Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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/
Will Sigsworth [00:00:00]:
SEO doesn't need to come first and foremost in your content strategy, but it is first and foremost in ours because it often dictates what we do, what we then decide to do. So it's in one position, a really good indicator of what we should be doing. And then from a second standpoint, technically it really helps us to ensure that we're not just ranking in those areas, but that the site is performing in the way that it should from a UX perspective and also helping bots who land on the site to crawl.
Nicole MacLean [00:00:33]:
I'm Nicole MacLean and this is Content Matters. Created in partnership with Share Your Genius. Our show consists of three parts. One where we pull in other Compose.ly team members to talk about content that matters to you, like a viral LinkedIn post or the latest trend. The second always includes an in depth interview with a leading marketer who sharing actionable insights and a little inspiration. And finally, you won't want to miss the last segment, aptly called Friends Matter, where we're shouting out some of your friends and mine for their content wins in B2B marketing. Let's cut through the marketing chaos together. I am very excited to have our very own Director of SEO, Kaylee Peterson, join her first Content Matter show. Kaylee, welcome to the show. Hi.
Kaylee Peterson [00:01:20]:
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Nicole MacLean [00:01:23]:
You're welcome. I love that everyone gets to experience your little like, mermaid moment. That's happening right now.
Kaylee Peterson [00:01:29]:
New year, new me. I'm lava girling it up right now. I think it's really getting the creative juices flowing.
Nicole MacLean [00:01:36]:
You know what? Creativity and SEO actually do go hand in hand, despite what people might think.
Kaylee Peterson [00:01:40]:
Yeah. It is not just a data field. It is the left and the right brain. It's a whole brain field.
Nicole MacLean [00:01:47]:
We love left and right brain things. Why? We love marketing because you need both. I had to bring you on the show because there is this new trend in SEO, as there always is, of this idea of like, there's no more SEO, the search engine optimization is dead. Instead think of like answer engine. Is that even answer aeo? Like answer forward answer first. Like, is this a trend we should be paying attention to? Is this the new era of SEO? Is your title now actually Director of aeo? Tell us, tell us what we should be paying attention to.
Kaylee Peterson [00:02:21]:
Yeah, I think if I got paid every time someone said SEO is dead, I could retire by now. Every year there's something new. AEO is one of those. I think it's an interesting concept. So what is it? AEO's answer Engine optimization it has a lot of other names I've heard Generative Engine Optimization. But the short and long of it is basically instead of just capturing your standard Google search, you're going after the AI search engines, the Bard, the ChatGPT, going after voice search. So the Alexas, the series of the world. Basically any way that people search that isn't typing a query into Google is trying to be captured by aeo. But at its core I think most of it is still SEO, which is what we're finding. Google really nailed those principles and really nailed the algorithm when they first built it. And so even as it continues to evolve, I think we still end up going back to those really basic SEO principles too. We just love to put new names and tie things up in shiny new bows.
Nicole MacLean [00:03:31]:
Right. Well that's how we go viral on LinkedIn and generate a whole new bunch of demands. You know, do not knock a marketer. Say that five times fast.
Kaylee Peterson [00:03:41]:
Exactly.
Nicole MacLean [00:03:41]:
We are doing our best and if AEO gets someone in, I'm not going to judge you for it. But it's still search. It's just, I think the, the goal of search has always been understanding the intent, understanding user behavior, how does someone want to find information and now it just happens to be that it's, it's a little more answer based. It's a, it's more question answer. People are leaning into long tail questions like we. I had a prospect, I was talking to the prompt he told me he used in order to find Compose.ly. I mean it was like the longest, most thorough prompt I've ever seen. The amount of long tail keywords in this thing that no one would ever put into Google because you just didn't think that Google would be able to handle that. And so it's just an evolution. But maybe it sounds like not a net new principle.
Kaylee Peterson [00:04:33]:
I think evolution's the perfect word for it. I think SEO has had a lot of different versions of itself throughout the year for sure. And I think when we look at AEO and the way the AI search models are working, it does, it just comes back to people will always ask questions until the end of time. People are going to ask questions. What changes is where they ask those questions and how they ask those questions and how they expect to get those answers. I think when you look at SEO you used to have to expect to sort through a website and really scroll and click through 2, 3 pages of search results to get what you wanted.
Nicole MacLean [00:05:14]:
Encyclopedia Britannica, find the index on the page.
