Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 141: What You Need Know for SEO in 2022
564 Plays3 years ago
Leah MacDaniel SEO specialist and account manager over at Till Agency joins me for this special Brands that Book and Stuff Markers Say podcast crossover episode. We're discussing SEO for 2022, what's the next big Google update, and what should people be focusing on to see SEO success in 2022. This is a live episode where people could ask questions live. If you're interested in learning more about our live episodes, be sure to sign up for our email list. In this episode unfortunately we had some technical difficulties. You shouldn’t hear them as you listen to the episode, but it did prevent us from answering some people questions live. So, my apologies if you did try to tune into this episode live but again if you're interested in joining us for live episodes in the future be sure to join our email list and will let you know when the next line episode is.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/improve-seo-website/
Recommended
Transcript
Importance of SEO for Businesses
00:00:05
Speaker
First, I think that every business out there, unless they're owned by some anti-internet, somebody living in a cabin in the woods, every business could benefit from SEO. I think businesses with kind of a longer customer journey, where your customer is doing a lot of research and a lot of consideration before making a purchase,
00:00:27
Speaker
I think those are the brands that really benefit from SEO and from the kind of SEO that I do in particular, which is really content marketing heavy by really getting to your customer at the beginning of their journey and answering those really early questions. That is when SEO like really packs a punch.
Introduction of Guests and Episode Overview
00:00:47
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:57
Speaker
Leah McDaniel, SEO specialist and account manager over at Till Agency joins me for the special brands that book and stuff marketers say podcast crossover episode. We're discussing SEO for 2022.
Live Recording Issues and Audience Engagement
00:01:09
Speaker
What's the next big Google update and what should people be focusing on to see SEO success in 2022?
00:01:17
Speaker
This is a live episode where people could ask questions live. If you're interested in learning more about our live episodes, be sure to sign up for our email list. In this episode, unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties. You shouldn't hear them as you listen to the episode, but it did prevent us from actually answering some people's questions live. So my apologies if you did try to tune into this episode live. But again, if you're interested in joining us for live episodes in the future, be sure to join our email list and we'll let you know when the next live episode is.
00:01:46
Speaker
You can check us to show notes at dvandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Bransdale Club podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at dvandchrista. Now, on to the episode.
Leah McDaniel's Role and SEO Insights
00:02:10
Speaker
All right, we are live, actually live today. So welcome, Leah, to episode of the Brands at Book Podcast, a little crossover episode with Stuff Marketers Say, our podcast over at the Till Agency. And for those of you who have not tuned in before, Leah is one of our account managers
00:02:28
Speaker
over at Till Agency. And so she actually helps manage accounts over at Till Agency. She is also our SEO specialist. So, Leah is relatively new to Till Agency, but not to digital marketing. And I'm really excited to have her here today to chat about search engine optimization and what we can expect in 2022 when it comes to SEO. And it's funny because I feel like we just got to the other side of
00:02:56
Speaker
of a major Google update. And yet here we are going in 2022 and we're already looking ahead to sort of the next big update. So lots to get into, but Lea, welcome. Thank you. It's awesome to be here.
00:03:11
Speaker
So if you are joining us live, then feel free to jump in the chat and ask us questions and we'll try to answer specific SEO questions along the way. So feel free to do that. And if you're interested in more live future episodes where you can actually interact with the topic a little bit, ask your specific questions, make sure you join both the email list at Till Agency.
00:03:33
Speaker
and at Davey and Krista. And so we'll be doing this live, you know, both for brands that book and this stuff marketers say podcast. And we typically try to publish episodes about a week in advance, just so people can gauge whether it's something that they're interested in. But like I said, today, the focus is going to be on search engine optimization, what we can do in 2022 to be successful, we're going to look back at 2021 and help us that I think looking back at 2021 will help us gauge a little bit, you know, how
00:04:03
Speaker
Maybe seriously, we should take some of these updates that are coming in 2022. So anyways, Leah, I'm going to kick it over to you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?
