Brandon Leibowitz runs and operates SEO Optimizers; a digital marketing company that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses get more online traffic, which in turn converts into clients, sales, and leads.
He got his start in digital marketing in 2007 after graduating from college with a degree in Business Marketing. In his first job, he handled the marketing aspects of an e-commerce website.
The company Brandon worked for was a national e-commerce brand that had recently built its website and was looking to bring more traffic to it. Brandon had no idea what he was doing and neither did they. He spent a lot of his time reading books and joining digital marketing forums to learn as much as possible about this new type of marketing.
Brandon helped the company with the following tasks: search engine optimization, email marketing campaigns, creating an affiliate program, optimizing paid ads on Google AdWords, setting up social media profiles, and a bit of web design. You could say that he wore a lot of hats working for this company.
In 2008, Brandon realized that most businesses would need a website to stay competitive in the future. But having a website was only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, they needed someone to help market their website to bring in traffic that would, in turn, convert to clients.
Brandon has always worked full-time at ad agencies helping their clients with search engine optimization. At night after work, he would work on his freelance clients from SEO Optimizers. He was recently able to quit his daytime job to pursue SEO Optimizers full-time.
What you will learn
- Discover effective link-building strategies for digital success
- How to manage an SEO client’s expectations (you’re not going to rank overnight!)
- How search intent can drive leads and sales conversions
- Discover tried and true strategies for effective CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
- Learn about the emerging role of AI in search
- Discover the best AI tools for search
- How is AI and search going to work together in the future? Brandon shares his insights
- Simple tricks to improve your local ranking on Google
- Brandon shares his best tips for generating leads and sales through search
- Plus loads more!
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:06 – 00:01:18
Hi, everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, Brandon Leibowitz. Now, Brandon is an SEO expert. He also knows how to use Google to get traffic that would convert into sales and leads. So, I think for everyone who’s a digital entrepreneur especially runs a website, runs a blog, runs an e-commerce store. These are all very, very important because quite often we get addicted to traffic, but we forget that the whole goal of that is actually convert those into leads and sales. So, Brandon runs the website called SEO Optimizers for the past 14 years. He’s been helping websites rank higher on Google using SEO strategies. He’s been doing that since he left college, maybe even done it before. He’s helped hundreds of websites rank for hyper-competitive keywords that convert into sales and leads. And we’re gonna try and keep this conversation very much in plain language rather than SEO language. He received his Bachelors of Science in Business Marketing for California State University of Long Beach and lives in Santa Monica in LA.
So welcome to the show, Brandon. It’s great to have you here.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:01:18 – 00:01:20
Thank you for having me on today.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:21 – 00:01:36
So, Brandon, you went and did a Bachelor of Science at Long Beach University. What made you do Bachelor of Science back then?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:01:37 – 00:02:08
Yeah, I got my degree in business marketing and always had ideas that I wanna do maybe like graphic design or help out with billboards or designing like magazine print ads, things like that. And after I graduated in 2007, everything is kind of shifting towards digital. So going to a digital world, but initially just wanted to get involved with the creative side of advertising and that was really what you mean to the business marketing degree.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:09 – 00:02:26
Right. So Bachelor of Science in Business and Marketing. So I haven’t heard of that combo before. So, is it, so how does science then tip into marketing? I’m intrigued by that angle at the university as a sort of major, minor or whatever.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:02:27 – 00:02:58
Yeah, I’m not sure why they give you a BA Bachelor’s of Art and then Bachelors of Science and then you pick your degree after that. But yeah, it’s either BA or BS in the United States. Yeah. But yeah, I’m not sure, I guess science because it is kind of like a science. It’s not really an art with SEO. It’s more of a science and applying what’s worked and what hasn’t worked and doing testing and things like that, but it’s not technically a science but according to the universities it is.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:58 – 00:03:20
Okay, right. Okay. Yeah, it just doesn’t matter which particular pop they put it in, it’s fine. So, you said you’re more interested in the creative side initially. Why was that? Were you a drawer at high school? What led you to sort of, or think that you’re going to get more into the creative side rather than the science side?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:03:21 – 00:03:41
I like drawing and art. So, but wasn’t my main focus in school, wasn’t the best at it. But I thought it’d be fun to do copywriting or get creatives and put that stuff out to the world and try to just do marketing with the creative side of things, with the copywriting or graphics and imagery and visuals and things like that.
