BrightonSEO: How (A)I Fixed My Broken Content Workflow

Transcript

1. How (A)I Fixed My Broken Content Workflow James Finlayson Light Emitting Data <> SEOmonitor Speakerdeck.com/jamesfinlayson @jamesifinlayson @JamesFinlayson
2. https://commoncrawl.github.io/cc-crawl-statistics/plots/crawlsize 2010 2015 2020 2025 In 2015 Content Marketing was driving the growth of the internet
3. pumping out endless content on every topic with search volume. Business was booming for content farms 0101010101100101010100101 0100100100010101010101010 0101011010101010101000101 0010100101010100101010 0101001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010010 1010010010001010101010101 0010101101010101010100010 10010100101010100101010 0101001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010010 1010010010001010101010101 0010101101010101010100010 1001010010101010010101001 01001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010 0101010010010001010101010 1010010101101010101010 1000101001010010101010010 101001010010100100100 1010111101010100110101101 010101010010101010101001 0000100100101010101100101 0101001010100100100010101 0101010100101011010101 0101010001010010100101010 100101010010100101001 0010010101111010101001101 0110101010101001010101010 1001000010010001010100110 1011010101010100101010101 0100100001001001010101011 00101010100101 0100100100010101010101010 0101011010101010101000101 0010100101010100101010 0101001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010010 1010010010001010101010101 0010101101010101010100010 10010100101010100101010 0101001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010010 1010010010001010101010101 0010101101010101010100010 1001010010101010010101001 01001010010010010101111 0101010011010110101010101 0010101010101001000010010 010101010110010101010 0101010010010001010101010 1010010101101010101010 1000101001010010101010010 101001010010100100100 1010111101010100110101101 010101010010101010101001 0000100100101010101100101
4. https://commoncrawl.github.io/cc-crawl-statistics/plots/crawlsize 2010 2015 2020 2025 Google managed to slow us down for a while with updates
5. 2010 2015 2020 2025 Soon the pace upped again https://commoncrawl.github.io/cc-crawl-statistics/plots/crawlsize
6. 2010 2015 2020 2025 Then, in 2023, the age of AI Content Marketing began. https://commoncrawl.github.io/cc-crawl-statistics/plots/crawlsize
7. The AI Content is arriving Tsunami
8. (with a few problems)
9. Keyword research wasn’t designed to lead to thousands of new pages out the other side !
10. So we scrape the bottom of that keyword research barrel
11. We become less targeted
12. But we’re producing more content than ever, so, who cares, right?
13. Who are slowly reducing their reliance on Google Way more content From more companies With a static online population
14. Google’s slowly sending fewer users offsite
15. …and they have their own AI play
16. So nobody’s reading your content.
17. And the content we are reading will increasingly come from brands that have no idea about the thing they’re writing about.
18. …so we’re outranked by our local undertakers…
19. we’re beaten by the butchers
20. The OnlyFans on your site are you.
21. The more we scramble, the more we forget: What’s this content doing for the brand? What’s this content doing for the consumer?
22. In 3 years time nobody’s going to be able to tell the difference between AI content and human content
23. 2010 2015 2020 2025 https://commoncrawl.github.io/cc-crawl-statistics/plots/crawlsize So this graph is going to start speeding up as the AI Content Tsunami hits the shore.
24. MORE CONTENT LESS TARGETED LESS STRATEGIC LOWER CONVERSION RATES
25. …and a lot of out of work content writers
26. 0001010101001101010100001010101010101010101010101001101010100101010 0101010101010101010000010101111101011100100101010010001010000101010 1111001010101010111001010001010101000101010010101010100001001000101 1010011010101000010101010101010101010101010011010101001010101010101 1010101010100000101011111010111001001010100100010100001010101111100 0101010101110010100010101010001010100101010101000010010001010101001 0101010000101010101010101010101010100110101010010101010101010101010 0101000001010111110101110010010101001000101000010101011111001010101 1011100101000101010100010101001010101010000100100010101010011010101 0001010101010101010101010101001101010100101010101010101010101010100 0010101111101011100100101010010001010000101010111110010101010101110 1010001010101000101010010101010100001001000101010100110101010000101 1010101010101010101010011010101001010101010101010101010101000001010 1111010111001001010100100010100001010101111100101010101011100101000 0101010001010100101010101000010010001010101001101010100001010101010 0101010101010100110101010010101010101010101010101010000010101111101 1110010010101001000101000010101011111001010101010111001010001010101 0010101001010101010000100100010101010011010101000010101010101010101 1010101001101010100101010101010101010101010100000101011111010111001 DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM
27. 0001010101001101010100001010101010101010101010101001101010100101010 0101010101010101010000010101111101011100100101010010001010000101010 1111001010101010111001010001010101000101010010101010100001001000101 1010011010101000010101010101010101010101010011010101001010101010101 1010101010100000101011111010111001001010100100010100001010101111100 0101010101110010100010101010001010100101010101000010010001010101001 0101010000101010101010101010101010100110101010010101010101010101010 0101000001010111110101110010010101001000101000010101011111001010101 1011100101000101010100010101001010101010000100100010101010011010101 0001010101010101010101010101001101010100101010101010101010101010100 0010101111101011100100101010010001010000101010111110010101010101110 1010001010101000101010010101010100001001000101010100110101010000101 1010101010101010101010011010101001010101010101010101010101000001010 1111010111001001010100100010100001010101111100101010101011100101000 0101010001010100101010101000010010001010101001101010100001010101010 0101010101010100110101010010101010101010101010101010000010101111101 1110010010101001000101000010101011111001010101010111001010001010101 0010101001010101010000100100010101010011010101000010101010101010101 1010101001101010100101010101010101010101010100000101011111010111001 DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM …but not for everyone
