Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard: Personal Branding, AI Strategies, and SEO Insights for Visionary CEOs

Eugene Levin with Jason Barnard at SEMrush live Prague 2019 Eugene Levin talks with Jason Barnard about Amazon as a (rather good) marketing channel. Really great conversation about how often we underestimate Amazon as a marketing / advertising channel. Amazons business model is diverse and better balanced than Facebook and Google. Amazon are sales focussed which makes it a big opportunity for sales and there is still time to jump on the train. In that he and Dan Saunders appear to agree. Eugene gives me tips on buying razors, then segues neatly into fake reviews on Amazon and Google. SEMrush are now offering Amazon tools alongside their more ‘traditional’ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools. I try to convince him that selling SaaS products through Amazon could be an option. It could, but isn’t (yet!). Amazon is likely to displace Google for product searches. Aven relationships with Target et al won’t save Google there because Amazon is a crowd-driven marketplace (brilliant strategy, apparently :)

Greg Gifford with Jason Barnard at Search Marketing Summit 2019 Greg has a lot of tattoos. And a great beard. And a cup of tea. And he tells me that the weight of Google My Business and proximity have increased immensely. We discuss the differences in that proximity weighting for car dealerships and coffee shops. As local search becomes more and more no-click, GMB has become your digital showroom – replacing your website. GMB reviews are the be-all-and-end all in local search. I ask a rather naive question about brand searches. Greg puts me straight (despite not watching much TV). GMB is a great feed for the Knowledge Graph about ‘who you are and what you do’. Then onto department listings, which I thought were 100% great, but Greg has a couple of less enthusiastic things to say about. Further, local search is getting increasingly complex to deal with, and mom and pop stores are likely to get left behind, especially as much of this new stuff is Google prepping for voice search. Onto local business Q&A and the low down on Posts. Beyond zero click search we are moving towards zero search search

Felipe Bazon with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO April 2019 Felipe Bazon talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about the low down on international SEO. Felipe came out of the sewers to do SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). We then get off to a bad start by disagreeing about the role of answers in SEO. But then he convinces me he has a great point of view. For a converting strategy, you will need to create different content for different countries and different cultures. We swap stories about the specifics of Spanish and French countries. Felipe tells me that ‘basic is advanced’ and I tell him that ‘getting to simple is a complex process’. Mention of French SEO Olivier Andrieux who runs a site dedicated to investigating featured snippets and analyse what Google can and cannot digest. Felipe takes that into a more strategic sphere with the idea of building brand using featured snippets (with a boxing example). Then takes a swerve over to SEO as a marketing discipline rather than a tech one. We should be talking to the CMO, not the CTO. Brand searches are key. Drive those, and you both drive a better SEO strategy, AND convince the CMO that you are performing. Then we get enthusiastic about getting the SEO and PPC teams together. And I wangle my way to a conference in Brazil, despite the fact that I forgot they speak Portuguese.

Chris Liversidge with Jason Barnard at TakeItOffline Brighton 2019 Chris Liversidge talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about the 14K trick–ultra optimising for mobile-first. Chris explains about the size of the first chunk of data on 3G and that leads Chris and I invent and perfect what we call ‘the mobile gold standard for speed – 14K trick’, and it takes us less than 20 minutes :) Like it was back in the 90s. And that is an advantage for me and Chris over the youngsters who were probably playing on my website back then. Like Bill Slawski is the patent reader, Gennaro Cuofano is the ‘financial statements reader’, Chris Liversidge is the ‘Google documentation reader’. In terms of speed, AMP is something you do when you give up. AMP is a crutch – the gold standard is PWA with the 14K trick. The Big Daddy update and the Mobile First update are good examples of Google giving sites a fair warning to give them time to adapt. But they often don’t. I ask why we can’t have Flash back? Chris is cruel to be kind and tells me we can’t.

Amy Annetts with Jason Barnard at Copycon 2019 Amy Annetts talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about on and offline marketing combined. Amy comes from the offline marketing world – having started back in advertising in the 90s, we have a great conversation about how relevant traditional marketing is to SEO/AEO. We get interrupted by the (very tuneful) Federation Bells in Birrarung Marr park, but quickly get back on track (well, Amy does). In the old days it was all very simple. And it still is, when you dig down to the root of what we are trying to do – connect to customers. Many companies looking to market online today are quickly overwhelmed, but they need not be. Amy gives great insights into how to gently and effectively bring offline businesses online. Back to basics, get excited about traditional marketing and put the heart back into marketing. Brilliant!

