Ranking in google searches requires much effort and skills that can be time-consuming. From learning the Google algorithms, doing keyword research, working on links, and on-page optimization, you surely have a lot to do. But with the help of AI tools such as Frase, you can make your work faster, easier, and ultimately better.
In this episode, Neal Schaffer speaks with Bill King, the Director of Marketing at Frase, an end-to-end SEO content creation that helps you “go from content ideas to SEO results faster and easier.” Bill has also worked with HubSpot as the Senior Inbound Marketing Consultant, and as the Acquisition Marketing Manager with Drift. Tune in and listen to Bill sharing about Frase and trends in content and SEO that you need to know in 2021.
Notable Quotes
● The process of going from an idea to an article that gets traffic from google, the easiest thing you can do is keyword research.
● We’re not trying to just give you tools to do stuff faster, better, and cheaper. That’s already helpful. We’re saying how do you make sure that if you write this content, then it will be the best?
● Most of the value you’ll get in content and SEO will be on transferring clear expected outcomes of what you’re looking for and understanding what the recipe is to be successful in search.
● At the end of the day, we want people to go faster, better, and more efficiently.
● The only way to really quantify what great content means is to understand how you can actually wrap your head around what it actually means to be great content.
● One of the first things people think about when they hear the word automation or AI is they think that it’s gonna replace hard work and expertise. That’s clearly not the case.
● Google in the backend is trying to understand who are the credible sources for specific topics and which are the best.
● If you have the tools in place to know I’m speaking to this topic in a deep, authoritative way, you’re already setting yourself for success.
Mentioned Resources and Tools
Episode 216: How To Use Influencers For Your Business
Learn More:
Ranking in google searches requires much effort and skills that can be time-consuming. From learning the Google algorithms, doing keyword research, working on links, and on-page optimization, you surely have a lot to do. But with the help of AI tools such as Frase, you can make your work faster, easier, and ultimately better.
In this episode, Neal Schaffer speaks with Bill King, the Director of Marketing at Frase, an end-to-end SEO content creation that helps you “go from content ideas to SEO results faster and easier.” Bill has also worked with HubSpot as the Senior Inbound Marketing Consultant, and as the Acquisition Marketing Manager with Drift. Tune in and listen to Bill sharing about Frase and trends in content and SEO that you need to know in 2021.
Notable Quotes
● The process of going from an idea to an article that gets traffic from google, the easiest thing you can do is keyword research.
● We’re not trying to just give you tools to do stuff faster, better, and cheaper. That’s already helpful. We’re saying how do you make sure that if you write this content, then it will be the best?
● Most of the value you’ll get in content and SEO will be on transferring clear expected outcomes of what you’re looking for and understanding what the recipe is to be successful in search.
● At the end of the day, we want people to go faster, better, and more efficiently.
● The only way to really quantify what great content means is to understand how you can actually wrap your head around what it actually means to be great content.
● One of the first things people think about when they hear the word automation or AI is they think that it’s gonna replace hard work and expertise. That’s clearly not the case.
● Google in the backend is trying to understand who are the credible sources for specific topics and which are the best.
● If you have the tools in place to know I’m speaking to this topic in a deep, authoritative way, you’re already setting yourself for success.
