The Edward Show

E1166: Google can lose faith in your website. That is the language Google's John Mueller used when discussing sites filled with large amounts of programmatic SEO content, low-quality pages, and generated content that fails to give users enough value. I break down what that means, why bad old pages continue to hurt a site, and what actual SEO recoveries look like. I cover: - John Mueller's warning that Google's systems can lose faith in a site based on its old pages - Why publishing hundreds or thousands of weak pages creates a sitewide problem - The danger of scaled AI content and programmatic SEO - Why producing more content does not fix a site that already has a quality problem - The "Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect in SEO - How repeatedly disappointing searchers damages the reputation of a site - Why click-through rate and pogo-sticking matter when thinking about user satisfaction - How weak pages create bad behavioral signals at scale - Why programmatic SEO makes the problem worse by publishing bad pages far faster than a human could - What happens when Google becomes more cautious about showing content from a site - How fixing the problem takes significant work and time I also break down a real recovery example where a company deleted around 200 thin AI-written pages and later saw Google traffic grow from roughly 1,000 to nearly 4,000 monthly visitors. Their new approach included: - Deleting thin AI pages first - Keeping only pages worth maintaining - Using real search data instead of having AI invent the content - Researching SERPs, search volumes, Reddit, Hacker News, and X - Using the actual language customers use - Writing bottom-of-funnel pages buyers actively search for - Publishing competitor lists with current pricing - Creating alternative pages for products people are leaving - Publishing original customer stories - Reviewing and editing every piece of content before publishing I also cover another recovery shared by Lily Ray. The site was hit by the December 2025 spam update, started making fixes, and finally began recovering roughly five months later. The takeaway is simple: If you flood your site with content that repeatedly disappoints searchers, cleaning it up is not instant. Delete the weak pages, improve the pages worth keeping, publish content people actually want, and give Google's systems enough time to see the change. Google does not forget a large history of bad content overnight. ⭐️ John Mueller's statements - https://bsky.app/profile/johnmu.com/post/3muwiaq3mws22  ⭐️ Charlotte Schmitt on 𝕏 - https://x.com/LottiSchmitt/status/2096967274343047324  ⭐️ Lily Ray on 𝕏 (recovery post) - https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/2069739309075161234  ⭐️ Ep 989 - Google's Helpful Content Update DESTROYED the Internet (What Actually Happened) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLUFjYrIEA  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Can Google Lose Trust 00:25 John Mueller on Programmatic SEO 01:53 Behavior Signals Explained 02:42 Boy Who Cried Wolf SEO 04:24 How Sites Recover 05:13 Pruning Playbook Steps 06:06 Bottom of Funnel Content Wins 06:37 Customer Stories Strategy 07:45 Recovery Timelines and Updates 08:51 Learn SEO the Right Way 10:40 Final Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #seorecovery #programmaticseo

E1165: Position #1 on Google is dead, at least as a single, static ranking you can check once and trust. Joy Hawkins returns to break down a study of 8.1 million Google search results that found organic rankings became 48.7% more volatile after the May 2026 Core Update. 97% of the tracking reports analyzed started shuffling, and two people searching the same phrase at the same time now regularly see different rankings. The volatility didn't disappear after the update ended. It stayed elevated. We get into what this means for SEO, rank tracking, local search, AI Overviews, Google's new AI local results, content pruning, scaled AI content, reviews, and measuring whether SEO is actually making money. Topics we cover: - The 8.1 million-search study that found Google rankings became 48.7% more volatile - Why 97% of the tracking reports studied started shuffling - Why saying "we rank #1" or "we rank #3" is becoming increasingly inaccurate - How two people searching the exact same keyword can see completely different results - Why city + service keywords such as "Denver plumber" were among the searches hit hardest - Why checking a keyword once is no longer enough to measure rankings - How many searches Joy wants before she trusts rank-tracking data - Why top-three visibility across many searches matters more than one recorded position - Why SEOs need to connect rankings to traffic, calls, leads, and revenue - Why Joy trusts Search Console and call tracking more than a single rank-tracker snapshot - How Google's go-to redirects are making life harder for rank trackers and scrapers - Why rank trackers could start contaminating Search Console click data - The theory that increased ranking variation could make CTR manipulation easier for Google to detect - Why Google's traditional local pack, organic results, and AI local results need to be treated as different algorithms - SEO tactics that work in the traditional local pack but lose strength in AI local results - Why keyword-stuffed business names and extended business hours matter less in AI local packs - The three review signals Joy sees affecting traditional local rankings: rating, review count, and review frequency - Why the actual language inside customer reviews matters more for AI searches - How Google uses reviews to answer subjective local searches such as finding a cafe with fast Wi-Fi - Why your Google Business Profile description does not move rankings - How changing copy on your website changes what Google says about your business inside AI results - The risks of self-promotional "best X" listicles - Why a strong differentiator on your landing page matters more now - Joy's experiment deleting roughly 1,000 pages receiving zero clicks - Her experiment comparing Claude-generated content from expert interviews against content written by a human from the same source material - What happened after pruning more than half the content from sites hit with domain-wide ranking losses - Why scaled AI content on a real business website has become far riskier - How businesses can see enormous traffic growth from scaled content before the entire site crashes - Why AI content itself isn't the problem and where Joy sees legitimate uses for AI-generated content The biggest change is not that SEO stopped working. Sites still dominate search results. The problem is that a single ranking position no longer tells you enough. You need enough searches to measure how often you appear near the top, then connect that visibility to traffic, leads, calls, and ultimately revenue. Joy Hawkins is one of the most experienced local SEO testers in the industry, and this episode gets deep into what she is seeing across millions of searches and active client campaigns. ⭐️ Joy's write-up on this - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/the-dynamic-serp-update-may-2026-core-update-changed-seo/  ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's Agency - Sterling Sky: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/  ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/SterlingSkyInc  ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyhawkins/  ⭐️ Local Search Forum - https://localsearchforum.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Joy Returns and Setup 00:18 May Update Weirdness 02:42 Eight Million Study Results 05:55 Static Rankings Are Dead 08:38 Measure Leads Not Spots 10:21 How to Trust Rank Data 11:19 Client Reporting and Revenue 14:57 Why Google Changed SERPs 16:17 Go To Redirect Fallout 20:49 AI Packs and Shortcut Tactics 25:01 Not Personalization and Next Steps 33:00 Business First SEO 33:17 Lead Source Tracking 34:58 Local Rankings Reviews 36:22 AI Local Packs 37:42 Review Keywords AI 41:17 Listicles And Risks 46:27 USP For AI Overviews 47:31 Experiments And Tools 51:13 Pruning And Penalties 54:35 Scaled Content Scams 58:58 Accident Page Case Study 01:02:51 Safer Testing Domains 01:03:20 Traffic Spike And Crash 01:03:49 Screen Share SEO Graphs 01:05:06 Scaled Content Publishing 01:05:55 Is Number One Dead 01:06:20 What Still Works Now 01:09:50 Keywords And Local Links 01:12:54 Risky Tactics And Scale 01:22:09 AI Content Nuance 01:23:40 AI Slop Backlash 01:25:53 Hype Versus Proven SEO 01:28:57 Closing Thoughts And Farewell The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #localseo #digitalmarketing

E1164: It cost just $72 in press releases to get Google's AI Overview to call James Dooley the "King of AEO." I break down how two cheap press releases created enough relevance and third-party confirmation for Google to repeat the claim directly inside an AI Overview. The first press release cost $66 through an EIN Newswire package. The second cost $6 through AB Newswire. Both placed "King of AEO" in the locations that matter most for relevance: the headline, page title, URL slug, and opening sentence. Google then cited those releases when answering the query "Who is the king of AEO?" I break down: - How $72 in press releases influenced a Google AI Overview - The exact press releases Google cited - How the phrase "King of AEO" appeared in the title, H1, URL slug, and first sentence - How direct, unambiguous language matters when building entity associations - How one $66 EIN Newswire press release became the first citation in the AI Overview - How a $6 AB Newswire press release syndicated to USA Today became another supporting source - Why repeating the same entity association across multiple sources creates consensus - Why Google's AI Overview confidently repeated a claim about a crowning ceremony that never actually happened - How the press release image also started appearing in Google Images for "King of AEO" - What happened after I posted videos about the experiment across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts - How other SEOs then started publishing their own "King of AEO" press releases - Why the SERP turned into an SEO battleground - Why James Dooley still remained the dominant entity associated with "King of AEO" - How relevance and consensus work together when multiple people compete for the same entity association - Why press releases still matter for both traditional Google Search and AI-generated answers - What this experiment shows about influencing the information Google uses to construct AI Overview responses Before the competition started, James had a major advantage: most of the highly relevant pages around "King of AEO" pointed to him. Once more people entered the SERP with their own press releases, social posts, videos, images, and websites, Google started acknowledging the competing claims while still naming James as the person most widely associated with the title. This is a clear look at how the sausage gets made inside modern search. If you understand how relevance, entity associations, third-party mentions, syndication, and consensus work together, a bizarre AI Overview like this becomes much easier to explain. 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Do Press Releases Still Work 00:59 EIN Newswire Case Study 01:30 Keyword Placement Breakdown 02:55 AB Newswire For Six Bucks 04:13 The Fake Crowning Event 04:44 Google Images Impact 05:05 Blowing Up The SERP 05:38 New Challengers Appear 07:51 Why This Works 10:48 Wrap Up And Goodbye The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1163: Does Google care whether people actually click the links on your page? I break down a $50,000 internal linking experiment across 15 websites, plus a Google patent that describes assigning different weights to links based on the probability that users will click them. The findings challenge a lot of standard SEO thinking around internal links, PageRank dilution, link placement, and how authority flows through a site. In this episode: - A $50,000 internal linking experiment conducted across 15 websites - How increasing internal links produced higher rankings and higher ad RPMs - What happened when pages went from 3 - 4 internal links to 20+ - Why the tester found no ranking decline from adding more internal links - How stronger internal linking eliminated "Crawled - currently not indexed" problems across his sites - How he found five internal links pointing to a page was an important threshold for indexing - Why internal links appearing earlier than other internal links on the page produced stronger ranking results - The click-tracking data showing a clear correlation between internal link clicks and ranking improvements - How internal linking based on topical similarity performed better than restricting links by categories or tags - How opening internal links in the same tab versus a new tab made no ranking difference in his tests - Dan Petrovic's PageRank Split Experiment involving a page with 4,225 followed outbound links - How a test site jumped from position 79 to position 3 despite receiving a link from a page with thousands of outgoing links - Google's patent "Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data" - Google's patent language describing link weights based on the probability that a particular link will be selected - How Google's patent describes collecting information about which links users selected - How browsers or browser assistants are described as sources of user-behavior data - Google's patent's example of recording actual clicks from one page to multiple linked pages - How click instances are used to train a model predicting which links users are likely to select - How links on the same page do not necessarily deserve the same weight - How this connects with what we already know about Google using click data through NavBoost - Why the most important internal links on your site should be links people actually want to click The big takeaway: internal linking is not just about adding links and distributing PageRank. Placement matters. Relevance matters. User behavior matters. And the links people click carry more weight. ⭐️ Black Hat World: I've Spent Over $50K on Internal Linking Experiments - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/ama-guide-ive-spent-over-50k-on-internal-linking-experiments-and-tests-this-year-here-is-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-it.1628963/#post-18067348  ⭐️ PageRank Split Experiment - https://dejanmarketing.com/pagerank-split-experiment/  ⭐️ Google Patent: Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9305099  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 $50K Link Click Question 00:31 BlackHat World Tests 01:49 More Links More RPM 02:41 PageRank Dilution Myth 03:38 Indexing And Link Placement 04:17 Clicks And Similarity Rules 06:10 Google Patent On Clicks 07:21 Model Weights By Probability 08:57 What This Means For SEO 10:16 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #webdevelopment

E1162: In 2016, Google gave an internal presentation called Q4 Search All Hands. Years later, slides from that presentation surfaced during discovery in Google's antitrust trial, and one of them contains an unusually direct admission: "We do not understand documents. We fake it." Google explained that its ability to understand documents directly was minimal. Instead, it watched how people reacted to search results and learned from those responses. I break down what Google said, why this presentation still matters for SEO, and what you can actually do with this information. We cover: - The 2016 Google presentation that surfaced during the antitrust trial - Google's statement that it did not actually "understand" documents - Why Google said it watched how users reacted to documents instead - How positive and negative user reactions contribute to Google Search - Google's description of sustaining the "illusion" that it understands - Why user signals are so important for SEO - Why I rank user signals above relevance and authority - How a highly relevant page can outrank a much more authoritative website - The story of how I outranked The New York Times within five minutes with a one-year-old site - Why satisfying search intent matters more than trying to guess what Google wants - How adding a TLDR to a page improves the user experience and improves conversions - A case where adding TLDR sections increased conversions by 33% - Why giving searchers the answer above the fold reduces confusion - How to structure page titles around the exact keyword someone searched - Why repeating the searcher's language makes your result immediately feel relevant - How adding the searcher's primary goal or benefit to a title increases clicks - The three questions you should answer before creating SEO content - Why blindly asking AI to write SEO content misses what the searcher wants - How to use AI as an assistant without outsourcing the important thinking - Why matching the type of page to the search intent matters - When to use an SEO landing page versus a blog post - Why giving someone informational content when they are trying to buy something creates a bad search experience The biggest takeaway is simple: Stop obsessing over what you think Google wants. Think about the person who searched the keyword. Who are they? What do they want? What are they trying to achieve? Then create the page that gives them exactly that. ⭐️ Google 2016 Q4 Search All Hands - https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-11/417516.pdf  ⭐️ David Quaid post on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid/status/2095861936927691185  ⭐️ My explanation on 𝕏 - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2095115036691767658  ⭐️ Reddit: How Adding a TLDR Boosted My Conversions by 33% - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1h3qstq/how_adding_tldr_boosted_my_conversions_by_33/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Google Trial Slide Leak 01:02 We Do Not Understand Documents 01:44 SEO Implication User Reactions 02:51 When Fake Understanding Fails 03:39 User Signals Still Rule 04:07 Poll Backlinks vs Behavior 05:27 TLDR Above the Fold 06:54 Page Title Benefit Formula 07:50 Three Questions for Intent 08:55 Match Content to Intent 10:37 Wrap Up Key Takeaway The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #growthhacking #digitalmarketing

E1161: I break down why I still consider LinkedIn a blue ocean for organic reach, Google rankings, AI visibility, and content distribution. A listener named Marc recently started posting again after years of inactivity. Within one week, one of his posts reached 45,000+ views. That came from an account that had been dead for years. And the opportunity goes far beyond LinkedIn's feed. LinkedIn pages rank extremely well in Google. LinkedIn ranks for almost 120 million keywords and gets close to 500 million clicks per month from Google. When you put your target keyword at the beginning of a LinkedIn post, LinkedIn places that keyword in several key SEO locations: - The URL slug - The page title - The meta description If your account posts consistently and gets engagement, LinkedIn posts also get indexed quickly. I break down an example from former Google employee Pedro Dias where a LinkedIn post was cited by Google's AI Overview shortly after it was published. I also explain a test where we: - Chose a competitive keyword - Put it at the beginning of a LinkedIn post - Got the post indexed with Indexceptional - Watched it rank #1 for the target keyword within roughly 30 minutes LinkedIn doesn't just have value for traditional Google SEO either. LinkedIn has millions of pages being cited across LLMs including: - ChatGPT - Google AI Overviews - Google AI Mode That makes LinkedIn useful for both search rankings and influencing what large language models find and cite. I also cover how I use LinkedIn as part of a much larger content distribution system. The same post can be repurposed across: - LinkedIn - X - Threads - Facebook - Instagram Reels - TikTok - YouTube Shorts - Facebook Reels You can take one idea, publish it as text, turn it into video, and distribute it across multiple high-authority platforms. I explain one of my favorite ways to find short-form video ideas: look for written posts that dramatically outperform the size of the account that published them. If an account has 30,000 followers and a post gets 100,000 views, that is evidence people care about the subject. You take that post, record yourself reading it in short-form video, and distribute that video everywhere. In this episode: - Why LinkedIn is still a blue ocean - How a dead account got 45,000+ views in one week - Why daily posting compounds - How LinkedIn parasite SEO works - Where to place keywords inside LinkedIn posts - How LinkedIn posts rank in Google - How LinkedIn content gets cited by AI systems - A LinkedIn post that influenced an AI Overview - How I got a LinkedIn post ranking #1 quickly - Why I don't recommend constantly using indexers - How to repurpose one LinkedIn post across multiple platforms - How to turn viral written posts into short-form videos - Why the same content can occupy multiple positions across search and social I personally get around 100,000 to 200,000 LinkedIn impressions per week while uploading the same short-form content I already publish elsewhere. If you're creating content anyway, LinkedIn gives you another distribution channel, another SEO asset, and another place where your content is discovered by search engines and AI systems. 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 LinkedIn Blue Ocean 00:21 Proof It Still Works 01:02 LinkedIn SEO Power 01:58 Indexing And LLM Influence 03:47 Video And Repurposing 04:51 Viral Post To Video 06:08 Daily Posting Playbook 07:30 Episode Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #growthhacking

E1160: You do not need to pay for backlinks to build authority in 2026. I break down a viral SEO Reddit thread about how people are getting legitimate, high-quality backlinks without buying links, spamming irrelevant directories, or wasting time on tactics Google is increasingly good at ignoring. The best part: several of the people in the thread shared specific examples, including the exact assets they created, where the links came from, and the results. We cover: - How one SEO used original research about hospitals to earn coverage from a major newspaper and multiple industry publications - How to turn public data from sources like the Census into linkable studies without collecting your own data - A home insulation campaign that used pest and population data to create a state-by-state infestation ranking and earned roughly a dozen free links - How one person scraped thousands of businesses in different industries, published the findings, and created statistics journalists and AI systems could cite - Why your research does not need to be complicated to become a useful link asset - Why transparent methodology makes data studies more credible - The difference between random directory links and legitimate foundational backlinks - Why relevant business directories can still make sense - How AI makes it much easier to build interactive linkable assets - How to get backlinks from partners, vendors, customers, awards, badges, and existing business relationships - How goodwill link building can earn links from organizations and local news publications - Why digital PR does not necessarily require paying an agency - How expert quote platforms can get you cited by journalists - Why you should not automatically assume you need more backlinks just because competitors have higher authority - Why relevance and user signals matters more than simply accumulating links - An SEO who ranks in positions 1-5 for 200+ keywords despite never buying backlinks - Why low-quality paid links can create problems beyond traditional Google rankings, including how AI systems evaluate suspicious or spammy mentions Start with legitimate foundational links. Then create things that real people, publications, businesses, and journalists genuinely have a reason to reference. That could be: - Original research - Public-data studies - Industry statistics - Free tools - Calculators - Quizzes - Awards - Expert quotes - Community projects - Partnerships - Goodwill campaigns - Digital PR You do not need thousands of backlinks. You need relevant pages targeting the right searches, strong user signals, and enough legitimate authority to compete for the keywords you actually want. ⭐️ The Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1vgxe6u/how_are_you_guys_building_backlinks_after_google/  ⭐️ Ep 1037 - How One Simple Website Got 384,000 Backlinks (Linkable Assets Explained) - https://youtu.be/-1Q5HHatvoc  ⭐️ Ep 1155 - He Donated a Free Roof and Got Links You Can't Buy - https://youtu.be/0aZi6sdOD-M  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Viral Backlink Dilemma 01:09 Thread Highlights Setup 01:32 Research Gets Links 02:36 Foundational Links First 03:32 Scraped Stats as Assets 05:02 Directories and Linkable Tools 06:31 Start Close to Home 07:47 Stop Overbuying Backlinks 09:52 Authority vs User Signals 11:12 Digital PR and Link Risks 14:01 Final Thanks and Goodbye The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #linkbuilding #backlinks #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1159: Google's August 2026 Spam Update hit some sites extremely hard. I break down four case studies from Glenn Gabe showing exactly what Google's August spam update targeted, including scaled AI content, programmatic SEO with little added value, thin affiliate pages, poor user experience, and sites operating in risky niches. One of the sites lost rankings for more than 200,000 queries. Another had more than 1.5 million URLs indexed, many of which were lost. These weren't simply examples of "AI content is bad" or "programmatic SEO is bad." The common thread was scale combined with very little unique value for the searcher. In this episode: - A YMYL site that lost rankings for more than 200,000 queries after scaling programmatic pages across countries - Why the combination of programmatic content and AI-generated copy can become especially risky in YMYL niches - A massive Amazon affiliate site built largely from Amazon product data - Why simply recreating merchant information and adding affiliate links can fall under Google's Thin Affiliation policies - What Google says good affiliate sites need to add beyond information already available from the merchant - A site with more than 1.5 million indexed URLs that was hit across multiple sections - Why adding some legitimate-looking UGC doesn't necessarily save a site where most pages still provide very little additional value - How a spam update can affect an entire domain rather than only the specific pages using questionable tactics - A fourth site with more than 250,000 URLs in a risky niche that redirected users to even riskier external sites - How that site lost rankings for roughly 25,000 queries - Why the August update appears to have gone after several different forms of scaled content abuse rather than one specific tactic - Why programmatic SEO itself is not the problem - The difference between useful programmatic pages and creating hundreds of thousands of pages that mostly repeat information available elsewhere - What recovery from a spam update can look like - Lily Ray's example of a site hit by the December 2025 spam update that began recovering about five months after making major fixes - Why spam update recovery can happen outside a core update - Why removing the spam and changing what you publish going forward matters more than waiting for another Google update The important distinction is value. You can build programmatic pages. You can use AI. You can build affiliate pages. But if you're scaling hundreds of thousands or millions of URLs without giving searchers something meaningfully better, different, or more useful, you're putting the site in a very different risk category. Glenn Gabe's case studies make that extremely clear. ⭐️ Glenn Gabe's article - Google's August 2026 Spam Update - Scaled Content Abuse, AI Content, Programmatic Content, Thin Affiliates, And More [Case Studies] - https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/august-2026-google-spam-update-case-studies/  ⭐️ Ep 1141 - Can You Launch 100,000 Pages and Survive Google? - https://youtu.be/wNtiygMsRfg  ⭐️ Lily Ray recovery post - https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/2069739309075161234  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 August Spam Update Recap 00:26 How Spam Updates Work 01:00 Case 1 YMYL AI Scaling 02:04 Case 2 Thin Affiliate Pages 03:50 Case 3 Scaled Content Abuse 04:59 Case 4 Risky Redirect Scheme 05:59 Recovery Takes Months 07:05 Wrap Up 08:21 Podcast Sign Off The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #growthhacking

