January 27, 2020 • 20 mins
Should we chase the latest Google update or keep everything the same and hold the line.
We all know Google never rests. Google is constantly evolving and adapting to present the best information possible for its customers (searchers). These changes are a byproduct of analyzing mountains of data and user behavior.
Now the question becomes, Google just rolled out a new update, will this affect my ranking positively, negatively or not at all?
Chris Bonney & Zach Wilson take a deep Google-dive to help you determine whether or not you should or should not react to changes that affect the signals and algorithm.
Opinions on Google's new SERP UI changes. Our take, Google isn't as altruistic as they once were. The UI changes will likely produce some significant upticks in CTR for Paid media, however, once users adapt their eyes and behaviors, things will normalize.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Bonney (00:09):
Hey everybody, and welcome to episode three of web
marketing insights here at GuloSolutions.
I'm Chris Bonney here with oneof the founders of Gullo, Zach
Wilson, uh, doing our podcastthing.
Again, today's podcast is aboutGoogle and the changes that they
make and should we chase themdown and try to remedy
(00:30):
everything we see wrong once anupdate comes or do we keep
things, you know, the same and,and hold the line.
So that's what we want to talkabout today.
Um, Zach, I think this is agreat topic.
A couple of things that aregoing on right now.
Uh, just sort of on the side isthat we know Google never rests
and they are, uh, just recentlymade a change to the, um,
(00:51):
results page to emulate a littlemore what the mobile experience
looks like, uh, with theiricons, favicons and all those
kinds of things.
Do you have anything before wejump into the main topic today?
Do you have anything you want tosay about that or do you have
any thoughts about that or whatshould we as marketers be
concerned about?
Because this is happening?
Anything in particular or is itjust cosmetic?
Zach Wilson (01:14):
Yeah, I think they're, uh, I think sadly, uh,
I think they're trying to, uh,blend the overarching goal is
the trying to blend paid sectiona little bit better, uh, with
organic.
I think that's on unfortunatelythe, um, the underlying evilness
(01:38):
of this.
But, uh, and I've, I've tried tobend.
I've, I've been trying toprocess it visually and reading
people's responses.
And it's interesting because, uh, generally speaking, I would
say generally speaking, peoplelike it.
I like it visually.
However, um, I think from,because it's a drastic change,
(02:03):
there's, there, there is some,uh, visual processing that
Google customers searchers aregoing to have to go through
before they're, before they canlike process, Oh, I'm looking at
an ad, you know, versus like thelittle ad icon versus you know,
something organic and just, andthat, that's going to take a
(02:26):
little bit of time.
That's for users and, and I am,my theory is that Google is
probably gonna be a bit of aspike and I'm in there just paid
a click throughs because of thischange.
And over time that will probablyflatten out and stabilize.
But yeah, I mean I, I like it.
I I like I said, I, I I'm, therewas a, I don't know if you
(02:50):
remember this or not, but therewas a trend, uh, Google in
Chrome and it's sort of stillthere but there and an Apple,
they are trying to like abstractaway from URLs, you know, making
everything, you know, justshowing your, your primary
domain and I don't know, as asort of truest and technology
(03:13):
person, I was just thought thisis generally a terrible idea,
terrible movement altogether.
So them bringing, uh, keepingthe, the URL in the syrup,
number one and, and even moreimportantly, which is
interesting, it's, it's nowabove the title, right?
So it used to be title URL andthe title or the URL was, was
(03:37):
pretty secondary.
And even for me, I didn't alwayslook at the URL, but now
they've, now they've brought itup and, and I, I'm noticing
myself, look at that, actuallyread this from top down in the
URL.
It's probably, I was thinkingabout the other end, it's like
favicon, URL, title, um, whichI'm not sure what the thinking
(03:58):
is behind that, but for me, I, Ilike it.
That's good.
What about you?
Yeah,
Chris Bonney (04:02):
yeah.
No, I, I agree with you.
I think it's always justinteresting to see.
I mean, they're, they don't doanything without thinking it
through or having research toback it.
And sometimes people lovethings, sometimes they don't or
they have their own reasons forit.
Um, but, um, yeah, I'm with you.
I will see where it goes fromhere.
I'm sure it's not the last thingthey'll ever change.
Um, but I think it's justinteresting as a, it just in
general, it's just becoming moreand more about mobile, right.
(04:26):
Where they seem to be leadingthings through on mobile and
then seeing how that relates todesktop.
