How the SERP Is Changing The Ways SEOs SEO: Ray Grieselhuber

0:00Ray Grieselhuber​

0:05We always say good SEO is good product management. And good product management is good SEO.

0:10And what that means is that every single aspect of the way you build your website.

0:14How you position your products to your customers. Your user experience. Your graphic design.

0:19All of that really falls under, from our view, the category of, SEO. And I think Google has long been pushing that message as well.

0:27Crystal WaddellWelcome 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.

0:44Let's jump into another great episode.

0:46Welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO Show. I am super excited to be here today with our special guest.

0:54Ray Grieselhuber.

0:56I met Ray at the Brighton SEO conference.

1:00And when I say met, I saw him at the Brighton SEO conference.

1:04In San Diego.

1:05And as soon as I heard him talk, I was like, you know what?

1:07This is a man that we need to have on the podcast.

1:09So Ray, thank you for being here today.

1:11How are you?

1:12Ray GrieselhuberI'm good.

1:13I'm good. how are you doing?

1:14I'm

1:14Crystal Waddellgood.

1:15And now you're back in the Midwest.

1:16Ray GrieselhuberYeah, in terms of personal, I grew up in the Midwest and Columbus, Ohio.

1:19And, after college, my wife and I wanted to move out to San Diego.

1:23Basically to get away from the winters. And we spent about 5 years there.

1:27To Japan after that.

1:29And then, did some backpacking, came back, had a couple of kids.

1:32Well, 1st kid. And then moved back to Japan.

1:34I started my company there and then moved back to the San Francisco Bay area after that for about 7 years.

1:40And then, in 2017, we moved back to Ohio.

1:43Just to have more room.

1:44Kids are getting bigger, wanted to spread out a little bit.

1:46And then, my company is a company called demands here and, we're an SEO platform.

1:50we. Focus on data and analytics primarily for eCommerce companies.

1:55Programmatic SEO teams.

1:57And what that means generally, it's basically any sort of. Website that's backed by a database.

2:01Like travel websites, real estate, job search, that sort of thing.

2:04You typically have a lot of different types of content.

2:07And keywords that you're trying to perform well for.

2:10And, they tend to be very complicated things to manage.

2:12And so our software helps you get a handle on that. Especially with the monitoring and prioritization side of things.

2:18Crystal WaddellIt's so interesting.

2:19When I hear that term e commerce.

2:20I always think of Shopify.

2:22And I just think of, products that people are selling, direct to consumer.

2:26But.

2:27You just mentioned a bunch of different industries that are actually e commerce.

2:31Even though I wouldn't have thought of them that way.

2:33Ray GrieselhuberWell, I always think back to that Wired article from 20 years ago.

2:37When they were talking about how B2B e commerce is actually going to be far larger than retail e commerce.

2:43And I would say 100 percent that's true.

2:45And so now we're looking at, SaaS as a category of B2B e commerce.

2:49And also all of the online, think of like business insurance.

2:53Any sort of business service that you can purchase online.

2:56All your supply chains.

2:57So it's a very broad category.

3:00Crystal WaddellWow. Cool. Okay.

3:02So I don't want anybody to be scared right now because we're using a lot of big words and big terms.

3:07And we are the simple and smart SEO show.

3:08We're gonna we're gonna break some of this down.

3:10For those of us who are like, well, SAAS, what are these things?

3:13But I do think it's so important to establish what an authority Ray is in this industry.

3:19And it's just going to be just a treat for all of us to get to learn some of these things.

3:23But one thing I wanted to talk to you, first about. I didn't tell you this.

3:26That book, product led SEO by Eli Schwartz.

3:30Wow. You recommended it at the conference.

3:34And so I decided to read it.

3:35Why did you recommend it?

3:37Ray GrieselhuberI think Eli has always had a really good perspective on things.

3:41I first met him when he was at SurveyMonkey.

3:43Way back in the day. And, I was just getting started with my company.

3:47And he gave me a lot of really good feedback.

3:49I come from an engineering background.

3:51And I was showing him what I had and obviously wanted to impress him.

3:55And he just shared with me the way he looked at things.

3:57And, 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.

4:08Versus simply thinking about it in terms of like, how much money can I make?

4:11Or what kind of like the more short term transactional goals.

4:14And that always stuck with me.

4:16And as we developed further, we naturally realized that the companies that we were working with that were the most successful in e commerce.

4:23Were those companies that very tightly integrated SEO into their product management capabilities.

4:30A lot of companies, large and small. We see it all over the place.

4:33View SEO as that free traffic you get from Google.

4:37If you spend a little time on it and maybe hire a couple of consultants.

4:40And really it just doesn't work that way. The companies that we've seen get to the point where they're category leaders.

4:46They treat SEO as the core part of their business.

