At the end of the day, AI content's not very good. I don't care like how many prompts you put in, it still has an aspect to it that to me is quite obvious.

Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we have Rachel Hernandez, marketing director of the Hawk SEO, joining us to help us elevate our SEO knowledge. In this episode, we explore link insertion, how AI overviews are going to impact the way we search, the myths surrounding link exchange, and the problems with using AI to write your SEO content, and much more. If you'd like to know what a marketer does for a marketing company or what SEO tactics an SEO company would focus on, this episode is for you. I'm Johnny Flash. Stay with us. Before we dive in, first a quick word from our sponsor.

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Hey Rachel, how's it going?

Hey, doing well. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so glad to have you on here. So um for those um where where are you located? Because I'm always just curious about where people are at.

So I'm in Asheville, North Carolina.

Okay. Oh, I love Asheville. Um, so are you close to the Biltmore by any chance?

Well, I would say like a 10-minute drive, maybe a little bit.

Oh, okay. Have you been to it? I'm assuming you have, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's beautiful.

It we went there uh last year for our 19th anniversary, my wife and I, and we just had so much fun. We went with they had all the Christmas decorations out, and it was just like we got the tour and we went on the roof, and it was just it was a really cool experience. We were talking about it just the other day.

It is so beautiful for the holidays. Did you get to go see? Did you see the indoor pool?

We saw the indoor pool, we did horseback riding. Uh, we even read a book um on the way kind of to Asheville because we drove down from DC and then back. We were reading a book about George Biltmore, like a Vanderbilt's life, you know, and like the building of the building and everything. So we felt like we were like we were hearing the whole story of how it came to be, and then we visited it and it was just really, really loved it.

You were very prepared. That's great.

It was fun, it was fun. So now I'm gonna have to top that this year for our 20th anniversary because we had such a good time. Uh my wife was saying, Oh, it was so great, and we did some hiking and all the things. So um, but anyways, cool. Well, uh great to have you on here. And I know that um you and uh the Hoth, the Hoth group, um the Hoth kind of SEO service are you know well known for doing SEO. So tell us a little bit about uh kind of your your role and what you guys have been doing there.

Yeah, I so my role specifically is I'm the director of marketing for the Hoth. Um so my my little joke is that I market marketing. Uh I also do SEO for an SEO company, so which which is uh fun and metafilled challenge. Uh the Hoth itself, we've been around since 2010. I've been there for eight years now. And we're primarily, I would say, um link building is really the thing that we're known for. And link building is if you're an SEO and you're doing SEO, um, you know how crucial it is. And if you've had to do it, you know how annoying it is to have try and figure out. Uh so we've definitely been lucky to cover ourselves like a very solid space in that need because it is so important. And it is um, I don't know if I can say this, but like such a pain in the ass um as somebody who's had to build backlinks before. Um, but we also do we do optimize content. Um we do technical SEO, uh local SEO services. And um we actually started off as a surely white label SEO agency. So um if somebody has like purchased SEO from another company, um, there's a very solid chance that that's our stuff that's been repackaged. Um awesome.

So I know our audience, we've got all kinds of folks uh listening and watching in in terms of, you know, we've got like the DIY who's trying to get their agency or their freelancer off the ground. They're they're still doing a lot of the things and they're trying to like get off the tools and kind of elevate in their business, right? So they're more of a business owner and not having to do all the things. Then we've got like the agency owner who probably has team members who's you know, probably has someone who does their SEO in-house. Like on my team, I've got a few folks on our team who actually do the SEO. Um, and then we've got some agency owners that have a fair number of like white label partners where they're like, I don't want to deal with the copywriting, I don't want to deal with the SEO. You know, let's just get someone like yourself or another uh white label service to do it. So if we could try to talk to all three of those audiences, I think that would be great. And um, I was thinking for the for the DIY, you know, trying to build links, it's sometimes you don't even know where to build the link, right? Or how what kind of link to build? Like, am I going to get a directory listing somewhere? Am I building like a blog? Am I publishing a blog post on someone else's blog and getting that to have a link in it back to my site? Am I just getting someone to try to insert a link to my website on an existing blog post? Um, and I know as like a uh we have a blog on our agency site that's reasonably popular enough that I get constant uh emails saying, Hey, would you add this link to our blog post? Or hey, you know, this would benefit you. And I'm just like, oh my goodness, like stop. Like it's just so much. If it was once every once in a while, I'd be like, oh, this is kind of cool. Someone wants to be on my blog. But when it's like every day, you're just like, I can't even respond to these because there's just so many of them. So um let's just talk about like what are the ideal kind of links if we could, like, or or the advantage of the different kinds.

