May 26, 2025 • 46 mins
Digital marketing is shifting fast, like the leap from directories to Google. AI is reshaping search, favoring unique, personal content over generic blogs. Traditional SEO fades, while personal brands rise. Human creativity now beats corporate content.
Guest contact information:
https://billricestrategy.com
https://www.youtube.com/@billricestrategy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/billrice/
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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (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 2 (00:23):
And welcome back to another fun-filled episode of
the Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I have a lot to share with youand I have a special guest here
today to get into thenitty-gritty of running a
digital agency.
What he sees working right nowon the B2C side.
What he sees working on the B2Bside.
Welcome to the show, bill Rice.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm super excited about thisconversation.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of things changing
.
I think Google's changed morein the last let's say 36 months
than they have in the last 15years.
Ads are changing, social'schanging.
There's so much that's going on, and so I thought it'd be good
to bring another fellow digitalmarketer on that's working in
(01:10):
both spaces, to talk a littlebit about what's working, what's
not.
So welcome to the show, bill.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey, thanks, thanks for the opportunity.
It's super, super exciting.
Like you said it's, it's a funtime.
I've been doing this for almost30 years, dates me a little bit
, but, but, man, we've beenthrough so many cycles and this
is another one of thosetransformational moments that's
like so exciting to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, so what's most topical to you?
What, what.
What are you looking at?
What's going on, what are youseeing?
We'd just like to start there.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question that we're
in one of those moments.
I'll actually really datemyself.
So the last time I saw a momentlike this was I was part of a
team that was seven of us gottogether, had some good funding
and everything and built one ofthe first internet-only banks.
And as we were doing that,yahoo directories were like the
(02:07):
thing right, and lead generationlike LendingTree was like this
little company that we startedcollaborating with.
And one of my developers on theteam came to me and it's like
hey, you should take a look atthis thing.
And so he brings up on a screenthis completely white page with
a box in it and he's like youjust like type a keyword and it
(02:29):
gives you like all the directorylistings.
So I'm again replicating theconversation.
Like we didn't know what SERPswere or anything like this, and
I was like do you think peoplewill do that?
You know, cause you wouldnormally go to the directory and
you kind of go into the sectionand find your thing.
Anyways, it's one of thosemoments.
Now we're in this moment.
So what that did was it changeduser behavior.
(02:50):
We didn't go to directoriesanymore, we did a Google search
right Now.
We're in this moment wherepeople are they don't I mean,
I'm on the leading edge of thisright, so I'm probably not
reflective of this, but I oftengo to chat GPT far before I go
to Google search anymore, and Ithink we're in one of those
(03:10):
moments where people areenjoying not only going to chat
GPT to do prompts, but actuallyhaving conversations with it and
having the response likethey're talking to a human,
almost.
So user behavior as a digitalmarketer is changing right in
front of us and we're going tohave to adapt and, man, this is
(03:30):
always fun when this happens.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I mean, yeah, ai-assisted search is absolutely
huge.
So I saw a tweet by Sam Altmanthat said they just onboarded a
million users in like four hoursor something like that, and
previously it was like thefastest they ever did.
It was like a million users inthree weeks or I don't remember,
(03:54):
or three days, I don't rememberwhat the number was, but it was
like it exponentially was a lotless.
And so the uptake, the pickup,people have started to use it.
People are working on inprompts, like I think prompt
engineering is becoming huge, alot of the components.
So, yeah, search is gettingeaten away and I think attention
(04:15):
is also in different places.
Right, so, social media, organicsocial, how these algorithms
are working now I mean it's fun,it's all new.
I think just like the internetcycle happened and all these
internet businesses were builtNow I think it's just like how
creative can you be?
(04:36):
Because they even help withcoding and everything else with
AI.
So I think there's going to bea whole new layer of businesses
and offerings that are going tobe a whole new layer of
businesses and offerings thatare going to be super disruptive
.
And I think that social mediahow the algorithm changed where
you don't have the followers,you didn't have to build a
follower account like an emaildrip.
It's just like you put out goodcontent.
(04:56):
It's opened up like it's a wildwest again.
No one knows what's going on orwhat's happening and a lot of
people don't change.
I feel like businesses start,they have something that works
and they're working that.
And I've been going to a lot ofSEO conferences.
I've been speaking.
I'm in some private groups.
You know, for a while it waslike what's happening, I don't
(05:16):
know what to do and you know youhave to get back out there.
I got back out there, starteddoing SEO again.
I'm doing organic social likemyself, like not outsourcing it,
not not having the team do itlike I'm doing it.
I need to understand what'shappening with the algorithms.
I'm doing the seo like it.
It's just it's a new error,right, yeah, what are you seeing
(05:37):
?
But this, this shows about whatyou do yeah what you're seeing,
so tell me what.
What you've seen with clientsand um what you're looking at.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a whole bunch of themes
and you kind of rattled througha whole bunch of them, so maybe
some of the larger trends thatwe're seeing.
You mentioned social media andthings like that.
So I have a blog post that Idid and believe it to be true.
(06:06):
Is, you know, we always say somany times we call the death of
something Right, and I think youknow blogs as an SEO strategy,
like used to.
You could, you could do a bunchof blog posts and you would.
You would inherently do SEOright.
It would just work.
Google was really good kind ofworking through those and if you
(06:27):
did a half decent job, you'regoing to get some results.
You're going to move the needle.
You're going to do well for aclient, I think.
Now to move the needle for theclient, going out into these
social audiences, particularlyon the B2B side in particular,
going out there with yourexecutives, with your leadership
, and having them producecontent.
(06:48):
These AI large language modelslove rich content.
They love videos, they loveposts that are in there.
The indicators are notnecessarily the backlinks as
much as they are kind of thefollowers and the engagement and
some of those other metrics.
Ai can really consume thatbetter than Google's algorithms,
(07:10):
you know, in a kind of monoline.
Having to force everything backto a search engine result page,
I think was a real limiter andprobably caused Google to have a
bit of a blind spot becausetheir constraint was on the
delivery, the front end UI,whereas ChatGPT doesn't have
that.
So they're consuming a lot.
So I think that's one trend.
(07:31):
The type of content that you'redoing is changing to that point
of individuals contributing.
One of the biggest and this is abig thing that we've been
focused on for LLMs is lookingfor gaps in what LLMs know.
So what LLMs have beenconsuming for the last several
(07:51):
years is blog posts and publiclyavailable content.
The moment that I put BillRice's personal experience into
a place where the LLM can grabit, the LLM just kind of like
Google.
They like that because it feelsmore personal, it's unique,
(08:14):
it's a gap.
They suck that kind of stuff up.
So we're constantly looking forgaps.
It's a big opportunity fororganizations because usually
organizations have some thoughtleadership, have some unique
angles or whatever, so producingcontent that gets them into
chat, gpt, llms, usually whatworks and we've had some really
(08:35):
kind of fast successes If youlook for those gaps and those
unique things that yourorganization knows about your
marketplace.
That's not just the drivel thatmost seo people point out.
And then I guess the last bigtrend that you and I both
probably experience is the bestseo people used to be
spreadsheet jocks, I mean theyknew, like, how to do a pivot
(08:58):
table, how to do a lookup tablelike no other.
Um, and that's changed becauseAI can be a force multiplier and
just analyzing massive amountsof data and helping us to create
strategies to look foropportunities.
So AI is playing a big role injust being our data analysis
(09:19):
inside of there and just reallyleveling up what we can see and
observe.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Well, you know, speaking of like Excel jockeys,
right, I'm going to Mike King'sSEO week and I'm excited to see
what they're working on right.
Because he's always just, youknow.
For any of those that don'tknow who Mike King is, I pull
rank.
He's awesome.
He's a thought leader in thespace, um, so you know, I saw
(09:47):
what Brighton, uh, is doing andwhat they're doing across the
pond, uh, and then you know whatMike's doing is is really
always cutting edge and it'sevolving, right.
The AI assisted search is istotally evolving how people are
using it, what they're lookingfor.
I mean, I think Google fromwhat I heard I don't know if
(10:10):
it's true they're losing moneyon the AI generated overviews
because they have to spend somuch energy and compute to do
that, because they're justtrying to keep people there, and
what that's doing is pushingand compressing the leads that
actually typically would come toa website, right, so people are
not really consuming websiteinformation as much anymore.
If they're getting theiranswers in, the people also ask
(10:32):
or the AI overviews, and so itit, it.
For me, it's becoming aboutdeveloping the brand and owning
everywhere.
Right, and you did talk aboutYouTube and people are consuming
a lot more videos than they didand Google does own them.
And you know YouTube and peopleare consuming a lot more videos
than they did and Google doesown them and you know people
spend more time on YouTube thanprobably anywhere else.
