10 SEO podcasts you should listen to in 2023
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Show notes
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is flying solo and wants to tell you about 10 SEO podcasts you should be listening to in 2023.
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10 SEO podcasts you should be listening in 2023:
- Search Off The Record
- SERP's Up
- Edge of the Web
- The SEO Mindset
- Azeem Digital Asks
- Marketing O’Clock
- Rankable
- The Recipe for SEO Success
- WTSPodcast
- The Measure Pod
Transcript
Coming up on this week's episode of Search With Candour, I will be giving you 10 recommendations for other digital marketing podcasts you should be listening to in 2023.
Intro
Welcome to episode 73 of season 2 of these Search With Candour Podcast. I am your host, Jack Chambers-Ward, and I am on my own this week. As I mentioned at the very start of the episode, I'll be giving you recommendations for 10 other digital marketing podcasts you should be listening to in 2023. I know that seems counterintuitive. I'm saying go and listen to other podcasts, but I am a big podcast listener as well as a podcast creator. I'll be covering a wide variety of different podcasts as well, or who I think cover a variety of different topics, so hopefully you'll still be able to continue listening to Search With Candour. Please don't stop listening to this one, but also go and check out some new stuff and download some more knowledge into your podcast feed each and every week.
SISTRIX TrendWatch
Search With Candour is supported by SISTRIX known as the SEO's Toolbox, and you can go to sistrix.com/swc, which obviously stands for Search With Candour and get access to some fantastic free tools including the Hreflang Validator, which I used on a client's website the other day and it was very useful. The Google Update Radar to keep an idea on those all important Google updates and to check your site's visibility index all for free. That's sistrix.com/swc for fantastic free tools. Of course, link is in the show notes as always at search.withcandour.co.uk. So I have a little preview of next week's Trend Watch, which will be out ... The week you'll listen to this on Monday, it'll be out later this week. I have a couple of little sneak previews of Trend Watch thanks to the fantastic data journalism team over at SISTRIX.
Let's talk about some mini crosswords, shall we, and I think this is part of this wider trend. Wordle was one of the most search terms over the last, I think it was over the last two years if I remember correctly. These little brain-teasers, these little extra things you can do in the morning to kind of wake yourself up seem to be really, really popular. Even encouraging people through things like Snapchat and TikTok, little mini puzzles like this are getting more and more popular and the data from SISTRIX very, very much reinforces this. Huge spike since the beginning of 2023, an absolute enormous spike in interest and I think people want to do that little quick mental workout during their coffee break, during their commute first thing in the morning to kind of get their brain going. It seems to be a more common thing and mini crosswords makes a lot of sense to kind of tie into your routine and get that kind of thing going.
The next trend we have is soundboards and I was like, what? That's a thing that have been around for years and years. For those of you who don't know, it is either software or hardware that you use to play audio clips and stuff while you are recording. I use this in podcasting quite a lot, radio stations use it all the time to play jingles and sound effects and all that kind of stuff. But again, because of TikTok, because of Instagram, because of social media, more and more people are using soundboards to add sound effects and silly little music tags and all that kind of stuff into their video creations.
It's the thing I thought was well and truly out of date. Is now very much on trend, especially thanks to Discord. I don't know if you've heard of the community chat app thing called Discord. I use it quite a lot myself, very common with gamers and things like that. They now have an in-app official soundboard that you can use to play sound effects and stuff perfect for Twitch streamers or just having fun with your friends in group chats and playing video games online and things like that. Apparently soundboards are more popular than ever by the looks of it, and as somebody who has been podcasting for 10 years, that feels very bizarre to me.
And last of all, something I feel like I do multiple times a day on a daily basis and that is how to screenshot on Windows. I don't know if this is necessarily from people transitioning from Apple devices over to Windows devices, but the snipping tool is your friend. I live and die, snip and sketch is like the best thing that's happened to Windows. I use it all the time to screenshot things for colleagues, to include graphs and data, to include snapshots and graphs and screenshots into client documents and things like that. It's so handy. You can obviously do the Windows key shift S, like screenshot the whole page, but the snipping tool is the best. I live and die by my snipping tool. It's like one of my most used tools on my keyboard probably. So I find it interesting how much interest has really spiked again over the last four years or so. Since 2019 it has really, really risen to over 400,000 searches for people, how to screenshot on Windows. Yeah, maybe people are transitioning, maybe people just don't know that the snipping tool is there, the era of the print screen button is now gone, but I find it fascinating that people are searching more and more for how to screenshot in Windows.
