Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted SEO podcast host, and I'm here with the legendary Greg Danio of It's Still Content Copy. You didn't abandon Content Copy.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: No, it's still Content Copy. Correct.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Okay. Because I know for a minute and you were just.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: For a hot second, I was gonna.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: For a hot second, you're like, flip the table. Forget this.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you talked me out of it. And like, literally it took you three sentences to talk me out of it. That's how convicted I was about switching my name
[00:00:34] Speaker A: was it don't do it Pretty much.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: I forget exactly what it was. But it wasn't much more than that.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: I think especially with all of the weightiness that they're invest, having us invest in brand to be able to get signal out right now, it would have been a huge step back for you, honestly.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: For sure.
Yeah.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: For those aren't familiar with your brand, what you do, and what would you say you do here, Greg? Could you fill in the gaps a little bit?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So we do SEO for B2B and then B2B SaaS companies.
And what we focus a lot of our time and attention on is increasing visibility, like increasing brand visibility, whether that's personal brand, like somebody within your company or company brand visibility.
So that's where we spend 80% of our time doing.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Does it matter? Like, you know, you're. You're pouring concrete walls. Like, do you have to have a brand? Is that now a marketing requirement?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yes, unfortunately, I, I think that I. So, so let's. I think the days of being like a tri. Like the traditional search days are kind of done, unfortunately. Like, like, we all made a, Like a really good living and probably a lot of us made doing like the traditional search of like, keyword research and, you know, out, you know, writing content and then, you know, the 10x content stuff and then building some links that we were just buying anyway. But, you know, nobody really talks about that, but that's kind of all what we were doing. And I think that that is gone. And I think, yes, you need, whether you call it brand or you call it visibility, we typically call it visibility. But yes, you need that. I think that's. I think, I think visibility is the new SEO.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Is it visibility or is it audience? Because I know you're. We talked about it a couple times about, there's, there's channels that marketers aren't tapping, like driving a newsletter, gathering emails, and actually following through and nurturing beyond the fishing expedition layer, which I think is a mentality that a lot of SEOs need to grow out of.
You know, we always were optimizing. I know I can go back to 2011 and look at one of my decks and I think it specifically says, I don't care about your branded queries in Google Search Console. I only care about your non branded queries.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: I think caring about your branded queries is kind of the, I don't want to say the only thing you should care about, but that's like where we put a huge part of our emphasis for sure.
Like, we want to rank and we want to have like brand. Like we want to have like appear in LLMs and we want to rank for other things that are not branded. But branded queries I think are the key indicator that says the other stuff is working. The other stuff is sort of like penetrating and you're increasing whatever, you know, share of voice metric that you want to look at. But I think that's sort of like the key indicator for sure.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Are there secondary metrics that align with that? Like, I know, you know, certainly Google Search Console filtering down to branded queries. It hasn't has.
Google keeps saying that there is, you know, some AI type of thing where I can query it or there's a toggle or filter.
Hey, is that any good?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: I literally just use, I just use ahrefs because it's so much easier to do whatever Google Search Console is trying to do.
And again, it's not, it's not accurate but like, it's just an indicator of like if it's going up, then I think then things are working in that regard. The other, I mean the other obvious indicator is what's revenue doing? Is revenue going up or is revenue going down? If revenue is going down, then then none of the other stuff matters. Then like, hey, increase branding queries. Like, who cares? Like revenue's going down.
So yeah, it all just ties back to revenue.
So the, so revenue is the indicator and revenue is like kind of the big thing. And then the key indicator is branded queries and things like that.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: What if your client isn't giving you revenue information?
What if their Google Analytics is busted? Isn't, you know, following through? You know, maybe it's stuck at the lead layer. You know, is it our responsibility as you know, coming in from this side to try to push more and say, hey, I need to be connected in deeper, I need to see more metrics, I need to get into your CRM, I need to understand your conversion funnel fully. Who's talking to these people for how Long. And how are you, you know, like,
[00:05:41] Speaker B: how are you trying to tell you? Like, if you're not increasing revenue, they're going to, they're going to complain to you.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: That is true. But I, I, I can't, I can't tell you that I haven't run into four different projects in the past six months where I've asked, hey, how's analytics? And they're like, it's not installed.
