Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
Transcript of:
009 SEO: Free Google Shopping traffic (and Buy on Google news) with Justin Seibert
[00:00:01.590]
You're listening to the Keep Optimising podcast to increase your traffic, improve your conversion rates and grow your profits.
[00:00:10.590] - Chloe Thomas
Well, hello and welcome. If you are looking to improve the performance and return on investment of your marketing, then you are in the right place. I'm Chloe Thomas, the host of this marketing focused podcast, and it's very, very cool to have you tuning in because this show is brandnew. I'm running a competition where you could win a keep optimising podcast tshirt. Oh yes. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to find out how to enter. Now, I hope you've been enjoying a full month, about SEO, and have picked up lots of tips for improving your organic search performance.
[00:00:41.940] - Chloe Thomas
Well, in 2020, when we're talking about getting free traffic from search engines, we could not talk about Google's decision to make the listings on the shopping tab free. So in today's episode, that's what we're getting into, where you can do it, how to do it, how to optimize it, what it could do for you. We're going to cover off all of that. We're also going to share with you some other hot off the press news about buy on Google.
[00:01:08.940] - Chloe Thomas
So all of that's coming up very shortly. But before we meet to today's guest, please do check out the sponsors.
[00:01:17.160] - Chloe Thomas
This podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo, the ultimate eCommerce marketing platform for email and SMS messaging. Whether you're launching your e-commerce business or taking your brand to the next level, Klaviyo gives you the tools to get growing faster. That's why it's trusted by over 38000
1 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com eCommerce brands. Build your contact lists and emails that pop and create marketing moments that build valuable customer relationships over any distance get started for free today.
[00:01:43.880] - Chloe Thomas
Visit Klaviyo.com/masterplan to create your free account. That's K L A V I Y O.com/masterplan.
[00:01:54.250] - Chloe Thomas
Today, I'm chatting with SEO expert, Justin Seibert .Justin is the president of Direct Online Marketing, which is a top 200 premier Google partner who have clients around the world, just has been named on the Hanafin marketing top 25 most influential pay per click advertising expert list, three years running so he knows plenty about the paid side of Google Shopping.
[00:02:16.790] - Chloe Thomas
And he's been busy helping retailers make the most of the free site ever since Google announced it earlier this year. Hello, Justin.
[00:02:24.620] - Justin Seibert
Hey, Chloe, thanks for having me.
[00:02:26.300] - Chloe Thomas
It's great to have you here to talk about such a such a hot topic in the world of free traffic. So before we get into that, how did you end up in this wonderful world of search?
[00:02:36.650] - Justin Seibert
You know, I was living in Los Angeles and started working for a financial company back in 2001. And they came to me and said, you know, we've been really successful in radio marketing, but for us to grow, we need another marketing leg. We think it's the Internet. Go figure it out. And I had no background in this whatsoever. Right. This is back in the wild, wild west days of of all things digital marketing. And so I did a whole bunch of stupid stuff and did some things that worked out OK because I sat right next to the sales force.
[00:03:10.950] - Justin Seibert
So I saw what was working, what didn't work. I would get earfuls if the leads weren't good. And so by experimenting, we're able to do some things that worked out. At the time I was working for the company. They were doing twenty five million dollars a year in revenue. By the time I left in 2006,
2 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com they were doing thirty five million dollars a year, just attributable to Google specifically. And I don't say that in terms of you know, I was really wonderful or anything like that.
[00:03:37.820] - Justin Seibert
I say it just from the perspective of I saw the results and if they could work at an amazing management team, awesome salesforce. But back then is still, as it seems today, people were still kind of doubting the Internet. They were doubting Google. But I saw firsthand that could work. And then when I moved away for family reasons, I ended up starting this agency.
[00:03:57.950] - Chloe Thomas
And the rest is history, as they say.
[00:04:00.110] - Justin Seibert
You have to be careful what you say when we're in the middle of a pandemic. I hope that the rest of this is more of a future going on. But yes,
[00:04:07.730] - Chloe Thomas yes, you're quite right. But it was back then, it was kind of crazy, wasn't it? There was still people saying, you know, it's a reluctance and a lot of companies to take advantage of digital marketing and online marketing. So there was a lot of scope for getting great results and for being able to learn on the job. It was a it was a it was a marvelous time.
