Blushark Digital
Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price founder of Blushark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
We are thrilled to have Duane Forrester, here formerly the person who ran the Bing Webmaster Program now the VP for Insights at Yext. Welcome.
Duane Forrester
Seth, thank you so much for having me on the show, man. Great to see you again.
Seth Price
You know, I for years, I've seen you keynoting, I've had the pleasure of talking with you a cocktail parties, one of the things I've always wanted to ask you about when you were at Bing and you were sort of inside the mothership, and you had your own portfolio, and you were talking to competitors and the other search engines. And you saw people professing from stage or talking about certain things out there. Were there moments where you sort of chuckled and you were just like, really? This is what there's, this is what they're peddling.
Duane Forrester
So in fairness, yeah, I'm not gonna lie, there were those moments, right. But to be clear, they were relatively limited. Like, what I felt good about was, and I would have these meetings inside, inside the engine where we would sit with the engineering team, and we talk through things. Because I'd come back from a conference and the engineers would ask me, you know, like, Hey, what did what are people talking about? What are they focusing on? And pleasantly, I would say 75 to 85% of it was perfectly aligned, it was exactly where it needed to be, right, a really good percentage, so that I felt good about it. Because the last thing I wanted was to walk on stage and be like, "No, you're dumb." That's wrong. Like you don't want to be doing that kind of thing. Of course not, you know, but obviously, if there was a major issue, and people you needed the course correction, then you would dive in on that and help out with it. Some things took some things didn't like, it doesn't seem to matter how much you tell people. Look, links are only part of the equation, they're not the entire answer. That thread still seems to be a pretty fat pipeline, right? Where people want to do that, you know, if you follow human nature, it's it's the way things are as humans, complex topic, we want to dumb it down, we want to make it as simple as possible, so that we can grasp it assimilated it, use it, execute around it. And every topic within search ends up following that same threat, doesn't really matter what it is, as long as somebody thinks, Well, look, I want to simplify my life. I'm gonna pick on this big thread and that's all I'll do. You know. And so that kind of thing happened all the time. But I gotta say, I was always pleasantly surprised when I talked with people, and, you know, little inside baseball, always pleasantly under shocking, shockingly surprised when I would talk with engineers and say, here's what they think matters. And the engineers would be like, Ah, interesting. Does that matter? Because I'm like, shouldn't, you know, and it doesn't work that way. They're not solving for the same problems.
Seth Price
Right. And to a certain extent, we're in the business of, of SEO, and that you're scaling and you're not just like your one little site you're working on. But when you're trying to do it across platforms, you know, part of it is just return on investment of time and resource we all limited. And so that's one of those areas where I find that it can be, you know, you're not just figuring out what works, but what, where's the juice worth the squeeze? You know? And so any thoughts on that just again, doesn't doesn't have to be just from the past. But as we're over time, we are some of those areas where the juice really is worth the squeeze in some of the areas where like, people say, Yeah, you really need to be doing this. And while it may matter, is it really moving the needle?
