February 15, 2026 • 55 mins
We unpack how search is changing as LLMs reshape discovery and why revenue, not rankings, should anchor your strategy. Corey Morris joins Matt to map a practical path: entity clarity, brand differentiation, GA4 fixes, and forward-looking KPIs that speak C-suite.
• shifting from keyword rankings to revenue KPIs
• LLM visibility layered on modern SEO foundations
• entity clarity, consistent data, and brand trust
• quality content over AI slop with lived expertise
• GA4 configuration and custom attribution
• dashboards that follow dollars not vanity metrics
• podcasts and thought leadership as ROI channels
• forecasting, risk assumptions, and boardroom language
Guest Contact Information:
Website: coreymorris.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/coreymorris
More from EWR and Matthew:
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Free SEO Consultation: ewrdigital.com/discovery-call
With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online.
Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability.
Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.
Your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential.
Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (00:17):
Howdy, welcome back to another funfold episode of
The Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, Matt Bertram.
It is 2026.
You're probably not going to getthis podcast for about a month
or two.
Uh, apologies.
We're uh backed up.
We've been doing a lot of greatinterviews.
Uh, I also need to change theintro.
I know that.
(00:37):
Um uh, but things are gettingdone.
I got a whiteboard set up behindme.
Um, you know, there we're we'regonna be doing some some
conversational talks.
Uh, we got a small group goingnow.
Um, there's a lot of well,discussion in that group, and
I'm kind of pulling some of thatforward uh into the podcast
(00:59):
because I think a lot of peopleare having the same questions.
Uh, I've been talking to a lotof different agency owners about
uh where the market's going, uh,what's happening with the AI
systems, how does that uhinteract with the traditional
systems?
I got a lot of clientconversations happening.
And so um the small groups havebeen pretty, pretty active.
(01:22):
And I think uh, you know, kindof bringing that uh out there to
to the public is is good.
Uh if you're an agency ownerlistening and you don't know
what's going on, umMatthewberchram.com.
I'm getting uh some consultinggoing there.
Um formally, I've been doingthis for a long time and people
have been asking me for that.
(01:43):
But uh we do have some smallgroups.
I do have uh Corey Morris here,um, and uh CEO of Voltage
Digital.
And uh Corey, welcome to theshow.
Uh you got a great background,love for you to share it with
the audience, and we can kind ofget into a discussion of uh how
the market's shaping up for you.
SPEAKER_02 (02:01):
Yeah, sounds good.
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Um, yeah, much like what youjust said, I've been doing this
for a long time, and it's it'slike, where do you start and
what do you unpack?
Um a little over 20 years nowinto my career, and it's it's
wild to to take a moment and getout of the weeds and and step
back and think about wherethings were 20 years ago, uh,
(02:23):
let alone just three or fouryears ago in uh the digital
marketing world.
Um, but my career has spanned umgoing from being a project
manager to digging really deepinto SEO as uh as a subject
matter expert and leading a teamthere at a previous agency, um,
having paid search in mybackground, um, email marketing,
(02:46):
and then you know, all of thatbefore social media emerged, and
and then being a morewell-rounded digital marketer,
and then starting um landing inin voltage as an employee, and
eventually working up throughrunning the agency day to day um
to becoming the owner um severalyears ago.
And so there's a lot ofentrepreneurial stuff in there.
(03:08):
There's a lot of like, you know,SEO woven in and digital
marketing um is digital strategyand and SEO and all where it's
going is is still a huge corepart of what we do day to day.
SPEAKER_01 (03:20):
You know, uh I don't know if you knew this, but my
pathway is has been very similarto that.
And so I I came on uh to to EWRwhen it was eWeb results uh as a
a contractor, actually, and thengot brought in-house and and
moved up.
And then we actually, uh Chris,who was my co-host who started
(03:41):
the podcast, uh, we grew anotherbusiness that's very, very
successful now.
Um, I'll tell you, uh, I don'twant to give too much away, but
we just got him on anotherpodcast.
But this is where podcasting'sgoing, okay.
We paid$23,000 or close to that,somewhere in that number for 45
minutes on a specific podcast.
(04:03):
Okay.
And he had to drive to to thelocation and all that.
And why did we do that?
Why did we do that?
Well, when we were firstlaunching the supplement brand,
um he came to me and he said,like, how how do we need to
what's our go-to-market?
And I was like, How much moneywe got?
It's like eight grand.
(04:24):
And so I got him on a bunch ofpodcasts, and we saw huge ROI
from that and uh built affiliateprograms and um you know
continued to to build the brand.
Now he's got a book, he's got aconference, uh, he's got his own
podcast.
And one of the major objectivesuh that we're tracking on kind
of like uh experimental search,uh, in addition to like the the
(04:48):
the main staples, our podcasts,and we found uh huge um ROI from
that.
And so um it's really worth thethe investment.
And so now he and the otherpartners that started EWR are
doing that full time, and I hadthe opportunity to to buy an
ownership share and looking at,you know, um uh, you know,
(05:11):
taking out the rest of the captable at certain point.
So um, but yeah, so so I've I'vekind of gone through that as
well.
And I would tell you that SEOwas a very nice, shiny object
that you said SEO, and everybodywanted that.
I'm starting to feel the sameway uh when we're talking about
um, you know, showing up in ChatGPT or something like that.
(05:33):
Uh, people don't reallyunderstand how the systems work.
I think they're a little morehands-on with it, uh, but but
I'm seeing a lot of need for it,and there's this huge debate,
okay.
And and I know a lot of the topSEOs and man, they I hate
getting on LinkedIn becausethere's just too much going on
uh all the time.
It's pretty noisy, but there's ahuge group of people that are
(05:56):
like, it's still just SEO,right?
And then there's a huge group ofpeople going, no, it's
fundamentally different.
And then I look at the data andI'm like, well, there you know,
is about 30 something overlap,and fundamentally they're trying
to get to the same result, buthow they get there is completely
different.
(06:16):
And I don't think I don't thinkthat that's been fully realized.
And and I think there's just alot of debate around like a new
name or a shiny object, butfundamentally, the more I get
into learning about AI itselfand how machine learning works,
and then how they surfaceeverything, it's fundamentally
well improved my understandingof like it's not about following
(06:41):
checklists, you know what Imean?
It's not it like everything'sbeen shifting, uh, and and I
think everything's a lot moreopen and more transparent, but
it's more complicated, so it'sstill kind of black box for a
lot of people.
And I just now in the lastcouple of months have started to
see people fundamentally takethe shift.
I mean, maybe people are talkingabout it, but they're giving lip
(07:03):
service to it.
But now I'm starting to see realinroads happen in the space.
And I also see these AI systemsacting really, really odd.
Um, they're not like justfollowing what Google's doing
anymore.
So I'd be interested to hearkind of your uh take on the
market itself and like whatwell, I know we were talking
(07:24):
previously about KPIs andtracking and revenue and all
those sort of things.
I would love to see kind of howyou're stacking it up today.
SPEAKER_02 (07:32):
Yeah, I mean, you just uh mentioned a whole bunch
there in just like two minutes,and um, I'm very aligned with
you on the in fact.
I had to go, I had to stop andback myself out of LinkedIn for
a period last year and just bein there for essential things
and ignore the feed becausepeople I know and love and trust
(07:54):
were were giving me eitherfrustrating me in not in a bad
way, but just with where wherethe debate was going and the
conversations were going, orgiving me some FOMO where it's
like, well, I'm not doing allthese massive experiments and
reverse engineering everythingbecause that's not a good use of
my time right now um for thisfraction of maybe getting one
(08:17):
visitor or speculating on onwhere this is.
My my goal isn't to to break thenews in the industry, it's to
help help brands move forwardand distill a lot of that down.
So, yes, I'm testing andexperimenting, but at a level
that is closer to beingsomething I can implement or my
team can implement.
And so I we actually wrote a uhit's not a public POV, but we
(08:42):
wrote one last year as anexercise for us to really get
around that because there was somuch about people wanting to
coin the new term and or talkabout what it is and isn't,
where I think to the point youwere getting into a little bit
is you know, on the on the theum traffic side of it, it's not
a correlation of okay, well,maybe search traffic dropped 50,
(09:08):
and that 50 can be accounted forover in an LLM.
It's like there's this is notjust a it moved type of scenario
one-to-one, it's changing, andGoogle also obviously you know,
with their AI overviews andintegration and direct, you
know, uh direct answers, but trychanging in the most disruptive
(09:29):
way they ever have the searchresults page.
There's there's just a a bigshift with multiple variables
that is hard to quantify.
And I know we're gonna talkabout attribution and some of
that to come, but uhphilosophically, where I started
was and when I was when I wasstarting to get asked by some
colleagues at a mastermind ofhey, um you guys are really like
(09:52):
doubling down on SEO, right?
When AI started to blow up,that's kind of a bold move.
And I said, My my answer was andcontinues to be no matter what
the avenue is and the platformor how it how whatever the
algorithm looks like or orsource is, there are brands out
there that want to be found, andthe game is getting even more
(10:13):
complex now, so there's gonna beas much, if not more, demand,
even even when we look at someof the short-term drops in
traffic and the questions, andyou know, is SEO actually
finally dead after the millionthtime of people asking it?
Well, maybe SEO from 2020 isdead, and I think that's where
we get into the nuance of whatyou were talking about of all
(10:34):
those debates out there that Ithink are distracting.
Of well, yeah, outdated SEO.
There's so much nuance intothat.
Uh, the SEO changed so much inthe last two or three years,
anyway, that if you'vemodernized it, a lot of things
are working.
So maybe there's 80% of your SEOstrategy, your modern, accurate,
yeah, up-to-date SEO strategydoes influence LLMs, but SEO in
(10:59):
2026 is different than SEO in2022.
And so a lot of that um applies.
I was just talking to my teamyesterday who we had three we've
had three leads um come throughthat were actually real people.
We talked to them as prospectsthrough finding my agency
through LLMs, and that's notthrough us having a dedicated
(11:20):
separate GEO strategy versus SEOstrategy, that's just through a
lot of the evolution of doingthe right things across the
board for visibility and doingit and being able to do those
things and push those forward.
So that's my soapbox.
Now get off of it.
SPEAKER_01 (11:35):
Well, uh again, uh kind of a similar story.
Um, I don't know if it was twoyears ago, two and a half years
ago, something like that, but wegot a call.
Uh, and they're like, We're onlylike, so we got so I got asked
to be on the call um by my salesteam.
So I came on the call and youknow, this good client and
(11:56):
became one of our biggestclients.
It's still a client today.
But essentially what happenedwas they called and said, the
only re this is how we startedthe conversation.
Like, I get on the call andthey're like, the only reason
that we're talking to you is youshowed up first in perplexity.
And this was two and a halfyears ago.
(12:18):
And my first question, and look,like, I mean, I was a little
behind the curve, I like Iwasn't on the cutting edge of
all this because I didn'tunderstand it.
I'm not gonna talk about it if Idon't understand it.
Like, I was still learning aboutit.
I go, what is perplexity?
That was my first question.
So he goes, Okay, so so, but Igo, great, like, great.
(12:39):
And and then as we were talking,he was like, I recognize your
voice.
And he goes, I've listened toyour podcast.
So that was why we got theclient, right?
Like, so there was a discoverycomponent of it, but there's a
lot of other things that youneed to do with your brand to to
close the deal.
And and so it could be you knowa a tipping off point, but I
(13:03):
also think we we were talkingwith one client about setting up
custom GPTs as a like a uh, youknow, a visibility component.
I go, no, this is more of like atrust or an intake component.
It it's it's not being used inthat light.