So
[00:06:04] Speaker B: not run into that problem. They all have analytics installed, the companies that we typically work with. And like, they're very on top of things like Churn. They're very on top of things like conversions and stuff like that. So, so I have not run into like, oh, we don't have analytics installed.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Like, yeah, maybe it's just the red tape level. Like, the higher you rise to the level of your incompetence and the larger the brand that you're working with, the less, there's aspects of it where you're less likely to have correct setups for these things. Because I can tell you it's like a national, like, top, you know, company
[00:06:42] Speaker B: that I think, like, maybe, like the, maybe then the prerequisite to working with them is like, hey, we have to install analytics.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I guess it's like, check your fundamentals, come back.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Like, see what we can.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Or just get paid to do the fundamentals for them. Right. Spend two weeks.
It's going to cost you three, four, whatever, $3,000 for, for us to install the, do the fundamentals of like, what's your analytics? Let's do a, you know, is your sitemaps installed? Blah, blah, blah, like all that, like, little stuff that has to get done, you know, are you Google Search Console things like that?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: It's, it's funny because it's, it's like, oh, I don't, I can just talk to Claude and have my SEO execute. I'm like, okay, well, someone asked me, what is it that AI can't do in SEO? I'm like, you have tons of different data pools in isolated pockets with its own individual flaws. If you go into Google Search console data and think that the tabular query data actually matches the Qlik data, then you're screwed, you know, because Google's only going to surface. I have literally an article, ironically, about how much Google Search console data sucks that is literally giving me less than 5% of query detail. You know, there's over a hundred clicks per month to it and it shows me like three named queries.
That's less work. Than putting up a finger and guessing a direction for the wind.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not something like I, I, I honestly kind of use Google Search console for like real time rankings and that's the thing that I use. Like, so I'll go to like the 24 hour thing. Like I'm not really big into looking at like, I'll get some like indicator of like, okay, impressions are up and maybe clicks are up. Like, but like you said, it's so, it's so bad at telling me that. So like I kind of just like, like, all right, where are we? Where, where, where are rankings this week? Like that kind of thing. But, but I guess to, to, to answer your initial question with Claude, like why can't Claude do my SEO? And like again, the biggest thing for, for your SEO right now is your visibility. So like how could Claude get you more visibility? It's gotta be like the outreach and the work that you do to build the relationships with getting on podcasts. It's gotta be the outreach and stuff that like, hey, we're gonna go sponsor these newsletters or whatever or going to go and we're going to create, we're going to go and partner up with these, these people and things like that. So like all those things that I'm not sure, like Claude helps for sure. Like, like Claude helps me like get, like get, get my clients on podcasts. Claude helps me get on podcast.
Claude helps me with like, hey, I need LinkedIn posts for this week. Like so Claude will help me do that. But like the actual like writing or, and the actual like visibility aspect of it, Claude doesn't really, there's a hole there. The AI doesn't really do that for me. Like it can, but it's shitty. And it's like, is that really what you want to represent your brand?
Like this mass spam outreach kind of thing?
[00:10:03] Speaker A: I think it's like all of these spammers, I'm just going to call them straight up spammers on LinkedIn, you know, promoting, you know, absolute geo, 100%, you know, drop your SEO program and just use Claude.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: It's like, yeah, it's stupid.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: It's, it's stupid because we're not. While, you know, I did a good interview with Mason McCumber who does automation stuff, but even after, you know, a hands on, one, on one consultation, I'm further along in using Claude and AI than I ever have been been been before. But I'm still not fully leveraging the agentic layer of like, oh, hey, I'm Going make an agent to do X and Y and Z.
And there's a part of me that's like, I need, there has to be like that human interaction.
You know, I was talking on LinkedIn to someone who just added me, oh no, let me click and see even what her name is. She's senior SEO and you know, Sarah Fitzpatrick.
So shout out Sarah. Hey.
So she asked what's new with me and this year. And like it's human interaction.
And so, you know, obviously it's self serving because I've got a freaking podcast, but that's kind of my whole bag is.
These are the, these are. I haven't done keyword research that didn't start with a conversation in the past six months. Like, I haven't gone and started a keyword research process for a new page, new section without referencing either one of my recorded podcasts or recording an interview, you know, interview with Pure Air, their oxygen monitoring. You know, I want to interview them to understand, you know, regulation, like, because that's something that Claude isn't going to have in its base training layer. You know, it might have some rough information, but it's not going to know the nitty gritty detail of like these deep niche industries.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: So what we do, the first thing we do when we sign up a new client is we interview the subject manager, the subject matter expert.
