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SEO best practices to accelerate your growth, with Steven Schneider, Co-founder and CEO @TrioSEO

The Growth Hub Podcast · 2025-06-09 · 35 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

46 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density9 / 20
Originality8 / 20
Guest Caliber11 / 20
Specificity & Evidence9 / 20
Conversational Craft9 / 20

Steven Schneider explains how SEO has fundamentally shifted over the past five years from pure content volume to an emphasis on site authority, credibility, and brand building. Modern ranking success requires quality backlinks from relevant, authoritative sources - a departure from the days when micro-affiliate sites could rank without any linking strategy. Schneider dismisses backlink disavowal as a waste of time, noting Google now handles low-quality link devaluation automatically. A key growth lever he highlights is engineering-as-marketing through calculators and interactive tools (built using lovable.dev), which serve dual purposes as lead magnets and SEO assets targeting less competitive keyword territory. Video content complements written pieces effectively when addressing the same topic, with YouTube-hosted videos likely receiving algorithmic preference from Google. On AI, Schneider advocates using it strategically - for summarizing brand guidelines, clustering keywords, and automating data analysis - rather than wholesale content generation. Ranking in AI search engines like ChatGPT mirrors Google's requirements: domain authority and quality content matter equally. The conversation emphasizes writing conversationally for human readers, not search algorithms, and recognizing long-tail keywords' continued relevance as voice and conversational search grows.

Key takeaways

  • →Site authority and brand credibility now outweigh pure content volume - backlinks from relevant, authoritative sources are essential, while low-quality links are automatically devalued by Google without manual disavowal.
  • →Calculators and interactive tools built with lovable.dev function as undervalued SEO assets that lower content creation barriers while capturing emails and nurturing leads through email sequences.
  • →Video content hosted on YouTube complements written blog posts on the same topics, offering engagement variety and likely receiving algorithmic preference in Google search results.
  • →AI tools excel at summarizing brand guidelines, clustering keyword research data, and automating spreadsheet formulas rather than generating original, publishable content.
  • →Writing conversationally for human readers - especially as voice search and ChatGPT normalize conversational queries - remains more important than keyword stuffing, and long-tail keywords deliver ongoing benefits in a voice-driven search landscape.

Guests

Steven Schneider

Topics in this episode

Lead magnetsBacklinksTrio SEOlovable.devbrand authoritycalculatorsYouTube video contentkeyword clusteringAI content strategyvoice search optimization

Questions this episode answers

What makes a quality backlink for SEO?

A quality backlink comes from a site with established credibility and relevance to your industry; Google treats these as votes of confidence that transfer authority to your domain, similar to how being associated with popular figures builds social credibility.

Should I disavow low-quality backlinks to protect my SEO?

No - disavowing is a waste of time because Google already devalues low-quality and spammy links automatically; Google announced it's phasing out the disavow tool since it handles link quality assessment itself.

How can calculators improve SEO performance?

Calculators function as engineered lead magnets and SEO assets that rank for competitive keywords by creating a barrier to entry competitors avoid; they capture user emails for nurturing while building unique content that complements your blog strategy.

Does hosting video content on YouTube versus elsewhere affect SEO rankings?

YouTube-hosted videos likely receive algorithmic preference since Google owns the platform; in practice, YouTube videos dominate video callout sections in search results, though this could partly reflect regional content availability rather than explicit bias.

How do you optimize content to rank in ChatGPT and AI search results?

Rank in AI search requires both domain authority (credibility Google recognizes) and quality content; ChatGPT references established sources, so new websites with no authority won't rank regardless of content quality, and writing conversationally with direct question-answer structures helps AI understand your content.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

9 / 20

A handful of genuinely useful data points surface (disavow tool being deprecated, calculators as an underused SEO asset, AI for keyword clustering) but the majority of the episode is filled with hedged non-answers ('it depends'), common SEO wisdom ('write for humans, not Google'), and conversational padding that any intermediate marketer would already know.

