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SEO consultant Eric Schwartzman has released an exclusive podcast interview with a well-known SEO consultant who runs a New York-based SEO consultancy about what the recent Google leaks mean for SEO consultants and their clients. In this special episode of the Earned Media Podcast, these SEO consultants share their revelations about search engine optimization best practices.
This podcast episode was released just days after one of the SEO consultants wrote the groundbreaking blog post announcing the leak. The post created a buzz in the SEO consulting community with revelations from leaked internal Google documents.
The SEO consulting findings shared in this podcast are already changing how SEO consultants approach SEO strategy, offering a competitive edge in understanding and navigating Google’s complex ranking systems.
SEO Consultant Uncovers Google Algorithm Secrets
In this episode, the SEO consultant discusses Google’s ranking systems and the factors influencing search results. Drawing from his extensive research and analysis, he reveals the hidden mechanisms behind Google’s algorithm, providing valuable insights for SEO professionals. These insights include a detailed examination of how different ranking factors interact and influence each other, suggesting a clearer picture of how Google determines the order of search results.
SEO Consultancy Exposes Google’s Deceptive Practices
Discover how Google appears to have misled the SEO community about key ranking factors. He explains the real role of domain authority, click data, and more, challenging the conventional wisdom within SEO consultancy, and provides evidence from the leaked documents that show discrepancies between Google’s public statements and their actual practices, revealing the need for SEO consultants to test, critically evaluate and adapt their strategies.
SEO Experts on the Impact of AI on Search
SEO experts need to stay ahead in the evolving search landscape. He delves into how AI is reshaping search and the implications for SEO strategies. Learn about Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and other AI-driven changes that are redefining SEO. He highlights specific AI technologies and how they are integrated into Google’s search algorithms, emphasizing the need for SEO consultants to understand and leverage these advancements.
Actionable SEO Consultant Insights
The SEO consultant provides practical advice for SEO consultancies on optimizing for the new realities of search. He emphasizes the importance of authoritative content, user engagement, and adapting to AI advancements. He also shares specific tactics for creating content that not only ranks well but also engages users, increasing the likelihood of achieving higher conversion rates and sustained traffic growth.
SEO Consultant Discusses the Truth About Click Data
Contrary to Google’s public statements, click data plays a significant role in rankings. The SEO consultant explains how this impacts your SEO efforts and why understanding this hidden factor is crucial for SEO consultants. He provides detailed examples of how click data influences search rankings and offers strategies for leveraging this knowledge to improve SEO performance.
SEO Consultant Emphasizes Authoritative Voice in Content
Creating high-quality, authoritative content is more crucial than ever in the age of AI. This experienced SEO consultant shares insights on why an authoritative voice in content creation is key to success in the current SEO landscape. He discusses techniques for establishing authority and trustworthiness in your content, which can lead to better rankings and more engaged audiences.
SEO Consultant Offers Actionable Strategies
The SEO consultant offers practical tips on optimizing your site for AI-driven search engines. Stay ahead of the competition by implementing these actionable strategies shared by a leading SEO professional. These strategies include advanced keyword research techniques, on-page optimization tactics, and link-building methods tailored to the evolving SEO landscape.
SEO Consultant Highlights Fragmentation of Search
The increasing diversity of search platforms necessitates optimizing for more than just Google. The SEO consultant discusses the fragmentation of search and why a multi-platform strategy is essential for SEO consultants. He explains how to effectively optimize for different search engines and platforms, ensuring a broader reach and more comprehensive SEO strategy.
SEO Consultant on AI and Verification
The role of AI in search and the need for users to verify information through trusted sources like Google is crucial. The SEO consultant provides insights into how AI impacts search verification processes. He explores the ethical considerations and best practices for ensuring that AI-generated content remains accurate and reliable.
SEO Consultant Analyzes Google’s Core Updates
Recent updates are addressing AI content and the ongoing battle against spam. The SEO consultant analyzes these core updates and what they mean for SEO consultants. He breaks down the specific changes in Google’s algorithms and offers guidance on adapting SEO strategies to stay compliant and competitive.
SEO Consultant’s Best Practices for Language Models
Ranking in AI-driven search environments requires new strategies. Based on his latest research, the New York-based SEO consultant shares best practices for optimizing language models. He also provides detailed advice on creating content that aligns with the preferences of AI-driven search engines, ensuring better visibility and higher rankings.
