The New Rules of SEO: Succeeding in an AI-Driven World

AI is changing everything, and that is very apparent in the marketing space. Google is seen a big shift in their business as people start to just ask the AI rather than search on Google. And, Google is pivoting fast to try to keep up. So how do you get your message out.

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another FUTR podcast.

Today, back with us is Kyle Roof, CEO and Co-Founder of Page Optimizer Pro, who appeared on episode #105 back in January of '23. A lot has changed since then, so we are going to talk to Kyle about how you get your message out there with all the changes going on.

Welcome Kyle

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Transcript

Chris Brandt: 0:00

AI is changing everything, and that is very apparent in the marketing space. Google is seeing a big shift in their business as people start to just ask the AI rather than search on Google. And Google is pivoting fast to try to keep up. So how do you get your message out amongst all these changes? Stay tuned. Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another future podcast. Today, back with us is Kyle Roof, CEO and co founder of Page Optimizer Pro, who appeared on episode 105 back in January of 23. A lot has changed since then, so we're going to talk to Kyle about how you can get your message out there with all these changes going on. Welcome, Kyle. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Well, it's great to have you back. And, and I think, you know, we, we, uh, we talked a little earlier and, and I think this is a really interesting time because there's so much changing in the world. I mean, beyond all the chaos of, you know, what's going on in the United States right now. which you're nicely isolated from in Thailand there. Um, but, but it, it, there's just a lot happening on the AI front in the way that, you know, search works. Um, and I think, you know, we've even seen like Google, um, is returning some mysterious results these days. And, and, um, and, and I think that's just gonna, that's gonna intensify, uh, even more. But at the same time that that's happening, we're kind of in this attention economy. Right where like being able to get your message out via those mediums is ever more important because that's how people are making decisions about everything. Right. Um, so like it, it's this great tug of war between, you know, like how do I, I get my message out there, but you know, I'm, I'm releasing it into a pool of chaos. So I want to, I want to ask you, how do I fix that?

Kyle Roof: 2:01

One thing that's interesting for. speaking just directly about Google is that they have, yeah. The, the AI overlay, they've got, you know, the SG results, but then they also have the regular results that that used to be, and the thing that's interesting is that all, when you say

Chris Brandt: 2:17

sg re,

Kyle Roof: 2:19

the, the, the generative search, the, uh, now they're calling it ai, uh, AI overview. So it's, it's the, the extra cards that appear that are AI generated is the idea, uh, those extra things that appear, right. If you go back a little bit. A few years ago, there was the featured snippets, which I think everybody's familiar with. It's, it's the box that appears at the top that actually might give you a quick answer to your question or to the thing that you're doing. And essentially what they're doing with AI is it's just, they've kind of expanded that out a little bit and they're using a slightly different method to find the answer. But before we get to those things, the search results have remained pretty much the same, you know, and, and the method for how they get those things is Something that I do a lot is testing the algorithm, testing results to see if, like, is this a factor? Is that a factor? Does this work? Does that work? All of that's actually remained the same. We've had, if you've been in online or you're kind of familiar with what's going on, there've been two massive updates, one, uh, at the end of last year and then one in March of this year. And a lot of sites were demoted. But what's interesting is that sites that made it through and then sites that started after, Are doing just fine, and they're doing fine with the same techniques and the same methods. So the algorithm for the regular, interesting, organic part hasn't changed as much as Google would like to tell you that Okay. That it has. But then the part that has changed is, or those extra cards that, that AI overview as, as they're calling it, which is really just a, which is half the page . It's a lot of it, but it's, it's a glorified featured snippet. It's, it's the same concept, just a little bit more. Of really what they were doing. And then they're saying that they're using an AI component, but then where does that come from? Where does that information come from? It comes from that first page from those results. So when you think about, okay, I want to show up in those things. I want to be in those areas. And they're saying that the clicks are just as good there or better than they are in the organic results. And they're saying that the traffic hasn't changed, uh, from what they're doing and people are clicking on those things. So to show up there, which is important, it really comes down to, are you showing up in the top 10? Are you doing those things before? Like, are you, those were your things that all still works. That's all it needs to be. And then in order for you to be eligible for the new stuff, you still have to do the old stuff. So people might want to run a lot of directions and like, I need to do the shiny thing or I need to do that. No, you need to do the regular stuff first. So you show up there to get the opportunity to appear in those new places. So while it feels like all this has changed in my, from my perspective, it's all a lot of the same. It's all the same and you still need to be and still need to do those things. To rank and to do well from before, because all that is, is, is all still what it was. None of that changed.

