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Ross Dunn
You think a ticket for not wearing your seatbelt is the worst that could happen until you get in a crash. Suddenly a ticket doesn't seem so bad. Click it or ticket paid for by
Scott Vanek
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Ross Dunn
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Scott Vanek
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Ross Dunn
try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
Scott Vanek
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering.
Ross Dunn
I really needed help.
Scott Vanek
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Ross Dunn
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Scott Vanek
Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM. Episode number 528. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanek. We were just talking about of all things, how to cook a good pork steak. The funniest, like all over the map discussions. But anyway, it's summer how sort of
Ross Dunn
how to do SEO on pork. Pork 101. We should go start a Pork 101 podcast. That could be fun for two episodes.
Scott Vanek
Yeah, we're stretching it there, but yeah, possibly too. Yeah. All right, well, let's just jump right in as we normally do, some SEO news. And to start off, I'm happy to say, I mean I've contributed before in terms of content, but actually as an author, I've never contributed to Search Engine Land until now. And my article is how to Run an AI Assisted SEO Competitor Analysis that actually works and you can find it on Search Engine Land. The link will be in the show notes and here's literally the table of contents just to give you a concept of what it's about. It's certainly nothing I can easily summarize on this because it's literally a guide on how to do an AI assisted SEO competitor analysis. So start with data, not a prompt. Number two, conduct a 20 minute competitive review. Number three, apply human judgment. Oh, that's a big one. Please do that. It's so very important because everything else will fall apart if you don't do that. Next, do a gap analysis. That's when you're analyzing what content or what targets you are going for and which ones you're missing that perhaps your competitors are going after. And oftentimes you'll find some stuff that you didn't even know existed or variations of something you're doing but they are tackling in a different way. That you need to do. You'll also notice two types of content that is really well written on their site that's driving a ton of traffic that you also need to eclipse in your own way. Turn that gap analysis into a brief, then run through a validation checklist I've created, then shift and then I kind of summarize it with how things have shifted to AI assisted SEO competitor analysis and how to do it. I just cover some of the main points of what you really need to consider to ensure that your analysis is worth all the work you put in. And yes, AI can speed all of this thing up extremely quickly. Like it's amazing how much faster you can do it versus the past, but you can also end up with absolute garbage in the end if you don't do it very carefully. So I get in a little bit of that to sort of sum things up. Sorry, I can't really get into all of it. I think it's, it's a little wordy to talk about here. It's a, it's about a 20 minute read. It's a lot of. I put a lot of work into it, so I think you'll find it useful. If you ever want to look at your competitors and find out what they're up to and how you might be able to eclipse them yourself. And if you don't want to do this work, you know where to reach us because we love doing this stuff. Yeah. So. Stepforth.com all right, next up, Google Ads. Read more Links Best practices, huh? Okay, I haven't seen this. Tell us about this.
Ross Dunn
So I actually haven't seen these links very often. I see them quite rarely. So if you're doing a Google search and you see after the description in the results, after your description on your listing, read more like you would on a blog or something, you might be wondering where did that link come from and why do they have it? Again, I don't see it that often, but Google's updated their, what do they call it? The search developer documentation with a few best practices on how to increase your chances of this appearing. So it's really not rocket science. There's nothing major you have to do, but a couple things. The first is make sure that any content you have on your page is immediately visible on the page to a human. So not hidden behind a tabbed interface, for example. It has to be visible without any interaction for it to qualify for this. Also avoid using JavaScript to control a user scroll position on a page load, so when the page loads it doesn't automatically push them somewhere else. And for those of you out there who are rather technical, uh, this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me but I'm going to share it anyways because Google shares it and they say if you use History, API calls or windows.location. #modifications, make sure you don't remove the hash fragment from the URLs as this will. Oh no, I cut it off. Not work.
Scott Vanek
I can't remember. You didn't paste it all.
