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How to Get Organic Traffic for Ecommerce in 2026 · eCommerce Podcast

0:05
Well, hello and welcome to the E-Commerce
0:08
Podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson.
0:10
It's great to be with you today.
0:13
Now, let me start by telling you a
0:15
story of a few years ago.
0:17
I had a beauty business, and we did
0:20
that thing that no one in e-commerce ever
0:22
tells you to do. We actually turned
0:25
off our ads.
0:27
Yes, we did. We didn't pause them.
0:29
We didn't optimise them. We didn't hand them
0:31
off to a new agency. We were simply
0:34
spending tens of thousands
0:37
of pounds every month on paid
0:40
ads. And as a company, we were having
0:42
some financial issues, um, and we needed
0:44
to save a lot of money
0:48
and quite quickly. So we just turned
0:51
them off. And you know what?
0:54
The thing that still surprises me when I
0:56
look back is that the sales held.
1:00
Now, they didn't hold forever, but they did
1:02
hold. And we didn't fall
1:05
off a sort of a cliff's edge, at
1:07
least not instantly, in that business, which
1:10
I thought was quite extraordinary, really. The business
1:12
kept moving, and
1:14
we saved tens of thousands of pounds every
1:17
month. And the reason is because we had
1:19
two things underneath us that really helped.
1:21
The first was we had a high repeat
1:23
purchase rate. And the second
1:27
was a body of organic search
1:29
rankings that we'd been quietly building over
1:33
the years. And the only reason I
1:35
could turn the ads off was because
1:38
we had that foundation.
1:41
If we didn't have that foundation, then
1:44
that decision to turn them off would
1:47
have pretty much killed our business pretty
1:50
darn quickly, let me tell you.
1:53
And that's what we're going to be looking
1:54
at today, because a lot of us, I
1:56
think, are running businesses where if
1:58
paid ads stop today, the whole business stops.
2:02
But we're probably all asking the question, should
2:06
I turn them off? And let me tell
2:08
you, I do wonder if
2:11
paid ads are actually starting
2:14
to not work like they
2:17
should? What do you think? I don't know.
2:19
There's a conversation that's been going on, isn't
2:22
there, really? And it's, it's
2:25
what we're going to get into on this
2:26
bright, cheerful, sunny day.
2:28
Now, if this is your first time
2:31
with us, a very, very warm welcome
2:34
to you. And make sure you like and
2:36
subscribe and do all of that good stuff.
2:38
And of course, if you're a regular, a
2:39
warm welcome back. It's great to have you.
2:42
Thanks for staying with us. Uh, it's really,
2:45
really great. Now listen, uh, before
2:48
we get started in the podcast, I have
2:50
to tell you something that I almost never
2:52
say on this show. There's nothing like
2:54
building a little bit of drama, isn't there?
2:56
Really? Uh, yeah, just me laughing at my
2:59
own jokes. You might actually have to sit
3:01
down for this one. Oh yes, drum roll.
3:04
Uh, today's episode is sponsored.
3:07
Now I know we don't normally do
3:10
sponsors on the E-Commerce Podcast.
3:11
You will know this if you've been a
3:12
regular. Um, so don't worry, you don't
3:15
have to fast forward. Um, it's just, it's
3:18
nothing like that. Uh, we've just never really
3:20
got into the whole sponsorship thing. We've never
3:21
really tried to pursue that whole avenue
3:24
as a podcast. Uh, and before
3:27
any of you reach for the unsubscribe button,
3:30
uh, or the fast forward button, uh, it's
3:32
not Squarespace, it's not Shopify, and it's not
3:34
HelloFresh. Oh, still
3:39
laughing at my own jokes. Yes, no, the
3:41
sponsor of today's episode is in fact my
3:44
own company. Which I know people have
3:46
a pronunciation issue with, is actually pronounced Aurion,
3:49
A-U-R-I-O-N, Aurion.
3:51
It's a Greek word, means tomorrow, which
3:54
I thought was a good name for a
3:55
tech company. Anyway, this is just me being
3:58
a little bit tongue-in-cheek, announcing a brand new
4:00
tool that we've built called SAM.
4:03
Now SAM stands for Slingshot AI
4:06
Mentor. I'm going to tell you a little
4:08
bit more about SAM, a bit more properly,
4:11
at the sort of latter part of the
4:13
show, what it is, how
4:16
it works, and all of that sort of
4:17
good stuff. But it's us basically
4:20
bringing e-commerce and AI together.
4:24
And so just thought I'd, I'd just announce
4:27
it on the show and just be upfront
4:29
because that's how we like to do things
4:31
around here. So today is sponsored by Sam.
4:33
Thank you, Sam. Appreciate it. There we go.
4:36
Confession over. Right. Let's get on with it,
4:38
shall we? Sponsored by.
4:40
Anyway, so today we are going to be
4:42
talking, like I said, about how to get
4:44
organic traffic for e-commerce and what that
4:47
looks like specifically in the year 2026.
4:51
How do we build the kind of foundation
4:54
for our businesses? That means if we've got
4:57
issues with paid media— hands up, uh,
5:00
pretty much all hands go up at that
5:01
point— how can we still carry
5:04
on? Because right now, like I say, I
5:06
think paid media is breaking.
5:10
Interestingly, Facebook CPMs are
5:13
up somewhere between 60% and 90%, which
5:17
quick math would say 75% in the last
5:20
few years. Paid search clicks, you may
5:22
know this already, have effectively
5:26
doubled in price across every single
5:28
vertical in the last year.
5:31
And the organic clicks, the ones that used
5:33
to balance all of this out for us,
5:35
well, they're falling actually at a rate of
5:38
between 11% and 23% vantage
5:41
points, depending on your industry and
5:43
vertical. So when you put all this together,
5:45
when you look at the maths, it's actually
5:48
genuinely quite frightening, isn't it?
5:50
And what I see most of us doing
5:53
in response to this is actually fighting
5:55
harder and harder and doubling down
5:58
on paid media. And
6:01
so I just wonder, right,
6:05
if we need to think a little
6:08
bit more holistically about
6:10
paid media, a bit more maybe outside of
6:13
the box, which is hopefully what we're going
6:15
to be getting to today.
6:18
I've got some ideas and some thoughts around
6:19
this idea of building organic traffic.
6:24
Now, it's not just as simple as saying,
6:26
well, that's just all about SEO,
6:29
isn't it? Organic traffic, Matt, why don't you
6:30
just do a show on SEO?
6:33
Because whilst that might have been true in
6:34
2018, my friend, I think, uh,
6:38
organic traffic is quite a bit more involved
6:40
now. So we're going to hit in today's
6:42
episodes 6 channels, not
6:45
1, but 6. Yes.
6:47
And right now I'm guessing most of us
6:50
are probably dabbling in one of them, possibly
6:52
two of them, but this is why I
6:54
think it's good to have these conversations to
6:55
expand our thinking and to think
6:58
about how we could do it differently.
7:01
So we're going to look at these 6
7:03
areas, 6 sources of organic traffic, and
7:06
ask ourselves, what's the one
7:08
thing we can do in each of these
7:10
areas in the coming weeks that's going to
7:13
help move the needle in our business?
7:15
Because you know what, I like action.
7:17
I like progress. I like simple coaching questions.
7:20
And I like to see how I can
7:22
improve. Now, of course, if
7:25
you are a regular to the show, you
7:27
will know that these sort of solo episodes
7:29
where it's just me sort of rambling on,
7:32
uh, hopefully delivering value, uh, we also
7:35
deliver a freebie and I'll tell you more
7:37
about that again at the end, how you
7:39
can get a hold of it, um, and
7:41
how it's going to help you in relation
7:43
to what we're talking about today.
7:46
So that is also coming up.
7:47
You're not going to want to miss this
7:48
freebie. Let me tell you, it is involved.
7:51
It's so cool. Uh, but you know, I'm
7:53
going to say that, aren't I? And none
7:55
of this, by the way, is theoretical, because
7:58
all of this stuff is what we're doing
7:59
in my own e-commerce companies right
8:02
now. You know, the one that's sponsoring the
8:04
show. Oh,
8:07
yes. So let's get into it, shall
8:10
we? But before we jump into
8:12
the 6, let me just, let
8:16
me just widen out the story
8:19
for a second if I can.
8:21
Because what happened, uh, to us in that
8:24
beauty business is what
8:27
is happening maybe in slow motion to nearly
8:29
every e-commerce founder I'm speaking to
8:32
right now. Okay, this is why I wanted
8:34
to do this episode. I reckon probably about
8:36
80% of the folks that I've spoken to
8:38
recently— and yes, this is anecdotal, I've not
8:41
measured this to an nth degree— I
8:44
reckon 80% of us have got some, uh,
8:47
pretty, pretty big issues around
8:50
paid media. 8 out of 10, right?
8:52
That's not just a few outliers. That's not
8:55
a handful of unlucky business people.
8:56
I think it's the shape of the industry
8:58
that we're in right now, which is why
8:59
I thought it would be good to talk
9:00
about it. And here's the thing about organic
9:03
traffic. It's worth calling this out really,
9:06
because it's the kind of thing we don't
9:09
always say out loud. You
9:11
may have opened I don't know, your
9:14
blog dashboard this month and saw the last
9:17
post was perhaps from 2024.
9:19
In fact, the reason why I think this
9:21
is I was, I was, it may have
9:22
been your website I was looking at the
9:24
other day, an e-commerce website.
