088: The Best of SEO (Part 2): Brand Building, AI, and the Future of Search

 

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Welcome back to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast! I’m your host, Danny Gavin, and today we’re continuing our special two-part eipsiode on the ‘Best of SEO’. 

In this episode, we’ll be sharing powerful stories from our guests about creating compelling content that not only drives organic traffic but also supports robust SEO strategies.

We’ll also discuss the synergy between paid search and SEO, how strategies can differ across various audiences and industries, and what the future holds for SEO. 

So, without further ado, let’s dive into these insightful conversations and discover how to maximize visibility and results. 

 

You’re also passionate about a concept I’ve not considered integrity within AI content marketing. Can you elaborate on this? 

Julia McCoy Guest

01:07

So that kind of came from just spending 10 years in content marketing, getting to see the inside of companies with you know, sometimes their weekly budget was $100,000 for content and it was insane to see how literally some of the biggest companies on the web were built through content, how literally some of the biggest companies on the web were built through content. And so what I got to see was those were some of the toughest clients we had because of the emphasis put on fact-checking these companies. Their reputation was made or broken based on the integrity of their facts, and these were cited companies that were often linked to by tens of thousands of other publishers, and so these other publishers relied on these websites to publish accurate content. And that I’ll tell you. That is the reason why I did not adapt to AI for about eight months, because I saw ChatGPT and I was like, ooh, this would ruin the reputation of all of my clients, because even OpenAI they’re pretty upfront. They said when they launched ChatGPT there is no source of truth in this AI. It literally just predicts, detects, generates. It’s not checking for facts. So at least they were honest. They said that from the beginning there’s no source of truth, but when I saw that, I was just like oh, I cannot use this, I cannot recommend it. You’re better off doing it humanly. 

02:31

Whenever I did adapt, it was because one of the main features in RankWell and Consonant Scale was fact-checking. 

02:39

And this feature has even gotten better to a point where RankWell builds a database of thousands of individual pages and it’s looking through all of those pages to find the most accurate like sometimes it’s just like one or two or three facts to put into that article and then that gives you this incredibly data rich, also accurate, article to publish. 

03:05

But you’ve used AI to save, you know, seven to eight hours, so you’re saving time. But you’re also publishing integrity-based content, which is fact-based content. You can’t really have integrity as a publisher without accuracy of facts. So that idea that I’m able to be a proponent of is a pretty big one, and it’s interesting because late last year I was at a conference with some huge companies Deloitte, dell, microsoft. Their communications teams were all in that room in Austin, texas and they were emphasizing the importance of accuracy and data security and privacy. Those things are important too, and that’s all as well in the company I work with. If you upload any data in your project that doesn’t actually get shared out into any other customer project or even the LLM. So it’s really great to be able to be on the side of this scary industry of AI but still be able to recommend something that is integrity-based. 

Danny Gavin Host

04:06

While using RankWell as part of content at scale? How necessary is it to have a writer to actually manage the tool, or could just a regular SEO analyst do it? 

Julia McCoy Guest

04:17

We just launched something called the Unified Editor, where you’re inside this editor that’s so simple and easy to understand. You even get a checklist of the things you’re missing to add into the article. You could definitely have whether it’s like even an intern or a marketing assistant or all the way up to a founder that wants to run it themselves, but they’ve never gotten familiar with SEO. What we’ve done is we’ve really removed that barrier to entry, making it easy for anyone anyone to open RankWell, and I love that because you know, content was never easy. The world I came from like you. Just you had to have years of experience before you knew what content should look like, how to write it, how to publish it looking like that, then how to analyze it. So I love that. The tool is this user level agnostic, where you can really jump in at any point and get straight into using it. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:11

Do you recommend agencies who use RankWell to be very transparent with their clients and be like, hey, we are using AI, or do you feel like it’s so good that it’s like what’s the point? 

Julia McCoy Guest

05:20

I spoke about this at an SEO conference and it was Brighton SEO’s first stateside conference and I’ve written about it on Search Engine Land. There’s a lot of opinions in SEO and the opinions usually favor you need to attribute the AI. I am on the contrary side. I came from 10 years of doing content with over 100 writers and those writers never got attributed. They basically forfeited their copyright. They were like okay, you’ll pay me a check. Okay, I forfeit all rights to copyright. That was how that worked. And so now I’m like hmm, are we going to give the AI credit when we never gave the human writer? So just if your content is humanly checked and it’s good content, I don’t think you should attribute the AI. That’s where I’m at with it. 

Danny Gavin Host

06:06

So as we move into WordPress at Optage, we’ve been big proponents of WordPress as a website platform for a very long time. As you know, it frequently gets brushed off as being a basic site platform for beginners and bloggers, and certainly not something for large enterprise level businesses, like we spoke about a couple minutes ago. What is it that you like so much specifically as it relates to enterprise-level business sites? 

Shelly Fagin Guest

06:28

So WordPress for me. I love the flexibility of it, and there’s a lot of bad WordPress sites out there. Do not get me wrong, but it’s all about what you do with it. I think that determines if it’s going to be good for you or if it turns to be something not so great. It’s super flexible and it can be as flexible as you need it to be, especially at the enterprise level. You can make it headless and you can use it just for people to manage their content, and if you have a big development team who wants to have the JavaScript and React-driven pages and pull in data from places that they don’t necessarily want to store in WordPress, you can do that as well. So there’s a lot of flexibility. 

07:15

The other good thing I would say is the economy in WordPress is huge, and by that I mean if you ever need people to help you, you’re always going to be able to find people that understand WordPress, and just because someone knows a certain type of code they know PHP yes, they can definitely go in and do tinkering around and do things for you in WordPress, but I would still prefer someone who really understands the ecosystem of WordPress. 

