BluShark Digital
Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark. Taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
Welcome, everybody! Thrilled to have Barry Schwartz here, a contributor search engine, Ilana SMX, the founder of Rusty Brick, a software development group, as well as the search engine roundtable, which I love personally and have learned so much and kept up to date. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Barry.
Barry Schwartz
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Seth Price
Tell me about your journey. How did you get to become this go to guy where we all learn so much? How did you know you've sort of elevated yourself amongst this crowd a very crowded space to be sort of the go to guy how to tell tell me how did this come to be?
Barry Schwartz
I wrote a lot of content spam. No sarcasm? No, I just write a lot. I found in 2003. Like in 2- early 2000s- Before 2003, I started to be fascinated with the SEO community, how search work, Google was up and coming, and how links influence Google search, it was just a fascinating thing to follow. The early Google dances where SEO could- the SEO community would just go crazy about rank- ranking changes and how their businesses were affected by it. It was just a really fascinating topic. Something that I thought like maybe I should just kind of like create a journal of what the SEO community is talking about. And I started doing that in the search engine roundtable, I started writing about what the, I guess topics of interest were within the SEO community deep inside the SEO community. And from there, I decided to just you know, keep keep going keep writing about that. And the search and roundtables. I started, I think in December 2003. So I think that's 17 years ago. And then I also started to write with Danny Sullivan, at Search Engine Watch originally, and then we moved from Search Engine Watch over to Search Engine Land shortly after. And I continued to write at Search Engine Land daily, and search roundtable daily. So I probably write about five to 10 stories a day on just search.
Seth Price
And so- So you started there, you did this, you know, you've been through everything. You've seen the spam, you've seen the sort of Google's push to force people away from the old school techniques. It seems that now the Google, at least from my perspective, has on the organic side, we're seeing a tweaking rather than a major- major shifts and that we're not, we're seeing stuff roll out over time to talk to us a little bit about from your perspective, what you know, how you've seen that metamorphosize within the church, how changes are rolled out. And then as somebody who is, you know, essentially the a thought leader slash writer in that space, how you're seeing that job evolve as far as letting people know what's going on?
Barry Schwartz
Yeah, so yeah, it's definitely evolved a lot over the years. So the early times, it was like, nobody at Google communicating with us, then Google guy came in, which was obviously Matt Cox, but nobody knew his real name. Unless you were like an administrator at webmaster world. And we we basically just track these, you know, changes happening in the datacenters, like rankings, PageRank changes, ranking changes, and everybody would just go in the same just trying to like, watch those changes. And Google really wouldn't comment much about it. The Florida update happens. I think you're in Florida now. But basically, it was one of the I think the first biggest devastating update for webmasters out there SEO and then we're just going to say, like my rankings dropped right before, you know, Thanksgiving and the shopping season. And all these sites that were thinking I'm making a lot of money, like they usually do from search engines and online e commerce saw their revenues just go completely out of the offline. And they had to fire people instead of you know, giving out bonuses that Christmas time. So businesses went bust. And then as more and more concern around how Google's algorithm updates may impact businesses over the years. What we saw was, Google started to communicate a little bit more I think Matt cutts by himself, and then Ellias the Google guy started to like communicate about some myths that SEOs believed in Sandbox updates and so forth. He tried to kind of like, you know, make SEOs and webmasters understand that it's not just some black box, Google really wants to rank, you know, relevant websites. And their aim is to provide the best search results for the user. And sometimes that means building on algorithms that try to reverse or anticipate or prevent any malicious or manipulative tactics that SEO is made to deploy like hacking, links spam, content, spam, and so forth. And these algorithms, not all of them, but these algorithms kind of tried to one- one is to reduce that spam. Two is try to find the most relevant types of search results for the query. So understand the query better, understand the content of the site better, and seeing how that stuff matches. So Google's been much more transparent over the years about those updates. They're not fully transparent. Of course, they can't be because of spammers will be spammers and try to, you know, manipulate the search results to give them too much information. But over the years, Google has become much, much more transparency from delegating a lot more resources to that transparency. It didn't really stop them from pushing out updates before the holiday season, but they're more conscious about it, obviously. So they instead of pushing it out. The last core update- December core update was on December 3, which was after the Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, shopping seasons, what was still before the holiday themselves. And half the SEOs are more than half the SEOs were like bad timing. And 40% of SEO is or like, it's fine. You know, it's better. It's not that'd be for the holiday shopping season. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely more transparency and more awareness for Googlers, about bridging the SEO community, website owners and Google.
