh, we'll use that in a lot of cases. Um, you know, but there are other ways we can establish a person's location, whether it's, you know, if we want to target them at home, we obviously know their billing address. Uh, so it kind of depends on the client and the campaign and what they're looking not only to target, but then how they're looking on the back end. Uh, you know, what KPIs are they looking to read?
Jeff Byer 12:23 Yeah. Cause a retargeting is, is you know, the flagship portion of any paid ad on online and digital for, for digital marketers. So, so, um, retargeting is how aggressive is it compared to, you know, online retargeting and in your industry, I think it's a little bit
Scott Dahlgren 12:43 So, um, you know, when we're selling our inventory, we're not doing it as much online. Our, our, our biggest source of advertising is really addressable. Uh, and that's running across DirecTV has about 23 million subscriber households, of which about 16 to 17 million are addressable households. To be addressable, you have to have a set top box that allows for addressable advertising. So basically an HD DVR set top box. So that's why it's not the full 23 million. Um, but when we're running addressable ads, frequency management is much more important than retargeting. So we can actually say within a three to four week flight that you want to reach a user, you know, four times a week or three times a week, uh, in a typical frequency over a four week flight. Might be 16 exposures. Uh, what I think we use more than retargeting in the addressable television world is attribution.
Scott Dahlgren 13:36 So when we're doing an addressable campaign, and we'll, we'll just keep with the auto examples. Uh, if we're targeting people who are in market for a luxury car, uh, we might say, okay, we have found 3 million of our 16 million addressable households that their leases expiring in the next 60 days. And they are in market for a luxury car because we know they've had a luxury car in the past. Um, so if we find 3 million of those households, what we'll do is we'll hold out 10% of that group. So we'll serve an ad to, you know, the 2 million and change, uh, and then hold out the, the 10%. So, you know, 200,000 in this case or 300,000. I said 3 million, um, and not serve them an ad. And then we can look basically throughout the course of the flight and then maybe 30 to 60 days after the flight, depending on how long we do, sort of a post attribution window on car purchases.
Scott Dahlgren 14:27 So, you know, did the people who were exposed to the ad purchase a car more than the same target group that was not exposed to the ad? And then we can actually show a lift in car purchases. Um, that's a very simple explanation. That's kind of what we did four years ago. We've gotten a little bit more sophisticated with our attribution in the year sense. Um, so now for example, we might say, look, it's job to get them onto the car dealer lot, but it's sort of your job to sell them the car. So now for an attribution on an addressable campaign, we might look at something like, did they visit the dealer live, you know, using that same control and exposed methodology. So a little less about retargeting since we're not in an online forum where people kind of come back in that way, but more about attribution.
Jeff Byer 15:12 Okay. And, and you, in that answer, you also explained how, how you, uh, how, how you determine something like a conversion metric. Uh, and I, you know, trying to use the mass as to, uh, determine a purchase, the, the purchasing and the, the return on investment.
Scott Dahlgren 15:33 Absolutely. And it doesn't even have to necessarily be a purchase. It could be a website visitation, it could be a dealer visit like we said, or an actual car purchase. It really just depends on what the client wants to measure. Uh, and more often we're doing things like brand studies too. So a company will say, well, we want to see how the exposed group views our brand as a whole. You know, do they have unaided awareness? Do they have aided awareness? What's their affinity with the brand? Uh, their likelihood to recommend it to a friend. We can also measure all that stuff against that same control and exposed a user base on addressable. So again, it's a little bit different than what your audience is probably used to hearing in terms of just the kind of searched based and social base, digital marketing. But, um, but they do have very similar characteristics in that you can do full funnel attribution analysis. You can do brand health studies and things like that.
Jeff Byer 16:24 All right. So, uh, should we get into some, some acronyms? Sure. Yeah. All right. There's a lot of them. All right. So, uh, what, what do you got on the top of your list?
Scott Dahlgren 16:35 So, uh, I mean, programmatic is, has really taken off in the last couple of years now that we have more and more digital video supply sources since we launched these new products like direct TV now and watch TV. Uh, again, we're selling that digital video inventory more frequently and we're doing it programmatically. So a lot of times when we're selling a programmatic campaign, we will set up a PNP, which is a private marketplace auction. This basically allows our clients to bid on this inventory in a private kind of reserved auction. Um, they could use a DSP that we have, uh, or they could use their own DSP. And that's, uh, the demand side platform. So those are companies like trade desk or a mobi or oath or DV three 60, which is Google's product, which is a big out here on the West coast or they could use app nexus.
Scott Dahlgren 17:27 Our DSP is actually called invest, uh, which we just launched recently as well. Uh, the demand side platform is basically a user interface that allows people to auction that inventory in a private marketplace, not to be confused with an SSP, which is a supply side platform. Uh, and that is a platform that sort of sits in between the DSP and the auction where the supply sources sit. So, uh, there's a lot of kind of acronyms just in the programmatic world, um, but also many in the addressable world as well. Um, CSX cross stream, cross screen addressable, that's the ability for us to, you know, target all of those people who are watching direct TV on their living room. But we can also then send ads to all the mobile devices in their same household. Uh, regardless of carrier. If it's a T and T, great, but if it's another third party carrier, that's fine too.
Scott Dahlgren 18:17 Uh, so cross screen CSX is, has gotten, um, quite popular in the last couple of years as well. I'm trying to think of any other ag acronyms off the top of my head. Looking at a cheat sheet here. Oh, data-driven linear DDL. That's another popular one. So is linear television, you know, uh, gets more popular. We have products like data-driven, linear DDL. Uh, so in the past a company might want to buy mail networks, so they would just look at, okay, what are the networks that have the most males? Well, it might be the golf channel or ESPN or uh, you know, the wall street journal, news channel, whatever, or the Playboy channel or the Playboy channel. Lots of men there. Exactly. Uh, and now we, with data-driven linear, we can do that on a more scientific basis by actually looking at the users who are watching it and sampling and actual audience size and saying, we know you're reaching at least 70% of, you know, men or women or whatever. Um, so a lot of acronyms and advertising and probably more so even at Zandra specifically just because we have so many advertising products. I think our general presentation is something like 85 slides and we sell about 22 products now. Uh, you know, not including the app nexus and the DSPs and the SSPs and, and all that good stuff.
Jeff Byer 19:39 DSPs assessed PS. I'll just, that's way too much
Scott Dahlgren 19:44 ID graphs, uh, you name it and Eve and then, uh, you know, data. That's a whole nother set of acronyms. Uh, you know, we work with probably 75 different data companies, Axiom, Epsilon, Experian, uh, Polk, new star companies that a lot of people haven't heard of, um, that are being acquired more and more by advertising agencies because they want to own a data company so that they can have their own sort of niche in terms of what they can offer to their clients. So, uh, the advertising world just in general, is filled with acronyms from the data companies to the platforms, to the products. Um, there's, there's lots of acronyms to go around.
Jeff Byer 20:27 All right. Well, I mean it definitely, I like how, uh, how different that, that each of these, these models is from, from, uh, online digital to, uh, what you sell, which is, you know, pretty much everything under the sun, including online, digital. So, um, for the, for the big brands, what, what trends are you seeing in, and like you mentioned at the top of show, where do you see all of this going?
Scott Dahlgren 20:53 Yeah, I mean, I think, um, you know, the trend that we're seeing now over the last couple of years is, is basically a shift from, um, the formerly siloed way of doing business at an advertising agency or advertising client to a more integrated approach. So you used to have, for example, a digital team at an agency and maybe an advanced television buying team and then over there a programmatic team, and then you'd have a social, uh, and search team over there. Uh, what they're finding is that they're needing to work together, uh, more collaboratively. They're all fighting for budget, of course, for each of their different teams, but often not looking at the overall bigger advertising pictures. So what the trend now is, is really more about measuring the unique reach across these different platforms and devices and trying to figure out what the most effective mix of that media is.
Scott Dahlgren 21:47 Um, so it may be that you know, you're reaching the majority of your people effectively just by buying addressable television and you don't need to run as much search or social or your audience may be more millennial focused. And so you need to run more search and social social to, to reach them because they're watching less TV. So we're seeing a lot of different companies kind of pop up that will measure where people are truly consuming media and what the best mix should be to reach them. Um, but we're also seeing clients get more sophisticated and bringing a lot of this stuff in house as well. Uh, relying a little bit less on agencies because agencies basically have their own products that they want to sell that may not be in the best interest of the client. Um, you know, IPG bought Axiom, publicists bought Epsilon, Dentsu bought Merkel, WPP bought Vaxis.
Scott Dahlgren 22:41 Well, all of those agencies will want to use the companies that they paid billions of dollars for. And the clients are well aware of that. So they're a little bit skeptical sometimes. So we're seeing a little bit more push back from the client in terms of how best to use data and what media mix to to reach. But really things are just evolving so quickly, uh, in this space. I think there's really just been a data kind of revolution in the last five years. Uh, that's both good and bad, but it's just changed a lot of the marketplace. And then of course, you know, as you know better than anyone that the way people consume content is changing. So trying to chase consumers across these different devices, um, is complex as well.
Jeff Byer 23:21 Yeah. And one thing I noticed a, especially through the, uh, the GumGum relationship is that, uh, when I first started with you and at gum gum, it was mostly entertainment, uh, work that I was getting. And slowly I niched down into automotive. And from what I can tell is that automotive, just, they advertise anywhere and no, and just spray it out there to see what works. And they're still doing that. And I think that's one of the only industries that I see that still does that. Are you seeing that as well?
Scott Dahlgren 23:57 Um, yeah, on products like GumGum, I think they are a little more receptive to opening up the targeting because they're not spending as much budget there. Uh, when they're, you know, putting a $6 million television investment down, they're getting really targeted, you know, they're looking for people not only who's lease expires in the next 90 day, but you know, people who've purchased Alexis two times in the past, for example, that could actually be a target. We want somebody who's purchased Alexis at least two times in the past and whose lease is expiring. So, you know, on one platform you may have a much wider reach campaign, uh, because the cost and benefit is there. But then on another platform you may have a much more targeted approach. So it really kinda just depends on where they're running. But, um, yeah, we do see different kind of targeting strategies based on the platforms that they're running. No doubt.
Jeff Byer 24:52 Yeah, they're definitely doing, uh, location targeting and, and so, um, you know, their, their dealer specific and then region specific and then national and national usually matches what their national television creative is. It's just kind of a mirror of what they're doing there.
Scott Dahlgren 25:08 Yeah. The dealer autos associations will have their own kind of tier two auto budgets and so they will run a lot more regional and local campaigns that are maybe a little less widely targeted because they are geographically regional. So they don't need to be as targeted for, for other things. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing I guess I would say is just in general, in terms of targeting, it's a, it's a little bit like back in, I don't know when it was probably when we were kids. W w do we have like four major broadcast channels when we were kids? Or is that,
Jeff Byer 25:41 I just go by channels. So we had a two, four, five, seven, 11 and 30.
Scott Dahlgren 25:47 Yeah. So basically you're talking about CBS, NBC, Fox. Um, and ABC, right? The regional Katy LA and yeah, but again, it was, you know, maybe you had, I don't know, 12 different channels. And now today on my DirecTV service, I have something like 230 channels. So you know, each of whom are also trying to sell ads on their platform. Uh, so I guess the point I was going to make is it's what we're seeing right now is something akin to that only in terms it's not in terms of actual channels, it's in terms of devices. So, you know, back in the day you might have had direct TV, Comcast charter, um, and you know, maybe I'll tease or whatever. The four big, you know, or five big cable and satellite operators were, uh, now you've got Hulu, you've got sling, you've Disney plus, you've got a T and T, T V, now you've got Apple TV coming out, um, plus up 50 others that I can't even think of off the top of my head. So now there's almost as many distribution platforms as there were cable networks, you know, kind of, uh, when we were in our teenagers. So as that number keeps growing, it's just getting more and more fragmented. Uh, so it's a really interesting
Jeff Byer 27:06 time right now. So let's say, uh, watching on a, on a disconnected device, say that, uh, I hooked my TV TV up to a, uh, a digital antenna and I'm watching NBC, uh, D does that just fall into a black hole of tracking?
Scott Dahlgren 27:22 Yeah. Well, not necessarily. Um, basically, so, you know, we sell basic advertising across all of the network. So the way it works for direct TV is we basically get two minutes of advertising per hour of content to sell. And that's where we sell either, you know, our linear addressable advertising. Typically there's six, 13 minutes of advertising to sell per hour of video content. So NBC, ABC, Fox, CVS are all selling that themselves. We actually don't insert on the four major locals, uh, or the four major broadcast, rather not locals, but broadcast. Uh, and that's pretty typical for most paid TV providers. So if you're running off a digital antenna, again, long answer to your question, but if you're running off a digital antenna, uh, chances are, uh, NBC has selling that directly. If you're watching on general four, uh, and what type of targeting they can do based on that is probably more limited than what we can do. Um, if we were to sell on that, which we don't because it's one of the four major broadcasts, but, uh, because we just have a lot more information than they do if it's running off in it.
Jeff Byer 28:27 Gotcha. So the most information they can get on a digital antenna is probably the antenna that's producing the feed and go get a general area
Scott Dahlgren 28:37
Jeff Byer 29:01 Okay. So now I have one last question as far as targeting, uh, people are tracking, uh, tracking, reporting, things like that. What, how, how well do you think you are able to tell group viewing, you know, things like bars and restaurants and places like that, or big sporting events like the super bowl where you may not get, you'll have way more eyeballs than you do? Uh, devices.
Scott Dahlgren 29:30 Yeah. Um, I, we basically kind of follow the general statistics that the, you know, the Nielsen's of the world's put out. Uh, there's a lot of Forester research and things like that. I, you know, I think it down to something like an average of 2.5 people watching any show at a given time on a television platform, a little bit less. So with CTV, maybe it's like two people watching at a time. And then of course on a mobile and desktop, it's, it's a one to one relationship. You usually don't gather around that type of screen. Um, so, you know, we, when we're selling advertising, it's on an impression basis and it's really only for that one person that we're targeting. But we do know that there's a lot of ancillary benefit to the people who are also in the room watching television in bars. That's even more exacerbated because you potentially have hundreds of people in a bar.
Scott Dahlgren 30:18 Um, and we're very fortunate as DirecTV because we're in 90% of the bars in the United States because we're NFL Sunday ticket. So, uh, we have a lot of reach there as well. Um, but yeah, there's that, that question comes up quite a bit and, um, there's definitely a lot of co viewing going on. Uh, the other thing that's going on that we get even asked even more isn't so much how many people are gathered around the television set, but how many people are watching TV while also looking at a tablet or phone? Um, and then that's where cross screen advertising comes into play. Again, that ability to send that addressable message on day one and then maybe on day two of the campaign, follow that message up with an ad on their mobile device. Um, so that, that comes up quite a bit as well. And then of course, we track all of it as well.
Jeff Byer 31:02 Okay. Well there you have it. Um, all right. Uh, follow up. What do you, uh, do you have anything from out where people follow you? Uh, what's your address? Um, how do you, how do you get into your car? What do you, if you, uh, looking for any addressable advertising solutions? It's Scott dot dahlgren@zanderxandr.com. Yeah. And I watched that video, uh, that I helped you cut down. Uh, the video. Zander w is a basically a, uh, modified abbreviation of, uh, Alexander Graham bell. Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Scott Dahlgren 31:40 Yes. We're going back to our roots. So Alexander Graham bell invented the telephone, uh, and we thought it would be cool to go back to our roots and named the company's Zander. Uh, I think we also looked at a bunch of other names. The, I think ampersand was up there because of the, and, and at. T and T a there were, they tested quite a few, but Zander is where we landed. We're going back,
Jeff Byer 32:03 do our roots. We're cool. And we're now hip. We're not just a, uh, you know, copper line based telephone company anymore. Now we're at real digital cool company like Google. Yes. And you've got a very cool branding and merge. That's a big thing in your area. Industry merge. Lots of jackets and lots of swag. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 32:25 Alright, my man. Thanks for coming to the office. Thanks for talking to us and uh, yeah, it's been a digital rage. Thanks Jeff for show notes and information. Go to the digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at bam. And please give us a rating review is really appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about this week in digital marketing and recaps the findings from his projects after the Google Core Algorithm update.
About Jeff Byer
Jeff Byer has been designing identities and building websites since 1995. He is the CEO and co-founder of Print Fellas LLC, and CEO at Jeff Byer Inc, a web design company in Redondo Beach, California specializing in Web Design and SEO. Twitter @globaljeff Bio https://www.byer.co/about-jeff-byer
Show Links and Mentions
Starting to see some clients have nice jumps in traffic with this core update.
This one is a medical site. pic.twitter.com/uCGrKc653I
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) September 27, 2019
Transcript
Jeff Byer: 00:07 Welcome to digital rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff buyer and today I am exhausted probably as most people are. The big thing that happened this week is the core algorithm update and a lot of controversy, not controversy, that's not an appropriate word to use. A lot of speculation about what it is and what it's about. And mostly it's been about medical sites and and mostly a
Jeff Byer: 00:38 Already and trust on anything related to medical issues. So the site that I've been mentioning in the past few episodes regarding SEO and EA T actually a was fine. There was a very little volatility it stayed even and even gained a couple of, a couple of spots on, on words that were related specifically to medical. So that was good news in the bad news department. I got a local business site that got a little bit hammered. And so I figured out that in one of my breadcrumb links, as I was updating the breadcrumb schema, I got one of the links wrong and got errored on that. So just fixed it today. I will report back next week and see if we get those spots back. But but overall they're still way ahead of any of their competitors.
Jeff Byer: 01:34 So what, how it affected their business is probably minimal. It was just search and usually that's a, you know, and, and is specific to a very highly competitive keywords that they really didn't get a lot of conversions on any way since they're small, local. So, so that's it on the core algorithm update, I'm sure there's more to follow. Marie Haines posted stats from one of her customers that seen good gains. So who knows if that was the algorithm update or just Marie Haynes doing a very thorough job on cleaning things up. I did submit a few disavow files this week just to clean up past mistakes from either me or who I inherited the websites from and disavow some toxic links that were obviously toxic. So we're going through those and still seeing him pop up. But we're using SEMrush to identify those backlinks and get them all straightened out.
Jeff Byer: 02:42 So my friend Matt, he texted me last week talking about what do you do when you're in the middle of a project and you start getting more and more features added on from your customers. And what I like to call this feature creep, it's kind of an industry term and feature creep is, is you know, the, there's many drawbacks to it and one is that you keep pushing the launch date further and further out. The second is it costs more money to develop and you keep changing things around. And so I experienced this on a small scale with one of my new projects that we started out, we've, we threw out the statement of work and we bid the project and we got all the way through the design and got, you know, got an approval that included a bunch of changes.
Jeff Byer: 03:44 So it wasn't really an approval. And the, one of the biggest changes was they've got a whole new line of products that wasn't included. So we had to backtrack in our designs, go back through all the navigation and all of the content structure, restructure it, redesign it, relay it out and get it going. And this also had to come without any they, they expected the changes to come without any change of the deadline. So that's the stress that I've been dealing with. I think we're gonna still end up pulling it off. I did, I had to end up taking a lot of the work on myself because the designer on the project was kind of a, not too happy about having to go back and redo everything and basically just did kind of a half ass job. I'd hate to say it. So I had to spend most of my day, most of my week actually refining and rebuilding.
Jeff Byer: 04:51 And what I ended up doing in the end is that it, you know, this could have stayed in design for another whole week, which we didn't have. So what I did is kept it clean and simple on the new pages. Cause one with the new products we don't have any information on yet. So we mock them up with, with you know, placeholder images and placeholder text and to the products that we do have that are their flagship products already have a, a look and a feel and an aesthetic. So the new products are going to look very tame compared to the flagship products. But that's also kind of kind of okay, since we still want to push people to the main products and the other products will gain in popularity as, as we see fit and we can add on once the website is done.
Jeff Byer: 05:38 So this website deadline is real and the popularity of the products or the hype on the products can come later at it's, can come later. We do have a retainer to stay on and do a maintenance SCO, SCM. So during all that process we will be doing improvements. Another topic that came up with one of my clients is they hire writers that are specialists in their field. And so they sent me a writer and said, what do you think about this writer and what, how will they work as far as SEO? And now that we have to take in, you know, the reputation of the author, especially in health related industries. I went and looked and they're well published throughout the internet, but the, the places that they are published are not authorities in the industry. So the sites that they're plump published on have less authority than, than most other sites.
Jeff Byer: 06:47 The other thing is they don't have any credentials or any authorship that would lead them to be experts in the fields that they're talking about. So I had to unfortunately send the feedback to, to the client saying they, I know that they can write and the product and the, the, their writing is great. The problem is it's going to do nothing for SEO if they make any type of medical claims because they don't have any verifiable authority to speak on these aspects of the industry. So client understood they respected it and they're going to keep looking for writers. So that was, that was on that project. Let's see what else we got going on. Oh, so project changes the way that I address it this on this project, I, I knew that I could do, I could pull it off without having to do anything drastic.
Jeff Byer: 07:49 So I just made the changes and moved on. And e-commerce, it's funny about e-commerce is it is very forgiving that way when you're just adding products and not changing brand and not changing real structure. An E commerce site already comes with a pretty set structure. You've got categories and you've got products. So it's, it was, I knew it was going to be easy just to add those in and, and move on. But if you're in a project and features keep getting added on, that's when it needs to be addressed. So most of my clients, our agency clients so the agency is the one that's actually bringing the changes and there's an in between so I can speak more frankly and just mention if it's something structural that's going to change either the site map or the navigation or require a unique individual pages, then it will require a change order.
Jeff Byer: 08:46 And that's the standing rule that I have with my agency clients that that is, is pretty much understood. So when a feature creep situation comes up and a client is asking, so now I'll switch from agency, from working for agencies to working one on one. When a client comes to me, direct client comes to me with several changes. I say, great, those are great ideas. Sounds good. Let me get you a quote for those. And we can go from there. And sometimes they expect it and sometimes they say, wait a second, why, why couldn't we just make these changes? And then I get into the technical aspects of what it's going to take to change. So right now with another client, a direct client, we are, we were down the path of a complete redesign design approved and static homepage built. And now we have a decision makers coming in and asking questions and making, they're not really making demands, they're making suggestions.
Jeff Byer: 09:57 And so when you're this far down the line on a project and those suggestions require going back to design, that's when a change order is required. So we're still in talks on that and we're still negotiating as far as what can be done and what can't. Budgets are definitely a concern. Timeline is also definitely a concern. And the, the decision makers are wanting me to go back and verify all of my data. So we're kind of taking where we're paused, where we are now, which is actual, you know, HTML before we go into as full site build. So basically I've got a prototype of what the homepage navigation, everything is going to look like, pausing that, going back to square one into pre production, running all of our preproduction data again so that we make sure that it's current and we're not basing it on when we did pre projection previously, we're going through all of our, our keyword data, all of our current syrup data and re re presenting it saying this is how we came to this conclusion.
Jeff Byer: 11:10 And if at that point anything changes within the company or within the, the thinking or within the data or anything like that. And those changes require us to go back to design, then we're going back to design with a change order in mind and the, you know, we're not going to, you know, completely start over in that whole portion of the site gets paid for. Again, there's definitely things that we're going to use going forward, but I think that having to redo all of the pre production and everything is probably going to be a 50% upcharge on the original design phase charge. So that on top of having to lie night item line, item out, everything that goes into the new build is also something that they're expecting as well. So all good, all stuff I'm ready for, there's nothing to hide. There's no, you know, I'm very upfront with all of my clients and you know, they come to me with questions and sometimes they come to me with, with challenges and, and I try and do as much as I can for my clients without having to ruffle feathers or you know, or mess with anything, mess with budgets, anything like that.
Jeff Byer: 12:30 But sometimes just for self preservation, I need to step in and mentioned that things need to need to get need to get done as far as they require them to get done, then there's going to have to be additional resources to do it. So that's been my past two weeks. I had my neighbor tell me yesterday, he's like, wow, you look tired. I was like, yes. Having dealing with rankings and, and clients making changes and, and all of that stuff that goes into being a solo preneur it's been tough. So I'm very exhausted. Obviously I didn't have time to track down a guest, but I did schedule two guests for next week. We're going to have one who does television sales, which, you know, television and digital. So in sales w w I just find it funny whenever I talk to him, he comes up with all of these acronyms and, you know, being in SEO, which, you know, most people don't know what SEO is.
Jeff Byer: 13:39 So having S SEO as an acronym for my particular industry and you know, all sorts of other acronyms that we commonly just use. And as second language, I'll think about, same thing with sales and ad ad buying and, and things like that. So he's gonna come in and go through a bunch of those acronyms because I think they're hilarious. We also have a a digital marketer coming on that's going to talk about web development, SEO, SEO, you know, the full package, full, full digital marketing spectrum. And he and I, I've, I read through some of his content and his white papers and he and I agree on a lot and specifically what we agree on is, is what Google likes as far as a high quality website likes as far as technology, as far as speed, content organization technologies mobility, you know, compatibility with several devices, responsiveness, things like that.
Jeff Byer: 14:54 So he has from what I understand, he has a proprietary platform that he builds that is that renders static websites. And so that's what I always tried to do is render static websites out to the, the customers so that they're fast and they don't rely on any server side calculations before loading. And so a lot of my new sites have almost, you know, between 97 a hundred percent performance on lighthouse reports. So, so that's all good. So next week everything will get back to back to normal as far as the office is concerned. I, I've, so I got the floors done, I got the walls knocked down and I'm, you know, kind of struggling with, we're, we're going to be setting up video and you're going to be doing video from, from here on out with, with you know, interviews and intros and things like that.
Jeff Byer: 15:50 And so I'm trying to figure out what my background is going to look like. It's going to be kind of a personality wall is what they refer to it as. So I first thing I needed to do is address all of the I needed to address all of my windows in the front, my whole front. It's a retail space. And so the whole front is glass. So I had a interior designer come and she brought in some some window covering experts to come in and, and take a look at the windows and give me quotes on estimates. And so my goal was have, have just sheers up during the day so that, you know, I can get the sunlight, but I don't see specific people, specific people don't see me. It's just kind of, you know a blur which I'm doing no matter what.
Jeff Byer: 16:45 And then I wanted to add blackouts to all the windows so that when I need to shoot indoors, I can predict the lighting predict the temperature and everything. That part is where I think it got really expensive cause I have 14 foot ceilings in here and I love having the high ceilings and it definitely helps as far as photography and rigging and things like that. But what I wasn't expecting is that this whole system to have the sheers, the sheer manual sheers, and then electric motors on the blackouts that could just roll down. I have a feeling to two things. It's super expensive and I don't know that this system that they came up with is even gonna look that great. So what I have in, in my studio now is I have these, these Muslim backdrops and there are about 80 bucks a piece and they're 10 feet by 20 feet and they, they look nice, come in a bunch of different colors.
Jeff Byer: 17:51 They're naturally blackout material and they can, they can span from the, from the the ceiling to the floor and for not that much money. So I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the cost effectiveness of if I was just to hang a couple of Muslims out up on my wall and have them draped down and then I could just undo the, the drapery bands and black it out enough that I wouldn't have to go through all of this. The only thing that I would need to worry about is the sheer situation, which the studio across from me, they just put up this translucent film and they, they etched out the, their name into the, the translucent film, which I thought was really cool and I was like, that will do everything that I need. So I'm probably not going to go through this huge issue of having to do, you know, motorized curtains and build boxes and custom fit sheers within the frames and all that stuff. It's, it's overkill. So I'm going to go back to the drawing board. I'm gonna price out Muslims and mounting hardware up onto the walls and go from there. So that's the story on the office. I am exhausted. So I apologize. Short episode, no gassed, but next week going to have two good, good interviews, going to release them. You know, every Monday this is going to come out on Monday the 30th. So have a great week and
Jeff Byer: 19:28 Good luck with all of your clients and the projects. I look for, show notes and information. Go to digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at bam. And please give us a rating review is the seriously appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks about the news and updates for this week in SEO and Digital Marketing.
About Jeff Byer
Jeff Byer has been designing identities and building websites since 1995. He is the CEO and co-founder of Print Fellas LLC, and CEO at Jeff Byer Inc, a web design company in Redondo Beach, California specializing in Web Design and SEO. Twitter @globaljeff Bio https://www.byer.co/about-jeff-byer
Show Links and Mentions
Google Chrome on Android Will Provide Answers to Queries Right in the Address Bar via @MattGSouthern Organic search responsible for 53% of all site traffic, paid 15% [Study] Barry Schwartz @rustybrick Matt Southern @mattgsouthern
Transcript
Jeff Byer: 00:08 Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people who make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and Today is episode 30. I can't believe its been 30th. Already met some great people, had some great conversations and we'll have more in the future. Just, it has been hectic lately, not only for me, but the digital marketing community in general.
Jeff Byer: 00:33 Those were the things we're gonna discuss quickly today, but could not get a guest lined up but also didn't have the time to really hound anybody down because of everything that's been going on with the with the algorithm updates and the search console report updates and you know, having an ads campaign that completely spun itself completely out of Control and having to reel that back in all sorts of fun stuff. So I apologize, but we will get somebody more interesting than myself on the show next week. So as I stated, we've have a couple of, you know, we've had algorithm updates going on and there's no real, there's no real consensus on what is causing it and any type of issues that are surrounding it. It's just that the algorithm update and may be directly related to the s structured data and search console reports.
Jeff Byer: 01:45 So let's get straight into that because that was what woke me up this morning was all of my search console alerts about my breadcrumbs. So the way that I do my breadcrumb Schema is just on pages that need breadcrumbs. So the home page obviously isn't going to have one. And when I have categories and deeper categories that I link to the, the homepage, then the next breadcrumb link is the category and then the next breadcrumb link is the landing page. And I always thought it was weird to link the page to itself in the, in the breadcrumb. So I never put the link in, I just put a span around the name of it so that I could have the item prop name in the structured data. Turns out that with this new update, Google wants the page linking to itself because it uses that link as an ID.
Jeff Byer: 02:43 So a, I'm going to have to go and fix my, my breadcrumb structure in all of my templates. And it's kind of pushing me towards this unified SEO template that I've been thinking about for a while. But having a, a standard custom modular way to make updates like a schema and, and structure, it has nothing to do with layout or design or content. It is basically just an overall structure for pages, especially with categories and, and you know, any type of Schema or, or metadata that I can automate and be able to syndicate a template so that changes like this can be immediate across every one of my clients. But for now we're going through one by one and changing them. So the first thing that I didn't even think of adding when I first built the breadcrumb screen is position.
Jeff Byer: 03:51 So the, they want to know it's not, you know, since they can show up in any position or not show up at all visually Google would like to know what position each link is in your breadcrumb. So I get that easy enough, you know, one, two, three homepage is one, category two and landing page three. Then I got penalized for missing field item. And so I was, I had an item prop, so it's item list and then item for the breadcrumbs. That's the Schema that it uses. And I had the item, I had assumed that the item would have been in the w by defining the Schema, but apparently I was wrong. And you have to actually define the item Schema in it and and the item is what I'm referring to as it uses the link as the item Id. So very interesting to, to get those corrections and I'm glad that I'm getting them corrected because, you know, this has been several years that my breadcrumb Schema has been just fine.
Jeff Byer: 05:06 So that is my rundown of the breadcrumb Schema. And since I was just getting it rolled out yesterday, according to Barry Schwartz and it's still continuing to roll out, but I got this, I got two console alerts on two of my sites and that, and then they started to roll in and there keep rolling in. So this is going to be something that is going to consume a lot of my time for this weekend and next week, but I want to get it fixed because anything that shows up in in search console as an error is what we considered a high priority and we fix it as soon as possible. So related to that is the reviews rich results. So this has been kind of kind of controversial because it basically, John Mueller basically said that if you have res, if you have re star reviews and ratings on your site for your site or your products that are on your site, Google's not going to count them because they're self-serving.
Jeff Byer: 06:15 So it sounds confusing and everybody is trivial. You know, it's always been worrisome that, you know, for one of my pages I just put this, the, the rating scheme Schema as static in there just to just to be in there. And sure enough, I got whatever rate star rating that I wanted out of that Schema because you know, I put it in there and it's simple. But now Google is saying, all right, if we're actually gonna put this in our search results, we have to verify this and verify it through a, a trusted third party, not just anybody. So that even if you get them from a trusted third party and you embed them onto your site, it's still no good. And they're not going to use them in that way. They'll use them directly from the third party. But if you can manipulate it in any way possible by just displaying them on your site, that's what Google is trying to avoid.
Jeff Byer: 07:09 So trusted third parties, which I'm figuring Google reviews are probably going to be one of the, the priority partners for reviews. And then there's the yelps and the bbbs and you know, going on from there. But now it's more important than ever to push your audience to review your site on any of the third parties where you are allowing reviews. So in, in local small businesses we point people in a number of places and it gets really confusing for the user, cause they don't know where to go. And we're, and we used to point them in several different directions. And now my unified point is the Google my business page. And I can, I have a deep link directly into the review, pop up for each one of my Google my business pages so that it's much easier just to go in, write a quick, quick review through Google, having somebody signed in through their Google account who's verifiable, knowing that they are a customer but not affiliated with the company in any way.
Jeff Byer: 08:21 Google likes that history, likes that verification. So that is the reviews, snippets algorithm updates. We touched on it earlier and they are, they are wreaking a little havoc. I'm gonna, I'm going to just take a quick look at semrush right now and just look at the graphs across all the projects that I haven't semrush and see, see if I can see a a trend in how it, how these are being reported. So let's go to, so what does the site I'm choosing right now is a they get most of their traffic through organic because they rank well for most of their pay, most of their key terms and they have a very low to modest paid campaign. So this'll be something that I'll be able to tell. The best, it'll be a more clear and sure enough, yeah, there's a market drop in, in traffic.
Jeff Byer: 09:47 Their overall position for their main keywords is, is the average dropped by a quarter of a percent, a quarter of a position. So not that big of a deal. But average, you know, estimated traffic dropped by quite a bit. So that's a little concerning, but it may be just, you know, featured snippets are, are showing up and and solving people's questions within the syrup, which that's something that we all have to be okay with. Now. let's go to the organic organic traffic insights and see if there's any, anything fun in there that we can decipher. But not, I mean, not a ton of fluctuation now. And not a lot of tennis punctuation through the Algorithm update period. Users are up, sessions are up, pages per session are slightly down, but not, you know, that's more of a content issue and an interface issue that we're currently solving. Right now we're in a complete overhaul redesign and a new, a new VP of, of
Jeff Byer: 11:18 Of digital, not digital of, what am I trying to say? Oh, business development. A new VP of business development came in after we've already had our, our designs approved and page developed. He came in and he just wants to go through everything and verify our thinking before we move forward. So we're kind of on hold with the full redesign of, of the page, but the full redesign is also going to be containerized and super fast. And the interface looks my Buddy Miro designed that and I'm really happy with it. Clients really happy with it. So we're re reorganizing the content and making some, some landing pages for a PPC once, once we get past this roadblock and get approved. So that'll be fun. And I'll share that on Twitter once we, once we relaunch and I'll send links out so that so that we can get some feedback.
Jeff Byer: 12:22 But yeah, so algorithm didn't, didn't hit that cipher very much, so not too concerned about it. So in, in some other news Matt Southern, he reported that Google chrome on Android is going to provide answers within the browser, not even at a, at a, a serp. So you know, trying to optimize for a browser is going to be pretty difficult. But since it's a Google browser, you can guess it's going to use the same algorithm. But how are we going to be able to report that we actually earned a, a featured snippet through a browser address or a, yeah, a browser address bar and not an actual serp with, you know, it doesn't, I don't know that it's going to relay any of that activity back to the Internet if it doesn't need to, especially if it works when it's offline is a completely different issue.
Jeff Byer: 13:33 So lots of different things to, to bring up there. But for the most part android users probably have something similar like this or are testing something like this and it's the overall percentage of people that are going to see this and the amount they're going to reporting is remains to be seen. But my guess is it's going to be pretty small. And in, in the case of, of where my client stand I am assuming it's going to be insignificant, but I will be tracking it, testing it and making sure that if there is a way to track it, we have a way to track it. So and the next little piece of news is a survey result on organic search is responsible for 53% of all site traffic and paid is accredited for 15%. And so I'm pleased with that.
Jeff Byer: 14:41 That's, that's a, that's good. I think you know, keeping their, the being the majority organic is still encouraging for SEOs and digital marketers and that it's not, you know, Google doesn't want to be paid a play, but they are respecting bigger brands more and they're respecting bigger budgets more because, you know, if you're currently, there still is a way in Google ads to overcome somebody's ad just by spending more money. And reputation for a small company against a big company is very hard to overcome. So you know, history, a number of years in business and all of those different factors that they, that they look for in experience and overall authority and trust issues. The, the whole eat you know, system that Google uses, all of that is making things move a lot slower, especially if you have a brand new site.
Jeff Byer: 15:50 So all things to consider, all the sites that I'm building and rebuilding are all going to be focused heavily on user experience eat for the customer and linking out to resources citing other, you know, credible resources when we're creating content. And also trying to get cited for our, my clients areas of expertise and, you know, building that ups and, you know, it's been increasingly difficult to actually get my clients to to put a person to the content you know, take claim responsibility, be a real person so that we can work on authorship and and work on a reputation for this person. And if this person is an expert for the, you know, if they work at this company, they should be an expert using that expert as a way to verify the validity of the content that we're putting on the site.
Jeff Byer: 17:04 It's very difficult to get this done. A lot of people don't want to do it. They don't want to be a person. They want to stay private or they just want to attribute it to the company, which is fine if the company already has a stellar reputation, which is, is pretty rare. So working through those issues. But that's that's pretty much it. That's all I have for today. Sorry, it's short. Sorry that we don't have a guest, but the the issues with, with clients and Google and, and updates and everything else is going on. I am completely overwhelmed and need to hire people. If you know anybody, let me know. Looking for a full time designer, looking for a full time programmer, a front end front end developer. So putting it out there, hit me up, Jeff at j, buyer.com if if you know anybody who's interested. All right, that's it. A follow me at Global Jeff on Twitter and on Instagram. I will start being more active on Facebook right now. It's just a bunch of pictures of my son and as cute as he is, I think it's pretty one dimensional right now. So I will work on being diverse in my content for Facebook and Instagram. So that is all my friends. Thank you very much for listening. Please consider giving us a rate
Jeff Byer: 18:37 In review on any of the podcast platforms that you grab on the phone for show notes and information for the digital rates. Dot FM. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at Bam, and please give us a rating review. Sincerely appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) talks with Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) about the Google link attribution announcement and its Twitter backlash, EAT, PubCon, Music, and green fish wallpaper.
About Lily Ray
Twitter @lilyraynyc Director of SEO at Path Interactive Personal Site lilyray.nyc
Show Links & Mentions
Quality Rater Guidelines - Updates https://moz.com/blog/new-google-survey-results https://moz.com/blog/nofollow-sponsored-ugc searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf https://www.pubcon.com/las-vegas-2019
I think this is the main reason for the nofollow changes. Many authoritative sites will use a blanket nofollow which, in the old system, made it so that Google would ignore those authoritative mentions other than for entity recognition. Now Google can use those links. https://t.co/oj9qHAeN0N
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) September 12, 2019
Tools
https://sitebulb.com/
https://www.botify.com/
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
https://www.searchmetrics.com/
https://www.conductor.com/
https://getstat.com/
https://moz.com/
https://www.semrush.com/
https://ahrefs.com/
https://www.sistrix.com/
Transcript
Jeff Byer: 00:08 Welcome to Digital Rage. The podcast about all things internet and the people who make it great. My Name Is Jeff Byer. Today we talk to Lily Ray, she is the director of SEO at Path Interactive and we talk about link attribution, FAQ schema, quality rater guideline updates, Google survey results, PUBCON, and my prediction for what the Google search engine result pages are going to look like in the future.
Jeff Byer: 00:33 And one surprise topic that nobody ever thought was going to come out of this podcast. Green Fish wallpaper. And to find out what's what's up with green fish wallpaper. You will have to listen to the podcast. So here is our interview with Lily Ray
Jeff Byer: 00:53 I'm based in Los Angeles. You're in your office?
Lily Ray: 01:02 Yeah, New York. I'm from the bay area though. Good friends in la.
Jeff Byer: 01:14 Well if you ever need a place, nice to hang out or just want to stop by and say hi right now.
Lily Ray: 01:20 You play guitars? I take it.
Jeff Byer: 01:21 Yeah, I've been in and out of bands since I was 12 years old and uh,
Lily Ray: 01:27 yeah, me to actually, but drums, drums.
Jeff Byer: 01:32 Drummers are very hard to find.
Lily Ray: 01:34 I know. It's so weird? It's just an ex such a big instrument. I think that's the issue. Yeah.
Jeff Byer: 01:39 Well I mean when we were trying out drummers, our original drummer left and we are trying out drummers. Um, they're just so loud and most of them couldn't keep tying, you know, because you have a drum set doesn't mean you're a drummer. You know, just, we always had a hard time finding one with the right fit, cause we're kind of a mellow like acoustic band and, right. Yeah.
Lily Ray: 02:03 Right. it's tricky. Drum drummers always want to be allowed.
Jeff Byer: 02:08 Yeah. We had one that, that uh, in rehearsal he was fine. Everything went great. And then when we got live it just took over the whole thing. We stopped playing and he kept playing. He didn't even realize we stopped playing.
Lily Ray: 02:20 Wow. That's kind of embarrassing.
Jeff Byer: 02:25 Are you ready to get started?
Lily Ray: 02:27 Yeah, let's do it.
Jeff Byer: 02:28 Okay. So, uh, today we're talking to lily ray. She says on Twitter, she's an SEO by day and DJ by night. How are you today?
Lily Ray: 02:39 Doing well, thanks for having me.
Jeff Byer: 02:41 So, um, I wanted to start with, uh, how your trip was. I saw you were in Berlin.
Lily Ray: 02:48 Yes, I went to London, Berlin and Barcelona. Um, so my husband and I go to Europe pretty much once a year, Berlin pretty much once a year for the past four years. Um, but this time we brought my step son who's 10. That was really awesome cause you kinda got to see everything through the lens of a 10 year old, which is a different experience, but super fun.
Jeff Byer: 03:08 Yeah. Very cool. That's always fun. We've got a two year old at home and uh, excited to start taking him around the world right now. Yeah. With the diapers. Yeah, still a little, little sketchy.
Lily Ray: 03:19 Yeah, it takes awhile.
Jeff Byer: 03:21 So, um, one of the big topics on Twitter go and you know, switching into SEO now is the, uh, link attribution and, uh, all the uproar there, which to me didn't seem like a big deal, but, uh, what's your take on it?
Lily Ray: 03:39 Um, I agree. And for the most part it's not that big of a deal. Um, I think there's a couple things in there that we have to pay attention to. So, um, I'm kind of excited about the whole update in the sense that no follow, it doesn't have to mean like a hard no follow anymore. Um, cause I think it started to get to a point where it was almost a little bit unfair, uh, you know, doing like trying to get back links and trying to get publicity and visibility for our, for our clients and knowing that the links were no follows. So it was like, well, you know, from the SEO standpoint, this technically doesn't have any value in terms of the link itself, but it might have all this peripheral value in terms of visibility and social shares and things like that. Um, so it's nice to know that that might not be the hard truth anymore.
Lily Ray: 04:24 Um, but the part that was a little bit frustrating and I think why a lot of people kind of took issue with Google's update was just that it wasn't very specific. Um, didn't say exactly what this means for certain types of links. Um, it didn't say, you know, we're going to start giving you SEO value from links from Forbes or with a pdf or anything like that. We just were kind of left up in the air, like figuring out what that means on our own. Um, and then things like the UGC and sponsored attributes are really cool just in the sense that it's like more granularity. But a lot of people were saying like, why would people take the time and effort to build this into their websites if we don't really know what the benefit is going to be. So I think Google, um, we'll probably continue to update us on how these things will be used. Um, but anytime you introduce something into the SEO community without a lot of specificity, you can expect people to kind of have a million questions.
Jeff Byer: 05:16 Well that's the Google way. You know, they're purposely vague because they're not going to give you a peek under the hood. They're just going to tell you what's coming. Um, right. My take on this whole thing is that they've been, they know what's behind a no follow link and they've known all along and they've been using that data whether, whether it publicly or not. So sure the, the no follow link to me was still passing something if it was reputation or something. So it wasn't, it wasn't a follow link. It wasn't a direct site, but it was, it was still a signal Google was using
Lily Ray: 05:50 for sure. I agree with you. I mean I think, um, I remember when no follow do follow started to become a really big topic in the SEO Industry and it was right around the penguin days. Um, and you know, people got really obsessed with like do follow links, which I've always hated that word cause right off the bat it was like, but if you know the New York Times or Forbes or whatever, it is going to be a no followed link. And that's the reason we're not going to try to get it. That's ridiculous. Like we still want to be mentioned in those publications. Um, and then obviously when you do get mentioned in those types of publications, there's a million new links that come out of it or social shares or just visibility. And I've always found that to be very beneficial. So I've personally never focused on it that much. Um, but it's nice to hear that Google might be maybe not taking it as literally as it used to to be. And in terms of like passing page rank. So I think it's exciting overall, just a little bit ambiguous.
Jeff Byer: 06:42 Yeah. And, and what, uh, what Gary each was saying is that, you know, you don't have to proactively do anything. We're just telling you that these are available. And if you wanted it to update your practices going forward, you could, but for, you know, like wordpress, their commenting system or are the discus system, it'd be super easy for them to just put the, the rel and gcs into any link that's in there. I mean, it's, yeah, it's,
Lily Ray: 07:08 I think wordpress actually said pretty quickly after that whole discussion happened that they're going to do it and then I read something today that they're already incorporating it into their next release. So you're right. It's totally easy.
Jeff Byer: 07:19 Yeah. So, um, I don't, I mean there's a lot of people picking on, on, uh, the Google team just for, for vagueness and, and, you know, lack of clarity. But in the overall scheme of things, this is very minor in the, in the, the SEO Realm. So. Yup. Agreed. Um, so the next topic I had was, oh, uh, I was gonna mention, uh, Danny Sullivan just tweeted, one of the more concise explanations of link attribution said, uh, uh, some publishers may have simply gone full no-follow without seeming to give much thought about why. Right. And now we can see and use those links in most cases. As I said, it's not going to change anything. So
Lily Ray: 08:15 yeah, I mean I think that that kind of was my initial reaction when I saw the update because if you think about the way that like page rank is supposed to flow throughout the Internet and it's supposed to reward people for being cited and certain reputable publications. And if you have a handful of publishers that are just cutting that off with no follow, it's not an accurate representation of like the link graph. Right? We're missing these really important publishers and their lengths and who they're citing and talking about. So I'm glad in the sense that that might be changing a little bit. Um, and I think that's only one facet of kind of what happened with this whole update, but that's one aspect of it that though I'm pretty excited about, you know, a lot of our clients have links from those publications, so that'll be nice to potentially see some benefit from that.
Jeff Byer: 09:01 Yeah. And, uh, Marie Haines retweeted Danny Sullivan's comment, just said, um, this is the, the main reason for the no-follow changes is many authoritative sites. Uh, we'll use a blanket no follow, which in the old system made it so that Google would ignore these authoritative mentions at other than entity recognition. And you know, like I, I said they've been using it, they just been saying they haven't.
Lily Ray: 09:27 Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the other flip side of it, which is this is what actually I took a little bit of issue with and I started to kind of tweet it, Google with some questions because you know, they've said for many years not to use no follow on your internal links to like sculpt page rank or whatever. And that's pretty, you know, that's the general consensus. But there are some Google documents that say that you can use no follow if you have things like faceted URL or like large ecommerce sites with facets and things like that. Um, and I asked that to Google like question person and they confirmed that the no follow was one use case for that. Um, and then this document, this document kind of Said, oh, we've never suggested doing that. That's not a great way of handling it. So for those of us that handle big commerce websites, I think a lot of people are actually using no-follow to control things like faceted URLs, not exclusively, but that's one of the tools that we have. Um, so this document kind of contradicted that and said like, that's not really a good tool that you should be using for this purposes. So that part frustrated me a little bit because it was like, which one is it? Yeah, yeah. And so I hope they come out with some, some new updates and clarification around that in the next few months.
Jeff Byer: 10:38 Yeah. And that would help if, if you're using that as, as a a, you know, you're using it in the proper, uh, way that Google wants to know the structure and how your site should be crawled. And then they're saying, well, we're going to call it anyway. Yeah,
Lily Ray: 10:53 yeah, exactly. Exactly. Stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tricky too. I like working at an agency where, you know, we have like 80 clients here at my agency. And so we have a lot of clients that ask a lot of questions and a lot of clients that are very curious and they want to learn SEO and they look to us to know the answers to pretty much all of these questions. And we do the best we can with reading, researching everyday, day and night, everything that's happening. So if an article comes out from Google and it's not super specific and then my client has a specific question for me, I have to say, I don't exactly know, um, you know, you can read their article, but they haven't made that clear. And it kind of feels like we lose points with our clients when that happens. Um, because we want to be seen as experts. A lot of times clients don't want to hear, like, I don't actually know, or like, you know, we weren't able to figure that out. So it's just, it puts us in an awkward situation. We'll have the time when we don't know the heart details.
Jeff Byer: 11:47 Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I've been in that situation as well and yeah, yeah. All you can say we're going to work on it and get as much information as possible. But for now, okay, now it's, that's up in the air, you know. Um, I was telling Marie Haynes when she was on the podcast, uh, when my, my client site got hit by the medic update and nobody knew it was, you know, had anything to do with, uh, y n y l or anything like that. It was just all of a sudden I was ranking number one in all my key terms for two to three years and all of a sudden, boom, all at once. I was like, well, what happened? So, um, they are a B2B manufacturer and they do deal with, uh, medical devices. They're there, they have a medical use for their device, but, uh, they don't claim any medical claims. They just claim what their product can do and very scientific and specific terms. Um, there were, I think they got hit more than anything else is they are, uh, David among Goliath and the Goliath just jumped above them even though their pages were structured worse and had less content.
Lily Ray: 12:59 Hmm. Yup. I'm definitely seeing a lot of that. So, um, Maria and I are going to speak together and I guess it's like two, three weeks now at pubcon about eat. Um, so she handles a lot of these types of issues and websites on a day to day basis. Um, I have a handful of clients that were hit as well, but I've been digging really deep into websites that were affected. And if there's one big takeaway, it's definitely like, as far as why I'm, why all topics go, there's a lot of big sites that Google seems to be relying very heavily on for a lot of keywords. You know, showing those sites almost as like a, just to make sure that they're not showing anything sketchy and just always bringing up, you know, the content from these trustworthy set of websites that they have. But, um, the downside of that, of that is that a lot of websites were kind of inadvertently affected by it.
Lily Ray: 13:47 So even if they're also trustworthy companies, they're just not able to rank as well because they're not one of those seed medical websites that Google's relying on. Yeah. So I kind of hope that they figure that out over time because there's plenty of small to medium sized businesses out there with great content that just are not really able to eat as much on topics, which would be unfortunate if that's the direction that this thing goes in because we want the, you know, we want people to be a place where a lot of people can get their, their thoughts and ideas out there and not just the big players.
Jeff Byer: 14:17 Yeah. And that brings up another point, uh, that we, that Maria Hanes has been talking about of course with you about as well, is that, um, if your site recommends a medical information that goes against a common accepted medical knowledge that you know, new ideas are automatically going to get, get, uh, bumped because they're respecting what's traditionally been known as, as, uh, as the, uh, the fact or the, the consensus.
Lily Ray: 14:51 Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely seeing that. I mean, this is a very controversial topic right now in the SEO community. Um, mostly because SEO is, are technical people and they can't figure out exactly how Google might be doing this. Um, but I 100% agree with Marie. I'm seeing it across a lot of websites. Um, I've been auditing some sites where, you know, they're a wordpress site with great technical SEO. They have great back links. That's an author that's sold a lot of books, but that Ha, that author happens to speak about natural medicine and they have pages on their website that are about why milk is bad for you or something like that. Um, and the page used to rank really well for like, you know, is milk good for you and maybe it used to be on the first page and now like completely disappeared.
Lily Ray: 15:34 Um, it's Kinda hard to chop that up to like technical SEO issues when maybe other pages on the site are doing just fine, but it's that one that disappeared from, you know, the top a hundred results. So I'm seeing a lot of that as well. Um, I don't exactly know how Google is doing it. I'm not an engineer, but there seems to be something that they're doing to try to maintain like scientific consensus that we used on the first few pages of results for these medical keywords. Um, and you know, there's obvious political reasons why they might be doing that right now, but I do think they might've taken it a little bit too far. Um, and I also think that these algorithm updates that we're seeing a few times a year, these big ones are causing huge fluctuations in the index. So I don't know that they're totally done rolling this out yet. Um, but it almost feels like they were a little bit panicked and had to make really big changes really fast. And now we're kind of seeing them work through that, um, with subsequent updates.
Jeff Byer: 16:31 Yeah. And there's definitely industries that are going to be affected like, uh, like, uh, you know, cannabis industry or the, you know, CBD especially. Um, but one of my CBD clients is, is, you know, their claims are all verified by, uh, medical doctors that have done clinical trials, but there's just not that many of them and they're not trusted, uh, or completely by the community. So, uh, they get hammered.
Lily Ray: 16:57 Exactly. And it's, it was kind of interesting to see, like when the medic update happened and then a few months later, everybody, myself included, started figuring out like, oh, this has something to do with authorship and author bio's and expertise. And so a lot of people went out there and added the author bio and, uh, you know, websites that were hit that don't necessarily have great quality content. They're still putting off her bio's and they're still putting, you know, we have experts writing these topics. But then when you actually read the Bio's, it's like a college student who loves writing about health or you know, something that's like, Eh, I don't know about that. Right. So, you know, I don't personally think that author bio's are a ranking signal in and of themselves, but I do think that it happens to be the case that the sites that are succeeding have very robust expert author bio's because that's how their websites were built, you know? So, yeah.
Jeff Byer: 17:50 And I think author by author Bio's, if you know the base basic thing about author Bios is linked to where you are on trusted sources. So obviously wherever your author bio is, is the source in question, so link out to where you've been cited, where you've been sourced and you haven't been cited or sourced, then you're probably not in authority. Okay.
Lily Ray: 18:11 Totally agree with that. Yeah. I think that links play a much bigger role in this whole EIT discussion than maybe people realize. And Google's actually said that pretty explicitly. They have, um, this document, I don't know if you've read it, but it's called how Google fixe just information and they actually talk about the fact that the way that they measure eat is through a lot of different signals, but one of the primary ones is through page rank. So they're really looking at kind of how these author names or these experts are linked from one publication to the next. So that's definitely a great point.
Jeff Byer: 18:42 Yeah. So a lot's to last is still discuss there and your, that's the primary topic of your, uh, pepcon talk.
Lily Ray: 18:51 Yeah, it's uh, the panel is just called eat so well they have a free for all to talk about it. So I'm really excited about that.
Jeff Byer: 18:58 Very nice. That'll be fun to listen to. Um, so what else did I have in, on my topics? I had a FAQ Schema, which I noticed you're not using or you're using for your personal side. I was just, I was looking at your SEO bio and you had the drop-downs on it. I was just kidding.
Lily Ray: 19:19 Yeah, I think a, any SEO will agree with me on the fact that our personal sites are not necessarily the best representation of our skills. Yeah. Um, I wish I had more time to work on that side, but yeah. So, um, that was like such a, I didn't expect that thing to go as crazy as that, but basically, um, we were really ambitious when FAQ Schema got rolled out here at my agency and we wanted to test it with one of our clients that was really forward thinking and like to try new things. So we just kind of slapped it on one of our pages. I had a bunch of FAQ is on it. And um, yeah, we started to lose traffic really fast. It took us a second to realize what was happening is the rankings were the same. Um, but then we looked at the results on mobile devices and it was like the entire content of the website was in a syrup, right.
Lily Ray: 20:08 Or of the webpage was there. So, um, I was like, wow, I never even thought that that might happen. You know, cause there's just been such a big push to use schema and there's a lot of cynical SEOs that totally anticipate that Schema is going in this direction where like you can get these rich results or people stay on the search results and don't actually click your site. So probably should've thought about that a little bit more. But anyway, we rolled it out and that happened. Um, but then that kind of ended up in this big discussion with other sts or we realized you could add links to the answers, which is pretty cool. So I added some links to the answers, tag them with UTMs and we're definitely seeing people click on the links within the answers, but I don't think that outweighs the decline in traffic that we see from having the FAQ Schema.