Lily Ray with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO April 2019 Lily Ray talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about E-A-T, the how, they why and the what to do! John Bonham, Keith Moon … Lily Ray. Rock drummer icons all :) Lily sets herself apart because a) she is alive and b) she knows boatloads about E-A-T. We discuss August and March updates. I suggest that Google has a slap-and-reward system. Lily politely ignores that, and gives some very encouraging information about E-A-T. Much of it is an easy fix. She then identifies what the constituent parts of building E-A-T really are. I ask for a lot of free advice. And Lily very kindly gives it to me – she is super practical and smart. We now need to be obsessed by Brand SERPs. And even gossip sites can be useful, as can comic sites… as long as they provide useful information. Pure buzz has no long term value. Trust rank is (perhaps) a thing? Then Lily finishes with a wonderful summary of the fundamental point of an SEO’s job.

Robert Gerrish with Jason Barnard at Copycon 2019 Robert Gerrish talks to Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about imposter syndrome. At CopyCon, Robert gave an amazing talk based on the book by Dr Valery Young “the secret thoughts of successful women, why capable people suffer from imposter syndrome and how to thrive in spite of it”. Over 70% of people struggle from imposter syndrome at some point in their working life. And, of course this happens to men and women in any industry. The five types of people who suffer from imposter syndrome (according to Valery Young): perfectionist, superwoman, natural genius, soloist, expert. This is a phenomenally interesting conversation about something that isn’t directly digital marketing but is well worth the listen.

Nils de Moor with Jason Barnard at BrightonSEO April 2019 Nils de Moor talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about SEO on the edge. Why not use Content Delivery Networks to manage some of our tech SEO? And not just the simple static stuff. CDN nodes allow us to intercept the request and adapt the content on the Edge without even going back to the original host. Several use cases: speed, overcoming restrictions of your host platform, A/B testing. Most importantly, it frees the SEO practitioner from some of the shackles that the tech imposes, which is brill. But not without its dangers… it is easy for an SEO changing content on the Edge to mess up big time, so demarcation and chain of commands are vital. And for anyone who knows ‘the Google Tag Manager’ trick of changing HTML on the fly, please note that this is more reliable, better performing, faster, has more use cases… And it gets better and better as the conversation progresses. Getting access logs from the host ever been difficult? You can get them at the CDN level. The Edge can become a powerful, simple and fast routing system. Nils gives us a glimpse of how. By the end of the conversation, Edge SEO has become my new favourite thing.

Andrea Volpini with Jason Barnard at TakeItOffline Brighton 2019 Andrea Volpini talks with Jason Barnard about the semantic web from 2000 to 2019, and beyond. This conversation packs in a phenomenal amount of fascinating information about linked data, knowledge graphs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machines… Andrea started working on semantic web technologies back in 2000 – so Andrea has been expecting the web to transition from being page based to being entity based for 20 years (see also Bill Slawski and Sergey Brin). All three have waited patiently for a long time and were starting to get impatient :) I then get unreasonably excited at the mention of Tim Berners Lee and his web of meanings. I find out that AI is hungry for data (as opposed to angry with data, as I had understood after a few beers the previous evening). Building a knowledge graph is a way to transfer the knowledge you have in a specific domain to the world, and in that sense it is much like a webpage. Andrea foolishly mentions the move from Mobile-first to Data first… so I push him to look into the future, and he brilliantly comes up with a lovely concept of Solidarity first and ‘the web of solidarity’, which sounds really cool to me. We finish off with a chat about DBpedia Bus, Norvig, Chomsky … and the possibility of telepathy further down the line!

Milosz Krasinski with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Milosz Krasinski talks with Jason Barnard about building links and the unexpected tricks in order to do so. Milosz and I debate the merits of different social media platforms, then how that plays into linkbuilding. Find the right people, the right angle, the right introductions… then adapt your personality to the type of person you are interacting with. There are only three types: salesman (Milosz), maeven (Omi Sido), connector (Anton). Navah Hopkins mentioned dividing people into 3 groups: geeks, nerds and a dork. I overstep the reasonable and suggest that three is the magic number … But then Milosz tells me 7 is the magic number. Or maybe 4. But then again, it might be 3. Turns out which of those 3 (doesn’t that just prove my point ;) is the magic number, it depends the context! As the conversation goes on, Milosz gives me half a dozen stunning tips and tricks for outreach for links – starting with the obvious – authority, sentiment analysis, social… and then a few (increasingly) sneaky ones (that elicit a rather Dastardly and Muttly laugh from me). And ends with a rather nice analysis of indirect linking.