So they really do seem to have amobile first, um, you know, with
amp and everything else.
I mean, it's very much a mobilefirst mentality there, which I
think is, and again, probablypretty smart.
So that's sort of my, my 2 centson it.
Um, but
Zach Wilson (04:47):
yeah, I was just going to say, so just segwaying,
how does this relate to not, notmaking changes?
Yeah.
Like change or the matterwhether you like it.
What are we not going to chaseafter in and in light of this?
Uh, yeah, probably not much, butI would say sure.
(05:07):
Uh, from a SERP perspective,make sure, uh, the, the front
end programmers are, are, uh,fave icons are, are, are
represented and brand andaligned with the brand.
And that's a, that's a big, uh,that could be a big fo Paul
right now, that's for sure.
Chris Bonney (05:26):
And they don't say a D on them.
Um,
Zach Wilson (05:29):
so if your company's name is a D something,
be careful.
Maybe that was, yeah.
Yeah.
That's funny.
That's a good one.
I like that.
Chris Bonney (05:43):
Um, so yeah, I mean, I, you know what some of
the, the impetus and some of theinspiration for today's podcast
came from, we recently spoke atthe American marketing
association and did and talk toover the course of the night.
What do we talk to?
Maybe 50, 60, 70, probably.
And we've talked specificallyabout, um, uh, SEO and CRO, but
(06:03):
mostly SEO.
And I thought a coupleinteresting takeaways.
There were one, we were talkingto a lot of marketers, that's
who everybody there was.
And when you ask them to raisetheir hand to say, ah, who is
actively participating on theirwebsite and, and, and cognizant
of and modifying for searchengine optimization, uh, you
(06:25):
would think every hand in thehouse would go up, but it
didn't.
So I mean, I think that tells ussomething about still in 2020,
um, the state of marketing.
Now, they weren't all digitalmarketers in the room in
fairness to them, but it justfeels like as a marketer in
general, SEO just should be,it's something that you're
always thinking about or talkingabout or raising your hand for a
(06:46):
, again, anecdotal information.
But I did find that sort ofinteresting.
Um,[inaudible] you know, forwhat that's worth, but
regardless of who raised theirhand or didn't, they were all
very intrigued by some of thethings that we've talked about.
And I think the one thing thatmakes people a little uneasy
about SEO is that it is alwayschanging.
They don't know what's in thisblack box.
(07:08):
They don't know how to addressit.
They don't really maybe know allthe things they need to know to,
to, to kind of get in the gameor speak confidently about it.
Maybe they didn't want to raisetheir hand cause they thought
they'd have to speak about itand didn't know.
But one of the things is, andthat's what we want to talk
about today, is we always hearabout these Google updates and
what as SEOs should we be doingto our content when that
(07:29):
happens.
So, um, we have a couplethoughts about that.
Um, but you want to just givesort of the overview that you
gave at AMA about this that said, um, when this happens, here's
kind of our philosophy, at leastat Google.
At Google.
Zach Wilson (07:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
For sure.
Well, I think the overarchingideas and philosophies that we
have are, uh, our just insuredis, don't you know, don't chase,
don't chase Google.
Don't chase takes an algorithm,algorithm updates.
Um, and what does that, whatdoes that mean?
(08:05):
One, uh, which connects to a,another, a podcast we had about
the search engine, land periodictable of elements and, and
follow, follow your core bestpractices, right?
Number one, not so, so that's,that's, that's always going to
be number one best practices.
(08:26):
Don't try and scheme and don'ttry and game a and number two,
uh, goals, right?
Like what are your, what areyour, what are your industry
goals?
What are your directives from,um, the board or your leadership
or whoever, uh, you have, whatare those goals and what are you
trying to achieve?
And make sure that your, uh,your, your organic search and
(08:51):
your on-page are aligned withthose goals.
Um, so that, that's, that's,that's number two.
And um, I think the also is, isthe idea of, of, of if you are,
if you are trying to respond,respond to certain things.
(09:12):
For example, we just talkedabout the UI, uh, the UI update,
right?
Like there's a UI update.
Everybody saw it, came out, sawcome out, um, slow where you
were in the queue.
Uh, sure.
But I think like, you know,what, what, what does it mean to
respond to an update?
(09:33):
Like the example that we bothgave about the fave icon.
Oh, you know, my, my agency ormy department where our fav icon
is missing or wrong or using thedefault or whatever default
WordPress theme or whatever yourdefault theme, whatever.
Right?