9:26
I clicked onto their blog. The last post
9:28
was 3 years old, 3 years old.
9:32
Um, I say that, okay, brilliant.
9:35
Uh, maybe you've Googled recently how to do
9:37
SEO for e-commerce in 2026.
9:39
That's just me, of course, throwing key terms
9:41
in there to the blog script.
9:43
See what I did? Maybe
9:47
you've Googled that. I don't know. Maybe that's
9:48
why you're here, because I just randomly threw
9:50
this term in. But I know a lot
9:52
of us do sit up late at night,
9:54
right? Checking our ad spend on our phones,
9:57
wondering at what point all this is going
9:59
to stop working for us.
10:01
Been there, read the book, seen the film,
10:02
got the t-shirt. Because the reality
10:05
is there is a decline and there's going
10:07
to come a point, I think, where maybe
10:10
paid ads, you seriously have
10:13
to ask, do we need to switch it
10:14
off? Right? So it's
10:17
a big deal. So let me tell you,
10:18
I've done all of this, sat
10:21
there, genuinely no shame if that's you, not
10:24
at all. It doesn't mean you're doing e-commerce
10:25
badly. I do think it's the shape of
10:28
our industry at the moment. And
10:32
there was a business actually I acquired a
10:33
little while back. Just to show you
10:36
the shape of the industry and the business
10:38
at the moment. The business we got last
10:41
year, a particular company, had what I
10:43
would call a CAC problem.
10:46
Now, if you're new to e-commerce, you will
10:48
quickly learn there are lots of these three-letter
10:50
acronyms, CAC being one of them, which
10:53
I still find a very funny acronym
10:55
because in England, CAC just means
10:59
it's rubbish. If something's CAC, it's not very
11:01
good. But in e-commerce, it means
11:04
customer acquisition costs, which
11:06
are also CAC. Again, let me
11:09
laugh at my own jokes. And
11:12
in this company we acquired, the
11:15
CAC, the customer acquisition costs, had gone up
11:17
quite a lot. Right. And it had gone
11:20
up a lot because the ad costs themselves
11:22
had climbed. No big
11:24
surprise there. But on top of that, the
11:27
effectiveness of those ads had fallen.
11:30
So they were experiencing this double whammy
11:33
where you get the rising ad costs, but
11:36
then you get the fall in return
11:39
on ad spend, or ROAS, which is another
11:42
acronym that you'll be familiar with.
11:45
And when those two things move against you
11:47
at the same time, you actually have a
11:50
fundamental problem on your hands.
11:52
And the trouble is this becomes a bit
11:54
of a treadmill, right? A bit of a
11:56
merry-go-round, a bit of a roundabout.
11:58
I don't know if you've noticed it, quite
12:00
a few people, I think, are on it
12:02
right now. Maybe one of them, I don't
12:03
know, because you've gone from Google to Facebook,
12:06
because Facebook was working and then, and
12:09
it was cheap, beautiful. And then iOS changes
12:12
happened. And Apple and Facebook seem to
12:15
have fallen out and then Facebook stops working
12:17
as much and it gets more expensive. So
12:18
then we go back to Google. And then
12:21
of course, Google costs go up because everyone's
12:23
gone back onto Google. And the auctions
12:26
end up being way more competitive.
12:28
And then someone else comes along years later
12:30
and tells you, you probably should go on
12:32
to TikTok, and the whole thing's exhausting, right?
12:35
Or whatever the thing is at the moment.
12:37
And one thing you can absolutely be sure
12:40
of is that the marketing industry will keep
12:42
inventing new and better ways, uh,
12:45
with new places for you and I to
12:47
spend our advertising budgets to reach the people
12:50
that will buy our products. And either that
12:52
audience will eventually wither and die, or
12:55
the ads on that platform will get really
12:57
expensive if it's good, because everyone else is
12:59
going to pile into that platform too.
13:01
And And then we're forced to think about
13:03
the next big thing, praying to those
13:07
in marketing to come up with a better
13:08
way for me to spend money because the
13:11
ads have stopped working. And it goes on
13:14
and on. And you go on this kind
13:17
of, what
13:20
would you call it, a cheap traffic, modern-day
13:24
version of an e-commerce Indiana
13:27
Jones. Do you know what I mean? I'm,
13:28
I'm hunting. I'm the treasure hunter for
13:31
the cheap, effective traffic.
13:33
Who, you know, is just great, isn't he?
13:36
Indiana Jones. Why would we not want to
13:37
be Indiana Jones? In fact, I have an
13:39
Indiana Jones Lego Indiana Jones model on
13:41
my desk just to remind
13:44
me a little bit in life of a
13:45
few things, which is great. So yes, why
13:48
would we not want to do that? Now
13:49
we've gone from newspapers to radio to
13:52
television to internet search engines, social media,
13:55
and of course, The question on everyone's lips
13:57
right now is, is AI the next big
13:59
thing? Is that the thing that's
14:02
next in line? Is that going to take
14:04
the throne for us in
14:07
terms of generating traffic and where we
14:09
put our ad spend? And the reality probably
14:12
is yes, it seems
14:15
to be that way. And of course, you
14:17
can further exacerbate this problem
14:20
depending on the type of customer your business
14:23
needs. So if you have, um, a
14:26
need to be profitable with new customer
14:29
acquisition because most of your customers are one-time
14:32
purchasers, you don't really get
14:34
the big return rates back.
14:37
The obvious one obviously being a couch or
14:39
a sofa. You don't sell those once.
14:41
I don't need to buy one every month,
14:42
and if I do, I've got some real
14:44
problems, right? So they tend to be one-time
14:46
purchases. So selling those sofas or couches,
14:48
you've got to make that first order count.
14:51
And I think it's getting really, really hard
14:54
for those kind of businesses.
14:56
Now, if you're a business that's perhaps profitable
14:58
by, say, order 3, well, I
15:01
don't think you're off the hook because, um,
15:04
I think historically those types of businesses
15:08
have gone with this idea that those who
15:10
have got the deepest pockets wins, right?
15:12
How long can I go before I need
15:13
to make money? Uh, AKA Amazon building
15:16
its empire. But I think it also promotes
15:19
a little bit of laziness because you're going,
15:21
well, I'm going to make some profit eventually.
15:24
I just need to suck up, you know,
15:26
the sort of higher, um, ad
15:29
costs and try and make it work.
15:33
But what was profitable, you know, originally
15:36
bought profit, well, maybe order 2 was profitable
15:39
and now it's order 3, which is going
15:41
to become order 4.
15:43
And these things, I think, have a real
15:44
impact on our business.
15:47
So full disclosure, full caveat, full legal
15:49
disclaimer, whatever language you would like
15:52
me to use, I am not— repeat, I
15:55
am not— telling you to go and turn
15:56
your ads off. Let me be
15:59
very clear about that because I don't want
16:01
anyone walking away from this episode and sending
16:04
me a legal letter because they've heard me
16:06
say you should turn your ads off in
16:08
the wrong way after telling my story and
16:11
your business has gone a bit Pete Tong.
16:13
Right? If you're running a brand
16:16
right now where first-time customer acquisition
16:19
is your lifeblood, where most of your sales
16:21
come from new people, not repeat people, and
16:23
you turn off your ads today, you are
16:26
going to notice that. You are going to
16:28
feel that pretty much instantly.
16:31
And so I think you have to have
16:33
a plan if that's the route you're going
16:34
to go down, because you will notice
16:37
it in your bank account by the end
16:38
of the day, if not by the end
16:40
of the hour. So let
16:43
me repeat, I'm not telling you turn paid
16:45
media off. But I am aware that there
16:47
is this cycle we get into which says,
16:50
if I turn my ads off, my sales
16:53
will drop. If my sales drop, then I
16:55
lose my cash flow. If I lose cash
16:57
flow, I can't really run
17:00
the business. And so we keep going on
17:03
yet another merry-go-round. And the trouble is, our
17:06
cash flow is getting less and less because
17:07
the profits are getting smaller and smaller.
17:10
And eventually the rising ad costs, the
17:12
rising CAC, the rising CAC
17:15
on every kind of level, the squeeze,
17:18
if we like, we get to a point
17:20
where we either close the business or we
17:22
do something like take out a Shopify loan,
17:25
which we talked about a few weeks ago.
17:27
And let me tell you, that episode has
17:29
produced a fair few comments and conversations.
17:32
So thank you for everyone that's reached out
17:34
and got in touch about that. That was
17:36
a couple of weeks ago. Do go
17:39
and check it out. So
17:45
what do we do? What is the plan,
17:48
Matt? Whilst, whilst figuring out this whole
17:50
paid media thing, which
17:54
we're going to be talking about this, I
17:56
think, in more and more episodes coming up,
17:58
because I think paid media is working
18:01
at the moment. There is still some semblance
18:03
of it working. And it really does.
18:05
I don't think it's dead yet. Um, but
18:09
is it dying or is it going to
18:11
radically change how it looks?
18:13
And I think whatever the answer to that
18:15
question is, the one thing I do know
18:16
is we need to build the foundation of
18:18
our organic traffic. Um, because
18:21
otherwise I think it's going to be a
18:22
nightmare. Um, let's be real.
18:24
It's going to be an absolute nightmare to
18:26
try and build organic when paid does stop
18:28
working. Um, or there's some radical
18:31
sort of rebalance in the whole thing.
18:33
And so now I think is the best
18:35
time whilst you can still have the best
18:37
of both worlds, because organic does take time.
