The SEO Playbook for the AI Age with Kevin Indig

It's a little trickier to find something like fields, but I would say, you know, 'cause I live in a, a small kind of town here, so there's this massive coffee culture I. There's a really nice place, uh, in the middle of downtown that is kind of your classic hipster coffee, but with a good work atmosphere. And that to me just, it triggers work mode in me. So for me it's, it's almost like a productivity tool. It is called Fourth Coast Cafe and Bakery. And

It's not just for leaders. I obviously, I've read the first time when I was in people management, I led large teams and organizations at tech companies, and. It is also an incredible guide for life. I find the values and the lessons in the book to be absolutely profound. And so I just basically, I always have my nose in that book at some point of time. 'cause it's a good reminder and there's so many new things that you miss the first time you read it.

Can you explain a bit about what has changed and the modern SEEO of today? A

Which I would say started probably around 2008. It was a bit more measured. Google penalized too much, stuffing, too much aggressive link building. They really started to implement some laws, I would say, in search because it became, you know, so popular in such a fruitful channel for so many companies. And then I would say the third era was probably started wrong. 2016 and lasted until I would say 2022. Uh, and that era was much more refined.

So Google was understanding much better what users want. Google augmented the search results with features like maps or image carousels or YouTube videos. And it was generally, you know, one of these eras where. You still had a good idea of all the different things that work. You got clear feedback signals from Google, but it wasn't at hacking spending anymore. It was, it got wide adoption.

The era that we're in right now, that started about two to three years ago, you could probably already imagine what that is. And that's the AI era. So now we're in a place where Google not just answers questions directly in the search results instead of sending users to websites, but. We also see a lot more competition to Google from chat GPT, but also sometimes from smaller platforms like Pinterest, uh, bigger platforms like Amazon, TikTok. So there's a fragmentation.

There's obviously ai and it it leads to a completely new sets or one set of new ways to go about SEO.

SEO started, we thought it was just about keyword stuffing and backlinks, and then content became more important, and then eventually user experience became more important. And we thought this is kind of natural progression from very technical factors to more software factors. Mm-hmm. What's actually true is that the soft factors were always kind of in there, but long story short, the main ingredients to the pie. Are not changing.

It's still the same recipe to, to make the dough, but the frosting changes and maybe some of the decoration changes a little bit. You know, maybe some of the ingredients are replaced for slightly different ingredients, like vegan friendly ingredients or something like that. So the basic. Composure is the same, but some of the details are different. And because SEO is so marginal and incremental, these details can matter a lot. Mm-hmm.

Users, select sources or search results based on whether they trust the brand or the company, and then whether they think it answers their question. Same for other AI experiences, right? Trust is so important because we know that AI can hallucinate, but also because sometimes the stakes are just very high. As in, if I'm searching for say, the side effects of a drug, obviously it has big implications and so. I wanna make sure that the answer that I get is trustworthy.

And with ai, people are still very skeptical and rightfully so. So yeah. Anyway, long story short, one of the big, big aspects of succeeding in this AI world, wherever you are, however big your business is, is really a trust first mindset, which means you need to. Position yourself and put yourself out there in a way that it fosters trust.

So maybe the price in some cases, is less important and it's much more important for users to know that in you're a small business, you have a, maybe you have one or more experts who help you with the, you know, crafting the product or with the right service. Or maybe you have a very high rate of happy customers, or maybe you will have, you've been in the business for a very long time.

You know, anything that fosters trust, I. Engagement with your audience can really come in handy with search because it means before people maybe even have a need before they even wanna search your brand or name is already top of mind for them, and so when they see it, they might select it as a trustworthy source.

Uh, but there is, I've read a study that big publishers like Reddit, Wikipedia, and so on, they're increasingly getting better traffic. Is that the case right now?

That trust element is so important, and so what we're seeing, what we saw in the study is that for high risk queries or searches, users will validate their answers on. Platforms like Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, and other forms or communities. So people want that balance between an efficient AI answer, but also double checking with a human to see if that is a correct answer or if the answer is more nuanced or or something else.

So yes, these platforms are getting more attention, which means that for you, you want to find ways to be present there. Now, it's tough to be present on Wikipedia, but Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, et cetera, it's very possible to be present there in a measured and trust building way, and I think every business has to ask themselves how to do it.

One of them is the LLM visibility, which is the large language models, and if we can get any content up in there in the lms, is there any way that we can do that or is there any suggestions that you. Advice to your clients?

