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The tricky part is deciphering a good

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backlink from a bad one. So
let’s say you have two blogs.

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Trying to determine which blog is going
to be helpful and which is going to be

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harmful is extremely difficult.

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Well, hello and welcome to another edition
of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

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I’m your host, Brett
Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce.

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And today we’ve got
Jeff Oxford on the show,

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and we’re talking about SEO search engine

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optimization. Going to weave in
some ai, some AI optimization,

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but you may be thinking what,
is anybody still searching?

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Is anybody still talking about SEO
these days? Isn’t everything ai?

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And have we got some insights for you?

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Because the good news is
if you’re doing good SEO,

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it’s going to help with AI as well,
and I can stay with authority.

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SEO is not dead. And so with that,
Jeff, welcome to the show, man.

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And how’s it going? It’s going great,
Brett. Thanks for having me. Yeah, dude,

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it was awesome.

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Connecting at Steve Chu and Tony Airbox,

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event Seller Summit Fort Lauderdale,
one of my favorite events.

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And I think you’ve spoken there
multiple times as well, correct?

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You’re kind of a.

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Radio. Yeah, this is my
third time speaking there.

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Nice, nice. And you talked about SEO.

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I sat in on your talk. I loved it.

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What a lot of people don’t know is
that actually at the very beginning,

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so OMG is now 15 years old.

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The first service we offered Jeff,
SEO, really SEO for local companies.

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It was just something we knew, something
we liked. I was a search engine nerd,

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and so a business partner loved it as
well. And so that’s what we did. Yep.

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Search engine optimization. That led to
Google search, led to Google Shopping.

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I had a video background that led to
YouTube, but in the beginning, SEO baby.

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Okay, so we can go deep in
the trenches. It sounds like.

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The We can totally nerd out for sure. Now,

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I have not been in the SEO
game in detail recently,

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but I still keep up. I can
still talk shop for sure.

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But why SEO as a topic now?

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And was that just something that Steve,
the VIN organizer was interested in,

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or were there a lot of requests
for it? Why SEO as a topic?

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So I guess a little behind the scenes of
what happened with that is he was also,

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he was asking me about AI
optimization chat, GPT optimization.

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And this is after we
already got SEO O in there,

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but we’re kind of at a
possible paradigm shift of how

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people are searching. If
we just look at right now,

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June, 2025 as a data point,
we just freeze this chat.

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Google is still the 800 pound gorilla.

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It still has 99 some ridiculous
amount of market share.

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Chad GD maybe has one to 2% maybe

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of the search.

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So this snapshot in time SEO is still just

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kicking butt, making
companies millions of dollars.

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But the trend is what gets
people talking about chat.

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Yes, it’s 1%, maybe one to 2% now,

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but a year or two ago it was 0.1%.

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And I mean, I can actually
drop some stats for you.

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So being an e-commerce SEO company,

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we have access to a lot of
Google Analytics accounts,

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and I had my VA a few last week.

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He went through all of
our analytics accounts.

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He looked at how much
referrals our clients,

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our e-commerce clients got from
chat GBT in April versus May to

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see what’s the.

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Fluctuation. Okay, great
comparison. Love that.

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112% Increase in referral
traffic from month to month.

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Yeah, from month to month. Wow.

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Yeah. And I can even
Now, did he also look at,

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and not to get too far ahead of you here,

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but did he also look at what percentage
of overall traffic came from chat?

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Jt? Not impressive. We’re talking
like most clients, it was one to 2%.

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But there are some e-commerce
stores that we’re seeing

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where chat GT is up to like 20%.

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Whoa, that’s significant.

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Of course, it depends on your niche.

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It depends on how much
content marketing you’ve done,

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how much blogging you’ve done,

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how much do you have enough
stuff to get cited and chat GPT?

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But just if we’re just looking at the
e-commerce world and averages from this

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dataset, yeah, it was about a little
over a hundred percent month over month.

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And then average across,

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this was about just shy of 300
visits a month from chat GBT.

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Interesting. And how does that
compare to Google, Google Organic and.

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Google paid, or did you do
that comparison? Luckily,
I have those stats here.

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I mean, Google’s, I don’t have
the month over month for Google,

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but because it’s probably
pretty steady, I would assume

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similar data point would be
for 2024, we took a sample of,

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I went over this to my
talk, but we took a sample,

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like 80 e-commerce sites that we
have Google Analytics access to,

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and also have Google search console
access to. And across these,

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you want to see what’s the highest
performing channel on Google Analytics.

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And number one outside of direct,
which just means it’s not attributed,

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but number one was non-brand organic
search, followed by paid search,

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followed by organic shopping. So
yeah, it’s one of those things where,

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yes, if we freeze this point in time,

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SEO is still the number
one top performing channel,

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even non-branded SEO or
non-branded search traffic.

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But the tides are shifting a bit.

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I was just on a call with a client
earlier today who sells refurbished

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computers, and we were looking at
some of their AI referral stats,

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and they’ve already,

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this year have had 23 in from chat GBT. So

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everyone should be paying
attention to the trend

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I live in here in Bend, Oregon,
where we have the last blockbuster.

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And if you’re, you still
have a blockbuster,

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we have the last blockbuster on earth.

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We were just talking about that.
So my oldest kids are 23 and 20,

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and so they still remember
when they were little,

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we still would go to the video
store. There weren’t a ton of ’em.

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It wasn’t super popular, saw
red box and stuff like that.

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But there was something magical about
walking the aisles of a blockbuster.

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Maybe they didn’t have
what you were looking for,

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but that was all part of the fun.

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So we were reminiscing and
missing the video store days.

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Yeah, come to Bend, you can get a T-shirt
and take a look, see what they have.

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So okay, there’s quick
dive diversion here,

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but how’s business at
the last Blockbuster?

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Do people come from nostalgia
to buy? Gees, a tourist.

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Attraction now? It’s kind what? It’s,
yeah, it’s all about the nostalgia.

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You can get some merchandise and they
still have the big blockbuster sign

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outside front and they put
little marquee letters on it.

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Super fun.

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So I guess the question is,

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will Google and SEO one day
go the way of Blockbuster

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far off in the future? We don’t
know, but I think we could say, Jeff,

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the demise of Google
right now is potentially.

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Overhyped. What? Say you about that.
I mean, no matter how this plays out,

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Google’s going to be fine.
Google has a corporation,

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they’ve got the infrastructure,

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they have all the best AI
researchers in the world.

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Their new Gemini 2.5 Pro
model is just killer.

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It’s insane. They’ve been play with a lot.

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Yeah, they’ve really caught
up to the AI race quickly.

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So props to them.

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The big question though is what about
search these 10 blue links that we have on

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page one? Are we still going
to be searching that way?

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And there’s a big question mark there.

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Google’s now testing their
AI mode where it changes the

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homepage of Google instead
of having a search box,

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it’s now a conversation box more similar
to chat GPT right now that’s just

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in testing. So we don’t know what’s
going to come out of that test.

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Is Google going to be like, oh,
wow, the engagement’s way higher,

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people are staying on our site longer,
we’re going to make this the default,

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or are they going to be like,
ah, people don’t trust it yet,

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there’s still some hallucinations.

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We’re still the best experience
and they’re going to stick
to how it’s now? It’s

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a big question mark,

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but the one part of it that no one really
talks about that’s so key is just the

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processing cost to serve a query.

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So if you go into Google and you type in,

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let’s just say what are
the best gaming laptops?

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What Google can process that
quickly, it pulls from their index,

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it has temp links. Great.
If you’re on AI mode’s,

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it’ll pull five to seven queries.

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It will then have to pull in all this
processing abilities from the LLM to

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process the results and then serve it up.

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So their cost per query is
going to go up a lot. Now,

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Google are the kings of infrastructure
and servers and data centers,

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and so they’ll be able to get
these costs down over time.

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But if their cost per query
goes way up and their ads,

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the revenue per query goes
down because there’s less ads,

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it starts to not make
financial sense for them.

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So even if the user experience
is perfect and way better,

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I’m sure they’re going to be balancing
out the financial viability of moving to

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a more of an AI focused search result.

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Yeah, it’s a really good call out.

