087: The Best of SEO (Part 1): Mentorship Meets Strategy

Best of SEO Part 1 – Transcript 

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast! I’m your host, Danny Gavin, and today we’re kicking off a special two-part episode that celebrates the very best insights from former guests on the topic of SEO. 

We’ve had many compelling stories on the podcast over the last few years on SEO, how the industry has grown and changed, best practices, and so much more. 

In this first part of our ‘Best of SEO’ series, we’ll dive into the critical role of mentorship in shaping successful SEO careers, as well as tackle the technical aspects of SEO and how to overcome common challenges in the field. 

Both episodes have gathered wisdom from over a dozen industry leaders and marketing professionals who have generously shared their experiences. Whether you’re just starting your journey in SEO or looking to enhance your skills, there’s something here for everyone.

So, let’s jump right into Part 1 and hear from our expert guests on how mentorship can transform your approach to SEO and the strategies to tackle those tricky technical components. 

Martha Van Berkel Guest

01:21

I would argue, my father today is a mentor for me because he spent, you know, many, many, many years in sales at IBM and so and I, you know, I run sales now at our company and so it’s like dad, like you know, help me understand how you would manage the situation. Or I’m thinking of doing this. What do you think the impact was? And he can, you know again, courageously share his experiences or, you know, ask me qualifying questions. And then I’ve had other mentors who are peers of mine now, where they ask me the hard questions and share their experiences, but they’re in a similar role that I am in today and so less of a sort of like they’re more senior than me or older than me. And then I would say, even early in my career, a lot of times it was my boss, or my boss’s boss, or women. I had a couple of really cool women leaders who kind of just was like, oh, she’s going somewhere and I want to help her remove some barriers and sort of help her thrive, and they just raised their hand and said I want to help. I didn’t know what my next role was going to be, and a past manager who was someone I had stayed in touch with you’ll see a theme of this. She was like, oh, I have a job in Belgium and again I like adventures, that’s sort of like part of it. And it was working with IBM. So again I had like a family history there. I’d worked there in my summers. Do I want to move to Belgium? The 24 or 5-year-old me was like, yeah, this could be awesome, this could be a great adventure. 

02:42

And Denby was a director in the technical sport organization and he actually was on assignment from Australia so he sort of knew a thing or two about working internationally and you know, he was at a different stage of his life but he kind of understood the complexities of it. And he actually took me aside and he was like I wanna go for a walk. He was like I have some wisdom I need to pass on to you. And what he said was he was like you know, international work is amazing and super fun if supported in the right way. And he said I’m concerned that at your level they’re going to send you to Belgium. You’re going to have a ton of fun, but you’re going to get stuck there. And he said you have a lot of potential at this company and you’re right now in headquarters in San Jose. And he said I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but I don’t think you should take this job and I was like but this is like, I want a new job. He’s like I will help you find a different job. For you to stay in San Jose. He felt so passionately about that that he was like I’ll help you find another job. And he did so. 

03:38

I didn’t move to Belgium, I stayed at headquarters, and this is actually where Jim Glick comes in, who is, I consider, I’ll say, one of my champions and one of my mentors. What I knew, but I didn’t know there and now I look back on it is Jim was an entrepreneur before he joined Cisco and I was doing a role. I was basically like they created a role for me, but it wasn’t a real role, but they were trying to keep me in the organization and I was exploring this legal issue that I won’t bore everyone with and I basically had got to know everyone at Cisco that had to do with this issue. I just kept calling people and following down the rabbit hole and again, I was really young and had no title. I just was like I’m going to solve this problem, and this is one of those things. I could have taken that as like, oh, I don’t have a real project. But instead I was like, what am I going to learn? Like I’m going to learn how to do project management, I’m going to learn everything I know about this it’s called export controls Like I’m going to know everything about it. And then, worst case, like I just hand this off to someone and I go do something else. But like I’m going to have some fun and I’m going to just like make this into what I can make it right. 

