Hey there, SEO enthusiasts! This week, we're bringing you an insightful chat with Zak Ali, the brains behind the US market of finder.com. If you’ve ever wondered how Google's recent algorithm updates and AI advancements are shaking things up for publishers, you won’t want to miss this one.
We kicked things off with a look at the Google Helpful Content Update – a real curveball for big publishers, including affiliate sites like Finder. Zak shared his thoughts on the turbulence and how AI is flipping the open web on its head.
The hot topic of AI mode in search results, especially with its current US focus, took centre stage. We explored how Finder navigates AI overviews and the shift towards zero-click searches. Spoiler alert: while traffic might take a hit, the quality of leads can actually improve.
We also chatted about ranking in AI results. It’s not just about keywords anymore; it’s about being quoted. Zak emphasised the importance of concise, skimmable content – think of it as crafting every piece for a featured snippet. Plus, the role of video content and enticing titles came up as potential game-changers.
Zak didn’t hold back on where he thinks SEO is heading. The future seems to favour those who can blend creativity with technical finesse, and those who build genuine, memorable user experiences on their sites.
For all you SEO warriors out there, the takeaway is clear: diversify your presence, keep your content concise and user-friendly, and always be ready to adapt. Oh, and don’t forget to engage with your audience beyond just the written word.
As always, thanks for tuning in to The SEO Show. Let's keep the conversation going – we'd love to hear what you think about AI and SEO's future!
[00:00:00] Sponsor Mention and Show Introduction
[00:00:44] Guest Introduction: Zak Ali from finder.com
[00:02:02] Discussing AI's Impact on SEO and Publishers
[00:03:28] AI and Zero-Click Searches: Effects on Traffic and Lead Quality
[00:04:41] Strategies for Ranking in AI-Driven Search Results
[00:07:07] The Evolving Role of Content and SEO
[00:09:28] Adapting to AI: Challenges and Opportunities for Publishers
[00:16:08] Future Predictions and Tactical SEO Adjustments
[00:21:13] SEO and AI Integration: Tools and Techniques
[00:35:21] Conclusion and Guest Contact Information
[00:00:00] Michael: Google claims 50 leads, Facebook claims 30, and your CRM shows 25. So who's lying? Nobody. They're just measuring differently. FormOrigin shows you the truth. See exactly which campaigns drive real leads with FormOrigin.IO that's F O R M Origin dot IO. Let's get into the show.
[00:00:22] Intro & Outro: It's time for the SEO show, where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.
[00:00:44] Michael: Howdy, SEO people. Michael here. And this week on the SEO Show, I was joined by Zach Ali. He's the general manager of the US market for finder.com, the big affiliate comparison type website. It's an Australian website, but it's got a global presence. And look, those guys are at the forefront of what's going on out there from a publisher's point of view with SEO with AI right now, obviously the Google helpful content update threw a massive spanner in the works for big publishers, for big affiliate sites. So we touched on that. But the bulk of the chat is on the topic that's on everyone's lips right now. AI, AI mode coming to Google in the search results, particularly in the US.
[00:01:27] Michael: At the moment, but soon enough the world.
[00:01:29] Michael: We had a chat with Zach about what Finder are seeing, how they're going about getting visibility in AI overviews and AI mode on Google, what he thinks is going on, what the LLMs are looking at, where you can influence them on your own sites, a little bit about the future of SEO and where things are headed for us all. So it was a great chat. I think you guys will find it interesting. So that's enough for me. Let's throw now to our chat with Zach Ali, gminder.com us about all things SEO, AI. Let's go.
[00:02:02] Michael: Hi, Zach. So tell me, as a publisher right now with all of the Google recent algorithm updates, helpful content updates, now there's like AI overviews potentially stealing traffic. How are things in your world right.
[00:02:16] Zak: Now@Finder.Com so it's been a tumultuous few years, I'd say. Um, algorithm updates always take you for a whirl. And as most SEOs will tell you, the HCU was pretty rough run for a lot of publishers. The recovery still seems out of sight for a lot of folks. Despite, you know, Google giving its guidance about creating people first content. It just seems like nothing seems to work. But. But now with the emergence of AI, I'm actually quite excited that the open Web is going to be sort of flipped on its head and hopefully in a good way. I think there's going to be some cons to it but I'm really looking forward to seeing how the SEO community and publishers at large sort of adapt to it.