Chris Brandt: 5:06

Here's another question, though. I mean, it seems like, um, you know, Google's not the only game in town anymore, right? And so, like, you know, it used to be that, you know, Google was the number one search engine and YouTube was number two searches. And I don't even think that's true anymore. I think that I got to imagine, like, TikTok would be probably the number two search engine These days, and then and then maybe YouTube, I don't you know, I don't you probably know better than I do. But it seems like, you know, at least when it was YouTube and Google is sort of the same ecosystem you're you're operating within to some extent, right? But now you're getting all these other players. So what's your take on like, Is, is Google the only game in town, um, or, or, or how does that, and like, and I think we've seen a huge uptick in Bing searches too, right? Because now that's getting integrated into so many products and things like that.

Kyle Roof: 5:59

That, that's true. I think some Google search has dropped, but they announced it on Q1 that like, like Google dropped like 4 percent or something like that. Of its market share in terms of, of, of share of voice within search. But I think about that. They went from like. 96% to 92%, you know, like . Okay, fine. But that, that, that in my mind doesn't mean like, let's reallocate resources, you know, like, you know, like that, that, that's not a significant enough drop in my mind to be like, Google's dead, no one's using it. Because I think, I think people are using it. Um, I think people still like it, but they're also using other things now too, right? Some are, but let's say you want to get, uh, uh, a restaurant recommendation for tonight. You're not going to TikTok for that. You know,

Chris Brandt: 6:52

you're not. It's funny because I've heard some, I've heard people making that recommendation actually now to actually look for restaurants on TikTok because it, it's, it's producing better local results for some people,

Kyle Roof: 7:05

you know, which is an

Chris Brandt: 7:06

interesting idea. I mean, I've never thought of doing that, but I did see it. I did see somebody talking about that recently. I saw,

Kyle Roof: 7:12

I saw an example too of like, let's say you're taking a vacation to. Scotland and you could do things to do in Scotland and the videos you're going to see are actually somewhat personalized because TikTok, their algorithm really dials in pretty well as to what you like and don't like. So the videos you'd see of things to do in Scotland actually might be more likely things that you would enjoy. I get that. I get that. But it's not that useful because now I've got to, instead of going through some results that I can read and discern real quick, now I have to watch a three minute video of a To get through that, like, I don't think people are doing that. Right, and then Google it to find the address. Exactly, exactly. Or if you were to use like, like ChatGPT's search thing real quick, for that kind of information, you still have to go to Google to verify the information, because ChatGPT, well, Oh, yes. They have that new search capacity. Makes stuff up. It hallucinates, it's also not current, it's also going to Bing, Yeah, to find results as much as they try to hide that fact, uh, you're still going to go to Google check. So because there's that extra step, I don't think people are doing that for their day to day type things. And the most normal types of searches, I remember when voice came out, so everyone had a Syria, a Syria or whatever. And I was like, Oh, you have to optimize for voice. And for a couple of years, like there's always somebody speaking at the conference that you're going to talk about how to optimize for voice. And then everybody realized all they do with that is what time is it? What's the weather today and play and play this song like that's that's all set my

Chris Brandt: 8:39

timer for 15 minutes exactly,

Kyle Roof: 8:41

right? That's that's all they use it for. They're not going to be like, you know any kind of Informational search and so while these things are still a bit up in the air on how people might use it It's still up in the air and I have a feeling that it's not going to supplant as much of Google searches as people might Might want to or predicting or would hope that it was

Chris Brandt: 9:02

when I went to Malta, you know last year all those we did all those things So like and even I would throw in Google Earth on VR, you know, we wandered around the streets of Malta You know in Google VR, which was actually kind of an interesting thing You know, like we tried the chat GPT, you know put together an itinerary for us. Well, you know, some of this isn't real Some of this doesn't exist. So maybe, maybe we need to, you know, be, you know, pump the brakes on that one. And then, you know, like I, I got into the tick tock threads of like all the things and I got, you know, people were showing, it was, it was great because it did show me all the things that I wanted to see, but I have no idea how to get there. You know, like, what do you need? Do you, do you need to, you know, take a ferry to get there? You know, what time do you have to leave? How far is it from, you know, like all that stuff. So like. You know, like we said, you're right back in Google at the end of the day. So yeah, I guess, you know, the relevance of Google is, is still strong.

