Podcasts about seoisaeo

Daniel explains his analogy between traffic lights and the sales process. When selling, we often have a tendency to speed up at a yellow light, and that is the wrong thing to do - a yellow light is an objection, so you should slow down and take the time to explain to the potential customer… Daniel advises taking people to their pain points right from the start, which reduces churn and avoids wasting everyone's time. Some lovely quotes "solutions hold no value, they only derive value from the problems they solve", "tension is the chemistry of sales"…. this is the day I switched from being an SEO to being a marketer. Thanks Daniel. Daniel on LinkedIn

Standing by the pool in a posh hotel in Chiang Mai, I start by mis-singing his name very terribly. I then insult him very rudely. And despite that, Jason remains really delightful. Building an ecommerce site from scratch is easy. Getting the foundations right is the only way to make it work long term. And that is very very difficult. It isn't just me who thinks that Prestashop is particularly tough… Shopify is the platform Jason recommends. No doubt in his mind. Then onto reviews, how they help convert - pre and post purchase reassurance - but also with features, functionality and attributes. He likes Trustpilot quite a lot. And at the end, I sing to myself. Jason on Linkedin and Twitter Poolside in Chiang Mai

People think "what do I have to do" rather than "what do I want to do"… outsourcing allows you to get to the place where you can choose what you want to do, and not be stuck in the rut of "need to do". BUT, that can lead to a midlife crisis, even at 25 years old. It's easy to outsource, but apparently, attaching your name to a project tends to make the process much more difficult, especially if you are perfectionist like Lee. We didn't get to the practical stuff - how do you outsource successfully… so we recorded a follow up episode that is a must-listen if you listened all the way to the end of this one :).

Nobody seems to know where that magic figure of 7 touchpoints come from… Daniel suggests it used to be 5.4 just to dialogue with a brand. With the advent of the internet, and the explosion of information that number is quickly approaching 20. As brand we are getting drowned out by the noise. Intelligent use of remarketing is now absolutely vital so you are front of mind at time of purchase. Aiming at bottom of funnel is like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Daniel gets a whole football team of touch points... and the Brand SERP is the striker who scores the goal. Luckily for me. We also discuss the rebranding for the podcast, but didn't figure out the new name :( Daniel on LinkedIn

Ahmed Khalifa with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO September 2019 Ahmed Khalifa talks with Jason Barnard about why you would use captions and subtitles for your video.   Firstly, accessibility. All sorts of people benefit from captioned / subtitled videos, not just deaf people says Ahmed Khalifa: non-native speakers, people watching with the sound off, when the speakers' accents aren't clear (think Glaswegian :) … and some people just like to read along. Automatic captions need to be corrected. Machines simply cannot get everything right (especially the scene directions and ambiance descriptions). Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. I personally hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. Ahmed is deaf, and relies on captions. But all sorts of people benefit from captioned videos… Of course, we get onto Glaswegian accents. Heads up Craig Campbell. Auto captioning is far from perfect. It needs to be corrected. Then we get onto pushing that to transcripts and adapted transcripts. Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. Guess who hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. I speak too much without engaging my brain. Ahmed saves the day and makes me sound intelligent. Phew ! Jason Barnard I'm going to reread your name to make sure I get it right. #SEOisAEO, welcome to the show. Ahmed Khalifa. Ahmed Khalifa Actually, yeah, that's quite like intro. People should do that more often. Jason Barnard Yeah, but the shame was I actually had to read it. Ahmed Khalifa I don't blame you for that. Jason Barnard Thank you. Lovely to meet you. I believe you started your career in Brighton. Ahmed Khalifa Kind of. I did have an agency experience in Worthing. So I lived there for like a year and I did agency work. I did a few things building up to it, then from then on, I just kept up the momentum. Jason Barnard And you worked for a company called Fresh Egg? My first thought when I saw fresh egg was rotten egg. Ahmed Khalifa My first thought was some kind of farm or something And that was about seven or eight years ago now. So it's been a while. Jason Barnard Okay. Right. Brilliant stuff.   Video Captions Jason Barnard You were talking about that earlier on, and shamefully I didn't see your talk… but you gave me a quick idea of what it was all about. Captions on videos and how rubbish they can be when they're auto generated on YouTube and people leave them idiotically. Ahmed Khalifa Pretty much. And they don't give it a second thought. Jason Barnard Yeah. And, and you were telling me why that's particularly interesting for you? Ahmed Khalifa Well, I mean, if I'm going to go from my personal experience, I depend on captions because I'm deaf and I depend on captions just to access videos. But then even if it's not for me, it can be for all for people for whom English is not their first language. They're learning the language. Or it could be some kind of learning disability and they need captions to keep up. It could be attention deficit disorder. It could be even be, for all of us, because you may be an urban transport or maybe you're in a library or whatever, and you just want to watch the video in silence. Jason Barnard Or it could be that the person speaking has a really, really thick Glaswegian accent like Craig Campbell. Ahmed Khalifa That is one thing that I mentioned in the talk. I had the example of Kevin Bridges, the comedian. He's from Glasgow, and the auto captions struggled. to get it right - and it was interesting what they come up with. So, of course, a strong Glaswegian accent can affect things (smiles). Jason Barnard That leads us really neatly onto the idea that if you make a video,

