September 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Ready to supercharge your local SEO game? Buckle up, because we're diving deep into the evolving world of search optimization with expert Bradley Benner. In this episode, we explore how AI and large language models are reshaping the SEO landscape, and what it means for local businesses trying to stand out in their markets.
The Shift from Traditional SEO to "Search Everywhere Optimization"
Bradley breaks down why the old playbook for local SEO is becoming obsolete. With the rise of AI-powered search and chat platforms, businesses need to think beyond just Google. We discuss:
- Why Google Business Profiles are still crucial, but no longer enough on their own
- The growing importance of optimizing for multiple search channels and platforms
- How to balance ethical SEO practices with achieving real results for clients
Content Strategy for the AI Age
Get ready for a paradigm shift in how we approach content for local businesses. Bradley shares insights on:
- Why branded content is now king for local SEO
- The dangers of content bloat and how to streamline your site
- Smart ways to repurpose content across multiple formats and platforms
- Building "branded location authority" through strategic content distribution
Practical Tips for Local Business Owners
Don't miss Bradley's actionable advice for navigating the changing SEO landscape:
- How to audit your site for efficiency and prune unnecessary content
- The two most critical factors for local search success right now
- Why mastering foundational marketing principles is more important than ever
- Creative ways to reach your target audience beyond traditional search
Whether you're a seasoned SEO pro or a local business owner trying to boost your online presence, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you stay ahead of the curve. Bradley's blend of technical know-how and marketing savvy offers a fresh perspective on thriving in the age of AI-powered search.
Curious to learn more? Tune in and discover how to future-proof your local SEO strategy!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
That's good. And welcome to a new episode of
Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett Deister.
(00:20):
If you guys always wanted to know how to do SEO better, you wanted
to get to the top of the Google searches. You wanted to be
just the top, top, top. And no one can touch you on
whatever business if you're doing it or if you're doing it for
a client or if you're doing it for the business that you currently work with.
Well, this episode is specifically for you. It tells you everything
(00:43):
that you need to know on how to be the best at local
SEO, SEO and AI. Because AI is coming up in the
ranks, we always got to know how to do it better through AI.
Sometimes. I know AI is not fun at
times, but I get it. I get it. But
you guys are going to be excited for this. I want to know in the
(01:03):
comments below what are you excited for for this episode?
And then have fun. All right, let's
get on to the episode, the show, Bradley. Well, thank you so much for having
me, Brett. I appreciate it. And the first question is all my guest is, are
you a coffee or tea drinker? Mostly a coffee
drinker, but a little of both. Do you have, like, specifics you
(01:25):
like or is it just whatever someone buys you? You're, like, good enough?
I like dark, kind of dark roasts. I prefer coffee
black most of the time. Occasionally I'll
mess with a little bit of cream, but I prefer black coffee and preferably the
strong kind. And I like it like so strong you have to chew it to
swallow it. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, if you really
(01:48):
want to do that, you could always just do cowboy coffee. That really will be
chewing type of coffee. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure about that. But I do like
a strong, dark roast. You mean like strong like flavor wise, or
like strong like caffeine wise? Specifically flavor wise. But
that typically is going to be stronger with caffeine as well too, you know, so
it's kind of a little of both. Well, here's the. Here's the thing that
(02:11):
most people don't know is that actually dark rose doesn't
have as much caffeine as the light to medium rose. So if you really want
caffeine, you got to go to the lighter stuff because that will give you
the more caffeine. If you want the. So why is espresso so
caffeine rich then? Well, it's because it's a. It's a smaller shot
and so you have more Condensed into it type of a thing. But they're never
(02:34):
dark roast actually unless they actually specifically do it. But when you roast it
longer, more of the caffeine escapes from. Gotcha.
Okay. But it's also, but also heating. It
has the caffeine escape too. So that's why cold brew has more caffeine than
the hot coffee. Gotcha. I do like cold brew that's,
that's good especially in the summer. So I like it all year round. So I
(02:57):
just. Yeah, even if it's cold, I drink it cold.
Anyways, I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give a listeners a
little bit more about what you do? Yeah, I primarily do.
Well, you know, SEO is, it's not just SEO anymore
really now with large language models and AI chat and all that stuff,
AI search, it's really set a search engine optimization,
(03:19):
search everywhere optimization, you know what I mean? It's like or LLM
optimization or something like that. It's basically optimizing for
whatever platforms consumers would be using to
identify local businesses that provide products or services that they're
searching for. And so that's really what I do now is kind of
focusing on. There's still a large component of search engine optimization, but that
(03:42):
is quickly fading because of large language
models and AI chats and all of that. So we really have to
kind of evolve to stay relevant. And that means
optimizing for all these different platforms now, which has made
our job a little bit. It's kind of interesting. But as in the kind
of search engine optimization world or the SEO world, things have
(04:04):
evolved, are evolving very rapidly. And so,
and sometime in some ways things have become easier for us at least
certain aspects of what we do because of AI. In other cases
it's become more complicated, more complex because we have
more platforms now, channels, etc that we need to be
optimizing for because there are so many options available.
(04:26):
It's very diff. You know, it's not like it has been for many years
where Google was like the 800lb gorilla, you know what I mean? Like
the, the, the, the only game in town, so to speak. It's not like that
anymore. And now local is probably one of the last things to be
hit the hardest by all of the local or the AI chat stuff.
But it still is losing market share. Like Perplexity
(04:50):
is coming up quick with as is for as kind of like a local search
chat option. And so it, you know, basically
what I do is I work on trying to identify ways to help local
businesses gain more Exposure in their own local markets.
That has traditionally been mostly with search engine optimization trying to get more
exposure within Google, but has really quickly morphed into
(05:12):
just trying to build more exposure across as many different platforms and channels,
avenues, etc. As possible so that the business becomes,
gains much more exposure in their local market. Becomes more of kind of like
the, the only choice for local business or
local consumers. And that's kind of what we do is try to build brand
authority for local businesses to gain more exposure across
(05:35):
various search channels. Is what you're saying is that like
Google, like my business used to be like the de facto thing like
you need to be on there, is it still the de facto thing for local
search? Yes. Or should you focus a little bit more on
perplexity? Well, you, I mean in my opinion having a Google business
profile used to be Google my business is critically important
(05:57):
for local businesses because that's still where the vast majority of local searches
occur are through Google. Again it is losing market share but not
as rapidly as general organic search, if that makes
sense. So typically people are going to go to Google and they're going to, if
they start to do any kind of search for a business or a
search query that Google knows has local intent. So
(06:20):
typically like for example, if you're on your mobile device and you go to Google
and you start to search in for something like you know, restaurants or Mexican
food or something like that, the near me modifier or suggested search query
always pops up. Right? Because Google knows you're on a mobile device and it's, it's
all about somewhere proximity and everything else. So the search
is still something that the local search is still what a lot of people
(06:41):
use or Google Maps to search for local businesses that
provide products or services that they're, they're seeking. But
so I think having a Google business profile is still critically important and not only
even if Google loses considerably more market share, it still would be
valuable to have a Google Google business profile because it's kind of a,
an authority builder, right. It's a validator of the brand because you have to
(07:04):
go through a verification process. And so I even recommend
to businesses that really don't serve just a local market
to if they can still get a Google business profile because it helps to
validate the business further within Google, if that makes sense.
