Meet Jenna Watson, Senior Vice President of Digital Media for DAC, who joins me live from her office in the windy city to discuss the past, present and startling future of a new world of search marketing and SEO for retailers. Jenna sheds essential light on the all-important search results page and thoughts on mastering the many, many different media connected through this most powerful of tools for modern marketers
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Jenna Watson, Senior Vice President of Digital Media for DAC, who joins me live from her office in the windy city to discuss the past, present and startling future of a new world of search marketing and SEO for retailers. Jenna sheds essential light on the all-important search results page and thoughts on mastering the many, many different media connected through this most powerful of tools for modern marketers
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Jenna
Jenna’s been working in digital media since it was brand new—the real Wild West. After having spent her career moving through various agencies, she now leads DAC’s digital media practice to create and deliver award winning digital media strategies. Jenna continually strives to build strong bonds between client and agency teams, ensuring DAC’s work is truly impactful to an organization’s objectives.
https://adage.com/white-paper/not-your-fathers-seo-how-brands-can-own-serp
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:06
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:09
On this episode, meet Jenna Watson, Senior Vice President of Digital Media for DAC, who joins me live from her office in the windy city of Chicago to discuss the past, present, and startling future of a new world of search engine marketing and SEO for retailers. Jenna sheds essential light on the all-important search results page, the SERP and thoughts-on-mastering the many different media connected to this most powerful tools for modern marketers. Let's listen in now. Jenna, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Jenna Watson 00:49
I'm well thank you, Michael. Thanks. I'm happy to be here.
Michael LeBlanc 00:52
Well, where is here for you? Where am I finding you today?
Jenna Watson 00:55
You are getting me from Chicago where it is a brisk 46 degrees.
Michael LeBlanc 00:57
Yikes.
Jenna Watson 00:58
Yeah. We're doing early winter, I think.
Michael LeBlanc 01:06
Yeah, I think so. It's, it's, I'm in Toronto and it is like that, too. We share many of the same weather patterns. So,
Jenna Watson 01:11
We do indeed,
Michael LeBlanc 01:12
I commiserate with your frigid, frigid environment. Well, we're going to warm it up. We're going to heat it up on the podcast.
Jenna Watson 01:15
Let's do it.
Michael LeBlanc 01:16
We got lots, listen, I'm really looking forward to this because I have to tell you a fun story. So, back in the late 90s. So, I'm a bit of an OG when it comes to eCommerce. I remember being in a Shop.org conference in like 98, 98 about, and I was sitting in the audience, and this, this, this, this woman was going on and on about this new thing. And it was changing. Her business was called Search. And, and, and she was, she was showing us some screens and Google and all this stuff. And I looked at it and my head blew up a little bit. And I remember going back, I was at Hudson's Bay at the time, I remember going back to part of my team, a guy named Darrin Keene, who's actually took over worldwide search for Apple. So, this launched a whole career for him.
Jenna Watson 01:38
Wow.
Michael LeBlanc 01:39
And I said, we got to do this thing. This, this Google search thing. It's going to be big.
Jenna Watson 01:44
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 01:45
And he's like, Do you think so? And then he's like, he came back. He said, you know, Google, it's just a bunch of renegades. I'm not sure it's going anywhere, you know, early days, right? Like, it was so I am very excited to talk about this in one way shape or another. I've been involved in search pretty much my whole eCommerce career, a bit of a first mover in it. Now, I don't have that level of expertise that you do. So, let's jump in, first of all, and learn a bit about who you are and, and what you do for a living.
Jenna Watson 02:37
Yeah, sure. So, I'm right there with you a couple, maybe just a year or two behind you in that, hey, let's try this search thing out. But I've also been in it since it was brand new, and I, I, I tell people all the time, back in the day, it was truly, truly the Wild West, right? We, there were no rules. We were making stuff up. So, if Google was renegades, the people doing the search work, we're even more renegades. So, yeah, I've been, I've been in advertising for 22 years now. Always on the agency side. So, I started my first couple years in traditional or print advertising. And I moved quickly into digital when digital became a more viable thing, which was very shortly thereafter. So, yeah, I'm, I'm our SVP of Digital Media at DCA Group. And that means I have all paid media and SEO under me. So, doing this digital media thing for a couple of decades now. That's, that's my story.
