SEO is great, but SEO plus our handy little friend AI, artificial intelligence, is even better. And today's guest, we're gonna dive all into that conversation and more. This is episode number 341 of the Mindful Marketing podcast where we're all about helping you connect more, scroll less, podcast where we're all about helping you connect more, scroll less, and grow together. But first, a word from our sponsor. I've recorded over 300
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keep these conversations going. I know. I think it's so this is one of those situations, y'all, those of you listening, where we've been connected online for, I don't know, forever. So but we met in person. We were just talking about this. We met in person, at DC Podfest pre pandemic, like, right before the pandemic. And look at us now. Yes. So for the people for the people listening, can you give us a little bit of background? What has your journey been into SEO and
specifically using artificial intelligence as well? So my my journey overall has been, like, 2 two paths coming together. Right? So professionally, I've been in tech since since college, a little bit over 20 years, started working, started as an intern actually and just took my whole way up a lot of, you know, big major companies and stuff like that. And that's actually where I was introduced to AI. I was working on an AI project back in 2016 for a major bank that
we all know. Right? So that's when I first like but I and at that time, that project was kind of a chatbot, which is funny because now everybody's doing them. But we were, like, building the first kind of chatbot that was gonna be used for that particular company. And then at the same time, on the other side of my path, I had already been working on SEO. I wrote a book on SEO. I've always been doing like web design and just helping people get found and search and all of
that work, blogging, all those things. And so, eventually, a couple of years ago, the past finally came together where I was taking a lot of my technology, which I always infused in everything I do anyway because I'm a tech girl. Right? And, now that I'm starting to build out and bring in other people, like, that's my goal to get more business owners, especially more women, especially more women of color to, like, be embracing these tools, these strategies that we know I know big companies are
using and we aren't. So that's always been the mission of my brand. And so that evolved from just doing it for people. Well, first doing it for myself, then doing it for people, then writing the book, then having a membership, and then eventually the software, which I like I said, is where the 2 kinda came together where it's like, I've got the tech skill and knowledge to build. I've got the SEO knowledge to the content and put it
together, we got SEO Assist. Yeah. And what year did you launch the the tool? So log this tool officially first launched in its 1st iteration in 2020. So this is, again, before AI. It actually originally was not an AI tool. It was really just a tool to help with content creation, taking a lot of my templates and putting algorithm and creating content that way. Little crude. I know. But, once AI initially, I was like, I'm not gonna put
AI in it. I actually was a little bit resistant. I was like, okay. You know, I wanted to still be authentic and using people's voice and stuff like that. And so it wasn't until I got better at that part of AI of making it sound like the voice of the person who was answering the questions because that's how the tool works. I'm like, like a chat GPT. There's no prompts or anything like that. We literally give you the questions because we know what
you should be saying. Right? And then you answer those questions. And then based on whatever what we call them content flows, content flow you've chosen, that's the content you get. So it wasn't until I could really get that authentic voice that I put that AI in. And then we went used to be called my SEO writer. And so then it went from that to SEO assist and just for the audience, it might do one more name change. Okay. But, you know, so starting from 2020 and then just
kind of rolling out different iterations. And so, you know, like I said, here we are now in, what we got. Yeah. Okay. I have a bunch of follow-up questions, but I think my first one is gonna be around this this concept of AI because it seems like people fall into 2 camps. They either love it or they hate it. Right? And I I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. I'm like, well, some things are are terrible, but
it's actually very helpful. How do you kind of educate people on the benefits of AI, especially those people who are, like, never in a 1000000 years, it's, you know, it's, you know, cheating or whatever. How how do you speak to that group of people? Well, first, I would never say it's cheating because it's still using your ideas and, you know, what you're what you're putting out there. And I say I did that all the time even to people, like, even in my book, which was in 2019.