Google has actually announced that they're in the process of taking away the disavowing tool
calculators are probably the most undervalued asset when it comes into an SEO strategy

Originality

8 / 20

The guest posting take ('I think it's dead. I think it's a trash strategy') is mildly contrarian and the calculator-as-lead-funnel angle has some freshness, but the overwhelming bulk of the episode recycles standard SEO maxims that saturate every SEO blog and LinkedIn carousel.

I think it's dead. I think it's a trash strategy
calculators are probably the most undervalued asset when it comes into an SEO strategy

Guest Caliber

11 / 20

Steven Schneider is a genuine practitioner who built and exited a 40-blog portfolio at $100k+/month using pure SEO - real operator credentials. However, he now runs a small SEO agency and the conversation rarely surfaces the depth of hard-won operational knowledge that credential implies; he stays at the advisory level throughout.

we had 40 in our portfolio. We scaled that to well over $100,000 a month in revenue. And we did all that with no backlinks
I've teamed up with a couple of great entrepreneurs to offer our own strategies that we've used for almost a decade to grow our own businesses, but now we implement them for clients

Specificity & Evidence

9 / 20

A few concrete reference points appear (40 blogs, $100k/month revenue, brand briefs of 5 - 10 pages, DR 0 vs DR 50, word-count ranges, tool names like Ahrefs and lovable.dev) but the episode lacks any named client case studies, specific keyword data, traffic figures, or before-and-after results that would make the advice actionable and verifiable.

we had 40 in our portfolio. We scaled that to well over $100,000 a month in revenue
each of our clients at Trio SEO gets a custom brand brief that's anywhere from 5 to 10 plus pages

Conversational Craft

9 / 20

The host shows genuine curiosity and fires a few decent follow-ups (pushing on why SEO writing tools are 'dangerous', inviting the guest to challenge a hypothesis on long-tail keywords), but concedes and agrees too readily, lets several vague answers pass unchallenged, and spends considerable time framing questions with his own anecdotes rather than extracting depth from the guest.

Okay, I love myself a follow up question there. Why would you say they're dangerous?
do challenge me on this

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker A60%
  • Speaker B40%

Most-used words

content49google30video20marketing16blog15long15quality13rank13youtube13best12chatgpt12write11start11sense10trying10hear9

Episode notes

All content marketers and creators out there have a love/hate relationship with SEO. After all, if you leverage it well, it has the potential to carry your business to new heights. Now, the fast pace at which search algorithms evolve makes it difficult to keep up with best practices, especially since SEO isn’t just Google (79% of traditional search engine shares as of March 2025), Bing (12%), or Yahoo (3%) nowadays. Today, SEO also encompasses new usages such as voice or AI search. And that’s a lot. To cover this topic, we invited Steven Schneider, co-founder and CEO of TrioSEO, an agency that helps B2B brands design and implement ROI-focused SEO strategies. Before TrioSEO, Steven co-owned a portfolio of 40 blogs, managed hundreds of articles monthly, and scaled to 7 figures relying only on SEO - without using advertising, without using social media, or any other channel, for that matter. Current SEO best practices The power of backlinks Engineering as Marketing on SEO Video content & SEO impact Clear AI use cases to uplift your SEO performance As well as thoughts on publishing frequency, word count, writing assistants, etc.

Full transcript

35 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: There's still a lot to be said around how to optimize content, how to write for human conversational tones, all the things I've kind of just rambled through. Humans are lazy and if you're using these AI written tools, you're going to become more reliant on them inherently because life is easier. You don't have to write, you don't have to think.