But if there is a way for you to get media coverage, even small, local newspapers, that is incredibly valuable. Basically any mention on the web in a positive sentiment, in a positive context is very valuable. Uh, that is number one. Number two is, if possible you wanna create content that is hyper targeted for your audience.

What that means is because users can search such longer questions on chat chip pt, and now also on Google, because of Google's AI reviews, they can also express their exact. Needs much, much better. So instead of maybe searching for a baby crib, which they would have searched on Google, maybe they search for something like baby crib for toddlers that have trouble sleeping in it, obviously, maybe it doesn't make sense, right? We get my drift here.

People can better express what exactly they're searching for. And so for you, on the other hand, you wanna figure out. Ways to create content that addresses very, very specific needs. Mm-hmm. You need to talk to your target audience for that and truly understand what are the problems that they're trying to solve that are relevant for you. Of course, because nobody knows what people prompt on LLMs, right? It's, nobody has that data.

Maybe they LM developers, but even for them it's probably very noisy. And so the key here is again, be as visible as possible to create content that. LMS can cite and the way to create the right content is to deeply understand who you are serving or who you're selling to and what problems they have with as much detail as possible so you can address it in your content.

I'll also say that for a long time, PR was just a new update on your product that that's not as useful as maybe the storytelling and data aspect of pr. There's a lot there.

Why does it take us to, because users will know that the comments in Reddit, most of them are sponsored and it'll get more and more, and any other platform it's the same. So I'm personally looking for a trustworthy place that is not promoted, that is real user experience, and at least the promotion is a little bit less than the others. Where does this. Take us to in terms of search.

The perception about Reddit for most non marketers, right, for most consumers, is that they do get an an answer from a human there, and they get an unbiased answer because it's mostly people who actually tried the product out. And because also there's this culture around Reddit, right? So Reddit has strong antibodies against spammers and people who are overly promotional, which does not mean that that doesn't exist on Reddit. It does exist on Reddit, right?

It's possible it does exist on Reddit, but in the grand scheme of things. It's still a pretty good platform. Mm-hmm. And gives you pretty decent answers. And you have these antibodies from the community itself, which might flag you or down rank you. You have karma as an antibody and you also have the moderators, which some of them are like very diligent. Right. So I would say altogether I. It doesn't prevent spam, and you can see that in the Reddit reports as well.

They do show how much spam they removed. They're probably gonna have to fight even harder now, which is why they wanna verify humans. You know, similar to LinkedIn where you make a video with your passport and stuff, you jump on a call with another human who makes sure you actually are human.

Um, but uh, sure, there, there will always be a gateway to spam, similar to Google search, but I think in the grand scheme of things, people value red it because it's most likely an answer from another human. Yeah. And it's authentic answer that is not necessarily biased or sponsored. And it's probably the last place on the web where that's the case.

That's why I had this question, and I actually have another question about chat g, PT or platforms like per and like AI and as. They are becoming places for us to do search. There are two aspects to that. First of all, they are collecting a lot of data from us and they are now ready to customize this data to serve us ads soon, probably. Uh, do you think that they're gonna take ads, uh, soon or is it already happening that we don't know?

A subscription model, but I think something like Netflix is probably gonna be most likely where the free tier has some ads and then you can pay to basically not have ads. But I think also that users have gotten so habituated to a free experience on Google because it's funded by ads.

Mm-hmm. And other, I mean, social networks, that it's likely that some ads will come in here, or let's put it this way, I'm very confident that OpenAI will test ads or experiment with ads, whether they will roll it out broadly or not. It's a bit harder to say. I also personally wish that. They somehow figure out a way to not use ads, uh, and look like I'm saying that as somebody who has ads in his own newsletter, right?

So I, I also do have sponsorships in advertising, but I think many platforms are too crowded with ads and it makes for a poor user experience. And you could argue that that's something that these platforms can measure and then balance out. Uh, plus the content is good enough, uh, or the answers, and people will tolerate ads. So I can argue you both ways, but it's very likely to give you a short answer.

What are some must haves, both from an a co perspective and a user experience perspective? Because. You are working a lot with the website experience as well.

Okay, cool. Either I'm gone or I'm staying on the website and I'm checking something else out. What I've seen in this study that I, uh, ran. Over and over is that people react very strongly to these little elements that highlight pieces or highlight the answer or make it easier to find what they're looking for. After all, people have a very low tolerance for disruption like ads or popups. Mm-hmm. They are short on time, short on attention. And so, um, the reality is everybody skims content.

