Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.111: Is SEO Dead? How Google, AI & Search Are Changing Business Visibility w/ Kara Duncan | The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP.111: Is SEO Dead? How Google, AI & Search Are Changing Business Visibility w/ Kara Duncan | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:00
  I think there's one of two camps which is either you're somebody
• 0:02
  who knows a lot about SEO or you feel like I have 0 insight and
• 0:06
  information on this. Some people are in this like
• 0:08
  stark belief that SEO is dead or SEO is dying, which I don't
• 0:12
  agree with. In 2022, Google had 5.5 billion
• 0:17
  searches a day. In 2025 it was like almost 17
• 0:21
  billion. AI is only going to get you so
• 0:23
  far and then people are going to look for the next step.
• 0:26
  You teaching someone in any category is really not the
• 0:29
  valuable thing anymore. It's about the experience around
• 0:32
  the information. I feel like a lot of people are
• 0:34
  like quick win junkies. Like they're like, I want to
• 0:36
  make 20K off this thing I do. I want to make 50K off this
• 0:38
  thing I do. Businesses with blogs on their
• 0:41
  website convert at a 13 times rate compared to businesses that
• 0:45
  don't have blogs. By no means is SEO dead, first
• 0:49
  of all. So I don't think SEO is dead.
• 0:51
  I think it's different. Hello, you guys, and welcome
• 0:54
  back to Ambitious. You were probably thinking,
• 0:55
  Kate, where are you? I am currently at George's right
• 0:58
  now where I'm filming this intro to this incredible episode.
• 1:02
  In this episode, I am joined by Kara, who is an absolute genius
• 1:06
  when it comes to all things SEO. And one thing that I know is the
• 1:09
  number one question so many people have right now is what's
• 1:13
  going to happen in this this day and age of AI constantly being
• 1:17
  on the rise and feeling like it's moving faster than we are?
• 1:20
  And what does that mean for SEO? And so in this episode, Kara and
• 1:24
  I dive into all of that and more.
• 1:26
  We dive into how SEO is not actually dead, it's just
• 1:29
  changing, and how understanding SEO or AEO is also going to help
• 1:34
  you to understand how to get discovered.
• 1:36
  We also talked about EEAT as a framework and how experience,
• 1:40
  expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are actually
• 1:44
  crucial to being discovered on Google these days.
• 1:47
  With that, she also talks about the three essential starting
• 1:50
  points that everyone has to have in order to be discovered right
• 1:54
  now online, how to optimize your website, how to build strategic
• 1:58
  backlinks and creating blog content and what that actually
• 2:02
  looks like in today's current ecosystem.
• 2:04
  She's also going to discuss the surprising stat that businesses
• 2:08
  with blogs on their website actually convert, which blew my
• 2:11
  mind at 13 times higher than people who have websites without
• 2:16
  them. She talks about how Pinterest
• 2:19
  actually acts as a true top of funnel for many businesses and
• 2:23
  how it helps them to get discovered, why the information
• 2:26
  as value type of era is actually dead and what's going to be
• 2:30
  taking its place. And she also talks about what it
• 2:32
  realistically looks like when you are planting seeds online
• 2:36
  and you want to get discovered by searches like Google or AI.
• 2:40
  So if you are somebody who's been in this, in this moment
• 2:44
  where you're not sure what's happening with SEO, what does
• 2:46
  this mean for my ability to get discovered?
• 2:48
  How do I make sure that I get discovered using AI?
• 2:51
  There are so many Nuggets in today's episode that you're
• 2:54
  going to want to take notes on. So without further ado, let's
• 2:56
  get into today's episode. Hello you guys, and welcome back
• 3:08
  to Ambitious today. I am so excited because we get
• 3:11
  to have an incredible conversation about, I was just
• 3:13
  saying before we press record something that you're either one
• 3:16
  of two camps, you know a lot about it, or you're like, I have
• 3:18
  0 insight and information on this and that's why I'm excited
• 3:22
  for today. So, Kara, welcome to Ambitious.
• 3:25
  Thank you for having me, I'm so excited to be here.
• 3:28
  Yeah, I'm honestly OK. So we were just saying before we
• 3:31
  press record that with SEO, there's really one of two camps.
• 3:36
  And I feel like now more people are getting curious about it
• 3:38
  because obviously of this huge AI conversation which we'll get
• 3:41
  into. But I think there's one of two
• 3:43
  camps, which is either you're somebody who knows a lot about
• 3:45
  SEO or you feel like you're like, I have lived in the social
• 3:48
  media bucket and I've not been in that world as much.
• 3:51
  I probably would say that I'm the second.
• 3:54
  So as a starting point, obviously you live in the SEO
• 3:57
  world. How long have you been kind of
• 3:59
  like in this in this area and using this as like a core piece
• 4:02
  of marketing? Oh, I would say I, I started
• 4:06
  doing it for my wedding business where I was like super dabbling
• 4:08
  like 7 years ago and I've been doing it for other business
• 4:11
  owners for five. Wow, wow.
• 4:14
  OK, So with that, obviously you see that in contrast to social.
• 4:19
  So maybe like bring us back to like the basis of the actual
• 4:23
  SEO, how it works. Because I know a lot of people
• 4:26
  assume, OK, you plant keywords and Google discovers you.
• 4:30
  But obviously I know it's more complex than that behind the
• 4:33
  curtains. So for anyone who's not familiar
• 4:36
  with SEO or really like how it works to get you discovered,
• 4:39
  what does that process look like?
• 4:42
  Yeah, for sure. So I do feel like SEO is like
• 4:46
  the clunkiest word in the history because it's like stands
• 4:50
  for search engine optimization. So basically what it means is
• 4:55
  that you are optimizing what you have on your website.
• 5:00
  I mean, now they're talking about social media as like its
• 5:02
  own search engine, like basically just making sure that
• 5:06
  the content and that your business gets found online is
• 5:09
  really at the core of what SEO is.
• 5:12
  And yeah, like you said, there are tactics to help do that,
• 5:15
  like use certain keywords. And, you know, I'm sure we're
• 5:18
  going to get into that. But at the core, SEO is
• 5:21
  literally just about like putting your business in the
• 5:23
  best position to be found online.
• 5:26
  Right. OK.
• 5:27
  Obviously most people I think probably associate or at least
• 5:31
  like even for a lot of people that I coach, they associate SEO
• 5:35
  with, oh, when I get into SEO, I'm going to have a blog and
• 5:38
  they associate with Pinterest. But if somebody wanted to until
• 5:43
  now leverage SEO, what's kind of like the typical way for the
• 5:46
  last say to your point earlier five years that people have been
• 5:49
  using SEO in their business? Yeah, definitely.
• 5:53
  So SEO could literally be anything.
• 5:55
  I mean, a lot of times people equate SEO with blogging and
• 5:58
  what I always say it really depends on your business, your
• 6:02
  industry. I would look up like the main
• 6:05
  keyword you want to be found for.
• 6:06
  So like marketing coach, website designer, if the people that are
• 6:10
  coming up all have blogs, there's a good chance that you
• 6:13
  need a blog or some sort of regular content.
• 6:16
  It could be your podcast or YouTube if it's being linked
• 6:19
  back to your site to help support you be competitive in
• 6:22
  those results, right? So.
• 6:24
  The basis of it really being that if someone wants to succeed
• 6:28
  in SEO, it really is, are the words that your ideal client
• 6:33
  that they're searching, are you coming up with that search?
• 6:36
  And so based off what I'm hearing, it's like if you're
• 6:39
  saying if you're writing it in a blog with those words, if you're
• 6:42
  speaking it in a YouTube video or a title of a YouTube video
• 6:45
  with those words, it's really ensuring that the words they're
• 6:48
  searching are the words that you are using within basically your
• 6:51
  marketing ecosystem. Yeah, that's exactly.
• 6:54
  Right. Yeah, OK, OK.
• 6:56
  Because I think a lot of people, especially for all of our like
• 6:58
  hardcore social media people who are like that's the stake in the
• 7:02
  ground. This is what I do to scale.
• 7:04
  I think that there's this conversation of to do SEO means
• 7:08
  you have to be a Blogger or you have to decide that you want to
• 7:11
  get into Pinterest. And obviously, like you're
• 7:14
  saying with YouTube, there's a lot of ways to leverage SEO.
• 7:17
  So like maybe in this current moment, what are some of the
• 7:21
  things that you're seeing are really like leverageable tools
• 7:23
  for people to get discovered? Yeah.
• 7:26
  And I think that that's really interesting.
• 7:27
  And like you said, I think in 2026, I'm seeing a lot of people
• 7:32
  say like this is the year I'm finally looking at my SEO,
• 7:35
  right. We know other algorithms tend to
• 7:37
  be a little more unstable. And I think it's interesting the
• 7:41
  difference between like Google and AI, although it is changing
• 7:45
  rapidly, but Google was previously really looking at
• 7:49
  your website authority, right? What information do you have on
• 7:52
  your website that supports you being the best search result for
• 7:57
  whatever someone's looking for? AI is really looking more at
• 8:01
  like your whole footprint. So that doesn't mean that you
• 8:04
  can just be on Instagram, but it does mean like if you have your
• 8:09
  kind of like profile and business in multiple buckets, it
• 8:13
  will see you more as an authority.
• 8:16
  And I mean, Google is changing this to Google just added
• 8:19
  YouTube and stuff to their Google Search Console.
• 8:21
  But basically what these algorithms are doing is they're
• 8:24
  creating more of a holistic profile, but your website often
• 8:28
  sits at the base of it. OK.
• 8:31
  Because really what you're saying then is the more places
• 8:35
  that you're discussing the thing that your ideal client is
• 8:37
  searching, the more likely you are to actually be discovered
• 8:40
  when they search. Yeah, exactly.
• 8:43
  Got it. OK.
• 8:44
  So with comparison of like Google versus AI, because, OK,
• 8:48
  there's obviously which I know we've talked about when we
• 8:50
  haven't been recording and just like separate conversations,
• 8:52
  there's this conversation which there's been a lot of articles
• 8:55
  and a lot of I guess, like noise around SEO.
• 8:57
  Some people are in this like Stark belief that SEO is dead or
• 9:02
  SEO is dying, which I don't agree with, which is that people
• 9:07
  are like, no, SEO is not dying, SEO is shifting.
