Odys Talks | 2023 in SEO

What a year it was! To sum it all up, Odys Talks finishes 2023 with a blast, getting legends Doug Cunnington, Jason Barnard, and Koray Gübür in one panel. SEOs and affiliate marketers were on a true rollercoaster ride for the past 12 months, to say the least. Some have come out on top, others have struggled, but one thing for sure – everyone definitely learned something valuable. Join this year’s last Odys Talks episode and make sure to pick the brains of these all-time greats!

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Introducing a Powerhouse Panel: Koray Gübür, Doug Cunnington, and Jason Barnard for an Epic Year-End Discussion

[00:00:00] Vladimir Ghilien: Welcome back everyone to Odys Talks. It’s the last episode of this year and yeah, it’s a blast.

[00:00:44] Vladimir Ghilien: We’ve got an amazing crowd today. We got Koray Gübür of Holistic SEO and Digital. We got Doug Cunnington of Niche Site Project and Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy of Kalicube. And I’m so excited about this conversation. It’s just that seems like a perfect combination to wrap things up this year, like having these three great minds with each of their own perspectives on things and their experiences and the things they’ve built. So, yeah, before we hit it up, I’ll just hit it off. I’ll just mention that this show is naturally hosted by Odys Global, your one stop shop and marketplace for aged domains, websites and premium names, as well as additional services including topic clusters, fully-managed website hosting, EAT audit and what was it? 301 redirects. I’m sorry, I’m just too excited.

Meet Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy

[00:01:50] Vladimir Ghilien: And by the way, we’ve also launched the leads to own feature. So if you spotted a domain at our marketplace or a website that you fell in love with, but you don’t think you can invest the entire sum into it, you can do it in parts from now on. So make sure to get in touch with us and our account managers will take care of you. All right, guys, why don’t you introduce yourselves? I know people know you, but still, just add anything you’d love to about yourselves. So Jason, since you’re the first time on the show, why don’t you go first?

[00:02:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you very much. I’m Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy. I’ve been in SEO for 25 years. Started in the year Google started, grew up with Google. Google didn’t really notice me, but I’ve been basically playing the Google game for 25 years. And the last ten years, it’s been all about brand on Google. So I created Kalicube Pro and Kalicube, which is a company that deals with brand on Google and marketing across the Internet and bringing branding and marketing together, packaging it up for SEO, which is our approach. And we’re basically focusing on Google’s understanding, its confidence in its understanding about who you are, what you do and which audience you serve. And the platform Kalicube Pro is all about optimizing entities for SEO.

[00:03:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you look at it from an SEO perspective, you look at it from Digital Marketing. Kalicube has solved Digital Marketing. Bold claim, but I think it’s true.

[00:03:30] Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, no doubt about it. Doug.

Meet Doug Cunnington, founder of Niche Site Project

[00:03:34] Doug Cunnington: I’m Doug Cunnington, founder of Niche Site Project, and I’m kind of a beginner in SEO compared to Jason. Only been doing it for about ten years or so. I had a project management background in consulting for a little while and started doing this. I also have a strong interest in personal finance and financial independence. So I have another podcast, a whole other thing I’m working on in that area as well. They kind of go hand in hand, entrepreneurship and independence in general. So that’s me.

[00:04:10] Vladimir Ghilien: Cool awesome. Thank you. Koray.

Meet Koray Gübür, founder and owner of Holistic SEO

[00:04:13] Koray Gübür: Ok. Hello everyone. So I am Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR, founder and owner of the Holistic SEO and Digital as an agency. And I am also founder of the Holistic SEO Communities and owner of the Topical Authority course and the framework. We are mostly focused on the training of our course members for the last six months, I can tell. And we shared maybe over 50 results from our community members too. And lately, we are interested in investing to some of the startups so that we can also take their SEO efforts and give value to our own money as well. It is a kind of new model for us too. And I can also tell that if you have some startups that are trustworthy, just send us an email and we can also check it for you as well.

[00:05:00] Vladimir Ghilien: Awesome. Cool. Perfect. Let’s go.

[00:05:03] Voiceover: Ladies and gentlemen, we are live.

Unexpected Connections and Influences in SEO Circles 

[00:05:11] Vladimir Ghilien: I just wanted to mention and give a shout out. Jason, you know the funny thing is, I saw you back in March in Saigon at SEO Mastery. Had no idea who you are at that moment. Then I found out. And then little by little when we started the show, I completely forgot about your existence. No offense, but when I was at the Chiang Mai SEO Conference, big shout out to Craig Campbell, he mentioned you in his presentation and I was like, oh, I really have to invite this guy. So, yeah, big shout out to Craig if you’re watching or listening or will be at some point, because I immediately put Jason’s name down in my notes.

[00:06:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I heard about that presentation from, I think Koray mentioned it, and also Anh from the Kalicube team was there and she said, he said a lot of rude words alongside my name. And I tried to explain to her, that’s just how Craig speaks. It wasn’t actually him being rude about me everytime he speaks.

Discussing Google’s Recent Spam Attack and SEO Updates in 2023

[00:06:24] Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, this is definitely the way Craig speaks and works and lives. Since I’ve named this episode SEO in 2023 or 2023 in SEO? I don’t remember the order, 2023 in SEO. So it would be awesome if we could wrap things that have been going on in the industry and all things associated with it throughout the episode. But the first thing I would like to address, and I would like to share your opinions and thoughts and insights is the recent Google spam attack. Yeah, I actually just recently discovered it and I was like, oh, that’s a great way to kick things off in this episode. So what’s been going on? Could you give us a brief input into it and how did it affect you in any way? Maybe your sites or whatever? Just how did you take it?