So I think it's still valuable to have for sure. All right, so I
mean you've emphasized or you, you believe in
(07:27):
like the ethical results driven SEO practices. How do you balance
achieving clients goals with avoiding shortcuts or
spammy techniques. I'm in the, I'm not one of the types of SEOs
that believe in the white hat, black hat, you know, camps or whatever.
I, I think SEO is SEO. If you are doing something to
manipulate the performance of a website or a Google
(07:48):
Maps profile or whatever in search, then you're,
you're violating Google's terms of service. So in my opinion, there
is no hats. There are no hats. Right? Like we just, we just do
SEO now. There are certainly some things that are spammy, questionable
things like that, that we could, I try to avoid. But you
know, Google kind of frowns upon anything that we do to try to manipulate its
(08:11):
results. So so basically, you know,
we, we try to do things that don't trigger any sort of
additional scrutiny or extra scrutiny, number one, or anything that would
cause a suspension or like for a Google business profile, a suspension or a re
verification. But there's almost kind of arbitrary suspensions
and re verification issues that happen with Google business profiles all
(08:33):
the time. You know, there's, there's always bugs with Google, no matter
what, no matter what time of day, what time of year, there's always bugs, usually
multiple bugs. So, so there are things that are always going
to occur. But I think that you know, focusing in
on local search optimization is critically important.
But like I said, it's really kind of evolving into doing other things,
(08:55):
which is good because trying to abide by Google's
rules, which are constantly changing and evolving too is very difficult.
And so this now does open up the opportunity for,
for us as marketing professionals to help local businesses
generate traffic sources. Right, from other,
(09:15):
other sources other than just Google. Because putting all of your eggs in that one
basket is a very dangerous because again, Google makes
changes to its own quality guidelines or
acceptable use policy all the time. And so what was
acceptable today, tomorrow may not be anymore. And
so if you rely 100 on Google, which I did for many years
(09:37):
because that's what I, I worked in and it was almost like the only
game in town, so to speak. So it was really like it was, it was,
it was reasonable to be, to spend all of our time focusing on Google. But
now that's not the case because of social media, because of language
models, chats and things like that. It's opened
up the ability for businesses to diversify their traffic sources
(10:00):
where they are generating customers from and leads. Right.
And so how do we balance things without doing things so
spammy? Well, we do a lot of testing and we, when we find things that
work, we typically will apply them. When we find
things that don't work or that cause negative movement, we, we
try to re. Restrict use of that as well. But we are always
(10:22):
constantly doing testing and trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. But as
I mentioned already, things are constantly evolving. So
we could do a ton of testing today or this week and find
several things that work real well and start to deploy those or implement those
on the client campaigns and then in two months that could be completely changed again.
So digital marketing is not for the faint of heart right now. I can tell
(10:45):
you that it's true. I mean even on
the content marketing side, it's definitely not the faint of heart anymore. I mean you've
got Google v03 now, you've got all the other
AI type of a thing going on. So I mean you, you
talked about the evolution or the changing of Google's
algorithm. So what do you see as the biggest trends
(11:07):
coming for local SEO besides, I mean we talked a little bit about
perplexity, but is there other things that are coming up that they should be aware
of? Probably the biggest thing is just trying to.
You, you mentioned content marketing. I think the, the most important thing for local
businesses right now as far as kind of
positioning themselves to perform well as
(11:29):
this whole landscape continues to change and evolve,
is to really focus in on branded content. So in
other words, publishing a lot of content across a lot of channels
that are always tying the products or services
that the business provides back to the business, associating the products
and services with that brand and also for local
(11:53):
businesses also associating the locations in which they provide those
services or products or services. So, so there's service area, what
even a local storefront business where like a dentist office or whatever
typically wants to serve a local market, not just that one
particular city. In other words, they want to be found by people, maybe in an
adjacent town or city, things like that. So having
(12:15):
content that is always creating associations
for the, to the brand from the products and services they provide and also the
locations in which they provide them is critically important. But you got to be
careful with how you are now at least got to be careful with dealing
with Google about content marketing. Because when I say publish a lot of
content, if you do that on the same website as the
(12:37):
primary website, so like on the bl. On a blog of the main website, for
example, that can create competing pages, which is like it's
potential cannibalization. I don't see cannibalization occurring much anymore. For
that is where if more than one page on a particular domain
is relevant to a particular search query, True Cannibalization is
Google will only select one of the pages to give an impression or to
(13:00):
serve in the search results for that particular query. And so
True Cannibalization is where if you were to do like 10
back to back searches like Ted Kubitis has a tool called Quora that does
this and it's the SERP volatility tester. And so you, you
can take a particular search query and do 10, 10 back to back searches
and it will show you the top 100 results for each of those searches
(13:22):
for that particular query. And True Cannibalization would show like
you know, for the first three searches this one page appeared in whatever
positions they were in. And then position search four and five, it
was a different page that appeared in whatever positions they were in. And that's showing
only one page showing at a time. But
now I don't see cannibalization occurring so much. But what I do see a lot
(13:45):
of is competing pages, which is where Google will serve more than one page
from the same domain for a particular search query. But though
both two or more pages that have been served from the same domain
will be lower in the search results than one page would have been had
there only been one page on the site relevant to that query. So in other
words, if there was only one page relevant to that query, it likely would have
(14:06):
been positioned much higher in the search results than if there are two or
more where Google Mate show them in the search results, but further down where they're
likely never going to get seen by the, the Google user. And so I bring
that up because one of the old you mentioned, I'm assuming you're
into content marketing, but as an SEO professional I, you know, we
did a lot of content marketing for local businesses for many years and that was
(14:28):
one of my primary methods. Almost the sole method that I would get
local businesses results with was just blogging consistently from their blog
and in republishing that blog content out on their social media profiles and
things like that, that worked incredibly well for years. But now
what happens is for those of you that are familiar with SEO, there's
been one of the major updates, there's dozens. I mean they do a major update
(14:51):
almost every month now Google does. But the helpful content update had two
major rollouts of that. And the helpful content update was
specifically Google's way to address this over
optimization and redundancy compete like this
duplication of Pages and content
on the site. For example, a lot of local
(15:12):
businesses, like I work with home service contractors, my own local SEO agency, I
really just work with tree service companies. And in the tree service industry,
you know, there's a multiple industry or multiple services, tree removal, tree trimming,
stump grinding, etc. And so usually a tree service company wants to
target a fairly large service area, two or three
counties often, right? And so usually in every county there's going to be,
(15:35):
you know, a list of cities and or towns, census designated places,
incorporated communities, unincorporated communities, et cetera. So what
we've done in SEO for years in local SEO was we would create a
separate page for each service, times each city
that they wanted to rank in. So let's say that there was three
counties and a total of, let's just for simplicity
(15:57):
sake, say there was 20 cities or towns in those three counties
that they wanted to target and they had three main services, tree
trimming, tree removal and stump grinding. Well, by
traditional local SEO tactics we would have had 60 pages,
right? Tree removal city one, tree removal city to tree removal city three,
tree trimming city one tree, so on and so forth that. Now
(16:19):
Google came out with the helpful content update as it relates to local specifically
to address stuff like that because it was bloat, it was redundancy, it was
duplicated content because it was saying the same thing over and over and over again.