Jeff Bullas
00:03:42 – 00:03:50
So, but the reality is with search, you know, getting ranked on search engines is both a bit of an art and a science, isn’t it?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:03:51 – 00:04:06
Yeah. In that design though, definitely but, yeah, it’s a blend of both because it’s all about testing, trial and error, working at it and getting creative and trying to come up with new ideas and new ways to go about the, the SEO and digital marketing side of things.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:06 – 00:05:34
Yeah, because of the interest. One of the interesting things I’ve found about SEO is very much about getting traffic and then making use of that traffic to generate leads and sales. But quite often you’ve got to come up with a very creative headline so that people go, I want a link to that because a lot of search engine optimization is about getting people to link to your site, to start to build your authority. So it’s almost like starts with. Well, it doesn’t start because the other part of the SEO equation is that you gotta be, for me, I’ll tell a bit of a story here and that I just started creating content without doing any keyword research. When I started my website blog in 2009, I just write about everything that interested me. I didn’t do any keyword research. And yet over time, I’d start to create a lot of inbound traffic from search engines because that’s, I’d created a lot of links and that came down to writing the best headlines. I couldn’t creating the best content I could. But my, if you looked at my search phrases, they were all over the place, they were not done strategically. So let’s maybe talk a little bit about that in terms of if you’re gonna start doing an SEO project, where do you start? Where’s Brandon start for the client?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:05:35 – 00:06:43
We’ll start off with the analysis of the website, look at their website versus the competitors. Try to figure out what the disconnect is. Why are the competitors ranking and why are they knocking in that traffic. And then from there, start implementing the changes first by going in and doing keyword research, figure out what keywords you wanna put in their website. So not just putting any keywords in there but doing keyword research using tools such as the Google Keyword Planner. It’s a free tool from Google that will show you how many people search for that keyword every single month. So you could figure out is this a good keyword? Or should I use a plural or synonym or some other variations? So you start off with that and then go in and start adding these keywords in the different areas in the website and the coding. It’s a little technical but one place that you don’t need to worry about or that’s not technical is just adding text to the website. So Google feeds off text, the more text they have, the easier it is for them to read and understand and know what keywords you’re targeting. So adding more text to every single page is something that you don’t need to go in the coding doesn’t require technical experience to just add more content and that will help out significantly.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:44 – 00:07:54
Yeah, and I just read that there was an SEMrush which is a SEO tool. They put out a little PDF the other day which listed, I think 44 tactics for SEOs. So that gives you a bit of an, you know, a bit of an idea of how detailed you can be with SEO. So, if you’re going to be trying to rank on page one of Google, the challenges are many number one, how competitive a keyword is and maybe can you talk about if you’re going to rank for a keyword that is very competitive? It’s gonna be a real challenge because you’re competing against some of the biggest sites in the world and it’s like a recipe, isn’t it? In other words, you got to do a whole bunch of things to mix together to actually be able to rank for a keyword. So what’s your strategy on keyword competitiveness? In other words, would you have a look at it saying, well, we’re not gonna go for the top ones, we’re gonna go for those that are around 50% or whatever it is. Can you talk a little bit about keyword competitiveness?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:07:55 – 00:10:39
