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October 13, 2025 72 mins

We dig into how search is shifting from links to answers, why reputation now outranks tactics, and how to position your brand inside LLMs before it’s 10x harder. Ross Barefoot joins Matt to compare notes on pruning, big content, reviews, local, and the reality of client communication.

• LLMs as a new gatekeeper layer and why fundamentals still matter
• EEAT with real experience, proof, and long‑form content
• Reputation first: reviews beyond Google and social mentions
• Pruning thin and off‑topic content to clarify entity
• RAG, freshness, and Google’s role in retrieval
• Hidden gems: surfacing forums and long‑tail answers
• Merchant Center and local search as stable channels
• Measurement gaps, anonymized referrers, and log insights
• Social’s rising weight in brand visibility
• Client education, budgets, and communication systems

Guest Contact Information: 

Website: eepseo.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rossbarefoot

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Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of LLM Visibility™ and 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

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:05):
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_02 (00:19):
Howdy, welcome to another fun filled episode of
The Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, Matt Bertram.
I am also still remote, soapologies for uh anything that
comes up.
I would just ask if you do getvalue from this podcast or
anything that we've done in thepast, it's very important if you
could share it, if you couldlike it, if you could engage

(00:41):
with the content.
We're going to be talking aboutLLMs today and kind of where
search is going.
And that is a big part of thenew world that and the new game
that we're playing.
And so I thought it would begreat to bring another um
seasoned SEO on to get hisperspective that's also in the

(01:02):
trenches doing this work so uhwe can start to make sense of it
all.
There's a lot of new data comingup every day.
Uh, so uh thank y'all for tuningin.
Um, Ross Barefoot, welcome tothe show.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
Well, thank you for having me.
I appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18):
Yeah, if you could just credentialize yourself a
little bit.
I know we were we were talking,you've been doing SEO since
2002, and um, I just didn't knowif there were any other
accolades you wanted me tohighlight.
You're just a a staple in theindustry.

SPEAKER_01 (01:32):
Well, yeah, I've been around um a long time.
Of course, that can sometimes beas much a hindrance as an
advantage, but you know, we'veseen lots of the changes come
and go.
Um I started out as a webdeveloper and programmer in
about 1996, and then hung out myshingle in 2001 with a web

(01:55):
development agency, had a fewemployees, and you know,
immediately everybody who wanteda website start asking, well,
how do I how do I come up onthese search engines?
You know, and at that time,people would ask me, What search
engine do you use?
And I'd say Google, and they'dsay, What's that?
So this is really prehistorictimes, I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_02 (02:17):
Well, I'll I'll tell you, um, our founder, Chris
Burris, um, that was the exactsame story, right?
So we started off as eWeb style,uh, became e-web results,
started doing the SEO, um, andand he was the host and co-host
of this podcast for for a longtime.
I feel like, you know, historydoesn't repeat itself, but it

(02:38):
rhymes.
We always hear that.
Yeah, I'm hearing that, like,what is perplexity, right?
Like, well, you know, I mean,maybe people have heard of Chat
GBT, but what is grok?
Or maybe I've heard of that nowwith some of the news, but um, I
feel like there's a new cyclehappening and everything's new,
there's kind of new territory.
There, there's like everythingthat I'm seeing is if you don't

(03:01):
position yourself right now inthese LLMs and it in let's say
18 months, it's gonna be 10xharder uh to to position in
them.
And a lot of people are notpaying attention to it.
So I just feel like it's a newera of search.
And I remember even when I wouldsay the word SEO and people
didn't really know what thatwas, but they're like, I know I

(03:23):
need that.
I feel the same thing with likeAI and even LLM uh visibility or
surfacing.
I I feel like that's you know,it's it's that the next chapter,
really, right?

SPEAKER_01 (03:35):
Right, exactly.
It's um as you say, history doesrepeat itself a little bit.
Um what really uh strikes me ishow some of the core
fundamentals, if you've beendoing, you know, really high
quality SEO as you guys have,you know that some of the core
fundamentals were obvious goingback over a decade.

(03:56):
I mean, we go back to 2011 whenGoogle rolled out Panda and they
gave us the guidelines, whatconstitutes quality content?
You know, and they had the listof questions, and they're still
using the same list ofquestions, you know, what
constitutes quality content.
Um, now, of course, that doesn'tmean nothing has changed.
It just means that there's somefundamentals that are really,

(04:19):
really solid.
Um, you know, and what what Iwas starting to say in the green
room was that up until recently,we've really considered
reputation management as kind ofa subset of SEO of digital
marketing, basically, uhcentered on reviews.
I'm starting to change my ownframing, mental framing, and I'm

(04:42):
thinking it's all reputationmanagement.
And SEO becomes a subset ofthat.
Because what you need is okay,what's your reputation?
Not necessarily in the minds ofthe consumers, although
ultimately, yes, but what's yourreputation with these large
language models?
You know, what are they gonnasay about you when people make

(05:04):
the shift, not just to sayingsomething like, um, you know,
foreign car repair near me, butinstead they're saying, hey, I
need a repair shop for my BMW.
Uh who does that near me andwhich one has the best
reputation and how do youcompare them?
And we're already getting intothat now.
And and the LLMs, the one thingthat I've noticed that kind of

(05:28):
works in our favor at themoment, LLMs are gullible, you
know, so we can craft thatnarrative if we are paying
attention, if we're trying tomake our content, you know,
basically get into the sphere ofwhat they decide on, which is
then another discussion.

SPEAKER_02 (05:49):
So, yeah, let me let me speak to a couple of things
um that you said.
Um, for first is like the theEAT framework is uh a very solid
framework.
Uh, when they added thatexperience component to that, I
think that that was because youcould synthesize a lot of the
expertise through um, you know,content generated by by AI.

(06:10):
And whether it be e-commerce orwhether it be um whatever you
had experience with, if you arein a picture of it, right?
You're you're proving that youhave experience with it, and
then you match that experiencelevel.
Okay, maybe you're not a doctor,but you've taken this product or
you know this product.
Like it gets uh, you know, itgets a little murky as far as um

(06:31):
your money, your life, and likethose channels you go down, but
the Eat framework is a fantasticframework.
And I love what you're sayingabout the reputation management
because yeah, it's about brandequity.
It's kind of spread out allacross the internet.
The LLMs are really like anintelligent human that's doing
really in-depth research, and wejust want to kind of shortcut

(06:54):
it.
And that and the shortcutting isthe reviews of other people,
right?
Um, I forget exactly what thatthat term's called, but I agree
with you.
I think that there was astrategy for maybe um uh you
know overwhelming uh reviews toto kind of push down bad
reviews, or there was kind oftactics of reputation

(07:14):
management, but now it'soverall, you know, what are
people doing, what are peoplesaying, and and to kind of bring
it into the conversation of ofwhere it's at right now, of what
I'm seeing is you were talkingabout the LMs being gullible,
and and I think that that's thepredominant issue.
I've talked to a couple buddiesthat have gone to kind of some
smaller SEO conferences, andit's all about still tricking,

(07:38):
like what's the next trick,right?
Yeah, right, right.
I mean, and so the thing that Isee though, the reason they're
gullible is they've just beenexposed to real-time data, okay.
They've been trained on datasets, and I've talked about this
kind of uh I I don't know ifit's a a uh a way to look at