Seth Price
So you know, let's take you back to the Matt Cutts period, because that was sort of, you know, talking to Randy on a prior episode, you know, you're sitting there sort of getting these different tidbits, some of them sort of seem misleading, you know, how did you know, as a journalist during that period, was that exhilarating, or frustrating having to deal with sort of the tidbits being thrown out to us slowly over time by Matt and others.
Barry Schwartz
So as a, as a reporter, writing about this, it was it was fun, honestly, it's- I get a thrill out of covering stuff first, covering speculation and then validating that speculation later. So in the early days of Google wouldn't confirm anything, I'd be like, I think there's a Google update based on what the SEO community is chatting about online. And based on the various tracking tools and so forth. And before the tracking tools, obviously, just looking at the chatter, like I see SEOs are coming to the woodworks and say, my client saw a decline here, my client saw an increase there. And you will just basically see a spike in that level of chatter. Like they say, when there's a terrorist threat, you see the channels of chatter starting to like spike, and there's obviously a different level of chatter, but you would see that and then mas, I know, Dr. P came out with his tool to track these things, based on the actual changes in the search results. And all these other tools have come out. And they kind of almost always correlate with the chatter. So it's, it's always nice to see that and then Google kind of be like, forced to say, you know, what, maybe we did have an update, and they say, we did have an update. Maybe it was a smaller update, in their opinion, or maybe they have nothing to confirm, but we've received. One is Google never confirmed these core updates before. And we got one Stanley Sullivan, who moved over to Google, he started to confirm them. And even sometimes he'd be like, Yeah, we did push out a small tweak to a core update, or we push out a small tweak to a Panda update back in the past, and they were confirmed things after the fact. Now they're pretty more proactive, and they don't confirm things after the fact. But yeah, I always like the thrill of saying, I think I see something, cool. Can you confirm it? Yes or no. And even, you know, them sharing whatever information, the more information they share. The more interesting is to see, they shared this piece today, they shared that piece yesterday, they shared this piece six months ago, how does that all correlate with each other?
Seth Price
You know, as somebody who sort of was part of an industry that pretty much learned its lesson, then not that there aren't plenty of legal spammers out there. But for the most people who are managing sites, your goal is not to get in trouble on these algorithm updates. I sort of it's shifted from myself from dreading them to loving them, because generally, the cream has risen to the top. The one area that hasn't been has been local. We've talked a lot about on this program speaking to people, why has Google not taken the steps necessary to eliminate spam and the local results? Were they did a pretty darn good job in the organic results.
Barry Schwartz
Right. So I mean, Google Local results do run off of different algorithms than Google web search, although there are some overlapping algorithms for understand queries and so forth, like neural matching. But Google Maps is newer. I mean, it's a newer platform than Google search. And Google Search seems to have a lot more resources but spent webspam teams, then the Google local team, you don't really hear much of anybody from the Google local team, although they are tremendous- for a tremendous amount of resources and features. So you see new features launching all the time around local- new tests, new user interfaces, around health and safety with COVID mapping directions, you name it, there's so many new features being released.
Seth Price
No, absolutely. It just seems that we see amazing things posts and you scheduling and they're gonna make it to the point where you can you never have to leave the GMB to to deal with a lawyer. That's great. But the idea that in today's day and age that the Spam is so saturate waded through some of the more competitive markets, that it just seems that like, this is something and I'm just curious, has there been discussion? Have you had discussions with any of the people, your former colleague, who's now on the inside? You know, it's something that presumably could be dealt with if they cared about it? Is there a reason it hasn't been prioritized? And do you think? Or do you think it will be something that they look at and try to tackle in the coming months or year?
Barry Schwartz
So I think they're definitely aware of it. I think they that they have done a certain amount of efforts to reduce some of that spam specifically in locksmith areas and stuff like that. They've taken certain cases, but it's they're always a step behind. It's like the old days of Google organic search, where Google was always a step behind the spammer. It's just so easy to get businesses into Google My Business through multiple virtual verification methods and virtual offices, and you name it that they constantly are trying to tweak their policies around verification and what business can be listed with type of businesses. And then as they tweak those policies, spammers find loopholes to go ahead and get their business. And then there's some people that are just being completely, basically not doing the right thing. I don't know if it's legal or not, but some of the cases are probably not legal, and what they're doing to get their business in there. So I think they're aware of it. It's just, they're just stuck just years and years behind when it comes to organic search.
