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

In this week’s news roundup, Erin Sparks and Mordy Oberstein talk about Clubhouse’s partnership with TED, Google’s Pandu Nayak’s roadmap for MUM and a few important perspectives that Google’s John Mueller recently shared. [00:04:10] Clubhouse partners with TED to bring more thought leadership to the platform [00:09:04] The roadmap for MUM [00:19:26] Why some sites rank for unusual keywords [00:27:13] Sometimes SEO isn’t the answer

14 Jul 202134min

Garrett Sussman, Demand Generation Manager at iPullRank, talks to us about his experience in developing tools to help connect agencies to clients and helps us understand the factors of that success. We also discuss the pitfalls of an Agency/Client relationship and when it is best to walk away. Learning the “Love Language” of your client is always the most important aspect.  Listen to Segment 1 of our 2 part interview with Garrett on the EDGE. [00:03:43] 100 podcast episodes in a year!  How did Garrett stay sane through that? [00:06:00] Garrett’s history - coming from teaching to the start-up culture. [00:09:14] Hiring internal SEOs.  The challenges of the industry [00:11:12] The evolving nature of the target: Google.  A completely different paradigm. [00:13:58] Supplementing your in-house with agency talent [00:18:24] Experience matters in the Agency/Client relationship.  Broken trust is the major pitfall [00:23:14] What are the key breakdowns inside of the agency, client relationship?

13 Jul 202129min

On this week’s roundup of News from the EDGE, Erin Sparks and Mordy Oberstein discuss Core Updates, recent opinions from Google’s John Mueller and the future of SEO work.   [00:05:39] Google’s July Core Update is rolling out, following a flurry of prior updates throughout June [00:14:57] How long does Mueller think SEO takes for new pages? Loaded question, and “it depends” [00:22:23] Mueller doesn’t foresee SEO becoming obsolete, but thinks the day-to-day executions will evolve

7 Jul 202131min

We went through the Bill Slawski-looking glass in this second part of our interview with the Gandalf of SEO. SEO strategy starts with knowledge of the entity you are wanting to market for as well as understanding the gaps that can be exploited.  Bill provides a continued history of the entity-understanding journey Google is on, with the recent additions of BERT and Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) rollout.  [00:03:29] Patent author sleuthing [00:05:44] Understanding BERT.  It’s been around longer than you think. [00:07:58] “You should know a word by the company it keeps” [00:09:49] Understanding Intent [00:10:38] 40% of our language has multiple meetings. [00:11:33] Example of Google’s MUM in the Wild [00:12:39] Format of content might be an indicator of entity types [00:16:42] A Search Engine’s Job: They're filling either the informational or situational needs of a searcher.

6 Jul 202130min

While Erin’s away, Mordy Oberstein and Carolyn Lyden take the mic and cover four new developments in the Google ecosystem. We cover Fake News sites, journalist bios, FAQs in snippets and, drum roll, the Core Web Vitals algorithm update! [00:05:44] Study asserts a ton of Google’s ad traffic is coming from fake news sites [00:12:14] Google wants to bridge the gap between content and writer [00:17:44] We’re going to start seeing fewer FAQ drop downs in snippets [00:21:31] The Page Experience (Core Web Vitals) update is rolling out now!

22 Jun 202134min

We speak with one of our favorite minds in search today, Bill Slawski of Go Fish Digital. Bill studies patents the way a librarian studies books. In this interview, we muse about the direction Google is heading and discuss the next evolution of understanding entity relationships. [00:03:59] When Bill got started in patent sleuthing [00:07:27] Tracking the authors of the patents, like authors of good books [00:13:40] Tying it all together: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” [00:19:20] Tying entities into search can be easier than SEO [00:22:57] The weight and impact of taxonomies and ontologies  [00:26:36] The language models that Google is building now [00:28:36] Latent Semantic Indexing is a misnomer

22 Jun 202133min

Mordy Oberstein, George Nguyen and Jacob Mann host this week’s episode of News From The Edge. They wrestle the mic away from Erin Sparks to talk about Google’s stance on comparing ranking factors, explain creating Web Stories, and cover how Google is demoting libelous content. [00:03:17] Google says to not compare the importance of different ranking factors [00:10:01] Web Stories are here and it’s time to start making your own [00:19:54] Google’s demoting libelous content in an effort to surface higher quality content

15 Jun 202135min

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Mark Traphagan about metrics that should be more important than rank. We also touch on whether Google even wants to give us clicks anymore, and how we might be wasting time even talking about them as much as we do in SEO. [00:04:44] What are some other metrics that should be more important than just rank? [00:11:25] It’s not about rank, at some point it’s a brand marketing position. [00:14:03] Does Google even want to give you a click?  [00:15:02] We can waste a lot of time complaining about changes from Google...Google’s taking with one hand, giving with another. [00:21:40] Over 1200 SERP features on Google [00:25:50] Google’s goal

14 Jun 202136min