00:04:12
Speaker
Sure. So I'm actually an OG Brands the Book listener. That's how I found out about the Till Agency, which is really cool. I live in Richmond. In addition to working for Till, I'm also a photographer. So I have a little bit of that kind of behind the scenes knowledge in how to build a brand and how to really implement this stuff in the real world. In addition to that,
00:04:38
Speaker
I live in a bus. That's maybe the most interesting thing about me. I was hoping you'd bring up the bus. I didn't want to say I didn't want to just be like, Oh, she lives in a bus, but I bring in the bus. It's not a bus, you know, the bus is, it's a nice bus. It's a cute bus. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like a refurbished school bus, essentially, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, a little, a little short bus.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, so that is awesome. I don't think it's the most interesting thing about you, but it is very interesting. And I will say, Leah actually manages our ads. She's our account manager over at Dave and Krista. So, Leah is the one that's managing and optimizing our ads on a day-to-day basis.
00:05:17
Speaker
Just if you're wondering, do I trust her? Oh, I mean, I trust her with our own ads. So anyways, let's dive
SEO's Long-Term Relevance
00:05:25
Speaker
in. When it comes to search engine optimization, I feel like I always think, oh, this will be like a 25, 30 minute episode. And then it always ends up maybe a little bit longer. So let's chat. Let's jump into that. First things first, I think because of all the changes constantly to Google,
00:05:27
Speaker
So,
00:05:39
Speaker
I think it's not uncommon for people to ask, is SEO even worth it anymore? It seems like a lot of luck and it seems like for a lot of people that no matter what I do I hear that I can't get my website to rank. So what would you say to somebody who's doubting whether SEO is worth it in 2022 or maybe hearing about some of the changes coming next year and they're like, okay, that's it. I can't do this anymore. What would you say to them?
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah. So first I completely understand the kind of frustration behind like, Oh, something's always changing. Like what do I need to be doing? What even works anymore? I like to very nerdily say that the best time to start working on your SEO was 20 years ago. The second best time is today because it's not a quick thing. And even though it seems like there are these big changes, it really is like, um, it's a long game.
00:06:35
Speaker
These changes come, things happen, but yes, it's absolutely worth it to work on your SEO. Those changes are never really as big or catastrophic as people think they're going to be. The best thing to do is just keep working at it, keep optimizing. I would say it's definitely still worth it. Would you say that certain businesses can benefit more than others from search engine optimization?
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, well, first I think that every business out there, unless they're owned by some anti-internet, somebody living in a cabin in the woods, every business could benefit from SEO. I think businesses with kind of a longer customer journey
00:07:20
Speaker
where your customer is doing a lot of research and a lot of consideration before making a purchase. I think those are the brands that really benefit from SEO and from the kind of SEO that I do in particular, which is really content marketing heavy, by really getting to your customer at the beginning of their journey and answering those really early questions. That is when SEO really packs a punch.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I think one thing that I appreciated about your approach as you came on to the agency is that, and I think we share a similar approach, is that it's very content-centric.
Content Creation and Technical SEO Focus
00:07:56
Speaker
And so there is this, I think, real focus on creating high-quality content on a consistent basis, and then taking care of the technical SEO bit. And that's not to say that the technical SEO part is not as important.
00:08:10
Speaker
But I think we both recognize that, well, one, we're not a website design company, right? I mean, over at Davey and Krista, we are. But over at Till Agency, where we're doing managed SEO campaigns. So when somebody is looking for somebody to help with search engine optimization, hopefully, and we'll tell them if not, the website structure is in a good spot.
00:08:29
Speaker
But then it's really a focus on creating that content and then working on the technical SEO piece. And there's always things to clean up on websites and building backlinks. But I would agree with you that a lot of changes over the last decade have come and gone. And ultimately, there are, I think, very few instances where I wake up and I look at our rankings report and I say, oh my, something really...
00:08:51
Speaker
something really drastically changed on a big scale. Certainly, I've woken up and a post has dropped 30 spots, and I have to figure out why it's dropped 30 spots. But across the board, I think very few instances where there's just some major drop off. And I think, again, if you're focusing on the fundamentals, typically, even these major changes that happen shouldn't be devastating when they occur.
