102: From Journalism to SEO Strategy: Dorit Sasson on Writing, Mentorship, and the Human Side of Search (Office Hours)

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor. Today, we welcome Dorit Sasson, who is the SEO Manager at Optidge, joining the team this past March. 

Prior to that, she spent years as an SEO analyst and consultant, with a focus on B2B enterprises. 

Her work has delivered results for clients ranging from B2B SaaS companies to a Fortune 500 telecom company.

Dorit brings a sharp mix of technical expertise and strategic tenacity to the ever-evolving, AI-driven search landscape—a topic we explore often on this podcast. 

Today, we’re going to talk about how Dorit develops top-ranking SEO strategies in competitive niche markets, as well as why SEO is a long-term game and how to manage expectations around results. How are you doing, dorit? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

01:07

I’m doing great, absolutely amazing. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:09

So I like to say most people come to Optage and it takes them a couple months for me to get them onto the podcast, but you jumped right away, so I’m so excited you’re here. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

01:18

I’m excited as well. It’s a real privilege. Thank you for having me. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:22

So what’s one thing people would have no clue about you after they first met you. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

01:25

They would not have known that I have spent years in another country, which happens to be Israel. They would have never known what my name stands for, which means a little leader. They would have never known that I served as a lieutenant in the IDF. I gave you three things. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:42

Were you born in Israel or did you move there when you were little? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

01:44

So my father’s Israeli, so he spent a lot of years going back and forth between the two countries, meaning New York and Israel. I was an Israeli citizen from birth. I was born in Manhattan, New York City, and from 18, I just dropped out. Once I started college I knew that, after volunteering on a kibbutz, that college life wasn’t for me and the rest is history. And I went and volunteered on a kibbutz and it became my second home and then quickly, my first and how long were you in the military for? 

02:14

Three years I was in a special unit that combined agrarian farm work with military service. It was at a very different time in Israel’s history and we just served on different military bases with foreign recruits from different countries and together we went through the army together and did different things. 

Danny Gavin Host

02:35

That’s amazing. So when you look back to that experience, how does it shape how you lead people today? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

02:40

You know, everything I learned in life really came from the idea it was really about thinking about the other and not thinking about myself. In America it’s very much like what I do. Look at me, my achievements, look at how great big sisters and we have to in order to survive and thrive in Israel. You, you behave like you’re in a wolf pack. It’s not the individual that matters, it’s the group, and the strength of the group depends on everyone. So everybody plays a role. 

03:19

And that really served me well, because I came from a very different world and a very different culture and I didn’t know how to fit in right away and I had to, like learn very much the hard, hard way, how to let go of my ego and how to really connect with other people and not think about myself and what people think about me and look how great I am. It was a real challenge at first because we came from different countries and everybody had that ego. You know very much like oh my God, I’m so great. Look how great I am. And you know people in Israel don’t care about what you do and how you do it. You know, to that degree it wasn’t so self-absorbed, so it was a very different mindset. 

Danny Gavin Host

03:59

So coming back to America and working like the US workforce where I’m not saying everyone’s to that extreme, but obviously it’s a little bit different. Was it hard for you moving back into a different culture or being in a business culture which is not exactly like that? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

04:12

Well, you have to remember, I left the States as a teenager and I came back as a wife and a mother and the world had completely shifted. I didn’t even have any tax records from 20 years ago. I was like what is Costco, what is Target? What is an SUV? I had no idea. 

04:35

In Israel at the time, cars were like dog cages. They’re not this big, massive. So that geographical size really was jarring. I didn’t have an idea. So there were different levels of adjustment. There was that wow, I’m in a honeymoon phase, but look how big the States are. And in Israel everybody is like one big family. It’s like everybody gives you one big hug and it’s not like that here. And so Israel will never be America and America will never be Israel. And those are the two real fine lines that I had to accept in order to fit in. It wasn’t immediate right now. I’m here doing this and I’m making money and I’m paying my taxes and I’m buying food, and it was a gradual, slow process of readjusting to a lot of different things at the same time. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:24

But it sounds like you knew what you had to do, even though it might have been hard. I don’t know how many years now you’ve been back in the US, but do you feel more comfortable here? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

05:32

I don’t think I’ll ever feel 100% comfortable. I think, as an Israeli, I’m never meant to be comfortable in the States. I think I’m Jewish but I’m also an Israeli and I feel like I don’t think my job here is to be comfortable, and we left for economic reasons. So at some point that is not the only thing in life. Just making money and comfortable, yes, from a financial perspective, but not feeling like life is meaningful. There’s something that I lack personally. 

