{"id":739,"date":"2019-05-05T18:01:09","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T01:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/?post_type=episode&#038;p=739"},"modified":"2019-05-13T23:20:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T06:20:04","slug":"jamie-alberico","status":"publish","type":"episode","link":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/","title":{"rendered":"3. Interview w\/ Jamie Alberico, Arrow Electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Resources:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Jamie Alberico on twitter:&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jammer_Volts\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jammer_Volt<\/a><\/li><li>Random, fun facts about Jamie:<ul><li>She wrangles in 4-6MM products, 7 languages<\/li><li>Her spirit animal is Ursula<\/li><li>And she&#8217;s made a flame thrower!<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Our Technical SEO Speaking\/Panel at Engage  (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7Z1jtZHN79U?t=2404\" target=\"_blank\">Our Technical SEO Speaking\/Panel at Engage <\/a><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Google reps talking about not using rel next\/prev (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/googlewmc\/status\/1108726443251519489\" target=\"_blank\">Google reps talking about not using rel next\/prev<\/a><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Jamie's Lighthouse article (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/a-technical-seo-guide-to-lighthouse-performance-metrics\/292703\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Jamie&#8217;s Lighthouse article<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/80216752, https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt8457080\/\">Ex<\/a><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"plained, (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/80216752, https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt8457080\/\" target=\"_blank\">plained,<\/a> Exclamation Episode<\/li><li>Colabs:&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/colab.research.google.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/colab.research.google.com\/<\/a><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.anaconda.com\/\ufeff\" target=\"_blank\">Anaconda<\/a> (a Python package manager)<\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=starbucks+journey+map&amp;rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS838US838&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjQyIKw4sHhAhXws1kKHYllB8QQ_AUIDigB&amp;biw=1899&amp;bih=842#imgrc=wZwtVboL1hOB0M:\" target=\"_blank\">Starbuck&#8217;s user journey maps<\/a><\/li><li>Kevin Indig&#8217;s Twitter:&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kevin_Indig\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kevin_Indig<\/a><ul><li>Article Alexis was referring to:&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kevin-indig.com\/user-intent-mapping-steroids\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.kevin-indig.com\/user-intent-mapping-steroids\/<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/goat-simulator-hits-xbox-one-with-millions-of-bugs\/1100-6426703\/\ufeff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Video Game Goat Simulator reference<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Timestamps:<br><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Note<\/strong>: Add 15 seconds for intro.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[0:00] Intros<br>[1:10] How do you deal with having so many product lines?<br>        &#8211; Step back and look as an ecosystem (set up rules, breaking up sitemaps, etc.)<br>[2:58] Working embedded within dev team<br>         &#8211; Helpful for: launching new code bases, features<br>         &#8211; More interconnected team <br>[4:00] Origin story as a writer, forming a front-end team, journey to be more technical side<br>[7:00] What makes our products different? &lt;- The data team implements<br>[9:00] Origins of &#8220;@Jammer_Volts&#8221;<br>[11:25] How do you learn technical SEO?<br>         &#8211; Being curious and questioning (I&#8217;m seeing behavior that&#8217;s different. What is happening?)<br>         &#8211; Being able to ask any question&nbsp;<br>[12:30] Any tips on working with developers? Resolving conflicts?<br>         &#8211; must clearly define what you want<br>         &#8211; learning to speak the same language<br>          &#8211; documenting issue appropriately<br>          &#8211; don&#8217;t bother people in deep concentration (if it&#8217;s not a priority)<br>          &#8211; tip: ask to stand in on a stand-up meeting<br>[18:20] How have things changed?<br>          &#8211; figuring out complex problems<br>          &#8211; freedom to fail<br>          &#8211; play with code (Give Google Colabs a shot)<br>[20:20] Relationship with eCommerce and search?<br>[24:00] Speed vs. UX<br>         &#8211; Look on #s of elements on the pages<br>          &#8211; Talk about recipes (and having fluff content)<br>         &#8211; Keep intent in mind\/ user-first <br>[28:00] Answer questions directly<br>[29:00] User journey <br>         &#8211; Friction points are real<br>[32:30] What do you need to do to be one of the best in eCommerce SEO?<br>         &#8211; Try to buy a product without using search<br>         &#8211; Using your own site&#8217;s hierarchy to find the product<br>[35:30] Dealing with c-suite<br>         &#8211; Tip: talking in less technical terms<br>         &#8211; Tip 2: Speak in $$<br>[38:30] Can an SEO sit in a boardroom?<br>[41:30] Nuggets of advice:<br>         1. Buy something on the website (many varieties of tasks in here)<br>         2. Understand how products come on and off your site<br>&#8211;tangent&#8211;<br>[44:40]<br>         3. Understand the user flow and ecosystem (many elements in here)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>My favorite Jamie quotes:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>&#8220;SEO is a reflection of your overall site health, it impacts all other mediums, we&#8217;re just the ones that can see it.&#8221; &nbsp;<\/li><li>&#8220;Sometimes when you pull on a thread, it causes more problems than it solves. So sometimes having an awareness of how this one thing affects the ecosystem can help.&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;You can&#8217;t buy something that doesn&#8217;t exist, and if you can&#8217;t Google it &#8211; does it exist?&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;(As a technical SEO) my customer is a search engine, it is googlebot&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;Experience what it&#8217;s like to wait 11 seconds to load a page&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;A website is a window into how a business runs&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;We use search engines as a mirror to understand a reflection of site health&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;A bug can truly be a feature, it&#8217;s all in how we handle it.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Note 1<\/em><\/strong><em>:  Add about ~15 seconds to timestamps to account for intro. \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Note 2<\/strong>: If you see notice any major errors, please reach out to seointhelab [at] merkleinc.com, we tried our best to stay true to the vocal version.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:00] Alexis Sanders:<\/strong> Hello. Hello. And welcome back to SEO in the lab today. I\nhave Jamie Alberico with me. Thanks so much\nfor coming in, Jamie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:08] Jamie Alberico:<\/strong> Thank you so very much for having me. It&#8217;s really good to\nchat with you again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:12] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYes. I&#8217;m so excited. I loved your speech at Engage,\nand I&#8217;m just so excited to get this next forty\nminutes to sink with you about some cool\ntechnical SEO concepts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:23] Jamie:<\/strong> It\nwas a lot of fun being on the panel with you. I love that we have the tech <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SEO panel, we\u2019re in this really beautiful ballroom and it was two women representing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:32] Alexis:<\/strong> So true. And that guy with the plaid shirt. I don&#8217;t remember\nyour name, sir, but I remember you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All right. Awesome. For\nour listeners, would\nyou mind giving yourself a bit of an introduction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:44] Jamie:<\/strong> All\nright. My name is Jamie Alberico. I live in\nDenver, Colorado. Fun Fact, my name means \u201cusurper elf king.