SEO 101 Episode 483 - A Major Acquisition, Bing and Google Accused of Stealing Recipe Content

Summary

SEO 101 Podcast Summary – Episode 483: A Major Acquisition, Bing and Google Accused of Stealing Recipe Content
Release Date: October 28, 2024
Hosts: Ross Dunn and Scott Van Ek
Source: WMR.FM

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Introduction

In Episode 483 of SEO 101, hosts Ross Dunn and Scott Van Ek delve into significant developments within the SEO landscape, discussing a major acquisition, allegations against Bing and Google regarding recipe content, updates to Google Business Profiles, advancements in AI, multilingual SEO strategies, and valuable insights from Google’s John Mueller on the use of SEO tools.

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Major Acquisition: Semrush Acquires Search Engine Land

Timestamp: [01:47] - [06:53]

The episode kicks off with Ross Dunn announcing a pivotal industry development: Semrush has acquired Search Engine Land and its parent company, Third Door Media. This acquisition includes prominent resources such as SearchEngineLand.com, the Search Marketing Expo (SMX), MarTech.org, the MarTech Conference, and Digital Marketing Depot.

Notable Quote:

"With this purchase, they're essentially acquiring the overarching company called Third Door Media. This is so huge."
— Ross Dunn [01:47]

Scott Van Ek raises concerns about potential biases, questioning whether Semrush’s ownership might influence the content’s impartiality, especially regarding tool recommendations like Ahrefs or Moz.

Notable Quote:

"I definitely wonder how that's going to play out with the bias... I hope they stay unbiased."
— Scott Van Ek [04:25]

The hosts express mixed feelings about the acquisition, acknowledging Semrush's value while remaining cautious about editorial independence under a tool-centric ownership.

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Pay-Per-Click (PPC) News

Timestamp: [07:00] - [17:22]

Scott Van Ek introduces two critical updates in the PPC realm:

1. Google Ads' 11-Year Data Retention Policy: Google Ads has implemented a policy limiting data retention to 11 years. Advertisers are urged to back up their historical campaign data by November 13th to prevent loss.

   Notable Quote:

   "If you use Google Ads, you have until November 13th to save that historical data or you will lose it."
   — Scott Van Ek [07:26]

2. New Penalties for Policy Violations: Google Ads is enforcing stricter penalties for agencies and third parties that breach their advertising policies. Violations may result in account suspensions without prior warnings.

   Notable Quote:

   "Activity by a third party partner that demonstrates a disregard for compliance with Google Ads policies may result in a loss of privileges."
   — Scott Van Ek [09:00]

Ross Dunn emphasizes the importance of adhering to these policies to avoid detrimental impacts on multiple client accounts, highlighting the interconnected nature of manager accounts.

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Allegations of Recipe Content Theft by Bing and Google

Timestamp: [11:33] - [18:52]

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Bing and Google allegedly copying full recipe content from websites. Scott Van Ek shares his experience searching for "turkey recipes," discovering that Bing presents complete recipe steps without proper attribution, sparking accusations from content creators like Inspired Taste.

Notable Quote:

"They were calling Bing out for showing their entire tahini recipe and calling it outright theft."
— Ross Dunn [12:51]

Ross Dunn speculates that Google might be engaging in similar practices through AI-generated overviews, potentially undermining content creators' control over their proprietary recipes.

The hosts discuss the ramifications for content creators, including strategies to prevent unauthorized content usage, such as hiding crucial recipe steps or embedding content in non-indexable formats to ensure traffic is directed to the original website.

---

Google Business Profiles Update

Timestamp: [15:05] - [19:16]

Ross Dunn brings attention to Google's removal of the "health insurance accepted" field from Google Business Profiles, as reported by Joey Hawkins via X (formerly Twitter). This change affects health-related businesses that previously used this feature to specify accepted insurance providers, streamlining lead quality by pre-qualifying potential clients.