Google’s Update Strategy and Its Impact on SEO

[00:07:34] Koray Gübür: Okay, let me start first. So I can tell that during this summer and after the summer, Google actually did lots of updates in a series, in a chain, let’s say. And I believe they published most of their updates or major updates and announcements like at the end of the year. Usually I interpret these intensity of updates like they are also a little confused to be honest, because when you do update every month, it doesn’t sound that much trustworthy because it looks like you don’t have that much a planned schedule. And maybe someone just said that, look guys, we are just finishing all these updates before the Christmas. Let’s roll out all of them and we can deal with all the communication issues later. And from my point of view, when I look at the websites that I am managing, we didn’t see actually that much kinds of negative things. Nearly every week, we publish actually a new BlueHat SEO Case Study in our YouTube channel by demonstrating website name search console information and giving three suggestions always.

Observations on Programmatic SEO and Google Algorithm Updates

[00:08:37] Koray Gübür: But there are a few websites that I can actually observe in a different point of view. They are usually programmatic SEO websites and I can tell that one converter and calculator websites that I am helping with, for instance, like two weeks ago there was an unconfirmed update as always. And it calls like 30,000 web pages are de-indexed very quickly. Then they started to come back one more time and according to the observation, I can tell that for instance, for the queries like milligram to do, I don’t know, liter or something, we saw that health-related websites were ranking rather than the converters. So I can tell that when they do these type of unconfirmed updates, they can actually affect the programmatic websites in terms of the relevance and they can change the ranking web page types and the source types as clusters and they can bring the traffic back one more time. But just be sure that they are also trying to configure and adjust what they did as well. Another thing that I realized is that, especially the new domains, and for example, when I see a domain from 2020, if they are hit by the Core Updates during the 2020, I usually say that, look, you started to have a baggage behind your website. And every year in every core update, you are getting new luggages or baggages from the past. And usually I suggest people to go sometimes to a new expired domain if you can do that as well, because sometimes people really insist on staying on the same domain, which risks their, let’s say, future even further as well. And I try to help them perform a proper site migration by protecting the ranking signals to accounts of brand new domain or expired domain, which helps them to actually save themselves from some of these luggages.

[00:10:30] Koray Gübür: We also published some of the case studies for that too. And I can tell that the new domain or brand new domain percentage in the search engine result pages, they are increasing their percentage overall. And it is one of the good news, at least for us, that we use them a lot. And I can also tell that these experience thing or perspectives have started to become really important, which means that even if you give accurate information, if you don’t provide a personal experience or personal perspective in your documents, it might be really harder for you to rank in the coming, let’s say, the years. Because one major advantage of Reddit and Quora or these type of websites is that first of all, on a single page, Reddit can give 80 different authors, 80 different answers, 80 different perspectives. When we look at your affiliate website or web page, you have just one author, one perspective. Another thing is that Google knows that Reddit users don’t use artificial intelligence to create their answers that much, which means that they are able to provide real users who talk to the real users with the real experiences and the real perspectives. That’s why at the first they ranked Reddit and Quora really high.

Google’s Introduction of Structured Data and Forums

[00:11:45] Koray Gübür: Then they brought the structured data for forums. Then they started to give a new SERP features called forums and discussions. It helped them to rank evergreen content, or let’s say factual, accurate content together with the forum discussions, which means they try to give expert and experience type of content together. In my Budapest speech, I defined these things like safe answers and I told people that, look, you can give the accurate information, but after giving the facts, just try to put a distance and try to do some personal experience with that. Another increased SERP feature is articles. And for instance, the first time, by the way, I was checking about these result panels and I saw that inside the source section, rather than giving the website name, they were giving the author name. So it’s not the first time that I saw that, to be honest. So it shows that they directly attribute content to the author right now.

Impact of Personalized Titles and Affiliate Websites

[00:12:49] Koray Gübür: But when we say the author still, I see also new affiliate websites that’s ranked really high with the titles like how I test and ranked ten safe cases, ten supreme softwares, et cetera. And they usually get, let’s say, Amazon reviews to reflect the perspectives. Then they start to add their own, let’s say, angle. And then also they put some, let’s say, evergreen, factual, accurate information there. They blend multiple angles there. And since they use a personalized title there, they directly rank higher, even if they don’t have that much page rank, even if they are actually brand new. I started to see these type of websites lately as well. And from spam point of view, I can tell that the problem with the AI or LLMs is that without knowing nothing about cancer, I can create really good articles about cancer, but I know nothing about it.

[00:13:44] Koray Gübür: I don’t have any experience, expertise, and I don’t also have a clinic that can provide something about that. So I believe Google tries to differentiate who deserves to rank there with their experience and services as well. Which brings us to the situation that who’s your author or who is the real source of the information and what kinds of other next search activities can be performed there. And I believe they are calculating these sections and I talk a little bit long. Sorry for that. These are my outputs.

[00:14:15] Vladimir Ghilien: It’s all right. It’s absolutely fine. You just spilled your guts and that’s amazing. Jason, sorry for interrupting.

Impact of the Killer Whale Update on Authorship in Google’s Knowledge Graph

[00:10:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I can add a couple of things about authorship, which is really interesting because it ties incredibly well to that. Number one is there was what we called the Killer Whale Update in July, and it was a huge update in people in the Knowledge Graph. The number of people in the Knowledge Graph tripled in two days.

[00:14:43] Vladimir Ghilien: Wow.

[00:14:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So it was a huge focus on people. A lot of subtitles were deleted and the subtitles that were increased were writer and author. So Google is explicitly looking for people who write, and the number of people who are cited in the Knowledge Graph and in Knowledge Panels as writer or author has gone up significantly. The number of subtitles has gone down significantly. That’s point number one. Point number two is authorship. At one point, Google attributed Barry Schwartz’s articles to me.

[00:15:13] Vladimir Ghilien: How come?

