[00:00:00] Ray Grieselhuber: ​

[00:00:05] We always say good SEO is good product management. And good product management is good SEO. 

[00:00:10] And what that means is that every single aspect of the way you build your website.

[00:00:14] How you position your products to your customers. Your user experience. Your graphic design. 

[00:00:19] All of that really falls under, from our view, the category of, SEO. And I think Google has long been pushing that message as well.

[00:00:27] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, the podcast dedicated to empathy driven brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:44] Let's jump into another great episode.

Introduction and Guest Introduction

[00:00:46] Crystal Waddell: Welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO Show. I am super excited to be here today with our special guest. 

[00:00:54] Ray Grieselhuber.

[00:00:56] I met Ray at the Brighton SEO conference. 

[00:01:00] And when I say met, I saw him at the Brighton SEO conference. 

[00:01:04] In San Diego. 

[00:01:05] And as soon as I heard him talk, I was like, you know what? 

[00:01:07] This is a man that we need to have on the podcast. 

[00:01:09] So Ray, thank you for being here today. 

[00:01:11] How are you? 

[00:01:12] Ray Grieselhuber: I'm good.

[00:01:13] I'm good. how are you doing?

[00:01:14] I'm 

[00:01:14] Crystal Waddell: good.

Guest's Personal Background and Journey

[00:01:15] Crystal Waddell: And now you're back in the Midwest.

[00:01:16] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah, in terms of personal, I grew up in the Midwest and Columbus, Ohio. 

[00:01:19] And, after college, my wife and I wanted to move out to San Diego. 

[00:01:23] Basically to get away from the winters. And we spent about 5 years there. 

[00:01:27] To Japan after that. 

[00:01:29] And then, did some backpacking, came back, had a couple of kids. 

[00:01:32] Well, 1st kid. And then moved back to Japan.

[00:01:34] I started my company there and then moved back to the San Francisco Bay area after that for about 7 years. 

[00:01:40] And then, in 2017, we moved back to Ohio. 

[00:01:43] Just to have more room. 

[00:01:44] Kids are getting bigger, wanted to spread out a little bit. 

Introduction to Guest's Company and Its Focus

[00:01:46] Ray Grieselhuber: And then, my company is a company called demands here and, we're an SEO platform.

[00:01:50] we. Focus on data and analytics primarily for eCommerce companies. 

[00:01:55] Programmatic SEO teams. 

[00:01:57] And what that means generally, it's basically any sort of. Website that's backed by a database.

[00:02:01] Like travel websites, real estate, job search, that sort of thing. 

[00:02:04] You typically have a lot of different types of content.

[00:02:07] And keywords that you're trying to perform well for. 

[00:02:10] And, they tend to be very complicated things to manage. 

[00:02:12] And so our software helps you get a handle on that. Especially with the monitoring and prioritization side of things. 

[00:02:18] Crystal Waddell: It's so interesting. 

Understanding E-commerce Beyond Traditional Perception

[00:02:19] Crystal Waddell: When I hear that term e commerce.

[00:02:20] I always think of Shopify. 

[00:02:22] And I just think of, products that people are selling, direct to consumer.

[00:02:26] But.

[00:02:27] You just mentioned a bunch of different industries that are actually e commerce. 

[00:02:31] Even though I wouldn't have thought of them that way. 

[00:02:33] Ray Grieselhuber: Well, I always think back to that Wired article from 20 years ago. 

[00:02:37] When they were talking about how B2B e commerce is actually going to be far larger than retail e commerce.

[00:02:43] And I would say 100 percent that's true.

[00:02:45] And so now we're looking at, SaaS as a category of B2B e commerce. 

[00:02:49] And also all of the online, think of like business insurance. 

[00:02:53] Any sort of business service that you can purchase online. 

[00:02:56] All your supply chains. 

[00:02:57] So it's a very broad category. 

[00:03:00] Crystal Waddell: Wow. Cool. Okay. 

[00:03:02] So I don't want anybody to be scared right now because we're using a lot of big words and big terms. 

[00:03:07] And we are the simple and smart SEO show. 

[00:03:08] We're gonna we're gonna break some of this down.

[00:03:10] For those of us who are like, well, SAAS, what are these things? 

The Importance of SEO in E-commerce

[00:03:13] Crystal Waddell: But I do think it's so important to establish what an authority Ray is in this industry. 

[00:03:19] And it's just going to be just a treat for all of us to get to learn some of these things.

Discussion on 'Product Led SEO' by Eli Schwartz

[00:03:23] Crystal Waddell: But one thing I wanted to talk to you, first about. I didn't tell you this. 

[00:03:26] That book, product led SEO by Eli Schwartz. 

[00:03:30] Wow. You recommended it at the conference. 

[00:03:34] And so I decided to read it. 

[00:03:35] Why did you recommend it? 

[00:03:37] Ray Grieselhuber: I think Eli has always had a really good perspective on things.

[00:03:41] I first met him when he was at SurveyMonkey. 

[00:03:43] Way back in the day. And, I was just getting started with my company. 

[00:03:47] And he gave me a lot of really good feedback. 

[00:03:49] I come from an engineering background. 

