The whole thing with SEO is, you know, if you really set up a website right the first time, it just pays dividends and dividends and dividends in the future. It's really beautiful to watch. Whereas I think a lot of businesses and business owners, they get short-sighted and see the paid return quite instantly. And so I think it's our job as marketers or anyone in the SEO space to educate some of those business owners and explain that, you know, while this might take, you know, three, four, five, six months.
It really does pay off over time. We're here today with Brittany Muller, Senior SEO Scientist at Moz, where we're going to talk about SEO, which makes sense. So Brittany, you started off as a Public Relations Communications undergrad, and now you are Senior SEO Scientist at the premier SEO digital analytics company. How in the world did that happen?
Yeah, such a weird path. Um, in a nutshell, I basically couldn't find a job after college. And so I packed up my car and I drove out to Breckenridge, Colorado to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a snowboard bum full time, which I love. We all have to have goals.
Yeah, I set my goal real high. And after, you know, a season out there and waiting tables, I got pretty bored and was, you know, anxious to do something. And I met up with a local realtor.
who taught me all about SEO. And the second I figured out that you can know how many searches are happening a month for a particular thing, my life was forever changed. I thought that was the most interesting thing in the world, that that information is just at our fingertips. And so I began making up words and creating these one-off websites to rank for all sorts of things.
Did some low-level... nefarious things I didn't know were that nefarious at the time, was leaving corporate 500 companies messages within their Google Analytics accounts, things like that, which I highly suggest no one does. But it was interesting because my goal was to rank number one for Burton US Open, day of the event, the first time they came to Vail.
And so I had worked seven months on this effort and day of the event rolls around and sure enough, my website ranks right above burton.com. And so that's when I kind of knew I was onto something and caused some waves in the SEO community, as you might imagine. And a couple of people reached out to me and were like, you know, you can do this and make money. Like you can do this and like get paid and have, you know. And so I teamed up with someone in Vail Rich Stats and we had an awesome time.
growing his agency for a year, and then I left to start my own. I had pride marketing for around five years, and we were a boutique medical marketing agency that worked with private practices where we had sort of figured out how that whole process worked. We had it down to a science.
And then I started speaking at conferences like this, and that's where I met a lot of my current industry friends today. Rand Fishkin told me that Cyrus was leaving Moz and they would love it if I were to apply. And so I went through the whole process and now I'm at Moz. That was kind of a crazy journey. That's an awesome journey.
Yeah, yeah. And we'll ask you about later on as well. So businesses, a lot of times, it seems that they launch a new product, they start a new business, they start a new division, but they don't think about SEO and they don't think about inbound until they've already done this.
Yeah. And it seems like there may be some reason that they might want to think about this beforehand. What would you say to those groups as far as someone starting something new?
Why is it important to think about inbound and SEO long before they do all the launch? Yeah, I think it's important to consider SEO before you even come up with a new name for something. You have to consider how it's going to be perceived.
Who's currently ranking for that keyword term? Can you even get the domain? There's all these technical aspects. that really do go into that naming that I think are an afterthought for most people, which is a shame because you could set yourself up much better for online success if you had done some of that research beforehand.
In addition to that, I think it's really important to consider how people are searching for your product or service online before you even launch a website, right? Is it intuitive? Are you answering all the questions that people are asking at the top? Are you, you know, is all the information there?
Because I think those two things go hand in hand and really can set you up for success. Now it seems like a lot of people are into the the concept that they can game SEO And we hear this all the time and they're not taking it as seriously as I think they should Yeah, so what are your thoughts on this because I'm sure you see that all the time I'm sure you have even clients that come to you and say well just make me number one right You know by some magic that you'll do right? Yeah, that's tricky.
I mean there's still Blackhat things that are being done today that work in certain industries even to be competitive in certain industries, there's almost a layer of that that has to occur, which is a shame. But I do think Google's getting much better at it. And there's no reason why you couldn't do those efforts more ethically. There's so many great resources now available for content creation, for technical SEO optimization, to really nail those things down and see results that way. Because the whole thing with SEO is you...
