006 – SEO Evolution and Algorithm Updates

00:01.00
Jeff
Hello everybody welcome to the W Psie hello everybody welcome to the W P Seo show I am your co-host Jeff I am joined here by my lovely co-host pete how you doing pete.

00:12.84
peteeveritt
I’m all good. Thanks ma I am all good. It is. We’re recording this one at nighttime for us and it’s it’s that time of year now where the night are drawing in It’s what it’s nearly eight 8 pm here it’s 3 minutes past eight and I’ve got the blind shirt and I’m hunkered down in my little cabin. Ah, looking forward to recording a good show.

00:34.81
Jeff
Honestly, this starting this podcast on top of building a business with you for the last few years has been kind of an interesting thing because you know you’re talking about it’s nighttime there. Yeah, it’s eight o’clock it’s noon here. So it’s like bright and it’s sunny where you’re. Ah, jinx myself. But we were the weather was starting to cool down and today it’s just hot as heck we’re going to use the Ac for the first day of this month again but um but it’s it’s very it’s kind of like it’s I don’t want to say jarring but like internally it’s very hard for me to like understand and kind of feel the difference between our two situations. You know like you’re going to bed after you record this and I’m just like. Halfway through my day still going and I don’t know it’s just it’s kind of all over the place kind of mind blowing to me that we can do this and the other thing that kind of popped in my head today I know this has nothing to do with any content that anybody wants to listen to on the show but that’s okay, you guys can bear with us. Um, is that we’ve been co-hosts.

01:11.65
peteeveritt
Yep.

01:24.57
Jeff
Co-founders co whatever we’ve never like thought hey who’s the Ceo or who is the you know whatever we’ve always just been like teamwork makes a dream work I don’t know it’s funny.

01:36.71
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, yeah I let you believe that don’t I.

01:40.19
Jeff
Yeah, you do That’s right, It’s just you just there you go you just been feeding into my ah my ego and my self consciousnessness and just letting me think that I’m actually important Thanks a lot Anyway, know.

01:47.99
peteeveritt
Ah, no in all seriousness. No We we never have had that discussion and we never have had the we’ve we’ve never had to we’ve we’ve we’ve always taken the approach that you and I are ah essentially a management team and. We make those decisions together and sometimes I have more pressing opinions I suppose and other times you do and we’ve never really come Across. We Never come to blows about anything and I’m not just saying that because we’re recording this. It’s It’s genuinely True. Um.

02:16.84
Jeff
No, actually yeah.

02:21.96
peteeveritt
Occasionally we get to an impasse and we say right? well look. Let’s let’s both sleep on it. Granted I will sleep on it 8 hours before you sleep on it. but um but yeah

02:29.34
Jeff
Ah, well and I just won’t sleep on it because you know I only sleep about 3 hours a week so you know anyway, anyway, yeah well thanks for listening to us bro mance about ah about each other for a little while here but actually today we wanted to kind of talk about I guess.

02:34.29
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, yeah, you do which is a different conversation.

02:48.89
Jeff
The evolution of Seo you could say or just kind of how things are changing how things are evolving um and there’s really piggybacks in my mind off of the recent there was another recent ah Google algorithm update I think mostly focusing on helpful content I mean we were talking about this before this is this isn’t a topic that. You and I spend a ton of time digging into because they’ve mostly been good in my opinion at least that’s my opinion. But I’d love to kind of hear how you how you feel about it.

03:18.40
peteeveritt
Um, yeah, yeah, most of the time depends who depends who’s on the other end of the call I had a um so so well we it was in the it was in the back of my head to almost call this show something like riding the wave of Google algorithm updates. Because that that was kind of what we were we we weren’t necessarily going to pick on a specific I’ll go update in this particular episode but talk about how al go updates have either been the same or ah like a modification the same thing or have where the differences have been over over recent years but um yeah the the most recent one if we are going to start at the place where we said we weren’t going to talk ah was it. It was actually the second half of a kind a helpful content. Update so the first half was released in late August and the second half was released in late september now. Of course when.