Like that's there.
That, that's, that's, that's notresponding.
(09:53):
That's not, that's, that's notchasing, that's responding.
Right.
So yeah, that's, that'ssomething that like as these,
and another great one was like,uh, H SSL, HTTPS.
You know, there was, this was acouple of years ago.
This is, uh, they may, they PO,they made a, uh, there was a lot
(10:13):
of theories about the changesand the priority of that.
And again, it was like, youknow, a lot, we had a lot of
people that hadn't actuallyflipped over to having their
site default to HTTPS or, um,you know, they had any, uh, HTTP
and HTTPS.
Again, this is like a response,not a chase.
(10:34):
So what's, um, what would be,what would be an example of, uh,
of, of, uh, of, of a chasing?
Uh, I'm trying to think ofactually an, uh, an example of
chasing something that'shappened recently.
Um, maybe it was, uh, I, Iguess, well, one more good
example.
I actually just read, which cameout yesterday, which was another
(10:57):
example of, um, I guess thiswould be chasing or responding,
but like, um, versus responding,which was around structured
data, there was, um, there wasthe thread that someone said
they got an alert from Googlethat said, um, you know, if you
don't include, uh, it was a foodblog.
If you don't include, uh,ingredients and calorie
(11:20):
information in turn in yourstructured data, you risk not
being index.
So the idea was the idea was, Ohmy gosh, you know, as a, it's
how important is structureddata?
And people were theorizing that,you know, uh, structured data is
, is actually not even, uh, noteven a, a signal or a factor in
(11:44):
ranking.
And so, so the idea is the ideais now that, okay, there's all
this stuff in the ecosystemfloating around.
Again, tests versus theories,verse actual practices, but some
people are like, well, I'm notgoing to, I'm not going to add
structured data.
Terrible idea, terrible idea.
That's the, you know, Googleuses like, and would we just
(12:04):
stop including structured datafor our clients and for people
as a core SEO best practice?
Absolutely not.
Because even if it's not asignal, um, or it doesn't
increase your ranking, it helps.
It helps you have accurate datain terms of, uh, in terms of
(12:27):
your syrup and how that data isrepresented and knowledge panels
and ratings and locations,[inaudible], GMB and, um,
product ranking, uh, productreviews and product counts and
all of this, all of this stuffthat goes into the, uh, into the
underlying structure data.
So, um, so yeah, so that's an a,I would say that's another, uh,
(12:50):
that's, that's just anotherlittle anecdotal, um, nugget in
terms of, uh, in terms ofchasing versus,
Chris Bonney (12:58):
yeah, bonding.
Well is it, is it fair to saytoo that, I mean there's two
aspects of what we're reactingto here, right?
One is to say, Oh my gosh, whatdid Google just do?
Where did my ranking go?
What can I do to replace it?
It's not to invalidate the factthat sometimes Google makes a
change and it does affect yourranking pretty significantly,
right?
People are going out of businessfor this, right?
(13:19):
So it's not to say it's not avalid thing to consider when it
happens to you, especially in abad way, but it probably is more
of a signal that what you weredoing before that was something
that Google probably frownedupon in some way.
And the update, what suppressedyou a little bit.
Now if you do bubble back up,then it means that you are on
the right track all any way andyou just had to ride and ride
(13:42):
the storm out.
But talk a little bit about, sothe Google update happens.
We don't want to panic.
That's what we're saying.
Just just see where things goand give it a little bit of
time.
But when do we want to make achange?
Because if we're not respondingto the Google updates, then
we're tracking our analytics andwe're tracking our rankings over
time.
(14:03):
And can you just talk a littlebit about that?
Like what, uh, okay.
Let's not chase that.
Let's not make a change becauseof the algorithm change, but how
do we know when we get to ourrankings and look at where we're
at?
How do we know that we'vestalled out?
What if it starts going down alittle bit and it had nothing to
do with, with an update, youknow, can you just talk a little
bit about that?
If we're just setting aside theupdates, when should somebody
(14:25):
think about making a changetwice a year, three times a
year, once every five years.
Just anecdotally.
What's just a[inaudible]?
Zach Wilson (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a great, that's a greatquestion.
And typical SEO response is atotally depends.
Um, but that, that being said, Iwould say you've got to, uh,
you've got to look at a largeswath of time, a large snapshot
time.
(14:51):
You know, what is depending onthe volatility of your industry,
that could be three months.
It could be a year.