00:09:14
Speaker
Right. For sure. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, no. I was just going to transition us to maybe looking a little bit back at some of the big changes in 2021. The big SEO update in 2021 that, if I remember correctly, and it feels like forever ago, started rolling out in June, but maybe more realistically towards the end of the summer, was Core Web Vitals. All right.
00:09:38
Speaker
Anybody who's been paying attention probably saw different information around that, especially in Google Search Console, or maybe they heard somebody talk about it, but that was going to be the big website update in 2021, and it was. But can you tell us a little bit about what Core Web Vitals were, or are rather, and maybe the impact that we've seen across at least some of the websites that we do SEO for and our own websites?
00:10:01
Speaker
Right. So taking a step back, I guess, Google's main purpose is to provide people who come on to Google and make a search to provide them with a good experience. So they want those people to be able to find the information that they're looking for quickly and efficiently on sites that are easy to use.
00:10:20
Speaker
And so the core web vitals, which everyone was freaking out about when this update was going to drop, the core web vitals are basically just measurable ways to determine how user-friendly your site is. It's basically measuring how quickly and cleanly and efficiently your site loads.
00:10:40
Speaker
So people were very upset. They were like, oh my gosh, if my site doesn't load under two seconds, I'm going to drop off of Google and my business is going to go under. And that's just not what happened. Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
people, let's see, people were worried that they were going to drop out of Google immediately. And I have done a lot of research into the core web vitals and what the folks at Google are actually saying about it. They're like, that was never our intent. This is more of like, keep these things in mind as you go forward kind of thing. We're not trying to kick all of the slow sites off of the internet or anything.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's what we ended up seeing, right? And there were clues that that was going to be the case even before Core Web Vitals rolled out. I forget off the top of my head, and I did another podcast episode that people can check out specifically on the Core Web Vitals, but there was a report that came back and I forget what company did it, but essentially found some astronomical percentage of the web failed Core Web Vitals standards, right?
00:11:42
Speaker
you could just realistically look and say, OK, well, it's not as if just because your site doesn't load in a certain amount of time that Google is going to seriously upend the rankings because that would deliver a poor experience for people. And Google, they want to deliver the best, easiest experience for people as possible, like you mentioned. So I think it wasn't something to freak out about. I definitely think that over the summer, we saw some shifting. But I think it just
00:12:10
Speaker
again, was an example of a major update that was good for us to be aware of, but ultimately wasn't apocalyptic like maybe many people were saying it was going to be.
00:12:24
Speaker
Right. And of course, it's great for your site to be quick and speedy and to load efficiently. But if you're putting out great content that answers people's questions, it doesn't matter if your site loads in five seconds instead of two seconds. Like if you're providing the best answer to those questions that people have, Google's still going to put you ahead of a fast site that gives a bad response.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so there are just so many things that come together that determine how Google ranks a site. Now, what I do think, I do think that to a certain extent, these major updates do serve as an indication or maybe encourage the web to go in a certain direction. So I think now, more than ever even,
00:13:09
Speaker
we've been paying more attention to site speed and we've been paying more attention to, you know, how elements on a page load, you know, so cumulative layout shift is one of the core web vitals. And so paying attention that as things load, there isn't this shift or jerk in the page that provides people a bad experience. So those sorts of things, I think those things are good,
Google's MUM Update and Its Implications
00:13:29
Speaker
right? And so for Google to say, hey, we're paying attention to this, at least web designers like ourselves alerts us to, okay, this is really where the future of the web is.
00:13:39
Speaker
Right, for sure. And I think that's great if Google is kind of guiding the internet toward everybody creating better content that's serving people better.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So now let's shift our conversation towards the next big update that we have to look forward to. And both of you and I have done a fair amount of research on this. And it's really interesting, I think. And I'm going to let you dive into maybe some of the things that this update concerns. It's called Google's MUM update. So M-U-M. So that's Multitask Unified Model. And it's going to roll out.
00:14:16
Speaker
sometime in the next year. And there's already been evidence of certain elements of it having rolled out already. So that's the fun thing about Google is it's always trying to figure out, is that new? Are they testing something? Are meta descriptions 60 characters? Are they going to be 180 characters or whatnot? They're always changing things. But this is kind of the next big update. And I think, again, we're going to see the same level maybe of concern or panic around it. I do feel like this, different than some of the past updates,
00:14:45
Speaker
feels more substantial, feels like it's going to change Google search results quite a bit, at least how they appear to the user. So can you explain a little bit about what the Google Mum update is and what we can expect with that update? Yeah, so I am very excited about this update. It's basically going to be incorporating multimedia results in searches and using AI to kind of connect broader themes and be able to answer more complex questions.
