The Evolving Landscape of SEO, AI, and Podcast Advertising with Eric Ritter

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts Radio network, Kingopodcasts dot.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Com podcasting on SEO. I might know a little something
about that. Welcome to podcast for show King of Podcasts,
here with you, Thanks for bringing time to go and
join me here on the program. Another great episode to
go ahead and entertain you all on Without further ado,

(00:30):
we're going to podcasting n so so in the area
of SEO. Just to give a little background for my
guests who might not know well, I'll bring it up
first once I introduced him. He's the president founder of
Digital Neighbor, a digital marketing agency specializing in legal SEO.
He's also a legal SEO GEO and AI marketing strategist, speaker,
and hosts of the search Bar podcast, where he's known

(00:52):
as the SEO Somalier. I'm here with Eric Ritter. Thanks
for beinging with Eric.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, thanks for having me in great pronunciation.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
The summer it's sometimes kind of a tongue twister, kind
of like a curveball to people.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So glad to be here. Thank you so much for
having me.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
It is a bit of a tough word. I mean
just I'm not a French. I don't speak any French really,
so just the we try anyway. Anyway, Eric, I haven't
had a chance to speak to you beforehand, but just
to give a little background on myself. So for over
almost twenty years, coming up in August August first will
be my startup podcasting, and in that entire time of podcasting,

(01:29):
I have been working on a podcast network called Webmaster,
Udio dot fm. And you tell me if any of
the names or things I'm telling you about sounds familiar.
One are the shows is one of our main stags
has been on the network is SEO One on one,
Ross Done and John carcut. I'm not familiar with them.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
YEP one on one, YEP.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
SEO rock Stars, which was originally Bake, Jake and ol
Man starting off Back of the Day, which has been
a couple other people that hosted on the show as well,
Chris Box, Frank Watson, Austie, Webmaster, sc Grew, Darren Babin,
among other names. And we've had other shows. We had
Bruce Clay who had hosted to show with us called
sem Synergy. That's the background I have. You might know
Rusty Brick, Barry Schwartz, he had hosted to show with

(02:09):
us called the Polls. So these are some of the
mains I'm familiar with of the first generation iseos as
we always talk about, and that's where it comes from
with me. So I was interested in what you're doing
in SEO now because overall I remember ten years ago
going to some big huge SEO events SMX being a
big thing in the space search bargaining, expo search engine strategies.

(02:33):
We would also kind of like the make the runover
to ad tech as well for part of that as well.
So like there was a lot of there was a
lot of work where SEO is so important, is so crucial.
Obviously AI has taking a very major dent in to
where where people are doing their search, whether it's first
of all from just the search results on Google yaha
are being but then to switch to social media and

(02:55):
now the switch over to AI. This is a lot
to goun track. And also I just feel like seos
been made into such a microniche now it's been segmented.
There's so many different other formats and areas of willing
to be able to cover. So with that said, you're
doing legal SEO, so even that now more into a
nieche itself. But how far back do you go in

(03:16):
SEO in this trek of all this evolving of SEO.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, now, I mean so you did a great job
kind of talking about the history and kind of the
godfathers of SEO there. So I've been doing SEO, probably
not quite as long as you've been podcasting, but pretty
close to that as well, So for probably like seventeen
eighteen years. So I've seen the evolution from the very
beginning where we're stuffing keywords, we're creating a page for

(03:43):
every single keyword, kind of just trying to gamify it, right,
trying to like fool the search engines. This is why
we should come up. And we've always said since the
beginning is you know what.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Google is smart.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's going to reward you for doing something that is
you know, pardon the phrasing here, but organic, right, something
that looks natural, something that the human's going to want
to read, something that's not written for the machine, for
the AI. And I think we've finally kind of gotten
there where now you're getting rewarded for actually putting out
quality content, something that actually matters, something that is actually

(04:20):
going to answer people's questions. There and the marketplace is
getting fragmented.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Like you said, it's not just Google anymore.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Right, It used to be Google and then maybe a
little bit of bing, but now you know, we got
search everywhere going on where you know, I teach here
at the local university, University of South Florida three years ago.
The kids like, we don't trust Google anymore, right, don't.
It's a big corporation. It's a company that people are
doing this thing called SEO, which really trying to fool it.

(04:49):
I want authentic answers. So if I want to know
where to get ramen nearby, I'm going to look on
TikTok and I'm going to search on there for best
Ramen restaurant near me because I'd rather see someone who
went there, took a video talks about it. Right, So
it absolutely is changing. It absolutely is evolving as to

(05:10):
where people are searching. And as an SEO, as long
as there's some way that you can put in the
search phrase, either with your voice, with a video or
typing it in, there's still going to be SEO for that. Right,
you mentioned social media. You know there's ways to come
up on TikTok, on Instagram wherever, or Pinterest, even when

(05:32):
people are searching for your product, for your service, for
your brand, and now the same thing on AI with
search GBT. Right, we call that GEO generative engine optimization,
where we're optimizing for those generative engines to come up
at the top. And as you mentioned, my focus is
legal SEO, so I help law firms get those higher

(05:53):
pain cases, those bigger retainers. Right, So figuring out where
are those people searching has always been the name of
the game, right, because the next big thing for an
attorney is to find kind of that blue ocean strategy.
It's like, where are no other attorneys advertising? Where are
no other attorneys being found? Because that's where you want

(06:14):
to show up, And so AI is one of those
opportunities is to be if someone's in a car accident,
you know, and that's the most expensive we know keyword, right,
auto accident attorney? Is where can I come up where
there's no attorneys competing with me?

