Transcript:

Matt (00:03):

And we’re live. Welcome to the JEMStones podcast. It’s your host, Matt Lewis joined by Kimmy. Julian is out today. He is doing a site migration and based off of what it looks like on the podcast, it looks like he took the cameras with him. We don’t have cameras today, Kimmy, but we do have art based off of our audio.

Kimmy (00:30):

Mmmmhmm, we are fancy today.

Matt (00:30):

Yeah, we are high class right now. We’re starting new trends in podcasting right here. You saw it here first. Don’t let anybody tell you that Joe Rogan did it before us.

Matt (00:45):

We’ve got a lot to talk about today. The first big thing is we are seeing a bit of an algorithm disturbance, a bit of a, what looks like a search rank algorithm update. It kind of started on November 4th, we are recording this on November 6th, still no clear reason as to what’s happening there, but we are keeping our eye on it. Something that we’re always vigilant about. Speaking about search, it looks like Google, and this evidently came out a couple of weeks ago but it’s just kind of come to my attention over the last few days, is that Google has released a new movie on how search works. I haven’t had a chance to watch it, but Kimmy, you saw this recently too.

Kimmy (01:33):

Yeah, I did see that it came out. I also have not had a chance to watch it, but from what I understand, it’s a pretty helpful, it kind of walks you through how search works from, Google’s standpoint, I guess, helps users to understand, just how things are working behind the scenes. I’d like to take a look at it and kind of dive in to see what points that they touch on. I do think that being that it is really kind of “how-to” descriptive video. It could be a really good resource for our clients, helping them understand how search works and understanding how SEO works and how our services are helping. Obviously, we work with clients within a million different industries and marketing and search marketing is not their forte. So, having something really descriptive that we can share with them, I think could be really helpful. So I’m definitely gonna check that out.

Matt (02:29):

Yeah. I’m, I’m also very excited to see that. So, I think it’ll be an interesting way to visualize search. It’ll be interesting to see how, what they have to say about their own algorithm, the way they understand it versus, the way we do or how they would explain it for the versus versus the way we do. Another big thing Google announced recently was that it is possible for the homepage to outrank deeper pages for keywords on those deeper pages, and as our content specialist, I know you’ve got something to say about that.

Kimmy (03:08):

Yeah, definitely. It’s something that we kind of keep in mind a lot when we’re working on fleshing out our deeper pages and fleshing out that homepage strategy. Something to keep in mind from the beginning as you’re aligning your pages for certain keywords is that, as you’re diving deeper into your site, you want to make sure that each of those keywords is very descriptive to those services or products on those pages, so that your pages are more well aligned with what it is that you do or what it is that you sell. And this is something we always have to be conscious of. Oftentimes our homepage is kind of the page, everybody lands on first, it’s where you want your information to be really informative for those visiting your site but you also don’t want to dilute the information that you have on those deeper pages, and lose some ranking in that. So, just something we’re always keeping in mind and always trying to plan out from the beginning so that we can avoid that issue.

Matt (04:08):

Yeah, absolutely. Alright. So another big topic from the last last couple of weeks is Apple search taking a market share from Google, releasing its own search system. There’s been rumors of this and, Apple bots being spotted for years now. It seems like we all kind of knew this was coming. But especially with what Google is going through with the DOJ, it’s an interesting time for Apple to start releasing some of that information and, start making some of that a little bit more public. Talking a little bit about what you can do to help Apple bots crawl your site. I know you saw this too Kimmy. What are your thoughts on that?

Kimmy (05:06):

I just thought it was kind of interesting that, while we have been seeing this for a while, as you mentioned with, the various bots being spotted, it is interesting to see that this is kind of coming into fruition just at the same time as we are seeing Google and their battle with the DOJ. Obviously that’s going to be kind of an ongoing battle, we don’t expect that to be resolved anytime soon, but it is interesting timing there. I think if they are, going to launch and everything is, obviously working well, it could be a great opportunity for them to take some of that market share away, but I guess only time will tell.

Matt (05:48):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple does it. I know, I’m a big fan of a lot of, I shouldn’t say a lot of, some of the Apple products, Apple maps that can still sit in the folder in my phone because I can’t delete it. But, for the most part, I’ve always been a fan of Apple, It’ll be cool to see what they do, how that affects things and who ends up actually using it. If it automatically goes on your phone or what, how they end up using it, it’ll be really interesting to see. Speaking of other search engines, Bing was having some search index issues last week, looks to be as though those are resolved, but we’re going to have to keep an eye on that. And then of course, search console coverage reports still delayed, waiting on Google on that one folks.

