Master Google Updates: Essential Survival Guide for Niche Bloggers!

Hello, fellow niche bloggers and digital marketing enthusiasts! Today I’m excited to share with you some invaluable insights from my latest Blogger Genius Podcast episode.

We’re diving deep into the recent Google updates and their impact on popular niche bloggers, like lifestyle bloggers, beauty bloggers, fitness bloggers, weight loss bloggers, interior design bloggers, personal finance blogs, and more.

Think of this as your survival guide to the new Google updates and an exploration into the latest trends in the world of digital marketing. This episode is all about how to still get your blog to rank on Google and elsewhere.

Show Notes:

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• Personality Quiz: What Digital Product Should I Create?
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• All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes

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Adapting to Google Algorithm Updates

As many of you know, Google’s algorithm updates can significantly affect our traffic and income, especially for those of us who rely on ads and affiliate marketing to monetize our niche blogs. In fact, even popular niches, like food blogging, have taken big hits and lost tons of traffic. But bottom line, there’s a silver lining! 

I’ve been working with bloggers to pivot towards selling digital products, like digital downloads, workshops, memberships, online courses, coaching, etc., offering free 20-minute strategy calls to brainstorm and navigate this new income avenue. It’s all about adapting and diversifying our monetization methods and traffic sources.

SEO Expertise with SEO, Steve Weidman

To give us a deeper understanding, I brought in SEO guru Steve Wiideman. Steve’s expertise shed light on the necessity for bloggers to stay agile with Google’s changing search algorithms and user behaviors. Can you still get your content to rank in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages)? Yes. But he stressed the importance of unique and helpful content, even in the age of AI-generated posts.

Beyond Traditional Web Search

Steve urges us to look beyond the confines of traditional web search and trying to get our blog or website to rank on the first page of Google search. Platforms like Google Discover, TikTok, and short-form media content are becoming increasingly important. It’s about broadening our digital marketing horizons and embracing the platforms where our audiences spend their time.

The Art of Keyword Research

We also discuss the evolving role of keyword research in driving traffic and building brand awareness. Understanding user intent is crucial for creating content that truly resonates and provides value. For those hit by a drop in Google traffic, Steve recommended analyzing top-performing pages, studying competitors, and optimizing content for a variety of platforms and search engines. For new bloggers and experienced bloggers, it’s no longer all about Google.

Personalization and Marketing Channels

The commoditization of content means we need to get personal. So even if you’re in one of the most profitable blogging niches, like home improvement, personal development, fashion, mental health,  real estate, or travel etc. this is no longer enough to make a lot of money. It’s a good idea to start using “I” and “me,” and sharing your personal experiences to make our content more relatable. It will show your expertise and how well you know your specific niche. Steve also highlighted the need to stay on top of industry trends and utilize different marketing channels to remain competitive.

Maximizing Marketing Vehicles

In the latter part of our conversation, Steve emphasizes setting goals for increasing the utilization of various marketing vehicles. He suggests seeking expertise in platforms like LinkedIn and using AI to boost visibility and authority.

The Rise of Generative AI

Generative AI is revolutionizing how we interact and communicate. It’s moving from providing solutions to taking actions, such as scheduling and content creation. This evolution opens up exciting opportunities for businesses in customer service, marketing data analysis, and content generation.

Strategic Content Marketing for Niche Bloggers

Steve encourages a strategic approach to content marketing. This includes reviving underperforming content through SEO reviews, UX assessments, and leveraging brand expertise. He also shared tips on using platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Medium effectively, focusing on providing value rather than self-promotion.

A Granular Strategy for Success

Finally, Steve advocates for a granular strategy. Start with one piece of content, measure the impact of each change, see if you can get it to the top of Google search, and continuously evolve. It’s about being strategic, leveraging AI, and implementing a measured approach to content marketing and platform utilization.

Embracing Creativity and Change

To sum up, our digital marketing landscape is ever-evolving, and success lies in our ability to be creative, adapt to changes, and diversify our strategies. I hope these insights from the Blogger Genius podcast inspire you to explore new avenues like selling your own digital products and thrive in the digital space.

Stay tuned for more episodes, and remember, I’m here to help you strategize your digital product journey.

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

• How to Make Money Blogging in 2024 (New Trend) with Jillian Leslie
• How Will AI Impact Blogging in 2024 with Steve Wiideman?
• The Truth About Blogging Success: Hard Work and Risks with Faith Mariah

MiloTreeCart, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTreeCart, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like fill-in-the-blank sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support. MiloTreeCart is currently available for a lifetime deal of $349 or three easy installments of $116.33.

Podcast Transcript: #325: Master Google Updates: Essential Survival Guide for Niche Bloggers!

