Search Insights 2024 Unveiled Ep.593

Ep. 59339 min2024-01-192,169 plays

Backlinks remain essential Google signals in 2024, but high-quality content, topical authority, core web vitals, and E-E-A-T together drive rankings more than link building alone.

Cover art for Search Insights 2024 Unveiled Ep.593
Key takeaways
everything that Google does is built on backlinks. I don't think it's going anywhere.

About this episode

Join us as Matthew Bertram, SEO Consultant unravels the intricacies of Google's ever-evolving algorithms, exploring the impact of numerous updates on SEO strategies in 2024. Our episodes dissect key algorithm changes, from core updates to specialized tweaks, shedding light on their real-world implications. Uncover the secrets behind what Google deems "helpful content" and how it influences your website's ranking.…

Questions this episode answers

How important are backlinks for SEO in 2024?

According to Matt Bertram, everything Google does is built on backlinks and they are not going away. They act as signals that someone is voting for your site, but Google evaluates whether each link is legitimate, purchased, or passes any ranking value at all.

What is topical authority and why does it matter for rankings?

Topical authority means establishing expertise across a subject area so Google categorizes your site for related terms. Matt Bertram explains that sites already ranking for topical authority can appear in results quickly, while sites not yet in the index may take 60 days or more to be categorized.

Should you delete low quality content from your website?

Matt Bertram advises against simply deleting low quality content because doing so can change the link equity of your site. Instead, improve it to high quality, combine it with related content, redirect it to a more valuable page, or drive it back to the parent page.

How do core web vitals affect Google rankings?

Matt Bertram estimates page experience and core web vitals account for roughly 30 to 40 percent of total ranking. He recommends treating Search Console errors as a roadmap and working to get that error count to zero as a foundational step.

In their words

that top spot is worth 40 plus percent of all the traffic for that keyword. So, you know, it's a horseshoe hand grenades like it's all or nothing.

Matt Bertram

if you just do the basics, right, you're going to crush 87% of people and then there might be some heavy lifting that you might need to SEO specialist or consultant to do.

Matt Bertram
Terms defined in this episode
E-E-A-T
Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trust signals that Google uses to evaluate content quality, with experience added to address AI-generated content that lacks first-hand proof.
Core Web Vitals
Google ranking factors covering site speed, interactivity, and visual stability, which Matt Bertram estimates make up roughly 30 to 40 percent of total ranking weight.
Topical Authority
A site's demonstrated depth of expertise on a subject area, which helps Google categorize and rank that site faster for related keywords.
Helpful Content Update
A Google algorithm update targeting content that lacks genuine usefulness or first-hand experience, rewarding content that proves the author actually engaged with the subject.
Read the full transcript (6,624 words · 33 min read)

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Marketing. My name is Matt Bertram. I want to be one of the people, I guess, to welcome you to 2024. I know I'm a little behind on this podcast. I've been pretty busy. Also, I've had some sick kids. And so my apologies for not getting to you, but I do have an exciting episode for you today. I have a number of things that I've been thinking about for 2024 that you might want to be focused on. Before we get into it, one of the things we used to do, I need to do better at it, is read some of our reviews. I have an interesting review that I've never, well, haven't had before something like this in a while. It's text messages from my wife. And basically she said, someone texted my wife and said, my family met you and your husband on the NCLY cruise last week. I'd like to thank you both for taking the time to chat with us. My sons had followed Matt and are interested in his books to begin reading. I just wanted to let you know you made an impact. Zachary hasn't stopped talking about all he can gain from Matt's books and podcasts. Thanks, blessings and happy health 2024. Just thought that was kind of cool. Wife sent it to me and I don't know. I don't think my wife knows totally what I do. I don't think a lot of people know what search engine optimization is or SEO is. I've had to explain it to a few people that I guess are in my inner circle, but don't even really know what I do. So sometimes we talk and we don't realize, uh, how, how technical we are. Um, so a couple of the things that I wanted to cover today, uh, and I'm going to kind of outline this is, you know, Google updates, helpful content update, AI, um, blogger kind of mistakes that I'm starting to see, uh, working with