Kaylee Peterson [00:05:18]:
You have to really used to do some research. You really had to look for what you wanted back in the day. And now we're in a place where Google's whole goal is you just never leave Google. You get it right there. Zero click search, an AI overview, there's your answer and you go. And we know that those aren't always accurate and people's search habits are habits. So it may be a long time before we get really away from Google. But I do think the people that are going after AEO are really honed in on something's changing, something feels different. The way that content ranks feels really different. So when we look at making a shift, it's not even really getting away from SEO, it's kind of just adding on. How do we do what we know works, what's always worked, and also make sure we're capturing these new ways to search and these new ways to be found too.
Nicole MacLean [00:06:09]:
So, yeah, how do we do that? Because it doesn't sound like we can just keep going after a list of keywords and magically see organic success.
Kaylee Peterson [00:06:18]:
What we've seen so far in terms of what's working for AI search results, AI overviews, answer, whatever you want to call it, is that a lot of it is question and answer based and a lot of it is how easily consumable is your content. So at the end of the day, humans are reading your content. The goal is that they get to your site, they read the content, they love it, they convert, you get leads, it's great. But to get in front of humans, that content's read by essentially a robot from first and foremost, Google Crawl bot by the AI crawl bots. And what we know now about a lot of, especially the AI crawl bots is that in essence, they're kind of lazy. If they can't easily scan your content and get the answer, they move on, or they make it up. Which I think Anyone who's used ChatGPT has noticed. Like you have to kind of go back and forth to get. Are you sure that's right? Did you really look at the website? So I think we know that they're not as thoroughly crawling websites as we'd hoped they would be to be a search engine. What that tells us about building content in SEO is that it's gotta be scannable, it's gotta be really modular, it's gotta be packaged so that anyone robot human can open a webpage, ask a question and get an answer right off the bat. And on our end, what we're doing to kind of update to that is Adding things like key takeaway summaries. So the article starts with here's the four highlights, the big ideas that you want to know. Is this what you're looking for? And if it is cool, we're going to expand on it. Below this using more questions in content. So using questions as headers and making sure the first sentence of that paragraph quickly answers the question so you have a really clear question and answer and then you expand on that question afterwards. So we get more into the weeds and using FAQs, huge. I think that's been a long time. SEO practice is FAQs, but using FAQs FAQs to almost conclude and summarize the article. So even if they feel a little repetitive, you have a really clear conclusion section that is question, answer. Here's everything. People usually ask about this kind of content and putting good structured data on there, good schema that says this is an FAQ section. This is a how to section. This is a data set because again, when the robots read it, they're looking for really quickly, where are my questions and answers and do they exist here? And if they do, cool. And if they don't, I'm on to the next.
Will Sigsworth [00:08:50]:
So I'm Will Sigsworth. I'm head of SEO at Pipedrive, which is a sales CRM focused at helping small and medium businesses find leads, close deals and drive revenue and hopefully grow alongside that. As head of CEO, I'm part of the growth team. So my focus is on ensuring that we're being discovered in search, wherever that may be. So Google other areas such as social directories, AI search now of course is the big thing. But also that when people come to the site they want to convert, they're interested in what we're doing and we can educate them as well to make sure that they understand what we do and how it will help them to grow.
Nicole MacLean [00:09:29]:
All right, well, how did you get into SEO? I'm always so fascinated by people's journeys. So did you start there or was there a fun journey that led us there?
Will Sigsworth [00:09:39]:
So SEO comes in roughly the middle of my career path at university. Actually did English and creative writing. So I was interested in marketing at that point, but eventually turned down. I was given the option of doing a master's in marketing advertising after my degree, but I thought, why spend the money when I can earn it? So I went into content marketing, primarily print, but also a bit of social media, social media, digital email, working for some some interesting brands like RBS NatWest, which is a banking chain primarily based in the UK and Chelsea football Club. I'm sure many of your listeners know about that.
Nicole MacLean [00:10:19]:
So you either just had a lot of people turn off or more people like lean, lean in and say, I.