Lily Ray: 20:52 So, um, I still recommend using it. Um, because there's been some other studies I think distill did a study recently and some others where if you're using it on the right pages, you can actually expect a pretty big increase in click through rates. Um, and they did some tests there where they saw that to be the case. And actually, um, I keep pushing my team, like don't be scared to use this stuff. Um, or use FAQ Schema and how to Schema and everything because just cause that wanting to sample it went kind of viral where it was like purely informational. There's been a lot of people getting really creative with FAQ Schema on like product pages and organization pages and things like that where you can actually get like a double result. So you can get like star ratings and all your product attributes and FAQ Schema at the bottom. And if you look at those results, especially on mobile, it's like the entire screen. So that definitely helps click through rate. And it's something that I don't know that we're going to have this forever cause it's almost like the biggest organic result I think I've ever seen. And I don't know how much Google likes that. So yeah, for the time being music, I don't know how long it'll last, but I've been pushing it really hard for sure.
Jeff Byer: 21:57 Yeah. And if, if you're a content strategy is informational and that information is, is being served within the serp itself, yeah, yeah. This stat of Click throughs is gone, but you're being seen as the authority of giving the answer. The answer's there. It's just they didn't click the get it. So, um, you know, I've, I understand ran Fishkins uh, you know, his concern about, uh, the, the reduction of clicks and right from a reporting aspect that yeah, you have to answer to your clients why we're not getting clicks, but you're, if you're, if you're really holistic in your content approach and you're trying to provide information to your audience, then getting that audience through the Syrup or through the page shouldn't matter because you've actually been the brand that provided the result.
Lily Ray: 22:50 [inaudible] provide the, yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think, um, what's been kind of interesting about these new schema types like FAQ and how to, um, they haven't, it doesn't seem like Google's really cracking down on the content that much. Um, I've had one person reach out to me who was really kind of like advertorial and his content. Like I think he, but do you need a great SEO click here? And that was one of the FAQ questions and then it was his phone number and his linkedin profile and the answer and that that did get taken down by Google or that's flagged it at least. But I haven't seen many other examples of Google actually telling people that their FAQ Schema is violating their guidelines. Um, except for technical issues that might be like the scheme is not implemented correctly. Um, but from a content standpoint, I don't think they've been cracking down on it too hard yet.
Lily Ray: 23:36 And we've gotten away with like putting, you know, the name of the company in the answers or putting a lot of links to our service pages and you even put like polluted links within that, within the actual formatting of the answer. Um, so I've seen some like insurance companies for example, where they might list like their five different insurance products using bullets within the answer with links to each of those pages. And that's pretty unusual for Google to allow us to have an organic result that potentially includes links to like 30 pages on your website without them cracking down on it. So again, I would recommend that people play with this thing. Um, don't abuse it too hard cause it, they might catch onto it and take it away from us. But for the time being, it's a great way to get more clicks to a lot of patients.
Jeff Byer: 24:20 Yeah. And the links in the, in the FAQ is, are definitely something once that, once I saw that that was possible, I understood that, okay, this is why you would want to do it. AndW why, why somebody looking for clicks is going to want to do that because it puts another clickable URL into the, the search engine page, the search result page. For sure. For sure. Um, okay, so quality raider guideline changes a, you wrote a article about this. What major changes did you see?
Lily Ray: 24:49 Yeah, I'm mostly semantics. I think. Um, it kind of feels like almost like a lawyer or someone read through the guidelines and said like, oh, we need to change that wording a little bit. So like, particularly on the section around like what does it mean to be a website that promotes hate or violence. Um, they changed some of the wording there, which seemed almost like a political correctness thing, which is not that interesting. But, um, the part that I found most interesting was, uh, the Pulitzer prize thing or after you read in the article, but they used to have, they have like this whole section in the quality rater guidelines where they provide very specific examples of what it means to be high quality or to be an expert on different topics. So it says if you're a news publication, a way that you can tell, but a news publication is trustworthy is because they've won 20 Pulitzer Prize awards.
Lily Ray: 25:40 And that would be all they said about it. And they actually did that like four or five times where it was like, well, they're one five Pulitzer Prize or 10 Pulitzer Prize or whatever. And, um, you know, I've seen a lot of the backlash that people say whenever Google rolls out these types of guidelines. And a lot of people will say, you know, it's not fair to use just the Pulitzer prize is the only place to look if you're looking at whether the publication should be trusted or not. And that was kind of my thinking behind why they now went and made those sections of the guidelines much more robust. They included like five different names of awards that, a publication that when, if it's, if it's trustworthy and reputable. So I thought that was kind of interesting just from like a political standpoint. Obviously Google is under political scrutiny right now, so that kind of makes sense. Um,
Jeff Byer: 26:25 but I, I mean, that seems like that there they're accommodating to not exactly their audience, their audience is a quality raider and the general public having access to it is just a, a perk as far as the way they see it and answering to the public on the way they tell their Raiders to rate that.
Lily Ray: 26:44 Yeah, I mean the, the publications they included are still very, very trustworthy publications. It just makes it seem like Google is encouraging a more like a broader analysis of what it means to be trustworthy. So that was my take on it. That might not be true at all, but I just thought that was pretty interesting. It was like seven instances of the Pulitzer Prize that got updated. Um, and then some other updates. Yeah, I think there's been so many questions in the past year about like what is eat, what is why I'm [inaudible], how does it apply to my website? So it seems like a lot of what they did was just break out the definitions a little bit more and to be a little bit more specific and like rearrange things a little bit. So I think I'm news, for example, moved from like the sixth or fifth example of a wild wild website to the first.
Lily Ray: 27:34 So I don't know if that means anything, but if it does, it kind of means that news might be the single primary place that they're looking at in terms of assessing like eat. And why I'm, why l um, and then yeah, they just, they got a little bit more specific. So, um, I think it was maybe Marie Haines who kind of suggested that a website is y m y l if it's e-commerce because it accepts credit cards. I don't know where that whole like narrative came from, but I think it might've been her. Um, but they made that pretty explicit in the guidelines this time. So they said like, if you are any ecommerce website, your wild whale. So that was interesting to see.
Jeff Byer: 28:09 Does it change your strategy at all? Uh, especially the news being a, the number one priority, uh, as far as the bullets in the why and why l is of, I mean, of course editorial mentions are, are always a great perk. But has your priority shifted as far as your strategy?
Lily Ray: 28:29 Yeah, not for all our clients. Um, and I keep kind of telling my team and a lot of people that I associate with, with this stuff, it's like, this doesn't always matter for every website. You know, there's, there's some websites that have been doing just fine with all these algorithm updates. They haven't been affected and they're doing everything pretty much right from the get go. So this isn't like a panic mode for all of our clients. Uh, but that being said, there's definitely some clients that we have and some sites that I work on that this is a big concern and this is a big issue for them. So, um, for any sites that might be like only showing one side of the story or being a little bit too salesy and why I'm, why all content, um, I've been working with those clients to kind of say like, you guys are pushing your product a little bit too hard here. Um, or you kind of only showing one side of the story on a really controversial topic. And that's a tough conversation to have for a lot of companies because that might be their entire business model is like, well, I sell natural medicine products and that's what I believe. Then, you know, that's what I've been doing for years. Right? But, um, you know, maybe there's other keywords that they can rank for, but if they want to rank for these very high volume, generic medical types of keywords, yeah, we have to change our, our strategy.
Jeff Byer: 29:41 And so where does, uh, the past year of, of SEO and you know, and updates and, and everything that we've been getting from Google, where does that put somebody starting a brand new website? How more, how much more difficult is it to rank as a new website?
Lily Ray: 30:02 Yeah. Um, I like to remind people that I think healthline, which is the biggest player in the medical space right now, it's like a seven year old company. Um, someone kind of corrected me and said, yeah, but they acquired this other company, ended up, you know, merger or whatever. So that obviously helps them. But there are other examples of websites that are relatively new that are doing things really well from an SEO standpoint. And just from a marketing standpoint and a business standpoint, they have a good reputation. A lot of the newer like tech startups and things like that. Um, if you get your SEO in order from the get go and people really like your brand and you produce great content out of the gate, I think it's entirely possible to rank. Now if you're, um, a medical website that's going to be a little bit harder.
Lily Ray: 30:49 Um, news is actually kind of different because, um, you know, there's Google News, which is separate algorithm and separate database of websites. So we actually just recently had an exciting example with the client where they had been declined from Google news over and over for many years. And what we did was we created one category on their website and created a separate self folder for that where it was taking just news, nothing controversial, nothing that could be denied by Google and they got approved instantly. That was pretty exciting. So there's ways to get around it. I would just say like, be realistic with your expectations. Um, try to find the exact niche that you're going after because you're not gonna rank for those really high volume competitive keywords anytime soon, especially if they're y m y l but there's, you know, we have plenty of websites here that are relatively new companies that we've been able to help with them a year or two. So,
Jeff Byer: 31:43 yeah. And I think, uh, I think the, the show notes page on this post, uh, I'm going to try and get it to rank for a green fish wallpaper. I think, uh, I think we got it.
Lily Ray: 31:53 No, this, this room is so extreme. Whenever I'm in here, it's like blinded by green fish.
Jeff Byer: 31:59 So, um, I've, I had a ton more of stuff. Um, um, I, I don't know how much time you have. I wanted to be real.
Lily Ray: 32:06 I'm just hanging out here. It's Thursday evening in New York, so, yeah.
Jeff Byer: 32:10 Okay, sure. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so quickly, um, your Google survey results were very interesting. Is that, uh, yeah, it taught me that young people aren't looking at any of my search results at all. Um, the, uh, the, the organic search result behavior versus, you know, compared to age was, was kind of shocking.
Lily Ray: 32:36 Yeah. Yeah. That was, you found it shocking. Yes.
Jeff Byer: 32:40 That the, that the, the youngest section of your respondents were, we're just not, we're basically, if it wasn't top one or two, they ignored it.
Lily Ray: 32:53 That didn't surprise me. It's upsetting, but it didn't surprise me at all. I mean, if I think about like my 10 year old stepson and how he uses the Internet and we don't have voice search devices in our house, so he's not one of those kids that's constantly talking to Alexa, but obviously there's millions of those kids at this point. Yeah. Um, and you know, the Alexa devices and Google homes, they give one answer. So that's kind of the, the new nature of searching, which is kind of terrifying.
Jeff Byer: 33:21 Yeah. So basically, yeah. And voice. Yes. But, uh, specifically in, in your, uh, survey was, was voice part of that question or was it only re organic?
Lily Ray: 33:33 No. Yeah. So that question was specifically around like when you conduct a search on your phone or on a desktop, you know, do you just look at the first page or do you look at only the first result or do you dig deeper into deeper pages? And yeah, the trend was basically that older people like to do more research. Um, and I think this partially just has to do with like older people obviously were here before search engines existed first of all. Um, but they kind of grew throughout the process of search engines changing over time. So Google is now an answer engine where it just shows answers on the front page, but it wasn't always the case. So people develop behaviors where they're actually looking deeper on the first page and they're going to page two because they're quite literally like researching through the search results.
Lily Ray: 34:16 And myself included, I'm not an older person as far as my is concerned, but I still have those behaviors from learning how to use like Yahoo and whatever original search engines we were using because I like to see different viewpoints. And that was the whole point of having at least, you know, 10 links to look at. Um, but I don't know that the youngest searchers had that experience from their perspective. It's like whatever's the first one or two results is probably a good answer to my question. And you know, beyond that, whatever Google puts on into syrup is actually even quicker and better answer to the questions. So, um, it's scary to think about that and I kind of hope that younger people become skeptical over time and start to realize like the featured stuff, it's not always totally right. So I'm going to do a little bit more digging. Uh, but yeah, the trend is a little scary. Yeah.
Jeff Byer: 35:07 Um, and you know, just think about it as it my SEO experience or my developer experience that I, I am interested what's on the, what completes the first page and what ends up on the second page. I mean, most of it is probably curiosity, but, uh, as, as you know, I have to have at some point done just a straight search of just information just for me without evaluating the Serp at all. And yeah, I would still scroll.
Lily Ray: 35:38 Yeah, for sure. I mean I think my, my husband's funny cause he's a little bit like cynical about using Google, especially with all this stuff that I bring him everyday, but he's like, oh, I just like to click on page three and see what's there and kind of go off of that. Or like any search. All right, now we're all putting it, it's like three, there's trillions and trillions of documents to answer all these questions at this point and Google's picking the top 10 but it's like there's so many other amazing options out there and we're just a little lazy and don't necessarily want to look at them. But you have these other people credit, you know, they're ranking on page three. They probably have something really good to say as well.
Jeff Byer: 36:17 Yeah. And uh, you know, that's been, that's been the struggle for a lot of a lot of companies and why they need SEO help is that, you know, they think they are providing the best and could be just a simple technical issue that we discussed earlier that that could be keeping them out. So, yeah, for sure. Um, so the, uh, the results that you got based on a result that had a featured snippet or knowledge panel and uh, the uh, you know, the declining and click-throughs, um, that seems like, that seems like the middle, middle generations are, are pretty trustworthy of the information they see in a, in a a knowledge panel and yeah. Does that concern you at all?
Lily Ray: 37:06 I mean, yeah and it should concern all of us. Um, and I think that's one of the reasons why Google is cracking down so hard on like Schema and you know, building out the knowledge graph and entities and things of that nature because they're also the ones that are pushing this new kind of like answer first or entity first answer page on Google and that's so they're, you know, they have to correct themselves when things are wrong when they say like a horse has eight legs or six legs or whatever, that doesn't look very good for them. So they're really pushing webmasters to go out there and make sure that all their cmos super accurate and then kind of penalizing people when the scheme is not accurate, making sure people go and fix it and things like that. Um, but it's, it's scary. I think I conducted the survey back in April, um, were a little bit before that and um, I was somewhat pleased, but it wasn't a higher number if I remember correctly.
Lily Ray: 38:02 It was maybe something like 20% of people looked at the knowledge panel and saw thought that their questions were answered, but then like 80% continued to browse and look for other answers. And then there was some contingency of people who just like completely ignored it, which was a little bit reassuring from my perspective. It's like I'm an SEO and I want people to click on things. Yeah. But it's alarming. I think like rand Fishkin, the fact that he goes on these speaking tours, talking about this stuff, he has a very good reason to do that. I'm happy he does cause a lot of SEOs, myself included, are too scared to talk that stuff. But, um, it's, it's definitely very important and we'll see what happens with this whole investigation with the government. Cause I think they're kind of looking at that stuff as well.
Jeff Byer: 38:44 Yeah. And, uh, I've talked about this with Barry Schwartz in the last episode last week and uh, you know, I've just said, Yo, are you a friend of Google and you know, cause he's visiting Google facilities all the time and he says, you know what, I bad mouth them as much as anybody and I've only been penalized once. So
Lily Ray: 39:03 yeah, it's a tricky situation to be in. Um, you know, Google, like John Mueller for example, he's an amazing guys, very, very kind, very generous. Um, and I really respect how communicative he is with our industry and how much he shares with us. I think just yesterday he posted this really amazing tweet where he was like, if anybody at Brighton SEO is speaking and they have questions about the new link attributes, I'm happy to help you out. Like, that's so super cool for Google to do that kind of stuff. Um, but then there's this larger existential like, am I going to have a job in 10 years? You know, or small businesses going to get traffic in 10 years, like, what's going to happen with that? So there's, there's two sides to it. Um, and I, I definitely see both sides. Yeah.
Jeff Byer: 39:44 And I have a small prediction for the future of Google, which is, um, in the, in the, uh, distributing information realm, they're gonna go the way of customization to where there won't be a predictable serp because they're going to allow the users to choose what features are available in their syrup. And so if they choose not to see a knowledge panel and want to do the, the deep diving on their own, they'll have the option to, or if they don't want to see results and they just want answers, they'll be able to, to customize in that way too. This is just, you know,
Lily Ray: 40:26 yeah, I've never heard that before, but it's cool. I like it. Um, and I like it because it means that there will still be SEO in the future. You know, if people choose to ignore eaters in a bitch or the knowledge panel or whatever the case may be, that means that there still has to be some things for them to click on after that. So, yeah.
Jeff Byer: 40:45 All right. So let's wrap up. Um, what, uh, what tools do you use on a daily basis?
Lily Ray: 40:51 Oh, Geez. Um, a lot of them. So search console and analytics are the first two probably, um, have a few different crawlers. So my agency partners with Spotify, which I love, um, but I've also been using site bulb and screaming frog for three years now. Um, SIPO is relatively new, which I I really love. They have a nice crawl visualization. I haven't seen it, but um, screaming frog has the same thing, but this one's really just like pretty. Um, and it makes for really nice powerpoints if which I have to do all the time at my agency. So I love using that tool. Um, I've been pushing a Searchmetrics content tool lately. I don't use it day to day, but it's a really fantastic tool. You're golden content. What it does is it scrapes like the top 30 or 60 results for whatever keyword you're targeting. And it does some kind of language processing and it kind of tells you, all right, if you want to rank for this keyword, we recommend using all these semantically related keywords. We've seen them like six times on ranking pages or eight times or something like that. So, um, as you're writing it kind of checks off.
Jeff Byer: 41:57 Yeah. You mentioned this tool with uh, with very short or not very, uh, with um, bill Slawsky when he was talking about the TF IDF of, cause we talked about that and we brought you up in that episode too. Is that, yeah. Cause uh, cause you mentioned Searchmetrics has this tool that may be using TF IDF just to give a broad spectrum of not only your main term frequency, but a, a whole bunch of alternative terms that are showing up with that main term.
Lily Ray: 42:30 Yeah. Yeah. And like the science behind it or the natural language processing methodology behind it is probably not nearly anywhere as sophisticated as what Google is doing, obviously. But that being said, it's a very pretty tool. It's very easy to use. It's a nice thing to give your writers and kind of give them some guidance about all the different topics that they should hit on, on a page that is going to rank well on whatever topic. So I like that. Um, you know, we use conductor, where you start, we use Moz was SCM rush a traps. I've been loving Sistrix for, um, for analyzing like algorithm updates. I think that's the best tool for that. They're from Germany, I believe. And I don't know how big their presence is in the u s but I recently got some districts, I'm absolutely loving it. So your sister x, and this is always a tricky question just because, you know, you go to conferences and everyone's like, hey, why am I to 11 tall? And they all kind of do similar things. So I'm like, sorry, I already buy that one. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Everyone's doing great work and we have a lot of them here.
Jeff Byer: 43:34 And finally, uh, what do you have to promote and where can people follow you?
Lily Ray: 43:40 Yeah. So I would just promote my agency path interactive. We are an agency here in New York City. Um, and you can follow us on Twitter at pap interactive. One word or myself, lily, right. NYC. I'm pretty active on Twitter. Uh, and yeah, I'll be speaking at pubcon with Maria and a couple of weeks and then SMX east here in New York with Glen Gabe. Um, and then also at onward, which is a conference here in New York by Yext. That will be in late October as well.
Jeff Byer: 44:08 All right, fantastic. Well, thank you very much for your time. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and Nopa hope you'd be willing to come back on. Uh, once we have, uh, the dust settled and possibly after all these talks I'll have a lot more. Uh, you'll, you'll be, uh, grabbing more
Jeff Byer: 44:26 out of me that I need to answer itself. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Alright, thank you very much. Look for show notes and information. Go to digital rage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage FM. And please give us a rate and review it. Sincerely appreciate it.
Today Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) interviews Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) about an unconfirmed algorithm update from last week, Bing Webmaster Tools adds import tool from Google Search Console, Bing Places adds an import tool from Google My Business, and much more.
About Barry Schwartz
About Barry Schwartz Follow Barry on Twitter @rustybrick Subscribe to Barry's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp8Kv-cF9YfA-G33CRxv6SQ Read Barry's Blog https://www.seroundtable.com/
Episode Links & Mentions
Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On August 29th Google Search Ranking & Algorithm Update Over The Weekend? Bing Places Also Lets You Import Your Google My Business Listings | August 30, 2019 Bing Webmaster Tools Lets You Verify Your Site Using Google Search Console | August 29, 2019 Google: We Try to Recognize Author Details, Reviewer Details & Overall Site Quality Details @Marie_Haynes @bill_slawski @feedly @TweetDeck
Videos
Transcript
Jeff Byer: 00:08 Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet from the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and today we talked to Barry Schwartz. @Rustybrick on Twitter. He is a Google search engine nerd or a search geek is what he calls himself on Twitter. We talked about an unconfirmed algorithm update. We talked about Bing Webmaster tools, being able to import from Google search console, we talk about [inaudible]
Jeff Byer: 00:32 Bing Places being able to import from Google my business, which I didn't see but other people are. So I'm going to dig a little deeper into that. We talk about authorship. We talk about the base camp, Google ad controversy, and if you need to purchase ads against your own brand name to [inaudible] competitors we talk about Google versus duck duck go, which is a interesting case about Google actually responding to naysayers. Talk about verifying, testing and citing your sources in your content. We talk about the tools that Barry uses and tools that barriers built. His blog is actually built on the custom platform that he made at his company that he owns with his brother called rescue brick. And we want everybody to go check out his youtube channel, rusty brick and subscribe so that he can build his subscribership. These video interviews or video intros are going to be part of the podcast going forward so that we have a presence on, on video channels and we also want to keep them under two 20 so that we can post them to Twitter. So that's right.
Jeff Byer: 01:35 It enjoy the interview with Barry. So today we have Barry Scwartz on the podcast. He is a self-described search geek based in New York. You run search engine round table and his articles are often referenced by top SEOs as well as Google. How are you today?
Jeff Byer: 01:56 I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Byer: 01:57 Of course. Thank you for coming on. Do you mind letting us know how you got started in digital marketing and became the authority that you are today?
Barry Schwartz: 02:06 I Dunno if I'm an authority. I just read a lot. But I have a web development company called Rusty Brick. We started at my brother and I actually started in 1994 or so, we'll know when we were in high school. And we build software. I don't really do digital marketing, I just write about it. So my company really just build software, both, both desktop software that runs in the web as well as mobile applications that run obviously off your iPhone or android phone. And we do that for any types of purposes. In terms of the SEO stuff that I write about, search engine land and searches around table, it's more of like a hobby. I don't necessarily consider myself a journalist per se. I write a lot obviously, but it's more of like a hobby for me where I just like to keep track of what's going on and changing in the search industry. But I published a lot of that on my own site and that probably started I started writing search in 2003. And I really didn't stop. I just kept writing and I probably write about five to 10, sometimes more articles per day just on search.
Jeff Byer: 03:12 So you are kind of an anomaly where you're writing about a search for the sake of search where most people that own agencies are looking for answers on behalf of their current clients.
Barry Schwartz: 03:24 Yeah. Or they're doing this to market their own agencies. So I just write about it because I find it interesting. I love the community and it's a good way to keep track of what's changing. It's a, Google is a very fascinating company. Search engines in general are really fascinating and that's the reason I write about it.
Jeff Byer: 03:42 So lately, have you seen an uptick in activity from Google as far as not only algorithm changes but the the features and options that are now available on the result pages? [inaudible]
Barry Schwartz: 03:59 No, actually it depends what you call feature. So the, if you go to Google and you want to do a search and you type in like, I don't know, whatever you want to type in. And I was like, Google. And then you would have the options to filter by different search tools. So now you can filter by like time, like date range and other things. There used to be tons more of features in terms of how you can filter the search results.
Jeff Byer: 04:21 So the activity has been pretty consistent over the last couple of years as far as with their features and ad-ons
Barry Schwartz: 04:27 They've been removing features in terms of those types of features. I mean there's other things like Google lens and Google maps that they are, so that type of stuff, the cool stuff that you're seeing is stuff that the release hold time, but they're also pulling back on a lot of features that they've launched years ago and no longer use. That includes technical features like certain types of markup like authorship or certain types of other features they released over the years. They removed that and now they're big into Schema and they're big into other things. So Google, like most technology companies, try things, see if it works, and then we'll, you know, stop doing it if it's not catching on or they find another better solution for it. You've seen that with Google's multiple social networks you know, orchid, Google buzz, Google plus, et cetera. And you seen that with lots of services like Google reader tons of Google products, but specifically with search, like Google search just wants to make it easier for people to search without them having to use special features. So the info command or certain types of advanced search operators stop working over the years. Because Google says they don't want, nobody really uses it, at least I guess a normal surgeon doesn't use it. People like you and I probably who are more advanced searchers probably do use it.
Jeff Byer: 05:40 Yeah. I use filter by time all the time. If I'm looking for code examples or things like that. A post from 2015 is not gonna help. Right. So and also the, I noticed the image filters, they removed filters by size.
Barry Schwartz: 05:58 Yeah. That was just that was interesting. They removed the last week I asked for a comment. They did not give me a comment yet. I surely follow up. But before that they removed two by accident. So, I'm not sure if it was a bug they moved to by accident again or if it's like a feature where they removed it because they don't want to support it anymore. So it's hard for me to know. They removed it I think hog a week or two ago. And people use it all the time. They want to find images specific size. They want to find images that are certain larger than a certain size and now they can do that. Only they can search for are by large, medium and icon.
Jeff Byer: 06:31 Yeah. And that was particularly helpful and I think that image search could have, you know, is a spot where Google could have a lot of improvements as far as usability and you know, knowing their audience and knowing the intent of the searcher that searching for images you know, editorial wise or content wise or just research,
Barry Schwartz: 06:55 Well, image search is a tough thing for them because there's different laws of different countries. So I know over the past several years, Google has different user to come to digital rates on all things. Internet would have [inaudible] buyers and maybe top [inaudible], stuff like that. Rusty brick on Twitter. I think also a lot of the filter [inaudible] search Geek is what he calls his cell phone to Twitter. We talked about outgrow settlements with them in terms of tools. Don't reference Google search console, talk about it being places being downloaded from, we didn't click on the image itself, but other people are and that changed little years ago that we tried out the basecamp, Google ad, go onto [inaudible] or whatever you need to purchase on brand name, shoe as competitors. We talked about Google versus Dow in case watermarks. Actually responding to naysayers, right? Verifying, testing and citing your sources in your content.
Barry Schwartz: 07:56 You used to talk about the tools that Barry uses and tools is a blog is images from life stock are getting off in this stuff or the brother called restaurant brick and just separate buddy to go check out his rusty brick doc and subscribe it just so you can build your subscriber ship. These video interviews or video interests are going to be part of the podcast going forward so that we have a [inaudible] recap. Those are posted video channels and we also want to keep them under 20 Twitter updates. Enjoy the interview with Barry Schwartz. Yeah. So I mean I track the, the chatter of an SEO community. I've been doing that for yeah, for five, 15 years. And when I see the SEO community start to like spike up and say, Hey, my rankings have changed, then it kind of symbols. It's kind of, you know, signals that something's going on with the Google search algorithm and maybe there's some type of filter.
Barry Schwartz: 08:52 Maybe there's some type of penalty who maybe was some algorithm update. Maybe there's manual actions. So it's hard for me to know exactly what's going on. The chatter from over the weekend or you know, just recently, like earlier this week was not as strong as maybe like a penguin update from the past or a panned update from the past or even these core updates. Google hasn't confirmed anything around his updates. So Google says they don't confirm from all updates anyway. They only confirmed the larger updates. And I haven't heard anything from them, so it's hard for me to tell you what it is. But there's definitely a lot of webmasters. That's why master is saying, Hey, we got hit or we did better on August 29th or August 28th. And the actual tools that track these updates like Moz cast certain metrics, you know, rank, ranger, SCM, rush, all these types of SEO tools that track the changes in the Google search results are also showing that change.
Barry Schwartz: 09:49 But again, it's not as significant as a massive core update or the old fashioned penguin and panda updates. But they're definitely, in my opinion, was some type of update that Google did not confirm. Gotcha. And the only way to really find out anything about it is to dive in and do a lot of research and find out, you know, topics. So sometimes like bigger updates, I'll do a survey asking the SEO community to send me their sites. Sometimes I'll get like 500 to a thousand different websites that say they got hit or they, they actually changed the rankings. I'll ask them to fill out a survey saying, what was the site? What did you see in terms of traffic changes up, down the same. What was the day you got hit a bunch of questions and then I'll analyze the sites themselves and I'll say, all right.
Barry Schwartz: 10:31 The sites either have, are very at in general, are very ad heavy or maybe they're, a lot of them have bad links or maybe they're in this specific industry or that specific industry. It's been harder to find the pattern with Google updates recently because it's not really one thing. Penguin was about links. A panda was specifically around content. Google has, you know, algorithms that look for add pages that have lots of ads that are distracting. It's never, it hasn't been the past couple of years. One thing that would actually hurt a website, and it's always hard to like pinpoint that this is the issue. Back when Google released on August 1st of last year, 2018, I kind of named that update, the medic update because I saw based on the survey results that a good, like 70% of the sites that were submitted to me were literally in the medical health, fitness, health and wellness type of field.
Barry Schwartz: 11:23 And then the next time you Google did a core update, I did another survey, it was more financial related. I'm going to, Google is kind of saying, yeah, we do have this concept of y m y l your money, your life, which is around financial websites, banking, websites, health websites, medical websites, PR, you know, those, those types of things. That core updates actually have a stricter I guess core updates in a stricter sense on where they want to make sure the content on those websites are much more authoritative and written by experts. So my theories on that or some of the early SEO people are on that concept where correct. Although it wasn't just specific to medic and I probably shouldn't have named named and medic. But you know, you got to give it some name. So
Jeff Byer: 12:05 Yeah, the name stuck definitely. And a, I had a client specifically that got hit pretty hard. We had them ranking number one for all of their key terms for up to two years at that point. And they make on an oxygen analyzer device. So they don't actually claim anything about health specifically, but they make a product that serves the health community and they got slammed. And now it was more it's more apparent that the reason they got slammed is they don't have any authorship and they don't have a ton of, of authority. And the claims that they make are not really verifiable because it's their product. And then they're up against some huge brands that have a huge built in authority. Right. So, so I also picked up a little report that you said that being places is now offering an import for Google my business.
Barry Schwartz: 13:03 Yeah. So that was interesting. At first, it was the first day before that actually reported that Google, sir, oh, sorry. That big webmaster tools lets you import your Google search console sites, right? So for a couple of weeks before that I saw Martin split, who's from Google reach out to the big webmaster tools team. And I guess they stopped by basically what happened was they figured out a way to say, all right, let's find a quick way to import all those sites. We have verified Google search console directly in my big webmaster tools. So now if you have big, you're not really using big web at big web master tools and you are using Google search console, you could just go right into bing, bing webmaster tools, login, click the import button and they'll do some type of verification authentication to import all the sites you have verified already with Google search console.
Barry Schwartz: 13:48 So it just gives you more access to more tools or [inaudible] tools. And I know being web master tools is actually investing more these days than they ever have in the past or in the past few years, at least on that and the suite of products. So definitely take a look at that. It doesn't hurt to have more data. Also they, after our report of that basically big places, which is equivalent to the Google my business center is lets you sync your, your places. So if you add a new place, I guess in Google my business it'll sync over to big, big places as well.
Jeff Byer: 14:22 Yeah. So I saw the, the, the search console sync. I didn't see the Google my business think in a, in the bing places interface. So I'm not sure if that's actually rolled out to everybody or are possibly just specific to, to certain users.
Barry Schwartz: 14:41 I think it's rolled out to everybody. I mean, there's two different things. So one is bing webmaster tools and one of them being places. So yeah, I would think if you log in now, you probably probably see it. You don't see the big webmaster tools at all?
Jeff Byer: 14:54 No. I only, I took a screenshot of the search console, but I didn't see it in being places I didn't see an import button for Google my business.
Barry Schwartz: 15:08 Yeah, I see. I mean, you saw my screenshot. Yeah.
Jeff Byer: 15:09 Right, right. And that's why I immediately went in there to try and sink them and, and didn't see it. So maybe it's just a slower roll out or or I'd need to dig a little deeper, but I figured it would just be right there on the, on the home page of my places.
Barry Schwartz: 15:27 It is, it's right on the top for me. I log into being places the dashboard, the first option I have here is sync with my Google my business. I felt that's been around for a lot longer actually than the big webmaster tools. But I could be wrong. So,
Jeff Byer: 15:40 Yeah. So I don't see it, but we can research that a little later. So also would you consider yourself a friend of Google? You have a good relationship with them?
Barry Schwartz: 16:01 I don't know what that means exactly and I can tell you this. So there are many Googlers that don't like what I have to say. There are many Googlers that understand why I write when I write sometimes. And there's many Google was at like, what I have to say. I'm the same time, there's many SEOs that feel like I'm a Google fanboy and there's many Googlers that feel like I hate Google. So you can't win fast. It makes sense.
Jeff Byer: 16:27 Yeah. And from what, from my experience, what I see is, is you're very fair about how you report and what you report. And so why I'm bringing this up is your recent riding on the base camp Google that and, and so that issue, it's an issue that I've had to deal with as well is that, you know, you ranked number one, but you've got your competitors ranking above you and you have to combat that. Have you ever suspected Google to strike back at shots, fired against them using their own tools? So
Barry Schwartz: 17:07 I mean, the whole base camp thing kind of surprised me that it got so much attention. It's literally like on CNBC and stuff like that or CNN or one of these sites, it's getting a lot of attention. Huh. It surprised me because this is a strategy that's been, that the SCM community and PPC community been using for years. I mean, you do, you see the back in the early days of Superbowl commercials or were airing and the competitor and the person who air the super called commercial wouldn't go ahead and bid on their own brand name. So you, let's say for example, you would have, I don't know, KFC advertising in the Superbowl and then McDonald's will go ahead and [inaudible] out at the McDonald's, go ahead and like bid on the keyword KFC Subaru commercial and say, all right, you know, this is our ad. Instead a was even see that happening for it for years and it, it, it costs pennies to bid on your bid.
Barry Schwartz: 17:54 Nick, your name and I'll see, I don't think it's a big deal to be honest. I don't think it's a big deal that Google allows you to bid on like base camp at Hec base camp can mean a thousand things. Obviously it's a brand, but base camp is also that could be a base camp. It's not, it's a generic keyword phrase. But Google has very strict rules by country on the ad side. What people could bid on in terms of trademarks and so forth. And they stick by that. So they've changed those rules over the years. I don't think they've changed it recently. But they're very clear guidelines around that. So I, it just funny that it got so much attention. And of course the ad is very, very cute. You don't want to run this ad and we're doing this against our will. We're forced to pay it's ransom. It's against a giant tech company. We're a small little company based on base camp is a small little company relative to Google but not to you. And I guess so.
Jeff Byer: 18:45 So do you think Google has ever taken adverse action to people using their tools against them or attempting to,
Barry Schwartz: 18:54 Hmm. I don't know. I mean, this is, I don't know if this lecture they take, I mean
Jeff Byer: 18:57 Slander them, you know,
Barry Schwartz: 18:59 They might say this ad is not relevant and they might take down the specific ad based in their guidelines. But no, I mean, people beat up Google and times they bad things about them. I was only penalized once and I say bad things about them all the time. So yes, I don't think so. The two big to go ahead and say, oh, this person's talking bad about me or this company's talking bad about me and take action. Yeah. I have to act like, but the doctor [inaudible] was interesting. So I don't know if you saw that Danny Sullivan, like that goes constant coming out with negative stuff around Google cause you know, privacy and this and that. And Danny Sullivan actually responded directly to DuckDuckGo and then I saw him, he now works for Google. And he's basically saying this and this allegation about from Dr [inaudible] saying about Google is incorrect. We don't have filter bubbles. We don't have that much personalization. And personalization doesn't put you in this filter bubble. And he actually responds, it's the first time Google actually responded, or a person who will actually respond to the doctor, go from my opinion. So sometimes they take debate, sometimes they don't.
Jeff Byer: 20:03 Yeah. and then recently you posted your interview with Marie Haines. When was that recorded?
Barry Schwartz: 20:12 That was at Mozcon in Seattle like a couple of months ago. Okay. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of, so besides for the Friday recaps and trying to get more blogging going, so video blogs, video blogs and just going, well I, I probably have about 30 videos. I published about half of them so far. And I'm going to keep it going. So probably once a week, probably on Wednesdays going forward. Just a video of a personality and the SEO Industry. So if you ever, I don't know what your base, maybe I could stop by your office one day
Jeff Byer: 20:45 A la anytime you're in la, come on by.
Barry Schwartz: 20:47 Yeah. Yeah. So why, why? My rule was I have to do it in person cause it, you know, I could always do it over Skype and no offense to Skype, but it's something about being in person with somebody that will be cool and I go to enough conferences and I travel enough that I could probably make it happen. So hopefully I'll see you in la soon.
Jeff Byer: 21:02 Yeah, I was going to try and make it to pubcon. Are you going to be Vegas?
Barry Schwartz: 21:07 Won't be a pubcon is always almost always on a Jewish holiday. So I was at pubcon last year as you may know and it's been a while since they've been there before that because it's always on a Jewish holiday. And I told them I wanted this like search personality award thing and I told, and they said, you have to come back in the new year after to give the, they give you this little tight Tiara or whatever, $10 tr and you have to like give to the next person, like crown the next, you know, winter. And I'm like, I looked it up when I was right after the, after I got the award. I'm like, you know, the dates you have there is like on Yom Kippur, which is like the most holy as Jewish holiday. There's no way I could go. So like, oh, we'll figure it out. But they didn't change the day. It's so there's no way I could go. I in Pumpkins, a fun, fun event. I wish I could go, but it's just a shame.
Jeff Byer: 21:53 Yeah. that's unfortunate cause yeah, I've, I like meeting people in person and yes, Skype is, is an impersonal way to to get these interviews done. But but since I've just started out and meeting people in real life is definitely one of my goals moving into the next year. So
Barry Schwartz: 22:12 No, I mean it's definitely is the most these things are done over Skype or Google hangouts or whatever. And it was great. It's just I bought this little camera on him, I don't have in my bag over there. So DGI pocket camp and I brought him cause look cool. I'm like, now what am I gonna do with it? So I'm like, alright, maybe I'll just start doing blogging. So I technically I can't use Skype with it. It's just like a little like cool camera. So forcing myself to meet people and stuff.
Jeff Byer: 22:40 Yeah, it's always a great, great thing to do. So with your your Marie Haynes episode, you know, everything, Marie Haynes, I always ended up talking to her about eat and what it means. And in your in your September Google Webmaster report, Google says, you know, you've pointed out specifically in the video that Google tries to recognize author details. What does that mean? I mean, if you're, if you're an author and you have an authorship page, but they're still trying to recognize author details. Is that no,
Barry Schwartz: 23:17 I don't think Google doesn't look at authorship anymore. I wish they did. I used to, I used to love it when they had authorship. I used to love it when they had authorship. There because even whenever SEOs did searches, your little photo would come off and would always be like a photo of you and the Google search results. But Google says numerous times, they don't look at authorship is not something they look at anymore, but s some way Google's able to figure out who wrote what piece of content, if they're authoritative and so forth. And it's clear. I mean, I quoted John Mueller numerous times of what he said around that. So I, it was, I mean I would just re read what he wrote or read what he said and you can interpret it multiple ways. Cause the way John has talked this kind of cryptic, so I don't necessarily put words in his mouth.
Barry Schwartz: 23:59 I tried to quote him a lot and I try not to necessarily I have to write a title for this, for the story. So I recognize all the details, reviewer details and overall site quality, you know, details. But then I just try to quote them as much because then, you know, I don't want people to take me out of context or him in that context. But I, I do think they have some way of figuring out is this content written by a specific type of expert in the area? And Google did say, I think a few, maybe a month or two ago, how they actually go ahead and recognize or how he would go. I asked somebody that, John Mueller, how would you go about recognizing that? And they're like, well, we have a, say we have a big index and we're able to see how, you know, us, they have a hundred competitors and 80 of those competitors are writing this about this topic and you're writing that something else about that topic.
Barry Schwartz: 24:52 Then then obviously if you're writing differently than maybe your stuff is not as accurate as maybe as the rest, maybe stuff like that. And then, you know, if you have these sections of your website, but your competitors have those sections on your website, maybe you should also be covering it, know, covering these details that you're not constantly because everybody else is covering those details. And that's what he kind of said. There's probably an article there in that recap how they recognize high quality content and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, I've written so much about, it's, it's hard to say how Google exactly does that, but there was a a video of John Mueller talking about that I think a month or two ago. Like I send you a link to it if you want to. She needed.
Jeff Byer: 25:34 Yeah, I've got it. I've got it open and I plucked a little pieces out of it. And one thing I plucked out of there is that author data should not be hidden in the Schema but made public, so they're gonna treat whatever they can find about the author that's public and viewable to the user rather than just in the Schema a, they're gonna respect that a little bit more. And so what I was trying to do is figure out if we had content that was based on a authority that was mostly an offline authority, didn't have much of an online presence, or would that still count?
Barry Schwartz: 26:17 Yes. I don't think it's, again, I don't think it's specifically about that specific person writing that content. It's more about what the content says, if that makes sense.
Jeff Byer: 26:28 Right. So it's not a, so what Marie Haynes was saying is that they're, they're trying to penalize people who post things that are not of a generally accepted opinion, especially with medical issues.
Barry Schwartz: 26:48 I Dunno. I mean, there's lots of theories out there. I don't, I, I don't know for sure. I don't think it's penalties and as I say, but I mean, how does somebody know that somebody is really a doctor? I mean, you see a link to their hospital profile on this different website. Maybe Google's able to pick up, all right, this doctor has a profile on, I don't know, this medical center website or that medical center website, but how do you actually verify, is there a list of, I guess maybe there's some type of database of approved doctors dos versus certain types of doctors versus, I know Chiropractor, I mean, where do you go from there? And I don't, I've never heard Google actually say they have a database of doctors. I don't know.
Jeff Byer: 27:27 Yeah. And so it leads to a, another question that bill Slawsky asked, which I find very important is what is, what source do you use for reliable, verifiable SEO information?
Barry Schwartz: 27:46 Me? Yeah. I mean in the [inaudible] obviously you can go with what Google says. You go with what SEO, say you go with the different SEO studies have said bought the best SEOs testings and see what works. Because what works for one, what works for one site might not work for the next site. What works for your agency might not work for a different agency. And the truth is what works within your agency for one client might not work for what's it within your agency for another client. So it's really, it's interesting. I think you kind of test and you've got to test on a client by client basis and not just even across all your clients. So, you know, adding, I don't know, a h three tag on a webpage worked for client day. It might not work for client B and there's multiple SEOs, I've come out and said, hey, you know, this case study worked really well for these three clients of ours, buffer the other 30 clients that did nothing. So sometimes we think what works is not really what really works. So just keep testing
Jeff Byer: 28:49 Great. Taz, you know, and, and you are often cited as a source and that's why I introduced you as an authority because you do do that testing and you listen to a lot of people who are doing the testing as well and report on that and you cite your sources, which is really important. So, yeah.
Barry Schwartz: 29:06 Yeah. I always say my, I, I think the web was built with hyperlinks and I think it's very important to link places. It's a shame. I mean, a lot of what Google was all about was about links and of course that kind of really internet because now nobody links out anymore because they're afraid of being penalized. But I'm still gonna link out forever and link, try to always link to the piece of the source that I got the information from because community is amazing and you have to credit those who find what they find.
Jeff Byer: 29:31 Yeah. Well, it's, it's definitely helping us as consumers of your content. So thank you very much for doing that. The last couple of questions before we wrap up. What are the tools that you use on a daily basis?
Barry Schwartz: 29:48 So I use a bunch of tools. I guess Feedly is one for tracking RSS feeds and different types of keyword subscriptions. I use on a desktop and mobile. I use I have my own internal tools. I build a tool for tracking different things. Internally. I actually use a lot of bookmarks as well, believe it or not. I use my own [inaudible] I built a lot of internal software. My company is a software development company, so we have a lot of internal software for, for everything. In fact even searches around that will be pulled out a custom CMS platform. I am big into email, I have to, I use tweet deck social media, all this type of stuff. So, but my finger I probably use the most is probably a Feedly and probably Feedly is the thing I use the most. In terms of for the SEO stuff I do.
Jeff Byer: 30:39 Okay. And do you have a, anything to promote where people can follow you? Where people can find more information? About you.
Barry Schwartz: 30:47 Sure. so my profiles at rusteberg.com/berry, I'm on Twitter, active or reactive at rusty brick. And also obviously searches around tables, searches are land, and if you can, I'm trying to get more subscribers to my youtube channel. So everybody who's listening to this and watching this they say, and youtube world smashed out like button and subscribe and hit that bell.
Jeff Byer: 31:12 Fantastic. Hadn't called rusty brick. So check it out. Fantastic. I already did that and the contents. Amazing. So thank you very much for your time. This has been very helpful. And we will have this out for you to, to review on Monday.
Jeff Byer: 31:28 Sounds good. Thank you. All right, thank you for show notes and information. Go to digital rates.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at Bam. And please give us a rate and review it. Sincerely appreciate it.
In this special video version of the podcast, Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) wants to wish everyone a happy and safe Labor Day weekend, and he runs down the upcoming guests for next months shows.
Show Links & Mentions
Barry Schwartz - @rustybrick Glenn Gabe - @glenngabe Lily Ray - @lilyraynyc Marie Haynes - @Marie_Haynes
Episode Video
Transcription
Jeff Byer: 00:01 Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff buyer and today we are doing a special video edition of the digital rage podcast because it is Labor Day weekend so we will not be publishing on Monday. Instead I'm going to just send this little, a little bite out as a podcast and a put it on my youtube channel and uh, hope everybody is going to have an amazing Labor Day weekend. So a few things upcoming is a, we've got our next three guests on the docket. I'm actually scheduled next week is Barry Schwartz. He's searched geek and he runs SEO Round Table, um, uh, overall great guy and publishes a, a weekly, a weekly update every Friday for all the search engine news that happened. Uh, he did report a algorithm update that uh, that's been gaining a little bit of, uh, a little bit of noise online lately and I looked at our traffic traffic's down, but rankings are still maintaining pretty much so, uh, not sure what's going on.
Jeff Byer: 01:12 I think our traffic is basically just holiday. You know, I've been seeing people out of the office for the whole week, so, um, I think that's related to my projects, but, uh, for him, uh, it'd be interesting to get more information and find out, uh, what actually happened and see if Marie Haines also has any information on that as well. Um, Glen Gabe is going to to come in. We're, we haven't scheduled a time, but, uh, he's gonna come in to come on the podcast and we're gonna interview him. He is a digital marketing consultant and contributor to search engine land. So, uh, he'll be fun to talk to and uh, get his thoughts and insights of all the, all the news, uh, current when we get them on the show. And then Lily Ray, she's hopefully coming back from, uh, from vacation this week or weekend and we'll try and schedule a time for her.
Jeff Byer: 02:08 She's speaking at Pubcon, so, uh, it's going to be a little tight, but, uh, that's pretty much the guests that I have lined up so far. If you have any ideas for guests, please reach out and let me know. Um, so, uh, I've stopped on my B2B campaigns. I've stopped all the, uh, PPC ads for the weekend just to, uh, you know, clear the plate. It's, I, I do it because, uh, we usually don't get any traffic and it's a good reset to have everything go to zero and see where we go, where we start or end up once we kick them back in. So, um, it's something that I like to do every once in awhile and knowing that it's a holiday weekend for my B2B clients that are specifically targeted in the United States, um, they're with it. And I, I just, I think it's good to have a little bit of contrast in your reporting and, and analytics so that you can see, you know, if anything reboots, anything gets reset, anything changes. And, uh, you know, I like having that mark in my graphs so that people can see, oh, that was a three day weekend from here on out. We should be good to go. So, yeah. Uh, that'll be everything back to normal in September. So that's all I have. Thank you very much for watching or listening. Whatever you're doing and have a great weekend. We will come back next week with Barry Schwartz.
Today Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) talks with Jeff Byer (@globaljeff) on the current state of SEO, Google Patents, and understanding the way Google interprets ambiguous queries. Bill is the Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital and is very generous with his time and knowledge.
About Bill Slawski
Twitter: @bill_slawski I answer questions #SEO #Search, #SemanticWeb, #patents, Director of SEO Research @gofishdigital, Juris doctor. Blog: SEO by the Sea ⚓ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slawski/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bill.slawski
Bill Slawski Speaking Engagements 2019
PUBCON Pro 2019, Las Vegas SMXL 2019, Milan Italy
Mentioned in this episode
GS1 Schema Quality location visits How Google May Interpret An Ambiguous Query Using a Semantic Interpretation Query intent using contextual histories TF-IDF Edge of the web episode with Erin Sparks
GS1 Web Markup Tool for GS1 SmartSearch Location Extensions Augmented Advertisements How would Google Answer Vague Questions in Queries? How Google May Interpret An Ambiguous Query Using a Semantic Interpretation Bill Slawski's Hardest SEO Quiz You'll Ever Take - 2018 Edition @lilyraynyc @erinsparks
Enjoying this article by @MarketMuseCo about why TF-IDF is outdated and overly simplistic for #SEO analysis. Great quotes by @bill_slawski @jroakes @martinibuster and more. https://t.co/p1iYU3ZEEt
— Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) August 16, 2019 Bill Slawski Reply: OK. TF-IDF is term frequency & inverse document frequency, which have nothing semantic built into them. I do use co-occurrence of meaningful phrases on pages that rank highly for the same query terms to build semantic topic models because those are related semantically.
Latent semantic indexing (Wikipedia) Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a system search engines use to analyze the other words people use surrounding a given topic. LSI keywords are words and phrases with a high degree of correlation to your target topic. Google's algorithm uses them to help determine content quality and relevance to the search term.
Bill Slawski wrote about it on an Inbound.org thread:
Latent Semantic indexing was invented and patented in 1990, before there was a web.
It was developed to help index small (less than 10,000 documents) databases of documents that didn't change much (like the Web does).
There have been a number of companies that started selling LSI Keyword generation tools that promised that they could help identify synonyms and words with the same or similar meaning.
Where those fail is that the LSI process requires access to the database (of documents) in question to calculate which words are synonyms - and the only people with access to Google's database to do that kind of analysis (which isn't possible anyway since Google's index is much to big and changes much to frequently) is Google.
Transcript
Jeff Byer: 00:08 Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and today I talk with Bill Slawski. If you don't know, Bill Hill is an SEO expert. He answers questions about SEO, search, semantic web and, and patents. Google patents specifically. He's the director of SEO Research at go fish digital. And he's just a really nice guy and very smart. That today was was a, was a fun episode. It was very good, informative
Jeff Byer: 00:41 Learning basically how search engines work and how they think and how they have evolved. So the topics that we discuss in order is bill's history, how he got into web and SEO. Talk about GS1 Schema. GS! Is the company that originally invented barcodes and they have, they have been the first ever creator of third party Schema. And so I was looking at implementing this into my own ecommerce websites to just to, you know, experiment and take a look at it and the structured data tool and, and beyond and see if [inaudible] can output that information even further than just regular Schema goes. We talk about quality location visits about Google rating, a visit to a physical location and how that is going to affect your results and how it interprets the quality of a location. There's a ton of go in there.
Jeff Byer: 01:52 We talk about semantic interpretation of an ambiguous query. Bill gives great examples of what happens when you search for something that is not detailed and you don't have any history of searching for it in the past and don't have any, any history at all. What does it do with that different, with that very vague search term and how the search engine tries to understand what it is you're looking for. All the research. And he has a pretty in depth article on it with a diagram of his model of how a search engine would work through that problem. So definitely something, something very important to, to read and find out, especially if you're in c s e o and you want to make sure that all of those signals are, you're all those intent and semantic signals. And you know, the, the way that you're searching, the way that you're providing your information to people who provide vague search queries.
Jeff Byer: 02:56 So very good there. Query using contextual histories and we talk a little bit about the, the controversy of lily re posted or retweeted a, an article that that bill was quoted in, which is debunking the TF IDF myth. And we go into detail on that and bill mentions that he's creating a SEO myths blog post, which I'm looking forward to reading. That'll be fun. So with all of that said I don't have much going on here at Jeff Buyer Inc other than, you know, continually trying to clean up all of the references to Jeff Buyer Inc. I've still got the buyer, buyer, Co social media and the Jeff Buyer Inc. So for media it's getting a little confusing and I'm just trying to stick with one and abandon the others. We finally got a Po, a project done that took over a year. It was a simple refresh of a local flooring business and I, it was just on the back burner for so long.
Jeff Byer: 04:10 And after I had the company do the floors in my office, I was like, Oh God, I really gotta just hunker down and do it. So I did it. And I think it looks incredible at that scored almost a hundred across the board on the lighthouse audit that we did. It's, it's just static and there's not a lot of content to it and it's a great platform if they wanted to start a content strategy and really nail the, the local results for flooring anywhere in Los Angeles. So that was a fun project and I'm sure I'll be working on that and mentioning it more in the future as their, their SEO and web needs evolve. So beyond that, we are in the middle of quite a few projects and I'm excited about sharing them with you once they're far enough along to share right now their Photoshop mockups in, in my folder.
Jeff Byer: 05:10 So I think that's it. I'm not going to bother rambling on. I will be posting a video tutorials. The first tutorial is my website launch process and a website audit process. So this is my first dip into the process, the video world of offering content about my processes. So there'll be fun, hopefully educational for you and if not, it will be a good learning experience for me. I've never really put myself out there before in, in video format, so it'll be an experiment and we'll see how it goes. So looking for your support and your, your constructive criticism. I'll word it that way. All right, that's it. Let's go talk to bill [inaudible]
Jeff Byer: 06:00 Lasky. Thank you for listening. Today we are talking to Bill Slawski, Bill Slawski is an STL expert. He answers questions about SEO and search through Twitter.
Jeff Byer: 06:14 And I've also about semantic web and Google patents. We use the director of SEO Research at go fish digital. How are you today?
Bill Slawski: 06:24 Good. How are you today?
Jeff Byer: 06:26 Doing well, thanks. So just briefly, I know you've been a in SEO since 1996 just for a brief history on how you got into SEO.
Bill Slawski: 06:40 Okay. So 1996, I had a friend who was bored with his job is a service manager at a car dealership and he said, I need to do something new. And I was reading a book on how people were incorporating people in Delaware as business and acting as a registered agents through the corporations. And I suggested that to him. He said, well, that sounds good. Separately. Sounds like something I need a website for. I said, no problem. I also just picked up a book on how to learn html two weeks. So two weeks later I had website forum.
Jeff Byer: 07:21 Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like we took a little bit of the same path I was at USC at the time and they were handing out pamphlets of, of literally three pages of how to write an html webpage. Yeah. Just simple static html. And I thought it was great and that's how it all started for me. Yeah.
Bill Slawski: 07:43 Ah, so I was working in the US, the court system and Delaware and they were having us go through the evolution of the web. We, we had a mine, Oh yeah. A map of the Internet. That was your introduction to email.
Jeff Byer: 08:03 Wow. [inaudible]
Bill Slawski: 08:06 We were using dump terminals at that time to add stuff to recruits database. So we ended up switching over to pcs, which were web accessible. It's a dumb terminals. Yeah. So we were learning bet the web, I'm learning bad email can go, things like that at that job.
Bill Slawski: 08:34 So teaching people how to use the web while learning how to use it myself.
Jeff Byer: 08:39 Okay. That seems always like a good learning tool is teaching other people. Yeah.
Bill Slawski: 08:45 Is it something that tried to do with my block? Yes.
Jeff Byer: 08:49 Yeah. So now you're a self-professed you're for fun. You read Google Patents, is that correct? Right. Yeah. I'm very curious. Yeah. So and this is helped out a ton of people, especially me and SEO, just to understand how search engines work, modern search engines work. So it's more that your insights bring a lot more to the table then, you know, than any previous information that, that you would get online, which is, you know, from keyword stuffing to buying backlinks to all that stuff you're saying now it's smarter than you
Bill Slawski: 09:33 Usually a lot of myth on the web and a lot of misinformation. I'm trying to come back there.
Jeff Byer: 09:38 Yeah, yeah, there, there is. So the first thing, so you had a, you were on on edge of the web with Aaron Sparks and you've mentioned [inaudible] Schema. And it's the first I've heard of it. And so this sounds like a huge deal cause I, I knew about gs one from, you know, consumer products. So, so when did this become an official standard and is this something that is, is a, it's being implemented in, in current e-commerce?