4:49We always say good SEO is good product management and good product management is good SEO.

4:55And what that means is that.

4:56Every single aspect of the way you build your website.

4:59How you position your products to your customers. Your user experience. Your graphic design.

5:04All of that really falls under. From our view, the category of, SEO.

5:09And I think Google has long been pushing that message as well.

5:12it's all about. What type of experience are searchers going to come when they come to your website?

5:17Are they going to see content that is authoritative. Backed by actual experience?

5:21Is it easy to interact with? All of these things really matter.

5:24And 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.

5:32Crystal Waddellit's interesting because I came from a teaching background. I was actually a PE teacher. I was a special needs PE teacher.

5:38And I used to coach high school volleyball as a varsity volleyball coach for a few years as well.

5:42And 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.

5:53And, I was trying to understand how that worked because, I have a Shopify site.

5:57And I'm thinking, that doesn't really make sense for my business, or I'm not sure how I could measure that success.

6:02And I know that there's a place for certain things. But I was really taken aback by the transactional nature of the business.

6:10And 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.

6:20And reading this book, it was just so comforting.

6:23And I was like, I'm not a crazy person!

6:25My main Products that I make, this is just an example.

6:29This is an old one. I made this for my son when he was four.

6:32I 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?

6:46how do they feel after they purchase all of those types of things.

6:49So when I heard SEO.

6:51And then I discovered UX design. I was like, to me, SEO and UX are just so intertwined. They can't ignore each other.

7:00Ray GrieselhuberTotally. Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's very hard to convince people of that mindset if they don't already have it.

7:07It 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.

7:16So 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.

7:21It was just all about, what can you do for me in the next quarter or two?

7:24Crystal WaddellYeah. Okay.

7:25one other thing that you said at the conference.

7:29You said that the days of traditional rank tracking are over.

7:35Do you remember talking about that? what do you mean by that?

7:37Ray GrieselhuberYeah, that's the core part of our belief as well.

7:39And it actually does go back to this product led SEO idea.

7:42Which is, if you look at the search engine results page or the search, as it's commonly shortened.

7:48What Google is presenting to you as a searcher is a ton of options and lots of different things that you can do.

7:55And, the old days, it used to be about, are you ranking number 1?

7:59Are you ranking number 2?

8:00Are you in the top 3?

8:01And that sort of thing.

8:02I don't want to say that those things don't matter anymore. Because they do matter.

8:06Really, in most cases, you have to be ranking in the top 3 to really get any sort of traffic.

8:11But it's still like just the bare minimum amount of information that you need to know.

8:15From what the SERP can really tell you.

8:16Because that top three position may not even be visible to the user when they first go to search on something.

8:23could be below what we call the fold. Where that first scroll.

8:27Because 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.

8:33Rich snippets and everything else.

8:35And so.

8:35All of that information is a very important set of clues.

8:39That 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?

8:52And so that's where traditional rank tracking just focuses on, oh, okay, what's my rank, and is it going up or down?

8:59At 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.

9:03And our argument is that. Yeah, sure. You need that, but you need to go beyond that.

9:07To understand the shape of the surf, what the user is seeing.

9:10Understand all the different factors that are influencing your decision where else they may be going.

9:13And it may not even be a competitor website.

9:15and 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.

9:22Crystal WaddellAnd so why is that crucial for and how does that interact with a successful SEO strategy?

9:28Is there anything you can do to mitigate if you're showing up high?

9:32But yet not even making it to the top of the search engine results page?

9:36Because of all the other stuff Google's offering now.

9:38Ray GrieselhuberAbsolutely. 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.

9:54there's, shopping results. There's all sorts of results that as a website owner, you can be included in.

9:59that 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?

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

10:11Because. 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.

10:19They 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.

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

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

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

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

10:45Crystal WaddellOkay. So I do want to follow up with you on that in just a minute.

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

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

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

10:59But 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.

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

11:11So 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.

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

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

11:30So we're covered.

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

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

11:37And then the images.

11:39Like in the image results.

11:41We 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.

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

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

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

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

12:09Ray Grieselhuberresults.

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

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

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

12:19Crystal WaddellThere's probably about, I think, 6 or 7 collections of products.

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

12:28Ray GrieselhuberAnd we do see that too, where some e commerce companies have a smaller number of products.

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

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

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

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

12:54Crystal Waddelllet's talk about SGE.

12:56Ray GrieselhuberYeah. What is this? Probably a lot of people have played with it.

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

13:03Google 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.

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

13:20So 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.

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

13:31But 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.

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

13:44Basically, 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.

13:53And 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.

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

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

14:09Where 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.

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

14:20But 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.

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

14:38I 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.

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

14:51I 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.

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

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

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

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

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

15:27How can businesses, still get somebody to come to their website?