(08:00):
things, it's not really aframework or a thesis, but it's
essentially there's like a landgrab, okay, that's happening.
And why the land grab ishappening today is because the
LLMs aren't sure, right?
Right.
And and I and I have seen uh Iwas at a conference where
someone made up a fake city andkind of ranked the fake city as

(08:22):
an example.
And and so yeah, they they arelike they only have the data
that's fed to them, but overtime, and they're looking at um
what users are doing and howusers are interacting.
So, like that fake city orrestaurant or whatever you want
to say, if there's no engagementor or it loses engagement, it'll

(08:44):
lose favor.
You know what I mean?
Like, so I think thisgullibility component is really
like the solidification of wherethese brands are gonna sit in
these LLMs, and and they'regonna kind of it's gonna be a
repetitive loop where it's gonnakind of lock them in as the
trusted source.
So if you're not in there toknock out those incumbents, just

(09:07):
like the top three positions inGoogle, you know, like I've run
up um uh clients to to positionfour, and it'll just stay there
right for a certain period oftime.
And I I don't know, that'sthat's kind of what I'm seeing,
but I wanted to open it back up.
I I just I I felt like you weregetting into something really
quickly with the gulableness ofthe LLMs, and I think that

(09:31):
that's where that's how a lot ofpeople are looking at it in SEO
today.

SPEAKER_01 (09:35):
Yeah, and and of course you can uh approach it
from a mindset of just trying togame them.
But um, you know, it wasinteresting because you you
touched on a number of thesethings.
I I listened to your uhconversation with Ray Giesel
Huber, if I'm saying thatcorrectly.
I like to say it like a drumman,but uh it was interesting

(09:57):
because um you know you youtalked a lot about still the
role that search plays.
And when it comes to that wholegullibility quotient, Google
still, and I don't know for howmuch longer this is gonna be,
Google is still something of agatekeeper.
Because you know, you you pose aprompt to any of the models, and

(10:19):
what they're gonna do is if theycan answer it quickly from
training data, they're gonna dothat.
But the training data is out ofdate, as you guys discussed.
Um, so typically they're lookingat and they're gonna say, okay,
is this prompt, uh, does itrequire freshness?
Kind of like in the old days, wehad the query requires

(10:39):
freshness, query requiresdiversity.
And so they're gonna say, doesthis require freshness or does
it require local knowledge,things like that?
And increasingly, their whateverlogic they've been uh, you know,
conditioned with, whatevercontext they've been conditioned
it with, they're gonna go outand they're gonna conduct a

(11:00):
search and they're gonna doretrieval, augmented generation.
Well, when they do that, youknow, what are they doing?
Basically, they're looking at 10blue links, and they're they're
basically the ones, they'reignoring everything else that
would have been on the surf ifyou were a human.
But Google is the oneresponsible for moving those up
in terms of relevance andauthority.

(11:22):
So if you're missing, if you'renot in there, then then uh LLMs
are not even gonna take a momentand evaluate you.
I mean, theoretically they couldif you were in some other uh
data set that they're lookingat.
But when it comes to theirretrieval augmented generation,
you're still gonna have to payattention to that.

SPEAKER_02 (11:42):
So, what I'm seeing, and I want to get your opinion
on this, is so so I think thatas new data is surfacing, right?
They're looking for the mostcurrent data.
I've seen data that said thelast 10 months is really kind of
the cutoff, or like you couldjust say the last year for for
LMs, but to your point, if youhave deep expertise, it could be
older if nothing has changed.

(12:02):
But but you're you're trying tosurface that that information.
And um, I've seen a default fromwe did this deal, like if we're
talking Chat GPT with Bing, thatit's shifted to more align with
Google, which probably Google'sum search capabilities uh well,
we believe to be true.

(12:23):
That's where most of thesearches are, and that becomes
the default um kind of uh uh,you know, this is this is the
the the trusted source thatwe're referencing.
But here's something interestingthat I'm seeing even recently,
and I wanted to get your opinionon this because this kind of
dovetails into the reputationmanagement.
Now LLMs are going beyond that,right?

(12:45):
So they're like, okay, this isthe trusted source, let's let's
lean on this and then like let'sdevelop our own opinions of
things, and it starts to look atsocial links, which is starting
to be incorporated, thereputation management, just how
is your brand being mentioned,right?
Share a voice, all that.
But get this is what I'm seeingvery recently.
The data's suggesting that thethings that are getting surfaced

(13:07):
in LLMs are on average on the 10blue links, 21 plus.
So past page two, right, thatare not written to you know
tweak that search that arereally answering a question or
those long tail key phrases.
Like I've seen some of theseolder blogs, some of these SEO

(13:29):
blogs, for example, um, aregetting bought up, okay.
Uh, but but but where you gotthe real, not like AI generated,
but humans talking about issues,talking about problems, solving
real things that are just buriedin the SERPs, but but it's real
information and really helpful.
Like I love going through thoseblogs and reading through them.

(13:52):
Those are now the ones that arebeing surfaced in LLMs.
So I feel like maybe LLMs aregrowing up.
I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (13:59):
That's very interesting.
I had not seen that data, and itconflicts with what my
assumption had been, but I don'thave any testing data to go on.
And now that you say that, thatdoes make a lot of sense because
I don't know if you've donethis, but you know, as I guess a
power searcher when I'm tryingto research a topic, often you

(14:22):
know, the first few links aregonna be so heavily um optimized
that you know it depends on thequery, of course.
Sometimes I'll just drop to thebottom and I'll just dive into
like I'll click into page threeor four or five because I figure
it's gonna be relevant, but notas heavily optimized.

(14:42):
And so, like you say, maybe theLL LLMs are you know being
basically instructed to look forthat kind of hidden authority,
sort of like uh what's theGoogle update, uh hidden gems
update or whatever where they'retrying to surface stuff that's
otherwise often overlooked.

SPEAKER_02 (15:04):
Well, yeah, I I think that that's a lot of kind
of plays into the deal withReddit, right?
And you you you see, okay, whatare people talking about?
What it what is relevant, andand I'm seeing okay, and then
this is brand new, right?
It's moving so quickly, right?
And that's why I want to getyour opinion on this.

(15:24):
I can see that like socialmentions are becoming as
important as backlinks.
Like, I feel like they're kindof there there's this turning
point of okay, here's all theinformation, here's kind of the
solidified authorities orentities that we're gonna
reference.
And once those becomesolidified, to validate if they

(15:49):
continue to stay in thatauthority position is well, like
uh comments.
Okay, it's like, are peoplecommenting on it?
Are people talking about it?
Are people reviewing it?
Because that's the only way tomeasure if this person's saying
this thing and this person saythis thing, what's more socially

(16:09):
relevant today is well, how doeseverybody else feel about it?
I I feel the same way on social.
If someone with a huge followingposts something and somebody
with not a huge following postssomething, there are use cases
if um you know you're usingunique data and um you know
people attach on to it, but I'msaying you post like like what a

(16:33):
day, or you know, like peoplejust post something like that,
or like I didn't mean it for itto go this way, and they post
the picture.
Yeah, the person that has thesocial capital or equity gets
the boost and the reshares andthe you know, like I guess Gary
Vanderchuk is a perfect example,like when he just posting, like

(16:53):
you know, this or that, likethere's this huge like
outpouring a share fallingcomments because people want to
attach to that authority andthat becomes relevant versus
somebody else maybe saying that.
I again I'm making inferenceshere because it it's all brand
new.
I'm just trying to synthesizethis data on how to best

(17:14):
position brands for the longhaul.
And and the craziest thing thatI'm getting, we did quarterlies
recently.
Um, a number of clients werelike, you know, LMs are a small
search, right?
It's like six percent doubledlike in the last year, but I'm
not using them.
Uh, you know, like optimizingGoogle is great.

