SEO Wrapped May 2023

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: Hello, I am Michael Costin and after one long month. Has it been that long? It has been. I'm joined by Arthur Fabik. How are you going?

ARTHUR: Good. Good to see you finally after a month.

MICHAEL: Yep. So for those that have been wondering where we've been, that have been sending out the search party or messaging, we've had members of our team messaged wondering where we were.

ARTHUR: We've had clients message members of our team. We've had clients message asking where the next episode is. Where, where have we gone?

MICHAEL: They want that content because people have come to expect our contractually obligated episode.

ARTHUR: I have no contract. You signed one.

MICHAEL: No, I didn't. It was an unwritten, unverbal contract. So anyway, what happened?

ARTHUR: Arthur went to Fiji and then- I went to Fiji, got the flu on the flight back and was very sick for two weeks. The real flu. The real flu, influenza B. Confirmed. Confirmed. But I'm back.

MICHAEL: we didn't plan ahead before we went to Fiji and plan out episodes and record them. So, um, yeah, left us without an episode of the SEO show for quite a while, but we're back and better. We're back in about the same, possibly maybe sicker. Um, we're doing a new episode today called SEO wrapped. where we're wrapping up, might not even be new. I think we might've done this or touched on it in the past. Can't remember. We've spoken about it. Yep. We're going to wrap up stuff that's going on in the SEO world at the moment. Hey, but before we do, can I do a little bit of blatant self-promotion? Sure. Is that okay with you?

ARTHUR: Oh, I'll allow it this time.

MICHAEL: All right. I don't know if anyone out there is into AI, chat GPT, that sort of stuff.

ARTHUR: They would be because they'd listen to the show. I know. I'm setting it up.

MICHAEL: I'm setting it up. And if they're also into cars. we've got a little random project going at the moment. When I say we, you, when I say we, me, there's an idea that came from talking about chat GPT. You know, everyone that uses chat GPT is like, Oh, what if you did this? What if you did that? Well, the concept was, what if you just put in like how to modify a car and see what it comes back with. Now we've decided to do that and actually implement. And by way, well, it's not just me. There's, You're involved. You know what's going on. I follow you. That's as far as I've been involved. So anyway, the gist is we've given chat GPT a prompt. We, I have given chat GPT a prompt and I'm just inclusive. You are? No, carry on.

ARTHUR: I'll stop.

MICHAEL: I'll stop. Given chat GPT a prompt and it's given a roadmap of stuff to do to a car to get better performance and sound and all that fun stuff. If you're into cars. Not just a car. your car, my car. Um, and I've documented it and I'm sharing it on social. I've called it Hoon GPT very cleverly. Um, so if you're into that sort of thing, check it out because we're only halfway through doing the work. It's already made a big difference. And, um, yeah, follow along if you're into that, but let's, let's throw that AI chat away. Let's throw that car chat away and move on with this episode of the SEO show. SEO wrapped. May 2023. Here's a headline for you. GA4 is coming in case you haven't missed it.

ARTHUR: It's hard to miss it with that obnoxious banner whenever you log into any profile and counting down like a doomsday clock. Yeah, it's really, really annoying.

MICHAEL: It's very jarring. I still didn't want to accept that it was happening. So it's happening. I just always thought, cause Google often will say that there's a cutoff date and push it back or whatever. They've done that with other tools. I was just waiting for that to happen, but it turns out it's not happening. And we actually have to deal with GA for full time from July 1st.

ARTHUR: I guess the difference is they've given us like a year and a half of lead time to prepare.

MICHAEL: I reckon even longer feels like it's been longer. But yeah, they have. At least a year and a half. But it just, just stuck my fingers in my ear and went, la, la, la, la, la, la, not happening. I like the GA we have. Now we're just not even usable.

ARTHUR: I've been migrating a lot of our clients accounts into GA4. So I spent a lot of time in there. I understand it. I know how to navigate around it, but I hate it. Like in comparison to GA3 or UA or whatever you want to call it far inferior what you get out of the box in terms of reports and how you can kind of filter through the data and everything. I find anyway, maybe in time after using it a bit more, but it's harder and more unpleasant to use basically.

MICHAEL: Yeah. You have to get reports that you could see easily before you have to set them up manually.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So July 1st around the corner, not far away now, make sure you've migrated your data, created a GA4 property, make sure it's collecting data, make sure that you move across all your conversions and set up events because if you haven't, you're screwed basically. Yeah. And I guess the other thing is you'll still be able to access your UA data up until the end of the year, I think. But after that, it's all gone. So if that data is important to you, then you have to download it and store it in somewhere else. Offline, painful.