04:40

And what happened was is that Cisco got called at the very senior level on this issue that I was now the expert on, and the only reason I was an expert was because I took this opportunity for fun and I had to. I basically got called into a vice president’s office. They were like Martha, what do you know about this? And I was like, oh, here’s my project plan, here’s all the people you need to pull into the room. This is where our biggest is and this is what we need to do in the next 60 days in order to get this solved. And I pulled all the people into the room. I directed everyone on what they needed to do and it got done and my vice president looked like a hero. 

05:13

And then he’s like I’m going to have you take on my next biggest project, which was a three to five year strategy on how to automate support for Cisco, and he championed me and mentored me. I had like no idea how to do strategy. I had no idea, like how to work with these senior directors, like in identifying what the themes were in order for us to then put together a budget, a team, pitch it to executives to get funding and then build a team. But guess what? 

05:46

He saw the entrepreneurial spirit in me that he was willing then to coach me and mentor me on how to like I had to stand in front of 10 executives on a monthly basis and just get, like you think of I don’t know, you guys have shark tank in the us, like dragon’s den canada but he like coached me on, like you know, under promise over deliver right was one of the things that I like I still like think of that right, stand there with confidence and answer with the information you have, but like stand tall Like they don’t know what you don’t know right and the reason I share this story, danny is like that mentoring opportunity. So like, yeah, I made him look good, like I got the opportunity and the support then to build this organization within Cisco that ended up being over 200 people Manage a budget. Oh wait, those are all the things I wanted to do and grow and learn. Remember, yes, right, you have to do the hard work and then those mentors will also show up because they want you to be successful. 

Batli Joselevitz Guest

06:38

On the job. I actually started out as an internet marketing assistant, which can be very vague, it can mean a lot of different things, but it was a great opportunity to really have a foundation, especially not having a formal marketing background or foundation. To like not intentionally, but it was almost like a process of elimination, but I was like, okay, I tried this route, it’s okay, but it’s not like I’m not super, super passionate about it, or I tried this route and same thing. So then, when an opportunity with SEO, like a project, came along, it definitely opened my eyes. Oh whoa, I had no idea this existed or like this would click, but it makes complete sense with just my eyes. Oh whoa, like I had no idea this existed or like this would click, but it makes complete sense with just. 

07:26

You know my background in journalism and storytelling as well, from a content perspective, and also photography and I think, going back even backtracking to before college, my passion for photography I discovered when I was 13. My passion for photography I discovered when I was 13. I also learned a very similar way, where I did take a class, but it was more of the technicality of processing and developing black and white film. It wasn’t how to actually compose a photograph, like how to look through the viewfinder, and that took some time and that was more of me just exploring and experimenting. And I feel like SEO was very similar, where I had the tools and the resources and then, once I had that, I could actually figure out okay, this is I could come up of like, oh yeah, this is what you do in this situation, and so forth, but it was more of like here’s the foundation, crystal clear basics, and then how can we actually apply this in this context? 

Danny Gavin Host

08:31

Imagine that someone actually identifies the pattern in their life of how they grow and learn and you were able to see that right. It’s like taking something, get the fundamentals, understand it and then from there I need to try and test and that’s how I’m going to learn and become really good at what I’m doing. I think it’s such an important lesson, right, and that’s why doing things and trying things, even if it’s in a different area you were doing retail sales right For a while the more experiences that you put yourself into, you kind of figure out like, how do I learn, how do I grow? And it’s just cool that you have found that out and you kind of have the openness to see what it is and like, okay, if I got to get to the next level, these are the things that I need. You know, I need that strong foundation and then I need that time to kind of grow and discover on my own. 

Batli Joselevitz Guest

09:21

Someone looking at my background paper would be like, oh wow, this is like a 360. How’s it all connected? And you know, being able to identify how it’s all connected is great, but also this isn’t like a one-size-fits-all or just for me, like someone else out there listening. I hope this should also give you some hope that even if you feel like you’re doing a 360, that it all is connected and helps you for your next chapter. 