So again, way before AI, I said in my book, you know, you don't unless you're a writer, unless you're someone who's selling copywriting. Right? And selling, really writing copy and writing for other people. We're all I just giving ideas. Right? We're all giving out our our own knowledge. And so even if you use something like an AI or a template or even somebody like a virtual assistant to get it started, it's
still infusing your knowledge. I never want anyone to feel like they're cheating or doing something wrong, regardless of what the Internet streets say. What's important is the content of the people and the search engines in this case. Right? They're not saying it, so you shouldn't worry about it if your actual customers aren't. So that's the first thing I say is that absolutely not cheating. The other thing I say is that
especially depending on what you're gonna use. Like, I know a lot of people default to ChatGPT. I even talk about ChatGPT a lot. But when you're using more specialized products, right, not even just mine, but you have more specialized products, they're written with what your end result needs to be. And I think that's where people miss out on using AI is that if you're not familiar with what the end result should be, like, what does good look like, then you're gonna get
potentially not good and sometimes crap out of AI. So you can't just take it for a grain of salt, which is why I like more specialized products because they're written with what's good in mind. Like, I use another tool called Opus Clips for video clips for the podcast. One of the things I love about it is it's not just going and saying, you know, minute 1 to minute 1:30. Right? It is actually going in and saying, this
sounds good. Let's put this with another piece of this. And it is actually doing some work to make sure you get to what good looks like. And that's because the OpusClip folks know what good short short form clips look like and know what good videos are. Like, it even tells you, like, this is a good hook. This is a good statement. Like, it even gives you a little grading score. So you want tools that help you get to that end result. That is what good looks like and written by
the people who know what good looks like. And so I think if you start combining that, it gets a lot easier and a lot more effective using AI tools. A 100%. This kinda reminds me of, gingerbread houses. I maybe I'm still in, like, Christmas mood, but, I'm the kind of person who, like, give me the kit. Like, I need the bread already baked. I need the icing. Because if you gave me the ingredients just raw, I would be like, I don't even know where
to start. And I feel like that's AI tools like this in a sense where it's like, sure, if you make them all the time or if you know what the end product should look like, you can just have, like, flour and sugar and whatever else goes into gingerbread and just make it. Right? But the rest of us, most of us need we need to see the box to see the what the puzzle's supposed to look like at the end. And I like that that's kind of what you're doing with with the, SEO assist
tool. Exactly. And I love you said the gingerbread, which we have still not done our gingerbread house. I just need to admit it to everybody. January, no gingerbread house is done. But and when I do my webinars, it's funny. One of the last slides I put is a, a slide with a different case. And I use the analogy of this being like cake mix. Like, you can start with a yellow cake mix. And from that, you can make a red velvet cake. You can make a pineapple upside down
cake. You can make an eggnog cake, which is what we made this Christmas. Right? You can make lots of different things, and that's what these tools really are. They're that basic mix that we know how to get you a good cake. You can add in your own flavor and add in your own extras, but at least it won't be dry. At least it won't be runny. At least it won't be all the ways you could mess up a cake that most of us just wouldn't know until we messed it up a a bunch of times. And in business,
you don't really wanna do that. Yeah. The cake analogy is perfect because it it leads to my next question. So going with the cake analogy, if you are a baker, right, you don't really buy the box cake, you make it from scratch. So I heard you say earlier, you know, if writing copy is your job, then, you know, it's a different, expectation than the rest of us. So what do you think about people who straddle that line? I'm talking content creators, small business owners. Like, we
write a lot of copy in our day to day work. We we publish blog posts on our websites. And even now, you know, Google and other search engines are saying they're gonna penalize content that's created by AI. What are your thoughts on that drama? So for the drama, I will say Google's also said that they can't tell what's AI and what's not. And very often, you know, just kind of a smaller version of that. Like, we'll see people say, if you use words like, like, Dell
Yeah. Somebody told me game changer the other day, and I was like, don't you take that away from me. And that's how I feel. Because I'm like, I talk that way all the time. That's how or or emojis. I am an emoji person. I like to shine a social personality in everything that I'm sending and writing. And so for me, I was always using emojis. Just because AI does it, doesn't mean it isn't real. And, technically, like I
