SEO apocalypse is here. AI has
come to take over the marketing world? Oh, no, don't think
so. In fact, I think Chat GPD is no threat to the roles of
optimizers copywriters SEOs and content marketers. Instead,
it's a powerful tool that can. Help enhance our work
as an SEO, as a copywriter, content marketer, whatever,
I am able to have an input that I can
very well already, or in the past, like you have already gotten in
different ways with different SEO tools, marketing tools, et cetera.
But through this chat bots, it's much more natural.
You can also integrate this quite easily through extensions.
This Marketing parts episode, you learned first, the importance of understanding
the user intent of AI prompts for SEO. Second, how to
effectively leverage AI to create high quality content that ranks
third, elated favorite chat chipd prompts for SEO activities. And number
four, how being generous with her knowledge accelerated her career.
Now, before I start, I've created a free Power cheat sheet that you can download,
fill it, and apply latest six elements of better AI
prompts for SEO. You can go to Marketing Powerups.com right now to download it or
find a link in the show notes and description. Are you ready? Let's go.
Marketing powerups ready.
Go. Here's your
host, Rambly. John really excited
to be talking about AI and SEO. You just mentioned a little bit
before we hit record how things have changed so much in the last five months.
I'm curious. You've shared great posts and Twitter trends and blog posts.
I'm going to link them all in the show notes in the description
as well. But I'm curious. You probably already have been forming opinions
about this, or you're seeing it. You've been in SEO since 2007
in marketing. Curious how you see AI impacting
SEO and marketing jobs. Do you think it will
take over our jobs? Probably not. Or will it be
more like helping us do our jobs easier, faster, or better?
What's your take on how SEO AI will affect marketing?
Yes, so that definitely different scenarios and angles about
it. So on one hand, from an automation of the
tasks that we tend to do right,
we can see that there are a lot of, let's say, tactical work that
can be highly automated with quality
of the output that we were not used to.
And actually, we can pretty much develop complete
workflows many times. The problem here is, of course,
the quality, the validation, et cetera, et cetera.
But for example, now that Chat GPT is
integrated with the web, but being as a browser too, and the
browsing plugins, et cetera, we can do
a lot of stuff. Like at least check out the Top
Rank pages for this query and let me know.
Based on the title tags of these top ten Rank queries,
suggest me one that is highly relevant, highly optimized,
based on SEO best practices, and provide me one
that is unique provide me five versions that are unique, provide me
ten versions that are unique. So me as an optimizer,
as an SEO, as a copywriter, content marketer,
whatever, I am able to have an input
that I can very well already, or in the past I could have already
gotten in different ways with different SEO tools, marketing tools,
et cetera. But through this chat
bots, I believe that it's much more natural.
And you can also integrate this quite easily through
extensions. So, for example, the GPT for
work or numerous AI extensions for Google Sheets
that integrate with OpenAI API.
So you can generate all of this in bulk, right? So it
can highly, highly, highly facilitate your translation work, localization work,
optimization work, and also even reward
this recommendation for an audience that is
not technical in case of SEO recommendations, right? Things like that
can highly, highly automate other
activities that you can also already automate from a keyword research
standpoint, competition standpoint, but in a way that let's say can be feel
a little bit more complete, easy, comprehensive,
and validated that you can easily validate too.
So there's that. On one hand, I think that the risk
falls into asking the bot something
very generic and that depends on the context.
So, oh, provide me an SEO strategy to
grow my website rankings in 2024 for
cruise lines, guides in Europe, things like
that, right? SEO, please. I mean, if you even ask Chad
GPT about what are the top criteria
or top factors or how to do an SEO recommendation
or SEO out, it's going to be at the end of the
day based on a lot of content out there that is not really 100% accurate.
And it's going to be very, let's say, non strategical,
not taking context into account. So there's
that on one hand. And then on the other hand, a big part of
our job as SEO, also as marketers is not
only identify the issues and opportunities,
identify a solution of the problem, but actually implement and execute on
that which in many, many as an Irish is a much
more difficult part. Especially in SEO, where we had to align
technical development work, content optimization
actions, promotional actions. So there's a lot of alignment,
project management, et cetera, et cetera,
going on, monitoring, identification of opportunities also along the
way, et cetera. So it's very strategical. It has to do a lot with
soft skills too. So this part I see much
more challenging that but
take over, right? So I will say that if you're a SEO
or marketer who are focused on the strategical part of it,
making things happen and are not like a one trick pony
just generating title tax, you should be safe, right?