We interview, um, that's an hour. We interview the sales team, if they have one, and then however many customers they allow us to talk to will interview. So sometimes it's like three or four customers. So we'll. And then what we do is we take all of that data and all those interviews, then we find out where the subject matter Experts, what podcasts, YouTube channels, blog posts, the subject matter experts, written things like that, and we compile that all into a library that we just build in Claude, right? And then, so when we, so like we don't so start an article without saying what does, what do these folk, you know, what do these folks think of this subject, right? Then it's like, hey, give me the stories that were told in the, that they've already told us. What do the clients think or the customers think about this? You know what I mean? Like, so then it's like, okay, we have all this data now and we can compile the, then we build the article and write the article around that stuff.
So, yeah, so like most of our, like we spend hours interviewing people before we even as part of our onboarding process, before we even get started writing content. Because like, you Said like, if I could just be like, find a keyword, research. Hey, Claude, write me 1500 words. Like, that's just nonsense. Like, that's not serving anybody any good. But like, hey, now we have your point of view, we have your customer's point of view, we have your customer success stories around this keyword. We have what your sales team's objections are and things like that. Now we could write the article, we could write the comparison page, we could build the service page, whatever it is, the FAQs, all those things around that.
Yeah. So like, the sales team is like, hey, when the sales team is like, why are you using our new tool? And it's like, well, we need these five integrations. Well, all of a sudden we could be like, cool, FAQ section. Do you integrate with these five tools or whatever it is? You know what I mean? That's a little bit, that's a little oversimplified, but that's kind of how we discuss it and that's how we approach our content there.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: What do you think about the proof of the expertise, the authority, the trust of any content is actually working in genuine anecdotes that are relevant? Do you think that Google is smart enough now, is processing enough now to understand, you know, the stories that we tell around topics that are relevant to get the point across in a human way?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think so.
It doesn't even matter what Google thinks. It's like, does like the person who you're trying to get the article, does the person who you're trying to get to read the article think that it's good and anecdotes and stories make it good?
That's just kind of the way it is.
I'd much rather read like, just for an SEO article because we're both in the SEO space. But like, I would much rather instead of like some generic, like seven ways to increase your to repair your site's technical content or whatever, technical, whatever, SEO, I'd much rather you be like, hey, this site, Jeremy, this site came to me as a complete message. Here's how we fixed it. And then step by step by step, like, that's a cool story. That's what I want to read. Not some generic seven steps to it. Like, I just want to see like the screenshots that you did, your thought process, the stories that you had. Here's where it failed, here's where it succeeded, blah, blah, blah. And that's really cool. So, yes, I think that's more interesting and I think Google picks up on that for sure.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: What do you think of the bot sandwich that's happening with marketers? We talked to Claude, we talk to GPT, we have the end human customer and they're talking to Claude, they're talking to GPT, they're both talking to Google and then they're coming back and you're playing this game of, of wibbly wobbly telephone.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: I think it's just the reality of what's happening. Like, I don't have any real. Like, it's not, it's neither good nor bad to me. Like, it's just like, that's what's happening. So now it's like, I just have to adapt to that. That's all. There's nothing to like, like it's a. This is a terrible answer. So I apologize to everybody listening. But like, it is, that's just what it is. So like, you just have to adapt. Like, there's nothing to think about. Who cares? Like there's. That's not something that I could control. So I don't. So whatever. Like, cool. Let's just, let's just fix it. Let's just work around it or work with it.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: What's the most. Oh, I think that dovetails. No, it's perfect because it's like, yeah, okay, yeah. Now let's, let's. That's reality. Let's just.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Reality. Correct.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: It's a human bought sandwich. Let's go there.
And I mean, I guess it has implications for, I don't know, does it have implications for like writing style or, you know, like write for people? Not for bots. But you're writing for bots who are being.
Writing for humans on the other side of two bots, at least at a minimum. But, but those bots are also like, hey, I care about what the humans want.
So maybe it's always been both.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: I don't, I've never really like, written for.
I don't, I've never specifically or intentionally written for a bot ever.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: I don't know if I did it in H2.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah. But I feel like that's for my, that's for a human like that. Like as a human being, you could
[00:17:58] Speaker A: add an H2 and it would not be code. Yeah.
