When ChatGPT Picks Winners, Who Counts As An Expert

Welcome And Nomad SEO Guest

0:03This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

0:18Howdy, welcome back to a fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matt Bertram. If I sound a little different, I apologize. I am remote. But speaking of remote, uh and speaking of the series where we're bringing on top podcast, uh top SEOs on this podcast from all over the world. Uh I wanted to bring Matt from Bangkok, but he's from originally from the UK. He's traveling all over the place. Like so, for all you digital nomads out there that uh are still going to all the conferences and meeting up with everybody, uh, once you have a family, you get kind of stuck a little bit more. So uh I'm definitely jealous. Matt, uh, welcome to the show. Hey Matthew, thanks for having me on. Yeah. And so um, you know, for everybody listening, uh, Matt's an expert in AI SEO as much as you can be, as well as like SaaS products. So uh if you're uh if you're listening and and you're you're doing some uh uh e-commerce or you're doing some uh like SaaS platforms, you're trying to build them, you're trying to grow them, uh, you know, you're doing any of that kind of stuff. This is the podcast for you. So Matt, why don't you just kind of set the table for us of kind of what you're seeing happening in the industry today?

SEO Vs AEO And LLM Shift

1:36Yeah, right. So thank thanks for the intro, Matthew. Appreciate that. And what we're seeing right now, so we're primarily working with SaaS clients, a lot in the US, across Europe, internationally, really. And with these clients, a lot of what we're seeing is the demand is fundamentally shifting to categorize SEO and AEO as being pretty separate services. Yeah, and a lot of brands are approaching it now with very distinct budgets. And I'm always seeing like two big camps of people, right? The the camps of people who are like, no, GEO, AEO, however we want to call it, it's the exact same as SEO. You just do the same principles, and then we have the exact opposite camp who are maybe trying a little too hard to engineer new concepts and new models, just with the idea perhaps it's easier to sell. But I think it can get a little confusing. So there's a lot of confusion, and it's great we have resources like this, like other podcasts, um, discussions, because that's what we need discussions about it. We have limited data, more data come in.

2:35But yeah, yeah, no, it and it's it's very noisy out there. I've actually built some feeds to like pull in stuff, and you're right, they're on social media, there's two big camps. There's like it's just good SEO, and then there's like it's fundamentally different. My viewpoint on it is that LLMs are a fundamentally different technology than search engines. So while things you might be doing some of the things, same things over here, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be interpreted the same way over here. So I like to look at uh GEO, AEO, whatever like you want to fight over the the name of it is. I might just ship stuff like and test it out, but it's a new layer.

Entity SEO And Authority Foundations

3:17I think that there's a layer that that there's data hygiene and there's like good quality categorization and SEO that's happening, and you have to have that good data, especially around entity. So, like we kind of skipped. Well, I felt like the the acceleration um through like digital transformation, if you will, from in the SEO field has moved really, really rapidly. And I think that entity SEO has not really got its light yet. Um and now we're already on like how to optimize for all this kind of other stuff. But if you're starting to build associations, is where I'm seeing a lot of value right now. I I I don't know. I mean, Matt, what are you kind of seeing or like where where are you in that camp? What's what's what's uh you know, put put it out there for everybody to comment on. Yeah, I'll have a stunts.

4:11I wasn't too far on the fence. Uh actually it's great what you're talking about with uh re-associating entities. So we did uh a piece of original research with a company called Blusterer that's specializing in like listings management and review directories, and yeah, we found like a huge amount in terms of like volume and being in SAS specifically a lot of like how you're categorized, but it's not necessarily as much the content of all the reviews, but actually the pure volume. So I'm quite big on the whole authority angle. I think as well, some of the recent changes with like how fanuts are starting when a query is originally searched and that query is already attached to big enterprise names in a space, especially in software, but I'm sure it's happening in a lot of different SEO categories. Um, it's really it's really interesting to see this happen, and it sort of is reinforcing to me that LLMs realize, similar to what Google have realized for a long time, that authorities almost a safer bet. And I think for a while we saw this, like how easy it was for new sites, especially on exact match domains or random listicles, just to appear, uh especially for longer tail queries in the AI overviews in Google, but also in Chat GPT sources. Uh, and now I think we're probably gonna see more of a shift back to authoritative sites. And whether that's a good or a bad thing is more up for debate, but I think that's the shift that's coming.