[00:04:27.620] - Justin Seibert
It really was.
[00:04:29.130] - Chloe Thomas really was. Well, the thing is, today is still a marvelous time because we still have amazing things happening, which we didn't think would would ever happen.
[00:04:38.510] - Chloe Thomas
I think, which is one of the ones that we get to talk about today, which is that Google turned that shopping tab free. So so so tell us exactly what these free shopping listings are, Justin.
[00:04:50.520] - Justin Seibert
3 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
Yeah, absolutely. And just to kind of bring it back full circle from where we were talking earlier, you know, Google's shopping results originally were free. You may remember, from 2002 to 2012. They had this thing they called Froogle before they turned it into Google Shopping and it became a Google ad supported network. So it's kind of fun to have that history and see it come back to that. But you're absolutely right, Chloe. They've opened this up at least within the US, and it's going to be expanded worldwide.
[00:05:20.990] - Justin Seibert
But now you have the opportunity to be able to get your results listed in first. It was just only under the shopping tab within Google, and they've opened it up even further to be within some of the search results directly on the main tab of Google as well. But you can now under certain circumstances, but we'll talk about can get your listings there for free, whereas before that was only under the realm of Google ads where you were paying per click or other type of model.
[00:05:50.980] - Chloe Thomas because I hadn't realised they'd started bringing it into the the normal search page as well, the normal search results page. So that that's going to have a huge impact on the traffic that comes through from there.
[00:06:01.580] - Justin Seibert
It is. And it's starting off on mobile only at first, and then it's going to be expanded into desktop. And even within mobile, it's only going to be within certain sections, kind of like that knowledge panel that can be expanded where you can see other listings there. But there's no doubt this is going to have a big impact.
[00:06:19.460] - Chloe Thomas
because and Google is moving quite fast because usually they seem to be when they announce something, it takes a while, like I would have expected it to maybe be six or 12 months before we start seeing in this in the search results as well as online shopping tab, because that was it was only kind of May when they started this move, wasn't it?
[00:06:37.730] - Justin Seibert
I think they made the announcement in April. And then I think we're starting to see it in May coming out. So they made the announcement about, again, the shopping tab originally. And it wasn't till the very end of June before they talked about the search being. Part of this so from my perspective, I think there's two things going on. One, they recognize that in the middle of a pandemic that there were you know, they needed to make a little bit of a pivot to help businesses out.
4 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:07:04.630] - Justin Seibert
And whether you say that's completely altruistic or not depends on your your view of Google. But I but I do think that there was an altruistic piece to that. And then the second piece being that they're one of their big concerns, obviously one of their major concerns is Amazon.
[00:07:21.640] - Justin Seibert
So I think this is some of the efforts that they're doing right now is in trying to put some chink in the armor and be able to attack Amazon from that front.
[00:07:31.660] - Chloe Thomas
I guess that I hadn't thought of the Amazon angle before, but of course, anyone who's been to, you know, anywhere where marketplaces are hanging out at the moment will have heard, you know, marketplace tools, systems are hanging out at the moment, will have heard over 50 percent of searches start on Amazon. Over 50 percent of searches start on Amazon. So, yes, I guess we should have expected Google to make some reaction to that sooner or later.
[00:07:54.250] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, it's you know, they've been it. If you remember, back in the day, Google and Amazon had a decent relationship and the fact that Amazon was one of their biggest advertisers and they paid them a lot of money to get traffic over to Amazon. And then Google started tweaking with them and doing some things that Amazon didn't like.
[00:08:15.280] - Justin Seibert
And then right before a big Google event, Amazon pulled all of its advertising dollars away to say that they weren't going to be pushed around. So they've had a really acrimonious relationship for, gosh, you know, the better part of a decade now. Yeah.
[00:08:28.750] - Chloe Thomas
So it's it's certainly going to continue, I fear. But but if it leads to things like free shopping, then I think we can all be quite happy about that.
[00:08:36.400] - Justin Seibert
Yeah. I mean, in an ideal world, you know, that's what competition should lead to, benefits for the consumer or to it in this case being the the advertisers or merchants, I should say.
