Episode Transcript
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>0:03</time>
<p>Hello, welcome to the unscripted SEO interview. I'm your host Mark A Preston and today I'm absolutely thrilled and honoured to welcome the SEO podcast King himself. Morning. overstaying sorry more. They are not sure if I pronounce your last surname. Correct.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>0:24</time>
<p>You got it? You got it. Right. You got all right. Thanks for having me those</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>0:27</time>
<p>for those people who are watching and listening who don't happen to know who you are, please could you give a overview of who MADI is and what you do in the SEO community?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>0:40</time>
<p>So let's start I was born at a very young age. And not kidding. I am the head of SEO branding at Wix, which basically means I'm sort of kinda how to put this, I try to make sure to the best of my ability that the messaging we put out and the content we put out around SEO, whether it be for the wider SEO community or for our own users of various kinds, because they're very different kinds of users who use Wix speaks to the accurate speaks SEO and the most accurate, precise and well intentioned way possible. Wonder that's what I do.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>1:18</time>
<p>And I noticed on your bio, you do something with SEMrush as well. Yeah. So yeah, we're just wondering if you work for Wix or SEMrush, because some are a bit confused.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>1:32</time>
<p>I work for Wix and I consult for sem rush. Okay, actually, actually, somebody asked me the other day, like, why, why are you why you want to partner up with us your you work for sem rush, why I consult for sem rush, but work for Wix and whatever works for me because I want to do first</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>1:50</time>
<p>great stuff. And when when did you start in the SEO industry? How far back or was it?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>2:00</time>
<p>I'm not good with time, let's think eight years, nine years, I started off I was working for, I'll tell you where I started off. I started off working. I was a Tecmo as a property manager a long, long time ago, that has nothing to do with SEO. I was a teacher for a while in Baltimore City that does have a lot to do with SEO actually. That's a different conversation. But more immediately, I started working for an educational software company who was writing their teacher manuals, and it was helping to build out their their lesson planning. And I was one of the only native English speakers at the company. They're like, Hey, could you write web content for us? I could write anything. So I have a very strong content background. And they're like, Okay, great. We want you to build up our organic presence. We want to get organic traffic from Google, I might get a great idea. What's that? And that's how I essentially started financially. The I think the first thing I found, I remember correctly, trying to understand how I'm going to actually do this was search engine lands, periodic table of SEO, whatever they call it, I think they still have it, right. Yeah. They don't advertise that much. But it's still there, if you're listening to this or watching this. And that's how I started getting into SEO. And then from there, I did a little bit of consulting after that. And I started working for a tool called rank Ranger managing their contest. I very much come from the content side of SEO, and then one thing led to another and as we exit at sem rush, I'm back at Wix as usual,</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>3:24</time>
<p>right. So basically, like most of the people, you stumbled into the industry completely by accident. Yes. We're gonna say, so. How much do you think the industry has changed since then? And now?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>3:41</time>
<p>It's completely different. If you're listening, oh, I've been doing SEO for 15 years, you say was completely different? When I started when I started? I would say like the it was just before like the the big thing around SERP features like I don't know what you want to call it search feature again, since we love calling things that get in the SEO industry. So Google, I think released featured snippets in 2014 If I'm not mistaken, but it didn't really become a thing as a 2015 2016. And answer boxes, direct answers started becoming a much bigger thing around that time. And people started really paying attention to what's going on with SERP features. If you fast forward now, there's still conversation around SERP features, but ever back in the day, because I remember I was the one feeding bearer to the information, or one of the people There's Dr. P, there's a bunch of people doing it. You would see like, oh, SERP feature trends, you know, all of a sudden, you know, Google's not showing as many Featured Snippets anymore. You don't really see that show up anymore on the other day, Bertie Clark, I think tweeted out that SEMrush was showing that Twitter boxes were down. You don't really see that kind of tweet or that kind of, you know, article albanesi Roundtable anymore the same way. I think that sort of calm down. And I'm trying to remember the timelines. I'm not good at this, but I think you You know, it was it was a ccTLD update, which was good, not good a time. I'm gonna say 2017, maybe 2018 I'm really bad at yours. And around then Google actually changed the way they they make SERP feature changes. They used to be like they're very much like global changes for future segments went down, there are less feature snippets on the SERP that was across the board and all gos are most geos. Or you would see it by region, like Nordic countries would go up. But the US and the UK and Canada they wouldn't, or the UK in the US or Canada would change their trends around certain certain features. But the Nordic countries one that kind of changed with the ccTLD updates at the Google kind of made a change around that time, you do still see shifts, but I have a kind of say that novelty has worn off. You we kind of gotten to use the fact that you're going to have to target certain features, and you're going to have to consider like, you know, getting your your there's an image box, have a year well show up in there, get image search traffic, that isn't the predominant conversation and then release it maybe maybe it is I just don't see it. But do you</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>6:05</time>
<p>think that's because certain features has become sort of the norm now. Whereas in the past, it was sort of clusters, the advanced stuff, but now it's just things people do? As a norm? did? Yeah. Totally octave? Obviously part of the industry changing as well?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>6:27</time>