09:45

So, going back to my retail experience, something I learned in there even though it wasn’t marketing per se, it was very fascinating because that company didn’t do traditional marketing. It’s all mostly word of mouth and the way they do marketing is very unconventional. And over time, the clientele. You start to identify their personalities, their personas and understand okay, where does this type of person hang out, what do they do, what is their mindset and that’s something that’s really important in marketing is understanding a buyer persona. So I really got that foundation working in retail. So even before I had this formal marketing background, I had real life experience where I’ve used this. It works, I’ve seen it in action. 

Mike King Guest

10:33

A lot of people reach out to me and this is why representation matters. Like I was literally sitting in this room watching all these people being like matters. Like I was literally sitting in this room watching all these people being like, oh yeah, this is not for me and that’s not something that I typically do, like in life in general, just from all the experiences that I’ve had and so on. But in that situation I felt that way. So many people have reached out to me not just you know black people, but also you know people of color in general reached out to me and they say like, hey, you know black people, but also you know people of color in general reached out to me and they say like hey, you know, I love to see you doing what you do in the authentic way that you do it, because sometimes it’s not just about like you know what you look like, how you present or whatever. It’s also just the way you are in the world. Like I’m not somebody who code switches, I’m not somebody who, you know, acts differently in these environments, and for some people that makes them uncomfortable, but for me I’m like I’m here, this is who I am, you know. Like I’m not changing who I am, just because you know this is how everyone else acts. 

11:43

People that reach out to me for that and they’re like I really appreciate that you’re not acting differently in this world. But yeah, also, you know, black people reach out to me as well and they’re like wow, you know you’re such an inspiration or whatever. And I appreciate that and I don’t take that for granted at all. Like I understand the gravity of my position and what I do and I always look to pay that forward wherever I can. And so when people reach out to me and they’re like hey, you know I’m trying to figure this out, I always try to make time to be like hey, you know, here’s what I’ve done, here’s what’s worked for me. It may not work for you, but let’s talk through it. I’m happy to do that sort of stuff because you never know what impact you’re going to have on that next person and so on and so forth. And you know I just want to do my best to make the spaces I’m in better for people like me who also want to be in those spaces. 

Danny Gavin Host

12:29

It’s so amazing, so powerful. I know, at Brighton SEO last year or, yeah, already last year one of my employees was with me and I was so excited that I could introduce him to you, because it’s like this is someone you know has potentially walked the same path as you and someone to look up and look how successful he is, and it was just nice, right Nice to be able to create that connection. It was just very inspiring for me. 

Mike King Guest

12:53

Yeah, again, like I feel like it’s my duty to do that, because I don’t want anyone to feel the way that I felt in that room where I was like this is not for me, because who’s to say it’s not for me, it’s for whoever can do it. And you know, I mean I think the things that I’ve shared with the SEO community imagine if I hadn’t had that moment watching Will Reynolds and I didn’t share any of that. You know, like I think that would have been a huge disservice. And I’m sure there have been people in the past who were even better than the things that I’ve done, who have felt that way and not felt like they could be included here and we’ve missed out on the things that they had to contribute. So, yeah, I think it’s really important for me to keep doing that work. 

Danny Gavin Host

13:37

Just to have a mix of people, so that everyone in the crowd has someone that they can look up to and say that could be me. It’s so powerful. You don’t really think about that, right? 

Mike King Guest

13:46

Yeah, and I think I might actually be underselling how impactful that was for me to see Will Like, literally while he was speaking, I pitched for SMX East and then I got it, and then that created all of this for me. So you know, for someone to be able to see themselves on the stage is so powerful. 

Sarah Presch Guest

14:07

This was probably one of the most ADHD ideas that me and the co-founder Jack ever had. We were at Brighton SEO. You can see this as becoming a common theme. We were at Brighton SEO and we were thinking that you know, there’s all of these different communities within SEO but there’s no space for kind of like neurodivergent folk like us. So we’re like, let’s make one In true ADHD fashion. We set up a Google form, we made a LinkedIn page and we went live. We were thinking that maybe one or two people would sign up and then we’d be like we have some friends and that would be it. But it’s kind of grown and now we have well over 200 members in. I think it’s like 30 different countries around the world. 

14:48

Now We’ve provided opportunities for people to go to conferences, to do training courses and stuff, because unfortunately, using autism as a statistic I can’t remember off the top of my head if it, I think it’s 73% of autistic adults are unemployed, even though they want to be employed. You can see that within the neurodivergent community, within SEO as well, that you’ve got all of these really, really talented SEOs but for falls that aren’t their own, Interviewing processes are not set up for them. So we’ve done like interview training courses for like a four week course and stuff like that. Training courses are not so accessible and if you’re unemployed you can’t afford to pay, you know, a thousand dollars for a training course and stuff like that. So it’s just trying to break down those obstacles and just help neurodivergent SEOs, you know, do their best in their career. 

15:40

Are there only SEOs or other digital marketing specialists in the group? We’ve got quite a lot actually. So we’ve got digital PR people, we’ve got PPC people, we’ve got translators who specialize in SEO translation, got content writers, as long as they work in digital marketing and they have something to do with SEO. That’s kind of like oh, that matters really. Even if you just want to learn SEO and you’re not quite there yet, you know, come and join us. 

Danny Gavin Host

16:00

How’s the feedback been, just from the members, has it been very positive? 

Sarah Presch Guest

16:05

It has been and you know, from my point of view, I feel like I finally found a community where we can kind of just be ourselves and we can be our kind of unmasked selves, because I don’t think you know as much as people say they’re open. I don’t think I’m quite ready for a bunch of autistic people to network in a very autistic way. You know it’s been perfect and you know we’ve had people who have sent us messages saying we actually landed our first job in SEO because of the training course that you provided and things like that. So you know it’s really cool. 

Fay Friedman Guest

16:38

Unlike many others, I’m not college educated. I started out as a copywriter for an SEO agency. This was way back when the internet was wild west and a lot of things passed that wouldn’t work today. I started out doing copywriting. I knew nothing about SEO and in a way, it was the best way for me to be exposed to the industry, because I saw a lot of black hat and gray techniques that like. I did that and then I kind of heard from clients or competitors who it came back to bite them. There were some dicey situations, but it was the best teacher and the best learning experience for me. So after that initial interesting experience at an agency doing copywriting, I really was intrigued by the entire SEO field and I spent around a year on my own just playing around watching YouTube videos, reading search engine roundtable and every single blog I could find playing with a family member’s website, and that was really how I got my team on SEO and every single blog I could find playing with a family member’s website, and that was really how I got my team on SEO and I feel like, in a way, that was the best teacher. So there was definitely always there’s like this imposter syndrome there’s always gonna be a part of me that feels like I’m missing something because I didn’t go to college. I discussed this in the past with a colleague and he’s adamant that when we’re not college educated in a way, there are things that we know better because we have to learn by making mistakes. Obviously, I really value university education. It was an interesting way to get into the industry and for me, it’s work. So, as you mentioned, I spent nine years in e-commerce and I’m always learning. There was never a day that I didn’t learn something new, which is great. 

18:27

At this point, I’m over to the real estate side, which is a completely different beast, and through my work in SEO, I was really exposed to all different touch points in marketing. So everything from print ads and, as I said, my background as a copywriter to email marketing print ads and, as I said, my background is a copywriter to email marketing and the technical specifics of building a website All of it I ended up touching and that’s really what helped shape my career. As I mentioned, some of these are relationships that are not necessarily that close, but that they’ve had an impact on me in some way Very short to somebody that, as I mentioned, I started SEO reading search engine roundtable, not understanding anything, Like I was reading Greek, I did not know what I was reading, but it was so inspiring for me that as I learned more, I really understood what he’s saying In real life. 