a lot of different bloggers, uh, topical authority, backlink importance, pay on page emphasis, uh, you know, the, the split and then, um, expertise and low quality content. So, uh, hopefully that will be something fun for you to stick around in. Um, I have been getting positive comments on all the different, uh, people that I have been interviewing. I actually, uh, had a five hour conversation. No, I think, I think it was less than that, uh, with Anthem, uh, the other day, uh, just, he, he really was kind of quiet on the podcast, but he's, he's more of kind of a philosopher is what I would say. Um, and I don't know if any of you like that style of, uh, content or interviews. I I'm starting to do a lot of other stuff. That's a lot of other places. And, and if you liked some of, I may, maybe the nuggets that were dropping, uh, or that I'm sharing, check that stuff out. You know, a lot of what I'm doing here is just sharing with you my journey and the things that I'm finding an important, and hopefully it's helpful to you. I haven't been really, uh, big or good on putting together packages to try to sell you stuff. I'm really just sharing this information to hopefully it helps you, uh, achieve what you're trying to achieve better because really what SEO is more than anything else in my mind is it's like a mirror. You're just holding up a mirror to Google and the algorithms kind of giving you feedback back because you're trying to show up higher in the Google rankings and Google rankings are going to take the top 100 things for a word that people are searching for. It's going to force rank those based on all their parameters. And then what SEO is, is the process of improving your content to, to move up in those rankings. And there is in the algorithms mind, a perfect score for what you can achieve, but we're just trying to be

like what we're running from the bear better than everyone else. Um, you know, you, you, you keep doing what you need to do till you get to that top spot. And certainly you do what you need to do to maintain that top spot. Um, and that top spot is worth 40 plus percent of all the traffic for that keyword. So, you know, it's the horseshoe hand grenades, like it's all or nothing. And that's why SEO works fantastic for some people and doesn't work well for a lot of people is because you have to be at the top. You have to be at the top of the page. You need to be in the top three. There's things that you can do. Um, if you make the top page to move up and if you're in the middle of the page to get to selected and there is data to say, Hey, maybe you don't want to be first. You might want to be second or third. And you know, Google's moving it all around. And certainly what they're trying to do is sell you ads of course. Right. And, and I would tell you, um, think about it. Think about, you know, combining ads and SEO because now you're going to have the algorithms sort of working in your favor more than the 95% of people, um, that are not using ads. And then you start to get into the specifics of, um, how you should use ads, how much you should spend be using ads. But, but I, I like ads as a supportive strategy to, to SEO in particular instances. And I certainly think that strategy, um, understanding what you're trying to do and having a creative way to, to, to achieve that. It goes miles. Like it's, it's about the grind, but it's about being smart and it's about, well, understanding the rules of the game and then also, um, playing by those rules, of course, but, but showcasing where the Google algorithm understands that your content is better, but guess what

your content has to be better at the core of it. So that's all I'll say about that, but let's, let's dive in to, um, some of these topics because I think they're super important in 2024. Um, since like June, 2019, the pace of updates has been incredibly fast. There's been more kind of updates in this period than there have been in like, I don't know, 10 years prior to this. So the SEO industry right now is turned upside down on, on what's working and what's not. I can tell you two years ago, I, I w I was not in like forums. I was not going to conferences. I was not doing any of that stuff. And I really started to connect with my peers to understand what they were seeing. And I have a big team that, that does SEO, but I started doing SEO myself because things were changing and I had to dig back into it. And, and the changes are so fast and furious. Um, it like, they don't share it with you every update, but man, there's like multiple core updates, uh, a month. I mean, like if I, okay. So there's like the, the newer one, like hidden gems that people are complaining about as you're starting to see like Reddit forums, uh, uh, and, and stuff like that popping up to change up the diversity. And certainly there's a lot of not as helpful sites ranking that's going to work itself out. Uh, update typically takes like 60 days to kind of work itself out. Also like the Google index takes about 60 days to, to turn over. So you have caffeine that if you're already ranking for a topical authority, you're going to pop in a quick time period. But, but if you're not in the index, it's, it's going to take 60 days for that to turn over. And if you haven't been ranking for that term at all, it's going to take even longer to be categorized. Right. But you got, um, you know, there's the

