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How should you tackle SEO in 2025 with Rory Hope | Avidly Talks: Marketing & AI

25 mins read

The future of SEO is here, and it’s changing fast. In the latest episode of Avidly Talks, Paul Mortimer sits down with Rory Hope, Head of Growth at HubSpot, to discuss how marketers can adapt their strategies for 2025 and beyond. From navigating Google's evolving algorithms to leveraging AI for better content, this episode is packed with actionable insights for staying ahead in the world of digital marketing.

Watch the episode below or listen on Spotify to learn how to set up a winning SEO strategy for 2025:

 
Listen on Spotify

Takeaways from this episode:

  • Digital marketing has undergone monumental changes recently.
  • Generative AI poses a threat to the quality of search results.
  • Marketers must adapt to Google's unpredictable nature.
  • Community websites are increasingly dominating search results.
  • Maintaining top positions in search is becoming more challenging.
  • Investing in quality content is essential for SEO success.
  • Subject matter experts are crucial for creating authoritative content.
  • User engagement signals play a significant role in rankings.
  • Non-content companies need to find innovative ways to produce content.
  • Future marketing strategies should focus on diverse platforms beyond Google.




Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Digital Marketing Changes
02:58 The Impact of Generative AI on SEO
06:00 Navigating the New SEO Landscape
09:01 The Role of Content Strategy in SEO
12:11 Adapting to the Evolving Search Environment
14:59 The Importance of Subject Matter Experts
17:58 Creating Quality Content in a Competitive Market
21:10 Leveraging User Engagement Signals
24:00 Strategies for Non-Content Companies
27:09 Future-Proofing Your Marketing Strategy
29:56 Conclusion and Key Takeaways
 
Full video transcript

Paul (00:00.0)
It's good. let's jump in. Welcome to Avidly Talks again. Mostly marketing, sales and HubSpot Focus podcast each week. We're diving into topics to help you do better in your work. I've nearly got this memorized now Rory. This week we're joined by Rory Hope, Head of English Growth Marketing at HubSpot. He's also spoken at several international conferences, including Inbound, Years of Expertise in the World of SEO and Inbound Marketing. How's it going Rory? 

Rory Hope (00:27.362)
That's going well. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, had a nice evening last night. There was some Northern Lights here above Edinburgh, so I got the camera out, took a few snaps. Amazing stuff. Yeah. 

Paul (00:34.048)
Yeah 

Paul (00:36.589)
Asked my family what's up and my uncle he tracks things like the space station and he'll tell us when that's a visible but yeah, so that last night northern lights visible I Must admit I was watching football. So I didn't I didn't go and look but I Wish I'd watched another light. Yeah, and 

Rory Hope (00:43.009)
yeah. 

Rory Hope (00:47.534)
Amazing. 

Rory Hope (00:52.014)
I left because it was so bad to be honest. Yeah. 

Rory Hope (00:58.898)


Paul (00:59.966)
it's weird isn't it they look better on your phone when you take a picture apparently 

Rory Hope (01:04.308)
Yeah, they do. We could see it a bit above, but absolutely the camera captures it with a couple of seconds of exposure and yeah, it looks amazing. 

Paul (01:12.746)
Nice. You'll have to send me the picture afterwards. So you're up in Edinburgh. It's nice to have a HubSpot guest on who's also from the UK. That's a novelty. So... 

Rory Hope (01:15.918)
I will. Yeah. 

Rory Hope (01:25.09)
Yeah, many of us 

Rory Hope (01:25.75)
are in the US for sure. 

Paul (01:28.77)
yeah, why we wanted to chat was like I say, you've got a obviously your role at HubSpot, but also from your background, you've seen a lot of the changes, in, in my marketing and SEO and how things have changed, I presume. So one of the recurring things we keep coming back to this year in particular is how things have changed so monumentally in digital marketing, SEO and inbound in particular. How are you seeing it? 

Rory Hope (01:59.254)
Yeah, I mean, that to me is a, you know, you could argue it's an understatement in some ways. I think it's been a huge couple of years. For me, especially with the channel focus that we have had historically at HubSpot, a huge amount has been placed on Google organic search and building out the visibility across organic search. It's been a bumpy ride. mean, Google, 

Paul (01:59.765)
Yeah, I mean that to me is a, you know, could argue it's an understatement in some ways. I think it's been a huge couple of years. For me, especially with the... 

Paul (02:14.539)
that we have had historically at HubSpot, a huge amount has been placed on Google organic search and building. 

