Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfupoleasercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimise your content to build traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello and welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me, ed Dawson, as usual, hosting, and today it's another interview episode with Andre Savoy. Now, andre is an ex-agency owner who now helps businesses with their website strategy, especially businesses who are starting off and trying to take their first steps or trying to solve problems they've had previously. You get someone in the right direction.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Now this recording on my side it went a bit haywire, so you're going to hear me sound like I'm sometimes a bit of echo, who doesn't quite sound as good as I normally do, hopefully, but Andre came through absolutely fine. This is partly the problem of me learning how to do these interviews and getting the tech right, and maybe I think I didn't quite get it right. So if you think I sound a bit weird, that's just because of that. Okay so, but do stick with it, because it's there's more of andre talking and his audio came up brilliant, so it should all be good.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So, without further ado, we'll get through and on to the interview. Hi, I've got Andre Savoy here with me, who is an ex-agent trainer, but he's been in the trenches for many years with SEO and content production and he's here to basically help share his experience, what he's learned along the years over, what does and doesn't work. So, yeah, andre, if you'd just like to introduce yourself and tell us yeah, thanks for having me, ed. Yeah, I, if you'd just like to introduce yourself and tell us what you've got to share.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Yeah, thanks for having me, ed. Yeah, I appreciate it. I've been in the marketing space for almost 20 years now and I owned an agency. We were one of the top 10 agencies in our group that we were part of, and last year I walked away from the agency because I had really wanted to kind of do share what I'd learned on a bigger basis and touch more people as a coach than I could doing one-on-one services. But when I saw what your show is about SEO is one of the most important things and it still is 20 years later was when I started and it still is now. So this is one of my absolute favorite topics to talk about, so I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Okay, cool, brilliant. I know you sort of a special interest in helping people avoid the kind of the get rich quick side of the industry.

Speaker 1: 3:24

yeah, um, yeah which, unfortunately, I see there are a lot of people out there who are sharing information that a can positively harm their websites and harm what they're trying to do. Um, so what's your kind of advice to someone who's starting off what they're trying to do? So what's your kind of advice to someone who's starting off and they're trying to sort out where do they go first? They might just be starting a new company, starting a website. What sort of pitfalls do you think they should be looking to avoid when it comes to where they source information from and decide where to go with their first steps?

Speaker 2: 3:55

Yeah. So I learned these lessons the hard way, you know, and I think what I found is that there are certain things with SEO that are going to work, no matter what is going on in the digital world. And so I think that the danger is number one is chasing the algorithm, right Like chasing the latest news, to go do something that supposedly works now that didn't work before. And the second big danger is, you know, falling for these low cost SEO things that they tell you, you know, are going to be some kind of magical thing and you don't have to do anything and they're going to do all the work and it's going to magically, you know, boost your content, boost your rankings, all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2: 4:37

So, you know, those two things have gotten me in trouble in the past with clients, because you know we actually did, or, you know and this is all well-intentioned, you know, it's not like we woke up in the morning and said, hey, we're going to be these black hat barons and go, you know, like, try and rob the world.

Speaker 2: 4:55

But due to lack of information or ignorance on our part, we signed up for some of these things and did them and we got that little short-term shot in the arm that they promised, but then, long-term, the websites really suffered and got hurt. You know, by either. You know I realize there's not like penalties against these days with things, but you know that stuff doesn't always have the desired impact, you know, and it doesn't usually work as well as it is, and so I think that's you know. You have to take the time to be literate about what you're doing and make smart decisions about where you're going to invest either your time or your money. You know whether it's your time to do things or your time to learn, or your money to hire a certain person or an agency to work on that stuff. You have to do your due diligence in that area because it's very important and there's really no skipping that step.