18:40
None of this is rocket science. It's not
18:41
like this is gonna be the first time
18:43
you've heard it. We probably all know this.
18:46
We've heard it all before. So hopefully this
18:48
is just a little reminder of
18:51
where to go because I
18:54
do think paid media needs
18:57
a bit of a reinvention. Um, Is it
18:59
going to stop working? Like I say, I
19:01
don't know, but I think to survive
19:03
the upcoming apocalypse, if
19:07
I can make it sound so melodramatic, um,
19:10
I think the ones that win are the
19:12
ones that have their sort of organic platform.
19:15
It's just a thought in the back of
19:16
my head. So with
19:19
that very important caveat out of the way,
19:21
let's talk about organic, what it actually is
19:24
and how we do it. Let me start
19:25
then by asking you a very simple
19:28
question. What comes into
19:30
your head when I say the word organic?
19:34
What is organic traffic to
19:37
you? Now, for most
19:40
of us, we're going to immediately think, like
19:42
I said at the start of the show,
19:44
about SEO, search engine optimization.
19:48
Um, we, we hear SEO, we
19:50
hear organic, and we translate that word into
19:53
SEO, right? It's our Google rankings.
19:55
It's, it's synonymous. Uh, with that,
19:58
they're synonymous with each other. Um, maybe
20:01
your site has ranked for products.
20:02
Maybe you've got a blog that's ranked.
20:05
Uh, maybe you've got a sitemap if you're
20:06
feeling really fancy.
20:09
Um, and you know, I think it was
20:11
a perfectly, like I said, reasonable definition of
20:13
organic traffic back in 2018.
20:15
But here we are 8 years later, and
20:17
I think it's going to be a little
20:18
bit, a little bit incomplete if we just
20:20
leave it as that.
20:23
Okay. Because it—
20:28
I just, I'd like to say, I just
20:29
think there are these 6 areas. Um, I
20:31
think there are— there's probably more, uh, depending
20:34
on how you interpret things, but I'm going
20:36
to focus on what I call the big
20:38
6. And if we can focus on that,
20:39
I think we're going to be all right,
20:41
genuinely speaking. I really do.
20:44
Now, one word
20:47
of caution here, and because I want to
20:49
talk about AI, obviously I'm going to talk
20:51
about AI. Right. Um, I
20:55
am watching history repeat itself
20:57
a little bit, uh, and I, and I
21:00
just want to be aware of it. Having
21:01
been around a little while, hopefully
21:04
you can learn from my experience here. Back
21:06
in 2018, what was fascinating
21:08
was SEO agencies were a massive thing.
21:12
Everyone needed one, and to be honest, most
21:16
of them in my experience
21:18
were a bit of a scam. Um, over-promising
21:21
and under-delivering. I don't think people were dishonest.
21:24
I just think, um, paid
21:27
media is easy. You put X in, you
21:30
get Y out. With SEO, it's a bit
21:32
more art than science. And so what
21:35
people were promising, they genuinely thought
21:38
they could deliver. Whether it was actually delivered
21:41
is another story. And we've been around long
21:43
enough to have come across— I think
21:46
I can count on one hand how many
21:48
SEO agencies who genuinely earned
21:51
their fee, right? So I've come across one
21:53
or two of those agencies, which is not
21:54
a lot in this world. Um, and
21:57
right now, the reason I mentioned this is
22:00
because right now we're starting to see exactly
22:03
the same thing happen with AI search, where
22:06
agencies are popping up promising the world
22:09
for $5,000 a month to get you cited
22:12
by ChatGPT. Um, so
22:16
I want you to know that going into
22:19
this conversation, because I'm hoping that this episode
22:21
means that you don't have to go down
22:23
that road, right? I think the agencies
22:26
that genuinely understand AI
22:28
search don't really
22:31
exist in massive large numbers right now because
22:34
it's such a moving field. I
22:37
don't think because AI
22:41
search is not easy to understand, including the
22:44
ones charging the premium fees, I just don't
22:46
think it's, it's that straightforward.
22:48
Um, so I just want to say
22:51
that best guess, um, what
22:55
area number 1 is going to be, uh,
22:57
as we're talking about today, is AI search.
22:59
But best guess, I think we have some
23:02
kind of clue, we have some ideas, it
23:04
is going to be a moving field,
23:06
right? So what I don't want you to
23:07
do, uh, is go out, rush
23:10
out and hire a whole bunch of agencies
23:12
based on AI or any other things that
23:14
we're talking about today. Because
23:17
I think a lot of this stuff you
23:18
can do yourself, right? Um,
23:21
Matt's not saying you need an agency, okay?
23:23
That's my other caveat. Over. I don't want
23:25
you to waste your money. Genuinely, I really
23:27
don't. I've seen a lot of people waste
23:28
a lot of money on these things,
23:31
a big fat waste of money in many
23:33
occasions. Um, that said,
23:36
there are obviously some genuinely good agencies
23:39
out there, I have no doubt.
23:41
Um, but this is going to be something
23:43
to watch. Okay. So let's
23:47
get into them, the 6 areas. Let me
23:48
name them quickly and then we're gonna get
23:50
into each one in a bit more detail.
23:53
The first one, like I said, no surprise,
23:54
is gonna be AI. AI search, AI,
23:57
well, we call it AI discovery, um, which
24:01
is being recommended by
24:03
the likes of ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity
24:06
or Google's AI overviews.
24:09
They seem to be the main ones, don't
24:10
they, that people are using.
24:13
And so that's the first AI discovery.
24:15
The second area is what I would call
24:17
site SEO or technical SEO, uh,
24:20
which is the classic on-page stuff most of
24:23
us think about when we hear the phrase
24:26
SEO. So title tags, meta
24:28
descriptions, schema, all of those
24:31
kinds of things really. Um, so SEO
24:34
is still important. It's one of the areas.
24:37
The third area I have cheated,
24:40
I don't know, you tell me if I
24:41
cheated a little bit, but in my head
24:42
I like to separate them. Um, I've separated
24:45
out what I call blog and
24:48
content, um, which I get as a form
24:50
of SEO, but it is based more around
24:53
content. Site SEO I see as more technical,
24:57
um, blog and content is more about discovery
25:00
SEO. Um, it's the long-form
25:03
trust layer, if you like.
25:05
And the reason why this is important now,
25:10
not just from the organic SEO point of
25:12
view, uh, as in being ranked on Google,
25:16
um, but we can see that this type
25:18
of content is starting to fuel AI discovery,
25:21
right? So AI is trusting this type
25:24
of content for its citations, which I
25:26
think is really, really interesting.
25:29
Um, area number 4 we're going to get
25:31
into is YouTube. Now I mentioned YouTube because
25:34
YouTube is still the second biggest search engine
25:36
on the planet, um, and it's getting bigger
25:39
and bigger for e-commerce. Um, and
25:42
again, YouTube is feeding a lot of AI.
25:45
Okay. The fifth area we're
25:47
going to look at is social SEO.
25:51
Um, because I think social is changing
25:53
and because Gen Z or Gen Z, depending
25:56
on how you want me to pronounce it,
25:58
are now searching inside the likes of Instagram
26:00
and TikTok. And they are doing that long
26:03
before they ever even touch Google.
26:06
So it is an area of search that
26:08
we need to think about. And then the
26:09
final area, the sixth one, is what we
26:12
call digital PR, which are
26:14
things like press mentions, podcast appearances,
26:17
founder authority, you know, the kind of
26:20
signals that build trust
26:22
in your brand as a sort of an
26:24
online entity. And we're going to talk about
26:27
why that's important in just a second.
26:30
Okay, so let's jump into the first one,
26:32
shall we? On each of these, I'm going
26:34
to give you my thoughts, I'm gonna give
26:37
you some suggested actions on what you can
26:39
do, all of which will be covered in
26:41
much more detail in this week's freebie,
26:44
which you are definitely going to want to
26:45
get ecommercepodcast.net/resources. Go
26:49
and grab it. Um, there's some great workbook,
26:51
uh, checklist in there just to follow, some
26:54
prompts you can use in AI to help
26:56
you. Okay. Because this is what, uh, the
26:59
stuff that we're giving you, full disclosure, is
27:01
what we're using right now, uh, in our
27:03
company. Like I was literally copied and pasted
27:05
it. So hey ho, uh, so
27:08
like I said, area number 1, uh, let's
27:11
get into AI search engine optimization.
27:15
There are, of course, all kinds of names
27:17
for this, aren't there? And I don't think
27:19
anyone's surprised by me mentioning AI.
27:21
It is the new battlefield. It is quickly
27:23
becoming the topic of conversation.
27:27
Um, we are all talking about it.
27:30
It, it could— you could argue it's still
27:32
pretty small in traffic, um,
27:35
but it is starting to make some waves,
27:38
especially when you think about the fact it
27:39
didn't exist 3 years ago and hardly really
27:42
existed a year ago, but is becoming a
27:44
bigger bigger deal. Now,
27:47
AI discovery is, like I say, it's basically
27:50
the question of whether ChatGPT, Claude,
27:52
Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews will
27:55
recommend you when a customer asks
27:58
something like, what's the best
28:01
chocolate bar I can eat to lose weight?
28:04
Um, or what's the best gift for my
28:06
dad? Because, you know, Father's Day is coming
28:08
up, or whatever it might be for your
28:10
particular business. Um, I don't know, because more
28:13
and more people, and the latest data
28:16
which I've seen suggests, if I, and if
28:18
I'm going to be precise, which I probably
28:20
should be, that 78% of
28:24
consumers have used large language
28:26
models for product research at some point in
28:29
the last year. Let's round it up.
