Kaspar
===
[00:00:00] Olga: Hi everyone. It's Olga Zarr from SEOSLY. Today I have a very special guest. This is Kaspar Szymanski. How are you doing,
[00:00:13] Kaspar: Olga? Thank you. And, uh, thank you for having me on the show. It's a real pleasure. I'm humbled. I was looking forward to this opportunity to be on your show for a long time. Very excited to be here today.
[00:00:23] Olga: Yeah, yeah. I am super excited to have you here because I know you have so much, so much knowledge and I have so many questions for you, and I hope to pick, pick your brains a lot.
[00:00:33] Olga: But I also want to get to know your story because I think this is a very fascinating one. So why don't we start by you just saying, a word, a sentence about what you are up to in ss e o and how you started when you started. Well, like what brought you to Ss e O? I'm super curious to learn.
[00:00:52] Kaspar: I'm humbled.
[00:00:53] Kaspar: This is, you're very kind. Thank you. And, uh, when you're saying award, how much time do we have? Because I, we
[00:00:58] Olga: have at
[00:00:59] Kaspar: least an hour. I tend to talk, um, extensively about seo. O I I'm excited to get carried away. Uh, my Seo o adventure started really, uh, when I joined Google. Um, that was actually in 2006. I joined the Google search team.
[00:01:13] Kaspar: Um, and that was of course, uh, a huge privilege. Um, I didn't know it at the time, but it, it, it provided me with the opportunity to gain insights into how Google, uh, search really works. Something that of course, uh, I benefit from my, my clients or clients search brothers, uh, do comprise, still benefit from.
[00:01:32] Kaspar: But, um, you know, that, that period that, um, my tenure that, um, uh, I had at Google, um, that was also an opportunity to meet people. Other very motivated, very skilled people. One of those guys that I started working early on with was Philly Visa. Uh, again, he was a Google search developer at the time. Um, and we, we hit it off.
[00:01:56] Kaspar: Um, Philly, I mean, Philly is a household name in the industry. Obviously a total rockstar on, on any SS e o conference stage. Uh, most people have either met or heard or read something from Philly. Yeah. But, uh, 2006 we just, we just ran into each other. We started working on shared projects at Google Search and that collaboration that initially started at, at Google, um, that actually spilled over into us, uh, building search products together a couple years down the line.
[00:02:23] Kaspar: So nowadays, We apply what we learned, um, those insights gained. We apply all of that knowledge and a huge volume of data because we are very much data driven, um, for the benefit of our clients. Um, we, uh, yeah, we are a boutique agency. If you want boutique Ss e o consulting agency. We help a handful of clients at any given time, typically in very competitive, uh, environments, which is obviously, as you know, yourself, uh, uh, great fun and, and, uh, yeah, it's a spectacular challenge.
[00:02:53] Kaspar: Just, uh, you're doing what you, what you, what you're loving. So this is fantastic. And, uh, I have to say Philly, uh, um, next to the experience at Google, the insights, um, meeting Philly, of course, all of these things, uh, trickled down and helped to build the foundation for search brothers.com, which is what we still do very successfully today.
[00:03:15] Kaspar: The, um, the activities, what, what we do. Our job comes with a lot of benefits. Um, the fun at work aside, I, uh, am privileged to participate in shows such as yours, that being one. Another one is going to conferences and speaking and sharing, um, with the public. And that's something I'm, I'm tremendously enjoying.
[00:03:36] Kaspar: I've been doing this for now, 17 years. Oh. Um, so, you know, you, you don't just travel great places. Uh, you also have the opportunity to meet a lot of people, um, to exchange, to learn from other people. So overall, it's a very happy story for myself, and I'm happy to say our clients tend to, uh, share that experience as well.
[00:03:56] Olga: Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. I heard, I read a lot about Philly. I think I like his tool very much. He has this tool for I think for debugging speed issues. I think he also now has one for interaction to next paint. I think I was playing with that just recently, so I definitely want to have him on the show as well.
[00:04:16] Olga: But talking about, uh, Serge Brothers, can you like, give me even more details, like is there only the two of you or are there more ex Googlers that are like what services exactly do you offer? Do you do like standard things that people offer, like s e o audits or is it like more strategy oriented?
[00:04:35] Olga: Tell me more about it.
[00:04:37] Kaspar: Okay. Um, yes and no. Um, we do offer, of course, the, if you want classic, um, standard ss e o audit, except it's not really standard because it's, it's really the, the, the stress, the factor that we really consider, uh, quite tremendously, that that's really, that's really tech technical factors, tech technical signals, and that's founded all on data.
[00:04:59] Kaspar: So when we, when we work with the client side, um, especially when there's, those are really rather substantial platforms. We, we crawl a lot. We crawl both on and off page. We utilize, uh, commercial tools. You know, um, I believe we can mention on the show a couple of really good ones there. Um, uh, deep Crow, um, being one of my favorite nowadays called Domar.
[00:05:21] Kaspar: Yeah. Uh, on crawl, uh, Spotify, screaming Frog, you name it. Just, just a name, a handful, you know, there is of course right. Which is fantastic. Uh, we tap into data from Lingo, search tools, majestic, ah, hfs, and of course Google Search Console and binging web master tools, you know, and as, as a, as as if you want, uh, the, uh, Google person or Google Ex Google, uh, fanboy.
[00:05:43] Kaspar: Uh, I'm the first one to say Bing. Web Master Tools is a treasure tool of data. So, yeah, totally. It's very good. Very exactly right. You, you're on the same page. Um, so we take all that data, including the data we get from our own prietary crawlers, uh, both on and off page factor that in, we dive, of course, into the code, but one thing that we, we do, we.
[00:06:04] Kaspar: By default, which I, I I feel at times is, is is pretty being omitted, is the server log analysis. And one of my pet projects, you know, I, I can talk for about server logs and the benefits of it. Please do, please do. Yeah. I, I, I, we, we really need to expand the, you know, the, the, the time allocated for the show.
[00:06:21] Kaspar: I'm just kidding. No, of course. We, we, we are gonna, we're gonna stick to this one hour, but we do, we do tap into server logs and at times we're talking about substantial volumes of data. But the benefit really is that, that having the critical volume of data, we're in a position to actually understand how does, how does the crawlers and how does the, how do the, uh, algorithms understand website signals, because that's what s e o is really about, right?
[00:06:46] Kaspar: Um, ss e o isn't really about the newest, uh, fanciest trend that is being tossed around there. It really is about signal input. The output, the rankings, the, the success that we enjoy. The ultimate conversion is, is the result of the signals that, that we allow crawlers to, to pick up, uh, and to reach and, and to interpret.