07:44

But I would still prefer someone who really understands the ecosystem of WordPress. They understand the intricacies of it and whether or not the code that you’re doing or the customization could potentially be harmful or it could break in a future update. I think it really is good that if you’re working in a CMS update, I think it really is good that if you’re working in a CMS, someone really really understands how it works, because it’s not about building for the now but thinking about the future as well, because it’s definitely not fun to have to come back and clean up a site that has been used and abused and overly customized over the years and then suddenly it’s really slow. And oh, wordpress is WordPress as well. So I see that a lot. 

Danny Gavin Host

08:32

So, yeah, Talking about slowness, which I know this isn’t the point, but do you have any favorite WordPress plugins that you recommend? I’m sure you have a list. 

Shelly Fagin Guest

08:40

Right, I do Obviously so. On the SEO side, I’ve always used Yoast. Yoast does a really great job. I also use RankMath as well. They have some really cool stuff. It really depends on the site, but I always prefer Yoast. For me, I always say the less plugins the better, but there are certain things that belong in a plugin that don’t necessarily belong in a theme. You really need to know when you use a plugin for something and when you don’t. I love, is it WP Rocket or is it WP Rocket? 

Danny Gavin Host

09:14

Yeah, I think it is WP Rocket yeah. 

Shelly Fagin Guest

09:16

I started to get their names all mixed up. That’s okay, sikuri. I would say hands down, because no one wants a hacked WordPress site. WordPress isn’t an easy hack, but unfortunately, because it’s the biggest CMS, it becomes the most targeted and the most vulnerable, and because it’s open source, that makes it even more so. The plugins and the themes that you use on it can make it vulnerable if you don’t know what you’re doing. So, even if you do, I would suggest you have a security plugin and Zucuri, because if it does get hacked, they’ll actually help you clean it up. So, yeah, those are my go-tos, and then the rest really depends on what the site is and what we’re building, what we’re looking to accomplish, but I’m a little lean on the plugin side. 

Danny Gavin Host

10:05

Yeah, no, I don’t blame you, and I also think a good hosting provider is also important, 100% Like Kinsta or the WP engines out there. They’re a little more expensive, but at least from the security side and speed it’s definitely worth it. 

Shelly Fagin Guest

10:18

Oh yeah, you definitely don’t want to host Gator or any of those type of mass hosts. I’ve always had dedicated virtual environment. For that reason, definitely hosts. 

Danny Gavin Host

10:31

We can leave our host Gator WordPress disaster stories for another episode. Exactly, is there a platform that you prefer to avoid when it comes to SEO? 

Shelly Fagin Guest

10:40

So it’s usually my recommendation If you can’t self-host, I would stay away. I do like Shopify, actually for Ecommerce. I think it’s great for that, but usually, with that said, I usually don’t recommend Blogger, blogspot or any of those types of Wix or something that, even though Wix has improved a lot as well. But for me, I like that freedom, that flexibility of being able to customize and scale and grow the site. Even though I might not need it now, the client might need it in the future. I like to set them up to be future-proof and that future to be as easy as possible. I’ve migrated a lot of sites from platforms that didn’t have that flexibility and it’s a nightmare. Your traffic usually Well. When I do the migration, traffic doesn’t usually suffer, but most migrations people come to me because someone botched their migration. So most companies do see drops in traffic, sometimes for several months, to be quite honest. So that’s never a good thing. So probably something that has that freedom, that flexibility. Open source is always good for that, but then it comes with trade-offs. 

Mandy Politi Guest

12:00

The content we generate. It serves a purpose. We’re trying to achieve something. So optimizing it for SEO means that you are making it the best possible version of what you can actually deliver to serve this purpose. So if we’re writing a piece of content like an informational blog post about anything about tiles, about plumbing we want somebody to read it and get some value out of it. So the idea is, we optimize the piece of content to serve the purpose of satisfying the search intent of the user, who is going to land on the page and they’re going to spend their time reading it. 

12:34

So for me, this is why it’s so important to optimize, because I think that many people optimize thinking that they’re going to rank, but that’s not the actual. That’s the journey, it’s not the actual destination, because you are going to rank. But then what are you trying to achieve? You want to get people in and you want people to stay, and you want these people to find your content useful enough to stay on the page and get some value out of it. So for me, if you change the perspective and think that I’m not optimizing to rank, but I’m optimizing to create something that’s really good and is going to be useful for the users. That’s the value of SEO. That’s why you optimize it. At least, that’s how I see it. 

Danny Gavin Host

13:11

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. We understand that’s important to write for SEO, write for users. So what are the effects that can come from good SEO and bad SEO? So why don’t we go with the good first, like what happens when you do it right? 

Mandy Politi Guest

13:27

Well, you get more users in, you get your brand known. You get people to interact with your brand and your website, you may increase your sales. You provide value, which is not always directly linked to sales, but it’s also in terms of providing information services anything that a website sells or what they’re trying to achieve and you’re helping people to associate the brand with a useful hub of information or a place where they can find what they’re looking for, be it product services or just purely like informational content. 

Danny Gavin Host

14:04

And then what about bad SEO? 

Mandy Politi Guest

14:06

Well bad SEO it can be. I perceive it as two different ways. You can have like black hat SEO, which means that you get people in thinking that they’re going to find something but in the end, finding something else, they get like frustrated and they exit the site straight away. Or you can have bad SEO in the terms of you try to optimize but you don’t do it really well and you end up with an extremely complicated piece of content that is really difficult to actually read. It doesn’t really serve the purpose, it doesn’t answer the user questions. Both have disadvantages, of course, mainly in the brand and the website, because, slowly, well, if people go in and then they leave, obviously you you’re not going to keep your performance, you’re not going to stay where you are and, second, people are not going to really identify your brand or website as the place to be for what they’re looking for. So it goes both ways. If you’re asking me, I think that both are equally bad, like the Black Hat SEO practices and also optimizing in a way that it’s not putting the user in the middle, in the center of what you’re doing. So both can actually have negative impact. 