[00:03:51] And I was showing him what I had and obviously wanted to impress him. 

[00:03:55] And he just shared with me the way he looked at things.

[00:03:57] And, I think the big, impression that I had from him at that point was, he really cared about matching what the product you're building is really to the needs of users. 

[00:04:08] Versus simply thinking about it in terms of like, how much money can I make? 

[00:04:11] Or what kind of like the more short term transactional goals. 

[00:04:14] And that always stuck with me. 

[00:04:16] And as we developed further, we naturally realized that the companies that we were working with that were the most successful in e commerce. 

[00:04:23] Were those companies that very tightly integrated SEO into their product management capabilities. 

[00:04:30] A lot of companies, large and small. We see it all over the place. 

[00:04:33] View SEO as that free traffic you get from Google. 

[00:04:37] If you spend a little time on it and maybe hire a couple of consultants. 

[00:04:40] And really it just doesn't work that way. The companies that we've seen get to the point where they're category leaders. 

[00:04:46] They treat SEO as the core part of their business. 

[00:04:49] We always say good SEO is good product management and good product management is good SEO. 

[00:04:55] And what that means is that. 

The Importance of User Experience in SEO

[00:04:56] Ray Grieselhuber: Every single aspect of the way you build your website.

[00:04:59] How you position your products to your customers. Your user experience. Your graphic design. 

[00:05:04] All of that really falls under. From our view, the category of, SEO. 

[00:05:09] And I think Google has long been pushing that message as well.

[00:05:12] it's all about. What type of experience are searchers going to come when they come to your website? 

[00:05:17] Are they going to see content that is authoritative. Backed by actual experience? 

[00:05:21] Is it easy to interact with? All of these things really matter. 

[00:05:24] And I think Google, that's one of the areas where Google has been doing a great job. Helping website owners to understand the importance of all of that.

The Host's Personal Experience with SEO

[00:05:32] Crystal Waddell: it's interesting because I came from a teaching background. I was actually a PE teacher. I was a special needs PE teacher. 

[00:05:38] And I used to coach high school volleyball as a varsity volleyball coach for a few years as well. 

[00:05:42] And so coming into this industry. at first the SEO advice that I ran into was very transactional, like very, we'll give you this for this.

[00:05:53] And, I was trying to understand how that worked because, I have a Shopify site. 

[00:05:57] And I'm thinking, that doesn't really make sense for my business, or I'm not sure how I could measure that success. 

[00:06:02] And I know that there's a place for certain things. But I was really taken aback by the transactional nature of the business.

[00:06:10] And so as I started to research more and more, there was just some things that didn't align with how I approached SEO for my own business. 

[00:06:20] And reading this book, it was just so comforting. 

[00:06:23] And I was like, I'm not a crazy person! 

[00:06:25] My main Products that I make, this is just an example.

[00:06:29] This is an old one. I made this for my son when he was four.

[00:06:32] I started selling on Etsy like in 2013. but my product is very personal, and I interact a lot with my client. I, I'm always thinking about them, always thinking about the user experience, always thinking about, how hard is it for them actually to finish the sale?

[00:06:46] how do they feel after they purchase all of those types of things. 

The Interconnection of SEO and UX Design

[00:06:49] Crystal Waddell: So when I heard SEO. 

[00:06:51] And then I discovered UX design. I was like, to me, SEO and UX are just so intertwined. They can't ignore each other. 

[00:07:00] Ray Grieselhuber: Totally. Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's very hard to convince people of that mindset if they don't already have it.

[00:07:07] It does seem to be this like intuitive. You either get it or you don't. I think we're fortunate in the fact that a lot more people, Who do get it are becoming attracted to our industry. 

[00:07:16] So we're seeing a lot more of it. Even five years ago, it was not like that, in, in many places, not all places have been many places.

[00:07:21] It was just all about, what can you do for me in the next quarter or two? 

[00:07:24] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Okay. 

The Evolution of Rank Tracking

[00:07:25] Crystal Waddell: one other thing that you said at the conference. 

[00:07:29] You said that the days of traditional rank tracking are over. 

[00:07:35] Do you remember talking about that? what do you mean by that? 

[00:07:37] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah, that's the core part of our belief as well.

[00:07:39] And it actually does go back to this product led SEO idea. 

[00:07:42] Which is, if you look at the search engine results page or the search, as it's commonly shortened.

[00:07:48] What Google is presenting to you as a searcher is a ton of options and lots of different things that you can do. 

[00:07:55] And, the old days, it used to be about, are you ranking number 1?

[00:07:59] Are you ranking number 2? 

[00:08:00] Are you in the top 3? 

[00:08:01] And that sort of thing. 

[00:08:02] I don't want to say that those things don't matter anymore. Because they do matter. 

[00:08:06] Really, in most cases, you have to be ranking in the top 3 to really get any sort of traffic. 

[00:08:11] But it's still like just the bare minimum amount of information that you need to know. 

[00:08:15] From what the SERP can really tell you. 

[00:08:16] Because that top three position may not even be visible to the user when they first go to search on something.

[00:08:23] could be below what we call the fold. Where that first scroll.