Um, uh, I, you know, forexample, we did, you did a, uh,
a voice, uh, search, uh, blogpost and, uh, a bunch of work on
that.
I would say that's, that'sprobably something in that we
(15:13):
should keep an eye on in ashorter time span because
that's, that's an emerging,that's an emerging topic.
It's pretty new.
It's trending upward.
Whereas, you know, if we'retalking about, um, some
something, uh, I don't know,like, uh, something in the
medical medical research.
Sure, sure.
(15:33):
Uh, you know, some sort of virusor a best practice for medical,
something that's, that's, that'sgot some like flu or something,
right?
Like it's something that's beenbeen been in, in the ecosystem
since the advent of time.
Right?
Like that you've got to look ata VAR, a larger, much larger
swath of time to make, uh, anassessment and the assessment,
(15:56):
what's the assessment based on?
To answer your question, it'soverall trend.
You know, if you're looking atsomething and it's, it's like
this, but it's, it's the, thetrend is, is, is either flat or,
you know, just a little bit upor a little bit down.
Do we play with that?
I probably wouldn't, you know,if you're, if you're trending,
(16:17):
if you're, if you're looking at,you know, a year or two years
and you've got a pretty, uh,obvious downward trend, um, it's
time to, it's time to either,you know, apply a rewrite, um,
do some, uh, reapply yourkeyword research, um, something,
(16:37):
something like that.
So, uh, that's, that's how Iwould look at it.
Okay.
Chris Bonney (16:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm with you.
And, uh, what, uh, what are thelast is, is we think about
wrapping up here, just quickly,what are the last, what are the
tenants that were saying aboutnot chasing?
Do we have, you know, the topthree things to consider here,
um, that people can take away sothey feel confident and
comfortable knowing that theydon't need to, don't need to
chase.
Zach Wilson (17:07):
Okay.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (17:12):
I think we talked about, um, making sure, number
one, we understand our goals.
Uh, what you're trying toachieve, correct.
Number two, um, Google can bewrong, right?
So we don't want to, uh,overcompensate and give them,
(17:32):
you know, just continue tochase, chase that, um, and just,
you know, make sure we'refollowing the best SEO best
practices from the beginning.
Like you said.
Um, it can be difficult to, uh,understand why, why things, uh,
based on an update.
But, uh, if we're following thetried and true best practices of
(17:55):
SEO, then, um, you know, then weshould be in pretty good shape.
So, uh, with that.
Okay.
All right.
So is there anything else youwant to add to that or what do
you think?
Zach Wilson (18:06):
No, I, I think, uh, in the, in the Google can be
wrong vein.
Um, just so we do that justice,uh, from a, uh, a topic
perspective, I think the, the,the takeaway there is, uh, is,
is, we always talk about this isthere's, Google is constantly
(18:29):
running tests constantly, right?
And so if you see, you know,these big jumps or you see from
a ranking perspective from 99 toone or your appearance and, um,
local or knowledge panel orfeatured snippets or whatever,
this is why, like this is why wedon't want to chase.
(18:49):
You've got to, you've got tolook just similar to your
earlier question.
It's like you've got to look atthe staying power of those
things.
And you know, if you, if youappeared in the knowledge panel
for just a couple of days andyou're like, well, you know,
why, why did I get out?
And you try and do someresponse.
You're not going to, there weresome, there were some tests that
(19:11):
the knowledge panel team wasrunning that you were part of
and you popped in, they did someAB testing and you popped out
and things have normalized.
That test may come back if it'sa good test.
Um, and Google might've beenright or, you know, there was a
hypothesis underlying hypothesisthat they were testing and it
(19:31):
was wrong.
Right.
So, uh, so again, just, youknow, going back to best
practices, uh, stay on trackwith their, you know, stay true
to your goals and whateveryou're trying to accomplish.
And, um, and just, and, andoverall you are who your agency
(19:51):
or your internal team.
You know, you do have to payattention to this stuff.
You do have to stop on.
Uh, you do have to stay on topof it.
And, um, and don't chase Googleupdates.
Chris Bonney (20:03):
Yeah.
Perfect.
Okay, great.
Well, we always enjoy talkingwith everybody about SEO.
This is our third episode in ourseries though, will be more
coming soon.
Look forward to that.
We're going to have a grouppodcast coming up very soon.
We're going to be talking aboutdigital marketing.
We'll talk about CRO, SRO, allthe things that are part of our
(20:23):
digital marketing toolkit andour toolbox.