Nobody starts at the top and then goes, like, reads it all through. No, usually people will scroll through the whole page first and then see what's interesting or might what might answer their question, and then they look for more signals of whether that question is trustworthy or whether it really answers everything that they were looking for. So. These elements are critical. Good headings, right? Like I think there's two ways to go about headings.

There is kind of the more stor storytelling approach where headings are maybe harder to understand unless you have the context of the rest of the content. I. And then there are very descriptive headings and you wanna form a search perspective and LM perspective. You wanna go with a more descriptive headings because search engines and LLMs understand the relationship between a heading and a sentence and a paragraph.

So you wanna be very deliberate in making the descriptive and then making it easy to read. I think, and this is probably very vague, but. That means avoid gray font, right? Make it black. Have a contrast between the font and the background of the website.

So that whole aspect around design, layout, composition, iss ability of navigation, iss ability of reading, all of these things do matter. And I will say, you know, like in, in many cases small businesses are probably well served with a really good template on, on the workplace or webflow that they can then customize. Not everybody has to start from the ground up, but if you can afford a really good. Brand consultant or brand agency Yeah. To help you with these kind of things. It's a big bonus.

You mentioned internal linking, having links. Mm-hmm. Not just in a top navigation, but also in your content. Big help. You wanna make sure that there's some optimized version of your site. Even if most of your visitors use desktop devices or iPads or tablets. Um. Search engines use mobile crawlers only, which means they only look at your website. Okay. Through the lens of mobile. Mm-hmm.

And so if you don't have a version of that, that can be damaging to you, even though your users come through desktop. So yes. These things matter. Internal linking speed, uh, even though speed matters less than most people think mobile optimized website. And then of course the right metadata, the right title, the right description, all that kind of stuff. All these things absolutely matter. Mm-hmm.

In this first era of SEO, they mattered so much more than what the actual user experience was and what the website showed, and now that's not necessarily the case anymore.

And then if I were to own a restaurant or the mom and pop shop around the corner here. I would create some content that hopefully fosters trust, maybe around the selection of products or maybe around the purpose of the business. Maybe there's a family history involved here. Maybe there's a community aspect involved here. Can you highlight community members, people who come over?

You know, I think there's so much depth that you can provide even as a small business side that is outside of classic search engine optimization. Whereas of course, if you're a big. Venture funded SaaS startup or consumer marketplace. Of course, content gets a very different quality for you. You can scale it differently. You wanna target search terms. I think as a small local business, the question is much more how can you foster trust with local people?

And if you're a small business that is not local. I mean, I have a small business in that sense, theoretically, and I think it's a lot about thought leadership. Being transparent about how you work, who you work with, maybe your results. So I think there's a content strategy in the cards for everyone, but to your point, mm-hmm. It doesn't always have to be the blog. It doesn't always have to be like the resources. You can be creative in that sense as well.

And I think that that often pays off because you stand out and you're more memorable.

A lot of my clients either hear about me through word of mouth, so they're checking with their network. Mm-hmm. Or they see my LinkedIn content, and then when they consider me as a potential partner, they check out my content to validate how I think. You know, and I hear this all the time, it's not, it's not the first source of how they found me in most cases, but it's more the second or third source to kind of check out, you know, how does Kevin take, how does he think about these topics?

And, and it's all that kind of stuff. But of course it's, it's a huge driver of business in that sense, because otherwise how would people know? So it's an interesting dynamic and I'm just talking about someone today, how. Surprising it is how good that works. But, uh, yeah, there are many ways for, you know, people to find you. Sometimes it's SEO and sometimes the content is not doing well in search at all, but it's still valuable.

How can e-commerce brands optimize their product page nowadays? Not just to rank, but to actually drive conversions?

That feed is obviously consists of product pages, not category pages, and it usually shows up at the very top of the search results. And so what that means is that it used to be that category pages are most important for e-commerce. They're still somewhat important, but product pages have become a lot more important 'cause they show up in this new product shopping experience on Google. And so there's a couple things to keep in mind. Obviously the visual aspect is always the most important.