MICHAEL: Guess it's not that painful if you just have one website, but when you have multiple clients and you're trying to deal with it on their behalf, it's extra painful.

ARTHUR: I know what is painful. Well, if you have a lot of data, it's painful. And then when you're going to compare that data, like you could just go into analytics and look at year on year or this year versus four years ago and have it all there. It was all just laid out in front of you. Now you can't do that. You have to find a custom way to kind of, piece together the GA4 data with the old data. And that's just, that's annoying. That's all it is really.

MICHAEL: And this segues into the next topic that we have, which is Google to remove inactive accounts. So they're on a bit of a spree at the moment. Things must be, they're tightening the belt around there. Too much data in Google's world. It must be. They're trying to offload data and they've got data coming out of the wardrobe, out of the chest of drawers, out of their socks. You know, I know I'm going to get rid of that data. So they're going to start removing inactive accounts that have been dormant for two years. So, um, that's Gmail accounts, Google accounts. Well, I think it's just Google accounts.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Gmail, say Gmail, make Google.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So if you have an analytics account that you haven't logged into for ages gone, well, it will be gone unless you've been actively using the Gmail part of it or any, any other services. But if it's just an account that's set up and no one uses,

MICHAEL: It would go. Yeah. So some people maybe have a Google drive or Google photos that they've used in the past where there's stuff on it and they know it's there.

ARTHUR: If they just log in as of December, 2023, if that account has been inactive for two years gone, I have a few old accounts that I've used to sign up to certain things, which I need to make sure don't go away. Cause I'm like signed up to sites and different things. I think I can't even remember what it is, but yeah, it was like a spare account. So I didn't get spammed.

MICHAEL: And what a lot of people do is if they're building like an app or some sort of workflow in their business, they might have like, you know, ACE industries dev at gmail.com that just plugs into a tool. That's a good point. And, um, Now, if you haven't logged in or engaged it, engaged with it or send an email or use, you know, put a file in drive or signed into an app with it, some sort of activity, Google will just wipe it. The great data purge of 2023. So that starts December, 2023. If you're in that camp, I'd be logging into your accounts. I hope the coughing you've got there is not infecting me with influenza B. No, you should be sweet.

ARTHUR: I have got a lingering cough that happens. It's not a contagious cough because I don't feel sick and I haven't been sick for like a week and a half.

MICHAEL: So it's lingering, but not contagious.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Confirmed. Yeah. Okay. It's one of those nasally. I don't know why we're talking about this. We're on, we're getting recording now, but nasally, you know, when it drops down from your sinuses into the back of your throat.

MICHAEL: No, my, my, my costs happen around like a tickle in my throat. Yeah. That's exactly what I just said. You said it drops down from your sinus.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So it's not a chesty cough. It's just the mucous. Anyway. Yeah.

MICHAEL: It's not contagious. Next time you cough, just do it into the mic.

ARTHUR: So I think the mic is picking it up anyway.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, let's move on. Is the mic picking up that 20% of CMOs are going to invest less in paid search and SEO this year? 20%. Why would they do that? You know what? The way this article was written, that headline there sounds scary, doesn't it? Alarmist. That's alarming. However, in SEO, 46% are going to increase their budget. and page search, it was something like 40%. So this article led with the bad step first.

ARTHUR: So they're going to increase their budget or reduce it?

MICHAEL: Well, 26% of them are reducing, but 40% are increasing and then the rest of them are doing nothing. Okay. So, um, yeah, that article was written in a weird way. What this is really saying is that more people are increasing their spend in paid search and SEO and social advertising. So 53% of CMOs plan to invest more in social compared to 14% who are decreasing.

ARTHUR: Well, it's costing more to advertise on Google, so they're going to have to.

MICHAEL: Yeah, there's definitely that. Um, but I guess this is just a long running trend of what you just said there costs going up every year. In fact, do we have, yeah, we have an article about, that let's, um, when we come to the next article, I'm going to skip right forward because it's relevant to this point, but, um, yeah, costs going up every year. Was that, uh, from the, the nasal area or was it from the chest?

ARTHUR: That was a dry cough.