So, uh, look forward to, uh,having you guys join us again
real soon.
Um, I'm Chris Bonney with ZachWilson from Gullo and this is
our web marketing insights.
Odcast.
Thanks for joining us.
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Uh, go to gulosolutions.com tolearn more about us.
(20:46):
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Uh, also, if you can hitsubscribe on our channel here on
YouTube, uh, that would be greatas well.
Hey everybody, and welcome to episode three of web
marketing insights here at GuloSolutions.
I'm Chris Bonney here with oneof the founders of Gullo, Zach
Wilson, uh, doing our podcastthing.
Again, today's podcast is aboutGoogle and the changes that they
make and should we chase themdown and try to remedy
(00:30):
everything we see wrong once anupdate comes or do we keep
things, you know, the same and,and hold the line.
So that's what we want to talkabout today.
Um, Zach, I think this is agreat topic.
A couple of things that aregoing on right now.
Uh, just sort of on the side isthat we know Google never rests
and they are, uh, just recentlymade a change to the, um,
(00:51):
results page to emulate a littlemore what the mobile experience
looks like, uh, with theiricons, favicons and all those
kinds of things.
Do you have anything before wejump into the main topic today?
Do you have anything you want tosay about that or do you have
any thoughts about that or whatshould we as marketers be
concerned about?
Because this is happening?
Anything in particular or is itjust cosmetic?
Zach Wilson (01:14):
Yeah, I think they're, uh, I think sadly, uh,
I think they're trying to, uh,blend the overarching goal is
the trying to blend paid sectiona little bit better, uh, with
organic.
I think that's on unfortunatelythe, um, the underlying evilness
(01:38):
of this.
But, uh, and I've, I've tried tobend.
I've, I've been trying toprocess it visually and reading
people's responses.
And it's interesting because, uh, generally speaking, I would
say generally speaking, peoplelike it.
I like it visually.
However, um, I think from,because it's a drastic change,
(02:03):
there's, there, there is some,uh, visual processing that
Google customers searchers aregoing to have to go through
before they're, before they canlike process, Oh, I'm looking at
an ad, you know, versus like thelittle ad icon versus you know,
something organic and just, andthat, that's going to take a
(02:26):
little bit of time.
That's for users and, and I am,my theory is that Google is
probably gonna be a bit of aspike and I'm in there just paid
a click throughs because of thischange.
And over time that will probablyflatten out and stabilize.
But yeah, I mean I, I like it.
I I like I said, I, I I'm, therewas a, I don't know if you
(02:50):
remember this or not, but therewas a trend, uh, Google in
Chrome and it's sort of stillthere but there and an Apple,
they are trying to like abstractaway from URLs, you know, making
everything, you know, justshowing your, your primary
domain and I don't know, as asort of truest and technology
(03:13):
person, I was just thought thisis generally a terrible idea,
terrible movement altogether.
So them bringing, uh, keepingthe, the URL in the syrup,
number one and, and even moreimportantly, which is
interesting, it's, it's nowabove the title, right?
So it used to be title URL andthe title or the URL was, was
(03:37):
pretty secondary.
And even for me, I didn't alwayslook at the URL, but now
they've, now they've brought itup and, and I, I'm noticing
myself, look at that, actuallyread this from top down in the
URL.
It's probably, I was thinkingabout the other end, it's like
favicon, URL, title, um, whichI'm not sure what the thinking
(03:58):
is behind that, but for me, I, Ilike it.
That's good.
What about you?
Yeah,
Chris Bonney (04:02):
yeah.
No, I, I agree with you.
I think it's always justinteresting to see.
I mean, they're, they don't doanything without thinking it
through or having research toback it.
And sometimes people lovethings, sometimes they don't or
they have their own reasons forit.
Um, but, um, yeah, I'm with you.
I will see where it goes fromhere.
I'm sure it's not the last thingthey'll ever change.
Um, but I think it's justinteresting as a, it just in
general, it's just becoming moreand more about mobile, right.
(04:26):
Where they seem to be leadingthings through on mobile and
then seeing how that relates todesktop.
So they really do seem to have amobile first, um, you know, with
amp and everything else.
I mean, it's very much a mobilefirst mentality there, which I
think is, and again, probablypretty smart.
So that's sort of my, my 2 centson it.
Um, but
Zach Wilson (04:47):
yeah, I was just going to say, so just segwaying,
how does this relate to not, notmaking changes?
Yeah.
Like change or the matterwhether you like it.
