The New SEO Playbook for Business Growth

John Jantsch ( 00: 01.272 )

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, and we are not any guests today. I’m going to do a solo show. I’m going to address a subject that is causing me a lot of anxiety. A lot of people asking questions. You’ve got people saying it is dead. There are people who claim that it is not dead. It’s just changing. Today, I’m addressing search engine optimization. SEO. SEO has been a marketer’s friend.

You know, you know someone who wants to buy something enters Google and visits your website, right? a lot of people are seeing that Google’s changing the way that they’re returning search. You have this feature called zero click, which basically means that Google is providing them with all the answers on the Google homepage without any justification for leaving your website to look up the solution. you’re getting AI overviews, that truly outline.

Lots of options for the answer. So what people are seeing is a significant decline in organic search on their websites. But here’s the thing I’ve noticed. A lot of that traffic wasn’t really helpful in any way. It was people looking for answers to things, how to do things. They weren’t looking to buy something from us. They merely desired to find the content, and marketers were more than happy to produce it. So don’t panic.

If you’ve seen it, the drop in traffic, however, doesn’t mean SEO is dead. it does definitely mean that there needs to be a new playbook. kind of the, the, I’m going to go over, I think five or six, kind of approaches that I think, I can’t remember how many years, five, no, six, six approaches that I think we need to be thinking about taking, right now. So, and I’m going to sort of compare old SEO to new SEO, just to sort of frame each of these approaches. So…

The first is that we must abandon this notion of keyword rankings. That was like the big thing. That was the holy grail of SEO was, you on page one for X amount of searches? Right now, what we need to consider is search presence and visibility. So the old way was track a fixed list of 10 to 20 keywords, try to get just obsess over getting page one rankings. And many people did it by writing thin.

John Jantsch ( 02: 24.974 )

kind of over-optimized content that was the only goal was to rank. Because today’s search is not a three-word, four-word search, the new model should consider total impressions rather than just the top 10 spots. It’s a long phrase, you know, what we used to call long tail searches. And so…

Having a lot of that high intent long-term search is still okay, even if you are not ranking for page one for that thing you really want to rank for. Google Search Console, I’m going to mention it a bunch of times, is a tool that you should get to know. You should be very cooperative with it because it contains a lot of the solutions needed right now. Measuring click-through rate, which is something that is a metric inside of the Google Search Console.

to examine the growth of branded searches and what is termed “query diversity,” which means that you are ranking for a lot of things. Like one page might actually not rank highly for a high intent search, but it might actually rank for 30 or 40. I’ve seen some 100 different types of searches that are the kinds of things people are putting in. Although they are not in any particular volume, they still generate a lot of traffic to a particular page. And when you start then saying,

because people are actually looking for my brand, and that traffic to this page is getting X click through rates. That’s a much, much better way to think in terms of, of search presence and visibility. So let me give you a tactic example. Use Google search objectives. Use Google search console to identify hundreds of low impression, long tail queries, like I’ve been talking about, and then build content clusters.

groups of blog posts based on those, so that you can gauge growth rather than just position and rank. All right number two. Don’t worry if some of this starts to get technical we do it all for you. So if I can give you an option, we’ve developed a system known as the search visibility system, which is our new approach to SEO. So I want to let you know we know how to do it in case you want us to do it for you. How is that? But everything I’m talking about you

John Jantsch ( 04: 43.982 )

can determine and carry out on their own. So number two, we’re going to have to embrace AI for content. That’s a given, in my opinion. There are some things that it does far better than humans, but we have to do it carefully because your brand, your stories, your case studies, your voice, your tone, all of that is you. That’s the human part of it. However, there is a lot of the research on the subject that can and should be done, to be honest, using these tools.

You know, tools like chat, GPT, you know, Jasper, you know, is another one for content as well. You’re going to put the strategy, the trust building, you’re going to, you’re going to do the UX still. You’re going to how it looks is going to be up to you. The readability is going to be up to you, but the ideation creating outlines. Tell me about one fantastic thing you can do: creating FAQs. So any content that you produce, anything that you read, you can actually produce the FAQs.

You can respond to the FAQs in your own voice, in your tone, and with your brand. Put your brand into those and you start when people start saying, what’s the best brand for X? You’ll start to see some traction around that.

So instead of writing 50 blog posts, use one thorough guide to a real, you know, client interview, then incorporate AI to create FAQs, videos, and content for Google Business Pages. Don’t worry. You know, if you have to write strategic content and then execute it, it will pay far more dividends than just those 50 blog posts.