5:35So so before we get into like off-page digital PR link building sort of thing, I think that that eat framework. So, like if you're coming into the conversation now and this is like first podcast you're listening to, Google's been pushing for a long time expertise, authority, trust. They added experience as kind of like, you know, a way to differentiate because now, you know, a word generator or uh or LLM can just generate context. You got anthropic now uh tagging it, right? Like so they're embedding code into the like letters or something like that. I'm not sure when the reader comes out, like that's that's been like the big discussion. But there was an update too for like directory sites specifically, where they were just for a long time, right? Like Web 2.0 started taking over because they were just listing all the different things in that industry. So they were building like a category uh strength because they're talking about all these people that are being talked about in this category industry. And then this update came out, and I think that like authorship, they tried to launch authorship, I think it was like 2014, they rolled it back. Who's saying it, right? Not just what they're saying, who's saying it, and then like is anybody else third party verifying it, right? And so that's what I've seen with some of these directory sites tank. And as we kind of get into link building, that's that that vote, and they're they're looking at these sites pretty extensively to say, well, what else is this person saying? Not just that this person had a like a high DA score, but they're looking at it from a 360 standpoint and say, how is that person distributing link equity? And is it being distributed to you in a way like even like these like like publishers are now um trying to offer like no index, uh no index pages, and then like they're like everybody's starting to kind of play a different game. And and I think that even a lot of people that are talking about traditional SEO, it's like just do like real outreach and get real links from real publishers, and you don't have to worry about any of that, and you don't have to look over your back for for all these updates. But again, it's going back to like that authority transfer of who's saying what and who is that person that's uh initially even saying the blog. And if you're in your money, your life, or whatever, um, and you're not authoritative or you don't have an online presence, your stuff's not gonna rank as much as somebody it does. Like, so so I think I think where they're going is really a good direction. Um, I I don't know. I mean, what are what are you seeing as we kind of move, I guess, more towards kind of the publisher side of things and like digital PR?

Consensus Signals And Visibility Tools

8:30Yeah, I think it's the safer direction, and it probably is is the right direction because, like you say, um it's not just who's speaking about you, but it's like why are they speaking about you? What's the relationship? And I think it's the concept that everyone's talking about of consensus. If all these co uh other publications in your industry that are relevant to you in relevant places are speaking about you in a consistent way, then the LLMs, when they want to output a response to a query that's relevant, they have a lot of consensus to agree on, and it doesn't feel like risky, perhaps.

9:05Yeah, to say I think that's big. Keep going on, keep keep riffing on that because I think that that's huge.

9:14Yeah, so the types of sites that I'm seeing with clients and what they're wanting links on has changed a lot, and I think this has come down a lot to AI visibility tools. So one I like a lot is the HubSpot AEO reporting, it's quite new, but also uh a lot of people are building their own workflows for it uh in-house. Like we use one with Data for SEO and Claude. Uh before that, I did use one in Google Sheets App Script with OpenAI's API key, which was horrible to build and probably not that useful. Uh, but then yeah, of course, there's tools like OutLair Peak, Profound, everything, different options for different levels. But they're all suggesting um to people and their businesses essentially you need to be featured in these exact places because these are the ones that are pulled through. Um, and I think that's a good starting point. But it's obtaining links and obtaining authority from these places. I have a phrase that I use is very wish listy, and I think it's often hard, they're very hard to obtain links, and that they definitely should be somewhere you focus on for sure. But is it a sustainable approach to really building authority? And then there's the idea of do you want to be seen everywhere or do you want to show up in the few places where it has the highest impact?