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, Eric, I know that if I had to go
ahead and take a pick on television or billboards or
other traditional advertising, legal probably spends the most money on
those areas. So how do you go and pull them
away from advertating on those platforms and make sure that
their search presence is sound and is expansive.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, no, great question.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
So here's something that's interesting, just a little nugget, right,
is probably a year or two years ago, I would
have said, don't spend any money on Bible, So spend
any money on TV or a bus shelter or whatever
that is. But now we've learned that Google and the
AIS actually reward you for people searching for your brand
for those brand mentions, right, So if someone goes by

(07:14):
a billboard, sees Morgan and Morgan, searches for Morgan and Morgan,
that's a signal to Google that Morgan and Morgan is important.
So it's actually becoming an SEO signal having those traditional
channels out there. With that being said, is I still
talk about that that's not as measurable as digital, right,

(07:35):
Like I don't know how many sign ups I'm getting
from a billboard necessarily. Maybe I put up a tracking
phone number, but that's not going to be super accurate.
Same with the TV spots is a lot of it's
just branding, right, And branding is the top of the funnel.
Digital is more towards the bottom of the funnel, where
someone is raising their hand and saying, hey, I need

(07:55):
your help, I need your service, and so that makes
the conversation much easier. Just kind of explain the way
that the kind of the marketing funnel, kind of that
customer journey is that if someone is searching for you
or has put out the signals you know that they're
searching somehow for your products and your services, they're much
more likely to become a customer. And then just showing

(08:15):
dollars and cents, right, the cost per lead, the cost
per acquisition is going to be much lower on a
digital spend than for anything traditional like Billboard or TV.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
So corporate environments media I focus on a lot on
another podcast that I do, and I've thought about when
the new technology comes in, we know that the disruptor
is going to come into play that we've well, just
look at twenty twenty. We look at traditional linear channels,
cable network television and moving to streaming, and the resource

(08:46):
is being put into basically corner the market on that.
But we've noticed there's always been a regression back. So
in the same thing right now with the lawyers that
you could see, Okay, let's go and try to put
as much as we can into digital, realizing no, we
need to be more of a hybrid now. We actually
still need these traditional linear platforms to continue to be

(09:08):
focusing on all areas. And it's not based on demographics, correct,
it's although we're been in bigraphics for an older demiographic
needs to be relied on for traditional or digitally needs
to be for a younger demographic. Have you ever noticed
that it's not necessarily just that cut and dry.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
It's definitely not that cut and dry, right, because your demographic,
you know, talking to the legal space is different. Legal
practices practice areas are going to target much different people.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
If I'm doing elder law, wills and trusts, that's usually
going to be an elder population. Right, They're not going
to necessarily be online looking for an attorney. They might
even still look at the Yellow Pages. Who knows, right,
they might.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well they use radio still, they're usually broken radio still
do ads or doing uh yeah, it's well they're doing still,
you know. And then of course the programs of like okay,
come on, have dinner with its all Garden and we'll
show you here's how you get a second mortgage or
annuity or whatever. They still do it today. It's it's
so Florida. I'm at that's a cut that that is

(10:09):
par for the course right here. Literally. So yeah, because
of the change here, I haven't really paid too much
attention because listen, I go back and here, we used
to have the only search cast on webass radio. I
had folks that it's a fox squeen telling us all
about things, Danny Sullivan telling is about things we were
falling in love with whatever mac cuts would come across.
The chief content officer at Google then where Danny Tolden

(10:31):
took a rest to that and just knowing, Okay, what's
the next update. Is it gonna be another Florida, a penguin,
a panda, or whatever else they're going.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
To pick whether those animal updates, yep.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
We used to have to follow that and say, oh
my god, here we go again. They're just shaking up
the car, the apple cart. That was something that happened
so much. But now we're the point where search results
along with the AI mode and social media. With an
AI mode, everybody has to have any mode. But one
of the things that I actually just talked about another guest,

(11:02):
we were one of the other networks I handle here
this cannabis radio dot com. So I was talking about
Cannabis Cultivator and once you know, I was talking to
someone was doing a new platform for the cannabis industry,
this Crypto. One of the things we brought up to
the fact was, you know, to do a proprietary AI platform,
you don't want to go and rely on the mainstream
platforms because they're sensoring. Still, there's only their information. They

(11:25):
want to make sure that you see. So to create
the integrity and the reputation to put out a new
proprietary AI platform, I mean, how many are we going
to have out there? And how do we kind of
filter how do we find those that are not going
to be filtered, are not going to be censored? And
how important is that?