[00:07:08] Kaspar: So that's what we do. I. You ask about our team. The primary, the primary team is the two of us, myself and Phil Visa. Uh, we do actually the, all the heavy weightlifting, we do the actual analysis. Now we do have a team, uh, managing the, the infrastructure, but they are not privy to client data. Um, they would, uh, make sure that we're afloat, that everything is in order and working, but, uh, we are the faces if you want, and actually the actual brains of, of the operation.
[00:07:36] Kaspar: Um, I do believe that sums it up. Um, and if you allow me, we can talk about server logs, but I don't want to monopolize too much, so I'll hand it over back to you if you want. Yeah,
[00:07:45] Olga: yeah. So I, I definitely want to talk about server logs because this is something that I believe I also should spend more time on and.
[00:07:55] Olga: I think I will learn a lot from you. so you have server logs for, I dunno, let's say a week. What is it that you can really get from this? Like what are some interesting things you were able to notice from those from this amount of data that would indicate, for example, the direction of your, of your s e o strategy?
[00:08:14] Olga: Like what are some things we can find except because, except for the obvious one that Google visited this page that many times and, and so what
[00:08:24] Kaspar: you, you're really throwing me softballs, don't you? That that's perfect. Yeah. I love that. Thank you. It's, it's good. Unpack that. So, uh, to answer, to answer the, um, The basic question, what can we do about one week of several of data at the honest answer is, and this, this is just a one right answer, it is nothing, absolutely nothing.
[00:08:42] Kaspar: It's, it's of no consequence. Um, to begin with, we have to think about the, the website, uh, and how large it is. No, if we have to have a one pager or 10 pages, we're talking really small operation server logs, probably not gonna be critical. So let's talk about, mm-hmm. So let's talk about more substantial website.
[00:08:58] Kaspar: Say, um, a thousand landing pages. Say, say, maybe say maybe something really, actually tangible, a hundred million landing pages, right? That's, that's a real platform. Now, one day of server log data is not going to tell us much, but if we happen to save and preserve raw server logs for an extended period of time, say maybe six months, preferably a year, and continuing.
[00:09:24] Kaspar: That's a different situation altogether, because now out of blue, if we, if we sift through that data, if we focus on the actual crawlers only specifically, we can understand what is being prioritized by Google. Right? And, and we're focusing right now at Google, even though, and this is very important to say everything that we do in order to please Google more, any optimization that is working really well with Google tends to work really well with Bing as well.
[00:09:51] Kaspar: And those 5%, 5% sounds like not much traffic, right? But, but if those 5% translate to a lot of conversions, I take that 5% gladly. Okay, so let's spark that for a moment, right? So if we happen to have that server log, we can understand this is, this is the volume of landing pages that is being prioritized by, by, by Google Bots, right?
[00:10:13] Kaspar: Does it overlap? With the volume of landing pages that we actually want to be prioritized. And, and very often, those two circles, ideally they would overlap a hundred percent, but very often the overlap is minimum, right? So that's the, the very basic first thing where we can say, okay, uh, it seems that the bot is crawling our supplemental content.
[00:10:34] Kaspar: Say the blog, the blog that speaks about, uh, pizza recipes while we're selling travel to Italy. Okay? So this is really supplemental content. This is ss e o content. We don't really care to rank for s e o for, for, for pizza recipe in Italy. We want to rank for travel to Italy, right? Different, sorry, different landing pages.
[00:10:53] Kaspar: Having that in place, we can understand the core budget allocation and we can influence that, but it does not stop there. A very important thing is to understand what are the responses, right? Say for a moment. Um, I love the travel industry. We work, we work quite a bit with the travel industry. It was very competitive.
[00:11:09] Kaspar: It's also very, very much changing and very similar to retail in this regard because the offer that used to be available yesterday that, that travel I was looking for, let's took, uh, let's stick to Italy, big Italy, pan fanboy here. Um, let's say we wanna go to Bologna, right? This, this is, there is an offer to travel to Bologna.
[00:11:28] Kaspar: It was available yesterday, but somebody booked it and, and it's completely booked out, right? That result is still in serves. It can be a product that's being sold out. That result is still in serves now, the users would click on it and the return answer to both bots and users would be 200. Okay? Which is effectively a soft 4 0 4.
[00:11:50] Kaspar: Yeah. Right, because, because, because the user signals, which is all different story, which you can talk about as well, because that's very important. So this is one of the critical, critical factors as well. But the moment we under, we, we see on a large scale tapping into the server logs that a lot of landing pages, which can't possibly offer a good user experience because the, either the item is sold out.
[00:12:13] Kaspar: Or the offer or the concert is sold out, or it may be expired or, or those travels are completely booked out, whatever it is, it's not there anymore. It's completely gone. If we see that on a large scale dose to return two a hundred, okay. We can clearly identify a problem, the culprit, because those should be 4 0 4 because the offer isn't there anymore.
[00:12:35] Kaspar: Yet they are not. And this is, this is standard, this is nine out of 10 times this is really happening. And you can, you can probably empathize with that situation where you have to get that message across. We understand You wanna rank for, for, for, for, for that particular product, so, so you still wanna rank for travel to Bologna, but you don't actually have any travel offers to Bologna?
[00:12:55] Kaspar: No. So it's not in your best interest. So now we can revert for a moment with server locks in mind. We can revert, um, for a moment to user signals and try and, and understand how this trickles down to user signals, right? Because those users that happen to go and, and, and let's assume for a moment, those are also ranking so high impression landing pages, possibly high c t r landing pages.
[00:13:18] Kaspar: So those users that are hellbent on traveling to bologna, obviously they're not gonna be clicking around on the landing page, most likely they will not do that. They will rather go back to Google serves, refin the query or look for another result. And by doing that, they're telling Google with their behavior, this is not a good user experience.
[00:13:37] Kaspar: This is not what I was looking for. Yeah, I've been disappointed. Google is determined to provide a good user experience. Consequently, the rankings for that landing page tank and ultimately for the website tank. So several logs provided treasure trove of data, which really can be tapped in if safe, preserved and collected.
[00:13:57] Kaspar: And this is very important because, um, frequently we hear two reasons why it's not possible. So once we had that conversation, once we presented all the benefits, the advantages of utilizing server logs, there is, uh, there is often, um, you know, in the back of the room there are two people raising their hands saying this is very frequently, um, the, the legal team would be like, I'm not sure that's even legal.
[00:14:20] Kaspar: Well, it is because you are only saving and preserving bot data, right? It has nothing to do with users. We only care for bots. We don't care how many users actually went to that website. In order to utilize the data for ss e o analysis, we want to understand how many bots went to, you know, to crawl that website, that, that landing page and the other, the other question is, and, and that that comes from different corners, it's gonna be really expensive, right?
