Once again we’ve teamed up with David Bain to produce a guide for SEO in 2023 that you can use to stay one-step ahead of your competitors as we head into a new year. Just like SEO in 2022, the guide will be available as a podcast, YouTube series, and a book, and will feature 101 of the world’s leading SEOs, all sharing their number #1 actionable tip for 2023.
The “SEO in 2023” book preview show was hosted by Dixon Jones, and featured Julia-Carolin Zeng from Charlie On The Move, Kerstin Reichert from SeedLegals.com, and Ian Helms from Q.digital.
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Transcript
Dixon Jones
Hello everyone welcome to episode 35 of Old Guard New Blood and this is SEO in 2023 the book preview edition because Majestic are coming out with or have come out with a book if you’re lucky enough to be watching this on YouTube or in video, then you’ll be able to see see the book. Soon available in all good Amazon stores near you SEO in 2023. It’s got a 500 pages of tips from 101 of the world’s leading SEO experts, three of which I’m delighted to say I’ve got in the studio with me today. So Ian, Julia and Kerstin, Hello to all of you. How are you? Hello. Hi, it Oh, so so. So let me start by by asking you guys to introduce yourselves, Ian why don’t you, why don’t you head off? Tell us about yourself. Who are you where you come from? And where are you since we got a very international contingent as usual in the group?
Ian Helms
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I’m Ian Helms, my pronouns are he/they. I am based in Chicago and I’m the director of growth marketing at Q.digital we are the country’s largest LGBTQ media site.
Dixon Jones
Excellent. I just saw I just just just sort of football match with another it’s the second the second pitch invader with with with a rainbow flag on, so the message is getting in at the World Cup. Thanks so much for coming on Ian and Julia, Julia-Carolin Zeng or Julia as we can call you without having to have a double barreled first name. Julia. How are you? Where are you? With with you come from? What do you do?
Julia-Carolin Zeng
Yeah. Hi, I’m Julia. I’m freelance SEO consultant. I’m currently in Madeira. It’s quite sunny here. I’m usually based in London, originally from Germany, and I specialize in international SEO and SEO for SAS products. So bringing the languages in and quite content heavy websites I would say.
Dixon Jones
Brilliant. Thanks so much for coming in from Madeira. So hopefully the weather seems like the internet’s fine there. We’re not quite so sure about Kerstin’s internet connection for the duration cursing, where are you? What do you do you come from?
Kerstin Reichert
Hello, everyone. Similar to Julia. I’m also originally from Germany. I’m usually UK London based but Currently I’m in Brazil. And just my internet connection is a bit dodgy from time to time. So hopefully it lasts. I’m currently the SEO and content lead at SeedLegals. Legals is a legal tech platform that helps startups simplify, there are legal things they need to take care of when they do option schemes, funding rounds and other things that start off stu. And, yeah, I’ve been doing SEO for numerous years in house agency side and also currently focusing heavily on content as well.
Dixon Jones
So Kerstin, just just how do I spell seed? Seed legal?
Kerstin Reichert
S, E, E, D, seet, like seed funding.
Dixon Jones
Okay, great. Okay. Thanks ever so much for coming on the show. And just before we dive into all of your tips and other tips you might have seen in the book, we lucky, our producer is is of course, the producer of the book as well. So David Bian. Thanks very much for all the effort in putting all this thing together. And is there anything I should have said at the start of the show? Oh, I’ll tell you what I should have said at the start of the show. This is going to be my last show. So I’m I’m stepping back, we’re going to change things around in 2023. ourselves a Majestic and we’re gonna have a different, different lead for podcasts and things. And David is going to be running things a bit more centrally on the show, because I think we’ve got you know, we’ve decided that old guard, the old guard has got a little old in the tooth, really. So I’m gonna pull back, do some other bits, but you’ll still see me around. So David, how are you?
David Bain
Very good. Thank you. Yeah, as you said we’ll still see you around. So we’re looking forward to to can you continuing seeing you in different circumstances, different roles, I guess. But one thing you mentioned to begin with was, the book is available and all bookstores are available on Amazon at the moment actually gets published on the sixth of December. So it’ll be available to the public then. If anyone watching wants to go to SEOin2023.com you can sign up for an email list there I get alerted to when the book actually goes live. We’re going to do a mammoth launch live stream as well. That’ll be on the sixth itself as well. So sign up to that email list and we’ll let you know when that happens.