Lukasz Zelezny with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Lukasz Zelezny talks with Jason Barnard about the tactics for organic traffic growth. Lukasz is a drum and bass DJ… so we discuss how many digital marketers were once musicians / in the arts. I discover that Lukasz loves stories and adores metaphors – through which he shares super tips for imporving your SEO and increasing organic traffic (reasonably) easily. Lukasz finds a lovely balance between digging dep, and doing simple things that bring quick results that keep your clients happy. The Snapshot method. Gap Analysis. Lukasz shares his favourite WordPress plugins. I share Wordlift with him and he goes off to investigate. We both get excited about reducing flowery content – be honest, direct, straight to the answer. And we end with a big fat smiley agree-fest ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj91l-uqwH4 Lukasz runs an SEO agency in London. Find out more here

Joshua Hardwick with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Joshua Hardwick talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SER Guy) about link building and outreach. Starts by gamely answering a question about Javascript. Then suggests how we can get guest blogging opportunities (starting in Bali, of all places!). Network a lot (in real life, not just online), be honest, be frank, be yourself… then once you get the guestblogging flywheel going, you’ll be all set. But, despite networking in person and trying too hard to be way too charming, I completely fail to get a link from Joshua… there is a lesson there somewhere (if only I can find it). Are mentions worth chasing without links? Not if you want to rank for anything worthwhile, it seems. Hrefs did a study last year – almost a billion pages – and found a straight correlation between links and ranking. Joshua hopes to rerun the study to see if that correlation is less strong a year on. I end with a very stupid question : what is your favourite topic for blog posting.

Hannah Thorpe with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Hannah Thorpe talks with Jason Barnard about SEO without traffic: the world of voice search, knowledge graph and brand. Google is a discovery engine that is increasingly pushing out answers. It has 20 years of historical query data to use to be able to predict what we will ask for before we ask. Hannah kindly tells me my horizontal vs vertical theory is a really cool idea. Then expands to a dual algorithm theory and backs it up with lots of solid arguments, including PACRR (a rather boring acronym that is actually REALLY interesting). Stop thinking about algorithms since machine learning means the algorithmic path changes at every execution, and there is therefore no specific set of tasks to do since the path is never predictable. She then explains what authority and relevancy are, and how brands can approach a search / discovery world where they are key. Entity as a ranking factor and how to make the most of that insight (clue: much more than SEO). WELL worth listening to. Mind blowing.

Steven van Vessum with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Steven van Vessum talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about learning from mistakes. Brno is the Eindhoven of the Netherlands… or perhaps Steven is getting mixed up… the Czech Republic. Steven’s personal site doesn’t have any pictures of unicorns but Steven still manages to give it a positive spin. Teaching search engine optimisation comes down to providing the basic pieces and then sending the pupil off into the world to master SEO by: doing, trying, making mistakes and learning from them. Steven’s advice: Be a critical thinker and you’ll pick up the pieces of the SEO puzzle along the way, and each individual should put those pieces together in the way that suits them and thus build their own unique “SEO puzzle” in their minds. BUT, after that great start, Steven gets carried away: SEO is like pancakes and SEOs are like children… And some well-known SEOs talk rubbish (no names are mentioned, though – with no editing required :)

Gianluca Fiorelli with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Gianluca Fiorelli talks with Jason Barnard about international digital marketing. Gianluca gives me my first sing back. Building an international digital marketing strategy starts with understanding your own business. We are not so much doing digital marketing, more marketing in a digital world. Prioritise your territories, then expand your international step by step (territory by territory). Think multi-country, multi-lingual and multi-cultural. Different cultures will often need different content, not just translations. Think about which tourist destinations are popular in Italy vs Spain vs UK, and therefore those that will give the best traction – different for each. Think localisation of a global brand or product, not simply globalisation. It is phenomenally important to take into consideration applicable laws and regulations – Schengen is a great example of this. We get overexcited about href lang in Spanish countries, French countries and Switzerland, and I end up deciding to take my automobile to Paris for some reason. Helpful Resources About Making it Internationally How to optimize Your Ecommerce for Google Images and Visual SearchSearch Intent and SEO. A Practical Guide

Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Jason Barnard talks about The Google Cookbook - Making Content Easy to Digest Google’s food is information. It needs to identify, collect, chew, swallow and digest in order to be able to give the answers to users. We look at leveraging Schema.org markup, Dom extraction, semantic triples, tables and lists to prepare Google’s food. We meander through a lot of questions and come up with some interesting explanations. Schema markup is like recipes and food items (that analogy doesn’t fly for very long). When you rebuild your site, start with thinking about structured data, since that encourages us to better organise categories, pages, and even Fraggles. I realise that I have been saying that I am a double bass. Alex gives me a taste of my own medicine by asking a question I wasn’t ready for. I wriggle through by quoting Jono Alderson and Cindy Krum – chunks, blocks and Fraggles. I cite so many people, it is starting to feel that I don’t have much to say for myself. Conclusion is “Help the Google Beast / Pet” and it will help you. Track Your Brand Log in Jason Barnard SEO is AEO. Welcome to the show. Jason Barnard. Alexandra Tachalova Okay, so today I have a pleasure to interview Jason Barnard. And so, I'm very excited about that, and I'll try my best. We're going to talk today about The Google Cookbook - Making Content Easy to Digest, which is actually a very big problem because it's very popular to have all those long-form content, but it's really hard to ... Just to read them. And so, I guess that's a very hot topic nowadays. Jason Barnard Yep, it's a very big topic too, and I'm going to talk about it tomorrow, so I've prepared it all, finished the slide deck this morning, and I'm ready to rock with this one. What do you mean by digest? Jason Barnard I like the idea that Google is having trouble, not only collecting its food, which is information, but also swallowing it, and then digesting it, so that it becomes energy for Google. Isn't that a lovely, lovely idea? Alexandra Tachalova Yeah, very, very, very good kind of comparison. Really. Jason Barnard I just made it up. I hadn't thought about that one, which is really stupid of me. Because I wrote the questions. Yeah, so it needs to identify, collect, swallow, and digest all this information to become energy, to be able to give the answers to the users. And that's a phenomenally big problem for Google. Alexandra Tachalova Okay, so it's just more about understanding what's going on, on particular pages and giving the right results to people. Based on this data. Jason Barnard Yeah. Alexandra Tachalova Okay. So, you talk about four main focal points. Let's go through them one by one. Starting with structure data schema, which is very popular right now- tell me how it relates to digesting by Google. Jason Barnard Well, the structure data, as we all know, just confirms what's already on the page, so Google would've swallowed rather the information on the page, even though it wasn't structured. But it won't be fully confident it has understood it. So, you put the schema markup, and then it becomes incredibly confident and that's what I would call digesting Alexandra Tachalova So, ingredients really. So, "this is cucumber and it was organic". Jason Barnard Yeah. Exactly. So yeah, you can give it all the information ... Break your food down into an ingredients. I don't know how far this is going to fly as an idea, but we can keep trying. But you break it down. It's name value pairs, so it really knows what you're talking about. And one thing I see is the people go, "Okay, great. I'll use it." And what they don't realize and probably what they don't do, is use it all over the place. You have somebody like Martha van Berkel who says, "Use it on every page." Bill Slawski will tell you the same thing. Aaron Bradley will tell you the same thing, and they're all right. It's incredibly difficult to do, because it's time consuming, and it's not always easy. Alexandra Tachalova Does it raise any kind of conflict when you just go everywhere with structured data? Jason Barnard Well, you should be able to put it on every page, because you can explain almost everything with structured data. The only problem comes if you say in structured data something that isn't on the page, which is a mistake that a lot of people make. That's spam. We're trying to cheat the engine again. So, obviously you want to stay honest, and Dave ... I can't remember his name... Ojeda, I think it was... Was saying, "When you're building your new site, start thinking about structured data and build it from the structured data upwards, because if you do that, you will identify how your pages are structured. What's in them and how the overall site is stru

Viktoria Mamatova with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Viktoria Mamatova talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about making your Twitter truly social. Learn how to make the most of your Twitter presence. Animated GIFs are old hat that has got a new shine (and they are a lot of fun). Viktoria is capable of sustaining entire conversations with just a series of animated GIFs. Tweeting is like throwing rocks into the sea and expecting to build a mountain. If you want some quick-n-easy visibility, get on some Twitter lists. Spend more time than is healthy in Twitter Chats – apparently, that time is an investment, and not a waste of time (oops for me !). Fundamentally: stay true to yourself, be enthusiastic and stay relevant … and everything will work out fine. Learn here about the relevance of Twitter Boxes on your Brand SERP.

Navah Hopkins with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Navah Hopkins talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about chasing quality and quality score. Google Ads – the mistakes not to make. Most of which I made. Quality score is a health indicator and not a KPI. Bid-to-budget ratios, The importance of isolating branded campaigns. Be the best in industry. Big brands are rubbish – they send dumb money at the problem – and there is your opportunity. Navah also sets me straight on Dynamic Search Ads (which I now realise I got over-enthusiastic about). And NEVER let a Border Collie take control of your DSA campaigns cos you will lose money (most border collies ain’t so smart). I get over-enthusiastic about DSA, confused about pipes, and yet (somehow) I strike gold. Lastly, Navah tells us about the three A’s… Automation, audiences and attribution – the key to the future. Then, to cap it all, I get Navah’s name wrong !