But to your point, I think thatuh good SEO has evolved, right?
(13:23):
So like if you're operating onold strategies and it moves into
kind of like you know, the BERT,and then there was like a like
the semantic stuff, and thenthere's entity, like so things
have moved and they're therewill continue to move.
But if you're doing good work,you're creating visibility.
And I think that traditionalSEO, the way I see it, is it's
like the layer one.
(13:44):
It's like to it's the tablestakes to get into the game.
You you have to be right in thetop 100, at least showing up for
the keyword.
If you don't show up for thekeyword, like in that top 100,
and that's like a good target,you're not gonna qualify for
anything else, whether it is AIoverviews or you know, rankings
or what have you, right?
So you have to be good enoughand differentiate yourself
(14:07):
enough where the machines,whether it be search engines or
AI bots, understand what it isyou do.
So you have to be really clearabout that.
Um, and the clearer you can beabout that kind of entity
disambiguizationdisambiguitization of who you
are versus somebody else.
(14:28):
And like also a lot of peoplehave data out there that like
needs to be cleaned up becauseyou know, like they just assume
that I'm on this platform, thisplatform, and this platform, and
this platform, they know it'sall the same person, and and
they're giving you credit forthat.
And I'm seeing that not beingthe case in a lot of instances.
Um, but I I feel liketraditional SEO and that
(14:50):
foundation gets you into thegame, and then there's kind of
that icing on the cake, which islike the the LLM layer, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (14:58):
Well, and and I think several of the things you
talked about withdifferentiation are are
important.
And in the era, probably thelast two decades.
I mean, while I've been doingthis, it's there's been so much
focus on well, it's digital, sowe can just pump out more and
all the wasted impressions.
Who cares?
Wasted traffic, who cares?
(15:19):
It'll go through the funnel,we'll get what we need.
When you see diminishingvisibility and traffic, now it's
actually pushed us back to thethings we've said all along.
And when we I say we, I'mpointing at myself as well,
right?
The things that we've said, wewant to create a quality
experience, we want to havebrand, you know, talk about our
brand in a way that standsapart, unless you're selling
(15:41):
you're the low price leader andyou're selling the widget for
the cheapest price, which I'venot worked with clients who are
like, I just want the mass andI'm gonna undercut somebody
because that's the Amazons ofthe world are gonna do that or
whatnot as well, right?
And we're not, and I haven't hadthem as a client, but when we
actually have to to to actuallydo what we've said for a long
(16:03):
time in the industry and go lookback at reinvesting in brand
strategy, brand development,product development, sales
messaging, and processdevelopment.
Because if you get we canactually get hopefully the same
opportunities, but we have to bemore focused in when we get that
impression and what we do withit and to move it through the
(16:25):
funnel.
So we actually have to put ourmoney where our mouth is on the
quality versus quantity, focusto it and differentiate.
Um, you know, I I had theopportunity to work with a
publisher and write a book, andit's really just outlining my
five-step process for digitalmarketing planning, and it's an
acronym called START is myprocess, and it's that first
(16:47):
six-week to two-month process wework through, like so many other
agencies as well.
But we we um I I was very clearthere because we also niched
down our service line and westopped doing branding, we
stopped doing brand strategy andall that, and and so I I talk
about those things asprerequisites.
You have no business, and wefind out the hard way sometimes
(17:08):
with clients.
If there are big gaps, you haveno business going and giving
Google hundreds of thousands ofdollars in Google ads and
spending a year or two on SEO tofind out that uh in a really
expensive experiment that youhad some gaps in your messaging
and your product development andyour roadmap, or you didn't have
things that were PR worthy andsome of the traditional things
(17:31):
and and that become digital andare those influences now.
So there's just so much thereand so much emphasis where it's
like I can't just kind of fakemy way through it, and I can't
just en masse scale AI generatedcontent, throw it out there, and
hope that it's gonna tell thebrand story and land that part,
that that diminishing amount oftraffic I might be getting and
(17:54):
convert them um or impress my AIcontent to go impress an AI
entity.
SPEAKER_01 (18:01):
Yeah, I mean, I I you know the term that
everybody's using on LinkedIn islike AI slop, right?
And and and I think it it isreally as people get more
comfortable with these tools,and when I say comfortable, I
mean a foundational level withthese tools, uh you're able to
create tons of content at mass.
And that's where I think the eatcomponent, they added that
(18:24):
experience layer to it, becausenow you can kind of trick the
the search engines to think thatyou have a certain kind of
experience.
Now, to put that all together inlike whatever your kind of you
know customer acquisitioncomponent is, and also to match
it with the brand, there'sactually a lot of additional
(18:44):
strategy work that has tohappen.
And to your point, that's been astruggle for for us, and and I
because we can execute reallywell, but you know, to make you
know do do fly, um, sometimes uhthere's there, you know, there's
certain things you have to goback and fix, right?
(19:07):
And so if you want us to executethis, we have to do these
things.
And so what has kind of happenedover time is me and a few of our
strategists have really startedto move away from the execution,
okay, and and try to evaluatethe business problem of what
you're having.
(19:27):
Because I I mean, many timespeople are coming to me and
they're going, I have a I have apaid media problem.
And I'm like, Well, okay, you'reranked fourth for a keyword that
has huge volume.
If you push that up, you coulddo that way less than what
you're spending on paid ads, andyou're going to get a much
better quality.
No, you have an SEO problem,right?
And or like they come in and youknow, there's all different
(19:50):
kinds of scenarios, but you'reright.
There, there's a many times isokay.
Well, you have a websitestructure issue, right?
Or you have a brand issue.
Issue, or you have no demandwhatsoever, so for a keyword
that no one's searching for.
So SEO is not really going towork.
Like, so like you got to makebetter decisions on the front
(20:13):
end of what your go-to-market isor your start program is to get
there.
And I really like that.
And one of the things I do wantto talk about if we have time,
this is an area I am lookinginto.
And I don't know how much youyou've you've like researched
this or not.
Um, I've I I was reading uh uhDwayne's book, uh The Machine
(20:36):
Layer uh over the over theholidays, and he was talking
about which I I knew about this,but he he really put it together
pretty well.
I'm gonna have him on on thepodcast, but um AI influence.
So when we get into KPIs, AI isinfluenced by what you're
saying, but is not referencingyou, right?
(20:59):
So your framework, like yourframework, like really making
sure that that's well definedand you know, potentially
trademarking and all that sortof thing, is important.
So you get attribution for thatbecause it might take your
framework and it might applythat framework and it might
impact it, and then it nevergives you credit.
(21:20):
And so, how do you measure that?
Right.
And so um that that is some ofthe factors around trademarking
the LM visibility and going,hey, y'all can fight over
whatever you want to call it.
This is what I believe it is,this is what we're doing.
We're just gonna we're gonnajust build this over here.
And and if anybody that I'mtalking to want to come over
(21:41):
there and check it out, and thenyou know, some of the industries
followed a little bit um uh inthat direction, but I still
think that there's you know, GAOand AEO and uh AI SEO, like all
of that I think is relevant, butthat where that battle is on the
naming convention is distractingon the implementation of of of
(22:06):
what's happening.
Um and really what we're seeingis clients need to understand
how to measure this.
And and I don't think thatanybody's come up with some
clear KPIs, and I don't thinkthat search rankings are the
right metric anymore.
And so we've been really slowlymoving away from that because
(22:26):
it's not it's not even relevant.
Um, it's just like we're lookingat just honestly, it's like
revenue.
Like, how where's the revenue?
Like, and can we figure thatout?
And what is that and work ourway backwards from that?
I I and I'm not saying thatthat's right, I'm just saying
that that's what we have done.
And it's the only way in theconversation with clients to
(22:49):
explain what's going on is justlike look at your bottom line.
Like, let like is what we'redoing having an impact?
Does it make sense?
Is it logical that this is goodbusiness, this is good
marketing?
Like, period.
SPEAKER_02 (23:02):
Yeah, no, you're uh what you're talking about is
exactly what we found works hashas worked really well for us.
Um a few years ago, we startedreally uh, and some of it was
because we realized no one wantsto to engage with someone,
(23:22):
whether it's an agency or hiresomeone who doesn't ask the
right questions and works justdoes the work blindly for six
months or a year, and then it'slike, oh, I wish I would have
known that, or I wish you wouldhave told me about that KPI or
how this impacts CRM orwhatever.
Like me, the 18 year agostarting out SEO, just wanted to
(23:45):
do my stuff and stay in my laneand stay in my channel because I
had enough to worry about therein that world and keeping up,
um, versus like getting intomessy corporate politics on the
client side or ask questionsabout things that were outside
of my channel or outside of mysubject matter expertise.
But what I my team and Irealized, even though our focus,
(24:07):
as we narrowed our focus to justsearch and websites and stop
doing branding, social, email,and the and creative services
and the 12 things we're doing,get down to just two things as
an agency, we still have to wecan't just hide in that silo or
in that in that subject matterexpertise, but we have to start
with we're gonna get fired, evenif it looks like all of our KPIs
(24:28):
are up and to the right.
If someone can't measure thatgap between what we're doing and
how it's impacting their bottomline, and it it it definitely
has gotten harder, but it's alsoa lot easier when you can have
transparent conversations,whether it's with the C-suite or
whatever highest level you canto your point of working
backwards, whether it's fromrevenue or profit and and
(24:51):
whatnot.
It's been it's been interestingwhen we've asked some of these
questions sometimes to you knowsenior global directors of
marketing about how their theirbusiness makes money.
And it's like, well, wait aminute, I'm just asking you to
about SEO.
Why are you asking me some ofthese ROI questions about
profitability?
But we want we need tounderstand that so we can have
(25:12):
full visibility of that to beable to help them understand.
Because to your point, it'slike, do we want to pour more
into this, or is that an unwisedecision either in this moment
because you're not ready yet,because there are some other
problems in the foundation ofyour house, or or in a couple
cases, you know, uh, you don'tthis is not the right channel.
You do not need paid search, toyour point.
(25:34):
We need a you have an SEOproblem, not a paid search
problem, or or even one of thestories I share in my book too
about a client uh actuallydidn't become a client, they're
a prospect, asked us to audittheir paid search because
they're like, Well, we feel likewe're getting this level of
profit, but we feel like if weoutsource it to an expert, they
might be able to take it evenfurther.
(25:55):
What we ended up finding out isthey were actually they thought
they were 20% profitable onthose leads.
They were actually 20% negativebecause they had attribution
problems and were connectingthose dots.
Like, you don't need to spendanymore.
Maybe you need to spend lessuntil you get these three or
four things fixed.
So we probably sold ourselvesout of potentially taking that
on, but we would have been firedanyway when they would have we
(26:17):
or that they would have figuredit out down the road on accident
or when harder questions wereasked later.
And so being it's it doesn'tfeel comfortable early on if
you're deep in the weeds like Iwas as a channel person and just
want to nerd out on one thing,but but thinking like a like a C
(26:38):
suite or CMO or director ofmarketing and what they're
accountable for and workingbackwards from there just opens
up a lot of new layers to beable to be successful or
navigate it together versusbeing you know walled off and in
a silo away from the the theactual KPIs that matter.
SPEAKER_01 (26:56):
You know, Corey, one of the things that you said uh
is is a discussion point in allthe crazy conversation that's
been going on.
And I I went to more conferenceslast year than I've gone to in a
long time, uh, because I reallywanted to like talk to people
and uh hear hear their storiesand join some masterminds and
all that sort of thing.
And I would tell you that thebiggest takeaway for me is that
(27:23):
SEOs that want to stay in theirlane and do their thing and
actually have a lot of greatdata and knowledge that you know
are well underpaid, uh in a in ahuge like the the amount of data
from traditional marketing andlike the reason that people or
CROs or you know executive suitethrow money into paid ads is
(27:46):
they can measure it.