28. Remember that people are reducing their reliance on Google?
29. When they do search those searches are increasingly branded bbc news amazon amazon uk restaurants Weather tomorrow bbc football xvideos chaturbate twitter outlook Porn hub porn wordle rightmove argos bbc mcdonalds Scoreboard for football Football scores tesco youtube Daily mail gmail google translate universal credit xnxx Restaurants near me bet365 next indeed facebook bbc sport hotmail translate sky news hotels sainsburys instagram Manchester united ig weather google xhamster Google maps ebay bbc weather yahoo mail Universal credit login Auto trader chatgpt 100 highest search volume terms in the UK, Sep ‘24, from
30. I search ‘John Lewis’ I search ‘apple watch’ I navigate to moneysavingexper t I don’t search ‘8k tv’ I don’t search ‘best watches’ I don’t search ‘best electricity provider’
31. If you can become the default then you win.
32. But only brands that deliver on their promises are able to achieve this.
33. Which is when 10 articles that resonate with your audience and solves their problem beats 10k articles that don’t.
34. Where those articles are something your CRM team want to mention in their newsletters
35. ..and something PPC sees value in funneling traffic through
36. …and your CMO understands why it exists
37. In the face of the AI Content Tsunami, it’s time to do CONTEXT-AWARE CONTENT MARKETING
38. The Processes Holding Us Back
39. Over the last 6 months, whilst training more than 2-dozen teams on SEOmonitor, I realised we all have the same content marketing process
40. The founder has a ‘brilliant’ idea and wins the account based on it
41. The account manager takes this idea and turns it into a strategy that makes…sense
42. The data analyst dives into keyword research, emerging with key findings in a dry spreadsheet
43. The content strategist, who hates data, tries to decode it into briefs
44. Content Writers do their best to produce something coherent
45. The account manager, unenviably, tries to justify it all to the client
46. The data analyst pulls together some data to prove it was a success…whether it was or not
47. The founder turns up to collect an award—whilst texting the team asking who changed everything
48. Each step burns budget
49. Only one step adds direct value
50. We can’t do real content marketing when we’re focused on our specialism rather than the outcome .
51. I call this Pass the parcel SEO
52. Occasionally the music stops, someone drops the parcel… …and a client churns.
53. We do this because, as you scale, you want to lean into everyone’s specialisms.
54. …because it leads to impressive looking process diagrams
55. …and because it’s what we were taught when we were learning.
56. There’s three main pain points: 1 2 3 Inefficiency Time spent on things that aren’t implementation and don’t drive results. Disjointedness Communication breakdowns, misunderstandings and those ‘I thought you were doing that’ moments. Inconsistency Especially when outsourcing content production, the quality, cost and speed is all over the place.
57. It creates short-term wins not long-term brand growth
58. This mess exists because of the ‘T-shaped marketer’
59. I once tried to teach Digital PR’s data science. It wasn’t so much herding cats as trying to teach cats calculus. Really purrsuasive cats that had journalists to get back to.
60. What I’m saying is that we all have strengths and weaknesses and that saying to just ‘get good’ isn’t an answer.
61. How do you do it all yourself when, you know, you can’t do it all yourself?
62. Instead of the AI Content Tsunami leading to us firing all our content writers… …we put them at the heart of the process.
63. Because content writers—the good ones—do lots of brilliant things other than writing content. They’re the only ones that have been taught to understand who they’re writing for.
64. Understanding the who, what and why of your audience is vital in creating a brand that resonates.
65. But when the whole world’s pumping out more, less strategic, content. How do we transition to Context-Aware Content Marketing? First, we fix our keyword research. But when the whole world’s pumping out more, less strategic, content. How do we transition to Context-Aware Content Marketing?
66. People choose not to buy from you for a few reasons: $ They don’t need a solution $$ There are better solutions $$$ They don’t know you exist $$$$ They don’t like you $$$$$ You’re not a good fit for them
67. This boils down to R resonance A awareness R reputation E edge
68. Almost all traditional keyword research focuses on awareness R resonance A awareness R reputation E edge How many people are searching each term and where do we sit for each of these buckets?
