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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
Self-promotional listicles,
if done well, are not bad.
If they're written well, I don't actually
think it's like a scammy tactic because
you can argue it's satisfying the intent
of what someone's searching for, and
we're not trying to be dishonest in
terms of the way that we're listing
companies in there, trying to force
rank them, or even just trying to
hide the fact that we are talking
about our own client in the blog post.
But I will say that many people
don't approach listicles the same
way that we think about them.
For us, we rank and convert for, like,
uh, tons of clients using this for tons
of keywords, but here's the more honest
approach to actually writing these.
You don't need to call yourself the best.
You just talk about yourself first, and
talk about yourself in detail, and sell
your prop- value propositions in an
honest, authentic, and transparent way
where you say, "Hey, this is who we are.
This is how we designed our product or
its features, or this is how we build our
service and strategy around our agency.
And if this is for you, great," and
you just talk about that at length.
You don't have to say, "We're the best
Welcome back to the Grow
and Convert Marketing Show.
I'm Devesh, that's Benji.
Today we're gonna talk about something
that even our own clients have been
bringing up because this narrative and,
and a few pieces by influential SEO
folks has been kind of going viral or
spreading, going viral in our little
nerdy SEO community online, which
basically these narratives are that
Well, I'm gonna start with something
very specific, which is this, this idea
that self-promotional list posts are not
working, um, or are even hurting sites.
And, and then we're gonna talk in the
second half about kind of what we think
is a related narrative, uh, for GEO
that your own content doesn't really
help in GEO and it's off-site content.
So let's start with the SEO narrative.
That seems to have started from
a Substack post off of Lily
Ray's, um, Substack newsletter.
Lily Ray, for those that don't know,
is a prominent voice in the SEO space.
We've sort of, uh, seen her on LinkedIn
and, and she's commented back and, and
honestly, we generally tend to agree
with most of the things she says.
Um, and so she's well-respected.
And w- we saw this initial post, and of
course, that has a lot of relationship
to what we do, or it's related heavily
to what we do 'cause we've been talking
about this in our own terminology.
We call them, like, category keywords.
It's a subset of pain point SEO keywords.
We've been doing-- going after category
keywords for, I don't know, seven, eight
years, and they've worked extremely well.
And then we had our own client, one
of our own clients actually Slack us
the article and saying, "You guys,
like, are self-promotional listicles
dead, and should we do something else?"
And, um, to cut to the chase- Well, mul-
multiple clients have said that actually.
And, and beyond just producing the
listicles, I don't know if we were the
first ones to do it, but I wanna say we
were one of the stronger voices in terms
of explaining why you should list your
company first in a list post when it was
more normal, I think probably before we
got started doing this, to list your,
your company somewhere in the list post.
Like, maybe not as the first
person- Yeah … but maybe like
two or three, uh, spaces down.
Or sometimes last.
I've seen it also last.
Yeah, last.
And but we, we made the argument after
testing this a little bit that it just
makes sense from a conversion rate
optimization perspective to list yourself
first because many people don't even
make their way down in, in that list.
Yeah.
So, um, we have an entire article,
written article on our blog that is
gonna come out about this and, um, and
that's gonna go into a lot of the, like,
nitty-gritty details of the data- So
I wanna try to make sure that this is
interesting to listen to as a podcast
or watch and listen to on YouTube.
So I don't wanna spend too much time
in, like, the nitty-gritty of the
data, but we're gonna go over…
'cause you can read that in
the blog post, which we'll put
in the show notes, of course.
Um, but we're gonna go into
sort of the main takeaways.
So overall, um, when we look at the,
her article, Lily Ray's article,
basically the, the data presented,
she sort of dissects, I think it's
something like six to 10, somewhere
around five to 10, um, prominent
mostly or entirely SaaS company blogs.
She anonymizes them, but she also
puts, like, the screenshots of the
SERPs and the article, so you can
just, like, Google the exact text
of the article and fi- and find out.