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah? No, great, great questions. Right.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
So looking at the generative AI, right when chat Ebt
came out, what is it like two years ago? Now,
it was a complete, you know, watershed moment, right the
damn broke. Everybody's seeing, Wow, this is what generative AI
can do. And everybody has their AI now right like Meta.
You know Mark Zuckerberg, you know has more money than God, right,

(12:10):
so he brings in all the AI experts. You know,
it's going to build up his own thing. Google has Gemini,
and you know, who knows what Apple is going to do.
You know, they might partner with Perplexity. But there's all
these different platforms out there, and a lot of them
are built on top of each other, right, So there's
interconnection between chatch bt, Perplexity, and all the other ones

(12:32):
out there. So for me, I'm not really as concerned
about censoring, but I can totally see for someone who
works in cannabis right where it's hard to even you know,
buy ads, right, so you're doing more SEO because you
can't place ads everywhere for them. That's super important for
my niche. The centering really has 'encrypt in yet. But

(12:54):
what has crept in is people getting legal advice from AI. Right,
So why would I hire in a attorney? Why would
I ask them if I can just ask chatchbt the
same thing?

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Right?

Speaker 3 (13:04):
And that can be kind of scary, right because now
you're getting legal advice just like getting medical advice from
the AI. And that's where I see, you know, kind
of an interesting kind of future. It's like, well, how
is this going to work? People are getting educated from
an AI from a generative AI which knows who knows
where those sources are coming from.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Eric, I think of the quote from Norman Vincent Peale
finally and fill it. And that's the part where I
think where we are right now, where genner to AI. Look,
they're playing their game right now. I'm a fall law
that on on media side, because they're going after intellect
your property. Okay, let's go ahead and go after archives
of all these different publications. We're going to go ahead

(13:45):
for this one hundred million dollars whatever we want to
go into, get into the archives of all these different
magazine publications and newspapers. We want to go back into
the archives, digitize it if it's not already digitized, and
take all that in. But then we're just going to
help support your financially because you're not making enough money
on circulation, not on the phone advertising, not enough on anything.

(14:06):
So let's just go ahead keep you afloat long enough
to take all your intellectual property embed into our system,
and then we're gonna buy you out on penalties and
a dollar and then we can just run the operation
and run the operation because our language arning monitor will
be already set. They're gonna do that already know that's
gonna come up. That's ten years down the line. But
then there's the other area of the alternative to that.

(14:27):
That's fine, there's gonna be a purpose for all those
sites chatting to be Tea, Perplexity and Gemini, absolutely, But
then there's the other AI sites that canna be proprietary.
And I think this is very important, is that there
are gonna be areas that these platforms are not going
to cover, and we need to have other proprietary platforms.
So and they also need the kind of sea they

(14:49):
still need to help up SEO so that they're gonna
be trackable, and I don't know how that's supposed to
work out. So it looks like serfs or search bars
or browsers that matter. I think that we're gonna get
the AI and the traditional search results are gonna go
by the wayside. I think we're moving away from that.
We're gonna go to AI. So if everything just ask

(15:10):
questions and get answers and that's it. Or put this out,
print this out, generate this, that's where we're going next.
That's the next the next decade. For sure, we're gonna
be already at that point. But the search marketing strategies
that are in place that we already know now, they're
still going to apply in the future, aren't they.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
Absolutely? So you bring up a great point, right, So
let's let's analyze that a little bit. Right.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
So, if I look at the Google results before AI,
I had a page with ten links, and through SEO,
your goal with to get on that first page because
nobody goes to page two, right, would say nine to
nine percent of people don't go past page one. So
that was always my objective as an SEO. Let's get
the client optimized. You know, if you're a law firm,
I need to be on page one when someone's searching

(15:56):
for that keyword. Now we have AI over you mentioned
AI mode, which is even a step further, but in
between is aioverviews where it's summarizing the results at the
very top, and it summarizes it based on a very
similar algorithm as those top ten. Right, So there is
still an algorithm behind it where it figures out, Okay,

(16:17):
you have more brand mentions, right, So brand mentions matter
more than links now for example, right, so hey, you
know this podcast might only have ten backlinks, but it
has one hundred thousand mentions, so it's more powerful.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
So I'm going to show at the top of.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Aioverview where I wouldn't show at the top of Google.
So it's still us figuring out and optimizing to make
sure I'm part of that summary of that recommended basically
result from Google. So instead of ten links, now I'm
fighting about over that summary.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
AI mode is taking that even a step.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Further, where now I'm summarizing up that answer, but I'm
still giving the sources, right, so we're still looking where
the as an SEO, where are those sources where it's
coming from? And that actually goes for all AI like
search GBT, on chat GBT. And what's interesting kind of
a real quick trick, right is I can't ask Google
why are you ranking me number one?