Duane Forrester
Yeah. So like, I think Seth, this is like the right mindset for a lot of business owners, right? It's really critical to understand it. Because if you go down the path of links are the only thing, reviews are the only thing, content is the only thing. If you do that, look, you're gonna check off a box, and you're gonna feel good at the end of the year. But then you're also going to do an audit and say, How come I haven't moved the needle? And it's because there are literally no shortcuts anymore. None at all. I will apologize on behalf of an entire industry, there are no shortcuts anymore because of people like me, who exploited those shortcuts over the last 25 years. And also because the world of search has advanced on its own. The engines have become so complex, it's not an algorithm anymore, not in the way we used to think of it. Like an algorithm before was like a really glorified butler. Its job was to go fetch the pieces of information out of the filing cabinets, based on the request you made at the front counter. That's what its job was. And it worked really well. It worked very fast. It got to the point where we kind of felt like you know, hey, this was really intelligent. Today, it's completely different. Today it's a black box. It's all machine, learning driven. And it is really making decisions based on the data. Okay, what do I know about Seth? What is his pattern? What other pieces of information do I have that would help me understand? Not only what order do I put this information in. But what order do I think is important to him today? Because hey, you know what, it's Monday. And on Mondays, Seth is all about information that's touching on the stock market. So all the answers that bring back should be inclusive of that, that topic that lean into that type of thing. And then of course, we see Seth come in, and Seth goes, Hey, this is awesome. It's exactly what I wanted to start my week. And it reinforces that and the algorithm learns from it, this machine learning algorithm learns a whole different world today. And and so like, when we're talking about this, like, what am I going to do? What am I gonna get back for it? There's a really, the framework that I use now and it's kind of been what I've always used personally with websites. But now it just seems to make a whole lot more sense, right? Before it was like, Look, that's one approach. And that's one approach of 20, and any one of them will work for you go deep on link building, go focus only on, you know, long tail content creation, whatever it happened to be. But today, my focus is on answering questions. It's that simple. And there's a reason for that. When I was in the search engine, we spent a lot of time trying to understand intent, so the consumers intent. So that example I used about what kind of content does Seth want on Monday morning, I need to know what Seth's intent is. Now, it's easy to infer if Seth is looking up information about the stock market, that he may want to invest in stocks. It may not be that he may already be an investor, he may be curious, he may be protecting a family member who has been approached to do some investing. It may be that he's running, he's on a board of directors, and he's responsible for their investments and managing it. I really don't know the details at this point. But I'm trying to understand what that intent is. And if I can understand your intent, then I can put exactly the right thing in your path at exactly the right moment. And that's what Google and Bing, and all the engines are trying to do right now. From the business point of view, the way you compliment this is you say, Well, okay, what are the questions that I am an authority to answer? What am I the expert on? So list out all my questions, list out all my answers, and now you work on getting those pieces of content into the search engine should be pretty simple, you're gonna create a question, you're gonna create the answer, you're gonna post it on page, you're going to get that indexed, it's going to rank well, hey, if you've done your job, right on the technical side of things, because, look, you don't get to skip that, right? I mentioned this, there's no shortcuts, you still have to do all the technical SEO. And if you really want to scare yourself today, go take a look at the PageSpeed Insights test and check for your core web vitals scoring right now, that is going to get turned on in May. And Google is going to start taking mobile ranking data from that to impact decisions. And a lot of talk about it lately. It's been around for, it'll be about a year front to back from when they finally turn it on in May. And it's really scary for a lot of businesses because they're not even close to passing the test right now. And that means that you don't get the full ranking benefit. Which means if a competitor goes in and passes the test, and you don't, then they get a ranking benefit, and you don't, and they step forward, and you don't so so all that technical stuff, you gotta get that all done. And then after that I am just focused on here's the question, here's the best answer is the most authoritative answer. And when you do that, you start plugging into everything that the engines are focused on today, which is all of these questions that are coming. You've got generations on either end of our device, and hardware world. So you've got an older generation who it's harder for them to use the screens like our keypads on the screens, it's just so hard to see. So they're hitting the the microphone button, and they're asking their question aloud, you've got a younger generation who just adopted this technology and are born into it and don't really know any different and for them, it's an efficiency thing. We've seen this happen previously, the generation like so Gen X and the Millennials. The older millennials, their kids, if you actually look at the studies, you'll see that they are much like their typing with their thumbs. They're much more dexterous than say, you and me, our generation
Seth Price
So I'm seeing for our teens, they don't type at all. It's all voice search.
Duane Forrester
It's voice search, or it's the sliding getting around like so they're using all those shortcuts, which means what's happening is the systems are capturing full statement questions, which is much more intent rich. And when you start then overlaying things like, I don't know, ice cream parlor near me. And the vehicle you're in is traveling in a certain direction and that direction is to where, you're at this speed, and you've already completed something else on a map journey. Google has a really good understanding that you're wrapping up your errands, and you want to treat on the way home. So it will try to find you the ice cream parlor that's the most efficient on the way, right? And happens to be open, there's a pandemic. So are there altered hours of operation? Like there's all of those things in the background? Because your intent is I want ice cream, dammit. So get me ice cream. Well, the joy of ice cream.