28:31
Let's call it an even 80.
28:33
It may well be now. 80% of us
28:36
are using AI for product research.
28:40
That's a heck of an uptake, isn't it?
28:42
If you think about it, I mean, geez,
28:44
uh, What is going on?
28:47
And it did. Dig deeper,
28:49
right? Because about 64% of us apparently
28:53
are planning to use AI chatbots for shopping
28:56
decisions this year. That's a, that's
28:58
a really big number, isn't it? So this
29:00
is real, is really happening, and AI is
29:03
starting to have a bit of an impact.
29:04
And so I think our companies need to
29:06
be visible inside of these systems
29:10
rather than just going, oh, we'll wait and
29:11
see. I think we have to start playing
29:13
the game a little bit now. Now,
29:15
this became apparent to me recently when I
29:18
go, when I go back to the
29:21
start of our beauty business, for example, back
29:23
in 2006. I appreciate we're
29:26
going back 20 years. But
29:28
when we started it, we set the website
29:31
live. Okay, it wasn't a launch.
29:34
It wasn't like we told anybody, we just
29:37
literally made it live. We'd been doing a
29:39
bunch of testing. And we made it live
29:42
and we were like, okay, we'll come back
29:44
tomorrow and we'll carry on with the testing.
29:46
But when we came back tomorrow, Mrs.
29:49
Smith, and that is actually her real name,
29:52
had placed an order on our website.
29:55
Somehow during the night,
29:59
Google had found us, indexed
30:01
us, and recommended us, us to
30:04
Mrs. Smith, who then purchase
30:07
the products. Now, I appreciate that doesn't really
30:09
happen anymore, does it? But it happened
30:11
back then, and it's how we launched our
30:13
business. And all of a sudden, people were
30:15
finding us. It's like we got instantly indexed.
30:17
The reason I'm telling you this is because
30:19
it feels a little bit like that with
30:22
AI right now. I'm
30:24
not gonna lie, there's no predefined rules that
30:27
everyone's trying to play in, bit like back
30:30
20 years ago with Google.
30:32
Um, I mean, on Google it's so hard,
30:35
isn't it? It's getting harder and harder to
30:36
get rank, uh, to get any kind of
30:38
rank, in fact. Um, but the other day
30:41
I was speaking to a lead, uh,
30:44
from one of our websites, a lead, and
30:46
I'm like, how did you find out about
30:47
us? I'm just really curious. Um, and they
30:50
said, oh, ChatGPT told me about you.
30:52
They told me that I should come talk
30:54
to you guys. Um, and I was
30:57
like, well, isn't that interesting?
30:59
There are some rule books on how to
31:01
get discovered by AI, but I don't think
31:03
we've particularly followed them to the letter.
31:05
Um, we've been playing around on it, sure,
31:08
but we've benefited, I think, from some of
31:10
the stuff that we've done around optimization.
31:14
But it's interesting to me that at the
31:16
moment it's still quite new,
31:19
it's still quite young, and it's
31:22
working for a handful of businesses.
31:26
Which is why I think it's really important
31:27
we start to get to work on it.
31:28
If you haven't done so already, the concrete
31:31
action for you is actually to seriously think
31:33
about AI discovery and what
31:36
you can do about it. And there are
31:37
3 things which you could probably do straight
31:40
away, um, that won't take a great
31:43
deal of time. Actually, all of them are
31:44
in the workbook. Um, number 1 is to
31:47
put a file on your website called llms.
31:50
Text or.txt, llms.txt.
31:57
Um, put that as a file. So txt
31:59
is a text file, um, and you put
32:01
that in the root of your website.
32:02
Now, if you're familiar with some of these
32:05
root files, you'll
32:06
probably recognize something like robots.txt,
32:09
which is where SEO crawlers go to look
32:11
for instructions on how to access your site.
32:15
Well, AI crawlers are now looking for
32:18
llms.txt. Llms.txt.
32:20
I really have to think about how I
32:22
say that. L-L-M-S dot T-X-T.
32:25
We could have really made it straightforward and
32:26
more simple. Large language models dot T-X-T.
32:30
We have one on the site, actually. I
32:32
even have one of those files on the
32:34
website I use for eCommerce Podcast, ecommercepodcast.net.
32:39
You can go and look at the llms.txt
32:42
file on the website.
32:44
Okay. Um, it really
32:47
isn't easy to say, is it? Uh, so
32:50
what this does is it helps AI understand
32:52
how to index our sites properly.
32:55
It's really just a small text file and
32:57
it tells AI what our site is about
32:59
and what's worth referencing.
33:02
Now, full disclosure, full transparency, like
33:04
I said, the whole thing isn't— is new.
33:07
It's all an emerging area.
33:09
Llms.txt files are still pretty
33:12
early. Less than 10% of sites
33:15
have implemented one at the moment, and no
33:17
major AI provider has really officially
33:20
commented to using them yet, at least not
33:22
that I'm aware of. But
33:25
everyone knows that they're there and everyone knows
33:27
that people are starting to use them. And
33:29
the truth is, it costs you virtually
33:31
nothing to add them.
33:33
So I don't think you lose out by
33:35
having one. And at some point there's
33:39
going to be some kind of common protocol.
33:40
There always is in these things. And I
33:42
think if the site's already using these files,
33:44
the llms.txt— I'm getting much quicker at that,
33:47
aren't I? Uh, then I think AI will
33:49
start to pick them out. So my advice
33:51
is just add it. Like I say, it's
33:53
not going to take a whole great deal
33:54
of time. Add the llms.txt
33:58
file to your root folder on your website.
34:02
And again, a bit more information about that
34:04
in the freebie. Number 2, make sure you've
34:06
got full product schema on your product pages.
34:09
So what do I mean by schema?
34:11
Well, schema are the invisible tags in
34:14
your page code.
34:16
So the code which drives your page, there's
34:18
these invisible tags that tell Google and
34:21
AI what the page is actually about.
34:24
The reason I say they're invisible, they're there
34:25
in the code, obviously, but they don't render
34:28
onto your web page. So
34:31
for example, we've put some again in the
34:32
workbook, but for example, schema tags like product,
34:36
This is a product. It's not complicated, is
34:38
it? Um, a tag, offer, uh,
34:42
here's the price, you know, here's the stock
34:44
status. There's a tag called aggregate
34:47
rating, which is what people scored,
34:50
uh, in their reviews. There's something called merchant
34:53
return policy. Um, so AI
34:56
knows you actually have got a returns policy.
34:59
All the important bits of information you
35:02
can add these things to your website relatively
35:05
quickly and relatively painlessly, um,
35:08
using schema. You can even populate
35:11
the brand name. You can add GTINs.
35:14
Um, GTIN is basically the barcode number.
35:17
Um, and so it's the unique ID code
35:20
that Google uses to verify your product is
35:22
in fact a real product and not just
35:24
words on a page. The interesting
35:27
thing here and why you want to do
35:29
this, okay, pay attention, is
35:32
Google's own data says complete
35:36
Product Schema gets about 30% more
35:40
click-through than the same listing without
35:43
it. You can increase your click-through rates
35:46
by 30% just by adding full
35:49
Product Schema to your website, which in my
35:51
view is a heck of a jump.
35:54
It's unbelievable, really, isn't it?
35:56
Um, and rich results, um, Well,
36:00
let me just say that the overall lift
36:02
on click-through rates, or CTRs if you like
36:04
your 3-letter acronyms, which is the percentage
36:07
of people who, who, who see your listing
36:10
and click, right? The overall lifting somewhere
36:13
between 20% and 40%. So this stuff
36:15
genuinely does move the needle.
36:19
Now, if any of this is starting to
36:20
feel a little bit confusing, I
36:23
will encourage you to keep listening. Do stay
36:26
listening. I'm not going to get massively technical
36:29
on these things. But we're going to
36:32
explain more about all of these things
36:35
in the freebie. Okay, there's going to
36:37
be some help with that. Because I get
36:40
that if you're driving, if you're walking the
36:42
dog, some of these things should be like,
36:43
I need to focus, what is going on
36:46
here? Go get the freebie,
36:48
which again, I'll tell you how to get
36:50
towards the end of the show. And I'm
36:51
telling you that just to tease you so
36:52
you keep listening to the end. Reality of
36:54
it is you can just go to the
36:55
show description and click the link if you
36:57
can't be bothered to wait. So, appreciate I've
36:59
just shot myself in the foot, broken all
37:00
the rules, but there you go. Anyway,
37:05
don't be put off by the technical thing,
37:08
is my advice.
37:10
So the llms.txt.
37:12
Number 2 is full product schema.
37:14
Number 3 is simply this: keep your
37:17
content fresh.
37:19
I think this is one of the most
37:20
under-talked-about aspects of trying to be
37:23
discovered by AI. Now, what do
37:26
I mean? ChatGPT, for example, pulls
37:28
about three-quarters of its most cited
37:31
pages from content updated
37:34
in the last 30 days.
37:39
Three-quarters, uh, if
37:41
you can imagine it, three-quarters of
37:45
its content, of AI's content,
37:48
um, from web pages is updated
37:51
in the last 30 days.
37:54
So if everything on your site is 2
37:55
years old, are you becoming invisible
37:58
to AI? It's a really interesting question.
38:00
I mean, AI likes fresh stuff.
