April 29, 2025 • 20 mins
Is SEO dead? Let's talk about it. I know the rumors are swirling and you may be feeling like learning SEO is a waste of time if it's dying or dead. Find out what I think is happening and what you should do for your business in this week's podcast. SEO and other online marketing strategies can help grow your business, audience, and email list but which ones are the best to use today and in the future? Find out this week.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shure MV7 (00:00):
Welcome back to the podcast.
This is Rachel Lindteigen, yourhost.
I'm so glad you're here.
And I want to take a secondbefore we jump into today's
episode.
To make sure you know, I'mteaching a live class today.
The last session of this one istoday.
You can get registered at thelink in the description or on my
(00:23):
website.
Go to the freebies tab,etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies, saveyour seat.
I'm going to be teaching thethree biggest mistakes that
people make when it comes totheir SEO.
And they keep you from gettingtraffic and getting leads.
and building your email list andhaving more sales and all of
that.
So I'm really going to explainwhat those three biggest
(00:44):
mistakes are and then you willhave a chance to learn what they
are.
You can ask questions if youhave them and then hopefully
you'll join me in simple SEOcontent where you can then put
together the SEO strategy.
for your website, for yourbusiness.
So make sure you're signed upfor that.
If you're not, yeah, I don'twant you to miss out.
(01:05):
I know the last session istoday, Tuesday, so do not miss
out.
All right.
Now jumping into today's lesson,today's discussion, like I said
a couple of weeks ago, I wantedto go through some of the most
common questions that I get.
Some of the things that peopleare just really kind of
struggling with because it's outthere and it's like, well.
(01:26):
Is this real?
Is this happening?
So I keep getting asked, is SEOdead?
Is this the end of search engineoptimization?
And I know people are concerned,especially with AI overviews and
the fact that they're beingexpanded.
And now Google has said they'regoing to add in the AI tab and
then chat GPT and perplexity andall the different AI tools.
(01:50):
Is this going to be the end ofSEO as we know it?
I don't think so.
I really, truly don't.
When it first came out, Iwondered if it would be the end
of it if I needed to adjust myniche and start teaching other
things because was this reallygoing to be the thing that
killed SEO?
(02:11):
Is SEO dead?
I mean, that's been goingaround.
Every time there's a change withGoogle, every time there's an
algorithm update for the last 15years, the rumors have swirled.
This is it.
This is what's going to killSEO.
But it's not, okay.
As I got more advancedunderstanding of how it worked
and I started to really see,what I realized is I think SEO
(02:34):
is actually more important todaythan it was even a year ago.
Because not only is the workwe're doing for Google
benefiting our websites from aGoogle perspective, it also
works for Bing.
And Bing, I know we haven'ttalked about much before, but
Bing is going to be important.
because Bing is what powersChatGPT's search.
(02:56):
The good news is what we do forGoogle generally works for Bing.
We don't have to do separateBing optimization.
What we do for Google will work.
But what I want you tounderstand is what we're seeing
in the research studies is thatin general the websites that are
well optimized, they're easy tocrawl, the content is easy to
understand.
All of that, those are thewebsites that are being used for
(03:19):
answers in AI overviews,perplexity, chat GPT, et cetera.
So if you want to know how do Ishow up in chat GPT?
How do I get my website in AIoverviews?
How does Google decide who'sshowing up?
It all comes back to yourtraditional SEO.
It comes back to making surethat Site is easy for the search
(03:44):
engine to crawl, meaning to gothrough and find the content and
click from link to link to link.
And the content itself ishelpful and it provides value.
And it's something that theywould want to share.
And when we talk about Google,it's optimized for the proper
keywords.
Now there is a little bit ofdifference in how Google and our
(04:06):
AI chatbots work.
The AI chatbots, because peoplesearch in a more conversational
tone, they're not necessarilylooking at the optimization
elements for the keyword andlooking at keyword, keyword,
keyword, and like each time isanother check that that's what
this page is about.
That's not how they work.
They work based on predictivetext, and they're looking for
(04:28):
what they think the next conceptor the next text should be, and
people are asking longerqueries, more conversational, so
we do want to make sure thatWe're thinking about that when
we're creating our copy so thatwe have a better chance of being
included.
So we want to be conversational.
We don't just solely want tofocus on one keyword.
(04:51):
We do want to look more at longtail keywords, which we've
talked about those a lot here.
Long tail keywords are simplythe keyword phrases.
that are like three, four, five,six words all strung together in
a phrase.
So is SEO dead?
That's the keyword I'm using forthis particular blog post,
podcast, etc.
(05:12):
Because that should work onGoogle and it should work on
chat GPT, search GPT,perplexity, etc.
So when we are formatting ourcontent to hopefully be included
in the AI overviews, there arespecific things we want to do
from a formatting standpoint.
We want to make sure that we'reusing headers, we have short
paragraphs, we have easy tounderstand, clear, concise
(05:36):
content.
Does this sound really differentfrom what I've been talking
about?
with you for the last two yearsnow, it really isn't.
It's very similar.
I did add a lesson in Simple SEOcontent recently that goes into
like, how do I show up in thesethings?
How do I have this work so thatmy students understand exactly
what they need to do from aformatting standpoint?
(05:57):
But I really want you tounderstand that.
SEO is not dead.
It is not dying.
In fact, I think it's moreimportant now than it was a year
or two ago because of the factthat now we're working on our
more visibility.
It's not just Google, or justBing, or just one of those.
It's now, where are peoplesearching?
(06:20):
Are they searching on Bing?
Are they searching on Google?
Are they searching ChatGPT?
Are they searching Perplexity?
We need to be visible in all ofthose places.
And thank goodness, thankgoodness that we don't have to
do separate SEO for all of them.
But we do have to do SEO if wewant to show up in all these
(06:42):
different places.
Because like I said, what we'refinding is the websites that
rank high on Google.
are usually SEO friendly.
Somebody has put the time andeffort into doing the search
engine optimization on that siteto make it easy to understand.
They are also generally thesites that are being used by the
AI chatbots for the informationthat they share, they're the
(07:04):
sites they link to, all of that.
I know that my site is gettingtraffic from chat GPT and
perplexity because I can go intomy Google Analytics.
And I can take a look and I cansee what traffic I'm getting
under the referral sources.
If you know how to look at youranalytics, it's under referral,
you'll have to apply a filter,et cetera, to see which engines
(07:25):
are sending it.
But I know that I'm gettingtraffic from them.
I also know that I'm ranking inchat GPT search for blog posts,
content, things like that, thatare also ranking high on page
one of Google.
And a ranking in the Google AIoverview section at the top of
the page.
So is SEO dead?
(07:46):
No.
Once again, SEO is changing.
It's updating.
It's adjusting.
It's evolving.
I think this is very similar towhen we had Google Panda and
Penguin come out in like 2011then again, um, helpful content
in 2023.
Those were the three largestalgorithm updates in the last
(08:08):
decade.
And Panda and Penguin wereaddressing poor quality content
and spammy backlinks.
And those are things that.
We don't worry about todaybecause they were resolved, you
know, 2011 and 2012, you know,to create high quality content,
to focus on your audience, tothink about your keywords
(08:30):
secondarily, like really focusright for your audience.
And then optimize for Googlesecond.
That is what Google has beensaying since 2011 and 2012.
You also know not to buy linksand to earn them.
And to protect your linkportfolio and your profile, and
think of it like yourneighborhood, and build links
(08:51):
and earn them.
Now, thanks to helpful content,You know that you need to make
sure your content truly ishelpful and helpful content.
I know a lot of people havetalked about it and kind of with
disdain, especially within theblogging community, they hate
it.
They think it was a terriblething.
What I want you to understandwithin the SEO community, what
(09:11):
we've seen and what Google hassaid is that what happened with
helpful content was they wentafter websites that were a poor
user experience.
So even if that website hadgreat content on it, they didn't
want it to rank as high if ithad lots of pop ups and lots of
(09:32):
ads where it.