For more such updates, follow us on Google News Martech News


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Constantine Ivanchuk, SEO Affiliates Team Lead at AFFTER joins Lee-Ann to discuss the unique approach of AFFTER as an invite-only affiliate program in the iGaming space. This episode focuses on the issue of quality over quantity, and providing bespoke commissions and account management to a select group of premium affiliates. Constantine also highlights the changing landscape of SEO over the last five years, and emphasises the importance of building relationships with affiliates, along with the need to diversify traffic sources in the affiliate marketing industry.
Listen in here for all of the insights…. 

Lee-Ann asks Constantine, “What sort of technological advancements is your platform working on in relation to AI right now? Because, if you’re going to be giving that high-touch experience, what are some of the things that affiliates can expect when they work with AFFTER?”
Constantine explains, “Well, when we’re talking about the AI, the field where the AI can really help us and improve the experience is basically the process of financial clearing. Firstly we focused our AI improvements on the chatbot for the affiliates and some internal processes inside our team to optimise the approach to the affiliate, the way of solving issues so there wouldn’t be any bottlenecks or stumbling stones, and the things that can be managed by AI that would not occupy the time of the person – of the affiliate manager.”
AFFTER’s technology has been built, elevated and developed to meet the needs of multiple different partners that work in the platform. Lee-Ann asks, “So you, yourself, specialise in SEO affiliation, which has also been the backbone of our industry for quite some time. But at our recent Amplify Summit, which was held a couple of weeks ago, we discussed that the rules of engagement are changing and customers are using the internet and all the social channels now to search for offers, too. So, it’s not just about Google anymore. I want to get down to the nitty gritty with you about how you think SEO has changed over the last five years, because I know that this is an area that you specialise in?”
Constantine says, “I would say that the so-called sphere of the SEO affiliates is shrinking year-by-year. I would say, of course, the reason is the Google updates, the more precise countermeasures of some regulatory bodies, and so on. But it’s also becoming the question of more quality versus quantity about the SEO affiliates. Because, yes, we started getting fewer and fewer players from SEO sources, but the quality has not become poor. So you can feel safe that SEO will still be your reliable source of high LTV players.”
[04:43] Creating a high-touch experience
[12:15] Finding new sources of traffic
[23:02] Affiliate Networks vs Direct Affiliates
 
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In this episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, Lee-Ann is joined by Simon Delaney, CEO at Databowl. They discuss
In this conversation, Lee-Ann and Leandro Schlottchauer, CEO of Kuyen Labs/Fuul discuss the transformative potential of blockchain technology in
In this episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, Lee-Ann is joined by Simon Delaney, CEO at Databowl. They discuss
In this conversation, Lee-Ann and Leandro Schlottchauer, CEO of Kuyen Labs/Fuul discuss the transformative potential of blockchain technology in
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Harshini Chakka

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In this article, I list down 10 best business podcasts that are just as entertaining as they are informative.
I know what you’re thinking: Entertainment and business don’t blend well together.
The general consensus is that business podcasts are “boring” and “uninteresting.” In other words, in terms of podcast categories, they’d probably be at the very end of the spectrum of entertainment.
But this list of best business podcasts is here to prove otherwise. The podcasts featured here can easily give mainstream podcasts like This American Life and Armchair Expert a run for their money.
So without further ado, here are the 10 most entertaining business podcasts you should listen to. If you need more recommendations, you can check the “Honorable Mentions” section to see 10 more entertaining and binge-worthy business podcasts.
Table of Contents
Hosted by: David Brown (a podcast by the Wondery Podcast Network)
The Wondery podcast network has some of the best business podcasts and Business Wars, hosted by veteran radio journalist David Brown, is the best and most entertaining business podcast of the whole lot.
Business Wars gives you the unauthorized, real story of what drives competing companies and their leaders, investors, and executives to new heights or ruin. The podcast covers some of the most intense corporate (and brand) rivalries — from Coke vs Pepsi to Netflix vs Blockbuster to XBox vs Playstation.
Each episode is around 30 minutes long and each brand rivalry is given a multi-episode treatment. Since the subject of the podcast is so interesting, it will keep you on the edge of your seat and before long, you’ll find yourself binge-listening to multiple episodes in the series.
