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Every day marketers sift through dozens of headlines, posts, and slacks telling us about the latest and greatest trend we should be following.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and like you have to figure it out by yourself. But you don’t have to do it alone. Content Matters with Nicole MacLean (Compose.ly’s CRO) is your digital partner for filtering the trends and focusing on the content that matters most — creating connection that drive results.
For more, head to our site: https://compose.ly/content-matters
Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/
[00:00:00] Kyle Whigham: If I need to spin up a piece of content to go to ChatGPT and say, write me a 1500 word blog post, using this as the title and let it run. You're gonna get that in about 30 seconds, if not quicker. You could post that. And it'll be good enough.
[00:00:14] Kyle Whigham: But is it really going to move the needle? Is it going to make an impact? if you are going to go with AI-assisted content, take the time to build out a prompt.
[00:00:24] Kyle Whigham: try to control. The narrative as much as you can,
[00:00:27] Kyle Whigham: I know it might be a little taboo to talk about using AI for content, but it's the world we're living in.
[00:00:33] Nicole MacLean: I'm Nicole McLean and this is Content Matters Created in partnership with Share Your Genius. This show is your digital partner for filtering the trends and focusing on the content that matters most, creating connection that drives results. Let's cut through the marketing chaos together.
[00:00:55] Stephanie Yoder: Yeah. My name's Kyle Whigham I'm the SEO manager at Luxury Presence. and I've been with Luxury Presence for three and a half years, have been in digital marketing and SEO and content creation for 13 years now.
[00:01:10] Nicole MacLean: Nice. How often do you get wig ham?
[00:01:13] Kyle Whigham: more often than one might think. it's either ham or people throw random ends in there. Wingman, Wingham,
[00:01:22] Nicole MacLean: Okay. I could see that.
[00:01:23] Kyle Whigham: I'm a telemarketers nightmare.
[00:01:25] Nicole MacLean: Yeah, exactly. Or that's, that's the test to know. Do you really know? Me? Is, can you pronounce my last name? I love that. Well, we're really excited to dive in, especially right now. I know you are gonna have a lot of great feedback on content and SEO and the, the changing nature of SEO, but maybe just help us kind of understand your background and.
[00:01:45] Nicole MacLean: Where you're coming from and kinda where some of the insights are coming from. So how'd you get to to where you are today?
[00:01:51] Kyle Whigham: Yeah, it's been a journey. so that 13 years ago, was looking for work and sent a text message out to a bunch of buddies and one guy responded and he said, you can come be an entry level. We'll teach SEO. and I was like, great, let's do it. What does SEO, what does that mean? I had no idea. Moved to Raleigh Dove right in, started out as a entry-level link builder.
[00:02:14] Kyle Whigham: So a lot of outreach, some content creation, developing relationships with different webmasters. but I was also
[00:02:20] Nicole MacLean: wanna circle back to the, to the link building. I know it's a, it's a polarizing topic. I feel like nowadays on if link building works or not.
[00:02:28] Kyle Whigham: there is, there is a lot to unpack there. but that this first company that I worked for, I was really fortunate to be surrounded by some, brilliant people, some industry leaders that would speak at conferences. And I ended up asking the late Russ Jones, he, he's kind of who I credit getting me into this.
[00:02:45] Kyle Whigham: And I was like, Hey, can I just listen to you talk to clients? And, and that's how I started learning and it kind of created this passion. There's, always something to learn. There's a new tactic. Google's constantly changing. Uh, now that we're in. the age of ai, there's always new tactics, strategies to learn testing and that really appealed to me.
[00:03:04] Kyle Whigham: and so bounced around to a couple different agencies and then, got hooked up with luxury presence. at the time I was like, I just wanna go back and get in the trenches. I had been in people leadership for a little while and I was like, I want to go be just a guy and get my hands dirty again.
[00:03:18] Kyle Whigham: Um. I. be promoted, move up through the ranks really quickly. I think it was about six months before they were like, Hey, do you wanna manage people? And I was like, you know what? Sure. and got back into it. And so now, right now I manage our client success part of SEO who we work with, real estate agents at Luxury Presence.
[00:03:39] Kyle Whigham: we have an onshore team and an offshore team that I'm in charge of. And we cover everything from on page strategy to offsite strategy. we want our clients to be good partners and so we'll provide like a, a playbook on how can you best be a good partner to make sure we're getting maximum ROI throughout.