It was an impediment to the userexperience.
If the person reading it wouldbe bogged down with ads or would
be annoyed by it, it's not agood search result.
It's not a good user experienceresult.
So because of that, that's whyGoogle deprioritized a lot of
the blogs.
Because while the content isgood and it truly does follow
(09:55):
helpful guidelines.
They were so focused on makingmoney off their readers that
their readers were a secondarythought.
And so that's why helpfulcontent was the way that it was.
Those of us who blog don't havea lot of ads, like I have no ads
on my site.
Those of us who blog who do notrun ads did not see the same
(10:17):
damage from helpful content thatothers did.
The other big algorithm updatethey've done.
Most recent time that we heardSEO was dead was when we had the
Google AI spam update lastspring.
And that one again, people werelike, Oh, SEO is dead.
It doesn't work.
It's all my traffic is down.
(10:38):
I lost 90 percent of my traffic.
What that update did was removeAI generated content from the
websites or from the web.
Google removed, oh my gosh, I'mtrying to remember, I was at a
conference where we talked aboutit.
I think it was about 50 or 60percent of the AI spam.
So when our AI tools came out,and we had ChatGPT, and suddenly
(11:02):
you could create tons of contentin almost no time.
You could ask ChatGPT to writeyou a blog post, and you can do
it today.
If you ask ChatGPT to write youa blog post and you tell it what
keyword to use, it will writeyou a blog post.
It's not going to be good.
It's not going to rank high onGoogle.
It's not quality content, but itcan do it really fast.
And so we had people, onceagain, kind of trying to cheat
(11:26):
the system.
And so they were producing tonsof content out of ChatGPT.
So maybe they do 10 blog posts aday or 20 blog posts a day
because they understood that themore often you blog, the more
frequently you blog, the betterchances you have of ranking, the
more keywords you have ranking,the more traffic you should get
to your site.
Like they understood how itworked.
(11:48):
What they weren't taking intoconsideration was that The AI
generated content was not thequality that Google wanted to
have indexed and it did workbriefly.
They did get those cheatertactics to work briefly with all
their content that they createdout of AI and they didn't edit
and they just put it straightforward.
But then the AI spam update cameand it got rid of it and it said
(12:11):
this is not what we want.
So each time we've heard peoplesay SEO is dead, SEO doesn't
work anymore, SEO is dying, it'sbeen In reality, cheater tactics
no longer work.
Lazy SEO no longer works.
I don't want to put the effortinto doing it the right way, so
(12:32):
what I've been doing doesn'twork.
So Panda and Penguin, like Isaid, they were about content
quality and backlinking.
So at one point in time, We hadall sorts of crazy stuff going
on within the SEO world.
So 15 years ago, we had evenless than that.
We had websites where companiesdid not want to have words.
Okay.
(12:52):
Can you believe this?
Imagine this for a moment.
They didn't want their beautifulwebsites to be ruined by words,
except the only way Google knowswhat your page is about and
what.
What your content is about is tohave words on it.
So they started doing thingslike having a white background
with white text so that only thesearch engine could read the
(13:13):
words.
It would not bother theirconsumers or their website
visitors.
Guys, that's a cheater tactic.
That's I believe it's calledcloaking.
You can't do that.
It's against Google's rules.
But people were doing that.
Or then they were ranking theirwebsites because they were
buying links to all sorts ofwebsites and they had nothing to
do with their business.
But if you had the most links,then you ranked the highest.
(13:34):
So those are tactics they'veworked on getting rid of and
they got rid of those about adecade ago.
Now we saw people really kind oftaking advantage of the number
of ads that they had and the popups and it really the sites were
bogged down.
They took a long time to loadbecause of the ads.
People didn't enjoy them becauseof the ads.
That's what helpful contentaddressed.
Your content needs to behelpful.
(13:56):
Then they added in EEAT, yourexperience, your expertise, your
authority, and your trust.
That's what your content isgraded on today.