You can leverage this tool also to accelerate the legwork
that you otherwise need to do to be much more efficient to right
to write or improve
many times outreach URL and builder for example, outreach messages things
like that. Also to investigate the profile or
the context of the websites or the authors that you are
reaching to get in touch with these type of things.
Also to get support or validation of how
to implement certain things within the code in case you
don't have access to a web developer, right? As an SEO to implement certain
things in the HD access or to generate regex, for example,
when doing SEO reporting, for example, things like that can
highly, highly help you in your day to day, but very tactical things
like that. I wouldn't rely on this completely for much more strategical
part. Then, on the other hand, there is a
completely different angle of it, just the impact on search
as a platform, right, google as a platform to
search and consume information and identify information that
you want to buy or consume in general. And that is definitely
shifting, right? I don't believe that from one day or another.
It feels like very echo chamber because between us it's
chat GPD. Chat GPD. But if you go out there and you do a survey
in the streets of how many people still searches search
on with Google and how many people are searching with any chat
bot, you will see that it's very minimal. Sure,
right. But I believe that it's a new interface,
a new paradigm that is much more natural to interact with.
So there's definitely a trend now, google has the big challenge here
and Bing has already started doing it. And actually I
think that in a particularly good natural with
good user experience way integrating their chatgpt
as a new tab, I think that separating
well, in which context it is much more advisable or natural
to have a chatgpt like experience especially when finding factual
information and a lot of informational queries but then in
which other aspects it doesn't actually solve your problem but also adds
an additional layer of complexity. And I think that this is what Google is trying
to sort out still, right? They have the technology, the technology
hasn't learned as much, it's not as refined because of course it hasn't been out
there so much as the Bing
one, which relies on OpenAI.
But I believe that the quality should improve, will improve. And what
it is actually risky from an SEO standpoint and publisher
and web owner standpoint is up to which point Google will
push it as part of their current interface.
Because at the end of day it's something also that they should want
to try to keep up, right, to refer the traffic to the
website ecosystem out there because there should be an incentive
for websites to keep publishing content that they can learn from.
That's what makes the web on one hand
and then on the other hand to not alienate their own advertisers
many times by keeping the traffic. But yes,
there's definitely going to be an impact.
I joined the beta test of the search engineerative experience
a few days ago. And yes, you can definitely see
that it's in beta, right? There are for certain queries,
for example, SEO courses, it will
try to geolocate the query, which was not
geolocated at all. If you search it right now in the traditional the
current search interface, right, you will get like the
top curses from guides,
reviews, et cetera, rather than a local pack
map pack, which is what they do in the search interactive experience and something
similar in ecommerce, right. They will try to show product carousel
at the top, which is very similar than the product carousel
that they're already featuring in the organic search results below. So it
feels a little bit repetitive, right? So again,
I think that the websites that actually have the risk to
end up not getting as much traffic as before, real risk,
I will say are those that are the middlemen, because Google
one definitely wants to become the middleman. Those that rely completely
on ads or affiliates
that don't provide a unique take,
an actual take something of value and provide the product or the
service themselves. Which is funny, right, because all
of the opportunity that exists right now to automate the content,
the way to be able to keep relevant
indeed will end up being having your own voice,
being an actual expert in a subject matter, subject matter
expert on your specific area, right? And Google
also wants to integrate this more and more on the
coming features that they have announced also, which is the perspective filter,
giving more of a visibility to real people authors,
right? So it's a little bit of a plan, it's going to change. I'm very
excited at the same time, normal, also a little bit scared,
but exciting times to be around for sure. Because that
fear is like being unknown of what's happening next. And you made a
good point about Google. They had to find the balance of
the Google ad business is such a big part of the revenue and they don't
want to disrupt their cash cow. And maybe Microsoft and
Bing has an opportunity because Bing ads is
not a big part of the revenue. So that they can be more
user centric versus Google to balance user and
business and revenue 100%. But you know what, funnily enough,
actually Bean has done a much better work on
integrating citations and external links,
going to websites where they take the content from
with overlay links, citations at the end,
referring to the actual websites at the bottom of the
answers, et cetera, in a much more prominent, visible way than Google. So it's
funny that you mentioned it because I 100% agree. And then funnily enough,
ironically enough, google is not doing what it is expected to do because
they have interesting, like much more skin on the game they do
than being right and not doing it like that for their advertisers
100%. That's super interesting. There's so much that you said
there that has so much value and Gem,
one of the things that I've heard is that if SEOs and
marketers want to stay relevant in this AI future world,
they have to focus more on strategic and execution.
Because a lot of the things that the typical
intern would do, give me the top pages
of this AI will be able to do that. Is that
what I'm hearing? If you want to stay relevant,
don't be a one trick pony, but also don't really focus too
much on the tactical without having strategic because AI
can't do that yet. Strategic 100%.