19:16

He is so kind, so open and willing to help. He’s just like humble, easy to reach. If you have a question he answers, and I love how you know, as I mentioned, my personality works, because his blog is exactly what I need, especially at this point in my career. I don’t have time to read long white papers and studies and he’s just quick bites of what’s important. He’s taught me a lot on the soft skill side leadership and communication and dealing with members of my team, because you could say that in many ways his personality is very different from mine, but he just has a way of quietly leading. He’s not the loudest guy in the room. He proves himself to his team with like a quiet authority. He knows how to be firm when he needs to and he knows his opinion and it’s really opened my eyes into different ways that you can lead, that it’s not always about talking the most and holding the big meetings, but it’s about really understanding your team and what they need at that given moment. 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

20:26

SEO is hard because I feel there’s so much debate and things become hot button issues and everyone kind of draws these lines in the sand. I don’t think it’s almost like American politics in a weird way. Right, everyone, I’m on this side, you’re on that side, you’re horrible. There isn’t a lot of room for dialogue and sharing of different ideas or saying you know what. I don’t agree with that, but I can see where they’re coming from and that might be valuable. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. 

20:56

Someone put out a study. I’m not going to say what it was. I felt like, okay, that’s not what they’re trying to explain, something, that’s not what that is. I disagree with that, but you know what? It’s interesting nonetheless. There’s interesting conclusions that I think are completely valid or worthwhile for marketers of all kinds to know and take away from that study, even though the thing they’re trying to explain might not be right. 

21:16

And I think, because SEOs don’t do that, because they don’t look for the good in things ever, sometimes it feels like I know it’s hyperbolic, but it doesn’t feel hyperbolic. I was just on Twitter a minute ago tweeting about something and someone replied back to me like yeah, seos make this so complicated. Why do we have to do this and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And because of that it makes talking and mentoring the wider community so controversial. But it shouldn’t be controversial at all. It should just be like ideas flowing out and you’ll see the old school SEOs complaining about that. Oh, I remember when back in the day we walked uphill both ways of school and newspaper for shoes and people shared ideas together on Twitter and it doesn’t happen anymore and it’s hard. 

Danny Gavin Host

21:59

Do you ever get any anxiety before you put something out there on, let’s say, Twitter or LinkedIn? 

Mordy Oberstein Guest

22:05

I used to when I was first getting in the industry. I don’t know if I know anything Now. I know I don’t know anything. I’m more comfortable with what I don’t know Once in a while. I put something out yesterday about AI overviews and SEMrush data, blah, blah, blah. I’m like someone’s going to look at this and they’re going to say that conclusion’s not right. And maybe it’s not right, I don’t know. Like I’m a god, I don’t know if 100% it’s right or wrong. So, yeah, a little bit, but like at this point, like it’s just SEO, if someone thinks I’m an idiot, like fine. 

Danny Gavin Host

22:36

The SEO strategy you’ve discussed using at GoFish is very focused on the technical elements of SEO. So links, analyzing logs, in-depth algorithm analysis. How did you come to this approach? 

Chris Long Guest

22:47

I think the approach has to be custom tailored to whoever you’re working with. Now that is the biggest thing. If you’re setting SEO strategy, it needs to be very tailored. So if you’re talking the sites that are bigger and larger, so if you’re working with a huge e-merce site that’s hundreds of thousands, millions of pages, you’re going to need to have a technical SEO approach and really that should probably be in your roadmap. All things being equal, that should be one of the biggest things you’re working on, because if you have millions of pages, you do have problems with indexation, crawl rates, site speed, all of that. You need to be taking a custom look because basically, when you’re dealing with scale, you need to be able to ensure Google can crawl that scale as efficiently as it possibly can be. That’s really helpful to have. 

23:28

However, if you’re working with different types of clients and we work with a lot of news clients and that is a completely different approach it’s still technical in some ways. A lot of it’s more almost strategic, where it’s like hey, with news clients, they don’t have problems writing content. They’re one of the few clients that you’re not forcing to get content out of. They have a bunch of editors and writers who can create that. So you’re more working with like hey, now our strategy shifts to how do we create editorial calendars? How do we really figure out where the content gaps are and how do we really inform what you’re going to do for the next year from an editorial perspective? Also, how do we work with specific creatures like top stories? 

24:06

Freshness starts to matter. It matters everywhere, in my opinion, but it matters a lot more for news organizations. How do we implement live blog posting and structured data? So there’s different types of strategies. Once again, that might all break down in terms of what type of SEO you are. If you’re a technical SEO, you’ll probably do really well working with the big e-commerce sites. If you’re a content-driven SEO, you might enjoy working with more news organizations or more standard WordPress-style sites. But really, that content strategy is going to be the key piece to success. 

Danny Gavin Host

24:33

So do you actually get through to news organizations an SEO strategy where it’s like, okay, we know you want to write stories, but look at it from an SEO perspective first. Where it’s like, hey, this is where you don’t have a lot of traffic from and you really should write more stories in this area. Are you actually influencing decisions at certain organizations? 

Chris Long Guest

24:52

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, and it’s been really great to see because I think a lot of news organizations are starting to realize just how important it is right when to see. Because I think a lot of news organizations are starting to realize just how important it is right when they see their competitors ranking in top stories, which most times is in the canonical number one position, and they start to ask themselves, hey, how do we get our stories written there? And then you take a look and say, well, hey, you know you’re writing these stories about these topics, but you’re not really highlighting the main piece. You’re not highlighting the main topic in the title tag and the subject line. Or you wrote a story yesterday, but in order to be in top stories, that story needs to be written within 24 hours. 

25:29

So we’ve worked with a lot of clients in terms of building out their strategies. What we find works well is really having a collaborative approach to figuring out like, hey, what stories they want to rank for, and then what’s their current, say, architecture, and then working with them to set a strategy for, hey, these are the rules for your editors Every time they create a new story. This is what the URL needs to look like these topics should be in the H1 and the title tags. You should update the story this frequently and really acting as an internal advocate for SEO amongst their newsrooms. We found that to be a pretty effective approach and that’s exciting to me because it’s one way you can scale content right. When you have all these different raters who can contribute, you can all get them thinking to have kind of an SEO mindset with every article they create. Even if you only increase their efficiency by 10%, well, that’s a large lift across the entire organization. 

Danny Gavin Host

26:16

So you transitioned last year from senior SEO manager to VP of marketing. You so you transitioned last year from Senior SEO Manager to VP of Marketing. You’ve always been an SEO evangelist. How has this shift changed your focus at GoFish, as you’re now viewing things from a more 10,000 foot perspective? 

Chris Long Guest

26:29

It is harder because with any role shift you find yourself a little bit less in the marketing day to day and more in the operational day-to-day. 

26:39

So really I think one of the biggest challenges with that kind of shift is how to have more influence at scale within your organization. 

26:50

So before you might be working on a specific SEO process and refining that and teaching the team how to do that, but as you take on right, as you should take on more verticals, and then and are talking to other team members, your kind of house of responsibility like grows in that way and you really need to figure out like, hey, how can you, how can you best like assert your opinions and influence and whatever across all of these different kind of realms. 

27:17

So that’s one of the biggest challenges, just kind of just how much more you inherit and then you’re figuring out your ability to influence those different factors. That’s not to say I still actually love the day-to-day of SEO. That is one of the bigger role changes. It’s just in terms of you’re thinking about larger pieces of the pie, so to speak, and really how to influence them, and it really does become a lot more about, like you know, hey, instead of this one individual tactic. I’m going to start to develop this process that you know 20 people can follow. That becomes just more valuable with the more growth there is within an organization or within yourself. 

Wil Reynolds Guest

27:54

Inevitably you Google something, you learn something new. You’re now like, wow, that’s a new word for me. So now you’ve got to Google that word as part of another thing, because you’re still trying to solve the problem. So now, each time you learn something, you’ve got to go back and refine your query and all that stuff In ChatGPT. You’re like, oh, that’s a great answer, but my kid’s four years old, oh, and it’s also a girl. So I don’t like that example. And it’s like, oh well, let me put it to you this way, let me put it to you that way versus the amount of searches and clicks and closing out pop-ups and where’s the content, versus where’s the ad, and everybody’s trying to make the ads look like content because they need to make money on that, and you’re just like man, there’s so much now I just can’t imagine. Why would you want to go through all that friction? 