03:58.61
Jeff
I.

04:12.58
peteeveritt
When these algo updates are released. They take about a fortnight to roll across Google’s international servers so you know whilst you in the states might get it quite quickly us in the u k you may get it a little bit later and that that can be the same for a bit. Doesn’t even need to be that kind of internationally it can just be. You know some data centers get it earlier than others. So um, and this one was an they’ve done a helpful content update before so this isn’t a new kind of um method or mantra or massive change of rules. This one was just about tightening up some of the some of the ways that some of the indexing is happening um because ultimately ultimately Google is always striving to provide the best 10 organic results on the internet to the user and they set the parameters for what they determine to be the best. That’s basically it.

05:07.99
Jeff
Yeah, obviously Google is a business they make their money off the ad sends and all that stuff but they still do want to provide a good result to people I I believe that I really do believe that I don’t think there’s some big evil entity just trying to squeeze the money of everybody I mean they want to profit like everybody else. But like if people don’t use Google because it doesn’t work. Well for them. They’re not going to use Google like they will eventually move away I know that they’re so ingrained in everything these days but there’s still a chance that if you know what? I mean if they made life harder for everybody people find an alternative.

05:37.89
peteeveritt
Well they yeah they they will absolutely but you you mentioned something key about the ads and this is this is something that I don’t hear a lot of seos talking about which is the role of ads in search search engine optimization. So if you if you strip Seo back to its like. Core function. It is really there to make Google money and it makes money as you perfectly rightly say by charging for the ads that appear at the top of the organic search results and the way it can charge a premium for those ads is to then make sure the next 10 results are the best. Most relevant up to-date ads that you could ah listings that you can find on the internet and by doing that and making sure that there’s a competition level in there. That’s what then keeps people paying for the ads ads above it. So when we’re running keyword research for people. We. Well we always include we often talk about the ad the cost per click data that we get for the keywords we very rarely remove it from the keyword research and the reason for that is yeah exactly if we were having a conversation about running ads you know we can look at that data and we know that the. The keywords that people are prepared prepared to put their hand in their pocket and spend more on. They’re the ones they’re getting the conversions from they’re the ones that are leading either the direct sales or the inquiries. You know if somebody’s prepared to pay $5 a click instead of fifty cents a click then you know which one that that they’re getting the inquiries from.

07:11.67
peteeveritt
If they’re prepared to spend $65 a click rather than $5 a click then they’re definitely getting inquiries or sales from it. Ah so you you need to you need to take that into context. But yeah, ultimately the whole purpose of everything we do is really to help Google make more money.

07:31.65
Jeff
I’m I guess so when you look at it that way I don’t like to think of it that way you’re right? No, you’re right I’m not arguing I’m not argue ages. It makes me feel sad when I think of it that way but because I don’t know I don’t know.

07:34.54
peteeveritt
But well but I know yeah you you don’t but.

07:42.90
peteeveritt
Well it it is it. It is a bit cathartic to think of it like that I suppose but I think it also helps set a bit of a frame of reference and from the discussion we’re having about I’ll go updates that all of these I’ll go updates are really that. Either to improve the search results or to keep the competition level keen and all to do with running running those ads that that really is the the brass tag. That’s why Google is paying its developers to build these things. Let me put it that way.

08:05.73
Jeff
Yeah.

08:11.98
Jeff
True true now we you know I I know you do adsense for clients directly. We don’t do that at Seo hive. But um I use that cost per click metric all the time when we’re doing keyword research for clients because even though we’re not going to be paying for ads for that keyword.

08:21.91
peteeveritt
Man is.