The only thing that changed was the city modifier, right, the location
modifier. And so that was a very inefficient way we all
did it as SEOs, we had to, that's how we got results when it was
(16:40):
a keyword based algorithm. It is no longer now because of AI large language
models, Google's own is integrated into its algorithm. It understands language much
better. And now we should be optimizing for entities which has this.
What I was talking about earlier when I mentioned to you, in some ways
the recent changes have made our jobs easier and that
this is specifically why I was, why I mentioned that was because now the
(17:02):
best way to optimize local sites is to have one page for each product or
service that they provide, one page for each
location that they want to target and you associate again,
that's, I keep talking about associations. That's what the semantic web is. It's how
entities relate or associate with each other. Relate to or
associate with each other. And so we create associations between
(17:24):
product or service pages and the location pages through
internal linking. And so now in that same example that I just
described a moment ago, that let's say three primary services and 20
locations. Instead of having 60, minimum of 60 pages now,
now you would have three plus 20, so 23, so a
third of the number of pages on the site and achieve the same
(17:47):
end goal. But now it's much more efficient for Google because Google's not
using a bunch of resources. Which is why the helpful content update was rolled out
by the way was because Google was very public about ever since the onset
of AI and AI writing assistance and things like that, there's been this
proliferation or explosion of content on the web and Google
can't keep up with crawling and indexing everything. And
(18:10):
so that, that's why it applied this kind of helpful content update was to
eliminate or punish sites that are using more resources than
necessary. Do you understand? And so to get back to what you were
saying, branded content block branded,
branded content, like publishing branded content to always create associations
between the brand, the products or services it provides and the locations in
(18:33):
which it provides them is critically important. So how do we do it without
publishing too much content on the site to where you create competing
pages? Do it with an external blog. And so
that, that's kind of where I think most local businesses right now stand
to position themselves to perform well. And how
things are evolving would be to start
(18:55):
hiring content marketing or local marketing or SEO companies or
whatever that can start to publish branded content across various platforms
but use the source. The content source is not the
primary website. But a, a, an external
blog might be an extension of the brand. So an example of that
would be like using something like Google sites. So sites, google.com or
(19:17):
blogger, tumblr, WordPress, weebly strikingly, any
one of those medium. Medium is a great blogging platform. You could use medium as
an external blog because then you can publish as much or the business can
publish as much content as they want. And it's not going to be competing with
the content on the main website because it's on a different domain that can also
end up becoming link building content. It can also be used, you can,
(19:40):
you can use that as kind of a, a way to publish a lot of
content across different platforms because different language models
ingest content from different platforms. So it's important to try to
be ubiquitous. In other words, try to get content
out, published as many places you know your content
published everywhere on the web as much as possible. And that's what I tell local
(20:03):
business clients now. Got you.
So blogging is coming back at least for a local SEOs,
because blogging is, well, I mean we've we've been told just like email
marketing, it's dying. But I never think any of this content is ever really
dying. It's just not as popular as before is really what it is.
(20:23):
Right. Well, and that's a great. As a matter of fact, the fact that you
just brought that up was when I say blogging. Yeah. Like
traditional just text based blog posts are, people have short, you
know, our attention spans keep shrinking and people don't want to
read a wall of text anymore. They don't. That's another thing just on page
optimization. I've noticed with local businesses, with local SEO
(20:44):
campaigns that if you can break a page up, that was typically
like, you know, again, three, four years ago, five years ago, if we wanted
to improve the optimization of a page, what would we do as SEOs, we go
throw more words onto the page. Right. We would, it was just like we go
in and we just try to increase the density, add more words. Oh, it's only
1500 words. We'll just make it 2500. That ought to fix it. You know, and
(21:05):
we did all this spammy stuff as SEOs because that's what we had to do.
But now we don't have to do that anymore. And so what I'm saying is
now like as a matter of fact, big walls of text or big
like long form articles when there's, when it really doesn't need that because
you're trying to make it rank, that's not necessary anymore. And so
breaking up the text into multimedia and engaging elements
(21:27):
within the page, like putting cost calculators like estimate,
like for tree services, like a stump removal cost calculator, you know, something
like that where you can get the visitor to engage with the page.
Putting AI voice text to speech
summaries of the main sections of the page, like and
then having a little audio player button next to the H2 heading for each section
(21:50):
where somebody can click and then they can hear a text to speech reading of
the, of the content. Again, that's an engagement signal
to Google that the visitor, the human is engaging with
the page and it's also adding multimedia to the page which
the language models are ingesting. So instead of just doing walls of
text, if you can add multimedia to a page which would include infographics,
(22:13):
images, audio players, videos, cost calculators or something that they can
engage with, all of that is going to improve the performance in Google search
but also improve the language models, ingestion of the content in
multiple formats. So that again, now we're Talking about the branded
content being consumed by these language models in
multiple formats, which gives it a greater chance to be recalled
(22:35):
or mentioned when somebody is searching for something that would be relevant to that
business. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's almost like we should rename
blogging now to be like multimedia blogging or
interactive blogging because you want them to interact more than you just
want them to just read. Google is using engagement signals now as more
of a validation of it
(22:57):
being a good business, a, a something that people are interested in. Right.
And that's it. And that's. I, I understand why Google's doing that is because that's
much harder to spam or to fake. Right. As, as
SEOs, we've always learned how to manipulate by faking things,
but it's very much more, it's much more difficult to fake engagement.
And so that's why Google's placing a lot more weight on engagement signals
(23:20):
and how visitors interact with the site, et cetera.
And that's why having those engaging elements on the page can help to improve performance
in search, because it almost forces the
visitor to engage, provide those engagement signals that Google's
looking for until someone. Figures out how to use AI to fake engagement.
That's correct. That's right. And I almost promise you that
(23:42):
people are working on that right now. So I mean, even with
that, where do you foresee the advance or more advancement in
AI for machine learning as well for local SEOs? You
talked a little bit about perplexity, but where do you see more AI
at least helping local businesses with their local SEO?
Well, because a lot of stuff can be automated now, so they won't
(24:05):
need the expensive agencies. And I, I'm an a, you know, I'm an agency owner.
I got multiple agencies in fact, and so, but
I think, I think it's the implementation of how to integrate
AI into their businesses that most businesses are going to need help with.
Right. It's not necessarily like, I mean there's certain tasks and
functions that can be automated or, or handed over to an AI that can, or
(24:27):
an AI agent that can, that can fix it. But I think it's also
developing custom solutions using AI for
businesses needs because there are going to be standard things that like a particular
business industry would be, there would be relevant things, things that AI
can accomplish for that industry. But even businesses in a particular
industry are going to have nuances with their own specific needs
(24:49):
that I think AI implementation is where there's going to be a lot
of growth potential for agencies like myself. But
also for businesses, if they become early adopters
of trying to integrate AI into their business and have custom solutions made,
it will give them a competitive advantage over all their other competitors. You see
what I'm saying? And look, I invest with an AI development company now
(25:12):
to develop AI agents for my agency and for some of my students,
because I teach local SEO as well and things like that. And it's not cheap,
it's expensive. But the thing is, is once you have an app or
an agent developed that does something very unique, then that
you can monetize it. Right. If it's for a local business, it's literally just going
to, typically, it's just going to help their bottom line. So it's been monetized by
(25:33):
increasing their revenue, reducing maybe overhead, ongoing costs,
things like that. But as an agency, if you develop
AI agents that can produce, you
know, that that would be relevant or valuable to more than one business while, or.