Danny Gavin Host

28:40

So do you feel like Google Ads, or the ad side of Google, is actually like their biggest shackles? That’s just going to hold them back from totally embracing the new world 1000%, and they just proved it again last week. 

Wil Reynolds Guest

28:52

So I started. This is where Some of this stuff We’ve been around for a while right, and oftentimes what I would say to young people when I would talk to them in groups or provide some mentorship is I’d be like hey guys, anytime you can jump in an industry where the rules aren’t written, you can’t stay on top of all of it. When it comes to Google and paid, what I’ve been saying to people is like Google’s not good at disrupting themselves, and the proof that I’ve been giving to people recently is look at how quickly Apple launched ITP or whatever, ipt, itp, whatever it is their privacy platform. They like announced it and had it rolled out in like 12 months, and that was five years ago or whatever. And Google’s like oh, you just killed all of our cookies if you’re on an Apple device, and that’s not good. And Facebook at the time cratered, so Apple applied that pressure. And Google’s now like oh, by the end of 2023, we’re going to have 1% of all the browsers are going to be using our new privacy platform. And now they just push something like that out to 2025 or something. And you’re like wow, so Apple did this like six years ago and got it done, announced it six, seven years ago, got it done in 12 to 18 months. You then announced shortly thereafter oh, we’re going to do it too, and we’re waiting five years from now. And then last week you just literally said oh, we’re going to push it back another year to get to like one and a half or 2% of the browsers are using your privacy platform because it fucks with how they make money. And I think the saddest thing about the state of Google today which is a way over-talked thing in our community, I believe. 

30:39

But the way that I look at it is, you literally were rewarded for years for going from one ad to two. I don’t mean to say it this way because I’m not that smart, but it’s like one line of code, add a second ad. One line of code, add a third ad. One line of code, add a fourth ad and just make money, print money, print money. And then it’s like take the yellow box and make it slightly less yellow, so then people don’t know it’s an ad. 

31:05

And then do this, so it’s less, and then do that, so it’s less. And then it’s like wow, you guys never really looked at yourself in the mirror and said how can I make a better ad experience for people? You just got to add another line of code, change the layout. You already had to have some code to create a color behind the paid search ads, so then you just made it lighter. I can do that. I can do that. So I think Google’s they’re kind of screwed because they’re going to have to kill parts of their cash cow in order to lean into people getting easier answers. And I think you just look at Apple launching the privacy sandbox or whatever they call it, and then how Google’s reacted to it, how long it’s taken, and I’m like that does not bode well for Google. 

Danny Gavin Host

31:50

And I think people don’t want to say it, but people like you do want to say it. It’s scary to say that. So how do you look from an agency perspective? Obviously, a lot of the work, a lot of the money, is from SEO, paid search, so doesn’t that scare you a bit? 

Wil Reynolds Guest

32:06

No, because people need answers. I don’t think the market for questions is going to drop Now that ChatGPT is here, and this is how I think it through. So the internet started with directories if you wanted to find other sites. So once you wanted to get off of AOL or Prodigy or whatever you were on, I was a Prodigy guy Like once you wanted to leave the platform, it was like you didn’t know domains to search for, right. You just went to directories. Yahoo directory, oh, okay. But then there became too many freaking websites that solved problems. And then Yahoo became like oh, page one of 30 for a locksmith or whatever, right. So then you’re like well, that doesn’t work. 

32:46

And then Google was like oh, why don’t we build something where you can type what you want in so you don’t have to follow this branch of a branch of a branch of a branch to then get like 900 different answers, alphabetized right. 900 different answers, alphabetized, right. That’s not the right way to get an answer. So let us do a search then, right. So I go all, right, let’s imagine that we’re doing that, we’re in this, so now let’s apply that same thinking. This is the one area, danny, where, like us being old dudes in this industry actually gives us a leg up over the new guys, right? Because we’re like wait, we’ve already seen this, bro. Like so AI is making it ridiculously easy for people to write content of all varying qualities. So we’re back to the same problem. Now you’re going to have 10 times the amount of content I don’t want my answer to be 10 times longer. Which means that now chat search engines for lack of a better word wherever you want to call them, because everybody you know I love watching SEOs get their panties in a bunch on something that has nothing to do with customers. It’s not a chat search engine. Like, what the fuck ever? Like, customers are searching for answers there, right? So now we’re living in a world where you’re like all these people are producing content faster than ever, which now means the chat search engines have the exact problem that the search engine solved for the Yahoo directory. 