You know, depending on, oh, ifyou're listening to a podcast or
(10:54):
if you're just heavily investedin the dopamine hit from, you
know a TikTok related video,which that is up there, but
still YouTube owns it and thenYouTube shorts.
So you know that's that's oneof our big initiatives is to to
move over to YouTube.
Um, because I think that that'show buyer behavior is changing.
Um, and that's something that,theoretically, we we understand
(11:16):
the algorithm, we understandwhat to do it, but to
operationalize it and to scaleit for clients when we need
content from them is verydifficult, right?
So you know that rich contentthat you get from clients, I
think the thought leadership,depending on the B2B side, they
understand it on the B2B or onthe B2C side like getting more
(11:37):
products, like you know, gettingthe differential information.
That's new, right Cause, evenpeople that are using these lms.
You're just spitting out thesame thing over and over again
and and something like what isthe internet theory?
Or that google says, um, Ithink something I read again I
don't these numbers I I shouldbe writing them down, but it was
(11:57):
like something like 48 46percent of the internet today is
ai generated yeah, okay, orbought right, so so so there's
there, there's a um.
They're always looking for thatrich content.
I think that's why they did thedeal with reddit right, because
you got the biggest like oh mygosh, like real, real people for
the most part are on reddit um,and I think that that's why you
(12:20):
on my spot twitter, you know,because and then he had he even
posted about, he had to scrapeout all the bots.
Um and so I don't know.
I mean what?
What did I share that you mightwant to add to um or that
resonated with you?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, I think you know the fact that you kind of
zeroed in on brand and Google'sbeen talking about this for a
long time.
But I think a lot of timespeople misinterpret why Google
thinks brand is so important.
But you kind of highlighted itthere Again.
If so much of the Internet isgenerated, you know, by AI or
(12:57):
you have bots or this ability tosort of take humanity out of
things and be very efficient atproducing content, and this race
to the bottom with content,brands become critically
important.
And I'm talking about likebrands, in the sense of like
organizations, but also personalbrands, because, again, when
(13:17):
brands speak, they bring aunique voice and tone and
approach and experience to thatcontent marketplace and that
really stands out.
And I think that's what's goingto get gobbled up by these LLMs
.
We had just just yesterday uh,I had kind of a point in case
example of this we had one ofour clients roll out a new
(13:40):
product.
We put up a quick landing pagethat we wanted to rank and we
wanted to get it into LLMs andthen there were kind of two
activities that happened One itwas somewhat unique, so I've
never seen this happen before,but it jumped to number two
within the first day and itmoved to number one within two
(14:01):
days.
So to me more important thanthe ranking thing, because it is
again unique and sort of nichemarketplace, so that's not
terribly unsurprising, but itshowed the rate at which Google
is consuming, like for it totake a brand new landing page
and shove it forward that fastin that market is really
interesting.
And then on the LLM side, wekind of did this thing and this
(14:25):
is an experiment so it could belike a weird sort of you know
one example.
So it is, you know, nostatistical significance, but we
went out to a free version ofLLM and we asked some questions
about our you know who was thebest provider of this product?
It had our company, our client,in that mix.
(14:46):
But then we started to coach itup and what it said in the mix
is it's like oh well, of thesepeople, these are the people who
do it, this person kind of doessomething like it, but they
don't have this specific productin their mix.
And then we can say, well, oh,interestingly enough, it looks
like they do Like literally.
This is the conversation withChatGPT.
Interestingly enough, it lookslike they do have it.
(15:08):
And here's a page and it took alook at that page and it's like
, oh yeah, this seems to be anew thing.
And then subsequently we askedsome more questions.
It essentially kind of likereset itself and again this
could be a flash in the pan.
But we basically coached it onthe product.
And then subsequently we didsome other things.
We had some other people testit.
(15:29):
The LLM had learned about ourcompany and new product and kind
of pushed it forward in theresponses.
So that was kind of a like canwe influence and coach up LLMs?
Is that that was.
That was a test.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I, I've actually heard people talking
about doing that.
I know people are are trying todo that, I think when the the
software updates.
And so I've been actually usinga lot of chats where I'm like,
don't update the software youknow, you know, but then there,
then, then there, there's,there's, there's ones that it
will update the software and Ifeel like that's when it's
(16:04):
learning and it's in itslong-term database.
Um, the question I had for youwas uh, back up your first
example, uh, it getting indexedso quickly?
Was this a new domain or wasthis a page on an existing
website?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, this was an existing domain, has some good
credibility.
Product was similar to otherproducts, so it was rolling out
kind of a new related product.
So there was leverage in thesite for sure, and we'd had
success with launching newproducts before on this site.
(16:45):
But we'd never seen it happenthat fast.
It's usually weeks.
In fact, it was so fast that wewent to because we were like
okay, how many SERPs did we get?
So we went to AAH drafts and wewent to SEMrush and like
nothing, like it didn't, eventhough you know those things are
pretty fast.
It had no knowledge of ourindexing and it wasn't even in
(17:08):
search console.
But if you just went out to theraw, just did the search, it
was popping up.
So it's, yeah, it's, it'sinteresting, our normal sort of
ways to to look for things we'renot indexing fast enough.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So what I'm, what I'm seeing is like the, the if
you're in the topical authority,right, if you're already in the
category, and you feed it newinformation and and this could
be an offshoot of like thecaffeine algorithm, you know,
because it seems to be running alot faster but it seems like
there's kind of like a swarm ofbots, if you will that kind of
(17:42):
come look at it.
They all have maybe they'remaybe like little agents that
all have like different thingsthat they're looking at.
And then you get this kind ofspike in attention pretty
quickly and then it'll kind ofsettle back down to where it
thinks it is and then it'llstart, you know, building more
data around that.
But yeah, I've seen, and ifyou're in that you know category
(18:04):
already and you know somethinghappens it could happen really
quick and then it kind of backsoff and starts to to to
normalize it and it kind oflevels out.
But, yeah, things are happeninga lot faster.
I mean, the long-term database,from everything that I've read,
turns over about every two anda half months.
So that's kind of why we doquarterly engagements and stuff
(18:25):
like that to kind of catch thatupdate, because things will go
from not ranked at all toposition two or whatever it is
is really really quickly basedon certain things.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Um, to that point.
You know, again, a lot of ourtools are third-party
observations, of google inparticular, and we don't have
any real tools to observe what'shappening in the llms.
So I think that's, from aclient engagement standpoint,
becomes difficult because, likeI said, there's nothing I can
show them in a standard ahrefsreport that we give out to them
like that we've had any success,but I know it's there, right.
(19:01):
And then LLMs like I have to do, like I literally have to do
screenshots or or ask them to dosome things to see what's there
, cause there there are no toolsaround success in that regard,
and it's, it's going to beimportant, but we don't have a
way to measure it or even toattribute it yet.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I think that that's something that is
probably one of that.
We talked about the newproducts or the new businesses
that come out of this.
Because, right, you said, okay,who's the best service provider
or who has the best product forXYZ, and it'll give you like a
list or it might give you one.
I think some of that's gettingpulled from schema, but it's
(19:44):
weighing it right.
So it's weighing it againsteverything else that knows.
And I do think pointing outinformation.
And when you say, check outthis website, pull the
information, it will certainlylearn in that chat and then, if
it's brand new, I see kind of anupdate happen and and I think
that it is learning andeverybody's feeding it.
(20:05):
Interestingly enough, I asked itwhat are the rules that you
abide by?
Cause I want to understand likewhat, what kind of answer
you're giving me, and peopletalk about kind of jailbreaking
certain things, and I asked itto notify me when, when I'm
hitting a guardrail on certainthings.
Um, you know, but I, I it wouldbe good to have tools to
(20:26):
understand where you sit in that, because how are you supposed
to provide reporting to this orthat?
I've found a lot of the tools.
I keep testing out differenttools and a bunch of people
sponsor the show, Like, but youknow how, like I haven't found
the right tool.
You know what I mean.
Like I I'll pull this from overhere, I'll pull this from over
here, and then now it's allgoing to like a token based
(20:48):
system, which is not necessarilya bad thing.
I mean, what are you using froma technology stack standpoint?
Um, when you're, when you'redoing this work for clients and
I know it will be different forB2B versus B2C- yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
So when AI, when the chat GPT sort of sprung on the
scene like one of the firstthings that I noted right off
the bat and it has become like acore philosophy and I share
this with everyone, and myyoungest right now is in college
, so she's like right in themiddle of like how does this
(21:23):
affect education and academiaand all this kind of stuff?
And so one of the things that,because she was in college, this
is probably why I came up withthis is you will always fail if
you ask chat, gpt or these AIthings to do your homework right
.
