{"id":773,"date":"2019-05-19T15:30:19","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T22:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/?post_type=episode&#038;p=773"},"modified":"2019-06-18T13:53:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T20:53:12","slug":"eric-hammond","status":"publish","type":"episode","link":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/eric-hammond\/","title":{"rendered":"5. Interview w\/ Eric Hammond, American Eagle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Episode Notes:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Information about Eric:<br><ul><li>Twitter:&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elhammond\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/elhammond<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Eric&#8217;s Podcast: <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/lunchtimeinrome.com\/\">https:\/\/lunchtimeinrome.com\/<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Timestamps:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>[0:00] Intros<br>[4:30] Go-to analogy for SEO?<br>[6:30] Why are analogies popular in SEO?<br>[7:40] What is the best way to train people?<br>[9:30] Developing case studies to build credibility from the ground up<br>[11:30] Fashion industry versus SEO<br>[18:40] SEO is about getting personality&nbsp;<br>[21:00] Making friends and leadership<br>[25:00] Value of creating processes&nbsp;<br>[28:00] Automation versus personal<br>[33:00] Three golden nuggets of advice<br>              1. Best practices<br>              2. Create site with the best UX<br>              3. Start making friends<br>[43:00] Lunchtime in Rome<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Top quotes:&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>&#8220;At the end of the day, we sell common sense. However, common sense is not all that common.&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8221; I go for basically breaking hearts and finding how people are really searching for it. &#8220;<\/li><li>&#8220;Leaders will like, join you alongside you and guide you through things right. And that&#8217;s what I do like It&#8217;s taking them on the journey of why we want to do everything&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;Are you going to speak to that person in a meaningful way that takes a person to join them in and what they&#8217;re looking for?&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8220;As an SEO, everything that everybody else does impacts your channel.&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8221; Wherever you can get a different perspective, you know, from a different angle. Looking at the looking at the same screen, but from a from a different angle and seeing something differently is always important <\/li><li>&#8221; Once you get those, like little quick wins and you explain it and you see results. People start getting it&#8221;<\/li><li>&#8221; I try to dumb it (complex SEO tasks) down as much as I can, so it&#8217;s very, very snackable and &#8230;. explain the why of what we&#8217;re doing everything. &#8220;<\/li><li>&#8221; I would say more or so of it is taking them out of the fashion industry and backing up a step and getting them out of like the verbiage in the fashion industry, right? And focusing on what people are actually searching for. &#8220;<\/li><li>&#8221; It&#8217;s kind of like the same old stuff that we&#8217;ve been talking about for a long time. Keyword research, content, user experience, you know, making everything much more friendly to the user &#8220;<\/li><li>&#8220;You won\u2019t get any of your great recommendations pushed through unless you have those good relationships. That&#8217;s what it all comes down to. If there&#8217;s anything I want you to take away, start making friends.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Transcript:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:00] Alexis Sanders<\/strong>:\nHello. Hello. Today we&#8217;re here, joined by Matthew Grabiak account manager at\nMerkle, as well as Eric Hammond (Account Manager at American Eagle). We&#8217;re so\nexcited to have you on the show, Eric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:10] Eric Hammond:<\/strong>\nYeah, I&#8217;m really excited to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:13] Alexis:<\/strong>\nEric is a longtime friend of ours, and I&#8217;m just excited to have a casual\nconversation with you. So would you like to introduce yourself to our\nlisteners? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:22] Eric:<\/strong> Yeah,\nso I actually used to work with Alexis here at Merkle and I have since moved on\nto do SEO at American Eagle Outfitters here in Pittsburgh. I enjoyed it. I want\nto say this. I enjoyed my time so much here. I miss you guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:38] Alexis:<\/strong> We\nmiss you so much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:39] Eric<\/strong>:\nIt was a great experience here and now I&#8217;ve moved on to American Eagle, which\nis also great. I love it there too. Tough work. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:48] Alexis:<\/strong>\nStill reppin\u2019 the Burgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:51] Eric:<\/strong> I love\nthis town! You know I do. I do love it, but yeah, let&#8217;s do I am a little bit\nmore about me. I&#8217;m a new dad, right? Five month old Maggie Grace. She&#8217;s\nadorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:01] Alexis:<\/strong>\nShe is. I can attest to that Instagram photos on point. Yeah, right. She&#8217;s\nalways smiling she&#8217;s so positive. Yeah, she really. She&#8217;s sleeping really good.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:12] Eric:<\/strong>\njust like you would want to keep that going. But, yeah, she&#8217;s a really, really\ngood baby<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:17] Alexis:<\/strong> on\na scale of one to ten babies, she\u2019s a ten. Crushing it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Yeah,\nyeah, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s who I am right now. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis<\/strong>: Nice.\nAnd I know you have a series of hobbies, just as some fun facts. I know. You&#8217;re\na really cool site, Xur. You played drums. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:35] Eric:<\/strong>\nYes, it&#8217;s funny. Started a website with a friend of mine. Whereisxur.com. So if\nyou&#8217;ve ever played destiny or destiny 2 you have probably visited the website,\nwe&#8217;ve had a lot of traffic and a lot of cool things happen with that. It&#8217;s kind\nof a pet project. I&#8217;m actually gonna be handing off Just because life changes\nand interest is dropped and moving on. It&#8217;s just kind of takes up too much\ntime. But<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:56] Alexis:<\/strong> he\nowned the [where is] feature on snippet for a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:59] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah it is pretty cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:00] Alexis:<\/strong>\nAnd it was awesome. Yeah, right on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:03] Eric:<\/strong>\nand I also play drums. I love playing drums. It&#8217;s my favorite thing to do. I\nplay almost every Sunday at church and I play a couple different gigs at\ndifferent bars around the city here. And I love that so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:15] Alexis: <\/strong>That\u2019s\nso Cool. Yeah, so fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:18] Eric:<\/strong> I\nactually want to build up my Instagram feed with, like, more drumming that&#8217;s a\ngoal of this year for me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:24] Alexis:<\/strong> (Lol)\nwe still need an intro, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:28] Eric:<\/strong>\nJust to make like me better. You know, you could kind of be more purposeful\nabout it because it really is like genuinely my favorite thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:34] Alexis:<\/strong>\nIt&#8217;s awesome. You get away from things like that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:36] Eric:<\/strong> Oh\nyeah. Such a like a release too<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:38] Alexis:<\/strong>\nIt\u2019s really so so true. I have no musical talent, but I got other people do you\nknow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:44] Eric: <\/strong>You\nhave so many other talents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:47] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThank you. Thank you so much! Alright, awesome. So let&#8217;s get into the meat of\nthe podcast. So just to get us started, what is your favorite aspect of SEO? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:59] Eric:<\/strong> I\nlove how it&#8217;s like, always changing, like the game is always changing. There&#8217;s\nalways like a new element, and it&#8217;s probably and I don&#8217;t want to fast forward\ntoo much, but it&#8217;s also probably my least favorite part of it. Like sometimes,\nlike we&#8217;re humans right, we don&#8217;t like change and there&#8217;s sometimes like, My\ngosh, could we just could we just stay here for a little bit? We&#8217;re having such\na good success. Can we just live in this success for a little bit. But Google\nwill do what Google does (and also other search engines). But there&#8217;s always\nsomething to research. There&#8217;s always something to study. There&#8217;s always\nsomething to strategically plan for and it just changes. And that for me is a\nreally great thing that drives me, because I need change. I need something that\nkind of like something new to focus on and all that, so it very much meets a\nneed there for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:03:46] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYou want to grow and develop. (Eric: Yeah) Be a part of something that ends up\nbeing bigger in the end. So cool. (Eric: Yeah) That&#8217;s such a great aspect. I\nfeel like that&#8217;s a popular one, because when you come into SEO, it&#8217;s always\nlike the whole fire hydrant of information you&#8217;re getting. And then you realize\nas your you develop into an account manager that it&#8217;s always a fire hydrant.\nYou&#8217;re just always surrounded by so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:04:10] Eric:<\/strong>\nIt\u2019s different. And I&#8217;ll probably talk a little bit about this too, but it&#8217;s\ndifferent than like any other marketing channel. It&#8217;s not. We&#8217;re going to plan\nto spend this amount of budget and expect to get this amount of return. (Alexis:\nYeah) I mean like all the paid channels and whatnot. So it is more about\nplanning and all kinds of strategic moves and whatnot. Yeah, I&#8217;ll talk more\nabout that too, but that&#8217;s pretty much the biggest reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:04:33] Alexis:<\/strong> So\ndo you have an analogy for what you like to, your go-to analogy for SEO because\nI&#8217;ve been hearing from different people different, that everyone has different\nconnections. I was sort of connected back to the like a seed you plant and you\ngarden and you plan, and you hope that the seed comes out because you&#8217;ve given\nall the right conditions for it to grow. Some people use the sports analogies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>What\ndid Tessa use last episode? I&#8217;m blanking on it. (For readers: Spoiled rich kid)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>It\nwas so good! I heard this week too hedge funds. It was like it&#8217;s like you&#8217;re\nhedging your bets. And I thought it was brilliant. I was like, Oh, my God, I\nnever thought about SEO from a financial perspective, It&#8217;s like you&#8217;re\nliterally planning your estimating what&#8217;s going to happen. You know, you&#8217;re\nessentially like a finance type, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:18] Eric:<\/strong> It\nis hard to, like, estimate it for an analogy. I don&#8217;t know, like it&#8217;s just\ncause it&#8217;s all over the place. I feel sometimes. So it&#8217;s hard to put, like, one\nanalogy to it, you know, oftentimes like, you know, by reference like we all\nhave to basically, like sing in harmony, right? It&#8217;s like, like kind of like,\nyeah, yeah, always goes back to music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:39] Eric:<\/strong>\nyou know, you have your director who strategically is guiding everybody through\nit all, and everybody you know over in the horn section is to be doing this,\nand you&#8217;re playing this note and also, you know, on the other side of things,\nlike in the woodwind section or whatever you want to call<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:55] Alexis<\/strong>:\nYeah, I would be the woodman. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:59] Eric:<\/strong> Yeah,\nthere you go. Yeah, but it&#8217;s all about like making everything sing in harmony\nfrom technical SEO making sure that&#8217;s going. And also like you keyword research\nin content optimization. You know, pretty much the nuts and bolts. And it was\nfunny. Is that kind of plays in the like? My whole theme is, like, at the end\nof the day, we sell a lot of common sense. Yeah, but common sense is not that\ncommon. Like I always refer to that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:06:17] Alexis:<\/strong> \u2018common\nsense, it&#8217;s not that common.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:06:23] Eric:<\/strong> So\nthat&#8217;s my, uh, out of pocket analogy for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>I\nlove it.. That was a great question. SEOs do seem to love analogies, right? You\nuse analogies, way more than other groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:06:37] Alexis:<\/strong>\nMaybe, do you think it&#8217;s because explaining SEO, too someone who&#8217;s never\nexperienced SEO before or experienced the wonders of the Internet and that it&#8217;s\nsomething that&#8217;s so far off from what they&#8217;ve ever experienced that you need to\nuse something that they&#8217;re going to latch onto. And so we&#8217;ve gravitated to\nthese different analogies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:06:59] Eric:<\/strong>\nyeah, well, and you have to make it relatable and well, like that&#8217;s actually\none of my takeaways from this episode (Alexis: Your golden nugs!) is like all\nthe relationships that you have with other people in educating them on what SEO\nis and having them have a better understanding is really great, you know, like\npeople outside of your team or, you know, big stakeholders in your company,\nlike they don&#8217;t really understand what it is. So making those relationships and\nbringing understanding and educating on what it is, will help you out the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:07:33] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove that. I just wanted to pause on that for a second because I think we could\ntalk about this for hours. I know. Yeah, we talked a little bit with this, with\nTessa about this, but what do you think is the best way to give that knowledge\nto other people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:07:49] Eric:<\/strong>\nIt&#8217;s funny. So James, who also used to work at Merkle with me James Patterson. (Alexis:\nJames P!&#8230; Jerry.) Yeah. Jerry. Yeah, Um, you know, he&#8217;s much more on the\ntechnical SEO side of things. And I&#8217;m much more on the content side of things. (Alexis:\nYou balance each other.) We do balance each other because he is a great set, like\nhis mind has just a great set of knowledge. But I feel like one of my strengths\nis like communicating things at a dumb enough level for other people to\nunderstand. Because I don&#8217;t feel like I&#8217;m not, like smart enough. So, like, I\ntry to dumb it down as much as I can so very, very snackable and just, you\nknow, just so you can explain the why of what we&#8217;re doing everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis<\/strong>:\nThose little quick bites, those little nibs! (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric<\/strong>:\nAnd once you get those, like little quick wins and you explain it and you see\nresults. People start getting it. Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>and\neducation, We&#8217;re only two episodes in. But education has already been a big\ntheme in these two episodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>That&#8217;s\nwhat it is like. And that&#8217;s what that&#8217;s one of the most like. I feel biggest\ndifference between agency and in house. On the agency&#8217;s side, you&#8217;re trying to\neducate somebody on the other side that might not be a SEO guru or whatever, or\nthey might be and they get it. But that communication and education funnel is\nso important it is so key like it&#8217;s probably the most important thing in a SEO\nlike minus keyword research, minus content, minus technical. Like you have to\ncreate great relationships. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:14] Alexis:<\/strong> So\nhow do you\u2026 Go ahead, You had a question Matt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:15] Matt:<\/strong>\nYeah. So sounds like communication and education are your top method of doing\nthis. But you have any other tips on ways to get buy-in from internal teams\nwith SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>I\nthink going back to what I said. Like, if you can get a little quick win, if\nyou can develop that relationship with somebody like, may be on the same level\nas you and you do like a little case study and you provide results that opens\nit up more and more. (<strong>Matt: <\/strong>Right?)\nSo kind of starting from the ground up like, what can you and what\nrelationships can you make that are more of a peer level on another team that\nyou can make a difference and then funnel that up and keep it going? Does that\nmakes sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:54] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah. So there&#8217;s, like a huge focus on \u201cwhat can I do for you\u201d versus \u201cwhat can\nI do for me? Or what can I do for the site?\u201d (<strong>Eric<\/strong>: Right.) You know, it&#8217;s let&#8217;s focus on, you know, I think is\ncan be a little bit different. I feel like sometimes, like a least I&#8217;ve always\nfocused on how can we better your experience, your site versus how can we make\nyou into a rock star? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:17] Eric:<\/strong> Right!\nI love setting other people up to win. I love, like making other people look\ngreat. (<strong>Alexis<\/strong>: Yes.) You know,\nwe&#8217;ll get those little quick wins like, you know, we have site merchants, and\nwe coordinate with them constantly, right? And we work with them basically on a\ndaily basis. And one of the great things with them is whatever they touch it\nimpacts the site greatly, you know, in terms of eCommerce, right, And I&#8217;m sure\nthat resonates with other eCommerce listeners. So if you can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:44] Alexis:<\/strong> Get\nall the power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:47] Eric<\/strong>:\nSo if you can make them look good to their supervisors in their bosses likes,\nthen you get buy-in, and then you just snow ball It right? Yeah. Great point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>I\nagree with that. In my experience, once you get them one win, they&#8217;ll continue\nto come back to <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Yeah,\nright. Exactly. They come back to you for more, right? Yeah, totally. And with\nus. Being a fashion Ecommerce website, it&#8217;s constantly changing, so they&#8217;re\nwondering, like what can we do for the next season? You know, all that kind of\nstuff<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:15] Alexis:<\/strong> do\nyou think the mentality of SEO fits really well with the mentality of fashion?\nBecause you mentioned that SEO is constantly changing, fashion is constantly\nchanging. It sounds like you like everyone (Probably) in the company has that\nsame mentality of, like, what&#8217;s next? What do we do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:30] Eric:<\/strong> I\nwould say more or so of it is taking them out of the fashion industry and\nbacking up a step and getting them out of like the verbiage in the fashion\nindustry, right? And focusing on what people are actually searching for. Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:49] Eric:<\/strong>\nThat\u2019s just best practice keyword research, right? Finding out how people are\nsearching for it, how people are referencing it because it might be different\nthan the lingo or the slang that we use on the inside, right? So it&#8217;s a big\neducation piece for eCommerce, and that would go across any commerce, right?\nIt&#8217;s not just fashion industry, it&#8217;s other stuff, too. And that&#8217;s been a great\neducation for our teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:11] Alexis:<\/strong>\nNice. So basically, you approach it as you know, we&#8217;re going to go in. We&#8217;re going\nto find the keywords that match what people are actually saying. We&#8217;re going\nadd those into our copy, and then we&#8217;re going to hope that we have some wins,\nshare those wins out to turn into, like, this virtuous cycle. It really them\ncoming back to you and get it more, more integrated into their system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:32] Eric:<\/strong> I\ngo back to it really is \u201ccommon sense is not that common\u201d, right? And it&#8217;s just\nit really is best practice keyword research. I feel like what I was looking\nthrough this. I was like, man, I&#8217;m gonna be a big letdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:45] Alexis:<\/strong>\nNo, no!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:46] Eric:<\/strong>\nEverybody is all about the best practices, you know? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>Yeah,\nthat&#8217;s a great point, actually. Have a question about that. Relate to the\nfashion industry. Is that ever hard sell? I&#8217;ve never worked in the fashion\nindustry, but I would imagine that SEO is a little more data driven by some of\nthe decisions that they make, or just the way that the fashion industry works.\nSo yeah, do they ever get married, to keywords or topics that you would I want\nthem to shy away from. And how do you deal with that struggle? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Absolutely,\nit goes back to getting those quick wins, if you can, if you can prove that\nsomething works and it&#8217;s beneficial and it resonates one with you know, performance\nand analytics. And you know how that&#8217;s going. But also how you know your target\ndemographic is responding to it. You know that&#8217;s important, too, because that&#8217;s\nanother good research you know, with cross functional teams, we have other\nteams doing research and different strategies there to focus on, like how our\nspecific demographic is referencing things as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:13:45] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThat&#8217;s awesome. I love that idea of personas, audience development, you know,\nmaking sure to figure out how the and users actually using systems. And I think\nSEO actually fits really well into those data teams because we&#8217;re always\nthinking about the user. We&#8217;re thinking about their experience. Which do you\nfeel that is different from what SEO, it would have looked like five, ten years\nago?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:08] Eric:<\/strong> I\nthink, like the nuts and bolts of it and reading all the blog&#8217;s reading all the\nspeculation. It really does come down to best practices like that. It&#8217;s\nkind of like the same old stuff that we&#8217;ve been talking about for a long time. Keyword\nresearch, content, user experience, you know, making everything much more\nfriendly to the user. That&#8217;s such a big, big focus. And it\nkind of always has been. Yeah, you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:32] Alexis:<\/strong>\nthink about the big expertise, authoritativeness,&nbsp; trustworthiness, like it&#8217;s like just a\nrecycling and new verbiage for what we\u2019ve always had. Yeah, I&#8217;ve always had. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:40] Eric:<\/strong>\nAnd there&#8217;s other things that you can pepper in structure, data. You know,\nthings like that. Just all those best practices. It&#8217;s just kind of, for me It&#8217;s\nmore monitoring how it&#8217;s working for you. And is it? Is it resonating for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:52] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, pepper in that structured data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:54] Eric:<\/strong>\nYou gotta do it, got to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:56] Alexis:<\/strong>\nLittle side of Structured data, pepper, technical SEO sauce. It has to be\nintegrated with the meal that you can just\u2026 right? Right. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:08] Eric:<\/strong>\nLast time you had the sports focus, I thought you were gonna get into fashion\nThis time around. I expected some really great fashion analogies from you know\nwhat (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>With\nme it would be all food and music based, that&#8217;s pretty much where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:18] Alexis:<\/strong> Do\nyou feel like everyone at American Eagle does fashion analogies? I asked this\nto Tessa about sports. So I&#8217;m like, does everyone and Dick\u2019s Sporting goods use\nsports analogies? Or do you all of you all gravitate towards other ones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:30] Eric:<\/strong> We\nuse, whatever is for the individual, you know? And it&#8217;s funny<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:36] Alexis:<\/strong>\nFocus on the target user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:39] Eric:<\/strong>&nbsp; It&#8217;s funny, like, I am not a fashion person.\nYou know, I look good today because I&#8217;m wearing American Eagle stuff, right?\nBut that&#8217;s because I get a discount for work, right? But, yeah, it&#8217;s\ninteresting, like the landscape of people that work on a fashion, you know, eCommerce\nwebsite or business or whatever that like me are not fashionable, like I don&#8217;t\nhave and go back to like keyword research and finding like how people are\nsearching for like, I&#8217;m just a normal guy. So I&#8217;m going to be less relatable to\nall the in insider lingo and whatnot. And I go for basically breaking hearts\nand finding how people are really searching for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:15] Alexis:<\/strong>\nBreaking hearts. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:20] Matt:<\/strong> Do\nyou think there are benefits to you not being a fashion guy working on a\nfashion site? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Absolutely.\nI think like that&#8217;s pretty much any anywhere, wherever you can get a\ndifferent perspective, you know, from a different angle. Looking at the looking\nat the same screen, but from a from a different angle and seeing something\ndifferently is always important, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Beauty\nof diversity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Right.\nAnd, yeah, it&#8217;s been a learning experience for me because there&#8217;s things that I\nhad no idea what espadrilles were. Now, I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:52] Alexis:<\/strong> I\ndon&#8217;t know what they are. What are they? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:55] Eric:<\/strong> I\nthink they&#8217;re like those shoes that have, like, the basket weaving sole, you\nknow, I&#8217;m talking about. Yeah, Okay. Yes. I had no idea they had a name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:02] Eric:<\/strong>\nand that&#8217;s what they are\u2026 Go ahead. I&#8217;ve seen it, but I may be pronouncing it\nwrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>I&#8217;m\ntrusting you because I&#8217;ve never heard it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:14] Eric:<\/strong> Right.\nAll right, but that&#8217;s how people search for it. I was like, I didn&#8217;t know this\nwas a thing. And evidently it&#8217;s really popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:18] Alexis<\/strong>: I\nwould love if someone was just thinking I get me some espadrilles, because\nthey\u2019re so hot right now right. All right. Awesome. I love that. I&#8217;m going to\ngo. Everyone look up espadrilles. Go to American Eagle. Okay, why is SEO so\nimportant for eCommerce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:41] Eric:<\/strong> I\nthink it\u2019s unique to eCommerce because we have the opportunity impact someone\non many parts of their journey. More than just buying something, right? So you\nhave, basically, from researching something to actually buying it. So you want\nto create great content to educate somebody on something, and then you want to\noptimize some things is that they&#8217;re finding your product, right? So speaking\nto it over here and optimizing, like, actual product side. So whenever they are\nsearching and they&#8217;re trying to find what they&#8217;re looking for doing general\nresearch and then they get closer and closer, and adding more words to their\nkeyword. We&#8217;re making it a longer keyword as they figure out what they&#8217;re\nspecifically looking for, they get down to it, and then they&#8217;re ready to buy.\nSo, like, you&#8217;re way up high in the upper funnel. But then you&#8217;re so close down\nto the end, funnel to the conversion and you&#8217;re like, yeah, and I\nthink that&#8217;s so unique is like I feel like other, like, you know, paid stuff is\nlike &#8211; buy, buy, buy, buy. (Alexis: Like do it.) Right? But it\u2019s more, it&#8217;s\nmore elegant with SEO. Yeah, it&#8217;s more of a I don&#8217;t know, more personal. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:49] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nkeep talking about analogies, but the one thing that I talked about at the end\nof my MozCon speech was this idea that SEO really is about building\nrelationships. And being good at Seo is being similar to a good friend. You\nneed to be there, be available. When someone needs you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:07] Eric:<\/strong> Right?\nBe honest. Be honest about what we&#8217;re talking about, right? Give a great\nexperience. Yeah. All that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:12] Alexis:<\/strong>&nbsp; Do HTTPS (lol). Got to be secure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Got\nbe secure. So I&#8217;m really glad you mentioned that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:20] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, And it is going to be one of my takeaways for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:23] Alexis:<\/strong>\nOK, we&#8217;ll digest that. Love it. Okay. All right. At a high level, what does a\nday in the life look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:34]<\/strong> <strong>Eric: <\/strong>So for me being again, we&#8217;re in\nthe fashion industry. It&#8217;s all about seasonality. So moving through the moving\nthrough the year, different season, like, what are we focusing on next? Right?\nLike We&#8217;re not talking about summer right now. We&#8217;re way farther ahead than\npeople think we are, which is pretty interesting. And it&#8217;s pretty cool to be a\npart of. So focusing on what&#8217;s coming up and staying focused with all of your\ncross functional teams is really important and kind of optimizing ahead, making\nsure that decisions are made and people are OK with all the decisions that\nyou&#8217;ve made. So we&#8217;re all signed off. And you know when it times when comes\ntime to launch for the season, we&#8217;re going from the ground up, and then things\nlike meeting with site engineers, making sure what they&#8217;re doing isn&#8217;t going to\nharm anything that we&#8217;ve set in place. That wouldn&#8217;t set us back. You know, so\nkeeping our finger on the pulse of site changes and all the technical things\nthat they impact. That&#8217;s a constant, like that&#8217;s a moving target all the time.\nBecause, you know, when you work at a place of, you know, like as big as\nAmerican Eagle, there&#8217;s so much going on. People are constantly testing things.