Notable Quote:

"It just makes sense. But why would they remove this? It just makes no sense."
— Ross Dunn [15:02]

Scott Van Ek speculates on possible legal reasons behind this removal, such as insurance companies' preferences, but acknowledges the negative impact on businesses reliant on this information to filter leads effectively.

---

AI News and Developments

Timestamp: [19:16] - [27:01]

The hosts transition to discussing advancements in AI that impact SEO:

1. Search GPT's Surge: Search GPT is reportedly yielding four times more referrals to brands compared to competitors like Perplexity and Claude, growing at 150% month-over-month according to BrightEdge Search.

   Notable Quote:

   "Search GPT is sending four times more referrals to brands than their competition."
   — Scott Van Ek [19:46]

2. Google AI Overviews and the Helpful Content Update: It has been observed that Google AI Overviews do not link to websites penalized by the Helpful Content Update. This phenomenon serves as a diagnostic tool to identify sites affected by content quality issues.

   Notable Quote:

   "Google AI Overviews that may talk about your business won't show a link to your site if you were hit by the HC."
   — Ross Dunn [20:46]

The discussion underscores the evolving interplay between AI technologies and SEO, emphasizing the need for continuous adaptation to maintain visibility and traffic.

---

SEO Tips for Multilingual Sites

Timestamp: [22:55] - [27:01]

Drawing from insights shared by Martin Split, the hosts outline three essential strategies for optimizing multilingual websites:

1. Website Structure: Choose between Top-Level Domains (TLDs) (e.g., example.fr), Subdomains (e.g., fr.example.com), or Subdirectories (e.g., example.com/fr) to organize content for different languages or regions.

   Notable Quote:

   "The most common and recommended ways to deal with international sites are to either use top level domains or use subdomains or subdirectories."
   — Scott Van Ek [23:44]

2. Correct Hreflang Tags: Implement accurate hreflang tags using valid language and country codes to ensure search engines serve the appropriate language version to users.

   Notable Quote:

   "Use a valid language and country code combination. Make sure all variations link to each other."
   — Scott Van Ek [24:25]

3. Language Selection Links: Provide users with visible links to switch between language versions instead of auto-redirecting based on assumed preferences, enhancing user control and experience.

   Notable Quote:

   "Provide links to different language versions rather than automatically redirecting visitors based on assumed preferences."
   — Ross Dunn [24:54]

The hosts and Scott stress the importance of these practices in improving international SEO performance and user satisfaction.

---

Advice from Google’s John Mueller on SEO Tools

Timestamp: [27:01] - [34:13]

John Mueller, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, is referenced for his insights on the over-reliance on third-party SEO metrics. The conversation highlights his caution against depending solely on tools for SEO decisions, advocating instead for consistent effort and high-quality content.

Notable Quote:

"SEO success requires consistent effort through great content, not quick fixes."
— Ross Dunn [30:13]

Scott Van Ek echoes these sentiments, emphasizing that while tools like Semrush are valuable for data analysis, they cannot replace the nuanced understanding and expertise required to navigate Google's algorithms effectively.

The hosts discuss common client misconceptions stemming from tool-based metrics, underlining the necessity for trained SEO professionals to interpret data accurately and implement strategic actions beyond what automated tools suggest.

Notable Quote:

"SEO metrics have to be taken with a grain of salt... they're just hints."
— Ross Dunn [31:00]

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Conclusion

In this episode of SEO 101, Ross Dunn and Scott Van Ek provide a comprehensive overview of recent events and trends shaping the SEO landscape. From Semrush's significant acquisition of Search Engine Land to the contentious issue of recipe content duplication by search engines, the hosts offer critical analysis and practical advice. They underscore the importance of strategic planning in multilingual SEO, the prudent use of AI tools, and the invaluable role of human expertise in navigating the complexities of search engine optimization.

Listeners are encouraged to stay informed through the show's newsletter at seo101radio.com and to engage with future episodes for ongoing insights and strategies in SEO.

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Remember: For more in-depth discussions and actionable SEO tips, tune into SEO 101 every week on WMR.FM.

