AI-Driven SEO – What’s Real and What’s Hype? (ft. Stuart Hendry)

Logan Shinholser
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser and today I’m talking to Stuart Hendry who is our SEO manager here at CGN, all about SEO and how AI has been changing it. Super awesome, really topically relevant podcast and we talk really through the foundation of where SEO came from and also how it’s going to be changing in the near future. So let’s go ahead and jump on in. Stuart. Excited for this?

Stuart Hendry
Oh, yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Cool. So let’s just, before we jump into all the SEO and the AI stuff, Stuart, give us like your background. I know you’re a soccer player. You got like the most niche master’s degree I’ve ever heard of. So who is Stuart, first off?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, perfect. So my soccer background, I mean, I was a player for about 15 years, 20 years, and then came over to the US. I played in college over here while studying marketing and then I went into the coaching world. I coached at the college level and while I was coaching, I was also getting the most niche master’s degree that you can get. I did a master’s in marketing, analytics and strategy as well, which is very helpful for what I do now.

Logan Shinholser
And just going into that as like, that being like what you want to get a master’s in, what are most people want to do from a job perspective with that degree?

Stuart Hendry
It varies. It varies. Which was a cool part of the program as well. You got to see people who really loved working with data and strictly that. So they would literally do just data visualization, lots of numbers, lots of spreadsheets. And then there were the other side of things when it came to the strategy from a branding perspective. So they ended up covering a lot of the holistic side. For me personally tying that in with coaching, I love the people aspect. So my job as an account manager as well as an SEO strategist was the perfect combination of both of those things. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
So let’s jump into SEO before we go into the AI stuff and like how that’s changed. To me, it makes sense to like give almost like a benchmark or like a foundation for SEO. So then that way when we say, oh, these are the changes that are happening. Like if we talk about, oh, chat, DBT is great for blogs, well, you may be thinking as the audience, like what the hell is a blog? Or like, why is that even important in the first place? So let’s talk about the foundations of SEO and then we can jump into the AI stuff to give you like a difference as far as like what. What is needing to happen? Versus how is AI changing all this stuff? Is that fair?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, that sounds perfect.

Logan Shinholser
So give us like the overview, like in your. I mean, you live SEO every single day. What is SEO?

Stuart Hendry
That is a fun question to answer. I mean, SEO has definitely evolved even in the time that I’ve been at the company here. A lot of the way I look at it is making sure that you’re delivering valuable insights about what you do to people who are searching for those specific things. So that can be done across a multitude of ways. It is the combination of what’s on your website, what’s in the blog content. Blog content is just what you’re writing about. It even ties into your socials, your Google business profile as well. So it encompasses a lot of things, but the easy way to say it is making sure that across all of those things, you are who you are or you are who you say you are. You’re showing your expertise in that area.

Stuart Hendry
You’re showing that you have knowledge, something different from other people, to stand out. And you’re just making sure that you’re delivering content that people care about in an open, honest way as well.

Logan Shinholser
So talk to us a bit about the whole e a t that Google has is their way of determining. All right, if somebody searches for this search, how do we figure out which websites or links to actually show in our search engine?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, perfect. So when it comes to that aspect, eeat is your experience, your expertise, your authoritativeness, and your trust, which is sort of at the middle of it all. So those other three elements really build towards gaining that trust with your audience. So everybody knows when you search something on Google, it’ll come up with one of 4 million results, as you said. How do we know which ones to show first, that is Google’s little mystery box that they have. So really it is a combination of the experience you have within the role.

Stuart Hendry
I don’t have much experience as a contractor, so if I were to go out and just write straight away as my own business about what I do, I wouldn’t have the experience to show the projects that I’ve already worked on or the times that I’ve dealt with customer issues throughout the process as well. What you really want to show in your business is the experience you have at what you do. So this can be through being able to answer questions. This could be through images of your work as well. The next piece is just your expertise. We want to just be showing that on a consistent basis.

Stuart Hendry
So if you show up and you post one thing about a bathroom and then two years later you post another thing, people aren’t going to really know that you’re an expert or that you have expertise in that area because they haven’t seen it on a consistent basis. Google takes that into account as well. So we want to consistently be showing them, hey, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to painting, when it comes to changing light fixtures, whatever it may be, and we want to make sure that we’re consistently showing them that while also answering the questions that people are looking at. The simple truth is people have questions when it comes to just about anything. And we want to show that, hey, we know this stuff, here’s our unique perspective on it as well.