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

15:33Ray GrieselhuberThat 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.

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

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

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

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

16:04That definitely has an impact.

16:06And will continue to.

16:07We'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.

16:15Backlinks, 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.

16:26In any type of different conversation because.

16:29The 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.

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

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

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

17:00And 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.

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

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

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

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

17:24Crystal WaddellYeah.

17:25So you mentioned EEAT. Yep. Could you give us a definition for that acronym?

17:31Ray GrieselhuberYeah, basically it, it goes back to, authenticity.

17:34And 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.

17:44And 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

18:14and 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.

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

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

18:36And I have this experience.

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

18:39Crystal Waddelland that was going to be my question. It's okay.

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

18:48Ray GrieselhuberExactly. And so that's why I think they look at more than just experience.

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

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

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

19:06We'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.

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

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

19:21And 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.

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

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

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

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

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

19:50And so, over time.

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

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

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

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

20:15It might get a little nerdy here.

20:17And 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.

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

20:32Someone 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.

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

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

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

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

21:01And 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.

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

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

21:20And 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.

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

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

21:42You 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.

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

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

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

22:12quite 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.

22:27And I just always want to celebrate a mom that I see.

22:30And 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.

22:35And 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.

22:49So

22:50Ray Grieselhuberthat's what it

22:52Crystal Waddellstands for.

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

22:57Yeah, 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.

23:09Ray GrieselhuberI didn't know that was legal.

23:10Even

23:10Crystal Waddellthat's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It just happened a couple of years ago.

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

23:20But 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.

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

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

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

23:43Crystal WaddellSo yeah, see, you're my target. Yeah.

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

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

23:55My, 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.

24:03And 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.

24:16Ray Grieselhubermy question around that is, is there like an NFT angle to this?

24:20Has that become a conversation?

24:22Crystal WaddellAnd 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.

24:33Ray GrieselhuberI didn't know that. that's good to know.

24:34I had no idea.

24:36That'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.

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

24:48Crystal Waddellyeah, and problems and challenges and when it's like everything, there's good and bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. okay.

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

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

25:09Ray GrieselhuberYeah.

25:09so 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.

25:17and all the resources that they put on, their documentation or search console.

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

25:24I 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.

25:30But 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.

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

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

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

25:52and 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.

26:00And 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.

26:12There'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.

26:20Crystal WaddellWhen you think about mobile versus desktop, do you have any recommendations on where people should focus?

26:26Because 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.

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

26:40that?

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

26:45I 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.

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

26:56Crystal WaddellI'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.

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

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

27:15Ray GrieselhuberYeah, 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.

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

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

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

27:39Okay, and we had mentioned this just in our chats offline.

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

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

27:52Sure.

27:53Yeah.

27:53basically 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.

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

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

28:05So 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29:03Where 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.

29:10And depending on the brand or the product.

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

29:18And 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.

29:24And 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,

29:31Expertise in the market. so that's part of it.

29:33Crystal WaddellSorry. I forgot to tell you. I raise my hand.

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

29:37So I have two follow up questions to that.

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

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

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

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

30:00Ray GrieselhuberYou can handle that through the, you probably are aware of the, HREF link.

30:04html.

30:05Crystal WaddellI have seen those letters all put together before. Yeah.

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

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

30:17Crystal WaddellOkay.

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

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

30:29Was her keywords in Spanish.

30:32Yes.

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

30:39in 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.

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

30:52So you have to understand that too.

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

31:03Ray GrieselhuberPotentially, yeah, I would say that's another one that really depends on the business and everything.

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

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

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

31:22And 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.

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

31:32You 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.

31:44Crystal WaddellOkay, 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.

31:52Ray GrieselhuberIt's a no brainer.

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

31:59Crystal WaddellIt's digital products actually.

32:01Like financial digital products.

32:03Ray GrieselhuberYeah. 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.

32:11Crystal WaddellExactly. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not a programmer.

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

32:18Okay. 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.

32:28I know there's one question that, I definitely wanted to make sure I asked.

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

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

32:42Ray GrieselhuberIt'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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

33:26Which is kind of unheard of.

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

33:32So, that's another one.

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

33:37But 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.

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

33:47Ads obviously can help.

33:49Going back to the idea of what are your users looking for.

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

33:58Crystal WaddellYeah, this is so awesome.

34:01I think you could tell I could just sit here and listen for so long.

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

34:08I 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.

34:18Ray GrieselhuberYep. In terms of social networks.

34:19I'm on LinkedIn.

34:20So 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.

34:37Crystal WaddellAnd that's where the, the product for SEO lives?

34:40Correct. Yeah. That's great.

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

34:45Ray.

34:46It is good to chat with you.

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

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

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

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

35:01So until next time.

35:02Ray GrieselhuberMatane.

35:03.

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