[00:14:44] Kaspar: And the answer is of course not because you can g zipp the data. And hard drives cost nothing comparatively speaking. Um, you know, when we're talking about large organization, about an organization that has those 1000 or, or maybe, uh, not just 1000 landing pages, but really rather a hundred million landing pages, couple of hundred euro for, for, for a couple of hard drives.
[00:15:05] Kaspar: Yeah. Really nothing. The critical point really is to start saving and preserving server logs completely and to never stop. Mm-hmm. Okay. Because if you, because this, this, this is, this is something that a lot of operations, uh, actually do. We have this conversation. We, we ask people, and do you save and preserve server log logs?
[00:15:25] Kaspar: And they go like, yeah, we do. We do. We do. We, we, no, we know we hear your gospel. We do what you're saying. So how do you do it? Well, we save it for a month, then we overwrite it. Or over a year and, and that are, that is very unfortunate. If it's one year, we at least have those 12 months. Right? But if they only save it for a week or a month and constantly override in order to, to actually cut costs, that is actually not enough in most cases.
[00:15:49] Kaspar: You are losing the historical data and server locks not, not recorded today, can never be, can, they can never be, you know, found again. They can never be recorded again. Yeah. Unless you restart recording now, you'll never head that, have that data. Um, so long story short, and I don't know if we can do that. I, maybe we can share, maybe we can share a link, uh, later for our Yeah, of course.
[00:16:13] Kaspar: Um, I, I, I have pen because this is something where nine out of 10 websites that I have the privilege, you know, working with, dealing with, they don't really utilize server logs initially. So I, I patent an article on search engine then that describes in detail how server logs can really work for you.
[00:16:32] Kaspar: Maybe, maybe we can share that. I'll share it. Yeah,
[00:16:34] Olga: definitely.
[00:16:35] Kaspar: And in, in order to give. People, something actionable, something tangible. The one thing that he can start doing today in order to make a huge difference down the line. I, I, it is also understood that for a large organization that think in terms of quarters, so, you know, um, quarterly reports, quarterly, uh, OKRs, um, this is, this is a very long-term engagement, right?
[00:16:58] Kaspar: Six, six months to 12 months before you can actually utilize the data. But maybe that article that I was, I was referring to can be used as leverage for the internal discussion. So we actually make that jump. So we, we, we stop thinking for, in terms of quarters and quarterly objectives for a moment, and think of ss e o as a long term game because that's what it really is.
[00:17:22] Olga: totally. And talking about, talking about server logs, let's say I am like. Less, less technical. I have a smaller website. Would it be enough for me to use Google crawl dots report? Can I get enough out of it or probably
[00:17:38] Kaspar: not. Really. It's not, it's not the same. Right? So I, I think this is an important, important point to raise because there is not just those 100 million landing pages websites that are also smaller, uh, I'm not even talking mom, mom and pop businesses, but small and medium businesses.
[00:17:54] Kaspar: If, if you, if you want. If you happen to be in a very competitive environment, you, and especially in a high margin environment, you obviously wanna have, wanna put your best foot forward if this is a major sales channel, if, if, if online is a major sales channel. But if that's not possible, if you wanna, if you, if you, if you're thinking of, of s e o as a maybe a cost effecti effective way of doing ss e o, the one thing that we should do at the very, very least is of course tapping into Google search console data and being webmaster tools as yeah, as your concur.
[00:18:30] Kaspar: Prior, and I'm, I'm so glad you're doing that because yeah. I am most, most, most of, of, uh, most, most professionals I talk to seem to be, say maybe a little bit apprehensive, a little bit, uh, hesitant to commit time and resources to Google search, to, to ping web master tools as well. But in, in the best case scenario, we are gonna have two sets of data that more or less overlap, right?
[00:18:51] Kaspar: So B would roughly say the same thing as Google Search Console and maybe sometimes, um, they actually focus on different bits and pieces of the website. So we get different insights. When it comes to backlink samples, of course this is a great opportunity because we can improve the, uh, increase the backlink sample that we're getting free of charge, something we, we typically have to pay for.
[00:19:11] Kaspar: So for those small businesses that do not have either the manpower, um, the time allocation, the resources already, the acumen, they know the capacity. Now how to deal, um, to deal with, with really the, the specifics and, and, and very complex matters around s e o tapping into Google Surgical. So is the bare minimum.
[00:19:36] Kaspar: And if for no other reason, there is one main reason, which I believe is also very much close to your heart because you mentioned that prior to our conversation here, and that is, This is the only place where we can actually confirm a Google manual spam action. This is, this is really euphemistic. It's a k a penalty, right?
[00:19:56] Kaspar: So at the very least, I should look into that and see, okay, if the website doesn't perform, perform as I, as I would like it to, is there at least a message that says, you know, Google found your website to be in violation with Google Love Master guidelines nowadays, Google Search Essentials. Um, and this is the reason why.
[00:20:14] Kaspar: And if there is none, there might be another reason. There are, there are different reports as well. I did mention, um, software force prior while looking into server log. Uh, Google does indicate those as well. Not always accurately, I have to say that as well. Sometimes they pick up words such as mm-hmm. Not found, um, to indicate yes that the product is sold out while the product isn't really sold out.
[00:20:36] Kaspar: Right. It can be some, just in context words, so it's not a hundred percent accurate, but it gives us an idea and of course, and gives us the impressions. It gives us the C T R, and this is the part of Google Search Console, which I totally love, right? Because if we happen to look into high impression landing pages, so landing pages that already get a lot of exposure to users, which however have low C T R, this is totally low hanging fruit.
[00:21:05] Kaspar: Yeah. The only thing we need to do is to make sure that the snippet is compelling enough for the users to actually click on it. Right. We already have the traffic, we just need to, you know, make this one little effort. So if the C T R is 0.1%, There is nothing, there is nothing you can do wrong about it as, as, as webmaster or as a publisher, because no matter what you do, it's either gonna be zero, which makes no difference.
[00:21:29] Kaspar: Yeah. Or it's gonna grow. And if we're happen to, to be talking about, you know, 15, 15 million impressions, um, in, in three months, and that's a treasure trove of traffic that you can tap into. So Google Search Console on every level, but particularly for, for those publishers and webmasters that don't really have the resources, uh, required to, to go to the next step for those folks, Google Search Console is the bare minimum if you want.
[00:21:56] Kaspar: Yeah,
[00:21:56] Olga: totally. Totally. And talking about binging webmaster tools. I, I am like a huge fan of, of that tool. I discovered it a couple of years ago and, and I really find it very useful. It's like my, another crawler there is this special ss e o section, right? When you can scan the site for like, some common ss e o errors.