E1158: Google published an article called "Good SEO Is Good GEO," arguing that the best strategy for showing up in Google's AI search experiences is still foundational SEO. I agree with a lot of it. But some of Google's advice leaves out important parts of how SEO and GEO work today. I go through Google's article point by point and react to it in real time. Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews are built on top of the same core ranking and quality systems used by traditional Search. It also says these AI experiences retrieve information from Google's existing search index. That means traditional SEO fundamentals still matter enormously for GEO, AEO, AI SEO, or whatever you want to call it. But that does not mean every piece of Google's advice should be taken at face value. In this episode: - Why Google says "good SEO is good GEO" - Why foundational SEO remains the starting point for getting visibility in AI Mode and AI Overviews - How Google's query fan-out works and why one AI prompt can trigger multiple searches - Why search intent still matters as much as ever - Why your page title, H1, URL slug, and keyword targeting still matter - Where I disagree with Google's advice to simply "optimize for people" - Why you cannot publish website content without understanding what people are actually searching for and expect Google to figure everything out - Why unique, first-hand, non-commodity content is valuable, but still needs distribution or keyword targeting if you want people to find it - Google's claim that marketers should stop chasing inauthentic mentions - Why that claim does not match what I see happening in actual search results and LLM recommendations - How brands are getting inserted into articles already receiving citations from large language models - Why inauthentic mentions can work even though I would not recommend building a strategy around them - Why Google is right about LLMs.txt - Why I still see no compelling evidence that LLMs.txt meaningfully improves your visibility in Google or AI search - Why user experience, trustworthy design, useful images, videos, reviews, and strong copy affect both SEO and GEO - Why Merchant Center and Google Business Profile remain important for ecommerce and local businesses appearing in generative search experiences - The problem with Google telling marketers to focus on business metrics while Search Console still gives limited visibility into AI search performance - Why leads, sales, signups, and revenue ultimately matter more than new GEO metrics invented by third-party tools The biggest takeaway is simple: You do not need to throw away SEO and start over because AI search exists. The same fundamentals that make a page useful, discoverable, relevant, trustworthy, and capable of ranking in traditional Google Search also give it a strong foundation for Google's generative search experiences. But "good SEO" still means understanding keywords, understanding intent, creating content people actually want, and making sure that content can be discovered. ⭐️ Good SEO is good GEO - https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/next/v2/article/search-and-video/ai-search-era-brand-authority-strategy/  ⭐️ Pareto SEO: The 20% of SEO That Matters - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/pareto-seo/  ⭐️ Ep 1081 - Google Merchant Center Mistakes Killing Your Ecommerce Revenue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilyAv_Li1qA  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Google SEO Meets GEO 01:11 Foundational SEO Still Wins 02:07 What Helpful Really Means 02:59 Ignore New SEO Labels 03:31 Query Fan Out Explained 04:21 Pareto SEO Basics 04:33 Optimize For People Not Bots 05:06 Keyword Targeting Reality Check 05:57 Inauthentic Mentions Debate 07:54 LLMs txt Not Needed 08:28 Unique Perspective Content 09:45 Non Commodity Content Needs Keywords 10:28 Website UX Still Matters 11:42 Noisy Metrics And GSC 12:59 Merchant Center Reporting 13:38 Key Takeaways And Critiques 14:22 Wrap Up 15:12 Daily Podcast Streak Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1157: Google is expanding some AI Overviews automatically, removing the need to click "Show More" and pushing traditional organic results much farther down the page. Predictably, a lot of SEOs are freaking out. I break down what Google actually changed and why I don't think businesses and publishers should panic about SEO. Google confirmed that AI Overviews can now dynamically expand when its systems believe a fuller AI answer would be useful. On those searches, users can get a much larger AI response plus the "Ask Anything" box before they ever reach the traditional blue links. I cover: - What Google changed with expanded AI Overviews - Why organic results can now appear much farther down the SERP - How Google is not simply sending every search directly into AI Mode - Why informational publishers have more reason to be concerned - Why SEO for products and services is a very different situation - The types of searches that still require people to visit a website - Why scenario-based keyword targeting continues to work - How to target people who know what they want but don't know which brand provides it - Why bottom-of-funnel SEO becomes even more important as informational searches get absorbed by AI - Why alternative pages and comparison pages influence buying decisions - Why detailed product and service documentation gives AI more information about when your business is relevant - Why AI systems can't recommend your company properly if you never explicitly explain what situations your product is for - Why useful backlinks and real brand mentions matter more than collecting links nobody sees - Why online reputation management matters for both AI recommendations and human searchers - Why building a real brand makes SEO, backlinks, AI visibility, and higher-volume rankings easier over time - Why I'm still not convinced blogging is dead - How Google Preferred Sources gives publishers another way to build repeat visibility inside Google - Why the right SEO strategy survives whether search is traditional, AI-enhanced, or eventually dominated by large language models ⭐️ Google AI Overviews Pushing Searchers Into AI Mode, Drops Show More Button - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-overviews-push-ai-mode-responses-41974.html  ⭐️ Ep 1049 - The Fastest Way to Get SEO Results: Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgGTmVZ1938  ⭐️ Ep 1074 - Blogging Isn't Dead: How Niche Blogs Still Make Money With SEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRaNVjcnbw0  ⭐️ Ep 1156 - Google Just Gave SEOs a New Ranking Signal (Do This Now) - Preferred Sources - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv7n03rkgaM  ⭐️ The conversation on Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1w1ur5u/google_making_ai_overviews_into_ai_mode_responses/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 AI Overviews Update 00:41 What Changed Exactly 02:31 Why SEO Still Crushes 03:01 Scenario Keywords That Convert 04:19 Pages That Influence AI 05:44 Holistic SEO And Branding 06:42 Blogging Is Not Dead 08:03 Preferred Sources Strategy 09:04 Stay Calm And Keep Going 09:38 Final Thoughts And Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #searchmarketing #digitalmarketing

E1156: Google Preferred Sources was originally introduced around news publishers, and that is still causing a lot of SEOs to dismiss it. That is a mistake. I go directly through Google's own documentation and explain why Preferred Sources now appears relevant far beyond traditional news sites. Google says any website that publishes fresh content is eligible. The feature is available globally in Top Stories and can also influence what users see in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google Discover documentation also specifically references creator and source preferences. I also tested SaaS websites, local businesses, and ecommerce sites in Google's Preferred Sources tool. They were eligible. In this: - Why people keep saying Preferred Sources is only for news publishers - What Google's current documentation actually says - Why SaaS, ecommerce, local, and other commercial websites can be eligible - How Google does not require a news sitemap, RSS feed, or Google News Publisher Center setup - Google's statement that any website publishing fresh content is eligible - Why Google says people are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source - The significance of more than 345,000 unique sources already being selected - How Preferred Sources can affect AI Overviews, AI Mode, Top Stories, and Google Discover - Why I think Preferred Sources is an important behavioral signal - How this could matter even if Preferred Sources itself is not a direct ranking factor - Why I compare selecting a preferred source to subscribing to a YouTube channel - How increased visibility and clicks could create downstream SEO effects - How to add a Preferred Sources button to your website in five minutes - Where I placed Preferred Sources buttons on my own site - How I customized the buttons to match my website - Other placements you can test, including your header, footer, inside articles, and pop-ups - How to create a reusable global widget so you can place the button throughout your site The biggest point is simple: do not dismiss Preferred Sources because its original rollout focused on news. The current implementation is broader than that. And because adding it to a website is so easy, the potential upside makes it worth testing now rather than waiting until everyone agrees it matters. ⭐️ My article - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/google-preferred-sources-seo-ai-visibility/  ⭐️ Google Preferred Sources - test your site - https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=edwardsturm.com  ⭐️ Google Developers: Help your readers find your site through preferred sources in Google Search - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/preferred-sources  ⭐️ Google Developers: Discover Core Update - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/02/discover-core-update  ⭐️ Google Blog: Original High-Quality Content in Search - https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/original-high-quality-content-search/  ⭐️ Search Engine Journal: Google's Preferred Sources Is Now A Global SEO Signal - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-preferred-sources-feature-is-now-a-global-seo-signal/573591/  ⭐️ Google Developers: Preferred Sources Documentation - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/preferred-sources  ⭐️ Preferred Sources button example on a blog post - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/parasite-seo-how-to-succeed-on-any-platform/#endingpreferredsource  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Preferred Sources Revisited 00:43 What Preferred Sources Does 01:44 Viral Clip And Backlash 02:40 Docs Prove Eligibility 03:30 Not Just News Sites 05:42 Potential Ranking Signal 06:54 Add The Button Fast 07:29 Design And Placement Ideas 09:19 Worth Doing Anyway 09:59 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing

E1155: A roofer in South Florida donated a free roof through Habitat for Humanity. The charity wrote about it and linked to his business. Then a local news station picked up the story, his Facebook post was shared more than 200 times, and one act of goodwill produced the kind of links and attention that are extremely difficult to buy. That is goodwill link building. I break down how businesses can do genuinely useful things for people, nonprofits, organizations, and other companies, then turn that work into backlinks, partnerships, mentions, and press. The important part most businesses miss is simple: ask for the link. Businesses already sponsor youth sports teams, donate products, support nonprofits, volunteer their services, and contribute to community projects. But because they are not thinking about SEO, they often get a logo or plain-text mention and never ask for a backlink. I cover real examples and practical ways to use this strategy across SaaS, e-commerce, and local services. In this episode: - How a donated roof turned into a nonprofit backlink, local press, and 200+ social shares - Why sponsorships and donations frequently create easy backlink opportunities - The two-minute follow-up email most businesses never send - How Lily Ray generated a large number of links through a pro bono marketing project during COVID - How SaaS companies can give free accounts to nonprofits and earn relevant partner links - How to get links from companies whose products you already use - Why publicly saying something positive about another company can lead to a case study or customer-story backlink - How e-commerce brands can donate products to relevant causes - Why recurring donations can produce links from multiple pages over time - How returned or lightly damaged inventory can become a link-building asset instead of waste - How e-commerce businesses can donate their expertise, not just their products - How local service businesses can provide free work to nonprofits or newly opened businesses - How disaster preparation and disaster response can create legitimate local press opportunities - Why third-party tips to journalists often work better than pitching your own company - How one goodwill project can produce backlinks, social shares, partnerships, and press at the same time The bigger idea is that backlinks work best when they look like real marketing. Instead of inventing artificial reasons for websites to link to you, do something that actually gives another organization a reason to mention you. Support something meaningful. Give away something useful. Solve a problem. Share somebody else's business. Donate your expertise. Then ask for the backlink. ⭐️ Bodhi- Local SEO's roofer post and comments - https://x.com/irentdumpsters/status/2092371437365461368  ⭐️ Lily Ray's post - https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/2092672103283613939  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Goodwill Link Building Intro 00:34 Habitat Roof Story 01:44 Ask For The Link 03:16 SaaS Goodwill Ideas 05:11 Ecommerce Donation Plays 07:21 Local Services Givebacks 07:58 Turn Good Deeds Into Press 10:08 Student Results Example 11:20 Daily Podcast Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #linkbuilding #backlinks

E1153: Breaking down the debate around AI-written SEO content, Google's ability to identify machine-generated text, and whether AI detection could eventually become a meaningful part of Google's search and training systems. Google's John Mueller recently liked a LinkedIn post arguing that Google may be moving toward an algorithm designed to target all AI content. That comes after the August spam update, which many site owners reported hit AI-heavy websites particularly hard. But detecting AI content and penalizing AI content are two very different things. I also look at an argument from SEO, Dan Petrovic, who explains why Google has little reason to automatically remove content simply because AI was involved in creating it. Google already has sophisticated systems for evaluating content quality, usefulness, and user behavior. In this episode: - Why John Mueller liking a post about an AI content crackdown caught my attention - What the August spam update may tell us about Google's treatment of AI-heavy websites - How easily Google may be able to detect AI-generated text - Why AI detection does not automatically mean an SEO penalty - How Google could use AI detection as one signal among many - Why user behavior may matter more than whether a human or AI wrote the first draft - How Google can use post-click behavior, session activity, and other signals to evaluate usefulness - Why low-quality content existed long before ChatGPT and other LLMs - How AI-generated content could be treated differently in search results versus AI training data - Three possible ways Google could handle AI-generated text going forward - Why Google might allow AI content to rank while excluding some of it from model training - Why AI content could receive less weight rather than being completely ignored - How user-generated content from customers, Reddit, reviews, and other sources could become increasingly important - Why I am still using AI for SEO content - The difference between using AI as a writing assistant and publishing completely AI-generated articles - Why short-prompt, publish-without-editing AI content is a bad SEO strategy - How we use AI for ideation, articulation, summarization, and heavily edited drafts - Why satisfying search intent still matters regardless of how the content was created - Why high-intent SEO remains one of the areas where I believe AI can be especially useful My view is that AI content is not going to disappear from Google Search simply because Google can identify it. Google has much more information available than authorship alone. It can evaluate whether a page answers the query, whether users find it useful, and whether the website is creating something people actually want. That means the goal should not be to make AI content undetectable. The goal should be to use AI carefully, edit heavily, add real information, satisfy search intent quickly, and create pages that deserve to rank. For us, AI remains a writing assistant rather than a replacement for the entire content process. ⭐️ Ep 1140 - Claude Is Watermarking Everything It Writes. Google Doesn't Have the Key - https://youtu.be/U4WKswNBr0s  ⭐️ Kristine Schachinger on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kschachinger-seo_i-said-it-a-couple-months-ago-and-im-going-share-7498052042116976640-re-G/  ⭐️ Dan Petrovic: No AI Penalty - https://dejan.ai/blog/ai-penalty/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 John Mueller Likes AI Warning 00:54 August Spam Update Fallout 01:21 Can Google Detect AI 01:31 EU AI Act Watermarking 02:48 What If Detection Is Cheap 03:18 Dan Petrovic Takeaways 05:07 Detection vs Quality Signals 07:41 Three Future Scenarios 09:23 How To Use AI Safely 11:43 Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #searchengineoptimization #seo #aiseo #digitalmarketing

E1154: Google's new goto redirects have a lot of SEOs worried that rank tracking is about to become less accurate, more expensive, or much harder to do. David Quaid joins me to break down what is actually happening, what it means for tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, and why the answer may be for SEOs to start building more of their own tools. Google's goto redirects add another step between the search result and the destination URL. That creates problems for companies that scrape Google at scale because they may now need to follow redirects instead of simply extracting destination URLs from the search results. That matters because a huge amount of SEO software depends on collecting SERP data. David and I discuss: - What Google's goto redirects actually are - Why Google may have introduced them - How they affect rank trackers and SERP scraping - Why exact ranking URLs may become harder to collect - Whether tools can still reliably track ranking domains - Why rank tracking data should not always be treated as exact - How Google Search Console can provide a second source of ranking data - Why SEOs may need to combine SERP data with Search Console - Why David believes most SERP tools are still largely usable - The problems with checking rankings only once per day - Why Google's changes could increase data collection costs - Whether Semrush and Ahrefs can adapt - Why smaller SEO tools and open-source projects may benefit - OpenSEO and the growing number of self-hosted SEO tools - Why SEOs should consider building internal tools - Using AI coding tools to work with Search Console data - Why Search Console data may become more valuable - How Bing Webmaster Tools could become more important - Why SEO agencies should pay attention to their own data instead of depending entirely on third-party reports - How ranking data relates to traffic, leads, and client reporting - What happens when a rank tracker says you rank somewhere but a manual search shows something different - Keyword cannibalization and how David uses Search Console to identify it - Why David cares more about ranking domains than exact URLs in many rank-tracking reports - Google's ongoing fight against scraping and automated search activity - Whether these changes are aimed at SEO tools, SERP APIs, OpenAI, or all three - Why Google may be making click-through manipulation harder - Whether OpenAI is building its own search index - The changing relationship between Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other search systems - Why SEO is still worth doing - Why the next generation of SEO tools may come from individual developers and small teams David's main point is simple: SEOs should not panic. Rank tracking is not disappearing. Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, SERP data, internal reporting, and custom tools can increasingly be combined to create your own view of what is happening. For SEOs who are willing to build, test, and work directly with their own data, these changes may create more opportunities than problems. We also discuss the SEO Tool Dev community on Reddit, where developers and SEOs can share scripts, extensions, tools, experiments, and new approaches to SEO data. ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  ⭐️ SEO Tool Dev Subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO_tool_dev/  ⭐️ OpenSEO 𝕏 post - https://x.com/ihteshamali/status/2093319473914921327  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Goto Redirects Panic 01:11 What Goto Redirects Are 02:09 Scraping War With SERP APIs 07:28 Rank Trackers Break Down 08:43 Future Tools Using GSC 11:51 Open Source SEO Tools 14:30 Short Term Survival Tips 18:09 Costs Rising For SEO Data 19:14 Consulting Shift And Expertise 23:27 Fixing SEO Tool Reporting 26:47 Tracking Domains Not URLs 29:12 Cannibalization Fixes 32:13 CTR Manipulation Crackdown 33:44 Google Versus AI Search 36:27 LLMs And Junk Content 39:41 SERP Tools Future Costs 42:58 Build Your Own SEO Tools 45:27 SEO Tool Dev Subreddit 46:50 Podcast Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #digitalmarketing

