{"id":777,"date":"2019-06-03T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T13:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/?post_type=episode&#038;p=777"},"modified":"2019-06-18T13:18:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T20:18:39","slug":"brendan-cottam","status":"publish","type":"episode","link":"https:\/\/technicalseo.com\/insights\/podcast\/brendan-cottam\/","title":{"rendered":"6. Interview w\/ Brendan Cottam, Wayfair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Notes:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Follow Brendan:<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bjcottam\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/bjcottam<\/a> <\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/brendancottam\/\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/brendancottam\/<\/a>\n<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>How to improve on SEO<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instantetraining.com\/\">https:\/\/www.instantetraining.com\/<\/a><\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skillshare.com\/user\/randfish\">https:\/\/www.skillshare.com\/user\/randfish<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Do you need to have development skills to be a\ngood SEO?<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/javascript-seo\">https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/javascript-seo<\/a>\n<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>HTML, CSS, and JavaScript \u2013 Important to\nrecognize<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>HTML \u2013 should be able to write<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>&nbsp;Escaped\nFragments<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/ajax-crawling\/docs\/specification\">https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/ajax-crawling\/docs\/specification<\/a>\n<\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seroundtable.com\/google-no-url-fragments-23449.html\">https:\/\/www.seroundtable.com\/google-no-url-fragments-23449.html<\/a>\n<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>How to inspire passion<ul><li>Hire right people <\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Weekly passion-based meeting<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Culture of learning and sound boarding<\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/jeopardylabs.com\/\">https:\/\/jeopardylabs.com\/<\/a><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Willing to listen to everyone else<ul><li>Ask follow up questions <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Differences from in-house versus agency<ul><li>More access to engineers<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>How did you build credibility with engineers<ul><li>&nbsp;Ask for\nfeedback on tickets before submitting<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>\u201cHow would you go about fixing this? What\ndetails do you want in the ticket to fix it?\u201d&nbsp;\n<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Book Alexis\u2019 boss (Chris) made her read: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Get-Anyone-Anything-Again-Psychological\/dp\/0312270178\/ref=asc_df_0312270178\/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=312162455511&amp;hvpos=1o1&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=9751014666242410288&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=1015129&amp;hvtargid=pla-460136077815&amp;psc=1\">Get\nAnyone to Do Anything: Never Feel Powerless Again&#8211;With Psychological Secrets\nto Control and Influence Every Situation<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Managing multiple stakeholders<ul><li>Triage \u2013 prioritize what\u2019s most important <\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/sandersal1\/diagnosing-technical-seo-issues\">https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/sandersal1\/diagnosing-technical-seo-issues<\/a><ul><li>Understand the problem and level of priority<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>What to do if faced with multiple hot priorities<ul><li>Developing a framework and documenting common\nanswers (especially for repetitive questions)<ul><li>Standard operating procedures (SOP)<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Why is SEO important for eComm?<ul><li>Revenue is generated at low ad cost<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>We are a more efficient channel&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Increases customer acquisition<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Similar to how one would diversify financial\ninvestments (24:00)<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Thinking and analyzing in terms of page types &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>Testing and experimentation<ul><li>How often to retest?&nbsp; <ul><li>Use judgment<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>What\u2019s on the roadmap? Priorities? Engineering\nlift?<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>What is best in class for eCommerce?<ul><li>Getting the customer experience right<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Crawling, indexing, ranking<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Blocking invaluable pages<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Top three nuggets of advice for an SEO in\neCommerce<ul><li>Curiosity<ul><li>Will\u2019s article: <a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/how-to-learn-seo\">https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/how-to-learn-seo<\/a><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Finding your passion<ul><li>Moving rankings<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Getting ranks to generate traffic<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Uncovering technical SEO problems<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Revealing in the moments <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Critical thinking<ul><li>Completing an objective analysis to form an\nopinion<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Must move and execute<ul><li>Be proactive<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2>Transcript:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:00] Alexis Sanders:<\/strong> Hello. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today we have Brendan from Wayfair. Thanks so much for joining today, Brendan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:07]\nBrendan Cottam:<\/strong> Of course, Alexis. Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:10]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Would you mind giving the audience a little bit of\nan intro?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:00:13]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Of course. So I have been in the SEO industry since\n2012. When I got started, I had always been interested in marketing, and then\nkind of found some SEO people on Twitter, and from there, it just kind of\ncatapulted into, like, being something I was really interested in. I started\nleaning in, like, right after I quickly found it, teaching it to myself, and\ntrying to learn from others in the industry. And so then, from there, I kind of\nlooked at a few places to start my SEO career and was super fortunate enough to\nend up at Seer Interactive. I spent a little over a year there, then ended up\nmoving back to Boston to work for another agency called Co-Marketing, did that\nfor about a year, and then stumbled across an in-house opportunity here at\nWayfair, and I&#8217;ve been here for just over three and a half years. I really\nenjoy all aspects of SEO from on-page to off-page to technical, so I really\njust look at Wayfair as my platform to do SEO and continue to build my skills,\nand share them with people along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:28]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Awesome. Thanks so much. So this was so action\npacked. First of all\u2026 repping Pennsylvania!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:34]\nBrendan:<\/strong> (lol) Yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:36]\nAlexis:<\/strong> PA people just having a quick chat. Awesome. So\nyou&#8217;ve been working in SEO since 2012, and one of the things that comes to mind\nis: what are some of the bigger changes that you&#8217;ve seen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:01:47]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Ah, you know, I think, definitely, one of them\nearly on in that time frame was Hummingbird, right? And Google interpreting\nsynonyms and search queries across a variety of different variations, so I&#8217;d\nsay that that is one that started right away, yeah. And then, SERP features and\nbasically taking clicks&#8230; sometimes taking clicks away from SEO. Like when I\nfirst started, you know, the Knowledge Graph was starting to appear, but it was\nlike, \u2018Oh, that won&#8217;t come for my industry, oh, that won&#8217;t come for e-commerce\nor something.\u2019 And sure enough, you know, it&#8217;s in about every vertical now so\nsay that&#8217;s definitely a key theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:32]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Definitely. No, yeah. We can see it in the local\nspace, like you said, Knowledge Graph, so any sort of informational query, even\nlike the hotel space has such interesting things with, like, transactional\ntype, queries being taken. So that&#8217;s so interesting that the whole entire\nlandscape is essentially changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:49]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Exactly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:02:50]\nAlexis:<\/strong> So, okay&#8230; so, one of the other things you\nmentioned in your intro; I know I&#8217;m going a little bit off track. You just\nmentioned so many things and I thought they are all so interesting. You\nmentioned that you taught yourself, and I feel like that&#8217;s something that a lot\nof SEO\u2019s face, regardless of whether they work in-house, in an agency, or they\nown their own agency or consulting firm. So one of the questions I get asked a\nlot, and I&#8217;m sure you get asked this a lot too, is what resources do you think\nare some of the best? Is there any way that you feel is most efficient to learn\nthe craft having been through that process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:03:26]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah. I mean, I had a few key things, you know,\nfirst, I immersed myself in the people and the companies that do it well. You\nknow, like Seer&#8230; Moz, where some of the first two distilled and the people\nthat work there. So, like, I really immersed myself. I remember one of the ways\nI did was like, I think one of Rand&#8217;s decks. I printed it out and just immersed\nmyself in that. So, you know, it&#8217;s one thing to be a passive follower, but I\nreally immersed myself there. Then I made my own site, and just started putting\nout some content to try to get it to rank. So that was kind of my way to action\non it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:04:10]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Nice. So experimenting from, like, a totally\ndifferent scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:04:13]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Exactly. And I will give you a third, which was, I\nthink&#8230; I believe most people hit this one too which is, like, you get the\nfoundation down and you do a little bit, but you&#8217;re like, \u2018I still want to be\nsurrounded by people who actually know what&#8217;s going on.\u2019 Right? You just want\nsome validation. Yeah, so I was, you know, lucky enough to take a course that\njust kind of touched on\u2026 It was like twenty courses that touched on all facets\nof SEO. So I got exposure to things like information, architecture, internal\nlinking, everything. So that was super helpful and good validation to know I\nwas on the right track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:04:54]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Nice. And so is that, like, at a local college or\nsomething along those lines? Or was that more of an online course? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:01]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, so it was actually online, and it was ending,\nlike, right when my semester was starting. So it overlapped with school a\nlittle bit, which was funny. But yeah, it was online. I&#8217;m forgetting the name\nof it. It was Instant E-Training, that was the name of the brand. I don&#8217;t know\nif they&#8217;re still around today, but highly recommended. Or, I mean, there&#8217;s\nprobably less costly options out there, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:27]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Nice. I know Rand has one on, like, Skillshare or\nsomething like that. So kind of, like, looking up online courses and just\ngetting exposure, I really like that idea. And, of course, active learning in\nmaking a site. This is another question that I get a lot too, and I\u2019d love to\nhear your thoughts. Do you think SEO needs to understand how HTML, CSS and JavaScript\nwork, and be good at it? There&#8217;s like two sides of it: there&#8217;s the\nunderstanding of how websites work, and then understanding programming. What\nare your thoughts on both of those? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:05:57]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Actually, the first time I came across <em>you <\/em>in the industry was your JavaScript\npost on Moz. I remember reading that, and, you know, two things were super\nvaluable: Just the JavaScript frameworks that are out there, so that was a huge\nresource to help me get familiar with those. And then at the time, we had\nsomeone within the company launch a feature that had a URL fragment, so your\narticle was super helpful because there&#8217;s a point in there where you talk about\nfragments and the downside to them. So that&#8217;s my intro to saying, you know, I\nthink HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are very important to be able to recognize. I\ndon&#8217;t know, I think being able to write those is up for debate&#8230;certainly\nHTML, you should be able to, but definitely recognize them on pages, in source codes\nand in the DOM is super important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:07:05]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Yeah, I love that idea of having, like, almost a\nlittle bit of understanding so you understand what&#8217;s going on, you have a\ngeneral sense, and you&#8217;re able to, therefore, communicate more efficiently with\ndevelopers, at least at a minimal level, because otherwise it&#8217;s going to be way\nmore challenging when you&#8217;re trying to get across your point or what you\nactually need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:07:30]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Exactly. Exactly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:07:31]\nAlexis: <\/strong>So I love that. Yeah, thanks for mentioning my\narticle. It&#8217;s so interesting because when I remember, before I started writing\nthat article, escaped fragments had been deprecated for probably about a year\nor two at that point. And that was so fascinating because, you know, like, we\nnever heard about it in our training because it was always like, \u2018Oh, well,\ndon&#8217;t use this or don&#8217;t use that,\u2019 but it was like one of those solutions that\nwas out there that, you know, I mean, at this point now Google&#8217;s just said\nthey&#8217;re not going to crawl it. And they&#8217;ll just crawl the pretty version of the\nURL, you know, having those elements that understand the history of that type\nof thing and understand the history of SEO, I think sometimes could be pretty\nvaluable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:08:04]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, and it&#8217;s interesting how, you know, engineers\ndon&#8217;t immerse themselves in what Google&#8217;s putting out there. So while it seems\nobvious to us, you know, other folks writing this code don&#8217;t take this\ninformation in like we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:08:18]\nAlexis: <\/strong>That&#8217;s so true. I feel like SEO (and I don&#8217;t know if\nyou agree with this), but SEO and tech and development, they grow at such a\nrapid pace that sometimes it&#8217;s really hard to keep up with. So what are some of\nthe ways that, like, you&#8217;re able to keep up with what&#8217;s going on in the\nindustry so that we can help out our developers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:08:36]\nBrendan:<\/strong> I mean, you know, some of the standard ways are\njust staying up on Twitter and following the right people, for sure, you know,\nthat&#8217;s kind of table stakes. You know, I think having people around you that\nyou can spitball and bring ideas to is also super important. And I think that\ntakes time to sometimes build out, like, if maybe you&#8217;re in SEO and you just\nswitched teams, it&#8217;s going to take a little while to get there. But I&#8217;ve had a\nlot of fun being at Wayfair for a little more than three and a half years and\njust building chemistry with people where we can talk about: if we decide to\nlazy load this feature will that impact our rankings? And you can really kind\nof break it out and make the call on that decision together, I think is another\nway to just stay up on what&#8217;s going on and different ideas you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:09:28]\nAlexis:<\/strong>&nbsp; I love this\nidea, too, because you&#8217;re almost touching on this idea of building a culture of\nlearning, and a culture of passion, because to some extent, like, you must have\nto hire people that are really interested and really passionate about a certain\ntopic. But I love this idea of having a group that shares information, and I\nknow that you&#8217;ve obviously experienced an agency world, and we kind of get that\nautomatically. But when you have a team like Wayfair, I&#8217;m assuming you guys are\nprobably&#8230; you\u2019re a smaller part of a larger marketing team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:03]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yes, exactly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:05]\nAlexis:<\/strong> So how do you guys flourish and&#8230; encourage that\ntype of learning or encourage that and have that, develop that chemistry? Is it\njust automatic or is there something as a manager that people can do out there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:17]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely doesn&#8217;t happen\nautomatically, for sure. And maybe unless, like, you know, the chemistry is\nreally firing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:25]\nAlexis:<\/strong> That&#8217;s such a controversial thing. And I love it.\n(lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:10:29]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Ah, you have to try to find ways to foster it. And,\nyou know, one of the things that I picked up at Seer, that that they did,\n(which was awesome) was a Friday meeting where the team&#8230; like, the format was\nbefore the meeting, post what you want to talk about, post how long you want to\ntalk about it, and it just created a lot of energy, and it was a lot of fun.\nAnd so, like, I&#8217;ve created something similar here where, you know, people just\nposting slack, what they want to talk about before coming to like, a stand up.