Paul (02:23.952)
I mean Google has 

Paul (02:28.03)
become far less predictable, more volatile, and strategies that used to work are less effective than they were before. I think Google's responded in thrashy and unpredictable ways to the boom of generative AI. I mean it's... 

Rory Hope (02:28.862)
has become far less predictable, more volatile, strategies that used to work are less effective than they were before. I think Google's responded in thrashy and unpredictable ways to the boom of generative AI. mean, 

Rory Hope (02:47.91)
generative AI presented a legitimate threat to the quality of their search results, right? Because people could just churn out lots of content and 

Paul (02:48.791)
Generative AI presented a legitimate threat to the quality of their search results, Whereas people could just churn out lots of content 

Paul (02:57.902)
and 

Paul (02:58.36)
the results would get worse. And there was already a lot of press around them getting worse anyway. So they had to respond there, but they also had to respond by trying to disrupt themselves internally. 

Rory Hope (02:58.36)
the results would get worse. And there was already a lot of press around them getting worse anyway. So they had to respond there, but they also had to respond by trying to disrupt themselves internally 

Rory Hope (03:12.237)
by launching generative AI features in the search results, like AI overviews. We've just had AI organized results as well, which are coming for certain types of query. And... 

Paul (03:23.082)
What's Explain that one because people will see AI overviews more obviously I think but explain the organized results. 

Rory Hope (03:25.388)
Yeah 

Rory Hope (03:28.982)
Yes. 

Rory Hope (03:30.059)
Yeah. So AI organized results are coming to certain no right answer queries. I mean, the example that Google gave in their press release was someone searching for vegan recipe inspiration and an AI organized result would ultimately pull together a search result that is completely unique to the intent of that query and brings in more from the... 

Paul (03:34.485)
no right answer queries. I mean, the example that Google gave in their press release was someone searching for vegan recipe inspiration and an AI organized result would ultimately pull together a search result that is completely unique to the intent of that query and brings in more 

Paul (03:58.066)
from the point of 

Rory Hope (03:58.316)
from what we're 

Rory Hope (03:58.715)
seeing in terms of the press release and early experiments, rich media, so videos, imagery, but videos being a major part there. So you're going to see more rich media in the search results and it's less predictable in terms of what type of result you're going to see. And for a marketer, that's challenging because Google said that they're not going to add this to Google search console, i.e. 

Paul (03:58.903)
what we're seeing in terms of the press release and early experiments. 

Paul (04:10.839)
So you're going to see more rich media in the search results, and it's less predictable in terms of what type of result you're going to see. 

Paul (04:19.799)
And for a marketer, that's challenging because Google said that they're not going to add this to Google Search Console, 

Paul (04:25.73)
i.e. you can't monitor it with a filter. Like you can't monitor A.I. overviews with a filter yet in Google Search Console. So all of these new SERP features, the generative A.I. led or SERP structures, are just adding to that unpredictability. 

Rory Hope (04:25.964)
you can't monitor it with a filter. Like you can't monitor AI overviews with a filter yet in Google search console. So all of these new SERP features, the generative AI led or SERP structures are just adding to that unpredictability. 

Rory Hope (04:41.046)
And that's making it much harder for us to replicate the playbooks and advance the playbooks that we've had in the past because the landscape is changing. And yeah, you know, so I mean, I think 

Paul (04:41.879)
And that's making it much harder for us to replicate the playbooks and advance the playbooks that we've had in the past because the landscape is changing. And yeah, so I I 

Paul (04:55.308)
think what I was saying before where there's sort of two areas I see that Google's focused, trying to preserve the quality of the search results and then trying to disrupt themselves with generative AI. 

Rory Hope (04:55.49)
what I saying before, where there's sort of two areas I see that Google's focused, trying to preserve the quality of the search results and then trying to disrupt themselves with generative AI. 

Rory Hope (05:06.655)
Some of the things that we've seen in the landscape, which I think has been well documented in the SEO community, but that's really affected our visibility are things like the rise of community websites in the search results, Reddit, Quora, just... 

Paul (05:06.935)
Some of the things that we've seen in the landscape, which I think has been well documented in the SEO community, but has really affected our visibility are things like the rise of community websites in the search results. Reddit, Quora, 

Paul (05:22.702)
just exponentially increasing and getting into the top one or three positions. The Reddit, the amount of Reddit in the top three this year has been ridiculous. 

Rory Hope (05:22.922)
exponentially increasing and getting into the top one or three positions for... yeah. 

