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LLM search is only about 1% of the total search market. Google still controls roughly 88%. So why do so many marketer's content strategy sound like it was written by someone in a panic about AI overviews? This week we're resurfacing a conversation with Grace Sharkey of Orderful to reset what SEO actually looks like for logistics in 2026, with a new intro reacting to Google's recent guidance on what does and does not matter.Included in this conversation is a fresh take on what Google just clarified, including what they're saying about llms.txt files, FAQ pages, and schema. Then we roll into the conversation where Grace asks the questions and Blythe walks through Google Search Console, long-tail keywords, the FAQ-page rebuild, and why your recorded sales calls are the most underused content gold mine in your stack.In this episode:Why Google Search Console beats Ahrefs and SEMrush for figuring out what to fix firstHow to sort your queries for the fastest click-through-rate winsThe long-tail paragraph queries LLMs are actually answeringWhy the FAQ page is the easiest piece of SEO work you can ship this quarterWhat Google just said about llms.txt files (spoiler: you do not need one)How to turn recorded sales and onboarding calls into a content engineWhy YouTube case studies beat gated PDF whitepapers for shippersThe "how did you hear about us" form field every high-intent page should haveWatch this episode on YouTubeLinks and resources:Grace Sharkey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-sharkey-31940765/Orderful: https://www.orderful.comGoogle Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-consoleAdam Robinson's Air Cover newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/air-cover-7450924377958912000/ SEO expert Gaetanao DiNardi: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7368964829673390084/More logistics marketing and sales content over on Everything is Logistics -----------------------------------------THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers.
Exposure Ninja Digital Marketing Podcast | SEO, eCommerce, Digital PR, PPC, Web design and CRO
AI traffic is growing fast, but most businesses have no idea how much of it they're getting, where it's coming from, or how well it converts.This video shows you exactly how to track traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot inside Google Analytics 4, including the quick method you can use today, and the proper setup that makes AI referral traffic a permanent channel in your reports.Here's what's covered:Why AI-referred traffic converts 4–5x better than Google organic and why that makes it worth tracking separately even when the volume is still smallThe quick filter method for isolating AI referral traffic in your existing GA4 reports in under two minutesHow to create a dedicated AI referral traffic channel group so you never have to click through filters againThe one ordering mistake that causes GA4 to misclassify your AI traffic as generic referral traffic and how to fix itWhy a large slice of AI-driven visits will never show up as AI traffic at all and what to track instead to get the full pictureThe tools we use to measure AI search visibility alongside GA4, including Semrush, Peak, and ProfoundAI traffic is still a small percentage of overall visits for most sites, but the conversion rates tell a different story. Ahrefs reported 12.1% of signups from AI search despite it driving just 0.5% of traffic. That gap is worth paying attention to.Read the show notes: https://exposureninja.com/blog/how-to-track-ai-traffic-in-ga4/Listen to these episodes next:The BEST SEO Strategies for 2026https://exposureninja.com/podcast/368/How To Dominate AI Search Results in 2026https://exposureninja.com/podcast/372/Copy The 3 Pillars of £50m+ SEO Campaignshttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/371/
Harry Duran, founder of Fullcast and creator of Podisphere, joins Jeff Mains to explore what it really takes to build a sustainable podcast, grow a content brand, and stay ahead in a rapidly AI-shaped media world.Harry shares his journey from corporate marketing at JPMorgan Chase and E-Trade, to launching his first podcast Podcast Junkies in 2014, to building Fullcast — a podcast production and marketing consultancy that has helped over 130 business owners launch and grow shows. He also dives deep into his newest ventures: Podisphere (a G2-style SaaS directory for podcast tools) and Podclaw (an agent-first podcast hosting platform built for AI agents, not humans).The conversation covers the seismic shift happening in content creation right now — from vibe coding and Claude Code to autonomous AI agents that market products while you sleep. Harry and Jeff also discuss why long-form human conversations are becoming more valuable in an era flooded with AI-generated content, the power of niche podcasting, and why the most important skill for the next decade may simply be learning how to talk to robots.Key Takeaways0:00 — Intro: What it takes to build a podcast and a business around it in an AI-driven content landscape4:40 — Recap of previous guests: Justin Trombold on AI strategy and Rick Delisi on The Effortless Experience6:10 — Welcoming Harry Duran — how he helped launch SaaS Fuel and what Fullcast does9:50 — Harry's origin story: From JPMorgan Chase and Unilever to electronic music, DJing, and discovering podcasting at New Media Expo in 201413:30 — Meeting Pat Flynn and Amy Porterfield; pivoting from a DJ podcast to Podcast Junkies; recognizing podcasting as your own personal stage17:10 — How Harry's first paying client (a $1,000 PayPal from John Livesay) launched Fullcast in 201522:10 — Introducing Podisphere: A G2.com-style directory for podcast tools — the inspiration, the build journey, and why traffic is the only metric that matters to sponsors27:30 — Building with no-code tools (Airtable, Webflow, Bubble), the frustrations of non-technical founding, and how vibe coding changed everything in 202531:30 — Claude Code, Agent OS, and spec-driven development: how Harry built more in six months than in five years combined37:50 — SEO strategy for Podisphere: Fathom Analytics, Ahrefs, programmatic blog posts, Google Search Console, and hitting 7,000 page views/month without a press release45:20 — The power of founder relationships: How 12 years of Podcast Junkies led to meeting Andrew Mason (Descript), the SquadCast acquisition, and building a network that fuels Podisphere51:00 — Why every founder should have a podcast: relationship-building, opening doors, and earning "street cred"54:40 — Introducing Podclaw: An agent-first podcast hosting platform built for AI agents, not humans1:01:30 — Moltbook: The AI agent social network, digital wallets for agents, and autonomous marketing via cron jobs1:08:00 — The "agent economy" and why SaaS companies that block agents are "dead men walking"1:15:30 — Why the most important future skill is learning how to talk to robots; parallels to the dot-com era of 19991:21:30 — The future of podcasting: AI-generated shows, long-form authentic conversation, niche doubling down, and why human voices are becoming more valuable1:28:00 — NotebookLM and the rise of AI podcast hosts; the disclosure debate1:33:20 — Harry's personal operating system: morning meditation, written intentions, strength training, and protecting attention before screens1:37:30 — Where to find Harry: fullcast.co, thepodisphere.com, podclaw.ioTweetable Quotes"The most important skill in the future is learning how to talk to robots." — Harry Duran"You can't speak to someone for an hour and forget their face. That's the magic of podcasting — it builds relationships that nothing else can replicate." — Harry Duran"The people who made money in the gold rush were the ones who sold the picks, the shovels, and Levi's." — Harry Duran"Companies that block agents are dead men walking. If agents can't get the data from you, someone else will build what they need." — Jeff Mains"It never feels done — you just have to ship it. Get it out there." — Harry Duran"AI is like having the vision in your head and finally being able to build at the speed of thought." — Harry DuranSaaS Leadership Lessons1. Build Your Distribution Before You Need ItHarry spent over a decade building Podcast Junkies before it became the foundation of Podisphere. His relationships with founders like Andrew Mason (Descript) and the SquadCast team weren't accidental — they were built over 500+ interviews. Leaders who invest in platforms, relationships, and audiences compounding quietly are the ones who have leverage when they need it.2. Sell Picks and Shovels — Build for the EcosystemRather than fighting for space in a crowded software category, Harry positioned Podisphere as the infrastructure layer (the G2 of podcasting). Great SaaS leaders ask: What does this entire ecosystem need that nobody is building? Being a connector and aggregator often outlasts being just another point solution.3. Non-Technical Founders Must Learn to Build at the Speed of ThoughtHarry's journey from Airtable → Bubble → Fiverr developers → Claude Code is a roadmap for any non-technical founder in 2025. The bottleneck is no longer code — it's vision and prompting. The founder who can articulate their product clearly to an AI builds faster, iterates faster, and maintains greater ownership of the product direction.4. Traffic Is the Only Metric That Converts to Revenue — Build for Discovery FirstPodisphere hit 7,000 page views/month organically before a single press release by treating every page as an SEO asset. Harry obsessed over internal links, programmatic blog posts, and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) for AI search. SaaS leaders building content or marketplace products should think like search engines think — not just build pretty interfaces.5. Agent-First Is the New Mobile-First — Design for It NowHarry didn't build Podclaw for human users. He built it for AI agents, complete with clean APIs, no unnecessary dashboards, and agent-friendly architecture. As agent economies emerge (complete with digital wallets and autonomous purchasing), SaaS products that block or ignore agents will be displaced. Build your API surface today like agents are your power users tomorrow.6. Protect Your Peak Performance Hours — Your Best Output Comes from Taking Care of Yourself FirstHarry meditates 20 minutes every morning, writes intentions in the present tense, and strength trains three days a week before opening a laptop. He's explicit: this is not a nice-to-have. The onslaught of screens, AI noise, and constant stimulation hijacks your nervous system. The leaders who perform at the highest level over the longest runway are the ones who treat personal maintenance as a non-negotiable operating system.Guest Resourceshttps://fullcast.co/hdbioEpisode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains
We keep having these very long shows covering dozens of different stories because the worlds we work in are changing so rapidly and with such frequency. This is another long episode touching on over three dozen items. Here's a brief but incomplete rundown:- Google Discover data missing in GSC for May 7 - 8. If you don't see it or it looks kinda weird, it's them not you.- Google Ads is moving to passkey security for certain actions starting in mid July- Google AdSense Vignette Ads are no longer a threat for triggering Google's back-button abuse policies- Google Ads API v24.1 is out- SEO MUST READ - Ryan Jones of Razorfish and maker of SERPrecon on how a Search Engine Works (https://www.serprecon.com/blog/how-a-search-engine-works)- ICE Agents have over 20Million targets on their iPhones via Palantir- New AI Act in Colorado allows for building of data centers in state- Conde Nast anticipates search traffic to drop to single digits- Google uses AI to actively disrupt hackers- Microsoft has built a multi-agent AI system that can compete with and beat Anthropic's Mythos in cybersecurity tests- A Harvard study found AI tends to feed businesses virtual nonsense when used for strategic planning- The costs of compute are rising quickly and Anthropic is passing them to businesses and consumers- Anthropic expands Claude AI's tools for law firms- Don't ever follow ChatGPT's advice on using drugs. Just don't. A young person died after being advised he could use a toxic drug combination safely. - AI is apparently rotting the brains of overworked software developers as AI tools start to feel like they're outsourcing their abilities to think- Grok is flailing against its larger and somewhat less douchey competitors. - TikTok introduces tools for FIFA World Cup content creators- Google's shift to TurboQuant, a newish algorithm that radically speeds processing time, makes generative AI answers cheaper and easier to produce- An Ahrefs study showed that adding schema did not boost citations on any AI platform including at Google. - Google no longer supports FAQ rich results- AI an unwelcome topic at commencement speeches across the nationA lot of fun conversation as we try to keep up with the speed of light. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Swearing on sales calls can boost win rates by up to 8% — that's just one of the counterintuitive insights that helped Gong grow from 11 customers to over $300M in annual revenue.Udi Ledergor joined Gong as employee #13 and marketer #1, eventually becoming CMO and now Chief Evangelist. His data-driven content marketing approach turned proprietary sales call analytics into viral marketing gold that media outlets couldn't resist covering.Udi is the author of "Courageous Marketing" and has over 28 years of marketing experience across multiple successful tech companies. He's pioneered creative growth tactics like securing Super Bowl ads and Wall Street Journal placements for a fraction of their usual cost, all while building one of B2B's most recognizable brands.In this episode, you'll discover why AI-generated marketing ideas should be eliminated rather than used, how to create content so valuable that university professors want to license it, and why the best way to use a small marketing budget is to show up where your audience already congregates instead of trying to build your own party.Here's what you'll learn in this episode:(00:00) Intro(01:00) Why Gong focused on LinkedIn and ignored their website(07:21) Why best practices are the enemy of standing out(13:31) The reciprocity principle: Give value before asking for anything(18:21) How swearing on sales calls became viral marketing gold(25:18) How to make your marketing budget unlimited(33:29) Creating websites for AI vs. humans in the age of answer engines(40:36) Why you need preemptive "marketing experiments" budget(44:18) Punching above your weight(51:23) Using AI to eliminate obvious ideas, not generate them(56:54) The Netflix test: Would people pay for your content?(1:01:31) Finding talent in unlikely placesWe hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend).Where to find Udi Ledergor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/udiledergor/X: @ledergorWebsite: https://www.gong.io/Where to find Tim:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/Referenced:Robert Cialdini (Influence): https://www.robertcialdini.com/Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick): https://heathbrothers.com/Malcolm Gladwell: https://gladwell.com/Adam Grant (Think Again): https://adamgrant.net/Daniel Pink: https://www.danpink.com/Peter Walker (Carta): https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwalk/Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com#ContentMarketing #B2BMarketing #GrowthMarketing #AhrefsPodcast
Most writers can barely publish one article per week — but what if AI could help you draft 30 articles in less time?Ryan Law has cracked the code with an automated content pipeline that's already producing high-quality articles for the Ahrefs blog in just 8–12 minutes each.Ryan Law is Head of Marketing at Ahrefs and has spent years refining AI-powered content workflows. He's built an intricate system of 23+ AI “skills” that work together to research, outline, draft, and optimize blog content — all while maintaining the Ahrefs voice and incorporating product use cases naturally.In this episode, you'll discover exactly how Ryan's “blog pipeline” works, why breaking content creation into discrete steps produces better results, and how AI eliminates the drudgery of writing while preserving human creativity.Tim also shares his own AI workflow for writing his upcoming book through voice dictation.Here's what you'll learn in this episode:(00:00) Intro(01:37) Inside Ryan's 23-skill AI content automation system(07:48) The research phase: analyzing competitor content and finding gaps(19:19) Referencing existing content to maintain consistency(22:23) Creating exhaustive outlines using the MECE principle(23:44) Why examples beat instructions for teaching AI your voice(29:26) Finding natural product placement opportunities(34:37) The critical importance of providing human context(41:00) Using AI to update thousands of existing articles(48:01) How AI eliminates creative drudgery, not creativity itselfWhere to find Ryan Law:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingslow/X: @thinkingslowWebsite: https://www.ryanlaw.me/Where to find Tim:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/Referenced:Claude (Anthropic): https://claude.aiAhrefs: https://ahrefs.com
El SEO ha entrado en una nueva fase, eso está clarísimo. Las búsquedas de información de todo tipo en las plataformas de inteligencia artificial generativa, estilo ChatGPT o Gemini no paran de crecer. Y en paralelo los que tradicionalmente eran motores de búsqueda y que después te llevaban a las webs, como el propio Google, están compitiendo contra las IAs modificando su funcionamiento para responder igualmente con IA, con las AI Overviews o en AI Mode de Google.Hemos montado una tertulia para ver cómo el sector SEO se está adaptando a esto. Para eso hemos liado a Raúl Valencia, SEO y CRO de Civitatis, ganador del Ecommerce Award a mejor estrategia SEO en 2025; a Filipa Serra, SEO y ASO Consultant de zooplus y también hemos citado a una de las herramientas SEO de referencia mundial, ahrefs, para ver cómo están adaptando la tecnología y qué notan de sus miles de clientes. Representa a Ahrefs su Marketing Manager, Marian Rodriguez.Enlaces de interés:⭐Ahrefs
We tried ChatGPT's integrations and they were... fine. Then we tried Claude's MCPs and everything changed. In this episode, we demo the integrations we actually use every day - pulling live CRM data from HubSpot, searching sales call transcripts in Fireflies, checking SEO rankings in Ahrefs, and more. All from one AI conversation. If you liked our Intro to Claude episode, this is the next level.