\nYou know, there&#8217;s so much that goes into it, that it&#8217;s really hard to keep up\nwith everything because that so many people have different ideas, and you\nwonder like, okay, is that going to impact us. We have to explain why. Let&#8217;s\npull back a little bit, that kind of thing. It really is again just best\npractice tests, Tech SEO and making sure everybody&#8217;s on the same page. And\nwe&#8217;re making the right decision for the user and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:11] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYes, so what would you do if, for instance, things didn&#8217;t go on the right page\nlike two people had different pages? Something didn&#8217;t happen. What do you think\nis the best way to resolve those type of issues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:21] Eric:<\/strong> I\nmean, it all comes back to like proving the why and explaining it and getting\nit. And that&#8217;s kind of where James succeeds is like he is a much better idea of\nhow to speak, to get developer and can speak their lingo better than I can help\nthem understand what we need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:38] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove that idea you going in there, speak their language<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:40] Eric:<\/strong>\nand seek understanding like you want. You want to seek understanding, and\nthat&#8217;s kind of what we do to get in on that level. So we want to see what&#8217;s\ntheir understanding behind what they&#8217;re doing and taking it back and trying to have\nthem understand why it&#8217;s really important that we don&#8217;t do what they&#8217;re asking\nor seek understanding and say this is awesome and promote them, right? It&#8217;s on\nthe other side of things too. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:04] Alexis:<\/strong> Do\nyou think, SEO and working as part of a company and starting with the why is\ngood leadership training? Because a lot of times I feel when you&#8217;re in\nleadership, if you can get people to get the why they&#8217;re doing something, then\nthey&#8217;ll just do it eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:20] Eric:<\/strong>\nCan you unpack that a little bit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:21] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, definitely. So you&#8217;re essentially in every area. Probably not the boss of\nevery single person that you engage with. Right? So you almost have to be a\nleader that has no authority from, say, we can fire you or We can lay you off\nor we can, you know, not promote you. All you can do is essentially give them\nthe why give them the tool set to succeed and then hope that they do that.\nYeah. So I for some reason, when you were speaking, I just found this beautiful\nanalogy of leadership in the fact that you guys are already pretty early in\nyour career are trying to have to explain why are you doing something? Why are\nyou engaging with this? And I just thought it was kind of a nice comparison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:03] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, No. Totally. And you do kind of. You&#8217;re, like, not a micromanager, But\nyou are like a leader of a very specific thing that touches pretty much\neverybody that does something for the site. Yes. Right? So you do kind of have\nto lead a team that you don&#8217;t lead, right? Yeah, totally. I see what you\u2019re\nsaying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:21] Alexis:<\/strong>\nThat leading without authority? Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:23] Eric:<\/strong> I\nlead without authority all the time. Like I have to, like, make my case. And\noftentimes it all goes back to those relationships that you build, that people\nwill listen to you and understand what you&#8217;re saying. And they&#8217;ll be on your\nside. And you are kind of it&#8217;s interesting. You put it like that. You are kind\nof a leader without authority. I do feel like that. I feel like I have no\nauthority. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:44] Alexis:<\/strong>\nAnd I think that having that experience of leading without authority for all\nthese people is going to become so much better when you actually, if you I have\na position where you are an authority, because you&#8217;ve already been trained in a\nway of what works. You don&#8217;t have to feel like you&#8217;re twisting someone&#8217;s arm to\ndo something. You know exactly what motivates them, What keeps them up at\nnight, that kind of thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:08] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, No, totally. There&#8217;s a quote out there about leadership, and it&#8217;s like,\nIt&#8217;s leaders don&#8217;t like, I&#8217;m not gonna quote it, but it&#8217;s basically like\nleaders don&#8217;t like, tell you what to do. Leaders will like, join you alongside\nyou and guide you through things right. And that&#8217;s what I do like It&#8217;s taking\nthem on the journey of why we want to do everything<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:27] Alexis:<\/strong>\nSuch a leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:35] Eric:<\/strong>(lol)\nYeah that\u2019s pretty much what a day to day is like it&#8217;s a constantly moving\ntarget, and there&#8217;s always something to focus on, and almost every day is\ndifferent because it depends on what comes up. You know, like it&#8217;s not like\nyou&#8217;re putting out fires, because nothing in seo is incredibly urgent. There&#8217;s\nit&#8217;s very rare when it&#8217;s like, Oh, this is going to break everything and we\ncan\u2019t do this. Like we deindex our whole site like that like that, Like, you\nknow, that hardly ever happens. But like, you know, it&#8217;s very rare. So it\nreally is like staying ahead of things and being in those conversations and\nbeing involved heavily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:25:09] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYes, okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt<\/strong>: Sure.\nYeah. So you listed a whole lot of things there for your day to day life,\nright, do you have any tips for just balancing all of that and managing of the\nteams that you work with and all of the page types that you work with on a day\nto day basis, especially for a site as big as AE?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:25:30] Eric:<\/strong>\nAbsolutely. I think it comes down. A lot of it comes down to process. So once\nyou&#8217;ve like, educated the why, what&#8217;s one thing that&#8217;s really important is to\ncreate a process that people can follow right from where, whether it&#8217;s keyword\nresearch and how we&#8217;re going to optimize. Or this is the content that we&#8217;re\ngoing to create, or this is the technical SEO roadmap for this project. It&#8217;s\nall about creating that follow along color by number way of doing things so\nthat you could, like, start to hand things off. They already have an\nunderstanding of the why. You&#8217;ve already made your case, but in order to\nrelieve the the oh, my gosh, I have so much work on my table, you&#8217;ve got to\ncreate processes to lessen the blow when something comes down the pipeline,\nright? And it&#8217;s also like prioritizing things. I think, you know, sometimes we\nas SEOs we might freak out about things that aren&#8217;t so detrimental and, like,\nyou know, we might be like too focused on something like, oh, my gosh, they&#8217;re\ngoing to do this and it&#8217;s going to, you know, cause this you know and really, it&#8217;s\nlike, let&#8217;s take a step back, let&#8217;s prioritize. Let&#8217;s take a look at the list\nof everything that we&#8217;re focusing on and create a you know a giant project\ntracker of What are we focusing on that&#8217;s going to get the best bang for our\nbuck, really? Even though we\u2019re organic and don&#8217;t spend money. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:26:50] Alexis:<\/strong>\nWell, your money is time. (<strong>Eric: <\/strong>It\nis, yes, time is money) and all the time that you spend with of all the people\nthat you work with, the efforts, you want to be heading in a direction that&#8217;s\nbeneficial. Organic doesn&#8217;t necessarily, may not cost money from a user\nperspective. Yeah, it costs people. (And people are expensive!