said, Google can't really tell the difference. It has some idea of maybe, but good writing is what AI and search in what AI search engines and all that stuff are based on. And so when they start bringing in that information, if you're doing good writing, it's gonna look like AI. So that's the first thing I'll say is don't be afraid to somebody saying you look like AI. The other part is straddling offense. So I very specifically, I say copywriters only because they're like
copywriters. I would say journalists. That's probably it. Like, it's a very small margin of people who get paid for their actual writing. Different than getting paid for the service that has written material. So like my team, we do content creation. We're getting paid for you to get found in search. We're getting paid for you to come up for certain different topics. You're we're getting paid to
put stuff out there for you. We're not getting paid for the period at the end of the sentence and the correct, APA citations. Right? We're not that's not us. So if our content meets what you need, that's all you need, all you want at the end. And so for those people who are like a content creator or, even social media manage, like, stuff like that, I think you can use AI. You're always gonna review it. You're always gonna
put your human touch on it. You're never gonna just go from tool to person, like, to your client, to even to your own platform. So I think you can still use those AI tools and have absolutely no problem. Like I said, unless you're one of those people who are just getting exactly paid for the the periods and the expiration points and the things like that. And even those different type of industries, you could still use it
for ID ideation. You could still use it for proofreading, expand on this topic, analyze, compare to other things. So there's still a lot of things that AI can help you with, even outlines of stuff, even if it's not necessarily writing everything word for word for word because it doesn't have to just write for you. It could do a lot of planning and work for you too, which is, like, I use I use Chat GPT, and a lot of that is what can
you help me work get through working wise? Not necessarily what can you do for me writing wise. Yes. A 100%. This is where I feel like I'm I'm in the middle with a lot of my thoughts on AI because I use it very heavily throughout my day. But it is a lot of, like, the analytical, the research, the ideating. And a lot of times, it helps me just formulate an idea because I'm a talking kind of processor.
So for me to even get to the end point, a lot of times I gotta talk through whatever is, like, going through my head, and I can use, you know, artificial intelligence to help me do that. And that's kinda what I like about SEO assist as well is that, we're not starting from a blank screen. We're not we're not starting from scratch. We we have the prompts to help us think through what we want that end result to be, which I think is such a powerful
tool that we have on our plate. So when we think about this, it's kind of like we're in the age of AI. How do we balance AI produced work versus other types of work? Like, what do you recommend to business owners? I would say work is work. Right? So I wouldn't try to balance or I wouldn't try to separate them. I would say, you know, what does my process look like now? What do I want my process to look like? Because some people, even without a tool at all, they know they're not where they
wanna be. Right? What do I want my process to look like? And then start thinking about where can I put a tool in this? So going back to like writing content, Right? I'm always gonna start with coming up with ideas. I prefer, and I've learned this now, to ask questions. I'm a more of a question generator. I'm a manifesting generator. I don't know if that, you know, makes a big difference, but people have told me I respond and now I see
it more. Right? So for me, the first thing I'm doing in my process is what questions are people asking? I'm starting with that. And then I'm gonna take out those questions, like, take 1 or 2 of those questions. And then I'm gonna say, okay, what kind of style of blog do we need for this particular site? And then I'm gonna write the content from that, you know, from that conversation and then make sure I got the right keywords in there, which I
usually already have, and then going on, you know, for the next thing. Repurposing. I'd much rather have a tool repurposed than have to continue to rewrite the same thing a couple of different times. So I have all these different steps without a tool involved. Right? Now that I've got the steps and I've got kind of my timeline of this is the things I need to do, I'm gonna go and say, where can a tool help me with this? So I know that I got, you
know, a question interview flow, which can be used to get questions. Thanks. I got that. I'm gonna be manually going through them, so I can't use a tool for that or I don't use a tool for that. But then when I get to the actual writing, I'm gonna probably, you know, choose my different blog post type, and I'm going to maybe use a tool there. Even if I write it myself, I'm going to now use the next step where I'm repurposing there. So when you're thinking about where am I going to put in
the tool? 1st, look at your process and then start thinking where are the things I can start replacing my part of the process with a tool or even a person using the tool because you can also have your team go out and do it, which I found a lot of value in that as well. Like, for my podcast and for different things, all I gotta do is that one big piece of content. They'll go out and now repurpose.