Mentioned Resources and Tools
Episode 216: How To Use Influencers For Your Business
Learn More:
ranking in Google searches requires much effort and skills. And we all know it can be very time consuming from learning the Google algorithms, doing keyword research, working on links on page optimization, etc, etc. You have a lot to do. But there's a new generation of technology that is helping smart marketers. And I hope I'm included as one of those rank every single blog post that we publish higher in the Google search algorithm. You're going to learn more about this technology, and how you can leverage it for your business in this episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, long time no talk. This was a absence that was unintended. But you know what life happens and I had a wonderful trip. And for those that don't know, you should be following me on instagram because that's where I share wherever I am in the world. instagram.com slash Neal Schaffer, obviously, but I had a wonderful family vacation, the first family vacation actually, since COVID. Started in beautiful Waikiki Beach. I actually went surfing for the first time there are a few people who said, hey, you're like Guy Kawasaki. He went surfing for the first time when he was 60. Hey, I'm not 60 yet. Okay. But anyway, I am very honored to be included in people thinking about Guy Kawasaki, but definitely check out my Instagram, it was a great trip. And on the final day of my trip, I don't want to give you guys too much information about my personal life. But on the final day of my trip, I got a call from the hospital that my 94 year old mother had actually slipped and fractured her hip. So the good news is that she had successful surgery, she's getting stronger. Hopefully, she'll be out of the hospital soon. And I just want to let you know that because as content creators, it might seem like everything is rosy. And we always have time to create content and do all these wonderful things. But the truth is that we're challenged by life just as much as you are. And you know what, during these few weeks, when I did not publish an episode, I saw this podcast maximize your social influence podcasts actually go up in various charts around the world. This is the value of having evergreen content that lives on long after it's published. And you know that I'm specifically talking about content in Google searches, videos and YouTube searches. And obviously podcasts in Apple podcasts, Spotify, and whatever amazing podcast out that you might be listening to this. And so going forward, I want to introduce you to some of my technology partners. These are companies with tools that have really helped not only social and digital marketing for my own brand, but also for my clients as well. And today, I have the killer tool. This is the tool. If you think just writing a blog post and optimizing it and Yoast is enough, you are dead wrong, and you're losing out to the competition. So you know what I don't want to I don't want to give you any more hints as to what I'm going to talk about. Let's get straight in to the interview with my good friend and really content marketing veteran, Bill King, the Director of Marketing at phrase. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The maximize your social influence podcast, search engine optimization, content marketing, digital marketing. We know that it is essential that we check those boxes for our marketing, not only before the coronavirus pandemic, but especially after it, as digital marketing becomes the primary way in which we engage with our customers. I've had a few episodes where I've talked about search engine optimization and content marketing. And I probably mentioned this tool that I use before called phrase especially if you're in my digital first group coaching membership community, you know, I have been praising them. And I'm really happy because I was a user of phrase, I actually found them on an app Sumo lifetime deal. And I think it was a black friday last year or the year before. And there are all these ideals now presume I'm the car that looks really interesting. And there are actually a few tools I bought but this one actually stuck with because it it it it became natural to me as part of my work process. But it also showed results. So over the course of time phrase has a and it's about frsc and there's actually a special offer that you'll want to keep listening to the podcast for if you're interested in the tool. So wait for that at the end and I'll put it in the show notes as well. But I noticed that they had a Facebook group at I always heard recommend create a Facebook group for your clients engage with them. And it's been a really, really great community. And so hey, do you have any success stories with phrase and so I shared it. And you know, lo and behold, hey, you know, we, we started an affiliate marketing program just for people that use us. It's like, awesome, I'm promoting you anyway, why not? Right. And then, as I mentioned a few episodes ago that I really want to feature more of the technology providers that I partner with on this podcast, because I think as much as I can share case studies in my own clients, these people can share case studies of the dozens, hundreds 1000s of clients that they service. So today, without further ado, I really excited to have bill King from phrase On this episode, we're going to talk not just about the tool, and I'll talk about how I use it, but also just about the trends in content. And in search engine optimization you need to know for 2021 and beyond bill, that was a heck of a long introduction. Sorry about that. Welcome to the show.
Bill King:I'm feeling the energy. Neil, thanks for having me on really hyped right now to talk about SEO. Thanks for the thanks for the glowing introduction.
Neal Schaffer:Awesome. Well, Bill, before we introduce phrase, why don't you introduce yourself?
Bill King:Yeah, sure. So I'm Bill King. I'm the Director of Marketing at phrase employee number four very small, agile team. I was actually so my path to SEO and digital marketing started kind of randomly, my career I started playing poker professionally online for about six years. that taught me sort of the quantitative analysis, understanding trends, how to pattern recognize, etc, all the things you need to be successful in digital stay. But I also went to school for journalism. And writing is a huge passion of mine. So I had a baseball blog, I used to go to the stadium and sit behind home plate and try to take notes, and I was really into it. But it turns out that I couldn't get traffic to my website. So I went down the rabbit hole of learning. And this is right when inbound was exploding. So I started teaching myself ended up working at HubSpot for a few years and saw that place just go from, you know, small to enormous where it is today went down to Charlotte to work at a FinTech startup and a growth role built the first growth team there. And then I came back up here and worked at drift in owned SEO and paid acquisition for drift for the global, the global growth team. And now I'm at phrase so I've done a lot of different things in digital marketing. But I think the the thing that I love talking to is people who can also share the enthusiasm of being a creator and then trying to put the technical aspects of it so they can get found. So there's nobody that understands that more than I do.