Will Sigsworth [00:10:26]:
Want to hear more lean in. Yeah, I'm not a Chelsea fan. I'll say that. I won't say who I'm a fan on, just in case I alienate more of your listeners. But yeah, it was just a job. Very much not SEO focused that point. It was more about engaging existing customer bases, engaging staff. So we did like internal magazines for a few companies, but we also did maintaining websites, creating social platforms, stuff like that. So it was very wide reaching. That was on the agency side. That was for an agency called John Brown. They're now part of Densi. And then about six, seven years ago when we joined Dentsu, there became an opportunity for me to work with an SEO agency from there on a new insurance brand and start working in the SEO space more, which I took because content was very much keen at this point. But I realized that to fully understand the content that you needed to be producing, SEO was such a huge sort of identifier of the things that people are interested in. So yeah, moved into SEO and then six years ago I joined Pipedrive as a content editor at that point primarily working on the blog. But in time we've sort of grown our remix to the whole site and now other channels as well, beyond the site so that we have a full omnichannel SEO focus.
Nicole MacLean [00:11:50]:
Well, it's so great to have someone who started in content and then learned SEO, because I think we have so many conversations with clients and prospects on. I don't think anyone thinks content and SEO are ever at odds with each other, but I think it's always just trying to discern based on goals based on the state of your site, you know, based on a lot of things like which should take more priority. You lead with SEO first or do you need to say, okay, technical is good, you know, we can be found, the site loads quickly. Like, we really need to focus on the quality content and just make sure that we have, you know, a thoughtful strategy and good keywords. So I'd love to hear just how you think, how you've seen content and SEO play together to produce the best results for folks.
Will Sigsworth [00:12:36]:
Sure. I think you've touched on it there. Really. It's all about ensuring that you're producing the content that people are interested in. And SEO is a really good indicator of what people are searching for online. It's what they're asking at that point in their search. So it gives us a good idea of where they are in the journey. It gives us a good idea of what sort of solutions they're exactly looking for, what you've heard and what many content marketers think that they can be at odds with each other. Content and SEO is true, it's a fair statement. But if you prioritize messaging, thought leadership, delivering your expertise in a way that will solve people's problems and also educate them at the same time, then even if you're not thinking about SEO, you're probably doing the right things from an SEO perspective. So SEO doesn't need to come first and foremost in your content strategy, but it is first and foremost in ours because it often dictates what we do, what we then decide to do. So it's in one position, a really good indicator of what we should be doing. And then from a second standpoint, as you mentioned, like technically, it really helps us to ensure that we're not just ranking in those areas, but that the site is performing in the way that it should from a UX perspective and also helping bots who land on the site to crawl.
Nicole MacLean [00:14:07]:
Yeah, I love what you said about if you can educate, be found and solve problems at the same time with your content, odds are the results and the rankings are going to follow and the engagement's going to be there.
Will Sigsworth [00:14:20]:
Exactly. I've worked with a couple of startup businesses recently where they had no SEO strategy before. I sort of delved into their numbers and in both cases, and I'm sure it's the same for many startups that already have a web presence. You'll probably already be ranking for keywords that are relevant. You'll already be doing some of the right things, even though you've never thought of it before.
Nicole MacLean [00:14:41]:
You mentioned thought leadership, and this has been a trend I've seen specifically over the last year. Maybe it's because of the rise of AI, maybe it's just where we're headed. But more and more folks are saying, I do want to invest in content, I do want to invest in organic, but I also want to make sure the content isn't just for a keyword, that it is engaging and that our buyers would want to read this. And yet there's also just the reality of you don't want to write for the algorithm, but there is some of the kind of foundation building of what I call like one on one content. Like you have to tell, you have to answer to Google, like, what is a CRM you know, your buyers may already know what that is. Your buyers may not want to read that article because they're maybe a little more sophisticated. But like, how do you balance your content strategy to create that thought leadership and engage with clients, but also make sure that you're kind of following those foundations of SEO?
Will Sigsworth [00:15:37]:
Sure. So in reality we like to jump through a few of the hoops that are there. We like to make sure that we have our keywords in the right places, the structure of the article. We have schema, markup or structured data like FAQs. We're doing all of that from like a technical perspective, but also ticking some of the boxes from a content perspective. Once that's done, the priority is producing content that is clearly expert led, that that is unique and that will leave people with an action point. And it doesn't need to be an action point to engage further with our product. It can be an action point to develop their plan further, to go to a next stage to learn more about the same subject. That's really what we're trying to do. But when it comes to our content, our strategy has always been to build out the bottom of funnel so that we're answering those questions with clear expertise and from a unique perspective. So yes, I'm ahead of SEO, but my background in content, creative, slightly journalistic side of things does mean that really my priority is to create content that will engage and give someone something different to what they've seen before.
