[00:06:13] How content consumption has changed in the last few years. [00:08:15] This virtual atmosphere is going to be permanent, to a scale. [00:09:36] Beginning content marketing research and building a repeatable model [00:12:09] Look at the data first [00:13:57] Watch what your competitors are doing [00:17:36] Does our content marketing get skewed with topics that are trending too much? [00:21:51] Establishing business goals in content marketing [00:24:36] How do you measure trust?...
Mar 30, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast We had a fantastic time with our 404-page contest, where we had our listeners submit their favorite three 404, Page Cannot Be Found pages from across the ‘net. We had over 90 submissions and found a huge spectrum of functional and entertaining pages to engage audiences that land on a missing page. Our contest winner will get a fantastic podcasting kit that we hand picked for the event. Join our judges Mordy Oberstein, Jason Barnard, JR Oakes, Lily Ray and our host Erin Sparks as we go over the t...
Mar 24, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Indig, SEO Director of Shopify, in his second part of our interview, covers the scientific methodology and mindset necessary for SEO improvements as Google evolves. We discussed in detail the opportunities to test with reversion control and baseline factors to clearly produce SEO results to the C-suite execs. SEOs need to be watching business results, not ranks. Check out this interview and tell us your thoughts about what we covered. [00:04:04] When Kevin witnessed changes in Google, now ...
Mar 22, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mordy joins Erin to go through some of the digital news on episode 402. We have a special Twitter contest for the best 404 page for our upcoming 404 episode. It was either that or have an episode you just wouldn’t be able to find, right? Get it? [00:04:51] YouTube Creators Outside the US: Tax Withholding Coming from Google? Google is going to be required to withhold taxes for non-US YouTube creators who earn money from US citizens viewing their videos. [00:09:01] Local Estimated Prices Near You ...
Mar 16, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Indig, Director of SEO at Shopify, shares some truly radical concepts towards how SEOs and business stakeholders should understand the ROI of SEO. Moving away from linear models and departing from transaction-based success goals leads us to understand behavioral modeling. Micro Conversions map our trail of understanding of how valuable SEO really is now and into the future. [00:04:27] Kevin Indig’s history [00:07:24] What are the Director Of SEO responsibilities? [00:13:14] Did Shopify get...
Mar 11, 2021•36 min•Ep 401•Transcript available on Metacast [00:06:07] Will Google Pass the Cost of Digital Ad Taxes to US Advertisers? Maryland is the first state to pass a tax on digital advertising. In countries such as the UK, Austria, and Turkey, Google has passed those costs to advertisers. Will it do the same in the US? [00:14:48] Search Results are Being Upgraded at Microsoft Bing The five key Bing features being updated include intuitive highlighting of content, integrated visual search, expandable carousels, infographic-like SERPs, and richer r...
Mar 09, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Craig Campbell visited the EDGE team to share some key understandings around Personal Blog Networks for inbound link building. He also shared his many tips for “website flipping”: finding old domains, making them sparkle and building the value of the site for sale. Entrepreneurship is the name of the game here today on the EDGE. [00:02:35] Is there Black Hat & White Hat SEO anymore? [00:09:26] What are PBNs? [00:14:19] How tough is SEO now? [00:17:43] How does the process of buying websites work...
Mar 05, 2021•34 min•Ep 399•Transcript available on Metacast Mar 02, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Craig Campbell, long time SEO, gives us a deep and dark look into the running of an agency and how it can affect you. There are stresses and challenges there that are not for the faint of heart. Is running a digital agency worth it in the long run, especially if it harms your health? Frank candor is the coin of the realm and Erin and Craig share some common ground on this episode. [00:08:08] How Craig got into the consultancy space [00:12:22] Employees that leave and compete with you [00:14:41] ...
Feb 26, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast [00:03:22] Site Ranking Smackdown: Wix vs WordPress All other things equal, does one website CMS (content management system) platform have an edge over the other when it comes to local search rankings? Google’s John Mueller weighed in on the topic with ideas and tips. [00:16:47] Core Web Vitals Reporting is Changing for the Better Changes in the Google Search Console often cause panic among SEOs and site owners, but the changes being made to Core Web Vitals reporting for LCP, FID, and CLS look l...