Like, you could have a header and it's not wrapped in it.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: But like, all I do is like, I go to like my, like I click my. So I write in whatever either whether it's elementor, what's the other one? Thrive themes or something. And I would literally just go. I highlight it and I go H2. So it's not like I'm specifically like trying to code it. It just makes it look easier to read.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: So yeah, I guess technically I could not code the H2.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: But I don't know, what do you think? I don't specifically say like, oh wow, we're gonna, we're gonna make this robot like and like I. And the other thing that I do, I know like content chunking is a big deal right now, but the other thing that I do naturally is like I only like I am very short set, the short set and short paragraph kind of person. Like just that like I did have to change my own style for that like to be that like that's just how I naturally write I think, you know, but again that's just easier for me. Like I'm a, I'm a 43 year old man. Like that's just easier for my eyes.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: I think about Bill Slosky.
I think about a conversation I had with Victor Pan when featured snippets first came out from HubSpot and we talked it through that to target, you know, featured snippets look at the structure of what the patents behind it want, which is multiple various different types of answers answering the same question and you could see that reflected of, you know, tabular data, an image with anchored with proper image name alt text that aligns with the image that then has a, you know, 50 to 120 word answer that directly answers the query. The question posed by the H2 and then the rest of that block is really just like a supporting argument for it. So it's like if you look at the patents of what they wanted for featured snippets, it's really an argument for creating passage rank, you know, like a passage ranked focused element. Because we used to have, you know, first it was things, then things, not strings or strings not things. And now we're getting deeper and more granular as it goes. But I just end up have ended up adopting that kind of thoroughness mentality of like, hey, if this was pulled out of context, would it, would it be useful?
[00:20:44] Speaker B: I mean I kind of do that, but I don't think about it nearly as deep as you just explained it at all.
And here's, here's why.
Let's say so let's say you have a new SaaS, you have a SaaS company, you have a SaaS and you're selling SEO software. We're both in the SEO space. We're selling SEO software, you're selling SEO software, you have a 50 or 60,000. You have a $60,000 marketing budget.
Or let's say would you rather this. Would you rather hire an SEO who's going to do all that and they're going to spend $60,000 and they're going to worry about, you know, whether the H2 is 120 characters and the text is this and all that stuff, or would you rather be like, hey, listen, we could partner up with Rand Fishkin, Lily Ray, Mike King and we could get on these 10 podcasts and things like that. And that's going to cost you about 60,000. Listen, you can't buy those people. I understand. Hypothetically, let's say that there's some way to buy the influence of these people because in some industries there are ways to buy those influencers. Which would you rather do?
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Well now the, like in the Golden Age of SEO 2010-2020, it was a no brainer to hire the SEO. But now
[00:21:59] Speaker B: I would, I would argue that even in the golden age of SEO, I'd still rather do that.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I think it wasn't as well understood.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Correct. It wasn't as well understood. But looking back, like, yeah, looking back,
[00:22:11] Speaker A: it probably would have been better. But you know, because he probably, you know, having those conversations with a Rand Fishkin would have forced you to invest in the quality of, you know, turn his gold quotes into golder quotes in structure. I just mean that's it. What I laid out is something you can structure into your fricking prompt and forget about it. Like I, I'm sorry, I don't have to hire myself to, but I can, I can get the, the influencer now to have the subject matter expert conversations, then leverage a AI with SEO prompting to extract the value and help build the stuff much faster than I could before. Right, for sure.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. Like we build content way faster right now. For sure. But I think like, you're missing the like. But I don't think like, but my point is that the stuff that like the technical stuff, whether it's like, you know, whether the issue. Like, like you were just saying, I'm sorry, I'm nitpicking this one little thing, but whether the, the H2 tag is 120 characters, like, I don't know.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: That is the sentence after the Sorry.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the sentence.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: It's. Sorry, it's a little bit different. It is.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Really? Yeah, yeah, you're right.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: It's the sentence after. Well, because that's the one that you. That sure. The header that's the one that fuels the future.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: That's.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: And I never once counted future snippets. It's not a strategy we can do anymore.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Correct. But even, even if it was, I don't care. And I would. I would much rather spend my time building the relationships with the influencers to get. Who are going to mention my tool or get me on their podcast.