[00:15:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It was in my article box, but it was Barry Schwartz’s article because my article was the first article in the related article section on the page, and he hadn’t signed his own article. And Google temporarily put me as the author because it was taking it. And he was saying, well, I understand who this guy is. He’s an expert on SEO, so he must be the author. And Barry Schwartz got put to one side, didn’t last for very long. They fixed the problem pretty quickly. But that does indicate to me very clearly that Google are explicitly looking for authors. They’re looking for who’s writing the content. And when you think about it, they did people before they did companies, because you can identify the company by the website, but the authors appear all over the place. They don’t necessarily have a website. So for Google to identify the author becomes increasingly important. Identifying the companies is secondary. That said, they’ve just done an update two weeks ago. Strangely enough, given what Koray just said, there’s a huge update again. But this was corporations, where the number of corporations in the Knowledge Graph have gone up. The confidence scores have changed.

[00:16:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There’s been a whole shift in the subtitles once again. And the subtitle, if you think about it, is all about categorization. And the September Update, Helpful Content Update, Gary Illyes said specifically, this is all about categorization. What we saw was the Knowledge Graph Update in July and a knock on into the Knowledge Panels in September. The two were very clearly linked. And this is the first time in Knowledge Graph world that we’ve been tracking for the last five years.

[00:16:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The first time that we’ve seen a direct correlation between a change in the Knowledge Graph and a significant change in the SERPs and an announced update. So that was really cool. Thank you. I said quite a lot as well, so I think it’s quite a lot.

Discussion on Spam Attack and AI Spam

[00:16:56] Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, Doug, go on.

[00:16:58] Doug Cunnington: I don’t even know if I could add anything. So the original question, I remember the original question was about the spam attack, right?

[00:17:08] Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah.

[00:17:09] Doug Cunnington: And I have nothing to add on that either. But I’m usually a little bit behind on these and I don’t manage as many sites or have as much data as you other guys. So for me, I’m just trying to keep my nose clean and listen to what you say in these instances. But I have nothing to add. So I’m not going to turn here.

The Challenge of AI Spam and Author Recognition

[00:17:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’ll add something about spam. And that’s what we were talking about is AI Spam is going to be a huge problem for Google. So they had to focus on people first, figure out who the author is, because then you can immediately see and look at the author what’s it called? The author vectors. Bill Slawski was talking about the fact that Google can recognize an author by the style. He was saying he can recognize who wrote a patent by the way they write the patent. And Google can recognize an author by the style of the writing. So for Google, presumably they have now templated Jason Barnard, which is how they figured out that I didn’t actually write Barry Schwartz’s article, because my author vector, will be totally different to Barry Schwartz. He writes very fast. I write really slowly. Is point number one. Sorry, Koray.

The Importance of Stylometry in Identifying Anonymous Authors

[00:18:13] Koray Gübür: It’s actually called stylometry. And it’s a very important concept because once in United States, the constitution of the United States are written by six or seven different writers. And there were 13 pages. The 13 pages are anonymous. No one knows who has written it. And there are multiple claims. For instance, Alexander Hamilton, and I really admire him, by the way, as philosopher, politician, et cetera. His production report is a great artwork for me, anyway.

[00:18:45] Koray Gübür: He is actually the claimed author. But his competitors were claiming that, no, you didn’t. I have written these 13 pages. So some of the NLP engineers, they actually implemented stylometry to see, and they have taken all the articles of Alexander Hamilton and other candidates. Then they have taken these 13 pages and they were able to see that actually the sum of the certain stop words or statistics in terms of the distribution of these words, they were really, really similar to the Alexander Hamilton. And that’s why, or with this way, they were able to understand that he was the real author of these anonymous 13 pages. And author vectors is like that too. For instance, when I talk in my articles, I always use the word “in this context.”

Signature Style and AI Detection

[00:19:31] Koray Gübür: “In this instance.” If I am writing that, it’s like a signature of you, basically. And in a similar way, one AI detector research, it was also talking about blacklisted verbs, which means that LLMs usually use certain type of, let’s say, statistics to bring these words together. And there are some safe words that LLM won’t be bringing together. And if you are able to actually give certain instructions, inputs by telling that, please use, let’s say a little bit my style, don’t use this type of, let’s say, stop verse. Just if you are able to replace them in their outputs, you can also hide yourself in a successful way against, let’s say, some certain detectors do. One more thing that I want to add, for instance, I say that when it comes to the forums, they first rank it, then they bring structured data, then they bring a SERP features. And Jason told that, for instance, this time we realized that corporations were increasing in the Knowledge Graph. Again, they actually brought not new, but new additions to the organizational structure data and they announced that they will be showing Knowledge Panels more.

Organizational Structured Data

[00:20:41] Koray Gübür: And please start using the organizational structured data. Another thing is, a few times, one time, especially in my interview, they asked me that you opened a job advertisement and you asked candidates, do you know who Emily Moxley is? So when I was taking some SEOs to my company, I was asking them directly, do you know who Emily Moxley is? No one knows it.

The Brain Behind The Knowledge Panels

[00:21:05] Koray Gübür: Still they don’t know, by the way, who is she? She is the brain behind the Knowledge Panels and most of these actual organizational or person type of entities, recognition and also serving. You can check her patents and just around that organizational structure data announcement together with Knowledge Panel announcement. She actually patented two other Google patents and designs about these things and she continues to become more important. And she is a product manager of the Knowledge Panels. I was asking this question to my interns like four years ago and even today actually, to be honest, I will suggest people to check which engineer is behind this, what type of designs the person has and why they are doing that. If you get that part, you can actually optimize your brand entities in a better way. Which Bill Slawski was talking about brand entities twelve years ago by telling that create a brand entity strategy to make yourself more authoritative in this context too. And I believe this is a difference today because they want to rank brands rather than blogs or ordinary websites.