If you wanna find keywords that are good that have search volume but also aren’t hypercompetitive. So if you go in the Google Keyword Planner and you see a keyword that gets a ton of search volume, I would then check that keyword in Google and actually search for it in Google and see who shows up on that first page of Google because it might be a great keyword with a lot of search volume. But if it’s just big corporations and you’re a startup or a small mom and pop shop, it’s gonna be a little bit tough for you to compete for that keyword. So you wanna find keywords that have websites that are ranked that are similar in size to you. So if you’re just a small startup and you’re searching for keywords, you want to find keywords that when you search for them in Google, that there’s not too much competition at small mom and pop shops because you want to compete with other people that are related or that are similar to what you’re doing. The more competitive the keywords are, the more backlinks that you’re gonna have to build. And that just takes time because backlinks are what ranks website but you’re small or just a startup company, you’re not gonna have many backlinks and it takes time to build backlinks. That’s part of that SEO that takes most time is building up that trust from Google and building up trust from Google is not easy. So I always go search in Google for my keyword or search in the Google Keyword Planner for keywords that seem good and then look for keywords that don’t have the most search but have the most relevancy. So finding keywords that are relevant that have buyer intent. Like you were talking about earlier, finding keywords that are actually gonna get conversion. So you’re selling like let’s say you’re selling shoes or men’s shoes, you might say alright, shoes gets me a lot of searches. But if I rank for the word shoes, what does that mean? It could mean so many different things. It doesn’t mean someone wants to buy shoes or men’s shoes or women’s shoes or even ranking for the word men’s shoes is gonna get you a lot of search traffic. But how many people actually care about the type of shoes you have because you might be selling boots and people are looking for tennis shoes. So having the keyword like men’s boots for sale, that’s gonna be a little bit more targeted if you’re selling boots because then it eliminates people that are looking for tennis shoes or other variations. So just getting really specific, the more granular you get the better. So like if you want to even one step further, someone’s searching for men’s boots, size 10 color brown. That’s really specific. Not how many people are searching for it, but the people searching, they have an intent that they probably want to make that purchase. They know what size, what color, what style they’re more at the bottom of the funnel, more likely to convert. But then I would still search in Google and see who shows up. If it is just a bunch of big corporate websites and I’m a startup, I would maybe then skip that keyword and try to dive a little bit deeper into something that has less competition.
Jeff Bullas
00:10:40 – 00:11:27
Yeah. And also part of that, by making it more specific and not, you know, not competing with the big guys, but also being very specific about brown men’s shoes or Bren men’s suede shoes, black sneaker shoes, that, which is more specific or less competitive. The other ones that are not, which helps as well to be able to understand. Quite often, you might be a local business and you’re trying to chase national keyword volume rather than local. So tell us a little bit more about if you’re a local business. In other words, you’re operating in a city or a state, a natural market or maybe even a suburb, that’s called local search. Tell us about what you do in that area and why it’s important. That would be interesting, I think for a lot of listeners and viewers.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:11:28 – 00:12:50
Yeah. So local is getting you up on Google Maps and places like that or Yelp or anywhere that someone’s searching. So if you’re a restaurant, you don’t really need to rank globally or nationally unless you’re a franchisee. But even then you still want to rank for your specific city because if someone’s searching for a restaurant near me, they’re not gonna want to travel too far. So you might have a local presence and make sure that you show up in the maps. When people search for that on Google Maps or so on Apple Maps or Bing Maps or Yellow Pages, Map Quest, Yellow Tripadvisor, the more maps you’re on the higher gonna rank on Google Maps. And that’s gonna just make sure that people find you locally. Also, getting more reviews is helpful but getting keywords in the reviews is really important because it’s not the number of reviews. It’s the number of reviews with keywords that it’s gonna really move you up the rankings because you could search for like a dentist near me. First position on Google might have five reviews. Second could have 25 reviews, third could have 100 reviews. So it’s not the number of reviews but getting keywords in those reviews, getting you listed on more maps, the more maps you’re on the higher gonna rank on Google Maps and just trying to get that local presence that way someone searching is searching for your brick and mortar physical location that you show up and that people find you and get that local traffic.