E1152: Google Analytics is one of the most widely used analytics platforms on the web, but there is a growing category of traffic it was never really designed to help you understand: bots, AI crawlers, and AI agents. I sit down with analytics consultant Jason Packer, author of Google Analytics Alternatives, to talk about what GA4 is measuring, what it can miss, and how the rise of AI is changing both analytics and SEO. We get into AI companies crawling the web, the possibility of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic developing their own web indexes, and what that could mean if AI platforms increasingly rely on their own infrastructure rather than traditional search indexes. We also discuss a separate issue that matters to anyone using AI for SEO: detecting AI-generated content. Jason explains current approaches to identifying AI-generated text and images, including watermarking systems such as SynthID, classifiers, and emerging standards around identifying AI-generated material. We also discuss whether Google can detect AI-generated content and why simply asking whether content was written by AI may be the wrong question. The bigger question is whether the content is useful, accurate, distinctive, and reviewed by a human. Topics covered: - What traffic Google Analytics 4 may be missing - Why GA4 intentionally filters much bot traffic - Why AI crawlers and AI agents create a new analytics problem - The difference between human visitors, traditional bots, AI crawlers, and AI agents - Why identifying AI traffic from user agents is difficult - What Cloudflare data can tell us about the growth of AI crawling - Whether OpenAI and Anthropic could build their own web indexes - How an AI-owned search index could change SEO - Why ranking for an LLM may work differently from ranking in Google - Whether early AI search systems could create new opportunities for SEOs - Hidden GA4 features and reports that many users overlook - How modeled users can affect what you see inside GA4 - Using device-based reporting identity to better understand your analytics data - Creating custom GA4 insights and anomaly alerts - Using Explore and User Explorer in GA4 - Where GA4 is genuinely powerful - Why GA4 may not be the right default analytics platform for every website - Google Analytics alternatives including PostHog, Amplitude, Piwik PRO, Plausible, Fathom, and others - Whether it makes sense to build your own analytics platform with AI coding tools - How AI-generated text and images can be detected - Google SynthID and AI watermarking - Why interoperability between AI detection systems matters - Whether Google can identify AI-generated SEO content - The risks of publishing AI content at scale - Why human review still matters when using AI for SEO - How AI can be used without sacrificing usefulness, accuracy, or brand voice The conversation ultimately comes back to a problem SEOs are going to have to understand: the web is no longer being visited only by humans and traditional search-engine crawlers. AI systems are increasingly crawling, retrieving, processing, and potentially indexing web content. At the same time, publishers are using those same systems to produce more content. That creates two important questions for SEO: How do you measure AI traffic that conventional analytics tools may filter or fail to identify? And how should you use AI to create content when search engines and AI platforms are becoming increasingly capable of identifying how that content was produced? ⭐️ Jason Packer's website, Quantable - https://quantable.com  ⭐️ Jason Packer's book, Google Analytics Alternatives: A Comprehensive Guide - http://gaalternatives.guide  ⭐️ Jason Packer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhpacker/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Meet Jason Packer 01:25 GA4 Hidden Insights 02:11 Modeled Users Explained 06:52 Custom Insights Alerts 09:12 Explore Reports Tricks 12:27 Learning GA4 Fast 14:39 Ask Advisor Critique 17:21 GA4 Basics For Beginners 21:40 Attribution And UA Nostalgia 25:19 What Traffic GA4 Misses 28:48 AI Crawlers And Analytics 31:04 Cloudflare Radar Web Crawling 33:05 AI Indexes And SEO Future 38:52 Spam In New Indexes 40:35 GA4 Alternatives Framework 41:20 Best Product Analytics Tools 43:11 Simpler Web Analytics Picks 46:10 Vibe Coding Analytics Risks 48:38 What Analytics They Use 50:19 Detecting AI Text Watermarks 52:42 EU AI Act And Detection APIs 56:09 SynthID Limits And SlopGuard 01:02:40 AI SEO Best Practices 01:07:15 Human Writing With AI Assist 01:11:47 Podcast Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #digitalmarketing #googleanalytics #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1151: Google has started routing search-result links through new google.com/goto redirects, masking the final destination URL for logged-out users. That sounds like a small technical change. For rank trackers, SERP scrapers, SEO tools, and marketers who depend on Google search data, it creates a much bigger problem. I'm joined by Jonathan Berthold from Moz to break down what Google changed, why rank tracking is being affected, how SEO platforms are responding, and what marketers should expect next. We also get into the larger fight happening behind the scenes. Google has been making it harder to collect search results at scale, from the removal of the num=100 parameter to these new Goto redirects. One possible explanation discussed in the episode is that Google is making it more difficult and expensive for AI companies and other automated systems to collect its search data. The problem is that SEO tools rely on some of the same underlying access. We cover: - What Google's new google.com/goto redirects actually do - Why the destination URL is now hidden in Google search results - Why this creates problems for rank tracking software - How Moz is handling the change - Why other SEO platforms have had to adjust their systems - Whether simply following each redirect solves the problem - How additional requests could increase the cost and complexity of collecting SERP data - Why agencies and consultants may see temporary changes in ranking reports - What SEOs should tell clients if their reporting starts looking different - How this could affect competitive analysis and other workflows that rely on SERP data - Why AI workflows that analyze Google results could also be affected - How this compares with Google's removal of the num=100 search parameter - Whether Google Search Console could see downstream effects - Why Jonathan expects SEO tools to adapt rather than rank tracking disappearing - The possibility that Google extends these redirects beyond logged-out searches - What this means for the continuing competition between Google, OpenAI, and other AI companies - Why AI companies have an incentive to develop their own indexes and alternative data sources - Why rankings are ultimately a directional metric rather than the final measure of SEO success - Why revenue, leads, and sales from organic search still matter more than individual ranking positions Jonathan's main advice for SEOs is simple: be adaptable. Google can change not only its ranking algorithms, but also the infrastructure that SEO tools use to collect and interpret search results. Rank trackers adapted after the num=100 change, and Jonathan expects the industry to find ways to deal with Goto redirects as well. The immediate question isn't whether SEO is dead. It's how much these changes affect the reliability, complexity, and cost of measuring search performance. And the longer-term question is bigger: as Google protects access to its search data and AI companies build their own sources of information, what does SEO measurement look like next? ⭐️ Jonathan Berthold on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanberthold/  ⭐️ Jonathan Berthold on 𝕏: https://x.com/j_bertho  ⭐️ Moz (my affiliate link): https://edwardsturm.com/refer/moz/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Goto Redirect Panic 00:48 What Changed In SERPs 02:47 Why Google Did It 05:15 Costs And Workarounds 07:37 SEO Tool Fallout 10:10 Beyond Rank Tracking 12:08 Fix Timeline And Pricing 14:33 OpenAI Index And Yelp 16:31 Search Console Volatility 17:26 Adaptability Takeaways 19:33 Does SEO Still Work 21:26 Wrap Up And Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #seoagency

E1150: James Dooley and David Quaid return to debate one of the biggest questions in SEO right now: is GEO a separate discipline, or is it just SEO under a new name? James says he used to agree that GEO was simply SEO with a different label. Then his own team changed his mind. He now runs a separate GEO/AEO department because people who can rank websites #1 in Google can still struggle to get brands cited in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode and other LLM-driven results. David pushes back. His argument is that most of the work required for GEO still comes back to strong SEO: understanding query fan-out, creating the right pages, earning links, building authority, controlling more of the search results and getting third-party sites to corroborate what a brand says about itself. The debate eventually lands on a more interesting point: James believes only about 1% of decent SEOs can actually do GEO well because there are additional layers beyond traditional website SEO. In this episode: - Why James created a separate GEO/AEO department after initially believing GEO was just SEO - Why ranking #1 in Google does not automatically mean you will be cited by ChatGPT or appear in AI Overviews - James's argument that GEO is closer to SEO plus online reputation management - David's case that GEO tactics are still fundamentally SEO tactics applied across more surfaces - Why third-party corroboration matters for AI visibility - How Yelp, TripAdvisor, Clutch, DesignRush, G2, Capterra, Reddit and other sites can influence what AI systems see about a brand - Why reviews, awards, case studies and brand reputation matter when a buyer asks AI to choose between two companies - How query fan-out changes the keywords and pages SEOs need to think about - Why James says GEO involves different competitors, tracking, KPIs and reporting - How parasite SEO, supplementary websites and exact-match domains can be used to control more of the information around a brand - The difference between tactics designed to move Google rankings and tactics designed specifically to increase AI citations - The role of press releases, social distribution and third-party mentions in getting faster AI visibility - James's fastest approach to AI visibility and what he considers more sustainable long-term work - Why building a defined entity, reviews, awards, knowledge panels and consistent third-party references matters over time - Why some GEO agencies may simply be weak SEO agencies using a new label - How businesses should evaluate a GEO agency before spending serious money - Why enterprise companies are moving larger parts of SEO, branding and traditional marketing budgets into GEO - Whether SEOs should start selling GEO even if they believe the underlying work is still SEO James and David disagree on where SEO ends and GEO begins, but they agree on one important point: a GEO provider who cannot understand and execute SEO is unlikely to be very good at GEO. If you work in SEO, run an agency, manage a brand, or are trying to understand how ChatGPT and AI search are changing search visibility, this episode lays out both sides of the argument with specific examples and tactics. ⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/  ⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley  ⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/  ⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley  ⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David "The King" Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 GEO vs SEO Debate Setup 00:45 Why AI Visibility Differs 02:25 GEO as SEO Plus ORM 05:17 Market Confusion and SEO Is Dead Claims 07:15 Budgets Branding and Off Page Proof 11:55 Can You Do GEO Without SEO 13:27 Yelp Reviews and Local Listings 22:05 Tools KPIs and Claim Frame Prove 26:15 SERP APIs and Query Fan Out Shifts 28:20 Creativity Outranking Listicles 32:54 Black Hat SEO vs LLM Poisoning 39:04 GEO Hype Emotional Marketing 43:17 Big Budgets and Boardroom Criteria 47:37 AEO Off Page Signals 49:12 Vetting GEO Agencies 51:18 Independent Advisor Panels 53:19 Budgets Shift To GEO 55:28 Fast AI Visibility Plays 59:36 Pop Under Traffic Boosts 01:00:50 Sustainable Entity Building 01:01:50 Query Fanout Hacks 01:07:14 Experimentation Mindset 01:10:36 King Of SEO Case Study 01:14:18 Temporal Semantics Explained 01:21:46 Common Crawl Training Test 01:30:58 Final AI Visibility Takeaways The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #seo

E1149: Jason Barnard breaks down how to get a Google Knowledge Panel for yourself or your business in as little as three months. We cover why clarity and consistency are the foundation of entity SEO and how Google decides whether it understands who you are. Jason explains what an "Entity Home" is, why your About page matters, and how to structure it for both humans and search engines. We go through the platforms new brands should consider, including LinkedIn, Crunchbase, The Org, social profiles, and review sites. Jason also explains why linking between your website and these profiles creates an "infinite loop of self-corroboration" that can strengthen Google's confidence in your entity. We discuss SameAs schema, common schema mistakes, website architecture, pillar pages, navigation, and why your homepage should usually focus on your brand rather than targeting a keyword. Jason shares how to write entity descriptions that are easier for Google and AI systems to understand, including the importance of semantic triples, related entities, and removing ambiguity. We also get into why third-party mentions, podcasts, press coverage, and other external sources can make a Knowledge Panel more stable and authoritative. Jason explains why Knowledge Panels matter beyond Google Search as people increasingly use ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI systems to research brands and individuals. Finally, he walks through the Kalicube tools and practical steps you can use to build, track, and strengthen your presence in Google's Knowledge Graph. Jason Barnard coined Brand SERP in 2012, the search results for your own name, your online business card. He coined Entity Home in 2015, the single page where a person or company officially lives online and where Google goes to resolve who you actually are. He coined Answer Engine Optimization in 2017, before the answer engines had arrived. Entity SEO didn't catch up to him; he was there first, and the terminology proves it. Jason's universal three-step process for earning a Knowledge Panel on your Brand SERP: 1. Be clear on the Entity Home. 2. Keep the facts consistent across every profile you control. 3. Link out to the corroboration that proves them. Do those three in that order, and the Knowledge Panel is the machine agreeing with you. ⭐️ Jason's Entity Home - https://jasonbarnard.com  Kalicube Pro tools from the episode: ⭐️ Knowledge Graph Explorer - https://kalicube.pro/tools/knowledge-graph-explorer  ⭐️ Copywriting Sandbox - https://kalicube.pro/tools/google-copywriting-analyzer  ⭐️ Trusted Sources Tool - https://kalicube.pro/tools/trusted-sources  ⭐️ Person Schema Generator - https://kalicube.pro/tools/schema-markup-generator-person  ⭐️ Organization Schema Generator - https://kalicube.pro/tools/schema-markup-generator-organization ⭐️ Free Tools Hub - https://kalicube.pro/tools/free-resources  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Knowledge Panel Basics 00:15 Entity Home Clarity 02:08 What Is An Entity 04:32 Search Volume Myths 06:15 Common Setup Mistakes 08:20 Corroboration Links 09:48 Platforms To Register 11:22 Future Of Knowledge Panels 14:15 About Home Media Kit 16:18 Pillar Pages Navigation 19:04 Site Architecture Rules 22:04 SameAs Schema Tips 23:28 Transparency And Trust 25:37 Brand Naming Strategy 28:59 Disambiguation Challenges 30:43 CTR Not A Factor 31:05 Notability Relevancy Confidence 32:27 Modular Platform Descriptions 35:19 Do the Reasoning for AI 37:22 Write a Clear Executive Summary 40:03 Avoid Ambiguity and Capitalization 43:52 Third Party Proof Matters 48:25 Why Knowledge Panels Win 53:11 When Panels Don't Show 56:57 Kalicube Steps and Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #entityseo #seo #searchmarketing

E1147: Your organic traffic is declining. Your rankings are getting more volatile. Pages that have been stable for months or years are suddenly moving down. Before blaming a Google update, backlinks, AI Overviews, or some mysterious algorithm change, look at the simplest explanation: Your pages might not be satisfying search intent well enough. I break down the most common reasons SEO traffic decline and what to do. First, not every traffic decline matters. SEO is volatile. Rankings go up and down. What matters is the overall trend and, more importantly, which pages are losing traffic. Losing low-value top-of-funnel informational clicks is very different from losing rankings on pages that generate leads, sales, signups, or discovery calls. I cover: - How to tell normal SEO volatility from a decline you should worry about - Why you should separate top-of-funnel traffic losses from bottom-of-funnel losses - Why search intent is one of the first things I check when rankings decline - How too much fluff above the fold can hurt a page - Why targeting keywords with conflicting intent on the same page creates problems - A real example where fixing search intent stabilized a company's declining search visibility - Why sites that look obviously AI-generated may create a new user-trust problem - How competitors entering your SERPs can cause previously stable rankings to move - Why competitors aggressively building backlinks can shake up rankings - How tracking individual keywords makes diagnosing declines easier - Why you should check whether losses are isolated to a specific subfolder or happening sitewide - Why I prefer organizing SEO sites into logical subfolders instead of using completely flat architecture - How unrelated content can confuse what Google understands your site to be about - When pruning or noindexing unrelated content can make sense - Why outdated content may be the entire problem - How keyword cannibalization can cause multiple pages on your site to compete with each other - Technical mistakes that can suddenly destroy visibility - Accidental robots.txt blocks and noindex tags - Staging sites accidentally getting indexed - Plugins generating huge numbers of meaningless pages - Programmatic SEO projects that can damage an entire site - Why you should still check Google Search Console for manual actions I also talk about something I think SEOs will have to pay much more attention to: AI-looking websites. Even if the information is good, users may increasingly distrust a site that immediately looks like it was generated by Claude or another AI tool. If searchers have repeatedly encountered generic, fluffy, or hallucinated AI content, the appearance of your site itself could affect whether they stick around long enough to see that your content is actually useful. The biggest takeaway from this episode is simple: Before looking for a complicated explanation for declining SEO traffic, look at your pages as a searcher. - Are you answering what they searched for? - Are you answering it quickly? - Is the answer obvious above the fold? - Are you targeting one clear intent? - Would you be satisfied if Google sent you to this page? Sometimes you already know the answer. You just don't want to admit it. ⭐️ Ep 1141 - Can You Launch 100,000 Pages and Survive Google? - https://youtu.be/wNtiygMsRfg  ⭐️ Ep 1030 - Keyword Cannibalization: Why Your SEO Pages Compete (And How to Fix It) - https://youtu.be/n3jrXrau6kE  ⭐️ Darren Shaw's LinkedIn Post - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7495990440530272256/  ⭐️ My 𝕏 post - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2091817392372400392  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Traffic Drops Explained 00:39 Assess What Matters 01:26 Top of Funnel Reality Check 02:14 When To Take Action 02:46 Search Intent Fixes 05:21 AI Slop Trust Issues 08:25 SERP Shifts And Links 09:52 Site Structure Diagnostics 11:56 Cannibalization And Tech 12:52 Do Stable SEO The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #seopodcast

E1148: Everyone is talking about GEO, AEO, fan-out queries, schema, Reddit, digital PR, Wikipedia mentions, and dozens of other ways to get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI systems. Devesh Khanal of Grow and Convert thinks most companies are skipping the obvious place to start: bottom-of-funnel SEO. Devesh shares what Grow and Convert is seeing across clients after years of publishing detailed, product-focused content. Their approach is straightforward: identify the searches closest to a buying decision, create dedicated pages that genuinely answer those searches, explain the product in enough detail for both people and LLMs to understand it, and build from there. We get into: - Why bottom-of-funnel SEO should come before most GEO tactics - The three keyword buckets Devesh uses: category keywords, comparisons/alternatives, and jobs-to-be-done keywords - Why search volume is often the wrong way to prioritize keywords - How sales calls, customer support, reviews, and customer questions can reveal better topics - Why you probably do not need to predict or target individual fan-out queries - What Grow and Convert found when studying the SEO footprint behind ChatGPT citations - Why Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT should not be treated as if they work the same way - How detailed content on your own site gives LLMs information about your use cases, customers, pain points, features, and products - Why case studies can matter for AI visibility even when they are not targeting an SEO keyword - How self-promotional "best" and "alternatives" articles can work without pretending to be neutral third-party reviews - The difference between transparent product promotion and content that creates an intent mismatch - Why ClickUp-style mass publishing is different from producing a handful of carefully written commercial pages - The risks of publishing thousands of lightly edited AI-generated pages - A company that published 25,000 AI pages and got to the point where journalists could not find the company by searching its own brand name - Why Devesh still builds backlinks to bottom-of-funnel pages - Why topical relevance matters more than collecting random links just to raise DR - Why links directly to the page you want to rank can matter more than general homepage links - How ranking bottom-of-funnel pages can indirectly create more third-party mentions when writers and researchers discover your brand Devesh also shares a simple exercise to do this week: make a list of the 10-20 most obvious searches someone would use when looking for a product like yours, then check whether you have a dedicated URL targeting each one. If you do not, that is probably a better place to start than worrying about schema tweaks or trying to reverse-engineer every possible AI prompt. ⭐️ Devesh Khanal's website, Grow and Convert - https://www.growandconvert.com/  ⭐️ Devesh Khanal on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deveshkhanal/  ⭐️ Devesh Khanal on 𝕏 - https://x.com/deveshkhanal  ⭐️ Grow and Convert Marketing Show on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grow-and-convert-marketing-show/id1652941589  ⭐️ Grow and Convert Marketing Show on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1CFauYp4GVXaMVNN9h9yxH  ⭐️ Devesh Writes on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@deveshwrites  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Episode Pitch Setup 01:40 What AI Visibility Looks Like 03:38 Skip Top of Funnel Prompts 06:21 Self Promotional Listicles 08:01 ClickUp Cautionary Tale 08:59 Do It Honestly 12:11 Scale Frequency And Stability 15:19 Why This Works In LLMs 17:23 Invisible Prompts Personalization 24:05 Keyword Buckets And Formats 29:27 Common Mistakes AI Content 32:30 Alternatives Pages Breakdown 35:54 SERP Analysis And Brand View 39:35 Positioning With Honesty 40:34 Listicles Without CTA Spam 40:56 Transparent Best Of Pages 42:41 Shopping Intent Explained 43:56 Branded Review Sites 47:58 AI Content Shadow Drops 50:12 Site Architecture Priorities 52:01 Bottom of Funnel Keyword Framework 56:29 LLM Visibility Buckets 01:03:46 Fan Out Query Myths 01:06:54 Backlinks And Citation Outreach 01:12:47 This Week Action Plan 01:13:59 Shaping The LLM Narrative 01:16:01 Wrap Up And Where To Find The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1146: Get free niche backlinks by interviewing small bloggers, business owners, and other people in your industry. This is a link-building method we're testing. Instead of cold emailing website owners and asking them for backlinks, start by giving them a reason to know you. Interview them on a podcast. Small bloggers and business owners are often much easier to book than established journalists or large creators. Many have never been interviewed before. Give them a good podcast experience, build an actual relationship, stay in touch, and you will have a natural opportunity to earn relevant backlinks. I explain exactly how the strategy works. You'll learn: - How partnerships and industry relationships can produce some of the most natural backlinks - How a podcast can be used for link building instead of traditional lead generation - Why you should start by interviewing small niche bloggers and businesses - How to identify potential guests with websites that could realistically link to you - Why organizing prospects by domain authority or domain rating can help you work your way up - How smaller podcast guests can help establish credibility before you approach bigger bloggers and journalists - Why you shouldn't ask for a backlink during the interview - How to stay in touch with guests through social media after an episode - Why repeated exposure can make a future backlink request much easier - How to ask a former guest to write about your business or list you as a partner - How social media posts can be offered in exchange for coverage without creating a reciprocal-link pattern - Why I would avoid building a large number of obvious reciprocal links - How some guests may write about you without being asked - How to use guest episodes to promote your business to people in your niche - Why you should put your business promo within the first four minutes of a guest episode - How to find potential podcast guests without relying entirely on cold email or DMs - How this strategy can eventually help you build relationships with larger bloggers, journalists, and publications The basic process is simple: 1. Find small blogs and businesses in your niche or adjacent niches. 2. Prioritize people who actively run a website. 3. Invite them onto your podcast. 4. Give them a good interview without immediately asking for anything. 5. Connect with them on social media and stay in touch. 6. Continue publishing so they repeatedly see your work. 7. After a few weeks or a month, approach about an article, partnership mention, or other relevant coverage. 8. As your podcast builds credibility, begin inviting guests with larger and more authoritative websites. Done well, you're not only building backlinks. You're building a network of bloggers, business owners, creators, and eventually journalists in your industry. Those relationships lead to links, partnerships, introductions, coverage, and opportunities that a standard backlink outreach email won't create. I also discuss how I produce guest podcast episodes, how I use social media content alongside the podcast, and how you can use AIPodcastMatcher to find people interested in appearing as guests. ⭐️ AIPodcastMatcher - https://aipodcastmatcher.com/  ⭐️ How I Produce Guest Podcasts in 90 Minutes (That Help Me Rank in Google) - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/how-i-produce-guest-podcasts-in-90-minutes/  ⭐️ How to Get the Highest-Quality Backlinks Possible by Starting a Niche Podcast - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/highest-quality-backlinks-podcast/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Backlink Method Intro 00:18 Why Partnerships Win 01:05 Podcast Lead Gen Basics 02:03 Turn Podcasts Into Links 03:06 Find Targets And Level Up 03:54 Run Great Guest Interviews 04:39 Ask For The Backlink 05:59 Avoid Reciprocal Link Traps 06:37 Tools And Outreach Setup 07:53 Scale Authority And Brand 09:52 Episode Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #linkbuilding #backlinks #searchengineoptimization