Ahmed Khalifa with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO September 2019 Ahmed Khalifa talks with Jason Barnard about why you would use captions and subtitles for your video.   Firstly, accessibility. All sorts of people benefit from captioned / subtitled videos, not just deaf people says Ahmed Khalifa: non-native speakers, people watching with the sound off, when the speakers' accents aren't clear (think Glaswegian :) … and some people just like to read along. Automatic captions need to be corrected. Machines simply cannot get everything right (especially the scene directions and ambiance descriptions). Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. I personally hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. Ahmed is deaf, and relies on captions. But all sorts of people benefit from captioned videos… Of course, we get onto Glaswegian accents. Heads up Craig Campbell. Auto captioning is far from perfect. It needs to be corrected. Then we get onto pushing that to transcripts and adapted transcripts. Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. Guess who hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. I speak too much without engaging my brain. Ahmed saves the day and makes me sound intelligent. Phew ! Jason Barnard I'm going to reread your name to make sure I get it right. #SEOisAEO, welcome to the show. Ahmed Khalifa. Ahmed Khalifa Actually, yeah, that's quite like intro. People should do that more often. Jason Barnard Yeah, but the shame was I actually had to read it. Ahmed Khalifa I don't blame you for that. Jason Barnard Thank you. Lovely to meet you. I believe you started your career in Brighton. Ahmed Khalifa Kind of. I did have an agency experience in Worthing. So I lived there for like a year and I did agency work. I did a few things building up to it, then from then on, I just kept up the momentum. Jason Barnard And you worked for a company called Fresh Egg? My first thought when I saw fresh egg was rotten egg. Ahmed Khalifa My first thought was some kind of farm or something And that was about seven or eight years ago now. So it's been a while. Jason Barnard Okay. Right. Brilliant stuff.   Video Captions Jason Barnard You were talking about that earlier on, and shamefully I didn't see your talk… but you gave me a quick idea of what it was all about. Captions on videos and how rubbish they can be when they're auto generated on YouTube and people leave them idiotically. Ahmed Khalifa Pretty much. And they don't give it a second thought. Jason Barnard Yeah. And, and you were telling me why that's particularly interesting for you? Ahmed Khalifa Well, I mean, if I'm going to go from my personal experience, I depend on captions because I'm deaf and I depend on captions just to access videos. But then even if it's not for me, it can be for all for people for whom English is not their first language. They're learning the language. Or it could be some kind of learning disability and they need captions to keep up. It could be attention deficit disorder. It could be even be, for all of us, because you may be an urban transport or maybe you're in a library or whatever, and you just want to watch the video in silence. Jason Barnard Or it could be that the person speaking has a really, really thick Glaswegian accent like Craig Campbell. Ahmed Khalifa That is one thing that I mentioned in the talk. I had the example of Kevin Bridges, the comedian. He's from Glasgow, and the auto captions struggled. to get it right - and it was interesting what they come up with. So, of course, a strong Glaswegian accent can affect things (smiles). Jason Barnard That leads us really neatly onto the idea that if you make a video,

Ahmed Khalifa with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO September 2019 Ahmed Khalifa talks with Jason Barnard about why you would use captions and subtitles for your video.   Firstly, accessibility. All sorts of people benefit from captioned / subtitled videos, not just deaf people says Ahmed Khalifa: non-native speakers, people watching with the sound off, when the speakers' accents aren't clear (think Glaswegian :) … and some people just like to read along. Automatic captions need to be corrected. Machines simply cannot get everything right (especially the scene directions and ambiance descriptions). Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. I personally hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. Ahmed is deaf, and relies on captions. But all sorts of people benefit from captioned videos… Of course, we get onto Glaswegian accents. Heads up Craig Campbell. Auto captioning is far from perfect. It needs to be corrected. Then we get onto pushing that to transcripts and adapted transcripts. Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. Guess who hadn't thought about how important that can be for context. It's not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. I speak too much without engaging my brain. Ahmed saves the day and makes me sound intelligent. Phew ! Jason Barnard I'm going to reread your name to make sure I get it right. #SEOisAEO, welcome to the show. Ahmed Khalifa. Ahmed Khalifa Actually, yeah, that's quite like intro. People should do that more often. Jason Barnard Yeah, but the shame was I actually had to read it. Ahmed Khalifa I don't blame you for that. Jason Barnard Thank you. Lovely to meet you. I believe you started your career in Brighton. Ahmed Khalifa Kind of. I did have an agency experience in Worthing. So I lived there for like a year and I did agency work. I did a few things building up to it, then from then on, I just kept up the momentum. Jason Barnard And you worked for a company called Fresh Egg? My first thought when I saw fresh egg was rotten egg. Ahmed Khalifa My first thought was some kind of farm or something And that was about seven or eight years ago now. So it's been a while. Jason Barnard Okay. Right. Brilliant stuff.   Video Captions Jason Barnard You were talking about that earlier on, and shamefully I didn't see your talk… but you gave me a quick idea of what it was all about. Captions on videos and how rubbish they can be when they're auto generated on YouTube and people leave them idiotically. Ahmed Khalifa Pretty much. And they don't give it a second thought. Jason Barnard Yeah. And, and you were telling me why that's particularly interesting for you? Ahmed Khalifa Well, I mean, if I'm going to go from my personal experience, I depend on captions because I'm deaf and I depend on captions just to access videos. But then even if it's not for me, it can be for all for people for whom English is not their first language. They're learning the language. Or it could be some kind of learning disability and they need captions to keep up. It could be attention deficit disorder. It could be even be, for all of us, because you may be an urban transport or maybe you're in a library or whatever, and you just want to watch the video in silence. Jason Barnard Or it could be that the person speaking has a really, really thick Glaswegian accent like Craig Campbell. Ahmed Khalifa That is one thing that I mentioned in the talk. I had the example of Kevin Bridges, the comedian. He's from Glasgow, and the auto captions struggled. to get it right - and it was interesting what they come up with. So, of course, a strong Glaswegian accent can affect things (smiles). Jason Barnard That leads us really neatly onto the idea that if you make a video,