Speaker 1: 5:44

Were there any particular areas that you found where you came across problems? Famously, anyone who's listened to my podcast long enough will know that I used to um, you know, pre pandering penguin used to buy a lot of links, um, lots, a lot of pretty low quality links. We got hit badly by um penguin and had to go through the whole process of disavowing and all that. And this is back in 2013, which which put me personally off the whole link buying thing, and that was one thing. I always caution people. Have you got any? Were there any particular strategies, tactics, things that you were trying for people that ended up coming back to bite you?

Speaker 2: 6:21

well, the the two. The link building strategy was one, and then the second strategy is, I think, very relevant to talk about today, and that's content. Um, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, there was a whole trend to write three to 500 word pieces of content that were considered evergreen, right, so they would just stay on the website and live forever and benefit you, and that led to this whole sort of cottage industry of people creating very low quality content. And the interesting thing today is that with AI, there's a temptation to just throw stuff into AI and create outlines. And I've just create outlines and it's been really fascinating to me to watch how similar AI is to what sort of polluted the web 10 years ago, with badly written, spun articles and that sort of stuff. So I think that lesson will kind of continue to go through today, because AI has been very helpful for things like structuring outlines and getting suggestions and pulling in themes and stuff.

Speaker 2: 7:18

But at the end of the day, you know, I don't think anybody's writing, going to AI and saying give me a 2000 word article on whatever your niche is and putting that article on your website and expecting to see that article produce results. You know, and I think that's again the shortcut is let let ai do it. I don't have to do it, let me just pop it in there and get a magic pill out of it, and it really doesn't work that way, and I think that's where you know it's not that hard to do it correctly, but it does take time or knowledge, you know so you're not necessarily advising against the use of ai completely.

Speaker 1: 7:52

You're just saying, if I'm right, you're just saying that don't just publish, go to IA and say, give me an article on X subject and then just slapping it straight up, are you more suggesting it's okay as a research tool, it's okay potentially to help you look at outlines and that kind of thing, but really that there still needs to be a human element when it comes to the kind of content that people are producing.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Yeah, well, that's exactly what I'm saying, but the reason I'm saying that is based on my experience. So my background is in writing and when I look at what goes into writing a really good piece of content. So take whatever your niche or your topic is, there's a good chance that you know a lot about that topic and so for you to sit down and either work with a writer or write yourself to write a really good, in-depth piece of content. If you compared what that would look like based on you giving AI something to say, write me 2000 words on this, there's really no comparison of what's going to come out of that from an output standpoint. So the middle ground maybe is that you know, what we found is we like to use AI for the structure and the research and that sort of stuff, but but I yet haven't been able to sort of master having it right in a tone that I'm proud of, to put out there and and feel good about from the standpoint of that. So I actually kind of took the opposite.

Speaker 2: 9:12

I took an article that that we wrote or I wrote, and put it through AI to just kind of compare what the polishing of it would look like and I feel like when it came out, you know it lost a lot of its personality, you know, lost some of the punch. And that gets down to, like, I think, us, as people who are writing and who are producing content, retaining some type of authenticity and authentic voice in our content. And again, I'm not saying I'm not afraid of AI, I'm not saying AI will never do that or maybe it can now. Maybe who other guests that have figured that out, but in my case I haven't seen that make that, that leap yet. And again it just goes back to, you know, probably the core thing in SEO that never goes out of style and it never gets old, is a really great piece of content, you know.

Speaker 2: 9:59

And a really great piece of content that's written by an expert, with the with the angle of there's something in this content of benefit to the end user. I mean, google likes that content. There's no, there's no two ways around it. They want to serve content like that. So that's the part that you know, taking that time to do that. It's not hard, but it is time consuming, you know, and it does take. You know, and if you're not a great writer, maybe you use AI more than you know somebody like me that went to school to be a writer or that has trained writers on staff. So maybe, if it's not your strength, maybe AI comes in more importantly there. But I think that core piece of creation still has to come from us, and not necessarily the computer, to see the maximum results today yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1: 10:41

I agree that the difference is obviously when it's coming from ai. It's only going to ever be able to work with information that it's seen before or that other people have produced oh, that's a good point.