69. Any SEO tool will tell you this (<cough> including the sponsor <cough>)
70. If we ignore the other factors, we’re throwing darts in the dark hoping for a bullseye
71. Or, with AI, we’re taking a machine gun to the web
72. We’re carpet bombing Google
73. SEO becomes the COVID of the internet
74. Meanwhile awareness helps consumers buy. It doesn’t always help consumers buy from you.
75. Large media agencies pass around expensive annual surveys for these sorts of insights.
76. Every team interpreted them differently. We were passing the parcel again.
77. But understanding your resonanc e reputatio n edge in the market will be vital when the AI Content Tsunami hits. , and
78. The problems 1 2 3 Content marketing’s about to go parabolic— making it 10x harder to rank. Current processes are too slow and disconnected to produce content that resonates. Often, we don’t even know what resonating with our audience means. We don’t know the company’s reputation, product fit or edge— we don’t have context.
79. Building context
80. R resonance A awareness R reputation E edge
81. Already Resonating SEOmonitor See what content and terms are already converting
82. Future Resonance Use PPC-backed temporary content experiments to understand content that disproportionately produces positive outcomes
83. R resonance A awareness R reputation E edge
84. I previously worked with Expedia in both the UK and Finland. At the time, click through rates in the UK—where the brand was established, well known and trusted, were higher than in Finland where they’d just launched. 50%
85. Reputatio n adds wind to your sails at every stage of the conversion journey
86. Should we lean on our reputation for reliability or go into detail as to how we’ve changed? Are we seen as overpriced and so need to spend time explaining the value proposition? Does everyone hate our CEO and so we talk about everyone, but them?
87. Auditing brand sentiment 1 2 Merge on [ ] [brand] [legit is reliable good trustworthy a scam complaints reviews worth it ratings issues ripoff news] Track and categorise
88. Auditing brand sentiment 2 3 worth it ratings issues ripoff] Track and categorise Track sentiment of results within branded results using Google Sheets, SEOmonitor’s API and Google’s Natural Language API. Template: <link>
89. 2 3 worth it ratings issues ripoff] Track and categorise Track sentiment of results within branded results using Google Sheets, SEOmonitor’s API and Google’s Natural Language API. Template: <link> screenshot
90. branded results using Google Sheets, SEOmonitor’s API and Google’s Natural Language API. Template: <link> screenshot 4 Monitor over time through Looker Studio visualisations Template: <link> screenshot
91. 2 Track and categorise 1 Merge on [ ] [brand] [legit is reliable good trustworthy a scam complaints reviews worth it ratings issues ripoff news] Auditing brand sentiment
92. 4 Monitor over time through Looker Studio visualisations 2 Track and categorise Auditing brand sentiment 3 Track sentiment of results within branded results using Google Sheets, SEOmonitor’s API and Google’s Natural Language API. Template: https://tinyurl.com/reputationmonitor
93. 4 Monitor over time through Looker Studio visualisations Auditing brand sentiment 3 Track sentiment of results within branded results using Google Sheets, SEOmonitor’s API and Google’s Natural Language API. Template: https://tinyurl.com/reputationmonitor
94. 4 Monitor over time through Looker Studio visualisations Auditing brand sentiment
95. R resonance A awareness R reputation E edge
96. What’s the brand’s edge over competitors?
97. We need to understand: True intent —what are the jobs to be done? Barriers to purchasing —what concerns them? Reasons to purchase —what motivates them? Brand position —how do we compare?
98. I used to interview product experts. You still can, but I’ve found it faster to automate and then ask expert to review. https://tinyurl.com/searchpurpose
99. Edge also requires you to add something new to the discussion. something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion Something different something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion something new to the discussion
100. I was talking to an annoyingly-right person not long ago on just this… (Cosmin, founder of SEOmonitor) What’s old in one country is often new in another
101. Bring unique ideas, data and viewpoints ranking abroad to local audiences
102. The RARE framework gives your keyword research context. Context to add value, convert and retain.
103. It’s that lack of context that makes content fall-flat. …that creates pass the parcel SEO … …and that makes ChatGPT content so forgettable.
104. That’s why ChatGPT starts hallucinating
105. What I realised over the last year…
106. …mostly because of this guy…. I’m annoying
107. Almost any LLM Is that when you feed that context into LLMs the content suddenly hugely improves resonance awareness reputation edge brand guidelines
108. and can you guess what tool integrated much of this directly into their content writer? + = resonance awareness reputation edge brand guidelines
109. Shocking takeaway Properly explaining what you want leads to better results!
110. If you do three things, having sat through 100+ slides 1 2 3 Add consumer context into your keyword research. Test using that context in your AI content creation. Go to stand 46 and tell Dave you love his shirt. He’ll give you ice cream.
111. and try SEOmonitor (with 50 free article creations)
112. Download the deck at https://speakerdeck.com/jamesfinlayson
113. Image Credits 1. OpenClipart-Vectors 2. The Noun Project 3. VectorPortal 4. Cosmin’s Facebook 5. Dave’s LinkedIn