And again, I usually start with developing things for my own business, and then
if I see where it can be applicable to other industries that I work with
(25:56):
now, it becomes a product that I can monetize, potentially. So as an
agency, I can see not only implementing AI
solutions for local businesses as another source, but then
also reselling those solutions to other
businesses in that same industry, if they. Or similar industries. If
that's clear. Yeah. And so what advice do you have for business
(26:18):
owners trying to navigate, like the best practices for SEO?
Because I'm pretty sure they're still out there. Old information or information that's not
correct. And so how do you do that? Because, I mean, everybody's trying to like,
get their old stuff to be relevant again, even if it's not relevant.
Great question. I think one of the biggest things to do is to right now
would be to do kind of an audit of the site, like analyze the content
(26:40):
and the pages and everything and look for bloat, look for redundancy,
duplication, and eliminate it. You know, it's almost like
trying. I use this as analogy. It's like a website
that has a lot of outdated content or too much content, and all of
that. It's like going swimming with bricks tied around your neck. Right?
You want to. It's very hard to go swimming, come up for air when you've
(27:01):
got all those. And all those pages, all that content, outdated
old content, things like that. All of that is like bricks tied
around the website's neck. And you should eliminate that stuff,
prune that content, redirect or consolidate
pages, all of that kind of Stuff to try to make the site more efficient.
Narrow the focus of the site and it tends to perform better. Narrow the
(27:23):
focus of the site to the more specifically the products or services that the company
provides in the locations in which it provides them and get rid of the bloat.
Then if you want to continue to try to market again instead of
trying to revive old content, start new and develop
content that can be turned into multi formats, multimedia
formats like we just described and then work on publishing and
(27:44):
distributing content across platforms as I mentioned previously. So
right now is a really good time for local businesses to kind of do an
overhaul of their digital presence, their website specifically,
make it more efficient, consolidate, narrow the focus of the site
to just the essentials because that's going to make it much more efficient
(28:06):
for Google to crawl which makes it tend to perform better and
then focus in on again on just really developing a market, a
content marketing strategy and then stick to it. Like right now
the most important 2, 2 most important things in local search is branded location
authority, which again publishing branded content across multiple
formats will build that branded location authority and then site
(28:28):
efficiency, which is an on page thing, an on page optimization thing.
So those two things. So off page is building brand authority, on page is
site efficiency. If you do those two things in tandem right now, you're going to
win in search. And I see that, I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I mean I could be wrong, but I can only see those two
components becoming more important to perform well in
(28:50):
local, in a local search environment. Not just Google,
but just across the board, so to speak. What excites you the
most about the future of local SEO and digital marketing? Where do you see yourself
and your team focusing next? More on the marketing
sides than just the technical side of things? You know,
I've, I've been in local SEO in the SEO business or industry now for
(29:12):
15 years and you know, I teach it and I've been
teaching it for 10 years now as well. So I coach others to learn how
to create a business around local SEO. Okay. And
what I've seen is most people come into this industry with the
idea if, if they learn how to rank stuff, which again that's
becoming like not even relevant any, I mean it still is now, but it,
(29:34):
it's, it's changing rapidly. But I've seen over the years a lot of
SEOs, aspiring SEOs come into this business
to think if all I got to do is learn how to rank stuff and
I will be financially free, I'm going to Be set, blah, blah, blah. That's not
the case, man. Learning how to rank stuff is only a very tiny portion of
being effective, right? Because you can rank a page, but if
(29:56):
it's not set up, doesn't have good copywriting, it's not set up for conversions,
etc. What is the purpose of that page to be like? It's not. If it
doesn't produce the desired end result, ranking is just
a, you know, it's just a vanity thing, right? And so
I think studying marketing and really
developing marketing and marketing
(30:17):
messages and you know, offers and things like that to help a
business to convert more visitors, not just to generate more
traffic, but to then convert them because you got better offers, better
copywriting, better presentations, better, you know, all of that. I think that's more
important. And then also looking for, and trying to identify ways to market outside
of traditional search or even AI search, but do more
(30:39):
focused like direct response marketing type of stuff, right?
So for example, in my like the tree service industry,
you know, I recently started looking at like, how do we do like
things even like direct mail campaigns. No kidding, us, physical mail,
like direct mail campaigns to like for a tree service contractor that's in an area
where there's a lot of golf courses, like to a, you know, golf course
(31:02):
maintenance managers, right? Because those or
property, property management companies that have,
you know, tenant buildings and commercial properties that have trees that need to be trimmed
and things like that. And that can be stuff where you can get outside of
traditional digital marketing in search and instead do
like direct response marketing to, you know,
(31:24):
property management property managers or golf course
maintenance managers, you know, things like that. And so I think just becoming,
I always recommend to my students in local SEO to identify one
particular industry and go really deep into that industry. Instead of going broad
across multiple industries where you're never really effective in any one industry,
pick one and get to know that industry better than even the business
(31:47):
owners do so that you become invaluable to them and you know,
how to get results for the business owners, but also how to
speak to the consumers of the products and services in that business or that industry.
You see what I'm saying? So I think, I think kind of, which is really
funny because all this technology has really brought me back to
foundational marketing and sales principles. You know what I mean? That
(32:10):
I really think now if we can learn how to apply
traditional and foundational marketing and sales principles to
all this technology that we have available to us, that's where we're
truly going to win not just becoming technology experts, but then applying
that technology with proper marketing techniques, so to speak. Yeah,
it always comes back down to the old school marketing tactics like
(32:32):
word of mouth is still king. No matter how much we love all this new
tech, word of mouth is still will always be king. That's right,
100%. And so people listen to this episode, they're wondering where can they find you
online to learn more about you and your companies. Well, I appreciate
that. Just if you just search Bradley Benner, you'll find my various
companies. Semantic Mastery is my company where I do coaching and teaching of local
(32:55):
SEO and SEO and now like not just SEO anymore but all the
stuff that we've been talking about today, which is beyond SEO.
But the best way is just go to our YouTube channel. If you go to
YouTube.com and you search for semantic mastery or go to YouTube.comantic
mastery, you'll go to our channel. We've got over 4, 000 videos we've
been publishing. I do a weekly Hump day hang. We call it Hump Day Hangouts.
(33:18):
It's a weekly SEO webinar. It's a Q A webinar. It's 100 free. Anybody can
attend every Wednesday. We do that from 4 to 5pm Eastern. That's why we
call it Hump Day Hangouts. We've been doing that for over 10 years, about 10
and a half years now actually. So we've got 550. I think yesterday was
549. Episode 5 49. So yeah,
I really enjoy this and that's the best way to get connected with us is
(33:38):
just through YouTube because you can ask questions, comment, whatever and we'll reply
back to you. But we have white label services and all that other kind of
stuff. But yeah, just check with, check us out on YouTube. That's the best way.
All right, Any final thoughts for the listeners? No, this was fun.
I appreciate the conversation. I, I really think right now is a good opportunity
for, you know, people in our, that are kind of dealing in the marketing
(34:00):
industries and traditionally with search and stuff. I think we need to be out there
talking about this because I think a lot of local businesses and even
unfortunately marketing professionals that aren't keeping up with this stuff
I believe are going to be left in the dust, like left behind.
They're, they're, they're going to become non relevant if they don't
evolve. And so I think it's really important for us to be out evangelizing
(34:21):
this kind of stuff right now, if that makes sense. So I appreciate what you're
doing, Brett. Thank you. Yes, it does make sense. AI is going to take over
just about everything in marketing. You have to. That's right. You have to learn it.
Well, thank you, man. Yeah. Thank you for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing
knowledge on local SEO and AI. Thank you for having me and thank. You for
listening to this episode, guys. I really do appreciate it. Just do
(34:42):
a quick favor and just subscribe to the YouTube or rumble or on any
of your favorite podcasting apps and leave a review. It does
help, but I want to know what it was. Your favorite moment in the
podcasting. Leave a comment below and then I will share in the next
episode. So guys, hope you enjoy it and see you
next week. As we talked, another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry. All
(35:04):
right, guys, stay safe. Get to understanding how you can use SEO better.
Leave a comment away what you learned the most, what was the most impactful and
see you next week later.
Foreign.
That's good. And welcome to a new episode of
Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett Deister.
(00:20):
If you guys always wanted to know how to do SEO better, you wanted
to get to the top of the Google searches. You wanted to be
just the top, top, top. And no one can touch you on
whatever business if you're doing it or if you're doing it for
a client or if you're doing it for the business that you currently work with.
Well, this episode is specifically for you. It tells you everything
(00:43):
that you need to know on how to be the best at local
SEO, SEO and AI. Because AI is coming up in the
ranks, we always got to know how to do it better through AI.
Sometimes. I know AI is not fun at
times, but I get it. I get it. But
you guys are going to be excited for this. I want to know in the
(01:03):
comments below what are you excited for for this episode?
And then have fun. All right, let's
get on to the episode, the show, Bradley. Well, thank you so much for having
me, Brett. I appreciate it. And the first question is all my guest is, are
you a coffee or tea drinker? Mostly a coffee
drinker, but a little of both. Do you have, like, specifics you
(01:25):
like or is it just whatever someone buys you? You're, like, good enough?
I like dark, kind of dark roasts. I prefer coffee
black most of the time. Occasionally I'll
mess with a little bit of cream, but I prefer black coffee and preferably the
strong kind. And I like it like so strong you have to chew it to
swallow it. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, if you really
(01:48):
want to do that, you could always just do cowboy coffee. That really will be
chewing type of coffee. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure about that. But I do like
a strong, dark roast. You mean like strong like flavor wise, or
like strong like caffeine wise? Specifically flavor wise. But
that typically is going to be stronger with caffeine as well too, you know, so
it's kind of a little of both. Well, here's the. Here's the thing that
(02:11):
most people don't know is that actually dark rose doesn't
have as much caffeine as the light to medium rose. So if you really want
caffeine, you got to go to the lighter stuff because that will give you
the more caffeine. If you want the. So why is espresso so
caffeine rich then? Well, it's because it's a. It's a smaller shot
and so you have more Condensed into it type of a thing. But they're never
(02:34):
dark roast actually unless they actually specifically do it. But when you roast it
longer, more of the caffeine escapes from. Gotcha.
Okay. But it's also, but also heating. It
has the caffeine escape too. So that's why cold brew has more caffeine than
the hot coffee. Gotcha. I do like cold brew that's,
that's good especially in the summer. So I like it all year round. So I
(02:57):
just. Yeah, even if it's cold, I drink it cold.
Anyways, I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give a listeners a
little bit more about what you do? Yeah, I primarily do.
Well, you know, SEO is, it's not just SEO anymore
really now with large language models and AI chat and all that stuff,
AI search, it's really set a search engine optimization,
(03:19):
search everywhere optimization, you know what I mean? It's like or LLM
optimization or something like that. It's basically optimizing for
whatever platforms consumers would be using to
identify local businesses that provide products or services that they're
searching for. And so that's really what I do now is kind of
focusing on. There's still a large component of search engine optimization, but that
(03:42):
is quickly fading because of large language
models and AI chats and all of that. So we really have to
kind of evolve to stay relevant. And that means
optimizing for all these different platforms now, which has made
our job a little bit. It's kind of interesting. But as in the kind
of search engine optimization world or the SEO world, things have
(04:04):
evolved, are evolving very rapidly. And so,
and sometime in some ways things have become easier for us at least
certain aspects of what we do because of AI. In other cases
it's become more complicated, more complex because we have
more platforms now, channels, etc that we need to be
optimizing for because there are so many options available.
(04:26):
It's very diff. You know, it's not like it has been for many years
where Google was like the 800lb gorilla, you know what I mean? Like
the, the, the, the only game in town, so to speak. It's not like that
anymore. And now local is probably one of the last things to be
hit the hardest by all of the local or the AI chat stuff.
But it still is losing market share. Like Perplexity
(04:50):
is coming up quick with as is for as kind of like a local search
chat option. And so it, you know, basically
what I do is I work on trying to identify ways to help local
businesses gain more Exposure in their own local markets.
That has traditionally been mostly with search engine optimization trying to get more
exposure within Google, but has really quickly morphed into
(05:12):
just trying to build more exposure across as many different platforms and channels,
avenues, etc. As possible so that the business becomes,
gains much more exposure in their local market. Becomes more of kind of like
the, the only choice for local business or
local consumers. And that's kind of what we do is try to build brand
authority for local businesses to gain more exposure across
(05:35):
various search channels. Is what you're saying is that like
Google, like my business used to be like the de facto thing like
you need to be on there, is it still the de facto thing for local
search? Yes. Or should you focus a little bit more on
perplexity? Well, you, I mean in my opinion having a Google business
profile used to be Google my business is critically important
(05:57):
for local businesses because that's still where the vast majority of local searches
occur are through Google. Again it is losing market share but not
as rapidly as general organic search, if that makes
sense. So typically people are going to go to Google and they're going to, if
they start to do any kind of search for a business or a
search query that Google knows has local intent. So
(06:20):
typically like for example, if you're on your mobile device and you go to Google
and you start to search in for something like you know, restaurants or Mexican
food or something like that, the near me modifier or suggested search query
always pops up. Right? Because Google knows you're on a mobile device and it's, it's
all about somewhere proximity and everything else. So the search
is still something that the local search is still what a lot of people
(06:41):
use or Google Maps to search for local businesses that
provide products or services that they're, they're seeking. But
so I think having a Google business profile is still critically important and not only
even if Google loses considerably more market share, it still would be
valuable to have a Google Google business profile because it's kind of a,
an authority builder, right. It's a validator of the brand because you have to
(07:04):
go through a verification process. And so I even recommend
to businesses that really don't serve just a local market
to if they can still get a Google business profile because it helps to
validate the business further within Google, if that makes sense.
So I think it's still valuable to have for sure. All right, so I
mean you've emphasized or you, you believe in
(07:27):
like the ethical results driven SEO practices. How do you balance
achieving clients goals with avoiding shortcuts or
spammy techniques. I'm in the, I'm not one of the types of SEOs
that believe in the white hat, black hat, you know, camps or whatever.
I, I think SEO is SEO. If you are doing something to
manipulate the performance of a website or a Google
(07:48):
Maps profile or whatever in search, then you're,
you're violating Google's terms of service. So in my opinion, there
is no hats. There are no hats. Right? Like we just, we just do
SEO now. There are certainly some things that are spammy, questionable
things like that, that we could, I try to avoid. But you
know, Google kind of frowns upon anything that we do to try to manipulate its
(08:11):
results. So so basically, you know,
we, we try to do things that don't trigger any sort of
additional scrutiny or extra scrutiny, number one, or anything that would
cause a suspension or like for a Google business profile, a suspension or a re
verification. But there's almost kind of arbitrary suspensions
and re verification issues that happen with Google business profiles all
(08:33):
the time. You know, there's, there's always bugs with Google, no matter
what, no matter what time of day, what time of year, there's always bugs, usually
multiple bugs. So, so there are things that are always going
to occur. But I think that you know, focusing in
on local search optimization is critically important.