Jeff Bullas
00:12:50 – 00:13:20
Yeah. Okay. So that raises a question in terms of ranking for local search, are Google Reviews considered in the algorithm for ranking if you’re doing, trying to get ranked on local search? Is that important Google Reviews? Because Google Reviews is obviously linked to Google. So a Google Reviews are based upon your experience and expertise. A Google Review is important in terms of ranking for local search.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:13:21 – 00:13:40
Well, it depends if you talk about the Google Maps, local search or their Google websites. Because when you search for a local business, Google is gonna show you websites that’s not been affected by the reviews, but also shows you the maps with the reviews that would be affected by the reviews, but not the number of reviews, but the number of reviews with keywords in it.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:41 – 00:14:59
Right. Okay. So, and because what we’re trying to do is we’re as an SEO expert, you’re always trying to work out what is the secret source that’s not generally totally revealed. Google will only give hints about what you should be doing. And so one of the things I’m interested by is how do you build links? And because links basically are the ones that tell Google how important your site is. In other words, there’s two parts to link building. Number one is the volume of links. Then the other one is the authority of those that link to you, such as if you got the New York Times to link to you. And you’ve got Forbes to link to you and you’ve got Amazon to link to you, then that would be a big tick to Google’s search algorithm saying that your site must be important. So let’s talk a little bit about link building strategies. I’d be intrigued and I think many people are because, a lot of people don’t do link building and a lot of people do. So let’s, what are some of the most basic things you should be doing with link building?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:15:00 – 00:15:51
I would start off by looking at your competitors’ backlinks. There’s tools you get to pay for them, but they’ll show you any website’s backlinks and one by one, you could look at your competitors, see all their backlinks and see which ones are relevant, authoritative and start reaching out to the site. Because if they’re linking out to your competitor, they would probably link out to you. You just gotta figure out what your competitors do. Do they write an article? Do they do a blog? Do they do an interview? They’re selling products that they give out free product for someone to read, review on their website and you kind of reverse engineer their strategy, the more popular tools would be Ahrefs, Moz is another one or SEMrush like pick or choose one. You don’t need to buy all of them, but pick or choose one of those and use that. And it’s gonna show you any website’s backlinks and then that’s gonna be the best because you are looking at your competitors and research what they’ve done in reverse engineer it.
Jeff Bullas
00:15:52 – 00:16:58
Okay. So there’s basically two ways to get links. Number one: make your content so attractive that people will automatically link to you. Okay. That takes time. And that’s the question I’d like to park as well in terms of what’s the biggest expectation of clients when they start, you know, an SEO strategy and time is I’m sure an argument you will have or not an argument but a tension point with a client where they have expectation that’s high. I can rank in two weeks. And we talk about that in a minute. So what in terms of also link building beyond just creating, you know, bloody good content with great headlines that say I’ve got a link to this and share it with my audience. What are some other link building strategies? And that would include paying for links or writing content for people as well. So can you take us through some of the advanced link building strategies that you would recommend and do for your clients?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:16:59 – 00:17:39
No, I mean, the best is getting on sites are related to what you’re doing. So you wanna find niche related sites and one way you could do that is by logging on other people’s websites. So you could build relationships with other websites are related to what you’re doing and see if you could contribute to them. Maybe if you’re e-commerce, you can give out products to other web or to people influencers that are in your niche and they could write a review about it, share it on the website, you get interviews, you do podcasts, you could just kind of get creative with how do you get other people to talk about you. So, I mean, the safest really is blogging or getting interviews. That’s really gonna be the better way to go about it.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:39 – 00:17:41
Yeah, that’s very time consuming, isn’t it?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:17:42 – 00:17:51
Yeah. SEO is not the easiest, It does take a lot of time and work, but put that work in and Google rewards you. But yeah, it’s no shortcuts unfortunately.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:52 – 00:18:34
Okay. Alright. So let’s talk about the challenges you have and people’s expectations regarding search engine optimization. In other words, building their search engine authority. Is one of your ongoing battles always about telling your client to be patient? In terms of how long it’s going to take to actually rank because I’ve had these conversations over a long time, the last 10, 12 years. People go, well, I’m gonna rank on page one of Google next week. How do you manage that expectation? And what’s your answer?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:18:35 – 00:19:21
I mean, it takes time. Unfortunately, if you want immediate results, paid ads are the way to go about it. But SEO is more of a long term play where it takes time to build trust up. That’s the biggest part is Google just doesn’t trust anybody and you can’t just build that trust up immediately, it takes time. And that’s the part that there’s no shortcuts, it’s backlinks are a big part of building trust. And the thing about backlinks is you can build backlinks and Google might not find them for a couple of days, couple of weeks, a couple of months, maybe never finding these backlinks. And that’s the part that takes time is Google needs to find these backlinks, readjust their algorithm, figure out, alright, how do we rank you? How do we trust you now that we see these other backlinks, these trust signals and all that just takes some time is no real shortcut, unfortunately.