MICHAEL: I dry cough. So, um, yeah, costs going up every year, but then also dollars are migrating from other mediums, you know, traditional forms of advertising and the like online and that's just continuing. So, As it pertains to SEO, nearly one in two people, if you're a CMO, are increasing their SEO budget. So that's what you're competing with in this world. That's good for us as an SEO agency. Good for us as an agency. I guess. But, um, as a business, if you're looking to cut costs there, well, 50% of your competition are increasing. That's not a good formula. So SEO, as we always bang on about is something, it's like an always on thing. It's like your bookkeeper is always on. So should your SEO be? Well said. Thank you. So should your SEO be? So it should be. I'm going to move on to this next article, which said search ad conversion rates down cost per lead up in 2023. So this is the SEO show, but in our world, we have a lot of exposure to Google ads as well. And one thing we've seen over the last few years consistently is CPCs have ballooned cost per lead like CPAs.

ARTHUR: CPCs have doubled in many cases.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So you have people who were getting leads for say 50 bucks a lead a couple of years ago that are now paying a hundred. Yeah. That sort of a clinging onto those glory days saying I want it back down there, but you just can't because.

ARTHUR: But it's like doubled compared to last year, but also the year before that it's up. as well. Yes. So it's gone up a lot.

MICHAEL: It's gone up. So it was from COVID to now it's just been ballooning, ballooning, ballooning. That's a symptom of the migration to online, like blowing up over COVID. I would say it's a symptom of Google increasing its automation and removing hearing profiteering, gouging. Absolutely. Now lots of people sort of tiptoe around saying that in this world, not you, not me. I weighed into controversy around here at the SEO show, but, um, I think a lot of their changes to the ad platform, uh, with their own benefit in mind, what do you think you mean to like Google ads?

ARTHUR: Yeah. Look, to be honest, I'm not in Google ads that often.

MICHAEL: So don't really have a comment, but look, he's another one of these people afraid to have an opinion about the Google.

ARTHUR: I'm not afraid to have an opinion about Google, but well, what happened over the last year?

MICHAEL: Let's see the jewelry. Let's say conversion rate was about 7% on average across all industries. Only two avoided a decrease year on year from search ads. So conversion rates are dropping.

ARTHUR: Okay. I'm looking here now. Yeah. So industries with the highest conversion rates, animals and pets, physicians and surgeons, automotive repair.

MICHAEL: So the average was about 7.85% from Google ads. Pretty good. That's really, yeah, not bad. That's assuming that you've got a great landing page. If you're converting that well, good offer too. Average cost per lead was about 53 bucks. Now only two industries saw CPLs go down year on year, which was auto sales and beauty. Everything else, 91% of industries saw an increase in CPL as well as a decrease in conversion rate. So Google ads is getting more expensive and the profits being generated by it are harder to come by. So what does that mean? You need to be on the game with your accounts. You need to be on the game with what happens after the click. And you also need to accept that it's not as easy to generate Epic profits, you know, with everyone flooding into the space, it's just a tougher nut to crack. Time will tell what happens. I'm sure we'll see as things go on year by year, even though there's recession and all that, they'll somehow manage to increase CPCs and their results because that's what they do.

ARTHUR: They can get away with it. That's the thing. If you want to advertise on Google, it's the price you pay and to survive, you need to be on Google. They're the only game in town. So, well, there's Bing, but let's face it. No one uses Bing, but yeah, if you want to be competitive, you need to be, you have to be running ads and

MICHAEL: That's it. That is it. I tell you what else is it. Have you heard of Neva? The search engine Neva? No. Yeah. Have you? I had heard of it. I've never used it. Didn't care about it. We've spoken about Ahrefs. Yep. Yep. Before. Yep. Dot com. Neva is another example of a search engine that is created by who? Ex Googlers. I don't know who, but. some dudes that used to work at Google and their whole grand ambition was to create the search engine that didn't really track user data. You know, it was a privacy first search engine and it didn't even run ads. The way they were making money was via premium subscription where they expected users as a portion of them would pay them every month to use the search engine. They're shutting down June 2nd. launched less than two years ago, realize that competing with Google is impossible. There's no reason for people to change. So why would they, they got, you know, tens and tens of millions of dollars in funding and yeah, it's gone. So another one bites the dust when it comes to search engines.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well this one, you okay?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just coughing off air. It was a, um, I would say. Was it a throaty cough or more of a chesty? It was more of a clearing of the throat. Okay.

ARTHUR: I mean, no big loss. I've never heard of Neva. So I don't think that had too big of a market share.

MICHAEL: It sounds like a, like, you know, when people want to, they've sort of privacy sweeteners for their drinks or something. Stevia. Well, it sounds like a brand.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Like a Neva. Yeah. What are you drinking? Can I have a Neva?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Mango. Skinny cap with our two neighbors, please. Yeah.