Jillian Leslie (00:00:00) – Hi, I’m Jillian, welcome to a brand new episode of the Blogger Genius Podcast. This has been a very interesting time. Google has been rolling out updates and many bloggers, niche bloggers who monetize via ads and affiliates have gotten hit. I’ve been on calls this week with many of you and one blogger said, Jillian, you have been right. It is time that we have multiple income streams and I’m now ready to sell digital products. If this is you, get on a free 20 minute call with me where I will help you come up with your digital product strategy and share best practices on how others are finding success. To book your call, just go to milotree.com, our homepage. Scroll down and you’ll see a link to my calendar. And please remember, the one constant in building online businesses is change. So book your free call now! I’m excited to show you a whole new way to monetize.

Announcer (00:01:06) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by Milo Tree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie (00:01:13) – Hello and welcome back to the show. I have a must listen episode today. I brought back my friend Steve Weidman. He’s an SEO guru to talk about what’s happened with Google, all the updates, how to think about your business today, and how to think about AI going forward. He was here last talking about AI and you guys all really like that episode. Now he’s giving practical tips on building businesses in 2024. And the landscape is different. It’s no longer about just getting Google to send traffic to your blog and you monetize that traffic. It is now almost like a 360 view of your business. Your blog is a piece of it, but you are no longer just a blogger. Steve shares strategies on what to do, how to think about your blog. If you’ve gotten hit by one of these Google updates. Really, we talk about the fact that now everybody needs multiple ways to drive traffic to our sites and multiple ways to monetize. We also talk about AI. I love hearing Steve’s prognostications.

Jillian Leslie (00:02:32) – Really, what I love is his positive view of the future. So if you need a dose of positivity and some new ideas about building your business, this is the episode for you. So, without further delay, here is my interview with Steve Weidman. Steve, welcome back to the show.

Steve Wiideman (00:02:54) – Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be back and excited to nerd out with you a little bit on all the cool things happening in digital marketing.

Jillian Leslie (00:03:00) – So before I said, let’s start, we’ve been just talking and talking, and then all of a sudden I realized, like, wait, we’ve got to get into this because there is so much to catch up on, and I love that you are so willing to come back to discuss all of these changes, because I think things are changing even faster.

Steve Wiideman (00:03:17) – Yes. And it’s exciting and it’s fun for us digital marketers to discover and explore the way that people are using the web and how we can help our clients make sure that they’re still getting business from people who are searching for what they offer.

Jillian Leslie (00:03:30) – Now, the thing that I shared with you is I get on calls with bloggers all the time, and I’m noticing a bunch of them freaking out because these new Google updates have literally cut them off at the knees. They’re talking about losing something like 70, 80, 90% of their traffic overnight. And all of a sudden these most of these bloggers are monetizing via ads on their site from services like Ramdev or Mediavine. And seeing these tremendous drops is very devastating. And so we’ve been talking about like, are these changes here to stay, or is this Google playing around and trying new things and kind of what is the future for the, let’s say, food blogger or DIY blogger or travel blogger? And what would you say to that?

Steve Wiideman (00:04:29) – I think it’s a two part question. Part one relates to systems and algorithms and and how, you know, search continues to evolve. And you’re right. They are doing a lot of testing. I think the other part kind of goes back to that. The story you you might have heard about the big SEO heist that happens in 2023, where a site that used to get just, you know, hundreds of thousands of visits, somebody basically crawled their their site map, the list of pages they have on their website, and they asked AI to regenerate better content than what was already on each of those pages for their own website.

Steve Wiideman (00:05:06) – So they basically took every single page, you know, that was on that site, used AI to create content and and that’s that ability, that’s that SEO heist ability, scares Google quite a bit because now they’re they’re threatened with, you know, a system that that’s, I don’t know, a little bit scary, a little bit crazy. And what what we’ve noticed since the, the latest update that happened earlier here in Q1 is a lot of those SEO hosting sites that were, highly AI generated, just boom, lost a lot of their content. And I’m not blaming the bloggers for using AI content or that their competitors might have been hijacking, you know, the keywords that they’re trying to rank for in their URLs by creating AI content. But I can tell you that’s that. I still stand by my favorite quote by Jim Rohn, that you don’t have to do extraordinary things to be successful. You only have to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. So I would encourage I would encourage first a gut check on our process.

Steve Wiideman (00:06:10) – Are we maybe using too much AI content and not providing enough unique, firsthand experience, helpful content on our pages? Can we study the top results and compare our pages, maybe even run some some, surveys and polls? Which page is most helpful and why? And recalibrate our strategy to make sure that our pages are still the most helpful. And of course, we can. We can use AI to help with ideas and brainstorming inspiration. But I think I think in terms of the shift, yeah, there’s there’s not going to be any stop to how search results are changing. And we need to not just evolve our strategy while we keep doing it and don’t throw it away, but we also need to broaden our approach to digital marketing to not be myopic around a Google web search. before we started recording, we started talking a little bit about Google Discover and TikTok and, reels and shorts, you know, all that short form media content that can be optimized for people who are scrolling their timeline, with a little bit of of planning, a little bit of, of page optimization to create some really good storytelling and visuals and, and video type content for that generation that’s starting to use Google a little bit less, and searching YouTube and TikTok for the type of content that they’re looking for.