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And we got to remember that It’s
like 80 90% of Google’s revenue is

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from search ads or query-based ads,

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and you could argue that a larger
percentage of their profits come.

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From this. Oh, okay. Profits. Yeah,
profits are probably way more than that.

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Yeah. Yeah, which is super interesting.

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And so a couple sets
that I was looking at,

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because I was curious
about this too, right?

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An executive at Apple recently
said, Hey, for the first time ever,

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we saw fewer searches,

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fewer Google searches on
Safari was the caveat.

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Google, however, released some data.

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They did not comment
on Safari specifically,

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which would lead you to believe that was
probably true. But they did say, Hey,

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we’re seeing increased search
volume across all platforms,

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including Apple users. And so what’s
interesting, I looked at this.

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If you look at daily
search queries on Google,

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8.3 billion a day in
2024 and now averaging

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13.6 billion a day in 2025.

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So that is a massive leap. And just
from the financials just to say, Hey,

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Google’s going to be able to keep
the lights on for a little bit.

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Earnings are up 12% year
over year. They had a beat.

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So their projections or their guidance
they gave to Wall Street, they beat it.

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So things are good from that regard
from standpoint and what Google has

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said, and I was at Google Marketing
Live, what Google has said is that, Hey,

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the AI mode, that’s part of what’s
driving this increase in searches.

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But your point is spot on where
it’s heard different estimates,

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but it’s a multiple higher
to in terms of compute costs.

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To.

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Generate those AI mode results
than it is just a normal

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query. And so Google’s going to have
to figure that out. I think they will.

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I think they’ll be able to incorporate
ads in a pretty unique and pretty clever

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way. And so listen,

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I think there’s some existential
threats facing Google.

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There’s also the antitrust
lawsuit and things like that.

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And so the future is not super clear,

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but I do think Google’s going to
be able to figure it out. And yeah,

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you mentioned AI scientists in 2015,

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that’s when Google bought Deep Mind,

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which is one of the leading AI
research companies on the planet.

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Some of those top researchers, top
scientists are still at Google.

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I think they’ve got the
best team. And so yeah,

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I think they’ll be able to figure it
out. But it is interesting, right?

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It is an interesting season right now.

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And so any other points on that,

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on Google’s demise or what the future
is going to hold for them before we get

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into some tactical stuff?

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00:12:06,430 –> 00:12:07,630
Yeah, I think that pretty much covers.

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I mean at this point it’s no longer an
infrastructure issue with data centers

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and servers. It’s no longer
a software issue with LLMs.

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They have all that. It’s really
just a user experience UI issue.

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How do they take this all and
give the right user experience?

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So we’ll see what comes up with AI mode.
It’ll be interesting. It’ll be really.

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Interesting to watch. For sure,
for sure. So came in super good.

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I’m excited about it.

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Why don’t we do this before we
talk about SEO and AI optimization?

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They do go hand in hand.

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Let’s back up a little bit and talk
about what are the components of SEO.

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So I know in the early days we would
always talk, Hey, there’s technical SEO,

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and there’s onsite SEO, and
then there’s offsite, SEO.

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How would you define though SEO now
and what are the big components of.

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It?

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I have what I call the four buckets
or four components of SEO you already

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mentioned. Some of ’em, technical,
SEO number one can Google crawl.

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Your website is your insight
indexable. This is site maps.

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This is robots tech structured data,

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basically making sure Google
can crawl all your pages,

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can index all your pages and you don’t
have any issues that’s going to slow down

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or hurt your ranking. So that’s technical.

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SEO number two is page optimization.

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This is making sure of your keyword and
the title tags, the meta descriptions,

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the header tags, also
having it in your content,

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just making sure your pages are
properly targeting the right keywords.

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Number three is going to be
content. This is e-commerce.

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So do your category pages
and collection pages.

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Have a description that describes
your products and provides a good user

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experience. Do your products
have good descriptions?

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Do you have blog posts targeting relevant
keywords? So that’s number three.

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And then the last one,

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which for most people listening to this
is probably the most important. I mean,

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if you’re a large brand
at very high authority,

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you probably don’t need to focus much on
link building, but most people who are

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doing seven figures to low eight figures,

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the biggest benefit is probably going
to be link building that’s getting other

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websites to mention you and link and
have a hyperlink back to your site.

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And it’s so interesting, and
I remember several years ago,

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Google’s been trying to downplay
backlinks and even say they don’t work and

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stuff, but I think a lot of the people
that have been doing SEOA long time like

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yourself, like me, were like, well,
that’s kind of what Google was built on.

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The original innovation that Google had.

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It was a project called bankrupt
just to get super nerdy.

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And the whole idea was Larry Page
and Serge Bren were like, Hey,

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what if we could look at the entire
internet, but based on the links?

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And then wouldn’t that be
a vote of confidence if a
lot of people are linking to

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this page or this site,

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00:14:50,350 –> 00:14:53,360
that is what gives it authority
or makes it trustworthy.

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They created page rank anyway, so
super interesting. So it’s like, yeah,

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I don’t think they’re going
to get away from that, right?

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00:14:58,190 –> 00:15:00,260
That’s still got to be the best signal.

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Probably Google’s just getting better
at weeding out spammy paid for junkie

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links, although that’s
maybe debatable as well.

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Yeah, and I mean,

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there’s a study done recently as
just earlier this year in January,

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and they looked at, this is coming from
hfs. They looked at something crazy.

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It was like, I think it
was a million keywords.

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So that’s a million search results.

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And they did all this statistical analysis
to see what ranking factors correlate

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or which factors correlate with rankings
and the number of backlinks to a

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page. So if we stick with
the whole gaming laptops,

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I’m a recovering gamer, so if
we stick with gaming laptops,

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and I have my Jeff’s laptops.com
website and I have my

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gaming laptops page,

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the number of links to that collection
page is one of the highest correlated

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ranking factors for those
stats Nerds listening,

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it was about 0.3 out with one
being perfectly correlated,

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but in perspective,

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most ranking factors in SEO
have a correlation of 0.05

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or 0.1. So to have 0.3 is
substantial. It’s very,

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very high correlation.
You’re going to have to have,

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if you don’t have back lanes, it’s
going to be really hard to rank. Well.

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It’s like three to six x more
valuable than other ranking factors.

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So to put that into context, that’s
great. And maybe, okay, so we’ve,

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we’ve got those four buckets of SEO,
let’s break those down in a minute.

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00:16:26,330 –> 00:16:28,580
But maybe to back up just a
little bit before we do that,

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00:16:29,330 –> 00:16:32,840
what’s the payoff here? Why do we
do this? If we invest time in this,

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hopefully we’ve convinced you that the
demise of Google’s a little bit down the

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00:16:36,500 –> 00:16:40,520
road at least, so you should invest
in it. But if we get this right,

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00:16:41,090 –> 00:16:45,560
what’s in it for us? What could the
payoff be? What are the results you see?

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I know it varies from category
to category, site to site,

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but what could we see
here if we do this right?

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00:16:51,740 –> 00:16:55,520
Yeah, I mean, that’s the question everyone
should ask before you invest in SEO.

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And it’s going to depend
on some, a few things.

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It’ll depend on are people searching or
even searching your keywords in Google,

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or do you have a product that’s new to
the market that people haven’t heard of

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where maybe you’re better off doing
Facebook ads or YouTube ads? So firstly,

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is the search interest there, how
competitive is it? If someone said, Hey.

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00:17:13,460 –> 00:17:16,190
I want to just real quick on that, Jeff,
I think that’s a super important point.

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One.

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00:17:16,700 –> 00:17:20,600
Of the ways we like to describe that is
does your product and does your category

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00:17:21,260 –> 00:17:24,890
depend more on demand generation where
you need to go out there and convince

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00:17:24,890 –> 00:17:27,560
people to start looking for your product?
They’re not maybe thinking about it,

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but if they saw it, they’d be interested.
Or is it more about demand capture.

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00:17:31,430 –> 00:17:31,820
Where.

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00:17:31,820 –> 00:17:36,080
You are capturing existing demand?
And so a couple of examples there.

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On the demand capture side, we’ve done
quite a bit in the automotive space,

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in auto parts and things like
that, especially on paid search.