Jeff Bullas
00:19:22 – 00:20:46
Cool. Yeah, that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that it’s just, it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint and you’ve really just got to take the time and invest in it over time. And that is something I think a lot of, I suppose non SEO or a lot of business people don’t understand. And I think that’s an important message is that you got to consider this as an investment in your website, your blog, your e-commerce store over years. And the sooner you start, the better it’ll be because for example, for me, I generate over 80% of our traffic is through Google Search. And we’re becoming much more strategic, the way I started was just basically create great content about anything that interested me that I thought people would want to hear about on social media and marketing and digital marketing. Look, it worked. But I realized that it’s actually better now to be very strategic about doing the research about the key phrases that you want to write for, that you are that is going to be part of search intent or buyer intent when they turn up on your site. So let’s talk a little bit about search intent and why it’s important if you’re gonna get leads and sales.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:20:47 – 00:21:25
Oh yeah, you want to bring in the right people because you’re writing for keywords. But if they’re just random keywords that’s just gonna get you traffic, that’s probably gonna hit that back button and that doesn’t look good either. So you want targeted traffic that’s actually gonna convert because ultimately, I mean, that’s what most people want is conversions. They want sales, leads, phone calls, things like that. So if you’re bringing in the wrong traffic, you’re gonna get traffic, but that’s not gonna convert just like social. You could have a bunch of followers on social media. But if they’re not converting, then doesn’t do much for you. It’s all about targeted traffic, targeted followers that are gonna wanna eventually hopefully make a purchase from you.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:25 – 00:22:05
Right. Okay. So what’s the type of content that you would create? And what’s the phrases just as an example? Because basically we talk about a digital market, we call top of the funnel, which is where you get attention, start building credibility and trust. And then the bottom of the funnel is where people are ready to buy. So could you take us a little bit through those funnel strategy? And you maybe give an example of top of funnel content versus bottom of funnel content as well. That would be good to know.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:22:06 – 00:23:07
Top of funnel is just more broad, generic type of content. So it’s just trying to capture a wider audience. It’s gonna be probably more broad, less or more competitive with those keywords just because it’s just really generic content. It’s targeting specific keyword, but it’s just an overall view generalization of it. So maybe if you’re selling like tennis shoes, you could have an article about just shoes in general and that could just get people interested in it. And then from there you try to have lower funnel, mid funnel where it’s more a little bit more transactional. I talk about maybe the comparison of different shoes like men’s versus women’s shoes still really broad in general, not much intent behind it, but it’s a little bit lower. And then the bottom funnel would be something that’s really specific. Like a comparison of that company’s top five different running shoes. That way, it’s more just talking about those specific brands and shoes and the models or the ones that are out there.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:08 – 00:25:42
Yeah. I think some of the bottom of the funnel I’ve come across is, basically, even as blunt as by, you know, X as in a keyword and then you might list, and this is done quite often is you might list if you were the vendor or trying to sell something, you would list yourself number one and number two in different ways and your competitors would sit below that because we know that positions number one and number two basically get all the clicks. So it seems, and people struggle a lot with this in terms of listing your competitors, but it works. It looks like it looks credible, it looks like a great review. And I think the other, some of the other ones which have got great buyer intent are things like best, right? That’s a keyword as in, that’s the headline that would be like, I watched the movie Nike the other day, which is about the journey of Michael Jordan being, Nike getting Michael Jordan to basically be the sponsor him for his shoes. And they created the, you know, Air Jordan shoe. So it would be like buy 10 best places to buy Air Jordan’s shoes, for example, or Sneakers. So, buyer intent is very important and that’s where the whole, this is where the SEO strategy becomes very strategic in terms of creating content from top of the funnel, right