June 18, 2025 • 41 mins
As artificial intelligence transforms the way people discover and interact with businesses online, traditional digital advertising tactics are beginning to lose their edge. In this episode of Over the Bull, we uncover why the once-reliable Google Ads strategy—built around microsites and keyword-stuffed landing pages—is quietly becoming outdated in the face of AI-driven search engines and smarter algorithms.
Ken Carroll explores how Google’s shift toward AI-powered search results and credibility-based ranking is dismantling the old playbook. We’ll break down why your Google Ads might not perform the way they used to and how AI is reshaping user behavior, search intent, and the very structure of ad campaigns.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a digital strategist, this episode will help you understand what’s changing in the world of Google Ads, why credibility and trust signals matter more than ever, and how to future-proof your marketing efforts in an AI-first world.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
I am sounding
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
the alarm on this episode of Over the Bull.
If you own a business and you'rerunning paid ads, you need to be
painfully aware of somethingthat's going to happen shortly.
I can't see a way around it, andyou need to understand.
So stay tuned to this episode ofOver the Bull.
So First of all, I want to talkto you about artificial
(00:31):
intelligence, and I want toshare my personal philosophy on
artificial intelligence.
Just kind of gives youperspective as to what I see.
I am not a salesman forartificial intelligence.
I merely see the storm on thehorizon, and I want to make
businesses aware of what itlooks like according to every
(00:53):
signal that's out there, what'sgoing to be happening with
artificial intelligence.
Now, as far as I'm concernedwith it, I see the artificial
intelligence model as it's beingevolved as a very dangerous
thing.
The reason being is that I haverun several tests on these AI
(01:16):
models, and the problem is itdoes have the philosophical and
theological bias of the peoplethat make it.
For example, if a company leansa certain way politically or
they lean a certain way when itcomes to certain subjects, such
as pharmacy or some of theseother issues, you see that
(01:37):
they're not giving you the fullstory.
I had to literally prod AI overand over again, and all it did
was kept referring to the makersof certain things and kept
giving me a bias that wasinaccurate.
This is the danger of artificialintelligence, and I think that
(01:59):
it's a real danger of artificialintelligence.
So as I'm talking to you aboutthese large language models, I
want you to know that I'mreacting to what I'm seeing on
the Internet.
I'm not overly excited aboutwhat I see overall with
artificial intelligence with thegeneral public.
(02:20):
When it comes to marketing, Isee great promise here.
when it comes to that.
But unleashing in a world wherewe have nothing but headlines
and captions and people justwant to be told what the answer
is, having a system that isbiased toward a certain
perspective and not able to giveneutral answers is dangerous.
(02:44):
I don't know any way to putthis.
And so keep in mind, this iswhere I am coming from.
Now, there is going to be somedramatic, dramatic changes when
it comes to how a business isgoing to market in the future.
(03:05):
So to kind of piggyback on thelast episode of Over the Bull,
basically search engines aregoing to change.
Everybody's painfully aware inbig tech that people are going
to transition the way that theysearch.
Now, a lot of you may alreadyknow that you use things like
(03:27):
ChatGPT and you now haveconversations with ChatGPT.
You no longer, you know, jump onGoogle and search the way that
you've traditionally searched.
At least a lot of you haven't.
And some of you just haven'tpicked up on it yet.
But it's very common for me todrive into work.
(03:49):
And as I'm driving into work,I'll often ask AI models.
I'll have conversations verballywith these models and ask it
questions and get feedback andthen, you know, have this
push-pull conversation.
And usually by the time I'm atwork, I have a lot of things
worked out that I've beenthinking about on the way in.
(04:09):
So it's been very valuable inthat respect.
But what does this mean for you?
It's going to mean a lot ofthings because now what it's
going to mean is you need torethink how your business is
going to get brought up in thoseconversations.
For example, you know, I'mtalking to an AI model and I
(04:31):
say, hey, my water heater'sbroke.
What do I do about it?
And then it's going to bring ananswer.
And then at some point, I'mlikely going to ask, well, who
can help me fix that?
And the way that you come up inthose models looks like it's
going to be significantlydifferent.
Also, how you gauge things liketraffic.
(04:53):
So let me give you for anexample, I was reading an
article and basically thearticle was about how Google's
killing the internet.
It was a Nice, sensationaltitle.
But basically what it was sayingwas that traffic on a lot of
these websites is starting to gothe wrong direction.
So if you could imagine, youknow, a company like Forbes or a
(05:16):
magazine or something like that,who traditionally writes a lot
of articles to gain traffic tothe website, and then they
monetize that traffic.
Well, now the answers will comeup straight in AI Answers.
You know, if it's credible, goodcontent.
And if that happens, then you'regoing to have to look at other
(05:38):
metrics for those businesswebsites on how they gauge
traffic.
Because some people may neverclick to go into the website to
read those articles, but ratherjust get the synopsis from AI
models.
In other words, within theconversation.
There's no need to click becauseyou've already got it.
(05:59):
And then if you use models likeChatGPT, what you'll see is when
it gives answers, oftentimes itwill cite where those answers
are coming from or how it'ssourcing that information.
And so that's pretty interestingbecause what that says is that
the way we look at certainthings looks like it's going to
change dramatically in terms oftraffic and things like that.
(06:23):
But more importantly, for mostbusinesses, it's how do I come
up in those conversations?
Now, how we're going to gaugesuccess or failure in the future
is largely unknown.
We can only go based upon ourcurrent metrics.
But based on everything that I'mlooking at, the credibility of
your company is going to be avery large factor.
(06:45):
Because if you really boil downsearch engines or chat models or
whatever, their value is is inproviding accurate content.
Now, their value to big entitiesis to provide skewed content,
which that's the dangerous partI'm talking about.
But providing accurate contentis, to the general public,
(07:09):
what's important.
So you can kind of see theirbalancing act.
If one of these big techcompanies has a philosophical
bias politically or with certainproducts that are big sponsors
or whatever, you're going to seethat they're going to have to
tightrope this because if theyget caught giving a bias, then
(07:30):
their AI models aren't going tobe as valuable.
However, it does also could turninto an Orwellian nightmare
where they control the majorityof people by giving them skewed
answers to that philosophicalbias.
So you can see the danger there.
Now, as far as what you need tolook at as a business is, one,
(07:53):
you need to start looking atmetrics that build your
credibility.
Now, a lot of you, and this isthe one thing I really want to
talk about today, a lot of youare paying for Google Ads right
now.
So you're hiring a Google Adscompany.
And here's kind of what thatGoogle Ads company does.
What they typically will do inthese situations is they build
(08:17):
you a website, right?
And they don't care how crediblethat website is in the eyes of
Google.
They're building that website toconvert as many sales as they
can.
That's all they care about.
These are typically calledsqueeze pages.
You can call them, you know,there's different products out
there that build them wherethey're called funnels and
(08:38):
things of that nature.
But historically, the idea ofworrying about the credibility
of those sites wasn't reallythat big of a deal.
And the reason being was is theywould pay for Google Ads.
They would do what we calloptimize, which basically means
you make Google happy with howyou set the ads up.
(09:00):
And then you send them to thatpage, and then you adjust that
page, and then people that clickon the Google Ads go to that
tiny microsite, and then theyperform the action that You want
them to perform, such as phonecalls or filling out a form or
booking an event.
You know, the really high ROIactions are what we would call
(09:23):
traditional KPI actions.
And that's worked pretty well.
over the years.
Matter of fact, it works reallygood sometimes.
There are entire businessesbuilt around this concept of
building these kind of squeezepages, like ClickFunnels is one
of those websites that do thesethings.