[00:03:57] Kyle Whigham: I've helped here and there with some of the stuff that goes on, on our corporate site. We just relaunched our website, luxury presence.com. and that went through a big migration. We added some new content on there, so making sure that everything was buttoned up,
[00:04:09] Kyle Whigham: but yeah, that's, that's the TLDR version of my career journey.
[00:04:14] Nicole MacLean: I know that we probably need to to dive into the SEO things and believe me, I'm sure we will, but it's interesting.
[00:04:21] Nicole MacLean: It's something I don't think we talk enough about in society, I guess in in corporate world of that becoming a manager and then
[00:04:28] Nicole MacLean: stepping back into an IC role I'm just curious kind of where your head was there. Like, you know, did people say, oh my gosh, why are you leaving? Management like, that's so weird. You made it. Why are you going back to execution?
[00:04:40] Kyle Whigham: that question came up, obviously during the interview process of like, you know, we, we look at your resume and you've, led teams, you started a couple departments, you know, why do you want to come back and, and be an ic? And the short answer was, Quite transparently. I felt like I got burned in a couple places.
[00:04:57] Kyle Whigham: but that's, that's the nature of business and corporate world. And business world. but also, you know, they, at the time that this was in 20 20, 21, it was just time for transition. Right. And, and I, I. Being in the trenches, getting my hands dirty, and sharing and having the, the relationships with the clients and sharing in the successes, that I was able to bring forth to them. Like that's been the most rewarding part of my career is, you know, I've worked with. Mom and pop shops, entrepreneurs, fortune 500 companies, enterprise level clients, and being able to share in the success when they, when they come to, to you and like you can have a direct impact on their success.
[00:05:39] Kyle Whigham: That's a real rewarding part. So at a luxury presence, like I've felt like, okay, this is, this is an industry I've, I've dabbled in a little bit. On one or two different occasions with different clients at other agencies. I think this is something that could be really unique, that it's, that's your whole focus.
[00:05:57] Kyle Whigham: You can become not just an expert in. Holistic, SEO, but really drive home local. SEO. How can you make content that is focused on a specific audience? And real estate sounds like a broad term, but there's so many different layers that go into it. you know, first time home buyers, vacation homes, luxury. there's more that I'm missing, but those just come off the top of my head.
[00:06:18] Kyle Whigham: When the opportunity came to move up to management, you know, it was a real, I don't wanna say it was a tough decision, but there was real discussion in, in our household about like, you know what? What does this mean? Is this what you want to do? And. Is this the right fit? Right. and I think,there's a little bit of a distinction when you're looking for an IC role or management role in is this company the right fit?
[00:06:45] Kyle Whigham: Is how are they gonna allow me to manage people the way I want to manage people? do I believe in the company values? Those things matter. As an ic, but I think more so when, when you're that manager, you, you have to be able to exhibit those traits, have that buy-in, and then also rally the folks around you to be able to, have the right people in the, in the right places and, build that cohesiveness as a team.
[00:07:10] Kyle Whigham: And I think that's even more important in the remote work environment, to be able to do something like that. So for me it was, it was all about fit. It was, like LPs a place that. was really easy to buy into for me. and I, I didn't look back once I had that opportunity. It was great. I felt like my voice, mattered here more than, just about anywhere else.
[00:07:34] Nicole MacLean: you said something again. there's nothing more that will burn a middle manager than a company that doesn't kind of practice what it preaches. And when you suddenly are a middle manager and you are trying to deal with things that are impacting the engagement and the morale and the ability of your team to do their best work.
[00:07:53] Nicole MacLean: You can't control because it's a misalignment from the top into how those things come to practice. Like you said, the values, the way you work, do you align with them? you know, it's interesting how much we'll kind of not suffer through, but we'll tolerate as an ic and then suddenly when we become a manager and you see it being done to other people, that's the straw for, for a lot of people.
[00:08:16] Nicole MacLean: And it's why I think middle management's one of the hardest,
[00:08:19] Kyle Whigham: It's
[00:08:20] Nicole MacLean: roles.
[00:08:21] Kyle Whigham: if you think about it too much, it can wear on you. for me, it all comes back to fit. And that fit is in that first six months, it became very apparent that executive leadership, senior leadership. Wasn't just saying things to say things. They weren't just words on paper and it really reverberates throughout the company.