10:26Yeah, so there is a lot of people talking about optimize everywhere, uh, for sure. Um, and you know, what I've seen on the B2B side is you don't need to own every channel, and it it's also hard to try to optimize a site or anything like that. Like specialization, I think, is the direction it's going, like you're saying, is like that that thin sliver and even like visibility. Okay. So like we tried all these different tools. We actually built one and and and launched it, but like when I see that my site's getting like read by Claude, I'm like, oh, people are stealing my content. Like that's what I think, right? Like I want to show up, maybe. Well, perplexity is is going in and and doing a lot of research, but maybe there's like a there's a um you know, a consumer side of that, right? Like people are using that for searching, uh, which I think they all kind of have their different advantages. But you know, chat GBT seems to be the most uh consistent as far as like people are using it, people are looking for it. But man, like I I I've started to run chat GBT ads in a couple different categories. Now I've only spent like $2,000. Okay, so like I don't have enough to talk about like what's happening yet, but like I'm trying to go after like some long tail niches to to see to see how how how that kind of impact makes. And so I'll I'll have to circle back on that. But you can absolutely now build your old tools, own tools, and I think that that category um is gonna be just like another kind of visibility layer. I I I mean Google's made some steps to to launch some uh ability to do that. You can we I use Claude to make like a separate analytics tool. Uh yeah, data for SEO has been fantastic, and like you know, different APIs that you can plug in, like HRS and stuff like that to start building some of these custom models are are are really great. But I think it really comes down to the strategy. Like I almost like, I mean, like you can get a bunch of different keywords and you can say, oh, optimize for this. And if you let these AIs just run wild, like they're gonna tank your site. Like they're gonna tank your site. Like you, you really need to know what good looks like. You really need to have a human in the loop when you're utilizing these tools. But it it really comes down to what is that core strategy? And I like that wish listy idea that you have, and I'm on the fence about it, like because there's certain authority hubs like BBB, right? And look, I was on the marketing committee for the Houston chapter of BBB for like five years. So, like, but that is like a staple that they want to see. So it's it's becoming um like a toll booth, or um, it's becoming something you almost have to have to like check that box. Um, and and I mean, uh, but I have seen Reddit shift, right? So I've seen uh the the the visibility from Reddit start to shift, and so you know, I guess that's just marketers doing what marketers do, but um the landscape continues to change, but if you have that North Star on where you're trying to optimize to and you're catching things along the way, and what I've also seen is a lot of brands try to grab like big names and they don't build that core foundation, or even like if there's a business that's geographically located, like focusing on their local community, they haven't done enough of that, and so it's that strength of the signal and the listicles and stuff. I don't I don't know how long that's gonna work for. I think it's like a temporary kind of barnacle SEO compounding effect right now. Um, I don't know. I you gotta you gotta stay on your toes. Like I that's why I think that people that listen to this podcast, that's what they're looking for is what is currently happening? How do I synthesize all that information? And you know, it it is unfortunately too difficult to predict where it's gonna be. I think having just that core good strategy and building those layers on top of it. And then as you kind of fan out with your strategies become a little bit more exotic, can be big like differentiators or tiebreakers when you're going up against a competitive brand.

Reddit Marketing Without Astroturfing

15:00Absolutely. I'm really glad you brought Reddit up in that as well, because actually, yeah, I updated our Reddit guide recently during this year. I think a lot of agencies have tried to start selling Reddit as a part of their service or even shifting their entire business model to be on Reddit and saying that Reddit is like the single-handedly only important thing for AI search. And I think ever from the start, people knew that would would probably be a disaster if you want to focus your entire business model on it. I think with Reddit, there's a huge, a huge place for organic marketing and community building. And I do think it's useful for AEO. I don't think it's uh something that should be completely ignored. We see like so many the citation rates dropped a lot recently uh for the monetary people have been doing, but it's still there. But the whole approach to Reddit has been very difficult because uh a lot of people are following the practice of astroturfing, right? To uh to speak about their brands in a way that's completely unnatural, clearly fabricated. And I don't know on the legal side, but I'm I'm sure people won't get into serious trouble for it. Uh, because I don't I don't I know they don't mean it maliciously, but it's I think from the very start of what Google's always said, and however not white hat someone might be as an SEO, I think like we we can agree that they are gonna go hard on this sort of like manipulative uh strategy.