15:09

And something else that I did, which I think that sometimes, again, if you get really busy, you forget to do. Is I actually go back on the content that we publish? I go back and I monitor, I check. After a month, two months, I go to see is it indexed? Does it rank for the terms that I wanted it to rank? Perhaps it ended up ranking for something else, and then I use this insight to re-optimize it. So for me, it’s very important when you publish a piece of content, you don’t just let it there to leave. You go back and you check, and I think that that was the most important part, because it gave me an understanding of how what I wrote was interpreted by search engines, especially using Google Search Console, and seeing, like do I rank for this term that I wanted to target? And if not, you re-optimize, but you don’t wait until six months or the next audit to do so. For me, this was a very, very important part going back and reviewing the performance. 

16:01

And something really useful that I learned from this was, for example, don’t be afraid to create longer content, because you think that if, for example, you add a section below the folder below, it’s not going to to rank for this specific term if the content makes sense in the total and now, especially, that google picks up uh snippets of uh like from below the folder not necessarily doesn’t take you necessarily to the top of the page. 

16:25

You can still perform really well for that, even if it’s not targeted directly on the metadata, by following a very specific structure. But I learned that by writing longer blog posts and then going back and really fast seeing that, okay, now this performs for this sub topic that I included, although I haven’t targeted on the metadata or really early on the text. So how did that happen? And this helped me to generate faster similar content. So I always recommend to go back. I think that was the biggest trial and error of seeing what performs and how I’m going to create with the right or something that’s going to be very good, and then going back to what was published and reviewing performance after a couple of months just to make sure that it performs for what I want it to perform and, if not, to quickly re-optimize it and not just go and do that after a year. 

Mike King Guest

17:10

We’re trying to optimize for a standard organic search or standard web search or whatever you want to call it. It’s more about how relevant is the entirety of the page to that query? And then, of course, you’ve got the authority metrics. Do you have the links? And then, of course, you’ve got, you know, the authority metrics, do you have the links? 

17:27

And then another big component, which has been reinforced by the leak and also the DOJ anti-trust trial testimony, is that the user behavior and how they interact with your page matters a whole lot. Are you driving clicks? Are people staying on your site after they’ve clicked through, so on and so forth. But as far as that, as it compares to AI overviews, ai overviews are driven by what’s called retrieval, augmented generation, which is a paradigm where you’re combining a large language model with the search engine, and so the way that works is that it breaks your pages down into chunks and then it looks for the most relevant chunk to the keyword and also the prompt that they’re using in the background. So really what that’s about is like where’s the most relevant paragraph or most relevant sentence to what the user is looking for? So I think of that as kind of like a micro optimization, whereas for web search is more of like a macro optimization for the page. So they don’t necessarily conflict with each other. It’s just that doing it for AI overviews is going to be way more granular than what you’re doing for the standard search. 

18:40

And then the other thing with AI overviews is that it also uses the structured data heavily, so not just like the individual structured data that you have on your page, but also the structured data that Google is building across the web and about the world and so on. 

18:54

There are going to be instances where it’s just a fact that Google has seen across the web and corroborated it and you can’t necessarily change it, because that fact is like all across the web, you can’t just change it on your site. 

19:07

But when they’re using content that is only found on a handful of sites, then you have that opportunity to change what that answer is going to be. And appear in those citations to the AI, these advancements that Google has made that have changed the science of how search works. So of course I want to know how it works, and by design, google has to not tell me how it works, and I’m smart enough to figure out how it works, so of course I’m going to share that because it enriches me, of course, for my business, but it also satisfies this deep curiosity that I have about this technology and allows me to contribute in ways that then I get back even more information from other people in this space who are also just researching this from a slightly different angle. So it’s biting the hand that feeds, but it’s also like I have to do it. 

Danny Gavin Host

20:05

Are there any traditional SEO tactics or SEO work that you feel people should stop doing or maybe focus less on? 

Mike King Guest

20:14

Yeah, the volume game and I say this understanding that the volume game is a large part of my monthly recurring revenue. 

20:22

But people really need to focus on quality and the content that they’re creating, and then quality and the links that they’re built. So when I say quality again, I mentioned it a bit before like Google is giving more value to links that drive traffic, links from pages that drive traffic and pages that are ranking well, and so you need to focus more on getting your links from there, and you don’t necessarily need a thousand of them to perform, whereas right now, most people are like, okay, well, that site has a hundred links from DA40s, I’m going to get 105 links from DA46s, or something like that, and you don’t have to do that. Like you’re the noise on the web that that’s creating is exactly what Google doesn’t want, right? And then Google is also crawling less, indexing less, so you need to focus on making content. That’s actually great that they do want to crawl and do want to index, rather than just spinning up a million pages and being like, well, if each of these pages gets two visits a month, we’re printing money. 

Britney Muller Guest

21:27

All of my prized gems in the search space and in marketing that have stood the test of time are because I was able to really deep dive on a particular topic and deliver more qualitative content than quantitative every time. And it’s interesting because I was recently talking to a bunch of DMOs, so destination marketers, who are pressured to do this volume over quality and I was able to give some very real examples of these things wouldn’t have stood the test of time if we took that approach. Granted, it doesn’t work for everyone, but I still get calls from clients from over eight, nine years ago who I set up on this piece of content that has snowballed over time. Those evergreen pieces aren’t going to be your low-quality, high-quantity work. 

Danny Gavin Host

22:28

Yeah, I think the trick is, for how do you sell that to clients? I know myself. We were up against another company recently on a proposal for a specific SEO and from our perspective it was more about quality. But the other firm they were up against was all about quantity and they wanted to go with that other firm because of the quantity aspect. So it’s interesting. 

Britney Muller Guest

22:53

It’s so interesting and maybe I mean some people can find a balance and do that well, but I sort of also think of it as like busyness isn’t a good metric of success, right, and being really strategic in your efforts and also just seeing so many efforts get such a high splash because of the strategic nature of it. 