Yeah, there's like there's a few different things that obviously go into this. And I generally, unless you're a brand new website and you have no links at all, you're just starting fresh, um, I I wouldn't even pursue directory link. I wouldn't use your resources, whether it's time or money, um, that direction, because they're just they're just not going to be as valuable. Um, to me, the best links to get are going to be like those in-content guest post links. Um, so yeah, like a blog on somebody else's website. And I do love, I I love a link insertion. Um and I think that's a very, very powerful um one, it's a powerful link because if you're putting a backlink in content that's already existing, that web page and that content already has some authority and traffic going to it and coming from it rather than when you're posting brand new content, you're kind of starting from scratch. Uh so when I actually like I because I have to do again SEO for an SEO company, and when I when I do link outreach for our own site, link insertions or niche edits are are usually my first pass because of that, and because it's also just like a very easy thing to say, like um, you know, I saw that you linked to this resource, um, have a better one, or it's very I've gotten that email from folks. Like, okay, and it it all depends. And I've I've had like um I had a a blog on our own website where I mentioned uh a big brand, like in like a case, kind of a case study, but you know, like just kind of an anecdotal one. And um this brand reached out to me and said, you know, hey, I I noticed that you mentioned our brand our brand in this post. Do you mind like linking to our website? Sure. You know, like why not? I I have no issue with that at all. Um so I think, yeah, I mean, if we're talking about link insertions, I think are my favorite. Guest posts can be super, super powerful. But then the other things that you want to look at when um you're looking for link opportunities are the site's uh different names for this, but domain authority, domain rating, um essentially like how powerful is that website is the scale from one to a hundred, the higher the the number, the more powerful the backlink. Uh I wouldn't bother with anything that's a it's below a 20. Um for the most part, it's just not going to do that much for you. And then um the other metric that we look at, the Hoth, that I think has become supremely important and people are finally catching on to this is how much traffic is going to that website. Uh because if Google is is sending that site traffic and they're they're ranking them for certain keywords, they're going to see that site is an authority too. Um so like we don't do guest posts on websites. The lowest will go is a thousand visitors per month organic.

Okay. Um, so you would say basically guest insertion, uh uh link insertion on an existing post is the best choice. Second best choice is maybe like a guest post and wouldn't really waste time with like directories and other stuff, right?

If you're brand new and you have no links, I think directories are fine because one, everybody, it's not like everybody has to start somewhere, but like you kind of have to start somewhere. And also if you're a brand new website, the first links you get to it naturally are not gonna be like those big juicy guest post links or those insertions. Um, so we want to build a natural backlink profile. And it three would make sense for that.

Yeah. And what what do you expect? Like, do you do you expect to pay something when you get a link insertion or not? And if so, like, or sometimes then what what would what's like a reasonable amount to pay for that?

It depends. I know that's the cliche marketer answer. Yeah, but it it it does. I mean, it depends on the website. It depends on um, you know, whether or not you can also offer something. Um, I do again, link outreach for our own website. Um, or it's similar when I do, I do influencer outreach for our website. Um, sometimes I'll say, Can you create like a post about us and I can give you this thing that you can review? And some people say yes, and that's great. Some people say, I want a thousand dollars for that post, and that's a different animal. Um, so it really depends on like who you're talking to and who you're you're um and what you're working with and what your budget is. And that's why I mean, not to like just shill. I'm not here to just shill our stuff, but working with a vendor who has like these established relationships with different websites and different brands is super useful because it kind of takes all that negotiating stuff like off of the for you. They they handle all that stuff for you.

Love it. So I mean, just just for the DIY out there, it could be anywhere from what would you say, like I mean, I guess it all depends, but if we're just talking about a link in existing blog post, I mean I guess it could be as cheap as free or like 25 bucks, and it could probably go up to like several hundred dollars, right?

Depending on if they're getting a link for $25, it's not gonna be a good link. Um yeah, I mean, it I I would say um, you know, when you you get um a response like that, you're usually going to be spending at least a few hundred dollars, and that's really on the lower end. Okay. What I recommend generally, ideally, is um offering up an exchange. So a lot of people say like link exchanges um don't work, and that's when like you reach out to a site and you say if you link to me, I'll link to you. Um I think that's a myth. I think there's a lot of evidence to show that those link exchanges do work. And the vast majority of sites, like if one single site links to you, they're going to like that's just kind of natural. If you're playing in the same sandbox, if you're in the same industry. That's usually what I would start with. Um you link to me, I'll link to you. Um, and I I personally have never paid for a link to our website. I always kind of try and figure out either if it is a value add, like I have this source for you, or so you mentioned our brand, or we can do a link exchange.