Danny Gavin Host

06:07

So let’s pivot. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

06:08

Yes, please. 

Danny Gavin Host

06:08

How did you first discover it? No worries. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

06:11

I could talk about myself all day. It’s just like I’m sure there’s going to be a limit to how much people want to hear my story, but I’m sure it’s. 

Danny Gavin Host

06:19

No, your story is awesome, but we have to talk a little bit about SEO. So how did you first discover SEO and what pulled you into making it your career? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

06:26

I was a teacher by trade. I started my journey as an EFL English, as a foreign language teacher, and I also pivoted. When I did reverse immigration back to the States, I became an ESL teacher and I was able to do that pretty seamlessly, pretty seamlessly and fast forward. 2019, 27, 16, just the world economies changed and shifted and I suddenly found myself unemployment line and I was able to start really pivoting really fast because I was always a writer and I wrote a book called Accidental Soldier, which is, right here, blurred a little bit, but it was about my service and sacrifice in the israel defense forces, a story that I felt I was born to write here in the states, and then I had to figure out how to market it and and I didn’t know how to market it in the way that you know was a pretty way to get to most people at the time and I had a website. So somebody said, hey, you know, use keywords and you know it’s the next thing. You know I was researching keywords, but that wasn’t really like how it flourished into my career. 

07:31

The next thing I knew was that I was also supporting authors and writers who also were trying to build an online marketing platform or an online author platform, which was the big buzzword at the time platform which, or an online author platform, which was the big buzzword at the time, and that was my kind of unemployment situation. Someone said if you, if you want to write, you might as well learn SEO. And I’m like, oh cool, what is SEO? I’d love to know. I only know how to spell it. I don’t know what it is. So I just got certified by a really good person in pioneering in the industry, Heather Lloyd-Martin, who runs the SEO Copywriting Institute. She’s very, very , one of the pioneers. I got started with her. I was like, cool, this is really cool. What else do I need to know? And it felt like I was on top of the world because I had this toolbox called SEO. I was a writer, I felt like a queen. I was like, yay, I have everything I need. 

08:26

And then I was just supporting writers and using my ESL and my teaching skills to help them understand and explain complex concepts. This is what it is. Because they were intimidated. They were like I don’t know anything nerdy and technical, it’s too scary for me. And I was like, let’s talk about this a little bit. And so I developed a course especially for authors and writers who were scared by this concept and I, at the same time, was learning it. So I decided you know, there’s a saying if you don’t know what you know, you need to teach it, or whatever that saying is. So I just started to develop these online courses and teach writers and marketers, and that’s how it started. That’s how the journey itself got started. There were other pieces to that journey, but that’s it. The question you asked was how did I get started? 

Danny Gavin Host

09:12

It’s so cool that you got trained by Heather. I’ve been on her email list for years. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

09:17

Yes, I have a bunch in my inbox too. 

Danny Gavin Host

09:20

She is amazing. That’s so cool. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

09:21

I’m so happy that we share a common person. It’s so cool. The SEO world is very small. 

Danny Gavin Host

09:27

But I don’t know if everyone knows about her in particular. So I think that’s, I think that’s really cool. Is there something about SEO that you believed early on that you no longer believe today? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

09:37

I had no idea that AI would take over. 

09:40

I was like, wow, keywords. And Heather was just like I. It was just like when she even taught these modules, I was like printing them on the machine and I’m like studying them and going on Google and testing them and I’m like this is so cool. You mean I can connect to a person just by a keyword, and that’s how I found her. You know, I was just like putting in a keyword. I had no idea that there was also this machine called AI. 

