How to Navigate the New Era of SEO

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1:01Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance. My guest today is Dale Bertrand. He's been an SEO specialist to Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups around the world for two decades. His clients include global brands such as Citizen Watch, ExxonMobil, and Boulevard. He speaks at industry conferences, leads corporate training events, and serves as an entrepreneur in residence at the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs Organization. So, Dale, welcome back to the show. Yeah, well, thank you for having me again. At least twice you've been on the show, I think, maybe, and we've talked about SEO.

1:40The SEO is so last decade, right? Not really, but I want to turn the tables a little bit and talk about search specifically and behavior, consumer behavior. when it comes to search, because that is probably driving a great deal of what people are doing in the world of SEO today, or at least it should be informing what they're doing in the world of SEO today. So where are we in the kind of rapidly evolving landscape of search engines in general and search behavior today? Well, we're in the middle of a lot of change. So I think anybody who's really paying attention to what's going on with Google, with consumer search behavior, things are changing pretty quickly.

2:22You know, AI is part of that story. Marketers are just starting to use AI and wrap their heads around, you know, how it can be useful for what we're doing for SEO. And then Google is implementing AI. So generative AI on the search results pages. And that can be scary depending on, depending on exactly how Google implements it going forward. And we're all for years, you know, trained as there's this little box. I go and I type in this little thing and I get a result that Google deems is what I wanted. How are search engines or tools like Perplexity going to change how people view? I mean, I know some people aren't familiar with it, but essentially it's more of an AI engine.

3:03You go and ask it whatever you want to ask it and it gives you a lot of different views. There's no ads around it. I mean, how is that experience in your view going to change essentially what the big monster Google does? Yeah. So perplexity is one of many generative AI search engines. So instead of just showing you a bunch of pages, which I consider a research project because I have to go through that in order to find my answer, it just gives you the answer. And for a lot of queries, if it's informational or if you're asking how many people sit on the Supreme Court, there's a definitive answer to that, a factual answer that it can give you without sending you to a website.

3:39So those types of search engines have a lot of implications. When people start using them, you might end up with more zero-click searches. So what that means is your customers are searching for your product or service, but they don't actually click anywhere, including clicking to your website. They're just getting the answer from the search engine. So that's going to be a whole new world. What we're talking about is destination content, which is the type of content that you create for SEO where basically the searcher needs to go to your website to complete the next stage of their journey. And that looks different for like a B2C journey versus like a B2B journey.

4:18But the point is you're not just giving the search engines information that they can pair it back to the searcher without ever sending anybody to your website. So we really need to think about how SEO needs to change. Yeah. So you were headed down that path. Let me back up just a little bit. The traditional SEO method of getting your website or your page on a website to show up in page one of Google was always kind of the gold standard. What you just described is not that world anymore. So how does that immediately impact brands that have spent years and thousands of dollars of trying to get on page one?

4:59How does that change their view of the world? Well, so I'm going to tell you the truth is we don't know, right? Because we don't know exactly how this is going to play out. Give me the answer, Dan! But we need to be prepared. So we want to future-proof our SEO. So in the short term, what we want to be looking at is what's changing on the search results page? When is Google starting to release some of these features? And then also, honestly, even more importantly, we want to pay attention to how are the customers that we're targeting in our market, how are they changing the way they search? That's really what matters most because what we're expecting is are consumers going to get used to using ChatGPT to find answers or you're going to start using perplexity or maybe Google starts to give them answers so they get used to the zero-click searches or getting information directly from the search engine.

5:48Also, we expect consumers will figure out that they can type in much longer queries, like not just restaurants in seattle but restaurants in seattle for a family of four with an infant and the dad loves spicy food and oh by the way the wife is lactose intolerant like that's a long query so we want to pay attention to whether customers in our market this is all going to be very market specific are searching for longer queries are they using the follow-up chat features so what that is you do a query and then you follow up very similar to using a chat bot like chat GPT. And then the third piece of it is, are the consumers that we're going after, are they starting to use different search engines?

6:28So on the B2C side, that could be TikTok, Amazon, YouTube. And on the B2B side, that could be maybe they're searching in LinkedIn or YouTube again, or software SaaS searching like Capterra or something like that. Because we want to pay attention to that because that's when we really need to change our strategies. So this is just a wonder question. You know, Google, Google doesn't make money on search. Google makes money on ads that are placed all around search. How does the need for them to evolve so that people say, you know, heck with this, I'm going over here. You know, how does it, how does that need for them to evolve impact their, you know, their cash cow?

7:09Yeah, like Google's under a lot of pressure is what it comes down to. So they've got new competitors and then also new technology. The new technology is the generative AI that they invented. And they have the technology, but it just doesn't work well enough for them to really launch it the way they would want to. And then what you mentioned is that Google's more of an advertising business than they are a search business. So they're not going to change anything if they can't figure out how to put ads on it. Like full stop, right? Like it just doesn't make any sense. So they've got a lot of pressures.

7:40You know, they feel like they need to change to keep up with competitors. The last thing they're going to do is let competitors take away their search volume and basically take market share. They want to be the default search engine, just like they are now for most Internet searches, no matter what, full stop. Like that's the most important thing to them. But they don't want to change if they don't have to because it could end up affecting their advertising revenue. So where does that leave us as brands and marketers? It honestly leaves us caught in the middle where we don't know exactly how these forces are going to play out, but it will change the way consumer search and the way Google search results work.

8:17Well, and, you know, there was a point in time when I wanted business, I wanted eyeballs. I just spun up a campaign, you know, for ads. Right. And that got me, you know, those things. Now, didn't necessarily turn them into customers, but at least I could buy, you know, that awareness or that exposure. How, you know, how are brands that maybe got lazy doing that, you know, now going to need to respond to create this destination content to to actually realize that people are in places where we don't even see them anymore? You know, places that, you know, dark social, I guess what people are calling it, you know, I mean, a lot of people are getting their information in those kind of places where, again, it's unseen.

8:59I mean, I guess I'm anticipating a lot of marketers are saying, what do we do, right? I mean, the world's coming to that. So what are some of the suggested things that people are just going to have to adapt to? Yeah, well, I can tell you what I'm doing on my website. That's the best advice that I can give you. We know that there are fundamentals. Like Google is looking for unique content, something called information gain, which is when you are adding content to the web, you're adding information that wasn't there before. So in other words, when you're creating content or service pages or even your website homepage, you're adding information that hasn't already been written about.

9:37Gone are the dates when you can write like Me Too articles on a topic and you're going to rank too because Google just doesn't need your content. So what I'm doing on my website is making sure that we're focusing on our unique perspective on issues and digital marketing strategies. And then also telling our customers stories. Like we work with clients at my marketing agency. So telling their stories of their brands and marketing campaigns and really getting deep into the founder's story. And, you know, that's interesting, especially when it's basically a story that other marketers can learn something from.

10:13So we're definitely doubling down on unique content in that way. And then another thing that we've seen when it comes to like our initial tests, optimizing for generative AI search engine, like the ChatGPT. And it's really a lot of what they're doing is averaging what's on the web. So I want to make sure that my brand is mentioned in as many places as possible. So I'm actually, you know, for my agency, spinning up a syndication campaign that we'd done a while back where I'm not just publishing on my website or LinkedIn, but I'm also publishing on, you know, many other websites. And John, I'll hit you up with an article later.

10:47But we're making sure that our brand is seen across the web so that when these generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT are averaging everything they know about my industry or the service that I provide, they see our name mentioned as many times as possible. So that's just some of the things that we're looking at. But that's how we're future-proofing our SEO. It's my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast, our friends at ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with a must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. We've been using ActiveCampaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters, and sales funnel drip campaigns.

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12:11Now this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue, and save precious time by upgrading to active campaign today. So one of the things you mentioned there was interesting, you know, talking about, I would welcome anything you want to contribute, Dale, first off, to duct tape marketing. But talk to me a little bit about, you know, the whole guest blogging. I mean, that's, you know, that was for a lot of people seen as a backlink play, you know, for example. And so talk to me. One of the things I'm really, I'm very bullish on is podcast guesting as opposed to guest posting.

12:46It is a form of content, obviously. A lot of podcasters are really want to promote their show. And so they, you know, they will promote it. They'll give you back. You still get the same backlinks, but you also probably get more exposure, more content, I think. than kind of the guest blogging, like dumping grounds that exist on a lot of websites. So talk a little bit about that, that guest blogging versus being a guest on a podcast as a specific tactic. Well, there's so much there because there's so much there that you're talking about like guest blogging and then also blogging with video, like we're doing today.

13:21We have the video content and then also repurposing it for articles. So the reason why there's so much there is because we want to make sure that when we're doing all of those things and all the other channels that we're on, one plus one equals three, instead of I'm doing this over here and I'm doing that over there. And really, because everybody knows there's so many different channels we can be working on as marketers that we're stretched pretty thin in terms of what we're doing. So what we're seeing working for our clients is starting with video. So like the conversation we're having today, have an interesting conversation around unique perspectives on a relevant timely issue.

13:58And then from there, you have video, you have a long form video, you can make short form videos. There's a number of channels that you can publish on LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, like whatever works well for your audience. And then from there, like we're able to do written content. So what I do is I'll take those videos, cut them down into the shorts that are all like discrete ideas, and then transcribe those shorts, turn those into social media posts. For my work, it's usually LinkedIn, but there's many other channels. and then also create a content brief so that one of the writers on my team can write it up, write up the ideas as an article.

14:36So now I have a video, I have social media posts and I have an article and I can take that stuff and build out more social media posts, also do my email marketing and then I have something for my blog and my website. But that's all from one video. So that's what I'm saying. We're not doing these things as separate efforts. We're trying to figure out how we do one form of content like the video we're doing today, get the ideas out of your head, the unique perspective, the type of ideas that Google's looking for, and then repurpose that in the right channels. Like the wrong thing you could do is say, I'm just going to put it everywhere.

15:09Well, guess what? Your customers are not everywhere. Figure out where your customers actually are. Figure out what type of content that they want, and then repurpose it. Well, and this might be a brilliant place for me to talk about AI, you know, frankly, because I think that what you just described, that's our approach as well. Video first, always, even with clients, we interview them, you know, to get, because what we get out of video too. We get tone and style and voice and point of view because they basically talk like they talk and they talk like, you know, in many cases, their brand, you know, if it's an owner of a, or a CEO of a business.

15:42And I think, I quite frankly think with that information, you can train, you know, a lot of the GPTs in the world to actually now speak and repurpose content in a way that you would do it. Or certainly a depth of knowledge, you know, about what you're talking about, case studies, example clients, all that stuff can be fed now in there. And you're not just, you know, creating the generic content that the world is creating. So I, to me, that is one of the best uses, most efficient uses of some of the AI tools today. Oh, well, absolutely. I mean, as you know, John, because you and I talked about it, I've been pretty deep into AI for the last two years.

16:20Yeah. And I've tried a number of different ways of replicating my voice, my ideas. and I've worked with some clients and agencies to do the same thing. We've had a lot of success replicating the style and voice of content. And where that brings you when you're using AI is we don't want to use AI to write content for us. They need to be our ideas. But the way that I've been thinking about it lately is when we're writing, there's thinking and then there's writing. And I've been exploring other ways to do the thinking. For example, I'm putting a lot more effort into content briefs nowadays and like researching and making them as solid as you can imagine and making sure that they're infused with my ideas on the topic so that the final piece of content will be unique.

17:01And then the writing is something, you know, one of my writers can help out with. And my writers are using AI tools to help with, you know, all sorts of things, but it's human written content at the end of the day. But that's when we've been thinking about it. But then there's another agency that I'm working with. Actually, they're in Europe. And they do a lot of content with subject matter experts and thought leaders where they'll interview the subject matter expert and write the content. And what we've been working on with them is for the first few articles, they interview the subject matter expert, but then we take the results of that interview and then also anything else that person has written, maybe a white paper, a book, or a book, and then put that into, train that into AI.

17:41And then going forward when they're writing articles on behalf of this person, they can consult the AI. Basically, I see AI the questions instead of the subject matter expert. And that mostly works. I mean, the tools just aren't exactly where I would want them to be nowadays. But that's the sort of thing maybe when GPT-5 comes out this summer that it'll work 100%. I don't know. But we've got the infrastructure. It works about 80%. Yeah. Well, and I think that's a great point because, I mean, my belief is I don't care what you're doing. It's only 80 % there. you know you can ask it to write metadata for you you don't want an article and you're still going to have to look at it you know so i think a lot of people people feel like this is like the magic fairy dust and they just don't you know have to work and frankly with that in mind the fact that so much garbage content you know is now going to be out there you know what does that do what does that do or what does that say you know the bar is now to actually have this destination content you talk about?

18:43Well, the bar is high. I mean, because there's so much out there. So really you need to, the mistake that a lot of us made was we were writing informative content. You know, like if I'm working for a clinic that might do addiction treatment therapy or something like that, then we're writing about what is the therapy? What are the different types of therapy? What are the medications, the treatments, the side effects? And it's like, okay, well, all that stuff has already been written and it's been written by institutions like the Mayo Clinic that are much more authoritative than you are. It's like Corner Clinic, right?

19:13So we just need to dump that whole attitude. And instead, you think, well, what makes my brand or me unique? What is our unique perspective? We might be the only clinic in this neighborhood in Boston. And we treat the types of folks that live in that neighborhood, whatever that means. And we're writing about that. Or we're telling customer stories, like I said before. What problem did they have? How did they try to solve it before? How did we help them solve it? But it doesn't sound like a case study, but the point is making it useful. And what Google's looking at is engagement with the content that you create.

19:47So if you create content that people actually click on and they go to your page, then that's engagement. People stay on the site and they don't bounce back to Google to click on something else. That's engagement. If they dive deeper into your site to learn more or eventually buy something, that's engagement. So what matters is it's unique. So it gets in Google in the first place, but then that people engage with it. So Google will keep ranking it and keep sending traffic to it. So it has to be useful. And the last thing I'll say about this, sorry, I'm going on my idea train here. But the last, like it has to be useful.

20:16And the way you'll know how to create like actually helpful, useful content for your customers is to talk to your customers. We're not hiding behind like keyword research tools anymore or analytics. You know, have real conversations with real customers, understand what they're searching for, the problems they have, the questions that they ask when they're making a decision around your type of product or service, but talk to them, figure it out. And then you can, then you can put something on the web that is unique. Nobody else has done it. And it's super valuable to your customer. Yeah. I've been saying for a number of years now, you know, content's not a tactic.

20:51It's the voice of your strategy. And that when I hear you describe that's exactly what it is. It's like, here's how we intend to compete. And that's what we're going to write about. Absolutely. So just to riff on it a little bit more, you're going to have to slow me down. But just to riff on it there, what's going to happen is brands that are personality-driven are going to end up doing better. Or maybe if you're able to build a community around your brand, whatever that looks like online or in real life. Or if you're able, because I've worked with a number of brands that tapped into a tribe that already exists, like the fire department coffee.

21:24They started by a firefighter who's also a Navy veteran. So he's able to tap into those networks to show Google that he's gaining traction and all of that. And there are also some brands that are aligned with a purpose, where it's a mission-driven brand. And Google can also see that traction and engagement. So those are the types of brands that I expect to do well going forward. Yeah, awesome. Well, Dale, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Ductate Marketing Podcast. You want to invite, is there anywhere you invite people to connect with you or find out more about your work? yeah check out my website fire and spark.com all spelled out and you can hit me up on linkedin or my email dale d-a-l-e at fire and spark.com so feel free to shoot me an email i love seo and seo questions so always happy to talk awesome well great catching up with you again and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road

22:24We'll see you next time.