Steve Wiideman (00:07:37) – So I think I think we continue with the, the creation of our, our blog content, but evolve it to make sure that we’re including all the things that we know can play a role in our visibility in a universal search result, such as including FAQs on the page, such as structuring the, you know that the code in a way that Google can understand the meaning of words that we’re using a little bit better, to make sure that we’re diversifying our media content and using our own images, not stock video and stock images, but actually creating our own and showing first hand experience by using words like AI and me and and showing, you know, a level of expertise that I just could never do. Right. So I think, I think that’s that’s kind of that mindset we need to start shifting toward.

Jillian Leslie (00:08:23) – Do you think keyword research as the main way of being a successful blogger is no longer the number one strategy? Is that being phased out? It felt like for a blogger, what you needed to do was understand keyword research, understand the idea of low competition keywords, understand just how Google worked, and even though the sounds negative, I don’t mean it that way.

Jillian Leslie (00:08:54) – But like you could almost gamify Google to your advantage. And even though you’re supposed to be writing for real people at the end of the day, if you wanted your post to rank, you also were probably number one writing with thinking, thinking about SEO, thinking about search intent, those kinds of things. And is that no longer where you would be focused?

Steve Wiideman (00:09:18) – I would still make keyword research my absolute most important first step in any inbound marketing campaign, if not for the the content on the website, for the content marketing calendar of what we plan to publish across the web and through, you know, the, the the difference, places that people find our content like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and so forth. So I, I would still create that as the foundation. In fact, this morning I delivered a taxonomy plan to one of our clients that that really broke down all the different ways that people are searching for and will find their content. The next step with that, that maybe the bloggers and and folks that have been impacted by search rankings would start to migrate into is is really looking at what types of content we need to have on that page to solve for the user intents.

Steve Wiideman (00:10:12) – So we we look at the competitors and, and their top pages and their top traffic driving pages. we do some searches for the keywords that we want to appear for, and we really study and analyze the top search results to, to get an idea of the types of content and needs and intents that the users are looking for, so that we can evolve our page to not just match the keywords, which you can still do in Google is actually now a, you know, a filter you could use. You just say, show me based on the keyword, not based on what you think I’m looking for. so yeah, I would, I would say the, the, the shift that needs to focus while we still keyword research, number one, to how we use those keywords to develop and evolve our, our holistic marketing plan, not just our blog posts.

Jillian Leslie (00:10:58) – Okay, so if this just I’m a blogger, I’ve lost 70% of my Google traffic. Is that coming back?

Steve Wiideman (00:11:08) – it’s it can if we address the, you know, the, the content that lost the traffic.

Steve Wiideman (00:11:14) – So go into your analytics, look at those pages that, that drove the most amount of traffic to the site. Start there. Do that competitive analysis. Look at what’s showing up in the search results. Study the the headings and subheadings and images and and other, focal points of the pages that are now outranking you to make sure that we’ve created something even better. And then take a look at all the different places that that our users are, are surfing and using. Like I said, social networks being number one TikTok. I think there’s still some room for Facebook. I know there’s there’s a lot of folks that look at Facebook like there’s a stigma to it, but, I’m seeing a lot of interactions and people sharing content. Even this morning, some of my peers were sharing some photos that were taken out. Popcorn, you know, on Facebook. So I would look at all of those different places where we can publish content, and optimize our content to appear in the streams for those folks that are, that are using the, the streams of short form video and, and Google Discover type content.

Steve Wiideman (00:12:18) – So that’s, that’s kind of the again, the approach or the mindset that I would take, as it relates to what’s next. Once we finished our keyword research, let’s, let’s start optimizing our content to appear in all of those places. But don’t just guess that what you think your your customers are going to want. Do those searches. Search TikTok, search Instagram. Look at the content that’s coming up. What’s what’s the music you know, in the background on TikTok? What’s, what’s the narrative? What are the hashtags that are being used? Let’s take the top 5 or 10 results and build something of our own. That’s that encompasses those same, those same focal points, but do a better job of it. and let’s, let’s do something in the competitors aren’t especially on those networks is let’s get other influencers involved in that process so that you can piggyback on their influence a bit and allow you to start capturing larger audiences. So many people just push content out there that’s keyword optimized, and there’s crickets.

Steve Wiideman (00:13:17) – But if you get other influencers involved to participate and you’ve seen celebrities now working with influencers in these clips, as a way, again, for each of them to expand their influence and expand their reach for that type of content. So I think that needs to be part of the strategy is it’s not just push really good content. Let’s get other influencers, maybe in our industry or a similar vertical, to participate in it so that we’re we’re growing on each other’s influencing influence. And you know, again, growing our reach overall.

Jillian Leslie (00:13:49) – So in terms of monetization, then if let’s say I’ve been relying on an ad network like receptive or Mediavine to make me money, I feel like what you’re saying is you got to start thinking, not just diversifying where people are finding your content, but also how you are monetizing it. Because we were talking about your daughter, and I was saying that one of the most successful blog niches is food blogging, and you were just sharing about where she’s finding recipes.

