What SEOs should know about devs

[Music]
Hello and welcome to a new episode of
Search Off the Record, a podcast coming
to you from the Google Search team where
we talk all about search and maybe have
some fun along the way. This totally
didn't sound like John Miller. My name
is Gary
and I'm a Gary at the Google search
team. And today we have Martin as a
guest. Well, actually you're also a host
sometimes.
Everyone say hi. Hi. Hi. What is going
on you today? That was amazing.
Martin. Yeah. How are you?
Okay. I think. Yeah. Okay. Just Okay.
Self test. Isn't that unusual for you?
Maybe. I don't know. I'm usually
happiness. Yeah. Exactly. I have this
perception about you that you're always
the the adjunct um chief of sunshine and
happiness because I'm the chief of
sunshine and happiness. That's true.
Yes. Google. Okay. Wow. So, you cannot
be that too. I I got a promo though.
That's pretty nice. Okay, let let me
tell you what I was thinking because for
a change I was thinking.
All right. So, I thought we'd do a more
human episode. You with you. You.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No. where we
where we talk about our human side
because I read that some people are
convinced that we are not quite humans.
So this will be this will be one of
those episodes where we debunk some
myths about us. Okay. Um maybe we talk
about some challenges uh that we might
have. And I don't mean I because I don't
have challenges because I'm the
challenge.
Oh, the turntables. Okay.
But yeah, they turned. Shocking.
Shocking. Shockingly, you turned the
tables. But Martin, why why don't you
say hi to this lovely audience?
Actually, you already said that. My
notes already are horrible. Yeah,
sweetie. Okay. So, so what do you No.
No. Was I ever? Um, but seriously, how
about we do a like a more human episode
where uh we talk about like frustrations
that we have and uh whatnot because I
think like at least some of the things
that we are doing are very different
from any other experiences I had. Mhm.
before joining Google in 1777,
which was 15 years ago, and you probably
had the same feeling that some things
are different from the things that were
at previous companies. Mhm. That's true.
So, what do you think? Yeah, that sounds
nice. Let's do that. What do you think?
Let's pull back the curtain. Okay. So,
you don't know the questions that I'm
going to ask, which is, huh?
I'm only slightly worried. Yeah,
she should be. A core part of our job is
public speaking. Um, and I know you as
the JavaScript goat like but no, not
that goat, the greatest of all time.
And but I also know that you also do
public speaking for the team. Yes. About
technical topics. Yes. Did you have pre
prior experience with that? I did. You
did? Yeah. What were you public speaking
about? A lot of different topics. Uh
mostly like web development but but like
cast.net. Right. So technical stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Technical stuff like
JavaScript and and all that kind of
stuff. JavaScript, CSS, backend stuff.
Yeah. Um, and I imagine that
was very different from the public
speaking experience that you have when
when speaking for Google search. Yes.
Yes, that was different. I touched a
nerve. Yes. I I see the audience cannot
see it, but I see Martin on my screen
and he's blushing.
So So h how is it different? Um so
beforehand I had pretty much uh an
audience that I shared my background
with which were developers. I still do
talks to developers or at developer
events which I really like but um
even if you go to a developer event and
talk about SEO, it is a strained
relationship you're entering and I am
particularly putting myself in between
the two sides. So it feels like there's
a bit of a divide between developers and
SEOs. Surprise surprise. Um
and I
am trying to so when when I used to
speak before I joined Google when I used
to speak to developers I was one of them
uh and I was speaking about topics that
they are thinking about as well. So it's
like oh you have that problem as well.
Interesting because I did this and it
kind of worked. I'm still struggling
with these problems. do you happen to
know what to do here? So I was in their
shoes. I was coming from their
perspective and I'm just like amongst
people who kind of share the same view
on topics generally mostly. I mean I had
some yeah situations regarding
accessibility on the web where some
people would disagree that I think the
web should be accessible to as many
people as possible but okay. Um, and now
I'm I'm kind of coming from an
adversarial role, so to speak. It's
like, who? He's a developer. He's one of
us and he speaks our language and he
does the things that we do, but he talks
about this weird snake oily kind of
thing and he probably wants to sell us
something. And I'm like, "No, I'm trying
to help you do your job better and
understand where the people who come to
your desk and ask you questions or want
your help come from." And sometimes that
is met with positive
feelings and reactions and sometimes
that is met with negative ones. Yeah,
that's different.