10:06

I thought that SEO would stay the king and the queen of the castle and they would hold all the secrets and all we had to do was keep learning all the secrets and then, when we would be kings and queens and we would be able to, like, disseminate information. I did not know that the position of SEO would be so threatened and so volatile and so vulnerable, because it felt at the time that I was learning something that was just. I wasn’t a pioneer. I didn’t start like Heather Lloyd-Martin, who was one, you know, starting from AOL and the World Wide Web and saw the different stages. I entered very late. 

10:44

I started my career in 2017, which is a decade and so much has happened. But at the time I was just like there’s just so much that I can learn within this little castle and I didn’t realize that there would be other castles and other cities being built around our little castle. And suddenly, suddenly it didn’t feel like we were special anymore and I thought that seo would always be special and I felt like now we’re always like we get a seat at the table but it’s with other, other people, other things yeah it’s. 

Danny Gavin Host

11:18

It’s definitely not like what it used to be, but I think, just like that there were pioneers back in the day when there were like five, 10 search engines and no one knew how I rank and what I do. Yeah, I feel like it’s. I feel like we’re in the same time and moment today and we have the opportunity to make that next castle, make that next special thing. But it’s hard right, because if you grew up in one castle to go build another, it could be. You know, it’s tough. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

11:46

This is my castle. Why do I have to deal with your castle? You know, don’t put your castle in my castle. I want my castle. 

Danny Gavin Host

11:55

Yeah, understandable. Let’s get into B2B and niche marketing. So what makes B2B or niche market SEO fundamentally different from broader consumer SEO? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

12:06

I didn’t know this until I entered as enterprise SEO, which is another castle, a whole nother castle, and I frankly didn’t have any experience dealing with stakeholders and BPs and this was like taking me into one little diving board and throwing me into the huge deep end. And that’s where I find I connected with the idea that in order to really rank, you need to first get buy-in from stakeholders. You need to learn the buying journey. You need to understand how complex getting that buy-in and then getting people to understand what it is that you do. And that’s what makes B2B very different from, let’s say, consumer, because it’s more appealing. You’ve got a fast turnaround, a fast cycle, there’s a faster sales cycle and everything has to be very emotionally driven to the point that it appeals to something you know like I’m thinking just consumer at this point. 

13:09

For B2B there’s a lot of. The buying journey is very, very different and in order for the business to understand the other person’s business, there’s got to be a state where they’re learning about it. What you’re doing. They’re in the awareness type funnel. Then they’re learning about it from a decision perspective and there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes in that decision. The content also reflects that. 

Danny Gavin Host

13:33

Naturally, when it comes to B2B and not always, but there’s often a lot of competitors who may have a lot of money and a long history. So when you’re coming into that new space, where do you start? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

13:46

I have to be very humble and vulnerable here and say I and I’re just talking and it’s so personal. It wasn’t. It was four years ago, maybe a little bit more, but I remember it so strongly because it was such a deep pivot for me, because I was so used to working with a group of people and suddenly I’m in like a fortune 500 telecom industry. That is just a tough nut to crack and you have to be. I come from New York City so I’m very much into competition and so I had to translate my vigor, my vim, my desire to solve problems, my hunger for challenges in the online space and figure out what the heck is going on. I think the best thing that I did at the time was that I was just studying the competition and figuring out who’s who and what’s what and what it is that they’re doing, and I think I’m also very much an advocate to any client that I serve. So I was just like damn, I want this money on the table for this client. How do I keep the money for this client on the table? 

14:51

And suddenly I became that voice and the voice told me I need to study what they’re doing. I need to make sure that what they’re doing is different from what you’re doing. I can understand the difference. Let me find the opportunity within that, and that’s where my head constantly kept me going. I was like where’s the opportunity? What is? What is it that they’re doing? What is it that this, this business, is doing? How can I set this business apart? And that’s the setup. That was the tone from day one. 