It's, like, some big brands
mostly that you've heard of.
Um, and what she notices and
what she points out is she
uses, I forget the exact…
It's not Similarweb, but it's
a competitor, like this traffic
monitoring of competitors
tool, kind of like Similarweb.
She uses that and, um, and shows that
they have all seemed to have had a
significant traffic dip in this very
specific time window in late January 2026.
And I think her Substack is
published, is dated February 3rd.
So, like, all of the graphs
she presents has, have these,
like, quick dips at the end.
And for those that are watching on
YouTube, I can share my screen so that
you can kind of follow along a little bit.
Like, here are these just, you know,
it's like the graph starts at 2021 on
the left side, so it's really zoomed out.
And right at the end, around, in
this case, February 2026, there's
this dip in overall traffic.
And this other one, it's
right around the same time.
So, like, over and over again,
like, you know, blog after blog.
But, but the larger point is she's
showing this sort of third-party
estimate or whatever of overall blog
traffic and saying, "Huh, there is
a dip right at the end of January."
And then she's saying, "I noticed that
in this blog and that blog and that
blog," in her examples, they happen
to have something like dozens or, in
most of them, hundreds of what she
defines as a self-promotional listicle
So basically what, what was caught
our eye and what became important to
us is we said, "Well, wait a minute.
We publish tons of these for our clients.
We monitor the rankings, the traffic,
and the conversions for all of
these because we sort of have to.
It's, it's what we do." Um, this
is not entirely what we do, by
the way, but, like, what we do
is publish content that ranks for
SEO keywords and converts, right?
And so, like, we're, we're on monthly
calls with clients, so we would
know, and we're just asking around.
We sort of had an internal discussion,
and everyone's like, "No, I haven't seen
any dip recently." And so we're like,
"What is going on?" So I dug into this
article and I noticed the first kind
of, you know, issue or objection I have
is that is correlation, not causation.
Specifically, what I just mentioned
she has is you're looking at overall
blog traffic happening to have a dip
in late January or early February, and
you're saying, "Hey, this blog also
happens to have dozens or hundreds of
self- these self-promotional listicles."
And, and so then immediately
I'm like, hold on.
Does she isolate the ranking
position or traffic of those
self-promotional listicles?
And I don't see that in, in the article,
which I thought was interesting.
And so I was like, well,
we can just look at ours.
We have, we have dozens of those as well.
And when I looked over and over
and over again in ours, I saw
absolutely no change in ranking.
So immediately I was like, we need to
publish this if for no other reason
than to have something on our site
that shows the counter-narrative to
our own clients or to prospects that
are like, "Hey, like, I've heard this
online or whatever." Um, and, and,
and so that's kind of the big thing.
The other key detail there is one of
the first examples she shows is a very
prominent SaaS company, um, and she
even says it has something like…
Let me scroll so I don't
get this, this wrong.
30,000 articles indexed on the blog, on
just the blog, and 191 of them she defines
as self-promotional listicles, and I will
get-- we'll get into the nitty-gritty
of the definition of that in a second.
So then that was the other thing
that kinda caught my eye, where
I was like, hold up, hold up.
We're saying a blog with 30,000 articles
on it happened to see a traffic dip,
and then, uh, under 200 of those 30,000
were this one type of content, and we're
saying that type of content's responsible?
But we haven't actually looked
and seen whether we're… I'm,
I'm seeing no evidence presented
that that, tho-those 191.
Like, I'm not seeing a dissection of
their ranking positions or their traffic
isolated to say like, "Oh, they look
like they're, they've all tanked in
ranking." And then I can look at our own
client data and be like, we have a ton
of these, and they don't seem to be…
Their rankings seem to be completely fine.
Um, and that's the core of
kind of what we're publishing.
I'm gonna pause there, Benji, if
you have any questions or comments.
No, I don't, I, I don't really
have any questions on that.