H how did you get into public speaking
or why? Um I think
I think I got into public speaking
through a meetup in Germany. Um where
they had a format called Ignite. Uh and
Ignite is there's a different word for
it, but I I can only remember the the
name. I think Ignite is a brand from
Aureli. Um but there's another term for
it. It's 5 minutes, 20 slides. They auto
advance and you just talk through your
slides. There's a different term for it
as well, but I keep forgetting what it's
called. That it's a It's a Isn't it
a Japanese format? I think so. I think
so.
20 slides,
five minutes or something like that. It
It has a name, but I cannot. Pichakucha.
Yeah, I don't know where that comes
from, but that
Well, that sounds Japanese. Okay, that
was fun. uh and and the challenge
because I kind of like talking to other
people about the stuff that I worked on
and for my co-workers eventually like
you run out of topics because they know
the things you do because they work with
you and uh my relatives and friends who
are not in computer science and software
engineering are quite bored so I had to
start public speaking I guess. Oh,
that's what that was your reason for
starting. No, no, the reason was I
imagine that you also had you also had
something like I want to help people or
something not just because like my
family doesn't understand me so I go and
public speak. My my actual primary
reason was that I saw a lot of people
moving away from the web and I really
really like the idea of the web because
it's such a ubiquitous and low barrier
medium and with with reasons like oh but
I want to build games and I'm like but
you can do that in the browser or but I
want to later on like 10 years later
it's like oh but I want to build like
something that works on mobile. I'm like
but you can do that on the web. I want
something that looks more like an app
but you can do that on the web. So, I
wanted to help people see and understand
that the web has a lot of power that is
not being used. And I want to help
people not run into those same problems
that I ran into. So, so how is that
different from
uh what you're doing today because like
conceptually doesn't feel all that
different. Yes, that's actually why I
why I was interested in the job and why
I'm so happy that I uh became part of
the team. I as a developer I see how
often we build stuff that then no one
finds and if no one finds it no one uses
it and then it kind of goes down the the
gutter and that's unfortunate and I also
to be fair I met a fair bunch of people
who might not have been from the SEO
world who might not have been the
easiest to deal with from a developer
perspective. I also to be fair and to be
frank met lots of developers who are not
easy to deal with neither from the
developer perspective nor from the SEO's
perspective. So um it's the the honest
is on both sides to be nice people. Um,
what's different though is that now I am
kind of trying to bridge a gap and I'm
also trying to talk to two very
different audiences
and that is tricky and sometimes I have
to talk well being the SEOs on or
digital marketing on one end right and
uh developers on the other end sometimes
these roles and and audiences fall into
the same person but it's it's not common
necessarily arily. Yeah. And what's even
worse is when I when I'm kind of like
speaking by proxy. So I tell SEOs what
to tell developers if they want
something. So
yeah. Do you think SEOs need to know
some dev stuff?
Because with with with I think when you
start doing development Mhm. Um okay I'm
giving away my biases but when you you
do some development um over the months
you start thinking in a different way
about computer systems than before
because you start seeing that well it's
doing this because it was coded such.
Mhm. But it also when you start
developing stuff you will start
understanding the limitations
that computer systems might have not all
of the limitations but some of the
limitations. So back to the question do
you think SEOs should know some dev? Ah
that's a that's a tricky one. Um, I
think it's a similar debate to the do
should designers know coding. Um, and
for the designers versus coding thing, I
I don't have an answer and neither do I
really have a a strong stance on this.
But but it depends a little bit on where
you draw the line to know deaf stuff.
Um, I think in order to optimize a
system or work with a system
so deeply like SEOs do, you have to
understand some of the characteristics
of the system. So I think if you've
never seen how HTTP roughly, you don't
have to code in C or C++ or JavaScript
or whatever to build like your own
crawler or to build your own C#.