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Why is this number two?

Speaker 3 (17:11):
But you can ask chat GBT It'll tell you what
the ranking factors are. And to me, that's actually pretty
more more fun, more interesting because now you can have
a common like imagine you could have back in the
day instead of Matt cuts. You could talk directly to
Google and say, hey, why are these number one? Why
is this number two? Wi is number three? I can
do that with chat GBT now and understand the search results.

(17:33):
So if you want to optimize, just ask it. Just
look at the results and then ask it, why are
these the results that you're using as citations for the answer?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Soberal cool, going want to go and drink field to
the website real quick, Hello Ericritter dot com. So if
everybode knows one word, Hello Eric Ridder dot com. And
let's go to the actual podcast itself. So you make
the point on the program that it's the search Bark podcast.
What is called serving them for your digital marketing to
work successfully? And we've gotten a glutton of podcasts out

(18:06):
there that have been on SEO for years. But also
we know that for some people, I don't know if
I'm to come into the space as you have because
right now you're two seasons in. I mean, he's forty
two episodes I've seen so far recorded, and you know,
there's a lot of new people in the space that
I have not been paid or I just see it's

(18:28):
really changed on who's out there to be talked to
and to also just try to keep up with the
people and connect with them. When you look at it
right now in the SEO space, today because, like I said,
I have not been able to fall too much. I mean,
are there a lot of conferences worth going to, a
lot of networking opportunities that are out there there are
still worthwhile? And what's the world on the ground now

(18:52):
about the constant changes right now of search marketing just
in general, I mean for still playing a lot with
paid organic search and how we're doing it and where
are we putting all the resources into.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for giving my podcast
a shout out. It's still it's still very young, right,
as you mentioned, just kind of getting off the ground,
getting started. But fun fact, when I got I'm not
going to say the year, but when I got my
master's degree in advertising, I did my thesis on podcasting
and advertising on podcasting, right, and so I've been interested

(19:27):
in podcasting, you know, even from an educational intellectual standpoint
for a very long time. And so, but getting into
SEO right and kind of the conferences word on the
ground is there is a lot of fear, right, there's
a lot of fear just like a lot of the
other industries about AI taking away jobs and can AI
do a lot of the things that seos would do?

(19:50):
Absolutely right. But in my opinion is it's another tool
that makes you quicker, makes you more efficient, and can
help you out. But you still need the brain, the
human brain. You still need a strategy, you still need
to give it direction, you still need to quality control it.
And that's the way we need to position ourselves towards clients.
We're not just a door a tactician anymore. And we're

(20:12):
going to do the SEO for you. We are your advisor,
we're your partner. That isn't gonna just do SEO. But
it's going to help you get found online. What does
that mean.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's going to get you more lead? What does that
mean it's going to get you more revenue?

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (20:24):
So, some of the SEO conferences I like is SEO
spring Break, which is out in Arizona.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
It's once a year. Shout out to them. They do
a fantastic job. I know SMX is still alive and kicking.
I haven't personally been in ten years, but I stit
it once in a while. For search marketing ever since
you know, you mentioned Danny Sullivan, who's now you know.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
The head of Search. He's a search liaison. That's what
it is.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
A search liaison at Google right ever since he left
sm Search Marketing Expo and Search markets has never been
the same quite frankly, you know, so they got very corporate.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Some of the the tracks that they've had on there
and some of the agenda they've had on there for
sessions and education, they get very repetitive. They haven't really
changed too much. They don't allow of new people in
this space. Yeah, and that was the.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Part where wet with them, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
I mean, they don't get me wrong. You know, we
dealt with the with both of those conmerces back in
the Bay, you know, and there's like a pub con
still a thing that still happens, and it's still very common.
But yes, you know at the end of the day,
and that's one of the only ones we kind of
still keep up with at all, if there is. But
you know, it's I want to give them to the
point about podcast advertising, because that's very interesting you bring
that up. And I also know that you know, through

(21:36):
your work there's a lot where you'd work on your
ad professor also your studio of South Florida. You're based
in Tampa, you know, so yes, very familiar. I got
a nie that's just finishing up our masters right now
South Florida right now for public health. And you know,
almost a long time Buccaneers fan for many years. So
Tampa always.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Finish Tampa based what we'd like to call ourselves exactly.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
So there there have been some areas where we've learned
about what advertising and podcasting because of that thesis. I
thought it was really important. Yeah, they've been always see
the radio outlet, so Odyssey and west Wood One. They've
put out podcasting surveys out there, and they they've mentioned
about in their perceptions that in the last eleven years,
nine out of ten marketers and immediate agencies say they

(22:19):
have discussed podcasts advertising for potential investment and consideration, surging
to a eleven year high. Seventy four percent of brands
and agencies are likely to consider advertising a podcasts and
spending attention jumps to sixty nine percent. So there's interest
in there. Obviously, we know that in the terms of advertising,
you know they're gonna go with promo codes or not.
They're going to want to look at cost per measurement