00:15:15
Speaker
The example that Google has been using when they're talking about this update is like, I hiked this mountain. What do I need to do differently to prepare for this to hike this mountain? And you could just type that into Google and Google can compare those two things. Whereas right now, if you wanted to find that answer, you'd have to do probably four different Google searches. Like what's the difference in weather between these two places? And what's the difference in altitude?
00:15:44
Speaker
So it's really going to be able to connect broader themes together and give people a more kind of succinct answer with fewer searches. And it's also going to be using AI to pull content from images and from videos. Even, I mean, Google has been able to pull content from images with the meta descriptions and stuff. Like if you use the alt text to describe
00:16:07
Speaker
what's in an image, Google can read that now, but using this AI, they will be able to just look at the content of the photo or the video and search from there.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is sort of a game changer, especially for wedding photographers or photographers like yourself and others and those who are very media focused, right? Or produce some sort of media as a result of what they do. And to a certain extent, you know, I mean, like kind of makes, I mean, alt text will probably still be important for things like screen readers, but maybe one day, Google just explained to the person using a screen reader exactly what that image is about, what's in that image. And you don't have to fill out for 50 different images in a blog post, you know, the alt text, right?
00:16:49
Speaker
So that's exciting just in terms of the direction that it's going. And I'll admit, I had sort of, I panicked too strong of a word, but looking at the layout and saying, oh gosh, like this is very different. This looks very different. It's not, I think even as Google put it, the 10 blue links, you know, that you see. And it's not like, you know, positions one through 20 or one through 10 anymore.
00:17:10
Speaker
you know, like more traditional results or what we're used to seeing as more traditional results, I think are going to be much further down the page. And so it is important that we take advantage of all the different aspects that we can of the web. But again, I think this is such a good thing, especially for people like photographers who previously, like back in the day, it was like, hey, it's all about the text that you have on the page, right? It's like,
00:17:34
Speaker
There's images that, that's great. I know that's what you do, but it doesn't really help you when it comes to search engine optimization. Well, that's becoming less and less true. Same thing with videographers. Those sorts of things I think are not only going to... This kind of update not only levels the playing field, but maybe makes it a little bit more advantageous to have stunning images and videos on your site. So I think that's what I'm most excited about when it comes to the mum update.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's going to be a great thing. One of the things that I hear from people all the time, and I'm like, you know, you need to create this informational content on your site. And they're like, I'm not a writer. Like, that's not where my strengths lie. I think this mom update is going to really kind of play into different strengths. So if you're really great on video, which I'm not, but
00:18:20
Speaker
If you're really great on video and you can't write a blog post to save your life, you can still put that content out there and Google can still read it and serve it in search results. I think it's going to be really great for people who learn in different ways and people who are able to express themselves in different ways.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I really do think that this sort of, you know, changes things, maybe leave it levels of playing field and it makes sense to like, if I'm looking for a photographer, I'm looking for somebody who's good at taking photos, right? In a particular setting, like it shouldn't really matter how good of a writer they are.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I think, you know, for the foreseeable future, it's probably still good to have those informational content, pieces of content on your website. But I do think hopefully this will, I think, make things easier maybe for photographers, videographers, and other more artistic-oriented fields.
00:19:10
Speaker
As far as the mom updates go, I think that what we'll have to do is do an episode specific to this update sometime in the future as we get closer to it. I think a thousand things are going to change between now and then, and we're going to have a thousand revelations as people continue to do research on the significance around this
Preparing for MUM Update
00:19:29
Speaker
update. But this is the update that people need to be ready for in 2022, so coming up.
00:19:36
Speaker
Again, if you are a photographer and I would say relatively often hear from photographers who maybe got rid of some images and stuff on their website because again, they wanted to replace it with text and things like that. Who knows? This really could be one of the updates that we've been waiting a long time for. Anything else that we should say about the mum update before moving on?
