The State of SEO With Ben Steele - EP 293

11/22/22 • 59 min

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Want to increase your ROI and improve your SEO strategy?

How will SEO evolve in the year ahead? What are the biggest threats and challenges?

SEJ's Ben Steele joined me on the SEJ Show to discuss the findings of SEJ's Second Annual State of SEO Study, which includes emerging trends in the world of SEO and can help companies plan for 2023 and beyond.

As long as people need to find things, there will be SEO. That explains why this industry has seen so much growth, even with the upset of the last few years and economic issues on the horizon. –Ben Steele, 12:34

Organic marketing or performance marketing forms, such as SEO and affiliate marketing, have risen from staffing and investment perspectives. –Loren Baker, 14:31

If you're hyper-focusing on that automation element, you might be missing its actual value, which is allowing you to go hands-off on some of the things that don't matter as much and focus on creating content that resonates with your audience –Ben Steele, 31:11

[00:00] - About Ben.

[06:49] - What is the second annual State of SEO?

[09:59] - Number of respondents involved.

[10:25] - Preliminary findings that stuck out.

[16:09] - Locales with the highest salaries for SEO.

[18:20] - Where SEO professionals focused big this year.

[22:31] - Metrics to track success.

[32:40] - Important emergent factors in the next two years.

[41:33] - Difficulties in ebook planning.

[43:34] - The difference between an ebook & a white paper.

Resources mentioned:

State of SEO - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/state-of-seo-performance/

Ebooks are an interesting beast because they have unique difficulties and advantages. The most significant unique problem is they require a lot of buy-ins. By that, I mean they need someone to not only have the time to sit down and read it but to go through the process of discovering and deciding to download it. –Ben Steele, 37:55

People are returning to basics, driven by Google's updates over the last couple of years. –Ben Steele, 19:40

Yes, rankings are nice, but it's much better to have an ROI where people purchase or click. –Loren Baker, 28:16

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Are you looking to keep up with current and effective digital marketing today? Check out https://www.searchenginejournal.com for everything you need to know within the digital marketing space and improve your skills as an internet marketer.

Connect with Ben Steele:

Ben Steele, Senior Editor at SEJ, is an expert in digital content. He didn't set out to be an SEO strategist. Still, after learning the skills needed for his job and combining them with some self-driven research on digital marketing, he found that this is where his true passion lay.

His professional theater background also helped him develop a work ethic and leadership skills, among other soft factors like creativity.

Ben now works on the ebooks of SEJ, where he always offers fresh insights and recommendations for content strategy. Through his work in SEO, he channels the human experience, journey, or expression into something that others can learn.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/writerbensteele/

Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BennyJamminS

Want to increase your ROI and improve your SEO strategy?

How will SEO evolve in the year ahead? What are the biggest threats and challenges?

Organic marketing or performance marketing forms, such as SEO and affiliate marketing, have risen from staffing and investment perspectives. –Loren Baker, 14:31

[00:00] - About Ben.

[06:49] - What is the second annual State of SEO?

[09:59] - Number of respondents involved.

[10:25] - Preliminary findings that stuck out.

[16:09] - Locales with the highest salaries for SEO.

[18:20] - Where SEO professionals focused big this year.

[22:31] - Metrics to track success.

[32:40] - Important emergent factors in the next two years.

[41:33] - Difficulties in ebook planning.

[43:34] - The difference between an ebook & a white paper.

Resources mentioned:

State of SEO - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/state-of-seo-performance/

People are returning to basics, driven by Google's updates over the last couple of years. –Ben Steele, 19:40

Yes, rankings are nice, but it's much better to have an ROI where people purchase or click. –Loren Baker, 28:16

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Ben Steele:

His professional theater background also helped him develop a work ethic and leadership skills, among other soft factors like creativity.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/writerbensteele/

Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BennyJamminS

Previous Episode

Scarcity Marketing And The Fear Of Missing Out With Mindy Weinstein - EP 292

Countdown clocks, limited seating, only X items left in stock ... does scarcity marketing work for you? If so, why?

Scarcity marketing and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a phenomenon that can be applied to all forms of marketing - especially digital.

Mindy Weinstein, Ph.D., author of The Power of Scarcity, joins me on the SEJShow to talk more about the concept - and how it can help you drive results.

Marketing is so much psychology; it doesn't matter if you're doing SEO, paid search, or social. You're trying to reach a person. I feel like it's a lot harder than before because it's a matter of not just reaching them but cutting through the noise and then using the right words. –Mindy Weinstein,1:51

Because of scarcity, there is excitement and there is loyalty. Think of Nike and some of these big companies that people watch for the drops. It goes beyond just creating quick revenue, as I need sales right now, which is what most of us associate with scarcity. –Mindy Weinstein, 29:02

You're bringing their focus, especially for people all over the place, and you're giving them the direction to tell them what to do, which many audiences actually crave. They don't necessarily want to make that decision, and they need you to guide them to make the decision or to make the sale. I think that's something that can be lost in digital marketing.