Building a Sustainable Digital Presence

[00:22:08] Vladimir Ghilien: Well, that’s quite some information. Thanks for that, Koray. Yeah. By the way, I’ve seen a couple of questions already from the audience and if you have any questions, just shoot them up in the chat section or if you’re listening, watching on LinkedIn in the comment section or on Facebook in the comment section as well. I’ll get to them just a little later. One thing we were talking about with Koray, by the way, before going live, which actually quite neatly connects to the brand panel topic and stuff like that, is that whether you’re doing SEO or affiliate marketing or any other digital-based thing, the best way to survive all the Google tantrums or whatever else is to actually build brick and mortar business, right? And I mean, Kalicube, the Knowledge Panels and things like that, they actually help affiliate marketers, businesses, whoever, to establish their presence as legitimate entities in the search engines, right? So it all actually boils down to the thing that pretty often is actually discussed in this show is that if you want to be successful doing SEO, doing affiliate marketing niche sites just to treat whatever you do as actual business. And Doug, by the way, you mentioned that months ago when we were recording the podcast episode. By the way, you can check it on our YouTube channel, the oldest podcast.

Transitioning from SEO to Media and Investing

[00:24:21] Vladimir Ghilien: I think it was episode six, that you’re moving away from SEO little by little and start to look into other directions. Then I saw that you were recent guest at Jackie Chou’s podcast Indexsy this week in marketing, or what it’s called precisely. I don’t remember. But part of this conversation was about you moving away from SEO into other things like investing and digital media. I’m sorry, media. So how have these several months been for you? The process of moving away from SEO into more into media and investing, things like that? And what are your main takeaways from this period?

[00:25:23] Doug Cunnington: Thanks for giving me a nice lob here so I could answer one. I think it’s clear with Jason’s answer and Koray, they’re deep in the weeds and they know a lot more details and I just haven’t kept up and I’ve been more really on the periphery as far as an SEO. And I never thought I had the same sort of pure skills or put in the time that these gentlemen did and do like on a current basis and keep up. And I also don’t want to compete with Google all the time on a daily basis where they can kick me in the balls and I have to go figure it out and play along. So slowly over time, my interest just kind of wavered a little bit and I’ve exited a few sites and turned the keys over to someone who wanted to manage those sites and have shifted more into really media kind of production where maybe I spend a little more time on the podcast and on YouTube. And that’s been really fun for me. And I could kind of define my own game and my own rules. Even if I have to play along with like a YouTube algorithm.

[00:26:38] Doug Cunnington: I can make really long videos that most people don’t want to watch, but they do well on audio and that’s been great. You mentioned investing really over time, and this is a little bit counter to our entrepreneurship culture, which I kind of have my foot in both areas as an entrepreneur and then as really like a long-term investor where I invest in index funds. So continually for the last decade, I’ve been pulling money off the table and investing in index funds to remove the volatility. It’s not investment advice or anything like that, but it’s remove the risk. And then if you study some of the financial independence ideas, you can live off the interest, and I won’t harp on it too much, but you can sort of derisk in one area and move into another. And I enjoy this media production area, so I’ve been spending most of my time on that, trying to get people on the email list and it’s just the same sort of Digital Marketing ideas, create content, you have a nice big funnel, get them on the email list, you could bring them whatever products you own, you could sell agency, services or whatever. And it’s been great and it really does remove the risk. So when these updates come around, I don’t care as much, I don’t even know until people tell me about it.

[00:28:06] Doug Cunnington: And it’s been great because I remember whatever getting penalties back in the day, you get that email or you check your rankings one morning and it’s all red, everything’s red, you panic, try to figure out what to do. So it’s been great. And consequently, I’ve been working less and less over the last three years or more, which I recommend to everyone, do that.

Jason Barnard’s Insights on Google Updates and the Kalicube Process

[00:28:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Can I add something in there?

[00:28:29] Vladimir Ghilien: Of course, of course. If anything comes up in your mind, just go.

[00:28:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, from our perspective, like you were saying, Doug, I generally don’t notice when there’s an update, a core update, because it doesn’t affect Brand SERPs. Very rarely does any core update have any significant effect for me. So I tend to find out when somebody announces it on a podcast. What do you think of the latest update? The answer is I didn’t even know there was an update. So although I’m known for SEO, it’s not where I’m focused. I’m focused on the Knowledge Graph, Knowledge Panels in particular, which we track very, very closely at Kalicube. And the other thing is that we’re now promoting the Kalicube Process. And the Kalicube Process is learning from Google what it doesn’t understand and what it does understand about your brand and your industry.

[00:29:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Using those results from Google to analyze your industry, where you should be standing, so you’re standing where the audience is looking, creating the content and the branded marketing materials to then place it on these different platforms, not just on your own website. Google then sees all of this, joins the dots, understands that you’re the best example of your cohort and the SEO follows. And at Kalicube, the Kalicube Process has driven 90% of our clients and it’s not SEO, it’s marketing and branding packaged for SEO and 10% is from the SEO. So just kind of making the point is, I’m actually not as much in SEO as people seem to think.

Achieving Online Success for Businesses

[00:29:13] Vladimir Ghilien: Okay, good to know. But yeah, this, the blend of everything you were talking about from the start of this conversation just makes a perfect combination of the things that a modern company, a modern business should look into if it wants to succeed. Like take care of SEO, take care of Knowledge Panels, take care of investments and just take care of not being affected by Google updates and other things that may come up like just two minutes from now…

[00:30:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that is the thing is, if you can succeed online as a normal business and you forget about Google, but you demonstrate that you’re succeeding as a business with the right audience at the right time for the right services, but you demonstrate that to Google, Google will simply follow you. It really is as simple as that. Google is a stupid child walking right behind you. All you have to do is guide it in the right direction.