Bill Slawski: 10:12 Well to give our listeners a really brief introduction and g s one during the company that first came out with barcodes. So when you go to supermarket in skin food products and they use the machines, do you read the prices? And so on, those machines are in barcodes. So she has swan has been involved in commerce need Chalmers for years. They take them to be charmers to try to
Jeff Byer: 10:41 Yeah,
Bill Slawski: 10:42 Make that work better. They introduced something they called g tans, which are a multi number of codes that products have. When you go to like an Amazon, you'll and you look for g 10, so you'll find Prac g chains. They're like the digital version of barcodes.
Jeff Byer: 11:03 Okay.
Bill Slawski: 11:03 They help identify where something's from, how much it cost and so on. So gs one got involved with Schema. They introduced the world to the first extended Schema. Schema is a process. [inaudible] Was developed by Google, Microsoft Yahoo and Yandex join mayor to provide machine readable information on a website and on news sites that search engines could read and understand and get a different view of products or more precise view. Often using something like Jason LD Marco, which is attribute name value. It's, it's, it's not quite the bag of words type thing you see on a webpage where there's no real format. It's not a, what pages aren't too structured. Right? Schema tends to be really structured and makes it easier for a search engine to be sure that's what your page is about if you do it right. Yeah. So [inaudible] said, well, we did this stuff for barcodes and collars offline. Let's do something for commerce online. Let's come out with this Schema. And they have a demo wizard that could be used if you want. If you run an ecommerce website and you want to include information about your products and how they're shipped and so on, it, it goes into so much detail, include stuff about what things are packed with, what allergens
Bill Slawski: 12:59 Potential allergens they might be packed with.
Jeff Byer: 13:02 Does that also carry with it where it's sold and, and inventory type that up. [inaudible]
Bill Slawski: 13:10 If you're, if you're running the commerce story, you're the one who is providing information about what is being sold. It's being sold on your website. Right. But it, it provides lots of information about products themselves. Okay. And the wizard is supposed to make it easier for you to present that information on you website.
Jeff Byer: 13:35 Okay. And do you know if any e-commerce providers, cloud-based e-commerce providers have been implementing this?
Bill Slawski: 13:43 Gs One is a nonprofit you works with lots and lots of consumers around the world. And I think the number, at least in the very tens and tens of thousands, if not more. So, so they, they work with lots of websites.
Jeff Byer: 14:03 Okay. Okay. So as the reason that was so interesting to me is that I, you know, if, if there is an implementation of it, I'm not seeing it in the structured data testing tool and I'm not seeing it in a backend systems like woo commerce or Shopify and wondering why that is. Is it too new? Is that something that's going to happen later or is it something you just need to do manually?
Bill Slawski: 14:30 Well, the gs one extension came out I think about two years ago.
Jeff Byer: 14:37 Okay. So,
Bill Slawski: 14:40 And Schema is something that at this point, it's being updated monthly. So you're not going to see necessarily see
Bill Slawski: 14:53 Product website tools that are built timely for schema updates. It's, it's something that needs me there needs to be some flexibility. Just like people do all plug in into popular CMS systems. It's a way of, of of providing the newest implementations to those products. Well, it's ideally with
Bill Slawski: 15:26 CMS is may need for Schema.
Jeff Byer: 15:30 Yeah. Yeah. So we'll move from, from gs one scheme at two quality location visits. This patent that you, that you wrote about what's involved there.
Bill Slawski: 15:44 Okay. So who spend about being a mobile location history information and it's tied to using a gps information or cell tower triangulation or Wifi access information to navigate from place to place. [inaudible] Google to have some idea where you're at and to do things like prop you to upload that pictures, just took to a Google maps to let people know more about the business you're at, where you took picture.
Jeff Byer: 16:21 Okay. And so this patent is, was it specifically where they're going to modify search results based on your GPS history?
Bill Slawski: 16:35 Would they say it was they're looking at visits. You make two places and whether or not they can consider those raise, it's a quality visit. And for instance, if you go to a sit down restaurant, you spend five minutes there and you leave, that's not quality visit to that type of restaurant. If you go to McDonald's, order at the counter, grab your take out and go and you spent by minutes, it's quality. Revisit that at restaurant. Right? Right. So, so it depends button type of business you're visiting as whether or not it would be considered a quality visit. And they can track where you go, how long you wait. If you see knowledge panels where they tell you which times place are busy at and the most popular time for people to visit, they're using that GPS information and knows. And so, so this isn't too different. The idea that these quality visits might be used as a indication of a place being popular of a place being someplace people might want to go to. And, and there's likelihood that people might visit if it's close enough to them.
Speaker 6: 18:00 [Inaudible]
Jeff Byer: 18:01 And is this unique enough to be patent worthy? Wouldn't other providers be, have the same access to this data? Like apple [inaudible]
Bill Slawski: 18:13 And apple did file patent in bed four or five years ago. There's talks about them using a GPS information to rank businesses on maps. So they've been there already. Goose is different enough so that it's not quite the same thing. Okay. That they're protecting different processes. Like the apple pen doesn't talk about using quality visit score. It just says we can use a GPS information track where people go in which places the go too much back Murray.
Jeff Byer: 18:53 Okay. That brings up another general point that that I wanted to ask you about is how do you feel about all of these Google patents being filed in the, in the day and age of, of open source and sharing information? Is, is there, is, is Google protect protecting itself or are they litigious in any way as far as seeking a copyright infringement?
Bill Slawski: 19:23 Well, the patent process is supposed to protect businesses and it's supposed to protect the public. It protects businesses by giving them a license or giving them exclusive rights to use the process big patented, and they need to go through a adversarial process with the patent examiner to get them pans approved. So the pants need to be new, not obvious and useful. And those are sure at the lowest level of the requirements were patent. So they can't just be something that people already been doing. Right, right. So they can't patent things or public domain already or common practices. So they think you become up with something unique and innovative and the trade off to the public is these pen pander filers are required to publish patents so that the public can read them and the public can talk about them, which is true why I felt it was important than me write about these pants because if, if they're written and the standard they're written too is so that somebody learned in, in the technologies, the retinue bad and understand it. So it's not, they're not written for the public, they're not written in such a low level, then you can teach them in kindergarten. Right, right, right. So, so if somebody writes about a certain change in process, the writing to people who build search engines or who work with search engines all the time,
Jeff Byer: 21:15 Right. And you help discern that information and bring it to the public in a more readable way.
Bill Slawski: 21:20 Right. I'm, I'm, again, I'm not teaching elementary school kids that build the search engines. I'm not, she ness you. Is that a build search engines? I'm assuming some knowledge on their part,
Jeff Byer: 21:34 Yeah. For a digital marketer to help understand how things work in the search world. Right. Okay. So, yeah. And, and you know, I know that I'm a coauthor on a couple of patents and they do, you know, we got very in the weeds as far as explaining how our process was different than anybody else's. This was a long time ago. It was a flash content management system. So that's how old it was.
Bill Slawski: 22:01 And sometimes the use of words isn't really intuitive. For instance, when Google writes about advertisements, they don't refer to them as advertisements much. They refer to them as content.
Jeff Byer: 22:17 Huh. Okay. So it didn't matter if it was paid or not, it's just content.
Bill Slawski: 22:21 It's just content right there they're talking about I see a ICO patent title with the word content in it. I know it has something to do with paid search.
Jeff Byer: 22:33 Oh Wow. So, I mean, are they referring to organic search or something else?
Bill Slawski: 22:40 Sometimes there might be something that comes out, like, like there was a pattern that came at, ran two months ago that talked about location extensions in a paid search where we're, if you, if you we're advertising something and it involved a local business, you could pay for what was the location extension, which means you can show other things with your ad like a map. Okay. And that's usually something that only really happens in local search these days. Who, yeah. But there they're extending the contact with additional search features. They're all manually.
Jeff Byer: 23:34 Okay. And so there have been in your your translation of these patents, have you ever seen I patent pursuit by Google to see somebody from doing something similar. So like DuckDuckGo has to have a lot of the same features, right?
Bill Slawski: 24:00 Think about, you know, beyond history and all these cars with all these round steering wheels, they weren't so in each other to stop making round steering wheels.
Jeff Byer: 24:11 Right, right. Okay.
Bill Slawski: 24:14 There are, there are limits and I've seen
Bill Slawski: 24:19 Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all come out with things or very similar, not exactly the same. They worded them differently, they described them differently, but the results were ultimately the same. Like, like a segmentation of content on a and this not advertisements on a webpage. Like what's mean content in a a news site, you've got multiple stories. So you've felt multiple blocks of information about different things and being able to distinguish each of those blocks and that refers to something different and being able, we'll segment that is something that's important for a search engine to be able to do. Right. So Microsoft got to the point where they'll and Google where those show pictures associated with the new story in search results. They've been able to identify the pictures that go with the content that go with the story.
Speaker 7: 25:29 [Inaudible].
Bill Slawski: 25:29 Microsoft actually came out with something they called block-level page rank, which said that they might, if they wanted to, they might be able to associate links with specific stories from specific blocks and give those links more weight than other links that may appear in the same page that might be like in navigational blocks on the page.
Jeff Byer: 25:55 Yeah. And I was talking to Cindy Krum about that on a, on a previous podcast about the the, the deep linking to to what she referred to as Frankel's on a page. So that not only is Google being able to grab the content from the page, they're also able to grab a deep link to where that content is.
Speaker 7: 26:18 Okay.
Bill Slawski: 26:21 At the gate used to call named knackers Frankl.
Jeff Byer: 26:26 Yeah, I liked the term. Okay. So we talked about quality location visits. The other, you, you posted a article and also tweeted about it and answered a lot of questions about, but a semantic interpretation of an ambiguous Curie query. So is I know that there's contextual histories that, that we're going to come to next, but on, assuming that Google doesn't have any, any information about the searcher, how would they interpret that ambiguous query?
Bill Slawski: 27:06 So some questions people ask, inquiries are vague. And the example that was in the patent was how long is Harry Potter?
Speaker 7: 27:17 And
Bill Slawski: 27:20 If I asked you that, I don't know how you would answer duration, really duration. Duration of what?
Jeff Byer: 27:29 Of the movie of which movie, you know? Yeah. That's how I'm beg was saying
Bill Slawski: 27:33 It's a movie. It is. Are they asking about movie? Are they asking about certain book? Did Disney come out with the Harry Potter ride? Are they asking about how long the ride is? Is there a podcast on Harry Potter? So it's ambiguous. I don't know. So search engine doesn't know. It's got to say, okay, what are they likely asking about? So they're, they're going to go through and, and I refer to it as mantic interpretation because they're going to try a semantic approach to answering that. They're going to say, okay, your query has an entity in it. Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a movie character of book character a potential ride. Some somebody people talk about, he's a character, he's a certain number of feet and inches tall. He lives a certain number of years. Are they asking how old is Harry Potter when they ask, how long is Harry Potter? Are they asking how, how tall is he?
Bill Slawski: 28:46 Those are all reasonable. And so they're trying to come up with which question is the best answer that we can provide? Which topic answer pair is the type of thing that p a person most likely wants to see. They're probably talking about one of the books, how many pages or one of the movies, I mean minutes. So every time I've done that query in Google, it's shown two or three of the Harry Potter books and lengthy or two or three of the Harry Potter movies and lengths of time. Because there's assumption is this person probably wants to know about the movies.
Jeff Byer: 29:34 Right? And so what, so the only information that it can draw from that is the character and the, the different forms of media that the character was in to, you know, try and create this from this one query, create this universe of information about that one specific character, and then bring about what would be the most popular [inaudible]
Bill Slawski: 30:00 Nope, the one most likely to meet the intent of the searcher. So that's why it was an intent question. It was a, and they're, they're trying to do it semantically by understanding who's in your question. What did you mean when you mean Harry Potter? When you ask Harry Potter? Another example was in same patent was how old is Washington,
Speaker 7: 30:29 Right? And [inaudible]
Bill Slawski: 30:32 The first step you got take there is for you what they mean when they say Washington. Do you mean Washington DC? Eight Washington state. Abraham, Washington. Denzel Washington.
Speaker 7: 30:43 Right, right.
Jeff Byer: 30:44 So so that brings us into contextual histories. So how do those tie in?
Speaker 7: 30:51 Okay.
Bill Slawski: 30:54 It's actual mysteries.
Jeff Byer: 30:58 I interpreted it as that there is a history of the type of searches that you have done in the past and that creates a content a context or possible subject matter that would narrow it down.
Bill Slawski: 31:18 There are a number of ways to interpret contextual history. One of them would be a way of search engine interprets to query pizza. If you're asking about pizza during lunchtime or dinnertime, you probably want to know where the closest pizza follower is. If you're asking at a different time, 3:00 AM you may still be [inaudible], but you may want to know something about the history of pizza.
Jeff Byer: 31:48 Okay. So
Bill Slawski: 31:50 The context matters in the asking in question and location may matter too. So if you're asking from a mobile device, you're in some place where there might be lots of restaurants. Again, you're probably asking about where the closest place you can get pizza is.
Jeff Byer: 32:11 Yeah, correct. If you're, you know, pretty much anytime of day pizza's good anytime of day. So, okay. I know this, you know, you laughed when I mentioned this before we started recording, but the conversation with Lily Ray about a article that you were quoted in about TF IDF and how it does doesn't fit. So title of the, of the, the article is actually a little misleading why TF IDF doesn't solve your content and SEO problems, but it feels like it does. So first of all TF IDF, how did, how did, so I'll, I'll just tell the audience term frequency, inverse document frequency is what that stands for. How did this become a thing?
Bill Slawski: 33:07 So term frequency is something they came around in the 1950s and it was the idea that you look, the number of words that appear in document and the words that appear the most, or either what the page is bad or their, what's considered stop words, words. It appear frequently in language like the, our end. So you eliminate the stop words. The next words that appear most regionally are likely with the pages about. So inverse document frequency is the idea that it's an idea. It came around in the 1970s 72, it was the idea that you could use a statistics and repetition of language to better understand the language itself. With the most commonly used words are with the rarest words are. So if you have a document that is rare in terms of how many documents actually include that word, there's a term that frequently appears in that document. So the page, your page, your document is about that word. That means you have a page that's frequently about the term. That's one of the rare pages that terms appears. It should be page that ranks highly in search results because of that,
Jeff Byer: 34:51 Which is, which is the myth. And this is what led to a lot of keyword stuffing back in the day.
Bill Slawski: 34:59 Well, it's that part of it's not necessarily myth. TF IDF is something that's likely been used by search engines. It's, it was probably something that was replaced in a number of search engines by a more advanced algorithm called BM 25 which, which search engine like alter of Easton in the late nineties, probably switched over from one to the next. And it's possible the Google never used df idea as something that ranked with beaches. They probably use some more advanced [inaudible] 25 they possible use a TF IDF in some of the other processes. And I've seen Google pans referring to TF IDF. Like there's one bad query refinements. The when you do query you might see a list at the bottom of your search results that tell you other things that are related to what you searched for that people also search for. And that's partially derived by process like TF IDF.
Bill Slawski: 36:18 Now, one of the, one of the things that happened at Google in the past couple of years is they've gotten better at natural language processing. They, they can have machines read documents and tag them with stuff like parts of speech with entity recognition process. Other things that tell them more about those documents than a TF on the f program ever did. It's old technology and they've been replacing it. They're, they're using names like Bert and Elmo is to the algorithms. So there's a sesame street now, algae there, but it is all technology and there they're using newer stuff.
Jeff Byer: 37:33 I can't find it. So anyway, it was, it was something about that that it was it was used in a very small amount of documents like 10,000 documents and not meant for something as big as, as what the web is.
Bill Slawski: 37:51 It's, that's Liens, mannequin vaccine, which is lung mythology rent too.
Jeff Byer: 37:57 Yeah. Latent semantic indexing. There we go. And so so and so Leighton Smith endings indexing is used by, by search engines or was correct. It's unlikely. Okay.
Bill Slawski: 38:16 It was developed in the late 1980s by bell labs and it was used to help index static document collections like a, the panic sample included talks about indexing eight books with material. And one of the limitations on liens mimic indexing is that every time you add new information to an index that you're using Elyssa and you need to run the indexing process over again. We know the web changes all the time and frank basis, people add comments to things, people publish new things, people delete information. So for a search engine to use lane's make indexing, they would have to tell us like to stop searching for a couple hours a day so they could catch back up. Right. And that's not going to happen. Right.
Jeff Byer: 39:21 Okay. So so you're currently writing an article about all these myths. When do you expect you'd be publishing that?
Bill Slawski: 39:30 I'm not sure. I'm going to turn that in sometime really soon.
Jeff Byer: 39:34 Okay. Well, we're definitely looking forward to that. So there was one more question I had for you. So in preparation for our talk today, I was looking through and I took your hardest SCO quiz 2018 edition. I dunno, it was asking you if you were planning on a 2019 edition.
Bill Slawski: 39:57 I can Mike, I'm not completely sure I've done all your additions and I was a little bit disgruntled by the fact that people were saying the PA there were too many pants in the test. It was more of a patent test than it was an SEO test.
Jeff Byer: 40:20 But that's what you do. That's what I expect from Bill Slawsky. Right.
Bill Slawski: 40:25 That's all. So I've been thinking, I did do a newer version. I need to get some patents out of there and just ask questions about search process. It's, I mean I write about church processes in patents. I don't need the patents to write about search boxes or to have them in the quiz.
Jeff Byer: 40:51 Yeah. And your understanding of the patents is a adding to your overall understanding of how search engines work, right. Which is where the, where the, the bulk of people are getting are gaining value from your content. So
Bill Slawski: 41:09 If I, if I write sovereign Bennett search engine process and there's a pen behind it, I can link to the patents. And if you don't believe what I'm saying about the search engine processes, you can read the patent and say, okay, yeah, Google did Polish that. That did say that. [inaudible]
Jeff Byer: 41:27 Yeah. All right.
Bill Slawski: 41:30 So just having that foundation, that support reinforcing what I write I think makes a difference.
Jeff Byer: 41:37 Yeah. Citing your information and your, that's another thing that you've been talking about. What you've talked about at the top of the show is verifying the information that you get online and, and that's, you're doing your part by verifying the information that you're providing by showing the link to the patents that you've been referencing.
Bill Slawski: 41:56 Right. Show supporting evidence. It makes what you write stronger.
Jeff Byer: 42:00 Yeah. And it'll give you a lot more authority and, and trust as, as you write things that are crazy. Yeah. All right. We're over time. Where can people connect with you, find you, follow you and ask you questions? Well, they can
Bill Slawski: 42:21 Find me on Twitter. It's bill underscore Slawsky SLA, w. S. K. I, they can find me on Facebook. It's a bill Slawsky is in the URL for that. They can find me on linkedin. It's a Slawsky. I publish couple times a month. I'm trying to do a little bit more frequently and SEO by the sea.com. I blog at go fish digital website, usually about three or four times a month.
Jeff Byer: 42:59 All right. And anything you have to promote now or should we just wait for your your SEO myths article?
Bill Slawski: 43:08 I'm going to be presenting at PUBCON in Las Vegas in October. Very nice. I'm going to be SMXL Milan in Italy in November. Yeah, that's pretty much my speaking engagements. You arrested a year. All right. This should be fun.
Jeff Byer: 43:39 That sounds like a lot of fun. Vegas and Milan. Yeah. All right, so your video froze up about halfway through, so I haven't been able to see you in a while, but thank you very much for your time. This has been very educational and I hope we can speak again soon about about new topics and possibly th the SEO myths and the 2019 quiz. All right.
Jeff Byer: 44:09 Thanks for your time though. Thank you for show notes and information. Go to digitalrage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @digitalragefm, and please give us a rate and review. Insincerely appreciate it.
Today I (@globaljeff) talk to Dr. Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes ), she is completely obsessed about Google Penalties and algorithm changes...Penguin, Panda, Unnatural Links, QRG, and diagnosing the reason for a site's traffic drop.
About Marie Haynes
@Marie_Haynes https://www.mariehaynes.com/ Newsletter & Podcast: Search News You Can Use
Show Links & Mentions
Wix SEO Competition Link: https://www.wixseolovers.com/ @methode @CyrusShepard Medic update client: https://www.amio2.com/ YouTube for Estimator360: http://bit.ly/2OQioOw CBD client: https://www.pinkzebranutra.com/ Natural supplement client: https://vitahustle.com/ Consolidating Brands (Byer Company, Byer Co) into Jeff Byer Inc at https://www.byer.co Jeff Byer Authorship Page: https://www.byer.co/about-jeff-byer
Yes, but...
I've yet to see much benefit from re-avowing links disavowed in error.
Also, remember @CyrusShepard's scary experiment where he disavowed all links, site tanked, removed disavow and site never recovered.https://t.co/HaaVnvR5OT https://t.co/lLc37BFwyQ— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 14, 2019
Let's say that Google actually is getting better at determining whether a page's content is not in line with general scientific consensus. How do you think they do that?
We've got some ideas, but would love to hear what others think.— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 13, 2019
The Quality Raters are told to use BBB info to assess for potential trust issues. We don't think Google's algorithms say, "IF BBB = low THEN quality=low", but if your BBB rating is low, it's likely a sign of other serious trust issues with the business. https://t.co/YoidVcWxh9— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 12, 2019
Transcript
Speaker 1: 00:07 [Inaudible]
Jeff Byer: 00:07 Go to digital rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff buyer and today we talked to Marie Haynes. Marie Haines is an SEO expert and her, her complete bio is completely obsessed about Google penalties and algorithm changes. Penguin and panda, unilateral links, quality rater guidelines, and diagnosing the reason for a site's traffic drops.
Jeff Byer: 00:38 She has made a career of this. She owns Marie Haines consulting and she has a stockpile of sites waiting to be evaluated. So that's how you know she's good is because she is in demand and having trouble keeping up with that demand, which is, which is great for her. So today we talk about e a t and YMYL, authorship and disavowed links. A lot of things that were mentioned recently this week on her Twitter feed. And so we're trying to keep it very contextual and current because now that these episodes are being recorded, basically week before today is Thursday, August 15th. So these episodes are being recorded closer to the publish date so that we can provide more updated accurate information. So before we get into the interview, just wanted to bring up a couple of things coming up.
Jeff Byer: 01:38 Going on at Jeff Byer Inc, we have been working slowly to consolidate the brands. So Byer Company or Byer Co is going to be phased out. And the only reason for that is that we weren't able to actually incorporate under that name. We took the assumption that if we were going to get a DBA to operate as Byer Co or Byer Company that we could basically officially do business as. But when we filed for the corporate name change, it got denied because it's too close to other companies buyers and company as a law firm. So definitely don't want to mess with that. So we're going back to Jeff Byer Inc and in this consolidation, I am also consolidating my personal blog & personal brands. So jeffbyer.com is now forwarding to byer.co, jbyer.com, which was the old Jeff Byer Inc website is now forwarding to byer.co
Jeff Byer: 02:51 Byer.co is going to be the hub for everything Jeff Byer because I am my company and there's no reason have separate buckets for all of this content. So it's going to all be consolidated and we're going to put the new blog there. And speaking of the new blog this has been a hot topic lately and I've been in production with this quietly, but I'll go ahead and bring it out in the open. I am building a wordpress backed the fastest wordpress backed blog that I can possibly create. So there was just a post about this on mas and I wanted to put in my 2 cents is that I've been mentioning this on the podcast since episode one of my headless wordpress and then my decoupled wordpress. So now what I'm doing is basically experimenting with different ways of just using the wordpress backend as a CMS and an API and API access point.
Jeff Byer: 03:53 That way the whole front end can be just driven off of the API. I created a CDN on, on the, on AWS so that AWS bucket is holding all of the assets and is, has the, the https, it also has the, the CDN and so everything on the wordpress backend is uploading to the CDN. And then all I'm accessing, all I'm using wordpress for is an API end point. So basically all the, all the wordpress installation has to do is spit out a Jason file with the content and everything else is going to be optimized as fast as possible. So still still a work in progress right now has got the rudimentary data and I haven't done all of the, the, the, you know, gone too far into the SEO and the, the Schema structured snippets and, and that part of it, but that's all coming soon.
Jeff Byer: 04:58 And basically you can treat it like you're building a static site and I'm building it using a Gatsby so that it renders a completely static side at the end. So all of that combined is going to, should make, I'm not gonna say it yet, but should make for one of the, one of the fastest, if not the fastest wordpress based blog that that anybody's ever built. So more on that later, once I get it closer to production. The other thing that's going on right now is we're heavy into the youtube SEO side of things. We just launched our, our the video for estimator three 60 and put up 30 videos into their youtube channel and their channel's been around for awhile, but now we're optimizing for it and we're, we're sending out, so the last two solid days of, of our SEO work estimated three 60, was specifically to drive traffic to their youtube channel.
Jeff Byer: 06:02 So we encourage you to, to go subscribe to their youtube channel. That's going to be one of their main sources of content moving forward. And they have some huge announcements coming up soon. Feature enhancements one enhancement that that's hopefully going to launch this week is a full quickbooks integration. And later on is going to be, if you know what these types of softwares are, that's an estimating software for construction residential, home builders and remodelers. So the estimating and project management portion is, is what the main product is. But having the quickbooks integration is something that they were working hard to get and partnered with quickbooks to get that done. And they are also making a native ios and android app so that the experience is smoother on mobile. And they're also doing what's called a, it's called takeoff software. And take off a digital takeoff software is basically allowing customers to just kind of put in dimensions in it.
Jeff Byer: 07:09 And it creates a, it's a specific type of, of estimating construction estimating software that's a much more technology focused and, and does a lot automatically. So those two things are huge and they're coming up for them. And so after we're done pushing the youtube channel subscriptions and a youtube channel views, then we're gonna move into back to the content strategy and signups. And we're going to re-instate free trials cause ever since we took free trials out the engagement has, has declined. So we're going to reinstate that and and get them some more subscribers. So that's it on my end. Other than that, Marie haynes.com Marie Haines is, is one of the best people to talk to if your site has been penalized for anything on Google. If you lost ranking suddenly and don't have any explanation why or if you just want her team to do a site review and tell you what they found a shirt, her expertise is combing through and recognizing changes and following the quality rater guidelines, quality rater guidelines or what Google's uses to send algorithm change signals back to Google.
Jeff Byer: 08:46 So these were not Google employees. They're independent third parties that use these guidelines to, to rate websites. And so these are these standards for the quality raters are basically the standards that you should be judging your own site with. And so Marie Haines offers that service to people who who either aren't ranking, have plateaued or got penalized. She'll find out she using her expertise, she'll find out what happened to the site, why it's being affected and how, if and how you can fix it. So great information and that's why she's so popular and so busy. So great conversation with her. Let's get right into it. If you have any questions, please email me Jeff at [inaudible] dot co and other than that, go to digital or h. Dot. F M for the show notes. And here we go with three
Speaker 1: 09:52 [Inaudible].
Jeff Byer: 09:52 Today we're talking with Marie Haynes. I am going to read her bio directly from Twitter, Twitter completely obsessed about Google penalties and algorithm changes, penguin panda, unnatural links, quality rater guidelines, and diagnosing the reason for a site's traffic drop. So is that still all accurate?
Marie Haynes: 10:13 That's me. Yeah, that's what I don't, I sound like a fun person at a party.
Marie Haynes: 10:18 A lot of people have been saying that on Twitter lately. You like, yes, these are the type of people I would talk to at a party. I would exactly. So thank you for coming on and your name comes up a lot in past episodes. And what the first thing that I want to talk about is something that I mentioned with Cindy Krum last week was that it's the one year anniversary of the medic update as of August 1st. So I've, I have one particular client that it got particularly penalized on, on that first week of August last year. And I s I, you asked on your podcast for people to submit anybody that you were doing research and you said, anybody who got hit by the site, please, please send us the site so we can take a look. And so I sent you the site and and your response was, we're overwhelmed with requests. I'm so sorry. No, no, it's okay. Trust me. It's a great problem to have. So how was, how was your first week of August? Last year?
Marie Haynes: 11:25 Yeah. So August 1st. I mean, we know now that it was a massive, massive update. And actually when that update happened, I was visiting with a client and so I was meeting with the client's marketing team and they were one of the sites that saw this massive increase. So it was a really great day for me. I don't think I'll ever forget being actually with my clients while they were seeing the fruits of our, you know, we've been working for months to, to help recover this site. But yeah, it was, it was really big. And you know, we called it medic because it affected a lot of medical sites, but a lot of sites that w the site you sent me was that medical [inaudible].
Jeff Byer: 12:00 I can't remember. So it was a manufacturer that makes things that can be considered medical, but no, it's a very scientific they make oxygen analyzers.
Marie Haynes: 12:11 Okay. Yeah. And we saw a lot of sites that were in that sort of vein as well where you know, they sold any sort of medical equipment like glucometers or you know, things like that. Those sites were affected as well. And, and I really think this was Google's first really strong attempt at trying to figure out which medical sites and sites selling medical equipment and, and similar sites were displaying elements of trust that Google could trust and that people could trust. But it affected other, you know, e-commerce, a lot of ecommerce sites. We even saw financial sites that had nothing to do with medicine that were hit with this update. But it was really big. And I really think, you know, all of the core updates we've seen since then, or sort of refinements or improvements to what Google can do in assessing this trust.
Jeff Byer: 13:00 Yeah. And now it seems like from then on is when we saw the increase in what we would consider major updates. And so now, even on your podcast this week, you said, you know, we're no longer going to treat these as, you know, algorithm changes because it is happening on a daily basis. It seems now
Marie Haynes: 13:19 Exactly for years I have been reporting on every little blip, you know, if, if I, if it seems like there was an update that Google didn't announce, if there's a lot of chatter about updates, you know, we try to figure out what is happening. And you know, for the last, well probably since August 1st maybe even before then, it seems like there's either a major update now that Google confirms, which is fantastic that they're, you know, they're starting to do this or there is some type of a tweak and we seem like we're saying the same thing every time. It looks like Google is trying to assess trust, trying to assess this whole idea of eat a little bit better. And then the changes that we're seeing are connected to those types of things. And so, you know, every week, even twice a week now, sometimes we, we're seeing these little blips that seem to be tweaks and so we're not going to be reporting on every single blip anymore. But still looking at it, you know, still looking to see can we see patterns of what Google's trying to do.
Jeff Byer: 14:17 And what are the, what are the reports that you look at to, to distinguish if somethings, you know, major, minor you know, global or are site specific?
Marie Haynes: 14:29 Most of what we're looking at is our database of clients from a current clients and even past clients. Because I've been doing site reviews primarily with sites that have been hit by algorithm updates since 2012. And so we have hundreds of sites that we can analyze. We still have access to analytics for those. And so we'll look at you know, just to see if we can see patterns. We have some set up to, to determine you know, was there a particular date on which a bunch of sites saw significant changes that go outside of seasonality. And if that's the case, can we draw some ties? Can we say, oh, yes, it seems to be mostly medical sites or sometimes what'll happen is we'll see it's been a while though, since we've seen this. There'll be an update and we'll see, ah, you know, the sites, the majority of the sites that saw significant changes, we flagged them as having link issues and things like that. And so sometimes we can see yeah, it looks like Google's working on this one particular area. But recently, you know, my, my conclusion in every single update that I've analyzed, and I don't claim that, you know, no, at 100%, but seems to be that some element of trust has been refined by Google.
Jeff Byer: 15:40 Yeah. And that's, you know, it's a huge thing now. And a lot of my clients are, are B2B and so they don't have a person responsible for the content on their site. And a lot of it is, is, you know, scientific facts, but it's not general knowledge. So it's very, I'm having a difficult time trying to perform a, some sort of an eat audit on the business itself. All I can, all I could do is that the business has age and experience and that's as much as as far as I've been able to get because even the marketing people in the company have privacy issues and they don't want a person to be responsible for the content
Marie Haynes: 16:24 For sure. And I think some of what Google is doing now are things that as an SEO, it's very challenging or maybe even impossible for me to fix some of those problems. So August 1st a lot of the sites that we saw that got hit by this update had severe reputation issues. You know, if you look at their review profile online, you could see that pretty much everywhere people were complaining that I didn't get a refund or I felt like I got scammed or you know, they sold me this supplement and it was just a piece of junk. And so that's something that as an SEO, I can't fix the fact that your business has reputation issues, you know, I can help, I can advise you to maybe let's try to get some good reviews. But if there's a fundamental problem with the business and people not trusting the business, that's a hard thing as an SEO to fix. So I think that our roles are sort of changing as SEO.
Jeff Byer: 17:19 Yeah. And you brought up that in the quality rater guidelines that they use better business bureau ratings as a, a, a factor, not a factor, but an example of how you can how a, a quality rater would be able to judge a business I guess effect or the Authority?
Marie Haynes: 17:41 Yeah. Well, when I first wrote about this, it stirred up some controversy because of course Google is not going to have a line in their algorithms that say if the BBB rating is low, then quality equals low. Because I mean, we can think of all sorts of problems that could arise from that. And BBB is not in every location. You know, there's no BBB in the U K and so, you know, that wouldn't make sense for an algorithm to apply just for American sites. And and so I think to understand what's happening here is to understand how the quality Raiders work. So when we talk about these quality Raiders, they're not Google employees. They're contracted out by Google. There's potentially tens of thousands. I've heard different numbers on how many people there could be. And these people are basically feeding information back to Google's engineers.
Marie Haynes: 18:33 And so if the quality Raiders look at a site and see that it's potentially not high quality, then Google's engineers try to tweak the algorithms to make changes so that that doesn't happen anymore. So the quality raters are told, look at sources like the BBB and they're given an example. There's an example in the Raiders guidelines that talks about a, it's some site that's selling kids playground equipment and it has an f rating in the BBB. And the Raiders are told that this is a sign of potential reputation issues. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that Google's algorithms are doing the exact same thing. They're training the Raiders to do what a human being would do to, to assess whether a business has reputation issues, but Google's algorithms probably use a huge number of factors. There's a patent that Google has that talks about how they can analyze the text from reviews online from blog posts online from anything online, basically to determine whether the overall sentiment for a business is positive or negative.
Marie Haynes: 19:38 And you know, those types of things we have to pay attention to. So if your BBB rating is an f, that usually means there's a problem with the business. You know, and if you, we've, we've seen businesses that I think probably have gotten into some legal discussions with the BBB and, and you know, somehow gotten their, their rating. All of a sudden it went from f to a one day or it their profile change and that has an improved their rankings because it's not that, you know, it's not that letter that is being a concern. Right. It's the actual issues with [inaudible].
Jeff Byer: 20:11 Yeah. And so, you know, I have a theory working that's, that's kind of based on all of this is the BBB and Capterra and some other platforms, they're paid a pay to play. And I think that goes against Google's guidelines, but the sites are still getting high reputation. High ranks over the actual companies themselves that they're, that they're collecting. So I think like companies like, like Kevin's company g too, it's not paid a play. It's very much audience driven and I think are going to take over and slowly the Cap Tara's in and paid review sites are going to hopefully fall off.
Marie Haynes: 20:55 Yeah. And I think one important thing to note is that so when you say BBB is paid a play, you have to pay to get accredited on BBB, but you don't have to pay to actually have a rating. You know, every business has a rating. And again, I don't think there's, I don't think Google's algorithms say, ah, this is an accredited BBB business, so therefore we must trust it. I don't think there's, I don't think you need to, but, but then other people have said, well, look, if I want to respond to my reviews, if I want to, you know, fix issues, I need to pay the BBB to do that. Yeah. So, you know, I, I, there's definitely some controversy there. But I think we were getting too hung up on like not saying you're getting hung up on this, but I've seen it from the industry that you know, we're focused on let's get these words on this page changed as opposed to why are all these people saying that our business is awful? You know, how can we fix that? How can we go after that? And that's really the key thing, which is not an easy thing to say, well, just do this and you'll, you'll rank better. You, you know, that type of thing.
Jeff Byer: 21:58 Yeah. And so the real question here is not the platform and it's not anything. It's just if you have no reviews or good reviews, they kind of are the same thing. But bad reviews could affect
Marie Haynes: 22:14 Yes and no. There's a section in the quality raters guidelines that actually talks about how for some businesses they expect to see a large number of reviews and actually having a lack of reputation online could be seen as a sign of low quality. So you know, if all of your competitors, so what we do when we're reviewing a site that's seen drops in conjunction with an algorithm update, what we'll do is we'll look at you know, who's ranking for your main keywords now, who actually succeeded in these latest round of updates that Google has done. And then where are they getting reviews? And we'll often see that, you know, your competitors have hundreds of reviews and maybe you've got 10 online. Well, of course, you know that that can be a signal to Google that more people are talking about your competitors. So, you know, I don't think we all need to go out and get thousands of reviews. Again, I think it needs to, you need to look at when an actual human being would think if they were doing research on your company, if they're trying to determine whether you're trustworthy, whether you're actually a legitimate company. So sometimes having a lack of reviews online could be a negative as well.
Jeff Byer: 23:20 Yeah. If, if the industry standard is that people review.
Marie Haynes: 23:24 Exactly. Yeah. And then, I mean, there are websites that regularly get reviews and so it doesn't, you know, the advice doesn't apply across the board for sure.
Jeff Byer: 23:33 Yeah, exactly. So explain just for the audience and everything explained what e a t really means in a nutshell. Okay. So, yeah,
Marie Haynes: 23:43 It stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. And the first time we saw this phrase was in the quality Raiders guidelines, which we've explained as, you know, a document to help Google just Kinda do quality control and figure out, oh, we wanted our algorithms to do this and the Raiders are telling us that's not happening. So what can we tweak, what code can we change? And so the second time we saw Google mentioned ea t was in a document that they put out called a guide to how Google fights this information. And they talked about how their, they actually say in this document their algorithms when they detect that a query is y m y l so your money or your life when they detected somebody asking a y m y l query, then they put more importance on e a t in their ranking algorithms that's actually in their documentation.
Marie Haynes: 24:36 And then just recently on August 1st as well of 2019, though Google published a blog post that talked about, hey, if you've been affected by core updates you should be considering looking at this eat thing. And so that's really in a nutshell, you want to have so expertise you can't really fake. But if you're, if you've been in business for one year and all of the people that are ranking really well have been in business for 50 plus years, it might be challenging just to say that you're in authority over them. Authoritativeness is primarily based on links and mentions. So are other people that are considered experts in your area actually referencing your work. And if not, then you probably don't have authoritativeness and trust. We've, we've talked about it a little bit. I think this whole idea of trust, you know, we could talk for the next four hours about trust. Again, I'm really fun at parties, right? Yeah. But yeah, so all of those components and then we really believe that if one of those is lacking, that can be seen as a sign of low trust and it can make it so that your entire site has issues ranking for important queries. And so it's very important to pay attention to.
Jeff Byer: 25:46 Yeah. And so trust a, that moves into my next topic I wanted to talk about is authorship and how important having a verifiable personality is to the content that you're putting out.
Marie Haynes: 25:59 Yeah. And in the vast majority, I mean, I think the majority of people who are listening to this it's very important that you have authors that are seen as experts in their field. Especially if you have medical content, if I was just diagnosed with a serious medical condition and I'm trying to find information on it I probably want information that's written by somebody who's actually got real life experience in treating this disease, in knowing what the side effects of medications are going to be. Rather than a content writer who is very good at researching the condition. There are exceptions though, if your brand is authoritative enough, you know, so the Mayo Clinic for example, they don't list individual authors on each of their posts. But they do have some posts that are fact checked by doctors and they have enough authority in their brand that you can trust. Oh, this was on the Mayo Clinic site. You know, it's probably something I can trust. So it all comes down to, again, what would a real user would a real user be inspired to believe this information if they read it?
Jeff Byer: 27:03 Yeah. And so that's what I've been getting into too with my clients. You know, in my construction clients, both of the owners are construction company owners. So that was kind of an easy win. One of them does have published papers and publications, so he's going to start writing the blog posts, which is great. But for my my oxygen analyzer customer, they don't have a personality. They don't have anybody publicly that has done anything. They don't really have any industry, the industries that they serve have these specialties but not specifically their manufacturing industry. So it's been very tough and they're losing out to huge brands that just happened to sell an oxygen analyzer.
Marie Haynes: 27:49 Yes. And that's the thing. See The authority of that brand is probably strong enough. So for your particular client, I think there's two options. You know, one is start working on an author that a, you want to get this person known as the expert. You know, so get them answering Herro requests, get them in the news saying, you know, this particular person from this website according to this person, this is what you need to do. That's one option. And then the second option is to just really pump it out in terms of PR and get the brand known. Now if your you know, a small mom and pop store and you're trying to be as well known as Walmart that's probably not going to happen, right? And then you have to talk about, well, maybe we're not going to rank for these high volume terms.
Marie Haynes: 28:38 You know, so it can be, it can be tricky because in the past, as SEOs, if we knew enough tricks and loopholes and knew where to get links and you know, we could make this small nope, I'm not saying your site is a nobody, but we could take a nobody site and make them actually rank above Amazon, Walmart, all of the big name players. And that's getting harder and harder to do now, unless you truly, you know, unless somebody if I say that brand name and people go, Oh yeah, yeah, they're the ones that you go to for this, then you're, you're getting there. Right. And if that's not the case, then you know that that needs to be worked on. If you want to rank for those high money terms.
Jeff Byer: 29:15 Yeah. So they w they were known for a specific products. They shifted into another product, another type of product where another brand was that, that company. So they're, you know, we're, we're combating with that. We're doing pretty well, but it's going to take a lot more than justa on page. We're going to have to do some, you know, industry newsletters and, and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Marie Haynes: 29:39 And that's why, that's why link-building is right. I mean, I think we got spoiled for a few years where every link seemed to help and a, and we found all these ways to get links, but if you think of why Google counselings, it's because their recommendations. So I think link building should be boiled down to where can we get people to recommend our products, our company, our authors. And that's challenging. It's really challenging to do that.
Jeff Byer: 30:03 Yeah. And so based on that same topic of links, we're looking at youtube, what am I, one of my customers who's trying to dominate youtube for their industry. And we were looking at, is there anything in the th the quality rater guidelines or just Google guidelines in general say that, you know, you can't pay or incentivize anybody to link to you. But for youtube there's, you know, there's people overseas that are, that are making companies based on getting youtube video of what video views and updating the the video volume just because youtube respects that, or at least it seems to currently. So that's all frowned upon. Correct?
Marie Haynes: 30:53 Well, sure. I mean, Youtube Algorithms are not our area of expertise, but but I think they're very similar and I think they, they draw some things from regular Google search, but I mean, I think if something just doesn't feel right, then it's probably not a good idea to do it. But with that said, when money's involved, you know, I can say, well, it doesn't feel right for me to pay for an extra 10,000 views on my a youtube videos, but if that's gonna make me money, maybe some people are going to do it. So I think in marketing, what Google wants to do is make it so that the things that they're counting only count if they're legitimate. And I think, I mean youtube had some changes over the years with how they value view count and what qualifies as an actual view as opposed to, you know, they're getting better at figuring out bots and click farms and, and things like that. But I think there's more priority in search as opposed to youtube. But I could be wrong.
Jeff Byer: 31:56 Yeah. And it just, I've, I've, I've, I was looking at it saying, okay, this doesn't feel right. It's probably not right. And it, even if it does happen to work, I, I don't feel good doing it for my customer. And I [inaudible]
Marie Haynes: 32:10 I was thinking of I was in a court case a few years ago as an expert witness for an SEO related thing and the attorneys dug up blog posts from like years ago and blog comments on the Moz blog and said like, this is different than what you think now. And, and so I think, you know, when I'm doing something online, I don't want people to be able to go back years from now and say, Oh yeah, yeah, but she was a spammer then, you know. And so I want to be able to look at, I do, and this sounds kind of Cliche, but would I be comfortable showing this to the web spam team at Google? You know, would I be proud to show them, hey, we got these great links. Most SEOs would be like, no, no, no, we don't, we don't want Google to actually pay attention to where I'm getting links.
Marie Haynes: 32:54 Not most, but some SEOs. And I think if, you know all of our marketing practices, if we can say, yeah, I would very comfortably stand in front of Google's web spam team and say, I'm doing this, this and this, then you can feel like you're on the right road. And I know, you know, that's challenging and there are some, some tricks and loopholes that still can get you further ahead. But Google's working to close those loopholes. So you know, taking the high road should be our priority if we want to succeed long term.
Jeff Byer: 33:21 Yeah. And I have, I still have one of my own personal brands that we did every trick in the book back in the day. We, we originally built the site in 2000 2002 and then rebuilt it in 2004. Using a ton of automated ways to to gain the keywords that we're looking for. And obviously buying links was one of those, one of those tactics back in the day. And so the, the site is still doing well, even though it's not mobile friendly, it's super slow, completely outdated. You know, it's something that's on my list to do, which
Marie Haynes: 33:58 Yes, I have one, I have a big long list like that too. Right. And the thing was that those tactics, it's not like they were illegal or even immoral in most cases. You know, it was like, okay, well it worked. And so I don't have a problem with us trying to do things like that provided that our customers are aware of the risks. And that's where I see issues, you know, because we see people come to us that have been penalized for unnatural Lincoln and the business owners really didn't know that anything was wrong, you know? And so if I think those listeners who are trying to push the boundaries a little bit and as long as your customers and your clients are aware of that and aware that your site could get penalized, you know, I think that's, it could be. Okay. But yeah, I mean, authenticity really should be our, our goals.
Jeff Byer: 34:47 Okay. And so it's, yeah, based on that and, and you know, it follows right through with eat. Is that anything that can happen naturally in the wild is, is the best thing. And it's also for our company, the best signals to use as if you're doing things right or wrong. [inaudible] Yeah, that's, that's a good summary. Yep. So, yeah, so the our job as SEOs now are coaching our clients into the right direction and not usually the, not the tricks anymore. They just, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of topics that I found on your Twitter feed that that were fun that I wanted to mention. So re avowing links. It turns out that, you know was it was it John Mew that said, you know, it should be fine, that it wouldn't effect. And then you mentioned I believe it was an experiment by Glenn Gabe where the ratings [inaudible].
Marie Haynes: 35:46 Yeah, it was cyber shepherd. Cyrus shepherd. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, if you disavow link, what's supposed to happen is the moment you upload your disavow file, as from that point on, as Google crawls the web. So let's say I disavowed domain colon example.com. The next time Google crawls the web and goes to example.com and finds a link pointing to my site, they'll say, oh, okay, well we don't want to count any signals from this link, whether they're good signals, whether they're bad signals, we've instructed Google, we don't want to count the signals that pass through this link. And so what we often see is people disavow based on fear, based on metrics, that there's a lot of tools that will tell you to disavow links based on metrics that are incorrect. And you know, I tried for a couple of years to build a tool to tell me which links did this about.
Marie Haynes: 36:35 And I find I just can't do it unless I'm manually looking at every single link. So let's say you've disavowed by accident. I had one client that disavowed every single link to their site because they used a tool that relied on toolbar page rank, which had gone away. And so every single a link came back as a tool bar, page rank zero, I think it was. And so, so let's say you've made a mistake, then you can download your disavow file from Google and remove the lines that you've no longer want disavowed and then re upload it to Google and what according to Google, what should happen is that the next time they crawl that page, so now they go back to example.com and they say, oh, okay, well we'll start counting these link signals whether they're positive or negative signals towards your site.
Marie Haynes: 37:24 The problem is that we haven't seen a lot of evidence that that actually happens. And when the disavow tool first came out, SEO started talking about using it to experiment. And Matt Cutts, who was with Google at the time, he said you know, we've actually got something built into the tool where there's a leg feature so that if you reeval a link in that process that I talked about that you know, maybe we won't start counting it again till months down the road. Or maybe this is what Matt said, maybe we'll count it again, but with less value. Now, Gary Ish has said something completely opposite to that, you know, he said, no, no, it should start counting right away. So we don't know. So what I say is be very careful with your use of the disavow tool. Yes, it's possible that if you disavow Lincoln error, you can reeval it, but it's also possible something's wrong on Google side and that re-evaluate links just don't count for as much as they used to or don't count at all. So we, I think we still need some more evidence you know, and maybe there's some tests that we could do here, but it's a, it's a tricky subject for sure.
Jeff Byer: 38:28 Yeah. and you know, disavowing in general you gotta be pretty spammed to, to have to need that type of, of assistance from Google.
Marie Haynes: 38:39 Well, it's something that I said, no. Yeah, I mean, we'll disavow spammy links. But since penguin 4.0 in 2016 Google, I really do believe that Google is pretty good at just ignoring, like if you get a bunch of comments, spam links or you know, adult anchored links pointing to your site, I think Google can determine like, hey, I'm not actually trying to rank for this term. It's probably an attack. And, and I have whole theories on how I think it's actually connected to eat. I think that if you're getting a link from a site that has zero e a t they just don't pass any signals through that link. That's, that's my suspicion. So the sites that we're seeing benefits from disavowing are ones where you actively have made links that go against Google's guidelines. So have you had a history of doing well then if you have a history of doing that kind of linking, then filing a disavow could potentially see improvements. Because John Mueller from Google said that there actually are algorithms outside of penguin that look at weather.
Jeff Byer: 39:43 We're freezing. Okay. We're still recording, so we'll just trim that little part out. So basically you were saying if, if you have a history of dis of either buying links or doing anything, link building that goes against Google's guidelines, that the disavow tool is perfect for correcting your previous mistakes.
Marie Haynes: 40:04 Exactly. And we have seen nice uplifts from disavowing in those situations, whereas if we're just disavowing negative SEO attempts or spammy links, they don't tend to have a positive benefit. You know, it's rare that we do just a disavow with just spammy links. But we still should be considering it though, for sites with a history of making their own links for SEO.
Jeff Byer: 40:28 Are Those Google penguins behind you?
Marie Haynes: 40:31 Yeah, they may not be Google Penguin, but we have a little penguin thing going. I've got to, yeah. You can't see in front of me. I've got art from my kids. It's a panda actually. Not It might as well get into it. Right. Yeah.
Jeff Byer: 40:45 I love it. So the other topic that you, that you discussed on Twitter was rankings for health topics that go against general scientific consensus. So this, this is a very interesting one. What did you find there?
Marie Haynes: 41:04 So whenever there's an algorithm update, we do look at what's changed in Google's quality raters guidelines because Google has told us that these guidelines actually represent where they want to go with their algorithms. And so the last change that happened which I think was may of this year, one of the things that we noticed was that Google added these things about scientific consensus that and actually some of that was already in there before, but there was more emphasis on health sites that contradict scientific consensus. And the example that was given in the quality raters guidelines is a little bit extreme, but they're talking about sites that tout that carrots cure cancer. And what we're seeing is that with the June 3rd update of 2019, there are a large number of medical sites that are in alternative medicine spaces that saw big drops.
Marie Haynes: 41:56 And it's not that they're completely contradicting science. It's not like, Hey, carrots cure cancer. And by the way, we sell carrots. But it's more it's a version of that. You know, it's people saying, hey, there's the supplement. And all of the different ingredients. Here's some research that shows that, hey, maybe this one particular herb has some tendency to help with arthritis. And, but yet there's really nothing that shows that the product on its own helps with arthritis. And so if you're selling natural medicine products that are based on a little bit sketchy claims it seems to be that Google is not wanting sites like that to rank and that can be a sign of low trust. And so what we were debating on Twitter was how would Google measure that? You know, how would Google determine what's truth, how a new treatment could come out today that is fantastic for arthritis.
Marie Haynes: 42:50 And just because nobody's written about it before doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. And so we started doing this little test because we were like, how could Google actually measure this? Because the algorithms are just algorithms, right? They're not it's not like a single person is sitting there going, this is good, this is bad. And so what we came up with this theory and we're still unpacking it. I'm going to write a blog post on this that'll be out in the next couple of weeks. So you get the preview to it. And, and what we've noticed is if you look at a particular page on say a a health website, let's say you were ranking, you used to rank well for essential oils and you look at the page on essential oils, look at the title tag of that post and let's say the post is saying lavender is going to cure whatever disease, you know.
Marie Haynes: 43:40 And then we put that phrase into Google and say, does lavender cure this disease site? Colon healthline.com, site site, colon, Mayo Clinic. These are all sites that we know, Google trusts, they give them good rankings, web MD, a even Wikipedia. And often what we're finding is that a, us a snippet will come back that says there have been no studies shown that prove that this medication or this herb treats this condition. And I think Google could very easily use natural language processing to determine like, hey, this website is making claims. They're making promises and our websites that we trust don't agree with those promises. So if there's enough of them on a website, we're not going to trust them. And I think that's a big component of what has happened with June 3rd not for every single site, but if you're a medical site that was hit June 3rd, this is what we're trying to solve is because there are some alternative medicine sites that actually are doing okay.
Marie Haynes: 44:37 And what seems to be the case is that they're not making claims that go outside of science. Like there are some essential oils that have very good evidence that show that it works or helps in somewhat. So hopefully that makes sense. You know, I think, I think Google is really trying to get this truth out there. And I think there are maybe some sites that have got caught in the crossfire and we'll see Google tweak things, you know, we'll, we'll see them probably relax a little bit on some of these areas and some of these sites that were hit hard, we'll start to bounce back again. It's a very interesting process to watch.
Jeff Byer: 45:10 Yeah. And I've particularly are watching it because I have a a natural supplement client and I have a CBD client and both make scientifically proven claims, but it's not in any publicly cited. We can't cite a public respected resource. And so that's where I'm, I'm hitting a wall is that the scientists who actually created this, these formulas are are well known in their contract for hire. So we can't quote them because they don't want their name tied to a specific product. But the claim, the claim is, is valid. So,
Marie Haynes: 45:49 Yup. And I think this is what I'm talking about where some decent sites are getting caught up and probably being seen as low quality when they're not. So for example, a site selling CBD, there's, you know, there's a lot of research to show that CBD is very, very effective for some things. But let's say this is a very hypothetical situation, but let's say there's a site selling CBD. And again, 90% of the information on the site is completely backed in science. And then there's all this other information that says, you know, you could use CBD to cure all these other things based on anecdotal evidence and based on like this one little line and a research paper. And it looks like it's scientifically backed. And then again, if I type into Google, does CBD cure this and healthline and web MD and all of those big players are saying, no, there's no evidence to support it.
Marie Haynes: 46:41 That could be seen as a sign of distrust for the entire site. So even the, so, so I would say one of our theories that we're working on right now is to have these health sites actually put all of this content that is potentially controversial on a different sub domain or on in a different folder. So that perhaps Google can recognize, you know, this is the section of the site that maybe we want to be careful in ranking. And then as more evidence comes out as it's more mainstream, I think you're going to see that with CBD that you know, mainstream science is going to come up to date with what a lot of other people are discovering. But until that happens, Google doesn't know which parts they can trust and which parts they can't. And so they're going to air on the side of caution and not let you rank. That's my opinion anyways, not let you rank if they think there's that area of suspicion there.
Jeff Byer: 47:30 Yeah, it's, it's like a, you know, when you've, when I first started reading about it on Twitter, I was like, okay, now Google is going to sensor our health information. And I understand that it's more that they're not going to rank somebody for making outlandish claims or allowing the, the searcher to act on false information.
Marie Haynes: 47:52 Exactly. And I think, I mean, maybe I give Google too much credit. But I do think that they do have a goal of a, how do I, how do I put this? If I created Google and I could see that millions of people everyday were being misled because they were reading stuff on my search engine, I would have issue with that. You know? And so a lot of people are getting good benefits, you know, if I'm looking for alternative cures to arthritis and a, and somebody suggests CBD and it works for me, that's fantastic. Right? But that suggestion is one of a thousand others and maybe somebody suggesting this supplement that is going to cost me hundreds of dollars. And the thing is pain conditions, they come and go a lot of the time. And so you know, there can be all of this anecdotal evidence to say, oh, the supplement works great. It worked great for me. But if there's no science to back it, like how do I trust that? So I think, you know, Google's again erring on the side of caution and saying like, we're not sure whether we can trust the medical information on this site. And until they are sure there's going to be challenging to rank for medical terms.