Transcript

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[Ross Dunn]

Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM episode number 483. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my co host is my company Senior SEO Scott Fenach. Well we had some big news this week. We're calling it non SEO News but it's so big it's kind of SEO news. Semrush or Semrush or however you want to call it. One of our foremost tools in our industry has bought Search Engine Land and its subsidiaries. So search engine land.com, if you don't know about it, is one of the main. Well I'd say the main website about search engines and what's happening in the world. I'd say it's. I don't know, it's on par. Maybe, maybe Search Engine Roundtable. Second, they're different sites in many ways but anyways Search Engine Lands turned into Quite the powerhouse over the years, since 2006, I believe, when they launched, and which is hard to believe it's been that long. And with this purchase, they're essentially acquiring the overarching company called Third Door Media. Third Door Media owns Search engineland.com, the Search Marketing Expo, or SMX, martech.org and the MarTech Conference, as well as Digital Marketing Depot. This is so huge. I mean, we're all like. There's been lots of discussions out there amongst SEOs on social, but what their thoughts are about this, this handoff. I'm personally a bit conflicted. I don't love the idea of a tool owning something like this. Everyone's going to be very cautious about what kind of content is coming out. Barry Schwartz has been the chief editor, or I forget his formal name of Search Engine Land for many, many years. And apparently he's staying on. He says it's made, it's been made it worthwhile for him to stay. Hasn't given him any reason to leave, but he's on guard, you know, if he finds that it's not a good fit, he will. Will leave. So I don't know what's going to happen here. I guess Search Engine Journal and other platforms might get a little more traffic from this because they still are somewhat unbiased, although they do have advertisers. So there's only so much lack of bias. But it's interesting. We'll see how this shakes out. What are your thoughts on this, on this transition, Scott?

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, I definitely wonder how that's going to play out with the bias. Right. Like, you know, you read an article and usually you get references to all these different tools. Are all the tool references going to be just Semrush now or is Ahref still going to be in there? You know, is Moz still going to be mentioned or are they going to. Are they going to, you know, cut that back? I hope not. I hope they. Well, obviously I hope that they, they stay unbiased. But how could you not, you know, at the same time, if I'd want to promote myself. So I don't know. That's. Hopefully it's still good. I guess we're going to find out, aren't we? If Barry leaves, then that's our cue that they're pushing Semrush a bit too much in their content.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. Who knows? I mean, ever awesome and nice. Lauren Baker might be quite excited about this. I still think he's the sole owner of Search Engine Journal. I'm not sure. Anyway, he. This could be good. Maybe Ahrefs is gonna come knocking on his door now.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, no kidding, right? I. I like what you said. I think it was yesterday or something that. Well, now I know why we're paying so much for. For our Semrush plan. They had to bank up some extra cash to make some acquisitions here, so.

[Ross Dunn]

Well, it makes sense. We spent a fortune on it and I can only imagine how many other agencies do as well at even higher rates. It's.

[Scott Van Ek]

Oh yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

Not cheap. It is a powerful platform though. And I wouldn't spend it if it wasn't worth it.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. This acquisition annoys me a little bit. But Semrush is. It's good. Like it's our go to. Not trying to say go use it and you know, promote them, but it. I'm in there every single day.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, well, and we had to choose. We. I got. Frankly I got tired of paying for multiple platforms. So we decided this, you know, yes, there's different deficiencies in every one of them, but let's just stick with the one that seems overarchingly the best and that was Semrush. So we did. And I really looked back. There's a couple times I've neat. I've wanted a little more data on stuff and we've looked at other ones, but mostly just through clients accounts. We have clients who have accounts on Ahrefs or the other one's escaping me, but yeah. Anyways, it's a good brand. It could do. They could have done worse. And, and congrats to all the partners there. I'm sure they're very happy. Well, at least I hope they are. I hope they did well.

[Scott Van Ek]

Oh, I imagine so.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. Okay. Next up on the this non SEO news. But it's still fairly important. What's up?