Yeah.
Um, so Next key item is the definition
of a self-promotional listicle.
So like if, just to recap, what I'm saying
is in our data we have a ton of these,
and when we i- we are isolating the actual
ranking position of that themselves.
Um, and, and, and, and then, and so,
and, and we're not seeing any decline.
I, actually, before I get to
the definition, I should say I
wanna be very particular and not
put words into Lily Ray's mouth.
To, to be fair, she never says or
claims that there's proof here,
and the article itself, let me
actually screen share one more time.
It's more, it's more like raising
the question, is this the cause?
Yeah.
And then showing, showing the traffic
graphs and kinda leaving it at that.
Yeah.
The title of her article is,
Is Google Finally Cracking Down
on Self-Promotional Listicles?
So it's a question.
Then the subtitle is also interesting,
The Most Popular GEO Tactic Might Indeed
Be Risky For SEO Purposes After All.
Might is a key thing.
And, and in one of the parts
of her examples she even says,
like, it, it was a tiny fraction.
It was like less than a
percent or something like that.
Like, there was w- or here's one ex-
example where she says the blog had
1,400, 1,400 articles and 61, only
4%, are self-promotional listicles.
And another one it was like .6%.
I calculated all of this.
It's in our counter article or
our article about this where
we have, like, the percentage.
So to be fair, she's just raising
this as a possibility and a question.
But what I say in my, in our article
that we're about to publish is, but
even raising the question, especially
when you have a platform like she
does, it, it affects decision-making
because then, like, I think it was
Search Engine Journal, like, did like
a kind of a syndication of this or
their own article and linked to hers
and said, "Hey, like, this is a thing."
And then people are looking at this and,
and, and most people are not gonna closely
look at the details like I'm doing here,
and they're gonna be like, "Oh my gosh,"
just like our clients, and be like,
"You guys, should we change strategies?"
Or people cherry-pick quotes from this
article and publish them on LinkedIn- Yeah
and don't, don't get into the
nuance of what she's trying to say.
And so this becomes a popular narrative
that says basically the self-promotional
listicles are dead, and that's, that
is largely the reason why I think it's
probably been brought up on, I would
say, four or five different client
calls over the last month or two, just
seeing these articles and then raising
the question, should we still do this?
Is there a risk to doing this?
And yeah, that was the reason for really
doing this video and writing the article.
Yeah.
So you can go to our article to see
the exact examples, and maybe we'll
share them in a second here as well.
But, um, l- let's, actually
l- let's do that first.
Um, well let's, let's actually now look at
some of these examples and of, of our own.
Maybe before we even get into the
examples- There, there's hypotheses
that I have in terms of why certain
sites are getting hit from this.
Like, maybe in those examples, it
doesn't necessarily show that certain
sites are, are getting hit from the,
the self-promotional listicles, but
just from what I've seen, I, I think
marketers are great at taking a strategy
that works and just running it into the
ground by, like, trying to- Over-automate
like, take it, yeah, take it to the
extreme and just, they, they take a
concept and there's, like, a lot of nuance
in, in how that concept is done or how
it works, and they just basically try
to take as many shortcuts as possible to
just game the system, and then that ruins
the whole, like, channel or tactic here.
Yeah.
I mean, you could think back to five
years ago, the term growth hacker.
Like, 10 years ago, the grow- the
term growth hacker was this term that
was seen as, like, at the forefront
of Silicon Valley and what people
needed to do in growth, and the idea
was basically you, you come into a
channel, you test it, and you scale
up what works, essentially, uh, if, if
you're, like, breaking it down simply.
And then you see a whole wave of
marketers branding themselves as growth
hackers and basically just doing really
scammy tactics, and then the whole
term growth hacker kind of dies because
the masses took it a- and ran with it,
and basically ran it into the ground
because they, they took, like, some of
the principles and just didn't do it
well and didn't do it correctly, and
then just, like, the whole thing died.