It will always fail you, itwill get things wrong, it will
give you, like, the worstquality, and so it is better as
(21:46):
augmentation, as an assistant,as a collaborator, as a
colleague.
Anytime you use it in thosesort of modes, you'll have the
best success or you iteratethrough things with it.
So when I'm thinking abouttools, I extend that philosophy.
(22:08):
So the worst tools that I playedwith are tools that try to bake
in and do your homework for youright, and this is the worst in
SEO content creation.
The tools for SEO contentcreation are some of the worst
because they've essentially gonelike anti-AI.
They baked in some, like youknow, hard.
This is my vision of it, whatthey've done.
(22:29):
Baked in hard coded prompts.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
And then you run things through it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
You say, hey, write me an article about this.
It puts all those prompts thatare probably not wonderful and
then it bakes out somethingthat's just trash right.
So to that philosophy, most ofwhat we're using are the core
tools ChatGPT, perplexity,claude Gemini.
We like to start with those.
(22:57):
We want to learn how to usethem.
I think that better abstractedtools will come eventually that
will allow a lower skill set towork with those.
(23:21):
With SEO, the people thatunderstand like how these things
work and how to manipulate thedata and the underlying prompts
and the things that make it giveyou the best quality will be
the winners.
So we're putting a lot of timeand energy into just using the
base level tool and working withcustom GPTs, learning how to be
(23:42):
better at giving prompts usingour own prompt databases where
we create something that worksand then we hold onto that and
reuse it and iterate on it.
Spaces have been reallypowerful, especially as an
agency.
We have clients, we always putthem in spaces and now we have
the ability to kind of organizethose projects and and have some
(24:03):
some baked in safe history.
So, anyway, those.
So so right now, yeah, we'reusing the fundamentals and we're
doing the hard work to learnhow to make them great.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, no, I, I had to step back into it.
This is not something that, uh,you've got to have a good
operator, right, you've got tohave somebody that knows what
good looks like to to to helpdrive some of this Like, you
can't just give it all over toit.
It's not um, autopilot just yet.
Um, you know what are youseeing as far as um, the mix for
(24:36):
clients of different channels,paid social how do you look at
that mix right now?
Are you staying from atraditional SEO standpoint?
Okay, no, we're going afterprompts.
We want to show up inAI-assisted search.
What does the sphere look likefor you of the marketing mix?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah, so we are a full service agency and
generally folks engage us forthe specific purpose of
generating high volume of leads.
So our mix generally and Ithink this is changing a little
bit.
So this is a great question.
So our generally first in PPC,because we got to generate
(25:20):
traffic, we got to, you got topush them to landing page, you
got to get high intent, we gotto start cooking leads, because
leads bring revenue.
And then we usually layer inSEO and content which has a
longer.
You know, usually, again,there's a reason, it's called
earned media.
It takes three to six months toearn your way in to those
similar positions that we'realready taking with PPC but are
(25:40):
costing us a lot more.
And then we layer in thingslike email and social media for
kind of the remarketing aspectof that or the lead nurturing.
So that's the stack.
Where this is changing, and Ithink it will change more, is
we're going to have moreengagements where we start to
lead with SEO, I think, or whatSEO will become, because it is
(26:04):
becoming faster and it isbecause of ChatGPT and we do
hear clients coming in leads,even our own leads, where people
say I did a Google search andit was trash.
And then I went to ChatGPT andit recommended you guys and it
made sense.
That's the other thing thatChatGPT does.
(26:24):
Back to one of your otherpoints it's increasingly
becoming more transparent.
It's telling you why it madethe decision or it's giving you
the rubric for how it, like,sorted this list.
Like this is why I gave youthese three people, which
(26:45):
essentially pre-sells, likepeople like Kaleidico and Bill
Rice Strategy Group.
So that's kind of interesting.
But I think, because of thespeed and because of the user
behavior and more of this, likeespecially the conversational AI
and component people liketalking to their phones and
expecting responses, liketalking to their phones and
expecting responses, I fullybelieve that that shift to, like
I said, what SEO and contentbecomes probably will start to
(27:08):
heavily encroach on our PPC.
One because it's moving faster,but two because traditional PPC
the SERPs and that ad model, Ithink is going to deteriorate
over time.
So I think PPC, we're going tohave to relearn that channel as
(27:31):
well, because it will eitherhave to be just to your point of
Google losing money on the AIresults.
It's going to have to be reengineered and we don't know
what that looks like.
So we're probably going to haveto make it an adjustment, but
before that adjustment happens,I guarantee you the model itself
will deteriorate and the typesof results that we can generate.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So so here's a really interesting piece of data that
I read like a day or two ago.
Um uh Neil, uh Patel put thisout.
Um, and I agree with you.
So I agree with everything yousaid.
What was interesting in thedata is everything was growing.
Google was up, ads were up,searches were up, people were
(28:14):
using every and all things, soeverything was up.
So it was losing market sharecomparatively to everything
because the whole market'sgrowing.
The whole market's just growingfaster than Google's growing but
it's still growing, which waskind of mind-blowing, right,
Because I mean now AI is onlyabout 4% of all searches and not
(28:38):
all those searches havecommercial intent, so that
number is probably a lot smallerbut, I do believe it's going to
grow.
I think that those things areimportant, but everything's
growing, which?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
it was really fascinating.
I hadn't thought about it thatway, but I wonder if some of
that and I kind of said this theother day in a conversation
that I was having is so beforeand again.
This is where behavior changesand this is why it's so exciting
for me when I see one of thesethings is before.
(29:09):
If you had to solve a problem,you probably went to your
experience first and then youdid a Google search.
Or maybe you did a Googlesearch to kind of get you
started and then you had to kindof read through a bunch of
stuff.
I bet in general, we're doingmore queries and true
augmentation of ourselvesbecause of chat, gpt, because of
(29:33):
things like Siri, which I thinkwill.
I'm in this moment where I thinkit's getting dumber before it
gets smarter, but I think atsome point, because one queries
and augmentation will be soaccessible, we'll just talk to
it or have a conversation.
It'll become normalized.
I wonder if that's why it'sgrowing, because I know I do.
(29:55):
Personally, I'd probably do aGoogle search half dozen times a
day.
Chatgbt I'm quite honestly init all day as I'm working.
I'm using it to producematerials, to summarize calls,
to do roll-ups of follow-upemails, to help me brainstorm, a
(30:17):
new campaign to analyze somedata Like.
Those are not Google searchqueries, those are like
literally like exponentiallymore queries.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah, I, I think that I had two really good things to
say and I needed to write themdown because, right when you
were about to finish cause I'mlistening to you they just they
left my head, so they'll have to, they'll have to come back, but
, um, I can, I wanted, I wantedto hear um, what, what you're
doing on social Okay, Cause, um,I, I think a lot of the
(30:53):
attention is being driven onsocial Okay.
Oh, here's, here's actuallywhat I was going to say.
So the number of searches thisis at least one of the things I
was going to say so the numberof searches that are converting
are eight plus words on average.
That, that was an interestinglittle fact.
So long tail key phrases and soif you think about, like the
(31:13):
queries that you're making, ifyou're talking to chat GBT, how
many words is that Right?
So you're like that, that.
That question is like I don'tknow.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
a paragraph of words oh yeah, easily.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So it's getting longer and longer, and so people
are understanding how to usethese things to get the answer
they're looking for, and so Ijust think that that's super
interesting.
If you're thinking about longtail key phrases and you know a
lot of people in certainindustries are just hitting on
those major keywords and thelong tail key phrases is
(31:50):
actually where the conversioncomes in.
Okay, yeah, here's the secondthing.
So there was a study that Ireread a while ago.
It was called the Zero MomentStudy.
It was done back in 2011 withGoogle, and what it reminded me
of was the the user's uh search,or the user journey or the
customer journey search of whenthey convert is not the straight
(32:13):
line.
It's not even linear up anddown or anything like that.
It's kind of like a uh, Adamand uh and and everybody.
You go out, you come back tocenter, you go out, you come
back to center.
You go out and come back tocenter, and, and you're, you're
bringing back that information,Just like if you're prompting
chat, GBT, right, you ask it aquestion.
(32:33):
Okay, Come back to center.
Nope, Refine it.
Come back to the answer, Refineit Like that's how people are
searching, and so you, you know,it's just fascinating to me
about user behavior of like whatpeople are doing, and I'm I'm
(32:54):
finding that happen even moreand more on social platforms and
now the content finds whoyou're looking for.
So then now you're gettinginstantaneous feedback of the
content you're producing and I'mjust curious um, you know how
much you've dabbled in that orplayed with that, because I'm
now back to working on stuff.
I'm doing a lot of the work tooperationalize how we need to do
(33:16):
it going forward, because someof those models change Every
time something new comes out.