  Firstly, accessibility. All sorts of people benefit from captioned / subtitled videos, not just deaf people says Ahmed Khalifa: non-native speakers, people watching with the sound off, when the speakers’ accents aren’t clear (think Glaswegian :) … and some people just like to read along. Automatic captions need to be corrected. Machines simply cannot get everything right (especially the scene directions and ambiance descriptions). Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. I personally hadn’t thought about how important that can be for context. It’s not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. Ahmed is deaf, and relies on captions. But all sorts of people benefit from captioned videos… Of course, we get onto Glaswegian accents. Heads up Craig Campbell. Auto captioning is far from perfect. It needs to be corrected. Then we get onto pushing that to transcripts and adapted transcripts. Apparently, professionals can write captions almost in real time, including descriptions about background noise. Guess who hadn’t thought about how important that can be for context. It’s not just what we say, but the context in which we say it. I speak too much without engaging my brain. Ahmed saves the day and makes me sound intelligent. Phew ! Jason Barnard I’m going to reread your name to make sure I get it right. #SEOisAEO, welcome to the show. Ahmed Khalifa. Ahmed Khalifa Actually, yeah, that's quite like intro. People should do that more often. Jason Barnard Yeah, but the shame was I actually had to read it. Ahmed Khalifa I don't blame you for that. Jason Barnard Thank you. Lovely to meet you. I believe you started your career in Brighton. Ahmed Khalifa Kind of. I did have an agency experience in Worthing. So I lived there for like a year and I did agency work. I did a few things building up to it, then from then on, I just kept up the momentum. Jason Barnard And you worked for a company called Fresh Egg? My first thought when I saw fresh egg was rotten egg. Ahmed Khalifa My first thought was some kind of farm or something And that was about seven or eight years ago now. So it's been a while. Jason Barnard Okay. Right. Brilliant stuff.   Video Captions Jason Barnard You were talking about that earlier on, and shamefully I didn't see your talk… but you gave me a quick idea of what it was all about. Captions on videos and how rubbish they can be when they're auto generated on YouTube and people leave them idiotically. Ahmed Khalifa Pretty much. And they don't give it a second thought. Jason Barnard Yeah. And, and you were telling me why that's particularly interesting for you? Ahmed Khalifa Well, I mean, if I'm going to go from my personal experience, I depend on captions because I'm deaf and I depend on captions just to access videos. But then even if it's not for me, it can be for all for people for whom English is not their first language. They're learning the language. Or it could be some kind of learning disability and they need captions to keep up. It could be attention deficit disorder. It could be even be, for all of us, because you may be an urban transport or maybe you're in a library or whatever, and you just want to watch the video in silence. Jason Barnard Or it could be that the person speaking has a really, really thick Glaswegian accent like Craig Campbell. Ahmed Khalifa That is one thing that I mentioned in the talk. I had the example of Kevin Bridges, the comedian. He’s from Glasgow, and the auto captions struggled. to get it right - and it was interesting what they come up with. So, of course, a strong Glaswegian accent can affect things (smiles). Jason Barnard That leads us really neatly onto the idea that if you make a video, do the transcript. Stick it on your site, then you get both the text - remember, people people prefer reading to watching videos. People talking about this more and more in this i...

Gennaro Looks at financials. He likes numbers. Microsoft has survived almost 50 years and ridden all the innovation waves (unlike many other large corporations). Microsoft are making $110 billion – almost as much as Google. But with a more varied and balanced business model – Office, Windows, Cloud, Gaming, Search and digital platforms. They have a lot of work to do to retain their existing clients, especially in Office. Their key worry with Office and Windows is how to stop their client-base shrinking. Investments such as LinkedIn are part of a strategy to expand their customer base. In both cases, they are dealing with very different demographics. And looking to the future… LinkedIn is making almost as much money as Bing advertising, but it still hasn’t paid for itself… but is key to their future because it hooks into so many other of their products. Contact Gennaro Cuofano

The Wonderful World of SaaS Startups Paul talks about the rarity of tech startups that actually survive… and the even more rare case of one that succeeds. Part of that is educating the audience for a new innovative product they didn’t know they needed. In this space, the new product is often the solution a company created to a problem they had… and then open it up to the wider world. Once out to market, the product often needs to adapt. You start with your core market. But then once investors come in, many startups expand the functionality of the product to try to reach a wider client base in order to please the investors. Not always a good idea. Knowing how to pivot is vital. Paul Bongers talks Jason Barnard through how SEPO tools have pivoted. And points out the irony that we are amazed that people are talking to their phones, given that Alexander Graham Bell invented it for exactly that purpose.

Jim explains how he identifies the patterns that link buying and PBNs create. Anyone who is selling links is creating a network that can be mapped (because they are using a Rolodex, apparently). There is no safe way to buy links, says Jim. And don’t expect natural links into your product page. They will be to your content pages, so use the internal linking to benefit your product pages. When you create that linkworthy content, then spend time promoting it using the 80/20 rule. Jim is happy to stand by the idea that links are still the biggest thing, and will be for a long time to come. Jim is a content creator who happens to get links rather than a linkbuilder who happens to create content.

The father of SEO – he’s been in the industry for almost a quarter of a century. He started with Infoseek. Then I say Google and my phone joins in the conversation. He then goes into the details of the 19 major search engines of the early years. And the tiny numbers we were using at the time. And how simple it was to rank, and yet complicated at the same time. Then the power of human intuition. And the glory of Macromedia Flash (that’s me, not Bruce). Rumour has it that only 10% of companies have even done any active SEO. Bruce suggests that there is an 80/20 half life of evolving SEO strategies. Lastly onto E-A-T – expertise is your onpage content, authority is that peers agree with you and trust is a reflection of the sentiment / praise of your users. Ends with a delightful Einstein SEO quote.