Speaker 1: 10:52

That's a very good point yeah, and there's a concept called information gain, which is this algorithm sort of patents that Google have written about information gain and the idea being that they're looking to rank content that has information in it that isn't yet seen elsewhere. So, while a lot of an article might seen in other articles because obviously when you're writing on a certain subject, yeah, you've always got to touch on stuff that won't have been covered elsewhere unless you're doing something incredibly specialist for a very specialist audience. But there's always going to be some stuff that will be around elsewhere. But it's having a part of that content that has got an information gain in it, something that's not been seen elsewhere, so that someone can learn from it. Then they put their patents.

Speaker 1: 11:45

It says that as people search on a subject in Google, obviously as they refine their search from their starting point and they search and they come back and search a bit more on the subject, google will try and find resources which has got an information gain on the resources that they showed them the first time around. So that's that's where I see that AI is always going to struggle with having that ability to synthesize new ideas and new concepts and new information. Is that something that you might. Does that resonate with the kind of what you're saying?

Speaker 2: 12:20

Yeah, no, I haven't heard the term information gain, and I think that's exactly where my frustration has come with it. Because, if my experience and I've used we've tested 15 different tools you know that work with AI, not just chat, gpt, right, like we've used, like 15 of these popular SEO tools that supposedly make writing a snap and all that and again it seems to be sort of a similar output, no matter what we do with it. That you know we have not reached that point where the great content you know still can come from a person. It can be refined and edited with AI and save time Absolutely. So you know, like I said, I don't mean to sound like a dinosaur with this, but what I look at it as, what I see AI being used for, is the path of least resistance, the lazy method which is not in like what we saw in the mid two thousands, you know, 2010, 2015, which didn't help anybody from the you know when it was all said and done. So you know, at that point it was people were like, oh, sign up, but we're going to write you 20 blogs a month or 20 articles a month, or something like that, and that seemed like good activity to the business owner.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Because a business owner heard content is king, or we need content for your website, you know, and they they're maybe not naturally a writer, you know, or that's not their skillset. So they hear they need content, but they don't know the difference between sort of useless content and good content. And so what? What? What I have found these days is that you know, in terms of when, people will ask how much content should I be creating each month, and I tell people all the time one great piece of content is better than any number of crappy pieces of content, because bad content you might as well not even put on your website. And I even saw it to the and Ed.

Speaker 2: 14:04

You probably saw this. We've come into audit websites that had 300 and 400 pages and, when we looked at the analytics, had three and four hundred pages, and when we looked at the analytics, we found that only about 15 to 20 pages on the website were actually being showed in search at all. So you could actually see pages that three-quarters of the pages not being showed in search for anything, and so what we want to do is, when we look at those pages, we saw some low quality content on there, so we wound up just going through and cutting those cutting cutting 30, 40, 50% of the content off a site. And what do you know? Site traffic went up to the remaining pages because all that dead weight got trimmed out.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Right. So you've seen examples where trimming excess content has actually had a positive result for the remaining content that you've done right.

Speaker 2: 14:50

We have, yeah, we've seen a lot of examples of that where, uh, I call it low quality content. You know you can sort of it's like uh people joke about. You know, is it porn? Like you know, when you see it like you kind of you can really look at these articles and go. You know, nobody's ever going to read this or look at this or gain any value from it yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's.

Speaker 1: 15:08

That's really interesting. So, going back to the evergreen content, obviously you touched on the idea of evergreen content at the start there and how that can be hard to achieve, have you? When we were well sites of mine, but particularly on broadbandcouk in the day, we had content that I called evergreen, because some of those pages were, and they still exist on the website since we sold it, are up to 20 years old, but it doesn't mean that content is 20 years old, because we would update that content as we went along, basically, so we would refresh content over time. Is that a tactic you've used to find success with?