ARTHUR: Anyway, maybe that's what the domain will be used for potentially. So they made no money really. No, that was all about privacy and people.

MICHAEL: Would you subscribe to a search engine when Google exists? No, exactly. I feel that they and their investors should have known this. Well, yeah. Cause I read about it when it came out. I'm like, I just thought this is not going to work. No one's going to change. Same thing we said about. Yep. How much did you have? Was it free? Free to use, but there was like a more fancy version. Right. I don't even know what that entailed, but that was the thing that people paid for. Oh, well solving a problem.

ARTHUR: People don't care about like people, people do care about privacy or data, but not many people. And people ultimately care about convenience and they'll use a alternate search engine for a little bit, but then they'll always get back to Google because it's easier, it's more, the results will be better. So yeah, pretty much. Sad to see you go Neva.

MICHAEL: Let's bail, bail to Neva. All right. Google has done its last mobile first indexing switch. That was a six year process. I feel like mobile first indexing has been something that, um, chicken little types, the sky is falling in the SEO world, mobile first indexing coming. Have you prepared for it? That's been going on for years. Um, what do you think about that?

ARTHUR: I mean, it's been rolling out for such a long time. Everything has been mobile first mainly anyway. So yeah, no real big difference to what we do or our clients.

MICHAEL: Yep. Who, like they say there's a handful of sites that are desktop only still.

ARTHUR: There would be some old sites out there. Yeah. But like, yeah, I guess they don't, there could be a lot of, actually there are still sites that are desktop only. I come across them here and there, but. I can't think of any at the top of my head.

MICHAEL: Like I just can't. Yeah. What is the use case for that in this day and age?

ARTHUR: Laziness and not caring probably and not realizing that Google switching to mobile only or mobile first indexing. Yep. So it'd be like a lot of old. air conditioning dealers and service-based businesses don't have like maybe eight-year-old websites that no one's touched.

MICHAEL: Image-based menus where you click on an image to go to the next page. Netscape, design for Netscape navigator badge in the footer. That's it.

ARTHUR: That sort of stuff. So there would be sites out there, but not ones that we deal with, not ones that we use. So yeah, like I said, doesn't really affect us.

MICHAEL: Or an interesting point. That was a six year rollout. I wish they did that with analytics. Can't we have another four years of notice?

ARTHUR: Maybe someone from Google is listening and they can pull some strings.

MICHAEL: They're not going to when I waded into controversy before though, that's the problem.

ARTHUR: That's why you should always avoid controversy. Hey, take a position.

MICHAEL: No comment. Our listeners, not readers, listeners want us to take a position. No comment. All right. OpenAI launches chat GPT iOS app, you know. Only in the US. Oh, I was about to say, I might use this when I'm doing my HoonGPT, hoonGPT.com. Well, you won't be able to. I won't be able to.

ARTHUR: Yeah, only in the US for now. And it apparently gives you a better experience than the mobile version of the site. It stores all the history there as well. So all your previous prompts you can go through and view in the app.

MICHAEL: So the same as a desktop, but in an app experience. I mean, handy, I think maybe when you're on the fly, maybe I didn't use chat GPT on the fly, really, but, but you could, let's say, I know I could, let's say you were coming out of a meeting and an email came in and it was long and you really wanted to give a really quick response. Yeah. Succinct and, and good. You could just good better than the words I'm using now. You know, that's what chat GPT is for. You could just blast it out with the app.

ARTHUR: Now you could ask chat GPT to improve what you just said and say it again. Better. Correct.

MICHAEL: There you go. Um, but personally I don't like using my phone. It's probably cause I'm old and like grew up using keyboards and computers, but when it comes to things like using chat GPT or even like researching, let's say a holiday booking trips and all that, I hate doing it on a phone.

ARTHUR: I hate buying things on the phone.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I think. Depends on what the experience is like research and lots of typing and flicking and changing between things.

ARTHUR: I hate buying stuff on a website on my phone, but when I'm buying stuff through Amazon, the process is so streamlined. It's so easy just to purchase something. It's like a little slider to buy, buy now, find a product. And I think you literally just slide it now and you bought it. Yeah. It's cool. Not bad. We're talking about boomers like you using your phone, not like using it for certain things. I'm agreeing. There's certain things I don't like doing on my phone. I'm starting to hate texting people. Yes. Especially like WhatsApp. I hate using WhatsApp on my phone. I like using it on my laptop because it's a lot easier for me to type it out on the keyboard than it is to type it out on the mobile keyboard. Agreed. I keep making mistakes on when I type on my mobile keyboard, like all the time. And I can't, I can't remember if I was, if it's just me getting worse or if the keyboards are getting worse, but like literally every word is gibberish.

