SEO in 2025

The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is undergoing rapid transformation. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and shifts in user behavior, marketers are faced with new challenges and opportunities. In a recent episode, Paul and Dale Bertrand delve deep into the evolving landscape of SEO, discussing how AI and changing search habits are reshaping the way businesses approach digital marketing. Let’s explore the key takeaways from their insightful conversation and how marketers can adapt to these changes.

Listen to the Full Episode here

Listen on Spotify

Takeaways from this episode:

• SEO is evolving rapidly due to AI advancements.
• User search behavior is shifting towards conversational queries.
• Marketers need to adapt to the changing landscape of SEO.
• AI-generated content is flooding the web, complicating search results.
• Understanding user intent is crucial for effective marketing strategies.
• Traditional inbound marketing methods may no longer be effective.
• Engaging with customers directly can provide valuable insights.
• Content should focus on providing information, not just keywords.
• Brands with established authority will have an advantage in SEO.
• Video content and interactive tools are becoming increasingly important.

Chapters 

Good to know about future SEO

Dale Bertrand, founder of Fire&Spark, has extensively discussed the evolving intersection of SEO and AI, emphasiing how AI is reshaping user search behavior and the implications for businesses. He notes that AI-driven search tools, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai, have transformed how users discover information, leading to more natural language and conversational queries. This shift necessitates that businesses adapt their SEO strategies to align with these new search patterns.

1. SEO is Evolving Rapidly Due to AI Advancements

AI technology is revolutionizing the SEO landscape. With AI-driven tools like content generators and language models, such as OpenAI’s GPT, marketers are now able to create content more efficiently than ever before. However, this surge in AI-generated content has also led to a flood of information on the web, making it harder for search engines to determine which content is truly valuable.

For marketers, this means that relying solely on keyword optimization or traditional SEO tactics may no longer be enough. To stay competitive, businesses must focus on creating high-quality, relevant content that adds real value, rather than just checking the SEO boxes.

2. User Search Behavior is Shifting Towards Conversational Queries

The way users search for information online is changing. Search queries are becoming more conversational, with people using natural language to ask questions or seek solutions. For instance, instead of typing "best SEO tools," users may now ask, "What are the best SEO tools for small businesses in 2025?"

This shift presents an opportunity for marketers to adjust their content strategies. Rather than focusing purely on optimizing for keywords, content should be tailored to address these more detailed, conversational queries. By understanding and responding to the specific needs of users, businesses can improve their visibility in search results and better meet audience expectations.

3. Marketers Need to Adapt to the Changing SEO Landscape

As AI-generated content floods the internet, search engines are evolving to prioritize content that offers genuine value. This means that marketers must rethink their strategies. Dale Bertrand emphasized the need to move beyond traditional inbound marketing methods and focus on creating content that fosters real audience engagement.

The new SEO landscape demands a more nuanced approach, where marketers prioritize understanding user intent and crafting content that genuinely addresses those needs. This approach will help businesses connect more effectively with their audience, build trust, and improve their search rankings.

4. AI-Generated Content Complicates Search Results

While AI tools can be incredibly helpful in generating content, they also present challenges for marketers. With so much AI-generated content flooding the web, search engines are faced with the task of distinguishing valuable content from low-quality material. For businesses, this means that simply churning out content is no longer enough to stand out.

In this new environment, content quality—rather than just quantity—has become more important than ever. Marketers must focus on crafting content that is both informative and engaging, offering unique perspectives and solving problems for their audience.

5. Understanding User Intent is Crucial for Effective Marketing Strategies

One of the most important takeaways from the conversation was the emphasis on understanding user intent. As search queries become more nuanced and personalized, understanding the reasons behind a user’s search is crucial for creating content that resonates with them. Whether users are looking for answers to questions, seeking solutions to problems, or simply exploring topics, marketers must align their content with their intent to create meaningful engagement.

By doing so, businesses can not only improve their SEO performance but also build stronger relationships with their audience. Providing real value through content that addresses user needs is key to building long-term brand loyalty.

6. Traditional Inbound Marketing Methods May No Longer Be Effective

Inbound marketing, which focuses on drawing customers in through content, has long been a cornerstone of SEO strategies. However, as AI-generated content floods the web, traditional inbound methods may not be as effective as they once were. Instead, marketers need to focus on engaging directly with their audience and gathering feedback to improve their content and strategies.