[00:08:41] Kyle Whigham: And so it was, it was easy of like, okay, I align with this. I can turn around and practice with this and, and, and, and run with it. So yeah, I, I agree with you totally. That like, if, if it's not a right fit, you know, that we might be having a different conversation today. But it's, it's been nothing but a blessing to be able to, to lead the folks that I do, and then have the different connections throughout the company.
[00:09:06] Kyle Whigham: in my role, I'm not just working with our marketing services, I'm now working with our product engineering and design as we try to elevate, Different products and features within our platform. and to be really looked at as that that subject matter expert, validates those thoughts that I had three years ago.
[00:09:23] Nicole MacLean: we're kind of on this topic of just the philosophy of work and, and how. Making sure you're, you're in those values. But one of the things that stood out immediately when I was on your LinkedIn profile is I believe it's your sub headline or, or whatever, which, you know, a lot of people will put their title or former ex Googler or, you know, something that is kind of self-promoting, if you will.
[00:09:45] Nicole MacLean: And yours really struck me because it was good enough. Never is.
[00:09:51] Kyle Whigham: Yeah, there, there's a, a fun story behind that. so I have been an LSU Tiger fan from the time I was like 10 years old, dating back to Warren Morris's walk-off home run against Miami in 1996. And, and I remember telling my dad like, man, it would be great to play there, like vivid memory about this.
[00:10:14] Kyle Whigham: Started going to baseball camps there. All the way through my senior year of high school, I think it was 2003. So I, I, during camp, during week, every lunch there's a guest speaker and one of the, one of the speakers, I think at the time, he was the hitting coach for Sanford University, former LSU Ballplayer, I think his name was Jeremy Moore.
[00:10:34] Kyle Whigham: And he started off with this. Good enough, never is. Now. He obviously related to. Sports and baseball and practicing. But that has resonated with me throughout every facet of my life, be it personal, professional. How I parent my children is this idea of, at the end of the day, if you sit back and like, eh, I did a good enough job and it probably wasn't, and that there's probably somebody else out there that is doing something a little bit extra, doing a little bit more, working a little bit harder than you.
[00:11:06] Kyle Whigham: the idea is like. a hundred percent if I,every single day when I show up, and I'll put this in a work perspective, but it a hundred percent, if I'm feeling 50%, a hundred percent of me on that day is greater than if I show up at a, if I'm here a hundred percent, but I only put in 50% effort.
[00:11:23] Kyle Whigham: So being able to every single day to come in and at the end of the day look back and say, I got 1% better than I was the day before or, and to not sit back and be like. You know what, that was good enough
[00:11:35] Kyle Whigham: And so it's, it's a reminder to just always be striving for greatness.
[00:11:40] Kyle Whigham: whatever that definition means to you.
[00:11:42] Nicole MacLean: Yeah, well, there's so many ways you, you can look at that. And it's funny, I, I am in, you know, we're all in probably a couple. Of different Slack communities. I saw someone post this quote from Lorne Michaels with SNL, of, you know, every Saturday we go on at 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock, whatever time it is, whether we're ready for it or not.
[00:12:03] Nicole MacLean: And you know, they were kind of saying like, some people would say that's great because they've been consistent and that's what people know them for. And the consistency was more important than being the absolute best absolute ready. And others were like, maybe that kind of hurt them. 'cause some weeks are better than others and maybe they shouldn't have gone on that week.
[00:12:21] Nicole MacLean: but it was like, no matter what, no matter where we are, 11 o'clock, that's the deadline. And then I saw that and then like a few hours later I saw your profile and it just kinda got me thinking. 'cause I feel like as marketers there's always this push pull of quantity or quality versus quantity and quality versus speed.
[00:12:39] Nicole MacLean: And this idea of is it good enough or like. Perfect is the enemy of, or great is the enemy of good and
[00:12:45] Nicole MacLean: all that stuff. And I'm just curious is may, this is kind of how we'll go from philosophy to content, but how you balance this idea of yes, there's always incremental and, and this idea of we can keep showing up and putting the effort into be better than we were the day before, but at what point do we maybe hurt ourselves in a business context that we need to be able to, to get out there and not let our own.
[00:13:08] Kyle Whigham: let's relay this to, to AI right now. It's really easy. If I need to spin up a piece of content to go to ChatGPT and say, write me a 1500 word blog post, using this as the title and let it run. You're gonna get that in about 30 seconds, if not quicker. You could post that. And it'll be good enough.