38:02
That's the thing that we can take from
38:04
this. Um, it's not that the internet's disappeared,
38:06
but the part of it that AI looks
38:08
at, well, it seems AI's got a really
38:11
short memory, uh, hasn't it? And so it's
38:13
got, well, maybe it's got a limited memory
38:15
is a better way to put it. When
38:16
you think about the size of the internet,
38:18
it can only remember a small portion of
38:20
it. So we have to bear that in
38:22
mind and it likes fresh and new stuff.
38:25
So keep your content fresh.
38:27
Okay. The third thing I suggest you do.
38:31
So that's AI discovery. Number 2
38:34
is site SEO.
38:37
Um, this is the foundation I think that
38:39
still pays in many ways. Uh, like
38:42
I said, you can call it technical SEO
38:45
if you wanted to. Um, this is the
38:47
on-page stuff. It's the classic stuff most of
38:50
us think about. Uh, like I said, title
38:52
tags, meta descriptions, image alt text,
38:55
schema, which we've mentioned, um, Core
38:58
Web Vitals, sitemap hygiene.
39:02
It's basically all the
39:04
sort of straightforward basic
39:08
plumbing that quietly determines whether
39:11
Google can actually understand what your
39:13
website is about and rank it.
39:16
And this is the work that
39:19
made it possible for my beauty
39:21
business to switch off paid ads and not
39:24
die, um, and instantly
39:27
generate cash. It's the foundational stuff.
39:29
It's the stuff I guess we don't really
39:31
talk about too much anymore, but we all
39:33
sort of know it probably needs doing, and
39:36
it's probably the stuff that most of us
39:38
are familiar with. It's a bit like mowing
39:40
the grass for e-commerce, isn't it, in many
39:42
ways? So what can you do
39:45
this week? I'm not going to dive too
39:46
much into this because there are plenty of
39:48
episodes which talk about SEO on the show.
39:51
But I would suggest that as an exercise,
39:53
you go and pick your top 10 product
39:55
pages, the ones doing the most lifting,
39:58
generating the most revenue, and audit
40:01
each page for 4 things.
40:04
Okay, so these are my 4 subpoints.
40:06
Number 1, make sure there's a title tag
40:08
on the page that's 50 to 60 characters
40:11
long. That's the formula that I use.
40:13
Okay. And then the
40:16
actual structure formula is keyword plus
40:19
differentiator plus brand.
40:21
Okay, so that's how you write those titles.
40:24
Check that out. So do that. And number
40:25
2, uh, have you got a meta description
40:29
actually present? Uh, is that description
40:31
written for humans and
40:35
not just robots?
40:37
That's such an important thing,
40:40
right? Uh, number 3, look at
40:42
the schema and look at the code.
40:46
Right, um, there's, for example,
40:49
there's an element called OG: type.
40:53
Uh, now OG, uh, it
40:55
just stands for Open Graph, um, colon type.
40:58
So Open Graph, we're just telling the type
41:00
of the site. The default setting for
41:02
that on most web platforms is to say
41:04
OG: type is website.
41:07
I would suggest on your product pages you
41:09
change it to product.
41:12
Okay, change it to product,
41:16
not just have it at website.
41:19
Okay, like I say, OG just stands for
41:22
Open Graph, um, type tells what
41:25
it is, and social platforms especially and AI
41:27
are looking at this particular tag.
41:30
Um, and like I say, most platforms
41:33
default it to website because that's
41:36
just the way they've always done it. Um,
41:39
it's a small detail, but actually it can
41:41
make a bit of a sizable difference, uh,
41:44
to how everything reads your pages. So definitely
41:46
worth doing. It just helps AI understand
41:49
context. And as we know, AI needs
41:51
context. So the fourth thing that
41:54
you should look at, uh, is image
41:57
alt text, which describes what
42:00
the image is actually showing, not
42:03
just the file name of your photograph.
42:06
Um, but it actually talks
42:09
about what is going on. It is a
42:11
basic accessibility practice that
42:13
we've been rabbiting on about for years, and
42:15
if you're not doing it, slap— just reach
42:18
out your right hand and slap yourself across
42:19
the face. It's just an important thing to
42:21
do, not just for SEO, but also because
42:24
of accessibility and helping people understand your site
42:26
that maybe, uh, wouldn't be able to otherwise
42:30
understand it. So go check those
42:32
4 things on your top 10 product pages.
42:35
That alone is going to help you move
42:37
the needle. Okay, so
42:40
that's area number 2, SEO.
42:42
Area number 3 is, like I say, another
42:44
form of SEO, um, but I
42:47
do like to separate it out, and that
42:48
is blog and content. Now for me, this
42:52
is the trust layer, and this
42:55
is important, right?
42:57
I really do think this is important, um,
42:59
I actually find this one not just important,
43:02
I actually find it quite interesting because I
43:03
don't know about you, maybe you're like me,
43:05
right? We treat our blog a little bit
43:08
like a chore, don't we? A little bit
43:10
like a chore that we should probably do
43:12
at some point, just not right now.
43:17
And so we just want to get it
43:19
done. We just want to get it out
43:19
of the way. Blogs have always been a
43:21
good thing for every— in fact, I can't
43:24
think, I can't think of an e-commerce
43:26
website where blogs don't really make sense
43:29
to have. Um, maybe
43:32
there is one and I don't know, but
43:33
I don't think there is. But the thing
43:35
with blogs that has changed more
43:37
recently, like I say, is that AI Discovery,
43:40
um, quotes now long-form content.
43:44
It's where it gets a lot of its
43:45
information from. So
43:47
your blog isn't just for the humans
43:51
on your site anymore. It is the trust
43:53
layer, like I say, that AI uses to
43:55
decide what your brand actually knows.
43:57
So now blogs are doing double duty, which
43:58
is a beautiful thing. If I can be
44:01
actually bothered to write them. And the data
44:03
actually backs this up as well. Brands that
44:05
consistently blog see something like
44:07
a 13 times more positive
44:10
return on investment than sporadic
44:14
publishers. I mean,
44:16
that's quite hard-hitting, isn't it? 13 times more.
44:19
I mean, you know, guilty as charged, Your
44:20
Honor. Hands up if you're like me, bit
44:22
of a sporadic blogger, bit of a sporadic
44:24
content guy. Uh, but we know the golden
44:27
rule has stayed the same consistently, always
44:30
consistently. Consistency always
44:34
wins. So if you're going to do blogging,
44:37
just be consistent, right? Uh, and of course,
44:39
if it fills you with utter dread, you
44:42
can help yourself by creating a really good
44:43
strategy with your friend AI.
44:46
Now I'm not just talking about just having
44:48
AI write, you know, AI slop for your
44:50
website. That's not what I'm saying.
44:53
That's not going to help you.
44:56
And if that's what you're doing, take your
44:58
other hand and slap yourself around the face,
45:01
right? Because we should not be doing that.
45:03
But AI can actually be a really good
45:05
copilot for creating really
45:08
good, proper content for your site that's going
45:11
to help you. So I think your concrete
45:13
action this week around this, and I love
45:15
this one because it's practical and I do
45:17
like practical. Just go to your customer service
45:20
team, ask them what are the top 3
45:22
questions that get asked
45:25
every single week, write them down,
45:29
and then write one proper 1,200-word
45:33
answer, at least 1,200 words to each
45:36
of those questions over the next month.
45:39
You can cite sources, you can add FAQ
45:42
page schema, you can link from product
45:44
pages to the article. If you
45:47
do 3 articles a month, that's gonna be
45:49
12 a quarter, 50 a year.
45:51
Um, that's a content engine that I think
45:54
actually does genuinely compound.
45:56
And every single one of those articles becomes
45:59
a piece of content that AI can cite
46:02
when your customer asks AI the
46:04
exact same question, because you
46:07
know that is what they will
46:10
end up doing. So I think this is
46:12
just a really practical, cool thing.
46:14
Just doing something like that, really, really straightforward.
46:17
So number 4, YouTube, the discovery
46:20
engine that most e-commerce businesses are
46:23
ignoring. Paid
46:26
ads actually on YouTube, I think at the
46:27
moment are quite interesting, but that's for another
46:29
episode. Maybe, uh, we're not talking about
46:32
paid, we're talking about organic. Now, hopefully we've
46:34
got Brett Curry actually coming onto the podcast
46:36
again soon. Um, and maybe we'll talk about
46:38
this with Brett. He's an absolute legend in
46:41
that area. Um, and I did see his
46:43
name in my calendar. I think in
46:46
the next few weeks, which I'm really, really
46:49
grateful for. Um, he's such a legend,
46:52
Brett, and you— I'm really looking forward to
46:53
the conversation. Anyway, YouTube is one
46:56
area that most e-commerce founders are leaving on
46:58
the, on the table. I think it is
47:01
fair, fair to say that actually, um, YouTube
47:04
is the second biggest search engine on planet
47:06
Earth. It's bigger than Bing, bigger than basically
47:08
everything except for Google itself.
47:11
And the data on this is genuinely
47:15
wild. Um, last year, viewers watched
47:18
more than 35 billion hours
47:21
of shopping-related content on YouTube.
47:25
35 billion
47:28
hours, which
47:31
is, uh, what was even more nuts is
47:33
that's a 250% increase
47:37
year on year.
47:40
250% increase.
47:43
I mean, that's an insane statistic.
47:46
And this is something, um, that
47:49
actually just fascinates me. I know I say
47:52
that a lot, but it does fascinate me.
47:54
But I don't— here's what I do, right?