Start a free trial of HubSpot's new AEO tool: https://clickhubspot.com/wdlc Ep. 420 In AI search,, relevancy matters more than authority. Kipp, Kieran, Beeri Amiel (Product at HubSpot and founder of XFunnel), and guest Sam Parr (Host of My First Million) dive into how AI-driven answer engines are disrupting traditional SEO and what marketers must do to adapt. Learn more on how AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is changing the rules of search, why citation and content relevance matter more than authority, and what tools and tactics you can implement to succeed in the new era of AI search. Mentions Sam Parr https://www.linkedin.com/in/parrsam My First Million https://www.mfmpod.com/ Hampton https://joinhampton.com/ The Hustle https://thehustle.co/ Beeri Amiel https://www.linkedin.com/in/beeri-amiel XFunnel https://www.xfunnel.ai/ HubSpot AEO Portal https://clickhubspot.com/aeo Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about Get our guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/customgpt Resource [Free] Steal our favorite AI Prompts featured on the show! Grab them here: https://clickhubspot.com/aip We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Produced by Darren Clarke.
Free AIO Audit - Click Here. How Australian eCommerce Brands Can Rank in AI Overviews (AIO) in 2026AI is changing how Australians discover and buy products online. In this episode, Ryan Martin sits down with Patrick Dhital one of Australia's leading SEO and AIO specialists — to break down exactly what eCommerce founders need to do right now to appear in AI-generated search results across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.If your brand isn't showing up when a CEO or customer searches for your category on an AI engine, this episode is for you.AI engines read structured data. That means moving your most important claims out of body paragraphs and into clear, structured page elements — headings, quick-facts boxes, certifications, awards — so AI can find and weight them correctly.Stop saying "award-winning product." Say which award you actually won, and give it its own heading on the page.This also includes schema markup and ensuring your meta copy is specific, not vague. Specificity signals trust to AI engines.Search behaviour has shifted from "best compression socks" to "what compression socks help me recover after a long-haul flight?" Your content strategy needs to follow. That means blogs and articles built around real customer questions — not AI-generated filler.The best content comes from knowing your customer better than any agency can. What questions do they ask you? Start there.Within those articles, include product carousels, CTAs, and comparison guides. Don't build content just for AIO — make it genuinely useful for the people landing on it.Being mentioned in a Vogue listicle on "top Australian knitwear brands" isn't just good PR — it's how AI engines discover and recommend you. Build backlinks and placements in topically relevant articles and listicles so that when an LLM goes looking, it finds your brand in credible, third-party sources.Social media presence matters too. If people are talking about your brand positively on Reddit or Quora, AI engines will surface that. If they're not — or if the reviews are bad — that surfaces too.AIO needs SEO to work. If you're not ranking on Google, AI engines won't find you either. The fundamentals haven't changed — they're the foundation.Be specific, not general. "Award-winning" means nothing to an AI. "Winner of the 2024 Good Design Award" does. Pull specifics out of paragraphs and into structured elements.Your content strategy should sound like your customer. Conversational queries are longer and more specific than ever. Write content that matches how real people talk — not how keyword tools think.Bad reviews can hurt you in AI, fast. What appears on Trustpilot, Reddit, or Quora is fair game for AI engines. Brand reputation management is now part of AIO.No single channel fixes everything. The brands with the best AIO results are also running Google Ads, social ads, email, and PR. It all compounds.ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Reddit, Quora, Trustpilot, Shopify, Remarkable DigitalWant a free AIO audit? Ryan and Patrick are currently offering AI visibility audits for Australian eCommerce brands. Hit the link below to start the conversation.
Most SEO tools are playing catch-up with AI search while their users wonder if traditional keyword tracking even matters anymore. Tim Soulo tackles your burning questions about how Ahrefs is navigating this shift, revealing that Content Explorer is their most underrated feature despite being 10x less popular than Site Audit.Tim Soulo is the CMO at Ahrefs, one of the industry's most comprehensive SEO toolsets with over $100 million in annual revenue. He's been with Ahrefs for over a decade, helping shape its evolution from a backlink analysis tool to a full marketing suite.In this solo Q&A episode, Tim reveals why Ahrefs has no acquisition plans, which tools generate the most usage (Site Explorer dominates by 3x), and why they're betting big on API expansion for the "wipe coding" revolution. He also shares candid thoughts on competing with Semrush and explains why Brand Radar crossed $10M ARR in just 5 months.Here's what you'll learn in this episode:(00:00) Intro(00:27) Any plans for acquisitions in 2026? (from Bilal Malik)(01:13) Which are the most vs least used Ahrefs features? (from Vimala Ellappan)(08:44) What is the most underrated Ahrefs feature? (from Kristiina Jannus)(10:48) How does Tim use Ahrefs for AI visibility tracking? (from Ayesha Asif)(13:33) How does Ahrefs fit into the modern demand engine? (from Gayle Kalvert)(17:18) How is Ahrefs looking at first vs third-party data? (from Hawrry Bhattarai)(21:27) Which SEO basic skills would Tim embed in LLMs? (from Laiba Naveed)(23:30) Which Semrush feature does Tim envy most? (from Coen Commijs)(25:59) If Ahrefs exists, what problem is Semrush trying to solve? (from Ashish Singh)(27:18) What's the update on ranking data beyond position 10? (from Mia Wolf)(29:21) How does Ahrefs plan to capture future SERP features? (from Alex Nguyen)(31:05) How do you balance evergreen content with fast-moving trends? (from Esther Dien)(34:24) What are your SEO predictions for 2026? (from Nick Malekos)(35:54) Where do you plan for Ahrefs to be in 5 years? (from Ivan Palii)(37:50) What's your POV on the Indian market? (from Aryan Jalan)We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! Be sure to follow and share with a friend.Where to find Tim:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/Referenced:ChatGPT vs Google: https://chatgpt-vs-google.com/Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com
Latif Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of SpiritHoods, a leading fashion brand known for its festival-inspired faux fur products. Under his leadership, SpiritHoods has generated over $50 million in revenue and achieved top-three search rankings across major product categories by strategically aligning product development with SEO. A creative entrepreneur at heart and fractional CMO, Latif specializes in bridging operations and design to drive exponential growth. He is also the Founder of The Growth Operative, a consultancy focused on brand growth and business development. In this episode… Many ecommerce brands rely heavily on intuition and creativity when deciding what products to launch. While this approach can work, it often overlooks a valuable source of insight — how customers are actually searching online. Could aligning product decisions with search behavior lead to more consistent growth? Latif Hamilton's answer comes from his experience as a creative entrepreneur and fractional CMO, where he connects product development with marketing strategy. He explains that instead of guessing what customers want, brands should use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to identify high-volume, low-competition keywords — and then design products specifically to match that demand. He emphasizes focusing on depth within a single category to build authority, aligning product naming with actual search behavior, and prioritizing long-tail keywords to capture niche opportunities. Latif also cautions against overreliance on agencies, encouraging founders to develop a working understanding of SEO so they can guide strategy effectively. Ultimately, growth comes from intentionally combining creative direction with validated demand signals. In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle talks with Latif Hamilton, Founder and CEO of SpiritHoods and Founder of The Growth Operative, to discuss SEO-driven product development. Latif discusses strategies for aligning product design with search behavior, how to build authority by dominating a niche, and avoiding common SEO mistakes like agency overreliance.
We help B2B brands launch shows that turn their point of view into pipeline. If you're launching a podcast (or have one already) and are not sure how it can hit your bottom line, book a meeting with Jason: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/jason-bradwell/youtube-meeting-link Most B2B marketing budgets are chasing 5% of buyers whilst the other 95% quietly form opinions about who they'll call when they're ready to buy. This is a reaction episode unpacking a critical shift happening right now in B2B marketing: the rising cost of rented attention and why owned media is no longer a "nice to have" but a structural necessity. With the cost of paid search rising sharply and algorithm updates continuing to reshape organic visibility, the businesses that will win are those building audiences they actually own. The episode draws on a landmark study from the LinkedIn B2B Institute showing that at any given moment, 95% of your target customers are out of market. They are not looking for your solution today, but they could be tomorrow. Yet the vast majority of marketing and sales spend, from you and your competitors alike, is directed at the 5% actively in-market. Owned media, whether that is a podcast, newsletter, or community, is the only scalable strategy to remain present and build trust with the 95% between now and when they are ready to buy. The episode stems from an Ahrefs study showing the cost of paid search has risen 58%, prompting the central question: if Google disappeared tomorrow, would you still have an audience? Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:15 Owned vs rented media: the structural difference 03:40 Why podcast subscribers are different from search traffic 05:10 The LinkedIn B2B Institute 95% study explained 07:30 Where marketing and sales budgets are actually going 09:45 The Ahrefs data: paid search costs up 58% 11:20 The honest question every B2B marketer needs to answer Key Takeaways ◼️ Why renting attention from platforms is structurally riskier than building an owned audience that persists through algorithm changes ◼️ How the 95/5 rule should reshape where you direct your marketing budget and content strategy ◼️ Why a podcast subscriber represents a fundamentally different relationship to a search visitor: they are seeking a perspective, not just an answer ◼️ How owned media compounds over time as an asset, whilst paid channels reset the moment spend stops ◼️ Why the rising cost of paid search makes the case for owned audience building more urgent than ever Relevant Links and Resources LinkedIn B2B Institute 95% study: https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/b2b-institute Ahrefs paid search cost data: https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/ Connect with Jason Bradwell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbradwell/ What's Next If this episode sparked a question about whether your current marketing mix is building something durable or just renting visibility, let us know in the comments and we will keep making more reaction episodes like this one. Useful Links Connect with Jason Bradwell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbradwell/ Learn more about B2B Better: https://www.b2b-better.com
Get Kieran's 11-skill AI content team: https://clickhubspot.com/fkbm Ep. 409 Why do some content ideas go viral while others flop? Kieran dives into building an AI-powered content team that can research, analyze, draft, and constantly improve your marketing output. Learn more on orchestrating 11 essential AI-driven content skills across workflows, crafting personalized audience profiles and writing styles, and using feedback loops to supercharge your content system month after month. Mentions Claude Code https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview Substack https://substack.com/ Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ Get our guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/customgpt We're creating our next round of content and want to ensure it tackles the challenges you're facing at work or in your business. To understand your biggest challenges we've put together a survey and we'd love to hear from you! https://bit.ly/matg-research Resource [Free] Steal our favorite AI Prompts featured on the show! Grab them here: https://clickhubspot.com/aip We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod Join our community https://landing.connect.com/matg Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Produced by Darren Clarke.