I mean also the fact that if you know how to leverage
these tools to make things faster, you don't want your competitors
to at work you just because they are using
this automation integrated with a
lot of SEO tools. Also now integrates chatgpt
like type of features like phrase for example, which is the content optimization
tool that I use. It's also integrating a lot of AI
for outlines, for paraphrasing, content writing,
content FAQs, et cetera. For example,
and not only for content also for example, for ongoing optimization
and opportunities. SEO testing.com, which is a fantastic tool
to identify, to monitor and identify opportunities, has integrated
also with OpenAI API
for those pages where they identified that there's
content decay, that content is decreasing
in rankings after a while because of lack of freshness, et cetera. They integrate
the brickrive feature optimization feature to identify easy
opportunities to optimize the content right there SEO. I think that there are very
smart ways to leverage these tools to accelerate the
pace of your task in SEO on one hand and then on
the other hand, 100%. I mean, if you have been focused all of this time
on selling, I don't know, I am going to write your metadata
of 100 pages or 1000 pages for 999
package. These type of things that we tend to see from time to time,
right? There isn't much
value right now, but still somehow it's possible to sell it.
I can see how that won't be the case in the future.
So that is why you, as a copywriter, as an SEO, et cetera,
you want to become much more knowledgeable, much more sophisticated,
to be able to add this extra layer of
strategical input in the work that you do.
Taking into consideration the context of the business, the goal of the business,
the context of your industry know how of the industry
all this information that well the bots won't have to
take and won't take into account when doing your work right?
It makes a ton of sense. I love that. I think people start I
had an interesting question asked me the other day about
sure, people coming out of university. They might be
at a disadvantage because typically their job starts off as that
intern who's doing that task you mentioned. Do you see
a future where prompt, AI prompts
is actually taught in university, where they're actually teaching
them how to build prompts. I'm just curious if
that is a world that's actually a course on
prompt engineering, which I've never heard of until this person asked me
yesterday. Yeah, there is one, indeed. There are quite a few. I mean OpenAI
published one. There are even a track of
how to leverage AI also in Maven
that was announced. A few different platforms are also releasing
their own different courses for everybody to
leverage the chat bots,
right? And to make it easy. And I can definitely see how in the future
remember when there was a time potentially you don't remember because you're
too young, but there was a time when I was a kid and I didn't
get it. But I remember when I was a kid, there were people who were
teenagers already that they went to typing lessons.
I did, I went to typing lessons. They actually went to typing lessons once
I got to that stage, that age
that wasn't taught because PCs
and computers and laptops were there were natural.
So they expected you to already know it, to already learn it
at home, whatever. So you went to computer class, YT class, whatever,
and you already were typing somehow in one way or another, some better than
others, but it was something already natural. Right? So I do believe that this is
going to happen now that for some people, yes, prom engineering,
how to leverage AI for kids
now that are, I don't know, ten, whatever,
when they are teenagers, that will be like natural for
them to know, to understand how to interact with chatgpt. They will need
a class for that. So indeed, for sometimes that will be needed
in the long term, that will be completely natural as kids right now
know how to use fun and to type. Yeah,
the exact same thing. Before I continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this
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Well, let's get back to the episode. Yeah,
that's a great analogy. You're right. I went to typing school and I can't imagine
my kid or them teaching typing school
at school. Right. It's just not I don't think so, is it? I wasn't taught
at least even yeah. That'S super interesting
that you're putting that. So there's courses out there around this
prompt engineering and a lot of the stuff you talked about,
the first experience of SGE that you had, and as well as
any prompts is on your website, I'm going to link
that in the description. You also have written several Twitter
threads around it that have gone viral. So I'll link to all of
that in the description. But I want to talk about like prompts itself because
it seems like there are bad prompts lead
to bad results and you gave one earlier,
give me an SEO strategy for 2023
for this business. And you're like, that's a terrible prompt
because it will not give you something useful. I'm curious,
what are other red flags for you when you're like, that's a bad prompt
there. What are those red
flags that you see in other prompts or you will say
will not give you good results? Yeah, those that are very generic
and BWAs, that don't specify all of the characteristics,
requirements, restrictions that are important to take into
account. So for example, if you ask to generate
title tax, right? I mean, tell them follow in SEO
best practices. Right. So you need to specify well,
and also give me title tax for,
let's say a Genes page.
No, give me the title tax for a jeans page.
That is a product listing page
that has a commercial intent and features
Genes as products so it knows
that or understand. And the answer is for
content. That is a PLP, that is transactional, that has
a commercial intent rather than informational because otherwise
very likely it will tell you the best genes for whatever,
like if it was a guide. Right. Or your risks on getting this right.