(17:35):
And I go, okay, we we can dothat, but like there's a a
concept of this future proofingof if you don't position
yourself right today, it's gonnabe 10x harder.
Like, I don't know, in a year,two years when everybody jumps
on this.
And I don't know, I I just Ifeel like there's a uh S that

(17:55):
like there's a there's anurgency in this that I don't
think people are following.
But I look, you've been in thisgame a long time and you've seen
these cycles, and there'sprobably a long tail on people
getting involved in this, but II just project this out and go,
okay, if agencies are doing thetraditional things and um LLMs
are only showing one to sixlinks, okay, and then those

(18:19):
links, once they getestablished, stay there, right?
And maybe the training dataright now is it will get to the
point where it's updatedcontinuously, like Google, I'm
sure of it.
Um, but but for this period oftime, there's reasons why the
same things are gonna keepshowing up, and so it's gonna be
a lion's share of the trafficgoing to a few of the SERPs.

(18:40):
And so if anybody is generatingbusiness online, like if you're
in that bottom threshold ofpeople that are laggards in
this, you're gonna die on thevine.
Like that, that's just kind ofmy opinion.
And I could be I could be wrong.
I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 (18:54):
Well, at least you'll die if if you're
depending on uh traffic, youknow, to be from Google search
to be your primary revenuegenerator.

SPEAKER_02 (19:06):
Most do, right?
Most most most companies that Isee when they come to us,
they're spending an oversizedportion of money on Google paid
ads, right?
Right?
Just just ad words, not display,not YouTube, uh, just ad words.
And then maybe they're doingSEO, but they're usually doing
heavy paid and a little bit ofSEO, but not really committing

(19:26):
to it, and maybe some remarkingon Facebook.
Like that is like pretty muchthe standard deviation of what
I've seen.
Now, if it's B2B businesses,it's LinkedIn, but no one's
taken this change seriously.
Like, again, you know, you meanno one.

SPEAKER_01 (19:43):
When you say no one, you mean if like your clients,
uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (19:46):
I'm saying, I'm saying of the clients coming in,
all they're seeing, the bigthing that I'm hearing is well,
my impressions are up, maybe,right?
My lead flows uh similar ordown, but my traffic's way down.
Like my traffic's down, mytraffic's down, and they're
freaking out because we'vetrained them that that's a

(20:07):
metric you need to look for, andalso positioning, which there is
a heavy correlation to wherethey rank, but I'm starting to
see that shift, I'm starting tosee like that decouple a little
bit, and so my my biggest thingis to explain to clients um and
people that are concerned aboutthis, because there's some big
brands and media companies.

(20:28):
We we've talked to some reallyhuge companies recently that are
like, what is going on?
We don't understand it, and weneed attribution, we need
attribution, and I'm kind oflike, ooh, I'm that's a tough
one, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (20:45):
And and it's it's uh getting harder all the time for
a variety of reasons.
Um, we have always reportedtraffic to our clients.
We've tried though not to hangour hat on it.
Um, you know, normally we'vetried to push them towards
using, depending on the businessmodel, but using conversion,

(21:06):
conversions is their asset test.
And ultimately, of course, Ithink we're we're drifting a
little bit back to the days ofuh you know Madison Avenue
advertising in the sense thatyou've got this budget and you
spread it around and youadvertise on TV and radio and
magazines and newspapers, andthen you hope your sales go up,

(21:27):
you know, because because it'sreally hard.
Like, like, for example, I I'muncertain really what the
percentage of search is from theLLMs, because often they don't
pass referrer data when theysend a click to a website.
So the website doesn't know it'scoming from an LLM, it's not in

(21:49):
the HTTP.
And so uh, and sometimes theydo, and sometimes they don't.
I mean, if you go and you do aninspection on some of their
links, it's it's basicallysending that traffic as
anonymized.
And so it's and I don't know ifthey're doing that strategically
or just because they don't careor what it is.

SPEAKER_02 (22:12):
Well, people there was a big upshoot about that,
and probably three or four weeksago when this will be released,
it will be a couple weeks beyondthat.
There, there is an option, andwe set that up uh in um GA4 so
you can start seeing more datathan just anonymized brand data.
And then we've been looking atlog files, so we built uh just
hatched together tools to um toto look at log for us, so we

(22:37):
just see what they're interestedin.
We don't necessarily know why,and and I think that that's the
problem that the industry'strying to solve right now.
But I think to your point is ifyou do good branding, good
marketing, build thatreputation, okay.

(22:57):
The LLMs are gonna follow whatgood research looks like, right?
So if you're on multipleplatforms and there's the 7114,
like seven hours of content,which we've seen LLMs really
reference entities, likepodcasting's been really
helpful, um, and and highquality content to to to reach
that.

(23:17):
And and then you know, you lookat an engagement rate, they want
to see a brand 11 times on fourdifferent channels, right?
So if you use that framework,um, which was I think 2003,
right?
2003 from Google, what youshould be doing, like again, it
goes back to the basicprinciples.
If you're doing good marketing,right, SEO shouldn't be meant to

(23:39):
cut corners, uh, but I think alot of people look at it like,
how do we get as much leverageas we can?
But you know, you optimize badcontent and it doesn't stick,
right?
Like you need really goodoriginal content, right?
And then you need to breakthrough the the the noise
because there's man, sinceCOVID, everybody's online now.

(24:01):
That I I saw a huge shift in uhpaid ad campaigns not working as
well, and we've fanned out tospread that out on on other
platforms to give them a littlebit more love, but you know, you
got to see your brand all overthe place um to break through
that.
So so I think it I think thatthat is in line with what what
you're saying and what you'reseeing as well.
I mean, what are some othercomparisons of what you're

(24:25):
seeing uh in the framework ofreputation management of
traditional SEO, just likefundamentals that are working
today?
I'm I'm curious.
Uh, what are some othercomparisons?

SPEAKER_01 (24:38):
Uh fundamentals, traditional SEO, fundamentals
that are working when it comesto getting visibility and uh AI
enhanced.

SPEAKER_02 (24:46):
Well, and and just like ranking clients today,
right?
Like I think that clients don'tcare if it's LOM or social media
or you know, traditional SEO.
They're just like, maybe leadsare down or visibility is down,
or you know, rankings are down,whatever it is.
I just need more business.
Is this working or not?
And I feel like we're goingthrough this shift and there's a

(25:07):
lot of like uncertainty.
So I'm having a lot moreconversations.
Um, you know, I'm doing morewebinars like with clients, um,
because it just seems likethere's a bifurcation that that
it has started, and um, we'vereally seen that with the with
the drop in traffic to to kindof signal, okay, I can't see

(25:32):
what's working anymore.
I'm assuming if we stay thecourse, we we should be fine.
But then there's a lot of peoplethat are freaking out on how do
I bridge this gap?
Am I doing everything right?
Um, and and I've seen peoplestart to pivot and want to
launch like different campaigns,and they're not giving it enough
time to to set.

(25:52):
So I'm just seeing how peopleare responding right to this be
very interesting.
Like, I don't even have ICPtarget personas of who those
people are, of like, but I'mstarting to see different
buckets of when I um talk to wewe get a lot of inbounds, like
um what their problem is and andwhat they're unhappy about.