Ross Dunn
That's hilarious. I didn't paste all my notes in there. So it just will something. I think it'll just basically break the functionality of adding that read more link there. So it does bug me though that they want content to be immediately visible, especially when it comes to mobile because tabbed content, super user friendly and having everything expanded sucks on a cell phone sometimes.
Scott Vanek
I think it's, I think that's daft. I mean as soon as you read that I thought what the hell. Because I mean remember back in the day when anything in tabbed interface that wasn't immediately visible wasn't indexed or wasn't considered and now, well, it was indexed but it wasn't considered in your overall ranking. Well, that changed when mobile became more important. They're like okay, yeah, you should do this because it's going to make it easier for everyone. And now they're telling you don't. But you know what, it's not that they don't, they're saying don't. It's just that in this case you're saying if you want the read more link at the end of a description in a search result, I don't think you really care that much. I like it, I've seen it. I have clicked on it more out of what the hell is this? But it's not the end of the world if you don't have it.
Ross Dunn
I think it's good. You might draw a few extra eyes, you might get a slightly higher click through rate. But like you said, it's not the end of the world. But if you can get it, do it. But please don't auto expand all of your tabs just to try to get this. It's kind of funny. A few years back I can't remember ever since COVID time has no meaning in my brain anymore. Um, we had a client who had a lot of tabbed content and at, at that point they were recommending like they Google, et cetera, SEOs were recommending that all tabbed content be expanded if you wanted to rank for it. And we had a client that had a ton of tab content. So I said to him, yeah, let's, let's just open up these tabs so they are by default expanded, which sucks, but let's just do it and see what happens. And rankings went way up. And then after a while it was kind of coming to the point where it didn't really matter. So we, I, I had him close all the tabs. Let's test again. Let's just close them all back to where we actually want them. They did that. And then ranking stayed stable. They didn't crash like we were kind of worried they might. So you do not have to keep them expanded. There was a time when absolutely you had to. Well, you were better off having them expanded. Now keep them, keep them closed up. Don't do it for this.
Scott Vanek
Ah, the changes over the years. Holy smokes.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, lots, lots of yo yoing on Google's part too.
Scott Vanek
Yeah. All right, so now we're going to jump into some, A little bit of heady content. This is more from Kevin. Wow, My gosh, My brain. Kevin indig. Yeah, and I love Kevin's content. It's always great. It's always a bit of a brain teaser because he gets into some really interesting stuff and, and typically there's studies that he's done and he's giving you all the information, not necessarily all the information you need. So you have to, you know, you have to really consider what you're reading and decide what is important to you and what isn't and what is important to some of your clients and what isn't to others, which is great. It's good to have that kind of content, but it is different. So with that in mind, his article is called the Ghost Citation Problem Problem. So the ghost citation problem. And he starts off with saying that 62% of your brand's LLM citations are functionally invisible. So that's essentially AI research results. Citations are functionally invisible. The link would be there. So let's say you're seeing an AI overview on Google and maybe a link is there, but your brand name won't be mentioned if you're in. The same thing happens when you're doing search. Any kind of direct search result from ChatGPT, from Google, Gemini, actually Google AI overviews, Gemini, Google. And ChatGPT is what he analyzed for AI search engines. It's too bad he didn't do Claude, but. Oh well. So he calls this a ghost citation because it doesn't mention Your brand, it's just a link. It's kind of like, why would I click this? But some people do his studies based on the Smrush AI Visibility Toolkit, which included 3981 domain appearances across 115 prompts, 14 countries, and the engines I just mentioned. So diving in a little deeper here, being cited versus being mentioned requires two different strategies. Now, I've got to note here because everything is up in the air right now. So although I'm about to give you some thoughts here, you have to keep in mind that each of these AI engines treat citations and mentions differently. Okay? So if you really want to get into the weeds, there's a lot of weeds. I mean, you'll get overwhelmed easily, but there's a lot there. He gets into it. He'll. You can read about how they're different and how they react, but let's just get this is 101. So let's talk about overall what he came up with here. Number one, citations signify that