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, so I. We don't talk about pay per click a lot for obvious reasons. Not pay per click 101 and we did a little bit last week and I'm going to a bit more this week. Sorry, but I felt I've got a couple things here that are probably worth mentioning. I know a lot of our listeners have pay per click account, so this first one kind of irritates me, but then less the more I think about it. So Google has announced an 11 year data retention policy. So Google.

[Ross Dunn]

Google Ads.

[Scott Van Ek]

Sorry, Google Ads. Sorry, Google Ads has announced 11 year data retention policy. So if you're advertising this is important. If you rely on analysis of your old data, you will want to act now and back up all your campaigns, especially anything historic. If you go back that far, if you use Google Ads, you have until November 13th to save that historical data or you will lose it. My first gut reaction was, oh, it's like Google Ads or sorry, Google Analytics, they're just going to get rid of your data and then it's gone. But I started thinking, you know, two year old Google Analytics data is super valuable. Is 11 year old Google Ads data valuable?

[Ross Dunn]

I don't think so. I think this is a, this is a dream really. They didn't have to switch platforms and lose it all.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, lose everything. I think for the vast majority of people, data that's 11 years old is kind of irrelevant. You're not going to reference that in making future decisions because everything's changed so much. It can't, you know, it's apples to oranges at this point. But yeah, if you are one of those people that has that old historical data and you want it for whatever reason, you've got a, you know, a few weeks anyways, you've got till November 13 to deal with that. So how to back it up? The easiest way I'm not sure, not my expertise. But we have a link to Search Engine Land which, and they link over to Google Ads and you can find that info and make sure you back it all up.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, we do Google Ads at Stepforth, so I'm sure Nathan, our pay per click, our PPC specialist, is definitely going to know more about this when needed. However, I really don't think anyone's going to care. 11 years is a long time, so I think it's a pretty sweet setup. Not a big deal. Next up here Google Ads is to. There's lots of Google Ad stuff but these are all fairly important so we wanted to make sure we covered them. They're releasing new penalties for agencies and third parties that perhaps are breaking Google's policies, their third party policies. Here's a quote from them. Activity by a third party partner that demonstrates a disregard for compliance with Google Ads policies may result in a loss of privileges removal from Google third party programs such as Google Partners and account suspension. We take violations of this policy very seriously and consider them egregious. If we find violations of this policy, we will suspend your Google Ads accounts upon detection and without prior warning and you will not be allowed to advertise with us again, unquote. There's a whole list of transparency requirements. This is easy for you to find if you're already an advertiser. You're probably already aware of this or they'd be notified. Anyway, we were talking about this briefly and, and talking, you know, would they give you a chance to get back? I doubt it. I doubt if you get suspended and they see something going wrong, they will completely cut you off. So be very careful.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, I kind of wonder if. So you know, all of our client ads go through the. I don't even know what they call it anymore but it used to be called, I think my client center or something like that. I think they've changed the name seven times since I used to do pay per click. But it's like basically one portal where you can access all of the your different Google Ads clients. I'm wondering if you screw up one of your clients it is it going to screw up all of your clients? You know what I mean? Like is it just going to ban your access? Is it going to. Or is it going to ban the end client and all of your end clients tied into your manager account? I don't know but like we keep everything on the up and up so like I'm not worried about us. But if you are managing these accounts and your clients are linked within each other through your account, be careful. I can't even imagine if you got banned and all your clients got banned because like I don't know how far reaching this would go but it could be bad for some people if you're playing dirty, which is good.

[Ross Dunn]

But yeah, well, good and bad depends.