AOL were very very big and were going to dominate the world. Did the CD work? Yes it did. At one point, for 2 weeks, no other CDs were produced in the world. Simon was doing SEO for TechCrunch, but the journalists didn’t want to listen. So he took them out to lunch and charmed them into submission. Problem solved! Both Simon and AOL were precursors. They had a two-pronged approach – copywriting and tech. Then onto examples of extreme preciceness, then the vagueness in queries and results… and how queries change with story evolution (and articles must change too). Play on people’s vanity to get them to do what you want. Sounds very creepy, but is less so than it sounds.

We start with a chat about talking to every single person at UnGagged. Pamela suggests that we have relationships with brands… and that brand can be our friend. We need to build relationships through connections. Then I get over-excited about entities and relationships and memory. Then onto brand personality (Pamela uses the official term – brand awareness). Vanilla is not bland (have a listen and you’ll know why). Then brands have personality and need to maintain that – meaning HR is really important. ALso, please DO have a branded Google Ads campaign. Finally, use the 7 points of contact to get rid of the churners (Kate Toon !), and don’t waste your ad budget on them. Finally, one of the more delightful out-takes with Pamela, Dexter (the videographer) and Hal (the photographer). Ace.

Google Colaboratory is like Google Sheets on steroids. Use it to save bucketloads of time and be terribly productive. Gerry White got very excited about the 6 use-cases Hamlet gave in his talk. For example automating duplication, writing meta titles automatically, Andrea Volpini’s dance with machines, mapping redirects, writing alt tags, finding content gaps

Along with Greg Gifford, Arsen Rabinovich, Jennifer Hoffman starts with why technical SEO pays. A bit of a discussion about bells, whistles, heavy images and mega comment threads leading to poor onsite experience in terms of load time. Then onto navigation and indexation. And tracking user behaviour, the Knowledge Graph, entity optimisation… and brands as entities. We end with the importance of spring cleaning.

Eric loves UnGagged. Then we discuss what is things to focus on in what stage of your startup journey, including which keywords. We get onto the importance of branding, brand SERPs and bringing the offline online. And when a query can be a mix of informational, transactional, and navigational. There is a lovely break where we discuss stuff ‘off-record’, that I left in because we completely forgot to discuss what we decided to discuss during the break.

Slightly uncomfortable moment at the start. I then try to be professional. Not sure if I carry it off. Jerry tells me how great UnGagged is. Then we move onto doing something – the small things effectively. And then the 5 things people can start to do to move your business forwards. A lot of it is simple common sense. And we miss that more often than not. Jerry gives me a good lip twitch that is now a ‘thing’ :) Jerry answers the question as to how much it can cost to flip a switch. Then onto swapping goat stories.

Cindy and I discuss an awful lot of stuff in a lovely, meandering and super informative chat. Starting with Fraggles, and how powerful they are (top middle and bottom)… Plus some experiments we have done, the risks for Google and the possibilities for the future. And onto Darwinism in search, onSERP SEO, local SEO, not needing a website, branding, offline SEO, ranking without an URL, the new EU directive, social metas. Crumbs. That’s a lot.

We start with the ‘soy sauce secret of sumptuous speech’. When you produce a piece of content, create it for everyone. SOme people learn visually, some auditively, some through reading. So one piece of content should be video, audio and text. Make a video, create an audio file and a transcript. And probably a good idea to adapt the transcript to be readable (as opposed to speakable). SEJ make an effort to format for Google with lists and QA etc etc. We get onto baseball and cricket – watching TV but listening to the radio. Then onto repurposing content across media (but the site is always the hub). Loren shares a neat trick to segment your email audience by learning-type. Then onto cartoons – Loren is Wreck it Ralph. ANd guess what film Loren describes as ‘Goodfellas and Ralph Breaks the Internet Combined’. AT the end, I have left the short (and fun) UnGagged interview.

Louisa is SEO editor at the LA Times and I feel a little overwhelmed by her and the institution that is the LA Times. First thing to know is that Louisa is there to educate the journalists rather than messing with their style. She is the stabiliser wheels for people who have 40 years of career behind them, which is cool. Moving an institution like this to a digital approach is a big, big deal. Then onto the European directive that aims to protect publishers. Louisa looks at it from the publishers point of view, I try to defend Google. Louisa then suggests a compromise and we move on very naturally to find a solution for a world where everyone is happy.

Sitting in two comfy armchairs, looking at the sea in Brighton. We start with a chat about machine learning in Google’s search algorithm, PageRank and then onto the Knowledge Graph. There are less entities in the world than webpages. So Google’s job is easier. But the Knowledge Graph is biased – the seed set for google’s understanding is a bunch of librarians (aka Wikipedia editors) who have little in depth knowledge on the topics they edit, especially in anything that is not within their culture. We happily grab examples from the surrounding environment. Piers become a central point, and piers in Ethiopia in particular. We move onto fan sites, that are not necessarily accurate, and perhaps people believe that William Shatner is a space man. Errors such as that at the start of a seed set will mean learning is biased and perhaps inaccurate… and can quickly spiral out of control. They are building on what Dixon calls ‘areas of light’, but that is biased too. One problem is that genuinely good new ideas are going to have trouble surfacing because of the bias against ideas that are not popularly held belief. We move onto loops of truth and self-fulfilling prophecies. Fake news gets a look in (of course). As does bad fact checking. Then we finish off with InLinks – Dixon’s super new SaaS for automatically building internal knowledge graphs and writing scheme.org structured data on the fly. I ask a trick question, and Dixon deals with it rather well. And we end by coining the phrase ‘The Wikipedia model’.