[00:08:47.560] - Chloe Thomas
5 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
Exactly which which I would quite happily go down. That's let's debate the economic theory of this. But I think the listeners probably want us to focus on the free free shopping. So I'm going to resist the urge and I'm going to ask you that. So at the moment, is USA only and what other countries can we anticipate it being rolled out to? Because it's probably not going to go global, I'm guessing?
[00:09:13.510] - Justin Seibert
Well, I think they've made the announcement that it is going to go global and they hope that it will go global by the end of the year. And sometimes Google's announcements get get pushed or changed. And I, I think it'll probably end up being any place that allows Google Shopping advertising. And I think that's the pattern will go, because originally, you know, when when it was kind of launched, I think it was in a similar manner where it was us and some English based countries shortly after that.
[00:09:42.580] - Justin Seibert
And then it started to go into another eight countries in another 12 countries and go on from that. So I think it's going to follow a pretty similar pattern. So I'd expect US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand probably in that first round. And then from there, Ireland, you know, some of the other English speaking countries. And then from there, I would expect some of the major economies. It'll it'll go into next. Cool.
[00:10:07.170] - Chloe Thomas
We'll all be listening. We will attempt to keep an updated section on the show, notes for where it's got to, but definitely worth checking it in your local area because you can tell quite easily on the search results if you look at those. But just in if we if we're in the US and right now we want to do this, how do we get started?
[00:10:27.340] - Justin Seibert
So it's fairly simple. You're going to start by creating a Google merchant center account and that's a free account. You don't have to pay anything for that. And in that account is where you're going to upload your product feed. And that's kind of it. I mean, we'll talk about some basic ways you can optimize for that. And I'm not depending on what how your website is set up and how you're free to set up. That's not always a super easy thing to do.
[00:10:56.590] - Justin Seibert
But assuming that you're using a pretty popular performance, it's a little bit it should be fairly straightforward for you to do if you've correctly input all the attributes and variables within your feet.
6 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:11:08.680] - Chloe Thomas
And if we've got a Google Shopping feed or a feed going into Google, much incentive for our Google Shopping ads. Do we just use the same feed or do we need to upload a separate one?
[00:11:20.080] - Justin Seibert
And now it's going to just take care of it automatically for you. So there's there's really not a whole lot that you need to do if you're already advertising on Google Shopping. Nice.
[00:11:27.870] - Chloe Thomas
So some of our listeners who didn't know this was happening in the US may actually find they're already getting free traffic.
[00:11:34.400] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, that's exactly right. How cool is that, guys? So you mentioned about optimization. So once that's in there, we're starting to see some results. What can we do to to optimize this traffic?
[00:11:47.380] - Justin Seibert
I think following basic SEO best practices. And that's really looking at all the attributes, making sure that the title information is correct, that you have great pictures always as a huge help, any of those types of things, and again, making sure that they're all completely filled out. You also want to make sure that you have your your taxation information correctly, your shipping information. Correct. Because if those types of things aren't right, that's something that can actually get your feedback.
[00:12:24.120] - Justin Seibert
So just make sure that you're doing basic housekeeping and all that information is correct.
[00:12:30.060] - Chloe Thomas
And of course, if we're using the same feed, all those improvements we make, if we're running Google Shopping ads as well, we should see improvements over that, too.
[00:12:38.340] - Justin Seibert
Absolutely. And just remember that, you know, just like with Google Shopping, you know, this isn't going to be strictly keyword based, its keyword based for the search. Right. But it's not keyword based for you. So don't worry about, like, trying to stuff in keywords that you think Google is going
7 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com to automatically match your listing where it thinks that people are searching for it. So absolutely. Make sure you have things like Skewes in there.
[00:13:06.300] - Justin Seibert
Make sure that you have a really descriptive product name. But just don't go to thinking this is the particular keyword I need to be on and I'm going to I'm going to stuff everything with that keyword.
[00:13:16.260] - Chloe Thomas
And we're obviously quite new. It's quite a new tool. We're only a few months in, so there's not a lot of literature out there that people can go and binge on to to find out how to tweak things. So I guess, you know, looking at advice on how to get your feet right for Google Shopping ads is a good place to go if you want to find the nitty gritty on that.