<p>I think so I think at this point, you know, right. For example. Yeah, earache. Number two, but it's below a feature snippet. Yeah. Or we've gotten to the point, I think, where I remember like, back in the day, it was like a novel thing to say, like, you know, like, make sure you understand what kind of feature snippet you have. For example, if you have a paragraph feature snippet very often, the entire answers in the actual paragraph Google's showing on the SERP. Whereas you have a list, people tend to feel like, am I getting the full list? Because Google has a little thing that says see more see full list of the exact language. So I'll click through back in the day, they've Oh, that's pretty novel. I think now we understand that.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>7:07</time>
<p>Yeah, I mean, it's I remember when Featured Snippets come about. And in my head, everyone was raving about it. And suddenly my head are thinking, this is actually going to reduce the amount of traffic for a lot of people, because they don't have any reason to click through. Because answering the question,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>7:34</time>
<p>I remember, I'm gonna get into years. I'm gonna say 2018, or maybe 2019, cribben, 20s. No, could have been 2017.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>7:40</time>
<p>Listen, don't worry about yours. I can't even remember kids debt averse.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>7:45</time>
<p>There you go. So I have the same thing. I screw up. I screw one of them up all the time. I did a study showing that I took feature snippets from you know, the years prior paragraph feature snippets. I did all of them. This was a particular about paragraph beater snippets. And it showed that the text inside of those Featured Snippets are getting shorter. Because they go That's good. Google is showing less it wasn't getting shorter. Google was showing less, it was getting shorter, because Google was showing the actual answer that the rest of the fluff. Yeah, so you have to be careful. I think like, you know, the artist i i, by the way, I hate most of the CTR studies, because most of the CTR studies are like on these like High search volume keywords. They're not I don't think that 15% or 20% or 25% acquisition. One is the actual CTR, when I looked at it, it was something around five or 6%, because I looked at it much, much more normalised dataset. So I don't like going into CTR studies. I don't really trust them. I know that our CTR, they surely you know, X percent of future students get X percent of CTR. I think for certain kinds of features diverse, and I'm speculating here, I think it's much lower than you think it is.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>8:53</time>
<p>Right? Now, you touched upon data or data, as I say, there, obviously, with your existing roles, you must have access to lots and lots of very huge datasets. Is there anything that you've seen that thought the thing, what the what is this? What is any sort of light bulb moment in any sort of data that you think? How on earth is this happening or any differentiators?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>9:26</time>
<p>I'm trying to seek? Was there a moment as I'm awake? Wow, like that seems crazy. If there was I don't remember. But there definitely been moments where you look at the data over a long period of time again, volatility data is like this. I think people don't realise you like go and go on Twitter and ask Dr. Pete, how complicated it is to track rank volatility, it's insanely complicated. One is because well, the way the tools work with the weather tools are it's all relative, right? So they're all in the green or they're all showing, you know, normal levels of volatility. One day, and then they show us fake the next day. But what's normal now is not normal from, you know, five years ago, rank is way more volatile now than it was five years ago. So if you if you were to look at like what's considered normal now would have been insanely volatile. If you looked at the weather tools back then it's all relative. And then like, there's all these reversals and tracking things in winners and losers list by the way, I wouldn't trust her winners and losers list by the fire we were me. Because why I tend not to include them. When I do a write up. I think I've done them twice. The one time it rank range, I did one I'm like, Okay, this is a hot mess. I'm never doing this again. And did one that when I first started at SEMrush, I think like two, two or so weeks after I started, there was a core up. And as we look at the data, I'm like, Okay, here's the data, I think we should redo some of the data, which they did. And their data now was amazing around the core updates. And they said, here's the format we use for the post. And I think I just did the winners and losers because I didn't want to mess with their format two weeks into starting a new job, kind of think it was the only time I've ever done a winners and losers list. But be careful with them. Because a lot of the times what happens is this is something I've noticed over time, like I think like looking at data for me has been like seeing repetitive patterns over and over again. And one of the repetitive patterns is that with winners and losers list, one of the things that makes it hard is what Google tends to do. They do it way more often now than they used to. They'll reverse reverse and reverse ranking patterns over and over and over again. And particularly one of the things that they do is they'll implement an unconfirmed update before, you know, a week, two weeks, weeks before confirmed update. They'll reverse it and the core update will reverse that reverses let's say a site was ranking number one, it goes it goes down to number 20. Goo that's a test. And then Google with the core update, let's say puts it back up to number one. So it's a lot of times these unconfirmed updates are just end up being a reversal. So you as a winner or loser list, you'll pick that up oh, this site one, it didn't really win because you go back three weeks, it was already winning tip number one, it lost tonnes of rank is was running a test before the actual real update hit. So a lot of the times are winners and losers list will pick those up as you know, wins or losses. So just be careful with</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>12:26</time>
<p>that. Yeah, I'm noticing quite a lot of bouncing around in the SERPs at the moment. And obviously, I work hard in the local space a lot. And especially in the local space, at the moment, things seem to be bouncing around like crazy. You know, it's, it's just you can't just say, Look, that's how it is. You know, it's costs. Like say it's all relative to everything</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>12:57</time>
<p>I was so I have access to like super secret seminars data. Oh, yeah.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>13:03</time>
<p>Come on. Spell, you can</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>13:06</time>