Rory Hope (05:31.746)
The graphs, the visibility graphs, it's just, it's, I mean, for me, if you think about what Google's trying to do, it's trying to de-risk generative AI kind of clogging up and spamming the search results. So how do you hedge against that? Well, let's just put community sites at the top because they are written or there's more of a chance that they're written by humans. You're getting human or people. 

Paul (05:33.846)
It's just, it's, I mean, for me, if you think about what Google's trying to do, it's trying to de-risk generative AI, kind of logging up and spamming the search results. So how do you hedge against that? Well, let's just put community sites at the top because they are written, there's more of a chance that they're written by humans, you're getting human. 

Paul (05:59.718)
people 

Paul (06:00.02)
are people first answers 

Rory Hope (06:00.02)
are people first answers. And I think that's been a big part of it. Exactly. 

Rory Hope (06:07.498)
Exactly. 

Rory Hope (06:24.136)
There is. 

Rory Hope (06:28.556)
Yeah. 

Paul (06:29.344)
to stop your toppings falling off your pizza use a nail or something or glue yeah. 

Rory Hope (06:32.632)
glue. Yeah, 

Rory Hope (06:34.161)
yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're working on that. I think there's less Reddit in the AI overview output than there was before. Now, I was looking at a piece of research piece recently, I can't remember who put it together, but it was showing that the likes of LinkedIn and others were increasing in terms of their being referenced in the overviews. Because of that. 

Rory Hope (06:59.17)
But for me, this is all about Google trying to preserve the quality of the search results in response to generative AI. And we've also seen a rise of niche relevant sites ranking the search results, which to me is no bad thing. But for a company like us, where we have over the last decade or so, eight years, created a lot of content across hundreds. 

Paul (07:07.585)
We've also seen a rise of niche relevant sites ranking the search results, which to me is no bad thing. But for a company like us, where we have over the last decade or so of eight years. 

Rory Hope (07:23.598)
close to thousands of different topics and had the chance of ranking across them. Now it's getting much harder to maintain those top positions because we are seeing when we deep dive into topic clusters that we used to rank for, those that aren't hyper relevant to our products and services or the topics that we're sort of known as an authority and relevant to, we're finding it much harder to rank for those than we used to. Plus Reddit, Quora are competing across those categories much fiercely, more fiercely than they were before. 

Rory Hope (07:51.874)
which is really just making the landscape a much tougher place to operate in from an organic search perspective anyway, over the last year or so. 

Paul (07:59.478)
How much of role is spent doing this kind of research? 

Rory Hope (08:07.552)
I would say so probably about 60 % or so of my role is focused on overseeing the teams, the strategy and the execution on our programs, as we call them, that have a great deal of historical reliance on organic search. So the HubSpot website, the HubSpot blogs, the HubSpot micro apps, Google search. 

Paul (08:36.599)
Google search 

Paul (08:37.228)
has been and probably will continue to be for at least some time the most repeatable channel for building our... 

Rory Hope (08:37.57)
has been and probably will continue to be for at least some time, the most repeatable channel for building out 

Rory Hope (08:44.251)
evergreen volume, right? And that means that because we're facing these headwinds, it's a big focus for me, excuse me, and has been for a while to try and figure out what we're going to do about these landscape changes. And, you know, we 

Rory Hope (09:01.739)
spoke about community rising in search results, niche relevant sites. 

Paul (09:01.76)
We spoke about community rising in search results, niche relevant sites. 

Paul (09:06.75)
There's also the disruption, disrupting themselves internally with AI overviews, that means reduced search result real estate for companies because there is gonna be a lower click-through rate because of these AI overviews. 

Rory Hope (09:07.864)
There's also the disruption, the disrupting themselves internally with AI overviews. That means reduced search result real estate for companies because like there is going to be a lower click through rate because of these AI overviews. 

Rory Hope (09:24.261)
So we're having to figure out what our new playbook is for this new landscape. And that's been a tough one. 

Paul (09:25.758)
So we're having to figure out what our new playbook is for this new landscape. And that's been a 

Paul (09:33.841)
tough one. 

Paul (09:49.59)
Remember rich snippets come in and we thought the same thing people will stay and not click But we always found for our clients that winning a rich snippet resulted in more traffic Are you seeing being mentioned with the little link bar in AI overviews resulting in less traffic then so the opposite of rich snippets? 