You got to kind of refigurewhat you're doing and what those
strategies are for clients andfor yourself.
So I'm just curious what you'dlike to respond to out of that.
And then anything about social.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, I think on, yeah.
So there's a lot, of, a lot ofinteresting threads to pull
there.
So let me start with the socialstuff.
So, again, I think it goes backto brands and, in particular,
personal brands.
So a lot of the social stuffthat we're seeing work well are
things that are staying in linewith social meaning that, you
know, people on social platformslike to interact with people,
(33:56):
versus brands.
This is why LinkedIn you knowcompanies has never worked Right
.
If you post to a company page,it's just like it's worthless.
Right, you need the individualsto work, so that's working
effectively.
And so what we're doing there,especially at the executive
level, I think there's thisresurgence of the concept of
(34:17):
sort of ghostwriting and what wecan do with executives.
Certainly, we can doghostwriting to actually do, you
know, the more traditional postand stuff like that, but
ghostwriting in the sense thatwe spend a lot of time
collecting whatever material wehave around those executives and
those leaders to understandtheir personal brand.
(34:42):
We load that in and then fromthere we start to give them
frameworks that we want them tofill in and it's like, okay,
this is the marketplace we're in.
We want you to comment on this.
We want you to kind of likepodcasts.
If we could get them all topodcasts and we could just take
the results of that, it'dprobably be wonderful content.
(35:03):
But we're essentially trying toseed that and we're saying, hey
, we want your commentary onthat.
We want you to hop on yourcomputer on a loom and have this
conversation.
Or we have this product calledguided content creation, which
is essentially like a podcast,but we just take the one side of
it.
So we'll get them on a toollike Riverside and we'll coach
(35:27):
them through it, we'll ask themsome questions, we'll get their
feedback.
Then our video, people willtake it and toss it.
So that gives that unique,nuanced perspective that works
so well on social.
So that's social.
And then I think the otherthing to your point of like the
(35:48):
user behavior I did want to pullon this.
Right there I heard aninteresting thing that changed
the way I do a lot of prompting.
So I think the other thingthat's happening inside of these
tools is we're asking the toolsto help us work better with the
tool.
So, like one of my little hacksnow is chat.
Gpt has kind of two types ofmodels.
(36:08):
They've got this uh 0103 seriesand then they've got the more
traditional chat, you know gpt 4, 4.5 or whatever they're on now
, so that the hack is the, thezero, the 0.3 or O3s or whatever
is essentially a reasoningengine.
(36:28):
And so I will kind of workthrough and this is for the more
complex and sophisticatedthings you do I'll work through
a prompt.
Then I'll give it to O3 miniand I'll say write me a better
prompt for this, and it'llrewrite a prompt which, to your
point, eight plus words no, it'slike a full paragraph.
(36:48):
Take that prompt, put it intofour or 4.5 and have it do the
work.
And so I think the serializationof the you know, of the tools
and those sorts of things, again, user behavior, right, as we
and I heard on one of your othershows, you guys got really deep
into talking about creating andusing agents that you're going
(37:09):
to kind of string together.
So the agentic aspect of usingAI is definitely going to be the
future.
We're just going to have theselittle AIs built these little
agents.
Built and we're going to setthem in motion and it's really
going to kind of open our dayyeah, I've been playing in the
evenings built and we're goingto set them in motion and it's
really going to kind of open ourday.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, I've been.
I've been playing in theevenings when I have time with,
with, with some next level stuff.
I even just brought, brought ina AI influencer agency that I'm
playing around with Right, andso I'm going to be playing
around with that a little bit.
See, see how that's happening.
We're starting to do a lot moreon social and you know I'm
(37:49):
really trying to come in andhelp build the overall strategy
and it's tough because thingskeep keep moving.
So you got to stay on the verytip of the spear with that, can
you?
You know, I know we're kind oflimited on time I would love to
hear, kind of we start to move.
(38:09):
To close, you shared the promptengineering of where the AI is
writing the prompt and kind offlowing it or water falling it
down from the logic to theimproving the AI.
So it gives you the best answer.
I love that.
That's actually something I'mnot doing.
So, kudos, I'm going to have totest that out now.
Awesome.
And what is one unknown secretof internet marketing that
(38:33):
you're seeing today that's maybeunderutilized, that people
aren't taking advantage of?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, I think what's going to get rewarded because of
AI and all these sorts ofthings is bringing personality
and creativity back to marketing.
Right, we got very programmaticabout marketing and data-driven
these sorts of things.
So one of the things I wasrecently on a podcast that's a
(39:04):
little bit more focused onleadership, and one thing that I
think AI and this goes to thatsecret right I think if you can
intentionally think about how toleverage AI and the increasing
sophistication of these tools toreclaim a significant part of
your day, to then take that timeintentionally instead of just
(39:27):
doing more and having morecapacity and doing more of it
with AI is to take that,particularly as leaders and
managers and startup foundersand organizations take that
reclaimed time and invest it inyour people to help them be more
creative, to teach them how totake risk and just spend more
(39:47):
time investing in our people andbecoming more human with our
teams to encourage them to pushand innovate and do those things
and make those teams stronger.
I think that's going to be asecret weapon, because marketing
the marketing that's going towin when AI takes over the world
(40:08):
is that little bit ofcreativity that looks is going
to like shine, like the sun,because it's going to.
It's going to be so differentbecause you know creativity and
we've already got it, we've gotfaceless YouTube channels Right,
and it's like so that littlebit of creativity, that little
bit of human touch is going toshine so bright.
(40:29):
So I think that starts with usreclaiming some time with these
tools and becoming a little morepersonal and and just doing the
old fashioned like teambuilding and working with people
.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
No, I, I love that and I think that that's what
technology, that was the promiseof technology when email came
out, right, you were going to beable to reclaim time and just
everybody started to work more,and I've kind of found giving
that space going to the gym,walking the dogs, being outside,
that's where creativity happens, right, maybe there's some
(41:05):
movement associated with that,um, but if you're all you're
thinking about is this, that theother thing?
It doesn't give your brain anyroom to be creative or your team
, uh, any time to to learn orgrow.
And and that's what I found isgoing back to even what I said
at the beginning, a lot ofbusinesses that start like I can
(41:26):
look when I come into abusiness I know roughly when
they started, because they'restill operating on the same
principles they were that werecutting edge at the time when
they started, and very fewbusinesses continue to kind of
stop, look around, look in themirror, like what are the
competitors doing that aregaining market share?
I think that these brands,moats are getting eroded,
(41:49):
everybody's eating off the brandand and some of these companies
that are coming out of nowhereand they've exploded on social
media is going to be happeningmore often.
And I think the bigger brandsneed to go on the offensive and
and start to invest in some ofthese things.
And I would tell you, the biggerbrands have that moat, they
have the money and they have thetime.
(42:10):
The smaller brands and thesmaller companies got to do it
now because they got to getahead, because the big boys are
coming.
It's almost like crypto, it'slike retail gets in first, like
when the big boys come, likeit's done.
You know what I mean.
And so I think that people needto establish building a brand
Now.
They need to understand wherethings are going.
Seo has always been a movingtarget, uh, and I think it
(42:33):
continues to be.
It just changes and evolves, um, and you got to take that time
to, to, to learn these tools andto get these tools implemented,
or the people that are aregoing to pass us everyone by.
So, bill, love having you on,love the conversation, want to
continue it.
How do people get in touch withyou best if they want to find
(42:56):
out more?
I know you're out there onpodcasts and talking and
blogging, so how do people bestfind you?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, I'm a big believer and I actually started
this newsletter out of kind of ayou know, scratching my own
itch.
I think it's really importantto be up on these trends and to
have a mechanism to kind ofcurate.
So I started my newsletter,myexecutivebriefcom, which is
just that.
It's.
It's a lot of it's myreflections and philosophies and
things that we've talked abouthere, but I am trying to curate
(43:26):
and give you an executive briefthat you can consume once a week
.
That keeps you on top ofeverything that's moving so
quickly.
So that's one easy way.
The second one, of course,billricestrategycom is my main
website, so if you want toengage directly with me, I'd
love to have you there.
And then to the point of socialmedia probably the place that
I'm the most active and happy toengage in conversations you can
(43:49):
get my attention the fastest ison LinkedIn, if you just look
for Bill Rice.
I was one of the early guysthere, so it's just Bill Rice
and I'll pop up in there andhappy to have either a DM
conversation, connect with me,whatever, and then lots of
content goes through thatchannel.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Awesome.
Okay, send me those links so Ican add it to the show notes and
everyone.
Hopefully you enjoyed theconversation.
It was definitely enlightening.
I learned some things and ifyou want to grow your business
with the largest, most powerfulplanet on the internet or which
is the internet, sorry reach outto EWR for more, more revenue.