November 23 update. There was the October update. There was the September update. That was helpful content. The August core update, the April core update, the February product review update, the December 22nd spam update, the December update of helpful content spam update. Certainly, um, AI, uh, December update on product review and hidden gems. Like, like these are the ones that have really started to make an impact and you know, you had to go back to the basics and you had to figure out what was working and what's not because they have all these dials and they spin the dials, right. Um, helpful content update, eat expertise, authorities, trust, they've added experience. You got the, the, the medic update, which is like the health and wellness. Um, but this helpful content based on eat and then the expertise added addresses the AI content because if you have to prove it, right. So if you're doing like product review and I don't work with a lot of companies that do product reviews, but this is a great example. Like if you're doing a product review before people like in the affiliate space would do a product review and they didn't even have the product. They didn't show the product. They didn't talk about the product. You know, now with AI, you could just write content about that product. Well, Google wants you to go that extra step. And, and I, and I think that there's this shift more towards brands. I've been writing about brands for a couple of years. If you've checked out some of my other books, like build your brand mania, all these sorts of things, rise of the personal brand. Um, no, like trust, all these things are about building a brand. And you know, one is you don't, you're not going to know what's real because someone can take whatever I say and put it all around and, and you don't know. And, and the scams are going to get better and the election cycle is going to get horrible. Um, and so

you got to figure out, uh, and I think, um, uh, you know, the, the approval, like that you're approved person to know whatever's on that person's page, you can take that as legit or behind kind of paid walls. What, what someone's saying is legit because anything out in the public, what, just like ad spam, there's scam spam, right. Um, and that's coming. So, so be prepared for that. And, and, and certain, certainly, uh, if there's a platform that you're using a lot, uh, take advantage of the change now and, and go ahead and get the check Mark. I think, uh, Elon Musk was trailblazing and in that regard. Um, but also in the content that you're producing, if we're speaking to SEO, you want to, you know, prove as you, that you have an opinion on this topic, right? Like you want to be, you know, you want to be one direction or another direction, not right in the middle. And that's typically what AI does is it's going to give you like all the data points. Like I'll give you like the middle point. Right. And even the query for diversity in Google is if you have an opposing view and opposing view, sorry, and you can, uh, back it up, you're going to show up in the search results. If everybody else is writing about something. And if you want to show up, you can't just put the base information out there. You got to put the base information out there. Plus your opinion, you need to add to it. Like everything about marketing is figure out what other people are doing, do it better, one up it. Right. Same thing with content. That's kind of how these skyscraper posts got started. It wasn't so much about them being long or the, the keywords or anything else. They just were providing more useful content. Right. And that's why I don't write for Forbes anymore because well, they kept projecting my content and I think it's more worthwhile to, to write the content and

put it on my site. So I've actually been putting together a lot more content and trying to, uh, enhance the, the richness of the experience and you can go check it out. It's not quite there yet, but, but we're certain we're working on it and I, and I'm looking at building a community, um, for SEO with, with the podcast kind of as the center of it, because, you know, this business is going on for, I don't know, 13, 14 years, we got 60,000 downloads a month. I mean, it's, um, it's, it's, it's quite a mouthpiece. Right. And, uh, I'm certainly blessed to, to be here, uh, and for you to listen and, and check this out. So, so certainly, uh, I do appreciate your feedback and if there's something more you want to do, cause I'm really trying to work on kind of finding my voice. There's a lot I could share with you, uh, especially when I'm just sitting here talking. Um, I think I said, right. I was, I talked to, to Anthem for like, um, my, my, my family's out of town. Um, so I'm bacheloring it up and, um, like we had a crazy long conversation that the whole thing was probably recorded by some, some agency cause we're talking about crypto, but, um, in the future and, and all that, but, but it was really interesting. I would think people would be interested to hear that conversation. So, uh, I am looking at different kinds of formats to do that. Um, had some, I did two podcasts today, um, oil and gas sales and marketing or yeah, oil and gas sales and marketing podcast on OGGN, uh, really fun stuff. We talked about storytelling. It's a lot about sales. If you're into that stuff, I'll, I'll put the link in the show notes, go check it out. All right, let's keep going. All right. So yeah, there's a bunch of websites that got hit with like low quality AI spam content, do content, spun content. I mean, that's the Google

