Wix just celebrated their 100th podcast episode! Congrats, Wix. To quote Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at Wix; “we talk a lot.”

You sure do! It’s a good thing you have a lot of interesting stuff to say.

The 100th episode of “SERPs Up” was full of awesome guests. Here’s a summary of the action.

Apart from the usual faces, Oberstein and Crystal Carter, Head Of SEO Communications, it was a powerhouse guestlist:

• Chima Mmeje.
• Darren Shaw.
• Joy Hawkins.
• Eli Schwartz.
• Kevin Indig.
• Barry Schwartz.

Just How Broken Are The SERPs?

The first guest was Chima Mmeje from Moz. She dove into the frustrations that many SEOs have been feeling and spoke plainly about the flaws in Google’s updates.

Mordy Oberstein: “Is the SERP broken?”

Chima Mmeje: “The helpful content update, and I’m saying this here, live, is a farce. There was nothing helpful about that update. … Yes, the SERP is 1,000% broken. … How does anybody even use Google in the U.S.? … I don’t think they are going to release any update that will fix these issues.”

Mordy Oberstein: “There’s no update. … Plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends … and they said ‘we don’t have any so we’re just going to throw Reddit there’.”

Chima Mmeje: “It was lazy to have Reddit there … Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go on Reddit and answer questions and then you see these answers populating in People Also Ask, populating in featured snippets, populating all over the SERPs as correct information. It is dangerous, at worst.”

Crystal Carter: “Do you think that one of the reasons why we’ve seen so much upheaval and so much so volatility in the SERPs, which I certainly agree with in the last year … is lots and lots of variables, like lots of new features coming in, so the alignment with Reddit, the AI overviews, the SGE … Do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs as a result? Or do you think it’s something else?”

Chima Mmeje: ” … releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Features that were rushed SGE [testing] did not even last a year and now they brought in Google AI Overviews. I still don’t understand why we have AI Overviews and featured snippets on the same SERP. I feel like it’s like pick one, make a choice.”

Mordy Oberstein’s next question was about what we can do. “As an SEO, how are you supposed to do this? I’ve heard things from people … Yeah, I don’t know what to do. I can’t produce the kind of results that I’ve always wanted to. Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this?”

Chima Mmeje: “I’m going to be honest, we are suffering … It feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing … because there is no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now and that is the best that we can do. It’s all a guessing game based on what we’ve seen one or two variables work. And this is not a long-term strategy. If we’re going to be realistic, it’s not going to work in the long-term. I honestly, I don’t know what the answer is … you’re fighting against Reddit. How do you compete against Reddit? Nobody has figured that out yet.”

Crystal Carter: “Thanks for saying it out loud, Chima.” Crystal was reflecting the sentiment of the commenters, who appreciated her candor and willingness to say: we don’t know, but we’re trying our best.

Mordy Oberstein: “The most honest take I’ve heard on that in quite a long time.”

Mmeje also recounted examples of small website owners and small businesses that have had to shut down. She also talked about the pervasive feeling in the SEO community that there is no rhyme or reason to how the algorithms handle websites and content.

What’s Going On In Local SEO?

The next guests were Darren Shaw from Whitespark and Joy Hawkins, owner of Sterling Sky for a segment called “It’s New.” They talked about new developments in local SEO.

Hawkins talked about a new feature in Google Business Profile.

Joy Hawkins: “… There’s a little services section inside the Google business profile dashboard that’s easy to miss, but you can add anything you want in there. … We’ve done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking, but I should clarify, it’s like a small impact. So usually we see it for longer-tailed queries that maybe don’t match a category or things that are not super competitive. … So it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out.”

Darren Shaw: “ .. this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services … And so Joy’s original research was focused on those predefined ones and it definitely identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms depending on how competitive they’re, as Joy had mentioned. … There is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Will you rank better with the custom services?”

Joy Hawkins: “Yes. They both work. In custom services … I’m trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something super niche like vampire facials. I was Googling, what the hell is that? … Really, really niche … But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever and there was. [Custom services fields are a] good way to go after longer tail keywords that don’t have crazy high search volume or aren’t super competitive.”

