Barry Schwartz Interview

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Welcome to a very very special episode of the SEO show this week an Arthur free episode. You've just got me After got a really bad backlink on a website. He's taking a little bit of time out from work No, just kidding. He wasn't able to make it to join me for this interview with our guests this week So I flew solo but luckily I was joined by quite a big name in the SEO industry and Barry Schwartz so he almost needs no introduction in the space he is the founder and the main contributor at search engine roundtable Which is basically a blog or website that's been covering the SEO industry for a long, long time. You know, longer than I've even been doing SEO. So it was great to have him on the show just to chat all things SEO. It was a really good conversation. We chatted about how he found SEO. You know, the early days when he was dealing with search engines like Lycos and AltaVista. And then all the way through to the launch of Search Engine Roundtable. His thoughts on the SEO industry on how Google engages with the SEO industry And of course, we asked him at the end our three favorite questions So without further ado, let's jump into this week's episode and interview with Barry Schwartz Hi Barry, welcome to the show for people that might not have heard of you If you could just let our audience know a little bit about yourself and who you are and we can get going from there

BARRY: Awesome. I'm Barry Schwartz. Thanks for having me. I'm the president of Rusty Brick, a software development company in New York. But you have me on the show because I write a lot about search and SEO. I've been writing about search and SEO since around 2003 on Search Engine Roundtable, a little bit later on Search Engine LAN, before that Search Engine Watch with Danny Sullivan. I help with XMX conferences. I do a lot of blogging, YouTubing, podcasting. It's all about SEO. So I love SEO. That's me.

MICHAEL: Awesome, awesome. Well, you're the perfect person to have on the SEO show. You've been in the game for a long time and you're pretty much one of the most well-known voices in the industry. I've been in this space since 2009 and I've read your publications since then. I was kind of interested, how did you personally discover SEO? What got you into this world?

BARRY: So I first got into SEO, but with a client of ours that was interested in learning about how they could get their website to rank in like AltaVista or Dogpile or one of those old search engines. So I started to… I found some online discussion forums where people were talking about it. It was super abstract and a lot of text and a lot of keyword density type of stuff. And I started to do a lot of research. I bought a couple of books, I read a bunch of white papers, some really technical stuff, some more abstract stuff, went to some conferences early on that Danny Sullivan led. So it was really from a client asking, how does this work? And then I just got hooked. I just couldn't stop watching this stuff. It was pretty amazing.

MICHAEL: Awesome, and I imagine it was much easier to get results back in the day, you know, if you're talking MyCosultaVista, you're just changing text on pages or what sort of stuff were you doing in those early days?

BARRY: Yeah, so back then before Google, it was mostly just text, text, text, getting as much text in the page as possible for the keywords and seeing what happens. But the early days of Google is super interesting because it was also about text. It was very text driven, but there was this Google dance period where Google would update their data centers every 30 days or so with the new, mostly page rank scores. I guess anybody who's watching this now, page rank is basically Google's algorithm to say how important are specific pages on your website based off of a link graph. Moz has their metrics that everybody talks about now with DA and stuff like that. Not Google's metric. So back then, page rank was super important. If you had a page rank of 7, 8, 9, 10, you can rank for whatever you want, no matter keyword density or not. So SEOs would literally just sit there. and wait and track the data centers, refresh their browsers and different IP addresses and see, what are my page rank scores this month going to be? And that can literally make or break your rankings for that month. So if you had a high page rank score, you can literally rank for whatever you want and make a crazy amount of money back in the old days. So that was pretty interesting in terms of how things were back in the super old days of Google.

MICHAEL: Yeah, very much so. Awesome. And so what sort of period was that and how long were you doing SEO before you sort of segued into launching Search Engine Roundtable? Were you working at a different publication first and then you went into Search Engine Roundtable?