Seth Price
You know, what is what was it like to have a colleague who you worked with, you know, different capacities over the years, you know, on one side of the aisle to go into go in house? Was that it? Was that in a bit of an adjustment? Has that been a neat, neat thing to have that continued banter?
Barry Schwartz
Yeah. So that was years ago now. So I wrote a post about it, like my worlds are upside down. So you had Matt Cutts leave Google and join the government, you had Danny Sullivan, stop writing about search from a SEO perspective, I guess and start working inside for Google. And now my kind of worlds are upside down in that sense. So- But honestly, I think it's been a very big positive. It would be great if Matt Cutts was still there, but Matt Cutts is no longer there, and Danny Sullivan's there. And I think he has made a lot of good change in terms of helping Googlers understand the importance. And there's perspective from SEO as webmasters, site owners and so forth. And kind of championing our position inside of Google, it's not always so easy for him to do that. And at the same time, it's somewhat of a loss to the SEO community where he can't really- just his writing style was something that I've never seen replaced. I can't replace it. But he was able to really take a feature or a new thing or something going on with Google, break it down really, really easily for people to understand, and really get to the core of that subject in a matter of like no time, he could publish an article in like 20 minutes that was like, crazy long, but was really broken in a way that people can understand it really quickly. And that part, I still do miss today. I don't think we'll ever find somebody who could do that. Because it's history in the space since the 90s. You don't have that. With his writing style. He was a journalist that understood search from its infancy. That also hacked his way into through coding here and there, he wasn't a coder, but he understood the HTML and stuff like that. So it was very, he's just a fun personality. So it's, it was it's it's a big loss for him to not be writing, I think, from that Search Engine Land, but there is very big positives for him working in Google directly.
Seth Price
You know, going back to the history of Google sort of spoon feeding things out. Are there any examples? You can think of- times when you are reporting on things they were giving you that turned out to be red herrings are things that SEO is probably shouldn't have been following, but Google wanted followed- was that sort of the part of the part that I found as an SEO early on was very difficult was figuring out what was being said, versus what we actually should do that was in the best interest of a client.
Barry Schwartz
Good question. I mean, there's all this debate around, it's I mean, it's early on as PageRank scores, like, you know, they were so proud of their PageRank scores, they had a toolbar indicator for it, SEOs were optimized for it. And then as peoples are manipulated in the SEO community, Google wanted to do away a PageRank. But the marketing team said, all Google is all about PageRank. We can't do it. So it took them years and years to kind of go away from PageRank scores. And then people started following GA scores, which have nothing to do with how Google ranks, which is the same. But yeah, that's one thing. I mean, the other thing is probably Google quality raters guidelines for years and years, it was always leaked. And then eventually, Google's like, you know what, forget it. Let's just publish it. And they published it, and it was a win win for them. I mean, I think that's a much bigger win for Google, because they're just basically saying build a great website. And then people are building great websites. I mean, the more obscure things are like link building, you know, do widget links work do spammy links. work and a lot of SEOs will say, yeah, they still work. And I'm still doing it for my clients, because the outcome shows that we're getting good results from doing the things that Google tells us not to do. And there are guidelines, Google says don't do X, Y, and Z. But yet we know X, Y and Z works, we're gonna still do it. The question is, in the long term, and five years from now, will that work? Is it you have to start building a new website or not from it? And we've seen that over the years with Panda, Penguin, various Google updates over the years that taking easy shortcuts, although maybe make you a lot of money in the one six month period, or even a few year period, ultimately, that websites not going to stand this the time of Google and their algorithms and eventually not do what is supposed to do. So it's hard to say that what Google's telling us to do versus what we should do, because there's only a tiny difference between that.
Seth Price
Right. So some of it is like a warning, hey, you better stop doing this. It may not affect you, at some point, it may. And the question is, have you pushed it too far? Exactly. Talks about the future. What do you see coming down the road where, you know, we're if you from your perspective, what should SEOs be focused on? You know, coming up 2021-22.