Dale Bertrand highlighted the importance of listening to customers and using their feedback to shape marketing efforts. By engaging with the audience and understanding their pain points, businesses can create more relevant content that resonates and encourages interaction.

7. Content Should Focus on Providing Information, Not Just Keywords

SEO has traditionally been heavily focused on keyword optimization. However, as AI and user behavior continue to evolve, content should shift from being keyword-centric to information-centric. The goal should be to create content that answers user questions, provides valuable insights, and addresses specific needs.

By focusing on providing real, actionable information, businesses can improve their search rankings and enhance their relationship with users. SEO will increasingly become about delivering high-quality, informative content that helps users solve their problems or find the answers they’re looking for.

8. Brands with Established Authority Will Have an Advantage in SEO

In this new SEO landscape, brands with established authority are likely to have a competitive edge. Search engines are becoming smarter at identifying trusted sources of information, and they tend to rank authoritative brands higher in search results. For new or smaller businesses, this may present a challenge, but it also provides an opportunity to focus on building brand authority through consistent, high-quality content, expert insights, and strong audience relationships.

Over time, brands that can establish themselves as trusted thought leaders in their industry will see the benefits of enhanced SEO rankings and increased visibility.

9. Video Content and Interactive Tools Are Becoming Increasingly Important

The rise of video content and interactive tools is another key trend shaping SEO strategies. Video continues to be one of the most engaging forms of content, and search engines are placing more emphasis on video results in search queries. Interactive tools, such as quizzes, calculators, and chatbots, also provide unique ways for brands to engage users and gather valuable data.

Marketers should consider integrating more interactive content and video into their strategies, as these formats not only boost engagement but also improve search visibility, making them an essential part of a well-rounded SEO plan.

Conclusion: Adapting to the New SEO Era

The SEO landscape is evolving quickly, driven by advancements in AI, changing user behavior, and an increased emphasis on content quality. To thrive in this new environment, marketers must prioritize understanding user intent, engaging directly with their audience, and creating content that is both informative and valuable.

By embracing these changes and adapting strategies to focus on conversational queries, AI-generated content, and authoritative branding, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and continue to build strong, lasting connections with their audience.

The future of SEO is all about relevance, engagement, and delivering content that truly serves the needs of users. It’s time for marketers to rethink their strategies and evolve with the times.

Transcript:

Paul (00:16.405)
Welcome to Havidly Talks, a mostly marketing, sales and HubSpot focus podcast. We're looking back at SEO again this week. We're joined by Dale Bertrand. He's SEO expert from Boston, Massachusetts. Well traveled around the world. I've just been telling him before we hit record about the pubs of London that he's enjoyed on his travels and he's coming back over to Europe in a couple of weeks time. He's the founder of Fire and Spark, public speaker. first saw him at Inbound last year. How's it going?

Dale (00:45.348)
Pretty good, Paul. Thank you for the invitation.

Paul (00:48.074)
So you were just telling us you didn't dive into this bit. Tell me about your time in Barcelona and where you ended up.

Dale (00:55.14)
So the Barcelona trip was a while back. I was in town because my wife was in Barcelona for a conference. But really the highlight of that trip was that I made the reservation for the wrong day because we took an overnight flight. And I can't be the only person who's ever made that mistake. It was an overnight flight, so I made the hotel reservation for the day of the flight when I should have made it for the day after.

So when I showed up, we didn't have a hotel room and we were obviously very tired because it was an overnight flight. So we had to scramble to figure out where we were gonna stay. So that was obviously a mess and I was embarrassed because I was there with my wife and we didn't have a hotel room. We figured it out after a few hours, but that was really the highlight of the trip, a lot of embarrassment.

Paul (01:23.744)
Fantastic.

Paul (01:40.385)
And you ended up at the Camp Nou, the football.

Dale (01:44.908)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was great. And I bought those tickets before we got there. So I got those tickets ahead of time. I was telling you that it was the experience of a lifetime. Like I really didn't, I didn't know what I was in for, but there was plenty of security. There were two factions that showed up at the game. There were a lot of chanting and everybody was singing the entire time. There were dueling courses going on in the stands.

before and after the game. were just dueling crowds. They're obviously supporting different sides. It was just not what I expected going to the game because it's just not what we have for American football games that I'm used to attending in the States.

Paul (02:31.978)
So go and watch New England regularly.

Dale (02:34.594)
Yeah, and also college football games that we watch. Yes, yes, the pigskin, yeah.

Paul (02:38.111)
your football though yes NFL yeah yeah yeah so what's the difference between the Patriots crowd and the soccer crowd in Europe how is it different for the Patriots stadium

Dale (02:51.236)
It's just, they hurl insults for sure. It's a lot less camaraderie and more just like hurling insults at the players and drinking. mean, yeah, they drink and shout four-letter words, but there isn't as much community spirit. I think that was the real difference. You know, when I was at like the European football game, they're...

were factions that represented a culture and a community that stood behind their team and they were united in their support behind their team. At the US, when I'm here watching football in the States, it's really, and geez, I hope nobody hears this and kind of hunts me down for saying something that I'm about to say, but it's really more like drunk fans who are hurling insults at the players.

And it's not so much like a sense of community. Like, that's really the difference.

Paul (03:53.569)
It's interesting that you picked up on that difference of the community bit. Barcelona is why it's interesting. Such a big, huge club, so many tourists there. So it's good that that's still there. That's good. That's good. I find similar when I was telling you about I went to watch Milan with my dad recently and we travelled across to Italy. You're right. You could see even just as an outsider the sort of groups. They'd obviously clearly always went to that bar before the game.

Yeah, it brilliant. That is one of the good things, isn't it, about sports. surprised it's not there for pigskin, like you say.

Dale (04:27.812)
It's there, it's just that I think there are other affiliations that are stronger.

Paul (04:35.85)
College and high school will be more community feel, won't it?

Dale (04:40.33)
In the Boston area where I live, there are affiliations around the neighborhood that you live in or the town that you live in around the city that are stronger than the team that you root for. And that's just something peculiar about the Boston area. And that overrides the community that you would expect to surround the team.

Paul (04:55.232)
Hmm.

Paul (04:59.615)
Right, right.

Dale (05:09.491)
And that's unfortunate.

Paul (05:11.987)
It blows my mind as well. I do like watching NFL, but as a football fan, I telling you, you're in London in a few weeks. There's probably 40 clubs you could go and watch. But you have, say I like, look at New England and that's the NFL team for this huge catchment area, isn't it? Geographically, I mean. Or like Green Bay in Wisconsin and there's fans drive for hours just to get to the ground. It's different ballgame, well, literally.

When.

Dale (05:42.852)
And with that said, we're entering the playoffs of the NFL season here in the US. So I'm looking forward to that. There's a lot of good football that's about to happen. So here's the thing, the Patriots aren't in it because the Patriots are like the worst football team in the NFL right now. So I'm not even paying attention to it. I'll watch the games. The NFL playoffs are some of the best games in sports because it matters. Like they hustle.

Paul (05:51.4)
Use your prediction before we actually talk work.

Paul (06:02.014)
okay.

Dale (06:10.862)
their season is on the line. If they lose, they don't get to play anymore. So they're good games. I'll watch them. But I don't know who's good. I'm not following it because the Patriots aren't here. I'm surprised anybody cares when the Patriots are

Paul (06:22.017)
Fair enough. Something you do. I was when I was in Boston, there was a who were they playing? There was a Thursday night game on anyway. And in the bar, you it was good to have that was the closest experience I've got to watching an NFL game in the stadium was watching it in a bar with people who had gone out to watch the game on all the screens. It was definitely good. Something you do know is SEO. And that's what we actually had to talk about. We've not turned this into a sports podcast.

though we might do at some point. Listen, I don't know if you've read this yet, but I saw a post on LinkedIn just before we came on that I want to read to you and get your thoughts on. Because you're here to talk about how SEO needs to change in 2025. How people listening need to change their approach to SEO and we're going to talk about why. But let me just read this out, it's from Lee Hill on LinkedIn. It was one of these posts that LinkedIn suggested to me. I've now connected with him.

Google search is so fundamentally broken now, it's almost unusable as a resource. I can no longer find answers to simple questions that we would have taken for granted in the past. Trying to find up-to-date and accurate information on basic things is now almost impossible. I search for what items you can take to a football stadium shows results from 2008, 2012, 2013. I'm guessing that's in the AI overviews with the little hyperlink.

A search for information on a connecting controller to a PC shows incorrect spammy affiliate crap from 2010. And a search for information on a particular holiday destination is just littered with made for affiliate sites where the author has clearly never been to the destination. I pretty much give up on most searches now and head over to a Reddit thread and just ask the question there and you usually get a sensible answer within a few minutes. I fear for SEO in 2025 and beyond.

Do you?

Dale (08:18.158)
Paul, let me ask you a question quickly before I answer your question. The author of that post, how much did he pay to do that search?

Paul (08:27.913)
I presume zero.

Dale (08:29.046)
Zero. So my first response is cry me an effing river that you're not getting what you expected. Because I've been alive for a long time, and I've been using the web since the web began. That's how old I am. And I remember when we had Yahoo and Lycos and Ask Jeeves and search sucked. The reason why the search that he's complaining about sucks so bad.

is because there's so much information available on the web at our fingertips that we complain about it now. And Google is free, but we still complain about it because it doesn't work as well as we wish it worked. Not only that, but we have chat GPT and perplexity and Reddit, and we have this thing called Google Deep Research that does the research for us instead of us having to spend five hours.

looking at 50 websites to compile a research paper on our own, we just click one button and it does this for us in three minutes and we just read it, cry me an effing river that your searches that you get for free don't work as well as you would like. So that's my first response. My second response is that, I get it. Like it didn't give you the response that you wanted because there's too much AI driven spam on the web.

And Google's AI algorithm doesn't work as well as we would all like because it's just too hard to search through billions of web pages, half of which are generated by AI. And not only that, there are better ways to get answers nowadays, like going to a Reddit thread or using an AI, generative AI search platform. Like I get that. So,

I think what this person is really complaining about is that the web has gotten so big it's unwieldy, and there are better ways to find certain types of information. The way that I'm looking at search going forward is that as a marketer, the customers that I want to reach are going to be doing two types of searches in the future. They're going to be looking for information, and they're going to be

Dale (10:51.744)
making decisions, purchase decisions around products and services. When they're looking for information, they're going to want a generative search engine, something like ChatGBT or Perplexity. And they're going to expect an answer or a conversation. When they're looking to make a decision, they're going to want information about products or comparisons, or maybe they're going to want products within a product category or direct comparisons between two products, or they're going to want to navigate directly.

to a brand's website. They're going to say something like, what dress was the lead actress in that TV show that I watched last night on Netflix wearing? Send me to that brand's website so I can see that collection. And that's a navigational search at the end of the day. And they're not going to want to have a conversation with the chatbot. They're going to want to use a decision engine like a traditional search engine like Google to do that type of search.

I feel like I empathize with the post that you just read, but the answer that I'm giving here is much more nuanced than is search broken? What's really going on is the web is a lot bigger and the advances in technology that we've experienced over the last several years are giving us more choices in how we find information that's helping us to make purchase decisions.

Paul (12:18.785)
How do you rank when you mentioned AI driven spam being sort of one of the factors to cause this? There's so much AI driven spam out there you say. Is that what you're seeing? That there's a deluge of AI content or is it more like the article mentioned that people like me have spent over a decade writing keyword content basically.

Dale (12:48.894)
It's all of the above. The way to think about it is that a large percentage of the web is crap. And that's one of the reasons why Google exists, to filter that out. Some of that crap, Paul, was written by people like me and you. Some of that crap is written by AI. Some of that crap was spun up by other forms of technology that's not AI. It just puts words together and spins up websites.

But and sometimes it's like well why do people do it because sometimes it works sometimes Google misses it and and ranks it or like sometimes that crap is generated for reasons that have nothing to do with Google, but it's just there Like there's a lot of crap on the web People don't realize that that crap exists a lot of times because they don't see it because Google's Mostly effective at not showing that crap, but there's so much of it that it slips through the cracks sometimes

And because of AI, there's more of it than ever. And I think people should have an intuitive sense that there's a lot of crap out there. If you think about your email, we all know that there's a lot more email spam now than there was 10 years ago. And we also know that there's more now than there was six months ago, because we're all getting more now than we got this time last year, because we can just feel it. And more of it's getting through the spam filters now than got through a year ago.

We can see it. It's just because it's easier to generate and it's easier to trick the spam filters. The same thing is happening in Google.

Paul (14:25.323)
How's the search behavior for users changed amongst all this?

Dale (14:32.548)
So what I said earlier about how what I expect is going to happen over the next year or two is that your customers, like as marketers, the customers that you're going after are going to split. When they're looking for information, they're going to use one set of tools. When they're looking to make a decision, they're going to use another set of tools. That's what's starting to happen now. And it's perceptible in some markets. It's perceptible in some audiences. In some, it's just not yet. But that's what's starting to happen.

Paul (15:01.692)
Explain that a bit further. you just add some examples to that?

Dale (15:05.548)
Yeah, so there are some markets like e-commerce markets where people are looking for information, let's say about like wedding dresses. What bridal shoes should I wear with this type of dress? It might be a short dress, it might be a long dress, it might be a dress with a very long train. Does it matter what bridal shoes I wear if my dress has a long train? Now when I'm starting that search, I'm looking for information. I wanna know do I need to go to a bridal dress shop to buy bridal shoes or do I go to a shoe store?

Can I buy bridal shoes online just by my shoe size? Or do I need to go to a bridal shop for them? Do I need to have my feet measured for bridal shoes? These are the types of questions where I've never been a bride, right? But I've got intuition in this space. but these are the types of questions. We're having a conversation. We're getting information. I'm not shopping. I'm not making a decision. I'm just getting information. Then once I've been told, well, based on the type of...

dress you've already purchased. You just need to make sure you know your shoe size, make sure you get wide, pick out a style you like. You can order it online. You don't need to go to a Prado shop. Okay, now I'm making a decision. I'm making a purchase decision. Now I go to Google. I want to see product pictures. I know my thoughts.

Paul (16:24.865)
So that first conversation has happened with Siri or chat GBT or perplexity.

Dale (16:31.032)
It happened with a generative AI engine where you can have a conversation and you can ask follow-up questions. And the experience that you have there feels like you're talking to an expert, a person you would meet in a bridal shop, or a friend, a friend who's been through the bridal shopping experience before. And you're having that conversation, you're learning, and you're getting information because your intent, your goal of that conversation is to get

information to learn. Then when you've learned what you need to have, you've gotten the information you need, now you're ready to make a purchase decision and a bit flips in your brain where now it's time for you to make a decision. And you no longer want to use a conversation engine, you want to use a decision engine. And a decision engine feels like a more like a traditional search engine. And now it's time to go to Google.

And you go into Google and you type in bridal shoes size eight wide. And you see a product grid of images of bridal shoes. Some of them you like, some of them you don't like. Maybe you refine your search because you say, I want the ones with the pretty floral print on them. you type in because, and think about this, like in the first type of search, it was conversational. So you were, you were asking questions, you were asking follow up questions. In the second type of search, you weren't using natural language anymore.

You were typing in query language. That's things like bridal shoes size 7W. That's query language. And you refine your query language with bridal shoes size 7W floral print. That's not natural language. That's query language. Those are two different types of searches. And the first one isn't even a search. It's a conversation in natural language.

Paul (18:23.457)
So what do you see people doing wrong in terms of targeting that first conversation? Because that's the whole inbound methodology of old. You could do. You've just described a full inbound campaign. If me and you were putting a campaign together for that bridal shoe shop, we'd...

Dale (18:44.068)
So this is very early days for the type of marketing that I'm talking about. Marketers are still doing traditional inbound marketing, which is creating educational content to educate brides, using this example, on how to shop for bridal shoes. And what that looks like is educational blog posts. But obviously, in this scenario,

the bride is not gonna land on your website and read your blog posts about how to shop for bridal shoes and then click on a link that brings them to your product page to check out. Like that's not gonna happen. The bride's gonna have a conversation with a conversational engine and that conversational generative AI search engine is gonna be trained on your content. Thank you, thank you for doing the research, thank you for writing that blog post, thank you for putting in all of that effort to train my AI.

Paul (19:22.848)
Mm-hmm.

Dale (19:41.272)
that I'm gonna put ads in.

Paul (19:43.584)
So what do you advise people do instead?

Dale (19:48.43)
So that's the multi-million dollar question, right? And the real answer is that it depends on how the generative AI engine, so the providers like Google, Perplexity, OpenAI with ChatGBT, it really depends on how they end up monetizing those platforms. They're going to come out with ad formats that live within ChatGBT, Perplexity, and Google. So they're going to come out

Paul (20:08.618)
What do think they're going to do?

Paul (20:16.736)
Do think there'll be no organic linking?

Dale (20:19.946)
There will be, but those will look like citations. And there will be ad formats, similar to the ads that appear in Google Now. So there will be advertising opportunities. There will be citation opportunities. So what we are doing now is we are building content that is relevant, that will appear as citations. So if you look at, and I'll talk about

Paul (20:27.937)
Hmm.

Dale (20:47.836)
one generative engine, which is Google's AI overviews. What we are doing today for Google's AI overviews is we are building content that is relevant to the types of conversations that we want to appear for. And then what that allows is to make sure that when Google is building an AI overview summary for a conversation, our content will be selected to be summarized for the AI overview.

So that just means that the page that we create will appear as a source link in the AI overview. And we can do that pretty reliably using some algorithms. There's some technical details for it. I guess I could tell you a little bit more, which is that what we know about how Google's AI overviews works is that if you...

have a page that appears in the top 10 search results, it's more likely that Google will use your page as one of the pages that it summarizes to generate the AI overview. So we can look at the pages in the top 10, and we can look at the pages that are appearing as source links for the AI overviews versus the ones that are not appearing.

in the AI overview for that particular query. And now we're able to basically use that to come up with our own algorithm for how to optimize content so that our page will appear. Because we know pages that are some of the 10, some of them are appearing, some of them aren't appearing. So we can do that. I'm trying not to get into too deep into the technical details. But that's actually a pretty reliable method for optimizing.

Paul (22:39.168)
And how are you tracking your citations in AI overview, or are you not at this stage?

Dale (22:46.852)
We are using, there's a platform, ZipTie. don't know if you've used that. Have you used ZipTie?

Paul (22:52.51)
No but people keep suggesting it I not used it. R.S.A.O. Team R.

Dale (22:56.492)
Yeah, so ziptie.dev is a good platform. We've been using it for a while since they came out, actually, to track citations in AI overviews. And it's a good tool. works. But all the other tools are going to come out with it soon. many of them have, it's just a matter of some of them are more reliable than others at this point. But that allows us to see whether our sites are appearing in the AI overviews. But what you really want

is to reliably be able to optimize your content to appear in the AI overviews. A big part of that is just SEO, because if you can appear in the top 10, you are much more likely, like roughly around 50-50, that you'll appear as a source link in the AI overviews. But you can do even better with the method that I'm talking about. So that's a big part of it, but you can also, and there's a lot more experimentation that we need to do,

to make sure that we can just as reliably appear in other LLMs and generative AI search results.

Paul (24:02.176)
know you need a crystal ball for this question but do you see, let's be honest, chatgbt

Dale (24:07.556)
.

Dale (24:13.826)
Not really. I mean, they're just two different technologies anyway. What I expect is going to happen is that Google will win. But Google will have to change. Google will change as much as it needs to in order to win. But Google has the technology and the distribution. It has the eyeballs. So that's the reason why I believe it will win. We just don't know how much it will be forced to change in order to win. So that's my premise. I expect.

Paul (24:34.016)
Mm.

Dale (24:43.594)
that Google will add generative AI features that look like AI overviews. But also there's Google's Google Deep Research, which I love. I've been using a lot. You have to pay for it. But for some queries, it's absolutely the right tool. And then there was another tool. I might be butchering the name here, but it was Google Learn About, which was also a really cool interface.

So Google's, and then there's Notebook LM that is amazing. So there's just a lot of AI interfaces, some of which are paid, some are ad supported, like Google's traditional interface. And I think they're experimenting with a lot of different ways to access information. And they're going to win. It's just not going to look like traditional Google search at the end of the day. And there will be a slice of the market for Chat GBT and OpenAI.

Paul (25:13.61)
I'm I'm not, playing with it.

Dale (25:43.204)
The framework that I'm using in my head is the framework that I described earlier, which is that some searches are fundamentally natural language conversations, looking for information, and then other searches are in this query language space that are supporting purchase decisions, and those are just two different things.

Paul (26:04.896)
Something you mentioned was the mid-funnel content for conversions. Is this that bridge that you're trying to catch people in, sort of ready before they go to purchase at the end of the conversation stage? Is that why you're targeting mid-funnel content?

Dale (26:22.46)
Well, for e-commerce especially, and for marketers who are looking to capture high intent searches, you want to build content that targets people who have purchase intent. That's what's valuable from a commercial perspective. So that content would be content that targets people who are in the process of making a purchase decision. And what you're talking about, Paul, is

like comparison content or niche buying guide content or interactive. The interactive kind of be like tools. So it might be a pricing tool, something like that. Pricing tools especially are types of content that Google can't summarize. Like the AI can't summarize that. It's an interactive tool. It's a widget on your website that somebody who is in the process of making a purchase decision would interact with. That is not.

text that Google's AI would summarize. That's important. And then there's video. Video is very important going forward. So that's why we need to rethink SEO content. SEO content is not educational blog articles going forward. That's going to be a killer. If you're writing educational blog articles, what you're doing is working for the big LLM

companies by writing their training manuals basically for their LLMs. You're building their training and you're doing it for free.