They'll go out and do show notes because they're allowed to do all these things and things like tools just help them do it and help me with the confidence that it's getting done correctly. It's getting done using my voice. So everything sounds like me. Like, it's just getting done the right way because I know what they're using to make it happen. Yeah. A 100%. I'm I'm so for this flow. And I think a lot of times we start backwards. We start with, like, oh, here's the tool. Now
how can I use it? But, what you're recommending and what I love about this is it's like you gotta figure out what your process is first, then find the tools that can help you. So with that in mind, for those listeners who are maybe a little bit more advanced, what are some of the ways that AI can help with content creation? I'm thinking, maybe keyword research or competitor. Like, how do we how do we use this powerful
tool to help us improve our work even more? So so funny you said keyword research because that's the one thing that I don't really like AI to generalize. One of the and one of the reasons why and then when I say AI, I'm thinking, you know, straight AI. Again, if you've got a specialized tool that has some other things, like, we also have an API with Semrush,
so we're bringing in other information. If you're just doing, like, GBT clause, nothing like that, I would not recommend a for keyword research. One of the reasons why is because it can't it still can't see what the actual numbers are behind it. So the volume, the, the what we call the keyword difficulty. So how well it'll rank among
others, how populous that particular keyword is. So those are important numbers that we do when we do keyword research that I would not use a tool I would not use an AI tool for that. I would go to an actual SEO tool that specifically brings in that kind of data and then incorporates it, which is nice, but I would not use it for that. But for other things, like ideation is always one. Right? If I'm gonna come up with those topics, I'm gonna come
up with those questions. Keywords and topics aren't necessarily always the same. They're not one for 1. So you can have good topics that you know people are asking these questions and answering them, which you should. And only maybe 1 or 2 keywords involved there, but you're still gonna come up for that topic, if that makes sense. So I wouldn't do the keyword research, but I would help it with the ideation. Definitely like proofreading things like that. I need a proofreader life regularly.
Then, other things like the repurposing for me, like, that's really, really big. So whether it's either a video tool or a written tool or whatever the tool is, being able to break it up into little chunks. This this day and age, we need to not say we need to be everywhere, but we need to have an appearance in most
places. Right? And so what that means and why don't say I don't like term be everywhere because I think it makes people feel like they need to sit on some computer and be literally on that platform every single day. And that's just not true. What you can do is schedule. Right? You can batch and schedule. I usually try to schedule out at least 20 per week. And if I do that, and that's with my groups and pages and everything. So at least
20 different posts going somewhere. Right? If I do that, then I can at least interject my little things and not feel like I'm overwhelmed. That all can be helped by AI. Right? AI can tell you when to post it, where to post it, what to post it. And then the better part of it at all is that now you've got that consistent voice because, like, if you start with, like, I generally start with the blog post. One big blog post. Break this up into a
bunch of different little posts for me. Where should I be putting these? When should I be putting these? Now it's doing all that work to help me figure out and get kind of through that pit of the overwhelm that sometimes comes up on that, like when when and where kind of stuff. And then now you can move forward to the next thing you have to do in your business or your day or the next week when you do it all over again. Right? But you don't
have to spend as much time. So I think those are some of the places where AI is helping out tremendously in in not just my business, but a lot of businesses. Yeah. A 100%. Like, when I people say this to me all the time. They're like, Andrea, you're everywhere. I'm like, well, it may look that way, but I have people and tools behind the scenes Yeah. Like, I really like everything you said. Right? Right. I'm not always camera ready, so we we just, you know, we go with the flow.