And they added the second Ebecause they wanted to combat
the chat GPT content because youneed to actually have done what
you're talking about.
You need to actually be anexpert and have experience doing
(14:19):
it.
They really want to make surethat the people that they're
ranking high that they'resending traffic to are really
good search results.
They really can help the personwho's searching.
We've talked about this before.
Google is a business.
Google is not here just to sendtraffic to you.
Google is here to make money.
The way they make money is byhaving ads that they can sell to
(14:41):
people.
And the only way they cancontinue to have enough audience
to sell their ads to to keepmaking money is to have really
great search results so thatpeople keep using them.
For their search now, you'veprobably heard, or maybe you've
heard Google search volume isstarting to drop and that may
have you wondering again, is SEOdead?
Do I even need to worry aboutGoogle?
(15:01):
So yes, Google search volume hasdropped slightly.
It did drop in Q4, 2024 for thefirst time in 10 or 12 years, it
dipped below 90%.
Now, yes, it dipped below 90%.
It's been hovering in that 88,89 percent range.
And you may have heard ChatGPTand the AI search engines are
(15:23):
taking over and so that's whyGoogle's search has dropped and
they are picking up.
ChatGPT is expected to have onepercent market share by the end
of 2025.
So to put this into perspective,most recent study that I've
read, for every one search onChatGPT there are 373 searches
(15:44):
on Google.
So is SEO dead?
Absolutely not.
As long as people are searchingfor the information related to
your niche on a search engine,you will continue to need to do
SEO.
And if you want to be futureproofed, you want to be ready
for where we're going with chatGPT search and perplexity and
(16:04):
all the different AI things,Then you again need to do SEO
because what we're seeing isthose new AI bots and chat
engines and search engines areall using the same type SEO.
Like if you have a welloptimized SEO friendly website,
you have a better chance ofbeing included in the search
(16:27):
results there, being the onethat they send people to.
So SEO is not dead.
I really don't think it's goingto die.
I do think every time.
Something changes, people startswirling saying this is the
thing that's going to kill SEO.
People may start searching lessoften on Google.
(16:48):
They may spread their searchesout across Google and Bing and
ChatGPT.
We know that some of our youngerconsumers are more likely to
search on social media channelsthan even on a traditional
search engine.
Like Gen Z is much more likelyto go straight to TikTok,
potentially Instagram, butusually TikTok to do their
search.
(17:09):
That's okay because we want tothink about what we refer to,
what's being referred to now assearch everywhere optimization.
Your consumer Um, may search indifferent places.
What you want to do is make surethat you are the one who's
showing up in those areas.
So your first thing to do ismake sure your website is well
optimized.
If you've not yet taken simpleSEO content, please join me in
(17:32):
that class.
Let me help you with this.
Do not try to Google and YouTubeyour way through this.
There are too many simplemistakes that you can make, too
many super common mistakes.
Let me show you what to do.
Let me guide you through this.
And then let's get your websitedone so we know it's one that
the search engines and thechatbots can understand.
And then you can start gettingthat visibility across multiple
(17:55):
platforms.
This is no longer just Google.
This is about getting you thatvisibility in other areas.
So Simple SEO content is goingto help you get visibility to
your content.
Whether you're talking aboutGoogle, chat GPT, perplexity,
you're looking at social media,I have a bonus training in there
(18:16):
on SEO for your social media.
It's not a training on socialmedia best practices.
It's SEO for social media.
What should you do from an SEOstandpoint for your Pinterest,
for your Instagram, for yourYouTube, etc.
And then let's make sure thatyou're using SEO because it's
really important across allchannels.
We want to build your brand.
(18:37):
We want people to have brandrecognition and we want you to
be the one that they findwherever they're searching.
Search everywhere.
Remember that.
All right, that's it for today.
I want to thank you forlistening to this one.
Make sure you're signed up.
Join me in the free class.
Like I said, it is today.
The last session is today.
(19:00):
Go to the freebies tab on thewebsite, etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies andI'll have information there for
you so you can very quicklyregister and get joined.