Dixon Jones
Yeah, it’s gonna be you know, you just have that on for the whole day. You got hours and hours of people coming on so but this is the preview of The the live launch. So we’re all we’re all ahead of the game here and, and got an opportunity to dive into things. What was your What was your tip in the book Julia?
Julia-Carolin Zeng
My tip is for 2023 to focus more on intent. And by that I don’t mean, just looking at tools and see does it say commercial or informational intent? Or what what all the other things I did it says, but by looking at the SERPs results. So to check directly, what does Google show what type of content is produced for certain search query? And really understanding? What is the question that a user has that stands behind a keyword? And then answering that question with the content?
Dixon Jones
Excellent. We’ll come back to user intent, then we’ll come back to all of these ideas, but I just wanted to get everyone’s you know, initial things that they put into into the book. Ian, what about you? What did you throw in there?
Ian Helms
Yeah, my tip for 2023 is to focus on quality over quantity, especially with Google’s helpful content update recently, we all know that you can’t just turn out a bunch of poor content and expect to get higher rankings or at least sustained rankings over time. So that’s my tip for 2023.
Dixon Jones
Okay, kind of a little related, but slightly sideways, so on and then Kerstin, you were also slightly slides onto that as well.
Kerstin Reichert
Slightly related, slightly different angle. But yeah, my tip for 2023 is to stop relying on tools, roll up your sleeves and do the work. I think there are some things that tools are really, really good for and then there are other things where they could even be misleading, and send you down the rabbit hole of low priority things you should probably not be focusing on.
Dixon Jones
So let’s let’s start on that one. Because, you know, obviously, obviously Majestic is a tool, and, but but it doesn’t, it’s not a tool for actually rolling up your sleeves and doing things. It’s a reporting tool it crawls. So, you know, we’re not we’re not scared of that comment. And but where are tools? Where are tools taking us down rabbit holes? Let’s let’s start with there. I mean, what sorts of things go wrong?
Kerstin Reichert
Let me try to provide a little bit of context and break it down. So to start on the positive note, I think tools are really good for doing things at scale, to do your initial audits to set up monitoring alerts, automate things. Yeah, really, really useful stuff you can do with the tools. But then on the other hand, you might miss opportunities. When it comes to keyword research, you know, you might say, oh, there’s no volume behind this keyword or this topic cluster, and you decide to ignore it. And actually, it would be really relevant for you for your website for your audience, and it would drive conversions, but you’ve dismissed it because the tool set otherwise, success just looking at rankings. Are they improving, or they’re not improving, if you only focus on that you might miss important business goals. So again, there’s a lot of manual work to be done. And then also priorities. And I think this is where you could get stuck in the rabbit hole and where you could maybe focus on the wrong things. So there might be technical errors that are flagged as the highest priority. But actually, when you dig deeper, when you look at other parts of your website, when you do a competitive benchmark, you might find that’s not going to move the needle for you. Or if you see content being flagged as Oh, this topic is not optimized. And you need to optimize these five articles. And you spend time on that. You put your writers on it. And you optimize all of these articles, but they’re actually not the content that drives business and drives conversions. And you’ve just neglected one of the other topics that yes, maybe they were not flagged in the pool, but they would have made a difference in terms of your business goals.
Dixon Jones
That’s interesting, because I sorry, jumping back, Julia. Yeah.
Julia-Carolin Zeng
Yeah, I just would like to add on and go a bit away from the content and keyword research focus thing, Google Search Console, the no indexation report, I hear it quite often from clients like oh, yeah, so many pages have flagged as not being indexed. And then I look into this and I see Yeah, it’s flagged as it’s disallowed. And robots. txt, I’m like, Well, we did this allow that or read this aloud that whole folder because we want it to be not indexed. So it’s not actually an issue. But when you look at these graphs and see the stats, tells you huge number of pages suddenly gone from the index and clients can quite often get a bit freaked out about these things.