All right, if you are a local business, meaning most of your business comes in a town, in a community, this is definitely for you.

John Jantsch ( 06: 36.546 )

That search continues to exist. That search, if somebody is in a town and Google knows they’re in a town searching for a certain type of product or service, a very high intent, let’s say you’re a remodeling contractor, somebody says best remodeling contractor, they don’t even have to put the name of their town in there, Google knows it, right? Therefore, increasing your focus on local and reputation SEO will be crucial going forward. Maybe it’ll go away in two years, but right now.

is going to be extremely important for local businesses. Therefore, don’t treat your Google business profile like a listing; instead, think of it as a standalone publishing platform. It gives you tremendous opportunity to publish your reviews, obviously they go there, but also a blog post or just little snippets of things, know, little abstracts of your blog posts, images can be put there. So consider it more as a” a”

a publishing platform. that ought to be, you ought to pay as much attention to that, if not more sometimes than your own website, quite frankly. Create content that addresses regional questions. Look at what people do. Look underneath for questions that people also ask when you look for one of these terms for your neighborhood community. So again, going back to the remodeling contractor, what’s the best

countertop, you know, for kitchens today or something somebody might ask. They’ll also fall under those six or seven additional questions that people ask, I suppose. Your FAQ should be addressing all of those. can include them on your Google business page. They don’t care what you publish there. Optimize, you know, location pages, structured data, citations, all the things that that help you show up when people say near me, you’ve probably done that kind of search, right? Mexican restaurant close to me. That that all happens.

You know, some of its proximity, of course, will show up if it is close to you. But, you know, for other categories, I mean, there are thousands of restaurants, right? But for other categories, maybe it’s an estate attorney or something. There aren’t many of those in a community, after all. So you can do a lot over and above proximity by really focusing on that.

John Jantsch ( 08:54.624 )

If you are working with an agency, they better be thinking, asking you about review acquisition, about responding to Q and A’s, about publishing weekly updates and posts on your Google business profiles. I mean, that’s, if you’re doing it yourself, that needs to be your kind of weekly checklist. Okay, now. Number four, prioritizing intent based SEO over volume based SEO. Yes. What do I mean by that?

intent base is clearly a search somebody puts in when they’re looking to buy. What does that mean when someone searches for the best car I can buy, for instance? That’s just kind of those things, you know, lots of volume for them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re looking for, you know, your particular product or service. Bottom line: Traffic doesn’t matter, regardless of what any SEO company tells you, is that.

Unless it leads to trust, engagement and conversion. That’s what you need to worry about. Although high intent traffic is undoubtedly competitive, you are aware that if you put your effort and effort there, it is more likely to lead to conversion. So what we do when we work with folks is we want to map all kinds of content to the customer journey. We employ what is known as the marketing hourglass for our purposes. You’ve probably heard me talk about it as seven stages, no like trust.

Try by, repeat, and refer. And the interesting thing about those stages is that they are behaviors that people go through when they try to find a business, interact with it, and then actually do business with that business. And so what we know is that their objectives at each of those stages, their questions at each of those stages, the challenges or what they’re trying to accomplish at each of those stages, it changes. And so ought your content.

Make sure that you are not just producing content that gets people to find you, but once they find you, it builds trust. It actually allows them to try maybe what it might be like to work with you or to understand your business, to understand your culture at your organization, all the things that they’re going to lead to them kind of checking those boxes and getting their questions answered at each of those stages. So…

John Jantsch ( 11: 12.066 )

create a service page for your business, as well as a case study, and FAQ. Certainly make sure that you have CTAs on those, calls actions, book a call, whatever it is. All of it optimized for intent. There is a good chance that someone is looking to buy if they land there because of all the attention it was focused on. And that’s different than somebody that you’re just trying to rank for some term that gets you traffic.

Therefore, the content you’re building has a different mindset. Again, we’ve gone through about a decade period of content for content sake to try to get eyeballs. And now what we’re trying to do is understand the journey that people are on. Five is the link building. It certainly was an aspect, is an aspect still of SEO. Anyone who talks to you about SEO will discuss link building or backlinks. But instead of thinking about link building,

I think we need to reframe that as brand authority building. know that the old fashion way was to post guest blogs or use shady directories to promote themselves or even conduct cold outreach. I mean, I get it all the time. People who are writing here, for whatever reason, link to me. So the whole focus was volume, right? Volume of backlinks. The matter is now, in actuality,

Google doesn’t even pay that much attention to backlinks, particularly the ones that it doesn’t see as very authoritative. So, you have hundreds of backlinks, and 20 or 30 of them might not be worth anything. So putting effort into just getting random volume of backlinks is something that’s been going away for years, but it’s just absolutely silly now to do because it’s a waste of time. In fact, it may even send some negative signals.