My personal favorite is Netflix vs Blockbuster – an eight-part series that dives deep into the rivalry between Netflix and now-defunct Blockbuster.
Launched in 2018, Business Wars quickly grew to be one of the most popular podcasts on Apple Podcasts. Fast forward to today, the podcast has had over 60 seasons and continues to have a large fanbase.
But it’s not just the brilliant storytelling ability of David Brown that keeps you hooked to this podcast. It’s also the fact that there are so many lessons to be learned from each business rivalry. If I could recommend just one business podcast from this list that’s equal parts entertaining and informative, it would be Business Wars.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
The below episodes have multiple parts.
Hosted by: John Carreyrou
Elizabeth Holmes had everything going for her. Her blood-testing startup Theranos was valued at over $9 billion and she was being hailed as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. And then it all came crashing down when it was revealed that her blood-testing technology didn’t really work.
To make it worse, Holmes had been lying to investors, doctors, and patients about the capabilities of her technology. Worse still, she had been using a wide range of intimidation tactics to silence critics, both from inside and outside her company.
Hosted by John Carreyrou, the WSJ reporter who first broke the Theranos scandal and the author of the brilliant book Bad Blood, this podcast delves into the court case against Elizabeth Holmes and the different scenarios that led to Holmes’ downfall.
Carreyrou breaks down every little detail concerning the Theranos scandal, from Holmes’ relationship with mainstream media to Silicon Valley’s fake it-till-you-make it culture that enabled Holmes to defraud investors and get away with her outrageous lies.
If you liked Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood, then this podcast is a must-listen. Even if you haven’t read the book yet, this podcast will reveal everything you need to know about the Theranos scandal and her subsequent trial that finally held Holmes accountable for her crimes.
Side note: This podcast pairs well with The Dropout, another podcast that covers the rise and fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. You can find more details about this podcast in the “Honorable Mentions” section.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: David Brown (a podcast by the Wondery Podcast Network)
WeCrashed is a six-part podcast series about the rise and fall of WeWork, a company that was once valued at $47 billion dollars. WeWork’s eccentric founder Adam Neumann was able to attract billions of dollars from top-notch investors around the world. He was on the verge of creating a global real estate empire.
All that changed when WeWork decided to go public. WeWork’s disastrous IPO in 2019 unravelled a web of controversies and deceit that the company was embroiled in. As Prof Galloway, host of the Pivot podcast, puts it, “WeWork tried to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.”
For a comprehensive understanding of the WeWork scandal, you must tune in to the WeCrashed podcast. The podcast is hosted by David Brown, who also hosts the super popular business podcast Business Wars (see #1 in this list). In fact, this podcast became so popular that it’s now being adapted into a limited TV series of the same name, starring Jared Leto as Adam Neumann and Anne Hathaway as Rebecca Neumann.
WeWork’s rise and fall is a cautionary tale for ambitious entrepreneurs. It reveals the amount of damage a narcissistic leader can do to an organization.
For me, the most infuriating part of the WeWork story was Adam Neumann’s settlement. He walked away with $1.7 billion after he lost the company millions of dollars every week and the company fired 8,000 employees across locations.
Side note: If you end up liking this podcast, please check out the book Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman. This business thriller offers an in-depth look at all the insanity that transpired at WeWork until its disastrous IPO. It was one of the best business books I read in 2021.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: John Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith (a podcast by the Wall Street Journal)
The Wall Street Journal’s Bad Bets is a podcast series that explores big-business dramas that have had a big impact on the world. It’s a relatively new series and the first season deals with the Enron scandal which many consider to be the mother of all corporate frauds.
Hosted by Wall Street Journal reporters John Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith, the show features interviews from key players who had a front row seat to the big egos and unchecked power within Enron.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: Hill Harper (a podcast by the Wondery Podcast Network)
This critically acclaimed podcast by the Wondery Podcast Network deep dives into some of the most famous court cases in American history, from Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker that put the company out of business, to ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli’s sentencing for securities fraud. In addition to all the legal drama, you’ll also hear about the real-world implications these cases had on the modern society.
Hosted by actor and Harvard Law School graduate Hill Harper, each court case is given a multi-episode series just like Wondery’s other podcast Business Wars (see #1).
I’d highly recommend you start with the Hogan v Gawker series as it’s the best and most entertaining of the lot.