16:22Well, there are regulatory bodies, and like I think that this just adds on to like reviews, right? Like people that are like fabricating reviews. It's it it it's uh deceptive, right, of of what you're trying to do. Um, I would tell you community building and like storytelling are some of like the most sought-after. Like, I mean, we're trying to hire some storytellers as well to help craft what we want people to remember around certain brands that we're working with and and tell that story across multiple platforms. Like you have different operators that know how to use these, they know the different tactics, but someone that can like craft that story that people will remember that and the recall rate because there's so much noise. I think it takes something like 20 touch points right now on B2B conversions, which is up from 11 uh uh years years ago, um, it's it's so it's so noisy. And I would tell you that the algorithms appreciate that. Like if you stay in the same lane and you get visibility, those type of posts will do well. So it's really important to not just look at the data and optimize for what the data says because on the paid side, which guys were talking about SEO, but on the paid side, I'll tell you these algorithms, they're rebuilding these algorithms based on intent. And let's say on Meta, for example, you just let a campaign run and you are like, hey, it's gonna self-optimize, and people start spamming your your ad, then it starts optimizing for more engagement for more spam, which you know, that sometimes you have to retool the track that it's on to make sure it's on the right track. And and I've seen this with organic social too, is like, oh, like if I if I post these kind of memes or whatever, like I'm gonna get a bunch of visibility. And it's like, okay, well, are you optimizing for impressions or are you optimizing, like we talked about previously, about the high intent keywords um or terms that are actually going to convert sales for you?

Attribution, CRO, Full Funnel Proof

18:34Like those are two very different things. And you could be like, oh, I'm getting like all these impressions and views, but it but is it pulled through? Are you tracking all the way through to your CRM? Are you, you know, is this the right kind of client? Are you generating uh is it compounding in the right way to get the result that you're looking for? And and I think that this full funnel marketing uh on the like e-commerce side, or if you're if you have the full sales loop online, and I even see like Google collapsing in on what Amazon's doing, right? Like just buy, just buy right here. You don't have to leave Google at all, right? I think that that's what everybody's going for is taking the whole funnel and just having it all off page, and you can get in first position. And this is this has been something that we've been working through internally, is like, okay, we're we're in the AI overviews, we're in first position for all these terms. How are we tracking traffic to make sure that the the greater funnel is converting? Because these keywords are goose aches, but we're in first position. There's some value in that, but how do we how do we loop it back into uh being able to show attribution?

19:46Nice. I like this a lot uh talking about attribution and the wider the wider prospect of everything because it's not like you're just putting SEO in one bucket, but you're you're putting it in how does this contribute to marketing as a whole, and then why does marketing contribute to sales? And like you said about the touch points, it can be super high in some industries, especially like higher ticket services or like enterprise level softwares. Um these uh sales cycles take a long time. You need to constantly be in the conversation. So I think that sort of blend of like retargeting for paid as well and having specific audiences and then maybe account-based marketing strategies, and then also be in front of mind by always being present uh in Chat GPT, in the AI overviews. So all throughout this research phase, uh you're showing up uh as the solution that solves the problem.

20:36Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Every time we get hired for SEO services, it SEO is what the label is, but it's really like get us more business, right? Like put a bow on it, like you know, and so a lot of times I was actually in a client meeting, we were doing a year review, uh, and we start talking about conversion rate optimization, and we're in a SEO contract, and a couple of the stakeholders in the room were like, Can you explain that a little bit more? And like, why are you focused on that? And you know, there's still a lot of education uh it to like business owners or or to to people outside the marketing department of all the different factors of what goes in uh to SEOs. I feel like you know, SEO and and the data and now how it touches everything should have like a greater seat at the table, uh, in in a lot of words, because they know they know what's happening a lot more closely than maybe like the IT department, or you know, if someone's downstream in sales or delivery, like they don't they don't see it all uh where it starts. And it's how you try to map the analytics together um and and get that as best visibility as you can based on the access that you have is been that. ongoing challenge. I even think that that's why paid ads tend to get more budget than than SEO is because you know you can get more attribution and and or easier attribution to show the the connection. I don't