Alexandra Tachalova with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Alexandra Tachalova talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about how to not let bad promotion kill your content. Write less, promote more… build organic traffic, get links, avoid the spike of hope. I learned how i can MUCH better promoting the #SEOisAEO podcast, which is rather cool :p) Outreach is the future (and Alex offers some advice about tools to use). Link building is and will remain fundamental, but too often overlooked. Watch out Neil Patel, Alex is coming up fast on your shoulder! In terms of content, think about ongoing content – a guide with chapters, for example. Or a podcast ! Also a bit of cheeky back scratching goes on and I beg for a link from Digital Olympus. I stop the conversation the moment Alex agrees with my analysis of the situation…

Judith Lewis with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Judith Lewis talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about creating a killer digital strategy. Judith condenses 10 years of experience in agencies into 20 minutes. Reach, Act, Convert, Engage – touching our customers before, during and after (purchase). The customer is always right, except when they are wrong… and that gives us as an opportunity to helpfully upsell more of our services and make money. Be inspired by others, then do it better! Concrete goals, broad aspirations and KPIs. I look behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. Do tech first, then content, then linkbuilding last. Judith gets enthusiastic about Amazon, and tells me that we are not selling traffic, selling visibility. Bob’s Polo Shirt Emporium gets a special mention and Judith analyses their performance in search. So if you are listening, Bob, just listen to the end to get some free advice.

Cindy Krum with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Cindy Krum talks with Jason Barnard about what fraggles means for mobile-first indexing. I learn what Cindy is bitter about, but fail to get her to reveal her age. She also says that mobile indexing meant Google moved from indexing URLs to indexing Fraggles (chunks). And I agree! Being expert in ASO gives you a big advantage in optimising for Fraggles. Lovely discussion about being an old SEO expert as an advantage (luckily for me), the indexing API, Cindy says quite a few words in French, and introduces a new theory about AMP that means there are reasons other than speed to develop AMP version of your site. I call Cindy a genius :) Then she has a bit of a quite delightful rant about Google. Oh, and if you are publisher, Google is trying to put you out of business. Last of all… new version of the outro song – so you HAVE to listen all the way through :)

Gennaro Cuofano with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Gennaro Cuofano talks with Jason Barnard about Google's business model. Understanding how Google makes money, and how its business model is changing will help you do better SEO and build a better strategy for the future. Gennaro reads financial statements and figures that out for us (similar to what Bill Slawski does with patents)… 70% of its revenues come from ads on SERPs – but what makes up the other 30%? Gennaro shares that info with me, then tells me about the Google cemetery, and tells me not to have empathy for tech giants – I should just take advantage of them! And lastly, the 100 billion dollar question – how is Google’s business model going to evolve in the coming years?

Deepak Shukla with Jason Barnard at Digital Olympus 2019 Deepak Shukla talks with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) about building your personal brand. Don’t feel guilty or ashamed about building your personal brand. It is important for both you and your company, and will serve you well in everything you do in future. Top tips Don’t rent your “digital brand house”Get yourself an Adina You’ll have to listen to the episode to know what those two tips even mean… but they are gold-dust. Brilliant stuff from Deepak (and Adina from PearlLemon by proxy). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZcDRSEw18

Craig Campbell with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Craig Campbell talks with Jason Barnard about smart social media strategies. Craig has a baby boy with the same accent as his. Craig gets me excited about Facebook (quite an achievement), we agree we should avoid Instagram… and then tells me about the right automation tools to use and the pitfalls to avoid. Basically, he gives me my Social Media strategy for 2019 and tells me what I should be doing in 2020 :) And, apparently he and I connected thanks to a bot. Sounds weird now I write it.

Laurence O'Toole with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Laurence O'Toole talks with Jason Barnard about topic clusters. Lemons, solar panels, prams, garden accessories… the topics Laurence likes to talk about are quite varied. According to him, Google is getting increasingly good at identifying authority within specific topics to a very granular degree. Big data is allowing Authoritas to get an inside view. Very enjoyably brilliant from Laurence. Hats off, sir ! Helpful Resources About Topic Clusters Stop Talking about Keyword Intent and Focus on What We Can Implement – Advanced SEO Automation TechniquesGoogle Question Hub – Is it Useful for SEO?