Staying Safe from Further Google Updates with Programmatic SEO

[00:30:58] Vladimir Ghilien: All right, so getting back to the questions from our audience, before I forget about them, the first one was from Dundee in YouTube. In the case of a programmatic SEO website, how can you stay safe for further update? I guess this question is for Koray in particular.

[00:31:21] Koray Gübür: To be able to keep these type of websites safe that, first thing that you should understand is that especially if it is a converter, all the pages say the same thing, which means that if I am converting five X to the Z, the answer is actually same for any other web page, which means that they are all actually giving the same answer. It also means that based on the fact you are not able to create a difference, the difference that you can create in this area will be coming actually from your micro semantics and presentation, which means how you demonstrate or present this information, how engaging it is and how well you are able to predict the next search activity or related search activities with your internal links. And if you are able to get these users continuously as a returning user to your website, and if you are able to show a better performance on the SERP, you will be actually safe. Another thing is that if you are able to increase your relevance, and let’s say if you are able to decrease your web pages cost for rendering or for crawling or for understanding just a little bit, just small amount, it will be huge effect because you probably have like 50,000 web pages. And if I’m able to increase your relevance just 1%, multiply it with 50,000 pages, it will be a huge difference. So that’s why when it comes to these type of web pages, usually I try to give the same answer with a table, with a list, with a visual, which also will be indexed and served, especially in the mobile, which will be increasing your CTR. Then I’m also trying to answer this question. Let’s say how to convert X to Y. It’s true, but let’s say you also need to give.

Effective Page Rank Distribution and SEO Strategies

[00:24:20] Koray Gübür: Actually, let’s assume a formula with the math semantic HTML because when it comes to math, we have series of text in HTML that you can be using. Then you will need to be ordering your internal links and you will also need to calculate your page rank distribution. People usually assume that I always work with the semantics, but it’s not true. I can tell I am coming from a PBN manager background from 2017 and I am not against Black Hat SEO at all. I am not working in a special relations team, so actually I am against them. So you need to also calculate your page rank holding, sculpting, how well you are distributing these page rank, how well you are giving the search engine signal of prominence of a single document.

Misconceptions About Semantic HTML Usage

[00:33:47] Koray Gübür: Because when it comes to calculators, converters, when I say converter, it’s not just about measurement units, it’s also about, let’s say, currency converting as well. You will need to understand the specific related search activities. Plus, let’s say you open a new page for every number. It means that you have eternal amount of pages, but search engine won’t be finding that much value. Let’s say 80% of these pages. In this case, you need to understand what are the most probable calculations and you need to open pages for them, of course. But when it comes to, let’s say, some other numbers, there is something that is called number indexing. Search engines or information red label systems, for instance, they usually index numbers like 1-2-4-5-7-8-9-10.

Background in PBN Management and Black Hat SEO

[00:34:33] Koray Gübür: But when it comes to the 4,000,500 and 564, it’s not that much a number that you can go for. In this case, you need to understand that which pages are not that much necessary. If you’re able to keep your website more, let’s say, shrinked, it means that you will be having more page rank per web page. Search engine also will be able to crawl your entire website in a faster way. Another thing is that when it comes to the external page rank, linking your homepage from your brand name and also linking your, let’s say, most important other pages to distribute these external page ranks further, it will be really helpful too, because when it comes to this type of programmatic websites for directories, for business directories, or for converters, calculators, or let’s say you are just listing all the attorneys in United States or all the tour agents in the United States. There are lots of websites like this and usually they all give the same address, same phone number, same logo, same of everything. It means you need to go beyond what your competitor has in a better presentation. Microsoft Bing is more open this when it comes to the quality of the web page.

Calculating PageRank Holding and Sculpting

[00:35:42] Koray Gübür: They directly tell that how you demonstrate is important as much as what you are demonstrating. So if you are giving the same info, try to give it in a better and more engaging way and try to do log file analysis regularly. Since you have too many pages, you can realize that search engine crawling may be 60% of unnecessary URLs every month. You can use your internal links to take attention to the more important areas, especially from your homepage. And I will do this too. Imagine that you publish a new page, but Google is recognizing this page two weeks later. How about making it just half hour? So indexation delay is an important signal for authority. I will try to do these type of tests after my first publication.

Importance of Calculators and Converters

[00:36:28] Koray Gübür: How long does it take Google bot to come crawl and index that without my intervention with URL inspection tool? If you’re able to make it shorter, it means Google is prioritizing you and the changes that you did until you get that prioritization will signal you what you should be doing in the future as well. I hope it helps.

Knowledge Graph Retrieval in Mathematical and Semantic Perspectives

[00:36:49] Vladimir Ghilien: Okay, thank you, Koray. I hope, Dundee, this answers your question. Let’s quickly move on to the next question from Johannes Faupel, the legend. It’s both for Koray and Doug. And the question is, can you please explain KGR from the mathematic perspective if possible, and the mathematic and semantic perspective. Some mean KGR does not work. I make other experiences. Thanks.

[00:37:22] Koray Gübür: KGR. Maybe he means Knowledge Graph retrieval or something like that, I assume. But if he can be more explicit about it, it will be easier.

Jason Barnard’s Journey on Navigating Google’s Evolution and Mastering Brand SERPs

[00:30:36] Vladimir Ghilien: Okay, Johannes, I reckon you’re listening right now. So if you can please specify what you mean. All right, so yeah, while we’re waiting for Johannes’ response to that, Jason, I’m really curious about how your, let’s say, growth alongside with Google as The Brand SERP Guy feels in perspective. I mean, have you been one or two steps ahead of Google at some points? And has Google been a couple of steps ahead of you? Have you been like playing this cat and mouse game with the engine?

[00:38:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I mean, I started back in 1998, I was a blue dog in a cartoon. We created lots of games and songs for kids and I bet my farm as it were on Google and optimized only for Google when there was InfoSeek and Excite and Magdalene and all the other and Lycos, and we just bet on Google. And either we were lucky and picked the right horse, or we were smart and picked the right horse, but definitely we picked the right horse. And then in 2012, I decided that I was going to stop with the blue dog and I wanted to be a digital marketer. And I realized that when people searched my name, it said, Jason Barnard is cartoon blue dog. And I thought, I have to reeducate Google, so it represents me the way I want to be represented today. And it forgets my past as a cartoon blue dog.

[00:38:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s when I started doing Brand SERPs, Knowledge Panels and so on and so forth. And then I built Kalicube Pro, which is designed to manage entities in Google’s Knowledge Graph and designed to manage the representation of a brand by Google. So Google’s representation of a brand is simply its opinion of the world’s opinion of you. So you can look at the Brand SERP, the representation of that brand, and say, well, if Google doesn’t understand, the world is confused. If I can clean up the world, Google will understand and the world will understand, and my audience will have a really clean funnel. And it’s worked incredibly well. And I built Kalicube Pro in 2015. Koray was using it in 2018, 2019, maybe 2020, I can’t remember quite when.

Kalicube’s Pioneering Role in Entity and Brand SERP Management

[00:39:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And as you know, Koray, nobody else was using it, and a lot of people thought it was just my own personal play thing. And what’s been interesting is this year, Google’s caught up with what Kalicube Pro could do eight years ago. So I’ve been waiting eight years for Google to catch up with me, and it’s pretty much caught up. So 2024 is going to be huge for us. So entity management and Brand SERP management wasn’t important in the core algorithms up until very recently. And the recent updates, the last six months have been an absolute boon for Kalicube, because what we were doing eight years ago is now actually useful. And so 2024 is going to be super huge. And the cat and mouse game, I was too far ahead, and now at Kalicube, the whole team is dedicated to staying eight years ahead at all times. Oh, and to do that, part of it is we listen to Koray a lot.

The Role of Kalicube Pro for Brand Positioning in SEO

[00:40:57] Koray Gübür: Thank you. I always tell that actually, the Kalicube Pro, it’s a great tool for actually branding and also brand positioning. And another thing is that I believe many SEO started to realize that too, because they try to appear in the generated entity list, it is the official name, but Google, we can call it like sometimes when you call, let’s say best SEO tools. Google gives the names at the top, like clickable and expandable for their results. And its official name is actually generated ranked entity list. But basically, imagine that you don’t appear in that area and to be able to appear in that area, you need to define your brand as relevant to that specific query or that topic, and you need to position your brand there by using third-party sources. So Kalicube Pro actually does it like years ago with the terminology as well, like corroboration pages, for instance, corroborating with each other to define a single thing with the help of the Entity Home, which is another concept from the Kalicube Process. And by using this type of third-party sources, Google can actually trust your brand further by finding reputation or reputable sources or statements about you. And right now, people started, actually some SEO started to, instead of buying links directly, they started to define themselves in a good way from the authoritative sources. Like one of the best tools for doing something, or it might be, let’s say an innovative technology for again, achieving something.

[00:40:48] Koray Gübür: And they started to also do PR for their founders and they connect their founders to their company and then they can do a podcast for their founders and they do other type of things and they try to manage Knowledge Panels. That’s why I say that actually it’s not always about the page rank that flows with the links. It is also about the meaning that actually is assigned to your entity if I am calling your brand in a really bad way. And other people also do the same, even if you have high page rank. And it was one of the issues, by the way, around 2019, one of my clients, a restaurant owner, called a scandal. But the good thing is that after the scandal, all the news websites, they were mentioning us, and Google thinks it’s a good thing and they ranked us higher. So the thing is that even if you do something bad, since the Google doesn’t understand what is told inside these pages, they ranked us higher. But in fact it was very bad.

[00:43:29] Koray Gübür: So imagine that I am in Amazon writing a review about a book or whatever, and I tell this is the worst book, worst computer, don’t buy it. And just because Google doesn’t understand the sentiment, it ranks that product higher in their own system too. But to prevent that situation beyond the links, beyond just amount of dimensions, they need to check annotation around that anchor text and annotation or sentiment in the page. And in that area, the Kalicube actually provides a kind of parallel process that you can manage from multiple different, let’s say, sources to create a surrounding sound about your brand with a high level of confidence so that Google can prioritize you as well.

Emphasizing Implicit Semantics in Kalicube Pro

[00:44:13] Vladimir Ghilien: How’s that for a shout out from Koray?

[00:44:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That was brilliant. What is delightful as well. And what was delightful, we’ve had a lot of agencies come on board on Kalicube Pro and not understand how to use it because they don’t understand that it’s not just about the schema markup. We talked to Jano van Driel, who helps us with our schema markup, who’s the biggest geek in schema markup in the world, and he talks about Kalicube as being implicit semantics as opposed to the explicit semantics of schema markup, which is really interesting perspective. And what Koray just described is what we’re trying to educate agencies to do is to look at the implicit semantics and rely on them and just use the explicit semantics as supporting evidence as opposed to primary evidence. And that’s huge. And most of the agencies we’ve been talking to haven’t really come on board with that. So if any agencies do want to come on board, come on board with a belief in implicit semantics, please.

Explanation of the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR)

[00:45:09] Vladimir Ghilien: Awesome. Awesome. All right, let’s get back to Johannes’s question. So I’ll just read it all over again. So, Koray and Doug, can you please explain Keyword Golden Ratio from the mathematic if possible, and semantic perspective? Some mean Keyword Golden Ratio doesn’t work. I make other experiences. Thanks.

[00:45:32] Doug Cunnington: All right, so I’ll try to remember. I haven’t defined it in a verbal situation in a while. So the Keyword Golden Ratio, it basically helps you find long-tail keywords. And you’re looking for the allintitle to be a ratio, right? So allintitle divided by the local monthly search volume. And that gives you some number. You want it to be under zero point 25 if possible.