[00:13:30] Kyle Whigham: But is it really going to move the needle? Is it going to make an impact? Or if you are going to go with AI-assisted content, take the time to build out a prompt. Add in specifics. How do you want this page to be laid out? Do you want sections with FAQs or listicles? do you wanna have it reference sources?
[00:13:49] Kyle Whigham: Do you want to have it be written in first or third person try to control. The narrative as much as you can, control what you can control. and then when you post it, you're gonna feel a lot more comfortable and, and have a little bit more pride in what you were able to do rather than, I don't know.
[00:14:08] Kyle Whigham: Skirt in a corner and using a, a one sentence prompt as opposed to a three page prompt that, that you have worked in research and tested on to get this piece of content that is going to make a difference. I know it might be a little taboo to talk about using AI for content, but it's the world we're living in.
[00:14:28] Kyle Whigham: and as far as like other marketing efforts go, like, you know, every, every month we try to a lot. Certain amount of time for all our clients, and I give the team as much autonomy as they need. They're all experts, they're all adults. they have that freedom to make the best choice.
[00:14:42] Kyle Whigham: Like of course we have standard operating procedure, but if you know it, every decision they have to make needs to be data informed. They need to be able to defend it. And if you're just going through the motions or, Doing things to check a box, then I would say that there's, you're not taking a lot of pride in your job.
[00:14:57] Kyle Whigham: You're not gonna be able at the end the day to say, Hey, like, I'm proud of what I did. So I think, I think the distinction is, doesn't have to be perfect. can you sit back and say, are you proud of what you accomplished for that day? Is this something that you would, using clients as an example, if you were that client and you were to receive your work, would you be like, that was a good investment on my behalf to go with this individual, to go with this company?
[00:15:20] Kyle Whigham: and if you can't, maybe reevaluate what you're putting out there.
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[00:16:33] Nicole MacLean: so you talked about maybe it's taboo to talk about AI when it comes to content. I don't, it's not, I mean, it is where we are. I think if anyone says, oh, don't use ai, you're not paying attention to, to what's going on
[00:16:45] Nicole MacLean: and, and you're probably leaving. Yeah. You're leaving something on the table.
[00:16:48] Nicole MacLean: You know, AI can be very helpful. AI can help make it better than what a human can write. I'm curious how you are thinking about. AI in your, in your content production. And the inevitable question follow up question will be how does that impacting SEO? Um, but I know that in itself is, is larger, so we can hold on that.
[00:17:05] Nicole MacLean: But for now, where do you see the most success in working AI into a content workflow?
[00:17:11] Kyle Whigham: Yeah. There, there's a lot happening with that. So our, our content production has, has moved from all human production. to We, we went the prompt route. We developed, SEO, best practice-styled prompts, uh, anywhere. I think we're up to like 333 different options and titles of, of very in-depth type prompts to help create this content.
[00:17:37] Kyle Whigham: And the one thing that we noticed is like you could feed an AI the same prompt four times. You're gonna get four potentially radically different pieces of content depending on what those inputs within the prompt. are And now we've moved to the point and it, it all gets human reviewed, by the way. I think that's the most important part is like whatever the AI spits out, I wouldn't take it at face value quite yet.
[00:17:57] Kyle Whigham: I would always make sure that, or We always make sure that our, our content team kind of goes over it with a fine-tooth comb, make sure it matches brand voice, whatever. now we've gotten to a point where we've utilized a couple of different tools to automate that workflow. So when a, Blog strategy comes in, you look at the title, you're able to pull, okay, what's the target location?
[00:18:19] Kyle Whigham: What is the target keyword? which prompt does it match up with? And then go, and then it still, so we've refined the process a little bit. I think the, the net benefit of this is obviously scalability and, and efficiency. And, and it, it makes it easy to change things on the fly. It makes it easy to,produce content at scale and don't hear that as use AI to produce a hundred pieces of content a day for a website.
[00:18:44] Kyle Whigham: use it wisely. there was a second part of your question.
[00:18:49] Nicole MacLean: Yes.
[00:18:51] Nicole MacLean: So the second part, just AI's impact on how people are searching.
[00:18:55] Nicole MacLean: What's your take on it so far?