But like I said, it's really kind of evolving into doing other things,
(08:55):
which is good because trying to abide by Google's
rules, which are constantly changing and evolving too is very difficult.
And so this now does open up the opportunity for,
for us as marketing professionals to help local businesses
generate traffic sources. Right, from other,
(09:15):
other sources other than just Google. Because putting all of your eggs in that one
basket is a very dangerous because again, Google makes
changes to its own quality guidelines or
acceptable use policy all the time. And so what was
acceptable today, tomorrow may not be anymore. And
so if you rely 100 on Google, which I did for many years
(09:37):
because that's what I, I worked in and it was almost like the only
game in town, so to speak. So it was really like it was, it was,
it was reasonable to be, to spend all of our time focusing on Google. But
now that's not the case because of social media, because of language
models, chats and things like that. It's opened
up the ability for businesses to diversify their traffic sources
(10:00):
where they are generating customers from and leads. Right.
And so how do we balance things without doing things so
spammy? Well, we do a lot of testing and we, when we find things that
work, we typically will apply them. When we find
things that don't work or that cause negative movement, we, we
try to re. Restrict use of that as well. But we are always
(10:22):
constantly doing testing and trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. But as
I mentioned already, things are constantly evolving. So
we could do a ton of testing today or this week and find
several things that work real well and start to deploy those or implement those
on the client campaigns and then in two months that could be completely changed again.
So digital marketing is not for the faint of heart right now. I can tell
(10:45):
you that it's true. I mean even on
the content marketing side, it's definitely not the faint of heart anymore. I mean you've
got Google v03 now, you've got all the other
AI type of a thing going on. So I mean you, you
talked about the evolution or the changing of Google's
algorithm. So what do you see as the biggest trends
(11:07):
coming for local SEO besides, I mean we talked a little bit about
perplexity, but is there other things that are coming up that they should be aware
of? Probably the biggest thing is just trying to.
You, you mentioned content marketing. I think the, the most important thing for local
businesses right now as far as kind of
positioning themselves to perform well as
(11:29):
this whole landscape continues to change and evolve,
is to really focus in on branded content. So in
other words, publishing a lot of content across a lot of channels
that are always tying the products or services
that the business provides back to the business, associating the products
and services with that brand and also for local
(11:53):
businesses also associating the locations in which they provide those
services or products or services. So, so there's service area, what
even a local storefront business where like a dentist office or whatever
typically wants to serve a local market, not just that one
particular city. In other words, they want to be found by people, maybe in an
adjacent town or city, things like that. So having
(12:15):
content that is always creating associations
for the, to the brand from the products and services they provide and also the
locations in which they provide them is critically important. But you got to be
careful with how you are now at least got to be careful with dealing
with Google about content marketing. Because when I say publish a lot of
content, if you do that on the same website as the
(12:37):
primary website, so like on the bl. On a blog of the main website, for
example, that can create competing pages, which is like it's
potential cannibalization. I don't see cannibalization occurring much anymore. For
that is where if more than one page on a particular domain
is relevant to a particular search query, True Cannibalization is
Google will only select one of the pages to give an impression or to
(13:00):
serve in the search results for that particular query. And so
True Cannibalization is where if you were to do like 10
back to back searches like Ted Kubitis has a tool called Quora that does
this and it's the SERP volatility tester. And so you, you
can take a particular search query and do 10, 10 back to back searches
and it will show you the top 100 results for each of those searches
(13:22):
for that particular query. And True Cannibalization would show like
you know, for the first three searches this one page appeared in whatever
positions they were in. And then position search four and five, it
was a different page that appeared in whatever positions they were in. And that's showing
only one page showing at a time. But
now I don't see cannibalization occurring so much. But what I do see a lot
(13:45):
of is competing pages, which is where Google will serve more than one page
from the same domain for a particular search query. But though
both two or more pages that have been served from the same domain
will be lower in the search results than one page would have been had
there only been one page on the site relevant to that query. So in other
words, if there was only one page relevant to that query, it likely would have
(14:06):
been positioned much higher in the search results than if there are two or
more where Google Mate show them in the search results, but further down where they're
likely never going to get seen by the, the Google user. And so I bring
that up because one of the old you mentioned, I'm assuming you're
into content marketing, but as an SEO professional I, you know, we
did a lot of content marketing for local businesses for many years and that was
(14:28):
one of my primary methods. Almost the sole method that I would get
local businesses results with was just blogging consistently from their blog
and in republishing that blog content out on their social media profiles and
things like that, that worked incredibly well for years. But now
what happens is for those of you that are familiar with SEO, there's
been one of the major updates, there's dozens. I mean they do a major update
(14:51):
almost every month now Google does. But the helpful content update had two
major rollouts of that. And the helpful content update was
specifically Google's way to address this over
optimization and redundancy compete like this
duplication of Pages and content
on the site. For example, a lot of local
(15:12):
businesses, like I work with home service contractors, my own local SEO agency, I
really just work with tree service companies. And in the tree service industry,
you know, there's a multiple industry or multiple services, tree removal, tree trimming,
stump grinding, etc. And so usually a tree service company wants to
target a fairly large service area, two or three
counties often, right? And so usually in every county there's going to be,
(15:35):
you know, a list of cities and or towns, census designated places,
incorporated communities, unincorporated communities, et cetera. So what
we've done in SEO for years in local SEO was we would create a
separate page for each service, times each city
that they wanted to rank in. So let's say that there was three
counties and a total of, let's just for simplicity
(15:57):
sake, say there was 20 cities or towns in those three counties
that they wanted to target and they had three main services, tree
trimming, tree removal and stump grinding. Well, by
traditional local SEO tactics we would have had 60 pages,
right? Tree removal city one, tree removal city to tree removal city three,
tree trimming city one tree, so on and so forth that. Now
(16:19):
Google came out with the helpful content update as it relates to local specifically
to address stuff like that because it was bloat, it was redundancy, it was
duplicated content because it was saying the same thing over and over and over again.
The only thing that changed was the city modifier, right, the location
modifier. And so that was a very inefficient way we all
did it as SEOs, we had to, that's how we got results when it was
(16:40):
a keyword based algorithm. It is no longer now because of AI large language
models, Google's own is integrated into its algorithm. It understands language much
better. And now we should be optimizing for entities which has this.