Michael LeBlanc 03:34
Well, you know, you were on kind of parallel tracks. I had an epiphany when I bought a book on this site, what was it called, Amazon. And I said to myself, you know, I was in fact, I was in kind of packaged goods, (inaudible) Black+Decker and I said, this digital and eCommerce could be something. And then I took a gig with Levi's, to get into. What was your epiphany that moved you from kind of mass media and print into digital? Because it wasn't, you know, it's funny to look back now. As in Yeah, of course, you do that, but it wasn't so certain back then. So, wha-, wha-, what was it that kind of pivoted you into the digital world out of the traditional world.
Jenna Watson 04:08
I was completely uncertain, and honestly, what it was, so I, you know, I was a, I was a young buck, you know, eager to learn new things. But in this, in this print agency, we were placing advertisements in various print publications, and some of those publications had websites. And some of those publications that had websites were like, hey, I think we can put this thing called a display banner up here on the top of my web page. Would you like to do that? And we're like, huh, yes.
Michael LeBlanc 04:43
As long as I can do it, as long as I can use flash to do it.
Jenna Watson 04:46
Right, right. And so it really was that it really was stepping, stepping into it in the most miniscule of, of paces, and then just all of a sudden, right. It got the groundswell and people started understanding it and websites proliferated and people used the internet. So,
Michael LeBlanc 05:04
Right on, right on. So, let's talk a little bit about the DAC Group. Tell us a bit about scope and scale. I know it, I know it well, it's a great team, but the listeners may not be as familiar. So, tell us a little bit about the origin story, because that's kind of interesting, too, but more, more contemporary, the scope and scale and what you folks spend your time on?
Jenna Watson 05:22
Yeah, sure. Our origin story is kind of crazy. We just turned 50 years old, five zero,
Michael LeBlanc 05:26
Five, zero,
Jenna Watson 05:27
This year, yeah. And we started out as a Directory Advertising Consultant, agency, DAC, which means, which means primarily, we were placing ads in yellow pages, right. So, the foundational element of what we were there to do was to connect businesses with customers and prospects. And oddly enough, that hasn't really changed. nor has it changed for any marketer when you get right down to it. But we, we, we became fully digital back in the, you know, we started our transition first in search in the late 90s have been fully digital for probably 12 to 15 years, in everything that we do. And we are now a full service, digital performance marketing agency. So, everything from media and SEO, which is my purview to content, analytics, creative, website development, everything that you can think about, from a digital marketing perspective, that's us.
Michael LeBlanc 06:16
This podcast isn't typically a history lesson, we've already touched on a bit of history in, in our context, I thought it might be useful to go back a little bit because not everybody knows the evolution of search. And I think it's meaningful, where it was to where it is going in where it is today, which is very different. Take us a little bit through a short history of time in terms of search. I mean, all the way back. It's funny, you were talking about banner ads, I think about the AOL network, right. They were the,
Jenna Watson 06:37
Oh, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 06:38
Or they had their own format. Like, it's interesting briefly. And of course, we could you and I, it sounds like we could spend a whole podcast talking about the history.
Jenna Watson 06:44
We could.
Michael LeBlanc 06:45
But briefly, from your very focused perspective, I think it's useful to kind of go through the history of how search evolved, and the platforms and how they've evolved. And then we'll get right into the contemporary stuff. But, how do you look at that?
Jenna Watson 07:03
Well, it's, I was just having a good laugh with some people. We were at a networking dinner last night, and the topic turned to this. And I said, it used to be so much fun to do a search, back in the olden days, because you know, even still, to this day, the way Google and other engines index and find your content is to organize all the world's information. I think we've heard that somewhere before, right, but,
Michael LeBlanc 07:22
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Watson 07:24
But back in the day, it was essentially a digital card catalog, right? HTTP means Hypertext Transfer Protocol, meaning literally, let me run out, grab this text-based,
Michael LeBlanc 07:31
Yeah.
Jenna Watson 07:32
Information and HTML based information and pull it back into my virtual card catalog. And so search was simply making yourself get found, but getting found in a much, much, much, much, much smaller pool than, than the internet is today. And it was very much based on textual content and HTML code. The early days of search SEO, in particular, you could very easily manipulate the system, right? There were signals and the algorithm as it was at that time was nowhere near as advanced and it was actually fairly easy to kind of game the system. So, you know, I remember working with a retailer in the early days and, during pre-holiday time, we'd say, oh, we've gotta get up to position one for KeyworX. And we would go out and we would buy a whole bunch of links. And those links would point back to our website, and we would skyrocket up into position one for KeyworX. And obviously, it's nowhere near that today. (Crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 07:50
More than, I would say more than frowned upon let's say,
Jenna Watson 08:42
Oh, yes. It is certainly frowned upon with a very, very upside-down frown.