Um, and and that's generally and how much and how much does it matter on like the no follow versus like the you know, follow and and and like where the link goes and that kind of thing.

Yeah, it does matter. Um it matters in the sense that like do follow is always going to be more powerful for an SEO perspective. So if you're really trying to put some dollars behind getting a page to rank with a specific backlink, um, do follow is always going to be preferable to no follow. The page it's pointing to is always going to um see more results, like more dramatic results than your website as a whole. And then on top of that, anchor text or the text that's hyperlinked matters as well. Um so yes, ideally, like you would have a keyword or an exact match at anchor text. Um that being said, if you are pointing all of your links to your money pages, if all of your anchors are exact match, if all of your links are do follow and you don't have any no-follow links, that is a red flag that is saying to Google, this is a natural link building, um, and they're gonna ding you because that just doesn't happen in the real world. So you want a variation, absolutely. Um, but I would not spend if I was to spend money, I would not spend money on a no-follow link.

This is super helpful, just because I I think there's a lot of like, you know, hey, what's what works, what doesn't work. And I think like you've you've kind of like uns, at least for the link building part, I think that that's a that's helpful. And it is still a lot of work. I mean, even if you know, like, okay, I want a link insertion and I don't want to pay more than a few hundred dollars and I want it to be a high domain authority, it's like it's a lot of work. You gotta find those sites, you have to send the message, you know, make sure they have a high enough authority in traffic, you gotta reach out to the right person, you gotta figure all that out. I mean, it just it's very time consuming. So um I think having someone like you all be able to just take care of that is such a relief, you know, in terms of being able to do that. And and they could still potentially even do some of their own SEO internally and just say, hey, we're gonna have the Hoth do uh our link building or whatever, right? If they wanted to, and you guys could take care of that. So there's lots of options, I think, for for that. What are you seeing in terms of um this is kind of shifting gears a little bit, but in terms of like, you know, uh I type in something on Google and now I'm not getting like a search result of a real person? It's saying, like, hey, AI generated this response for you. And I'm like, do I really want to like trust this or not? It probably depends on what it is, but it it's you know, so how is that stuff impacting like SEO? And like, is Google just gonna eventually replace all of us with like their own answers, you know, and um sites could be suddenly like irrelevant, right? Like WebMD, which you would normally maybe go to for like medical like advice or something like that, right? Now maybe it's just gonna be Google's bot, you know, generating all the the medical things. It's gonna say this is not medical advice, but then it's gonna say all the things that you want to hear. So I mean, how how is how do you think that's gonna impact things?

Yeah, that's really that's a really good question. Um, and it's it's well, I'll I'll start with this, which is that the AI overviews is is fairly new. Um, and they actually just launched a new UI today um that I'll talk about in a second. But Google has like this isn't new, even though this particular aspect of it is. I I can't remember the last time I did a Google search and just saw like a list of like blue URLs attached to a website. Like there have been the knowledge panels now, there's the YouTube results. People also ask um if it's a shopping query, they have like the map and the stores that are closest to you, or and they have the filters. And so like it's always kind of been moving in this direction. And that's because Google does, you know, want to improve the user experience for people who are punching in queries. You don't always want to have to go to a website to get to what you want, and that's that's okay. Um so AI overviews is just kind of an extension of that at this point. Um, I don't necessarily think that Google is going to make it so that we never leave that page because then their paid ads would be Google pay ads would be irrelevant. Like they don't, they they want us to also buy those sponsored slots. And if those slots are the only ones that exist, they are not in with the organic results as well. They're not going to mean anything and nobody's gonna click on them. So I think we're safe for now. Um with AI overviews, um I think what we're going to see is um a loss of direct traffic to your website via organic. But because a lot of these um results for AI are coming up for those more like top-of-funnel searches rather than like buyer intent keywords, the traffic that you're losing is not necessarily going to be traffic that would necessarily convert because they're not there in the funnel yet. And I actually think this is very useful for businesses because um when there's an AI overview result and it can have like three results, five results, seven, like seven different citations within that one box, it shows your brand, it shows the logo, and as of um today, I'm not sure when this is going live, but um each element of the answer of the AI overview points to a citation to a particular website. And if you click on that citation, it will take you to the website as well. Um so I think in terms of like top of funnel brand awareness, if somebody is doing a lot of searches related to your field and you're consistently showing up in those AI overviews, that's good. I think that's actually really good for you. That's a lot of really nice recognition. And then when they're ready to do those bottom funnel buyer keywords, they will be sent to your website and maybe they'll trust you more and be ready to buy.