BARRY: No. So I always had Rusty Burke. We always built custom web stuff. So early on, before there were any content management systems, we built content management systems for early companies and so forth. And as content like WordPress, well, before that, it was like movable type and different platforms came out. We stopped doing basic stuff. We started doing more software development stuff, mobile apps. software applications for ER departments and stuff like that. So my company really specializes in building out software. The SEO thing is not a job. We don't do SEO. I just write about it. But obviously, we have our own website, Searching Around Tables, Searching Land. My own websites, they all have to rank fairly well to drive business. So yeah, obviously, I know SEO pretty well. I get my hands dirty. But I don't do SEO on a day-to-day basis because Or at all, really. Because one is, I write about it a lot. And I want… It's hard to get the trust of both sides. You have Google over here. You have the SEOs over here. And SEOs think I'm in Google's pocket. Google thinks I'm in the SEO pocket. And Google hates me. SEOs hate me. Everybody hates me equally. So it's pretty interesting. So I really got into SEO probably early 2000s, like 2000 or 2001. I was very into participating in the forums and online discussions, trolling a lot and chatting it up with people. And then in 2003, I decided to start cataloging what the most interesting discussions were in the search community. That's what the Search Engine Roundtable was all about. It was basically cataloging, this is what the search community is talking about. This is why it's important. This is what they're finding. It was interesting around Google Dances, obviously, because, oh, Google Dance is coming. Get prepared. Here are the data centers you should look at. And then it was more about features and ranking updates and so forth. So I kind of liked that aspect of it.

MICHAEL: Yeah, awesome, awesome. So I guess its early role was to let people know when these big updates were happening, be that sort of voice. Has that changed over the years? Where do you sort of see your, I guess, your goal or your vision or your place in the industry at the moment with Search Engine Roundtable?

BARRY: Searching around the table really has not changed in terms of that core principle of highlighting what the search community cares about and is talking about. It's changed a little bit in that it used to be all in forums like Webmaster World, Jim's World, SEO Chat, stuff like that. Now it's kind of more on social media with Twitter and so forth because people have moved from old-fashioned forums to social media and stuff. So maybe the sources of the information have changed. There's a lot more People talking about Google these days. Google's a much bigger company. It's now public. It has Android. It has tons and tons of businesses. But I try to focus in on really just search. And that involves, obviously, organic and paid search. And also highlighting what the search marketers really care about, for the most part, by sourcing that information from the search marketers, from those discussions still.

MICHAEL: Yeah, cool. On that note, what sort of content do you find performs best or is most popular on the site? What do people like to hear about?

BARRY: That's a tough one. You never know what is going to perform best. It sometimes surprises me what actually performs best. I don't know. I mean, it's basically sometimes like, I enjoy covering the Google algorithm update stories. I enjoy saying, oh, that SEO chatter is out there. People are talking about an update. Google hasn't confirmed it yet. Maybe later Google will confirm it. I always enjoy that because updates tend to make a difference immediately to people. I also like to spot new features. That's always fun. So I enjoy like finding new features and covering those types of things, and also covering some news. Search Engine Atlanta cover a lot of news, Search Engine Roundtable cover a lot of news. But often it's finding things that just are brand new that Google hasn't talked about. Finding things that Google's not talking about is the most interesting thing for me. what will be most popular, it's really hard for me to say. People think I know because I've been writing. I think I wrote close to 40,000 stories on search over the past almost 20 years. And I still can't tell you if I publish something that this will be a success or not a success. People think I do and people think I'm crazy for saying that. But some things just blow up and some things just are duds. And honestly, there's no real formula to that. It's not word count. It's not what keywords you put in the thing. It's Just sometimes it's who knows. I mean, I can give you a story about like, I wrote a story about how a girlfriend was upset with their boyfriend. And what the girlfriend did, this is like probably 10 years ago, what the girlfriend did was spam Google image search with memes of the boyfriend's boyfriend's photo, like a class photo with all these different memes. And I wrote about like, I'm like, Oh my god, this is great. Standard like high school couple. His girlfriend uses Google to go ahead and get back at at the boyfriend. I thought this was like an SEO. Yeah, funny thing to talk about. All of a sudden I see it got picked up by like TMZ and all these like gossip magazines. And it blew through the roof. And then I got a phone call from like the parents of one of them how the They're so upset, they're crying. I'm like, I didn't even think it would go past this small little SEO community. So I kind of like, that's the only page I probably know robots at TXT out of my website. But you never know. You never really know what will explode and what will not, to be honest.