Kyle Roof: 9:53

The other thing I would say too is when you limit results, so like a, a chat GPT result is, is one thing you have to be very confident that that one thing is correct. And the thing about Google or other search or traditional search engines is you see 10 results, some stuff on the side and then you as the human can actually start to evaluate if that's good information or not, you know, and then you can go through a few things having multiple confirmation points, I think is important just as a person that wants that information. You can't just go to the first things like, Oh, that's probably right. And then. Leave, you know, as things become more important or the importance value goes up, you're going to want multiple forms of confirmation. And that exists in a, in a 10 page result type deal, where you can then look at it and feel good about the decision that you're making. And that just doesn't exist in those other forms. Um, so that's where I think people actually want to take the time. I think that we'll want to take the time to evaluate because I think they know they can do it better than some algorithm or, or some AI that, that just doesn't really comprehend what they're, what they're asking. You know, and the information that they need,

Chris Brandt: 11:00

right? What should we do to stand out now? Because there's another aspect of AI is that AI is also flooding the internet with content. So now you're not just competing with other businesses, other people, other brands, whatever, but you're also competing with, you know, all this AI generated content. And you know, while some of it's good, I mean, like I use AI to help me generate content all the time, you know? You know, that is both great for me, but also problematic because, you know, you can identify AI in, in, you know, some of these searches and I know that they do do some down ranking of things like that and that sort of thing too. So it's like, it's a blessing and a curse, you know, this AI thing, um, to

Kyle Roof: 11:44

like, how do you stand out? Well, one of the biggest things, and Google has been pushing this for the last couple years is establishing, you know, are you real? Are you a real company? Are you a real person? This is the, if you've been following the eat. EEAT stuff. That's what they've been getting into, establishing who's responsible for this website, who's responsible for this content, you know, and are they, is it transparent that we can, we can figure this out. And so a lot of sites have been deemed Before

Chris Brandt: 12:15

you go, what does, what does EEAT stand for?

Kyle Roof: 12:17

Uh, that's right. Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness is what it, what it stands for. But the idea Trustworthiness is the most important concept of it. And when you really boil it down, it is like, is this a real website? Is there a company behind this? You know, is this a real thing? And then is, did a human write this or, and is somebody responsible for this content? You know, those, those are the two biggest kind of criteria out of it is, is this basically, is this real? And so I think, Uh, the, the, the sites that have made it through these updates recently and the sites that have continued from the last several years through these updates are real brands, real brands that are selling real things, real companies that actually exist and they're comfortable being transparent because they are real. The, the people that have really taken a kick to the pants are the ones that don't want to show that they're real, you know, that they want to hide who they are and they've Continually gotten bashed. And the last couple of updates have been hit really hard. And it comes down to, are you real? And, and not just like, you know, Google can't see a website. They don't look at it there. It's a bot coming through and a bot is looking at the site. So a bot has to come through and try to get through the site to tick enough of the boxes from the boss perspective, that this is a real thing. And so the sites that have done the best, right. And how they really stand out and how they survive are the ones that Our companies are brands. It's like we're legitimate. We're not hiding anything. This is where we're located. This is how you can contact us. These are the humans that work here. That to me is, is, is priority one, uh, in surviving any and all of this is, is, is demonstrating to a bot. That's the John Mulaney joke. Uh, you spend the majority of your life, uh, proving to a robot that you're not a robot. But it doesn't that make you just want to walk into the ocean,

Chris Brandt: 14:13

but like that's why I keep asking the question Do we serve the computers or are they serving us at this point? Yeah, I mean like but all I know is I spent all my day taking care of a freaking computer So

Kyle Roof: 14:23

yeah, you're proving to a computer that you're not a computer the entire time But um, honestly from like a search perspective or from what we're talking about perspective is their main priority is getting real companies into the sir Into the serbs, you know real people There people want to think about a value judgment sort of thing and that's not Google's game They don't want to make a value judgment. They don't want to say that this is better than that You know, right when it comes down to like say Somebody's credentials. What's better a degree from Stanford or a degree from MIT? Who knows who cares and and that's not what that's not the game They want to get into but they want to know that you've got that degree You know, that, that somebody is speaking from a, a position of authority. From experience, yeah, from expertise there. That, that's, those are the signals that they're looking for, that, that it exists, you know, but not that it, one is, is better than the other. There's some sort of of value to, or even like 30 years of experience versus somebody just outta college with it, which is they don't care. Like that's not what they want to do, but they want to know that there are humans behind this. And so I think how you can stand out. From your original question is, is proving that you're real and as more signals that you can give a bot that you're a real person, that you're real company. I think that is. Is paramount right now.