Ian Helms
I was gonna add another thought to that too, from personal experience, we, in a previous role automated a lot of our processes that we were doing and it helps lead to efficiency, of course. But at the same time, the issue I guess, for lack of better words that it created was that not everybody fully understood then how the automation worked, what the formulas or the algorithms and things that were going into producing the output where and so then they couldn’t troubleshoot. They didn’t necessarily have the the background into understanding what the like what fed the data and why the decision was ultimately made to do or not do a particular thing, based on that automation that we were creating. And the same kind of plays into tools like, yeah, Search Console, sem rush any of the other like keyword research tools that people might be using, where if you don’t understand exactly how data is coming in, or what the you know, what’s feeding that you might come out with unbiased or biased opinions or incorrect priorities as well.
Dixon Jones
I wanted to come on to keyword research tools, because I think they’re a pretty good example of, of where, you know, numbers can be misleading. And because because I noticed that Mark Williams-Cook, who also runs a tool to be fair, in the book said, you know, focus on nonzero on zero volume, look at zero, don’t don’t, don’t throw out zero volume keywords. So keyword research tool, can say there’s no keyword volume for a particular phrase or idea. But in actual fact, that could be the very, very one that is driving your whole business forward. Particularly if it happens to involve your brand name, of course, but that the the keyword research tools are a lot of the keyword research tools seem to just spewing out numbers of volumes and things like that. And that’s going to send you in the wrong kind of direction. And Kerstin, you talked about sort of zero volume keywords as an example of where that that goes. But, you know, do you do you think that more and more, we’re going to be making mistakes if we’re building content plans, just around keyword volume? Kerstin, you want to go with that?
Kerstin Reichert
Yeah, I think you, you want to do both, right? You want to use tools? Initially, but you want to combine that with your own thinking. I mean, that’s what you should probably always do. But I think yeah, if we want to stay with with search volume, you might even be in a space where the tools are not really telling you much at all. So for example, I’m in the legal tech space, and more, more specifically in the startup space. So for me, I just don’t get enough data from tools, I need to rely on other sources. And I think you should do that anyway. And there are brilliant sources that you already have, you might have internal search data, you might have a customer support team, you have a sales team, you have your customers, and you can can see what their feedback is there’s there’s so much information that you can that you can take in you can you know, dump it somewhere, cluster it and then go from there. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be based on on keyword research tools. But yes.
Dixon Jones
I guess I guess your your your your places a very good example to, you know, to Julia’s point of user intent that, you know, so let’s say it’s a child custody question that the user has got, you know, they’ve they’ve got a very personal experience, they’ve got a very specific issue that they want to come in, and they’re not just talking to you, they’re going to type in and child custody and expect their their whole world to be responded to, they’re going to have something very, very specific and user intent, there becomes a good example thing I think of where you’ve got to really try and answer the individuals question. So, so yeah, so I think it’s good. Anyone else got any thoughts on keyword research as an example of a tool that maybe has had its day?
Ian Helms
I mean, I agree a lot with what Kerstin’s saying. The piece that I think is also exciting and unique about thinking with your brain and not trusting the the tools to start is i i have done a lot with predictive keyword research. And so when you’re thinking about keywords that are seasonally relevant or like yearly, you know, keywords with yours and then or even if you’re looking at expanding into a niche that hasn’t really been explored or picked up or searched for before, because you may be creating a new space. You can look got what’s being done in other areas and find, you can usually cross reference, what the keyword search volumes are trends, how they grew. And, and explore intent around those types of industries, to then map that into what you’re doing and what your industry is and how you’re approaching your content and SEO. And, and there’s not always keywords like Kerstin is saying, as well that show up in the tools in that case, but you can sort of formulate them based on existing data that you have.
Dixon Jones
And I find that I find as well on keywords, I mean, I’ve got, I put this one into a presentation that you know, a word like Mustang, and you just don’t know whether that person is interested in a horse or a car at that particular point. And even when they start putting things like horsepower around there, you don’t necessarily know, but certainly where words are labels for ideas, is my kind of belief. And, and so, you know, when you’re focusing on to your, to your point Ian of quality over quantity, you know, really, when you’re trying to start answering user intent to Julia’s point of user intent, Kerstin’s point of don’t use tools, your point of quality over quantity, I think that all comes down to, you know, really trying to help the user, it goes back to what Google has been saying for a number of years of trying to help the user. So how do you how do you propose that we, we throw out those tools in and focus on quality?