Steve Wiideman (00:14:21) – Yeah. ChatGPT.

Jillian Leslie (00:14:23) – So she is literally just typing in a query into ChatGPT, getting a recipe.

Steve Wiideman (00:14:28) – In the GPT app on her phone, and she’ll start there and jump right in to give me a recipe for whatever. And sometimes ChatGPT will will spit back a good recipe and then a link to view more. And a lot of cases, she’ll actually click those links because she knows there might be a video or something to watch to give her more context, but sometimes not. Sometimes in those cases, potential food bloggers just lost, you know, a visit because she decided to get a quick answer on on ChatGPT, which means that, if recipes are going to be something where we lose some traffic, let’s find other topics and things that are interesting to our customers where they will go to a search. And again, it doesn’t have to be Google. and provide content that guides them, you know, to to subscribe and see more of our content because the social networks algorithms thinks that that our content is more helpful to them.

Steve Wiideman (00:15:22) – So they’ll see us more often in their, you know, in their, their streams as they’re flicking through, whether it’s Google discover or, reels or shorts etc..

Jillian Leslie (00:15:32) – And I feel like content in and of itself is becoming commoditized, because it could be I go to this blog for this recipe, or I go to ChatGPT and I’m kind of indifferent. Therefore, what is the differentiator? I’m going to argue it becomes you.

Steve Wiideman (00:15:51) – As what is for sure we talked about this a little bit is using more more terms like I and me and things like that in your content so that you’re you’re really personalizing it around, you know, your experience with whatever that topic happens to be for sure. I would 100% agree with that. But you mentioned the the paid advertising side. It’s amazing to me how few digital marketing folks will marry the data between the two. Using your organic data to to influence your paid search and paid advertising, and then using your paid advertising data, to better influence, you know, your organic strategy.

Steve Wiideman (00:16:26) – I rarely see those two things happening, and both of them play together so well, you know, that it’s it’s, sad that more marketers don’t, you know, don’t use both data points to help influence one or the other.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:38) – Could you break that down?

Steve Wiideman (00:16:39) – Sure. Well, when I was at Disney, we had a, in our monthly report, we would have a page that would show our top 50 search terms from paid search right next to our top 50 search terms from organic. And we’d look at both of them and say, hey, there’s some gaps here in organic where we can borrow from what’s working really well and paid and or and optimized content for organic and gets, you know, double exposure in a search result. And the organic side, there’s there’s a lot of really top performing pages that we’re not creating ad groups for in our our paid search strategy. Or we learn a little bit more about our audience demographic from paid search because we get some of that third party data, you know, that we might not be able to get from organic.

Steve Wiideman (00:17:20) – And then we we tailor that toward the voice and the narrative of the content so that we’re we’re talking to the right demographic, based on what we learned from our paid search, third party data. So I think I think that’s, again, just another, another place to explore new opportunities of where we can improve both our paid and our organic strategies.

Jillian Leslie (00:17:43) – And can you that that makes a lot of sense. What I hear you saying, I feel like there’s a theme and that is no. One strategy. You’ve got to be looking for the opportunities. And this is something that I always say is when there is change, most people will freak out. Most people will either freak out, and become paralyzed. They will live in denial that this really isn’t happening, and somehow it’s just going to correct itself if I just hang in there long enough. or they get angry and, like, give up. But what you seem to be saying is you’ve got to now become more creative. So when you say start with keyword research, it’s not just for Google anymore, it’s for TikTok, it’s for Instagram, it’s for.

Jillian Leslie (00:18:33) – And we didn’t even talk about yet Reddit, Google, Quora, Reddit, Google, Discover. And now it’s kind of finding these different places to test to see. Can it get some traction here? Can I get some traction here? and that seems to be what you are saying.

Steve Wiideman (00:18:53) – Yep. 100%. And and it’s going to continue to change and evolve. If generative AI rolls out from Google Labs into web search, which doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for a while. But if it does, you know, there’s there’s a whole shift in the appearance of a search result, you know, and and we adapt to that. So one, one thing you could do to feel less, concerned or worried is once a month, do a sort of a roundtable with some of your favorite marketing people and ask them, where were the the top platforms I should be putting my time and energy into right now. Continue to use Google Trends and watch what, you know, where people are interacting and, and what they’re looking for.

Steve Wiideman (00:19:34) – And, you know, just just spending a few minutes a month just keeping up with the changes and trends and things that are happening. Again, I mentioned I use a tool called Feedly to follow the, the latest, in our industry and in some of the niches such as local search and ecom. if you want to subscribe to some of the sites that, that are in your industry that are really important every morning, it’s like reading the newspaper, you see this little Feedly article, it kind of talks about all the things that are happening and that are trending, so that those words can stay top of mind for you and your focus continue to shift. But you also reminded me of something I built as back in 2010. It was something, it was like an internal tool. I called a tactic utilization table. And and having a tactic utilization table basically involves having a column for, well, having a section of columns for every, every, every medium from organic to paid to email to referral to affiliates.