Chris Brandt: 15:36

Well, so how do you

Kyle Roof: 15:37

do that? How do you prove that you're real? Uh, uh, from from a very basic Uh thing, uh, do you have an address on your website? Do you have a local phone number that matches the zip code to that address? You know, do you have a current copyright? Uh, do you have a page that talks about the humans that work at your company and are there links to LinkedIn, LinkedIn and Facebook or wherever are the things that might be important for your particular niche? Do those things exist now? You could say, like, I had one of those things and I still got hit. That's not the point. The point is taking enough of the boxes right to show. That you're real.'cause the bot can't just, again, it's not looking at it being like, oh, I clearly this are, these are real people. It can't do that. So it has to go through its little checklist. Right. And the more things you can give it, the better. But from a very basic standpoint, just those things, uh, that, that a real company can show would be, you know, it's, uh, multiple email addresses. You know, you've got one for, uh, general contact. You've got one for complaints. You've got one for returns. You know, you've got one, like the real companies have those things. They have different departments. They have different people manning those departments. They have, uh, their address, their phone number. It's a local phone number. They've got those things and they can prominently display it and they can also put into the schema. So schema are tags inside. Your code that, so when a search engine comes to a page, it can, it can understand the content, you want to make it as easy as possible for a bot to come in and find this information. And the way you can do that is through schema. So you have organization schema, maybe on your homepage that says like what type of company you are, who you are, what you're doing, who founded this company, and then the more of that you can do, the more you demonstrate that, you know, you're real. And I think that is, um, that was important before. I think it's going to become more and more important. As we go forward,

Chris Brandt: 17:26

I'm applying this to myself, right? You know, and, uh, you know, I'm my, you know, this podcast exists solely on the internet. I, you know, like, it's not something that I, you know, have a physical address for, you know, it is there is for somebody like me, is that just, I'm going to end up in the bucket of not real people.

Kyle Roof: 17:46

No, I mean, do the search for yourself. Do you show up? I bet you do. I bet. Yeah. I bet stuff about you does. I bet your profiles show up. You know, and that's demonstrating, you know, if you were to do, you know, Chris Brandt and then the thing that you're most known for, because there are, I hate to tell you this, but there are a lot of people named Chris Brandt. You know, there, there are a few, there are a few running around, right? Right. Yeah.

Chris Brandt: 18:07

Totally. But if you don't, you know, Chris Brandt. Well, there's something good about that. Hiding and hiding in the crowd. Yeah. But if you do like, you know, your

Kyle Roof: 18:16

name and your thing, like the thing that you do professionally, and then you should see your LinkedIn profile show up somewhere, like, and that's Google understanding who you are. My name is actually fairly unique. So if you were to type in, you know, Kyle Rufin, SEO, it's just going to be, you know, A page of this beautiful face is all you're, all you're, all you're going to see. Yes, I've done that before. There's a lot of it. Yeah. There's too much. There's too much. But um, you can start to see if Google understands who you are, you know, uh, and, and what you're doing. And if not, there are things you can do, like you can, um, uh, again, that, that LinkedIn profile. So your, your social signals, you can get in and start doing citations. Nice. And for your industry that acknowledge like who you are and links back to say your own site or to you know, your business side or your personal site. You can do those types of things. You can start doing press releases. Uh, when you have some accomplishment or something like that, those types of things are signals that you can throw out to demonstrate that you're, they're an actual human, but most by and large, just by doing the normal things. This is a, this is a huge point. Real companies don't have eat issues. Because they just do what real companies do naturally and they don't have any problems, you know, real humans, generally speaking, don't have heat issues because you just do what you would normally do on the web and that's enough for Google to figure it out. The people, the companies, the people that have problems are the ones that are trying to hide themselves. And then they're trying to retroactively figure out how they can do it better. Those are the ones that are, that have more often than not have issues. But if you're just, if you're a regular human and you've been doing regular human things online the last 10, 15 years, you're probably okay. And Google knows who you are.