This podcast. Going on your podcast right now is way more valuable to me as a, as an SEO agency than going through my content and being like, all right, is this content too long or is this content chunked? Is this like, it's way more valu.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: So, yes. And I saw Rand Fishkin's post. Was it two days ago of. It's. It's flipped. You know, we need to be playing.
You know, we need to. We need a goalie 100%.
Your website is the goalie, you know, or however the. The mouth at the end of your Kraken. Let's use the Kraken metaphor. You need a beak to crack the morsels that, that your tentacles bring in, but you need more tentacles than.
And you need to be reaching out and pulling things back consistently.
And if you can figure out how to convert on those platforms along the way, that's even better. But you know, like, that's my mentality is like, you know, reach out more. More tentacles, bring it back in, leverage different channels, you know, collaborate, you know, and in house SEOs, your job more than ever is to play outside of. Of SEO SEO, you need collaboration. It's. It's bringing. Bringing home that last layer of value between teams.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Like if you're, if you're an SEO now and again. Like, I think at one point in time, like I, it's things that I call myself in SEO agency because like, I don't think of that anymore of myself that right now. But like, if you're an SEO, like, your job was never ranking. Your, Your job was never content. Your job was never links. Your job was increased revenue. That was your job.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: It just so happened that the way to do that was to write content and build links. Now I think, like, the job is, yes, you have to write content and build links, but you also need to be getting your CMO on podcasts. You need to be building a YouTube presence. You need to be creating thought leadership on LinkedIn. You need to be, you know, like, I'm talking very specifically B2B. Like, like B2B doesn't do TikTok or whatever as much. But like, like, you know, you need to be Building your, your email newsletter. I just saw a study and again, this is an N equals one study, but it's something that I've been thinking about like, like companies brand. Garrett Sussman just wrote this study or created this study over at. It's on ipullrank.com so in case your listeners want to check it out again, it's an n equals 1. But it makes sense that Gmail is pulling data from their, the email to personalize AI to AI presence, right? So if you're a small email marketer, email marketing company and you're in 10,000 Gmail inboxes or whatever, like, well, that increases your search presence. But somebody's like, hey, what's the best email marketing company?
I think it was like, there's like a 40% chance increase, 40% increased chance. I believe it was that your brand will be cited or recommended because you're to that personalized content to that personalized search. So like, you have to be doing these things. It's. You can't just be like, oh, you know, you, you paid me for four blog posts a month and eight links.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Like that.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Just, that's not the thing anymore. That's just not going to get done.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: I definitely agree.
What do you think is going to happen in the next year? We've seen an incredible change of pace and tone.
Any. Any. Do you dare stare into the crystal ball and give us the future?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: I'm very bullish that visibility. Like, I'm very just bullish on visibility and brand building as, in terms of like, in terms of like the thing that's going to be working best, however you want to do that, whether you want to, like, I like getting in front of other people's audiences, going on podcasts, YouTube channels. Whether you want to build your own YouTube channel, like, whether you want to go build your own podcast, LinkedIn. Like, again, B2B is LinkedIn for, for me versus other channels. But like, yeah, very bullish on building your, building your visibility and your brand.
I don't, I don't have any other predictions other than that. Like, I don't know what Google's going to do in terms of like the 10 blue links or whatever. But do you use. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you one question.
Do you still use the 10 blue links in Google when you do a search?
Or do you look at the AI overview and just be like, okay, this is good enough. And then like, you go, never.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: I've never consumed any of the content from an AI overview.
Okay, I either use Claude or I skip or I auto scroll past it. Okay, when I do actually Google, I'm trying to think.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: I mean, see, I mean that's kind of like a big deal though, right? Like when I do actually Google. So I do still use Google as my primary search over like Claude or chat gtp.
But like I start out at the end, like if I don't get an overview, I'm kind of upset that my query didn't review an overview. Not that I think it's perfectly right and not that I think it's correct, but at least it gives me like a starting point that like I don't have to go and like do my own research for like. So like. Yeah, but like you do the same thing though. You just do it in Claude kind of.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: I think this is embarrassing to admit, but I cannot change my default search engine away from Yahoo.