[00:13:34.470] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And look, if you're having trouble with your feed, maybe that's where you pull in a shopping service on the high end. That might be something like channel advisor on the less expensive and it might be something like data feed watch. So you can always get help from those ends. But I think that advice that you're giving, Chloë, of looking for literature on the shopping side of things specifically for maintaining your fee would be really useful.
[00:13:58.380] - Chloe Thomas
And we seeing, you know, see you up with a lot of clients across the US and around the world. But are you seeing many businesses see results from this, see actual traffic coming through?
[00:14:10.170] - Justin Seibert
We are, but it's but I wouldn't say it's massive. And a lot of cases we're dealing with clients that are already having the shopping to get in there. In other cases, we're putting the shopping food in for them because they're not running any shopping ads currently. They're starting to see it. They're starting to see some traffic from it. But again, because it's mobile, because it's mobile only because it's only in certain sections of mobile at this time.
[00:14:35.760] - Justin Seibert
I think it really depends on the products and so on. A lot of cases, especially if it's something really niche, you're not necessarily seeing the move right now, a huge deal. But like Google does with everything, this is a chance for you to get in on the ground floor, to be able to make sure that you're set up for it so that when they're sending more traffic across all devices, in more searches, in more places, that you're already set up for that.
8 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:15:02.490] - Justin Seibert
So this is a great time, I think, to jump in. It doesn't cost you anything. It's not a huge investment of your time. And I think it's kind of foolish for for people not to do it, even if they're not seeing some huge payout at the moment.
[00:15:14.190] - Chloe Thomas
It's a bit like we used to say, you know, ten years ago, well, you've gone through the pain of setting up a shop shopping feed. You might as well put it into Froogle. Exactly. It's not a case of, well, you've gone through the pain of setting up a shopping feed. Let's turn it on. And then as Google increase the visibility of those search results, you'll start getting more and more traffic.
[00:15:32.200] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, it's a great analogy.
[00:15:34.130] - Chloe Thomas
OK, so I before we hit the record button, you were telling me there's something else quite cool that Google's done in this area. So could you could you tell the listeners because this is like totally hot off the presses. So could you tell us a little bit about this this other area that Google is giving in?
[00:15:52.500] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, I was really excited to talk about this, and it is really very brand new. So Google's had this service that not a lot of people are aware of called buy on Google shopping actions, kind of the same thing where you could list your products on Google. And they've had it around for a little while, but there's been a lot of restrictions. It's not necessarily been the easiest thing to work with in the world. And on top of that, it's kind of Amazon like where you'd be paying a commission to Google based on any sales that you would get.
[00:16:26.820] - Justin Seibert
You're not paying for traffic. They originally started this. I think I remember when it was and even before beta programs with Google ads, it was an alpha and some of clients were invited to join it, but never really completely took off. And what they just announced is that they're opening that up to be zero percent commission. So they're starting to roll out invitations for it. But there is a wait list that you can join right now. It is eligible for sellers in the US, but what's also kind of exciting, because I know you you're watching people all over the world, is that it's not just forced sellers located in the U.S. It can be for sellers in certain countries that are outside of the US, but for them to be able to list for us buyers.
9 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:17:14.370] - Justin Seibert
So it has even a little bit more of a footprint than the free shopping listings are having for people right now.
[00:17:21.120] - Chloe Thomas
Well, so that's literally a marketplace basically run by Google that it costs us nothing to be on. That's correct. That's kind of kind of crazy.
[00:17:33.450] - Chloe Thomas
It's kind of crazy. And it, again, is one of those where why wouldn't you get yourself on the wait list?
[00:17:38.270] - Justin Seibert
There's no reason not to from my perspective, unless there's always the fear where if you know what kind of data you're giving to Google and everything else. But I think we've already all passed that because the benefits, you know, almost all of us are using Google analytics, relying on Google to send us traffic. So unless you have major Big Brother fears, I think that there really isn't any reason to kind of jump on and and get into this now while you can only sign up for it.