[00:08:27] Because Google may have a bunch of ads on top of that, they may have a bunch of different features that they've built for the searcher themselves. 

[00:08:33] Rich snippets and everything else.

[00:08:35] And so. 

[00:08:35] All of that information is a very important set of clues. 

[00:08:39] That the user is interacting with before they even come to your website. And so as a website owner, why would you not want to understand those factors that are influencing your customer behavior before they even see your site? 

[00:08:52] And so that's where traditional rank tracking just focuses on, oh, okay, what's my rank, and is it going up or down?

[00:08:59] At the end of the day, that's what it is, there's trends and everything else, but that's basically what it comes down to. 

[00:09:03] And our argument is that. Yeah, sure. You need that, but you need to go beyond that.

[00:09:07] To understand the shape of the surf, what the user is seeing. 

[00:09:10] Understand all the different factors that are influencing your decision where else they may be going.

[00:09:13] And it may not even be a competitor website.

[00:09:15] and so that one of the core things that we offer as a company is we offer a lot of data and insights into understanding that. 

[00:09:22] Crystal Waddell: And so why is that crucial for and how does that interact with a successful SEO strategy?

[00:09:28] Is there anything you can do to mitigate if you're showing up high? 

[00:09:32] But yet not even making it to the top of the search engine results page? 

[00:09:36] Because of all the other stuff Google's offering now.

[00:09:38] Ray Grieselhuber: Absolutely. one of the nice things about the things that Google is offering is that there are places for website owners to show up in those other types of results. so you've got different types of rich snippets. You've got, Things like people also asked, which your website may be used for that.

[00:09:54] there's, shopping results. There's all sorts of results that as a website owner, you can be included in.

[00:09:59] that aren't a traditional rank. And so you really need to have a handle on what that looks like. And are you there? Are you not there? Is your competitor there? do you even know what's there?

[00:10:09] Like, all of these things are really important for people to understand. 

[00:10:11] Because. In the case of some of these richer features, if they live above the traditional organic rankings. That may be all a searcher ever sees. 

[00:10:19] They may not even know about the rankings below the scroll. and so that, it's very important to be present there as much as possible.

[00:10:25] And we haven't even started talking about what Google is going to be doing with their SGE. 

[00:10:30] Or their search generative experience, their AI stuff, right? That's going to further solidify the need to understand what that looks like.

[00:10:37] because there's going to be a whole new set of results that show up above all of the other results.

[00:10:42] That are generated by Google's a I,capabilities. 

[00:10:45] Crystal Waddell: Okay. So I do want to follow up with you on that in just a minute. 

[00:10:48] But I want to give,a specific example of how, my website has actually done a couple of those things. 

[00:10:54] And we've talked about it here on the show. 

[00:10:56] And you can correct me if I'm wrong because I, no genius here. 

[00:10:59] But some of the things that I've done is, naming my images based on what people are searching for, and utilizing like offsite Strategies like Pinterest.

[00:11:08] I was just talking about that today, like the power of unbranded search.

[00:11:11] So a lot of times because I'm e commerce and selling a product, the shopping results will show up at the top of the page. 

[00:11:18] And so I've been fortunate that my Shopify store product shows up there. my Amazon store product, shows up there.

[00:11:26] And then my Etsy store products show up there, which is great.

[00:11:30] So we're covered. 

[00:11:32] And then Etsy is running ads on my behalf, it was like, yay. 

[00:11:34] So I'm showing up in the ads. Showing up in the shopping results. 

[00:11:37] And then the images. 

[00:11:39] Like in the image results. 

[00:11:41] We also show up there, for the different products that we've made over the years. And it's just, it's been a happy accident that those things happen and they actually happened before I knew anything about SEO.

[00:11:53] But it was just because I was talking about the product that we create. 

[00:11:57] And it aligned with what the person was searching for. 

[00:12:00] And so therefore, even though we may be like say number five in organic search results. 

[00:12:05] We're still showing up in multiple places in those image 

[00:12:09] Ray Grieselhuber: results. 

[00:12:10] Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:12:11] Being able to Capture that and understand that. And then, for you, how many products do you sell on? 

[00:12:16] Is there like a variation or the variations on 1 major product? 

[00:12:19] Crystal Waddell: There's probably about, I think, 6 or 7 collections of products. 

[00:12:23] Wooden products, numbers, letters, marquee numbers and letters, collages. 

[00:12:28] Ray Grieselhuber: And we do see that too, where some e commerce companies have a smaller number of products. 

[00:12:33] and then others are like millions, And Think about those are some of the problems that we get pulled into sometimes. 

[00:12:38] Where you do have hundreds of thousands or millions of different products selling. 

[00:12:42] How do you really understand all the different possibilities that can appear on the search results? At that scale without turning that into data. 

[00:12:50] And so that's We see that as a very important thing to really monitor. Awesome. Okay. So 

Understanding Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE)

[00:12:54] Crystal Waddell: let's talk about SGE. 

[00:12:56] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah. What is this? Probably a lot of people have played with it.

[00:13:00] Probably even more people have played with chat GPT by this point, but.

[00:13:03] Google was very early on and AI obviously in a lot of different ways, but, I think everyone was a little bit taken off guard by how, Chat GPT really took things to another level. 