SEO, the more specific and descriptive you can be
with all of the input that you
need the bot to take into account for the more accurate output
the best will be. Right, and I understand that, especially at the beginning,
that can take a little bit of refinement, right?
I do a lot of like imagine that you are an SEO providing the context.
Imagine that you're an SEO specialist developing
a keyword research for a website that is this and provide
very specific context in order to get more accurate
answers. So that is why I came up with the five W's and
the H, as you mentioned, right? Yeah. Because typical
questions, methodology for journalists to
specify when doing an interview, right? To specify all the context,
why, who, where, when, how and
by providing all of this different specifications,
characteristics, restrictions to take into account the context,
the output will tend to be much better. Right, that makes
sense. And I love that the more specific it is, the much better.
I never used that imagine before. That's genius.
I've seen one where pretend you're Ted Lasso. I'm not
sure if you watch Ted Lasso, the show where he's this really optimistic
coach on Apple TV and write me
a LinkedIn post as Ted Lasso. I never
thought about it as like imagine you're an SEO specialist and you're
very specific about providing it context so that
it doesn't just output you. Generic stuff.
The prompt that you mentioned around the gene, you kind of already started breaking down
the five W's and H there. Can you break down
a little bit more? What is the context you were talking about? Create five
title tags and then where is it going to be used for?
You're talking about it for Genes category.
Can you break down an example of how the five W's
and H fits into.
Actually, I have quite a few
examples in
the website. Like examples like very specific,
right? What is the expected task? So create
five title tags. Where is it going to be used to be
featured in a Y Genes category page? How is
the format, language, structure, tone, length,
characteristics, constraints?
The content needs to be descriptive of products in English,
relevant, engaging with a commercial intent,
following SEO best practices of no more than
50 characters each, for example, because otherwise it might be
who is the target audience? Potential gene buyers, right?
When is it going to be used on an ongoing basis?
Evergreen content, when you want to use why
do you want to use the expected goals, right, to engage the audience and
rank better in search results. So all of this together is
create five title tags to be featured in a Y Genes category
page. The characteristic to be taken into account are the following
the target audience are potential genes buyers to be and it's
going to be used at an ongoing basis to engage and run better
in Genes category pages. So all of this, yes,
is a bit long right. But will allow you
to create an output that is much more
accurate, that needs less refinements.
And then you can create and I highly, highly advise that you
have your Prom library. There are actually extensions that
facilitate this aiprm is one of the promise extensions
that exist. But you can create your own library even in your own Google Sheets.
This is what I do too. So anybody that I work with can have
access to this prompts that I know that are very well refined.
For this use case,
you probably need just to add the specific
topic and the audience will change on the type of page. And for
this is an area of title tax, or this is an area of metal description,
or this is an areas of headings or FAQs. The output
will be really, really good. Right. This looks like
the early forming of like a content brief almost, or like
imagine you're outsourcing this to an intern
or somebody. The more specific you are, the more likely
they'll be successful at doing that task rather
than do X. For me,
I truly believe that if I am good at this, it's because I'm so
used on working remotely. Right? I have been working remotely
already for a while, since like even when I was an employee,
right. 2014 I became also on my own, et cetera, et cetera.
So I am very used to communicate well in written,
be very specific, very accurate on given,
requiring or asking or ordering.
Very specific in a very specific way in the way I communicate.
And if you're sloppy, if you're too generic or ambiguous and you don't
know how to request stuff in a very
accurate way, then you will have a harder time. If you're used
to work remotely and know how important is to communicate well in written,
then it will be much more easily for you. Yeah, I feel like a hot
take here is like, don't blame Jack GPT, blame you.
Like blame yourself. If you're getting bad results, it's because you're not
thinking through the stuff that you should be
thinking about before you provide it to AI. So that
you talked about generic. The reason why it's generic is
like you're not digging through exactly what you're looking for. Who is it for
the how, the why and everything else. 100%. I mean,
bad output is because your input was bad and you didn't validate it well.
You didn't refine and you didn't validate it well too. I mean,
the only person who you can blame
for having bad quality content generated by AI out
there is you, right? Because you didn't do a good job first
with the input,
with the prompts, or with the validation later on
and you need to have a validation workflow.
Interesting, having an actual expert double check validate
that what has been the output is actually
accurate, that is point, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Yeah.