47:56
I, and I, I know this from my
47:57
own habits. Whenever I buy something
48:01
and I don't really fully understand, you know,
48:03
what that product is like, and it's not
48:06
a repeat purchase, my first place I
48:08
go to is YouTube. And I
48:12
type in the product name, and I watch
48:13
videos about that product.
48:17
And about 61% of the so-called
48:19
younger generation, the 14 to 25-year-olds, say
48:23
that YouTube introduced them to brands
48:26
they hadn't heard of. 60
48:31
of our younger generation are finding out about
48:33
brands because of YouTube.
48:35
And that is a massive deal.
48:37
YouTube has got some really big numbers associated
48:40
with it. So
48:44
we've got some more information about YouTube on
48:47
the e-commerce podcast. Like I said, we've hopefully
48:50
got Brett Curry coming in as well.
48:52
There are some past episodes about it.
48:54
I'm really excited to have Brett coming on.
48:57
I really am. And so, like I say,
48:58
make sure you stay connected for that because
49:00
I do think YouTube is a really big
49:02
opportunity. And the real action, my suggestion
49:05
here for you is simply to do one
49:07
product demonstration video this month.
49:10
As simple as that. You can record it
49:12
on your iPhone. It doesn't need to be
49:14
anything complicated. Put the keyword
49:17
in the title, add a real description,
49:20
at least 3 paragraphs, not 3 words, right?
49:25
Use chapters in the time— use
49:28
chapters and timestamps in the description.
49:31
Do cards linking through to the product
49:34
page on the video.
49:36
And that's, that's it, right?
49:38
You do that 12 times this year and
49:40
you start to build a YouTube channel that
49:41
quietly works for you in the background.
49:44
And if you want to know how much
49:46
YouTube can move products, and
49:49
if I, like I said, if I think
49:50
about the purchases I made, 90% of them
49:52
I'm convinced I've researched on YouTube recently.
49:55
before I bought the product.
49:58
I don't know about your habits, that's maybe
49:59
just mine. And this includes everything from podcast
50:02
studio equipment, and actually,
50:05
um, not this podcast studio that I'm filming
50:07
at the moment, uh, we're building this
50:11
year two new YouTube
50:14
studios for our companies, okay?
50:16
One in our warehouse in Liverpool, uh,
50:19
and one in Nottingham. and we've
50:22
invested quite massively
50:25
in this area.
50:27
And already we've noticed some pretty big
50:30
changes, if I'm honest with you, um, in
50:32
one of our e-com video businesses because of
50:36
YouTube and because of podcasting.
50:38
It's just, it's, it's
50:41
mind-bending actually, some of the stuff that's happened.
50:44
Now I appreciate not everyone's in the same
50:45
position that I'm in to be able to
50:47
build two studios. Uh, but setting some
50:50
space to record videos, even just on your
50:52
phone, I think is a good
50:55
thing. It's, you know, it's really important.
50:57
We're investing heavily in it, like I say.
51:00
Um, and for me, it's not just the
51:02
studio equipment. I've looked at things like camping
51:05
gear, been camping recently. We've been moving house.
51:07
Guess what? Been watching videos on that.
51:09
All kinds of stuff really. So do think
51:11
seriously about YouTube. I can't overestimate
51:14
it. Overestimate it. I can't overstate it
51:17
enough. Area number 5,
51:20
social SEO. Search
51:24
is now happening inside the apps.
51:27
And this is one of the big discoveries
51:29
of recent times, I think,
51:31
where social media is concerned. And again, it's
51:33
not rocket science. We all knew this was
51:35
coming. But maybe it is a sort
51:38
of a mindset, mindset, mindset
51:41
shift. For anyone over the age of,
51:44
I don't know, maybe 35, because the data
51:46
again is really clear. Gen
51:49
Zed or Gen Z, you
51:52
take your pronunciation how you want it, now
51:54
searches inside Instagram and TikTok before they even
51:57
touch Google. 67% search on
52:00
Instagram, 62% on TikTok, and
52:03
only 61% on Google.
52:06
So they're ahead.
52:08
Only just, but they are ahead. And so
52:10
Google is no longer the default for an
52:13
entire generation of people who are searching.
52:16
And if your products are aimed at those
52:18
people, at that generation, uh, it's obviously
52:21
really important to be found there.
52:24
So practically, what can we do?
52:26
Well, simply look at things like your captions,
52:29
your hashtags, your bios, the on-screen
52:32
text that you're using in your Reels.
52:34
These are all now searchable assets.
52:37
They are in effect the meta description of
52:39
the social network. So your action this
52:42
week, simple, just go and order your Instagram
52:45
bio or your social media platform of choice.
52:48
Look at the last 30 posts, look at
52:50
the captions you've used, and look
52:53
at the actual words you're using and the
52:55
phrases your customers type into
52:58
the search bar. Are they the same?
53:01
You might want to rethink some of those
53:03
cute branded phrases you've been using
53:06
that no one really types into search engines
53:08
anymore. Uh, treat the caption a bit like
53:11
a meta description, treat your bio like
53:14
a homepage with title tags, and start
53:16
writing for search inside social as
53:20
well as for the algorithm. And that would
53:22
be my top tip there.
53:25
And finally, we come to digital
53:28
PR, the authority compound
53:31
interest, if you like. This is really fascinating.
53:35
I should probably find another phrase.
53:38
This is exceptionally mind-alteringly
53:44
fun to learn about. So
53:47
no, the trouble with some of
53:50
these conversations, I think, about organic
53:53
traffic is they are a bit of a
53:54
black hole, right? Aren't they? If you spent,
53:56
like I said, $100 on paid media, that
53:58
bought you $300 in sales, you go, well,
54:01
there you go, I've got return on ad
54:02
spend of 3. It's an easy thing to
54:04
measure. It's easy to do. It's easy to
54:06
put more money in and crank that machine
54:09
handle. And the stuff we're talking about
54:12
is not straightforward. Trying to measure
54:15
ROI on organic becomes complicated
54:19
because if you've been following the show for
54:20
a while, you'll know I'm
54:23
a fan of something called the blended ROAS,
54:26
this whole blended ROAS idea.
54:29
And there's an episode on that.
54:31
Just go to ecommercepodcast.net, search blended ROAS, you'll
54:33
find out about it. And I think digital
54:36
PR, out of all of them, is probably
54:38
the area that feels a bit more black
54:41
hole than the rest, if that makes sense.
54:45
How do you even measure return on ad
54:47
spend here? It is complicated.
54:49
It is a slow burn, and it feels
54:52
like one of those things where you're not
54:53
really doing anything until suddenly something
54:56
happens and it's all going great.
54:59
So digital PR is press mentions,
55:02
podcast appearances, expert quotes,
55:05
forum quotes, Reddit presence,
55:08
um, founder bios, all the things that build
55:10
your brand as a sort of trusted entity
55:13
in the eyes of both humans and
55:16
AI. Now that's important.
55:19
And again, when you look at the data,
55:22
certainly the data that I've been reading, Which
55:25
is really, it's really interesting.
55:28
Everything's really interesting today. Maybe I should just
55:30
call this podcast The Really Interesting Podcast.
55:32
Anyway, when you look at the data, brand
55:35
search volume is
55:38
the single strongest
55:41
predictor of whether AI is
55:44
going to recommend you. Okay, so
55:47
it correlates more strongly than backlinks by
55:50
a factor of about 3 to 1.
55:52
Which is a little bit nuts, especially if
55:54
you've been on a backlink building strategy, because
55:57
that's what we've been told to do for
55:58
the last few years. So the question isn't
56:01
how do I rank anymore, I guess it's
56:02
how many people are actually out there searching
56:05
for your brand name.
56:07
Brand recognition is important,
56:10
and this is where digital PR can be
56:13
really, really helpful in generating
56:15
that. If you've been following
56:18
along closely, you'll notice that our Vegetology site,
56:21
one of our e-commerce websites, a few months
56:23
ago we launched a
56:26
new podcast called So That's Why.
56:28
The So That's Why podcast really
56:31
ties in well with our audience, and Jen
56:33
specifically, she's the head
56:36
of marketing at our company, has done a
56:37
phenomenal job with that podcast.
56:41
I mean, I'm involved in it. I pretty
56:43
much just turn up and I just look
56:45
like I know what I'm doing, or at
56:47
least try and look like I know what
56:48
I'm doing in front of the camera.
56:50
But Jen has definitely done the whole thing,
56:52
a phenomenal job with that. And the impact
56:55
of it, I think, is very measurable in
56:57
some respects. Certainly right now in our email
56:59
marketing, it's quite fascinating when we send out
57:01
emails about that podcast and what happens to
57:03
sales. Now, I'm not saying you should go
57:06
out and start a podcast, but, um,
57:09
it does help with brand recognition,
57:11
and these things do make a difference. So
57:13
we're doing podcast appearances, okay?
57:17
Uh, so, and again, that ties into YouTube,
57:19
which also ties into AI Discovery, which also
57:21
ties into content These things aren't mutually exclusive.
57:24
They're all connected. Hopefully you've seen that.
57:27
Um, but yeah, what do you do?
57:28
Okay. So this week, add your person schema
57:31
to your about page on your website.
57:35
This is important.
57:37
Um, add your founder bio.
57:40
Um, add a photo, a LinkedIn
57:42
URL if you can. Go and find podcasts,
57:45
at least one podcast in your niche.
57:48
Contact the host of that podcast and ask
57:50
if you can be a guest on the
57:51
show and go and deliver great value.