\nAnd then we just dive into those topics. So that&#8217;s a specific way that we&#8217;ve\ndefinitely built up the chemistry. And then I think, outside of SEO, we&#8217;ve been\ndoing things like SEO office hours for certain parts of our company that are\nreally needed most. So that&#8217;s kind of a way we&#8217;ve evangelized SEO throughout\nthe company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:26]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Oh, nice. So anyone&#8217;s welcome to those office\nhours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:28]\nBrendan:<\/strong> In this case, it&#8217;s like merchandising is a huge\nteam that&#8217;s making changes that impact SEO, so it&#8217;s specifically that team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:39]\nAlexis:<\/strong> That&#8217;s so funny because one of the things that\nTessa mentioned from Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods and Eric, also, from Aerie, is that\nmerchandising is the one who you have to get in with. So funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:52]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, and like, I don&#8217;t know&#8230; Oh go ahead. Sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:55]\nAlexis:<\/strong> No, no, you go ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:11:56]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Yeah, I&#8217;ve always wondered what merch is like in\nother e-commerce sites. I mean ours is between, like, a 150 to 200 person department,\nso it&#8217;s a huge department. Everyone&#8217;s vertical lies in different categories,\nso, we&#8217;re bigger than ten, but like, there&#8217;s ten of us responsible for\ninteracting with them. And so, like, 10:150, like, that\u2019s insane. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:12:25]\nAlexis:<\/strong> You&#8217;re like, \u2018Not even teachers are expected to do\nthat much.\u2019 (lol) That&#8217;s awesome. And one of the things you mentioned, the\nFriday meetings, we actually started that in Pittsburgh probably about a year\nand a half ago. We call it SEO Lab, and we do, usually we have either somebody\ncomes with news or something like that. I think we could probably do a little\nbit more preparing, but one of the things that we love in Pittsburgh is doing\nSEO Jeopardy. There&#8217;s kind of this janky tool that you can find online, if you\nlook up, \u2018make your own jeopardy,\u2019 and so sometimes people will go in and make\ntheir own jeopardy versions. Then we&#8217;ll play Jeopardy! And it&#8217;s always really\nfun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:13:03]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Cool, cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:13:04]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Going to learn competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:13:06]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Yeah, and going off, that the only other add I would\nsay in terms of like, fostering that culture is like, you know, everyone has to\nbe willing to listen to everyone else, and hear what they&#8217;re saying, and\nunderstand, and ask follow up questions. And, you know, that&#8217;s something that I\nthink is sometimes taken for granted, like not everyone fully fully does that.\nSo I think doing that can help create a good culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:13:33]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Yeah, I love when people start trainings and you\ncan hear the trainers say things like, \u2018Oh, there&#8217;s no such thing as a stupid\nquestion,\u2019 because a lot of times, I think people are really intimidated to ask\nsomething, but they&#8217;ll never learn unless they get something wrong or they ask,\nor they try to figure something out themselves. So true. Awesome. So you also\nmentioned you have agency experience combined with in-house. What is that? What\nwas that transition like? Do you feel like it was very smooth? Do you think\nthere&#8217;s anything that you&#8217;d recommend&#8230; any differences that you notice\nbetween in-house versus agency life? Got it? Ah, there&#8217;s a lot of questions\npacked into one. (lol)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:14:16]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Because I went from agency to inhouse ecom at a\nlittle bit more of like, a lower level per se, you know, the transition was\nrelatively seamless. When I got here, right, I was writing content, doing\ncurated research, working with clients (aka merchandisers) and identifying and\ndiagnosing technical SEO problems. A lot of the same things, like seamlessly\ntransitioned which is definitely one of the reasons why I was able to hit the\nground running, you know? And I think I&#8217;d say the one difference was: my access\nto engineers; they were right at my fingertips, right? So they&#8217;re part of our\nteam. So finding ways to interact with them and kind of build credibility with\nthem was probably one of the main differences. And then I&#8217;d say, if you&#8217;re if\nyou&#8217;re going from agency to ecom at a higher level, it&#8217;s super cross\nfunctional. And so you&#8217;re going to have to be comfortable putting yourself out\nthere, getting in front of teams that are making changes that impact that SEO,\nand you&#8217;re going to have to build relationships and really make a case for SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:32]\nAlexis: <\/strong>So you mentioned you had to build credibility with\nengineers. How did you do that? How did you approach that process? Donuts every\nTuesday (lol)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:15:43]\nBrendan:<\/strong> I&#8217;d say, when I identified technical SEO problems,\nI said, you know, I brought them to engineers and kind of made sure I said,\n\u2018Oh, like, what are you seeing? This is what I&#8217;m seeing. What are your\nthoughts? And how would you look at this problem, specifically, like when we&#8217;re\nwriting engineering tickets?\u2019 One of the things I did right away, because I can\nkind of sense if, as an SEO, you put in an unscoped or unclear, like, a very\nunclear SEO ticket, that&#8217;s kind of an easy way to not end up on an engineer&#8217;s\ngood side. So I was just like, from the start, like before even hitting publish\non this ticket, I would kind of go to them and say, you know, \u2018I&#8217;m seeing a\nbunch of broken links across this page template. How would you go about fixing\nthis, or what details do you want in the ticket to fix this?