Ian Helms
Gosh, I mean, I think that one of the threads that runs through the book of recommendations is to put your self in the shoes of your audience, and then also to explore the search engine results pages. And so, you know, do some of these searches that you think might be relevant, see what’s coming up on the search engine results pages, think about what you’re, you know, pros and cons of the service or tool or whatever you’re offering, are, and then, you know, find the find where they all meet together and create content that intersects with with, you know, the intent with what people are looking for, with what you have to offer. And, and that’s, you know, going to be your magic key, which I think talking about quality over quantity. And I think somebody mentioned earlier to the perfectionism, maybe that was in the pre call, which we can get to you. But you don’t want to focus on making something so quality or so perfect that then you don’t produce anything. So there is a caveat to to the quantity piece where you know, you can just get get so bogged down in in trying to make something so perfect that you then ultimately never publish. And I’d love to hear even from Kerstin on the legal side, having also come from a software as a service in the past that was a legal focused immigration technology. We had a lot of red tape and a lot of legal review and compliance issues that we needed to always work through. And so the intersection of what people are searching and what legal could approve, and what we can say we’re not always easy to meet. So it’s easier said than done. Sometimes it’s kind of my point.
Dixon Jones
Say, it’s so yeah, Kerstin, you’re welcome to jump in on that. But I was gonna go back to Julia and say, right, this, this user intent, focus and quality. Is there. Is there something I mean, how do you approach user intent yourself? But let me start with that.
Julia-Carolin Zeng
So usually, I do my initial keyword research and create a content plan that isn’t based on topics. So the keywords and that sense, helped me identify what are the topic clusters. And then when I prepare a brief for writer, I take Okay, these are now the keywords that are relevant for this one page. So we can target all of this here together. On one page, when I create a brief, I look at this the SERPs and check okay, what is it that Google is showing here? Is there for example, a video? Is there a knowledge graph? Is it producing listicles of all kinds, and then that tell the writer, look, this is what we need to do. And if there’s a lot of video content for a topic, then I also tell my client, well, instead of just writing a blog post about it, we should probably produce a video. And then if everything is listicles, then also what we produce should probably be a listicle. And then I also look at these different pages that are ranking highly, and see what exactly are they doing? What are they talking about? And then I tell the writer, instead of giving you here, your keywords and now write 1000 words, I’m saying, Okay, this year are the keywords that fit in the cluster things you should somehow talk about. But these are your paragraphs, the things that you should cover on the page. So there should be an intro paragraph that explains this concept. There should be here something that’s maybe a nice visual graph, whatever the topic is depends? medicines, usually what I tell my writer to meet that intent and answer the question that stands behind a keyword or several keywords.
Kerstin Reichert
I wanted to add to that, I think that’s also a very good example. Is that how you put together briefs for for writers. And sometimes you have tools that great briefs for you. And they might give you an average of how many words an article should have. I think that’s all well and good, but I wouldn’t necessarily rely on on that. So even when it comes to creating a brief, I think the manual work is already so important. And we work in a very similar way. Our writers, when they have the topic, they have maybe the key word focus, they always check manually, what comes up in search results? What is the intent behind the search query? And then the ultimate question that we always ask for every piece of content is what is there? And how can we do something that is so much better than that. And that’s exactly how we are.
Ian Helms
That’s a great, that’s a great point, I think, to the to the point that everybody’s making, you can’t, it’s not just copying what’s in the top of the search engine results pages, you’re not going to have the same exact headers, the same exact, you know, paragraph structure, you want to model off of that, but not one to one, because if you’re just creating the same thing, Google is going to recognize that and that’s, again, going back to the helpful content, update, something that they’re trying to avoid happening. And so it is important to have that unique perspective and make sure that you’re bringing something new and fresh and relevant and unique to the table on top of, you know, giving people what they want to see.