(09:45):
And so here's the question.
If we're talking aboutcredibility, what makes your
business credible in the eyes ofthese artificial intelligence
models?
There are a lot of metrics thatwe can look at, and a lot of
these metrics, when businessespay a Google Ads company to send
them traffic in this way, theyusually don't worry about these
(10:07):
metrics, the ones that buildactual credibility.
They're just worried about salesfor the next week, the next day,
the next hour.
Now, this is a mistake movingforward.
We are moving into a brave newworld on the Internet.
Like it, not like it.
Hate the AI models, love the AImodels.
(10:30):
We're moving into it.
That storm is on the horizon.
The genie is out of the bottle,and we're going into it in a way
that we've never been before.
And so the question is, what dowe do?
How do we do it?
Well, credibility is key.
the answer.
You want to show yourself asbeing credible so that these AI
(10:50):
models will start showing yourbusiness when questions are
asked about things related toyour business so you have an
opportunity to get in front ofpeople who potentially want to
use your services.
So this whole idea, so let'sthink about this for a second.
(11:12):
The people that have made aliving off of selling Google Ads
and building these littlemicrosites, that's going to the
wayside.
I don't know how it's actuallygoing to fully impact when the
AI model comes around, and noneof us do, but we all pretty much
know that credibility isimportant.
(11:34):
And the one thing about theselittle microsites is think of it
like a little island, right?
in the middle of nowhere relatedto your business.
And this traffic that you're notgetting credit for for your
business is being sent to thismicrosite.
So the traffic, the visibility,the on-site time, there's a lot
of things that could contributeto what's going on.
(11:56):
But the big thing is you want todo as much as you can to instill
credibility.
These Google Ads strategies arenot going to contribute to that.
you need to start thinking aboutyour businesses.
How do I make it overall morecredible?
And if I'm using practices thatdon't contribute to the
(12:16):
credibility, but they scratchthat itch of sales, then you're
going to have to rethink that.
And if you don't rethink it now,you're going to be behind the
curve as these things start totransition.
And I think they're going totransition relatively quick.
So the idea is now you don'twant to run ads to these little
(12:38):
microsites.
What you want to do is if you'regoing to run ads, you want to
run them to your main website.
And if your person or your groupis still building these little
microsites out and selling themto you, it's going to feel good
right now if it's working.
You know, no one likes pullingthat Band-Aid off, you know.
(12:59):
But you're going to have to ripthis band-aid off if you want to
stay on the forefront of what'scoming with artificial
intelligence.
This means that if you have ahistoric resource that has been
using this practice, that it'sgoing to go away.
And if they're still doing thispractice, they're either unaware
(13:21):
that this is happening, orthey're ignoring that this is
happening.
But Google has publishednumerous articles.
Years ago, they would even saythat their search engines are
wrong because it would give youmore than one answer.
You look at the number of peoplethat use ChadGPT.
It's significant.
This is not a phase.
(13:43):
This is a movement, and it's anundeniable movement.
Just look at how big tech haschanged.
Their mentality.
Remember, green energy, greenenergy, nuclear bad, nuclear
bad.
But then we see their truecolors when we look at the
amount of energy that's going toneed to be run in these AI
(14:06):
models.
Now what we see is we neednuclear power.
You know, we see these big techcompanies now getting into it.
You see, the thing is, is we'reseeing the true colors.
When it was convenient to begreen, it's green.
But as you see the consumptionof these models, you see it
getting worse and worse.
And this is just one indicatorwhen they're testifying, saying
(14:27):
we need more energy.
We need more nuclear plants.
And they're showing theirhypocrisy by doing this.
Then what we're also seeing isthat this is real.
You can't just say my guy's gotit figured out.
Here's how I know this.
One of the things I've wonawards in is search engine
(14:49):
optimization.
And I can't tell you how manytimes that I have seen different
SEO companies, SEO firms who areusing practices that have been
dead for 10 years.
They still try to use thesetactics.
And it's kind of odd to see thatthey've not– even full SEO
(15:10):
companies have not embraced theidea that those practices no
longer work.
Well, just imagine SEO hasevolved very slow over the
years.
It's gotten really good to kindof weed out these kind of like
junk websites.
By the way– When they buildthese websites for these landing
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pages for your Google ads, thoseare the same thing, essentially.
They're these little scrape junkwebsites in Google's eyes.
And Google's never really likedthese ideas.
And other search engines, theyreally want high quality
content, but they also want yourmoney.
You know, when 78% of Google'srevenue is estimated to be paid
(15:54):
ads, they want your money.
This is why some of the settingsand the defaults are set up in a
way that would spend your moneyquicker, not more efficiently or
effectively.
That's why you really shouldnever run Google Ads on your own
if you're a business.
That's a huge, huge mistake.
You'll spend a lot more moneyand get a lot less results.
(16:19):
So the idea is you need to lookat Let's put some application to
this.
The first thing you're going toneed to do is you're going to
need, if you're using a GoogleAds guy, you need to find out
how they're running ads andwhere they're running those ads
to.
Are they running them to yourmain website?
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And are they working on yourmain website?
Are they driving traffic to thatmain website?
Or...
Do they have a spin of yourwebsite like another website
that's built that's separatefrom your main website?
And if that's the case, you'regoing to need to have a serious
(17:00):
talk or seriously reconsider whoyou're using for Google Ads,
which means now you're seeingrather than having your Google
Ads guy being separate, from,say, your organic SEO guy or
your web development guy, nowwhat you've got to do is you've
got to find someone who can kindof do all of those things.
(17:22):
Because you can't have your SEOguy tripping over your paid
AdWords guy's feet and viceversa.
And you've got to be able todevelop and modify your website
in rapid fashion to react towhat that traffic does.
So that's one of the reasonsthey build these little
websites.
The first reason is, of course,to validate that they're working
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because they want to track theirown results.
But the other reason that theydo it is so they can make
movements and changes if theyneed to, which most of them
really don't.
They're more concerned about thefirst part of just justifying
it.
Quick side note, one of thethings that these Google Ads
guys do often is is I found thatthey'll go to your Google
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Business profile, and they willactually point that to these
little scrape sites, theselittle micro sites that they're
using for Google Ads.
This is another mistake.
What they're doing is trying topad the numbers.
Like back in the old days when Iused to watch the NFL, they
would have that term, you know,where you're padding your stats,
where you would basically throwthe ball in the flats or
(18:26):
something like that, and then itwould, you know, statistically
increase your numbers.
That's kind of what they'redoing with this.
They're they're fudging thenumbers by tying Google business
into your your paid ads.
And coincidentally, thatdecreases your credibility and
can actually get your listingsuspended or it can get it.
(18:49):
And I've seen this.
It'll get you suspended or atvery least we have to re-verify
your business sometimes becauseGoogle wants to trust what's
credible.
That's their model.
That's their That's why peopleuse it.
If you did a search and a bunchof irrelevant results came up,
then what you're going to do isnot use that search engine.
(19:11):
Well, this is part of the reasonthat one of the factors in how
much you pay per click on GoogleAds is the quality score of your
ads.
They want to make sure that yourads correspond with the keywords
you're targeting and correspondwith the landing page you're
sending them to.
That's the quality score.
They care about that becausethey have to care about that.
(19:31):
Think 78% of their revenue.
That's a pretty big number.
So now what do you do?
Let's put some practicalapplications to this and kind of
lock down what you need to doand really prioritize it.
First, don't fall asleep.
Don't fall asleep.
Don't ignore this.
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This is absolutely– I can't evenput it in perspective how
important it is– regardless ofthe results you're getting from
those websites.