Seth Price
And it's funny, you know, look, take like Starbucks, which is amazing technology on the app, I order from it regularly. But when you're on a road trip, they they are not Google, they have not quite gotten to that point. So now, because you're like, hey, I don't want something in the past. I'm not going back. The only time I've ever wanted that, I think is like if there's a gas station, and maybe there's something well, hey, if there's not one with an x distance, maybe the one you just passed, but as long as there's one forward and you're heading that way. I want nothing from the past, and you start to you know, you start to expect this insane level of intelligence, and you get upset when it's not there.
Duane Forrester
So this is really interesting Seth. So I remember a point my history here, a little over a year ago, I was still traveling a lot. I relied on the GPS that was built into my pickup truck. And when I live in Los Angeles, so like going from my home to the airport could be a three hour drive, depending on traffic on the major freeways. And there were times when you were just like, I gotta bail out, I gotta go, I gotta go find a grocery store or gas stations, I used to use the bathroom here, like, I just gotta go. And the problem with those systems was because those are database-based systems that upload data and continually pull from it, but they only update a quarter or every six months. The problem with that is you're stuck on the freeway, and it's telling you that the nearest grocery store is actually three miles behind you. And you're sitting in gridlock traffic at 6am on a freeway, and you're like, there's no way I'm getting to the exit, getting off getting across the freeway back onto the freeway and traveling back to three miles, doing my business, getting back on the freeway and making it to my flight. Like it's just it is never going to happen. And so your options are limited. Now enter Google into solving this equation. Okay, Google Maps for years has been siphoning the really important stuff out of ways, right? Just constantly bringing the features over. So before I leave my home, it's telling me very clearly, don't take the freeway, go down PCH, because if we take you down here, and we take you down Topanga Canyon, and then we put you on PCH, it's gonna say 40 minutes of travel time based on traffic right now. And on what we project traffic.
Seth Price
And that's what we're waiting for that to really hit. It's not quite here yet, but not far away. They could do if they wanted to...
Duane Forrester
Just announced, I think it was Ford just announced or might have been GM. I can't remember which one of them just announced. They're going full Android Auto in the next year. So now back to your point, okay. You want to get this level of intelligence around all this stuff, right? Like, don't take me to the Starbucks that like, understand, I'm on a road understand.
Seth Price
I'm going 65 miles an hour, right? Like you're sitting there in the neighborhood, you go anywhere.
Duane Forrester
Exactly. So don't tell me to take the next exit, as I'm passing it, to tell me that the nearest Starbucks is oops, you just missed it. Right? That's not technology serving me, you know, because now I have to try to out think what I understand your failure is, to try to then say, well, hold on a second, I might miss a couple more Starbucks at the next exits, because I need to move over a couple lanes and, you know, like, things take time and distance at 65 on the freeway. It's not an instantaneous. Oh, it's on my right. I'll just turn.
Seth Price
But what would have said you're getting you better at the beginning, though, when you left your house? Yes. If you knew at 6am? Yes, it's an hour to the airport. But based on the fact that by 6:30, this area based on Monday through Friday, you know, if you could get to that, then you wouldn't be getting off the you technology would prevent you you would not have your coffee before he got in the car. Well, you know that you have a two hour trip ahead of you.
Duane Forrester
Exactly. And that's we've got all the pieces, right. We just it hasn't been threaded together that way yet. From a business standpoint, it's really important to know that we have all those pieces. And we're really close to this world, Seth and I are talking about, because that's the world your business lives in digitally. So now imagine it's not Starbucks. It's your store that I want to stop at on my way to the airport in the morning. This becomes a very different proposition. Because it's really important for me to understand how busy is your business at this time of day. And that's going to come back to things like Well, Google has a dataset that it builds out on businesses and attracts what they look like. And it has a rich feature that will tell me the consumer, whether you're busy at noon or not. And so I know when to go in, kind of important right now with a pandemic raging, for us to be able to look at that and say, Look, I want to show up at the store, but I want to show up at the store when there's nobody else there. So I'll go at 3:30 in the afternoon, when you have a dip in your foot traffic instead of 11am, when you have a spike in it, and it's all still squishy, but you have to be participating in this in order to reap that benefit. And now we're back to talking about technical stuff. Again, we're gonna now we're going to talk about your structured data implementation, your schema.org data points that you've lit up the things you've identified. And, and so again, there's no shortcuts on this, you know, and it's this, it's this constant, I have this conversation with companies where I'll sit down at some point with their SEO and I'll ask them, like, you know, does it feel like your life has gotten much more complex over the last five years, and, and there's always a sigh, and they're like, it's almost too much like it's, it's almost you can't keep up to your head.