Neal Schaffer:That is awesome. I mean, some of those companies, iconic companies in the space HubSpot drift in particular, are true pioneers. And so that's really great experience and a great here, you're at a start up too. I love startups. And by the way, you're talking to someone growing up, who would send away you know, I would ask my mom for a check and send away and every year get like the scorecard book for every Dodger game, and I would I would watch on TV and do the scorecard. I don't know people still do that these days. But I see you're not you know what I'm talking about?
Bill King:That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, I started, I was really passionate about the game, I actually wanted to be a sports blogger. And that was my goal, started a blog, you know, and just didn't understand the mechanics of the web. And, you know, went down that rabbit hole, like I mentioned before, so and I think a year probably a Red Sox fan. I actually so I'm such a big fan that I can't even pick a team. I'm one of those guys. So I still go to the Red Sox. They're right down the street from me. I live right right in the city. But But if I can find a ticket, I will be there.
Neal Schaffer:So you're a true fantasy baseball player then? Oh, yeah. Yeah. A note for listeners, we actually have a fantasy baseball league in our home, my wife and me and our two kids. So that's a nice setup. You know, it's so fun first place and no complaints. Alright, so no, this is not a sports and fantasy and baseball podcast, we can make it I'm sure. So cool. So Bill, you know, I found that my phrase through appsumo appsumo, by the way, is a great place just I mean, sign up to their newsletter, you never know what sort of deals they have. I subscribe like $50 a month to some tools where I could have gotten lifetime access for $50 back in the day, and phrase was one of them. So hey, you all missed out. But it's still really, really compelling technology bill, I use phrase for content ideation, as well as for on page SEO. And I know that you've released other technology and I've sort of played around with the AI content creation and paraphrasing as well. But you know, when if someone out there thinks, okay, SEO, I got WordPress, I use the Yoast SEO plugin, I get the green light. And maybe I subscribe to like a keyword research tool like sem rush or tracking tool. What are they missing out on? If they don't use a tool like phrase?
Bill King:Yeah, that's a good question. So I was a customer of the platform when I was at drift. We were using them to automate some of the tedious processes, but the best way I would describe it is we're shooting to be air table or notion for SEO. And so the easiest way you can take a topic For a keyword that you want to write about, and you're saying yourself, I want to make sure that I get search volume, and that I'm able to get traffic to my website, we take you from idea all the way to live article in smoothing out that entire process, which I mean, you know, is the most frustrating friction full part of doing content in content marketing is going from the idea all the way to the to the live article. And then also, we also help you post live where your article tends to decay over time, because it sort of loses traction or gets outdated. And so we give you tools to update stuff. So basically going from a keyword to live article. And once it's live, making sure the article stays the best for your specific keyword you're trying to target.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, and you know, I'm going to be actually talking as much about phrases you do in this podcast. But so I know that recently, you've added sort of that keyword research capability, I still am big fan of sem, rush, and or sem, rush whatever's politically correct. But that's sort of where I do it. And then I bring it and what I was finding was okay, I want to research an article. And I want to write an article on like, whatever subject, right, what I tended to do was, I was going to like the first, you know, page to a Google results, I was opening like 10, or 20 tabs, and I was sort of researching will, what are the topics that people are talking about? Because I want to make sure that if they're relevant for my brand, my experience, and the products and services I offer, I want to make sure that I hit those bases. And that was really only part of the story. Because when I started using phrase, I realized that you did all that for me. But you went above and beyond that. And you taught me that it's not just you want to hit all those bases. But there's a reason why those articles are ranking. And we can use our our AI and algorithms to try to teach you how you can better rank. I think that's a really compelling value proposition for phrase, why don't you tell us a little bit about that bill?