Nicole MacLean [00:16:54]:
Where have you found efficient ways to get that internal expertise into the content? Especially if maybe the marketer or the person in your position isn't that hands on expert themselves?
Will Sigsworth [00:17:09]:
That's a very good question. This is really one of the biggest challenges is getting that stable of experts, you know, thought leaders around the business. I'd say for smaller businesses it's actually a huge advantage because many startups, small businesses, the founders, the early hires, I'm very much still involved in all areas of the business rely on that. You know, if you're a founder led business, if the founder's voice is there, use it as much as possible across all your content. For businesses of a larger size like me, from an efficiency perspective, what I found is we're producing content that's helping those teams that have the expertise find ways to negotiate time with time, poor teams in a way that benefits both of you. So for example, we've launched Authorship on the blog and we've used many of our sales team to help like ghost write articles.
Nicole MacLean [00:18:04]:
Oh, that's a great idea.
Will Sigsworth [00:18:06]:
Yeah. Because Obviously we're a sales CRM and we've got a great sales team who really know their stuff. I mean, they're selling to sellers.
Nicole MacLean [00:18:13]:
They're like, that's an intense place to be. That's, you know, you really have to know your stuff.
Will Sigsworth [00:18:19]:
Exactly, yeah. So we've said, you know, help us with this authorship problem and tit for tat, we're going to work with them to develop more case studies that they can put in front of prospects that they can use to negotiate with potential new customers and really drive them through to the conversion point. Case studies, you know, PDFs, any sort of sales collateral we can develop because we're already kind of doing that with the content we're producing. We just need to reformat it slightly, maybe focus in a little bit more on the solutions and the features that are going to really push specific prospects to move through. Maybe look at like new industry niches that we hadn't looked before. And you know, it continually perpetuates a positive motion from, you know, we're helping them with case studies, they're giving us new industries to produce content for. We're then taking those industries into our other content producing there so it can be really like snowballed into something really positive. So yeah, that's what I'd recommend.
Nicole MacLean [00:19:22]:
So you mentioned something about authorship and so for maybe folks who aren't as familiar, don't live in SEO on the day to day, I think that has always been tied a lot to this concept of eat and showing authority. Can you maybe just speak to like, what is eat and how does authorship help or not help when you're thinking about creating authority on your site?
Will Sigsworth [00:19:45]:
So eat. Especially in the last year, I mean it's always been important, but especially in the last year and in the years ahead, it's going to become more and more important. So it's, you know, expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trust. It's basically exhibiting by what's on your website, not just the content, but everything. And not just your website, but all the domains linking to it. Everywhere your brand is mentioned that you know what you're talking about within your specific industry. Towards the end of last year, Google decided to change their algorithm as they often do, and eat was at the forefront of that decision. And a lot of brands that were ranking for keywords that aren't related lost those rankings, understandably. You know, you don't want to be going to a car manufacturing website if you're googling about potato crisps, potato chips, right. So it kind of goes back to what, what I was saying before about the way that you approach your content creation from an SEO perspective. Yeah. Google is saying eat is important. So produce authoritative, trustworthy content, expert, LED that gives a unique opinion so that it shows that you know what you're talking about. Go that extra step to say, okay, here's a statistic that you won't find anyone anywhere else. Here's an original quote you won't find anywhere else. Here's a little graphic that we've developed to help illustrate what we're talking about and that can really help you sort of tick off those eat boxes. So I'd say from an SEO perspective that it's hugely beneficial to think about the content creating just in those terms. If you don't have time for like keywords and all the technical stuff, focus on that, because that's the priority. The other thing that I say Google really likes is doing the work. If Google can see that you're constantly producing, constantly improving, constantly developing, it will reward you for that. Obviously not everyone has the time to do that or the resources to do it, but generally I've found that if you're doing the right things and you're doing them often, Google will reward you.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:44]:
Yes, the consistency piece I think is key. Again, a very common conversation we have with folks around, okay, well, I just want to do two a month. And that is a consistent. If you do two blogs a month or two updates to the site that are meaningful, that is consistency. But I think it's more than also about setting the right expectations on how quickly you're going to see results of that consistency as well. But I think it's definitely better to think how can you put things in place and how can you put processes in place so that you are doing that work? And Google sees that consistency versus just bursts of energy that are maybe a little more sporadic.