[Scott Van Ek]

If you're legit playing dirty. It's good that the agency gets in trouble. Maybe not the end clients, but true that.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, so SEO news, this is something you discovered. This is kind of cool.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah. So last week we were talking about how Google was stealing, well I use the word stealing kind of loosely. Recipes and posting the full recipe within sort of a limited test within search results. Which is great because you don't get all the blogger content that and not great depending on who you are. Well, it turns out Bing has actually been doing this for a while. I don't know when they started but it's not even a test, it's just full on live. So I actually did a quick search to test it. I searched for turkey recipes because we're coming out of Canadian Thanksgiving and I know how to cook a turkey. But let's search turkey recipes in the results. I got a full carousel with 12 steps on how to cook a turkey that you could scroll through everything you need to know. And I don't recall seeing a reference to where that recipe came from. Although it might have been there. I got to. I'll admit I don't remember but a few days ago as well inspired taste. I'm not actually sure who inspired taste is but they were referenced in the search Engine Roundtable article. They were calling Bing out for showing their entire tahini recipe and calling it outright theft. Which yeah, I think they're not entirely wrong but it's.

[Ross Dunn]

I, I don't envy them, you know, I really don't. It's a tough situation for, for anyone frankly with content that is their own and they don't want it poached but they have to show it in order to get people to their sites. One of the things that I think I discussed a little bit the last time you were talking about recipes is, you know, how are they going to respond to this if they don't get any kind of kickback? And now I'm thinking about Google here because when we were talking about Google they were apparently working with what did he call them? The writers, recipe dealers. I don't know who the words this is not coming to me right now. But anyway, who create these. And they, they said all right, so we've got an arrangement with you. We don't know what that arrangement is. I, we assume they're getting some money to test these AI overviews that include actually the full recipe. I didn't think they really did, but it truly is the full recipe. It's nuts. I really didn't think they'd be able to fit all that. But they do. But the people that won't. I, I really have suspicions that they're. That Google's not going to arrange this with everyone and there's a good chance that what's happened on Bing will happen to others and their content will just be, well, stolen. So what will these people have to do? And, and I would think that they're going to hide pretty key points of the recipe in either different parts of the page that make it more difficult for Google to or for the search engine to grab or in content that can't be indexed. I don't know what but they're going to have to figure something out to make it so that you have to go to their website and that's going to be a good yet another See all this stuff creates business. Someone's going to have to create this and make money off it. But yeah, there's just no way this is going to be good for anyone if they can. If these search engines can just take Advantage of people. So let's hope it'd be interesting to see what happens.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ross Dunn]

Okay, so Google business profiles have removed the health insurance accepted statement from profiles. Now this is according to Joey Hawkins via X. It appears that Google is removing health insurance fields from Google Business profiles. If you were a health related organization or you are previously, you could list what insurance you accepted within your business profile. Perhaps you can still list them but they weren't there aren't appearing now or they've completely removed the option to add it. I think that's unfortunate. I really don't understand why they would do that because that is very important and it saves huge amounts of wasteful phone calls. My gosh. For dentists. We work with dentists and my other company first dentist.com and the amount of like we have dentists who don't accept any kind of insurance and prefer to or don't accept not. It's not the insurance they accept. The insurance they don't accept. What's I guess Obamacare or public care. I don't know much about it being in Canada here, but certain types of care they don't accept and they were able to specify this and we thought that was a real win. Yeah, it just saves people phone calls. And when we get leads to the client, they're not getting what amounts to garbage leads.

[Scott Van Ek]

You're just pre qualifying.

[Ross Dunn]

Exactly. Why the heck would they remove this? It just makes no sense.

[Scott Van Ek]

It made no sense to me. And then I started wondering if maybe there's some legal reason the insurance companies don't want them to be able to be listed or something. I don't know. That's the only thing I could think of that might possibly be why if a certain insurance company doesn't want their name thrown out randomly like I, I don't know why. Yeah, if that's what they want, they could make it happen.

[Ross Dunn]

So yeah, it's kind of like in the old days when we people used to say, well if you, if you want to use Amex at our establishment you have to pay an extra 5%. Well Amex shut that down pretty quickly.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

And now it's back and now it's legal. But back then they shut it down quickly because it was making them look bad. Well, I guess this could make health insurance companies look bad too. I don't know. Interesting. It's a puzzle move, but it is.