Jeff Byer: 48:56 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's been tough and it still is tough and I'm trying to figure out ways of, of doing it and possibly a third party validation of the claims that we already had validated. Yep. Okay. Go [inaudible]
Marie Haynes: 49:11 Quality Raiders guidelines. They talk a lot about what are other experts saying about your website, about your articles. And so I think one interesting thing would be like, let's say that there is a particular claim about CBD that your client is, is trying to get validated, is trying to get Google to realize, you know, like, ah, this is actually is a good thing and it's gonna help people. One of the answers could be in finding ways to get the people recognized as experts in that industry to start quoting your stuff. And so some of it could be too and I don't know what the regulations are in this area, but to start doing some studies even to do surveys you know, you can do a survey of of, of this company's clients and, and just ask them questions about their pain level before and after using the CBD and you know, their thoughts on it and produce a very well-written article that's not loaded with sketchy stuff, you know, stuff it's not overly markety. And then if you can get the big names in the industry to say, you know, what, hey, this, this really well done study on CBD maybe demonstrates that this is helping some people, you know, things like that. So so getting your work or getting your company's cleans by people who are already trusted as authorities by Google is a really good way to work towards that too.
Jeff Byer: 50:33 Yeah. I think that's the way we're going to go. So we're over time. I want to be respectful of your time. Do you have time for one more? One more question for sure. Okay. So on Twitter, you've been talking, you've been commenting on a lot of people's authorship pages. What should go into a good authorship page
Marie Haynes: 50:51 For sure. So
Jeff Byer: 50:54 First of all,
Marie Haynes: 50:56 It's important to know that ea t I really believe that it's mostly figured out by Google, by off-page signals. So it's not like I can go on my website and say like, Hey, I'm the world's greatest known kidney doctor. You know, when I'm not Google I don't think is going to be tricked by that. I'm what John Mueller and a few other Google employees have said throughout different publications with Google is that things that we put on our website can help Google to connect the dots. And so an author page it's there for two reasons. One is for Google, so Google can say, oh, this author who's writing on this topic, on this website, it's the same author who we recognize as an expert on these other websites. And so when I write a topic on SEO, Google can figure out that it's the same Marie Haynes that maybe was you know, disco written on search engine round table or something like that.
Marie Haynes: 51:50 Right? and even Schema you can use same as Schema to help Google to connect those dots. And then the second reason for author Bio's is for your readers. Again, if I'm reading a post and I'm trying to decide, I want to learn about this, you know, complicated financial thing, I'm trying to figure out something with my taxes, do I want to read that from somebody who is a good content writer who's done their own taxes a couple of times? Or do I want to read it from, you know, an accountant who has seen every problem in the, in the, in the, in the books. And of course as readers so writing an author bio that can encourage my readers to go, okay, this person knows what they're talking about and I trust this content. And now, but then that sort of goes into, you know, does Google use Google a user engagement signals? I think they do. I think they can figure out like, hey, people were looking for this information. They landed on your website, they spent a lot of time on your website and you know, they kept going through it and they engaged with it. That could be a sign of quality as well. So I've sort of babbled a bit there, but yeah, author profiles are important. But not as important as off page e a t signals.
Jeff Byer: 52:59 Yeah. So providing links to everywhere you are off page, you know, media mentions, all that stuff is going to be just as beneficial. Basically just helping Google find the stuff if they haven't connected the dots already,
Marie Haynes: 53:11 That's what we recommend. Yet we had one client for, which has worked really well. They had done a rebrand and it had been like a year and Google, they could not recover their rankings. And we said, look, there's nothing on your site that actually connects you with your previous brand. And so we did all of this stuff on the site to extol their eat and with the next update they shot up like amazingly for their rankings. It was incredible. So I think in that case we helped Google the connect the dots. So yeah, you should be doing all you can on your site and also off your site to improve eat.
Jeff Byer: 53:43 Yeah, I just combined, I used to have my personal all separated from my business and I decided that that was, you know, promoting too many things. It had too many buckets around. So all the buckets now lead to my, my site. And now my site has an about page, which is just me and [inaudible] Preston article. I don't know if you looked at it and if you did any research on me, I was checking who is this guy? All right. And the last topic that I had if you have time is a wix SEO lovers. Dot.
Marie Haynes: 54:15 Ah, is that not the craziest thing that we're doing that, so, yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people probably remember, I think it was two years ago, wix did a contest for who could rank number one for SEO hero. And it was a horrible thing because it was every site that got close to ranking was spammed to death. And and it was, it was just bad. And then wix came out with this new competition saying, so the whole idea is that there's only two entries. There's us, which they chose our team and then liquid interactive who is running the site, wix SEO haters. And so we're running the SEO lovers site. And what we need to do is actually show good things about wix and FTO, which seems like a ridiculous thing because a lot of SEOs really don't like wix.
Marie Haynes: 55:04 So I'll tell you why we did it. It has been an incredible training tool for my team. So some of my team, I've never made a website, they've never started from scratch in helping rank websites. And we're learning as a team, we're learning really basic things about link-building, you know, about how can we get some links and, and we have a whole thing that's gonna shift into action in the next few weeks where we're going to be starting to get a really good links pointing to our website. And so if we win we get $25,000. And the winner is whoever ranks number one for the term wix or net one, number one, whoever ranks for Wix SEO whichever site is tired, wins $25,000. If we lose, we win $10,000. And so, you know, it's a great learning experience for us. There are some limitations to wix for SEO and we're going to talk about those on our website. And you know, but there's, it's not horrible. And right now at this time, I think we're both ranking on page five. We're a few positions higher. And so, so far our site that was created in Wix is able to compete. And we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Jeff Byer: 56:12 All right. And did you want to encourage people to, to link to yours? You're right.
Marie Haynes: 56:17 I will. I just didn't want to come out and ask for it. But Hey, if any if any of you want to, I mean, if this information has been helpful, then we would love a link to a, to our wicks SEO lovers.com site. Jeff, if you want to link to us from the podcast notes, that'd be awesome. You know, some of you are like, Whoa, she's asking for links. That's against Google's guidelines. It's not, it's totally within Google's guidelines for me to say, Hey, can you link to me? But if I start to incentivize it then that's where things become a little bit gray. So if anybody on their own volition would like to thank us and, but really it should be more to recommend the content. There's really good content on that site. Actually, my team's writing we've written stuff about basic information on canonical links on when to use a no-follow. When do you use no index? This is all on the WIC site. So there's good linkable content there.
Jeff Byer: 57:07 Very nice. All right. And now the time for Marie Haines to promote Ray Hanes [inaudible] how would you like people to reach you and interact with you and your content? [inaudible]
Marie Haynes: 57:20 Thank you. The best way to reach me is on Twitter. So I'm Marie underscore Haynes, h a. Y. N. E. S. If you want to reach out to my team and I, it's help@mariehaynes.com. I have my team members go through the first round of emails, so you may not get me directly, but my team is incredible. And I would like to just mention our newsletter. You've, you've mentioned your podcast is a part of newsletter. So every week we do a newsletter that takes us many hours to complete. It's usually about 5,000 words and it is everything you need to know that's happened in SEO along with tips. We scour Twitter every week to say, oh, this person had this really great tip. And so we'll put that in the newsletter. We do have a paid version as well as a free version. The free version has tons of stuff in it too, but the page is definitely worth it. So, and you're holding me
Jeff Byer: 58:07 And you're holding a, a sweepstakes competition right now, right?
Marie Haynes: 58:10 Oh, yes, we are. I shouldn't look at you. You're marketing for me. This is great. You know everything about us. So yeah, we do have a competition where we're just trying to get some new subscribers. Our 100th episode is coming up. I think we're at 96 right now. So in mid September, our 100th episode is coming up. And if you are not up subscriber to the newsletter and you become a free subscriber, you can win a one year subscription as a paid subscriber. If you buy a paid subscription, then you can potentially win a lifeline, a lifetime subscription. So yeah, we're trying to do a little thing to kind of drum up some more subscribers.
Jeff Byer: 58:49 Very nice. Well, this was very informative. I've, I hope you can come back on and, and and help us out a little bit more with r e a t and, and updates. And you know, this is just a, it's an ongoing thing cause it seems like every week your, your Twitter feed has a whole bunch of, of great actionable nuggets. And you know, I've built up a million questions and I had to narrow it down to, into these few. But thank you very much for, for all of your content. Everything you do, everything you share. And this has been an
Jeff Byer: 59:22 Excellent conversation.
Marie Haynes: Oh, thank you. I've enjoyed the conversation too.
For show notes and information. Go to digitalrage.fm Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @digitalragefm and please give us a written review we sincerely appreciate it.
Today we talk with Cindy Krum based to talk about fraggles which Kevin Indig mentioned in Episode 22. Cindy is a mobile marketing innovator and CEO/Founder at MobileMoxie.
About Cindy Krum
Company: https://mobilemoxie.com/ Follow Cindy on Twitter: @Suzzicks Try MobileMoxie for 30 days free - Promo Code: DIGITALRAGE Article: https://moz.com/blog/the-importance-of-fraggles
Show Links
Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes https://twitter.com/randfish https://twitter.com/jonoalderson https://twitter.com/mediadonis https://twitter.com/screamingfrog https://twitter.com/semrush https://twitter.com/Moz https://twitter.com/sitebulb https://twitter.com/DeepCrawl
Where were you a year ago today? I was visiting with a client at the very moment this Medic recovery started happening.
Looks like there is another update of some sort happening today, although not as big as Aug 1, 2018.https://t.co/frVfqpCoL4 pic.twitter.com/uazmdZTDxD
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) August 1, 2019
Transcript (sort of)
Speaker 1: [inaudible]
Jeff Byer: Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer and today we talk with Cindy Krum, she's a mobile marketing evangelist and CEO and founder of Mobile Moxie. Our topic today is Fraggles, a new Google search feature that will grab content from your website, bring it into the search engine result page with a deep link directly to the mention of that content on your page. This is
Jeff Byer: very important and today we had a discussion about it on Twitter. Glenn Gabe posted that Google is starting to index these deep links and starting to pay attention to them. And this is exactly what Cindy and I talk about in our conversation is that they are generating these deep links on the mobile result pages going directly to the content that they pulled out of your page. So really interesting topic and it was fun that a, this topic came up right after we interviewed Cindy. So more on that in a bit. But for now, uh, we'll talk about, one thing that came up from our conversation is that Marie Haines tweeted that it was the one year anniversary of the medic update. And for those of you in SEO, you remember the medic update. If you're dealing with your money, your life issues for your customers, these are issues dealing with health and finances mostly.
Jeff Byer: Um, they expand to other, other genres. In my specific case, it extended to a manufacturer of products that are used in, uh, in medical scenarios. And, uh, this was, this update hit my client pretty hard and it took almost six months to fully recover and some of our main keywords didn't recover at all. But, uh, it was a major shift in the Google algorithm and how Google treats experience authority at trust. So the good news is we got Marie Haynes on the books. She'll be here, um, interviewing next week to talk specifically about, uh, experience, authority, trust, the quality rate of guidelines and how all of this is basically going to be the new way that Google judges the quality of your content. So, uh, beyond that, nothing new to report. Just, you know, busy keeping everything alive and, and keeping the digital rage train rollin'.
Jeff Byer: With that we will get into the interview with Cindy Krum. All right, today we are speaking to Cindy Krum. She is a mobile marketing evangelists and CEO and founder of Mobilemoxy. How are you?
Cindy Krum: I'm good. How are you?
Jeff Byer: Doing well, thank you. So we'd like to, to start with the really hard hitting questions right off the bat. So first question is what does your screen name mean?
Cindy Krum: It's a good question. I um, I've had that screen name since I was a kid since the AOL disc came in the mail.
Jeff Byer: Oh Wow. Very nice. So is that a nickname?
Cindy Krum: Yeah, it was a nickname. So I liked, this is way going back, but when I was very little I loved Dr Seuss and they would call me Seuss and it just kind of evolved into Seussicks. And so that's what my family called me when I was a kid.
Jeff Byer: Ah, very nice.
Cindy Krum: Seussicks not Sussicks. I just was bad speller as a kid and I decided how it would be spelled.
Jeff Byer: Okay. Well now it's yours. You own Suzzicks with Z's. So, I saw you retweeted a post for Marie Haynes. Uh, this marks the, yesterday technically marks the one year anniversary of the medic update, which was a nightmare for me as well. One of my clients, a B2B manufacturing role for oxygen analyzers. And most of them are used in, the medical space. So she posted, you know, her nightmare last year. How did that affect you?
Cindy Krum: Uh, well, so it, most of our clients weren't particularly affected. We have one, you know, company that comes and goes as a client and in the medical space, but, but most of our clients are outside of, uh, any of the industries that were really hit hard.
Jeff Byer: Okay. So out of the YMYL categorization. Right. Okay. All right. So what, what I really wanted to talk about is what a Concept brought up last week, which was Fraggles. So, in your words, what are Fraggles?
Cindy Krum: So at Fraggle is a fragment plus a handle. So what we found is that Google seems to be indexing a smaller than page level units. Now, um, they're indexing not just the page but pieces of the page and linking to it. And they've done this for awhile with jump links. Um, but, but the important thing here is that they seem to be able to do it. Even if the jump link isn't there, they super impose a locator onto content to surface it sometimes. And so that seems like a big, big deal.
Jeff Byer: And is it links or are they just scraping the content and putting it in the syrup?
Cindy Krum: So they're lifting the content. That's the fragment, the fragment of content, and then, uh, linking to it. So when you click on it, it's not just that you get to the page that it's from, instead of scrolls you to that piece of content on the page.
Jeff Byer: Okay. And this is without any, any direction control from the website itself,
Cindy Krum: right. Direction and control helps. So, for instance, using, um, jump links and h two tags that seems to help get you frag goals. Uh, but we've seen it where it, it seems like Google is just putting them there and you can especially see this too with amp featured snippets. Um, if you have an amp page that gets a featured snippet, what happens when a user clicks through on the featured snippet is Google scrolls directly to where it's from and even highlights the featured snippet so you could read it in context.
Jeff Byer: Okay. Okay. So, uh, the, you know, they've been, they've been scraping content on the knowledge graph for, for a while now. Uh, but it's the links that are, that are really the, the more unique part.
Cindy Krum: It's the scrolling behavior. Yeah. Because if you think about a page like indexing pages isn't a good way to surface answers. And really what Google is trying to do more than surface pages now is respond with answers and there might be many answers on a page.
Jeff Byer: Correct. Yeah. Though I was talking to Kevin and deg about was a, the concept of microsites that within a site you go a in depth into multiple pages of a big topic and serve a bunch of different answers and in the context of that one big category.
Cindy Krum: Yeah, absolutely. Well and [inaudible] as well with my theory that I've been kind of, um, talking about with what does mobile first indexing really need and loosely I think mobile first indexing really means Google switching from being a website or a search engine that surfaces websites to a search engine that surfaces answers. And more specifically that means index the information around the knowledge graph to understand how this topic is related to that topic and how we can answer questions within those topics.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, I lifted from your, your uh, Mazda article that I, that I was reading that just got posted, um, that you, uh, you basically redefined mobile first indexing as portable, preferred an organization of information.
Cindy Krum: Exactly. But actually that is from, so the art, it's in the article from this year, but I first talked about that I think it was two years ago at, at Moz con. Yeah. Cause I think people are really wrapped up in this um, switch of the user agents. But honestly like Google used to switch user agents that it crawled with like casually on a Saturday without two years of preparation and notice, uh, I think the, the mobile part is tripping people up. Uh, and they're, they're really hung up on the user agent when I think the indexing is the most important part of the, the name mobile first indexing.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And so what, when it first came out, when mobile first indexing was first brought out, everybody thought it was device specific. So they were all testing their sites on, on the devices and you know, thinking that the device, if it wasn't a hit, if it was hidden on a mobile device, that it wasn't going to get indexed. But that was proven not to be the case.
Cindy Krum: Right. Well with the front javascript indexing, Google is good at like doing the expanders and stuff like that. The Java script might trip up a, I do think that there is some validity to saying if it doesn't show up on a mobile phone, then it's going to struggle the index. But Google has also said that they're still indexing desktop content. Uh, and that, you know, they've, they've been a bit hazy there. Uh, so I do think that that showing up on a mobile rendering is still important, but I think that we have to think like Google and Google has always like two or three years ahead of us. They know what's happening before we do. And for them what they've been doubling down and investing in and building tech for is um, connected speakers, connected home hubs, these dummy screens and connected TVs where it's just a poor dulling and windowing content from all over the web. And for that to happen, they can't just window a webpage. They want to window the most relevant content. And, and in some cases they want to like strip it out or lift it and show it in a context where it's relevant and useful, but not messing up the design and UX of whatever else is going on.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, and I think I've read an article about it and though the title of the article is called the, uh, the invisible syrup, which is that f with voice search and smart devices and not necessarily needing a screen, they need to provide search results. So whatever format possible that they're going to do it that way. So, um, is uh, is uh, the fraggle based indexing is optimizing for fractals or uh, uh, something that you would suggest for your clients?
Cindy Krum: Yeah, absolutely. So, so what we're doing to help get frog when we can is, um, number one using the speakable Schema. And within that it's how to Q and a and FAQ and, and then adding back in, uh, the jump links and h two tags like I talked about, that seems to help. Okay. So it's not fully like, it's not fully a fraggle that Google just made up. We're saying like, here is the section of the content where that answer is to kind of help it along because I don't know if you've heard, um, but uh, search console is starting to index Hashtag URL separately from the main URL. Again, like this is like 1995 when they stopped indexing jump links as a separate URL. But now in search console you'll get the main URL and then you'll get the jump link URL with their own traffic data.
Jeff Byer: Oh Wow.
Cindy Krum: Okay. So that's, that's fun to see and a point I think. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes sense that they're gonna start using that as a, as a a serve option as well, especially in mobile for the jump links and, and things like that. So the more that you can describe those jump leaks and provide Schema for them, the better. Uh, I did have a technical question though on the FAQ. Um, when I was reading the Schema, uh, instructions from Google and from schema.org for Q and. A, they expect Q and a Schema to be on a dedicated Q and a page. And most of what we're seeing now is Q and A's being included on the content page. Is it, is it that you can optimize for, for question to answer fractals within a larger piece of content. So they distinguished between Q and a, an FAQ, uh, by saying that FAQ, you write the questions in the answers in Q and a, uh, they have to be submitted questions. And my guess is that, um, you know, with the GMB staff, they're just starting to make the reviews and Q and a searchable, my guess is with a separate page, it's just easier for them to lift an aggregate. Right. Okay. Um, but
Speaker 5: ah, okay.
Cindy Krum: I think that that's, they're putting that in their requirements, but it's probably more of a preference or in the long term it'll probably be more of a preference. Right?
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And I've got, I've got an experiment running right now. I just published it yesterday with, uh, with long form content landing page for a specific, uh, uh, keyword, a high value keyword with a Q and a section, which is within the content, but it's using the, the, the, uh, the FAQ markup so that it's for question, it's subtitle with the question paragraph with an answer and then a square photo to go with it with all the, the Schema markup to see if those questions actually get pulled.
Cindy Krum: But remember FAQ and Q and a are different and you are asking a question about Q and a and the Schema that you said is on the pages FAQ.
Jeff Byer: FAQ. Yes. I didn't mean QA. I didn't even use their submitted. Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. Confuses it.
Cindy Krum: But it sounds like a good test.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, we'll see what happens. And um, cause I, from the way that I read it, it was supposed to be a whole page just for questions. And so I'm just sectioning off a section of the page just for questions. So we'll see if that works. So, um, what are, uh, what are you seeing as the, the latest trends in, in mobile marketing?
Cindy Krum: No, mobile marketing as a whole or mobile SEO?
Jeff Byer: Uh, both. Yeah.
Cindy Krum: Okay. Mobile
Jeff Byer: marketing as a whole. And I just think that the, the word mobile is losing its fidelity to the device and that mobile means anything that's not, um, a laptop or a desktop. Uh, so mobile includes like TVs and includes connected speakers and home hubs and uh, stuff like that. Mobile is like a catchall for anything that's not a more traditional computer. Uh, and so that makes it kind of easier and harder. It means that it's easier to find data that says that mobile is whatever you want, uh, growing, shrinking, flat, you know, whatever, because you can include all these things or not include all the things or, or what have you. But the main thing I think that that's really fundamental from an SEO perspective is that, um, Google is taking more and more in the, of the top of the Cert, uh, and websites are getting less and less click through.
Jeff Byer: That's a big deal. The other thing in mobile that's related to that is that the mobile device is becoming the hub for everyone's life even more than it was before. Um, and the, the special growth is in media and entertainment, like movies, TV, stuff like that. And I think, um, because there are so many cable cutters, uh, Google sees that as a huge opportunity to monetize, um, because like lots of money used to be made on network and cable TV commercials, selling them, barring them, having them, whatever. Um, and without as many people watching TV and that like that, um, there's a vacuum like power vacuum or opportunity vacuum, uh, that Google wants to fill with TV ads, subscription rental, buy all of your media from Google and youtube or from Google play and depending on your device. But it's like most people don't realize, cause most people don't work on both android and Ios. But basically everything that's in Google play is now in youtube as well. But it might be subscription model for TV or rental or whatever, rent this movie by this movie, whatever. But it's the same inventory has surprise Google on some boasts. Yeah, yeah. And so are you seeing that, uh, you're trying to translate the, the traditional offline models into a mobile experience? Or is it that we're carving new directions with the proliferation of entertainment being mobile, being shifted to, uh, phones and, and tablets.
Cindy Krum: It's, it's new directions and it's not just the mobile aspect of it, but it's all the on demand consumption. So Netflix now has its own series and movies and Hulu has it's own series and movies and so there are new competitors in the market as well as new formats and new ways to monetize.
Jeff Byer: Okay. And new ways to target
Cindy Krum: any ways to target. Right.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Okay. So it's, so in, in the SEO specific side of, of mobile marketing, how, how would you, uh, how do you go about what more, what am I trying to say? Uh, probably more what the strategy is when you're thinking about SEO, uh, compared to, you know, a desktop based SEO to a mobile based SEO.
Cindy Krum: Sure. So I encourage people to think outside of the blue links, uh, because really on, on a lot of the big, heavy hitting terms, the top of the page is Google, Google and Google, just different variations of Google content.
Jeff Byer: Hmm.
Cindy Krum: Um, and you know, from a traditional SEO perspective, the best thing you can do really is get one of the featured snippets. But if you're thinking outside of the SEO box, you can think like, what else could I do to be up here in the top? And like SEOs who don't have a local background, don't think about what could I do in Google my business to be here if there's a map pack or a, what could I do in, uh, other outlets? Uh, for instance, like in Google play or, um, youtube to be here, right. Is there a video ranking? Why is it not my video? Oh, cause I don't have videos, you know, so stuff like that where it's not necessarily going for a blue link to your site. Um, but just content that's yours
Jeff Byer: being visible on the, on the top of the result page in any way possible. Right. Okay. Right.
Cindy Krum: And some of the PPC stuff is getting much more engaging and um, competitive. Uh, so for instance, I've seen them testing something that looks like an Instagram slideshow where it has a, uh, a huge image. Um, that's like a square that takes up most of the space above the fold after you've got your navigation and Google stuff at the top and it's mostly, and then it's got dots so you can swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe and see like a beautiful slideshow of Adidas shoes or whatever. And it's not just the, the product photography with white backgrounds, it's more like instagrammy
Jeff Byer: [inaudible]
Cindy Krum: uh, with models and settings and stuff.
Jeff Byer: And, and they're showing user generated content as well. Right.
Cindy Krum: Some user generated content. I haven't seen as much of that, but, but there's also the, the pls and then the shopping stuff where you search for, I have an example in one of my most recent talks where it's buy guitar near me and Google divides the, the sponsored product stuff, the sponsored pla stuff with buy online, buy in store and either one, either tab that you click, it's got a carousel of actual guitars that you can buy right then like pictures of the guitars. So why would you want to hunt in someone else's website when Google is giving you a feed with filters and you can, you know, sort by brand, sort by color, whatever. I mean it's really engaging where you, you get pulled in by the picture of the product that you want or the question do you want to buy online or do you want to buy in a store? Um, and before you know, you've clicked on a pla or a paid ad because it's a better experience than wrestling with someone's website or landing on a bad landing page that doesn't actually show you what you want or it's out of stock.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Yeah. True. So they're, they're trying to control the experience and make it best for the, for the searcher and, uh, and also, uh, trying to predict their search intent. So, so searching for a guitar, uh, usually means purchase intent. That doesn't mean you, you know, just kinda looking around or getting information. So yeah. Uh, and Barry Schwartz has been doing a good job of, of posting a lot of these new cert features and seeing experiments. So I, I follow him for that specific reason. It's just what is going on and, and, you know, it's nothing we can modify for because they're just doing experiments. But, uh, it's good to know that these things exist so we can, so we can build media towards it.
Cindy Krum: Yeah, exactly. But also from an, from a mobile perspective, if you're doing mobile SEO, I encourage people to think really hard about what is part of the knowledge graph because, for instance, um, the Google my business, that's part of the business aspect of the knowledge graph. Uh, the pls, uh, the stuff that they're getting in merchant center, I don't know if you've seen this, but they're now creating product knowledge graph pages. So for this specific guitar, it's within the knowledge graph and knowledge graph knows that this guitar comes in White, red, black and green.
Jeff Byer: Oh yes, yes. I have seen, I've in some searches I have seen that and I've, I always wonder where they get the data. Is it Wiki Pedia or
Cindy Krum: merchant center? Merchant Center. Yeah. That's historically PPC, but it's coming up. We see merchant center carousels now in the organic.
Jeff Byer: Okay. And so brands or re re retailers can gain access to, to to that information.
Cindy Krum: Yup. Or get inventory shown in those carousels.
Jeff Byer: Okay. And is that based on the uh, the submission of product lists to Google shopping?
Cindy Krum: Yes, but you can submit them without running the paid ads. Okay. That's what I've been told. I'm not a PBC expert. Okay. But you can send them all of your product specifications and data and then not run the ads. That was my understanding.
Jeff Byer: Okay. So what is, what is something that the audience can take away as far as a typical, a digital marketer that is wanting to, to modify their content, not only for Mobile, but, uh, I'll try and get Frankel's as well. What's, what's the philosophy
Cindy Krum: I think in terms of chunks of questions and answers and liftable content, cause B, Google's going to be lifting and representing more and more content and SEO is, they're getting mad about it now, but I think it's gonna Continue. They can, they can get mad all they want. I can't stop the Google train. Right. So you have to kind of let Google lift your content if you want to be there at all. That seems like the new play and you know, being upset about it as fine. I agree with like some of the stuff that ran his talking about with, uh, the, the anti competitive nature of what Google's done to change the syrup. Right. Where everything, all roads lead to Google. Yeah. Um, I agree that that's a problem, but also Google's a business and we rank, uh, in their search engine at their discretion. Yeah. It's their game. They don't have to rank any of us.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And so that brings up another question is, are you, uh, expanding into other distribution channels so that you're, you know, if for some reason Google's yeah. Gone off the deep end and nobody uses it anymore, what is, where, where is your content also living?
Cindy Krum: So I think that, um, I'm, I'm doing everything I can to make sure me and my clients are putting their content in all of the Google channels available. So for instance, um, putting videos in youtube, putting podcasts in Google podcasts and Google play, um, putting stuff in Google my business, including doing Google posts and products and stuff like that. And it's, it's, uh, loosening your stranglehold on needing to do SEO on the website and doing SEO in a more holistic way. Um, just thinking about not just driving clicks and rankings, but driving visibility in the syrup,
Jeff Byer: visibility and engagement
Cindy Krum: and engagement. Yeah. Yeah. But it's also about, we have to, we're not, we have to be real marketers and market good products and not just tricksters who, no loopholes in Google.
Jeff Byer: Right. And that's, that's
Cindy Krum: kind of been, you know, Google's philosophy and trying to do everything they can to, to keep fake engagement and, and ranking signals from being, from being manipulated. So, so yeah, that's something that there's evidence that sometimes it works, but for the most part it's not something to rely on. Right. Yeah. So I also saw a post, um, is Barkley there with you? He is. He's being so quiet. He's asleep.
Jeff Byer: Nice. So you're a dog lover.
Cindy Krum: I'm a dog. Larmer I also have a cat.
Jeff Byer: Oh, you do? Okay. So you list dog lover on your, on your Twitter profile. All right, so, uh, living in Denver. Um, so what outside of SEO and marketing do you like to do?
Cindy Krum: I mostly do a lot of SEO and marketing occasionally. Uh, I love, I love, uh, audio books. It's kind of something I, I'm always reading something and I'm always happy to talk about what I'm reading. Um, so anyone will listen. So what are you ready? The happiness advantage right now? It's, uh, about, it's kind of neuro psychology or neuro pop psychology depending on who you ask about or how your brain performs better, when you're happier so you can be more efficient versus unhappy brains struggle.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And if I've, yeah, there's a bunch of, uh, books that, that touch on that, but a, this sounds like a great, a great deep dive into the psychology of it.
Cindy Krum: Absolutely. I think I did a really great ted talk that I call Amy the Unicorn Ted talk because that's the most memorable part is he tells a story about his sister Amy, the Unicorn.
Jeff Byer: Oh, very nice. I will look that up and link to it in the show notes. Okay. Uh, and so one question that I ask, uh, all of everybody that I have on the show is who do you follow and, uh, look to for information.
Cindy Krum: I follow everybody. The people who I get the most out of, uh, recently, uh, always rand is good. I don't always agree with everything he says, but it's always well thought out and very smart. Um, uh, Jonno Alderson is super smart. Again, I don't always agree. These, these are people that have strong opinions and I also have strong opinions, so I don't always agree, but I totally, uh, I often agree with Jonno and uh, respect the thought process and stuff like that. Uh, let's see. Marcus Tandler MCASS Tobler the two Marcus's. Um, that's the top of
Jeff Byer: my list right now. Who's the top of your list? Oh boy. I have, I've, I've been, you know, ever since boss Con, uh, just a whole rash of people who were, who are, uh, providing a ton of information from Moscow. So that brought you into the fold. Uh, Lily Ray, uh, Marie Marie Haynes, uh, and uh, of course rant, but rants, uh, like some of his is his frequency of posting on the, the Google serpent and decline of Click throughs. Um, it's, it seems to be the majority of what's taking up his time right now,
Cindy Krum: I think. Yeah, well it's a big deal because you can be, if people are stuck in their analytics and they're just looking at analytics or search console or something and they see they've maintained position one for years and years and years, but traffic's down. Like that's a hard conundrum to deal with. Like we're doing everything we can and we're, we're still position one, but the traffic's just not there anymore. So I get it. I'm, I'm, I'm there with him.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And it's something that, you know, businesses are just going to have to learn to adapt to and, and switch. So I'm dealing with this too. Two of my customers now, uh, both of them deep B2B, so, um, it doesn't have quite the, you know, the impact as far as bottom line. They're still doing traditional, uh, outreach sales. Uh, but I'm trying to get their online presence a little more omni-channel so that, uh, they're bringing in because they have a very, uh, personal touch when, when customers engage, but getting them in front of their customers is the more difficult part. So, uh, that's why instead of them just concentrating on telephone calls and emails, getting them to branch out, offer content, offer value, and invite people in to ask them questions and engage with them without any pressure of sales. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, I follow Barry Schwartz and Dan Scher and um, uh, a bunch of, uh, other SEO experts that, uh, I like to follow that, uh, optimize the and rob woods, uh, and smarty.
Cindy Krum: Yeah. I follow all those people. They're all astic there a lot of super smart people in this industry. It's why I love it so much.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Bill Slawsky he's always fun.
Cindy Krum: Was Great.
Jeff Byer: So, uh, what tools do you use other than obviously mobile? Moxie?
Cindy Krum: I use the mobile maxi tool. What other tools do I use? Um, I was pretty old school. I use screaming frog a lot. I use SCM and Mas. Um, sometimes they use like the new crawlers, like a site bulb or a deep crawl. Those are great too. Um, and then search console and Google analytics, we're getting into more data studio in tag manager. I'm excited about that. So that's pretty much it.
Jeff Byer: That's fantastic. Uh, yeah. So yeah, screaming frog, it's amazing how long that tool has been, has been relevant. It's been adapting and changing so well, I'm really, uh, yeah, it's, it's, you know, other than the, the Google supplied tools, it's one of the oldest tools out on the market.
Cindy Krum: Yeah. So, you know, my concern with, with all the tools is that they're still focusing so heavily on desktop and Google has said they're mobile first. And so I'm doing everything I can because we have API APIs into tar. Um, emulators and simulators are what we've renamed to the page of scope and the circulator. Yeah. We have the ability to plug those into other tools so that they can at least like show a mobile version. Uh, because I feel like so many of these, when you dig into what is the mobile data, it's either an approximation based on desktop or you know, there's kind of shifting stuff in there. So, um, yeah, I, I'm ready for the rest of the industry to update to also be mobile first.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Well, you're, you're at the forefront of it and you're not, you're a, you're an innovator as far as mobile marketing and, and using traditional SEO tactic tactics specifically for mobile. So, uh, I appreciate what you're doing and it's, it's helping all of us, which is great. Yeah. Thanks. Um, all right, so, uh, to finish off here, where can people find you? Follow you? Um, what do you want to promote?
Cindy Krum: Sure. Uh, so like you mentioned earlier on Twitter, I'm Susie x, s u, zed, zed, I c k. S. Uh, that's the easiest place to get me. Um, but I'm all over the place traveling and speaking at conferences. So always come up and say hello to me if you know I'm going to be around, uh, or my email address is just Cindy at mobile maxi. Uh, and what am I trying to promote? Let's see. I'm trying to promote, uh, my tools. We just did a redesign of the homepage, which I'm really proud of and everyone laughs, but our tabs are screaming fast, like loading situation. Beautiful. I'm really proud of my team for that. Um, so I don't know, do you want a promo code? I'll make a promo code so that all your listeners can get 30 days free and the tools has that. That would be fantastic. What do you want your Promo code to be?
Jeff Byer: A digital rage,
Cindy Krum: digital rage. All caps then. All right, perfect. Do it.
Jeff Byer: I'll do it in the next five minutes. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for your time and again, a really, really fun conversation, loved having you on. And uh, I look forward to following you, seeing the updates and uh, hopefully we could do this again.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Awesome. Anytime. Happy to do it. Thank you very much for show notes and information. Go to digital [inaudible] dot FM. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at them. And please give us a rating and review. We sincerely appreciate it.
Today we talk with Beverly Macy, Adjunct Professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management and Technology & Marketing Consultant. Beverly specializes in Blockchain, IoT, and AI technologies and is a published resource on the cutting edge of the present and future of these technologies.
About Beverly Macy
Twitter @BeverlyMacy LinkedIn BeverlyMacy Article: The Forecast for IoT: Cloud with a Chance of Blockchain Article: How 3 Top Trends Will Shape Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies in the 2nd Half of 2019
Show Links
Unchained Podcast @laurashin Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for interesting new content @globaljeff
Transcript
Speaker 1: [inaudible]
Jeff Byer: Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things Internet and the people that make it great. My name is still Jeff Byer and if you want me to prove it, go follow me @globaljeff on Twitter. Today, we talked to Beverly Macy. She is an adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson School of management. And she is also a digital technology consultant specializing in blockchain, IoT, and AI.
Jeff Byer: She mentioned a large automotive client that she's working with currently. Most of her work is in supply chain management which makes sense for anything like blockchain to work. So, we'll get into that in detail a little later. So before we get to the interview, just wanted to talk about a recent interesting website audit I did for a customer. A current customer was asking me if I could help his father's business because they were having some issues with SEO and website performance and overall digital marketing and business. So of course I want to help out and plus I want to see, you know, how this local business is failing. So bad in a relatively a medium market, not a big market. So I went, I was excited to look at it from a research standpoint.
Jeff Byer: So I went and looked at it. And as typical with these local businesses, I've been through a couple of different designers that have been through a couple of different Wordpress themes. and I just laugh because none of them optimize anything. Most of them are not developers. They're just, they modify themes through the WYSIWYG and what they can't get done. They just ignore as far as requests from the customer. So needless to say they hosted on Bluehost, which I have been public about, my disdain for bluehost and there are performance issues that they don't even, they don't even offer HTTP/2. You have to still pay for an SSL certificate. They don't allow you to use any of the free resources from the c panel. Uh, there's many issues and you know, they have, they have very opaque pricing. They're going to get you in on a $3 and 95 cent per month, or you know, I think it's four 95 a month, but then they're going to charge you 20, 95 a month on your next year renewal.
Jeff Byer: It's very unfair policies, a lot like GoDaddy's pricing policies where you pay a $5 for a domain and then it costs you $28 when it renews. It's, it's a, it's not something that I advocate and I've moved away almost completely moved away from both companies. So that's the way you should treat companies that you're not exactly happy with. So anyway, they're hosted, they have a wordpress installation that's hosted on, on bluehost. I looked into their statistics and SEO and they're doing fine for their company name, but none of their other high value keywords are working at all. They look like somebody sold them into a content marketing campaign that was completely out of context. That was never going to rank because Google knows that they are a service provider and the information that they were providing was out of context for keywords that probably weren't even going to convert.
Jeff Byer: So it was an interesting case study. I'm, I've did a couple of, you know, their, their lighthouse report was terrible. There were two links. There were two images that were being linked from the development server of one of the previous designers. Uh, it's, it's a mess. And so, what I started to is go through the technical issues. so one fixing the errors in the console to looking at the the security vulnerabilities that are always included with j query. Uh, they were a bootstrap based theme, so it was requiring j query, but it was an old version of j query. But I think even the newest version of j query is still going to give a vulnerability air. So I'm not sure that that can go away completely. Uh, this was the funny part is they actually do have https security on the server.
Jeff Byer: It's just not a, I think only three or four of the pages actually use it. So they're getting penalized there. they've got uh, poor color contrast on all text on the site, which you know, is not only a usability issue but a accessibility issue and a SEO factor as well. Not being able to read the content images, didn't have alt descriptions, links with no discernible names and small tap targets on mobile. So these are all really standard things when, when we build websites here, especially in the design process. So since we custom design everything, we address these issues from the beginning working with themes, you don't get to design. And if the theme developer decided that you know, this fancy way of doing buttons though not accessible, was easier to sell, then that's the way they're going to do it. And unless you know the code and are able to get in there and modify it yourself, you're going to inherit all of those issues.
Jeff Byer: So one great article that I was, that I saw while I was poking around in this stuff is when you're, when you're deciding on a theme, accessibility and performance should be your number one priority. So don't go to theme forest and just start looking at designs, get that, get in there and test these things. and then beyond that, you know, the hosting and using CDNs caching, all those performance upgrades are an absolute must. So needless to say, there's a lot to do with this company and I am going to help them out and hopefully I can share the case study with the public once we have it done. there content issues started when I wasn't receiving his emails and that's always a bad sign because that could either mean his, his domain is being penalized. So I use Gmail for my business, the g suite and g Gmail jumped his emails to me and these weren't cold emails.
Jeff Byer: He, I had already been introduced to him through my client and he was not able to get his emails through the Google junk filter. So, he's probably been sending email campaigns through his domain, so or through his actual email server, but bluehost is nefarious for re giving out IP addresses that have had previous penalties. And so he could have just inherited assist an IP address that has had issues in his is blacklisted or, or at least put on a spam directories. Uh, so dealing with that, that was the first issue is that I didn't get emails from him for a week because they were all being junked. So once I figured out they were getting junked, I whitelisted him. I've started using his direct Gmail address and uh, did a quick IP IP penalty search and there were no apparent IP penalties. But getting them away from bluehost and getting him on a clean, dedicated IP is definitely top priority.
Jeff Byer: So moving the site is going to be number one. He has in the last three months has a ton of spammy backlinks sites that obviously aren't anywhere near what his, what his John MRA, so completely out of context. But none of these links had over a 10 domain rank. So really bad spamming links. He got talked into some sort of an old SEO firm that is doing more harm than good. So I told them we'd have to disavow, start disavowing all of those links that were purchased and start over with good quality links and good quality content. none of, like I said, none of his keywords are ranking on page one a, the keywords that he is ranking for or at least optimize for are very low volume. And so I'm thinking this keyword research was done by somebody who, one wanted to just show rankings and get quick wins or two didn't actually take into account the effectiveness or do any competitive research and see what their click through rate or success rate was for each of these words.
Jeff Byer: So another issue, a stock, a really low resolution photo for the, for the big banner image means one thing to me is that the person who was installing this template and, and playing around with the template had no idea how to use Photoshop or optimize an image. and to the source images were probably low resolution as well. So instead of asking for better assets, he just put this really low resolution, terrible looking image, and having this huge banner on top of the website with absolutely no real value was awful. Anyway, so the first impression look on the site is terrible. Uh, then he's got a stock photo of a guy holding a plumber's wrench with no personalization, no personality, no actual. It looks so generic that this could be for, for any company in the world. it's missing calls to action.
Jeff Byer: The goal, the main call to action is a telephone call, but there's no links on the telephone calls. Uh, the other call to action is a email, but there's no links on the emails. Call to actions. The buttons go to the contact page, which is not secure. So you get a warning as soon as you get there. the blog has really thin content. Whoever's writing this content put in, you know, the minim I don't even think most of the articles there are over 500 words. and obviously that's not, like I said, it's out of context. There's no ownership verification there. Google my business listing, it got slammed early on with a couple of bad reviews and the customers never, they responded to the customer in time, which was the right thing to do. But the [inaudible], they never asked the customers to reconsider their refuse after talking to them or resolving their issue.
Jeff Byer: So, so they've got issues all across the board. So, the links are really what's killing me or what's going to take a while to overcome the SEO tactics were just outdated and they're spammy backlinks, the keyword stuffing, no verifiable public information. I mean, this is, this is the, this is starting from zero on eat, even though their domains been around for awhile. So this current state of their website is awful. So I think what my, what my my, what my gut is telling me is get it, just get this out of wordpress. They're not gonna use it. put it into a easier to use probably Java script of a content management system, but get the site static as soon as possible. Get rid of all of those extra resources, simplify it and make it fast on mobile as fast as humanly possible, get better assets, better loading assets and uh, put, put an, put a face to the company and uh, actually get some, get some credibility, have the author himself write articles so that he starts building up a following and uh, get, get their social media campaigns built up and uh, hopefully get, gets backlinks from resources.
Jeff Byer: So big project there, I'll use it as a case study because it's not, it's not going to be for profit. Uh, I'm helping a existing client out who who I really enjoy helping out. So this'll be a fun one, a good case study. So I'll keep you posted on that. And now we have our interview with Beverly Macy. Once again, Beverly Macy is an adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson School of management at digital technology consultants specializing in blockchain, Iot and AI. She has been published several places and used as a resource for people like Oracle and uh, and people on the blockchain in blockchain technology who are doing innovating and sharing information. So she's at the forefront of all of this and it's a very exciting conversation. So here we go, be Macy
Jeff Byer: How are you today?
Beverly Macy: I am great, thank you. And thank you for having me.
Jeff Byer: Of course. Of course.
Jeff Byer: So to start out, why don't we talk about the beginning, how you got started in everything digital and technology.
Beverly Macy: Okay,
Beverly Macy: sure. So I've always had a passion for emerging technology. I started my career as a software developer way back a long time ago. I was in corporate America for quite a while in traditional marketing and sales roles. Then I started my own company and I've been teaching it yes,
Beverly Macy: Cla
Beverly Macy: for about over 15 years and traditional marketing kinds of courses. Somewhere in the mid two thousands, it became evident to me
Beverly Macy: through my consulting work that clients were beginning to ask about things like blogging and podcasting. Interestingly enough. And we did some research on behalf of one of my larger clients and discovered the whole emerging world of social media, which is now really digital media, including mobile. and that was kind of how it all started. I've always had a pension for the emerging technology of the day, so.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And so based on that, how did, what was the idea that spawned the, the book about Social Media Now?
Beverly Macy: Well, when I was that guy, UCLA a in the early days, we launched a, one of the very first social media marketing courses in the United States at UCLA. And that was very breakthrough at the time. And we started doing some business conferences around social media marketing, this new phenomenon. This is the mid two thousands, 2008, 2009. And I was actually approached by McGraw Hill at after one of my talks in New York City. and they asked me to write the book, which I was really pleased to do. And I was joined by my coauthor Terry Thompson, who had been a former student of mine, but she also had a background in marketing. So we were able to, pull all of our resources and write a pretty seminal book on social media marketing. The book went on to be used in a number of universities as well as kind of a strategic look at social media for our businesses.
Jeff Byer: Okay. And at the time, what what was the the hot social media trends and what has changed since then?
Beverly Macy: Well, the interesting thing is we were very naive at the time. We saw a social media marketing and social media as you know, the good thing that was going to connect everybody and make everybody happy. and in the beginning it kind of did. There was a lot of discovery. People were very excited about being able to kind of bring the global world, you know, right to your fingertips, if you will. and what was happening at the time the, we didn't actually write the book about specific platforms. We approached it more from a strategic standpoint, but at the time it was, you know, Facebook, Twitter, linkedin, snapchat I don't think can be really hit the market yet, although I will say that in the book we do cover a couple of things that were very forward leaning. One, which was virtual currency, which nobody was talking about, but it was being widely used in gaming platforms. So that's the predecessor to bitcoin and, the crypto currency world. And the other thing, we devoted a whole chapter to measurement and analytics. And back in 2011, nobody was talking about analytics and social media. So it was pretty forward leaning in terms of what we covered, I think that what's changed is unfortunately, we've seen
Beverly Macy: kind of the dark side of of social media and I think we're ironing out all those kinks now, but we're realizing that, you know, we've kind of unleashed a, a two headed monster and we want to really hopefully get back to the positive side. the other side of that coin is that everything is now mobile. So early on, social media was at the desktop or on the left up top. Now it's clearly mobile. So
Jeff Byer: now that, that Pandora's box we opened, you're, you're referring to free speech and uh, and negative negativity on social media or,
Beverly Macy: yeah, I think so. I think it's the idea that if anything goes and, and that's great, you know in the early days anything goes, but it turns out that anything goes can kind of go dark also. And I think it's been a little bit shocking to marketers and to people in general to realize how negative, you know, the, the anonymous public can actually skew. So that's been a little bit, you know, just the unfortunate, I do think that we will get past that so to speak and we'll be able to counter it. But
Beverly Macy: I think that's definitely been an issue. And then of course the other thing that's come up in the last couple of years has been privacy insecurity. And I think those two issues are also getting a new look. You know, what does it really mean to be giving my data away for the opportunity to use the platform? in the beginning that sounded like a fair exchange. And now I think some people are starting to question that.
Jeff Byer: Oh, and the devices have a lot to do with that too, right?
Beverly Macy: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of factors in this. I mean, we could spend a whole hour talking about kind of where this all went, not wrong, but how this kind of new phenomenon is occurred. But nonetheless, from a marketing standpoint, you know, and from a digital media stand point, we want to try to counter that as much as possible.
Jeff Byer: Gotcha. Yeah. Uh, so transitioning from the social media you are now wrote the book on Social Media Marketing and that extended into digital marketing. Yeah,
Beverly Macy: absolutely. Well, I think the market changed it itself. You know, digital social was kind of a thing over on the side. So you had, you know, traditional marketing and marketing and PR, whatever, and then social media marketing. Now everything is really digital. I think we could all agree that, I would say the digital umbrella includes social platforms. It includes mobile, you know, it's now starting to include a lot more about voice activation. So I think all of these things are, part of digital.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. I, I, and I don't know that there's even a separation between traditional marketing and digital marketing now because digital has to be a part of even your mainstream campaigns.
Beverly Macy: Totally agree. Totally agree. And I think that's a really blending. Finally, I think there was a lot of pushback on that in the beginning and traditional marketers wanted to kind of have a, you know, a firewall between the two and I think that that's absolutely come down. That would be correct.
Jeff Byer: So now let's transition a little bit into the blockchain. how did you get to be involved in, in researching and, and blockchain reporting?
Beverly Macy: Sure. So, let's see. I've, as I said, I've always been interested in emerging technology in this, started to bubble up, you know, the bitcoin phenomenon started in 2008 with the Sitoshi white paper on Bitcoin, but, that was kind of way off to the side. and as I said in our book in 2011, we did write about, um crypto currencies or what was called at the time, virtual currencies. And just the whole concept of it, not so much specifically to a platform. as time went on, I think that in 2017, we saw a big rush of what was called ICO or initial coin offerings. There was a lot of buzz around what is a cryptocurrency bitcoin new coins we're being in and her introduced to the market. But my interest was really more about the blockchain technology that was underlying all of these crypto currency phenomenon.
Beverly Macy: And I happened to meet, with a group of people who ended up starting something called the La blockchain lab, which is a consortium of UCLA, USC, cal tech, the city of Los Ans was some corporate members. Panasonic was a founding member who really wanted to look at the marketplace and look at the opportunities from the standpoint of, you know, what is this phenomenon? Where will it be applicable? Are there any real use cases that we can get our arms around who's doing, you know, study into this and really kind of take it quote seriously rather than just say, oh, you know, the new shiny object bitcoins.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, I remember. It was, yeah, no, I remember when wind, you know, bitcoin was, was bitcoin and you, everybody is like, okay, what is this and how does it work? And there the word was blockchain and so everybody associated blockchain with cryptocurrency, but blockchain itself didn't actually get separated from crypto currency recently as far as, as far as general reputation, not as far as technical minded people, but uh, people who, who were looking at cryptocurrencies and people who are looking at a blockchain and realizing there were two separate things.
Beverly Macy: Absolutely. That's 100% correct. And so I, um have, you know, only a couple of clients that I work with these days I picked very selectively and one of them is in the high end auto automotive space and they wanted to look at blockchain as it relates to their supply chain management. So we did a very exhaustive study actually in Europe, with some other folks related to looking at what is block chain number one, and educating ton of the board of directors of what does it even mean. And number two, who are the vendors that are working in it, you know, talking with companies like Oracle and sale, even sales force and SAP and IBM and really kind of doing a deep dive into how are these vendors that that primarily, service the enterprise market. How are they approaching block chain? What are they looking at, what are they doing, who are some of their early customers, that type of thing. And getting, all of that information in a report and delivering it back to the client, which we completed in the beginning of this year. So it was a very exhaustive study and it was very revealing because it gave a good kind of state of the market, if you will, of where, where all this is at.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And I remember doing my deep dive into blockchain and you know, creating different you know, small little exchange apps and things like that just to get a better understanding of it. and my you know, you always think of like, what would it be a dream project? So something that that is a problem now that you could use blockchain to solve. And funny enough, what I came up with was in the automotive space, but was being able to track every the history and transaction of a vehicle. So when you buy a used vehicle, you know, when it was purchased, when it was serviced, when it w w when it had accidents, you know, all verifiable information so that there isn't so much scamming and, and uh, and distrust in the industry.
Beverly Macy: Absolutely. And that's the provenance application. You know, the idea of the historical, tracking of, of a, an object that is also being used now. IBM and Walmart have a a study going on in food safety, the ability to track the seed to the marketplace. where does food go? There's a lot of fraud in, in fish, in the fish market and the olive oil market. You'd be surprised at how deep some of this can get. Also. I know that de Beers diamonds was looking at this related to diamond mining. so there's a lot of different applications. When you start thinking about tracking something's life and the components of that product or serve, you know, that product that you're talking about. So you're absolutely right. And that is an exciting part of blockchain. it's, again, it's, it's in development.
Beverly Macy: This is a completely different way of thinking about our supply chain, which is that this idea that you're going to track every single part of it, down to, you know, the screws in the, in the car or the carburetor or whatever it may be. and I think it's really exciting. It's, it's not a quick fix. However, it's not something that you think of an implement, you know, quickly this is being taught to, you've got to get all the different vendors involved to sign up to this. Everybody who's on the supply chain has to agree to this level of transparency. And that's, you know, that's a challenge. Let's face it. So,
Jeff Byer: yeah. And there's going to be plenty of companies that would be you know, it's in their financial interest not to expose all that information.
Beverly Macy: Well, that's true. And so blockchain, you know, there's permissioned and permissioned lists blockchains. So you can actually develop a permissioned blockchain where everybody is basically a private chain where everyone involved or all the parties and stakeholders involved could have an agreement with one another but not be public to the public so to speak. you know, so there's lots of different things that are being looked at. And I think, what I'm interested most interested in [inaudible] related to blockchain and I've been writing about this is blockchain and combined with AI and Iot. So in the enterprise or what, what sums vendors are calling intelligence systems or the intelligent enterprise, which is all of these new technologies that are talking about linking, you know, Iot is all about sensor data sensors everywhere and the data that comes back, it's way too much data for most companies to know what to do with. So AI is part of kind of parsing all that data. What does it all mean? Who needs it, where should we route it? And then the blockchain is not necessarily just a storage, but it's kind of an infrastructure or a highway really for everything to live on. So we're seeing companies like SAP,
Beverly Macy: IBM, look at these, three kinds of technologies of how can they kind of service one another and maybe something will emerge from that. So I think that going into 2020, we're going to see more of that kind of approach in the enterprise, not just here's our standalone blockchain. And then I think that inside of that, a, what could begin to happen back to the conversation about, you know, different stakeholders in the supply chain is something called, you know, tokenized incentives. So could you build in some incentives that are a token or a currency but not, not a Fiat currency or a currency on the public market that could be generated to incentivize all the players to be part of, you know, this transparency that's going to be required. So it's kind of interesting to begin to think like that. It takes you in some fascinating conversations. They get pretty deep.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Yeah. And I do agree with your previous point that the the blockchain is a to look to as a tool but not the product itself. And in combination with other technologies, especially AI technologies that it can be very powerful and be used in, in ways to automate a lot of resources, especially you know, thinking resources like sorting through data on sensors that you mentioned. that's a ton of data constantly coming in. So yeah,
Beverly Macy: yeah. And companies are finding that they just can't, you know, big data. I, I wrote him a piece of a while back on, you know, forget big data. Let's go to small data. The problem is that what data do we really need? You know, and, and sorting that out, you know, we have a lot of tools to do that, but AI can do it so much faster. So what's the data that's going to be required? And sometimes we don't even know what that data is. You know, data begets data in some ways, you know? Uh, so I think that applying AI to this marketplace is going to be fascinating to see where it goes.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. It's going to be incredible to see the implementations, especially on the larger scale, like the, like the larger companies that are have the resources to do that research and have the the ability to to, to process large amounts of data on scale and see what, see what's found. Cause that's, you know, I think there was a few articles that I read that this is the, the generation of data where it's just producing tons and tons of data, but, you know, pay me a 1% of it actually gets, gets sifted through to find results.
Beverly Macy: Exactly. And then, you know, what, what do we need? I mean, you start thinking about the insurance industry, all the data that's involved in the insurance industry or the legal industry or anything, you know, all of these industries with tons of data and can AI began to help, you know, sort through that for some interesting, some very, like I say, some very interesting results. So, yeah, I think it's a fun time and I tell students all the time, this is a great time to be. If you, if you have a, an inkling towards these kinds of questions, this is a great time to make an impact in how business is structured for the next 20, 30 years. You know, I think this is going to be a longterm project. So
Jeff Byer: yeah. Uh, it's, you know, this is pretty much the beginning, but but happy to see where it goes and, and, I love staying on top of it and I'm sure you love as much being involved in it on a, yeah. As a, as a consultant and and as a professor, you bet
Beverly Macy: you bought one. It's really fun. There's some great thinkers right now. We, we the the blockchain lab,
Beverly Macy: I just did a, um oh, couple of months ago at USC, we held an event with the city of Los [inaudible]
Beverly Macy: Tangelos can, we talked about smart cities and we talked about blockchain and AI and Iot and some things related to the Olympics. Coming to Los Angeles in 2028 and how some of these technologies might be applied to you know, whether it's the logistics of moving people around the city or whether it's you know, entertainment or tracking what's going on. It's, it's, it's really fun to start thinking about those kinds of real world projects and situations.
Jeff Byer: That's great. so are there things that are, that are live now that that utilize the blockchain that most of the general public wouldn't know? Is there interacting with the blockchain?