Bill King:Yeah, so the process of going from an idea to an article that actually gets traffic from Google, the easiest thing you can possibly do is keyword research that that gets you to understanding is there existing demand for the topic that I'm trying to speak about, or the group of topics that I'm speaking about? Now you've got your original data set? And then the question is what happens between keyword research and a first draft of an article? Well, it turns out that if you just do keyword research and send it off to a writer, that's really difficult for them to understand what exactly you mean, how do you take a keyword and turn it into a article that is optimized for hundreds of different keywords related topics, all the questions somebody could possibly ask, what structure? Do you want it? When do you want it? What happens after I get the first draft on all these different processes, they either exist in an internal wiki, or you have it up in your head? Oh, this is exactly what I'm expecting. But nobody has actually created a real process to get you from A to Z. And so what we're thinking is, we started as a company that would help you automate content briefs, that was the initial ideation of phrase, we said, Hey, pretty clear. You need a content brief, you need to build a put instructions for your writer, put some from some formal processes around that. That was start one. And then we said, Okay, wait a second, why don't we zoom back out? Let's look at the entire process, when you go from idea all the way to a live article is actually a lot of different things in there. So there's research, there's planning, there's the brief, there's optimization after it goes live, there's a lot of silos of areas that we can help in. So we started there. And now we're moving our way out all the way to the point that you can actually create content, using AI tools to paraphrase and rethink through ideas. These are all designed at the end of the day, to make it easier for you to turn your idea into something awesome that gets search traffic.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, I think so. You know, my blog, and I've talked about this in the podcast before, when I realized at some point, I had so many guest posts, but they weren't necessarily doing keyword research, or they were targeting keywords that just weren't relevant to my business. Right, got one point, I basically archived and 301 redirect and more than half of my content, I get more traffic now with less than one quarter of the number of blog posts I had before. Because I'm making sure that every single post, whether it's mine, or from a guest author is targeted to the keyword that makes sense. And and there's also demand, right? So that was sort of my first aha moment. But the second aha moment was really not just, you know, just using Yoast and keyword research, but was using phrase to realize, wow, if I really want to rank for this, there's certain things that I probably want to talk about that the data shows you want to talk about. And this is where we really get into your algorithm and AI. And the third thing is now I go back into content that I wrote like a year or two ago, and some of it is still doing good. Some of it still first paid, some of them might have skipped the second or third page. And then I run it in to phrase today because you have the option not just create new content, but optimize content or revise content based on a URL and a keyword. And I realized that, you know, there's a lot of stuff I'm missing. Now I'm in the process of not just using phrase for the new content every week, I'm republishing old blog content, I'm adding, you know, significant, you know, 20 to 30% more words, I'm keeping it up to date, but in a relevant way that's really targeted to making sure that I get those search engine rankings. So just want to get people to understand just the compelling nature. In fact, I'm such a huge fan of phrase. And now I have my clients using, I only have like 20 credits a month for that for the lifetime plan. But what phrase allows you to do is I can actually share that document, Bill was talking about that, you know, a lot of times companies will outsource the work to writers, I have a team of writers as well. So I can create the structure of what I want that post to be about in phrase, and then I can share that link to the writer, including if it's a revised content with the content that it's already imported. And then they can work off of that. So basically, for some of my clients, they only, you know, published a few blog posts a month, I'm basically creating it in phrase sharing the link, and then they're working internally. But every single one of my clients, some of them have obviously scrubbed, subscribed on their own, but they've seen that compelling value, just like we had with Yoast, if your WordPress blogger phrase just takes it to the next level, I think once you start using it and understanding what we're talking about, it becomes just that that must have to I mean, Bill, have you found that with with your clients as well, what's what's been I mean, you have an amazing trajectory over the last year, it's funny, because I don't like to mention competitors. But one of my clients said, Oh, we use something like that called circle scope. And a year ago, I heard a lot about these guys, but maybe because they didn't do the appsumo deal, maybe because of the business model, maybe because they're targeting more enterprise. I really don't hear about them anymore. But I hear more and more about phrase. So I don't want you to compare itself to the competitor, per se. But you know, as far as like that process that your clients are using is is what I'm doing. Is that sound? pretty average? I know you have this whole other answers, or questions I forgot which spread which the name of it was this whole widget to to provide this automated, you know, knowledge base chatbot on the side as well. But yeah, is that is the process? Is that sort of how most of your clients you say use your tool? Or am I missing out?