(26:14):
And I I think that there's a lotof churn going on in the
marketplace right now, andpeople are trying to find people
that can figure it out.
And it's kind of like, well,we're all trying to figure it
out at the same time, and no onehas like the answer, right?

SPEAKER_01 (26:28):
Right, right.
Um, well, you know, it's verydifficult to answer the question
because as you uh indicated,things are moving so fast that
it's hard to even pause and takea beat on anything.
The one thing that I there's acouple of things though that
seem to be fairly clear, andthat is um it's really we're

(26:51):
getting a lot more visibilityfrom big content.
So about a year ago, we startedpushing our clients towards more
extensive content and to leanheavier on EEAT.
And um, so as we've been helpingthem craft pieces and you know,
or instead of like in the olddays, oh, make sure it's at

(27:13):
least 200 words.
Well, now we're wanting, youknow, 1500 or 2,000 words, very,
very heavily researched.
We created strategically basedon semantic topic research, you
know, which is basically whatkeyword research is nowadays, so
that it fulfills some sort ofneed.

(27:34):
Those pieces of content tend toperform much better.
Plus, for our clients, we'vebeen going through and we've
been uh really aggressivelytrying to identify off-topic
content, thin content, get itoff the site.
That sometimes is a challengebecause sometimes clients they

(27:54):
just you know they want to holdon to certain pieces of content
for whatever reason, you know.
Like for example, one of ourcustomers is a regional bank,
they've got about 40 branches,so they've got a lot of where
they've you know have where youtemplated it out, huh?
Well, and it's all this meet theteam stuff, you know, where you

(28:14):
visit somebody and look at theirhorses and what they do in their
spare time.
And and so what we'll do iswe'll identify stuff that maybe
we can't remove, but we do knowindex it.
And um, so we are trying to, andand it has been useful and and
seems to be helping most clientswhere we're paring down the less

(28:37):
relevant content in order tokind of sculpt the relevance of
the site more to what itsmission is in the eyes of you
know Google or whatever, Googleet al.
The other thing is for oure-commerce clients, it's to lean
really heavily on MerchantCenter, um, you know, because

(28:57):
it's still that the the areaswhere I see that uh are less
impacted are local search ande-commerce search, just in the
sense that you know that data ismore structured, but we want we
make sure that we uh you knowalways optimize their feed in
merchant center differently thantheir pages in search, and that

(29:21):
seems to be continuing tosucceed in much more visibility
and more clicks in MerchantCenter, which is is kind of
undergirding uh the fact thatfor our uh e-commerce clients,
their traffic is way down, buttheir sales are not, and and
there again, we see some ofthis, and one of the things

(29:44):
we've been working to educateour clients on is that not all
traffic is created equal, and inthis these days, you're losing a
lot of crap traffic that youdidn't need anyway.

SPEAKER_02 (29:55):
Man, you you hit on something that I haven't talked
about a lot.
Um, I've Doing a lot of internaltrainings on it though.
I need to uh kind of push thoseout publicly.
Um, there's kind of a a lag timeof training internally, teaching
clients, and then pushing it outpublicly, um, pruning websites,

(30:15):
right?
Um, right, I think uh LLMs cansniff out uh templated content
really quickly, and they'retrying to identify are you a
authority entity in thisgeographic area?
And if you're using templatedcontent, that really hurts, or
if there's like outliers, um,and so uh there's some really
interesting stuff where you canplug data in and you can get

(30:38):
like a visual graph and you canshow the clients, hey, this is
an outlier, and this topic abouthorses is sending mixed signals,
so we need to archive it or dothat.
Like we've found that likepruning, uh, well, anything that
gets uh unindexed is a bigsignal, right?
Uh that that this is notrelevant or helpful, and trying

(31:00):
to force that back into gettingindexed, it's it's really to ask
the question, why is thathappening, right?
Um, and so the the concept ofpruning, um I I kind of treat it
like let's make the website moreaerodynamic with the edges.
And um, you know, it if we havelike wind drag on on rankings or

(31:24):
whatever is going to be thefuture metric, uh we need to
sharpen that.
And if there's yes, you know, ifthere's keywords that I see a
lot of websites, the one of thefirst things we tend to do is um
with with a lot of clients ismake sure they're like indexed
in the right category.
Like there sometimes Googledoesn't understand what it is uh

(31:46):
as an entity, and and when thosekeywords fan out, it's all over
the place.
And so once you like get it intothose grooves, and if you trim
off that to kind of send thesignals a little bit more, it
starts to kind of move faster inthat direction.
It's a lot of like pushing asnowball down a hill, and if you
you know decrease all the drag,it'll start start start moving

(32:08):
faster.
I I think that's a really goodconcept you brought up that I
don't think a lot of people um II see with clients.
Well, when we have like the uhmenu structure conversation, the
navigation structureconversation uh with bigger
clients uh becomes quitechallenging because you have
different stakeholders andyou're like oh it becomes uh

(32:32):
yeah, so I I think um uh andthen just really quickly on the
uh e-commerce, I I think you'redead on, right?
Uh e-commerce, I think Google'sdoubling down on from what I've
seen from their presentations.
That that's really where it'sat.
And local, um, we've been reallyfocused on local because that's
one thing we we know we cancontrol.

(32:52):
They haven't updated thatalgorithm.
Um, we can impact that.
And there's some crazystrategies that we've started to
develop that are a hundredpercent like by Google
guidelines, um, where wherewhere we can get a lot bigger
footprint, it takes um uh someadditional work to do, but
that's one thing that hasn'tchanged, and I don't think it's

(33:16):
going to change.
I thought at one point thatmight go away, but
geographically uh defining theentity from from that kind of
subset, G and B gives you thebiggest trust of like this is in
a geographic area location, andthose reviews uh and the
frequency of those reviews aresuper important.

SPEAKER_01 (33:37):
Um, I think I think those profiles are important
even when the business is notlocal, just because it's another
uh foothold, you know, becauselike we we're seeing that with
some of our B2B clients that arenot geographically centered,
that still we optimize theirprofile.

(33:57):
I mean, we don't make it themain focus, but we make sure
that that is a touch point, andyou can see information from the
profile optimization coming upwhen you go to uh like Chat GPT
and ask them what can you tellme about this company?

SPEAKER_02 (34:12):
Which is great, it references the reviews, right?

SPEAKER_01 (34:14):
Like it'll reference the reviews.
Sometimes they'll referencethings that might be in services
in Google Business Profile, andum, and so I I you know it's
like you know, the um the wholething with large language models
and generative uh you know, AIand all this is just massive

(34:36):
amounts of data, and they keeptrying to scale that up.
So we're thinking, and this isnot empirical, but we're
thinking it just basicallyintuitively, we want to give
them as much relevant data aspossible.
So that means even though nobodyever clicks on a post in GBP,
even though maybe they don'tconsult the frequently asked

(34:59):
questions, even though maybethey don't read the description
for the services, all of that ispart of the data.
You know, so if it's done welland is on topic, my belief is
that's like you say, ispositioning for the future, it's
positioning to to to give areally rich uh kind of

(35:20):
structure, not just a footprint,but a rich footprint to to these
uh models.
And you know, we'll see.
I hope it works.
Well, no in a couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 (35:32):
So so let me ask you, when you're when you're
approaching uh a new clienttoday, uh, or you you you just
uh get a a consultation withwith a client and you're doing a
discovery call with them, likewhat are the things that you're
looking for and that you feelare the biggest impact?