What are we not going to chaseafter in and in light of this?
Uh, yeah, probably not much, butI would say sure.
(05:07):
Uh, from a SERP perspective,make sure, uh, the, the front
end programmers are, are, uh,fave icons are, are, are
represented and brand andaligned with the brand.
And that's a, that's a big, uh,that could be a big fo Paul
right now, that's for sure.
Chris Bonney (05:26):
And they don't say a D on them.
Um,
Zach Wilson (05:29):
so if your company's name is a D something,
be careful.
Maybe that was, yeah.
Yeah.
That's funny.
That's a good one.
I like that.
Chris Bonney (05:43):
Um, so yeah, I mean, I, you know what some of
the, the impetus and some of theinspiration for today's podcast
came from, we recently spoke atthe American marketing
association and did and talk toover the course of the night.
What do we talk to?
Maybe 50, 60, 70, probably.
And we've talked specificallyabout, um, uh, SEO and CRO, but
(06:03):
mostly SEO.
And I thought a coupleinteresting takeaways.
There were one, we were talkingto a lot of marketers, that's
who everybody there was.
And when you ask them to raisetheir hand to say, ah, who is
actively participating on theirwebsite and, and, and cognizant
of and modifying for searchengine optimization, uh, you
(06:25):
would think every hand in thehouse would go up, but it
didn't.
So I mean, I think that tells ussomething about still in 2020,
um, the state of marketing.
Now, they weren't all digitalmarketers in the room in
fairness to them, but it justfeels like as a marketer in
general, SEO just should be,it's something that you're
always thinking about or talkingabout or raising your hand for a
(06:46):
, again, anecdotal information.
But I did find that sort ofinteresting.
Um,[inaudible] you know, forwhat that's worth, but
regardless of who raised theirhand or didn't, they were all
very intrigued by some of thethings that we've talked about.
And I think the one thing thatmakes people a little uneasy
about SEO is that it is alwayschanging.
They don't know what's in thisblack box.
(07:08):
They don't know how to addressit.
They don't really maybe know allthe things they need to know to,
to, to kind of get in the gameor speak confidently about it.
Maybe they didn't want to raisetheir hand cause they thought
they'd have to speak about itand didn't know.
But one of the things is, andthat's what we want to talk
about today, is we always hearabout these Google updates and
what as SEOs should we be doingto our content when that
(07:29):
happens.
So, um, we have a couplethoughts about that.
Um, but you want to just givesort of the overview that you
gave at AMA about this that said, um, when this happens, here's
kind of our philosophy, at leastat Google.
At Google.
Zach Wilson (07:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
For sure.
Well, I think the overarchingideas and philosophies that we
have are, uh, our just insuredis, don't you know, don't chase,
don't chase Google.
Don't chase takes an algorithm,algorithm updates.
Um, and what does that, whatdoes that mean?
(08:05):
One, uh, which connects to a,another, a podcast we had about
the search engine, land periodictable of elements and, and
follow, follow your core bestpractices, right?
Number one, not so, so that's,that's, that's always going to
be number one best practices.
(08:26):
Don't try and scheme and don'ttry and game a and number two,
uh, goals, right?
Like what are your, what areyour, what are your industry
goals?
What are your directives from,um, the board or your leadership
or whoever, uh, you have, whatare those goals and what are you
trying to achieve?
And make sure that your, uh,your, your organic search and
(08:51):
your on-page are aligned withthose goals.
Um, so that, that's, that's,that's number two.
And um, I think the also is, isthe idea of, of, of if you are,
if you are trying to respond,respond to certain things.
(09:12):
For example, we just talkedabout the UI, uh, the UI update,
right?
Like there's a UI update.
Everybody saw it, came out, sawcome out, um, slow where you
were in the queue.
Uh, sure.
But I think like, you know,what, what, what does it mean to
respond to an update?
(09:33):
Like the example that we bothgave about the fave icon.
Oh, you know, my, my agency ormy department where our fav icon
is missing or wrong or using thedefault or whatever default
WordPress theme or whatever yourdefault theme, whatever.
Right?
Like that's there.
That, that's, that's, that's notresponding.
(09:53):
That's not, that's, that's notchasing, that's responding.
Right.
So yeah, that's, that'ssomething that like as these,
and another great one was like,uh, H SSL, HTTPS.
You know, there was, this was acouple of years ago.
This is, uh, they may, they PO,they made a, uh, there was a lot
(10:13):
of theories about the changesand the priority of that.