MICHAEL: I wonder if she's running an SEO agency 10 years later. She should be. Probably. So you touched on before, you wear two hats or you sort of, I guess, you've got two camps, you know, you've got the SEO world reading your articles, you've got the Google side of things. What's Google's, I guess, stance towards, I guess, yourself and the website? Like, are they feeding you information? Are they sort of pretty friendly with you or do they try and, I guess, the perception in the SEO world is that Google might deliberately be a bit vague with things to try and throw people off the scent. How do you find dealing with them? Are they giving you good information?

BARRY: It's a hard one to say because whenever Google gives us information, me or anybody in the search community, we always want more. And we always feel like they're hiding something from us when they give us anything. Where in the old days, they would tell us nothing. And we would just try to figure it out ourselves, which I loved. But now if Google tells us, this is something or this is an update, then we want to know what type of update, what sites were hit. how big of an update it was. And we always ask for more and more and more. If they don't give us something, we're like, what are you hiding? Why are you hiding that information? Why do you hate us? So I think they're definitely more transparent than they used to be, by far, especially if you go back 20 years. And I think things have changed over the past 10 years or so with Matt Cutts leaving. then Danny Sullivan getting on board. It's been interesting to watch how Google has changed over the years. But I think it's like a lose-lose situation. The more transparent Google is, the more we think they're hiding stuff from us. And I'm not sure if that's fair of us to do that. Of course, SEO is to considerate of Google's things, but I'm trying to put myself in their shoes as well. It's easy for us to complain, but I think if you understand their perspective also, it makes you better at what you need to do. Think about why Google is making these changes, why they aren't telling us something, or why they're telling us a little bit of information. And then maybe if you understood that there's a reason they're not telling us everything, maybe that will make you better at what you It's like Google feeding us everything. There's a reason behind all of this.

MICHAEL: For sure. I guess the big part of SEO is doing your own testing and figuring out what works. Even if they are telling you one thing, going out there and doing it and seeing for yourself. I definitely agree with that. You've got to always be testing. So with your search engine roundtable, you mentioned you've got Rusty Brick, you're doing a lot of software development, you've got this site, you're publishing 40,000 articles over the years, so you're putting up a lot of content. What does a day look like for you in that regard? How much of your time do you dedicate to writing an article, publishing it, or how many articles are you doing per day? And I guess with the business, is it a full-blown business in and of itself?

BARRY: So I don't treat any of my search engine writing as a business, per se. As you can see, there's been lots of search writers over the years. A lot of them are no longer around or not writing anymore. They're maybe consulting and doing things that pay better. I am in a lucky situation where I obviously have a company. I make money on that company. I have a team of developers here. We thankfully do well. And I can spend some of that time just writing the way I want to write. I never expected people to read it. They read it, and it's great, but I don't spend that much time per day writing. I probably spend maybe an hour on Search Engine Roundtable, maybe an hour on Search Engine Land a day, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. probably like five to 10 minutes to write a blog post, maybe less. And I write probably somewhere from five to 10 blog posts per day. There's obviously the research involved. I use obviously RSS feeds and Twitter feeds and so forth to find stuff as well as other mechanisms. But it's not like Maybe I spend max two to three hours per day on this stuff. It looks like I spend all day on it. I really don't. But I guess it's a hobby. It's a labor of passion, if you call it.

MICHAEL: Yes. Is that purely after all these years and you've got a successful business, it's just the passion that keeps you going with publishing content? Being so consistent, doing five posts a day, a couple of hours a day, every day, that's pretty impressive to keep it up for that long.

BARRY: Yeah, consistency runs through my veins. Everything I do is consistent. From my routine every day, everything is super consistent. Not only is consistency important for your business, for how you run your day, for your family, it's also important for the readers to know what to expect, when to expect it, to earn trust. I think that's… Consistency is very, very important. Also, for SEO purposes, you want to be consistent, technically, with your website. You want to make sure your URL structures are consistent. You want to make sure your technical SEO is consistent, crawling, all that type of stuff. But consistency, I think, is super important for everything from business to personal life.