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:12] Eric:<\/strong> It\nreally does. It really is. And then it&#8217;s one of my things to take away. It is\nreally about creating those relationships and having like, you, put in your\ntime, of course. But then there&#8217;s so many other people that put in time for you\njust to make sure that everything is resonating for SEO and that really is the\nresource, like there&#8217;s no dollar amount to it. It&#8217;s really the people that\nmatter. And that&#8217;s why one of my biggest focuses is relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:36] Alexis<\/strong>: I\nwas going to go with another analogy that sometimes I&#8217;ll calculate if I might\nconferences. How much money you can, you think you&#8217;re spending based on how\nmany people are there, how much your estimated salary would be. I usually put\nit like, I don&#8217;t know, like, got 65k, $75k dollars a year, and then I have\ncalculate it by the minute. So how much money are you spending from talking to\nan audience for thirty minutes? How can you most use that time? So I think that\ncan actually apply to business meetings to, like, you&#8217;re in a meeting with five\npeople who are all making $100K thousand dollars a year or something like that.\nThey get paid a lot. How much do you know? How much money are you costing them?\nBy spending that time? And how can you make the biggest impact out of that\ntime? I mean, I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s something we need to calculate on a daily\nbasis, but I think just recognizing and appreciating that people are worth and have\nvalue. That it is economic.,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:29] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, I know machine learning is a big thing, and, like, you know, it&#8217;s a big\nthing in industry, but really like it&#8217;s still his people. Yeah, it really is.\nYeah. You can&#8217;t get anything done without people. Yeah, You know..<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:39] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, it\u2019s so true!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:41] Matt<\/strong>:\nSo I&#8217;m glad you brought that up because you might say that you&#8217;re focusing with\ncontent, and we&#8217;re just kind of started to get in the age or people are using\nmachine learning to create content for SEO. Yeah. What is your opinion on that?\nHow important you think the personalized touches versus automation with things\nlike that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:01] Eric:<\/strong>\nWell, two sides to that story, I think in general, I think it could be good. I\nthink it could be it could lessen your workload. And it could be optimized\nfrom, uh, if you&#8217;re if you have a robot optimizing for another robot and that\nrobot talks to that robot. Sure. Like that in theory, that that sounds good,\nright?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:22] Alexis:<\/strong> Robot\nempathizes more with robot two (continued tangent\u2026). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:32] Eric:<\/strong> Right.\nAnd I know like Machine learning is getting smarter and smarter. But, you know,\nwhen you talk about your brand and your brand voice and what that means to the\ndemo that you&#8217;re speaking to, I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re quite there yet. So it&#8217;s more\nabout Are you going to sell the person and not, persuade is the wrong word,\nBut, like, are you going to speak to that person in a\nmeaningful way that takes a person to join them in and what they&#8217;re looking\nfor? You know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:01] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah. It&#8217;s got have intact. It&#8217;s got a resonate. Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:05] Eric:<\/strong>\nRight. And I don&#8217;t I think we&#8217;re there yet with machine learning. Probably will\nbe some you someday, but not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:11] Alexis:<\/strong>\nAbby and I, my specialist and I, might have talked about the fact that we\ncannot wait for the day where every kid gets a robot where the robot knows them\nbetter than anybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:20] Eric:<\/strong>\nyou&#8217;re born in the hospital and there\u2019s Like just a little robot that\u2019s waiting\nfor you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:24] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah. It&#8217;s like a little robo baby. (lol) Like, look, it like, You are sad\ntoday, Maggie, I will help You deal with these complex emotions, you know,\nshe&#8217;ll never feel will never feel lonely or sad. You know, because I do think\nthat with the Internet, with phones, it&#8217;s actually in some ways we&#8217;re becoming\nmore connected. But we&#8217;re becoming less connected at the same, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: Oh <\/strong>totally<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>I&#8217;ve\nbeen taking some college classes, so I look at the generation Z and I watched\nhow they interact with each other and almost always they\u2019re on the phone. But\nwhen they actually connect with the person you could tell they latch on.\nThey&#8217;re like, Oh, my God, you want to talk like this is so rare. It&#8217;s almost\nlike<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:06] Eric:<\/strong>\nIt&#8217;s like getting a letter<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:08] Alexis:<\/strong> Yes!\nIt\u2019s like getting a letter! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>I\u2019m\nkind of sad that\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Anybody\nthat wants to send us a letter on the podcast, just send us one at Merkle\nPittsburgh office. We accept all fan mail love and we love it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:21] Matt:<\/strong>\nWhen was the last time that you got personal piece of mail. Something sent to\nyou like a letter. Not an invitation,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:27] Alexis<\/strong>: I\nhave a pen pal, actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:28] Eric:<\/strong>\nOutside of like a holiday, Maybe when I was like, 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:35] Alexis:<\/strong> I\u2019m\ngoing to send you a letter. I have so many stamps and I collect stationery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:42] Eric:<\/strong> I\ndo appreciate good stationery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:44] Alexis:<\/strong>\nGod right. I&#8217;m a big fan. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:47] Matt:<\/strong> I\nhope I don&#8217;t get this wrong. There&#8217;s actually a website. I think it might be\ncalled snail mail dot com where you can just automate and they\u2019ll send the\nletter for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Here&#8217;s\na personal touch without the personal touch. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:02] Alexis:<\/strong>\nOh, my gosh. Snail mail pen pals. It looks like dot net. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:09] Eric:<\/strong> So\nyou have a pen pal And like you, like, physically write letters<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:12] Alexis<\/strong>: I\ndo. sometimes we physically write letters. We I mean, he&#8217;s visited Pittsburgh\nbefore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:16] Eric<\/strong>: No,\nI mean like, but you don&#8217;t like typing anything or like not like writing an\nemail or&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:19] Alexis:<\/strong> Now,\nwe met online, you know. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. It&#8217;s one of, like, very,\nvery interesting modern relationship. I feel like we met online, and then we\njust talk since then. It\u2019s very weird&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:30] Eric:<\/strong>\nSee, I\u2019d rather pull the quill out and, like, dip the pen in ink and can get\nthe wax stamp on the envelope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:37] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah, um it&#8217;s been fun, the last six years or so. Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of weird to\nthink about this. Some relationships are just naturally long distance. And, you\nknow, sometimes you just connect with someone on like a thinking level. Just\nlove their thoughts. Yeah, totally see what&#8217;s going on in their life. Yeah,\nit&#8217;s very odd, but, you know, but I embrace that. It&#8217;s pretty, pretty cool. But\nanyways, okay, getting back to SEO. So we have five minutes left. We don&#8217;t\nreally talk, however, but it&#8217;s been thirty five minutes, Even talked about you.\nSo I love to get what your little golden nuggets of advice for SEO working in eCommerce.\nIt could be anything could be interpersonal. It could be, like, very specific.\nGet that structured data pepper on there, whatever. Whatever it is happens to\nbe that you think will be valuable to listeners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:30] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, absolutely. So again, I go back to common sense is not that common. Well,\nthat&#8217;s what made up my list. So doing your keyword research and optimizing\naccordingly, right? Create great content and surround all of your products with\ngreat content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:47] Matt:<\/strong> Do\nyou have any tips for tools or techniques that you use?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:52] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah, so we leverage BrightEdge\u2019s data cube tool to perform a lot of keyword\nresearch. We do have some rush to do that. They have a great keyword magic\ntool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:34:01] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nlove their magic tool!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:34:03] Eric:<\/strong>\nIt\u2019s a great tool. However, I do find BrightEdge\u2019s more, uh, succinct, is that\nthe right word where you&#8217;ll type in a word, and sometimes you&#8217;ll get too much\nof too many things that aren&#8217;t related of what you&#8217;re trying to research in the\nkeyword magic tool. And you have to like, really, really, really filter out and\nget down. Where BrightEddge is a little bit smarter? It&#8217;s kind of like knows\nwhat You&#8217;re what you&#8217;re getting at, which is which is really interesting and,\nyou know, reverse engineering things and physically looking at competitors and\nsee what they&#8217;re doing. Like, you know, all those best practice keyword\nresearch techniques that you&#8217;ve probably heard before. Like, that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s\nat. Yeah, and number two would be create a great user experience with technical\nSEO best practices getting your site fast as possible, getting you know, page\nload speed up, use structured data, all those great things that create the\ngreat user experience on the technical side is so important. You know, if you\nvisit a website that is much faster and snappier and you&#8217;re getting to where\nyou want to get faster, it&#8217;s just better. Right? If things were laid out in a\nway that&#8217;s even like aesthetically pleasing or things like that like, you know,\nthat&#8217;s so important. So just taking a look at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:35:19] Alexis: <\/strong>it&#8217;s\nalso a trust metric. I feel when you look at the user experience and if you&#8217;re\nnot as familiar with the brand, I mean American Eagle, you guys obviously have\na great experience. I know because I go on there every year for all of my\njeans, the best jeans like no joke. (Tangent stuffs) American Eagle jeans are\nthe bomb dig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:35:48] Eric:<\/strong> I\ndidn\u2019t own a pair of American blue jeans before I worked there. I never shopped\nat American Eagle I shopped at like Kmart. May it rest in peace, but it was\njust me. But when I when I was enlightened to how great the jeans are like I\nwear them around the house like I don&#8217;t even wear like, sweatpants. I just wear\nmy really comfortable jeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:08] Alexis:<\/strong> Are\nthemale ones have a little bit of stretchiness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:12] Eric:<\/strong> We\ndo, we have like, levels of stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:14] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYeah. I always get, like, super extra stretch. I\u2019m like I need that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:18] Eric:<\/strong>\nThey pretty much all stretch. Yeah. Uh, so comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:23] Alexis:<\/strong> So\nyou guys have a great experience, but other sites that you&#8217;re less familiar\nwith, I mean, like Chicwish dot com or something. People may not be as familiar\nwith that site or that brand. So having an experience where people can trust it\nand it looks legitimate because there&#8217;s so many people online that are, are\nlegitimately trying to hack people and hurt them, so, making sure that, you\nknow, you have all the information &#8211; the about us pages like the HTTPS,\neverything, all of your surround sound online and buy surround sound I mean,\nother people, How they&#8217;re talking about you online is good and positive-ish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>It\u2019s\nyour reputation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Yes.\nYeah, yeah, yeah. So important. Yeah, I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:06] Eric:<\/strong> Number\nthree is again creating great relationships with cross functional teams. Like as\nan SEO, everything that everybody else does impacts your channel. So\ncreating those relationships and making your case is helping other people\nsucceed and building that trust within the technical development side of teams\nor the content side of things. It&#8217;s all so important, and I love how you put,\nlike, leadership without authority. Like that&#8217;s really what you are and like,\nif you don&#8217;t have those good relationships, you&#8217;re not going to get anything\ndone. You won&#8217;t get anything pushed through. You won\u2019t get any of your\ngreat recommendations pushed through unless you have those good relationships.\nThat&#8217;s what it all comes down to. If there&#8217;s anything I want you to take away,\nstart making friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(tangent)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:48] Alexis:<\/strong> Personal\nrelations, Yeah. Whatever you got to do, what you find out, what kind of coffee\nthey like. Whatever. Whatever you gotta do to persuade them to get on your\nside. You like I&#8217;ve ordered some Argentine imperial. I&#8217;m in a lot of debt right\nnow. There&#8217;s this ad that came out the other day That was Ryan Reynolds and\nHugh Jackman, and one of them had posted on Twitter. And basically they&#8217;re like\nWe&#8217;re ending our Twitter feud. And so they each made an ad for companies that\nthey own. And the whole premise of it is that Ryan Reynolds makes this amazing\nad for Hugh Jackman. That&#8217;s hilarious. He&#8217;s like \u201cHugh would have thought of\nthis company, Hugh Jackman,\u201d Beautiful. He&#8217;s like and he&#8217;s like, Wow, that was\nso good. And Ryan Reynolds was like, \u201cYeah, I spent a billion dollars\u201d on it,\nso and then they show Hughes and he&#8217;s like, Oh, it&#8217;s not ready I&#8217;m not ready\nAnd all he does is like, pour out the tequila like you know what? \u201cRyan\nReynolds. Not a cool guy. Bet you the tequila is good. I have to try.\u201d And it\njust cuts back to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:38:56] Eric:<\/strong> It\nreally is about relationships. Get those going. And you&#8217;ll have a really great\nsuccess. Promise? Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:39:02] Alexis:<\/strong>\nOkay, So I have a toughie to end on. What do you do if your relationship\nperhaps gets off on the wrong foot? How do you solve for that type of about\nemotional and relationship crisis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:39:15] Eric:<\/strong>\nUm, just that kind of depends on what it is, but I think it goes also back to\nseeking understanding. So you&#8217;ve got to get to where they are, you\nhave to understand where they are and join them in their emotion and where they\nare, which is actually plug for my podcast, Lunch time in\nRome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:39:33] Alexis:<\/strong>\nlike, Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:39:38] Eric:<\/strong> But\nit&#8217;s all about getting to where they are joining them in their emotion and like,\nwhat went wrong and trying to mend it, you know, giving them some forgiving\nthem, reassurance, all that kind of stuff and joining them where they are so\nthat you can gain it back. Right. Um, whatever you could do, to remedy the\nsituation. Or if you have to apologize or, you know, whatever, just get back\non, seeking understanding. Getting back on the page that they&#8217;re on. So\nsometimes you just have to be open, honest and vulnerable and like the key is\nthat vulnerability, right? And you have to Sometimes you\nhave to, you know, let your hair down and admit to things that you might have\nbeen wrong on or face a tough conversations. You know that that will benefit\neverybody. But, you know, again, getting down and seeking their understanding\nis important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:25] Alexis:<\/strong> So\ndo you think that requires you to, like, let go of ego a little bit? Because I\nknow last week I sent you an email. I was totally wrong. I mean, I was like, I\nwas so wrong, and I was like, hey, I think it&#8217;s this, but I got to do more\nresearch on it. And I knew I needed to do more research in it. And then I did\nmore research, and I sent you this article and they were like, yeah, that\narticle says you&#8217;re totally wrong and was like, Okay, I didn&#8217;t want to say\nthat. I sent you the article and I was like, You&#8217;re right, I&#8217;m totally wrong.\nI&#8217;m so sorry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:52] Eric:<\/strong> I\ntold you I was going to make fun of you today on the podcast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:40:54] Alexis:<\/strong>\nyou know, now making fun of myself, right? Right. But like, people are wrong.\nLike, sometimes the assumptions that you have about things are right or wrong\nand that can occur within, you know, a more technical situation or it can occur\nin an interpersonal situation that you just didn&#8217;t see it from their\nperspective initially. And then you suddenly are enlightened to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:13] Eric:<\/strong> Exactly.\nAnd goes back to that, like seeking understanding and, you know, getting to a\nplace where you see it, you see it, how they see it, and then all of a sudden\nmakes sense to you instead of, like you pushing back. You see it differently\nnow that you see what they&#8217;re what they&#8217;re speaking to, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:29] Matt:<\/strong> So\nwhen you were not able to do that, I feel like it turns it into more of a\ncompetition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:35] Eric:<\/strong>\nAnd then like that, it&#8217;s not good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:37] Alexis:<\/strong>\nYou don&#8217;t compete with your stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:40] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah. Don&#8217;t compete like, you know, pull back when you need to and, um and, you\nknow, pivot and move on to something else and maybe get a win over there and\nthen come back to it and bring it up again, if need be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:41:55] Alexis:<\/strong> I\nhave a great mentor who, one thing that he said to me that has resonated\nthroughout my entire life. It&#8217;s that everyone else in the world is doing their\nbest with what they&#8217;ve been given, Now they may not have been taught how to\ncommunicate with others so way that they are communicating a problem to you\nisn&#8217;t coming off in a way that&#8217;s effective. But just if you can, get that\nconcept that everyone else is doing their best to every single moment and\ntrying to do what&#8217;s best for them and trying to live functional lives, probably\nI&#8217;d probably shorten to that down like 99% of people are trying to do that. I\nstill think that they&#8217;re are one percent of people that are just bad people in\ndoing bad things. But I think that 99% of people are good people that end up in\nsituations that maybe they don&#8217;t know how to deal with effectively. Just if you\ncan appreciate that about someone, you can say like, \u201cOh, you know, they&#8217;re\nacting really crazy driving, but they&#8217;ve never learned how to communicate in an\neffective way and they&#8217;re frustrated right now because they have to get\nsomewhere, it&#8217;s really important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:42:55] Eric<\/strong>:\nYeah, there&#8217;s more good than bad, no matter what the media puts out. There&#8217;s\nmore good than bad. All news is bad news, on TV&#8217;s it\u2019s all bad news, but\nthere&#8217;s like people like again. It&#8217;s back to relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>(tangent)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:16] Eric<\/strong>: Yeah,\nabsolutely, totally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:18] Alexis<\/strong>:\nSo let&#8217;s talk about a little bit about your podcast before we jump. Okay? So Lunchtime\nin Rome?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:23] Eric:<\/strong>\nlunchtimeinrome.com,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:24] Alexis:<\/strong>\nlunchtime in Rome, lunch in Rome. Lunch time, lunch time. So it&#8217;s actually\nbased off of dot com, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:31] Eric:<\/strong>\nYeah dot com. It&#8217;s actually reference from Romans twelve fifteen in the Bible,\nso it&#8217;s twelve fifteen lunchtime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Matt: <\/strong>Clever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>&nbsp;right, right. But it&#8217;s all about just like\nsitting down and having a conversation and teaching people how to join each\nother in their emotions and comfort any hurt that they have in their lives.\nIt&#8217;s really good, and I really, really recommend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:43:58] Alexis:<\/strong> If\nyou want to learn to make relationships, go to Eric&#8217;s podcast lunchtime in\nRome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:44:04] Eric:<\/strong>\nCheck it out! I would like for you to check it out and you can visit the\nwebsite and give us ah, like a share on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:44:11] Alexis:<\/strong>\nHigh ratings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric: <\/strong>Yeah,\nyeah, five stars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Nothing\nless. awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Is there anywhere\nelse to find you on the innerwebs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:44:25] Eric:<\/strong>\nYes. I am on Twitter at @elhammond that&#8217;s probably the best place that you\ncould communicate with me on the level that I would probably want to\ncommunicate with you at this point, stranger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>(tangent)<\/strong> Yeah\nTwitter, hit me up, I\u2019d love it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:44:37] Alexis:<\/strong>\nAwesome. Well, thank you so much. And thanks, Matt. For coming on and being\nawesome as always thanks so much!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric<\/strong>: Thank\nyou!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alexis: <\/strong>Ciao,\nBye. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Episode Notes: Information about Eric: Twitter:&nbsp;https:\/\/twitter.com\/elhammond Eric&#8217;s Podcast: https:\/\/lunchtimeinrome.com\/&nbsp; Timestamps: [0:00] Intros[4:30] Go-to analogy for SEO?[6:30] Why are analogies popular [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808,"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: 5. 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