an AI is drawing from your material. So these citations is a link, just so everyone knows they're linking to you. While mentions where your brand name is mentioned or your business name involve the AI explicitly naming your brand. And in those cases, they don't always include your link. While the specific impact of each is still being determined. A clear system governs when a brand is merely cited versus fully mentioned. Now, that clear system is not so clear to me yet. I gotta admit, it's clear to him. That's good. But let's get into a few other things here. So there's four points here. So number two, LLM specific approaches are essential. He says your tactics for Gemini should differ from those for ChatGPT. AI visibility reports that combine data across multiple LLMs are often inaccurate. That is so important to know. And it's one of those things that we've been kind of lucky over the years. Yeah, blessed and cursed with Google being the leader. Really haven't had to worry about anyone else. So we just were able to focus on one set of conditions that will create a ranking. Yes, we had Bing and sometimes we worried about that, but very rarely. But now we've got like the olden days where we had Web Crawler, InfoSeek and Hotbot and AltaVista and later Google. You had to worry about what were the algorithms that ranked material on them. Well, now we have the same thing happening, except it's for AI. And when you're looking at a reporting system and there are a ton of Them that are coming out and we've been testing some. It's the wild west again. You know, if you look at a report and it tells you what you should do to get listed in an LLM again, an AI search result, and it's aggregating all the information and saying this will work for all engines, don't believe it. It's just not accurate. Does that mean you should ignore it? If you don't have much time, you're just working on your site to improve it. No, go ahead, do it. You're not going to hurt anything. It's just that if you really want to be laser focused and get results in each of these different AI engines and AI result, each of these LLMs, you are going to have to take a lot more practiced and strategic approach to it, which I don't envy. It's, it's. I don't envy ourselves for having to deal with this, never mind anyone else. It's hard work. Number three, brands get named through comparative content. If you want brand mentions for your business rather than just citations, your content strategy should pivot toward recommendation, comparison and evaluation. That doesn't mean just top 10 lists. I mean, it's a start, but lists are really losing a little bit of their luster these days. It's truly creating something of value, putting the effort in. And that's why you're seeing. In a way, it's ironic, we're seeing greater content coming out from people because they're putting more effort in. That's great for readers. It kind of sucks. If you have to write the content, then you have to find the time to do it, but it is creating better content out there. Number four, the structure of your prompts is key. Businesses must identify not only relevant topics but but also the specific phrasing styles that trigger brand mentions instead of anonymous citations. So those are the ones where again, anonymous citations are when you just triggering this are when you get a link but you're not being mentioned. Conversational queries and complex structured ones often yield vastly different results. And this is the big problem. You could be tracking an AI result using an AI tracker, but you just, you just don't know what people are searching for. You just have to do your best and track some of the main ones you think are more likely to be used and see how you appear. Kevin shares a lot more in this article. They're only. It's only for paid subscribers and I don't feel it's my right to share that here because you know, he has to make a living. But I do recommend you check out his article. Any of his articles. There isn't one I would say is bad. I mean they're all highly thought out and he's a definite thought leader. So I highly recommend check subscribing to his substack@growth-memo.com and that's Kevin Indigenous. There's just a mountain of great content on there. But he gets into the different strategies for each of these different AI platforms and it's crazy. I mean he does write this I'd say a largely for the enterprise level businesses where the Money's at for SEOs, but also where it's frankly a bigger game. You know, they need to show up. So it's very detailed. But there are nuggets like these that you can pull out of it. I think one of the best nuggets out of all this is that if you're using AI visibility reports, be weary. If if it's combining the data of all the LLMs. If you really want to show up in ChatGPT, then you need to look for other information. You need to look for other reports because this is probably not going to do the do what you need. All right, let's take a quick break and we come back, we're going to talk about Google. Click through rates. Welcome back to SEO101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Webmark.