Seth Price
It started with your opening salvo when you talked about what's involved, right? At the end of the day, it's sort of what I asked you about, like, Hey, what are people overemphasize? That's why it's so important, because you can't possibly keep up with all that, you know, that answer the question, right? And, you know, I have to come back to the funnels, its content, its links, it's that markup, it's the structure, it's your local. I mean, there are things you control and things you don't almost feel like you're a 12 step program. And as long as you hit those fundamentals, yes, some person's intent is not going to get you there. But you'd also don't want that and I get as an SEO, one of the things I get is, with some of the algorithm updates, we'll see traffic, not monetizable traffic, but blog traffic, right, disappear from stuff that made them feel really good, right? 1000s of pages of content disappeared, of pageviews disappeared in the last one all week. Okay, it's nice to get traffic. And we know that for SEO that those touch points, but it's not making you any money. And what Google's saying, hey, this is not a good answer. For people. It's it's traffic, because it's a blog, but their job should be, you should know, what I look for when I'm advising people is what is your monetizable traffic. Now, again, non monetizable traffic comes through touchpoint long as it doesn't bounce, God bless. But it's what good,it's a cat and mouse game. Because when you're getting that extra traffic, it's not a good user experience, necessarily. It's the best they could you given the situation.
Duane Forrester
So you know, this is a really interesting point. Seth, I'm gonna lean into this a little bit. Okay, because you talked about bounce rate in there, you talked about, you know, the useful traffic versus not use less traffic, but less useful traffic, okay. You know, there's always a moment in time where we all want to feel good, you know, and that's when we go outside. And like, I do this regularly, right? When I want to next pick me up, I go take a photo of the sunset, in my neighborhood, and I post it on Instagram or on Facebook. And immediately people my network ping back to me and they go, that's beautiful. That's awesome. Right, like, that's all I was looking for it right? Like, it just makes me feel connected. And, and so getting that traffic kind of makes you feel like, hey, there are people coming through my door. This feels good. You know? Now, look, they're all browsing. Nobody's buying. Everybody's walking back out again. You've paid for air conditioning, you've paid for lighting, you've paid for staff to be there to answer questions, and you've got no revenue to show for that. At some point, you have to suggest to yourself, well hold on a second here. If nobody's walking through my door, but they're buying from me online. Maybe I can turn the lights off for the day and save all my expenses. Because I'm still making revenue online, you have to think in these terms, right? Which is, well look, if this isn't providing value for me, then why am I supporting it with a hard cost investment. So a lot of times some of that blog content, you'll be able to look at it and say, I'm just gonna let it age out. And I'm getting rid of it because it doesn't provide any value.
Seth Price
So traffic, I'll push back a little bit on this in that there is value for traffic, assuming it doesn't bounce.
Duane Forrester
Okay, so we want to split the hair, I'll the hair. So let's let's do this. Let's do it. I'll play your game. So okay, I will agree with you. But I am gonna say now you're starting to suggest we better have a really robust program and we got to know what we're doing with it. Okay, because just having that traffic, it can be valuable, right? But if you don't have a way to stop the bounce from happening, understand it's not helping. If you don't have a clear path for conversion to keep those people engaged, then it's not developing everything it can for you. Now you could argue that there's a brand new component to this and there always will be that's fine, but I don't know that most businesses like that's their number one focus right? Like let's grow a brand know most is let's go for. But I don't want to discount that. Like I don't want to say that like that doesn't have happen because it does happen. And there's a recall that happens, somebody reads something they remember your brand name, two weeks later, they read something related your brand name pops into their head, you know. And as a marketer, you then you could put your pixel you at for as long as they allow us. Yeah, we can retarget, you know, it's, it's, it's still a piece of a potential funnel, maybe...