00:19:59
Speaker
Not that I can think of. Yeah, I think it'll be something to watch for sure. I think there's going to be more information rolling out about it as it gets closer and Google kind of fine tunes their idea of what this is going to be. So definitely something to keep on your radar, but not something to freak out about and not something that's going to push you off the internet forever. Just something to keep in mind as you're creating content for the future.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I think maybe it will make technical SEO that much more important. I'm thinking especially around like adding schema to your site. Unfortunately, I think it's easier than ever to add schema to your website, especially if you have like a WordPress website. But there are so many different schema generators out there that for people who don't have any idea what I'm talking about, it's easy to find one. So what I'd encourage you to do now in the meantime, if this is something that you're, you're interested in, maybe just Google about the mum update and take a look for yourself. At least take a look at what
00:20:53
Speaker
how it's going to change what the search results look like. And I'll make sure that I include a screenshot of that, of an example in the show notes for people to take a look at. So for now, I think that's what people should be doing. And then like I said, as we get closer to the update, we'll start rolling out with more practical information of what people can do around this update.
00:21:14
Speaker
So let's
Key SEO Strategies for the Future
00:21:15
Speaker
move on. Let's just talk about maybe three to five SEO items that people should focus on in 2022 in order to be successful. In your opinion, what would those things be? Yeah, so kind of broad overview.
00:21:30
Speaker
I think people need to focus on really understanding and serving their searcher intent instead of worrying about SEO hacks. I think people are really, they kind of get worked up into a frenzy about making their site as fast as possible or putting all these keywords in their alt text thinking that they're going to hack the system somehow. And I think that's,
00:21:53
Speaker
A, that maybe used to work 10 years ago. There used to be those sites where they would, you know, put the keywords in the same color as the background and whatever, but that's not the way the internet works anymore. And you will kind of ride these different updates better if your goal with your SEO is just
00:22:13
Speaker
to serve, search, or intent. If you are creating content, building your site in the back of your mind, what are people going to be searching for and how can I help them answer those questions? That's going to be the big thing to guide your SEO strategy going forward.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think this segues really well into your second point about broad topic research. So if the first one is truly serving searcher intent, and what we mean by searcher intent is, like you said, just basically answering the question or serving the customer and meeting whatever intention they have,
00:22:48
Speaker
for doing that search in the first place. So we might have a more purchase-oriented search or intent if I'm looking for a specific brand of shoes, right? But this, I think, segues really well into broad topic research, which is your second tip. So tell us a little bit more about that.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, so using very specific keywords is becoming less and less important as Google improves on this AI and gets a better understanding of what terms go together and kind of builds this map of knowledge.
00:23:20
Speaker
For example, Google now knows that weddings and elopements are pretty much the same thing. Whereas, you know, they're totally different words and people would optimize completely differently in the past if they were a wedding photographer versus an elopement photographer. But now Google is like, okay, I understand that they're basically the same thing.
00:23:40
Speaker
So looking at broader topics instead of very narrow, like, okay, should I say Minneapolis wedding photographer or when Minneapolis wedding photography? So kind of doing looking at these broad topics, the bigger questions, and not worrying so much about the specific words that you're using, but answering kind of that broader question.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes Google refers to this as entities versus keywords. And I do think that's an important shift. I think for a lot of people, thinking about them even as keyword groups might help, you know, so like you were just suggesting, you know, if you have sort of this topic, you know, what are sort of the different sub keywords of that topic and creating content around those that makes sense. But again, I think what we're seeing, especially in this next big update is keywords themselves becoming less
00:24:31
Speaker
even less important and Google more focusing on, as you put it, these broad topics or entities. And again, I think that's makes life a lot easier. I think keyword research is still going to be important or maybe we should call it entity research. I don't know. But I also think that for the lay person who just kind of has an intuition about what somebody might be searching for, you know, Google becoming more intelligent is going to help.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to help everybody. It's going to help searchers find the information that they're looking for. How many times have you gone into Google and you're trying to find this answer to the specific thing? And you're like, what combination of words do I need to put into Google to get the answer that I'm looking for? And you have to try seven different searches before you find the thing that Google recognizes. That is just not going to be the case anymore, which is really exciting. So it'll be helping both the searchers and the content creators.