[00:22:17] Olga: And one thing I found with binging is that generally it is way more I would say restrictive, at least at the beginning when you have a new site, right? It can, you may have trouble, at least in my experience, getting indexed in binging for a longer time than you have in Google. And binging made demote you for small things like you have title tag which is too long.
[00:22:38] Olga: I had a lot of such cases. Did you also notice something similar?
[00:22:43] Kaspar: I. Yes. To a different extent, I suppose. Mm-hmm. Um, something that we did notice is that very frequently when we talk about large websites, um, you can compare the volume of landing pages being detected, crawled, indexed, and ranking, right?
[00:22:59] Kaspar: Mm-hmm. And if, if we look at the bare numbers, nothing else, just those bare numbers between binging and Google. I would say nine out of 10 times, Google seems to pick up a significantly larger volume. Yeah. But that is something that probably, um, is indicative of the crawl budget allocation and the resources that being are being put on Google's site in order to get all the information that is out there, which is what they're trying to do.
[00:23:26] Kaspar: Yeah. Now I can imagine, and I, I am in no position to really speak, um, uh, out of experience working with within Bing. I've never worked for Bing. Um, I have a couple of, uh, peers that used to work for, for Bing, so we talk to each other, but this is really just my personal opinion. It seems to be, uh, B isn't committing the same kind of resources.
[00:23:45] Kaspar: So, so the Crow budget allocation is, is less for large sites. Um, they get a lot less, a little bit less data. So obviously they have less data points and, and signals to, to get content, um, indexed, uh, and ranking that having said. I think one point is critically important when we talk about bank, to give it a bit more of a wider context.
[00:24:09] Kaspar: A lot of businesses out there, um, are absolutely dependent. We have to say that in these star terms, they're absolutely dependent on, on the organic traffic force coming from Google, right? Uh, which can be okay. However, it is a huge business liability because, um, totally that that traffic is not given, right?
[00:24:29] Kaspar: So we're talking only organic traffic. That traffic is not given. Um, there can be a major update that weighs factors differently and that traffic may not be forthcoming anymore. There can be a slip up on the server side. There can be an instance of the website being, uh, compromised and hacked. There can be a lot of scenarios where that traffic isn't forthcoming anymore, potentially for.
[00:24:52] Kaspar: For a longer period of time, it can be an issue with a Google Webmaster guideline, uh, slash Google search essential violation, which translates to the same result. I have traffic, I have no traffic overnight anymore, and my business is suffering. And this is where bank direct traffic and other sources come in because those 5% of traffic are our market share that we talked about prior, that, that that big current big currently has in, in a lot of, um, in a lot of markets.
[00:25:19] Kaspar: Um, that traffic can be the remaining traffic that I'm still enjoying while I'm trying Yeah. To figure out what's happening with, with, with Google traffic. Where did we go wrong? This is the traffic that translates to those conversions that keep, keep the operation afloat. That also means that becoming a brand and the go-to place in my vertical is critically important from a business perspective.
[00:25:45] Kaspar: Not, not only from an ss e o perspective. Yeah. But from a business perspective. Because I wanna make sure that there is traffic because people know us as a brand because we, they know what we stand for and they know what kind of unique selling proposition we still keep providing with no regard to whether we are present in search or not.
[00:26:02] Kaspar: So brand building brand isn't a direct signal, right? The, a better brand does not get better rankings. But the bigger brand, a more known brand, gets better brand recognition. Ergo it gets more, um, better, better, you know, better C T r because users go like, okay, this is the landing page. I know. I'm trying to get that.
[00:26:24] Kaspar: Flight to Bologna, and this is the brand I'm familiar with. Let's go there. Right? So brand recognition trickles down to user signals, which, which effectively improve ss e o, but brand also helps us to become less dependent on that one major source of traffic, which is critical for the business. This is very important to, to think about also from a business perspective, not only from s e o perspective.
[00:26:48] Kaspar: Yeah, totally,
[00:26:48] Olga: totally. So maybe let's now switch a bit to talking about Google penalties, because we have already touched upon this a little bit. So I, I, I read you, you, you used to work, uh, you read in, uh, you, you used to work in, in, uh, webs, uh, spam, uh, with a team fighting with spam. Did you also get to know Madkatz?
[00:27:13] Olga: Sure, of course. Oh, okay.
[00:27:14] Kaspar: So tell me. But, but Met, met Cuts is, is, uh, that's a long time ago, you know? Yeah. I think there, there will be, some of our listeners may be like, who's that?
[00:27:23] Olga: I used to watch him on YouTube. I remember. Okay. So what it's like to work, uh, as part of the web spam team in Google, what it
[00:27:32] Kaspar: was like.
[00:27:33] Kaspar: Okay. That's a, that's a flashback now for me because obviously that's, that's a while ago. Um, two, so maybe from two perspectives if we want working for, with the team, um, was a tremendously rewarding experience in the sense that the group of people was. Spectacularly diverse from every perspective. So people were, were originally from all over the world.
[00:27:58] Kaspar: They spoke a multitude of languages. Um, uh, I, I'm lucky to, to to speak three languages halfway. Okay. Uh, that was a total underdog situation. You know, we, we had, we had people on, on, on team who spoke seven languages fluently and, and not the most obvious ones. You know, not just major European languages, but really languages will go like, wow, you know, where this is, this coming from.
[00:28:20] Kaspar: Um, their backgrounds, their experiences. Um, they had been people who had worked in archeology or, uh, in medical profession prior. There was a manager who used to be a submarine captain prior. Um, so it was mind boggling, um, in an incredible opportunity. To listen and to learn, um, and to humbly understand that there is so much more out there than just search.
[00:28:46] Kaspar: It was fantastic. Now talking about Matt, and obviously this is a long time ago. Matt hasn't been involved in, in Google search for a while as well. Um, he's every bit as charismatic, um, in a meeting, um, um, than he is, uh, out there. Um, great guy to work with. Um, yeah, I remember fondly, you know, I, I had, um, I kind of opened up really, um, some of the international outreach operations, um, on behalf of Google, uh, of Google search and, and webmaster webmaster outreach really, because Matt was doing webmaster outreach for the English, for the English speaking, um, audiences.
[00:29:25] Kaspar: But there was, there was obviously another bigger world out there as well. So there was the German operations, there was the Polish operation, Spanish and so forth. Um, so some of the projects that where I had, uh, the opportunity to work closely with Matt was us saying, listen, um, Some of your target audience, they are not quite as, as familiar with English.
[00:29:44] Kaspar: They are not quite as comfortable with English outreach. We got to address them in, in their, in their own respective languages. So we started going to conferences. We started publishing in their languages, and that was a fantastic, a fantastic opportunity. And of course it came with the opportunity, you know, to go to the headquarters, uh, which is not a bad thing to do.