What I was talking about earlier when I mentioned to you, in some ways
the recent changes have made our jobs easier and that
this is specifically why I was, why I mentioned that was because now the
(17:02):
best way to optimize local sites is to have one page for each product or
service that they provide, one page for each
location that they want to target and you associate again,
that's, I keep talking about associations. That's what the semantic web is. It's how
entities relate or associate with each other. Relate to or
associate with each other. And so we create associations between
(17:24):
product or service pages and the location pages through
internal linking. And so now in that same example that I just
described a moment ago, that let's say three primary services and 20
locations. Instead of having 60, minimum of 60 pages now,
now you would have three plus 20, so 23, so a
third of the number of pages on the site and achieve the same
(17:47):
end goal. But now it's much more efficient for Google because Google's not
using a bunch of resources. Which is why the helpful content update was rolled out
by the way was because Google was very public about ever since the onset
of AI and AI writing assistance and things like that, there's been this
proliferation or explosion of content on the web and Google
can't keep up with crawling and indexing everything. And
(18:10):
so that, that's why it applied this kind of helpful content update was to
eliminate or punish sites that are using more resources than
necessary. Do you understand? And so to get back to what you were
saying, branded content block branded,
branded content, like publishing branded content to always create associations
between the brand, the products or services it provides and the locations in
(18:33):
which it provides them is critically important. So how do we do it without
publishing too much content on the site to where you create competing
pages? Do it with an external blog. And so
that, that's kind of where I think most local businesses right now stand
to position themselves to perform well. And how
things are evolving would be to start
(18:55):
hiring content marketing or local marketing or SEO companies or
whatever that can start to publish branded content across various platforms
but use the source. The content source is not the
primary website. But a, a, an external
blog might be an extension of the brand. So an example of that
would be like using something like Google sites. So sites, google.com or
(19:17):
blogger, tumblr, WordPress, weebly strikingly, any
one of those medium. Medium is a great blogging platform. You could use medium as
an external blog because then you can publish as much or the business can
publish as much content as they want. And it's not going to be competing with
the content on the main website because it's on a different domain that can also
end up becoming link building content. It can also be used, you can,
(19:40):
you can use that as kind of a, a way to publish a lot of
content across different platforms because different language models
ingest content from different platforms. So it's important to try to
be ubiquitous. In other words, try to get content
out, published as many places you know your content
published everywhere on the web as much as possible. And that's what I tell local
(20:03):
business clients now. Got you.
So blogging is coming back at least for a local SEOs,
because blogging is, well, I mean we've we've been told just like email
marketing, it's dying. But I never think any of this content is ever really
dying. It's just not as popular as before is really what it is.
(20:23):
Right. Well, and that's a great. As a matter of fact, the fact that you
just brought that up was when I say blogging. Yeah. Like
traditional just text based blog posts are, people have short, you
know, our attention spans keep shrinking and people don't want to
read a wall of text anymore. They don't. That's another thing just on page
optimization. I've noticed with local businesses, with local SEO
(20:44):
campaigns that if you can break a page up, that was typically
like, you know, again, three, four years ago, five years ago, if we wanted
to improve the optimization of a page, what would we do as SEOs, we go
throw more words onto the page. Right. We would, it was just like we go
in and we just try to increase the density, add more words. Oh, it's only
1500 words. We'll just make it 2500. That ought to fix it. You know, and
(21:05):
we did all this spammy stuff as SEOs because that's what we had to do.
But now we don't have to do that anymore. And so what I'm saying is
now like as a matter of fact, big walls of text or big
like long form articles when there's, when it really doesn't need that because
you're trying to make it rank, that's not necessary anymore. And so
breaking up the text into multimedia and engaging elements
(21:27):
within the page, like putting cost calculators like estimate,
like for tree services, like a stump removal cost calculator, you know, something
like that where you can get the visitor to engage with the page.
Putting AI voice text to speech
summaries of the main sections of the page, like and
then having a little audio player button next to the H2 heading for each section
(21:50):
where somebody can click and then they can hear a text to speech reading of
the, of the content. Again, that's an engagement signal
to Google that the visitor, the human is engaging with
the page and it's also adding multimedia to the page which
the language models are ingesting. So instead of just doing walls of
text, if you can add multimedia to a page which would include infographics,
(22:13):
images, audio players, videos, cost calculators or something that they can
engage with, all of that is going to improve the performance in Google search
but also improve the language models, ingestion of the content in
multiple formats. So that again, now we're Talking about the branded
content being consumed by these language models in
multiple formats, which gives it a greater chance to be recalled
(22:35):
or mentioned when somebody is searching for something that would be relevant to that
business. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's almost like we should rename
blogging now to be like multimedia blogging or
interactive blogging because you want them to interact more than you just
want them to just read. Google is using engagement signals now as more
of a validation of it
(22:57):
being a good business, a, a something that people are interested in. Right.
And that's it. And that's. I, I understand why Google's doing that is because that's
much harder to spam or to fake. Right. As, as
SEOs, we've always learned how to manipulate by faking things,
but it's very much more, it's much more difficult to fake engagement.
And so that's why Google's placing a lot more weight on engagement signals
(23:20):
and how visitors interact with the site, et cetera.
And that's why having those engaging elements on the page can help to improve performance
in search, because it almost forces the
visitor to engage, provide those engagement signals that Google's
looking for until someone. Figures out how to use AI to fake engagement.
That's correct. That's right. And I almost promise you that
(23:42):
people are working on that right now. So I mean, even with
that, where do you foresee the advance or more advancement in
AI for machine learning as well for local SEOs? You
talked a little bit about perplexity, but where do you see more AI
at least helping local businesses with their local SEO?
Well, because a lot of stuff can be automated now, so they won't
(24:05):
need the expensive agencies. And I, I'm an a, you know, I'm an agency owner.
I got multiple agencies in fact, and so, but
I think, I think it's the implementation of how to integrate
AI into their businesses that most businesses are going to need help with.
Right. It's not necessarily like, I mean there's certain tasks and
functions that can be automated or, or handed over to an AI that can, or
(24:27):
an AI agent that can, that can fix it. But I think it's also
developing custom solutions using AI for
businesses needs because there are going to be standard things that like a particular
business industry would be, there would be relevant things, things that AI
can accomplish for that industry. But even businesses in a particular
industry are going to have nuances with their own specific needs
(24:49):
that I think AI implementation is where there's going to be a lot
of growth potential for agencies like myself. But
also for businesses, if they become early adopters
of trying to integrate AI into their business and have custom solutions made,
it will give them a competitive advantage over all their other competitors. You see
what I'm saying? And look, I invest with an AI development company now
(25:12):
to develop AI agents for my agency and for some of my students,
because I teach local SEO as well and things like that. And it's not cheap,
it's expensive. But the thing is, is once you have an app or
an agent developed that does something very unique, then that
you can monetize it. Right. If it's for a local business, it's literally just going
to, typically, it's just going to help their bottom line. So it's been monetized by
(25:33):
increasing their revenue, reducing maybe overhead, ongoing costs,
things like that. But as an agency, if you develop
AI agents that can produce, you
know, that that would be relevant or valuable to more than one business while, or.
And again, I usually start with developing things for my own business, and then
if I see where it can be applicable to other industries that I work with
(25:56):
now, it becomes a product that I can monetize, potentially. So as an
agency, I can see not only implementing AI
solutions for local businesses as another source, but then
also reselling those solutions to other
businesses in that same industry, if they. Or similar industries. If
that's clear. Yeah. And so what advice do you have for business
(26:18):
owners trying to navigate, like the best practices for SEO?
Because I'm pretty sure they're still out there. Old information or information that's not
correct. And so how do you do that? Because, I mean, everybody's trying to like,
get their old stuff to be relevant again, even if it's not relevant.
Great question. I think one of the biggest things to do is to right now
would be to do kind of an audit of the site, like analyze the content
(26:40):
and the pages and everything and look for bloat, look for redundancy,
duplication, and eliminate it. You know, it's almost like
trying. I use this as analogy. It's like a website
that has a lot of outdated content or too much content, and all of
that. It's like going swimming with bricks tied around your neck. Right?