That validation is about reviewing the results and kind of tweaking it
like asking it follow ups, like changing stinks to
it. Is that exactly what that is? Yeah,
100%. And then also if you're using it, for example, for generating
title tax, for example, or generating content. FAQs, for example, you have
an actual copywriter reviewing it. So they don't need
to write from scratch all of the FAQ, but they are going to edit them
and add value on them. Where are the FAQs?
On an example, renting a car in London.
So maybe you can leverage keyword tools as well as the chat bot
to generate these questions and answers.
But if you have an actual copywriter, who's a car expert,
car rental expert that knows the business, know the know how,
will know when a question potentially that is asked
doesn't make sense. It's too generic or too repetitive,
or the answer that has been given by the bot is too
broad to be actually useful and actionable. So this person
will add the extra layer of their actual
experience and expertise to make it
useful and make it actionable also within
the website. Right? To do this, you can change this
configuration of the website to obtain this type of cars or
don't worry about this particular rules in London because
they don't care about this. Things like that. Right. So literally something
like I believe that there's tons of value on
thinking of it like this. Like the first layer of content of
information. Yes. It would be at this point not
smart to not leverage these tools. However, in an era where
content can be highly, highly automated by AI,
you need an expertise layer that is going to be your own voice, your unique
selling proposition. Otherwise your content will look exactly the same than
any other content out there. Unique, uniqueness. What makes you unique?
What is your tone of voice? Right? This is Marketing 101. I feel
like that's a whole thread and post that you can potentially write if you haven't
written one yet. That's something that's often skipped where people think just
put it in and then publish it. And you're like, no,
wait a second. You're adding that expertise,
that uniqueness. The stuff that that search
engines look for, that credibility and
things like that, that you can't really check with this.
You started already kind of digging and giving examples. You have this,
by the way, that article you mentioned around the five W's and
H I'm going to link in the description. Great post.
Another one you had was like prompts that can
accelerate or help people with SEO activities.
You've been giving a ton already around title tags and
description. I'm curious,
is that title tag something that you use often or what
are other ones from that? This 20 that are often
maybe your favorite or maybe ones that you use quite often for
clients or for yourself? Yeah, I love to leverage it for ideas,
right? Especially as a non native English speakers. Better ways to say something
more professional ways to say something interesting. Also to do
stuff in bulk. Leveraging the extensions,
the Gushids extensions, rewrite me regenerate
these titles that are too long by.
Making them less than 55 characters while keeping
the core key, keywords that you can see in
this auto cell into account SEO,
it will provide them to you. Right? So this type
of workflows, I use them a lot or generate the FAQ for
this group of pages in book equal sheets by
looking into the most asked questions, the most popular question about
their topic, taking into account that they are going
to be featured in listing pages in this type of business. So you
go, you take a look and then someone who's an actual expert
in the business comes and review. So these type of scenarios,
I think that they can be very powerful. I use them. I actually
was using a little bit of that on my own websites that I have as
a little bit of a test to and I have more and more clients are
relying on the tech to help their
marketers, to help their copywriters, not to replace them.
Right? That is something very important. That makes sense. I like
that. I never even thought about that. I think even copywriters can
use this, give me variations of this.
So it's more like an ideation tool where you
can give me other options where you can pick one that might
make more sense for you rather than something else is
exactly what I'm hearing. 100%.
One other question I had around before we ship around career power
ups is I've heard a lot of specifically
I work in B, two B, SaaS, and a lot of SaaS companies have been
hit traffic wise, organic traffic.
I noticed that you're like providing a bunch of templates on your
site and I've heard, I don't know if this is correct, where that
value add of adding templates or like Google Sheet or
even videos is a way to stay
relevant in this AI feature search world, so to speak.
I'm curious, what are some practical tips you have for marketers
and SEOs who have seen their traffic go down
because of maybe I or in the past few months and they're
trying to figure out exactly what the future of things they can do to
continue to stay relevant. What I will
say is that you do a good benchmark. You take a look at what is
getting visibility right now in the SERPs and
what is getting your traffic. So for example, if you see that Google is shifting
the results because they have identified
that the intent of the user, the search behavior of the users has changed and
of course you are sort of giving outdated content that doesn't
really fulfill that need of the users that Google
is finding right now. You need to update that content or to
create new content that actually fills that need. So from time to time,
indeed, especially until now, like after core updates that
happen every three or four months or so,
we'll see that many times for some queries
broader queries. Well, Google were ranking, for example,
listing pages. All of a sudden they are not ranking as
many link listing pages, but they are now ranking
guides. And then all of a sudden it's
not that they have shifted the type of content that they are ranking now,
but now they are showing a prominent video carousel
or a map pack, or a map pack, or an image
pack, or a product carousel right in the feature.
So all of the clicks go there rather than on
your website, even if you haven't lost positions, literally SEO.