Steve Wiideman (00:20:34) – all of those different ways that we’re going to drive traffic will have a group of rows of, of, of columns. And in each of those columns, we’ll have different publishers and different strategies that that play a role in that particular, discipline of digital marketing. And what you do is you create a row that has a 1 to 10 score for each of those columns, and then you go out to an expert and you say, hey, could you give me an audit of how I’m doing with Google ads? could you give me an audit of how I’m doing with my organic search strategy in these different columns, from tech to content to off page to local? whatever your particular e-business model happens to be. and then you get a final score, you tally that up at the end, you’re like, wow, I’m only 13% utilized of all the different marketing, capabilities that that we can, invoke into our, our campaign strategy. and then you start working through each one, you get your teams, you know, to continue putting a plan together, tracking their progress every year at the end of the year, you go back, you do your audit again.

Steve Wiideman (00:21:39) – Hey, we’re at 26%. That’s phenomenal. We’ve doubled, you know, our our utilization of all these different, vehicles, you know, in our marketing, you know, let’s set a goal for next year to get up to 35, you know, and then in ten years, maybe you’re 80% utilized. You’ve maxed out everything you could possibly do with native and paid search and so forth. And all you’re really doing is just recalibrating and adjusting based on, you know, the competitive landscape. So I think that might be something to give, you know, some peace of mind, for all the different things you could be doing and all the different publishers where we could be pushing our content out to, you know, and having somebody who’s an expert in each of those. one example of for B2B is LinkedIn, you know, and so when we decided, hey, LinkedIn’s an important place for us, you know, we reached out to Judy Fox, who’s an expert in LinkedIn and and understands the LinkedIn algorithm.

Steve Wiideman (00:22:31) – We did some training with her. We built a process, you know, and it’s repeatable. And we’re in there as much as we can, trying to improve our visibility for people who are searching for SEO related content. And our authority on the topic of SEO in LinkedIn, by again going to an expert, and that LinkedIn has a column that’s right there, you know, under, you know, the the section of referral traffic, border lining social media and, you know, and it’s making a difference. We get leads, we get clients from it. And, you know, we continue to build our our brand awareness as people are searching for content that we publish on that platform.

Jillian Leslie (00:23:08) – As you can hear in this episode, the world is changing. We need to monetize in new ways. I have the perfect way for you to start. It is by creating an easy e-book. And now with AI, there’s no reason not to do this. In fact, I have a freebie with the 13 AI prompts.

Jillian Leslie (00:23:30) – You need to write an entire e-book in under three hours to grab this freebie. Go to military.com slash e-book prompts. That’s military comic book e-book prompts prompts. Snag it today. What are you waiting for? And now back to the show. Now you came on my podcast. Gosh, I can’t even I don’t even know what time when. But, you talked about AI and you blew people away. I heard from that was one of my, most vocal episodes, meaning people were like, whoa, he was amazing. And and you were doing it to me during the episode. I was saying, God, you’re blowing my mind. You’re blowing my mind. So now that we’re here in this moment in March, I want to ask you what you are seeing. Like you mentioned generative AI, and can you explain what that is and can you explain? I feel like you are really good at looking out into the future and you’re not freaking out. So you’re not putting this lens of fear and panic on that lens.

Jillian Leslie (00:24:51) – And therefore I feel like you have more clear eyes. Can you explain what generative AI is and where we’re going when it comes to AI?

Steve Wiideman (00:25:02) – Worse. So this all started with these these large language models that were created by, folks like OpenAI and of course, Google jumping into the mix. There’s Claud. But what they were doing was, was building a way for, for computers, basically to to study information that, that they fed it. And then they said, hey, based on everything that we’ve we’ve fed you, let’s create a way that we can interact with the artificial intelligence, where they can communicate the same way we do as humans. Ergo, the generative AI part of it, the language model itself is just a big database of everything. They fed it with all of its filters for safety and privacy, which of course there’s ways to jailbreak and go around it, which you know, is fun but scary at the same time. And then there’s the actual generative AI place where we can interact with that knowledge base as much as we’re able to.

Steve Wiideman (00:25:58) – And you’ll notice in ChatGPT, a while ago, if you would have asked a question about something that’s going on today, it would say, I apologize, but my database only goes up to the state, and now they’re adding GPT and extensions and ways that you can still, get more real time data, while also leveraging the amount of information it’s already got in its system. Whereas Gemini, Google’s version, their, their generative AI is real time and Copilot and being is trying to be a little bit more like that as well, incorporating both the ChatGPT information it has while also using its web search results to create, you know, more of a real time experience as you’re interacting. And it’s interesting to watch, too, because it’s literally. Putting word, one word at a time into its its answer in response. Again based on the the database that it has and the magic of how it’s trying to communicate like a human with you and and it can be it can be customized, you can customize it to speak with you in a different tone and different, character persona so that you can interact with it in a way that’s more comfortable for you.