• 9:11
  And I think that that can be said for really any kind of
• 9:13
  marketing, right? Like if you think about e-mail
• 9:15
  marketing, e-mail marketing has shifted from the way that it
• 9:18
  once used to activate people. So usually people could spam you
• 9:22
  with emails and now people are sick and tired of that and they
• 9:25
  really want intentional depth or with social, everyone remembers,
• 9:29
  at least I remember those like pointing videos we all used to
• 9:32
  do a couple years ago. And it's like, that wouldn't
• 9:34
  work today. So it's not to say that reels
• 9:37
  are dead. It's just like what people are
• 9:38
  activated by in a reel has changed.
• 9:41
  So with this SEO conversation of like, you know, is SEO dead?
• 9:46
  Is it not dead? As I said, I don't personally
• 9:49
  feel that it's dead. What are you, I guess seeing
• 9:51
  shift from what you've been doing maybe for the last couple
• 9:54
  years versus what you're kind of seeing is needed now to win with
• 9:58
  SEO or to see it the impact for someone's business?
• 10:02
  Yeah, for sure. And you're right.
• 10:04
  I think The funny thing about like doing this for five years
• 10:07
  is like people have literally been saying that SEO is dead
• 10:09
  like my, my entire career. So honestly, I think that's why
• 10:14
  I didn't take it seriously when I was first dabbling it like 7
• 10:17
  or 8 years ago. Like it's just like, because who
• 10:20
  knows what this is actually going to do.
• 10:21
  And it certainly has shifted in the age of AI.
• 10:25
  Like I was looking up stats the other day actually, and it was
• 10:28
  like in 2022, Google had 5.5 billion searches a day.
• 10:34
  In 2025 it was like almost 17 billion.
• 10:39
  So it's like yes, more people are just like stopping at the AI
• 10:43
  overview. I mean the numbers are changing
• 10:45
  all the time 'cause it's so new, but they say around 60%.
• 10:49
  But when you look at how many more searches there are people
• 10:53
  are like we have information at our fingertips and we are using
• 10:57
  that right. So yes are a lot of people you
• 11:01
  know dropping off at AI yes. If would I start an
• 11:04
  informational blog in 2026? Probably not.
• 11:08
  But if you're you're using it as a way to support your business
• 11:12
  and you know the conversation can't stop at AI, like maybe
• 11:16
  you're a website designer, maybe you're a business coach.
• 11:18
  AI is only going to get you so far and then people are going to
• 11:22
  look for the next step. So it's like as long as people
• 11:24
  are looking for the next step, there will be platforms trying
• 11:28
  to connect us regardless of where the search is happening.
• 11:31
  Got it. OK, that makes sense because I'm
• 11:33
  thinking with that if someone maybe has been and or even
• 11:37
  things with social media too, that information used to be your
• 11:42
  leverage point. It used to be your value piece,
• 11:44
  which is like if you were, we had tons of education based
• 11:48
  videos and tips and tricks used to be the thing that whoever
• 11:51
  provided basically the most education or value was connected
• 11:54
  to the business that would win. And so I think what you're
• 11:57
  noting with SEO is true with a lot of marketing right now,
• 11:59
  which is the fact that with Chachi, BT and other AI
• 12:03
  platforms, AI search models, there's so much information
• 12:08
  available to us. So the simple fact that like
• 12:10
  you're going to be the piece of information for someone is not
• 12:14
  necessarily the leverage piece anymore.
• 12:17
  And so to your point with depth, if somebody wanted to not be
• 12:20
  that, like you're saying, not create the information page,
• 12:24
  what do you recommend to someone to be like that next level of
• 12:27
  depth? I guess like for your clients,
• 12:28
  for example, what would that look like to make sure that
• 12:30
  they're not just sitting on the surface of, oh, you came up for
• 12:33
  a quick piece of information, but making sure people come to
• 12:36
  you for depth. Yeah, for sure.
• 12:38
  And I do feel like that is like the $1,000,000 question because
• 12:41
  one of the buzzwords that I'm hearing is like thought
• 12:45
  leadership content, right? And it's like people want a
• 12:50
  quick win to be a thought leader and it doesn't work like that.
• 12:53
  Like you actually, one of the things that I'm saying is like
• 12:57
  getting back into having conversations with your audience
• 13:00
  because there is so much ChatGPT stuff out there.
• 13:05
  To your point, more is more is more is not always the case.
• 13:09
  But that doesn't mean that you can have a little 600 word
• 13:12
  paragraph either. But really what I think is going
• 13:15
  to help people snap out online is making sure that their
• 13:19
  content is like fresh and relevant and then also they have
• 13:24
  first hand experience with it and that they're actually
• 13:28
  talking to their audience still. Because something that Google
• 13:31
  and AI have both kind of like said that they are prioritizing
• 13:36
  is that the author actually has first hand experience with what
• 13:38
  they're talking about. And that is like a direct
• 13:41
  reflection of so many people using AI to talk about what they
• 13:45
  have no idea about or that they don't have first time experience
• 13:48
  in. Yeah.
• 13:49
  So it's almost the aspect of it's not about information
• 13:52
  anymore as much as it's like the insight around the information.
• 13:56
  Yeah, exactly. Got it, got it.
• 13:58
  OK, Cuz I think that the same thing is happening a lot of
• 14:01
  marketing right now, which is like if somebody was, I'm going
• 14:04
  to teach you, I'm going to teach you.
• 14:05
  It's like you teaching someone in any category is really not
• 14:09
  the valuable thing anymore. It's about the experience around
• 14:13
  the information, which is like, can you take the equivalent to
• 14:15
  like a textbook about marketing, right, Textbook about SEO or for
• 14:18
  me for business and give me real life examples, scenarios, things
• 14:23
  I'm going to experience, what I can kind of prepare myself I'm
• 14:27
  going to see down the line. Like I think to your point of
• 14:29
  thought leadership, there's a lot that is underneath the
• 14:33
  surface of the quick search that AI is going to provide or that
• 14:37
  AI summary. And I think to the conversation
• 14:39
  of like SEO being dead. What I feel like no one's
• 14:43
  addressing is the fact of like, where do you think AI is getting
• 14:45
  it's information? It's getting it's information
• 14:49
  from the Internet, which to your point earlier, if you're not
• 14:52
  seen as the top of your industry or the top person who has the,
• 14:56
  to your point, a lot of width on the topic and then you're going
• 15:00
  to not come up and search. Like I had somebody who was in
• 15:03
  my network and they just signed a client from chat, which was
• 15:08
  kind of crazy. Maybe the person literally said
• 15:10
  I'm looking for a business consultant in this area with
• 15:12
  this expertise. And because this person who came
• 15:15
  up had YouTube, podcast, blog, website, like all again of that
• 15:19
  width, they were like, hey, this is the person you should be
• 15:22
  hiring and here's why. And so they literally booked a
• 15:25
  consult and that person became like a $50,000 client.
• 15:29
  And so they were like, you know, while they were thinking, OK,
• 15:33
  I'm doing social, I'm doing all of this.
• 15:35
  The actual thing that allowed them to come up was all the
• 15:37
  seeds basically that they had been planting for the last five
• 15:40
  years that allowed them to come up for search in the first
• 15:42
  place. Yeah, that yeah, exactly what
• 15:46
  you said. Like the people are like, how do
• 15:49
  I kind of like game getting on ChatGPT and like or AI?
• 15:53
  Like I'm kind of using those terms interchangeably, but it's
• 15:55
  like you have to have the content for it to pull from.
• 15:58
  It's not going to randomly find your Instagram profile and go
• 16:01
  based on that. Like there's just compared to
• 16:03
  what other people have been doing online, it's just not
• 16:07
  competitive. Yeah, and.
• 16:09
  Actually, sorry, I would also add based on what you were
• 16:13
  saying about your business friend, there have been some
• 16:17
  reports. Again, this is like a newer
• 16:19
  thing, right? But ChatGPT traffic is almost
• 16:22
  acting like referral traffic where they're spending longer on
• 16:25
  your website, almost as though they had been like, recommended.
• 16:30
  So it's less cold. Then maybe we would find a
• 16:33
  Google search. Because we feel whether this is
• 16:36
  right or wrong, we feel like ChatGPT really knows what we're
• 16:39
  looking for. So if ChatGPT is recommending
• 16:42
  someone to us, we do have that sense of like, they're probably
• 16:47
  it, yeah, just crazy for a robot.
• 16:50
  But we just do it instinctively. There's people using ChatGPT,
• 16:55
  which you know, teach their own people using ChatGPT for their
• 16:59
  therapist. So it was interesting because
• 17:01
  with AI search, it's interesting because they were talking about
• 17:05
  which most people don't know. AI is actually designed to feed
• 17:09
  you what you want more of based off your past searches.
• 17:12
  So like if I'm constantly searching for example purposes
• 17:14
  like blue, it's going to give me all answers in the tone of the
• 17:17
  lens of blue. Whereas if it's like you're
• 17:19
  searching everything with the lens of red, it's going to give
• 17:22
  you all of your responses from that point onward with the lens
• 17:24
  of red. So there is definitely this
• 17:28
  validation it gives us or it tries to basically give us what
• 17:31
  we want more of because it knows that if I feed you more of what
• 17:34
  you like and enjoy, you're more likely to come back.
• 17:37
  It's like the basis of all, all platforms.
• 17:39
  But the question with I guess SEO, which a lot of people have
• 17:44
  with social media is this aspect of volume, right?
• 17:46
  Like it's like if I on social media, it went from a post today
• 17:50
  was the marker. Then for people on TikTok, it's
• 17:53
  like we're doing 3 to 5 videos a day, which is crazy.
• 17:56
  So there's all of this volume aspect, but with SEO, I'm
• 18:00
  curious how much of it is volume and how much of it is just sheer
• 18:05
  consistency. So I actually don't think
• 18:08
  consistency matters that much. I think we do need to, like I
• 18:13
  said, it will prioritize fresh relevant content for sure.