Rory Hope (10:07.244)
We've not, however, the CTR, the weighting, the distribution of CTR is changing. So if you're in the AI overview, yes, you may maintain the traffic that you had in the past potentially go up. We don't actually have any data at the moment on how much our results, our click-through rate goes up if we're in the AI or not. That's something that we're working on at the moment. Of course, it's not 

Rory Hope (10:31.426)
that helpful where Google hasn't provided the opportunity to filter. So we've actually been using zip tie and doing kind of daily checks and spot checks. But because it's so inconsistent with being logged in, not logged in, et cetera, it's been really hard to measure. I do know that SEMrush have just, and AHRUS, I believe, have just brought out a feature to allow you to filter. And I've seen this pretty, pretty good. So we're going to dig into that. 

Paul (10:47.05)
And I hate trust, I believe, which is brought out a feature to allow you to filter. And I've seen this pretty, pretty good. And so we're going to dig into 

Paul (10:53.28)
that. But what we have seen is we have seen when our AI overviews presence, our inclusion within the AI overviews themselves drops, traffic has dropped quite sharply. So I think that. 

Rory Hope (10:53.624)
But what we have seen is we have seen when our AI overviews presence, our inclusion within the AI overviews themselves drops, traffic has dropped quite sharply. So I think that 

Rory Hope (11:05.873)
our expectation, our hypothesis at the moment is you still get traffic from AI overviews, but the gulf between winning and losing has become larger, like you saw with the introduction of featured snippets in 2016 or something like that. Yeah. 

Paul (11:20.614)
Yeah, 

Paul (11:20.97)
so it's almost like if you're not on page one of Google, you might as well not be on Google. The old content approach is if it feels a bit like if you're not going to be in the Google AI overview, you might as well not be ranked anyway. Maybe that might be a bit extreme, but time will tell, I guess. 

Rory Hope (11:41.966)
Yeah, I agree. And there's paid AO reviews as well now. They're rolling out in the US on mobile, I think. we'll have to see how that impacts things. Most of my role is focused on organic, but we do partner with our paid marketers to coordinate on campaigns and across the programs. And that's going to be something that we're going to be experimenting with and seeing what the KPIs look like from that as and when we get. 

Rory Hope (12:11.672)
It's time to do so. 

Paul (12:12.95)
do you think obssies towards end of the year now for planning for next year's budgets it feels a bit like you'd have to spend more just to stay where you are in terms of in terms of results 

Rory Hope (12:25.644)
Yeah, I would expect so. I think it's, I think the thing is, is that I think it's paid. Yes. think everywhere, all channels. Yes. All media formats. So it's getting harder to get the visibility you had before on Google organic search. You then have to pay for. 

Rory Hope (12:55.17)
that visibility more than you had before. We just spoke about kind why it's getting harder. Okay, so if you want to maintain that level of traffic leads, signups, for instance, if you're in SAS, we are, you you might have to bridge the gap with more paid. So you're having to, you know, your, your CACLTV is, is reduced. It's, it's becoming more expensive and the ROI is getting worse. And that's been something that we see. 

Rory Hope (13:23.938)
companies are seeing, there's a lot of people talking about it at moment. I mean, if you think about organic search right now and you can still of course rank and you can rank well, but to do that now you have to invest a lot more into your content. You have to, you know, make sure that the content is heavily EAT compliant, which is a framework that Google doesn't measure directly, but it's a way that you should focus your resources if you want to rank well. 

Rory Hope (13:52.558)
And to do it well, you need subject matter experts. They're not cheap. If you want original research, that's not cheap. So if you focus on creating the most original content that you can, which is what we're really trying to do, have to, I think now you have to really be smarter with where you're putting your resources than maybe you were before. So reducing the topic focus to the topics that are 

Paul (13:55.99)
subject matter experts. They're not cheap. If you want original research, that's not cheap. So if you focus on creating the most original content you can, which is what we're really trying to do, have to, I think now you have to really be smarter with where you're putting your resources than maybe you were before. So reducing the topic focus to topics that 

Paul (14:19.09)
are really valuable to your personas or your audience or ICPs. And you're confident. 

Rory Hope (14:19.82)
really valuable to your personas or your audience or ICPs and you're confident, 

Rory Hope (14:25.138)
transition them through the funnel and you have data to support that. And that's something that we've been focusing on recently is trying to get that focus refined for where we put our resources because of the ROI concerns that we're seeing across all channels at the moment. 

Paul (14:46.006)
So that's quite counter to how you started talking about mass produced, low quality content. So you're talking about going more expert, more niche as well. 