E1145: Google just gave SEOs a new feature that could change how publishers build visibility across Search, Discover, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. I break down Google Preferred Sources, how it works, why it matters, and why publishers should pay attention before everyone starts using it. Google Preferred Sources allows users to choose publishers they want to see more often in Google Search experiences. These selections become a user-controlled signal that works alongside Google's ranking systems. I cover: - What Google Preferred Sources is and why Google launched it - Why this could become an important signal for publishers and SEOs - How Preferred Sources connects with Google Discover, Top Stories, AI Overviews, and AI Mode - How to check if your website is eligible to appear as a preferred source - How to add a Preferred Source button to your website - Where to place the button to maximize the chances that readers select your site - How I customized my own Preferred Source buttons using WordPress and Elementor - Why this is not just for news publishers, but can also apply to brands with company blogs and product pages - How domain-level and subdomain-level sites are eligible while subdirectories are not - How SEOs can think about this as an audience-building strategy Google's documentation says Preferred Sources selections do not override relevance. Your content still needs to match user interests and provide value, but this gives publishers a new way to encourage users to tell Google they want more from their website. This is one of the few features where publishers can directly encourage users to create a signal around their website. If you run a website, publish content, work in SEO, or care about Google Discover and AI search visibility, this is something you should understand. I also share how to implement this on a website, where I would place the buttons, and why I think many publishers will overlook this opportunity. ⭐️ Search Engine Journal: Google's Preferred Sources Feature Is Now a Global SEO Signal - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-preferred-sources-feature-is-now-a-global-seo-signal/573591/  ⭐️ Google Developers: Preferred Sources Documentation - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/preferred-sources  ⭐️ Compact Keywords testimonial insert - Rank & Rent SEO: How Ippei Built 130 Sites - and Made $240K From One 15-Hour Website - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muwrS4Dh_R8  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Preferred Sources Breakthrough 00:17 How the Feature Works 01:10 Old Button vs New Popup 02:51 Designing High Converting Buttons 03:41 Where to Place the CTA 04:29 Setup Guide With Claude 05:21 Discover and Ranking Limits 06:07 AI Mode and Global Impact 06:39 Domain Eligibility Rules 07:18 SEO That Makes Money The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

E1144: Google's August 2026 spam update has officially finished rolling out, and we're seeing clear patterns in who got hit, who recovered, and who is winning. The update launched August 18 and completed just three days later on August 21. But the volatility started well before Google officially announced it. Throughout August, sites were reporting major ranking swings, sudden traffic losses, and unexpected recoveries. One of the biggest patterns: scaled content sites are getting crushed. I break down what happened during the August spam update using real sites, Google Search Console screenshots, Reddit posts, Ahrefs & Semrush data, and examples being shared throughout the SEO community. Topics covered: - How the August spam update started affecting sites before its official August 18 launch - Sites publishing 500 to 1,000 pages per day suddenly losing rankings and traffic - The difference between legitimate programmatic SEO and scaled content abuse - Google's policy against scraping, stitching, and combining content without adding meaningful value - A site getting roughly 2,200 organic users per day before its traffic started collapsing - Guru99 falling from an estimated 14 million monthly organic clicks in 2021 to roughly 50,000 today - The pattern of sites rapidly increasing their number of pages while their organic traffic falls - Why "Mount AI" happens when sites use AI to rapidly scale low-value content - Mike King's explanation for why Google may not need to detect AI-generated content directly - How user behavior and site-quality signals can eventually expose bad scaled content - Why generative AI at scale is not inherently spam if the pages actually provide value - An expired-domain case that some SEOs initially blamed on the spam update - Why redirects from acquired or expired domains aren't automatically expired domain abuse - The importance of maintaining search intent when migrating or redirecting pages - SaaS sites that appear to be winning during the August volatility - Why short bottom-of-funnel landing pages are continuing to work - Sites previously hit by Google spam systems suddenly reporting recoveries - Whether this spam update could be followed by another Google core update I revisit Mike King's explanation of Mount AI. His argument is that Google doesn't need to reliably identify whether content was written by AI. Google can initially rank a large new set of pages, collect signals about how searchers respond, and then adjust the site's visibility based on those signals. Publishing 100,000 pages isn't automatically the problem. Publishing 100,000 pages that don't give searchers unique value is. There is a legitimate way to do programmatic SEO at scale. The underlying data, usefulness of the pages, search intent, UX, and reason for those pages to exist all matter. Meanwhile, I'm seeing encouraging movement from SaaS sites. Our own vibe-coded SaaS has been growing throughout August without aggressively scaling content, and I share another newer SaaS using short bottom-of-funnel landing pages that has also been gaining organic clicks. The August spam update is finished. Now we get to see whether the volatility settles down or Google has something else coming next. ⭐️ SE Roundtable: Google August 2026 Spam Update - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-august-2026-spam-update-done-41906.html  ⭐️ Reddit: Who got hit - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO_Marketing_Offers/comments/1vsln4q/comment/p4mlfam/  ⭐️ David Quaid - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid/status/2090046206290386970?s=20  ⭐️ Expired Domain Comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1vrv11e/breaking_google_august_2026_spam_update_is/  ⭐️ Ep 1141 - Can You Launch 100,000 Pages and Survive Google? - https://youtu.be/wNtiygMsRfg  ⭐️ Donmend0 on 𝕏 (site recovery) - https://x.com/donmend0/status/2090438229635879068  ⭐️ Ganesh_S_007 on 𝕏 (site recovery) - https://x.com/Ganesh_S_007/status/2090502537741029874  ⭐️ Ep 1127 - Google's Biggest SEO Leak Changed Everything… But Almost Nobody Adapted - https://youtu.be/fIs1ZSmEJGU  ⭐️ James Dooley - https://youtu.be/EOkrLkKNDrY  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Spam Update Recap 01:03 Scaled Content Fallout 03:32 Spam Policy Breakdown 04:11 Programmatic SEO Wipeouts 05:31 Guru99 Case Study 08:15 Mount AI Explained 10:32 Expired Domain Confusion 12:49 SaaS Sites Winning 13:54 Recoveries and Core Rumors 15:13 Durable SEO 17:06 Episode Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #programmaticseo #seopodcast

E1143: He Did 2,000 Podcasts in a Year Just for SEO Rankings James Dooley has published 2,000 unique podcast episodes this year and is on track to hit 3,000 by the end of the year. But he's not doing it to build a traditional podcast audience. He's doing it for SEO. James breaks down the system he uses to turn short, keyword-focused podcast episodes into Google rankings, video rankings, backlinks, leads, and mentions across AI platforms. His episodes are typically only 5-15 minutes long. Instead of making broad, entertainment-focused shows, he treats each podcast episode like an SEO landing page: one search query, one tightly focused topic, and questions built around the attributes of that topic. We get into exactly how this works, including how James chooses topics, structures episodes, distributes them, and uses podcast syndication as part of a larger SEO strategy. We also discuss why he deliberately targets bottom-of-funnel searches such as "best lead generation company for plumbers," how he approaches competitor keywords, and why video has become such an important part of his search strategy. James explains how his team: - Creates podcast episodes around individual search queries - Keeps most SEO-focused episodes between 5 and 15 minutes - Structures podcast conversations similarly to SEO pages - Targets bottom-of-funnel keywords designed to generate inquiries - Uploads the video to YouTube before distributing the podcast - Uses Transistor to syndicate episodes across podcast platforms - Identifies podcast platforms that provide dofollow and nofollow links - Links podcast descriptions back to highly relevant pages - Works to get syndicated podcast URLs crawled by Google - Uses transcripts to reinforce entities and relationships between topics - Publishes supporting press releases and guest posts - Distributes episodes through social platforms - Uses IMDb as part of his entity and knowledge-panel strategy - Tests publishing similar videos across multiple YouTube channels - Uses slightly different titles and thumbnails when testing distribution - Tries to trigger Google video carousels for targeted searches - Targets competitor names, alternatives, and comparison searches with video - Uses podcast content to support Google rankings and AI visibility We also talk about an important distinction between ranking a video and getting a video recommended by YouTube. James isn't necessarily optimizing these podcasts to become viral YouTube videos. His goal is often much simpler: when someone searches a commercially valuable query, he wants his video to appear. That changes how he thinks about everything from episode length to entertainment value. James also explains why podcast syndication matters beyond YouTube. While YouTube transcripts may primarily be accessible within Google's ecosystem, publishing transcripts and related content elsewhere gives search engines and large language models additional text-based sources connecting people, companies, products, and topics. We get into: - Podcast SEO vs. traditional YouTube growth - Google video rankings - AI search and LLM visibility - Podcast backlinks - Entity SEO - Knowledge panels and KGMIDs - Semantic triples - Press release syndication - Google News and Google Discover - AI-generated podcast videos - HeyGen, ElevenLabs, and Higgsfield - Podcast sponsorships and monetization - Why James is publishing 3,000 episodes this year - How he built a team to handle editing, thumbnails, uploads, and distribution James also shares why he's doing such an extreme amount of content in the first place. After writing eight books in a year, he set himself the goal of producing 3,000 podcast episodes so that when he asks the business owners he works with to publish one episode per week, he can show that he practices what he preaches. This is a detailed look at what happens when podcasting is treated not only as content, but as an SEO distribution system. ⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/  ⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley  ⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/  ⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 2000 Podcasts Results 01:41 Keyword First Podcast Model 03:27 Bottom of Funnel Queries 05:58 Syndication Stack Setup 08:21 IMDb Entity Boosting 10:11 Backlink Lift Explained 12:19 Episode Content Blueprint 15:13 Titles Descriptions Workflow 18:06 Transcript Keyword Seeding 20:38 AI Generated Episodes 24:09 Multi Channel Upload Tests 29:27 Video Carousel Domination 32:17 LLM Transcript Visibility 33:15 Transcripts Press Layers 34:22 Knowledge Panels Per Episode 36:10 Entity Indexing Proof 37:45 Press Release Providers 38:54 Old Google News Hacks 40:54 Podcast Transcript SEO 43:47 Scaling 3000 Episodes 47:34 Guesting and Podmatch 51:01 Monetizing With Sponsors 01:02:14 Avoiding Top Funnel Waste 01:04:39 Wrap Up and Next Debate The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #backlinks #seopodcast

E1142: Reddit citations in ChatGPT just totally collapsed. Promptwatch data shows Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations dropping dramatically in August, falling to below 0.5% after previously sitting around 3-4%. This is the third major Reddit citation drop we've seen, and it raises a bigger question for SEOs: what happens when an AI search strategy built around one platform can disappear overnight? Klaas Foppen, co-founder of Promptwatch, joins me to break down what changed, what may have caused it, and what SEOs should do next. We cover: - Why Reddit citations suddenly fell in ChatGPT - The difference between an AI citation, source, mention, and visibility - Why Reddit can still be accessed by ChatGPT even though it is being cited far less - The August 8 query fan-out change that appears to have reduced Reddit citations - The much larger August 14 drop that Klaas believes may have involved a more deliberate adjustment - Why nobody outside OpenAI knows whether licensing negotiations, user feedback, search quality, or another factor caused the change - How this same dramatic Reddit decline is not showing up across Google AI Overviews and AI Mode - Why SEOs should not abandon Reddit just because ChatGPT is citing it less - The danger of building an entire AI search strategy around Reddit, parasite SEO, or any single third-party platform - Why your own website remains the part of your SEO and AI-search presence that you control - How technical SEO, complete product information, feature pages, comparison pages, landing pages, and fresh content can affect AI visibility - Why listicles are still frequently used for commercial-intent AI queries - Why product pages and landing pages may become more important as AI systems increasingly search official websites directly - Why old-school evergreen informational content may be less valuable when an LLM already knows the answer without searching the web - How OpenAI, Bing, Meta, Exa, and other companies developing or using different search indexes could reshape SEO - Why new AI search indexes could create opportunities for SEOs before their spam detection becomes as sophisticated as Google's - Whether PDFs, research papers, and sites like arXiv could become important sources for AI systems and training data - Why AI search is much less stable than traditional SEO and why tactics that work today can change very quickly The biggest takeaway is not that Reddit is dead. It's that "post on Reddit and get cited by ChatGPT" was never a durable AI search strategy. Reddit can still be a valuable marketing channel. But if your visibility depends entirely on Reddit, another social platform, or one AI search tactic, a single change can wipe out much of that advantage. Build the website. Get the technical fundamentals right. Publish the information customers and AI systems need. Earn mentions across multiple sources. And treat AI search as a moving system that needs to be watched rather than a fixed formula. ⭐️ Klaas Foppen on 𝕏 - https://x.com/forgebitz  ⭐️ Klaas Foppen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaas-foppen/  ⭐️ Promptwatch - https://promptwatch.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Reddit Citations Vanish 00:38 Why The Drop Happened 02:11 Citations Vs Mentions 05:04 Deals And Partnerships 09:25 Other LLMs And User Backlash 11:10 Will Reddit Return 12:39 Diversify Your Marketing 14:02 Future Search Index Shakeup 19:53 What Content Works Now 23:09 Training Data And PDFs 26:10 Query Fanout Direction 27:23 On-Site SEO Foundations 29:53 Promptwatch New Automation 31:59 Wrap Up And Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1141: Can you launch a brand-new website with 100,000 pages and survive Google? That's the question at the center of today's episode with David G. Quaid. A listener sent me a problem he and his friends keep running into: they launch programmatic SEO sites with 10,000 - 100,000 URLs, organic traffic shoots up, and then the sites collapse back to zero. So David and I dug into whether large-scale programmatic SEO is still possible in 2026, where Google may draw the line between a legitimate database and scaled content abuse, and what separates sites that survive from sites that get wiped out. We cover: - Whether launching 10,000 or 100,000 URLs at once is automatically dangerous - Why David might launch a new marketplace or database slowly - The difference between legitimate programmatic SEO and scaled content built primarily to capture search traffic - Why empty location, category, job, or marketplace pages can become doorway-page problems - Why proprietary data can completely change the equation - Whether a site with genuinely useful data could launch at massive scale from day one - Why backlinks, press coverage, branded searches, and other signs of a real business may matter - Why user satisfaction could be one of the biggest differences between programmatic sites that survive and sites that collapse - Click-through rate, pogo-sticking, return searches, and other user signals we think Google may be evaluating - Why publishing 100 pages, checking performance, and then scaling may be safer than immediately publishing 100,000 - How to use Google Search Console to identify pages and queries that may be producing poor user signals - Why misleading page titles can create problems even when they initially generate more traffic - David's prediction for what Google's August spam update could target - Why some publishers may be blaming AI Overviews for traffic losses that are actually ranking losses - How to separate traffic lost to AI Overviews from traffic lost because Google moved your pages down - Why HubSpot's organic decline may have more to do with rankings and changing user behavior than AI simply taking its clicks - Whether Google Search has actually gotten better or worse over the last few years - How far a site can expand into adjacent topics before weakening its existing topical relevance The main question throughout the episode is simple: If you have 100,000 pages that genuinely deserve to exist, can you make all of them available immediately without Google assuming you built the site to manipulate search? David thinks there are conditions where it can work. The harder question is what signals Google needs to see before it trusts you enough to let it work. ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Programmatic SEO Today 00:17 Listener Database Launch Dilemma 01:12 Spam Updates and Scale Risks 03:18 Slow Rollout Strategy 04:25 Empty Pages and Manipulation 07:51 What Scaled Abuse Means 08:34 Proprietary Data Launch Debate 09:39 Grokipedia as Edge Case 12:31 Authority and Brand Signals 14:46 pSEO Example Book Calculator 20:34 Doorway Pages and Permutations 28:09 Phased Scaling and Testing 31:27 When Big Brands Can Launch Huge 32:46 pSEO Shortcut Mentality 33:17 When Programmatic SEO Fails 33:40 Localization and Scalable Pages 34:39 Finding Real Value Add 35:35 Brand Search Entity Mixups 39:28 Crawlers and Cloudflare Blocks 40:20 August Spam Update Predictions 42:15 Recovering From Traffic Drops 45:01 Free vs Freemium Titles 46:04 GSC Iteration Playbook 48:56 Are Google Results Better 50:23 HubSpot and User Signals 55:27 Expanding Into Adjacent Niches 01:00:49 Can 100k URLs Work 01:02:27 Wrap Up and Next Episode The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #programmaticseo #seopodcast

E1140: Claude is now watermarking everything it writes, and the SEO community is worried about what this means for AI content and Google rankings. But there's an important detail: Google likely doesn't have the key needed to verify Claude's watermark. I break down what Anthropic's new watermarking system does, why it's being implemented, what it can and can't prove, and whether any of this should change how SEOs use AI-generated content. Anthropic is adding machine-readable marks to Claude's output as part of its compliance with the EU AI Act. The watermark can remain in text that has been copied and pasted, and Claude-generated files can include provenance metadata. The system is being rolled out across Claude, including its API and third-party platforms. But a watermark doesn't necessarily mean Claude wrote something from scratch. If you give Claude your own writing and ask it to fix grammar, translate it, summarize it, or otherwise process it, the resulting text may still contain the mark. And if no watermark is detected, that doesn't prove Claude wasn't involved. In this episode: - Why Anthropic is watermarking Claude's output - How AI text watermarking works - Why the EU AI Act matters here - Why switching from Claude to another major AI model won't solve anything - What Claude's watermark can and cannot tell you - Why short passages and heavily edited text are harder to verify - Why Anthropic's secret detection key matters - Why Google currently can't validate Claude's watermark - Whether Google could use AI watermarking as an SEO ranking signal - What Ahrefs' research says about AI-generated pages ranking in Google - Why AI content and bad content shouldn't be treated as the same thing - Where AI watermarking could matter for agencies, clients, and contracts - The potential EU disclosure requirements for publishers - Why human review and editorial responsibility matter - My take on whether this changes anything for SEO - Why generic AI content could still create problems even without an AI-content penalty - Why trust, original data, strong opinions, fact-checking, and editorial review matter more than whether AI touched the content - An example of AI-generated content that I genuinely enjoyed - How we're using AI-assisted SEO content on a new SaaS while targeting bottom-of-funnel keywords I also discuss Ahrefs' data on AI content in Google. Their research found AI-generated and heavily AI-assisted pages ranking throughout the search results, including at the top. The bigger issue appears to be something SEO has dealt with long before generative AI existed: bad content. My view is simple: if the output is enjoyable, novel, useful, accurate, and properly reviewed, the fact that AI was involved doesn't automatically make it bad content. The bigger long-term question is what happens to brands that publish large amounts of generic AI content without developing a recognizable voice, adding original information, taking meaningful positions, or earning trust with their audience. AI can help make great content. It can also make a lot of mediocre content very quickly. The difference is what the person using it actually puts into the process. ⭐️ Ahrefs: Claude Now Watermarks Everything It Writes - https://ahrefs.com/blog/claude-now-watermarks-everything-it-writes/  ⭐️ My post on 𝕏 - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2089307227064500665  ⭐️ Ep 1110 - Google's Next SEO Apocalypse: The Scaled AI Content Crackdown Is Coming - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w66ME9-IRQ  ⭐️ Ep 1124 - YouTube's AI Detector Is Punishing Real Creators - Is Google Search Next? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33QKtsBy9As  ⭐️ Super Mario Bros 3 Jazz Lo-fi Remix - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNjuiOd1c1I  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Claude Watermark Panic 00:31 What Watermarking Means 01:58 EU AI Act Compliance 03:08 How Text Watermarks Work 03:58 Limits and Detection Keys 04:25 Google Rankings Impact 06:07 SEO Community Reactions 07:22 My Skeptical Take 08:49 Real Risk Reputation 11:23 AI LoFi Success Story 13:24 Using AI for SEO 14:54 Wrap Up and Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #seopodcast