Panda update. Um, think about what I just said at the beginning of this message about, you know, your content for whatever topic or keyword or keyword set you're trying to rank for, uh, you got to be in the top 100 to even get indexed. So most blogs right now are not indexed because they've, they've not said anything different or original and whoever says it best gets that ranking. So if you are indexed, fantastic. You're getting some SEO juice, but you're certainly not getting referral traffic. So the name of the game is create better content. Anything that's low quality content, which we'll address later, there there's ways to deal with it, but know that like, look at your content. And if someone's not going to read it or it's not useful, really consider what you're going to do with that. All right. So I also talked about it a little bit before topical authority, um, and backlinks, right? Everything, everything that Google does is built on backlinks. I don't think it's going anywhere. Backlinks are just signals. They, they tell you, uh, what, you know, like someone's voting for you and Google will interpret. Is that about legit? Did you buy that boat? Um, how powerful it is that they'll, they'll, they'll sometimes say it, it doesn't even pass juice, right? Um, it's just creating a signal and Google's going to look at everything else it interprets. So you got to understand that link and where it's coming from. And, um, certainly like NAP listings or citations, super valuable because you're trying to rank, you know, like a GPS locator. And there's a lot of people saying this is actually where you're located. So that's helpful. Um, we've even branched out and we've started to really, uh, do work on, uh, being places and Apple, uh, outside of Google. I mean, it's getting more competitive and you don't get traffic unless you're at the top. So what's happening is you're starting to go further out, uh, on that kind of limb branch to, to grab, grab

that traffic. Right. But, um, the BERT update, I loved it because it's like, it's part of my last name. Um, but focused on the understanding of context of words and searches. And this was like a huge change because it's not just looking for keyword density anymore. It's looking for how all these keywords relate. And then, you know, it's starting to incorporate the models on top of models on top of models that that's trying to replicate human behavior. And so I think that the energy that people put into gaming, the system and the stress they have looking over their backs. I know people that called me that got hit with penalties this last time around 30%, 50% down in traffic. Now they were making money while the hay shine there. A lot of these are affiliate guys. Um, but I would tell you that, that it's not worth it. Put in the energy to do it the right way. All right. Page experience, core web vitals, super important. Almost, I would say it's probably, I don't know, 30, 40% total of the ranking. When you're talking about site speed, uh, interactivity, uh, visual stability, Google hates that stuff when it loads moving around. And a lot of that's done with code. And that's something that we're really starting to increase our technical chops on because it's having such an impact. Like we were always doing a pretty good job with it, but the name of the game is get a search console errors to zero. Okay. That is what you can do. If you don't know what else to do, they're giving you a roadmap. And I would, I would take that into consideration, have good content, have good core web vitals. It doesn't have to be that difficult. I can tell you that for a number of our clients, we're ranking number one, uh, number two, number one, whatever it fluctuates a little bit, um, for a number of keywords with pretty foundational strategies. There are certain industries like in locations like up in New

York, California, or down in Florida, uh, based on the industry tied to that area where there's a ton of competition and okay, there's a lot of people spending a lot of money and you have to develop more advanced strategies. But if you just do the basics, right, you're going to crush 87% of people. Uh, and then there might be some heavy lifting that you might need a SEO specialist or consultant to do, but also not everybody's a SEO specialist or consultant and anybody that knows anything about web design doesn't necessarily mean they know SEO and vice versa. Um, I remember back in the day when I, when the internet was starting, if they said there, if they said they were in it, I thought they knew how to do everything it. Right. Um, so building out those specialties and, and actually this is kind of flipping it. Cause I know a lot of SEOs, um, listen to this podcast to, to learn how to improve it. I think, I think a good portion of that. I actually ran a campaign over the holidays to get all the data that podcasts don't show you, uh, based on different ads we were running and, and I'll actually share, share it with you later of, uh, geographically where people were listening to the podcast in North America. Um, what type of people are listening to it. And yeah, there's a, there's a ton of, uh, people that are trying to learn SEO and in the SEO space. And I would even tell you just to kind of switch gears a little bit. If, if you're an SEO in the space, you need to upskill yourself to handle the changes that are happening in the marketplace. Um, we are starting to get extremely advanced on analytics tracking. And, and I would tell you that we knew how to do it. We weren't doing it before. And that was really, um, a basis on what the type of clients we had were. So we were working with, you know, a