[00:13:16] With the way that you could interact with language models and AI, and it's been very interesting.

[00:13:20] So I think Google was like, we need to have something here ASAP because, they want to continue to maintain their position, in the market and everything. 

[00:13:28] And so they rushed it out, but then they've been refining it since then. 

[00:13:31] But basically what I think of it as anyway, is they put a chat widget at the top of their search results page and it does different things.

[00:13:40] You have to be logged in order to see it. And you have to be. In a, a Chrome browser. 

[00:13:44] Basically, it's that thing that will show up, sometimes it auto expands, sometimes it does not. and so that's going to be 1 important factor, I think, for website owners on whether it does or not. 

[00:13:53] And then basically, the type of content that they put in there really depends on, what you're searching for. sometimes they'll try to replicate almost like an eCommerce storefront.

[00:14:03] With a lot of different, almost like shopping type results showing up there.

[00:14:06] sometimes it'll just be their own little, content marketing attempts. 

[00:14:09] Where they're generating content to answer a question. so we can talk more about, search intent and stuff. But, that, I think that's a big factor there.

[00:14:16] but basically they're experimenting. It's still experimental. 

[00:14:20] But they're experimenting with this idea of how can their AI more accurately anticipate what somebody is really looking for? And just give that to them. Versus trying to get them to scroll through a bunch of different results and figure it out for themselves.

[00:14:33] Crystal Waddell: I was an early adopter of Jasper. So I love, utilizing Jasper, especially for meta descriptions and Shopify. 

[00:14:38] I was like. Where have you been all my life? but then when they came out with the chat function after chat GPT launch, I did not like it at first, like I, I had my ways of doing things.

[00:14:48] So then when it came time to like actually utilize the chat. 

[00:14:51] I was hesitant, but now I chat with Jasper, like he's my friend, and ask him different questions. So I almost think that those who came in on the chat GPT side. 

[00:15:02] They're going to really. embrace this S. G. E. upgrade or whatever you want to call it that Google's giving us.

[00:15:08] But I've noticed there's two times, two different things that showed up for me. 

[00:15:12] Once. It showed up as, like a big square at the top with a bunch of summarized information. 

[00:15:19] And then another time it said, do you want to have, like that summarized information?

[00:15:24] Along with what you talked about with the shopping.

The Impact of SGE on Businesses

[00:15:27] Crystal Waddell: How can businesses, still get somebody to come to their website? 

[00:15:31] When that's popping up at the top? 

[00:15:33] Ray Grieselhuber: That is the question. That everyone has right now, so it's still early. Google is still, it's still in an experimental phase. So we don't really know yet what the end result is going to be.

[00:15:42] I think that what everyone is looking at right now is basically.

[00:15:47] there is still a connection between ranking. on the SERP and showing up in those results. 

[00:15:52] And so people that tend to rank higher will usually have at least 1 or 2 mentions in that generated thing.

[00:15:59] From that perspective, the basics of traditional SEO, especially with, we can talk about and so forth.

[00:16:04] That definitely has an impact. 

[00:16:06] And will continue to. 

[00:16:07] We're also, and this is a pretty hot topic at Brighton. was this idea of, digital PR kind of going beyond the idea of traditional link building. 

[00:16:15] Backlinks, they do matter, of course, but, there's a lot of talk around this idea of, maybe even more than a direct backlink, it's more important to have your brand name mentioned. 

[00:16:26] In any type of different conversation because.

The Shift from Keyword-based to Semantic-based Search

[00:16:29] Ray Grieselhuber: The big shift that Google is probably making here is, and Mike King talked about this, and it's a really good keynote. he talked about the shift in search from, the traditional kind of keyword based search to more of the semantic based search. and what that means, basically, is going from just looking at the text to looking at the meaning of the word and the context of the word.

[00:16:48] And so Google, as they're continuing to upgrade their systems, they're looking at building ranking models around the context of the text. 

[00:16:57] And they've been doing this for a long time, of course. 

[00:16:59] But I think it's continuing to accelerate. 

[00:17:00] And From that perspective, the actual context of the text that they're indexing on the web will, potentially be even more impactful than a direct link. 

[00:17:10] Assuming all the right conditions are in place. 

[00:17:12] And so, I think that's a major selling point behind the digital PR pitch, and. 

[00:17:17] You know. It's early again, I would say. 

[00:17:20] But we're starting to see people move in that direction, so that'll be one of the things to watch for. 

[00:17:24] Crystal Waddell: Yeah.

Understanding E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in SEO

[00:17:25] Crystal Waddell: So you mentioned EEAT. Yep. Could you give us a definition for that acronym? 

[00:17:31] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah, basically it, it goes back to, authenticity.

[00:17:34] And so there, I'll just read here 'cause already Google, but basically it comes down to, They're, do you have direct experience with it? so it's experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. 

[00:17:44] And so experience is really the most important thing. I think the way Google is looking at it and the way they're starting to reward, everything. 

[00:17:51] Because, with going back to what you said about Jasper. 

[00:17:54] AI content generation is a thing and we've already had like a.

[00:17:58] A prototype version of that was like, outsourced offshore content creation at scale with all the different content farms. 