Stuart Hendry
And all those things accumulate to showing that trust. That’s why someone who has 30 years of experience is huge compared to someone who just has one year, because you can show that trust, that expertise, the experience that you bring to the table as well.

Logan Shinholser
So essentially the way to like, put a kind of a summary on this is you want to show people in Google that you have, you know, if you’re putting out an article about, I don’t know, like top kitchen trends, Google wants to make sure that this is somebody who’s actually a kitchen remodeler. They have been doing this for a long time, so much so that they can actually show, hey, these are the past kitchens that I’ve done. So when it comes to showing kitchen trends, this is not just like, you know, Stewart, the SEO guy, this is actually, you know, Nate the remodeler who is actually putting this stuff out.

Logan Shinholser
And then that way Google’s like, okay, if we have to show one of these articles and they’re both on kitchen trends, one comes from somebody who’s just an Internet marketer and one comes from somebody who’s actually doing this thing, let’s actually show that the one, that the person who’s actually doing the thing day in and day out, we want to show their article because they’re way more likely to be the ones that are knowing this stuff. Kind of like how like angies list when they put out like a diy thing or like, stuff about trends probably doesn’t do nearly as well as an actual company who’s doing this stuff. If they were to put out a similar article. Am I off on that?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, very similar. And then there are tons of nuances within SEO itself. You wouldn’t want to just put a whole block of text on the page. So there are little aspects that not only do you have to show your experience and your expertise, but you got to do it in a way which really answers the heart of the question people are searching for in a way that’s easy for them to consume. So there’s going to be so many different ranking factors when it comes to what you see on that first page of a Google search that aren’t just your expertise and your authority, because a lot of people miss that area where they go, great, I’ve been in the trade for 30 years. I know exactly what I’m talking about.

Stuart Hendry
And then they just spew it all out on the page, or they do the opposite where they just, they don’t go into enough detail. They don’t really touch on the heart of what people are answering. Or maybe they’ll answer four questions when all they needed was one. So it’s really a balance of showing your expertise in a way that people want to consume as well. I know there are books that I’ve read that I just want to put down because there’s no headings, there’s no structure to it as well. I kind of get lost at which line I’m on and just have to keep repeat and repeat.

Logan Shinholser
So talk to us a bit about what you’re bringing up as content. What is the role of content in building up your SEO and all that eeat stuff?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah. So Google is a dominant figure in this market. So a lot of people are doing their searches online when they’re going through that buyer’s journey process as well. So they have questions about how long does this take? How long does it take to get a bathroom remodel? What are the costs? What can I expect a timeline to look like? There are all little different questions that unless these people have all the experience and they’ve done it 20 times, they don’t know what the answer is. So where content comes into play on your website specifically, it’s a way to help generate traffic to the site. By that, if someone has a question, how much does a bathroom cost?

Stuart Hendry
We want to make sure that if they’re going to find the answer out, we would like it to be from us that helps to generate people to the site, but also build up that trust with them as well, especially because what we deal with is very local. So we want to make sure that we’re giving information specific to that spot. I remember I’ve lived in Connecticut and looking at stuff for that specific area I was living in, but I would get the averages, so I would get something that’s you know, across the whole United States from a cost perspective. And then when I tried to actually reach out to remodelers, it was 20, 30% more than that. So we really want to make sure that locally you’re showing good content that answers what people in your area are asking for.

Logan Shinholser
So, talking through content, what are some elements of what makes up good content versus what would you consider to be bad content? Cause I think that will directly then flow into how AI is now helping or hurting those things.

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, great question. So when it comes to good versus bad content, one of the things I already touched on was the readability of it as well. So I think a lot of people get the misconception that they have to just game the system, but if we really think truly about the end user, the end person that’s going to read it, how do they read things? Putting headings that separate, making sure the paragraph length is two to three sentences and not eight to ten. A lot of people won’t even give you the chance to build that trust. If the first thing they see on your content is unorganized information or it looks piecemeal together, they’ll leave straight away. And that’s a signal to Google this wasn’t a good piece of content.