[00:03:04] Michael: Nice. Well let's chat about that where it's a word on everyone's lips at the moment. AI, LLM, geo, whatever you want to call it. People still arguing what to call it but what are you seeing on your side in know, in a, in a broader sense now with AI overviews with AI mode in the us which isn't even here in Australia yet. But what are you seeing in those sort of I guess early days of this.
[00:03:28] Zak: So we're definitely seeing its effect on traffic. Zero click search is real. There are some bright spots to it but you know like the quality of lead that LLM send is higher that so far has panned out for us. But the, in terms of just sheer volume to the website, I do think there is some headwinds on the way for publishers who are experiencing Google in its current state. We're seeing AIOS surface more for more queries, especially informational queries. They're also showing up on transactional queries. Not every transactional query but you do see them mid funnel. So it is a, you know it is going to change the nature of search and how we measure sort of success. I think there's a lot of stakeholder management that should probably be taking place right now in the US in terms of why where did all the traffic go? Well it's, you know, it's there, we're just getting impressions, you know there's going to be a bit of a convert. Awkward conversation I think but we're seeing that for sure on our end. How it's sort of affected already be monthly traffic numbers.
[00:04:41] Michael: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess ranking in a site like yours, you know, massive content driven site, maybe pushing people through affiliate links, ranking. Google has always been about ensuring you have like a keyword optimized piece of content, maybe some keyword rich backlinks, overall domain authority, good internal linking, all that sort of stuff. With AI mode, how do you rank in AI results so to speak? What are you, are you seeing any. And of course we're all figuring it out as we go at the moment. So what are you seeing? Maybe it's not scientific in your studies but how are you appearing in AI results at the moment?
[00:05:20] Zak: Yeah, yeah. And good to preface all best guesses on this end but I think one thing that has been interesting for us. Where we have seen some success is it's not necessarily about ranking. Right. It's about being quoted and sort of viewing it from that perspective. It allows you to tailor the copy to be a little bit more direct and concise. I think we're prioritizing clarity in ways that we hadn't before. I think, you know, writers, editors are the more creative side of life, like to introduce a lot of pros into their writing. And I think as it relates to LLMs, you're, you might, they might be looking for a more direct, precise answer that they can then feed to the user. In a way, tailoring your copy for LLMs feels like a double edged sword. And it's like, you know, we're going to get the, maybe we might get the visibility on the side of the result but people aren't clicking into it. And so the value exchange between the creator and the LLM isn't there. The way it was where it was like the 10 blue links in the creator. But there is some interesting. Yeah, there's some interesting metrics we've seen. There is one article that we wrote, it wasn't in the AI mode, but it was in the AIO that we wrote. It was a Robinhood related article and we'd actually done a video and we had done a written piece of content and both of them showed up in the IO and so in March we didn't have the video. In April we did and we actually saw traffic to the website go up in April by 25% after adding the video. So it was one of those things that sort of goes against the norm in that traffic. We did see an increase. We saw growth despite the AI overview being on the result.
[00:07:07] Michael: Right. So you've done the video, embedded it in the page that the AI sources.
[00:07:13] Zak: Yes.
[00:07:13] Michael: And then maybe does it, does it show in the serps as like a video thumbnail or something like that that's increasing click through or something or what are you sort of suspecting is causing that?
[00:07:24] Zak: I have a theory that that is playing a role that using the thumbnail as instead of the random stock image that, you know, sites tend to do is actually playing pretty well. That actually leads me to like another theory I have and why that video has increased is that the title tag is not generic on that one. It's a, it's one where it's like, you need to read this first. I can't remember exactly what it says, but it's read this before signing up or something like that. Something that I were a user, it would catch my eye. Despite getting the straight information, I'd be like, ooh, can I trust the aio? This, this thing on the side is telling me I need to read this first. So I have a theory that you almost, the publishers almost need to go back to. You know, all rows will lead back to the title tag, but treat the thumbnail and the title like. Almost like YouTube. How you would YouTube to. To prioritize CTRL above all else and being enticing.
[00:08:20] Michael: Okay, and so with that video, is it a YouTube video that is then embedded on your site and the traffic comes through to your site, or does it go to the actual video itself and then you're relying on the traffic coming from the video back to your site?