08:28.48
Jeff
Like you said if one is is worth $65 and the competition and the keyword you know density whatever that we have to to basically implement to rik for that one is equivalent to one. That’s only worth fifty cents we’re going after a $65 one because it’s so much more valuable and I guess kind of stepping back and thinking about it as to. For those ones that are paying for those ads that are at the top It’s also better for them to have the most competition down there I guess it’s better for Google to kind of create a ah fight right? because if those 10 are really good. They’re cementing the fact that that company needs to keep paying that adsense if they’re not part of that first 10 they need to keep paying for those ads.

08:54.14
peteeveritt
Yeah, well yeah.

09:01.82
peteeveritt
Absolutely.

09:04.92
Jeff
Keep saying ad senses but I just need to say ads. But um, so yeah I never really kind of thought of it that way like in a sense. It is a bit of ah a nudge you know I think a lot of times those ones that are doing ads are also in the top 10 from what I see just from day-to-day searches in real life. Not you know, not trying to look at it from an Seo standpoint. But. Um, I usually see overlap and and I don’t know I don’t know if this makes me a good person or a bad person. But anytime I see a company that has ah an ad sponsored ad on a Google search and then I see that they’re like the first or second ranked page to I always go down and click the non-sponsored one.

09:38.70
peteeveritt
Or you see depends who ah you see I I’m ah it depends who the company is some people I think ah I want more value from you I click the ad. Ah.

09:39.51
Jeff
I’m like here let me save you guys some money here I know what it’s like I’m gonna save you some money.

09:51.20
Jeff
They don’t put any. Don’t say any names right? Ah, don’t make any enemies.

09:53.87
peteeveritt
Ah, ah, but yeah, yeah, no you you? Yeah, you you’re absolutely right? You need to you need to consider those things I had. In fact I had this conversation with a client this morning. This is no word of all I I genuinely had this conversation. Um. And I frequently bring it up like this but I was talking to this client. They’re run a printing business here in the Uk. In fact, it’s a global business but they they have their own Uk site and their Md had been over from oh their Ceo had been over from the states and had realized that they weren’t number one for certain keywords which he basically takes for granted in the Usa. And hence they were starting to look for some seo resource and that’s where I came in and the discussion went to I don’t like having discussions with clients or when I’m when I’m talking to clients I’m very clear that I want to tie our Seo. Into a metric that’s in their business. It’s normally sales or inquiries 1 of the 2 but it it could be something else, but it’s something that’s tangible to them and so if we’re going to work together. You need to be prepared to have those discussions with me and release that information. Otherwise this relationship isn’t going to work and that’s kind of the the ground the ground. I I sort of lay in front of them and then I say the reason is this because actually getting 100000 visitors to visit your website isn’t that difficult which it isn’t but finding 5000 people who are searching for what you want to buy that is by far a harder.

11:27.95
peteeveritt
Ah, harder task and that’s exactly where the the whole um looking at the ad spend Metric can really help you is identifying the Keywords that are going to actually make a difference to your client and ultimately at the end of the day if we’ve sold a recurring service to anybody or ah. Ah, Seo retainer to anybody our duty really is to make sure that we are spending their budget wisely on getting them to rank for Keywords that are going to make themselves regardless almost regardless of the search Volume. You know we.

12:00.99
Jeff
He.

12:03.40
peteeveritt
There’s no point in in saying oh well, you want to go after that keyword over there because it’s got 10000 searches a month if it’s so loosely connected to what you actually do that. It’s the the conversion rates going to be pathetic. You’re far better going after ah, a. Keyword with far less volume. That’s actually going to lead to some sales.

12:24.23
Jeff
It makes sense. It makes sense and you you get all that info with you know when you start doing a Keyword research. You’ll get the you’ll get the details on what the estimated cost per click is what the kind of traffic. It’s getting um, what’s the other one. The keyword difficulty is always kind of interesting too because that actually looks at what the competitors. Putting out there and how much competition there is so all those kind of come into balance that right.