Stuart Hendry
So there are other factors, which is does it actually answer the question, does it have images throughout there as well that enhance that readability aspect? And then does it help take them to the next sort of question as well? That’s what we look at, is how can we generate a piece of content that answers one question? And then what is the next question? This person might be having to help direct them and help them on their journey towards really finding out about bathrooms, kitchens, whatever it may be like, before.

Logan Shinholser
We go into the bad stuff. What’s an example of that as far as like, hey, we have this one blog post or this one thing, and we want to answer the next thing. What do you mean by that?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, perfect. So let’s say it’s localized to an area and we’re talking about weather damage. And so you’re in Green Bay, for example, and you’re talking about the weather damage that you can see to the exterior of your house. So maybe we start with signs to look for after a hailstorm on the siding aspect of your house. When they read through that, the next thing is to point them in how to repair it. So logically, someone’s gone out, they’ve seen, oh, I’ve actually got some broken off here, or I’ve got some holes in my siding. The next piece is, well, what do I do? I know I have the problem. I can see it. I’ve been able to identify it. The next thing is how do I repair it?

Stuart Hendry
And that’s why you might send them to something that talks about repairs and then you can add in pieces of is this something you could do yourself, or is it something you would need to hire a contractor to help you with?

Logan Shinholser
So when it comes to now, bad content, I guess where in all of the stuff that you talked about, what is the difference between what you just described, which is good content, to what bad content would look like?

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, bad content is easy to spot. So when you come onto it rambles, it talks in long sentences. It doesn’t actually answer the question. So if I’m searching for what’s the cost to paint my kitchen and I get onto a blog and it’s talking about the local turkey drive event in the area, it’s not good content towards what I’m looking for or if it talks about the weather in that post. So you want to make sure that whatever someone’s searching for, firstly, do I answer that question? The next piece is you don’t actually provide any new valuable information, so you’re not giving something that someone couldn’t find already on Google. So that’s how.

Logan Shinholser
So why is that important? That’s a big part. I see a lot of the AI stuff coming out. So talk more about that, which you may have been doing already.

Stuart Hendry
But so when it comes to your eat, your experience, your expertise, authoritativeness and trust, you’ve got a million results plus that will talk about that one specific topic in Google’s eyes. Why should I show yours above someone else’s? And if yours just covers what everybody else talks about, word for word, exact images, exact headings, then Google’s going to look at you and go, there’s no point on me showing this one to people because this one already does a good enough job of it. So when we look at the ones that are ranking really high, it’s the ones that Google sees that great. They really answer this question. It’s really helpful. People are happy with the answer they get. I’m going to keep showing this until you can show something that adds a little bit more expertise.

Stuart Hendry
It might be that you go deeper into the topic. It might be. Let’s say it’s a trend topic. The reason you look at trends. So let’s say I look at kitchen trends. They know that I’m looking for this year’s trends. They’re not going to show a blog from 1998. So it’s making sure that you have that freshness aspect to your content as well. Because those things change over time. Pricing changes, inflation, all those aspects can influence that. If you’ve got a blog that you wrote ten years ago, you need to make sure you’re going back in and refreshing it as well so that it’s up to date with what people are searching for today.

Logan Shinholser
Talk to me about the balance of writing the blog post for Google versus writing it for people.

Stuart Hendry
This is one of the biggest questions that you hear within the SEO industry as a whole. Always write for people. If you write for people, that will be the most important thing in the longevity. There are different aspects over the history of SEO that have changed where you can game the system and started with simple things where you would just throw that one keyword, the bathroom remodel costs hundred times throughout the piece. Over time, Google gets smarter and is able to pick up on those things. And so for the longevity of your site, the longevity of your brand, building that trust, you will lose out. So it’s important that really your focus should be completely on. Is this helpful? Am I actually helping to answer this question for this person? Am I giving expertise that I have that I know?

Stuart Hendry
Hey, there’s actually this one trick that I know actually really helps with this and sharing that because it could be different. In your local area, you might deal with woodpeckers, whereas in Florida you may never have that issue. So you’re making sure that you’re talking about the local issues that your customer base may have. If you write just for Google, over time, you’re going to get found out. Ultimately, Google looks at how long people stay on your page. So if I click on the first link and then I go right back to the page before Google takes that as a signal of this mustn’t have answered the question that they needed. So I’m going to show someone else’s a little bit higher until they can see that engagement metric where they go onto the page.