Digital PR Links With Original Research

22:16know. Like let's let's jump into more like link acquisition um and and digital PR because I think that that authority building piece is so so big. And I I think that a lot of these like link building companies like can hurt hurt brands more than they know. Like I I I've seen a lot of people that have started to like use services to to build links and it actually tanks their site or it it hurts their trust. How do we detox all this money that they just spent like there's a delicate balance but doing outreach and and using automation to do outreach like there's some strategies that we're we're we're testing out that that seem to be working really well but but there's a human in the center of it. It's not just people um you know uh trade in trading links for money like that that does that doesn't seem to uh work long term like I think there might be a your a short term spike in uh kind of attention and and uh they the the bots kind of swarm to the page and you get like this a pop and then you get like a drop you know um I don't know I mean what what's been your experience and and your opinion on where the market is right now as it as it has to do with link building?

23:57Definitely a lot of different ways of of approaching link building I like the digital PR and authority building idea anyway so original research I think that's been like one of the biggest topics of 2026 and I'm very pro-original research I think it's great I think it's going to attract the exact kind of links you want it's gonna have your brand decided alongside some sort of evidence that you're an authority in the space because it's not only oh yeah here's a link to this agency or here's a link to this brand it's like oh this brand found this and I think it's people can get really creative with their approach of original research but for most businesses they're sitting on a lot of original data and a lot of data that can be synthesized and made into stuff that is interesting. And even though it might be something really niche it's still something that can regularly come up in like a roundup list. And one thing I'm seeing even more because people are using agentic workflows to research and to build their content and run fully managed AI content strategies which can be effective maybe not as optimal but often pretty effective. And these research elements are actually just finding a lot of data that actually supports what it needs to support and the the the model's looking to find stuff to make its narrative believable and it's going to find your original data your original research and add links to you and that business is going to upload the article maybe they check and they're like yep it sounds good the original research looks good. So that's huge. I think that's great. There's some agencies doing like sort of really creative sort of larger digital PR campaigns I think these campaigns can be pretty expensive but for a lot of brands with budget like they they can be good because they can get you the top media links that aren't going to be you're not going to get these links through buying them on a link building marketplace or through some agency uh the the really unattainable links that way.

25:46And and I would I would tell you that the cost per those links of those big campaigns so they're expensive but if you average how many links you get over the course of a campaign like that from those publishers it's untouchable on on the cost per link. Okay. I mean we did this big push and I think we were getting like I mean okay just so everybody that's listening can understand what I'm saying I'm talking da 70 to da 90 links legit links that are that are are are organic um are are natural for like 157 dollars on average like when you averaged it all out like you that is unbeatable and the and that those will stick those are legit um pr campaigns you know um and and the I I think that the original research where you're building these kind of nodes or data sets um that that ai will will grab it and if it's useful to them will use it later. And so it's thinking through strategically how how to pull that together. That was actually one I was doing earlier this week is um I was cleaning up all my archive emails like I have like too many and and I was matching it up with data sets that we had. And it was it was really interesting some of the different kinds of potential case studies that we have that that we can share. And then and then I think it's even making uh the case studies like sortable um I I think that that's like a pro tip that I would say is uh not just humans but but AIs being able to uh understand how to organize them how to sort through them and how to understand what you actually have proof for that what you're doing because I think authority proof you can use those pretty interchangeably that's really what AI wants to see like okay you say you do it prove it to me show me what you did and then I'm gonna look at that study and I'm gonna compare that study to somebody else that has like a summer study and I'm gonna get a comp and then I'm gonna like force rank that and then I'm gonna compare that against other like listicles and things like that and I'm gonna compute like a score for you. Sorry I'm saying like a lot I I just noticed that so I apologize anybody uh if you don't know what you're gonna say don't say like just be quiet so I'll I'll be quiet and let Matt Matt talk there.