[00:08:33] Zak: I think it's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column b. So the YouTube video ranks and then there's also the YouTube embed on the article itself. So we have two results in the AIO. So we're featured twice. We have like double exposure. So if people who want to watch and listen, they have that option and the people who care to read have that. But I think that sort of leads me to like what we're actually seeing that the role of a publisher or an SEO is changing, that you almost have to be everywhere. You can't just be a web content expert anymore. It's no longer just about the written word. It's evolved now to being in video platform platforms, to being on forum sites, to being on social media, which is really interesting because those were always siloed marketing disciplines and now they're sort of combining to. Where the SEO is. Is the, the catch all title for just someone who knows how to get visibility.
[00:09:28] Michael: Yeah, well, I actually saw the, the label search everywhere optimization you might have seen banded about on LinkedIn lately, which kind of. I kind of like that compared to like, you know, people are trying to push GEO or AIO or these different terms. LLMO kind of thing doesn't really have the snappiness of SEO, does it?
[00:09:47] Zak: And no, it's all SEO. I think those terms are. Won't be there three months from now.
[00:09:51] Michael: Yeah, no, they won't be. Everyone's scrambling at the moment and trying to keep on top of things. So I guess like. So that makes sense, like being in the different places that these AIs will sort of draw from when formulating a result. What do you. In terms of content? So you're saying shorten, I guess, brevity, concise content is there Anything else you're seeing with structure, the way you're writing things, are you changing anything on Finder? Because, you know, back in the day, you used to have to go super deep and almost add in waffle at one point to ranking Google, but now we're sort of going the other way, trying to get. It's like trying to get in featured snippets, isn't it? In a way.
[00:10:29] Zak: Exactly. That's basically what the. Our content's turning into. It's just one big approach to featured snippets, to being sourced and quoted. And it is true that. So the content's not brief itself. So we are trying to cover the full funnel in the content. And there's another example of us winning where I think that's why it's because we are not only doing the top, but we're doing the mid and the bottom all in one article. But the way we're structuring the content is so much less paragraph heavy. It's not walls and walls of text. And I just don't think that's how the Internet audience reads anymore. Or if people still read, they scan, they look for the really precise piece of information that they want and if they can pull that out, almost like how LLMs work, that's what they're looking for. And they'll feel like they had a good experience. And so we're trying to make our content skimmable but memorable as well. And I think that last point is really something that is going to be more and more important with less volume to the sites.
[00:11:32] Michael: And are you doing that based on your own human assessment of the site, or are you using tools? Are you using AI itself to help, I guess, inform how you go about doing this?
[00:11:45] Zak: Definitely. I mean, I think if you're not using AI right now, there's something wrong. It can be such a great research tool. It can help you phrase your content in a way that's more easily understood. Remove the EM dashes, which I'm upset about because I used those before AI, but now I feel like people use them. They think you use ChatGPT, but it is, yeah, definitely we're using. We're using AI. ChatGPT, Claude Gemini, any way to speed up the workflow. We make sure that everything is still given a strong editorial review. And a lot of, I would say still 99% of the content on our site is written by actual experts, actual humans. But we're definitely augmenting parts of the workflow where we can. With AI.
[00:12:36] Michael: Yeah. And where do you see it headed, I guess long term because I sort of see people say, you know, you need to add to the content that's out there, try and create new angles or provide value that others aren't providing in their content to have a chance to be featured as one of the sources as well. But then I hear, you know, zero click search happens. So the incentives are not aligned anymore. Why are people going to, I guess spend time doing that? We're sort of at this weird juncture where the incentive to invest in creating this content is going to disappear. But like, as Google turns into being like one of these AI things, it's sort of the only ticket in game. Well, AI will be. So where do you see things heading in this regard?