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And that’s one of those things where
it’s like, yeah, if I need brake pads,

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well, first of all, I’m going to go to
a dealership, but if I need brake pads,

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they’re squeaking and there’s an event,

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00:17:49,950 –> 00:17:53,940
and so then I just go search and I buy
brake pads. But if it’s something like,

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Hey, some new apparel that
I’ve never worn before,

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00:17:58,350 –> 00:18:01,320
or maybe the chiefs just made the
Super Bowl and so now there’s something

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00:18:01,320 –> 00:18:05,640
popping up in my feed and I want to
buy it. That’s demand generation.

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And so understanding where your product,

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00:18:09,360 –> 00:18:14,130
your company sits on that continuum is
going to also determine how much is it

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00:18:14,130 –> 00:18:15,750
going to pay off to invest in SEO.

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00:18:16,230 –> 00:18:17,520
Yeah, 100%.

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00:18:18,120 –> 00:18:22,890
So we talked a little bit
earlier about dissecting a

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00:18:22,890 –> 00:18:27,420
bunch of e-commerce analytics accounts,
non-branded organic search’s traffic.

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So that means people going to
Google searching for a keyword,

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but not having your brand name in there.
They’re not searching OMG commerce,

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00:18:34,890 –> 00:18:38,400
they’re searching YouTube ad
services, something like that.

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So that was the highest
performing revenue wise.

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So we know the potentials there,

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but as far as what can you
expect as far as increases go,

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I have some data there.

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I looked at 152 SEO campaigns
over the past few years to see

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on average, what was the increase after
three months, six months, nine months,

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and 12 months, three months on average,

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we saw about a 20% increase.
Six months was about 50%,

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nine months was 65,
and a year was 75%. So.

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That’s just.

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00:19:11,220 –> 00:19:12,090
Ballpark. And it.

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00:19:12,090 –> 00:19:14,190
Changes increase in non.

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00:19:14,190 –> 00:19:16,590
Organic brand organic traffic. Correct.

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00:19:17,310 –> 00:19:17,850
Nice.

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00:19:17,850 –> 00:19:18,683
Yeah. So

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00:19:20,280 –> 00:19:24,780
if you’re a massive brand and you’re
getting hundreds of thousands of

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00:19:25,110 –> 00:19:28,680
visits a month, that 50 to 75%,

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00:19:30,040 –> 00:19:32,130
it’s going to pay for itself
a thousand times over.

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00:19:32,670 –> 00:19:36,180
If you’re a smaller startup and you’re
only getting maybe a thousand visits a

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00:19:36,210 –> 00:19:37,043
month,

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00:19:37,830 –> 00:19:41,220
a 50 to 75% increase might
not be as substantial.

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00:19:41,220 –> 00:19:44,760
So a lot of this depends on for
SEO to be worth it. Obviously,

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00:19:44,760 –> 00:19:47,580
the more traffic you have now,

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00:19:47,640 –> 00:19:50,640
the more organic search revenue
you have now the better.

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00:19:50,640 –> 00:19:53,730
Think of it as like a multiplier.
If you’re starting out,

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00:19:53,730 –> 00:19:57,240
it’s going to be at least a year before
you really start getting good momentum.

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00:19:57,600 –> 00:19:58,590
But the potentials there.

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00:19:58,590 –> 00:20:01,860
If you do it and you’re an industry
where people are searching your products,

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00:20:02,250 –> 00:20:03,360
it’s not too competitive.

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00:20:03,360 –> 00:20:07,620
And the last caveat I’ll give is that
your prices aren’t too expensive.

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00:20:07,830 –> 00:20:09,000
I mentioned this briefly,

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00:20:09,000 –> 00:20:12,570
but if you have a premium product
that costs three x to four x,

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00:20:12,570 –> 00:20:13,620
so people get on Amazon,

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00:20:14,070 –> 00:20:16,830
you’re going to have a much higher bounce
rate and Google’s just not going to

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00:20:16,830 –> 00:20:18,390
rank you as high as your competitors.

360
00:20:19,110 –> 00:20:22,950
Right, right. Yeah, totally, totally
makes sense. Okay, super helpful.

361
00:20:22,950 –> 00:20:25,860
So then let’s kind of break
down those buckets then.

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00:20:26,940 –> 00:20:30,330
Let’s go through each one and kind
of talk about some of the tactics or

363
00:20:30,330 –> 00:20:33,090
approaches that we should consider two to.

364
00:20:33,090 –> 00:20:37,530
Fill that bucket. Sure. Bucket
number one, technical SEO.

365
00:20:38,100 –> 00:20:42,050
If you’re on Shopify, you probably don’t
have to spend too much time on this.

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00:20:42,540 –> 00:20:44,460
Shopify is a very SEO friendly platform.

367
00:20:44,460 –> 00:20:46,020
I’m sure most people
listen to this right now.

368
00:20:46,020 –> 00:20:48,290
If I had to guess more half are
probably on Shopify. Totally.

369
00:20:48,610 –> 00:20:48,920
Yeah.

370
00:20:48,920 –> 00:20:51,010
Totally. It’s a great platform. Very,

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00:20:54,070 –> 00:20:57,070
yeah, you probably don’t have to
spend too much if you’re on Shopify,

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00:20:57,280 –> 00:21:01,930
Magento two, BigCommerce or WooCommerce,
any of those four platforms,

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00:21:01,930 –> 00:21:04,930
you’re probably pretty solid.
If you’re on a custom platform,

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00:21:04,930 –> 00:21:08,380
if you’re on Volution or you still
haven’t left Yahoo stores or some of these

375
00:21:08,380 –> 00:21:09,460
old legacy platforms,

376
00:21:09,940 –> 00:21:13,240
you’re probably going to want to spend
a lot more effort on technical SEO.

377
00:21:13,240 –> 00:21:14,380
But for most people.

378
00:21:14,380 –> 00:21:16,330
It’s you’re probably going
to want to migrate, honestly.

379
00:21:17,020 –> 00:21:21,910
More so migrate. But for most people,
technical, SEO gets overblown.

380
00:21:22,270 –> 00:21:24,520
I honestly think people
talk about it too much.

381
00:21:24,730 –> 00:21:27,100
People love to talk about it because
it’s something you can control.

382
00:21:27,460 –> 00:21:30,850
You can go in and make
updates to your XML side map,

383
00:21:30,850 –> 00:21:34,840
and you can make changes to your robots
text that your crawl efficiency is super

384
00:21:34,840 –> 00:21:39,340
dialed in. You can make sure you
have schema on all these pages,

385
00:21:39,340 –> 00:21:43,300
which a lot of times Google’s not even
respecting all the different schemas and

386
00:21:43,300 –> 00:21:48,160
structured markups these days.
So honestly, yes, there might be.

387
00:21:48,280 –> 00:21:51,550
It’s still good to have a professional,
do an audit and say, okay,

388
00:21:51,700 –> 00:21:55,840
fix this and then move on. Don’t
dwell on the technical SEO stage.

389
00:21:55,840 –> 00:21:59,050
It should be a one and done type
thing. It should not be a big project.

390
00:21:59,560 –> 00:22:03,130
Totally makes sense. Number two,
page optimization. Very simple.

391
00:22:03,490 –> 00:22:06,130
Make sure whatever keyword
you’re trying to rank for,

392
00:22:06,130 –> 00:22:08,350
you have that in the
beginning of your title tag.

393
00:22:08,710 –> 00:22:10,780
And if you’re not familiar
what a title tag is,

394
00:22:11,140 –> 00:22:12,580
if you search a keyword in Google,

395
00:22:12,580 –> 00:22:16,390
it has that blue or purple
link that’s the title tag.

396
00:22:16,390 –> 00:22:18,070
It’s a very important ranking factor.

397
00:22:18,070 –> 00:22:21,490
Google puts a fair amount of weight
into what keywords you put in there.

398
00:22:22,120 –> 00:22:24,370
In the search in general.
Then in the search results,

399
00:22:24,700 –> 00:22:29,200
that title tag is going to become kind
of the headline almost for that organic

400
00:22:29,200 –> 00:22:31,780
listing. Not always, Google can kind
of put whatever they want to put there,

401
00:22:31,780 –> 00:22:35,730
but a lot of times the title tag shows
up there, but also shows up in the

402
00:22:38,110 –> 00:22:39,640
tab of the browser as well.