If you really set up a website right the first time, it just pays dividends and dividends and dividends in the future. It's really beautiful to watch. Whereas I think a lot of businesses and business owners, they get short-sighted and see the paid return quite instantly.
And so I think it's our job as marketers or anyone in the SEO space to educate some of those business owners and explain that while this might take three, four, five, six months, it really does pay off over time. It's interesting. I always think that SEO has changed a lot in the past five years. I'm curious what your thoughts are on how it's changed.
And also, how is it going to change in the next five years? What's going to change that's going to make it different for marketers? Yeah, that's a really good question. So as far as five years ago to today, there's definitely been some big changes.
I mean, we've seen Google shift their focus on mobile. And so now they're... crawling your site mobile first. That's what that whole thing was about, right?
And they want to see how you're delivering your content or your value on a mobile device. So that's been probably the biggest shift in the last five years. In addition to that, we've seen Google get much better, right?
We see them evolving and continuing to answer questions in the SERP space, search engine result page. So those pages are getting more robust. They're having more rich answers and we're seeing an increase in zero click-through rates.
So the zero click-through rate is when someone goes, does a search for something, they get the answer that they're looking for and they leave. They never have to visit a website. And this is continuing to grow because Google's surfacing this information.
And so we have to get a little bit savvier as marketers and SEOs and say, okay, while they might be answering this particular thing or this particular thing. we can still provide so much value in these other areas they have yet to get into, right? And might not ever. So our job as marketers is to answer that question, but also give them some reason to click through. Otherwise, we're not getting what we need.
Absolutely. I mean, marketers should 100% know what featured snippets they currently own. So that's just that first answer.
It looks like an answer box. Because if you're fulfilling all of the answers in there, and it's not long enough to say read more, people might not click through to your site. So the thing is, you know, always make your lists longer than seven or six, depending on what you're seeing in search results. But yeah, you sort of have to play that game to ensure that things are being clicked through.
And similarly, if you're not in featured snippet spaces that you hope to be, but you are on page one for those terms, you are in contention to steal that, which is a lot of fun. and super interesting. So yeah, you have to be a little bit more on your toes and savvier as far as looking at this data.
And the future of search? Yeah, the future of search looks interesting. So Google just had their big IO conference.
And I was surprised by a couple of things. One is their messaging shift from smart devices to helpful devices. They really want to drive it home that your phones and these devices in your kitchen and the home hub, that these are providing value to your life, that they're helping you get things done faster. So this is getting into more action-oriented things.
And the other thing was their continued focus on voice. Voice has sort of been a big buzz term for the last several years. We haven't seen as much growth in voice as we sort of expected to see several years ago. But the focus that Google has on it has not seemed to change. And we do see them getting better at answering voice queries.
They have very long ways to go. But understanding where those voice queries are coming from and ensuring that your client or website can... have real estate in that space is essential to moving forward.
From a marketing strategy perspective, it seems like a lot of people in strategy aren't thinking about SEO. They're not thinking about search. They're not thinking about inbound.
They're actually just kind of thinking that those are tactical issues and they're not really strategy issues. So from an SEO company that cares about SEO, why is SEO and inbound a strategy issue and not just a tactical issue? Yeah. This sort of blows my mind and hurts my heart a little bit because I consider SEO to be digital psychology.
We are looking at the ins and outs of how people are searching online and what's effective and what's not. And if you're not understanding that full funnel process from the data side of it, from how people are actually doing these searches all the way up to a transaction, you're missing a big piece of that puzzle. And I think... that helps you do everything else better. There's no reason why that data can't help support paid.
There's no reason why that data can't help support offline marketing. You know, at the end of the day, these are people having real questions and they have true intents that they're after. And if you're not serving it in the way that's desired, and that's the greatest part of the whole thing too, is that Google's search results is a window into intent. Google houses all of the world's data. they know what sort of content someone is looking for when they do a particular search.
For example, if you were to create the best article in the world on DIY Halloween costumes, but you didn't have any images in your article, you would never rank. Because all Google shows for that search is images and videos. It's all visual. So if you're not understanding the form of content that people are desiring in a particular space, you're really missing the boat on all sorts of aspects for your strategy. Makes sense.