So I'm curious about what you think about the future of AI because it feels like, to me, it's going to be like the iPhone. When the iPhone first came out, it was like, oh, big deal, or, you know, oh, you're fancy if you have an iPhone. Now it's like all phones look the same. And I I kinda feel that's where AI is headed, where it's like it's a big deal now, but, you know, 5, 10 years from now, it's gonna be so integrated in what
we do, we won't even think about it anymore. But I'm curious, you know, looking ahead 3 to 5 years from now, how do you see AI changing specifically content and SEO? Because I I don't know. I don't know what to think about that. I'm sort of finished with the SEO piece. A lot of search engines are now incorporating. So they've got, like, their own SEO or search, you know, search AI, that kind of thing.
So that's that's one good thing and bad thing. I am one of those people who's a little bit worried, which is one of the things that, from you, or John Mueller from from Google said in the very beginning. Like, they don't want the Internet to all look like the same thing. And so that is one of the potential downfalls of everyone's using AI and just kind of throwing it out there. Like people say, write me a blog
post about being on a podcast. Right? If I don't give it anything more specific than that, it's going to probably sound like a lot of the other blog posts that are out there because I didn't give it anything specific. So I think, I think that's one of the downfalls. And one of the things we have to look out for is not sounding just like everyone else, being more specific, being more detailed,
which is where I think things are going to go. I think things are going to get much more specific, much more niche AIs, much more workflow based AIs. So it's not just going to be I'll use Chatty, which is what I call Chatty. I use Chatty for everything. It'll be, I need to do this specific thing. Let me go to that tool that is specifically for this because it has those different, you know, algorithms built in. It has additional APIs that it's not just going. It's not just
to chat. It's going to a bunch of other things and then pulling that in and bringing it to chat and bringing it back. I think that's gonna be a lot more a lot more workflow based. So a lot more like instead of me having to ask it 5 or 6 different things to do, I'll be able to put in one thing and now it's going to go out and do the whole workflow. It may ask me, do you know, I see this is in your content. Do you want me to do this kind of thing? So a little
bit more of interactive, a little bit more intuitive. I also think more voice based is going to be important because I think they've gotten, they've gotten written down, of course. But I think now even chat is already starting to do this and some other tools are working on this. Being able to answer the questions or say whatever you want and then have it processed from that as opposed to needing because even once you sit down to type
in whatever you're typing, we still try to make it sound more formal. Like, I said, I'd have to catch myself and say, Kayla, you don't have to write this email for you to write the email. Just tell her what you wanna say and let it do the rest. Right? That's what you have it here for. I think we're gonna move more into with VoiceBase, not worrying about that so much. We will be able to say, write an email to, you know, send a thank you for being on the show. Right? You know, write an email to do
this. And sometimes it might actually be able to start sending that email or remind you, hey, you were on a show yesterday. Don't forget to send the thank you. They've got, like, motion is 1. And I just started with Sun Summer, it's called. But, somebody else on my podcast recommended it. So I just started with it yesterday. But now those are starting to look at your calendar and say, okay, here's what you have to do. Here's what you have on your calendar. Here's when you can start doing that
work. It's going to now start doing some other things. Like one of those things in your task is send an email. Let me do that for you. Right? You know, one of the things in that thing is schedule your next interviews. Let me do that for you. So I think it's going to move more into doing more work for you to do a more of the whole workflow as opposed to 1 to 1. And to, like I said, that audio processing where you don't even have to formalize your kind of thoughts as much as we
we tend to do. You'll just be able to say, hey. Do this really quick, and it'll do it. Yeah. Oh, man. We're truly living in the future. If it if it starts sending emails for me, I mean, come on. Listen. What if it's in the morning like, I drop my son off from school so we have a bit of a commute, like, 15 minutes. Imagine in the morning on the way back, I just, like, send an email here, send an email there. Are there any other emails I need to send today? And by the time I
get to my house, all I'm doing is proofing emails and getting them out. See, I was telling someone this the other day because I was looking in my Gmail for something, and I just didn't type the right word, and so I never found this email. And I was like, I wish I could just describe it and it could, like, take my description and then, like, be smart about it. You know what I'm trying to say. Okay? I just can't think of the word that will get