00:25:27
Speaker
because you don't have to make everything so hyper specific. Google is now going to be using that AI to kind of know more about these broader topics or entities.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, so I think that's right. I think my big concern around AI is mostly that it's going to become, you know, so smart that it takes the world, yada, yada, right? So that's my big concern when it comes to Google that and the amount of information they know about us. I actually tried, and this I think would be relevant to the mum, the Google mum update discussion that we were having earlier, which is I have duck, duck, go on my computer. Have you heard of duck, duck, go? So for those of you listening,
00:26:06
Speaker
Well, it's funny you say that because I have DuckDuckGo on my computer and also on my phone and I thought, okay, I do care about privacy, but it's funny. I feel like so many people say they care about privacy. I think in theory, we all care about privacy, but then we have an Amazon Alexa in our home, which is basically like a little bug. But anyways, all that to say, so I've tried intentionally to use DuckDuckGo when I don't have to use Google like Chrome. And so for some things, I just have to use Chrome.
00:26:35
Speaker
But I get so frustrated because I would Google like the location of a business just to get their phone number so I can call, right? But the way it comes up is just so, so much less advanced than how Google serves information that it takes so much longer. But again, obviously the trade off is well, I maintain my privacy, but at the same time, it's like, ah, this isn't worth it. So I've pretty much given up on that. And I'm like, and I don't really have, you know, I was like, okay, well, there's nothing really, I've nothing to hide. So it's like, whatever, I'm just going to use Google Chrome.
00:27:05
Speaker
but I do like the idea of DuckDuckGo in theory. Right. I think that's, I tried DuckDuckGo also thinking like, oh, this is the smart, responsible thing to do. And I was like, actually, it just makes my life a lot easier when Google has all this information about me already. That's right. That's right. In like 99% of situations, I'm like, oh,
00:27:25
Speaker
I'm just trying to find the number for this deli down the street. And it's like, what am I doing? I might as well just use Google. Anyways, but I do, again, in theory, I'm like, no, they shouldn't have all this information about me. I'm the same way with Facebook. It's like, no, I don't want them to have all this information about me. With that said, I'll go and visit sites intentionally, hoping that then I'll see some sort of special deal in a Facebook or Instagram ad. Yep, exactly.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's funny how that works. But anyways, moving on to the next tip. So we talked about truly serving searcher intent. I think that's been a fundamental of SEO for a long time that we should focus on broad topic research, which again, I think to a certain extent, something that we should be have should have been focusing on for a while now, but I think even more so as Google rolls out with this new mom update, now multimedia content. So speak to that a little bit.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah. So multimedia content is honestly something that I personally have been resisting for a long time because I am just better when I have a chance to like sit down and kind of compose my thoughts and write something out. I sound smarter and more coherent. And there's been all of this, you know, news and recommendations. People are like, Oh, well you need to start using reels and you need to get on YouTube and do all of these things. I'm like, I,
00:28:49
Speaker
I will let my business go under, I think, before I do that. But it's becoming more and more of an important thing, especially with this Google Mom update. I'm not saying that people who don't like doing video need to force themselves and not do written content anymore, but it's opening up these options. Whereas in the past, it seemed for a lot of people that writing blog content was really the only way to show up.
00:29:18
Speaker
in Google search, and that's not going to be the case anymore. So if you're a person who really thrives on video or is great doing, you know, lives or podcasting, things like that, it's going to be easier to still show up in search, even if written content is not your main focus.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, I mean, I think that's one of the biggest, most nerve wracking things for me with this update is I like writing like you. I don't feel, I feel just more put together when I can clarify my thoughts through writing them down. I think some of my best content are blog posts. And even if more people listen to the podcast, for instance, I think a lot of my ideas or things that I talk about on the podcast came from initially writing them down, you know, in a blog post, right?