MICHAEL: Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Well, with Search Engine Roundtable, just sort of wrapping up on it, it's a passion, it's a hobby. Do you sort of have any sort of business aspect to it at all? Like are you sort of, I guess, running ads, that sort of stuff, to make money out of it and make it worthwhile doing? And you spoke about consistency from an SEO point of view. How's your SEO for Search Engine Roundtable? How's your organic traffic these days?

BARRY: Yeah. First question is on the ad side. So yeah, we have ads. I have ads on the website. I have ads in our newsletter. Those are all managed actually by the parent company of Search Engine Land, Third Door Media. I stay out of that completely. I also have ads in my videos that I produce weekly. That I personally manage because Third Door Media doesn't want to do it. I don't need the money for it. I just feel I appreciate people wanting to advertise and it means that it's some value there. I don't look at the money and be like, it's not that much money relative to what I make overall. But it's just basically a token of appreciation. Twitter just announced Twitter super followers and I have several people super follow me for $3 per month. I have a Patreon. I have a couple people donating every month a few bucks to $100 per month. It's not about the money. It's like, oh, people actually value sometimes what you write. Especially when people put money towards that, it means something, I guess. It makes it worthwhile. Encourage me to do it just because i feel like people value it on some level of course you read it the traffic all there google doesn't value it as much because there are no is not as good as you asked it's something that i need to have a redesign that i need to launch i. We're so busy with client work that I feel bad pulling my team off of client work to actually launch a new design. There's tons of old legacy technical debt and SEO issues that have a list of stuff that I want to fix on the old site. Outside of just the design, there's a lot of poor URL issues and duplicate content. It's an old CMS custom built that really needs some TLC to fix up. So it could be better. My writing could be a little bit better as well, but I told you, I write really fast. I publish fast. I'm sure I have tons of typos. I should maybe hire an editor. But again, it's a hobby blog. So I don't treat it as a business. And I think there is some appreciation from that where my writing is not biased based off of me having an SEO consulting firm where maybe something Google says might Persuade me to write it in a different angle that might not be the full truth Or maybe Google might not give me the full information that I need to to publish Or maybe a sponsor might go ahead and you know do something that is bad, and I won't be able to write about it I don't care. I mean again. They could take their money. I could give them a refund I couldn't care less about the money. I do all this because I Enjoy it. I enjoy you know sharing information about the search community, I enjoy what's changing. So I keep it as far as possible away from business because I don't want any business to influence the writing itself.

MICHAEL: Yeah, don't want it clouded, keep it authentic. And I definitely think that comes across in, you know, I've been reading it for over a decade now. So it's been very consistent in that regard, which is awesome.

BARRY: I apologize for all the typos.

MICHAEL: Well, look, I guess let's move on and chat a little bit about Google, because I guess if there's one person I can think of, it would be yourself that's seen it all, so to speak, over the years. You know, you've been covering it for ages. I thought maybe it'd be cool to talk about the big-ticket Google updates or sort of, as I'm calling it, earth-shattering events over the years. So algorithm updates, famous manual penalties, things that really shook things up in the SEO world. Do you have any that come to mind? You know, big moments, newsworthy things that stand out to you over the years?

BARRY: Sure. I mean, the Google update is always the biggest. The biggest one, obviously, was the Florida update in 2003. That really was like, whoa, SEOs need to think about diversifying or not putting all their eggs in one basket. After that, I'd say the number two biggest update that shocked the SEO world was probably the Penguin update, more so than the Panda update. Even though the Penguin update launched right after the Panda update, Penguin is more focused on links. It only had a 3%, I think, or something like that. 3% impact on the search queries at Google, whereas Panda was like 12%, according to Google. But I think SEOs were more in the Penguin bucket. So SEOs were really big into links and manipulating links. And when Penguin was unleashed, or whatever you want to call it, it really shook up a lot of SEOs. And even some big SEO companies went bankrupt over it. And then obviously, I think the Panda update was probably one of the other bigger updates. I think everybody in the SEO community would be like, Panda is very well known. That hit some massive content sites and some really big businesses actually went out of business because of it. But nowadays, it's more about those core updates and stuff like that, I think. Um, in terms of other things like user experience changes and so forth, like, you know, Google launched like the universal search results. I don't remember that. It's probably early 2010, 2000. I forgot exactly. I like found like Google was testing this new universal search results where not, it wasn't, it wasn't only just web results, but it was also videos and images and maps all in one web search interface. Now you think about that now, it's like, of course you do a search for restaurants. You want to see local path, but back then it was just, 10 blue links. It wasn't a map. It wasn't images. So Google called it Universal Search. I think it was Marissa Meyer back when she was at Google. Obviously, then she went to Yahoo. Yahoo failed. And now I don't know what she's doing. She's probably some, you know, whatever. But in any event, I found that. I saw Google was testing that. And Brian Williams at NBC when he was, before his scandal, when he was on NBC, he had me come to the studio there. What's it called? Something Rock. Why am I blanking? Anyway, in the city, New York City, so I'm not far from New York City. So I went there, and I spoke to him for like an hour and a half about this Google feature. And I was on NBC channel, like primetime, whatever. And I had about four seconds of airtime after speaking to him for an hour and a half. I'm sorry?