\u201d That is true. I\nam the SEO\nproduct owner for Arrow Electronics, which means I wrangle four to six million products in seven\nlanguages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:03] Alexis<\/strong>:\nThat&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all you do just on a daily basis. (Lol) It&#8217;s pretty much&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:07] Jamie:<\/strong> It&#8217;s pretty low key, it\u2019s very chill, you know?\n(lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:10] Alexis:<\/strong> Like, how do you, How do you even like manage that? How do you deal with\nhaving so many different product lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:17] Jamie:<\/strong> You\ncan&#8217;t do it on a one off basis. You&#8217;ve got to step back and look at the system\nas an ecosystem. So how do we create systematic rules in play that say, \u201cAll right, this new PLP\nhas no translations available in these\nlanguages. How do we keep answering the user&#8217;s requests and getting them through there? What do we do when we sunset products? How\nto even break up our sitemaps?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So initially we had, you know,\nsix million products in a site map on every night it rebuilt, and it shuffled in order. So I&#8217;m just joining this team. I&#8217;m trying to\nunderstand why is there this gap in our\nproduct index coverage? Indexation\u2026 I dare you, Barry, \u2026 (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:01] Alexis:<\/strong> First\nline, throwing down the gauntlet. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:07] Jamie:<\/strong> For those of you who don&#8217;t\nknow if you say indexation three times, it&#8217;s\nlike a Beetlejuice effect for Barry Adams. He will appear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is called in index coverage and we had a\nsignificant gap in it for our electronics\nso I\u2019m going through\nthe site maps and then realizing this site map\nis different every time. What is happening here? So worked with my dev team. I have been lucky enough for the majority of my\ncareer to be embedded with dev teams to break it out by product line. So now, you know, we have\nnine hundred forty product lines while our six million products fall into\nthose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<strong>00:02:40] Alexis:<\/strong> who&#8217;s also a technical SEO that&#8217;s embedded within a development team. Do you find\nthat that system works well for a technical SEO\nand do you have a component that is a more\ncontent heavy side?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:58] Jamie:<\/strong> Yes,\nI am lucky enough to have a content SEO team\nwho handles, you know, building our new content, identifying gaps, places that\nwe can reach more people who are looking for what we offer. But being embedded with a dev\nteam, especially when it comes to, you know,\nlaunching new code bases, migrations, new\nfeatures, every piece of that, when you have the ability to sit down and talk\nwith your devs and go, \u201cHey, my JavaScript boot-up time is really heavy here,\u201d (mine, like on a page, I\u2019m personifying\na page.) (Lol) \u201cHow do we go ahead and get\nthis down? What cashing elements can use? It&#8217;s It&#8217;s really effective because\nyou have the ongoing feedback back and forth and there&#8217;s not that dis-connective \u201cI&#8217;ve put a ticket, and\nI&#8217;m gonna hope for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:42] Alexis: Definitely,\ndefinitely. I like the idea of having those two different teams closer and more\nintimately tied to the source. I feel like that&#8217;s an interesting model, and one that&#8217;s newer. In the past, have you ever worked with\nany other companies that did something similar? Or is this kind of also a newer\nconcept for you as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:00] Jamie: My first in-house SEO job I started as\na marketing SEO and it was I was primarily focused on this blog on this education center, but I monitored all the pieces\nand there was a point where wow, my top keywords\njust dropped 23 spots. What&#8217;s going on? Oh no, and my index is bleeding out.\nI&#8217;m losing forty thousand pages a week and by\ndigging into that, began to work more and more with the developers. Eventually\nwe formed a front-end team. So SEO, UX, the\ndevelopers, our QA team. We were all on one team together. It\u2019s the\nfirst time I got an experience with a team build like\nthat. But I found that because we were so interconnected, because we all had\ndifferent insights and knowledge. Having the team work together is a single,\ncohesive unit to produce the best product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:51] Alexis: And do you\nthink that&#8217;s a direction, a strong direction\nfor a lot of e commerce companies that they&#8217;re heading into, to more specialized areas of SEO?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:01] Jamie: I really\nhope they are. I really hope that people can take an approach of SEO isn&#8217;t\njust about organic traffic acquisition. It&#8217;s a reflection of your overall site\nhealth. This is impacting all other mediums we\u2019re\njust the ones that can see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:16] Alexis: Definitely,\ndefinitely. And in researching your resume, (which is awesome, by the way), I\nfound that you did a lot of CRO work before,\nyou have a background in writing. What was your journey like to be more on the\ntechnical side of things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:30] Jamie: Ah, so the\ntrick here is to graduate college during a recession, and while your pondering life.\nBecause all kind of longer than normal and hear where this is going to explain\nto their student loan officer, I want to pay you and\nI want to eat. How do we work this out? You\nbeing to find a way to take that English degree and\nput it to some frame of use? For me that started off as blogging. I was actually a blogger outreach manager. I was one\nof those people that I now ignore in my LinkedIn inbox. This is pre-penguin. We didn&#8217;t\nknow any better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:05] Alexis: It was okay\nback that\u2026 (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:07] Jamie: Yeah, it was\nOK, you know, Listen, thing about her field is it constantly adapts. It&#8217;s\nconstantly evolving everything you know, like R.\nI. P. Well, next and previous\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:19] Alexis: I was\nactually wondering how you felt about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:21] Jamie: It makes\nsense. It truly does. If we look at the use of technical signals when they&#8217;re\nnot correct, correctly implemented or there&#8217;s just difficulty with the code\ngoing ahead in acknowledging and consolidating that it makes sense to go, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:34] Alexis: Yeah, I\nguess too Like the first page is the most important page, typically in those\ntype of sets, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:42] Jamie: I do, you\nknow, if we&#8217;ve got any Ecommerce site that has a product line made of sixty\nthousand products, which is a world I live in, it would be great to be able to\nbreak this down and have them be more specific\nand more relevant. Like what makes these sixty thousand products different from\neach other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:57] Alexis: Yeah, and\ndo you find it a challenge doing that? Like that might be more of your content team too, But like&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:03] Jamie: No,\nit\u2019s actually our\ndata team that handles that. (Cool!) Because,\nthis is the thing about being in this place\nwith dev teams is I get to work with architects and get to work with devs\nI get to work with developers. All these aspects,\nit&#8217;s very much like any form of machine learning: You get good clean data in, get good cleaned data out.\nYeah, so identifying, now, I assume that so\nand so controls this. Well, time to just take a step\nback, and analyze some assumptions, sit down, have a cup of coffee with me,\nlike \u2018Oh, I misunderstood. What&#8217;s your rules\nhere?