Seth Price
And as a marketer, you then you could put your pixel you at for as long as they allow us. We can retarget, you know, it's still a piece of a potential funnel, maybe...
Duane Forrester
Exactly. So let's take a look at what that funnel looks like now, because this is the critical part. So you've got a piece of content, it's ranking well enough to get some traffic. So people are coming on there. Your problem now is, the person rather reads part of it or all of it, and then leaves you? Well, you need to have a way to keep them engaged with you. Because if they came in, they read something with you. Chances are there are topics that are related to what they just consumed, that you can also discuss with them that are relevant, it's a part of their journey on learning more. So this comes back to questions and answers. So if the person has asked a question, you came up as an answer, they clicked on you, they come in and they read your answer. If they've read the whole thing, they clearly are into what you're saying. So it might just be technical, because they don't know the definition. And they want to read the definition. Or it could be that they they like the way you're presenting it, they like your voice on it, and it resonates with them. Either way, you have somebody who has invested the time to read the entire piece of content, you need to make sure that your capture funnel is is very clearly defined, and giving them the things that keep them on your domain. Because if we take this around, and we say they've read half of what you wrote, or they read a third of what you wrote, or they read the first sentence, that shortening timeframe, when they bounced back to Google is starting to look bad for you. And Google is then going to look at it the next time they see that question. And they're gonna say, Well, the last time Seth came in, he really didn't read all that article over there. So that's not the right one to put in front of him. So we won't put that domain high in the rankings.
Seth Price
This is so funny. I almost see the flip side. Yes. But let's take an example. I'm gonna spend a lot of time in a legal space. So for example, I don't know if they have these in California be their speed cameras or red light cameras. Okay. So in the legal space, they are not a great thing, because you can I profess not to want to help somebody with them, and that it would cost them more money for us to represent them than if they just paid the ticket, like the cost of a real lawyers. So and, you know, while there's some apps out there working on it, most law firms so what I have thought of and as such as this, it's other areas, and there are a lot of lawyers that are in a lot of marketing people that are trying to say: hey, there's a whole access to justice area where people can't in the micro world get access, because you're not cost effective, or they can't afford either one. And that when you're able to sort of provide content and answers, you're saying, hey, somebody will get a bad experience, they won't come back. I'm sort of banking on the opposite, that I don't really want the phone call, cuz that's going to tie us up from a business perspective. But if I can walk somebody through what your options are on a red light camera, and get them to spend two minutes reading that that area, right, if I can do that, and demonstrate a good bounce, right, the person gets their answer, right, that in theory that would then when somebody comes on a monetizable issue for something that is a widget that we do sell that you then have shown Google, hey, this is a place so like, it's sort of like if you're going to do it, do it right. So that it's not just spam trap, it's spam content. But if it's real content that's answering somebody's question, even without making a sale. In theory, that would be the flip side of your your sort of discussion right there.
Duane Forrester
So yeah, you have to approach it, like every question is worth an answer. And you have to have a legitimate answer, right? Like, you have to do that. Even if your answer is a non starter. Like the answer is, this isn't worth your while employing a lawyer for pay the fine move on.
Seth Price
Hey, these are the things to look at on a ticket. You know.
Duane Forrester
Just be that it may be a... Look, I'm going to give you everything you need, because I really don't want to engage with you on it. And you need to know this anyhow. Versus okay. Yeah, no, that's a clear cut case of you know, here's your problem. And here's how that doesn't stand up. We should have representation on this. Let's go ahead and engage, and we moved the thing forward.
Seth Price
I just thought of this, as it's there or have an answer our call to action saying, I we are sorry, we are as frustrated as you this is not if you have the only thing to change. This is a political thing. Here's the number for your council people call them.