Will Sigsworth [00:22:26]:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's like email, social media, all these types of marketing. Right. Regular cadence. Google and people like things to happen regularly and often, but obviously not too often. You don't want to oversaturate it.
Nicole MacLean [00:22:41]:
Right. It's find that sweet spot. Deadline's looming and you're juggling a million projects. Maybe you've tried outsourc sourcing to an agency before, but how can you be sure that they're going to deliver on your specific goals, on time and on budget? Well, look no further than Clutch, the number one leading marketplace for B2B service providers. Clutch streamlines your search, helping you kick off projects faster. So you can focus on what you do best. On Clutch, you can select from over 2000 unique services and specialties to quickly narrow in on a comprehensive list of the agencies best for your project. Then filter down to a short list of qualified providers through filters. Or use Klutch's project brief technology to match you to the best fits. From there, just compare the providers by reading in depth verified client reviews to learn more about the work that these agencies have done for businesses like yours. So you can make a confident hiring decision. Get matched to the best agencies for your business and request quotes at Clutch Co ContentMatters, you'll be one step closer to having those projects off your never ending to do list so you can shift focus back to the big picture. That's Clutch Co Content Matters. So I wanted to ask this question because especially in your role and the fact that you have content in SEO, you know, a lot of people walk in content marketing's not new. SEO marketing's not new. Oftentimes you're walking into a position and you're inheriting a Frankenstein strategy or a bunch of content that you didn't necessarily own. And so I'd love just to like take a visionary dream moment for a second and if you were coming into like that brand new startup, you could start the content marketing and SEO engine from scratch. What would be some of the tactics and strategies that you'd prioritize today that you think would yield the best results?
Will Sigsworth [00:24:34]:
Yeah, good question. So as I mentioned, having worked with a couple of startups recently, what I found that they're kind of often doing some of the right things without even knowing it. So first and foremost do a quick audit, see where they're having success and double down on those points. So they might already be ranking for a couple of keywords, optimize the pages that are ranked for those keywords, maybe build out a cluster of pages beneath those. I found that focusing on the areas where people are having success already and just optimizing tweaking has the biggest potential for positive impact. Because, you know, the move from position 100 to 20 doesn't really bring you any more eyes, but position 10 to 5 hugely advantageous. So that would be my first suggestion. My second suggestion was to, would be to really like pin down exactly what the offering is in that business. They might already be talking about it. You said you might have already adopted, you know, some Frankenstein strategy. But if you understand exactly what the offering is, the messaging that should be surrounding that, that gives you a really good basis to do more research around well, the SEO keywords or the content you want to produce. And there's plenty of ways that you can find that out as well. So you can look at their social media. What sort of content is already resonating with their audience on there? Maybe they're an E commerce platform, maybe they have like an Amazon site. There are already keywords there that you can check. There are plenty of places where you can find this information. So my three recommendations would be tldr. First of all, do a quick audit of what's working for them and double down. Second of all, really understand their messaging, their audience, how their solution helps their audience, and how you can phrase that exactly. And then thirdly, consider all channels, look at what's working already in those regards. And obviously then there's the unknown unknowns, which I'd say is a bit more challenging. I'd say start with the knowns and go from there.
Nicole MacLean [00:26:40]:
Yeah, the social piece is interesting and I've seen that pop up more. I was just talking to a sneaker brand. That's. That's all I'll say for now. And they talked about, especially in E commerce, there's so many variations of keywords that are slightly the same but obviously different. You know, like red Jordan fours, blue Jordan fours, black Jordan fours. You could create a very dry article that works all those keywords in and you could check the box and put it out. But something that they've been doing is trying to tap into trends on TikTok and Instagram and work in these keywords related to these trends. And so to what we were speaking to earlier, finding that kind of thought leadership and engaging in how you solve a problem for your clients while also marrying that. So, you know, the example they gave is there's a. I guess I'm clearly not into fashion trends because I was like, oh, I didn't know this was a thing. But they mentioned that there's a trend to dress more monochromatically versus, you know, really bold. And so they're like, we're going to adopt that and create a couple posts on how to style different shoes in that monochromatic trend. And so to your point, I feel like SEO used to be like, you find the keyword, you write a good post, you post it, cool, you're done. And now that multi omni channel is so important. I feel like SEO has just gotten more complicated when everyone's looking for a silver bullet and the world's like, nope, actually, more and more, you need many, many different tools in your arsenal here. There's not just that one thing that's going to work for you.