I've tried like following tutorials, changed it, reset. I can't go too far because I. My Chrome is way too set. I have like 34 different Chrome profiles all logged into different client stuff from all of the years and I'm terrified to try to like really do something desperate. So it's like every time I type into the bar a search Yahoo. So like now since I'm, I'm like sitting half of the day on Claude waiting for her to give me a token so I can do stuff.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: That's hilarious.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: And then if I really, I'm like, oh no, I actually need to see Google. Then I have to type in Google and then re input the query. So it's like, that's fun. But no, in SEO I'm like, my default engine is Yahoo.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Jeremy, one of the best technical SEOs in the world, can't change his Internet browser.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: The shame.
As my daughter says the same.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Oh boy.
Let's talk about links.
Yeah, so you touched on it earlier that there's always been this, you know, and it goes, what is old is new, you know, to the year 2000, 1995. Even like there's link building and half of that link building really is paid money behind the scenes. And then we have all of these battles going forward.
Penguin, you know, there's always this black hat pressure of figuring out what the next way to exploit links is. And I think we got infected as SEOs of like when we do outreach, it's not worth anything unless it's getting me Dr. -50s, you know, it's not worth anything unless I get a blue clickable link to back to My site because we invested so much in explaining this algorithm process to the CEO, cfo, cmo, Marketing Manager of like hey, I need this budget to go build links and here's why. And it's going to move the needle and I promise and it'll take forever and it's painful and it's half of your budget, but I swear that it works.
And that swearing that it works led us to, you know, like when Rand Fishkin came along in 2012, he's like yeah, mentions matter, unlinked mentions matter. And like that's nice rant. Like I can't get budget to just get somebody to mention my site online.
But now with LLM based processing, mentions I mentioned matter as much as links.
I haven't seen studies that show any strong correlation between a link development layer and LLM rankings because they can't invest the, the time in it, they can't invest the signal in it. It's only from the secondary layer of what they pull back from rankings.
So rankings are affected by links and that's what, that's the way that links still matter. But, but in LLMs themselves.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have seen no studies or data that proves any correlation whatsoever of a blue clickable link influencing brand visibility such as it is, such as we can get in LLM based search results. Gemini, Claude, GPT perplexity, etc.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: The blue click. So I would push back on that a little bit.
When we get a brand ranked listed in a listicle that's like so like you go to one of those trackers and LLM trackers or whatever, those tools say what you want about them, they're not very, they're not accurate. Like you can't tell which prompts or whatever but you could get some insight into where the LLM is pulling their data from.
And so what I will say is like when we get into, when we get companies into a listicle, like 10, like let's say you have a CRM or whatever, 10 best CRMs for small business or whatever that we've, we've seen that help.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: But I don't know, I don't know if that's the mention.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: I was gonna say that. The only thing is is like I don't know if that's correlation versus causation. I don't, I can't tell you that. Like, like we just get the link and I don't know if it's because of the mention or not.
It is also true that like, I mean half the Half the things in there are non like non linkable things. Like for instance when you look at like any like LLM recommendation engine, it's like half of them are Reddit. Like not half but like many of them are Reddit, many of them are YouTube. You're not getting links there for the most part podcast mentions or some LinkedIn, you're not getting links there usually and then the listicles where you are getting links. So I mean I don't know we still do get do link building in the sense of like we have I don't know, 10 best Mailchimp alternatives or whatever and we'll build, we'll still build links to, to that like very specific page or whatever and you know, but like link building from a, getting 2530 links for a company or a month, or 50 links for a month. Like that's, that's called by the wayside
[00:35:26] Speaker A: for us anyway, I think, I'm not arguing that there isn't value in link building, it's just that I haven't yet and I'd love the data if it was there. If anybody has a study, please DM me, please send it to me. Where there's been shown any for sure any any stronger correlation to having an article that's linked versus unlinked having a bigger impact in LLMs.
That's the other problem of having impact from a brand.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: I was going to say from a brand standpoint. I don't think so. I don't think there's any difference between having your like the unscripted, unscripted podcast.com linked versus unlinked. I don't think there's any difference however, like I think if like there's an internal page on, on the unscripted podcast that you want to rank or whatever for a particular off brand keyword.
I still think there's a, I still think that there's a place for traditional link building there.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think link build in one way because it's behind the scenes more. I think that strategic, strong, heavily brand centric keyword link building has its value because you've got the knowledge base, you've got the first query set. If it's not not in the knowledge base, then it's going to that query fan out and you can only get in that query fan out by ranking. You get ranking by links. You know, it's still 50% of the equation there. And so the fuel behind the scene, what's happening in the wrapper, you know, still matters. So yep, I, I think, I think it's just easier actually to make an argument now of, hey, we need. Need visibility and mentions and every opportunity I get, I'm going to make it into a link. Yeah, but for sure, now you can now we have.