(44:26):
If you got any value from this,please comment like, share it.
It really helps and until thenext time, my name is Matt
Bertram.
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 2 (00:23):
And welcome back to another fun-filled episode of
the Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I have a lot to share with youand I have a special guest here
today to get into thenitty-gritty of running a
digital agency.
What he sees working right nowon the B2C side.
What he sees working on the B2Bside.
Welcome to the show, bill Rice.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm super excited about thisconversation.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of things changing
.
I think Google's changed morein the last let's say 36 months
than they have in the last 15years.
Ads are changing, social'schanging.
There's so much that's going on, and so I thought it'd be good
to bring another fellow digitalmarketer on that's working in
(01:10):
both spaces, to talk a littlebit about what's working, what's
not.
So welcome to the show, bill.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey, thanks, thanks for the opportunity.
It's super, super exciting.
Like you said it's, it's a funtime.
I've been doing this for almost30 years, dates me a little bit
, but, but, man, we've beenthrough so many cycles and this
is another one of thosetransformational moments that's
like so exciting to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, so what's most topical to you?
What, what.
What are you looking at?
What's going on, what are youseeing?
We'd just like to start there.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question that we're
in one of those moments.
I'll actually really datemyself.
So the last time I saw a momentlike this was I was part of a
team that was seven of us gottogether, had some good funding
and everything and built one ofthe first internet-only banks.
And as we were doing that,yahoo directories were like the
(02:07):
thing right, and lead generationlike LendingTree was like this
little company that we startedcollaborating with.
And one of my developers on theteam came to me and it's like
hey, you should take a look atthis thing.
And so he brings up on a screenthis completely white page with
a box in it and he's like youjust like type a keyword and it
(02:29):
gives you like all the directorylistings.
So I'm again replicating theconversation.
Like we didn't know what SERPswere or anything like this, and
I was like do you think peoplewill do that?
You know, cause you wouldnormally go to the directory and
you kind of go into the sectionand find your thing.
Anyways, it's one of thosemoments.
Now we're in this moment.
So what that did was it changeduser behavior.
(02:50):
We didn't go to directoriesanymore, we did a Google search
right Now.
We're in this moment wherepeople are they don't I mean,
I'm on the leading edge of thisright, so I'm probably not
reflective of this, but I oftengo to chat GPT far before I go
to Google search anymore, and Ithink we're in one of those
(03:10):
moments where people areenjoying not only going to chat
GPT to do prompts, but actuallyhaving conversations with it and
having the response likethey're talking to a human,
almost.
So user behavior as a digitalmarketer is changing right in
front of us and we're going tohave to adapt and, man, this is
(03:30):
always fun when this happens.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I mean, yeah, ai-assisted search is absolutely
huge.
So I saw a tweet by Sam Altmanthat said they just onboarded a
million users in like four hoursor something like that, and
previously it was like thefastest they ever did.
It was like a million users inthree weeks or I don't remember,
(03:54):
or three days, I don't rememberwhat the number was, but it was
like it exponentially was a lotless.
And so the uptake, the pickup,people have started to use it.
People are working on inprompts, like I think prompt
engineering is becoming huge, alot of the components.
So, yeah, search is gettingeaten away and I think attention
(04:15):
is also in different places.
Right, so, social media, organicsocial, how these algorithms
are working now I mean it's fun,it's all new.
I think just like the internetcycle happened and all these
internet businesses were builtNow I think it's just like how
creative can you be?
(04:36):
Because they even help withcoding and everything else with
AI.
So I think there's going to bea whole new layer of businesses
and offerings that are going tobe a whole new layer of
businesses and offerings thatare going to be super disruptive
.
And I think that social mediahow the algorithm changed where
you don't have the followers,you didn't have to build a
follower account like an emaildrip.
It's just like you put out goodcontent.
(04:56):
It's opened up like it's a wildwest again.
No one knows what's going on orwhat's happening and a lot of
people don't change.
I feel like businesses start,they have something that works
and they're working that.
And I've been going to a lot ofSEO conferences.
I've been speaking.
I'm in some private groups.
You know, for a while it waslike what's happening, I don't
(05:16):
know what to do and you know youhave to get back out there.
I got back out there, starteddoing SEO again.
I'm doing organic social likemyself, like not outsourcing it,
not not having the team do itlike I'm doing it.
I need to understand what'shappening with the algorithms.
I'm doing the seo like it.
It's just it's a new error,right, yeah, what are you seeing
(05:37):
?
But this, this shows about whatyou do yeah what you're seeing,
so tell me what.
What you've seen with clientsand um what you're looking at.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a whole bunch of themes
and you kind of rattled througha whole bunch of them, so maybe
some of the larger trends thatwe're seeing.
You mentioned social media andthings like that.
So I have a blog post that Idid and believe it to be true.
(06:06):
Is, you know, we always say somany times we call the death of
something Right, and I think youknow blogs as an SEO strategy,
like used to.
You could, you could do a bunchof blog posts and you would.
You would inherently do SEOright.
It would just work.
Google was really good kind ofworking through those and if you
(06:27):
did a half decent job, you'regoing to get some results.
You're going to move the needle.
You're going to do well for aclient, I think.
Now to move the needle for theclient, going out into these
social audiences, particularlyon the B2B side in particular,
going out there with yourexecutives, with your leadership
, and having them producecontent.
(06:48):
These AI large language modelslove rich content.
They love videos, they loveposts that are in there.
The indicators are notnecessarily the backlinks as
much as they are kind of thefollowers and the engagement and
some of those other metrics.
Ai can really consume thatbetter than Google's algorithms,
(07:10):
you know, in a kind of monoline.
Having to force everything backto a search engine result page,
I think was a real limiter andprobably caused Google to have a
bit of a blind spot becausetheir constraint was on the
delivery, the front end UI,whereas ChatGPT doesn't have
that.
So they're consuming a lot.
So I think that's one trend.
(07:31):
The type of content that you'redoing is changing to that point
of individuals contributing.
One of the biggest and this is abig thing that we've been
focused on for LLMs is lookingfor gaps in what LLMs know.
So what LLMs have beenconsuming for the last several
(07:51):
years is blog posts and publiclyavailable content.
The moment that I put BillRice's personal experience into
a place where the LLM can grabit, the LLM just kind of like
Google.
They like that because it feelsmore personal, it's unique,
(08:14):
it's a gap.
They suck that kind of stuff up.
So we're constantly looking forgaps.
It's a big opportunity fororganizations because usually
organizations have some thoughtleadership, have some unique
angles or whatever, so producingcontent that gets them into
chat, gpt, llms, usually whatworks and we've had some really
(08:35):
kind of fast successes If youlook for those gaps and those
unique things that yourorganization knows about your
marketplace.
That's not just the drivel thatmost seo people point out.
And then I guess the last bigtrend that you and I both
probably experience is the bestseo people used to be
spreadsheet jocks, I mean theyknew, like, how to do a pivot
(08:58):
table, how to do a lookup tablelike no other.
Um, and that's changed becauseAI can be a force multiplier and
just analyzing massive amountsof data and helping us to create
strategies to look foropportunities.
So AI is playing a big role injust being our data analysis
(09:19):
inside of there and just reallyleveling up what we can see and
observe.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Well, you know, speaking of like Excel jockeys,
right, I'm going to Mike King'sSEO week and I'm excited to see
what they're working on right.
Because he's always just, youknow.
For any of those that don'tknow who Mike King is, I pull
rank.
He's awesome.
He's a thought leader in thespace, um, so you know, I saw
(09:47):
what Brighton, uh, is doing andwhat they're doing across the
pond, uh, and then you know whatMike's doing is is really
always cutting edge and it'sevolving, right.
The AI assisted search is istotally evolving how people are
using it, what they're lookingfor.
I mean, I think Google fromwhat I heard I don't know if
(10:10):
it's true they're losing moneyon the AI generated overviews
because they have to spend somuch energy and compute to do
that, because they're justtrying to keep people there, and
what that's doing is pushingand compressing the leads that
actually typically would come toa website, right, so people are
not really consuming websiteinformation as much anymore.
If they're getting theiranswers in, the people also ask
(10:32):
or the AI overviews, and so itit, it.
For me, it's becoming aboutdeveloping the brand and owning
everywhere.
Right, and you did talk aboutYouTube and people are consuming
a lot more videos than they didand Google does own them.
And you know YouTube and peopleare consuming a lot more videos
than they did and Google doesown them and you know people
spend more time on YouTube thanprobably anywhere else.
You know, depending on, oh, ifyou're listening to a podcast or
(10:54):
if you're just heavily investedin the dopamine hit from, you
know a TikTok related video,which that is up there, but
still YouTube owns it and thenYouTube shorts.