And it's kinda the same thing here
where- Self-promotional listicles,
if done well, are not bad.
Like, the examples that we're gonna show,
if, if they're written well, I don't
actually think it's, like, a scammy tactic
because- Yeah … you can argue it's
satisfying the intent of what someone's
searching for, and we're not trying to
be dishonest in terms of the way that
we're listing companies in there or trying
to force rank them, or even just trying
to hide the fact that we are talking
about our own client in the blog post.
But I don't-- I will say that many
people don't approach listicles the
same way that we think about them.
Yeah, so- And so they see this tactic
working, and they kind of take certain
elements that we think are important
in, in the way that we write 'em, and
they completely disregard that, and they
produce hundreds of 'em for terms that are
not actually relevant to their business.
They actually do try to force rank them.
They do try to hi- they, they create
some fake persona at the company that
comes across as some third-party expert
and then tries to say that this company
is the best and hide the fact that this
person actually works for the company.
So I do think that there's a lot
of validity to what Lily is saying
in that There's a good portion of
marketers who are just taking this
tactic that is working well and
just not doing it the proper way.
Yeah.
Let, let me do something I probably
should've done at the beginning, the, and,
and you kind of already made the argument.
Let's define it.
Yeah.
Okay.
I probably should've
done it at the beginning.
So self-promotional listicle,
what does that mean?
It's, uh, a list post that almost
always is going after what we in
Grow and Convert terminology call
category keywords, basically things
like best CRM software, in our
case, best content marketing agency.
And in fact, you can remove the best.
We, we don't even target the best.
You sort of end up ranking for the,
the term best as well, just CRM
software, content marketing agency.
We're gonna show an example here from
a client, trucking management software.
And what she calls a self-promotional
listicle is you then…
The intent of that blog post obviously
is that the user wants to list.
You're typing in best CRM software,
you want a list of CRM software.
And she's saying there's these companies
who are themselves CRM software who then
write th- this post, and they… And
this is, this is an important detail.
She says, "And they put themselves
as number one on this list, and even
sometimes pretend it is or act as though
it is some objective list where they
like, you know, evaluated all the options
and voila, they, they came out ahead
in some objective set of criteria."
And she's saying this is sort of
like misleading and self-serving.
I could pull up some examples too.
I didn't have this up before, but
it jogs my memory of one that I
came across recently that I think
is- I actually thought about, like,
listing a bunch of these examples
in the published article, and I was
like, "No, I don't wanna give these
people links or these article links."
But, like, a- as you pull up
those examples, what I'll say is,
as you said, that is misleading.
We agree.
And, but our argument, we've been
going after those keywords for years
for our clients, and they work like
gangbusters, specifically, just in case
you're not familiar with everything
we've talked about as Grow and
Convert and Pain Point SEO, they work
extremely well because of the keyword.
The article's important, but the
keyword has a massive amount of buying
intent because they're literally at
the bottom of the funnel looking for
software, evaluating options, looking
for that type of product or service.
And so if you're there,
you're in a really good spot.
Like, you, you, you, you,
you, y- you're, you're…
It's y- it's on you to fumble it, right?
Like, you should be able to
kind of get good leads from it.
Now, but for us- We don't do those
scammy things in ours, and here's the
specifics of what Benji's talking about.
To rank for this, you do not
need to force rank the list.
So just because someone's asking for
the best content marketing agencies,
you don't have to be like, "The
number one is Grow and Convert."
And even worse is like, "We have evaluated
10 leading agencies in an objective
set of criteria." That is pretending
to be Wirecutter for consumer goods,
or like CNET or PCMag or whatever.
It's like pretending to be those,
which actually, s- side note,
side note, we're talking about
these self-promotional listicles.
You know who else does it
in a really scammy way?
All of those software review sites.
The position of those people in
software review sites is not objective.
It's just whoever pays them more.
Yeah.