Beverly Macy: You know, I don't know that there's the public would know or not know. I will say that there are, some use cases that are of note. One is myrisk, which is the biggest shipping company on it's out of the Netherlands, I believe, but it's the biggest shipping company on the planet. And so every time you see these great big gigantic barred ships with, you know, thousands of containers and if you get down to the port of La at the harbor or whatever, you would see these kinds of things. IBM and Myrisk have an HSBC. The bank has done some really interesting things with blockchain around tracking on shipping containers and even tracking inside what's inside of some of the shipping containers. So that's not going to affect the public directly. Although, you know, the idea here is that as we get better transparency in this type of thing, the products that you actually do receive as I, I'll go back to like, is that really all of oil? Well let's hope it is, you know, and maybe now there'll be a way to prove that it is. So there's things like that
Beverly Macy: that I think also is again, in supply chain management is one of the biggest areas at least that I've been looking at. you, we talked about provenance also this idea of being able to track a vehicle or a diamond that type of thing as well. we are seeing a lot of you know, early Beta kind of projects and that, but I don't have something that I could point to that would say this is blockchain and it's affecting the rest of the world.
Beverly Macy: However, I will pivot to say that Libra, the announcement from Facebook, which is not technically a virtual currency or not technically a token, is going to be very interesting to see how that develops and what it has done. The announcement is it's brought it to the public consciousness of what is a cryptocurrency. Even the conversation around Libra has sparked people to say, oh, I didn't know what it even was. So that's a kind of a public education almost, if you will.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Kind of like when a, when o.com was accepting bitcoin and uh, that proprietor introduced it to the public. Like, wow, you can actually exchange bitcoin for good goods was a huge step and now, and now Facebook is yeah. Using its mainstream popularity to, to make this public. And Yeah, there was a lot of outlet out outlash as far as, you know, why is Facebook building their own cryptocurrency? But, it's, yeah, it's what they do with it. Just like anything. It's like what do you do? What does Facebook do with all their data and,
Beverly Macy: well, exactly. And you know, Facebook, I mean, you know, opinions on Facebook again as a whole other show, probably a whole nother conversation to have. But I think, again, just the benefit of putting it into the kind of public consciousness is useful because that gets people thinking and talking about a new way of exchanging value with one another. And I think that is a positive, what Facebook actually ends up doing with it. You know, will it just be chuck e cheese tokens for 2 billion people or will it be more than that? That's, that's to be determined, you know?
Jeff Byer: Yeah. So we're kinda getting to the end here. So there's a couple of other questions I'd like to ask each of our guests. so obviously follow your person to follow as far as blockchain and and, you know, current events falling blockchain. who else do you follow in this space?
Beverly Macy: That is a really good question or a really good point. there's a number of podcasts that are out there that are pretty good. There's one by, I think her name is Laura Shin. It's called unchained. And she has very interesting guests from everything from the enterprise approach to the kind of crypto currency approach to the kind of wild cryptocurrency. She did
Beverly Macy: some really good interviews with folks around Libra when it was first announced for instance in different things like that. so that's a podcast that I like to pay attention to. I also follow on it just in the General News, you know, r one, I do have a Google alert set for, you know, blockchain and AI and Iot. So I get lots of different kinds of news that comes in and it's kind of interesting to see where it's all coming from. You know, who's talking about it on Twitter and on, linkedin. There's lots of people talking about crypto. I try to make a definition, you know, between crypto and blockchain. And so I am interested in what's happening in the crypto space because it's, it's going to matter as time goes on. But my primary interest is in, as I said, the blockchain Iot. AI.
Beverly Macy: Okay. So, you know, I follow the traditional folks in that, the oracles, the, the IBM's, the SAP sales force, you know, to see what they're doing and talking about. So that's kind of how I do it. And then through the lab, I'm one of our, one of our goals is to begin to do more education kinds of seminars and things like that. But we ourselves exchange a lot of information. So it's been very useful to be part of a really smart group of people who are deep into the topics.
Jeff Byer: That's fantastic. So we'll, we'll link to that into linked to all those resources in the show notes. And are there any tools you use on a regular basis that that help with searching for cryptocurrency or doing research for clients, anything like that?
Beverly Macy: Well, as I mentioned you know, Google alerts are always useful. It's unbelievable how they've been around forever and people forget about them. But the Google will deliver right to your email. you know, news about whatever your topic is. So I do think that that's useful. I also, you know, I, I, there was a meetup here in Los Angeles. It was the Beverly Hills Blah, a bit corny and I think, and they, they did some events. So I tried to just kind of stay in, in touch in general with what's on. the tools that I use in research are pretty much, you know, what everybody uses. There's a lot you know, there's, there's a lot available out there. It's just a matter of getting to it. And then I will say that, you know, through the partnerships that I've built myself as well as through UCLA and also the lab, you know, we can get some pretty good briefings from some of the companies I talked about. they're not giving us proprietary information, but they are helping us to do a deep dive into how they approach the market. So I think that's very useful. And I know Amazon is now in the block chain market. They've got a pretty good public, like slide deck that you can find somehow by searching Amazon and blockchain and you know, I think it's
Beverly Macy: in their cloud services that kind of got bundled under that, but there's lots of information out there. So,
Jeff Byer: yeah. And uh I'm looking at the article that that uh, oracle has posted on their blog. Uh, your article of the, yeah. Uh, the challenges, and it's linking to uh, iot-analytics.com.
Beverly Macy: Okay. Okay, good. Yeah, that's great. And that's probably an oracle. Yes. I have done a couple of different things for Oracle. there should be another one as well. This one just was
Beverly Macy: released, I guess last week. so, you know, talking with them about these subjects
Beverly Macy: and then of course they share with me some of, you know, how they're approaching the market as well and that that helps build the knowledge. I think the nice thing right now, I'll just kind of end with this. The nice thing in the blockchain universe right now is that everybody's in a sort of a learning mode. So there's a lot of sharing of information and that's helpful, you know I know MIT is doing some great stuff, other universities. but I think there's a nice kind of, again, sharing between, you know corporations and universities and Eaton, the city of Los Angeles. We're here talking with them and they talk with us. And so that's very helpful,
Jeff Byer: right? Yeah, yeah. Open source communication definitely paves the road for progress, especially in new technologies like this. So it's important to keep that open. And I think having that public pressure to, for corporations to keep that open trend is has been amazing. And especially for emerging technologies like this. Uh, everybody can benefit from everybody else's experiments, research mistakes, Eh, ah, yeah. Fail fails. Yup.
Beverly Macy: Well said. Well said. Yep.
Jeff Byer: All right. Beverly will thank you very much for being on our podcast. We'd love having you and it's great to, to talk about cryptocurrency and, and digital marketing and Iot with you. anything, everywhere you want to promote a, have people follow you, where can they get in touch with you?
Beverly Macy: You know, you can follow me on Twitter at Beverly Macy. I'm on Linkedin. I'm, I'm everywhere. would love to, you know, connect with folks and you know, I'm happy to spread the word. I think this is a, again, this is a very exciting time and as I said, I tell my students this all the time, you know, if I was sitting in your seat, I'd be, you know, tactically jumping out of, out of my chair with excitement because there's so much opportunity out there.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, there's definitely an opportunity. Well, thank you for, for bringing the subject to the forefront and also teaching the students about it so that we can have a, a, a well well-informed workforce coming in after college. So thank you very much for, for your time and
Jeff Byer: yeah, we'll look forward to speaking here against you. Okay. Thanks a lot for show notes and information. Go to digital [inaudible] dot FM. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digital rage at them. And please give us a rate and review and sincerely appreciate it.
On today's episode, we bring back Kevin Indig, VP of Content and SEO at G2.com. Jeff Byer talks to Kevin about microsites, landing pages, SEO, sitemaps, and a couple of Twitter controversies.
Transcription:
Jeff: Welcome to Digital Rage, the podcast about all things internet and the people that make it great. My name is Jeff Byer, and today we are having Kevin Indig back on the show. Kevin did a talk in Minnesota and talked about using microsites instead of landing pages, which stirred my interest. So I wanted to get him back on the show and talk about landing pages and all the good things that he's doing over at G2.
Jeff: Just quick short announcement. Matt is taking a little bit of a hiatus from the podcast. He's gotten very busy, and this does take a lot of time and a lot of resources. He's always going to have this opportunity to come back on the show and either promote, cohost, whatever he wants.
Jeff: But for now, in order to keep the consistency and be posting every week and create a weekly show, I am going to take over all parts of the production. So, the things that might be a little on the sketchy side moving forward that Matt used to take care of is guest-booking and the show notes. So the show notes I will do my best. I'm probably going to have to go with an automated solution for the show notes as a starter and then go back, read through them and have them all transcribed and sent to me. So a lot of outsourcing there, outsourcing the design issues and refilling the queue again.
Jeff: So, what we're going to do is reach out to all of the guests that are on my list. My list includes Izzie Smith, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, Bill Slawski, Rand Fishkin. There are quite a few people that I follow that have a ton of questions, people that I interact with on Twitter. I interact with Kevin on Twitter a lot, so he was natural to get on the show and talk about SEO and content marketing, digital marketing.
Jeff: The state of digital marketing is that everything is changing. Google's AI is getting smarter. Context is a huge factor now. You can't just go after a keyword and expect to rank for that keyword just by creating a landing page. You need to provide value and context.
Jeff: So, there's been a lot of great content floating around about context and about understanding semantic search and Google understanding which search results are more relevant for the user's search intent. And so, we talked to Kevin about that, and Kevin starts every project with no keyword research, and he was kind of hinting that keyword research is almost dead. He didn't want to go all the way to say that it was completely dead.
Jeff: But what he starts with is the problem that your product is trying to solve and then understand the customer's journey from when they have that problem to making a decision to choose a problem.
Jeff: So, the top, middle, bottom of the funnel, create an experience, and that's how the idea of microsites came about. And his time at Atlassian showed that these microsites really do work, and it is a viable option for your content strategy moving forward, especially big sites that have a lot of different content and ideas around them focusing an idea into one bucket, which is what we're calling a microsite now. Not a separate domain or subdomain but on the actual site taking your main content and building it out into its own mini-experience inside of your whole brand experience.
Jeff: Great conversation and definitely he's one of the best. He's our first repeat guest so love having him on. So, before we get to the interview, sorry I'm talking too fast. Before we get to the interview, a couple of things I wanted to bring up. There were a bunch of tweets about MozCon, so MozCon was a couple of weeks ago now. And a lot of people were live-tweeting, especially Lily Ray. I love Lily Ray. She was doing a great job live-tweeting during the event and doing a great job introducing the presenters and the presenters' topics and things like that.
Jeff: A lot of the content that I found really valuable is that content should include information on contributors. So, this goes to what Marie Haynes and Lily Rae have been talking about for a long time, which is author pages and letting not only Google but the audience know who's writing the content and what their credentials are.
Jeff: So this is something I'm going to start implementing something for myself, which is everything that I put out there. I will have one page with all of my information, where I've been published, where I post, where to follow me, all of my LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram profiles. Basically just an author-info page.
Jeff: And then along those lines is that brands that post on behalf of the brand and do content marketing as a brand. That brand will need a profile on why this brand has the authority to post about things like this.
Jeff: So, it's a lot of somehow verifying that you do have the expertise in the subject matter that you're talking about. So opinion pieces, things like that, it's not as relevant as what your day-to-day job is and what you post about is going to have to be connected and verifiable through third-party means. And for Google-trusted third party means.
Jeff: So, for a lot of big brands and celebrities and things like that, that's going to include Wikipedia and IMDB and follower counts and things like that. For us normal people, it's going to be a little bit more difficult, but the more we're out there and posting, and the more we're getting noticed and our content is being interacted with, the better we're going to do as far as being a trusted resource.
Jeff: And HARO, Help a Reporter Out, is a good way to get started with that. And Marie Haynes mentions this a lot. And HARO is basically just reporters looking for sources on different articles. And so I've been a member of HARO for a while now. And I've contributed to quite a few articles. Now that I've looking to make an author page for myself, I have to hunt all those down, which is going to be a little bit of an issue, but it'll be fun all the same.
Jeff: Another topic from MozCon that came up is that Google My Business, which we always refer to as GMB, and in this interview, we'll refer to it as GMB as well. If you reach out to your customers and ask them how happy they are with your product, if they say yes they're happy, and you send them to write a Google review, and if they're not happy you send them somewhere else where they can rant but not publicly or not on a third-party forum, this is a violation of the GMB guidelines, and you could get penalized for that.
Jeff: So this was interesting because we have an episode. I forgot which episode it is, but I'll put it in the show notes because I'm mentioning it now. But, this was a tactic that one of our interviewees had performed in the past. And that is previously, you wouldn't think about it. It was common sense that you'd ask your customers if they're happy, and if you are, you ask them for a review.
Jeff: But now, since it's against the rules, it is somewhat weighing your reviews towards what you want as the result, you're influencing it a little bit by filtering them out like that. But for the most part, I still think that in Google My Business or any review site in general, the only way that people are really going to be fired up to write a review is if they're not happy.
Jeff: So, having good service and a good product, of course, you're going to have the nefarious one-star trying to bring your rating down. But, for the most part, I think that as long as you're paying attention to your customers, responding to customer service requests, making sure that people are unhappy are heard and addressed and somehow try and make them happy, that's always the best policy. More of a business policy than anything else. If you want a good review, a good rating, that's how you get them is to be a good company and be a good person in general or a good citizen.
Jeff: All right so another controversial few tweets that I addressed, and I talk about this in the interview. So I don't want to ruin it all. But, one of the tweets that were being sent out during Mozcon was that there are no longer any national SERPs, which is a search engine result page.
Jeff: And so, what that means is I had to do a lot of clarifying, and I was tweeting back and forth with Lily Ray and a few others. And what that basically means is Google's search engine results pages are no longer ... cannot be isolated from geographic influence.
Jeff: So, if you are going to search for anything, anywhere, anytime, your geolocation will have something to do with how that page is displayed. So, we already know that if you're searching for a local business or a service around you, service near me, something like that, absolutely that's a given that you're going to be served a map. The map is going to know your location, and you're going to see results based on ratings and reviews and things like that.
Jeff: So, it was an interesting discussion, and Kevin and I get into that more in the episode. But it was nice to clarify that. So for a software company that serves everybody, the fact that their GMB listing is based in Minnesota is that going to affect the rankings. And I'm currently running a test on that, and I will publish my results and make sure that everybody who's involved in the conversation is copied on that.
Jeff: Moz now is promoting their new, local analytics tool. And since local is now a staple of every search results page, it makes sense that analytics will follow suit. So, it's definitely an interesting tool I want to check out. I stopped using Moz a long time ago because I was getting better data. No tool is perfect. And you can use five different tools and get different numbers on each tool depending on what access they have, what frequency they're crawling, things like that.
Jeff: So, right now Ahrefs and SEMrush seem to be my go-to for analytics research and reporting. But obviously, analytics, Google Analytics, and Webmaster tools are on the list as well. So Moz I will probably give another chance because of this new inside local analytics tool.
Jeff: And then algorithm updates were happening during MozCon, which was kind of funny. So Marie Haynes was chomping at the bit to get home and do a new version of her podcast and newsletter talking about all the changes that have been happening, all the volatility in surfs for the month of July. And as soon as she gets back home, she gets sick. And finally, she did this week she posted talking about all the volatility.
Jeff: And I think this is the new world we're living in is that Google is going to be constantly working on their algorithm and making changes that seem major but now it's almost completely up to the AI and running real-time searches really fast. So I think this is going to be the norm until. I don't see it normalizing for a while. And I think that Google is also going to build into their algorithm that they like to switch up the results, change things up a little bit.
Jeff: Those are my thoughts on MozCon. We're going to get into GMB short names and things like that later. But for now, I want to bring in our guest, Kevin Indig.
Jeff: All right today we're talking to Kevin Indig. Kevin Indig is the VP of SEO and content at G2.com. He's a mentor for German Accelerator and is the creator of the Tech Bound newsletter. Hey, Kevin, how are you?
Kevin: Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you?
Jeff: Doing well. Thank you. So, what spawned us to have you on the show again was when I saw you were giving a talk in Minnesota about microsites. And this is a topic that I'm very interested in.
Kevin: Right yeah.
Jeff: So my typical approach. I'm dealing with SMBs, so my typical approach to these content strategies, SEO strategies for them is landing pages for their high-value keywords that are relevant, contextual and serve the user. And now microsites is basically that on steroids. How did this idea come to fruition?
Kevin: So, it basically started at Atlassian, where I was before G2. And we basically iterated on the format and finally got to it. We have to take a step back. There are many good reasons to have landing pages and blogs and all these other formats that are around. But what if you merge the two? What if you were to combine them and target top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel keywords all in one experience? That's kind of the question and the point of view that we started at Atlassian. And we created a couple of really successful microsites that turned out to be our cash cow in terms of getting traffic. Some topics like [inaudible 00:15:58], ITSM, DevOps. And these are all really important topics for Atlassian and for Atlassian's products.
Kevin: So again, we asked ourselves why are these experiences fragmented across a website? If you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you think of it further, blogs are a format that's 30 years old. But the web has evolved ever since. So, you want to provide an experience that catches people at the very beginning of the problem and them leads them all the way down to convert.
Jeff: Yeah. And inside the same experience, all the relevant content is in one bucket basically for them to cross-pollinate.
Kevin: It is. And even further, this concept of a microsite that I introduced, I have to explain that this is not the classic microsite that a lot of people have in mind, which lives on a sub-domain and is a one-off for campaigns.
Kevin: The concept that I introduced is much more a maintained, living content hop if you will that lives on the root domain, off in the sub-directory. But has its own experience. This is something that I think is really important and that the brands were successful with this have embraced. To provide customer experiences for different topics that all live on the root domain and are connected to the brand. But they're almost a bit isolated in themselves.
Jeff: Yeah and so that's the other part that the word microsite became basically even sometimes on its own domain, something for specific to campaigns. But this is a separate experience within an existing domain within an existing website.
Jeff: So, how would you start this process? Would you create all the funnel keywords and then create an experience from there, or do you try and predict user use cases first?
Kevin: That is a really good question because it plays into something bigger, which is CUIC research and how we create content nowadays. I personally think that we're a bit [inaudible 00:18:22] keyword research. It doesn't really fit into how SEO works nowadays.
Kevin: It's a concept that worked really well when pages were up to four single keywords, but nowadays, pages allude much more to topics and user intent and therefore CUIC research in the classic sense probably isn't the most helpful anymore.
Kevin: So, the way that I start this is I usually start with the big problem that the product tries to solve. Every product solves at least one big problem. A car solves a problem of mobility for example. You could think that a computer solves the problem off productivity. These are all important topics, right? So to make it a bit more tangible and concrete, at Atlassian, one of the biggest cash cows was Jira, and Jira is a tool to solve project management. So project management would be a topic that I'd start with.
Kevin: Number one is to identify the big problem or one of the big problem that your product solves and start from there. Once you have the problem, you start to think of all the use cases that this problem occurs in, right? And then you go from there.
Kevin: So it is a problem-driven approach to content creation and CUIC research. And of course along the way, you would figure out stuff like search volume and maybe keyword difficulty, and you look at user intent. But it's not the first thing you start with. And this message is really important for me to bring across, right? A lot of people still go out. They have an idea of what their main keyword is. They throw it into a tool like Ubersuggest, they look at all the variations, they sort out the search volume, and then they go to create content.
Kevin: I don't think that's really the best approach anymore.
Jeff: Okay. So starting with the problem that you're solving and getting into the mind of the user and creating content there. So, from what you're saying, you could actually do pretty well with an experience without doing any keyword research at all.
Kevin: Pretty much yes. Again, the reality is I still check search volume from stuff. I still look into recommendations from tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. I don't disregard that. But, I'm not driven by that either, right? I try to have an empathetic approach to users and really create content for their problems. And that worked really well at Atlassian.
Kevin: Now again, of course, we check, we did some sort of CUIC research at Atlassian. But it's not how we started. We started with a user approach first. And I thought about what is the problem that we're trying to solve. What are all the questions that people have? And where do they get stuck? What are the big pain points? We talk to customers and users. We looked at forums like Reddit and Quora. We're looking at what people are searching for. Hacker news. Of course, depends on your topic a little bit, right?
Kevin: Social media and social networks. So basically looked at platforms that people use to exchange questions and answers and looked at what are the big questions that they're dealing with and not what keyword has the highest search volume. That's what I'm really trying to say here in essence. And we even talk to some of our customers, interviewed them. We talked to thought leaders in the space.
Kevin: We did a lot of classic surveys and market research and then created content based on that. And then, somewhere towards the end, we checked the recommendations from tools and search volume.
Jeff: So, more customer and content research first. And the keywords followed after that.
Kevin: Yes sir.
Jeff: Okay. So that would be a great point for anybody, even when you're first starting your business, you're going to have a lot of this stuff already nailed out. So you wouldn't need to bring in SEO research, anything like that until all that is already established.
Kevin: Yeah 100%. And then you take all of that, and then you map a journey. You map a user journey, right? You can be super old-school, you can write it down on post-its and put it on the wall. Or you could find some other method, right? There are mind mapping tools. There are all sorts of ways that you can get to the goal.
Kevin: But the tool doesn't matter as much as thinking about what is the journey that people go through when they have that problem, right? Some of these journeys are three steps long. And others are 30 steps long. It depends on your product and your target market, your audience.
Kevin: But really think about the journey. Try to be empathetic and then create your content along that journey. I think that is what makes people really successful in brands.
Kevin: One example that I recently saw that I was really impressed by is a site called Policy Genius. I think they're on policygenius.com. And they do that really well. And then I recently read an interview with one of their chief editors I think it was who explained how they took that approach. And I'm happy to send over the link so you can enter the show notes.
Kevin: But they did a really good job in helping people with different use cases. I'm sure there are a couple other sites out there that do this as well.
Jeff: Yeah. They do a very good job in marketing. They do approach it in the right way. This is a great topic for anybody starting out in SEOs that it's no longer going to be go dominate a keyword because that's not going to do much if you actually have a business.
Jeff: Because a lot of content marketers are teaching that method, which now doesn't seem like it's valid.
Kevin: Yeah. I think we have to detach ourselves from the idea that every page should be optimized for a keyword. I'm saying detached and not throw it in the trash right? I think there are still ... it helps you conceptually to think about how to optimize a page. But it doesn't help you strategically.
Kevin: So strategically, you also see that with Google. They kind of changed and announced last year that they're going to change their knowledge graph toward embracing these user journeys and anticipating questions that users have. And I think that's a great example. It's much more about use cases. It's less about keywords.
Kevin: And users have evolved. They evolved away from just typing in abstract keywords towards asking Google questions and having real user journeys and experiences with Google. And I think us as SEO and content marketers, we have to embrace that. We have to be a bit more creative because that's another side problem of this main problem is we're all trying to create content for the same keywords, and it makes sense to a degree. But how do you differentiate? How do you become creative in your content strategy?
Jeff: Yeah. And following the journey and the content strategy and not going after keywords. Not ignoring keywords but not making them the primary focus like they were two years ago.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jeff: All right. So another post that I saw on Twitter. You refreshed your post about XML sitemaps, which I really enjoy. I always use XML-sitemaps.com. I think they do a great job, especially their free version does pretty much most of what you wanted to do. What was the reason in updating that post?
Kevin: So SEMrush asked me if I could refresh their post, which is previously written I think by another person. But I think it was a bit older and needed an update. I recall a very spicy situation back at Atlassian when I just started. I wanted to get a quick win on the map. And so I realized Atlassian didn't have an XML sitemap, which in itself is pretty fascinating.
Kevin: But, then I thought hey this is awesome. Quick win. Ran over to the devs. Asked them to turn this on, and I see a mess. And they told me that it's not possible. And I was pretty stumped by that. Long story short, I eventually crawled the site with a screaming frog and created an XML sitemap from that functionality and uploaded it. And we saw a significant increase in traffic. Now it's not 2x or 10%. But, I remember seeing a visible spike. I think it's no surprise that XML sitemaps are important, but that reminded me of these simple things that you tend to forget that have a big impact.
Jeff: Yeah. And John Wheeler just said it's not a ranking factor. It's a directory factor. It's a way to find your stuff.
Kevin: Yeah absolutely.
Jeff: So I think a lot of people took that wrong. But yeah it's not going to get you to rank better. It's going to get Google to find your content easier, which is a lot of what structured data is all about, too. It's like what are you talking about and put it in context and give it a structure.
Kevin: Yeah for sure. People often think that everything is a ranking factor in SEO and no. There are actually three different steps: crawl, render and rank. And XML sitemaps clearly help with the crawl factor. They even help Google find orphan pages.
Kevin: And I remember, I think it was, now I'm butchering the source. But someone from Google mentioned that actually XML sitemaps are the second-most important method to find and crawl URLs. It doesn't matter how large your site is, you should always have XML sitemaps. You should use the full extent of what they offer.
Kevin: In this post that I wrote, I outlined a couple of advanced tips, not that advanced, but something that is not obvious or that Google doesn't tell you right away, like structuring your XML sitemaps after subdirectories or after page [inaudible 00:28:41] to get extra visibility.
Kevin: But, it's the simple thing that scales, especially for a larger size, especially news publishers, big e-commerce stores. They have an extra benefit of that simply because there is so much more for Google to discover and crawl.
Jeff: Yeah and so I read an article, I started running an experiment I put my images into a separate image sitemap. What are the advantages of that?
Kevin: Yeah so for Google it's just a better or an easier way to find all of the different images. And also crawl images, when they're being updated or when they're being changed, which also happens to a fair degree. So you can either, with most of these formats like images or videos, you can either add an extra, separate sitemap. Or you can add extensions to your current sitemap.
Kevin: And you can add more information to help Google understand what the picture and the video is about. So, Google is not yet, probably soon, but not yet in a place where they can actually see what's in the image. So they rely on factors like the all-text and sometimes links or surrounding text of the image.
Kevin: And XML sitemaps are just another way for Google to understand the context and content of that image. So, all of your rich media, especially when you're a site like Pinterest or a video platform, you should definitely think about adding those kinds of rich formats to your XML sitemaps.
Jeff: So would you create a separate sitemap for a microsite?
Kevin: That is a good question, and the answer is probably yes. I think it depends on the beta on the size of that microsite. But I often create specific XML sitemaps for subdirectories. Just simply to be able to see if there are any problems with indexing or if there's anything else weird going on.
Kevin: Any type of content format on a site, whether it's a blog or a microsite or something else, would be worth to have a separate XML sitemap for it.
Jeff: Okay. And the separate file doesn't matter as long as you're clear with telling Google where your content is and what it is.
Kevin: Yeah you can get crazy with XML sitemaps. I think there's a size limit of 50 megabytes if I recall correctly. But otherwise, other than that, it doesn't matter much if you have some overlap in between different XML sitemaps. It's the same kind of logic as with Google search console accounts. You can create console accounts for different subdirectories or subdomains or whatever you want. And that shouldn't have a detriment as long as all of the URLs return a status quo to a 100. You wouldn't want to have any redirects or 404 pages in your XML sitemaps. But as long as you keep that standard you can become really creative.
Jeff: Yeah. That's great. And sitemaps are often overlooked tool that is not ranking, but it is discovery. And it's the key to discovery I think. It's one of the first things I do when a site goes live is make sure that the sitemap is submitted to search console and discoverable, no errors and test with a bunch of different tools to-
Kevin: It's one of the most basic things that are often overlooked. And so, [inaudible 00:32:19] the robots.txt, those two things are one of the first things that I check when a site reaches out to me and has problems or one of the sites that I'm working with has any problems, I always double-check what's going on there. Also because these two files are analogous.
Kevin: So, that means robots.txt is often used to tell Google what not to crawl. XML sitemaps are used to Google what to crawl. So, if there's any problem, check those two first and see if there's a big issue there.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. All right so I was scrolling through your Twitter feed, and you've said something very controversial that I have to bring up. You like the new Twitter, and you like Gutenburg. So, I don't mind the new Twitter. I think it's fine. A lot of people were in up arms about it I know. But Gutenburg?
Kevin: Sometimes I say these controversial things and stir the pot. People have strong reactions about that. I stand by my word. I like the new Twitter. I don't love it. But I think it could have been worse. And, I also like the new Gutenburg. It's a way to be a bit more creative with their content, especially in terms of layout and experience that is very easy for people to use.
Kevin: I just like you can install a couple of extra blog plug-ins, and you get some really cool functionality there where you can just helps your content stand out a bit more, right? I think a lot of the content looks the same, feels the same, and that kind of content experience can be a differentiator.
Jeff: Yeah. And so for me, from a UI standpoint, it looks like that you're only allowed to work with one block at a time. But, if you paste in a huge document that you wrote in something else, it properly separates it out. So the UI tells one story, but the functionality is different. And that's why I don't like it so much is because there is a disconnect there. You expect it to act differently than it actually does.
Jeff: And that's basically because we grew up with bad UI like Microsoft Word and Google Docs and stuff like that. So we expect things to be just a flat piece of paper. So it is a new way of thinking, and I understand that I probably need to evolve. But at first glance, taking a fresh blog post and writing it in blocks was a bit of a stretch in my brain to figure out how it would work.
Kevin: It is a transition for sure, absolutely fair point there. I think it's interesting from a standpoint of ... I think about the web evolves. And when you pay attention to Google, I often take the SEO lens of course, right? But when you look at Google, they kind of have a block thinking as well. And I know that they collaborate very closely with WordPress. That's public knowledge.
Kevin: It's interesting to see how Google takes little pieces of content and starts to enrich the search results pages more and more. Sidney Crum, who's an expert on mobile entities calls this fraggles. And it's basically ... the gist of it is Google is just getting better at understanding content to a very deep level and is able to pull different fragments from different sites and combine into something new in the search results pages.
Kevin: And Gutenburg is interesting because you kind of start to adopt that block thinking, and you can create content better in certain blocks. One of the easiest or simplest representations of that are featured snippets, which are the little answer on top of the search results. You can create a custom or reusable block for that keeps an optim link that I think it's between 60 and 70 words, has a little headline on top.
Kevin: You can just better at thinking in these formats that have an actual benefit when it comes to SEO and content.
Jeff: Yeah. And I was just listening to Izzy Smith. So Izzy Smith said that in the UK, they don't have an issue of where the rich snippet text and the rich snippet image are from different locations, but we do.
Kevin: Oh yes we do.
Jeff: A lot of my rich snippet results that I get are we either have the image or have the text but not both. It is Google mashing up content, like you said, and making something new.
Jeff: Here's something off-topic but wanted to bring it up anyway is how do you think, as digital marketers, we're going to be impacted by Google adding so many features into the SERP to keep people from clicking through.
Kevin: Not good. I have a very clear standpoint on that. And if you follow me on Twitter, read my stuff, you'll see that I'm more skeptic toward it. I'm not a prophet calling the death of SEO. But, I do see severe problems with how Google is transforming into an answer machine. And they publicly say that. It is not a secret. It's not something we have to interpret. Google publicly said that they want to get better at giving users the answers right away.
Kevin: And I think the actions or the changes that we've seen in the last 1-2 years are very clearly showing that. So, I think it's a problem. I have not read the transcript of the most recent earnings call that I think came out yesterday. But I saw a couple of tidbits on social, and I think organic traffic has dipped as in the traffic that people get from Google.
Kevin: At the same time, I think their ad revenue increased by 28%, though I might butcher that number slightly. But, I think that is a very clear result of Google's new mobile design and of how they give more answers in the search results, which allows them to show more ads, which at the same time is bad news for webmasters.
Jeff: Yeah. And Rand Fishkin has been very vocal about this. It seems like every talk that he's given in the past year has been how click-throughs are going down and ad revenues for Google are going up.
Kevin: Rightfully so. And the drama of the story is that us as webmasters, SEOs and CART marketers, we have to feed the monster in our self-interest and against our self-interest. We're basically slowly killing ourselves in that sense. And again, I'm exaggerating a little bit to make the point here.
Kevin: But, we're in a conflict, and the best solution there is to up your game, invest more into content, keep people on your site, become more of a destination and diversify your traffic to not be too reliant on Google.
Jeff: And okay speaking on that point, is it time for another search player to come out and make search an open platform again?
Kevin: I think yes. I think the more Google becomes its own destination and less of a platform, the more they create and leave a vacuum that has always been filled since the beginning of the internet. But it will probably take a bit of time for a new player to step into that vacuum because first Google has to transition more into a destination and answer engine. They're in the transition process, but it's not completed yet.
Kevin: And then there needs to be some sort of a courageous player or founder or whoever to tackle that. Now I know we have DuckDuckGo out there. They recently got way more attention, and I also recall seeing statistics that they send more organic traffic over to sites. And I think they have a very interesting format, right? There's a lot of stuff to be liked about DuckDuckGo.
Kevin: However, the big problem is I still, and everybody else, still uses Google, and the results are still really, really good, right? The thing is that users, and including myself here, don't hate Google. The product is not bad. It is fantastic. So the pool of incentives for users to use DuckDuckGo is still a relatively small, whereas webmasters would wish that they had more traffic from DuckDuckGo would come.
Jeff: Right. And so, on the DuckDuckGo conversation, how concerned are you about your online privacy?
Kevin: To be honest, I'm not too concerned. See, I'm from Germany, Jeff, and Germans, Europeans are a bit more sensitive to the whole privacy deal. I do think from a monopoly standpoint point of view, we do have a problem for sure with the big tech companies, but that's another different conversation.
Kevin: So, for me the primary incentive to use DuckDuckGo is less the privacy concern and much more the concern of a company becoming a monopoly and basically cutting off the content providers from traffic.
Jeff: Yeah. And I want to be out there. I put myself out there. I advertise myself to be out there, so I basically volunteer my information. So, privacy is obviously not a concern for me. It is for some of my customers that don't even put a credit card online. And so, I understand the issue, and I want to be respectful of that issue. I'm actually kind of forward thinking as far as the privacy concern.
Jeff: And my site right now, I have a no-tracking policy already in place so that when the privacy laws come into effect, I am a good example of if you don't want cookies or to be tracked at all, I'm giving you this option. And if you accept, then nothing trackable gets installed. The only thing that you're going to get is a PHP session cookie, which is out of my control.
Kevin: Yeah for sure. We have to be respectful and mindful of people who don't want to be tracked or who have a problem with this. It's not enough to say I don't have a problem with this, so nobody else should have this. There should be some sort of democracy in that sense.
Kevin: And there's pros and cons to both, obviously. But I like the approach of DuckDuckGo of saying that contextual advertising is probably good enough. There is a lot of merit to that.
Kevin: And to add another interesting standpoint to that conversation, I recently read an article by a professor, whose name I don't recall at the moment, but who has been doing a lot of research on Google and on search engines and who basically promotes the notion that Google should open up their index as an API and allow other search engines to come up. And I just thought that was a really interesting point.
Kevin: Even in the interest of Google, I think there's great ways to diversify their business problem in that sense because they're super reliant on ad revenue.
Kevin: But also because competition tends to make everything better. And so, I think it's the same for privacy, right? If DuckDuckGo was a bit stronger and people had more choices to use platforms and search engines to respect privacy more, I think that would be a great addition to the web and keeping the web what it is today and not transforming it into something ugly.
Jeff: Yeah. And I don't want to seem like privacy is a big issue, but I don't want to seem hypocritical because I still use tracking data to inform decisions and content and interface. So, as digital marketers, we have to look at the data. But, Google's already started blocking some of the data. Some of the search queries we're not able to see because Google has deemed it some sort of privacy concern.
Kevin: Oh yes that played that really really smartly over time. They often use the benefit for the user as a gateway to make some pretty drastic changes. The same way with how they promote AMP, which is basically a commoditization of content that they control.
Kevin: Now I know that Google and the AMP organization are separate, and AMP is not owned by Google. But when you look at how they can make this the standard simply by giving more visibility in search and how it aligns with some of their interest, then it doesn't matter if they're the same company or not.
Kevin: So, anyway, long story short, I think we can have our cake and eat it, too. We can track users without violating their privacy and provide great experiences for them.
Jeff: Yeah. And, the question is always raised and never answered is that if Google is blocking that info from us, does Google use that info?
Kevin: Yes of course. No, until Congress forces Google to open it up or until they are being more transparent with it. But, it's the same as how Chrome basically has integrated AdBlocker and how Google then decides what ads to block or what not.
Kevin: So, you just see these bigger shifts and lots of different areas where Google gets more control over the web and over the experience that users have. Users don't complain because in most cases it makes sense for them. But it also means that Google just becomes more of a monopoly, and we as citizens of the web and as humans and as SEOs and content marketers, we have to join the conversation and figure out together how much of that we want versus how much of that we should not want.
Jeff: Yeah. And, if it's making our lives easier, then it'll be easier to forgive once it turns into getting bombarded with things we said into our smart [inaudible 00:47:27]. Then we've got an issue.
Jeff: One more thing I wanted to bring up, I know we're running out time, but MozCon. A lot of people were tweeting about there are no more national SERP's. So, it was tweeted out of context. So, I went on just to correct people and to say for most queries, not all queries, but for most queries, the national SERP doesn't exist. That you have to take some of local in mind.
Jeff: How for a company like G2, and a company that is serving as a info-base, specifically for software, a software company, let's say, an international software company. How would that affect them?
Kevin: Right. So I do agree when we talk about personalization or customization. We're talking about local user intent. Now, meaning people googling for stuff like sushi near me or car shop, Google shows more local search results because Google deems it more important to show people local instead of something else.
Kevin: Now, I think the reason for people saying that there are no national SERP's anymore is because the amount of these searches with a local intent are so big. So, there are so many of them.
Kevin: And so for companies like G2, it affects part of our business. It affects the part aside that lists local service providers. And in that sense, yes. We have to adapt the way that we monitor and track results for these specific pitch types.
Kevin: But the majority of our business is still software products that do not have a local user intent, right? But, I think 2019 is the year where everybody should have had local on their radar for 5 or 10 years already. It's not something new in that sense. But what is new and what I do observe myself as well is that Google deems that more searches have a local intent and shows more local packs in the search results. And I think that's where a lot of people feel that local is growing. To my opinion, it is just Google shifting more search intent for specific searches to local.
Jeff: Yeah, and so I've tweeted out to Lily Ray about this and said that a software company that has a GMB page for their headquarters in Minnesota, and they're selling software everywhere, because it's online cloud-based software, are they going to automatically get associated with the center of the country because their headquarters is there?
Kevin: What did she say?
Jeff: She said it's likely and that it does come into play and because this is along the lines of a national SERP, and I said how could this SERP not be national because it doesn't matter where it is. For a software company, it doesn't matter where you are. And she said well if it doesn't influence the results, it's going to influence the SERP because local items are going to be thrown in. So it does change the SERP.
Jeff: But how you market to it, how a digital marketer overcomes that, I have no idea. It's like do you not have a GMB page for a software company?
Kevin: Right. Yeah. It's definitely something that we need to tackle. It's also something that provides a bit more opportunity. The local bags have their own ... it's not that they work differently completely from organic search, but they follow a different logic. They're much more review-driven and driven by the validity of their address and those kind of things.
Kevin: And I know because my mother and my brother both have local businesses themselves, and so we did a bit of work there to "optimize." And that its own kind of ranking.
Kevin: When you think of search, apart from classic organic search but also in the realms of something like images, videos or maps, people search maps as well and that functionality's increasing. You can now throw a generic keywords into Google Maps, and that ... it's a lot of search volume going through Google Maps. So you want to be present for that as well.
Kevin: However, it's a different way to optimize for a search engine because it's basically a local or geolocation-driven search engine. So, it's just something that I think provides a lot of opportunity that us as SEOs have to wrap our heads around a little bit and embrace a different way of search.
Jeff: Yeah. And so, I'm following this closely because for the SaaS company that I was telling you about on the last episode, they're starting to get some attention. They have GMB page for their headquarters in Minnesota. I overcame their problems of one of the employees closing a GMB page for their LA office. So, whenever anybody on this side of the country searched their company, it said permanently closed. So I finally got that figured out, so the only GMB page for them now is their headquarters.
Jeff: But I'm looking at where their users are coming from and trying to gauge whether this is making a difference or not. So, I'll probably write a report on that once I have enough data to have an opinion one way or the other. Right now, it doesn't seem like there is.
Kevin: Great, no but good job on helping them out with that. I think it's super important. Also because I've seen anecdotally that Google uses some of the information of the GMB account in organic search. So, especially when it comes to something like brands factors. There seems to be an impact.
Kevin: And one other example is that I see it mostly with is when you have a domain migration or a URL migration, you change your domain or URL, Google sometimes will rewrite your titles for you if you want to or not, and they often use information from the brand that you edit in your GMB account. So, I think there's another connection there.
Jeff: Yeah. So, GMB, for one of my accounts, they're using the GMB listing as the verification system for their ads account. And they've moved, and that was a huge issue for their ads account.
Kevin: It's major.
Jeff: Yeah so. All right, so where do you want to send people? What do you have to promote?
Kevin: What I have to promote? Nothing paid because I have a job. That's a plus for me. But, if I were allowed to send people somewhere, it's probably going to be my weekly email called Tech Bound. It's an email where I write a weekly short block article about all things digital marketing with a focus on content marketing and SEO of course. I invite guests for exclusive interviews, and I curate some of the best content that I found that week on the web. It's a free weekly email, and it's all-exclusive stuff, so you wouldn't find it anywhere else. It's not block articles that I wrote on my site and then copied to the newsletter. It's all-exclusive stuff that you'll only find there. So, feel free to check it out. It's called Tech Bound.
Jeff: Yeah. And the last one was great with the interview from Otho about the backlink story. Yeah, we could do a whole nother episode on backlinks.
Kevin: Thank you.
Jeff: But yeah I loved it, and I loved the five pieces of the week at the bottom. Those were all really great content that I had missed throughout the week. So it's fun to have you put those together and collect all those pieces and news.
Jeff: So, where you want people to follow you?
Kevin: You can follow me on Twitter. Name is @Kevin_Indig. So you just google my real name, and you'll find me. Or my site, which is Kevin-indig.com
Jeff: All right. Perfect. Thank you very much, Kevin. Again, this is a great episode and look forward to having you back.
Kevin: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure [inaudible 00:56:05] with you.
Jeff: For show notes and information, go to digitalrage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @digitalragefm and please give us a rate and review. We sincerely appreciate it.
Kevin Indig's Links:
Kevin Indig https://www.kevin-indig.com/ Twitter @Kevin_Indig Subscribe to Tech Bound: https://www.kevin-indig.com/tech-bound/ https://www.g2.com/
Other Links:
Cindy Krum @Suzzicks #fraggles Lily Ray @lilyraynyc Rand Fishkin @randfish Izzi Smith @izzionfire Policy Genius: Refreshing advice: how Policygenius used organic search to boost on-site recirculation by 300%
Jane Lee's Pitch Event mentioned in Episode 17 was attended by Matt and Jeff, and we break down the pitches as well as the event itself.
Launchpop Pitch Event by Shopify
10 brand pitches led by Jane Lee
Elenita mezcal drinks, not yet launched, prototypes made in their kitchen.
Lunata beauty technology cordless hair tools, in retail.
Ateyo esports and gaming brand, apparel, sitters, pants designed to sit in. Sponsorships. Made in Los Angeles.
Graydon skincare natural plant-based superfoods.
Ballsy, the $5k startup made 4m sales, humorous products names, Adam Hendle, wipes called handys, shampoo called good head.
Neuro gum and mints based on a multivitamin formula created in college b vitamins natural caffeine. Founder former runner, snowboard accident left him paralyzed. Available at CVS, GNC, JetBlue.
Mai Vino wine in a baggie/pouch lasts 30 days after opening. Launch in NYC. $18 subscriptions.
Subtle beauty, stackable portable makeup, customized, 3 month supply smaller than travel-sized products "ho on the go".
Siren snacks Elizabeth plant-based protein snacks women-focused grain free dairy free soy free gluten free targeting offices and food service offline marketing
Kova helmets for bike share and scooter share foldable helmet, removable covers and chin strap Kova means helmet in Hebrew.
Today is a very special episode of Digital Rage, it is our 20th episode. We review all of our episodes and our key takeaways.
Episode 0 with Matt & Jeff: From Jeff: - We actually recorded episode 0 right after recording episode 6 - We mention our early January meeting that sparked the podcast
Episode 1 with Matt & Jeff: From Jeff: - recorded on February 1 - launched March 5 - Matt first mentions accessibility - The purist shop talk episode - We didn't know what the show was going to be - My email alerts kept going off, and my mic was too hot - I had fired my advertising client for the first time - matt mentions honeybooks and bonzai - are you still using bonsai?
EP 2 SEO with Jeremy: From Matt: - The year of Marie condo for SEO - back to the simplicity and processes. What brings you joy? - Always check to see what a website actually does to make sure it’s in line with the SEO strategy. From Jeff: - Our first interview - I blew it right off the bat, saying "CEO" instead of SEO - Jeremy chuckled a little before answering - I was nervous - my mic was still too hot
EP 3 with Tom Reynolds - Smarketing: From Matt: - Sales needs to support marketing and vice versa. I like how Tom thinks and wants to figure out how he can increase sales with his marketing and projects he takes on. We also talked about accessibility on this show From Jeff: - I totally messed up the recording half way through - I wanted to hear myself in my headphones so I tuned on input monitoring - That created a doubling effect which made everything too hot and sounded like we were in an echo chamber - we learn what Smarketing is - I got to vent my frustrations with b2b manufacturing seo - tom and I commiserate on the struggle with closing the loop - not having access to the whole process, like sales and service - We did an after-interview convo about matt's concern about our audience not being broad, most people wont understand it - I confirmed that I / we like to talk shop, and essentially our audience is us
EP 4 with Neil: From Matt: - Loved how he loves to build. He’s putting out great websites and a ton of them at that. I like how he’s found a niche and is sticking to it.. He’s referred me a few clients over the last few months that are not in his niche. A coder with design sense! From Jeff: - I loved this interview even though my mic was still too hot - Neal is awesome, I want to have a beer with that guy - He joined the skype convo using his laptop, no mic or headphones, so were getting delay feedback from his end, and an angry dog in the background - Talking shop about full stack development is very fun to me
EP 5 with Esteven and Social Media: From Matt: - He loves social. You could tell he really knows his stuff. - With social you can get the word out there on a cheap budget and turn the needle. - Liked his story about the recycle xmas tree program in Long Beach and how some social ads helped increase the awareness. From Jeff: - The first hint of matts name butchering, more on that in later episodes - My mic was still too hot - Esteven Gamez opens our eyes to social done right - The impact of local social marketing stands out - The Christmas tree recycling campaign - He uses buffer, which got me to use buffer for the podcast - Surprisingly, this was our first Skype hookup
Ep 6 shop talk: From Jeff: - Starts off with matts furious fingers typing - My mic is STILL too hot - This was right around the launch of the podcast - I mention I am still working on technical stuff before launching - We were still deciding on a podcast hosting platform - This is our first mention of Privacy which is also a recurring topic - I forgot about TAYL - I was reminded of my idea of automating a podcast using TAYL to read blog posts - Hot tool talk, and I started to use notion - Matt, have you invited Pat Flynn to the podcast yet?
EP 7 with Pierre / SEO: From Matt: - SEO has changed again. Smaller budgets aren’t doing what they use to do. - He’s been larger in the past and has had to scale down due to competition but I like how he’s still at it and trying to figure out how to grow the biz. He’s also into reputation management, social, and web design. From Jeff: - Don't take this the wrong way - I love it - but you have butchered some names and this was the best - Zarokian turned into Zarkonian - SEO is obviously one of our most popular and actionable topics
EP 8 with Brian Wood: From Matt: Great show! Easy to talk to and super inspiring. I like how he’s still hustling after all these years. He’s not resting on his success and his books. And liked how he gave advice to people just getting going. Just do it. Start putting up videos. Adobe and others are out there and could see you and your content. From Jeff: - Mic was way tooo hot - Podcast just launched - We changed the format to chat, then interview - Instagram and facebook went down - Love Brian Wood, he inspired me to create 6 minute training videos - He mentioned going to Adobe Max - you still want to go together?
EP 9 with Kevin Indig: From Matt: - Another fun show. And it’s been fun to connect with Kevin after on twitter. Super knowledgeable in the seo space. And the growth and saas marketing area. Talked a lot about content and the role it plays. Just another reminder that if you’re trying to get people to your site you need to figure out what they need and give them great content. From Jeff: - My mic is finally fixed! - I pre-wrote my intro and completely stumbled on it - Our most popular episode so far - Mostly because Kevin has a huge following for SEO - I mention my construction software client - He did a great job using my client as an example of how to technically market them correctly.. which confirmed I was on the right path with that client
EP 10 with Michele Landis: From Matt: - Accessibility is super important and in this show we heard a ton about this space. After this show and others we’ve done on the space it’s become super apparent that we need to remove barriers for all. From Jeff: - My mic is way tooo hot again - Our first failed t-shirt design - Also our first accessibility guest, matt had mentioned it in episode 1 - Live user testing was a main takeaway - We first hear of accessibility trolls which is a huge problem
EP 11 with Mic Pam: From Matt: - We did this show twice so def a learning experience. Surprising to hear how far woo has come. Def will keep in mind for future ecom jobs if it’s on the smaller side and/or if wp is important to the site. - Key takeaway was to really listen to what your client needs and find them the best solution. Sometimes we tend to offer the solution that we prefer due to familiarity but that doesn’t always translate to what’s best for the client. From Jeff: - The mic pam episode drama - The first recording was so bad we had to do it again - We learned about e-commerce - And I was surprised that Magento was still a popular platform
EP 12 with Jonathan: From Matt: - Automation is important. But you shouldn’t automate a process that is broken or not working well. - A good reminder for sure on systems and automation and how they can help save time. From Jeff: - Jonathan Tobin, programmer turned lawyer - Helps us with our legal questions - How easy trademarks actually are - How a signature is still standard for executing contracts - There are probably a ton of quotes we could pull out of this episode, before we started pulling quotes
EP 13 with Ali Cox: From Matt: - Loved hearing her passion for the industry she’s in. - Wow. And also loved hearing how ag is using content marketing to market themselves - video, social, websites. Very inspirational. - We could also take notes on what she’s doing and apply it to other businesses. Story is key. And what better way to tell the story than video and social. From Jeff: - My first guest! Ali Cox - I state publicly that I am rebuilding print fellas - Turns out it is going to be harder and more expensive than I thought - But I am doing it because it is hard - If I can rebuild print fellas, I can build anything - We talk AWS, my new favorite platform - we talk about ag and telling our customer stories - I was in the middle if my 4 day website build nightmare and completely spaced out for the fist few minutes of the interview
EP 14 with Jason Siciliano: From Matt: - Another great example of putting out content that educates the consumer to who you are. Also love how he started the modern copywriter and is keeping it going. He’s helped a ton of people and in turn has been able to help himself from time to time with the site. From Jeff: - Matt talks about nuns and meditation - his trip to the woods - I talk about the 4 day CBD website nightmare I was dealing with in episode 13 - I talk about posting my videos and an automated publish everywhere approach - Jason was awesome - He has the greatest job ever - buying thousands of dollars of tech and destroying them with robots
EP 15 with Rachelle Golden: From Matt: - More accessibility and the importance of it and how it’s hitting all types of businesses. She brought the legal side to the table and did a good job keeping it easy to understand. From Jeff: - Mat gets the guest name right, but butchers her company name - Hat maker turned into hat macker, rachelle corrects him, and he tries to repeat it and says hate maker - Super inspiring episode - Matt talks crypto - Jeff talks about buying drugs online - Drag and drop bootstrap - We did the intro after the interview - which I really like - My favorite episode - Got my to sign up for an online course and schedule testing and certification
EP 16 with Rob Taylor: From Matt: - SAAS marketing and his custom solution. Great episode. I’m excited to see where he goes with it. I feel at some point if he wants to scale it he’ll have to stop customizing it. But that’s just me. From Jeff: - My second guest! my brother rob Taylor - We discuss the medic update - Matt discusses his cms, organic, and how he adapted it to conferences - We talk tech stacks - How to market an app - Learning apps for certification qualifications
EP 17 with Shopify Jane: From Matt: - Too short of an episode but great to hear about what she’s up to. Look forward to following her and see how they do. - She’s got some big clients already and I like her biz model as far as taking equity in a company. I’ve considered that over the years. From Jeff: - Shopify Jane! - Another post interview interview... which I really like. did I mention that? - She was busy and we started late, so although short it was a lot of fun - I talked about that last weeks of my automotive contract - Print fellas gets an actual start... sort of - Matt mentions Gatsby, which send us down a rabbit hole - Launch Pop - we were supposed to attend her event this month - I expose my idea about tumerice - Now that I think about the name, it sounds like tumor, which nobody likes - We find out gary vee is a launch pop client which stirs the vee pot
EP 18 with Jason Reynolds: From Matt: - Super dense with info. Great to see the industry he’s in do content marketing. It really works in all spaces. I’m looking forward to seeing the updated site. As of now it looks pretty good so curious to see what more they do. Also great to hear that such a high ranking domain won’t rank if you don’t put in the footwork to do the SEO. Ranks for 261k in the top 100 now and in may it was 324k. They’ve been hit! From Jeff: - My 3rd guest - Jason Reynolds - Matt talks about privacy policies and quotes his favorite lines - Matt asks about headless and gatsby using the wordpress api - I compliment Matt on his company IG account - looking good - Matt explains his social process - We talk about building basically a micro site within a huge corporation and huge global website
EP 19 with Steph: From Matt: - I believe she’s in her late 20s and super mature. It was inspirational to hear her story and see someone that is really thinking about a good life work balance and taking steps to make sure she’s happy. Working full time remotely and coding side hustles. Love it! From Jeff: - Listening to that episode on headphones I noticed I had a lot of interefence - Sounds like a constant hiss - probably a power cable too close to an audio cable - Steph Smith - the name that kept alluding me - I forgot to hit the record button on our intro - This was another post interview intro - like that - We tease this episode 20 format - Matt mentions what Google calls the June 6 update - Algo update that effected his clients - I mention the medic update and how this sounds similar - I mention a years old schema code, that google just sent an error message for, which triggered my suspicions about an update - Another mention of Gatsby - Matt was a little distracted - We talked to Steph about remote work and distributed companies how Steph quit her job and redefined her life - She calls in from Bali - how cool is that
Today we talk with Steph Smith about how she left consulting 2 years ago to redesign her life. She’s now a maker and works remotely leading the publications team at Toptal.
Bio:
Left consulting 2 years ago to re-design her life. She’s now a maker and works remotely leading the publications team at Toptal.
She started to code a over a year ago and has launched Nomad Hub a place to explore coworking retreats, Make Yourself Great Again (a calculator for visualizing wasted time) and FeMake (data on female makers), and more!
Show Links:
- Steph Smith
- Steph Smith on Twitter
- Steph Smith on Product Hung
- Steph Smith on Instagram
Today we talked with Jason Reynolds from 3M about content development, SEO, digital engagement and activation.
About Jason Reynolds
Jason is the North American Marketing Manager for 3M Abrasive System Division, North America. When I met him he was in sales, selling diamond cutting tools for precision applications, such as aerospace, and the company was acquired by 3M. During the transition he became a sales training manager before jumping into marketing.
Unless you're in this business, it's very difficult to draw a correlation to how it touches everybody's lives every day.
Jason Reynolds
Show Notes
[14:48] [Jeff Byer]
Today we have Jason Reynolds. Jason is the North American Marketing Manager for the Abrasive Systems Division at 3M. Full disclosure, he is my cousin by marriage - my wife's cousin. He married my wife's cousin and so he's family to me. When I met him, he was selling diamond precision cutting tools and the company that he was selling for got purchased by 3M. He was doing sales and then went into sales training for 3M and now is the Marketing Manager. Welcome, Jason.
[15:30] [Jason Reynolds]
Thank you, Jeff and Matt. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
[15:35] [Jeff Byer]
To start up, will you tell us a little bit about your role and what you're doing for the 3M Abrasive Division?
[15:45] [Jason Reynolds]
Absolutely. Like you mentioned, I work for the Abrasive Systems Division. I work for a unique business within the ASD division. It's Precision Grinding & Finishing. It came about through that acquisition of the prior company that I was working for, which was the Winterthur Technology Group. We came to 3M through that acquisition. We brought along with us a unique product portfolio that 3M really didn't focus on nor have in their portfolio. So it was a nice complement to their Abrasive's product portfolio.
Currently, I am the North American Marketing Manager. So I have responsibility for portfolio management, pricing, promotional strategy, new products commercialization, project management, for the key business segments for our Precision Grinding & Finishing business for North America. So I work very closely with sales, manufacturing, application engineering, business services, as well as the global PG&F team, which is based out of Europe. Really, all in an effort to maximize our competitiveness [??:17:04].