[00:18:57] Kyle Whigham: I think what's really interesting and what we're starting to see right now is these LLMs, Google's AI overview, Google's AI mode. they want unique expert insights, and I think that is the key differentiator between folks that are using AI to produce broad content. You know, an example might be, oh, here's top 10 renovation tips, and, and like, that's great.
[00:19:23] Kyle Whigham: that sounds amazing. Or, is definitely on target for a real estate agent. Like how do you increase your home's curb appeal, but if you don't localize it. To your target audience and your primary market that you're trying to, to focus on. And you certainly don't add your own expert insights of like, Hey, this, this, you can say, this is what I did in my home.
[00:19:42] Kyle Whigham: Or Here's a list of my favorite, tiles or LVP flooring that, that we installed and they look great, or almost as indistinguishable from Harwood, without those unique expert insights or first person experiences. You're just kind of shouting into the ether, right? And, you're getting lost in the mix of every other website that is producing content at scale.
[00:20:07] Kyle Whigham: the other thing that we're starting to see is, and that, I don't want this to sound alarming, but a lot of these LLMs tend to value brand authority, brand power, but is for. Smaller businesses, individual agents or or smaller brokerages, you can stand out from these big brands by truly becoming an expert and honing in on what is your niche, what is your area of expertise?
[00:20:38] Kyle Whigham: Because. We've seen with, the larger brands like HubSpot, when these IO reviews, rolled out, they saw a massive drop in traffic and pages that were indexed because they were trying to cover everything under the sun when it came to marketing and the value or their perception of Google's AI's, Google's crawlers, was you can't be an expert in everything.
[00:20:59] Kyle Whigham: So if you're, if you're a real estate agent, you. Can't try to cover every topic under the sun in general real estate. But if you're a real estate agent in Beverly Hills, more often than not, all your content should revolve around luxury properties, luxury homes, luxury lifestyle, tax information, and really drill down into the individual layers, what that means, what your personal experience is, and that is gonna separate you from the pack.
[00:21:28] Kyle Whigham: it's ever evolving. I think my answer to this would've been a little bit different had we had this conversation even like six months ago. Um,
[00:21:36] Nicole MacLean: six weeks ago, I feel like people were still in a different spot.
[00:21:41] Kyle Whigham: and in my, in the journey in my career, like circling all the way back to being an entry level link builder, like you could easily manipulate Google search. I think these LLMs are a lot less manipulable. Manipulable What? It's a lot harder to trick an AI than it was Google's crawlers. I could go and build a thousand links overnight with one anchor text and immediately I'm ranking number one.
[00:22:07] Kyle Whigham: I didn't need any content on my website. Now I. I can't build a thousand links overnight 'cause I'm gonna get to cite the index. But if I don't have any supporting content that supports what I'm promoting on my homepage as being an expert in, or I have transactional or money pages that are geared to, to convert leads that are.
[00:22:27] Kyle Whigham: I'm using real estate 'cause that's what I know I've known for the last three years. But if I, if I'm trying to get people to come to my page that is blowing Rock Homes for Sale and I have no supporting content about what I know about Blowing Rock, what it's like to live there, what the housing market looks like, then I'm not gonna see any traction for the pages that are gonna help me convert leads.
[00:22:48] Kyle Whigham: We can just keep going on this. What we're starting to see even more is with the rollout of, and, and I'm gonna use AI overviews because it, it's a lot easier to track right now. Now that the data is in Google Search Console, is it? It's called the Great Decoupling. As you're seeing impression, share, rise, and clicks to your website.
[00:23:07] Kyle Whigham: Decline. And this is because as users, they're typing in their for mostly informational intent searches. So think of like what's, what are things to do? questions where you're not looking to buy anything. No commercial intent or transactional intent. And so you may, your website or your blog post may be linked to in the a IO reviews, but I know when I search for something informational.
[00:23:31] Kyle Whigham: I'm not always clicking through to read that full article because I'm getting this the Reader's Digest in the AI overview. Now, here's the good and the bad. Here's where we can take some action outta here is those pages that are being used for AI overview. If you have. Lead generation pages on your website, you know that these pages that are ranking in a IO reviews, you can then start leveraging that authority from a IO reviews and start passing them on to passing on that authority via internal links and semantically related, keywords and search freezes to your pages that are gonna be transactional intent, for when those searches happen.