Chris Long (formerly at Go Fish Digital, now co-founder of Nectiv Digital) explains how AI is reshaping search from two angles: (1) operational automation (briefs, research, internal linking, refresh workflows) and (2) shifting buyer behavior, where people increasingly start discovery in LLMs and use Google more as a verification / reputation check. He demos how MCP connectors let you query Ahrefs and Google Analytics conversationally (often in Claude), then blend datasets to generate competitive insights, keyword clustering, and strategy gaps—without living inside traditional dashboards.Timestamps0:00 — Intro: SEO vs AEO/GEO and why AI is changing the game0:20 — Two AI impacts: automating SEO work + changing how buyers discover products1:50 — Google becomes “verification” while LLMs become discovery (especially in B2B)3:00 — “WebMCP” concept: standard rails so agents can reliably take actions on websites5:25 — Optimizing for agents (treating them like VIP visitors) and what that means for sites6:15 — Why LLM/agent usage is hard to measure (clicks vs logs vs self-reported attribution)10:00 — Nective's “build first” approach: tools/workflows before hiring more people14:00 — Demo: Ahrefs MCP in Claude for competitor insights + content strategy patterns27:45 — Demo: Google Analytics MCP (and why it's a relief vs GA4's interface)35:50 — Blending Ahrefs + GA data to generate strategy gaps and page ideas39:00 — AEO tooling landscape: LLM trackers (Profound, Athena) + automation (n8n, AirOps)41:15 — Autonomous agents (OpenClaw) and the future of “persistent” task completion45:15 — Where to find Chris (LinkedIn + Nective Digital)Tools & technologies mentionedSEO / AEO / GEO — Approaches to improving visibility in traditional search and AI-generated answers.LLMs (Large Language Models) — Used for research/discovery; increasingly the first stop before Google.Agents / Agentic browsing — Software that navigates websites and completes actions (forms, carts, checkout).WebMCP (as discussed) — Structured markup/standardization so agents can precisely interact with site elements.MCP (Model Context Protocol connectors) — Connectors that let AI query external tools via natural language.Ahrefs — SEO data platform (traffic estimates, backlinks, top pages, competitor research).Claude (web + Claude Code) — Used for data-heavy work and debugging MCP setups.ChatGPT — Mentioned as preferred for more knowledge-based tasks compared to data analysis.Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — Web analytics; MCP access can reduce reliance on the GA4 UI.Server access logs — Useful for identifying agent/bot activity not visible in standard analytics reports.BigQuery — Intermediary data warehouse for querying analytics data more flexibly.Slack — Used for capturing “how did you hear about us?” attribution signals.Profound — LLM visibility/brand mention tracking tool.Athena — Another LLM visibility tracker discussed as more data-driven/scalable.n8n — Workflow automation for content engineering pipelines.AirOps — Automation/content workflow tooling mentioned alongside n8n.OpenClaw — Referenced as an autonomous agent tool example.Subscribe at thisnewway.com to get the step-by-step playbooks, tools, and workflows.
Benedicte gives an energizing talk at the Oslo Claude Code Meetup. Benedikt uses AI to optimize their website.Despite getting a bit chaotic, Benedicte gave an energizing talk about Jean-Claw at the recent Oslo Claude Code Meetup last week. At Outseta, the team decided to lean into enabling AI operations.Benedikt optimized their website with the help of AI: adding more structured data, creating dedicated author pages, adding an “updated” date field, and more. And while he's certain that a perfect Ahrefs health score is just a vanity metric, he's taking that small win.Benedicte and Benedikt also talk about how AI speeds up experimentation, why they think good taste and experience matters these days, and more.Mentioned on the show:Is it Queen or AI?More and more social posts are drafted while interacting with AI agents
Jack Chambers Ward hosts Search with Candour with guest Dena Warren, SEO Lead at Techquity, to discuss how e-commerce brands can prepare for AI search and LLMs.They cover how the importance of consistent product data across on-site content, feeds, and maximising structured data (product, FAQ, reviews).Dena highlights using user-generated content, avoiding duplicate manufacturer copy, and ensuring key content is visible in HTML rather than hidden behind JavaScript interactions, feed optimisation using OpenAI's product feed spec, and, of course, scepticism about LLMs.txt.Follow Dena:Techquity: https://www.techquity.co.uk/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dena-warren-b44106139/Dena's recommendations:Ahrefs unlinked mentions: https://ahrefs.com/content-explorerAlsoAsked: https://alsoasked.com/Kelewele recipe: https://www.africanbites.com/kelewele-or-alocospicy-fried-plantains/Resources:https://developers.openai.com/commercehttps://productfeed.cloud/Time stamps00:00 Introduction01:39 Meet Dena Warren02:39 Why Clients Ask Now04:38 Avoiding AI Snake Oil06:52 Product Data And Schema10:18 Personalised Comparison Prompts12:13 2026 Ecommerce Essentials15:56 JavaScript And Crawlability17:33 Cloudflare Bots Panic20:54 Feed Specs For AI24:10 Agentic Commerce Readiness26:44 No Separate AI Subsites30:59 Multimodal Images And Video34:06 Shopping In Context35:08 3D And Video Demos36:05 Machine Readable Packaging37:29 SEO Shiny Object Traps38:02 llms.txt Scepticism42:22 Agentic Commerce Reality46:16 Agent Ready Checkout49:43 Small Brands Can Win53:52 Recommendations58:27 Episode Wrap up
I take Perplexity Computer for its first real spin and test five use cases that founders can use right now to make money and move faster. I connect my Gmail live, let the AI send cold outreach on my behalf, set up daily competitive intelligence monitoring, research 50 VCs for a mock Series A, and kick off a full investment memo on Shopify, all in a single session. By the end, I walk away genuinely impressed and convinced the $200/month Max plan can pay for itself with one closed deal. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 00:35 – What We're Testing Today 02:35 – Use Case 1: Warm Outbound at Scale 15:31 – Use Case 2: Automated Competitive Intel 25:11 – Use Case 3: Investor Pipeline Research (50 VCs) 26:58 – Use Case 4: Turn a Podcast Into a Content Machine 31:39 – Use Case 5: Live Market Diligence (Shopify Investment Memo) 34:17 – Bonus: Additional Use Cases Worth Trying 36:06 – Closing Thoughts and Takeaways Key Points Perplexity Computer runs multiple research tasks in parallel using sub-agents, skills, and tools — functioning like a virtual analyst working across the open internet. The cold outreach workflow found real email addresses, researched each prospect's recent activity, and drafted hyper-personalized emails that reference specific details — then sent them through a connected Gmail account. Setting up recurring competitive intelligence monitoring (daily reports, weekly sponsor tracking) is where the tool shifts from a one-off assistant to a persistent agent running on autopilot. The VC pipeline research use case demonstrates how founders who lack a warm network can still build a structured, targeted investor list with fund sizes, thesis alignment, and partner contacts. At $200/month on the Max plan, the cost pays for itself if even one sponsorship deal or investor meeting closes from the outreach. The platform already supports connectors for Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, HubSpot, Ahrefs, Reddit, and more — making it a serious contender for centralized founder workflows. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/
Website traffic is down. AI Overviews are answering questions before anyone clicks. For marketers who have relied on search for growth, this feels unsettling.In this session, Ryan Law (director of content marketing, Ahrefs) joins Joe to break down what's driving the decline (hello AI overviews), what's still working, and the practical moves to make right now - from content refreshing to business potential, research-led content, and platform-native social distribution.Key topics include:- Why AI overviews can cut click-through rate even when you rank number one- How to prioritise content refreshing and spot pages that are quietly bleeding traffic- Title tests, keyword tweaks, and filling topic gaps to improve rankings and clicks- Using business potential to choose topics that naturally lead to your product- The three content archetypes performing best right now research thought leadership trending topics- Social distribution tactics that drive reach without forcing people off platform⸻Timestamps:00:00 The state of website traffic in 202607:00 The real impact of AI Overviews13:00 Content refreshing strategies22:00 Scoring topics by business potential26:00 Research and thought leadership32:00 Social distribution and LinkedIn tactics38:00 Q&A and practical advice⸻Watch / listen:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-meetup-podcast/id1365546447Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5QvmFdxg5pMwsfPkKjhXl9⸻Please take the time to check out our partners, all of whom we work with because we think they're useful companies for lovely marketers.Frontify – All your brand assets in one place: Frontify combines DAM, brand guidelines, and templates into a collaborative source of brand truth.Mailchimp - The all-in-one marketing platform that helps teams turn emails, automation, and now SMS into smarter, more connected customer journeys (and they've been longtime friends of TMM!).Cambridge Marketing College – The best place to get your marketing qualifications and apprenticeships.Planable – the content collaboration platform that helps marketing teams create, plan, review, and approve all their awesome marketing content.Wistia – a complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, market, and measure their videos and webinars, all in one place.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise companies struggle to differentiate content from 50+ competitors doing identical strategies. Patrick Stox, Technical SEO at Ahrefs with proven expertise in scalable search programs, shares his framework for building high-impact in-house teams. He outlines the essential technical and content roles needed for enterprise search success, emphasizes hiring creative problem-solvers over traditional job titles, and details his strategy for creating standout content through personal branding and industry visibility rather than generic corporate messaging.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise SEO teams require strategic role allocation beyond traditional technical and content functions. Patrick Stox, Technical SEO Consultant at Ahrefs with extensive experience scaling search programs across multiple enterprise organizations, outlines his framework for building high-impact in-house teams. The discussion covers optimal team composition prioritizing creative problem-solvers over rigid job titles, integration of video content specialists as core team members, and personal branding strategies that differentiate enterprise content through visible subject matter experts rather than anonymous corporate voices.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise teams struggle to differentiate content in saturated markets. Patrick Stox, Technical SEO Consultant at Ahrefs with expertise scaling search programs across multiple enterprise clients, shares his framework for building high-impact SEO teams from scratch. He outlines the essential team composition prioritizing technical and content specialists, emphasizes hiring creative problem-solvers over traditional role-fillers, and details strategies for creating standout content through personal branding and industry visibility rather than generic corporate messaging.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise teams struggle with building effective in-house SEO programs from scratch. Patrick Stox, Technical SEO at Ahrefs with extensive experience scaling search teams across multiple enterprise organizations, shares his proven team-building methodology. He outlines the essential technical and content roles needed for enterprise success, emphasizes hiring creative problem-solvers over traditional job titles, and details his personal branding framework that differentiates enterprise content teams from generic corporate approaches.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
SEO budget allocation faces unprecedented pressure as businesses shift resources to GEO initiatives. Patrick Stox, Technical SEO at Ahrefs with extensive enterprise search optimization experience, addresses the critical challenge of demonstrating SEO value retention while organizations explore emerging search channels. The discussion centers on strategic budget justification frameworks and value attribution methodologies that maintain SEO investment during periods of search diversification.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise SEO teams waste 60% of their time on manual technical fixes. Patrick Stox, Product Advisor at Ahrefs with 20+ years optimizing enterprise search programs, reveals how AI-powered automation is eliminating technical debt while reshaping content strategy. The discussion covers Ahrefs' real-time site auditing system that automatically detects and fixes canonicals, redirects, and internal links without developer intervention, plus strategic frameworks for balancing top-funnel content investment against bottom-funnel conversions in an AI-first search landscape.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Exposure Ninja Digital Marketing Podcast | SEO, eCommerce, Digital PR, PPC, Web design and CRO
Search is changing fast — but the question on every marketing leader's mind isn't just how AI is evolving. It's whether the fundamentals they've built their organic strategy around still hold.Do Google rankings still matter now that ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Mode are reshaping how people search? The short answer is yes — but the full picture is more nuanced, and understanding it could change how you invest in SEO, set your KPIs, and report to your board.Dale Davies (Head of Marketing at Exposure Ninja) and Charlie Marchant (CEO of Exposure Ninja) break down everything they know:⭐ Why Google is still around 210 times bigger than ChatGPT — and what this means for where your organic budget should sit right now⭐ The Ahrefs data showing a clear correlation between page one rankings and your likelihood of appearing in AI Overviews — with position one carrying roughly a 50% chance of citation⭐ Why a study of 20,000 websites found a 53% drop in click-through rates driven by AI Overviews — and why rankings are still worth pursuing despite it⭐ How ChatGPT and other LLMs actually pull from Google's results, and the 62% overlap between Google page one and ChatGPT answers (ChatOptic)⭐ How AI Mode and conversational search are compressing the buyer journey — moving users from awareness to brand comparison without ever visiting your site⭐ The metrics shift every marketing leader needs to make: from traffic volume to answer visibility and conversion quality⭐ Why attribution is getting murkier, what "dark traffic" means for your reporting, and how self-reported data can bridge the gap⭐ How agentic AI search will behave differently from human search — and why positional ranking will matter far less to AI agents than authority and context"SEO's future is owning answers, not chasing clicks. We're going to see a huge shift in the metrics we expect from SEO — far less focus on traffic quantity and much more interest in the quality of that traffic."If you're trying to justify your organic strategy to stakeholders, reset your KPIs for the AI era, or simply get clarity on where rankings fit in a world of AI Overviews and ChatGPT — this episode gives you the honest, practical breakdown you need.Follow Charlie Marchant on LinkedIn for the latest in AI Search Optimisation:https://www.linkedin.com/in/charliemarchant/Request a free marketing review: https://exposureninja.com/reviewTry Semrush for FREE:https://thankyouninjas.comGet the show notes:https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-66/Listen to these episodes next:How to Rank in Perplexity AIhttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/349/How AI Is Changing SEO Foreverhttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/348/Traditional SEO in the Age of AI Searchhttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/346/
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Chloe, Eric, and Jimmy unpack the idea of “content theater” — creating content not just to be consumed, but to shape perception, legitimacy, and trust.They debate when content breadth can be more valuable than depth, especially for small teams selling to larger companies, and explore how content can signal scale, strategy, and credibility even if it's rarely read end‑to‑end. The conversation digs into surround‑sound marketing, MVP content, and the tension between quality, quantity, and checkbox marketing.The episode also examines modern content consumption realities — skimming, algorithms, repurposing, AI summaries, and LLM discovery — and asks a provocative question: should content be created with the assumption that no one will read it?A thoughtful, nuanced discussion for marketers navigating scale, perception, and the evolving role of content in 2026.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/Follow Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoty/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Everyone is rushing to "optimize for AI." Most are doing it wrong. In this episode, Tim Soulo, the Chief Marketing Officer at Ahrefs, cuts through the noise around AEO and GEO and explains why business owners are massively overcomplicating what visibility really means today. While AI-powered search feels new and unpredictable, Tim argues that the same core SEO principles still apply. Create genuinely useful content for your audience, and the algorithms tend to follow. We dive into how traditional SEO compares to AEO and GEO, and where AI actually changes the game. Tim breaks down how large language models decide what to surface and answers a question many founders are asking right now: how much should you realistically invest in boosting AI visibility before the returns flatten out? Tim explains why creating content purely for AI is a mistake, and how updating existing content, improving clarity, and leveraging social media can increase AI visibility without risking long-term trust. He also challenges the idea that SEO has to be slow, showing how AI can help businesses move faster when used correctly. If you want a practical, hype-free take on AI and SEO, this episode delivers. Topics Discussed in this episode: How traditional SEO compares to AEO and GEO (03:44) Overcoming the pitfalls of AI overviews (06:44) Understanding LLM algorithms (09:42) Analysing how well you rank in ChatGPT (12:46) How much should you invest in boosting your visibility? (19:33) Creating content for people, not for AI (25:34) Using social media to improve your AI visibility (27:34) How to update your existing content to make it more AI-friendly (30:02) Using AI to help you rank faster (38:47) Will traditional SEO remain relevant or fade away? (42:51) Mentions: Empire Flippers Podcasts Empire Flippers Marketplace Create an Empire Flippers account Subscribe to our newsletter Ahrefs Sit back, grab a coffee, and learn how to optimize your brand's visibility in the age of AI.
