x-pose.org

I haven’t blogged in a long time for a variety of reasons but the current scene on Twitter in regards to SEO is completely off the rails. To the point of cringe, so I decided to fire up the blog-o-matic one more time.

There is a ton of misinformation, and I want to take a second to provide my insights on it because I completely disagree with the conspiracy theory as to why Reddit has risen in visibility.

Let me preface this with I am NOT and SEO expert. It’s not what I concentrate on day after day. I concentrate on running a business and SEO is one of the many hats I wear.

Speaking of running a business. Do you play fantasy sports? Do you like winning? Well, check out FantasySP and the Fantasy Assistant to help manage your teams an stay on top of breaking player news. (super smooth promo – nice)

Follow the Experts, Avoid the Influencers

We live in a very fortunate place in time where SEO experts freely and publicly display their thoughts and insights for all of us to learn from. Lily Ray, Glenn Gabe, Marie Haynes just to name a few. You can find other reputable figures in the industry based on reading through their timelines.

This is a good way to avoid “SEO influencers” and stick to the professionals.

A general rule of thumb. If the person on Twitter hides their URLs, then they are probably not a great source of SEO advice. If the person on Twitter advertises newsletters and courses behind a paywall then they are probably not a great source of SEO advice.

The point of SEO is not not create niche blogs and rank for niche content based on keywords in that niche.

In my opinion, the point of SEO to help businesses and creators put their best foot forward with a better understanding of how search engines work.

If you currently run a niche blog, then try to create a company and brand with it. Soon you won’t look at things through the lense of an SEO, but through the lense of a business owner and entrepreneur.

Wrong way of thinking…. My SERPs have dropped lately but my content is good and well researched. Maybe I just need to become a travel agent to rank better. Surely that is a good ranking signal.

Right way of thinking…. I want to turn my niche blog into a business. It makes sense to take the next step and become a travel agent or partner with travel agencies to convert visitors into leads.

I am not an SEO professional but I like to pretend

I have been building companies since before social media was a thing. SEO was never my main focus. To be honest, I learn whatever I have to to ensure my business succeeds and SEO is one of many hats.

For example, did you know that originally all apps created for Twitter had follow links in each tweet?

Well, I did. And I used that knowledge to build my own app to generate follow links from the Twitter domain a long time ago. That meant learning the API, building the app, and to start tweeting.

The Reddit Conspiracy Theory

Essentially, the quick summary of the conspiracy theory is that Google partnered with Reddit prior to their IPO and inked a deal for $60 million for API access. Now with data access, they wanted to push Reddit visibility to further increase the value of their data and train their models.

Traffic has started to increase since Summer of 2023 and has continued to rise as this current March Core update is still ongoing. Not by a little, but by A LOT. An unprecedented amount.

These are the biggest sites on Google in the US, in terms of SEO visibility (via @sistrix)

Every one of the top 10 sites has seen visibility decline this week, with the exception of https://t.co/BHi9S8v22a

Reddit now has 1k+ total visibility index points. For context, it had… pic.twitter.com/sQjOZi2pId

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 10, 2024

Good stuff @garrettsussman pic.twitter.com/E8VTKjCr5E

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 10, 2024

Some SEO influencers (not those listed above) across Twitter then got out their pitchforks and took to the streets of the internet to cry foul over unfair Google business practices. Surely, even Lily Ray is on it. Danny Sullivan, how could you do this?! Bro, weak sauce.

Case closed, no? We got em.

How We Got Here, the Data Arms Race

First, some facts. Google has a market cap of 1.99T. Reddit has a market cap of 7.41B. Reddit has never been a profitable company since 2005.

Keep in mind, Reddit does not pay for content. They do not pay for moderation. All of this is free and they STILL have not been able to turn a profit in their company’s history. Ouch.

There was a movement to close access to data since the rise of ChatGPT. Large Language Models (LLMs) are only as good as the data they are trained on. At this point in time, LLMs have gobbled up most of the publically available data. So what’s next?

Owners such as Elon Musk started to limit API access to Twitter in July of 2023. It also limited access to public URLs to avoid scraping data in large quantities. He listed a variety of reasons, like cost, but the real reason was most likely to prevent companies from using their data to train models for free without proper compensation.

The arms race on data begins. ChatGPT is king. Google and others need to scramble to catch up.

Meanwhile, Reddit is preparing for an IPO, so obviously they cannot continue to allow apps to dominate using their API for little to no cost.

By finally becoming a public company they decided to kill all third party apps and limit access to their APIs. Moderators revolted but in the end there was little they could do.

Spez (aka Steve Huffman) basically said we have the power and these apps have to go. Their revolt won’t last forever. All our data are belong to us. Boy was he right, but still very much an asshole.

As a public company Reddit needs to maximize revenue by all means necessary which includes 1) Selling data to companies who want access for LLMs, 2) Forcing users to use their official apps so they can make more money off advertisements and keep tabs on user metrics.

Ah yes, sweet sweet control.