Okay, number one, get with yourGoogle Ads guy.
Say, where are you sending thetraffic to when you're doing the
ads promotionally?
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If it's your main businesswebsite, then it's on the right
track.
If they say they built thisspecial optimized website
they're sending traffic to, andthen they give you the
justification for it orwhatever, you're on the wrong
track.
That train is going to end soon.
You need to start thinking aboutyour overall credibility.
(20:35):
So this is the crux here.
Are you going to ride the trainuntil it blows up, or are you
going to get off of it and startdoing things that are better?
Slowly pull off the Band-Aid,rip off the Band-Aid, whatever
analogy you want, but the pointis credibility.
You want to take that traffic,and then you want to start
pointing it to your mainwebsite, and then optimizing
(20:56):
your main website.
Now, this also means you need toswitch providers.
You're going to need somebodythat's going to understand
search engine optimization,Google ads, landing pages,
social media, how thatintegrates into it, because you
can't ignore social mediaanymore either.
(21:17):
Those are signals that have beenSEO signals for some time, but
they're also going to be signalsas far as your overall
credibility of your business.
The next thing is you want tolook at your Google business
profile.
So if you go tobusiness.google.com and you go
in there and look, you can seewhat website that's connected to
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your Google business profile.
And that'll be an immediate cluewhether or not your Google Ads
guy's padding the numbers ifhe's pointing it to that site.
But that should point to yourmain site.
The other thing is you need towork with a company that
specializes in local marketingstrategies.
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Now, there's a lot of good toolsout there.
Now, when I say local marketing,there's a term you're going to
want to write down.
It's called your NAP score, likewhen you were a kid and you took
a nap in preschool or something.
But NAP stands for name,address, and phone.
What that means is yourinformation is going to need to
be consistent across all abandwidth or a spectrum of the
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internet.
And if it's not consistent, thenwhat's known as your NAP score
is decreased, meaning you're notas credible, you're not as
consistent as your competitors.
Now, at Integris, we haveinvested some tools seriously
into really addressing thisproblem on a level we've never
done.
(22:45):
We've always done it, but nowwe've got like a supercharged
version because we do see what'sgoing on here.
So what you need to find out isif you've got a separate person
who's doing your Google businessprofile optimization, you need
to find out what they're doing,what your NAP score is, and
where you are ranking locally.
(23:07):
You also need to carefully payattention to the categories at
which they're assigning to yourbusiness.
I have seen a lot of thesethings where people are selling
these kind of automated systemsand they're just collecting
money from you every month andletting those things go on
autopilot.
Really, the optimization needsto be much deeper.
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The descriptions need to befilled out.
The categories need to beunderstood.
The name of your business needsto be accurate.
The address of your businessneeds to be accurate.
And you need to respond toreviews quickly.
And there are some really neattools that help you doing
responses to reviews.
Believe it or not, that is knownas one of the factors that go
(23:50):
into Google BusinessOptimization.
So if you see a lot of unreadreviews and you're paying
somebody to do that, that's asign they're not doing their
job.
You see categories in yourbusiness by editing your
profile, scrolling to thecategories, and you're seeing
that they're not consistent orrobust.
You don't see it fully filledout.
They're not doing their job.
(24:11):
They're just collecting apaycheck.
So getting your NAP score up ishuge, and you need to find
somebody that does that.
Ideally, you want to find thatperson that does Google ads
online Plus Google business.
And then you also want to havethem where they understand SEO
and web development.
Okay.
So the next thing is, is tounderstand your web developer.
(24:35):
Okay.
Traditionally, your webdeveloper is almost considered
like this designer, so to speak.
where they pick a template andthey put in pictures and they do
this and they do, but they'renot considering the big part of,
okay, how does this contributeto the larger conversation,
credibility, and conversions?
(24:56):
Because now your Google Ads isnot going to this highly
optimized, low-ranking website.
Now it's going to go to yourmain website.
So now you can't ignore thosekind of traditional KPIs that
were coming from Google Ads.
So you've got to make sure yourweb person understands that.
You see, this is why it'sgetting much more complicated.
(25:18):
Traditionally, what you wouldsee is a Google Ads guy.
So if a guy is just doing GoogleAds, he's not going to be able
to help you in the future.
He's probably doing all rightnow and he probably understands
quite a bit.
But if you don't quickly expandinto full-fledged web
development and search engineoptimization, increasing your
(25:39):
NAP score, investing in theright tools, working on your
social, making all thatconsistent, guess what?
That a la carte having 10 chefsin the kitchen, that's going to
be more and more problematic asyou go.
I don't know what it's going tomean in terms of like these
design tools like Canva and allthat.
(26:00):
You know, traditionally,branding and marketing people, I
personally find I'm resistant tousing that because I find it's a
shortcut rather than doing thehard work and keeping the
branding consistent.
But there are some applicationsfor it.
And anyway, just a thought.
We had a previous podcast whereme and a guest were talking
(26:23):
about those products.
But I don't know how this isgoing to even impact that
product.
All right, so once you haveachieved that, the next thing
is, is are you doing your socialmedia?
What I mean by that, are youposting on a regular basis?
Are you using topics that arerelevant?
Are you linking those topics toarticles on your website?
(26:46):
Now, when I say articles on thewebsite, I cannot state this
enough, okay?
I have seen SEO guys and they'redoing more and more of this.
They're using artificialintelligence to write the
articles for the client, andthey're not incorporating the
client's specific benefits, andit's not human engaged.
(27:12):
So what do I mean by that?
Well, if you look at AI content,AI is actually looking at AI
content, okay?
This is why, and they don't likeit, by the way.
They don't want AI content.
They want Meaningful, sentienthuman content is what they want
(27:32):
right now.
This is why we have terms likeEEAT.
If you go back and listen to aprevious podcast, I spent a
little time on EEAT and theimportance of creating original
authoritative content that's notjust blathered and spit out by
AI.
So even though AI is...
(27:54):
becoming more of that, it isbecoming the standard of the
internet and conversationallanguage.
It's also looking for humancontent.
So you see there's this weirdcontradiction in the way the
internet's going to move.
So another flag that yourprovider's not doing a good job
(28:14):
for you is if they're smatheringcontent and using AI to create
that content, not involving youin it.
So what they're trying to do iscreate a bunch of content and
say, hey, look what I'm doingfor you.
And then you look at it and go,wow, that's a lot of content.
That's a lot of articles.
(28:34):
And in reality, they're justrunning it through one of these
AI things and creating anarticle, posting it to your
website and giving you some eyecandy that's not really
relevant.
The ideal way to do it iscombine AI.
So what we do is we use...
AI tools to examine otherpopular articles.
(28:56):
And then we create outlinesusing AI tools.
And then what we'll do is we'llactually generate an article,
share it with the client, andthen we'll ask the client to
read it, adjust it, modify it,clean it up.
And then actually there are eventools to even like mask the idea
that even parts of it were AI.
And so the idea is you reallywant to make sure that you're
(29:19):
creating original content.
If your SEO guy's whippingthings out and just posting it
to your website, that's likely aproblem unless you meet with
them and they can show you howthey're addressing EEAT and what
they're doing.
And go back and listen to theEEAT podcast to kind of
(29:39):
understand what I'm talkingabout.
So if this sounds complicated toyou, it is.
It's getting more complicated.
You need to start looking atsomeone who can holistically do
all of this for you.
And you're going to have tostart doing something that's
(30:00):
going to be really, reallypainful for a lot of you.
And that is the KPIs that youlook at.
Meaning KPIs is just a fancyword to say meaningful actions,
okay?
And so we got a thing, I think,on KPIs too.