Bill King:Yeah, if you look at the areas where we provide the most value, it's in two specific areas. It's number one, it's the transfer of knowledge between what you're expecting from the article and what you actually get from the writer. And those that area, I've learned, I've been running large scale content and SEO teams at some of the most competitive niches you can possibly imagine. And most like I think about the 8020 rule, 80% of my results come from 20% of the things I do. And one of the things I noticed was that if I was spending a little bit more time in automating some of the things that that transfer some of that knowledge from my brain, to the writer, the end result scales faster than it does when I do it in a one to one fashion. So if I'm creating, if I'm doing a bunch of keyword research, and I'm sending it out to to writers, and then we're going through three or four revisions, and we have to go back and forth, back and forth, and the content isn't on par. That isn't a scalable system. So one of the things I first when I first discovered about phrase was I could basically just take my keyword research, plug it into the tool, and get 90% of the way to the point that the writer could look at this thing and say, I know exactly what you want me to do, how it's going to be structured, what I should answer. And the most important thing is that SEO today, there is a lot of diminishing returns for being in second or third place. Because you see a lot of the search engine results are much more favoring one best answer. And so what we're trying to do is we're not trying to just give you tools to just do stuff faster, cheaper, better, that's already helpful. We're saying, how do you make sure that if you write this content, that it will be the best competing against everybody else who's also going for the same real estate, which is so important. The other thing we help with that is that is really helpful that it is, is this aspect that you don't just publish something, and then just the content just goes away. There are other people who are also competing for that landscape. So once you publish the best article, it might not be in three or four months, because somebody else is also trying to get that real estate. So most of the value you'll get in content and SEO will be a bot will be on transferring clear expected outcomes of what you're looking for. And understanding what the recipe is to be successful in search. In what we're doing is we're putting together a way to automate all that stuff. Because end of the day, we want people to be able to go faster, better and more efficiently. And that's what the whole tool is built to help you do.
Neal Schaffer:So built in your mind to win at Seo? Well, I guess it's always been about quality content. So what Well, obviously that's a no brainer to win today. Considering that you're representing phrase. I like to use the term standing on the shoulders of giants. There's probably a reason why these sites are ranking in the first second page is that you know other than writing great content, it would you argue that that's really the best way to do r&d to analyze Try to find how you can improve your SEO or is it? I mean, I know it's, it sounds simple. There's a heck of a lot of depth to that answer. Right. Yeah. But but in simple terms, we would you argue that that's like a fundamental one of the fundamental important things you can do.
Bill King:Yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear that Google is is is trying to move away from things that can be manipulated. And they're looking at natural language models that trying to understand language from a person's perspective. And so as they get better at that, it is in your best interest to be the best to your end users. But what a lot of people say create great content, that is such a rare and ambiguous term. So, you know, coming through the inbound methodology, all we talked about was create great content. But what do you actually mean, by creating great content? The only way to really quantify what great content means is to understand how you can actually wrap your head around what it actually means to be great content. So what what is underneath phrase that actually is one of the most helpful aspects is, instead of you poring through every single result in the search engine, and meticulously taking notes, we basically set up an automation platform that says, okay, you want to rank for these keywords, or this keyword? Let us go find that quantitative recipe for you. Now, you've got an exact list, we know that Google's interpretation of the best answer probably includes the specific topics because if you're an expert on something like let's say you're a podcast, you're an expert in a lot of things around social. Well, if you were going to be an expert on social, how would you define being an expert in social, you'd say you need to have a working knowledge of digital marketing, you need to learn about SEO, you need to learn about creative, you need to learn about user psychology, all the aspects of that creates an amazing social marketer. Phrase does that for SEO. So we go and we look at everything that's, that's already ranking, we say, here are the things that Google has determined are the most important topics. And here's the things you need to write about. This gives you the best chance of being considered the authority for this topic. And that's the most important thing, it's about deducing what you need to write about so that you can get to the table. And then you add your extra expertise on top of it to make it clear that the best.