down to the bottom of the funnel. Because when people turn up best of or buy their intent, they’ve already done their research. They’ve got their credit card out, it’s sitting on their computer and they’re ready to go. Now that comes down to, and this is the other important I’d be interested in your thoughts on this. Really great SEO works very well with great CRO. Now, I’ve used two acronyms which I really, I don’t like to use generally. CRO is Conversion Rate Optimization. In other words, do you, have you optimized the page? You’ve got their traffic, you’ve got their attention, they’ve turned up, you’re ranking for the first page of Google or maybe its second page. But once you get them to your page, this is where conversion rate optimization, which is where you make it easy for them to buy by having a call to action at the top of the page, for example. So what’s your attitude to CRO Conversion Rate Optimization to make sure that when you’ve got them on your page, you convert them, what are some of the key basics that you recommend to your clients?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:25:43 – 00:27:02
Yeah, I would make sure that. Well, the website looks good on all devices on mobile desktop, chrome Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, test it on all different platforms. But making sure that maybe on desktop versus mobile, the mobile version might be a little bit more simplified, less on the mobile because it’s a smaller screen, less real estate and just making sure it looks good and concise and making sure all the important information is at the top of the page. But when you look on the screen where you see on the screen is called above the fold. Once you start scrolling, it’s below the fold and the majority of people never scroll down on the website. So making sure that all your printed information is at the top like it called action value proposition. Letting people know what’s in it for me. Maybe have some bullet points or video or stuff that’s easy to digest because people’s attention spans are really short and if you don’t capture it, they’re probably hit that back button. So I make sure that the value propositions up there to understand what’s in it for me. What are you gonna, what benefits am I gonna get from using your product or service that’s really important and just having everything up there that needs to be up there at the top above the fold. Below the fold you can have more tax and all the other technical features and specs but above the fold should be clean, simplified and just make it easy for people to read and know exactly what that page is about.
Jeff Bullas
00:27:02 – 00:27:30
Yeah. Okay, cool. That’s some really good tips then. Right. So another question I have is we’ve seen the rise of video in terms of being important. How important is video for SEO? Because if you go to a Google search results page, quite often, they seem to give prominence to two sites that have video. So tell us a bit, what’s your recommendation on the use of video for search and conversion for example?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:27:31 – 00:28:14
I mean, when you search on Google, sometimes you’ll see videos in the search results. So it’s not just websites anymore, like Google Lists, they show images, videos, maps when the videos appear. It’s primarily YouTube because Google owns YouTube and YouTube as much as they can. So if you could the videos, I put them up on YouTube and try to optimize your YouTube channel videos. That way you could just capture more of that free real estate on that first page of Google. And that’s really gonna help out because people want, they don’t want to read articles anymore or blogs. It’s much easier to just hit play, have someone speak to you and people would rather have that done than read the 500 or 2000 word article.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:15 – 00:30:07
Yeah, there’s a phrase that’s emerged in the last one to two years it’s called and I didn’t know what it was initially I had to Google it to find out, TLDR. And because you mentioned that people don’t want to read anymore. Too Long Didn’t Read is what that acronym means. So this is where you’re talking about above the fold. You’ve got a call to action straight away. Buy X right away. Okay. Or top three places to buy X, right? Especially if you’re doing affiliate, for example. So that’s, and for me, okay. So, and we’re all wired differently. Some people prefer videos. Some people prefer text. I could read the text within an eight minute video in about 40-50 seconds, right? I could scan it, see what’s important and done. Whereas I don’t want to wade through eight minutes of video to see something that’s relevant to me. There’s one other question that I’m intrigued by that has emerged in the last six months and I’d be interested in your thoughts on it around. And it’s ChatGPT and AI. So where do you see the role of AI and ChatGPT in search currently and also maybe in the future I’m interested in your thoughts on that because this one school of thought says if you create content with ChatGPT, Google knows it’s, you know, written by AI and will discount it. Another school of thought says Google treats it as content because it’s content, end of story, don’t care. So let’s have a little chat about, I mean your thoughts on the role of AI in search where it is today and where it’s going, I’d be intrigued by your insights.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:30:08 – 00:31:03