So you know that's that's oneof our big initiatives is to to
move over to YouTube.
Um, because I think that that'show buyer behavior is changing.
Um, and that's something that,theoretically, we we understand
(11:16):
the algorithm, we understandwhat to do it, but to
operationalize it and to scaleit for clients when we need
content from them is verydifficult, right?
So you know that rich contentthat you get from clients, I
think the thought leadership,depending on the B2B side, they
understand it on the B2B or onthe B2C side like getting more
(11:37):
products, like you know, gettingthe differential information.
That's new, right Cause, evenpeople that are using these lms.
You're just spitting out thesame thing over and over again
and and something like what isthe internet theory?
Or that google says, um, Ithink something I read again I
don't these numbers I I shouldbe writing them down, but it was
(11:57):
like something like 48 46percent of the internet today is
ai generated yeah, okay, orbought right, so so so there's
there, there's a um.
They're always looking for thatrich content.
I think that's why they did thedeal with reddit right, because
you got the biggest like oh mygosh, like real, real people for
the most part are on reddit um,and I think that that's why you
(12:20):
on my spot twitter, you know,because and then he had he even
posted about, he had to scrapeout all the bots.
Um and so I don't know.
I mean what?
What did I share that you mightwant to add to um or that
resonated with you?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, I think you know the fact that you kind of
zeroed in on brand and Google'sbeen talking about this for a
long time.
But I think a lot of timespeople misinterpret why Google
thinks brand is so important.
But you kind of highlighted itthere Again.
If so much of the Internet isgenerated, you know, by AI or
(12:57):
you have bots or this ability tosort of take humanity out of
things and be very efficient atproducing content, and this race
to the bottom with content,brands become critically
important.
And I'm talking about likebrands, in the sense of like
organizations, but also personalbrands, because, again, when
(13:17):
brands speak, they bring aunique voice and tone and
approach and experience to thatcontent marketplace and that
really stands out.
And I think that's what's goingto get gobbled up by these LLMs
.
We had just just yesterday uh,I had kind of a point in case
example of this we had one ofour clients roll out a new
(13:40):
product.
We put up a quick landing pagethat we wanted to rank and we
wanted to get it into LLMs andthen there were kind of two
activities that happened One itwas somewhat unique, so I've
never seen this happen before,but it jumped to number two
within the first day and itmoved to number one within two
(14:01):
days.
So to me more important thanthe ranking thing, because it is
again unique and sort of nichemarketplace, so that's not
terribly unsurprising, but itshowed the rate at which Google
is consuming, like for it totake a brand new landing page
and shove it forward that fastin that market is really
interesting.
And then on the LLM side, wekind of did this thing and this
(14:25):
is an experiment so it could belike a weird sort of you know
one example.
So it is, you know, nostatistical significance, but we
went out to a free version ofLLM and we asked some questions
about our you know who was thebest provider of this product?
It had our company, our client,in that mix.
(14:46):
But then we started to coach itup and what it said in the mix
is it's like oh well, of thesepeople, these are the people who
do it, this person kind of doessomething like it, but they
don't have this specific productin their mix.
And then we can say, well, oh,interestingly enough, it looks
like they do Like literally.
This is the conversation withChatGPT.
Interestingly enough, it lookslike they do have it.
(15:08):
And here's a page and it took alook at that page and it's like
, oh yeah, this seems to be anew thing.
And then subsequently we askedsome more questions.
It essentially kind of likereset itself and again this
could be a flash in the pan.
But we basically coached it onthe product.
And then subsequently we didsome other things.
We had some other people testit.
(15:29):
The LLM had learned about ourcompany and new product and kind
of pushed it forward in theresponses.
So that was kind of a like canwe influence and coach up LLMs?
Is that that was.
That was a test.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I, I've actually heard people talking
about doing that.
I know people are are trying todo that, I think when the the
software updates.
And so I've been actually usinga lot of chats where I'm like,
don't update the software youknow, you know, but then there,
then, then there, there's,there's, there's ones that it
will update the software and Ifeel like that's when it's
(16:04):
learning and it's in itslong-term database.
Um, the question I had for youwas uh, back up your first
example, uh, it getting indexedso quickly?
Was this a new domain or wasthis a page on an existing
website?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, this was an existing domain, has some good
credibility.
Product was similar to otherproducts, so it was rolling out
kind of a new related product.
So there was leverage in thesite for sure, and we'd had
success with launching newproducts before on this site.
(16:45):
But we'd never seen it happenthat fast.
It's usually weeks.
In fact, it was so fast that wewent to because we were like
okay, how many SERPs did we get?
So we went to AAH drafts and wewent to SEMrush and like
nothing, like it didn't, eventhough you know those things are
pretty fast.
It had no knowledge of ourindexing and it wasn't even in
(17:08):
search console.
But if you just went out to theraw, just did the search, it
was popping up.
So it's, yeah, it's, it'sinteresting, our normal sort of
ways to to look for things we'renot indexing fast enough.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So what I'm, what I'm seeing is like the, the if
you're in the topical authority,right, if you're already in the
category, and you feed it newinformation and and this could
be an offshoot of like thecaffeine algorithm, you know,
because it seems to be running alot faster but it seems like
there's kind of like a swarm ofbots, if you will that kind of
(17:42):
come look at it.
They all have maybe they'remaybe like little agents that
all have like different thingsthat they're looking at.
And then you get this kind ofspike in attention pretty
quickly and then it'll kind ofsettle back down to where it
thinks it is and then it'llstart, you know, building more
data around that.
But yeah, I've seen, and ifyou're in that you know category
(18:04):
already and you know somethinghappens it could happen really
quick and then it kind of backsoff and starts to to to
normalize it and it kind oflevels out.
But, yeah, things are happeninga lot faster.
I mean, the long-term database,from everything that I've read,
turns over about every two anda half months.
So that's kind of why we doquarterly engagements and stuff
(18:25):
like that to kind of catch thatupdate, because things will go
from not ranked at all toposition two or whatever it is
is really really quickly basedon certain things.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Um, to that point.
You know, again, a lot of ourtools are third-party
observations, of google inparticular, and we don't have
any real tools to observe what'shappening in the llms.
So I think that's, from aclient engagement standpoint,
becomes difficult because, likeI said, there's nothing I can
show them in a standard ahrefsreport that we give out to them
like that we've had any success,but I know it's there, right.
(19:01):
And then LLMs like I have to do, like I literally have to do
screenshots or or ask them to dosome things to see what's there
, cause there there are no toolsaround success in that regard,
and it's, it's going to beimportant, but we don't have a
way to measure it or even toattribute it yet.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I think that that's something that is
probably one of that.
We talked about the newproducts or the new businesses
that come out of this.
Because, right, you said, okay,who's the best service provider
or who has the best product forXYZ, and it'll give you like a
list or it might give you one.
I think some of that's gettingpulled from schema, but it's
(19:44):
weighing it right.
So it's weighing it againsteverything else that knows.
And I do think pointing outinformation.
And when you say, check outthis website, pull the
information, it will certainlylearn in that chat and then, if
it's brand new, I see kind of anupdate happen and and I think
that it is learning andeverybody's feeding it.
(20:05):
Interestingly enough, I asked itwhat are the rules that you
abide by?
Cause I want to understand likewhat, what kind of answer
you're giving me, and peopletalk about kind of jailbreaking
certain things, and I asked itto notify me when, when I'm
hitting a guardrail on certainthings.
Um, you know, but I, I it wouldbe good to have tools to
(20:26):
understand where you sit in that, because how are you supposed
to provide reporting to this orthat?
I've found a lot of the tools.
I keep testing out differenttools and a bunch of people
sponsor the show, Like, but youknow how, like I haven't found
the right tool.
You know what I mean.
Like I I'll pull this from overhere, I'll pull this from over
here, and then now it's allgoing to like a token based
(20:48):
system, which is not necessarilya bad thing.
I mean, what are you using froma technology stack standpoint?
Um, when you're, when you'redoing this work for clients and
I know it will be different forB2B versus B2C- yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
So when AI, when the chat GPT sort of sprung on the
scene like one of the firstthings that I noted right off
the bat and it has become like acore philosophy and I share
this with everyone, and myyoungest right now is in college
, so she's like right in themiddle of like how does this
(21:23):
affect education and academiaand all this kind of stuff?
And so one of the things that,because she was in college, this
is probably why I came up withthis is you will always fail if
you ask chat, gpt or these AIthings to do your homework right
.
It will always fail you, itwill get things wrong, it will
give you, like, the worstquality, and so it is better as
(21:46):
augmentation, as an assistant,as a collaborator, as a
colleague.
Anytime you use it in thosesort of modes, you'll have the
best success or you iteratethrough things with it.
So when I'm thinking abouttools, I extend that philosophy.
(22:08):
So the worst tools that I playedwith are tools that try to bake
in and do your homework for youright, and this is the worst in
SEO content creation.
The tools for SEO contentcreation are some of the worst
because they've essentially gonelike anti-AI.
They baked in some, like youknow, hard.
This is my vision of it, whatthey've done.
(22:29):
Baked in hard coded prompts.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
And then you run things through it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
You say, hey, write me an article about this.
It puts all those prompts thatare probably not wonderful and
then it bakes out somethingthat's just trash right.
So to that philosophy, most ofwhat we're using are the core
tools ChatGPT, perplexity,claude Gemini.
We like to start with those.
(22:57):
We want to learn how to usethem.
I think that better abstractedtools will come eventually that
will allow a lower skill set towork with those.
(23:21):
With SEO, the people thatunderstand like how these things
work and how to manipulate thedata and the underlying prompts
and the things that make it giveyou the best quality will be
the winners.
So we're putting a lot of timeand energy into just using the
base level tool and working withcustom GPTs, learning how to be
(23:42):
better at giving prompts usingour own prompt databases where
we create something that worksand then we hold onto that and
reuse it and iterate on it.
Spaces have been reallypowerful, especially as an
agency.
We have clients, we always putthem in spaces and now we have
the ability to kind of organizethose projects and and have some
(24:03):
some baked in safe history.
So, anyway, those.
So so right now, yeah, we'reusing the fundamentals and we're
doing the hard work to learnhow to make them great.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, no, I, I had to step back into it.
This is not something that, uh,you've got to have a good
operator, right, you've got tohave somebody that knows what
good looks like to to to helpdrive some of this Like, you
can't just give it all over toit.
It's not um, autopilot just yet.
Um, you know what are youseeing as far as um, the mix for
(24:36):
clients of different channels,paid social how do you look at
that mix right now?
Are you staying from atraditional SEO standpoint?
Okay, no, we're going afterprompts.
We want to show up inAI-assisted search.
What does the sphere look likefor you of the marketing mix?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah, so we are a full service agency and
generally folks engage us forthe specific purpose of
generating high volume of leads.
So our mix generally and Ithink this is changing a little
bit.
So this is a great question.
So our generally first in PPC,because we got to generate
(25:20):
traffic, we got to, you got topush them to landing page, you
got to get high intent, we gotto start cooking leads, because
leads bring revenue.
And then we usually layer inSEO and content which has a
longer.
You know, usually, again,there's a reason, it's called
earned media.
It takes three to six months toearn your way in to those
similar positions that we'realready taking with PPC but are
(25:40):
costing us a lot more.
And then we layer in thingslike email and social media for
kind of the remarketing aspectof that or the lead nurturing.
So that's the stack.
Where this is changing, and Ithink it will change more, is
we're going to have moreengagements where we start to
lead with SEO, I think, or whatSEO will become, because it is
(26:04):
becoming faster and it isbecause of ChatGPT and we do
hear clients coming in leads,even our own leads, where people
say I did a Google search andit was trash.
And then I went to ChatGPT andit recommended you guys and it
made sense.
That's the other thing thatChatGPT does.
(26:24):
Back to one of your otherpoints it's increasingly
becoming more transparent.
It's telling you why it madethe decision or it's giving you
the rubric for how it, like,sorted this list.
Like this is why I gave youthese three people, which
(26:45):
essentially pre-sells, likepeople like Kaleidico and Bill
Rice Strategy Group.
So that's kind of interesting.
But I think, because of thespeed and because of the user
behavior and more of this, likeespecially the conversational AI
and component people liketalking to their phones and
expecting responses, liketalking to their phones and
expecting responses, I fullybelieve that that shift to, like
I said, what SEO and contentbecomes probably will start to
(27:08):
heavily encroach on our PPC.
One because it's moving faster,but two because traditional PPC
the SERPs and that ad model, Ithink is going to deteriorate
over time.
So I think PPC, we're going tohave to relearn that channel as
(27:31):
well, because it will eitherhave to be just to your point of
Google losing money on the AIresults.
It's going to have to be reengineered and we don't know
what that looks like.
So we're probably going to haveto make it an adjustment, but
before that adjustment happens,I guarantee you the model itself
will deteriorate and the typesof results that we can generate.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So so here's a really interesting piece of data that
I read like a day or two ago.
Um uh Neil, uh Patel put thisout.
Um, and I agree with you.
So I agree with everything yousaid.
What was interesting in thedata is everything was growing.
Google was up, ads were up,searches were up, people were
(28:14):
using every and all things, soeverything was up.
So it was losing market sharecomparatively to everything
because the whole market'sgrowing.
The whole market's just growingfaster than Google's growing but
it's still growing, which waskind of mind-blowing, right,
Because I mean now AI is onlyabout 4% of all searches and not
(28:38):
all those searches havecommercial intent, so that
number is probably a lot smallerbut, I do believe it's going to
grow.
I think that those things areimportant, but everything's
growing, which?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
it was really fascinating.
I hadn't thought about it thatway, but I wonder if some of
that and I kind of said this theother day in a conversation
that I was having is so beforeand again.
This is where behavior changesand this is why it's so exciting
for me when I see one of thesethings is before.
(29:09):
If you had to solve a problem,you probably went to your
experience first and then youdid a Google search.
Or maybe you did a Googlesearch to kind of get you
started and then you had to kindof read through a bunch of
stuff.
I bet in general, we're doingmore queries and true
augmentation of ourselvesbecause of chat, gpt, because of
(29:33):
things like Siri, which I thinkwill.
I'm in this moment where I thinkit's getting dumber before it
gets smarter, but I think atsome point, because one queries
and augmentation will be soaccessible, we'll just talk to
it or have a conversation.
It'll become normalized.
I wonder if that's why it'sgrowing, because I know I do.
(29:55):
Personally, I'd probably do aGoogle search half dozen times a
day.
Chatgbt I'm quite honestly init all day as I'm working.
I'm using it to producematerials, to summarize calls,
to do roll-ups of follow-upemails, to help me brainstorm, a
(30:17):
new campaign to analyze somedata Like.
Those are not Google searchqueries, those are like
literally like exponentiallymore queries.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah, I, I think that I had two really good things to
say and I needed to write themdown because, right when you
were about to finish cause I'mlistening to you they just they
left my head, so they'll have to, they'll have to come back, but
, um, I can, I wanted, I wantedto hear um, what, what you're
doing on social Okay, Cause, um,I, I think a lot of the
(30:53):
attention is being driven onsocial Okay.
Oh, here's, here's actuallywhat I was going to say.
So the number of searches thisis at least one of the things I
was going to say so the numberof searches that are converting
are eight plus words on average.
That, that was an interestinglittle fact.
So long tail key phrases and soif you think about, like the
(31:13):
queries that you're making, ifyou're talking to chat GBT, how
many words is that Right?
So you're like that, that.
That question is like I don'tknow.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
a paragraph of words oh yeah, easily.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So it's getting longer and longer, and so people
are understanding how to usethese things to get the answer
they're looking for, and so Ijust think that that's super
interesting.
If you're thinking about longtail key phrases and you know a
lot of people in certainindustries are just hitting on
those major keywords and thelong tail key phrases is
(31:50):
actually where the conversioncomes in.
Okay, yeah, here's the secondthing.
So there was a study that Ireread a while ago.
It was called the Zero MomentStudy.
It was done back in 2011 withGoogle, and what it reminded me
of was the the user's uh search,or the user journey or the
customer journey search of whenthey convert is not the straight
(32:13):
line.
It's not even linear up anddown or anything like that.
It's kind of like a uh, Adamand uh and and everybody.
You go out, you come back tocenter, you go out, you come
back to center.
You go out and come back tocenter, and, and you're, you're
bringing back that information,Just like if you're prompting
chat, GBT, right, you ask it aquestion.
(32:33):
Okay, Come back to center.
Nope, Refine it.
Come back to the answer, Refineit Like that's how people are
searching, and so you, you know,it's just fascinating to me
about user behavior of like whatpeople are doing, and I'm I'm
(32:54):
finding that happen even moreand more on social platforms and
now the content finds whoyou're looking for.
So then now you're gettinginstantaneous feedback of the
content you're producing and I'mjust curious um, you know how
much you've dabbled in that orplayed with that, because I'm
now back to working on stuff.
I'm doing a lot of the work tooperationalize how we need to do
(33:16):
it going forward, because someof those models change Every
time something new comes out.
You got to kind of refigurewhat you're doing and what those
strategies are for clients andfor yourself.
So I'm just curious what you'dlike to respond to out of that.
And then anything about social.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, I think on, yeah.