Chris Brandt: 19:54

You're talking about your company Page Optimizer Pro. I mean, I know that you, you, your big presence in the SEO world and sort of like, you know, getting that message out. Um, What, what should, like, what should one expect from going through this exercise, you know, like if, if you want to elevate your company's presence, your brand's presence, like it's, it's not just like you hire somebody and then all of a sudden you're, you know, number one on the search engine. There's a lot of stuff that goes into it, right? What, what, what, what should people expect when they, they start on this journey? When

Kyle Roof: 20:32

you think about your products or your services or what you're offering. And then you think about somebody sitting in front of their computer. What, what are they going to type in? What, what are they going to do? You know, their hair's on fire and the only thing that's going to put out this fire is your thing, you know, what, what are, what are they typing in? The very first step on that is you need a page dedicated to that, to whatever that thing is, that, that product or that service. And a lot of people miss that point entirely, where I'll ask people like, you know, we want to do SEO. That's fine. We want to rank for this. That's fine. I say like, what page on your site have you optimized for this? And you just kind of hear crickets and they're like the website, you know, and Google doesn't rank websites. Google ranks web pages. So you have to have a page for that main concept. That's it. You know, that's, this is the thing that we do. This is the service we have, the product we offer. You have to have a page for that. And I'd recommend that it not be the homepage because your homepage is better suited for your brand to tell people who you are as a company. Don't use that for a main keyword or a main concept. It's kind of, it's going to cover your con your concept as a whole, you know, we're into plumbing, you know, and then though each of your individual services that you offer should be. Individual pages. So the first thing in an expectation would be make sure you've got a page for that particular thing that you want people to search for from there. Uh, that's where a tool like mine can come in where you can put in and we can tell you how many times you need to get that term. In specific places, like where you need to put it and how many times in addition, uh, how many times it's important terms need to be there too. Cause it's not, you know, 2005 where you can just take a term and stuff it in a thousand times. Google's gotten a little bit better and they're going to be variations of your term. They're going to be different ways to, to talk about your term in context and you want to get all those contextual terms on the page. a certain number of time in certain places. And what my tool does is it tells you those terms and it does it quickly so that you can optimize and get it on and give yourself the best chance to rank for those terms with, with the, with the words you put on the page.

Chris Brandt: 22:38

Thus page optimizer pro, right? It says it like it is. Um, and for people who are watching, um, uh, we're gonna, we have a discount code, uh, for page optimizer pro that I can share. Uh, probably it's probably over here right now. Um, but yeah, you know, uh, that's a good way to get, get started, um, and, and, you know, getting some feedback on what you're doing. I, Would, uh, I would think that'd be a great, great, great place to start, right? For sure. For sure. So, so like, if people are going to do this, like how much, how much of a time commitment do we, we think this is going to be? I mean, is this going to be like something that, you know, you start now it's going to be, you're going to see results in six months to a year? Is it three months? Is, you know, like how, and then like, is this like, you just got to keep going at the same level all the time because things are changing all the time? What, what's sort of the time commitment here?

Kyle Roof: 23:31

I think a good way to judge that. Um, without giving the crappy answer of it, it depends, a good way, a good way, a good way to judge is how many clicks are you getting from Google each day? Right now? Yeah. What, what number is that? And let's say it's a hundred clicks a day, which is great, right? You're getting 3000 clicks a month, you're getting a hundred clicks a day. Then you go out and look at the keyword you want to win. If that keyword is a monthly search volume of a thousand, why should Google give that to you? Why should, why should Google care where you can probably win is a keyword with monthly volume of a hundred kind of where you are on that daily click. And so the idea is if you're in that range with the keyword volume is in that range that you're getting per day. So the monthly volume to the daily volume, then that's going to be pretty quick. You know, that's probably within a month or some change, the more it is above where you are on your daily clicks, the harder it's going to be. And I would bet it, you can easily add a month per hundred from there, just as a, as a general guideline. So, you know, if you are, again, at that a hundred, you're going after a term that's like 3000. A month, that's going to take some months, you know, and you're gonna have to do a lot to that. And you're gonna have to do a lot of external things where you're going to get votes from backlinks, external signals need to come in to show that you deserve this keyword. But you have to think about it in terms of, of do you deserve it? And if your site is only getting, you know, 50 clicks a day, 10 clicks a day, you know, then, then you don't deserve those terms that are in the thousands per month, you know? And so you have to build up your site to get to that point. And so I think that's a good way to determine if you go after a term, are you going to win that term quickly? And if you, if you're within, you know, a little bit on the clicks you're getting, well, then you have a really good chance. If it's, if it's far away, then you really, you can win. It's just, that's where it's going to start taking a lot of time.

Chris Brandt: 25:30

And this is a sort of similar related question, you know, like how much should people expect to spend? And I know it depends. And I assume if you're going after a bigger, harder keyword, it's going to cost you a lot more money and take, you know, more time, right? Uh, but like, like what, what are some kind of gauges?