lot of like local businesses or multi-location businesses. Now we're really working with some enterprise companies and the, the, the level of sophistication that they're looking for on tracking is extremely high. Not only that they can pay for it. And that's, what's exciting because I know the challenge that a lot of you have is to say, okay, like I'm trying to do everything for them, but they only have this budget. I mean, I got to the point where if they wanted to run a campaign and they didn't have like a decent amount of money, uh, I would ask him, I was like, Hey, like, I know you're trying to get this up and going. This is more kind of a branding campaign. Do you want to set up analytics or not? And then they were like, yeah, set it up. And I was like, well, I'm going to have to charge you and here's how long it takes and et cetera, et cetera. And I was saying, so, you know, maybe we set up a pixel. Um, you know, maybe we use a UTB tag, um, really quickly and maybe let's not set up all these goals and let's set up all this stuff, especially if you're offering like a service-based business. So, um, you know, we just started to operate pretty lean, uh, and, and I, and we could bring down our prices and, and, you know, I think, I think everybody won, but trying to do an exorbitant amount of work and to do everything the right way for someone that doesn't have the budget or can't fully utilize it needs to be taken into consideration. I think that, well, digital strategy, uh, that, you know, we started off in execution and we moved more towards, uh, well, full service consulting, integrated marketing, um, your strategy of what you're trying to achieve and what you want on return on investment on those dollars are so important. And you should really think about that before starting to throw money at something. Cause you can just

drop money, uh, in the ocean of digital marketing and it could not go anywhere. All right. Off the soapbox. Let's keep going. Um, all right. When you're talking about content and I've seen like both of these things happen and you know, the importance of content was based on, I think if you want to look it up, I think it was called the hummingbird update. Um, and it was to understand user intent and, and help deliver more relevant results. Cause look, if you get bad results, you're going to leave Google and there's starting to be other kids on the blog. Uh, certainly in this area, they're losing market share. Um, so, you know, either I've found certain people writing all transactional content or people that are writing all informational content. Well, if you don't have both, you have some holes in your funnel. So if you're writing all informational content, you're trying to build your, uh, uh, topical authority, your expertise, uh, you might be producing content for Legion, but if you don't have that messy middle and that transactional content at the end, and you shouldn't be shy about it. Like if you're saying buy and you think people are searching by like you should optimize for the word by now, you don't want to over optimize everything. And I think that the pendulum swings and people were, um, too much over optimizing for something. But if you're optimizing to a reasonable agree and you're trying to send signals for something that that's transactional, you should say that. Right. And so, um, just think about and look at your content of how it, how it breaks down in the funnel and, and think about that customer journey and that target persona. If you haven't done that, you know, figure it out. Like you can Google it, you can YouTube it. We have a workshop, whatever. And well, make sure your content lines up and you know what's going and happening along that content. Don't just write content for content. Don't just write content to rank.

Like it needs to be organized in a way that makes sense for the, for yourself, for, um, your, your, your potential customers and users of your site and for Google. And when those are all in alignment, you're good. You're going to rank quite well. All right. Highlighting the experience and expertise for trust building. Building trust is that kind of magic formula, um, to help get people over that hurdle to buy because they don't know who you are. Right. And so, um, building trust, showing that expertise, uh, really aligns with your money, your life concepts. And I've been working just, I don't know why. Uh, well, it's a mirror, right? I'm putting stuff out there right for that stuff. People have been calling, uh, we've been working with a lot of finance companies. Um, we've been working with a lot of SAS companies and, you know, I was in healthcare for a long time and I was actually in recruitment prior to this for, for the longest period of time. And here's the craziest thing. Everything Google looks at, right? So Google can see my LinkedIn profile, can see my profile. And it was talking about, well, I've developed hiring strategies, recruitment strategies, and somehow the algorithm figured that out. And I've had a lot of like recruitment companies. I had a 98 location, uh, recruitment company that was looking to go from like light industrial to, um, high ends, like head hunting, corporate recruitment, uh, white collar recruitment. And they wanted to fly me up there and build out their whole strategy. And I was kind of amazed that I, that they called me and I was this kind of purple squirrel or, or perfect fit for that. And I was like, how did this company find me? And I just kind of started to do some research and I realized that that was the mirror that I was putting out there based on, on my profile. Um, I think that, uh, understanding how to manage people and how to find quality talent and build