MICHAEL: I've gotten worse with that stuff and on keyboard too. I think it happens with age.

ARTHUR: Maybe sad.

MICHAEL: All right. We've got one last point here is something that might cheer you up in the U S paid search spend forecast is to hit 110 billion. Wow. 110 Billy in 2023 paid search. Yes. Now the reason we're bringing this up is because paid search is the cousin of SEO.

ARTHUR: We're talking about Google ads or all paid search, Facebook, no paid search, not Facebook.

MICHAEL: So Google, just Google ads. Okay. And Bing, you know, whatever goes to Bing. Sure. So paid search alone represents 42% of digital ads. If it hits that 110 Billy, its growth will be about 8.2% year in year. which is higher than overall digital ad spend, just. So that's increasing 7.8. So people are spending more, but it probably ties back to Google charging more, CPCs being higher, results being worse, that sort of thing.

ARTHUR: The reason we're bringing this up- Well, if CPCs have doubled, then obviously the spend would double. Yeah.

MICHAEL: They haven't doubled consistently.

ARTHUR: Not consistently, but I mean, okay.

MICHAEL: But yeah. Reason this is brought up is because paid search for 41.8% of total digital spend goes to paid search. The lion's share that goes to Google 110 bill a year into Google's pocket to rent traffic from them on paid search. We here at the SEO show love ranking organically where you don't rent traffic from Google. You own it. You own the asset, you are a landlord of the digital real estate market, aren't you? Just owning that traffic. In a way, yeah. I don't know.

ARTHUR: That analogy was sort of- A landlord would imply that you're renting out that traffic to other people.

MICHAEL: True.

ARTHUR: True. The analogy of SEO is like building and owning a house compared to Google ads of renting a house.

MICHAEL: Okay. All right. You know what? That's the last time I freestyle an analogy on the show.

ARTHUR: I find that hard to believe.

MICHAEL: Can't promise that. But with that level of spend going into paid search, yes, paid search makes sense. You can see metrics, dollar here, ROAS, all that sort of stuff. But the SEO opportunity, just to take portions of that and invest more significantly in your SEO. A lot of businesses will invest big time in paid search on agency retainers, media, like the amount of money that gets plowed into it, renting from Google. Just increase your SEO a little, be a bit more wholehearted with your SEO.

ARTHUR: It ties into the previous point where we were talking about 46% of CMOs plan to increase their SEO budget as well. Hmm.

MICHAEL: It's good for us SEOs. It is. And it's good for the people investing in it. Ultimately they're the ones that, well, let's say it's a little bit rocky out there economically. People might be pulling back, but the ones that are increasing will be the ones that reap the rewards on the other side. Just like COVID. Exactly. Exactly like COVID.

ARTHUR: When COVID first started, everyone panicked. First thing they pulled back was their marketing spend. The ones that didn't and continued investing a couple of months later started to reap the benefits. Yeah. And the ones that scaled back, I guess, suffered.

MICHAEL: There's one e-com store I can think of that was doing very low six figures a month, then rode the COVID wave because they didn't stop investing in SEO and we're doing like very high six figures a month, not long later. And if they'd stopped, they would have seen nothing like that growth.

ARTHUR: Well, we had clients that were doing cloud delivery. Yeah. Basically same thing, continue to invest. And then when, Lockdown came, went through the roof, because he was ranking. So rather than scaling back the investment, he increased his investment and ranked well. And then when the time came, he was the first, second, ranking whatever. And yeah.

MICHAEL: Not bad. That is SEO right there. That is SEO. And this has been the SEO show. What do you reckon about that episode? It's good. One of the better ones, you reckon?

ARTHUR: I like these types, like this type of format.

MICHAEL: Good breadth of topics, some good cough chat in there as well.

ARTHUR: There we go. That was a bit chesty that one.

MICHAEL: Oh, Hey, if we're going for another month, that means I got influenza B2.

ARTHUR: Oh no. I like these more conversational type episodes where we just have topics and chat about it.

MICHAEL: Not bad. Well, that's it. That's another episode done. Every month. I reckon we will. It's a new thing, but that's it for today. Go check out whoongpt.com and until next time. Happy SEOing. Happy SEOing. See ya.

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