They're paying them 3,000, 4,000,
$10,000 a month to be listed at the top.
You've ranted about this on some
other podcast episode, I think.
I, I, I hate, I hate,
I hate that industry.
Gartner, Forrester, it's all a scam- Yeah,
it's all pay to play … in my opinion.
I mean, it, it's, it's, it's truly
those companies, you pay them
hundreds of thousands of dollars to do
unbiased research about your business.
And then they put you in some magic
quadrant, and that makes everyone
else wanna buy your software.
But it's not an objective, like
way of viewing the industry.
It's, it's truly whoever's gonna pay
the most, they come up with research
that makes your company look good.
And same thing with G2, same thing with
like we have experience doing this for our
own agency, where we worked with Clutch,
that's like an agency review site, and
learned through the process of trying
to get reviews there that they promote
certain agencies who pay them a lot.
Yeah, they were basically- So it's
like- … like, "Pay us more, and then
you'll get higher." Yeah, and it's just
like- I, anyway, so that, that's an aside.
We should, we should do that.
We should have a grow, grow and convert
quadrant, but we're the only one.
We're the only agency on
the top right quadrant.
Be like, "Look, like we
objectively evaluated all of them."
Um, anyway, that's an aside.
Others do that.
So for us, we rank and convert
for like a tons of clients
using this for tons of keywords.
But here's the more honest
approach to actually writing these.
Number one, you don't force rank.
So what Benji said is from a viewer or
eyeballs or time on page perspective,
it makes sense to put yours at the top
because you just have this decay of who's
looking at the page as you scroll down.
Look at any scroll map
and it's the same, right?
And so you want- if you don't put
yourself at the top, you're just
working hard for a ranking and then
getting less views to your brand.
It makes no sense.
But it doesn't have to be that
you're saying, "This is the
ranking of best content agencies
or CRM software or whatever."
Number two, you don't need
to call yourself the best.
You just talk about yourself first, and
talk about yourself in detail, and sell
your prop- value propositions in an
honest, authentic, and transparent way
where you say, "Hey, this is who we are.
This is what we, we believe in.
This is how we designed our product or
its features, or this is how we build
our service and strategy around our
agency, and like we're proud of it.
And, and if this is for you, great."
And you just talk about that at length.
You don't have to say, "We're the best
And then the way you present it to the
other options is you just say, "Here
are other prominent brands we often hear
about from our customers or in sales
conversations or whatever." That's honest.
That's true.
And the argument on our side
is that actually fulfills
search intent, and here's why.
If you are searching, especially for
B2B but even consumer products, if
you are… In fact, let's, let's take
a consumer product as an example.
If you're buying a car and you get
to, like, y- let's say you're buying
a pickup truck and you get to, uh,
the Toyota Tacoma page, you kind of
want to hear Toyota be like, "Here's
all the best features of the Tacoma,"
and then you'll go and evaluate
it versus some other pickup truck.
You're not like, "Oh my God,
Toyota's, like, so misleading
because they're making Tacoma sound
good." You know where you are.
You know you're on their site, and you,
and you want them to sort of… You
just, you want the best pickup truck.
You're like, "Okay, give me your
best features." I think the same
thing is true with B2B products.
So you're like, okay, like, if
I'm on Salesforce's site and
they're talking about CRM software
saying, "We designed it XYZ way.
Here are the key features.
Here's what's important," and you're like,
"Okay," like, "that makes sense," i- in
our minds, the consumer is not stupid.
They know that they're
on Salesforce's site.
They can look at the URL.
They can look at the logo on the top left.
And so as long as they're n- the,
the brand is not pretending, as
long as the brand is not saying, you
know, pretending they're Wirecutter
or PCMag and being like, "We did an
objective analysis of all of this
software," like, that's just stupid.
That just comes across as
really scammy, really cringey,
or just straight-up dishonest.
So we agree with that.
Um, that's the big picture.