Ross Dunn
You think a ticket for not wearing your seatbelt is the worst that could happen until you get in a crash. Suddenly a ticket doesn't seem so bad. Click it or ticket paid for by NHTSA. Tired of overpaying with DirecTV? Dish offers a reliable low price every month without surprises. Get the TV you love and start watching live sports news and the latest movies, plus your favorite streaming apps all in one place. Switch to DISH today and lock in the lowest price in satellite TV starting at $89.99 a month with our two year price guarantee. Call 888 add dish or visit dish.com today. Apro Vechecha Los ahoros de Memorial Day en los y compra los vasicos parelo gar pormenos ahoro centadolares en la parrilla Agas de cuatro quemadores Char Broil performance series Ademasa hora cuarintaisinco porciento en electro domestico Selectos Nuestra mejor Selection est? Taki and Lowe's. Lowe's Nosotros.
Scott Vanek
Marketing and my company senior SEO Scott Vanak, I forgot to ask if you had any thoughts about the last thing we were talking about there, Scott, with
Ross Dunn
Kevin and Dick stuff. It's, it's a lot of confusion, you know, it really is. And even when you know what you're talking about, it is. And, and the, you know, when you talk about tracking AI results and LLMs, it's just I, I don't really trust any of the trackers because it, it, every result is so wildly different because it is conversational. It's not someone searching for cheap pens or something. You know, like something where it's very clear cut. You're going to get the same result every time and it's totally different. And then it's, there's so much personalization and, and, and appearing at the top is certainly important, but it's not as simple as just optimizing for, you know, a word or it's just so intense and. Yeah, it's crazy.
Scott Vanek
Yeah, I think a lot of our, this is going to get more and more intense as time goes on. We've, I guess we've covered this before in a bits and pieces, but a lot of our role as SEO is going to be just ensuring our clients have the right content and are regularly updating cornerstone content and in reinforcing what layouts are working and then going, okay, hey, this one took off, this one didn't. What's the difference? Maybe this other one that didn't take off just needs to be worded slightly differently to target that slightly different AI search. Yeah, it's. I don't think SEO is quite as fun as it used to be. No, at least boring stuff in a way.
Ross Dunn
But there's lots of interesting little tidbits that come out. Like there was, I don't know where I heard this from. It might have even been from you where you always want to mention the thing throughout your content. So for example, let's say you're talking about a pen. Because my terrible pen example, you're like the blah, blah, the Ross Dunn super pen writes upside down in space, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then later, later on in a different paragraph, don't say it also comes in blue. Say the Ross Dunn superpen also comes in blue. Like don't say it or words like that. Repeat the name in a different chunk.
Scott Vanek
A different chunk.
Ross Dunn
Sorry. In like a different chunk of content. Exactly. Because when AI sees that paragraph or section of your page later on and you're referring to the item as an it or a. I can't think of another example Other than it. But if you're not using the name of the product or the, the name of the thing that the product is like a car or a pen or whatever, AI gets confused. It can't always connect that content throughout the page. So you really little things like that you didn't have to really do with organic SEO. I mean, you did if it was keyword relevant because you want the keyword in there. But it's a little bit different here because now you want to make sure the context and make sure AI understands that it is a pen or a car or.
Scott Vanek
Yeah, whatever. And the biggest takeaway from that, that, you know, I think, you know, we all know now as SEOs, but I think it takes a while to really get into our system and, and process is that instead of pages, AI just looks at chunks. Yeah. So it doesn't matter if you've got one. You know, it's not thinking about what page was this on, it's thinking about this content that it's already got gathered. It knows it's there, it's using it and it's that chunk. That chunk is actually a page in a, in a, in a, in a way, it's its own entity, its own thing. And that's why, like you said, you've got to maintain that conversation so that it doesn't go, well, what does he, what is he talking about? Because it can't, it doesn't read the whole article. It's just thinking about that one piece and that's fascinating. All this is at least fascinating. There's one thing about all this. I. All these changes is at least keeping us on our toes. But it's just, it's, it's vastly different than anything we've ever done and we're all growing with it. All you listeners, you know, it's just not necessarily fun. And then sometimes it is, it's a mixed bag.
Ross Dunn
It could be fun and stressful and easy and hard and all the things.