Duane Forrester
And that's entirely the publisher of the website, that is entirely their choice. Like certainly can do that. Right. The critical part in this though is if somebody lands on your page, and they don't consume the content, and let me be crystal clear about this. It doesn't matter what your produces piece of content. If you put two bullets on a page, or you put 100 bullets on the page, Google understands intrinsically how long the average human takes to read that content. So if it's a fraction of that needed time, whether it's for two bullets or 100, and they bounce back, Google says that's a failure. So it doesn't matter that there was only a small amount of content to consume, Google will know the person didn't consume it. And they will say, that to me is not a good answer, in this case, and move on. I would suggest, there was a just last week, there was a restaurant, I think, in Montreal, Canada. They published their menu, and they were brutally honest about themselves. They were like, you know, the kung pao chicken, it usually comes out a little greasy, you know, you should probably try this instead. And and they went viral when they published this thing, because no, no restaurant.
Seth Price
And instead, it's a restaurant owner. Right?
Duane Forrester
It's like, and yet it's driven business through the roof. for them. It wasn't their intention. The guy was just frustrated. And he was like, Look, I'm just going to try to guide people toward the high profit stuff that I know, we do really well, and we get good reviews on, because I'm sick of getting bad reviews on the stuff that I know, we don't do so well.
Seth Price
Now that the home run would be like, Hey, why are you not upgrading that to, you know, general Tso's and getting it? You know, like I said, Mark is telling you that I like it like, but I appreciate the sentiment, right?
Duane Forrester
And so like, like, any business can choose to do this. And it can actually have a very resonant effect with a customer. Now, what we see a lot of companies doing is there, there has been an in complete transparency Seth, you know, this right? Like, this is a product my company offers the AI powered site search solution. The reason this is important is, you need to think of it not in terms of a little box up in the top corner where somebody might or might not go to, think about it in terms of Google, we ask our most intimate questions to them. We call a car from a complete stranger and we get in the back with Uber, we stay at a stranger's home with Airbnb. Amazon knows exactly what we're going to buy before we're going to buy it. So all of these things have one thing in common that made them massively successful. It's the fact that they start your journey with you asking them for what you want. So you ask out loud, and you touched on this earlier you said like, you know, like teenagers, right? They're just like, look, I'm going to talk to the microphone. That's what I'm gonna do. So now every one of these companies is getting this incredibly deep, rich, intent rich set of results. And they can then build answers for that. Right, which is why we love these companies. Yeah, Uber solves, you know, the stinky dirty taxi dilemma. But let's be clear, it does way more than that for us as well. Airbnb opened up a whole new world to consumers and travelers. You know, it made luxury travel affordable to everyone. Because someone's renting that mountain cottage now, instead of you didn't have access to it if you wanted a mountain cottage here to go buy one.
Seth Price
Oh, no, no, that to be fair, it was out there. But it was very, very hard to find, it was different websites. It was just like, you know, like, there were car services before Uber it just was incredibly inefficient and in weight, and it was, you know, back when they brought down both, you know, they they brought economies of scale, and they brought on demand.
Duane Forrester
Well, and they brought the ability for you to do crazy stuff, like oh, I need to stop at the store on the way enter it in and now the driver goes to the store and you get your stuff and then you keep going.
Seth Price
And I guess I'll just share with you a personal story daughter her outgrew her bike, we're down in Florida. I go on Facebook marketplace, find the bike, push the button, say I'm sending an Uber, Uber shows up there. You know, I there was no like I was I was away for the day. I don't want to send my wife to like Lowe's parking lot to do a swap in that considering where we are. And I was like, okay, and with with three clicks of the button. Yeah, it's at your door.
Duane Forrester
Yeah. And this was last week's news. But Uber just bought Drizzly and Drizzly is all about alcohol fulfillment. So look, Uber is not taking me to the bar anymore, or taking me home from the bar, but they can bring the bar to me. And I think it's a very smart investment. Point being that we're turning to services to ask our question and get that answer. And why isn't your business setting up that same scenario? So when that consumer hits the page, okay, and that person is sitting down, saying, look, I have this traffic infraction. You're saying, look, here's everything you need to be aware of. Right? Really suddenly what you're saying is PFL like, yeah, I'm sure you're a great person, right? But like, big picture here, like this isn't worth you pursuing in this manner. But there are other things that you know, consistently that people need support with buying and selling a home, possibly for some people renegotiating a mortgage. It could be, you know, wills and testaments and things like this. And maybe those things for illegal business in, our actual like keep the lights on, they just keep revenue coming in. Because you know, when you get someone engaged, you can get them to the conversion. Well, wouldn't it be great to be able to have on your page those calls or actions, or a way for them to just ask that next question and get the obvious answer the same way they would from Google, but from your own website, so they never found they...