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Chloe and Eric explore the invisible work behind content marketing — and why content teams often struggle to get credit for their impact.They discuss how content fuels revenue and growth while remaining difficult to attribute, and unpack the extra work content marketers routinely absorb, from internal comms and copyediting to product messaging and strategy.The conversation then turns to practical ways to increase visibility, including building internal advocates, reporting with narrative and nuance, and clearly connecting content work to business outcomes.A focused, validating episode for content marketers navigating recognition, visibility, and value.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/Follow Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoty/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Everyone is rushing to "optimize for AI." Most are doing it wrong. In this episode, Tim Soulo, the Chief Marketing Officer at Ahrefs, cuts through the noise around AEO and GEO and explains why business owners are massively overcomplicating what visibility really means today. While AI-powered search feels new and unpredictable, Tim argues that the same core SEO principles still apply. Create genuinely useful content for your audience, and the algorithms tend to follow. We dive into how traditional SEO compares to AEO and GEO, and where AI actually changes the game. Tim breaks down how large language models decide what to surface and answers a question many founders are asking right now: how much should you realistically invest in boosting AI visibility before the returns flatten out? Tim explains why creating content purely for AI is a mistake, and how updating existing content, improving clarity, and leveraging social media can increase AI visibility without risking long-term trust. He also challenges the idea that SEO has to be slow, showing how AI can help businesses move faster when used correctly. If you want a practical, hype-free take on AI and SEO, this episode delivers. Topics Discussed in this episode: How traditional SEO compares to AEO and GEO (03:44) Overcoming the pitfalls of AI overviews (06:44) Understanding LLM algorithms (09:42) Analysing how well you rank in ChatGPT (12:46) How much should you invest in boosting your visibility? (19:33) Creating content for people, not for AI (25:34) Using social media to improve your AI visibility (27:34) How to update your existing content to make it more AI-friendly (30:02) Using AI to help you rank faster (38:47) Will traditional SEO remain relevant or fade away? (42:51) Mentions: Empire Flippers Podcasts Empire Flippers Marketplace Create an Empire Flippers account Subscribe to our newsletter Ahrefs Sit back, grab a coffee, and learn how to optimize your brand's visibility in the age of AI.
Get our 10 AI prompts to dominate SEO & AEO: https://clickhubspot.com/mbc Is SEO more relevant than we thought? Ep. 385 Kipp, Kieran, and Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, dive into the data behind the real state of SEO, debunking the myths that SEO is dead and uncovering what's really changing with the rise of answer engine optimization. Learn more on whether LLMs are really overtaking search, how marketers should invest between SEO and AEO, and the most repeatable tactics to rank #1 on Google and show up in AI-generated answers. Mentions Ethan Smith https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanls Graphite https://graphite.io/ Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ ChatGPT https://chatgpt.com/ Grok https://grok.com/ Claude https://claude.ai/ Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ Get our guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/customgpt We're creating our next round of content and want to ensure it tackles the challenges you're facing at work or in your business. To understand your biggest challenges we've put together a survey and we'd love to hear from you! https://bit.ly/matg-research Resource [Free] Steal our favorite AI Prompts featured on the show! Grab them here: https://clickhubspot.com/aip We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod Join our community https://landing.connect.com/matg Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Produced by Darren Clarke.
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy chats with Nate Turner, co-founder and CEO of Ten Speed, about the evolving world of organic marketing and how AI is reshaping content strategy.They unpack what organic marketing really means today — beyond SEO — and explore how brands can unify SEO, content, LLM visibility, and digital PR into a powerful growth engine. Nate shares insights on the changing skills marketers need, the importance of leadership buy-in, and how to balance long-term strategy with agile execution.Tune in for a practical conversation on thriving in the new era of organic marketing — with plenty of real-world examples and actionable tips to help you plan for 2026 and beyond.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nateturner1/TenSpeed: https://www.tenspeed.io/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
How to Build a Winning Strategy for Your B2B Brand In a fast-paced business environment, marketers, agencies, and consultants must proactively help clients differentiate their brands in the marketplace. One way of doing this is by analyzing the strategy, messaging, and brand positioning, both for their own brands and key competitors. So how can teams conduct this kind of brand research and competitive analysis in a way that's insightful, efficient, and actionable for planning the next steps? Tune in as the B2B Marketers on Mission Podcast presents the Marketing DEMO Lab Series, where we sit down with Clay Ostrom (Founder, Map & Fire) and his SmokeLadder platform designed for brand research, messaging and positioning analysis, and competitive benchmarking. In this episode, Clay explained the platform's origins and features, emphasizing its role in analyzing brand positioning, core messaging, and competitive landscapes. He also stressed the importance of clear, consistent brand positioning and messaging, and how standardized make it easier to compare brands across multiple business values. Clay also highlighted the value of objective, data-driven analysis to identify brand strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, and how tools like SmokeLadder can save significant time in gathering insights to build trust with clients. He provided practical steps for generating, refining, and exporting brand messaging and analysis for internal or client-facing use. Finally, Clay also discussed how action items and recommendations generated from analysis can immediately support smart brand strategy decisions and expedite trust-building with clients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4_o1PzF1Kk Topics discussed in episode: [1:31] The purpose behind building SmokeLadder and why it matters for B2B teams [12:00] A walkthrough of the SmokeLadder platform and how it works [14:51] SmokeLadder's core features [17:48] How positioning scores and category rankings are calculated [35:36] How differentiation and competitors are analyzed inside SmokeLadder [44:07] How SmokeLadder builds messaging and generates targeted personas [50:24] The key benefits and unique capabilities that set SmokeLadder apart Companies and links: Clay Ostrom Map & Fire SmokeLadder Transcript Christian Klepp 00:00 In an increasingly competitive B2B landscape, marketers, agencies and consultants, need to proactively find ways to help their clients stand out amidst the digital noise. One way of doing this is by analyzing the strategy, messaging and positioning of their own brands and those of their competitors. So how can they do this in a way that’s insightful, efficient and effective? Welcome to this first episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast Demo Lab Series, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Clay Ostrom about this topic. He’s the owner and founder of the branding agency Map and Fire, and the creator of the platform Smoke Ladder that we’ll be talking about today. So let’s dive in. Christian Klepp 00:42 All right, and I’m gonna say Clay Ostrom. Welcome to this first episode of the Demo Lab Series. Clay Ostrom 00:50 I am super excited and very honored to be the first guest on this new series. It’s awesome. Christian Klepp 00:56 We are honored to have you here. And you know, let’s sit tight, or batten down the hatches and buckle up, and whatever other analogy you want to throw in there, because we are going to unpack a lot of interesting features and discuss interesting topics around the platform that you’ve built. And I think a good place to start, perhaps Clay before we start doing a walk through of the platform is, but let’s start at the very beginning. What motivated you to create this platform called Smoke Ladder. Clay Ostrom 01:31 So we should go all the way back to my childhood. I always dreamed of, you know, working on brand and positioning. You know, that was something I’ve always thought of since the early days, but no, but I do. I own an agency called Map and Fire, so I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 10 years now, and have worked with lots and lots of different kinds of clients, and over that time, developed different frameworks and a point of view about how to do this kind of work, and when the AI revolution kind of hit us all, it just really struck me that this was an opportunity to take a lot of that thinking and a lot of that, you know, again, my perspective on how to do this work and productize that and turn it into something that could be used by people when we’re not engaged with them, in some kind of service offering. So, so that was kind of the kernel of it. I actually have a background in computer science and product. So it was sort of this natural Venn diagram intersection of I can do some product stuff, I can do brand strategy stuff. So let’s put it together and build something. Christian Klepp 02:46 And the rest, as they say, is history. Clay Ostrom 02:49 The rest, as they say, is a lot of nights and weekends and endless hours slaving away at trying to build something useful. Christian Klepp 02:58 Sure, sure, that certainly is part of it, too. Clay Ostrom 03:01 Yeah. Christian Klepp 03:02 Let’s not keep the audience in suspense for too long here, right? Like, let’s start with the walk through. And before you share your screen, maybe I’ll set this up a little bit, right? Because you, as you said, like, you know, you’ve built this platform. It’s called Smoke Ladder, which I thought was a really clever name. It’s, you like to describe it as, like, your favorite SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool, but for brand research and analysis. So I would say, like, walk us through how somebody would use this platform, like, whether they be a marketer that’s already been like in the industry for years, or is starting out, or somebody working at a brand or marketing agency, and how does the platform address these challenges or questions that people have regarding brand strategy, analysis and research? Clay Ostrom 03:49 Yeah, yeah. I use that analogy of the SEO thing, just because, especially early on, I was trying to figure out the best way to describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it before. I feel like it’s a, I’m not going to fall into the trap of saying, this is the only product like this, but it has its own unique twists with what it can do. And I felt like SEO tools are something everybody has touched at one point or another. So I was using this analogy of, it’s like the s, you know, Semrush of positioning and messaging or Ahrefs, depending on your if you’re a Coke or Pepsi person. But I always felt like that was just a quick way to give a little idea of the fact that it’s both about analyzing your own brand, but it’s also about competitive analysis and being able to see what’s going on in the market or in your landscape, and looking specifically at what your competitors are doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are. So does that resonate with you in terms of, like, a shorthand way, I will say, I don’t. I don’t say that. It’s super explicitly on the website, but it’s been in conversation. Christian Klepp 05:02 No, absolutely, absolutely, that resonated with me. The only part that didn’t resonate with me is that I’m neither a coke or a Pepsi person. I’m more of a ginger ale type of guy. I digress. But yeah, let’s what don’t you share your screen, and let’s walk through this, right? Like, okay, if a marketing person were like, use the platform to do some research on, perhaps that marketers, like own company and the competitors as well, right? Like, what would they do? Clay Ostrom 05:32 Yeah, so that’s, that is, like you were saying, there’s, sort of, I guess, a few different personas of people who would potentially use this. And initially I was thinking a little more about both in house, people who, you know, someone who’s working on a specific brand, digging really deep on their own brand, whether they’re, you know, the marketing lead or whatever, maybe they’re the founder, and then this other role of agency owners, or people who work at an agency where they are constantly having to look at new brands, new categories, and quickly get up to speed on what those brands are doing and what’s the competitive space look like, you know, for that brand. And that’s something that, if you work at an agency, which obviously we both have our own agencies, we do this stuff weekly. I mean, every time a new lead comes in, we have to quickly get up to speed and understand something about what they do. And one of the big gaps that I found, and I’d be curious to kind of hear your thoughts on this, but I’ve had a lot of conversations with other agency owners, and I think one of the biggest gaps is often that brands are just not always that great at explaining their own brand or positioning or differentiation to you, and sometimes they have some documentation around it, but a lot of times they don’t. A lot of it’s word of mouth, and that makes it really hard to do work for them. If whatever you’re doing for them, whether that’s maybe you are working on SEO or maybe you’re working on paid ads or social or content, you have to know what the brand is doing and kind of what they’re again, what their strengths and weaknesses are, so that you can talk about that. I mean, do you come across that a lot in your work? Christian Klepp 07:33 How do I say this without offending anybody? I find, I mean jokes aside, I find, more often than not, in the especially in the B2B space, which is an area that I operate in, I find 888 point five times out of 10. We are dealing with companies that have a they, have a very rude, rudimentary, like, framework of something that remotely resembles some form of branding. And I know that was a very long winded answer, but it’s kind of sort of there, but not really, if you know what I mean. Clay Ostrom 08:17 Yeah. Christian Klepp 08:17 And there have been other extreme cases where they’ve got the logo and the website, and that’s as far as their branding goals. And I would say that had they had all these, this discipline, like branding system and structure in place, then people like maybe people