Scott Vanek
Yeah, yeah. I would love to have heard what John Karkat would have thought of all this would have been fascinating to get his feedback on this. Yeah. All right, well, next up here, Google Click through rates improving for organic results with AI overviews. Fill us in. Yeah.
Ross Dunn
So take us with a bit of a grain of salt and I'll tell you why in a second. But recent study by Seer Interactive shows that click through rates seem to be increasing for organic results when AI overviews are being shown. So click through rates were at an all time low back at 1point.3% according to the previous study back in December of 2025. As of February 2026, that rate has started bouncing back and is now at around 2.4%. To compare organic results where AI overviews are not shown, we're at about 3.2 and 3.8% respectively. So about a third or they're about a third the number of clicks when AI overviews is being displayed. So yeah, so we're seeing the click through rate jump from 2.4 to 1.3, which is great, possibly, you know, an awesome sign for the future. Maybe Google's fixing stuff out. But there is one key difference in the studies. Their old study seer, looked at 3,119 informational queries from 42 clients, over 25 million impressions. Well, their new study is much broader and it looks at 5.47 million queries across 2.43 billion impressions, 53 brands, and also looks at transactional and commercial intent, so not just informational intent. So Barry was, was talking about it and comparing the two studies, but I don't really know that it's an apples to apples comparison to be totally fair. Well, I know it's not. I shouldn't say I don't know that it isn't because it clearly isn't. You know, you've got exponentially more queries and you're looking at more content. So I take it with a grain of salt. I do like it when I see the numbers are higher and favorable. That's great. But I look forward to seeing them redo this. Hopefully they redo it in, I don't know, maybe six months or something with the same expanded, broader view and see if it actually makes a difference. But potentially good maybe.
Scott Vanek
Yeah. I can't say we've seen the results of that in our clients work. I mean, they got, their visibility is good, but they've all seen. Doesn't matter how good they have their visibility, they are seeing drops in that, in their impressions and their traffic and you name it, AI is not doing any favors for anyone in any business that I can think of.
Ross Dunn
I will say this though, and I know Ross, you and I both said this a bunch and that is the biggest hit again is informational queries. And informational queries typically, not always, but typically have lower conversion rates anyways. So just because you're seeing fewer clicks doesn't necessarily mean you're seeing fewer sales or at least not on the same scale. You may be seeing less sales, but it's not going to be the exact Same. So yeah.
Scott Vanek
Cool. All right. Bing Webmaster Tools New AI reporting features I'll just read this off. You put this in here. Krishna Mahavan from Bing recently demoed some new AI reporting features that will be launching in Bing Webmaster Tools soon. The four new features include Citation Share, Grounding, Query Intent, Semantic Topic Label, Geo Focused recommendations. So Generative Engine Optimization focused recommendations. This will help to further improve Bing's AI performance reporting that is already available, which launched in beta back in February. Currently the reports only show Citation share for user selected dates. It's an interesting. I don't where I've read this either, but someone was mentioning that it's. It must have been on LinkedIn anyway, that Bing is probably the reason they probably launched this AI reporting features so quickly is that they're number two. You know, they're. They're not the foremost company and Google is so far ahead they don't care, obviously don't care. They don't even explain themselves. It's just ridiculous. Our questions could just fall on deaf ears and it's sad. They've gotten so big for their britches. It's. It's frankly unbelievable. Anyways, I'm. I don't know if they'll ever have a report. There's. They're probably hiding something that they figure there's no reason we should know if they don't have to show it.
Ross Dunn
And I guess it is exciting though. I'm. You know, the, the current performance reporting at Bing Webmaster Tools is, I don't want to say useless, but it's not, it's not overly useful. And to see that they're working on expanding it and they're doing something, they're trying. I don't know how far this is going to go, how accurate it'll be. We can't even really expand on these bullet points because we don't know yet. It doesn't actually exist yet. So what it actually looks like, who knows. And I will say embarrassingly, when I wrote it, this, these notes and I wrote geo, I was thinking geographic and I don't know why I feel really stupid when you read it out and you're like, yeah, generative Engine Optimization, like right, of course, duh. I just, I need another coffee. I don't know, but it just shows how you get so entrenched in something that that's what GEO has always meant. It's always referred to local forever until like I don't know, last Thursday or something. It's just so new. All these new acronyms that are taking over old acronyms and there are too many.