[00:30:02] Kaspar: Mm-hmm. Um, so it, it, it was, it was really, really great. But I think nowadays, um, Working with, with Met cots previously, and he was by no means the, the only star on the team. He was probably the leader and the, the greatest shining star, but there were other very committed people as well on the team. Working with those folks was, was, of course, fantastic, but what, what helps me nowadays?
[00:30:28] Kaspar: Um, more to understand client situations and address those as, um, more operational experiences that I had, uh, I had at Google. And that is, of course, applying penalties. Uh, first, first of course, investigating, um, signals, understanding SP signals in particular, link networks. Um, applying penalties, issuing penalties when, when those were justified.
[00:30:52] Kaspar: And then on the other hand, which is, which is more from, from, from a webmaster perspective, which is much more rewarding. And that's the other part, lifting, removing penalties, uhhuh when these aren't warranted anymore. Now doing those things, of course, is something that helps us nowadays, um, help clients that have been struggling with either their websites not living up to their full potential or expectations, or websites that indeed are, um, afflicted by a manual, uh, spam action.
[00:31:21] Kaspar: A k a penalty.
[00:31:23] Olga: Yeah. Cool. Cool. Has the number of manual actions become smaller? I guess, I guess it has over the years because a lot of those penalties have been, I think, replaced algorithmically. Is it true?
[00:31:39] Kaspar: That's hard to say. Um, mm-hmm. I don't have the insight, obviously anymore.
[00:31:42] Kaspar: Yeah. Yeah. I would have loved to retain, uh, access to Google tools. Um, you were reluctant, but from what you're seeing, like as, as you leave the company, you'll lose access. You don't lose. Yeah, totally. Totally. You don't lose, you don't lose access to your, to your friends and peers. You lose access to the tools.
[00:31:58] Kaspar: Um, so it's a gut, it's a little bit of a gut feeling situation. Um, I obviously do follow the, um, Public statements. And I'm very careful, uh, with those public statements because we are talking about public statements originating from a large organization. So it's, there's the PR team, there's the legal team, there's the marketing team.
[00:32:17] Kaspar: Everybody is a little bit involved in crafting a very specific message, right? Mm-hmm. You have to read a little bit between, between the lines. Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, Google does share those spam reports, uh, every now and then. Yeah. Once, once a year or so. And the numbers tend to be, um, well, they, they tend to be in the millions.
[00:32:36] Kaspar: They tend to be tremendous. It looks like the output is growing, but it, it's really hard to make a judgment call, whether these tend to be, uh, a very small minority or a big chunk of, of the operations. Obviously Google is trying to do everything algorithmic. That, that, that goes without saying. It's not just the volumes that they're dealing with.
[00:32:57] Kaspar: It's obviously much more efficient. Any manual spam action is actually costly because one human has to, has to, you know, Created the, the, the investigation, the documentation, another human has to look into it. All these things cost time and money. And then the process has to be reverted as a reconsideration request is to be successfully processed.
[00:33:16] Kaspar: So I, I'm a bit hard pressed to say that it is either in decline or, or growing. I can only say that the, it's a never ending flow of inquiries, um, of prospective clients or, or business partners saying, um, look, we have this thing lingering. Um, it's holding our website back. And, and lingering really is the right term here because if a manual spam action is in place, it kind of doesn't really make great sense to, to improve the website or to have a new release or to do any other things that may be beneficial, conducive to the business because it is being held back, the result is being held back by the manual spam actions.
[00:33:56] Kaspar: So the, the, the number of inquiries is, is not really adding up. Um, and people need help with manual spam actions. I don't think it'll ever cease to exist. I have to say that as well. Mm-hmm. Because Google has been trying and was in some areas, more successful than in others to automate, um, to automate spam combating as much as possible.
[00:34:19] Kaspar: Um, link detection is a very good example, right where, where Google is saying, oh, we're pretty good in detecting, um, illegitimate links. So links that, that are not based on, on merit only that very well may be true. Now, having said there is still a huge industry out there that is, say, selling pat rank, passing links, um, and they are not, they don't seem to be afflicted, they don't seem to be going away.
[00:34:42] Kaspar: Obviously it seems to be working in some cases, otherwise that industry wouldn't be out there. So algorithmic solutions were, while very much applicable on a large scale, are not applicable in a hundred percent of cases, obviously don't catch a hundred percent of, of all suspect, uh, you know, suspect signals.
[00:35:00] Kaspar: And for that reason, I do believe that manual spec spam actions, um, are there to stay for the foreseeable time, which is not bad news for us as an industry, um, in terms of, you know, for publishers or webmasters because a manual stem action has a couple of advantages in comparison to an algorithmic issue.
[00:35:19] Kaspar: The manual spam action is clearly, clearly defined in Google Search Console. It says, um, we suspect the website from having, um, bought links that pass patron, and that's the reason why. It's, it's not very elaborative. Uh, there is not a lot, uh, of examples, but at least we have a hint. We know where this is coming from.
[00:35:38] Kaspar: We know this is the reason why Google doesn't trust our, our backlink signals anymore. Or maybe it's content signals. It's actually quite specific. The message is quite specific Now. Um, it also can be fixed and we would, we would see after applying for reconsideration request, which is a dedicated process, process, actually, the, the application itself is processed by humans.
[00:35:59] Kaspar: And we would see, once it's been approved, the message goes away and no, you know, we can focus on improving the website again and, and, and growing serves. Um, in comparison to that, any algorithmic issue doesn't trigger necessarily a message. Right. Yeah. So if the website tanks in organic search, all right, we have to, we have to check first, right?
[00:36:20] Kaspar: Maybe there's a correlation with an our update, right? If there was a correlation, um, with a Google update that focuses on quality, that may give us a hint. But, um, say for a moment, something else change, say for a moment that, um, the IT team or the developers unintentionally opened up, uh, the staging server and the staging server is completely now indexing everything and can analyzing to self, that would be a critical issue.
[00:36:46] Kaspar: Which, which is unrelated to anything that Google does, right? Yeah. Um, and, and, and these things actually do happen. So with an algorithmic issue where signals don't seem to be conveying the message to search engines that we want, we have to actually investigate first. It's a much more in-depth situation.
[00:37:03] Kaspar: That's, that's where audit isn't warranted. That's where an audit is critically necessary in order to move forward. So these are two different things I don't necessarily see, um, Penalties as a, as a terribly bad thing for two reasons, they can be fixed. And very, very often these, these situations where webmaster or our publisher almost gets a heart attack because they get a message.
[00:37:26] Kaspar: Yeah. That they, that is really scary. It can be the beginning of new growth. Big organizations are often reluctant to change anything. Right? Yeah. Especially when we think in terms of, of quarters. If, if I happen to be a C-level manager, I, I want to have the results next quarter. And with search, this is not a given.