Dixon Jones
I agree with absolutely everybody but to but let me throw a spanner in the works and say, you know, isn’t, we’re getting quicker or reacting to what Google is demanding that we should do next. I think because as an SEO as an industry, as we’ve learned to be more agile, and as, as Google changes as search result, we kind of adapt our content effectively to try and work with that. But I sort of feel that Google’s health content update in particular, has highlighted that a lot of results that are definitely all answering the question, but they’re all answering it in the same sort of style. You know, they’re defining the defining the main issues at the top. And then they’re talking about some of the underlying problems and questions and FAQs that are that are around the subject matter. And then going down. And you ended up with this, this this this content, which when I look at a lot of those results, they’re starting to look a little vanilla, and I’m guilty as everybody else at creating that content. But but we’re we’re doing that, because Google is not necessarily spotting that, that one idea that is different to everybody else’s well, that that theme that’s very different to everybody else’s. Do you think Google’s got a problem with the help for content update? And how do we, how do we break through that? Or is it you know, are we are we going to break through that? I don’t know if anyone wants to take that on?
Ian Helms
I’ll jump in with the most egregious one that I think everybody will know is recipe content is one of the worst when it comes to let me tell you all of these things about like, if you’re it’s an apple pie recipe, let me tell you about what apples are and the different varieties of apples in which apples are perfect for baking and how to make a crust and how to do lattice on top. And then finally, you know, 2500 words later, you get down to the actual recipe that you want to see. That’s something that, you know, if you’re modeling your content off of that, you’re going to continue to to feed the negative cycle of giving people what they don’t want to see. But that Google once said that they thought that they wanted people to see maybe it’s kind of what you’re getting at. And I’ve worked on recipe sites before where we don’t have the 1000 words. It’s literally just the recipe and maybe a short intro paragraph like a cookbook might present it. And we get page one rankings top of the page, top of the recipe, grid. And so there’s proof that you don’t need that all the time. And and I think part of you know, these algorithm updates and these major rollouts are, are that they’re not perfect right away, but that they continue to tweak them and make them get better over time. And so I do think that the unique content and the pieces that do have aspects that are not exactly what everybody else is doing, can and have and will continue to just start to mix in a little bit better. And we’ve seen that with like nested results or indented results rather and things like that, where Google’s possibly even trying to test what people are maybe looking for how to even shift the The results in better match the intent that people are maybe looking for.
Dixon Jones
Okay. Okay, guys, we got a question in the chat. Well, we’ve got a couple of people from Montse Cano is here but can’t stay she might have gone. I suspect she’s gone off to the UK search awards which are on this evening. So hi, Montse. Thanks for coming in. But Hobby Turysta? I’m not not sure if I understand the question. So I’m going to read read out it. He says in a couple of couple of sentences. I spotted the keywords that the keywords medical marijuana have not been detected in the topic cluster of cancer. So the keyword cancer has not been detected in the topic cluster of medical marijuana. So saying that topic clusters are updated? I don’t know if that’s updated? I’m not sure if that’s the right word. From an SEO point of view? Can you express yourself about updating topic clusters? I guess, I guess, thing number one there is? Why would medical marijuana be be associated with the top of your cluster? So I don’t know whether maybe I don’t know the subject matter well enough. But I’m not quite sure if I understand what hobbies are asking there. So can anyone jumping in Julia?
Julia-Carolin Zeng
I have an idea. And I think it relates to how do you initially identify what your topic clusters should be? And the way how I do it, instead of just typing a word into something that then suggests me a million keywords, as I identify who are the competitors in more than one sense. So the direct business competitors, and also other websites that are talking about my topic, amongst other topics? And then do basically a gap analysis and see what content do we already have? So to get really get an overview of what are all these big topics out there, and then categorize them in like one top level category and subcategories. And I see how it can happen when you have a topic like medical marijuana, how lots of websites are probably not talking about it as a use for cancer patients. But when you do your gap analysis, right, it should come up as one of the topics.