Have an argument base for why just mention.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: I just don't even think it's an argument worth having. Like, who cares?
Just get your, get your bra. If they give you a link, if, if they give you a link in a great. On a great site, great. And if they just mention, like, unscripted, the unscripted podcast, the leading SEO podcast for blah, blah, blah, like, that's awesome too. Like, who cares? Just get it. Like, don't worry about it. Like, there's no, there's no need to argue is what. Like, that's why. That's what. I see this on LinkedIn all the time. Like, all the arguments and I'm like, don't worry about the. Like, don't argue. Just this is the reality.
Just do it. It's okay.
We don't, we don't have to worry about it.
It's not something that I can control, so I don't even worry. I don't think about it.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Like, if TechCrunch wanted to give you a.
I mean, you used to run SEO arc, but if TechCrunch wanted to give you a mention, are you going to be like, hey, listen, guys, hold on, I need the link, you know,
[00:38:25] Speaker A: no, we used to be. There used to be the wedge. There's also.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah, but not anymore. It's not. Right.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: That's fair.
As kind of wrap up here. Remind us of your brand.
Anything special coming up for you?
Where can people find you? Hang out, ask questions.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn mostly. I publish almost every day.
And then contentcompy.com and then gregtentcompy.com before
[00:38:56] Speaker A: we started this interview and you were thinking about it, dreaming about coming on the unscripted SEO podcast.
Yeah. At least did you hope that I would have asked you that? I haven't yet.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: I think that. I think the thing that you, you. We talked about it, we hinted at it, but I think the thing that I.
Where I see SEO going and what I see moving the needle more than any of the other stuff that we've sort of talked about is like just that visibility aspect. Right. Like f. Like whether that's. Find the influencers, find the podcast, find the people with the audience that you want to serve and just get on and like, the rest of it'll take care of itself. Like publish your service pages, do some little keyword research to publish your service pages, do a little keyword research to publish your like alternative pages or your how to pages and all that stuff. But like the rest of your time and the rest of your strategy and the rest of your mental effort and budget, like figure out where your audience is and then, or who they follow and then go and get in front of them via in that way and I think you'll be fine.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Can recommend this SOP to sit down and create a Nexus document and you can do it with Claude, but you're basically going to brainstorm out every non direct competitor that wants to reach your same audience that has a marketing budget.
And if there's any hobbyists on the side who is speaking to your audience, brainstorm it out because you can. And even your direct competitors, sometimes you can get sneak in there with clever things like inviting them on a podcast to interview them. I did that for, you know, the unscripted home improvement podcasts because they were out of my market and so. And even a couple of, you know, Cookeville based home improvement folk, I interviewed them and got them to mention my client H and H Cookeville.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: So people will do it for sure.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah, they'll definitely do it if you give them a reason. But think about all of the, all of the marketing budget you can multiply your potential by, you know, that's how I think of it is like there are people with marketing budget and if I give them a reason to promote me, I'm going to get much further now in this economy, as they say, with the benefits for me of collaborative marketing, the benefits for me of giving, giving first and not trying to do some scammy like, oh, you have a broken link on your site. Can you point it to me? Right, yeah, no, but actually like have some sort of value prop, you know, approach it as a journalist, have, you know, three questions that you think this, you know, if you're a realtor, you know what moves the needle on curb value?
[00:41:47] Speaker B: You.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Yep, that, that question could go to home inspectors, could go to landscapers, could go to home designers decor, individual products. There's hundreds of different opportunities. If you just reached, if you went beyond, oh, I'm a realtor, you know.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
And also like the other re. The other reason why somebody will promote you is you'll just pay them to like. And that's cool too. Don't worry about it. Like, don't worry about it.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it does.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: It's just, I mean as long as you do it in your, you know, whatever ethical way you decide. Just, you know, whether you want to have it, like say sponsored or whatever it is. Like, you know, like do your ethical thing. Like getting just paying people to promote you works really well and it increases your visibility.