So there's a lot, of, a lot ofinteresting threads to pull
there.
So let me start with the socialstuff.
So, again, I think it goes backto brands and, in particular,
personal brands.
So a lot of the social stuffthat we're seeing work well are
things that are staying in linewith social meaning that, you
know, people on social platformslike to interact with people,
(33:56):
versus brands.
This is why LinkedIn you knowcompanies has never worked Right
.
If you post to a company page,it's just like it's worthless.
Right, you need the individualsto work, so that's working
effectively.
And so what we're doing there,especially at the executive
level, I think there's thisresurgence of the concept of
(34:17):
sort of ghostwriting and what wecan do with executives.
Certainly, we can doghostwriting to actually do, you
know, the more traditional postand stuff like that, but
ghostwriting in the sense thatwe spend a lot of time
collecting whatever material wehave around those executives and
those leaders to understandtheir personal brand.
(34:42):
We load that in and then fromthere we start to give them
frameworks that we want them tofill in and it's like, okay,
this is the marketplace we're in.
We want you to comment on this.
We want you to kind of likepodcasts.
If we could get them all topodcasts and we could just take
the results of that, it'dprobably be wonderful content.
(35:03):
But we're essentially trying toseed that and we're saying, hey
, we want your commentary onthat.
We want you to hop on yourcomputer on a loom and have this
conversation.
Or we have this product calledguided content creation, which
is essentially like a podcast,but we just take the one side of
it.
So we'll get them on a toollike Riverside and we'll coach
(35:27):
them through it, we'll ask themsome questions, we'll get their
feedback.
Then our video, people willtake it and toss it.
So that gives that unique,nuanced perspective that works
so well on social.
So that's social.
And then I think the otherthing to your point of like the
(35:48):
user behavior I did want to pullon this.
Right there I heard aninteresting thing that changed
the way I do a lot of prompting.
So I think the other thingthat's happening inside of these
tools is we're asking the toolsto help us work better with the
tool.
So, like one of my little hacksnow is chat.
Gpt has kind of two types ofmodels.
(36:08):
They've got this uh 0103 seriesand then they've got the more
traditional chat, you know gpt 4, 4.5 or whatever they're on now
, so that the hack is the, thezero, the 0.3 or O3s or whatever
is essentially a reasoningengine.
(36:28):
And so I will kind of workthrough and this is for the more
complex and sophisticatedthings you do I'll work through
a prompt.
Then I'll give it to O3 miniand I'll say write me a better
prompt for this, and it'llrewrite a prompt which, to your
point, eight plus words no, it'slike a full paragraph.
(36:48):
Take that prompt, put it intofour or 4.5 and have it do the
work.
And so I think the serializationof the you know, of the tools
and those sorts of things, again, user behavior, right, as we
and I heard on one of your othershows, you guys got really deep
into talking about creating andusing agents that you're going
(37:09):
to kind of string together.
So the agentic aspect of usingAI is definitely going to be the
future.
We're just going to have theselittle AIs built these little
agents.
Built and we're going to setthem in motion and it's really
going to kind of open our dayyeah, I've been playing in the
evenings built and we're goingto set them in motion and it's
really going to kind of open ourday.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, I've been.
I've been playing in theevenings when I have time with,
with, with some next level stuff.
I even just brought, brought ina AI influencer agency that I'm
playing around with Right, andso I'm going to be playing
around with that a little bit.
See, see how that's happening.
We're starting to do a lot moreon social and you know I'm
(37:49):
really trying to come in andhelp build the overall strategy
and it's tough because thingskeep keep moving.
So you got to stay on the verytip of the spear with that, can
you?
You know, I know we're kind oflimited on time I would love to
hear, kind of we start to move.
(38:09):
To close, you shared the promptengineering of where the AI is
writing the prompt and kind offlowing it or water falling it
down from the logic to theimproving the AI.
So it gives you the best answer.
I love that.
That's actually something I'mnot doing.
So, kudos, I'm going to have totest that out now.
Awesome.
And what is one unknown secretof internet marketing that
(38:33):
you're seeing today that's maybeunderutilized, that people
aren't taking advantage of?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, I think what's going to get rewarded because of
AI and all these sorts ofthings is bringing personality
and creativity back to marketing.
Right, we got very programmaticabout marketing and data-driven
these sorts of things.
So one of the things I wasrecently on a podcast that's a
(39:04):
little bit more focused onleadership, and one thing that I
think AI and this goes to thatsecret right I think if you can
intentionally think about how toleverage AI and the increasing
sophistication of these tools toreclaim a significant part of
your day, to then take that timeintentionally instead of just
(39:27):
doing more and having morecapacity and doing more of it
with AI is to take that,particularly as leaders and
managers and startup foundersand organizations take that
reclaimed time and invest it inyour people to help them be more
creative, to teach them how totake risk and just spend more
(39:47):
time investing in our people andbecoming more human with our
teams to encourage them to pushand innovate and do those things
and make those teams stronger.
I think that's going to be asecret weapon, because marketing
the marketing that's going towin when AI takes over the world
(40:08):
is that little bit ofcreativity that looks is going
to like shine, like the sun,because it's going to.
It's going to be so differentbecause you know creativity and
we've already got it, we've gotfaceless YouTube channels Right,
and it's like so that littlebit of creativity, that little
bit of human touch is going toshine so bright.
(40:29):
So I think that starts with usreclaiming some time with these
tools and becoming a little morepersonal and and just doing the
old fashioned like teambuilding and working with people
.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
No, I, I love that and I think that that's what
technology, that was the promiseof technology when email came
out, right, you were going to beable to reclaim time and just
everybody started to work more,and I've kind of found giving
that space going to the gym,walking the dogs, being outside,
that's where creativity happens, right, maybe there's some
(41:05):
movement associated with that,um, but if you're all you're
thinking about is this, that theother thing?
It doesn't give your brain anyroom to be creative or your team
, uh, any time to to learn orgrow.
And and that's what I found isgoing back to even what I said
at the beginning, a lot ofbusinesses that start like I can
(41:26):
look when I come into abusiness I know roughly when
they started, because they'restill operating on the same
principles they were that werecutting edge at the time when
they started, and very fewbusinesses continue to kind of
stop, look around, look in themirror, like what are the
competitors doing that aregaining market share?
I think that these brands,moats are getting eroded,
(41:49):
everybody's eating off the brandand and some of these companies
that are coming out of nowhereand they've exploded on social
media is going to be happeningmore often.
And I think the bigger brandsneed to go on the offensive and
and start to invest in some ofthese things.
And I would tell you, the biggerbrands have that moat, they
have the money and they have thetime.
(42:10):
The smaller brands and thesmaller companies got to do it
now because they got to getahead, because the big boys are
coming.
It's almost like crypto, it'slike retail gets in first, like
when the big boys come, likeit's done.
You know what I mean.
And so I think that people needto establish building a brand
Now.
They need to understand wherethings are going.
Seo has always been a movingtarget, uh, and I think it
(42:33):
continues to be.
It just changes and evolves, um, and you got to take that time
to, to, to learn these tools andto get these tools implemented,
or the people that are aregoing to pass us everyone by.
So, bill, love having you on,love the conversation, want to
continue it.
How do people get in touch withyou best if they want to find
(42:56):
out more?
I know you're out there onpodcasts and talking and
blogging, so how do people bestfind you?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, I'm a big believer and I actually started
this newsletter out of kind of ayou know, scratching my own
itch.
I think it's really importantto be up on these trends and to
have a mechanism to kind ofcurate.
So I started my newsletter,myexecutivebriefcom, which is
just that.
It's.
It's a lot of it's myreflections and philosophies and
things that we've talked abouthere, but I am trying to curate
(43:26):
and give you an executive briefthat you can consume once a week
.
That keeps you on top ofeverything that's moving so
quickly.
So that's one easy way.
The second one, of course,billricestrategycom is my main
website, so if you want toengage directly with me, I'd
love to have you there.
And then to the point of socialmedia probably the place that
I'm the most active and happy toengage in conversations you can
(43:49):
get my attention the fastest ison LinkedIn, if you just look
for Bill Rice.
I was one of the early guysthere, so it's just Bill Rice
and I'll pop up in there andhappy to have either a DM
conversation, connect with me,whatever, and then lots of
content goes through thatchannel.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Awesome.
Okay, send me those links so Ican add it to the show notes and
everyone.
Hopefully you enjoyed theconversation.
It was definitely enlightening.
I learned some things and ifyou want to grow your business
with the largest, most powerfulplanet on the internet or which
is the internet, sorry reach outto EWR for more, more revenue.
(44:26):
If you got any value from this,please comment like, share it.
It really helps and until thenext time, my name is Matt
Bertram.
Bye-bye for now.
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