[00:46:02] Doug Cunnington: There’s some wiggle room, right? There’s some wiggle room. The tools give different values, but it ends up being a fairly robust formula because it’s so simple and it’s very helpful for beginners. So if you’re watching this, you’re probably quite advanced. A lot of the topics that we covered were, like, way deep in the weeds. So if you understand what we’re talking about, especially the previous answers, then you probably have some layers that you can add onto the Keyword Golden Ratio to maybe make it more accurate. However, I will usually push back just because you have more data and you have more layers that you can put on top of a simple formula like the Keyword Golden Ratio. It doesn’t mean it’s more accurate, it just means you maybe have more data. Now, the Keyword Golden Ratio can be helpful if you integrate it with some other tools, for example, so that you can help prioritize.

[00:47:02] Doug Cunnington: Or there’s nothing better than go taking a look at the SERPs and then you can see what Google really thinks. But that is sort of the general idea, the definition of the Keyword Golden Ratio. One key thing is you’re looking for the local monthly search volume to be less than 250, which again, for beginners, forces you to find long-tail keywords. Like almost by definition, like that is going to be a long-tail keyword and it simplifies things. So when we have more sophisticated conversations like this one, sure, we could poke a lot of holes in it, however, one level up, right? It’s an okay idea, right?

[00:47:45] Doug Cunnington: We’ve probably seen other people explain it in different ways. This was a really difficult, and I’ll pat myself on the back. It was a good marketing situation. Like, just go look. It just came out of nowhere. I made it up, talked about it for like two years before anyone actually paid attention. And then people talk about it now.

[00:48:07] Vladimir Ghilien: If I could, I would have patted you on the back.

The Value of Attention and Criticism in Innovation

[00:48:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But that is pretty interesting. Doug is talking about something like that, creating something, talking about it. Nobody listens to you. And then all of a sudden everyone wakes up and isn’t it delightful?

[00:48:23] Doug Cunnington: It’s great. And one of the greatest signs is when you have people tell you that you’re wrong and tell you why it doesn’t work and then you knew you won because they’re paying attention to it and they’re trying to discredit it. And I’m like, yeah, they’re all valid points, but when you have some negativity out there, it means that you have people’s attention, which is great. That’s what we’re trying to do.

[00:48:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, well, that’s good news for me. Thank you. You’ve cheered me up no end today.

Semantic Perspective for Keyword Golden Ratio

[00:48:52] Vladimir Ghilien: Okay, Koray, do you have anything to add from the semantic perspective for the Keyword Golden Ratio. Yes.

Understanding Search Engine Indexing

[00:49:02] Koray Gübür: So the first thing to understand about is the indexing methodology of the search engines. So it is actually, especially before, when I say before, I mean like three or the four years ago, it was working way much better, I believe. But it is mainly because of the search engine’s methods for indexing things, because when you do a mathematical calculation to understand the relevance of a page. You should understand that a search engine is like a blind librarian. They just see which verse appear with which words at where, but they understand nothing inside the content and then they guess that which shelf in the library is the best shelf to put this book in and Keyword Golden Ratio there. By putting most useful keywords as much as possible to your title tag, you directly signal your relevance and you tell search engine that, look, I belong to this index, this shelf. I know you are blind and I am guiding you to put me through this shelf as much as possible. Today, there is one extra layer there which is sentential semantics.

The Importance of Semantic Relevance and Structured Content in SEO

[00:50:10] Koray Gübür: No need for confusing. Basically, it means that semantics based on sentences, and right now search engines are able to process your text in a better way and they are able to understand your sentences, which means that they are not that blind anymore. And in this case, if you are just putting all the keywords to increase your ratio to your title tag without creating a kind of proper sound, a proper logic or proper signaling your content format that well. And if the rest of the document is not following what you put in your title tag, even if you are able to signal your relevance, you won’t be able to be responsive to the needs behind the query. Which means that while trying to increase a ratio, you can decrease your responsiveness or usefulness. And if they realize that, especially these mathematical calculations might be helpful for clustering the pages, and if they realize that, most of the time, let’s say over 95% of the web pages that increase this ratio, or trying to hit these specific things, if they are not responsive enough, they can cluster all these documents and they can actually demote them altogether. So that’s why usually, at least in my framework too, I always tell that what you put in your title tag with a proper order should be followed in your document as well. For instance, if I am talking about glasses, let’s say I write a title tag here, glasses types, frames and lenses. If lenses appear at the end with the title tag, I also put it to the most bottom part of the document, for instance, because it’s always front title.

The Impact of GDR on SEO and Google’s Algorithm Updates

[00:51:48] Koray Gübür: And in this case again, I am mentioning lots of important query terms, which means actually my GDR again will be high. But at the same time, what I have written there has been followed together also in the document with a proper distributional semantics and prioritization. So when I say there is an extra layer, I just mean that since they’re able to understand what you are doing there sometimes using some simple title tags, and let’s say focusing on the inside the documents a little bit more might be more helpful. But I know that around 2017, 2018, 2019 and even 2020, it was working really well. And once they improved their algorithms, it became like this. I can add one more thing in the news SEO, Google doesn’t have time to process your sentences that much, which means if they trust your website, if you are authority for a topic, you can actually leverage GDR in a more aggressive way. But just be sure that you are also giving the value that you promised in the title as much as possible.

[00:52:48] Koray Gübür: Because with a core update it can be reversed. But it is more open to exploit that Google’s need, because they need to index and serve the content like in seconds. There is no time for reading the sentences and compare all these things to each other.

Keyword Density and Research

[00:53:03] Doug Cunnington: I want to jump right in. I agree with 90%. Part of what your answer included was keyword density. I think you thought that because of the ratio, but this is all on the keyword research side. So I agree with you as far as on page density, keyword usage, all that. Great. But just so people don’t get confused.