(22:41):
and the importance of that, and they don't necessarily want
to put a full investment and just trust of the
spot or the host or that podcast is going to
be able to go and deliver leads back to them.
So teamy to that part about in the area of
advertising for podcasts. You know, for those that want to
have their own podcasts, they want to try to get
out avertising and get the reach for more advertising to

(23:03):
come the damn so get aside for the programgrammatic ads
that all the podcasts hosts provide tos. I mean, it's
nice to get a little bit kicked back on that,
but I could always use more, always find more advertisers
out there. What will you say about that part? For
those aspiring podcasters, I want to be able to find
more advertising help.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, now, so so two things.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
So my thesis real quick was about basically ads versus
live reads, right, kind of the programmatic versus kind of
a sponsor read. And then the placement beginning or middle
of the podcast which ones are the most effective?

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Right? And so I ran that study.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
And you know, spoiler alert, it was live read sponsorships
at the beginning were most well received.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Right.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
So that was kind of my hypotheses, and that was
the thesis. And and I can attest to that, right,
So if someone reads it.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's gonna like a host.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
It's mean much different than just an ad all of
a sudden interrupting the podcast.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Right.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
And So to your point, how can I as a
podcaster get more, get more ad revenue, and get interest
from advertisers. And this is advice I give to everyone
that I didn't necessarily follow until recently, which is number one,
Know your target audience and niche down. So be very
focused on who you're targeting with your podcast to build

(24:26):
up a loyal following, a loyal listener base that will.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Continuously listen to you.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Right, So don't be all over the place, don't have
guests from all different.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Reaches of the world.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
If your goal truly is monetization, my opinion is definitely
specialize in one area continue to build that up, because
then you can easily go to an advertiser, to a sponsor, or, whatever,
and say this is these are my numbers, this is
who my target audience is, and these numbers are continuously

(24:59):
growing because I'm becoming a subject matter expert in that
area and I'm going to continue to grow the podcast
and get you more and more listeners.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Now, in that line of thinking, for those podcasters that
want to have constou sustainability because one of the things
I've always noticed with a lot of podcasts now is
that if they stick to a driven niche and they
kind of they find their will, well, they find their lane,
they stay in it. I can't do that myself because again,
I do four different podcasts, and even in the podcast

(25:29):
that I do now, there are certain subjects I know
I can come back to and I could reach it
every week. But the thing is it is trying to
go after trying to find advertisers to know, Okay, this
is the trust they're going to talk about this particular subject,
the content they're going to put out there is going
to get consistent results. Fine, but the one thing is
I don't want to as a podcaster the fact I

(25:52):
have the freedom to go and talk about different topics.
I don't want to be held down to one different
area just to get after advertising for that. So what
do you say about that part where you know that
the advertisers that will are willing to go and spend
they expect the constantency of the same, But I also
could be handicapping the podcast from really going forward and

(26:16):
growing an audience.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, no, that's a great question, right.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
So my point is, if that's your only goal is
I want to grow, I want to get revenue, and
I don't care about anything else.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
To your point, that might be super fucking boring.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I don't know if I can curse on the podcast,
but I did bleed that in right, Okay, So I
would get fucking bored if I just talk about one
thing all the time.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
So I totally get that, right.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
But if your goal is just to monetize the podcast,
go for one audience, talk about the one thing over
and over. But if you want to actually build an
audience that's listening to you, that cares about you because
you're making fun equips, you have great jokes, or you
have something else, then.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Go ahead and do that.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
And because then you're actually building something that might be more,
that might be long term, and you're not going to
burn out.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
So one of the areas I think follow me this
little bit a little bit out there on a tangent,
but where so one of my programs is called The
Praise than the Bocher's and part of it was that
was a show that I re generated. I had originally
started as call when I'm Out podcasting, so it just
stuck on several subjects and rotate on those. They were
kind of wide open. But then I took the stats

(27:27):
from that, I realized, Okay, there's certain subjects that people
who really wanted me to talk about when it comes
to anything is more adult, more sexual, dating, culture or
society related. So I created the praising the bochers and
just evolved the show from that. So I got it
now to a certain format and kind of the idea
where I came from with it was that all the
talks I used to watch, you know, in the nineties,
like if it's you know, Montell Williams or Jerry Springer

(27:49):
or specificly Morri Povits, you know, there's like five types
of episodes you're gonna watch. Okay, it's the ones about
the portunity tests, the ones about the lie to the
thictor tests. You know which ones they are. But it's
like consistently, Okay, that rotation right there, hamster Wiel people
kind of stated of that, But that's that rotation that
keeps you in your lane but also doesn't keep you