Rory Hope (14:59.406)
Absolutely. Yeah. So in the past, the strategy where would be, you know, HubSpot could rank for 400 different topics and rank well, because the algorithm didn't have a way of determining as well as it can now a relevant site. And it wasn't rewarding, let's say the outputs from an EEAT strategy quite as much as it is now arguable, depending on the query type, but 

Rory Hope (15:28.8)
You know, now that's the case. what you, I would recommend companies do, marketers do is become more focused with the topics that you're going to publish, invest, invest your resources in. So we actually rolled out what we called a three P's framework. So I love a framework to be honest, I some marketers do some don't, but. 

Paul (15:38.871)
focused with the topics that you're going to publish your best resources in. So we actually rolled out what we called a three piece framework. So I love a framework to be honest. I some of us do sometimes but 

Paul (15:58.016)
it was it's product personas and performance. And we audited our entire library. 

Rory Hope (15:58.016)
It was its product, personas and performance. And we audited our entire library 

Rory Hope (16:03.842)
and essentially said, we scored it working with various teams internally to say, how relevant are the pieces of content in this topic cluster to the product? Score that based upon the different products that we have. How relevant are they to our personas? Because that doesn't always align. You can have persona topics that aren't directly linked to the product, score it. 

Paul (16:05.494)
So, said we scored it working with various teams internally to say, how relevant are the pieces of content in this topic clustered to the product? Score that based on the different products that we have. How relevant are they to our personas? Because it doesn't always align. You know, can have... 

Rory Hope (16:24.48)
And then performance, what does historical performance look like? Because sometimes you can be surprised that you've got a topic that's not directly relevant to the product and arguably isn't that relevant to a persona that got created once and it's performed really well and you're generating leads and signups and MRR. So what we did is we put that together into a matrix and we use that now to prioritize our topics more effectively and then invest that content resource into those areas. 

Paul (16:52.538)
Give 

Paul (16:53.266)
us the three P's again. 

Rory Hope (16:53.774)
because as we saying, you know, it is getting harder to target the breadth of topics that you used to because the bar has been raised, you know. 

Rory Hope (17:06.264)
So the three P's were product, personas, and performance. And that's a way of scoring content across 

Rory Hope (17:15.066)
your site to create a prioritized list to put your resources into. 

Paul (17:21.928)
and then when you sort of find the sweet spot which I presume is scoring high in all three what are you then doing with that topic? 

Rory Hope (17:32.558)
Yeah, great question. Let's use the framework that a lot of SEOs and marketers have been talking about, which is EEAT. So expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. we've created, we have a process internally where we have our growth marketers that do a lot of the research, the specs, the optimizations to our media portfolio. And we... 

Rory Hope (17:58.306)
We hand a lot of their briefs off to our internal media team. We're fortunate enough to have that set up being the company that we are in the past when I've worked agency side, haven't had that luxury at times, but that's how we operate here at HubSpot. And what we have been focusing on is once we know that refined list of topics, we're looking to firstly identify who internally or externally is a subject matter expert in those topics. Do we have one? Do they have an online presence? If no, 

Rory Hope (18:27.042)
How could we go about building that if yes, we may prioritize that topic over others because we actually have the pre-made one I made earlier, subject matter expert who can actually author the content or the media. It doesn't have to be text content, of course. In fact, increasingly with non-text content is important, video, et cetera. So map topics to subject matter experts. We look at 

Rory Hope (18:54.518)
Okay, what original research could we add to the pre-existing content within these topic clusters that we're going to go after every given month or quarter? If we don't have original research, we will partner with a team in media who have partnerships, tools, the likes of Glimpse, et cetera, to put together new first-party research pieces. 

Rory Hope (19:18.606)
You might have seen the likes of the state of marketing report, the state of AI report, et cetera. And once we get that produced, we then basically take snippets of the original research and distribute it out across those relevant topics. Now it doesn't always have to be a major state of X topic level investment. We have a lot of smaller research projects running because a lot of the topics we're targeting won't. 

Rory Hope (19:46.53)
be relevant to a big sort of state of marketing or state of AI report. And so I would highly recommend companies looking at, marketers looking at, you what services are out there for that kind of first party research at a relatively efficient budget. And once we were focusing on subject matter experts and originality, we're looking at, okay, what is the... 

Paul (19:53.622)
looking at what services are out there for that kind of first part of research at a relatively efficient budget. once we were focusing on subject matter experts and originality, we're looking at, what 

Paul (20:13.694)
are the user engagement signals like for this content? What's the user experience like for this content? Because one of the things that... 