Side note: To learn more about the Hogan vs Gawker case, I’d also recommend you read the book Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday which covers this case in greater detail. It’s one of the best business thriller books I’ve ever read and it’s hard to put down once you start reading it.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg
How do you determine whether NFTs are just short-term fads or here to stay? Is Web3 the internet of the future? Which of today’s trends will shape the opportunities of tomorrow? If you’ve pondered over these questions, then this podcast is for you.
Hosted by Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg, Where It Happens puts you in the middle of the conversation of innovations and opportunities and gives you access to a community that helps you take advantage of what’s next.
For an introduction to this podcast, check out episode 8 which features an interview with Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, where he shares his early lessons from Reddit and why he’s betting big on Web3.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: Stig Brodersen and Trey Lockerbie
As the name suggests, this podcast interviews and studies famous financial billionaires. From Warren Buffet to Jeff Bezos to Howard Marks, We Study Billionaires will teach you how to apply the billionaires’ investment strategies in the stock market.
The podcast has been around since 2014, so there are a lot of episodes to go through. I’d recommend starting with the first episode of this podcast, which delves into Warren Buffet’s investment approaches.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: Lindsay Graham (a podcast by the Wondery Podcast Network)
Business Movers is a weekly podcast that covers the true stories of the brilliant but all-too-human businesspeople who risked it all to reach new heights. It’s hosted by Lindsay Graham, the Webby Award-winning host of the podcasts American History Tellers and American Scandal.
In the podcast, Graham explores the triumphs, failures, and ideas that transformed our lives, ranging from how Howard Schultz saved Starbucks from the brink of disaster to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
The below episodes have multiple parts.
Hosted by: Alex Lieberman (a podcast by Morning Brew)
This is a podcast hosted by Morning Brew. If you’re not in the know, Morning Brew is a free daily newsletter that covers business and tech news. It’s one of the most popular business newsletters out there with over 3 million subscribers around the world.
Morning Brew’s motto has always been “stay informed and entertained.” The same principle applies to their podcast Founder’s Journal, which is hosted by Morning Brew’s co-founder Alex Lieberman.
Lieberman treats the podcast like his personal audio diary where he shares the tools you need to think better and build a better business and product. Lieberman’s favorite productivity method, which he explains in episode 298, really resonated with me and I was able to take some pointers from it.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Hosted by: Eric Golden
Consider yourself a crypto enthusiast? Then this is the podcast for you. Web3 Breakdowns offers a good primer on complex Web3 topics, including popular NFT projects, crypto assets, blockchain-based protocols, and businesses being built with Web3 architecture.
The podcast features a series of conversations with innovators, founders, investors, and influencers in the world of decentralized internet. It’s the best business podcast to tune into if you’d like to expand your knowledge and understanding of Web3’s emerging ecosystem.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
My 3 Favorite Episodes
Related: 22 Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts
If the above listed business podcasts aren’t enough to quench your thirst for entertainment, here are 10 more binge-worthy business podcasts.
So these are my picks for the most entertaining business podcasts. Did I miss out on any of your favorite business podcasts that are not just informative, but also entertaining? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to check out some of your recommendations.
If you’d like more podcast recommendations, check out these lists as well:
If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 17 February 2022 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness.
Related Articles
Sharing here my list of the channels I listen to:
1. The Tim Ferriss Show
2. How I Built This with Guy Raz
3. Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
4. TED Talks Business
5. The Bottom Line with Barry Ritholtz
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Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…

Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…
A few links on this blog are affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service through one of these affiliate links, I’ll receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
Rest assured, I recommend only those tools that I personally use and genuinely trust. In most cases, you’ll find in-depth reviews, tutorials, and how-to guides of these tools on my blog to help you make informed decisions.

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Join us as we share insights from the top SEOs at the world’s largest traffic-driving websites. Instead of guesswork, you’ll discover how to leverage real data to align your team and fast-track growth with five proven and actionable tactics you can implement immediately.
Discover the latest trends, tips, and strategies in SEO and PPC marketing. Our curated articles offer in-depth analysis, practical advice, and actionable insights to elevate your digital marketing efforts.
In this guide, industry experts explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the onslaught of AI tools, and provide actionable tips for thriving amid these shifts.