[00:18:07.350] - Chloe Thomas
Well, exactly, because signing up doesn't permit you to give them their fee, does it? And I'm guessing that that Google owns the customer from a data perspective and a repeat marketing perspective.
[00:18:17.970] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, that's that's correct. Because you're getting all of the you're getting all the data about it. So I think that you where, you know, places like eBay sometimes don't want you kind of marketing to the person outside of their marketplace, I think give a little more freedom on the Google side of things to do it. Where they had a lot of restrictions before was in terms of returns, in terms of payment processing and all of those things that they were trying to handle through Google.
[00:18:46.680] - Justin Seibert
And they've open that up now for for this part of the program. So if you are doing your payment processing through PayPal, you can actually continue to do that. Now, that wasn't something that was part of the program before. If you have a Shopify fee, that's something that you can put in automatically. They still have restrictions about things like how quickly you need to handle returns. You need to be able to accept them within up to 30 days later and get payment back to people within two days.
10 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:19:14.850] - Justin Seibert
You have to handle this within the US. But again, they've loosened some things up and it's, I think, made it really attractive to me. It feels like they're trying to do is build this up into something that can compete with Amazon. And the my expectation is that they'll go back at some point to if not requiring a commission or some other payment model, at least giving preferential treatment to places that do it.
[00:19:39.930] - Justin Seibert
But right now, I think I'm just trying to build it up so I can see it going the way of Facebook where the organic visibility decreases massively and they paid visibility goes through the roof because Google does like to monetize varas ads. So but that's as we said with with the free shopping listings, get in on the ground floor and you'll have that visibility as soon as the you know, the volume starts coming through. So we'll we'll add a link to the waitlist application to the show nights for all of your listings so you can you can get there, there any anything else just in any any other news happened whilst we've been recording?
[00:20:18.900] - Justin Seibert
Not that I'm aware of because I've given you my sole focus call, really excited for this podcast just because things just seem to be happening in this space at the moment.
[00:20:27.480] - Chloe Thomas
So I guess the the key thing is to make sure you've got a good shopping feed so you are ready to get your you know, your products into the right places as soon as these opportunities become available.
[00:20:38.340] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, that's right. And I just can't stress pictures enough how important they are. One interesting thing with with buy on Google is that you can actually choose from a library of products if you're a reseller of products where you can link that up to your feed. But in general, always the more pictures that you own that are high quality, that show things from different angles, I think the more that it's going to make your products stand out and perform better for you.
[00:21:06.570] - Chloe Thomas
Cool. Well, thank you for all of that, Justin. We are going to pause now for a mind of our sponsors and then we'll be talking about the wider world of SEO.
[00:21:16.160] - Chloe Thomas
11 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
It's safe to say that most of us have been doing more shopping online lately. And if you're an eCommerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first time customers. But once they made that first purchase, how do you keep them coming back? Well, that's what Klaviyo is for. Klaviyo is the ultimate email and SMS marketing platform for eCommerce brands. It gives you the tools to build your contact lists, some memorable emails, or to make key messages a more way, way more.
[00:21:40.490] - Chloe Thomas
Whether you're launching a new business or taking your brand to the next level, Klaviyo can help you get growing faster. And it's free to get started. Is it klaviyo.com/masterplan to create your free account? That's K L A V I Y O.com/masterplan.
[00:21:58.690] - Chloe Thomas
OK, Justin, so far we've gone deep into organic shopping listings with a side order of buy on Google. Now you get to wow us with your insider knowledge about the whole of SEO SEO for the following questions.
[00:22:11.860] - Chloe Thomas
Your answer can be anything to do with SEO, which, of course, does include organic shopping listings.
[00:22:17.800] - Chloe Thomas
So, Justin, are you ready? Let's do this lightning round.
[00:22:21.320] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, let's go for it.
[00:22:22.300] - Chloe Thomas
OK, so let's start with the SEO newbie advice. If we've inspired someone to take the first step with SEO, what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
[00:22:33.520] - Justin Seibert
To me, it's all about content and content helps everything. It's going to be helpful for user experience. It's going to be helpful for link below thing. It's going to be helpful for keyword optimization and all those things really matter. But if you don't have the content as a foundation, you're going to struggle. So make sure you have the town. I want to be really clear. I, I think
12 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com sometimes the advice people are left with this feeling of the field of dreams where it's build it and they will come.