403
00:22:39,910 –> 00:22:44,200
So it’s going to have some
pretty prominent placements
and Google gives it a lot

404
00:22:44,200 –> 00:22:45,033
of weight.

405
00:22:46,030 –> 00:22:49,150
And speaking of title tags,

406
00:22:49,150 –> 00:22:52,960
like this is one thing I see a lot I
a mistake a lot of people make, and

407
00:22:54,760 –> 00:22:56,590
you can have a very brandable name.

408
00:22:56,590 –> 00:23:01,150
So I was talking with a client who they
sell leather conditioners and leather

409
00:23:01,150 –> 00:23:02,950
cleaners. It’s a product for,

410
00:23:03,130 –> 00:23:05,980
if you have a car and you want to
have the leather look in its best,

411
00:23:05,980 –> 00:23:09,460
you get this leather conditioner
that you can put on the car seats.

412
00:23:10,240 –> 00:23:13,300
But they don’t call it leather
conditioner. They call it rejuvenator oil,

413
00:23:13,720 –> 00:23:14,650
and that’s the brand name.

414
00:23:15,520 –> 00:23:19,000
So the issue with that is people
aren’t searching rejuvenator oil,

415
00:23:19,000 –> 00:23:19,833
they’re searching.

416
00:23:20,410 –> 00:23:24,820
So their products weren’t ranking very
well in Google because they’re calling it

417
00:23:24,820 –> 00:23:25,750
what they want to call it.

418
00:23:25,960 –> 00:23:26,680
Not.

419
00:23:26,680 –> 00:23:27,700
What the customers are calling it.

420
00:23:27,700 –> 00:23:32,680
So finding a balance between
brandable names and keywords

421
00:23:32,680 –> 00:23:34,750
is always something that you’re
going to have to keep in mind,

422
00:23:34,750 –> 00:23:37,750
but you’re going to want to have that
whatever keyword you’re ranking for,

423
00:23:37,750 –> 00:23:41,500
ideally you want to have that in your
title tag as close to beginning as

424
00:23:41,500 –> 00:23:42,333
possible.

425
00:23:44,140 –> 00:23:44,350
Love.

426
00:23:44,350 –> 00:23:45,530
It, love it. And then meta descriptions,

427
00:23:45,530 –> 00:23:48,200
that’s those two lines of black text
that we see in the search results.

428
00:23:48,830 –> 00:23:50,180
These aren’t really a ranking factor.

429
00:23:50,240 –> 00:23:52,730
It doesn’t matter if you have your
keyword in there a bunch or not at all.

430
00:23:53,450 –> 00:23:57,230
The best way I like to describe it is
meta descriptions are your ad copy for

431
00:23:57,230 –> 00:24:01,670
SEO. So having really well written meta
descriptions with your calls to actions,

432
00:24:01,670 –> 00:24:04,400
unique selling points, it’s going
to have a higher click-through rate,

433
00:24:04,520 –> 00:24:05,660
which will send more traffic.

434
00:24:06,110 –> 00:24:09,560
But if Google sees your listings
getting a higher click-through rate,

435
00:24:09,830 –> 00:24:12,110
that’s also going to have a
positive impact on rankings.

436
00:24:13,340 –> 00:24:13,580
Yeah.

437
00:24:13,580 –> 00:24:14,210
I.

438
00:24:14,210 –> 00:24:17,780
Love that. So it’s an indirect ranking
factor, isn’t it, where it’s like,

439
00:24:18,230 –> 00:24:22,100
use this text to get more
clicks, organic clicks,

440
00:24:22,100 –> 00:24:23,540
the more organic clicks you get.

441
00:24:23,750 –> 00:24:27,260
Actually Google’s going to reward
that by ranking you higher. So yeah,

442
00:24:27,260 –> 00:24:29,060
it’s an indirect but important piece.

443
00:24:29,570 –> 00:24:31,310
And just to nerd out a little bit more,

444
00:24:31,820 –> 00:24:35,930
Google had this massive
ranking factor leak last year.

445
00:24:36,200 –> 00:24:38,270
We saw thousands of documents,

446
00:24:38,270 –> 00:24:42,290
internal documents on what they’re
looking at when scoring websites.

447
00:24:43,040 –> 00:24:46,160
One of the things that’s confirmed is
they look at the click-through rate and

448
00:24:46,160 –> 00:24:48,650
the search results. So if
you’re in position three,

449
00:24:49,070 –> 00:24:52,040
but you have a higher click-through
rate than position two because you have

450
00:24:52,040 –> 00:24:55,460
either a brand name that people
recognize or a really well-written meta

451
00:24:55,460 –> 00:24:58,790
description, Google, it’s one of
the most powerful ranking factors.

452
00:24:58,820 –> 00:25:00,350
Google will move you up so fast.

453
00:25:00,590 –> 00:25:01,423
Yes.

454
00:25:01,700 –> 00:25:02,860
So yeah, metas script is going.

455
00:25:02,860 –> 00:25:05,420
To huge impact. Again, that’s a vote of
confidence, right? That’s Google saying,

456
00:25:05,420 –> 00:25:05,840
Hey,

457
00:25:05,840 –> 00:25:10,670
people are voting with their clicks
and with their attention that they like

458
00:25:10,670 –> 00:25:12,170
this result. So we’re moving it up.

459
00:25:12,740 –> 00:25:15,800
Exactly. And then the last
piece of page optimization,

460
00:25:16,880 –> 00:25:18,470
second to last would be header tags.

461
00:25:18,470 –> 00:25:20,450
This is what’s actually
displayed on your page.

462
00:25:20,450 –> 00:25:24,410
This is the big header that users
see. Not as important as a title tag,

463
00:25:24,410 –> 00:25:26,120
but still there’s some
ranking benefits there.

464
00:25:26,120 –> 00:25:28,670
So make sure you have your keyword and
the header tag. That’s kind of like the.

465
00:25:28,670 –> 00:25:30,740
Headline for the page, right?
So when you open a page, it’s.

466
00:25:30,800 –> 00:25:32,960
Basically the headline
that you see exactly.

467
00:25:32,960 –> 00:25:37,190
It’s the big bold text you see at the
top. And then the last piece is content.

468
00:25:37,220 –> 00:25:39,200
You want to include your
keyword in the content,

469
00:25:39,200 –> 00:25:42,320
preferably at least once in
the first 100 words or so.

470
00:25:42,680 –> 00:25:44,450
You want to include
variations throughout it.

471
00:25:44,450 –> 00:25:45,830
You want to include related keywords.

472
00:25:45,830 –> 00:25:49,640
So having your keyword throughout your
content is also a very helpful ranking

473
00:25:49,640 –> 00:25:52,970
factor, which is why for category
pages and collection pages,

474
00:25:52,970 –> 00:25:57,230
you want to have at least 200 to 300
words of content and sprinkle your keyword

475
00:25:57,230 –> 00:25:58,063
in there a few times.

476
00:25:59,000 –> 00:26:00,170
Love it. Love it. Okay,

477
00:26:00,170 –> 00:26:04,580
so we got technical SEO that’s probably
covered before on a reputable platform.

478
00:26:04,880 –> 00:26:07,760
Most listeners are probably on
Shopify, so you’re mostly good there.

479
00:26:08,330 –> 00:26:13,190
Then we got page optimization, which is
really those factors, title tag content,

480
00:26:13,310 –> 00:26:17,390
header tag. Yeah. So
it totally makes sense.

481
00:26:17,390 –> 00:26:19,160
So then what’s bucket number three.

482
00:26:20,000 –> 00:26:21,770
Content? So with content,

483
00:26:22,250 –> 00:26:26,360
where I see the most opportunity is
making sure your category pages and your

484
00:26:26,360 –> 00:26:30,320
collection pages have that
200 to 300 words of content.

485
00:26:30,320 –> 00:26:33,140
It can make such a big difference
in ranking. It’s so easy to do,

486
00:26:33,140 –> 00:26:33,980
especially with ai.