Susan insists that voice search is happening faster than we think. 5 years, not 10. Half life theory comes into play with technology. Don’t underestimate “Call mom”. Then we have the great debate about the amount of voice data. And Susan nails her argument by identifying what are the fallbacks for these machines? Interestingly, even if we think the answers / system is weak now, that doesn’t mean we aren’t going somewhere very interesting very fast. Susan acronyms. I keep using them. But they are ambiguous. So she convinces me again… I agree. featured snippets are super important (and super exciting).

We start talking about building community. David gives some great tips – he has 22,000 people in his genius community who share 50,000 messages a month, so he knows what he’s talking about. he points out we all have a community whether we know it or not. We talk about implicit and explicit communities, then have a debate about the word ‘crumbs’. But then David turns the table on me brilliantly by asking about the red t-shirt… and the second half is him getting me talk about the digital nomad lifestyle and the podcast. My initial though was to only publish the first half. But David does a great job as interviewer, so I left it all. Warts and all ! At the end Susan Westwater (the previous podcast guest) joins in because she thinks we are just having a chat (and not recording a podcast). Finally, right at the end, we end with a Mexican standoff.

We start with a delightful chat about New York, Halloween and even get a quick (made up) Broadway ditty. Then onto E-A-T and how this is affecting our approach to digital marketing. You need to get your information more accurate with help from experts. The problem comes from the fact that the returns aren’t immediate, which is a problem for a lot of people since their job often depends on fast results and quick returns. Is there a quick-win cheat? And is Google a chicken with its head cut off (terribly good analogy for Halloween)? Lily Ray tells all !

We start with an idiotic James Bond analogy. Paul pulls me back to the serious business of ‘what is technical SEO’? And the definition is wider than I thought. 4 types of tech SEO. Paul has a plan to tell me the 4 types. Like a child, I keep trying to jump ahead. Paul then looks at skillsets and venn diagrams. And that we should look at (and accept and appreciate) these crossovers. SEO is one giant Venn diagram of skillsets. Then onto the fact that in SEO we are (and need to be) multi-skilled. We end with ‘it’s important to get into the weeds’. Who knows what that means (ask Paul)

Marty starts with his musical career and the segues very neatly into why that initial career path helps with digital marketing. And, as we all know, there are a lot of musicians in this space. Mentions for Robert Smith, AC/DC, The Monkees… And we also learn to love our lard pack… and it becomes yet another spur of the moment silly ditty

Once again I get the pronunciation of someone’s name wrong. How does James find clients: referrals, conferences, content promotion… and a little SEO :) Keep a good customer base. Never have one single client who represents more than 10% of your income. Next how to hire great staff. Conferences, job sites, Facebook groups… Enthusiasm, a personality that fits in to the team, motivation… I decide we are talking about ranking factors for getting jobs. The first year is always going to be really tough. Surviving the first 3 years is key. Then you are rolling. After 8 years, 80% of Jame’s job is networking. Great clients are hard to find and bad clients and easy to find.

In the pub, just before the second day of the Takeitoffline unconference. Barry hates AMP and is an attempt by Google to force the web to conform to their vision of the web. Now they are getting involved in WordPress, and we should be very worried (especially when we get words like PWAMP). A commercial company should not be the organisation that decides how the web works – because they will do what is best for their bottom line, not what is best for the web. Google is an advertising company with 90% dominance and should be regulated. They started wanting to make the web a better place, but are now a company looking to make money. We dig into how the European Directive may pan out for news sites. Although they are playing hardball on the EU directive, and the recent updates have impacted the publishers enormously (and cost them dearly), Google are trying to be more political with the publishers. Then onto what business models might work for news publishers – not a one-size-fits-all. I vaguely float the idea of calling him Happy Barry. Then onto Google breaking the Social Contract, and the ins-and-outs of permission to scrape. Conclusion – Barry chirpily says that Google don’t feel they owe anyone anything.

Both findability and discoverability = matching user intent with information or content that they want. Quickly. On and offline. Grocery stores, for example. We end up trying (and succeed) to shoehorn the idea into punk music and Dada movement.

Google don’t look at author. They look at entities. Google don’t look at accuracy of facts. Kristine uses Omegas as an example as to why. Then why linking out is so important. I expound my topic layer theory. They don’t use NLP, they use NLU. Which is why we need Schema.org… and we end up with a sulky robot on crutches

Fabrice us downloading the whole worldwide web every day (even my site). Bing have launched a crawling API, and that is putting Fabrice out of a job (and he wants to be out of a job) – simply ping Bing to have an URl crawled immediately. They also have solved Javascript.

I have to read her name tag to get through the difficult first moments of the podcast. Then we talk about the health industry and getting old (it is expensive). Plus the target audience is not necessarily the people themselves, but their children. And if the audience is the older people, Bing is a good marketing target. She goes on to say that if you do the right thing, Google updates are not a worry, and you sleep well.

Craig explains that I have got the strategy for my podcast all wrong. My plan is to not have a plan, which is not a good idea, it seems. So he tells me what I SHOULD be doing. Hint – have a plan.

Google, Bing and Amazon have a user-centric design perspective, and we tend to forget that. We should pull and analyse the data to discover the real pain points of our potential clients rather than use our instincts since we are all biased, and our content will therefore be biased.