57:55
Okay? Don't sell your stuff.
57:58
Just go and deliver great value,
58:01
right? Genuinely helpful replies on Reddit or
58:03
on Facebook groups that actively work
58:06
in your category. Don't sell, just be useful.
58:09
Just be helpful. That's the playbook these
58:12
days. Now Reddit is in
58:15
and out of favor with AI, it seems.
58:19
Some weeks you can, you should do stuff
58:21
on Reddit. Some weeks she doesn't really care.
58:23
Um, but remember, we're not doing this just
58:25
for tactics to be discovered. Um, but if
58:28
you go out there trying to be helpful
58:30
to a community, AI and the community
58:34
seem to really like that.
58:37
So that's it. The 6 fronts.
58:39
AI discovery, site SEO, blog and
58:41
content, YouTube, social SEO, and
58:44
digital PR. These are the 6 areas
58:47
you really need to look at. At least
58:49
that's my experience. And if we do
58:51
those 6 areas, we start to master organic
58:54
traffic, which is going to be one of
58:56
those key things for longevity in e-commerce.
59:00
Now granted, there is a lot there.
59:02
This is probably the longest episode I've recorded
59:05
for a long time.
59:07
There's some technical phraseology.
59:09
There's a lot of things to make you
59:11
go, Matt, What on earth, dude?
59:14
But we wanted to get all of this
59:15
into an episode, a single
59:18
episode where all of the content was there.
59:22
Because why would we not,
59:24
right? We, we definitely want to be helpful.
59:26
And hopefully this is helpful. There's a lot
59:28
of content here. But like I said, we're
59:30
going to put all of this into a
59:31
freebie, which is a free printable PDF.
59:35
That is essentially an audit kit across
59:38
these 6 areas. It's going to include all
59:40
the checklists for each of the 6 areas
59:42
I've talked about. There's, I think, 18
59:46
AI prompts in there that you can paste
59:48
straight into Claude or ChatGPT.
59:52
One to audit, one to fix,
59:55
one to verify. Um, there's
59:57
also a scoring radar, um,
1:00:00
that so you can see at a glance
1:00:02
where you're strong and where you're weak.
1:00:04
Um, and there's some 20-minute quick wins,
1:00:07
uh, for each of the 6 areas as
1:00:10
well. So if you've only
1:00:13
got a small slice of time, have a
1:00:14
look at that. It's going to have a
1:00:16
glossary in the back as well for all
1:00:18
the technical terms that we have been throwing
1:00:21
out. If you need to understand those a
1:00:23
little bit more. So it's a pretty good
1:00:25
freebie, if I'm honest with you, a lot
1:00:27
of thought has gone into this one.
1:00:30
And if you do nothing else from this
1:00:31
episode, do go grab that.
1:00:33
Like I say, just go to ecommercepodcast.net. Um,
1:00:37
click on the resources link and you will
1:00:38
find it there. You can click the link
1:00:40
in the show notes or description below.
1:00:43
Um, it's just— I
1:00:46
just think you'll find— I think you'll find
1:00:48
it really, really helpful.
1:00:51
Uh, just click the links below, um, or
1:00:53
go to the website, like I say, ecommercepodcast.net.
1:00:59
Actually, I can't remember what the— I'm just
1:01:00
thinking now, I can't remember the name of
1:01:02
the audit. Um, it
1:01:05
will be obvious on there which one
1:01:07
you should download. Really sorry, I just, I
1:01:09
don't know why I didn't know the name.
1:01:11
Anyway, that's what we call bad planning, isn't
1:01:13
it, on my part. Uh, but it is
1:01:15
entirely yours and it is for free, um,
1:01:18
and it will walk you, like I say,
1:01:19
uh, through everything that we've talked about and
1:01:22
give you the ability to check your own
1:01:23
company using some of the guides and prompts
1:01:25
and so forth. Now, for those of you
1:01:28
who have heard me at the top of
1:01:30
the episode talk about how this show was
1:01:32
sponsored by SAM.
1:01:35
Well, let me bring it round to that
1:01:39
as we close out the show.
1:01:43
Now, the
1:01:46
reason why I am talking about SAM,
1:01:49
like, what is SAM? Well, let me explain
1:01:50
what it is. So SAM is something I'm
1:01:52
super excited about, super proud of with
1:01:55
what we've got here. AI has obviously become
1:01:58
a big deal in e-commerce, and trying to
1:02:00
understand how AI impacts your e-commerce
1:02:03
business is a pretty big
1:02:05
deal. A lot of people I've been speaking
1:02:07
to, certainly people in our own company as
1:02:10
well, have not spent weeks and months
1:02:13
in front of AI understanding it and how
1:02:15
to get the best out of it. So
1:02:17
they feel either a little bit left
1:02:20
behind or don't really know what's going
1:02:23
on. It's one of the reasons why we
1:02:24
put the prompts in the freebies to try
1:02:25
and help you. Right? But we also
1:02:28
wanted to create a system that we could
1:02:30
use company-wide that took
1:02:33
the power of Claude and brought into
1:02:36
Claude our frameworks and our understanding
1:02:40
of the topic of e-commerce, right?
1:02:43
It's like we supercharge Claude into
1:02:47
understanding e-commerce.
1:02:50
And so we merge Claude and that knowledge
1:02:52
together. And the third thing I wanted to
1:02:54
do was to give it specific context text
1:02:56
about our own businesses.
1:02:59
Because we understood if we could do that,
1:03:01
we could do some really interesting things, right?
1:03:03
And hence SAM was born.
1:03:05
So SAM simply stands for Slingshot AI Mentor,
1:03:09
and SAM is something that we've built for
1:03:11
our own companies, for our own businesses.
1:03:14
Um, that's where it's come from.
1:03:16
And the good news is we are now
1:03:17
making this available to the
1:03:20
public, uh, after some requests from a bunch
1:03:22
of people. We are making this available to
1:03:24
the public The only thing is,
1:03:27
um, you get, you get everything in some
1:03:30
respects, but what you don't get is the
1:03:32
context about my business. So I'm sorry if
1:03:34
you're one of my competitors, that's not
1:03:37
how this is going to work, but you
1:03:38
will get the layer,
1:03:41
the e-commerce layer. Sam is that e-commerce layer
1:03:45
and you're going to have to feed into
1:03:46
it your own business context.
1:03:48
We're going to show you how to do
1:03:49
that. It's really straightforward to do it. And
1:03:52
the best way to describe SAM is to
1:03:54
use the words, I think, of one of
1:03:55
our users. They—
1:03:59
how did they put it? Because I thought
1:04:00
they put it better than I did. They
1:04:02
said SAM is Claude, but with a very
1:04:04
specific focus on e-commerce.
1:04:08
Like I say, it's the layer that sits
1:04:10
on top of Claude. And it's
1:04:13
been trained intensely on those
1:04:15
things. Which has been great.
1:04:18
And the same person actually told me the
1:04:20
other day they were doing some research for
1:04:21
new, new product ideas and they put
1:04:24
some questions into Claude, got back some answers.
1:04:27
They put the same questions in Sam and
1:04:28
I think got back much clearer and much
1:04:30
more decent answers, much better, much more focused,
1:04:33
much more e-com specific.
1:04:36
I think that's what they said, something like
1:04:37
that. And so that's what Sam is.
1:04:40
Sam is the e-commerce specialist that lives inside
1:04:42
Claude. And the cool thing is, if
1:04:45
you add, like I say, the context of
1:04:47
your business as well, you get these three
1:04:49
things together. You get Claude
1:04:52
and all the power that Claude has, this
1:04:54
understanding of e-commerce. Throw in there the context
1:04:57
of your business. All of that working together
1:04:59
is pretty incredible.
1:05:02
So why am I talking about Sam? Why
1:05:03
did Sam sponsor today's show?
1:05:05
Thank you, Sam, for sponsoring today's show. How
1:05:07
does this all work together? Well, let
1:05:10
me tell you, because maybe if you're like
1:05:12
me, um, and you're using AI, or if
1:05:14
you're wanting to get better maybe at using
1:05:16
AI for your business and not sure where
1:05:18
to start, SAM is a great place.
1:05:21
And the cool thing is today's audit
1:05:25
kit, the freebie, um, that's
1:05:27
a slice, a little sliver, um, of
1:05:30
what you can do with SAM.
1:05:33
So SAM, what we do is we create
1:05:35
these skills that you can use inside
1:05:37
SAM. And one of those skills—
1:05:40
there's too many S's going on, uh, is
1:05:43
we called Scout because we needed something else
1:05:46
with an S. Uh, it basically— Scout
1:05:48
is like, um, this audit
1:05:51
but on speed, right? And it lives inside
1:05:54
SAM. And what
1:05:57
it does is it explains to SAM what
1:05:59
to do, how to do it. That's what
1:06:01
a skill basically does. And so with the
1:06:04
Audit Kit, I can have Sam do all
1:06:07
the analysis for me.
1:06:09
It works through this whole thing, all
1:06:12
6 fronts, automatically.
1:06:14
It goes to my website, it checks the
1:06:16
pages on my website, and it hands me
1:06:18
back a playbook of really specific
1:06:21
changes that we need to make on the
1:06:24
website with the reasons behind
1:06:27
each one. And the cool thing is, because
1:06:30
I appreciate not everyone's got the same technical
1:06:33
level of understanding. If there's something you don't
1:06:36
understand, it just feels a bit over your
1:06:38
head, maybe we just ask Sam.