Stuart Hendry
They spent time there, they moved on to another page on the site. Those are signals that Google sees. So ultimately, if you’re not actually helping people and the user, you’re going to see those metrics and you’re not going to be in the rankings that you would ideally want to be in.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, because I know with that stuff, like I, when I talk to clients to try to explain SEO to me, that whole idea of like how people are engaging with the, not only the article or the post, but also the rest of the website. It’s easier to almost explain it as if, like social media, where it’s like, imagine you put out an Instagram post. Instagram immediately puts it out to who they think is going to want to see this post. And if those ten people all like it, comment, share it within Instagram’s like, wow, this is pretty good. Let’s show it to 100 people. And then it kind of just goes from there. And SEO, it used to not be this way, but now it’s getting to the place where it’s just, it’s got to answer the question.

Logan Shinholser
If you’re putting out a post that’s five kitchen trends and there’s not a single photo on there, like, I guess you could maybe describe what, like, a modern kitchen looks like versus like a mid century modern kitchen looks like. But like, it’s so much easier just to show the photo of it and then highlight the elements of what mid century. You know, let’s talk about wood, because that’s what they love back then. So, like, stuff like that, like, I know for me, I can instantly tell how much thought has gone into the blog post versus how much is somebody just checking the box based off of just a quick visual of are they actually breaking this thing down? Is it super short answers that are not actually even, like, explaining this stuff. So to me, the engagement stuff is everything.

Stuart Hendry
Yeah. And Google is incredibly sophisticated. So there was recent stuff about how they can’t actually tell you exactly what the page is about. They can get a good idea. So a lot of the signals is from engagement as well. Now, we’ve spoken a lot about content, but even when it comes to your Google Business profile, which is your online listing, so if someone’s to search remodeler in Charlotte, North Carolina, you see a map pack, which is essentially just a map with businesses next to it. So even that profile itself goes a lot based off the engagement. Are people clicking on the link? Are people clicking through your photos? Now, it’s known that not every single piece of your Google Business profile is a ranking factor, but engagement is.

Stuart Hendry
So for example, your question and answers, it’s known that doesn’t help you rank better or not. But engagement is a ranking factor. So people clicking and looking at your q and A’s and seeing the questions you’ve written, the responses, that is a signal. So all in all, it’s aspects of locally. You want to make sure that’s completely filled out so that people have the chance to engage with you because Google sees that great, they’re clicking on it similar to socials, they’ll click on that, they’ll share it to people. When we look at some of the analytics randomly, you’ll get a big spike. So to explain that a bit better, your impressions is when someone sees a link on Google.

Stuart Hendry
So we track those metrics and if people see a big spike in that graph, that’s because Google has gone, I’m going to try this out. I’m going to show this higher up on the search results. Maybe I was showing it on page 50, but I’m going to just toss it in there on page two or page one and see how people interact with it. And if people love it when they’re searching for it, then they go, okay, this could be a good piece of content. Maybe I should show this to more people. So very similar to how you explain the social media sort of algorithm and how they judge good content. There’s more and more of that in your SEO, overall, your blog content as well.

Logan Shinholser
So last thing on this, before we jump into the AI stuff, talk a bit about just the volume of content and how that plays into, I guess, like your authority in the eyes of.

Stuart Hendry
People and Google, there’s no perfect answer for this. The biggest thing is consistency. It is like a lot of things in life. If you do it once every three months, you’re not going to get the sort of results that you hope for. If it’s something that you can do on a consistent basis, that’s shown to Google, okay, great. They’re consistently uploading. They consistently are able to cover different topics within this industry, so they must know what they’re talking about when it comes to exteriors. So we want to make sure that consistently we’re showing up in those things. Ideally, you would post more than less, but what you don’t want to then do, and we’ve seen this in the past, is just post so much that then Google sees you as just a spammy site.

Stuart Hendry
There is a fine balance between the right amount of content, too little and too much. It’s just like Goldilocks. If you’re just posting 1020 times a day, eventually Google might see, and especially if it’s not high value content, Google might go, this all just seems like spam. And then no matter what, even if you’re posting good content, you’re still not going to get those results you want because Google just goes, now this guy’s untrustworthy, so I’m not even going to bother showing those things anymore.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. I talk about this with, like, with reviews where Google, it’s smart, it’s learning this stuff. And if Google’s used to your company never getting reviews and all of a sudden you get 30 reviews in one day, you know, maybe it’s all legit. And you just finally said, all right, all clients leave me a review, but Google doesn’t know that. All they see is that you went from nothing to 30 instantaneously. That doesn’t seem normal.