[00:13:23] Zak: You know it's funny, I'm not sure if you read the Google guidance they gave out to where basically they're saying like measure your traffic differently, you know, and add unique stuff. And it was almost like they were asking you for new information to help them train their models. And you're right, the exchange of value is, it's tbd. Right now we're not sure if we do add the unique content, the videos, the graphics, the original research, what are we getting in return from that? Being cited is fine. And certainly there's a case to be made that the more you're featured, the more brand recognition you'll have and then that'll trickle through into other areas of your business. But a lot of businesses are traffic dependent truly. And so I'm not sure how you navigate that really. Like that's something that I think is an area where we're gonna have to wait and see. And I think one thing that's going to be interesting is if the value exchange is not there for the creator anymore, where are they going to go? Are they going to be prioritizing YouTube and podcasts and newsletters? Are they going to be trying to build more one to one relationships with their audience? I certainly think they will. And I know Finder certainly is going down that track as well to be much less traffic dependent business and offer a lot more utility. But on top of that I feel like it's going to be a really interesting next 12 months.
[00:14:48] Michael: I'll say that yeah, it's a total state of upheaval potentially. I guess we also have to remember a lot we're very close to this, working in this world and using AI nonstop ourselves. But they've large swathes of people out there that haven't replaced Google with AI yet. I think Google pushing AI mode will be the big distribution game changer for this sort of stuff and it remains to be seen what happens when that is rolled out fully. They need to make money still, don't they? Off off ad clicks which it's a massive upheaval in their own business. So they're sort of a between a rock and a hard place.
[00:15:23] Zak: Oh totally. I mean when it was released that Safari saw Google searches down, going down for the first time in 23 years their ST still hasn't recovered from that that point and I think we all know that their ad business is their cash cow. And without that how are they. Yeah, they're not going to be the Google we know and love that's giving away all these fruit free tools or basically they won't they they were a company that was so valuable they became a verb itself to Google things. And so what is the post Google monopoly look like or will we even get that when they, when they roll out a mode? You know they're brilliant engineers and marketing people over there. Will they figure out a way to monetize it so that they, they're. They're still the same old company that we've always known. Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:08] Michael: Interesting times. So let's come back to I guess tactical stuff, what you're seeing out there. Short, concise content makes a lot of sense. Being in multiple places makes a lot of sense. You know anecdotally on our side we said that building brand is super important. Branded third party links, that sort of stuff. Are you seeing any other stuff either that you can do on your site or off site in terms of authority, in terms of brand, whatever that are influencing your visibility in the LLMs.
[00:16:43] Zak: So what's really interesting is that LLMs can understand, we'll use that word for just clarity's sake, content. And so I think mentions are going to have a play a role in a way or a similar role to what backlinks used to. You know it may not be about the backlink anymore but about the mention when it's all said and done if or at least it says equally important to ranking now. So I do think like it is very important still to focus on making sure that your brand is mentioned on high profile sites. I don't think backlinks are going anywhere. It is a really good metric for determining credibility. I think there's just no other way around it but perhaps there are other ways as well to influence it. So one of the ways that I think that makes a lot of sense is to be on every platform and to not only be on every platform, but to have like the human within the organization also associated. So you're creating the entity web essentially that, that demonstrates your credibility. So you're getting mentioned and you're getting backlinks, but also your editors or your writers or the CEO or the founders are also getting now mentioned on things and they're, and so they're bringing it all together to build this profile on you that shows that okay, this, this is someone worth citing. This is someone the users are going to resonate with because they've demonstrated credibility.
[00:18:08] Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, it's not like sort of pigeonholing yourself into just SEO anymore. It's being very, I guess holistic for want of a better term in how you go about it. And that I guess big, bigger brands, legitimate brands with resources that makes sense. But where does this leave things for? I guess smaller publishers that don't have the resources, maybe they use AI to put themselves everywhere. It's going to be interesting to see how. Because the great thing about Google was that smaller brands could compete with big, big brands in the search engine real estate. There's so much opportunity out there and we see a potential future where only these bigger brands that can afford to do this brand building, to have these human advocates for them to spend the time into being everywhere will succeed.