So the definition in our case is w-
in fact, in many places in the written
post of this, I, I switched the term,
and I often call it product-focused
list post or category, product category
list post or bottom-of-the-funnel list
post just to sort of get in people's
heads that it doesn't have to be this,
quote-unquote, self-promotional listicle.
You are still spending a bunch of
time on yourself because that makes
sense from a marketing perspective,
but you're doing it in an hon- honest,
authentic, and transparent way.
Do you want me to pull
up the example first?
Sure.
Do you wanna go negative example
first and then, and then show-
Sure … the way to do it right?
Sure, let's look at the negative example.
That'll be fun.
Yeah, I actually came across this
post, I wanna say a few months ago.
What I don't like about this approach,
well, first they, they changed I can see
that they changed the title since I've--
or like the, the person's author bio.
It used to say like editorial
team at WebinarNinja.
But what I really do not like about this
post is, is I do feel like this is pushing
the boundaries of what you should do.
Uh, first of all, you can see
that ProProfs owns WebinarNinja,
or they're affiliated.
But then the way that this is written
is it's written in like a first
person, I tried all these webinar
products and like some of them failed.
It's like I lost $2,000 on a
webinar from using one of them.
I ran-- I really ran all these real
webinars across major platforms.
Like did you really?
Like you're a writer at this company
and you used 15 different webinar
products for various different
webinars, and then you're truly writing
about your first person experience?
It's just not really believable to me.
Uh, and then the way that it's written is
they truly do try to say they're the best
when you get down to the list Yeah, no,
look, just look at that H2 subheading.
Number one, WebinarNinja, best
webinar software to generate leads,
grow sales, and teach better.
So just keep that in mind when we
go l- look at our, um, examples
And then a lot of the times they,
that they bring in these ratings
too, and I just, I don't know.
And, and, like, some, some of the posts
will cherry-pick negative ratings for
their competitors and things like that.
But again, they're trying to force rank
this, and they're also just trying to
say, "I've tried all these different
platforms, and this is my objective view
on why WebinarNinja is the best," even
though you can tell this person is a
writer and editor at the company- Yeah
that owns WebinarNinja.
Yeah.
And I just, it's just not believable, and
this is something that I take issue with.
Like, we have clients asking us about
writing, writing these type of posts
in that first person point of view.
But if you haven't actually used
these products and you don't
have first-hand experience,
essentially you're just lying here.
And I just take issue with how these
kind of posts are written, and this
definitely does push the boundaries and
is something that I wouldn't recommend
doing for many companies, even though
this tactic did work for a while.
I actually didn't look right before
this if they still rank number
one for best webinar platforms.
But essentially, when we were trying
to write a post that competed with
this, we had a client that asked
us should they take a similar
approach 'cause this is working.
And our answer is just no.
Because yes, it's working in the short
term, but again, if you can clearly
tell this is just, like, lying, it's,
it, even if it works in the short term,
usually these tactics end up hurting
your site in the long term, and it's just
not something that we would recommend.
Yeah, and I'll say, like, this is extreme.
I haven't seen that often.
But the kind of, like, blah corporate
version of this is just, uh, the company
saying, like, "We have evaluated,"
or, "We looked at," and like, "We're
the best." Like, the, the, the larger
takeaway of how you write it is you
just don't need to say you're the best.
So now let, let's look at what
we do in, um, in contrast.
So I'm gonna pull up- One, one more
thing really quickly before we move on.
Another thing that I think is very scammy
in the way that people do these is they
put in this schema to try to make it
seem like there's reviews for this.
It, it's, like, supposed to help with
click-through rates, and they'll put
product schema in their blog posts.
Oh.
And this is something- I
haven't seen that or noticed it.
So there's, like, star ratings
Yeah, there's star ratings.
And so sometimes this actually, this works
to get your product up top here, and,
and then it has a higher click-through
rate 'cause people are like, "Oh, this
post has, like, real reviews in it."