E1139: Image backlinks work surprisingly well for SEO, and one old experiment found they could even outperform exact-match anchor text links. I break down an SEO experiment from Dan Petrovic that tested four different types of backlinks to see which had the greatest effect on rankings. The test compared: - An exact-match anchor text backlink - A naked URL placed after the target keyword - An image backlink using the target keyword as the image alt text - A "click here" backlink with the target keyword placed near the link The result that stood out: the image backlink with the target keyword in the alt text performed better than every other link type in the experiment, including the exact-match anchor text link. The experiment was conducted in 2013, so I also look at whether the idea still matters today: Linked image alt text is still treated as anchor text for SEO purposes. I also cover more recent research from Kevin Indig and Semrush analyzing 35,000 backlink data points across 1,000 domains, which found that image backlinks correlated more strongly with AI search visibility than text links. Then I get into the practical part: how to actually build backlinks using images. We break down: - Why image backlinks affect search rankings - What Dan Petrovic's anchor text proximity experiment tested - Why the image backlink beat the other link types - How Google uses image alt text as anchor text - Why image backlinks may also matter for visibility in AI search - How to use infographics, charts, photos, maps, and product images for link building - How reverse image search can uncover websites already using your images - David McSweeney's TRUST formula for creating images journalists and bloggers may want to use - How to find topics journalists are already covering - How to turn research and data into simple visual assets - How to find journalists and bloggers who may be interested in your images - Why niche-specific stock photos can continue generating backlink opportunities after you publish them - Why you should still be careful with exact-match anchor text I explain a simple image strategy: create original niche-specific photos, charts, data visualizations, infographics, or other useful images and make them available on stock image platforms. If bloggers, journalists, or other websites use those images, they may credit the source. You can also periodically reverse image search your work to find websites that used an image without attribution and contact them to request a source link. The important point is that link building does not always have to start with asking someone to link to a page. You can create assets people already have a reason to use. ⭐️ SEO Sherpa: SEO Experiments - https://seosherpa.com/seo-experiments/  ⭐️ Dejan Marketing: Anchor Text Proximity Experiment - https://dejanmarketing.com/anchor-text-proximity-experiment/  ⭐️ Growth Memo: How AI Really Weighs Your Links - https://www.growth-memo.com/p/how-ai-really-weighs-your-links-analysis  ⭐️ Ahrefs: Build Links with Images - https://ahrefs.com/blog/build-links-with-images/  ⭐️ Charles Floate's image SEO post - https://x.com/Charles_SEO/status/2021835662538813870  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Image Backlinks Surprise 00:37 Dan Petrovic Experiment Setup 01:56 Results Image Alt Text Wins 02:27 Still Relevant Today 03:09 Link Worthy Image Ideas 03:42 TRUST Formula for Visuals 04:46 Outreach and Promotion 05:02 Stock Photos Backlink Hack 05:50 Reverse Image Search Links 06:28 Avoid Over Optimization 06:38 Optimize Well Find Great Keywords 08:55 Sign Off The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #linkbuilding #backlinks

E1138: How does James Dooley start a brand-new SEO site with 650 industries worth of SEO experience? James walks through how he evaluates a new SEO opportunity from the beginning, including when he'll use a fresh exact-match domain, when he'll buy an aged domain, how he evaluates the backlink profile before buying, and how he turns simple lead generation sites into larger brands. We also get into the economics behind local lead generation, why James thinks SEOs put too much weight on DR, and what "good content" actually means when the goal is to rank and convert. James explains why the strategy changes completely depending on the market. A low-competition local site might be built and earning quickly, while industries like finance or iGaming can require powerful aged domains, significantly more authority, and a completely different risk tolerance. We cover: - How James decides whether a new SEO opportunity is worth pursuing - Why his team analyzes search volume and CPC when entering new industries - Fresh domains vs. aged domains vs. exact-match domains - When an EMD makes sense for local SEO and long-tail keywords - Why competitive finance niches can require established authority - What James looks for before buying an aged domain - Why DR alone can give you a misleading picture of a domain - How he evaluates branded anchors, naked URLs, spam, trust, and backlink quality - The SEO tools and metrics his team combines when analyzing domains - Why an existing Google Business Profile can make a domain more attractive - The economics of buying high-value aged domains - How aggressive iGaming operators can rank repurposed domains extremely quickly - Why James is moving away from the churn-and-burn side of iGaming - How he approaches local lead generation sites - Why 50 targeted service/location pages can sometimes be enough to start - How a small lead gen site can fund the next site and eventually become a portfolio - James's definition of good SEO content - Why some pages can rank with only a few sentences - Why content should be "as short as possible but as long as necessary" - The problem with burying answers inside thousands of words of unnecessary content - How James turns an SEO site into a real brand - Citations, reviews, Google Business Profiles, case studies, awards, social profiles, and third-party reputation signals - How AI makes it easier to distribute brand assets across multiple platforms James has spent years repeating this process across hundreds of industries, so this episode is less about one isolated tactic and more about the decision-making process behind starting an SEO project from zero. If you're building your first site, launching another lead generation property, evaluating an aged domain, or deciding how much authority a new project actually needs, this episode gives you James Dooley's approach from the ground up. ⭐️ Ep 1131 - James Dooley & David Quaid: The SEO "Best Practices" We Ignore - https://youtu.be/jW8hYUn99Uk  ⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/  ⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley  ⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/  ⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Background 00:56 How James Starts Sites 01:19 New Site Context Matters 01:53 EMDs in Finance 03:06 650 Industries Explained 05:39 Aged Domains Strategy 09:05 Tools and Anchor Checks 11:35 iGaming Churn and Burn 13:46 Local Lead Gen Blueprint 14:37 Good Content Definition 16:51 Building a Brandable Site 18:50 David Quaid Call In 19:13 Wrap Up and Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #blackhatseo #digitalmarketing

E1137: Local SEO is changing as Google Maps becomes more AI-driven. I'm joined by Darren Shaw, founder of Whitespark and one of the most respected people in local SEO, to break down Google's Ask Maps AI and what businesses need to do to get recommended. Ask Maps combines Gemini with Google's location data, Google Business Profiles, reviews, Maps activity, and other signals to answer detailed local questions and recommend specific businesses. Darren believes this is where local search is heading, and that traditional Google Maps rankings may eventually become increasingly AI-driven. We cover what actually influences these recommendations and what local businesses should focus on now. In this episode: - What Google Ask Maps AI is and how it differs from normal Google Maps search - Why Darren thinks AI-driven results could eventually become the default experience in Maps - Why ranking well in traditional local search still gets you most of the way toward showing up in Ask Maps - How to fully optimize your Google Business Profile for AI recommendations - Why every service in your GBP should have a detailed description - How Google uses your products, attributes, posts, photos, videos, and social profiles - Why reviews are one of the strongest signals for Ask Maps - How to ask customers for reviews that give Google more useful information about your business - Why review responses may matter more now that AI can reference them - Why you should diversify reviews beyond Google - How to use Ask Maps itself as a local SEO research tool - How to uncover the most common customer complaints and pain points in your market - How to find third-party websites Google references for businesses in your industry - How Ask Maps can reveal information about competitors and service-area businesses - Why Reddit, local communities, and broader brand mentions matter for AI visibility - A simple Reddit strategy for local businesses - Why sponsoring and participating in local events can strengthen your brand presence - Local SEO tactics Darren considers low-value, including Google stacking and local business schema - Why NAP consistency is becoming more important again with AI search - Why citation optimization matters more than obsessing over every minor citation inconsistency - Why your website still has a major influence on Ask Maps - Why you should have separate pages for every major service and sub-service - How FAQs and query fan-out can uncover questions to answer on service pages - Why pricing information should be included on your website - How to use Ask Maps to find obscure services your competitors aren't covering - When competitor comparison pages make sense and when they become manipulative - Why proximity matters less in AI-driven Maps results than traditional local rankings - How personalization changes which businesses different people get recommended - How search history, Maps history, Gemini activity, and other Google data can influence recommendations - Why there may no longer be one universal "#1 ranking" in local AI search - How often Darren recommends refreshing important pages and Google Business Profile content - How to manually measure Ask Maps visibility despite probabilistic results - Why prompt tracking requires multiple searches across multiple AI systems - Darren's highest-priority local SEO actions for businesses that don't have time to do everything Darren's core recommendation is simple: completely fill out your Google Business Profile, create strong pages for every service you offer, add useful FAQs, and consistently collect detailed customer reviews. Those fundamentals mattered before AI, and they remain the foundation for getting recommended by Google Maps AI. ⭐️ Darren Shaw's first time on the pod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awWMG1e5kY  ⭐️ Local Search Ranking Factors: https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/  ⭐️ Whitespark's local SEO software and services: https://whitespark.ca/  ⭐️ The Whitespark Local Update Podcast: https://whitespark.ca/the-whitespark-local-update-podcast/   ⭐️ Darren's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/whitesparkca   ⭐️ Darren's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darrenshawseo/  ⭐️ Darren's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenshawwhitespark/  ⭐️ Darren's Threads: https://www.threads.com/@darrenshawseo  ⭐️ Darren's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/darrenshawseo/  ⭐️ Darren's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@darrenshawseo  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Ask Maps AI Intro 00:57 What Ask Maps Does 03:35 Future of Local Search 04:49 Core Ranking Tactics 06:07 Optimize Your GBP 11:49 Reviews That Drive AI 16:31 Ask Maps Research Hacks 21:54 Branding Signals Matter 23:00 Reddit and Community Playbook 25:17 Local Events and Subreddits 27:55 Local SEO Time Wasters 29:16 Geotags and Google Stacking 30:37 Why Schema Backfires 32:05 Citations and NAP for AI 33:37 Service Pages and FAQs 35:19 Pricing and Hidden Services 37:27 Accordion FAQs and AI Parsing 39:40 Comparison Pages Done Right 42:05 Proximity vs Reputation in AI 44:06 Personalized Ask Maps Results 47:45 Freshness and GBP Posting 50:50 Measuring Ask Maps Visibility 52:04 Prompt Tracking Reality Check 53:47 80-20 Local SEO Checklist 54:52 Whitespark Tools and Wrap-Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #localseo #googlebusinessprofileoptimization #searchengineoptimization #generativeengineoptimization

E1136: Charles Floate has been doing SEO for years, across everything from brand-new sites to companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on backlinks. In this episode, Charles lays out how he approaches SEO from A to Z: starting a site, building authority, finding keywords, structuring pages, getting links, becoming a topical authority, scaling what works, and changing the strategy as a site gets bigger. We get into: - Charles' "zero to 100" strategy for launching a brand-new site - How he uses entity stacking, citations, directories, social profiles, and reference sites to establish a new brand - How many backlinks he would build to a 10-page site vs. a 1,000-page site - Why backlink velocity has to match the size of the site - What actually makes a backlink valuable - Why a backlink that never gets indexed may provide no value - Why Charles doesn't force-index every backlink - How to find your real SEO competitors instead of just your business competitors - How to reverse engineer competitors' backlink profiles - Why Charles looks for referring domains shared across multiple ranking competitors - How smaller companies can beat larger competitors by doing better link due diligence - Why he usually targets long-tail, higher-intent keywords before the biggest keyword in a niche - How he knows when a site has reached topical authority - How topical authority changes the economics of publishing new pages - How Charles thinks about page-level relevance - The weight-loss site that lost most of its revenue after expanding into gardening and composting content - How to expand into adjacent topics without destroying your existing topical focus - How Charles would structure categories, URLs, navigation, and core site pages - His process for building topical maps - How he uses ranking competitors to expand one keyword set into hundreds of related queries - How SEO changes between a new site, a growing site, and an enterprise site - Why enterprise SEO is often easier to rank but harder to execute - When keyword cannibalization becomes a serious problem - How Charles approaches "crawled, currently not indexed" pages - Why refreshing existing content can outperform constantly publishing new content - How optimizing for traditional Google results differs from optimizing for ChatGPT, Claude, and AI Overviews - Semantic triples and how machines understand relationships between entities - Brand mentions, citations, consensus, and AI visibility - Charles' experiment getting an AI Overview to recognize his SEO awards site - Parasite SEO and satellite microsites for taking more positions in long-tail SERPs - What Charles considers the most important ranking factor in traditional Google search - How user engagement signals matter after you start ranking - How hidden keyword stuffing in schema and source code can over-optimize a page - What SEO tactics Charles thinks Google is likely to go after next This is Charles Floate's SEO process from a site with zero authority and zero rankings all the way through large-scale and enterprise SEO. ⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO  ⭐️ Charles Floate on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfloate/  ⭐️ Charles Floate on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesFloate  ⭐️ Charles Floate on Facebook - https://facebook.com/thecharlesfloate  ⭐️ Charles Floate's community - https://seo.stream   💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 SEO Playbook Kickoff 00:40 Meet Charles Floate 01:24 Authority And Links 02:44 Zero To 100 Launch 06:56 Social Profiles Activity 07:48 What Makes A Good Link 10:27 Backlink Indexing Reality 12:24 Reverse Engineer Competitors 18:55 Buying Links And Due Diligence 23:21 Competitor Link Overlap 26:38 Relevance And Topical Focus 31:46 AI SEO And Semantics 35:43 Generic vs Topical Authority 36:43 HubSpot Traffic Drop 38:49 Refresh Content Strategy 40:55 Pivoting Beyond Weight Loss 45:00 Building Topic Bridges 47:50 Site Structure Basics 51:19 Keyword Research Framework 55:52 Topical Maps Explained 57:00 Enterprise vs Small SEO 01:01:10 Indexing Issues Fixes 01:03:55 Content Overlap ROI 01:07:44 CRO Beyond Rankings 01:09:32 Sell Outcomes Not SEO 01:10:43 Auditing Traffic Drops 01:13:42 Common Decline Causes 01:16:20 Quality Score Explained 01:19:16 AI SEO Opportunity 01:22:49 Training Data Tactics 01:25:39 Gaming AI Overviews 01:29:42 Parasite SEO Plays 01:30:48 Ranking Factors Today 01:33:49 Future Updates Focus 01:35:46 Information Gain Framework 01:37:40 Episode Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #linkbuilding #seopodcast

E1135: Matt Hammerton joins me to break down the local SEO system he uses across personal injury law and home services. Matt has been doing SEO since 2009, manages more than 100 Google Business Profiles, owns stakes in multiple home service companies, and currently works with OneLaw, a law group that did $100 million in the first six months of this year. We get into the work behind those numbers: Google Business Profiles, reviews, locations, links, press releases, keyword research, AI search, and the systems Matt has built to manage it all at scale. We cover: - Why Matt believes reviews are the biggest factor in Google Business Profile rankings and Local SEO - How removing just four negative reviews caused one law firm location to jump in local rankings - Why average star rating can matter even when a business already has thousands of reviews - How often Matt runs local ranking scans and why he checks them every few days instead of once a month - How he sets up new Google Business Profiles - How he uses DBAs to put target keywords into legitimate business names - His approach to categories, service areas, descriptions, city pages, and additional locations - Why he has seen GBPs rank without even having a website attached - How he approaches review generation for home service companies and law firms - Why reviews on Yelp, Facebook, Thumbtack, Avvo, and other third-party sites matter for AI search - Why 1,000 Google reviews alone may not be enough to win recommendations from LLMs - How he builds links directly to directory profiles so those profiles rank for branded searches - How controlling page one for "[brand] reviews" affects both searchers and AI systems - How Matt uses Google Ads conversion data to decide which SEO keywords are actually worth targeting - How he combines Search Console data, existing page content, and AI to update pages - How personal injury SEO can be worth so much more per ranking than home services - The client journey after someone finds a personal injury lawyer through search - Why Matt publishes three to five press releases per week for law firms - How he republishes old wins, settlements, awards, and company news to keep them visible - How he uses EIN Newswire and why some press releases stay indexed for a year or longer - Why he puts NAP information in press releases for local SEO - How he uses Manus to research links, write content, prepare submissions, and check published placements - Why he still manually reviews AI-generated content before anything goes live - How he queries multiple LLMs across dozens of keywords to find the directories and sources influencing their recommendations - Why his biggest advice to SEOs is simple: build the system yourself, implement it, test it, and only then hand it off This is a detailed look at how an aggressive local SEO operator manages Google Maps, organic search, reputation, links, PR, and AI search across businesses where a single lead can be worth thousands of dollars. ⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Agency - https://www.brainspikemarketing.com/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthammertonaktaktion  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MattHammerton/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aktaktion/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OnlyDreamers   ⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Label - https://www.onlydreamersmusic.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Meet Matt 01:04 100M SEO Impact 01:57 Scaling 100 Plus GBPs 04:02 Why Personal Injury Pays 08:05 GBP Rankings Are Reviews 10:23 Removing Bad Reviews 12:32 Getting More Reviews 14:33 Launching New GBPs 17:02 DBA Keyword Names 22:32 Categories and Setup 25:03 Review Funnel Tactics 27:49 Website vs GBP Power 30:31 Stop Automating Support 32:58 Reviews Drive LLM Rankings 34:07 Rank Directory Listings 35:24 Link Building With AI 36:52 Own Brand Review SERPs 39:53 Keyword Research Workflow 43:06 Conversion Keyword Patterns 44:51 Personal Injury SEO Value 47:09 Client Journey And Reviews 49:50 Press Releases For SEO 54:34 AI Drafting And QA 57:44 Agency Vs Solo SEO 01:00:24 Press Release Indexing 01:01:52 NAP Citations in Releases 01:03:09 AI Written Press Releases 01:04:31 Aggressive SEO 01:05:23 Link Building Sources and Vetting 01:08:08 Anchor Text Balance and Penguin Lessons 01:10:38 Pre AI Spinning and PBN Blasts 01:12:58 Future Updates and Long Term Growth 01:14:50 Music Marketing Success Story 01:21:14 Viral Stunts and SEO Parallels 01:26:08 Reviews and Entity Visibility 01:27:46 LLM Research and Execution Mindset 01:29:51 Wrap Up and Where to Find Him The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #localseo #legalseo #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1133: Most brands don't want to call themselves "cheap." That's exactly why the word can be such a powerful SEO modifier. I break down an SEO tactic James Dooley shared during our recent three-hour podcast: targeting words like "cheap," "cheapest," "affordable," "low cost," "budget," "inexpensive," and even "free" to stand out in Google and attract searchers who actually care about price. The opportunity exists because there's a disconnect between how brands want to describe themselves and what customers want. Brands want to be "premium." Searchers want something they can afford. And when almost every competing result is using the same words like "best," adding a price-focused modifier can make your result stand out. We cover: - How brands avoid words like "cheap," even when customers search for them - Why "cheap" can make a Page Title more attractive in the search results - Alternatives including affordable, inexpensive, low cost, budget, cheapest, and free - When you should put the modifier at the beginning of your Page Title - When your primary keyword should still come first - How search volume changes the way I would structure the page - How site and page authority affect how aggressively you can change your Page Title - Why lower-volume, bottom-of-funnel keywords often require far less authority - How relevance and search intent fit into the strategy - Why this tactic probably makes no sense for luxury brands - Examples for service businesses, e-commerce, and SaaS - How I would target "best web design agencies" - How I would structure a page targeting "carry-on luggage" - How I would use "affordable" for residential general contractor software - How freemium SaaS companies can use "free" as the modifier - How to combine this strategy with my Page Title formula The basic idea is simple: Most companies are fighting over the same obvious wording. "Best." "Top." "Leading." Meanwhile, customers are thinking: "How much does this cost?" "Can I afford it?" "Is there a cheaper option?" "Is there a free version?" That gap creates an SEO opportunity. I also explain why this gets more nuanced as keywords become more competitive. Sometimes you need the exact target keyword at the beginning of the Page Title, in the URL slug, in the H1, and prominently on the page. With more authority, you have more freedom to write a title designed primarily to win the click. And for under-targeted bottom-of-funnel keywords, the strategy becomes much easier. This episode is a practical breakdown of how I'd actually execute the tactic rather than simply adding the word "cheap" everywhere. ⭐️ Ep 1131 - James Dooley & David Quaid: The SEO "Best Practices" We Ignore - https://youtu.be/jW8hYUn99Uk  ⭐️ Ep 1130 - The $50 Micro-Influencer SEO Strategy Nobody Is Using - https://youtu.be/8jHGa95T0GY  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Cheap Keyword Hack 01:13 Synonyms and CTR Boost 02:04 Agency Keyword Nuance 04:07 Authority Volume Intent 05:04 Ecommerce Carry On Example 06:53 Low Volume High Intent 07:54 Page Title Template 11:10 Final Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #onpageseo #digitalmarketing