Speaker B: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Growth Hub podcast. The podcast for all things B2B. Marketing. Marketing made by marketers for marketers. I'm, um, your host, Clement Rene, and today we'll discuss SEO. As a trained content marketer myself, following up with SEO best practices is kinda part of me. But if, um, I'm being honest, the rhythm at which algorithm evolves is outpacing my capacity to keep up with them. Especially considering that SEO isn't just rhyming with Google search nowadays. Today, SEO also means taking voice or AI search into account. And that's a lot. And so to cover this topic, I thought it would be interesting to get a real expert on the show. And that's Stephen Schneider. Stephen is co founder and CEO of Trio SEO, an agency that helps B2B brands design and implement ROI focused SEO strategies. Now, before co founding Trio SEO, Steven co owned, um, a portfolio of 40 blogs, managed hundreds of articles monthly and scaled to seven figures only relying on SEO. That means without using advertising, without using social media or any other channel for that matter. And so in this episode we cover everything SEO, including guest posting, SEO writing assistance, the ideal frequency for publishing blog content, the ideal word count for a blog post, the value of backlinks, and whether or not you should worry about low quality ones. Engineering as marketing or tool based marketing and how you can actually support your SEO performance, the role of video content in SEO. And of course there's the elephant in the room, AI. And Stephen shares a couple of actionable examples on how to utilize it in a way that will actually help you nail your SEO game. And so here we go for episode 112 of the Growth Hub podcast with Stephen Schneider, co founder and CEO at ah, Trio SEO. Hey Stephen, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: So I said a few words about you and Trio SEO in the introduction of the episode, but can you maybe tell us a bit more about yourself?

Speaker A: Yeah, I am a longtime entrepreneur. I got my feet wet for the first time in college learning SEO and building micro affiliate websites back in kind of the Amazon affiliate wild west, you know, kind of era of that fun and Flash forward. I now am CEO and co founder of Trio SEO. And I've teamed up with a couple of great entrepreneurs to offer our own strategies that we've used for almost a decade to grow our own businesses, but now we implement them for clients. So it's a lot of fun to be able to tinker with people's websites and strategies and almost treat every single website like it's one of our own.

Speaker B: Well, I'm, um, by definition right now my boring title is head of marketing, but I am a content marketer at heart. And, uh, so, obviously, big topic I wanted to take you on today is SEO. Um, and, you know, a lot of people I talk to, a lot of customers, uh, I talk to often are, you know, seeking the best practices in SEO, or, uh, they're also, like, asking us, you know, are, uh, what we're doing here still worthy doing, or is it actually harming our SEO efforts, or is it just like, you know, gone to waste or whatever? So I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this. What is a best practice? Or what is something that was a best practice five years ago that is something that could now hurt your overall SEO performance if you still do it?

Speaker A: I think the biggest thing is just, uh, the fact that five years ago or longer, you didn't really need a lot of authority to rank. So, for example, when I was building those niche sites, we had 40 in our portfolio. We scaled that to well over $100,000 a month in revenue. And we did all that with no backlinks and no backlink strategy attached to any of it was just pure content. Just publish and wait for it to rank. And that's certainly not the case nowadays. I wish it was, but, you know, there's really a huge shift toward ensuring that your site is credible and authoritative and very trustworthy. And at the end of the day, you're essentially building a brand and not a website. And you have to kind of remember that. And that's what Google is recognizing, and that's how Google is starting to rank websites.

Speaker B: All right, well, that's a very good point, actually, I wanted to ask you then, uh, what makes a good backlink?

Speaker A: The, what we've seen over time is that if you have a site that already has a lot of credibility attached to it and it's very relevant to your content or to your industry, that's pretty much what's going to be deemed as a very quality backlink. So I always like to think about it as, you know, if you are in high school and you just joined the, you know, the football team and you're kind of up and coming, you don't have any friends, and the popular person who's the head of the football team takes you underneath their wing. And over time you very quickly become more popular and more well known. It's kind of the same thing with SEO. As other websites in your space start talking about you and start linking to you, Google takes that as a vote of confidence from their credibility and transfers that over to yours. And so if you can acquire a lot of these relationships, then your website becomes very authoritative in a space which helps your rankings long term and obviously your revenue falls in place then.

Speaker B: Still, on the authority side of things, um, something I've been doing myself, um, when looking at specific backlinks that a domain would be receiving or, um, would have in its pocket, in a sense, um, I've been disavowing the low quality ones. Is this something that really has an impact down the road when it comes to the overall SEO performance or is it a bit of a gadget type of thing?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely a waste of your time, to be totally frank. Um, Google has actually announced that they're in the process of taking away the disavowing tool. And probably long before you went to go and disavow it, it mean Google already just devalued the link. So Google nowadays is pretty smart in understanding whether a link is quality or not, whether it was purchased or not, whether it's a legitimate, you know, relationship or not. And over time it has just been able to kind of create a, you know, checklists of sorts that will help you just, you know, save the legwork of trying to shoo away these, these spammy or unvaluable links. Um, websites will attract links regardless of whether you're trying to build them or not. And Google understands that and understands that sometimes they're spammy and malicious. So they're just going to kind of do the heavy lifting for you and, you know, disavow or devalue them from the start.