(28:09):
to micromanaged. And that's the part where I think some
of the podcasters out there and some of the even
concent creators in general, because even when we talk about
this for a contragration as a whole, that people will
go so micro natche to one spot. They'll be viral
for a minute and they fade out, and then they
have to find a way to get themselves back up
because they've lost some of their luster, some of that

(28:29):
popularity has gone by the wayside. I get that all
the time. I'll get into something right there so many
videos and so on, and then I just kind of
lose interest and I'll follow unfollow, And I bet you
that happens all the time. So in that area, that's
one of those things I thought would be if I
could get an advertised to buy on board and say, listen,

(28:50):
I got five the resumptions gonna talk about. Okay, so
it might be dating, it might be about sugar daddies,
it might be about OnlyFans models, and like there's like
four or five. I know, I'll just come back to
and regurgitate unless there's something else to add to the mix.
But like, I know what my audience gets. I fall along.
It's a younger audience as well. They're gonna just kind
of work with me on this and I'll know what

(29:12):
they're going to bring up and figured out other subjects
I can also talk about as well that also help. Now,
an interesting point in this particular study I took from
Westwood One in odysty Arnie Simski, who is a longtime
media consultant to work with BBDO worldwide so advertising aint
dis experience. He's a media consultant today he talks about
a five percent solution. Quote, it's time for brands to

(29:34):
get serious and allocate five percent of digital budgets to podcasting.
Is that a good amount or do you think it
should be more?

Speaker 3 (29:43):
So, it really depends on your goal, your industry, right,
what you're trying to do. I think personally it should
be more. Let me just get that out of the way,
right number one. Number two, I really like, if you
want to do branding, you want to get yourself out there,
you want to get in front of the right people,
then I think podcasting is a great solution.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Right.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
So for example, if you're even if you're a local business, right,
there's local podcasts out there, and I think that's what
most people don't realize.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Right, I'm in Tampa Bay.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
There's plenty of local podcasters that are talking about things
to do with your family or restaurants opening or whatever.
If you can connect with them, you know, that's fantastic
because they're going to have a loyal following that's already
built up there. So I think podcasting is really an undiscovered,
untapped media part of the media mix that we need

(30:37):
to tap in much more, you know. And to your point,
I think what scares off people is it is newer.
It is not maybe as easily measurable. But then look
at radio. I mean, radio still works as well. We
talked about, you know, older population listen to radio, but
here's the twist is it's younger people listening to these podcasts,

(30:58):
you know. And I think a lot of people, you know,
especially in the old established media world, how the preconcept,
Oh it's just like radio and write it off and like, no,
it's not at all fucking like radio. It's radio on steroids,
you know. And it continuously to continues to grow. So
if you find you know, the right formula, you find
the right people. I think you need to allocate much

(31:20):
more than five percent towards podcasting.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Now. In some of the subjects you talk about on
the search Bar podcast, one of the areas that was
really interesting. It was that you do talk about some
of the website builders, so WordPress or you know, I
think about the fact that you know, web development and
web design has changed so much and how important it
is towards the search ability of your website. Wicks has

(31:46):
put a lot more money in, a lot more investment
in the SEO now more than ever. I don't know
if it's been made. It did in the game, and
I know we Webmaster do. We actually had a chance
to go and get them. The advertised with us for
a while and I was great to go and you know,
have them give that chance to go and talk more
about it. Then there's Kinston Now that's like the alternative
WordPress is trying to go and get them in obviously
because WordPress had a bunch of issues with WV and

(32:09):
there's certain areas with some of the modules they have
on there to go and work on things. But in
some areas you've talked about, you know, keeping WordPress sites
secure and other various series you've also talked about well
as social media, marketing, local service ads. So when you
determine what topics to talk about when you've had them
on obviously you had guests again and support with all

(32:29):
these but what have been the areas in SEO Right
now of your podcast you can see for the analytics
what have gotten the most response.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Anything AI related? Quite frankly, anytime we're.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
Talking about AI and anything, and this isn't so much
my podcast, but just in general, I've found that when
it's more hands on, more how to this is how
to do it, that's been really successful for me as well.
On there is really just kind of the hands on
and than anything AI related.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
It's so funny, like in my industry, I don't know
how it is for you, like with podcasting everything else,
But anytime I'm talking to someone, as soon as the
word AI said, their eyes get big. That's all they
want to talk about. It's the point where I'm kind
of sick and tired of it, Like how is AI
going to.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Inge your industry? You know?

Speaker 3 (33:17):
And it's and I'm and don't get me wrong, I'm
not I'm never going to get tired of talking about it,
but I'm like, there's so much else going on. AI
is just the new shiny object. But everything that we did,
like even said, is you know, SEO is still going
to be a lot the same you know, AI is
just another platform that we need to optimize our clients for.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Period amazing work. Now, well, that said, what are some
of the Are there any area there is you could
tell me about what you have in the works right
now of what the show's focus is going to be
on more. I mean, obviously you have to talk about AIS,
you know, just it's there, it's in front of us.