[17:23] [Jeff Byer]
Specifically, I'm interested in what the end goal is of this website is that you were telling me that you created.
[17:40] [Jason Reynolds]
This was a digital activation project. It really came about because of two things. One is that we had a new, innovative, first-ever, 3D-printed abrasive product that we wanted to showcase, that we wanted to promote, that we wanted to get out into the market. And then secondly, we knew that we wanted to revamp the PG&F landing page. And so it was really a two-pronged approach digitally with the focus being around that new 3D printed product.
[18:24] [Jeff Byer]
So not only introducing the product, but also gave you a good excuse to rebrand the whole division?
[18:31] [Jason Reynolds]
100%. Our particular business segment within ASD, we had built out and developed the first-ever landing page about two years ago and at that time, it was really somewhat benign in content and overall call-to-action. We met the objective of having the page but we really wanted to improve the content, improve the user experience, improve the call-to-action based off of that page.
[19:20] [Jeff Byer]
Can you tell me what some of the clients are that you work with? For me, Abrasive System is just not...
[19:27] [Matt Ramage]
Yeah, I was also going to ask what the audience is. Demographics, things like that.
[19:36] [Jason Reynolds]
Unless you're in this business, it's very difficult to draw a correlation to how it touches everybody's lives every day. But if you think about it, from waking up in the morning, from taking a shower, the fixtures within your bathroom, within your sink - to the car that you drive from various components of the body to various components of the engine, camshafts, crankshafts, valve-train components, gearing - to taking flights in aerospace market with jet engines, with landing gear. So we get involved in abrasives on the precision side that really touch our lives and the products that we engage with, each and every day. It's cellphones and the various components that go into the cellphone; the glass that goes onto that cellphone.
We deal with abrasives and precision abrasives that go into the manufacturing of those products that you would touch each and every day that you would drive, that you would fly in, that you would ride on the water, in terms of the boats. We touch each and every one of those products with an abrasive product. We tend to get involved on the more precision grinding side of it, which tends to deal with engines, and turbine blades, and various engine [??:21:27} components, medical and you name it. It's quite a varied product group for about 5 key markets that we focus on. And our customer tends to be the process engineer. This tends to be the person that is overseeing the project, that is overseeing the manufacturing of their product. That's who we tend to get involved with, to engineer a custom solution for their product.
[22:06] [Jeff Byer]
How are you targeting these people?
[22:12] [Jason Reynolds]
A lot of it right now is through the various companies that we had previously. It originally started out as Plant Dunnington, which was specifically super abrasives, diamond CBN products. Wint was purchased by Winterthur. So, really, it was through the current customer base - the markets that we were involved in. At the time, it would have been through literature pieces and catalogs that we had available at the time. If you think back to those days prior to 3M, there was really no digital presence, no digital strategy. It was really through word of mouth and through our presence in the marketplace and how we were known in the market. So we really didn't have a good digital presence.
[23:14] [Jeff Byer]
Can you talk us through some of the different digital strategies you've used to increase brand awareness and sales?
[23:23] [Jason Reynolds]
Absolutely. We had an opportunity with Onset at the beginning of this year and it was really involving that two-pronged approach. One, it was to really develop a digital strategy around that new product, that new 3D-printed abrasive product and then secondly, the opportunity to improve our website. What we did was we had to define who are customer persona was and in doing so, you define who it is that you're really marketing to, what you're building this digital experience for. And so without having that person, we found at 3M that you tend to not have a very focused or successful approach because it may be too broad-based. So we went through this customer journey mapping process. Essentially, for this process engineer, taking this engineer from their original research and awareness to testing the product, to getting production [??:24:38], to full-scale up.
[24:41]
We took that engineer through the customer journey and we identified gaps in that process. And we were much more involved in the back-end - so from testing, to scale up. Where we found the gap was in that awareness, was in that research, because we didn't have good digital presence. And so we identified two really main key areas, which was a need for improved research around our business, and then also a need for improved contact to be able to nurture that lead through the process. It was all through the front end that we determined where the two gaps existed.
[25:38] [Jeff Byer]
Was this all internally, or did you guys bring in an agency to help you with this process?
[25:44] [Jason Reynolds]
We have a good team and set of teams at 3M. So initially, in determining who are persona was, we used our 3M Insights Team. They really do a lot of the research on these personas and what drives them, what motivates them, what peaks their interest. We utilized the Insights Team to help define the process engineer and who we were targeting. And then we have a digital team at 3M, who I was assigned to. It was about eight individuals strong who all have varying degrees of talent and things that they focus on digitally that I worked with to build out this digital strategy and presence for PG&F. Really highlighting those two main components of the new product and then the PG&F landing page.
[26:52] [Jeff Byer]
With this new persona, what action items were your team going to take? Was it the content or the messaging/advertising? Did your division perform all those tasks?
[27:10] [Jason Reynolds]
Absolutely. We determined the two gaps, what we call epics, which is really around the research and then the contact portion, and we essentially put a strategy together - how to improve not only the content on the page, but to improve how much content and the additional pages that we had on the landing page. But rather than be somewhat superficial, you go to a single landing page - there's maybe [??:27:53] literature. We built out a full structure. No matter how the customer went and viewed themselves as doing research, we allowed the user, no matter how they came to our site, and no matter how they research, to get to the same result. So whether they see themselves as an application, as a market, as a technology, essentially through the strategy and structure that we built out, you get to the same result.
And we did a lot of research on keywords, key phrases, within the major search engines that we are aligned with. We recognized gaps within our content where we really weren't relevant in searches. We were hitting about page three or four, which you guys know rarely does the user go beyond page one. So we weren't ranking very high in keyword searches.
[29:10] [Jeff Byer]
You would think that just being on a 3M domain would give you so much extra link juice and respect and quality, that anything you publish with a keyword would be automatically "1." It's fun to hear that even with a huge domain like 3M, you weren't able to get the rankings that you needed just by having a page.
[29:35] [Matt Ramage]
Is it a standalone site or is it a subsite under the 3M overall domain?
[29:46] [Jason Reynolds]
It's under the 3M domain. We had to follow some of the guidelines laid out before us and one of those is linking to the 3M domain. But subsequently, we were also able to build out our own content, our own standalone pages, but yes, we are a part of the 3M domain within their metalworking page.
You hit a nail on the head. Even with our 3M presence within the search engines, which we do carry a lot of weight, it just goes to show you that if you don't have the right content on your page, it's not focused content, it's very generic, you will really miss the mark in terms of high rankings and SEO optimization with those keywords within our business. We were missing the mark clearly and we knew that.
[30:57] [Jeff Byer]
Gotcha. So we're trying to find the page. Is it the metalworking-us page?
[31:07] [Jason Reynolds]
Yep. It is 3m.com/metalworking...it you type in "3m precision grinding."
[31:22] [Jeff Byer]
That's your keyword?
[31:24] [Jason Reynolds]
That's the keyword. I'll type along with you. And...
[31:33] [Jeff Byer]
1 organic result. And nobody is buying ads against it. So you're in a unique space there.
[31:41] [Jason Reynolds]
That's right. So we also recognize that we had the opportunity to own a lot of the keywords within our business and within the markets that we target, by just improving the content on our page and within the individual pages that we've built out. Much of the look will change over the next two weeks. The project, which was a 12-week project, is coming to its conclusion in the next week and a half. So a lot of what you're seeing now we actually improve even further. So it'll be a nice new look, very clean, with some nice call-to-actions on each one of the individual pages.
[32:33] [Jeff Byer]
Yeah, this is great. I just got in a Twitter conversation with Kevin Indig. He's in SEO at G2 Crowd and I was talking to him. He was doing a case study on somebody with a top-level domain, but all they did was change the quality of their content and they went number one for thousands of new keywords. I was telling him, quality over quantity is now winning, especially on Google.
[33:04] [Jason Reynolds]
Absolutely.
[33:06] [Jeff Byer]
Did you do any advertising or Social Media to support this?
[33:11] [Jason Reynolds]
We're working on that right now. This digital activation is 12 weeks and it's involved 6 individual sprints. Each one of those sprints is 2 weeks long. And so they ad piece, the social piece, was a part of this last sprint. Awareness ads have been pushed live and it's really videos that showcase the 3D technology. We'll also engage on a social front as well, to really improve the demand generation. But a lot of other components had to be in place on the website - in terms of how we process an incoming lead, how they contact us, who it goes through. So, in going through this digital activation, it also made us aware that some of our contacts process was lacking and so we also took the opportunity to improve that because studies will show you that a nurtured lead or a nurtured customer will actually increase their purchases with you, in the total purchase amount, the more that they are nurtured along the buying process. We are really doubling down on that to make sure that's part of our customer's experience by going to our site.
[34:56] [Jeff Byer]
I'm working on a blog post right now that's talking about the customer journey and how to hit them in each phase of their decision-making process. And how to categorize them, and change your ads, and change your content based on where they are at in the process. And you can tell where they are at in the process by the keywords that they choose. There's a guy who did this for his retail company and he created a spreadsheet that had a custom algorithm in it that would pick out. He would just run a report of the top thousand keywords for specifically what he was trying to target and if it had certain conjunctions or certain specific words, he was able to use this algorithm to assign it a stage of purchasing. Whether they are just researching or.... So it's fun to hear that you're going through that same process as well.
[35:55] [Jason Reynolds]
Yeah. Absolutely. It's been a nice learning experience for me in just that. And going through this customer journey, and exactly what you mentioned, is really now being able to look at the metric of what we're doing digitally and then what kind of results that we're getting. Already, just through organic traffic, not really pushing any major demand, nor activities in terms of these [??:36:26] and the social, is we've seen a huge uptick from a little less than 200 hits a month to now over 500 hits a month over the past two months alone. And we've not even really pushed anything live to generate that demand. So we're seeing some really nice organic traffic just by improving our content and our relevance in search.
[37:00] [Jeff Byer]
Yeah. That's great. Jason, what type of CRM are you using to nurture the leads and keep tabs on that?
[37:10] [Jason Reynolds]
So that is Salesforce.com. And this was also new for us. We have campaigns that we attach these leads and opportunities to and we found that we needed to have a multiple-campaign structure. We needed to understand what was coming through digitally versus other legacy means. And we really wanted to track what we were doing digitally and what impact that was having, separate from what was coming in just through our legacy means - through customer service, through our sales reps, through things like that. We really wanted to partition that and so we built out a multi-level campaign structure where we can really get at the metric behind both online and offline activities. And just like you mentioned, Jeff, is really to understand what impact that is having so we know what we need to adjust to improve our relevance, to improve search, and to improve the conversion ratio of the customers that are coming to our site. This is really not something that we've done before and now the division is even looking out what we're doing and using what we're doing as a pilot. This is the SIPG division within 3M, which abrasives is housed under. They're even looking at our structure and it looks like they will go live with that structure because of the metrics that you can pull and just the pure content that you can pull from that. It's been a nice learning experience of going through this process.
[39:20] [Jeff Byer]
It's fantastic. And seeing how all you do is understand your customer and create a better experience for them and it pays off in traffic searches and engagements.
[39:34] [Matt Ramage]
It's common sense. You're giving the customers what they're looking for. It's a great thing.
[39:44] [Jason Reynolds]
It's additional content. The original website was somewhat superficial. It had links to literature pieces but ultimately it just wasn't a good overall user experience. The user couldn't go there and learn more about a market, about a product, about an application. It didn't dive into other pages and relevant content. And now what we've done is we've built that out. We've built out a very nice structure that makes sense and we've hit some of the key markets and applications and products to really improve the user experience. And through those metrics, we'll really be able to determine where we're seeing some really good results, good hits on the website.
[40:41] [Jason Reynolds]
Each page will have a call-to-action. So we'll see what pages the customers are going to, what they're engaging more with, and we'll be able to double down on what's working really nicely and then we'll work to improve [??:40:57].
[40:59] [Jeff Byer]
That sounds great and sounds like something that a lot of businesses should be doing, especially Home Depot. I can never find what I'm looking for when I walk into that place.
[41:12] [Jeff Byer]
We're just right at about the end of our interview and one of our favorite questions to ask our guests is, "What tools are you using?" You mentioned Salesforce, but what other digital tools, or otherwise, do you use on a daily basis?
[41:35] [Jason Reynolds]
Just our Outlook, moreso from an email standpoint. We are using iSmart, which is a sales reporting tool, which was new for us. We launched SAP in the middle of last year. So along with that came some new reporting tools that we're utilizing. We are using PowerBI, which is linked to iSmart and it's a way to organize a lot of the sales information that you're pulling from the system and be able to organize that in graphs and charts - things that are a bit more appealing to the eye. So some very nice platforms that we're still getting used to but provide us with some very powerful metrics, reporting, and analysis that we use to better our overall business.
[42:52] [Jeff Byer]
And I see in your keyword research you mentioned Moz and Brandwatch?
[43:02] [Jason Reynolds]
These are two platforms our digital team works with to do a lot of their research. So it's moreso them having been engaged with those platforms just to do a lot of the analysis as we've been doing through this digital exercise at the various stages. They really utilize those platforms to give us feedback and to also provide direction on what we need to look for, how we need to write and adjust our content. And just make us more relevant. Those two platforms were very useful for the digital team as we were going through this exercise.
[43:53] [Jeff Byer]
Wrapping up, where can people learn about you? Learn about the products? Where should we send them?
[44:02] [Jason Reynolds]
If you just type in "3m precision grinding," you'll be able to go to your main website. In another week and a half that'll have a really nice look. So you can go there and go through all the pages and content that we've built out. I would start there.
[44:26] [Jeff Byer]
Alright. Very nice. Well, it was great having you on. Some great information. It's fun learning how these worldwide companies are handling SEO and digital marketing. It's very fun, very educational for us.
[44:43] [Jason Reynolds]
Yeah. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Matt.
Show Links
-
3M Abrasive Systems Division
-
3M Precision Structured Vitrified CBN Grinding Wheel
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Twitter Digital Rage
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Instagram Emarketed
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Castos
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Salesforce
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Power BI
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Moz
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Brandwatch
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Netlify
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Sanity
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GitHub
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Kevin Indig
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Stubbs Alderton & Markiles
Today we are speaking with Jane Lee, co-founder of LaunchPop, about her approach to launching startups and her pitch event to help 10 entrepreneurs with marketing and funding to launch their product.
About Jane Lee
- Jane is from Canada and has been in the marketing & tech space for over a decade.
- She’s worked with some big brands such as Pepsi & General Mills.
- She’s currently co-founder of Launch Pop
We like to call ourselves a venture launch studio. We help high potential founders launch their direct consumer businesses. Typically, before we decide to work with someone, or launch their company, we look at the founder and figure out if they have the grit. If they have the passion and are in it for the right reasons. And then we look at the product they want to launch.
Jane Lee
Show Notes
Hosts: All right, today we have Jane Lee. And Jane is from Canada, has been in the marketing tech space for over a decade. And she’s worked with some big brands, such as, Pepsi and General Mills. And she started her first company in 2015 called Silly B Intimate, which was later acquired, and maybe we can hear about that later on in the show. And she’s actually a ??? entrepreneur which I actually remember seeing some of her videos a number of years ago and we were chatting about that before the show as well. So, some people still recognize Jane as Shopify Jane.
Hosts: Shopify tracked Jane’s progress of setting up a store called Shopify Stockroom, and she just kind of went through from start to finish in starting an online store. And more importantly, now she is co-founder of Launch Pop and that’s what we are going to talk about today. Launch Pop helps high potential founders launch products that will change your life.
Hosts: Welcome to the show Jane.
Jane: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Hosts: Yeah! Well let’s jump right into it. Why don’t you tell us about Launch Pop? And it looks like, is Launch Pop still associated with Shopify?
Jane: Yeah, I mean like, it is because I am still ??? industry.
Hosts: Oh okay, got it.
Jane: I still have such a great relationship with them. When I was at Shopify, I was in their entrepreneur and residence. And people are like, “What is that?”, and it’s kind of a lot of different things. I got to work on a lot of cool projects. And so, some of the things were like, come in this stock room. I was into speed zombie Shopify. Really brainstorming streams. Grabbing you, and also did some cool stuff like help Kylie Jenner with her lip kits, or enter Pop Glop. So, those are really cool experiences. But at the end of the day, you don’t. I really did miss working with entrepreneurs and also watching products. Because that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life, and what I love doing. I still have a great relationship with them and I talk to them often. All the founders that we work with always use Shopify. And we’re actually even planning a cool event in 2 months. It’s called Launch Pop Pitch. And essentially, it’s a shark tank pitching event in collaboration with Shopify. Founders will be able to pitch to 4 judges, and the winner will get $140k in investments. A spot-on Launch Pot studio. And also, years’ worth of Shopify for free. Clearly a very good relationship with them still.
Hosts: Yes, wow. That’s great. Shopify is one of my new favorite platforms. I’ve just launched 3 stores recently on Shopify and I love it. And it’s a lot of fun. What is the typical customer journey for a Launch Pop customer?
Jane: Basically, what we do. People are kind of confused and ask are you an agency? Are you an accelerator? Are you an investor? And to be honest, we’re not. We’re kind of in the middle of those 3 different things. We like to call ourselves a venture launch studio. We help high potential founders launch their direct consumer businesses. Usually they come to us and we vet each founder that we work with. The reason why is that over the past 2 years since we started Launch Pop, we noticed that the companies that did the best, had great founders. Especially when it’s early stage. The founder makes the biggest difference and the people who invest in these early stage companies, they are just investing in the founders.
Jane: Typically, before we decide to work with someone, or launch their company, we look at the founder and figure out if they have the grit. If they have the passion and are in it for the right reasons. And then we look at the product they want to launch. A lot of them come to us at different stages. Some come to us super early stage and they just have the raw product. Some of them don’t even have a product and are still in product development. And some of them have a product that’s already had product market fit, so they don’t actually have a direct consumer business yet. We look at the product and one, it has to have a very clear white space, in terms of how it’s being positioned. And two, the market size has to be big enough for us to see the high potential, and in potential and exit. And three, it has to be a product of integrity. When I talk about integrity, I mean it actually has to be innovative and be a product that can stand on its own, without great branding.
Jane: You guys know your style, there’s so many different companies out there right now. And there are so many different brands. There’s a lot of shit (laughs). And so, we at Launch Pop only want to stand behind products that are actually innovative, and actually disrupting categories, and helping humans live better, if that makes sense. So, yeah.
Hosts: I don’t think my fantasy product would qualify.
Jane: What is your product?
Jane: Amazing
Hosts: Yeah. And so, I bought the domain and everything, thinking this was just going to be automatic. But I don’t know if there’s even a market for it.
Jane: What’s interesting is the first phase of when you end up working with a founder is actually finding that product market fit. I like to call our team growth minded brand people. We do a lot of testing before we decide on a brand direction. We actually do this testing through Facebook and Instagram. We mock up different Facebook ads, and we test out to see if there are actually people interested in this product. You don’t even have to have an end product ready. You can mock it up, via you can graphically designed different packages, graphically design your product. You don’t even need a real photo, and we put it on a Facebook ad. And we target hundreds of different target consumers to figure out which target consumer loves this. Where do we get the most engagement on a Facebook ad? And via the Facebook ads, we are able to see the market size and who we should target, and how we should position the brand.
Hosts: I was just going to ask what the call to action is on a product that doesn’t exist?
Jane: Usually it’s an ad that’s mocked up, and we say if you are interested in this product, give us your email and when we launch, we’ll give you 15% off.
Hosts: Gotcha.
Jane: Just like CTA will give us your emails, that’s how we count which ad is winning. That’s how we figure out where there is product market fit.
Hosts: Yeah, that makes sense. Can you give us a few highlights of some of the companies that you’ve launched, and that you are proud of?
Jane: We’ve launched some really awesome companies. One is Morning Recovery. It’s a hangover drink, I think a lot of people have probably seen it. We pushed that around 2 years ago and he came to us with an interesting story. He went to Korea and he had a bunch of meetings, and he needed to be productive the next day, so, he started drinking these hangover solutions. These drinks have been in Korea for a very long time, but there were no products like this in the US. He came back to the US and said let’s launch this in the US. And so, we did.
Jane: We did this one on Indigogo, and in the first 3 months, there was a million dollars in revenue. And then he went on to get a series-a of 8 million dollars. So, that was one of the companies that we launched. Another company that we launched which was really cool, and this was super, super early stage. We helped this girl named Sarah, and she came to us saying that she really wanted to use the ingredient algae, because it’s the most carbon negative product out there, but did not know what format to put it in. So, like I mentioned before, we created a bunch of different Facebook ads. We created algae cookies, algae chips, algae bars, algae vitamins, and we tested it on various different personas. And what we found after we did the testing, was we got the most emails with the ad that was around algae vitamins. And so, we decided to create the most organic and the most real vitamin out there, which is in a whole food format. So, the vitamin without the capsule.
Hosts: They look like energy bar cubes.
Hosts: I’m on the site now, it looks great. It looks real.
Jane: During the program that people watch with us, we essentially become their co-founder. It’s interesting because we do take equity in the companies that we launch, and the companies also give us a monthly retainer. Just so we can keep the lights on from an operational perspective. We end up taking equity, we have skin in the game. The way that we act is not like an agency. We don’t stop when it hits 5pm. We’re up, and we’re in flack with them until 3am or 4am. Because we have skin in the game. It becomes a very different type of relationship when we have equity. We act like co-founders. We go in day in and day out, we’re there for them emotionally. A lot of them are first time founders, so we are coaching them on how to build a team, how to build a business and scale the business, and even how to manage investors.
Jane: What’s happened over the past two years is we’ve launched some great companies. And all of these investors in LA were like, who is Launch Pop? We seem to be investing in the companies that have been launched through Launch Pop. We’ve created a network of investors, with an array of up north*. And we give them a deal flow, essentially. So, we send them companies that we are working with. And for them, they see the companies a little more favorably. Just because we are launching them, and we de-risk their investment a little bit. And so, there is that kind of relationship as well. We help our start ups get introduced to these VCs. And we help them with their VC deck. And we help them figure out their financials as well. So, we are kind of like a full stack co-founder.
Hosts: What would be the latest stage that you would take somebody on?
Jane: We focus on launching the direct consumer side of their business. We have this one company that we’re starting to work with, and they already have their distribution in Pottery Barn, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, etc. But their direct consumer website is not fully there. And they haven’t really optimized on that yet. And so, they have been in business for 5 years, and they are pretty well established, but they really want to own that relationship with the customer. And obviously, get more margin. And so, we’re helping them launch. Their D2C business.
Hosts: So, with every one of the companies you work with, you take on the creative?
Jane: Our team is a full stack team of digital marketers. You have designers who focus on website packaging and graphics. And you have growth marketers who do paid acquisition, copywriters, brand people, info marketers, PR folks, everything is internal with our team. I like to think of our team as like The Avengers of draft consumer marketing.
Hosts: Okay, so, you’re a godsend for somebody with a product who just doesn’t know what to do.
Jane: And we also have another side of our business where we just do branding for later stage companies. Do you guys know who Gary V is?
Hosts: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I’m wearing his shoes right now actually. The clouds and dirt shoes.
Jane: We’re rebranding his empathy wine, his wine company. His wine company is direct to consumer, and he trusts in our capabilities to understand consumer digitally needed brands. So, we’re rebranding his, and we’re rebranding a lot of other cool brands. So, there’s that side of our business, which is purely just a brand agency side as well.
Hosts: Is that under Launch Pop, or is that under a different company?
Jane: Yup, that’s under Launch Pop.
Hosts: Great, great. Well, I know we have a hard cut off time. Why don’t you spend the last couple of minutes and tell people where they can reach you, and find out more. And I believe that next event you have coming up, is it next month?
Jane: I really want to take this time to actually encourage people to apply to this pitch event. I know how hard it is to start a business. You definitely do need capital, because you are going against all these people that have venture backed money. And there is a lot of noise, and essentially, when it comes to direct to consumer, whoever has a lot of money is able to get the inventory that they need, and the community that they need, and create the content that they need, and obviously paid acquisition is still a very important part of the business.
Jane: I really wanted to give people a shot at getting some dollars to start their business, if they had a really great product that they wanted to push forward in the world. Applications are due online by June 10th or 15th, I want to be flexible for everyone. It’s a really simple form that you can fill out that’s on our website www.launchpop.com. It’s very simple, you just fill out your name, the product that you have, what stage you are in; in terms of product development, why you are creating that product?
Jane: And then I am going to be choosing 10 different people to pitch in real life, in LA. And so, we are going to be having the hosting of this event on June 28th, and 10 people will be pitching to 4 different judges. And then we will be choosing a winner to win $140k in investments. They will be able to launch with us, and also get a years’ worth of Shopify for free. And Shopify can get expensive, so it’s actually a great thing to win. And also, this event, we are inviting 150 guests. And all the 150 guests will be VPs, entrepreneurs, investors, and different agencies that you can network with and find help, if you are in the space of launching a business.
Hosts: That’s fantastic. Well thank you Jane. Would you be able to get Jeff and I on the list?
Jane: Yeah! Honestly that turmeric rice idea is actually pretty awesome. Not going to lie. You could totally apply.
Hosts: All right, cool. Tumerice is on the menu. I’m ready to do it. I’ll mock up the package today. All right, where do people find you?
Jane: You can just go onto our website www.launchpop.com. In there, if you want to contact us, you can fill out the form, or just reach out to hello@launchpop.io, and shoot us and email saying hi. Or if you guys have any questions at all about launching or D2C and what that space looks like. On Instagram too, it’s Launch Pop.
Hosts: All right, well thank you so much Jane for being on the show. It was a brief show, but we definitely got a lot of value and I’m sure listeners will like to follow you online. So, thank you again for being on the show.
Jane: Yeah, no worries. Thanks so much for having me.
Hosts: And do you still go by Shopify Jane?
Jane: People come up to me and say, “Shopify Jane!” It’s funny. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I still love that company and I’m still good friends with everyone there. So, yeah, I don’t mind.
Hosts: Okay. All right, well thank you very much for being on the show, we really appreciate it.
Jane: Yeah, no worries. Have a great day.
Hosts: Yeah, you too. Thanks, Jane.
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Show Links
- Jane Lee LinkedIn
- Jane Lee Instagram
- Launch Pop
- Shopify Stockroom
- Kylie Jenner Lip Kits
- Indiegogo
- Nordstrom
- Gary Vee Empathy Wine
On today's episode of Digital Rage we speak with Rob Taylor from TD Media. Rob has built a SaaS product called Conference Brain that provides a complete conference and live learning management solution.
About Rob Taylor
- Rob is the Founder and CEO of TV Media
- Product manager of Conference Brain
If a client wants a specific feature there is a very good chance that we will develop it for them. Where some of our competitors would say this is the way it works take it or leave it.
Rob Taylor
Show Notes
Alright on the show today we have Rob Taylor. Rob is the Founder and CEO of TV Media. He is also the product manager of Conference Brain. Which is going to be what we wanted to dig into mostly on this episode because it is a very interested app. And he is a father and he is also my brother, so welcome Rob!
Hey! Thanks Jeff.
Yeah, welcome to the show.
So, let’s start with why don’t you tell us about the Conference Brain, give us the overview.
Yeah. Sure. So Conference Brain is a platform that allows organizers of live learning events to manager pretty much all aspects of their events using a single log in. When we built the system it was designed as a beast mode project for a specific client and they were using six different systems to manage their one meeting. So between managing the website, the eblast, attendee registration, exhibit registration, abstract admission and judging. All of those were done in different systems so there was no single source of truth for their data. Which became really problematic when they wanted to start building advance functionality. Like giving their members discounts on conference registration. So, it was sort of the itch that they had and as we were developing it for them, we found that there were a lot of other organizations in that similar set of circumstances.
Alright, and oh, question. What does CME stand for?
So, continuing medical education. Doctors are required to their education on a regular basis annual and submit proof of that. A lot of that can be done online these days. But when you have a meeting in March, April in Palm Springs. It is pretty easy to attract people to come to your meeting at a live event. Um. yeah and there are just a lot of networking and things that you can do in a live context.
Okay. So, your app will actually track and help count towards continuing education?
Right. So they literally plan the entire meeting using our platform. Like they are already using it now to plan the 2020. We just finished 2019 right at the beginning of April. So all of the scheduling in terms of what sessions their going to offer, what social events. With CME there are pretty strict requirements for what you can give credit for and what you can’t. So if you are having a cocktail reception that is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company that does not confirm CME credit where an educational session would. So, our platform differentiate between those two things and allows the organizers to assign a value in terms of points for each session that someone attends. Then at the end they get a certificate that says you have earned 21.5 CME units. So that is how that works.
Oh great!
So can you maybe walk back and tell us why you choose that industry. Was that just based on one of your clients for a other company and then you got into that.
That is a great question, yeah. That is exactly what happens. We do a lot of work in the fertility space and the client that we developed this for was the specific reproductive society. So their the second largest organization for CME for reproductive endocrinology. Which is basically fertility medicine. So they just celebrated their 67th annual meeting. They have been doing it for a while. And one of our clients fertility center we work with was on the board of directors there and was aware of the need and they were looking for companies to build something custom for them. They couldn’t find anything else out in the market place that let them do exactly what they had a vision for creating. So it found us is really the answer.
Got it.
So how long ago was that?
Uh, we started building it in, about 5 or 6 years ago. They have ran 4 meetings on it. And we spent about a year or two on it just getting ourselves familiar with the organization. We went to a meeting before it was worked on to see how it was run. Then we spent about 12 months building the first version of it. Then over another period of 3-4 years we have continued adding features. For instance in the first couple years that we did it they still outsourced the mobile app for attendees for a third party but we since then have created a service that ties into our back end. Sort of work was they had to export it from one system and input it into another system and now they don’t have to do that. The mobile app pulls from the single source of truth. Which is really one of our driving principals in developing this thing.
Do all of the attendees have, they can down a iphone and android app at the conference.
Exactly. They can do it ahead of time. It is in both of the respected stores and it has everything from their sessions, schedule to all of the attendees contact information, exhibit map, list of abstracts. With these learning events there is a big focus obviously on education and a lot of that education comes from the community. Where they submitted abstracts and those abstracts are judged. Then there is a big poster presentation where everyone puts their big scientific posters up on a board. So it gives them a listing of what posters are at which location. All that important information.
Ok. Now is it, is the app kind of custom tailored to each?
Yeah. That’s a good question. Yeah it is completely branded. Just like the conference brand it self. We are currently working with two conferences. The second is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health which is a worldwide organization. Probably 3-4 times the size of Pacific Coast Reproductive Society. So obviously their installation of conference brain is custom to them. We don’t yet have the mobile app for them but were working on that but it would be completely different. The way we do that is instead of a multi tenant platform which you know a lot of these systems run like. We actually do things a little differently. We use get and code versioning to actually create a separate repository. So we have a upstream master repository not to get too technical then we pull that down into each clients individual repository. Which allows us a lot of flexibility of customizing the platform. We don’t really have to consider something that wouldn’t work for client A if client B wants it because we would make it a configuration option and client A doesn’t see what client B wants. So it allows us to kind of rapidly scale this thing up in terms of 90% of the work is done but if they want the registration to work differently we can customize it in their downstream repository without affecting anyone else.
And with that system it sounds like you can, in something every lastly you would worry about updates but if this is conference by conference you don’t need to worry about it lasting more than a year.
Well, kinda. With CME regulations there is a recording requirement where you have to keep all the data for 6 or 8 years. So there is definitely a longevity concern and then with our other client Wpath they actually ran 7 conferences on the same platform. Some of those are smaller surgical courses and then there is their big national one that is coming up i believe in November where it is a lot bigger. There is the idea of keeping it running 24/7 because people need access to their CME certificates. It is also a membership system. So when they pay their dues they do that through the system as well. So um, it does all year round.
Gotcha.
Got it.
So Rob, Jeff and I were talking before you got on the show. My company and I have done a couple conference. We have our own CMS as well so we have done some in the AA space, alcoholics anonymous and one of the issues we ran into was we don’t have an app for it. It’s just a website with registration. Another issue we ran into was people not having actual internet connection at the actual conference. So have you had to, how do you handle that? Obviously the people need to be on wifi but is all the information downloaded in case there are internet problems?
Yeah. So that is a good question and we did look at that originally. Part of the original specification when we did the project for Pacific Coast Reproductive Society. That it needed to be able to run locally. Their last system was filemaker pro and they would literally shut the entire registration system down and move it to a laptop and run it locally without a internet connection to do onsite registration.
Ouch.
Yeah. painful right. So technically we could do the same thing. All of our deploy infrastructure is programmatic done from the command line so it would be pretty trivial to take the entire stack and employ it to a mobile computer if we needed to. We would obviously have to shut down the data in production while we are doing that because we wouldn’t have any way of synchronizing spare data sets but it could be done. We haven’t had a problem with it though the conference venues that we run at have really good wifi internet and so it has not been an issue. I am sure if it was we could probably hard wire a solution but you can’t do much with a mobile app if there is no good internet.
Right.
Some things are beyond our control.
Yeah and I guess these days wifi is just kind of comes with you just expect it at conferences.
And you could always do a mobile hotspot if you needed to even if the infrastructure wasn’t there. We would probably leverage some third party, even if we had to go satellite we could probably do that.
Mm.
So two of the things that I see that you probably had as major hurdles was getting accredited to assign continuing education credits and two is uh, adoption of a new system.
Mhmm.
Were those, correct?
So fortunately number 1 is nothing that we have to deal with. The society that we are licensed to is responsible for that part of it. Their kind of responsible for making the decision as to how our system would conform to those requirements. So to be quite honest we are not experts in CME compliance. We just rely on them to provide that. There are some kind of strenchet rules that we made kind of a open ended system for review of faculty material. That is a really big deal and so when a facility is assigned to the system they have to upload their presentation ahead of time. That presentation can be assigned to a judge one or more judges and those judges have to review each slide in the deck and sign off on a series of questions that are open ended. Meaning that the client can go in and ask the questions that they want to ask and how many questions they want to ask. One of the many questions is, is this presentation free from any commercial logos. That is a big deal. You can’t and it is crazy how people will try to subtly take a picture of themselves and in the back corner is their company logo. Can’t blame them they are trying to optimize the opportunity. So by having the system it doesn’t enforce any rules but it allows the admins to say what are the questions you need to sign off on so if the certification requirements change in the future they can add a different question. They have a historical record of who reviewed the presentation so if they were ever questioned by the governing body they would have some proof to show. And then the second one in terms of adoption we have been very fortunate. You know Pacific Coast Reproductive Society by their own admission previous system was really challenging for users. For example if I registered as an attendee and I changed my address. That update wouldn’t be reflective in my membership record because that was a whole different table. They had duplicate addresses in those two tables there wasn’t a single source of truth for address. So there wasn’t really any push back in people adopting it, which was fortunate for us. I think the larger question is how to get larger companies that aren’t on our platform to adopt it.
Yes.
That is definitely a hurdle. It is more of a entreprise sale cycle in terms of there is a board of directors and their planning their meetings a year out and if you are lucky you are trying to get in on a opportunity in 24 months kind of a thing. Coming from standard development marketing that is eons.
Yeah. So that is one of the main things we wanted to discuss. The challenge that you had with growing the business with an enterprise level sale cycle. What is your plans going into the future with this.
Yeah. I wish I could speak authoritatively to this point because you know, were still trying to figure it out to be completely honest. I think the plan for us really involves being consistent. So creating content on a regular basis so were actually looking at developing documentation as content and as a marketing tool. So that as we develop, because documentation is still in its infancy but as we release different chapters of documentation publicly, even though it may give our competitors some insight as to how our system works. I think the upside of having relevant content on a regular basis will probably trump that. So, um, and then just being persistent. It is a long sales cycle and it is going to be something you have stay in touch with people on a regularly basis. Previously to be quite honest our sales approach has been try to get them to express intent and if the sale cycle isn’t closed in 6-8 weeks we probably just move on from that opportunity. Then we will need to shift from that and know that it doesn’t happen in that time frame and be more patient and invest more time into the sale. I think is kind of where we are going.
Interesting.
Are there competitors like direct competitors or is your product unique?
Uh, it’s, there are definitely direct competitors and some very large ones and so that is definitely a challenge but the flip side of that challenge being very large they are trying to do things that scale and were not. Were purposely trying to things efficiently if you will. Meaning that if a client wants a specific feature there is a very good chance that we will develop it for them. Where some of our competitors would say this is the way it works take it or leave it. That is one of the things that drove wpath our second client to choose working with us because we didn’t say no to anything. We were like yes let's figure out what you want and make it work that way. I think we're a bit more eager in that aspect being new and we have a platform that allows us to do that customization without a downside. It would be great if we developed features that more than one client would want to license but um were still willing to work with the clients as sort of a custom application development if you will but with the benefit economically of having most of it already done. I think that is our sweet spot. We can offer them a high level of customized service but their still not paying for a complete solution.
Yeah makes sense. Rob would you mind speaking about pricing at all or how that works. You don’t have to get into the nitty gritty.
Yeah. That’s a fair question. So for CME compliant organization that uses all the features, including the mobile app and registration, member dues collection and all of that it ends up being around $36,000-$38,000 a year, licensing. There are organizations that don’t have membership bodies that just do conferences without membership or that do not require CME compliance so were looking to offer custom solutions. Where people aren’t paying for things that they don’t need and that would lower the price point but were still toying around with and see if we can make sort of a light version that would have registration obviously and session planning but may skip some of the things like faculty review or abstract submission if an organization doesn't do that.
That sounds like a good approach to have a scaled down version you could probably easier to set up for them as well.
Yeah and the thing you know, it would include everything in terms of the website, mobile app and registration. Organizations that are doing that now through multiple providers might be attractive to them both economic and just sort of a operational standpoint.
I have a leading question. I want to lead you into sort of like taking a peak under the hood but do you see that the customization of your app would be scalable and which would be something that would never go away.
I think I understand the question.
So 10 years from now you wouldn’t lock down your service like other big competitors have.
No, I don’t think so. I honestly, we come from a development background. I am not a sales guy. I am a developer, a marketer. So I really enjoy the process of learning the needs of the potential client and see how we can address them with technology. That is sort of an inherit passion of mine so I don’t think I would ever want to just do something that was the same for everybody and if the leading question is to lead me into the technology stack and how we do that is that where you are going?
That is straight where I am going. Straight under the hood. I want to know how it works.
Right. So uh it is all done in PHP at least the main web part of it and company framework. If you have ever used company it is complexed but really good at what we want to do which is establish a common way to do something and add exceptions. So on the view layer just looking at how things are presented to the screen regardless of the back end logic um,. What we would call the base repo has a set of view layers but even within the company there is a really easy way to override the base layer of the view. So what we do is we pull the whole company view down into the clients repo and then within that we make new files that only live in the downstream repo and override the default view layers. So, not to be too technical. I guess it is ok to be technical. But it is really designed to, and there is some manuel going back and forth. For instance if you update the base layer you have to synchronize that override layer downstream. But it is a real easy way for the development team to focus on one core repo, push that down and there are other people who can handle implementation at a clients specific level. So even operationally it gives a really clean division of labor where developers can work on developing core features without worrying about how that is going to affect anybody down stream. Then another set of people can focus on how do we take that and make sure it works in that clients and that is not something that scales very well because you have to manually in some cases update things. Like I said earlier were not trying to scale well were trying to do things purposefully and not at scale because I think there is an opportunity there.
Yeah definitely. It helps with the evolution of the product as well because if you have a few clients asking for the same feature you add it to the core features.
Yeah. Then we have the options of tying things to a central configuration file and even that configuration file can be partially overridden on a client level. So there is a main config its Yamel in cemphany. So it is a config.yaml file but then we have a config.client.yamel and in the up stream repo that is an empty file but down stream if we want to add parameters we literally copy parameters from the main config yaml and change the configuration there.
It takes priority.
Exactly. Exactly. So the view layer has this view of overriding and priority and the config layer has this same idea and then if we need things that are programmatically different we can build two things parallel versions of something like a registration flow and we say client A uses this registration flow and client B uses this registration flow. Um so it doesn’t, we never have to touch client a’s registration flow if client b wants changes.
Yeah.
So company itself is fantastic. It’s complicated but for this type of development where you have uh, upstream, downstream repo. It is really wonderful for our purposes. Then the mobile app is done just to kind of give you a walk through of it. We chose reactive for the mobile app which is ok. You know.
It’s popular for sure.
It’s popular and I am not honestly adversed well enough in reactive for sure, it is not my strong suit. But I think those are more to me as a developer, the developer we use is great but mobile app development is so much harder than web development.
Yes.
Really there's so many more considerations and it takes longer. I am so used to so quickly in a web environment so that is definitely been kind of an adjustment. This isn’t the first mobile app we have done but it is the one that has been used the most for sure. Um, then we tie the real native client to the data set using anodapi. So the mobile app connects to the nod stack and the nod stack pulls data from rethinkdb which is really interested sort of data store. Were using MySQL. Company uses this thing called doctorant or optionaly instead of writing query you are writing indoctron. Doctor pushing company to rethink that as well. We did that kind of on purpose because we wanted the mobile app to have the same data but be redistributed multi server database environment that we could have on a different set of serves so that the mobile app would never be directly affected by the web performance. It’s a little convoluted but um it works well in practice.
Yeah and I went straight to thinking it went from mysql to a json file. Having the db solution seems like a much easier option.
Well and we kind of do a change feed so that as certain tables are updated we store kind of a meta table that says hey this table was updated at this date and time. Then the mobile client through nodapl stores when the last time was updated in their client and if it hasn’t changed it doesn’t bother to download it. So it knows when to download this new data sort of by this meta change log information on the table which pretty efficient. You still have to do pulling every I think we do it every 30 seconds but you are pulling this tiny information date, time and then if it's greater than you stored locally then you go and grab the whole table again.
Gotcha.
I have a question about set up. If a company comes to you and they pretty much have no customization and want the features that you offer. What does the set up look like?
That’s a good question. It could be done really quickly. The hurdle is usually importing and utilizing their user data. So that is more important to membership organizations and they have dues they want to collect and dues history that they want to import into the system um and most of those folks don’t have normalization done. Their people will be just a text fill instead of being a table. So you can have md credential you could have 7 or 8 variations of it with periods and capitalization and all of that. So, going through and normalizing all of that but short of those challenges. We can spin up in 2-4 weeks pretty easily.
Ok. Wow nice!
Yeah it's already done. It’s just a matter of creating another repository and programatically creating it. So if there is you know,, it has a built in CMS for modifying. Basically conference brain is the website for the organization but if they have an existing Wordpress website they can do a conference.domainname.com and do the conference function there. Then the design wouldn’t be such an aspect. We try to discourage that because having a single website, single place to log in is probably a big advantage as far as friction for their attendees but it's an option to scale up quickly.
Ok got it. During the actual events how are you providing support at those events.
Yeah. It depends from a pcrs I actually go onsite and help them with onsite registration. I am actually the guy printing peoples badges and helping people buy tickets and stuff. That was an opportunity that came early on and I took it. Developing is one thing but to see it in action is another. You make a long list of things that could be better.
On the ground. Home Depot requires all executives to work on the floor for two months attorneys and all.
Then our other client wpath, we have been to one of their meetings because I wanted to meet the board of directors and see how the meeting was run and they run every meeting without any assistance from us. It is not like we have to be there but we certainly can be and like to be if it is feasible.
Alright we're coming up on the critical 30 minute mark. What we love to ask our guest is what tools do you like to use. Obviously you use get, what else is primary to the tools that you use on a daily basis.
We self host our repos on get labs on our own servers so we don’t use github we use get lab. Which is fantastic. I was a little intimated getting that set up myself but super easy to maintain and I would highly recommend. Macbook Air for programming. Sublime text is my primary tool of choice for coding but our dev team uses different tools php storm I believe.
Any vs coders?
No. I don’t think so. Sorry. Um, we have a really interesting ticketing system that no one has ever heard of called egroupware its out of germany. It’s open source but we use for all of our ticketing and time tracking internally. We run payroll of that to figure out how much to pay everybody based on how much they have worked and clients submit tickets directly into that system either by email or directly into that interface. Um, I like Iterm2. I have been using that for a while and within that I use Tmucs which is good screen multiplier. If you do any stuff you should learn screen or tmucs it sets up your workspace in a terminal and even if you are on a remote server and it dies you can log back in and all of your stuff is still there. You can run processes within a terminal context. What else photoshop, illistrator.
You used lume the last time I talked to you.
Yeah that is right lume is great for short videos. We do that all the time if the client has a question about something we will record a short screencast and send it over to them. I have tried a bunch of different video programs and this one is by far easiest even their paid version is like $8.00 a month. It’s ridiculously cheap.
Yeah. I can’t express how simple they make sharing easy but how much they give you for free.
Yeah and I like the feature that they send you an email when someone has seen it so even in like prospecting emails, i’ll record a screencast and then I’ll get insight if the prospect actually viewed the video or not. Sort of gives me how far along they are coming in terms of being ready to talk. Let’s see what else that is pretty much it.
Well there you go. Fantastic. Um, alright so what do you want to promote how do people follow you. Where do you want people to reach out.
Yep. Well were on linkedin, I think and I do a little on Twitter. LinkedIn is better and then conferencebrain.com is the best way to learn more about the platform and there is a demo request form there that you can fill out and we will be right in touch if anyone wants to try it out. We have a full version with demo data where you can log into the back end and see how all the functionality works and that would be the best way.
Alright sounds good. Thank you very much rob for being here, it was very informative and fun talking to you.
Yeah. Thanks a lot guys.
Thanks Rob.
For show notes go to digital rage.com and follow us on Twitter at Digital Rage FM. Consider giving us a rate and review we would sincerely appreciate it.
Show Links
- Conference Brain
- Rob Taylor on LinkedIn
- TV Media
- Alcoholic Anonymous
- Pacific Coast Reproductive Society
- WPATH
- Home Depot
- Sublime Text
Today we have another important conversation about accessibility. Rachelle Golden drops some knowledge on us, and we take immediate action - that's how important this episode is.
About Rachel Golden
- Fresno County Bar Association, Board Member
- Fresno County Women Lawyers, Member at Large
- Consultant and educator for the Civil Justice Association of California
- Associate Member Certified Access Specialist Institute (CASI)
- Regularly collaborates with and assists elected officials in drafting ADA reform
- DRI The Voice of the Defense Bar
My whole goal is to make sure that all businesses, small and large, are able to service their clients and to make sure that they get to keep the money that they earn in their own pockets. And not give it away to predatory plaintiff. It drives me nuts.
Rachelle Golden
Show Notes
Jeff: Yep, yeah.
Matt: So, there we are. Let’s, uh, get right into it with our interview with Rachelle Golden.
Matt: Alright, well welcome to the show today Rachelle. Today we have Rachelle Golden. Rachelle works at Hatmacker Law. Is that Rachelle? Did I get that name right?
Rachelle: It’s Hatmaker, but close.
Matt: Alright. Okay. Hatmaker, sorry. Um, so yeah. Rachelle handles Labor and Employment Law but especially um, you know, specializes in ADA Compliance. So that’s what we’re actually going to be talking to her about today. She has extensive experience consulting with private and public entities and actually works on policies as well for federal and state laws regarding ADA compliance. So we’re really excited to talk to you about that today. So welcome to the show!
Rachelle: Thanks! I’m happy to be here.
Matt: Yeah well, um. Yeah I guess we’ll dive deep - dive right into this. We uh, we’ve had a few people on to our, uh, you know this is our first- this is our 15th episode and we’ve definitely addressed this topic a couple times but we haven’t had anybody, um an attorney on the show to speak about accessibility. So, I- maybe we should do this a disclaimer at this point that this is, um. How do you say it? This is not legal advice?
Rachelle: (laughs) This is not intended to be legal advice. It’s for educational purposes only. This is not Attorney-Client privilege. And if you have specific questions or concerns, please contact me directly. (laughs)
Jeff: What she said.
Matt: Perfect, exactly. (laughs) We’ll put that right there at the top of the show notes. So..
Rachelle: (laughs) Okay, fair enough.
Matt: Um, well thank you so much. You know I, I guess we’ll just, yeah, just jump right into it.
Um, yeah why don’t you um, why don’t you just walk us through a typical accessibility case. You know, with regards to a website that’s not accessible to people with disabilities.
Rachelle: Yeah, well there, okay. So, what happens is, is.. Um, and I have allergies. So if I start sneezing or need to blow my nose, just bare with me. Um, got to love Fresno. (laughs) Uh, what happens is typically I’ll get a call from a potential client or, you know, a referral or somebody and they’ll say “Hey. I either got a complaint or I got a demand letter. I don’t even know who to talk to about this. I didn’t even know that website accessibility was a thing. Is it even a law?” You know, that- that’s where the genesis of these conversations start is the person is completely blindsided because they didn’t- like I said, they didn’t even know it was a thing. So then, you know, then I’ll ask them a couple of questions about their business and what type of website they have. Whether it’s just informational or whether they’re actually conducting some sort of transaction through the website. Whether it’s, you know, if it’s a restaurant, it’s just informational. Um that’s, you know, one category. Or if it’s a hotel, um, and you can book rooms through it, that’s a different type of- of problem. Or if it is a restaurant and you’re selling, you know, gift certificates, or you’re making reservations, or, you know. If it’s interactive in some way, and you really.. Then you’re really, um, facing a situation where there could be a potential liability. So, um, the first thing that I do when I get the complaint is I analyze it with a tooth and comb. Um, typically they’re “Canned Complaints” meaning, you know, there’s a handful of lawyers who, who bring these lawsuits across these country, um, and, most of their complaints look exactly the same. So if I’m dealing with a- a law firm that’s actually using a plaintiff- And I say using a plaintiff um, because that’s exactly what happens. What happens is the- the person is working for one particular law firm and filing hundreds of ‘suits, all the time.
Matt: Oh.
Rachelle: So, and really the person that makes, um, this is um, you know, benefitting is truly the attorney because what I found is um, that the actual settlement itself, only a very small percentage goes to that particular plaintiff. Most of the attorneys fees and costs- or most of the settlement, rather, goes to the attorney.
Matt: Oh, interesting.
Rachelle: Um, so it’s not- It’s not as if, you know, the $4,000 statutory penalty. That- the plaintiff is getting that full $4,000. They usually get maybe $500, maybe $2,000 at most, and then- So then the attorney captures the rest of the $2,000 and plus they get their attorney’s fees on top of it. So it’s really- it’s not balanced. Um, so. If I’m dealing with somebody who’s actually using a plaintiff who has a visual, cognitive- I haven’t seen too many cognitives, um, probably because there’s a capacity issue there. So it's typically visual or hearing impaired. Um, then I know we’ve got a true communication barrier-type case where then I- I need to make sure that the website is compliant with the website content accessibility guidelines, uh, to point out AA or greater. Um, or if I’m dealing with a person that has a mobility disability like myself, who’s just saying, you know, “Oh, I can’t filter your website based on your accessible features.” That’s an entirely different problem because the ADA has not met the- the communication barrier statutes are not designed and intended to accommodate that type of person because they can see the screen, they can hear the videos, see the pictures, understand and appreciate what’s on the screen. So, that’s a more defensible case in my experience because that’s not what the ADA was set out to do, in that particular instance as far as websites go. So depending on what case I’m dealing with and what kind of plaintiff I have, what the allegations are, then it truly just becomes, okay, do you want to fight this? You know? If we think we have a defense, we try it. Um, especially if it’s personal mobility disability. Um, or if it’s, say, “Well, your website is not compliant and this person has a visual impairment, and you have a transactional website. Um, it’s probably in your best interest and the cheapest route to try and settle this case.
Jeff: Now are you.. Gotcha, got it. It makes sense. Now are you, as far as, you know, when these cases come in, are you then reaching out to, you know, like an independent audit company? Or are you guys just on staff, kind of, you know, up to the regulations in determining whether it’s accessible or not? Or..?
Rachelle: Even if I was sounding that way,..
Matt: Okay.
Rachelle: I wouldn’t- I wouldn’t want to be. Um, the reason is because then I become a witness to my own client’s case.
Matt: Oh, okay.
Rachelle: Okay, so, um. There’s very specific kind of boundaries that need to be in place there. So even if, you know, and I intend to take some coding classes and, and intend to become.. In fact, starting this summer, really kind of diving into this issue so that I have more knowledge and to better serve my clients. Say, well this is required, and this is not required. And so, kind of learn more about it so I understand- Just like with construction related access claims. I know that with California building code and the federal designs standards barrier very, very well. So when I get a “Canned Complaint” I already know more than the plaintiff and the lawyer on the other side. And so in those particular circumstances, it’s really in the client’s best interest because now I know what’s legitimate and what’s not. What they’re claiming is- is truly and barrier and in claiming you- you know, what’s not a barrier. And I- my goal is to become the say way with accessibility for websites of: “No, this is required or this isn’t required.”
Matt: Mmhmm.
Rachelle: Um, but I’d- I used independent auditors to come in, and will look at, um, a clients website if they can afford it because, you know, auditing is very expensive. Um, most of the time the client’s are not willing to spend, you know, the $5,000-$10,000 just to get a thorough audit done, because that doesn’t include the remediation of the website.
Matt: Mmhmm.
Rachelle: So..
Matt: Outside of an audit, what are- what would be good first steps for a company to take?
Rachelle: Well, I always recommend if you are using a template website, you know, GoDaddy, Wix, WordPress, whatever it may be. If that’s your template- SquareSpace- if you’re using a template as a website, call the company and ask them “Hey, is this template WCAD 2.0 AA compliant? 90% of the time, they’re going to ask you “What’s that?” That’s a pretty good indicator that the template that you’re using is not accessible. Okay. I know, um, that WordPress does have a WCAD 2.0 AA template that’s expensive. Um, and it’s limited to what you can do to it, because that’s the problem with- Not the problem. That is how it’s designed in the- the website content availability guidelines. Minimal tweaking because once you start tweaking things, then you’re messing with the code in the background and so then you’ve just destroyed the accessibility component to it. Right?
Matt: Right.
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: If it’s a website that you’re constantly uploading pictures and feeds and farming people out to different third party um, sites and things like that, chances are it’s not going to be compliant because you are the, the user is manipulating the content on the website. So that is one of the limitations. And from what I learned is, that, yeah. You can use a, you know, a template that’s ADA compliant um, but you’re limited on what you can do with it. So you would really need to go through your IT people to upload it in a- a compliant way. So, then the other thing is, and the other kind of group of people, is if you design your website from scratch and used, you know, a- a very savvy IT company or a website developer or a mobile app developer. Call them and ask them. And unfortunately about 50% of the time even those companies are not up to speed.
Matt: What do you find are the most common, um, problems with websites?
Rachelle: It’s your basic, um, it’s basic. So, like, hotels is a big industry right now with- with the website and accessibility complaints. So what I see often is websites are not- hotel website are not- Not very big chains. Um, it, they caught on. But your smaller mom and pop, maybe a franchise, um, they are not able to be sorted by the accessible features. So they can’t you- you know they’ve got, you’re looking for a queen room with a roll-in shower, right? You can’t sort the rooms by queen bed with a roll-in shower. You can sort by queen but then you have to read in the- the jargon at the bottom to see what the amenities are. Um, and the problem is that the sorting in that particular instance, or you’re looking for a, you know, queen room with auditory alarms, or a TTY telephone, or some sort of communication um, accessibility that you would need. It’s not typically able to be searched for in a website. For restaurants, it’s the pictures of the food is not able to be translated into text. So, um, and the reason that’s important is because, yeah you may have okay, a turkey sandwich as the menu description. But then the picker- picture shows it’s on focaccia bread with havarti cheese and, you know, iceberg, or you know, maybe there’s arugula salad or lettuce. You know, the picture says a lot more than the actual description of the restaurant item. So us as, you know, people who can see without any impairment know that this is a delicious sandwich. Whereas somebody who has a visual impairment is like “Well I want don’t a turkey sandwich. It sounds boring.” They’re not afforded the same access.
Matt: So on the hotel, uh, example you gave, are hotels required on the facility to have this and they’re just not matching on their website experience?
Rachelle: That’s right.
Matt: Okay.