Barry Schwartz
Alright, so the most immediate I mean, so there's always this core update. So we just had a core update. And those are some of the bigger things that I SEOs are like, these are these are important. So make sure your clients websites, you know, you basically build the best possible website, yada, Google says, make great websites, yada, yada. Google has their advice around core updates, a search for Google core updates, advice or something like that, you'll probably find the article. Outside of that, I mean, the things that are upcoming really soon is obviously mobile first indexing. Most sites, hopefully by now, are over a mobile first indexing. But if your site is not ready for mobile first indexing, that might be a big issue. So March 2021, is Google's gonna say every single website is gonna be mobile first indexing. If your site has not been moved over then yet, that means that Google says your mobile site and your desktop site are different? It doesn't- rankings are going to change. So March, websites that haven't been updated in a while that are not really done, well, probably will see some ranking disturbance because of it. But I would assume by now, most websites have been moved over. So it is what it is. And then obviously, the page experience update with Core rev vitals that's happening in May 2021. We saw some examples of how that might look in the search results. So Google says the actual snippets themselves will have maybe visual indicators showing you if the website does well with page experience update. The small icons, Google did it with a mobile friendly update. When it was when that rolled out Google did it with fast pages or slow pages. Google does it with AMP today when they have these indicators. So that's the most important part is to make sure you have good indicators for your website, because that could increase or decrease click through rates in the search results. I don't think personally that you'll see a massive ranking change. If you don't do well with the core rev vitals. I think relevancy will always trump PageSpeed or Core rev vitals. But if your website and your clients website are exactly the same, then Cora rev vitals will come into play. So those are like the most upcoming things that SEO should worry about, and webmasters should worry about making sure your future proofing your core updates, making sure your site is mobile friendly and mobile- ready for mobile first indexing and the upcoming paid experience update.
Seth Price
Gotcha. What about LSAs? You know, we- I was added in with Google on the West Coast and number a couple years back they were focusing on the the the awfulness and locksmiths and home improvements. And then they said, Oh, well there's a lot of money in legal let's let's go there. Even though you guys are licensed. It's been a pretty clunky rollout so far. Just want to get your perspective on the the LSA expansion beyond the original couple areas they started with.
Barry Schwartz
Yeah, so local service ads. So I've heard mixed rumors, I've heard that they work very, very well from a lot of people. And then I've heard from some people, they're not so great. I'm not sure somebody really should do a study on by niche, by industry. And maybe it's really great for plumbers but horrible for legal professionals. I'm not sure like anything.
Seth Price
It depends, right. You know, right now, I think that we are I'm not judging it based on the ROI right now, a lot of people are getting great ROI. But they also have not turned them into an auction yet, which when that happens, that that great ROI is likely to disappear. So right now I'm like, yeah, it's a wild west grab what you can because they're trying to get you hooked on it. But you know, PPC got pretty expensive in major markets for money keywords. I don't I assume that the lead gen that you're getting through the local service ads will go the same way within a short period of time.
Barry Schwartz
I think now it's just a monthly $50 per month fee to be-
Seth Price
No no, you're paying per call at a pretty substantial rate, but it's still reasonable compared to the cost of clicks. So let's say a click might be $60 A call might be A 200, that's a pretty good deal. If you're clicksor at 60, to get an actual call, that's challengeable to a certain extent. So the- My concern is, they are going to get to the point where they're like, Okay, you know, we recognize that there are more people that want that call than there are, you know, calls available, and it's gonna push that up. So that $200 call will become hypothetically $600, to match the $60 click.
Barry Schwartz
Yeah, I mean, that's the case of this is like, you know, when you were back in SEO and PPC, back in the old days, it was cheap, and really easy to make a lot of money. So take advantage while you can. And I'm sure something's gonna come out in the future, that's new around this, let's look cool, get guaranteed, which is, I think that's the $50 per month service. So that's something that people should probably take advantage of, they can get it a little badge indicator on your local listings is really, really good. But if you know that $20 phone calls worth it for you, and you can return to that conversion rate, and the ROI is there, you know, pay as much as you can to get as much of that volume now before other people start to find out about it. And then that rate that click through rate, or that phone call rate goes up way too.
Seth Price
Awesome. You know, in the remaining moments, we have just wanted to get your thoughts, you know, you talked about what you sort of- what you think Google's going, but what what you know, what's interesting to you, if you speak to and get the opportunity to talk inside and on and off the record with people, you know, what are the things that sort of interest you coming up in the coming quarters.