Rory Hope (20:14.222)
What are the user engagement signals like for this content? What's the user experience like for this content? Because one of the things that 

Rory Hope (20:21.104)
I've been a big believer and focused on this for a long time before the Google API leak, cetera, but was just the importance of user engagement signals in rankings. I've been a long-term follower of the likes of Brian Fishkin and when he used to do the tests in the SERPs where everyone click on position three and you saw it rise to position one. And it's like, well, 

Rory Hope (20:41.112)
Google needs to be looking at engagement data somehow to determine quality. So the API leak, think, is now boost just kind of giving away more information that Google might use Chrome to determine quality of content due to user engagement signals, et cetera, which just kind of reinforced this belief that we had. So what we're looking to do now is how do we look at our piece of content and actually improve the quote unquote UX of them? 

Rory Hope (21:09.678)


Rory Hope (21:10.099)
so that the user engagement signals improve. We do some testing with the likes of Convert and other platforms and basically try and improve speed, experience and monitor how that impacts results. 

Paul (21:27.264)
Super interesting. I'd love to talk about that in more depth. I think we're going to need a specific sort of content strategy podcast. on the strategy point, you mentioned something at the of the answer around finding people. Have we got a subject matter expert with an online presence ideally? Why does that matter? 

Rory Hope (21:51.202)
Yeah, so we believe that matters more now since Google added the additional E to EAT guidelines in the search quality evaluator rating guidelines. So expertise and experience, or both of those actually. So for us, what we want to do where possible is optimize content that used to be generic. Well, I wouldn't say generic because the content was of high quality, but third, 

Rory Hope (22:20.622)
third person, these are the 10 best website AI builders for your business and not actually have a perspective, not actually have someone who's been using these tools and actually building websites. then so now what we're looking to do is actually, yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So now what we'll be looking to do is go, okay, so we want to get ideally someone who's done that to write the piece and write it. 

Paul (22:23.362)
In in Bang blogs in Bang blogging 

Rory Hope (22:48.33)
in first person, preferably, with experiences that they've had doing whatever the intent is of the query that we're trying to target or the cluster of queries. So that's a big part of it. But also when you think about the beginning of the conversation, was sort of talking about the hypothesis of Google's wanting to do what they can to reduce the risk of spam and generative AI, regurgitating content just out. 

Paul (22:51.35)
with experience with experiences that they've had doing whatever the intent is of the query that we're trying to target or the cluster of queries. 

Rory Hope (23:17.172)
on the search results, it's much harder to replicate. So if you're looking for originality, which is something that a lot of SEOs are focusing on where they can at the moment, we talked about research, cetera, you can't get more original than having someone who knows the subject matter right about their personal experience, or it doesn't have to be a first person personal experience, but at least giving their perspective on the relevant topic that is being discussed or sub topic. 

Paul (23:46.29)
So that's been our thinking there in terms of trying to bring in subject matter experts where we can, certainly for our highest tier topics. You're not going to be able to do it for all of them. It's a lot of coordination and budget to do that. 

Rory Hope (23:46.54)
That's been our thinking there in terms of trying to bring in subject matter experts where we can, certainly for our highest tier topics, because you're not going to be able to do it for all of them because it's a lot of coordination and budget to do that. 

Rory Hope (23:59.83)
So that's kind 

Rory Hope (24:00.449)
of where we've sat recently. 

Paul (24:00.47)
So that's kind of where we've sat 

Paul (24:01.792)
recently. The challenge with, I mean, like you say, for HubSpot, that's you've got the luxury of a large team and, you know, experts on hand. Thinking more of HubSpot's actual customers, in my team, in the agency, we're kind of there as well, because we're the in-house team, but we understand what you're talking about. And it's about marketing and et cetera, et cetera. If you're like, no. 

Paul (24:30.134)
classic example of you are a widget manufacturer. Your experts are busy inventing new widgets or making sure they're getting shipped on time or and you don't have a team of SEO and content marketers that in-house you perhaps have an agency. How, of a, I know this wasn't in the notes I sent to you but how do you see like non content house companies, manufacturers, whatever. 

Paul (24:59.274)
Producing that content obviously going to an agency is one thing but content agencies of the past 10-15 years where the likes of me could go okay I've had a few meetings and I can do now the tech you tell me the 10 best tools and I'll make it sound like you know what you're talking about How do we go to that deeper level? 

Rory Hope (25:17.494)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I did leave the agency world three years ago now, but I was in it for eight years before I joined the company for HubSpot that I was at. I would say, you know, that is a real challenge. And that's why a lot of agencies have found things quite hard recently. I know from connections that I've got from the agency world that certainly over the last two years, it has been 

Paul (25:32.63)
say, you know, that is a real challenge and that's why a lot of agencies have found things quite hard recently. 