(33:57):
But what are the other areas? I think that's still
kind of hold out on me. Are there any areas
you ever talked about when it comes to black hat
or if you were talking about any publica content or
going areas of you know, where paid organic content go,
anything like that at all? I mean, and that's another
great question is that you know, do you ever delve
into the black hat tactics or how do you how

(34:18):
do you feel about that part? Or do you just
stay as much white hat as possible?

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah? So a great question. So first of all, what
is black hat versus white hat? Right?

Speaker 3 (34:26):
So, black hat is that you're using tactics that Google
explicitly says don't do these. White hats is that you're
following line by line this is what Google says to
do right. My philosophy on it is you want to
be competitive and do whatever it takes to get your
client up there.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
So if the other people are.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Doing it and being successful, that means that you should
be doing it as well. Us you're doing your client
at this service. So that's my quick answer to it
is I call it gray hat. So you're still guided
by white hat by doing the right thing, but it's
okay to step a little bit, kind of put your
toes a little bit in the water of other tactics

(35:05):
that others are doing as well, or else you're not
going to be as successful with your work as others
are for their clients.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
So it's amazing how much work you are doing right
now in terms of being able to put out doing
the professor work right, teaching classes, doing this podcast, and
also working on people you know obviously doing services out
there as well as the SEO Somalia. Also you have
the website Digital Neighbor. I have a chance to about
that either, but what are you going to do to

(35:34):
that as well? So you have a team of devoted,
passionate experience digital marketers following the mantra mister Rogers a
Strategers neighborhood, be kind, be kind and be kind. So yes,
take me into that part. And what Digital Neighbor does
is to prove an seal partner.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yeah yeah, so real quick. So seamiers me personally. I'm
a strategist. I'm a fractional CMO. I kind of help
law firms grow, right, That's what I'm all about. I
have an agency, Digital Neighbor, I started nine years ago
based on the teaching of my childhood hero that you mentioned,
mister Rogers Neighborhood. Mister Rogers was all about being kind,

(36:12):
about meeting other people where they are, respecting them and
doing the right thing. And that's what we do at
Digital Neighbor is. We don't want to just be another vendor,
another expense. We want to be a true partner with
skin in the game or we care about you. So
we are roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty,

(36:32):
do the SEO, build your website, do the ppc ads,
run the campaigns, get you more business, get you more leads.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
And I have a fantastic team there.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Most of the people, by the way, know me as
a professor, so I started as a professor. They come
in as an intern, then they eventually start working for me.
They get trained up in everything. So people have been there,
you know, the agencies nine years old. People have been
there for eight years. You know, it took me a
year to hire first people. People have been there eight year,
six years, five years, and we do kick ass SEO.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
There one last question. I wanted to get back into
the area of advertising and podcasting. Yeah, just because the
area of CPM was very interesting to me. There was
another three came out, but this was late last year.
Lives In, one of the big podcast hosts with the
one I actually got on my podcast with it. Initially,
they had put out podcast advertising rates the highest and
most successible CPM categories, and when they put down in

(37:26):
August twenty twenty four, they said the average CPM rate
for a sixty second ad twenty one dollars twenty five cents. God,
that's low, minor decrease compared to what it was the
previous month. But the three highest CBO categories would be Government,
Technology and Health of Fitness twenty nine dollars, twenty nine
dollars and twenty four dollars respectively. Still, that's just not
that much that podcasters get on this in here so

(37:49):
I mean, what should it be if you were to
tell these podcasts hosts are because now every one of
these podcasts hosts are offering programmatic advertising. It's there, and
you know, we can't get control what the content is
more or less, we kind of beholding to what they're
going to have. They're now enforcing where I'm at speaker
right now, and they're en forcing to put more ads
into the mix because they say, well, people can tolerate

(38:11):
having you know, minute long ads, you know, every ten minutes.
So they're trying to actualize Oh but at the same time,
you're biking the money back. Okay, fine, So it's the
part of the best way to maximize revenue by finding
more advertisers to give you a bigger CPM. What kind
of CPM can you charge or can you claim? And

(38:33):
then if you're on YouTube, which I'm I don't know
if you're contents on YouTube or not, but a lot
of people doing for podcasting on YouTube obviously it's one
of the biggest places to find podcasts. You want to
find that modetization for youtubere for creators and be able
to go and get the whatever their CPM is for
what they're getting from it. What's the better place to
make sure you get more revenue for your podcast to

(38:55):
get turned around.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
So, first of all, I want to say something might
be controversial to add on I said earlier, right, which is,
if you're doing a podcast, choose a niche and stay
in that lane. Right, And we can disagree about that.
That's my personal opinion. Choose that niche, keep talking about it.
Number two, think YouTube first. So when you're creating a podcast,
think about how it's going to play on YouTube, because