Um, into today's class, askquestions if you have them, and
then let's do it.
Join me in simple SEO content.
Let me walk you through how youdo this and we'll get it taken
care of for you.
Thanks for being here.
Bye for now.
Welcome back to the podcast.
This is Rachel Lindteigen, yourhost.
I'm so glad you're here.
And I want to take a secondbefore we jump into today's
episode.
To make sure you know, I'mteaching a live class today.
The last session of this one istoday.
You can get registered at thelink in the description or on my
(00:23):
website.
Go to the freebies tab,etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies, saveyour seat.
I'm going to be teaching thethree biggest mistakes that
people make when it comes totheir SEO.
And they keep you from gettingtraffic and getting leads.
and building your email list andhaving more sales and all of
that.
So I'm really going to explainwhat those three biggest
(00:44):
mistakes are and then you willhave a chance to learn what they
are.
You can ask questions if youhave them and then hopefully
you'll join me in simple SEOcontent where you can then put
together the SEO strategy.
for your website, for yourbusiness.
So make sure you're signed upfor that.
If you're not, yeah, I don'twant you to miss out.
(01:05):
I know the last session istoday, Tuesday, so do not miss
out.
All right.
Now jumping into today's lesson,today's discussion, like I said
a couple of weeks ago, I wantedto go through some of the most
common questions that I get.
Some of the things that peopleare just really kind of
struggling with because it's outthere and it's like, well.
(01:26):
Is this real?
Is this happening?
So I keep getting asked, is SEOdead?
Is this the end of search engineoptimization?
And I know people are concerned,especially with AI overviews and
the fact that they're beingexpanded.
And now Google has said they'regoing to add in the AI tab and
then chat GPT and perplexity andall the different AI tools.
(01:50):
Is this going to be the end ofSEO as we know it?
I don't think so.
I really, truly don't.
When it first came out, Iwondered if it would be the end
of it if I needed to adjust myniche and start teaching other
things because was this reallygoing to be the thing that
killed SEO?
(02:11):
Is SEO dead?
I mean, that's been goingaround.
Every time there's a change withGoogle, every time there's an
algorithm update for the last 15years, the rumors have swirled.
This is it.
This is what's going to killSEO.
But it's not, okay.
As I got more advancedunderstanding of how it worked
and I started to really see,what I realized is I think SEO
(02:34):
is actually more important todaythan it was even a year ago.
Because not only is the workwe're doing for Google
benefiting our websites from aGoogle perspective, it also
works for Bing.
And Bing, I know we haven'ttalked about much before, but
Bing is going to be important.
because Bing is what powersChatGPT's search.
(02:56):
The good news is what we do forGoogle generally works for Bing.
We don't have to do separateBing optimization.
What we do for Google will work.
But what I want you tounderstand is what we're seeing
in the research studies is thatin general the websites that are
well optimized, they're easy tocrawl, the content is easy to
understand.
All of that, those are thewebsites that are being used for
(03:19):
answers in AI overviews,perplexity, chat GPT, et cetera.
So if you want to know how do Ishow up in chat GPT?
How do I get my website in AIoverviews?
How does Google decide who'sshowing up?
It all comes back to yourtraditional SEO.
It comes back to making surethat Site is easy for the search
(03:44):
engine to crawl, meaning to gothrough and find the content and
click from link to link to link.
And the content itself ishelpful and it provides value.
And it's something that theywould want to share.
And when we talk about Google,it's optimized for the proper
keywords.
Now there is a little bit ofdifference in how Google and our
(04:06):
AI chatbots work.
The AI chatbots, because peoplesearch in a more conversational
tone, they're not necessarilylooking at the optimization
elements for the keyword andlooking at keyword, keyword,
keyword, and like each time isanother check that that's what
this page is about.
That's not how they work.
They work based on predictivetext, and they're looking for
(04:28):
what they think the next conceptor the next text should be, and
people are asking longerqueries, more conversational, so
we do want to make sure thatWe're thinking about that when
we're creating our copy so thatwe have a better chance of being
included.