Bill Slawski with Jason Barnard at SEOcamp Paris 2019 Bill Slawski talks with Jason Barnard about patents and entities in search since 1999. Patents are really easy (or so says Bill Slawski): they identify a problem, they tell you about the prior art used to solve the problem, tell you why that’s insufficient, then they provide a solution. We also talk about patent writing styles and the Ernest Hemingway of patents. We look at Google Maps as a knowledge graph and traffic cop. Onto why many of the best employees moved from Microsoft and Yahoo to Google (the reason is not what I thought). Remembering dates, names and patents is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Along the way, we work back through the history of entities in search, starting 2019 and right back as far as 1998 (Sergueï Brin). This interview / conversation was recorded at 7 am in a bakers shop in Saint Denis near Paris and has an amazing backing track of coffee, bread and the locals chatting in Arabic and watching TV (don’t worry, it doesn’t ruin the listening experience, it a truly makes it better :) Jason Barnard SEO is AEO! Welcome to the show, Bill Slawski. Bill Slawski Thank you Jason. Jason Barnard Right. Lovely to meet you. For the listeners, please excuse us, there's quite a lot of noise behind, some people talking Arabic. We're at a boulangerie, a bakery in the middle of Saint Denis in France. It's seven o'clock in the morning after SEO camp. This is absolutely brilliant because the coffee machine keeps going off. People keep coming in to chat to the guy. That's just setting the scene cause we're having a good laugh here. Yeah, Bill? Bill Slawski It's a good atmosphere. I love going to breakfast in the morning at bakeries. Jason Barnard And this is a bit of a different bakery than you get in San Diego, yeah? Bill Slawski It's not too much different. Jason Barnard Oh! Right, okay. Bill Slawski There were a few like this, yeah. Jason Barnard Brilliant stuff! So you don't feel too, kind of, away from home, you're feeling very much at home. Bill Slawski And this reminds me more of what I used to go to when I lived in Virginia. Jason Barnard Okay. Bill Slawski It is the Red Truck Bakery. The owner, the baker owned a red truck and used to cater events. He'd drive up in a red truck and hand out bread and pastries. Jason Barnard Yeah, so that Red Truck Bakery, he thought long and hard about the name of his bakery. Bill Slawski Yeah, he had a red truck and parked down from events Jason Barnard I was stuck in Lawrence yesterday and he was looking for examples for something and there was a lemon tree right next to him. So, all the examples were lemons. It was brilliant, but we all have tendencies to do that. We look around, and my idea is the name of the street or swimming pool. Bill Slawski When I started my website, SEO by the Sea, I was standing in the second floor window in an office in Havre de Grace, Maryland watching sails bouncing up and down on the Chesapeake Bay. Jason Barnard Brilliant. Jason Barnard Okay, and so SEO by the Sea is your blog. And your company is Go Fish Digital, so that's all terribly sea oriented. Bill Slawski It's not my company, it's a company with a couple friends who I met at a meet up ten years ago or so. I was speaking on named entities in 2007. Jason Barnard That sounds terribly probable, yeah. Bill Slawski Yeah. Jason Barnard And when, sorry? Bill Slawski 2007. Jason Barnard Okay, so ten years before I even knew what they were. Brilliant stuff. Let's get on to something a bit more professional. Bill Slawski Okay. Jason Barnard You look at the patents, we all know that, Bill Slawski, the patents guy. I'm very thankful to you as I said earlier on, that you read them so that I don't have to. I assumed it was just because you're a lawyer and that's kind of the connection, but in fact it's not, is it? Can you tell me? Bill Slawski I was an undergraduate English major and one of the professors I really appreciated the advice of used to teach us, taught me a class in deconstruction of literature. And so, it was the idea of reading something, looking at all the parts, everything that made it what it was and combine that with the homework we used to do in law school which is taking judicial opinions, breaking them down into 9 different parts or types of things. It's a habit I developed from years of school. To read something, break it down in parts. Patents are really easy. They identify a problem, they tell you about the prior art involved that is used to solve it. And why that's sometimes insufficient, then they tell you *We have a solution, and here's what it is, here's where we're going.* And that's what a patent does. Jason Barnard Brilliant, it does seem very simple. I mean, I look at them and I just go *I can't think through all this stuff.* But, if you think of all the structure of it, i

Fili Wiese with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Fili Wiese talks with Jason Barnard about pagespeed, sitespeed, lighthouse and HTTP/2. Sitespeed is all about user experience. With some incredible Lighthouse insights, tips and tricks, Fili Wiese makes me go all starry-eyed about Lighthouse (pagespeed 3.0). He follows that up with a few super lessons in HTTP/2, and tells me that speed as a ranking factor is an illusion. Also, by the way, Google wants to be a librarian and Fili owes me TWO Lego men :) Helpful Resources About Google Penalties Website Migration with BingYour Questions Answered About Google Penalties and Their Impact On Websites

Arnout Hellemans with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Arnout Hellemans talks with Jason Barnard about trust-building without links. A lovely conversation where we cover mentions, links, linkless links, the knowledge graph, Brand SERPs and reputation. Sounds like a bit of a mix, but in fact it all makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Arnout !

Kate Toon with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Kate Toon talks with Jason Barnard about conversational and conversion copy. Batman and Robin, unique selling points, understanding the audience, emotional issues, matching problems to solutions… Kate makes an incredibly good job of clarifying all this Stunningly brilliant !

James Brockbank with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 James Brockbank talks with Jason Barnard about the challenges of digital PR campaigns. Links are like nuclear waste.Links have less value than before penguin.PBNs no longer work.Mentions have no value.Relevant links are gold Google are simply sending us a red herring by saying that we should stop focussing on links, so says James Brockbank. In this really enjoyable conversation, James shares some great examples of linkbuilding and gives his 6 point list for creating content that will get those valuable links. Oh, and apparently, Kim Kardashian works less than a day to earn what the average Brit earns in a year !