Discover the latest trends, tips, and strategies in SEO and PPC marketing. Our curated articles offer in-depth analysis, practical advice, and actionable insights to elevate your digital marketing efforts.
Join three of Reddit’s top executives in this exclusive AMA (Ask Me Anything) to discover how you can tap into Reddit’s unique platform to drive brand growth.
Join this leadership discussion for proven techniques to build long-term relationships and keep your clients coming back.
Google’s John Mueller shared his thoughts on the traffic metric and how SEOs should use it
Google’s recent Search Off the Record podcast discussed the important details of SEO, including a thought provoking segment about how SEOs can benefit from realign their thoughts about traffic with other possibly more important goals.
One of the most misinformed things that search marketers do is measure their success by citing traffic statistics. We’ve all seen the posts on Facebook or the articles on blogs, where a search marketer relates how they did X for a client and traffic exploded exponentially within months.
Link builders use traffic as a metric of success, content writers do it, SEOs do it.
The question that goes through my mind when I see that is, well, what effect did that have on sales or ad clicks?
Because if earnings remain flat then the traffic increase probably doesn’t matter and probably neither did the SEO work done for that traffic.
Ask any Pay Per Click expert or any affiliate marketer about the importance of conversions versus traffic and the response is clear: conversions are everything, not traffic.
Adam J Humphreys, CEO of search marketing and design consultancy Making 8 (LinkedIn profile) said this about success metrics:
“I focused on analytics early on and learned the language of business which is ROAS. This is all executives care about other than awareness.
Our job is to grow their business first as well as awareness second.
Many don’t know how to measure attribution from SEO.
Things like form fills and calls are almost always unmeasured and unreported. Clients get super excited when I talk about this because it’s almost like nobody ever cared about their success.”
Martin Splitt asked the question about the business impact of traffic.
Martin asked:
“…when you say traffic drops, what does that mean to you? Is it impressions?
Are you going to Search Console and click on the Performance report and you just look at the impressions going down or clicks?
Or do you actually measure a real business impact? Like you’re selling only half as many things as you used to sell last month?”
John Mueller added his thoughts on the topic. He tried to explain why SEOs don’t focus on return on investment (ROI) or the impact of SEO on earnings.
He offered his guess that maybe it’s the time between doing SEO versus the impact of it.
He commented:
“Usually what I see from people is that they focus on the traffic on their site.
And they look at something like Analytics and they say, ‘Oh, I get so many visitors and so many visitors from search engines. And that number went down significantly.’
…And the aspect of ROI or kind of the value of that traffic, I see that as something that a lot of these SEOs tend not to focus on primarily, because my assumption is it’s just a very long lead time there.
Like you can turn your website off now, but you might still have people who are kind of like paying for something for a while.
And then, it’s like, wow…”
Mueller followed up is thoughts on why SEOs might not focus on earnings by discussing how website traffic can be a misleading metric because it doesn’t tell a lot about why something happened, it only shows what happened.
He continued:
“But I do think it’s something where I sometimes feel it’s misleading to just purely focus on the traffic.
And I see that with our sites as well. A year or two ago, we would rank for the word “Google” in Canada or something like that, the search documentation, of course.
I hope the Google website ranks for the word Google. But like the Search documentation would rank for the word Google somewhere on the first page.
And we got tons of traffic there, but all of that traffic was basically irrelevant.
And then if you only look at the traffic and all of that irrelevant traffic goes away, then it might look like you lost a lot of traffic, but actually it’s like all of those things are people that weren’t relevant for your site anyway.
So you almost need to look at the bigger picture of all of the traffic that’s gone, but also keep in mind like, well, a lot of this was useless and I should maybe focus on the queries that people use, and then clicks and impressions for those, or individual like lower level pages of the site and kind of track those a little bit more.”
SEOs promote themselves through case studies showing all the traffic their efforts brought. But those studies are hollow and maybe even deceptive if there’s absolutely no reference to how much sales lift resulted after their effort.
Link builders do a similar thing where they promote all the hundreds or thousands of links they acquired for a client and sometimes mention the lift in traffic. Just as consistently as SEOs, they always leave out the effect on sales or earnings.
Why do they do that? I suspect that many of those SEOs have never actually built a business around monetizing affiliate sales or ad clicks and thus don’t have first hand experience from that side of the SEO fence.
A lot of the old school SEOs like myself learned what we know from building and monetizing websites, maybe because client work for SEO wasn’t really as much of a thing then as it is now.