<p>tweet it out. Like if you ever once in a while you're like, I'll tweet something out, and it hasn't been sent much logo. And you're like, where's that data inside of SEMrush. That's my secret sauce dashboard that they built for me. Which they should put into the actual tool, it's a really good tool the way they have it set up anyway. So I track rank, or track volatility pretty frequently and pretty carefully. So one of the things that I've noticed is like, there's a way there's way more volatility happening. I've tweeted a lot about as we go through and like find them I don't you find them. But anyway, there's way more I think I pulled data on it's something like from 2020 to 2021, there was a 70% increase in the number of days showing high levels of volatility. Now to qualify that when they pull more data later for I'll plug it for a state of search study that we put we published through sem rush, you can download that it's free. In there. We show that there's Yes, more days of high volatility, but the drastic level of swings, the level of volatility itself, how drastic it is, is less. So more volatility less drastic, I speculate because you're already starting at a higher level of volatility anyway, so it's harder to go up from from a, it's easier to go from like a five to an eight level of volatility. If you're already at eight, where are you going?</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>14:26</time>
<p>Yeah, right.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>14:28</time>
<p>But there's way more volatility happening. I was talking to our own team here at Wix. And I was actually we're running a whole blog post, they already want to talk about McCall. I want to talk about rank volatility, how the patterns have changed. And they're like, you what you just wrote is exactly what we see inside of our own rankings. Whereas what you're seeing, you're seeing for your local rankings, there's a way I see it from my own sites that I'm working on. Like there's just way more volatility, a lot of reversals, a lot of testing, it seems like right, and it does, it could be a day later you returned to Normally a week later, three days later or three months later, but there's a lot of testing going on. And it makes it that, to me, at least, if you're tracking rank volatility, they used to be like, okay, like, Okay, here's an algorithm update where the confirmed or unconfirmed, I can trust for the most part, this is my new ranking. Or I'll wait a couple of days, okay, there was a reversal, there wasn't reversal, I'm good. But now, I see your reversal. Fine, I'm still thinking in my head, it a couple of days, I'll probably see another reversal. So becomes a much longer you're tracking rank, it becomes a much longer trend that you really should be looking as opposed to like, you know, this more snapshot of time that we're used to looking at, I'll look at like three months now. Like, okay, here's the objective and much like you do with impressions out of Search Console, you're not really looking at the last like week or so you're really looking go and search console defaults this way, the last three months for that reason, and just kind of stick it what's the trajectory? Am I going up? Am I going down? What's what's happening here? That's kind of how you look at rank now, I think.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>15:58</time>
<p>Yeah. So as an industry, when an SEO is looking at all these, all this volatile tility? What? What are they supposed to do?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>16:13</time>
<p>Wow, well, depends. Is it about I'll qualify, though, it depends on a larger trend. Like if your larger trend is you're going up, you see these significant moments where like you've lost 20 positions, like I would personally ignore that. Right? I whatever reason, Google's I think Google's doing a lot of machine learning, testing and recalibrating. I think what words heading is, I think we're heading towards war, I'll call it a for lack of a better word, like a real time algorithm, kind of like penguin 4.0. Right? You see back in the day, you had to wait for a Penguin update to come out to reverse whatever it is crap you're doing beforehand. And now you're good, right, then whatever year and I can try, here's, again, Google released penguin 4.0. And now it happens a real time, I think what you're seeing is Google updating rank more and more in real time, as opposed to waiting for these significant moments in time, ie core updates, or whatever kind of official update to adjust the rank. Which by the way, from the data I looked at at sem rush, it looks like the core updates are becoming less powerful over time. Right? It kind of supports what I'm saying. So I think like if you're looking at longer trends, and you see for some reason, every couple of weeks Google Joe's demoting the rankings to this page, you know, 20 positions, and then it puts right back up a couple of days later, I would ignore that. That wouldn't be my high priority.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>17:32</time>
<p>Right? Now, just gain to understand you as an SEO, what app really irritates you about the industry?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>17:44</time>
<p>Oh, how much time do we have?</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>17:46</time>
<p>Let's say top three? Top three.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>17:51</time>
<p>Oh, man. Okay. One is how we use data. I think speaking of like, start off with talking about data, like more about data. I think we don't understand data as a trend. Right? Like the numbers you're getting used to put all the numbers in, you know, whatever tool you're using are not exactly. Yeah, they're not exactly not supposed to be exactly right. The numbers you're seeing in Search Console aren't exactly right. The numbers we're seeing in analytics are not exactly like, for example, the case they always use if you look at Google Analytics, and you look at the same Wix analytics, the numbers will be different. Do I know why? Because the way that Wix filters out bad traffic, and the way that Google filters out bad traffic are different algorithms. So the numbers are gonna be different. What's important? Is the trend, is the trend the same? Most likely the trends will be the same. Don't look at data like Oh, haha, I have now 25 backlinks right. 25 this and 300 this, my domain authority is Seo 28.7. Like, the numbers don't matter. It's it's the trends what's, where's the data pointing you? And what does that data actually mean? Meaning like, how do you qualify that data? Because most data, people understand what you're trying to say outside of things like rank, a lot of the data that you're looking at, is you're trying to qualify behaviour, like clicks, you're trying to qualify what what's happening, why people are doing something. And what you're trying to do is take a quantitative figure, which is a number of clicks, try and trying to explain why people are clicking, which is qualitative. And what you're hoping is that if I say that, okay, this page is good and things are working here because the volume of the quantity of the data is so much so that it must be that it explains what's qualitatively happening. But that's not a one to one. There's a schism there you can have things like you have the gap people are clicking through. But why? Why are they clicking through? And perhaps if you think of and understand why they're clicking through, you can make it even better and get more clicks. Right? It's like the data just leads you to a sort of what is data just numbers and they don't make data can't qualify. behaviour,</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>20:01</time>