(39:18):
that's how.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
You're going to grow it.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
That's how you're going to get more subscribers, and that's
where you're going to make the most money. Average YouTube
CPM is two to fifteen dollars. You can get up
to twenty dollars cpm as to what I typically see
on YouTube. By being on YouTube, you're going to get
more viewers, right because people turn on YouTube in the
background and they're watching it, they're getting they're going to bed,
they're working, they're cooking. They're going to be watching your

(39:41):
podcast in the background. And that's going to be revenue
for you there. Because you just make a playlist your podcast,
people are going to go through them and you're going
to make money that way. So that's my recommendation is
think YouTube first, and then from a CPM standpoint, tip
you mentioned ones that are even higher than that. I
typically see twenty kind of as the top seed.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
I am trying so hard to work on getting my
content over on YouTube to go ahead monetize because right
now my YouTube channel, it's got the subscriber count. I
got over five hundred. Finally hit that marker and watch ours,
I am at what twenty two fifty I think it
is in three thousand is what's required in a full

(40:22):
calendar year. So I'm working on it, and now I
know that the biggest thing I gotta do is retention
to keep you able to go in and stay on
and watch and stay with the content, so I get
more towards where I need to get to that goal
to finally monetize. And it's been so hard a climb,
I'll tell you. I think it started with twenty seventeen.
I really started putting into real effort and getting the

(40:44):
content up there. So again, eight years later, I still
haven't reached this mark yet. But I also have to
change it because some of my content as adults, so
I can't just put it out there and make it
free for every ready, so I've had that barrier to
go against.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, but it's been very difficult.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Now. I don't disagree completely on the idea of if
it's staying in one niche and then sticking with it.
I think there is something to be said where I
mentioned about the rotation a little bit. If there's a
little bit, yeah, staying in the content.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
Right, as long as it's all around that same kind
of pillar content, right, you got the pillar, you know,
and then you have things going around it. I think
that's perfectly good good right.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
And that's the part where I see, like, okay, and
there's always certain subjects that they're out there. Okay, if
it's like a dating show, it's the same kind of
people to come on board say the same thing. Okay, patriarchy, whatever,
this and that, misogyny, it's all this kind of stuff.
It's like, okay, we've heard it over and over. Just
find a little bit of something where it's your that lane.
And I think you can find a rotation so that

(41:40):
you're not just sticking to the same subject and you
can find a way to get up there and you
know that I can see where that works out for
podcasters out there if they're going to do that, because again,
with podcasting, you're not gonna be able to go and
service everybody because people come into podcasting you're not you're
looking for something. It's all variety. You have to kind
of narrow down what you're content tent is. I can

(42:00):
agree with that too, And that's.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
One of the differences between podcasting and radio. You know,
on radio, you're speaking to a more brighter, brought a
broader audience potentially, But on a podcast, you know, it's
almost like going to a certain you know, a very
certain program on the radio show on TV, and that's
where you're expecting to this same thing over and over.
Like you said, you know, like the nineties talk shows, right,

(42:23):
that was definitely still near and dear to my heart.
If you haven't seen the Jerry Springer documentary on Netflix,
definitely worth checking out of what actually happened by this se.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
I thought they did a pretty good representation representation. But yeah,
that that's one of those where like talk about a
show that made their way and then they just you know,
was it a Richard Dominic that was the guy that
created the really got the series going off with going
like that and just said, Okay, you want to get advertised,
you want to get the ratings, you have to keep
hitting the same thing over and over.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
And they did.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, and they ran into the ground. But that's okay.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Maybe to the extreme, took a load to the extreme,
but absolutely it was successful for a reason because they
knew their audience and knew what buttons to push every time.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, exactly. So there are a couple of websites to make
sure to mention Hello, Eric Ritter dot com. That's for
the SEO Somalia and that's wh where you do really
the illegal SEO work, Digital Neighbors, the agency work you
have there available for people, anything else you want to
make sure we mention people before we get to move along.
And also in the SEO Smali you can find the podcast.

(43:24):
You can find on both websites chrets.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah, absolutely, so you can go to either website find
the search bar podcast. I really enjoy working with law firms.
So if you're a law firm and you know a
law firm that needs help with se O or their marketing,
check me out at Digital Neighbor dot com. And UH
would love to do a free audit or strategy session
with your law firm.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Can you guys make all that money off all these
different cases. You got the money to go and spend
with Eric, so go do that, all right, Digital Labor
dot com Hello Eric Ritter dot com and thanks for
being on again. And also catch the search bar podcast
find on those websites and also where we've rEFInd podcasts.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Eric. Thanks you.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you being on
with us. Really really have it. Enjoy having you on
today and going through all.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
This this was a pleasure this way. I had a blast.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, my pleasure is buying and so listeners, thank you
for finding podcasters really joys. Do then a little redesign
of the website. It's not perfect. It's WordPress, and I'm
not paying for it, so I'm doing what i can
to go ahead and get the word out there. But
it's an all one for all my podcasts included this
program of course, two episodes a month and all my
mother content. King of Podcasts dot com and we'll talk

(44:33):
to you next time.

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