[00:37:45] Kaspar: Now, the moment that, that the website is already suffering. That's a different situation, that the pain is already there. This is the moment where approval becomes much more feasible because, because everybody's is, is recognizing that action is warranted. So the manual spam action penalty, or even the website tanking without a penalty, can be the beginning of actually new growth, not just to the same level, but way beyond that, once the balance and the legacy has been tackled.
[00:38:17] Olga: Yeah, totally. That's a very, very, uh, positive different way of looking at, at, uh, at pa, at manual penalties. And I really would like more people to look at this at this way and talking, talking about, um, Getting to know whether it is, uh, Google it, whether it is Google, uh, algorithmically penalizing you, or is it is something else?
[00:38:41] Olga: Something I do is I simply compare bing traffic, organic traffic to Google. And if they correlate, then usually this indicates this is a technical thing. If there is just a drop in Google, usually it means Google is possibly is having issues with you.
[00:39:01] Kaspar: And, and it's another instance where we can see having more data points as an
[00:39:06] Olga: advantage.
[00:39:07] Olga: Yeah, totally. Totally. And can you share, is there something you can share about the process of a manual reviewing, reviewing the sites? What does it look like? At least as much as you can share? Of course,
[00:39:21] Kaspar: w with, with, without, uh, getting in trouble because of the N D A, right?
[00:39:25] Kaspar: Yes. Right. Um, Not in much detail, but, uh, there is, there is much most definitely a very de dedicated, um, team of humans. So this is a manual, manual, uh, process if you want. Experience is a big part of it. Uh, peer peer checks is a big part of it. And I wanna say, and this is not widely known, um, hunch a spider sense Uhhuh, uh, you know, like, like, like Spider-Man's.
[00:39:52] Kaspar: Having that, that spidey sense, then something is coming up. That sense is something that is being developed, was being developed at my time and the team. And obviously, um, obviously it is a little bit of a hunt. Um, you, you want, you wanna find the result. Uh, on the other hand, in, in doubt, you always decide in favor.
[00:40:12] Kaspar: You know, you always decide of in, in favor of the potential culprit or the website. And it is a hard situation where we're investigating, uh, over time. However, you do develop that six sense, you, you can take a look at the website, um, and you can. Not straightforward, tell this is what they're, what's happening, but you know what you're looking for.
[00:40:33] Kaspar: You, you know, yeah. You have an inkling, you may find what you're looking for. The, the, the confirmation of your suspicion in a particular area. May that be the content, may that be, um, uh, an off-page situation. And of course, it also depends very much on the vertical. Some verticals, we have to say that some verticals are very, very prone to link building.
[00:40:55] Kaspar: Um, they're, you know, they're very competitive and, uh, at times it's hard to find, um, any major players that have not done link building. Um, At some point in time. On the other hand, of course there are, there are plenty of verticals and even more websites out there where no building link building is happening at all.
[00:41:16] Kaspar: In fact, most of the websites have none or almost no, no backlinks, and they don't really care for it because, um, their focus is a different one and they don't really need to do that in, you know, they don't need to build links in order to be successful. Um, which would bring us to, to a very, another very important part of, of operating a website, being successful and, and doing s e o, which is the unique selling proposition.
[00:41:40] Kaspar: So, um, when we talk about, when we can talk about unique selling proposition in a moment, but. When we talk about the operation at Google, obviously there is no better way than applying for, for, for working, of applying for a position at Google search, uh, and getting in, um, and gaining all that experience.
[00:41:56] Kaspar: Um, this is however, not really, um, you know, going in detail about how the operation works is not really something that has been published to the best of my knowledge. I will not be the first one to do that. It is exciting work. I wanna say that straight away. Um, and it's, it's great, great fun. However, the most.
[00:42:16] Kaspar: Fun part of that, the most enjoyable part of, of, of, of that work for myself was twofold. On the one hand, it was really lifting those penalties, especially when a website was getting back in Google's good grace, you know, and they fixed whatever it was. And, and they could, they could, again, gain visibility for, for, for the relevant reasons.
[00:42:34] Kaspar: And the other part is of course, the opportunity to engage, to speak on behalf of, of major brand, if not the major brand and the product that is so helpful to human lives for, you know, in such an, such a massive way, um, to, to speak on behalf of that product or part of that product. And also engage with the, with the audience and big part of the audience.
[00:42:54] Kaspar: Uh, I'm not sure if, if that's widely known, a big part of the audience, um, are, are so-called, um, uh, you know, super users or, or, or, People that are very committed within Google Webmaster, um, uh, forums. And yeah, working, working with that community, um, helping those guys, but also them helping us, uh, talking to each other, learning from each other, meeting in person, uh, with that while traveling or, or at dedicated events.
[00:43:22] Kaspar: That was fantastic. That, that, that human part of the whole operation is really what make a huge, huge difference, and which, uh, gave one the impression that, uh, we could together, uh, make substantial difference. I am afraid I cannot go much into detail, you know, of the, of the actual operation, even though I'm sure our audience would be interested in that.
[00:43:43] Kaspar: Yeah. But allow me to say, knowing how they operate, knowing how Google, um, how the Google team operates doesn't translate to an actionable advice for one who wants to rank better. And one thing, oh, one thing I wanna say straight away, please stay away from the Google radars guidelines, because those translate to nothing that pertains to how a website ranks.
[00:44:07] Kaspar: It's completely unrelated. It's a different topic. Personally, and this was way after I left the company personally, I thought it was unfortunate those radar guidelines were ever published because they distract everyone is going crazy
[00:44:20] Olga: about
[00:44:20] Kaspar: them. Yeah, it's been a while ago, right? A couple years ago it, it was released and, and I was like, why would you do that?
[00:44:27] Kaspar: Right? It's, it's not, it's not gonna make people's lives easier. People not gonna be able to understand what really matters for the websites yet. They're gonna obsess about things that are unrelated to the actual crawling indexing point, ranking process, and a writer's guidelines. I would totally stay away from, from that.
[00:44:43] Kaspar: If, if there is something you would like to focus on, um, as, as a listener to this, think about the unique selling proposition. Um, this is for every business, be that online or offline, the one thing that helps you stand out, right? What is it that makes people go to your website or to your business? What motivates people to give you their heart earned money?
[00:45:06] Kaspar: And in the online business? That unique selling proposition is first experience in the snippets, and that's something that people don't really think about very frequently because they just assume that the clients or the or the users might understand what the website is about. But sometimes it's not the case For that reason, we have to tell them, you know, we are brand A doing this and that, and the reason why it was special, the reason why we are the right match for you is this, and this has to be defined.
[00:45:36] Kaspar: Unique selling proposition, critically important, often overlooked.