Danny Gavin Host

15:20

So, instead of copying, it’s more about finding that area that maybe no one has taken yet and going after that. Absolutely would you say that’s the case. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

15:29

Yes, and I can give you countless examples of what I did, if you would like me to jump into that next question. 

Danny Gavin Host

15:35

Yeah, I love that, because my next question is like walking us through a campaign or a strategy where you have to get creative because the obvious seo plays or maybe you know those obvious things that competitors were doing were already taken you have to remember I was dealing with a fortune 500 company or 50, I don’t even remember if it was one less zero, one more zero. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

15:55

I never get the two, I never know each vertical, like, let’s say, there was wireless and that was consumer, okay, but then there’s B2B, so we’re thinking IOT, we’re thinking cloud, we’re thinking internet. Each one of those was a client within a stakeholder and it was just like what do I do to get ranked? Tell me, you know, what do I need to do? And I had to figure out really quickly, you know, because everything would be okay, well, you know, write content, let’s write a white paper or thought leadership piece, and it’s not getting ranked. Well, why is it not getting ranked? 

16:35

And I had to constantly. Or if it was a page, a sales page or a product page or a service page, I mean it didn’t look good on me if that page after a few months was just flat in terms of rankings. So I had to study what I. What I constantly did was that I asked myself the same three questions each time: what is this page ranking for, what should it be ranking for and how do we get there? And the same three questions each time: what is this page ranking for, what should it be ranking for and how do we get there? And those three questions kept, like you know, driving me home. And even if, in, even if I found myself in very difficult keyword, tough, difficult keyword situations where I would literally bang my head against the wall and I would go to my, my colleague, slash supervisor, and I was like I can’t find anything here, what the heck is going on? I had to get creative, I had to pause, pivot, I had to look at it in a different way, I had to ask myself a little bit of different questions and then ultimately, I would just it depended on the situation If we’re dealing with like a service page, then I have to do like a quantitative analysis and see where the gaps are in content, because you know, you’re playing with big boys, big people. 

17:44

You’re not playing with little fish. You’re dealing with big, big fish, with people with big, big pockets, lots of money. And that was just the way that I had to keep riding those waves and constantly like doing a quantitative analysis and seeing. You know, what is it with these top page ranking elements? Is there something that I’m doing that they’re doing that we need to do more of? Whether it was expanding the word count, whether it was getting creative with the content expansion types, whether it was adding an FAQ page and everything needed a buy-in Like. It was very much like. Here’s what we’re proposing, here’s what we’re thinking, here’s what we see, and then it would go through and we would see results. That was if we were dealing with a service page. If we were dealing with content, it was also difficult to use keywords. The competition was very tough, and so I would constantly study and see where the gaps and the opportunities were. 

Danny Gavin Host

18:41

Dealing with that bureaucracy kind of having to get everything approved. Was that difficult? Or did you just learn how to? I don’t want to say manipulate the system, but work the system. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

18:49

It was very frustrating. I love it when I can have a direct impact. I always had a direct impact. I had a line with anybody. Anything that I needed I got you to connect to on an email level, on a phone call level. But to get it actually implemented on the website, you have to go through Beagle. You have to go through approvals, multiple buy-ins. 

19:13

They always loved the emails and it’s like this is great information, new and like, so talk less like are you gonna go and put this in? Are you gonna like the bottom line? Are you gonna like to implement this or are you gonna just say it’s so nice and so great, we love this and I and I did so much work and I really like it, but nothing really got implemented. And that was like you know. And in the meantime they’re ranking, they’re taking over. Why are we not doing anything? And it was frustrating because it was like you know, on one hand you were like riding the train and you were pushing it and you were moving it, but you couldn’t do very much more than that and the train kept moving and all the other trains were passing by and we were like slowing down and not moving. I’m like this can’t be happening. 