Neal Schaffer:And if you're wondering, you may be thinking, well, then if it's just automated, then anybody can do it. Anybody can rank and I just want to remind people that and remind you know, you as well, but even though it is automated sort of information served on a platter, you still need to analyze that, for instance, right? I've done I've seen results like, you know, best social networks for b2b marketing and like Google Plus, because Google sometimes will rank really, really old articles. Oh, yeah, sometimes outdated topics that come up. And it's like, okay, so at the end of the day, you have to have that analog mindset, to sift through that data and understand not only what is relevant today, but also what is relevant to your business. For instance, you talk about digital marketing, I don't talk a lot about the creative side. That's not where I operate. That's not my skill set. That's not my zone of genius. So I don't talk about that, even though the tool might recommend I do, right. And that's how you have you bring your own unique perspective to the content, which ultimately will allow you to rank and attract those people that appreciate that content. Right. And I think I think that's an aspect a lot of people forget about this. It can't be the tool does not determine the content. It's only one of many guides, but it really, really critical and strategic guide, obviously. Yeah, I
Bill King:mean, like one of the first things people think about when they hear that word automation, or AI, is they think like, Oh, this is going to replace hard work and expertise, that is clearly not the case. Right? What we're saying is we're saying, Here is the general analysis to get you to the get you to the table. And then if you want to be the number one result, you need to add your, your level of expertise on top of that. And that's why I think the writer prep comes. So it's so important. Because when you're working with external writers, even if you're an internal marketer, you might not have people that internally understand the subject matter very well. So in order for you to transfer that knowledge, you need to have systems in place to say, what exactly what I need to talk about to be considered the expert in this, even if I'm not. And so putting those tools together, are so important. Because if you just sit there and you're working on SEO, and your job is just to do keyword research, and good luck, you're gonna find out really quickly that that is not how it works today, you need to be clearly the authority on that topic. And the better you can transfer that information to your writers or to yourself, the more the better the product is ultimately,
Neal Schaffer:just moving off of a phrase and just talking about SEO in general. So I am you know, I call myself a social media marketer turned digital marketer. So I have not been doing SEO for a decade. Right. And I hope to provide a new refreshing perspective on it, because I have this, you know, new look at it. Yeah, what I've found is there's basically, I mean, there's things like user experience and you know, speed and mobile first optimization, and we can talk all about that. But I think that really what I've found to be the three main things I'd love to get your input and what else I'm missing. Obviously it starts with the con Then the content is, it's from the keyword research. It's the optimization, everything that goes with it. But you also mentioned authority. So I have this concept Public Library content. And I'm like, hey, blog, do your keyword research, find 52 topics related to the category of content you want to rank for, and blog it and share your expertise. And if you can get 25 to 50 posts around the same subject, it's a signal to Google that you probably know what you're talking about, right? So I noticed that when I started doing this, I published a book on influencer marketing before I started blogging about influencer marketing. But now I rank really quickly, for when I publish good content about influencer marketing. On the other hand, when I publish content on email marketing, or search engine optimization, which I only have a few posts on, I don't rank as quickly. I don't rank as high. And I'm wondering if it's because in Google's eyes, I don't have the authority. And I know that they define authority in many ways, not just the volume of content you have. It's right. But But I'm assuming that that obviously is critical for ranking. It also explains why you can rank for certain categories of content, and others. Would you agree with that?
Bill King:Yeah. So one of the biggest revolutions in AI, or I'm sorry, or an SEO over the past few years has been the introduction of AI into Google's algorithm. And so what they're essentially trying to understand is Google, when I first got into SEO, it was a bunch of different websites with links to the website in Google was just basically a click aggregator, you would search something, you'd find a bunch of things to click on, you would go, well, the introduction machine learning has has really helped them understand entities, attributes, people, places, things, they're starting to classify it like you would if you were building like you've ever seen a child grow up, they sort of learn things in like, phases, right? They understand their parents, and then their friends and this and that. And so that's kind of how I think about AI today is it's in the infancy, it's trying to understand who is Neil, one of the things that he is an expert in. And when he has something to say that I can prove that he's an expert in, I should probably surface that to users that are looking for that. Now, if you start a brand new blog, you have no content, and you haven't written anything about it. Think about it, if you were explaining this to your friend, I have a friend who just started a business now has no customers, you should trust him and give him all your money. Like that's not how it works. So Google in the in the backend, what they're trying to do is they're trying to understand who are the credible sources for these specific topics, and which of these, these pile of URLs and content are the best. And the second thing that that it's super important to talk about is that it is no longer about driving, you know, clicks directly to your website, Google is actually making a very concerted effort to keep you on the search engine results page. And the reason for that simply is that they make more money from AD clicks, because