• 18:18
  But I think having high quality content, and I mean, we all like
• 18:24
  to say like quality over quantity, you do need a
• 18:27
  significant amount of quantity. I don't want to like negate
• 18:30
  that. And you have like 2 really
• 18:31
  great. Blogs. 2 blogs and that's it,
• 18:33
  right? So like being realistic about
• 18:37
  that. But I do think like, do you have
• 18:39
  to blog once a week for the rest of your life?
• 18:41
  No, like you can absolutely build like a capsule blog with
• 18:44
  your core points. You can, you know, tweak them as
• 18:48
  you go. If you have multiple ideal
• 18:50
  clients, I think that's a way to do it where you're like, I have
• 18:53
  one blog that's geared toward business coaches and one that's
• 18:56
  geared toward website designers. And like, is the core content
• 18:59
  super different? No, but they have minor tweaks
• 19:02
  to them so that I can get in front of.
• 19:04
  Because another thing that I'm seeing, what everyone is seeing
• 19:08
  is how much more specific searches are getting right.
• 19:12
  Like we aren't just typing 3 words into Google.
• 19:15
  We are like giving it our life story or ChatGPT.
• 19:19
  And like this is exactly what I'm looking for.
• 19:21
  This is exactly what I want. And, and I mean in that way, I
• 19:25
  think it's really exciting for small business owners because
• 19:27
  there's never been like more opportunity for someone to be
• 19:30
  looking for exactly what you have and you're not competing
• 19:33
  for like marketing consultant. Right, right.
• 19:37
  So does that mean that the person who's producing the
• 19:39
  material or producing the marketing also has to be super,
• 19:42
  super specific in the language that they're using?
• 19:45
  I think that algorithms are really sophisticated like we are
• 19:50
  seeing. I feel like some sensationalize
• 19:52
  like similar to like SEO is dead, like keywords are dead,
• 19:56
  right? Because algorithms, it doesn't
• 19:59
  have to be like the exact keyword for algorithms to
• 20:03
  understand what you're talking about now.
• 20:05
  But I do think like, I still think keyword research is hugely
• 20:08
  important because we do need to make sure that people are
• 20:11
  looking, I mean. You see it all the time in
• 20:14
  marketing when people are like, I'm a Unicorn marketing
• 20:16
  specialist or like whatever, right?
• 20:18
  We need to like be mindful that like we need to get in front of
• 20:22
  what people are searching for. But in terms of like then using
• 20:25
  that exact word 8 times in your blog post, I don't think it
• 20:29
  matters anymore. And one thing that I think is
• 20:32
  really interesting is with Google, like I said, they have
• 20:35
  always kind of looked at your website and judge that as like
• 20:39
  one piece in terms of your authority.
• 20:43
  But what's interesting is with AI, it's something like 90% of
• 20:47
  AI recommendations are coming from position 21 or later.
• 20:51
  So like Page 3, like these websites or blog posts would
• 20:54
  never see the light of day in a traditional Google algorithm,
• 20:59
  right? But because of how specific
• 21:02
  people are asking questions to ChatGPT or AI models, we have
• 21:07
  the opportunity to get really specific, like you're always
• 21:10
  talking about on this podcast and going deep and like really
• 21:13
  getting in front of people. Right, right.
• 21:17
  Well, like I think the thing that I remember you saying, like
• 21:20
  it was like months ago and you were like, I have this post from
• 21:22
  like or this blog from like years ago.
• 21:25
  That's still to this day generates traffic.
• 21:28
  And I think that that really is the basis of good marketing is
• 21:32
  trying to find ways that whatever you produce can live
• 21:36
  longer. Because obviously you and I have
• 21:38
  even talked with the fact, and I know you have a lot of really
• 21:40
  good content around this or the fact that everyone, including
• 21:43
  myself, is really exhausted of the fact that you're creating so
• 21:47
  much content and the life cycle of that is so short.
• 21:51
  If we think about for people who leverage Instagram and listen,
• 21:55
  granted you, you pick your poison, right?
• 21:57
  Like I've picked my, my, my playground to be in.
• 21:59
  So like, I'm not going to, you know, demonize it.
• 22:02
  It is it is obviously something that's that's helped my
• 22:05
  business, but it is very in some respects short lived, which is
• 22:08
  actually part of why, you know, I started the podcast is because
• 22:12
  the story you put up last 24 hours and the feed posts you put
• 22:17
  up kind of have a has a life cycle maybe of a week or
• 22:19
  potentially a month, depending on its reach.
• 22:22
  But it is very short lived. And I think one of the things
• 22:25
  that is exciting about SEO and also with whether it's your
• 22:29
  website, blogs or even something which we can get into with
• 22:32
  podcasts as well and people leveraging, you know, blogs for
• 22:35
  their podcast. The life cycle is so long.
• 22:38
  So like that in your piece, if you could share with people like
• 22:42
  what is that real life cycle of what SEO can do for you in the
• 22:45
  sense of like for your clients even maybe how much traffic it's
• 22:49
  sending a year, 2 years down, the longer down the line in the
• 22:54
  sense of what it can generate? Yeah, I mean, that is my
• 22:58
  favorite thing about SEO. I always say like if you're
• 23:01
  starting from scratch, you're going to want to blend some
• 23:04
  trendier pieces of content that won't last forever.
• 23:07
  Maybe, you know, we're still doing like 2026 trends posts or
• 23:11
  things like that that will get you similar to Instagram.
• 23:14
  I mean, not quite as like spiked or anything, but like that will
• 23:18
  get you traffic this year versus like some of like foundational
• 23:23
  pieces of what you do in your business that could easily last
• 23:26
  you. I mean, I would say three years
• 23:30
  and then you can go in and do an update, right?
• 23:33
  So it's like, it can last you so much longer.
• 23:35
  Like I've had blog posts in my wedding business, which I, you
• 23:39
  know, like we're still getting leads every single month.
• 23:42
  A majority of leads come from Google, and I have blogged like
• 23:46
  12 times in five years for that business, right?
• 23:50
  Because we had a Bank of content.
• 23:52
  And I mean, yeah, we've updated things like posts that are like,
• 23:56
  top resorts to get married at. Sometimes we'll like throw in a
• 23:59
  new one like, but it's not the same as like recreating content
• 24:04
  all of the time. Yeah, well, I think.
• 24:07
  Thousands a month, right? Like thousands of people
• 24:11
  visiting yourself, yeah. It's exciting because I think
• 24:14
  that we've been so programmed in this like to your point, this
• 24:18
  short dopamine spike, right? Like it's like I put out a piece
• 24:22
  of content and I get X amount of inquiries or I put out a piece
• 24:25
  of content and I get X amount of applications.
• 24:27
  But I think the part that a lot of people don't really think
• 24:29
  about because they are just in this dopamine cycle of like I
• 24:31
  put it out, I get an application is really asking yourself, do
• 24:35
  you want to play that game for the next 10 years?
• 24:38
  And I think that as the SEO conversation, which is why I was
• 24:40
  excited to talk about it, it's like it's, it's not even a
• 24:43
  matter of you have to do one or the other because obviously both
• 24:46
  of us are technically on social. But I think it's also looking
• 24:49
  at, are you planting seeds that will allow this to bloom for you
• 24:54
  to your point in three years, Like the fact that you're still
• 24:56
  getting leads from something that you put out three years ago
• 25:00
  for any business owner, I feel like is a dream to think about
• 25:04
  getting. If you could get leads for your
• 25:05
  Business Today from something you put out three years ago, it
• 25:09
  would be a dream for anybody. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 25:12
  And what I would say to your point about kind of needing to
• 25:15
  be everywhere, I think a lot of people are starting to see
• 25:17
  Instagram more as a nurture tool than a growth tool.
• 25:20
  Not to say you can't go on Instagram, obviously there's a
• 25:23
  million examples of ways that you can.
• 25:25
  But I have seen with my own business and with clients
• 25:29
  businesses, it's like, yes, people find you on Google or
• 25:31
  ChatGPT, but then they are vetting you, right?
• 25:34
  Nobody's just hiring somebody off a website, Yeah, with the
• 25:38
  tune of 10,020 thousand whatever dollars, right.
• 25:40
  Usually they will look for you in a couple places, whether
• 25:44
  that's like your podcast or your Instagram or I mean depends on
• 25:49
  your industry and what you sell. But definitely there is more
• 25:52
  advantages than there ever has been to have a holistic
• 25:55
  presence. I think I'm curious as to what
• 25:58
  your thoughts are. One of the things I think stops
• 26:00
  people from having a bigger presence is this aspect of
• 26:03
  capacity, right? Where it's like, OK, like I'm,
• 26:06
  I'm struggling to stay consistent with the social media
• 26:08
  platform, but now I'm going to add on a blog and then I'm going
• 26:11
  to add on Pinterest and then I'm going to add on these pieces.
• 26:13
  But I think the interesting thing, which I know you've
• 26:15
  shared before and just like personal conversations, is also
• 26:19
  that people don't realize that the SEO component doesn't have
• 26:22
  to be its own thread of content or its own thread of marketing.
• 26:26
  That it also can complement the other things that you've already
• 26:29
  produced. Meaning you're not starting from
• 26:32
  scratch necessarily of like, what do I want to talk about
• 26:35
  this week within, for example, your blog or if you want to post
• 26:39
  a Pinterest, like you're not starting from scratch.
• 26:41
  So if someone maybe is like, OK, I do need to start planting
• 26:44
  seeds because the social media game is tearing me out.
• 26:48
  What does that look like to kind of, I guess, leverage
• 26:50
  repurposing? Like what are maybe different
• 26:52
  ways that you're seeing people leverage SEO without necessarily
• 26:55
  wanting to go spend? OK, my number one marketing
• 26:58
  channel is for example SEO or blog.
• 27:02
  Yeah, for sure. I mean, we can repurpose so
• 27:05
  much. I would say like for my own
• 27:07
  business, I'm not creating a new blog post every single week.
• 27:12
  That is strictly blog, right? But I do have a weekly podcast
• 27:15
  episode that I then turn into a full blog post.
• 27:18
  So like not like 2 paragraphs of show notes with the embed code.
• 27:21
  Like it is a, you know, 3000 word kind of blog post that I'm
• 27:24
  basing off my transcript. And then I have one YouTube
• 27:27
  video that goes out a week. I turn that into a blog post.