(35:53):
I'm I'm starting to uh create asurvey here of of what what SEO
experts think is um uh mostimportant and and then try to
map that too with with some dataand and overlay that.
And I'm I'm curious how howyou're looking at um maybe like

(36:14):
what are the five things, if youwill, that that you are are
looking for or assessing whenwhen you're looking at a new
client coming in.

SPEAKER_01 (36:23):
Well, that's a good question.
Um, and it's actually I have to,you know, full transparency.
I have not had an aggressiveonboarding process or sales
process because I've had solittle churn and I've tended to
operate with uh a few largeclients over a long period of
time.

(36:43):
But um we are now, you know,considering these same questions
that you're talking about, andof course, we've over the years
we've onboard a lot of clients,but we haven't had, we've never
developed our own ICP.
Um, you know, and I was thinkingabout this just this morning
because I was thinking, youknow, guy, we we work with, you

(37:05):
know, we've got a client that'sa financial institution, we've
got a client that's a hundredmillion dollar B2B in
e-commerce, and then we've got asmall ski shop in Aspen.
I mean, the very diverse, it'snot like we have a niche that we
really go after and that we dowell with.
And so I thought, you know, themy ideal client uh profile is

(37:29):
mainly to talk to the client andfind out if they're willing to
communicate and to do any workon their own.
So more than what businessthey're in, because it's I mean,
you know this, it's now we'rehaving to look at so such a
broader territory, you know,it's been kicked around here,

(37:53):
the whole search everywhereoptimization, uh, you know,
instead of search engineoptimization.
And although I'm not crazy aboutusing that for the acronym, it
is relatively true in the senseyou've got so many touch points
that unless the client is justwilling to open up their wallet
and say, take whatever you need,they're gonna have to do some of

(38:14):
it, you know, whether it's maybethe social media or reputation
uh augmentation or you know,work on uh certain aspects of
their website.
So if we like we've got a clientright now, it's our one Fortune
500 client, and I just wish Iwas in a position that I could

(38:35):
fire them at the moment becausetheir revenue is nice, but they
are so non-responsive that Irealize you know, they're just
they're basically shootingthemselves in the foot because
they're so distracted and sonon-responsive.

SPEAKER_02 (38:50):
So man, okay, you brought up something that I want
to bring up, and I wish I had mypen in front of me because you
you I want to I know somethingelse you said where I want to
take the conversation.
I do want to also make it.

SPEAKER_01 (39:02):
If only this was recorded, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:04):
I know.
Oh my gosh, yeah.
Um, so one of the things I Idefinitely want to go back to is
is how you're viewing about umreputation management, because I
think that that is the right wayto think about things, not SEO.
Um I can tell you that what I'mseeing, um, and I've I have case

(39:27):
studies I need to publish onthese things where uh a client
is expanding and wants to expandtoo quickly and doesn't have the
authority either geographicallyor in different verticals,
right?
So it's like I we we do a lot ofoil and gas, and so people are
like, Oh, we're we're inmedical, we're in agriculture,
we want to do oil and gas, andlet's just jump in and do it.

(39:49):
And I'm like, okay, and and I'veeven seen this, and I've been
thinking about this.
This is something that's been onmy mind recently is we work with
clients because everything weget's inbound from all different
industries.
I was on a call with a publiclytraded crypto company uh two
days ago.
Um, but we you know brought onsome hundred million dollar uh

(40:11):
manufacturing and logisticcompanies because there's a
bunch of stuff coming fromMexico, like we're all over the
place, right?
And I got healthcare companiescalling me, and I'm like, I've
wanted to dive down andspecialize, right?
And it's been hard when greatclients come and the the
fundamentals of SEO are thesame.
And I go, okay, can I competenationally with some very large

(40:37):
companies uh in the SEO space?
Like, right?
Like people can there's a lot ofconsolidation, people are just
throwing money at at some ofthese keywords and ad words.
And I'm like, do I want to dothat?
And I I see how the LMs aregoing.
I go, okay, where do I want tospecialize?
What do I want to specialize in?
And then I have to be really I'mthinking through how many

(41:00):
different categories do I thinkI can own when you're looking at
the LMs.
And I try to tell clients that,and I used to tell them, like,
we had some financial centers inNew York that were expanding
across the United States, andthey're like, we want to set up
offices here, here, here, here.
And I go, based on your budget,based on your budget, I don't
think we can go after each oneof them.

(41:22):
And then sometimes, you know,they'll lean on my account
managers, we'll do it, and thenI'll have to come in and we'll
have to walk it back and say, wespread ourselves too thin, we've
dropped in the rankings, like weneed to focus and we need new
new capital to go after this, ifthat's what you want to go
after.
And I'm seeing again that samestory being applied potentially

(41:42):
to the LLMs on the uh on thedepth of expertise that are
gonna get surfaced when you lookat that.
And and so I agree with youclients that don't um
communicate back to you.
We have a couple clients thatyou know, big clients, they
won't get back to us to proveapprove the content.
And so it's like all there, it'ssitting there, it's waiting, and

(42:05):
we know we're gonna get measuredon performance, and it's like,
hey, like we're getting backedup here, like we need we need
some time.
Uh, even like creating socialthat that's one of the big
things I want to get youropinion on is we've just now
started kind of an informationarchitecture social media uh

(42:28):
strategy um that we've openedup.
Like we wanted to just focus onon maybe uh search engine
marketing, paid ads and and SEO.
And I just never saw socialmedia as like, hey, other people
can do that better than us,right?
Like there's that like that.
That's a whole that needs to bean agency in itself.
I even carved off our ourvideography component during

(42:51):
COVID of that, because that thatkind of no one would meet in
person.
And now I'm looking at thatgoing, we need to bring all that
back.
That's probably now moreimportant or equally as
important.
I feel like it's a one-two punchuh of attacking this market from
the reputation standpoint.
What is your opinion on that?
Because it seems like social ispart of the mix.

SPEAKER_01 (43:15):
Well, it seems like uh you're like I'm a mirror
image of you, or you're a mirrorimage of me because we've done
the exact same thing.
We've focused on uh SEO and paidsearch, and I have deliberately
steered away from social media.
Now we'll do some social mediawork, but only if somebody puts

(43:37):
a gun to our head.

SPEAKER_02 (43:38):
And and it's an existing client, right?
It's not like a exact it's not auh a lead product or anything,
yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (43:44):
And now I'm seeing that it it's absolutely
impossible to ignore socialmedia.
I mean, we've got to also eitherwe have to partner with somebody
or we have to, and right now I'mbringing on board somebody who's
a seasoned social media person,particularly for one of uh the
brands that I work with.

(44:06):
Um, and I'm I'm telling themthis is going to be a huge part
of it going forward, um, becausethey're gonna be looking at it,
and then but when you say socialmedia, well, what are you
saying?
You're yeah, what does thatmean?

SPEAKER_02 (44:19):
Like there's a kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 (44:20):
What does that mean?
Yeah, you know, so you've gotyou've got this pretty broad
landscape.
I mean, it comes back to me overand over.
I hate saying this, you know,coming from a small business
background, but it just seemslike to cover all these bases is
gonna require more budget, andit's probably gonna be more the

(44:42):
realm of larger companies thatare also enlightened enough to
see this is where they've got tobe spending their money.
Uh, but I think a lot ofcompanies are not gonna see
that, or they're not gonna seeit until it's that 10x harder to
get into, as you're you know,talking about.
So a big part of it is thecommunication and education of

(45:04):
the client.
And I can tell you guys do thatsort of like us, but to do that,
you've got to have a clientwho's willing to be educated.