Seth Price
I get it, I could give you my personal journey that historically what I have seen as a consumer, and what I make decisions is I did not like the results I got for internal site searches generally. And so if I eliminated it historically, now, I made it something you have to revisit as technology and Google Consumer Report. But the idea is, I always got bad answers. And to me, I'd rather push one of six buttons, oh, you need help with this. And it brings it up, you know, maybe with with our with our kids, they're going to be pushing the button and saying it.
Duane Forrester
But that's the key. Everyone is trained to search. So if you give them the search box, front and center, and they don't see what they look, they want, the next easiest, most efficient thing for them to do. Now, granted, if you're on a mobile device, you can hit the the microphone button and speak this out loud if you want to, you know, if you have a keyboard, you can type it out. But people do have a propensity to simply ask their question again in a search box, because Google has trained five generations of searchers now to actually just ask the question, and we'll give you the answer. So typically, in a historical context, and this is still holds true today, most people have a direct database lookup for their site search. So if you don't put the question in the way the engineer put the question in, it comes back with zeros. It doesn't work. I've seen this on some of our client websites, I went into one, and I was looking for a hamburger. And they have a branded name on their hamburger. And they literally had a quick search button right below their search box for that name. And I clicked on it, and it refreshed the page, and it gave me the search results. And it said zero found. And yet, if I went through nine steps in their menu to get down there, it's right there. And it's available to put in my cart to have.
Seth Price
And that's why I never because I never was convinced that it was there.
Duane Forrester
But today, you have access to systems that literally put... so I'll use us as an example. You know that Google uses Bert and Smith and all of these very deep machine learning systems to get the results we see today. Okay, that's exactly the process and system that my company uses for our solution. So you actually get a Google like box on your webpage, same level of knowledge, same level of understanding, same level of intelligence. But that's what's powering your search box today. So it is time for companies to look at this and say, how do I extract value. And speaking of extracting value, you then have a very rich set of questions that get built over time. And you know exactly what consumers are asking. So now you also see where your content gaps are, you see that this question gets asked 11 times a week, and there are 10 other questions that get asked one time a week. Okay, well, then we know what we have to produce content on if we don't already have it. And if we're not ranking for that question, and we have content, then you know that you have to optimize that content, not the other 10. Right now, that's not the priority. So being able to pull that data, what are people actually asking me and seeing a full sentence string, a full question? That's massively powerful, and very, very eye opening for a business owner. And look, I'll be completely transparent Seth, like, we're not the only way to solve this problem, right? I believe we have a great solution. Point being that the old way of doing it, you don't have to suffer through that anymore. There are ways to step forward and use more intelligent solutions, get more data, and then your content is more on point. So think of the keyword research people do go up a level to topic research. And now take that and say, Well, my consumers are telling me every topic they want to hear from you very clearly these are them. So now you're not tied to keyword research from Google, which is tied to paid advertising, you're actually hearing directly from consumers who visited you, even if it's a fail, even if you don't have an answer for them, you now know, potential produce, right?
Seth Price
Assuming you feel, you close the loop and do it.
Duane Forrester
You have to do the work. And then of course, that content becomes indexable. And now suddenly, you're ranking for that question in Google like it's, it's a very powerful circle. That kind of exists today. And not a lot of businesses are really in there exploiting it yet. But we're starting to see companies do this and to great effect.
Seth Price
This is great. Like we could go on, we're happy to have you back.
Duane Forrester
The next time I come back, so we have to talk about knowledge graphs, because knowledge graphs are what are under all of it. That's what Google is built on, Bing is built on every website can and should have their own knowledge graph. We'll talk about that one again later. It's it's very deep.
Seth Price
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here and continued success that day. And we can't wait to continue the conversation and hopefully in person next time.
Duane Forrester
Oh, absolutely Seth stay safe, man and be well, thank you.
BluShark Digital
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO insider with Seth price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.