So, okay, so I've got two follow-ups then to that with the AI overview. What kind of content should we be putting on our websites so that we do show up in an overview? Is that like frequently asked questions? Is that like extensive content on a specific topic? Like what kind of content do we want to generate for that? Is my first question?

Yeah, I I think um, and I've been sort of geeking out over this um for months now, but really especially today because it's this new one. So I've been kind of seeing where um obviously like our own site is showing up. And what I'm seeing is it's typically long form content that's like almost that pillar content that dives deep into a subject. So one of the ones that we show up in, I think, is um like customer avatar, um, because we have like a very epic piece on that. And then um, what you want to do is structure that long post, and these are generally going to be blog posts because we are talking top funnel. Um, you want to structure that post so that it's optimized really well for the algorithm. So an H2 that would like answer a direct question with a very clear definition that answers that question underneath it. I'm seeing bullet points show up in AI overuse. Um, and I'm also seeing infographics show up. So think about within a long form piece of in-depth content, how within that can you make each element like very snackable, like very easy for a user to understand just from reading like you know, 300 words at the top of the search results page?

Okay, love it, love it. So, yeah, so having the long form and and how long does long form have to be? I mean, like if I'm at a thousand words and my like hitting the the minimum threshold, or do I need to be at like two, three, four thousand? Like, what are you what do you think about that?

It's dependent on the keyword or like what your topic you're trying to optimize for. For me, I don't publish anything that's less than 2,000 words. And that's if I'm like not necessarily really trying to push hard to rank. If I'm trying to push hard for rank, I'm doing closer to 3,500. To 4,000 words. But like keep in mind, I'm in a very competitive niche. Like um, so if you are in an industry that is a little bit more specific or where you know you're not going against like really, really huge brands or people who produce a lot of content because there's a lot of content that's written around SEO, um, you can probably get away. I wouldn't do a thousand words anymore. Um, but I think 2,000 words, uh, if you're in an industry that's a little bit more niche, is is a very solid number to go for. If you're like it.

And you can even overlay other types of content. Like you said, like your blog post could have the infographic. You could record like a two or three, four-minute video explaining the thing. Cause I'm seeing now like the video, you know, the videos have been showing up in the results for a while, but like it'll have the caption, it'll even have like the segment pulled out that answers the question that I had, right? So we're um personally out, we're in the middle of building a house. And so like they're getting ready to do the footers, and so I'm reading like, okay, what is what is gonna happen with the footers exactly? What do they look like? Do mine that they're about to do look like what they're supposed to look like? So I'm Googling, like, you know, what do footers look like on a house construction? And I'm getting like even video results. I'm getting photo infographics, I'm getting text, but I'm getting video results that are showing me like a particular part of a video that has the guy in front of the footers showing what the footers are, right? So you can apply that in so many ways, though, in terms of like you're the paving company and someone wants to know what's gonna happen with the process of their pay driveway getting paved. You could record that video on your next job, you turn it into a long blog post, you have an infographic that shows the layers of the driveway. Um, and there's just lots of things that you could do that makes it like really good content that most of your paving competitors are not gonna have, right, in your local area.

I love that. Like, um a metaphor that I've used recently is think of like the search or the search engine results page as like a monopoly word. And like, yeah, like some property might be more valuable than others, but like more that you own, whether it is that YouTube video or showing up in the A overview or an image that's an infographic, the more likely somebody's gonna land on you.

Yeah. And it doesn't take that much more effort. I mean, like I work with a lot of churches in the church world, and we're like, well, I'm always coaching them like create something once and like use it across all your channels, right? So this the preacher preaches a sermon, you've now got this video, you can transcribe that, you've got like the long form content, you can take out a snippet of that and put a 30-second clip on social. You can like, you know, you can kind of like take these pieces of content and then recreate them as an infographic, as a video, as a blog post, and all these things. And it doesn't have it's like a little bit less work than if I was trying to do different topics for all of those pieces of content, right?

100%, yeah.

Well, another thing I wanted to ask you about since we're talking about um SEO and AI and stuff, because this is this has been something that even my own myself and my own team have been wrestling with. So I know others are wrestling with it, you know, and it's like, how much should we or could we use AI for SEO content? And like even if Google maybe is okay with it right now, especially if it has some human element to it, like could we get to a point in six months where Google's finally like, wow, there's too much AI content. We just want to we want to rank original content higher. And so, like, that content that maybe did okay for a client for a period is now like getting deranked down because it was written by AI or whatever. Like, I'm just kind of curious. And of course, this could change like by the time this episode goes live, you know, and that kind of thing. But um, I'm just kind of curious on like your all's take on like how much it's okay to use AI, I guess, to create SEO content.