Oh, God.
But really this is- This is like
a hack that you shouldn't do.
We've asked our technical
SEO multiple times.
Like, I don't even think there are reviews
in here, or if they are, they're hidden.
Oh, I remember this.
I think there was at least one
client that noticed it, uh, on
the competitor- Yeah, and asked us
sites, and he was like, "Hey, should
we do the same thing?" But if you l-
review the guidelines for s- like product
schema, it has a very certain purpose.
Yeah.
Or a very specific purpose behind-
Yeah … when that's supposed
to be used versus when it's not.
So these kind of tactics were being
used and, like, working for a short
period of time, but you can get your
site completely penalized by using the
wrong schema on certain blog posts.
And so this is, for whatever reason
in this space, they tend to use
a lot of the more scammy tactics.
But those are a couple things that
have been brought up by clients, so
I just wanted to share them, because
those two tactics I do think are
fully bending the rules, and I think
Lily's argument in terms of, like,
seeing this kind of stuff and calling
it out is completely valid when- Yep
this is the approach that
these companies are taking.
100%. Okay, so I'm
gonna show two examples.
One is ours, one is a client.
So for on the client side, I'm gonna
first show their ranking stats.
So in contrast to the way sort of
Lily does the analysis where she's
like, "This company's blog seems to
be declining in traffic, at least in
that, in that short period around end
of January 2026, and they happen to have
50, 60, 100, 200 of these blog posts.
Maybe it's related." We're-- We
just said, "Well, we know, we
know our s- our, our list posts.
Let's just look at the rankings." If
Google is cracking down, the number one
thing you would see is the ranking drop.
So here is trucking management
software as a keyword.
The blue line is our client's post,
um, on their blog for that keyword,
which we'll dissect the post itself.
You see that it's solid, solid, solid.
Around the end of January 2026,
you don't see much movement.
Um, and then it's still right now
ranking number one and has just been
since, let's say, September 2025,
it's just been hovering between, like,
i- in, in the first few spots, uh,
between one and 10, and recently just
between one and four, one and five.
And then similarly, I'll flip
over to our own, and we'll look at
one of our articles, Best Content
Marketing Agencies, and that has
had-- It's pretty competitive,
and we were late to the game here.
A bunch of fluctuations since
2024 where the graph starts.
But if anything, after January 2026,
we've actually seen it spike back up,
and we're in the top few spots right now.
I think right now Ahrefs
is showing as number one.
It's pretty volatile.
It could show up at any spot if you
Google- Yeah, through, through multiple
Google updates and spam updates too.
Yeah.
Which tell, tells me that something
about the way that these posts are
written is, is working with Google.
Google actually thinks that we're an
authority on both of these topics, and
there's validity in what's said here.
So, like, yeah, i- if, if it was written
in a way that was scammy or spammy,
w- I would have expected through, I
think, three Google updates from the
December core update, the March spam
update, and then the March core update,
we would have taken a massive hit,
and instead our posts got pushed up.
Yeah.
So let's now contrast this
to how we write this post.
So we'll start with our own Best
Content Marketing Agencies compared
to, um, the example you were
showing and, and, and some of the
examples that are in Lily's post.
So, uh, I, I'm gonna kinda get into
the details of our introduction
because I think that kinda sets up
how to do this in an authentic way.
Number one- We start off by just,
just, just listen to the vibe of this.
Our opening sentence: "We've been
running our content marketing agency,
Grow and Convert, for 10 plus years
now. In that time, we work with--
We've worked on content writing, SEO,"
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like
all these things we've worked on.
So just that, just that means out of
the gate, we are not hiding who we are.
We just say, like, "We're a content
marketing agency." Then we say, "From
several years of experience, countless
conversations, we've developed a
good sense of what businesses are
looking for when they hire agencies,
what they're disappointed by when it
doesn't work out, and what true growth
looks like in a successful engagement.