Will Sigsworth [00:28:18]:
Yeah, that's very true actually. I would say you're right. You need to think about what's happening in the industry. What your competitors are doing is hugely important as well and that could be a real indicator of what you could try yourselves. Yeah, but there's no silver bullet. I think maybe I've been at risk of being a bit old school with some of my guidance so far. I would say that SEO is still very relevant even in the world of AI. But you're right, there are a couple of things that people need to start thinking about more holistic across all channels. Content and making sure it's all working together. And yeah, we're not going to say.
Nicole MacLean [00:28:56]:
Old school, we're going to say tried and true.
Will Sigsworth [00:28:58]:
Tried and true, yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:28:59]:
It's nice to hear that. There is so much, you know, AI search, GPT and it's coming and we should prepare. And I actually just, fingers crossed, hopefully closed our first deal from someone who said I found you through ChatGPT. I was like, wow, we are, we are here. That is, that is actually happening for people where that is now a true search function. But that doesn't mean that the tried and true staples of SEO can't also still yield really, really positive results for businesses.
Will Sigsworth [00:29:30]:
Yeah, definitely. And in fact, I mean everyone I'm sure already knows this AI search is still relying heavily on the algorithms that were put in place by the likes of Google being in order to surface the right content. So yeah, I would say when it comes to AI, you still have to focus on what works, but think holistically and lean on your pre existing expertise as mentioned with eat and then just continue doing what works.
Nicole MacLean [00:29:55]:
Yeah. So with Pipedrive the CRM one could say is, is maybe a crowded space now, but you guys have been around for a while, have really good history and kind of aged brand. But how do you think about yourself in the market when there are a lot of tools now and especially with like an SEO and content strategy where you really, I imagine you dig in and find your niche and just excel there.
Will Sigsworth [00:30:22]:
Exactly. Right, yeah. So Pipedrive, as you mentioned, we've been around for over a decade now. You know, we've had constant, consistent growth. We're loved by a lot of people. We rank well in a lot of different areas with customers and the industry alike. First and foremost, Pipedrive is product led. So we have like great developers, engineers, product managers who are constantly evolving our product, really understand what the customer wants, what the voice of the customer is saying and delivering. As you mentioned, the problem is it's a very oversaturated industry. It's a lot of competition. You know, our two main competitors are the big two when it comes to SaaS, HubSpot and Salesforce. You know, everyone's heard of those two. So how do we compete in that industry? It's yeah, making sure that we find that niche and that we communicate it with absolute clarity. But also because a lot of people coming to CRM are from spreadsheets, they may not know actually what they're looking for, what they need. That's where content can help to educate, to answer those questions that as I mentioned before, they're asking through Google, they're asking on AI search, they're asking on social media, on Reddit, Quora, answering those questions, being the first brand that they see, that's the challenge. And also targeting the right people is the solution, let's say. Great. So I'd say, you know, really important to, to find your niche. Try to boil down exactly what you do in a two to three word phrase or, or a couple of phrases. Do the same with your products. What are they, what do they do? And then use keyword tools like Google Trends answerthepublic to find terms around that. And for some companies it's easy like Pipedrive, We've got plenty, we've got sales CRM, we've got simple CRM, we've got CRM for real estate, CRM for different industries, plenty there. But for other businesses it's going to be harder. So it will take work. But like I, as I mentioned I'm working with a couple of startups. One industriality that offers after sales solutions, white labels them for industry like heavy industry equipment. It's quite a complex offering. In fact it's very complex offering and that's just like one sided things I do. They've also got like AI, they've got certification, everything with them. I said right, here's a keyword with search volume that's relevant to what you do. And that was industrial after sales and that sort of trying to find exactly the phrase that might not perfectly describe what you do but is at least, well, something that people are searching for. That's the way to go after it.
Nicole MacLean [00:33:06]:
Yeah, okay, so I have to dig a little deeper. You said the R word Reddit, which if you're in SEO and content right now I think is definitely a big consideration. It continuously seems to pop up more and more in the top three for a lot of common queries. How are you thinking about Reddit in an SEO strategy?
Will Sigsworth [00:33:29]:
Yeah, we're definitely thinking about it at the moment, not really acting on it.
Nicole MacLean [00:33:32]:
I think that's where everyone is. A lot of brands I feel like, are okay. I need to pay attention. But what do you do?