Regine le Roux with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Regine le Roux talks with Jason Barnard about measuring reputation. Régine gives us a great view of how to measure brand (or personal brand) reputation over time. She then enthusiastically encourages us NOT to stick our head in the sand and face up to the realities of our reputation. Then goes further and suggest that we share our reputation score (?!) and maintain an ongoing brand reputation strategy that accounts for all the important stakeholders (and not just the clients). Lastly, she insists that we manage our reputation proactively so that we are safe when the paw paw hits the fan :) Helpful Resources About Regine le Roux Regine le Roux Archives - BizNews.comWe Meet the Founder of Reputations Matter, Regine Le RouxRegine Le Roux Shares Why You Need To Be Proactively Managing Your ReputationCEOwise Words With Regine Le Roux - Each Generation’s Mode of EngagementRepursing Plastic Bags to Put Bread on Hout Bay Tables – Regine le Roux

Kristopher Jones with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Kristopher Jones talks to Jason Barnard about image search. Pinterest, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Instagram… Visual search is going to be massive, no doubt about that. But who are the players, how do they play, and what is the best action plan to take advantage of this amazing opportunity? Pinterest, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Instagram… Kris sees a semi-browserless world with voice and visual search dominating. But that isn’t the end of SEO. But it does change where SEO is going. We go off-topic a few times, but it is all 100% interesting.

Jono Alderson with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Jono Alderson talks with Jason Barnard about SEO and AEO in a world without websites. With the SERP increasingly offering solutions to queries, we are facing world where websites are increasingly less important (as it were). Jono Alderson talks extensively about on-SERP SEO, a great continuation of Rand Fishkin’s approach in this episode – communicating across channels, all along the user journey. SEO is the puppeteering of all the channels.Jono Alderson Not a volume game any more, it’s a right-fit and quality game.Jono Alderson Market to everybody and bring them gracefully down the funnelJono Alderson Plus we talk about WordPress, Jono tells me the interview was a Treat (great phrase !)… and right at the end, we discover that SEOisAEO rhymes with Jono ! Jason:SEO is AEO, welcome to the show, Jono: Anderson.Jono:Wow. Amazing, amazing.Jason:It's losing some of its shine.Jono:No, no, it was great.Jason:Lovely to meet you, Jono:. Thank you for being here.Jono:Yeah, thanks.Jason:Bit about you, you're a futurologist.Jono:An amateur one I think, but I don't know if you can be a professional one, so-Jason:I don't even know what one is.Jono:I think I have a lot of opinions about what might happen next, and needed a way of describing that, and it was a handy word.Jason:Oh, it's not a thing then?Jono:Oh, it is. It has connotations of pretentiousness. I know there are in large organizations...Jason:I didn't say that :)Jono:No, but everyone else will. I spent a lot of time in agencies and SEO trying to build strategies for clients, and a lot of that depended on understanding where everything was going and what the world might look like in five years from now, if you're building a big strategy, committing a lot of resources. So I had to build an understanding and some estimated guesses on whether we'd have flying cars and what Amazon were up to and all these things, and yeah, that turned into futurology, so that's quite fun.Jason:Brilliant. You basically say, "Where will we be in 2024," if it's five years?Jono:Yeah, or maybe even a bit further, but obviously it gets harder the further out you go.Jason:Last night, I saw we were gonna be with Global Corporation.Jono:Yeah, the evil overlords.Jason:That was brilliant by the way, last night. A great piece of acting.Jono:Yeah, well maybe, maybe. I spoke to the guys from Google afterwards and they were like, "This feels like a really accurate description," of where they are and how everything works, so it might not have been theater at all.Jason:Oh, right. Oh no. Everybody can be very afraid.Jono:Yeah, always.Jason:You said ... "what the Walking Dead taught me about the future of consumer loyalty"... what the ... is that?Jono:Oh God, that was a while ago. That was really fun. That was the precursor to a whole bunch of stuff I've been thinking about around where digital marketing goes, and the core of the premise was that we are as consumers saturated with choice. Everything is becoming commodified. Products get cheaper to manufacture, they get cheaper to distribute. It's cheaper to enter most markets. Increasingly everything is service-orientated, and consumer choice becomes the differentiator. In a world where I'm empowered to do my own research and make decisions on what I want, then what makes the difference is quality, and I can choose which brands I do or don't want to engage with, and the only thing that really sets them apart is the quality of the experience they deliver.Jono:As you start to change what it means to be a brand, to focus on that rather than I'm cheaper, I'm faster, I'm closer, because none of those things make sense to compete on, we need to really reinvent how we think about marketing and consumer research and SEO in particular. It's not about trying to sell things about the bottom of the funnel, it's about trying to build awareness and preference.Jason:Rand was talking about that.Jono:Yeah, yeah, very much, the fly wheels and all of that stuff, yeah.Jason:Oh, so you and Rand are on incredibly well.Jono:Yeah. I think all of SEO is starting to converge on this. It is the same kind of thing-Jason:Yeah. It's becoming digital marketing much more. I mean Rand has brilliantly moved from just SEO in inverted commas to this digital marketing thing, and I ... Hats off to him. Hats off to you as well. Brilliant stuff. But I didn't hear the Walking Dead in there.Jono:No, so that was-Jason:I mean that was fine and sensible-Jono:The rationale was I got bored of the Walking Dead as it kept ... I really wanted to like it, and it had promised a lot of really good stuff. I liked the dystopian future stuff. And what I found was there was increasingly more television and more media available to me than I could or would ever consume, and it got to the point where I thought, "You know wha