Jason Barnard’s Take on Koray Gubur’s Influence

[00:52:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. I wanted to add something as well. Number one is I’m understanding more and more why Leanne on the Kalicube team talks to me about Koray all the time. The point of which it becomes quite tiring and quotes all of the things that Koray’s been saying today. But the other thing is, as Koray was speaking, I was just imagining this. I mean, he’s had a blind librarian, I would say a word-counting child librarian that doesn’t yet know how to read. And now it’s learnt to read. And on top of that, it’s got these big piles of books coming in, and it’s got piles of books from different sources. And it’s prioritizing the piles of books that it’s been seeing have been useful in the past and have a good history and have become authoritative.

[00:54:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So I’ve got this little child in the library doing this with the books in some mad Disney cartoon, which is fun for me, and I don’t know if it’s helpful for anybody else, but it certainly makes sense for me.

Wrapping Up and Embracing Mentorship in the SEO Industry

[00:54:26] Vladimir Ghilien: Well, it’s definitely fun, which is a great part. Yeah. Wow. It’s been almost an hour of us talking, you guys talking, discussing things, and it’s been awesome so far. So eventually we have to wrap this up little by little. But one thing I just wanted to mention before we actually wrap things up is that probably the most important thing that I’ve noticed within the SEO industry and all the other clusters associated with it built around it, is that a lot of people, a lot of great people, awesome professionals, huge specialists, they’re eager to share their knowledge and I mean, you’ve been doing just that throughout this hour and it flew just like that, yeah, eager to share the knowledge, help others, help understand things in depth. So that being said, Doug has recently joined the Odys Mentorship Program. So he’s now one of the mentors and you can reach out to him and book a coaching session with him.

[00:55:45] Vladimir Ghilien: You can find the link to his mentor page right in the description box. So Doug, at the end of the day, what led you to taking this offer and jumping on board with the mentorship initiative?

[00:54:14] Doug Cunnington: Well, I love what you guys are doing at Odys, of course, and I’ve enjoyed coaching actually since my corporate days where I think I learned probably as much as any other time for mentoring and helping onboard folks and just teaching and help to bring new managers and new higher level management in place, right? So as I’ve grown online, I have a lot of experience. A lot of times it’s things that didn’t work and it’s very helpful to save people time so they don’t make those same mistakes, which cost money, which is horrible, but it also costs time, which is even worse. So when you guys proposed this, I thought this is a great way to help folks out. And a lot of the other mentors are very strong, just like our other guests today, very strong in the SEO area, which I don’t try to pretend like I know things that I don’t, which I think is helpful. The other part is I am very good at scaling management. templates, systems because of my background in operations and project management.

[00:57:23] Doug Cunnington: So those are the main areas where I think I could help out, especially if someone is in a spot where they are growing and they do need to bring new folks on. So I appreciate you guys inviting me.

[00:57:37] Vladimir Ghilien: And we’re happy to have you on board. By the way, Stewart Blister Vickers, who has also been a participant of the show, has also joined the initiative. You can go to the odys.global/mentors and check out the entire list of our mentors and more great people are coming up into the program. So yeah, just stay tuned and keep your eyes open.

Kalicube’s Open Knowledge Philosophy

[00:58:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Talking about sharing, I mean, Koray shares an awful lot, shared an awful lot with me over the years. And at Kalicube, we’re really here to share. We’ve got nothing to hide. We share everything we learn. The only barrier we have is the amount of time it takes to get things out of our brains and onto the web and into audio. And one thing is our business model is based on the idea if we share everything we learn, there are going to be enough people who get it wrong or who have sufficiently complicated situations they can’t deal with it themselves. So everybody come along to kalicube.com. Take everything you can.

[00:43:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Somebody said they were reverse engineering what we were doing at Kalicube. You’re not. Take it. It’s there to be taken and to be shared. We’re relying on the people who realize that Kalicube Pro will save them time or that have problems that are much more interesting for us. So we get to solve the interesting stuff. So sharing, I think it’s wonderful and it’s delightful.

Wrapping Up an Amazing Year of Odys Talks

[00:59:10] Vladimir Ghilien: Amazing. Guys, thank you very much for this discussion. It was a blast. I’m totally blown away. I think this is a perfect wrap up for this year’s, the first year of Odys Talks livestream. Even though it wasn’t like the full year, it was started in May, but still, we’ve been going live weekly pretty much except for a couple of weeks. And yeah, this is a perfect way to wrap things up. So by the way, guys, Merry Christmas to you. I forgot that there’s Christmas just a couple of days ago. And happy New Year that’s about to come. Is there anything you would love to tell the audience before we…

[01:00:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Happy birthday, Vladimir. It’s your birthday today and a happy new year.

[01:00:10] Vladimir Ghilien: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Now you’re making me oblige. Yeah. All right. But still the question still holds true. Would you like to add anything to tell the audience before we shut things down?

[01:00:31] Koray Gübür: I would like to, but after Jason sings I can’t sing like that.

[01:00:39] Vladimir Ghilien: All right then, once again, thank you, everyone. Stay tuned for next week’s episode. It’s going to be January 3rd and we’re going to be live with another great panel. Stay put. Stay tuned. We’ll announce it early next week just as usually. So yeah. Thank you, guys.

[01:01:02] Koray Gübür: Thank you.

[01:01:02] Vladimir Ghilien: Happy New Year. It was a blast.

[01:01:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Happy New Year. Thank you.

[01:01:08] Vladimir Ghilien: Wow, guys, I’m just so happy about this conversation and Riverside didn’t let me down this time. It worked perfectly. Well, so thanks to each and every one of you for joining for doing this. Doug, thanks for waking up early.