There's three little snippets, three little glimpses and peaks into Trend Watch and you can go to sistrix.com/trends, subscribe to that newsletter, and you'll get 10 exclusive trends delivered straight to your inbox every single month. Some of them are very relevant to digital marketing industries, get relevant trends from social media, from Amazon, all kinds of stuff. It's very, very interesting, very useful data and like I said, get 10 of them delivered straight to your inbox every single month by subscribing to Trend Watch at sistrix.com/trends.
1. Search Off The Record
Hosts: John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes
So I'm going to kick things off with probably the most influential of these podcasts, the only podcast I know in SEO and digital marketing that makes headlines when it publishes a new episode. It is of course Google's official podcast, although it is called Off the Record. Search, Off the Record here is a fantastic podcast hosted by Gary, Lizzie, Martin and John from the Google Search team. You'll probably know their names from every podcast, every SEO conference across the world. They are fantastic hosts, fantastic podcasters, and have the inside scoop on everything Google, and that is the kind of big selling point of this. Not only are the hosts very knowledgeable and very informative and very welcoming to the show, it's the insider knowledge. It is the real kind of, "Oh yes, we do that thing at Google. Here's why we should do this thing." And I know Mark and I talk about this all the time, so much of Google's communication to the outside world, to SEOs, to digital marketers in general, you've got to look in the nuance, and read between the lines, and pick it apart and things like that.
What Search Off the Record allows us to do is have that knowledge delivered straight to your podcast app essentially. They do fantastic transcribing process as well, so you get a written copy of the episode as well, very much in the same way we do here at Search With Candour as well. And yeah, I highly recommend you check out Search Off the Record if you're not already. I'm guessing you already are since I think they're the biggest by sheer numbers in all of SEO and search marketing in terms of podcasts. Search Off the Record are pretty amazing and like I said, whether it's Gary, Lizzy, Martin or John hosting the podcast, they have some fantastic Q&A sessions, they have fantastic topic discussions, they will go through the latest Google updates and kind of the thought process behind that and why it's going on and all that kind of stuff. It is the kind of one stop shop for me for a lot of Google updates and how to go through and communicate that to other people in our team, to our clients and all that kind of stuff as well.
I'll also read off the little snippet for each podcast as we go through that they have on their podcast feeds, so I'll give you the official wording from Search Off the Record as well. "Search Off the Record is a podcast show that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search and its inner workings. In each episode of the podcast, the folks from the search relations team will give you background info on the decision making behind launches, feature prioritization in search console and the projects Google search teams are working on. They'll share fun stories from the many conferences they attend as well as from their day-to-day working life at Google. They'll also dive into the currently trending conversations in the SEO community at large."
I think that sums it up pretty well, certainly summed it up better than I could. And what I think really helps them stand out is a lot of the Q&A stuff they do. They are the most engaged with the community podcast, I think out there and I'll get to a couple other examples of other podcasts who do as well. But I think it's a huge credit to that team, to the search relations team, to the fact that they are willing to take on so many questions and answer them with sometimes brutally honest answers, which I think is a credit to the Google Search team, for sure.
2. SERP's Up
Hosts: Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein
Next up we have the new wave of SEO podcasts. It's SERP's Up from Wix. This is hosted by Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein. More on Mordy in a moment. We'll be talking about Mordy again. But yes, the SERP's Up is the official Wix podcast all about SEO and digital marketing and it features some fantastic guests. It features some fantastic chemistry between Crystal and Mordy. I've met both Crystal and Mordy at BrightonSEO. They are an absolute delight. They bring such fantastic energy to the show and the combination of the two of them as hosts is so engaging and so funny. There's nothing quite like it. The combination of Crystal and Mordy is very unique in podcasts and I very, very much appreciate the energy and chemistry they bring to every single episode. It also ties directly into the SEO Learning Hub over at Wix, which is a fantastic resource. If you haven't already checked it out, I will put a link in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk for you to go and check that out.
Shout out to George who is the editor. I know Mark has been featured on the SEO Learning Hub. I know Sophie Brannan, Adriana Stein, Chris Green, Al Gaza, Mordy himself, fantastic resource and the podcast is a perfect sort of companion piece to the SEO Learning Hub if you haven't already checked that out. What I really love is the production value of SERP's Up as well. I'll get into why that is so good in a moment for my next listing and it all comes together really nicely with different segments, recurring segments which I think work really well. There's little quick Q&A segments and having somebody come on as a guest, but also giving a shout-out to particular tools and particular people to follow on social media who are doing cool stuff. I love all that kind of stuff where it's just a little quick shout out and a quick little dynamic there and I very much appreciate what Mordy and Crystal are doing over at SERP's Up.