\u2019 And just\nincorporating their feedback into the ticket just helped build credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:16:49]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Definitely. I love that idea of like, giving some\ncognitive dissonance, almost. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve ever heard of those\nstudies where basically, they went around all these different neighborhoods and\nthe first time they asked the question: Do you like giving to charity? or\nsomething like that\u2026 Do you believe that giving the charity is good? or\nsomething along those lines. Or do you usually give to charity? And then a week\nlater, they went around again and basically saw whether or not people donated,\nand if you had, if you were one of the houses where they&#8217;d ask that question\nand you had agreed, you were way more likely to actually donate money. Yeah,\nit&#8217;s actually&#8230; there&#8217;s a book that actually, my boss made me read, which I\nthought was very funny, that he was like, \u2018This is the best book,\u2019 but one of\nthe things that it said, it was basically: if you have a boss that&#8217;s kind of\nunagreeable (which makes this so funny that my boss gave this to me). If you\nhave a boss that\u2019s unagreeable, or, kind of like automatically defensive or\nsomething along those lines, if you ask them that morning like, \u2018Hey, don&#8217;t you\nthink it&#8217;s nice when people are just flexible and just, like, listen,\u2019 or\nsomething along those lines, and they agree, they&#8217;re like, \u2018Yeah, totally.\u2019\nLater in the day there&#8217;ll be more apt to listen to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:58]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Because they&#8217;re tired (lol)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:17:59]\nAlexis: <\/strong>But that&#8217;s because they affirm something about\nthemselves, and once we say something about ourselves, we have, I guess, (or at\nleast this is the idea) that we have a harder time going against it. So if I\nagree that I am a flexible person in the morning, then by the evening, if I&#8217;m\nnot acting in a flexible way, I&#8217;m denying what I believe about myself. So it\ncreates this cognitive dissonance that our brain, like, can&#8217;t handle,\napparently. So, yeah, going to them beforehand, being like \u2018Oh, yeah, like, do\nyou agree that this is a problem?\u2019 And they&#8217;re like, \u2018Yeah, we agree. This is a\nproblem.\u2019 And then when you send it to them, they&#8217;re like, \u2018Yeah, it&#8217;s totally\na problem.\u2019 So and then, of course, the idea of clarity: I think that&#8217;s such a\ngreat idea to make sure, like, you\u2019re including all the details and being\nspecific and honoring their time too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:43]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, exactly. I like that. This is something I\ntell my team a lot. I&#8217;m like, \u2018your time is insanely valuable.\u2019 Everyone&#8217;s time\nis, so just making sure we respect that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:18:54]\nAlexis: <\/strong>That&#8217;s so beautiful. Okay, so you mentioned that you\nguys are a team of, like, fifteen going up against, like, about one hundred and\nfifty to two hundred. So how do you deal with having multiple stakeholders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:19:07]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Ah, good question. And definitely, you know, as a expands,\nyou have more and more stakeholders. So I mean, I&#8217;d say one is, you know,\nalways being approachable. So you know, I think if you&#8217;re if you&#8217;re less\napproachable, stakeholders are going to go around you, or not include you on\nthings or not be completely upfront. So I&#8217;d say that would be a key part. And\nthen, you know, as an SEO, if you get a lot&#8230; if you&#8217;re at the point where you\nhave, like, you know, a boss to answer to, you know, between five and ten cross\nfunctional partners and some reports, like, I believe you have to triage. You\nmight get hit with all of those people asking you something at once, and it&#8217;s\nphysically impossible to answer, you know, fifteen people at the same time. So\nI think I&#8217;m always triaging, like, alright, what came in first or what&#8217;s most\nimportant? Which, actually one of your decks&#8230; I saw you did a few conferences\nlast week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:17]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Thank you so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:17]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah. But diagnosing technical SEO issues; I\njust thought it was an awesome deck. And, like, just tying into this is, like,\nunderstand the problem, and like, the level of priority. So when you have to\nanswer to a lot of people, you just, you really have to understand the level of\npriority that each of those requests take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:39]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Is there anything that you found helps you\nprioritize those like, let&#8217;s say you were attacked by, like, fifty requests or\nsomething like that&#8211; fifties a lot. Let&#8217;s say, like, really ten high-stake\nrequests. How do you go about prioritizing those? Is it just best guess? What\ncan you delegate? You know that type of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:20:57]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Yeah, I&#8217;d say a couple things: one is a framework.\nSo if the questions are repeated, like similar questions, we have frameworks\nfor how to answer them. So if it might be, you know, we want to make this\nchange that might deactivate a bunch of URLs on the site. Will that impact SEO?\nJust really templatizing the response so it can be super clear and as fast as\npossible would be one, and then kind of going off that is like, I&#8217;m actually\nfinding, you know, a lot of the same questions just keep coming up. I&#8217;m sure\nthis happens on the agency side as well. Like you start to get the same\nquestions. So just documenting this is super helpful, I find, so I point a lot\nof my questions to existing articles we&#8217;ve already created in house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:48]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Definitely. Yes. So having those established best\npractices, case studies; it\u2019s that type of stuff that really works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:54]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Definitely. Do you find you get a lot of the same\nquestions from clients?