[00:45:41] Olga: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great tip. And even though Google, often, sometimes rewrites your meta description, your title, right? Yeah. If you leave it like blank, you are totally living it to chance. If you still put time to, to do something unique, creates something unique, there is at least a chance that at least part of it will be shown, right?
[00:46:02] Kaspar: Yes. And, and this is, you know, in, in order to, to maybe, um, also touch on AI because it's on, on so many people's minds these days, and this is a great opportunity to apply ai. Um, what, what's being tossed around as ai, it's actually a language model, but let's, let's say AI for, for simplicity's sake, because that's what's, what's the trend nowadays?
[00:46:23] Kaspar: So if, if you wanna experiment with more compelling snippet representation with your SERP real estate, if you wanna make it more appealing for more users to actually give it the benefit of adapting, click on the result. That's a great opportunity here is where AI can be, can be utilized in order to experiment to see what, what's working best.
[00:46:43] Kaspar: You don't have to do that manually and o obviously it's, you know, it's difficult at times because was those 100 million landing pages that we keep talking about can optimize every single one of them off the bat? Yeah, but you can, you can start with, with high, high impression and low CT C T r potential cash cows and see where it goes and build a case in order to get more resources in order to improve a larger section of the website.
[00:47:07] Kaspar: I, I, I think AI, just to tap on that, has great applications, um, in some areas and then, you know, software development or general development, um, is one of those, um, It is, however, about the signal input still, just to revert back to what we were saying at the beginning, um, how we, how we create the data, how we create the, um, the, the content.
[00:47:32] Kaspar: Because data equally well, candy content, um, how we do those things is not so important as how the quality turns out to be and how it's read and understood by search engine first crawlers, then algorithms, of course. Yeah.
[00:47:49] Olga: Totally. Totally. And maybe one more question about, um, manual actions. So, yes, a while ago I was like reading Google Documentation and the actual list of those manual action is quite, quite long.
[00:48:02] Olga: I used to think, and I think a lot of people still think that manual action is usually for links, but can you talk about different types of manual actions may be the ones you have direct experience with, and. Which ones were used to be like the most popular ones, or the least popular, popular ones. I'm very curious, again, to learn this.
[00:48:25] Kaspar: Absolutely. Now we're definitely gonna go over time because this is, this is, this is totally a pre project, so, so yes. Uh, um, of course, I, I did apply and, uh, and lift any kind of penalties out there. And you are absolutely right saying it's not just about backlinks and backlinks. The reason for, for a manual s spam action, a k a penalty, uh, can be backlinks.
[00:48:49] Kaspar: It's not, it's maybe one of the more frequent ones. It is not the only one. The reasons for for applying a penalty can be manyfold. Uh, back in the days, you know, long time ago it could have been cloaking, which is, which is hardly ever used these days by, by major websites. Mm-hmm. Um, doorways. It's a very, very common one.
[00:49:07] Kaspar: So, uh, if we happen to have landing pages, which actually you redirect to another source, often a central source, be that a dedicated landing page or maybe the root that's already behavior, that's something Google disapproves of because the user is supposed to be able to access, um, the actual content straight away of the batch without clicking, uh, to an inter intermediary, uh, landing page.
[00:49:32] Kaspar: So doorway behavior is something that can trigger a manual experiment. Action. Low quality content very well can trigger a similar situation and the consequences of those. Um, often can be described as, as, as a steep decline. So there was a drop in, in ranking and subsequent site, um, often slowly declines further mm-hmm.
[00:49:55] Kaspar: Until further notice, until the issue is, is, is being addressed. Um, I do wanna, however, touch also because there is a multitude of penalties out there, I do want to touch on one penalty, which is very little known and there is a very good reason for that. And that's, that's a penalty, a manual span action that is being applied for websites that actually sell patriot passing links.
[00:50:18] Kaspar: Mm-hmm. And that kind of penalty, you never, ever hear anyone saying, oh, we got penalized because, you know, because we are suspecting of selling backlinks. And the reason for that is obvious. If you can think about the major media outlets out there, um, say the top 10 of any respective country. The majority of those two sell links.
[00:50:39] Kaspar: Yes. We have to say that. We say we know that
[00:50:42] Olga: Totally. I worked at SU agencies. I
[00:50:45] Kaspar: know exactly. We, we, you know, that, or, or listeners know that Google knows it. So those guys, they obviously utilize Google Search Console as well. They would get the message. We believe you're selling patron passing links. Um, you know, it's part of your business model.
[00:51:00] Kaspar: It doesn't actually say that, but it's, it's kind of a given. Uh, we don't trust the links that you send out anymore. Um, other than that, your website is fine. Now, none of those guys, none of those media outlets go out there and, and go to their customers that are paying for those back and say, you know what?
[00:51:16] Kaspar: Stop buying them. Google. Google, Google caught as red handed. What do we do Now? Obviously, they'll, they do none of that, right? They keep selling those links, even though those links are obviously not compromises. Now, those, those links are also a great source of identifying websites that are buying links.
[00:51:35] Kaspar: So it's actually a risk, right? It's actually a risk for, for, for their clients. The me, the, the message, the message is straightforward in Google Search Console. Obviously it can be fixed. I rarely recall anybody saying, we got a message that says, we're selling links. We want to get rid of that. Can you fix, can you help us fix that?
[00:51:52] Kaspar: They don't care. They keep selling, right? This is, this is something that is being left to linger. Oh, one of those penalties that where you can, you can go ahead and wait until it expires. It takes very long time as any penalty, a couple of years. Um, but it will be reapplied. It'll be reissued once the site is being reviewed again because it, because the penalty, because the penalty expired over time.
[00:52:15] Kaspar: Um, you can live with that. You can't live with, with a, with a doorway, uh, Norway website, uh, penalty. You can't live with that. You can't live with a low content thing, content penalty. You can't really live with a link buyer or a website that was identified as, as buying links penalty. But the website that sells links, you can probably live that with that was well and ranks the really, rather, fairly well.
[00:52:41] Kaspar: So there is a multitude of those penalties and they translate to different consequences, including a complete removal, which I have to say is very, very rare. It's a very severe penalty. 'cause obviously even the site operator will return zero results. So this is, this is the, the nuclear option if you want.
[00:52:58] Kaspar: Um, and because there is so much ambiguity about that, because there is so many different, uh, uh, information, there's so much information being disseminated about that and different experiences of, of course, I actually did write an article, which I would again be happy to share if you're willing to. Of course.
[00:53:16] Kaspar: Um, it's, it's the ultimate, it's the ultimate, um, Google Penalty Guide, um, which, uh, I shared, uh, I published with Search Engine L It was one of the longest articles I've actually ever built. You know, I, I, I, I, I drafted it. Um, and, uh, as of today, it is, uh, I think one of the, the most useful ones because it helps people understand these are the penalties, this is what they translate to, and this is how to fix them.