[00:18:58] Zak: I think the, the area where they can fight back most is to make sure is to leave have that memorable content, that content that is, really leaves an impression on you. And I think with AI for one, I don't think AI written content is deranked or devalued in any ways unless it's like extremely obvious and adds nothing new. But I think they can use these tools. I mean I'm sure you've seen the VEO3 videos just all around the Internet. Just you know, who's to say that they can't use this combination of all these new tools coming out to. And before this we were talking about the Adobe, you know, podcast studio thing. Like there's every tool in the world right now that's, that's enabling smaller publishers to compete with the bigger brands. And I think there's tremendous opportunity for them to continue to succeed because they're hungrier. Like I don't think the big 500 person organization, you know, will, the big names in the industry are going to be nimble enough or fast enough to adapt to these trends or to say the thing that, that maybe a smaller, only a smaller publisher can say or give that hands on Experience. I do think grit will be rewarded here as well. In one of the examples I'd shown you of a finder outranking a pretty big name in the US financial industry, their content was quite thin and so we had no business being above them in the citation. But because of their name or you would assume so because of their name and their brand strength. But the fact that our content was so much more comprehensive, we took the meter through the entire funnel like it was, I think it was about how to invest a certain amount of money. And we said, you know, well, first check that you all your bills are paid and you know, before you put it all in dogecoin or crypto, whatever, like why don't we focus on, you know, your bills are paid and your debts, you paid your debts down and whatnot. And so we really took a very user centric approach and it was really encourages, encouraging to see us rewarded over them. It wasn't like a long tail search where, where, you know, it was a more generic article for the competitor that was ranking against ours. It was like the exact same intent, but we hit it harder and we actually won.
[00:21:06] Michael: Yeah. Awesome. And are you familiar with the Query Fan concept that's being spoken about quite a bit at the moment?
[00:21:13] Zak: Yes. The. What are they calling it? The Query fan out technique?
[00:21:18] Michael: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Zak: Yes. Yeah.
[00:21:20] Michael: Which I guess like with, with a.
[00:21:21] Michael: Site like Finder, if you have a lot of content that addresses the different angles that someone might search about, that is going to be beneficial. So I guess for our audience, if you're not familiar with QueryFan, it's basically the concept that if you, if you start asking a question of AI in the background, it starts searching all sorts of different questions or intents related to that overall theme and it will draw information from multiple sources and different angles or intent buckets, if you want to call it that, to give you a good answer and stands for reason that like, you know, you might have an article on best credit cards, but then if you have articles on different angles that people search for credit cards, student credit cards, whatever, you have a chance to be found in it. So it's almost like you need more content on your site in a way to try and address this.
[00:22:11] Zak: Oh yeah, you, you just touched on it and that I will, you know, I take back everything you said. That's the way for smaller publishers to win. The and, and Finder certainly, at least in the US has benefited from that tremendously is, you know, we didn't really have a snowball chance in hell to go up against like Nerd Wallet or Credit Karma for best credit cards. And especially with the amount of providers that show up now in serps, we've had to play in the long tail space like almost exclusively for like the past year and a half. And it's actually in a ironic way it's starting to work out for us because when they do fan out, when it does the broad search to and then starts doing the subtopics finders there usually for a lot of the subtopics it's always the queries that are like you know, best bank accounts. But we have a qualifier for Star wars fans who watched andor and did the, you know, so it goes down the list and finder had that article and so we'd always get pulled in and you know, we may not be number one sided but we were in there.
[00:23:12] Michael: Yeah. And so you mentioned at the start the you get less traffic from this because you know, a lot of zero click. It just answers the question people have straight there in the search results. They're unlikely to click through. But the ones that do click through it's a bit more bottom of funnel or you know, higher quality. How are you sort of tracking that at the moment and what are you sort of seeing?
[00:23:34] Zak: So when we look at our earnings per click metric, they're much higher when it comes from AI. So we might get a hundred from Google and make, you know, for every hundred users we make like 20 bucks or every 100 users, 10 of them clicks and the ones who, the 10 of them who click, you know, they convert. But from ChatGPT we're seeing much higher conversion rates. So if we get that same like 100 visitors might be like 90 of them who convert. So it's a really high amount. That's a really intentional audience that we're bringing in. And I think it's because they're walking themselves down the funnel as they're having the conversation with the LLM.
[00:24:14] Michael: Yeah, I love that. So it's just how do you get more traffic ultimately from these LLMs? So right, which, what, what are we, what are we counting on? It's probably behavior changes I guess more people shifting off Google to using them. What I guess like you said before, CTR type stuff if you can do it in your, your article titles, your, your video images, thumbnails, that sort of stuff.