Speaker B: Okay, well, that's good to hear. And that's probably reassuring also for some of the people listening and watching because, um, that's something that's been obviously, um, a red flag for me. If you get thousands and thousands of terrible quality backlinks, it would always, it's a bit of a scary thing to see and um, disavowing is always a solution. But then happy to hear that maybe you just don't even need to care about this that's great. Um, but then still on the very SEO best practices side of things. So for context, a couple of episodes ago, uh, we had Jean Bonnenfont on the show and we discussed the intricacies of engineering as marketing, or for those listening or watching. Essentially, engineering as marketing is also known as tool based marketing. So that means creating free tools to provide value and acquire and nurture good fit leads, um, into paying customers. Now, I know you have a few thoughts, uh, and maybe a few best practices to share when it comes to engineering as marketing. So what are they?

Speaker A: Yeah, I love this topic. I actually just published a LinkedIn carousel on that this morning about how calculators are probably the most undervalued asset when it comes into an SEO strategy. Uh, some of our top clients actually leverage calculators as lead funnels and lead magnets in order to rank for terms that would probably feel like they're more difficult to go after because there's this barrier to entry when creating a calculator. And it's like this, there's a lot of development and all this, like, techy stuff involved. But I mean, there's this new tool that I'm loving right now. It's called lovable.dev. it's essentially ChatGPT for development work, and you can just type exactly what you need, give it to the formulas, and it does all of the backend work and the front facing styling and just gives you the output within seconds. So one of our kind of core things that we're switching toward trio SEO is how do we integrate a calculator or a quiz or some sort of engineered asset for every one of our clients, new and old, and set up a lead funnel on the back end, maybe an email drip sequence where the client captures the user, the email, and then from there on out they get nurtured and kind of more ingrained with the ecosystem of the brand. So it's, uh, there's so much upside. I mean, the calculator keyword research world is. There's just so many opportunities. That's where I really have been nerding out lately. I love it.

Speaker B: All right, so wait, you said lovable.dev.

Speaker A: yeah, lovable.dev.

Speaker B: all right, well, I'll definitely have a look and maybe if you're listening or watching, you should too.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker B: All right, well, that's giving me a lot of ideas. Uh, and I'm probably going to invest a lot of hours into this, so I don't know if it's if I should thank you or curse you, I don't know, but we'll see. Uh, now something like another big topic when it comes to SEO. And uh, I'm thinking about this because it's been, for as long as I can remember, video marketing has been part of, you know, these are the best marketing trends you need to follow for you know, next year, whatever. Like literally like I kind of remember a year where video marketing has not been the thing for next year. But I think it's fair to say that we are now in this situation. And uh, I mean I don't have specific studies in mind but I keep seeing those like 90% of B2B marketers say they use video, blah, blah, blah. But what I've seen recently is that um, 50% of B2B buyers say they actually use video content to make uh, purchase decisions. So that must mean something. And uh, that's according to I think the Mengen report. I uh, can put the link somewhere in the description. Uh, and I mean now also producing high quality video content is fairly accessible to. All you need is a phone, uh, maybe good lights and a decent microphone. So yeah, anyone can get it done in a sense. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to best use video. Not only to uh, using the, let's say later stages in the funnel to convince uh, potential buyers that this is the right solution for them. Um, so how to use video to actually support your SEO efforts. So really up um, there in the funnel.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it really is important to think about assigning a topic or a keyword to a piece of content. And content in this definition is somewhat arbitrary whether it's going to be a blog or a service landing page or even a video for that extent. But at the end of the day, if you do have written content in a blog, it would be very, very favorable to have a video that complements that content and maybe it talks about the same steps or processes or the information within that guide and then also, you know, adds a summary snippet because there are going to be people that engage with, you know, a blog and instead of reading a two or three thousand word article, they'd rather watch a two minute overview of what you have to say in that same kind of offer. So there's, there's always going to be a different way to engage and communicate with people. And I think it's important to remember that Google really favors unique content. So if you have say 10 pieces of content ranking in the search results and one of them has a video that complements that content that is a very high quality piece of content from start to finish because it offers something that the others don't. And so if you do have the capacity and the capabilities to do video content and do it well, I think that there's a huge advantage to be gained there by you know, even uploading it to YouTube, trying to build a YouTube following, repurposing it within your social media, offering it within a newsletter. I mean once you could do that upfront work you, you can pretty much have a one to many relationship and how people are going to be receiving and engaging that one video or that one piece of content. So I love it as a strategy. I think it definitely adds value to your website, your brand and the user's kind of information processing progress at that standpoint. And yeah, I'm all for it, I love it.