SPEAKER_02 (45:13):
Well, you know, to to so I do uh I do coaching for
for a number of uh SEO companiesand digital marketing companies,
and what what's interesting isyou know when when I bring them
on, I think it's gonna be like,okay, I'm gonna teach you all
this SEO.
It goes back to like most of thequestions are client
communication questions.

(45:35):
And I have to just shareexamples.
Like, I have two examples rightnow of where I know the way to
not do stuff, right?
Like I've learned the hard way.
Here's something recentlytalking about the videos.
Uh, uh a lead that we we had ona drip, came back, wanted uh a
big video production for uh aconference that's coming up, I

(45:57):
think in November.
And I'm like, I don't have anyvenue people in-house, I don't
want to deter the focus of allthis stuff that's going on with
the LLMs.
I don't want to project manageit, essentially, right?
So I basically she was likeready to go.
This sounds good, I like it,everything, whatever.
I gave her the referral to theperson that did all her work

(46:20):
that I had in-house.
Email introduction, referral.
Right.
No, she didn't want it.
She was like, Oh my gosh, likenow I have to start over.
Um, I wanted to go with youguys.
I've like, no, this is theperson that wear in my whole
department, like, so you don'tlike I'm not gonna mark it up,
but she wanted me or my team toproject manage it.

(46:44):
And if I would have just if Iwould have just done it as a
subcontract, like a doublemargin thing, and just handed
her to it like under the brand,like gave him an email, it would
have been fine, but because Ireferred it out, she totally
lost it on me.
And I was shocked by thatpersonally.

SPEAKER_01 (47:03):
Yeah, I mean, I can see why you're shocked, but it
doesn't surprise me.
You know, I've I I've been goingthrough this thought process of
what is my unique sellingproposition, and it's not
results and it's not activities,it's that when I'm in a call
with clients, they trust me asthe authority, and they've

(47:26):
worked with me enough that theytrust also my integrity.
I'm not gonna lie to them soforth.
So it's more about just who's infront of them, yeah.
So when you step away andsuddenly you're no longer in
front of them, it's like takinga blankie away from a little
kid.

SPEAKER_02 (47:44):
I this is new to me, right?
Like I look, I've done I've I'veI've learned a lot, I've done a
lot of stuff, but I'm stillmaking mistakes.
And this was, you know, this wasprobably a good size video
project.
They had quite a bit of budget.
I even tried to kind of comeback and like refer other people
for them to look at, you know,and I was just shocked.

(48:07):
I was just shocked that thebrand of who you are, they
connect with you, they want towork with you.
There, there's a lot to be saidto that as we go back to the
reputation, and they wanted myeyes on it, they wanted to pay
me, made sure I was watching it.

SPEAKER_01 (48:20):
And it's so tough though, because you you know,
scaling, scaling, it's hard toscale yourself, you know.

SPEAKER_02 (48:27):
Well, well, okay.
Another I'm just gonna like thisis um this is uh uh what is it
called?
Uh I'm going through therapylike live for everybody.
Like, I want to like here here'shere's something else that I'm
dealing with.
So, like other people that thatlisten that are going through
this thing.
I'm going into a big meetingwith one of our largest clients
next week, okay.

(48:48):
And it's gonna be like a halfday meeting, all the you know,
different stakeholders, peoplethat I kind of have talked to or
known, and we're gonna look atall their strategy, okay?
And the real reality is they'rethey've been doing whatever
they've been doing, which I I'munder NDA, so I gotta be a
little crypto.
Sure, sure.
But I like this is really I onlyhave a couple clients that have

(49:09):
NDA under, but this is one ofthem.
But yeah, essentially they'respending a lot of money, yeah,
and they've been doing somethingfor a long time, okay, and it
used to work, and it's notworking on the paid, and it's
not working on the SEO.
They brought us in, like we'vedone the stuff, we've got them
ranking in the top two, threepositions, okay.
One, two, three positions.

(49:30):
We're getting them in the AIoverviews, we're doing
everything they asked us to do,but it's not working like it
used to, okay.
And so I'm having thisconversation about the
reputation, about the LLMs, butwe're kind of going against the
grain of saying this is whereit's gonna go, I need it to work
now.
And so I'm preparing mypresentation, right?

(49:50):
And I'm like, oh okay, this isone of the stressful things of
my job.
I always get called in when it'snot going right for an account.
Um, and it's not by any SEO.
Like, I have testimonials, likethis is great based on the data.
I could build a bunch of casestudies on this stuff, whatever.
This is what I'm going in tosay.
This is what I'm leading with.

(50:10):
Tell me, because I don't know.
But they are much bigger thanthan we are as an agency as far
as like revenue and what they'redoing.
I'm spending, okay, on on time,effort, like all this.
Uh, like if I'm a qua, I like totreat our uh brand like a client
and have have have our teamtreat it like that.

(50:31):
So I have kind of cost of goodssold and I kind of know what's
going on.
And and uh we have a coupleentities or brands that that
we're uh building.
Um I'm spending three to four Xeffort, okay, on them.
And I'm just I like that's whatI'm gonna do.
I'm gonna say, do you understandhow important this is?

(50:54):
And you're spending, you've justupped your paid media budget.
That's not working, but you'rejust blowing crazy X more than
you're spending on SEO.
And I'm just gonna show youbased on you know our revenue
and you how much more I'mspending, and this is what I'm
doing because I know that theytrust me.

(51:15):
Um uh, and so uh I just don'tthink people get it.
That's that's just where mythat's where I'm at right now is
even like social media posts, Ipost stuff, very little
engagement on stuff that's likefrontier.
Um I feel like my cryptoknowledge from three or four

(51:35):
years ago, whatever 2022,whatever the last cycle was, 21.
I now have when I'm in meetings,now people are asking me like
how to move crypto from walletto wallet, like I'll pay you to
get I'll get some friendstogether, you can train us.
And I was like, I thought thatthat like the tail on this
thing.
I I thought that like that'scommon knowledge now, four years

(51:56):
later, or you know, even uhfurther back, and I'm going now
it's just starting to come topeople's minds.
So I think all this stuff we'retalking about, only a few people
are gonna get it, and then yeah,in a couple years, people are
gonna be like, oh, like thatwould be easier.

(52:17):
And I don't know if it's 10x,I'm just kind of I'm just saying
it's gonna be way harder onceright once these LLMs solidify
who they trust, and and I thinkthat it goes back to the pruning
that you need to get deepexpertise in the areas that you
want to own, and you got to bereally strategic about what
you're gonna do because I meanGoogle rolled out AI search.

(52:41):
If these things continue tomove, I don't know how long
it'll take, but I I just thinkit's gonna get a lot harder.
And I think to your point, thesebudgets are gonna need to get
much, much bigger.
And what is that gonna do forthe small businesses?
How are they gonna be able tocompete?
Then that goes back to me.
Well, okay, if you're ane-commerce brand, I think you're

(53:03):
okay.
I think if you're a localbusiness, you can double down on
local and that and you're stillgonna win on that.
That that game hasn't changed,but I'm seeing a lot of national
brands or brands I haven't seenbefore move into these local
areas because their authority isso so strong.
Um, and I've even started to seeuh spillover from uh regional

(53:25):
brands internationally, right?
Like, and it's just becoming abig it's gonna be very
competitive.
I just see it's gonna be verycompetitive.