Darren Shaw: “You want to make sure that you’re telling Google what you do … that’s basically what the services section provides. And it’s not a huge ranking factor, but it’s just another step in the local optimization process. … a tip for custom services because custom services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It’ll say this business provides vampire facials, right? Well, did you know there’s a vampire emoji? So if you put the vampire emoji in the title … Then in the local results you’ll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service, but yours has that little vampire emoji which will draw people in.”

There was tons more in this section, including questions from the audiences and some great jokes.

The Obligatory AI Section.

Eli Schwartz And Kevin indig were next up to talk about AI. Oberstein, professional rabble rouser, tried to get them to argue, but despite their very different posting habits, they found a lot to agree on about AI.

Mordy Oberstein: “It wouldn’t be an SEO podcast if we didn’t talk about AI. Where do we currently stand with AI? What can it do? What can’t it do?”

Kevin Indig: “… We’re at a stage where AI basically has the capability to create content, analyze some basic data. It still hallucinates here and there and it still makes mistakes. … If you compare that to when this AI hype started in November, 2022, so it’s almost two years now and we’ve come a really long way, these models are getting exponentially better. … It means different things based on whether you look at it as a tool for yourself to make your work more efficient. And of course, what does it mean from an SEO perspective? How does it change search, not just Google, but also how people search. And I think these are all different questions that are exciting to dive into. … So there is a lot of objective data that indicates efficiencies and benefits from AI. There’s also a lot of hype that promises a little too much about what AI can do. And so I’m generally AI bullish, but I’m not in the camp of AI is going to replace us all the next two years.”

Mordy Oberstein: “I’m setting the stage here a little bit because while your LinkedIn pros are generally like pro ai, a lot of Eli’s posts are a little more skeptical about AI. So Eli, what do you think about what Kevin just said? By the way, I’m like, for those who are listening or watching this, I’m pitting them against each other. They’re friends and they do a podcast together. So it’s cool.”

Eli Schwartz: I think AI is great. I think that there’s a lot of great things you can get out of AI. You can, again, like Kevin said, it can be your thought partner. … I’m anti AI in the way people are using it. And I don’t think people have necessarily changed their behaviors because before … they outsource [content] on Fiverr and Upwork and they bought very cheap content and now they’re getting very free content. So then that’s coming from AI. That behavior hasn’t really changed. The challenge is that now there are more people that think they can copy them.

So I talk to CMOs all the time who are like, well, I just go of my SEO team. A big company reached out to me recently. They wanted to gut check themselves after they already fired their SEO team. So I can’t really help there, but they’re like, AI can do everything. … Well, I’ll see them in a year from now when they have whatever sort of penalty. AI is a very powerful tool. Any tool we have a drill is a very powerful tool. But if you just hold it in the air and just let it go, it’s going to make holes. But if you use it appropriately, it does the thing it’s supposed to do. … We’re humans and we buy stuff and it has to come to a point where humans are talking to humans.

Crystal Carter: “… Most of the gains are coming from productivity. The stuff like Kevin was talking about with being able to write product descriptions more quickly, being able to write lots of posts more quickly and being able to finish your things more quickly, brainstorm, et cetera, in terms of the quality, the quality is still not there. It’s getting there rapidly, but it’s still not there.”

There was lots more AI talk, so you should listen to the whole episode if you want to hear the full range of opinions.

Snappy News About The Google August Update

“The Snappy News” segment featured Barry Schwartz, Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land. It also featured the dreaded SEO phrase “it depends.”

Mordy Oberstein: So the article of the day is from Search Engine Land, basically written by Barry that the core update, the August 2024 core update is done. It is complete. … The issue with Google folks who are trying to figure out, will they see a reversal of their fortunes from the 2023 helpful content update, the September, 2023 helpful content update. It’s a mouthful, to be honest with you. And my question for you, since you’re here, did that happen? Was the August updated reversal?