\u2019 But now I know, and now I know the next person I need to talk to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:42] Alexis: Now I know you&#8217;re really actually very important. So about\nthat email last week, just throw it in the trash. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:51] Jamie: I\nlike to think that I don&#8217;t underestimate people&#8217;s importance.\nI&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ve not included a smiley face where I should have and it came off a\nlittle to direct, but we do our best and we\nlearn and we grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:01] Alexis: Have you\never watched that Explained episode on exclamation points on Netflix? This is very\nspecific. So Netflix has this show from Vox, which is\ncalled Explained, and they have a whole\nepisode about the exclamation point, and you as\na writer, you might be more informed about\nthis, but apparently for many years the exclamation point has been considered\nuseless by writers. There&#8217;s, like, no point. It&#8217;s like nobody uses that ever.\nAnd they talk about the rise of the exclamation point as, starting with\nmarketing, but then actually being attributed\nto linguistically, women being in the workplace. Yeah, you need a way to soften\nyour message, but at the same time be able to express your thoughts out and it\nwas really interesting. So you saying, \u2018Oh, I\ndidn&#8217;t add a smiley face.\u2019 I was like&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:47] Jamie: That&#8217;s\nreally some genuine feedback I&#8217;ve received. (Oh, really? &nbsp;Sigh\u2026 \u2639) Oh, sometimes your emails come off as too direct. And to be honest, I&#8217;ve often wondered in\nscenarios like that, if my male counterparts have received that same kind\nfeedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:59] Alexis: Oh they\ndefinitely haven\u2019t. There&#8217;s no way they have. (\u2639)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:05] Jamie:<\/strong> Hey, you will really directing\nthis email. And you made someone over here cry? Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:08] Alexis:<\/strong> You\nsaid exactly what you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it&#8217;s tough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:10] Jamie:<\/strong> We were talking about how I got into SEO. We\u2019ve moved into a beautiful tangent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:15] Alexis:<\/strong> On this tangent, I want to ask you another kind of tangential question about you. So what does @Jammer_Volts mean? I know that\u2019s your handle and I&#8217;m like, really curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:32] Jamie:<\/strong>\nLiterally very little. back in the day In a\npast life, I had a custom prop shop, so we had our booth at the very first ever comic con we made. A lot of people went into this cosplay\noutfits and they would paint a Nerf gun. And we\nalways thought I was a little bit well like, alright, I guess it gets the job done. An this shop\u2019s\ngoal was that we&#8217;re going to make something that is\nfunctional that shoots a fireball. Yeah, we were the people who want the &#8211;? that\nwould shoot fireballs and used an antique jewelry box to case them in. I doubt any of the pop culture cons or comic cons would let you in with them. But the idea was, here&#8217;s your piece of\nauthenticity, here\u2019s something that makes this\nworld a little bit more real. See, it didn&#8217;t\nlast very long, but it was a fun adventure. And\nmy partner was professor Volts. I was, Jammer\nVolts, cause I had all the communications and Jammer\nrefers back to like World War two radio communications. It&#8217;s also a Derby term.\nSo I apologize to every Derby girl out there\nwho&#8217;s like \u201cyou&#8217;re not a jammer, why are you\nusing that?\u201d I wouldn&#8217;t know any better. I&#8217;ve\nhad this name a long time. I would love to do\nDerby. I&#8217;ve got elbow talents. Let&#8217;s do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:58] Alexis<\/strong>: You could reach her at @Jammer_Volts on Twitter. Awesome. So cool. That&#8217;s actually like an amazing story for a handle. So that&#8217;s awesome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, cool. So one of the\nquestions that I get a lot is how do you learn Technical SEO? And I feel like you as someone who&#8217;s gone through this process, what are some resource is that you&#8217;ve learned from and found really\nuseful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:25] Jamie: You learn\nfrom being curious and questioning. I can\nhonestly say most of my career, most of my\nsuccess has been from taking a step back from assumptions of how a process\nworks of how, you know, this piece of data gets here, and going: \u201cI&#8217;m seeing behavior that&#8217;s different. What is the gap\nbetween these?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And being willing to be the\ndumbest kid in the room has been my greatest strength because it lets me ask\ndumb questions. And then I can come to understand, oh wait, transaction means something different to you when you\u2019re referring to server hits.\nAnd for me, it means\nan Ecommerce transaction, identifying that Codex and even finding the words for\nthings knowing, Ah, this has a name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:17] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. So do you think that listening and being able to question is&#8230;\nalmost like your weapon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:24] Jamie<\/strong>: That is my superpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:27] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThat&#8217;s a good one, like that&#8217;s actually a really, really good superpower. So if\nyou would have an actual superpower. What would it be? Do you know?\n(lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:34] Jamie:<\/strong> I\nwould have the ability to teleport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:38] Alexis:<\/strong> Oh\nmy gosh that would be such a nice one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, so you obviously work\nwith developers a lot. Any tips, tricks,\nthoughts on, like what it&#8217;s like to work with developers and getting them to do\nwhat you want them to do? And maybe even, I&#8217;m\ninterested, too in like, how do you resolve\nconflicts when they\u2019re very resistant to what you\nwant? How do you get them to come around to your side or like when to back\ndown?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<strong>00:13:02] Jamie:<\/strong> Absolutely. There tends to be two frames of thought, and I actually worked as an advocate to\nget the marketing SEO side to begin adding Jira tickets. Jira\u2019s a\nfantastic way of managing your backlog and getting things moving, prioritized.\nIt was a running joke for a while that our lovely\nhead of SEO at the time, his name was Brad. He\nwould just send me tickets that were like \u201cWebsite\nbroken. Please help\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it\u2019s became, \u201cLet&#8217;s have a\nconversation about what information&#8217;s valuable.\u201d Developers are very literal. They want to give you the\nproduct that you want, but unless you clearly defined that it&#8217;s a big gap. So\npart of it is learning to speak the same language. It&#8217;s learning. Okay, What does the ticket process look like? when I put a ticket in, what\nhuman would I have a conversation with? Because, typically, business analysts\nare involved and they help get additional information. I&#8217;m pretty notorious for\nwhen I first joined teams, over-documenting\nlike, \u201cHey, I found a substantial issue. I&#8217;m going to bring it to the table. Do\nyou have questions. Can we hold them until I get\nthrough the first 23 pages of this? And then we can get to explore the\nsupporting Excel books, and we can examine this further.\u201d So really making a\ncase, letting them reproduce it, showing them with a diagnostic tool, exactly what is the problem and what the goal is. (Definitely.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&#8217;ve worked in teams where\nthey called the Dev Pod the \u201cshark tank,\u201d\nbecause everyone was afraid to go in there,\nyou&#8217;d eaten alive. Developers, a lot of times are wearing\nheadphones with nothing playing, and it&#8217;s a social cue of \u2018I am in a complex thought process, and I&#8217;m not able to have\na conversation right now.