like you and I will be out on a job, right and it’s something, and I’m sure you’ve come across this, and we’ll probably dig into this later, but like you, it’s something I’ve come across several times, especially in the B2B space, where branding is not taken seriously until it becomes serious. I know that sounds super ironic, right, but, and it’s to the point of this platform, right, which we’re going to dig into in a second, but it’s, it’s things, for instance, positioning right, like, are you? Are you, in fact, strategically positioned against competitors? Is your messaging resonating with, I would imagine, especially in the B2B context, with the multiple group target groups that you have, or that your company is, is going after? Right? Is that resonating, or is this all like something that I call the internal high five? You’ve this has all been developed to please internal stakeholders and and then you take it to market, and it just does not, it just does not resonate with the target audience at all. Right? So there’s such a complex plethora of challenges here, right? That people like yourself and like you and I are constantly dealing with, and I think that’s also part of the reason why I would say a platform like this is important, because it helps to not just aggregate data. I mean, certainly it does that too, but it helps. To put things properly, like into perspective at speed. I think that might be, that might be something that you would have talked about later, but it does this at speed, because I think, from my own experience, one of the factors in our world that sometimes works against us is time, right? Clay Ostrom 10:19 No, I totally agree, yeah, and, you know, we’re lucky, I guess would be the word that we are often hired to work on a company strategy with them and help them clarify these things. Christian Klepp 10:33 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom 10:34 There are a million other flavors of agencies out there who are being hired to execute on work for a brand, and not necessarily being brought in to redefine, you know what the brand, you know they’re positioning and their messaging and some of these fundamental things, so they’re kind of stuck with whatever they get. And like you said, a lot of times it’s not much. It might be a logo and a roughly put together website, and maybe not a whole lot else. So, yeah, but I think your other point about speed is that was a huge part of this. I think the market is only accelerating right now, because it’s becoming so much easier to start up new companies and new brands and new products. And now we’ve got vibe coding, so you can technically build a product in a day, maybe launch it the next day, start marketing it, you know, by the weekend. And all of this is creating noise and competition, and it’s all stuff that we have to deal with as marketers. We have to understand the landscape. We’ve got to quickly be able to analyze all these different brands, see where the strengths and weaknesses are and all that stuff. So… Christian Klepp 11:46 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom 11:46 But, yeah, that, I think that the speed piece is a huge part of this for sure. Christian Klepp 11:51 Yeah. So, so we’re okay, so we’re on the I guess this, this will probably be the homepage. So just walk us through what, what a marketing person would do if they want to use this platform, yeah? Clay Ostrom 12:00 So the very first thing you do when you come in, and this was when I initially conceived of this product, one of the things that I really wanted was the ability to have very quick feedback, be able to get analysis for whatever brand you’re looking at, you know, right away to be able to get some kind of, you know, insight or analysis done. So the first thing you can do, and you can do this literally, from the homepage of the website, you can enter in a URL for a brand, come into the product, even before you’ve created an account, you can come in and you can do an initial analysis, so you can put in whatever URL you’re looking at, could be yours, could be a competitor, and run that initial analysis. What we’re looking at here, this is, if you do create an account, this is, this becomes your, as we say, like Home Base, where you can save brands that you’re looking at. You can see your history, all that good stuff. And it just gives you some quick bookmarks so that you can kind of flip back and forth between, maybe it’s your brand, maybe it’s some of the competitors you’re looking at and then it gives you just some quick, kind of high level directional info. And I kind of break it up into these different buckets. Clay Ostrom 13:23 And again, I’d love to kind of hear if this is sort of how you think about it, too. But there’s sort of these different phases when you’re working on a brand. And again, this is sort of from an agency perspective, but you first got the sort of the research and the pitch piece. So this is before maybe you’re even working with them. You’re trying to get an understanding of what they do. Then we have discovery and onboarding, where we’re digging in a little bit deeper. We’re trying to really put together, what does the brand stand for, what are their strengths and weaknesses? And then we have the deeper dive, the strategy and differentiation. And this is where we’re really going in and getting more granular with the specific value points that they offer, doing some of that messaging analysis, finding, finding some of the gaps of the things that they’re talking about or not talking about, and going in deeper. So it kind of break it up into these buckets, based on my experience of how we engage with clients. Does that? Does that make sense to you, like, does that? Christian Klepp 14:28 It does make sense, I think. But what could be helpful for the audience is because this, this almost looks like it’s a pre cooked meal. All right, so what do we do we try another I mean, I think you use Slack for the analysis. Why don’t we use another brand, and then just pop it into that analysis field, and then see what it comes out with. Clay Ostrom 14:51 So the nice thing about this is, if you are looking at a brand that’s been analyzed, you’re going to get the data up really quickly. It’ll be basically pop up instantly. But you can analyze a brand from scratch as well. Just takes about a minute or so, basically, to kind of do some of the analysis. So for the sake of a demo, it’s a little easier just to kind of look at something that we’ve got in there. But if it’s a brand that you know, maybe you’re looking at a competitor for one of your brands, you know, there’s a good chance, because we’ve got about 6000 brands that we’ve analyzed in here, that there’s a good chance there’ll be some info on them. But so this is pipe drive. So whoever’s not familiar Pipedrive is, you know, it’s a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), it’s, it’s basically, you know, it’s a lighter version of a HubSpot or Salesforce basically track deals and opportunities for business, but this so I flipped over. I don’t know if it was clear there, but I flipped over to this brand brief tab. And this is where we we get, essentially, a high level view of some key points about the brand and and I think about this as this would be something that you would potentially share with a client if you were, you know, working with them and you wanted to review the brand with them and make sure that your analysis is on point, but you’ll see it’s kind of giving you some positioning scores, where you rank from a category perspective, message clarity, and then we’ve got things like a quick overview, positioning summary, who their target persona is, in this case, sales manager, sales operation lead, and some different value points. And then it starts to get a little more granular. We get into like key competitors, Challenger brands. We do a little SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, and then maybe one of the more important parts is some of these action items. So what do we do with this? Yeah, and obviously, these are, these are starting points. This is not, it’s not going to come in and, you know, instantly be able to tell you strategically, exactly what to do, but it’s going to give you some ideas of based on the things we’ve seen. Here are some reasonable points that you might want to be looking at to, you know, improve the brand. Make it make it stronger. Christian Klepp 17:13 Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, this is all great clay, but like, I think, for the benefit of the audience, can we scroll back up, please. And let’s just walk through these one by one, because I think it’s important for the audience/potential future users,/ customers of Smoke Ladder, right? To understand, to understand this analysis in greater depth, and also, like, specifically, like, let’s start with a positioning score right, like, out of 100 like, what is this? What is this based on? And how was this analyzed? Let’s start with that. Clay Ostrom 17:48 Yeah, and this is where the platform really started. And I’m going to actually jump over to the positioning tab, because this will give us the all the detail around this particular feature. But this is, this was where I began the product this. I kind of think of this as being, in many ways, sort of the heart and soul of it. And when I mentioned earlier about this being based on our own work and frameworks and how we approach this, this is very much the case with this. This is, you know, the approach we use with the product is exactly how we work with clients when we’re evaluating their positioning. And it’s, it’s basically, it’s built off a series of scores. And what we have here are 24 different points of business value, which, if we zoom in just a little bit down here, we can see things like reducing risk, vision, lowering cost, variety, expertise, stability, etc. So there’s 24 of these that we look at, and it’s meant to be a way that we can look across different brands and compare and contrast them. So it’s creating, like, a consistent way of looking at brands, even if they’re not in the same category, or, you know, have slightly different operating models, etc. But what we do is we go in and we score every brand on each of these 24 points. And if we scroll down here a little bit, we can see the point of value, the exact score they got, the category average, so how it compares against, you know, all the other brands we’ve analyzed, and then a little bit of qualitative information about why they got the score. Christian Klepp 19:27 Sorry, Clay, Can I just jump in for a second so these, these attributes, or these key values that you had in the graph at the top right, like, are these consistent throughout regardless of what brand is being analyzed, or the least change. Clay Ostrom 19:42 It’s consistent. Christian Klepp 19:43 Consistent? Clay Ostrom 19:44 Yeah, and that was one of the sort of strategic decisions we had to make with the product. Was, you know, there’s a, maybe another version of this, where you do different points depending on maybe the category, or, you know, things like that. But I wanted to do it consistent because, again, it allows us to look at every brand through the same lens. It doesn’t mean that every brand you know there are certain points of value that just aren’t maybe relevant for a particular brand, and that’s fine, they just won’t score as highly in those but at least it gives us a consistent way to look at so when you’re looking at 10 different competitors, you know you’ve got a consistent way to look at them together,. Christian Klepp 20:26 Right, right, right. Okay, okay, all right, thanks for that. Now let’s go down to the next section there, where you’ve got, like this table with like four different columns here. So you mentioned that these are being scored against other brands in their category. Like, can you share it with the audience? Like, how many other brands are being analyzed here? Clay Ostrom 20:51 Yeah, well, it depends on the category. So again, we’ve got six, you know, heading towards 7000 brands that we’ve analyzed collectively. Each category varies a little bit, but, you know, some categories, we have more brands than others. But what this allows us to do is, again, to quickly look at this and say, okay, for pipe drive, a big focus for pipe drive is organization, simplification. You know, one of their big value props is we’re an easier tool to use than Salesforce or HubSpot. You can get up to speed really quickly. You don’t have all the setup and configurations and all that kind of stuff. So this is showing us that, yes, like their messaging, their content, their brand, does, in fact, do a good job of making it clear that simplicity is a big part of pipe drive’s message. And they do that by talking about it a lot in their messaging, having case studies, having testimonials, all these things that support it. And that’s how we come up with these scores. Is by saying, like the brand emphasizes these points well, they talk about it clearly, and that’s what we base it on. Christian Klepp 22:04 Okay, okay. Clay Ostrom 22:06 But as you come, I was just gonna say as you come down here, you can see, so the green basically means that they score well above average for that particular point. Yellow is, you know, kind of right around average, or maybe slightly above, and then red means that they’re below average for that particular point. So for example, like variety of tools, they don’t emphasize that as much with pipe drive, maybe compared to, again, like a Salesforce or a HubSpot that has a gazillion tools, pipe drive, that’s not a big focus for them. So they don’t score as highly there, but you can kind of just get a quick view of, okay, here are the things that they’re really strong with, and here are the things that maybe they’re, you know, kind of weak or below average. Christian Klepp 22:58 Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s certainly interesting, because I, you know, I’ve, I’ve used the, I’ve used the platform for analyzing some of my clients, competitor brands. And, you know, when I’m looking at this, like analysis with the scoring, with the scoring sheet, it, I think it will also be interesting perhaps in future, because you’ve got a very detailed breakdown of, okay, the factors and how they’re scored, and what the brand value analysis is also, because, again, in the interest of speed and time, it’d be great if the platform can also churn out maybe a one to two sentence like, summary of what is this data telling us, right? Because I’m thinking back to my early days as a product manager, and we would spend hours, like back then on Excel spreadsheets. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but um, and coming up with this analysis and charts, but presenting that to senior management, all they wanted to know was the one to two sentence summary of like, come on. What are you telling me with all these charts, like, what is the data telling you that we need to know? Right? Clay Ostrom 24:07 I know it’s so funny. We again, as strategists and researchers, we love to nerd out about the granular details, but you’re right. When you’re talking to a leader at a business, it does come down to like, okay, great. What do we do? And so, and I flipped back over to slacks. I knew I had already generated this but, but we’re still in the positioning section here, but we have this get insights feature. So basically it will look at all those scores and give you kind of, I think, similar to what you’re describing. Like, here’s three takeaways from what we’re seeing. Okay, okay, great, yeah, so we don’t want to leave you totally on your own to have to figure it all out. We’ll give you, give you a little helping hand. Christian Klepp 24:53 Yeah. You don’t want to be like in those western movies, you’re on your own kid. Clay Ostrom 24:59 Yeah. We try not to strand you again. There’s a lot of data here. I think that’s one of the strengths and and challenges with the platform, is that we try to give you a lot of data. And for some people, you may not want to have to sift through all of it. You might want just sort of give me the three points here. Christian Klepp 25:19 Absolutely, absolutely. And at the very least they can start pointing you in the right direction, and then you could be, you could then, like, through your own initiative, and perhaps dig a little bit deeper and perhaps find some other insights that may be, may be relevant, right? Clay Ostrom 25:35 Totally. Christian Klepp 25:36 Hey, it’s Christian Klepp here. We’ll get back to the episode in a second. But first, I’d like to tell you about a new series that we’re launching on our show. As the B2B landscape evolves, marketers need to adapt and leverage the latest marketing tools and software to become more efficient. Enter B2B Marketers on a Mission Marketing Demo Lab where experts discuss the latest tools and software that empower you to become a better B2B marketer. Tune in as we chat with product experts. Provide unbiased product reviews, give advice and deliver insights into real world applications and actionable tips on tools and technologies for B2B marketing. Subscribe to the Marketing Demo Lab, YouTube channel and B2B Marketers on a Mission, on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Christian Klepp 26:21 All right. Now, back to the show, if we can, if we could jump back, sorry, to the, I think it was the brand brief, right? Like, where we where we started out, and I said, let’s, let’s dig deeper. Okay, so then, then we have, okay, so we talked about positioning score. Now we’re moving on to category rank and message clarity score. What does that look like? Clay Ostrom 26:41 Yeah. So the category rank is, it’s literally just looking at the positioning score that you’ve gotten for the brand and then telling you within this category, where do you sort of fall in the ranking, essentially, or, like, you know, how do we, you know, for comparing the score against all the competitors, where do you fall? So you can see, with Slack, they’re right in the middle. And it’s interesting, because with a product like Slack, even though we all now know what slack is and what it does and everything. Christian Klepp 27:18 Yeah. Clay Ostrom 27:19 The actual messaging and content that they have now, I think maybe doesn’t do as good of a job as it maybe did once upon a time, and it’s gotten as products grow and brands grow, they tend to get more vague, a little more broad with what they talk about, and that kind of leads to softer positioning. So that’s sort of what we’re seeing reflected here. And then the third score is the message clarity score, which we can jump into, like, a whole different piece. Christian Klepp 27:48 Four on a tennis not a very high score, right? Clay Ostrom 27:52 Yeah. And again, I think it’s a product, of, we can kind of jump into that section. Christian Klepp 27:57 Yeah, let’s do that, yeah. Clay Ostrom 27:59 But it’s, again, a product, I think of Slack being now a very mature product that is has gotten sort of a little vague, maybe a little broader, with their messaging. But the message clarity score, we basically have kind of two parts to this on the left hand side are some insights that we gather based on the messaging. So what’s your category, quick synopsis of the product. But then we also do some things, like… Christian Klepp 28:33 Confusing part the most confusing. Clay Ostrom 28:36 Honestly to me, as I get I’d love to hear your experience with this, but coming into a new brand, this is sometimes one of the most enlightening parts, because it shows me quickly where some gaps in what we’re talking about, and in this case, just kind of hits on what we were just saying a minute ago. Of the messaging is overloaded with generic productivity buzzwords, fails to clearly differentiate how Slack is better than email or similar tools, etc. But also, this is another one that I really like, and I use this all the time, which is the casual description. So rather than this technical garbage jargon, you know, speak, just give me. Give it to me in plain English, like we’re just chatting. And so this description of it’s a workplace chat app for teams to message, collaborate, share files. Like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, you know, I get it. Yeah, I already know what slack is. But if I didn’t, that would tell me pretty well. Christian Klepp 29:33 Absolutely, yeah, yeah. No, my experience with this is has been, you know, you and I have been in the branding space for a while. So for the trained eye, when you look at messaging, you’ll know if it’s good or not, right. And we come I mean, I’m sure you do the same clay, but I also come to my own like conclusions based on experience of like, okay, so why do I think that that’s good messaging, or why do I think that that’s confusing messaging? Or it falls short, and why and how can that be improved? But it’s always good to have validation with either with platforms like this, where you have a you have AI, or you have, you have a software that you can use that analyzes, like, for example, like the messaging on a website, and it dissects that and says, Well, okay, so this is what they’re getting, right? So there’s a scoring for that, so it’s in the green, and then this is, this is where it gets confusing, right? So even you run that through, you run that through the machine, and the machine analyzes it as like, Okay, we can’t clearly, clearly define what it is they’re doing based on the messaging, right? And for me, that’s always a it’s good. It’s almost like getting a second doctor’s opinion, right? And then you go, Aha. So I we’ve identified the symptoms now. So let’s find the penicillin, right? Like, let’s find the remedy for this, right? Clay Ostrom 30:56 Yeah, well, and I like what you said there, because part of the value, I think, with this is it’s an objective perspective on the brand, so it doesn’t have any baggage. It’s coming in with fresh eyes, the same way a new customer would come into your website, where they don’t know really much about you, and they have to just take what you’re giving at face value about what you present. And we as people working on brands get completely blinded around what’s actually working, what’s being communicated. There’s so much that we take for granted about what we already know about the brand. And this comes in and just says, Okay, I’m just, I’m just taking what you give me, and I’m going to tell you what I see, and I see some gaps around some of these things. You know, I don’t have the benefit of sitting in your weekly stand up meeting and hearing all the descriptions of what you’re actually doing. Christian Klepp 31:59 I’m sorry to jump in. I’m interested to know, like, just, just based on what we’ve been reviewing so far, like, what has your experience been showing this kind of analysis to clients, and how do they respond to some of this data, for example, that you know, you’re walking us through right now? Clay Ostrom 32:18 Yeah, I think it’s been interesting. Honestly, I think it can sometimes feel harsh. And I think again, as someone who’s both run an agency and also built worked on brands, we get attached to our work on an emotional level. Christian Klepp 32:42 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom 32:42 Even if we think about it as, you know, this is just work, and it’s, you know, whatever, we still build up connections with our work and we want it to be good. And so I think there’s sometimes a little bit of a feeling of wow, like that’s harsh, or I would have expected or thought we would have done better or scored better in certain areas, but that is almost always followed up with but I’m so glad to know where, where we’re struggling, because now I can fix it. I can actually know what to focus on to fix, and that, to me, is what it’s all about, is, yes, there’s a little bit of feelings attached to some of these things, maybe, but at the end of the day, we really want it to be good. We want it to be clear. We don’t want to be a 4 out of 10. We want to be a 10 out of 10. And what specifically do we need to do to get there? And that’s really what we’re trying to reveal with this. So I think, you know, everybody’s a little different, but I would say the reactions are typically a mix of that. It’s like, maybe an ouch, but a Oh, good. Let’s work on it. Christian Klepp 33:55 Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So we’ve got brand summary, we’ve got fundamentals, then quality of messaging is the other part of it, right? Clay Ostrom 34:02 So, yeah, so this, this is, this is where the actual 4 out of 10 comes. We have these 10 points that we look at and we say, Okay, are you communicating these things clearly? Are you communicating who your target customer is, your category, your offering, where you’re differentiated benefits? Do you have any kind of concrete claim about what you do to support you know what you’re what you’re selling? Is the messaging engaging? Is it concise? You’ll see here a 7% on concise. That’s basically telling us that virtually no brands do a good job of being concise. Only about 7% get a green check mark on this, and kind of similar with the jargon and the vague words big struggle points with almost every brand. Christian Klepp 34:55 Streamline collaboration. Clay Ostrom 34:58 So we can see here with Slack. You know some of the jargon we got, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), MQLs (Marketing Qualified Lead), if you’re in the space, you could argue like, oh, I kind of know what those things are. But depending on your role, you may not always know. In something like Salesforce marketing cloud, unless you’re a real Salesforce nerd, you probably have no idea what that is. But again, it’s just a way to quickly identify some of those weak points, things that we could improve to make our message more clear. Christian Klepp 35:27 Yes, yes. Okay, so that was the messaging analysis correct? Clay Ostrom 35:33 Yeah. Christian Klepp 35:33 Yeah. Okay. So what else have we got? Clay Ostrom 35:36 Yeah, so I think one other thing we could look at just for a sec, is differentiation, and this is this kind of plays off of what we looked at a minute ago with the positioning scores. But this is a way for us to look head to head with two different brands. So in this case, we’ve got Slack in the red and we’ve got Discord in the greenish blue. And I think of these, these patterns, as sort of the fingerprint of your brand. So where you Where are you strong? Where are you weak? And if we can overlay those two fingerprints on top of each other, we can see, where do we have advantages, and where does our competitor have advantages? So if we come down, we can sort of see, and this is again, for the nerds like me, to be able to come in and go deep, do kind of a deep dive on specifically, why did, why does Discord score better than Slack in certain areas. And at the bottom here we can see a kind of a quick summary. So slack is stronger in simplification, saving time, Discord has some better messaging around generating revenue, lowering costs, marketability. But again, this gives us a way to think about what are the things we want to double down on? So what do we want to actually be known for in the market? Because we can’t be known for everything. You know, buyers can maybe only remember a couple things about us. What are those couple things where we’re really strong, where we really stand out, and we’ve got some separation from the competitors. Christian Klepp 37:18 Right, okay, okay, just maybe we take a step back here, because I think this is great. It’s very detailed. It gets a bit granular, but I think it’s also going back to a conversation that you and I had previously about, like, Okay, why is it so important to be armed with this knowledge, especially if you’re in the marketing role, or perhaps even an agency talking to a potential client going in there already armed with the information about their competitors. And we were talking about this being a kind of like a trust building mechanism, right? For lack of a better description, right? Clay Ostrom 38:03 Yeah, I think to me, what I like about this, and again, this does come out of 10 years of doing work, this kind of work with clients as well, is it’s so easy to fall into a space of soft descriptions around things like positioning and just sort of using vague, you know, wordings or descriptions, and when you can actually put a number on it, which, again, it’s subjective. This isn’t. This isn’t an objective metric, but it’s a way for us to compare and contrast. It allows us to have much more productive conversations with clients, where we can say we looked at your brand, we we what based on our analysis, we see that you’re scoring a 10 and a 9 on simplicity and organization, for example. Is that accurate to you like do you think that’s what you all are emphasizing the most? Does that? Does that resonate and at the same time, we can say, but your competitors are really focused on there. They have a strong, strong message around generating revenue and lowering costs for their customers. Right now, you’re not really talking about that. Is that accurate? Is that like, what you is that strategically, is that what you think you should be doing so really quickly, I’ve now framed a conversation that could have been very loose and kind of, you know, well, what do you think your strategy is about? What do you know? And instead, I can say, we see you being strong in these three points. We see your competitors being strong in these three points. What do you think about that? And I think that kind of clarity just makes the work so much more productive with clients, or just again, working on your own brand internally. So what do you think about that kind of perspective? Christian Klepp 40:08 Yeah, no, no, I definitely agree with that. It’s always and I’ve been that type of person anyway that you know you go into a especially with somebody that hasn’t quite become a client yet, right? One of the most important things is also, how should I put this? Certainly the trust building part of it needs to be there. The other part is definitely a demonstration of competence and ability, but it’s also that you’ve been proactive and done your homework, versus like, Okay, I’m I’m just here as an order taker, right? And let’s just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it right? A lot and especially, I think this has been a trend for a long time already, but a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with now in the past, they want to, they’re looking for a partner that’s not just thinking with them, it’s someone that’s thinking ahead of them. And this type of work, you