Danny Gavin Host

20:05

So you mentioned a big part of the strategy is finding opportunities in content. So like, practically, how does one go about spotting keywords, topics or content opportunities that others are missing? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

20:19

There’s a lot of different ways I did it that were faster than other ways. The faster way is looking at the topics that we were missing on a whole, and we were missing a lot of different topics. So wireless in itself or IoT Very basic questions like what is IoT? Internet of things you know, like glossary content. When you’re dealing with a very big corporation, sometimes the buyer doesn’t even know what the heck this is, you know, and I would make cases and I’d say we need to have education. We need to. We can’t just expect people to know what the heck this is, you know, and sometimes the language was so over the top like they didn’t even the jargon was even hard, and I think that’s just a learning, a learning gap, things that you know. There’s a missed opportunity even in that itself. So I would often like come with that to a table and say we need more glossary content and and it would be like as simple as writing something up like that and educating the masses on the very simple level of what this is, and so that keyword would drive that type of content and we’d have many different pieces like that. Or it would be like this versus this, like this application or this technology versus this technology, because then you’re comparing and you’re contrasting and then they understand okay, what’s the difference? Maybe I need this or maybe I don’t need that. So those were like the first level type of content. 

21:51

And then I would go into our tool called SEMrush, which is still used to today and a lot of businesses use it, and I would go into our tool called SEMrush, which is still used to today and a lot of businesses use it, and I would just like run the URL. It’s a very basic, Kether Lloyd Barton type tactic. Just run the URL, see what it’s ranking for and see you know what our page is ranking for and see what that page is ranking for. And many times it was just as simple as that first step and trying to get the same type of keyword. You’re literally beating each other out on the same keyword or variation. But it was more like let me find what we’re ranking for and let us re-optimize the content. 

22:33

That was always the cheaper strategy. That was always the better one of the two. Content that was always the cheaper strategy. That was always the better one of the two. When it came to building new content, that was a bigger hurdle, but I ended up getting many pieces ranked on this dying B2B blog that I was fortunate to resuscitate and as a result of many, many attempts and tries and briefs I think hundreds and hundreds of briefs I wrote just to help build that kind of content awareness around what is or versus, and those were very common type keywords that either the site was ranking for or we strive to rank for it. 

Danny Gavin Host

23:15

So this sort of like basic glossary content or I guess even comparative content. Do you feel like there’s still a place for that today? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

23:24

Oh yeah, the reason why I’m very emphatic about it is because it’s not just what the keyword stands for, it’s how the top rankers are actually educating their target audience around this, and there’s a section in our brief that we would always like say okay, so what are the unique, what is the competition doing that we could be doing? What are some of the insights that are being done with others? And it was like they were always the top rankers that were outranking us, were using YouTube videos, were using YouTube videos, infographics, right, and they were building content in such an engaging way that it was just like pure joy to like make a recommendation like that, because I was like, damn, that’s such a great thing, let’s do more of this. And that became a reality, and there were a lot of people that I was working with strongly advocated for those recommendations, because A that’s what Google favors. 

24:28

They love that kind of YouTube engine, right, and it’s a great way to get them. Sometimes you don’t even have to read the content. You just go into a one minute video and you get everything that you need, and we didn’t do enough of that. So it’s really not about only the keyword, it’s really about how you are hoping that keyword will get ranked with the brief? And the brief was really the foundational blueprint for everything that I think I attributed to that brief many, many times over. 

Danny Gavin Host

25:02

And I know briefs, like the art of the brief, is something that you use even today, and I imagine, or even know, that that is also going to be the key to how one can get ranked within LLM Google AI mode. Would you agree? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

25:15

It’s an art and a science. Sometimes it’s an art and sometimes it’s a science being able to know how to build it, what to look for. When I said that SEO was like the castle, it was all about the keyword and how top rankers are using top ranking elements, because this is what they’re doing. And now AI and overviews are becoming evolved from search generative experience and then search generative was the new buzzword, and now it’s AI, overviews, right and carousels and images and things like that. How do we get ranked for that? 