• 27:31
  My site is getting 2 new blog posts and compared to how much
• 27:35
  work I put in to my podcast and to the YouTube video, making it
• 27:39
  a blog is like a tiny bit more work.
• 27:43
  And I would say, I mean, I know everyone's experience varies,
• 27:46
  but like YouTube I think is discoverable on its own.
• 27:50
  Podcast being discoverable is I feel like a misconception.
• 27:55
  Like I think people think if they have like the great topics
• 27:59
  or sometimes a guest can be super discoverable, but for the
• 28:02
  most part, people are finding your podcast because you are
• 28:05
  telling them about it. Whereas like with my podcast, I
• 28:09
  see spikes in downloads for episodes that do well on Google.
• 28:15
  And then it's like if I can get them to listen to my podcast on
• 28:18
  Google and then that podcast episode is good, I can keep them
• 28:22
  in my orbit, right? Which is what we all kind of
• 28:25
  want to do more of. It's actually so true because I
• 28:28
  had a friend who's starting a podcast and they're like, yeah,
• 28:31
  like I'll just start it and then like grow my listener base.
• 28:32
  And I was like, how are you planning on doing that?
• 28:35
  And I think a lot of people think like, oh, I'm going to
• 28:37
  search, you know, business and research SEO on Spotify.
• 28:40
  And it's like, do you know how many podcasts are going to come
• 28:42
  up that have either in the title SEO?
• 28:44
  It's either the title of the actual show, the title of the
• 28:46
  episode. And it's actually really
• 28:49
  difficult for a podcast to get discovered typically.
• 28:52
  So there needs to be just like promotion aspect as you said.
• 28:56
  And even with social, the interesting thing with social
• 28:59
  clips of a podcast is people think that social clips alone
• 29:02
  are the thing that will promote it.
• 29:03
  And they do help, but think about how many of us watch a
• 29:06
  clip of a podcast and we never go to the actual episode itself
• 29:09
  unless it's like a teaser. Sometimes the thought is
• 29:12
  complete and we never need to go to the full episode.
• 29:14
  So I do agree. I actually find for our podcast,
• 29:17
  the biggest thing that out of everything that we do that has
• 29:20
  been helping is the title of the YouTube videos that we put out
• 29:24
  because are they actually searchable?
• 29:27
  So that if someone's searching, launching that it actually comes
• 29:30
  up. And then that typically to your
• 29:31
  point is what starts the rabbit hole.
• 29:34
  The YouTube short title will come up, which leads them to the
• 29:38
  YouTube video, which then leads them to Spotify, which then
• 29:40
  leads them to, it's like kind of obviously this downward funnel.
• 29:43
  But I agree, I think that a lot of people are not thinking as
• 29:47
  well about how we consume, right?
• 29:49
  If you're searching for something, if I'm searching for
• 29:51
  something, whether on Google or AI, thinking about how is your
• 29:56
  ideal client looking for information?
• 29:58
  And then are you positioning yourself in such a way that you
• 30:02
  would get discovered because of how you're titling things,
• 30:05
  because of how you're putting content out?
• 30:07
  Because I'm sure even for your clients, there's also the aspect
• 30:12
  of creating content for us and then creating content for what
• 30:15
  is someone looking for, which I think is also a big disconnect
• 30:18
  because a lot of people create marketing, whether it's YouTube,
• 30:23
  it could be blogs of like, oh, this is something that I created
• 30:25
  because I found it interesting versus what is the person that I
• 30:28
  want to work with actually searching for on the Internet
• 30:30
  today. Yeah, for sure.
• 30:33
  I I totally agree. And to your point about titling,
• 30:36
  I think that is sometimes where people get stuck because they
• 30:40
  choose something, I want to say click baiting, but not in a bad
• 30:43
  way for their podcast. And when you turn that into a
• 30:46
  blog post, you don't need to use the same title.
• 30:49
  It can be much more straightforward, right, Right.
• 30:53
  And I think that's the missed opportunity because nobody is
• 30:55
  looking for like the number one business mistake I could ever
• 30:57
  make or whatever, right? It's so true.
• 31:01
  It's so, so true. When it comes to the ecosystem
• 31:05
  of SEO, one of the things that you often hear people talk about
• 31:08
  is Pinterest. And so I when I have
• 31:11
  conversations with people and I'm like, yeah, you know, like
• 31:13
  there's for example, a photographer business coach that
• 31:16
  I coach and she, she talks all the time about the fact that she
• 31:19
  was like, I don't feel that any business should have anything
• 31:23
  other than social, SEO and referrals.
• 31:25
  Like these are the three pipelines of marketing.
• 31:26
  If you only have social, you're shooting yourself in the foot
• 31:29
  because it basically means that you're missing on this whole
• 31:31
  other channel. And one of the pieces with with
• 31:35
  the SEO component that she talks about is Pinterest.
• 31:37
  She was like, it's a matter of looking at kind of as you were
• 31:41
  saying with Instagram, there's nurturing tools, there's
• 31:43
  visibility tools. How does Pinterest come into the
• 31:47
  mix in the sense of connection to SEO?
• 31:50
  Because some people think they can't do SEO without Pinterest.
• 31:53
  But obviously we see a lot of people who are very successful
• 31:56
  with SEO using Pinterest. So how does it kind of come into
• 31:59
  the ecosystem if someone's thinking about leveraging SEO in
• 32:02
  2026? Yeah, for sure.
• 32:05
  I would say you don't need Pinterest as like part of your
• 32:11
  SEO strategy. However, there are like huge
• 32:15
  advantages to including it. So one, we see pins all the time
• 32:19
  show up in the AI overview and it is more compelling to click
• 32:23
  on that pin than it is to click on like one of the sources on
• 32:27
  the side most of the time, right, because we're visual.
• 32:29
  So if we're looking at an AI overview and we want more and
• 32:33
  there's like like a pin there, we're just naturally going to
• 32:36
  click it versus like trying to find the sources.
• 32:39
  It also shows up in the Google image search tab.
• 32:42
  And then it also, I think people grossly underestimate how many
• 32:46
  people are actually using the platform.
• 32:48
  So Pinterest is continuing to grow.
• 32:52
  I think sometimes it's like millennials, we see that our use
• 32:56
  of Pinterest starts to go down, you know, as we have certain
• 32:59
  things I want to say like together, right?
• 33:01
  We use a planning platform a bit less.
• 33:04
  But the reality is like Pinterest is growing month over
• 33:07
  month. They're just at 600 million
• 33:09
  monthly users. So they're not a small platform.
• 33:12
  And so the fact that you have these SEO benefits, Oh, the
• 33:15
  other thing I was going to mention, sorry, is backlinks to
• 33:17
  your website. So backlinks are a huge factor
• 33:20
  on how much your website is deemed as an authority.
• 33:24
  So on Pinterest, you have your Pinterest boards that are then
• 33:27
  like supporting all of the links that are going to your website.
• 33:30
  And you have the individual pins that again are all pointing back
• 33:34
  to your website. And I mean, people are on there.
• 33:37
  There's kind of 12 key categories on Pinterest and
• 33:40
  business is one of them. So one of the examples I always
• 33:43
  like to give is searches for like investment apps are up 620%
• 33:49
  this year. And so when you look at a search
• 33:51
  like that, that doesn't end with, OK, I got the
• 33:55
  recommendation and now I have the information, right?
• 33:58
  It's like, no, people are searching for that because they
• 34:00
  want to download it. They might want to buy your
• 34:02
  digital product. If you're like, oh, hey, I have
• 34:04
  exactly what you need to know about using your first
• 34:07
  investment app, right? There's like, like you said, we
• 34:11
  all go down these little rabbit holes, but I think it's there's
• 34:15
  a misconception that Pinterest just ends with pretty photos on
• 34:20
  a pin. Well, it's, I actually went to
• 34:23
  and you're spot on. I went to a marketing conference
• 34:26
  last year and it was basically like all the major companies.
• 34:29
  So things like, you know, Pepsi, Nike, all these huge companies
• 34:32
  and one of the big companies and one of the big presentations
• 34:34
  that we attended was the CEO of Pinterest.
• 34:37
  And I have, I was completely blindsided by the stats that she
• 34:42
  showed, like literally like you're talking about.
• 34:44
  Because I'm going to be honest, full transparency, I thought
• 34:48
  before I saw that presentation, I was like, OK, yeah.
• 34:51
  Pinterest is like where we do like, inspo for a wedding
• 34:53
  planning or like inspo of outfits and things like that.
• 34:56
  Like I thought, are people consistently using it?
• 34:59
  But she was talking about how much the platform has grown
• 35:02
  obviously since she became the CEO.
• 35:04
  And also with that, talking about the user base of how many
• 35:08
  of the different categories, both like Gen.
• 35:10
  Z, millennials or the 2, I believe two major groups who are
• 35:14
  using it. But then also with that, even
• 35:16
  older generations are not coming back to it because of the the
• 35:19
  way that they've curated what it gives you.
• 35:22
  And they were talking how most people really don't understand
• 35:25
  that Pinterest in itself truly is its own social media
• 35:28
  platform. Like there's people who are
• 35:29
  using it all the time, especially in the business
• 35:32
  category because it was a business conference.
• 35:35
  They were talking about how this is a main place of search.
• 35:38
  People are using it for searching ideas for content.
• 35:40
  They're using it for, to your point, searching ideas for
• 35:43
  certain information or questions they're trying to answer.
• 35:45
  And her whole point was, are you coming up when people are
• 35:50
  searching for it? And so I think that with all the
• 35:54
  the options that people have, they wonder, OK, like where does
• 35:57
  Pinterest fit into the ecosystem?
• 35:59
  And so based off what you're saying, it's kind of almost what
• 36:04
  I take from it is that Pinterest is the organic way of almost
• 36:07
  like an ad to allow you through search to get discovered for the
• 36:12
  information that they can then go deeper on elsewhere.
• 36:15
  Yeah, exactly. So Pinterest is, I mean, I
• 36:18
  define it as like a true top of funnel platform, right?
• 36:22
  Nobody is converting off of the single pin.
• 36:24
  You're not nurturing someone from a single pin.