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:21:58]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Coming from the same client, we usually won&#8217;t get\nthe same repeated questions, but across the agency, I think a lot of people are\nconcerned with the same things. Like, for instance, everyone wants to know what\nthey could do for voice. So we have a voice best practices, type of thing.\nWhere if someone asks us for that, we understand, like, what are the best\npractices that one can do? What is the level of the industry? What is pretty\nmuch going on? So there&#8217;s those types of things, and then we also do two things\nin Americas: we have a set of best practices, which then, people go in and\ncustomize them specifically for their clients. But we also print terms of\ninternal training, and we have these things that we call S.O.P\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:36]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. Standard Operating Procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:22:39]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Yeah, standard operating procedures, where it\u2019s\nbasically just like a list of things, like an itemized list of things that\npeople can go through and do steps in the procedure so that they can become\nfamiliar. And I think they usually get updated on, like, a yearly basis or so,\nthat enables newer people to go in and follow that specific process. But it&#8217;s a\nvery, very time consuming process, so it&#8217;s broken up across about, we have\nprobably like a fifty to seventy person team at Merkle, so not all the work\nlays in one account manager&#8217;s hands. But whenever something like that is done,\nwe try to roll it into what the client is doing, and then pull that back into\ntrying to normalize it so that people can accomplish a similar task. Yeah,\ndefinitely. But I love that idea, having an established framework, having\ntemplated answers so that you can then modify them to answer the correct\nrequest. And you mentioned before that you treat your in-house merchandise as\nclients, basically. So it&#8217;s almost similar to like you&#8217;re an agency within an\nin-house company, which is kind of fun to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:43]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah, totally, definitely. I don&#8217;t know if\nit&#8217;s because I came from agency, but that&#8217;s definitely a way I viewed the team\nhere from the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:23:52]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that&#8217;s a great way to do it. And I\nknow that one of my clients actually has the same exact thing. They worked for\na big hospital, and they have all the different hospitals as different clients,\nall the different business lines are different clients to them as well. So I\nthink that it makes sense. Yeah, that&#8217;s awesome. Okay, so I&#8217;ll dive into some\nof the questions. I know I got a little bit off topic, but some other things\nthat we had planned to talk about: Why do you think SEO is so important for an\ne-commerce business? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:24:22]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Yeah&#8230; SEO is a way to reach high intent customers\nlike, super efficiently, and I think the power of SEO, it means like, revenue\nis generated at very low ad cost. So it really increases customer acquisition.\nAnd so that&#8217;s, I think, why it&#8217;s super important. That being said, I think one\nof the interesting things about e-commerce sites is a lot of them, Wayfair\nincluded, have diversified their marketing efforts. Like, similar to how one\nwould, you know, diversify financial investments, right? They&#8217;re doing a lot of\ndifferent things. And so I remember, like, maybe a couple agency clients before\nI got here, you know, had north of sixty, seventy, eighty percent of traffic\ncoming from SEO&#8230; while I think that\u2019s like, awesome for SEO, and super\nimpressive, you&#8217;re putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So I think it&#8217;s super\nimportant and super efficient. But also, I think it&#8217;s great that e-commerce\nsites are diversifying and using other channels as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:25:26]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Yeah, definitely. And I love that analogy of\nfinance and pulling it back because in some ways, it&#8217;s almost like the market.\nYou have to make bets and hope that they work out. Yes. So do you think that\ne-commerce SEO is different from other forms of SEO or other verticals?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:25:43]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Some of my thoughts are probably slightly biased to\nmy experiences, in agency, and then here. I mean, I do think the scale is much\nlarger, which means you have to kind of have a system or a systematized way of\nbreaking down data. So in some of my agency experience, it\u2019s like, we were kind\nof looking at a couple hundred keywords for a client. But when you get\nin-house, you can really go to the tens and hundreds of thousands. Certainly,\nthat could vary at another agency, but I just had a lot more data in front of\nme. And so, one of the ways&#8230; key lessons I learned in e-commerce is just\nlike, thinking in terms of page types, right? So there&#8217;s different page types\non the site that drive traffic. Some drive more than others, and all those page\ntypes have features that either are important SEO or not important SEO. So\nreally understanding those, and like, living and breathing them is super key to\nbeing successful and driving more growth. And I&#8217;d say, you know, having a\nproduct-focused mindset similar to the page types, kind of understanding them.