I mean, I wish I knew the future about where it’s going, that one. So from there, everything changes so quickly, it’s tough, but it’s definitely here to stay or we’ll have to see what’s going to emerge in the future. But yeah, Google said in the past they don’t want chat or content written by third party tools or AI and things like that. But last year or like six months ago, they said that it’s okay. We don’t care now, as long as the content offers value, we don’t care who writes it if it’s written by people or AI. So you can use tools like that, but I won’t just copy it verbatim. I’d probably go in and double check, edit it because it needs some revisions. It’s not perfect yet. It’s getting better and better, but still not there yet. So definitely take everything with a grain of salt and go in and make those tweaks. But it is a tool that will help expedite things and make people more efficient. So I would use it, but just double check, fact check all that stuff, make sure it’s accurate and then you could use it. Don’t just copy it verbatim.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:03 – 00:32:13
Yeah, I totally agree. I’ll think that you can use the ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting in terms of the main body information. But then you need to add your own voice to it. You need to make sure that it isn’t using similar words all over and over again. So it sounds like it was written by a robot. You know, start with a story but make sure you’ve got the keywords at the top of the, you know, both in the headline as well as in the first sentence or two. So this is what leans into the other part of it is is that there’s a lot of tools out there including RF and SEMrush and you know, Yoast which are SEO tools to help create content that meet Google guidelines and give you the best chance of ranking that we’re seeing the rise of AI being used within those tools. And there’s the rise of new tools that such as Surfer SEO which basically will score your content based upon SEO optimization. What are some of the top tools you use for search? And which ones are using AI?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:32:14 – 00:33:07
I mean, there’s a ton of tools out there but I mean, it’s kind of up to you Surfer, there’s Frase, there’s Jasper, there’s so many of them out there. I mean, they’ve been around since I’ve been doing SEO in 2007. ChatGPT is just a newer one that’s emerged, but there’s so many tools out there that work equally well, if not better. I mean, ChatGPT is good at creating content. But other tools that are more SEO focused will focus on looking at your competitors to see how much text they wrote. What’s the frequency of those keywords in there? What synonyms, plurals, what other variations of these phrases are they incorporating in there? So you could figure out how to sprinkle that content in and how frequently like how they write their titles, things like that. So they are beneficial, but it’s not up to you which tools you want to use. There’s so many of them out there, but they’re all pretty good. Surfer is a really good one. Frase is a really good one I like.
Jeff Bullas
00:33:07 – 00:34:52
Yeah, I think you sort of got and this is the question that’s quite often asked. Well, I’m asking it, so will the incumbents who plug in AI and start evolving their platforms, which using, you know, some smarts to basically make it easier and faster and amplify what we do as humans. You’ve got the incumbents like SEMrush and you’ve got, you know, Ahrefs which are maybe the top two and they’re very complicated tools, they’re powerful tools. Then you’ve got something like a new emerging one, which is Surfer SEO. And so it’s really interesting to see what will happen over time. But I think that I really think that the incumbents are going to still have a lot because they’ve got the resources to actually optimize their site and also in time and money to invest in their site to make it work in this new AI emerging forest fire because AI is really, has just been amazing. Really, hasn’t it, in terms of its impact on content. So I’ve been to though, yeah, I know you maybe don’t want to talk about it, but maybe you could. Is that where do you think the future research might go with AI and also search such as, Bing’s been experimenting with a hybrid version and Google’s doubling down and trying to, they’ve brought out Bard as well, which is equivalent to Chat GPT. I’ve been a little bit in terms of where you think it may go in terms of search. How’s AI and search going to work together in the future?