Some people do. I don't know why that
came up. Probably because right now I
have my glasses on so I C sharp.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay. And
that uh is how we wrap up this episode.
I I killed him. I killed him. Good. No.
Um you don't have to code like your own
low-level network thing. I don't think
you need to do that. But you should
understand what is a header. How does
HTTPS conceptually work? What's the
certificate? How does that influence how
the connection works? Uh, right? How
does H2 differ from HTTP2 differ from
HTTP 1.1? These kind of things make
sense to understand and so does
understanding HTML and maybe maybe even
understand a little bit about
JavaScript. Again, not necessarily like
the in detailed bits and pieces, but you
should understand how it interacts with
the page and how that could make your
life easier or harder, right? So, I
think some knowledge is useful. I don't
think and that's that's the other tricky
thing. SEO is such a broad field. There
are people who are amazing at taking
content international for instance. I
don't think they need to understand deaf
stuff because they specialize on a much
higher layer
as in like the content and the structure
and language and localization in
different markets, they might not have
to understand the technical bits and
pieces, but someone who's like a general
purpose SEO or someone who's even
specializing on technical SEO, I think
they should understand dev stuff. What
do you think? I I don't know if
internationalization was the right ah
okay because there are technical fair
enough there are technical Yeah. Yeah.
But but I I I get what you mean like for
example if you're uh like even if you
are I don't know like media SEO like
they would want to know or they should
know differences between the content
formats and the uh content deliveries
like for example if you are hosting
video then how are you hosting it like
are you streaming it in or are you just
uh putting a static file somewhere on on
a server and then just like referencing
it in a in a video container like from
my perspective and usually the the SEOs
that I talk to slashwork with will know
at least the basics of of the internet
workings and I don't know if my biases
just keep me away from SEOs who who lack
that knowledge but generally the SEOs
that I I talk to they are pretty good at
this but of course the group that
doesn't know much or at all about some
of the basic stuff on the internet can
can cause or have the potential to cause
some headaches both for the sites like I
see that daily in the uh crawl issue
report form where they installed a
random plugin and this is a large agency
uh they installed some random calendar
plugin for uh all their clients that for
whom it makes sense. And suddenly we
discovered sometimes 100 million URLs,
new URLs because of that calendar
plug-in. And
basically
the blame was on us, not on well you
added 100 million new URLs to your site
and we crawl started crawling them. Like
what? Um maybe not the best example
either but um
so but but they they can cause headaches
for the sites.
Do you think they can cause headaches
from our coms perspective?
Yes. And to be fair, I think and again,
this is not all SEO. It was just like
No, no, no, no. It's it's I I think
there's a there's a mindset situation as
well. Like I I think the people who
don't know and they are upfront about
it, they don't cause as many headaches
and they usually don't cause as many
issues.
It gets dangerous when you're in the
Dunning Krueger kind of trough where you
think you know things and then you
don't. And that happens to me every now
and then that I and I I love talking to
everyone who wants to talk to me. I'm
I'm excited to hear their perspective,
their experiences, but sometimes they
come in basically
yeah flexing their technical skills and
from the flexing you can tell like no no
uh no it's it's not there and it's it's
okay. But the problem is by pretending
that they know they kind of take away
the opportunity for me to explain things
to them. Um, and that is that is tricky
to navigate. And sometimes you are in
in a situation where you're being asked
a question that is very contextual and
you notice that the person asking is
having the necessary contextual
knowledge. And I'm not even saying like,
oh, SEOs, oh, they don't know their
stuff. No, no, no. What I'm saying is,
and SEOs should know this, and they do
know this, that one website and another
website might be very different from
what they need to be um looked at or
what needs to be looked at, what needs
to be done, and what the requirements
are. some someone who is like serving a
very specific niche with highly
regulated content in a single country in
a single language might have very
different requirements than a multi-
language, multinational brand that sells
everything to everyone. And then you
have someone who asks a very specific
question in a very specific context. And
I can tell this person knows their
context very well, but there's like
other people listening as well. And
that's fine. That's how it should be.