487
00:26:33,980 –> 00:26:38,180
There’s honestly no excuse not to have
some well-written category descriptions

488
00:26:38,180 –> 00:26:39,013
on your pages.

489
00:26:40,280 –> 00:26:45,090
And then there’s also blog posts
now I think gets overblown a bit.

490
00:26:45,120 –> 00:26:48,990
In the SEO world, everyone feels
like they have to create content.

491
00:26:48,990 –> 00:26:52,410
You have to keep having fresh content
on your website that way Google keeps

492
00:26:52,410 –> 00:26:54,720
indexing things. There’s
all these myths about it.

493
00:26:55,260 –> 00:26:59,580
My take on blogging is you
should only blog if there’s

494
00:26:59,760 –> 00:27:04,350
particular topics that have high search
volume and decent conversion potential.

495
00:27:04,620 –> 00:27:07,620
So sticking with the gaming laptops,

496
00:27:08,010 –> 00:27:12,330
I bet you there’s a lot of
people searching best gaming
laptops or maybe they’re

497
00:27:12,330 –> 00:27:15,780
searching Dell versus
Lenovo gaming laptops.

498
00:27:16,140 –> 00:27:20,130
Any keyword like that, that’s like best
gaming laptops or comparison, Harrison,

499
00:27:21,390 –> 00:27:24,000
or maybe it’s laptops for

500
00:27:26,160 –> 00:27:27,150
programming students.

501
00:27:27,660 –> 00:27:32,280
Anytime that the keyword has some type
of search intent that they’re looking to

502
00:27:32,280 –> 00:27:33,480
do research and byproduct,

503
00:27:33,840 –> 00:27:37,140
those are great blog posts to create
That way you’re not just getting traffic,

504
00:27:37,140 –> 00:27:40,920
but you can get conversions. But
writing about what is a laptop,

505
00:27:41,820 –> 00:27:46,080
how to clean your laptop,
how to install Windows 12,

506
00:27:46,170 –> 00:27:50,640
whatever it is, those are not going to
convert. Yes, they’ll drive traffic rank.

507
00:27:50,640 –> 00:27:52,410
Whatcha going to get from that? Exactly.

508
00:27:52,560 –> 00:27:54,780
That’s all going to be answered
in the AI overview anyway, so.

509
00:27:55,230 –> 00:27:58,320
That’s a hundred percent.
So realistically,

510
00:27:59,670 –> 00:28:00,750
most clients I see,

511
00:28:00,750 –> 00:28:05,250
I’d say maybe 20 to 30% actually have
some good topics where it makes sense to

512
00:28:05,610 –> 00:28:08,430
go down that direction of
blogging. But for me, honestly,

513
00:28:08,430 –> 00:28:11,940
about 70% of e-commerce
sites I take a look at.

514
00:28:12,390 –> 00:28:15,210
I don’t think blogging’s a waste of
time and that they’re not going to get a

515
00:28:15,210 –> 00:28:16,260
positive ROI from it.

516
00:28:16,260 –> 00:28:18,900
Just put content on the category
page, product page, things like that,

517
00:28:18,900 –> 00:28:21,210
and leave the blog alone. Yeah.
Now another interesting thing,

518
00:28:21,210 –> 00:28:24,840
I was talking to Steve at Seller Summit
and he was talking about how his blog

519
00:28:24,840 –> 00:28:28,890
traffic has died. A lot of blog traffic
has died, and that was tied to a recent,

520
00:28:29,340 –> 00:28:32,460
somewhat recent Google update. Can
you talk about that a little bit?

521
00:28:33,420 –> 00:28:35,880
When did blogs, again,

522
00:28:35,880 –> 00:28:38,460
maybe die is overdramatic,

523
00:28:38,460 –> 00:28:42,330
but when did blogs die or when
did they reduce in importance?

524
00:28:42,330 –> 00:28:44,880
Because there was definitely a
day early in our SEO careers,

525
00:28:44,880 –> 00:28:48,990
I’m sure where leaning heavily
into blogs, that was a winning.

526
00:28:48,990 –> 00:28:51,750
Strategy. Yeah, we can
go deep into this one.

527
00:28:51,870 –> 00:28:55,770
I was actually working with Steve
on his blog while all this stuff was

528
00:28:55,770 –> 00:28:59,850
unfolding. So we had worked
together, we Forex his blog traffic,

529
00:29:00,300 –> 00:29:04,860
and then it was around 2023 that
Google had a barrage of updates,

530
00:29:05,040 –> 00:29:08,580
different core algorithm updates.
They had the helpful content update,

531
00:29:09,360 –> 00:29:12,390
and I’m going to give you a little
backstory and a tie it all back into your

532
00:29:12,630 –> 00:29:13,050
question.

533
00:29:13,050 –> 00:29:17,550
So essentially what happened is Google
was pretty good at giving results,

534
00:29:17,550 –> 00:29:21,030
but what really dropped the
ball and really failed was

535
00:29:22,110 –> 00:29:26,070
anything like best gaming
laptops, best protein powders,

536
00:29:26,070 –> 00:29:29,280
best weight loss supplements, best VPNs,

537
00:29:30,090 –> 00:29:33,480
the affiliates. And for those that
dunno what affiliate is, it’s basically

538
00:29:34,980 –> 00:29:38,280
I have a blog. I am going
to be an Amazon affiliate.

539
00:29:38,280 –> 00:29:42,520
I include links to products on
Amazon. If people with those links,

540
00:29:42,520 –> 00:29:46,600
I get a commission. So
there’s an incentive for these
affiliates to rank as high

541
00:29:46,600 –> 00:29:49,480
as they can. They can make a lot of money,
and they were making a lot of money,

542
00:29:50,140 –> 00:29:51,490
millions upon millions of dollars.

543
00:29:51,490 –> 00:29:56,410
So they’re just flooding Google
with all these really crappy low

544
00:29:56,410 –> 00:29:59,770
quality affiliate sites that just
regurgitating information on Amazon.

545
00:30:01,180 –> 00:30:03,970
It’s causing a nightmare for
Google. Everyone knew the results.

546
00:30:03,970 –> 00:30:04,810
You just can’t trust them.

547
00:30:04,810 –> 00:30:07,960
It’s just you’re hearing reviews about
products and it’s obvious they’ve never

548
00:30:07,960 –> 00:30:09,250
even touched the product in their life.

549
00:30:09,250 –> 00:30:12,070
They’re just regurgitating Amazon
reviews and other information.

550
00:30:12,070 –> 00:30:15,160
So Google what their solution to this was.

551
00:30:15,160 –> 00:30:19,780
They pretty much just
decimated any middle tier,

552
00:30:19,780 –> 00:30:23,710
low tier, standalone blog. If
you’re just a blog, you’re screwed.

553
00:30:24,520 –> 00:30:28,570
But if you’re an e-commerce store with
a real business that has a business

554
00:30:28,570 –> 00:30:32,770
address and has customers and you
happen to have a blog doing great,

555
00:30:33,850 –> 00:30:35,800
you’re blogs can perform better than ever.

556
00:30:36,400 –> 00:30:40,390
If you’re a service provider like
Brett, you or me, and we have a blog,

557
00:30:40,630 –> 00:30:44,200
we’re established businesses. We
might even be Google My Business,

558
00:30:44,200 –> 00:30:47,860
we might have a physical address
and we have a blog, that’s great.

559
00:30:47,860 –> 00:30:51,340
But if I’m just a blog and that’s all
I do and I don’t have a product or a

560
00:30:51,340 –> 00:30:54,370
service, those sites got decimated.

561
00:30:56,650 –> 00:30:57,340
Which makes sense.

562
00:30:57,340 –> 00:31:02,230
And a lot of those were back in the day
when you would pay for backlinks and

563
00:31:02,230 –> 00:31:04,030
things like that. Not
that I ever did that,

564
00:31:04,030 –> 00:31:06,670
but you’d get links from sites like that.

565
00:31:06,910 –> 00:31:09,340
And so a lot of them just got torched.

566
00:31:10,270 –> 00:31:13,690
Yeah, it got destroyed. I mean,
the results now are way better.