What it is important is to understand first, why is that changing?
Google is changing their search and
search results, their interface of the results,
because of a need of the user that is shifting. So can you produce content
in videos, in images,
or generate feeds in order to make the most out of
all of these features that Google is showing in your results and are eating
your clicks, your traffic, that is the first thing. If it is
doable for you, then when it actually makes sense for you
to do it. So in a way that has an ROI
Posit impact on your business, right? Maybe you cannot do
this for every single query, for every single content, but you can start assessing
the impact for a few very important money making queries for
you where you can see that these type of snippets or features are shown and
you have the capability to create them. That can be a way that can
be one of the ways for me, especially with the new surgeon
narrative experience that will be released in the next few
months after trial test. Whatever bed type needs to be on
Tweaks, they need to have, and I'm certain and hopeful that
they will continue referring traffic to the websites
with proper citations and links, as Bing
is doing. There's certainly going to be a shift, so we
need to understand how it's shifting to
be able to keep relevant and continue connecting with
the users in one way or another. An example, yesterday I
was seeing and I was playing around with the new
Google search generative experience, Snapshots, and seeing
that for branded queries, if you work with a very well known
merchant, an example, right,
retailer, an example,
Nike sneakers. If you search for
this branded queries like this for
a product line of a very big brand, you will tend
to use that the category pages, the listing pages
of that big brand website will tend to be there
all the time. This is pretty much traffic that they own,
big brand, let's say, type of experience.
At the end of the day then with the new search generative experience, you realize
that Google is pretty much generating their own listing
above the organic results and they are listing directly
the products there. So the traffic that used to go to
the category page of Nike
sneakers or NORFACE
jacket will now be attracted
to go to specific pages that are now featured
at the top. You know the thing, the funny thing is that these product pages,
when you click on them, a Product Knowledge Panel
is displayed. And in the Product Knowledge Panel,
you don't only have the link to
the product page of the official brand, but also all of
the distributors online stores
oh my goodness. That distribute their product. So, yes, you can see how the
net effect for the typical listing page will be negative if
this is released as it is in beta right now.
What can you do? So it is about working and understanding the
shift of the behavior of the user on one hand with these
new results and how these results are displayed to identify opportunities
for these brands to say okay, then, a new type of page is required,
or make your PLPs or your listing actually different,
to have a more prominent, visible way
to connect with the users in another way right of the journey.
Or maybe they are not necessary at all all of a sudden. And then you
need to focus completely on your product pages and making them
much more comprehensive, much more unique, all the structured data,
et cetera, et cetera, to ensure that you get
the top visibility there again. Or maybe you even need
to generate much more informational content. So Google source that
content at the top of their snapshot, which is what they're doing
with money guides. And then they are, let's say,
pressure to link to you in this other way. So again, it's about,
I would say, being very strategical, keeping your eyes open
and see every time that you are getting less traffic.
Why? Is this because I have lost positions or not?
I am keeping position. Is the click to rate that is decreasing? And why is
the click to rating decreasing? Is because there is a big feature
above my result that wasn't there six months ago. What is changing? Can I leverage
that or not? Or is because people are
not search engine much this type of products and they are searching
them in another way. Should I create new content to tackle and target
and address these other queries? So again, you need to identify
this. So as you can see this type of stuff,
I don't see a bot replicating this type of behavior quite easily. You need to
understand the market. You need to understand the context. You need to
be proactive and identify opportunities like that. And pretty much
this is why SEO tends to be complex, because you need to be paying attention
like this every time there's an ongoing change.
And then also it's about aligning the resources to
validate your hypotheses monetize, develop tests, and then
replicate in a way that is actually cost effective for the websites.
I just love how you like really dug into it like a detective
broke down. What you would do. Like this is like this investigative
something died. Now we got to go dig into the clues and figure out exactly
how to fix it. Really, thank you for sharing that
and digging deeper into that. In terms of
yourself, I noticed you share a lot of Google Sheet templates
and it's not gated. I'm curious if that's more of you trying to
be being really helpful to folks or is that like an
SEO? It's an SEO play at all where just
open it wide and it's not something that once again,
it's a value add that Google can't just crawl.
You have this template that they need to show or
something. This is a
great question. Thank you. And I think it tied with what we were talking
a little bit before we started our recording. Riley, there's this
balance and layer about you as
a professional, as a market, as a consultant too.
Are willing and able and happy to share
for free out there to give back
to the community, to establish yourself as an authority also
in your sector, et cetera, which are things that
of course I want to do. And then also how much
you don't want to give away because should be part of your know how that
you sell ultimately right to your clients.
