Mordy is the Search Liaison for Wix. He's also the host of two podcasts: Behind the SEOs and The SEO Rant.
He knows his stuff and has had to. After all, he's been working hard to help change the perception that SEOs tend to have about Wix, and he's been doing it by having lots of conversations with some of the smartest minds in the industry. With Grade.us and GatherUp in our toolbelt, we understand the importance of a reputation.
He also runs a regular #SEOChat on Twitter which is well worth checking out.
Check out this week's podcast to watch him and Garrett geek the heck out over some serious SEO.
The highlights:
The insights:
Wix's reputation with SEO professionals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XVKjbt1xQw
(What, precisely, is offensive about this bundle of pure awesome? Dude. This is everything I want in a commercial and more. -RCH)
So when he came to Wix, he sat down and talked to over 30 SEOs about the brand.
Mordy challenges the popular idea that you can't rank if you have a Wix site.
While you can't do some of the things in Wix that you can do in WordPress, there are advantages, too.
He calls it "different strokes for different folks."
If you don't wanna spend a lot on development, if you don't want to spend a lot on graphic design, if you don't want a solid, strong, SEO-optimized CMS, then Wix is a great option for you."
How Wix is changing brand perception
They once had a lot of work that was quite siloed.
They came to a realization.
Shares some of the technical SEO capabilities that have been developed for Wix that aren’t commonly known by old school SEOs.
You wanna add structured data? Yes, go ahead and add it for your static pages. We do add it in a box for dynamic pages, and there was an override you could use if you want to override the out-of-the-box we created for you, or you wanna add it where you don't add it for certain dynamic pages and so forth.
They've done a tremendous amount."
Mordy notes that a lot of Wix's users are not SEOs, they're SMB owners or practitioners that don’t necessarily focus on SEO.
Mordy says SEO is the big conversation at Wix right now, from the C-Suite on down.
Speculation about Google and tinkering with SERPs
Mordy notes that he really enjoys studying the SERPs.
He speaks of something that happened very recently.
He offers another example from the past.
Garrett asks if he thinks Google is consciously trying to keep people from visiting other people's websites.
What I think they're trying to do is I think they're trying to say: We wanna position ourselves as an authority. Very much the way they tell sites they should be an authority. They're following their own advice. How do they do this? By providing an answer.
I don't think it's about: Let's give people the answer to keep them off sites. That's too nefarious for me."
Garrett asked if Mordy foresaw anyone giving Google serious competition.
Google is brilliant about it.
When they give you those answers that creates an association in your mind. Google's where I go to get answers. It's a very deep psychological relationship. That's not going to be easy to break."
But, Mordy points out, anything is possible.
Thoughts about Amazon in the context of Google
Garrett asks: "People make the argument Google almost missed the train on eCommerce as a search engine. Do you see them going in the direction of Amazon, or Amazon going the direction of Google?"
Mordy says he doesn't think Google will crack the eCommerce market.
He does say that he saw them do this very successfully with travel sites.
He contrasts this with what Google did.
So Travelocity could have done that instead of selling me a rental car I don't want. If Google does that with products: here's the pricing trend, here's a ton of really helpful information about the product that Amazon's doing that it also could have done, I don't see why Google can't take down Amazon."
Taking advantage of Wix's data capabilities
Garrett asks what Wix users who are into eCommerce should do to stay relevant.
Mordy said it was important to stay on top of the data.
You can use it for your SEO if you test things out with this coupon. I tried something with this SEO strategy. With that coupon, I tried a different SEO strategy. And see how that works."
He says that it's also all about content.
Does your site have a product identity? Who are you? You sell brownies? Do you sell hash brownies? Do you sell specialty brownies? Birthday brownies? Whatever brownies you're selling, what makes you stand out?
What gives you an identity so I understand if people are searching for whatever kind of brownie is relevant, you're the person I wanna show."
For more on this, see Garrett's talk with Jason Barnard, "The Brand SERPs Guy."
What’s your right now cause?
Morty has an autistic son.
He isn't talking about donating to charities here, so much as offering opportunities.
If you know somebody in the industry that you're working in, go out of your way to try to offer [autistic people] a platform where they can publicly present themselves, and give them the opportunity. You may have to coax them a little bit to do that, but I would urge you to do something like that. Just really reach out, make it comfortable and safe for them to do this because they will and they can.
There's just a resistance and a fear of doing that, so maybe help people overcome that."
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