SPEAKER_01 (53:33):
Well, there's a lot to unpack there, as the saying
goes.
And um, yes, it's it's verycompetitive.
I I I agree with you, themajority won't get it, but um
when it comes to clients,businesses, let's say, um, even
SEO agencies, a lot of them arenot going to get it until it's

(53:54):
too late, you know.
But but when it comes to umbusinesses and what we do, SEO,
I think the majority of themhave not got it all along.
You know, really that's a fairpoint.
Yeah, and and so they sort ofwant to adopt the role of here's

(54:15):
some money, make things better.
And uh that's the the rare find,the person, the company, and
maybe this is why we've had solittle churn, is because we've
just lucked into the the type ofcompany that is busy working on
their business.
And once they've developed thattrust, it's sort of like the

(54:37):
LLMs.
Once they've developed thattrust, then they're they want to
go and focus on something elseand just basically let us, and
when I try to explain to them,because I'm an over-explainer,
meet so.
So, yeah, so I put together Iput together this great
presentation, great, on AIenhanced search and how it's

(54:59):
going to affect their businessand so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 (55:03):
Now I want to see it.
Yeah, I'll be glad to share it.

SPEAKER_01 (55:07):
But I I and then I customize it for our biggest
clients.
One of the clients I puttogether, because they this is
the Fortune 500 company, theyjust won't get they keep paying
us, but they don't, you know,engage.
So I s I created a Loom video ofthe presentation and I sent it

(55:29):
off to them and I reminded them,and I reminded, especially the
key decision maker who's theCMO, and never bothered to look
at a 10-minute presentation.
You know, so what do you do withthat level of non-engagement?

SPEAKER_02 (55:48):
Now so I again I'm gonna share one more thing just
to let everybody know howtransparent I am.
We lost we lost a 12-year clientthat left us before, came back,
uh, did some things, and thengoes, okay, we need to use you.
I actually it was a family-ownedbusiness that uh we had to

(56:11):
resell the kids that took over.
Yeah and and there was thissolid relationship there.
And uh the the two founders uhwere well not founders, I guess,
the kids that took over weremarried, had a kid, okay.
And um we were sending them Loomvideos, emails, uh, we would

(56:32):
respond to all their messages,but we used to have uh regular
calls with them, okay?
Right.
And um we could see that theyhad weren't watching the Loom
videos, we were tracking what todo about it, we were sending
them text, we were like, look atthis information.
We're trying to communicatesomething uh to you of what's

(56:52):
going on, and and it was kind oflike a managed service.
We've been working with them forso long, called us up.
Well, call called me up.
Hey Matt, we need to talk toyou.
I said, All right, and he said,We're leaving, and I said,
Really?
Why?
You know, um, we've been tryingto get a hold of you.
You haven't communicated with usin six months, and and we've

(57:13):
already hired another agency andall this kind of stuff, and uh
and yeah, and and we were likelike we I showed them all the
things, they didn't watch any ofthe videos, like we were trying
to get a hold of them, wecouldn't get a hold of them.
So then that opened up, okay.
We're debriefing, why did welose this client?
What happened?

(57:34):
Um and we we really were lookingat the metrics and we've
determined, okay.
So again, this is like not anSEO thing, but this is like a
client relationship.

SPEAKER_01 (57:45):
Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 (57:45):
We are now rolling out Slack for all clients on
communication as the mainchannel because we think people
are getting death by email.
Um, and and like and we'resetting text triggers to make
sure that they're getting theinformation because use it.
It used to be email was the mainform of communication, but we're

(58:06):
not even convinced they'regetting it, they're not watching
the videos, and so that that'slike changing how we're doing
everything.
Like, I got to implement her,we're we're we're rolling it
out, and I and we're gonna saythis is the main form, and now
everybody can see that thosecoin interactions.
These are the kind of issuesit's not their ranking, their
rankings were through the roof.

(58:28):
Like I was shocked that theywere leaving after so long
without even kind of like anescalation, and everything they
asked us to do, rebuild, goafter that.

SPEAKER_01 (58:37):
We did it all, but it's but I I think that
communication in the eyes of theclient and and that relationship
is so critical, and that doesn'thave anything to do with SEO,
no, but but it's it it has a lotto do with running the agency,
and it has a lot to do with thetime that we're in that

(58:59):
everybody's overloaded withinformation, and you know, I
mean, I I you know my email onthe this is my hobby horse is
the overwhelm, uh you know,because I'm overwhelmed, but
everybody's overwhelmed, and sothe the kind of the accumulation
of all that overwhelm is justthis type of miscommunication, I

(59:20):
should say missed communication.
Yeah, missed communication,yeah, yeah, and and you're
trying to get their attention.
I I feel sometimes it's like insocial media, I feel like you
know, I'm track side at theND500, and there's somebody way
up in the stands, and I'm tryingto scream and yell and get their
attention.
The noise is just too great.

(59:40):
There are too many people, youknow, they're gonna be lucky if
they see me.
And so, you know, I don't have asolution for it.
Um, I I is all I could do is Ican commiserate that that's part
of the problem.
This is again why uh for us, youknow, sometimes you gotta take
on clients because you got topay the bills and you.
got to pay the staff andeverything.

(01:00:02):
But ideally, um, what to lookfor in a client is not their
business model or where they'retrying to compete or any of
that.
It's it's are they willing tocommunicate?
And um do they know when youtalk to them, do you get a feel
for that?
You know, and and they'rethey're practically worth a
discounted rate to have somebodylike that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:24):
Oh, I hear you.
I I've also um I have to I'vefound that when I go meet them
in person um uh and if theclient's big enough it it will
warrant that if they're notlocal uh makes a huge difference
uh and I've had a lot of clientstell me oh we're gonna
communicate we're gonna get backto you like you know especially
when we're like building awebsite we're like we need
feedback and uh and and I feellike there's a project

(01:00:47):
management cost that um there isis huge that that eats into you
know any any kind of margin andyou have to consider that uh
we've started to do a a a new uhline item for that which clients
don't love but I'm like hey likeif they don't respond like I I
have to add that um yeah yeahyou know well I will be

(01:01:10):
interested in hearing how youhow Slack works out for you at
some point in the future thishas uh gone by too fast.
No I hear you well let's let'sstart to bring it back and and
kind of wrap up with someviewpoints on how you are
looking at the market from areputation management standpoint
and then maybe some of theunknown secrets of internet

(01:01:33):
marketing that you have been uhimplementing and working for uh
a number of years uh to sharewith people maybe some best
practices.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:43):
Yeah um I would say from the standpoint of
reputation management is um whatwe're looking at is although uh
the Google reviews is extremelyimportant, we see them pulling
in reviews from all sorts ofplatforms.
So whereas you know we had kindof given up on uh citation

(01:02:04):
building as part of local SEOwe're now reviving that and
looking at okay what alternativeplatforms can we work with and
also how can we you know usebecause we have like we use in
our shop BrightLocal for uh youknow trying to boost reviews and

(01:02:26):
so now it's coming back andsaying okay how can we work with
them in order to help them putin place a review outreach
program but then not have itexclusively focused on Google.
And then also um uh making surethat we make good use of the
LLMs themselves when it comes toum figuring out exactly what

(01:02:51):
next steps are like like withsome of our clients uh you know
we'll do we'll go and we'll sayokay who's a good whatever it is
who's a good company in thisarea for this particular type of
service and our client won't bementioned and so we'll say why
did you not mention and oftenthey'll give you pretty specific
information well oh yes theyhave a good reputation and