So images, having good product images, several from different angles. If you're selling fashion, for example, you wanna show how it looks like on a person and maybe not on a person. So make it visually easy for people to understand all the aspects of the product. Closeup shots, uh, further away shots, you know, uh, all the different things. Maybe video second. You obviously wanna highlight price. Price matters a lot.

Uh, and after people have a good visual understanding of the product and they're still intrigued, then they're scanning factors like, what's the price? What's the shipping time? What's the warranty or return policy. And then they look for things like reviews or. More context around the product. Maybe there's, you know, some description around the material of the product. So these are the most important elements.

What becomes more important now for product page optimization is, um, the whole aspect around reviews and FAQs. Frequently asked questions, so, what temperature should I wash this product with? Is it, uh, resistant to water? You know, how long does it last? All these kind of questions are critical, not just because. Of conversion rate optimization.

It has a big impact, but also because it helps LMS to better understand the relevance of your product or the attributes and the details of your product. Sure. For, you know, hardcore conversion optimization, you can do things like. One click sign up. So let people sign up with their Google account. You can reduce the number of steps in the checkout flow. You can offer buy now, pay later plans with Klarna or later pay. And so those things matter as well.

But what's so much more interesting is that when you do good jobs selling the product like you were in a store, then some of these hurdles of checkout and payment. Don't matter as much because people are much more willing to overcome them. Whereas if your product is maybe, you know, they're not so sure, but they know they can return it. If they don't like it, then maybe like a poor checkout can actually turn them off and can prevent you from making the sale.

They might buy it from someone else. So I think not enough content is probably the biggest sin. I would say the second biggest sin is just poor product images. Not having a video, having the wrong angle of the product. You really wanna invest in high quality product photography. Again, video and being very mindful about the angles and the ways that you present the product. It's the same thing in a shop, right? If you go to a store.

And again, if we stick with fashion, uh, and everything is cluttered and it's hard to find, or there are too many products and it's a big turnoff for people, um mm-hmm. Whereas if it's well presented, the chance that somebody buys it is so much higher because you can fall in love with that product faster, or even if it's about price. Right. Doesn't always have to be high in fashion if it's about price and it's hard for you to figure out where the.

Products are that are on sale or see the price of the product quickly, then you might also not buy. Right? So all these things kind of translate to the online experience. And the biggest sense that I see people make or companies make is that they don't think enough about reflecting or translating that in-store experience to the online world. Hmm.

And I think it's a big mistake. So I would say number one is you actually have a deep understanding of who you're selling to, not just, you know, like. Sure. Age demographics and stuff. Yes. But what problems are they trying to solve? How are they solving them today? How big are these problems? What are their preferences? You know, do they want a cheap solution? Do they want a premium solution? Where do they shop? What competitors do they look at? Like a really in-depth understanding.

And that can sometimes come from only 10 people, right? I don't think every company needs to go out out there and survey a thousand or a hundred thousand people. Start with 10. And see what the commonalities are. It also, by the way, shapes your business strategy a lot because if you realize that you're selling high-end artisan products to somebody who cares about price mostly, then you're tackling the wrong market, right?

So anyway, uh, I'm not gonna go on a longer rant here, but understanding your target audience deeply, that's number one thing. Number two, you as a marketer in this world, need to juggle the performance aspect with the. Brand aspect, let's put it this way. So what I mean by that is there is a balance to be had between running good ads, which again, for almost every business, I think you can run.

Really like online ads are just a. Viable channel for you, but you don't wanna forget all the things that you can also do on top of that to create a strong and lessing brand. Meaning to be memorable, talking to the right people with the right message, with the right positioning at the right time, right? These kind of classic marketing things, I feel like we've lost that as well. A little bit at the cost of, uh, performance marketing. So you wanna juggle brand and performance.

That's my number two. And then number three is standing out. Whether it's search focused content, whether it's web design, whether it's a local mom and pop shop, not enough companies are thinking about, how can I stay memorable, meaning, uh. Like be different than what's out there. How can I differentiate, leave a lasting impression and do something that maybe other companies are not doing? And it shouldn't be a gimmick, right?

It shouldn't just be we're wearing pink hats in the store or, you know, like, uh, we're singing our, uh, you know, uh, brand audit or something to our customers. It shouldn't be gimmicky. But at the end of the day, and I mentioned this at the very beginning of our conversation, which makes for a nice frame. There is a lot of competition out there and there are lots of options out there. And so.

You need to find ways to stand out in a way that customers remember you positively and in a way that vibes with your personality and your business and who you are.