28:21Yeah no absolutely and in terms of pure link building I think a lot of approaches have changed to it. So there's definitely different types of ways that agencies do it but there's some models of link building that I think largely we can all agree are very dead and have been for a long time where it's like this approach of asking for editorial links for exchange in a guest post, these are always going to be paid financial relationships because everyone knows the value of the link. And asking for a brand mention doesn't suddenly make it less valuable. Everyone now believes in the value of brand mentions just as much so with the the wider PR approach it is much more natural yes. And then the other thing that I think can work really well is link exchanges in certain aspects when they're built on real partnerships. They're very scalable often going to be very cheap. Obviously you're gonna need your own asset to trade the links with that's either going to be your own blog or some sort of other media distribution you have. But that's also a way to get links and I think what's interesting about that is you can be a bit more selective about okay we're wanting to target specific pages. This is much more typical like blue link search but that correlation with blue link search and AI is massive and it's not something that we can ignore just because AI search is new.

29:44And and I think like I would go a step beyond like link exchanges to actual partnerships. And I think that that's what's trying to be identified is actual partnerships, not just like a bunch of link exchanges where you're never mentioned. I think it's where there's consistently two people that are in a vertical that are referencing each other talking about each other maybe they're doing a webinar together like that's when I think the real power um happens is is not just a link exchange. Like I get email requests for link exchanges and I'm like who are you and like why and like like this this is not relevant. Like this is just spam outreach noise sort of thing. But when people present something like hey like we want to do this we want to do this together we want to like whatever like we want to do a small series about this or whatever then I'm like okay and and I I really investigate the brand and and the people and say oh these are these are people we can do business with I I think people I haven't heard people talk recently about referral networks okay like if we're talking about uh so again my how I look at things I'm gonna zoom out a little bit and say I'm really more of a digital strategist than specifically an SEO uh because I feel like SEO depending on how you define it depending on what box you want to put yourself in or what other people put you in you can't effectively just be and focus on SEO to effectively do your job based on whatever KPIs you're being measured on. And so I feel like it continues to kind of expand. And if you're if you're looking at business goals you have to start thinking about some of these other things. So they might not be specifically relevant to SEO but I'll tell you it's circular I feel like referral networks and what you can get out of referral networks or interviewing an expert on their team or like you said co-citations or unique research or doing events together like these things build that digital footprint that goes that association and through that association it says hey these people are actually walking the walk not just talking the talk.

32:16It's that quantity of visibility so this is the perfect example uh of like a real partnership where maybe there's like a YouTube co-series or podcast uh sharing some original research together that identifies two uh different things and it's published across both mediums both uh founders of the companies are publishing it on LinkedIn uh people are interacting and there's all this digital trail of that visibility that's actually being built I like the label of a digital strategist I think I need to adopt that because it is about strategy and largely everything is every single unit of work is getting to a point where it can be automated and every article even to the point of saying okay this is basic keyword research but you need to understand where it like fits into the entire brand and where it fits into where you're trying to go the KPIs you're being measured against why do we need to drive visibility here what's actually the purpose of it so you build authority in all these different places and this visibility approach building this huge footprint and that's how you over time are getting into this set of okay you're an authority in this space.

Automation Guardrails And SaaS Playbook

33:22So so we were working on like building these like internal skills that different people are using and what you just brought up made me think of it is like I hire somebody for a specific job to do this specific piece. And then I realize oh you have to do this and then oh you have to know this and then you have to know all these different pieces to function and then I'm like okay I'm automating that but be right but I mean it it's be it becomes you you really need I would all I okay I'm gonna branch out a little bit here and say if you're trying to like step into like this agentic world if you're a a client or a customer or an agency whatever if you're not strong in automation you may just need to focus on automation before you get into agentic workflows because I what I'm finding is when we build these agentic workflows then I want to add guardrails to like what the AI is doing so it becomes consistently because there's a lot of drift and then I'm going like okay well maybe I just need to like automate it and then like agentically have them make a couple decisions and like train the model on like all these different uh points to make this decision really well and then I'm kind of like building nodes to make make those decisions better so I get more consistent results. And then I'm like trying to train somebody to like okay you have to know how to wire these things up and then I'm going okay well then we got to put a wrapper around that. So I just keep working backwards. Does that make sense? Like I keep working backwards to meet clients and and and people that we're bringing on where they're at to utilize uh these agentic workflows and that I guess that's what people are doing is they're putting wrappers on things uh and they're you know obfuscating kind of what's going on so that it's easier to make decisions and meet people where they are because I I I actually feel if you're utilizing some of these later latest tools you're gonna pay for it but you're you're gonna still get um access to to a lot of uh what's happening in the marketplace but to even do like tool revision I mean I've found like we need to review we need to be reviewing tools like quarterly right now um because things keep changing or you know does this meet the use case I don't know I'm going down a a a different rabbit hole so um I don't know if you have any thoughts around anything I shared and then uh we can we can jump back and close out on um kind of what's different with uh SaaS and and AI than than maybe other segments of the market. Sure.