23:15

I think of the yard that created the celebrity jet emission research that went completely viral. I mean, they had to. Their legal team was under fire because of it. They kind of stood their ground. It fit with their values right. They’re very environmentally conscious, they want to work with companies that care about the environment, and it ended up working really really well in their favor, and now they have every backlink you could ever dream of, which is again just like a residual benefit. But I think of cases and I think as marketers we have gravely undervalued PR. There are so many ways we can be savvy with planting different stories in the press if we know what we’re doing, and so that’s also kind of been a tool I’ve enjoyed using a lot lately, yeah. 

Danny Gavin Host

24:07

And digital PR link building has undoubtedly evolved since Siege’s founding. Can you tell me what your take on its role as an SEO and content strategies now, in 2024, especially in the world of AI? 

Ross Hudgens Guest

24:18

Yeah, we’re calling it product-led digital PR. It’s sort of our most recent significant strategy shift and our thought process there is getting, if they don’t have it already, first-party data and putting it across the content ecosystem, not just like one asset you promote, but, if I have it, we have a data study on content marketing trends and then we use that data across a blog post on what is link building. Like 63% of companies are using link building. Just making that up, but that makes that piece more unique to us, differentiated in a world of ai, uh, claude or shat gbt can’t pump that out in five seconds. So doing that kind of data first stuff that would be good, independent of whether or not you did or seo existed and hopefully can truly build a brand and and that’s a big part. 

25:10

And yeah, we’re doing more spread out digital PR. We’re not doing like 19 link building assets. It’s like what is one high leverage thing Not always, but some people are more than that but for us it’s like one big trends report a year. It just makes sense and I think that does make sense for a lot of companies generally. So that’s high leverage, even if links didn’t matter. That probably is worthwhile just from a brand building standpoint. So that’s sort of what we’re leaning into, while still thinking links matter. We’re still kind of like do things that make that thoughtful, but it’s more about it’s got to be really high leverage, it seems. 

Batli Joselevitz Guest

25:49

I could go into like a black hole of just researching and seeing what are the latest trends and techniques, because it can get very technical as well, like it’s creative, but there’s a lot of technology that goes into that that’s still not even developed. 

26:05

So I still feel like that’s almost like it’s in its pioneer days or the tail end of it. I’m not too sure, but being a part of that story in some regard and just being in the loop, I think is really good and it gives an advantage for the future, because there is a future in it. We’re seeing it more and more every day, especially with other platforms like TikTok, where it’s obviously very visual and the search results page being more dynamic. With the type of information that’s portrayed. You don’t just see web pages anymore. It can be events listed out, businesses listings, having a really good idea of how can we make content that’s rich content and not just run of the mill like here’s an article, because, yes, that’s still important, that always will be. That’s a foundation. But to be competitive and really think outside the box, you have to see the full picture and how to stand out from the crowd. 

Danny Gavin Host

27:05

So this might be an oversimplification, but is it fair to say the more you understand about your audience, the greater your chance of successfully marketing to them. Can you add to that statement? 

Sarah Presch Guest

27:15

One of my recent talks and the talks that I’m going to be doing in Croatia on Thursday, we’d look into, you know, cognitive biases and, as much as we like to think that we’re, not, every single human in the world is biased. I’m biased, you’re biased, everybody’s biased, and there’s nothing that we can really do about it. But world is biased. I’m biased, you’re biased, everybody’s biased, and there’s nothing that we can really do about it. But by understanding the way people think and what’s actually going on behind the scenes, it can help us do a much better job. Like I’m probably gonna go a little bit off on the tangent now, so I apologize no, it’s good. 

27:47

One of the things I’m going to be talking about that I haven’t actually talked about before is something called cyberchondria, and that is a mix of cyber and hypochondria and it’s an actual. It basically means that when people are obsessed with looking up symptoms online, you know comes a worst case scenario and then panic about it. You’d call it the Munchausen effect If it wasn’t online. You know the people who panic about you know getting sick and do it for attention and stuff like that. 

28:13

But online information and online medical content is not helping the situation whatsoever, and having access to forums is not helping whatsoever. And then you have to go and see you know all of the SERPs Reddit’s at the top, quora’s at the top and it’s kind of unbelievable because you’re thinking this is going to make things like this so much worse. And the more SEOs just create content without thinking about these kind of things and just bulk upload things because I know there’s SEOs out there who work on medical content without being medical experts themselves it just makes it so much worse and you actually like it’s been linked to um, excess health care, deaths and stuff like that, so it’s got really, really serious consequences and yet we should be doing something about it, or at least understanding it yeah, that’s very important, especially like now with, like google’s generative ai at the top, and I know like that just compounded it because I, you, because I don’t have any examples offhand, but some of the stuff that was coming out there, specifically with healthcare and medical, was pretty bad. 

29:17

The other side effect of it as well is I don’t know how common they are in the US, but I know, for example, the NHS in the UK has these AI-driven symptom checkers that they use and instead of encouraging people just to, you know, talk about the symptoms that they’re having or the not so serious illness that they’re suffering from, it actually puts symptoms inside people’s heads and then people start to worry more. And you see that online when, for example, they get a featured snippet with something more serious in that they didn’t necessarily go in thinking that they had this serious disease, but they came out thinking of it and came out worrying about it. And then just people’s anxiety goes overload. People go to the doctors. It takes more healthcare resources. You know it’s pretty crazy. 

Danny Gavin Host

30:03

Yeah, definitely a topic we don’t talk about, but yeah, it’s really sort of like the dark side of SEO, right, and the problems that it can cause. Really, it’s sort of like the dark side of seo, right, and and the problems that it can cause. Talking about cognitive biases which of the cognitive biases is the most difficult to work with or market to and why? 

Sarah Presch Guest

30:18

I think confirmation bias because there’s no real way to kind of hack it per se, because I know when you talk about things like availability bias, there’s ways to. You know people work with the most recent information, so therefore you have to make sure that your brand is the most recent thing that people hear of and you have to make sure that you know you’re always making a positive first impression, whereas confirmation bias is, you know, people don’t realize that they’re doing it and when people search for something online, they’re actually looking for information that confirms their existing beliefs. So if you type in something like one of the examples I had was is ADHD caused by sugar? Google will actually feed you back featured snippets and stuff that proves the point that ADHD is caused by sugar. 