Steve Wiideman (00:27:09) – You can even give it its own name. I call mine Mr. Wizard from neo. So from a matrix, just for fun. So I’ll ask a question like Mr. Wizard, tell me how to do such and such, so that it can kind of become your personal assistant. Now, right now, the way that we’re using.

Jillian Leslie (00:27:22) – That’s what I just wanted to interrupt for one second, because that’s what I think of when I think of generative AI, when I think about ChatGPT and it’s like, hey, it it feels more like a tool. Whereas I think of generative AI is more like my own personal assistant that knows what Jillian wants. That is like literally sitting next to me in whatever I’m doing. She knows my taste, knows so much, and then can be interacting with me in a much more personal way, right? And almost like it will go with me around the internet. It’ll go with me wherever I go. a little bit like the movie her.

Steve Wiideman (00:28:01) – Yeah, yeah, it’s getting there.

Steve Wiideman (00:28:02) – We’re really close and and every, you know, every major, company who’s getting involved in it’s figuring out different ways that that we can harness it. The, the big thing right now is of course, I video and I images and some scrutiny on how Google was using people, you know as as results that that got a little bit, nerve wracking, I think. And they had to scale back on it. So you can’t really do people in Gemini right now. But but it’s gone beyond just getting answers and ideas and solutions and directions to now being able to actually take action. Gemini, for example, can add something to your Google Calendar. It can help schedule emails. It can, you know it and and it’s duets, extension and workspace. Now you can you can use AI to help build presentations and create images and backgrounds and designs and graphics using AI for your your slideshow presentation. So, so the AI has gone from from just being give me an answer a solution. Let’s talk. Let’s chat till three in the morning like people were doing when it first started to.

Steve Wiideman (00:29:10) – Now let’s let’s build something together. Let’s create something and and take action on it. Let’s create a budget. Let’s, let’s organize things, let’s build tables and let me upload a spreadsheet and have you analyze it and tell me, the answers that I’m looking for without me having to use a bunch of Excel formulas and, and figure it out on my own. So there’s, there’s a lot more that’s that these assistant type technologies are doing that. You know, we couldn’t do when it first came out, when it was just more of a, you know, conversation, if you will.

Jillian Leslie (00:29:42) – And how will this affect our businesses online?

Steve Wiideman (00:29:46) – Oh, it already has. I mean, the way that customer service works now, I think you’re seeing a lot more AI chatbots on websites, you know, and they’re getting better. You know, we we used to see people using tools like Mobile Monkey and other things to try to create, you know, answers.

Jillian Leslie (00:30:02) – Like canned answers. Yeah, but.

Steve Wiideman (00:30:05) – But now you can feed your, your AI, your whole knowledge base of information and allow it to have, you know, more realistic, human like conversations with, with visitors.

Steve Wiideman (00:30:16) – We can use AI to to analyze marketing data and help us make decisions that might have taken us weeks to studying analyze. Now we can get that information back in moments from a content standpoint, you know, as long as we’ve we’ve fed it the the right input from what we’re looking for, it can help us generate a table of contents and a whole of, you know, constructs of a really effective page of content. You know, that we want to write ourselves, not have it, write it. we could also, you know, automate a lot of like, if you’ve got a website with 4000 pages and you’ve never done any SEO on it, and all the page titles and descriptions or just product name, category, brand name across your entire website, you can now use AI in something like ChatGPT for sheets. I think it’s just GPT for sheets. and you can basically create a, a workflow that goes through and, and automatically generates ideas for titles and meta descriptions that’s fed from the pages themselves that are unique to that page, without having to manually go a row by row by row and edit 2000 pages on your website.

Steve Wiideman (00:31:24) – So you can you can do a lot more now, and automate a lot of the processes, thanks to, you know, the way that technology continues to evolve.

Jillian Leslie (00:31:33) – And are you finding this as exciting as you did on our last call?

Steve Wiideman (00:31:39) – Oh, more so, I mean, we’re we’re already starting to spend more time studying the, you know, the, the algorithms of TikTok and looking at YouTube and their shorts and, you know, the, the viral impact of it versus normal videos and, and normal, you know, website content. It’s it’s so it’s so exciting that even even earlier this morning, we’re on a call with a client and they were talking about their content marketing strategy as it related to social. And it got argumentative. You had the person who was the expert in it who understood algorithms and trends and patterns and how we produce content that that aligns with what people are looking for right now. And the traditional business owner who was like, no, we need to stick to the boring, kind of stale narrative of our business and what we want to do.

Steve Wiideman (00:32:26) – And it’s so interesting to watch the interaction between business and marketing teams that, you know, that are really exploring the, the, the fast moving train of, you know, of digital marketing platforms and social media and inbound marketing in general.

Jillian Leslie (00:32:41) – So, wait, if I want to understand the TikTok algorithm, how am I going? I mean, I don’t know if I could do it as a one person operation. How am I going to use AI to do that? To understand, I think which like what trends and what kind of hooks and what kind of content will get people’s attention. How am I going to do that?