And SEOs haven't done a good jobof tying it to revenue because
it's it's a little bit abstract,right?
Of like how to tie it and how itinfluences it.
And the best case studies Ihave, okay, which I need to like
publish them, I need to get geton that and publish them, but
are really reverse case studies.
(28:06):
Like, so I'm not I don't have asgood of data of like this
measured this, if like I can'ttie it to to the data points.
But what I can show is if youlose keyword rankings for
certain keywords, or like forexample, I have a um like a
private equity brand, andthere's a bunch of different
(28:27):
brands, and they're like, Okay,we need to focus on this one
brand.
And and and I basically took allthe budget and focused on that
one brand and kind of let theothers kind of shrink based on
the the layout of the website,right?
Like, like we're gonna reallyfocus on this because it's too
noisy, we don't know how tocategorize it, all this kind of
stuff.
Their revenues droppeddramatically, and I'm like, you
(28:50):
had other lead funnels comingin, but the but the brand, the
brand presence is so important,and it's like, how do you
measure like or that like alawyer with tort or whatever?
Like the like the brand beingthere when people research, and
I'm even seeing this in um uhsimilar web data.
People are going to the website,they're of course searching you
(29:12):
on Google, they're checking now.
One of the key sources fromsimilar web that I'm seeing on a
number of brands is like grok orchat GBT.
That's like the out so peoplefind out about you whatever way
it is, but then they go researchyou and they want to see like
where is that authority, whereis that expertise, where's that
trust?
How are how is that websitepresenting it?
(29:33):
And if you don't have thoseright things and you aren't, you
know, hitting on the hot buttonsor positioning right, um, it's
affecting revenue on thebackside, just like the other
example with the keywords.
If you lose certain keywords orcategories or you know, fan out
too much and and it's notfocused, they feel the reverse
(29:53):
impact a lot more than theincremental increase.
You know what I mean?
Uh or I don't know, it's beenweird.
It's been, but it's but it'sthese like reverse case studies
where I see the value in thedata of where that risk factor
is if we don't do this versushere's what we would get if we
do do this.
SPEAKER_02 (30:12):
Well, and I think for and I'm gonna say this and
make this disclaimer for anyonewho's tuning in at this minute
and didn't hear what we justtalked about about 10 minutes
ago, but I'm not advocating forold SEO, but but obviously a big
part of content and contextdriven and authority-building
SEO forever has been qualitycontent.
(30:33):
And so if you've got stalecontent, outdated content out
there, even on a page that youthink might get one visit a
year, but it still needs to beout there because it's a service
you have, or it's still a blogpost for that super long tail
one person right fit prospectthat might come in it and it's
worthy of staying on your site,make sure it's updated, make
sure it's accurate because thatwhole complete picture still
(30:56):
matters.
And so, yeah, the the you can'tgo into okay, we got to prune
everything, or but at the sametime, we can't, like in the old
days, neglect all this oldcontent out here either, because
that complete picture is isbeing judged exponentially more
by by AI than it even was byGoogle, who would have to fan
(31:17):
out and eventually see it andput the picture together in a
more uh more um longer-term way.
SPEAKER_01 (31:23):
I think you just said it, the complete picture,
right?
That is what AI is doing isreally grabbing the complete
picture and looking at it fromall these different angles.
And so you have to think abouteverything.
And then even going back to myearlier point to highlight a
little bit more, when you saidat the very beginning, you're
like, I went through this phase,you said you that you were a
(31:45):
digital marketer.
And I I actually think it'svery, very difficult today,
unless you work at a very largecompany, uh, which there's a lot
of issues with siloing and andeverything as as you go bigger
and red tape.
But if you're not a digitalmarketer, at least have that
(32:06):
surface level understanding.
Like the previous experiencewith the agency of doing all
these other things make youbetter at SEO, make you better
at kind of like the informationcapture, the information
organization or or or umdiscovery process because they
all impact it, they're all woventogether, they're not um siloed.
(32:28):
And and I I just think it's SEOsreally need to improve their
language about how they'recommunicating about what they're
doing.
And I I I honestly think thatthe KPIs are what's holding
everybody back and andrethinking through what the real
KPIs are of how do we measurethis and have more kind of
(32:51):
boardroom language um is gonnachange the game.
And I feel like SEOs have themost data.
Now, some of it's siloed andbringing it all together, and
again, AI helps with that, butbeing able to articulate that
data is where the gap is.
SPEAKER_02 (33:09):
Yeah, no, and that's exactly it.
That goes the getting, andthat's the hardest part again,
to get comfortable going outsideof your comfort zone of this is
what I know.
Now I got to enter into somebodyelse's territory or find the
gray area where nobody owns theKPIs, things are disconnected,
and and to be willing to be aproblem solver at a different
(33:30):
level.
Like you might have two or threemonths of if you're in an agency
or even in a new higher-end yourteam, of before you actually do
any SEO work or any optimistoptimizing anything, just trying
to troubleshoot and problemsolve and connect the dots with
dashboards and data that'severywhere and CRMs, things that
have been neglected for years orhave been built by certain teams
(33:52):
and that aren't talking to eachother.
And I don't know, whether that'sa Fortune 500 or a 10-person
company, those things exist andthose they've always existed,
but it's more important thanever to get the dots connected
because we can't just assumethat everything's up and to the
right, and I even see leads gothrough or e-commerce sales come
through from search with a niceattribution string, that it's
(34:15):
gonna equal somebody saying goodjob in the ownership or C-suite
or on the client side or or inthe in the stakeholder seats to
actually understand that.
And um, yeah, it's it has beenfascinating to see how things
have changed.
You mentioned earlier talkingabout podcasts and strategy, and
that's again, you know, some ofthe things that maybe aren't
(34:37):
text on a page or an inboundlink that you can see as an SEO
from years ago, um, maybe getnot don't get thought about as
much because it's it doesn'tfeel like indexable content, but
you know, all the collection ofstuff is important, and how much
you're willing to shareknowledge and put it out there
is important too.
And the there are all kinds ofproblems and question marks on
(35:00):
trademark and defending it.
And you know, if I give more tothe LLMs, are they gonna just
gonna rip me off into Google?
Are they gonna rip me off evenmore?
And so there's all I'm not evenI'm not even gonna wade into the
legal side, how do you protectthat?
That's still to come um in ourindustry in the next few years,
but there's just so much aboutuh considering how much do you
(35:22):
gate and keep close to the vestand maybe not get found versus
how much do you freely giveaway?
And and I was reminded of this alittle bit when you were talking
about um some of the educationmy team yesterday was talking
about um as going throughinterviewing and hiring um for
another um search role, talkingabout uh the approach of most of
(35:46):
our clients don't care about thenerdiness and the super
technical parts of it.
But do we hold that back andwater it down where they and
they don't get the impression orunderstanding of it enough?
So we're like, we have it there,and we might give them 90
seconds of it before they youknow they're check out on us and
(36:06):
then get down to the level thatthey care about.
And that's whether you're anagency or an in-house or
whatever you're doing, I thinkthat's important to be able to
validate big pictures here.
We'll take you there, and youneed some forced education, even
if you don't want to listen, um,versus chasing all those shiny
objects and and making it feellike the snake oil or crystal
(36:28):
ball that it isn't if you'redoing it, uh doing it properly,
and and to be able todemonstrate that shift.
So I think that's part of thegap that we talked about too.
There are people talking aboutit way out here on the
exploratory end, and people whosound like it's outdated and you
can't validate if it's outdated,or we're just making it more
approachable and where thatmiddle ground is of how we work
(36:50):
through it, talk about it, andeducate stakeholders of where
we're going and how messy it isnow compared to how it's never
not been messy, but how it was alittle bit more linear and how
we measured it 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
Wow, you you you brought up some things that I I
will have to save, or maybewe'll bring you back for another
discussion.
I don't want to veer off toomuch into data hygiene issues uh
internally, uh externally.
Um, but uh I would love to diveinto in the kind of this last
piece here about KPIs and whatwere the KPIs you used to use?
(37:29):
What are the KPIs you're usingnow?
What do you think the KPIsshould be?
Are there any tools that you'refinding helpful?
Like, let's give people likeactionable steps on what they
should actually be looking at.
Because I'll tell you right now,all this nerdiness is exciting
for me.
Like, I I love digging into it.
(37:49):
I I love the data, I love how itall connects together.
Like that gets me going.
So, this is this re-evolution ofthe industry has been fantastic,
and and it's repositioningeverybody at the starting gate,
right?
And so uh certainly uh, youknow, people that have done
everything right uh are you'rehave an advantage, but for the
(38:11):
most part, it's a reset.
And and I and I love I lovethat.
Um and it's fun to compete.
Um now, but everybody elsethat's not thinking that way is
like, oh my gosh, I went throughanother learning cycle here.
Uh I just went through digitaltransformation, I'm just now
running ads since COVID, like Ifigured it out, and now I gotta
(38:34):
learn it again, and I'm tryingto run my business, and you
know, the private equity guysdon't have a clue um what is
going on.
They just want to dump theirmoney into something.
And so, like, how do you measurethis stuff?
Like, or what, yeah, just howare you dealing with with with
the the KPI component of it?
And I know we talked about thatprior to going live.
SPEAKER_02 (38:56):
Yeah, um I'll go back to to what we talked about
about starting at the thefurthest endpoint we can get,
whether that's revenue or or oradjusted gross income or
whatever it might be ofprofitability and working
backwards to make sure that uhfor us, in many cases, our
dashboards get all the if we canget attribution of search or
(39:20):
digital marketing driventraffic, like the old days, all
the way to um through leads.
And in many cases, we're workingB2B.
Um, and so we have lead valuesand getting close to the sales
team or or CRO or whoever itmight be who's leading that and
can validate that this data isclean um all the way through.
Getting to that number andunderstanding that and customer
(39:43):
lifetime value and all thosethings.
So that's the holy grail.
That's where we want to be,because then we can at whatever
regular checkpoints, annual ormore often, reevaluate that and
have a pulse of are we gettingenough leads?
Are we getting high enoughquality leads?
Um Are they targeted properlyand start the convers and keep
(40:04):
the conversation there on anongoing healthy basis and not
have to keep going andre-evaluating the ultimate
business goal and have and haveum challenges with that?
So if we can anchor to that atleast at an annu on an annual
basis and understand have thebusinesses goals changed, are
the marketing goals in alignmentwith that?
And that doesn't, again, soundlike an SEO's job, but it's
(40:26):
become more of important tovalidate that some of these
points are in place.
So for us, the deepest goals weget to typically and that we
love reporting on are thoseagreed upon KPIs related to
deals that come through or leadsthat come through and validate
and our ability to connect intoCRM or whatever levels of data
(40:47):
we can.
And we have e-commerce clientstoo, and that's different and
feels easier uh because we getthe data in real time coming
back to us, but also we have tounderstand margins and if you're
drop shipping versus where yourwarehouses are and what tariffs
did to you or anything else,then you can't just turn off
that part of the brain eitherand say, well, it's a four to
(41:07):
one or 12 to 1 ROAS, or or ifyou're looking at from an
organic perspective, how you'revalidating that return on um on
spin of of what you're investingin SEO efforts.
So whatever that is, not justtrusting it for a year or two or
three and saying, Okay, well, wegot you 50,000 leads in the last
(41:28):
five years.
Why why is that not profitable,or why is the company shutting
down or or selling off orwhatever?
And so that that's the KPIlayer.