–Loren Baker, 19:20

[00:00] - Mindy's background.

[05:17] - What is scarcity marketing?

[06:00] - Four types of scarcity.

[10:14] - How to take scarcity marketing from the traditional to the digital side.

[16:01] - Examples of using scarcity marketing in websites.

[20:20] - Examples for service-based businesses.

[25:19] - How McDonald's used scarcity marketing.

[32:27] - Ways search marketers can incorporate scarcity marketing into campaigns.

Resources Mentioned:

The Power Of Scarcity Book - http://powerofscarcity.com

Market MindShift - https://www.marketmindshift.com/

It's multi-layered. It's more than just thinking buy now, or miss out, or you have only one day left. There's so much to it, it doesn't always work and it only works for specific audiences depending on the type of discourse you're using. –Mindy Weinstein, 2:39

Just telling you have these products as best sellers or most popular on your website helps someone as they're searching on your website. –Mindy Weinstein, 7:50

You want to have the regular price because it elicits a feeling of loss aversion that we don't want. –Mindy Weinstein, 33:54

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Mindy Weinstein:

Mindy Weinstein is the founder and CEO of Market MindShift and a national speaker with an extensive background in digital marketing strategy. She has trained companies across all industries, from Facebook to World Fuel Services.

Mindy is also the leading expert on persuasion-related concepts, with years of experience in the business. The research she conducts helps companies better understand how to persuade their customers-and; she isn't afraid to think deeply!

Her book, The Power Of Scarcity, is available on November 8, 2022.

Connect with Mindy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindydweinstein/

Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mindyweinstein

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker

Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

Next Episode

Google and the Rise of Zero Click Searches What Does it Mean For Your Business with Marcus Tober - EP296

What is Zero Click? And how does it affect businesses and their SEO/PPC strategies?

Semrush's Marcus Tober joins me on the SEJ Show to discuss Semrush's recent Zero Click study and how this fits into a growing trend in Google.

Get insights on how Zero Click reshapes expectations of traffic, multi-touch attribution, and other traditional Google KPIs.

Zero Clicks for us means there was an initial search and nothing after that. There was no continuation. And we did is we defined a session in a two-minute window. –Marcus Tober, 09:42

The biggest pivot probably in the past decade is that, to your point, someone may click on Google Maps, someone may click on Google Images, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not reaching the business goal of that user. –Loren Baker, 12:44

As a marketer, we should aim for areas with a hybrid strategy. We need to show up for these transactional commercial searches, even if we know we don't get to click. We need visibility. We also need to invest in content that might trigger different search results, like, featured snippets, or maybe show up in more visual searches because we have lots of visual content. –Marcus Tober, 19:59

[00:00] - About Marcus.

[04:22] - The difference between enterprise vs. normal marketing solutions.

[08:00] - Is Zero Click negative or positive with planning for SEO?

[08:19] - What triggered the Zero Click study?

[12:12] - Is the call button a Google internal click or a click to the site?

[18:04] - What are the popular product box?

[22:12] - An actual query on mobile by Loren.

[30:37] - How do you make sure your brand covers the results delivered?

[39:07] - Google's search difference on desktop vs. mobile.

[47:02] - Other findings from the Zero Click study.

[48:08] - Conversion rates through Google products vs. regular organic traffic.

[51:58] - Will people ignore a CTR within indexed content and be served on Zero Click?

Resources mentioned:

Semrush - https://www.semrush.com/

Zero Click may mean Google may have answered the user straight away. So there was no need for the user to click to continue anything else.–Marcus Tober, 11:24

I truly believe Google has now found enough motivation to compete against Amazon. That's why they're investing so much in all these different ecommerce integrations.–Marcus Tober, 36:58

SEO will be very important in the near end and long term if we understand from which perspectives users are coming. Don't only optimize on transactional keywords because you can convert this traffic easily in SEO. And then, suddenly, Google launches popular products with checkout, and you lose every traffic. It would help if you diversified to succeed in SEO.–Marcus Tober, 23:45

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Marcus Tober:

Marcus Tober is a visionary leader who has been tackling the most complex enterprise workflows and requirements related to SEO. As SVP of Enterprise Solutions at Semrush, he develops smart and innovative SEO solutions to manage complex SEO workflows and requirements.

He previously founded Searchmetrics and was named European Search Personality Of The Year in 2016. Among the enterprise companies he's worked with are eBay, Adidas, GoDaddy, and Walgreens. Using data science in websites is his game, and he is always passionate about building organic SEO products.

Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcustober/

Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcustober

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lorenbaker

Connect with him on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker