Show notes
Notes:Follow Brendan:https://twitter.com/bjcottam https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendancottam/How to improve on SEOhttps://www.instantetraining.com/https://www.skillshare.com/user/randfishDo you need to have development skills to be agood SEO?https://moz.com/blog/javascript-seoHTML, CSS, and JavaScript – Important torecognizeHTML – should be able to write EscapedFragmentshttps://developers.google.com/search/docs/ajax-crawling/docs/specificationhttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-url-fragments-23449.htmlHow to inspire passionHire right people Weekly passion-based meetingCulture of learning and sound boardinghttps://jeopardylabs.com/Willing to listen to everyone elseAsk follow up questions Differences from in-house versus agencyMore access to engineersHow did you build credibility with engineers Ask forfeedback on tickets before submitting“How would you go about fixing this? Whatdetails do you want in the ticket to fix it?” Book Alexis’ boss (Chris) made her read: GetAnyone to Do Anything: Never Feel Powerless Again–With Psychological Secretsto Control and Influence Every SituationManaging multiple stakeholdersTriage – prioritize what’s most important https://www.slideshare.net/sandersal1/diagnosing-technical-seo-issuesUnderstand the problem and level of priorityWhat to do if faced with multiple hot prioritiesDeveloping a framework and documenting commonanswers (especially for repetitive questions)Standard operating procedures (SOP)Why is SEO important for eComm?Revenue is generated at low ad costWe are a more efficient channel Increases customer acquisitionSimilar to how one would diversify financialinvestments (24:00)Thinking and analyzing in terms of page types Testing and experimentationHow often to retest? Use judgmentWhat’s on the roadmap? Priorities? Engineeringlift?What is best in class for eCommerce?Getting the customer experience rightCrawling, indexing, rankingBlocking invaluable pagesTop three nuggets of advice for an SEO ineCommerceCuriosityWill’s article: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-learn-seoFinding your passionMoving rankingsGetting ranks to generate trafficUncovering technical SEO problemsRevealing in the moments Critical thinkingCompleting an objective analysis to form anopinionMust move and executeBe proactiveTranscript:[00:00:00] Alexis Sanders: Hello. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today we have Brendan from Wayfair. Thanks so much for joining today, Brendan.[00:00:07]Brendan Cottam: Of course, Alexis. Thanks for having me.[00:00:10]Alexis: Would you mind giving the audience a little bit ofan intro?[00:00:13]Brendan: Of course. So I have been in the SEO industry since2012. When I got started, I had always been interested in marketing, and thenkind of found some SEO people on Twitter, and from there, it just kind ofcatapulted into, like, being something I was really interested in. I startedleaning in, like, right after I quickly found it, teaching it to myself, andtrying to learn from others in the industry. And so then, from there, I kind oflooked at a few places to start my SEO career and was super fortunate enough toend up at Seer Interactive. I spent a little over a year there, then ended upmoving back to Boston to work for another agency called Co-Marketing, did thatfor about a year, and then stumbled across an in-house opportunity here atWayfair, and I’ve been here for just over three and a half years. I reallyenjoy all aspects of SEO from on-page to off-page to technical, so I reallyjust look at Wayfair as my platform to do SEO and continue to build my skills,and share them with people along the way.[00:01:28]Alexis: Awesome. Thanks so much. So this was so actionpacked. First of all… repping Pennsylvania![00:01:34]Brendan: (lol) Yes![00:01:36]Alexis: PA people just having a quick chat. Awesome. Soyou’ve been working in SEO since 2012, and one of the things that comes to mindis: what are some of the bigger changes that you’ve seen?[00:01:47]Brendan: Ah, you know, I think, definitely, one of themearly on in that time frame was Hummingbird, right? And Google interpretingsynonyms and search queries across a variety of different variations, so I’dsay that that is one that started right away, yeah. And then, SERP features andbasically taking clicks… sometimes taking clicks away from SEO. Like when Ifirst started, you know, the Knowledge Graph was starting to appear, but it waslike, ‘Oh, that won’t come for my industry, oh, that won’t come for e-commerceor something.’ And sure enough, you know, it’s in about every vertical now sosay that’s definitely a key theme.[00:02:32]Alexis: Definitely. No, yeah. We can see it in the localspace, like you said, Knowledge Graph, so any sort of informational query, evenlike the hotel space has such interesting things with, like, transactionaltype, queries being taken. So that’s so interesting that the whole entirelandscape is essentially changing. [00:02:49]Brendan: Exactly. [00:02:50]Alexis: So, okay… so, one of the other things youmentioned in your intro; I know I’m going a little bit off track. You justmentioned so many things and I thought they are all so interesting. Youmentioned that you taught yourself, and I feel like that’s something that a lotof SEO’s face, regardless of whether they work in-house, in an agency, or theyown their own agency or consulting firm. So one of the questions I get asked alot, and I’m sure you get asked this a lot too, is what resources do you thinkare some of the best? Is there any way that you feel is most efficient to learnthe craft having been through that process?[00:03:26]Brendan: Yeah. I mean, I had a few key things, you know,first, I immersed myself in the people and the companies that do it well. Youknow, like Seer… Moz, where some of the first two distilled and the peoplethat work there. So, like, I really immersed myself. I remember one of the waysI did was like, I think one of Rand’s decks. I printed it out and just immersedmyself in that. So, you know, it’s one thing to be a passive follower, but Ireally immersed myself there. Then I made my own site, and just started puttingout some content to try to get it to rank. So that was kind of my way to actionon it.[00:04:10]Alexis: Nice. So experimenting from, like, a totallydifferent scale.[00:04:13]Brendan: Exactly. And I will give you a third, which was, Ithink… I believe most people hit this one too which is, like, you get thefoundation down and you do a little bit, but you’re like, ‘I still want to besurrounded by people who actually know what’s going on.’ Right? You just wantsome validation. Yeah, so I was, you know, lucky enough to take a course thatjust kind of touched on… It was like twenty courses that touched on all facetsof SEO. So I got exposure to things like information, architecture, internallinking, everything. So that was super helpful and good validation to know Iwas on the right track.[00:04:54]Alexis: Nice. And so is that, like, at a local college orsomething along those lines? Or was that more of an online course? [00:05:01]Brendan: Yeah, so it was actually online, and it was ending,like, right when my semester was starting. So it overlapped with school alittle bit, which was funny. But yeah, it was online. I’m forgetting the nameof it. It was Instant E-Training, that was the name of the brand. I don’t knowif they’re still around today, but highly recommended. Or, I mean, there’sprobably less costly options out there, of course.[00:05:27]Alexis: Nice. I know Rand has one on, like, Skillshare orsomething like that. So kind of, like, looking up online courses and justgetting exposure, I really like that idea. And, of course, active learning inmaking a site. This is another question that I get a lot too, and I’d love tohear your thoughts. Do you think SEO needs to understand how HTML, CSS and JavaScriptwork, and be good at it? There’s like two sides of it: there’s theunderstanding of how websites work, and then understanding programming. Whatare your thoughts on both of those? [00:05:57]Brendan: Actually, the first time I came across you in the industry was your JavaScriptpost on Moz. I remember reading that, and, you know, two things were supervaluable: Just the JavaScript frameworks that are out there, so that was a hugeresource to help me get familiar with those. And then at the time, we hadsomeone within the company launch a feature that had a URL fragment, so yourarticle was super helpful because there’s a point in there where you talk aboutfragments and the downside to them. So that’s my intro to saying, you know, Ithink HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are very important to be able to recognize. Idon’t know, I think being able to write those is up for debate…certainlyHTML, you should be able to, but definitely recognize them on pages, in source codesand in the DOM is super important.[00:07:05]Alexis: Yeah, I love that idea of having, like, almost alittle bit of understanding so you understand what’s going on, you have ageneral sense, and you’re able to, therefore, communicate more efficiently withdevelopers, at least at a minimal level, because otherwise it’s going to be waymore challenging when you’re trying to get across your point or what youactually need.[00:07:30]Brendan: Exactly. Exactly. [00:07:31]Alexis: So I love that. Yeah, thanks for mentioning myarticle. It’s so interesting because when I remember, before I started writingthat article, escaped fragments had been deprecated for probably about a yearor two at that point. And that was so fascinating because, you know, like, wenever heard about it in our training because it was always like, ‘Oh, well,don’t use this or don’t use that,’ but it was like one of those solutions thatwas out there that, you know, I mean, at this point now Google’s just saidthey’re not going to crawl it. And they’ll just crawl the pretty version of theURL, you know, having those elements that understand the history of that typeof thing and understand the history of SEO, I think sometimes could be prettyvaluable.[00:08:04]Brendan: Yeah, and it’s interesting how, you know, engineersdon’t immerse themselves in what Google’s putting out there. So while it seemsobvious to us, you know, other folks writing this code don’t take thisinformation in like we do.[00:08:18]Alexis: That’s so true. I feel like SEO (and I don’t know ifyou agree with this), but SEO and tech and development, they grow at such arapid pace that sometimes it’s really hard to keep up with. So what are some ofthe ways that, like, you’re able to keep up with what’s going on in theindustry so that we can help out our developers?[00:08:36]Brendan: I mean, you know, some of the standard ways arejust staying up on Twitter and following the right people, for sure, you know,that’s kind of table stakes. You know, I think having people around you thatyou can spitball and bring ideas to is also super important. And I think thattakes time to sometimes build out, like, if maybe you’re in SEO and you justswitched teams, it’s going to take a little while to get there. But I’ve had alot of fun being at Wayfair for a little more than three and a half years andjust building chemistry with people where we can talk about: if we decide tolazy load this feature will that impact our rankings? And you can really kindof break it out and make the call on that decision together, I think is anotherway to just stay up on what’s going on and different ideas you have.[00:09:28]Alexis: I love thisidea, too, because you’re almost touching on this idea of building a culture oflearning, and a culture of passion, because to some extent, like, you must haveto hire people that are really interested and really passionate about a certaintopic. But I love this idea of having a group that shares information, and Iknow that you’ve obviously experienced an agency world, and we kind of get thatautomatically. But when you have a team like Wayfair, I’m assuming you guys areprobably… you’re a smaller part of a larger marketing team. [00:10:03]Brendan: Yes, exactly. [00:10:05]Alexis: So how do you guys flourish and… encourage thattype of learning or encourage that and have that, develop that chemistry? Is itjust automatic or is there something as a manager that people can do out there?[00:10:17]Brendan: Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely doesn’t happenautomatically, for sure. And maybe unless, like, you know, the chemistry isreally firing[00:10:25]Alexis: That’s such a controversial thing. And I love it.(lol)[00:10:29]Brendan: Ah, you have to try to find ways to foster it. And,you know, one of the things that I picked up at Seer, that that they did,(which was awesome) was a Friday meeting where the team… like, the format wasbefore the meeting, post what you want to talk about, post how long you want totalk about it, and it just created a lot of energy, and it was a lot of fun.And so, like, I’ve created something similar here where, you know, people justposting slack, what they want to talk about before coming to like, a stand up.And then we just dive into those topics. So that’s a specific way that we’vedefinitely built up the chemistry. And then I think, outside of SEO, we’ve beendoing things like SEO office hours for certain parts of our company that arereally needed most. So that’s kind of a way we’ve evangelized SEO throughoutthe company.[00:11:26]Alexis: Oh, nice. So anyone’s welcome to those officehours?[00:11:28]Brendan: In this case, it’s like merchandising is a hugeteam that’s making changes that impact SEO, so it’s specifically that team.[00:11:39]Alexis: That’s so funny because one of the things thatTessa mentioned from Dick’s Sporting Goods and Eric, also, from Aerie, is thatmerchandising is the one who you have to get in with. So funny.[00:11:52]Brendan: Yeah, and like, I don’t know… Oh go ahead. Sorry.[00:11:55]Alexis: No, no, you go ahead.[00:11:56]Brendan: Yeah, I’ve always wondered what merch is like inother e-commerce sites. I mean ours is between, like, a 150 to 200 person department,so it’s a huge department. Everyone’s vertical lies in different categories,so, we’re bigger than ten, but like, there’s ten of us responsible forinteracting with them. And so, like, 10:150, like, that’s insane. (lol)[00:12:25]Alexis: You’re like, ‘Not even teachers are expected to dothat much.’ (lol) That’s awesome. And one of the things you mentioned, theFriday meetings, we actually started that in Pittsburgh probably about a yearand a half ago. We call it SEO Lab, and we do, usually we have either somebodycomes with news or something like that. I think we could probably do a littlebit more preparing, but one of the things that we love in Pittsburgh is doingSEO Jeopardy. There’s kind of this janky tool that you can find online, if youlook up, ‘make your own jeopardy,’ and so sometimes people will go in and maketheir own jeopardy versions. Then we’ll play Jeopardy! And it’s always reallyfun. [00:13:03]Brendan: Cool, cool.[00:13:04]Alexis: Going to learn competition.[00:13:06]Brendan: Yeah, and going off, that the only other add I wouldsay in terms of like, fostering that culture is like, you know, everyone has tobe willing to listen to everyone else, and hear what they’re saying, andunderstand, and ask follow up questions. And, you know, that’s something that Ithink is sometimes taken for granted, like not everyone fully fully does that.So I think doing that can help create a good culture.[00:13:33]Alexis: Yeah, I love when people start trainings and youcan hear the trainers say things like, ‘Oh, there’s no such thing as a stupidquestion,’ because a lot of times, I think people are really intimidated to asksomething, but they’ll never learn unless they get something wrong or they ask,or they try to figure something out themselves. So true. Awesome. So you alsomentioned you have agency experience combined with in-house. What is that? Whatwas that transition like? Do you feel like it was very smooth? Do you thinkthere’s anything that you’d recommend… any differences that you noticebetween in-house versus agency life? Got it? Ah, there’s a lot of questionspacked into one. (lol)[00:14:16]Brendan: Because I went from agency to inhouse ecom at alittle bit more of like, a lower level per se, you know, the transition wasrelatively seamless. When I got here, right, I was writing content, doingcurated research, working with clients (aka merchandisers) and identifying anddiagnosing technical SEO problems. A lot of the same things, like seamlesslytransitioned which is definitely one of the reasons why I was able to hit theground running, you know? And I think I’d say the one difference was: my accessto engineers; they were right at my fingertips, right? So they’re part of ourteam. So finding ways to interact with them and kind of build credibility withthem was probably one of the main differences. And then I’d say, if you’re ifyou’re going from agency to ecom at a higher level, it’s super crossfunctional. And so you’re going to have to be comfortable putting yourself outthere, getting in front of teams that are making changes that impact that SEO,and you’re going to have to build relationships and really make a case for SEO.[00:15:32]Alexis: So you mentioned you had to build credibility withengineers. How did you do that? How did you approach that process? Donuts everyTuesday (lol)?[00:15:43]Brendan: I’d say, when I identified technical SEO problems,I said, you know, I brought them to engineers and kind of made sure I said,‘Oh, like, what are you seeing? This is what I’m seeing. What are yourthoughts? And how would you look at this problem, specifically, like when we’rewriting engineering tickets?’ One of the things I did right away, because I cankind of sense if, as an SEO, you put in an unscoped or unclear, like, a veryunclear SEO ticket, that’s kind of an easy way to not end up on an engineer’sgood side. So I was just like, from the start, like before even hitting publishon this ticket, I would kind of go to them and say, you know, ‘I’m seeing abunch of broken links across this page template. How would you go about fixingthis, or what details do you want in the ticket to fix this?’ And justincorporating their feedback into the ticket just helped build credibility.[00:16:49]Alexis: Definitely. I love that idea of like, giving somecognitive dissonance, almost. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of thosestudies where basically, they went around all these different neighborhoods andthe first time they asked the question: Do you like giving to charity? orsomething like that… Do you believe that giving the charity is good? orsomething along those lines. Or do you usually give to charity? And then a weeklater, they went around again and basically saw whether or not people donated,and if you had, if you were one of the houses where they’d ask that questionand you had agreed, you were way more likely to actually donate money. Yeah,it’s actually… there’s a book that actually, my boss made me read, which Ithought was very funny, that he was like, ‘This is the best book,’ but one ofthe things that it said, it was basically: if you have a boss that’s kind ofunagreeable (which makes this so funny that my boss gave this to me). If youhave a boss that’s unagreeable, or, kind of like automatically defensive orsomething along those lines, if you ask them that morning like, ‘Hey, don’t youthink it’s nice when people are just flexible and just, like, listen,’ orsomething along those lines, and they agree, they’re like, ‘Yeah, totally.’Later in the day there’ll be more apt to listen to you.[00:17:58]Brendan: Because they’re tired (lol)?[00:17:59]Alexis: But that’s because they affirm something aboutthemselves, and once we say something about ourselves, we have, I guess, (or atleast this is the idea) that we have a harder time going against it. So if Iagree that I am a flexible person in the morning, then by the evening, if I’mnot acting in a flexible way, I’m denying what I believe about myself. So itcreates this cognitive dissonance that our brain, like, can’t handle,apparently. So, yeah, going to them beforehand, being like ‘Oh, yeah, like, doyou agree that this is a problem?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we agree. This is aproblem.’ And then when you send it to them, they’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s totallya problem.’ So and then, of course, the idea of clarity: I think that’s such agreat idea to make sure, like, you’re including all the details and beingspecific and honoring their time too.[00:18:43]Brendan: Yeah, exactly. I like that. This is something Itell my team a lot. I’m like, ‘your time is insanely valuable.’ Everyone’s timeis, so just making sure we respect that.[00:18:54]Alexis: That’s so beautiful. Okay, so you mentioned that youguys are a team of, like, fifteen going up against, like, about one hundred andfifty to two hundred. So how do you deal with having multiple stakeholders?[00:19:07]Brendan: Ah, good question. And definitely, you know, as a expands,you have more and more stakeholders. So I mean, I’d say one is, you know,always being approachable. So you know, I think if you’re if you’re lessapproachable, stakeholders are going to go around you, or not include you onthings or not be completely upfront. So I’d say that would be a key part. Andthen, you know, as an SEO, if you get a lot… if you’re at the point where youhave, like, you know, a boss to answer to, you know, between five and ten crossfunctional partners and some reports, like, I believe you have to triage. Youmight get hit with all of those people asking you something at once, and it’sphysically impossible to answer, you know, fifteen people at the same time. SoI think I’m always triaging, like, alright, what came in first or what’s mostimportant? Which, actually one of your decks… I saw you did a few conferenceslast week.[00:20:17]Alexis: Thank you so much.[00:20:17]Brendan: Yeah, yeah. But diagnosing technical SEO issues; Ijust thought it was an awesome deck. And, like, just tying into this is, like,understand the problem, and like, the level of priority. So when you have toanswer to a lot of people, you just, you really have to understand the level ofpriority that each of those requests take.[00:20:39]Alexis: Is there anything that you found helps youprioritize those like, let’s say you were attacked by, like, fifty requests orsomething like that– fifties a lot. Let’s say, like, really ten high-stakerequests. How do you go about prioritizing those? Is it just best guess? Whatcan you delegate? You know that type of thing.[00:20:57]Brendan: Yeah, I’d say a couple things: one is a framework.So if the questions are repeated, like similar questions, we have frameworksfor how to answer them. So if it might be, you know, we want to make thischange that might deactivate a bunch of URLs on the site. Will that impact SEO?Just really templatizing the response so it can be super clear and as fast aspossible would be one, and then kind of going off that is like, I’m actuallyfinding, you know, a lot of the same questions just keep coming up. I’m surethis happens on the agency side as well. Like you start to get the samequestions. So just documenting this is super helpful, I find, so I point a lotof my questions to existing articles we’ve already created in house.[00:21:48]Alexis: Definitely. Yes. So having those established bestpractices, case studies; it’s that type of stuff that really works.[00:21:54]Brendan: Definitely. Do you find you get a lot of the samequestions from clients?[00:21:58]Alexis: Coming from the same client, we usually won’t getthe same repeated questions, but across the agency, I think a lot of people areconcerned with the same things. Like, for instance, everyone wants to know whatthey could do for voice. So we have a voice best practices, type of thing.Where if someone asks us for that, we understand, like, what are the bestpractices that one can do? What is the level of the industry? What is prettymuch going on? So there’s those types of things, and then we also do two thingsin Americas: we have a set of best practices, which then, people go in andcustomize them specifically for their clients. But we also print terms ofinternal training, and we have these things that we call S.O.P’s.[00:22:36]Brendan: Yeah, yeah. Standard Operating Procedures.[00:22:39]Alexis: Yeah, standard operating procedures, where it’sbasically just like a list of things, like an itemized list of things thatpeople can go through and do steps in the procedure so that they can becomefamiliar. And I think they usually get updated on, like, a yearly basis or so,that enables newer people to go in and follow that specific process. But it’s avery, very time consuming process, so it’s broken up across about, we haveprobably like a fifty to seventy person team at Merkle, so not all the worklays in one account manager’s hands. But whenever something like that is done,we try to roll it into what the client is doing, and then pull that back intotrying to normalize it so that people can accomplish a similar task. Yeah,definitely. But I love that idea, having an established framework, havingtemplated answers so that you can then modify them to answer the correctrequest. And you mentioned before that you treat your in-house merchandise asclients, basically. So it’s almost similar to like you’re an agency within anin-house company, which is kind of fun to think about.[00:23:43]Brendan: Yeah, yeah, totally, definitely. I don’t know ifit’s because I came from agency, but that’s definitely a way I viewed the teamhere from the start.[00:23:52]Alexis: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to do it. And Iknow that one of my clients actually has the same exact thing. They worked fora big hospital, and they have all the different hospitals as different clients,all the different business lines are different clients to them as well. So Ithink that it makes sense. Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, so I’ll dive into someof the questions. I know I got a little bit off topic, but some other thingsthat we had planned to talk about: Why do you think SEO is so important for ane-commerce business? [00:24:22]Brendan: Yeah… SEO is a way to reach high intent customerslike, super efficiently, and I think the power of SEO, it means like, revenueis generated at very low ad cost. So it really increases customer acquisition.And so that’s, I think, why it’s super important. That being said, I think oneof the interesting things about e-commerce sites is a lot of them, Wayfairincluded, have diversified their marketing efforts. Like, similar to how onewould, you know, diversify financial investments, right? They’re doing a lot ofdifferent things. And so I remember, like, maybe a couple agency clients beforeI got here, you know, had north of sixty, seventy, eighty percent of trafficcoming from SEO… while I think that’s like, awesome for SEO, and superimpressive, you’re putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So I think it’s superimportant and super efficient. But also, I think it’s great that e-commercesites are diversifying and using other channels as well.[00:25:26]Alexis: Yeah, definitely. And I love that analogy offinance and pulling it back because in some ways, it’s almost like the market.You have to make bets and hope that they work out. Yes. So do you think thate-commerce SEO is different from other forms of SEO or other verticals?[00:25:43]Brendan: Some of my thoughts are probably slightly biased tomy experiences, in agency, and then here. I mean, I do think the scale is muchlarger, which means you have to kind of have a system or a systematized way ofbreaking down data. So in some of my agency experience, it’s like, we were kindof looking at a couple hundred keywords for a client. But when you getin-house, you can really go to the tens and hundreds of thousands. Certainly,that could vary at another agency, but I just had a lot more data in front ofme. And so, one of the ways… key lessons I learned in e-commerce is justlike, thinking in terms of page types, right? So there’s different page typeson the site that drive traffic. Some drive more than others, and all those pagetypes have features that either are important SEO or not important SEO. Soreally understanding those, and like, living and breathing them is super key tobeing successful and driving more growth. And I’d say, you know, having aproduct-focused mindset similar to the page types, kind of understanding them.You know, being product-focused is super helpful for, you know, working withother engineers or working with other product managers within a large company,so you can start to get them making changes that help SEO. And then I would saya couple others, like link building, is something that I believe in, somethingthat we continue to like, see move the needle. But, you know, it varies basedoff of the site you’re on. And so, like, I’ve had times on agency SEO where Iwas doing link building for a start-up, right? And so we were like superaggressive, like fully white hat, we had a lot of different strategies runningat once, you know, from founder interviews to other things, and that was like,a lot of fun. And again, something here, we’re still doing it to a certainextent, but not as much as I have seen with my agency experience.