But what About Google

As I mentioned earlier, Google was completely blown out of the water by ChatGPT. OpenAI was poised to dominate the next revolution of technological growth. And make no mistake about it, AI will indeed dominate the next decade in innovation.

Google had to act fast. That means data and fast.

Google announced an expanded partnership with Reddit for their data to train their LLMs and provide AI access for Reddit to help improve their search.

“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with Reddit for many years, and today we’re sharing a number of ways that we’re deepening our partnership across the company“

“Google now has access to Reddit’s Data API, which delivers real-time, structured, unique content from their large and dynamic platform. With the Reddit Data API, Google will now have efficient and structured access to fresher information, as well as enhanced signals that will help us better understand Reddit content and display, train on, and otherwise use it in the most accurate and relevant ways. This expanded partnership does not change Google’s use of publicly available, crawlable content for indexing, training, or display in Google products.”

O rly. Liar.

But Surely Google Can’t Be Trusted

Reddit data was as valuable two years ago and it is today. Increased visibility in search engine results DOES NOT make their data more valuable. Sorry, it just doesn’t. There is no correlation.

If you were to pay for access to all of the research papers on astrophysics, the visibility is low but the value is sky high for a LLM.

Plus, Google does not own a stake in Reddit the company. They do not care how the company performs as a publicly traded company. Google does not run specific ads on their platform to generate additional revenue for Google.

If this conspiracy theory held any water, they would have also announced an advertising partnership to funnel that money BACK into Google’s hands.

If you really wanted to be a conspiracy theorist, Google could intentionally tank the stock by decreasing visibility and forcing Reddit to sell to them. Now that’s evil and fits the narrative.

All to save what, $60 million dollars? Google does not care about $60 million dollars. Google has a 2 trillion market cap. Even that is a stupid idea.

Furthermore, this is what you know publicly. You do not know what other deals Google has for data. They could have deals with multiple companies to train data on, and Reddit is just one of many.

If I were Google, I’d want access to various types of data to train models on, and one of many is User Generated Content.

You have no idea what deals Google has in place or what data deals they are working on. Plus, you are most likely using Chrome to read this.

The biggest power grab in the history of the internet. They literally invented a web browser to maintain their control over market share in search. Yet, somehow, the big news is this data deal with Reddit?

Google inks a deal with Apple to be the default search engine for billions of dollars, but this data deal with Reddit is the big problem.

Move on. There is nothing to see here but a phase in Google’s history about adapting their algorithms to a new age in content creation. Reddit has way too much visibility. I think it’s a mistake and things need to be tweaked but that is a topic for another day. Forbes and other companies ranking for literally anything is also a huge gaping hole in fairness and accuracy.

If there is interest I will dive a bit into how I see the current SERPs and recent core updates. However, I am fairly certain there are qualified SEO professionals to take on that topic.

Rant over.

Recently Intercom announced their new pricing scheme which resulted in a 2X price increase for using the same product for me. I made a comment on Twitter about this price increase and the folks at Intercom were nice enough to reply.

They are the industry leader and have to do what is best for them. However, as a small business owner I had no choice but to move away from their product to minimize my overhead.

According to the Crisp website I wouldn’t lose any core functionality whatsoever and instead would GAIN value.

TL;DR Instead of paying ~$500 per month using Intercom with limited functionality, I switched to Crisp and gained access to Bots, Help Desk, and a Status Page for just $95 per month. By switching to Crisp exclusively, they save me at least $5,000-6,000 per year.

But before I get to the good stuff, let’s take a look at the stuff that isn’t so great.

Intercom is better at Design

The most obvious thing you will miss when moving to Crisp from Intercom is the difference in the interface. Intercom has such great attention to detail and has such a slick interface. It feels like a modern app and is the reason why I refer to Intercom as the industry leader in this space. (I don’t know if that is true or not, but that is my perception)

Every aspect of Intercom’s interface is better, including the floating help box where the customer interacts and the backend side of things. Everything from replying to tickets to setting up automated campaigns just feels better on Intercom.

Ticket Replies Should be Better

Let’s take an in depth look at ticket replies and how their interface falls short.

Why is the reply window box so small? The box should be much bigger and the whole screen itself is a bit more basic compared to Intercom. The method in which you close tickets is also a bit wonky. There is a color coated bar on the top of each ticket that you have to click on to close it.

Crisp will NOT autosave your responses as you type. This one will be missed because sometimes during a ticket we might get distracted or accidently close the tab.

There is no point and click interface for Saved Replies, so instead the only option is to type in the shortcut interface of “!texthere”. (Make sure your support team knows this ahead of time)

When creating new Message Shortcuts (aka Saved Replies), you have to go to a different area completely, which is under Settings. I can’t just quickly type one up without leaving this area and save it. In addition to that, it uses a markup language rather than a point and click interface to create links, images, and formatting. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means that the average Joe might be a bit confused at first glance.

When you attempt to include an image in a Crisp ticket, it will automatically send the image in it’s own response. There is no option to add the image inline with your text response. Needless to say, it’s a bit cumbersome.

I often find myself accidently pressing the enter key twice while replying to a ticket in an attempt to start a new paragraph, but instead it sends my half-completed response to the customer. Whoops.