You want to. It's very hard to go swimming, come up for air when you've
(27:01):
got all those. And all those pages, all that content, outdated
old content, things like that. All of that is like bricks tied
around the website's neck. And you should eliminate that stuff,
prune that content, redirect or consolidate
pages, all of that kind of Stuff to try to make the site more efficient.
Narrow the focus of the site and it tends to perform better. Narrow the
(27:23):
focus of the site to the more specifically the products or services that the company
provides in the locations in which it provides them and get rid of the bloat.
Then if you want to continue to try to market again instead of
trying to revive old content, start new and develop
content that can be turned into multi formats, multimedia
formats like we just described and then work on publishing and
(27:44):
distributing content across platforms as I mentioned previously. So
right now is a really good time for local businesses to kind of do an
overhaul of their digital presence, their website specifically,
make it more efficient, consolidate, narrow the focus of the site
to just the essentials because that's going to make it much more efficient
(28:06):
for Google to crawl which makes it tend to perform better and
then focus in on again on just really developing a market, a
content marketing strategy and then stick to it. Like right now
the most important 2, 2 most important things in local search is branded location
authority, which again publishing branded content across multiple
formats will build that branded location authority and then site
(28:28):
efficiency, which is an on page thing, an on page optimization thing.
So those two things. So off page is building brand authority, on page is
site efficiency. If you do those two things in tandem right now, you're going to
win in search. And I see that, I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I mean I could be wrong, but I can only see those two
components becoming more important to perform well in
(28:50):
local, in a local search environment. Not just Google,
but just across the board, so to speak. What excites you the
most about the future of local SEO and digital marketing? Where do you see yourself
and your team focusing next? More on the marketing
sides than just the technical side of things? You know,
I've, I've been in local SEO in the SEO business or industry now for
(29:12):
15 years and you know, I teach it and I've been
teaching it for 10 years now as well. So I coach others to learn how
to create a business around local SEO. Okay. And
what I've seen is most people come into this industry with the
idea if, if they learn how to rank stuff, which again that's
becoming like not even relevant any, I mean it still is now, but it,
(29:34):
it's, it's changing rapidly. But I've seen over the years a lot of
SEOs, aspiring SEOs come into this business
to think if all I got to do is learn how to rank stuff and
I will be financially free, I'm going to Be set, blah, blah, blah. That's not
the case, man. Learning how to rank stuff is only a very tiny portion of
being effective, right? Because you can rank a page, but if
(29:56):
it's not set up, doesn't have good copywriting, it's not set up for conversions,
etc. What is the purpose of that page to be like? It's not. If it
doesn't produce the desired end result, ranking is just
a, you know, it's just a vanity thing, right? And so
I think studying marketing and really
developing marketing and marketing
(30:17):
messages and you know, offers and things like that to help a
business to convert more visitors, not just to generate more
traffic, but to then convert them because you got better offers, better
copywriting, better presentations, better, you know, all of that. I think that's more
important. And then also looking for, and trying to identify ways to market outside
of traditional search or even AI search, but do more
(30:39):
focused like direct response marketing type of stuff, right?
So for example, in my like the tree service industry,
you know, I recently started looking at like, how do we do like
things even like direct mail campaigns. No kidding, us, physical mail,
like direct mail campaigns to like for a tree service contractor that's in an area
where there's a lot of golf courses, like to a, you know, golf course
(31:02):
maintenance managers, right? Because those or
property, property management companies that have,
you know, tenant buildings and commercial properties that have trees that need to be trimmed
and things like that. And that can be stuff where you can get outside of
traditional digital marketing in search and instead do
like direct response marketing to, you know,
(31:24):
property management property managers or golf course
maintenance managers, you know, things like that. And so I think just becoming,
I always recommend to my students in local SEO to identify one
particular industry and go really deep into that industry. Instead of going broad
across multiple industries where you're never really effective in any one industry,
pick one and get to know that industry better than even the business
(31:47):
owners do so that you become invaluable to them and you know,
how to get results for the business owners, but also how to
speak to the consumers of the products and services in that business or that industry.
You see what I'm saying? So I think, I think kind of, which is really
funny because all this technology has really brought me back to
foundational marketing and sales principles. You know what I mean? That
(32:10):
I really think now if we can learn how to apply
traditional and foundational marketing and sales principles to
all this technology that we have available to us, that's where we're
truly going to win not just becoming technology experts, but then applying
that technology with proper marketing techniques, so to speak. Yeah,
it always comes back down to the old school marketing tactics like
(32:32):
word of mouth is still king. No matter how much we love all this new
tech, word of mouth is still will always be king. That's right,
100%. And so people listen to this episode, they're wondering where can they find you
online to learn more about you and your companies. Well, I appreciate
that. Just if you just search Bradley Benner, you'll find my various
companies. Semantic Mastery is my company where I do coaching and teaching of local
(32:55):
SEO and SEO and now like not just SEO anymore but all the
stuff that we've been talking about today, which is beyond SEO.
But the best way is just go to our YouTube channel. If you go to
YouTube.com and you search for semantic mastery or go to YouTube.comantic
mastery, you'll go to our channel. We've got over 4, 000 videos we've
been publishing. I do a weekly Hump day hang. We call it Hump Day Hangouts.
(33:18):
It's a weekly SEO webinar. It's a Q A webinar. It's 100 free. Anybody can
attend every Wednesday. We do that from 4 to 5pm Eastern. That's why we
call it Hump Day Hangouts. We've been doing that for over 10 years, about 10
and a half years now actually. So we've got 550. I think yesterday was
549. Episode 5 49. So yeah,
I really enjoy this and that's the best way to get connected with us is
(33:38):
just through YouTube because you can ask questions, comment, whatever and we'll reply
back to you. But we have white label services and all that other kind of
stuff. But yeah, just check with, check us out on YouTube. That's the best way.
All right, Any final thoughts for the listeners? No, this was fun.
I appreciate the conversation. I, I really think right now is a good opportunity
for, you know, people in our, that are kind of dealing in the marketing
(34:00):
industries and traditionally with search and stuff. I think we need to be out there
talking about this because I think a lot of local businesses and even
unfortunately marketing professionals that aren't keeping up with this stuff
I believe are going to be left in the dust, like left behind.
They're, they're, they're going to become non relevant if they don't
evolve. And so I think it's really important for us to be out evangelizing
(34:21):
this kind of stuff right now, if that makes sense. So I appreciate what you're
doing, Brett. Thank you. Yes, it does make sense. AI is going to take over
just about everything in marketing. You have to. That's right. You have to learn it.
Well, thank you, man. Yeah. Thank you for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing
knowledge on local SEO and AI. Thank you for having me and thank. You for
listening to this episode, guys. I really do appreciate it. Just do
(34:42):
a quick favor and just subscribe to the YouTube or rumble or on any
of your favorite podcasting apps and leave a review. It does
help, but I want to know what it was. Your favorite moment in the
podcasting. Leave a comment below and then I will share in the next
episode. So guys, hope you enjoy it and see you
next week. As we talked, another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry. All
(35:04):
right, guys, stay safe. Get to understanding how you can use SEO better.
Leave a comment away what you learned the most, what was the most impactful and
see you next week later.
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