3. Edge of the Web
Hosts: Erin Sparks, Mordy Oberstein and Jacob Mann
Next up I mentioned Mordy and I mentioned the production value of SERP's Up because let's talk about the first SEO podcast I ever listened to when I started trying to get into SEO. It is, of course, EDGE of the Web Radio. To me this is kind of the OG, this is kind of the original SEO podcast and Mordy being one of the hosts, Erin Sparks the main host is absolutely fantastic. Erin of Site Strategics fame. I'm sure you've heard of Erin Sparks. And Jacob Mann who is producer and co-host there as well. The three of them together make a really fantastic, really slick, really brilliantly produced podcast and I think it's kind of the closest thing to American radio stations that we have in the SEO world.
It's like I said, super well produced, Erin has a fantastic voice for radio and the guests that they have on our essentially the who's who of SEO. They're coming up on 600 episodes at the time of me recording this episode, which I think is pretty spectacular. I think they're one of the longest running SEO podcasts in general. That's years and years of episodes, so there's a lot of back catalog to go through if you want to dive back through and check out EDGE of the Web Radio in the archives essentially.
Also worth noting is it's multiple episodes per week as well and typically they will split a guest interview into two halves. I'm interested to find out why they do this, so maybe it's just to kind of produce more regular content and kind of spread it out a little bit. But it's something I always find interesting when you get kind of the first half of the discussion with one guest and then the second half of the discussion on the next episode with that same guest. It's an interesting approach and I think it works well if you are really trying to cram in useful information, you can get in that little bite size first episode and then catch up with the second episode later on as well. I think it's a really good way of splitting up a longer ... More than an hour, you split that up into half an hour or 20 minute chunks and it works really, really well.
Like I said, EDGE of the Web Radio was the first SEO podcast I ever listened to when I first sort of started thinking about working in SEO like five years ago or so, and I couldn't recommend it enough. It is fantastic and like I said, has the who's who pretty much of guests including recently, Areej AbuAli, of course, the amazing Areej. Daniel K. Chung is coming up I know very, very soon. And of course our very own Mark Williams-Cook has made an appearance on the EDGE of the Web fairly recently as well, talking all about AlsoAsked and zero volume keywords.
4. The SEO Mindset
Hosts: Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman
Next up, perhaps two of my best friends in podcasting and a podcast that is very inspiring to me personally and for my career and career growth and progression and all that kind of stuff. It is the SEO Mindset hosted by Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman. Two of people you might recognize because they've both been guests on this show, Sarah last year and Tazmin a few weeks ago back in May. And we also did a live podcast in Brighton together. The three of us teamed up together to do a live in-person show during BrightonSEO, the evening before BrightonSEO. And the reason I want to work with the SEO Mindset is because I think it's doing something that is unique and interesting and they're putting themselves out there as not necessarily experts. They're not talking about technical stuff, we're talking about almost the emotional side of digital marketing and SEO. We're talking about career progression and confidence and imposter syndrome and all this kind of stuff. I think is really, really interesting to give you those actionable tips that aren't just based on the technical SEO side of things. They're not necessarily something you need to do for your website or for your clients, but this is something you can go and do and think about how you think about yourself and your career. I think it's a huge, huge credit to Sarah and Tazmin, the success they've seen so far, they've had some fantastic guests on the show. And yeah, I think it's a really, really unique podcast that brings a lot of that "soft skills" to the SEO podcasting industry and I think that's a massive space that is occupied really, really well by these guys because it was thoroughly underutilized beforehand with most kind of podcasts, either focusing on news or technical stuff. I know I've been inspired by them to kind of start branching out and doing a little bit of the soft skill stuff as well. So yeah, highly recommend you go and check out my number four recommendation, which is the SEO Mindset.
5. Azeem Digital Asks
Host: Azeem Ahmad
Number five is Azeem Digital Asks. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably know who Azeem is already. He is for my money, one of the best speakers in digital marketing and PBC and SEO. He is fantastic at just being an engaging in-person speaker at conferences and that energy really carries over to his podcast as well. In particular, and kind of bouncing off what I was just talking about with the SEO Mindset being inspiring, Azeem is somebody who really inspired me to bring in a more diverse cast of guests and actively, actively push for that when it comes to the guests we have here on Search With Candour. Diversity and inclusivity is something Azeem champions brilliantly in the industry and it's a huge credit to him to have brand new people coming in, brand new voices on the show. And yeah, I hugely appreciate what Azeem has been doing for the podcasting and SEO in general.