Steve Wiideman (00:33:02) – Of course. So so there’s two different approaches there. Right. The first approach is, is don’t reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to go and study, you know, on your own when there’s already so much content available on TikTok and YouTube, around their algorithms, you know, you could even do a search for SEO for TikTok and find thousands of pages of people sharing what they’ve learned, you know, and then you aggregate that information and start testing each of those different suggestions into your own plan.

Steve Wiideman (00:33:31) – The other part of it is just going out there yourself and and looking at it, I’ve, I’ve kind of hacked mine to be only travel information. Right. And and so when I’m like, hey, check out TikTok and I hand the phone over to my wife, my kid’s like, you’re just gonna let her see what’s on your TikTok stream? I’m like, well, yeah, what would be on it that she wouldn’t want to see? And and, you know, and of course, you get all sorts of really random weird stuff that shows up on mine. It’s 100% travel content. And she’s like, how’d you do that? And I’m like, because I understood what, what I needed to see and what I wanted to do. I started to hit, not relevant to me, didn’t like the brand and like the creator, I liked, commented, shared and and interacted with travel content. I did that over the course of a 30 day period and now all I see is travel content.

Steve Wiideman (00:34:16) – So now thinking of what I did as a user and reverse engineering it as a marketer, right? It’s not too hard to figure out, you know, what, what types of content really stood out, what focal points, what sounds, you know, and the importance of sounds. And you can go to the TikTok ad creator and it’ll suggest specific sounds that you can add to your content. You find those that are trending, throw that on your content, run a test, add the tags that correspond to the search terms you want to rank for, maybe tag or mention. Some of the other content creators that are in that industry creating similar content, you know, so that you’re aligned and you’re putting yourself in that sort of semantic web, and then you test and you watch how users interact, maybe even go back to some of your existing followers and say, hey, I’d love to get your feedback on this TikTok post. What do you think? How can we make it better? What would you like to see more of? Ask your customers.

Steve Wiideman (00:35:06) – You know what kind of things they’d like to see. Throw it out there and say, how about now? You know, and this continue down that path until you get, wow, this is amazing. You guys did an incredible job. Perfect. Now let’s rinse and repeat and then continue multivariate testing.

Speaker 4 (00:35:20) – Wow.

Jillian Leslie (00:35:21) – Wow I oh I’m so happy that I get to talk to you because you always put this positive spin on everything. Again, where we started was me saying I’m on call after call with bloggers who are watching their businesses, what I would in their minds crumble. And you’re and I am saying to them, no, there’s a whole new way of thinking about your business. I believe it’s pivoting to you not using all of your strategies. But now it’s no longer just this kind of SEO cranking out content for Google where you know how to win with that algorithm. You’re saying no, no, broaden. Like step back, open your aperture. That’s what I’m saying as well. Okay. You’ve been able to make money this way.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:11) – What else can you offer? Especially when it comes to you. But. Bolstering yourself your brand, using all of your strategies.

Steve Wiideman (00:36:26) – Absolutely. And and start with just one piece of content and you know, and use that one piece of content to see what you can do and then rinse and repeat. You don’t have to try to tackle everything at once. Just pick one really important piece of content that might have, lost some traffic. Start with having an SEO review of the the page. go to a UX expert and have them take a look at the page. go to a brand expert and have them take a look at the page, take all that feedback, rebuild it, and then go out to all those different places. We mentioned the Reddits, the Quora is the mediums, the, you know, the social media websites, you know, and push out some content that corresponds to it, and mentioning Lincoln Bio or Lincoln and description to get them back to the page itself and, and then measure the difference 30, 60, 90 days later and see if you’re able to resurrect that content.

Steve Wiideman (00:37:16) – And if you were, then rinse and repeat and continue down the line based on the pages that you know, that used to generate the most traffic for you.

Jillian Leslie (00:37:23) – That’s a very smart strategy. Before we go, though, I do want to ask you just about Reddit and Quora and whether a medium like these are platforms that I feel like ebb and flow or have been ebbing and flowing, and now I feel like they are right in the spotlight, because Google feels like that is human centered content and is showing it in search results. Is there a strategy of posting on Reddit and Quora and Medium and places like that? Where are you seeing people get traction?

Steve Wiideman (00:37:53) – Yeah, just like we mentioned before, there’s there’s a lot of tutorials on SEO for and each of those different platforms SEO for medium, SEO for Reddit. So you can, you can aggregate a lot of different ideas and do some testing yourselves. But I mean, the the obvious focal points are, are going to be around my like died over here.