Barry Schwartz
I mean, there's, there's two ways to kind of look at that. One is Google's constant devotion and desire to make search as best as possible for their searchers for the users. And they will go and- No, they will- no expense for them to do that. So Google will do whatever they can to make sure their search results, both on the ad side and on the organic side and the local side, and all of the verticals are as the best they can. So when we, as webmasters, or site owners or SEOs see something that Google's changing or testing, we have to really, instead of thinking about, Oh, this is going to hurt us or Google's doing this because they're evil, they're going to do it no matter what we can complain as much as we want, they're going to still do it, you have to get in the mindset of where Google wants to go, because they want to satisfy their searchers. And if that means Featured Snippets are going to reduce click through rates, or Google is going to show zero results and reduce clicks, you got to think about how can I say, Alright, I want to leverage this from a branding perspective. So next time somebody searches for that query, they're not searching for the question. They're searching for my brand, and getting to my website. So you have to kind of think about how can I leverage these changes that Google is going to keep doing no matter what how much we complain as SEOs- as SEOs, we have to make sure to leverage those changes that Google's gonna make in the future, to the best of our ability to drive that conversion to our website, or by a phone call, who cares if they actually clicking out onto our website, we care more if they're making a sale. And maybe that means Google, you know, by now, via Google, or maybe it means shopping actions. Or maybe it means using the Google new lead forms, or Google My Business or whatever it might be, you want to make sure you get that lead to your site, or to your phone or any way you possibly can. So you could actually convert that user. And that may mean you have to invest more in branding. So you get that phone call later, in a feature snippet or something like that. So that's one perspective of thinking about, alright, Google's gonna change, you got to adapt with that CEOs have been really, really good about adapting to change. That's what SEO is all about change. So I'm not concerned with SEOs about doing that. And then I'm going to the bigger things that Google is constantly doing. I mean, Google is constantly changing things and so forth. So you know, you know, Voice Search, Google Assistant, upcoming players like maybe Apple Siri, Apple Search is coming out with something in the future. Hopefully, Microsoft Bing is investing tremendously in duckduckgos, there are crazy amounts of commercials. So there's lots of competition out there. And Voice Search has always been pretty interesting to me. It's baked into everything now you're driving your car voice searches, they're talking to your fridge, your microwave, your your clock on your counter, I have Google Home, and Apple Siri behind me, Apple home pod behind me. Assistants and home automation, all that stuff. It's just so exciting. We're in the position we're in right now from a searcher perspective. And the question is, how could we as SEOs leverage all that? To make the biggest bang for our buck?
Seth Price
That's awesome. But as we conclude, can you just tell me a little bit about Rusty Brick and in your, you know, what do you guys do there?
Barry Schwartz
So Rusty Brick does not do SEO, we build software. So if you have a unique idea that you want to build a website for, or a mobile app for usually like, I don't know you're in the law business. And you have an idea of how to make your lawyers do more by making sure they track their hours better. Stuff like that any software, workflow systems, anything to make your business more efficient, or new ideas like startup ideas, that's what you focus on anything that's not out of the box. So if you want to build an E commerce site, go with Shopify. But if you want to build something that's unique, that is not out of the box, that's what Rusty Brick specializes in.
Seth Price
Well, I'll give you my two cents. And where I see demand in the market without a solution is billing of hours, whether it be legal or otherwise, there's plenty of billing software out there. But understanding that most people spend most of their time on their phone and email with their mobile device, and finding something that truly helps capture that phone time. And email text time, I don't think really has been done elegantly in the market. And somebody's gonna make a lot of money with that.
Barry Schwartz
Yeah, there's actually a reason for that, because Google and Apple and Apple are very restrictive about- more so Apple- restrictive about what you can do with the background with third party apps on native apps, like the phone app, and the native email client in texting. But yeah, that's, uh, yeah, if you could, there's lots of solutions out there. But if somebody could crack that up and make a lot of money.
Seth Price
Absolutely. Well, they said, Thank you so much, Barry, really appreciate it and keep up the awesome work. I gotta tell you, it just it's been part- part of my journey is getting your your emails and figuring out what my next challenge is. And, you know, it's, it's been a fun ride. And I'm glad to have always had you as, as sort of my secret source or primary source to figure out what it where I need to turn next. Oh, thank you so much.
Barry Schwartz
Thank you for having me. It's been fun.
BluShark Digital
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.