\u2019 So part of it&#8217;s going to be acknowledging how important the\nissue you&#8217;re facing is. Is the site literally\non fire? Okay, if it&#8217;s not going ahead and\ninterrupting someone who&#8217;s working in a complex process, who is going to\nhave to take 20 minutes to get back to where they\nwere once they stop, may not be worthwhile. So\nhow do you take something like a ticket format\nlayout for all those critical pieces and then have\nthat conversation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the first thing I would\nadvocate to any SEO\u2019s out there who are a\nlittle bit scared of your dev teams, ask to sit\nin on stand up. This is the morning meeting\nwhere devs, they&#8217;re\ngoing to go, \u2018This is what I&#8217;m working on.\nThis is where I&#8217;m blocked. This is what I&#8217;m working on next.\u2019 Start there. Just be a fly on the wall. It&#8217;s okay not\nto be able to contribute immediately, but you&#8217;re going\nto learn a lot. And once you understand how to speak that language, getting\nwhat you are asking for done effectively will become easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:44] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. I love that idea of, like, almost going in, infiltrating, be\na spy or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:50] Jamie:<\/strong> Be\nthe dumbest kid in the room. Own it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:00] Alexis<\/strong>: We could accept it, embrace. That&#8217;s awesome, though, because I&#8217;m sure eventually, like\nI&#8217;m sure you found that you&#8217;ve graduated throughout the ranks and now you&#8217;re\nprobably one of the smarter people in the\nroom. I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s some really smart people you work with<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:09] Jamie:<\/strong>\nThere&#8217;s still on a regular basis. Moments where I&#8217;m like Jeff, \u201cI have no idea what you&#8217;re saying right now.\u201d I&#8217;d like to\ncome, I like to say, Jeff, Dream-crusher last-name.\nHe frequently comes to me and goes, \u201cHi, this thing that you want to fix, this\nthing you want to change? Well, you&#8217;re pulling on a string.\u201d So a lot of times,\nreally, I&#8217;m sure many SEO\u2019s out there have\ngone: This is the stupidest thing. Why have we\ndone it that way? Why won&#8217;t you just do it this way? Well, that comes down to\nfundamental architecture, and sometimes when you pull on that thread, you&#8217;re\ngoing to release a lot more problems you&#8217;re going to solve. So having the\nawareness of how this one thing you want to change in the ecosystem will impact\nother pieces, will impact other teams initiatives, is critical for you to be successful in these large environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:00] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. Yeah. You don&#8217;t want like a full yarn ball going out everywhere, creating a mess. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:05] Jamie: <\/strong>It&#8217;s\ngoing to anyways, it\u2019s gonna happen. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:10] Alexis:<\/strong> One\nday you will. One day you will bring a site down too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:16] Jamie:<\/strong> And that\u2019s still there\nrunning joke. It&#8217;s not your until you break\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:19] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nguess that&#8217;s true. I have broken one too many sites\nin my day, not obviously our clients\u2019 sites, but&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:28] Jamie:<\/strong> In full transparency. I&#8217;ve been working in a friend&#8217;s sites\nand, you know, doing may have been in the HTaccess file, and I&#8217;ve been, you\nknow, just writing the mod rewrite so it could go ahead and resolve all\nversions to preferred, and accidentally taken\ndown their site. Because I want it done right next day. Yeah, that&#8217;ll do it. And it\u2019s like keeping your\ncomposure when they ask: What are you doing this\nweekend? Well. bringing their site back. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:00] Alexis:<\/strong> Everything&#8217;s Fine. Everything&#8217;s great. Yeah, Let&#8217;s Why don&#8217;t you two\ntalk for, like, two minutes? Yeah, that&#8217;s great. Let me just put my headphones\nin for a second. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:00] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nfeel really thankful that I got into SEO very\nearly on. I mean, relatively speaking, starting\nin 2008, caffeine was 2006. Google&#8217;s finally on everyone&#8217;s radar. We were Ask Jeeves\nanymore, but because it was so unknown and it\ngave me a lot of freedom to fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:14] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. What do you feel like are some of\nthe things that have changed within the\nindustry since you started? Do you feel like there&#8217;s been like a huge shift? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:25] Jamie: <\/strong>There&#8217;s textbooks now! (lol)\nI&#8217;ve had people ask me, How did how did you learn?\nWhat classes did you take them like old boots on the ground and a prayer in my pocket? &nbsp;(lol) It was, I\ndon&#8217;t know, but I figure it out. You know, a lot of complex problem solving and\nbeing willing to sit down with people and\nbeing willing to sit outside, you know, a CTO&#8217;s\noffice for two hours, and wait patiently\nbecause something was important enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:52] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, definitely. Oh, my gosh, I can only imagine. So I know that one of the\nthings that I&#8217;ve always felt about working for an agency is the coolest part is\nyou get to see a ton of different complex problems that different groups\nhave in different industries, and I feel like you&#8217;ve\nalmost got that through going through\ndifferent jobs, seeing different types of things, working with, like particular\nsites. I think that&#8217;s like you said, Learning on the job is probably one of the most important\nthings that one can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:19] Jamie:<\/strong> And\nyou know, if you&#8217;re limited, a lot of it&#8217;s hard because you don&#8217;t have the\naccess to that type of thing. I remember I was. I was lucky enough to work with\nthe Google Analytics product owner in getting enhanced eCommerce in when it was first a thing. And it was really tricky because there were no sites out there\nthat already had these types of things. We\nwere white listed for it. It was a beta. Well, it was It was amazing data to\ntake advantage of. It took it like a year for them to put up the demo-store so\nyou could go ahead and look at this sandbox testing ground. I think Google has\nembraced that as well. You haven&#8217;t gotten a check out Colabs yet or, you know,\nbegun using colab workbooks and your Google\ndrive to start playing around with code. I highly recommend it. It&#8217;s that\nfreedom too fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<strong>00:20:04] Alexis:<\/strong> Yes. Yeah, And it&#8217;s really cool, because I&#8217;ve\nalways felt I don&#8217;t know if you felt this and your experimentation with\nprogramming that the worst part is the set up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:13] Jamie:<\/strong> Oh,\ngetting your libraries, right? Please kill me now.\nActually, Hamlet Batista shared out a great\nway just over coffee and chatting at Tech SEO boost. Great conference guys. The only tech SEO conference out there. Thank you, Paul and search Catalyst\nTeam. But he was like, Hey, here&#8217;s how you export all of your library dependencies when you share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:34] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThat\u2019s like thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:35] Jamie:<\/strong> So\none of my biggest challenges was not only setting it up, but I&#8217;m making it so\nsomeone else could use it on far smarter minds and myself, like Hamlet have\ngone ahead and figured this out on our sharing that\ninformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:46] Alexis:<\/strong> Yeah definitely, and there&#8217;s always a lot of people with python\nwill use something like Anaconda. But if you go in blind or, I don&#8217;t know,\npositive optimistic, you&#8217;re like, Oh, like, let me download the newest python,\nPython three, and then, you know, it&#8217;s like No, no, no, no, no. They designed\nit on python 2.7. You&#8217;re like, Well, what&#8217;s the difference? Nothing\nworks. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:06] Jamie:<\/strong> That was our big difference. Very, very big difference. But\nthat&#8217;s why those Colab research workbooks are\nso great because you&#8217;re working in a python notebook that gives you that same\ninterface as Anaconda does, where you can run\neach segment, you can identify your break points. You can rework it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:24] Alexis:<\/strong>\ndefinitely, and you could do some pretty intense stuff in there like some\npretty intense machine learning stuff. So pretty cool, pretty cool, great\ntip. Having worked in eCommerce and Technical SEO, What do you see as the relationship between\neCommerce websites and search?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:40] Jamie:<\/strong> You\ncan&#8217;t buy a thing that doesn&#8217;t exist. And if you can&#8217;t Google it does it\nexist? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then we have Amazon as\nGoogle&#8217;s largest competitors because they&#8217;re so effective at selling. And if we\nreally dig deep into the bones of how eCommerce\nis set up and you start looking at what data\nare we even sending in our product seats? Because\nchances are I&#8217;m using that same data in my structured\ndata markup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How can we learn from these\nother tools? So a lot of collaboration with the channel manager, the person who&#8217;s sending out that product feed to Amazon, to\nGoogle, to any other of the page search partners. They have a lot of insight that\nwe can gleam. But it&#8217;s that willingness to go.\nI want to learn about your world. I&#8217;m going to sit here on be the be the\ndumb kid for a second and I&#8217;m going to come out a lot better for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:29] Alexis<\/strong>: So\ntalking about the dumb kid, I have a question for you. What does \u201cSEO as a function of product mean?\u201d You mentioned that in an\nearlier conversation we had once and I was like \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:43] Jamie:<\/strong> Oh\nthat one time we talked intensely for like, two days\nwith way too much coffee. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know that when it comes to\nhow a report in my current position, my\ncustomer is a search engine, it is Googlebot. It is primarily Googlebot\nbecause, you know, we have a JavaScript heavy\nsite. We&#8217;re working towards moving to more server-side rendering, at least for\nthose critical components. So international search engines are a bit more adapted at picking up what that content means. Personally and persistently on a mission to improve\nperformance, I really encourage anybody out\nthere who was working with an international site. Go travel abroad and don&#8217;t\nrely on your 4G WiFi (if you can). You pick up\na SIM card from one of the local shops, pop\nthat thing in and experience what it is like for you to spend 11 cents to load a page and stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:40] Alexis:<\/strong> and\nsuffer&#8230; (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:44] Jamie:<\/strong> It\u2019ll\nbe five minutes of your life, eleven cents of your\ndollar. How apt are you at that moment of like\nyeah it is worth buying. Wonder how long their cart process is. Oh, I&#8217;ve gotta register. How much more likely are you to back off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:57] Alexis:<\/strong> So\nhow do you balance? I&#8217;m always curious with us for e commerce sites. What is\nthere any internal logic on: How do you\nbalance the experience with speed and how do\nyou know when to start focusing on one or the other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:09] Jamie:<\/strong>\nSpeed is the experience. It&#8217;s is the foundation of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:12] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, that&#8217;s the tough part too, is they are\nkind of like the same thing. But then again, there&#8217;s always the optimization of\nthe actual experience itself. So&#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:15] Jamie:<\/strong> Define\nfor me optimization. <em>(Alexis note: She\u2019s\nlevel setting right now! See advice in action! Way cool!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:20] Alexis:<\/strong> So\nlike, let&#8217;s say, for instance, you know what you want to have with your website\nexperience. But maybe, not necessarily as fast as it could be\nphysically, getting\nlike a minimal, viable product ready. Your code works, everything&#8217;s good, but then it&#8217;s not as efficient as it\ncould potentially be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:39] Jamie:<\/strong> Look\nat the number of elements in the page, is\nsomething I would advocate for. There is a great Think with Google piece that\njust came out in the last year. It talks about the number of elements and image\non the page. And where is that sweet spot for conversion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it is not that you can&#8217;t have these functionalities. This is where we begin to look at our user centric key\nperformance indicators (KPIs) on those are\nthings like time to first contentful paint. Yeah, that is one of those metrics\nin Lighthouse. It&#8217;s a very obscure thing to try and\nunderstand what it means. The thing I came here for, I can see. No one cares about content that they can&#8217;t see loading. So\nwhen you even look at the UX, when you look at\nthe experience of your page, keeping in mind that user. What is the reason they\ncame here? It&#8217;s like it&#8217;s become a little bit of a trope now, but you go and\ntry and read the recipe online. You&#8217;re like, \u201cI don&#8217;t care about your second\ncousin&#8217;s wedding Can I just find out how to makes muffins please.\u201d (lol) But keep that in mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis<\/strong>: So true, like\nthe intent of a website and why you&#8217;re going, there is more important to consider. So I guess I like your idea of coming at it\nfrom a user-first perspective because I think\nsometimes, like I think there&#8217;s a quote on one of the Google training&#8217;s. I&#8217;m\npretty sure you did the certification, too, but (because I saw you had\ndone it), but basically it says the smallest site is\na site with no resources on it, right? And at\nthe same time, like you have to have something to get that experience going,\nright?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:26:11] Jamie:<\/strong> And\nit has to be worthwhile. If your content is good enough, when I get to the bottom of the\narticle, I promise you I\u2019ll click on that\nfollow-up link.\nIf what you&#8217;ve provided to me is of enough\nvalue and engaging, I will go out and click\nthat CTA. You do not need to put an overlay on\nmy screen and stop what I came here for like \u2018Hey do you like me yet? You&#8217;re coming off a\nlittle thirsty? Okay, interstitial thirsty, knock it off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:26:47] Jamie:<\/strong> And a website is a window into how our business runs on. If\nbusiness\u2019 push to get more email sign ups is\nmore important than why I came here as a user,\nthe resource I came here for, that shows that\nthis is not a user-first company, and there\nare plenty of companies out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:04] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove that analogy of a website is a window to a business. That&#8217;s so beautiful. And I think I actually, I think it&#8217;s 100%\ntrue across the board. You think about it. And if you see a website that you\nknow isn&#8217;t necessarily prioritizing the user than you can tell that they&#8217;re\nnot, they don&#8217;t have that mentality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:22] Jamie<\/strong>:\nAbsolutely. And I found our REI does is a\ngreat job. Shout out to the REI team made a beautiful work. Even in the values of the company. So how they choose to not\nonly, here is\nthe product you want to buy, but here&#8217;s a community that loves the things you do. Or hey, you&#8217;re not sure\nif this thing is right for you, do you want to turn like a day experience for it? And it&#8217;s\nabout technology serving the user and that is a, it&#8217;s a tipping\npoint right now. A lot of people have reacted with a lot of anger that, you\nknow, Google broke this agreement we had where we would give them content and\nthey would give us clicks. Well, if the content you&#8217;re providing could be\nanswered very quickly in this quick little\nblock instead of me having to read about your second cousin&#8217;s wedding, I just came\nget my muffin recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you must think of\nit this way &#8211; If\nthat&#8217;s the only value you were providing -&gt; Sorry, it makes sense to not go\nahead and give me that click through. If you\u2019re providing more, if that snippet that I&#8217;ve seen is engaging enough and will\ngive me more information, then, yeah, I&#8217;m going to go ahead and click that. I&#8217;m going to give you my time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So humans have time, energy and\nmoney. We&#8217;ve got &#8211;? everywhere. We could make\nmore money, but time is limited. That&#8217;s the true human factor. That&#8217;s why you\nwere&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:44] Alexis:<\/strong> Are\nyou worth my time? I love that. Exactly, in Frederic\u2019s interview on SEO in the Lab, had talked about websites and the idea that \u201cAre\nyou worthy of me giving you my credit card information?