So we want to be conversational.
We don't just solely want tofocus on one keyword.
(04:51):
We do want to look more at longtail keywords, which we've
talked about those a lot here.
Long tail keywords are simplythe keyword phrases.
that are like three, four, five,six words all strung together in
a phrase.
So is SEO dead?
That's the keyword I'm using forthis particular blog post,
podcast, etc.
(05:12):
Because that should work onGoogle and it should work on
chat GPT, search GPT,perplexity, etc.
So when we are formatting ourcontent to hopefully be included
in the AI overviews, there arespecific things we want to do
from a formatting standpoint.
We want to make sure that we'reusing headers, we have short
paragraphs, we have easy tounderstand, clear, concise
(05:36):
content.
Does this sound really differentfrom what I've been talking
about?
with you for the last two yearsnow, it really isn't.
It's very similar.
I did add a lesson in Simple SEOcontent recently that goes into
like, how do I show up in thesethings?
How do I have this work so thatmy students understand exactly
what they need to do from aformatting standpoint?
(05:57):
But I really want you tounderstand that.
SEO is not dead.
It is not dying.
In fact, I think it's moreimportant now than it was a year
or two ago because of the factthat now we're working on our
more visibility.
It's not just Google, or justBing, or just one of those.
It's now, where are peoplesearching?
(06:20):
Are they searching on Bing?
Are they searching on Google?
Are they searching ChatGPT?
Are they searching Perplexity?
We need to be visible in all ofthose places.
And thank goodness, thankgoodness that we don't have to
do separate SEO for all of them.
But we do have to do SEO if wewant to show up in all these
(06:42):
different places.
Because like I said, what we'refinding is the websites that
rank high on Google.
are usually SEO friendly.
Somebody has put the time andeffort into doing the search
engine optimization on that siteto make it easy to understand.
They are also generally thesites that are being used by the
AI chatbots for the informationthat they share, they're the
(07:04):
sites they link to, all of that.
I know that my site is gettingtraffic from chat GPT and
perplexity because I can go intomy Google Analytics.
And I can take a look and I cansee what traffic I'm getting
under the referral sources.
If you know how to look at youranalytics, it's under referral,
you'll have to apply a filter,et cetera, to see which engines
(07:25):
are sending it.
But I know that I'm gettingtraffic from them.
I also know that I'm ranking inchat GPT search for blog posts,
content, things like that, thatare also ranking high on page
one of Google.
And a ranking in the Google AIoverview section at the top of
the page.
So is SEO dead?
(07:46):
No.
Once again, SEO is changing.
It's updating.
It's adjusting.
It's evolving.
I think this is very similar towhen we had Google Panda and
Penguin come out in like 2011then again, um, helpful content
in 2023.
Those were the three largestalgorithm updates in the last
(08:08):
decade.
And Panda and Penguin wereaddressing poor quality content
and spammy backlinks.
And those are things that.
We don't worry about todaybecause they were resolved, you
know, 2011 and 2012, you know,to create high quality content,
to focus on your audience, tothink about your keywords
(08:30):
secondarily, like really focusright for your audience.
And then optimize for Googlesecond.
That is what Google has beensaying since 2011 and 2012.
You also know not to buy linksand to earn them.
And to protect your linkportfolio and your profile, and
think of it like yourneighborhood, and build links
(08:51):
and earn them.
Now, thanks to helpful content,You know that you need to make
sure your content truly ishelpful and helpful content.
I know a lot of people havetalked about it and kind of with
disdain, especially within theblogging community, they hate
it.
They think it was a terriblething.
What I want you to understandwithin the SEO community, what
(09:11):
we've seen and what Google hassaid is that what happened with
helpful content was they wentafter websites that were a poor
user experience.
So even if that website hadgreat content on it, they didn't
want it to rank as high if ithad lots of pop ups and lots of
(09:32):
ads where it.
It was an impediment to the userexperience.
If the person reading it wouldbe bogged down with ads or would
be annoyed by it, it's not agood search result.
It's not a good user experienceresult.