<p>I think, in the industry, not all of the industry books, some of the industry is kind of what I call a robot mindset. And if they just put logical thinking into things, they'd see things differently on that, and it seems surprising once they see things differently, and once they understand the why, then they'll they'll tweak things and move things forward in a different way.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>20:34</time>
<p>Yeah, totally. And that's, I think, like me, if you want to, like call this my second pet peeve or your 111 A or one B. It's the fact that we don't think conceptually about things. Sometimes we think very much like a checklist mentality, which has its place in time, and it's really good. But when you think conceptually, it's different from being someone giving you a fish and being taught how to fish kind of thing. And there's not a lot of people who do that, like for example, you know, someone who comes to mind like Kevin Indyk, right, somebody who thinks more conceptual about SEO, and then you can take that concept and you know, you can apply in a million different ways, you know, literally re I like the things that you put out there, because they're conceptual, you can take that, and now have a wider understanding that can help you form like directionally or strategically, where do you want to go with things? So I think there's a there's a lack of that, especially lately, there's been a lack of that going on in the industry for some reason. I my personal opinion. Yeah. I guess the third one would be people are just kind of jerks to each other.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>21:29</time>
<p>I have noticed in the industry, I don't know what's going on. So a lot of the respectful conversations have gone.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>21:42</time>
<p>Gone, right? You show up on Twitter now. And I I'll just tell you, my personally, how I feel like I feel like Twitter's becoming a burden to me at this point. It's like annoying, I like it. I like it. I like it. Because I like interacting with people. It's a way to connect with people, I there's a tonne of people I really love and appreciate. And you get to interact with them. And I really enjoy Twitter from that perspective. And I've learned a tonne from the things people have posted on Twitter. But what I find lately is people are not really posting a lot of information. And when they are posting it ends up getting into like a fight. I think there's you think that let's have at it, as opposed to this is why I think this, this is why I think this are both sides. Reasonable. Yeah. So then just treat them as reasonable differences of opinion. And like, I'll look at that, like, you know what, I kind of like this one better, but at least I'm able to see that dialogue. And then that, to me sparks myself that start thinking about things a little bit differently, does the back and forth. I don't know what am I conclude. I don't know which side to take on this one. But just that the balance, conceptual stimulation, I think is gone. For some reason.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>22:48</time>
<p>I think it's because a lot of people just make statements, instead of quantifying why they think that. Yeah. And I think that's the thing. So obviously perception is a very big thing. And once you read something, if you don't back it up with the why you think that, then you're going to take one or two directions. Because in your head, this saying this, even if they didn't mean that,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>23:21</time>
<p>yep. It does a really bad thing. I think it's like a vicious cycle, because I don't want to qualify anything if I do and then someone's gonna like that stupid. So why why do that. And it just creates this ongoing cycle of information not being shared the right way.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>23:38</time>
<p>This is this is one of the things I've seen over the years change. Because at one time it used to be a steal should be where it's just opinions. People do tests, they do different things. They try different things, and they get different results. And here's what they found. You know, and I think if people stop doing that, then we'll never explore what's theirs. There's no right or wrong. It's just obviously what works for the individuals.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>24:17</time>
<p>Yeah, I think there's a lot of unhealthy things going on. And I think there's a lot of different causes, for example, like the level of content, I mean, maybe again, I'm not seeing it, maybe it's out there, I'm just missing it. So I don't want to say like unequivocally but the level of content being shared, I think has gone down tremendously. Like where where's there a really good place where you know, if you show up other than, than say, I think you know SC roundtable I'm gonna get a really good content that no filler, it's just great content. I'll learn something from it.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>24:47</time>
<p>And Wix. Right, that by the way,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>24:52</time>
<p>that I will be honest with you when we sat down to the SEO Learning Hub. So I remember having conversations with the team and with George when when he He joins saying the entire unique selling point of this whole thing is that we don't need it for acquisition. And there's the Wix blog. And they do things for acquisition. So we don't need to do things for acquisition, I'll give you a little like inside scoop. Like I remember looking at a piece of content that somebody edited from the one of the blog editors editing before George joined. George window was our head of SEO editorial used to work a search engine and get to know who he is. It's super awesome guy. Before he joined someone from the blog, he was looking at editing and they were editing it from the lens of this is a blog post for the blog, but it's not Yeah. And I said, like, stop, we can't do this, because that person is editing it with an acquisition mindset. Which makes sense, because that's what they do. And that's what they're supposed to be doing. And I'm not saying the Wix blog content isn't good. It's amazing. For a blog, I've all the blogs that are out there, like I know, we die, like I know, their team, like they're amazing team. There's a lot of really good information there. But at the end of the day, it's gonna have you know, your CTA job, because it is a funnel to get people into Wix. And that's, that's what it should be. But our hub, like we don't need to do that we have a blog, we're not in. I'm not into ranking for keywords. I'm not trying to bring in traffic. I'm also of the opinion, I'm using the whole hub, by the way as a test to do this. And so far, it's working out beautifully. That you don't need to like I'm going to I need to rank for this keyword. If you write about a topic. Let's say it's, you know, internal linking. And you don't worry about targeting the keyword, but you just worry about writing or creating really good content, you'll probably end up ranking for it anyway. Assuming the other things on your site are set up in order.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>26:40</time>