12:44.24
peteeveritt
That’s well, yeah, absolutely and that’s one of the questions we get asked quite a lot is what’s the difference between keyword difficulty and competition. So the Keyword difficulty is a metric of well. How. How difficult it would be to rank for that keyword so that brings in lots of factors that brings in the the type of copy you’ve got to create the number of inbound links the number of internal links the number of external links the main age site health. All of that kind of stuff that’s keyword difficulty I e a measure of. How much effort you will have to put into the thing you’re creating to stand a chance. The competition level that is more a metric of how much that serp changes so you know so some serps get updated almost daily. Others will remain static for a few weeks. Others might remain static for months because there’s not actually that many people that are trying to go for those keywords hence there’s a far slower churn of results on the search page. So that’s the difference between those 2 things and ah yeah. That’s just a question we get asked quite a lot and then you can throw the cost per click in there as well.

13:50.90
Jeff
You go and I guess that the way I look at it is There isn’t an exact science on how to kind of balance these things you just have to look at it and you have to figure out what’s most important and you know where your where your targets are what your budget is and the amount of work you get there. You can ah put into it.

14:02.22
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely That’s that’s exactly it. But if we bring this back to Algos which is the algorithm updates al go updates which is kind of loosely. What this episode’s supposed to be hang enough. There’s look at like like we said when we. Like I said when we’re talking about it. The helpful content. Update That’s recently come out end of September may be verging into early october with the two week rollout. Um, that is an evolution of the helpful content. Oh that’s the second part of the helpful content. Update that came out in August that was an evolution of the helpful content that update that came out. Ah, earlier in the year and all of them. Well if you look at all of them. They’ve all tightened the rules and the first one of course defined what helpful content actually is what kind of sits within that parameter and it’s things that are.

14:57.92
peteeveritt
Essentially of value to the end user stop writing content for the search engine start writing it for users. That’s actually going to inform them that they can get to the bottom of your piece of content even halfway down your piece of content and have actually learned something and and solved their problem. That’s that’s the content that’s going to rank. Um, but if you look even further back than that. Whatever you call it those those ah practices of writing for human beings of um, not keyword stuffing of you know, simply making sure your structures correct all of those kind of things have transcended like. Maybe a dozen or more algorithm updates over the past five six seven years those things haven’t changed. They’ve maybe been badged slightly differently the priority of them has maybe moved a little bit. Um, but they’ve always been there just in different guises. So. If you are running a website and you’re consistently generating high value content. That’s aimed at your customers. Um a book that I often recommend on this is ah they ask you answer by Marcus Sheridan if you don’t know where to start with this and you don’t have the budget to go and start an seo retainer or ah, you know an Seo agreement with. Ah, provider like us. For example, you just go buy that book $19 on the book and you can get. You can get the you the gist? Um, but go and start there and if you do that consistently over a period of time you will start to rank and you’ll start to rank. Well.

16:28.39
peteeveritt
And eventually you’ll start to take on the big boys Now if you’ve not got the technical expertise you will hit a limit with that you will get to a level where you’ll need some but it’ll get you out the gate. It’ll start hopefully generating you some enquiry some sales you’ll be on the right path and then an seo that comes in. At a later day. You’ve already built a really good foundation for them to build on top of.

16:47.50
Jeff
See everybody well I don’t say everybody but some of the like Facebook groups and stuff that I browse around some of the seo related ones and these are industry folks right? These aren’t these aren’t discussions about how to rank your blog better. These are you know industry folks that Seo all day day and day. So many of them freak out at all of these updates whether it’s a helpful content algorithm update or something else in the past years everybody freaks out and I’ve never even before starting seo hive I’ve never looked at that and been like oh that’s bad and I’m not saying they’re bad I’m not saying these people are doing anything. Bad.

17:18.76
peteeveritt
Um.

17:22.54
Jeff
But I have to add or I have to wonder or assume that they you know they were doing some of black hat techniques or they were doing the things that Google is now taking away which it’s because they’re realizing doesn’t help anybody and I had a conversation earlier this week with one of our clients and we were talking about this exact thing. It’s really what prompted me to kind of keep talking about this today with you.