34:02

And you go oh, you need a system to allow people to search, which is going to be easy to spam if it’s just like keyword driven, right? So, oh, we need a trust metric. Oh, page rank. Oh, because Will doesn’t want a 10 times longer answer. Just because we are indexing 10 times more content. Will wants an answer that he can read and understand with minimal friction, but I now have a million documents to select to put into my small answer for Will. How am I going to do that? Sam Altman, you’ve got to have something that puts a ranking signal somehow on. 

34:37

Well, if I get the content from the New York Times and this site and that site like, do I value that more and do I trust that more than somebody else who just wrote it, like I think these problems will show themselves. I think it’s really unpredictable right now and it’s really out there. But I think at the end of the day, they’re going to need freaking algorithms to sort through the plethora of AI-built content for the AI answer. People don’t want longer answers, even when there is 10 times more content that’s been produced. So how are they going to narrow it down to what’s most important? It’s got to be something right. 

35:11

So then I’m starting to look at like the C4, the common crawl and just be like where did they use most of their tokens from? Because if most of the tokens you use, why would you crawl the New York Times more than you would crawl Seer Interactive? I don’t know. They write more content around more topics and they’re more trusted, got it? So I’m thinking of the common crawl as an early like okay, you put more tokens against sites that you trusted more, it looks like. So maybe I could be off here, but that’s just optimizing for an algorithm again. So it’s like okay, how do I understand what shows up and what answers show up, and how frequently the same answer shows up and how often? It gets a little spicy in terms of giving me different answers to the same questions, and I think that’ll be what the future of search kind of looks like. But it’s still an algorithm dude, because there’s too much content out there and I don’t want longer answers. 

Danny Gavin Host

36:07

With LLMs and the training material and which are written by humans and they inherently have human biases. Do you believe there’s any way to eventually filter out the human error and prejudices that we’re seeing? 

Britney Muller Guest

36:13

No, because there will always be bias. But there’s ways to mitigate that bias and one of those ways is by introducing transparency into what those biases are. So, even with our rough understanding of the C4 data set, which is used in most LLM trainings, we understand that Wikipedia is super biased. But now that we know the specifics of it because the average editor at Wikipedia is super biased but now that we know the specifics of it right, Because the average editor at Wikipedia is, I think, 27 years old, Over 87% are men, they are of higher education, single and no kids Because we know that we can better adjust, we can of navigate some of those biases. It’s when these closed black box systems give us no insight into what they were trained on, even like the image generative models, we lack the understanding there of like what all went into it. If we knew, we could have a much stronger understanding of those biases and find ways to navigate them. 

37:23

With LLMs specifically, there is a really exciting area of research to help mitigate errors and some of the bias with multi-agent deployment. So with that you’re actually deploying basically multiple instances of LLMs and the thought process being that the odds of them all making the same bias, judgment or error will be less likely. There’s still a whole lot of work to be done in that space, but that’s some really exciting progress. And then, oh my gosh, I wish I could remember her name. There was a brilliant talk at NeurIPS around identifying bias in image recognition models and generative image models, and it was some of the most brilliant research I’ve seen on the topic to date. So there is exciting work being done but, again, unfortunately it’s not necessarily in companies’ best interest. But it’s an important area of research. 

Danny Gavin Host

38:26

As we reach the end of part one, we hope you found these insights to be invaluable. We’ve explored the significance of mentorship and tackled some of the technical challenges in SEO. Make sure to tune in next week for part two, where we’ll discuss how to create compelling content that drives organic traffic and how to align SEO with other marketing strategies for maximum impact. Plus, we’ll talk a bit about the future of SEO, too. Thank you for listening and, as always, remember to continue learning and growing in your digital marketing journey. We’ll see you next week for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast.