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, keywordpupilusercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimise your content for 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 a new episode here of SEO is not that hard. It's me here at Dawson, as always, and, yeah, I just thought I would record a new episode. I've got a few messages from people saying they're while they're enjoying the best ofs. You know, they always just want to know when something new is coming out. And I'm not back full time.

Speaker 1: 1:35

I'm only recently back from a family holiday in Iceland, which, if you've never been to Iceland, I do recommend it. It's an incredibly different place. You'll never go anywhere like it, especially if you've got any kind of interest in geology or geography. You know, we saw glaciers, we saw volcanoes, we saw lava flows, we saw, you know, huge mountains, incredible scenery. Um, not a cheap place to go, I'll admit, um, but we had a really great time and um, yeah, it's been fantastic doing things like that. We've been really busy on the farm. We've got hay making coming up. If the weather stays right in the next week or two, we should be making hay, which is obviously a big, important event here on the farm to get that harvest in. So I'm still not going to be back full time for a little while, um, but there's so much been going on.

Speaker 1: 2:21

There's so much chatter in the seo industry at the moment about the changes in the online search world that have come about with the rise of the large language models like chat, gpt, claude and others, and as well as things like google putting ai overviews and ai mode into search, and it's been leave asking. You know, I've been asking myself the question through all of this what are the seo fundamentals that still hold and are still important to follow, given all this? Now, my personal experience so far through all this is that sites that do something that an LLM or an AI mode or anything like that cannot do, which is sell and fulfill a product. You know someone wants to buy something e-commerce. You know you still gotta have a warehouse. You still gotta have the products you still got. You still have these things if you are selling a product to end users, people are still getting their business still. You know you might be getting less traffic, but it doesn't matter in terms of people are still making their sales. Businesses are still sustaining, growing. And likewise, if you're providing information that is not easily found within these large language models, like things like broadbandcouk, where there are affiliate sites which have these unique databases where they synthesize information together, join desperate parts of information, so like broadband availability, data in an area, broadband providers, latest deals, all these kind of things that the LLMs and Google have never been able to keep up with, they're still doing well. They're still making income. They're still making income. They're still making trade. It's all good.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Some sites, yes, have gone and that's a dispo If you are relying on display advertising to cover basic facts, websites that might have worked well four or five years ago, yeah, that is kind of a model that has gone. But while we in the industry all have a keen interest in searching, keeping up to the late, up to date with the latest things, as using the ai um search llms a lot more than we would otherwise, there are still huge swathes, like the vast majority of the populations worldwide is still accustomed to using search in the traditional way, and lots of stuff is still going to go through that. It's definitely not dead. But the key thing I keep asking myself is what of the age old advice is still relevant, and I am actually finding more and more that that old advice is still relevant. So let's let's think about why and what are these SEO fundamentals that still hold true and, arguably, are even more important in the age of AI search?

Speaker 1: 5:02

So, first of all, that is, high quality, user centric content. I mean, this has always been important, but now it's absolutely key. Ai models they need high quality, comprehensive and well structured data to learn from and to synthesize their answer for AI overviews. You know, in the old days, people would write a thousand word articles targeting a specific keyword. That was you know what people would have done, but what it is now and what I've always pushed for.

Speaker 1: 5:31

If you've listened to me long enough, you will know that I always talk about creating content that comprehensively covers a topic and anticipates those follow-up questions and provides unique insights, data perspectives. You know you're not just writing for a user to read, you are writing to be the definitive source of material that a user would cite as in, they will give you a link. You know, you, this is this how you build links by creating natural, great content and would also the kind of stuff that ai will cite. So your goal is to answer the question behind the question. You know, as I always say, build content around people's questions. That's what we built.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Keyword people use to find the questions people ask about topic. It's important, it's hugely important, so, in fact, it's even more important. You know, the thing I would say, if you're taking action on this, is to focus on depth and originality. You know, don't just list five tips or whatever. Explain the why behind each of your answers. Provide real examples, include data, include expert quotes. Be that natural source, be the topical authority, quote quotes. Be that natural source, be the topical authority.

Speaker 1: 6:44

Secondly, eeat, which you I've not heard eeat mentioned so much recently. But that experience, expertise, authoritism, trustworthiness now these are the things that google have talked about for a long time. It's in all, their google um. You know guidelines for search raters and it is still an important concept. You know, as Google and the other LLMs generate answers, they're under real pressure, real real pressure to have you know, to avoid misinformation. They know that if they start giving bad advice. It's the kind of thing that generates them bad press, and they really, really want to try and avoid misinformation, which means they're going to favour sources that demonstrate strong signals of experience, expertise, authoritiveness and trustworthiness. So this is something really, really, really key. So this is I mean I'm not going to cover how to do EEAT and just this Go, look back, listen to previous podcasts, especially the ones where we talk about search rate guidelines. Those are the kind of things you've got to follow, which is basically being, you know, citing your sources, following the guidelines in the search rate, search rater documents that suggest what the kind of things that trustworthy sites will do. Pay attention to the reviews that you get from places like trust pilot, especially if you're selling people stuff. Yeah, eat matters, because they only want to cite sources that they think are going to be trustworthy.

Speaker 1: 8:10

You still need and this is the third point, you still need strong technical seo foundations. If a ai crawler or a crawler from any kind of system cannot find your content, crawl it, render it and understand it, then however good your content is, it's useless. If your kind of technical plumbing is broken, you know you need to make sure your site is still crawlable, it's still fast. You need to have structured data. There is, you know, structured data is a bit of a question mark at the moment about whether it really is important for LLMs or not, but Google use it. So put it in anyway. Llms, if they don't use it now, probably will in the future Make it easy for the robots to parse and structure and understand your data. This matters just as much as before. Okay, so even if you're getting less visitors to your site, doesn't matter. You want the bots to be able to reach, understand, crawl and get all around your site in a way where a strong technical SEO foundation will allow. So all those things still count.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Fourth I want to mention is semantic seo and topical authority, and I kind of covered it in point one. But this is the natural evolution of keyword research. You know large language models and even google. Now they think in terms of topics and entities, not just strings of keywords. Okay, building topical authority means demonstrating that deep expertise across a whole subject area, not just ranking for one or two head terms. So it used to be, you know, in the old days target a list of related keywords, start with the highest volume, work your way down. That's just doesn't cut it anymore. Now you need to be building those content clusters or hubs that cover topics from every angle. You know you want to be seen to as the go-to resource for everything related to your course subject. These are the sites that the LLMs will cite. These are the sites the LLMs will recommend. These are the sites that do well in Google, always have done and are even more so nowadays.

Speaker 1: 10:12

So what you need to be doing is thinking in topics. You know everyone always uses running shoes as the example, but if you're selling running shoes, you need content, not just to be the best running shoes, but also things on marathon training plans, injury prevention, shoe care, all sorts of things around the topic of running, not just about shoes. And you need to get your internal linking sorted to show the relationships between these concepts, because these are all the kind of things that will build you up as that authority, as that topical authority, which means you'll get covered in all the right places you want to be. Fifth point I'm going to call this authority signals.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Really, it's backlinks and mentions, but it used to be just backlinks. Okay, a vote of confidence. You know, the more good quality related backlinks you've got to your site generally, the better you'll have done in search. Now there's lots of caveats to that. Go listen to my other podcasts on link building the things to avoid because you can get yourself in trouble with link building but essentially, yes, these things matter. They matter to google. Still, the large single models are buying and investing in link graph information as well. Now that's proven.

Speaker 1: 11:27

So, being linked to and just mentioned, you know mentions are now working as well as links are, especially with lms. If they see you mentioned a lot, they see you coming up your website being mentioned alongside the topic area that they are looking at. They will relate you together. This is how the LLMs work. They relate words and concepts and topics together. So these backlinks and mentions are important as ever. It's not that they weren't important before, but they're as important as ever. So these things still count. It's not that they weren't important before, but they're as important as ever. So these things still count. So with this, I've got loads of podcasts on different link building techniques like digital PR, creating link with the assets, all sorts of things. Go back, listen to the back catalogue on links. You'll get loads of ideas on what to do with this. So, going back through all the things we've talked about, these are all the things I've talked about. These are all the things I've been talking about and other seos I've been talking about for years and years and years and years.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Okay, there is slightly more emphasis in some areas than others than there has been previously. You know, like I think topical authority is getting more important, but that topical authority now used to be topical authority to generate huge amounts of traffic, and that still will work in some cases. But now I think the topical authority is less about generating large amounts of traffic, but more about demonstrating your authority, and that authority is what is important to llms, who will cite you, and that citation when people are doing their research in the LLMs might not bring you lots of traffic initially, but it will set you up to be the resource that people will come to when they need to take the next step. If they're looking to purchase something, that's when they'll step out of the LLM. If they need to go further and do more research than just getting an initial answer from the LLM, that's when they'll come to you. So it's important to be there, but for slightly different reasons than before and again, with the backlinks. You should drive up to traffic now. It might not drive you so much traffic if people are transferring over to the LLMs, but it will rise you up and bring you into people's attention in the LLMs. So all these things still count.

Speaker 1: 13:43

So would I be rushing and changing or anything differently? No, have I done anything differently? No, I've just carried as I has always have done and it's still working fine for me so far. Things can change, okay, things can change, and when they do, you'll be the first to hear about it from me. But right now, I still see the fundamentals as important. So still listen to fundamentals, still follow the fundamentals. Still see the fundamentals as important, so still listen to fundamentals, still follow the fundamentals, still apply the fundamentals. They are the key to getting to where you want to be. Okay, so that's it from me today.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I will likely be back more full-time, I think, in the early autumn. As I mentioned earlier, we've got lots of stuff still on the farm, haymaking in particular that I'm due to go away again later this month to Scotland for a period of time, so I'm not going to have the time to record many more new full-time, new podcasts, but if anything does come up anything important, I will be here, do not fear. And, yeah, in the meantime, please do carry on enjoying the best of us Because, as I say, these fundamentals, they still count and it's good to refresh on them. So until next time, keep optimizing, stay curious and remember SEO is not that hard when you understand the basics. Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 1: 14:57

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 mention 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 dawson on both.

Speaker 1: 15:12

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 keywords people usecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people asking 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.