567
00:31:13,840 –> 00:31:17,740
But one of the byproducts of that
is even really good quality content.

568
00:31:17,740 –> 00:31:21,670
Like Steve and his website, my
wife quit. Her job is good stuff.

569
00:31:21,670 –> 00:31:25,390
He’s a true industry expert. He
knows his stuff, his content’s great.

570
00:31:25,930 –> 00:31:29,260
It’s a high authority I
think of for those SEO nerds,

571
00:31:29,620 –> 00:31:34,270
domain rating 70 or domain rating
domain authority around 70, huge, huge.

572
00:31:34,690 –> 00:31:39,310
But even then his traffic dropped
off like 90% because these updates.

573
00:31:39,310 –> 00:31:44,290
Now I am working with one content
site that’s pretty authoritative,

574
00:31:44,620 –> 00:31:45,970
and we’re doing an experiment right now.

575
00:31:45,970 –> 00:31:49,600
So I have a theory because when I
work with Steve and I did analysis,

576
00:31:50,320 –> 00:31:53,770
all his competitors that are just
standalone content sites, they plummeted.

577
00:31:53,800 –> 00:31:55,240
They dropped off like 90%.

578
00:31:55,900 –> 00:32:00,760
The sites that absorbed all those
rankings and benefited were the product

579
00:32:00,760 –> 00:32:03,460
and service sites that had,
they were in Google My Business,

580
00:32:04,330 –> 00:32:07,240
they were in Google’s knowledge
graph. So if you do auto complete,

581
00:32:07,240 –> 00:32:10,030
they’ll show up as like a
known entity and Google.

582
00:32:10,420 –> 00:32:14,470
And so right now I’m doing an
experiment to see if I can take a blog,

583
00:32:15,100 –> 00:32:19,240
get them and Google my business,
get them a Wikipedia page,

584
00:32:19,240 –> 00:32:21,850
get them all the signals that
show it’s a legit business.

585
00:32:21,850 –> 00:32:22,900
This a real business.

586
00:32:23,170 –> 00:32:26,860
A real business. What impact
will that have? So TBD,

587
00:32:26,860 –> 00:32:28,690
but the correlation is there.

588
00:32:28,720 –> 00:32:31,720
I love that theory, man. That’s
smart. Yeah, keep me posted on that.

589
00:32:31,720 –> 00:32:32,530
That’s super interesting.

590
00:32:32,530 –> 00:32:35,590
Yeah, so to be determined,

591
00:32:35,590 –> 00:32:40,310
but the correlation is still there.
The sites that have a physical address,

592
00:32:40,310 –> 00:32:43,130
a phone number, they’re in Google my
business, they’re in the knowledge panel.

593
00:32:43,580 –> 00:32:45,110
Those sites were fine.

594
00:32:45,410 –> 00:32:47,720
The ones that didn’t have a
knowledge panel or any of that,

595
00:32:47,720 –> 00:32:49,550
they all just got decimated.

596
00:32:50,480 –> 00:32:54,320
Got it, got it. Interesting. Okay,
super interesting insight there.

597
00:32:54,320 –> 00:32:57,590
Thanks for sharing that. What
else about this content bucket?

598
00:32:57,590 –> 00:33:02,150
What else would you advise or coach
us on for our e-commerce store?

599
00:33:03,020 –> 00:33:06,620
That’s pretty much it. I have
200, 300 on category pages.

600
00:33:06,620 –> 00:33:09,410
Include your keyword and
then just one little pro tip.

601
00:33:10,010 –> 00:33:12,590
If you’re wondering what related
keywords to include in your content,

602
00:33:12,740 –> 00:33:15,740
just search your keyword and Google image
search and you’ll have that refinement

603
00:33:15,740 –> 00:33:16,573
bar at the top.

604
00:33:16,760 –> 00:33:20,300
Those are all great related keywords
that you might want to consider ones that

605
00:33:20,300 –> 00:33:22,040
are applicable, including your content.

606
00:33:22,580 –> 00:33:25,400
Interesting. Great, great
insight there. Cool.

607
00:33:26,240 –> 00:33:30,350
So we’ve got our technical
on page, our content.

608
00:33:30,350 –> 00:33:33,590
What’s bucket number four? Bucket
number four is link building.

609
00:33:33,650 –> 00:33:37,580
You want to get as many other sites
linking back to you as possible. Now,

610
00:33:37,580 –> 00:33:39,290
if you want to do this, the white hat way,

611
00:33:40,040 –> 00:33:43,280
one strategy that can work really well
for e-commerce sites is product reviews.

612
00:33:43,790 –> 00:33:46,880
If you have a direct to consumer
product, you can find some blogs,

613
00:33:46,880 –> 00:33:51,380
you send them some product for free, they
take some photos, they write about it,

614
00:33:51,380 –> 00:33:53,450
and in the writeup, they’re
going to include a link back.

615
00:33:53,960 –> 00:33:56,210
So that’s probably one of
the best ways to do it.

616
00:33:56,240 –> 00:33:59,630
And you can also get some referral
traffic from these sites if it has a big

617
00:33:59,630 –> 00:34:00,463
enough following.

618
00:34:00,710 –> 00:34:04,610
Another strategy that can work well
but is extremely difficult is content

619
00:34:04,610 –> 00:34:07,100
marketing, creating
content, promoting content.

620
00:34:07,100 –> 00:34:10,700
And the reason it’s so hard is when
you’re doing content marketing for link

621
00:34:10,700 –> 00:34:11,533
building,

622
00:34:11,540 –> 00:34:16,280
it’s less about what topics will appeal
to your customers and what topics will

623
00:34:16,280 –> 00:34:20,540
appeal to bloggers. So you’re probably
going to create content that might not

624
00:34:20,540 –> 00:34:25,100
even interest your, it could be if
we’re sticking with gaming laptops,

625
00:34:25,430 –> 00:34:29,330
I could do an article
about gaming statistics,

626
00:34:29,330 –> 00:34:33,170
like what percent of Americans youth spend

627
00:34:35,300 –> 00:34:38,180
10 hours a day or more on video games,

628
00:34:38,180 –> 00:34:40,340
which video games are the
most popular by hours?

629
00:34:40,340 –> 00:34:44,120
I do a whole breakdown on all these
statistics that’s not really going to

630
00:34:44,120 –> 00:34:46,670
interest someone looking
to buy a gaming laptop,

631
00:34:46,850 –> 00:34:51,620
but it could interest a journalist
who’s writing about screen time on kids

632
00:34:51,860 –> 00:34:55,400
and wants to reference a statistic.
Now that’s going to get some backlink.

633
00:34:55,400 –> 00:34:58,820
So it’s why it’s so hard to do it is
you have to really kind of change your

634
00:34:58,820 –> 00:35:02,750
thinking and less of what will my
customers want versus what will the

635
00:35:02,750 –> 00:35:04,340
journalists and the
bloggers want to link to.

636
00:35:05,600 –> 00:35:07,250
Super interesting. Yeah.

637
00:35:07,550 –> 00:35:10,760
So what are the most used tactics then,

638
00:35:10,760 –> 00:35:15,500
and what are you coaching your clients
on in terms of practical ways to build

639
00:35:15,500 –> 00:35:19,940
links? Because this has always been one
of those areas where it’s the highest

640
00:35:19,940 –> 00:35:22,820
correlation in terms of ranking factors.

641
00:35:23,330 –> 00:35:25,910
It’s how Google was
built based on backlinks,

642
00:35:26,930 –> 00:35:29,780
but to do it the right way is really
time intensive and really difficult.

643
00:35:30,560 –> 00:35:33,920
So what are some of the tips, suggestions,
advice that you give to clients?

644
00:35:34,610 –> 00:35:38,220
So I’d say try go the white
hat as much as you can.

645
00:35:38,460 –> 00:35:40,590
Definitely do the content
marketing or the product reviews.

646
00:35:40,980 –> 00:35:42,870
But here’s the sad truth about it.

647
00:35:44,250 –> 00:35:46,350
If you want to get a
link to a product page,

648
00:35:46,350 –> 00:35:49,500
if you want to get link to a
category page, nine times of the 10,

649
00:35:49,860 –> 00:35:52,020
a blogger is going to require payment.