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:57] Jamie: <\/strong>Exactly.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:00] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nthink that idea of \u201cAre you worth my time?\u201d It even goes beyond that, you know,\nbecause it&#8217;s like, first of all, are you trustworthy? But then also, are you\ninteresting enough? (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:10] Jamie:<\/strong> Do I\nfeel like I&#8217;m empowered? Do I feel smart and capable on your site? (Alexis: Yes.) If I don&#8217;t understand how to flow\nand interact with this to do a simple thing, it&#8217;s disparaging. (Alexis: Yeah.) I&#8217;m not going to feel like\nI can handle these next steps. I&#8217;m not going to feel like the thing I came here\nto purchase is going to give me he feeling, the experience that it\u2019s intended to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:31] Alexis:<\/strong> Yeah, we&#8217;re so spoiled because so many websites today have such\na strong user experience that we&#8217;re not used to\nchallenging user journey flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:43] Jamie:<\/strong>\nFriction points are real. Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:45] Alexis<\/strong>: No,\nwho I love, they have a great map &#8211; Starbucks always has, Like, these amazing\nused user journey maps that they update all the time. And I&#8217;m sure different\npeople in the organization have them. But some\nof them you can find online that they have, and they map out every single part\nin the user journey from, like, the feeling that they want them to have when\nthey get in the shop to like the\ncustomer ordered the coffee or something. it&#8217;s always\nlike, very impressive to see, like that level of user focus and what they want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:13] Jamie:<\/strong> Please\nshare that link? Yeah. I would love to see that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:16] Alexis:<\/strong> Let\u2019s\nsee if I can find it. I think Kevin Indig&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:18] Jamie:<\/strong> Of\ncourse, Kevin has it. That man is, if you guys don&#8217;t follow Kevin on\nTwitter yet. Go do it. He&#8217;s from, He&#8217;s from the Jira team, actually. So his tool helps save my tail on daily\nbasis, and he&#8217;s brilliant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:30] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThanks, Kevin. Thanks for being you. Yeah, I&#8217;m pretty sure it was one of the\nthings that he had shared. So he, I&#8217;ll follow\nup with him and I&#8217;ll check the site and see if\nI can find it for the notes in this podcast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Okay, So what do you\nthink are the top challenges facing large eCommerce sites today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:49] Jamie:<\/strong> Oh,\nman, that is such a loaded question. All right, so if you&#8217;ve got a large eCommerce\nsite and it was, it was set up a minute ago.\nYou know, it&#8217;s been online for a while. It&#8217;s\ntrustworthy, it\u2019s got authority. Well, there are two aspects here that are\npretty challenging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One,&nbsp; how is it scaled out? Is every different\nsection of this site an independent CMS? Are they aware of each other? Are they\nintegrated? It&#8217;s an information architecture\nchallenge that can result in cannibalism on a really difficult user journeys,\nhigh friction conversion points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have to look at, for a\nwhile, sites\nfocused their performance metrics on full page load, and that ended up with a\nlot of hole punching and going \u2018Well, we&#8217;ll get the full page on there and they&#8217;re gonna make all\nthese asynchronous calls. We&#8217;re gonna load everything that way.\u2019 And it was, it was a way to make it appear to be smaller\nwithout actually being smaller or faster. Um, so now that&#8217;s led to our pivot\nfor these user centric metrics. Where? Well, how long until I could be\ninteractive? They came here an amount of PDP.\nI want to buy this thing. So get me the content that tells me \u201cHey, here&#8217;s the thing you came to buy. Here&#8217;s the critical\ninfluence you need to know, a price, how fast it ships.\u201d Here&#8217;s a picture, you know, images are so important because of the closest we can get to a\nproduct while being online. And here&#8217;s our buy by. And the further I go down\nthat page, the further and going to be away from ready to purchase. I need help, I need more information\nbefore making the best decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:28] Alexis: <\/strong>Definitely.\nAnd this is a question that&#8217;s in a similar vein. But what do you see as the most critical elements of eCommerce SEO to get right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:37] Jamie:<\/strong> That\nis, I don&#8217;t even know where to start. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<strong>00:32:38] Alexis:<\/strong> Do it, well. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:44] Jamie: I<\/strong>\nneed you to go ahead and pull out your phone,\non your own website\nand try to buy a product going incognito in mode, turn out that WiFi, try and\nbuy a product. If you could do that and you don&#8217;t need to go take a walk on the\nblock and chill, you\u2019re doing all right. Taking that back and you&#8217;re going to repeat it. And you&#8217;re\ngoing to try and find that product not using search, by using the\ncategorization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:09] Alexis:<\/strong> OooOoo,\nI love that idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:12] Jamie<\/strong>: Yes,\nyou have to go through your own hierarchy to complete this. Okay, Now you&#8217;ve\ngot the one thing, you&#8217;ve got a toaster. Now we&#8217;re going to switch from I want to buy a\ntoaster too, I&#8217;m a user who wants to host a\nbrunch. So that means I&#8217;m not just looking for a toaster. I&#8217;m looking for\nnapkins. I&#8217;m looking for plates. I&#8217;m looking for, It&#8217;s Kentucky Derby. I think\nMoscow mules is that where Kentucky Derby,\nis that the drink of choice? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:15] Alexis:<\/strong> We&#8217;ll go with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:16] Jamie:<\/strong> We&#8217;re\ngoing to pretend it is. Everyone loves Moscow\nmules and big fancy hats and there\u2019s horses.\nBut go through that journey and try and have an\nexperience, try and complete that. If you can&#8217;t, then we&#8217;ve identified another\nproblem. And this is where you start to begin\nto understand from a user focus where are my gap points? While I&#8217;m on this article that tells me how to make a Moscow\nmule because I&#8217;m holding a Kentucky Derby party. But there&#8217;s no link for me to\nbuy the thing or there&#8217;s various dead ends, and you want to spot those. That&#8217;s\nboth for SEO and CRO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we look at it from a search\nengine perspective, Google wants to give us really authoritative&nbsp; answers. We&#8217;re\nasking higher level questions. So if we&#8217;re having a conversation with a topic\nof Star Wars, we&#8217;re going to talk about siths, Jedi\u2019s, Ewok, Han Solo, Yoda. And\nthat&#8217;s just gonna be part of a well-informed conversation. That was a thing,\nthat was weird, but that\u2019s just a naturally\ninformed conversation. And search engines want\nthat same kind of interconnectivity between content on your site. It wants you to have a strong branch like on a tree, and then it will judge you based on how these branches go off, is it a healthy branch? Is this a weak one, a\nparasitic one that&#8217;s really detracting and not able to support the user&#8217;s\nintent. But we have a strong one over here. You\ncan also stop me at any time. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:35:20] Alexis:<\/strong> You\u2019re\ndoing so well. I just wanted you to just keep going and I was like, I&#8217;ll stop before the closing question, if we get there. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:35:31] Jamie:<\/strong> Okay\nthe downside of my passionate rants, every\ntime I get in front of C-level, and this is\nanother piece of feedback that I get on a\npretty regular basis is \u201cyou&#8217;ve got to take a\nstep back from the technical.\u201d It&#8217;s very\ndifficult for me to separate out those pieces because the devil is in the details. He&#8217;s in the\nexecution. It&#8217;s not what you do, it&#8217;s how you do it. And I&#8217;m still personally learning in my own growth, how you\neffectively communicate those to the people who could push the buttons\nas they go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:03] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. Yeah, I think that&#8217;s a huge challenge to being able to, like\ncommunicate to someone who doesn&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s going on, I think. But\nthen also, you have to get them to do or invest in what you&#8217;re doing, even\nthough they don&#8217;t understand what you&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:18] Jamie:<\/strong>\nAbsolutely, you know, who am I speaking to you? Is this a good time to make a\nlogical argument? You know, a very passionate, emotional based argument. What is the best way to approach this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:32] Alexis:<\/strong> So\nhave you found anything that&#8217;s really effective so far in your journey? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie: <\/strong>Dollars signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Dollars? Yeah. I feel like that sense is telling me how much\nthis is gonna cost me. How much money will I make?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:44] Jamie<\/strong>: And\nnot even how much it&#8217;s gonna cost, but how much can be\ngained? Yeah. So when you present it as, look,\nwe have the assets here, we have, and this is\na great time to work with your product content management team to understand\nthose who are taking in data for new products, who are helping to categorize\nthem. What kind of relationships we\u2019re\nfacilitating with manufacturers, to go on. You basically lay constraints for yourself. So I like to go ahead, I consider\nSEO as like a\nbooster pack. I&#8217;m not going to come in and demand that you guys rework\neverything that you do, but I&#8217;m gonna help you as you execute to be foundationally solid, to be stable, to be scalable and to begin to have\nan awareness of other parts of the system. So when we connect all of these\ntogether when it&#8217;s an ecosystem that understands \u201cAh, my manufacturer over here\nhas, you know, made this new product line, and we have a relationship\nwhere we\u2019re\npromoting them.\u201d What places could we go ahead and put a relevant information\nabout those products on other places? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I have my manufacturer who&#8217;s making copper mugs, Kentucky\nDerby\u2019s coming up. Where do I place those so they are relevant to a\nuser and provide value as opposed to the thing I have to scroll past or the\nthing that takes forever to load. And it makes my page jump. If your site does that, please make someone who can push a button go\nthrough that experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:38:15] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. But one of the questions I wanted to ask was, do you think in SEO, one\nday, can sit in the boardroom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:38:23] Jamie<\/strong>: I\nlove that question and I want to take it on. I think if SEO\u2019s like myself, learn how to speak, you know this is the new\nCodex I&#8217;m learning. This is a new Rosetta Stone. How to translate my intent and\nwhat I want to see done into words that they understand and have meaning to\nthem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But we&#8217;re advocates of Web\npresence, of users, of performance. We should absolutely sit in the boardroom.\nWe are a place to go. This isn&#8217;t just about selling things, it\u2019s about selling them in a way that is meaningful, that supports users, because when a user feels like you have\ntheir back, they&#8217;re going to come back to you. So this is an investment in a\nlifetime value. You can turn and burn through customers. You can, you know, miff\nthem over, but it&#8217;s going to run out one day. It&#8217;s not an indefinite supply. So\nby being that presence who goes there. And we\nuse search engines as away, as a mirror to see them, a reflection of overall\nsite health, a reflection of overall user experience through analytics on page.\nThen we begin to understand, and we can present that in the boardroom and we can grow the business by making that experience better.\nThis is a digital world. How do we keep up with the next step?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:39:41] Alexis:<\/strong>\nDefinitely. It&#8217;s so fascinating how almost&#8230; websites and working on sites\nhave almost gone back to more traditional sales values, cause I just remember\nwatching this. There&#8217;s like this ride called \u2018It&#8217;s a small\nworld.\u2019 I don&#8217;t know if you\u2019ve heard of\nit, at Disney like one of the most daring famous\nones, I don&#8217;t know, Whatever. I&#8217;m not like that.You\nknow, it&#8217;s like So basically, you go into it and it takes you in this world,\nand everyone&#8217;s like saying It&#8217;s a small world after all for, like, twenty\nminutes straight. And (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:10] Jamie:<\/strong> I&#8217;m\nsorry, I don&#8217;t know that song, can you sing it again? (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:11] Alexis:<\/strong> It\u2019s\na small world after alllllll. Okay, you guys got my\nvoice (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:18] Jamie:<\/strong>\nWorst podcast episode ever. I&#8217;m sorry, guys. That was a close, intimate. They\u2019re\nlike \u2018Oh, she\u2019s the worst. Derailed conversations for\nIt&#8217;s a small world song. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:27] Alexis:<\/strong> It\u2019s like shield your ears,\nAlexis is singing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, but basically the woman\nwho created that ride had asked Walt Disney, \u201cWhat\nis my budget?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And she was like, \u201cOh, I need\na budget like, What are you looking at? What are we trying to achieve here? \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And his answer was, \u201cOh,\nthere&#8217;s no budget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And she was like, \u201cWell, like\nwe kind of need a budget.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he&#8217;s like, \u201cNo, build the\nride that people are going to want to come back to, because if they come back then we don&#8217;t have any problems.\u201d,\nwhich is kind of, like, a fun business philosophy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Jamie: Exactly. And they you\nhave advocates.) And like, that&#8217;s almost similar to what you&#8217;re saying here is building the site that\npeople are going to want because then you&#8217;ll\nbe able to have people come back to it in a way that&#8217;s meaningful and\ninteresting to them. Which, man, Disney\nabsolutely ahead of his time, behind his time in many ways, but ahead of his time in like, a\nfew. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:23] Jamie<\/strong>: If\nyour frozen head is listening to a podcast\nright now. Thank you. And also, with the hell man. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:29] Alexis<\/strong>:\nOkay. All right. So for the final closing question, what are your three nuggets\nof advice for an SEO working on a technical Ecommerce site?