[00:53:42] Kaspar: This is, this is the important part, right? Those penalties can be addressed. There is a reconsideration request process, a dedicated process, um, that is specifically meant only for website operators and, and publishers that happen to have a penalty and they want to get back into Google's good grace. They wanna play again by Google Webmaster guidelines slash Google Search Essentials, those that rule set.
[00:54:07] Kaspar: Um, so they can, they can submit a rationale. Um, I use, I used to process those rationales on Google's end. So if I may give you an advice, if you're a listener, um, and, and in need of a re reconsideration request, please be brief. This is very, very important. Starting, starting off with hi. Uh, my name is John Doe.
[00:54:28] Kaspar: I'm the c e o of the John Doe in company. Um, I have 4, 5, 5, 500 employees, um, and a large family to support. Um, this is all nice. Yeah, I'm not gonna go any further, but this is, this is additional information that is really not useful in the context of the process for the person actually doing the work on Google Send.
[00:54:50] Kaspar: I would very much rather have preferred to, to get a message that says, hi, this is what we have done. Please have a look. Now, the, what we have done part is important, right? Mm-hmm. If the website is penalized, is being penalized for, for backlinks, it doesn't really make great sense to remove the rich snippets or to, or to tackle, uh, content issues because that's not the reason, and the reason is backlinks.
[00:55:17] Kaspar: So I would rather prefer to have something along the lines of, we couldn't really remove those links, you know, because. Let's face it. Remove, it's difficult. But, uh, we have created a new DIS valve file that includes 10,000 patterns on, um, domain, domain level patterns, um, which we now have submitted to through the DIS tool.
[00:55:39] Kaspar: Please have a look. Um, and of course it helps if it's an edge case. If you are, you know, if you are like doing the minimum amount of work, but you wanna make sure that it's, it's still successful, I. Personally would add, going forward, we commit to abide by Google Search Essentials or Google webmaster, uh, guidelines.
[00:55:59] Kaspar: I would, I would add that sentence. It, it can give you a little bit of an edge. One thing, um, that is important to know about the, uh, consideration request is however, that there is no confirmed turnaround time. And this is, yeah, that was
[00:56:13] Olga: supposed to be my next question. How long and why, how, why so long.
[00:56:17] Olga: Small
[00:56:17] Kaspar: piece of information, right. Small piece. But, but critical because, because sometimes, uh, my, my personal experience working with clients is, uh, uh, Q four is a good time, right? Q four, generally pure projects. So more time allocation to, to deal with consideration requests. But if you have a penalty, you don't have the luxury of waiting until Q four.
[00:56:39] Kaspar: Um, uh, we have experience waiting anything between eight hours. Uh, and, um, I, I really wanna say almost eight months. Uh, well, eight months would be probably an over about four months. Anything is possible. So really swift, really, really quick responses. One way or the other saying, um, you are, you're, you're back on, on track or, you know, the reconsideration request has been rejected.
[00:57:01] Kaspar: Um, or, um, or really months long waiting. Anything is possible, which is something to remember when we consciously choose to utilize Black hat methods. And I'm, I'm the last person to say, um, you know, it's every webmaster's personal choice. It's a business decision 'cause it's a risk. Um, it offers potential gains in a short period of time.
[00:57:24] Kaspar: And, and there is of course, a price to be paid a penalty possibly. If you're willing to do that as a webmaster, that's perfectly fine. It's your own risk. But be aware that fixing the issue down the line in long game can take a very, very long time. And if, if you can deal with that, if this is acceptable, perfectly fine.
[00:57:44] Kaspar: But if this is something that would really impair your business, I would reconsider it. It'll also help you sleep better at night if you're not, yeah, if you're not fretting about the penalty because you, you know, you know what you're doing is, is really rather problematic. Another important thing about penalties as it's also not widely known is that because there are so many different ones, um, there are penalties that tackle the serpa presentations of rich snippet penalties.
[00:58:09] Kaspar: If, if we're not, if we're cutting corners there, um, content, different types of content, backings, all of these, they are, they can be very specific. Or they can be very, very general. So they can be applied in a granular way. You know, if only bits and pieces of the website mm-hmm. Are in violation or on the site level, and typically the message says so, and those penalties are not mutually exclusive.
[00:58:33] Kaspar: Meaning if the website is having poor content is also spamming, uh, rich snippets. And at the same time is buying on selling or selling links, that's potentially four different penalties that can be applied. And of course they have to be addressed, uh, separately because this is different issues. It is rarely happen.
[00:58:54] Kaspar: It's rarely happen. Most business, no, most businesses are not disa adventurous to say, we are gonna go full black hat. You know, we don't care. Whatever happens, happens. Um, but of course it is, it is a possibility. I have seen these cases, uh, these cases prior. The good news is all of these can be fixed. The less optimistic, um, perspective is it can take rather a really long time.
[00:59:21] Olga: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, that was so many, so many knowledge bombs. So much knowledge. Like, like it's also, I'm going to probably create a lot of quote tweets out of this conversation because there is just so much good in it. And of course the links you mentioned are probably by now linked somewhere below so you can read them.
[00:59:42] Olga: And, uh, Casper, one final question. Where can people find you, follow you because you, you are such a, such a great follow, the follow of the week of the month at least, or even of the year for me.
[00:59:55] Kaspar: You're too kind, Olga. Thank you. Um, search brothers.com, uh, as you can see right next to my name and that's our website.
[01:00:02] Kaspar: And if you. Uh, wish to follow me. Uh, it's Cass Tweets or just have a look at Twitter. Um, I'm not difficult to find. I'm rather active on LinkedIn. I have to say with the professional network, uh, most among us, uh, use, utilize that with as well. However, if you happen to be at a conference, uh, where I'm actually speaking and presenting, please come approach me.
[01:00:24] Kaspar: Let's talk, let's talk face-to-face. It'll be my pleasure. I'll make sure to answer your, um, personal questions, what you really care about. Are we gonna be talking about your friend's website? If you want to do that. Whatever it is, it'll be my pleasure to meet some of the followers face-to-face. And I want to utilize the opportunity to say Olga, it was a real pleasure.
[01:00:43] Kaspar: Um, great being on the show. Uh, I'll be happy to come again if you wanna have me in some time. Yeah, of course. And of course I'll talk to Philly so he can join the ranks, um, of your star speakers on
[01:00:54] Olga: that show. That's awesome. Thank you so much and thank you everyone, and see you in the next episode.
[01:01:00] Olga: Bye-bye. Bye now.
[01:01:01] Kaspar: Thank you.