Yeah. You went from a non-technical background to a technical background. Yeah.
And there are a lot of people who want to know how they can move into that. They understand that SEO or analytics, they understand that these things are part of the future of marketing. Yet they're not sure what they can do.
So what can they do from, and you've seen a lot of people who've probably done the same thing that you've done to some degree. What are things that people can do to move themselves from this non-technical background into a technical space? Yeah, that's a good question. And I do see that a lot where people, just because they don't have a technical background, don't feel comfortable or confident going into that space.
And that's where I highly suggest you figure out how to build a website. And not from scratch, not you have to be a perfect programmer, but just that you know how to set up. a WordPress site on a server somewhere and that you know how those connections come to play.
Just understanding how, you know, your domain name points to your server files that then get fetched for the browser. Just knowing that path helps you wrap your head around technical elements. And it also really gives you this beautiful space to play around and to experiment on your own site and to break things.
You know, I still have several of these today that I will run different technical tests on. Or if I'm not feeling totally comfortable in meta tags or how this might work, I will go try it there first. Right. It's a great way to experience these things before, you know, you're kind of put on the spot for a client or, you know, a business. But in addition to that, I'm a firm believer that, you know, you should be breaking things.
Go separate, break it, break that website. You know, set things up technically that you are above what you're comfortable doing just so you can start getting the hang of it. And it's okay to do that when, you know, you're just starting out. It's okay to do that when you've purchased your own really cheap server and can just goof around on it.
That's half the fun. Now, when you say breaking things, what do you mean by that? I literally mean just breaking things.
Yeah. So breaking your website so you can't figure out how to get back into it. I mean, I've done that so many times.
But it's given me the confidence to speak about these things. Because without that, I would be relying on observations or what I've heard others say. And I guess for me, at least, it means a lot to know what I'm speaking about, to have gotten my hands dirty and know how that works.
And then you're able to really communicate and create good relationships with developers, which is half the battle in SEO, right? You need to be able to know how to speak their language. in order to get things implemented and also just to be on the same page.
Because a lot of times there's this perceived riff between developers and SEOs that is completely unnecessary. We have so much to learn from developers and developers can learn from SEOs and why these things need to be set up a certain way. So just being, you know, dangerous enough to break things or to know where things at facilitates this level of communication that helps you get so much more done.
I like this idea of finding value in the errors or finding value in the mistakes. Absolutely. And then learning from that.
So in your career, and your career is moving great. And what are the things, I guess, that you've learned that have helped you to kind of move where you are today? And what's the future?
What's the, you know, where are you going? Yeah. And I'm not saying away from Moz.
I'm just saying, where are you going as far as the future of what you're going to be doing? Oh, gosh, that's a really good question. So I think what, there's two big things. Well, let's say three big things in a nutshell that have helped me get to where I am today. One is this element of fun.
And that I, when I, like I said, I would get so excited trying to figure out how many searches a month people were doing for like Britney Spears, you know, silly stuff like that. I had so much fun. This was a giant game to me.
So instead of going home and watching a movie, I would tinker and play like this was a true passion of mine. So if you can find it, whether it be a space where you're really passionate about it, or you can become passionate about the different SEO things that get things done in that space, latch onto that because that facilitates so much curiosity. This wasn't work for me. And a lot of it still isn't today.
It's, I'm... insatiably curious to know how these things work, like what makes this tick versus this. And so because of that curiosity, I was constantly on Twitter. And that's where I learned tons of stuff and how quickly things were changing was all coming through Twitter through these influencers. And that really helped me move the needle.
In addition to the third thing, just being super competitive. You know, I grew up playing sports and... brother and I think if you can provide that level of competition and again it's like a game and you want to win and you can have fun with it it's it's just the perfect mix to accelerate your career whether you know it could be in whatever industry you can use all of those awesome yeah thank you thank you so much for your time and really appreciate it we appreciate you flying all the way from Seattle to Miami and hopefully you've had some nice weather But thank you very much. Thank you.
Thanks for having me.