So because of that, that's whyGoogle deprioritized a lot of
the blogs.
Because while the content isgood and it truly does follow
(09:55):
helpful guidelines.
They were so focused on makingmoney off their readers that
their readers were a secondarythought.
And so that's why helpfulcontent was the way that it was.
Those of us who blog don't havea lot of ads, like I have no ads
on my site.
Those of us who blog who do notrun ads did not see the same
(10:17):
damage from helpful content thatothers did.
The other big algorithm updatethey've done.
Most recent time that we heardSEO was dead was when we had the
Google AI spam update lastspring.
And that one again, people werelike, Oh, SEO is dead.
It doesn't work.
It's all my traffic is down.
(10:38):
I lost 90 percent of my traffic.
What that update did was removeAI generated content from the
websites or from the web.
Google removed, oh my gosh, I'mtrying to remember, I was at a
conference where we talked aboutit.
I think it was about 50 or 60percent of the AI spam.
So when our AI tools came out,and we had ChatGPT, and suddenly
(11:02):
you could create tons of contentin almost no time.
You could ask ChatGPT to writeyou a blog post, and you can do
it today.
If you ask ChatGPT to write youa blog post and you tell it what
keyword to use, it will writeyou a blog post.
It's not going to be good.
It's not going to rank high onGoogle.
It's not quality content, but itcan do it really fast.
And so we had people, onceagain, kind of trying to cheat
(11:26):
the system.
And so they were producing tonsof content out of ChatGPT.
So maybe they do 10 blog posts aday or 20 blog posts a day
because they understood that themore often you blog, the more
frequently you blog, the betterchances you have of ranking, the
more keywords you have ranking,the more traffic you should get
to your site.
Like they understood how itworked.
(11:48):
What they weren't taking intoconsideration was that The AI
generated content was not thequality that Google wanted to
have indexed and it did workbriefly.
They did get those cheatertactics to work briefly with all
their content that they createdout of AI and they didn't edit
and they just put it straightforward.
But then the AI spam update cameand it got rid of it and it said
(12:11):
this is not what we want.
So each time we've heard peoplesay SEO is dead, SEO doesn't
work anymore, SEO is dying, it'sbeen In reality, cheater tactics
no longer work.
Lazy SEO no longer works.
I don't want to put the effortinto doing it the right way, so
(12:32):
what I've been doing doesn'twork.
So Panda and Penguin, like Isaid, they were about content
quality and backlinking.
So at one point in time, We hadall sorts of crazy stuff going
on within the SEO world.
So 15 years ago, we had evenless than that.
We had websites where companiesdid not want to have words.
Okay.
(12:52):
Can you believe this?
Imagine this for a moment.
They didn't want their beautifulwebsites to be ruined by words,
except the only way Google knowswhat your page is about and
what.
What your content is about is tohave words on it.
So they started doing thingslike having a white background
with white text so that only thesearch engine could read the
(13:13):
words.
It would not bother theirconsumers or their website
visitors.
Guys, that's a cheater tactic.
That's I believe it's calledcloaking.
You can't do that.
It's against Google's rules.
But people were doing that.
Or then they were ranking theirwebsites because they were
buying links to all sorts ofwebsites and they had nothing to
do with their business.
But if you had the most links,then you ranked the highest.
(13:34):
So those are tactics they'veworked on getting rid of and
they got rid of those about adecade ago.
Now we saw people really kind oftaking advantage of the number
of ads that they had and the popups and it really the sites were
bogged down.
They took a long time to loadbecause of the ads.
People didn't enjoy them becauseof the ads.
That's what helpful contentaddressed.
Your content needs to behelpful.
(13:56):
Then they added in EEAT, yourexperience, your expertise, your
authority, and your trust.
That's what your content isgraded on today.
And they added the second Ebecause they wanted to combat
the chat GPT content because youneed to actually have done what
you're talking about.
You need to actually be anexpert and have experience doing
(14:19):
it.
They really want to make surethat the people that they're
ranking high that they'resending traffic to are really
good search results.