650
00:35:52,350 –> 00:35:56,190
You could have the most compelling
pitch with the best product.

651
00:35:56,190 –> 00:35:59,430
That’s truly groundbreaking.
But these bloggers,

652
00:35:59,430 –> 00:36:02,700
this is how they put food on
their table. They live off this.

653
00:36:02,710 –> 00:36:05,220
This is their income. And
if they check your site,

654
00:36:05,220 –> 00:36:08,550
if you were a library
or you were a nonprofit,

655
00:36:08,790 –> 00:36:10,260
they’re probably not going to charge you.

656
00:36:10,260 –> 00:36:13,290
If you reach out to them and they
click on your site, it’s like, oh,

657
00:36:13,290 –> 00:36:15,990
this is an e-commerce
site. Nine times out of 10,

658
00:36:15,990 –> 00:36:20,700
they’re going to require payment.
So they might call it an editorial fee of

659
00:36:20,700 –> 00:36:24,660
like, oh, we’ll write about
you, we’ll feature you,

660
00:36:24,660 –> 00:36:28,860
but it’s going to take time to pull up
that post and make the edits and then

661
00:36:28,860 –> 00:36:30,840
publish it and do all this stuff.

662
00:36:30,840 –> 00:36:34,170
So you can expect
anywhere from 50, I’d say,

663
00:36:34,170 –> 00:36:39,120
to a hundred dollars of these editorial
fees or blog fees to get featured.

664
00:36:39,120 –> 00:36:40,350
So that’s the sad truth of it.

665
00:36:40,590 –> 00:36:44,280
What’s even kind of more sad is
I wish it didn’t work as well.

666
00:36:44,490 –> 00:36:48,990
I really wish that the
links paid links from

667
00:36:49,590 –> 00:36:54,480
blogs didn’t work, but they do. And the
correlations there, insights rank. Well,

668
00:36:55,200 –> 00:36:59,160
the tricky part is deciphering a good

669
00:36:59,850 –> 00:37:02,520
backlink from a bad one.
So let say have two blogs,

670
00:37:02,850 –> 00:37:05,640
trying to determine which blog is going
to be helpful and which is going to be

671
00:37:05,640 –> 00:37:07,710
harmful is extremely difficult.

672
00:37:07,710 –> 00:37:11,280
I see even SEO veterans have been
doing this for five to 10 years.

673
00:37:11,280 –> 00:37:14,190
They still get it wrong.
You have to look at, well,

674
00:37:14,190 –> 00:37:16,350
what’s the domain rating and
domain authority of the site?

675
00:37:16,350 –> 00:37:20,130
Is this going to help me?
Okay, let’s go a step deeper.

676
00:37:20,130 –> 00:37:21,420
How much traffic does this have?

677
00:37:21,420 –> 00:37:25,050
Does it actually have some rankings in
Google? But now they’re getting smart,

678
00:37:25,080 –> 00:37:26,130
and I don’t know if you know this Brett,

679
00:37:26,130 –> 00:37:30,060
but a lot of sites will manipulate
and game their traffic numbers by

680
00:37:30,060 –> 00:37:34,710
artificially running a bunch of
fake searches on nonsense nonsense

681
00:37:34,800 –> 00:37:38,190
keywords and that they ranked for.
So now they’re inflating that.

682
00:37:38,190 –> 00:37:42,720
So you have to go a step deeper and see
the keywords that are driving traffic

683
00:37:42,720 –> 00:37:45,660
are those keywords related
to the site’s main focus.

684
00:37:45,660 –> 00:37:48,150
So there’s so many checks you have to do.

685
00:37:48,330 –> 00:37:51,600
We’ll even go deep and look
at who is this linking out to?

686
00:37:51,600 –> 00:37:54,720
Is it linking out to porn sites
and escort sites and Viagra sites?

687
00:37:55,230 –> 00:37:59,310
So for most people, they stop
at level one and level two,

688
00:37:59,310 –> 00:38:01,530
they’ll look at the domain rating,
the traffic, they’ll move on,

689
00:38:01,890 –> 00:38:05,280
but you’ll end up buying links that are
just absolute garbage and can hurt your

690
00:38:05,280 –> 00:38:09,030
sites. So link billing, it’s
so hard for that reason.

691
00:38:09,030 –> 00:38:13,020
So that’s why I say if you’re going
to do it, the white hat approach,

692
00:38:13,020 –> 00:38:17,970
going to real blogs and product reviews
and take a stab at content marketing

693
00:38:17,970 –> 00:38:21,930
is probably best. But just
know of all the four buckets,

694
00:38:21,990 –> 00:38:25,440
link billing is the most difficult and
the hardest for an e-commerce brand to

695
00:38:25,440 –> 00:38:26,520
make a core competency.

696
00:38:27,270 –> 00:38:30,570
Yeah, it totally makes sense,
man. Super, super helpful.

697
00:38:30,570 –> 00:38:34,950
So let’s then get to maybe the question
that was most burning in people’s

698
00:38:34,960 –> 00:38:39,940
minds. Well then what about
ai, SEO? So what do we do?

699
00:38:39,940 –> 00:38:43,720
So, okay, this is our core SEO,
and that’s aimed at Google,

700
00:38:43,720 –> 00:38:47,500
but what if we want to rank in
Jet GPT or Perplexity or Gemini,

701
00:38:47,500 –> 00:38:50,530
which is related to Google or
other AI that’s yet to come?

702
00:38:51,010 –> 00:38:51,880
What’s your advice on that?

703
00:38:52,660 –> 00:38:56,350
It’s a great question. There is some
overlap. If you’re doing SEO, right,

704
00:38:56,350 –> 00:38:58,990
a lot of it’s going to
carry over to chat GPT.

705
00:38:59,050 –> 00:39:03,790
So one thing that chat GT does is a lot
of times they’ll show the sources of

706
00:39:03,790 –> 00:39:06,010
where it’s pulling information
from and it’s pulling from the web.

707
00:39:06,400 –> 00:39:11,080
So content marketing and blocking
can be great if you have some posts

708
00:39:12,070 –> 00:39:14,890
and anyone to this, if you want
to show up better in chat g bt,

709
00:39:14,890 –> 00:39:19,330
first thing you should do is do a best
gaming laptops, best protein powder,

710
00:39:19,330 –> 00:39:23,980
whatever your product is, create a buyer’s
guide or a product roundup about it.

711
00:39:24,430 –> 00:39:26,860
So those get picked up very
frequently in chat GBT,

712
00:39:26,860 –> 00:39:29,380
so you get a little more
influence on swaying the model,

713
00:39:30,070 –> 00:39:34,000
whatever you think is best. So blogging,

714
00:39:34,000 –> 00:39:36,880
content marketing is one.
Link building is another one.

715
00:39:37,000 –> 00:39:41,230
We see if there’s getting
mentioned on other websites,

716
00:39:41,440 –> 00:39:45,130
getting your product reviews
on authoritative sites,

717
00:39:45,430 –> 00:39:48,250
those are also getting picked
up as sources. So that can help.

718
00:39:48,730 –> 00:39:53,590
It’s like a PR play where the
more sites and webpages in the web

719
00:39:53,590 –> 00:39:58,060
that mention your products, The higher
chance you have of being cited in these

720
00:39:58,060 –> 00:39:59,050
large language models.

721
00:39:59,890 –> 00:40:03,280
But if you want to be just kind of go
straight to the jugular on how you’re

722
00:40:03,280 –> 00:40:07,590
going to rank, well search
your keyword or go into a chat,

723
00:40:07,860 –> 00:40:11,830
GPT type best protein powder,
whatever your keyword is in there,

724
00:40:13,000 –> 00:40:14,530
scroll down, look at the sources,

725
00:40:14,530 –> 00:40:17,230
it’s going to tell you exactly where
it’s pulling from to generic this result

726
00:40:17,560 –> 00:40:19,780
and try to get your
product featured in those.

727
00:40:19,780 –> 00:40:22,930
So it’s going to show you all
these top 10 protein powder,

728
00:40:22,930 –> 00:40:26,440
top eight protein powder type pages.
You’re going to want to reach out to them.