Feb 23, 2021•32 min•Ep 396•Transcript available on Metacast Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy, joins the EDGE to talk about Brand SERP Optimization. We cover a host of steps to improve Google’s understanding of your brand. Learn about rich site links, twitter and video card and how topical, relevant content makes its way into the Brand SERPs. This is the modern business card and managing the data brings you more into focus for Google and your customers. You cannot just ignore it. [00:07:45] Why is the Brand SERP so important? [00:10:04] Google is like a ...
Feb 19, 2021•47 min•Ep 395•Transcript available on Metacast [00:03:48] Desktop Users Will Now Have Messaging for Google My Business It was only a matter of time for desktop users to get GMB messaging, and it’s now rolling out, so keep an eye out for messages appearing in your GMB desktop dashboard. [00:10:19] Free Top Product Results Gets Scroll-to-Text Feature on Google Click on a result that has scroll-to-text and Google takes you to the web page and the spot on the page with relevant text is highlighted. This will now be on free top product listings b...
Feb 16, 2021•30 min•Ep 394•Transcript available on Metacast Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy, joins the EDGE to share the concept of the Brand SERP and how it affects our digital visibility. Learn about Jason’s backstory, how he came to be the leading authority with 500 knowledge panel experiments going at this moment. Also find out how he has been in Erin’s head for the last 17 years, without even knowing it. The digital business card is here and you need to learn how to bring it into “focus”. Be sure to listen to the second segment of the show as well...
Feb 10, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast [00:06:00] Google News and Discover Abuses Targeted by New Manual Actions When a site is reviewed by humans for alignment with Google’s webmaster guidelines, a manual action might be the result for violations, and there’s a whole new set of those manual actions. By Barry Schwartz [00:11:02] No Difference by Site Type in Google Core Web Vitals When Google provides a Core Web Vitals score for a site, it does not differ according to the type of site, although Google’s John Mueller understands why i...
Feb 09, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications at SEMRush, digs into the SEMRush World Data Trends of 2020 they published and we discussed the ability to see world-wide social consciousness trends. Want to get a tour through the entire SEMRush platform? We went through the platform with Fernando, and covered the three main layers of the tool. We found out Fernando’s favorites and shared our favorites as well. Get a great take on what SEMRush has in store for the future of the tool as well, on this podc...
Feb 04, 2021•46 min•Ep 391•Transcript available on Metacast [00:03:35] Are Google Local Services Ads Tanking Google Ads Accounts? Google launched local services ads for lawyers in September and many lawyers are seeing steep increases in cost per conversion coupled with big drops in conversions. Those are seriously negative impacts. [00:11:05] How Will Australia React to Google’s Counter-Offer? Google has added a banner to Australian news search results expressing its willingness to pay to support Aussie journalism, essentially making a counter-offer. Wil...
Feb 02, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications at SEMRush, shares his thoughts on the changes that the company had to go through over the course of the last year. We cover the management of 1,000 staff going to remote, the stresses of that change and the opportunities for innovation that it caused. We learn about how businesses reached out to SEMRush for their advice and counsel during the shut down. Throngs of businesses didn’t know where to start in marketing and needed the help of SEMRush. Listen in...
Jan 28, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast [00:03:37] Price Drops Featured in New Google Rich Results Consumers love finding out about price drops, and Google is launching a new rich results feature to highlight product price drops. Online retailers just need to use the right structured data to get in on it. By Roger Montti [00:07:20] Do Contextual Links in Featured Snippets Threaten Click-Through Rates? SEOs are concerned that more links in such a high-visibility search results feature will hurt brands by potentially reducing click-thro...
Jan 26, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Google & Facebook. We unpack each company’s challenges and the concepts of fairness. Isn’t this Big Tech’s platform that they invested in? [00:05:27] The argument FOR business acquisition [00:09:13] The FTC reviews these acquisitions already [00:13:36] Facebook's weakest argument. [00:14:47] What are we upset about? [00:16:13] Google and Antitrust [00:18:16] Google: The Texas Lawsuit [00:21:00] No sympathy for t...
Jan 20, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast [00:03:24] New Community Feedback Feature on Yelp for “Health and Safety Measures” Enough people want to know how safe they’ll be from the pandemic if they visit local businesses that Yelp has added a feedback feature for social masking and social distance compliance. [00:10:52] Google Doesn’t Want to Pay Australian News Company Australia wants an industry code requiring tech giants like Google to pay news publishers. Google’s “experiment” of disappearing Australian news from search is a chillin...