MICHAEL: Did he put you in a good light with those four seconds? I didn't do anything bad in the editing? I think so.

BARRY: Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was a good experience. I've been on other news things before, but that was like, you know, primetime. That was pretty big. So I mean, a lot of these things are pretty cool. Yeah, like a lot of big brands were You know penalize me all days with the links spam targets those are pretty interesting with google first started winning after going after links and manipulated links i think overstock and. eBay and a bunch of big brands were actually hit by this. Ultimately, I think they came out to be fine. But it was always interesting to see Google go after these big companies and even big spenders on ads. They went after these big companies, and they didn't care. They're like, we don't care how much money you spend on Google Ads. We're going to penalize you if you're trying to manipulate our search results.

MICHAEL: Yeah, well, they sort of, I guess, there are those big… Big sort of big ticket takedowns, you know, like the JCPenney and BMW had one back in the day. And I think Rap Genius and other brands.

BARRY: Google even penalized themselves, remember, with Chrome ads, and they bought links and stuff, and they went ahead and penalized themselves. So it's funny, they don't hold back. If Google sees they're doing something that they shouldn't be doing, or any big company, they'll go after them. They don't care. Not so much these days, because they just ignore the links with the newer Penguin update. It's just ignored. They don't really count the links. But back then in the old days, when they actually penalized links, it was a big deal.

MICHAEL: Hmm. Yeah. Well, we anecdotally just, we used to see, you know, maybe five years ago, sites getting manual penalties all the time. I can't even remember the last time I saw a manual penalty. Um, you know, especially for links, you don't really see it anymore. No, no. So I guess, you know, we, we touched on it before, like over the years, Google, I would say they've sort of changed a bit between, confirming updates and what they target and then being deliberately vague about it. So like in the early days, didn't say anything. Then they went through a period of sort of announcing, you know, like Penguin, Panda, like they had names and all that. Then now these days they say there's sometimes confirmed there's a core algorithm update, but they don't really say what it addresses. What do you, what do you think is a better approach from your dealing with them over the years and sort of, I guess, being the mouthpiece in a way for the industry?

BARRY: I can say before this, it's a lose-lose situation. So they still don't confirm most of these updates. I mean, I cover a lot of unconfirmed updates. Google, the updates they do confirm, at least the big ones, the core updates, they only confirm it like the day it's going to roll out. And then the smaller updates that they give us months and months of notice about, like, I don't know, like the page experience update, mobile first update, HTTPS, etc. All those updates are super lightweight, they go live, nobody notices any ranking changes from them. So they give us all this time, months and months to prepare, sometimes years to prepare for. We spend so much money and effort getting our sites ready for this stuff. And they're important, but they're not important for rankings. So the updates that are the most important for the rankings, there's no real heads up that it's coming until it's too late. I don't know. Should Google give us a lot? What will we change? That's Google's point. What would we do different? month-to-month or update-to-update, if Google would give us a heads up that a core update is going to happen. We know a core update is going to happen. Google does core updates every 3, 6 to 12 months. So what would we do different? Just keep making your website better. And that's what Google says. And there's truth to that. The question is, Should Google confirm more of the smaller updates? Is it good to know from a SEO perspective that, yes, Google had an update, Google didn't confirm it, but everybody else is saying it's a Google update. So maybe it's like, it's not you, it's me, or that type of thing. Do I have to make any changes? Was it a technical problem with my website? Or was it something that Google changed? Those are the types of things that would be useful to know as an SEO to say, is it something that I need to change technically with my website? Did I mess something up? put a no index on my site? Or was there some type of bug on my website? Or was it something that Google just doesn't like on my website anymore, and a core update actually hit it? And then I know I have to take a longer, deeper look on their website. So I think there are pros and cons to Google confirming these things. But it's hard for Google to confirm everything, I guess, because they're such a massive company. I know they read it when I write these blog posts, but they barely confirm anything anymore, which is kind of sad.