Kyle Roof: 25:46

In my mind, you know, if you're going after like local stuff. So you are that, that local plumber, uh, uh, the low HVAC, the doctor, the lawyer, I really can't see spending less than a thousand dollars a month to be really serious about it, to, to like get consistent results and go, if you're doing something national, it's gotta be somewhere like 2, 500 a month to, to be consistently competitive. Now you can do it with less, you can do it on your own. That saves time. Money, you know, the more you can do on your own, the better. And, and, and in theory, you can actually do all of this yourself. It's just a matter of knowing where to allocate your time and resources. And I know there's also the wildcard factor of getting with an agency that knows what they're doing. And I probably everybody that is listening has been burned by one or two. So I understand all of those. Those, those, those issues for sure. But, um, you know, when you think about a term that, how much is it going to make you a month? Let's say a term, if we get on page one, if we get in the top three, this is going to make me 5, 000 a month. Okay. That's, that's, that's great. How much do you think somebody is paid to get to that 5, 000 a month? You know, they're probably 20, 30, 40, 000? Yeah. Like, to get to that point where they're there, so then now if you want to come in now to get that and you're at 1, 000 a month and you figure they've easily spent 40, 000 to 50, 000, All right, now that's how long it's going to take, or that's how much money it's going to take. And then you kind of have to make a decision if it's worth it to go for it or if you can actually get there. Um, a lot of people tend to think that they're, they're the only ones doing SEO. You know, they're the only ones going after a particular term. It turns out there are a lot of people doing SEO and there are a lot of SEOs out there. A lot of people that know what they're doing, all spending money and all doing things. They don't really care that you're new or you want to do something. So,

Chris Brandt: 27:37

right. Well, and I got to imagine it's very, very difficult going up against like large brands, you know, that just are dominating categories. Like you say, you know, going after certain keywords that, you know, maybe another brand is, is ranking really well with, um, you know, I think you have to, and I know you've done some of this in your past. You have to be a little bit more guerrilla marketing to kind of tap into that,

Kyle Roof: 28:02

right? Yeah. Think about where they're not. You know, they are huge. They are, they're doing things, but they are going after those two word phrases, you know, like the, the most competitive ones, but there are probably three or four word phrases that they aren't, you know, that they just, they will not, it's not with their time or their energy. And a lot of those can be very convertible terms. Meaning if somebody searches for that, they're gonna the buy now little bottom of the funnel type terms. So that's where. You can still win with research, you know, it's, um, it's, it's not that it's all been done because it hasn't, you know, there are still gaps in the market. There are still opportunities, uh, things evolve and you can still create pages to go after terms that can convert that where you're not going just directly head to head. With that national, you know, huge company, or that company that's massive in your local region, you don't have to go head to head with them. There are places where they're just not looking, and those still do exist.

Chris Brandt: 28:57

Well, and I know you can, you can leverage some of the size of those companies against them. I mean, you have that, the last time we talked about, so that Wells Fargo example that you have, maybe you want Refresh people on that because I think that's a great example of how you can leverage a bigger brand to help your brand.

Kyle Roof: 29:14

The thing is that people don't like to optimize for their bad things. And so there, there, there might be things that your competitors are doing that are not great and you have an alternative that is better. You can optimize for that because then when somebody searching for like, why is this happening? What is this doing? What is this thing? You can offer the answer to that and then you can offer the solution. Yeah. And that, that exists and it has existed for quite some time. Error codes, uh, just general, like, or some people get in the mail, like there might be something that got in the mail and there's a specific term for whatever that is, you can optimize a page for that to explain. What they're experiencing, what they're going through, and then be like, Hey, do you not like that? Because, because we don't do that. And, and, and those, so all those opportunities still exist and they're still a very rankable. Um, another thing you can think about too is our alternatives. So just because your competitor doesn't know who you are, you can still be their alternative. You know, and you can rank for, you know, you could be a brand new brand and you could be the alternative. And then the hope is that they see that and then create a page on their site to combat whatever you have on yours because then that's only going to validate you and that's going to give you brand searches and, and you're now, your product is now on their site. Kind of thing. So you could create alternative pages with the hope that your competitors actually see these, even if you're, you know, this big in the hope that they're going to respond to it by creating pages on your site. And then that's, that's only a good thing for you

Chris Brandt: 30:46

from a perspective of like a company. I mean, like what, what sort of, uh, commitment and expectations should they have about all this? I mean, obviously it's going to involve. You know, like reworking your page is going to involve doing some research. It's going to, you know, like producing materials You know, like what what kind of like what kind of expectations should people have one of the