[00:23:04.210] - Justin Seibert
There's a lot more to SEO than that, as I think your listeners probably know. But starting with that really quality content where you're giving value to the people reading it and you're giving a perspective is going to make everything else so much easier.
[00:23:20.080] - Chloe Thomas
And just to be even clearer on this, we're talking blog content as well as product page content and home page content.
[00:23:27.160] - Chloe Thomas
And it's every form of content across the site and buying guides and anything else that you can put together that you think that the person who's visiting would find it valuable video.
[00:23:40.360] - Justin Seibert
All of those things
[00:23:42.370] - Chloe Thomas
Excellent OK. So now once you've started with your SEO, of course you've got to Keep Optimising. So what's your favourite way to improve SEO performance?
[00:23:51.590] - Justin Seibert
OK, I'm going to cheat here for a second, Chloe, but I but I'm hopeful you're going to let me do it. So I'm a huge fan of using Google ads specifically for SEO. And the reason is I like going in and seeing what the actual search queries were.
[00:24:07.300] - Justin Seibert
So whether you're just using Google ads for that temporary period for you to build up some information or you already have it and maybe you have a little bit of your budget you dedicate towards keyword experimentation when you have that data, it's gonna be so helpful because we spent so much time and effort and heartache and in cases money for working with an outside agency or just paying people in our in our teams to do it for us on optimizing our sites. But we don't have the keywords right.
13 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:24:37.750] - Justin Seibert
We're going to waste all of that effort. And so by spending a little bit of money just to get that data, you can be more confident in what you start optimizing towards. So I'm a I hope that's not too far outside the bounds. I'm not talking about a huge budget, but I think if you can do that explicitly for keyword research, it can be a huge benefit to for SEO.
[00:24:57.730] - Chloe Thomas
I love that. So that's definitely allowed as a tip. So that might be if we were a business, because I just want to really understand this. If we were business selling garden furniture, we might bid on one hundred dollars on garden furniture over the course of a week just to see what terms are coming in on that so we get a better idea of what to build out. Is that what you're meaning? Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:25:21.460] - Justin Seibert
And so I can make sure I'm being really clear to keep it high level. What happens is you're going to tell Google, hey, here are some words that I want you to to bid on. And in your example, we're going to take part in furniture, but somebody might type in something like garden furniture to fit my 12 foot by twenty four foot. I'm sure I'm using us measurements. I apologize.
[00:25:47.650] - Chloe Thomas
Think we're quite happy with metric or imperial here. We're not picky.
[00:25:52.330] - Justin Seibert
I will. Thank you. And I might say twenty to to fit my twenty four by 12 foot deck. That's in green. Nobody's ever searched for that term before. Nobody's ever going to search for that term again. But you're going to give Google the ability to put your ad on it because it might make sense for you. That might be a great term for you. And they're going to do some good terms and they're going to do some bad terms.
[00:26:16.000] - Justin Seibert
But you're going to go through that data and see what works and what doesn't. So whether it's a term that's very specific like that, or you might just say, ah. I need to be advertising on deck furniture or I need to be optimizing on deck furniture or I need to be optimizing on how to spruce up my patio. But that's not don't have the word furniture in there at all, but it might be a great term for you might be the way to bring buyers in.
14 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:26:41.920] - Justin Seibert
So when you started experimenting on that and seeing what the actual terms are and then even seeing, what do they do once they hit your site? Did they convert? Did they spend time on there, then that just really gives you a leg up on that keyword research. Otherwise, you know what? That SEO. It takes a while to actually start seeing the fruits from your labor. So this is a way of just expediting that process.
[00:27:01.780] - Chloe Thomas
I think it's really clever. I love it. OK, just in the next one is that it's impossible to improve our marketing unless we're monitoring the performance. But the list of stuff we could monitor can be overwhelming. So what for you is the number one SEO KPI?
[00:27:17.910] - Justin Seibert
Yeah, so it depends on really what the marketing, what your market position or what your goals are. And so just to give you a couple of examples. So like, are we trying to get market share right now? Is that the single most important thing? We really don't even care about the financial performance? Well, then we're looking at total conversions within parameters. If efficiency matters, maybe we're looking at return on spend, like how much of our effort?