17:30.99
peteeveritt
Um.

17:41.78
Jeff
Um, and and they said something they said do you remember not that long ago but a few years ago I guess it’s all relative right? You know we were talking maybe ten years ago using Google was like a superpower. You know my parents would call me hey can you find this out and I’d be like just Google it and they’d be like well now I’m on a page with a pop-up and it wants me to put in my credit card and it says my Mac has spyware and I’m just like oh yeah I forgot it wasn’t that long ago that it was really really hard to search for things like you just got tricked at every every turn. Every page you went to you know to mean and now Google is like oh you’ve got popups nap boom you’re going down. Oh your your site’s not responsive. It doesn’t load on mobile devices which most of our customers are you’re done. You’re going down you know and in fact and that’s actually a good thing to ah not to stick on this one too much. But. Remember when there was the responsive I don’t I don’t think there was an algorithm update called a responsive you know algorithm update but there was one that really started to emphasize having a responsive website and people were like well it won to because it it doesn’t make my site look like it’s supposed to yeah but it works on a mobile device. That’s what’s important.

18:46.77
peteeveritt
Well yeah I mean this is the well there was it. It came in actually over a number of i’go updates. Um, and you know there was the there was the first one which where it categorized mobile mobile sites. So.

19:00.95
Jeff
It.

19:02.50
peteeveritt
Maybe it didn’t change them in the in the cert ranking so much but they they kind of were noted and then you move on a few months a year or whatever and all of a sudden you know then mobile results start to feature more heavily and then you finally got to an update where they said no, we’re moving to mobile. Mobile first indexing. So now if you’re not mobile responsive now you’re out and in fairness you know they give you like 2 or 3 bytes of the cherry with that one. They they kind of give you the the initial warning shot where everybody goes. Oh yeah, that’s nice. Yeah, nobody’ll, ever do that and then they’ll give you the one way. It’s like yeah you best take this seriously and then it’s like right? Well now if it’s not done. You. You’re punished.

19:31.49
Jeff
If anything.

19:38.40
peteeveritt
So yeah, that that was how that one worked the um like some of the Algo updates a bit like that they they have definitive outworkings. You know your your site is either mobile responsive or it isn’t suppose. It can be badly mobile responsive but normally that’s kind of ah it is or it isn’t. Type thing they you know they they did the release about the the ss ah, um, ssl certificates everything needing to be secure that was a yes, it is or no it isn’t and it’s still like that now I mean we still have to go to why know padlock dotcom sometimes and actually find out why sites don’t have a ah padlock. You know why why? It’s not going green. But. That’s another example of yeah this this was a black or white one. But yeah, actually there haven’t been that many of those kind of updates in the last maybe 10 years You could probably count them on 1 hand whereas when you think of all of the Algo updates that there are and there’s normally 1 or 2 a month that they’re miniscule. But there’s normally 1 or 2 a month and occasional. You get to these big headline ones like the helpful content one that that prompted this discussion. Um, but you yeah we all of those all of those ones that don’t get mentioned and take out those ones with definitive mobile responsive ssl etc. All of the others. Ah.

20:39.82
Jeff
Yeah.

20:55.80
peteeveritt
Basically an evolution of the same thing you know good content consistent content not stuffed with keywords or links um, structured properly in a good hierarchy with some inbound links from ah from from external sites that they’re all that those things have. Basically remained the same and or the principles of them and just the the rules around them have been massaged a little pbn’s private blogging networks that they’re bad news and I still get clients I I had a client that came to me. In fact, he came to us. Was on um I’m on a podcast that can’t mention the name it was it was a client of Seo hive and he came to us because he’d been buying links from a private blogging network and he knew it was the wrong thing to do.

21:46.58
Jeff
Oh.