Dixon Jones
Right? I guess, well, I guess if you’re riding around cancer, you’re not necessarily going to be talking about medical marijuana realists, unless you’ve got that as a product in your you know, the people they’re going to come back for cancer are going to be the Pfizer’s of this world or that people with you know, medical cancer products, I would guess. But if you’re going to type in medical marijuana, then I guess the question is, does it give you cancer? I suspect that’s, that’s the user intent question. Part of that is, is does marijuana give you cancer? Which is probably a different questions to, you know, how do I go and buy some medical marijuana?
Julia-Carolin Zeng
I think more in the sense of how medical marijuana could help with some of the issues that you have when you have cancer or other illnesses, diseases, that they take it, for example, to take away the pain as like a form of painkiller, and so on. But this, again, I see how it can easily be missed in a gap analysis, if nobody is making that connection, yet. But this is where we’re talking to experts comes in and technically the business owner, or in my case, my client, they should know what they’re talking about why they’re trying to sell this medical marijuana and who the target audiences. So there’s also a lot of communication always involved in these things.
Kerstin Reichert
I wasn’t sure if the common meant medical marijuana was not in the topic cluster, or if it was there, and it wasn’t ranking. But I think it could also be that it might be a controversial topic that might not be medically proven. So that could have something to do with it, why it’s not there? Or why maybe not? I guess it depends on the website. If it’s all facts, and this is proven medical advice, then maybe it’s a topic that doesn’t fit.
Dixon Jones
And of course, marijuana is not legal in all countries, or states, whatever. And so Google’s probably got a whole a whole algorithm out when it can and can’t use the word marijuana or medical marijuana, or marijuana in the concept of medicine or whatever, it’s in there as well. So there’s a whole load of things that might be happening with that particular one, which just goes to show that you need to pay attention to user intent, because you got to make sure that, you know, the question is unambiguous for the for the user is answered unambiguously for that for the user. Okay, so let me just, I wrote in the book as well, so I decided to go really off piste. And bear me bear with me here because I kind of thought, you know, I’ve been doing the prediction for next years and didn’t want to come up with the same idea. And so I I talked about the possibility next year of of augmented reality. So augmented reality, you got glasses on that, you know, you’re, you’re out looking at something and then and it sort of overlays some some some information. So you could be sitting at the Tower of London or the Empire State Building and and it suddenly has a whole lot of facts that appear in your glasses for augmented reality. So I’m thinking, Well, if you, if you use location schema on your content, then it might be much easier for a search engine to then pick that information up and throw it into an augmented reality situation. So am I am I about two years ahead of my time on that one and talking rubbish? Or is that a crystal ball idea? That’s, that’s worth some merit of thinking about schema outside the box and where it might be used? Anyone want to come back and laugh at me on that one?
Kerstin Reichert
I think I’m laughing, but I’m not laughing about the idea. I think it’s a good concept. Well, if we’re gonna walk around with, you know, Google Glasses or other glasses in 2023, I would say probably not. But that’s not to say using schema markup is a bad idea. So I would suggest to do that anyway. And then we can see if that’ll benefit our classes in the near or far away future.
Dixon Jones
To be fair, it’s not just glasses, because you can, you’ve got a Google view where you can sort of hold up already your Android to a to a thing and get some overlay of stuff. So there’s, there’s stuff that’s already happening. But that is only going to grow. And I saw Facebook Meta are working with Ray-Bans. So if they’re working with Ray-Ban, there’s only one way I can imagine that they’re working with Ray-Ban to come out with a product and it’s going to be an augmented reality product. So I do think that, you know, there’s a lot of possibilities within schema to, you know, to go to Wembley Stadium, and it will put it out and it’ll show you the fixtures for next for the net for coming months. So and things like that. And maybe I’m maybe I’m being out of the out of the ballpark, so to speak to mix my metaphors between Wembley and, and somewhere in and baseball parks. But anyway, I, you know, it seems to me that what I’m trying to get to is that search may become more diverse in where people are looking for things. And that’s happening, you know, people are asking friends in Facebook about, you know, best place to go to a restaurant rather than asking a search engine, for example. And fact, they’re asking friends more and more. I think so. So is there this possibility that search is finally going to break away from just Google SERPs? And if so, how might that be in? Is there anything? You want to come in with it?