[00:18:04] And so what Google really wants to know to the degree possible is. 

[00:18:08] Does the person who's writing about this topic actually have direct experience with this thing? Or are they just.

[00:18:13] Are they just some sort of content farm? 

The Importance of Authenticity in Content Creation

[00:18:14] Ray Grieselhuber: and so that's, that is going to be a human experience is definitely going to be a big differentiator between AI generated content and human content. 

[00:18:22] That being said, I've already seen websites that are completely AI generated top to bottom, including graphics. 

[00:18:30] And what they're doing now is starting to put in things like, hi, my name is Layla or my name is Bob.

[00:18:36] And I have this experience. 

[00:18:38] So you can tell that they're already like trying to 

[00:18:39] Crystal Waddell: and that was going to be my question. It's okay.

[00:18:42] If they Google wants experience, but how do they know, what is it that checks the box for experience? 

[00:18:48] Ray Grieselhuber: Exactly. And so that's why I think they look at more than just experience.

[00:18:52] So expertise is one that is pretty hard to fake. 

[00:18:56] This is one of the problems that I have. There's a lot of content that I want to write on LinkedIn. 

[00:19:00] Or on our blog and so forth. And I get pitches all the time for, Hey, we can write your content for you.

[00:19:06] We've got this AI tool and everything. It's I don't as much as I would love to be able to scale myself that way. I haven't bitten off on that. 

[00:19:13] Because I'm not convinced that someone can talk about the topic the same way that I can. And that's expertise. 

[00:19:19] I know that there are certain things that I'm good at.

[00:19:21] And I can lend authority to that and authority, which is the next letter in the acronym comes out of that expertise. You have that capability and people understand this is a very human thing. 

[00:19:31] We can just tell right away if someone is. so that's another one. 

[00:19:34] And that obviously feeds into the next one. 

[00:19:35] Which is trustworthiness, which is, does this person or do this website have a track record of delivering reliable information?

[00:19:41] There's different sides of the concept of misinformation and disinformation out there right now on the Internet. 

[00:19:47] And different parties involved in creating different types of content. 

[00:19:50] And so, over time. 

[00:19:51] Both Google and searchers are always maintaining this, Record of whether or not a given person or a given website is trustworthy.

[00:19:59] And so how Google actually evaluates all of that. it's not always clear to us on the outside. 

[00:20:05] But, I think that they've probably developed some pretty interesting technology to address that. 

[00:20:09] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And I know when you were speaking, I remember there was that point where you were talking about something and you're like.

[00:20:15] It might get a little nerdy here. 

[00:20:17] And I remember that was the moment where you got my attention because I was like, that's what I came for. like I want to hear the nitty gritty details of how this stuff works. 

[00:20:26] So I appreciate that so much. And I also appreciate the fact that you recognized, Hey, look.

[00:20:32] Someone else doing, someone else speaking about something that I do is not going to give people the same level of, same expert level opinion that I can do myself. 

[00:20:44] And so I really appreciate that you said that.

[00:20:46] because I've worked with some clients and again, I'm new to SEO of the last couple of years. 

[00:20:51] And, they just want to hand it off to me.

[00:20:54] Like you just take care of it. You're the expert. And I'm like, no, actually I'm the SEO. You're the expert. 

[00:21:01] And so that's a tough conversation to have because, I think some business owners, especially small business owners, they think, oh, I'm going to hand off this project to you. 

[00:21:09] Where it's more of no, this is a partnership where I'm going to really showcase So, I love that you have that approach.

[00:21:17] Ray Grieselhuber: it's, it is one of the hardest things to convey. I'm not surprised that you run into that too. 

[00:21:20] And actually going back to Eli, he had a really good quote about this a couple months ago where he said, the difference between paying for traffic via advertising versus and building long term organic traffic via SEO.

[00:21:33] Is basically the difference between renting a house and owning a house. 

[00:21:36] You're when you're renting a house or when you're renting traffic through some ad network, you are able to do that. 

[00:21:42] You can just say, you go get me that traffic and I don't want to deal with it. you're when you're owning something and suddenly you're the one who has to wake up and fix the furnace at 3 a. m. because you're building that equity and you have to do a lot more and comes down to what you want over the long term. 

[00:21:57] The trade off is that you get assets out of the deal by investing in that equity. 

[00:22:01] And I think that's a very powerful analogy that he had, for people. Yeah, 

The Concept of Digital Assets

[00:22:05] Crystal Waddell: that idea of digital assets was another kind of term that I took away from the conference that I never thought about it.

[00:22:12] quite like that. And for what I do, my, my main client is senior moms and I just love to celebrate moms. like it's a big thing that I feel like,because my mother left when I was a baby. So I always had this soft spot for, Okay. mother child relationships. 

The Impact of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in College Athletics

[00:22:27] Crystal Waddell: And I just always want to celebrate a mom that I see.

[00:22:30] And I'm like, you're doing a great job. and I also have friends who are moms who have athletes who are going to college. 

[00:22:35] And I'm excited because our next venture for my website, collage and wood dot com. Is to interview people about the NIL Situation in college athletics. 