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[Ross Dunn]

Happening. And so if you find yourself getting a lot more garbage calls, I apologize to saying garbage, but it really is for companies who don't want this, this kind of lead, then this is why, and hopefully things will change back. Okay, let's take a quick break and we jump back. We're going to go into AI news and then some interesting tips from Martin Split and John Mueller.

[Talkspace Representative]

SEO101 will be back right after recess.

[Ross Dunn]

Welcome back to SEO101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Van Ek. All right, so what's next year? Search GPT gives brands four times more referrals versus perplexity. And Claude, you put this in here and let us know what's going on here.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah. So despite being in a limited beta, according to Bright Edge Search, Search GPT is sending four times more referrals to brands than their competition. You know, it's, it's been growing at a rate of about 150% month over month. Perplexity and Claude. And I've got to admit, I haven't used either of them. I'm sure Ross probably has.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. And not Claude. But perplexity is amazing. It's. Yeah, they're saying it's, it's a potential Google competitor. It's so well done and it is very, very good.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah. And they're only growing at a rate of 22%. So there's got to be a bit of marketing that's causing for that. That's Cause for that if Perplexity is growing much slower than Search GPT, as we reported, I think it was even last week. OpenAI does plan to roll out Search GPT before the end of this year because right now it's just a limited beta. So it's growing fast as a beta. What's that going to look like at the end of the year when they go live? How's it really going to compete? I don't know. I guess we're going to find out, but it's on fire right now.

[Ross Dunn]

Everything is going so dang fast. It's. It's stunning. All right, Google AI Overviews are not linking to sites hit by the Helpful Content Update. I think this is really interesting. Not so much just the fact that this was discovered, but the fact that it's a great way to test what could be wrong with a particular client who's had a drop in rankings. So Lily Rae noted in X that it appears these Google AI Overviews that may talk about your business won't show a link to your site if you were hit by the helpful Content update. She said if you search for for quote, who is, then you put the website in unquote. AI Overview results will not include a link to the site if it was hit by the HC or Helpful Content Update. This has been confirmed by Glenn Gabe. So it looks like something that we can look at and use as a bit of a test when we're considering what's up with a new client or what's up with your site if you find that things have plummeted.

[Scott Van Ek]

One thing I found interesting is that Glenn Gabe noted that a client who had been hit by the con, the Helpful Content Update, but then recovered in August. So now things are good. They still weren't cited in the AI overviews after being basically reinstated in August. So it's like, are you permanently banned from AI Overviews if an update doesn't like you? Was it coincidence? I don't know. I don't know how many examples he has of this, but he's seen some examples of it, so it's crazy.

[Ross Dunn]

The other thing that is really odd is that this still appears to be true even if the affected site is ranking in the number one spot organically. What the. Huh.

[Scott Van Ek]

It's weird. It's really weird.

[Ross Dunn]

I guess different parts of the engine not speaking to different parts because they're completely separated and yeah, I imagine they have to keep AI and all this stuff separated because it's all experimental at this stage. Yes. Anyway. All right, so Martin Split, we've had him on the show before. Great guy. He's sharing three SEO tips for multilingual sites. What is tip one?

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, so tip one is website structure. You know, there are three main ways to structure your website for international searches or audiences. You've got your top level domains.fr.de.ca for us Canadians up here. You can implement subdomains, so canada.example.com or you could utilize subdirectories like example.com canada. These are the most common and he quoted the most common and recommended ways to deal with international sites is to either use top level domains or use subdomains or subdirectories. He did list a bunch of pros and cons for each, which is amazing. There's a huge screenshot at Search Engine Journal because it was all in a video at a Google Search Central. So in number two.

[Ross Dunn]

Oh, sorry, are you finished there? I was going to jump into two.