31:02

As SEOs, people kind of look at these keywords and they’re like is ADHD caused by sugar? Perfect, let’s make a piece of content about it without thinking again is this a helpful keyword? Is this a good keyword that we want to write about? Is it going to cause danger in the future to anybody but nobody knows about it? Nobody knows what confirmation bias is and it’s not part of you know training for SEOs or anything like that. So, yeah, I think that’s a tough one and it’s something you know. 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

31:27

I’m hoping to spread the word about a little bit more and then hopefully more people would have if you’re a designer, what brand means to you is visual design and tone and logo and blah, blah, blah. And to me, like that’s not brand Like but I’m not saying it’s not like it just be being like, you know, like an ass hat, like that’s not brand. Brand to me has to do with the. It’s the intersection, it’s about it’s associative connection between your identity and your audience’s identity who you are, who your audience is, what you provide in terms of who you are and what they need. And the intersection of that, where you overlap, is brand. It’s what you exude out and what’s received in by the audience is brand and that’s very conceptual, it’s very existential. It’s why I like brand and it’s very, very powerful, why I think SEO is needed. I think SEO is always needed and, if you can, if you and the conversation kind of got renewed with the whole I don’t know if the audience is familiar with this or not like the whole Google leaks. That happened a few months ago where there was an API call and all of a sudden the algorithm got leaked and really get leaked, but we saw things in there Like perhaps Google’s looking at mentions across across the web. So it’s not just links, it’s how often your brand is being mentioned. Or, for example, if people are like clicking on the web, clicking on you from from from results. Now, if you’re a familiar brand, you’ll get more clicks. So brand now comes in. So we’re kind of renewed this whole conversation around brand and SEO. 

32:59

But all the old school is no, no, no, brand and SEO have always been about whatever I’m like it’s, it’s super powerful. Um, because? Forget all in all of that, the web itself is fundamentally changed or changing In my opinion. You can disagree with me. I’m not offended. Half of the things I say are completely not true, but I think this is true. The web is changing and people are looking for something that’s much more connective. I think you see this with people going to TikTok to get information. You see this with. Google didn’t pull evil experience out of its rear end. It saw a trend because Google’s got a massive amount of data where people are looking for that kind of content. It goes like that’s where we’re going to go with this thing. 

33:41

There’s a shift to people wanting authentic experiences from their web content. I think web content has become more conversational. I think brands who, from a brand marketing point of view, if you’re a big brand out there. If you can be more conversational, that would do you well. They’re very hesitant to do that, which I think is a big mistake, but fine, if that’s where the web is going. They’re looking for a much more authentic kind of experience. They’re looking, for example, I think, not to be nudged into the conversion right. 

34:10

So being top of mind becomes much more important. I want autonomy in my buyer journey. I don’t want to feel like I hit a landing page and click here, buy now, get this now. That’s like 1970s used car commercial kind of thing. If I’m looking to have that control over my buyer journey, so then me coming to you when I’m ready becomes much more important, which is obviously a brand awareness play. If the entire web is shifting in this direction which I am a little bit biased into thinking that it is because I do brand marketing then SEO, ppc, whoever you are, you need to understand brand marketing, because that’s where the web is going and forgetting, like you know, diving into the nuanced implications of that. It’s self-evident if that’s the direction of where the web is heading, if you’re not in line with that mindset because brand is a mindset, in my opinion you’re going to get left behind. So that’s why top level, I think, is super important for SEOs. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:05

And then I guess, to dumb it down a bit, what would be an example of SEO with brand marketing in mind or SEO without brand marketing in mind? 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

35:14

I’m an SEO, I don’t care what happens on social media. Do whatever you want to do on social media. Google doesn’t care about social media. Okay, google’s a moth and Google will be attracted to they will have the largest digital light. And if you’re getting traction on social media, people are sharing your stuff. They’re then maybe you know mentioning that in an article or doing a. 

35:35

Rand Fish has got a great video about this, about how, like, most traffic comes from google. So I won’t be on social because most of it comes from google. Yeah, but you’re forgetting the fact that they saw you on google and then googled you to find you and find your product or your service after the fact. So the traffic may be directly from google but, to borrow philosophical from aristotle, that’s just the material cause. That’s like the immediate side, the immediate cause, like the actual like. The immediate cause, like the actual, like efficient cause, behind the whole thing was they’ve seen you on social. 

36:03

Social plays a huge role in getting momentum, getting you know people, getting to search, doing branded searches for you, and there’s a whole Google patent about Google’s looking at branded search. Google’s stupid Like. If Google knows like people are typing in Nike shoes, nike shoes, nike shoes. There must be a connection between Nike and shoes. So anytime you’re going to see something for shoes, we’ll rank Nike Obviously oversimplifying that. 

36:25

But a lot of that brand building that ties into search. That way comes from doing things on social, comes from content marketing practice comes from being out there at conference and gaining momentum and traction and positioning and having an identity and people knowing about you and people thinking about you a certain way and then people interacting with you a certain way. All of that plays into how people go about searching for you on Google, what they’re searching for, how they’re interacting with you on Google. If they see you on the SERP and then say, nope, that brand sucks. 

36:58

So it comes into play so many ways, but social for me is one of the biggest, most obvious ways that building up your brand on social, getting that brand momentum on social positioning yourself because social is such an easy way to position your brand directly and I’m not saying it’s a direct ranking fact, that’s not what I’m saying Directly plays a role in what your SEO momentum will look like. Also, by the way you see this with like big brands, like SEO is like oh, big brands always rank for everything. Google’s biased towards big brands? They’re not biased towards big brands. They just have the biggest digital light because of the brand marketing that they’re doing. 