Therefore, the new strategy focuses exclusively on earned media, podcast guest appearances, PR partnerships, and developing strategic partnerships with key industry players. That’s the type of thing that is going to really be a valuable backlink. Is it normal for me to post and publish a podcast? Every guest that comes on my podcast, I link back to their show. give them, if they tell me some freebie they have, I’ll probably link back to that.

John Jantsch ( 13: 33. 566 )

It’s branded because we mentioned their name. The company name was frequently mentioned in that. so that type of backlink is probably the most valuable backlink you can get. A bonus is that we give, I mean, the podcast gets some exposure. They might actually win a client because they heard about it. It is amazing content. You can republish the content you provided as a guest on a blog or podcast. You can cut it up into a hundred social media snippets. So

I think you should, really, be trying to get it because, um, it’s the number one, um, backlink, and I think you should do it because I think you should. So if you want to get on some podcasts, podcast bookers.com would be an option for getting these types of backlinks that I talked about. And you can get, to be honest.

four or five podcast backlinks for the, you know, what somebody would charge you to get probably a bunch of dubious backlinks. So no more guest blog posting, get your clients interviewed on niche podcasts, you’d be on a podcast, get cited in the local news. look for brand-embedded links. Don’t worry about page rank or authority anymore. From that perspective, it’s all about the brand. Okay, now. And then the last one, and this is really,

for agencies, but know that vanity reporting is something that I believe drives a lot of businesses crazy if you have an agency you work with. You know, rankings, traffic, bounce rate, keyword movement. These things all sounded good, you know. In some cases they looked good because they were going the right direction. But what did they amount to for you? Long-tail queries today, for example, saw a rise in your search impression.

is now more important. What are all the impressions you’re getting, then, collectively? Your click-through rates by intent category, branded versus non-branded, but particularly branded click-through rates, you want to improve those. You want reporting on those because those really tell the story that you are actually getting the right kind of traffic. Leads, engagement, email opt-ins, form submissions, phone calls, and other factors are all evident.

John Jantsch ( 15: 56.118 )

Is that what you want to see expand, then? mean, because that’s a pretty darn good indication that there’s not only high intent, but that you’re going to actually get some conversion out of that. So if you’re an agency, I challenge you to start showing clients their search visibility and trust indicators are growing and not just whether they rank for plumber in their city. So those are my…

six, was speaking to both businesses and agencies there because a lot of businesses hire agencies. So, if any of this made sense, but you’re now asking,” Great, how do I do this, John?” Happy to help you. Love for you to ask us about our search visibility system, which no shocker here is built around strategy first. Therefore, it makes no sense to create any particular type of monster.

visibility or SEO play, you know, without actually building that on a solid foundation of what you’re, you’re who you’re trying to attract, what you do that’s different, your core brand promise, all those things have to be built around that. Then, whatever you have must have content. So we’re going to help you build not only helpful content, but we’re going to help you build these content clusters as we call them or hub pages. You’ve got to

If you run a local business, you must unquestionably concentrate on Google business, which is increasingly important than ever. We, I love Google search console and I think there are so many, it’s the most underutilized tool. It’s inexpensive. And it’s the most underutilized tool. And there are so many nuggets and insights that you can gain from there. We are certain of that.

to really direct a lot of what we do and then really work on your reputation, authority building and give you reporting that’s actually going to tell an accurate story. If you’re listening to this and want to learn more, you can contact John at ductapemarketing.com or visit our website. You can book an appointment with.

John Jantsch ( 18: 03.7 )

Someone who can really walk you through how AI is being used in all of this, and what strategy first looks like. And, and maybe, this idea of how to think differently about SEO. you’re an agency, this is something that we teach and have been granted to a lot of agencies as well. So hopefully that was useful for today. I’m going to actually be harping on this idea. In fact, I’m going to perform a full show on the Google search console as well. So you might want to tune in for that. So…

Thanks for listening. Love those reviews. I appreciate any suggestions. It’s just John at DucktapeMarketing.com and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.