[Scott Van Ek]

Yeah, I was gonna say just go there for the video, for this, for the screenshot. It's a whole bunch of tips and if I ramble on you're all going to get bored. So go there if you care. Tip number two is make sure to use the correct hreflang tag. So use a valid language and country code combination. Sometimes for example, people will put USA instead of us. That's wrong. So make sure you've got the correct two digit code. Ensure that your language variations all link to each other. So you know, you want to make sure every single page on your product that you've got in a different language, they're all linked within one or two, one another. I can't talk now either. Fire me. And also include self referencing links. So each page has to link back to itself in your hreflang tags. He says make sure the attributes are valid. Use valid language code combinations and then make sure all variations linked to each other. Make sure again. Yeah, self reference. A self referential link so your German page links to itself and the English and Japanese pages. Oh my God.

[Ross Dunn]

I'm not the only one that's slurring today.

[Scott Van Ek]

I. I'm gonna need a coffee after. You think it was like tequila lunch today or something?

[Ross Dunn]

Well, tag team, I'll do, I'll do number three here. So language selection. Finally, Martin recommends providing links to different language versions rather than automatically redirecting visitors based on assumed preferences. Yeah, his quote says essentially that and, and I 100 agree. It's nice when you go to a place and maybe it might be in Japanese but then there's a link to Canada and I can switch to Canada. My son's deeply in. In entrenched and interested in Japanese. So sometimes he goes to sites and he wants it to be Japanese. He doesn't want it to be flipped to Canadian. And you know, why not just have it that way and don't automatically do it? People are smart enough these days generally to make that selection themselves.

[Scott Van Ek]

I want to put out one personal note out there, a little message to developers out there. If you have say, an American and a Canadian version of the site and you are auto redirecting people to the Canadian version, in my case, don't auto direct me to the French version because I don't speak French and more often than not, I don't know why they assume everybody in Canada speaks French and yes, it's in a second official language, but the majority, well, I'm guessing here the majority of us are not bilingual. Maybe, I don't know, but I'm not. So don't send me to a French site just because I'm in Canada. Let me pick.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, I'd say what, 8/10 of the country is purely English. So yeah. But probably population wise, Ontario is, or in this case Montreal and Quebec and all that area is huge amount of people. So. Yeah. Anyways. Wow. Falling down that rabbit hole.

[Scott Van Ek]

Okay, yeah, there we go.

[Ross Dunn]

But yeah, I've had that, that incident recently and I could not get out of it. It was on which page I was going to, I don't know. But I had to delete my cache because I kept assuming I was French. Like, stop it, stop it.

[Scott Van Ek]

I love it when I get French ads as well on YouTube or social media. And it's the ads are all in French. Like, why are you serving me? What makes you think, where are they picking that up from when my account is in English?

[Ross Dunn]

I don't know.

[Scott Van Ek]

Waste of money for them. Not me though.

[Ross Dunn]

Yep. All right, so John Mueller spokes here about over reliance on SEO tool metrics. This is really simple. Some just a few main points here. He warns over against over relying on third party SEO metrics. He speaks to a person who came at him with a lot of different metrics that were making him very concerned and you know, saying, hi, what. What's happened to my site? This is so scary. One of the things he said drives me nuts. He said, well, you know, these things can't take into account your disavow file and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, wait a second, they keep, they just don't stick to One story not long ago they said that this eval file is not doing anything anymore. It's just really just going into a little sandbox. So don't worry about it. Now he's talking about how that has an impact. He's just, it's just so tiring at times. Hopefully he just forgot to mention that. I don't know. He says the. Yeah, the third party tools can't access Google data like exactly that this eval files. And he also said that it's not rocket science. SEO success requires consistent effort through great content, not quick fixes. And he's accounting quick fixes. I'm certain he's. He's piling in just quick AI content and that's 100% accurate. You want to have content that has got your expertise placed in it, even if it's just in the prompt that you've created to make sure that it does. Consider these elements as well as it as the other information it's sourcing online from its own database. Anyways, it is a consistent effort. It's not easy. And that's why sites that make that effort do succeed most of the time. Not all the time, unfortunately, but most of the time. And you know, it's 100% true that SEO metrics have to be all taken with a grain of salt. We've said before, it's happened recently where we've been taken too seriously about our own metrics being that we've said on the show where we have to generalize. And that's really what SEO metrics are. They're just hints and an SEO just. We just know that we don't talk about it because it's just the way things are. We know that these tools do not index the entire web. They have not. They've got a small portion of it. There's no way they could. They're not Google. So they're only getting a taste of all these different places. They don't know where all the backlinks are. They don't know all the changes that could have happened. They're estimating all this based on some very smart algorithms. But still it's not Google. And that's why we exist. We've come to know Google really well. We're not faultless, but we've certainly got a much better grasp of Google's pulse because we look at this data all of the time and we see the data from Semrush and we know how to take it with a grain of salt and just how much salt it's really hard to describe, but that's the worst. At least it gives you some concept of how we're thinking.