Logan Shinholser
So they’re going to go ahead and flag it, which is kind of like with the SEO stuff is, you know, if you go from no blogs or one every quarter to all of a sudden you’re doing 20 a day, even if it’s great content, it’s almost like it’s got to build to understand that even if this is all completely legit and you now have dedicated your entire life to just putting out helpful content on your website, which means you can do a lot of it still is going to take time for it to actually, like, trust that just because you’re doing it’s actually now legit. They’re going to read through it, they’re going to send it out to people, test it, and then once they start to see the feedback, I guess, come back that it’s like, hey, this is pretty good stuff.

Logan Shinholser
Then they trust you and go from there.

Stuart Hendry
Yeah. And as we spoke about SEO encompasses that whole thing. I read an article the other day specifically about reviews and why Google might, you’ll see randomly, Google might just take one of your reviews off. They’re getting more sophisticated with that. One of the areas was, if this person has not been in your area when they did that review, or if they’ve never, like, been in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Google will go, how could they have done a service with this company if they’ve never been there? So they’re getting more and more sophisticated to be able to see what’s legitimate and what’s not. Your reviews is a huge piece as well.

Stuart Hendry
We want to make sure that we’re being the part, doing the great job and then following that up to be able to show that everything when it comes to your SEO side of things is trust. Can I show people that they can trust that I can do the job, I can deal with problems? I am the business that I say I am, and that I’m going to be able to help them through the process as well. So if you don’t have those reviews, you may be the best remodeler in the world. You may be the nicest, best customer service, but if you’re not able to show any of those things, people aren’t going to know. So you could be all these great things and all that.

Stuart Hendry
But if you’re not going through the process of getting reviews, making sure that you’re responding to reviews as well, those are all just trust signals. All of those interact together to really position you higher up in those Google search results as well.

Logan Shinholser
So now transitioning over to the whole, how does AI factor into all this chat GPT, which is, I think, what everybody talks about with, oh, AI is chat GPT, although truth be told, AI has been around since the fifties. I actually did a whole talk, not a whole talk, but I talked about this on stage at this event that went through this idea of, there’s AI summers and winters, so you have a summer, which is AI comes out, everybody’s excited, this is gonna change. The world is gonna make, you know, famine go away. And then they realize that, okay, well, this is not gonna solve all the world’s problems. So they start to get a little bit less enthused about it, and then it goes into a winner, then it comes back up, then it goes back away.

Logan Shinholser
And now the latest summer that we’ve been in is because chatgpt came out. Everybody’s excited. It’s amazing. But then you realize, oh, actually there’s some errors with it and it doesn’t actually do all this, you know, incredible stuff. It is incredible, but it’s not like, you know, it does everything for you. So little by little, we’re probably going to go back into an AI winter. But for right now, we got the summer. So chat DBT comes out 1819 months ago. What impact has that had on SEO?

Stuart Hendry
As you said, it’s kind of a bit of an up and down journey as well. I’d say when it first came out, it does seem like that this is going to solve all the issues. Then over time, you do see errors with it, you do see ways that you go, wait, maybe I need to double check this work a little bit more and keep a bit more of a keen eye on it as well. The way that we’ve seen the biggest change is it’s just a tool. It’s a tool to help assist you. It’s similar to when the Internet came out that then became a tool to help with research. So what AI, or chat GBT has really helped with is speeding up some of those processes.

Stuart Hendry
So allowing the analysis, the research part of it, to be quicker, that’s awesome because then you can spend more time really making sure that the content itself is great. So you’ve seen what’s working well on a search result page. You’re able to see the topics that they talk about as well, and then you can add in the expertise. So we talked a lot about search intent. We talked a lot about making sure you’re delivering valuable content to what people are actually asking. This just allows you to do that in a way where you make sure you’re showing that intent. I think when AI first came out, it was great. Now I can just mass produce as much as possible and completely trust this tool to create great stuff. But we talk about uniqueness.