Speaker 2: 15:50

Yeah for sure. We've made a lot of money with seo content over the year, with, excuse me, evergreen content over the year. Um, you know, again, if you're in a niche, uh, having a, something like a definitive guide or a, you know, some kind of a comprehensive guide to whatever the subject matter is, that your business is related to, taking the time to create that, um, that usually creates a very good resource for not only for Google but for customers, for people that are looking for that information. Ultimately, I tell people, create what you think people will find the most value for, and Google will usually reward you for that. And so, creating long-form content that is a guide, a summary, something that really puts together the information in a way, maybe that it hasn't been done before.

Speaker 2: 16:38

We've had those pages rank for 10, 12 years in search for clients and not slow down and to your point, those pages often need to be updated. You know, maybe once a year, once every couple of years, depending on the subject matter, you may need to revisit one of those pages and say you know this, this content's a little out of date, let's polish it up, but that's they're still. You know, that's part of, I think, normal housekeeping, with a, with a, with a business and a website is to do that sort of thing do you have any um particular strategies or any kind of data that you look at when you're looking at polishing?

Speaker 1: 17:11

you know, existing content. Is there any kind of data that you look at when you're looking at polishing existing content? Is there any kind of data sources that you look at or anything like that?

Speaker 2: 17:17

You know, in our case it's usually a ranking tool of some kind that will tell us, or even Google Search Console will show you where you rank now for things.

Speaker 2: 17:26

But you know, at some point we can usually tell if there's a page that's ranked pretty high and maybe it's dropped to eight or 10, we'll usually see the website traffic drop a little bit and at that point we can go say, look at one of the pull that page and start looking at it to say what, what, what might we do differently with this page? Um, and and actually we've used AI in some cases to throw that page into AI and say you know, can you suggest a new sections or some new or some some missing spots based on this? And they'll give you know at that point we've gotten good suggestions for stuff to add to that page, or you know components that we want to do differently. But yeah, you know, usually it's the smell test when you look at it to say you know, I'm looking at this and this looks like it needs to be updated. It's got some mentions of older things or some stuff, that's, you know, regulations or guidelines that have now been updated so that kind of stuff needs to be fixed.

Speaker 1: 18:17

yeah, I mean, we're finding that Google Search Console is now a really fantastic source for where to find how to improve content, especially with the, the areas where you're getting visibility, but you're not getting clicks and you can see how your ranking, you know, maybe on page two, three, four, that kind of thing. So Google's obviously thinking, yeah, you're in the right place, you know, you're almost there.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Even to even rank for many terms just on those pages shows you're better than you know, 99.9% of your competitors, but it can identify those areas where you just need to work a little more on the content.

Speaker 1: 18:49

It maybe add a few bits in to raise those bits up. And we've been on keywords people usually do a lot of work with that and we've integrated the search console to find those areas and polishing that content up, because you can obviously get much quicker wins with fixing existing content sure, quite often than adding new content. Not that adding new content isn't valuable, but I think, as you said earlier, it's not a matter of having a cadence of oh, we must add 20 pieces of content a month. There's no point adding content for the sake of it. You should only add content where you've identified a need for that content rather than just doing it for the sake of it, because that's when you start adding on, adding on dead weight content, like you said, that in the long run you might have to come back and take off and that's just like a wasted effort all around, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 19:37

no question about it. And you know what a great, what a great tool to have to be able to have some, a tool that shows you you're on page two or three, which means we kind of like your content, but it could be better, you know. So it's like getting a C or a B on a test you know where you know like, ok, I could work harder on this and get my grade up to an A. Well, why wouldn't you start there? Because that means you're already on the right track. So I think that's a very smart recommendation there.

Speaker 1: 20:05

I've got an interest in AI. Tell me what your thoughts would be on this, which is something that I've been experimenting with on my personal blog, which is using AI to repurpose other content. So, for example, I take a lot of podcast transcripts because a lot of podcasts that I do are just me talking. You know you're only my second ever official guest, so this is all very new to have other people on, but a lot of the time it's just me talking. Basically, and what I've been experimenting with is getting the transcript of whatever I've been talking about.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Now, hopefully, in some of my episodes there's some information gained in there, there's something that's a personal story from me, or it's more than just saying to the um, an ai writer, an article, and say I've done a podcast on people tech manager I've been. I've been having the ai take the transcript and then turning it into a blog post and it and it picks up my tone of voice, it picks up the things I've talked about and does a lot of that work of getting the content from one force, from this, obviously the spoken form into the written form, and then I get it, even even had it so put it onto wordpress for me and then in draft I then go and edit it up, add links, you know, remove bits that are wrong, change it where I want to add something in, but it's done. A lot of the heavy lifting for me is that anything you've tried? Or, oh yeah, kind of strategy, get around that problem of it just being you know just all ai does it happen?

Speaker 2: 21:40

yeah, no doubt. I think that's. I think that's an excellent case use. Um, I've done it, you know, we've done it. Um, I think that's a great case use for it, because it's doing exactly what it intended to do, which is to streamline processes and take what's there and refine it. So I love it. The interesting thing, though, is I did that recently with a video transcription, and, as I asked it to trim it a bit more, it got more and more polished, and so, by the end, I kind of wound up going with a middle version of it, because it did strip out some of the tone of voice that I think we were lacking there. So, again, some of that's my own limitations with AI, but I think that what you're describing is an excellent use of it, because you've already created the content, and so I'll tell you a quick story.

Speaker 2: 22:30

So I had a client once that was a really good at what they did. They were a local business owner, and they were really good at what he did, but he was just completely intimidated by the idea of content creation and writing because he wasn't a writer. So I told the guy. I said well, I just want you to get your phone out and just do a voice recording. So he would. I'd give him the topic and he'd start doing that. And again, so would have been nice to have that four or five years ago to say, take his voice recording and do that. Which is what we did at the time, which was give that voice recording to our writer and have that writer work it up. But it's the same idea, right it and have that writer work it up but it's the same idea, right. It's his ideas, it's his points and let's use it. So I mean, I think it's the same process and it's the same thing. I think it's a very valuable use of time and technology to do it that way.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Yeah, it's essentially having your own ghostwriter, isn't it? So you just record your thoughts, your ideas and get your expertise in there and then let the AI turn it into something that's publishable in a different format, but it's still based on your knowledge, your information, your expertise, which is the important thing to get across. That differentiates you from just saying to an AI write something on this topic.

Speaker 2: 23:42

100%, Ed. I'm 100% with you on that. Are there?

Speaker 1: 23:46

any other sort of areas that you know, sort of pitfalls, anything that you think that anything that we haven't covered, that you think you want to get in there. That's valuable for people to hear.

Speaker 2: 23:57

I think that the low cost SEO and the overuse of AI are probably the two biggest ones that I think I run into on a daily basis with helping clients, and I think, basically, they're both used for the same reason that I think people in general feel stressed, feel short on time, they feel like they don't really understand what's going on with certain things, and so that's those, those factors ultimately drive people to look for the, for the easy pill or the easy button, and I think that's what those two, those two AI strategies wind up being easy buttons that you know, people like I'll just take that, thank you, and, you know, get away from it. So I think that's the. I think that's the challenge for us today is to just not take the easy pill and to ask why and learn and to make smarter decisions about what we're doing and maybe take the extra time to do it right, because the fundamentals aren't that hard, but they are.

Speaker 1: 24:55

They do take time, you know, and so that's, I think that's what different separates the successful, successful businesses from the ones that that just sort of struggle so what would your advice be to someone who is either just starting out with a website, or if they've got a website and they feel like they're not getting where they want to be. They feel stuck and they don't know what to do. What would be some initial steps they should take? Where should they go to look for help or what kind of things should they concentrate on?