And a lot of people say and are like, okay, but if you are going
to give away this, at least leverage
it to get into this users or
into your funeral already, right? SEO, I prefer a
wider reach. I think that life's too short to gain
stuff around many
ways to get stuff anyway. I highly dislike
this trend that I see over Twitter. Like, oh, I have this template
about X or Y. Retweet me and follow me
and I will send it to you over DMs. Like,
oh, my God. Why? Look, if I am sharing stuff for free
without being gated, et cetera, I know that people will find
me valuable enough. And if I do it at a consistent basis
and the value
versus noise ratio is good enough, people will eventually,
like after the third time, consider themselves
that it's valuable to follow me. Follow me because I am sharing good
stuff all the time rather than me requiring them to do it
just to share the first. Right? So I am much more aligned
with being much more natural, providing value,
being more organic. At the end of the day, I am an SEO, and that
is what I love. This way to do marketing because it's
more aligned with good UX. Rather than pushing people
around to do X or Y without them being
necessarily all in there
yet making their mind that this is the actual right thing
for them to do. Right. So I prefer to give nudges and
that they realize that there's value following me and reading
my newsletter the same rather than
gaining everything and requiring access like that. Yeah,
I love that you're really optimizing for impact.
You can impact more people because people will be turned off when you get it.
Oh, I don't want to give my email like you're actually trying to
share it and distribute it to as many people and help as many people as
possible, SEOs and marketers alike. And it will make
the people who follow me also more engaging.
Also, if I am requiring that, for example, to grow my newsletter
list, for example, very likely a lot of these people will never open my newsletter
anyway because they have been pushed to subscribe to it in that
way. Right. I prefer that they decide to do it so because they
have seen that I share value and they are incentivized
to open the newsletter because they know it's useful.
Right. I love that that's a perfect place to switch gears.
And I feel like this is already starting to push towards that around
things that helped you accelerate your career. Now, you've been in SEO
now since 2007, and I'm curious what's something
that's helped you level up and accelerate? It could be
just what you mentioned, helping as many people as possible, but it could be
going on more podcasts or talks or starting your own show.
I'm curious what's one thing that's helped you level up your
career? Yeah, 100%. I think that what
you mentioned actually has been like the key differentiator in my journey,
right. Sharing. And I do it because I love it,
because it's the way that I also learn. I mean, to be
when when you share something, when you educate on something, it's because
you have tried it, you have tested it, and you also learn along the way
things that work, things that done, and get feedback from other people and interact
much more with the community. Of course,
I will say that it's something that should be natural for you
to do something, that it's not something
difficult or that will add some extra layer of
complexity in your life. That doesn't make it enjoyable.
Right. For example, when I mean sharing too
is sharing in so many different formats. For me,
speaking is also sharing just in speaking format. When you
do presentations, when you do webinars, when you go on stage or in podcast.
Sharing is also writing blog posts, writing guides, sharing templates
that is sharing too. So a lot of people is like, oh, how you ended
up deciding that you wanted to speak. Because speaking was another
way of sharing potentially a little bit more stressful and complex one,
but also one that I also enjoy more
because allow me to travel to places and I
love to travel and interact with the community. And since I work remotely, that is
a way that I have to see more people and interact
and meet more like minded people, et cetera, et cetera, SEO. It becomes
very natural for me to do so. But of course, you need to enjoy it.
So whenever someone tells me, oh, I want to become
a consultant or develop my career in a way, and I want to develop,
establish my personal brand, but I don't love to speak,
right? I was like, no worries. There are so many different
ways to share with guides, wet podcasts,
with this, with that. So you don't need to be pushed on
doing it in a way that
doesn't spark joy, right? It's not natural
for you and it's not enjoyable. At the end of the day,
that's so good. I love how you brought us sparking joy
there doing a podcast or sharing templates
or even speaking, whatever makes you spark joy. I'm curious what's
motivating you to share. You talked a little bit about meeting
with other folks, but is it to have as much impact
on the world, maybe more outdoors? Obviously, there's also
the business side to it where growing your personal brand generates
potential clients. What's still motivation
for you specifically that's helping motivating you
to continue to share great content that once again I'm
going to link in the description. Also a big fan of your newsletter,
which I'm telling everybody to subscribe to it. But what
is that motivation behind all of this for you? Yeah, well,
I'm very curious and this is one of the things that actually attracted
me to SEO, that SEO is a little bit of content.
Technical marketing is a mix of everything.