<p>Do you know well, I explained this as I asked the question like, Why do you think genuine bloggers drive a shit tonne of organic traffic? They don't sit there thinking, I need to add this keyword I need to adapt the juice write about the topic?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>27:01</time>
<p>Do you know who says great job of this on animals? And we're here to see their blog? No, they had a yeah, definitely check that I should check it out more often. Am I gonna like Google it? Like bring it up? Now? It's animals.co animals the z at the end? They have a great blog. There was a recent post from Ryan laws. I think his name is Yeah, Ryan law, about like why he's called the winner doesn't take it all information gained in the new future of SEO. It's a great post about like, we think big domains grab everything. And he's like, no, they really don't eat. It's a beautiful post is really well written content. It kind of went viral on Twitter. That's the kind of thing you should be creating.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>27:39</time>
<p>Brilliant. So why was the Wix SEO Learning Hub created initially</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>27:46</time>
<p>was created to help people learn about SEO. Isn't that crazy?</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>27:49</time>
<p>Exactly.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>27:54</time>
<p>I will tell you again, inside scoop. So we had somebody write a post about 301 redirects. And it was a really good post. But what they did was because again, I think and this just shows you how we're trained as writers and it's a bad thing. They put in the post, you know, all sorts of like plugs for wicks like how to do it inside of wicks here and inside of wicks over there and said away we're like, no, no, no. This is a post about 301 redirects. It's not a true poster, we have a separate section on the on the hub about SEO tools, many how to use Wix, and the tools inside of Wix for doing SEO that's for that. And we'll have a posted about three ones. And that's this, that's when you do that. So we actually killed it, not the post, we use the post where we killed all that content about the Wix stuff at the way way and we put like if you're using Wix, here's how a short little section how you do it. And we actually had it didn't go out yet. We had some one of the contributor, right for the for the hub, who happens to work for the SEO tools. And they did that typical thing where they throw in the I'm like, Nope, we're not doing that this is about whatever topic it is. Don't throw your tool in, make it usable for anybody whether they use your tool, whether they don't use your tool, and they did it again, because like, what they're they're a great writer, they're a great person. That's just a mindset that we have about doing things. And what I said to them was like, Look, we're not doing it for our own tool. We're definitely not doing it for your tool.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>29:19</time>
<p>Yeah. So because a lot of people think the week's SEO learning tool is just about how to do SEO on Wix. No, no,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>29:28</time>
<p>not at all. It's about SEO for everybody, by law, because we have many different kinds of users. So we have content, like I call it foundational content, you know, I don't know how to how to write a title tag kind of thing, or what was it what is a canonical tag? Why are they important? And we have like I I just did analysis recently of the May 2022 core update, which took a deep dive into that's on the hub. So there's content for everybody. We felt that it was important that if it's going to be a resource for learning SEO, then it should have all kinds of content for all kinds of SEOs.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>30:02</time>
<p>Yeah, so gearing on to Wix SEO specifically, as as you know, I'm probably the first person in the SEO industry that publicly announced that I moved my site from WordPress two weeks back in 2017. I wrote a case the Rand Fishkin was kind enough to share it, and I got absolutely annihilated. Write it, let's just say annihilation, is polite. But then, obviously, I know things have changed in the industry, perception has changed. Because when I mentioned the word Wix now, an SEO in the same context, a dog get abuse.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>30:54</time>
<p>Yeah, sometimes really sucks if people did that to you.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>30:57</time>
<p>Yeah. But as obviously, you're a key, you've been a key part in changing the mindset. I have to say that personally, from somebody that's tried, but no one's ever listened. Basically.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>31:15</time>
<p>I'm not. I give you a lot of credit. We all by the way, internally, we all give you a lot of credit for being out there like that. We all appreciate that very much. What</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>31:23</time>
<p>do you think it is about what you've done that changed the mindset?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>31:32</time>
<p>I boy, I personally think if it was accurate or not, it was kind of like the perfect storm in a good way. The product changed tremendously. It's, you know, I would say, circa 2019, the product really shifted in a big way. has even from 2019. to Now when you look back at it, it's shifted again in a big way, which is amazing. And it's going to keep going. There's amazing things coming along, blah, blah, I'm not gonna plug the plug the platform like that. So that was one part of it. Like, you know, when I joined, I knew not the LE Malik. Before he came to Wix, I knew him before he was at Wix. He was one actually brought me to Wix and I knew if not it was there, then this was good, because not the is amazing. Don't let him know that I said that because I like to give him crap. But he is amazing. So part of it was like there was an actual story to tell it in a legitimate way. Like, this was not what you think it is. And what I fundamentally did was, it wasn't that complicated, right? You know, Wix, let's be honest. Wix is a great marketing engine, they are very good at marketing. But sometimes when you're good at marketing, I'll take myself personally learning from experience when you're good at marketing, I'm not saying I'm good at marketing, I'm okay. Marketing, you make the mistake of trying to market too much sometimes, or market to the wrong place. And you can't really mark it to SEO is like you as an SEO, you're a marketer. Okay? I firmly believe SEO is a marketer that no, it's a whole debate out there, blah, blah, blah. You can't market to marketers they see right through you. It's like, you know, you bring your bring your car, and a guy brings his car into the mechanic and, you know, says, you know, I need you to fix this a mechanic. They're like, yeah, I need to fix this. You need to fix that. For the person they're speaking to without them knowing is actually the mechanic and like, Yeah, this is BS.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>33:29</time>
<p>Yeah, that's You're right. I'm actually a qualified mechanic, or There you go. And then I'll go into the garage. And next slide. Yes. Let's just see what they're going to say.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>33:40</time>