Paul (25:44.63)
Certainly over the last two years, 

Paul (25:46.266)
has been hard because it's been hard for everyone who makes a living through marketing on Google because of the new bar, the challenges that we face. I don't know. I think now there's a real opportunity for a content agency. And I know you're talking about, so if you're a HubSpot customer that produces widgets, how can you go about? 

Rory Hope (25:46.552)
It has been hard because it's been hard for everyone who makes a living through, you know, marketing on Google because of the new bar, the challenge that the challenges that we face. don't know. It'd be, I think now there's a real opportunity for a content agency. And I know you're talking, okay, so if you're a HubSpot customer that produces widgets, how can you go about? 

Rory Hope (26:12.482)
you 

Rory Hope (26:12.706)
know, building, creating content that satisfies EAT. Your experts are busy. So I think you have to find, you'd have to find the resource ideally to get the experts some spare time to be interviewed, film a podcast like this, and then have that content repurposed through the likes of AI or a content agency or one internal marketer. So I think that would be helpful if you can create the space for one or two of your internal 

Paul (26:13.227)
building a basic concept that satisfies EAT, your experts are busy. So I think... 

Rory Hope (26:42.26)
experts, subject matter experts to have a low lift way of contributing ideas and content. And then the marketer should then go and optimize their profile online. It's not the be all and end all of course, but those would be some tactics I would think of. quite frankly, think you'd probably, if you wanted to really be successful, and this is where the barrier to entry on Google is high, and it's going to be higher now, you probably would need a content agency. And I think there's an opportunity. 

Paul (26:49.213)
marketer should then go and optimize their profile online. It's not the be all and end all of course, but those would be some tactics I would think of. But quite frankly, think you'd probably, if you wanted to really be successful, and this is where the barrier to entry on Google is high, and it's gonna be higher now, you probably would need a content agency. And I think there's an 

Paul (27:08.854)
opportunity, 

Paul (27:09.804)
a good opportunity for agencies out there now who will specialize in finding good content creators for certain topics, topics that are highly, or in 

Rory Hope (27:09.804)
a good opportunity for agencies out there now who will specialize in finding good content creators for certain topics, topics that are highly or industries 

Rory Hope (27:19.076)
that are highly competitive and then actually kind of bringing them on board to create content for companies that are willing to or have the budget to pay for it. So I think there's probably an opportunity there, whereas the model of churning out lots of content for a lot of companies quickly, I think that's becoming, that's hard. 

Rory Hope (27:37.558)
that's going to become much more difficult to maintain, I think. And we used to do it. When I was at Symmetrical, my old agency, had 20 clients who all wanted content services and some we'd outsource the content production, some we do it in-house, but that was a strain. And I think now looking back, probably the quality of content that we were producing then wouldn't work now. Some of it would for sure, but not all of it. And that's going to be really hard for agencies, I think, moving forwards to find that balance. 

Paul (28:07.701)
No, I think we've had the same sort of learning curve in the data showing us those things. remember we've had clients where the simple view of it would be, well, here's a pain point and here's 10 topics around it that are slightly different in 10. And you can get half up to speed and produce something that would rank. that's 

Paul (28:32.64)
That's already been declining but the pace that's changing in terms of bringing your results is rapid. That's why we're talking about these topics as much as we can. We've been talking about it at events and people realising it needs time off your experts. That needs to be the marketing. I think it comes, your subject matter experts having an online presence leads into something which is a whole other kind of worms we didn't get to which is 

Paul (29:02.775)
people trusting people in the age of AI and also not just being on Google. You said about LinkedIn and social platforms and communities. You're gonna, think marketing teams setting up have got a challenge or businesses setting up, to market themselves have got a challenge of how do you get these people in front of people if it's not just on Google? Do you, I guess my question is, I'm rambling there. Google isn't the only place that people are gonna be searching. 

Paul (29:33.366)
So what advice have you got at a top level for next year for people to not just try and rank on Google, what else do people need to be thinking about when they're planning for 2025's plans? 

Rory Hope (29:44.534)
Yeah, 

Rory Hope (29:45.006)
absolutely. Yeah, so I would say, you know, 

Rory Hope (29:51.598)
Focus on refined topic, for refined topic selection. 