Using traffic as a metric is useful for measuring the impact of SEO but traffic should not be the goal of SEO. The reason is because there are different kinds of traffic.
Some traffic converts into sales. Some traffic has a lead time from the first visit to the sales. Some traffic is useful for building a brand name.
But some traffic is not relevant or useful.
When it comes to diagnosing traffic drops related to ranking changes, it may be helpful to understand if there’s any impact on sales and if not, to understand why the traffic drop had no monetary impact and if content and SEO efforts might be better directed in a different direction.
Listen to the Google podcast, Search Off the Record: SEO Is In The Details.
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Join us as we share insights from the top SEOs at the world’s largest traffic-driving websites. Instead of guesswork, you’ll discover how to leverage real data to align your team and fast-track growth with five proven and actionable tactics you can implement immediately.
Discover the latest trends, tips, and strategies in SEO and PPC marketing. Our curated articles offer in-depth analysis, practical advice, and actionable insights to elevate your digital marketing efforts.
In this guide, industry experts explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the onslaught of AI tools, and provide actionable tips for thriving amid these shifts.
Discover the latest trends, tips, and strategies in SEO and PPC marketing. Our curated articles offer in-depth analysis, practical advice, and actionable insights to elevate your digital marketing efforts.
Join three of Reddit’s top executives in this exclusive AMA (Ask Me Anything) to discover how you can tap into Reddit’s unique platform to drive brand growth.
Join this leadership discussion for proven techniques to build long-term relationships and keep your clients coming back.
Google is revamping its official SEO Starter Guide, streamlining advice for modern website owners, and simplifying complex topics.
Google’s SEO Starter Guide, a critical resource for search engine optimization professionals, is undergoing a significant revision.
The impending update was announced on the latest episode of “Search Off The Record,” a podcast featuring Google’s Search Relations team members.
First launched years ago, the SEO Starter Guide aims to explain the basics of improving website visibility in Google Search results.
According to Gary Illyes and Lizzi Harvey, the existing guide needs to be updated and will see significant changes.
With over 8,000 words of advice, the current SEO Starter Guide remains one of the most visited resources on Google’s Search Central site.
“This is the third most viewed page, which is interesting to me because I would have thought maybe people read it and then they move on,” said Harvey.
The guide consistently ranks high in Google search results for keywords like “SEO,” drawing huge traffic.
Given the guide’s popularity, changes to the content and recommendations could significantly impact how new website owners approach SEO. Some strategies may be deemphasized or omitted entirely.
A key focus of the overhaul will be simplifying the content for modern users, especially those new to building websites.
The guide, known for its extensive reach and high view rates, is set to become more concise and relevant.
“Our current draft that we have right now is around the 3000 mark,” Harvey revealed, highlighting the goal to eliminate redundancy and outdated advice.
Illyes says the revised guide should focus more on general SEO concepts than technical details. For example, understanding the importance of page title tags without manually editing HTML code.
The changes reflect the rise in popularity of content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and website builders like Wix. These tools automate much of the technical SEO work, allowing users with minimal coding skills to optimize web pages.
During the episode, the hosts tackled the perennial declaration that “SEO is dead,” a statement that periodically surfaces within the industry.
Contrary to this claim, the SEO Starter Guide’s popularity and positive feedback signal a robust and ongoing interest in SEO.
“It is our top viewed guide after the home page,” Harvey stated, countering the myth and reinforcing the belief that mastering SEO is as vital as ever for online success.
The decision to streamline the SEO Starter Guide reflects a shift towards a more focused and user-friendly approach.
With information overload being a common challenge, the revised guide aims to provide clear, impactful advice without overwhelming readers.
“I don’t want to have ten different places where we’re doing… like saying the same thing in varying ways,” Harvey explained.
The podcast revealed that the updated guide would prioritize user experience and practical needs.
This includes simplifying complex topics and ensuring the guide remains accessible to beginners while providing value to seasoned professionals.
Google is expected to release a revised version of its SEO Starter Guide soon.
The upcoming guide will provide key information about current search engine optimization best practices while removing outdated advice.
This new iteration will likely become an essential resource for beginning and experienced SEO professionals looking to improve website visibility in search results.
Featured Image: Piotr Swat/Shutterstock
Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, …
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