It's it's not much differentthan what it's been in the past,
but there's extra scrutiny on itand making sure we understand it
and and not just trusting theother the other side of this
too, not just trusting GA4 outof the box, right?
(41:50):
Of course, what doesn't gettalked about is that GA4 emerged
a few years ago and stillfrustrates many, if not all, of
us, um, and because it it wehave assumptions that things
just work and get measuredproperly like they did
previously.
Um, we wrote a great article.
Um IVP of Strategy did last yearthat's got 15 screenshots in
(42:16):
walking you through the10-minute setup to go set up a
the attribution you need to seeLLM traffic and categorize it
properly.
And we've got another one comingin the next few weeks um based
on a client problem we weresolving yesterday um that's
solvable, but not anout-of-the-box feature.
And so uh the constantlyrevisiting and and rechecking
(42:38):
and validating has become uhunfortunately a new time
commitment to make sure the KPIsdon't get taken for granted.
SPEAKER_01 (42:47):
Yeah, I think um GA4 is something that was kind of
like when AdWords switched overto the new uh system.
Like there's actually somereally good components to it,
but they move stuff around andyou've got to do it a different
way and you gotta hook certainstuff up.
Um, you know, so I do think it'smore powerful or useful, and a
(43:08):
lot of stuff that might not beas useful, they're kind of
going, This is not as useful,like you don't need to focus on
this, but people are focused onolder KPIs.
I would love to hear kind of aswe close out what are the tools
that you're using and are thetools effective?
Because okay, like in the lastfour months, everybody added
their bolt-on AI visibilitytool, right?
(43:32):
And I mean even the traditionaltools, like I'm going like,
okay, are are y'all even I'mlike going to my team, I'm like,
are y'all even looking at thekeyword tracking?
Like, is it accurate?
Like, you know, and everybody'sgoing back to manual searches.
That's that's a lot of what, butthen manual searches are
(43:57):
personalized if you're lookingin the AIs to to to yourself.
And so then it's like, okay,have the client look at it.
There, there's so many differentlike layers or or kind of like
different angles to look atthis, and then like these tools
are also giving you one datapoint, and you're like, okay,
well, maybe that's pulling fromover here or over there, but I
(44:18):
can't replicate it, or theclient can't replicate it,
right?
It's like, oh, you're rankingnumber one, and then nobody on
your team can replicate theclient can't replicate, or like,
where is this number comingfrom?
And like, is that even datavalid?
And then I was on a like abigger panel discussion with a
bunch of teams, and the the ITteam was there, and they're
(44:39):
like, Isn't all this datatheoretical?
And I was like, Yeah, a lot ofit is, and they're like, So, how
do we know if it's true?
And I was like, We don't, andthat's why we're using multiple
tools to to kind of create likea GPS coordinate to to kind of
validate it from differentangles.
And I said, These are the goldstandard, this is what's out
(45:00):
there, you know.
I was like, So what what weended up doing is uh a guy on my
team and and his brother-in-law,they're like they're like coders
and stuff.
Uh, they built a tool calledCarrot and uh and we're we're
just launching that and and it'sliterally like all the input,
and we're gonna be using thistool customized mainly for for
(45:22):
our clients, but like it's gonnabe out there, but there are tons
of tools, it's just like reallycustomized to what we need, and
and um it's it's been wild, it'sbeen just wild about what's out
there, and I'm like, we paid forthis tool, we're paying for this
tool, and then I'm like, they'retelling me different things, and
then I'm like trying to talk totheir their dev team, and like
(45:45):
then they're explaining it tome, and I'm like, like it's
almost going back to like youryou know, you you look at the
revenue number and you know whatyou need to do, and you know
what things should be.
And I mean, I've just findmyself relying a little bit less
on the tools as kind of adefinitive answer and more kind
(46:06):
of on um like what I seehappening at where I can see it
in the data, but but I don'tfeel like the tools have done a
a great job doing that, and nowit's you know, um I don't know,
there's just a lot, a lot morenoise out there, is what I feel
like.
But that's my personal, and Iwould love to hear your and if
you don't agree with me, I wouldlove to hear the disagreement
(46:29):
because I I'm always learningand talking to other SEOs and
trying to learn myself.
SPEAKER_02 (46:33):
So no, I I I love what you said, and that example
you gave of being challenged onthe theoretical aspect of it,
it's always been theoretical.
We might have been, we mighthave felt more comfortable with
being able to see things in whatI've called a linear way before,
but there's always first click,last click, view went through
you know, windows, Facebooktaking credit for everything,
(46:55):
right?
Like all of all of that hasalways had problems of flaws,
and every tool, when we werestill focused on keywords way
back when would give you wilddifferent ranges of estimated
volume.
And yeah, Google was alwayspulling back data and trying to
make it, you know, go throughall their privacy things and
keywords not provided, moving itto Search Console and changing
(47:16):
how they sample data versus giveyou literal data, your own data,
and look at you know, and thenfiltering out spam and bot
traffic.
So all of that has always beensomewhat theoretical.
We just got better at packagingit and feel and trusting it, and
it got it did get better, but itit it definitely I I agree with
(47:36):
you.
We have yeah, we use some of theyou know leading tools like
hrefs and screen frog and thingsin our stack, but we went away
from the enterprise leveldashboard and report third-party
dashboard and reporting tool.
In fact, I couldn't, I for youknow, we'd been in it in them so
long that we had a 12-monthcontract that I didn't realize
it wasn't monthly.
(47:57):
And I'm like, oh man, we'vemoved away from that.
I still got to pay for it forsix more months on that
enterprise huge ticket thingthat we were paying for, because
we had gone to building our ownlooker dashboards and our own
reporting infrastructure, not ina way, not a software
development way, like we wouldhave thought about it 10 years
ago, but in a practical waywhere there's a base of what
(48:19):
we're pulling in.
We have a lot of customconfigurations in GA4, like we
talked about a moment ago, tomake sure we're actually getting
the data in the way we need itand to be able to parse it.
But all of that's connected asmuch as we can to that data
point on revenue or sales orleads or whatever it is.
And at the end of the day, it itobviously is a to a degree still
(48:42):
theoretical conversation.
And the client, or or if you'reagain in-house, you have to be
in an environment where yourbrand and company is comfortable
with understanding that there'sthis is an investment, and we
hope to see a return oninvestment.
And I use the example of like,do I go question my financial
(49:02):
advisor um and scrutinize?
There's a prospectus, there'sdisclaimers that say, you know,
past performance doesn'tguarantee future performance.
It's not a big line itemexpenditure, or it shouldn't be.
It should be looked at as aninvestment with an expectation
of return on investment.
And when we when we can look atit that way, then it's a healthy
conversation, like in othercategories of life or business.
(49:26):
And know that there are ups anddowns, and we're using what we
know from the past and what weproject for the future, and
we're trying to connect the dotsright here, but you know, it
it'll get us there, but it mightnot have been exactly how we
thought it would.
SPEAKER_01 (49:40):
Wow, I think that's a really good place.
I want to add one more point tothat, and then I want to give
you an opportunity to promotewhatever papers or you know, uh
stuff that you you want, andwe'll we'll get it in the show
notes.
Um, what I've seen, and I am inthe same situation, actually.
We, you know, at at a certainpoint we got locked into like a
(50:02):
big enterprise likevisualization, all this kind of
stuff, and our team loved it.
Okay, and they're like, it it'senterprise and it's presented to
the clients and all that.
And the conversation becamelike, are you are they seeing
value in it and are they usingit and is it helpful?
(50:23):
And like they I the the so Istarted going on the calls,
right?
And we started recording.
Um we we started about a yearand a half ago recording all our
calls and um feeding it to AIand we're getting kind of a
sentiment analysis as we scaleand um you know what needs to
happen.
And you know, I haven't fullyautomated it pushing into like a
(50:44):
CRM tool yet where it justcreates tasks, but I want to get
I want to get there.
Um, you know, there's a littlebit more training that has to
happen, but but I can tell youthat they weren't using it and
we've started to build our owndashboards and customize stuff.
But the point that I'm trying tomake is when I'm having those
(51:05):
discussions with clients, theydon't care about what happened.
They care about forward looking,they care about where is it
going, what are we doing, whatcan we expect?
And then they want me to putstake my name on it, and then
then they want to hold me towhatever I think will happen.
Does that make sense?
(51:26):
Like, that's what I'm seeing isthey're like, this is what okay,
what do you think will happen?
Where do you think we'll bebased on all this data?
And then I'll tell them, andthen whatever I said, that's
what's gonna get measured atwhatever next milestone there
is.
And then either that's true orfalse, or how close am I to that
(51:47):
number?
And that's what I'm starting tosee.
The forward-looking indicatorsis is really what the executives
that I'm talking to care about.
And am I right or am I wrong?
So they're like, you synthesizeit all, just tell us, and then
we'll measure if what you saidis true or not.
SPEAKER_02 (52:03):
And in so many cases, that's bringing them
transparently and authenticallyinto the mess with you to
understand that this is not anexact science because it's you
know, it it can backfire if wedon't do that.
Here's the flashy slide, here'sexactly what you're getting in
terms of revenue, and thensomething in the marketplace
changes, but we've never hadtalked about the risks involved
(52:25):
in a transparent way or what weknow and don't know, and then
traffic starts dropping.
It's like, well, we haven'teducated or talked about what we
do in this case and why the whywe actually expected it to start
trailing off, but this number ofyour revenue hasn't because it's
quality versus quite all thosethings, and so yeah, to that
point, the the trust that and inan industry that unfortunately
(52:48):
has had a lot of burned and andmisplaced trust, um, like like
others, but um being able toshare with them the expertise
and how we're bringing you alongon this journey and where we're
going, much like again, afinancial advisor, right?
You're trusting them to try tomanage your money, but and do it
(53:09):
proactively and not letsomething sit out there for six
months and get tanked and nothave a new strategy ahead.
And and I think that's thecleanest example for me to take
this to a different industry,but that's the the part of it
where you know, if we're toobuttoned up and we're always
trying to sell and present, andI say this from the agency side
of things, if we're alwaystrying to just present and put
(53:31):
another deck and put a rosypicture on something, then when
something really drasticchanges, we haven't built a
framework where we talk about itin a problem-solving, same team,
proactive way.
Now we're reacting and the houseis on fire and and and it's more
catastrophic than it ever shouldhave been.
SPEAKER_01 (53:49):
I love it.
Corey, uh, you've talked about alot of great things, y'all are
doing some awesome stuff.
I'd love for you to uh plugwhatever you would like to plug.
And I would also love for you,if there's one thing to kind of
crystallize uh for for anyonelistening, what is the one
takeaway?
What is the one unknown secret?
I guess you know, I used to sayof internet marketing, but just
(54:11):
what's the one big takeaway thatyou would have recommended to
anybody listening?
SPEAKER_02 (54:17):
Yeah, um uh I'll I'll come back to that.
I'll first mention the the uhthe areas um to find me.
So my agency is Voltage, that'seasily found at voltage.digital.
Um, if you I I do a lot ofspeaking and and sharing in the
industry, so you can find me atCorey Morris.com for that.
Um, or go find me on SearchEngine Journal or Search Engine
(54:38):
Land for my articles there, um,or for my book, The Digital
Marketing Success Plan, where Igive away uh that five-step
start planning process.
That's a long title.
Um, so I've shortened it to theDMsp.com.
And you can find it there orfind it on Amazon.
Um, but that takeaway really isconnected back to that start
(55:00):
planning process.
And it's the one where um I knowit gives anxiety if I bring up
the question of if you don'tknow or feel like you know that
your marketing is producing ROIand you feel like you're just
doing it because you've alwaysdone it, or somebody said you
should do it, or you're buying achannel essentially of activity.