Stuart Hendry
We talk about being able to stand out from the million other results. If we don’t have the additional expertise, the photos, the uniqueness, the readability, all those aspects, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to end up just creating content that sounds like everybody else’s content, reads like everybody else’s content, and then you end up in the position where Google goes, I’ve already seen this. I’ve actually seen this a thousand times. So what makes you different? What makes you stand out? Why are you gonna be the one to really answer people’s questions?

Logan Shinholser
So I remember when it first came out and there was a guy on YouTube that I watched a lot of his stuff and essentially he would write for. It was like e commerce, but it was a men’s fashion website. And he got to the point where he was writing like 1012 blog posts a day and he was doing all that stuff of like making it feel unique and different. So on paper you’d look at it and go, that was great content. And what happened was he was talking about it and teaching people how to do this stuff. And all of his people coming to his website, looking at those, like, paid, like all that stuff was going really well.

Logan Shinholser
And then all of a sudden it just crashed where if you look at the actual graphs of people finding his stuff, it looked like it was just this mountain that was shooting straight up. And then all of a sudden one morning he came in and his next YouTube video was like, okay, here’s the reality of mass produced AI SEO. And it just showed that Google essentially went in and said that all these articles that you’ve been mass producing, they’re actually not that great. So we’re going to go ahead and stop showing him as much. And his traffic for like, those articles just essentially evaporated overnight. So can you talk a bit more about, I guess how people are using this stuff incorrectly?

Stuart Hendry
Well, you mentioned it before with the reviews. If you just suddenly get 30 reviews in a day, it’s a little suspicious. Again, those could be genuine things. You could have gotten all those and they just lined up at the same time. But in Google’s eyes, that’s a bit of anomaly. So that’s something that doesn’t seem usual when they look at the millions and millions of businesses that they help when it comes to your Google listings. Same thing is with content. So if you go from being able to produce one a week or three times a month to suddenly 15 posts a day, eventually Google is going to look at it and go, this doesn’t seem normal. One, it’s a bit of anomaly, and then two, that just might make them want to look at it with a fine and tooth comb.

Stuart Hendry
So is this content actually helpful? Again, you want to make sure that you’re covering all the questions someone may have about the topic, but you do have to do it in a way that’s actually valuable. Like that is, I think a lot of the issues people have when it comes to SEO is looking at it as a system that can be gamed. Again, there are rules and there areas that you can make the most of, but if your sole intent is to do that, to just take advantage of the system and advantage of this new technology, eventually it may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but eventually Google will release an update that will then send all that, as you said, crashing down the other way as well. So we really want to think about consistency.

Stuart Hendry
We really want to be consistent in the long run. So if we just have big spikes, you could produce 100 pieces of content and go, great, that’s 100, I’m done for the year. It’s not going to have the same impact as if you’re showing up on that regular basis and showing Google and showing the people that you’re trying to help, that you’re consistent.

Logan Shinholser
So one of the things you wrote at the beginning was it’s a tool. Just like you kind of hear this phrase that people keep talking about. It’s like, AI is not going to replace jobs, it’s going to be the people that know how to use the AI that’s going to replace jobs. Like that kind of stuff. What is the benefit of like understanding the frameworks or like how SEO works, how to write good content? Like for our, like our writers here, like they, before all this AI chat stuff came out, they’ve written thousands and thousands of articles and done a bunch of research to understand foundationally how all this stuff works.

Logan Shinholser
And then a tool like chat DPT comes in like, talk to me a bit about like, I guess having somebody that understands the foundation of the stuff, then being able to use chat GPT versus somebody that doesn’t understand that stuff and then use chat GPT.

Stuart Hendry
So for our writers here, it sort of makes it exponential in terms of what their skill level is and the experience they have of writing. It then allows them to harness this tool to make more and also make better stuff as well. So they’re taking all that expertise, all that great foundation, and then just being able to do the research part quicker, being able to find structural elements quicker, that’s really matching that question. What people who don’t have that experience or the understanding of the foundation? I mean, we’ve spoken a lot about the blogging side of SEO. There are so many technical aspects, there are so many aspects of your website as well that can play a part. I think people get misconstrued where it’s like, great. Well, I’m writing the blogs, but is it with good quality? Is it actually answering questions?