E1134: Are traditional CMS platforms like WordPress about to become unnecessary for SEO? TJ Robertson and David Quaid join me to talk about a very different way of building and managing websites: CMS-less sites where bots and AI agents handle publishing, technical fixes, internal links, site updates, analytics, and eventually even parts of optimization themselves. TJ has already been building websites with Claude Code and believes that for many companies, moving away from WordPress will make sense within the next 6-12 months. We get into what these websites look like, what they can do today, where the technology still falls short, and what happens when websites no longer need humans making every individual change. We discuss: - Why TJ is building websites with Claude Code instead of relying entirely on WordPress - How a client could edit a CMS-less website simply by asking an AI agent to make the change - Why changing hundreds of pages at once becomes much easier when the site is controlled through code - TJ's work on a one-button WordPress-to-Claude-Code migration - Why Shopify may be one of the major exceptions to moving away from traditional platforms - How to stop AI-built websites from having the same generic "Claude Code" design - Using Figma with Claude Code to create more customized designs - Why bot-managed websites could automatically update themselves multiple times per day - Websites that update content automatically when the underlying product or database changes - Self-healing websites that detect broken links, broken forms, tracking problems, outdated information, and other issues - Building an SEO bot trained specifically on your website - Replacing parts of the traditional Semrush/Screaming Frog → SEO → developer ticket workflow with automation - Why David thinks there are opportunities to build custom analytics instead of relying entirely on GA4 - Tracking customer journeys and changing pages based on what returning visitors previously viewed - Why AI-generated content itself is not necessarily the problem - The difference between useful automation and dumping thousands of low-quality AI pages into Google - How Google might respond as high-quality automated content becomes possible at massive scale - Why obvious AI writing patterns are becoming a liability - AI satellite sites, exact-match domains, and third-party industry sites - Why having multiple websites could give brands a larger footprint in AI search citations - How satellite sites can give marketing teams room to experiment without changing the main company website - Whether you should connect AI satellite sites to the same Google Search Console account as your main domain - The risks of building third-party sites primarily to promote your own brand - Why websites may eventually expose structured company data directly to AI systems instead of creating thousands of keyword-variant pages - David's argument that LLMs are not actually "AI" by themselves - What SEOs and businesses should start experimenting with right now, even if they have no intention of leaving WordPress yet TJ makes the case that for roughly $200 per month, you can already have AI doing work that previously required an engineering team, and that we are only beginning to figure out what websites built around that capability will look like. The question is no longer just whether AI will write SEO content. It's whether AI will eventually run the website itself. ⭐️ TJ Robertson on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tj-robertson-seo/  ⭐️ TJ Robertson on 𝕏 - https://x.com/SeoRobertson/  ⭐️ TJ Robertson on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TJRobertsonDigital  ⭐️ TJ Robertson on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tjrobertsondigital/  ⭐️ TJ Robertson on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@tjrobertson52  ⭐️ TJ Robertson's Agency - https://tjrobertson.com/  ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 CMS-Less Vision 02:11 Building With Claude 03:55 Clients Edit With AI 05:55 Rapid Prototyping Wins 09:24 WordPress Tradeoffs 12:25 EMDs For GEO 18:40 Avoiding Scale Penalties 25:12 Migration Timeline 27:44 Designing Beyond Generic 29:40 Editing Workflow Debate 33:35 Automated Content Quality 42:04 Google Indexing Limits 43:28 LLMs Not AI 45:06 Scale Spam Signals 47:38 Programmatic SEO Line 50:26 AI Search Changes Content 54:08 LLMs Not True AI 59:03 Satellite Sites Risk 01:05:26 Cheap Sites New Innovation 01:11:02 Avoid AI Content Tells 01:13:33 Skills And Knowledge Base 01:23:03 SEO Bots And Automation 01:25:35 Final Takeaways The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #aiseo #seopodcast

E1132: Somebody asked on Reddit: "What are some of the craziest, most interesting SEO stories and tactics you've come across?" The answers were incredible. I go through the best stories from the SEO Growth subreddit, including a Danish telco that outranked Apple for the keyword "iPhone" within an hour of a keynote. We also look at: - How an article about a random PS5 rumor reached #1 in Google and won the featured snippet - Why answering controversial or highly debated questions directly can create SEO opportunities - How to find strange rumors and unanswered questions people are already searching for in your niche - Why giving a clear answer beats huge publishers, Reddit threads, competitors, and even the manufacturer itself - How marketplace websites have used vendor badges to generate backlinks from businesses across an entire industry - Why badge-based link building has worked so well for directories, marketplaces, awards sites, and other businesses - How some affiliate SEOs have used expired domains and 301 redirects to rapidly increase rankings - Why expired-domain strategies can produce fast results but also carry serious risk - Why you don't necessarily need a powerful domain or thousands of backlinks to rank for valuable keywords - How under-targeted, high-intent keywords can give smaller sites opportunities to compete - Why pages that directly satisfy search intent can naturally earn backlinks over time - How deleting thousands of weak, outdated, cannibalizing pages can actually improve a site's SEO performance - Why content pruning can help sites that have expanded too far beyond their real topical authority One of my favorite lessons from these stories is the PS5 example. During the peak of the PS5 hype, an SEO noticed people debating whether the console should be positioned vertically or horizontally. Major media sites, Reddit threads, competitors, and Sony itself were discussing the subject, but nobody was giving searchers a simple, definitive answer. So he wrote an article targeting the question directly. Within days, it ranked #1 and captured the featured snippet. The lesson is simple: pay attention to the questions, rumors, disagreements, and problems people in your market are already discussing. Then look at the search results. If everyone ranking is dancing around the question instead of answering it clearly, there may be an opportunity to create the page that actually gives searchers what they came for. ⭐️ Reddit: What are some of the craziest, most interesting SEO stories and tactics you've come across? - https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1vhv8si/what_are_some_of_the_craziest_most_interesting/  ⭐️ Ep 1120 - You Don't Need 1,000 Backlinks to Rank on Google (Here's What Actually Works) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dwPZu9rjt8  ⭐️ Ep 976 - The AI Clickbait King: How One SEO Built 9,000 Websites - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8w4-MOG_0M  ⭐️ Ep 1030 - Keyword Cannibalization: Why Your SEO Pages Compete (And How to Fix It) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3jrXrau6kE  ⭐️ Ep 989 - Google's Helpful Content Update DESTROYED the Internet (What Actually Happened) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLUFjYrIEA  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Reddit SEO Stories Intro 00:16 Outranking Apple Fast 01:54 PS5 Rumor Snippet Win 03:18 Turn Rumors Into Pages 04:40 Earn Links Naturally 05:15 Badge Backlink Strategy 06:21 Expired Domains and 301s 07:17 High Intent SEO 08:41 Delete Content to Grow 10:08 Wrap Up and Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #growthhacking

E1131: James Dooley and David G Quaid join me for a three-hour discussion about the SEO "best practices" they ignore, the advice they think gets repeated without enough testing, and what they really look at when trying to rank websites. We start with a simple question: which accepted SEO practices do you not follow? That turns into a much broader discussion about how Google works, why SEO checklists often fail, and why tactics that work on a large authority site can be useless on a new domain. James and David agree on a core principle throughout the episode: test what works, understand why it works, and avoid treating SEO advice as universal. We get into: - Why James largely ignores standard SEO best practices and relies on in-house testing instead - Why doing "more SEO" does not necessarily produce better rankings - How adding more pages can create cannibalization instead of improving topical authority - Examples of pages ranking with almost no content - James' story of ranking #1 with a page that was accidentally published before the content was written - Why a technically poor website with an unnatural links penalty could still rank for extremely competitive terms - The relationship between authority, relevance, traffic and rankings - Whether Google actually understands content quality in the way many SEOs assume - Why "just write good content" is incomplete SEO advice - EEAT and what James and David believe it does and does not affect - Why simply adding author bios is unlikely to fix a struggling website - Google quality raters, RaterHub and manual transparency actions - When EEAT considerations may matter more for finance, gambling, medical and other high-consequence searches - Why YMYL may need to be considered at the query level rather than treating an entire industry the same way - Schema: where it is necessary and where adding more schema probably will not improve rankings - Why job, flight, hotel and similar structured search features are different from ordinary webpages - Backlinks, PageRank and why authority still matters - Why comparing backlink counts alone can give you the wrong conclusion - Branded search and whether increased branded searches can influence broader rankings - Using search behavior, autocomplete and suggested searches to strengthen associations between a brand and a topic - Click-through rate and how James approaches CTR testing - Why advice from SEOs working on huge brands may not translate to a brand-new website - Exact-match domains and partial-match domains - Why both James and David dislike having a single website as the only source of SEO traffic - Using multiple sites to reduce single points of failure - How James evaluates aged and expired domains using data from multiple SEO tools instead of relying on DR or DA alone - Why looking at trends and historical data matters more than blindly trusting a single authority metric - Contextual bridging and how to move from easier topics into increasingly competitive search terms - Why topical relevance determines which keywords a website realistically has the authority to target - How Google Search Console can reveal search demand that traditional keyword tools miss - Ranking social profiles and videos in Google - SEO in an AI and LLM-driven search environment - Why David believes SEO remains one of the best ways to reach someone at the exact moment they are looking for something A recurring theme in this conversation is that SEO is contextual. A tactic can be useful on one site and pointless on another. Schema can be required for one search feature and irrelevant to another. An author bio can matter in a transparency review without being the reason a normal commercial page ranks. A change that produces huge results across one million pages may have almost no practical value for a small local business. Instead of building SEO around a checklist, James and David argue for understanding the underlying system: relevance, authority, search behavior, internal relationships between pages, external links and real-world testing. This is the longest conversation I've recorded, and we had enough time to get past the usual surface-level SEO arguments and into the reasoning behind how both James and David actually approach ranking websites. ⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/  ⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley  ⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/  ⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/  ⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley  ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Best Practices Debate 01:44 Checklist SEO Myths 04:15 Authority Over Quality 06:20 SEO Case Studies 12:02 Content Quality Reality 21:21 EEAT Framework Clash 24:23 Why EEAT Falls Apart 32:25 Branded Search Signals 35:58 Brands Win on CTR 36:53 Autosuggest Brand Seeding 38:06 CTR Manipulation Done Right 39:56 Real Case Study EMD Launch 42:42 EEAT Myths vs Reality 44:02 RaterHub and Transparency Penalties 48:18 When EEAT Applies YMYL 01:01:53 Schema When It Matters 01:08:14 FAQ Schema and PAA Pages 01:12:40 Relevance Times Authority Framework 01:14:32 CTR Weakens Authority 01:15:19 Stop Anthropomorphizing Google 01:16:19 Bad Advice From Big Brands 01:20:07 Tribalism And Schema Wars 01:23:16 Debate Culture And Testing 01:26:47 CDN Fight And Ego 01:30:04 Penalties And Core Updates 01:31:35 Google Engineering Under Hood 01:38:07 Intent Shifts And Traffic Tiers 01:39:48 Listicles And SEO Creativity 01:42:26 LLMs Feed On Lists 01:53:58 AI Mode And Ad Economics 01:56:20 Index Moat And AI Race 02:00:03 Why Google Still Wins 02:00:42 Search Is Not The Real Battle 02:01:43 LLMs Need New Vectors 02:03:28 Best Time For SEO 02:05:09 SEO Demand From CEOs 02:07:36 AI Makes Building Easy 02:10:05 SEO Interest Explodes 02:11:22 Brand Building Myth 02:13:18 Chunking For AI Overviews 02:14:31 Using Every Tool 02:17:55 No Perfect Tool Stack 02:20:35 Data Driven Domain Buying 02:24:20 LLM Citations For Outreach 02:27:58 EMDs To Reduce Risk 02:31:59 Republish And Reuse Content 02:33:18 Steal Winning Slugs 02:35:11 Cheap Keyword Modifier 02:35:46 Search Console Goldmine 02:37:05 Social Linking Risks 02:39:56 Google As Traffic Engine 02:43:34 Tools Cost And Trials 02:47:17 Starting From Zero 02:51:16 Blogspot Ranking Playbook 02:54:16 Topical Bridging Explained 03:00:17 Strategy Over Keywords 03:04:05 Thanks And Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #seotips #seostrategy

E1130: Micro-influencer SEO is one of the most overlooked ways to get your brand mentioned across Google, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and AI search tools. I break down a simple strategy: instead of paying for generic press releases or chasing influencers with huge audiences, work with tiny creators whose videos are already being indexed and ranked by search engines. A micro-influencer with only a few hundred or a few thousand followers can still publish content that appears in Google for months or even years. And in many cases, the cost can be as little as $25 to $50 per creator. I cover: - Why micro-influencers can be useful for SEO even if they have a small audience - How to check whether an influencer's videos are being indexed by Google - How to test their past content before paying them - Why follower count is not the most important metric for this strategy - Using high-intent keywords that competitors are ignoring - How to structure an influencer's video description around a target keyword - Why the target keyword should appear near the beginning of the description - How to coordinate multiple creators around the same keyword and brand - How to support those creator posts with a page on your own website - Where to place the keyword in your page title, URL, H1, and opening copy - Why YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok matter beyond their own platforms - How video content can continue ranking long after it is published - Why social platforms are increasingly being used as search engines - How video descriptions can influence what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI systems cite - Why authentic creator content can be more useful than a generic press release I also walk through a specific example using the keyword "residential general contractor software." The basic process is: - Find a micro-influencer in your niche - Copy the description from one of their recent videos - Search that exact description in Google - Check whether the video is indexed - Look at older videos to see how long their content tends to stay indexed - Find a high-intent keyword that is not being targeted heavily - Pay the creator to make a relevant video around your product or company - Give them an SEO-focused description to use - Repeat the process with several creators - Create or optimize a page on your website around the same keyword The goal is not simply influencer reach. The goal is to create multiple relevant pieces of content that associate your brand with a specific high-intent search term across platforms that Google and AI systems already crawl and reference. ⭐️ The Gary Vaynerchuk episode - https://youtu.be/EUnV-xaH32k  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Micro Influencer SEO Edge 00:56 Find Creators That Rank 01:37 Pitch With Overlooked Keywords 02:04 Write Descriptions For SEO 02:50 Dominate With Multi-Platform Posts 03:44 Social Search Is Exploding 04:08 Benefits And LLM Impact 04:18 Fake Reviews And Citations 05:01 Why This Tactic Wins 05:46 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #influencermarketing #generativeengineoptimization #seo

E1129: The further a source is from your company's control, the more likely AI systems may be to trust it. Kaleigh Moore explains her "Source Signal Stack," a four-level framework for understanding how brands earn visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other AI search tools. A company can control its website, blog, and social accounts. It has less control over what employees, independent creators, customers, journalists, and online communities say. According to Kaleigh, those independent sources can carry more weight because they are harder for a brand to manufacture. Kaleigh spent 10 years running a content marketing agency and working with companies including Shopify, Stripe, and Amazon Business. After AI changed the content industry, she enrolled in a graduate program at Harvard to study how large language models are built. She now researches AI search visibility, creates content, and publishes the Context Window newsletter. We cover: - How AI systems form an impression of a brand across the internet - The four levels of Kaleigh's Source Signal Stack - Why company-owned content may be the weakest trust signal - Why Reddit discussions, podcasts, earned media, and independent mentions matter - How named experts can help companies become associated with specific subjects - Why brands should create original frameworks and repeat clear, consistent language - How LinkedIn articles can reach the top of Google quickly - How Kaleigh ranked LinkedIn articles at number one within 24 hours - How short YouTube videos helped her earn citations in Google AI Overviews - Why creators may become increasingly important for AI search visibility - What "Creator AEO" means and how companies can work with outside experts - Why one-off sponsored posts are less useful than long-term creator relationships - How to check whether an influencer's existing content ranks before paying them - Why a small creator with ranking content may be more valuable than a large creator - How long video descriptions can help search engines and AI tools understand content - Why companies should stop publishing anonymous blog posts - How scaled AI content can create poor user signals - Why readers can usually recognize content written entirely by AI - How Kaleigh uses AI as a research and thinking partner without handing over her voice - Why conversational writing, personal stories, and unusual details are difficult to copy - Why founders should publish from personal LinkedIn accounts instead of relying only on company pages - How six months of daily LinkedIn posting created inbound leads and speaking opportunities - Why brands need to think and operate more like media companies - How podcasts can build relationships with bloggers, journalists, and potential customers - Why offline events can produce online mentions, social posts, and backlinks - How AI is changing the way businesses research and purchase software - Why buyers increasingly use AI during long and expensive evaluation processes - Why citation counts alone may be an unreliable measurement The central lesson is that AI visibility cannot be created only through changes to your website. Brands need recognizable experts, useful content, independent discussion, trusted relationships, and evidence that exists seemingly outside their direct control. The companies that understand this are the ones that appear when people ask AI tools what to buy, who to trust, and which solution to choose. ⭐️ Kaleigh Moore's newsletter, Context Window - https://kaleigh-moore.beehiiv.com/  ⭐️ Kaleigh Moore on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaleighmoore/  ⭐️ Kaleigh Moore on 𝕏 - https://x.com/kaleighf  ⭐️ Kaleigh Moore on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@aisearchlady  ⭐️ The Source Signal Stack - https://www.kaleighmoore.com/blog/2026/4/22/the-source-signal-stack  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Kaylee Background Pivot 01:54 AI Changes Marketing 04:25 LinkedIn UGC SEO Hack 06:00 Repurposing Content Systems 11:51 Source Signal Stack 17:26 Future of Blogging Audio 23:30 Human Authors Beat Slop 27:17 Using AI Without Losing Voice 36:06 Creator AEO Partnerships 39:01 Long Cut Consistency 40:48 LinkedIn Daily Reps 41:29 X vs LinkedIn Posting 42:36 Which Platform Pays 43:09 Journalism Links Debate 47:30 SEO Needs Media Company 48:24 Podcasting For Backlinks 51:50 Offline SEO Flywheel 55:02 Ecommerce Community Lessons 57:48 Time Compression Burnout 58:53 AI Search Newsletter Workflow 01:02:19 Winning AI Evaluations 01:04:14 Micro Influencers Parasite SEO 01:09:21 Growing On X 01:12:49 Lightning Round Wrap 01:17:00 Final Thanks And Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #contentmarketing #generativeengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1128: Local SEO is changing as Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI systems influence how people find and evaluate local businesses. I'm joined by Joy Hawkins and Caleb Ulku for a detailed discussion about what is working in local SEO now, which common tactics are becoming less effective, and how businesses should prepare for AI-powered local search. Joy and Caleb compare what they are seeing across client accounts, ranking tests, Google Business Profiles, local packs, AI-generated recommendations, website content, reviews, links, and conversion rates. Topics covered: - How large language models evaluate local businesses and decide which companies to cite - Why local businesses may need content that clearly explains pricing, processes, outcomes, and service details - How awards and industry-specific directories can influence AI recommendations - Why winning an award is not enough unless the business also promotes it clearly on its website - How AI-powered local packs may reduce the importance of Google review volume and frequency - Why Yelp, Facebook, Reddit, and other third-party platforms are becoming more important for local visibility - How AI systems read the actual language inside reviews instead of only looking at star ratings - Why businesses should encourage customers to describe their experience and outcome in their reviews - The risks of asking for, buying, or incentivizing reviews on different platforms - Why fake listings, fake reviews, rank-and-rent listings, and other forms of Google Business Profile spam continue to create problems for legitimate businesses - How business hours can affect local rankings and why Google's written guidelines do not always match what works in practice - Whether keyword-stuffed Google Business Profile names will continue working as AI local results become more common - Why improving a local business website's design can increase leads without rebuilding the entire website - How AI tools can help businesses improve landing pages, buttons, coupons, images, page layouts, and conversion rates - How Joy and Caleb use AI to produce content without publishing generic rewrites of competing pages - Why original interviews, customer stories, project details, pricing information, measurements, timelines, and outcomes make content more useful - Why publishing dozens or hundreds of similar AI-generated pages can become a liability - How to approach location pages, service-area pages, and multi-location business websites - When separate location pages compete against each other and when combining locations may produce better results - Why press releases appear to have lost much of their previous influence on rankings and AI citations - Why exact-match anchor text, scaled link building, and guest posting have become increasingly risky - Which local link-building methods still work, including sponsorships, charities, community organizations, events, youth sports, and relevant award sites - What to examine when a website's organic traffic has been declining for several years - How excessive informational content, weak search intent, and expansion beyond a site's authority can damage performance - Why some websites need content consolidation, pruning, restructuring, or partial rebuilding - How local rank maps and Google Search Console data can reveal missing topical and geographic relevance - How Google Business Profile categories and services can guide website structure and internal linking - Where Joy and Caleb disagree about URLs, internal links, location pages, and duplicate content - Why CTR manipulation and driving-direction manipulation may work temporarily but can create serious long-term risks - Why tactics that stop working as soon as you stop paying for them are difficult to build a reliable business around This conversation is for local business owners, SEO consultants, agency owners, marketers, lawyers, home-service companies, and anyone trying to understand how local search is changing. ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's Agency - Sterling Sky: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/  ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/SterlingSkyInc  ⭐️ Joy Hawkin's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyhawkins/  ⭐️ Local Search Forum - https://localsearchforum.com/  ⭐️ Caleb Ulku on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@calebulku  ⭐️ Caleb Ulku - https://calebulku.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Meet the Local SEO Pros 00:34 Getting Recognized IRL 02:02 Local SEO in the LLM Era 04:31 Awards as AI Signals 07:52 Paying for Credibility 12:34 Reviews Beyond Google 15:47 Yelp and Reddit Trust 18:50 Spam and Fake Listings 23:40 Loopholes That May Die 25:50 Big Missed Opportunities 31:35 AI Content That Ranks 36:38 AI Content Scaling Trap 37:12 Unique Content vs Relevance 38:24 Citygate Pages Risk 39:53 Multiple Locations Strategy 41:14 Press Releases Decline 43:08 Anchor Text Crackdown 43:55 Local Link Building Wins 48:46 Traffic Drops and Audits 55:22 GBP Landing Page Fixes 58:03 Citations and CTR Hype 01:02:27 Fake Reviews and Takedowns 01:05:44 Site Structure and URLs 01:10:00 30 Day Action Plan 01:11:25 Wrap Up and Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #localseo #localsearchengineoptimization #localmarketing #seo