36:24But I like I like the rabbit holes because I you got me thinking about the guardrails and uh the feedback cycles and I think a lot of companies right now are of course going to be trying to build their own in-house solutions and to make sure things like content production and the actual underpinning strategy is good. I think the danger can be we now have access to an unfathomable amount of data and we can get data through any API MCP and we have this huge moat of data and yes we can analyze it and spot patterns but also we're going to spot the patterns that we want to spot and it's it's easy to sort of have like multiple ideas and always be trying to move to the next thing but oftentimes it is about actually having that strategy and sticking to it and the consistency of okay doing the basics right getting building the authority building the topical authority like you said as well about uh interviews earlier and interviewing specialist team members this is the way I'm always asking clients to do to do their updates it's like we can get a good version of this and it's maybe 80% of the way that but without this real unique experience and insights to stories you can tell and storytelling the theme we discussed all of this this content's never going to be exactly where we want it to be right so we have to add all of this in and then yeah in terms of doing that a genetically that's another problem to solve because then how is the AI going to capture that level of experience? Yeah no I think this has been a great discussion I would love for you to kind of highlight for somebody that has a SaaS company or is working with SaaS companies you you've really uh focused on on this segment of the market can you share anything that you're seeing that they might be able to take away from this to really be actionable and have some some value from this conversation biggest actionable things right now SAS and B2B companies selling higher ticket things focus on revenue and focus on what's actually going to get the best leads in the because the customer accounts that are ultimately the ones that have the longest lifetime value work backwards from the business economics and then you can update the strategy around that oftentimes the best things you can do on a website are content updates uh having clear URL paths and clear structure between the site internally linking where it's suitable uh building that sort of cluster of authority on the site and then building authority in the right places uh landing links that are actually going to be good relevant sites ideally in articles that already have traffic if that's possible uh that's always nice and yeah I think having this like wish list of these are the the biggest sites in our niche and these are the specific sites that we need to get featured in is good but it's not it's it's pretty hard to get there naturally and a lot of the times they're not going to want to link to you because you're competitive or something like that. And the solution really is being a more authoritative brand where they're gonna naturally write about you anyway. Exploring the partnerships as well I think that's great. I'm doing more in terms of uh YouTube in terms of uh building presence in other areas because I'm quite in the camp of a lot of people are saying is this is now about brand marketing a lot more SEO is way less in isolation than ever also another top tip uh looking to understand user behavior on the site we earlier mentioned about CRO but understanding if certain pages aren't converting well uh but you're driving traffic to them that traffic's not gonna always be there if users always are bouncing from these pages they're not following to get more information but yeah that there's some top tips for SAS.

40:13I think they're applicable to a lot of businesses uh but SAS categories can be a bit unique in terms of the ways that people get links there is a lot more link exchanges going on a lot of different sort of partnerships like that because of all the tool integrations and everything yeah original research everything I love it I love it so Matt with EMGI from Bangkok thank you so much for coming on the show so if people want to find out more about what you're doing follow you uh online what what your thoughts are your your independent research how do they uh find out more about you thanks Matthew and yeah you can find me at emgigroup.com uh that's our website Matt MG on LinkedIn and Matt Mg on YouTube as well so all these places awesome well thank you everybody for listening if you like this show please leave us a review let us know please go check out bestseopodcast dot com uh this podcast is sponsored by EWR Digital if you want to grow your business with the largest most powerful tool on the planet the internet keep listening to this show for more tips uh and insights thank y'all so much for listening my name is matt Matthew Bertram or Matt Bertram bye bye for now