Episodes
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Will Critchlow interviews Todd "Oilman" Friesen - ex-Salesforce and Vimeo SEO expert.
I’m joined today by Todd Friesen who OG SEOs will know as Oilman. He was already a huge name in the nascent industry when I got started “some time ago” and we first met at an SMX West conference in 2006 or 2007. The reason I’m particularly excited to talk to Todd is because he’s the best example I know of someone who started his career in the churn and burn world of darker-hat SEO, and then made a journey via agency life and director-level in-house roles to one of those relatively-rare VP of SEO positions.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show.
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Can we guess? Does it matter?
The more Google relies on machine learning and user signals to make searchers happy, the less explainable the results are, and the harder they have to guess.
Does that matter, and what should we do about it?
Join Will as he meanders through these implications in this episode.
Take the quiz here to test your SEO skills: https://searchpilot.scoreapp.com/
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Missing episodes?
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Frank Williams, of Formula 1 fame, apparently would ask this question in response to almost anything he was asked (org changes, budget requests, etc) and it's been bouncing round my head since I heard that.
This week, Will talks about making the car go faster, as well as some tactical discussions about what it's possible to test from an SEO perspective, and why and how we are working to create the best possible places to do on-site SEO.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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More data digging into where Google sends clicks after users perform searches, this time vis-a-vis how budget is attributed and how organic traffic fare against paid search. As always, Will brings this back to the importance of setting metrics and budgets to achieve your SEO goals.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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How can SEOs understand and start speaking the language of business?
Understand the definitions of these key business termsIdentify what makes a 'large amount' spend for your organizationDevelop a dashboard that provides visibility on search's impact on revenueFresh off the eTail conference speaking with eCommerce and digital leaders, Will shares his thoughts on why it's so important for SEOs to understand and start speaking the language of business.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Organic search is the biggest channel for new customer acquisition for most ecommerce sites, but it is frustratingly opaque and often the hardest channel to understand or improve. Are your wishes for SEO is for it to be accountable, transparent, and to drive growth? Then listen on.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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What does leadership really care about when it comes to SEO?
Will spends a lot of time talking to folks in leadership positions about what they really care about (as well as to the teams who report to them). Some of the themes Will explored are: SEO is confusing. We don't have SEO goals; We want to do things right but faster; We've been stung by SEO before. If any of these resonate with you, then listen to both Part 1 and 2!
This is Part 2. You should be able to find Part 1's audio in the show's library.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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What does leadership really care about when it comes to SEO?
Will spends a lot of time talking to folks in leadership positions about what they really care about (as well as to the teams who report to them).
This is Part 1 before Will accidentally pressed the wrong button and took himself out of the live stream. Thankfully, the YouTube and LinkedIn live streams continued, but the audio file recording was split into two parts. Hence, Part 2's audio upload follows next.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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There's only one thing in the news this week as it relates to Google - and that's the leak of internal engineering documentation regarding how organic search works. First reported and analysed by Rand Fishkin and Michael King, it's a treasure trove of rabbit holes (to mix my metaphors) for those of us who geek out on this stuff. But what does it change? What should we be doing differently as a result? Rand said that if you aren't changing things as a result (and didn't have omniscient knowledge of Google's inner workings already) then "you're not paying attention". I disagree. Tune in to find out why. Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In a week where we are celebrating the announcement that SearchPilot is working with M&S to bring SEO into their experimentation program, it seemed like a good time to revisit testing in ecommerce generally, how experimentation programs work, and what good looks like! Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Taking on the biggest announcement from Google (so far), AI Overview, Will sifts through published articles and posts to get to the core points of how this can affect marketing and the search world. He also shares ways on how we, as marketers and SEO professionals, can do better amidst all these changes. One clear way of doing better is by running more SEO A/B tests as it's going to get harder to predict which pages will perform better. He concludes with an optimistic point of view on all these changes. Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this live stream, Will shares his thoughts on whether Google is saving costs and provides an explanation to uncover a few recent mysteries. He breaks down the answer referencing revenue reports and data-based research. Also featured in this week's talk is the presentation he gave at the recent BrightonSEO conference. You can tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Google is feeling the pressure, from regulators, from the media, and from customers. Are they really under pressure? What are they likely to do about it? This week, Will want to dive into some of the sources of uncertainty and instability and what they mean for marketers and leaders of companies that rely heavily on search visibility. Here's one of the articles (The Man Who Killed Google Search) he referenced in his talk. You can tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this week's live stream, Will covers a whole bunch of articles and thoughts on whether a Google subscription works or not. He also talks briefly about the effect of your (UK) social status on your work pay and promotion. He shares podcast episodes and channels that he's listened to and following. Two of them are from Lenny's Podcast where Jason Lemkin talks about building world-class sales organizations and Dharmesh Shah on productivity framework for leaders. You can tune in to the whole live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Learn about a goal-setting model for your experimentation program, early lessons for SEO A/B testing from Googlebot and GSC, and Will's insights on being a 'sustainable' founder. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This week's talk centers around the value of experimentation to help you make meaningful decisions. Will also shares some research paper and trend lines on statistics and ecommerce growth. All that to point to the importance of testing for both CRO and SEO with an example of a CRO positive change that was a -25% effect on SEO. Head over to our YouTube channel to see some live whiteboarding to have a sneak peek of Will's new 2x2 quadrant. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
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Will Critchlow pull out the threads on a common SEO element that is within your full control: internal linking? How can you influence this element more? How to set up SEO A/B tests for internal links? Plus Google's new Head of Search and Apple and Google Gemini's strategic partnership. And some sneak peek and news alerts from SearchPilot. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
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This new research proves that search is still the biggest channel and offers you your biggest opportunity for growth. Not only that but the data staggeringly shows that Google dominates the search stream. Will goes through this latest research from Rand Fishkin. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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When you have experimentation ingrained in your organization's culture, it's important to have the right tool to match this practice and discipline. More often, we come across this question: Build or Buy? Will discusses this big ol' question referencing Ryan Lucht's presentation deck on experimentation and from Ronny Kohavi's deck. Find out what set of questions to use to determine whether build or buy suits you. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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After a week's break, Will is back with some thoughts on his experience bootstrapping while building his business. He also shares some of his holiday reading list. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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