Pretty sure I have ADHD undiagnosed
because I'm like this all over the place. But yes,
this is what actually attracted me to SEO and
I love about it. And then when I became independent,
Also, and even before, I always was attracted
to I'm like blogging on the side, doesn't necessarily need to make money,
but it's something that I enjoy sharing on social media, going to events even if
I didn't and wasn't thinking at the time, becoming independent,
having a consultancy. And then afterwards,
it's something that I am more mindful
about, about how I'm
very thankful for the career that I have had and how I have been able
to evolve myself. Thanks for the information that I have been able to
get in one way or another. So I want to simplify that and make it
much more easy, so newcomers can have
all of, for example, with learning SEO IO to have all of this aggregation
of knowledge that is accurate, that is up to date,
that is provided by people who will
provide the know how and will help them to get there much faster.
So that is why I created Also as a way to give back, let's say,
because, yes, sometimes it's like, oh my God, I'm so lucky.
And I'm very thankful for all the evolution
that I have had professionally, right? So it's also a way to do
something that I enjoy and to give back and also to play around,
to test around. I am also using the websites that I create
to test things with SEO FOMO.
Actually, I never expected
email marketing and newsletter to be, oh my God,
I am hooked now, right? To be so good, to be successful. I'm like,
organic SEO. And I'm like, oh, my God. If you want an engaged
bottom of the funeral customers or
fans or audience, go there, create your list and
play around what works or not to grow. It the same
when I started Crawling Mondays, my video
series podcast, right? I started at the beginning of 2019
or so to test YouTube as a channel, organics channel to
optimize for and took it from there, right? So I'm always
testing new things and doubling down on those that work.
So, for example, I have launched Marketing FOMO,
which is the digital marketing newsletter weekly, because I saw
that SEO FOMO was very successful and
there was a need for marketing digital marketing that is not
SEO focused, but content marketing, digital PR,
paid search, et cetera, to have something similar
and try to get there much faster. Right? So these type of
things I love to play around and thankfully, while being independent,
right. They provide me the flexibility to do this stuff. I love it.
I feel like what I'm hearing is like, you're just naturally curious and
you're doing all of this and you're sharing it in public. Just like, oh,
this is what I learned and this is something that's helped me,
that can help you. That's super, super cool.
In terms of second to the final question
around, if you can send a message back
to a younger version of later, what advice or
tip would you send yourself who might be starting out in SEO,
who might be starting out in marketing? What would be that tip or
advice or nugget of wisdom that you can share to your
younger version of you? Yeah, I will say, don't double think
it. Be proactive. Give yourself your own
opportunities. Right? I think that especially when I was very young
and starting as an SEO, I was always looking for expecting
someone like a good boss or mentor or something like that to see
my value and provide me the opportunity to grow my career,
better job, more salary, better this and that. And then
I realized that I needed to provide that opportunities
to myself. So, an example, if you're looking people and expect them
to ask you to speak at a big conference, right,
but they haven't seen you speak ever, right?
Can you get into their radars? Give yourself that opportunity first by
even creating your own webinars,
creating your own video series, or starting to speak.
And then with this examples that you know how to speak well,
you propose little by little to smaller channels so
they can invite you. Then bigger and bigger online
stages. And then at some point it's like when there are now
forms to pitch to be conferences like examples that you can speak well,
you can already send quite a few, right? So it's very
hard for them to say no, but given yourself or getting to
that point where it's very hard to dismiss
you or to overlook you or to not give you opportunities because you're so good.
I believe that there's a lot we can do for ourselves rather than
just asking for help. It's like, oh, I don't have the support or I
don't have the validation. You need to validate yourself many,
many times and get and push yourself towards
this part where it's impossible to not take you into consideration
wherever you want to go, right. Independently of where you want to go. So I
think that we can do a lot around that. And I will say myself because
my early 20 something took risk, yes,
but I believe that, yeah, I will have pushed myself much harder on
doing being much more proactive, starting on my own, et cetera,
rather than looking for to others to give me opportunity like that,
or applying to jobs, things like that, right? I love that.
There was this other conversation I had with Brendan Hufford. He talked
about this book called Be So Good That They Can't Ignore You
by Kyle Newport, which is exactly what you're saying. You're just
like honing your craft and really sharing and
it all kind of works together, what you just said. Like you sharing,
you honing your craft, you building up and asking
for it kind of builds up to where you are today.
Love to hear that. You can find out more about ladies work online.
She's doing a lot, actually. She has a podcast called Crawling Mondays.
You can find on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. She has a newsletter
SEO FOMO at Seofomo Co.
She has SEO consulting@orient.com courses
at Learningseo IO. You can find all of those links,
including her LinkedIn and Twitter profile on the show. Notes and Description
thank you to Alita for being on the show. If you enjoyed this episode,
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