MICHAEL: Well, on that note of when a big core algorithm update happens and things are really shook up, there can be a tendency for people to want to jump in and immediately fix their site and change things and tweak things. From your experience, is this the best approach for dealing with these major updates or do you reckon people should let the dust settle a little before going in and trying to address big changes, big updates?

BARRY: Yeah, no, I think it's always best to wait a little bit. Because again, when these core updates are released, it's not like you can make a quick change. expect it to reverse itself. You have to usually wait, usually, usually wait for another core update to roll out. Like I said, that's at least three months, usually six months for the core updates to roll out. So you do have time to plan. So if you saw you were hit by a core update, and you would know if you got hit by a core update, you would see 30% of your traffic pretty much drop the day of, the day after a core update was announced. You know you have to go ahead and it's a long-term fix. You can't just run and make changes. It's not a quick technical fix. changing your URL structures or whatever, it's not going to make a big difference. In terms of things, these are not quick technical fixes. These are long term SEO strategies around content and usability and making sure your users are happy. So these things take time. Rushing is not going to solve this. So any core update issues.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, moving on from Google, let's talk about the SEO industry as a whole. You've seen it all over the years. What state would you say the SEO industry or world is in at the moment right now?

BARRY: I think we're in a pretty, I mean, we're in better shape than we ever were. I think back, we still have a bit of a black eye. I think on some level, still people don't understand what we do, what the industry is about. But I think it's way better than it used to be. I mean, corporations now, enterprises have large SEO teams. I just spoke recently to somebody who has a VP status of SEO. You've never heard of a vice president of SEO in corporations before. And that's just like legitimizing what SEO is about. So I think overall, I think the SEO industry is much more creditable than it used to be, especially 5, 10, definitely 20 years ago, where it was like some type of you know, mystical black art or something where, you know, it was like not, it was just, you know, people thought it was like crazy. So I think we're in a much better position now than we used to be. Of course, there's a lot of people, a lot of misinformation out there. And it's pretty bad in terms of misinformation, but I think it's much better than it used to be.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. And so that being the state now, pulling out your crystal ball, where do you see FCA evolving over the next five years?

BARRY: So SEO is going to be dead in exactly four and a half years. No, I mean, the cool thing about SEO is always as long as there's people searching for something anyway, it doesn't have to be on their phones, it doesn't have to be on their desktop, talking to their devices, whatever it might be, there will still be SEOs trying to optimize for that or trying to rank for that. So SEOs are amazing at adapting. That's one thing. So I think SEO will be strong in five years from now. I think the industry will become more mature over the years. And I think more people will still continue to respect and continue to value what SEOs do.

MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And I guess on that note, you know, sort of valuing what SEOs do and sort of, you know, you touched on misinformation before. An important thing is obviously to stay educated, particularly if you're engaging with an SEO agency or working on it yourself. Obviously they can follow yourself and your publication, but outside of what you get up to with your site, is there any other people in the industry that you follow or publication podcasts you listen to that sort of stuff to stay abreast of what's going on?

BARRY: So that's hard. I mean, I follow almost, I think, almost everything. I'm sure I miss a lot of stuff. The cool thing is, if you want to see everything that I follow, I have a newsletter that includes probably like 30, 40 links per day to not just the stories that I wrote or the searches that I wrote, but also to tweets that I found interesting from different people in the industry, including John Mueller, which I cite a lot, but also tons of other people like Glenn Gabe and a bunch of other people. Plus, I have tons of links to articles that I think are useful on a daily basis. Every single day, I probably have like analytic stories, SEO, PPC, mobile, voice, business related stuff. So if you are a crazy search nut like me, or search geek like me, and you want to follow everything, just subscribe to the newsletter, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. I have a pretty much every day I have a very, very detailed and you know, what's on the what I found for the day. So if you want to see what I'm following, just check there, I guess.