they're an ads business. So one thing something that has really changed recently, and this is why phrase has been going aggressively after these kind of niche topics and questions is that Google as their machine learning has gotten better, their understanding of topics has gotten better. So they've been able to extract deeper insights from your content and surface it to searchers. Additionally, if you have a question, if I say, hey, Neil, what's the best way to do influencer marketing? Do I need to go through a 3000 word blog post to learn that? No, it's probably just a 200 character response. And so those things are really important to think about. In SEO nowadays, it's no longer just like, you know, create some content, build some links to it, and then try to get as many clicks, you need to start thinking about how do I get distribution on these individual parts of my content? And so that's where the more of the technical stuff comes in, where you're looking at, like, Can I structure my documents properly, to have the right subtopics and everything else? Those are, those are more of the technical nuances. But most importantly, that is just Google's way of understanding content. And so if you have the tools in place to know, I'm speaking to this topic, and in a deep, authoritative way, you're already setting yourself up for success. And then everything else afterwards is just more the in the weeds SEO stuff.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, that's a great point. Oh, that phrase will surface those people also asked questions when you I always, you know, create the automated briefs. So I try to include those as headings. And when I can't, I use the FAQ schema, Yoast does include an FAQ if you use Gutenberg the FAQ schema box. So I try to include an FAQ and answer five of those tough questions in every single blog post. And that's, that's definitely really helped with with rankings and traffic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's great advice. The other one I wanted to go over bill was the notion of backlinks. Right. And I know that this is man, you talking about duping the algorithm, right? But my content, the backlinks, it has to be like hyper, if it's not hyper relevant, it just has no value. But if it's hyper if it's another website that has some authority on the same subject of influencer marketing, that's linking to one of my posts and influencer marketing that to me, sends a really, really strong signal. So it's not about getting 50 100 500 backlinks. It's it's more about just getting a few from really, really relevant with, you know, with good enough authority to really spark things that that's what often I'm curious to hear your opinion.
Bill King:Yeah, so Let's zoom out on backlinks, Google's PageRank algorithm, the reason why Google actually became the dominant force in SEO is because of what's called PageRank out the PageRank algorithm. And so the only way to scale authority across the web is to use backlinks. Because it's the only scale for a while, it was the only scalable way that they had to determine who was the authority and who wasn't. Everything else failed a lot of different experiments, you know, went on over the years, like how do we organize content? Well, now Google's getting to the point where they're, they're looking at both the backlinks, but also just the the AI is able to deep more deeply understand websites, users of, you know, topical authority, etc, website engagement metrics, so the old days of like, build a, you know, a page, and it doesn't matter how good the content is, or how crappy the on page experiences, but if you get enough backlinks, honestly, that was the way you actually succeeded in SEO for quite some time, we are moving past that, or already past that this point. So thinking about backlinks, 2.0 is is not just about the authority of the web page, it's about the topical connectivity of those entities. So if your website links to mine, I link to somebody else's about about french fries, they're gonna go Well, that doesn't make sense. Neil and Bill have some general topical connectivity here. And so if a user goes from Neil's website to build website, that makes sense. And so you need to be very careful about your link building efforts. Today, not to scare people, but just be more thinking about what does this have in the end users best interest? Because if you don't like again, like sending clicks off to random websites might be good for your quote, unquote, like PageRank. But is that good for the user? And so you need to start thinking about that, and less about brute force SEO, and more about like, how do I create great partnerships with people that are in the industry? And you know, we were just talking about different ways we can do that before we started the podcast, but like, build partnerships go deeper than just link trading? Because that stuff, I think, is probably on the way out?
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, I have an episode I'll link to in the show notes about influencer marketing for SEO, same content, all about relationships. And, and I think just in digital marketing in general, that's a lot of what it comes down to. And it comes down to human aspect, right? We talk a lot about it in social media marketing. And, you know, with Google wanting people to stick on the search results page, it's no different than social media sites wanting to stick on their sites, and they don't want, they don't want you to go to a YouTube video or elsewhere. So it's all sort of, I think, coming together, and hopefully everybody listening, it's sort of all beginning to make sense. I know that we covered a lot. And I know that people listening might be interested in checking out phrase. So I wanted to let you know that in full disclosure, I am a proud affiliate for phrase, but we have collaborated to be able to offer you not just a free trial. And the free trial does give you those like five free results a month. I think right now, it's five free total. So you can
Bill King:Okay, if you said hey, listen, this sounds great. I'd love to get more organic traffic. But I don't know how all you have to do is just come over create a free account. There's no credit card required, just putting your keyword and then take a look at some of our guides and say, Hey, does this make my life easier if I'm trying to get traffic from organic search? And hopefully it does. And if you have any questions, let me know, I'll be happy to help.