[00:22:49] So 

[00:22:50] Ray Grieselhuber: that's what it 

[00:22:52] Crystal Waddell: stands for.

[00:22:52] Name, image and likeness and how the college athletes are getting paid now. 

[00:22:57] Yeah, but it is big business, and there's actually coordinators at the universities. There's third party integrations. it's just, it's really getting messy, I think. And. And. 

[00:23:09] Ray Grieselhuber: I didn't know that was legal.

[00:23:10] Even 

[00:23:10] Crystal Waddell: that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It just happened a couple of years ago. 

[00:23:13] So I started writing about it when it first was, overturned by the NCAA that athletes could get paid. 

[00:23:20] But now it's no, let's, we need to get on the inside of this. So parents and kids can know what to expect and how to navigate it. 

[00:23:27] and some of these college athletes, they're posting videos on their Instagram with their Teslas.

[00:23:33] That just got wrapped in vinyl. it is insane. Crazy. Yeah, super insane. 

[00:23:38] Ray Grieselhuber: So it's good to know. I've got one athlete that could potentially be at that point down the road. 

[00:23:43] Crystal Waddell: So yeah, see, you're my target. Yeah. 

[00:23:47] So it's not just moms. It's great dads too. 

[00:23:49] Yeah. but my point is, those are the ways that I'm excited that I've learned that I can connect with my people. 

[00:23:55] My, my clients that are going to buy from me because there are points along their journey where I can Still serve them or they can come back and find out information.

[00:24:03] And so that I, this all comes back to that, idea of a digital asset. like I really wanna create some linkable assets, that are statistical in nature. is that right? Statistical ? I don't know if that's the correct term. 

The Potential of NFTs in NIL

[00:24:16] Ray Grieselhuber: my question around that is, is there like an NFT angle to this?

[00:24:20] Has that become a conversation? 

[00:24:22] Crystal Waddell: And that's a good question. I'll definitely put it in the conversation to the guys that I'll be talking to. I'm sure there is, if it's financial, it's all up for grabs. yeah, crazy stuff. 

[00:24:33] Ray Grieselhuber: I didn't know that. that's good to know. 

[00:24:34] I had no idea. 

Discussing the Impact of Sports on Schools

[00:24:36] Ray Grieselhuber: That's, it's encouraging to see that because the schools, they make so much money off of all the sports and you want the kids and families to be able to benefit from that too.

[00:24:44] Obviously, there's like a whole new set of incentives probably that come along with that, but 

[00:24:48] Crystal Waddell: yeah, and problems and challenges and when it's like everything, there's good and bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. okay. 

Transition to Search Engine Results

[00:24:54] Crystal Waddell: So when we're talking about like those things in the search engine results pages,being volatile or whatever, not being seen. 

[00:25:02] How can small business owners effectively monitor that without the resources of a larger company?

[00:25:09] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah. 

Introduction to Google Search Console

[00:25:09] Ray Grieselhuber: so I would definitely start with Google search console. they keep adding more and more tools and that's a free tool that's available to any website, owner. Okay. 

Benefits of Google Search Console

[00:25:17] Ray Grieselhuber: and all the resources that they put on, their documentation or search console.

[00:25:22] they've got, they've done a really good job.

[00:25:24] I think with that, they don't. They don't their data doesn't necessarily show you all of the things that. You should be monitoring. 

[00:25:30] But it'll give you a really good baseline and shows you all the data about, the different keywords that are driving traffic and so forth. 

Exploring Other SEO Tools

[00:25:36] Ray Grieselhuber: and then if you want to go deeper, it's 1 of the things that we provide with our demand metrics, platform and.

[00:25:41] We work with, basically people from small startups to, multinational companies. 

[00:25:46] And so it's something that scales really well. It's just comes down to, the type of volume that you're dealing with. 

Understanding the Importance of Data and Analytics

[00:25:52] Ray Grieselhuber: and all the data and analytics are the same. and so those are 2 places that we try to help people understand that those are resources that are available to them.

The Future of SEO Industry

[00:26:00] Ray Grieselhuber: And I think it's going to continue to as the industry grows, you're going to see a lot more of that stuff come out, too., it's just so many smart people building things. And there's different facets and angles to all of this. 

[00:26:12] There's just so many different ways to go down 1 rabbit hole, so it really depends on what your particular challenges are and what your particular niche may be.

Mobile vs Desktop: Where to Focus?

[00:26:20] Crystal Waddell: When you think about mobile versus desktop, do you have any recommendations on where people should focus? 

[00:26:26] Because I know a lot of people are creating their websites. If let's just use Shopify, for example, they're creating their websites on Shopify and they're creating it in the desktop view.

[00:26:36] Do you think that's the best way to do it? Or what are your thoughts on 

[00:26:40] that? 

Personal Shopping Preferences

[00:26:41] Ray Grieselhuber: I think that depends a lot on your audience. for me, I'm more of a desktop shopper. 

[00:26:45] I don't even log into Amazon or anything on my phone. but I'm also Gen X. I'm not a millennial. I'm not Gen Z, so I don't know, what that would look like.

[00:26:53] Yeah. So are you more of a desktop or mobile? Purchaser? 