We discuss pest control, cartoons, and eventually get onto how to get great online reviews for an offline business. It’s all about relationships. Oh, and asking nicely. Bribing people doesn’t work. Top 3 platforms are Google, Yelp and Facebook

For once someone gets all over excited about brand SERPs. I manage to keep reasonably quiet and let him talk, despite the fact I am over excited about it too. He actually does proper audits on all terms that contain the brand name, and gives some super duper insights we should all be taking note of. So go out and manage your branded searches. Easy win, and vitally important.

Majestic don’t keep Dixon informed about very much. Because he can’t keep a secret. When they DID tell him what they have been doing for the last year and a half,., he got rather enthusiastic – context around links by analysing around chunks / blocks / segments / sections / fraggles of content… and so scoring content according the context of the segment it is in… text, semantics, link density, images, alt tags and so on. Cool! The fact that Majestic are doing this (and looking at how well they do it) gives us a good indication of how well Google will (probably) doing. Then onto the new link tags, the problems inherent in the UGC tag… And Dixon suggests that Google add a rel=important tag. Dixon digs his grave by suggesting that Google lack variety and are moving to echo chambers… and somehow uses Middle Ages Villages to demonstrate. I get excited about self-fulfilling prophecies and the problems of discoverability and trust for some authoritative content … The World’s best content is the very stuff that is buried.

We start with a discussion about horrid nicknames at school (that were secret until today) Then we move quickly onto local search and near-me information. There are more near me searches now than ever before – both explicitly expressed in words, and increasingly  by geo localisation. We are now expecting local results within 500 metres, down from 5km in just 6 years. Local search is all about the answers. And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search. Local search also brings to the fore that online / offline are intertwined.  And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search.  Google is now pulling in information from all sorts of sources. And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search. The parallels go on and on… Being in local search is the best place to be for digital marketing now. Getting that right is the starting point for any business – and most get it wrong. Then onto the other players in the near me field – we often forget that “near me” information comes from a variety of sources  in the near me world – Yelp, Facebook, Bing, FourSquare… Local is a global thing.

Google formalised its reaction to the Link Tax on 23rd September. I was a bit confused. Luckily Andrea has already figured it out and gives me the rundown / lowdown on the EU copyright Directive, Google’s reaction to it and the practicalities for publishers… Google News publishers are opted in by default, other publishers are opted out by default. Search Console gives publishers he means to control this. Schema markup is the solution if you want to opt-in and yet keep your rich results. Could this perhaps even be an opportunity to take control of our content? Brilliant !

Liz was at SMS Sydney to get some extra SEO knowledge – but she knows more than she lets on. She has a Norwegian name, is Australian… but is part Swiss (but she has never been to Switzerland). Liz and her husband (Matt) buy fully functional domains that they can monetise, or sell on – a bit like buying property, apparently. But the ROI on websites is incredibly high. MUCH higher than real estate. She suggests that the due diligence in their industry is simply an SEO audit – and it is mad that more SEOs aren’t doing it (how stupid are you Jason?) She encourages me to dip a toe in the water – I could buy a $500 website and get my start – I call it pimping websites, Liz calls it renovating. A lot of the work that needs to be done is simple SEO cleaning up and UX. Liz insists it is easy money if you work at it from a business point of view. Quick discussion about international expansion for manufacturing SMBs (Sarah Carroll gets a mention there). Then back to buying websites to monetise them… she doesn’t look for sites by topic, but rather income or profit. She has a site all about pigeon racing, so we have a lovely discussion about pigeon racing that goes from the Philippine to betting, to Little Voice, to Mike Tyson. Amazon affiliate sites are blue chip, AdSense sites are blue chip. And since AdSense delivers ads based on the search algorithm, we SEOs have a DOUBLE advantage.

Starts with a yawn. Then he forgets one of his jobs. Jono’s current job at Yoast and it is his double dream job – his role is to turn up at work and think of fun and interesting things to work on that are impactive. I have never had a real job, and spending a couple of days at Yoast HQ is the first time I have thought it might be nice. Jono could have chosen anything he wanted to work on, and he chose Schema.org (the most boring thing on the web). He is swimming in relationships, philosophy, … and then he gets into the pure scale of what they are doing – 14% of the web uses Yoast… Um. Wow. And on top of that, they need to be backwards compatible and remain compatible with all the plugins that hook into Yoast and all the badly coded sites. One simple, genius idea has made all this possible (like all the best systems). Schema.org markup gives Google confirmation, confidence and precision. Jono wants a t-shirt! Google are rolling out a conveyor belt of carrots (in the form of embellishments and additions to rich results). Next up is booking a restaurant or buying a product enabled by Schema.org (and we find out why a Bose headphone costs $33900). Quick discussion about Joomla and Typo3 (Jono likes Typo3). Followed by a bit of memory loss. Jono then gives a quick rundown of how and why Google are betting the farm on WordPress. Lastly, Yoast is investing very heavily in Schema.org – it is the future of the web, apparently… as big a jump as from Web 1 to Web 2. From interactive communities to interoperable data.

Paula had just given a talk at BrightonSEO in (April 2019 edition). This is a great follow-up to Dan Saunder’s episode… Amazon is challenging both for PPC and SEO. PPC can become very expensive very quickly, especially as a side business. Reviews are the key, and the step to getting enough reviews is very big. And when you get enough, your competitors will spam you down, and then Amazon replicate successful products with Amazon Basics… double cut-throat. For SEO, brand is vital. Just like Google, Amazon want to get their users through to the best product / sale as fast as possible. So conversion rates are the single biggest thing to get right. Intent is vital for that, and an opportunity is to be found where your competitors are falling down – just check out their reviews :) Rank well on Amazon, you will probably rank well on Google – I get carried away and suggest you can forget Google-centric SEO, and perhaps dump your website. Paula brings me back to earth. We end with Google’s problem of owning path to purchase, but not owning the sale. And Amazon’s inverse problem.