You shouldn't ask us oneonone. You
should ask us in public forums. Yeah. Um
but then I answer this person and we
kind of have like established aha okay
so this is your context. This is the
situation you are in right now with this
client or with your company. Um
in this case
XY Z do do this do that and then look at
this and see if it gets better. But if
we say that out loud, then someone else
might listen who are in a completely
different context. They might do
something completely different. Their
client might have the opposite needs and
then they just go, "Aha, so I'll do
that." And that might actually be
harmful.
That's tricky.
Yeah. But I mean that applies on pretty
much any com situation. Like for
example, if you are a war correspondent
and then you do one-on-one with someone
and then someone overhears and then they
put that in different context and it's
suddenly it's it's very different or u
there were big cases about how
cropping
images for example which is another mode
of communication um changes the the the
meaning of the image quite a bit. So
that's true. Yeah. True. What you are
saying is that it depends. It depends.
Coms is hard. Yeah. And
what I mean especially like war for
correspondence might actually be an
interesting example because I think they
the challenge is that you have different
parties with very differing confronting
um and conflicting agendas.
And what I what I worry is in in
developer communities generally
you don't have that. Everyone just wants
to build stuff better, faster,
whatever. Um, in in the SEO community, I
sometimes see that some people
try to make it into a confrontational
and conflicting kind of situation where
they have an agenda they want to push
and then everyone else has a different
agenda or like some some player A has a
and I'm not saying like we are exempt of
that. We have an agenda. That is by
definition the case because we want to
build the best search engine there is.
Um if we always succeed, I don't know. I
don't think so. We are striving to do
our best and by that we want certain
things for the web. We want it
accessible. We want it fast. We want it
joyful to use. Um, and and some people
might disagree with some of our points
or some of our our goals. I think that's
fine, but it it often makes things
tricky because people might cherrypick
and might pick one thing you said, take
that out of context and use it as an
example why people should follow their
agenda rather than ours. And I think
again that's fair game if I say it in
public. You can definitely use it
however you feel like, but sometimes I'm
I'm saddened or scared by how
out of proportion that can get and how
quickly that can get out of proportion
and that's unfortunate. How would you
fix that? Oh boy. Because
to me it goes back to standard uh
communication challenges. Mhm. Um like
it's it's it's not like we are doing any
different from true from other from from
other public speakers. True. Who also
have an agenda. They might want to sell
a book. They might want to lobby for
something. Quite literally everyone has
an agenda. Some sort of agenda. True. It
feels like to all the the the headaches.
Well, I didn't want to say that. I kind
of like you sometimes. A thank you. So
yeah, not often but sometimes I like
a
anyway um like there's no real solution
to to the problem, right? Like we can
amalorate some of the
some of the issues like for example
abandoning my pet peeve uh it depends.
Um and then instead of saying it depends
actually say out the whole thing or at
least the major things that the thing
depends on. True. Um, but ultimately
there's no solution to the problems.
Basically, it's just like it's part of
your job description. True. True. Yeah.
I I think it would be nice and this is
wishful thinking, but I it would be nice
if people if people at least like tried
to not only
look behind what we are saying, but what
other people are saying as well. like
why is this person saying this now at
this point in time? Especially if it
confirms your own bias. I'm the first
one to admit that sometimes if something
confirms whatever I was thinking in the
first place, I'm like, haha, I knew it.
Um, but it it makes sense to think about
like, wait, does this apply to me?
Does this make sense? And I give you an
example out of out of the blue, out of
the field. Basically, I was at a under a
water photography workshop where we were
in a pool. It was extremely brightly
lit. It was extremely clear water. Uh
the pool was made out of out of polished
aluminum or steel or whatever it was,
but it was very bright and very
reflective. And everyone was using their
strobes. Everyone was lighting this pool
up as if there is like a major
thunderstorm going on. And I was looking
around going like, "What the hell? Why
are they doing that? Because my pictures
I think come out fine without even
switching on the lights. Because the one
thing we have plenty of right now is
light. And I think like sometimes people
just blindly follow any kind of guidance
or any kind of like guru they heard and
that that leads to these kind of things,
right? I read books, I watched videos
and I saw things u with regards to
underwater photography and yes of course
light is there's not much light
underwater generally. So you need to
bring light so you have strobes or video
lights. But that doesn't mean that you
should just blindly apply them to
everything you do. And I think if we
were to think about that that would be
nice. Would that be the one thing that
you'd change about how we come like how
we communicate or I mean that's not what
what what would be the what would be the
the thing that you think we can do to
make our situation better. That's really
Other than quit. Yeah. Other than
quitting.