1:06:40
Sam, explain that to me. And Sam will
1:06:42
tell you what it recommended, why it recommended
1:06:45
it, and you can go as deep as
1:06:47
you want to go. And it's all tailored
1:06:50
to your specific business.
1:06:53
It is, in effect, the agency you don't
1:06:55
have. And I think it is flipping
1:06:58
brilliant. I really do. I, I appreciate I
1:07:00
may be slightly biased, but it's unbelievable the
1:07:02
results we've been getting. We're
1:07:05
using it in the office, um, the thing
1:07:07
is growing, it's expanding. It does work off,
1:07:10
like I say, the foundation of Claude. So
1:07:12
in some respects, there's no ongoing
1:07:15
subscription costs. If you already got Claude,
1:07:18
um, you can keep using that because you
1:07:20
can run— and you can run these audits
1:07:22
as many times as you like. It's just
1:07:24
going to use your tokens So it depends
1:07:25
on the platform that you're on. So there's
1:07:27
no ongoing subscriptions.
1:07:30
But full disclosure, there is obviously a cost
1:07:33
to SAM, being totally real and straight with
1:07:36
you, because it's just, you know, like how
1:07:38
we want to do it here on EP.
1:07:40
Um, there is a membership fee to join,
1:07:43
uh, which is currently $2,000, which
1:07:46
I think is about £1,600, something like
1:07:49
that, um, on the site.
1:07:51
And you can join SAM.
1:07:53
And when you join, there's an onboarding course
1:07:56
that you do, which really gets you up
1:07:58
to scratch with it. I am personally
1:08:02
doing all the onboarding calls with everyone that
1:08:04
signs up, which is why we're running it
1:08:07
on a waitlist right now. So if you
1:08:09
are interested in SAM, it's not that the
1:08:11
doors are closed when you go to the
1:08:13
website, they are open.
1:08:15
I'm trying to open them as fast as
1:08:16
I can, sit down with each new member
1:08:18
personally, And, um, I
1:08:21
think that's probably how it should be at
1:08:22
this stage, really. I really enjoy doing these
1:08:24
onboarding calls because Sam is brilliant and awesome,
1:08:27
and I want to make sure people get
1:08:29
the best out of it. Um, and so
1:08:32
yeah, because you're listening to the podcast, and
1:08:34
if you've made it this far, me rabbiting
1:08:36
on on the longest episode of the podcast
1:08:39
ever talking about today's show sponsor, if
1:08:42
you join the waitlist by Thursday the 22nd
1:08:45
of May Um, if memory serves me
1:08:47
right, that's the week, the 7 days after
1:08:50
this podcast goes out. I really probably should
1:08:51
have checked that. Um, you've got a, you've
1:08:54
got about a week. If you join the
1:08:55
waitlist during that time, I will send you
1:08:57
a discount code for 25% off the membership
1:08:59
fee. Um, and
1:09:02
with that, uh, you will also get a
1:09:05
little bit of extra credit to get the
1:09:06
Scout skill working.
1:09:08
So this whole SEO audit thing working and
1:09:10
doing stuff on your machine as well.
1:09:13
Um, which is just really, really
1:09:15
cool because these things are great, but it's
1:09:18
just, I find it's, you've, there's so much
1:09:20
time you have to put into these things
1:09:21
and you can do them, right? You can,
1:09:24
you can do all of this stuff. Um,
1:09:26
but the automation just speeds the whole thing
1:09:28
up. And so the link will hopefully be
1:09:29
in the description, but like I say, you
1:09:31
can just head to the website ecommercepodcast.net
1:09:35
and just look for Slingshot, click
1:09:37
the link. In fact, I think you can
1:09:39
even go to ecommercepodcast.net/slingshot
1:09:43
if you want to type in the whole
1:09:44
URL. And listen, like I say,
1:09:47
this is really important. You— as
1:09:50
much as I love Sam and think it's
1:09:52
great, I appreciate it's not in everyone's
1:09:55
budget. You do not need Sam to do
1:09:57
what we have talked about today. Everything I've
1:10:00
talked about is doable yourself.
1:10:02
I make no claims that it is in
1:10:04
fact not doable by yourself. The 6 areas,
1:10:06
the actions, the audits, all of it.
1:10:09
Um, what Sam does, I think, is it
1:10:11
shortens the runway. It does a lot of
1:10:13
automation. It does a lot of the heavy
1:10:16
lifting and a whole bunch of other stuff,
1:10:18
um, in the context of your business.
1:10:20
But if that's not what you're
1:10:23
heading at right now, no worries at all.
1:10:26
Take the freebie. Genuinely take— it is free,
1:10:28
the freebie. That's why we call it a
1:10:29
freebie. Do the audits, and you'll
1:10:32
find that is going to be helpful for
1:10:34
you in so many ways. I'm not trying
1:10:37
to talk you out of SAM. I am
1:10:39
just being straight with you.
1:10:41
We never want to get to this place
1:10:42
where you have to do stuff after listening
1:10:44
to a podcast for however many minutes this
1:10:46
has been going on. And then
1:10:49
I had— you have to spend an inordinate
1:10:51
amount of money to get it done. That's
1:10:52
not what we're going to do at all.
1:10:54
So let me leave you. Finally, let
1:10:56
me leave you in peace, uh,
1:10:59
with the thing that makes all of this
1:11:01
worth doing. Because when we get this right,
1:11:03
when a customer finds us through any of
1:11:05
these areas organically, that customer
1:11:08
in effect is a free customer.
1:11:11
Their CAC is zero. Now look, I know
1:11:14
before you shoot me down, there are some
1:11:15
costs involved. There's time, there's staff.
1:11:17
Organic isn't actually free, it
1:11:20
just costs differently. But What
1:11:23
we didn't have to do is pay Meta
1:11:26
to put that customer in front of us.
1:11:27
We didn't have to pay Google because frankly,
1:11:29
they've got enough money of ours anyway.
1:11:33
They found us because we made ourselves findable.
1:11:36
So if we can drop 1 or 2
1:11:38
customers into, you know,
1:11:41
the LTV to CAC ratio, some of these
1:11:43
free customers, which is one of the most
1:11:45
interesting ratios you should be tracking, by the
1:11:47
way, if you look at the math, see
1:11:49
what happens if you put in 10 new
1:11:51
customers. What happens if you put in 100
1:11:52
new customers over the course
1:11:55
of a year? You know, suddenly you start
1:11:57
to see the shape of your business changes,
1:12:00
not because you're necessarily going out and acquiring
1:12:02
more customers, but because the average cost,
1:12:05
the CAC of those acquiring customers has
1:12:08
gone down. And in a paid media
1:12:11
world where Facebook CPMs have gone mental
1:12:14
and CAC across e-commerce is running
1:12:17
about 2.5 times higher than
1:12:20
a blended CAC— let me just say that
1:12:22
again— a paid media CAC is running
1:12:25
at 2.5 times higher
1:12:28
than a blended CAC. Well, those shifts
1:12:31
in the math become really important.
1:12:33
That's what we found in our beauty business
1:12:34
when we turned the ads off. It wasn't
1:12:36
that we just found a magic trick. It's
1:12:38
just that we'd had the organic foundation quietly
1:12:41
compounding for years.
1:12:44
And when paid disappeared, that foundation really
1:12:47
carried us, and it's really important.
1:12:49
So go build your organic foundation now whilst
1:12:51
paid media is still working, at
1:12:54
least on some level, and build it across
1:12:57
all 6 fronts if you can. Not just
1:12:58
one, genuinely have a go at all 6,
1:13:01
uh, and maybe one day paid media just
1:13:04
need a radical rethink, um, it's going
1:13:06
to pay you dividends.
1:13:08
Okay, anyway. I
1:13:12
think that should probably be about it. Uh,
1:13:14
in the next episode, I don't normally do
1:13:15
this teaser thing, but if you've made it
1:13:16
this far, in for a penny, in for
1:13:18
a pound. Um, I'm just gonna let you
1:13:20
know what's coming up. One of the things
1:13:22
I really want to get into is about
1:13:24
a platform rebuild we're doing, which I appreciate
1:13:27
sounds really boring when I just hear it
1:13:29
out loud in my own head, but we
1:13:31
are moving one of our sites onto a
1:13:33
new platform. It's not Shopify, it's not WooCommerce.
1:13:36
I'm gonna explain everything in that episode.
1:13:39
I don't have issues with Shopify, WooCommerce, but
1:13:42
we do want to do things differently, especially
1:13:45
in the world of AI. And Scout, the
1:13:47
skill that we've got in Sam, has really
1:13:49
helped us get that platform, um, on
1:13:52
a good solid foundation, that's for
1:13:55
sure. So you're not going to want to
1:13:56
be missing that— the decisions, why we've
1:13:58
made the decisions the way we've made them,
1:14:01
uh, what is actually going on I
1:14:04
mean, geez, it's gonna be, it's gonna
1:14:06
be fun. Yes, it is. Anyway, thank
1:14:09
you so much for joining us. Thank you
1:14:11
for sticking with me this long.
1:14:13
If you are still with us, hopefully you've
1:14:15
got some good stuff out of this episode.
1:14:20
All that's left for me to say, go
1:14:21
check out the website ecommercepodcast.net.
1:14:23
Look at all the stuff that's going on
1:14:25
there. Go grab your freebie, grab your resource.
1:14:28
But that's it from me. Thank you so
1:14:30
much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week
1:14:33
wherever you are in the world. I'll see
1:14:34
you next time. Bye for now.