Steve Wiideman (00:38:14) – obvious focal points are going to be around the the title of the thread and making sure those search terms are there, solving problems, you know, whether you’re using, answer the public or another question, you know, based keyword tool and, and, you know, looking for those questions, maybe even picking up Google alerts for them. so that’s, you know, when when somebody does ask a question, Reddit, Quora or otherwise, you get a notification and can jump out there and drop your answer in. And if you’re smart, your answer is going to start with that short summary that’s at the top of the page on your website, so that you get that beautiful feature and it feature snippet in the search results, which you might see in the generative AI and Google Labs. or if you’ve got it on your phone as well. So, I would say that’s, that’s probably for, for Reddit, medium and so forth is what I would do is again, pick up those alerts, be one of the first to answer, give absolutely your best feedback and, and and blow that thing up so that nobody can compare to it.

Steve Wiideman (00:39:15) – I did a post and.

Jillian Leslie (00:39:16) – Link to link to your blog where you’re answering that.

Steve Wiideman (00:39:18) – Question. So the link to the the plugin be careful because Reddit doesn’t like SEOs. In fact, they they’ll immediately like disavow you. So I’d be careful linking right away and Reddit. I think it’s okay to to say, yeah, let me know if if you, you know, want more info on this, I have a page. that way you’re not just dropping links. Reddit’s just hate SEOs. So, you know, again, I did a post, I think it was on the Moors website years ago, and they had the community, around boilerplate SEO strategy, and I gave everything screenshots, examples where I would start step by steps, you know, and, you know, I made it super easy for someone to read who was putting together a strategy. And that page dominated for search terms that even my own website couldn’t rank for because it had such great authority. So I think that barnacle SEO strategy of hey, if we can’t beat Reddit and Quora and Medium, let’s make sure we at least have a voice on those, those sites, and let’s make sure that our brand and the keywords that we want to become semantic to are used, you know, within each of those different places that we post.

Steve Wiideman (00:40:22) – And let’s make sure if we do have a page on our website around that topic that we take the short summary from that page that’s at the top of the page and use that as what we start with, so that Google crawls the web and sees that instance of that answer across the web, and might decide that our answer is the best based on how often they see it.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:39) – Oh, that’s so interesting. Oh my God, what I’m hearing again, this is a very granular strategy. I like your advice. Start somewhere, start with one piece of content and optimize it and learn and figure it out and test it on different platforms. Because otherwise this, you know, is is infinite, but that you like get traction and then you start drilling down or expanding slowly from that.

Steve Wiideman (00:41:09) – Right. And measuring everything, I mean, every everything that you do put a note in a, you know, whether you’re using software or just using a Google sheet, put a note of when you made the change, and then measure the difference and, and really put a lot of detail into what? You did so that you can learn from it and just continue to evolve.

Steve Wiideman (00:41:28) – But the best way is not to try to take everything on yourself. Get with those experts in each of those different platforms and those different industries who have proven results that don’t just go out and promote videos of how great they are, but actually have proven results of what they’ve been able to accomplish for their clients and get them to help you to craft the strategy so that you know you’re not having to relearn something that took them ten years to do well, or in today’s time, more like two years to learn.

Speaker 5 (00:41:55) – Right? So, okay, Steve.

Jillian Leslie (00:41:58) – Can I have you back in a couple of months? So any time you can do one of these powwows again.

Steve Wiideman (00:42:03) – Of course.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:04) – I learned so much from you. And I think your advice and again, I love that you’re just super excited about this and that you have interesting ways of, again, opening the aperture so that you can see your business in a more holistic way.

Steve Wiideman (00:42:21) – I love it. I’m happy to help. And I love, love talking tech.

Steve Wiideman (00:42:24) – So anytime you want to talk about traveler technology, I’m all yours.

Jillian Leslie (00:42:28) – So Steve, if people have questions for you and want to reach out to you, where should they go?

Steve Wiideman (00:42:32) – Sure, we’re all over the web. If it’s even if it’s not me, if it’s someone here on the team or just get them in on all social Weidman. if you want to just talk to me. My handles usually SEO Steve everywhere so you can find me across all the socials there. or you can just shoot me an email, just steve@whitman.com. And, you know, I try to get back to everyone. I’m kind of a zero inbox guy, so, you know, happy to answer any questions or at least guide you to, you know, a resource to help.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:02) – Well, I just have to say, Steve, thank you so much again for your time. And thank you for coming back on the show.

Steve Wiideman (00:43:08) – My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:10) – I hope you guys like this episode. I love when Steve comes on the show because he expands the way I think about building businesses right now.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:21) – Things are definitely changing and we all need to stay up on those changes. Really, it is about expanding your reach, driving traffic in new ways, monetizing in new ways, and leaning into you your personal expertise. If you are ready to start selling your knowledge through digital products, get on a free 20 minute call with me. Just go to Military.com, you’ll see a link to my calendar. Come talk to me, because I know that these are big concepts. These are big changes. This feels scary. So let me give you an action plan where it won’t feel as overwhelming. Now, if you’re ready to jump into selling products, sign up for MiloTreeCart. We’re selling it right now for a lifetime deal of $349 with a 30 day money back guarantee. So there’s no risk. But please don’t be left behind. This is the direction you want to be moving in, and I will see you here again next week.