know what we’re seeing here on screen, this is the type of work that I would consider thinking ahead of them, right? Clay Ostrom 41:18 No, I agree. I think you framed that really well. Of we’re trying to build trust, because if we’re going to make any kind of recommendations around a change or a shift, they have to believe that we know what we’re talking about, that we’re competent, that we’ve done the work. And I think I agree with you. I think like this, it’s kind of funny, like we all, I think, on some base level, are attracted to numbers and scores. It just gives us something to latch on to. But I think it also, like you said, it gives you a feeling that you’ve done your work, that you’ve done your homework, you’ve studied, you’ve you’ve done some analysis that they themselves may have never done on this level. And that’s a big value. Christian Klepp 42:08 Yes, and a big part of the reason just to, just to build on what you said, a big part of the reason why they haven’t done this type of work is because it’s not so much. The cost is certainly one part of it, but it’s the time, it’s a time factor and the resource and the effort that needs to be put into it. Because, you know, like, tell me if you’ve never heard this one before, but there are some, there are some companies that we’ve been working with that don’t actually have a clearly, like, you know, a clear document on who their their target personas are, yeah, or their or their ICPs, never mind the buyer’s journey map. They don’t, they don’t even have the personas mapped out, right? Clay Ostrom 42:52 100% Yeah, it’s, and it’s, I think you’re right. It’s, it’s a mix of time and it’s a mix of just experience where, if you are internal with a brand, you don’t do this kind of work all the time. You might do it at the beginning. Maybe you do a check in every once in a while, but you need someone who’s done this a lot with a lot of different brands so that they can give you guidance through this kind of framework. But so it’s, you know, so some of it is a mix of, you know, we don’t have the time always to dig in like this. But some of it is we don’t even know how to do it, even if we did have the time. So it’s hopefully giving, again, providing some different frameworks and different ways of looking at it. Christian Klepp 43:41 Absolutely, absolutely. So okay, so we’ve gone through. What is it now, the competitor comparison. What else does the platform provide us that the listeners and the audience should be paying attention to here? Clay Ostrom 43:55 So I’ll show you two more quick things. So one is this message building section. So this is… Christian Klepp 44:03 Are you trying to put me out of a job here Clay? Clay Ostrom 44:07 Well, I’ll say this. So far in my experience with this, it’s not going to put us out of a job, but it is going to hopefully make our job easier and better. It’s going to make us better at the work we do. And that’s really, I think that’s, I think that’s kind of, most people’s impression of AI at this point is that it’s not quite there to replace us, but it’s sure, certainly can enhance what we do. Christian Klepp 44:36 Yeah, you’ll excuse me, I couldn’t help but throw that one out. Clay Ostrom 44:38 Yeah, I know, trust me, I’m this. It’s like I’m building a product that, in a sense, is undercutting, you know, the work that I do. So it is kind of a weird thing, but this message building section, which is a new part of the platform. It will come in, and you can see on the right hand side. And there’s sort of a quick summary of all these different elements that we’ve already analyzed. And then it’s going to give you some generated copy ideas, including, if I zoom in a little bit here, we’ve got an eyebrow category. This is again for Slack. It’s giving us a headline idea, stay informed without endless emails. Sub headline call to action, three challenges that your customers are facing, and then three points about your solution that help address those for customers. So it’s certainly not writing all of your copy for you, but if you’re starting from scratch, or you’re working on something new, or even if you’re trying to refresh a brand. I think this can be helpful to give you some messaging that’s hopefully clear. That’s something that I think a lot of messaging misses, especially in B2B, it’s, it’s not always super clear, like what you even do. Christian Klepp 45:56 Don’t get me started. Clay Ostrom 45:59 So hopefully it’s clear. It’s, you know, again, it’s giving you some different ideas. And that you’ll see down here at the bottom, you can, you can iterate on this. So we’ve got several versions. You can actually come in and, you know, you can edit it yourself. So if you say, like, well, I like that, but not quite that, you know, I can, you know, get my human touch on it as well. But yeah, so it’s a place to iterate on message. Christian Klepp 46:25 You can kind of look at it like, let’s say, if you’re writing a blog article, and this will give you the outline, right? Yeah. And then most of the AI that I’ve worked with to generate outlines, they’re not quite there. But again, if you’re starting from zero and you want to go from zero to 100 Well, that’ll, that’ll at least get you to 40 or 50, right? But I’m curious to know, because we’re looking at this now, and I think this, I mean, for me, this is, this is fascinating, but, like, maybe, maybe this will be part of your next iteration. But will this, will this generate messaging that’s already SEO optimized. Clay Ostrom 47:02 You know, it’s not specifically geared towards that, but I would say that it ends up being maybe more optimized than a lot of other messaging because it puts such an emphasis on clarity, it naturally includes words and phrases that I think are commonly used in the space more so than you know, maybe just kind of typical off the shelf Big B2B messaging, Christian Klepp 47:27 Gotcha. I had a question on the target persona that you’ve got here on screen, right? So how does the platform generate the information that will then populate that field because, and when I’m just trying to think about like, you know, because I’ve been, I’ve been in the space for as long as you have, and the way that I’ve generated target personas in the past was not by making a wild guess about, like, you know, looking at the brand’s website. It’s like having conducting deep customer research and listening to hours and hours of recordings, and from there, generating a persona. And this has done it in seconds. So… Clay Ostrom 48:09 Yeah, it’s so the way the system works in a couple different layers. So it does an initial analysis, where it does positioning, messaging analysis and category analysis, then you can generate the persona on top of that. So it takes all the learnings that it got from the category, from the product, from your messaging, and then develops a persona around that. And it’s, of course, able to also pull in, you know, the AI is able to reference things that it knows about the space in general. But I have found, and this is true. I was just having a conversation with someone who works on a very niche brand for a very specific audience, and I was showing him what it had output. And I said, Tell me, like, Don’t hold back. Like, is this accurate? He said, Yeah, this is, like, shockingly accurate for you know, how we view our target customer. So I think it’s pretty good. It’s not again, not going to be perfect. You’re going to need to do some work, and you still got to do the research, but, but, yeah. Christian Klepp 49:13 Okay, fantastic, fantastic. How do, I guess there’s the option, I see it there, like, download the PDF. So anything that’s analyzed on the platform can then be exported in a PDF format, right? Like, like, into a report. Clay Ostrom 49:28 Yeah, right now you can export the messaging analysis, or, sorry, the the messaging ideation that you’ve done, and then in the brand brief you can also, you can download a PDF of the brand brief as well. So, those are the two main areas. I’m still working on some additional exports of data so that people can pull it into a spreadsheet and do some other stuff with it. Christian Klepp 49:49 Fantastic, fantastic. That’s awesome, Clay. I’ve got a couple more questions before I let you go. But this has been, this has been amazing, right? Like and I really hope that whoever’s in the one listening and, most importantly, watching this, I hope that you really do consider like, you know, taking this for a test drive, right? How many I might have asked you this before, because, you know, I am somebody that does use, you know, that does a lot of this type of research. But how much time would you say companies would save by using Smoke Ladder? Clay Ostrom 50:24 It’s a good question. I feel like I’m starting to get some feedback around that with from our users, but I mean, for me personally, I would typically spend an hour or two just to get kind of up to speed initially, with a brand and kind of look at some of their competitors. If I’m doing a deep dive, though, if I’m actually doing some of the deeper research work, it could be several hours per client. So I don’t know. On a given week, it might depend on how many clients you’re talking to. Could be anywhere from a few hours to 10 hours or more, depending on how much work you’re doing. But, yeah, I think it’s a decent amount. Christian Klepp 51:07 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this definitely does look like a time saver. Here comes my favorite question, which you’re gonna look at me like, Okay, I gotta, I gotta. Clay Ostrom 51:17 Now bring it on. Let’s go. Christian Klepp 51:22 Folks that are not familiar with Smoke Ladder are gonna look at this, um, and before they actually, um, take it upon themselves to, like, watch, hopefully, watch this video on our channel. Um, they’re gonna look at that and ask themselves, Well, what is it that Smoke Ladder does that? You know that other AI couldn’t do, right, like, so I guess what I’m trying to say is, like, Okay, why would they use? How does the platform differ from something like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude, right? To run a brand analysis? Clay Ostrom 52:00 Yeah, no, I think it’s a great question. I think it’s sort of the it’s going to be the eternal AI question for every product that has an AI component. And I would say to me, it’s three things. So one is the data, which we talked about, and I didn’t show you this earlier, but there is a search capability in here to go through our full archive of all the brands we’ve analyzed, and again, we’ve analyzed over 6000 brands. So the data piece is really important here, because it means we’re not just giving you insights and analysis based on the brand that you’re looking at now, but we can compare and contrast against all the other brands that we’ve looked at in the space, and that’s something that you’re not going to get by just using some off the shelf standard LLM (Large Language Model) and doing some, you know, some quick prompts with that. The next one, I think, to me that’s important is it’s the point of view of the product and the brand. Like I said, this is built off of 10 plus years of doing positioning and messaging work in the space. So you’re getting to tap into that expertise and that approach of how we do things and building frameworks that make this work easier and more productive that you wouldn’t get, or you wouldn’t know, just on your own. And then the last one, the last point, which is sort of the kind of like the generic software answer, is you get a visual interface for this stuff. It’s the difference between using QuickBooks versus a spreadsheet. You can do a lot of the same stuff that you do in QuickBooks and a spreadsheet, but wouldn’t you rather have a nice interface and some easy buttons to click that make your job way, way easier and do a lot of the work for you and also be able to present it in a way that’s digestible and something you could share with clients? So the visual component in the UI is sort of that last piece. Christian Klepp 54:01 Absolutely. I mean, it’s almost like UX and UI one on one. That’s, that’s pretty much like a big part of, I think what it is you’re trying to build here, right? Clay Ostrom 54:13 Yeah, exactly. It’s just it’s making all of those things that you might do in an LLM just way, way easier. You know, you basically come in, put in your URL and click a button, and you’re getting access to all the data and all the insights and all this stuff so. Christian Klepp 54:29 Absolutely, absolutely okay. And as we wrap this up, this has been a fantastic conversation, by the way, how can the audience start using Smoke Ladder, and how can they get in touch with you if they have questions, and hopefully good questions. Clay Ostrom 54:47 Yeah, so you can, if you go to https://smokeladder.com/ you can, you can try it out. Like I said, you can basically go to the homepage, put in a URL and get started. You don’t even have to create an account to do the initial analysis. But you can create FREE account. You can dig in and see, you know, play around with all the features, and if you use it more, you know, we give you a little bit of a trial period. And if you use it beyond that, then you can pay and continue to use it, but, but you can get a really good flavor of it for free. Christian Klepp 55:16 Fantastic, fantastic. Oh, last question, because, you know, it’s looking me right in the face now, industry categories. How many? How many categories can be analyzed on the platform? Clay Ostrom 55:26 Yeah, yeah. So right now, we have 23 categories in the system currently, which sounds like a lot, but when you start to dig into especially B2B, it’s we will be evolving that and continuing to add more, but currently, there’s 23 different categories of businesses in there. Christian Klepp 55:46 All right, fantastic, fantastic. Clay, man. This has been so awesome. Thank you so much for your time and for your patience and walking us through this, this incredible platform that you’ve built and continue to build. And you know, I’m excited to continue using this as it evolves. Clay Ostrom 56:06 Thank you. Yeah, no. Thanks so much. And you know, if anybody, you know, anybody who tries it out, tests it out, please feel free to reach out. We have, you know, contact info on there. You can also hit me up on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time there, but I would love feedback, love getting notes, love hearing what’s working, what’s not, all those things. So yeah, anytime I’m always open. Christian Klepp 56:30 All right, fantastic. Once again, Clay, thanks for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Clay Ostrom 56:36 Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Christian Klepp 56:37 All right. Bye for now.
In this episode of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell (that's me!) welcomes back Ashley from Deviation to dive deep into the evolving world of search. We break down digital silos across marketing teams, explore the power of unified metrics, and discuss why brand search and intent-rich content are key to dominating the search-everywhere era. From creating demand via social media to optimizing for long-tail keywords and leveraging data-driven strategy visuals, this conversation is packed with tactical and strategic gold for business owners, content creators, and SEOs alike.