And again, it was like, youknow, a lot, we had a lot of
people that hadn't actuallyflipped over to having their
site default to HTTPS or, um,you know, they had any, uh, HTTP
and HTTPS.
Again, this is like a response,not a chase.
(10:34):
So what's, um, what would be,what would be an example of, uh,
of, of, uh, of, of a chasing?
Uh, I'm trying to think ofactually an, uh, an example of
chasing something that'shappened recently.
Um, maybe it was, uh, I, Iguess, well, one more good
example.
I actually just read, which cameout yesterday, which was another
(10:57):
example of, um, I guess thiswould be chasing or responding,
but like, um, versus responding,which was around structured
data, there was, um, there wasthe thread that someone said
they got an alert from Googlethat said, um, you know, if you
don't include, uh, it was a foodblog.
If you don't include, uh,ingredients and calorie
(11:20):
information in turn in yourstructured data, you risk not
being index.
So the idea was the idea was, Ohmy gosh, you know, as a, it's
how important is structureddata?
And people were theorizing that,you know, uh, structured data is
, is actually not even, uh, noteven a, a signal or a factor in
(11:44):
ranking.
And so, so the idea is the ideais now that, okay, there's all
this stuff in the ecosystemfloating around.
Again, tests versus theories,verse actual practices, but some
people are like, well, I'm notgoing to, I'm not going to add
structured data.
Terrible idea, terrible idea.
That's the, you know, Googleuses like, and would we just
(12:04):
stop including structured datafor our clients and for people
as a core SEO best practice?
Absolutely not.
Because even if it's not asignal, um, or it doesn't
increase your ranking, it helps.
It helps you have accurate datain terms of, uh, in terms of
(12:27):
your syrup and how that data isrepresented and knowledge panels
and ratings and locations,[inaudible], GMB and, um,
product ranking, uh, productreviews and product counts and
all of this, all of this stuffthat goes into the, uh, into the
underlying structure data.
So, um, so yeah, so that's an a,I would say that's another, uh,
(12:50):
that's, that's just anotherlittle anecdotal, um, nugget in
terms of, uh, in terms ofchasing versus,
Chris Bonney (12:58):
yeah, bonding.
Well is it, is it fair to saytoo that, I mean there's two
aspects of what we're reactingto here, right?
One is to say, Oh my gosh, whatdid Google just do?
Where did my ranking go?
What can I do to replace it?
It's not to invalidate the factthat sometimes Google makes a
change and it does affect yourranking pretty significantly,
right?
People are going out of businessfor this, right?
(13:19):
So it's not to say it's not avalid thing to consider when it
happens to you, especially in abad way, but it probably is more
of a signal that what you weredoing before that was something
that Google probably frownedupon in some way.
And the update, what suppressedyou a little bit.
Now if you do bubble back up,then it means that you are on
the right track all any way andyou just had to ride and ride
(13:42):
the storm out.
But talk a little bit about, sothe Google update happens.
We don't want to panic.
That's what we're saying.
Just just see where things goand give it a little bit of
time.
But when do we want to make achange?
Because if we're not respondingto the Google updates, then
we're tracking our analytics andwe're tracking our rankings over
time.
(14:03):
And can you just talk a littlebit about that?
Like what, uh, okay.
Let's not chase that.
Let's not make a change becauseof the algorithm change, but how
do we know when we get to ourrankings and look at where we're
at?
How do we know that we'vestalled out?
What if it starts going down alittle bit and it had nothing to
do with, with an update, youknow, can you just talk a little
bit about that?
If we're just setting aside theupdates, when should somebody
(14:25):
think about making a changetwice a year, three times a
year, once every five years.
Just anecdotally.
What's just a[inaudible]?
Zach Wilson (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a great, that's a greatquestion.
And typical SEO response is atotally depends.
Um, but that, that being said, Iwould say you've got to, uh,
you've got to look at a largeswath of time, a large snapshot
time.
(14:51):
You know, what is depending onthe volatility of your industry,
that could be three months.
It could be a year.
Um, uh, I, you know, forexample, we did, you did a, uh,
a voice, uh, search, uh, blogpost and, uh, a bunch of work on
that.
I would say that's, that'sprobably something in that we
(15:13):
should keep an eye on in ashorter time span because
that's, that's an emerging,that's an emerging topic.
It's pretty new.
It's trending upward.
Whereas, you know, if we'retalking about, um, some
something, uh, I don't know,like, uh, something in the
medical medical research.