00:30:04
Speaker
So I get nervous like, oh man, am I going to have more trouble ranking some of these posts? And we have been doing more with things like YouTube. And then obviously we do the podcast. But so I don't think, you know, again, I think we're going to be, we're going to be okay. But I am like, well, you know, it's nice. I mean, even for me personally, like I very rarely watch a YouTube video unless it's like,
00:30:25
Speaker
Oh, there's like a leaky pipe and I have to figure out how to fix this. So their garbage disposal broke and I have to figure out how to fix it. Right. In most cases, I'm looking for something written anyways. I think a lot of people are still going to find themselves in situations where they can't play a video at work or something like that. And they just need a written answer. So I don't think that you have to go in that direction, but I do think that the more, you know, like you put it multimedia content that you create, the better off you're going to be when it comes to Google's new format for the search results.
00:30:54
Speaker
Right, and that kind of goes back to serving searcher intent. If what you're trying to convey would be better conveyed in video, it doesn't matter if you're better at writing it down. If somebody is going to be looking for a video to answer this question, if you want to be ranking for those search terms, you should probably create a video.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's, I think that's exactly right. And you can always include written directions. It's the best of the best of both worlds, right? But I am glad that we finally started focusing a little bit more on YouTube this past year. So very timely. So the last tip you have here is Google my business.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yes, so Google's entities are still kind of a nebulous thing.
Significance of Google My Business
00:31:39
Speaker
It's not super easy to explain the way that Google defines entities, unfortunately, but basically anything that somebody would search for by name,
00:31:50
Speaker
Google would consider to be an entity. And so the best way for your average person to kind of work toward that to kind of play into that system would be to have a good Google My Business profile, because that's the number one way to say to Google, I'm an entity.
00:32:09
Speaker
And I think a lot of people, they're just like, yeah, I guess I have to have a Google My Business for local search or whatever. So they make it and they tell their clients to send reviews and then they never think about it again. But I think it's going to be more important going forward to have posts on your Google My Business profile and make sure that you have your description as kind of keyword optimized or gives a clear description of what your business is or what you do or who you serve.
00:32:39
Speaker
And I also think that having up to date relevant reviews is going to just continue to grow in importance. There are lots of folks that I've worked with who have 100 reviews on their Google My Business profile, but their business has kind of shifted focus over several years. And so now they are
00:32:59
Speaker
a course creator or something, but all of their reviews are about when they were a wedding photographer. And so somebody who ends up on Google looking at them, it's like, I don't think this person is actually a course creator because all of these people say that they're a wedding photographer.
00:33:19
Speaker
And Google is going to have that same confusion too. If all of the signs point to, you're a wedding photographer, not a course creator, that's going to kind of confuse that whole entity stew.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Google My Business, I feel like, again, just going back to our quick conversation about DuckDuckGo, I mean, definitely one of the areas in which I think Google shines and it's just an aspect of Google being able to aggregate that information from the website, even from non-platforms that you don't own, so like your entities that you don't own, like your website. So for instance, if you are a wedding photographer,
00:33:55
Speaker
your reviews from wedding wire or not might come in. If you are a restaurant, it's probably going to be Yelp and similar places to that. So Google does a really good job of aggregating that information in a place that I think that other search engines just have some room to catch up. I think that there's probably a lot of space between Google and the next most popular search engine.
00:34:16
Speaker
So I agree, especially I think for local businesses in particular, and I would say like, if I'm thinking about purchasing something that's from a local business like I'll read the Google reviews I spend next to no time reading like Facebook reviews I spend next to no time on Facebook pages anymore.
00:34:32
Speaker
But what do I find myself spending time on if I'm doing research about a company? I'm more likely to look at their Google My Business listing than I am to go to their Facebook page. I feel like Facebook pages, we all have them just because we need them to run ads or something, but I feel like not utilized as much in the same way as Google's listings.
00:34:52
Speaker
So one thing that I will say, a little tidbit that I've discovered recently, people, your listeners might be familiar with this, with reviews disappearing. Google reviews, they know their client wrote one and it showed up for a second or their client screenshotted it and it's just not showing up.