<p>Right, exactly. So when you print a market to SEO is and I think some of the I think you see this in the SEO tools also, like where they market themselves, sometimes they fall into the same trap. But that's a little bit different for different reasons. SEO see right through it. Yeah. So all I did was say, like, look, I'm gonna bring you the information. You make your own decisions. By the way, they the marketing lesson behind that is, it's like you don't you have a landing page, and it's got like 4 million CTAs. And it's just telling you to buy buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And you're wondering, Why is nobody clicking anything. It's because you're not people like to have autonomy. And you're not giving them that choice. You're trying to coerce them into making a sale. And to into executing the sale. Rather, you have to give people the autonomy to make a choice, meaning you need to feel confident your own product enough or service enough to say, I trust the user that I may give them the information. They'll make the right choice, which is all I really did. And I asked for feedback because no platform is perfect. Any platform that tells you that they're perfect. Which by the way, you see this your tools were the best like no one's the best. You're really good at x, you're really not that great at y just kind of on that. You know, they're always things improve and I see this legitimately, if you see something you don't like inside of Wix. com Tell me if something even nothing related to SEO, I'll try to fix it, there was someone who had a whole problem, the way we're doing our logins bla bla bla, so I brought it to whatever team that it was took a little while to find out, like, who was the one that responsible for it. And there was a whole discussion about how we fix this. And I think that's really important. I don't know why doesn't happen more in the SEO world. I you know, whatever tool like say, like, let us know what you like or don't like, and, you know, take that feedback. And I think that's a really important thing to do. I think it's, you know, where you see us did a really good job with that content came? And have you seen like, the way they taught? Yeah, really good, just good content, is that they're not overhyping the tool. They can just tell you what's in there. And they kind of let you make your own decision. The tool is awesome. And it is awesome. Yeah.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>35:52</time>
<p>So I did want to ask you, like, when if when weeps have such a bad reputation in the industry? What specifically, was it that you thought, Yes, I want to put my name to this and make a difference and make a change?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>36:14</time>
<p>That's a great, no, no one's ever asked me that. That's a great question. Well, one is the people. The people are just amazing. I know, you know them. There's really nice. Yeah. So it was a very welcoming team. I know the interview process, feeling. I will like to work with these people. And there are people like naughty, who are doing this most of my feeling, there's people who are doing really, really good things. And I saw that I saw the product. Right. So I saw Oh, is in there. And I think, you know, part of the problem people have is they make they make a decision based on outdated information. Remember John Mueller talking about about Wix, like, these reputation things linger on? Yeah. And so I saw there was a there was a story here to tell and I happen to like brand marketing. Because I think and by the way, I think it's a tremendous overlap. It's another conversation we're gonna have between brand marketing and SEO, oh, one under my son, a tonne. And people don't appreciate it. Why don't you say that like, well, that sounds crazy. But it's not. But I liked the psychology, I liked this actually philosophy behind it. If you're talking about how to create identity, or how to change identity, or had a one show about identity to get into philosophical concepts, I really, I really, I really geek out about that kind of stuff. So it was SEO, it was brand marketing, which had really enjoyable, so and there was a really cool story to tell. So that's kind of why I decided to do it. And it was a challenge. All right, I, let's see if I can do this.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>37:46</time>
<p>Well, thing I remember when you started, obviously, I would probably, you know, celebrating from the rooftops. But when you looked online relating to Wix and SEO, there was pretty much negativity. And I think just you just saying, Look, this is what it's like now. You know, doing a million on one, podcasts and interviews and everything and writing many blogs everywhere. I think that slowly away when people search for things. Now, thanks to all the amazing people whose all they've done, is just given up to date account.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>38:31</time>
<p>That's, that's really it. And it was, you know, the product team was releasing things again, it was like all these things happening one time the product team is releasing things are really spot log report. So you know, do literally nothing to get server log data and have it in a chart. You didn't have a log in two weeks and click on a button. So like there was, you know, things coming out constantly there was just talking about it there was asking for feedback there was having conversations there was if you have a question, I'll happen and you have a complaint. I'm happy to talk about and have a conversation. I was talking to an SEO, big name SEO. And we're talking about her website and you know, we're maybe moving it to Wix and my blah, blah. And she said that one of the reasons why I want to move this site to Wix the site that I have is because not just the product, but the way the whole team speaks about, and communicates about the SEO regarding the product in SEO in general. Just putting out information being helpful being supportive. I think it's something that is refreshing to see which goes back to our complaint about SEO in general. It's kind of refreshing to be able to put out like, content around SEO. This is really helpful, no slant. I really enjoy that as a person.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>39:51</time>
<p>I think one of the things that sticks out is obviously a few people that work at Wix or active online And not one person has ever said, I don't want you to tell me what you think's wrong with it. You know, that's been that's been everyone yourself. And everyone wanted this feedback so they can constantly improve the product.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>40:17</time>