Kyle Roof: 31:06

biggest like? Bottlenecks or roblox we run into is just the idea of creation of content One of the things is you need to be an authority in in your niche and the idea of an authority is That if somebody comes to your site, they can get the answer You know, to their question. And so you, you have to answer all those questions. You have to have all that information. And so if your mindset is like, we're just going to have one page on our site and it's going to be this big and it's going to, that's, that's problematic. That that's not a way to do it. Cause that's just, there's not enough real estate on one page to answer all the questions. And so I would say you do need to have the ability to get content out. Add a regular clip and expect that you're going to grow your site, you know, sites that are healthy sites that are doing well are gaining keywords. They're gaining impressions. You know, they're, they're getting more share of voice. They're growing. And really the way to do that is through more content. And so you have to be prepared that we're going to get content out and we're going to get it out in a systematic way and we're going to link it in a very systematic way. So it's not just something like I put all this content. I'm like, well, what was your strategy? What were you doing? And they're like, oh, it was just content. That's not the point. It's not content for the sake of content. It's content that's very specific, you know, that has a reason for it to exist and you want to get out. So I think. The first thing is you have to realize your site's going to have to grow. You're going to have to wait to get that content out, and you're going to have to have a reason for the content. Why does this exist? What are we trying to do with it? And, and those are huge factors that honestly defeat a lot of websites. You know, where they've got, um, a super fancy website that was developed by this great, you know, firm out of San Francisco. And it takes two months to create one new webpage. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, well, that is entirely worthless, uh, towards, uh, uh, right. I worked with a startup and they were an app and they had this, like, I don't know how much they spent 50, 60, a hundred thousand. It doesn't matter what they spent. I was like, uh, Google saw their homepage as a 404 because in whatever the system that they built, Google couldn't read it. And so in this fancy system, Google saw their page as a 404 and, and it was just like, yeah, What, what do you want me to do with that? You know, and they were in their developers talking about how like beautiful this code was. And I'm, I'm confident it was beautiful, but if Google can't read it, you know, then there's actually no point, you know, for that to exist. And so like, you have to realize like, we need Google to see this. We need to get content out. We need to do it at a regular clip or, or some of the biggest things that, um, uh, you need to understand. And then that's where the time comes in because it's usually, uh, building that site up to support the site, to get up levels in terms of how much Google will trust you for terms, uh, that's all part of the process. And that that's the time that it takes and, and, and where resources are often spent.

Chris Brandt: 34:07

Wow, that's, I mean, you're like loading my head up with, uh, you know, a lot of thoughts here, you know, because there's this, I mean, because one, it's like, you know, like the, the, the, the need to produce content that's relevant, I think is, is I can, you can see the value of that, but it's like, I think a lot of companies really struggle with that because, um, It's hard to produce content, and not only is it hard to produce content, it's hard to produce content that has a sincerity to it, you know, like when you look at a lot of companies, they're producing content just for the sake of producing content, and maybe that helps, you know, I don't know, I guess it, you know, it just gives you another opportunity to rank, right? But at some level too, it's like, if it's, if it's not, You know, really genuinely conveying the message that you want it to, um, you know, it's not going to be as effective as it could be. And I think that's a really hard thing

Kyle Roof: 34:57

for companies to do. You know, I think so. There are a lot of complaints about there's content and SEO to content. And I have a little pushback on that because, you know, is somebody asking this question? Now, it would somebody that is interested in your product or are they genuinely asking this question, then you should have that answer on your site. And that's where a lot of this content comes from would be answering those types of questions that might come in. And there's just so many sites that don't answer those questions, you know, just at all. And then they like, you know, Dismiss the idea of SEO because they're like, well, I don't know SEO, but like a big part of SEO, this optimization is, is answering those questions. And if you can do that so that you can get it so that if somebody comes to your site, they can find those answers. Your site's just going to be better from an SEO perspective. Google will like your site more. Your site will have more authority. It'll have more strength because it's ranking for a keyword that's getting more impressions. And then if you've linked things to target pages, they push up better and perform better. And that's all, that's all SEO. So what really comes down to is, are you an authority? You know, are, are you, are you getting that information to your users? And that's where like research and stuff like that comes in.

Chris Brandt: 36:05

Go figure. It's this whole SEO game is really just kind of about, you know, good business practices at the end of the day.