But traditionally, there havebeen two kind of KPIs.
The kind of traditional KPIsthat you look at that drive
(30:24):
traffic, calls, all that.
But then you have somethingcalled awareness KPIs that kind
of build your brand up within acertain segment.
There's going to be a series ofKPIs you're going to need to pay
attention to that are likecredibility KPIs.
You know, like where is your NAPscore at?
(30:44):
How are you performing locally?
What kind of content are youcreating?
Are you broadcasting similarcontent on social?
What is your website domainrating?
So if you go back and look, Ithink MozTools calls it DA or
domain authority, but then toolslike Ahrefs call it domain
(31:05):
ranking or rating.
I can't remember off the top ofmy head.
But what that does is actuallyshow you how strong or how weak
your website is.
And so you really need to getthat DA or DR score as high as
you can.
And you need to do that throughcreating credible content.
And there's just so manyfactors.
And so literally when you'rethinking today, if it's not all
(31:28):
put together in a meaningfulway, it's not going to help your
business succeed in the future.
And here's the really scarypart.
I remember leaving it off in thelast podcast.
But the scary part to this thingis, is that your business can go
dark overnight.
Meaning that when these modelsswitch and you're not building
(31:51):
your credibility up in ameaningful way and you're not
asking questions about how yourcredibility is being built up
and you're leaning more on thesetraditional KPIs, your business
can go dark.
It can go dark literallyovernight.
And as they're pulling thesemodels and they're changing
these metrics, these big techcompanies are doing it.
(32:13):
And so if you're not watchingthat, then your sales can fall
through the floor.
Everything you trusted can fallthrough the floor.
You know, one of the hard thingsto do, and this is every
generation, is that I still talkto businesses that are big and
their sales are going the wrongdirection.
(32:33):
And it's because they rely onlegacy techniques, meaning old,
irrelevant techniques to sellthat they once relied on that
are no longer relevant.
So this is why you see thingslike newspapers that are trying
to sell Google Ads advertisementor banner ads or whatever, and
(32:57):
they do a really poor job of it.
They're just piggybacking theirhistoric reputation on selling
this new technology that theyreally don't have a grasp on.
And so, uh, but they're, youknow, we're a big company, we
can add this on kind of thing.
And, uh, that's, uh, obviously amistake, uh, too, but, but the
(33:18):
reason that they're doing thisis because one, the companies
are trying to survive, uh, a lotof the legacy media, uh,
newspapers, you know, uh, justold techniques, uh, that are
dying this slow death.
And now what you're seeing isthat they're trying to cling on
to it, but then the owners ofthe businesses that once were
(33:40):
very successful doing certainthings, they still try to cling
on to those things.
And so you've got to get out ofit.
You've got to get out of thatmindset and say, okay, the
world's changing.
I don't want to be advertisingin the yellow pages of the phone
book.
I don't want to be investing indesigns in the yellow pages of
the phone book or buying fullpage ads in the phone book when
(34:02):
people are going to the Internetand they're searching a whole
different way.
If you cling on to what you'redoing, that's exactly what you
are doing.
You are buying the modern dayversion of yellow page ads in an
old phone book, something thatno one uses anymore.
And for your youngergenerations, yes, we actually
(34:22):
had a phone book back in the daywhere we would advertise and
promote.
That's why you see like a lot ofthese old businesses like AAA
something.
The reason they put all A's inthe front was because they want
to come up top in the phone booklistings.
So that's a little bit of oddtrivia on why you see some of
these heavy AAA names and thingslike that.
(34:45):
That was a traditional marketingstrategy.
Okay, guys, I know as abusiness, I know you want to do
business and you don't want tobe messing with this stuff.
I know it's technical.
It can be frustrating.
And it's hard enough when you'vegot all these people emailing
you a bunch of cold emails,promising you the moon.
You got a guy that's halfwayworking.
(35:06):
And now I'm telling you thathe's probably not going to be
good in the future.
And now you've got to make somereally tough decisions.
But it's the reality of wherethe internet is.
Now, if you can get moving onthis and get going in the right
direction, you'll be in theforefront.
The good news is the people thatgo dark will be hidden and
(35:28):
you'll be more visible.
The good news is that you canstay in front of this thing by
instituting best practices.
And here's the thing.
As far as I know, The practicesthat are going to sustain you
are the best practices thatthey're telling you.
(35:48):
All these search engines aretelling you to do.
And so it's not the practices.
It's all these little weirdtechniques that these marketing
companies are doing to try toskirt the system.
Let me share a story with youreal quick before we go.
There is a technique in searchengine optimization.
(36:11):
And it's called PBNs.
If you look it up, you'll findout it's a private blog network.
Now, what that is, is it iswhere a search engine
optimization company will go buya bunch of high-value domains,
(36:31):
meaning they have that highdomain rating.
And they'll build these junksites using it.
And then what they do is theytry to hide the fact that they
own all these websites in thisprivate blog network.
And then when someone buysservices, rather than doing the
hard work of buildingcredibility, they just simply
put backlinks on these websitesand point them to your site,
(36:56):
which gives the impression thatyour website is more valuable
than it is.
You see, they're trying to trickthe internet.
Now, They've been very clear,the search engine has been very
clear that this is extremelyfrowned upon.
Not only frowned upon, but youcould get banned.
I mean, in extreme situations,kind of like you're caught up in
(37:19):
a sting operation and you'reinnocent.
Well, if these SEO companies arepromoting your business like
that, they can hurt your brand.
But you see, Google's openlysaid, we don't like this
technique.
But yet the SEO companies aredoing it because it's easier for
them to do it.
They get results, make thecustomer happier, and they don't
(37:40):
even tell them what they'redoing.
All the business thinks is thatthe SEO company is really,
really good at what they do.
They have no idea that if theyquit using those services, guess
what?
All those links, they go away.
And then you hire your next SEOguy, and your next SEO guy is
trying to use ethical practices.
(38:01):
And like not using steroids toperform an athletic event, he's
trying to do it the legitimateway, putting in the work and
hard energy and effort to buildyour credibility ethically.
And yet he may be getting beatup by you a little bit because
you're going, well, my last SEOguy was able to do this.
(38:22):
And...
Those are challenges.
All right, so basically this isgoing on everywhere.
There are businesses that aresending cold emails out.
Do you really want to be thebusiness where you have someone
that is sending out emails onbehalf of your company,
(38:42):
representing your brand and yourname, sending out random cold
emails to large groups ofpeople, begging for work?
Is that how you want yourbusiness to be known in the
world?
If not, then you need to getaway from it.
Do you want to go down in ablaze of glory using old Google
Ads techniques that reallyshould have never been done to
(39:04):
begin with?
Or are you going to switch over?
Are you going to start worryingabout social media in a
meaningful way or not?
Are you going to start thinkingabout content marketing in a
meaningful way?
Or are you going to allow yourSEO guide to keep pushing these
AI blog articles on the internetthat are not as valuable as
(39:29):
properly managed EEAT articles.
You see, all this has to bethought through.
All this has to be addressed.
So good luck.
Good luck with this.
And I really hope that you takethis to heart.
And I hope you use this to makeyour business stronger and
better.
I hope you use this to find goodvendors that really have an idea
(39:52):
of how all this stuff workstogether.
And I hope that you can, youknow, instill the patience and
not go back to people that areusing techniques that are
completely inappropriate, onlyhurting your business, and they
only feel good today.
They won't feel good long term.
(40:12):
So to your success, I really dohope you do this and I hope that
you grow and I hope you're onthe forefront and I hope you
take advantage of what's comingin the AI model in spite of all
the potential negatives that aregoing to happen with the world
and as it's transitioning and aswe deal more with the society of
(40:35):
people that want to appearintelligent but don't really do
the real homework to understandreally what's going on.