me this exact email. And I feel like we're so close to artificial intelligence truly being, like, that helpful, especially with something like Gmail, which we all use. It's like, how can we make this smarter if I could go, okay. Give me 3 emails that are on this topic, but not this or that, whatever the case may be. Even if I don't use the right words, I I hope that it becomes more integrated and it can help me out a little
bit better. Once you met someone so along long along the lines of that, and let you know it's coming, I met someone last year, young lady. She has she has a an AI tool, and it's specifically for the production industry and, like, actors and commercial work, stuff like that. They send out these sheets. I forgot if that's what they're called. Call sheets. So they send out these sheets with information about them. And then on the verse on the adverse, those who are looking are sending
out sheets based on what we need. This particular tool goes through your emails, finds all of the different sheets, starts making a database of all the different people who are available because they've sent you a sheet. And then when you come in and say, I need this, instead of you sending out a sheet, it's actually querying the database. That is probably the best tool that I've seen so far. And this I'm sure she's much further ahead because it's about a year and a half ago that I
met her, at a different conference. But that's that's the that's where it's getting to, where it's I can actually read, start making sense of categorizing, and then use it for something later on when you actually need to execute some work. That's where I think we're going. Yeah. That sounds amazing. So brilliant. I love it. Okay. So for those people who are listening, who are like, I need the SEO assist in my life. Tell us more about it and where we can find the live demo. So
SEO Assist, is atsiosis.com. You can have you can go to a live demo, which is their interview flow. So basically, it's a bunch of different flows. You come in and say, Lewis says, what do you wanna work on today? Right? And you click what you wanna work on. And then from there, you can choose, you know, what kind of blog post you wanna do, what kind of questions you wanna generate, that kind of thing. And so we've made our interview
flow, which I've used a lot on my podcast. If you ever listen to my show, I'm using those questions available for people to try. So if you go to seosys.com slash live demo, that'll take you there and you can answer about 4 questions. Who's your audience? What's their goal? Who's the guest? And and what kind of, interview? So it's whether or not it's a blog, podcast, or YouTube interview. And it gives you 25 questions. And the good thing about the questions is it's not just and this is where
knowing what good looks like comes in. Right? It's not just here of 25 questions. We actually break it down into kind of like your general questions and then we give you 5 what we call the controversial questions because our show should have 1. Right? And then we give you the basic questions, which are always the ones that people forget because you're used to doing it. So you're not thinking of, like, what I call the eggs, milk, and butter back to my cake
reference. I talk about cake a lot. Lot. Every cake, most of them have egg, milk, and butter. Right? So that's the basics, and we always forget those. And so it even has questions based on that. So you guys can go and try that and play with it and get your questions. I use it for interviewing people, and I use it for myself. Actually, I have a couple of YouTube videos, which are super funny, where I'm actually I'm I'm doing it because
I'm demonstrating, but I'm actually interviewing myself. I have my glasses and it's like, interview me? Not interview me. Interview me. But you can use it even if you're not doing it that funny. But you can use any of those questions can become your next blog post because those are questions that people are asking out in search engines. Right? They're asking the search engines about this particular thing. They're talking about these
particular controversial process that are happening. They're they they need this information, and so it gives you, like I said, 25 questions you can use to get that information. Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. And if y'all wanna try this out, highly, highly recommend. I use it for my podcasts. Getting those questions can really help save us so much time, so much research time too. So you can check that out and all of the links in the show notes, onlinedreya.com/341. Akhila, thank you
so much for being on the show. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. I love these conversations, so thank you. Yeah. This was so fun. And thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Coming up next week, we are kicking off our LinkedIn challenge inside of the Mindful Marketing Lab, and this is our 7th year doing it. If you are not in the lab, you can still get your free pass. Go to onlinedrea.com/linkedin to join us for free
from January 27th through 31st. In the meantime, I'll be back at you next Tuesday with another episode. That's all for today. Bye for now.