Speaker B: Do you know if there is any value or benefit uh, for like using videos that are actually hosted on YouTube? I mean Google is YouTube. So will Google face favor your video content if like say you have a blog page and then you have also like a video content on that page? Um, will Google yeah. Value that content better if that video is from YouTube or if it's hosted elsewhere?

Speaker A: I don't know for sure but my gut uh, tells me that YouTube is probably favored because Google owns YouTube. So there's always going to be an incentive for Google to show Google product at the top whether it's going to be PBC or YouTube. So um, I think that putting stuff on YouTube is probably a good place to start and it's never going to hurt you at the end of the day.

Speaker B: Interesting. Maybe it would be good to check that. I would assume that maybe publicly they're not allowed to say that hey we're favoring, favoring YouTube. But uh, it could be interesting to experiment with that.

Speaker A: I've never seen a search result, even if you had a keyword that is very video intent focused like any how to guides or product roundup guides or whatever you know that looks like um, I've never seen or rarely maybe have seen a non YouTube video and a video call out section within the Google search results.

Speaker B: Like that's a fair point. But could it also be because at least you know, if we think SEO of course like the content that's showing up is like usually like optimized for a specific region in a sense. So it could also be that um, YouTube being big where you are, it could also be that this is also the Reason why most of the video content that is pushed to you is from YouTube. But again I think it would be interesting to investigate here because uh, yeah, it could obviously be that uh, it's favor, but that I don't know. Then, um, another topic I wanted to take you on today, uh, still SEO related, um, is AI. And the reason for this is that of course it's getting very difficult to talk about marketing nowadays without talking about AI. So my take is that AI is both, let's say a blessing and a curse for content creation because I mean if we're being honest, it's a fantastic tool, um, or I would see it as a fantastic assistant, uh, for content production because you can ask it anything and it will do it. Then quality obviously is uh, debatable. But and speaking of, I would say that most of the time the result will be, I would say dull in most cases. And um, the reason for this is at least my explanation for this, that it feeds from existing uh, content. It doesn't have any hot takes or anything. Nothing new. Udi, uh, led from Gong was saying in the previous episode that if you expect AI to create something new for you, well, I guess you're definitely going to be disappointed here. So my question to you, uh, as an interested content creator, um, is can you share concrete examples and successes for using AI to actually support your content creation and uplift your SEO performance?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that if you're thinking about SEO seriously from an ongoing blog strategy, for example, it's really important to have a brand brief or set of rules and guidelines when it comes to understanding your tone, your messaging, how CTA are used, um, best practices to include things to avoid maybe. And so each of our clients at Trio SEO gets a custom brand brief that's anywhere from 5 to 10 plus pages specific to everything I just mentioned. And that's straight from their team. We also include our own notes. And so when we work with a client, if they give us a 20 page document from their internal team, chances are their own team hasn't really read through all 20 pages. So it's very efficient. If we can upload that into some AI processor that allows us to have a congested or optimized TLDR summary of that which we can then use moving forward. So those are some of the ways that we're using um, AI in order to streamline our processes. I think that that's a, ah, very easy way to do that. Other things I'm looking at are like data analysis. So if I'm, you know, doing a, uh, massive keyword research strategy. And there's a bunch of keywords in my sheet that I've already collected from ahrefs. How am I clustering these? Or you know, trying to incorporate advanced formulas to get to the end destination that I can kind of envision that the spreadsheet might be able to offer. But I don't know how to write a long Google sheet formula that has 50 apostrophes and commas and stuff like that. So I'll just take a screenshot and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking. How would you implement something like that? So I think the main kind of gist here is that AI is much more powerful than we think. And it really just comes down to asking AI, can you do this? And if not, how can we get there? So it's a very powerful way to get to where you want to go, but you have to ask it and be able to work with it. It's not going to be a perfect solution from the start.

Speaker B: I'm definitely going to, uh, take some of the examples you just mentioned. Uh, I've not necessarily used uh, for instance, AI to create those keyword clusters. Uh, that's a very specific example that I can definitely use in my everyday work and I will steal that from you. Thank you. Of course. Um, now still on AI something, uh, I see a lot is people wondering how to rank on AI search results. Uh, and usually my answer to this is make sure your content meets your target audience's interests and their needs. Um, and my question to you then is first, does that make sense? And um, second one is, is there more to it?

Speaker A: Yeah, first off that definitely makes sense. I think that being very direct in how you're answering things and kind of almost thinking about it from like a, uh, how do you rank? And people also ask when that was really popular a couple years ago, you know, the, the question at hand and the answer should blend together. So you know, if the question is how do I rank in ChatGPT? You should almost start it with to rank in ChatGPT, do this, etc. So trying to answer the question with the uh, keyword involved is definitely helpful, but not a must. The other things I would think about is just the authority of your website. So for example, if you started your website yesterday and say you published five articles, those articles and the content within it isn't going to rank in ChatGPT because it's brand new, has no, ah, credibility, you have no domain authority attached to it. Google doesn't understand it and index it yet. So why would ChatGPT take that with any credible reference? So ChatGPT, I, I would say probably has an incentive to show quality results. If you are Googling, you know, something that is within your money, your lifestyle realm, it has a hopefully, uh, moral obligation to show you correct information. It doesn't purposefully want to be malicious and show you a fault, like a false result. So from that kind of perspective and mindset, you definitely need the authority to back up that kind of intent behind whatever result it's pulling from. And you also need the content. So if you don't have the content to begin with, you have to grow your blog, you have to grow your resource library, and you have to have a 1, 2 combination in order to effectively rank in ChatGPT long term.

Speaker B: Yeah, and do challenge me on this, um, but I also have this feeling, and this is the worst possible, uh, type of approach in marketing, of course having feelings, uh, but I have the feeling that now, uh, more than ever also when it comes to keyword optimization, um, long tail keywords are becoming even more relevant, uh, because of the extra context you need to provide. But also considering AI, uh, and how people use tools like ChatGPT, for instance, because they think they talk to a person, in a sense they talk to something that has some sort of, ah, personality. Um, my feeling again, terrible way to bring it, but, uh, is that people are more conversational in their questions or in their uh, queries. When you go on Google, this is Google. Google has not really changed so much or the way we use it, or it has changed, but not that much in the past decades even, um, and people might actually keep their queries to maybe shorter specific keywords when it will be very conversational. With ChatGPT, um, is this something you also see, um, as an SEO expert yourself, um, should people really be focusing on those long tail keywords, uh, even longer long tail keywords?