Ian Helms
I mean, there’s all the talk about TikTok these days, right? If you’re looking for fashion trends, or think the hottest things to do in a city, those are things that people are now going to TikTok more so than to Google because, you know, there’s a lot more fresh, relevant new content constantly being turned out, it’s way more visual, like you’re saying. So I think it’s like, maybe this the step, like, half step in between where you’re describing Dixon in the world going with augmented reality, and, and where we’re at now where you can see and explore places before you actually go to them to understand whether or not it’s something that you want, or see what how particular clothing fits on a particular person. And there is, I think that there is a valid point about getting ahead of the game and focusing on some of those efforts and finding ways to you know, whether it’s schema like you’re talking about, or what have you to get your content seen in different ways or different formats. But at the same time, like, it goes back to priority prioritization. And right now, I don’t think personally, that we’re at a point where the world is ready to adopt all the technologies and, and learn how to how to go about that, that not all the companies that are out there in the world have the budgets to create the type of augmented reality is even, you know, Meta dropping a lot of what they’ve been working on for the Metaverse. And so I think there’s a there’s definitely something there but it’s a balance of, you know, where we’re going to get where we are now and how to use your influence and the quality that people are looking for.
Dixon Jones
I do appreciate that my idea was a bit out there but but you know, but as Kerstin says, you know, schema is something that’s there anyway, and and it’s it because obviously, whatever search technology is going to jump in, they’re not going to jump in and then expect everybody to suddenly come up with new ideas, they’re going to jump on something that’s already there. And it seems to be that schema is, is developing at quite a pace now. And and that gives that gives some machines a ready way to try and find answers that he didn’t have much more structured than before. So hopefully, hopefully, the schemer idea is the the underlying task, not the not necessarily saying, right, let’s go and find the best pair of augmented reality glasses to wear and optimize for that. But he also made the point on TikTok, I think, you know, that’s a really interesting way of searching because it’s like Google discovery in a way and that your Google is TikTok is influencing you based on your own choices. So you choose what you want to see next. And you’re what you’re liking and what you’re not liking. And Google’s discovery is similar in that it’s working on your, your patterns and your history to try and sort of come up on as to what sorts of things are interesting to you. So that’s a totally different way of searching. Or rather, it’s a different way of being influenced. So you’re not necessarily actually searching for something. But definitely you can, you can guide a message and a brand down to a particular type of user, based on the kind of content that you put out there. I think, and I think that’s a, that’s something for 2023 as well, that, you know, it becomes more and more important to segment your business and understand your user and be able to define your user because there’s no point in creating content that’s going to never get into that TikTok feed, for example. So, you know, is the type of content that you’re going to be coming up with going to change in 2023? Or are you do you think you’ve your carry on doing what you what you’ve always done? I don’t know who wants to take that one?
Ian Helms
I’ll jump in. Absolutely. As social media evolves as the way that people are expecting to see content, I think as the SERP evolves, there was a search that I did recently, where I think the top 50% of the page was image story Discovery News base and didn’t have any traditional search results in it. And so, you know, even not like video aside, which is already a kind of a hot topic in a way. Just even focusing on imagery and not relying on stock images, and finding ways to break through that is also I think, something that everyone needs to start thinking about and prioritizing as well, too, because there’s nothing worse than seeing the same stock image on every single post about the same thing, because nobody has a unique perspective on it or whatever. And so, yeah, finding ways also, I think, quality over quantity wise to repurpose content. I think that’s the biggest missed opportunity that a lot of people have, which is, you know, taking that listicle make it into a carousel for Instagram, making it into a real or TikTok video, make, like finding ways to, to take what’s effective and, and put it into the different formats that people are going to find it on, and how they’re going to like to possibly see it and discover your brand through.
Dixon Jones
So let me just bring in David here, if I may, David, you put the whole book together, and I’ll let you save your best bits for your marathon session on this on the sixth. But you you did pick out a few bits of the towards in your closing, closing thoughts? Are you picked out all sorts of interesting ideas, but review of your content quality or lack thereof and things from from all sorts of people really? Is there something in it that you you think plays to this user intent that was in the book that that?