729
00:40:26,440 –> 00:40:27,940
You’re probably going to have
to send them free product.

730
00:40:27,940 –> 00:40:30,850
You’ll probably have to send them an
affiliate link to make it worth it.

731
00:40:30,850 –> 00:40:33,310
You’ll probably have to have a compelling
pitch on why they should include you.

732
00:40:33,940 –> 00:40:36,490
But that what I’m seeing
is the biggest impact.

733
00:40:36,670 –> 00:40:39,670
We did some correlation research on this,

734
00:40:39,670 –> 00:40:44,050
and it was like we talked about links
being highly correlated with 0.3

735
00:40:44,890 –> 00:40:48,670
when it came to chat GPT and
getting your product included,

736
00:40:49,660 –> 00:40:54,550
it was like 0.45 correlation
of the number of different

737
00:40:54,550 –> 00:40:55,990
product roundups you were cited in.

738
00:40:56,350 –> 00:40:59,980
So the more product roundups your product
is found in, that’s in the sources,

739
00:40:59,980 –> 00:41:03,670
the much higher chance you’re going to
have of showing up in those chat GBT

740
00:41:03,670 –> 00:41:04,600
shopping carousels.

741
00:41:05,230 –> 00:41:09,820
Yeah, it totally makes sense. And in some
ways it’s similar to product reviews.

742
00:41:10,120 –> 00:41:14,950
And what I mean by that is
looking at Amazon reviews,

743
00:41:14,950 –> 00:41:17,890
product reviews make a big difference
in terms of ranking and conversions and

744
00:41:17,890 –> 00:41:22,420
all those things. And the issue
is that they can be gamed, right?

745
00:41:22,450 –> 00:41:25,060
People can manipulate them. There’s
tons of fake reviews. So it’s like,

746
00:41:25,060 –> 00:41:28,870
well then won’t Amazon just get away
from that? And the real answer is no,

747
00:41:28,870 –> 00:41:31,360
they can’t. There’s no better signal.

748
00:41:31,540 –> 00:41:34,190
Every user or every shopper
wants to see reviews.

749
00:41:34,190 –> 00:41:37,250
And so it’s got to get better at
weeding out the crappy reviews.

750
00:41:37,250 –> 00:41:41,660
And I think it’s the same
thing with these roundup blogs,

751
00:41:41,660 –> 00:41:43,190
with backlinks, with things like that.

752
00:41:43,220 –> 00:41:47,060
These are signals that when
done right are the clearest,

753
00:41:47,060 –> 00:41:49,760
most powerful signals that
are out there right now.

754
00:41:49,760 –> 00:41:53,120
And so really just got to do it the right
way, build those things the right way.

755
00:41:53,690 –> 00:41:57,500
But it makes sense to me that those are
going to continue to be a ranking factor

756
00:41:57,830 –> 00:41:59,330
for SEO and for AI SEO.

757
00:41:59,990 –> 00:42:03,650
Yeah, I would a hundred percent
agree with that. Cool. Cool.

758
00:42:04,040 –> 00:42:06,620
Awesome, man. Well,
this has been fantastic.

759
00:42:07,730 –> 00:42:11,630
I really want to pick your brain on AI
as well. So how about, let’s do this.

760
00:42:11,630 –> 00:42:13,970
Let’s be like a little
teaser. We’ll do another ai,

761
00:42:14,240 –> 00:42:18,200
let’s do an AI focused episode. This
will be the little teaser for it.

762
00:42:19,310 –> 00:42:22,670
What models are you playing
with the most right now?

763
00:42:23,330 –> 00:42:27,470
What are you most excited about with
ai and specifically like AI and working

764
00:42:27,470 –> 00:42:29,090
with your agency and
automation and stuff like that?

765
00:42:29,480 –> 00:42:32,600
And is there one cool thing you can
share with the audience related to ai?

766
00:42:33,560 –> 00:42:38,510
Yeah, so models wise, I was
using Claude 3.7 a bunch,

767
00:42:38,510 –> 00:42:42,920
and then four for a while, but then
I started using Gemini 2.5 pro,

768
00:42:42,920 –> 00:42:47,570
and I think that’s my favorite one
right now. What I love doing for fun,

769
00:42:47,720 –> 00:42:49,850
I’m not a coder, I’ve always
wanted to be a programmer,

770
00:42:49,850 –> 00:42:53,090
but I dunno how to program. So
I’ve been using this tool Rept,

771
00:42:53,090 –> 00:42:54,770
which is like an AI code generator,

772
00:42:54,770 –> 00:42:59,540
and I’ve been able to build some
pretty powerful apps that can take a

773
00:42:59,540 –> 00:43:03,950
screenshot of a blog, pass
that screenshot to an AI model,

774
00:43:04,610 –> 00:43:08,900
analyze it, and then from
that analysis also pull on

775
00:43:11,860 –> 00:43:14,870
keyword ranking data for page
and then generate title tags,

776
00:43:14,870 –> 00:43:15,800
meta descriptions and headers.

777
00:43:15,800 –> 00:43:20,480
So basically automating the SEO process
where you take a screenshot of a page,

778
00:43:20,810 –> 00:43:21,920
you pull on the ranking data,

779
00:43:21,920 –> 00:43:25,220
you give all this to the AI model
and have it optimize the page.

780
00:43:25,940 –> 00:43:27,290
So as far as your teaser goes,

781
00:43:28,280 –> 00:43:33,080
literally just last week I pulled
the trigger and hired three

782
00:43:33,080 –> 00:43:36,230
full-time AI automation specialists.

783
00:43:36,290 –> 00:43:40,670
And we’re doing an experiment
to build a fully autonomous

784
00:43:40,850 –> 00:43:44,360
AI agency where there’d be no people.

785
00:43:44,360 –> 00:43:49,340
It’s just I’m going to see how
many of the SEO steps can I

786
00:43:49,760 –> 00:43:53,390
automate with ai? And instead of
having an actual account manager,

787
00:43:53,390 –> 00:43:57,590
you have your AI account manager. So this
is something that we’re building out.

788
00:43:58,490 –> 00:44:01,310
Dude, can’t wait to see that. Okay.
That was a good teaser right there.

789
00:44:01,310 –> 00:44:05,660
That was powerful. Definitely going
to do an AI episode coming up next.

790
00:44:06,080 –> 00:44:08,270
And so looking forward to that. But Jeff,

791
00:44:08,270 –> 00:44:10,100
as people are listening to this
and they’re like, dang, alright,

792
00:44:10,100 –> 00:44:13,160
I got to think about seo. I got to think
about ai seo. I need to talk to Jeff.

793
00:44:13,850 –> 00:44:15,890
How can people reach out to
you? How can they work with you?

794
00:44:16,550 –> 00:44:21,140
Yeah, you can go to my website.
It’s just 1 8 0 marketing.com,

795
00:44:21,200 –> 00:44:24,470
180 marketing.com. Or you can
just shoot me an email directly.

796
00:44:24,470 –> 00:44:28,940
My email is Jeff at 1 8 0 marketing.com.
Happy to hear from you guys.

797
00:44:29,690 –> 00:44:32,040
And Jeff, as you can tell,
just super cool dude,

798
00:44:32,040 –> 00:44:34,920
the kind of guy you want to hang
out with. Grab a beer with talk,

799
00:44:34,920 –> 00:44:39,840
SEO and talk e-commerce with. And so
with that, Jeff, awesome job, man.

800
00:44:39,870 –> 00:44:44,850
Thanks for the time and looking forward
to that AI episode. Thanks, Brett.

801
00:44:44,850 –> 00:44:49,290
This has been fun. Awesome. And as
always, thank you for tuning in.

802
00:44:50,010 –> 00:44:50,910
Would love to hear from you,

803
00:44:50,910 –> 00:44:54,300
connect with me on LinkedIn or
shoot us a note about the pod.

804
00:44:54,300 –> 00:44:55,620
Or if you like this episode,

805
00:44:55,620 –> 00:44:58,890
share it with somebody that you
think will enjoy it. And with that,

806
00:44:58,890 –> 00:45:00,570
until next time, thank you for listening.