Rand Fishkin with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Rand Fishkin talks with Jason Barnard about Digital Marketing Strategy. Throw your old inbound marketer’s playbook out the window. Social is walled in, Google organic is staying on the SERP, influencers don’t deliver and web advertising trending to zero. Rand Fishkin shares some rather good ideas about how to adapt to this new world. Oh, and watch out for the Green Pants. Rand talks about internet marketing, including social, influencers and no-click SERPs – all dressed up as the Four Horsemen. What you'll learn 00:01 Introduction to Rand Fishkin 01:02 Discussing "Lost and founder by Rand Fishkin" 02:03 Empathy is the most important skill for a marketer 02:47 Why should we be self-aware? 04:26 The Four Horseman of web marketing 05:08 Removal of social media reach 06:56 Google as the second horseman 07:30 Is influencer marketing working? 08:35 Web advertising ROI is trending to zero 09:35 Levels of traffic and what is most appealing 10:16 Building a rapport before selling 11:33 Engagement trumps price of an advert on platforms such as Facebook 13:06 The 3 marketing flywheels 13:50 The smart marketer’s battle plan 15:45 Driving traffic and engagement back to your own site

Joost de Valk with Jason Barnard at YoastCon 2019 Joost de Valk talks with Jason Barnard about Google investing in Wordpress. Why is Google investing in WordPress. For speed? For structure (aka Gutenberg)? For Accelerated Mobile Pages? For PWA? Or just to make the web more Google-shaped? Joost cuts to the chase. Oh, and by the way, “making money is boring” – great stuff, Joost de Valk! What you'll learn 00:01 Introducing Joost de Valk01:56 The importance of funding diversity03:10 How impactful is Google's investment into WordPress?05:49 Speed : Is WordPress too slow?06:56 Why is the inclusion of AMP not possible?09:58 The benefits of PWA11:14 Embracing Gutenberg with its flaws13:15 The auditing of Plugins15:10 Yoast SEOs development16:14 Is WordPress threatened by Google?

Dan Saunders with Jason Barnard at SearchY Paris 2019 Dan Saunders talks with Jason Barnard about focusing on Amazon in AEO. Is Amazon the only place to look for the future of ecommerce? They certainly look to have a big advantage. Dan talks us through SEO and SEA on Amazon today and tomorrow. Looks like we might be underestimating this amazing opportunity.

Will Critchlow with Jason Barnard at SearchY Paris 2019 Will Critchlow talks with Jason Barnard about what to do when your SEO and CRO conflict. Split testing CRO is very common, split testing SEO hardly anyone does it. And even fewer bring the two together. Distilled do! And Will tells us all about why and how… They also mix-n-merge CRO and SEO split testing to help make the best decisions!

Anders Hjorth with Jason Barnard at SearchY Paris 2019 Anders Hjorth talks with Jason Barnard about how to search and shop using ads. The only economic model for voice search so far is “sell the device”. How are things evolving, and where are Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple going next? Read more here https://www.innovell.com/what-does-voice-search-ad-targeting-look-like/

Véronique Duong with Jason Barnard at SearchY Paris 2019 Véronique Duong talks with Jason Barnard about what Baidu do better than Google. At first sight, Baidu appears to be a Google copy both in terms of the services it offers and its business model. But it is ? Véronique and Jason have a chat about what Baidu does and doesn’t do.

Aleyda Solis with Jason Barnard at SearchY Paris 2019 PWA is an acronym for Progressive Web Applications. They tick all the boxes to push Apps to a back seat and redefine the way we develop websites. Compatible with all devices, they work offline, they are cheaper to develop they avoid maintaining multiple systems… Plus both Google and Bing have put their weight behind PWA. Aleyda and Jason discuss where this is taking us.