those processes are an incredibly important vehicle to grow your business. I mean, we went through, uh, action coach and EOS and, uh, different kinds of business coaches and, and I've picked up all kinds of stuff and, and that's not stuff I share about or talk about here. Um, but let's like, we have a, a very, very focused kind of search marketing niche, um, that we've, we've really developed and gotten really good at. Um, I know how to find good people and know how to manage good people and, and that's, and then you need to learn how to run a business. Um, uh, there's also this, uh, Goldman Sachs program. I would encourage you to check out. Uh, that's really cool. Um, if you're, if you're doing everything, trying to grow an agency, um, because it's amazing. Um, but it's a lot of work and there are definitely some ups and downs. Um, but I regress. So, uh, your money, your life is really just like a additional layer of you have to be on point with all your stuff and we're going to hold you to a higher level of accountability and, and think about it. Like if you're talking about someone's money or you're talking about someone's health and you're giving them advice, okay, what's your authorship, right? What's your background? Uh, what are your ratings? Um, you know, like Google's investigating all these things to determine you saying this, like if a doctor says something over what Matt says on working out or something like that, and, and, or you, so, okay, you have Matt that says it, and then you have somebody that has a, like a PhD or even like a NBA or just like a BS and like, um, health science or something like that. And then you have a doctor, those different people stuff should hold more weight. Um, right. It just, it just makes sense. And, and so there's just a higher level of scrutiny there. And, and if you're trying to, if you're a doctor or we're,

we're, I think we're picking up, um, uh, a couple dentist practices here, but like if, if you are a brand or have a brand or a doctor and you're building a brand, you got to engage in that trust building, you got to engage in, engage in that eat because Google are looking to check those boxes and see those signals. Right. So, all right. Um, okay. So, so low quality content for better performance, you know, removing low quality content resonates with the effects of Fred, which targets websites that are thin or affiliate content, emphasizing high quality and valuable content. However, I, I think you need to just evaluate your site and, and, and, and I don't think that there's like different, well, I don't think that there's different multiple, multiple, multiple tiers of quality content. I think there's either good content or bad content. I think you just need to look at your content and go, will someone read this? Is it good? Am I proud of it? Right. That, that, that's our delineation to a deliverable to, uh, a client. Can we show this to the client? How do we show this to the client? I know that there's a lot of people out there that, that do backlinks and I think it's a big business, but I, I think it's just a signal and I think you can overdo it. But, but again, like, I mean, it's certainly valuable, but if you're building all these links and it's not valuable and you don't want to like show it to the client, what's that real value of that? And how much work did that take? And is there something you could better do with your time? Right. Um, but, but look at your content and go, does this content have a place on my site? Is it something I want to be a topical for a authority about? Is it something that helps me move the ball forward in some way? Right. Cause you're mapping out your, your customer journey. If it doesn't like get

rid of it. If it's it's low quality content, make it high quality content. I don't think just delete it because it's low quality content. If it's helpful, improve it to make it high quality content. Um, certainly if you're, if you're using a tool and where you can see it has backlinks to it and you start killing that old content, that's not ranking anymore. You're going to change the link equity of your site, um, more than maybe you want. So I'm not a huge fan of killing content unless it makes sense. And then you just, you know, make a redirect to something more valuable or you combine it or, or you drive it back to the parent page. Um, and you can get rid of it. And certainly you want to prune your trees. Um, but I think that is well thoughtful about what content you have and then decide, is this content helpful for me to get to where I'm going in what capacity and is it good or not? And if it's not good, make it better. All right. Um, that that's kind of, uh, I don't know, my, my two cents on it. And these are some of the things that you should really be considering, um, as you move forward. And, you know, none of these rules are like 110, 110, like steadfast. I would tell you, you know, I have played around with and tested having multiple H ones and I've seen sites with multiple H ones, multiple H twos that rank really, really well. Um, and, and there's kind of some thought and logic about it. And maybe I should put together some better put together papers. Cause like I test stuff, I find out stuff. And then, uh, I think people want to see, see what I find out. Cause I have a lot of data across a lot of sites and, and I'm always kind of trying to understand what the Google Adams doing and then figure out what works and, and apply it on, on other sites.