And, and LLMs don't seem to care whether or not it's a sponsored post or not. Like, they just don't.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: So, no, they haven't added that layer and I don't think, I don't really think they can.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: But I don't know if even if they can, like, you're still going to get a lot of, a lot more, a lot of customers and a lot of visibility and a lot of people talking about you so.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate your time and insight.
It's content guppy.com right?
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: I'll make sure to harvest any links from the stuff we discussed. I think you mentioned Garrett Sussman's article. I'll make sure it all shows up in the show.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Garrett Sussman's article on I Pull rank.
Great article.
If you're thinking like, again, it's a small study, probably need some more conclusions. But like, if you're not doing email marketing because you're like, oh, I'm an SEO and I shouldn't be doing email marketing, like, this might make you reconsider.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: I think as a closing thought, it's not that SEO is dead because we've seen zombies.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: No, not at all.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: We've seen the zombie arise. But I think that people who exercise in the domain of search engine optimization must cross contribute across skill pools and become a better marketer in general.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: It's no longer a siloed activity.
Excuse me? It's just not. It's a, it's the stuff that, like, I mean, when I was a time Dr. We did all this stuff, but we, we focused 80% of our budget on SEO, like content and links, and then 20% of stuff on like partnerships and podcasts and YouTube channels and outreach and all this other stuff.
I would just flip the budget that I, you know, I would just flip the budget. I just don't need that much content anymore. I don't need that many links anymore. And I would just flip the budget and do more of the outreach because, like, when I look back at what is still working for Time doctor All these years later, it's that brand, it's like all that brand stuff that we were building in the, you know, 2015-2020,
[00:44:35] Speaker A: as I kind of, I'm giving this opportunity to. And if you don't have one, that's fine.
Do you have a question that you would want the next SEO or two that comes on the show to try to answer?
What problem have you run into? What conundrum have you not yet solved? What workflow is lacking?
[00:44:59] Speaker B: Yeah, so like the, the thing that we have, I mean like, like I haven't seen Mason's interview yet but like I think the stuff I'm really curious to see like at the age ed tick letter level, what people are building there.
Like we're siloed and I have my own ideas but like it's cool to see what other people are building and hear what other people are building. So like always that right now again, not because I think the bots should take over and but because like I think there's a lot more room for me like selfishly to execute faster.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: My, my execution. I've been spending the like a few minutes every so often with Claude. I had a build connect use Royal MCP with WordPress to launch a hub categorizing my podcasts. Both were on unscripted and so categorize found the major themes, sorted and published and created pages and then interlinked them, then created CTAs to explore the hub both on the pages as well as on the site itself. Added CTAs across all 125 different interview posts to.
Now I'm working on a layer to create downloadables for each interview of like a PowerPoint version, a word Doc version. Right. And put it behind an email wall to gather, you know, email interest subscription.
So subscribe and you could get the download, you know. And so I'm looking and using it from that perspective and I'm moving towards that being a fully agentic flow. I've got the skills down now I just have to figure out how to get the program to sequentially do all of the individual skills that I've. I've come up with.
So yeah, watchmason. I. I have one or two other age guys that I've interviewed. I mean I have one coming up.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: Cool. I'm curious. I'm gonna check them out. But yeah, I haven't had a chance to watch Mason like I said. But like I was, you know, my buddy Liam just literally said like he's been trying to find a marketer but he can't find one. And I'm like, why can't you find one? He's like, it's hard to find an agentic marketer that's moving at the speed I'm looking for. And I think speed is just everything right now. I had a writer one time. Just. I'm so sorry. I know that we're out of time.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Keep going.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: But, like, I had a writer. I was using a. I was using a writer. Love the writer. But he's like, I' this article back to you in a week. And I was like, a week? Like a week? Hold on. I gave you. I, like, I literally gave him all the information that he needed, like, because I had all the interviews and all the podcasts and all that, that data library, and I gave it all to him and access and everything like that. And he's like, what? What are we doing here? Like, I need like four of these this week, you know? So, like, it's just the speed is everything. Yeah, I hear you.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: I think I have two or three agentic people actually booked in the next month, so I'll make sure.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Looking forward to hearing them.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: I will even send you the link to all my agentic. To the agentic.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: I appreciate it.
[00:48:11] Speaker A: Interview material. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you and sharing your wisdom, sir.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: I had so much fun, man. It's always a blast.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Peace out.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Take care.