Danny Gavin Host

37:32

So what about the small businesses who don’t have the budget? And I know you’re saying it’s not like it’s a ranking factor, but what do these startups or small businesses? How can they still be effective on Google when brand is so important? 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

37:46

So that’s it. I look at it almost like a complete opposite, like brand is the equalizer that helps these small businesses. If I’m a small business, I don’t necessarily have like a huge amount of money to, you know, hire 10 content writers and five link builders and blah, blah, blah, but I can go to the local, you know, you know fair, and sell my pies and meet other people and gain momentum, that trend that that offline translates to online. Right, I met so and so. Now they link to me. I met, or I met so and so, and now, like we’re doing a collaboration together, I’m going to do an interview on his podcast about pie making. Brand is the equalizer that, without a big budget, still lets you gain momentum. Just need to think about it a little bit differently. 

Danny Gavin Host

38:27

I like that. Do you have any examples of SEO working well with brand marketing? 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

38:31

I don’t know if I have a particular example. I do think, though, one of the things that you’re going to start, I think, hopefully seeing is like brands, like I was looking at the other day, you have like Nike versus New Balance, and how many AI overviews are they getting? So, yes, some of it’s going to be like overlap with organic results. Nike is ranking, they get into the AI overview, but a lot of what LLMs do is entity based. If, around the topic, you’re the known entity, right, so I’m going to put you in there because you’re the quantifiable entity that I’m aware of around this topic. So that’s something where I feel like we prime for a case study about how brand impacts SEO, because all of that LLM awareness from across the web, it can come from content distribution I’m not saying it can’t, but it fundamentally comes from good brand building. So that would be something I would love to see someone do a case study on that, as, like the AAO read, data becomes a little bit more mature kind of thing. Yeah, I agree. 

Fay Friedman Guest

39:29

Some properties will have a larger percentage of families with children, so then our ads will reflect that, where I’m trying to show how the property is very family friendly and has a playground. Some have a lot of pets, so I’m going to show these dog parks. I really try to do a lot of analysis on the demographics of the property, or sometimes we’re trying to change the demographics. Sometimes we have a property where we want to raise rents and we want to bring in a new demographic, so I’m going to change our ads and say, hey, we recently renovated the lobby and this looks like a five-star hotel and try to use that to entice a higher income demographic. 

Danny Gavin Host

40:10

So, along those lines, with so much competition in the commercial real estate world and competition in these marketing channels, how do you stand out? 

Fay Friedman Guest

40:25

It’s tough, but I believe it really comes down to the market research and how good you are at understanding your consumer. The way the traditional ILSs work is everybody throws up their listing, tries to make their pictures look as pretty as possible and, if it’s not working, offer a special lower rent, whereas I try to be smarter in trying to, as we said, understand the people who are applying and make the process better for them. We’ll say, let’s say, if this is a demographic where a lot of people are working, we should open the leasing office on weekends for tours. Try to do things differently. That will appeal to them more than just price. Another thing is that we’re in the process of slowly redoing all of our property websites and, as you mentioned, ev testing. That’s a huge part of it. It’s the user experience, and we have Hotjar set up to watch heat maps and watch consumer behavior on the websites, and that’s a key part of it. 

41:18

I recently saw a LinkedIn post from I believe it was Brady Newman, somebody who’s like really smart in the real estate marketing space, and he was talking about how, on e-commerce, you want to buy your website and you buy the dress In real estate. It’s like I want to buy a dress. Okay, fill out this application. Pay us a deposit. We’ll see if we can give you the dress. We have to think about it. Okay, fill out this application. Pay us a deposit. We’ll see if we can give you the dress. We have to think about it. Okay, come back in let’s see if the dress fits you. Oh, sorry, the dress is not available. We can give you a different dress, and that was such a great comparison to how real estate is really behind in the e-commerce world which I’m used to. So that’s really something we’re trying very hard to do is is to bring real estate closer, to make the process smoother, more seamless, more user-friendly. 

Danny Gavin Host

42:01

And that fits so well with my next question. As we move more to SEO when it comes to the transition from e-commerce to commercial real estate, was your approach to SEO the same, or did you have to rethink it from the start? 

Fay Friedman Guest

42:13

I did have to rethink it. It was refreshingly easier but in some ways harder Because, as I mentioned, the ILSs are always going to have the top spots Apartmentcom, Zillowrentcom they’re always going to have the top spots in Google for the high competitive terms. But there’s so much room with the more granular, long tail keywords and the ways that you’re targeting a specific demographic and, in a way, those are the higher converting terms, you know, because they’re lower down in the funnel. So I feel like that’s my sweet spot. I did have to rethink things a lot, but it’s a lot more gratifying. It’s a lot. The success is quicker once you figure something out. I’m not competing with ILSs, you know, that’s it. I’m not competing with them. I’m just trying to find ways to work smarter, not harder. 

43:03

I think that there are a lot of SEOs that are like no, no, chat GPT, don’t ever use it. We use it, we embrace it. And there’s actually a member of my team who started using it right away and I love the initiative. Like before I even started using it, she came to me like hey, I did some really cool stuff with chat GPT. Can I use it? I’m like sure, this is awesome. So I love when they take initiative like that and it was great and we’re using it, we’ve integrated into our processes. 

43:27

I think that, in general, it’s not going anywhere. It’s only getting smarter, and the SEOs and the content marketers and the people who are going to survive are the ones who are integrating AI and ChatsHPT into their work and come get with smarter decisions because of it. Like, if you try to fight it, I think if you say like, don’t use it, it’s the devil, it’s everybody else’s use. So I would say rather, let’s embrace it and figure out ways to use it and make us smarter and quicker and better. I’m not going to say we definitely have some content that we write completely from scratch, and there’s a lot of content that we say we throw it into ChatGPT, we edit it, we fix it and it’s good. Google says that they don’t like ChatGPT content. I want to see how they’re tracking it. I don’t know. 