Will Sigsworth [00:33:39]:
Yeah, so I think first and foremost, we're conscious that it has to be a genuine voice that we're putting on there. Redditors are some of the most observant people on the Internet, and if they think someone's coming in with an ulterior motive, they'll call it out. So I think the benefit of Reddit, though, is that it's full of questions, it's full of content, it's full of people wanting to know more from a simple basis. You can just find the threads, find the subreddits, where you can just offer a bit of expertise as an individual, making sure you're not posting as Pipedrive, posting as someone within Pipedrive or whatever business you work for, and not like doing anything to link back, just offering the information, no strings attached. Google Reddit, they have a very strong relationship. They'll do that work for you. So, yeah, I'd say in the simplest terms, just offer the help, no strings attached, be genuine. If you want to go more complex, Obviously there's different sort of types of Reddit content. Let's say Reddit content structures out there, like AMAs, discussion threads, all of those are opportunities as well. From my business's perspective, we're B2B, so it's an even bigger challenge if you're B2C or you're B2B but you have an offering that is, let's say, more playful or more. Less staid or business focused. You can also trial out being a bit quirky on there, entering conversations that may not be directly related to your business, but where you can sort of put in a thought that is related to what you offer, but in a way that feels natural to the conversation. I mean, social media has been. Been rife with, with companies doing that, and it became a little bit too, too much. I think maybe like three years ago, I think that kind of died down. But you used to have like Oreo and, oh, Wendy's.
Nicole MacLean [00:35:45]:
Burger King.
Will Sigsworth [00:35:45]:
Wendy's. Yeah, exactly. When they started talking to each other, I think that was when everyone was like, we're done now.
Nicole MacLean [00:35:51]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think Reddit. One other thing I've been thinking about it too, is as just a potential other client testimonial channel. You know, we have G2 crowd, we have Trustpilot and clutch and you know, I mean I'm sure there's so many more. But you know, if someone goes to Reddit to say well what is someone saying about this company because they trust Reddit, it goes back to that eat it is probably one of the most trustworthy sources because there is that authenticate BS meter I think on Reddit that the users can really tell and if you're not there and B2B is harder. I mean to your point, I don't know that there's as much of an expectation as maybe a B2C that people are sharing their experience. But it is I think something to consider of if you have clients who are big Reddit folks who, you know, mention the client success like they look at Reddit for unrelated things like it might be something to think about from client advocacy, just how you can say hey can you share your experience? And then there is that genuine thing. So I think that might be a kind of soft way to start entering in is just thinking of it just as we do other reputation management platforms.
Will Sigsworth [00:37:06]:
Yeah. And in fact I mean I'm sure you know this many of your listeners do. There was a bit of a turning point where with Google and Reddit special relationship, some of these directories GT crowd et cetera were left in the cold a little bit and Reddit replaced them. So yeah, you have to think about Reddit as a like for like in those in those regards. The one thing I'll say though is that AI search platforms complexity especially is still using directories, et cetera to surface information. They're not as reliant on Reddit. So if you're interested in bringing in leads and customers from that regard and like you we've had some success recently, we've had a few leads come in from those platforms and pretty similar conversion rate as well, which is nice to see. But if you're interested in yet ranking on plenty or appearing in perplexity search then it's still worth going after. Directories or even Google directories are still definitely a worthwhile channel for consideration.
Nicole MacLean [00:38:06]:
Yes, kind of just like you said with Google's not going anywhere. These other directories, they're not going anywhere right now. It's still important. So we've talked a little bit about content and SEO. We've kind of skirted around some technical SEO pieces but would love to hear just some thoughts on the technical SEO pieces, how important that is and how to use that to then inform your content strategy.
Will Sigsworth [00:38:29]:
Sure. So technical SEO obviously is vitally important and it's actually one thing that everyone should be doing if they're looking into SEO, because it's a real indication of the performance of your website and that impacts not just SEO, but ux, et cetera. And also what I'm hoping for the next year or so is that tech SEO, which is maybe one of the more unloved areas of SEO, will start getting more recognition. Because with AI permeating public consciousness at the moment, I think there's a more of a fascination in how AI works than there was in like Google Algorithm or how Google surfaced what you found in SERPs, but your average consumer wasn't interested in that and Google obviously guard that information quite carefully anyway. So I was hoping that because AI bots rely heavily on tech SEO to surface what's happening and because there's more of a fascination in AI, maybe people who are interested in learning more get down that path to realize that tech SEO is hugely important and it should be something you're considering both in terms of traditional search, but also especially in terms of AI search and, you know, everything in between.