Kyle Roof: 36:13

You know, it really is like, it looked like, all right, like, like people like, like, they think it's like fairy dust or like, or like chicken bones, you know, at the end of the day, it's just like doing good research. Doing market analysis, finding where your competitors are, like, you know, segmenting your market where, where they might be. That's all that it is, just in this Wild West environment that seems so out there.

Chris Brandt: 36:41

Yeah, you're right. I mean, like, I, you know, like, when people think about, especially when SEO was first a thing, it just seemed like this magical, magical thing, but, uh, it, it really is just about. communicating effectively at the end of the day and then letting somebody know that you're communicating effectively. I guess that's the change. You're actually letting somebody know that you're doing it.

Kyle Roof: 36:59

And then you do have to add in the math perspective because he, it, you do want the algorithm to understand what you're talking about. And in order to do that, it comes down to math. Like, have you used these terms so that Google understands what the page is about and can also see that the page has importance. You know, so there is that, but what I've found is that if you answer the question correctly, the SEO part should just be a slight edit, you know, where I find when people like, Oh, I've got to add, you know, 80 terms to my page according to my tool. Right. I'm like, that means you missed the mark entirely. So it's not now, you know, you have to SEO the page like you should have written better content because clearly you weren't talking about what you should have been talking about, you know, like that in my mind, it's it wasn't, it's not, that's not an SEO problem. That's, that's a content problem. You didn't, you didn't answer the question correctly because this is based off of the answers that Google currently has. They're expecting to see and you just didn't write that. So, right. Okay. That's where I, like, you know, if you're, again, if you're, if you're just providing that good content that you're answering those questions, you should be pretty close to SEO. And then it's just tweaking from there. But if you're way off the mark, then, then you just, you missed it. You missed it entirely.

Chris Brandt: 38:11

What's old is new and what's new is old, I guess, um, to some extent, but, um. For sure. So what, what's next for you? Where, where you go from here? I mean, I, obviously it seems like you just got to, you know, stay one step ahead of everything that's happening.

Kyle Roof: 38:23

You know, um, so, uh, I, I, I made my name in the industry by running tests on the algorithm and, you know, I have a patent, uh, on how to test the algorithm. And in the last six months through the last several updates, eight months, excuse me, I've been running a lot of my original tests. Uh, from 2016, just to see like, where are we at now? And they all work. They're all still the same. It's all, it's all exactly the same. And so from my perspective, you know, we're seeing a reduction of people in SEO. We're seeing people get out from their sites. We're getting, we're seeing people get out from services. And I've seen this before, not, maybe not to this extent. Like this is, this is, I think, more significant. In the doom and gloom, uh, side of things, but in my mind, I'm seeing more opportunity because I know that the stuff that I, that I do still works the SEO that we're doing still works. And even if there is a reduction in traffic from, from Google, from SG or, or, or the, the AI, whatever, or, or tick tock gains ground, uh, there's still a lot of traffic there. And I know that the stuff I'm doing still works. And so what I'm seeing right now, this is. a huge time for opportunity. This is where I can go all in on what I'm doing and really take advantage of it during this time of recession, if you will, uh, in the industry, if people are getting out, that just leaves more opportunity for me. And so what I'm seeing is I'm doubling down on what I'm doing. You know, I'm, I'm, I see the opportunity and I'm going all in right now. And I, and I hope that people are seeing doom and gloom and get out because then that just leaves more room for what I want to do. Yeah. In chaos, there's opportunity. When there's blood on the streets. Blood on the streets, you gotta

Chris Brandt: 40:09

buy. Yes, that's right, that's right. So we've got the discount code. I, I think I, I did set up, I guess, an affiliate. For me as well, so I might get a little portion of anything that, that people go to. So that'll be an interesting thing. You will make tens of dollars. Tens of dollars. Yes, I will make tens of dollars. So that'll be interesting. But I do, I do, I do want to fully disclose that because you know, we're, we did that. You know, I think what you're doing is really interesting and obviously, you know, we're coming to the expert here. So that's, that's why I like talking to you, Kyle. And, and yeah, I, I sort of envy some of your lifestyle there in Thailand. Not quite the humidity, but the humidity. But, uh, you know, the rest of it sounds pretty awesome. The rest of it is good. Um, but I, I just want to say thanks so much for being on. Uh, this is, this has been super informative to me. I hope everybody else finds it as informative. Um, and, uh, just, just thanks for, for, uh, being on and, and, and sharing the code and sharing all the information. Oh, I love being here. Thanks so much. I do appreciate it. Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you could click on that like button, hit subscribe. And if you could share it with somebody, you know, And I will see you in the next video.