Damn it. You're taking me away uh from
from my options. No. Um
I think
and I think we're trying to do that. I I
think we can do more of explaining the
context or repeating the context in
which an answer appears and I try to do
that in in the last uh in one of the
last conferences I I spoke at tech SEO
summit where it's a very technical
audience and you know me as the
JavaScript person and a bunch of people
know me as the JavaScript person. I just
wanted to grab people's attention.
JavaSc Sorry sorry sorry JavaScript goat
okay JavaScript goat you know me as a
JavaScript goat in a presentation about
performance optimization I said don't
use JavaScript on a slide I agree yeah
yeah okay great fantastic uh I had like
a a remark on that slide saying like
there's context missing here and then I
gave all that context and I think if you
can avoid JavaScript for what you're
doing then absolutely definitely avoid
it And people are like, "Martin Split
says that." And I'm like, "But that's
the reality. That's what you should do."
The problem with me saying that is, and
probably this this podcast is going to
come back and bite me. The problem with
me saying that in general, is that
people will just take that one sentence
and ignore everything else I said before
or after and say like, "Google says
don't use JavaScript." So what I did
instead is I explained JavaScript is
necessary for a bunch of stuff.
JavaScript can be used in a simple
website because that's the other thing.
People are like, "Oh, but if I build a
website, there's no place for
JavaScript." I'm like, "That's not true.
If you want your website to work
offline, you need JavaScript." So making
these broad statements is tricky. And
I'm trying to avoid making these broad
statements unless I give a lot of
context. I actually spoke I think like
five minutes about the context for that
statement. And it's much much broader
than what I would say here right now.
But I try to give as much context as
possible and I hope Yeah. hope people
will take the context into account
before just blindly blasting messages
like that.
Yeah. You know that uh that particular
example that you just brought up that is
the reason why we don't share our
slides. Yeah.
Yeah. Basically our slides our slides
without context they are useless. Yes,
that is true.
Martin and unfortunate. Yeah. Um are you
feeling better now? I'm feeling so much
better. Thank you so much for the
therapy session, Gary. This is great.
Okay. Do you know that this felt like
the coffees that we've been doing uh
during co Yes, we should do them more
often. Like what? What? COVID. No, not
CO. The coffees, the conversations. Not
even the coffees. I don't care
particularly about coffee. Okay, fine.
You don't have time for me anymore.
Well, I do. And you're wrong. Okay.
Well, fine.
It's okay. Fine. It's okay. Okay. How do
you feel about wrapping up this episode?
Okay. Fine. It was nice. All things
should come to an end. Was it? I think
it was nice. I liked it. I really like
it when we don't have a structure for
the episode and we are just like
randomly talking about stuff. Well, to
our listeners, let us know in the
comments if you prefer those episodes as
well. That would be interesting to get
Why do you ask them so many questions
because you are like tell us what you I
want to know. I don't know. Maybe
they're like, "Oh god, no. Why is this
happening again?" And then we should do
less of it. Well, on the other hand,
it's our podcast. We can do whatever we
want, right? Can on our last day for
sure. Well, that was for this episode,
dear listeners.
So, Martin, people can find you on
LinkedIn and on blue sky something. Blue
sky. Blue sky, I think. Yes, there's not
that many master splits, I believe.
Tick, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,
tick tock, tick tock. No, not really. on
Tik Tok too. No, you don't truly. Okay.
Well,
it was really nice chatting to you and
um I say that from the bottom of my
heart, which doesn't exist because I'm a
machine. Um and listeners, thank you
very much for listening and goodbye.
Outrobot 3000 generic greetings.
We've been having fun with these podcast
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and goodbye.
[Music]