And our job as business ownersis to survive and grow, protect
our people, and do a good jobfor people.
And this is one of those steps.
To your success.
Until next time, this is Kenwith Over the Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (40:57):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
I am sounding
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
the alarm on this episode of Over the Bull.
If you own a business and you'rerunning paid ads, you need to be
painfully aware of somethingthat's going to happen shortly.
I can't see a way around it, andyou need to understand.
So stay tuned to this episode ofOver the Bull.
So First of all, I want to talkto you about artificial
(00:31):
intelligence, and I want toshare my personal philosophy on
artificial intelligence.
Just kind of gives youperspective as to what I see.
I am not a salesman forartificial intelligence.
I merely see the storm on thehorizon, and I want to make
businesses aware of what itlooks like according to every
(00:53):
signal that's out there, what'sgoing to be happening with
artificial intelligence.
Now, as far as I'm concernedwith it, I see the artificial
intelligence model as it's beingevolved as a very dangerous
thing.
The reason being is that I haverun several tests on these AI
(01:16):
models, and the problem is itdoes have the philosophical and
theological bias of the peoplethat make it.
For example, if a company leansa certain way politically or
they lean a certain way when itcomes to certain subjects, such
as pharmacy or some of theseother issues, you see that
(01:37):
they're not giving you the fullstory.
I had to literally prod AI overand over again, and all it did
was kept referring to the makersof certain things and kept
giving me a bias that wasinaccurate.
This is the danger of artificialintelligence, and I think that
(01:59):
it's a real danger of artificialintelligence.
So as I'm talking to you aboutthese large language models, I
want you to know that I'mreacting to what I'm seeing on
the Internet.
I'm not overly excited aboutwhat I see overall with
artificial intelligence with thegeneral public.
(02:20):
When it comes to marketing, Isee great promise here.
when it comes to that.
But unleashing in a world wherewe have nothing but headlines
and captions and people justwant to be told what the answer
is, having a system that isbiased toward a certain
perspective and not able to giveneutral answers is dangerous.
(02:44):
I don't know any way to putthis.
And so keep in mind, this iswhere I am coming from.
Now, there is going to be somedramatic, dramatic changes when
it comes to how a business isgoing to market in the future.
(03:05):
So to kind of piggyback on thelast episode of Over the Bull,
basically search engines aregoing to change.
Everybody's painfully aware inbig tech that people are going
to transition the way that theysearch.
Now, a lot of you may alreadyknow that you use things like
(03:27):
ChatGPT and you now haveconversations with ChatGPT.
You no longer, you know, jump onGoogle and search the way that
you've traditionally searched.
At least a lot of you haven't.
And some of you just haven'tpicked up on it yet.
But it's very common for me todrive into work.
(03:49):
And as I'm driving into work,I'll often ask AI models.
I'll have conversations verballywith these models and ask it
questions and get feedback andthen, you know, have this
push-pull conversation.
And usually by the time I'm atwork, I have a lot of things
worked out that I've beenthinking about on the way in.
(04:09):
So it's been very valuable inthat respect.
But what does this mean for you?
It's going to mean a lot ofthings because now what it's
going to mean is you need torethink how your business is
going to get brought up in thoseconversations.
For example, you know, I'mtalking to an AI model and I
(04:31):
say, hey, my water heater'sbroke.
What do I do about it?
And then it's going to bring ananswer.
And then at some point, I'mlikely going to ask, well, who
can help me fix that?
And the way that you come up inthose models looks like it's
going to be significantlydifferent.
Also, how you gauge things liketraffic.
(04:53):
So let me give you for anexample, I was reading an
article and basically thearticle was about how Google's
killing the internet.
It was a Nice, sensationaltitle.
But basically what it was sayingwas that traffic on a lot of
these websites is starting to gothe wrong direction.
So if you could imagine, youknow, a company like Forbes or a
(05:16):
magazine or something like that,who traditionally writes a lot
of articles to gain traffic tothe website, and then they
monetize that traffic.
Well, now the answers will comeup straight in AI Answers.
You know, if it's credible, goodcontent.
And if that happens, then you'regoing to have to look at other
(05:38):
metrics for those businesswebsites on how they gauge
traffic.
Because some people may neverclick to go into the website to
read those articles, but ratherjust get the synopsis from AI
models.
In other words, within theconversation.
There's no need to click becauseyou've already got it.
(05:59):
And then if you use models likeChatGPT, what you'll see is when
it gives answers, oftentimes itwill cite where those answers
are coming from or how it'ssourcing that information.
And so that's pretty interestingbecause what that says is that
the way we look at certainthings looks like it's going to
change dramatically in terms oftraffic and things like that.
(06:23):
But more importantly, for mostbusinesses, it's how do I come
up in those conversations?
Now, how we're going to gaugesuccess or failure in the future
is largely unknown.
We can only go based upon ourcurrent metrics.
But based on everything that I'mlooking at, the credibility of
your company is going to be avery large factor.
(06:45):
Because if you really boil downsearch engines or chat models or
whatever, their value is is inproviding accurate content.
Now, their value to big entitiesis to provide skewed content,
which that's the dangerous partI'm talking about.
But providing accurate contentis, to the general public,
(07:09):
what's important.
So you can kind of see theirbalancing act.
If one of these big techcompanies has a philosophical
bias politically or with certainproducts that are big sponsors
or whatever, you're going to seethat they're going to have to
tightrope this because if theyget caught giving a bias, then
(07:30):
their AI models aren't going tobe as valuable.
However, it does also could turninto an Orwellian nightmare
where they control the majorityof people by giving them skewed
answers to that philosophicalbias.
So you can see the danger there.
Now, as far as what you need tolook at as a business is, one,
(07:53):
you need to start looking atmetrics that build your
credibility.
Now, a lot of you, and this isthe one thing I really want to
talk about today, a lot of youare paying for Google Ads right
now.
So you're hiring a Google Adscompany.
And here's kind of what thatGoogle Ads company does.
What they typically will do inthese situations is they build
(08:17):
you a website, right?
And they don't care how crediblethat website is in the eyes of
Google.
They're building that website toconvert as many sales as they
can.
That's all they care about.
These are typically calledsqueeze pages.
You can call them, you know,there's different products out
there that build them wherethey're called funnels and
(08:38):
things of that nature.
But historically, the idea ofworrying about the credibility
of those sites wasn't reallythat big of a deal.
And the reason being was is theywould pay for Google Ads.
They would do what we calloptimize, which basically means
you make Google happy with howyou set the ads up.
(09:00):
And then you send them to thatpage, and then you adjust that
page, and then people that clickon the Google Ads go to that
tiny microsite, and then theyperform the action that You want
them to perform, such as phonecalls or filling out a form or
booking an event.
You know, the really high ROIactions are what we would call
(09:23):
traditional KPI actions.
And that's worked pretty well.
over the years.
Matter of fact, it works reallygood sometimes.
There are entire businessesbuilt around this concept of
building these kind of squeezepages, like ClickFunnels is one
of those websites that do thesethings.
(09:45):
And so here's the question.
If we're talking aboutcredibility, what makes your
business credible in the eyes ofthese artificial intelligence
models?
There are a lot of metrics thatwe can look at, and a lot of
these metrics, when businessespay a Google Ads company to send
them traffic in this way, theyusually don't worry about these
(10:07):
metrics, the ones that buildactual credibility.
They're just worried about salesfor the next week, the next day,
the next hour.
Now, this is a mistake movingforward.
We are moving into a brave newworld on the Internet.
Like it, not like it.
Hate the AI models, love the AImodels.
(10:30):
We're moving into it.
That storm is on the horizon.
The genie is out of the bottle,and we're going into it in a way
that we've never been before.
And so the question is, what dowe do?
How do we do it?
Well, credibility is key.
the answer.
You want to show yourself asbeing credible so that these AI
(10:50):
models will start showing yourbusiness when questions are
asked about things related toyour business so you have an
opportunity to get in front ofpeople who potentially want to
use your services.
So this whole idea, so let'sthink about this for a second.
(11:12):
The people that have made aliving off of selling Google Ads
and building these littlemicrosites, that's going to the
wayside.
I don't know how it's actuallygoing to fully impact when the
AI model comes around, and noneof us do, but we all pretty much
know that credibility isimportant.
(11:34):
And the one thing about theselittle microsites is think of it
like a little island, right?
in the middle of nowhere relatedto your business.
And this traffic that you're notgetting credit for for your
business is being sent to thismicrosite.
So the traffic, the visibility,the on-site time, there's a lot
of things that could contributeto what's going on.
(11:56):
But the big thing is you want todo as much as you can to instill
credibility.
These Google Ads strategies arenot going to contribute to that.
you need to start thinking aboutyour businesses.
How do I make it overall morecredible?
And if I'm using practices thatdon't contribute to the
(12:16):
credibility, but they scratchthat itch of sales, then you're
going to have to rethink that.
And if you don't rethink it now,you're going to be behind the
curve as these things start totransition.
And I think they're going totransition relatively quick.
So the idea is now you don'twant to run ads to these little
(12:38):
microsites.
What you want to do is if you'regoing to run ads, you want to
run them to your main website.
And if your person or your groupis still building these little
microsites out and selling themto you, it's going to feel good
right now if it's working.
You know, no one likes pullingthat Band-Aid off, you know.
(12:59):
But you're going to have to ripthis band-aid off if you want to
stay on the forefront of what'scoming with artificial
intelligence.
This means that if you have ahistoric resource that has been
using this practice, that it'sgoing to go away.
And if they're still doing thispractice, they're either unaware
(13:21):
that this is happening, orthey're ignoring that this is
happening.
But Google has publishednumerous articles.
Years ago, they would even saythat their search engines are
wrong because it would give youmore than one answer.
You look at the number of peoplethat use ChadGPT.
It's significant.
This is not a phase.
(13:43):
This is a movement, and it's anundeniable movement.
Just look at how big tech haschanged.
Their mentality.
Remember, green energy, greenenergy, nuclear bad, nuclear
bad.
But then we see their truecolors when we look at the
amount of energy that's going toneed to be run in these AI
(14:06):
models.
Now what we see is we neednuclear power.
You know, we see these big techcompanies now getting into it.
You see, the thing is, is we'reseeing the true colors.
When it was convenient to begreen, it's green.
But as you see the consumptionof these models, you see it
getting worse and worse.
And this is just one indicatorwhen they're testifying, saying
(14:27):
we need more energy.
We need more nuclear plants.
And they're showing theirhypocrisy by doing this.
Then what we're also seeing isthat this is real.
You can't just say my guy's gotit figured out.
Here's how I know this.
One of the things I've wonawards in is search engine
(14:49):
optimization.
And I can't tell you how manytimes that I have seen different
SEO companies, SEO firms who areusing practices that have been
dead for 10 years.
They still try to use thesetactics.
And it's kind of odd to see thatthey've not– even full SEO
(15:10):
companies have not embraced theidea that those practices no
longer work.
Well, just imagine SEO hasevolved very slow over the
years.
It's gotten really good to kindof weed out these kind of like
junk websites.
By the way– When they buildthese websites for these landing
(15:32):
pages for your Google ads, thoseare the same thing, essentially.
They're these little scrape junkwebsites in Google's eyes.
And Google's never really likedthese ideas.
And other search engines, theyreally want high quality
content, but they also want yourmoney.
You know, when 78% of Google'srevenue is estimated to be paid
(15:54):
ads, they want your money.
This is why some of the settingsand the defaults are set up in a
way that would spend your moneyquicker, not more efficiently or
effectively.
That's why you really shouldnever run Google Ads on your own
if you're a business.
That's a huge, huge mistake.
You'll spend a lot more moneyand get a lot less results.
(16:19):
So the idea is you need to lookat Let's put some application to
this.
The first thing you're going toneed to do is you're going to
need, if you're using a GoogleAds guy, you need to find out
how they're running ads andwhere they're running those ads
to.
Are they running them to yourmain website?
(16:39):
And are they working on yourmain website?
Are they driving traffic to thatmain website?
Or...
Do they have a spin of yourwebsite like another website
that's built that's separatefrom your main website?
And if that's the case, you'regoing to need to have a serious
(17:00):
talk or seriously reconsider whoyou're using for Google Ads,
which means now you're seeingrather than having your Google
Ads guy being separate, from,say, your organic SEO guy or
your web development guy, nowwhat you've got to do is you've
got to find someone who can kindof do all of those things.
(17:22):
Because you can't have your SEOguy tripping over your paid
AdWords guy's feet and viceversa.
And you've got to be able todevelop and modify your website
in rapid fashion to react towhat that traffic does.
So that's one of the reasonsthey build these little
websites.
The first reason is, of course,to validate that they're working
(17:43):
because they want to track theirown results.
But the other reason that theydo it is so they can make
movements and changes if theyneed to, which most of them
really don't.
They're more concerned about thefirst part of just justifying
it.
Quick side note, one of thethings that these Google Ads
guys do often is is I found thatthey'll go to your Google
(18:04):
Business profile, and they willactually point that to these
little scrape sites, theselittle micro sites that they're
using for Google Ads.
This is another mistake.
What they're doing is trying topad the numbers.
Like back in the old days when Iused to watch the NFL, they
would have that term, you know,where you're padding your stats,
where you would basically throwthe ball in the flats or
(18:26):
something like that, and then itwould, you know, statistically
increase your numbers.
That's kind of what they'redoing with this.
They're they're fudging thenumbers by tying Google business
into your your paid ads.
And coincidentally, thatdecreases your credibility and
can actually get your listingsuspended or it can get it.
(18:49):
And I've seen this.
It'll get you suspended or atvery least we have to re-verify
your business sometimes becauseGoogle wants to trust what's
credible.
That's their model.
That's their That's why peopleuse it.
If you did a search and a bunchof irrelevant results came up,
then what you're going to do isnot use that search engine.
(19:11):
Well, this is part of the reasonthat one of the factors in how
much you pay per click on GoogleAds is the quality score of your
ads.
They want to make sure that yourads correspond with the keywords
you're targeting and correspondwith the landing page you're
sending them to.
That's the quality score.
They care about that becausethey have to care about that.
(19:31):
Think 78% of their revenue.
That's a pretty big number.
So now what do you do?
Let's put some practicalapplications to this and kind of
lock down what you need to doand really prioritize it.
First, don't fall asleep.
Don't fall asleep.
Don't ignore this.
(19:51):
This is absolutely– I can't evenput it in perspective how
important it is– regardless ofthe results you're getting from
those websites.
Okay, number one, get with yourGoogle Ads guy.
Say, where are you sending thetraffic to when you're doing the
ads promotionally?
(20:12):
If it's your main businesswebsite, then it's on the right
track.
If they say they built thisspecial optimized website
they're sending traffic to, andthen they give you the
justification for it orwhatever, you're on the wrong
track.
That train is going to end soon.
You need to start thinking aboutyour overall credibility.