21:50.30
peteeveritt
And he wanted to do the right thing so he came to us so we’d build him some white hat links and we went through it all and we said okay, yeah, that’s that’s fine. We can. We can do that this is our process There may be some costs involved but we can we can help you with that and about. Seven or eight weeks later he left us because he didn’t think we were building links fast enough and he could guarantee the speed he could build them from the brogging network and I might oh that’s your decision your funeral but it’s it’s also your decision. Um his site. Recently got blacklisted and has dropped like a stone and ah I did get a phone call from um, a mutual person that knows us both saying? Yeah, he’s he started asking whether he wants to to you know you start mentioning might talk to you again in the near future I was like please go back to him and tell him not to bother.

22:26.69
Jeff
Oh no.

22:44.89
peteeveritt
Ah, he he was a ah gentleman I wasn’t so ah fond of working with again, let me put it that way.

22:52.16
Jeff
Every now and then there’s a relationship that just isn’t correct.

22:55.75
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely and that’s that’s no criticism that was more an example of the of the the Pbns and and how it goes wrong I’m not I’m not for for are for our listeners out there I’m not not talking deroitarily of the bloke if you want to if you want to hear the derogatory version that’s feel free to give me a a ring and I’ll I’ll tell you.

23:00.51
Jeff
Um, yeah, no I know and it’s will it.

23:15.68
peteeveritt
Actually I’ll probably get into trouble of saying that now too.

23:17.30
Jeff
I Got know no comment on this pi’a on the own on this one. Everybody he you just I’m out of this conversation I don’t even I think I know who he was talking about but fight oh boy Oh boy Boy oh boy and I had a point and now I forgot it what it was too I was gonna bring it up. But.

23:22.99
peteeveritt
Ah, and we might have just found our first argument.

23:29.23
peteeveritt
Yeah, so that’s all that’s all my fault. That’s all my fault.

23:36.11
Jeff
No, that’s okay, um, actually you know what it was. It was about the the things not evolving very much which is they’re evolving. They’re they’re nice. They’re not changing drastically and that’s good because.

23:48.94
peteeveritt
Yeah.

23:52.90
Jeff
I Know Okay I’m sorry I’m back I’m back I’ve got my train of thought we’re back on it. So I feel feel like I’m bragging a little bit because and and I don’t mean to but I am but I ah you know, but it feels good I don’t care when we started Seo Hive One of the big concepts we had was. We wanted to produce content because content’s been our biggest like deliverable that we’ve just but we’ve got articles flying through I was going to say off the shells flying through the wires. The wi-fi signals or whatever every every all month. Whatever um.

24:18.80
peteeveritt
Metaverse.

24:24.77
Jeff
And it’s awesome I Love that and I’m blown away by how much we produce and how awesome our writers are but from the gett go you know we were trying to figure out. Okay, what are our metrics How many Keywords do we need in articles. What are we? what you know we were trying to esoppe everything out and we we took a step back and we were like no, we’re going to write good content.

24:39.51
peteeveritt
Um, yeah.

24:41.95
Jeff
Let’s focus on that number 1 right? Let’s focus on good content that isn’t stuffed with keywords it’s going to have a keyword and it needs to have a keyword and it’s going to have a topic right? But we don’t need to insert them in every other paragraph we don’t need to get spammy with it. We want stuff that people are actually going to get. They can print it out to their clients handed over they can sit through and read it and go god’s a good article. You know and I feel confident that we’ve done that for the you know 99.99 I’m sure we might have missed 1 or 2 here and there that didn’t go over as well. But at the same time that concept really worked out to be correct I guess I mean you know to me like. Ah, be honest I knew it was good because of like a user usability or like a user experience standpoint but I did not predict that three or four years down the line we would have helpful content algorithms and be like oh all, right? ah.

25:25.86
peteeveritt
Yeah, well, but this this is the thing This is the thing I mean doing what we do We write content about a lot of subjects I mean you know we’ve written it from literally from everything from Mobility scooters. To ah to schools to lawyers to um Jewelers to you you name it but you know ah tradeies plumbers Electricians Um Psychedelic drugs. Absolutely you name it I mean yeah, like unicorn.