Rachelle: Yep. So, any- So there’s two components really to kind of title three, which is- So there’s five titles of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The first is Employment. We’re not talking about that. The second is um, Government Entities. We’re not talking about that. The third is Places of Public Accommodation who are open to the public. So the publicly owned businesses that have their facilities open to the public. And then, um, the fourth and fifth are Communication Barriers and- not Communication Barriers, um, uh- Shoot, I forgot what Title Four was. They’re not relevant here. The Communication Barriers fall under Title Three and it says the- Title Three says “If you are a privately owned business who are- have your doors open to the public you need to now make your- you need to make all of your services, privileges, facilities, benefits, activities,.. Everything available in an accessible way. So people are taking this communication barrier and- and kind of adding it to that construction related access claim. So not only do you need to have ramps to get into your front door, you need to have, you know, a push button door if your door is too heavy, or inaccessible counter height, or um, accessible tables in your restaurant or accessible rooms. You also need to then put that- the information on your website so people who have communication barriers can understand and appreciate what those accessible features are.
Matt: Gotcha.
Jeff: Got it.
Matt: Now do you see- so, right now as far as like, like restaurants need to have, you know, a bathroom that’s accessible to handicap, but do you, right now like, is it the actual law for, like, all businesses to have websites that are accessible? Or, I mean, I- I believe it’s not but I mean, do you in the even- do you think that it will eventually get there? To a point where, like, all businesses will, if they have a public space, will they need their website to also be accessible? Like, by law?
Rachelle: Well, so, I think eventually the answer that question is yes. I think it will be um, I think eventually some, in some fashion it’ll either be codified statute that, in a state or federal statute, that it you- you know, here’s- here’s what the standard is. Just as we’ve done with the construction related access guide. Guidelines of, we’re saying “Here’s the standard for federal law. It must meet, at a minimum, the Americans with Disabilities Act design standards from 2010.” That’s the threshold. Okay, and then if you’re states want to impose a stricter standard, like California uses the two- California uses the California Building Code that changes every 18 months, um. California says “Yeah, you need to meet the federal guidelines but you also need to meet the California guidelines.” So now, the California guidelines meet and exceed the federal guidelines. So, if you’ve met California Building Code, you have met or exceeded the requirements in the federal standards. I presume that we will be dealing with the same sort of issue, um, as it relates to websites in the future. But right now, um, there’s a split in jurisdictions about whether every website needs to be accessible or not. So, if you’re looking at um, Floria or, um, really Florida’s the big state that talks about any website needs to be accessible if it’s dealing with the place of public accommodation, whether you can conduct transactions on it, or not. California, on the other hand, surprisingly is actually more cons- is more liberal than that. Um, no, rather than more conservative than that, they’re saying “No it’s not every website that needs to be accessible. It’s only if there’s a true nexus to the brick and mortar of the building. So, if you’re having a blog site that anybody can read, and you may have- it may be tied to your business in some way. Like, you know, a legal article or, you know, a food blog, or, you know, whatever. And you can’t conduct any business on it. There’s not nexus to the brick and mortar. It’s not as if you’re making reservations, buying gift certificates, and ordering online food. Okay, but if you can’t do those things through your website, then it need- it does have to have access to the brick and mortar and it does need to be WCAD 2.0 AA compliant.
Jeff: Okay.
Rachelle: Does that make sense?
Jeff: Yes, definitely.
Matt: Yeah and it sounds, you know, in- in the- the tradition of California, it sounds like, that, they’re going to, you know, a- a lawmaker is going to address this, and put something in- in place for businesses conducting- businesses in California that have websites. I’m sure this is, you know, in the near future and it should be addressed soon for companies.
Rachelle: Well- well, so here’s what’s really interesting about California right now. Um, I have talked to both, uh, Republican and Democratic legislators throughout the entire state, in several different jurisdictions. Um, and when I’m doing a presentation I, uh, on construction related access claims I always talk about websites, and typically the presentations that I do are sponsored by an elected official. 100% of them that I have spoken with are, like, “This is ridiculous. When is this going to stop?” Meaning, we’ve gone too far to allow litigation over inaccessible websites. How can this possibly be? So, it surprised me, because..
Jeff Yeah.
Rachelle: I have been told from construction related access claims from various legislative officials “I am not going to stick my neck out and take the rights away from people with disabilities. I’m not going to say you can’t- you can’t, um, litigate over construction related access claims because I want to provide the most amount of access.” And I- I agree with that. I’m- I’m disabled myself. I use a wheelchair. So I agree with that, 100%. But at the same time, I don’t agree that you should be able to be a serial litigant over this issue. And as these- as the construction-related cases keep coming and are not slowing down, I think legislators are now more aware of, yes, we need to provide accessible websites so people with visual, hearing and cognitive impairments can use the website and access the business. It helps the businesses bottom line, number one, because now you’re excluding no one from your- from your facility and your services that you provide. But, two, we’ve got to stop this litigious soc- society. It’s gonna get abused. It is being abused and they’re giving the people who actually have a need, like myself for construction-related access claims, I need accessible hotel rooms. Okay, but now when I go to a hotel, the hotel patron’s looking at me like “Shoot, I’m going to get sued.” And the same is happening to people with visual, hearing and auditory impairments. Uh, they need those services but now these, like, you know, heavy hitters are really, um, furthering discriminatory animus towards people with disabilities, rather than eradicating barriers. It’s really unfortunate.
Jeff Oh.
Matt: Yeah, the bad ones ruin everything.
Rachelle: It’s true. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Matt: Yeah, that’s crazy. It’s, uh, they’re doing- They think that they’re- they’re presenting themselves on the side of justice, but they’re doing a complete disservice to the people that it’s affecting.
Rachelle: 100%.
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: 100%. It’s really sad. I mean, and the- and the website guidelines kind of make sense. I mean, yeah, high contrasting colors for somebody that is not able to decipher between different shades of blue because their vision is going. Or, um, you know, a picture turning into text so somebody who can’t see it all has the ability to understand what’s being offered on a website. Or somebody that, um, is completely blind and has a screen reader and needs the screen to be read aloud to them. Or somebody with a cognitive impairment who is trying to buy tickets on an online ticket service and you only have three minutes to fill out the form. Maybe it takes them three minutes to appreciate ‘first name’ means. And so then they’ve been timed out of that form before they even have the opportunity to type their first name.
Jeff: Oh geez.
Rachelle: You know what I mean? So it’s very important, it’s- you know, it’s gone the litigation has just gone too far.
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Rachelle: And now people are digging their heels in, are like “I’m not going to change my website. I’m just going to take it down. And I don’t care. I don’t want people with disabilities accessing my business. I have no interest in serving that population because they’re going to sue me.” That’s the mentality that’s being perpetrated.
Jeff: Ah, oh. Uhhh.
Rachelle: Yeah. It sucks!
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: (laughs)
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: So when it’s sore-
Jeff: Yeah.
Matt: So, uh, what uh- So- other specific industries decides hotels and restaurants uh, are you seeing anything? Any other industries that are getting hit hard by the litigation?
Rachelle: Education. Education, so that would fall under Title Two. Uh, so federal agencies. Anybody that receives federal funds must comply with the rehabilitation action 508, which talks about providing accessible, um, educational curriculum to all of it’s students. And so the first real cases that we saw come down from the court system dealt with, like, MIT and Harvard about their online education system. Um, so, uh, that edu- you know, private and public education alike, are really getting hit hard. Um, government agencies are also becoming a target um, because the Department of Justice has said if you are a government agency, you need to have your website accessible. Oh and by the way, the order to comply was two years ago so if you haven’t updated your website, you’re late. Um, so, it- no, no public or private industry is exempt. So if you have a business you are exposed. Period. End of story.
Jeff: (unintelligible)
Rachelle: You know, Netflix got hit. Scrib, which is an on- like, audible, it’s an online book service. They got hit. Um, so any business is at risk unfortunately.
Jeff: Yeah. Now was there, um, some type of grace period, as far as, you know, once the lawsuit’s been made, does the company have, like, a certain amount of time? And- And does that vary, as far as, you know, fixing the items and..?
Rachelle: I wish there was. And so, actually the legislation that I’m- I had drafted a year ago. It never went anywhere, unfortunately. Um, it provided for 120 day grace period. I would argue that that’s still not long enough because if you’re dealing with a complicated website and you’ve got to completely rebuild it. Basically you got to so- you know, pull down all of your inactive pages and say “We’re working on this. Please come back at a later time.” Or completely scrap your website and start over. Um, and it costs money, as everybody likely that’s listening to this podcast knows, that building a website from scratch is not cheap or easy. (laughs) Um-
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: Especially if there’s really a lot of individualized content. Um, so as it stands right now, no. Um, the- the plaintiffs will tell you that the communications barriers statutes were inactive for federal regulations 20 years ago and, so, if you have built a website in the last 20 years, then you have been required, even though the WCAD guidelines didn’t even become on anyone’s radar until about 2008. So, uh, my approach personally for how I handle my ADA cases, my website cases, is if you’ve built a brand new website. I’m sorry, it sucks to be you. And it’s not compliant. If you have been dealing with a website for the last, you know, 15 years and it’s evolved over time, then you need to do what’s right and achievable to make those- at least those transactional pages, the ones where you can conduct some sort of business to be WCAD compliant and if it’s possible to code it, just those pages that way. Sometimes it is possible, and sometimes it isn’t, depending upon, you know, how pages feed into it. So, um, so that’s- that’s really my approach. Um, and that- that seems to have worked well with plaintiffs. Especially the older websites. But if you have built a brand new website in the last couple of years and you have not given any thought to how it’s accessible or not, um, my recommendation is to figure that out quickly and, uh, work on coding the pages that require transactions. Registering that code first. Fixing that code first.
Matt: Now, do you have resources that you send people, uh, to get those types of website corrections done?
Rachelle: Yeah, so, um, I use Regularly Accessible 360 with Michele Landis, who I understand that you guys spoke with, which is awesome.
Jeff: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Rachelle: Um, she’s become a friend of mine and she’s one of the smartest, savviest, as I’m sure you understood when you spoke with her. People in the business. She’s been doing this a long time. So, Accessible 360 is a very reputable grade company. And then I also use the the Bureau of Internet Accessibility, the OAI- or, the OIA. Uh, Sarah Dawes, the sales manager,
Jeff: Yes. Yes, Sarah’s great. Uh.
Rachelle: She’s awesome.
Jeff: Yeah I’ve spoken with her a couple times and she’s super knowledgeable.
Rachelle: Totally.
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: Um, and then, as you’ve spoken with Tom Reynolds also, um, Tom was another great resource. He’s more local. He, um, he’s really- he doesn’t do audits, um, but he will certainly will be able to recode or reprogram a website if, like, ones that you’ve done, like, one of those download, automated scans and you’ve got issues popping up- I don’t recommended those to rely on them. Like, let’s say you do a scan, and then you fix your website, and then you do another scan. It’s going to give you a false positive. Um, so they’re not good to determine whether you are accessible, but they are good to determine where your holes are in your inaccessibility. And, so, Tom’s really good and taking those kind of problem areas and then fixing the website to bring it- bring it up to code. But, um, b-o-i-i-a it’s a- a company- or, you know, company affiliation and then Rachelle’s company will actually do one of these audits. Um, and- and they do a banged up job of it.
Matt: Alright. Yeah I got to ask this question, because Jeff and I both run (laughs) a web agency and we build websites. Are the companies that build the websites ever, uh, you know brought into these lawsuits? Or-
Rachelle: Well it all depends on what’s in your contract. Um, so, I- the argument will go like this, okay. When you have a construction related access claim, the tenant and the landlord are jointly and separately liable. So whether the tenant has access over the common areas or not, like the parking lot, if somebody comes in and says “You have an inaccessible parking to your gas station” but they don’t own the land and they’ve only rented the four corners of the actual building, it doesn’t matter. The plaintiff will sue both the landlord and the tenant, and then the courts say “You two need to figure out who’s responsible.” Unless you have specifically allocated ADA responsibility in your contract in your lease. So if you say “Landlord will assume all responsibility for ADA vi- violations in the common area.” Then the tenant just tenders their defense to the landlord and the landlord takes- takes it all. They identi- they identify the tenant and it’s the landlords responsibility. The same argument will apply to website developers. The ports will say, ‘cause the user is gonna look at the company and say “I- You’re the expert. You created this website. It’s not accessible. I hired you to do a job and it wasn’t done properly. Or access- not properly- wasn’t done in an accessible format.” The courts will say “Well there’s liability against the both of you, company and user. It’s up to you guys to figure out how you’re going to figure this out.”
Matt: Yeah, and we brought this up with Michele Landis, is that, um, you know, the- most company’s, what they’re doing is they’re saying “If you are, you know, here’s the issue with accessibility summarized.” and saying “If you want the accessibility package on top of that, it’s an upcharge. And-
Rachelle: Absolutely.
Matt: It has to be. And, you know, ‘cause, all this stuff it- even though it shouldn’t be- you know, we’re talking about it should be uh, you know, best practice and assumed but it’s- it’s not. And in our industry we have to outline that, and say, you know, your- your $10,000 website is going to be a $15,000 website if we have to go through the extra steps of making sure that it’s completely accessible.
Rachelle: And in that type of situation then I would- If I were representing you as the website developer, I would say “No, I gave them the option to provide that service and they declined it. Therefore, they are assuming the liability for not being compliant.” I would take that to the bank all day long. Um, so it really comes down to the language of your contract with your clients. It really will hinge on that. Um, especially if your contract addresses accessibility and WCAD guidelines, and the client initials next to the paragraph saying “I decline” then you as the website developer could don’t do that, do it, you as the website developer are then saying “Cool. Hands off. You’re assuming the risk for this. You want the cheaper- cheaper and easier version. That’s your choice. But I am absolved of liability for your making that- for you making that decision.” So your- your contract language really needs to be tighter. Absolutely. If- if regard- I mean, I’m glad that you guys are already doing that but I know, um, a lot of the contracts that I have seen with website developers. Especially if they’re in like a, you know, a shared workspace and they’re just getting started, and they’re just using a, you know, a canned contract for those kind of smaller, less- less experienced business owners. Um,they’re- they’re gonna be left holding the bag along with the user. If there’s- if there’s not language there. So, it’s really important for your listeners to make sure that as web developers they’re able to be in a thriving business and protect themselves from liability with that contract language.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s great advice. And it- it goes right along with what Michele Landis was telling us, as well, is that, if- as long as we give the- the customer the opportunity to opt in or opt out then that, you know, obviously it’s got to be word- worded correctly but we can, you know, have that passed off to the customer that they declined.
Rachelle: Absolutely.
Jeff: And it’s defensible in court if there’s a complaint.
Rachelle: And I wouldn’t mind- the structure, if I, if I’m giving my recommendations as to how, kind of, a contract should be laid out, think of it like an arbitration agreement. Okay, so, arbitration agreements have to be conspicuous. Um, California- they need to be kind of standalone. They can’t be buried in a handbook somewhere. Like an employee handbook. They need to be expressed language. You know, very, very detailed. Very specific. Um, you know, you need to cite the law that you’re following. Whether it’s the federal law or the state arbitration guidelines. It’s a big- it’s a standalone contract. What I would do if I were creating a contract for a website developer is, have it either be in the beginning. Right when you’re talking about the price of, here’s the option of this is what it would cost for WCAD compliance. Okay, let’s say it is a $10,000 contract and it’s going to cost $5,000 more. The cost of WCAD, um, coding compliance will be an additional a$5,000. You are declining to pay that fee and you are declining to make your website WCAD compliant. Yes or no. Check a box, yes. Okay, they’re declining it. Initial, date. Right there. Right in the beginning. So there’s not chance of that user saying “I didn’t see that.”
Jeff: Hmm.
Rachelle: You know, don’t bury it in your language. Make it- This is a really- From a liability standpoint, I would hate in court trying to defend a contract that you drafted because that’s going to cost more money than- So now you’re gonna have to, you know, be alone with your user and fight the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. But then you’re gonna be in a counter-suit, suing each other over breach of contract. I mean your- your, the cost of your case just exploded. So it’s really important to make sure that it’s a stand out unambiguous “You are declining. We are absolved of all liability. You are shoulding the liability for any accessibility website.” And any- any person that says that this website isn’t accessible.
Jeff: Well, now I’m scheduling an appointment with my lawyer.
Matt: (laughs)
Rachelle: (laughs)
Jeff: Update the, uh, terms of service in, uh, the master service agreement.
Matt: Yes.
Rachelle: That’s the other thing, too. And I- I got this question the other day actually from somebody on the East Coast. They were dealing with a standard terms and conditions on a mobile app. Uh, they were defending the mobile- mobile app developer. And they were asking the question of “What if- How can I enforce the arbitration agreement that’s in my standard terms and conditions?” And my response was- And- And the reason this is applicable. Bare with the legal jargon here for a minute. In- with arbitration agreements, it says that it can’t be an unconscionable agreement. Meaning, it has to be fair to both sides. You know, it- it can’t be an adhesion contract which take it or leave it. Um, there- There’s like six or seven different things that the arbitration agreement must have in order to be determined to be fair. If you’re burying that in your standard terms and conditions of “I accept all terms, click here” and then keep going, it’s not enough.
Jeff: It’s not enough. Yeah.
Rachelle: You’re gonna have an unconscionability argument on your hands. Okay. I would argue the same as going to be for your, um, inaccessibility. If you bury it in your standard terms and conditions- maybe it’s own pop-up screen, if you do it electronically. You know, maybe it’s- so that way- you know, and you can’t- you can’t click on the bottom. And I know a lot of people do this. You can’t click on the bottom “I accept” until you scroll through it, to where it’s like, at least the person had to have looked at the rolling screen before they click on that- before they’re allowed to click on that “I- I accept.”
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: And then they can go use the app or the website.
Jeff: Yeah and to be absolutely sure make it a separate opt in.
Rachelle: Yeah. uh-huh. Yep.
Matt: Alright, well Jeff and I have our- have some to-do’s to work on. (laughs)
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachelle: (laughs) Well good! Then it’s been helpful. At least for the two of you obviously.\
Jeff: I know, I know. This has been great.
Rachelle: Yeah.
Jeff: Well, um. Thank you so much Rachelle. Um, I guess, do you have any parting words for our audience today?
Matt: Anything to applaud?
Jeff: Where, um, where do people find you?
Rachelle: Um, uh, yeah. People can find me at hatmakerlaw.com It’s m-a-t-m-a-k-e-r law dot com. Uh, again my name is Rachelle. R-a-c-h-e-l-l-e. Golden. G-o-l-d-e-n. You can email me at rachellehatmakerlaw.com Um, what I would suggest to every person who’s listening is, if you’ve listened to this podcast and you have questions, either contact somebody that you know that knows more about this, or contact me and I will be thrilled to talk to you if you want to learn more about it. Just so that way, your business can continue to thrive. Because that’s my whole goal. Is to make sure that all businesses, small and large, are able to service their clients and to make sure that they get to keep the money that they earn in their own pockets. And not give it away to predatory plaintiff. It drives me nuts.
Jeff: Yeah. That’s- that’s great advice and a great offer and, uh, yeah I already sent one of my clients your way. And, uh
Rachelle: Aw! Thanks!
Jeff: (laughs) So, uh, yeah and more are coming after this conversation.
Rachelle: Awesome.
Jeff: (laughs)
Matt: (laughs) It’s so great.
Jeff: Well it was very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for your time.
Rachelle: Yeah.
Jeff: For coming on to the show with us. This is a very important that we have discussed, you know, three or four times now and, uh, and we want to keep professionals like you with- with this sage advice and- and, you know, honest, valuable offers. Uh, we want to bring this out to the open and make sure that everybody’s in line and participating in the- the accessibility of all the products that they- that they provide. So-
Rachelle: Well yeah, I think the challenge is for any business is: challenge yourself. Like, yeah, I don’t know what WCAD is. Go out and learn it and master it. And now you’re like, the jam. Now you’re the master of “Hey if you want an accessible website, I’ve got this down hot. And I’m the quickest and cheapest on the market” Use it as a marketing tool to have people funnel into your business. So, you know, don’t shy away from it. Like “Oh this is hard. I don’t want to get into it.” Like, no. Let’s do this! Let’s go all in and figure this out and then market yourself as “I’m a guru of WCAD coding” you know? I mean, that’s- that would be an amazing market- I would funnel people to that type of business if someone was using that as their tagline.
Jeff: There you go Matt. Team it up. Let’s do it. (laughs)
Matt: (laughs) Let’s do it.
Rachelle: Seriously. I, absolutely. Anybody who needs a website, you know. I’ll be like, “Hey, talk to these guys. Not only are the good, they’re affordable and they’re compliant.” Boom.
Matt: Nice. I like it. I like it. Great, well thank you so much Rachelle.
Rachelle: Thank you so much. Have a good one guys.
Matt: Alright. Thank you so much.
Rachelle: Bye!
Matt:
(music plays)
Speaker: For show notes and information, go to DigitalRace.fm Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digitalracefm and please, give us a raving review. We sincerely appreciate it.
Show Links
- Hatmaker Law Group
- Rachelle T. Golden LinkedIn
- Fresno County Bar Association
- Fresno County Women Lawyers
- Civil Justice Association of California
- GoDaddy
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Accessible 360
Todays episode we speak with Jason Siciliano who is the Creative Director at SquareTrade, and founder of ModernCopywriter.com. We talk about content marketing, copywriter portfolios, and destroying digital devices for research.
About Jason Siciliano
- Creative Director at SquareTrade
- Formerlly at Target & Yahoo in creative roles
- Founder of Modern Copywriter
What I try to tell copywriters who are just coming out or just starting to put their stuff together is find a copywriter out there who’s doing it and has a portfolio that blows you away and do that.
Jason Siciliano
Show Notes
Matt: Found out more about him, but welcome to the show Jason.
Jason: Thanks for having me man. It’s great to be here.
Matt: Well, I guess let’s get into currently, what you’re up to these days at SquareTrade. I did check out the website this morning and I love the phone dropping into the cereal. Did you have any play in that?
Jason: Yeah. That’s my team. I’m Creative Director at SquareTrade. I also have Coms. The Coms team here, as you’ve said, do protection plans trying to disrupt the warranty industry which was traditionally known for horrible service.
Matt: Yes. (laughs)
Jason: SquareTrade has just started to find out. That’s all I have to say. SquareTrade kind of came along and flipped out on its head and is now the protection plan provider at most US retailers and we’re in six countries in Western Europe. And we protect everything. You know at Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Costco, phones and tablets and electronics to appliances and furniture and all that. So, a big part of my job as Creative Director is trying to bring that to life. Protection to life and act as an advocate for for consumers. So we do a lot of video breaking stuff. Every time there’s a new Galaxy or iPhone that comes out.
Matt: (laughs)
Jason: We have a bunch of robots that we developed with a robotics engineer from Cal Berkeley.
Jeff: How fun is that?!
Matt: I know! I want your job, Jason!
Jason: It’s a blast. I know. It’s awesome. So we buy like twenty-grand worth of phones and go out and dunk them and drop them and bend them and tumble them and stuff..
Matt: Oh yeah.
Jason: It’s super fun.
Matt: Yeah, instead of All State. You just bring the mayhem to your office.
Jeff: (laughs)
Jason: Exactly! Yeah, nice, nice. Yeah, we were acquired by AllState about two and a half years ago, and as they continue to expand what they need as far as protection today for their consumers from auto and home. Do you know they recently acquire- acquired an identity theft protection company and for armor, us, as far as product protection and there’s expanding how they protect people in a more holistic way. And I think you know back in the day, the first insurance plan everyone had was on their car when they were 16 and they got their first car- and I think today it’s on your phone at probably 12 or 13.
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Matt: Yeah, so speaking of all your marketing and history and everything, is there one project that stands out to you that has always been something you're super proud of? One of your favorites?
Jason: Oh, god. I mean I love the one at SquareTrade that you specifically mentioned, which is our Breakability Campaign. It’s been going for 8 years, 9 years- where we go and test phones with these robots. It’s a blast. The Galaxy fold has, I’m sure everybody’s aware, has had some problems.
Jeff: Yeah.
Jason: Samsung’s pulled back on that. But let me just say, we’ve got a new robot waiting for that to come out.
Matt: (laughs)
Jeff: (laughs)
Jason: So, that’s pretty exciting. There was a campaign probably, I’m trying to think of something real quick, way back in the day. I’m gonna date myself. Do you guys remember InfoSeek?
Matt: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jeff: Yep.
Jason: So, back in the dot com days, that was the beginning of my copywriting career. That was in the nineties in San Francisco during the dot com boom, and that was just launch after launch after launch, right? And there was this company, InfoSeek, this was before Google dominated everything. And they were a search engine. And the time that we launched them, they were the number three search engine. They were like, “We’ve got a $30 million budget. We want to do a huge branding campaign but we don’t really know what we are, so don’t say anything about us, just make a big splash.”
Matt: Okay.
Jason: Which is the most awesome thing in advertising you could ask creative person to do.
Matt: (laughs)
Jason: So, we shot this big campaign for the launch of InfoSeek in Brooklyn with Vic Argo, who is this actor that was in every score cities movie. And kidnapped this guy and took him to an abandoned warehouse. And just made, basically, little movies out of it. It was fantastic.
Jeff: Oh man.
Jason: Yeah. Those days were, those were different days.
Matt: That sounds very familiar. I think I remember those campaigns.
Jason: There was a Super Bowl one. That was my one Super Bowl campaigns back in the day. (laughs)
Jeff: (laughs) That’s great.
Jason: Alright, so I’d have to say it. You talked about- kind of breaking phones. Do you remember the, I’m sure you’ve seen it, the blender. Will it blend? Have you guys?
Jeff: Yeah (laughs). I heard that it was a hoax. Is that?
Jason: I didn’t hear it was a hoax. So there’s a lot of YouTubers out there that are doing really crazy stuff with their phones, and I think that we’re taking a little bit of a different attack because we’re an insurance company.
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Jason: Actually doing real science with it and trying to give the phones breakability scores so that consumers are really informed. It’s still really fun. We’re still out breaking stuff and shooting video but we’re trying to do it in a scientific way where people can look at it and go “Okay. Is the iPhone 10 more durable or less durable than the iPhone 8 or should I wait until the iPhone Max comes out? Is there a real difference?” Our tests are really about how people actually break stuff: drop it, dunk it.
Matt: Yeah.
Jason: That type of thing. Rather than dropping it in a blender.
Jeff: Right. (laughs)
Jason: That stuff is fun. I think if we did that we’d lose a lot of credibility.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. (laughs) Makes sense.
Matt: So I have to go back to Scorcher Rate. You talked about it kind of disrupting the industry. Can you speak to that a little bit? What were some of the few things you guys did to kinda set yourself apart from all the other companies that were providing mediocre service?
Jason: Sure, if you want to talk about warranties. Absolutely.
Matt: (laughs)
Jeff: Hot warranty talk.
Jason: Yeah, hot warranty talk. I think the founders of SquareTrade. So, SquareTrade started actually as the arbitration company on eBay and for the first six years of its life, that’s what it was.
Matt: uhuh
Jason: And it grew to a certain size and then the founders looked around and said “Okay, this is only going to get as big as people argue on eBay. So, where else can we take it?” And they looked at the warranty category, which is just a monsterous category. $20,000,000,000 category, and said the service is horrible, there’s no innovation..
Matt: mmhmm
Jason: And the world is changing. People are carrying thousands of dollars worth of glass techno- expensive technology on them everywhere and protection is not caught up to it. And this was right about the time, they were fortunate, right about the time the first iPhone came out. So they flipped it around and started doing protection based on great service. Realized that people shop through ratings and reviews. So, make a warranty that people would be able to research online and see how good it is. And then they changed how the protections were done too by really focusing on accident protection. The old warranty industry was focused on “If your thing just breaks, we’ll fix it.”
Jeff: mmhmm. Okay.
Jason: And SquareTrade really focused on “If you break it, then how do we fix it as fast as possible?” Because you can’t be without your phone. So, that’s what we keep doing, and today we’re already to the point where, if you break your phone, if you crack your screen, in most places we can get a check out to you in the same day and fix your screen in like 30 minutes.
Matt: Okay. (laughs)
Jeff: That’s amazing.
Matt: Yeah, that’s impressive.
Jason: Yeah.
Matt: Can we test it right now Jason if I.. (laughs) ..break my phone on this podcast? (laughs)
Jeff: (laughs)
Jason: (laughs) Do you have a SquareTrade?
Jeff: Do I have to have your service ahead of time? (laughs)
Jason: You don’t for the SquareTrade go. The cracked screen, you can just pay for that all in cart, on the site.
Jeff: Okay. (laughs)
Jason: Don’t have a plan. But it’s much better if you do have a plan.
Jeff: Okay.
Jason: It’s cheaper, and it’s crazy that you look at iPhone, you look at the new Galaxies. They’re just getting more and more expensive and they’re loading up with features. And, the phones are amazing, but they’re getting more and more breakable. And there’s now glass on both sides. You drop the thing and crack it, FaceID doesn’t work.
Jeff: Mmhmm
Jason: How you get into it doesn’t work, you’ve got a brick. So, repairs are on the iPhone Max, like $350 for the phone screen and $550 for the back.
Matt: Oh geez.
Jason: That’s a lot of money.
Matt: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, going back to my flip phone. That thing was durable. (laughs)
Matt: (laughs)
Jason: (laughs) Seriously. There was nothing wrong with my little Nokia brick back in the day.
Jeff: Yeah, it’s super dependable.
Jason: Really?
Jeff: Just note: no range. But super dependable.
Jason: Yeah, and texting was like...
Jeff: Oh mean, yeah.
Jeff: Three, three, three. Four, four, four.
Jason: Yeah, right. Right. (laughs) Yep.
Jeff: So there’s a question in here that’s peaking my interest. Sorry Matt if I’m jumping in front of you.
Jason: Yeah.
Jeff: The question is: which content, which marketing, as far as content at SquareTrade, what has worked and what has flopped?
Jason: As far as content, do you mean copywriting?
Jeff: It could be copy video or a campaign, in general.
Jason: I would say what has worked well is making stuff that’s useful to people. Like, the Breakability Campaign. And what’s kind of flopped or not worked as well is stuff that is more traditional advertising or old school advertising that was maybe brand building without adding the useful piece to it. Or the education piece to it. We’ve done a fair amount of direct consumer advertising here, and it’s just such a complicated product and such a complicated industry that if you go with a campaign that’s pure brand, people don’t really understand what’s being advertised or why you’re better or the value. It’s forced us to be able to tell the story of the category and the product in a very real way- Like the Breakabilty Campaign- People can understand that. “Okay, I can see it. A phone is breaking and I get what you guys do. You protect phones and you do it in a better way.” What did a campaign, maybe five years ago with a big agency out of New York. We had spent like $1,000,000 on it, big tv campaign, and it was beautiful and funny and all that- award winning. But it didn’t really impact sales. And people were still kind of like “I still don’t quite get what you guys do.”
Matt: hmm
Jason: And the benefit of it. I would say the learning for me is maybe something different than working at a big brand, like a Target or a Yahoo, when you’re in a place like SquareTrade. You’ve got to do a lot more about education and a lot more selling on the value of what we do than at another place where you’re just reminding people of the brand and that the brand is great.
Matt: Mmhmm That makes sense.
Jeff: And you have quite a staple of unique selling points, right?
Jason: Yeah we do. It’s a ton of different categories and each category and each product that we cover has its own staple of products and features. Whether it’s a phone and it’s getting out and fixing it as quickly as possible to a big tv where we’ll say “We’ll come out- We’ll send a guy out to repair your tv in one visit and if we don’t repair it in that one visit then we’ll buy you a new tv.” Service is different for each category so how do we communicate that in as quick of a way as possible? Especially because nobody goes to the store to buy a warranty, right? You go to buy a tv or a laptop or whatever you’re gonna do and then all of a sudden when you’re there, you’ve got to make this purchase decision right there. It’s from awareness to education to value to pulling the trigger all in a minute or two. After you’ve picked this other product that you’ve researched probably a lot. So, it’s a different way to sell.
Matt: And Jason, where are you actually educating those people? Are you driving them to the site or YouTube or how that working?
Jason: It depends on the store that we’re at.
Jeff: Mmhmm
Jason: 95% of our sales is at U.S. retailers. So, if it’s a store you know like a Target that’s not highly assisted more of the sale has to come through online research. Was somebody on their phone there. Or brochures. Merchandising versus, let’s say, if somebody goes into B&H Camera and Photo in New York. That’s a super highly assisted sale so most of education comes through an associate. Talking to people.
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Jason: In that case, we make sure that we’re really arming the associate with materials and everything that they need to talk to a customer.
Matt: Okay. Makes sense.
Jeff: And online are you integrated with the sales process? Like a B&H Photo?
Jason: So people can go online to SquareTrade.com and definitely check out the features and service and get education there. We’ve got a whole page dedicated to new plan holders and making sure that you know what you’re buying and when it starts and how to file a claim and all that. And then we do a lot on the service side to educate people too on “Hey, if you’re gonna file a claim, this is how it works.” We try to make it as easy a process as possible for people online because I think most people these days would prefer to do everything online, rather than have to pick up the phone and call somebody. So, we try to make it so you can do it in just a couple minutes online, and it just works.
Jeff: Alright, perfect.
Matt: Yeah.
Jeff: And yeah, I hate calling people. (laughs)
Matt: And have you integrated with online retailers?
Jason: We have.
Matt: Okay.
Jason: We have integrated with the online component of every retailer that we’re partners with.
Jeff: Okay.
Jason: Whether it’s Target.com or Walmart.com or all those in addition with eBay and other online retailers. All the way to NewEgg. Just very specific type of online retailers.
Jeff: So, eBay, you would even cover used products?
Jason: It’s really new products, mostly.
Jeff: Okay.
Jason: There’s just a couple of categories where we will do products that aren’t new. For example, we’ll protect any smartphone, new or old as long as it’s working. You can go on to SquareTrade.com and protect any smartphone. There’s a little test that you have to do. We just text you and then you reply to the text to make sure that your touch screen’s working.
Jeff: Yeah.
Matt: Oh that’s great. Yeah.
Jeff: Alright, well let’s jump to it. I would love to hear more. I was fascinated in just why you started with Modern Copywriter. Can you tell us a little story about that?
Jason: Sure.
Jeff: Yeah.
Jason: So, I started that Modern Copywriter in 2009 so right now it’s almost the 10 year anniversary.
Jeff: Oh, wow. Congratulations.
Jason: Thanks. Which is crazy to think about. But I started it as sort of a blog on the side. At the time I was at Target and I was the Creative Manager at Target and I had this open position for a Senior Copywriter there and just struggled. It was a great spot, I mean awesome company. In-house at Target’s a great team and struggled to find copywriter portfolios except through recruiters. It was just like “Where is the site online that just has features? A great copywriter portfolios site?” And, there’s a ton for designers, but where’s the copywriter one? And I thought “You know what? Maybe this is my blog idea. Maybe this is what I’ll do.” So I started posting copywriter portfolio sites, pulling them out of communication arts and some of my friends and asking people “Hey, is this okay if I post this up on a blog?” And people were pretty cool with it. And it took like three to six months and then school started picking up on it and using it for students. “Hey, this is, what a copywriter portfolio looks like.” And from there it really kind of took off. It’s been a great side project for me. And has kept me really connected with the copywriting community. And helped a lot of people get jobs. And helped students see what really good copywriter portfolio websites are and made me hate my own portfolio forever.
Jeff: (laughs)
Matt: Isn’t that with everybody in the creative industry? Your own site’s the worst. (laughs)
Jason: Yeah. Oh absolutely. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Jeff: So what are you most proud of with the copywriting?
Jason: With that site? I’ve gotten a lot of really cool texts from people about getting work and stuff. But I’ve also gotten a lot of really cool texts from students saying “Hey, I have used the site a ton to figure out what kind of copywriter I want to be.” I know back when I was in college, I was in journalism school in Oregon and knew pretty quickly in college that I wanted to go into copywriting. I was lucky enough to find Janet Champ’s work. And Janet Champ was a big copywriter at Wieden and Kennedy in Portland. And she launched the women’s Nike stuff. She was writing poetry, you know? And magazine ads for Nike Women.
Jeff: Yeah, wow.
Jason: Just blew my mind. Just totally blew my mind.
Jeff: Wow.
Jason: So, for me, what I tried to tell copywriters who are just coming out or just starting to put their stuff together is find a copywriter out there who’s doing it and has a portfolio that blows you away and do that.
Matt: Mmhmm.
Jason: And call them and talk to them and say “How did you do it?” And “How did you get where you are? And how did you get that portfolio?” We have a pretty cool industry and people will talk to each other. So, I think that’s kind of what the site serves. Now mostly it’s just writers connect and inspire writers to do better work.
Matt: MMhmm.
Jason: And that’s probably what I’m most proud of.
Jeff: Have you ever thought about turning this into kind of more of a business? Or kind of a full time thing? Or is this just kind of a hobby thing for you? I mean, currently it is, but..
Jason: I have. Over the past 10 years, I’ve thought about a bunch of different ways to monetize it. I’ve had people suggest it. I’ve thought about making a book out of it. I’ve thought about, you know..
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Jason: Do I turn it into more of a recruiting site? You know because a lot of recruiters use it. There’s something about keeping it free and easy that feels more altruistic. An idea hasn’t come across my table yet that I’ve looked at or thought up and said “Yeah, that’s what I want to invest my time in.”
Jeff: mmhmm.
Jason: And it’s been a great way to connect with people and do all the things that I want. It’s served me very well.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah. When we spoke with you on the phone you mentioned you’ve hired some people off the site, right?
Jason: For sure. Yeah. Absolutely. I just hosted, Virginia Commonwealth brand center, just had their graduation week and they always send me, Ashley Summenall, who runs their outreach for BCU, every year sends me all their student portfolio sites. So I feature them for a week on the site and I see them before everybody else.
Jeff: (laughs) Okay.
Jason: It’s a benefit to me to be able to see who’s coming out and if I’ve got an open spot.
Jeff: Yeah.
Jason: Reach out to those people first. Or if I’ve got friends in San Francisco where I’m based who are looking, I can shoot portfolios their way, too.
Jeff: Mmhmm.
Matt: There is kind of the dribble monetization. Now I was circling back to the monetization part where you just offered a paid tier with other thing? I was just trying-
Jason: Oh, yeah.
Matt: Keeping it mostly free.
Jason: So it’s free to. The way it works is people email me their portfolio. And it could be our writers and directors also do work up there. I just opened it up like two years ago to anybody creative who wants to be on it. But there’s two ways that I’ve monetized it a little bit. One is I do paid job posts. So if agencies have an open copywriter position they want to post on the site, it’s like $150 and I’ll put that up there. And because I feel like that’s good for writers to get those jobs.
Jeff: Yep. Yep.
Jason: And then, the other thing is if a writer wants me to really look at their portfolio and analyze it and chat with them for an hour about their site and give them kind of an objective review of their site as someone who’s looked at thousands of copywriter sites over the past 10 years, I’ll do that also for $150. And the only reason I charge for that, honestly, is because so many people were asking me to review their site, and I’ve got a pretty busy day job. So, I just charge to make sure that people are serious. (laughs)
Matt: (laughs) Okay.
Jason: Actually want to spend the time- They want me to invest the time in it and they’re gonna invest the time, too.
Matt: Yeah, makes sense.
Jeff: And that could be incredibly helpful for someone starting their career or just looking to job seek. Having somebody say “Yeah, you’re way too in the weeds on it. And from my perspective it looks like your portfolio needs a little bit of this help, which could mean the difference between a career and still seeking for a job.”
Jason: Yeah I get. Most of the people who ask me to do that are people who’ve been in the industry for a while. But maybe they haven’t done a job search in a couple of years and they haven’t revamped their site in a while. And they’ve got the work that they got, but they want to know the best way to present it. And that’s what I can kind of help with and say, “Listen, maybe you should move to SquareSpace or integrate Venmo with it or your nav is kind of tough to click back and forth. Most people looking at your site, the first gatekeepers, they’re gonna take about 60 seconds to click through your site and your site’s kinda hard to navigate. Or you’re missing this component, your bio could use a little help from here. That’s kinda the advice I try to give. It’s more from an objective standpoint as someone who’s looked at a lot of copywriter portfolio websites. Rather than a subjective “Hey, I’m just a creative director and I like your work or don’t like your work.” Because I think most people, I know plenty of people who can do that..
Jeff: Right.
Jason: But maybe don’t get the objective. “Hey your site is kind of not working great because of this and this.”
Matt: Yeah, the presentation more than the content.
Jason: Totally. Exactly. Yeah.
Matt: Yep.
Jeff: What a great service. I mean $150 is pretty much free. I think that you’re helping a lot of people doing that for them.
Jason: It’s fun. I’ve been doing it for 10 years so I obviously enjoy it, but it keeps me fresh too looking. I get to look at so many copywriter portfolio sites and, as a writer myself, it’s a blast. I get to see a lot of work through Modern Copywriter that I would never see.
Matt: Yeah.
Jason: And then connect with a lot of writers that I wouldn’t get to connect with otherwise. Especially being in-house. I’ve been at SquareTrade now for almost 7 years, so I’m not in and amongst the agency community. And Modern Copywriter is kind of my way to do that.
Matt: Yeah that’s great.
Jason: Yeah, it’s cool.
Matt: Yeah.
Jeff: Well awesome Jason. We are just about our half hour mark. Any plugs? Or would you like to make any final comments to our audience?
Jason: Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. You guys are great and it’s fun talking about copywriting and Modern Copywriter. So, I really appreciate you guys asking me to be on.
Jeff: Great well yeah.
Matt: Of course. Thank you so much for being on.
Jeff: Yeah, thank you so much and we’ll definitely be listing links to the very things that we spoke about in the show notes. It was great talking with you Jason.
Matt: Yeah and copywriters out there. Contact Jason and have him view your portfolio. That is such a huge help, and if you’re looking for a job or just looking to see what opportunities are out there, you couldn’t ask for more than a little bit of Jason’s time and to help you present your stuff.
Jeff: Great job, Jason.
Jason: Yeah, anybody who wants to get their portfolio featured on Modern Copywriter, again it’s free. Just send your link to Jason@ModernCopywriter.com and I’ll get you in the queue. Thanks guys.
Jeff: Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much Jason.
Matt: Thanks a lot Jason.
Jason: Alright. Bye.
Jeff: Alright, have a great day. Bye.
Speaker: For show notes and information on DigitalRage.fm follow us on Twitter and Instagram at DigitalRageFm and please, give us a rate and review. We sincerely appreciate it.
Show Links
- SquareTrade
- Allstate
- ModernCopywriter
- Target
- eBay
- Wieden
- Newegg
- B&H Camera and Photo
- Jason Siciliano
In this episode we speak with Ali Cox from Ali Cox & Company about Agriculture marketing, being an olympian, and parenthood.
About Ali Cox
- Founder of Ali Cox & Company
- Founder of Hey Turlock
- Agriculture Marketing Expert
- An Olympian
The most effective avenues for marketing agriculture clients, hands down, is a mobile website.
Ali Cox
Show Notes
Jeff Byer: Yes. Alright, so I hope you enjoy it. Here is our interview with Ali Cox.
Alright. Today, we have Ali Cox on the show. Ali Cox is the co-founder of Ali Cox & Co Marketing, co-founder of heyturlock.com. She is an Olympian, a super mom and fifth-generation farmer. Hi, Ali.
Ali Cox: Hi, there. I thought you were going to say "Supermodel." I was about to love you even more, Jeff.
Jeff Byer: Oh, well, have you been? You probably were a supermodel.
Ali Cox: That's right. That's right.
Matt Ramage: Welcome to the show.
Ali Cox: Hi. Thanks for having me. This is exciting.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Yeah.
Jeff Byer: The first question we have is we would like to know about your experience at the Olympics.
Ali Cox: Sure, I'm happy to talk about the Olympics. The Olympics, I was in the 2004 Olympics, which happened in Athens, Greece, and I made the women’s eight rowing boat. That was after lots of hard work and years on the team. I raced in, I don't know, about 12 different World Cup events and then world championships. I'm also a world champion.
The Olympics were very hard, obviously. Training is typically six and a half days a week. Requires an extraordinary amount of teamwork, but then, also, a lot of independent grit and just confidence in yourself because it's... Making the boat is, honestly, almost harder than even racing at the Olympics. It was an amazing team experience, though, and that really has positioned me, I think, well for my career.
How I really run our business and our agency is with a team aspect, so most of our team members touch all of our work and work very collaboratively. Really, the best idea wins. We are there to support each other, and I think that really was cemented from the Olympics. Of course, winning a medal at the Olympics is special, but truly, I think that, through sports, I really learned how...
I liked to be managed, and I liked to be coached. I liked to be developed, as an athlete, and I'm trying to do that, as an employer, to be honest.
Jeff Byer: Very nice. Where's the medal?
Ali Cox: Oh, hidden from my three-year-old.
Matt Ramage: I was going to ask if you're actually wearing it, today.
Ali Cox: You know what? I actually forgot to wear it to work, today. Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Oh, okay.
Ali Cox: My medal, I think it's in my husband's sock drawer, to be honest. I should probably go check.
Jeff Byer: Nice.
Ali Cox: Yeah, I don't put it on the wall. It's not even locked up. Probably, it should be, but now that the world knows where my medal is, it really should…
Matt Ramage: Uh-oh.
Ali Cox: It’s going to be, starting today, because--
Matt Ramage: We can cut that part out.
Ali Cox: Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah, but that medal really is... It's very ratty-tatty. Probably, a couple thousand children have worn it. I did a lot of public speaking, right after the Olympics. For about eight years, I did a ton of public speaking in the public school system in New York City, where I lived, and also in my home area.
Matt Ramage: Oh, great. How did you get into marketing?
Ali Cox: How did I get into marketing? How did I not get into marketing is actually a better question.
Matt Ramage: Okay.
Ali Cox: As a child, one of my jobs was the neighbors would all hire me to serve at their dinner parties and -- even in sixth grade -- to be the waitress. I think I was always selling food or, kind of like the experience of marketing, an experience person. Then, in high school, I was the rally commissioner for our high school. It had about 3,000 students, so I actually did have to pull permits, and promote, and make posters, and run content and all that.
Those were my two very formative starts. Then, from there, I always knew what I wanted to do, starting my sophomore year of college. Then I just pursued it, relentlessly.
Matt Ramage: Wow, great.
Jeff Byer: What are the top opportunities in ag marketing, today?
Matt Ramage: Or, wait, wait, maybe, can we back up and say just--
Jeff Byer: Yes.
Matt Ramage: How did you get into ag marketing?
Ali Cox: We should develop to ag marketing, yeah.
Matt Ramage: Yes.
Ali Cox: Okay. Okay, well, let's start with this. I had a pretty extensive entertainment marketing background. In college, I had several marketing internships and several sports marketing internships. Then, while I was training, I also worked in sports marketing, at an agency. Then, after I competed at the Olympics, I moved to New York City, full time, and worked at IMG, which is a sports entertainment marketing agency. Then that transitioned into when I started by business.
I still did a lot of sports, and entertainment, and fashion, but I also started doing tech. I think I sold my soul a little bit, doing that, and it was about 12 years ago, I started my business. It was about 10 years ago, I think, that my dad put the idea in my head. Like, "Why don't you think about coming in. We're spending a lot of money on the tomato growers board and bean growers board," and there was a lot going on in ag. Like, "Would you be interested in that," and it planted the seed.
Then I started thinking about how I am a fifth-generation farmer of the same land in California, and it is important to me. I had spent about 10 years in New York and then was ready to move back to my hometown -- which truly is the heart of California ag -- and pursue it. That's what we're doing.
Matt Ramage: Hm, great, great. Yeah, so what would you... As far as ag marketing goes, what would you say would be the top challenges for just, yeah, I guess, for the farmers and just the overall industry?
Ali Cox: Well, first, I think we should talk about the opportunities.
Matt Ramage: Okay, yeah.
Ali Cox: The opportunities, so the California agriculture industry is a $54 billion agency. And so, there's an unbelievable amount of opportunity, from a marketing perspective. Also, there are really no agencies... Or there's only a handful of agencies who focus on ag marketing. We are relentlessly pursuing that, from an ag communications perspective, and just believe that there is an opportunity for growers, and processors, and for the industry to tell their stories, themselves. That's why we're focusing so much of our efforts on giving the industry the tools to do that, so we will help our clients develop strategies, help them with their tools, help them put a face out there and, also, not to be scared of the media.
I think what's really... We're finding a real switch and change in the industry, is that growers in the ag industry is understanding, now, that nobody is coming to save them. They've got to save themselves, and they've got to tell their own stories. They've got to develop strategies, in order to do that.
We are really... I think, quite frankly, millennials get a bad rap, which I'm always advocating for millennials because it's 90% of my team, is millennial. Really, seeing an opportunity, with the younger farmer and the younger generation, to adapt, and to innovate, and really not fight the system, but embrace the system and take control of what... the messaging that they want to put out there.
Matt Ramage: Mm.
Jeff Byer: How is technology making a play, in that realm?
Ali Cox: Well, most... Ag technology is a fascinating niche technology industry, and it's making a huge play, just in the whole landscape. Most farmers, now, carry a smartphone. There are electronic moisture sensors. There are a lot... Most farmers, like bigger farmers, have their own weather stations. Testing for... It's just a smarter way to do ag, which I am happy to follow up on more.
The actual farming operations is changing, to be more technologically savvy. That is something that I want to make sure that consumers understand; that California ag, in particular, is innovating very rapidly. While, yes, we require a lot of resources to do our jobs, we, unapologetically, are moving, and adopting, and adapting. That's a story that we tell.
From a marketing perspective, we use an enormous amount of video. We have an in-house video department. We do an enormous amount of copywriting and, also, website development and social media. Really, we work to help those growers tell those stories that are very authentic, based on whomever their audience is and understanding, right now, that audience is global.
We just really want those growers to feel comfortable telling their stories, which is something that is not... By nature, farmers are a very gritty, confident, quiet, hardworking industry, so it is not first nature for them to go and tell their story to the world. That is something that we are helping, slowly, slowly, slowly, adopt into their practices and their comfort level.
Of course, there's a lot of challenges with that because it's not normal. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel safe. At the same time, with this new generation of millennials now stepping in... Because, I mean, baby boomers are phasing out. There's only five more years that they're going to be the decision-makers, so there's a lot of transition in the ag industry. That's really where our agency is finding our niche and capitalizing on it.
Matt Ramage: Mm, wow, great. You know what I was thinking? As far as... You spoke about the audience as global. Can you talk more about that audience? I guess I'm trying to figure about who the actual ag is marketing to? Is it the consumer, or is it other businesses or manufacturers?
Ali Cox: It really depends.
Matt Ramage: It depends, okay.
Ali Cox: It totally depends. I can't really blanket... I can't give you an easy answer on that.
Matt Ramage: Okay.
Ali Cox: Each one of our clients, obviously, when we start to help them, that's the first thing we figure out, is who are we talking to. Who is our audience? Some of our audience are processors, so we work with the processors. If you're a processor, we look at who your sales targets are. If you are a domestic, if you really are focusing on domestic sales, so if you're working with the Kraft, and the Nabiscos, and the big domestic, even, or the smaller brands, you're probably looking at more of a consumer play by default because those marketing departments want to cross market. If you're... the majority of your crop is going internationally, like to Korea, or Japan, or Europe, then there's a different set of specifications. Really, it's helping understand what those are and telling those stories in a way that is very meaningful. Then, oftentimes, then we follow-up with the sales collateral, and the messaging, and the videos, to all support that.
Matt Ramage: Mm-hm.
Ali Cox: It really depends.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. You have the unique opportunity of not only representing farmers and marketing their product, but representing the processors and marketing back to the farmers.
Ali Cox: Exactly.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Ali Cox: That is part of it. That's definitely... We have almond processors that they have an inherent challenge in that they have two customers. They've got the customers they sell the crop to, and then they've got the growers that they're looking to bring in to process their crop.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Ali Cox: Same with our rice clients. Same with our walnut client. All of our ag clients have that issue, and that's something that we work closely with them to--
Jeff Byer: Is that different messaging, both ways?
Ali Cox: It's different messaging. There's 200 process... No, there's 100 almond processors in California, so, basically, there's 100 processors processing all of the crop in the entire world. Our job is to help each one of them differentiate.
Oftentimes, when they come to us, they say, "Our messaging is quality." We're like, "Okay, that's great, but that's not really a message." That's not unique. Everybody has that quality. "We're family-owned." "Okay, that's great, but that's really not unique." Lots of people have family-owned businesses. We peel back the layers, to figure out what are the differentiating qualities.
There's plenty of opportunity for everybody, and that's what's so amazing about the ag industry. There's how do we help them understand that there is a packer for everybody, for every grower, and every grower just needs to find out what's their comfort level. What are they looking for?
It's like we all like a different running shoe. We all have a different reason why we like a specific running shoe, and so, that's why we're going to stick with that running shoe. It's the same thing with your processor, wherever you feel comfortable.
Then, on the packer side, with their customer, then they develop relationships. It's a relationship business, a commodity relationship business with a fluctuating price. That's the other thing.
I could go on about this forever. I mean, really. Growers and farmers, the price change is minute by minute, so you really never know how much you're going to make, year to year. That's, again, why those farmers, their personalities are so tough. They have no idea how much they're going to make, and they have an incredible amount of risk.
Matt Ramage: Hm.
Ali Cox: That's why they need us.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Right, yes.
Jeff Byer: What have you found are the most--
Ali Cox: I love that.
Jeff Byer: --are the most effective avenues for marketing them?
Ali Cox: The most effective avenues for marketing them, hands down, is a mobile website. You've got to have a mobile-friendly website. You've got to invest in your content and continual development of content, so that your SEO rate can stay high; but, also, just so you can tell your story. That's your home base, is your website.
When we first start working with a lot of our clients, we go and we visit them at their plant. Their plants are... I mean, you could eat off the floor. They are so clean. They are impeccable. There is no dust. They have 10 different certifications that are USDA, and Japan specs, USDA specs, Korean specs, European specs, very… I mean, tons of these specifications.
Then you go to their website, and it just looks like they don't care. And so, that is where we often start. It's like, "Okay. The experience I'm having in your plant is like the opposite on your..." It's messy. It's like a cluttered mess. It is hard to navigate, so that, we typically will be like, "Okay, we don't have a consistent story here. Your front door is your website, and your website is a disaster." It's not a good representation.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. And so, now that farmers are now going online and have the smartphones, they are looking to that as a first step to relationship because it really is about relationships, at the end of the day.
Ali Cox: Yeah, exactly, and so, five years ago, that didn't matter. We didn't have... Everybody didn't have a smartphone. Or maybe 10 years ago, it didn't matter. Really, just that personal relationship mattered.
Now, we've got son and daughter coming along, who are saying, "Great. I really value that personal relationship. That's wonderful, but I'm still going to do my homework. I'm going to do my due diligence. I'm going to get on that website, and I'm going to make sure that these people are speaking a language that resonates with me and that makes sense to me, from a professional standpoint." That's why the millennial farmer and the millennial person working in ag is actually the least lazy generation because they do the most homework. They do the most due diligence. They do copious amounts of due diligence. That's where we find our job is to go and help those clients navigate. Our clients that have adopted this processes over the last five years, they are reaping the benefits now.
Jeff Byer: Mm.
Matt Ramage: Ali, can you maybe walk us through one of... a case study that you were proud of and that we can get the sense of the overall... I guess, the success and how, what happened?
Ali Cox: A case study. Jeff, this was not in the original questions.
Matt Ramage: I'm sorry.
Jeff Byer: I told you it was conversational.
Matt Ramage: Or just, you know, a client you're--
Ali Cox: I'm looking at the logo wall.
Matt Ramage: Okay, a client you're proud of and that you're just telling their story.
Ali Cox: Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm proud of all of our clients because, otherwise, we wouldn't still be working with them. I am proud of Monte Vista Farming Company, so Monte Vista is one of those 100 almond processors. They decided...
The CEO is very innovative. He's younger, but he is a steadfast advocate of ag, and his family's been farming for years and years. Jonathan, the CEO, just decided, "Listen. We're not going to just... We're not just going to say we're a family-owned business and we have high quality. That's not okay. I'm not okay with that. I want to be the industry leader in tech and innovation," and he was.
I am so proud of that website. We did it a couple years ago, so it's time for a refresh now. He decided, "Yeah, I'm happy to invest in video. I want our story told. I want... I know, when I talk to growers and when I talk to customers, I know what I'm saying, but I want to make sure that everybody knows that."