[00:26:56] Crystal Waddell: I'm a little bit of both. It depends. If I'm on instagram or Tik Tok late at night. And I'm just weak with my self control. I might purchase something. 

[00:27:05] Right there on my phone. as long as my card is stored, but my card is stored on my computer.

[00:27:11] So typically I do most of my shopping, on my laptop. 

[00:27:15] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah, I think, it's, I personally, I like the shopping experience better on a laptop, but really that just comes down to data. You have to understand. Google analytics will tell you very quickly. whether most of your transactions happen and you'll probably know, some of the tools and Shopify and so forth as well. 

[00:27:30] But what inevitably what we see in most cases, it's usually not either, or. 

[00:27:34] It's usually a mix of both.

[00:27:35] And it's sometimes 60, 40 or 70, 30. One direction or the other. 

Understanding the Concept of Localization

[00:27:39] Ray Grieselhuber: Okay, and we had mentioned this just in our chats offline. 

[00:27:43] But we were talking about the concept of localization and I was wondering if you could define that for us. 

[00:27:49] And give us like what that means in the context of SEO. 

[00:27:52] Sure.

[00:27:53] Yeah. 

The Importance of Language in Localization

[00:27:53] Ray Grieselhuber: basically it comes down to language. Most cases it'll be international. in some places like the U S you have a lot of different cultures and languages here too. 

[00:28:00] And so it may not even be necessarily international. 

[00:28:03] You're working with different audiences that come from different backgrounds. 

[00:28:05] So a lot of our larger customers, they're, e commerce companies that have, a big market in America. And the UK.. And maybe Germany, France.

[00:28:14] Japan. Places in South America. And so forth. 

[00:28:16] And In each 1 of those markets, you have, different content in different languages. 

[00:28:20] When you can really start to see the difference between the smart players and the ones that are 

The Difference Between Translation and Localization

[00:28:25] Ray Grieselhuber: Still figuring it all out. Are whether or not you understand the difference between translation and localization. 

[00:28:31] And what that means is translation is, you can just feed that through.

[00:28:34] Google Translate almost these days and get okay, output to translate your content. 

[00:28:40] Maybe you can hire a team of translators to edit it and everything. 

[00:28:43] But, that is not even table stakes, really. 

[00:28:47] If you want to perform well in these markets.

[00:28:49] And in order to do well, localization is really a better way to look at it.

[00:28:53] And so that's more going to, are you using the type of words that your direct audience is actually using? 

[00:29:01] We see this a lot in Japan, for example. 

[00:29:03] Where they'll use... there's 3 different writing systems in Japan for depending on whether or not you include the English letters in there as well.

[00:29:10] And depending on the brand or the product. 

[00:29:11] They may use different or both of those. different language system, their writing systems for their content. 

[00:29:18] And that may not be how the brand chooses to represent it. And so you have to understand what the searcher is using when they're looking for it.

[00:29:24] And so just from a keyword targeting perspective, you have to understand what that looks like. Data can help you with that, but also you need some sort of, 

The Role of Expertise in Localization

[00:29:31] Ray Grieselhuber: Expertise in the market. so that's part of it. 

[00:29:33] Crystal Waddell: Sorry. I forgot to tell you. I raise my hand. 

[00:29:35] Everybody gets a kick out of it. okay. 

Discussing Shopify and SEO

[00:29:37] Crystal Waddell: So I have two follow up questions to that. 

[00:29:39] Because with Shopify, they'll give you the option to add other placements. Other markets.

[00:29:45] but on say, and like a SEO tool might look at that and say, you have duplicate pages. 

[00:29:52] Because even if it's in English, like there's one for , the UK, you can, one for the United States, is that bad? 

[00:29:58] Or how do you deal with those things? 

[00:30:00] Ray Grieselhuber: You can handle that through the, you probably are aware of the, HREF link.

[00:30:04] html. 

[00:30:05] Crystal Waddell: I have seen those letters all put together before. Yeah. 

[00:30:08] Ray Grieselhuber: That's basically the way to give Google a directive about what language and what region you're targeting with that. 

[00:30:13] And so that I hope you avoid, some of those penalties around duplicate content and so forth. 

[00:30:17] Crystal Waddell: Okay. 

The Importance of Keywords in SEO

[00:30:18] Crystal Waddell: And then the follow up to that would be, one of my clients, when I was looking at her Google search console. 

[00:30:24] One of the opportunities that just presented itself over and over again. 

[00:30:29] Was her keywords in Spanish.

[00:30:32] Yes. 

The Potential of Spanish Market

[00:30:33] Ray Grieselhuber: And that's a good example in America because we have English, we have Spanish. we have probably a decent Chinese speaking population. 

[00:30:39] in like SoCal, for example, you've got a lot of Japanese, so it just depends, but there is, there may be very valuable market categories.

[00:30:48] Within the U. S. that have languages where the English is not primary language. 

The Importance of Understanding Your Audience

[00:30:52] Ray Grieselhuber: So you have to understand that too. 

[00:30:54] Crystal Waddell: So, the advice and would probably be the same to use that H reflame or whatever to create duplicate pages? But in Spanish?