25:57.95
Jeff
Um, Psychedelic drugs.

26:05.39
peteeveritt
Feces we’ve we’ve literally done the lot. It’s ah it’s it’s it’s quite a wild ride. But you’re right, you know we need to. We’ve always written first and foremost for the human beings that might read this and then we ah. Ply the seo brush over the top and ultimately that well so I’m gonna say I obviously I don’t know when somebody’s gonna listen to this you know there might be an Algo update in six months time that completely ruins everything that we say and that’s part of the.

26:37.47
Jeff
Is possible.

26:40.20
peteeveritt
It’s part of the joy and also part of the fear of working in Seo you know Google your your rules are set by somebody else and they could just rip the rulebook up tomorrow.

26:45.77
Jeff
Hey Siri remind me in six months to check the algorithm updates and cancel this podcast recording if it’s still live.

26:54.64
peteeveritt
So yeah, there you go? Ah so it’s you know we we live got to live be by the seat of our pants a little bit sometimes but the it it is. It can also be really rewarding and really and really interesting with some of the stuff that we we have to um. Have to talk about.

27:13.75
Jeff
Ah, just so you know Siri really did make a reminder I was joking but she really did.

27:16.90
peteeveritt
I was waiting to hear it actually on the mic. But I didn’t pick it up.

27:23.71
Jeff
Ah, well I’m going to be honest, you know we kind of went into this episode not having like a clear like topic or we just wanted to kind of chitchat about this and I’ve actually found it Very fun, Very kind of interesting. Um I’ve you know like I I Still admit that you are the expert in Seo on this and that you are why. Um, you specifically are why I approached you or you you know when we started this and um, I’m still learning So every episode every time we talk I learn something Else. You know it’s great, but um, but this this has been a lot of fun. So I don’t know I don’t know how you feel about.

27:54.52
peteeveritt
I know it’s it has been fun and I think actually maybe we should do an episode 1 time which is just a bit of our story about how we well I was gonna say how we met but we met because I became a client of yours and you you came? Well yeah, how how we connected and you know.

28:09.77
Jeff
Um, we’ve never met. Ah.

28:14.19
peteeveritt
How this how this bromance started and maybe we should do ah an episode about that just for people to get to know you and us a little bit and you know if they don’t want to. They don’t they can skip an episode. That’s absolutely fine and but but look the final. Maybe the final. Um.

28:22.45
Jeff
They can think and skip that one. It’ll be there. It’ll be there sooner or later.

28:31.42
peteeveritt
Sort of example of this was can you remember when I started in Seo and I started building websites. Ah if you had lots of locations you duplicate your pages change the names of just change the city names or the town names throughout the copy publish it and you’d link them all up in a in a block in the footer. Um. And then so that it didn’t so that it didn’t look spammy. You’d color them all the same as the background so that you couldn’t see them and there was just this light panel. Well then like the first evolution of that rule was right? Well Google’s going to detect links to the same color as its background. So oh crap right? now we have to make sure that all the links are visible. So. Then you colored them all white on a dark gray background or whatever it was and then they said but we’re now going to start penalizing pages that are too duplicate so you can’t have all these duplicate pages. So right? Okay, so now we need to build like service pages and have proper locations built in and. It works in some industries like if you’ve got restaurants For example that have different menus but they’re all part of the same chain they can have their own pages whereas if you’ve got um you know I don’t know if you’re a plumber or something and all the thing that’s different is that is your name is your like the name of the town. Well actually you can’t do that. You need to. Do that differently and then we had schema data that was developed so actually we could then declare what was businesses and what was business details in the background so you didn’t sit that look I’ve I’ve probably missed some bits out there. But that’s that’s how the evolution has worked if you speed it up to like a million percent that’s how the and it.