Rory Hope (29:56.162)
So don't try and rank for everything. Focus on the topics that are really relevant to your product services or the problems that your customers are facing. Once you know what those topics are, try and find subject matter experts either internally or if you can and you have the budget externally to agree to contribute X amount of time half a day a day, a week, if you've got marketers that can 

Paul (29:56.183)
So don't try and rank for everything. Focus on the topics that are really relevant to your product services or the problems that your customers are facing. Once you know what those topics are, try and find subject matter experts, either internally or if you can, if you have budget externally, to agree to contribute X amount of time half a day a day, a week, if you've got marketers 

Paul (30:21.138)
that can go out and then run up the content for them once they share their ideas. 

Rory Hope (30:21.282)
go out and then write the content for them once they share their ideas. 

Rory Hope (30:25.966)
Get that in place. And then, you you still want to work towards a content plan with this quality content through the heart of it. But in terms of what that content is in terms of its media format, 

Rory Hope (30:44.024)
You probably, certainly if you're a smaller business now in line with what you're saying about, you know, people wanting human led content rather than, or people first content rather than AI generated content, you're best off putting something like we're doing right now together where you have a podcast, you might host it on a company like Riverside or similar, and use that as a space to discuss these topics and then put that on YouTube, put edits of it on TikTok, YouTube, 

Paul (30:55.467)
best off putting something like we're doing right now together where you have a podcast, you might host it on a company like Riverside or similar, and use that as a space to discuss these topics and then put that on YouTube. But edit some of it on TikTok. 

Paul (31:13.623)
YouTube is probably my preference being in B2B than TikTok right now, so there's a lot of uncertainty about where TikTok's going, certainly in the US at the moment. But I think YouTube and non-text-based content would be key. And if you want a relatively low-lift way of taking a lot of your old text content that's sitting there, hopefully still ranking well, maybe not as well on Google anymore, use that as a blueprint and start to work on podcast episodes that cover those topics, that are filmed. 

Rory Hope (31:14.166)
is probably my preference being in B2B than TikTok right now. There's also a lot of uncertainty about where TikTok's going, certainly in the US at the moment. But I think YouTube and non-text-based content would be key. And if you want a relatively low-lift way of taking a lot of your old text content that's sitting there, hopefully still ranking well, maybe not as well on Google anymore. 

Rory Hope (31:36.558)
Use that as a blueprint and start to work on podcast episodes that cover those topics that are filmed so that they can be 

Rory Hope (31:43.263)
videos. And then you can use AI now to slice up those videos very quickly and also transcribe them, edit them then, and then start to publish that way. And that's very similar to the new products and features that HubSpot have been rolling out this year around sort of content remix and the content hub AI innovations and everything. It's really, that is all about thinking about 

Paul (31:44.756)
and you can use AI now to slice up those videos very quickly and also transcribe them, edit them then and then start to publish that way. And that's very similar to the new products and features that HubSpot have been rolling out this year around content remix and the content of AI innovations and everything. It's really, that is all about 

Paul (32:06.326)
thinking about. 

Rory Hope (32:07.352)
small to medium sized businesses and how do we create something for them that's really easy and quick for them to create content at scale? Because that's the challenge. That's whatever the challenge that lot of businesses and small businesses, medium sized businesses are facing. So the TLDR there is get the foundations in place, but do start to where you can experiment with video podcasts and discussing those topics, putting those videos out on YouTube, optimizing those videos and seeing where that gets you. 

Paul (32:07.895)
small to medium sized businesses and how do we create something for them that's really easy and quick for them to create content at scale? Because that's the challenge. That's whatever the challenge that lot of businesses and small businesses, medium sized businesses are facing. So the TLDR there is get the foundations in place, but do start to, where you can, experiment with video podcasts and discussing those topics, putting those videos out on YouTube, optimizing those videos and seeing where that 

Paul (32:35.05)
gets you. Embed those videos back into your text 

Rory Hope (32:35.502)
embed those videos back into your text content 

Rory Hope (32:37.848)
and you've got a nice loop there where you're enhancing the quality and originality of that content that you had in the past that might have sat there third person, not really that great, whereas now you can level it up with this approach. 

Paul (32:37.848)
content and you've got a nice loop there where you're enhancing the quality and the originality of that content that you had in the past that might have sat there third person, not really that great, whereas now you can level it up with this 

Paul (32:49.538)
approach. 

Paul (33:08.081)
It looks for where we're more animated and zooms in on that and suggests it These are all the time savers that you're spending the same amount of time as previously to write 10 blogs But you've got your expert Who can only commit an hour a week like you say? Sharing their knowledge and you're putting it out. So really really great way to look at it I'd love to dive into this more I'm gonna ask that we do a follow-up and we look at more the production and the day-to-day and how people can actually