And, and I can tell you that there are instances where double H ones could work. Um, you know, now it's not, it's not the rule of thumb, but it could work. Also, I can tell you that there's pop-ups like an exit pop-up that comes up and based on how the code's written, that pop-up comes up and whatever you have set on that, it has an H one on it. And then now you have that H one and then you have the H one, uh, that your site that you want to rank for. And then it dilutes what you're trying to do. I've had that happen too. You know, um, I think that I'm just kind of battle hardened, uh, over the years that I've, I've learned what works and what doesn't work. And, and I, I want to steer you, um, in the right direction. And, um, you know, if you need any kind of consulting or coaching, definitely reach out. If you have a, uh, a big problem with the SEO account, um, buy one of the consulting packages. Cause man, I, I had, um, uh, a group of ladies that I think are listening to this, that that's how we got started. They literally were like, all right, we're on this call. And then they're like, here's the website. And we've been trying to figure this out for a while now. Can, can you tell us what's wrong in this hour? Right. And so had to kind of live audio. And I think we, we figured it out. Um, but also I'm even interested in, in taking on some, some really tough projects that, that people have. Um, I have a couple days at the end of the week that, that I can put in some other stuff and I really need to do something to, to not feed my crypto habit. Um, and I think it's bad and I think it's dangerous. And I think, um, I think you shouldn't do it. Um, but I also think that I'm a technologist and

I think, I don't know what it's going to look like. And I think it's too early to go. And I think there's a lot of things going on and, and, and you gotta be careful. And I love data. Um, there's, there's something there and, and there's a future there for us. And, um, I mean, my mom was one of the first employees at Microsoft and I was playing, um, dial up, uh, multiplayer games when everybody was outside playing, playing football. And, and my mom kind of was freaked out that I knew some of her employees by name. And I, I, I, you know, I, I went to a couple of Microsoft events and, um, like I, I knew these people, right. Cause you game, you talk all the sort of thing. And, um, and I just, I, I just love what the internet developed into. I mean, I remember when emails were like a new thing. And I remember when people didn't want to put their information online. I remember when everything was given away just to get people online. And then now you got the generation right now that's like, Hey, I got to pay for, for whatever my kids watch YouTube. I gotta, I gotta pay to not show the ads cause they do not understand ads. Right. Um, and so I think the world's changing and it's evolving and the internet's evolving and, um, you know, you, you, you should, you should check that out if you haven't, but man, um, I don't want to give any advice. It's all educational, uh, stuff. Um, but just don't go crazy, be careful. And, and yeah, if you, if you have stuff you want me to work on, um, reach out to me, I would love to help you out. I am developing while we're, we're, we're about to launch, uh, a mastermind course for the oil and gas industry. Uh, but, but a lot of this, uh, internal training and stuff we did over the holidays to ramp up. And I'm telling you,

it's getting busy right now. It's getting busy right now. Everybody's back. And, um, our calendars is like blowing up. And so, uh, we have put together some really good trainings and stuff like that. And my goal is to roll those out. Um, and, uh, there might be a new brand we're launching and that sort of thing. So if you're still listening, uh, thank you. And please go leave me a review. Um, go leave me a review. I really, I would really appreciate that. I also think through Buzzsprout, um, there's a way to like, if you want to like send me like a dollar a day, I don't know, uh, or something like that, that'd be cool too. Uh, I don't have anybody sending me any money and I'll definitely give you a shot, shout out or something like that. I am going to be interviewing more people on the podcast, um, and also other people in the community. Um, but it's gotta be something valuable that you're sharing that I don't know about. And, and if, if you want to do that or, or, or you feel like 2024 is the year, um, feel free to reach out. I love connecting with people. I am not very social on social media. Um, but if you reach out me directly on LinkedIn or leave me a review or, or, uh, get into a consulting session, I would love to connect with you and, um, you know, figure out what's going on in your life. See if I can help if there's anything you think. So, all right, well, that's it. Um, and, uh, you know, if you're wanting to grow your business or grow yourself with the most powerful tool on the planet, um, AI plus internet, um, reach out to us, uh, schedule a consultation on our website at EWR digital.com and until the next time, bye-bye for now.

This episode answers

Matthew Bertram, host of The Best SEO Podcast
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint

Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG® (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.

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