Stuart Hendry
And are you doing it on a website that you know is a paper bag in terms of your foundations? So when it comes to people who don’t understand how to write for people and then they use this tool, they end up not knowing how to check and balance that they can’t then see if what’s actually being produced by the tool is helpful. They don’t actually know what to look for either. So then you create this content, you can do it at a higher production rate as well. You publish it and then you wonder why it’s not doing well. You don’t have the ability or the expertise to actually check and reference that, unless you were able to send it to someone who has all those expertise.

Stuart Hendry
But then at that point, you might as well spend the time upfront making sure that you understand what people are looking for. You understand even elements of writing as well, like the importance of the structure, the importance of how your introduction is to really answer the question quickly so that people might want to read more further down as well.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I know we’ve had clients that are like, hey, can I write some blogs in addition to you guys writing the blogs? And we’re like, that’s fine. However, like, send them over to us and we’ll check them out and let you know. Like, is it good or not? And I think every time that this has happened, it’s very apparent that it was just chat GPT that wrote it. And then when we look through it, we’re like, hey, this is actually, by the time that we go through and have to do all the technical stuff, make sure it actually plays into the full strategy and all this stuff, it would have taken us half the amount of time for us just to write it on our own.

Logan Shinholser
Kind of like it’s, you know, if a homeowner, if you’re a kitchen remodeler and homeowners like, hey, let me install the range hood myself. And then you come in and yes, they technically installed it, but there’s so many issues with it. It’s like, I think most homeowners don’t realize, like, actually my brother in law is dealing with this right now where he has a, his AC unit, he bought a house, it’s six years old, and the AC unit is six years old. Should last a lot longer than that. Well, it already died. And it wasn’t because the AC unit, it was because the person who installed it, because it was a flip house, did it incorrectly. And those little things make a big difference.

Logan Shinholser
And now he’s got to get a new h vac system that was essentially, they just installed it correctly from the get go, it would be fine and he would not be dealing with this. But now, because it was done incorrectly, it’s very similar with people that just like, pop up on chat GPT and say, hey, can we use this? And it’s like, I mean, technically we could put this up on the site, but it’s, from our perspective, either one gonna do nothing or two, potentially hurt the website because you’ve got. It’s not, you know, Google doesn’t look at just the one article, it looks at the whole website as a whole.

Stuart Hendry
Yeah. And even how they link together, you know, there are aspects of your website where we spoke about linking from one article to the next. Your whole website is this big web that is communicating, hey, Google, follow this to go to this. And really trying to teach Google about what the site is about as well. So there are so many fundamental aspects of SEO which can get played off as, okay, why don’t I just write the blog and I just publish it easy as I save myself a few dollars here and there. It’s the same thing. Our clients will deal with clients who say, well, why can’t I just do that piece? Go ahead. But it will probably end up with us needing to do that for you anyway. That’s why they hire the expertise as well.

Stuart Hendry
So you want to make sure not only that, but what are the main things you want to focus on in the business? So we use these tools to be able to really speed it up and make sure that we’re going more in depth, finding the little tidbits that we couldn’t find before because of the manual time that it took to do all of that research as well. So do you want to focus on helping us with those pieces, or is there other elements of the business, for example, that are much more priority that would help expand that trust and help build your authority, just from a business perspective?

Logan Shinholser
So let’s kind of wrap this up with that, because I know we have clients that are like, hey, can I help you guys write the blogs? And we’re like, actually, there’s a lot more that you could be doing on your own in your business from a marketing perspective that would actually help holistically way more than you trying to, you know, say, hey, I have a, I like English. You know, I like writing. Let me just write some stuff. It’s like, there’s other things that you should be doing that will help everything that much more. So what are some of those things that you talk to clients about that may want to help us out with the blogs, but we’re like, hey, do this instead.

Stuart Hendry
I think it’s always a tricky position to be in. One of the most important things that we talk about here at CGN is, you know, look in the part, being the part, track the part as well. So first off, we want to be the part. So they need to make sure that is that experience the clients have with you. Great. We talk about it many times where you’re in someone’s home, you’re disrupting their daily life. It’s probably the most uncomfortable thing they’ll go through, especially if they have families and they’re used to routines. I know. I love my routines. And so when, like, my dad is coming to visit, I get thrown out of that. So making sure that, okay, am I making sure that experience with them is incredible?