Limited Segments Functionality

Crisp does not have the ability to create segments like Intercom. On intercom, it was basically a mini database that I could interact with and create my own segments in a few clicks.

For example, I cannot easily save a new segment consisting of all of my users who are paying members that like football and have logged in the past week. That data can still be sent via the API and saved for a user, but you can’t manipulate it like on Intercom.

Instead it is much more basic and just lists your Contacts for a specific segment. If I wanted to duplicate that functionality, I’d have to add a custom segment via the API and assign this user a segment using my own code.

Automated Campaigns are Different

When I say different I mean this in a bad way. In Intercom I can add an automated campaign based on any user data entry I add via the API.

In Crisp, I can only set up Automated Campaigns based on Events that push via the API. So for example, I can’t set up an automated campaign for users who first logged in today or first appeared as a new trial member segment.

Instead I have to create a “New User” event and push it to the API. This requires additional work that I didn’t have to do before. I don’t like how this works and wish I can set up automated campaigns based on user data rather than Events, but it’s not the end of the world.

The way in which Intercom organizes campaigns is also better. I can create a campaign and call it “Onboarding User” and once I click that it’ll show the series of emails I send off.

In Crisp, it’s not like that and just lists all of the emails I have set up, and I don’t know what event they are attached to unless I click on it. Messy.

It’s Not All Bad, Seriously

I realize this entire article thus far is me nitpicking features that Crisp has in comparison to Intercom. After everything I have listed above, you would think that I hate Crisp. The truth is that I would still without a doubt migrate to Crisp.

In the end, the biggest functionality that you lose is the Segment interface, aside from that, everything else is there.

Bots Bots Bots

I had never used the Bots feature in Intercom simply because it was too expensive so I have nothing to compare it to. However, once I migrated to Crisp, I eventually set up my first bot after getting the core functionality working and was super excited to finally have this feature live on FantasySP.

It took a bit of time to understand the flow but they do have examples to go by and a good help section.

This should cut down on the same type of support tickets and make both the end user happy and the person answering support tickets happy.

Simpler Pricing

Switching to Crisp means no more dealing with additional packages. I don’t have to add the Help Desk package or the Bot package. I don’t have to worry about how many contacts I have added over at Crisp. I don’t have to worry about how many active contacts will affect the price during my busy season versus my low season.

Crisp has 2 plans to choose from and offers up a dedicated IP option. That’s it. Simple. Elegant. Straightforward. Honest. No complex (shady?) bullshit to deal with. No more guessing how much September will cost compared to May.

I am getting peace of mind at Crisp. Companies like Crisp who offer up simple pricing like this should be rewarded for doing the right thing.

I am on the cusp of a pricing rant and want to talk about email companies absurd pricing model, but I am going to reel myself back in.

Dedicated Email IP

So far I haven’t seen the need to add a Dedicated Email IP. All of the emails sent to my test email addresses arrived without any warnings and did land in the inbox.

Crisp recently launched a new analytics section that shows Campaign deliverability rates among other things. Based on what I see there, I am not overly concerned about deliverability rates as of writing this. However, I do wish that they included more in depth reporting for email bounces. Are they bounces because of invalid email addresses or because of another issue like AOL sucks? Crisp doesn’t tell you.

The price of the dedicated email address appears to have increased from $35 to $55 a month? I’m not 100% sure, but I remember seeing a much cheaper price just a few weeks ago.

Helpdesk Rocks

Another cool perk of Crisp is that they include the Helpdesk in their unlimited package for $95 a month. This is another feature I wish I could have used at Intercom, but again, the price was way too much to justify it.

So instead I was using GrooveHQ to handle the FAQ and help section, which was around $240 per year. Now I can finally ditch that additional expense and keep everything inside one interface to make it easier for my customers to get the help they need.

I am happy to report that the Crisp Helpdesk is possibly my favorite feature. It looks great. Writing and organizing articles is a snap. Not to mention, Crisp automatically includes a working certificate as soon as you create it.

Have a look at the FantasySP helpdesk.

Don’t forget about the Status Page

Yet again, Crisp proving why it has so much value. They also include a Status Page so you can easily inform your users of an outage. I personally don’t need to use this feature but I created a basic status page just for the email alerts.

The Crisp Support Team Rocks

When I first started researching which product to switch to I had a lot of questions. I contacted customer support multiple times and they were always extremely helpful. I’m not talking just generic questions that sales could handle, but real in depth questions a developer would ask about the API, etc.

Angelique was especially awesome when it came to answering my questions.

Wrap Up

Again, I want to reiterate that Crisp offers amazing value for a great product. A lot of the things I picked on in this article should not deter you from making the switch. I just wanted to let you know that there are some key differences.

In fact, you would be stupid not to switch in order to save thousands of dollars.

I understand a lot of companies are lazy and won’t make the switch and just swallow the additional cost like it’s no big deal. Heck, I didn’t want to migrate away either but money talks.

So if you take away anything from this post, hopefully you walk away knowing you’ll be in good hands over at Crisp.