[00:24:10] Kyle Whigham: The AI overviews and AI mode. For the real estate industry are I think going to be a lot less detrimental to. Because estate, until Google decides to buy a Zillow or pay into every single MLS, they can't give you listings, right? You can't purchase a home through Google. They're still gonna need to go to your website.
[00:24:34] Kyle Whigham: And so you need to be able to have. All of your authority pointing to these transactional pages. So when somebody does want to buy a home, you're showing up, but you can support that transactional pages by having quality content that is unique, powerful from your own perspective, and showcases your local area expertise.
[00:24:53] Kyle Whigham: I think that's what it comes down to is you gotta show, showcase that you're the expert.
[00:24:57] Nicole MacLean: it's so interesting 'cause as we are trying to dive in how to better give clients information on how they're showing up in prompts and what, what are the prompts, you know, it's way more unique search terms than what it was in Google because it's not only how someone chooses to word, potentially a very lengthy prompt, but also everything that it's learned about them.
[00:25:19] Nicole MacLean: Up to date and that that can even impact what they see. And so I think it does kind of, we haven't figured this out yet, but you know, if you have a personality that chat is recognizing, and then you as a, a real estate agent, write a blog post that maybe has the exact same information, educational information as the 12 other realtors in the area, but your own personality is in there, and that better matches what chat knows about.
[00:25:46] Nicole MacLean: The pattern thus far of how this person prompts you might get pulled in and that type of thing was never considered with Google
[00:25:55] Kyle Whigham: Right,
[00:25:55] Nicole MacLean: before. It was just whether Google views you as authoritative or not, regardless of like style. and that is by no means scientific. So don't
[00:26:04] Nicole MacLean: take that as
[00:26:04] Kyle Whigham: bring up a really good you bring up a really good point though about, LLMs and, and personalized search, right? I know I've mostly focused on Google throughout this chat, but I mean, chat, GBT has larger market share, than it did a week ago, and I think it's only gonna continue to grow. but you hit the nail on the head, the being able to identify the prompts that are being. The visibility tools that are out there are cost prohibitive for, Joe business owner. there's nothing on the market right now that makes a lot of sense. And you could run the same prompt a hundred times a day and you're gonna see different answers. It, it takes a entirely different data set to understand, I think, how LLMs are viewing a business or viewing a website.
[00:26:55] Kyle Whigham: because some of it's personalization, because some of it is, I mean based on the user, but certainly based on on how chat g so.
[00:27:09] Kyle Whigham: Is routinely brought up in, in different case studies. Is LLM seem to reward fresh content and refresh content. So if you want to be topically relevant for, I don't know, seasonality, you should be writing about what's happening this weekend or like 4th of July that's coming out, uh, in a couple weeks here.
[00:27:29] Kyle Whigham: Write about where's the best places to go see fireworks. Well, you're likely not going to create a lead out of there, but you're going to establish trust with the user. You're going to show these l LMS that, that you are intimately familiar with the area that you could be an expert in the area,
[00:27:44] Nicole MacLean: That also just depends on, on which LLM you're using. Right? Be and the model of it. 'cause I know like in some cases, Chacha PT is pulling from its latest state of the internet, which is like mid 2024.
[00:27:58] Kyle Whigham: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:59] Nicole MacLean: But some of chance Bt, depending on kinda which model you're on, is, is live. And same thing for like perplexity or Claude.
[00:28:06] Nicole MacLean: so then you also have to keep that in mind of when you're pulling information and where you may show up more of.
[00:28:12] Kyle Whigham: It's tricky, right? And, and I, I wish I could sit here and say one way or the other, or put out a definitive statement, but it's so fluid right now. it's everchanging. It's an exciting time. Like as a marketer, it's really exciting because it, I relate it to when I. Google's penguin and panda algorithm updates came out.
[00:28:32] Kyle Whigham: There were a lot of SEOs that made a lot of money gaming the system. these algorithm penalties came out and they're like, they wash their hands. I'm like, I'm done. I'm out. And I think you're gonna see that a lot with marketers now, now that these LLMs are are out, you can either adjust and learn and capitalize on this new version of search or you'd be like.
[00:28:55] Kyle Whigham: I'm just gonna switch gears altogether. I'm gonna go buy 30 acres of land and start farming.
[00:29:01] Nicole MacLean: I would stand on on this opinion is I think you're gonna have the immediate people who, it may not be the marketer that pulls the strategy, but the CEO or the, the leadership team that doesn't have the stomach for it. And I was gonna say SEO is dead and stop producing content.