<p>There's always there's always something I remember I did an article for Search Engine Journal about structure data in Wix. And I think that's one of the areas where we've gone from, you know, zero to 10%. Amazing what's gone on in there especially or more recently, being able to edit the out of the box markup on a single pages and single vertical pages, which I'm sure you're very I saw, you were very happy about. But there are still gaps, like certain customers dynamic pages, it's hard to implement structure data. On those kinds of pages, you have to use a dev tool, we own that, like there's something that's something that's on the it's on the agenda. So when I wrote the article, I'm like, You know what, and it's, again, another, just another marketing lesson for you. If you're listening to this podcast, or watching this video. I'm on hiding that fact. It's one, it's if you're doing SEO on a Wix site, it's important to know, right? Because now you're gonna say, Okay, I created this page. And maybe I shouldn't create this kind of page, but I want to do this, or I'll create this page, but I know what I'm getting myself into when I do it. I have to I know how to use code, and how to write code. I love JavaScript. Great. I have no problem doing that, then go ahead. But as an SEO, it's important to know the limitations of some things that you know how to best behave and interact with the platform and SEO is that Chris Accardo he says SEO is your your about getting around things and working around things is something you have to work around. So why wouldn't I be upfront about it? By the way, I think because it was upfront about it. Surgeon jerte landcape Journal came back to me and said, Hey, we don't normally ask brand people to write about their own brand. But we love what you did in unstructured data posts. And how it wasn't a selfie kind of thing. It was just information. Would you mind running a post about, you know, some things, you know, tips to use? You know, tips around using works for us? Yeah,</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>42:07</time>
<p>yeah. Well, I mean, from an outside perspective, you do seem to know, pretty much everyone in the industry. Does that sort of help?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>42:18</time>
<p>It doesn't hurt.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>42:23</time>
<p>Yeah, moving the conversation away from weight to the general SEO population? What would you say is the one ultimate thing that really needs to change in the industry?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>42:41</time>
<p>I don't know if there's like one thing.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>42:44</time>
<p>I know, we could list about 1000. But if I was to something so that, basically, if this would change, it would create a huge impact for many people in the industry.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>42:58</time>
<p>I think it will be to not and I'll put myself on like on the on the line here a little bit. Don't just look at what people are saying like, yeah, that sounds great. That's like, oh, wow, they put out a 20 page blog post. But they must be really smart. Like thinking to it? Like does it actually make sense? Does it not make sense? Does it make sense in a certain context, but not in a certain kind, which, by the way, is most likely the case like this makes sense? In one context, probably doesn't make sense. It certainly makes sense. To an extent, like I'll put myself out there, I'm very much all about like, thinking about, like, you know, the way Google algorithm really behaves from a very like wide lens angle. But that means that I'm giving up when you're looking, if you take my advice, you're probably giving up on things like you know, adding the word best to your title tag, which I do for one of my one of my podcasts, but I'd stop I couldn't tolerate it anymore. But I still love the copy on the page, whatever. But you're kind of giving up on that kind of mindset, which could bring you immediate results that are really, really important. Right, so contextualise, I take what I'm saying. But put into context like that's a long term kind of strategy short term, you may not want to take my advice.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>44:20</time>
<p>Yeah, I'm gonna say you mentioned your podcast there. I was gonna say, I think I've lost track because you do so many things. But I was gonna say one. I mean, where can people find your podcast and why do you do podcasts? What What's the reason behind it you personally?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>44:44</time>
<p>So first things I've never had you on the podcast yet?</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>44:47</time>
<p>Did I know not yet? Oh, dude,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>44:51</time>
<p>you got to come on the podcast. So I don't know what's your availability? Same time now. August 3, let me know if you're available.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>45:02</time>
<p>Okay, I'll check the direct. Okay.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>45:05</time>
<p>Second, Second. Second thing is, I don't know I got a big mouth, I like to talk. I'll tell you the truth. Like, I used to be a teacher. So part of teaching is, let's say it's, you know, the quote Yogi Berra, who is a baseball player from the US, you know, half of the half the half of the game is half mental, half physical, the other 90% is not what is it, I can't get the quote, wrong. 90% of the game is mental. The other half is physical. But when you're presenting information to people, so whatever split 6040 7030 is content, and the other whatever the other half is, is presentation is entertaining people keeping people engaged, or you can a great teacher, you know, tonnes of information. And if you can't keep those kids engaged, you're dead. Yeah. So I've always liked that balance of presenting, I like to give over information. Because that's why I went into teaching. And I also appreciate the part of it that is keeping people engaged. I think that podcasting is like the natural format. Why Phil, best able to do that?</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>46:15</time>
<p>Yeah, I must admit, when you actually said, Yeah, sure. I'll come and jump on your interview series. I'm like, then I sat back and thought, Oh, shit. I'm interviewing the interview king here.</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>46:31</time>
<p>Alvin, the interview, King. But first off, I was flattered that you asked me and choose. I don't know, I kind of feel like these kinds of things. Shouldn't I think maybe that's why I like podcasting, because it shouldn't be intimidating. You're going in front of an audience, you know, of 2000 people at a conference, you're like, oh, man, all these people pouring on a podcast we're talking to or whatever, you know, 100 people, 200 people, 2000 people, 2 million people? I don't know right now. I'm talking to you. Yeah. Yeah, like,</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>47:00</time>
<p>I mean, I think, obviously, this series, you're my first guest. And it's called the unscripted SEO interview for a reason. Because I didn't want to direct the conversation. Plus, depending on what was said, depends on the floor, we go down. And I think it's so important for the end or stray, to hear these things. And I know you talk to about what needs to be changed. And, I mean, there is a lot of case studies online, published, not as many as it used to be, but there's still a few case studies. And what I've found in every case today, it lacks what's the word, the relationship ad set? So for me, I'm really I've recently read a case study and I thought, well, this will only work if you are a recognised brand. Everyone knows why don't you tell that to people because what's gonna happen they're gonna go online, they're gonna try their stuff. And where's the hell of a lot of time energy and money? Because nobody knows them yet. And I think that that's that's that you just want me all</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>48:24</time>