Wil Reynolds Guest

44:18

Winning people, is it bro? It hit me like a ton of bricks when I took over our marketing. I’m like, wow, our traffic from LinkedIn is dog shit. And everybody says, oh, but they’re not incentivizing you to send traffic off platform. And I’m like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I’m getting three times the amount of traffic from LinkedIn that we did back in October and September. How did that happen? 

44:41

I completely changed the way that we did content. It wasn’t search first and then post it on LinkedIn and see if anybody cares. It was post on LinkedIn first, see if anybody cares, then write from your heart and then slightly tweak the post a bit to try to get some search visibility, if you want. But my goal was always to. I was using Google as a proxy to get to people and now I’m using social as the direct people themselves and I’m saying maybe the proxy and all the jumping around hoops that I do is watering down me coming up with actual content that the humans want to read and get value from. So maybe I should just write the stuff the humans want to get and see how it plays out and so far this year it. And see how it plays out, and so far this year it’s been an interesting freaking test and I can’t wait to share the data with people because it’s my own data, so I don’t have to worry about it being client stuff or whatever you know. 

Danny Gavin Host

45:24

Yeah well, it’s been a pleasure watching your growth on social because I know for a while I remember I don’t remember if it was a couple of years ago, but it was like you had this whole traveling kind of like showing off why do I need to do that? So I felt like ever since that point you pulled yourself back, but I feel like now you’re pushing yourself forward, but in the right way, right, by being that educational source, making people ponder, making people think and really adding that value not just to the direct people around you but also to the industry at large. 

Wil Reynolds Guest

45:54

Yeah Well thank you for that. But I will tell you, man, I missed a lot of stuff in that time. And it’s really been joyous for me to get back into following people like Cyrus and people like Lily Ray and all that, because now I’m starting to see things that are making me think differently. But I had extracted myself so far out that it kind of hurt a little bit the way that I. 

Danny Gavin Host

46:13

It made me happier, but it also hurt my ability to see our industry in certain ways too you know this term might be new to some of our listeners, but what is AIO and do you think this will eliminate SEO? 

Julia McCoy Guest

46:25

So, first of all, I don’t think it will eliminate SEO, but I do think it will change SEO forever. I coined this back with our founder in January 2023. And it was just tied to the idea we need to give writers a new series of steps, and so AIO was like the new career, the new job role, and it’s since been in hundreds of job listings and I even see copywriters using it in their LinkedIn headlines and it’s this idea of artificial intelligence optimization and you basically step into the role of the optimizer of the AI machine, and that role is incredibly valuable. It’s going to get more valuable as time goes on and I think the roles there will look different. We’re seeing like AI officer, and now Google even has AI overviews as part of search. They’ve hijacked AIO. 

47:17

I like to say I came up with it first, but anyway, that’s a side point, but it’s definitely helping writers see we need to get in the seat of governing the AI and optimize that content versus SEO content is me opening a Word doc and writing from scratch, taking that into a set of tools, optimizing it, which is a completely backwards, time-wasting process. Now, when you have a process like AIO because of artificial intelligence, I’ve also heard you use the word future-proofing SEO. 

47:52

What does this mean? Is AIO the future-proof version of SEO? I would say think about future-proofing SEO. A few months ago, my answer would have looked different, but since we’ve seen the AI overviews have such turbulence, you know they scaled back the AI overviews completely. So there’s like a huge percentage now that won’t show up in search because you know we were getting very unsafe answers on things related to situations that touched your life medical finance, so Google’s like uh-oh, we’re going to be in trouble here. Scale that back. 

48:24

So I think that this idea of using AI and optimizing the content output and putting yourself in the driver’s seat it will last, no matter what Google looks like. But what we need to remember is that Google itself is in this place of so much volatility and the best thing you could do is use the AIO approach, get in the driver’s seat of AI, save tons of time, get way more efficient at content, but really build a brand. Think about a volume of content links to all your content and really build that up, because that is what will last versus oh, how do I get ahead of all the Google changes, which is going to be a game that will. The rules of that game are always changing, thanks Google. So that’s how I would approach that. 

Nick LeRoy Guest

49:14

But I think to your point. There’s kind of two things that I felt like took me a long time to learn and arguably I’m still learning. One is just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s true. I mean the amount of things that I had done for my websites and client websites because I read it on somewhere else, I just assumed that these individuals are smarter than me and then they didn’t have that positive correlation. A lot of what I have learned in my career is truly test, try, measure, repeat. The other part is like I said. So one is just kind of like not trusting everything that you do. But I think the other thing, too is maybe less so today, but when I started, at least, there was a lot of information paralysis. I spent so much time reading what other people are doing that I didn’t necessarily act on it because it felt like I was so overwhelmed with this person thinks this, but these five people argued that this person did that, it did that and it was like I get so caught up reading the message boards all day long that I wasn’t doing SEO, and I think that’s kind of what social media is today. 

50:19

A lot of us, including myself at times I get caught into it. We’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Twitter or X and we’d rather banter back and forth about SEO semantics instead of going into our sites and trying to do something just a little bit better. We are in a world where there’s an SOP for everything. I can have a book and a checkbox for you to do SEO, but I can’t teach you to be hungry and to want to learn and to try to get better. So if that’s you and you have the ability to tell your story, display that curiosity, I think that’s going to be your biggest benefit. And then the other two things which I feel like are just kind of like sub-bullets 99 and 100 after the first 97, which is curiosity and passion is obviously the tactical things, assuming you’re not starting from scratch. But even if you are, start up your website. 

51:14

I bought nickleroycom back in 2008 because somebody on Twitter told me you should own your own domain and then I could build my own site. Turned into like wow, I could do black hat stuff too and not get in trouble and I’m not causing any issues for a client Learning hunger. And then we talked quite a bit just about that communication. Again, I can’t stress enough unless your goal is truly to sit in the back and white label and you want to just do the work and you don’t have ambitions to get above a certain level, then you’re going to have to communicate, You’re going to have to figure it out. So you don’t have to be amazing, but be passionate, learn those hard skills and communicate, communicate, communicate. If you can get those three things down. You know I’ve been saying this a lot, but it’s like you are instantly within like the top 10% of all SEOs, because not many SEOs can do all of that, nor do they want to. 