30:05.92
peteeveritt
When you say it like that it kind of makes sense and now we laugh back at anybody that sticks a whole load of links in footers for stuff. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say when I started that was the way it was done because stuff was built in tables. You know.

30:19.73
Jeff
It was yeah it was. It’s and still I mean you still see it and I think I feel like we mentioned this recently on on one of our opposites too but Craigslist which if nobody knows what that is is like a classified site around here or it’s worldwide. Um, but I still see on there every now that I’ve looked for cars and I look for a Honda element and I’m getting you know Toyota Celicas popping up and then sure enough they’re using html in their ads and putting it all white text on the white background and having every word in there and it’s like.

30:53.41
Jeff
Guess who doesn’t use Craigslist to look for vehicles me because it’s not ah, it’s not a fun experience anymore. You know it’s so that’s what I’m saying. Yeah yeah, that exactly what I’m saying it’s you know they these improvements I think are good.

30:57.74
peteeveritt
Ah, bc the search engines used to be like that. So going back to your point about how it used to be difficult. That’s because that’s what the results used to be like so.

31:11.30
Jeff
You know they’re they’re all good. These algorithm updates these changes is evolution. It’s good now if you’re a small business owner who paid x amount of dollars for 1 ne-time work and then you departed with your Seo team and then two years later you found out things evolved that sucks and I feel bad for you. You know what? I mean but um. I think for the people that are willing to kind of put it in keep on top of it I’m not saying everybody out. There has to have an ongoing Seo person or Seo team. But you know if if ranking is important to you. It is something you got to keep up on it just is you know it just is.

31:38.96
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, absolutely and please don’t ever respond to one of those emails that starts with I will get you top of Google please and I guarantee we will never send that email.

31:54.14
Jeff
No, no noop. Nope Nope Nope That’s a whole different discussion and different way of doing things and yeah.

32:00.14
peteeveritt
Um, yeah, absolutely well. My yeah this has been fun. This has been fun and sometimes some of these unscripted ones are ah ah, good to do.

32:09.28
Jeff
Yeah I think we it’s I mean it’s really when we when we’ve said okay we need to put this podcast. We’ve been talking about it for years. We realized that we were doing this on our calls and learning and exchanging information and having all these great topics and how many of them did we have and we went. We should have recorded that so here that’s what we’re doing now.

32:23.94
peteeveritt
Yeah.

32:29.50
Jeff
I’m seeing Pete’s face way more often than I ever have and it’s beautiful and I love it I even tried to change the white balance on my camera to make it look a little more night like his his you know area there so we are putting the work in for you guys. So if you could do us a favor and if you’re watching this on Youtube click like. Click subscribe if you haven’t already subscribed in your podcast player of choice. Please do? So um, you can find all of our podcasts at seohive.seo/podcast when am I forgetting pete.

32:54.58
peteeveritt
Yep, you can indeed ah other than if you do like this show, please, please go and give it a 5 star review. That’s 5 1 2 3 4 5 star review if you don’t want to give it a 5 star review and drop an email to hello at seohive.com we’ll deal with that that way. But. Ah, yeah, other than that I think you got it now.

33:16.14
Jeff
Um, I just remembered I think at least on Itunes or Apple Podcast whatever they call it today. Um, you actually like see the person’s name and stuff when they review so we’ll have to get some shout outs to some people when we see some reviews one of these days.

33:25.13
peteeveritt
Show some show some review. Love absolutely.

33:29.78
Jeff
Get your name in the podcast by reviewing us is that well is that like bribing people now I shouldn’t do that I’m going to get sued.

33:36.38
peteeveritt
Ah, hey you’re all on your own with that one. That’s both of us in trouble in 1 show. So it’s been nice knowing. Yeah now I’m kidding cool. Well I think that I think that one.

33:42.30
Jeff
Ah, or.

33:54.94
peteeveritt
That brings you on to an end before we crash it anymore. So yeah, ah we will see you in the next show have a good week. Everybody.