Search with Candour – Details, episodes & analysis

Maria Scheibengraf joins Jack Chambers-Ward to explain why localization is so important for your international SEO strategy.

Direct translation just doesn’t work for SEO. You need to take culture and nuance into account when it comes to your international SEO strategies.

Maria explains the common problems that many agencies and SEOs face with multilingual SEO and how to get SEO localization right. Follow Maria Scheibengraf

• Follow Maria on LinkedIn
• Follow Crisol Translations

Resources

• Maria's companion blog post
• Book recommendation: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• The Nike 'Am I a Bad Person? ad

Sponsors

• Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
• Start your 14-day free trial of Optmyzr
• Book your personalised Optmyzr demo

Chapters

• 00:00 Start
• 00:00:34 Intro
• 00:01:37 Sponsor: SE Ranking
• 00:03:45 Sponsor: Optmyzr
• 00:06:39 Welcome to the show Maria Scheibengraf
• 00:08:06 Why is SEO localisation so important?
• 00:11:00 The flawed workflow of SEO translation
• 00:15:10 Direct translation doesn’t work
• 00:16:21 Localisation is so much more than language
• 00:20:33 Book recommendation: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• 00:20:53 High context vs low context communication
• 00:22:06 British humour vs American humor
• 00:24:00 The importance of technical SEO in localisation
• 00:27:25 Understand what devices your audience are using
• 00:30:00 Common problems with SEO localisation
• 00:36:35 Linguists should learn SEO skills
• 00:40:30 When should SEO localisation be involved in the process?
• 00:41:09 The ideal international SEO workflow
• 00:44:35 How NOT to convince Germans to buy your products
• 00:47:45 How to budget for SEO localisation
• 00:49:20 Reuse resources to save time and money
• 00:51:45 Reframe your unique selling points to different cultures
• 00:54:05 Understanding cultural-coding
• 00:55:32 Be mindful of your messaging in different cultures
• 00:57:10 Marketing is still about evoking emotions in your audience
• 00:58:00 Even emotions are culturally coded
• 00:58:37 ‘Am I a bad person?’ Nike ad
• 01:00:34 Individualistic vs collectivist cultures
• 01:02:58 Search behaviour is becoming more conversational in English
• 01:05:05 AI is not trained on minority languages
• 01:06:58 Adapt your language to cultural standards
• 01:08:12 Even small changes in language can make a big difference
• 01:09:12 Don’t say ‘please’ in your Spanish content!
• 01:10:51 How language changes through generations
• 01:11:35 “De nada” means “it’s nothing” not “you’re welcome”
• 01:13:49 Tiny errors can really change your messaging
• 01:14:08 How to build trust with your audience
• 01:15:40 Where to follow Maria Scheibengraf
• 01:16:36 Outro

Eric Hoover joins the Search With Candour podcast this week to discuss how to use AI for SEO. Yes, we’re finally talking about AI tools in detail and how to integrate AI into your SEO workflow.

Eric has recommendations for using AI and LLMs for keyword research, competitor analysis, content creation, ecommerce optimisation and if SearchGPT can ever dethrone Google as the primary search engine.

Sponsors

1. Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
2. Get your tickets for the live Brighton podcast

Links to follow Eric:

• Follow Eric on LinkedIn
• Eric's Website

Links to resources/articles

• Unmasking AI by Dr Joy Buolamwini
• AI in SEO, Treat it like a New Team Member
• Human-AI Collaboration
• FeedGen AI
• Ranch style SEO vs skyscraper style content
• Most people can’t identify AI-generated content

Chapters

• 00:00:00 How to do SEO in an AI world
• 00:00:28 Intro
• 00:01:37 Sponsor: SE Ranking
• 00:03:45 Live brightonSEO podcast 2 Oct 2024
• 00:05:44 Welcome to the show Eric Hoover
• 00:06:01 Let’s talk about cats (briefly)
• 00:08:16 SEO in an AI world
• 00:10:49 Book recommendation: Unmasking AI by Dr Joy Buolawmini
• 00:12:25 Working with AI as an assistant
• 00:14:37 You should learn to use AI in your workflow
• 00:15:20 How to use AI in keyword research
• 00:18:10 How to use AI in competitor analysis
• 00:19:35 Use AI to automate tasks and save your brain bandwidth
• 00:23:10 How to use AI for ecommerce optimisation
• 00:29:34 How to use AI to create content briefs
• 00:32:06 How to use AI to brainstorm new ideas
• 00:36:30 The common pitfalls of AI content
• 00:39:00 Can readers recognise AI-generated content?
• 00:41:36 How AI is integrated into the rest of our lives
• 00:44:50 Ranch-style SEO strategy works for AI-powered search
• 00:52:20 Content strategy for AI Overviews
• 00:54:20 Waiting for SearchGPT
• 00:56:50 Will there be a Google killer?
• 00:59:25 How search behaviour is shifting away from Google
• 01:02:50 Where to follow Eric Hoover
• 01:03:50 Outro and thanks

Sponsors:

• SEO Testing - Begin your exclusive extended free trial today
• Search 'n' Stuff - Use code CANDOUR20 for 20% off your tickets

Mark and Jack reunite in the Candour studio to say goodbye to Universal Analytics and Google's continuous scroll, discuss why Bing's index is more important than you think and why AI Overviews are now showing for fewer than 7% of queries.