25:48

That kind of language is taking over sections of our brief and how do we include that in the way that we’re making recommendations? So it’s definitely evolved and if I look at it, I would train cross collaboratively. So I would take a group of people from consumers who weren’t involved in business and they were also doing briefs, but we would never have a unified brief and I would teach them and that would be like training for them. If I look back at that training, if I had to do that kind of training today, it would be very, very different all of a sudden. It wouldn’t be about the keyword, it would be about AI and overviews, and it’s just mind-boggling because that wasn’t that long ago. 

Danny Gavin Host

26:32

So, outside of your brief structure and SEMrush, is there any other tool or technique that you swear by? And I’m not talking about necessarily from before, but nowadays? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

26:43

That I swear by. Well, that’s a big commitment. I spend a lot of time looking at Google itself and looking at how the language is being used in different ways. It’s intentional because Google is favoring certain types of content over others. Google is favoring certain types of content over others. Google is favoring certain types of page types over others. 

27:03

You know why it is so authoritative and you know where the non-authoritative sites are and why it is for this keyword only or this topic, and people also ask questions and things like that. So I don’t know if swearing is and I’m not a betting person and I’m not a gambling person. So it’s really hard for me to go that way because everything changes all the time. But I spend a lot of time analyzing the SERPs and just because I’m a word person and a writer, I just and I’m a number server I spent a lot of time looking and seeing and paying attention and starting my observations and insights that way, and then I do a little bit more digging and a little bit more digging and I spend some time with some of our AI. I do use Phrase, which is an SEO briefing tool, which has helped, but it’s very different. Briefing tool, which has helped, but it’s very different. 

27:57

I use AI tools like AI, perplexity, chat, gpt, but ultimately, I really do believe that we aren’t being taken over yet by AI and there is something called human intervention and there is something called humanity and there’s something called connection, and I do believe that we still have the ability to make decisions, because I’ve seen mistakes with AI, and I’m sure you have as well, and I know that you have a podcast on this, so I’ve listened to that as well. It’s real, it’s a thing, and so I spend the time are perfecting the art and the science of a brief by being a human being and just looking and making decisions based on where I am in real time, and not relying only on AI to do everything for me and copycat it, because then I feel it’s unethical for me, because then I might as well just have AI do everything, and it doesn’t always do it the right way. 

Danny Gavin Host

28:54

So we spoke a little bit about getting rankings, but how would you keep rankings once you’ve earned them, especially when competitors are watching everything you do? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

29:03

Well, I gave an example where things don’t move very fast. Let’s say, ideally you’ve gotten the buy-in, you’ve gotten the brief approved, you’ve gotten the content implemented and then you’re constantly looking at the rankings. And I do spend a fair amount of time monitoring, updating the performance trackers, the metrics, reanalyzing why content dropped in certain rankings, and I think that’s just what I keep doing is testing, retesting, monitoring and remonitoring. And that rinse, frost, repeat. 

Danny Gavin Host

29:41

In a world of instant gratification and when there’s so many other digital marketing strategies, how do you convince stakeholders that SEO is worth the wait? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

29:50

It’s a tough question because SEO is really not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You’re training, you’re constantly training. You know, worst case scenarios. It was just like how do I get on the first page of Google? How do I make sure that this stays? It’s a very hard conversation to have because you’re not in control of those rankings and you can’t commit to something like that. And it’s very hard for those kinds of stakeholders because they want to understand the why before they even get the results, and so it’s really important to manage expectations that way. But then also there’s another level of just strategizing and planning and showing them like this is where we are right now. Just like the stock market, seo compounds. It’s compounding SEO interests and that compounding develops over time. So what you do today will continue to compound, and so that little bit of that kind of thing settles in and then having that insight with, like, let’s say, a 30 or a 60 day plan, like here’s where we are today. This is what I’m seeing. We believe that we will get X. And this is what I would do. I would say we would believe that and we had a tool that did this. We believe that over time, we will get X number of clicks if we do X and Y and Z, and this is where we think we will land, and it was like a cost of opportunity. This is where we think we will land and it was like a cost of opportunity, and that was a very strong blueprint or a way to convince stakeholders that we have a strategy, and when we tied it into a business decision, it was an easier play than just saying let’s do SEO. 

