Google Podcast Discusses SEO Expertise

Google’s recent Search Off the Record podcast touched on the issue of SEO expertise and the disconnect between how SEOs think Google ranks websites and how Googlers understand it. The difference is so great that Gary Ilyes remarked that sometimes he doesn’t know what SEOs are talking about.

Google: SEO guru’s questions “make no sense”

Martin Splitt discussed meeting Turkish publishers and SEOs of various experience levels at a Google event in Turkey where attendees complained about poor search results. It turns out that the problem is not Google’s search results, but a problem in the way Turkish websites are made, which indirectly calls into question the SEO expertise of Turkish-language publishers.

he said:

“And then we ended up realizing as a group as a whole that there are a lot of problems with the way content is created on Turkish language websites…”

Gary Illyes expanded on Martin’s comment about experience levels by saying that it’s a subjective thing, that some people who describe themselves as beginners are actually extremely knowledgeable about the finer details of crawling and indexing, while other SEO gurus ask questions that don’t make sense.

Gary shared:

“The thing you mentioned about experience, I’ve realized over the last few years that it’s a very subjective thing. Like, when you ask people, “What’s your experience?” And they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a guru,’ and then on the opposite end of the spectrum, like, ‘I’m a complete beginner.’

And then you start talking to them and the newbie knows a lot more about HTTP, for example, than I do about indexing and indexing and whatever, like how it’s perceived from the outside.

And then you talk to the guru, and the guru is like… the questions themselves don’t make sense. Like, you can’t interpret the question they’re asking.”

That section about questions that don’t make sense describes the disconnect between what SEOs and Googlers believe about SEO. Let’s face it, there is a disconnect.

Gap in knowledge and experience

Sometimes there is a gap between how SEOs perceive the ranking algorithm and how Googlers try to explain how it works. A classic example is the disconnect in SEO belief utthe concept of domain authority and Google’s denial of its existence. A few years ago, in a Google Search Central Hangout, a person told John Mueller that a major update eliminated the ranking of all their keywords.

they asked

“How is it possible for our authority to drop by more than 50 percent overnight? What could we do to increase our authority?

Mueller replied:

“Generally speaking, Google does not rate page authority. So it’s not something where we would give you an authority score and say this is a general authority score for your website. So that’s not something we would apply here.”

This belief in “domain authority” is one of many examples where what SEOs think they know about Google is completely unrelated to what Googlers know about how search rankings work.

What do SEO experts really know?

Martin Splitt continues the conversation with proxies to rate SEO expertise by the size of the sites they manage, but concludes that even that proxy metric doesn’t really say much about their SEO expertise either. Ultimately, they conclude that they need to engage in a deeper conversation with the search marketing and publishing community to determine if there is anything Google could do better to explain what SEOs should be doing.

He explained:

“I mean, we try to gauge experience by asking them how many years you’ve been doing this kind of work and how many years you’ve been in this industry, and how many impressions a month do you have, roughly? And these are proxy metrics. And as you say, it’s super subjective.”

He mentions the wide range of complexities of technical issues that SEOs need to understand, and John Mueller adds that even experts in a particular SEO niche can be deficient in basic SEO concepts. The point of the conversation is to speculate whether the root of the disconnect is in Google’s documentation, or whether it’s just that SEO experts simply don’t know.

John commented:

“It’s like someone could be super focused on web workers or trying to crawl them, and at the same time, like, ‘How do I block the site from being crawled?'”

Martin agreed, saying:

“Yeah. And that’s probably why it’s so subjective. And it’s super interesting, super interesting to see them say, ‘Yeah, we’ve got it all figured out. We’re running a tight ship here.’ And then you see, it’s like some of the things that are generally talked about in all the beginner’s documentation are missed.

And that left me with a question. Don’t they know that this documentation exists? Is it that they found it difficult to match the amount of information we put out there? Or do they not know?”

Lizzi Sassman then asked:

“Did you feel, just talking to them, if they knew about the documentation or if there was some, I don’t know, feeling or vibe that the translation was bad or something like that.”

Martin replied:

“That’s exactly what I don’t know, because we were so busy during the event doing all the talking, like everyone wanted to talk to us. And that’s great. That’s fantastic. That’s why we do it.

But it doesn’t really give you room to think about things on the spot. So I thought, actually, on my flight back home, I said, ‘Hm. I wonder. damn I should have asked these questions.’ But, you know, that means we have to go back and ask them again.”

What is an SEO expert?

SEO expertise is subjective. Anyone who insists that SEO is one thing is out of touch with the reality that there is no single definition of SEO. I disagree with many SEOs on what they think is good practice, and with more experience some of them end up agreeing with me. There are some SEOs whose experience is vastly different from mine, and I humbly sit back and listen to them share what they know over dinner.

Many of us work from home, but keep in mind that we are all members of the search marketing community and should be able to listen to what others have to say about SEO, not just have polite disagreements about the “right way”, but also expect to others will disagree and don’t let it polarize you, but rather keep an open mind.