[00:31:03] Ray Grieselhuber: Potentially, yeah, I would say that's another one that really depends on the business and everything. 

[00:31:07] But, a lot of times to they'll use that tag in combination with a different URL structure as well.

[00:31:13] And so they'll have whatever dot com slash. In us for us, English. 

[00:31:19] And that allows you to separate the country from the language. 

[00:31:22] And so you can have, you'll see this a lot, in Belgium. You'll have like French and Flemish and basically different languages. Same country. 

[00:31:30] And you can just choose which one you're more comfortable with.

[00:31:32] You don't see that as much right now in the US, but I think we are going to see more of it. if you use that combination of segmenting your URLs properly and making sure you've got the right HTML tag set up, then you'll be in pretty good shape. 

[00:31:44] Crystal Waddell: Okay, I'm definitely going to tell her about that because, there's definitely so many business owners who are searching for what she offers. En Espanol. So I thought.

[00:31:52] Ray Grieselhuber: It's a no brainer.

[00:31:53] If you've got that audience, it's is she like she provides services locally or is it all e commerce or? 

[00:31:59] Crystal Waddell: It's digital products actually. 

[00:32:01] Like financial digital products. 

[00:32:03] Ray Grieselhuber: Yeah. Okay. that's a no brainer for sure. and if it's just English and Spanish and her audience is primarily in the U. S. anyway, and it's digital.

[00:32:11] Crystal Waddell: Exactly. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not a programmer. 

[00:32:14] But that was definitely something that I want to explore with her.

[00:32:18] Okay. Oh, I know our time is coming to the end here. And I'm so sad. So I'm looking through my questions to see. Okay. Which what's the. Big daddy that we should end on here. 

The Final Question: One Thing to Increase Website Visibility

[00:32:28] Crystal Waddell: I know there's one question that, I definitely wanted to make sure I asked. 

[00:32:31] If there's one thing that a small business owner could do to increase visibility of their website.

[00:32:37] And therefore, hopefully profitability, what do you think that one thing is?

[00:32:42] Ray Grieselhuber: It's a really good question. the natural answer is SEO, of course. but so many things in our industry, it does depend on who you are. 

[00:32:50] If you're a small company,carpet cleaning or something like that.

[00:32:54] SEO will help you, but you're going to have to do it properly.

[00:32:57] And I know people who have built multiple million dollar businesses in that type of industry. 

[00:33:02] Just with pamphlets that they're handing out and so the answer is not all digital. 

[00:33:06] At 1st, there may be a non digital way to get people to come to your website. 

[00:33:10] And then, they see, how things are working. 

[00:33:12] A buddy of mine runs one of the, if not the only, five star, on Google Maps auto repair shop.

[00:33:19] And he has more business than he'll ever be able to handle. 

[00:33:22] And he's got, it's not ten five stars.

[00:33:24] It's like thousands of five stars. 

[00:33:26] Which is kind of unheard of. 

[00:33:27] And his business has been built on word of mouth and Google Maps. He doesn't really have a website. 

[00:33:32] So, that's another one. 

[00:33:33] Going into e commerce obviously, it's going to be a lot more like digital focus and stuff.

[00:33:37] But there's all these creative ways to Use the off internet world to get people to think about it, you know in addition to just traditional SEO. 

[00:33:45] So. Obviously i'm a big fan of SEO. 

[00:33:47] Ads obviously can help.

The Importance of Understanding Your Users

[00:33:49] Ray Grieselhuber: Going back to the idea of what are your users looking for. 

[00:33:52] You have to think about how your users and how your audience is consuming information and where they're going to come across new things. 

[00:33:58] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, this is so awesome. 

Wrapping Up the Discussion

[00:34:01] Crystal Waddell: I think you could tell I could just sit here and listen for so long.

[00:34:05] I'm like, this is so great. Always good to talk with you. Yeah, 

[00:34:08] I appreciate you so much. And do you want to just share, where people can access? And, connect with you if they're thinking, Oh, wow, he said something that I think I need to follow up on. 

[00:34:18] Ray Grieselhuber: Yep. In terms of social networks.

[00:34:19] I'm on LinkedIn. 

[00:34:20] So I'm always happy to connect with people and chat there. it's been a really fun way to meet people. and I am on Twitter, but I've got 40 followers there. So feel free to connect, but it's, I don't have a huge presence there. and then, yeah, our, our website is demandsphere.Com. D-e-m-and and then sphere, like the ball. 

[00:34:37] Crystal Waddell: And that's where the, the product for SEO lives? 

[00:34:40] Correct. Yeah. That's great. 

[00:34:42] Awesome. Okay. thank you so much for joining me today, 

[00:34:45] Ray. 

[00:34:46] It is good to chat with you. 

[00:34:47] Yeah. I hope you had fun. I know that we are all benefiting from your knowledge.

[00:34:52] Yeah, thank you so much for being here. 

[00:34:54] And if you're listening right now and you have any questions, want to follow up, definitely email me. 

[00:34:58] And yeah, we'll just keep growing together. 

[00:35:01] So until next time.

[00:35:02] Ray Grieselhuber: Matane. 

[00:35:03] . 

[00:35:03] ​