31:38

I have to say, though, that that environment was very different, let’s say, from, let’s say, an agency, where they’re paying for a service line and they don’t see the results right away. So it’s a very different environment, like the clients that Optage serves. It’s not the same as what I would do in that B2B environment. You know, if a keyword lost its ranking, it wasn’t like people noticed right away. I noticed because I cared, and so I would constantly revisit and relook, but it’s very different when you’re paying your own money for a service line and you want to make sure that that stays. So my job is to continually look at that. Your other question is to continually monitor, knowing that sometimes that happens. And what is it that’s causing that to happen, which is the other question that you asked. 

Danny Gavin Host

32:28

So, in the agency world that you’re in right now, how do you keep clients encouraged during the quiet months when results aren’t visible yet, or maybe, let’s say, the months that aren’t performing as well? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

32:38

Yeah, I’ve done this a few times already in some of the client calls where we have, we show our monthly reports and what I’ve done already is I’ve already gathered insights on early promise of ranking what is already the content already doing. You know how it performs? Oh, we’re ranking for this, this search term in the carousel. Oh, we’re ranking for this search term in the carousel, and that’s a great thing because now people are looking at this carousel and they’re clicking on this blog post and it’s not a sponsored ad and that’s good because it’s quite unquote free traffic. 

33:12

It’s one way to keep them occupied or engaged. Another way is just to keep them informed of what you’re doing in terms of content, like where your next steps are. So if there’s like a certain campaign that you’re doing in terms of content, like where your next steps are, so if there’s like a certain campaign that you’re planning or what you’re looking at, and I would just I just keep them busy that way and say you know, here’s where my strategy is, here’s what I’m planning on doing for the next month’s worth of content. I’m always looking at rankings and revisiting them and looking at them in different ways and revisiting them and looking at them in different ways. 

Danny Gavin Host

33:42

So, with the proliferation of AI and with the SERPs changing and maybe even the SERPs going away completely and only having like an AI mode or chat, got some sort of interface, what do you think marketers can do now to prepare and to get ready and to educate themselves? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

34:02

I’m in the business of SEO, so in my world I’m thinking, to prepare and to get ready and to educate myself. I’m in the business of SEO, so in my world I’m thinking, as long as you have a website, you have SEO. I mean, I know that it sounds really weird that AI and SEO one is. This one is that we work different sides of the street. I feel like AI gets siloed or SEO gets siloed, or they both get siloed. I think we owe it to ourselves and the agencies or the organizations that we’re working for and the people that we’re together with to just help each other, embrace that. This is our new world. How do we support both of them to help each other? Because I sometimes feel like they’re not on speaking terms. They’re not on speaking terms. I was like that with Excel. When I had Excel issues. I was like I’m not on speaking terms with you, excel, I’m getting too efficient for you and you do not like it when I’m efficient, so goodbye. I feel the same way in that, like that’s the same kind of feeling I get with the AI and the SEO piece and when I left that B2B world, ai was just being used as a content platform, a content development platform. So it was more like how do we create briefs with AI? It wasn’t like AI on the website and now everything about our brief sucks. And I think we need to also embrace the idea that we still, even with AI and I know this is going to sound a little weird that we still have something called SEO best practices and they still have a place at the table and we should not be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and I think in this new world, it’s AI, this and your next shiny object syndrome, and then we forget these best practices because we’re so consumed with the AI, and so we have to find this gentle balance. And how do we do that? And I think that’s the world that we’re living in right now. That’s the way that the world is heading, and I feel like it’s very easy to forget all of our SEO tools. Everything that I was trained in suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. 

36:10

And Heather Lloyd-Martin had the answer to your question and she was in an email kind of, and she said you know AI, this and AI that. What’s the? At the end of the day, you use SEO best practices and I’m like thank you, you know like we still need that at the table, and so we need to figure out how do we incorporate this new world in our briefs and we don’t like oh my God, it’s AI. I don’t want to deal with AI and we work together. 