Um that is where you definitelyshould scrutinize where it is
(55:25):
and if you have a plan.
Um, and I love to say, you know,if you don't have a plan, you're
just spending money.
SPEAKER_01 (55:33):
I love it.
Well, Corey, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Everyone listening.
This is the future of searchwith L Invisibility.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Uh bye bye for now.
This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.
Your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential.
Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (00:17):
Howdy, welcome back to another funfold episode of
The Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, Matt Bertram.
It is 2026.
You're probably not going to getthis podcast for about a month
or two.
Uh, apologies.
We're uh backed up.
We've been doing a lot of greatinterviews.
Uh, I also need to change theintro.
I know that.
(00:37):
Um uh, but things are gettingdone.
I got a whiteboard set up behindme.
Um, you know, there we're we'regonna be doing some some
conversational talks.
Uh, we got a small group goingnow.
Um, there's a lot of well,discussion in that group, and
I'm kind of pulling some of thatforward uh into the podcast
(00:59):
because I think a lot of peopleare having the same questions.
Uh, I've been talking to a lotof different agency owners about
uh where the market's going, uh,what's happening with the AI
systems, how does that uhinteract with the traditional
systems?
I got a lot of clientconversations happening.
And so um the small groups havebeen pretty, pretty active.
(01:22):
And I think uh, you know, kindof bringing that uh out there to
to the public is is good.
Uh if you're an agency ownerlistening and you don't know
what's going on, umMatthewberchram.com.
I'm getting uh some consultinggoing there.
Um formally, I've been doingthis for a long time and people
have been asking me for that.
(01:43):
But uh we do have some smallgroups.
I do have uh Corey Morris here,um, and uh CEO of Voltage
Digital.
And uh Corey, welcome to theshow.
Uh you got a great background,love for you to share it with
the audience, and we can kind ofget into a discussion of uh how
the market's shaping up for you.
SPEAKER_02 (02:01):
Yeah, sounds good.
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Um, yeah, much like what youjust said, I've been doing this
for a long time, and it's it'slike, where do you start and
what do you unpack?
Um a little over 20 years nowinto my career, and it's it's
wild to to take a moment and getout of the weeds and and step
back and think about wherethings were 20 years ago, uh,
(02:23):
let alone just three or fouryears ago in uh the digital
marketing world.
Um, but my career has spanned umgoing from being a project
manager to digging really deepinto SEO as uh as a subject
matter expert and leading a teamthere at a previous agency, um,
having paid search in mybackground, um, email marketing,
(02:46):
and then you know, all of thatbefore social media emerged, and
and then being a morewell-rounded digital marketer,
and then starting um landing inin voltage as an employee, and
eventually working up throughrunning the agency day to day um
to becoming the owner um severalyears ago.
And so there's a lot ofentrepreneurial stuff in there.
(03:08):
There's a lot of like, you know,SEO woven in and digital
marketing um is digital strategyand and SEO and all where it's
going is is still a huge corepart of what we do day to day.
SPEAKER_01 (03:20):
You know, uh I don't know if you knew this, but my
pathway is has been very similarto that.
And so I I came on uh to to EWRwhen it was eWeb results uh as a
a contractor, actually, and thengot brought in-house and and
moved up.
And then we actually, uh Chris,who was my co-host who started
(03:41):
the podcast, uh, we grew anotherbusiness that's very, very
successful now.
Um, I'll tell you, uh, I don'twant to give too much away, but
we just got him on anotherpodcast.
But this is where podcasting'sgoing, okay.
We paid$23,000 or close to that,somewhere in that number for 45
minutes on a specific podcast.
(04:03):
Okay.
And he had to drive to to thelocation and all that.
And why did we do that?
Why did we do that?
Well, when we were firstlaunching the supplement brand,
um he came to me and he said,like, how how do we need to
what's our go-to-market?
And I was like, How much moneywe got?
It's like eight grand.
(04:24):
And so I got him on a bunch ofpodcasts, and we saw huge ROI
from that and uh built affiliateprograms and um you know
continued to to build the brand.
Now he's got a book, he's got aconference, uh, he's got his own
podcast.
And one of the major objectivesuh that we're tracking on kind
of like uh experimental search,uh, in addition to like the the
(04:48):
the main staples, our podcasts,and we found uh huge um ROI from
that.
And so um it's really worth thethe investment.
And so now he and the otherpartners that started EWR are
doing that full time, and I hadthe opportunity to to buy an
ownership share and looking at,you know, um uh, you know,
(05:11):
taking out the rest of the captable at certain point.
So um, but yeah, so so I've I'vekind of gone through that as
well.
And I would tell you that SEOwas a very nice, shiny object
that you said SEO, and everybodywanted that.
I'm starting to feel the sameway uh when we're talking about
um, you know, showing up in ChatGPT or something like that.
(05:33):
Uh, people don't reallyunderstand how the systems work.
I think they're a little morehands-on with it, uh, but but
I'm seeing a lot of need for it,and there's this huge debate,
okay.
And and I know a lot of the topSEOs and man, they I hate
getting on LinkedIn becausethere's just too much going on
uh all the time.
It's pretty noisy, but there's ahuge group of people that are
(05:56):
like, it's still just SEO,right?
And then there's a huge group ofpeople going, no, it's
fundamentally different.
And then I look at the data andI'm like, well, there you know,
is about 30 something overlap,and fundamentally they're trying
to get to the same result, buthow they get there is completely
different.
(06:16):
And I don't think I don't thinkthat that's been fully realized.
And and I think there's just alot of debate around like a new
name or a shiny object, butfundamentally, the more I get
into learning about AI itselfand how machine learning works,
and then how they surfaceeverything, it's fundamentally
well improved my understandingof like it's not about following
(06:41):
checklists, you know what Imean?
It's not it like everything'sbeen shifting, uh, and and I
think everything's a lot moreopen and more transparent, but
it's more complicated, so it'sstill kind of black box for a
lot of people.
And I just now in the lastcouple of months have started to
see people fundamentally takethe shift.
I mean, maybe people are talkingabout it, but they're giving lip
(07:03):
service to it.
But now I'm starting to see realinroads happen in the space.
And I also see these AI systemsacting really, really odd.
Um, they're not like justfollowing what Google's doing
anymore.
So I'd be interested to hearkind of your uh take on the
market itself and like whatwell, I know we were talking
(07:24):
previously about KPIs andtracking and revenue and all
those sort of things.
I would love to see kind of howyou're stacking it up today.
SPEAKER_02 (07:32):
Yeah, I mean, you just uh mentioned a whole bunch
there in just like two minutes,and um, I'm very aligned with
you on the in fact.
I had to go, I had to stop andback myself out of LinkedIn for
a period last year and just bein there for essential things
and ignore the feed becausepeople I know and love and trust
(07:54):
were were giving me eitherfrustrating me in not in a bad
way, but just with where wherethe debate was going and the
conversations were going, orgiving me some FOMO where it's
like, well, I'm not doing allthese massive experiments and
reverse engineering everythingbecause that's not a good use of
my time right now um for thisfraction of maybe getting one
(08:17):
visitor or speculating on onwhere this is.
My my goal isn't to to break thenews in the industry, it's to
help help brands move forwardand distill a lot of that down.
So, yes, I'm testing andexperimenting, but at a level
that is closer to beingsomething I can implement or my
team can implement.
And so I we actually wrote a uhit's not a public POV, but we
(08:42):
wrote one last year as anexercise for us to really get
around that because there was somuch about people wanting to
coin the new term and or talkabout what it is and isn't,
where I think to the point youwere getting into a little bit
is you know, on the on the theum traffic side of it, it's not
a correlation of okay, well,maybe search traffic dropped 50,
(09:08):
and that 50 can be accounted forover in an LLM.
It's like there's this is notjust a it moved type of scenario
one-to-one, it's changing, andGoogle also obviously you know,
with their AI overviews andintegration and direct, you
know, uh direct answers, but trychanging in the most disruptive
(09:29):
way they ever have the searchresults page.
There's there's just a a bigshift with multiple variables
that is hard to quantify.
And I know we're gonna talkabout attribution and some of
that to come, but uhphilosophically, where I started
was and when I was when I wasstarting to get asked by some
colleagues at a mastermind ofhey, um you guys are really like
(09:52):
doubling down on SEO, right?
When AI started to blow up,that's kind of a bold move.
And I said, My my answer was andcontinues to be no matter what
the avenue is and the platformor how it how whatever the
algorithm looks like or orsource is, there are brands out
there that want to be found, andthe game is getting even more
(10:13):
complex now, so there's gonna beas much, if not more, demand,
even even when we look at someof the short-term drops in
traffic and the questions, andyou know, is SEO actually
finally dead after the millionthtime of people asking it?
Well, maybe SEO from 2020 isdead, and I think that's where
we get into the nuance of whatyou were talking about of all
(10:34):
those debates out there that Ithink are distracting.
Of well, yeah, outdated SEO.
There's so much nuance intothat.
Uh, the SEO changed so much inthe last two or three years,
anyway, that if you'vemodernized it, a lot of things
are working.
So maybe there's 80% of your SEOstrategy, your modern, accurate,
yeah, up-to-date SEO strategydoes influence LLMs, but SEO in
(10:59):
2026 is different than SEO in2022.
And so a lot of that um applies.
I was just talking to my teamyesterday who we had three we've
had three leads um come throughthat were actually real people.
We talked to them as prospectsthrough finding my agency
through LLMs, and that's notthrough us having a dedicated
(11:20):
separate GEO strategy versus SEOstrategy, that's just through a
lot of the evolution of doingthe right things across the
board for visibility and doingit and being able to do those
things and push those forward.
So that's my soapbox.
Now get off of it.
SPEAKER_01 (11:35):
Well, uh again, uh kind of a similar story.
Um, I don't know if it was twoyears ago, two and a half years
ago, something like that, but wegot a call.
Uh, and they're like, We're onlylike, so we got so I got asked
to be on the call um by my salesteam.
So I came on the call and youknow, this good client and
(11:56):
became one of our biggestclients.
It's still a client today.
But essentially what happenedwas they called and said, the
only re this is how we startedthe conversation.
Like, I get on the call andthey're like, the only reason
that we're talking to you is youshowed up first in perplexity.
And this was two and a halfyears ago.
(12:18):
And my first question, and look,like, I mean, I was a little
behind the curve, I like Iwasn't on the cutting edge of
all this because I didn'tunderstand it.
I'm not gonna talk about it if Idon't understand it.
Like, I was still learning aboutit.
I go, what is perplexity?
That was my first question.
So he goes, Okay, so so, but Igo, great, like, great.
(12:39):
And and then as we were talking,he was like, I recognize your
voice.
And he goes, I've listened toyour podcast.
So that was why we got theclient, right?
Like, so there was a discoverycomponent of it, but there's a
lot of other things that youneed to do with your brand to to
close the deal.
And and so it could be you knowa a tipping off point, but I
(13:03):
also think we we were talkingwith one client about setting up
custom GPTs as a like a uh, youknow, a visibility component.
I go, no, this is more of like atrust or an intake component.
It it's it's not being used inthat light.
But to your point, I think thatuh good SEO has evolved, right?
(13:23):
So like if you're operating onold strategies and it moves into
kind of like you know, the BERT,and then there was like a like
the semantic stuff, and thenthere's entity, like so things
have moved and they're therewill continue to move.
But if you're doing good work,you're creating visibility.
And I think that traditionalSEO, the way I see it, is it's
like the layer one.
(13:44):
It's like to it's the tablestakes to get into the game.