Neal Schaffer:Awesome bell. So if you click Well, I'm looking at my own web page here. But if you go to Neal schaffer.com, slash phrase, that's f ra s, he not only will you get a free trial, but should you subscribe, you will get a 25% off discount for the first three months, make sure you go through that link to take advantage in disclosure is an affiliate link. But it all goes to hopefully what you would consider a good cause. I'm looking forward to doing more with phrase, I'm looking forward to putting up YouTube videos on how I use it. It is going to be in the digital first group coaching membership community supported platform. So if you have questions about phrase before even have to go to phrase, I'm hoping to be able to answer them for you. I'm not big of a user and I want to know myself. So that's really all I have to say you owe it to yourself to try it and really see what you might be missing. Bill. Is there anything I know that we this whole sort of you know, answers that the whole chatbot? We didn't even cover that. But as far as the basic SEO and phrase, is there anything that we should have covered that we missed?
Bill King:No, I just I mean, I just want to remind people if like if you heard us talking about a lot of big words, and a lot of confusing SEO, stuff that is more about what we see on the back end really SEO and being successful in organic is just taking the time to really create great processes around creating great content. And if you're struggling with that phrase is definitely the tool for you. And if you have any questions on like, hey, this sounds great, but I don't know what I'm doing. Check out the guides. I'm sure Neil is gonna put out some great videos on how to do it. But there's never been a better time for creators to get into SEO because it's less about you know, brute force rankings. And it's more about getting creators to create some amazing stuff and surface get in front of their their target audience. So I encourage everybody to try it out.
Neal Schaffer:And I challenged the listener if you do a keyword search For something that's related to your product or service, something you're an expert in. And you don't like those results. You're like, I can write something better than that, or Hey, no thing, no offense against HubSpot, but they try to rank for anything. And everything that goes way beyond their product is sort of famous to do a good job. So they're one of my competitors, but they have so much volume and so much authority that they're able to get away with it. But regardless, I've beaten HubSpot on certain keyword searches. And so I want everybody to know if you know your stuff, you can beat the competition I want to inspire I have seen, I went from zero on influencer marketing related topics to not only first page, but top three, for a number of really, really strategic keywords that have real volume in the course of two years doesn't take a decade. It takes persistence, but it takes smarts and using the technology that exists and phrases, you know, sem rush and phrase. That to me is the golden combination. And and actually if you don't have a sem rush, subscription phrases, including more and more of that keyword research aspect of it, so you may not even need that for certain aspects of what I'm talking about. So I really hope you'll check it out below. Thank you so much. I look forward to doing more with phrase I know we got to talk about doing a webinar soon. Hopefully, we'll we'll be able to offer even more value to everybody listening. But thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing the growth of phrase and the growth of all of us that use phrase and hopefully all of us, you know, doing better and better with our SEO. Thanks, Neil. I really appreciate the time. All right. I hope you really enjoyed that episode. You know, after we finished I had a separate talk with Bill and I showed him my search engine rankings and how for my niche and influencer marketing, I now outrank Hootsuite, and Sprout Social, and all these companies that are writing a lot of content about influencer marketing and spending a lot of money using tools like phrase, and yet I was able and well hopefully will continue to be able to outrank them. And I owe part of that. It's not just one tool that does it right. But phrase has definitely been a invaluable ninja tool in my arsenal, make sure you take advantage that special offer go to Neal schaffer.com slash phrase, Fr s E. And you know what, if you want support for phrase above and beyond what you can get from them, join my community, digital First, go to Neal schaffer.com. slash membership phrase is one of the technologies that I am supporting above and beyond what phrase gives you if you really want to know the tips and tricks on how to use it. Once you invest in it, come join my community, and let me help you on a very, very detailed basis. Alright, that's it for another Well, hopefully, it was exciting for me. Hopefully, it was exciting for you episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. Hopefully we're going to be back at you next week again, and I won't make you or I'll try not to wait make you wait so long for the next episode. I promise. I'll do my best but I'm only human But hey, that's it. Wherever you are in the world. Make it a great social day. Bye bye and sale and nada