Time stamps:

• 00:00:11 - Intro
• 00:01:14 - Sponsor: SEO Testing
• 00:05:00 - Sponsor: Search ‘n’ Stuff
• 00:07:30 - In loving memory…
• 00:08:18 - RIP to Google’s continuous scroll
• 00:14:09 - RIP to Universal Analytics
• 00:16:06 - Prompt injection leads to demotion on Bing
• 00:22:34 - The Bing index powers a lot of LLMs
• 00:34:02 - AI Overviews only show for 7% of queries
• 00:43:30 - Outro

Links and resources

• Previous episode about GA4 key events and attribution
• Previous episode about GA4 with Krista Seiden & Simo Ahava
• RIP Universal Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528?hl=en
• Prompt injection with Bing: https://www.seroundtable.com/prompt-injection-bing-webmaster-guidelines-37650.html
• Bing's index is more important than you think: https://x.com/jes_scholz/status/1812693442558087653
• AI Overviews only showing for 7% of queries: https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-visibility-new-low-444048

On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by digital marketing extraordinaire (and Jack's new best friend), Jamar Ramos.

Jamar joins Jack to discuss:

• Why you should be watching All Elite Wrestling (yes, they talk about professional wrestling for a few minutes...)
• Jamar's transition from creative writing to digital marketing
• How much does representation matter in digital marketing?
• What is it like being a BIPOC founder of a marketing agency?
• What can people in positions of management do to highlight POC?

Full show notes, transcript and links at search.withcandour.co.uk

Welcome dear listeners to this big bumper episode of Search With Candour, our Halloween Spooktacular 2022!

Joining your (g)host Jack Chambers this week is the mortifying Myriam Jessier and shocking Stéphanie Walter.

In the first half of the episode, our horrible hosts play you some of the scariest SEO stories from BrightonSEO's best and brightest SEO people, including:

1. Steve Paine from SISTRIX (who sponsors this podcast)
2. Lidia Infante
3. Dixon Jones
4. Arnout Hellemans
5. Kyle Place 
6. Billie Geena Hyde
7. Adam Gent
8. Sean Fleming 
9. John Mueller
10. Andi Jarvis
11. Crystal Carter
12. Malcolm Slade
13. Andrew Optimisey
14. Sarah McDowell
15. Martin Splitt 
16. Azeem
17. Alizée Baudez

In the second half, Jack & Myriam learn all about Stéphanie's horror stories from people trying to build links from her blog.

Full show notes, transcript and links available at search.withcandour.co.uk.

In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Maddy Osman, the founder of The Blogsmith and best-selling author of Writing for Humans and Robots. Jack & Maddy discuss:

• Why it's important to write for humans AND robots
• Common mistakes made by SEOs that impact their writing
• How has AI writing affected writers in 2022
• Some tool recommendations for SEOs and writers

And much more!

The full show notes and transcript can be found at search.withcandour.co.uk

In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by the incredible Olga Zarr, the founder and CEO of SEOSLY.

Jack & Olga join forces to discuss SEO audits (Olga's favourite topic!) including:

• The first steps of auditing a new website
• How regularly should you audit a website?
• What are some of the most common things auditing tools miss?

And in case you missed it, here is Olga's in-depth article about her auditing process: https://seosly.com/blog/seo-audit/

Search With Candour is supported by SISTRIX, the SEO's toolbox. Go to sistrix.com/swc to try some of their fantastic tools for free.

For full show notes, links, and transcripts, go to search.withcandour.co.uk

In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Alex Hickson, Head of Digital PR at TrunkBBI to discuss:

• How to inspire clients to try digital PR
• Thinking outside the box for opportunities
• Breaking out of your brand bubble

Full show notes, links, and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk

Welcome to the Search With Candour podcast. Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by the inimitable Mark Williams-Cook for a live SEO Q&A!

That's right, live and unedited! This episode was recorded live and broadcast via Mark's LinkedIn page.

Click here to watch the video version on LinkedIn.

Questions answered include:

• How do you decide when it's best to canonicalise multiple variants of a page over simply making one page with a self-referring canonical?
• Is it necessary to keep URLs short or we can keep them as per our need (to cover the focus keyword)?
• I see comments on having a "Link Building Strategy". As a small business should we worry about this, or should we concentrate on good content that builds authority and attracts links?
• Is location tagging images still effective?
• Is HARO worth the effort or do you prefer any other alternative for link building?

and more!

Full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk

In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by freelance SEO consultant Luce Rawlings to discuss:

• Starting your career in-house vs in an agency
• When's the right time to go freelance?
• The pros and cons of freelancing
• How can you continue to learn throughout your SEO career?
• SISTRIX's Visibility Leaders 2022 https://www.sistrix.com/visibility-leaders/retail-2022-overview

Full show notes, links, and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk