Could the best way to rank in Google actually be to ignore Google? That's what the renowned SEO Marie Hayes said in her most recent newsletter. And I actually think she might be onto something. I've been subscribed to Marie's newsletter for five or 10 years now. What is time? And I'm fortunate enough to call Marie a friend these days. I highly recommend her newsletter overall, but this most recent one really spoke to me. I just want to kind of go through it. Marie posits that we can simplify the way that Google ranks websites into four steps. Although it's actually three steps, the fourth one is more of a continuation. First, Google gathers an initial set of results based on traditional ranking factors. Then Google uses a set of AI systems to rank that set of results by which results will best satisfy the user. And then finally, Google uses a series of signals, like user behaviour, to determine how accurately they predicted which results would best satisfy the user. Step 4 is just that over time, these systems will get better and better at predicting which results will satisfy the user by continuously comparing those predictions to the signals they're getting from users themselves. As Marie states, this is a simplification. It's much more nuanced than this in reality, but her framing more or less matches my intuition. Marie then points out that most SEOs are still focused on that first step, traditional ranking factors. Historically, That has been the most important step. Initially, it was the only step...

Could the best way to rank in Google actually be to ignore Google? That's what the renowned SEO Marie Hayes said in her most recent newsletter. And I actually think she might be onto something. I've been subscribed to Marie's newsletter for five or 10 years now. What is time? And I'm fortunate enough to call Marie a friend these days. I highly recommend her newsletter overall, but this most recent one really spoke to me. I just want to kind of go through it. Marie posits that we can simplify the way that Google ranks websites into four steps. Although it's actually three steps, the fourth one is more of a continuation. First, Google gathers an initial set of results based on traditional ranking factors. Then Google uses a set of AI systems to rank that set of results by which results will best satisfy the user. And then finally, Google uses a series of signals, like user behaviour, to determine how accurately they predicted which results would best satisfy the user. Step 4 is just that over time, these systems will get better and better at predicting which results will satisfy the user by continuously comparing those predictions to the signals they're getting from users themselves. As Marie states, this is a simplification. It's much more nuanced than this in reality, but her framing more or less matches my intuition. Marie then points out that most SEOs are still focused on that first step, traditional ranking factors. Historically, That has been the most important step. Initially, it was the only step. But we've known for a while now that Google's been trying to get away from factors like backlinks and keywords and just deliver results that actually meet the user's search intent. The cheaper, faster, smarter these AI Models get, better Google's able to do that. And it's important to note that the AI Models Google is using to rank websites are not large language models. At least not yet. We're talking about smaller, specialized models like BERT and Nav Boost and glue. These models are still far from perfect at evaluating which sites are gonna satisfy your search intent. They are getting better very quickly. Now, for the time being, traditional search factors are definitely still important, and that's largely because it's the cheapest way for Google to get that initial set of results. But I do agree that they're only going to become less important. And while Google is focused on results that satisfy the search intent, they're still pretty terrible at evaluating quality. Partly because the AI isn't smart enough, and partly because it would just be too expensive. But what I think pretty much any SEO would agree with is that it's much easier to rank if you're a well known, established brand. Marie Hayes calls this out in her newsletter. She recommends everyone review Google's Quality Raters guidelines. If you're not familiar, Google employs something like 16,000 quality raters, which are contractors that are given a set of guidelines by which to evaluate search results. They are then presented with a set of results for a given query and are tasked with evaluating how closely those results match the guidelines they've been given. This is how Google evaluates whether or not an algorithm update is moving things in the right direction. These guidelines don't exactly tell us how Google ranks websites, but they do tell us how they want to rank websites, what factors they want to matter. And what Marie points out is that over and over again in these guidelines, Google emphasizes the value in being known as the go to source in your industry. Now, how exactly Google determines that you're known as the go to source in your industry is still a mystery. And the more it's turned over to AI, the more it might even be a mystery to the engineers at Google. But I think Marie's point is that we should stop trying to solve the mystery. Better these AI systems get, the harder it's going to be to figure out exactly how they work. Instead, we should just give into the idea that Google's gonna get better and better at ranking websites the way they intend to rank them. Instead of being focused on how to make Google think you're known as a go to source in the industry, you should be focused on becoming the go to source in your industry. And if your brand is too small to be the go to source in your industry, pick a subset of your industry that you could dominate, and then put your effort into creating content and tools and resources that are truly helpful to your audience. And I think all of this is directionally correct, but it's not a new trend. It's a trend that's been going on for at least a decade now. It's just accelerating now. And I think it's important to reiterate that we haven't arrived in this future yet. Traditional SEO is still very effective, but what this episode of Marie's newsletter did for me would just remind me that we need to be focused not just on where Google is now, but where Google is heading.

SEO is changing fast — and the best strategy might sound crazy: stop optimizing for Google. 😳 Focus on being the best resource for your audience, and Google will catch up... Traditional SEO remains effective, but the creator expects it to become less important as ranking systems better predict user satisfaction. Main topics: Brand authority, Google ranking direction, Traditional SEO transition.

SEO is changing fast — and the best strategy might sound crazy: stop optimizing for Google. 😳 Focus on being the best resource for your audience, and Google will catch up. #SEO #GoogleUpdate #SearchEngineOptimization #BrandBuilding

Brand authority
Google ranking direction
Traditional SEO transition


Here's a small technique that I use to see if a person is using Yoast, they have e commerce and they have not optimised their Yoast properly, which probably means they haven't done their s E. O. It's very simple. All I have to do is look in the page title and do the product category if it still says archive. Now this is the reason why if you look under Yoast and settings, under everything relating to categories, the standard that Yoast puts in is archives in the title for whatever the reason is, this is the way that Yoast do it. But most people that optimise with Yoast have no idea what they're doing so they leave this archive in. Take a look how quickly and easy it is to see a whole list of websites that have got Yoast, that have got a e commerce website but have not optimised their product category pages. It probably means they haven't optimised the SEO. In Google, I'm gonna do the following search in title archives and then I'm gonna say in U. R. L product category. The first result I'm gonna see there is Pentel. I can see very quickly that it says archives in the page title. If I look at the page source, I can see that this website is built on WordPress and it's got Yoast. I can do this technique over and over again and I can see a whole lot of websites. That haven't done their Yoast optimisation and this probably means that they haven't done SEO optimisation. I'm almost sure that most of these companies are paying someone to do SEO for them or that they think someone in the company is doing SEO for them, but they're absolutely getting nothing in return...

Here's a small technique that I use to see if a person is using Yoast, they have e commerce and they have not optimised their Yoast properly, which probably means they haven't done their s E. O. It's very simple. All I have to do is look in the page title and do the product category if it still says archive.

Now this is the reason why if you look under Yoast and settings, under everything relating to categories, the standard that Yoast puts in is archives in the title for whatever the reason is, this is the way that Yoast do it. But most people that optimise with Yoast have no idea what they're doing so they leave this archive in. Take a look how quickly and easy it is to see a whole list of websites that have got Yoast, that have got a e commerce website but have not optimised their product category pages. It probably means they haven't optimised the SEO.

In Google, I'm gonna do the following search in title archives and then I'm gonna say in U. R. L product category. The first result I'm gonna see there is Pentel.

I can see very quickly that it says archives in the page title. If I look at the page source, I can see that this website is built on WordPress and it's got Yoast. I can do this technique over and over again and I can see a whole lot of websites. That haven't done their Yoast optimisation and this probably means that they haven't done SEO optimisation.

I'm almost sure that most of these companies are paying someone to do SEO for them or that they think someone in the company is doing SEO for them, but they're absolutely getting nothing in return. If you're worried about SEO or you want better SEO results, either DM me or drop a comment below for free SEO audit.

Homepage and CMS SEO settings affect how search engines interpret the most important page on a business website. Main topics: WordPress and website SEO settings.

How to Tell If You Haven’t Optimised Yoast on Your Product Categories...


This Google secret is completely unknown. If you search your industry in title colon quotes write for us then you can see all the blogs in your industry that accept guest articles. These will get you backlinks. If you search site colon reddit com or site colon quora com your industry quotes how do I or quotes why does then you can find questions to make content on save years learning how to do SEO that gets customers at compact keywords com.

This Google secret is completely unknown. If you search ‘your industry intitle:"write for us”’, you’ll see all the blogs in your field that accept guest articles... Searching `industry intitle:"write for us"` can surface industry blogs that accept guest articles and may provide backlink opportunities. Searching Reddit or Quora with industry plus question modifiers like “how do I” or “why does” can reveal questions to turn into content. Main topics: Content ideation from forums, Link building prospecting.

This Google secret is completely unknown. If you search ‘your industry intitle:"write for us”’, you’ll see all the blogs in your field that accept guest articles. These can help you get backlinks. If you search ‘site:reddit.com OR site:quora.com your industry "how do I" OR "why does”’, you’ll find real questions you can create content about. Save years learning how to do SEO that gets customers at compactkeywords.com. #searchengineoptimization #seotips #digitalmarketing #growthhacking

Content ideation from forums
Link building prospecting


Your rankings are completely irrelevant. I don't know how many more ways I can tell people that your website's keyword rankings are actually not important. Let's say you're ranking position 1 for a load of keywords, but they don't actually bring you any website traffic. Or maybe they do bring you traffic, but you're getting no conversions from them. Why would you care about those rankings? Why would you wanna rank for those terms? Let's say they do bring decent traffic and conversions, but your rankings fluctuate for them quite often. Like you and a couple of competitors, you just flick between being positions 1, and 3. This is rarely a reflection of your campaign, and a lot more often is to do with the location you're in. Google randomly rolling out another update or one of the millions of other reasons why your rankings might randomly change from one day to the next. As long as you're seeing an increase in traffic and conversions from organic search

Your website's keyword rankings DO NOT MATTER. I know this might be a controversial SEO tip, but your website's Google rankings are actually one of the least important things... Keyword rankings are a weak SEO success metric when they do not produce organic traffic, conversions, or meaningful business outcomes. Main topics: SEO measurement.

Your website's keyword rankings DO NOT MATTER. I know this might be a controversial SEO tip, but your website's Google rankings are actually one of the least important things in your SEO campaign. Because if you're ranking in position 1 on Google for a load of keywords that don't get searched by your target customers, what's the point? And if your rankings flick between the top 3 positions for a keyword that generates loads of clicks and sales regardless of the turbulence, you're wasting your time trying to chase a consistent position 1 ranking. Some SERPs are just like that, no matter what you do. Instead, focus on your website traffic growth month by month, and, more importantly consistent and increasing conversions.   #SEO #seotips #DigitalMarketing #MarketingTips #searchengineoptimisation


The way people find businesses and products is changing very quickly. We're moving into a world where AI Is doing all the research for us. The better this AI Gets, the more we're going to trust its recommendations. So the key for a brand that's looking to be found online is to be as noisy as possible. I say this a lot in my videos, but I thought it would be good to break down what I mean. So I just like to go over the three highest leverage activities I see for businesses who want to be found online in this new future. The first one is press releases. Press releases used to be a huge part of SEO, but they stopped ranking competitively. However, to be found by AI, you don't have to rank competitively. As long as the content is being indexed in search engines, AI will find it. Creating a press release with the terms you want to rank for in the title is an easy way to get content recommending your brand posted to 500 or more websites. If you're looking for a premium service, I recommend the News Guy, and for a budget option, I recommend PR Log. The second high leverage activity I recommend is podcasts. If you use a service like podmatch.com, you can easily get matched with podcasts in your industry. Now, if you have the time to spare, I think it's worth starting your own podcast. But the easiest way to get started is just to go on other people's podcasts as a guest. Going on someone else's podcast takes 30 minutes to an hour of your time. You get exposure to their audience, you typically get at least one backlink...

The way people find businesses and products is changing very quickly. We're moving into a world where AI Is doing all the research for us. The better this AI Gets, the more we're going to trust its recommendations. So the key for a brand that's looking to be found online is to be as noisy as possible. I say this a lot in my videos, but I thought it would be good to break down what I mean. So I just like to go over the three highest leverage activities I see for businesses who want to be found online in this new future. The first one is press releases. Press releases used to be a huge part of SEO, but they stopped ranking competitively. However, to be found by AI, you don't have to rank competitively. As long as the content is being indexed in search engines, AI will find it. Creating a press release with the terms you want to rank for in the title is an easy way to get content recommending your brand posted to 500 or more websites. If you're looking for a premium service, I recommend the News Guy, and for a budget option, I recommend PR Log. The second high leverage activity I recommend is podcasts. If you use a service like podmatch.com, you can easily get matched with podcasts in your industry. Now, if you have the time to spare, I think it's worth starting your own podcast. But the easiest way to get started is just to go on other people's podcasts as a guest. Going on someone else's podcast takes 30 minutes to an hour of your time. You get exposure to their audience, you typically get at least one backlink. Most podcasts are gonna post the content to at least a half a dozen different websites. And typically they'll cut up the long podcast into a series of short form video. So you get a ton of content created and distributed on your behalf for a very small amount of your time. Now one important thing to point out about the host guest economy in podcasts. Even though everyone has a podcast these days, there are actually way more people who want to go on as a guest than there are people hosting their own podcasts. Which means that as a host you can get guests that are way outside your league. This is one of the best ways to meet and network with people in your industry that are more well known than you are, and of course to associate yourself with them. Alright, I'm gonna share the third high leverage activity, but then I wanna give you the final piece to make sure this all works. Third activity is doing exactly what I'm doing right now. Making short form videos. Every single platform is pushing short form videos right now, including Google, who is now showing them more often in their search Results and each video's transcript can easily be repurposed into social media posts, blog posts, LinkedIn articles, medium articles. When done the right way, these are a low effort to create and produce a ton of high quality on brand content. The whole process takes us about 30 minutes, and we get about 12 pieces of content out of it. Once it's dialed in, you can create up to 12 pieces of high quality on brand content in less than an hour. So those are the three highest leverage activities I think you can be doing as a business owner. To be as noisy as possible and make sure your brand is found all over the internet. However, to make all this work, you still need to be applying SEO fundamentals. You need to understand what people, and increasingly, AI, is searching for when they're looking for this information. And you need to make sure that the pages that you're trying to get found are optimized for those terms.

Traditional SEO is dead. Here's what actually works for getting found by AI 🤖 Press releases, podcasts, and short-form video are the move... Press releases are claimed to help AI discovery because indexed syndicated pages can be found by AI even if they do not rank competitively in Google. The creator suggests press release titles can target terms and create syndicated pages that recommend the brand, but this should be treated as a cautious test. Guest podcast appearances can create exposure, backlinks, multi-site distribution, and derivative short-form clips from a small time investment...

Traditional SEO is dead. Here's what actually works for getting found by AI 🤖 Press releases, podcasts, and short-form video are the move. #AISearch #SEO2025 #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing

AI visibility distribution
Podcast guesting for GEO
Press release keyword targeting
SEO fundamentals for AI visibility
Short-form video repurposing


Video is the easiest form of marketing and I can already hear you saying no TJ videos terrible. Maybe it's easy for you to make video, but it's not easy for me. It's gonna take a ton of time or money and no one's gonna see my video anyways. I'd rather just write blog posts or run ads. But the thing is, this is exactly how all your competitors feel too, which is why it's so easy to win with videos. There's just less competition and that's not to mention that all the algorithms love video right now. Everyone's pushing video. So you really have an unfair advantage if you're just willing to make them. And I'm not knocking blog posts or running ads, but making videos is the easiest way to create high quality blog posts and high performing ads. The thing is, video feels competitive because you see these videos with millions of views and high production value and that get you thinking, I could never do that. But the thing is, you don't have to compete against Mr Beast or other YouTubers or famous TikTokers. Instead, you should be looking at your direct competitors in the video content that they're creating. Of course, the first thing you'll notice is that most of them aren't creating video content at all. But I bet you'll find at least a few competitors that are creating video and typically you'll find they're not high quality videos and they're not getting millions of views. In most industries they're probably not even getting thousands of views. So you have to ask yourself, why are they continuing to create these mid videos that are getting a couple hundred views?...

Video is the easiest form of marketing and I can already hear you saying no TJ videos terrible. Maybe it's easy for you to make video, but it's not easy for me. It's gonna take a ton of time or money and no one's gonna see my video anyways. I'd rather just write blog posts or run ads. But the thing is, this is exactly how all your competitors feel too, which is why it's so easy to win with videos. There's just less competition and that's not to mention that all the algorithms love video right now. Everyone's pushing video. So you really have an unfair advantage if you're just willing to make them. And I'm not knocking blog posts or running ads, but making videos is the easiest way to create high quality blog posts and high performing ads. The thing is, video feels competitive because you see these videos with millions of views and high production value and that get you thinking, I could never do that. But the thing is, you don't have to compete against Mr Beast or other YouTubers or famous TikTokers. Instead, you should be looking at your direct competitors in the video content that they're creating. Of course, the first thing you'll notice is that most of them aren't creating video content at all. But I bet you'll find at least a few competitors that are creating video and typically you'll find they're not high quality videos and they're not getting millions of views. In most industries they're probably not even getting thousands of views. So you have to ask yourself, why are they continuing to create these mid videos that are getting a couple hundred views? Well, if you're in an industry where each customer is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars and you don't have to put a lot of effort into each video, it's easy to see how even 100 views from your ideal customer could be well worth the time. For most businesses, if you put a landing page up on your website and it got 100 visits, you consider that a success. And a typical landing page takes way more effort and converts at a lower rate than a good video. The biggest mistake businesses make with their video strategy is going after view count instead of going after the right views. Not only will a good video bring you leads from the platform you post to which you should be posting to all of them, it's often the easiest way to rank for a competitive term in Google search results. All your competitors are doing blog posts. Most of them are not doing video and Google showing video in their search results more and more often these days. It's also a completely free way to test ads. You can reedit your top performing videos into 15 second ad spots with a strong CTA at the end and the video transcript becomes the perfect starting point. For a blog post.

Your competitors think video is too hard. That's exactly why you should be making them. 💡 What's stopping you?... Businesses should judge video by qualified customer views and leads, not maximum view count. Top-performing organic videos can be edited into short ad spots, and video transcripts can become starting points for blog posts. Main topics: Video lead quality, Video repurposing for ads and blogs, Video SEO opportunity.

Your competitors think video is too hard. That's exactly why you should be making them. 💡 What's stopping you? #VideoMarketing #BusinessTips #ContentCreation #MarketingStrategy #SmallBiz

Video lead quality
Video repurposing for ads and blogs
Video SEO opportunity


Google Analytics is hiding your website traffic from ChatGPT. Even though ChatGPT handles over 60 million searches per day, Google still classes this as referral traffic. I think we all know why they're doing that. But there is a way around it. So you can see exactly how much traffic you're getting from ChatGPT in Google Analytics and it's stupid simple to set up. In the reports tab, click library, create Detail Report, choose blank For dimension, add session source For metrics. All you need is sessions, but I like to add these ones so I can see the true value behind these sessions as well. Then you're gonna copy this filter so the report only shows data from sessions with ChatGPT's URL. Save this as a new report. Then go into one of your published collections and click edit. Find the report and drag it over to the left, then click save. Go back to your reports tab, open the collection and find your new report. Now you can see all of your website traffic

Replying to @Ben How to see website traffic from ChatGPT in Google Analytics: Step by step guide GA4 hides your ChatGPT traffic inside the Referrals traffic source, so you... ChatGPT referral traffic can be isolated in Google Analytics by creating a detail report with session source and filtering for ChatGPT's URL. Main topics: GA4 AI referral reporting.

Replying to @Ben How to see website traffic from ChatGPT in Google Analytics: Step by step guide GA4 hides your ChatGPT traffic inside the Referrals traffic source, so you need to set up a custom GA4 report to see your real AI search traffic data.   Here’s how to find it and track your ChatGPT SEO performance in GA4.   #ChatGPTSEO #SEOtips #GoogleAnalytics  #AISEO #GEO


Oh, I never thought of this you could use ChatGPT to find all the different addresses. So I've started with queries like show me all the addresses you're aware of for client name in city and then it like came back with 3 and I was like, what what are these two? Cause they only have one address and I was like, okay, tell me more about this one address where did you find that one? And it gave me a list back and I was like, okay, give me all the URLs for those sources and then there you go. Boom. I went to all those sites and I'm like, sweet, thank you for the citation audit ChatGPT. So you can actually use this for all kinds of you know, just finding these problems and then you can clean them up and so ChatGPT might think one of those addresses is the actual address cause they don't have access to Google's database which is where most business owners are keeping their data up to date but if the web is riddled with old addresses and old phone numbers then that's getting into the LMS and the LMS can help you fix it you can just ask them what are the addresses and phone numbers you're aware of and show me where you're getting that data from and then you can go and fix them so I thought it was pretty cool and I like this Very much. I like it very much now. Very, very much. Citation consistency is back.

AI visibility work depends on matching the right model, search surface, or answer format to the business outcome being optimized. Main topics: AI visibility and answer readiness.

Is citation consistency making a comeback? I know I’ve said it doesn’...


Don't share the secret. Don't share the secret. Don't share the secret. Don't share the secret. Don't share the secret. Don't share the secret. ChatGPT is hugely influenced by 6 dollar press releases. This guy bought a 6 dollar press release to get ChatGPT to recommend his newsletter as the best AI SEO newsletter for CMOs. ChatGPT is citing financial content. Financial content is getting its information from AB Newswire. AB Newswire has a bulk package which makes each press release cost 6 box. This works for Google's AI overviews as well. Search best aisceo newsletter. There it is. If you don't get the 6 dollar package, you can still go to Fiverr and get somebody who has it. Press release distribution on Fiverr is very cheap. Learn this tactic and more at compactkeywords.com.

The biggest GEO - generative engine optimization - secret! ChatGPT is hugely influenced by $6 press releases... Cheap press releases are claimed to influence ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews by seeding financial/newswire content that AI systems cite. Main topics: Press release manipulation.

The biggest GEO - generative engine optimization - secret!  ChatGPT is hugely influenced by $6 press releases. Harpreet Singh bought a $6 press release to get ChatGPT to recommend his newsletter as the best AI SEO newsletter for CMOs.  ChatGPT is citing Financial Content.  Financial Content is getting its information from AB Newswire. AB Newswire has a bulk package which makes each press release cost six bucks. This works for Google's AI overviews as well.  Search best AI SEO newsletter.  There it is. If you don't get the $6 package, you can still go to Fiverr and get somebody who has it.  Press release distribution on Fiverr is very cheap. Learn this tactic and more at compactkeywords.com #generativeengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #growthhacking #performancemarketing


Google recently disabled the num equals 100 parameter now the reason why this is important is that for over two decades SEO's and softwares could easily get the top 100 results from Google on a single page by using this parameter but now with Arctic everyone is stuck there are a few reasons why this is important and what has been impacted number one all the leading SEO softwares out there are all over the place because the results that they have shown are are obviously inconsistent a href came out with a warning and they've said how this is going to affect them in the short term now what might happen and I hope not is that some of these SEO softwares like a hrefs and Semrush and Moz might be charging users like me more money to get these results this might mean that SEO services worldwide becomes more expensive now these results also have had a huge impact as well on even Search Console where a lot of people are reporting in consistencies one of the conspiracy theories out there and it does make a bit of sense is that Google are trying to stop some of the AI models like ChatGPT and Perplexity from easily getting their results either way the small change has had a major impact on the SEO community as a whole keep on following the story because I'm sure there's Gonna be a lot more to it in the coming weeks and months.

SEO workflows benefit from specific research tools for keyword discovery, historical checks, backlink triage, citations, and search visibility diagnostics. Main topics: SEO research and tooling workflow.

Google Has Removed Support for &num=100 This video will show what hap...


Before you fire up any AI writing tool, you need to make sure that you're targeting the right keywords. You can use any decent keyword research tool for this. I like to use Semrush. And you're gonna start by searching for a really broad term related to your industry. This should give you a huge list of keywords, which we're gonna filter to find the why behind the search. This is known as the search intent. An informational search intent means that someone is looking to find more information. A commercial search intent means that they're thinking about buying, but they're not quite there yet. Transactional search intent means that they are ready to buy. So if you're gonna publish blog post, you wanna focus on informational or maybe commercial search intent if you wanna boost the visibility of any kind of landing page. So for services, products, basically anything that sales focused, then you wanna be targeting commercial or transactional searches. This makes sure that you're targeting keywords that are gonna bring people in at the right stage of their journey. As a final step, we're also gonna filter this list by keyword difficulty. Set the maximum to around 30 to find keywords that are easier to rank for Now, you're gonna go through this list and pick out all the keywords. That you actually want to target. And this is gonna be based on what you offer and what seems like a good fit. Now that you've got your target keywords, we're gonna look at who's currently ranking for them. So go to Google and open up the top two to three results...

Before you fire up any AI writing tool, you need to make sure that you're targeting the right keywords. You can use any decent keyword research tool for this. I like to use Semrush. And you're gonna start by searching for a really broad term related to your industry. This should give you a huge list of keywords, which we're gonna filter to find the why behind the search. This is known as the search intent. An informational search intent means that someone is looking to find more information. A commercial search intent means that they're thinking about buying, but they're not quite there yet. Transactional search intent means that they are ready to buy. So if you're gonna publish blog post, you wanna focus on informational or maybe commercial search intent if you wanna boost the visibility of any kind of landing page. So for services, products, basically anything that sales focused, then you wanna be targeting commercial or transactional searches. This makes sure that you're targeting keywords that are gonna bring people in at the right stage of their journey. As a final step, we're also gonna filter this list by keyword difficulty. Set the maximum to around 30 to find keywords that are easier to rank for Now, you're gonna go through this list and pick out all the keywords. That you actually want to target. And this is gonna be based on what you offer and what seems like a good fit. Now that you've got your target keywords, we're gonna look at who's currently ranking for them. So go to Google and open up the top two to three results. Then you're gonna copy and paste this content into a document, or you can just save the whole page. Now you can fire up ChatGPT. I like to create a project for each type of content and client I'm working on, because then I can just give it information about the brand, any content formatting, their writing style, what they offer. If you don't have access to projects, you can just give all this information in a new chat. Open up a new chat. Give ChatGPT the keywords you want to target, search intent behind them, and the type of page you're creating content for, then add this to your prompt. And upload the competitor content you saved in the last step. And then, rather than just telling ChatGPT to write the content, you're gonna get it to create a content outline first. This is your chance to make sure it actually understands what you're asking it to do. And you can get it to remove or add any sections that don't quite fit. Once you're happy with the outline, then you're gonna tell ChatGPT to write the content section by section so that you can edit, humanise and refine it before they move on to the next. Let me know if you want a part 2 on how to do that.

How to use ChatGPT for SEO (Long SEO tutorial incoming - make sure you save this!) If you’re using ChatGPT to write your SEO content before doing keyword research or... Before AI-assisted writing, keyword targets should be filtered by intent and difficulty so the right terms map to the right page type. AI-assisted SEO writing should start with keyword intent, competitor context, brand inputs, an outline, and section-by-section human editing. Main topics: AI-assisted SEO content workflow, Keyword intent mapping.

How to use ChatGPT for SEO  (Long SEO tutorial incoming - make sure you save this!) If you’re using ChatGPT to write your SEO content before doing keyword research or competitor analysis, you're already doing it wrong. Here's how to build keyword research & SERP analysis into your ChatGPT SEO content strategy to create SEO content that's worth publishing.

AI-assisted SEO content workflow
Keyword intent mapping


Google actually rewards you for directing visitors off your website. These are 10 similar websites with similar content, all targeting the same keyword. All five of the pages that link out beat all five of the pages that don't link out. Linking out to other websites was the only variable. When you link out to high quality, relevant pages, it tells Google you're helping people. That trust will push you higher in search. If you wanna get search traffic, don't be greedy with your link juice or your clicks. Link out. And if you wanna learn how to get customers with SEO, go to compactkeywords.com.

Google actually rewards you for directing visitors off your website. 10 similar websites with similar content all targeting the same keyword... The creator claims pages linking out to high-quality relevant sources beat similar pages without outbound links when outbound links were the only variable. Main topics: External linking experiment.

Google actually rewards you for directing visitors off your website. 10 similar websites with similar content all targeting the same keyword. All five of the pages that link out beat all five of the pages that don't link out. Linking out to other websites was the only variable. When you link out to high quality relevant pages, it tells Google you're helping people. That trust will push you higher in search. If you want to get search traffic, don't be greedy with your link juice or your clicks. Link out. And if you want to learn how to get customers with SEO, go to Compactkeywords.com. #seotips #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #bloggingtips


Blogging has always been an important part of SEO, but that's been changing a lot lately because of AI. Even today, implementing an SEO campaign that didn't involve blogging is pretty much unheard of. What's changing are the types of blog posts that are effective and the method we use to write blog posts. Over the weekend, I did an audit of a website that has become really the leader in their industry for information around their product and service. One thing we do with these audits is we run about 50 different prompts through all the big large language models to see which websites ChatGPT, and other large language models look at before they recommend this client or one of their competitors. For this particular company, their website was actually the second most cited source by ChatGPT and other large language models. In other words, when people go to a large language model to ask questions about the product and service that this company offers, the second most cited source is this company's website. I think the first was Wikipedia. However, if you look at the actual response from ChatGPT and other large language models after receiving one of these prompts, they were typically recommending one of the client's competitors over them. Even though this company was one of the primary sources of information the large language model was using to make the recommendation, there were five competitors being recommended more often than the company. And ultimately, that's all that really matters, right? Is that recommendation. So how could that be?...

Blogging has always been an important part of SEO, but that's been changing a lot lately because of AI. Even today, implementing an SEO campaign that didn't involve blogging is pretty much unheard of. What's changing are the types of blog posts that are effective and the method we use to write blog posts. Over the weekend, I did an audit of a website that has become really the leader in their industry for information around their product and service. One thing we do with these audits is we run about 50 different prompts through all the big large language models to see which websites ChatGPT, and other large language models look at before they recommend this client or one of their competitors. For this particular company, their website was actually the second most cited source by ChatGPT and other large language models. In other words, when people go to a large language model to ask questions about the product and service that this company offers, the second most cited source is this company's website. I think the first was Wikipedia. However, if you look at the actual response from ChatGPT and other large language models after receiving one of these prompts, they were typically recommending one of the client's competitors over them. Even though this company was one of the primary sources of information the large language model was using to make the recommendation, there were five competitors being recommended more often than the company. And ultimately, that's all that really matters, right? Is that recommendation. So how could that be? Well, the pages that these large language models are citing from the company's website are purely informational. This is what we would call top of the funnel content. This content never really performed well, even in traditional search. But at least in traditional search, it brought people to your website, and from there, you might be able to convert them into customers. When a large language model is pulling information from your website, all that matters is whether or not they recommend you. And so most SE0s that have been paying attention are switching to middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel content. Middle of the funnel content is gonna be buying guides, comparison articles, top 10 lists, anything that helps people make that purchase decision. And bottom of the funnel content are gonna be your transactional pages, your product category or service pages. These are the ones that people will find when they're ready to buy something and they're just trying to decide which brand to go with. However, that doesn't mean there's no opportunity left in top of the funnel content. For example, a how to article can perform really well if you're part of the solution. It's also worth noting that when these articles do well, they can attract backlinks. And at least for now, backlinks do still help. My guess is they're gonna help less In the future, but they matter now. The important thing is that wherever the large language models are getting their information, you're being recommended on those pages. And that's whether or not the content is on your website.

Your blog posts are training ChatGPT to recommend your competitors 😬 Here's what actually gets you recommended #SEO #ChatGPT #ContentMarketing #DigitalMarketing #AISearch Middle- and bottom-of-funnel content may matter more for LLM recommendations than purely informational posts. For AI visibility, it matters whether the pages LLMs use as sources recommend the brand. Main topics: AI citation vs recommendation, MOFU And BOFU Content, Source Page Recommendations.

AI citation vs recommendation
MOFU And BOFU Content
Source Page Recommendations


TJ is wrong about social media content. TJ says all you need to do is take a video of yourself rambling and repurpose it into a bunch of content and it's gonna do well in social media. My background isn't an SEO, but TJ is my brother and TJ has 15 years of experience in SEO, which means I have 15 years of experience of listening him talk about SEO. So same thing, right? My background is in marketing. I have my degree in marketing plus an MBA and I'm currently working with TJ I have my own dog too, Daisy. And honestly, TJ doesn't take advantage of the power of showing his dog on social media. If your goal is to get social media famous or attract hundreds of thousands of followers, you're gonna have to get on those trends and you need to find all those trending audios that are going to attract more viewers because that's what matters, your viewer count, your engagement and getting more followers. If you rely on needing lots of customers to run your business efficiently, and I mean lots by thousands, right? If you're a big business selling a lot of products, then yeah, you're gonna need to do something that gets a lot of followers. But if your clients are the type of clients that are spending hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars on your product or service, then being social media famous isn't your priority. Your priority is getting quality content in front of your potential client and posting trends to the masses isn't always gonna help with that...

TJ is wrong about social media content. TJ says all you need to do is take a video of yourself rambling and repurpose it into a bunch of content and it's gonna do well in social media. My background isn't an SEO, but TJ is my brother and TJ has 15 years of experience in SEO, which means I have 15 years of experience of listening him talk about SEO. So same thing, right? My background is in marketing. I have my degree in marketing plus an MBA and I'm currently working with TJ I have my own dog too, Daisy. And honestly, TJ doesn't take advantage of the power of showing his dog on social media. If your goal is to get social media famous or attract hundreds of thousands of followers, you're gonna have to get on those trends and you need to find all those trending audios that are going to attract more viewers because that's what matters, your viewer count, your engagement and getting more followers. If you rely on needing lots of customers to run your business efficiently, and I mean lots by thousands, right? If you're a big business selling a lot of products, then yeah, you're gonna need to do something that gets a lot of followers. But if your clients are the type of clients that are spending hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars on your product or service, then being social media famous isn't your priority. Your priority is getting quality content in front of your potential client and posting trends to the masses isn't always gonna help with that. In fact, it could really hurt that when you post trends just for posting trends sake and for getting views on social media, you start attracting a different crowd than your potential clients and social media learns that so suddenly when you have something to say or you wanna attract your clients, they're not there listening. Instead it's viewers who want some of those social media trends and they're gonna scroll on and we get all in our heads about wanting quality content but as we see with t J's videos, you can just get on and ramble. There's gonna be people who came to social media to hear that. This is actually been the entire strategy my brother built his business on and he's gotten a lot of great quality leads and clients through this strategy. Getting on and making rambling videos is way better than nothing at all and making these videos where you are talking about something you're an expert on, you're going to find people who relate to your content and those can be your potential clients so don't wait until you feel like you're perfect at social media. No one feels like that when they start and don't wait until you have hours to dedicate to this just like me and DJ are doing. Just take a video walking your dog, find a part of your day where you can take out your phone and ramble for 5 minutes. You're an expert at what you do. There are people who wanna hear that and don't worry about giving away your secrets. The do it yourself clients aren't your clients to begin with and their engagement on a topic that relates to them is gonna help social media find the clients that are gonna purchase your services because while not every single viewer is gonna become a client, this strategy is about getting your videos in front of people who could be your clients. Come here, dog. Yes. Say hi. Oh.

Social media fame won't get you quality clients. Rambling about your expertise will 🎯 Stop chasing trends, start talking... For high-value services, social strategy should prioritize potential-client exposure over mass trends and follower count. Simple expert videos can attract potential clients by helping the right audience relate to the problem. Main topics: Expert Video, Social Content Strategy.

Social media fame won't get you quality clients. Rambling about your expertise will 🎯 Stop chasing trends, start talking. #contentmarketing #b2bmarketing #socialmediatips #smallbusiness @mckenziestewartseo


So Microsoft just published an article called Optimising Your content for inclusion in AI Search answers, and it actually has some really good information about how to get recommended by large language models like ChatGPT. So I figure we could go through some of the big ones. This is what I love about Microsoft, by the way. They're way more transparent about how to rank in search engines than Google ever has been. For example, Microsoft shared the fact that user behaviour factors into their ranking algorithm years before Google was forced to reveal that from the DOJ Trials. Most of the article that Microsoft put out is the same thing that SEO's have been saying for years, but it's still very valuable information. This is stuff like having clear titles using proper heading structure. They also confirmed a lot of our early findings about what works in AI Search. Specifically, these are things like semantic chunking, making sure every section or every chunk of your article is self contained. In other words, you should never need context from another part of the article to make sense of a specific section. They also talk about how bulleted lists and tables are easier for machines to parse than large paragraphs of text. They also provided some very specific guidance, like avoid making more than one claim per sentence. As they point out, having multiple claims in a single sentence can confuse machines that are trying to understand your content. Another thing that they said can confuse machines and I thought this was hilarious...

So Microsoft just published an article called Optimising Your content for inclusion in AI Search answers, and it actually has some really good information about how to get recommended by large language models like ChatGPT. So I figure we could go through some of the big ones. This is what I love about Microsoft, by the way. They're way more transparent about how to rank in search engines than Google ever has been. For example, Microsoft shared the fact that user behaviour factors into their ranking algorithm years before Google was forced to reveal that from the DOJ Trials. Most of the article that Microsoft put out is the same thing that SEO's have been saying for years, but it's still very valuable information. This is stuff like having clear titles using proper heading structure. They also confirmed a lot of our early findings about what works in AI Search. Specifically, these are things like semantic chunking, making sure every section or every chunk of your article is self contained. In other words, you should never need context from another part of the article to make sense of a specific section. They also talk about how bulleted lists and tables are easier for machines to parse than large paragraphs of text. They also provided some very specific guidance, like avoid making more than one claim per sentence. As they point out, having multiple claims in a single sentence can confuse machines that are trying to understand your content. Another thing that they said can confuse machines and I thought this was hilarious. M dashes this is ironic because it's large language models that are most notorious for overusing the EmDash. Whether or not the em dash is confusing the machines, or the machines are just labeling it as AI content because of the em dash, I do think it's a good idea to be replacing all the em dashes in your content, at least for now. They also confirmed that machines have a hard time finding information that's hidden in tabs. This is something that's been shown a few times from tests over the years. You wanna make sure all important content is visible on the page. They also encourage you to use question and answer format, which aligns with what pretty much every SEO is doing right now. In fact, typically when I ask SEOs what they're doing to optimize for AI, the only thing they say is adding more epic use.

Microsoft just revealed how to rank in ChatGPT search (and they're way more transparent than Google) 🤖 The em dash thing is hilarious #SEO #AISearch #ChatGPT #ContentStrategy Microsoft guidance is cited to support self-contained sections that machines can understand without other page context. Bulleted lists and tables are described as easier for machines to parse than large paragraphs. Microsoft is cited as recommending no more than one claim per sentence for machine understanding. Main topics: AI-writing artifact risk, Hidden Content, Machine-Readable Formatting, One Claim Per Sentence, Q&A format for AI search.

AI-writing artifact risk
Hidden Content
Machine-Readable Formatting
One Claim Per Sentence
Q&A format for AI search
Semantic Chunking


This is really sad. Marketers are using research papers to manipulate LLMs. This research paper publication date was changed to be more recent. Nothing else changed. Same text, same quality. LLMs value freshness, signals a lot. This is what happened. Every single model fell for it. Google uses stored versions of pages to see if marketers are changing dates without changing content. LMS don't have the same experience dealing with spam.

Marketers are using research papers to manipulate LLMs. A research paper publication date was changed to be more recent. Nothing else changed, same text, same quality... The source describes a freshness-spam test where changing only a research paper date allegedly influenced LLM outputs. Main topics: LLM freshness spam.

Marketers are using research papers to manipulate LLMs. A research paper publication date was changed to be more recent. Nothing else changed, same text, same quality.  LLMs value freshness signals a lot. This is what happened. Every single model fell for it. Google uses stored versions of pages to see if marketers are changing dates without changing content. LLMs don't have the same experience dealing with spam. #generativeengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #growthhacking #digitalmarketing


It's crazy that this exists. This website purchased a huge amount of spam links. Spam backlinks pointed at a competitor website. 45,000 comment links, that was $15. 7,000 double tiered forum profile links, exact match anchor text. They were doing exact match anchor text here too. Cost $5. 4,000 sidebar links $20. Exact match anchor text. Total spent $40. Here's when the 45,000 comment links come in. Then the 7,000 forum links, they actually go up. But then when it is complete, the sidebar links come in straight down. This is called negative SEO, and they tank a competitor's website. Can you believe that? Things like this in internet marketing are so insane? And for every SEO that says this doesn't work anymore, I can find another who knows somebody that this happened to or this has happened to themselves.

It’s crazy negative SEO exists. An SEO firm tested it by spending just $40 on spam backlinks to one of their own sites. 45,000 comment links for $15... SEO workflows benefit from specific research tools for keyword discovery, historical checks, backlink triage, citations, and search visibility diagnostics. Main topics: Negative SEO, SEO research and tooling workflow.

It’s crazy negative SEO exists. An SEO firm tested it by spending just $40 on spam backlinks to one of their own sites. 45,000 comment links for $15. 7,000 double-tiered forum profile links for $5.  4,000 sidebar links for $20. All using exact match anchor text. When the last batch of links hit, the site dropped straight down. Some say this doesn’t work anymore, but many SEOs have seen it happen firsthand. #negativeseo #searchengineoptimization #blackhatseo #backlinks

Negative SEO
SEO research and tooling workflow


If you want to succeed at social media marketing, you have to understand one important thing. It's not about selling, it's about giving. And one of the best marketing books I've ever read, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary Vaynerchuk stresses this point, give value, give more value and give an even more value. Before you ask a client for sale on social media, you have to be building the trust. You can't just be expecting to post one post on social media and expect the sales to start coming in. Start giving value, start caring about the client and then ask for a sale. Too many people make a mistake that they first jump in and try to make a sale on social media without building trust. Again, focus on building trust and credibility on social media and then the sales will follow.

Social growth depends on repeated useful content and distribution mechanics rather than posting without a clear value reason. Main topics: Social content value and distribution.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook 👊🥊  Give Value First on Social Media  The i...


Every dollar spent on direct mail generates twelve dollars and fifty seven cents in sales. I just had this direct mail expert on my podcast. He's been doing direct mail since 1999. He told me, according to the Direct Marketing Association, actually, it's been increasing over time. Every dollar spent on direct mail, he said $13. This is twelve dollars, fifty seven cents. As society becomes increasingly digital, it becomes easier to stand out using physical mail. Everyone thinks physical mail is so hard to do. How do you find the addresses? How do you make the bulk mail? This guy made a site that makes it easy to design mail, find potential customer addresses to send it to, then actually just send it. I was really shocked by this conversation. If you want to listen to it, the episode is at Edwards pod com.

Every dollar spent on direct mail generates $12.57 in sales. I just had this direct mail expert on my podcast. He's been doing direct mail since 1999... Channel strategy should follow where attention and response are actually moving, not only where a team already publishes. Main topics: Media channel strategy.

Every dollar spent on direct mail generates $12.57 in sales. I just had this direct mail expert on my podcast. He's been doing direct mail since 1999. He told me, according to the Direct Marketing Association, actually it's been increasing over time, every dollar spent on direct mail, he said $13, this is $12.57. As society becomes increasingly digital, it becomes easier to stand out using physical mail.  Everyone thinks physical mail is so hard to do. How do you find the addresses? How do you make the bulk mail? This guy made a site that makes it easy to design mail, find potential customer addresses to send it to, then actually just send it. I was really shocked by this conversation. If you want to listen to it, the episode is at edwardspod.com #directmailadvertising #ecommerce #marketingstrategy #marketingtips


So Google just released Gemini Enterprise and it actually looks really cool. It's obviously built with larger organizations in mind, but essentially it's a platform for building and sharing agents and have access to all of your company's data. This really should be the ultimate N a d n killer except there's one fatal flaw. If it wasn't for this one flaw, I really think n a d n and really most AI apps would be in trouble right now. And that flaw of course is that you're locked into only using Gemini products. Anyone who's building AI workflows, automations, AI powered software understands why you don't want to be locked into a specific set of AI models. Using the best model for a specific task makes a huge difference and what that best model is differs wildly based on the task or even on the specific step of a task. Pretty much all of my AI workflows use at least two models, usually three. Now as these models continue to get better, it is possible that they'll reach parity and it does seem like Sam Altman and others are kind of counting on the models becoming commoditized. That happens distribution is gonna be all that matters and then suddenly the platform becomes more important than the underlying model. What's clear right now is that all the major model makers Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are desperately trying to get people to build on their platform. All three companies have recently released tools that make it easier to build agents on their platform, revealing what seems to be a shared vision...

So Google just released Gemini Enterprise and it actually looks really cool. It's obviously built with larger organizations in mind, but essentially it's a platform for building and sharing agents and have access to all of your company's data. This really should be the ultimate N a d n killer except there's one fatal flaw. If it wasn't for this one flaw, I really think n a d n and really most AI apps would be in trouble right now. And that flaw of course is that you're locked into only using Gemini products. Anyone who's building AI workflows, automations, AI powered software understands why you don't want to be locked into a specific set of AI models. Using the best model for a specific task makes a huge difference and what that best model is differs wildly based on the task or even on the specific step of a task. Pretty much all of my AI workflows use at least two models, usually three. Now as these models continue to get better, it is possible that they'll reach parity and it does seem like Sam Altman and others are kind of counting on the models becoming commoditized. That happens distribution is gonna be all that matters and then suddenly the platform becomes more important than the underlying model. What's clear right now is that all the major model makers Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are desperately trying to get people to build on their platform. All three companies have recently released tools that make it easier to build agents on their platform, revealing what seems to be a shared vision. We're instead of doing our work in separate distinct tools, all of our work is done in a single platform, relying on agents to either handle or help with each step in the workflow. I do think this is the direction things are headed in. I'm guessing there won't be a single winner here. There will probably be multiple platforms that people used to do this. I'm guessing that either Google or OpenAI will have the most popular platform, but there's still time for another company to come in and create their own. Whoever wins, though, I do think we'll be doing most of our work in some kind of AI operating system or instead of opening individual apps and websites, agents are doing all that for us. And while it will still make sense to develop your own software, apps and websites, I think pretty soon you'll be doing it with these platforms in mind. Anything you build will need to be accessible to these agents or have its own agent. And there will inevitably be big opportunities for businesses that are paying attention.

Google's new Gemini Enterprise looks amazing but has ONE fatal flaw that changes everything 👀 #AI #GoogleAI #TechNews #AIAgents #FutureOfWork As work shifts toward AI operating systems and agents, apps and websites may need to be accessible to agents or expose their own agent interfaces. Main topics: Agent-accessible websites, AI workflow platform risk.

Agent-accessible websites
AI workflow platform risk


Last week OpenAI announced buy it in ChatGPT what buy it in ChatGPT is is now an instant direct checkout inside of ChatGPT without even leaving the platform currently the platform is available for people in America and ChatGPT your first rolling out with Etsy stores then they're gonna roll out with Shopify stores and apparently they're gonna be rolling out with all the other major platforms as well this is massive news for e commerce websites and this just shows you again the importance that your website and your products are easily found in ChatGPT through GEO let me know your thoughts do you think this is going to change the e commerce industry as we know it?

Buy It in ChatGPT Is a Game Changer for E-Commerce The new Buy It in ...


The difference in ranking No. 1 and No. 2 on Google is crazy. If you show up No. 4, your click through rate is 7.4%. At No. 3 it increases a little bit to 10.2%. No. 2 it increases a lot to 18.7%. But at No. 1 it more than doubles at 39.8%. If you're ranking 4 to 2, you can do what's called a content refresh. Some common issues you might notice maybe you're targeting your keyword awkwardly. Maybe it takes too long to get to the meat of the page. You have a lot of fluff if you don't have images that are related to the content. A boring writing. The page is ugly. The page is slow. This is a huge one. If your keyword isn't used in the right places, like the page title or the meta description, or the H1, or the beginning of the first sentence, that hurts SEO performance a lot. There's a lot of reasons. I have them all in this article. Content refreshes in SEO how to double your traffic fast. If you Google that, you'll get everything you need to do to fix your content for SEO.

The difference between ranking number one and number two on Google is huge. If you show up at number four, your click-through rate is 7.4%... Homepage and CMS SEO settings affect how search engines interpret the most important page on a business website. Main topics: Content refresh for near-top rankings, WordPress and website SEO settings.

The difference between ranking number one and number two on Google is huge. If you show up at number four, your click-through rate is 7.4%. At number three, it goes up a bit to 10.2%. At number two, it jumps to 18.7%. But at number one, it more than doubles to 39.8%. If you're ranking between four and two, you can try a content refresh. Some common issues include awkward keyword targeting, taking too long to get to the main point, or having too much fluff. You might also be missing relevant images, have dull writing, an unattractive layout, or a slow-loading page. A big one: if your keyword isn’t used in key spots like the page title, meta description, H1, or the start of your first sentence, your SEO performance will suffer. There are many other reasons. I cover them all in my article, “Content Refreshes in SEO: How to Double Your Traffic Fast.” If you Google that, you’ll find everything you need to improve your content for SEO. #seotips #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #marketingstrategy

Content refresh for near-top rankings
WordPress and website SEO settings


If your business needs leads or customers right now, running ads is the only reliable method. Don't worry, this isn't an ad. This is just something I find myself telling business owners quite often. I primarily do organic marketing. So search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, organic video marketing. And I really do believe that long term organic forms of marketing give you the best return on investment when done the right way. The problem is that it takes a long time and the results are unpredictable. Whenever I talk to someone who's like, I need customers right now, we're in trouble. We need more business this month. I'll tell him, then you need to run ads. It's the only reliable method of taking money and turning it into more business in a short period of time. So the next logical question is, where should I run ads? I just wanna go through your options and how to think about the best place to be running ads. For the last 10 or 15 years, there's really been two types of places that you can run your ads. You're either showing up in someone's feed on a social media site or you're showing up in a search engine, which is pretty much just Google or like 90% Google. There's also Bing. So the advantage of running ads on Google is that you're showing up as someone is searching for the thing that you're offering. This means it's way more likely they're Gonna click your ad and buy what you're selling. The main disadvantage is that you pay way more money to run these ads on social media...

If your business needs leads or customers right now, running ads is the only reliable method. Don't worry, this isn't an ad. This is just something I find myself telling business owners quite often. I primarily do organic marketing. So search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, organic video marketing. And I really do believe that long term organic forms of marketing give you the best return on investment when done the right way. The problem is that it takes a long time and the results are unpredictable. Whenever I talk to someone who's like, I need customers right now, we're in trouble. We need more business this month. I'll tell him, then you need to run ads. It's the only reliable method of taking money and turning it into more business in a short period of time. So the next logical question is, where should I run ads? I just wanna go through your options and how to think about the best place to be running ads. For the last 10 or 15 years, there's really been two types of places that you can run your ads. You're either showing up in someone's feed on a social media site or you're showing up in a search engine, which is pretty much just Google or like 90% Google. There's also Bing. So the advantage of running ads on Google is that you're showing up as someone is searching for the thing that you're offering. This means it's way more likely they're Gonna click your ad and buy what you're selling. The main disadvantage is that you pay way more money to run these ads on social media. You can get a lot more exposure for every dollar you spend, but you're just showing up in their feed uninvited. They're not searching for the product or service that you sell. Social media ads typically make sense when there's a very specific demographic or shared interest among people who are interested in your product or service and that's because the social media algorithms are very good at targeting specific demographics and interests. On the other hand, if you're like a personal injury attorney or a plumber, something that anyone might need but only in a very specific situation and where they're likely to be searching for you as soon as they need you, social media ads tend not to work very well and search works much better. If you find yourself needing to explain what your product or service is, it's not something that people are already familiar with, you're gonna have a hard time on search but a video ad on social media could do really well. On the other hand, if you sell a commodity or at least something that people think of as a commodity like window tinting, you're gonna have an easier time on search. And this whole time I've just been talking about social media as if it's one platform, but of course there are many platforms. The biggest ones are gonna be meta and TikTok. And I say meta because it's one ad platform to show ads on both Facebook and Instagram. When most people are deciding which platform to show their ads on, they think where is my audience? I often hear things like, well, I don't wanna show ads on TikTok cause that's just for younger people and my demographic is older. Then they're always surprised to hear that the vast majority of my viewers are over 45 years old. These platforms have billions of users. Plenty of your ideal customers are there. My advice is that before running ads, post some content organically to each of these platforms. And I always recommend video content if it's possible. Try posting 10 videos to each of the social media platforms and see how they perform. Not only will this show you which platforms algorithm likes your content the most, it'll also show you which of those 10 videos it likes the most. Take the video that got the most views, cut a 15 second version of it, put a strong offer at the end with a call to action to take the next step. Now as I said, for the last 10 or 15 years, those have been the two types of places you can run ads. But we're starting to see a third category which is AI results. Google has just started experimenting showing ads in their AI responses, ChatGPT Is hinted that it's coming. So we still have no idea what this will look like, but it does seem like it would be a good fit for pretty much any business. And typically right after a platform starts running ads is when you get the best rates. So I'm guessing there's gonna be some big opportunities for those that act quickly.

Need customers NOW? Here's where to run your ads (and why most people pick wrong) 👀 #BusinessTip #PaidAds #Marketing Search ads fit known high-intent demand, while social ads fit demographic or interest targeting and offers that need explanation. Posting organic videos can reveal which platform and creative performs best before turning a winner into a short direct-response ad. Ads in AI results from Google and ChatGPT are framed as an emerging third ad category with possible early-mover opportunity. Main topics: AI results advertising, Organic video as ad testing, Paid search vs social ads.

AI results advertising
Organic video as ad testing
Paid search vs social ads


This is the keyword Personal Injury Lawyer NYC. A keyword like this is a 200 dollar cost per click, maybe more. These colors on the right show how well optimized pages are for this keyword. Notice how the green one is ranking number one? You put your keyword in these places, you'll get a green score. And you just want to look at this number here. This is how authoritative each website is. Even for a keyword like personal injury lawyer NYC you still have low authority site showing up. Nobody knows to look at Google results like this. Anybody can rank for keywords if they optimize for them properly. These scores are from the SEO tool MASS, and I show how to do this exact strategy in depth in my SEO course at compactkeywords.com.

Anybody can rank for keywords if they optimize for them properly. This is the keyword, “personal injury lawyer NYC.” A keyword like this has a $200 cost per click, maybe more... The source claims even expensive competitive SERPs can include low-authority pages when keyword optimization is strong. Main topics: On-page SEO, SEO keyword competition.

Anybody can rank for keywords if they optimize for them properly. This is the keyword, “personal injury lawyer NYC.” A keyword like this has a $200 cost per click, maybe more. This is how to rank for it. And I show how to do this exact strategy in depth in my SEO course at compactkeywords.com #seotips #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #growthhacking


The most clicked websites in Google Search are social media platforms. That means if you are making content and you don't know how to find keywords or target keywords, you are leaving tons qualified visitors on the table. Use a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz. Find language that actually describes what you are talking about. Put it at the beginning of your title field and at the beginning of your description field. There's an entire section on this in my SEO course at compactkeywords.com.

The most clicked websites in Google search are social media platforms. That means if you are making content, and you don't know how to find keywords or target keywords, you... Because social platforms receive heavy Google Search clicks, creators should use searchable keyword language in titles and descriptions. Main topics: Social search keywords.

The most clicked websites in Google search are social media platforms.  That means if you are making content, and you don't know how to find keywords or target keywords, you are leaving tons of qualified visitors on the table. Use a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz. Find language that actually describes what you are talking about, put it at the beginning of your title field and at the beginning of your description field. There's an entire section on this in my SEO course at compactkeywords.com. #socialmediamarketing #seotips #digitalmarketing #searchengineoptimization


Have you noticed that the shopping tag inside Google search results in South Africa seems to be missing? Now take a look what I'm gonna do below. I'm gonna open up my V P. N and then I'm gonna do a search result in a number of different countries. I'm gonna go to the U. S. A. I'm gonna go United Kingdom and I'm gonna go to Australia. I'm going to search for the word paddle rackets. You can see very clearly that the shopping tab comes up for all those different countries and you can see the huge amount of free organic shopping listings. But now again when we go into South Africa it's missing. Unfortunately, I can't give you a solution and I don't know what the reason is. I'm gonna try investigate to see if we can get any news but until then, like I mentioned that shopping tab in South Africa seems to be missing.

Search features can vary by country and surface, so visibility checks need location-aware monitoring. Main topics: Search feature availability monitoring.

The Shopping Tab is Not Showing in Google South Africa 🇿🇦 The Shoppin...


It is very quickly becoming easier to automate things. Just in the last few weeks, all the major model makers have released features that make it easier to set up automations. But that'd be fun to run through a few of them. I actually did a video a few months ago about how most automations are a waste of time. In that video, I was talking about n8n, which can be very useful, but my point was that most things that people try to automate end up being a waste of time. And that might still be true, but it's definitely less true today than it was a week ago. I think we are very quickly moving towards a world where automations are so easy to set up that they just become mandatory. So let's talk about the major announcements from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. OpenAI announced a bunch of stuff at their Dev day, but in terms of automation, they announced what they're calling Agent Builder. This seems like OpenAI's response to Google's Opal, which is a lot like N 8 n or zapper, but much easier to use. Agent Builder seems to fall somewhere between n8n and Opal. It's a little more advanced than Google Opal, but not quite as simple to set up. Still much simpler than n8n. The main use case seems to be creating agents that integrate with MCP servers, MCP being The primary protocol used connect agents to software. Moving on to Google, they just announced Gemini 2.5 computer use. This is an agent that can use a browser. It's similar to Perplexities Comet browser or ChatGPT Agent, Anthropics computer use, or even Google's own Project Mariner, except this one is inside of Gemini 2.5...

It is very quickly becoming easier to automate things. Just in the last few weeks, all the major model makers have released features that make it easier to set up automations. But that'd be fun to run through a few of them. I actually did a video a few months ago about how most automations are a waste of time. In that video, I was talking about n8n, which can be very useful, but my point was that most things that people try to automate end up being a waste of time. And that might still be true, but it's definitely less true today than it was a week ago. I think we are very quickly moving towards a world where automations are so easy to set up that they just become mandatory. So let's talk about the major announcements from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. OpenAI announced a bunch of stuff at their Dev day, but in terms of automation, they announced what they're calling Agent Builder. This seems like OpenAI's response to Google's Opal, which is a lot like N 8 n or zapper, but much easier to use. Agent Builder seems to fall somewhere between n8n and Opal. It's a little more advanced than Google Opal, but not quite as simple to set up. Still much simpler than n8n. The main use case seems to be creating agents that integrate with MCP servers, MCP being The primary protocol used connect agents to software. Moving on to Google, they just announced Gemini 2.5 computer use. This is an agent that can use a browser. It's similar to Perplexities Comet browser or ChatGPT Agent, Anthropics computer use, or even Google's own Project Mariner, except this one is inside of Gemini 2.5. It seems like it's just a cheaper, simpler way to have an agent use a browser on your behalf. And in theory, it could do anything that you could do on a browser. As with all the other agentic browsers, it's still very slow and fairly limited in what it can do well, but it shows that Google's invested in this. I think it's safe to assume that eventually this will be really good and we'll all have agents using browsers on our behalf. Finally, Anthropic just announced their Claude Chrome extension. This adds a Claude chat window directly into the side panel of Chrome and allows Claude to take actions on your behalf inside the browser. And if you missed it about a month ago, Claude also announced the ability to create spreadsheets and slide decks. I'm still not sure what the best use cases will be for all these technologies. We've introduced a few new automations at our marketing agency, but we're mostly just experimenting right now. What's clear is that this technology is improving very quickly. It can be hard to figure out the best time to start automating a specific task, but it's clear that every year, it's gonna make sense to automate more and more of them.

I said automations were a waste of time. OpenAI, Google & Claude just proved me wrong 🤖 Testing these at the agency now #AIautomation #OpenAI #productivity AI automation tools from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are becoming easier to set up, making more workflows worth revisiting over time. Main topics: AI automation adoption.


I wanted to highlight the form, too, and I'm gonna drop that in the show notes. If you see a business doing nefarious stuff, there is a report business conduct form, and it's mostly for reporting fake review generation, and so there is that form, so if you have a competitor that you do not like, then you can submit them on this form and see if Google removes all their reviews. Darren, Darren, Darren, so much nefarious advice from you. We're on this podcast. Hi. Everyone knows I'm joking, mostly. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Oh, dear, dear, dear.

Search reputation management is about controlling and monitoring how a name or business appears in search results and reviews. Main topics: Search reputation management.

Apparently, businesses can now LOSE all their reviews if they ask for...


The biggest search optimization blog is now openly using AI written content. Search Engine Land. This is an AI writing their article. What they do is very smart. If you're putting up AI written blog content that reads like it's written by an AI, look at this mdash totally reads like it's written by an AI. Say that it is edited and reviewed by humans. The biggest search engine optimization blog using AI content. This is a format if you want to use AI written content that you should copy.

The biggest search optimization blog is now openly using AI written content. Search Engine Land - they have an AI writing their article, but what they do is very smart... Search Engine Land is cited as openly using AI-written content with human editing and review disclosure. Main topics: AI content disclosure.

The biggest search optimization blog is now openly using AI written content. Search  Engine Land - they have an AI writing their article, but what they do is very smart. If you're putting up AI written blog content that reads like it's written by an AI, say that it is edited and reviewed by humans. The biggest search engine optimization blog using AI content. This is a format, if you want to use AI written content, that you should copy.  #searchengineoptimization #seotips #blogseo #digitalmarketing


So OpenAI just announced ChatGPT apps. I wanna talk about the opportunity they present for anyone with a website and how they give us a clue as to what the future of the internet might look like. I actually just made a video a few days ago about how websites are gonna become less important. You wanna clarify that? I think websites are gonna continue to be very important for at least a few years. But in that video, I predicted that something like MCP. Would enable platforms like ChatGPT. To bring the user everything that your website currently brings your users. And that's exactly what ChatGPT. Apps is doing. I'm not saying that ChatGPT. Apps will replace websites, but it looks like it's a step in that direction. And this could be a big opportunity for business owners or anyone with a website. So the two examples that OpenAI shared were Canva and Zillow.com. They show how, while you're having a conversation with ChatGPT, you can invoke these apps and interact with them all within the same ChatGPT chat window. And these are built on MCP, which a lot of integrations are already built on top of, along with a new ChatGPT Apps SDK, which, according to the presentation, is very easy to implement. Now, I'm not a developer, I do build video games as a hobby, but I'm excited to see if it's easy enough. That I could actually implement it if this goes as well as opening eye hopes. This could be a new gold rush. Being one of the first organizations with the ChatGPT app could be like being one of the first organizations with a website...

So OpenAI just announced ChatGPT apps. I wanna talk about the opportunity they present for anyone with a website and how they give us a clue as to what the future of the internet might look like. I actually just made a video a few days ago about how websites are gonna become less important. You wanna clarify that? I think websites are gonna continue to be very important for at least a few years. But in that video, I predicted that something like MCP. Would enable platforms like ChatGPT. To bring the user everything that your website currently brings your users. And that's exactly what ChatGPT. Apps is doing. I'm not saying that ChatGPT. Apps will replace websites, but it looks like it's a step in that direction. And this could be a big opportunity for business owners or anyone with a website. So the two examples that OpenAI shared were Canva and Zillow.com. They show how, while you're having a conversation with ChatGPT, you can invoke these apps and interact with them all within the same ChatGPT chat window. And these are built on MCP, which a lot of integrations are already built on top of, along with a new ChatGPT Apps SDK, which, according to the presentation, is very easy to implement. Now, I'm not a developer, I do build video games as a hobby, but I'm excited to see if it's easy enough. That I could actually implement it if this goes as well as opening eye hopes. This could be a new gold rush. Being one of the first organizations with the ChatGPT app could be like being one of the first organizations with a website. I think it's safe to say that Google is gonna respond and put something similar into Gemini. This just seems like the obvious way things will continue going. I also assume platforms will emerge that makes it much easier to integrate this for your company than having to build it from scratch. But certainly at least a trend worth following.

OpenAI just dropped ChatGPT apps - could this replace websites? 🤔 Breaking down what this means for your business ChatGPT Apps built on MCP and the Apps SDK may let users interact with business functionality inside ChatGPT instead of visiting a website. Being early with a ChatGPT app is framed as a potential new-channel opportunity, similar to early business websites. Main topics: AI apps / agentic web, Early mover opportunity.

AI apps / agentic web
Early mover opportunity


SEO is dead. SEO is dead. SEO is dead. June 2025 traditional search like Google has 9.78% market share. Ecommerce has 3.13% market share. AI tools compared to all the rest has point six four% market share. Google Trends search engine optimization as a topic interest over time. SEO is at an all time high. Don't give into the fear, uncertainty and doubt. SEO is far from dead.

SEO is dead? June 2025: traditional search like Google has 9.78% market share. Ecommerce has 3.13% market share. AI tools, compared to all the rest, has 0.64% market share... The video argues “SEO is dead” is FUD, citing Google/search market share and Google Trends interest in SEO as evidence that SEO remains relevant. Main topics: SEO market narrative.

SEO is dead? June 2025: traditional search like Google has 9.78% market share. Ecommerce has 3.13% market share. AI tools, compared to all the rest, has 0.64% market share. Google Trends, search engine optimization as a topic. Interest over time, SEO is at an all time high. Don't give in to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. SEO is far from dead. #searchengineoptimization #marketingstrategy #digitalmarketing #buildinpublic


As we know from a SEO point of view your homepage is the most important real estate that there is. The most important part about doing your homepage SEO is your page title. Google have to see what that page title is about and it's imperative that you use your keywords in that page title. Now the biggest sign that shows that you haven't done SEO on your homepage is that when your homepage is actually still labelled home. Now the quickest way to see if you've done SEO on your homepage is going to Google type in site colon your website U R L and press enter another way that you can do it is once your website is already loaded type in site colon before your U R L and again press enter the results are the same. Now take a look at these examples below as you can see when I type in site and colon before the U r l all these pages say home all these websites are quite major companies in South Africa and I guarantee you that the results are nowhere near as they could be in SEO because their page title is still labelled home. You can see that there's Russells, there's Hi Fi Corporation, there's Stanlib, there's P P s and one or two others. If you know any of these guys, go and show them these results. Now if you own A website, I would suggest to you the following. Go into Google, press site colon, put in your website address and press enter. If your homepage is still labelled home and you don't have your keywords inserted there, chances are that whoever is doing s, c, O for you is not doing a good job.

Homepage and CMS SEO settings affect how search engines interpret the most important page on a business website. Main topics: WordPress and website SEO settings.

Does Your Homepage SEO Title Say “Home”? If your homepage title still...


Google Merchant Centre is a free tool from Google that allows you to put your products on Google search results. All you need to do is sign up for an account, add your product feed, shipping and business info and Google automatically pulls in your products to show them in search results.

Free SEO tools that actually help you rank – Part 20 Google Merchant Center is one of my favourite free tools for ecommerce SEO... Google Merchant Center can surface product feeds in Google search results after adding product feed, shipping, and business info. Main topics: Ecommerce SEO / Merchant Center.

Free SEO tools that actually help you rank – Part 20 Google Merchant Center is one of my favourite free tools for ecommerce SEO. If you don't already have your products on Google Merchant Center, you're missing out on huge ecommerce SEO potential for your online store.  It's free and easy to set up, you can automatically sync your product feed, add promotions, tie it to Google Ads, etc. All free! #FreeSEOTools #EcommerceSEO #SearchEngineOptimization #SEOtips #googleshopping


I do SEO. And occasionally when I'm talking to a business owner, they say, we want you to help us rank higher in Google, but we don't want to change the words on the page. And this can be a problem cause most of what we do in SEO. Is change the words on the page. However, the conversation is a little more nuanced than some SEOs might make it out to be. Because of course, SEO. Isn't everything. So I thought it'd be fun to kinda walk through the conversation that I tend to have with these business owners. The way I see it, there are three things you need to balance when considering the content on your website. One is SEO, another is your brand. This is typically where business owners wanna push back. And the final one is your conversion rate. Now, in a lot of ways, you don't have to pick between these three. Most best practices for website design are good for SEO, your brand, and conversion rate. But there are times where you have to make a compromise and you have to decide how much to prioritize one over the other. So I'm gonna give you some hard and fast rules that I think every business should follow. And then I'll provide some guidelines for when you should prioritize one over the other. The first is it when someone visits an important Page on your website. It needs to be immediately clear what this page is about and who it's for. This is important for SEO, for conversion rating, and even for your brand. So if this is the page for a product or service, the name of that product or service should be in the title of the page above the fold...

I do SEO. And occasionally when I'm talking to a business owner, they say, we want you to help us rank higher in Google, but we don't want to change the words on the page. And this can be a problem cause most of what we do in SEO. Is change the words on the page. However, the conversation is a little more nuanced than some SEOs might make it out to be. Because of course, SEO. Isn't everything. So I thought it'd be fun to kinda walk through the conversation that I tend to have with these business owners. The way I see it, there are three things you need to balance when considering the content on your website. One is SEO, another is your brand. This is typically where business owners wanna push back. And the final one is your conversion rate. Now, in a lot of ways, you don't have to pick between these three. Most best practices for website design are good for SEO, your brand, and conversion rate. But there are times where you have to make a compromise and you have to decide how much to prioritize one over the other. So I'm gonna give you some hard and fast rules that I think every business should follow. And then I'll provide some guidelines for when you should prioritize one over the other. The first is it when someone visits an important Page on your website. It needs to be immediately clear what this page is about and who it's for. This is important for SEO, for conversion rating, and even for your brand. So if this is the page for a product or service, the name of that product or service should be in the title of the page above the fold. Surprising to me how often brands get this wrong. It's typically because they're so focused on conveying a specific message or eliciting a specific emotion. And there's nothing wrong with that, but if the visitor can't tell what you're selling, then it's all wasted. Moving on, let's talk about what's most important in each of these three areas. For SEO, what really matters is that you're using the same terms that people are searching for when they're looking for whatever this page is about. So this is the page for one of your services. Make sure you're using the term that people actually search for when they're looking for that service. Not the term that you use internally, not the technically correct term. Whatever people tend to search for in Google, that term needs to be in your H1 or the title of your page, as well as the meta title and if you can, the first sentence of text. In terms of your brand, what matters most is that you're clearly distinguishing yourself from your competitors. Make it very easy for visitors to see who you're For and who you're not for and for your ideal customer. Make it really clear why you're the best choice for them and for conversion rate. Make it as easy as possible for them to take the next step towards working with you. So whether that's calling you, filling out a form, signing up for a demo, purchasing a product, make it really easy for them to find that button. You'd be surprised how many people will give up after a few seconds of searching and go straight to your competitor. Outside of those main rules, it really is a balancing act determining how much you want to prioritize SEO, branding, and conversion rate. In general though, the bigger your company, the more you want to prioritize brand, and the more commoditized your industry is, the more you want to prioritize SEO. And conversion rate.

Can you rank on Google without killing your brand voice? Here's how to balance SEO, brand & conversions ✅ #SEO #BrandStrategy #WebsiteDesign #MarketingTips #DigitalMarketing Important pages should immediately make clear what the page is about and who it is for, supporting SEO, brand clarity, and conversion. Service pages should use terms real customers search for, not only internal or technically correct terminology. For service pages, the searched term should appear in the H1 or title, meta title, and ideally the first sentence. Main topics: Brand vs SEO vs CRO, Page clarity / SEO / CRO, Page SEO Fields, Service Page Terms.

Brand vs SEO vs CRO
Page clarity / SEO / CRO
Page SEO Fields
Service Page Terms