Michael LeBlanc 08:46
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Watson 08:48
Yes. So, it was a lot of fun, and it was really quite simple. As the engines get smarter, as natural language processing becomes the de facto way that the engines understand search queries and the related results. Search is so much more sophisticated and difficult and hard to accomplish. And the changing ser-, the search engine results page is also constantly evolving around user needs and user behaviors as well. So, it is not static at all. You know, what I see a lot in agency life is at one point a marketer learned about SEO, and they learned it pretty well. But that was usually around 2007, 2008, 2009 And then they said okay, I understand search.
Michael LeBlanc 09:36
Got it. Yeah, got it.
Jenna Watson 09:38
Got it, check. And unfortunately, you don't got it.
Michael LeBlanc 09:42
Well, I loved, I love the title of your, you passed along a thought leadership paper not your father's SEO. I suppose your grandfather's not your father's SEO.
Jenna Watson 09:48
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc 09:49
It made me laugh. But, you know, nested in your comments around early search is that you could actually develop an advantage using it. Like retailers could, could be better than others in and develop an expertise that's so hard to do now, right? In other words, what used to become, or what used to be a differentiator became table stakes pretty quickly, right?
Jenna Watson 09:58
100%,
Michael LeBlanc 09:59
Take us through what is now a complex, super fragmented world of possibilities, you know, as again you, you called about, you talked about the SERP and talk about the three key strategies for, for, for owning the SERP, what's the SERP again. Remind me of what that (crossover talk), stands for.
Jenna Watson 10:35
Thank you for getting me out of my acronym world? S, E, R, P, SERP is the search engine results page. So, it's literally the page that appears when you perform a query on Google or another engine.
Michael LeBlanc 10:46
Okay. And that could be on any device. It's kind of an agnostic term that says, here's what you get back when you type in wonderful recipes from a barbecue master on YouTube or whatever.
Jenna Watson 10:56
For example, yeah, for example, (crossover talk).
Michael LeBlanc 11:00
But take us through that. Because there's no, I mean, it's, it's A), it's all the new platforms and, and just take us through,
Jenna Watson 11:08
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 11:09
You know, this, the key three things you need to think about strategically and then we'll get into, peel back and get into a few more details.
Jenna Watson 11:12
One of the things about SEO that is actually still the same is that technical excellence has always mattered in SEO. So, for example, you know, remember when I called the engine, like a big digital card catalog, kind of, if the engine, spider or bot or crawler or whatever you want to call it, if it couldn't access your webpages, you had no chance of appearing in that index. The same is still true today. Although, I would argue it's very difficult to make your website content is not found today. But it still does happen. So that, that technical excellence layer, it still matters, because a search engine, the way I think about it is like a very, very fast, very smart human user, right? It wants to come to your website and wants to read your website, left to right, top to bottom, follow the link, see if everything makes sense and understand the information there. If there is something technical preventing that from happening, you're already dead in the water, right? You will not have any results at all. And additionally, some of the more recent algorithm changes have really focused on this. So, we now have Core Web Vitals being a primary factor. So, Core Web Vitals include things like your page speed, how quickly does it load?
Michael LeBlanc 12:26
Right.
Jenna Watson 12:27
Do you have, you know, does your layout shift on your mobile device before it's fully loading? So, it's looking at these really technically focused elements and saying that that matters deeply. So, still, you still have to start there as the base foundation layer.
Michael LeBlanc 12:43
Wow, this, would you call them vitals, like vital signs? It's, it's, it's a deeper, it's and you know, it's interesting, because it does harken back, again, not a history lesson. But pre, pre-Google and some of the sophisticated search engines, it was a mess, trying to find anything. So, you know, the way that they would index and present your results really, really mattered. How should, how should we be thinking about that now, in terms of, you know, again, from a strategic perspective, and then we'll get into the different elements. But I think you, you've kind,
Jenna Watson 13:01
Sure.
Michael LeBlanc 13:02
Of had those three kinds of, you know, you got to approach it this way,
Jenna Watson 13:05
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 13:06
At a high level, even when you're explaining it to someone who's not so steeped in search, like some of the listeners may not be search practitioners but may want to understand better so that they can at least, you know, ask the right questions of those who are like you, experts.