Speaker A: I think that, uh, there's always going to be an opportunity if you start thinking about long term long tail keywords. And I think a good SEO strategy inherently will have long tail keywords included within it. So it's not a black and white answer whether should we use long tail keywords or should we not? I think if you just use them long term you'll see benefits from that. But I totally agree with what you're saying around how people who are using AI, especially from a voice search point of view, are definitely having conversational tones attached to that. And that also ties into my second Point which would be content inherently should be written in conversational formats. So what we've seen over time is you don't want to write content that is written for Google. You want to write it for humans and the actual person who's going to be on the receiving end of that. So I think that as we're seeing a shift where people and how they're using AI in their daily use, it makes a lot of sense that Google is very um, robotic in almost how you talk to it. And even like my parents, they'll be like, I am looking for a. And it's like you don't just talk to a normal. Like it's still, it's pretty smart. And even like when I'm like in a, you know, hyper focused state working on like a spreadsheet or something with ChatGPT, uh, I'll just pull up my mic right here and talk to it like I'm talking to you and just trying to think through situations or you know, if I'm taking a screenshot of something, I'll be like, oh, actually your, your formula referenced range, uh, a 6 to B7. It's actually a 5 to F4. Can you adjust that? And also next time I want to make sure that we touch on this blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm almost trying to treat ChatGPT like I'm um, teaching, you know, a student or I'm talking to a team member or something that can actually offer value. Um, aside from just Google being get me the result please. It's a very different relationship. Uh, which is it's interesting point for sure.

Speaker B: Now you mentioned writing for people and not necessarily writing for Google, which got me to think, um, this chicken of the RDX type of thing, you're starting a like you have a B2B company or any business and I guess can be relevant to any sort of business. You're starting a blog. Do you start writing for Google or do you start writing for people? How do you get there? How do you get to rank to begin with?

Speaker A: You always want to write for people. Good SEO is human centric at the

Speaker B: end of the day.

Speaker A: So if you write a blog and all of them are written human centric and conversational tones and to the T ideal, they still probably won't rank unless you have the authority to back up those pieces of content. So you could have a hundred blogs on your site that are the best blogs in the world. But if your site is a Dr. 0 versus Dr. 50 plus, those are two very different landscapes in Terms of how much traffic you gain over time, how quickly Google will understand and index your content. So I think there has to be a balance between thinking about this from blog and what people are reading and engaging with. That should be human written and human focused. And then the site structure and the architecture of your site, for example, the navigation menu, the footer, the site map, like all of the kind of nuts and bolts from a technical standpoint, like that's for Google, that's how Google understands your content. The schema, like all of that, you know, weird things that are dev focused, that's for Google. So it just, you have to think about it from a perspective of who's actually engaging with this and what is the goal of what I'm working on at that given time.

Speaker B: All right, well, thank you so much for this. Um, I have a couple of extra questions for you. Um, I would say I'm expecting shortish answers, uh, so that you go straight to the point. Um, first one, what's your take on SEO writing assistance?

Speaker A: I think they're dangerous and if you become too reliant on them, you will probably diminish the quality long term and become less creative as a human.

Speaker B: Okay, I love myself a follow up question there. Why would you say they're dangerous? I agree there, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Speaker A: I think the AI content is still a little too early in the game to take it at face value and publish it and then question why your content didn't rank. And so there's still a lot to be said around how to optimize content, how to write for human conversational tones. All the things I've kind of just rambled through. And so over time, humans are lazy and if you're using these AI written tools, you're going to become more reliant on them inherently because life is easier. You don't have to write, you don't have to think. And so I'm guilty of it too when I'm using ChatGPT. And so I think that if you work that into your tech stack, you're going to slowly become more useful with it and how you use it. And uh, it's a slippery slope at the end of the day.

Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely agree there with the humans taking the or our brains are taking the easy way out. That's just how we're all wired in a sense. I mean, a couple of months ago I was definitely deep and relying on AI too much for content creation and then I had to stop. I didn't completely uh, raw AI out of my, uh, workflows. But I had to really rethink how I use it because I was just unable to think for myself and that really became a problem. So, yeah, definitely agree there. Um, all right, so, uh, what would you say is the hardest part about SEO?