(01:03:13):
they'll describe the client andeverything that they'll that
that they'll say uh however thereason we didn't mention them
then they'll they'll give it toyou and often although you you
can't trust an LLM obviously butbut often they will give you
stuff that as soon as you see ityou can say intuitively oh yeah
that's true um you know we don'thave as rich a variety or we

(01:03:36):
don't have as many positives butthen also to view reputation as
not just a factor in reviews nowwe have not implemented this
because yet because just of timeand it's so time consuming but
another place where they willget your reputation is for
example Reddit is the big onebut then they'll look at

(01:03:59):
discussions on other you knowthat they're looking at even at
stuff like Quora that's prettylow quality and so here again
it's it's either coaching theclient or asking them for enough
budget to be able to interactwith all these various points of
presence.
So when and then going back tothe reputation side of things to

(01:04:22):
focus on content and we're atthe beginning edge of this to
focus on content that is verymuch for example client
interviews that also would havea video embedded that also would
speak to you know why did youhave a good experience with our
company because they're stilllooking at your website as an

(01:04:44):
authoritative authority aboutyou.
So we can't just say oh let'signore the website because
they're looking at everythingelse but that's what I mean when
I say and I think this is theit's not really a secret and nor
is it unknown but that the LLMsare pretty gullible if you tell
them about yourself in a waythat is believable and I don't

(01:05:05):
advocate of course ever sayinganything that's not true but but
if you take your strong pointsyou look at them and you see
that you've not been talkingabout those strong points on
your website you're deprivingyourself of a very good
reputation management sourceright there.
And so that's a good startingpoint.

(01:05:26):
I love that now is thereanything else that we we haven't
covered that you think is issuper valuable to call out and
then Ross how do people uh findyou follow you um uh engage you
in services like what would youlike to share and we'll
definitely put that in the shownotes as well sure uh someone

(01:05:46):
who wants to contact me can justemail me Ross at EEP for extreme
exposure promotions seo.com andthat's the website address as
well I'm also active withsearchengineacademy.com which is
the SEO training group umhaven't been as active with that

(01:06:07):
lately because of the time uhtrying to keep up and so the
last thing that we didn't coverthat is more of insider baseball
you like me probably get youknow I feel like I'm selling
jinzu knives you like me getnewsletters just every day full
of content that you should bereading uh and you may already

(01:06:30):
do what I'm gonna suggest herebut what I've taken to because
it's absolutely impossible forme to keep up with everything so
like for example I I got uhAlita Solas's very fine
newsletter she's always got likea thousand and one articles in
there she's posting on LinkedInlike I can't even keep yeah it's
crazy so I'll open often like 10links from her email I just add

(01:06:56):
them all to note notebook lm idon't are you using notebook ln
in internally i i have beenplaying around with it we
haven't put it into the workflowno so i've got an extension on
my chrwser that'll add in bulktabs and i can go down tick all
the tabs i add them all into anarea and then i've shared this

(01:07:17):
with each of my team so youcould just go and query across
the sources and you can do thatwith uh YouTube videos as well
and it's been very usefulbecause what I'll do is I'll
feed a bunch of newsletters inand then I can go in once a week
and I can say what are the toplevel uh updates that you see in

(01:07:40):
these newsletters in the staterange and it'll give me a really
good list.

SPEAKER_02 (01:07:44):
So Ross you just gave me an idea and I'm gonna uh
I'm gonna build a little toolI've been uh taking this Harvard
ai course um oh and uh I've beenpulling a lot of things
internally uh into kind of uh uhLLM to to synthesize data and to
to to bring together all thesedifferent data sources and I

(01:08:05):
haven't thought about uhaggregating all this all these
uh feeds uh and uh RSS feedsthat I'm getting and all these
emails like I I am overloadedwith the amount of new
information that that's comingand every time I open up any
social media I'm like I got tosave everything like I this is
it's too much and I'm like it'sanxiety inducing yeah it it

(01:08:29):
really is and I'm like I don'twant to open it up because then
I'll miss this and I I gottastart you know and and I need to
I need to have a system to topull all that together and I
like what you're doing and anduh maybe we can have an offline
discussion but I'm gonna buildthat in to to automation and
then have it kind of synthesizethat data to to really aggregate
um there was a a newsletter whenI was heavy on the sales side of

(01:08:53):
things uh that uh I I couldn'tkeep up with all the sports and
I think it was called skinnysomething it I think it was for
women actually it was anewsletter that talked about all
the sports so you could havelike surface level discussion on
it.
Oh okay yeah right and and so Icould at least have
conversations with with you knowsports fans uh on on sales calls

(01:09:15):
and so I that was part of myroutine every day when I was
going to see accounts I wouldknow what's going on so I could
talk about it and I feel likethat would be really helpful
today.
I I think one of the mostvaluable things my team tells me
is we have an internal uh SEOchat and I just when I find
things that are interesting Ilike publish them in that and

(01:09:36):
that's definitely becomes likekind of inside baseball I think
people like the value of that Ithink you're doing something uh
similar I I think you have a a aa better system though that than
I have so so awesome well yeahthat's that's been that's my one
hope for some way through thisuh jungle that we've wandered
into is you know um becausegetting a guide that's tough you

(01:10:02):
know I I I think what I thinkthat that's the most important
thing that I want to say and andand end on for everybody is most
businesses feel like they wellthey somebody internally just
needs to be the person dedicatedto keeping up to date with all
this stuff and and and makingsure it's being implemented if

(01:10:22):
it's not an inside person uh uha third party that you can go to
and I think the value in thestrategy and in the information
is is is worth it right is worthit right uh to know what you
should be doing what what'svaluable what's not because you
only have so many resources andyou if you line those up and
point them in the rightdirection and and I and I think

(01:10:46):
that today more than everbecause everything's new that
that's a that's something thatpeople should be looking for and
have that trusted source on onwho to follow and then I would
encourage uh other freelancersand agencies to become that
person right and but then itbecomes a full-time job
synthesizing all thatinformation and sharing it and

(01:11:08):
and building that audience setso yeah even with even with
tools and shortcuts it's still afull-time job it's I mean it we
are entering in a jungle and I'mstarting to see a lot of kind of
collaboration happening wheredifferent people are doing
different things and there'sjust so much to cover um that
that you got to be stayed tuned.
So I do appreciate everybodythat's listening.

(01:11:30):
I am actually trying to turnthis into uh a a dedicated team
and a source and we need to fundthat um and one of the things
that you can do is well followand like and share uh is uh
something you could do for freeuh is establish currency to help
let us know what what you wantto hear about and what you want

(01:11:52):
to focus on.
And I am building a team butwe're not building any revenue
off this this is just kind of acommunity uh benefit and and
also a way for for me to stay upto date with with what's going
on and connect with uh greatpeople like yourself Ross.
So um thank you so much forbeing on uh everybody if you
like this conversation let usknow uh I'll be sharing all

(01:12:13):
Ross's links in the show notesuh and we'll be making uh some
some little clips and shorts forthis we are straddling YouTube
right now uh best SEO podcastbut we're moving over to
internet marketing secrets uh solook for us there I know a lot
of you listen on iTunes andSpotify so thank you and uh
until the next time uh this isMatt Bertram this is unknown uh

(01:12:36):
secrets of internet marketing umbye bye for now thank you matt
it's been a pleasure enjoyed itRoss
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