E1127: Google's biggest SEO leak gave marketers more information about how search works than almost any event in the industry's history. But according to Mike King, most SEO strategies, tools, and reporting systems barely changed after the leak. Mike explains what the leaked Google API documentation confirmed, what it revealed about links and ranking systems, and why the SEO industry has failed to act on some of its most important findings. We break down Google's different index tiers, why a backlink's value may depend on where the linking page sits in the index, and why common third-party metrics such as Domain Authority and Domain Rating may not tell you what Google actually values. Mike also explains how Google uses vector embeddings to understand pages, passages, websites, authors, brands, and entities. This changes how marketers should think about relevance, authority, mentions, links, and content creation. We also go deep into AI search and how platforms such as ChatGPT retrieve and evaluate information. Topics covered include: - What Google's API leak confirmed about ranking systems - Why Mike believes the SEO industry failed to adapt - How Google separates content into different index tiers - Why links from pages with rankings and traffic may carry more value - Why Domain Authority and Domain Rating can be misleading - How vector embeddings help Google understand relevance - Why brand mentions can sometimes matter more than backlinks - The difference between optimizing for prompts and query fan-outs - How ChatGPT breaks a prompt into multiple search queries - Why comprehensive content can create more chances to appear in AI answers - How to inspect the searches ChatGPT performs behind the scenes - Why AI search should not be treated as another version of traditional SEO - How brands should measure AI visibility, citations, accuracy, and performance - Why Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, earned media, and your website all matter - How content format affects whether AI systems select your page or video - Why starting your own subreddit may help protect your brand's position - The biggest mistake companies make with AI-generated content - Why publishing an article from a single prompt often produces weak results - How human review, original sources, structured prompts, and subject experts improve AI content - Why Google may rely more on user behavior than unreliable AI-content detection - Which older SEO tactics are returning because of AI search - What "relevance engineering" means - Why future marketing teams may need SEO, PR, UX, content, data, and engineering skills - Why SEOs should learn to build tools and test AI platforms directly Mike also shares a specific AI search case study involving 499 response codes. His team found that ChatGPT was abandoning page requests because the client's website took too long to respond. After identifying the problem in the site's log files and improving response speed, the client's AI search visibility increased by roughly 300% over three months. Mike's practical recommendation is simple: Check your server logs for 499 errors. Identify the affected URLs. Improve page speed, especially time to first byte. According to Mike, fixing this problem can improve AI search performance in 30 days or less. This conversation is for SEOs, founders, content teams, PR professionals, and marketing leaders trying to understand how discovery is changing across Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Bing, YouTube, Reddit, and other search surfaces. ⭐️ Mike King's agency, iPullRank - https://ipullrank.com  ⭐️ Mike King's music - https://verywellversed.com  ⭐️ Mike King on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkingphilly/  ⭐️ Mike King on 𝕏 - https://x.com/iPullRankAgency  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:17 Google Leak Takeaways 05:44 Index Buckets Explained 07:50 Embeddings and Entities 09:19 Mentions vs Links 11:51 Earning Mentions Tactics 14:27 Black Mirror Launch 16:05 Seeding Clips and Ads 19:15 Leak Frenzy and Twiddlers 22:14 Optimizing for AI Search 23:50 Inspecting Query Fanout 26:18 Fanouts vs Keywords Strategy 30:01 C-Suite Measurement Framework 31:05 Input Metrics That Matter 31:43 Why It Is Not Just SEO 33:01 Tooling For Measurement 33:38 Query Fan Out Research 34:54 RAG Pipeline Visibility Gaps 37:06 Who Should Lead GEO 38:46 Pilot Win Fixing 499s 42:09 Getting Into Training Data 44:22 Relevance Engineering Explained 48:04 Content Formats For AI Search 49:29 Using Reddit Without Astroturfing 51:58 AI Content Mistakes To Avoid 54:10 How Google Judges AI Content 57:09 Future Of Niche Publishing 59:01 Unpopular SEO Take And Skills 01:02:44 One Action For 90 Days 01:03:04 Wrap Up And Where To Follow The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1126: Breaking down one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO: Google Search Console. David Quaid returns to the podcast, sharing his screen, showing what is really going on. Many SEOs judge performance by looking at clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position. But those numbers, by themselves, rarely tell you why a page is succeeding or failing. Instead, we explain how to use Google Search Console to understand what Google is actually testing, which queries matter, when pages are competing against each other, and how experienced SEOs diagnose ranking problems. Topics covered include: - Why clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position can be misleading - How to analyze Search Console at the page and query level - Why average metrics often hide what's really happening - Understanding Google's ranking and testing process - How Google experiments with pages before rankings stabilize - Why keyword-level analysis is more valuable than site-wide metrics - Identifying keyword cannibalization using Search Console - When keyword cannibalization is worth fixing - and when it isn't - How to determine whether a ranking problem is caused by authority, relevance, or user behavior - Why page titles past page 1 rarely improve CTR - How to use Search Console alongside a SERP tracking tool - Looking for patterns in page history instead of reacting to daily fluctuations - Why Google hides parts of Search Console query data - How Google groups searches into keyword clusters - Using Search Console to spot intent mismatches - Why some pages rank for keywords you never targeted - How to decide when to republish, retarget, or rewrite content - Building a keyword universe instead of tracking vanity metrics - Why CEOs and marketing leaders should know their most valuable keywords The breakdown also covers: - Google's testing periods for new pages - Search intent versus page intent - Topical authority and relevance - Search Console filters and query analysis - SERP reports and keyword tracking - Common mistakes beginners make when evaluating SEO performance - How experienced SEOs interpret ranking volatility - Google Knowledge Panels and entity updates - Why EEAT discussions are often misunderstood - What YMYL actually means in practice If you've ever looked at your Google Search Console dashboard and wondered whether your SEO is actually working, this episode explains what to focus on - and what to ignore. ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Welcome Back David 00:35 SEO Castle Metaphor 00:48 Reddit GSC Metrics 02:34 Why Macro Stats Mislead 03:55 Keywords And SERP Reports 06:30 Click Zone And Titles 07:52 Creating A New Query 10:54 Regex And Query Filters 12:37 Knowledge Panel Name Edit 17:10 Hidden Queries In GSC 19:29 Google As CTR Engine 22:02 Testing And SERP Fluidity 25:24 Why GSC Data Lags 27:30 Finding Cannibalization 31:36 Fixing SEO Expert Overlap 35:37 When Cannibalization Matters 35:50 Diagnosing With SERP Tools 39:23 GSC Drops And Page Deltas 41:55 Rebuild Pages And Retarget 43:04 Newbie GSC Starting Points 45:28 Keyword Research And Relevance 48:09 What Data To Share Online 49:49 Keyword Universe For Leaders 52:38 SERP Fluctuations And Alerts 55:31 EEAT And YMYL Reality Check 01:05:17 Historical Trends And Tagging 01:10:49 Debates LLMs And Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #googlesearchconsole #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing

E1125: A page can target an easy keyword, match the search intent, and still fail to stay indexed or rank. I explain why republishing that page under a new URL may give Google a reason to evaluate it again using the topical authority your website has built since the page was first published. I experienced this with a page I originally published in March 2023. The keyword was easy, the page was properly optimized, and few competing websites were directly targeting the query. However, my website did not have enough topical authority when the page was first published. The page briefly reached the number-one position about a year and a half later, but it eventually disappeared from the index again. In March 2025, I republished the same content under a slightly different URL and redirected the old URL to the new one. Less than a month later, the page was ranking number one for its target keyword. It has remained in that position since. The content did not need to be rewritten. The main change was the URL. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why a page may fail to rank even when it targets a low-competition keyword - How your website's topical authority can affect a page when it is first published - Why an older page may continue to underperform after your site becomes more authoritative - How publishing the page under a new URL can lead to a new evaluation - Why the old URL should be redirected to the new URL - How to determine whether a keyword is genuinely being targeted by competing websites - Why keyword tracking is necessary for finding pages that should be performing better - How organic clicks and relevant backlinks can strengthen your authority within a topic - When this method may be worth testing on one of your own pages The basic process discussed in the episode is: - Find a page targeting a keyword that should be attainable - Confirm that the keyword appears in your title and URL - Check whether competing pages are directly targeting the same keyword - Confirm that the page has consistently failed to stay indexed or rank - Create a new URL by making a small, relevant change to the slug - Publish the existing content under the new URL - Add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL - Track the target keyword to see whether the new page begins ranking This is not about changing URLs across your entire website. It is a specific test for pages that appear to be properly optimized but were originally published before the website had enough relevance or authority in the topic. The episode also includes an excerpt from a previous conversation with David Quade explaining why Google treats each URL as a separate page and why a new slug can give the content a new start. ⭐️ The Magic Pill of SEO: Topical Authority - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/magic-pill-seo-topical-authority/  ⭐️ 10-Minute SEO Hack That Took My Page from Invisible to #1 on Google - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/10-minute-seo-hack-that-took-my-page-from-invisible-to-1-on-google/  ⭐️ Ep 846 - The SEO Playbook That Actually Works: PageRank, Topical Authority & Real Results - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eK5-TpaiPw  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Indexing Problem Setup 00:44 Republish With New URL 01:44 Topical Authority Explained 02:36 Case Study Timeline 03:36 David Quaid Google Canon 05:17 New Slug Fresh Start 05:34 Track Keywords And Republish 06:17 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #digitalmarketing

E1124: YouTube's AI detection system classified videos from Kurzgesagt as AI-generated spam, even though the videos are made with love by ducks and people. That mistake sharply reduced distribution for one of the largest science channels on YouTube. The affected video performed well on the usual quality signals: - People clicked at an above-average rate - Viewers watched for longer than usual - Audience feedback was positive But the video still became the channel's worst-performing upload since 2013. YouTube later confirmed that its automated systems had incorrectly identified the channel's content as AI-generated material. We look at why that matters for SEO. Google and YouTube are both part of Alphabet, and both platforms are working to detect large-scale AI spam. Research connected to YouTube has described systems that can analyze patterns across text, media, accounts, and publishing networks. These systems look for signals such as: - Repeated AI-generated text patterns - Similar text embeddings across many accounts - Shared templates and sentence structures - Repeated terms and phrasing - Coordinated publishing behavior - Groups of sites or accounts using similar content systems - Poor engagement signals across a larger network The concern is that these systems will not always distinguish between low-quality automated content and legitimate work. A real creator, publisher, or business could be affected because its content happens to share patterns with a larger group of AI-generated pages. We cover: - What happened to Kurzgesagt - Why YouTube reduced the reach of the channel's video - How automated AI detection can make mistakes - Why this incident matters for Google Search - How Google may identify scaled AI content - Why common AI writing tools can create detectable patterns - How default prompts and templates can make websites look similar - Why an entire group of sites could be judged together - How user behavior may influence spam classification - What website owners should review before the next major update - What to do if legitimate content is caught in an algorithmic crackdown - Why continuing to publish and improve still matters after a traffic loss Questions to ask about your own content: - Does it follow Google's spam policies? - Does it give the searcher the information they expected? - Does it sound like it was written for a specific audience? - Does it contain repeated generic phrases found across many other websites? - Are you publishing large amounts of content with the same structure? - Are you relying on default AI settings without substantial editing? - Are there obvious AI writing patterns throughout the site? - Are users clicking your pages and quickly returning to the search results? - Does the site contain original experience, examples, opinions, or research? - Would the content still be useful if search engines did not exist? This does not mean every site using AI will be penalized. The larger risk is producing content at scale that looks, reads, and performs like content from low-quality automated networks. The goal should be to create pages that are useful, specific, accurate, and clearly made for the person searching. I also discuss the HouseFresh recovery. The site lost most of its Google traffic after the Helpful Content Update, continued publishing and marketing its work, and later grew well beyond its previous traffic level. An algorithmic loss can be severe, but it does not always have to be permanent. ⭐️ Ep 1110 - Google's Next SEO Apocalypse: The Scaled AI Content Crackdown Is Coming - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w66ME9-IRQ  ⭐️ Kurzgesagt writeup - https://x.com/Kurz_Gesagt/status/2083191397981561232  ⭐️ Google Research Shows How AI Spam Can Be Detected - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-generated-ai-detected/579987/  ⭐️ Glenn Gabe - https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2067951984187949532  ⭐️ Ep 1083 - Google's New AI Spam Detector Could Wipe Out Entire SEO Networks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I78IQS99EwU  ⭐️ Ep 999 - How to Humanize AI Content (Before It Destroys Your SEO) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8CoElpldtk  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 AI Crackdown Warning 00:34 Kurzgesagt Gets Flagged 01:38 YouTube Confirms Bug 02:34 Why It Matters for SEO 03:22 How AI Spam Is Detected 04:51 Protect Your Content 06:48 If You Get Hit, Persist 07:56 Consistency Mindset 10:17 Final Thanks and Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #googleupdate #growthhacking

E1123: Claude shared conversations were appearing in Google, Bing, and other search engines, exposing information that users may never have expected to become publicly searchable. The problem was not caused by a complicated search engine failure. It came down to a basic technical SEO mistake: the shared pages were accessible to search engines without the correct indexing controls in place. In this episode, I break down what happened, why the reporting around the story created additional confusion, and what the incident shows about the importance of involving experienced SEOs in product and website decisions. Topics covered: - How Claude shared chat URLs became publicly searchable - The types of sensitive information reportedly found in indexed conversations - Why a public URL can be discovered even when users think it is only being shared with one person - Why robots.txt does not guarantee that a URL will stay out of search results - How a noindex directive works - Why blocking a page in robots.txt can prevent search engines from seeing its noindex directive - The mistake Anthropic made when handling Claude shared pages - The incorrect SEO advice included in some reporting about the incident - What Google's documentation says about robots.txt and noindex - Why search engines are not responsible for deciding which website pages should remain private - How website owners can control which pages are crawled, indexed, and displayed in search results - Why sensitive pages should be protected at the product and technical level - How ChatGPT shared conversations created a similar indexing problem in 2025 - How SEOs used indexed AI-generated pages for parasite SEO - Why some old Claude Artifact pages may still appear in Google - What this incident reveals about the continued importance of technical SEO A key distinction discussed in the episode is the difference between crawling and indexing. A robots.txt rule can prevent a search engine from crawling a page, but it does not necessarily prevent the page's URL from appearing in search results. If Google discovers the URL through links or other sources, it may still index the URL without being able to read the page. A noindex directive tells a search engine not to include a page in its index. However, the crawler must be able to access the page to see that directive. When a page is blocked through robots.txt, the crawler may never see the noindex instruction. This is why combining a robots.txt block with an on-page noindex directive can create problems. The crawler is blocked before it can read the instruction telling it not to index the page. The broader lesson is straightforward: - Decide which pages should be public - Decide which pages should appear in search engines - Do not assume that an unlisted URL is private - Use the correct technical controls - Test how search engines can access sensitive page types - Include SEO specialists when building sharing, publishing, and privacy features - Remove sensitive information at the source instead of relying only on search engine directives SEO is not only about increasing rankings or generating traffic. It also includes controlling what search engines can discover, crawl, index, and display. When those controls are handled incorrectly, the result can be a privacy problem, a security problem, and a reputational problem. ⭐️ Om Patel's Claude post - https://x.com/om_patel5/status/2081218866839966116  ⭐️ What excites you in SEO - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2083151456685769104  ⭐️ Barry Schwartz writeup - https://searchengineland.com/google-indexed-claude-chats-because-anthropic-didnt-block-your-private-chats-from-search-engines-483748  ⭐️ Google's robots.txt instructions - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7489871  ⭐️ Ep 757 - Google Is Indexing ChatGPT Conversations?! Huge SEO Opportunity (And Risks) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LfNTcTJ86M  ⭐️ Ep 788 - Rank #1 on Google in 5 Hours with Claude Artifacts (AI Parasite SEO) - https://youtu.be/nYOYNPtjS5g  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Claude Share Leak 01:02 SEO World Reacts 01:44 What Wired Missed 04:00 Robots.txt Disallow vs Noindex 05:34 Google Policies Explained 06:46 ChatGPT Repeat Mistake 08:21 Claude Artifacts Still Indexed 10:07 Wrap Up and Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #anthropic