• 36:26
  It's like your only goal is to get them somewhere where you can
• 36:30
  take them to those other steps. And I also just want to add,
• 36:34
  like to your point about people underestimating kind of
• 36:38
  Pinterest is like especially, and it could just be my
• 36:41
  algorithm algorithm, but I feel like people underestimate that
• 36:46
  Pinterest is one of the only platforms that is committed to
• 36:49
  being like a positive place to be on the Internet.
• 36:52
  And I think people are like flooding back to that.
• 36:56
  And I think especially like when you say about business, I always
• 37:00
  say like Pinterest is kind of the platform you go and you want
• 37:03
  something in your life to change, right?
• 37:05
  If you're planning a wedding, if you want to get healthy with
• 37:07
  meals, sure. But also like starting a
• 37:10
  business, changing up your Instagram, rebranding your
• 37:12
  business, like getting grand photo.
• 37:14
  It was like you're flooding there.
• 37:16
  Well, it's really, if you think about it, a place of
• 37:19
  inspiration, like most people in some respect that your point of
• 37:23
  like you're rebranding, like even for us, we're doing
• 37:26
  branding for another business right now.
• 37:27
  And the first thing I did is I went to Pinterest and I was
• 37:29
  like, OK, let's pull together a vibe of what I'm thinking.
• 37:31
  I'm renovating a house right now.
• 37:33
  First thing I did is I made a Pinterest board of like, what
• 37:35
  are the kitchens that I want mine to look like?
• 37:37
  So it's very true. It's the first place that you go
• 37:41
  to generate an idea of something that you're wanting to kind of
• 37:45
  eventually go into. Now, one of the things that I
• 37:47
  know with anybody in marketing, so I know for I would take a
• 37:51
  high probability that this happens to you within your
• 37:53
  agency. Everyone's like, OK, where's the
• 37:55
  ROI? Like if I'm going to put in, you
• 37:57
  know, money into any marketing, whether it's social, it could be
• 38:00
  podcast, it could be SEO, where's the ROI?
• 38:04
  And one of the things that you just noted, which I think is
• 38:06
  really important is that just like getting discovered is the
• 38:09
  first step, but what happens after that is also crucial to
• 38:13
  whether when they discover you, what happens, which is either
• 38:15
  they discover you through whether it's AI, Google or
• 38:18
  Pinterest, your information is what's fed to them and they're
• 38:22
  presented with you. And then what happens next?
• 38:25
  So I'm curious for you if you've ever seen that Maybe you know,
• 38:29
  because I feel like people can get discovered, but maybe the
• 38:32
  conversion doesn't happen or like people fall off.
• 38:34
  They don't opt into the e-mail list, they don't consume the
• 38:37
  website, they don't go listen to the podcast.
• 38:41
  Have you ever seen someone who maybe has ranked well and they
• 38:44
  have become discovered but it's like then people drop and that's
• 38:47
  because of the Part 2, which is like what happens after they get
• 38:50
  discovered? Oh, for sure, yeah.
• 38:53
  I mean, we see that with any platform.
• 38:55
  But I will say, because one thing that you said that I
• 38:58
  wanted to touch on was like people go to Pinterest for
• 39:00
  inspiration, but they also do go on the platform often to take
• 39:04
  action. So it usually is like sometimes
• 39:08
  it's mindless scrolling, like when you're collecting kitchen
• 39:10
  ideas, for example. However, like there is so much
• 39:14
  research to be like Pinterest users are spending more money
• 39:17
  than other platforms. Many, I think it's like 85% of
• 39:21
  regular pinners have absolutely made a purchase on there.
• 39:24
  So if they're not taking action, which I, I agree, I think a lot
• 39:28
  of us, we build our website, we build our blog and we don't
• 39:31
  consider that a cold audience is going there.
• 39:34
  We think like I need a website to send my Instagram people to.
• 39:38
  And the experience that your Instagram people need to have is
• 39:41
  way different than what your Pinterest people need.
• 39:45
  Because for example, since we're talking about blogging, if I am
• 39:49
  clicking on a pin that then goes to a blog, is it even obvious
• 39:53
  that you are not a blog site, right?
• 39:56
  Like if you are a business, is that obvious to me?
• 39:59
  Or would I just think like you're your industry's version
• 40:03
  of Wikipedia? Right, right.
• 40:06
  Well, it's you actually are spot on.
• 40:07
  So even back to the example of the house originally when we
• 40:11
  were kind of like in the infancy of the renovation, I just had
• 40:13
  this random inspo board that I sent to a designer.
• 40:16
  And literally just this week I was like, OK, it's small thing,
• 40:20
  but I'm like decision for baseboards.
• 40:22
  What baseboards are we using? And I'm like, OK, let me go to
• 40:25
  my Pinterest. So I literally went to
• 40:27
  Pinterest. First question was, can you send
• 40:29
  me the link to the site of that photo, which is basically it was
• 40:33
  some, you know, renovation company and they sold these
• 40:38
  baseboards. So we literally were like, find
• 40:40
  the link to this website of the person who was the source of
• 40:43
  this photo because it was their work.
• 40:45
  And let's find where we can source this material.
• 40:47
  So literally to your point, we saw this photo, we pinned it and
• 40:51
  within 20 minutes we were looking to figure out can we buy
• 40:54
  it from this person because it was exactly what we wanted.
• 40:56
  So you're spot on that people can go through that process.
• 41:00
  But I also agree, I think people don't consider the full
• 41:04
  ecosystem with their website. They think about, OK, well, to
• 41:07
  your point, I have people from Instagram going to it.
• 41:10
  So I'm just going to assume that they already know who I am, what
• 41:13
  it is that I do, they know the name of my services, things like
• 41:16
  that. But would you then recommend if
• 41:18
  someone is going to leverage SEO really in any component that
• 41:22
  they should be setting up their ecosystem or their business to
• 41:25
  be just as welcoming of cold traffic as they are of warm?
• 41:29
  Yeah, for sure. And not even just your website
• 41:32
  like individual blog posts like I would.
• 41:36
  I always start my blog post with like introducing the topic and
• 41:39
  then introducing who I am. Like you're going to know the
• 41:42
  next step is like to work with me or to read this other blog or
• 41:45
  to sign up for my podcast like in the second paragraph.
• 41:48
  Because people are just skimming and you're going to, you need to
• 41:52
  make it obvious like this is the e-mail where to get on my e-mail
• 41:55
  list. This is the freebie that you get
• 41:57
  with it, right? Like I think Pinterest is never
• 42:01
  going to be a middle of funnel, end of funnel platform, right?
• 42:05
  In some ways at least they can save you for later and then come
• 42:08
  back to you maybe depending on what you do.
• 42:11
  But for the most part, if people aren't converting from
• 42:14
  Pinterest, it's because you are missing those middle of funnel
• 42:18
  pieces. And I think people underestimate
• 42:21
  like we are seeing like longer buying cycles in most
• 42:24
  industries, right? And often times someone can
• 42:27
  stumble across you on Pinterest and then they come find you on
• 42:30
  Instagram. And maybe that's where they made
• 42:32
  the purchase and maybe they even feel like they found you on
• 42:35
  Instagram. But that isn't always the case.
• 42:38
  Not even just for Pinterest, but anywhere we forget the first
• 42:41
  time that we see someone if we're used to following them on
• 42:44
  Instagram everyday. True.
• 42:46
  And I think that there's a lot of people, you know, who will
• 42:48
  have say like in an intake or an application, like, where did you
• 42:51
  find me? And it's like, well, they're
• 42:53
  applying through Instagram. So as a result, they choose
• 42:55
  Instagram. But to your point, where was the
• 42:58
  first touch point that they had with you?
• 42:59
  What was the first experience that they had with you?
• 43:02
  And so if someone's wanting to, OK, they're, they're listening
• 43:05
  and they're thinking, 2026, I do not want to rely on social media
• 43:08
  alone. And they're curious about SEO.
• 43:11
  Where does someone start with this ecosystem?
• 43:13
  Because to your point, you can have search through YouTube.
• 43:16
  You could also have, for example, your podcast repurpose
• 43:19
  to what you noted into a blog. You could do blogging
• 43:22
  separately. You also can think about
• 43:24
  Pinterest added to it. So for most people, when they
• 43:26
  listen, they're like, this is so overwhelming.
• 43:28
  There's so many options of what I could do.
• 43:30
  If you're kind of looking at, you know, the success plan, if
• 43:33
  you will, for 2026. What do you think?
• 43:36
  If you were going to like design for somebody, this is in an
• 43:39
  ideal scenario, what I would recommend.
• 43:41
  What are some of those pieces that people should be
• 43:43
  considering in your opinion? Yeah, so I think the first part
• 43:48
  is honestly looking at your website, because a lot of times
• 43:52
  people like want to skip to blogging or want to skip to
• 43:54
  Pinterest, but your website is where you're sending people.
• 43:57
  So at the very least, you have to make sure that it is set up
• 44:01
  to capture those people and that some of those main keywords are
• 44:06
  on your website because that's gonna support your other
• 44:09
  efforts. It has the biggest impact in the
• 44:11
  smallest amount of time. I would also say figure out your
• 44:16
  back links. So like if on your Instagram you
• 44:20
  still have a link tree or if your LinkedIn doesn't have your
• 44:23
  website, like find all of these places.
• 44:25
  Like I'm I'm thinking of the wedding industry because it's
• 44:27
  top of mind, but they have like the Knot and WeddingWire and all
• 44:31
  of these wedding directories. Like how can you get on these
• 44:34
  for free and get them pointing back to your website just so
• 44:37
  that you have like a solid foundation?
• 44:40
  And I forgot to ask you earlier, for anyone who's listening
• 44:43
  doesn't know what backlinks are, can you kind of breakdown what
• 44:47
  what is, what are backlinks? Yeah, for sure.
• 44:50
  So they're just links that are on external websites, so not
• 44:53
  your actual domain, and they point back to your website.
• 44:57
  Got it. OK.
• 44:58
  So one time website number 12 is looking at backlinks and then
• 45:04
  from there where where do they kind of go?
• 45:06
  What would be next I guess in your opinion?
• 45:08
  And then I would start a blog, but if you already have content
• 45:12
  that you're creating, like a podcast, like YouTube, start by
• 45:16
  just turning that content into a blog.
• 45:19
  It really like when we think about how much effort it is, it
• 45:22
  is so minor to turn it into a blog.