Brandon Leibowitz
00:34:52 – 00:35:57
Yeah, that one, I’m not too sure because it changes so quickly as well that I don’t even know what’s gonna happen in the next couple of days or weeks. It just keeps changing and changing. It’s so dynamic right now that it is really tough to predict what’s gonna happen, what’s gonna stick, what’s going to resonate with people, but for now I just say, stick with what you know, and Google still really runs the show and dominates in terms of traffic. And I mean, it’s slowing down a little bit, but we’ll have to see what they’re gonna do to keep that traffic and recapture it and get there. But you can’t really do much with ChatGPT and other tools you can’t like buy. So if someone’s searching for transactional product or keywords, can’t really buy there yet, maybe in the future they’ll let you buy somehow. But right now you can’t do that. So, I mean, it’s taken away from like basic, like question answer type of content, but you’re trying to like make purchases, they’ll give you recommendations, but you can’t purchase from there. So you still got to search on Google where to buy those products or services or whatever it may be that you’re looking at. So you have to see what happens with search and if it keeps on changing and it goes to AI or something else. But yeah, it’s tough to really predict that.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:57 – 00:38:06
Yeah, I think search is gonna be around for a long time yet. It’s, but I think it certainly is going to evolve. I think Bing has got a hybrid. They’re experimenting with, sorry, which is search on one side and then ChatGBT on the other. And that’s basically because you gotta verify quite often. I’ve struggled with trying to get some facts and information about a certain thing. And I found that the ChatGPT is, can be what it brings up in an answer can be quite wrong when you go to Google and, or Bing in your search. And it’ll actually be a different answer. The challenge that people need to understand with ChatGPT is it’s been trained on data that is quite often two years old. So a lot has changed in two years. So and the other thing you mentioned too, which I think people don’t, is that intent or buy is not gonna happen very easily within ChatGPT. But there is some work being done with some major vendors including travel sites where it’ll be embedded within ChatGPT and others. But yeah, it’s early days. I think like you said, we’re just going to have to still stick to the basics. But I think what all of us have to do is we need to keep an eye on what’s happening with AI so that you can start to pivot when the direction starts to become clearer. And I think that’s the thing we’re gonna do with a fast moving tech world is you just gotta be continue to be aware and keep yourself up to speed and still be doing the basics. So yeah, so just to wrap it up Brandon, there are some top tips you’d like to share about if you’re going to, if you want to generate leads and sales through search. What are some of the things that you think are really important for business owners and entrepreneurs, marketing people need to understand? What are the some of the top tips that you think just are very, very important.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:38:07 – 00:39:07
Probably just going after quality versus quantity for everything. So just going after quality content, quality backlinks, quality everything is in the past to just push out as much stuff as possible. Now it’s go for quality over quantity because that’s really good. It’s gonna move the needle the most, not just putting out a bunch of random stuff that is just filler content, but going after really good content, really deep content, most is focusing on good quality backlinks that are really relevant and authoritative versus just going after basic random generic backlinks. You really need the needle as much as it used to. So quality is so very important, but patience is also very important. Just understanding it all takes time for Google to readjust your algorithm to find and see all these changes and give you those rankings. A lot of people will get kind of discouraged and wonder what’s going on. But as long as you keep working it and building it up and building it up over time, Google is gonna start trusting you more, but just don’t get discouraged if you don’t see those immediate results because it does take time to get Google to trust you. It’s not something you do overnight.
Jeff Bullas
00:39:08 – 00:39:58
Yeah, that’s what we were talking about before is that it’s a journey. It’s, and it’s not a sprint. You’ve basically got to understand that this is gonna be an investment, investing in a digital asset, which is your website and you got to treat this as a journey of years. Yes, you’ll get some results maybe in a month or two or three depending on where you are in the journey of being, you know, a built Google Authority. How many links have you already got and key phrases. So, yeah, I think that’s great. In other words, quality over quantity and patience, I think are very, very important and being guided by people such as yourself to actually do the basics right and for you keeping them on the track. So, Brandon, how many, how do people contact you? That’s, what’s the best way.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:39:58 – 00:40:28
So anyone that wants to learn more, I create a special gift for them. If they go to my website seooptimizers.com, that’s S E O O P T I M I Z E R S .com forward slash gift, they could find that there along with my contact information and a bunch of classes I’ve done over the years, I’ve learned it for free so they could see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also if they want to book some time on my calendar for a free website analysis, I’m happy to check out their website from an SEO point of view and they could book some time on my calendar there as well for free.
Jeff Bullas
00:40:28 – 00:40:54
Alright, cool. That’s awesome. Well, thank you very much for sharing some of some free stuff which basically adds value to people so they can actually understand. Thank you Brandon for coming on The Jeff Bullas Show. It’s been an absolute pleasure and thank you for dialing in from LA and hopefully might bump into you and catch up with you in LA at some stage when we come over. So, thank you very much Brandon. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Brandon Leibowitz
00:40:54 – 00:40:56
Thank you for having me on today.