Speaker 2: 25:29

Well, shameless plug, ed, I would. Group is a is a good spot for that. You know, um, after, after almost 20 years of running an agency and charging thousands of dollars a month to work for for clients, we took what we've learned in that space and put it into a group program where there's, you know know, an online training course which includes a section on multiple sections on SEO, and then we have weekly training sessions we do and feedback groups and that sort of stuff. So we put a lot of that there, that, and it's very affordable price wise. So so, so we have that out there.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Because the question you just had is really, you know, require some learning for a business owner to decide what they're going to do, just like they would have to say, well, how do I get more traffic?

Speaker 2: 26:09

Well, maybe you need paid ads, maybe you need SEO, maybe you need a mix of those things in the beginning. So all those sorts of things go into just requiring somebody that's owned a business to become somewhat versed on what their choices are and what they need to do. But from an SEO standpoint, the best advice is, without question, is to take the time to create at least one really good in-depth piece of content a month. That's very authentic and I usually have to tell business owners don't be afraid to be authentic, be who you are, speak, write your content in the way that you would speak to customers, because if you're in business and you're having success, the way you speak to customers obviously is important and valuable. So take that and grab it and make it part of your digital content. I think you'll see that will move the needle for you, whatever your business is, because that authenticity and that realness is, I think, what will separate people going forward.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Yeah, yeah, brilliant, brilliant, and it's great to hear that you have that course, that people can get help, because that is the key thing, I think. Obviously, I speak to a lot of people and it's always that case of knowing what the first steps to take are. And it is hard to, on a podcast, say this is the one thing you should do, because, like with many things, especially in seo, it often depends upon where you are, where you're trying to get, and that varies a lot between different, different people, because different people have different goals, different businesses, and the best way forward can vary dramatically. So having having someone like yourself who they could speak to, to find that kind of tailored advice and get that sort of course, a lot of the different areas to go, and obviously I presume in your course is there um, are people able to talk amongst each other? Is there a group element to it as well, or is it.

Speaker 2: 27:52

There is and and uh, and and actually that that question, um, I I answered that question in in my course with a, with a section called assess your assets, and it that decision of what do I do next really depends on kind of taking a hard look at what you have existing and what you have available to you and working a plan based on those things, and so we actually go through that and talk about that, those things, to try and help people make those decisions. So, yeah, it's a big question. It's something that you know I fielded about a half million times over 20 years of running an agency, and that's that's the kind of stuff that we've tried to put into this course, in this group program is a lot of the questions and things that just keep getting asked over and over again. Let's put it into here and let people get access to it, and then let's talk about it when they're, when they, when they get their answers or their stuff done, you know, and so that's kind of fantastic, fantastic.

Speaker 1: 28:41

Well, I'll, I'll get the details of that course from you and I'll put them in the show notes. Thanks, yeah, so if you want to go and check that out, take a look then look in the show notes. The links will be there. So, yeah, I think that's been absolutely fantastic, andrew. I mean it's been a fantastic chat about. Yeah, I'm really keen on this kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 28:59

That it's like you know you've got to build solid foundations to get where you want to go. Avoid those get-rich-quick schemes that promise instant results. I know from past history that they've just blown up on your face. It's better to have a solid plan and follow it through and build for the long term. Amen, I love it. Yeah, brilliant.

Speaker 2: 29:20

Well, thanks for coming on. All right, buddy.

Speaker 1: 29:22

Yeah, take care. All right, have a good one. A good one. Thank you, thanks for listening. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 1: 29:28

This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my seo tools and services. You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that ed is spelled with two d's. You can find me on linkedin and blue sky. Just search for ed daw on both.

Speaker 1: 29:43

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our SEO intelligence platform Keywords People Use at keywordspeoplesusecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online, poster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority. And finally, connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize and continually refine your content and targeted, personalized advice to keep your traffic growing. If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice, then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.