Jef gets us started with a repeat of his groovy Elvis impersonation. Then gets serious and gives some amazing insights into what machine learning Google is using that affects SEO. Obviously Rankbrain, but also crawling and extracting unstructured and structured data for the web. I love the idea Jeff throws out – that Schema.org is the only thing we are doing ONLY for the search engines. We debate whether Schema.org is needed for understanding or is it really mostly for improving confidence. We move onto how many legs does a horse have (pretty funny) and how fast does an ostrich run. Jeff has a lovely line on cocky human beings. Onto ML in Google Ads, specifically DSA. Volume of data is incredibly important, and is a factor we (I) often overlook. Lastly Smart Display – Maybe machine learning will push some ugly ads because they work better… in which case we still need the human touch!

On the beach in Tel Aviv, Joel tells me he has Ukrainian roots. Joel has attention deficit disorder, meaning he has trouble achieving long term goals… unless under pressure, or the goals are incredibly short term task-driven or when it is fun. PPC is all three! He was unemployable, but PPC at Wix.com changed that. Learning PPC is easy – just 3 days if you read fast enough – so it is a great career for someone who could have been a lawyer but couldn’t remember swathes of detailed information. I suggest PPC is simply functionality and common sense. Joel adds that I had forgotten to mention experience, which is vital. We agree that our jobs are like playing a game. PPC is a game that has fairly simple rules, and is fun to play (if you like that kind of thing, and Joel does :). Lastly, onto gamification and the similarities and differences between gambling and PPC. Professional slot machine players, Google Analytics and the one armed bandit technique, which is brill.

Ric is the first guest to ask specifically for the song. Apparently it haunts his dreams! Ric is really into local SEO, and so he is a big fan of reviews. I start on the obvious advantage – reducing Google Ads costs. Ric suggests takes it much further. He gets very excited about the amazing insights we can get from analysing the reviews data we have. Trustpilot have seen a 40% uptick in organic traffic due to the E-A-T updates … Three factors for local search – proximity, NAPS, credibility (and accuracy, so four!). Google are looking for trust in you as a brand, and trust in the information it has about you. Reviews help enormously with both. I mention inferred reviews back in June, two months before Bill’s article about Quality Visit Scores Patent (Granted: July 30, 2019). Then we get into Android tracking – both direct and indirect, touching on probabilistic and deterministic wotsits for tracking (I get a bit confused). We debate whether Jim Carrey in Yes Man could be tracked by his behaviour. Then into the BIG (and most interesting) chunk of the conversation – aggregating and using review data ourselves, where reviews are being used by Google, and where they might be taking this. Reviews are the pulse of your clients. By doing analysis of the sentiment pre and post offline campaign, you can measure the success. Reviews feed into E-A-T, the Knowledge Graph, brand measurement, We agree that everyone in SEO should be looking into reviews. During the conversation, Bill Slawski comes up a few times, and every time, we both get unreasonably enthusiastic.

Alexandra Tachalova with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Alexandra Tachalova talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about how to not let bad promotion kill your content. Write less, promote more… build organic traffic, get links, avoid the spike of hope. I learned how i can MUCH better promoting the #SEOisAEO podcast, which is rather cool :p) Outreach is the future (and Alex offers some advice about tools to use). Link building is and will remain fundamental, but too often overlooked. Watch out Neil Patel, Alex is coming up fast on your shoulder! In terms of content, think about ongoing content – a guide with chapters, for example. Or a podcast ! Also a bit of cheeky back scratching goes on and I beg for a link from Digital Olympus. I stop the conversation the moment Alex agrees with my analysis of the situation…

Alexandra Tachalova with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Alexandra Tachalova talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about how to not let bad promotion kill your content. Write less, promote more… build organic traffic, get links, avoid the spike of hope. I learned how i can MUCH better promoting the #SEOisAEO podcast, which is rather cool :p) Outreach is the future (and Alex offers some advice about tools to use). Link building is and will remain fundamental, but too often overlooked. Watch out Neil Patel, Alex is coming up fast on your shoulder! In terms of content, think about ongoing content – a guide with chapters, for example. Or a podcast ! Also a bit of cheeky back scratching goes on and I beg for a link from Digital Olympus. I stop the conversation the moment Alex agrees with my analysis of the situation…