Sure, sure.
(15:33):
Uh, you know, some sort of virusor a best practice for medical,
something that's, that's, that'sgot some like flu or something,
right?
Like it's something that's beenbeen been in, in the ecosystem
since the advent of time.
Right?
Like that you've got to look ata VAR, a larger, much larger
swath of time to make, uh, anassessment and the assessment,
(15:56):
what's the assessment based on?
To answer your question, it'soverall trend.
You know, if you're looking atsomething and it's, it's like
this, but it's, it's the, thetrend is, is, is either flat or,
you know, just a little bit upor a little bit down.
Do we play with that?
I probably wouldn't, you know,if you're, if you're trending,
(16:17):
if you're, if you're looking at,you know, a year or two years
and you've got a pretty, uh,obvious downward trend, um, it's
time to, it's time to either,you know, apply a rewrite, um,
do some, uh, reapply yourkeyword research, um, something,
(16:37):
something like that.
So, uh, that's, that's how Iwould look at it.
Okay.
Chris Bonney (16:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm with you.
And, uh, what, uh, what are thelast is, is we think about
wrapping up here, just quickly,what are the last, what are the
tenants that were saying aboutnot chasing?
Do we have, you know, the topthree things to consider here,
um, that people can take away sothey feel confident and
comfortable knowing that theydon't need to, don't need to
chase.
Zach Wilson (17:07):
Okay.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (17:12):
I think we talked about, um, making sure, number
one, we understand our goals.
Uh, what you're trying toachieve, correct.
Number two, um, Google can bewrong, right?
So we don't want to, uh,overcompensate and give them,
(17:32):
you know, just continue tochase, chase that, um, and just,
you know, make sure we'refollowing the best SEO best
practices from the beginning.
Like you said.
Um, it can be difficult to, uh,understand why, why things, uh,
based on an update.
But, uh, if we're following thetried and true best practices of
(17:55):
SEO, then, um, you know, then weshould be in pretty good shape.
So, uh, with that.
Okay.
All right.
So is there anything else youwant to add to that or what do
you think?
Zach Wilson (18:06):
No, I, I think, uh, in the, in the Google can be
wrong vein.
Um, just so we do that justice,uh, from a, uh, a topic
perspective, I think the, the,the takeaway there is, uh, is,
is, we always talk about this isthere's, Google is constantly
(18:29):
running tests constantly, right?
And so if you see, you know,these big jumps or you see from
a ranking perspective from 99 toone or your appearance and, um,
local or knowledge panel orfeatured snippets or whatever,
this is why, like this is why wedon't want to chase.
(18:49):
You've got to, you've got tolook just similar to your
earlier question.
It's like you've got to look atthe staying power of those
things.
And you know, if you, if youappeared in the knowledge panel
for just a couple of days andyou're like, well, you know,
why, why did I get out?
And you try and do someresponse.
You're not going to, there weresome, there were some tests that
(19:11):
the knowledge panel team wasrunning that you were part of
and you popped in, they did someAB testing and you popped out
and things have normalized.
That test may come back if it'sa good test.
Um, and Google might've beenright or, you know, there was a
hypothesis underlying hypothesisthat they were testing and it
(19:31):
was wrong.
Right.
So, uh, so again, just, youknow, going back to best
practices, uh, stay on trackwith their, you know, stay true
to your goals and whateveryou're trying to accomplish.
And, um, and just, and, andoverall you are who your agency
(19:51):
or your internal team.
You know, you do have to payattention to this stuff.
You do have to stop on.
Uh, you do have to stay on topof it.
And, um, and don't chase Googleupdates.
Chris Bonney (20:03):
Yeah.
Perfect.
Okay, great.
Well, we always enjoy talkingwith everybody about SEO.
This is our third episode in ourseries though, will be more
coming soon.
Look forward to that.
We're going to have a grouppodcast coming up very soon.
We're going to be talking aboutdigital marketing.
We'll talk about CRO, SRO, allthe things that are part of our
(20:23):
digital marketing toolkit andour toolbox.
So, uh, look forward to, uh,having you guys join us again
real soon.
Um, I'm Chris Bonney with ZachWilson from Gullo and this is
our web marketing insights.
Odcast.
Thanks for joining us.
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Uh, go to gulosolutions.com tolearn more about us.
(20:46):
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Uh, also, if you can hitsubscribe on our channel here on
YouTube, uh, that would be greatas well.
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