He was the first that basically put a line in the sand and said, "Listen. This company stands for transparency and traceability, and that's what we're going to stand for." That emanates across their website, throughout their entire plant process, so much that they're the go-to for KIND bar, for example. KIND bar does a lot of their advertising with Monte Vista Farming growers. Why they developed that relationship is because of that transparency and traceability, and so, it affects every aspect of their business, including the consumer experience.
That's a case study that I am super proud of, and that was one of our first. I think that was one of our first ways of doing processes, and Jeff was really, really, really instrumental in making that happen. They love our website that we've made, and it is time for a refresh. They also develop... They also invest in content.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. The website that's up now is version two. Version one was very innovative. It was the full screen, with the hamburger menu and the full screen navigation. It was really fun. Then SEO took over, and we had to scrap all of that.
Ali Cox: Yeah. Yeah, that was a great first project though. Not first project, but that was a great first almond processor project.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of fun with it.
Ali Cox: We've gotten a lot of business off of that website because, I think, people learned. Like, "Oh, it can be done like this," and really, that was Jonathan, the CEO, saying, "Let's just go for it. Let's just do something different. I don't want to be the same. I want to be different. Now, they are so successful and growing their tonnage, and have really deep relationships and, with their customers in Japan and abroad, are just fantastic. Now, we do a lot of their marketing for their Chinese trade shows and everything else, so it just has evolved. It's evolved really well.
Jeff Byer: Alright. You ready to transition over to Hey Turlock, another project I helped you with?
Ali Cox: I love Hey Turlock. Hey Turlock was started out of necessity, like all good projects are. Hey Turlock, well, let's see. We launched that almost three years ago, and it's in my hometown, which is Turlock.
When I came back from New York, I just was like, "Well, what’s up? How do I even know what's going on around here?" And so, with a business partner, we created a local social media-based company. Jeff helped with the website, and another... It's time for an app. We need to get that. We need to evolve that, too. I'm a perfectionist, so I just need to do everything.
We developed Hey Turlock, which has just grown, and grown, and grown. We've developed processes and systems, and really, it has turned out to be a thriving local... a local go-to for our area. I think it's pretty scalable, too.
Jeff Byer: Yeah. What Matt and I usually have, when we have projects like this come up, is that the client asks for something like this, and we're like, "Sure. We're going to build it for you and everything." Then, it mostly goes unused and falls by the wayside. Pretty much, 90% of the times that we build blogs or content management systems for our clients, it doesn't get used.
Matt Ramage: We use it.
Jeff Byer: This was an amazing--
Ali Cox: Let's stay positive.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, we end up using it for ourselves. Yeah, but this one was the process of building it and then watching them just jump on it; fill it with content; make relationships with all the local businesses; fill the calendar with events, a year in advance. You guys just took it and exploded it, so I'm really proud of you and proud of what you did with what we had created initially. It was really nice to see you guys took over.
Ali Cox: Yeah. There's been some transition. I bought my partner out, and so, now my agency owns it, 100%. Even in the last two months, just the internal operational changes, I'm seeing just the... I'm seeing that happening externally, also.
Yeah, it's really exciting. We're growing. We added two more people to the team. I see that... I see Hey Turlock doing nothing but growing.
It also provided a really great base for us to launch Turlock Restaurant Week, which is another local baby of mine. And so, we finished our second year of Turlock Restaurant Week in January, and we are part of California Restaurant Month and have about 25+ businesses participate. That's a really fantastic property that I'm proud of, also.
We do it like... The first time I launched the first Turlock Restaurant Week, I was like, "This would be a nice team project" and also one that wouldn't get... For the other small businesses out there, it wouldn't be... I mean, I'm the final approval. Quite frankly, I was like, "Everybody out here is going to be approving their own stuff" because it's nice not to have everything you do changed by the client. And so, we got to be the client, and that was a good bonding experience for us.
It was also, I think, a confidence booster because our stuff looked so cool, and we loved it. It was fresh and innovative. Again, no client was changing anything, and so, we could really guess that would maybe be a suggestion for other businesses out there, is find a passion project, and do it because it will... even if you're just doing it as a confidence booster because it's nice not to be edited.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Yep.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, definitely. That's where you and I get along well, is in the creative and in the... and seeing eye to eye on that stuff. Usually, when stuff gets changed for the worst, we both agree that it's the wrong--
Ali Cox: It's the fit.
Jeff Byer: --way to go.
Ali Cox: Lame.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Ali Cox: I know. I think that I'm going to start... In new business presentations, I think I'm going to start showing version one of everything. I don't want the to see what's out there. I want them to see version one because that, always the best.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Oh, well, great. Well, you had talked about, I guess, at your company, you've got 90% millennials. Jeff told me that you recently spoke at a conference, working with millennials, so can you talk about how that went?
Ali Cox: Sure. I spoke at the AgTech Summit. I spoke on the transition of decision power, of decision-making powers and, really, what is happening in the world, right now, with baby boomers terming out in the next five years. It's already started, quite frankly.
Now, grandpa, dad or mom, and grandson, or granddaughter, they're all at the table. Grandfather, grandmother is probably getting a little confused by anything or just tired, quite frankly. There's been so much change in the last 15 years of doing business. They're just all exhausted, quite frankly. Now, just how do we make sure that we put our best foot forward, and understanding that everything's changed.
Jeff Byer: Right
Ali Cox: It's not just about, again, it's not just about going and working with a local source we've had a relationship for three decades, or three generations with. Now, you're working with people, like my brother, who are in their mid-30s and are perfectly capable of having remote relationships and perfectly capable of doing deals with banks, anywhere. They don't have to just be here, so the whole landscape is changing.
Matt Ramage: Mm.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, changing for the better, using more information that's readily available, using the technologies and... Yeah.
Ali Cox: I mean, from our experience, I mean, from our perspective, it's changing for the better. Talk to somebody who's 65 and over, they might not believe that.
Matt Ramage: Uh.
Jeff Byer: It's probably swallowing up the people that refuse to change. Yeah, I understand that, as well.
Ali Cox: Yeah. That's okay. I mean, that's... Our job is to help bridge that, and that's where we've really found a sweet spot because I think it helps that I have grown up in this. I respect tradition. I respect history, but I also love innovation. I love knowing what's next. We just approach it very tactfully and very respectfully.
There's a reason why we have a successful agriculture ecosystem in California, and that's because people worked really hard for a couple hundred years. We need to respect that; right? They've done a great... They've been stewards of their land. Clearly, it's been a sustainable process. We're still farming. And so, I respect that, and I also respect that times are changing, and we don't want to get lost in the dust.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Oh, yep.
Jeff: Understood. It's, yeah, paying homage to where you came from, but also having the courage to forge on in a new direction, new path, new technology,` with the younger generation taking over.
Ali Cox: Right.
Matt Ramage: I've got to ask a question that's unrelated to everything we've talked about. We have had a drought in California, and the drought, I think, is over. How is it, up there? Are people happier, now that we had some rain this year?
Ali Cox: Um.
Matt Ramage: Or are we still in it?
Ali Cox: How political should we get?
Matt Ramage: Right, because every time I drive up to San Francisco, I see the signs about water. Yeah, I guess we could get pretty political. Let's not get too political.
Ali Cox: Okay, so are we happy it's rained? Yes. We've had two wet winters, which is great. It actually needs to stop raining because, right now, we are getting into some really dangerous territory of too much rain; too much rain too late in the season because it's time for blossoms to start coming out, and planting to happen and all of that. So that is good.
Matt Ramage: Mm-hm.
Ali Cox: We have some severe political issues, right now, that are affecting California agriculture, that are very sensitive. The California water board has made quite a few decisions that are... adversely affect California ag. Water is definitely a hot topic. Even though it's rained and we have our snowpack, and that's fantastic, that doesn't mean that we're going to see all that water.
It's very touchy, but I'm going to play both sides. The pro is that we have water. There's water to fight over. The con is... Another pro is, by having stricter regulations and all that, it's forcing innovation. It's forcing people to do things a little differently, and it's forcing technology adoption.
In the almond orchards, right now, where we are in the heart of almond country, most large growers have dual-line drip systems. That means they have paid to have drip throughout all of their orchards, in every single... Every tree is getting drip from two lines. Guess what? To install 100 acres of drip, it's over $1 million, just to install it. That's not even to pay for the water.
What needs to happen is... We have all these demands on growers to innovate and to evolve, which is... Again, I'm for it. That's contentious, for a lot of people. What needs to happen, then, is we need consumers to realize, "Listen. Growers are changing, and that means that you need to understand that they're spending more money. You need to be prepared to spend more money in the grocery store."
Matt Ramage: Mm-hm.
Ali Cox: "We need you to support California agriculture. If you're only shopping the cheapest and the bottom of the barrel, and you're fine eating food that you have no idea what kind of requirements they've been grown under, internationally, because there is no international process or law, then that's the risk you're putting on you and your family. You're also not supporting your local ecosystem, and also, then you should probably stop putting those demands on the local ag community."
Matt Ramage: Mm.
Ali Cox: It goes both sides, and that's why growers have to tell our story. Because you wouldn't know that, unless you talked to a grower. You would not know that their bottom line has grown by about 30%, in the last five years, because of a whole host of reasons.
Matt Ramage: Wow.
Ali Cox: Employment wages, too. Environmental requirements went up.
Matt Ramage: Mm.
Ali Cox: Your food should cost about a third more.
Matt Ramage: Wow.
Jeff Byer: Yeah, way to go, Matt.
Matt Ramage: Oh.
Jeff Byer: No, but that... I'm not playing around. That is a very important issue.
Matt Ramage: Yeah.
Jeff Byer: As living in southern California, we receive way more water than we deserve. There is not enough water, just to say, in southern California, and we know that we're stealing from central California ag, as consumers. There's only so much that we can do. We can vote, but Ali is front line, seeing exactly the damage that it's causing, not having the water go to where it's supposed to go.
Ali Cox: Yeah. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking because the... It's just heartbreaking to see what happens to the economy, to be one, and also to drive by and see dead orchards, number two. They're getting pulled out and then, potentially, developed into homes, which then require water. It's just a cycle. `
It's just a cycle. Again, from a marketing perspective, my whole job is to tell the story, so everybody has the opportunity to make their decisions in a balanced way. At least, now, growers and farmers can have more of a presence at the table and be part of the conversation.
Matt Ramage: Yeah.
Jeff Byer: What we like to end our interviews with is tools.
Ali Cox: Okay.
Jeff Byer: What tools do you use, on the daily basis, to help you keep productive and keep things flowing properly?
Ali Cox: I'm surprised you're not laughing at me, right now, Jeff.
Jeff Byer: Emailing Jeff is not a tool.
Ali Cox: No.
Matt Ramage: Jeff's on that tool list.
Ali Cox: Our agency is... We are in the middle of a... We're, basically, growing 100%, every year. We have grown 100%, every year for the last five years, so we are scaling. I would say our tools are scaling with us.
It's something that I'm constantly thinking about, but I was just thinking through what we do now. We do a lot of digital advertising and buying for our clients. Obviously, we're on Facebook, Instagram, Google, all the time, buying advertising.
We use Hootsuite for social media management. That's going to be changing, though, in the next... That's going to be changing, really quickly. We use Mailchimp, every single day, for our clients. I would say Google is our home base, so we use the Google Drive for everything. Also, Dropbox, I'm happy to pay the Enterprise Dropbox fee, every year. Everything is housed through Dropbox. Everybody has a Mac. Everybody has an iPhone. That's all paid for.
One tool that I have, that has just blown the cover off the ball for me, lately... About nine months ago, I started using Gusto, and that is an HR payroll resource, I think, primarily targeted towards small-/medium-size businesses. From an administrative perspective, running payroll, that has been a game changer for me. I'm happy to advocate for it, and I have. I've recommended it to several other friends who have people to pay.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: They have great customer service, too. I used them, a couple of years ago, and they were just a fun company to work with.
Ali Cox: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: The interface is great, and yeah.
Ali Cox: Yeah. I mean, if you're using it a couple years ago, it's probably a different company now because even six months ago, there's been things that have... they've iterated that are just even better. I mean, they're really, I think, investing, so that's been a game changer for me. Right now, we're looking to move into a better content management system and for social media, quite frankly, and for measurement for social media. We use Google Analytics, every day.
We work in an open floor plan. My rule really is that you're not allowed to email your neighbor unless you have an attachment, or you're following up with an actual strategy or a document. There's no internal questions, so you have to actually talk to your neighbor. We really... That's a rule that I enforce, too. As soon as I get this long email about how somebody feels, then I know that we're doing a bad job. We're not working as a team. I work to really enforce that. Really, it's our contractors that we work with. They get the brunt of the emails.
Matt Ramage: Okay.
Jeff Byer: Those important people.
Ali Cox: Those poor, poor, humble souls. Yeah, and obviously, we're on email, constantly.
Jeff Byer: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Do you guys do any chat? Do you guys do any internal chat?
Ali Cox: Yeah, we... We just use the Google.
Matt Ramage: Google chat.
Ali Cox: Google email chat function.
Matt Ramage: Yep. Yeah.
Ali Cox: Yeah.
Matt Ramage: Alright.
Ali Cox: We have production schedules. I guess that's the only thing. I should, actually, drill in on that. We have 30 clients; 30, give or take, clients at any time. Each client has a production schedule that we use Google.
I know that we could innovate. I know that we could look into more of a management software system, and we have. I don't know. It always just seems to come back to that, from a point of ease.
Jeff Byer: Alright.
Matt Ramage: Yep.
Jeff Byer: Well, where can people find you? Who do you want to promote? What are your plugs? Let's get those out there.
Ali Cox: My plugs is to go to our beautiful website, designed by Byer Inc. That's alicox.com, and then, if you want to see us in the day-to-day, you should go to alicoxandco_marketing on Instagram. A fact that you will probably always find, if you look in the stories, you'll find a team out on a photo shoot. I think that we've been on... This is our seventh photo shoot this week, and so, they're all in the stories.
This week, we have been videoing beans, garbanzo beans, garlic, pistachios, and right now, pistachios. It is mid-April. Pistachios are pollinating, right now, which is really interesting. We've been on an almond shoot, and we've been to Chico State, UC Davis, part of the rice shoot, right now. We're going to go video a winery, this afternoon.
Matt Ramage: Oh, sounds fun.
Ali Cox: Yeah.
Jeff Byer: Nothing going on, today.
Ali Cox: Another day.
Matt Ramage: It looks like you got a busy day.
Ali Cox: Another day.
Matt Ramage: Great. Well, thank you so much for being on this show. I mean, we could definitely have you back or turn this into another hour of talking. Thank you so much.
Ali Cox: I could talk. That's for sure.
Jeff Byer: Yes, thank you very much, Ali.
Ali Cox: Okay. Thanks, guys. I'm going to hold on. I'm going to take a picture, so I can put this on our--
Matt Ramage: Oh, yeah.
Ali Cox: I'm going to put this on our stories.
Matt Ramage: Yeah.
Ali Cox: Smile
Jeff Byer: For show notes and information, go to digitalrage.fm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at digitalragefm, and please, give us a rate and review. We'd sincerely appreciate it.
Show Links
- Ali Cox & Company
- Ali Cox & Co on Instagram
- Hoot Suite
- Mailchimp
- Dropbox
- Gusto
- Hey Turlock
- Byer Co
Today's episode of Digital Rage features Programmer turned Lawyer Jonathan Tobin to discuss automation, as well as legalities content creators run into. We talk trademarks, training videos, Calendar automation, and Jeff has a cold.
If you automate a bad process, you can magnify your problems.
Jonathan Tobin
Show Notes
- Formerly a programmer
- Now an attorney
- Heads Counsel for Creators
Show transcripts from Jonathan
This is not LEGAL ADVICE
- A lot of the automation tools and a lot of the APIs, there's actually a lot less hands-on code that you need to do in order to build a product.
- I had been developing software for a while. I've been a programmer, did some design, and I'd worked for a few startups, a few larger companies as well, and I started to get curious about what went on behind the scenes, sort of what went on in the businesses - how are people taking ideas, software, and turning them into a viable business.
- I realized I would have loved to have known these things when I was a designer or a software developer because there's a lot of legal basics that I think a lot of people aren't exposed to. And so that was the genesis of my practice. That was sort of how I decided this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to help people with law.
- One thing we implemented really early on was scheduling automation.
- It takes out that whole process of trying to schedule a phone call with the emails back and forth. Anytime I'm automating something, I'm looking for something that can reduce a task or take away something that just essentially takes up time.
- We want to make sure we track our leads and track any communications with leads.
- Anything that helps us to share easily is definitely helpful.
- We use Slack a lot internally. We use Slack for our internal conversations, but also for notification.
- We get an email from Adobe Sign saying that the document is signed via Slack, so we know we have a new client and it's time to do something.
- Regarding automation: It's a passion in so far as it's bringing me closer to what my vision for the business is. Automate as much as possible so that everybody can do more high-end work. So even if that's been an administrative assistant, they can focus more on our client relationships rather than scheduling appointments.
- You can set out the terms of a scope of work. Hey, I'll build you a website for X amount of dollars and I'll deliver it by this date. Those things are easy to do. Now one of the things, you know, the reason why I usually recommend some sort of formal contract somewhere in that process is because you run into things like… when you talk about legal boiler plate, there are actually important things in there.
- Surprisingly there are people who are like, I asked a question on Quora, this attorney answered my question, and I did the things the attorney said. It got completely screwed up because maybe I didn't provide all the facts or the attorney wasn't accurate or misunderstood something. I lost a bunch of money and I want somebody else to pay for it. I want somebody to pay for that. There are people out there who are seeking payback, I guess you could say, when they feel like they've received bad legal advice, even if it's not legal advice. And so, the bar has talked about that you want to be really careful to make sure people know that this is not legal advice.
- You want to make sure that all those relationships are clear. Same thing if you hire somebody, make sure that you have a contract with them. So, let's just say you have someone who does a logo for you or some part of what it is you're making. Make sure that there's an agreement with them. And so that usually that can be a formal agreement or it can just be like, hey, we talked about it and we have a sense. Obviously, I recommend a more formal arrangement and at least working through those issues.
Show Links
- Counsel For Creators
- Acuity Scheduling
- vCita
- Slack
- Adobe Sign (formerly Echosign)
Today we spoke with Mic Pam who runs a digital agency that specializes in e-commerce solutions. Mic talks about the wide range of e-commerce platforms, shifting trends, marketing, and SEO solutions.
About Mik Pam
- Founder of Pin Agency
- Director of Marketing at Waterbottles.com
- 15 years of ecommerce experience
What’s good for your business is the first thing you have to really think about when you deploy a platform.
Mik Pam
Show Notes
Alright, today we have Mic From Pen Agency on the show with us. So welcome to the show Mic.
Thank you for having me. Thank you guys.
Yeah. Great! A little introduction Mic and I have known each other for let’s say 10 or so years. We actually worked for um, I guess were competitors working for the same clients and Mic took over working for the clients that I stopped working with and I think we did some back and forth. And it was a crazy client we worked with, we won’t mention that name on the show but that can be um, a topic of another show. Working with..
That is a whole other show on it’s own.
Yess! Haha. Definitely but yea Mic runs Pen Agency. You know they do web development, marketing and they have a speciality in ecommerce and um, are ecommerce experts. He is also the director of ecommerce at waterbottles.com. So, yeah. Mic brings a lot experience with Magento, Shopify, A lot of different ecommerce big platforms. So we are going to dive deep into ecommerce today. And uh, yeah well come to the show Mic! Let’s jump into it. The first question would be tell us what are the big platforms that you are working with today or is it still Magento or a mix of different platforms now or?
So, um, right now there is a lot of uh platforms that have become uh, have evolved and grown into like real players. But I think to preface that uh, conversation you have to realize what these platforms are good for. Like um, the top, um all of the internet is dominated by, if you took a screenshot of what is out there and what people are using for ecommerce. It is night and day people use a lot of woocommerce. That is the Wordpress specific ecommerce.
And free and open source. Yeah.
Free and open source but again with free and open source there comes a lot of cognizant?
Right.
If you take a snapshot of everything on the web that is the major player right now at this moment it’s WooCommerce. It’s was basically a plug in before but now it is its own platform that is integrated tightly into Wordpress.
So, then if you go down farther into the top 1000 or 100,000 sites you will start to see the magnetos become a major player, shopify, websphere comes into play.
Then if you look at the top 10 you will see IBM, Oracle, Magnetos still there but you won’t see the woocommerce, open carts all those guys.
It’s what's good for your business. That is the first thing you have to really think about when you deploy a platform. What really fits.
So, yeah what we really deal with, Matt and I both have this set in common. That we deal with small to medium size businesses. On my end is mostly b2b, so I don’t get a lot of chance to use ecommerce but for our b2c customers in small to medium size businesses. You know a hand full of products, is that where Magento really shines or would you go with one of the cloud services?
Yeah. That is a great question but I would say Magento comes with a cost even when people say it’s open source. Magento developers buy on a baseline will cost you 2-3 times more than what a Wordpress developer would cost you, even more.
The platform itself needs constant updating. Magento is a more involved platform. If you are looking at the small businesses that have a few products WooCommerce might be a good solution. Shopify has grown leaps and bounds. That is the number 2 player when you look at the screenshot of the platforms. First is WooCommerce, then shopify, across the board because of the ease of integration, the cost of entry is night and day compared to something like a Magento or a Websphere.
Yeah. You can be up and running the same day on the Shopify.
Oh yeah!. If you don’t have a lot of functionality, just have them worry about the backend. All the nitty gritty then you will have it up and running in a week.
So Mic what as far as the different types of businesses out there, can you give us a break down of manufacture would make sense for a Shopify or WooCommerce would be good for. Can you break down some of the different cases.
Yeah. That is a good question. So, basically if your want to publish a lot, if you are going to do content marketing you are probably already going to be familiar with Wordpress. With Wordpress and WooCommerce they just provide a very important 1,2 punch for these startups.
Because you have a functional ecommerce web form and content marketing system. It’s a minimal cost compared to the other platforms. You can get your feed to it. It is built on the strength of its community. That community made it what it is right now. It would be harder to find a bigger community than what is supporting Wordpress and WooCommerce. That is how it has become what it is right now. Before we could barely put 100 items in there and it would start to give us data locks, server errors. Now a few thousands it can handle it, of course depending on your server infrastructure.
Yeah. That is interesting because I did, I have rescued some popular ecommerce sites out of the Word Press system because of how the database was getting killed with every page request.
This particular customer had a celebrity endorsement and every time the celebrity would tweet about it, his site would go down.
So at the time we switched him over to Bigcommerce because they were the biggest you know enterprise cloud player at the time and fixed all of his issues. That is where I said well maybe this Wordpress, WooCommerce is not all it is cracked up to be and isn’t meant for anything with any type of volume. But you are saying now they have fixed all that?
I wouldn’t say they fixed all of that. It is not going to be at the level of these if you compare it to Shopify or BigCommerce that are Magento. Their more than capable to handle concurrent connections. These are like multiple users, looking at different pages, different sessions. It’s still going to be a lot of server dependency, how your server architecture load balancing, and that stuff. You still have to run through some hoops but from what it was 8-10 years ago. It’s really progressed a bit and I would if you had a few products, I would say 100 to 1000 products. This might be a good platform for you but if your sole purpose is to get your feet wet in commerce, I think a path would be a BigCommerce or Shopify. Funny BigCommerce was really big back then, I don’t know why Shopify ate them up. There was nothing close back 4-5 years ago.
Yeah and I think the biggest change because I saw it in my customers. I built a bunch of BigCommerce sites and the biggest issue they had was how complicated the back-end was. They took out features but they also simplified it. So the actual store owners could better handle the administration and order processing.
Yeah. That is the one thing that really went, that store owners and administrators loved about Shopify. Was that it was intuitive, the back end was so intuitive. It took a little bit for the buyer to enter was really low. The floor was low. Yeah, they loved it. That is probably why they beat BigCommerce in.
Mic if you had one platform to pick when it comes to SEO. Let’s say your selling 500-1000 products and you want to go heavy on the SEO, which platform would you pick and why?
Ok. That is a little loaded question because I’ll always be a little biased.
Prior to a few years ago we were Magento partners. So we were doing a bunch of ecom stuff. For the start up it is a toss up between Shopify and WooCommerce. The thing about Shopify, it has extensions or plugins that the community has built. It has a good community behind it too that will do all the, change titles, update urls, your ability to change descriptions and stuff like that. But aside from that you don’t really have too much control on the technical level. It’s a shared platform. Let me give an example. We had to manipulate how each secondary or first share URL shown on our website. You would be a little hard pressed to do that on the Shopify website. So, that is the cons of going with the self-serve services. WooCommerce doesn’t give that much flexibility. But if you are a start up with a few hundred products it’s a toss up between those two. If you are a pure ecommerce go with Shopify. We are also Shopify partners just so that is clear.
Ok. You don’t want to step on anyone's toes today, Mic.
Yes.
So, have you had any success in connecting either of those platforms with social media. For generating traffic or sales.
Yeah. More so more than social media. Everyone who has become serious in ecommerce most of them followed the path of the Omni channel sales. It is selling on multiple platforms. Getting different advertising. Even Facebook, you can consider it a platform. You can get sales through Facebook. Omni channel that is a different layer of ecommerce. That is more like the big websites like Websphere or even Magento if you can figure it enough. You have to make use of all the data, what you are spending and what you are relying on in these channels. It is a more involved process. As far as social media, there are some, before we had to ask developers to code in Facebook connect, page connects and stuff like that. It is fairly easy. It is like drag and drop, and it connects to your Facebook page. Your post, you can automate your products into your feed. Not that you would like to do that, it’s spamming but you can do that now. With greater ease.
Yeah and there is a ton of automation now, not only with social media. You mentioned that omni channel approach but email as well.
Yeah.
The latest news that Mailchimp and Shopify have seperated has that impacted you and any of your projects?
No, so Mailchimp is uh, again it’s what it’s used for. We used it for certain services. We started with Constant Contact. I am not going to say anything about them but we had like Mailchimp. We had, so what we wanted to create was uh, that thing escapes me now. They use to do landing pages, i forget what it is called. We don’t do a lot of, so we kind of host our own email because we have a service to make our own mailers.
Ok.
So yeah, we kind of. It’s all depending on the client and their budget and their goals right. They don’t want to spend too much on email marketing we refer them to like the Mailchimp. Campaign Monitor was another one that is fairly decent too. As far as reliability but Mailchimp is the one that is easiest to integrate on all the platforms.
Well, not Shopify anymore.
Yeah. Shopify.
I am starting to dealing with that now. So it will be interesting how this disconnect between the two companies impact my work because we have got the Shopify ecommerce site. We have the Shopify storing, data and user data. Then we have the Mailchimp marketing campaigns that go out. So there may be a few manual processes that may need to be added into our new solution.
We found Campaign Monitor on this level as decent. If you can take a look at that.
Yeah. I’ll take a look at that.
So Mic where do you, as far as the future of ecommerce do you see any big changes happening in the next five years? I guess probably more automation, AI stuff. Where do you see it going?
No. If anything we should all have already realized that ecommerce is the future. It has already shut down a few big box stores. You know you’re looking at one of my favorites is Toys R’ Us.
Back in the day there was only one place to go.
Now you can be very gradulate with I want this with pink ribbons and you know. You can just Google it and you will get that exact item that your heart desired. So ecommerce has, some people call it etail but it is ecommerce. It is the future. It is what all our big brands have invested a ton of money to just be the best to give the user the best shopping experience. We have seen some. There is one site I think it is Zappons. They have experimented a few years back on, not It’s an Amazon platform that sells shoes.
Zappos yes. Their personalization was top of the game. Because they store your data. They kind of know what you are looking at. So if you are looking for running shoes they will only serve you running shoes ad that are specific to the style that you were looking at. Say you like other shoes they will show you those specific shoes. You know, it’s not rocket science. If we give you a selection of exactly what you want then you will most likely buy from them.
So those are the types of things that are not just being developed. Their deployed and happening now. We can see that even the ads have become very personalized. Back in the day we would use if they use this keyword then send them this ad. Now there is a lot of personalization. There is categories, like-minded buyers. There is so much to go through.
Yeah. Now, I look at some stuff on Amazon then a week later I get an email of ten things that are what I was looking at on Amazon. And you know, some of them are on sale now. So it’s like.
Yeah exactly.
It's all the tagging and remarketing. And now Amazon is getting a bit more aggressive with it and like you said Mic the personal information. So now I got an Amazon Echo in my living room that is probably listening to me because what my wife are talking about in the living room ends up in my inbox or as an ad on Amazon.
So Mic have you ever had to optimize or purchase anything through a voice assistant?
I have not. I tried it with Amazon but up until the point of are you sure and I didn’t go through with it. My kid always you know, kind of pranks me. He tries to try all these crazy stuff. He knows I get alerts. The first time I saw what the, but I got smart to his tricks. But there is a cool story though. My partner and I were talking about Whiskey. I did not search for it. I did not Google it. We were talking and chatting the next day I have ads for the exact brand. Even my Facebook. It’s creepy but its like can they really hear what were talking about but its correlation. It’s just kind of scary for what is out there but it is good for marketers. They got more work.
For us. You know, I know you guys have had the same experience. You get a new client. You research them and then you are bombarded with all their ads and competitors ads.
Alright Mic, so yeah. What else can you tell us about ecommerce. A friend of mine reached out to me that has a have a jewelry store and they are selling jewelry online. They asked me what are we doing wrong here. So what do you tell a new person that is online with ecommerce. What advice do you give to someone who is brand new to get the ball rolling. You give them a ton of advise but maybe we can address that on the show.
From personal experience. Beverly Hills Jewelry reached out to us a couple of weeks ago too. Their brick and mortar store is doing decently but they get 0 sales and 0 exposure. Of course these clients will tell you we want to get more, I think it is our job to let them know that we need to manage your expectations. I have told this guy we can do it but it is going to take x amount of time. X amount of resources because you have to show them these are who you are going up against. Research “custom made jewelry” you are going to go up against Custom Made, which is like the #1 store online. And if you look at their backlinks they have so much backlinks and authority. The closest you will get in within a few years time is 2nd or 3rd but to get there you will need to expand a bunch of resources. Put money into content marketing. I would tell them straight up there might be more channels more appropriate for what you want. If you want a 10% increase in online sales. That is doable. That is realistic. If you want 20% increase we can get there but of course the very first thing you do is look at their site and you can almost right away see it’s built to look good. It’s not built for search. Those are the things you point out to them. I feel like with a lot of clients they think we do magic most of the time.
What magic?
Like you can get us there in three months. I said I can try.
I would say for your customer. Just trying to target their audience. Not trying to hit everyone but try to find a brand that is also trying to target the same type of audience and then make a lookalike audience and target them. This simple formula has worked time and time again. I am doing the same thing for my fitness clients right now. I am making a lookalike audience and now I have them.
Perfect. Also the lowest hanging fruit is your best ambassadors. Right. So you look at their circle. Their circle will most likely be interested in your stuff too. It’s much less money too. Just follow the low hanging fruit and exceed their expectations.
That is great, thank you. Thank you.
So what tools are you using? We love to hear about tools that people are using in online marketing. What tools are you using everyday?
We have some. First of all like when we look at competitors or prospective client. We do a preliminary audit like what kind of architecture their site has, their ranking. So, the basic Screaming Frog is a really useful tool for marketers and developers too. To find like duplicate content, duplicate tags, duplicate broken links. I would really recommend for what it cost Screaming Frog has been really indispensable. Another tool online which is called Siteliner. Siteliner.com, it is a free tool. It is web based. You put in your domain name and it will scan however much it can scan then it will tell you uh, if there broken links, page size, load time, words per page.
I am going to my site right now. I have used it before but it has been a while.
It still works! It will show you how many links and inbound links are you getting. It can download the site map. Then it will tell you where the duplicate content is. Those are like the easy wins when you are doing a technical audit.
10% duplicate content.
Don’t take it for what it is. It is just a reference. But yeah it will give you a lot of good insight on a project you are working with. Then you have the tried and tested SEM Rush and HREFs. Stuff like that, you can cross reference these things and you will see what needs to be updated or fixed on your website. Trust me there always is something to do on the website.
It is never ending. You get those parts that all of a site that a site is not mobile friendly because the buttons are too close.
Yeah, too close. I hate that one.
Do you use any project management tools.
Yes. For the product management team we have Jira. And were trying to move over to more time based. So we use, we try to use agile where you have two week sprints, so at the end of the two weeks you can prioritize, assign task based on what is most important. We use that. We have used the Google Suite, a lot too. Were trying to mess with something called Jam Board right now from Google. Have you guys heard about it?
No.
I have heard about it but I don’t think I have used it or seen it. Yeah tell us about it.
So JamBoard is like a digital whiteboard but it first introduced like a hardware product. It is expensive like $5000.00 bucks for the hardware. But you can actually use your tablet. You can skype clients and just jamboard ideas. You can buy a big tablet and use that and open it up. It’s pretty cool. It’s like an interactive whiteboard.
Oh nice!
That is great.
Yes. So you can basically, you’ll have your tablet going and they can see your notes and what you are doing?
Yeah! They can erase what you wrote, check mark it. It’s a pretty neat tool, its very interactive, it’s fun and clients seem to like it.
I wonder if it works with a wikim tablet. Like you can write to a virtual board even though it’s not visual to you. Huh.
It might yeah.
It seems like it should. We should give that a shot.
You can see your doodles.
I am guessing it comes integrated with Hangouts.
Yes.
Great thanks, Mic so much! We could go on and on. We will have you back on to talk about how to deal with crazy clients. I am sure Jeff has some of those too.
We can talk about crazy clients. We can talk about proposal processes. We can talk about all sort of agency stuff that we deal with.
Nice well Mic why don’t you let our audience know where they can find you.
Yeah so we just recently moved offices were in Glendora. You can visit us at PinAgency.com, or send an email at info at pinagency.com if you have any requests or violent reactions.
(Laughter)
But thank you so much for this opportunity and I will still get in touch and hopefully meet with you guys soon.
Thank you Mic, very nice to meet you.
For show notes go to Digital Rage.fm, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Digital Rage Fm. Please give us a great review we sincerely appreciate it.
Show Links
- WooCommerce
- Shopify
- IBM WebSphere
- WordPress
- BigCommerce
- Mailchimp
- Constant Contact
- Campaign Monitor
- Zappos
- Amazon
- Custom Made
- Screaming Frog
- Siteliner
- SEM Rush
- Ahrefs
- Jira
- Jamboard
Today's episode is all about web accessibility. We have co-founder Michele Landis on from Accessible 360, a company that provides audits, training and remediation help for businesses for people with access needs.
About Michele Landis
- Co-founder of Accessible 360
- Digital Accessibility Expert With Equitable Access Know How
- Public Speaker
- Industry Leader & ADA Policy Strategist
Web accessibility is the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with websites, apps, internet of things, enterprise systems and so on for people with disabilities.
Michele Landis
Show Notes
- Quick overview on the field and laws.
- How did you come to get into the field of accessibility?
- Can you speak more to the legality issues?
- Types of devices accessing websites.
- What are some of the main technical issues you’re seeing with sites that aren’t accessible?
- Industries being impacted?
- What are the legal requirements for websites marketing internationally?
- Are there legal resources available specific to digital accessibility?
- Do you recommend companies hire accessibility specific legal teams to address accessibility?
Show Links
- Accessible 360
- Michele Landis on LinkedIn
- WCAG Guidelines
- Accessibility Insights for Web Chrome Extension
- Color Contrast Analyzer Chrome Extension
Today's episode is all about SaaS marketing, featuring real world examples of how SaaS products need to market themselves in 2019. Kevin Indig is a SaaS marketing specialist who joins us and offers sage advice while sharing his wisdom and expertise in the SaaS field.
Content plays an important role when your brand has multiple products.
Kevn Indig
About Kevin
- Technical marketer
- Starting next week as VP of SEO & Content at G2 Crowd
- SAAS marketing expert
- Currently a mentor for Growth at German Accelerator
- Previously head of technical seo at Atlassian
- Previously director of SEO at Daily Motion
Show Notes
- Denny's responds in real time on Twitter to the massive Facebook & Instagram outage
- Exciting news in web development - A new CSS spec is being defined for CSS Aspect Ratio. This will eliminate many JavaScript tools that are used to normalize media.
- Let us know more about your role as a technical marketer
- Some strategies you’ve used in SAAS marketing & growth
- With your new job as VP of SEO & Content at G2 Crowd what will you be up to?
- Can you speak to the company pivot?
- Some challenges you foresee
- How will this change the SEO strategy?
- How was it working at Atlassian?
- We love tools here at Digital Rage, what are some of your favorites?
- What does a SAAS customer of mine need to do to get more traction online, and with review & aggregator sites?
- Adding schema to your website - saw small return in adding this so opted not to go this route
- Schema best for ecommerce
- Isolated landing pages used for learning and resources
- What do your customers deeply care about?
- Interview customers to find out pain points
- Invest heavily into creating content to address pain points
Show Links
- Kevin Indig
- Kevin Indig on Twitter
- G2 Crowd
- Atlassian
- SEM Rush
- Ahrefs
On this episode of Digital Rage we speak to Brian Wood. Brian is a training consultant, author, developer, and father who tells us about how to stand out in a crowded market, launch courses online, and one of new favorite video tools from Adobe.
You have to be able to do more than just your one thing.
Brian Wood
Show Notes
- Loves teaching!
- Has worked with Starbucks, Adobe, REI, Nordstrom and a bunch of other companies.
- Has courses on Lynda, Creative Live, How Design University, Curious and Peachpit
- Is also a developer
- Author of more than 10 books
- Speaks at conferences: AIGA, How Interactive, Adobe, etc.
- Spends majority of time on training these days - speaking, writing, producing courses
- Talks about how to get into the training business these days - in short start doing it. Get on YouTube & Udemy and start putting up training videos. Adobe does keep on eye on what people are up to.
Show Questions
- How did you get started in software training?
- What resources do you use to identify trends and create new courses?
- Do you need to be an expert in order to teach?
- Are you an expert before you start writing a training article, or do you become an expert while writing?
- Do you have any courses on Adobe CC Process Automation (I need this)?
- What is the difference in revenue between web development and training?
- How’s the online training landscape shifted over the years?
- What’s your favorite adobe program?
- What advice would you have for someone trying to get into speaking?
- What are some of the challenges you face with your training business?
Show Links
- Brian Wood Training
- Brian Wood on YouTube
- Brian Wood Courses on Lynda
- Brian Wood Courses on CreativeLive
- Zapier
- Twilio
- David Blatner on Twitter
- AnnMarie Concepción on Twitter
- Dan Petty on Dribble
- Premiere Rush CC
- Adobe XD
- Adobe Spark
On today's show we have Pierre Zarokian, Founder of Submit Express and veteran search marketer. We get into SEO, reputation management, how the SEM industry has changed, and more!
More on Pierre: Website - Twitter - LinkedIn
Reputation management is 10X SEO.
Pierre Zarokian
Show Highlights
We asked Pierre the following questions:
- How did you get started with SEO?
- How important are backlinks today?
- What are some of the challenges today in running Submit Express?
- Tell us more about reputation management and what type of clients you typically work with in this space?
- What type of marketing do you utilize for your own companies?
- Where do you see the future of SEO going?
- What is the process for repairing an online reputation?
- Will voice search be important?
More from the show:
- $500/month won't get you the results it did 10 years ago - now $2 to $3K/month budgets
- SEO as a service has gotten competitive - offshoring, local, more agencies, freelancers
- SEO has gotten a bad rap due to people getting burned
- Reputation management is a really involved practice - lots of work to suppress rankings - building assets, link building, reviews, blogging, social media posts, optimizing existing content, etc.
- 10 properties at minimum for reputation management
- Wild west in reputation management as far as paying people to remove content - its recommend to go through a reputation management company to handle this
- On Yelp you can flag a negative review
- If it's not a first hand account you can ask Google and Yelp to remove (chances of getting removed are less than 5%)
- If this doesn't work you can try sending a legal letter to Yelp
- Can go straight to the person but don't offer money - if Yelp finds out your business could get flagged with a warning at the top of the page for 6 months letting people know you tried to pay to have a review removed (nothing in writing - if you do reach out do so verbally)
- Ripoff report doesn't remove anything unless you opt to pay through their paid program
- Best thing to do when you've got a bad review is to increase the good reviews
- Pierre has a program that will send a survey via text or email to your customers asking for a review - if it comes back positive than they get a followup asking to write a review on Yelp and Google and if they are not happy you can reach out before they write a review
- And more!
Show Links:
- Submit Express
- iClimber
- Web Design Express
- Reputation Stars
- Ripoff Report
- The Hoth
- Complaints Board
- Pissed Consumer
- Scambook
Today's show features NO guests because we're too cool for school. ;) Jeff & Matt dive into topics that are top of mind in their agencies.
Show Highlights
Domain Whois Privacy
Some registrars are starting to comply with EU regulations in not displaying domain information to the public. In the past if you did not pay for the privacy feature your domain information was available to the public through a “whois” search.
Podcast Media Hosting
- Libsyn - $15/mo with limits, bad UI, not integrated
- Castos - $190/yr ($15.83/mo) Integrated, easiest, free month, no limits
- Simplecast - $162/yr ($13.50/mo) not integrated, easy, no limits
- Buzzsprout - $12/mo 3hrs per month, otherwise unlimited
- Podbean - $108/yr ($9/mo) unlimited, monetization tools
Google My Business
- Ties your address to all of your accounts
- An employee claimed a business listing for his shared office, then listed the location as closed, now in the SERP it shows a big red Permanently Closed
- I went to GMB to see if I could reclaim the business, made me request access from the employee
- Once I had access, there were 2 accounts with the same address, one was suspended. I changed the address to try and unlock it
- The Youtube channel is associated with the suspended address, so if I remove that listing they will remove the youtube channel
- Now I have to request that the youtube channel be associated to the other address before I can remove it
- Google telling me to get reviews and optimize my GMB page
- 3 different support reps hung up on me
TAYL
T)alk A(t) Y(ou) L(ater), pronounced "tale", is the service that gives your Internet content a voice. It uses state of the art A.I. and machine learning to sound (almost) human. Send TAYL anything you want read. Listen in the TAYL app, or by using Podcasts.
Dux Soup
Back to our conversation about LinkedIn platform annoyances, Dux Soup is a platform that invades LinkedIn profiles and spams the messenger bots. It automatically adds people to your CRM, and automates “top-of-mind” communication.
Content Marketing with Kindle
Matt shared about his experience with getting a book approved on Amazon for resale as an ebook for Kindle users. Once the content was written it took 2 hours to format the pages, create the book cover, and add all the book details to Amazon. Kindle provides free software to properly format your book and also an online tool to create your cover. The book was approved within 24 hours and is now showing up in an Amazon search for the title: Do i need rehab?
Notion
A productivity app that allows you to store notes in an innovative way that allows for a lot of customization. Mentioned on previous shows this app is still relatively new to the tech world.
Proposals
Matt & Jeff talked proposals for a bit and will most likely do a future show on this topic. In short both have been in the business for 20 plus years and have come to a point where both are not interested in creating the fanciest proposals. Speed is of the essence in getting future clients the scope and if agreed upon more details and a contract follow.
Show Links:
- Domain Whois Privacy
- Kindle Direct Publishing
- Do I Need Reahb?
- Libsyn
- Dux Soup
- TAYL
- Notion
- Castos
- Simplecast
- Buzzsprout
- Podbean
On today's show we have Esteven Gamez, a social media marketing expert and founder of Keen Social. Lets get into it!
We have this new experimental department that we're just trying out; it's called social media.
From interview in 2009
Show Highlights
- My background is pretty unique because I didn't really start off in social media or really in marketing.
- I ended up in hospitality for about five years trying to do marketing because I did an internship with Hilton going through college.
- I've always loved marketing.
- We have this new experimental department that we're just trying out; it's called social media. And I was like, what is that? They said, we use Myspace to be able to reach out to new audiences. And I was like, Oh, well, I'm on Myspace.
- My job was to reach out to people who might have influence in entertainment to let them know that there're all these new pieces of content online and possibly share it on their own portals.
- After my internship ended, I still worked at the Hilton and I decided this is what I want to do for my career. This is super fun, it’s new, nobody's really doing it, I kind of want to be at the forefront of it. And so I decided to create a proposal for my GM at the Hilton where I was at. And he actually didn't like it. He thought it was silly and just a fad that is going to go away.
- I decided it's time to go on my own and my partner pushed me off the cliff and I decided to create my own agency and that's where Keen Social came about. And it's just taking all of my experience and bundling it up into one agency.
- We’re a small agency at Keen and we've only dealt with influencers about twice because it's a lot of work to create contracts with these people and get them to actually do what you want them to do at the right time and create the right content. It's a lot of orchestrating, but if you do it correctly, and you have a good team, then it could lead to big results.
- I know everybody in social media gets asked this question a lot and there's not really a consistent answer, but is there a magic frequency for each one of the platforms that you post for?
- Honestly, I don't live by that rule. I know everybody lives what is the proper amount of frequency. To me, it's finding a balance between paid social and organic social. And let me just explain to the audience what the difference is - organic social is basically leveraging the platforms as they've been created. So, it's just creating a post. Paid social is when you actually take that piece of content and turn it into an advertisement.
- When you have a strategy that is thinking of both - organic and paid, that's what's important. And when you have a budget for paid for your clients, then it really balances it out. If you're only doing dealing with organic social, then I guess frequency becomes more important.
- My rule is as many as possible, but most of the time that comes down to resources. Do you have the resources to actually have somebody posting three times a day? If you do, great. If you don't, then maybe you should do four posts a week. That's when strategy becomes really important just trying to figure out how many resources do I have, how much time do I want to commit to creating content, how much content I need to actually produce. So, those are all the questions I kind of get spun into that decision.
- Our golden rule here at Keen is consistency across platform is imperative. Consistency in your messaging should look holistic across all platforms, but every platform is different. So you need to tailor that message to that specific platform.
- Video is essentially everything.
- Video is great for awareness. Whenever people just want to create an awareness campaign, just introducing them to a new service or a new product or even the fact that they exist.
- Consistency in messaging once again is also important. So if you have a video that you want to publish to Facebook, then I would recommend publishing across all platforms at the same time, but also putting in on the landing page that they land on. Because once again, somebody might click on an ad and go to the landing page and if they don't really see the same messaging on the landing page, then they get confused and they might drop off and they might not do the action that you're trying to get them to do.
- The reason I am in social media is that you could do so much with it. You can stay relevant with conversations that are already happening.
- And more!
Show Links
- Keen Social
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- Allstate Mayhem
- City of Long Beach
- Skittles on Instagram
- Oreo Cookie on Twitter
- Coca-Cola on Instagram
Today we have Neal St. Clair on the show who's the founder of East of Western. We dive deep into software, running an agency, and he asks the hosts some questions as well.
What I love the most is just building and developing. I think there's nothing better than designs get approved, handed off, and I have sort of a clean slate to say, okay, let's start building this thing
Neal St. Clair
Show Highlights
- Neal St. Clair's background - didn't originally go to school for programming - went to school for business and marketing at Boston University
- So for about a year and a half in Boston, I just worked with this guy, kind of learned some html, CSS, real basic stuff. This was back in probably like 1999, 2000. And from there, kind of loved it.
- In 2002 moved out to California with the goal of let's see if I can do this without getting a real job and try to freelance and code and make websites for way too little money at the time.
- Over the years it was me, solo coding kind of in my bedroom. And then it evolved into me and a couple of people in a small office. And just kept evolving until where I'm at now at East of Western world. We're this digital agency, there's five of us at the company, and sort of now finally believe I don't need to get a real job.
- So switched over to Linux and PHP, but our CMS now is a very similar to a WordPress set up. So, MySQL database, PHP five or seven, pushing towards seven now and very similar setup, but that's what we're working with now.
- We provide some of the basics for SEO. What we always like to tell people is we want to set up a site with best practices and the best structure. Our CMS does include some meta editor tools so clients can be in control of their page titles, descriptions, keywords.
- We really fell into the world of photography. So, years ago we had one of our offices with a gallery in Los Angeles.
- In the beginning, we were building this stuff on WordPress and it was working, but we would kind of struggled with building the site, handing over the WordPress admin and sort of watching people's eyes glaze over because all they really wanted to do was drag and drop and move photos and videos around and they didn't care about the hundred other things that WordPress is really good at, but not really necessary for a portfolio site like that.
- We never start with pick layout A, B, or C. We always work with the clients and make something unique and oftentimes that will mean tailoring our admin or CMS to work with whatever the front end needs to do.
- I wear probably way too many hats. What I love the most is just building and developing. I think there's nothing better than designs get approved, handed off, and I have sort of a clean slate to say, okay, let's start building this thing, whatever this project or this site is.
- And more!
Show Links
- East of Western
- WordPress
- JQuery
- GitHub
- SASS
- NPM
- BrowserStack
- Photoshop
- Sketch
- Notion
- Evernote
- VS Code
- Basecamp
- Media Temple
Tom Reynolds joins us today to talk Smarketing and Accessibility. Tom runs The Reynolds Group and specializes in working with manufacturers.
More on Tom: Website - LinkedIn
Why do you exist? What problem do you solve?
Tom Reynolds Show Highlights * The way we sold those machines was to teach people how to write copy and communicate it at the point of sale. And I've always felt that was really relevant to the Internet world because you get about five seconds to capture someone's attention when it comes to communicating at the point of sale as they're passing a piece of merchandise. * And so, starting in about 2002, I switched over and started doing consulting primarily with manufacturing companies helping them with new technology, which at the time was websites, but we've gone on to do apps and other kinds of software for people. * Smarketing is a term I did steal. It is a real term out there. I think that actually the first people to use it was Hubspot. But, my interpretation of the word is that it really combined sales and marketing. * People are so enamored with this lead machine that a lot of it is Internet driven, that they've kind of forgotten the sales side of the equation. * I focus my marketing effort on helping people bring balance back in and bring in the sales side of the equation. * The balance I'm talking about is that communication and support on both sides - the sales supports the marketing and the marketing supports the sales. * You've got to be targeted with B2B a little bit more with manufacturers, then you are with say B2C. * People’s expectations is if they call you, they'll ship you something overnight and the shipping will be free. * You really have to go after the quality and support the dealers and help them get leads and build a website that actually supports the dealer. * And more!
Show Links * Not Paid Script * WCAG 2.0 * Color Blind Chrome Extension * Color Contrast Analyzer Chrome Extension * Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List
Today's show features Jeremy Rivera, an SEO expert based out of Nashville. Jeremy lives and breathes SEO and works full time for Raven Tools and also does SEO in his free-time for companies. Jeremy's figured out how to skip sleeping so he can work 24 hours a day. ;)
Jeremy Links: Website - Twitter - SEO Tool
Show Highlights * Lots of insights from Jeremy on SEO best practices, tools, and people in the industry. * Returning to simplicity in SEO. * Back to the fundamental question: What is Google trying to do? Google is trying to connect the persons intent with their search with the result they get. Our job is to optimize what we're doing to fill that intent. * Case study: Painter that didn't say what he did. * When performing audits he checks to find out what they actually do and makes sure that's part of the SEO * Case study: Commercial photographer with just pics and no info on what they do. * "If you confuse you'll lose" from Donald Miller. Bringing story into our marketing strategy is key. * A huge step is telling people what you do and what the next step is. * and much more!!
2019 is the year of Marie Condo in the SEO world. Look at processes and ask if they bring us joy.
Jeremy Rivera
Experts Mentioned
- Donald Miller - website - twitter
- Bill Slawski - website - twitter
- AJ Ghergich - website - twitter
- John Mu - twitter
- Gary Illyes - twitter
Tools Mentioned
- Raven Tools
- Outreach
- Spyfu
- Ahrefs
- Screaming Frog
- Beam Us Up
- SEM Rush
- Answer The Public
- GTmetrix
- Outreach Ninja
- Freshbooks
- Google Drive
Welcome to the first episode of Digital Rage! On this show Matt Ramage & Jeff Byer talk shop at the virtual water cooler. You'll learn about industry news, tools being used, accessibility standards, overreach by Facebook & Google, and more!
Show Highlights Pat Flynn successfully launches first physical product on Kickstarter called the Switchpod. Discovered the Switchpod on Instagram Stories. Then went on to see on Product Hunt and through Pat Flynn's regular email. Was able to successfully use influencer marketing by sending the product to YouTube famous vlogger, Peter McKinnon. Here's the product review:
Kickstarter Campaign Idea: Can each of you buy me a cup of coffee for the rest of my life?
Overreach - Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on themselves. More on that from TechCrunch. And Google continues to push out new updates that keep users on Google like position zero.
Gary V, the king of social, is still big on Facebook and states that it's still the cheapest place in the world to get ads scene by the most people. Gary says we should be pouring as much money into FB as we can. And he's also big on LinkedIn right now. Both Jeff and Matt are on LinkedIn but at the moment don't spend regular time on it. Jeff is tired of the sales message he gets after a connection is made. And a Gary V maxim: always provide value first.
Jeff Byer talks about firing a client at Byer Company, and how his time is more important and talks about the ramifications. Jeff got assigned some work while on vacation after letting the client know he'd be gone for 4 days. A good work-life balance is key in Jeff's life. Jeff talks about a podcast called Hustle & Flowchart and how they promote not killing yourself with 20 hour work days. Hustle will eventually lead to burnout, except for Gary V. ;)
Matt Ramage talks about the new Emarketed brand, repositioning, website, and services. Matt also talks about one of his latest projects with Yum-Yum Donuts and Winchell's on building new versions of both sites with accessibility in mind. Matt is working with Accessible 360 as an independent auditing company that is providing training and reviewing design and code along the way.
Matt & Jeff discuss tools they use to run their agencies. Links below for tools that both have used or are currently using.
Show Links
- Pipedrive
- Honeybook
- Bonsai
- Hubspot CRM
- Mailchimp
- Calendly
- Freshbooks
Welcome to the Digital Rage Podcast. Jeff Byer and Matt Ramage are the hosts that bring you digital marketing and internet topics every week. We have interviews lined up with leaders in the industries of SEO, Social Media, Marketing, Design and more. Here is a little more information about us.
About Matt Ramage
- Started at Earthlink in 1996 in customer support
- Started building websites in 1998 - first site was for a good friend selling karmann ghias
- Worked at a DSL provider called Zyan Communications in 1999 in the web hosting department
- Led digital at a drug rehab after the dot bubble burst but the drive to Laguna Beach was brutal - left there to go out alone in 2001
- Been running Emarketed since
- Started doing SEO & PPC in addition to building websites in 2001
- With SEO it was trial and error from the beginning and seeing what worked and didn’t work
- Adwords certified with Google
- Emarketed has been a Google Partner for over 10 years
- Notable clients: World Gym, Winchell’s, YumYum, Quick Shade, Sector 9, The Bluegrass Situation
- Started Organic CMS in 2000 which is a CMS with no plugins to manage and is super flexible
- Been working in the mental health field since 2000
- Have a 22 year old daughter
- Been meditating seriously for 10 years
- Member of Toastmasters International for 3 years
About Jeff Byer
- First basic program in 1987, 6th grade
- Started using Photoshop in 1989, got it from my cousin
- Started building websites in 1997 with a partner
- Built an intranet for Aramark
- Started at Sony producing websites for TV and Movies
- Co-wrote on 4 US patents related to digital publishing
- Produced audio and video software for Sony
- Left Sony to manage production at an Agency
- Notable agency clients: Anheiser-busch, mcdonalds, nissan, nasa, disney
- Became a partner at Dice Media in 2002
- Started DDOP and LAMP dev
- Started my quest for SEO mastery
- Started Print Fellas in 2004
- Started feeding my love for photography
- Started feeding my love for food (hah) cooking
- Started Affordable Recipes
- Joined the Stevie G Band as Bass player even though I was a guitarist
- Started hiking
- Went back to being a solo agency around 2008 as Jeff Byer Inc
- Made an album with the band
- Band broke up when by son was born
- Stopped hiking when my son was born
- Focussed my business after my son was born
- Rebranded to Byer Company, offering DDOP
Jeff Byer's Interview with Voyage LA
What is the Digital Rage Podcast about?
DigitalRage.fm is a podcast about all things internet. From marketing to technology, we will discuss the latest topics and interview leaders in the industry.