Jan 19, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon). We cover the history of antitrust and how the archaic laws from 1872 cannot apply to the complex technological realm we are in. Sam had great input into the perspective of US and EU comparisons. Dive into this very topical discussion. [00:07:59] History of Antitrust Laws in America [00:11:00] The Differences In Big Tech As Opposed To Other Industries [00:17:52] The...
Jan 16, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast [00:04:43] The Why and How of Going Granular: Beyond Traditional Intent User search intent has increasingly taken center stage for shaping content and SEO, but are the traditional user intent categories up to the task of addressing micro-intentions? Probably not. [00:13:06] Subtopic Rankings Launched by Google in Mid-November What Google is aiming at is to diversify the content surfaced on broad queries based on possible subtopics that may be of interest, although it doesn’t seem to have changed...
Jan 12, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to 2021! Here’s what we covered this week: [00:03:44] Legal Action Against TikTok for Underage Data Violations While TikTok has managed to avoid being banned and continues to grow, a new legal challenge is coming in the UK for how it handles personal data for underage users. Will TikTok continue to squeak by? By Andrew Hutchinson [00:10:14] Does Google’s John Mueller Ever Take a Break? John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, was online engaging the webmaster community on both N...
Jan 05, 2021•50 min•Ep 383•Transcript available on Metacast Last Week of Digital Marketing News for 2020 (3:48) Request Indexing Tool is Now Back in Google Search Console Google’s Request Indexing Tool was first disabled on October 14, it’s finally back, albeit 69 days later and well past the holiday shopping season when people needed it. Better late than never? (6:33) After a Google Algorithm Update, Why do Some Portions of a Site Fluctuate? According to Google’s John Mueller, the algorithms don’t just look at the big picture of a site, but also look at...
Dec 29, 2020•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined on the EDGE by Shay Rowbottom, social media influencer on LinkedIn for a second segment of our interview. We talked about the need for authentic content and the concepts of social media narcissism. There’s a perpetuation of false selves in social media and we need to develop the ability to source personal validation away from social media. The super-spreading of social hate is at an all-time high and it is difficult to challenge the tide. Shay shares her positive thoughts on how we ...
Dec 23, 2020•30 min•Ep 381•Transcript available on Metacast This week's News Roundup: Another Google Search Console Feature Disabled: Issue Validation If you use Issue Validation to tell Google you’ve fixed an issue so they can verify it, the Coverage report is a no-go. New validation requests will not happen until the update is complete. Schema.org Will Now House the Google Structured Data Testing Tool When Google said they would ditch their Structured Data Testing Tool in favor of their newer Rich Results Test Tool, the backlash was so strong they had ...
Dec 22, 2020•27 min•Ep 380•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined again on the EDGE by Shay Rowbottom, social media influencer on LinkedIn. Shay shares with the EDGE listeners key thoughts about the strength of the LinkedIn audience, why there are so different from every other type of social media audience and how to connect with authenticity. We cover a wide range of techniques of engagement but focus singularly on a very important goal in LinkedIn communication: establishing trust. You can’t fake it and you shouldn’t try to. Give a listen to the...
Dec 16, 2020•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mordy Oberstein joins the rag-tag band of EDGE of the Web in our new weekly digital marketing news delivery! Today’s Headlines: (06:53) Biggest Google Core Update of 2020 (15:36) Should Misinformation on Websites Be Penalized by Google? (26:26) This year has seen a doubling of “available near me” compared to last year...
Dec 15, 2020•34 min•Ep 378•Transcript available on Metacast In the second part of our interview with Dixon Jones, we discuss the unique attributes of the InLinks software and how it supports semantic SEO. Dixon discusses the operation of the software for your website in order to associate target topics and provide increased contextual knowledge to search engines.
Dec 04, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dixon Jones rattles off some core concepts of semantic search and what it means to today’s SEO professional. Learn about the history of semantic search, Google’s patent development toward understanding things, not strings. Join us in the first of 2 parts, talking to a leader in the SEO field for over 20 years.
Nov 25, 2020•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