[00:29:17] Nicole MacLean: And I think we have a solid 12 to 18 months before this all really kicks in, that if you stay. You know, steady on your strategy, if not even double down, there's gonna be market share to gain that. While I do believe organic traffic, and impressions are gonna go down and AI overviews and the zero click search and all that, it is changing it.
[00:29:40] Nicole MacLean: But I do think that there's room to grow actually in this channel because so many people are gonna pull out and if you stay steady while preparing for the future, like don't just. Do your classic tried and true SEO. Keep experimenting, learning AI search, staying up to date on it, making sure your content is just getting better and better.
[00:30:01] Nicole MacLean: Then you're gonna be at this perfect inflection point for when it flips in like 12 to 18 months. But because so many people are gonna go start farming, there is still opportunity right now for, for folks.
[00:30:12] Kyle Whigham: I think you hit the nail on the head. I think you're a hundred percent right. I think to give encouragement to anybody that's listening, if you've been following best practices and not trying to gain the system and, and you've been producing quality content, you've been promoting yourself on social media, you're creating partnerships with other local businesses where you're getting mentioned on other websites, You're in great shape. I am a firm believer you're, if you do scroll through LinkedIn, you're gonna find, like you said, all these posts of oh, SEO is dead. Oh, content marketing is fallen by the wayside. I don't think it's all doom and gloom. I. I think if, you have had a quality strategy in place, you are set up extremely well for the future.
[00:30:55] Kyle Whigham: And if, and like you said, if you are thinking about doubling down, now is the time to build up that content backlog to even venture out. and I think the future of search and, and as LMS get more and more advanced is multimodal content. Start thinking about how can I, how can I take my blog post and have a video around it?
[00:31:15] Kyle Whigham: Chop that up into reels, chop it up into YouTube shorts. and then you start creating links on all these different, assets and funnels. participate in a Reddit community. there's multiple studies out there that say, you know, chat, GBT pulls something. I thought I saw something crazy, like 40%. Of what it recommends and or links to is coming from Reddit.
[00:31:36] Kyle Whigham: Like there's a huge opportunity for you to get involved in, in your niches subreddit, your industry subreddit, and participate. I'd even say go so far as creating your business's own subreddit. Have a admin account and if, if people are searching for you, your Reddit community is gonna show up, people can interact directly with you.
[00:31:57] Kyle Whigham: And then you have a user account that then goes out and interacts in these other subreddits that are related to your community. don't do it in a commercial way, like follow the rules of Reddit, be positive, promote good things, but you're gonna start seeing that pay off the more and more you invest in different funnels rather than relying on traditional search.
[00:32:16] Nicole MacLean: Yeah, and I think that's such a great place to end the conversation. Too is just this idea of like, it's not doom and gloom and you can't game the system. Like I think if anything, what I've learned is everyone's always out there saying like, we'll just do the link building or just put more keywords in, like just get the keyword density up high enough.
[00:32:34] Nicole MacLean: And to your point, every single algorithm update, every time there's been a significant shift in SEO, it's just made it harder to do SEO. Well, and I think this is just maybe one of the biggest jumps we've had. In a long time. It's like there is no gaming the system anymore. Your content just actually has to be good.
[00:32:51] Nicole MacLean: You do have to have a point of view. You have to either find a really good partner or you need to take the, you know, internal resources to do this. And there is reward and return on the other side of that, but you can't just game with a thousand links
[00:33:08] Kyle Whigham: exactly. exactly. One, one term we, we throw around often, that I've been a big fan of is like, you have to match user intent. Satisfy is not just about keywords, it's about answering questions, how to go about understanding those questions. The keywords will give you clues, but there's all sorts of other metrics that you can look at as far as engagement, on once they get to your website.
[00:33:30] Kyle Whigham: if you were trying to boil it all down to something, it's, you have to establish yourself as an authority. You have to match user search intent and understand what's your unique value proposition amongst this constant barrage of noise that's on the internet.
[00:33:46] Kyle Whigham: What separates you from the competition?
[00:33:50] Nicole MacLean: thanks for listening to this episode of Content Matters, created in partnership with Share Your Genius. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend. Otherwise, you can find all the resources you need to stay connected with us in the show notes.
Till next time.