00:35:12
Speaker
It's been a bigger issue since 2020 when at the beginning of COVID, Google kind of disabled reviews to prevent small businesses from being unfairly slammed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so ever since then,
00:35:27
Speaker
The Google reviews have been kind of off. They haven't been right since then. And one thing that I learned recently, working with the client who had that problem, her Google reviews had just disappeared, her most recent ones. One thing that I learned is that Google still really wants you to be getting reviews in different places like
00:35:46
Speaker
on Facebook or on Yelp or on WeddingWire. Because if you're only getting reviews through Google, that's an indicator that they might be fake. And so they would take them down. So as much as I am with you in that I don't read Facebook reviews, I haven't been on Yelp in years. It's still very important to be getting reviews in those places and not only sending people to Google.
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that's a great tip. And I don't think I've heard that. So really appreciate that you sharing that with us. And yeah, I still think some of these other places like Yelp, or what and why are they not some of these like citations that are created specifically for your niche or industry. I you know, I didn't mean to suggest those weren't good. Facebook reviews, I don't and does Google even aggregate Facebook reviews? Have you seen that?
00:36:35
Speaker
I think it does sometimes. So I haven't seen, I don't think I've seen that, but anyways, I mean, to your point, I think that I think the takeaway is go get reviews in a lot of places and not just necessarily in Google. And like you, and like we both said, Google aggregate those reviews on your listing anyways. So they will show up on your Google, my business listing. Now with that said, what I kind of like about that, just as I'm processing it a little bit more is that for people who may not get a lot of Google reviews specifically, it sounds like the reviews in other areas actually count.
00:37:04
Speaker
And we knew on some level they actually counted, but it was kind of unclear as to how much. So it sounds like maybe a lot in terms of just building trust with Google as a search engine so that they're more likely to rank you.
00:37:18
Speaker
Right. I think that plays into the general idea of entities. Like if you are only an entity on Google, if there's no trace of you anywhere else, Google might not understand that you actually exist. So kind of having that proof of your existence in other places on the internet would benefit any business for sure.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, these are some great tips, and I think that they're good tips to keep us successful in 2022. And I think at the end of the day, both of us agree that content is still front and center, even though, again, I think people who are photographers or photos make up a large part of their site, people who are videographers or videos make up a large part of their site, I think should be excited about the updates that are coming out, because I think maybe your content will be recognized in a way that it hasn't been before.
00:38:07
Speaker
Really excited about that update and lay. I just want to thank you for taking the time and sharing your expertise with us and how we can be successful with SEO in 2022. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been really exciting.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, so we'll have Leia back on soon, I'm sure, because there's so much to talk about when it comes to search engine optimization. I think two topics that I want to talk about in the relatively near future. One, getting more specific with this Google mom update. What is it? How exactly can we optimize for this update specifically? And I think it's just going to be a matter of maybe weaving a little bit just to see as information and tests roll out and understanding that a little bit more.
00:38:45
Speaker
But the second one that we'll probably do sooner is going to be maybe a few tools that you can use to optimize your website. And I know that Leah has some of her favorite tools. I have a few favorite tools of my own. So I think it'd be a really interesting conversation for us to chat through those things.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yes. One of the things that I want to mention is that if you're interested in having SEO done for you, then reach out to till.agency. That is where we help or one of the things we do is help clients with their search engine optimization goals. And so you'd be able to work directly with Leia in doing that. And we have all sorts of different options from more one-off help, just helping you correct maybe errors on your site or trying to
00:39:27
Speaker
meet a very specific objective to ongoing managed SEO campaigns. So reach out to till.agency for more information about that. And over at davianchrista.com, you can find one of our newest courses is a Show-It SEO course. So if you are a Show-It user, you can access our Show-It SEO course at davianchrista.com forward slash shop. Thanks again, Leah.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually have looked at the Davey and Krista Show It SEO course, just a little tidbit here. It's great. I am always excited when I can learn something new. I'm always trying to grow and improve. And I learned new stuff about SEO from Davey and Krista's Show It course. So just sliding that in there for you.
00:40:13
Speaker
That's good to hear. Because like I said, Leia is not new to SEO. And one of the reasons that I got our access to that was because you're more familiar with WordPress and show it maybe as a little bit of a newer platform for you. Right. But I am glad that you picked up some stuff along the way. That's great. That makes me happy. It makes me feel even more confident in that content. So thanks for sharing that. Of course. All right.
00:40:45
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.