You you have to be right in thetop 100, at least showing up for
the keyword.
If you don't show up for thekeyword, like in that top 100,
and that's like a good target,you're not gonna qualify for
anything else, whether it is AIoverviews or you know, rankings
or what have you, right?
So you have to be good enoughand differentiate yourself
(14:07):
enough where the machines,whether it be search engines or
AI bots, understand what it isyou do.
So you have to be really clearabout that.
Um, and the clearer you can beabout that kind of entity
disambiguizationdisambiguitization of who you
are versus somebody else.
(14:28):
And like also a lot of peoplehave data out there that like
needs to be cleaned up becauseyou know, like they just assume
that I'm on this platform, thisplatform, and this platform, and
this platform, they know it'sall the same person, and and
they're giving you credit forthat.
And I'm seeing that not beingthe case in a lot of instances.
Um, but I I feel liketraditional SEO and that
(14:50):
foundation gets you into thegame, and then there's kind of
that icing on the cake, which islike the the LLM layer, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (14:58):
Well, and and I think several of the things you
talked about withdifferentiation are are
important.
And in the era, probably thelast two decades.
I mean, while I've been doingthis, it's there's been so much
focus on well, it's digital, sowe can just pump out more and
all the wasted impressions.
Who cares?
Wasted traffic, who cares?
(15:19):
It'll go through the funnel,we'll get what we need.
When you see diminishingvisibility and traffic, now it's
actually pushed us back to thethings we've said all along.
And when we I say we, I'mpointing at myself as well,
right?
The things that we've said, wewant to create a quality
experience, we want to havebrand, you know, talk about our
brand in a way that standsapart, unless you're selling
(15:41):
you're the low price leader andyou're selling the widget for
the cheapest price, which I'venot worked with clients who are
like, I just want the mass andI'm gonna undercut somebody
because that's the Amazons ofthe world are gonna do that or
whatnot as well, right?
And we're not, and I haven't hadthem as a client, but when we
actually have to to to actuallydo what we've said for a long
(16:03):
time in the industry and go lookback at reinvesting in brand
strategy, brand development,product development, sales
messaging, and processdevelopment.
Because if you get we canactually get hopefully the same
opportunities, but we have to bemore focused in when we get that
impression and what we do withit and to move it through the
(16:25):
funnel.
So we actually have to put ourmoney where our mouth is on the
quality versus quantity, focusto it and differentiate.
Um, you know, I I had theopportunity to work with a
publisher and write a book, andit's really just outlining my
five-step process for digitalmarketing planning, and it's an
acronym called START is myprocess, and it's that first
(16:47):
six-week to two-month process wework through, like so many other
agencies as well.
But we we um I I was very clearthere because we also niched
down our service line and westopped doing branding, we
stopped doing brand strategy andall that, and and so I I talk
about those things asprerequisites.
You have no business, and wefind out the hard way sometimes
(17:08):
with clients.
If there are big gaps, you haveno business going and giving
Google hundreds of thousands ofdollars in Google ads and
spending a year or two on SEO tofind out that uh in a really
expensive experiment that youhad some gaps in your messaging
and your product development andyour roadmap, or you didn't have
things that were PR worthy andsome of the traditional things
(17:31):
and and that become digital andare those influences now.
So there's just so much thereand so much emphasis where it's
like I can't just kind of fakemy way through it, and I can't
just en masse scale AI generatedcontent, throw it out there, and
hope that it's gonna tell thebrand story and land that part,
that that diminishing amount oftraffic I might be getting and
(17:54):
convert them um or impress my AIcontent to go impress an AI
entity.
SPEAKER_01 (18:01):
Yeah, I mean, I I you know the term that
everybody's using on LinkedIn islike AI slop, right?
And and and I think it it isreally as people get more
comfortable with these tools,and when I say comfortable, I
mean a foundational level withthese tools, uh you're able to
create tons of content at mass.
And that's where I think the eatcomponent, they added that
(18:24):
experience layer to it, becausenow you can kind of trick the
the search engines to think thatyou have a certain kind of
experience.
Now, to put that all together inlike whatever your kind of you
know customer acquisitioncomponent is, and also to match
it with the brand, there'sactually a lot of additional
(18:44):
strategy work that has tohappen.
And to your point, that's been astruggle for for us, and and I
because we can execute reallywell, but you know, to make you
know do do fly, um, sometimes uhthere's there, you know, there's
certain things you have to goback and fix, right?
(19:07):
And so if you want us to executethis, we have to do these
things.
And so what has kind of happenedover time is me and a few of our
strategists have really startedto move away from the execution,
okay, and and try to evaluatethe business problem of what
you're having.
(19:27):
Because I I mean, many timespeople are coming to me and
they're going, I have a I have apaid media problem.
And I'm like, Well, okay, you'reranked fourth for a keyword that
has huge volume.
If you push that up, you coulddo that way less than what
you're spending on paid ads, andyou're going to get a much
better quality.
No, you have an SEO problem,right?
And or like they come in and youknow, there's all different
(19:50):
kinds of scenarios, but you'reright.
There, there's a many times isokay.
Well, you have a websitestructure issue, right?
Or you have a brand issue.
Issue, or you have no demandwhatsoever, so for a keyword
that no one's searching for.
So SEO is not really going towork.
Like, so like you got to makebetter decisions on the front
(20:13):
end of what your go-to-market isor your start program is to get
there.
And I really like that.
And one of the things I do wantto talk about if we have time,
this is an area I am lookinginto.
And I don't know how much youyou've you've like researched
this or not.
Um, I've I I was reading uh uhDwayne's book, uh The Machine
(20:36):
Layer uh over the over theholidays, and he was talking
about which I I knew about this,but he he really put it together
pretty well.
I'm gonna have him on on thepodcast, but um AI influence.
So when we get into KPIs, AI isinfluenced by what you're
saying, but is not referencingyou, right?
(20:59):
So your framework, like yourframework, like really making
sure that that's well definedand you know, potentially
trademarking and all that sortof thing, is important.
So you get attribution for thatbecause it might take your
framework and it might applythat framework and it might
impact it, and then it nevergives you credit.
(21:20):
And so, how do you measure that?
Right.
And so um that that is some ofthe factors around trademarking
the LM visibility and going,hey, y'all can fight over
whatever you want to call it.
This is what I believe it is,this is what we're doing.
We're just gonna we're gonnajust build this over here.
And and if anybody that I'mtalking to want to come over
(21:41):
there and check it out, and thenyou know, some of the industries
followed a little bit um uh inthat direction, but I still
think that there's you know, GAOand AEO and uh AI SEO, like all
of that I think is relevant, butthat where that battle is on the
naming convention is distractingon the implementation of of of
(22:06):
what's happening.
Um and really what we're seeingis clients need to understand
how to measure this.
And and I don't think thatanybody's come up with some
clear KPIs, and I don't thinkthat search rankings are the
right metric anymore.
And so we've been really slowlymoving away from that because
(22:26):
it's not it's not even relevant.
Um, it's just like we're lookingat just honestly, it's like
revenue.
Like, how where's the revenue?
Like, and can we figure thatout?
And what is that and work ourway backwards from that?
I I and I'm not saying thatthat's right, I'm just saying
that that's what we have done.
And it's the only way in theconversation with clients to
(22:49):
explain what's going on is justlike look at your bottom line.
Like, let like is what we'redoing having an impact?
Does it make sense?
Is it logical that this is goodbusiness, this is good
marketing?
Like, period.
SPEAKER_02 (23:02):
Yeah, no, you're uh what you're talking about is
exactly what we found works hashas worked really well for us.
Um a few years ago, we startedreally uh, and some of it was
because we realized no one wantsto to engage with someone,
(23:22):
whether it's an agency or hiresomeone who doesn't ask the
right questions and works justdoes the work blindly for six
months or a year, and then it'slike, oh, I wish I would have
known that, or I wish you wouldhave told me about that KPI or
how this impacts CRM orwhatever.
Like me, the 18 year agostarting out SEO, just wanted to
(23:45):
do my stuff and stay in my laneand stay in my channel because I
had enough to worry about therein that world and keeping up,
um, versus like getting intomessy corporate politics on the
client side or ask questionsabout things that were outside
of my channel or outside of mysubject matter expertise.
But what I my team and Irealized, even though our focus,
(24:07):
as we narrowed our focus to justsearch and websites and stop
doing branding, social, email,and the and creative services
and the 12 things we're doing,get down to just two things as
an agency, we still have to wecan't just hide in that silo or
in that in that subject matterexpertise, but we have to start
with we're gonna get fired, evenif it looks like all of our KPIs
(24:28):
are up and to the right.
If someone can't measure thatgap between what we're doing and
how it's impacting their bottomline, and it it it definitely
has gotten harder, but it's alsoa lot easier when you can have
transparent conversations,whether it's with the C-suite or
whatever highest level you canto your point of working
backwards, whether it's fromrevenue or profit and and
(24:51):
whatnot.
It's been it's been interestingwhen we've asked some of these
questions sometimes to you knowsenior global directors of
marketing about how their theirbusiness makes money.
And it's like, well, wait aminute, I'm just asking you to
about SEO.
Why are you asking me some ofthese ROI questions about
profitability?
But we want we need tounderstand that so we can have
(25:12):
full visibility of that to beable to help them understand.
Because to your point, it'slike, do we want to pour more
into this, or is that an unwisedecision either in this moment
because you're not ready yet,because there are some other
problems in the foundation ofyour house, or or in a couple
cases, you know, uh, you don'tthis is not the right channel.
You do not need paid search, toyour point.
(25:34):
We need a you have an SEOproblem, not a paid search
problem, or or even one of thestories I share in my book too
about a client uh actuallydidn't become a client, they're
a prospect, asked us to audittheir paid search because
they're like, Well, we feel likewe're getting this level of
profit, but we feel like if weoutsource it to an expert, they
might be able to take it evenfurther.
(25:55):
What we ended up finding out isthey were actually they thought
they were 20% profitable onthose leads.
They were actually 20% negativebecause they had attribution
problems and were connectingthose dots.
Like, you don't need to spendanymore.
Maybe you need to spend lessuntil you get these three or
four things fixed.
So we probably sold ourselvesout of potentially taking that
on, but we would have been firedanyway when they would have we
(26:17):
or that they would have figuredit out down the road on accident
or when harder questions wereasked later.
And so being it's it doesn'tfeel comfortable early on if
you're deep in the weeds like Iwas as a channel person and just
want to nerd out on one thing,but but thinking like a like a C
(26:38):
suite or CMO or director ofmarketing and what they're
accountable for and workingbackwards from there just opens
up a lot of new layers to beable to be successful or
navigate it together versusbeing you know walled off and in
a silo away from the the theactual KPIs that matter.
SPEAKER_01 (26:56):
You know, Corey, one of the things that you said uh
is is a discussion point in allthe crazy conversation that's
been going on.
And I I went to more conferenceslast year than I've gone to in a
long time, uh, because I reallywanted to like talk to people
and uh hear hear their storiesand join some masterminds and
all that sort of thing.
And I would tell you that thebiggest takeaway for me is that
(27:23):
SEOs that want to stay in theirlane and do their thing and
actually have a lot of greatdata and knowledge that you know
are well underpaid, uh in a in ahuge like the the amount of data
from traditional marketing andlike the reason that people or
CROs or you know executive suitethrow money into paid ads is
(27:46):
they can measure it.
And SEOs haven't done a good jobof tying it to revenue because
it's it's a little bit abstract,right?
Of like how to tie it and how itinfluences it.
And the best case studies Ihave, okay, which I need to like
publish them, I need to get geton that and publish them, but
are really reverse case studies.