Scott Vanek
And I heard the other day, I. Yeah, that's one of the things I shared with you too. I think they were saying that Google, it's got some sort of a training program or something and they're calling it GS, Not.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I saw that.
Scott Vanek
SEO, which is funny because Danny Sullivan, they're one of their main mouthpieces at Google, is saying, no, it's just SEO. But no, it's just. It's gotten so big, no one's talking to each other. I'm sure it's. I mean, whatever. All right, updates from our last episode, the back button hijacking. And we got an update on it in our last episode. Yeah, go ahead.
Ross Dunn
Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yeah, in the last episode we mentioned how Google is targeting sites that hijack back button behavior. And they had said that on June 15, action will start being taken. Well, on X, I think this was yesterday or something. Glenn, Gabe shared an email that he has seen about this where Google sent out a warning noting a site in violation along with sample URLs. So if you receive one of these warnings from Google about the back button hijacking, do not ignore it. They are clearly serious about it. And if you are violating this June 15th, what are we, April 29th right now? You got six weeks. You're in big trouble in six weeks if you don't take care of it if you are doing this.
Scott Vanek
So I hope they hammer people who are doing. Yeah, freaking hate them.
Ross Dunn
Perma ban, man. Just perma ban.
Scott Vanek
Totally.
Ross Dunn
You know what's, you know what's worse than. I guess this would be considered back button hijacking. But when the back button, they just disable it fully. Oh, and you go to a site and you can't leave and you've got to, you know, go into your history and right click to try to get back to where you were because you can't click the button. That better be included because it must be because that's the worst.
Scott Vanek
Or the ones where they've got automatic redirects. So you can't go back. Yes, that's another one that just drives me up the wall. All right. Google won't use spam reports with personally identifying information. Last week we spoke about how Google will be sharing spam reports word for word with webmasters. They stated that no personal information would be shared, providing the person filth filling the report or filing. Sorry, filing the report does not include personal details within the report. This has caused A lot of backlash. Google has now stated that any spam reports that contain personally identifying information will not be processed at all. Okay.
Ross Dunn
No middle ground.
Scott Vanek
All right. And you had a thought on that?
Ross Dunn
Yeah. I just love how at least Google has listened, but I think they listened wrong. They listened to the sense. Yeah. Don't share that information in the report. But why just, you know, negate the entire report? Why not, you know, use AI? Because we know Google knows how to use AI and just remove the personal stuff. The report's still valid. If someone accidentally says yes, you know, this. Ross's website is spamming. Blah, blah, blah. Thanks. Cheers, Bob. And now, because he said his name is Bob, Ross can get away with spamming all he wants.
Scott Vanek
You know, you're picking on me, man.
Ross Dunn
You know, it's been a while and you pick on me, so I. Fair enough.
Scott Vanek
Fair enough.
Ross Dunn
By the way, your pen website is awesome.
Scott Vanek
Yeah. Well, one word answer for why they're doing it. Lawyers.
Ross Dunn
Oh, I bet.
Scott Vanek
Yeah.
Ross Dunn
Yes.
Scott Vanek
I just. I don't even want to. Yeah. They've got so many countries that they have to deal with and I don't imagine. And everyone's got their own rules about privacy. It's probably just a nightmare. Anyway. Well, on behalf of Myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanek, thank you very much for joining us today. Have a great week and remember to tune to future episodes which air every week on WMR fm. Great.
Ross Dunn
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Scott Vanek
You think a ticket for not wearing your seatbelt is the worst that could happen? A fine, an inconvenience, a little embarrassment. But then comes the crash. There are injuries, a hospital bed, the long road to recovery, the moments you'll miss. Suddenly, a ticket doesn't seem so bad. That ticket, that was nothing. Click it, don't risk it. Paid for by nhtsa. When I found out I was going
Ross Dunn
to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
Scott Vanek
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering.