(20:35):
So this is the crux here.
Are you going to ride the trainuntil it blows up, or are you
going to get off of it and startdoing things that are better?
Slowly pull off the Band-Aid,rip off the Band-Aid, whatever
analogy you want, but the pointis credibility.
You want to take that traffic,and then you want to start
pointing it to your mainwebsite, and then optimizing
(20:56):
your main website.
Now, this also means you need toswitch providers.
You're going to need somebodythat's going to understand
search engine optimization,Google ads, landing pages,
social media, how thatintegrates into it, because you
can't ignore social mediaanymore either.
(21:17):
Those are signals that have beenSEO signals for some time, but
they're also going to be signalsas far as your overall
credibility of your business.
The next thing is you want tolook at your Google business
profile.
So if you go tobusiness.google.com and you go
in there and look, you can seewhat website that's connected to
(21:39):
your Google business profile.
And that'll be an immediate cluewhether or not your Google Ads
guy's padding the numbers ifhe's pointing it to that site.
But that should point to yourmain site.
The other thing is you need towork with a company that
specializes in local marketingstrategies.
(22:00):
Now, there's a lot of good toolsout there.
Now, when I say local marketing,there's a term you're going to
want to write down.
It's called your NAP score, likewhen you were a kid and you took
a nap in preschool or something.
But NAP stands for name,address, and phone.
What that means is yourinformation is going to need to
be consistent across all abandwidth or a spectrum of the
(22:25):
internet.
And if it's not consistent, thenwhat's known as your NAP score
is decreased, meaning you're notas credible, you're not as
consistent as your competitors.
Now, at Integris, we haveinvested some tools seriously
into really addressing thisproblem on a level we've never
done.
(22:45):
We've always done it, but nowwe've got like a supercharged
version because we do see what'sgoing on here.
So what you need to find out isif you've got a separate person
who's doing your Google businessprofile optimization, you need
to find out what they're doing,what your NAP score is, and
where you are ranking locally.
(23:07):
You also need to carefully payattention to the categories at
which they're assigning to yourbusiness.
I have seen a lot of thesethings where people are selling
these kind of automated systemsand they're just collecting
money from you every month andletting those things go on
autopilot.
Really, the optimization needsto be much deeper.
(23:28):
The descriptions need to befilled out.
The categories need to beunderstood.
The name of your business needsto be accurate.
The address of your businessneeds to be accurate.
And you need to respond toreviews quickly.
And there are some really neattools that help you doing
responses to reviews.
Believe it or not, that is knownas one of the factors that go
(23:50):
into Google BusinessOptimization.
So if you see a lot of unreadreviews and you're paying
somebody to do that, that's asign they're not doing their
job.
You see categories in yourbusiness by editing your
profile, scrolling to thecategories, and you're seeing
that they're not consistent orrobust.
You don't see it fully filledout.
They're not doing their job.
(24:11):
They're just collecting apaycheck.
So getting your NAP score up ishuge, and you need to find
somebody that does that.
Ideally, you want to find thatperson that does Google ads
online Plus Google business.
And then you also want to havethem where they understand SEO
and web development.
Okay.
So the next thing is, is tounderstand your web developer.
(24:35):
Okay.
Traditionally, your webdeveloper is almost considered
like this designer, so to speak.
where they pick a template andthey put in pictures and they do
this and they do, but they'renot considering the big part of,
okay, how does this contributeto the larger conversation,
credibility, and conversions?
(24:56):
Because now your Google Ads isnot going to this highly
optimized, low-ranking website.
Now it's going to go to yourmain website.
So now you can't ignore thosekind of traditional KPIs that
were coming from Google Ads.
So you've got to make sure yourweb person understands that.
You see, this is why it'sgetting much more complicated.
(25:18):
Traditionally, what you wouldsee is a Google Ads guy.
So if a guy is just doing GoogleAds, he's not going to be able
to help you in the future.
He's probably doing all rightnow and he probably understands
quite a bit.
But if you don't quickly expandinto full-fledged web
development and search engineoptimization, increasing your
(25:39):
NAP score, investing in theright tools, working on your
social, making all thatconsistent, guess what?
That a la carte having 10 chefsin the kitchen, that's going to
be more and more problematic asyou go.
I don't know what it's going tomean in terms of like these
design tools like Canva and allthat.
(26:00):
You know, traditionally,branding and marketing people, I
personally find I'm resistant tousing that because I find it's a
shortcut rather than doing thehard work and keeping the
branding consistent.
But there are some applicationsfor it.
And anyway, just a thought.
We had a previous podcast whereme and a guest were talking
(26:23):
about those products.
But I don't know how this isgoing to even impact that
product.
All right, so once you haveachieved that, the next thing
is, is are you doing your socialmedia?
What I mean by that, are youposting on a regular basis?
Are you using topics that arerelevant?
Are you linking those topics toarticles on your website?
(26:46):
Now, when I say articles on thewebsite, I cannot state this
enough, okay?
I have seen SEO guys and they'redoing more and more of this.
They're using artificialintelligence to write the
articles for the client, andthey're not incorporating the
client's specific benefits, andit's not human engaged.
(27:12):
So what do I mean by that?
Well, if you look at AI content,AI is actually looking at AI
content, okay?
This is why, and they don't likeit, by the way.
They don't want AI content.
They want Meaningful, sentienthuman content is what they want
(27:32):
right now.
This is why we have terms likeEEAT.
If you go back and listen to aprevious podcast, I spent a
little time on EEAT and theimportance of creating original
authoritative content that's notjust blathered and spit out by
AI.
So even though AI is...
(27:54):
becoming more of that, it isbecoming the standard of the
internet and conversationallanguage.
It's also looking for humancontent.
So you see there's this weirdcontradiction in the way the
internet's going to move.
So another flag that yourprovider's not doing a good job
(28:14):
for you is if they're smatheringcontent and using AI to create
that content, not involving youin it.
So what they're trying to do iscreate a bunch of content and
say, hey, look what I'm doingfor you.
And then you look at it and go,wow, that's a lot of content.
That's a lot of articles.
(28:34):
And in reality, they're justrunning it through one of these
AI things and creating anarticle, posting it to your
website and giving you some eyecandy that's not really
relevant.
The ideal way to do it iscombine AI.
So what we do is we use...
AI tools to examine otherpopular articles.
(28:56):
And then we create outlinesusing AI tools.
And then what we'll do is we'llactually generate an article,
share it with the client, andthen we'll ask the client to
read it, adjust it, modify it,clean it up.
And then actually there are eventools to even like mask the idea
that even parts of it were AI.
And so the idea is you reallywant to make sure that you're
(29:19):
creating original content.
If your SEO guy's whippingthings out and just posting it
to your website, that's likely aproblem unless you meet with
them and they can show you howthey're addressing EEAT and what
they're doing.
And go back and listen to theEEAT podcast to kind of
(29:39):
understand what I'm talkingabout.
So if this sounds complicated toyou, it is.
It's getting more complicated.
You need to start looking atsomeone who can holistically do
all of this for you.
And you're going to have tostart doing something that's
(30:00):
going to be really, reallypainful for a lot of you.
And that is the KPIs that youlook at.
Meaning KPIs is just a fancyword to say meaningful actions,
okay?
And so we got a thing, I think,on KPIs too.
But traditionally, there havebeen two kind of KPIs.
The kind of traditional KPIsthat you look at that drive
(30:24):
traffic, calls, all that.
But then you have somethingcalled awareness KPIs that kind
of build your brand up within acertain segment.
There's going to be a series ofKPIs you're going to need to pay
attention to that are likecredibility KPIs.