So to help you choose the right agency,
we're gonna share our most important
learnings and key factors to consider."
Then, "We will share how we've addressed
each of these factors at our agency."
We are auth- authentically setting up
the fact that we're gonna talk about
what we think people should look for in
an agency, and then we're gonna share
how we have addressed those in ours.
So then there's no sense of any
kind of bait and switch or whatever.
You're like, out of the
gate, you're saying, "We are
a content marketing agency.
We're called Grow and Convert.
We've been around for this long.
We've done this stuff." We're gonna
talk-- We have a lot of experience.
We've talked to clients.
We're gonna talk about what you
should probably look for, what clients
tend to look for, and how we address
it and approach it in our agency.
Then it says, "We'll share it." And
then lastly, since people like to
evaluate multiple, "We'll share best
content marketing agencies we've
heard come up a lot over the years."
Yeah, and, and even in the list, they're
genuinely companies that we compete with.
Right.
Like, we'll hear from prospects, "Yeah,
we talk to Animals. Yeah, we talk to Siege
Media." These are peers in our industry
that we know personally and talk about.
It's like they're not random companies.
They're legitimately, if you were
looking for a content marketing
agency, these are probably the
players that you would view, like you
would go between us and this list.
Right.
And note what we don't do.
We don't say we've tried them, right?
Like, like the one example you
showed, uh, in our preview before
Grow and Convert, I tried all of
them, and I'll tell you my experience.
Like, that's not true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and we, and we don't
say, um, we're the best.
Like, we just say,
"Here's how we stack up."
We put ourselves-- We list ourselves
and discuss ourselves first, so we
spend the most time there 'cause that
makes sense, but we just get into it.
The number one factor, our content
strategy is optimized to drive leads
and sales, and we just get into the
meat of it, and here's our philosophy,
and here are additional articles,
and then we continue from there.
So that's our example, and then our
client example in kind of the SaaS and,
and software space is this trucking
management software, and it has a
different tack because it's not as
first-persony as Grow and Convert.
The vibe of Grow and Convert's blog
has always been very first-persony,
us, our, this is what we've learned,
we're gonna share it with you.
But this is like trucking
management software.
It's a lot more business-like.
And so the, the details, I'm not gonna
read this one sentence by sentence, but
I do dissect it in our written article.
But basically, our client builds
software for a particular type of
trucking or hauling called bulk hauling.
You don't really kn- need to know what
that is besides the fact that it is
a subset of just general trucking.
And so it says we basically position
ours as saying, "Look, most trucking
management software," which people
in the industry call TMS, "they sort
of serve everyone, but bulk haulers
have these very specific needs, and
so you need, uh, something specific
in your TMS," and we're gonna talk
about that, and we're gonna talk about
ourselves first, um, to sort of address
how we built ours for bulk haulers.
And look at the subheading
for Toro, which is our client.
Number one, Toro.
Again, it just has… I shouldn't even
say number one if you're listening.
It has one period, so we're not
even say- e- even alluding to
the fact, like, we're the best.
We just say, "1. Toro TMS, the trucking
management software for bulk haulers."
We don't say we're the best one.
We just, whatever.
We are a software for bulk hau- haulers.
And then it goes in in saying, again, "If
you're a bulk hauler, these are the things
you should look for," and then we go into
the details of, like, screenshots and
all of how we've fulfilled that criteria.
And so to us, we're like, this w-
I think it's not a coincidence that
we have withstood all the Google
updates that you're talking about.
This is actually genuinely useful.
If you're a bulk hauler, you're like,
"Oh, yeah, like, all these other
software, it doesn't really work for me,
or it's not built for me. Like, let's
hear the best." And you're not dumb.
You know you're on Toro's site.
And so you can just be like, "Okay,
that's Toro's take. Let me go investigate
if anyone else is relevant," and
then you can, you know, and some
fraction of them are compelled by the
s- pitch, and they'll book a demo.
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