[00:24:42] Zak: Definitely. And, and Claude had some leak today or you know where their internal sort of ranking algorithm was. Was, was, was. Yeah. Leaked by somebody or it was exposed and, and they don't use backlinks either. And so there was like there it is interesting to see how each of these companies are sort of tackling the same problem. Maybe it wasn't cloud, maybe it was perplexity. So I apologize if I'm wrong on who I'm talking about. But it is interesting to see how much traffic these LMS are going to drive and how they're driving it. And so. But there is one thing I'm worried about, which is I'm worried about the over intellectualization of search again. So I think at first it was, you know, really the creative folks were in charge and they were writing good content and that was what was ranking. And then we all started copying each other and so it was like everyone on the page one, we'd all look at each other's articles and like they have that section. So now I have that section and anyone who added something new, we would, we would copy and we would stay really tight to the same keywords and write the same articles. We'd scrape each other's sites and copy each other, you know, so it was really like that. And I think it took a lot of the heart out of content, which sort of paved the way for LLMs and why people adopt them. Because like, look, I'm going to get the same no personality answer on the next 10 sites in the blue links. Why would I not use the LLM? But now it is almost becoming about which, which site can be the most, have the most. Like in a way, you know, you still have to have that sort of concise direct answer, but you could have more personality to your content and use more interactive tools. I'm, I guess that's what I'm most excited about is the tools that are going to come out of this. That, and that was cited in the leak, that pages that offered something that engaged the user was going to be rewarded. And so I think we're going to see a lot more utility come from the websites beyond content, which is just going to keep evolving.
[00:26:45] Michael: Yeah, yeah. And I think humans on that note will seek out authentic human stuff more and more because like already, like I go on LinkedIn and I just see blatant AI comments on every bloody post on there and it just makes me want to leave. I just, you know, I think these platforms are real danger. Reddit will be absolutely hammered. The real danger of just losing their audience because it just becomes this barren wasteland of AI making generic AI comments to each other. You know, so having that, that brand, that, that personality, not that brand, that human element to it will become more important.
[00:27:23] Zak: Oh totally. It's so funny. I see the same stuff on LinkedIn and you can almost when the posts are written by AI too it, it does become like yeah, we're just watching robots speak to each other.
[00:27:33] Michael: Yeah, yeah. So so do you on your side like I know we're early days but are you able to track this see monitor your visibility in the LLMs or is it a bit of a black box still for you at Finder, like how much visibility you have and what terms you're showing on terms? Let's say terms but yeah, let's say themes.
[00:27:57] Zak: Yeah, still still a bit of a black box. I mean we're tracking referral traffic but understanding which conversations we're being shown in we don't necessarily know have a good way to track that at the moment. I know we're working really hard on it. There's a lot of new tools coming out right now as well that are supposed to be able to help you do that but I'm always cautious of like which ones are vaporware and which ones actually do the thing and so, and the price points right now are ridiculous. So I always, whenever I see a contact sales page on the pricing page I'm always like all right, this is, is probably going to be an arm and a leg but I am interested into to seeing how one would, one would do that and if you have any leads please let me know because we're always looking. Yeah.
[00:28:42] Michael: Oh man. I don't know that it will ever be solved by third party tools because there's Claude Perplexity, Gemini ChatGPT, Chat GPT. Right. Has the bulk of it, so let's say that. But there's going to be levels of personalization going on in it and the answers you see will be different to what I see potentially. Sometimes it draws on its own training data set, other times it will go search Bing to pull out its answers. So how do you track it? I don't know. Like we're sort of, we're sort of approaching it with this mindset of how things has always been. But yeah, it's a bit of a. My. The, the pessimist or cynical sort of side of me says look, they're just going to capture all the traffic and then they'll start putting their own products and affiliate links and like you know, like Google Travel sort of taking over the search results. And is that the end game where these AI companies just dominate? They own everything and you know, we're just helping them at this Point, train. And, you know, maybe somewhere in between is the right answer. Who knows?
[00:29:44] Zak: I'd be lying if I, I didn't have the same thought that it was headed in that direction. And, you know, you listen to some of these founders of these AI companies speak and they're like, you know, will apps even exist in, in 10 years, or will everything be driven through agents and will the interface go away and will it just be, you know, sort of like that movie her, where you're talking through in your piece and that's just sort of how you're going through your day. But you touched on something just now that I actually really like about this next wave, which is that keywords are going to die. And I, I have always thought that, like, keywords can never properly encapsulate an intent. You know, they were never good enough. And if your search was very specific, you like, prayed like hell that Reddit, there was some random user on Reddit who had the same issue as you. But if they didn't, like, the quality got so much bad or so much worse after, you would, yeah, you'd add some more specificity to it because there was, what, 10 MSV for the, for what you really needed. And so the, you know, the most credible folks or the, or even the smaller publishers, like, it's not worth my time to write it now. There's nothing that's not worth your time to write. And so I really hope that fuels this next, this next generation of, or next era of SEO.