• 45:25
  You can often get like someone on your team to help you with it
• 45:29
  too, right? Because you're not like they're
• 45:31
  just repurposing that content. So it can be really low lift for
• 45:35
  you. And then once you have, I would
• 45:38
  say like if you're doing that weekly for like 3 months and you
• 45:41
  have a little bit of content, then you can look at like adding
• 45:44
  on those layers. Like maybe you add extra blog
• 45:47
  posts that are specific to what you do because our podcasts are
• 45:51
  not always specific to what we do, right?
• 45:54
  Or Pinterest or other places like YouTube, whatever to get
• 45:59
  down online. And just like start small, I
• 46:01
  guess. And then just keep adding those
• 46:03
  pieces. But I would start with the
• 46:04
  website 1st and then start with any sort of consistency with
• 46:08
  blogging. Which I think is really
• 46:10
  interesting too, because you see so many people who will talk
• 46:12
  about like, you don't need a website.
• 46:15
  And I think that it's also like, to your point, and it makes
• 46:18
  total sense if you think about not having a website and you're
• 46:22
  just sending traffic to something, you're kind of like
• 46:24
  leaving them in this void. Like they don't really have a
• 46:26
  curated experience of you that you've created.
• 46:30
  Instead, it's kind of like I'm plopping you here.
• 46:31
  I'm going to let you just like fish around and find whatever
• 46:35
  you find. So I think you starting with the
• 46:37
  aspect of website makes a lot of sense because really what that
• 46:40
  means is that if you're going to get discovered, are you curating
• 46:43
  the experience of how someone discovers you?
• 46:45
  Or are you allowing them to kind of curate their own and find
• 46:48
  whatever they find? And I think that when that
• 46:51
  happens, some people don't get the conversions or the outcomes
• 46:55
  that they want because what they find is not necessarily
• 46:58
  something that helps them move down the process.
• 47:00
  One thing that I know is kind of this debate within business in
• 47:04
  this current moment in time. And this is the same thing for
• 47:06
  social media. If people being like, oh, I'll
• 47:08
  just use AI to write my blog, or they'll say I'll use AI to write
• 47:11
  my social captions. And my personal take on this is
• 47:14
  I think AI is great. I think AI can help with a lot
• 47:17
  of concepts. I think it can help with a lot
• 47:18
  of like idea generation. But if I might be really honest,
• 47:23
  I can see AAI caption a mile away meaning like you read it
• 47:28
  and you're like this so clearly was stopping Now, granted, AI
• 47:32
  probably isn't it's, you know, infancy and maybe a couple years
• 47:34
  from now will be a very different story.
• 47:35
  But I think right now people are desiring to read things that
• 47:41
  actually activate them, whether in an emotional way, in like an
• 47:45
  insight way, like you mentioned earlier of thought leadership.
• 47:48
  And so for my purse, my personal opinion is I think right now,
• 47:52
  while AI can do a lot for us, there's just this human factor
• 47:57
  that I think not only can it not quite replicate, but I think
• 48:00
  that people are desiring it. Meaning it's not that you
• 48:03
  couldn't write A blog and say like, hey, AI, this is my
• 48:06
  podcast, Write me a blog and you don't touch it.
• 48:09
  I know it can assist, but I don't necessarily know it's the
• 48:11
  whole process. And I think people who uses the
• 48:14
  whole process are actually, it's going to be detrimental to their
• 48:17
  brand and it's going to be detrimental probably to the
• 48:20
  results that they generate. So what's kind of your take on
• 48:24
  how people can think about AI in context to things like blog and
• 48:29
  SEO? Like would, I guess maybe you
• 48:31
  fully trust it to just hand it off and do it for you?
• 48:33
  Because obviously you have an agency where you support people
• 48:36
  with this. So I would imagine there's an
• 48:38
  aspect of like the human touch is really valuable in those
• 48:41
  instances. Yeah, I absolutely think AI can
• 48:45
  do a lot. I obviously don't think that you
• 48:47
  could just like hand it off and copy and paste.
• 48:49
  But I mean, there have been so many like SEO people testing
• 48:53
  this where it's like, OK, if I start a brand new website and I
• 48:56
  just like flood it with AI content, like 5 posts a day or
• 49:00
  something like that. What we've seen happen is that
• 49:04
  it will rise in search results pretty quickly and then it will
• 49:07
  fall dramatically because at the end of the day, these platforms
• 49:11
  are paying attention to like what the user experiences and
• 49:14
  how humans are interacting with the content, right?
• 49:17
  And humans are not interacting with AI content as much, right?
• 49:21
  So yes, I think you can use AII mean Google has said that
• 49:25
  they're not penalizing AI content.
• 49:28
  However, I mean, the way that Google ranks things is through
• 49:32
  this EEAT, which is experience, expertise, authoritativeness and
• 49:37
  trustworthiness. And experience is actually a new
• 49:42
  one. They used to only consider like
• 49:44
  if you seem to have expertise and you were an authority and
• 49:48
  they deemed your website trustworthy.
• 49:50
  But the reason they've added this experience and AI has said
• 49:53
  that they prioritize this too, is they want to know that the
• 49:55
  person writing has more than just like book experience on it,
• 49:59
  right? They don't want that level of
• 50:02
  curation of information anymore. They want like real humans.
• 50:06
  I mean, look at the investments big, big companies are making,
• 50:11
  right? Like with Google acquiring, not
• 50:13
  acquiring, but they're using Reddit information to try and
• 50:17
  like learn more about how humans talk, right?
• 50:19
  Adobe just, I think they acquired Zemrush for like $1.9
• 50:23
  billion. So you're like SEO is not going
• 50:27
  anywhere. Like big places are like how do
• 50:29
  we make it better? How do we make it more human?
• 50:32
  And to your point, I think there's, I mean, one thing about
• 50:35
  AI is it can give you a first draft, right?
• 50:40
  But I think and like, who knows 2 years from now, but right now
• 50:44
  it's so important to have a human not only like rewrite it
• 50:47
  so that it sounds like a human, but also like make sure that
• 50:51
  it's correct. I actually, I, one recent client
• 50:55
  came to me and they're like, listen, I have been using AI to
• 51:00
  turn my podcast into blog post. And somebody actually like came
• 51:04
  up to her and was like, hey, like you have this on a recent
• 51:06
  blog, but like, I don't think that this is correct.
• 51:08
  And then she's like, Oh my goodness, it's not correct.
• 51:11
  So not only is that blog post not really serving you because
• 51:16
  AI generated, but also it could be really diminishing any sort
• 51:22
  of trust because if you have something and someone who is not
• 51:24
  an expert is like, I don't think that that's correct.
• 51:28
  Yes, on your website. Like I can't think of a way I
• 51:31
  would lose trust faster. Right, right.
• 51:34
  Well, that's so interesting that you say, OK, so obviously
• 51:36
  there's the education side of it.
• 51:38
  When you say experience, what do you think that that looks like?
• 51:42
  Like if someone was to say, OK, like there's a there's a good
• 51:44
  experience to it. Do you think it's the sense of
• 51:46
  like the experience someone has consuming the information in the
• 51:49
  sense of you were saying earlier, like the time they
• 51:51
  spend on the site, how maybe potentially they come back to
• 51:54
  it? What kind of helps somebody to
• 51:56
  go from being the educator to being the person who also, by
• 52:00
  Google terms, is seen to have a good experience?
• 52:04
  OK. So actually it didn't explain
• 52:06
  that. Well, I'm glad that you said
• 52:07
  that because they do consider the user experience as a
• 52:10
  ranking. But when I'm talking about like
• 52:12
  how Google is using experience, I mean like the experience the
• 52:16
  author has in the subject matter that they're talking about.
• 52:19
  So they want to know that they're.
• 52:21
  Yeah, sending someone who is like in the weeds doing The
• 52:24
  thing is talking to people about it.
• 52:27
  OK. And so would that be, do you
• 52:30
  think for most people quantified by like authority or do you
• 52:35
  think it's quantified by or like, I guess how Google would
• 52:38
  diagnose that or see that if someone's like, OK, like, I want
• 52:42
  to make sure that I am seen in Google's eyes as the one who has
• 52:45
  experience is that by, you know, I would say flashier things,
• 52:50
  like accolades of achievement in the sense of like the
• 52:52
  superficial things that we think about of, you know, people had
• 52:55
  this whole era of, like, I want to have Forbes under my name.
• 52:57
  And I want to have, you know, this magazine or whatever it
• 52:59
  might be. Or is this like, OK, wow, this
• 53:02
  person's got a lot of topics or a lot of subject matter around
• 53:06
  this on the Internet. Therefore, this probably is
• 53:09
  someone who's trustworthy. I think it's a mix of things,
• 53:13
  but one of the easiest ways I think to infuse it into what
• 53:17
  you're creating is honestly just good storytelling.
• 53:20
  Not like Chachi BT storytelling, but like I was sitting down with
• 53:24
  a coaching client because I coach for XYZ and we were
• 53:28
  talking about this that I know so many people are looking for
• 53:31
  like starting blog posts like and really phrasing it like so
• 53:34
  you were there doing the thing. You live and breathe it.
• 53:38
  You live and breathe it versus just you're an expert at it.
• 53:42
  Right, right. And then you said trustworthy,
• 53:45
  what it like when you work with clients and you want to make
• 53:48
  sure that like again by SEO standards, they are seen or kind
• 53:51
  of categorized as trustworthy. What do you see?
• 53:55
  Like in this moment in time actually is the thing that helps
• 53:58
  people to be seen as trustworthy.
• 54:00
  Yeah, I feel like it is how consistent their brand or
• 54:05
  business is. So I mean, like for software
• 54:07
  companies, they have things like Trustpilot and you know, places
• 54:11
  like that where you can leave reviews.
• 54:13
  Google's absolutely looking at how many reviews your Google
• 54:15
  business page has. So if that's somewhere that you
• 54:18
  have never prioritized getting testimonials, I think that that
• 54:21
  is important. And when I say consistent, I
• 54:24
  don't mean like she blogs twice a week.
• 54:26
  I mean, like what she's saying on Google matches what she's
• 54:29
  saying over here, matches what she's saying on her main
• 54:32
  website, matches what there's consistency there.
