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Personalized Search Journeys Are Here: Cindy Krum on Micromoments and a Macro SEO Career

Written by: Adrienne Kmetz Tags: community, technical-seo, jobs-career, critical thinking

Published: May 16, 2025

A beautiful spring day in Denver, a lively interview of Cindy Krum by Noah Learner, and amazing pizza – what a wonderful way to spend The SEO Community's first in-person meetup at the Champa Commons in Denver. Over 32 Denver-area SEOs turned out, and we spent the better part of two hours meeting, eating, laughing, talking, and listening to Cindy and Noah.

You can also watch the virtual version of Cindy's Campfire Chat conversation with Noah from the day before. 

We’re grateful to our sponsors, SEOClarity and DemandSphere, for helping to make this happen. Plus amazing pizza from Marco's and a beautiful room from Champa Commons. 

➡️ Missed it? Register for the next one on 6/19

Cindy's contributions to the seo industry run deep

Cindy is an absolute legend, having gone all-in on MobileMoxie at a time when search experts were disagreeing on how Google was treating websites on desktop versus mobile – and just how big mobile search was going to become.

We're still not used to the status quo changing even today, and as early as 2008 Cindy challenged us to accept that the mobile revolution was going to happen. As a pioneer in mobile SEO, Cindy also specializes in App Store optimization and international SEO, has spoken at countless conferences, and wrote "the" book on mobile SEO in 2010. 

Even as late as 2015, “when more than 50% of traffic was coming from mobile, so many businesses were still not investing in it,” Cindy said. She wanted to know why they were being so stubborn. "Half the traffic is there. I wasn't afraid to say that." 

She didn’t sugarcoat it, and that’s one of the reasons why she has been able to build such an influential brand.

"I was willing to start conversations that no one else was having. No one was talking about mobile search, and I wasn’t afraid to say things that people disagreed with or that I didn’t know."

"We all have different experiences and I want to hear yours. I want to learn," she reflected. 

Cindy had her fair share of detractors – even Rand Fishkin disagreed at one point about mobile trends. 

Cindy today is drawing parallels to then: AI mode is set to become the new default, as Google wants to create more personalized journeys for searchers – and the future of its business may rely on it.

"We used to optimize for keywords. Then we optimized for entities. Now we are going to be optimizing for journeys." - Cindy Krum, 5/15/25

Journeys are here, micromoments are back

Let’s talk about journeys. We all know it often takes more than one search, a bit of time, validation, mental processing, and some emotional feelings to truly fulfill a query. If I'm doing something complicated where education and comparison is required to feel confident in a decision, that journey is not going to look like a funnel – it will look nonlinear. The "messy middle, as Google called it", says Ryan Mendenhall. 

Cindy reminisced about a time when Google was more vocal about micromoments – people on phones doing things quickly, and optimizing for those types of searches and decisions.

“The argument was that people are on their phones and so they want to do everything fast. As Google started referring more and more to micro-moments, more and more SEOs started talking about it. At which point, Google stopped talking about it. But I don’t think it really went away.”

I want to know, go, do, or buy

"Searchers can be bucketed into four main categories of journeys based on their initial search," Cindy says. "And based on where these journeys go, like to Chrome or to Maps, they are all monetized in some way." 

They are all relatively self-explanatory, and if there isn't a monetization mechanism in some way, they're benefitting from your data. For instance, "even how fast you go to that place after searching for it" is data they'd likely collect, Cindy says. 

“I predict what we will hear from Google next week at Google I/O, is that they have made progress on what it looks like to have personalized search across most of the customer journey. And rolling out AI Mode pretty widely in the past two months, supports that. I think they’ll tell us that they’re a little bit closer to figuring that out."

"And those blurred lines, where all of the product is one experience because it's so integrated together, strengthens their antitrust argument that Chrome can’t be separated from the rest of Google.” 

Obfuscation

Noah gives Cindy a one-word prompt and asks her to riff on it. Cindy expertly encourages the audience to take most data "with a grain of salt."

Our data is often wrong, and the tools we use aren't all that accurate. “I want people to know when to question the tools – and that you should.”

"Always reference data from multiple sources", Cindy says, "because that is how you will discover if one of your data streams is not hooked up properly."

Or, the tool could be showing you that not all data is bad. For example, "If average position is going down in Console, then you look at SEMrush, you might see it's going down because you're picking up a lot of new keywords on page 5 – and in this scenario that's a good thing." 

And if you are having trouble convincing leadership of a specific tactic or change?

Cindy says, “If there is enough data and consensus on your perpesctive, you could send a few articles on the topic to your leadership before your presentation."

One example is the claim that with AI Overviews now rolling out widely across devices and Google is claiming that yes, fewer clicks are coming through, but they're better clicks. "Google has a vested interest in sending quality traffic to paid advertisers and organic websites." 

Is this true? We'll have to gather data to find out, as AIO continues to roll out.

"Start to talk to your team about focusing more on conversions as a success metric, rather than traffic." Cindy recommends.

On building her brand and expertise

"Tell us about building your personal brand," Noah prompted. "What was the inflection point in your life where you started on this journey?" 

“I decided to start speaking mostly because I went to an SEO conference and was so disappointed in just how bad it was.

I decided I could do it better, and I submitted a pitch for a smaller conference, except it got canceled. I got bumped up to a bigger conference, and was put on a panel to talk about .mobi domain names. I remember getting into a heated argument with another panelist, and afterward I went up to the moderator to apologize.

‘Oh no, that was amazing and spot on,’ he said – and that moderator was Danny Sullivan. So that led to more opportunities."

Putting herself out there, not being afraid to say something, being reliable, and prepared, brought momentum to her speaking career. 

What skill helped her the most as a consultant? Business knowledge

Knowing how businesses make money and spend money is the best way to be able to predict whatever the future is going to bring SEO, Cindy says. It's the competitive advantage that allowed her to be innovative within the realistic business world, by knowing what's important both at a macro and micro economic level. 

What does Cindy do to get pumped for a speaking gig?

To beat the nerves of a speaking gig, Cindy tells us to remind ourselves that the anxiety we're feeling is really that we're just excited – "they feel similar," she says.

After years of practice and competitive public debate, Cindy reminds herself "I do know this stuff backwards and fowards, and even if I stumble on my words, I know I'll find them again."

Here's her full routine: 

1. "Make sure I'm looking and feeling my best.
2. Rehearse my presentation – usually on top of the counter in the bathroom so I can make eye contact with myself. 
3. Right before I go on stage, I listen to a pump up song. 
4. I throw my hands up in the air and wave as I smile and walk on stage. 
5. I try to absolutely nail the first 30 second to one minute, usually after that it's smooth sailing. I try to make eye contact with someone in the audience even if the lights are bright. 
6. Then I picture that person is my dog, Barkley. Because psychologically, familiar faces make you feel more at ease."

The SEO community is grateful that Cindy could spare her time and expertise to share with all of us. Thank you, Cindy!