[00:30:59] Michael: So for SEOs right now, for people with websites that, you know, they might be in Google, they get traffic from it, but they, they want to start working now. AI mode isn't even accessible by everyone right now. So we're early, but like, what do you think people tuning into this should be working on with their sites right now to make the most of things or position themselves based on what you're seeing?
[00:31:23] Zak: I would say step zero. Make sure all of your technical SEO is in place, you're using proper headings, and schema is now relevant again. Schema, markup. So I would make sure, like, everything, their content's as readable as it possibly can be. But then I'd start creating strategies to be more and more places to, to, to get behind the camera, to be, to do YouTube, to do social media. I don't think there are any more, at least on the editorial side, low visibility roles. I think you have to kind of be front and center and sort of leading the conversation as a human face. And, and I think that's going to add a level of trust to your brand that's going to help carry you through during this next time. But also, how can you be more user centric? Like if you're given a clean slate and you, and you, you're asked to forget everything you know about SEO today, how would you actually create your website? Like how, what would you talk about? How would you talk about it? What would you do to leave a real impression on the person so they feel like they can click on your link or what have you? And also, how are you retaining these users? I think a lot of publishers were content with only ever being that one site that someone clicked on that one time they were on Google, rather than actually building a real relationship. And so how can you build a relationship once they're on your site? Because you're going to have so much less traffic. What are you doing with that traffic? Are you making the most of it? Are you capturing it in some way? Are you funneling them to a newsletter or asking them to follow you on your other channels or subscribe to your YouTube? Are you building the connection with them, making it interactive? Are they allowed to leave comments? Are they allowed to leave like community notes on your content? Like, how can you engage them in ways that keep them coming back so that you don't need only fresh con, fresh eyeballs, but you can sort of reactivate the eyeballs you've had in the past?
[00:33:17] Michael: Yeah, I love that because particularly in the publisher world, the affiliate heavy sites, you know, it might be bestairfryerreviews.com or something like that, they're not a real brand, they're not doing any. They have a newsletter, people opting in for news, you know, air fryer updates. Right. So in a way a lot of the bug bears that people have about the SEO driven economy which just got bigger and bigger and bigger, all these junk websites will be resolved and it is, yeah, going to be those real relationships that you have, like, like an E commerce brand. They might pay a lot to acquire a customer up front, but then they try to own that customer relationship, if they can from this and then get them to buy from them time and time again. It's that mentality for everything, really.
[00:34:00] Zak: Yeah, it really is. And, and you know, there's one, you know, the politics of it all aside, if we talk about Tesla for a second, you know, in the beginning at least they did no, they had no relationships with dealers in the US and so everything was direct to consumer and that may still be the way it is just across, you know, the world, but they focused on creating such a good product. The product marketed itself. And so I think there's a similar sort of ethos right now that folks can adopt is like, let's make something so good that people don't go to Google. They type my company's name right into the URL itself. And I think if that's like, the mission and the intent behind the entrepreneur or the publishers behind these sites, I think they'll. They'll be really impressed with the results.
[00:34:50] Michael: Love it. Well, I guess to wrap things up, in your opinion, is SEO dying again or is it just rebranding? What do you think? Where are things going to be? 1 year, 5 years even, which is a. That's a long way, but let's. Let's go six months, one year.
[00:35:08] Zak: I think SEO is rebranding. That would be my. My official take. Yeah.
[00:35:12] Michael: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, this has been a really great chat, Zach, for people that want to connect with you, learn a little more about you, stay in touch. After listening to the show, where can.
[00:35:21] Zak: They head so they can find me on all the typical social Media, BlueSky, Twitter, LinkedIn. Just type my name, Zach Ali Z A K A L I. And hopefully my account shows up and love to follow you back.
[00:35:36] Michael: Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us on the SEO show, mate.
[00:35:39] Zak: Thank you so much, Michael.
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