Barry Schwartz: “It depends on the site. I think the number, I don’t have the exact data, obviously I don’t think anybody does, but I’ve seen examples of some very few sites see complete reversals. … There are a number of sites that saw maybe a 20% bump, a 30% bump, maybe a 5% bump. But very few sites saw a complete reversal, if you want to even call it that. … I’ve been through a lot of Google updates over the years, and it’s sometimes sad to see the stories, but at the same time, if you keep at it and you are true to the content, your audience, generally, you’ll do well in the long run. Not every site, there’s plenty of sites that have been hit, went out of business, and they couldn’t come back. That’s business in general. And things change, like seasonalities and times change. You’re writing about the railroad business a hundred years ago and you keep writing about it today. There’s not many people investing a lot of money in railroads these days. So I dunno, it’s, it’s hard to read those stories, but not everybody deserves to go back to where they were. And then at the same time, Google’s not perfect either, which is why they keep on releasing new updates.”

That’s a wrap!

If you haven’t experienced a SERPs Up episode before, you should absolutely take a listen to experience the full effect of Mordy and Crystal’s banter.

The SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio. 

At a time when anyone can create content, the real challenge—and opportunity—is in saying something new. 

I think content curation can help with that.

Curation is all about finding undiscovered stories and repackaging ideas in ways your audience really respond to.

In this article, you’ll learn why content curation is great for growth, and how to talent scout quality underground or left-field content.

Gathering and sharing content is a popular social media tactic, but content curation extends to mediums and channels far beyond social.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Newsletters, in particular, have become the go-to platform for curation, since they’re fairly cheap to run and easy to set up.

The numbers back this up. A quick look at Site Explorer shows newsletter platform Substack experiencing a 373% leap in organic traffic from September 5th, 2023 to September 5th, 2024.

You can see some great examples of curated SEO newsletters here: I Subscribed to 72 SEO Newsletters. Here Are My 11 Favorites.

Now you know about content curation in all its forms and guises, let me tell you what’s so great about it…

1. Content curation saves time and money

At Ahrefs, we follow The Pareto Principle: the idea that 80% of the reward comes from 20% of the effort.

If you want to improve your effort:reward ratio, curation is a great option.

“One benefit is that I don’t have to write an essay from scratch each week (which is what most newsletters are).”

While content curation has the potential to save you time, resources, and money, I do want to add two important caveats:

2. Curation helps you build links, traffic, and engagement

Marketing Examples is a goldmine of curated marketing snippets.

Founder, Harry Dry, doesn’t just gather content — he dissects real-world marketing copy, name drops the creator, and breaks down their winning formulas, making it easy for readers to replicate that success.

As a result, his site has earned fairly consistent links and traffic over time, growing organically by 88% in the last two years.

Curating content is an example of what I call “awareness you prepared earlier”. Your chances of driving traction are vastly improved when you crowdsource ideas.

Not only do your audience consume your curated content, they publicize it to their own network via social posts or reciprocal links when they get featured.

Some refer to this as “ego bait”. Obviously there’s an element of flattery involved, but in my experience, the top curators prioritize content that genuinely helped or inspired them, rather than chasing big names with the widest reach.

3. Curating content is great for EEAT

But, since 2022, first-hand experience has become a prerequisite for ranking in Google.

Curating others’ lived experiences and knowledge in your content is a powerful way to build your EEAT and improve your rankings.

4. You become credible by association

We tend to categorize people according to their social group memberships – this is known as social categorization.

If you’re regularly associating yourself with respected thought leaders, your audience is more likely to group you with them, and hold you in higher regard as a result.

Mixing in your own content and opinion is important for building credibility, but be careful not to overdo the self-promotion.

Back to SQ:

“I don’t tend to include all of the blog posts we publish on our blog.“ 

5. You get closer to your customers and community

6. When you curate, your content gets better

7. You build your personal “brand”

Aleyda curates SEO news and insights across her newsletter, SEOFOMO, her podcast, Crawling Mondays, her owned social media channels, and industry talks.

As a result, her name now drives ~600 monthly organic searches, according to Site Explorer.

And over 19K “in content” mentions, according to Content Explorer.

1. Pay attention to lesser-known voices

Mark Williams-Cook, Director at Candour and Founder of AlsoAsked, does just this when curating his newsletter: Core Updates.

“I’ve made a conscious effort not just to follow the ‘big names’, as there are some truly excellent SEOs that are very quiet on social media. I’d always recommend following someone if you see them putting out solid advice, even if you’ve never heard of them. I’ve made some good friends and excellent connections that way!” 

This is probably something you’ll have to do manually at first.

I try to pay close attention to people leaving savvy comments on social media posts and industry communities.

2. Build an X list of “ones to watch”

3. Mine niche and atypical sources of information

Nicole DeLeon, Ed Zitron, Marie Haynes and other tech curators recently mined Google’s DoJ trial documentation to investigate “buried” information on how the search engine ranks content.

Search Engine Roundtable founder, Barry Schwartz, is always extracting content from Google rep social comments, Google developer docs, and Google’s Office Hours video series to curate hot-off-the-press news.

Techemails mines leaked tech company emails from court filings and curates them across social media and their website (p.s. they are preeetty eye-opening).

Finding and teasing out obscure information is a great skill to have when it comes to content curation.

Here are some more ways you can do that:

• Track updates in company documentation (e.g. brand Ts & Cs, Google Developer Docs, Anthropic Release Notes)
• Mine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request databases
• Monitor government data via fact finding bodies (e.g. Indeed curates content from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to inform content in their Hiring Lab)
• Study public datasets released by research institutions (e.g. Harvard Dataverse)
• Mine “hidden” or ephemeral content (e.g. podcasts, webinars, industry talks, seminars etc.) to curate quotes and promote relatively unheard information
• Monitor public announcements and press releases from organizations

4. Track down new and trending content

Be the first to break and curate news in your industry. Start by searching for industry-specific keywords in Content Explorer.

Then add filters to make sure you’re seeing the freshest and highest quality content.

In my experience, I find that:

• Adding a minimum Referring Domain of “30”
• Adding a minimum word count of “300”
• Sorting by “Date: newest first”

…shows me the newest and best SEO related content, but you should play around until you find what works in your industry.

This next part is really important. Once you’re happy with your configuration, hit “Save filters” so that you can repeat this analysis for the next instalment of your newsletter, podcast, social post, article, or whatever else you might be curating.

With the Content Explorer, you’re searching for instances of a keyword in the title, content, URL or all of the above.

But relevant content won’t always contain the exact keywords or topics you’re searching for.

In which case, try searching for keywords in the anchor text linking to that content.

There’s a preconfigured search for this in Ahrefs’ Web Explorer. Just hit the “examples” tab, and select “Most quoted newly published pages about ChatGPT”:

This will load a full report of the most linked to pages about the topic “ChatGPT” over the last week. Then all you need to do is update the report with your chosen topic, and adjust any filters.

And hit “Save report”.

Another tip for breaking news was recently disclosed by SEO expert and founder of SEO blog Detailed, Glen Allsopp, on the Ahrefs Podcast (it’s a great episode – I highly recommend a full listen!)

He spoke about a technique that he refers to as the “iPhone Link Building” method.

“The reason I call it this, because it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how old your website is, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been around. If you have a photo of the iPhone 16 before anyone else and you put that on [your site], the whole tech world is going to talk about it, right? You’re going to get links from every tech website on the planet. Doesn’t matter that [your site] has nothing to do with tech and gadgets. You’ve got the first iPhone link. People are going to talk about it. So I refer to it as the iPhone link building.“ 

To carry out “iPhone link building”, Glen sets up an alert using Visual Ping. This sends him a notification as soon as there’s an update on one of the webpages he’s tracking. If something new or interesting has changed, he’ll work this into his next piece of content.

5. Ask your network

Here’s Chris Haines, Ahrefs’ Senior SEO Specialist, doing just this on LinkedIn…

And here I am posting in Women In Tech SEO (my #1 community) for contributions to my article: So You’ve Been Asked To Humanize AI Content 

Often, Slack communities will dedicate a channel to self-promotion. This is another handy way to find new content to curate.