[00:27:42.310] - Justin Seibert
When I say return on spend, what are we paying for SEO either in terms of our own internal efforts or anything else? And then what is the value that we're getting after it? If it's customer lifetime value is really huge, again, it might be total conversions that we're looking after. So the reason I say this background is understand, it's to me it's all about conversions. Whichever variation of that applies to your situation, it needs to be about conversions.
[00:28:08.850] - Justin Seibert
And I think in the SEO world, a lot of times we end up getting stuck on rankings in traffic and domain authority and all these things that matter. And it should be looking at we look at these that. Right. But, you know, you can get a bunch of traffic that doesn't convert for you. I was just talking with with a prospect last week, and we're happy to take a look at the site. And we saw this giant spike and we said, oh, man, what is going on?
[00:28:36.870] - Justin Seibert
Well, they ended up ranking for some terms related to Aaron Hernandez, who was in the news, again, for some nefarious reasons. The point is it has nothing to do with his site whatsoever. So even though we saw that spike in traffic, it didn't actually mean anything for him. And he was really savvy and he understood that already was aware of it. But my point is, I don't want to get so focused on on rankings or traffic that I'm losing sight of the reason we're doing SEO, which is to make money.
15 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
[00:29:07.240] - Chloe Thomas
Oh, so true rankings reports are lovely, but they're not the number one thing by any stretch of the imagination. OK, finally, crystal ball time. But what's coming up in the next six to 12 months that we should be getting ready for in SEO?
[00:29:23.910] - Justin Seibert
You know, my crystal ball is in the shop, but I think the things that typically work that have always mattered to Google, Google and I'm using Google for all search engines here, but Google continues to tweak and to refine. So the things I would look at are user experience and trust. They've made major changes towards that. They made more announcements on the trust side of things that are coming into play next year. They want to give people time to fix things like site speed and things along those lines.
[00:29:57.300] - Justin Seibert
So I think the more that you can do things that are good for your potential clients to see, to help them make that buying decision generally are going to be good for SEO. So every these articles come up on the trust side of things, these articles come out every year. You've seen Khloe, they are link building. Instead, I've seen an article named that at least once every year over the last decade. And I don't deny that Google would like to not have that much of a factor.
[00:30:28.110] - Justin Seibert
And they've continued to make tweaks, but they still need to look for other things that are going on for the Web. So I would just say, what are other ways that you can prove your credibility? And I would say things like press. I would look at things like your store ratings. I would look at things like reviews, sites. I wouldn't even look at things like social media. And I know that Google says explicitly that they don't look at the social media, whether that's factually accurate, which it probably is, or they're measuring the indirect impacts of social media.
[00:30:56.640] - Justin Seibert
I think all those things matter.
[00:30:58.560] - Chloe Thomas
Yeah, it's it's amazing how how much and how little SEO has changed over the last ten years, because it's it's kind of been lovely seeing Google really focus in on that bit, you know, its end goal, i.e. giving everyone the result they want when whatever they search, you know, that personalized side and the best result side of things. And I personally find it really cool that they the further Google
16 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com get down this path, the more the things we need to do to rank well are the things we should be doing to be nice to our customers.
[00:31:33.300] - Justin Seibert
Anyway, I love that I'm going to totally steal the way you said that. I think it's lovely and and it's true.
[00:31:42.770] - Justin Seibert
You know, it's interesting, too, when you think about the changes, like you said with Google originally, the best part about Google was it was the equalizer, right? You didn't have to be this giant company. If you know how to work the web, you could compete, you could sell your things online. And then Google started moving back towards let's give big companies more credibility and make it easier for the bigger companies. And then they bring back things like we're talking about today with Google Shopping giving a chance to the smaller merchants to be able to compete on that without having an advertising budget.
[00:32:12.650] - Justin Seibert
So it is really interesting to see the way they kind of move back and forth, but always towards that goal of a great client experience, because that's how Google's business works. They want people to continue to use Google. Yeah, they want to keep us there.