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:47] Jamie:<\/strong> My three Nuggets of advice are: Go buy something, Do it\nthrough product categorization. We&#8217;ve got to go down and find it. Do when\nyou&#8217;re throwing them on the PDP. Do it when you&#8217;re trying to have that\nexperience, that conceptual journey that goes\nacross categories<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:06] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove that one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:07] Jamie:<\/strong>\nUnderstand how products come on and off your\nsite? How are they on boarded? At what point\nis there a PDP? At what point is that PDP go away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:21] Alexis:<\/strong>\nSuch a good one too. We could also talk about that for probably another hour. How\nto offload it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:27] Jamie:<\/strong> We\u2019ll\ntalk about that We&#8217;ll have a Disney sing along. It\u2019ll\nbe great. I love rocking out to poor unfortunate souls \u2026 Ursula, you\u2019re\nmy personal hero or spirit animal\u2026 (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:38] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThrow in the Little Mermaid, Not like the Disney version, the original story. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:44] Jamie:<\/strong> The\nDisney version bothered me as a child because I just thought to myself \u2018Write it down!\u2019 (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis:<\/strong> You\u2019re like, \u2018obviously.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie:<\/strong> This could all be solved if you more the note that was like \u201cHi,\nI met you the day, you were drowning. I saved you. I really liked you\nand impulsively traded my voice for some legs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:02] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYes, you&#8217;re like \u201cand\u2026 it was not a great decision. In retrospect.\u201d\n(lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:10] Jamie<\/strong>: \u201cI\nthink that ate my friend for dinner. He was a small crab \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis<\/strong>: and I still\nfeel really bad about it. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie<\/strong>: I feel like,\nif she had lived on, finished out her days on land, it would have been really sad. Now they&#8217;ve been like,\n\u201cOh, we\u2019re having flounder\nfor dinner.\u201d (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis<\/strong>: Oh,\ngosh, that is true. That is very true. &nbsp;(lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie: <\/strong>I think we\nanswered the question of whether or not Ariel was vegan, and Ariel was definitely vegan. She\nwent into the open ocean every day and she sucked in krill. Those are living so that would be\nvegan. Oh, complex dietary ethics for Ariel. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:52] Alexis<\/strong>: I\u2019m\nthere&#8217;s a specific word for what she was. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:58] Jamie<\/strong>: I\nsay I supposed to answer another nugget of advice.\nUnderstand your infrastructure. So say you&#8217;ve got a\nblog and your blog is categorized. Do you use\nthe same categories in your blog as you use in eCommerce? How does\nthat connect through with&#8211; you &#8216;ve got community support or questions? Understand the\nflow of those. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You begin to use the same words to describe something you create consistency.\nAnd baseless words off of what your users are going\nfor. You know, we look at site search more times. The conversion rate is five\ntimes that of those who are trying to find another way. How do you facilitate\nthat pathway? Because when you do that, it&#8217;s not just about the user\nexperience. You&#8217;re also allowing a chance for a greater order value, for a\ngreater sense of investment from user is now engaged with your content. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s selfishly altruistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:44:56] Alexis<\/strong>: I\nlove that word, \u201cselfishly altruistic\u201d But that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s like, what a lot of\nfriendships are. You know. You have to take care of yourself first. But you also have to take care of\nthe people around you too, you know, And by taking people around you, in a way,\nyou&#8217;re taking care of yourself<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:45:14] Jamie<\/strong>: And\nloving someone as another person in this works interpersonally\nas well for their flaws. Being willing to acknowledge your own and\nfigure out how you know you can learn better, do\nbetter or just being able to laugh at them. It&#8217;s\na beautiful thing. (Alexis: So beautiful.) I think the video game goat\nsimulator taught us that a bug can truly be a\nfeature. But it&#8217;s in how we handle it.\nYou know, bugs, we treat them as part of the\nexperience. They become a feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:45:54] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove that. And with the goat, which is the bug, which\nis the feature, we will close out. Thank you so\nmuch, Jamie, for coming on the podcast today. we should totally do it again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:46:08] Jamie:<\/strong> Yes,\nwe\u2019ll try and stay better on topic, but I make no promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:46:11] Alexis<\/strong>: I\nthought it was awesome! Thank you so much. Signing off, ciao!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resources: Jamie Alberico on twitter:&nbsp;https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jammer_Volt Random, fun facts about Jamie: She wrangles in 4-6MM products, 7 languages Her spirit animal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.6.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Podcast: 3. Interview w\/ Jamie Alberico, Arrow Electronics | TechnicalSEO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Alexis talks with Jamie Alberico from Arrow Electronics about technical SEO, working with dev teams, large eCommerce sites, and more in the lab! Listen in. :-)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Podcast: 3. Interview w\/ Jamie Alberico, Arrow Electronics | TechnicalSEO.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alexis talks with Jamie Alberico from Arrow Electronics about technical SEO, working with dev teams, large eCommerce sites, and more in the lab! Listen in. :-)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TechnicalSEO.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-05-14T06:20:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/seo-in-the-lab-jamie-alberico.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"45 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Merkle Inc.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/\",\"sameAs\":[],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/merkle-bug-192.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/merkle-bug-192.png\",\"width\":192,\"height\":192,\"caption\":\"Merkle Inc.\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/\",\"name\":\"TechnicalSEO.com\",\"description\":\"Blog, Podcast &amp; Presentations\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/seo-in-the-lab-jamie-alberico.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/seo-in-the-lab-jamie-alberico.jpg\",\"width\":800,\"height\":500},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/\",\"name\":\"Podcast: 3. Interview w\/ Jamie Alberico, Arrow Electronics | TechnicalSEO.com\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-05-06T01:01:09+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-05-14T06:20:04+00:00\",\"description\":\"Alexis talks with Jamie Alberico from Arrow Electronics about technical SEO, working with dev teams, large eCommerce sites, and more in the lab! Listen in. :-)\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/jamie-alberico\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Insights\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Podcast\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"3. Interview w\/ Jamie Alberico, Arrow Electronics\"}]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/episode\/739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/episode"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/episode\/739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/episode\/739\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}