They really can help the personwho's searching.
We've talked about this before.
Google is a business.
Google is not here just to sendtraffic to you.
Google is here to make money.
The way they make money is byhaving ads that they can sell to
(14:41):
people.
And the only way they cancontinue to have enough audience
to sell their ads to to keepmaking money is to have really
great search results so thatpeople keep using them.
For their search now, you'veprobably heard, or maybe you've
heard Google search volume isstarting to drop and that may
have you wondering again, is SEOdead?
Do I even need to worry aboutGoogle?
(15:01):
So yes, Google search volume hasdropped slightly.
It did drop in Q4, 2024 for thefirst time in 10 or 12 years, it
dipped below 90%.
Now, yes, it dipped below 90%.
It's been hovering in that 88,89 percent range.
And you may have heard ChatGPTand the AI search engines are
(15:23):
taking over and so that's whyGoogle's search has dropped and
they are picking up.
ChatGPT is expected to have onepercent market share by the end
of 2025.
So to put this into perspective,most recent study that I've
read, for every one search onChatGPT there are 373 searches
(15:44):
on Google.
So is SEO dead?
Absolutely not.
As long as people are searchingfor the information related to
your niche on a search engine,you will continue to need to do
SEO.
And if you want to be futureproofed, you want to be ready
for where we're going with chatGPT search and perplexity and
(16:04):
all the different AI things,Then you again need to do SEO
because what we're seeing isthose new AI bots and chat
engines and search engines areall using the same type SEO.
Like if you have a welloptimized SEO friendly website,
you have a better chance ofbeing included in the search
(16:27):
results there, being the onethat they send people to.
So SEO is not dead.
I really don't think it's goingto die.
I do think every time.
Something changes, people startswirling saying this is the
thing that's going to kill SEO.
People may start searching lessoften on Google.
(16:48):
They may spread their searchesout across Google and Bing and
ChatGPT.
We know that some of our youngerconsumers are more likely to
search on social media channelsthan even on a traditional
search engine.
Like Gen Z is much more likelyto go straight to TikTok,
potentially Instagram, butusually TikTok to do their
search.
(17:09):
That's okay because we want tothink about what we refer to,
what's being referred to now assearch everywhere optimization.
Your consumer Um, may search indifferent places.
What you want to do is make surethat you are the one who's
showing up in those areas.
So your first thing to do ismake sure your website is well
optimized.
If you've not yet taken simpleSEO content, please join me in
(17:32):
that class.
Let me help you with this.
Do not try to Google and YouTubeyour way through this.
There are too many simplemistakes that you can make, too
many super common mistakes.
Let me show you what to do.
Let me guide you through this.
And then let's get your websitedone so we know it's one that
the search engines and thechatbots can understand.
And then you can start gettingthat visibility across multiple
(17:55):
platforms.
This is no longer just Google.
This is about getting you thatvisibility in other areas.
So Simple SEO content is goingto help you get visibility to
your content.
Whether you're talking aboutGoogle, chat GPT, perplexity,
you're looking at social media,I have a bonus training in there
(18:16):
on SEO for your social media.
It's not a training on socialmedia best practices.
It's SEO for social media.
What should you do from an SEOstandpoint for your Pinterest,
for your Instagram, for yourYouTube, etc.
And then let's make sure thatyou're using SEO because it's
really important across allchannels.
We want to build your brand.
(18:37):
We want people to have brandrecognition and we want you to
be the one that they findwherever they're searching.
Search everywhere.
Remember that.
All right, that's it for today.
I want to thank you forlistening to this one.
Make sure you're signed up.
Join me in the free class.
Like I said, it is today.
The last session is today.
(19:00):
Go to the freebies tab on thewebsite, etchedmarketing.
com forward slash freebies andI'll have information there for
you so you can very quicklyregister and get joined.
Um, into today's class, askquestions if you have them, and
then let's do it.
Join me in simple SEO content.
Let me walk you through how youdo this and we'll get it taken
care of for you.
Thanks for being here.
Bye for now.
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