Paul (27:54.74)
marie haines talked about that on the show and do you know her yeah yeah she was talking about how the we were laughing because we ended up getting our tinfoil hats on but sort of how all along we were always suckered into training google's AI LLMs all with our SEO content and every single search query and do you prescribe to that theory?

Dale (27:59.022)
yeah, absolutely. She and I are in a mastermind.

Dale (28:22.668)
absolutely. Because Google's measuring behavioral data on every single search, every single query, every single click. And not only that, but they're doing it every time somebody uses Chrome. So it's not just on the Google search results page. It's when you're using Chrome on websites. So it's not just what you search for and what you clicked on Google search results page, but it's what you do after you click. So we're all in a little Petri dish in Google's watching.

time.

Paul (28:55.626)
we know that i think the other when you talk about you've painted an analogy of do you know when the cut the resources they've got the got technology you've got you know and right for you to do pics so you've got

whole thing is there for them to win. How are you advising your clients now? Not in commerce or B2C as such, but have you got any advice for B2B companies who have perhaps got a longer buyer's journey, there's a different research phase? Where else can people in that scenario target sort of the top half of the funnel and feeding their leads for the future?

Dale (29:38.606)
So it all depends on the co- So the advice is different depending on the company. At the very highest level, and I don't think this is going to be useful advice for everybody listening, because, and I would say like if you're listening and you want advice, know, reach out to me and I'll take a look at your situation and give you advice. But at the highest level, like if you're an established brand with established authority, then you want to leverage your brand. Like Google is trying to amplify established brands. So that's like the

the generic advice there if you've got established brand. But if you don't have an established brand, then you're looking for opportunities to meet your audience where they're at. Full stop, like, but what does that mean? It depends on the audience you're going after. It depends on where they're at. They might live on other channels. They might live on communities. Maybe they live on LinkedIn communities that...

post LinkedIn pages that appear in Google searches. And now you have to interact with those communities in order to get the ability to post your own content to those LinkedIn communities. And that's what's going to appear in Google. And that's how you're going to get the traffic. I'm making that up. But those are the types of strategies that you need to look at. it's not a traditional, or it's certainly not a strategy of posting articles to a blog that are keyword targeted and hoping to get your organic traffic that way.

Sometimes there are indirect organic traffic strategies. Other times they're just not an organic traffic strategy. But if you've got a brand you can leverage, awesome, that's what Google's looking for nowadays. If you don't, then it starts with where's your audience paying attention. And you've got to really go all in on that. maybe Google's involved, maybe they're not.

Paul (31:36.544)
And what's one thing someone can do this week to get started with that finding out where their audience is at?

Dale (31:42.788)
Talking to your customers is the other thing. So when I'm advising a startup, and especially if I'm writing a check investing in a startup, the first thing I want to make sure they're doing is talking to one, two, three, four, maybe 10 customers a day, whatever the right number is. But it's just like, who are you talking to in your market on a daily basis so that you're learning?

where they hang out, what the preferences are, how they're reacting to your messaging, what they think of your product, whatever that is. So if your marketer listening to this and you're trying to figure out what your strategy should be, what your content should be, where your customers are hanging out, then what I would ask you in 2025, like what is your plan to make sure you're having a conversation with somebody in your market on a daily basis? And a lot of times the mistake that digital marketers make is hiding behind analytics.

So you might think that, well, I'm looking at search console so I know what keywords they're typing in. So I know what keywords I need to optimize for. I know what keywords I need to put in my blog posts. Like, dude, you've already lost. Like, give it up. You need to be talking to your customers to figure out how to do your marketing, or else it's just not going to

Paul (33:01.651)
and then go and talk to them where they tell you they are. SEO is not writing keyword articles for Google, it's writing and providing information or producing information, not even just writing, you mention video for your audience and putting it where they're at. Thank you very much, Dale. If you've enjoyed this episode, please hit subscribe, leave us a comment on Spotify and a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Hit that follow button so you don't miss future episodes. We'll see you next time. Thank you, Dale.

not got too many meetings in the rest of your day now.

Dale (33:33.06)
All well, thank you for having me. It was fun, fun conversation.