(28:06):
Like, so I'm not I don't have asgood of data of like this
measured this, if like I can'ttie it to to the data points.
But what I can show is if youlose keyword rankings for
certain keywords, or like forexample, I have a um like a
private equity brand, andthere's a bunch of different
(28:27):
brands, and they're like, Okay,we need to focus on this one
brand.
And and and I basically took allthe budget and focused on that
one brand and kind of let theothers kind of shrink based on
the the layout of the website,right?
Like, like we're gonna reallyfocus on this because it's too
noisy, we don't know how tocategorize it, all this kind of
stuff.
Their revenues droppeddramatically, and I'm like, you
(28:50):
had other lead funnels comingin, but the but the brand, the
brand presence is so important,and it's like, how do you
measure like or that like alawyer with tort or whatever?
Like the like the brand beingthere when people research, and
I'm even seeing this in um uhsimilar web data.
People are going to the website,they're of course searching you
(29:12):
on Google, they're checking now.
One of the key sources fromsimilar web that I'm seeing on a
number of brands is like grok orchat GBT.
That's like the out so peoplefind out about you whatever way
it is, but then they go researchyou and they want to see like
where is that authority, whereis that expertise, where's that
trust?
How are how is that websitepresenting it?
(29:33):
And if you don't have thoseright things and you aren't, you
know, hitting on the hot buttonsor positioning right, um, it's
affecting revenue on thebackside, just like the other
example with the keywords.
If you lose certain keywords orcategories or you know, fan out
too much and and it's notfocused, they feel the reverse
(29:53):
impact a lot more than theincremental increase.
You know what I mean?
Uh or I don't know, it's beenweird.
It's been, but it's but it'sthese like reverse case studies
where I see the value in thedata of where that risk factor
is if we don't do this versushere's what we would get if we
do do this.
SPEAKER_02 (30:12):
Well, and I think for and I'm gonna say this and
make this disclaimer for anyonewho's tuning in at this minute
and didn't hear what we justtalked about about 10 minutes
ago, but I'm not advocating forold SEO, but but obviously a big
part of content and contextdriven and authority-building
SEO forever has been qualitycontent.
(30:33):
And so if you've got stalecontent, outdated content out
there, even on a page that youthink might get one visit a
year, but it still needs to beout there because it's a service
you have, or it's still a blogpost for that super long tail
one person right fit prospectthat might come in it and it's
worthy of staying on your site,make sure it's updated, make
sure it's accurate because thatwhole complete picture still
(30:56):
matters.
And so, yeah, the the you can'tgo into okay, we got to prune
everything, or but at the sametime, we can't, like in the old
days, neglect all this oldcontent out here either, because
that complete picture is isbeing judged exponentially more
by by AI than it even was byGoogle, who would have to fan
(31:17):
out and eventually see it andput the picture together in a
more uh more um longer-term way.
SPEAKER_01 (31:23):
I think you just said it, the complete picture,
right?
That is what AI is doing isreally grabbing the complete
picture and looking at it fromall these different angles.
And so you have to think abouteverything.
And then even going back to myearlier point to highlight a
little bit more, when you saidat the very beginning, you're
like, I went through this phase,you said you that you were a
(31:45):
digital marketer.
And I I actually think it'svery, very difficult today,
unless you work at a very largecompany, uh, which there's a lot
of issues with siloing and andeverything as as you go bigger
and red tape.
But if you're not a digitalmarketer, at least have that
(32:06):
surface level understanding.
Like the previous experiencewith the agency of doing all
these other things make youbetter at SEO, make you better
at kind of like the informationcapture, the information
organization or or or umdiscovery process because they
all impact it, they're all woventogether, they're not um siloed.
(32:28):
And and I I just think it's SEOsreally need to improve their
language about how they'recommunicating about what they're
doing.
And I I I honestly think thatthe KPIs are what's holding
everybody back and andrethinking through what the real
KPIs are of how do we measurethis and have more kind of
(32:51):
boardroom language um is gonnachange the game.
And I feel like SEOs have themost data.
Now, some of it's siloed andbringing it all together, and
again, AI helps with that, butbeing able to articulate that
data is where the gap is.
SPEAKER_02 (33:09):
Yeah, no, and that's exactly it.
That goes the getting, andthat's the hardest part again,
to get comfortable going outsideof your comfort zone of this is
what I know.
Now I got to enter into somebodyelse's territory or find the
gray area where nobody owns theKPIs, things are disconnected,
and and to be willing to be aproblem solver at a different
(33:30):
level.
Like you might have two or threemonths of if you're in an agency
or even in a new higher-end yourteam, of before you actually do
any SEO work or any optimistoptimizing anything, just trying
to troubleshoot and problemsolve and connect the dots with
dashboards and data that'severywhere and CRMs, things that
have been neglected for years orhave been built by certain teams
(33:52):
and that aren't talking to eachother.
And I don't know, whether that'sa Fortune 500 or a 10-person
company, those things exist andthose they've always existed,
but it's more important thanever to get the dots connected
because we can't just assumethat everything's up and to the
right, and I even see leads gothrough or e-commerce sales come
through from search with a niceattribution string, that it's
(34:15):
gonna equal somebody saying goodjob in the ownership or C-suite
or on the client side or or inthe in the stakeholder seats to
actually understand that.
And um, yeah, it's it has beenfascinating to see how things
have changed.
You mentioned earlier talkingabout podcasts and strategy, and
that's again, you know, some ofthe things that maybe aren't
(34:37):
text on a page or an inboundlink that you can see as an SEO
from years ago, um, maybe getnot don't get thought about as
much because it's it doesn'tfeel like indexable content, but
you know, all the collection ofstuff is important, and how much
you're willing to shareknowledge and put it out there
is important too.
And the there are all kinds ofproblems and question marks on
(35:00):
trademark and defending it.
And you know, if I give more tothe LLMs, are they gonna just
gonna rip me off into Google?
Are they gonna rip me off evenmore?
And so there's all I'm not evenI'm not even gonna wade into the
legal side, how do you protectthat?
That's still to come um in ourindustry in the next few years,
but there's just so much aboutuh considering how much do you
(35:22):
gate and keep close to the vestand maybe not get found versus
how much do you freely giveaway?
And and I was reminded of this alittle bit when you were talking
about um some of the educationmy team yesterday was talking
about um as going throughinterviewing and hiring um for
another um search role, talkingabout uh the approach of most of
(35:46):
our clients don't care about thenerdiness and the super
technical parts of it.
But do we hold that back andwater it down where they and
they don't get the impression orunderstanding of it enough?
So we're like, we have it there,and we might give them 90
seconds of it before they youknow they're check out on us and
(36:06):
then get down to the level thatthey care about.
And that's whether you're anagency or an in-house or
whatever you're doing, I thinkthat's important to be able to
validate big pictures here.
We'll take you there, and youneed some forced education, even
if you don't want to listen, um,versus chasing all those shiny
objects and and making it feellike the snake oil or crystal
(36:28):
ball that it isn't if you'redoing it, uh doing it properly,
and and to be able todemonstrate that shift.
So I think that's part of thegap that we talked about too.
There are people talking aboutit way out here on the
exploratory end, and people whosound like it's outdated and you
can't validate if it's outdated,or we're just making it more
approachable and where thatmiddle ground is of how we work
(36:50):
through it, talk about it, andeducate stakeholders of where
we're going and how messy it isnow compared to how it's never
not been messy, but how it was alittle bit more linear and how
we measured it 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
Wow, you you you brought up some things that I I
will have to save, or maybewe'll bring you back for another
discussion.
I don't want to veer off toomuch into data hygiene issues uh
internally, uh externally.
Um, but uh I would love to diveinto in the kind of this last
piece here about KPIs and whatwere the KPIs you used to use?
(37:29):
What are the KPIs you're usingnow?
What do you think the KPIsshould be?
Are there any tools that you'refinding helpful?
Like, let's give people likeactionable steps on what they
should actually be looking at.
Because I'll tell you right now,all this nerdiness is exciting
for me.
Like, I I love digging into it.
(37:49):
I I love the data, I love how itall connects together.
Like that gets me going.
So, this is this re-evolution ofthe industry has been fantastic,
and and it's repositioningeverybody at the starting gate,
right?
And so uh certainly uh, youknow, people that have done
everything right uh are you'rehave an advantage, but for the
(38:11):
most part, it's a reset.
And and I and I love I lovethat.
Um and it's fun to compete.
Um now, but everybody elsethat's not thinking that way is
like, oh my gosh, I went throughanother learning cycle here.
Uh I just went through digitaltransformation, I'm just now
running ads since COVID, like Ifigured it out, and now I gotta
(38:34):
learn it again, and I'm tryingto run my business, and you
know, the private equity guysdon't have a clue um what is
going on.
They just want to dump theirmoney into something.
And so, like, how do you measurethis stuff?
Like, or what, yeah, just howare you dealing with with with
the the KPI component of it?
And I know we talked about thatprior to going live.
SPEAKER_02 (38:56):
Yeah, um I'll go back to to what we talked about
about starting at the thefurthest endpoint we can get,
whether that's revenue or or oradjusted gross income or
whatever it might be ofprofitability and working
backwards to make sure that uhfor us, in many cases, our
dashboards get all the if we canget attribution of search or
(39:20):
digital marketing driventraffic, like the old days, all
the way to um through leads.
And in many cases, we're workingB2B.
Um, and so we have lead valuesand getting close to the sales
team or or CRO or whoever itmight be who's leading that and
can validate that this data isclean um all the way through.
Getting to that number andunderstanding that and customer
(39:43):
lifetime value and all thosethings.
So that's the holy grail.
That's where we want to be,because then we can at whatever
regular checkpoints, annual ormore often, reevaluate that and
have a pulse of are we gettingenough leads?
Are we getting high enoughquality leads?
Um Are they targeted properlyand start the convers and keep
(40:04):
the conversation there on anongoing healthy basis and not
have to keep going andre-evaluating the ultimate
business goal and have and haveum challenges with that?
So if we can anchor to that atleast at an annu on an annual
basis and understand have thebusinesses goals changed, are
the marketing goals in alignmentwith that?
And that doesn't, again, soundlike an SEO's job, but it's
(40:26):
become more of important tovalidate that some of these
points are in place.
So for us, the deepest goals weget to typically and that we
love reporting on are thoseagreed upon KPIs related to
deals that come through or leadsthat come through and validate
and our ability to connect intoCRM or whatever levels of data
(40:47):
we can.
And we have e-commerce clientstoo, and that's different and
feels easier uh because we getthe data in real time coming
back to us, but also we have tounderstand margins and if you're
drop shipping versus where yourwarehouses are and what tariffs
did to you or anything else,then you can't just turn off
that part of the brain eitherand say, well, it's a four to
(41:07):
one or 12 to 1 ROAS, or or ifyou're looking at from an
organic perspective, how you'revalidating that return on um on
spin of of what you're investingin SEO efforts.
So whatever that is, not justtrusting it for a year or two or
three and saying, Okay, well, wegot you 50,000 leads in the last
(41:28):
five years.
Why why is that not profitable,or why is the company shutting
down or or selling off orwhatever?
And so that that's the KPIlayer.
It's it's not much differentthan what it's been in the past,
but there's extra scrutiny on itand making sure we understand it
and and not just trusting theother the other side of this
too, not just trusting GA4 outof the box, right?
(41:50):
Of course, what doesn't gettalked about is that GA4 emerged
a few years ago and stillfrustrates many, if not all, of
us, um, and because it it wehave assumptions that things
just work and get measuredproperly like they did
previously.
Um, we wrote a great article.