Jono Alderson with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Jono Alderson talks with Jason Barnard about SEO and AEO in a world without websites. With the SERP increasingly offering solutions to queries, we are facing world where websites are increasingly less important (as it were). Jono Alderson talks extensively about on-SERP SEO, a great continuation of Rand Fishkin's approach in this episode – communicating across channels, all along the user journey. SEO is the puppeteering of all the channels.Jono Alderson Not a volume game any more, it's a right-fit and quality game.Jono Alderson Market to everybody and bring them gracefully down the funnelJono Alderson Plus we talk about WordPress, Jono tells me the interview was a Treat (great phrase !)… and right at the end, we discover that SEOisAEO rhymes with Jono ! Jason:SEO is AEO, welcome to the show, Jono: Anderson.Jono:Wow. Amazing, amazing.Jason:It's losing some of its shine.Jono:No, no, it was great.Jason:Lovely to meet you, Jono:. Thank you for being here.Jono:Yeah, thanks.Jason:Bit about you, you're a futurologist.Jono:An amateur one I think, but I don't know if you can be a professional one, so-Jason:I don't even know what one is.Jono:I think I have a lot of opinions about what might happen next, and needed a way of describing that, and it was a handy word.Jason:Oh, it's not a thing then?Jono:Oh, it is. It has connotations of pretentiousness. I know there are in large organizations...Jason:I didn't say that :)Jono:No, but everyone else will. I spent a lot of time in agencies and SEO trying to build strategies for clients, and a lot of that depended on understanding where everything was going and what the world might look like in five years from now, if you're building a big strategy, committing a lot of resources. So I had to build an understanding and some estimated guesses on whether we'd have flying cars and what Amazon were up to and all these things, and yeah, that turned into futurology, so that's quite fun.Jason:Brilliant. You basically say, "Where will we be in 2024," if it's five years?Jono:Yeah, or maybe even a bit further, but obviously it gets harder the further out you go.Jason:Last night, I saw we were gonna be with Global Corporation.Jono:Yeah, the evil overlords.Jason:That was brilliant by the way, last night. A great piece of acting.Jono:Yeah, well maybe, maybe. I spoke to the guys from Google afterwards and they were like, "This feels like a really accurate description," of where they are and how everything works, so it might not have been theater at all.Jason:Oh, right. Oh no. Everybody can be very afraid.Jono:Yeah, always.Jason:You said ... "what the Walking Dead taught me about the future of consumer loyalty"... what the ... is that?Jono:Oh God, that was a while ago. That was really fun. That was the precursor to a whole bunch of stuff I've been thinking about around where digital marketing goes, and the core of the premise was that we are as consumers saturated with choice. Everything is becoming commodified. Products get cheaper to manufacture, they get cheaper to distribute. It's cheaper to enter most markets. Increasingly everything is service-orientated, and consumer choice becomes the differentiator. In a world where I'm empowered to do my own research and make decisions on what I want, then what makes the difference is quality, and I can choose which brands I do or don't want to engage with, and the only thing that really sets them apart is the quality of the experience they deliver.Jono:As you start to change what it means to be a brand, to focus on that rather than I'm cheaper, I'm faster, I'm closer, because none of those things make sense to compete on, we need to really reinvent how we think about marketing and consumer research and SEO in particular. It's not about trying to sell things about the bottom of the funnel, it's about trying to build awareness and preference.Jason:Rand was talking about that.Jono:Yeah, yeah,

Jono Alderson with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Jono Alderson talks with Jason Barnard about SEO and AEO in a world without websites. With the SERP increasingly offering solutions to queries, we are facing world where websites are increasingly less important (as it were). Jono Alderson talks extensively about on-SERP SEO, a great continuation of Rand Fishkin's approach in this episode – communicating across channels, all along the user journey. SEO is the puppeteering of all the channels.Jono Alderson Not a volume game any more, it's a right-fit and quality game.Jono Alderson Market to everybody and bring them gracefully down the funnelJono Alderson Plus we talk about WordPress, Jono tells me the interview was a Treat (great phrase !)… and right at the end, we discover that SEOisAEO rhymes with Jono ! Jason:SEO is AEO, welcome to the show, Jono: Anderson.Jono:Wow. Amazing, amazing.Jason:It's losing some of its shine.Jono:No, no, it was great.Jason:Lovely to meet you, Jono:. Thank you for being here.Jono:Yeah, thanks.Jason:Bit about you, you're a futurologist.Jono:An amateur one I think, but I don't know if you can be a professional one, so-Jason:I don't even know what one is.Jono:I think I have a lot of opinions about what might happen next, and needed a way of describing that, and it was a handy word.Jason:Oh, it's not a thing then?Jono:Oh, it is. It has connotations of pretentiousness. I know there are in large organizations...Jason:I didn't say that :)Jono:No, but everyone else will. I spent a lot of time in agencies and SEO trying to build strategies for clients, and a lot of that depended on understanding where everything was going and what the world might look like in five years from now, if you're building a big strategy, committing a lot of resources. So I had to build an understanding and some estimated guesses on whether we'd have flying cars and what Amazon were up to and all these things, and yeah, that turned into futurology, so that's quite fun.Jason:Brilliant. You basically say, "Where will we be in 2024," if it's five years?Jono:Yeah, or maybe even a bit further, but obviously it gets harder the further out you go.Jason:Last night, I saw we were gonna be with Global Corporation.Jono:Yeah, the evil overlords.Jason:That was brilliant by the way, last night. A great piece of acting.Jono:Yeah, well maybe, maybe. I spoke to the guys from Google afterwards and they were like, "This feels like a really accurate description," of where they are and how everything works, so it might not have been theater at all.Jason:Oh, right. Oh no. Everybody can be very afraid.Jono:Yeah, always.Jason:You said ... "what the Walking Dead taught me about the future of consumer loyalty"... what the ... is that?Jono:Oh God, that was a while ago. That was really fun. That was the precursor to a whole bunch of stuff I've been thinking about around where digital marketing goes, and the core of the premise was that we are as consumers saturated with choice. Everything is becoming commodified. Products get cheaper to manufacture, they get cheaper to distribute. It's cheaper to enter most markets. Increasingly everything is service-orientated, and consumer choice becomes the differentiator. In a world where I'm empowered to do my own research and make decisions on what I want, then what makes the difference is quality, and I can choose which brands I do or don't want to engage with, and the only thing that really sets them apart is the quality of the experience they deliver.Jono:As you start to change what it means to be a brand, to focus on that rather than I'm cheaper, I'm faster, I'm closer, because none of those things make sense to compete on, we need to really reinvent how we think about marketing and consumer research and SEO in particular. It's not about trying to sell things about the bottom of the funnel, it's about trying to build awareness and preference.Jason:Rand was talking about that.Jono:Yeah, yeah,