\nYou know, being product-focused is super helpful for, you know, working with\nother engineers or working with other product managers within a large company,\nso you can start to get them making changes that help SEO. And then I would say\na couple others, like link building, is something that I believe in, something\nthat we continue to like, see move the needle. But, you know, it varies based\noff of the site you&#8217;re on. And so, like, I&#8217;ve had times on agency SEO where I\nwas doing link building for a start-up, right? And so we were like super\naggressive, like fully white hat, we had a lot of different strategies running\nat once, you know, from founder interviews to other things, and that was like,\na lot of fun. And again, something here, we&#8217;re still doing it to a certain\nextent, but not as much as I have seen with my agency experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:55]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Yeah, you probably almost don&#8217;t have to, as a brand\nlike Wayfair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:27:59]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Exactly. Like, we kind of target it and use content\nmarketing in specific ways. But, you know, the scale of, like, a start-up\nneeding links is definitely much different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:12]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Definitely. Definitely. And you think, like you\nsaid, you can almost drive it through the content you created by creating like,\nhighly engaging type content. Nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:21]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah. And then just the last one I wanted to bring\nup was something&#8230; It could have been a mix of where the industry was heading\nbecause I&#8217;ve definitely followed it, like, Distilled ODN. But testing and\nexperimentation, you know, really took another level while I was here at\nWayfair, and so we&#8217;re always, you know, testing across our site, split testing\nand trying to grow traffic. But also, you know, we&#8217;ll test if we can learn\nsomething about the algorithm that we didn&#8217;t know before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:28:54]\nAlexis: <\/strong>how often do you think it&#8217;s important to test? So\nlet&#8217;s say, for instance, you found something that was successful or you found\nsomething that was unsuccessful. When is it that you renew those assumptions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:06]\nBrendan:<\/strong> That&#8217;s a good point, because we&#8217;ve had some things\nthat we say around here lately that it&#8217;s like, \u2018Oh, we ran that, like three\nyears ago. Is it still valid?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:16]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Definitely. That&#8217;s what made me curious because,\nlike, when you&#8217;re in that testing culture, you almost, like, you do the test\nand you say, \u2018That&#8217;s good.\u2019 But I&#8217;m always interested in how long. When do\npeople start renewing things and trying different stuff? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:29:32]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Yeah. I mean, I don&#8217;t have specific, concrete date\non, you know, if a test is older than two years, renew it. You know, I just use\nmy judgment, like, what&#8217;s on the road map right now? Can we fit it in? Like, I\ndid one quickly\u2026 actually, this is kind of a sad topic which I&#8217;d love to nerd\nout about, like the history of Wayfair is very cool as it relates to SEO,\nbecause we basically had a bunch of microsites from 2001 to about 2012, and so\nit went from one microsite, to 200, and then it merged all those into Wayfair.\nBut recently we\u2019ve gotten some questions about the value of those, so it\u2019s,\nlike, you know, we did a test back in 2015. We knew which ones were valuable\nand which ones weren&#8217;t. But then we were like, we need to look at that again.\nSo that&#8217;s an example of one that we felt we could revisit, and it was super\nquick to do, right? It didn&#8217;t take a lot of engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:30:34]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Yeah, definitely. I love that idea of trying to\nprioritize the efficiency of it as well. Like, how long is this experiment\nactually going to take? Awesome. Okay, so I&#8217;ll ask two more questions just\nbecause we&#8217;re nearing the end of the forty-minute mark and I want to make sure\nwe have time for the final question. So, what do you think is best-in-class,\nand what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that you&#8217;ve seen in\nterms of e-commerce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:31:00]\nBrendan: <\/strong>SEO, you know, best-in-class for e-commerce is: 1)\ngetting the customer experience right, which is, you know, not as SEOs is in\nour control all the time. So that would be things like merchandising, pricing,\nyou know, customer experience. You know that needs to be super strong and at\npar with the market. And then from there, like, from an SEO perspective, I\nthink, in order of importance: crawling, indexing, ranking, you know, making\nsure you know certain page types are super invaluable for SEO, so definitely\nmaking the case to block those would be important. And then, from there, it&#8217;s\noptimized topically, I&#8217;d say, as well as for internal linking, and like, tweak\nand iterate those constantly to find out what works. And then like, if you need\nexternal authority, ensuring that you\u2019re building links over time, and then\ncontinue to test at scale to understand the levers that impact rankings\nfurther. So those would be&#8230; that&#8217;s best-in-class for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:08]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Awesome, Yeah, that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all you\nhave to do (lol). No that was awesome. Thanks so much. Okay, so the final\nquestion: so I&#8217;ve been asking everybody that comes on the podcast: What are\nyour three little nuggets of advice for SEO working in e-commerce or on an\ne-commerce site? And this could be anything; it could be interpersonal, it\ncould be site related, just something that you found that&#8217;s been useful to you\nin your career as an SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:40]\nBrendan: <\/strong>I love this question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:42]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Thank you. Yeah, it&#8217;s been so fun to hear people&#8217;s\nanswers; they\u2019re so different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:45]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Oh, nice. When this airs, and the others air I\u2019ll\ndefinitely listen so I hear what others say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:51]\nAlexis: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah, I think it\u2019d be cool to compare, like,\nfrom the audience point of view, what types of responses people are giving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:32:58]\nBrendan:<\/strong> So, my first one would be curiosity, And at first\n(that I talked a little bit about when I first got into SEO) I remember reading\na post by Will Critchlow. It was on Moz. It&#8217;s like \u2018how to learn SEO\u2019 and one\nof them was, \u2018Curiosity is your biggest asset.