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

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...

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 c...

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] K...

[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 highlight...

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] W...

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]...

[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 a...

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. ...

[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 t...

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...

[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 s...

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...

[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...

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.  Th...

[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 link...

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...

[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...

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...

[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 q...

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? Joh...

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...

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...

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 Da...

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...