Send us a textWhat if one small, free tool could earn you more backlinks, leads, and trust than months of blogging? We dive into engineering as marketing, a strategy that turns lightweight, useful tools into link magnets and lead engines, especially powerful as AI search surfaces cited, authoritative resources.I walk through the core idea: build a free tool that solves a real problem right next to your product's value. From HubSpot's Website Grader to Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker, we break down why these tools spread so fast, how they capture qualified interest, and what makes them defensible. You'll learn the principles that matter most: tight product alignment, single-purpose scope, instant output, and honest value that earns shares without heavy gating. We also talk about how this approach fits top-of-funnel intent, attracting people who are problem-aware but not yet shopping, and why that early trust compounds into stronger SEO performance and brand recognition.Then we get practical. I outline how to choose the right idea, avoid feature bloat, and plan a small but focused launch to trigger the first wave of links and usage. We cover lightweight promotion on LinkedIn and Twitter, tapping your network for early feedback, and using supporting content to answer questions and strengthen search visibility. The point is simple: difficulty becomes your moat—if it's genuinely useful and hard to copy, it will keep earning attention over time.If you're ready to stand out from a sea of lookalike content, this is your playbook for building something people can't wait to share. Subscribe for more SEO strategies, share this with a teammate who's stuck on content ideas, and leave a quick review to tell me which tool you'll build next.SEO Is Not That Hard is hosted by Edd Dawson and brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUse.com Help feed the algorithm and leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/seo You can get your free copy of my 101 Quick SEO Tips at: https://seotips.edddawson.com/101-quick-seo-tipsTo get a personal no-obligation demo of how KeywordsPeopleUse could help you boost your SEO and get a 7 day FREE trial of our Standard Plan book a demo with me nowSee Edd's personal site at edddawson.comAsk me a question and get on the show Click here to record a questionFind Edd on Linkedin, Bluesky & TwitterFind KeywordsPeopleUse on Twitter @kwds_ppl_use"Werq" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Send us a textGreg Gifford joins the Near Memo to break down his large-scale Local SEO study of 3,000 personal injury law firm's Google Business Profiles. He reveals what #1 ranked PI las firms are doing that #10 ranked practioners are not. From review response rates and schema misfires to UTM tracking errors, the trio unpacks what's real in local SEO and what's hype. The episode closes with a lively debate about the AI-driven future of the SERP.Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy, Eric, and Chloe dig into the role of podcasts in B2B content strategies — where they fit, who should host them, how to repurpose them, and whether they're truly essential in 2025.Eric shares how the Dock podcast became the backbone of his content strategy — a goldmine of first-party insights that fueled blogs, newsletters, and social content. Chloe opens up about her love-hate relationship with podcasts and how repurposing audio into bite-sized or story-driven pieces helped her reconnect with the medium. Jimmy reflects on the unique connection podcasts create with listeners — one that blog posts and social media can't replicate.Together, they unpack the realities of running a B2B podcast: founder-led shows, consistency challenges, and the art of turning conversations into content that drives real business results.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.Join us on Thursday, November 13 for a free event with Ahrefs: Make Your Business Discoverable in AI, Search, and BeyondYou can register here: https://luma.com/3irom2vd************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/Follow Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoty/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Thank you to Ahrefs for being the sponsor of this episode.Check out the Webmaster Tools - https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025This week's show topic is a response to the speculation of a Halloween Google Core Update. Since I had the data from all the dates in question, I thought it might be fun to go back as see if there were any alternate explanations for the volatility and ranking swings.Spoiler alert!!! There are!Last week's episodeTopical Cohesion vs Topical AuthorityMentioned in the show:Speculation reported on "unannounced" Google updatehttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-volatility-october-28-40339.html Indexation Research - Crawl Or No Crawl Tools that I use and recommend:Indexzilla -https://www.indexzilla.io (indexing technology)GSC Tool -https://bit.ly/gsctoolAhrefs Marketing Platform - Webmaster Tools https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025Youtube Channel -Confessions of An SEO®https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf -------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO™ wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO™An easy place to leave a review https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881You can find me onCarolyn Holzman - LinkedinAmerican Way Media Google DirectlyAmericanWayMedia.com Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Chloe Thompson sits down with Rachel Bicha, a Boston-based freelance content strategist whose tagline—“an analog girl in a digital world”—captures her refreshingly human approach to B2B marketing.They explore how Rachel blends creativity and experimentation to bring meaning back to content marketing. From print newsletters to serialized storytelling, she shares why “small experiments” can transform how brands connect with audiences—and why playing it safe is the biggest risk of all.The conversation dives into what makes content meaningful (hint: it should make you feel something), how print is becoming a powerful “pattern disrupt” in digital-first industries, and why people-focused stories beat product features every time. Rachel also unpacks how to pitch creative ideas to leadership, measure success beyond leads, and start small without losing momentum.It's an inspiring look at how freelancers and brands alike can rediscover creativity, personality, and purpose in B2B content.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/Follow Rachel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-bicha-44080/Know more about Rachel's work: https://rachelbicha.notion.site/Stay in touch with Rachel Bicha: https://the-creative-side.kit.com/e2ef48d2ea************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Send us a textIn this episode, we are joined by copywriter and messaging strategist Chrysanthi Stamou, who specializes in helping service-based businesses create conversion-focused and SEO-friendly websites.Chrysanthi breaks down what every small business owner needs to know to turn their website into a powerful, client-generating tool. From homepage structure to SEO myths and writing calls-to-value that resonate, you'll learn how to write website copy that reflects your personality—and gets results.This conversation is a must-listen if you're building or updating your SEO-friendly website and want it to actually bring in leads.Crafting High-Converting Website CopyKey TakeawaysWhy an SEO-friendly website still matters in 2025, despite the rise of short-form video and social media platforms.What makes a website conversion-focused: using customer-driven research, clear messaging, and benefit-led structure.Call-to-value vs. call-to-action: How to write CTAs that encourage clicks and reduce resistance.Homepage hero section best practices:Focus on the transformation your services offer.Use benefit-driven, keyword-rich headlines.Include clear direction with action-oriented CTAs.About page that connects:Move beyond listing credentials.Share your story and values in a way that builds trust.SEO insights:Why SEO is not dead—and how it fuels AI tools as well as Google rankings.How to measure your site's SEO performance with Google Search Console or Ahrefs.Website audit tips:Replace generic page headers with value-driven messaging.Spread testimonials across key decision points—not hidden in sliders.Simplify your navigation (5–6 links max) to reduce choice paralysis.Welcome to the Savvy Scribe Podcast, I'm so glad you're here! Before we start the show, if you're interested, we have a free Facebook group called "Savvy Nurse Writer Community"I appreciate you following me and listening today. I would LOVE for you to subscribe: ITUNESAnd if you love it, can I ask for a
Thank you to Ahrefs for being the sponsor of this episode.Check out Brand Radar https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025This week's topic was inspired from a fellow SEO, Shaun Anderson, creating his breakdown of Google's internal Content Warehouse API documentation that was leaked in May 2024.I love how he did this and while I differ from the specific conclusions made about Topical Authority - he also confirmed siteFocus and siteRadius - relate to the topical width and breadth of a site - something I refer to as "Topical Cohension." And this is at the heart of my Helpful Content System analysis.Check it out - a Rose is a Rose is a Rose no matter what you call it.Last week's episodehttps://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/let-the-games-begin-season-5-ep-42/Mentioned in the showhttps://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-dashboard/https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/topical-authority/https://x.com/Hobo_Web/status/1980924240766407152https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/hobo-seo-quadrilogy/Indexation Research - Crawl Or No Crawl Tools that I use and recommend:Indexzilla -https://www.indexzilla.io (indexing technology)GSC Tool -https://bit.ly/gsctoolAhrefs Marketing Platform - Brand Radar https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Youtube Channel -Confessions of An SEO®https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf -------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO™ wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO™An easy place to leave a review https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881You can find me onCarolyn Holzman - LinkedinAmerican Way Media Google DirectlyAmericanWayMedia.com Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy Daly sits down with Eric Doty and Chloe Thompson to ask a big question: Does strategy still matter in content marketing?As AI accelerates change across every channel, the trio explores how content teams can balance experimentation withlong-term planning. They discuss why “random acts of content” are still a trap, how to adapt strategy on shorter timelines, and which fundamentals—brand, positioning, messaging—remain constant.They also touch on shrinking teams, the blurred lines between content and enablement, and why AI might actually give marketers space to be creative again. It's an honest look at how strategy is evolving in an era of speed, uncertainty, and endless possibility.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoty/Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy Daly chats with Becky Lawlor, founder of RedPoint Insights, about her new report, Content That Converts: 2025 B2B Buyer Insights.They dig into what today's B2B buyers value most—from credibility and original research to how AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing the content journey. Becky shares findings on which formats drive conversions, why case studies still lead the pack, and how owning your research can boost brand trust and ROI.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Becky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckylawlor/What Really Drives B2B Buyers to Convert in 2025: Free Report DownloadEpisode 72 with Becky Lawlor on Original Research Done Right************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy Daly and Chloe Thompson sit down with Tom Rudnai, founder of Demand-Genius, to dig into the State of Content Attribution report from Superpath and Demand-Genius.They explore why attribution is still one of content marketing's toughest challenges—and how teams can better connect their work to revenue. From leadership buy-in and data ownership to the overlap between content marketing and sales enablement, it's a candid conversation about proving content's impact and telling a stronger data story.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free to improve your site's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-rudnai-0539b6151/Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/Get your free AI content audit from hereHow to Prove Your New Narrative Actually Drives RevenueContent attribution report 2025************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Thank you to Hrefs for being the sponsor of this episode. Automate technical SEO with Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ai-tech-seo?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025. This week's show is me parsing out the answer to a question that I regularly get asked in my forensic analysis consulting.The TOP issue that I find regularly in my consulting relates to some form of duplicate content.And the question is - Why can't I keep doing what I'm doing when I see it everywhere?My answer: It works until...Last Week's episodehttps://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/monopoly-bingo-season-5-episode-39/Mentioned in the showMy SEO Pet Peeves - Season 1, Episode 26 (2021)Google's Leaked API Documention - https://searchengineland.com/unpacking-googles-massive-search-documentation-leak-442716Looking for a TOC wordpress plugin that does NOT "confuse" Googlebots. We're close. https://carolynholzman.com/fix-the-canonical-scoring-in-helpful-content/Indexation Research - Crawl Or No Crawl Tools that I use and recommend:Indexzilla -https://www.indexzilla.io (indexing technology)GSC Tool -https://bit.ly/gsctoolAhrefs Marketing Platform - Automate technical SEO with Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ai-tech-seo?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025Youtube Channel -Confessions of An SEO®https://g.co/kgs/xXDzBNf -------- Crawl or No Crawl Knowledge panelInterested in supporting this work and any seo testing?Subscribe to Confessions of an SEO® wherever you get your podcasts. Your subscribing and download sends the message that you appreciate what is being shared and helping others find Confessions of an SEO®An easy place to leave a review https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/confessions-of-an-seo-1973881You can find me onCarolyn Holzman - LinkedinAmerican Way Media Google DirectlyAmericanWayMedia.com Consulting AgencyNeed Help With an Indexation Issue? - reach out Text me here - 512-222-3132Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-stateLicense code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA
In this episode of Content, Briefly, Jimmy Daly, Eric Doty, and Chloe Thompson ask how content marketers should think about productivity now that AI has changed the game.They discuss the shift from output-heavy days to work that's more strategic, creative, and often harder to measure. Along the way, they share how tinkering with tools, blocking time for deep work, and aligning with managers can help content teams stay focused without falling into the “more is always better” trap.It's an honest conversation about balancing efficiency with impact—and how AI is forcing marketers to rethink what a productive day really looks like.This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. You can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, for free, to improve your website's SEO performance and grow traffic from search.************************Useful Links:Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmydaly/Follow Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edoty/Follow Chloe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethompson3/************************Stay Tuned:► Website: https://www.superpath.co/► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@superpath► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/superpath/► Twitter: https://twitter.com/superpathco************************Don't forget to leave us a five-star review and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
John Corcoran is a recovering attorney, an author, and a former White House writer and speechwriter to the Governor of California. Throughout his career, John has worked in Hollywood, the heart of Silicon Valley, and ran his boutique law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, catering to small business owners and entrepreneurs. Since 2012, John has been the host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where he has interviewed hundreds of CEOs, founders, authors, and entrepreneurs, including Peter Diamandis, Adam Grant, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Marie Forleo. John is also the Co-founder of Rise25, a company that connects B2B businesses with their ideal clients, referral partners, and strategic partners. They help their clients generate ROI through their done-for-you podcast service. In this episode… The world of podcasting and digital marketing is changing fast as generative AI and shifting SEO rules redefine how audiences find and consume content. With so much uncertainty, how can businesses ensure their podcasts remain visible, relevant, and powerful tools for authority building? According to John Corcoran, a seasoned podcaster and business strategist, the fundamentals of SEO and relationship-driven marketing remain more important than ever. He emphasizes that while AI and search engines may evolve, building credibility, cleaning up websites, and delivering valuable content are timeless strategies for growth. John highlights how tools like Ahrefs can uncover hidden technical issues and how reading the right resources can sharpen SEO strategy. Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as Chad Franzen interviews John Corcoran, Co-founder of Rise25, to discuss adapting podcasting and SEO in the age of AI. They explore how generative AI impacts podcast growth, why tools like Ahrefs are essential for visibility, and the SEO books every marketer should read. John also shares how podcasting helps professionals in even the smallest markets attract clients and build authority.
See how often your brand gets mentioned with Ahrefs at: https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=wanshow&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=partnerships Step confidently into daily life with the ultra-light Vessi Pacific Sneaker. Vessi claims they are fully waterproof, and they come with a 1-year warranty with 30-days of worry-free returns. Get 15% off your first pair at https://vessi.com/wanshow at checkout! Visit https://www.squarespace.com/WAN and use offer code WAN for 10% off Buy something from dbrand so they have an excuse to keep messing with Linus. Visit http://dbrand.com/WAN Check out Dell's powerful business laptops at: https://lmg.gg/dellprowan Pick up a Secretlab Titan Evo Ergonomic Gaming Chair today at: https://lmg.gg/secretlabwan Get a special deal on Private Internet Access VPN today at https://www.piavpn.com/LinusWan Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For the full experience, watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0j_n3OOM7c Episode 712: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talks to Greg Isenberg ( https://x.com/gregisenberg ) talk about how to find a startup idea and build it in a couple hours using AI. — Show Notes: (0:00) Step 1: Find an idea (7:57) Step 2: Sketch out the idea (9:48) Step 3: Scope out the MVP (18:25) Step 4: Vibe code a prototype (36:06) Step 5: Vibe marketing the business (49:14) Step 6: AI agent product manager — Links: • Want Greg's guide to Build an AI Startup in 3 Hours with