[Scott Van Ek]

I get emails from clients fairly regularly where they see a statistic or a figure or some kind of data from one of these tools and they don't like it. They're like, why is this, Whatever it is, whatever the example is, or maybe they don't like how Yoast isn't giving them a green dot for a page or something. And they come at me like, why is it like this? Or why is this broken? Like, well, then I have to explain. Well, it's not broken. This tool is actually incorrect in this instance because whatever the situation is, and you really have to look carefully, you can't look at the data and assume it to be perfect. Even if it is perfect, it might not be what you need to do. I can't think of a great example because there's so many different ways that this can play out. But, you know, that's where you need to be trained really, and know what you're looking at and how to read what this data is trying to tell you.

[Ross Dunn]

It actually brings up an interesting thought I had. I had a call with a prospect yesterday. It was a really great call and actually a listener of the SEO 101, and he had. He'd been using a company for many years, or at least a couple years now for SEO. And I reviewed a bit of their work and it was actually pretty decent. But what it came around to when I kind of had to sum up my thoughts on it was it was good, but it wasn't great. It was as though they were a junior SEO. They had done a lot of the main stuff, but they were missing a lot of the technical aspects of SEO. And that's where, you know, we're going to come in and fulfill everything and make sure it's done right to this next level. And that's sort of what these tools do. They help you get to a certain point. And when you get to that point, if you've done it right, not many people don't. But if you do get to the point that you've done okay, you're going to plateau, generally, unless you're really going to invest the time to be an SEO. And that's where it's best to hire someone to take you to the next level. We have different ways people done that. We've got some that have asked us just to advise them on a monthly basis, just go over their data with them. We have one actually is really interesting. Now it's almost a new market where they don't mind doing the work and they're using some really great tools. Some of these tools we're talking about, I think in this case they're using Semrush and, but they just don't know how to tell what content is or what of the suggestions. And a significant amount of them, there's a lot of them from Semrush are worth prioritizing and where they should be in that priority list. So we're helping them do that and we're going to give them more insight in how to do that. And, and that's great. We love to be that person that can help with that and there's no reason you have to in those situations. If you want to do it yourself, hire an SEO company full time. You can just have us as consultants just to help you, help guide you through that process. It's, it's one of the coolest parts of our business, I think, just knowing that we can really make a difference at all levels, almost all levels of a business's growth. And yeah, I kind of get, I get it. Get pumped when we get into that sort of stuff. It's fun working with smaller businesses and medium businesses as they grow. Some of them have grown up with us. We've had clients that have been with 20 years and that's just so cool. I think that's, it's an honor really, and a lot of fun. Well, with that said, thank you for joining us today on behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company's senior SEO, Scott Van Eck. Thank you for joining us today. I'm repeating myself. That is just how the day is. Remember, we have a show Notes newsletter you can sign up [e-mail] please do. We've got lots of great content on there and some of these links that we're providing, obviously we can't just read off in our show, so they're going to be quite helpful for you to click on. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes which air every week on WMR fm.

[Scott Van Ek]

Thank you for listening, everybody.

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