\u2019 And so that&#8217;s been like, I\nthink I still have the print out of that article. I&#8217;ve just brought it with me,\nand when I changed companies, it\u2019s just in my desk somewhere, but I live by\ncuriosity for sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:44]\nAlexis:<\/strong> That\u2019s so awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:33:\n46] Brendan:<\/strong> Yeah, and so the second one, which, actually, is\nsuper similar to when I looked at your diagnosing technical SEO issue deck, is\ncritical thinking, right? Like completing an objective analysis to form, you\nknow, a judgment and, like, definitely, really liked your deck for that reason,\nI thought a lot of it embodied critical thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:34:04]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Okay, so I will ask you one question about your\nfirst piece of advice, if you don&#8217;t mind. For curiosity, you&#8217;ve been an SEO for\nabout seven years now, right? And how do you maintain that curiosity and that\nlevel of inspiration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:34:20]\nBrendan:<\/strong> It could be something that&#8217;s just fortunate, you\nknow? I&#8217;m very fortunate enough to have found something that I&#8217;m interested in,\nand that I just continue to want to understand it. And I guess I&#8217;m interested\nin, you know, looking back on the last seven years, things that make me, like,\nreally excited, right? Like moving rankings, getting those rankings to generate\ntraffic, generating links, uncovering a technical SEO problem and lifting it,\nlike, those things all feel so good when you uncover those things, and they\ndon&#8217;t happen every day, but the only way they do happen is if you immerse\nyourself in it. So I&#8217;d say I&#8217;ve always been very excited about uncovering\nthings, and that&#8217;s a huge way to stay engaged and motivated. Do you have any\nthoughts on that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:35:15]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Ways use to stay curious? I think my initial\nreaction is, to some extent, it&#8217;s a little bit intrinsic, almost, that people\nhave to have the passion. Like you said, you&#8217;re fascinated by it and it\ninterests you; you like to learn. You like to try something different and\nthat&#8217;s almost, I think, it&#8217;s hard to capture in a person, but I think that&#8217;s\njust something that some people have naturally, like It&#8217;s like passion. How do\nyou spark passion in a person? Like, they have to do it themselves, I think, to\nfind things that you love within the fields, which I think&#8230; We&#8217;re really\nfortunate because we interconnect with so many different areas of the business,\nthat there&#8217;s always somewhere else to explore. I know that there are a lot of\npeople who, in the industry, have been exploring machine learning because that\nrelates to SEO in certain ways, in terms of like generating text or or even,\nlike, analytics, and analytic analysis, and stuff like that. So just finding\nareas that you love or things that you&#8217;re interested in that continually keep you\ninterested in our line of work. Probably that would be what I have to say, but\nI like your answer; it was great, it\u2019s almost like an explorer, like a\ndiscovery or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:26]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Cool, cool. And I guess the last I think it is also\nvery important, right? You have to move and execute. And so I think, you know,\nhaving the willingness to just move and get something done, right? Maybe you\u2019re\nnew and starting out and you like, don&#8217;t really know what to do. It&#8217;s like, you\nknow, if you&#8217;re lucky enough to have a manager under you who&#8217;s outlining\nsomething like, listen and go do what he or she says. And then you&#8217;ll just\ncontinue to learn and figure out things along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:36:58]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Yeah, trying things. Do you think it&#8217;s valuable to\ntry things on a smaller scale at first and then expand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:05]\nBrendan:<\/strong> Definitely. It\u2019s good to start small, always. I\nmean, and another example would be like, maybe there&#8217;s a big idea that you want\nto move forward with, but like, you need to make a case for it internally. So,\nyou know, thinking of a way to start small and get a quick learning to make the\ncase for something bigger is definitely valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:25]\nAlexis:<\/strong> Definitely. Well, thank you so much for joining\ntoday. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Brendan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:32]\nBrendan: <\/strong>Thank you. Alexis, had a lot of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[00:37:35]\nAlexis:<\/strong> All right. Awesome signing off, ciao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes: Follow Brendan: https:\/\/twitter.com\/bjcottam https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/brendancottam\/ How to improve on SEO https:\/\/www.instantetraining.com\/ https:\/\/www.skillshare.com\/user\/randfish Do you need to have development skills to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803,"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: 6. Interview w\/ Brendan Cottam, Wayfair | TechnicalSEO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Alexis talks with Brendan Cottam, an SEO at Wayfair about SEO in-house vs. agency, managing multiple stakeholders, inspiring passion within staff, 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\/brendan-cottam\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Podcast: 6. Interview w\/ Brendan Cottam, Wayfair | TechnicalSEO.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alexis talks with Brendan Cottam, an SEO at Wayfair about SEO in-house vs. agency, managing multiple stakeholders, inspiring passion within staff, and more - in the lab! 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