6. Marketing O’Clock
Hosts: Gregg Fin, Jessica Budde, Christine Zirnheld (AKA Shep) and Nicole Waddington
Next up, we have probably my most appointment listening SEO and digital marketing podcast. Soon as this comes out every Friday, it is the first thing I listen to. It is of course, and if you've ever heard me talk about marketing podcasts, you've probably heard me talk about Marketing O'Clock hosted by Greg, Jess, Christine, AKA, Ship, and Nicole from Cypress North. It is one of the most engaging, one of the funniest, one of the broadest reaching marketing podcasts out there. If you don't trust me: Glenn Gabe, who we mention on the show very regularly, one of the fantastic SEOs to follow on Twitter and one of the most knowledgeable guys in the industry cites it as his favorite marketing podcast. So if you're not trusting my recommendation, you can at least trust Glenn Gabe's recommendation.
The chemistry between the hosts is fantastic. They are not afraid to call out bad, crazy things when they see them. Greg is ready to go on a rant at a moment's notice and something Greg and I have in common. They also happen to have the catchiest intro song and segment jingles you've ever heard in your life. The production quality is immaculate and fantastic. Even the video quality is fantastic and perfectly edited together and all that kind of stuff. It is a perfect all round package and I highly recommend checking out The Good, The Bad and The Googly because yes, they do puns in their titles for their recent search generative experience discussion. And unsurprisingly, it's full of rants and yeah, it's fantastic. Highly, highly recommend you go and check out Marketing O'Clock. As I said, it's probably my go-to if I had to pick number one, it is my number one in terms of content quality, audio quality, host chemistry. Everything I look for in a podcast, Marketing O'Clock has in spades, so I highly, highly recommend you go and check out Marketing O'Clock.
7. Rankable
Host: Garrett Sussman
Next up, we have one of my favorite interviewers in all of SEO podcasting. I talk about the fantastic Garrett Sussman from iPullRank, and I'm going to talk about the kind of combo of Rankable, which is the regular podcast series, the weekly podcast and SEO Weekly, which is the news recap show that Garrett does on their YouTube channel. I think he does a fantastic job of combining the two and balancing something I try to do here on Search With Candour is balancing the news and balancing the interviews and guests and things like that as well. And what Garrett does, I think he really delves deep into topics, does his research, and really pulls out interesting questions and ideas from every guest he has on the show. It's a huge credit to Garrett. I think that is such a big skill to have in podcasting and something that you don't just kind of pick up overnight. That's something you really kind of put a lot of thought and effort into. There's also some great segments including the Rankable Moments, regular tips and things like that as well. So I highly recommend you go and check out iPullRank's Rankable Podcast and the SEO Weekly updates on the YouTube channel. Again, links, all of these will be in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk.
8. The Recipe for SEO Success
Host: Kate Toon
Next up is The Recipe for SEO success hosted by Kate Toon. This is one of the other first SEO podcasts I listened to about four or five years ago, just behind EDGE of the Web I think. And Kate is a really interesting, really knowledgeable and experienced SEO, talking all different kinds of topics. And I particularly enjoyed her recent conversation with Kevin Indig, who is again, a fantastic SEO in his own right and somebody who should be following all about improving website user experience. And that very much tied into my conversation recently with Adriana Stein. So if you were intrigued into how UX and SEO combine and interact with each other and things like that, this conversation with Kevin and Kate from a recent episode of Recipe for SEO Success is fantastic. Kate also dives into regular tips as well, so she's recently launched a kind of subseries of the podcast called Toon Tips and they are sort of like 10-ish minutes of bonus episodes essentially, talking about specific optimization tips, specific recommendations, tools, topics, all that kind of stuff just from Kate herself and kind of diving into her experience and her knowledge. So it's a really nice balance of that interview and guest led topics and also direct and actionable tips and insights from Kate in bite-sized little chunks as well. It's fantastic. Highly recommend you check out Recipe for SEO Success.