Um IVP of Strategy did last yearthat's got 15 screenshots in
(42:16):
walking you through the10-minute setup to go set up a
the attribution you need to seeLLM traffic and categorize it
properly.
And we've got another one comingin the next few weeks um based
on a client problem we weresolving yesterday um that's
solvable, but not anout-of-the-box feature.
And so uh the constantlyrevisiting and and rechecking
(42:38):
and validating has become uhunfortunately a new time
commitment to make sure the KPIsdon't get taken for granted.
SPEAKER_01 (42:47):
Yeah, I think um GA4 is something that was kind of
like when AdWords switched overto the new uh system.
Like there's actually somereally good components to it,
but they move stuff around andyou've got to do it a different
way and you gotta hook certainstuff up.
Um, you know, so I do think it'smore powerful or useful, and a
(43:08):
lot of stuff that might not beas useful, they're kind of
going, This is not as useful,like you don't need to focus on
this, but people are focused onolder KPIs.
I would love to hear kind of aswe close out what are the tools
that you're using and are thetools effective?
Because okay, like in the lastfour months, everybody added
their bolt-on AI visibilitytool, right?
(43:32):
And I mean even the traditionaltools, like I'm going like,
okay, are are y'all even I'mlike going to my team, I'm like,
are y'all even looking at thekeyword tracking?
Like, is it accurate?
Like, you know, and everybody'sgoing back to manual searches.
That's that's a lot of what, butthen manual searches are
(43:57):
personalized if you're lookingin the AIs to to to yourself.
And so then it's like, okay,have the client look at it.
There, there's so many differentlike layers or or kind of like
different angles to look atthis, and then like these tools
are also giving you one datapoint, and you're like, okay,
well, maybe that's pulling fromover here or over there, but I
(44:18):
can't replicate it, or theclient can't replicate it,
right?
It's like, oh, you're rankingnumber one, and then nobody on
your team can replicate theclient can't replicate, or like,
where is this number comingfrom?
And like, is that even datavalid?
And then I was on a like abigger panel discussion with a
bunch of teams, and the the ITteam was there, and they're
(44:39):
like, Isn't all this datatheoretical?
And I was like, Yeah, a lot ofit is, and they're like, So, how
do we know if it's true?
And I was like, We don't, andthat's why we're using multiple
tools to to kind of create likea GPS coordinate to to kind of
validate it from differentangles.
And I said, These are the goldstandard, this is what's out
(45:00):
there, you know.
I was like, So what what weended up doing is uh a guy on my
team and and his brother-in-law,they're like they're like coders
and stuff.
Uh, they built a tool calledCarrot and uh and we're we're
just launching that and and it'sliterally like all the input,
and we're gonna be using thistool customized mainly for for
(45:22):
our clients, but like it's gonnabe out there, but there are tons
of tools, it's just like reallycustomized to what we need, and
and um it's it's been wild, it'sbeen just wild about what's out
there, and I'm like, we paid forthis tool, we're paying for this
tool, and then I'm like, they'retelling me different things, and
then I'm like trying to talk totheir their dev team, and like
(45:45):
then they're explaining it tome, and I'm like, like it's
almost going back to like youryou know, you you look at the
revenue number and you know whatyou need to do, and you know
what things should be.
And I mean, I've just findmyself relying a little bit less
on the tools as kind of adefinitive answer and more kind
(46:06):
of on um like what I seehappening at where I can see it
in the data, but but I don'tfeel like the tools have done a
a great job doing that, and nowit's you know, um I don't know,
there's just a lot, a lot morenoise out there, is what I feel
like.
But that's my personal, and Iwould love to hear your and if
you don't agree with me, I wouldlove to hear the disagreement
(46:29):
because I I'm always learningand talking to other SEOs and
trying to learn myself.
SPEAKER_02 (46:33):
So no, I I I love what you said, and that example
you gave of being challenged onthe theoretical aspect of it,
it's always been theoretical.
We might have been, we mighthave felt more comfortable with
being able to see things in whatI've called a linear way before,
but there's always first click,last click, view went through
you know, windows, Facebooktaking credit for everything,
(46:55):
right?
Like all of all of that hasalways had problems of flaws,
and every tool, when we werestill focused on keywords way
back when would give you wilddifferent ranges of estimated
volume.
And yeah, Google was alwayspulling back data and trying to
make it, you know, go throughall their privacy things and
keywords not provided, moving itto Search Console and changing
(47:16):
how they sample data versus giveyou literal data, your own data,
and look at you know, and thenfiltering out spam and bot
traffic.
So all of that has always beensomewhat theoretical.
We just got better at packagingit and feel and trusting it, and
it got it did get better, but itit it definitely I I agree with
(47:36):
you.
We have yeah, we use some of theyou know leading tools like
hrefs and screen frog and thingsin our stack, but we went away
from the enterprise leveldashboard and report third-party
dashboard and reporting tool.
In fact, I couldn't, I for youknow, we'd been in it in them so
long that we had a 12-monthcontract that I didn't realize
it wasn't monthly.
(47:57):
And I'm like, oh man, we'vemoved away from that.
I still got to pay for it forsix more months on that
enterprise huge ticket thingthat we were paying for, because
we had gone to building our ownlooker dashboards and our own
reporting infrastructure, not ina way, not a software
development way, like we wouldhave thought about it 10 years
ago, but in a practical waywhere there's a base of what
(48:19):
we're pulling in.
We have a lot of customconfigurations in GA4, like we
talked about a moment ago, tomake sure we're actually getting
the data in the way we need itand to be able to parse it.
But all of that's connected asmuch as we can to that data
point on revenue or sales orleads or whatever it is.
And at the end of the day, it itobviously is a to a degree still
(48:42):
theoretical conversation.
And the client, or or if you'reagain in-house, you have to be
in an environment where yourbrand and company is comfortable
with understanding that there'sthis is an investment, and we
hope to see a return oninvestment.
And I use the example of like,do I go question my financial
(49:02):
advisor um and scrutinize?
There's a prospectus, there'sdisclaimers that say, you know,
past performance doesn'tguarantee future performance.
It's not a big line itemexpenditure, or it shouldn't be.
It should be looked at as aninvestment with an expectation
of return on investment.
And when we when we can look atit that way, then it's a healthy
conversation, like in othercategories of life or business.
(49:26):
And know that there are ups anddowns, and we're using what we
know from the past and what weproject for the future, and
we're trying to connect the dotsright here, but you know, it
it'll get us there, but it mightnot have been exactly how we
thought it would.
SPEAKER_01 (49:40):
Wow, I think that's a really good place.
I want to add one more point tothat, and then I want to give
you an opportunity to promotewhatever papers or you know, uh
stuff that you you want, andwe'll we'll get it in the show
notes.
Um, what I've seen, and I am inthe same situation, actually.
We, you know, at at a certainpoint we got locked into like a
(50:02):
big enterprise likevisualization, all this kind of
stuff, and our team loved it.
Okay, and they're like, it it'senterprise and it's presented to
the clients and all that.
And the conversation becamelike, are you are they seeing
value in it and are they usingit and is it helpful?
(50:23):
And like they I the the so Istarted going on the calls,
right?
And we started recording.
Um we we started about a yearand a half ago recording all our
calls and um feeding it to AIand we're getting kind of a
sentiment analysis as we scaleand um you know what needs to
happen.
And you know, I haven't fullyautomated it pushing into like a
(50:44):
CRM tool yet where it justcreates tasks, but I want to get
I want to get there.
Um, you know, there's a littlebit more training that has to
happen, but but I can tell youthat they weren't using it and
we've started to build our owndashboards and customize stuff.
But the point that I'm trying tomake is when I'm having those
(51:05):
discussions with clients, theydon't care about what happened.
They care about forward looking,they care about where is it
going, what are we doing, whatcan we expect?
And then they want me to putstake my name on it, and then
then they want to hold me towhatever I think will happen.
Does that make sense?
(51:26):
Like, that's what I'm seeing isthey're like, this is what okay,
what do you think will happen?
Where do you think we'll bebased on all this data?
And then I'll tell them, andthen whatever I said, that's
what's gonna get measured atwhatever next milestone there
is.
And then either that's true orfalse, or how close am I to that
(51:47):
number?
And that's what I'm starting tosee.
The forward-looking indicatorsis is really what the executives
that I'm talking to care about.
And am I right or am I wrong?
So they're like, you synthesizeit all, just tell us, and then
we'll measure if what you saidis true or not.
SPEAKER_02 (52:03):
And in so many cases, that's bringing them
transparently and authenticallyinto the mess with you to
understand that this is not anexact science because it's you
know, it it can backfire if wedon't do that.
Here's the flashy slide, here'sexactly what you're getting in
terms of revenue, and thensomething in the marketplace
changes, but we've never hadtalked about the risks involved
(52:25):
in a transparent way or what weknow and don't know, and then
traffic starts dropping.
It's like, well, we haven'teducated or talked about what we
do in this case and why the whywe actually expected it to start
trailing off, but this number ofyour revenue hasn't because it's
quality versus quite all thosethings, and so yeah, to that
point, the the trust that and inan industry that unfortunately
(52:48):
has had a lot of burned and andmisplaced trust, um, like like
others, but um being able toshare with them the expertise
and how we're bringing you alongon this journey and where we're
going, much like again, afinancial advisor, right?
You're trusting them to try tomanage your money, but and do it
(53:09):
proactively and not letsomething sit out there for six
months and get tanked and nothave a new strategy ahead.
And and I think that's thecleanest example for me to take
this to a different industry,but that's the the part of it
where you know, if we're toobuttoned up and we're always
trying to sell and present, andI say this from the agency side
of things, if we're alwaystrying to just present and put
(53:31):
another deck and put a rosypicture on something, then when
something really drasticchanges, we haven't built a
framework where we talk about itin a problem-solving, same team,
proactive way.
Now we're reacting and the houseis on fire and and and it's more
catastrophic than it ever shouldhave been.
SPEAKER_01 (53:49):
I love it.
Corey, uh, you've talked about alot of great things, y'all are
doing some awesome stuff.
I'd love for you to uh plugwhatever you would like to plug.
And I would also love for you,if there's one thing to kind of
crystallize uh for for anyonelistening, what is the one
takeaway?
What is the one unknown secret?
I guess you know, I used to sayof internet marketing, but just
(54:11):
what's the one big takeaway thatyou would have recommended to
anybody listening?
SPEAKER_02 (54:17):
Yeah, um uh I'll I'll come back to that.
I'll first mention the the uhthe areas um to find me.
So my agency is Voltage, that'seasily found at voltage.digital.
Um, if you I I do a lot ofspeaking and and sharing in the
industry, so you can find me atCorey Morris.com for that.
Um, or go find me on SearchEngine Journal or Search Engine
(54:38):
Land for my articles there, um,or for my book, The Digital
Marketing Success Plan, where Igive away uh that five-step
start planning process.
That's a long title.
Um, so I've shortened it to theDMsp.com.
And you can find it there orfind it on Amazon.
Um, but that takeaway really isconnected back to that start
(55:00):
planning process.
And it's the one where um I knowit gives anxiety if I bring up
the question of if you don'tknow or feel like you know that
your marketing is producing ROIand you feel like you're just
doing it because you've alwaysdone it, or somebody said you
should do it, or you're buying achannel essentially of activity.
Um that is where you definitelyshould scrutinize where it is
(55:25):
and if you have a plan.
Um, and I love to say, you know,if you don't have a plan, you're
just spending money.
SPEAKER_01 (55:33):
I love it.
Well, Corey, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Everyone listening.
This is the future of searchwith L Invisibility.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Uh bye bye for now.
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