EDGE of the Web - The Best SEO Podcast for Today's Digital Marketer

Erin Sparks is back at the mic with Mordy Oberstein to tackle some recent developments in SEO from Google. Today’s news update covers the gamut—another unexpected algorithm update, a recommendation for redirects from Illyes and a new feature that tells end users why a page is ranking in their search results.  [00:06:54] Google hits us with another spam update [00:12:16] Gary Illyes recommends keeping redirects in place for one year [00:16:20] Google is showing why pages rank to the end user

Mordy Oberstein is joined by the great Barry Schwartz this week as they analyze July’s Core Update, a new GoDaddy integration for merchants, and the definition that Google added to job postings. Get your schemas ready! [00:03:43] Glenn Gabe’s Rapid-fire Insights on Google’s Core Update [00:13:00] New Integration from GoDaddy allows Merchants to show Inventory across Google [00:21:24] New Search Editorial Content Policies for Job Postings are coming soon

Garrett Sussman, Demand Generation Manager at iPullRank, continues his talk with Erin Sparks as they focus in on subject matter knowledge and meeting user, and client, behavioral needs. We explore the signals clients send when they’re looking elsewhere, and talk about his experience with Agency Ahead. [00:04:59] Garret’s experience in mining subject matter knowledge from clients to flesh out the Buyer’s Journey [00:06:50] The changing user behavior and subsequent content needs [00:09:36] Leveraging an event to pivot a hard-headed client’s understanding of their consumer’s content needs [00:11:07] Areas to avoid for first-time clients doing the User Persona / Buyer’s Journey exercise.  [00:20:55] How to know when a client starts looking at other agencies  [00:23:16] What Garrett learned from his 100 episode podcast run in one year.

In this week’s news roundup, Erin Sparks and Mordy Oberstein talk about Clubhouse’s partnership with TED, Google’s Pandu Nayak’s roadmap for MUM and a few important perspectives that Google’s John Mueller recently shared. [00:04:10] Clubhouse partners with TED to bring more thought leadership to the platform [00:09:04] The roadmap for MUM [00:19:26] Why some sites rank for unusual keywords [00:27:13] Sometimes SEO isn’t the answer

Garrett Sussman, Demand Generation Manager at iPullRank, talks to us about his experience in developing tools to help connect agencies to clients and helps us understand the factors of that success. We also discuss the pitfalls of an Agency/Client relationship and when it is best to walk away. Learning the “Love Language” of your client is always the most important aspect.  Listen to Segment 1 of our 2 part interview with Garrett on the EDGE. [00:03:43] 100 podcast episodes in a year!  How did Garrett stay sane through that? [00:06:00] Garrett’s history - coming from teaching to the start-up culture. [00:09:14] Hiring internal SEOs.  The challenges of the industry [00:11:12] The evolving nature of the target: Google.  A completely different paradigm. [00:13:58] Supplementing your in-house with agency talent [00:18:24] Experience matters in the Agency/Client relationship.  Broken trust is the major pitfall [00:23:14] What are the key breakdowns inside of the agency, client relationship?

On this week’s roundup of News from the EDGE, Erin Sparks and Mordy Oberstein discuss Core Updates, recent opinions from Google’s John Mueller and the future of SEO work.   [00:05:39] Google’s July Core Update is rolling out, following a flurry of prior updates throughout June [00:14:57] How long does Mueller think SEO takes for new pages? Loaded question, and “it depends” [00:22:23] Mueller doesn’t foresee SEO becoming obsolete, but thinks the day-to-day executions will evolve

We went through the Bill Slawski-looking glass in this second part of our interview with the Gandalf of SEO. SEO strategy starts with knowledge of the entity you are wanting to market for as well as understanding the gaps that can be exploited.  Bill provides a continued history of the entity-understanding journey Google is on, with the recent additions of BERT and Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) rollout.  [00:03:29] Patent author sleuthing [00:05:44] Understanding BERT.  It’s been around longer than you think. [00:07:58] “You should know a word by the company it keeps” [00:09:49] Understanding Intent [00:10:38] 40% of our language has multiple meetings. [00:11:33] Example of Google’s MUM in the Wild [00:12:39] Format of content might be an indicator of entity types [00:16:42] A Search Engine’s Job: They're filling either the informational or situational needs of a searcher. 

While Erin’s away, Mordy Oberstein and Carolyn Lyden take the mic and cover four new developments in the Google ecosystem. We cover Fake News sites, journalist bios, FAQs in snippets and, drum roll, the Core Web Vitals algorithm update! [00:05:44] Study asserts a ton of Google’s ad traffic is coming from fake news sites [00:12:14] Google wants to bridge the gap between content and writer [00:17:44] We’re going to start seeing fewer FAQ drop downs in snippets [00:21:31] The Page Experience (Core Web Vitals) update is rolling out now!

We speak with one of our favorite minds in search today, Bill Slawski of Go Fish Digital. Bill studies patents the way a librarian studies books. In this interview, we muse about the direction Google is heading and discuss the next evolution of understanding entity relationships. [00:03:59] When Bill got started in patent sleuthing [00:07:27] Tracking the authors of the patents, like authors of good books [00:13:40] Tying it all together: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” [00:19:20] Tying entities into search can be easier than SEO [00:22:57] The weight and impact of taxonomies and ontologies  [00:26:36] The language models that Google is building now [00:28:36] Latent Semantic Indexing is a misnomer

Mordy Oberstein, George Nguyen and Jacob Mann host this week’s episode of News From The Edge. They wrestle the mic away from Erin Sparks to talk about Google’s stance on comparing ranking factors, explain creating Web Stories, and cover how Google is demoting libelous content. [00:03:17] Google says to not compare the importance of different ranking factors [00:10:01] Web Stories are here and it’s time to start making your own [00:19:54] Google’s demoting libelous content in an effort to surface higher quality content