36:37

How can we support each other but not lose the SEO that we’ve earned, that we treasure, that we value, that we see as important, and how do we find that strategy within? It’s a very tight rope, it really is, but it’s very easy to get blinded by AI and just forget everything, and we can drive ourselves crazy doing that, and I have, and I’ve been there, and it’s not a fun place to be. To answer your question, I think marketers just need to keep having these conversations and not being threatened by them, but just having very open conversations about what it is that we’re doing. How do we keep evolving and still maintaining SEO best practices? So long as we have websites, we will continue to get ranked. 

Danny Gavin Host

37:23

Yeah, and a good example just to end this conversation, and I think I mentioned this to you earlier this week but our own company website, Optidge. We decided to start creating landing pages that better look at the service that we provide and the industry that we can help and, more specifically, a page that focuses on that. We provide HubSpot specifically for medical device companies, so from an SEO perspective, it makes sense to create a page about that, make sure it’s structured in the right way, covers the topics that are necessary, and so we were doing it from an SEO perspective. But before we knew it, when someone is actually going on ChatGPT and searching for a company that does HubSpot, specifically medical advice companies, we’re actually number one. But approaching it from a more typical traditional SEO background and following those rules actually helps us in the new sort of AI search world and, in some ways, even better than before. 

38:32

But the only caveat is things are changing, so we don’t know. Once again, just like Google, the way that its algorithm was back in the day in the early 2000s, the mid 2010s and now 2020s is very different. I imagine that that will be the same case for AI as it’s growing up, but I believe, just like you, that building up a website building, content building, who you are to suddenly take all those SEO foundational points and just throw them out the window is ridiculous. Seo foundational points and just throwing them out the window is ridiculous. I believe that having that process, that knowledge that’s going to propel you into the AI as well, yes, we’ll have to tweak it, maybe a little bit differently here and there, but someone who’s just saying forget about all that, I think they’re not going to be successful moving forward. So before we finish our conversation today, I like to just talk about something more personal. I know you’re really big into exercise, health and food. Could you share a little bit with the audience about those things and what you like about exercise? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

39:34

Yeah, I’m happy to. I think I mentioned a few times I am on a mission to get my body back after being a mom and, you know, going through that pregnancy stage and I just feel like where’s my muscle? So I’m just spending a lot of time kickboxing, doing group fight exercise classes at six o’clock in the morning, like I did this morning, just like starting to realize how much energy I do have, how much muscle I do have and how much it takes work to get there again. And that’s a great way to start the day. It gives me so much energy, gives me so much purpose. It’s energizing. I enjoy it. 

40:13

So I spend a lot of time in those kinds of classes. So I scream and hit the air and do all sorts of crazy things and lunge at like 536, which is a little weird and then I just run around and we have lots of trails and parks here in Pittsburgh, so I spend some time outdoors before the weather starts to get cold. That’s it. I’m just on a big mission, a small, humble mission to get my little body back. 

Danny Gavin Host

40:40

No, that’s really important and lovely. Obviously, you gotta put the time into it and be very purposeful, and it’s awesome that you’re making this space for that. 

Dorit Sasson Guest

40:48

Thank you for appreciating it. 

Danny Gavin Host

40:50

Doreen, where can listeners learn more about you? 

Dorit Sasson Guest

40:54

They can go on LinkedIn and spend some time on LinkedIn and learn more about Optage and learn about what Danny does and all the things that he does too, because we’re all part of that ecosystem together and they can find me more about LinkedIn and what it is that I enjoy doing and what I’m learning about and where I am. And that’s your world, IEI world. 

Danny Gavin Host

41:14

And we’ll definitely include a link to your book, which I think is very special, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, for sure. All right, Dorit, this was absolutely wonderful. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you for bringing your really special perspective. You’ve been through so much throughout your life and that really shapes you as being a very unique individual in how you approach SEO, life, marketing. So we really really appreciate that, appreciate you. 

41:37

And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We will speak with you next time.

00:00 / 42:03