Jenna Watson 13:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think the first step there is to think about your customer or your ideal prospect, put yourself in their shoes and think about all the different ways that they can interact with your brand on the SERP. So, for most brands, you will, you will probably have some paid advertising. So, that might include shopping ads, which are the ads generally on the top of the SERP page that feature the product image, the product name and the price, then you may have some regular standard paid ads underneath that, which could be, which are all keyword based and could be up to four individual positions for, for marketers or for brands to appear there. If you have local stores or you have local service areas, a map would be likely to appear on that SERP result for you. If you have the type of content that can answer questions, FAQ style questions, it might appear in what we call position zero or an answer box. Videos get pulled into the SERP; images get pulled into the SERP. And then standard HTML based links, off to website pages also get pulled into the SERP. So, you have to put yourself in that user's shoes and think where are all the places on this search engine results page that a person could interact with my brand? And now what do I do about understanding what all those places are?
Michael LeBlanc 15:00
You mentioned this earlier in the conversation, you know, how do I get to number one? Is it still the case that page position for your results on the, on the SERP matters? Is it, does it even matter more now that it's on mobile or on your Apple Watch is that still, you know, spoken differently? We always used to say if you, if you wanted to hide a body where nobody would ever find it, put it on page two, (crossover talk),
Jenna Watson 15:19
Put it on page two. Well, the interesting thing about page two is that there usually isn't even a page two, a lot of the SERP results are infinite scroll, right? So,
Michael LeBlanc 15:25
Right, right, right.
Jenna Watson 15:26
It all depends on the layout that you're receiving at the time. But yeah, a lot of it's infinite scroll. So, page two could mean something that's in position seven, for example. But,
Michael LeBlanc 15:39
Right, right,
Jenna Watson 15:40
Yeah, position does still matter. And, and I'll tell you why that is, you mentioned it yourself. Mobile devices, so if you do any sort of a query on your mobile device, you're going to see paid ads on the screen, and you will not get to something organic most of the time until you scroll. And depending on the layout of that SERP you might be scrolling for a minute. And so,
Michael LeBlanc 15:57
Right, right.
Jenna Watson 15:59
You know, if, if the user can get their answer through a paid ad, they are most likely going to engage with that paid ad and not worry about scrolling to find organic. Because you and I know the difference between paid ads and organic ads, and you and I care about that. But John Q searcher does not care. They just want the best answer to their question, right.
Michael LeBlanc 16:23
Which isn't, you know, it's interesting, you say that, because my experience, you know, anecdotal and personal is the paid ad isn't always the best result. Because, you know, lots of people are still trying to, you know, you search on one thing, and they take you to some page that's very, you know, not exactly related. You know, like, let's talk about this changing environment like TikTok, just the latest with a startling factoid buzzy headline about the number of people who are A), on it, which is legit, but B), using it for search. And, and you know, they're just the latest in a long line. And you know, there's discussion years ago that Amazon was becoming a search engine, but in my mind, and I'm sure yours, I'd love to hear your opinion. Not all search queries or search is equal. Talk about that for a minute.
Jenna Watson 17:10
Yeah. And again, so I've told people before, remember, in the 2010s, the early 2010s, when omni-channel was all the rage, it was the buzzword that was to be had. Now, if every brand had actually gone and executed a true omni-channel at that point in time, they wouldn't be worrying about search, right? They wouldn't be having these problems today. Because if, if you think about it, the thing you need to be understanding as a marketer is what is the intent of the user on that platform, right.
Michael LeBlanc 17:39
Right, right.
Jenna Watson 17:42
So yeah, yeah, people do use TikTok to search, but what kind of result are they going to get back? So, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 17:50
And what's their intention, right? I (crossover talk), That probably another ratchet word, yeah.
Jenna Watson 17:52
Exactly. So, you know, I spoke to a Gen Z person. Recently, and, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 17:54
How did that go, you know, (crossover talk)?
Jenna Watson 18:05
Well, I started by telling him to get off my porch. So,
Michael LeBlanc 18:08
Get off my grass.
Jenna Watson 18:11
But he said, he does use it to search, and I said, okay, but tell me for what, though. And he said, well, you know, if I'm like, going to a new city, and I want to see what some of the restaurants or clubs are, like, I'm like, Sure, get that check. Totally makes sense to me.
Michael LeBlanc 18:26
Love it.
Jenna Watson 18:27
And I said, but what if you need to buy a washing machine? And he's like, well, yeah, I'm not going to go ask TikTok how to buy a washing machine. So again, you have to, you have to think about the format's that are available on the platform, you get short form videos on YouTube. So, if it's a query that can't be effectively answered through short form video, then it's not the right place for you to put that content.
Michael LeBlanc 18:54
I love to use short term video because of course, everybody's in the game now, right? TikTok has kind of opened everybody's eyes, Facebook, Insta-, YouTube are always serving up short term videos. But to, to, to invert the success metric there, if you own a restaurant or food service, you really, really, really want to focus on short, short form video, cuz somebody's going to search, where can I go for a great dinner in a new city? You want to be there, right? So, as you said, it depends on the user and the intention. It may be less, as you said, to buy a dishwasher.
Jenna Watson 19:22
Right? Absolutely. It's all about what's, what's the intent of the user with that query? And how is it best answered? It might, it might be best answered by a really long blog post,
Michael LeBlanc 19:30
Right, right.
Jenna Watson 19:31
Depending on the right, depending on the query. So, you have to really think that through. Yep.
Michael LeBlanc 19:39
Let's turn the lens around. Actually, you guys are already very good at turning the lens around (inaudible) and understand the user's perspective, like on that SERP on that search engine results page. It's crowded, right?
Jenna Watson 19:51
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 19:53
And you've got, you've got the intersection of organic and paid and you've got visuals and stuff. Talk about what's happening there because, again, thinking back to your thought leadership paper, which I'll put a link to, if that's cool in the, in the show notes.
Jenna Watson 20:00
Sure, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 20:01
And see it for themselves. I mean, the search result pages are very complex, there's images that are automatically served. They're shopping for things. So, walk us through that intersection. How do you think about that strategically and tactically?
Jenna Watson 20:14
Yeah. So, you know, you have to go back to what Google's intent is. It's (inaudible) we're just, we're all about intent on this podcast today. But that's the name of the game. What's Google's intent? Google's intent is to give the searcher the best answer for their query. And, I mean, you know,
Michael LeBlanc 20:25
Is it? Is It?
Jenna Watson 20:26
To their favor,
Michael LeBlanc 20:27
Yeah.
Jenna Watson 20:28
There's a lot of, there's a lot of places for paid ads to answer questions.
Michael LeBlanc 20:30
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Watson 20:32
But, you know, that is part of the changing SERP, a lot of monetization happening. That's one of the things certainly, but it has never been Google's mission statement to send free traffic to your website. That's just, that's just what brands and marketers got used to. And that's what they think of SEO as but for a human user who is going to Google and searching for something, they simply need the answer. So, you know if I'm, if I'm looking for a new pair of running shoes, and I, generally speaking, I know what kind of shoes you know, I need a neutral, you know, whatever it is, if I know those sorts of things, I can search for that. And I can narrow down my query and I can see them, I can see them in a shopping ad, I can see the price, I can see what stores they're at, I can just go through, and I can be on with my day.
Jenna Watson 20:57
But as a user, you have the ability to interact through multiple different types of results on that page. And what Google is constantly doing is changing the SERP layout as a response to what people are interacting with. So, if people are interacting with the Map Pack, then the Map Pack is going to take precedence in the layout of the SERP for those sorts of queries. If people are just doing the drop down on the people also ask and that and then they're leaving Google because they got their answer. When more people search for that type of a query, it can be responded with a person also asking the answer box, right? So, you know, as a human user, you are potentially overwhelmed. But Google's entire job is to give you the best answer as quickly as possible. It's not necessarily to send you off of Google to somebody else's site. It's simply to answer your question. And so yes, there's a lot there from the user's perspective. But you have a choice. And as you continue to choose the interesting thing about search today is that searches are almost one-to-one personalized for you.
Michael LeBlanc 22:46
Sure,
Jenna Watson 22:47
Right. It's not 100%. But back in, back in the good old days, if I went and searched for shoes in Chicago, and you went and searched for shoes in Toronto, and my brother in Hawaii, went and searched for shoes, we basically see the same SERP,
Michael LeBlanc 22:56
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Watson 22:58
The three of us are going to get dramatically different results based on where we are physically, what we've searched for in the past, what our trends are on Google, etc. So, yes, there, it is very busy, and it is potentially crowded and overwhelming. But it is based on your own personal behaviors to a large extent. And so therefore it is quite a personalized experience for the user.
Michael LeBlanc 23:06
Interesting. All right let's talk about trends. This level of complexity, what, what are you seeing, in terms of working with retailers? And I'm, then I'm going to ask you advice, but you've been in this game a long time, you know, retailers and, and brands sometimes bring this in-house, and then they, they look to agencies, I would imagine, with this kind of complexity, it's pretty tough, but not impossible to do this yourself. What, what role do you see? And what role do you find yourself playing more often now with, with retailers and, and clients?
Jenna Watson 23:36
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. There was a time when SEO largely went in-house, not for every brand, certainly. But it was one of the functions that was most easily in-housed. Because it was fairly well defined. Remember when everybody learned SEO? And then they were like, check, I got it.
Michael LeBlanc 23:55
Got it, yeah?
Jenna Watson 23:57
Now we're kind of swinging the other way where I think people are understanding the complexities of the SERP, the complexities of search today. And they're understanding that one or two or a handful of in-house individuals can't possibly keep up with, you know, all the changes that are happening to the extent that an agency partner can because A), that's our job, our job is to stay current and to know all of these things. But B), we have the luxury of seeing many different clients, in many different verticals, having many different challenges and solutions that we're finding for them. So, I think a lot of marketers today are saying this is a big, crazy world. My SEO doesn't look anything like it used to look like, please help me. And so, they are turning to agency partners for that. In some, in some cases, you know, we're doing kind of the technical pieces, and they're writing the content. In others we're doing the whole thing, soup to nuts, we're writing content, we're creating videos, we're doing all of that. So, it really depends on who they've got in-house, and the skill set that is available to them there.
Michael LeBlanc 24:57
Right on. And, and in my experience, the opportunities that can afford people. Like you can always hire someone who's really good, but keeping them on a single brand is, is a bit of a challenge, right? Because it, you know, where do you go? Where do you go next and all that stuff? And I imagined that I got even more, so more, more prominent in, in the thinking of trying to find talent, right? I mean,
Jenna Watson 25:15
Yep.
Michael LeBlanc 25:16
I'm sure you guys, like everybody else, work hard to find not just any talent, but the right talent. And,
Jenna Watson 25:21
Absolutely.
Michael LeBlanc 23:22
In this. All right, so advice time, last question for you. And I'm going to frame it in two starts. And one, stop two things, the listeners should start doing or thinking about when it comes to SEO and search. And one thing they should stop doing.
Jenna Watson 25:36
Start number one, is to go out and educate yourself on all of the things that are changing, and how dramatically and quickly they are changing. So, if you are a brand and you do have an SEO person or team in-house, set a meeting with them, have a little education session with them, hear them out. Because all the things that are going on now are not the same things that you learned before. And it behooves marketers to understand that SEO is a much different beast than it was even just a couple of years ago. So, that's start number one.
Jenna Watson 26:04
Start number two, would be to look at your data, understand your trends. Learn what you can about all the different ways that your customers and your prospects have interacted with you in the past. There is a treasure trove of first party data available to you from search that shows you know, where did people come in? Was it a homepage query? Was it a branded query? If you have the map, if you're doing you know Google Business Profile, you can see what sorts of keywords. Did people find you? Was it brand, was it non-brand? Did they look for directions? You have a ton of information there that can actually help you inform your next steps. And where you should start to focus because you have to do the technical elements. But it's really about content, because content is how people get answers. So, you need to be constantly making that content. And that content, you already have an amazing base of data. And a lot of people just let it kind of sit there. So, I would say start digging through your data. Look at what you already know about your customers and your prospects and use that to inform your next steps.
Michael LeBlanc 27:10
What's the most common thing you, you would advise them, the folks listening to not do?
Jenna Watson 27:14
We have to stop thinking about SEO as an individual siloed channel that will continue to bring you free traffic to your website in the same percentage growth that it has every year so far.
Michael LeBlanc 27:27
Well, listen, it's been a great discussion. Are you? How do you get in touch? Are you a LinkedIn person? What's the, what's the best way to get in touch with you and the team?
Jenna Watson 27:35
I am a LinkedIn person personally; you can find me there. But our website, dacgroup.com has the ability to contact us and that'll go and get pushed through to the right people, depending on which market you're in as well. So, it might just be easiest to visit us on the website. But if you're interested in me particularly, I'm on LinkedIn, and you can find me there.
Michael LeBlanc 27:54
Oh, fantastic. Well, listen, Jenna it was great, great catching up and said, it’s fun to chat. You know, both of us have been in the game for a long time. So, it's great to, great to talk about both where it's been, but more importantly, where it is today and where it's going. So, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast. I wish you a better weather or warmer weather as well as, as we head into as we head into the fall and much continued success. So, thanks again for joining me on the podcast.
Jenna Watson 28:19
Absolutely. It was a great time. Thanks, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 28:21
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week. And check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
SERP, search, SEO, people, Google, query, podcast, brand, marketers, user, digital, website, short form video, understand, page, bit, content, based, changing, early