“In the Women in Tech SEO Slack group, we have a hashtag channel (#wts-amplify-me) that serves as a space for members to promote their work, and it’s wholesome to see lots of our members use it to highlight the work of others! This channel helps me curate content for our weekly WTSNewsletter. As newsletter creators, we are responsible for amplifying diverse voices, which was the driving force behind starting WTSNewsletter. The lack of diversity in industry newsletters motivated me to create our very own weekly newsletter that showcases the brilliant work of underrepresented individuals.” 

Community content sourcing doesn’t begin and end with LinkedIn or Slack. Check out other pockets of the internet, including niche forums, Subreddits, Facebook groups, and Mastodon instances.

6. Bookmark everything

Use web highlighters

Use a web highlighter plugin to bookmark interesting content for future curation.

Organize examples in a note taking app

Use a note taking app like Notion or Obsidian to organize your content examples.

Bookmark your saved social media content

You’ll undoubtedly have banked some great content on social media over the years, but navigating back to those archives can be a bit of a faff.

I bookmark mine to my browser so I can easily jump back in (e.g. LinkedIn “Saved”, X bookmarks, X advanced searches, TikTok saved, Instagram saved etc.)

7. Set up author notifications

Follow creators and journalists that inspire you. Subscribe to their channel, turn on notification bells on LinkedIn and X, and set up RSS feeds to get alerted whenever they push out new content.

Tip

When you’re searching for new content in the Content Explorer, check out the Authors tab for ideas on which thought leaders to follow in your industry. 

8. Set up keyword alerts

Get notified as soon as on-topic content is published, with Ahrefs “Mention” alerts.

9. Use AI to extract and annotate content

Extract nuggets from “hidden” content

I used AI to extract quotes and insights from webinars, interviews, and YouTube videos. The post I wrote for SpinSucks was inspired by content mined from interview transcripts and bookmarked social media content, using Claude AI.

Reverse-engineer successful content formulas

I fed ChatGPT examples of top-performing blogs to understand patterns of success, and inform my opinion of what “good” content looks like, while updating the post: 6 Simple Blog Post Templates (Download & Edit Along.

Make sure you have a clear theme

Build your exclude list

Repurpose your knowledge

Final thoughts

In a world where 70 million blog posts are published every month, skilled curators stand out. They don’t just share content – they build communities, spark discussions, and become go-to resources in their niches.

If you’re giving content curation a try, experiment with different formats and track what resonates (our Content Explorer can help with that too), then watch your influence grow.

“Entity SEO”.

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Not only does the word “entity” sound foreign, it feels like yet another thing to add to your never-ending SEO to-do list. You’re barely afloat when it comes to SEO, but ohgawd here comes one more new thing to dedicate your scarce resources.

I have good news for you though: You don’t have to do entity SEO.

Why? Because you’re probably already doing it.

Let’s start from the beginning.

In 2012, Google announced the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base of entities and the relationships between them.

An entity is any object or concept that can be distinctly identified. This includes tangibles like people, places, and organizations, and intangibles like colors, concepts, and feelings.

For example, the footballer Federico Chiesa is an entity:

So is the famous British-Indian restaurant Dishoom:

Entities are connected by edges, which describe the relationships between them.

Introducing the Knowledge Graph helped improve Google’s search results because:

• Google could better understand search intent — People search for the same thing but describe it in different ways. Google can now understand this and serve the same results.
• It reduced reliance on keyword matching — Matching the number of keywords on a page doesn’t guarantee relevance; also it prevents crafty SEOs from keyword stuffing.
• It reduced Google’s computational load — The Internet is virtually infinite and Google simply cannot understand the meaning of every word, paragraph, webpage, and website. Entities provide a structure where Google can improve understanding while minimizing load.

For example, even though we didn’t mention the actor’s name, Google can understand we’re looking for Harrison Ford and therefore shows his filmography:

That’s because Hans Solo and Harrison Ford are closely connected entities in the Knowledge Graph. Google shows Knowledge Graph data in SERP features like Knowledge Panels and Knowledge Cards.

With this knowledge, we can then define entity SEO as optimizing your website or webpages for such entities.

If Google has moved to entity-oriented search, then entity SEO is just SEO. As my colleague Patrick Stox says, “The entity identification part is more on Google’s end than on our end.”