Ross Dunn
I really needed help.
Scott Vanek
I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing. Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you.
Ross Dunn
Visit betterhelp.com today.
Podcast: SEO 101 on WMR.FM
Date: April 29, 2026
Hosts: Ross Dunn (CEO, StepForth Web Marketing), Scott VanAchte (Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing)
In this episode, Ross and Scott dive into several hot topics in the SEO world, focusing on practical applications of AI in SEO, the emerging “ghost citation” challenge for brands in AI search results, Google SERP changes, and updates on webmaster tools and spam report policies. True to SEO 101’s mission, the hosts break things down for beginners—keeping it practical, light-hearted, and jargon-free.
[01:25–04:30]
“AI can speed all of this up extremely quickly… but you can also end up with absolute garbage in the end if you don’t do it very carefully.”
— Ross [03:50]
[04:30–08:12]
“It does bug me though that they want content to be immediately visible, especially when it comes to mobile because tabbed content [is] super user-friendly.”
— Ross [05:51]
“Don’t auto expand all of your tabs just to try to get this.”
— Ross [07:02]
[08:16–19:02]
“If you look at a report ... and it’s aggregating all the information and saying this will work for all engines, don’t believe it. It’s just not accurate.”
— Scott [16:09]
[19:09–23:20]
“Don’t say ‘it also comes in blue,’ say ‘the Ross Dunn super pen also comes in blue.’ Repeat the name ... because when AI sees that paragraph or section ... and you’re referring to the item as ‘it’ ... AI gets confused.”
— Ross [21:05]
[23:42–26:29]
“I take it with a grain of salt. I do like it when I see the numbers are higher ... but it’s not apples to apples.”
— Ross [25:25]
[26:29–29:22]
“All these new acronyms that are taking over old acronyms and there are too many.”
— Ross [29:22]
[29:38–30:52]
“If you receive one of these warnings from Google about the back button hijacking, do not ignore it. ... If you are violating this June 15th ... you're in big trouble in six weeks if you don't take care of it.”
— Ross [30:06]
[31:13–32:57]
“Because he said his name is Bob, Ross can get away with spamming all he wants.”
— Ross [32:25]
“So much personalization, and appearing at the top is certainly important, but it’s not as simple as just optimizing for a word... it’s so intense.”
— Ross [19:09]
“Instead of pages, AI just looks at chunks ... that chunk is actually a page in a way, its own entity, its own thing.”
— Scott [21:56]
“It could be fun and stressful and easy and hard and all the things.”
— Ross [23:20]
“One word answer for why they’re doing it. Lawyers.”
— Scott [32:50]
| Segment | Description | Time (MM:SS) | |---------|-------------|--------------| | AI Competitor Analysis Article | Ross outlines his new published guide | 01:25–04:30 | | Google “Read More” Best Practices | How to qualify & Ross’s perspective | 04:30–08:12 | | Ghost Citation Problem & AI Search Insights | Kevin Indig’s findings and in-depth analysis | 08:16–19:02 | | Content Optimization for AI | Chunks vs pages, maintaining context | 19:09–23:20 | | Google Click-Through Rates & AI Overviews | Latest study and real-world client observations | 23:42–26:29 | | Bing Webmaster Tools’ New Features | Forthcoming AI reporting updates | 26:29–29:22 | | Google Back Button Hijacking Penalties | Upcoming enforcement and host commentary | 29:38–30:52 | | Google Spam Report Policy | Personal info leads to discarded spam reports | 31:13–32:57 |
This episode blends foundational SEO perspectives with up-to-the-minute changes in AI, SERP features, and webmaster tools—emphasizing continued adaptation and the importance of human judgment, even when leveraging advanced AI. The hosts keep the discussion accessible, relatable, and occasionally cheeky—making it a must-listen (or read!) for SEO beginners and professionals alike.