Stuart Hendry
So we want to make sure that not only are we delivering high quality, but we’re communicating regularly. We’re doing all those little touch points. We’re showing up on time. We’re showing up looking professional as a company as well. We’ve got company branded t shirts. That’s something we want to make sure we have foundationally in place from a marketing side of things. We really want to then do the follow up as well. So we want to get those reviews. We want to make sure that every single job we do that we blow it out of the water to begin with. And then we’re following up and getting those reviews, having people mention the projects that you did and the areas you did them as well. And then from there we want to make sure we’re documenting that stuff throughout the project as well.

Stuart Hendry
So there are so many ways that one project can be utilized across your site, across the blogs. So professional images, I’m sure we’ve spoken about plenty of time on the podcast as well. That’s a huge piece because we can then take those areas. Something we use a lot of now is our featured project pages which help show. I’ll explain a little bit about featured project pages. It’s highlighting the story. So the pain problem that people went through and the solution as well. On an actual project you did. We then use the professional images, different types of media on those. What’s great from an SEO perspective is you’re now able to be found for that search term. So bathroom remodel in a certain area. So we talk about eat that, showing the expertise in that specific area that someone may be searching.

Stuart Hendry
So there’s great ways to make sure that we’re capturing the project, capturing the story from the clients as well. So even taking notes on what was the pain problem they had, what were the main things they wanted, what was important to them, was it communication, was it being updated every single day? Was it the guys, what they spoke about in the house, those kind of aspects, and then documenting that part of the story, taking great visuals because we can utilize those in so many different ways for the business as well. Versus spending all your time on writing, there are so many more impactful ways that we can help grow that marketing and that brand side of things.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, and if you guys want to see more about the feature project page stuff, we actually, just, at the time of this podcast coming out, the YouTube video breaking down how to create them for yourself, the impact I know they’re having. We’re starting to see these pages show up in that whole AI summary. When you type in, you know, looking for a specific service in a specific area, these pages are now starting to pop up. So it’s super impactful stuff. And if you want to build one on your own, like there’s a YouTube video that is on our channel that you can go and check out. So Stuart, last question here. What do you think the next twelve months has in store for SEO? Considering AI is just continuing to get better and better? There’s more tools coming out, things like that.

Stuart Hendry
Above all else, the most important thing won’t change. Making sure that you’re writing that content. For people answering those questions for the next twelve months, I mean, the last twelve months has been a huge change as well. So now that more and more players, I would say, are coming into that, the AI software and different tool sets, I think you’re going to see more and more niche tools that can do one specific thing really well when it comes to creating content briefs. The analysis part, the helping with linking within the site. So I could say over the next twelve months, unpredictable bit of a wave of how it changes. But the most important thing is to continue to really be the part.

Stuart Hendry
Show your expertise, show your authority in this space and communicate that in a way that’s really engaging for people to read through and really helps solve their problems. At the end of the day, we’re trying to serve the needs of the client as well. What needs? What problem? What pain points? And how can we do that in a way that really is easy for them to understand and position you as that authority when it comes to that subject?

Logan Shinholser
Awesome. So I say we wrap it up there. This has been awesome. Stuart, I appreciate you coming on here and talking about this stuff. And because this stuff changes so much, we’ll have to get you back on in the near future. Just talk about how it’s completely changed all over again in the past few months.

Stuart Hendry
Yeah, we’ll just record this again tomorrow. Talk about something completely different.

Logan Shinholser
Awesome. Thank you.

Stuart Hendry
Thank you. All right.

Logan Shinholser
That was an awesome podcast. My biggest takeaway was how much Stewart just kept getting back to look. Even with AI, no AI, it doesn’t matter. You need to have good quality, helpful content on a consistent basis. So it’s one of those things where it’s like a diet, you just, you know, you have all these new methods and pills and all that stuff come out, but at the end of the day, you can’t outwork a bad diet. So make sure that you’re doing the right things from the get go. If you found this helpful and you actually want to do a little bit more research and understanding of those feature project pages, like what I brought up in the actual podcast itself, it’s on our YouTube channel.

Logan Shinholser
So as soon as you are parked, if you’re driving right now or not, go on YouTube, check it out, because that will be a hugely beneficial thing to understand, both from a consumer’s perspective, but also from a Google and SEO perspective.