[00:32:26.480] - Chloe Thomas
Well, Justin, we are nearly at the end of the show, so could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and your business on the Web and social media plays?
[00:32:34.280] - Justin Seibert
Absolutely. So the best place to go to our website, directom.com, that's the word direct. Oh, is an online Amazon marketing directom.Com. You find all of our social media profiles on there. And if anybody would like to connect with me directly on LinkedIn, that's probably the best place.
[00:32:51.620] - Justin Seibert
So just looking for Justin Seibert that German spelling for my name on Twitter, it will be the best places to reach me and I would love to connect with any of your listeners,
[00:33:03.620] - Chloe Thomas
17 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com
Marvellous well Justin we'll put links to all of that in the show notes. And thank you so much for being on the Keep Optimising podcast today and for being so generous sharing your expertise with us and that Google Shopping knowledge to you. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:33:15.800] - Justin Seibert
Thank you, Chloe.
[00:33:18.660] - Chloe Thomas
So there you go, the ins and outs on your Google Shopping free organic listings, if you're already doing Google Shopping campaigns, such a simple thing to be ready for currently only in the U.S. even, but shortly to be coming to the U.K. and other places as soon as Google get round to it and well worth getting set up.
[00:33:35.490] - Chloe Thomas
Plus that whole buy on Google opportunity as well, which even if you're not based in the US, you can, but you start in the US, you may well be able to take advantage of two. You get the links to all that. We discussed the full transcript of this episode, important notes and more at Keepoptimising.com. That's with an S, not a Z. And please do let me know what you think. The easiest way to do that is via Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #keepoptimising.
[00:34:00.050] - Chloe Thomas
Now, as part of my mission to help you improve your marketing, I invited all SEO specialists to join us for a Q&A webinar at the end of the month. It's your chance to get your questions answered. Now, I know a lot of you love the questions I ask, but I'm sure you've got some of your own. So get yourself registered for the webinar by going to Keep Optimising dot com and you will find out all the details. I'm really looking forward to connecting with some of you during the webinar.
[00:34:25.050] - Chloe Thomas
And if you're listening to this after the webinar happened, don't worry, you can still catch the replay. Just head to Keepoptimising.com and you'll find the links. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Keep Optimising podcast. A whole set of episodes about SEO is now live. So please do have a listen to them all. Go on, go another binge and make sure that you tune in next Wednesday when we'll be starting our series of four shows about how to quickly improve the conversion rate on your website to lift the performance of all your marketing.
[00:34:55.080] - Chloe Thomas
Because the better your website works, the better your marketing performs. We're going to be covering an eclectic set of topics, some you probably wouldn't be expecting. So make sure you tune
18 Keep Optimising Podcast: https://keepoptimising.com into them all. But I hear you cry. Sep has five weeks. Why, yes, it does. And we've got something rather special. And Black Friday, Cyber Monday focused lined up for you in the last week of September. So lots of good stuff coming up for you then.
[00:35:20.580] - Chloe Thomas
Now, if you know someone who's particularly interested in improving, improving their website performance, then please do let them know that we're going to be covering it throughout September because this show exists to help you and help them improve their marketing. So I'd love it if you could help spread the word.
[00:35:36.000] - Chloe Thomas
One of the easiest ways to spread the word right now is to take part in our launch competition. So thank you for holding out to find out how you can enter this competition to win a Keep Optimising podcast teeshirt, not least because this week is your last chance to enter. And here's what you need to do. You can get one entry by sharing on Twitter or Instagram what you think of the show and including the hashtag Keep Optimising. Or you can get three entries.
[00:36:03.300] - Chloe Thomas
Yes, three entries by finding us on Apple podcasts, subscribe, write and review on Apple podcast. Then screengrab that review and share it on Twitter or Instagram again with the hashtag Keep Optimising.
[00:36:17.610] - Chloe Thomas
Now we're gathering up all the entries each week and are picking a winner every Wednesday until the 2nd of September. So you can find all the details about that at KeepOptimising.com or the step by step guide. If you want to get those three entries. Have a great week, all of you, and make sure you listen to the next episode so I can help you to Keep Optimising your marketing.
[00:36:39.300]
Access everything Keep Optimising at dot com that's within S, not a Z.
19