Speaker A: The delayed gratification that comes with it. And I think that anybody who actually understands the value of SEO and has experienced it firsthand, it is so rewarding. And everyone agrees that it's well worth the wait. But that game of waiting and just going through the months of pain thinking, why am I doing this? Is it actually worth it? What's on the other side of it? It's, it's a very hard place to be in, especially when you're a business trying to, you know, make returns and create revenue and croi. And um, it's very hard to tie those to SEO in the short run. It's a very long term payoff. So I think patience pays in SEO. And it's important to remember that this

Speaker B: one is going maybe to make you laugh or smile, but what's the ideal frequency for publishing blog content? You probably hear that a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah, as often as you can without it, uh, diminishing the quality. So if you're, if you can do an article a day and you feel like it actually is high quality and edited well and written well, go for it. If it's one a week or one a month, go for it. I think that every company is different. Every content strategy is different. Some articles might be very easy to write, some might be very difficult to write. And so I think that all things considered, you have to see what makes sense, resources allocated, and is that actually the best use of your time? So if you're a, uh, CMO or a founder, should you actually be writing blog content? Probably not. Like, I think that it really comes down to what is the highest leverage thing that you can be doing at that point. And if it's blog content, great. If not, let someone like us help you.

Speaker B: Another question you probably hear a lot. Is there an ideal word count for a blog post?

Speaker A: Classic SEO answer. It depends, I guess. Um, so I would say it really just depends on what the search intent is asking. You know, if it's a, um, super complex topic, it probably is, you know, in the 2000 word count range because you must have these sections to compete. And take a look at any of the top ranking articles, you probably see the same thing. Um, however, other niches that are less competitive or a little bit more straight to the point you can probably get away with 750 words to 10001500 max. So there's no black and white answer for what you should aim for or what you shouldn't aim for. I would say less is always more. That's probably our golden rule that I try and stick to. Don't um, think that everyone's ranking for a thousand and if I have 4,000 I'm gonna get straight to the first page. It's probably the opposite. So, um, same thing as, you know, going back to the human centric mindset. Like, do you think they really want to read a 4,000 word article if you can get the point across in a thousand words? Probably not. So I'd say trust your gut there.

Speaker B: Good. And if you had to narrow it down to one, that's probably the difficult part. What's your best recommendation for anyone trying to up their SEO game?

Speaker A: I think that there are so many great creators just absolutely dominating LinkedIn right now with high quality content, case studies, tips and tricks like AI, you know, tools that they're using. And um, everyone's kind of using LinkedIn as their open source diary in a way to track what they're learning, what they've worked on. And anybody who's up and coming can just be a sponge and follow, you know, a handful of great creators who publish content daily and just start eating up all of this, you know, certain type of content. And it's also great because you can follow specific people who are experts in their field and get really niche information daily or weekly. So I think that, you know, it's a, it's a great place to be and if you're trying to go down that journey, uh, think about LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Another one actually that just came to my mind. Um, what's your take on guests? Um, guest posting. Like should, should B2B companies like, I mean I'm asking because I'm receiving so many emails from like, hey, do you accept guest posters at the moment, for instance? We don't, uh, and we have reasons for that. But like, what's your take on this from an SEO perspective?

Speaker A: I'm sure all of the backlink people are going to freak out when I say this, but I think it's dead. I think it's a trash strategy. At the end of the day I think that there are so many better ways to get links and it just doesn't make sense from the time trade off perspective anymore. Um, yeah, I'll keep it that, but I think that there are better things you could be doing with your time.

Speaker B: All right, I'm just going to set some auto reply on my email so that I direct those people to you and then they hear that message, I'll

Speaker A: just send them back to you and we'll just put them in a loop.

Speaker B: Oh, boy. Uh, but yeah, I think that was it for me. But I have one last, uh, question for you, uh, before you get to continue with your day. What's a piece of advice you received that made you a better professional?

Speaker A: Just try and wake up every day excited to work. I think that it's so easy to get caught in the grind culture and the rat race or whatever you want to call it, but if you can just wake up truly happy to do what you're doing, you've already won. And I learned that early on, and it's been a good reminder every day.

Speaker B: That's fantastic advice and on those beautiful words, uh, I guess that's it. We're done for today. So, Steven, thank you so much for joining. This was, at least for me, quite inspiring. Got a few ideas to probably go and work on right now as we end this, uh, chat. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: And this concludes today's episode. I hope you learned a thing or two, and if you did, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. This podcast is brought to you by marketing agency advanced B2B. So if you're looking for a partner to assist you with strategic marketing and anything HubSpot spot, visit advancedb2b.com and if you're still around to hear this, thank you for listening and take care.

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