• 54:35
  And it just makes the brand and business seem stronger.
• 54:38
  And honestly, one thing is age of the domain and website,
• 54:43
  right? So it's not something that you
• 54:44
  can necessarily be like, OK, I want, I want this.
• 54:48
  But if you don't have a website now like, now is the time to get
• 54:52
  it up for sure. Right.
• 54:54
  Well, I think that's a really important piece because people
• 54:59
  often, especially I see it in the social media world, they're
• 55:02
  just kind of like they want these quick hits of topics.
• 55:04
  So I'm just gonna talk about this on a Monday and this on a
• 55:06
  Wednesday. And you kind of see that they
• 55:09
  adjust what they say depending on whatever they feel like is
• 55:12
  gonna activate the person that day.
• 55:13
  So they're kind of to the left on one day and to the right on
• 55:16
  the next day. And what I take from that is
• 55:19
  that not only obviously like brand presence is going to be
• 55:22
  important. So to your point, like if you
• 55:24
  have width, it will help you. If you have personal experience
• 55:27
  and storytelling, it will help you.
• 55:29
  But what I also take from that is that you need to actually
• 55:32
  know what are your consistent beliefs as a brand?
• 55:35
  Like what are those consistent like threads that you can ensure
• 55:39
  are everywhere that you are? Because if you or creating
• 55:43
  content just with the aspect of speed or you're just using
• 55:47
  ChatGPT, just like you said, get something out because you're
• 55:49
  like, OK, great. I'm checking the box of putting
• 55:51
  out a blog post. But the blog posts are all over
• 55:54
  the place in the sense of what they talk about, what your
• 55:56
  beliefs are, perspective. There's no kind of through line
• 55:59
  that that even though you're consistent in production can
• 56:02
  actually potentially be something that's detrimental to
• 56:05
  your success. Yeah.
• 56:07
  For sure, for sure. And like, I think there is a
• 56:11
  danger in that AI sounds so good, right?
• 56:15
  Like we, I was actually, you're going to laugh as a business
• 56:19
  coach. I was like scrolling on threads
• 56:22
  and it was like, put this ChatGPT prompt in ChatGPT.
• 56:25
  And it was like some sort of like coaching prompt.
• 56:28
  And then the person said, like, take this to your actual coach
• 56:30
  to strategize after. And I was like, Oh yeah, what
• 56:33
  the heck. Like I'm curious about this
• 56:35
  because I've never used AI for like that sort of high level
• 56:39
  planning. I believe in like human coaches,
• 56:42
  but like I was like curious about it and like the way that
• 56:45
  AI wrote me a plan that and like it sounded so convincing, like
• 56:51
  it was a good plan. But then like my again, my human
• 56:53
  experience was like that isn't going to work and like it would
• 56:56
  just like talk in circles. So in some way I feel like
• 56:59
  people starting businesses now are so lucky to have it.
• 57:03
  And on one hand, I think like this could so easily be your
• 57:06
  detriment because chat JBT honestly, like Instagram will
• 57:10
  convince you that you're being productive and this is a good
• 57:12
  use of your time and give you that dopamine and more of what
• 57:14
  you want. But sometimes, yeah, the slow
• 57:17
  wins are what's gonna help you build a.
• 57:20
  More well, and I do think that that highlights to me, which I
• 57:23
  so agree with because people are saying they've asked me, are you
• 57:27
  worried about like business coaching, for example, getting
• 57:29
  wiped out? Because like you were talking
• 57:31
  about SEO, Are you worried that ChatGPT could do it?
• 57:34
  Or are you worried that someone could ChatGPT these questions?
• 57:37
  And I was like, yes, but even with everything you shared
• 57:39
  today, there's this aspect of discernment, which is like, if I
• 57:42
  say to ChatGPT, OK, use all of Kara's content and her advice
• 57:46
  and write me a blog post about this topic, right?
• 57:49
  Sure. But then the question becomes,
• 57:50
  OK, I have the response. And there's what it provides to
• 57:53
  me and there's what you and your agency would provide to me.
• 57:55
  And truthfully, for anybody who hasn't seen the other side of
• 58:00
  what you guys produce, there's not really any way for me to
• 58:02
  truly know with discernment that this is like, OK, this is the
• 58:06
  right answer. There's no way to know that
• 58:08
  whatever you're putting out is in fact the thing that you
• 58:12
  should be publishing on your blog or even for example, to
• 58:15
  your point of SEO for YouTube, like you could chat GPC, you
• 58:20
  know, give me a very SEO rich title for this type of topic,
• 58:24
  But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have confirmation
• 58:27
  of why is that SEO rich or like, why does that work?
• 58:31
  How do we know that works? And something I wanted to, to
• 58:34
  ask as well is like the winds, because I, you were talking
• 58:38
  earlier about the trends versus the pieces that are long form.
• 58:41
  And I think in this time, I feel like a lot of people are like
• 58:46
  quick win junkies. Like they're like, I want to
• 58:48
  have like AI want to make 20K off this thing I do.
• 58:51
  I want to make 50K off this thing I do.
• 58:53
  And I think with SEO, one of the things that I will admit is I
• 58:58
  think that people are probably similar to TikTok kicking
• 59:02
  themselves that they didn't start sooner.
• 59:04
  Because obviously, like you just noted earlier, you've been
• 59:07
  planting seeds for years. And so there's this aspect of
• 59:13
  you can't expedite that process. Like you can't if you haven't
• 59:16
  been planting these seeds, you can't just rush to plant them.
• 59:19
  When you said earlier, you know, if you don't have your domain
• 59:21
  set up, you can set it up today. But the end of the day, if
• 59:24
  someone else's domain has been around for 15 years longer than
• 59:27
  yours, like that is going to matter.
• 59:29
  So I think for a lot of people listening, I would note there is
• 59:34
  an urgency here to kind of get these pieces in order because
• 59:38
  it's kind of, I think a little bit with SEO, almost like, you
• 59:42
  know, putting money into investments, like you kind of
• 59:45
  have to pay into investments each month.
• 59:48
  And then with that, how much you have in your investment, it's
• 59:51
  really a matter of how they compound over time.
• 59:53
  And I think with this current age of marketing, there's a lot
• 59:57
  of like quick wins, but it leads people to have to stay in that
• 1:00:00
  bucket. So if someone listening today is
• 1:00:03
  like OK. I'm wanting to do this and I'm
• 1:00:06
  going to lean into SEO and I realize that this is important
• 1:00:09
  for not only traditional SEO but also for AI, for chat, for
• 1:00:13
  Google, all of it. I need to focus on this.
• 1:00:17
  What would you, if you wanted to be really honest with them, tell
• 1:00:20
  them to set as an expectation for themselves of what they need
• 1:00:23
  to go in with as a perspective? Because I know from the people
• 1:00:28
  that I know who do SEO, they're like, it's a long term game,
• 1:00:30
  kind of similar to podcasting. It's not something that you put
• 1:00:33
  a podcast up and you're like, hey, I signed 18 clients.
• 1:00:35
  Like it's just not that bucket. But it also is insanely
• 1:00:40
  beneficial long term to the business.
• 1:00:41
  So curious if someone wants to get into this, what's the brutal
• 1:00:44
  advice you'd want them to know? I know I so I usually tell
• 1:00:48
  people 6 to 12 months. I think it depends on the
• 1:00:51
  industry. If you are a local business, so
• 1:00:55
  like local wedding photographer or something, six months feels
• 1:00:59
  more reasonable. If you are a website designer
• 1:01:03
  that can work with anyone in the world, like 12 months to two
• 1:01:08
  years, depending on how not that you don't see wins before that.
• 1:01:12
  But to get like an ROI and what you're putting in, it's going to
• 1:01:16
  take, yeah, like a year and a bit maybe.
• 1:01:19
  And the wins that kind of come sooner just so people know that
• 1:01:23
  there are wins. It's like before you can
• 1:01:26
  actually see like an ROI in your bank account, you have to get
• 1:01:29
  the blog post as an example, on Google, right?
• 1:01:32
  But it starts on page 20. There's no ROI on page 20.
• 1:01:36
  Then you get to page 15 and you're like, OK, it's working.
• 1:01:39
  There's still no ROI on page 15, right?
• 1:01:42
  So you do see these like, and then you kind of get like, it's
• 1:01:47
  not the same way as on Instagram, but then you have
• 1:01:49
  like 1 post that does well, right?
• 1:01:52
  And then you have another post that does well.
• 1:01:55
  And those kind of like wins all need to happen before.
• 1:01:59
  It's like, OK, I'm getting consistent traffic.
• 1:02:01
  And now you have enough traffic that you can actually work on
• 1:02:04
  some of those more conversion pieces, right?
• 1:02:06
  Because before we're just, I don't want to say guessing
• 1:02:09
  because, you know, we're putting a little more effort than just
• 1:02:11
  like throwing something up. But until you have traffic, you
• 1:02:14
  don't know how people are going to take the next step.
• 1:02:18
  And so then you have those wins. So I feel like, yeah,
• 1:02:21
  realistically, maybe like one to two years.
• 1:02:24
  And then like, let's say you're blogging once a week.
• 1:02:27
  I mean, at the end of two years, you have like over 100 blog
• 1:02:29
  posts. And I think in the early stages,
• 1:02:32
  you need to take the wins where it's like, OK, I made this blog
• 1:02:35
  post and then I sent it to my e-mail and I made some content
• 1:02:37
  from it. And like, those have to be the
• 1:02:39
  wins that you're like hanging on to until you get like those.
• 1:02:43
  I found you on Google. Well, I think it's also like
• 1:02:47
  it's an important piece because I think that people
• 1:02:50
  underestimate like long term play until they see other people
• 1:02:55
  who are then benefiting off the long term play.
• 1:02:57
  So like, think how many of us, you know, for example, listen to
• 1:03:00
  a podcast that's been around for five years, it's famous now and
• 1:03:03
  everyone listens to it now. Like think of like Diary of
• 1:03:06
  Aceo. He blew up in like year 3, even
• 1:03:08
  though he was recording in his bedroom for a couple years
• 1:03:10
  before that. So it's like he planted a lot of
• 1:03:13
  seeds. But in the time, there was no
• 1:03:16
  return necessarily instantly of this dopamine hit of his
• 1:03:19
  efforts. And yet overtime it compounded
• 1:03:22
  like you're talking about and here he is.