Matt (06:44):

So if you’re waiting, you’re waiting with us. Another big one that came out, I think it was John Mueller said that Google does have difficulty differentiating between B2B and B2C sites. Now this is something you and I deal with on a constant basis, Kimmy, is what are our clients trying to do? Are they trying to sell business to business or business to consumer? Are they trying to sell a product directly to the end user? They’re trying to get it to, into the hands of other businesses? And now content is obviously going to be a big part of that. Google is saying that it has a hard time determining that, but I think you and I both know, that’s kind of comes down to more of a search intent. When you’re going after keywords, you’re looking at the search intent rather than the keyword itself. It might, there might be some crossover and things like that, but for the most part you’re looking for when we’re doing keyword research or we’re doing content research, and we’re looking at that from a search intent perspective. Any thoughts on that?

Kimmy (07:52):

Yeah, just like you said, it can be hard for them to differentiate, but we’re always, when we’re building out our strategies, looking for ways to find that searcher intent. And especially with our products, the people who are selling products or services, you really want to make sure that, what is that searcher looking for? Or are they actually just searching more of an informational term, and is that term really gonna help us get the type of people we’re looking for to our site? So, that’s something we’re always thinking about when we’re planning out our content is how we can make it more obvious to Google bots, to our visitors, to our site, what our intention is and what our goals are as a business and for our clients as well.

Matt (08:43):

Yeah, absolutely. So another big thing, that we’re, I think you and I are both excited about, and I’m going to give all of our listeners a little behind the scenes on how the podcast works. We have a bunch of topics, and then we have notes about those topics that we want to talk about. And I think your note on this topic pretty much says it all. Google my business has a progress status for reinstatement requests. And your comment, if you would,

Kimmy (09:13):

“It seems like it should have been a feature all along”

Matt (09:16):

It just seems like it should have been a feature all along you are, right?

Kimmy (09:20):

Yeah. I mean, that seems like a very simple feature to have to tell you the progress of what’s going on. Especially as an agency, when you’re dealing with hundreds of Google my business, it could be hard to track. What is the progress? When is the last time this was addressed or even looked at? So, it is nice to see that feature, It’s just shocking that it’s taken so long.

Matt (09:46):

Yeah. Who knows with their internal system how that would have worked. But yeah, it is good to see it is out, it is surprising that it took this long, even if it were email updates, I would absolutely have adored email updates, especially over the last year or so where we’ve been dealing with a lot of GMB changes for a lot of our clients would have been nice.

Kimmy (10:12):

Yeah. And lots of longer waiting times when things were getting changed around, lots of people changing their hours and everything during the beginning of the pandemic. And a lot of those changes weren’t getting made, so updates are great.

Matt (10:28):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s nice to see. Another quick thing, just a point that I have to make. There was recently a poll on Twitter and the question asked how many paid tools do you use? As an agency, we use a lot of paid tools. I would imagine that a lot of the people that doing this were freelance SEO or something, because they have time to go on Twitter and answer polls. But the majority of SEOs said that they spend less than $13,000 a year on tools. And they use between two and four paid tools, the majority of them some use even less. I ran through the comments because I was so confused by this, again, working in an agency where we have a ton of clients and therefore have to rely on tools like ranking tools and things like that.

Matt (11:26):

And it looked like a lot of them were saying that they build their own tools. My only question to you is if you’re building a tool, you’re not doing SEO, so what are you really ? Are you building tools or are you doing SEO? Just my 2 cents there. Speaking of SEOs being quizzed, it looks like, again, we’re November six, who SEOs voted for, this was a rusty brick over at SEO round table, asked this. It looks like it was much easier to count those votes, Kimmy what’d you see there?

Kimmy (12:11):

Yeah. It seems like they were able to actually get that pole count in, which is great. What I thought was interesting about it was just to see the kind of the way that people are voting within a smaller demographic of people. Seeing how people think within a smaller group versus a nationwide kind of poll is definitely, really interesting to see. I know that obviously this election has been very split and it didn’t seem to appear that way in that niche group. So it’d be interesting to take that and do it on kind of a, a bigger scale and see different industries and how that kind of plays out.

Matt (12:54):

Yeah. And that is, that poll is part of an article over at SEO round table. Feel free to go check that out if you’d like, Again, I guess that’s all I’ve got. Do you have anything else Kimmy?

Kimmy (13:08):

I don’t think so. Not, not at this moment.

Kimmy (13:12):

All right. Well, for the JEMStones team, I’m your host, Matt Lewis. Thanks so much for listening.

Kimmy (13:18):

Have a great day. Thanks for joining us.