Yeah, I wouldn't I would not use it to do the writing itself. Um, and I think for some of the reasons that you mentioned, Google has sort of gone back and forth. Um, when AI when ChatGPT officially or initially hit the mainstream, uh, Google released an update to the helpful content update they had previously done in the fall. And they said that helpful content was defined in part as content written by humans for humans. And at the time, people were like, oh, okay, so they're they're coming out against AI content. And then um, Google figured out that they couldn't figure out what AI content actually is. So they kind of rolled it back and they said, you know what? AI content's okay as long as it's helpful. Um but I think we're going to see this push and pull. But really, I think also at the end of the day, AI content's not very good. Um I don't care like how many prompts you've put in or like how designed you think, it still has an aspect to it that to me is generally quite obvious. And if the software that people have created can't pick it up, if you are in tune with the industry or you know, in tune with like writing, you you recognize it right away. And that I think because our job as SEOs and as marketers is to provide a good user experience, and that means when you put something on your website, it should be quality and it should be useful and it should be something that the reader can relate to and enjoys reading, um AI is not going to do that. And even as it advances, if everybody like if AI becomes the perfect writer, if everybody is using it, then everything still sounds the same. And that's going to be you're going to be the differentiating factor if you're one who's not using it for your content. So I want to.

I I think you're right on with that because um my I've I have a couple few kids in high school, and I remember earlier this year in the spring when they were finishing up one um their, I think it was in 10th grade or whatever, and he got a newsletter from the school, my my son did, and he was reading it and he was like, I think this was written by AI, you know, or whatever, or or the the or the link to the I don't know if it was I can't remember if it was the email or a link in the email to something that he clicked on that he was reading, and he was like, I think this was written by AI, and this is like by the school, and then like he puts it into the AI detector and it's like 91% like writ writ likelihood written by AI. And it was so interesting because he's like, here you've got a 15, 16-year-old, you know, who's just reading something from the school. Like, there's no reason to think that the school didn't write it or whatever, right? But then he's he's able to detect like that this doesn't seem like it's like it's written by a human, you know, and it's like, and it wasn't bad content or anything like that. It was just like we can tell. It's almost like um when you go to a website and you like can tell that it's stock imagery versus like really the company or the organization or whatever. You know, it's like we can all tell. Like if I go to a church website, I can tell you whether that's like stock images or whether that's like actually photos of the church. Even if I've never been to the church, I could just go there and make that, you know, because I've looked at enough church websites and I've coached enough churches that like it's very obvious, right? And so I think someone like my son, who's like, you know, he's up on the school, like what's going on at the school and everything, right? At the high school, like he can tell if this is like something that's written by a person or not.

And that's gonna take you out of it, even if it's good. Like, let's say you could write a bunch of AI content and it ranks in Google, but like the whole point of ranking is for somebody to click on that link and go to your website, and if they get to that piece of content and they're like, oh, like this is AI, or like this is you know, whatever. I I mean to me it would be a turnoff as a user trying to learn more about a product or service or a business or a brand. Um, you know, and so then what's the point? Like, if you're number one and and you're alienating your users once they click on you, that 33% share, it's useless.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is good. This is good. Um, awesome. Well, as we wrap up here, um, any other kind of thoughts on on SEO that you want to share, things that you think would be helpful for our audience? I know there's I know we could I I could geek out on this stuff for a like I get really into this. Uh, you know, SEO, AI, like even like Google ads, which are all they're all kind of related in some ways, right? Um, and so I could just talk about this for a while, but um anything else you think that would be helpful or just uh tidbits or information that you think for our audience?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is not new. Like we're saying the search engine results pages have been changing, so people stay on them. We have seen massive algorithm changes. I, you know, the Hoff was there for the pandas, the penguins, the hummingbirds. And at the end of the day, it it really is if your North Star is about improving the user experience and not about like simply trying to rank, you're gonna be okay. If you're just trying to kind of game the system or find the easy way in to get your site to rank in Google, you're not gonna make it. Um, but if you're focusing on the people that you're trying to serve, you'll be able to survive any sort of technological change because that's what they're trying, that's what these search engines are trying to provide and trying to do.

So love it, love it. So good. Rachel, thank you so much. Um, really enjoyed this conversation and uh hope to get to connect with you again soon.

Yeah, thank you so much. This is a good time. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast, and a huge thanks to Rachel for joining us. Okay, folks, remember to subscribe and please share with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Johnny Flash. Let's get to work.