<p>you're like, you're like you're getting me here because I one of the things I don't like about SEO studies when you when you're saying in grad school or you're doing your thesis your doctorate school, we are going to be a PhD. What is the study start out what it has to abstract and then the limitations. Why because everyone's talking about their falls right away. No, because unless you contextualise the information, it's pretty much worthless. Right? Yeah. So I always try to start off with like, here's what I did. Here's what I didn't do. I only looked at these kinds of keywords. I only looked at X number of keywords. I only did this I don't know this right. I'm doing a case study on analysing the arm. I don't know Google's algorithm. I look at tonnes of cases it's just what I happen to look at is what I saw take it for what you want. And I when someone does that, it makes me a trust them and be a appreciate it because I'm able to contextualise what's in there? You can contextualise I'll tell you like last year I they had me judge the Search Engine Land awards. And I don't know like I was like talking to Karen online and who was surgical anatomic I don't know if I'm doing a bad job here. But I'm given everybody like threes on everything. And so why am i because like there's no context it was like yeah, we did this. Here's the result. Whoa, like Yeah, okay, like, what was your thinking behind it? Why did you do that? How did you do that? What like were the new ones along the way because at the end of the day of your Jeronimo submitting to turn award if you're getting a judge like me because maybe I'm I'm on now liar. Yeah, I did this. Here's the result like, Okay, everybody does that. Like that wasn't novel. To me what was novel was the diagnosis of the problem. Here's how we figured out there was this problem. And then we did a slew the solution. Yeah, we figured out what key we wrote. We wrote some content like this solution, not usually that complicated, or Yeah, we saw there was a technical issue. And yeah, we fixed it.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>50:20</time>
<p>Yeah, I think that can be said the same for some, not all books, some SEO talks. You know, it's basically, you know, ESL famous brand. Everyone knows we did these tweaks were to the few months, and look at this spike that's going on. Yeah, pretty much, basically, that's it. But um, I can't believe the town's running away. I know, we could spend hours and hours talking about this. But just, yeah, just to end if, say, you are working on a brand. Nobody's heard of what are the three things you should be mindful of as an SEO?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>51:08</time>
<p>One is? Where do I start with the because there's so many ways you can you can you can phrase this, there's so many different shades of this. Start specific, right? And this could be like when you're doing keyword research, and you see like, oh, zero search volume. I'm not doing that no start start with that. Because it's really when a searcher just kind of like a courtship. Not going to stick with you on the first date, right? I'm not going to matter you on the first date. Google's not going to rank you. Number one, if you I have put up one page about you know, targeting the keyword shoes. If you want to rank for shoes, it's gonna take you a long time. That's really all big domains. Google's been a bias. Google has an understanding of that domain, it's been around for a long time, it's able to contextualise that domain, it's able to trust that domain, it will rank that domain. But to be most of the time it happens going to be a big domain. Where you need to do is start off giving Google an understanding of who you are and what you aren't what you do. And that could mean starting off with some of the longer tail things that don't have a tonne of search fine. But they has a tremendous amount of SEO benefit, because you're giving Google an understanding of this is what I do. And that, by the way, be segmented if your shoes, don't go for shoes, like what is it unique about you and your business that lets you compete with a Nike? I forget ranking forget Google, you're selling shoes online. So like, obviously, you think you can compete with Nike forget about the rankings as a as a company as a brand. So what is it that's unique about you that lets you think that you can do that, because clearly you're not Nike.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>52:44</time>
<p>So go for that,</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>52:45</time>
<p>start with that and expand and that's again, like, again, that's where brand marketing and SEO overlap, you wouldn't start going for shoes as your brand, and your brand marketing, you will start with the niche like what do I how do I speak to my very, very core target audience, and then you would branch out from there. So again, the same thing, and that, that plays itself out how you do keyword research, depleted stuff, and how you talk about content and what kind of content you're targeting. And you'll find this kind of with the animals blog posts I was telling you about. And I did a study on this a long time ago. So very similar kind of thing. The SERPs starts opening up for you when you do that.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>53:20</time>
<p>Brilliant. So more did the person is that anything the SEO community can do to help? You?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>53:33</time>
<p>Know, good,</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>53:34</time>
<p>brilliant, that. So just to finalise things? Where can people find you? And what sorts of conversations would you like to have with them?</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>53:46</time>
<p>Let's see. I'm mainly on Twitter at Morty Oberstein is my handle like kind of LinkedIn more these days than it used to be? I find like LinkedIn is kind of more vibrant than it used to be. Conversations. We could talk about anything from General Sales chicken, which I love general sales chicken, to anything like SEO, baseball, SEO, again, content marketing, brand marketing CMS is I'm pretty much down for anything.</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>54:12</time>
<p>Brilliant. So it doesn't just have to be about wigs. No, no. Fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I'm gonna say we, there's so much being shared our have to recap. Like I say, and it will get shared on on my website and we'll share it around but thank you so much. It's been an honour and a pleasure to have you on the show. And yeah, no matter I always say no matter how long you've been in the industry, there's always something new to learn. And today has proved that</p>
<cite>Mordy Oberstein:</cite>
<time>54:59</time>
<p>that Well thank you for having me and being a wonderfully gracious host</p>
<cite>Mark A Preston:</cite>
<time>55:03</time>
<p>Thank you more that and join the rest of your day you too thanks bye</p>