I mean, if you look at the ‘entity SEO’ tactics you find in blog posts, you’ll discover that they’re mostly just SEO tactics:

• Earn a Wikipedia page
• Create a Google Business Profile
• Add internal links
• Create all digital assets Google is representing on the page (e.g., videos, images, Twitter)
• Develop topical authority
• Include semantically related words on a page
• Add schema markup

Let’s be honest. If you’re serious about SEO and are investing in it, then it’s likely you’re already doing most of the above.

Regardless of entities, wouldn’t you want a Wikipedia page? After all, it confers benefits beyond “entity SEO”. Brand recognition, backlinks from one of the world’s most authoritative sites (albeit nofollow)—any company would want that.

If you’re a local business, you’ve probably created a Google Business Profile. Adding internal links is just SEO 101.

And billions of blistering barnacles, creating all digital assets Google wants to see, like images and videos, is practically marketing 101. If you’re a Korean recipe site and want to be associated with the kimchi jjigae entity, wouldn’t you already know you need to make a video and have photos of the cooking process?

When I started my breakdance site years ago, I knew nothing about SEO and content marketing but I still knew I needed to make YouTube videos. Because guess what? It’s hard to learn breakdancing from words. I don’t think I needed an entity SEO to tell me that.

Topical authority is an SEO concept where a website aims to become the go-to authority on one or more topics. Call me crazy, but it feels like blogging 101. Read most guides on how to start a blog and I’m sure you’ll find a subheading called “niche down”. And once you niche down, it’s inevitable you’ll create content surrounding that one topic.

If I start a breakdance site, what are the chances I’ll write about contemporary dance or pop art? Pretty low.

In fact, topical authority is similar to the Wiki Strategy, which Nat Eliason wrote about in 2017. There wasn’t a single mention of entities. It was just the right way to make content for the Internet.

I think the biggest problem here isn’t entities versus keywords or that topical authority is a brand-new strategy. It’s simply that many SEOs are driven by short-sightedness or the wrong incentives.

You can target a whole bunch of unrelated keywords that have high search volume, gain incredible amounts of search traffic, and brag about how successful you are as an SEO.

Some of the pages sending HubSpot the most search traffic has barely anything to do with their core product. A page on how to type the shrug emoji? The most famous quotes?

This is not to single out HubSpot—I’m sure they have their reasons, as explored by Ryan here—but to illustrate that many companies do the exact same thing. And when Google stops rewarding this behavior, all of a sudden companies realise they do need to write about their core competencies. They need to “build topical authority”.

I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater because I do see value in the last two ‘entity SEO tactics’. But again, if you’re doing something similar to the Wiki Strategy for your site, chances are you would have naturally included entities or semantically relevant words without thinking too much about it. It’s difficult to create content about kimchi jjigae without mentioning kimchi, pork, or gochujang.

However, to prevent the curse of knowledge or simply to avoid blindspots, checking for important subtopics you might have missed is useful. At Ahrefs, we run a page-level content gap analysis and look out for subtopics:

For example, if we ran a content gap analysis on “inbound marketing” for the top three ranking pages, we see that we might need to include these subtopics:

• What is inbound marketing
• Inbound marketing strategy
• Inbound marketing examples
• Inbound marketing tools

Finally, adding schema markup makes the most sense because it’s how Google recognizes entities and better understands the content of web pages. But if it’s just one new tactic—which I believe is already part of ‘standard’ SEO and you might already be doing it—then there’s no need to create a category to define the “new era” (voice SEO, where art thou?)

Final thoughts

Two years ago, someone on Reddit asked for an SEO workflow that utilized super advanced SEO methodologies:

The top answer: None of the above.

When our Chief Marketing Officer Tim Soulo tweeted about this Reddit thread, he got similar replies too:

And even though I don’t know him, this is a person after my own heart:

You don’t have to worry about entity SEO. If you have passion for a topic and are creating high-quality content that fulfills what people are looking for, then you’re likely already doing “entity SEO”.

Just follow this meme: Make stuff people like.