E1122: What does an SEO actually do every day? The answer depends on the stage of the website. The work required for a brand-new site is very different from the work required for a site that already ranks, generates revenue, or has an established presence in its market. I break down the day-to-day responsibilities of an SEO across three stages: - A brand-new website - A website that is already ranking - A large, established website For a new site, an SEO often has to handle nearly everything. That includes planning the site structure, researching keywords, creating pages, building links, checking technical issues, and making sure the website is designed to grow. For a ranking site, the focus begins to change. You have real search data, existing authority, and pages that can be improved. Your work becomes more focused on expanding rankings, fixing keyword cannibalization, improving declining pages, and using internal links to support more competitive keywords. For an established site, SEO becomes a combination of strategy, prioritization, management, and quality control. You may be working with thousands of keywords, multiple departments, outside agencies, technical teams, content marketers, and public relations teams. You will learn: - How to plan the information architecture of a new website - How keyword research should influence subfolders and site structure - Why every important page should be connected through internal links - How to avoid creating orphan pages - How to study competitors without copying their mistakes - Why branding, trust, user experience, and SEO are connected - How poor pop-ups and usability problems can hurt search performance - Why new websites should start with less competitive keywords - How top-of-funnel pages can support more valuable commercial pages - Why link building often takes up most of an SEO's time on a new site - How to earn links that also produce referral traffic and brand awareness - Why direct traffic and branded searches matter - How to check whether a website is crawlable and indexable - How to use Google Search Console and Screaming Frog - Why you should track keywords, tests, changes, and results - How video and other platforms can rank for your target searches - How SEO work changes once a website starts making money - How to find keyword opportunities within your existing rankings - How to use ranking pages to support more competitive pages - What keyword cannibalization is and how to reduce it - Why a ranking website should not depend entirely on SEO - How SEO can support social media, public relations, sponsorships, and other marketing - How to get more value from sponsorships than a single backlink - Why technical problems become more common as a website grows - How staging sites, robots.txt rules, plugins, and noindex tags can cause ranking problems - How to identify and update pages that are losing traffic - When a website is ready to target larger and more competitive keywords - How SEO changes when you are managing an established website - Why content pruning becomes important - How to prioritize thousands of possible keyword opportunities - How to cover the top, middle, and bottom of the search funnel - How to expand into an adjacent topic without losing topical focus - Why large websites often accumulate thin, duplicate, or unnecessary pages - How programmatic and AI-generated pages can create indexing problems - Why established companies often pay for SEO tools they do not need - How large brands compete for the highest-volume keywords - Why established-site SEO is a balance between fixing problems and finding new opportunities The main lesson is that there is no single daily SEO checklist that applies to every website. Your priorities should change as the site grows. A new site needs structure, research, content, links, and technical foundations. A ranking site needs optimization, internal linking, updates, testing, and marketing beyond search. An established site needs prioritization, management, technical oversight, content cleanup, and a plan for competing for the most valuable keywords in its market. ⭐️ Ep 1120 - You Don't Need 1,000 Backlinks to Rank on Google (Here's What Actually Works) - https://youtu.be/8dwPZu9rjt8  ⭐️ Ep 1104 - The 1-Hour SEO Update That Makes Your Best Pages Rank for More Keywords - https://youtu.be/GmsAuotHGso  ⭐️ Ep 1030 - Keyword Cannibalization: Why Your SEO Pages Compete (And How to Fix It) - https://youtu.be/n3jrXrau6kE  ⭐️ Ep 1012 - How IBM Took Over "AI" Keywords on Google (And What You Can Steal) - https://youtu.be/NwJk9HN-TOI  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 What SEOs Do Daily 00:43 New Site All Hats 03:06 Keyword Research Strategy 03:58 Link Building Grind 05:06 Tech Checks Tracking 06:13 Ranking Site Growth 07:18 Diversify Marketing PR 09:54 Fix Declines Scale Up 10:37 Established Site Management 12:43 Biggest Keywords Stunts 13:43 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #linkbuilding

E1121: There is no permanent #1 ranking in AI search. Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR and Charles Floate join the show to explain why Google's results are becoming less fixed, more variable, and harder to measure with traditional rank tracking. They break down what is changing across Google Search, AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other answer engines - and what they are changing in their own SEO strategies. The conversation goes beyond predictions. Koray and Charles share case studies, technical explanations, black-hat observations, and practical frameworks drawn from years of testing Google. In this episode: - Why AI search results are probabilistic - and why "position #1" no longer tells the full story - How rankings can change throughout the day, even when tracking tools report a stable average position - Why Google appears less tolerant of outdated content and large-scale AI publishing - The authority site that published more than 2,000 AI articles in one day and reportedly lost around 70% of its traffic - Why freshness depends on the query, and how Google may compare previous versions of a page - How Google's need for fresh sources in AI Overviews and AI Mode may be changing traditional search - Why Charles no longer wants to build the same "niche expert" content sites he built six or eight years ago - How one parasite page reached page one for a competitive finance query within three hours - Koray's $200, single-page site that grew from five clicks to 8,000 Google clicks per day without changing its content - What "visual semantics" means and why page layout, buttons, product grids, upload fields, and other functional elements may affect how Google classifies a page - Why Koray believes the Helpful Content Update would be more accurately described as a "functional content" update - Why a useful article may still struggle if the site does not clearly provide a product, service, tool, or other function - How to decide whether a query deserves its own page, a heading, or only a sentence - Why topical maps must be reviewed as Google changes query intent and semantic relationships - How topical focus, exact-match domains, expired domains, links, and click data work together - Why there is no single SEO silver bullet - and why content, links, technical SEO, entities, user behavior, and page function must support each other - How click satisfaction differs by query, and why a longer visit is not always a better signal - Why links and brand mentions serve different purposes when ranking pages, companies, products, and people - How Koray and Charles are using satellite sites, content distribution, and mentions to influence AI recommendations - What each guest would do with a fresh domain, $10,000, and six months to generate revenue - Which parasite platforms may work for B2B, local, B2C, and other markets - One SEO action listeners can implement this week that could affect rankings within 90 days This episode examines how Google evaluates pages, how AI systems retrieve and describe brands, and why tactics from traditional search cannot simply be copied into AI search. Subscribe for more conversations about SEO, Google, AI search, content, and backlinks. ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR's website - https://www.holisticseo.digital/  ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/koray-tugberk-gubur/  ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR on 𝕏 - https://x.com/KorayGubur  ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TopicalAuthority  ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/koraytugberk.gubur.948/  ⭐️ Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR on Medium - https://medium.com/@ktgubur  ⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO  ⭐️ Charles Floate on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfloate/  ⭐️ Charles Floate on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesFloate  ⭐️ Charles Floate on Facebook - https://facebook.com/thecharlesfloate  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Meet Koray and Charles 00:22 Koray's SEO Origin Story 01:36 Topical Authority Breakthrough 02:30 Semantics vs Systems 04:56 What's Working in SEO 06:15 Google Gets Less Tolerant 09:07 Freshness and Historical Data 12:39 Charles' $250K SEO Lesson 15:35 Koray's Cost of Retrieval 16:24 Visual Semantics Case Study 20:19 SEO Myths and Schema 24:09 Entity Stacking Frameworks 28:09 Core Updates and Embeddings 31:05 Topical Maps Explained 36:11 Function Over Content 37:29 Visual Product Mimicry 40:02 Fake Collections That Rank 42:11 Helpful Content Misnomer 44:53 Agents For Visual Actions 46:05 Clicks And RankLab 48:02 Engagement And Satisfaction 50:38 AI Results Are Probabilistic 54:20 Liquid SERPs And Duration 55:48 AI SEO Tactics 01:00:04 Parasite SEO Playbook 01:08:12 Mentions Versus Backlinks 01:13:28 One Tactic This Week The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #blackhatseo #technicalseo

E1120: Your competitors may have 500 to 1,000 backlinks while your site has only a handful. That does not automatically mean you need hundreds of links to compete. I break down a popular SEO subreddit discussion about how to build backlinks today. I review the strongest comments, explain which advice is useful, and show why relevance, real traffic, relationships, and search intent often matter more than the total number of links pointing to a site. You'll learn: - Not doing any link building to get backlinks - The debate on PBNs - When buying backlinks can create risk - Why cold outreach and guest posting work, but require time and consistency - How businesses earn links through podcasts, niche publications, partnerships, sponsorships, and digital PR - Why a relevant link that sends real visitors can be more valuable than a high-metric link that gets no traffic - How to evaluate a website before asking for a backlink from it - Why you should check traffic history, ranking keywords, indexing, and sharp traffic declines - How original stock photos can attract natural backlinks with little or no outreach - How reverse image search can uncover websites using your images without attribution - Why brand mentions may still help Google understand your business, even when there is no link - How answering one journalist request per day can lead to strong editorial mentions and backlinks - Why industry events and business relationships can produce users, press, partnerships, and links at the same time - How hosting or appearing on podcasts can help you build relationships with people in your market - Why three highly relevant links may sometimes be more useful than hundreds of weak or unrelated links - How under-targeted, high-intent keywords can help a lower-authority site compete with larger websites The main point is simple: do not measure your backlink strategy only by quantity. A good backlink should make sense for the business. Ideally, it should appear on an indexed page, come from a relevant source, support your reputation, and send interested people to your site. Links created only to manipulate rankings are easier to identify as spam and less useful to a real business. I also explain why link building should not be separated from marketing. Useful content, expert commentary, podcast appearances, earned media, partnerships, events, and sponsorships can all generate links while also building awareness and bringing potential customers to your website. ⭐️ The Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1v2qkjz/how_do_you_get_backlinks/  ⭐️ Ep 1092 - The Digital PR Playbook That Earns High-Authority Links (Most SEOs Never Learn) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prWLsQNMHqo  ⭐️ Ep 1116 - James Dooley Episode - https://youtu.be/EOkrLkKNDrY  ⭐️ Ep 1111 - Why Red Bull Ranks for Everything: The SEO Power of Viral Marketing and Sponsorships - https://youtu.be/lmPBNIDwIks  ⭐️ How to Get On Podcasts as a Guest in 2026: The Easy Way - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/get-on-podcasts-as-guest-2026/  ⭐️ How I Produce Guest Podcasts in 90 Minutes (That Help Me Rank in Google) - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/how-i-produce-guest-podcasts-in-90-minutes/  ⭐️ https://aipodcastmatcher.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Reddit Backlink Question 01:12 Four Link Methods 01:53 Guest Posts Deep Dive 02:28 PBNs And Buying Links 02:57 PR And Podcast Links 05:17 Evaluating Link Quality 07:23 Stock Photo Link Hack 09:07 Digital PR And Mentions 10:57 Earned Media Examples 12:20 Journalist Quotes Daily 13:07 Partnerships And Hosting 14:42 Relevance Beats Backlinks 16:27 Wrapping The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #linkbuilding #searchengineoptimization #backlinks

E1119: Most ecommerce brands assume they need more traffic. But sometimes the real problem is the product page. I sit down with James Backenstone from Build Grow Scale as we screenshare and tear apart real ecommerce product pages while explaining why some pages convert while others lose the sale. James has spent 10 years studying customer behavior, working with more than 100 brands, and reviewing stores ranging from startups to eight- and nine-figure businesses. Across Build Grow Scale's work, the team has managed roughly $1 billion in ecommerce revenue. We look at the good, the bad, and the confusing across subscription and one-time-purchase product pages. James explains what he would change, what he would test, and which details can quietly cause a customer to leave. You'll learn: - The three questions a product page should answer before a visitor scrolls - What belongs above the fold on desktop and mobile - Why a vague product title can hurt both conversions and SEO - How clutter, unclear selections, broken-looking buttons, and unnecessary popups create friction - Why benefits and key product details should appear before secondary offers - Where to place reviews, star ratings, testimonials, and customer photos - Why real reviews often look more trustworthy than a page filled with perfect five-star ratings - How to build a clear subscription and one-time-purchase section - When a sticky add-to-cart button is worth testing - How to order product images, ingredient details, dosage information, videos, and customer content - Why captions should be added to product videos - How large video files can slow down a Shopify store - When comparison charts help customers understand why your product is different - Why brand-focused numbers can matter less than customer-focused proof - How to use customer objections to decide what information belongs on the page - Why "clarity trumps persuasion" when someone is deciding whether to buy James also explains how his team combines Shopify server-side data, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Microsoft Clarity to study behavior across a store. They use Claude to compare the data, find repeated patterns, and create a testing plan instead of relying on a single analytics platform. We also discuss: - Microsoft Clarity heatmaps and scroll tracking - Intelligems and VWO for A/B testing - Matching landing-page language to the ad or search that brought the visitor in - Exit-intent offers and timing popups based on average time on page - AI customer support that clearly identifies itself and transfers difficult questions to a human - Why every page change should be tested on real users rather than judged only by appearance The main lesson is simple: traffic cannot fix a product page that fails to explain what the product is, what problem it solves, and why the customer should buy it from you. Subscribe for daily episodes on SEO, AI, ecommerce, marketing, and building businesses online. ⭐️ Build Grow Scale - https://buildgrowscale.com/  ⭐️ AI Powered Store Audit - https://buildgrowscale.com/bgs-intelligence-snapshot  ⭐️ James Backenstone on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-backenstose-839048206/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Product Page Teardowns Intro 00:35 Meet James and BGS 03:38 Why CRO Principles Matter 06:03 Mystery Tackle Box Audit 12:21 Clarity Over Cleverness 19:33 Reviews and Credibility 29:15 Heatmaps and AI Analysis 33:08 Pet Supplement Page Done Right 37:52 Mobile Sticky Add to Cart 41:00 Images and Made in USA Trust 44:35 Captions For Product Videos 46:26 Buy Box Breakdown 50:47 Sticky Layout Idea 52:01 UGC Testimonials And Hosting 01:02:04 AI Chat And Exit Intent 01:08:11 Cut Redundant Sections 01:12:45 Comparison Charts And Reviews 01:19:26 Conversion Summary And Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #conversionrateoptimization #ecommerce #seo #searchengineoptimization

E1118: Google hit WindowsForum.com with a manual action covering roughly 168,000 forum threads and more than half a million posts. The site's owners argued that Google unfairly punished a decades-old community for "thin content" without providing example URLs. But once you look deeper, the case becomes much more complicated. We investigate what WindowsForum says happened, what changed on the site before the penalty, and whether Google's action was deserved. The site presented the penalty as an attack on old forum content that had survived years of Google updates. However, its own response also revealed a large automated AI publishing system that created news articles, forum replies, and content based on material from other sources. Some of that content included unrelated topics such as: - Cryptocurrency promotions - Stock price predictions - Analyst ratings - General financial news - Articles that had little connection to Windows - Automated forum replies that summarized and praised user comments - AI-generated news pages built from third-party sources WindowsForum later said it was removing thousands of low-quality articles produced by its automated system. It also claimed that every bot-authored article had been reviewed after the manual action. That raises several questions: - How much AI-generated content was published? - How much human review took place before publication? - Why did the site's organic traffic increase so rapidly before the penalty? - Was Google targeting the old forum archive or the newer automated content? - Should a manual action against part of a site suppress an entire URL pattern? - Should independent forums be treated differently from large platforms? - Are users actually helped by AI-generated replies inside community discussions? The traffic pattern is also worth examining. WindowsForum's estimated organic traffic remained relatively stable for years, then increased sharply from around 4,900 monthly clicks to more than 150,000 monthly clicks. That increase appears to line up with the expansion of its automated publishing activity. We break down: - WindowsForum's public explanation of the penalty - The details missing from the original Reddit discussion - The site's automated AI content pipeline - The admission that thousands of low-quality articles were published - The use of AI accounts inside forum discussions - The site's scraped and summarized news content - The unusual organic traffic growth before the manual action - Why old content may not have been the real reason for the penalty - Why domain authority cannot protect a site from low-quality publishing - What this case means for site owners using scaled AI content The evidence suggests that WindowsForum used its established domain authority to publish large amounts of automated content, much of which added little original value and sometimes had little connection to the site's main topic. Google's response may have been broad, and the lack of example URLs makes the reconsideration process harder. But the site's own admissions make it difficult to argue that the penalty came without warning or justification. This case is a useful warning for anyone planning to publish large amounts of AI-generated content. AI can help with research, organization, editing, and drafting. It should not replace subject-matter expertise, fact-checking, original analysis, or human editorial review. Publishing more pages is not the same as creating more value. ⭐️ WindowsForum full response - https://windowsforum.com/threads/  ⭐️ Join the Reddit discussion - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1v6jn8x/google_hit_windowsforumcom_with_a_thincontent/  ⭐️ Join the discussion on X - https://x.com/gaganghotra_/status/2081287139271250274  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Detective SEO 00:14 Manual Action Breakdown 01:51 What Actually Changed 02:28 Why Google Hits Broadly 04:00 WindowsForum Response 04:38 AI Workflow Red Flags 06:26 Suspicious Traffic Spike 08:35 AI Slop Examples 09:43 Bigger AI Crackdown Context 11:30 Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #seo #searchengineoptimization #webdevelopment #digitalmarketing

E1117: Breaking down Rank-and-Rent, one of the most profitable local SEO business models. We are joined by a pro in the subject: Ippei Kanehara Ippei has been building Rank-and-Rent websites for more than 11 years. During that time he's built hundreds of local lead generation sites, generated recurring income from websites that are over a decade old, and recently built 130 new sites to test what's working in SEO today. One of his earliest websites took around 15 hours to build and has generated more than $240,000 over its lifetime while continuing to produce recurring monthly revenue. We cover the complete strategy behind modern Rank-and-Rent SEO, including niche selection, keyword research, website architecture, topical authority, Google Business Profiles, AI content workflows, and why bottom-of-the-funnel SEO continues to outperform many traditional content strategies. Whether you're an SEO professional, agency owner, affiliate marketer, local business owner, or someone looking to build recurring income online, this episode is packed with practical insights and real-world examples. Topics covered include: - What Rank-and-Rent SEO is - Whether Google Business Profiles are still required - How the business model differs from running an SEO agency - How to generate leads before signing clients - Using free leads to acquire long-term customers - Commission deals vs. flat monthly rental agreements - Why recurring rental income often produces lower client churn - The biggest misconceptions about rank and rent - How successful operators continue building without relying entirely on GBP - Choosing profitable local niches - Why home service businesses continue to offer strong opportunities - High-ticket vs. low-ticket service industries - Avoiding overly competitive local markets - What to look for when analyzing competing websites - Why many local businesses still have weak SEO - Exact match domains and partial match domains - Building brands around local search intent - Website structures that consistently rank - Homepage optimization - Heading hierarchy - Service page strategy - Sub-city landing pages - Internal linking strategy - Using the homepage as the authority hub - Building topical authority across an entire site - How many pages to launch with - Creating dozens of bottom-of-the-funnel pages - Expanding into neighboring cities - Finding overlooked service keywords - Using Google's autocomplete for keyword research - Google Search Console to discover new opportunities - When to create new pages versus expanding existing content - Information architecture for local SEO - AI-assisted content creation - Entity optimization - Editing AI content for higher quality - Making local landing pages more unique - Case studies and location-specific content - Image strategies for local websites - Link building vs. topical authority - Why Ippei has largely stopped relying on guest posts - Using internal authority across owned websites - Building multiple websites for the same client - Scaling local SEO without unnecessary complexity - The first 30 days of launching a new Rank-and-Rent website - Why beginners should build multiple sites - Common mistakes new local SEO operators make We also discuss how Google's algorithm updates have affected different business models. Ippei shares how large content websites can be heavily impacted by updates while many local lead generation sites continue producing consistent results by focusing on commercial search intent and bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. ⭐️ Ippei's Blog - https://ippei.com/  ⭐️ Ippei's Web Builder & Call Tracking - https://ippei.com/dashboard/  ⭐️ Ippei Kanehara on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@IppeiSEO  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Rank and Rent Intro 00:27 Model Breakdown 03:31 Monetization and Billing 05:03 Why It Beats Agencies 08:48 Ippei Origin Story 14:24 Best Site Example 14:58 Misconceptions and GBP 17:17 Picking Profitable Niches 18:46 Reading Competition Right 23:07 Site Structure Basics 25:44 Branding and Scaling Cities 28:22 EMDs and Must Have Pages 31:36 Internal Linking Strategy 36:31 Avoiding Doorway Pages 39:44 AI Content Workflow 43:34 Keyword Research Methods 46:22 GSC Insights and New Pages 47:27 Keyword Page Splits 48:31 Backlinks Versus Authority 51:09 First 30 Days Blueprint 54:38 Site Structure Strategy 56:35 Image Sourcing Tactics 57:59 GBP Lead Boost 01:00:45 Video Verification Hacks 01:05:52 Reviews And Conversions 01:08:23 Monetization Models 01:10:08 Lead Handoff Scripts 01:16:16 Contracts And Leverage 01:18:14 Scaling And Mistakes 01:21:51 Mega Brand Rollup 01:27:18 Why Projects Fail 01:29:30 Final Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #rankandrent #seo #searchengineoptimization