9. WTSPodcast
Hosts: Isaline Muelhauser and Areej Abuali
Next up, we have the fairly recently relaunched Women in Tech SEO Podcast. Previously this was hosted by Sarah McDowell, as I mentioned, the host of the SEO Mindset Podcast. And you might recognize Women in Tech SEO because that incredible community built by the one and only Areej AbuAli was brought up quite a few times on the show. Basically, any time a member comes on the show, they talk about how incredible and supportive and brilliant that community is. So if you're not already for the record, go and check out womenintechseo.com, become a member. There's a fantastic Slack community there. I think it is, from what I've heard, again, not being a member myself, so I have no biases here. It is the most supportive, most brilliant, most engaging community around in SEO and something I very much aspire to do with my Neurodivergents in SEO community I co-founded with Sarah Presch. The podcast itself now hosted by Isaline Muelhauser and Isaline is a really interesting, really engaging interviewer and has a brilliant way of pulling out neat little insights and interesting topics with her guests, particularly speaking of neurodiversity, a recent episode featuring Greta Koivikko. I apologize Greta if I've mispronounced your surname. My Finnish is non-existent. But yeah, Greta and Isaline did an episode recently all about working with neurodiversity and how we can as employers, as employees, as colleagues, as friends, help to work with people and help people understand what it's like to work with neurodiversity. As well as somebody who recently got diagnosed with ADHD, this is something I can relate to pretty significantly. And yeah, that came out I believe the beginning of May sort of time, so like four or five weeks at the time of this episode coming out. So I highly recommend you go and check that out.
And it's just an ongoing series highlighting the incredible members of that community and Women in Tech SEO. So again, another kind of example similar to Azeem where they're doing a fantastic job of shining a light on a lot of underrepresented and underappreciated people in the industry. So highly recommend you go and check out that and also go and check out Isaline's previous podcast called Work in SEO as well. That was a fantastic podcast in and of its own right. But yes, Isaline Muelhauser, you're doing a fantastic job of hosting the Women in Tech, the second season, I guess, of the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. Funnily enough, I know how that feels. Big shoes to fill for me here in season two of Search With Candour, and of course you'll hear regular appearances from the one and only Areej AbuAli in there as well.
10. The Measure Pod
Hosts: Dara Fitzgerald and Dan Perry-Reed
Last, but by no means least, my 10th and final recommendation for another SEO podcast is not an SEO podcast, and this is why it stood out to me. It's all about analytics and data, and it's from what I could tell, this is about the only as in depth and knowledgeable podcast specifically about analytics. And with the upcoming eclipse of GA4 looming above our heads at all times, especially now we're in June of 2023 and it's all going to happen in July of 2023, The Measure Pod from the guys over at Measure Lab from Dan and Dara over at Measure Lab is a fantastic insight into analytics and data, and that world. It is some of the best insights I've had for things like GA4, things like attribution modeling and some real detailed interesting stuff for analytics. Something I've not really dived into that much. I mostly look at it, obviously from an SEO perspective, reporting to clients and all that kind of thing. But I very rarely dive into the analytics and the real kind of details themselves and the way that these guys are able to.
I also did training for GA4 at BrightonSEO from Dan from The Measure Pod, and we bonded over podcasting. We talk about how much I enjoy his podcast, which was very nice. And yeah, genuinely I learn so much every week it feels like, whether it's guests on, whether it's just Dan and Dara talking about the latest updates and things to keep an eye on in terms of analytics. It's not all focused on Google Analytics as well. They do dive into other topics around data and data collection, episodes about BigQuery, and that's been a big discussion here in the Candour office fairly recently as well.
They also take suggestions for topics via feedback forms, something that ties us all the way back round to Search Off the Record, the first podcast I mentioned. I think it's a very cool way of getting the audience involved and being able to kind of answer questions in a lot more detail and really kind of bring that interactivity to a podcast where so often it can feel like just one person talking into a microphone into the void that is the internet. So yes, I highly recommend you checking out The Measure Pod if you want to learn more about analytics and data.
So to give you a quick rundown, of course, links for all of these will be in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk. The 10 digital marketing podcasts I recommend in 2023 are:
- Search Off The Record
- SERP's Up
- Edge of the Web
- The SEO Mindset
- Azeem Digital Asks
- Marketing O’Clock
- Rankable
- The Recipe for SEO Success
- WTSPodcast
- The Measure Pod
Hopefully, that's given you a lot more things to add to your regular podcast app. Hopefully you will continue listening to Search With Candour as well. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey that has been season two of Search With Candour.
Like I said, I listen to a lot of podcasts, so if you ever need any podcast recommendations, I have plenty to give out on a variety of different topics. You can contact me on social media. I am @JLWChambers on basically everything. Twitter and LinkedIn are probably the best places to find me on there. On LinkedIn, I'm, of course, just Jack Chambers-Ward, nice and easy to find on there as well. So enjoy your podcast listening, everybody. I'll be back next week with a guest, Mark and I'll be back very soon with another SISTRIX with Candour livestream as well.
But until then, thank you so much for listening and have a lovely week. Enjoy listening to podcasts!