Danny Gavin Host

52:11

In addition to SEO for Lunch, what are some of the best publications you would recommend for SEOers to stay up to date in the industry? 

Nick LeRoy Guest

52:17

Yeah, so I love Aleda’s learningseoio. That is literally the default, so I send everybody there, whether they just heard the acronym SEO or they consider themselves the world’s best SEO leader in the world. It’s a great opportunity just to go through, really just polish some of the knowledge that you have Selfishly. I have my own newsletter, so, like I said, the SEO for Lunch. But Aleda Solis also has a great newsletter. There’s quite a few others Steve Toth has one, eli Schwartz there’s so many other people that have these newsletters, and I think newsletters are the new version of blogging, so I’m a big fan of signing up for those. The only caveat and I mentioned this earlier is just make sure that you are balancing the time reading about SEO and making sure that you’re doing it, because nothing can replace actually getting your hands dirty and learning it. But those are really the big things that I’m telling people to do. And then the other thing is because I haven’t said this enough is build your network. 

53:24

Ask people for a virtual coffee. I’ve not met another SEO that isn’t happy, if not excited, to tell you about their SEO story and what they learned, and you’ll be amazed. You’ll have this virtual coffee with somebody, and it might be five years later and they might hire you. You might hire them. You might be doing a contract, you might be interviewing them. There’s so many opportunities. This industry is so small. Reach out, become friends if you can. And give that’s the other thing too. Just give as much as you can, because it will come back around, but everybody hates it if you just come and say buy my links. You’re gonna have to communicate, you’re gonna have to figure it out, so you don’t have to be amazing, but be passionate, learn those hard skills and communicate, communicate, communicate. If you can get those three things down, I’ve been saying this a lot, but it’s like you are instantly within the top 10% of all SEOs, because not many SEOs can do all of that, nor do they want to. 

Danny Gavin Host

54:28

You’re very active on LinkedIn. You’re often sharing interesting insights and finds relevant to the industry almost daily. As many view LinkedIn as a job search platform and not really the professional social media platform it truly is. How do you think about your approach to how you communicate on the platform and the type of content that you share? 

Chris Long Guest

54:46

Yeah. So I think it’s simple. I try to share the content that I will be interested in and I think that really trying to think of like, hey, what do I wish someone had told me down the line, right? So like if I find a certain cool, if I find a certain tool or a certain technique or have a way of communicating SEO, I think some of the most interesting ones are, yes, like obviously, hey, these are the technical SEO ones. These are also, I also like, the ones about here’s how you communicate SEO right, screen a screen recording, use the screen recording software, use a screen recording software. 

55:19

Even just that little change was fundamentally different, where, instead of having to write out long technical explanations, that I can just screen record something in 15 seconds and send it to you. We both understand you now understand it better. I don’t have to write it out fully. Just those little things that there’s no one necessarily out there telling you to do, those tend to make really good, interesting ones to write about. For me, I’m very interested about where the future of search is headed. Those are always good ones. Technical SEO I think there’s the. I think people would say that’s one of the biggest gaps in terms of skill sets. I think there’s always an appetite to learn more. People want to know more technical SEO, and what changes is Google making? How do I look at a really large site? That might intimidate me. E-commerce sites are notorious for that, so I think that’s also just interesting for me to go out and write about. 

Danny Gavin Host

56:10

Another interesting conclusion from the leak which is not a direct conclusion in a way was that we should focus on customers and not the leak, which is not a direct conclusion in a way, was that we should focus on customers and not the leak. Do you want to talk more about that? What pushed you to kind of come to that conclusion? 

Mike King Guest

56:23

When you think about impacting the things that Google is measuring at scale, it’s not by doing these little hacks, it’s by making something that people actually want and promoting it right. Because, when you think about it again, I look at this as like user experience, relevance and authority. Well, when we say things like be a brand, which no one wants to hear because it’s such an ambiguous idea, brands are going to be the ones that are going to have the better user experience, because people remember these brands and they’re like oh yeah, I searched for something. A brand I know has showed up. I am, of course, going to click on that more than a brand I don’t know. 

57:00

And brands have the money and the wherewithal to invest in relevance, making robust, comprehensive pieces of content and experiences that are beyond just one piece of content. And then brands are also going to be able to capture that authority because, again, if you see a brand you recognize, you have a higher likelihood of linking to that brand. So you know, at the end of the day, what you need to do is be a brand in order to create this stuff at scale. Like, sure, you can go buy a bunch of links so you have the same number of links, but you’re not going to have the same quality of links, because we’ve just learned how quality is measured it’s based on pages that get more traffic and rank for things. 

57:45

Where you’re building your links from are not going to be sites that get a bunch of traffic or rank for things. So a brand is going to beat you there. A brand is going to beat you in user metrics because, again, a brand is going to be more attractive to people. Sure, you can fake that by getting a whole bunch of people to click your things, but it’s going to be people from, like you know, random countries in the middle of nowhere and it’s not going to have the same signal as a user logged into Chrome in the United States or wherever location you’re trying to rank for, so it’s going to be a diluted signal anyway. So, again, the focus needs to be on like well, how do I do this stuff at scale? And it’s going to be by actually building a brand that people remember and want to read content from. 

Danny Gavin Host

58:27

And that concludes Part 2 of our ‘Best of SEO’ series. We’ve explored the art of compelling content, the collaboration between SEO and PPC, strategy differentiation, and insights into the future of SEO. 

I hope you found these discussions as enlightening as I did.

Thank you for joining me on this journey through the best of SEO insights from our fantastic guests. 

Keep pushing the boundaries of your knowledge, and remember—your growth in digital marketing is just beginning!