Nicole MacLean [00:39:48]:
Completely agree. It's been an interesting evolution of our company as well. You know, we started and our core is still content and content creation and all of the stuff we've talked about how important is to have quality, unique, expert content. But we very much, we quickly saw folks who that's all we were doing for them. But then they'd say, why is. Well, why isn't our content improving? Why isn't our ranking improving? And then as we started trying to help dig in and like solve this. Is it the content quality? Is it whatever the number of technical issues we would find on sites? And it's like you can produce the best content in the world, but if the technical is not. Is not there, it's just this like weight, this anchor on your site that just is going to drag it down no matter what.
Will Sigsworth [00:40:35]:
Absolutely.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:36]:
So I agree. I think the first thing you said there was technical SEO is important and it's the one thing everyone should do. And I feel like that's the. We just, we could have just done the whole show in about 30.
Will Sigsworth [00:40:47]:
Yeah. Just kind of that.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:49]:
Yeah.
Will Sigsworth [00:40:49]:
I mean, content off page, that's the fun stuff. Tech SEO, that's the foundation.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:54]:
Ooh, tech SEO. Wow, that was so good. That should go on a pillow for SEOs.
Will Sigsworth [00:41:00]:
I think that's a Neil Patel, if I'll give him that credit for that.
Nicole MacLean [00:41:04]:
One Will, let's celebrate. What are some fun things that you and the pipedive team are working on.
Will Sigsworth [00:41:10]:
So, unsurprisingly, like pretty much every business in the industry, we are looking at how we can bring AI into the platform. We've already got a couple of beta products out there, we've got a sales assistant, we've got some chatbots on the tool that help people find the information they need. But watch the space. We've got plenty of ideas to do more. You know, whether it's building reports, helping you write emails. That's something we're really excited about for this year.
Nicole MacLean [00:41:39]:
And probably some fun new keywords for you to go after as well.
Will Sigsworth [00:41:44]:
Yes, very much so. It's. I'd say 30 to 50% of our strategy for this year is around AI.
Nicole MacLean [00:41:52]:
Yeah.
Will Sigsworth [00:41:54]:
And it's. Oh, actually here's something that I will say as a bit of advice. Keep an eye on AI keywords right now because there's a lot of AI related keywords where a number of terms that are distinct but maybe not, you know, have a lot of similar meaning. They have the same SERPs. That's going to change.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:16]:
Oh.
Will Sigsworth [00:42:18]:
So if you look at, if you do AO keyword research and you're like, oh, we can just cover the same topic with these three different keywords and have them all on the same page. Great for now, but keep an eye on it because in the future those three keywords will have different topics that you can cover.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:35]:
Yeah, okay, that is good.
Will Sigsworth [00:42:36]:
As people. Exactly. Yeah. As people sort of better understand what AI is, better understand the solutions that are being offered. As I mentioned earlier, people are far more interested in AI than anything else, even the layperson. So be prepared for search volume to grow in that area.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:57]:
Yes. And I feel like I've been just hearing and seeing a lot with, to your point, search engines besides Google, Bing, I've been hearing getting used a lot more likely because of their use of AI, obviously. Search, GPT, ChatGPT, perplexity and then even looking at other things like Reddit and YouTube which are, as you put it, have special relationships with Google. But looking at, I think just expanding the definition of what a search engine means and is.
Will Sigsworth [00:43:25]:
Exactly.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:26]:
Not just Google.
Will Sigsworth [00:43:27]:
Exactly. Yeah. Sort of what I was hinting at, but maybe not saying as eruditely as you did when I was talking about holistic search.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:40]:
Welcome to another edition of Friends Matter, because after all, content comes and goes, but we know that friends remain. All right, this week we are celebrating our friends of Compose.ly, Nick and Ian over at Shurok who just launched their own podcast at the end of 2024. We obviously know how much work and care goes into launching a new show and so so excited for them. Their show is called the Growth Asylum where they're focusing on topics all about how to grow revenue using sales and marketing tactics. They have such great energy and so if you're interested in finding another show, be sure to check them out. And congrats guys. Wishing you tons of success. If you know someone who's doing cool things, launching their own show, a new product, trying out new things in the market, we want to hear about it. So be sure to go to Compose.ly Friends Matter to nominate them. That's Compose.ly Friends Matter. 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.