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.