David Bain
I mean, yes. to certain degree, yes. And kind of following on from what Ian was saying. I just want to say first of all, was, I highlighted one key tip from each chapter. And that’s a tip that resonated with me. But what I also encourage the reader to do is actually, you know, hopefully read all the book and actually decide for themselves, which one tip from each chapter resonated with them is most suitable for them in their business. And maybe run with that because there are 101 tips in that book and it’s very difficult to to implement everything’s you have to decide what’s more suitable for yourself. So select a tip from each chapter is what I was seeing there towards the end. But following on from what Ian was saying and talking about TikTok and what you were saying about SEO for discovery, almost optimizing for discovery as opposed to for search. Martin MacDonald in Chapter One said, move from SEOing for information retrieval, to SEOing for information suggestion.
Dixon Jones
Okay. Yeah. So you’re basically for the person with so you’re basically feeding, feeding the idea to your segmented market, really. So it’s kind of where search meets advertising.
David Bain
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s always coming up with what the user wants before they actually actively search for it.
Dixon Jones
Interesting. Yeah. Interesting stuff. All right. Go ahead. Kerstin.
Kerstin Reichert
I just wanted to add that that’s basically what we’re doing with Google discover already, right? Google surfacing content that you might be interested in. So I think it’s definitely if you have the capacity, good to have an eye on that, and try to anticipate it could be relevant.
Dixon Jones
Yeah. Sorry, Julia, go on.
Julia-Carolin Zeng
So one thing that I guess also getting more important or was always super important, and the reason you’re gonna love this is internal links. So how are we connecting our content to one another? Are we guiding the user down a journey with further readings? And, and all of that, and that should also be always taken into account when we’re writing content? Like how does it fit in overall with the website?
Dixon Jones
Obviously, I love that thank you very much, Julia and Jan-Willem Bobbink is, is somebody that David pulled out in his is best idea for Chapter 10, as well, so which was optimized for internal links, so but, you know, you could rely on a tool to do that if you wanted to, but I’m not gonna go there today. Guys, we’ve, we’ve reached the end of our of our allotted time, again. And so I absolutely want to say thanks ever so much for coming along. Just before I ask people, you know, how they can get ahold of how people can get ahold of you if they want to, obviously, they can read the book. But David, what are we going to be doing in 2023 in terms of the podcasts and things because I gotta step back. I’ll be I’ll be around whenever you need me. But have you got any thoughts yet as to how you’re going to take the show in a different direction?
David Bain
Well, I’m not sure about a different direction. But certainly in terms of the first show of 2023, we’ve got that lined up. And that’s going to be how to set your SEO strategy for 2023. That’s gonna be in January, the fourth at 5pm GMT 12pm, Eastern Standard Time. Three great guests lined up for that Maria White, Dre de Vera and Crystal Carter. So January the fourth 5pm, signup at majestic.com/webinars. And of course, the URL that want to mention as well, is SEOin2023.com. That’s where you need to sign up to actually watch this live stream launch of the book SEO in 2023.
Dixon Jones
Brilliant. Thanks so much, David. And guys, just before we go, where do people find out from about you? How can they get ahold of you? Julia, do you want to head off there?
Julia-Carolin Zeng
Yeah, so the the easiest way, I guess, is to reach out via email and that is info at charlieonthemove.com. That’s my own business, or LinkedIn. You’ll find me if you just type in the name as you see it right now on screen.
Dixon Jones
Oh, yeah, but people can’t. So is Julia-Carolin Zeng, so that that’s great. Thanks very much. Kerstin, how do they get ahold of you?
Kerstin Reichert
I’m probably most responsive on LinkedIn. So that would be the preferred channel if you find me there with my name should come up otherwise Kerstin Reichert SeedLegals should give you the right search result
Dixon Jones
Ian how do they how do they find you?
Ian Helms
Similarly, LinkedIn or Twitter while it’s still around, my handle across all social is @IanHelms so you can find me there.
Dixon Jones
So guys, thank you ever so much. What I learned at the end there is we should all be optimizing for LinkedIn, it would seem but we’ll get onto that in a different a different year. Thank you ever so much for coming on to the show. I really do appreciate it. I hope you guys have a lovely Christmas and See you in cyberspace in 2023. Bye guys.
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