• 1:03:23
  Or for example, people who are Youtubers who have like a
• 1:03:27
  million subscribers, like that didn't happen in two months or
• 1:03:30
  six months. It was like weekly videos that
• 1:03:33
  got to like 100 or 200 people that overtime compounded.
• 1:03:36
  So I kind of see SEO the same way in the sense of that you
• 1:03:40
  really have to go in with the mindset of I'm doing this
• 1:03:45
  because in the next two years, like you're saying in my
• 1:03:47
  business, I want to be able to leverage this down the line.
• 1:03:51
  And I think it's also why, you know, when you see people, for
• 1:03:53
  example, like, obviously it's a bigger brand like a Jenna
• 1:03:55
  Kutcher who's still leveraging SEO and blogs and Pinterest and
• 1:04:00
  all of that with her business. Like she's been doing it for a
• 1:04:02
  very long time and is obviously now as a result reaping the
• 1:04:06
  rewards of it. But I think it's important that
• 1:04:10
  people set the expectation around it because it's not
• 1:04:12
  something like a, a quick hit of TikTok or a quick hit of
• 1:04:16
  Instagram that's going to give you this instant ROI.
• 1:04:19
  But I think the other piece that I would just add to that to your
• 1:04:22
  point earlier of making it into content is I think the other win
• 1:04:26
  as well is like, this is also assuming you're going for like
• 1:04:29
  cold traffic. So you're going for like, hey, I
• 1:04:31
  want people to discover me. But what about the people who
• 1:04:33
  could already know that you exist?
• 1:04:35
  Like whether it is through social media or other channels
• 1:04:37
  like you're talking about, who could benefit from this being on
• 1:04:42
  your website? So for example, if someone has
• 1:04:45
  no blogs on their site right now, how could somebody who is
• 1:04:50
  looking to invest with you, maybe from TikTok or Instagram,
• 1:04:53
  leverage the fact that you have blogs up to help them to convert
• 1:04:57
  and you're also simultaneously planting seeds for the future?
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, for sure. Like I was even just thinking,
• 1:05:03
  there's a stat out there that I was reading that was like
• 1:05:07
  businesses with blogs on their website convert at a 13 times
• 1:05:11
  rate compared to businesses that don't have blogs.
• 1:05:15
  So, right. And it's even, I hate to say
• 1:05:19
  this as someone who is a writer, but it doesn't even really
• 1:05:23
  matter if people are reading it, the fact that it's there and
• 1:05:27
  people skim it. People like double check.
• 1:05:30
  I mean, very few people will read every single blog even
• 1:05:34
  before they hire you. Like they're more likely to just
• 1:05:37
  like if they find you on a blog, they're maybe going to skim that
• 1:05:39
  one, they're going to skim one or two.
• 1:05:40
  They're going to head to your services page or your Instagram
• 1:05:43
  or somewhere to warm up further, right?
• 1:05:46
  Most of us aren't sitting down and like reading word by word,
• 1:05:50
  but blogs. One that just having it there
• 1:05:55
  increases trust and makes people more likely to convert.
• 1:05:58
  I feel like as well with blogs, what I know has also worked very
• 1:06:03
  well with some of my clients is they have blogs and then they
• 1:06:05
  embed a resource or a freebie in kind of linked within it.
• 1:06:11
  And that in itself has just generated even the aspect of
• 1:06:13
  generating an e-mail list for them of people who've gone to
• 1:06:16
  the site. They're not in a place of
• 1:06:17
  investing because they're still maybe just again, like searching
• 1:06:20
  kind of in that nurturing phase, but they opt into something.
• 1:06:23
  Now you've got their e-mail, you have a whole other funnel from
• 1:06:25
  which to nurture them. And the other thing which I've
• 1:06:27
  had recently is that I've had people discover me off other
• 1:06:31
  people's blogs. So like I had someone who
• 1:06:34
  searched a topic and they were like, yeah, I went to so and
• 1:06:38
  so's blog, which is where I found your podcast, which is
• 1:06:40
  then where I read the transcript or like the summary of it.
• 1:06:43
  And then I found you because you were hyperlinked underneath it.
• 1:06:46
  And it's like this whole journey.
• 1:06:48
  And so I was like, you're finding me through other
• 1:06:50
  people's blogs, not even my own blog, but like my other people's
• 1:06:53
  blogs. Because again, they literally
• 1:06:54
  searched the topic in our blog, not even our podcast, to your
• 1:06:58
  point earlier, but our blog of the podcast is what came up in
• 1:07:02
  the search. And then that led the rabbit
• 1:07:04
  hole to kind of happen. So I think, you know, the thing
• 1:07:07
  that I take from it is by no means is SEO dead.
• 1:07:11
  First of all, right, when he was like, I'm not sure if SEO is
• 1:07:15
  dead. It's not dead.
• 1:07:16
  I would say my, my quote, if I could like succinctly
• 1:07:21
  summarizes, I don't think SEO is dead.
• 1:07:23
  I think it's different and I think that it's basic essence.
• 1:07:27
  Everything you've said today, like I know you have a lot of
• 1:07:30
  stats of success stories that you've helped.
• 1:07:33
  I know you have a lot of clients that are still very much winning
• 1:07:35
  even to your point of your own business from three years ago
• 1:07:39
  bringing in leads. Like do we need to hear anything
• 1:07:41
  else? It obviously means that SEO is
• 1:07:44
  not dead, it just has changed. And so if somebody is like
• 1:07:47
  listening today, they're like, OK, fine, you've sold me on it.
• 1:07:50
  I'm curious about SEO, like where where do they reach out to
• 1:07:54
  you? Where do they kind of find more
• 1:07:55
  info to to look into what this could look like for them and for
• 1:07:59
  their branded business? Yeah, for sure.
• 1:08:01
  So I mean, the easiest way to find me is the carereport.com or
• 1:08:04
  I have a weekly podcast also called the Care Report cuz
• 1:08:07
  naming is not my thing. And yeah, I mean, I have a
• 1:08:11
  private podcast on my website that will take you to my private
• 1:08:15
  private podcast called Build It once, get found for months and I
• 1:08:17
  walk you through my whole process there to.
• 1:08:19
  Learn that's a great game. I'm just saying someone says
• 1:08:23
  great name. It's a great name yeah.
• 1:08:25
  OK, amazing. Well, Kara, one thing I wanted
• 1:08:27
  to to ask as a final piece is obviously you've been in
• 1:08:31
  business for several years and in this process you have seen
• 1:08:35
  SEO, you've seen social media. If there's one thing that you
• 1:08:39
  could give someone for advice and just like the marketing
• 1:08:42
  space in general that you're like, if I wanted to win and
• 1:08:45
  marketing in 2026, this is what I would recommend.
• 1:08:48
  What do you think people should be having as maybe as a
• 1:08:50
  perspective, a thought, something to do?
• 1:08:54
  Like obviously we outlined what to do when it comes to SEO
• 1:08:57
  specifically, but when it comes to marketing, just from all the
• 1:09:00
  things that you're seeing behind the curtain, what would be like
• 1:09:02
  a recommendation of what you think it might take to win in
• 1:09:05
  Marketing Lens in 2026? Yeah, for sure.
• 1:09:09
  So I would say this is like a reoccurring thing that we've
• 1:09:11
  said today, but it's not too late to prioritize SEO in your
• 1:09:15
  business. And I mean, in the age of AI, it
• 1:09:19
  doesn't matter if you're not a good writer.
• 1:09:21
  It's almost the least important part of what I do know because
• 1:09:24
  writing is almost become a commodity.
• 1:09:26
  Everyone can do it. Learn some of the basic
• 1:09:30
  formatting things with AI. So AI wants the author to be a
• 1:09:35
  parent, right? They want to know that you have
• 1:09:38
  experience. Add a frequently asked questions
• 1:09:41
  like those are the kind of thing is like different formatting
• 1:09:44
  things that AI can really help with or can help AI find you and
• 1:09:50
  focus on that versus like obsessing over the writing.
• 1:09:55
  Not that you want it to be AI slop.
• 1:09:57
  I don't mean that, but focusing on that and not getting so
• 1:10:02
  bogged down and like, I have to write because it's never been
• 1:10:05
  easier to write and that isn't the part that is going to make
• 1:10:08
  you stand out. Yeah.
• 1:10:10
  Amazing, so good, so good. Well, Kara, this was so good.
• 1:10:13
  It's I feel like it's a master class and I see you come back
• 1:10:16
  with with a notepad. As a side note, I also want to
• 1:10:18
  add, I have just heard and seen all of the incredible things
• 1:10:23
  that Karen and her team do for people when it comes to SEO.
• 1:10:26
  And obviously you guys know I'm a big, big advocate of making
• 1:10:28
  sure that you go to people who have the experience and the
• 1:10:32
  background to be able to help you to shortcut to get results.
• 1:10:35
  I will tell you if you are someone who's listening today
• 1:10:37
  and you're thinking about doing SEO, Karen and her team are
• 1:10:40
  absolutely incredible with this. So if you are at a place where
• 1:10:42
  you want to integrate this in your business, I highly
• 1:10:44
  recommend reaching out. I don't often recommend people
• 1:10:47
  on this podcast, but I will tell you, I've seen behind the
• 1:10:49
  curtain of what they do. It's absolutely incredible.
• 1:10:51
  So if you're listening and you're thinking, OK, I really
• 1:10:53
  want to do this, but I also have no time or capacity, I really
• 1:10:57
  recommend reaching out to her either on Instagram, through her
• 1:10:59
  website. You, you will not be sorry with
• 1:11:01
  the results you'll see. So with that being said, Karen,
• 1:11:03
  thank you so much for coming on. This was so good.
• 1:11:05
  Wow. Thank you so much, Kate.
• 1:11:06
  I'm so, I love chatting with you and I'm just so honored to be
• 1:11:09
  here. Yeah, of course, of course.
• 1:11:11
  All righty, you guys. Well, as always, thank you so
• 1:11:14
  much for listening and we will see you in next week's episode.
• 1:11:16
  And, as always, stay ambitious.