You know, like where is your NAPscore at?
(30:44):
How are you performing locally?
What kind of content are youcreating?
Are you broadcasting similarcontent on social?
What is your website domainrating?
So if you go back and look, Ithink MozTools calls it DA or
domain authority, but then toolslike Ahrefs call it domain
(31:05):
ranking or rating.
I can't remember off the top ofmy head.
But what that does is actuallyshow you how strong or how weak
your website is.
And so you really need to getthat DA or DR score as high as
you can.
And you need to do that throughcreating credible content.
And there's just so manyfactors.
And so literally when you'rethinking today, if it's not all
(31:28):
put together in a meaningfulway, it's not going to help your
business succeed in the future.
And here's the really scarypart.
I remember leaving it off in thelast podcast.
But the scary part to this thingis, is that your business can go
dark overnight.
Meaning that when these modelsswitch and you're not building
(31:51):
your credibility up in ameaningful way and you're not
asking questions about how yourcredibility is being built up
and you're leaning more on thesetraditional KPIs, your business
can go dark.
It can go dark literallyovernight.
And as they're pulling thesemodels and they're changing
these metrics, these big techcompanies are doing it.
(32:13):
And so if you're not watchingthat, then your sales can fall
through the floor.
Everything you trusted can fallthrough the floor.
You know, one of the hard thingsto do, and this is every
generation, is that I still talkto businesses that are big and
their sales are going the wrongdirection.
(32:33):
And it's because they rely onlegacy techniques, meaning old,
irrelevant techniques to sellthat they once relied on that
are no longer relevant.
So this is why you see thingslike newspapers that are trying
to sell Google Ads advertisementor banner ads or whatever, and
(32:57):
they do a really poor job of it.
They're just piggybacking theirhistoric reputation on selling
this new technology that theyreally don't have a grasp on.
And so, uh, but they're, youknow, we're a big company, we
can add this on kind of thing.
And, uh, that's, uh, obviously amistake, uh, too, but, but the
(33:18):
reason that they're doing thisis because one, the companies
are trying to survive, uh, a lotof the legacy media, uh,
newspapers, you know, uh, justold techniques, uh, that are
dying this slow death.
And now what you're seeing isthat they're trying to cling on
to it, but then the owners ofthe businesses that once were
(33:40):
very successful doing certainthings, they still try to cling
on to those things.
And so you've got to get out ofit.
You've got to get out of thatmindset and say, okay, the
world's changing.
I don't want to be advertisingin the yellow pages of the phone
book.
I don't want to be investing indesigns in the yellow pages of
the phone book or buying fullpage ads in the phone book when
(34:02):
people are going to the Internetand they're searching a whole
different way.
If you cling on to what you'redoing, that's exactly what you
are doing.
You are buying the modern dayversion of yellow page ads in an
old phone book, something thatno one uses anymore.
And for your youngergenerations, yes, we actually
(34:22):
had a phone book back in the daywhere we would advertise and
promote.
That's why you see like a lot ofthese old businesses like AAA
something.
The reason they put all A's inthe front was because they want
to come up top in the phone booklistings.
So that's a little bit of oddtrivia on why you see some of
these heavy AAA names and thingslike that.
(34:45):
That was a traditional marketingstrategy.
Okay, guys, I know as abusiness, I know you want to do
business and you don't want tobe messing with this stuff.
I know it's technical.
It can be frustrating.
And it's hard enough when you'vegot all these people emailing
you a bunch of cold emails,promising you the moon.
You got a guy that's halfwayworking.
(35:06):
And now I'm telling you thathe's probably not going to be
good in the future.
And now you've got to make somereally tough decisions.
But it's the reality of wherethe internet is.
Now, if you can get moving onthis and get going in the right
direction, you'll be in theforefront.
The good news is the people thatgo dark will be hidden and
(35:28):
you'll be more visible.
The good news is that you canstay in front of this thing by
instituting best practices.
And here's the thing.
As far as I know, The practicesthat are going to sustain you
are the best practices thatthey're telling you.
(35:48):
All these search engines aretelling you to do.
And so it's not the practices.
It's all these little weirdtechniques that these marketing
companies are doing to try toskirt the system.
Let me share a story with youreal quick before we go.
There is a technique in searchengine optimization.
(36:11):
And it's called PBNs.
If you look it up, you'll findout it's a private blog network.
Now, what that is, is it iswhere a search engine
optimization company will go buya bunch of high-value domains,
(36:31):
meaning they have that highdomain rating.
And they'll build these junksites using it.
And then what they do is theytry to hide the fact that they
own all these websites in thisprivate blog network.
And then when someone buysservices, rather than doing the
hard work of buildingcredibility, they just simply
put backlinks on these websitesand point them to your site,
(36:56):
which gives the impression thatyour website is more valuable
than it is.
You see, they're trying to trickthe internet.
Now, They've been very clear,the search engine has been very
clear that this is extremelyfrowned upon.
Not only frowned upon, but youcould get banned.
I mean, in extreme situations,kind of like you're caught up in
(37:19):
a sting operation and you'reinnocent.
Well, if these SEO companies arepromoting your business like
that, they can hurt your brand.
But you see, Google's openlysaid, we don't like this
technique.
But yet the SEO companies aredoing it because it's easier for
them to do it.
They get results, make thecustomer happier, and they don't
(37:40):
even tell them what they'redoing.
All the business thinks is thatthe SEO company is really,
really good at what they do.
They have no idea that if theyquit using those services, guess
what?
All those links, they go away.
And then you hire your next SEOguy, and your next SEO guy is
trying to use ethical practices.
(38:01):
And like not using steroids toperform an athletic event, he's
trying to do it the legitimateway, putting in the work and
hard energy and effort to buildyour credibility ethically.
And yet he may be getting beatup by you a little bit because
you're going, well, my last SEOguy was able to do this.
(38:22):
And...
Those are challenges.
All right, so basically this isgoing on everywhere.
There are businesses that aresending cold emails out.
Do you really want to be thebusiness where you have someone
that is sending out emails onbehalf of your company,
(38:42):
representing your brand and yourname, sending out random cold
emails to large groups ofpeople, begging for work?
Is that how you want yourbusiness to be known in the
world?
If not, then you need to getaway from it.
Do you want to go down in ablaze of glory using old Google
Ads techniques that reallyshould have never been done to
(39:04):
begin with?
Or are you going to switch over?
Are you going to start worryingabout social media in a
meaningful way or not?
Are you going to start thinkingabout content marketing in a
meaningful way?
Or are you going to allow yourSEO guide to keep pushing these
AI blog articles on the internetthat are not as valuable as
(39:29):
properly managed EEAT articles.
You see, all this has to bethought through.
All this has to be addressed.
So good luck.
Good luck with this.
And I really hope that you takethis to heart.
And I hope you use this to makeyour business stronger and
better.
I hope you use this to find goodvendors that really have an idea
(39:52):
of how all this stuff workstogether.
And I hope that you can, youknow, instill the patience and
not go back to people that areusing techniques that are
completely inappropriate, onlyhurting your business, and they
only feel good today.
They won't feel good long term.
(40:12):
So to your success, I really dohope you do this and I hope that
you grow and I hope you're onthe forefront and I hope you
take advantage of what's comingin the AI model in spite of all
the potential negatives that aregoing to happen with the world
and as it's transitioning and aswe deal more with the society of
(40:35):
people that want to appearintelligent but don't really do
the real homework to understandreally what's going on.
And our job as business ownersis to survive and grow, protect
our people, and do a good jobfor people.
And this is one of those steps.
To your success.
Until next time, this is Kenwith Over the Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (40:57):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
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