MICHAEL: Yeah, awesome. So for our listeners, they just head to search engine roundtable to sign up for that newsletter.

BARRY: Yeah, search the roundtable every day around 4pm Eastern New York time. I post that newsletter, the email goes out about 15 minutes later and takes about an hour to go out if you want to subscribe to it on email. Otherwise, you can just get it on the website. It's up to you.

MICHAEL: Yeah, awesome. Okay. All right. Well, I did have one question about the misinformation in the SEO world. Because there's a topic that comes up about regulation in the industry, like there is in other industries, you know, financial services or some sort of way that people can prove that they're, I guess, up to, they're not up to no good. What's your thoughts on that? Do you think there's a, I guess, scope or need for that in the SEO world?

BARRY: That's a good question. It's been tried before. I think people tried to make best practices or regulation or certification before for SEO, and it didn't work. There were different organizations that tried it. There were different companies that tried it. question who's gonna cover it who's gonna nobody can't agree on anything so who's gonna agree on a set of like certification or rules or regulations is obviously the guidelines and have the SEOs don't even comply by it so who's gonna who's gonna go and govern it and it's just impossible it's been tried so many times i'd be shocked if it ever happened.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I sort of agree on that. Like no government's going to step in there and do it. There's not that much of a need for it like there is in financial services. So it's left to the industry to try and do the right thing, which happens to varying extent, I guess. So look, it's been great chatting to you. I just wanted to sort of finish up with some quick fire questions that we like to ask at the end. So there's just three of them. The first one is, what would you say is the most underrated SEO tactic?

BARRY: That's a hard one. Every site is different. Obviously, saying it depends is the classic SEO term. But if you don't have title tags, and you launch a website, everything says like, page title goes here. That's super easy. And that's something you can win big with. But yeah, it's hard to say what's the most underrated SEO tactic. Obviously, writing good content is the blah, top, you know, answer. But title tags, you know, is something that I think people who have no clue about SEO really don't even think about. And understanding what words you should put in your title tags is probably the most important thing outside of the content itself.

MICHAEL: Awesome. Okay. And on the other side of the coin, what would you say is the biggest myth in the SEO world?

BARRY: There's so many, it's hard to name one. The biggest thing right now is page experience update is huge. You have to go ahead and spend countless money and resources on page experience update to improve your Core Web Vitals. I think that's a huge myth right now. Other things are like ads help you rank better and organically. Again, it's not true. There's just so many domain name registers say domain name length registration is important. It's not. There's just so many. It depends on what business you're in, what you're selling. You know, it could be anything.

MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely. No, yeah, I definitely agree with those. All right, well, the last one. In the SEO world, we're all nerds. We love our SEO software, our tools. If you had to only use three to get the job done, what three bits of software or tools would you favor?

BARRY: I'm a content guy, so I would say Feedly to track what's going on so I know what to write about. Two, Google Analytics to see what people are accessing my website, what they're doing in there so I can make it better, hopefully. And then Google Search Console. It's basic, it's free, and it tells you pretty much what you need to know. I'm not going to mention any real, I'm sorry, paid, free, basically paid tools. I'm going to, well, a few of these have been paid, but I'm not going to mention the big tools out there. There's so many of them. And obviously, some sponsor me, so I don't want to name any of that stuff.

MICHAEL: Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Awesome. Okay. Well, look, man, it's been really great chatting to you today and getting to know a bit more about your backstory and everything. For people that are interested, if they want to go follow you, check out your newsletter, where can they head at the end of the show?

BARRY: I'm super active on Twitter. So it's at Rusty Brick. My company is Rusty Brick. That's the Twitter handle I use is Rusty Brick. Back in the old days, we never used their names. We use aliases. Check out Search as a Roundtable, Search as a Land, and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want at youtube.com slash Rusty Brick. Just follow. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you. Awesome.

MICHAEL: Thanks, Barry.

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