[00:27:55]Alexis: Yeah, you probably almost don’t have to, as a brandlike Wayfair.[00:27:59]Brendan: Exactly. Like, we kind of target it and use contentmarketing in specific ways. But, you know, the scale of, like, a start-upneeding links is definitely much different.[00:28:12]Alexis: Definitely. Definitely. And you think, like yousaid, you can almost drive it through the content you created by creating like,highly engaging type content. Nice.[00:28:21]Brendan: Yeah. And then just the last one I wanted to bringup was something… It could have been a mix of where the industry was headingbecause I’ve definitely followed it, like, Distilled ODN. But testing andexperimentation, you know, really took another level while I was here atWayfair, and so we’re always, you know, testing across our site, split testingand trying to grow traffic. But also, you know, we’ll test if we can learnsomething about the algorithm that we didn’t know before.[00:28:54]Alexis: how often do you think it’s important to test? Solet’s say, for instance, you found something that was successful or you foundsomething that was unsuccessful. When is it that you renew those assumptions?[00:29:06]Brendan: That’s a good point, because we’ve had some thingsthat we say around here lately that it’s like, ‘Oh, we ran that, like threeyears ago. Is it still valid?’[00:29:16]Alexis: Definitely. That’s what made me curious because,like, when you’re in that testing culture, you almost, like, you do the testand you say, ‘That’s good.’ But I’m always interested in how long. When dopeople start renewing things and trying different stuff? [00:29:32]Brendan: Yeah. I mean, I don’t have specific, concrete dateon, you know, if a test is older than two years, renew it. You know, I just usemy judgment, like, what’s on the road map right now? Can we fit it in? Like, Idid one quickly… actually, this is kind of a sad topic which I’d love to nerdout about, like the history of Wayfair is very cool as it relates to SEO,because we basically had a bunch of microsites from 2001 to about 2012, and soit went from one microsite, to 200, and then it merged all those into Wayfair.But recently we’ve gotten some questions about the value of those, so it’s,like, you know, we did a test back in 2015. We knew which ones were valuableand which ones weren’t. But then we were like, we need to look at that again.So that’s an example of one that we felt we could revisit, and it was superquick to do, right? It didn’t take a lot of engineering.[00:30:34]Alexis: Yeah, definitely. I love that idea of trying toprioritize the efficiency of it as well. Like, how long is this experimentactually going to take? Awesome. Okay, so I’ll ask two more questions justbecause we’re nearing the end of the forty-minute mark and I want to make surewe have time for the final question. So, what do you think is best-in-class,and what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve seen interms of e-commerce?[00:31:00]Brendan: SEO, you know, best-in-class for e-commerce is: 1)getting the customer experience right, which is, you know, not as SEOs is inour control all the time. So that would be things like merchandising, pricing,you know, customer experience. You know that needs to be super strong and atpar with the market. And then from there, like, from an SEO perspective, Ithink, in order of importance: crawling, indexing, ranking, you know, makingsure you know certain page types are super invaluable for SEO, so definitelymaking the case to block those would be important. And then, from there, it’soptimized topically, I’d say, as well as for internal linking, and like, tweakand iterate those constantly to find out what works. And then like, if you needexternal authority, ensuring that you’re building links over time, and thencontinue to test at scale to understand the levers that impact rankingsfurther. So those would be… that’s best-in-class for me.[00:32:08]Alexis: Awesome, Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s all youhave to do (lol). No that was awesome. Thanks so much. Okay, so the finalquestion: so I’ve been asking everybody that comes on the podcast: What areyour three little nuggets of advice for SEO working in e-commerce or on ane-commerce site? And this could be anything; it could be interpersonal, itcould be site related, just something that you found that’s been useful to youin your career as an SEO. [00:32:40]Brendan: I love this question. [00:32:42]Alexis: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been so fun to hear people’sanswers; they’re so different.[00:32:45]Brendan: Oh, nice. When this airs, and the others air I’lldefinitely listen so I hear what others say.[00:32:51]Alexis: Yeah, yeah, I think it’d be cool to compare, like,from the audience point of view, what types of responses people are giving.[00:32:58]Brendan: So, my first one would be curiosity, And at first(that I talked a little bit about when I first got into SEO) I remember readinga post by Will Critchlow. It was on Moz. It’s like ‘how to learn SEO’ and oneof them was, ‘Curiosity is your biggest asset.’ And so that’s been like, Ithink I still have the print out of that article. I’ve just brought it with me,and when I changed companies, it’s just in my desk somewhere, but I live bycuriosity for sure. [00:33:44]Alexis: That’s so awesome.[00:33:46] Brendan: Yeah, and so the second one, which, actually, issuper similar to when I looked at your diagnosing technical SEO issue deck, iscritical thinking, right? Like completing an objective analysis to form, youknow, a judgment and, like, definitely, really liked your deck for that reason,I thought a lot of it embodied critical thinking.[00:34:04]Alexis: Okay, so I will ask you one question about yourfirst piece of advice, if you don’t mind. For curiosity, you’ve been an SEO forabout seven years now, right? And how do you maintain that curiosity and thatlevel of inspiration?[00:34:20]Brendan: It could be something that’s just fortunate, youknow? I’m very fortunate enough to have found something that I’m interested in,and that I just continue to want to understand it. And I guess I’m interestedin, you know, looking back on the last seven years, things that make me, like,really excited, right? Like moving rankings, getting those rankings to generatetraffic, generating links, uncovering a technical SEO problem and lifting it,like, those things all feel so good when you uncover those things, and theydon’t happen every day, but the only way they do happen is if you immerseyourself in it. So I’d say I’ve always been very excited about uncoveringthings, and that’s a huge way to stay engaged and motivated. Do you have anythoughts on that? [00:35:15]Alexis: Ways use to stay curious? I think my initialreaction is, to some extent, it’s a little bit intrinsic, almost, that peoplehave to have the passion. Like you said, you’re fascinated by it and itinterests you; you like to learn. You like to try something different andthat’s almost, I think, it’s hard to capture in a person, but I think that’sjust something that some people have naturally, like It’s like passion. How doyou spark passion in a person? Like, they have to do it themselves, I think, tofind things that you love within the fields, which I think… We’re reallyfortunate because we interconnect with so many different areas of the business,that there’s always somewhere else to explore. I know that there are a lot ofpeople who, in the industry, have been exploring machine learning because thatrelates to SEO in certain ways, in terms of like generating text or or even,like, analytics, and analytic analysis, and stuff like that. So just findingareas that you love or things that you’re interested in that continually keep youinterested in our line of work. Probably that would be what I have to say, butI like your answer; it was great, it’s almost like an explorer, like adiscovery or something.[00:36:26]Brendan: Cool, cool. And I guess the last I think it is alsovery important, right? You have to move and execute. And so I think, you know,having the willingness to just move and get something done, right? Maybe you’renew and starting out and you like, don’t really know what to do. It’s like, youknow, if you’re lucky enough to have a manager under you who’s outliningsomething like, listen and go do what he or she says. And then you’ll justcontinue to learn and figure out things along the way.[00:36:58]Alexis: Yeah, trying things. Do you think it’s valuable totry things on a smaller scale at first and then expand?[00:37:05]Brendan: Definitely. It’s good to start small, always. Imean, and another example would be like, maybe there’s a big idea that you wantto move forward with, but like, you need to make a case for it internally. So,you know, thinking of a way to start small and get a quick learning to make thecase for something bigger is definitely valuable.[00:37:25]Alexis: Definitely. Well, thank you so much for joiningtoday. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Brendan.[00:37:32]Brendan: Thank you. Alexis, had a lot of fun.[00:37:35]Alexis: All right. Awesome signing off, ciao.The post 6. Interview w/ Brendan Cottam, Wayfair appeared first on TechnicalSEO.com.
