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The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast
SEO Tactics That Actually Work in 2025
00:21:47
Proven SEO tactics for 2025 to boost visibility, rankings, and performance in the AI-driven search era.
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- [00:00]
Testimonial Speaker
I was like this. I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for, I can honestly say has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly. It's the best investment I ever made.
- [00:16]
Marketing Narrator
What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing Certification Intensive program for fractional CMOs, marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You could use our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM World Scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today. DTM World slash scale.
- [01:03]
John Jantz
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Prasanna Dungle. He has nearly two decades of experience building businesses in marketing, tech, healthcare and SaaS. He's a managing partner at By Grow by Data. He holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Cornell, a master's in engineering from Princeton, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management. That means he paid a lot to get educated. He was born and raised in Kathmandu, probably the first Kathmanduan on the show today, but he now resides in Boston. So welcome to the show, Prasanna.
- [01:40]
Prasanna Dungle
Thank you so much, John, for the nice introduction and it afforded the conversation.
- [01:45]
John Jantz
Yes, yes. So we're going to talk basically about SEO today. And I know that's a lot of the work that you do at Grow by Data. A lot of change, you know, AI, other things going on, a lot of. I mean, you even see people on LinkedIn saying SEO is dead. So how, how are you telling, how are you telling people they need to prepare today for changes in. In traditional search results?
- [02:09]
Prasanna Dungle
Yeah, that's very hot. Popular topic for folks in source growth. Marketing. Marketing altogether. You're right. I mean the. I don't think SEO is dead. I think it has evolved. In fact, you know, it's the era of Google, AI and just chats and all of these in fact has provided further impetus in my mind to start because the way I like to think about search is, you know, you're asking a question and Google is answering today, but then new sources are answering and you're trying to understand how the answers are being presented. Right. Whether it be visually, like in retail, for example. You know, we like to say that the source Result page is increasingly becoming like the Amazon results page with a lot of product pictures being visible, Reddit being visible many times like you know, over the last year or so, videos and so on. So I think search has evolved, right? You have to look at paid search and traditional SEO in a new lens and in fact it's created, I mean there's just a lot of interest to capture that and I think the ones that are really going to win are going to be ahead versus be stuck in his or her old ways. But you know, I think it's. And there's huge opportunity ahead.
- [03:31]
John Jantz
Well, the one thing that I think is leading a lot of people to saying, I mean people are seeing their organic traffic dropping. I mean I think that's reality. But then they also go to the Google homepage or search page and they see the AI results or AI overview that that comes there and you know, there are many people that they get their answer and, and off they go. Right. So the so called zero click, you know, era I think has really got a lot of people worried that, you know, all the effort they spent on producing content over the years is now going to go away.
- [04:02]
Prasanna Dungle
That's a fair concern. And the, the concern is Google is answering the question right on the sort page versus now letting us go click and going to the page. So that remains the way that and, and we will have to see how that evolves, you know, the next few months or the next year. Some are in fact saying it's because of that that folks like us are moving to newer channels to discover. Right. But that said, folks are also using it as an opportunity for brand building, which is when you get picked up by these 0 click results, you are in fact reminded like you're seeing a TV ad almost in a new remembering a brand and then ultimately you remember that to make a purchase. So that's one way that I know brands are thinking about it. But that said, I think just relying on, you know, that is challenging. You know, perhaps top of like awareness days, keywords have had fewer clicks or if any, you know, and then increasingly I know source marketers are focusing on other types of content which requires someone to click and go in. But the, the other way I like to actually show the positive is if you are visible on Google zero source clicks, it could also indicate that you could be more friendlier to LLMs and so you could get picked up by some of the chat engines. And so if you're not getting picked up at all, I think that's a problem. You want to get picked up. You can obviously you can't rely on it alone. You have to use other sources, but you have to get picked up so that you also get picked up in the other sources which in fact are almost like zero click sources even on the chat. That's how I think about it.
- [05:59]
John Jantz
So people are, I mean content is, you mentioned content and I want to go to, you know, types of content. One of the bits of advice I'm hearing from a lot of folks is this idea of, you know, a lot of information content, you know, the how to type of stuff is really what Google is kind of consuming in the AI overviews. But if somebody is actually searching to solve something or searching for a specific type of company, you know, those high intent searches are still there and happening. Would that suggest that we should be moving our content very much to much more intelligent intent driven content as opposed to kind of that top of the funnel, you know, show up in search content.
- [06:43]
Prasanna Dungle
So I think it depends, right. You know, if you believe that the top of the funnel content serves what we are trying to find very well. Right. Then you know, it may not be worth being the 9th or the 10th brand out there to capture that there's diminishing return. Right. However, if you feel like, you know, your, your point of view is very strong, then why not create the brand in the first place? It's about brand touch point and then, but assuming that's not the case, you are right, I do think then you know, trying to go in and capture demand, you know, in the middle of the funnel or lower funnel, you know, and then really trying to draw someone searching from those is also a wise strategy that I know many have follow. Like we were talking to a large financial services client recently and what they were telling me is hey, you know, we've, we, I mean we don't see the ROI of really investing in top of the funnel content anymore because you know, we're not getting folks to come to our site. And many times I talk about the brand being mentioned on top of the funnel, but sometimes the brand isn't even mentioned. And so it even defeats the purpose of presenting your brand in front of someone. And so these guys were in fact creating newer types of content like quizzes or infographics or more deeper content that that needs the user to interact to get the answer. And that's where they were gravitating towards. And I'm actually seeing more and more brands do that.
- [08:09]
John Jantz
Well, are there, are there metrics, new metrics, different metrics that we should be tracking today to really understand how although this AIO is, is kind of affecting our search.
- [08:21]
Prasanna Dungle
We like to use share of voice as a metric to really track a brand's visibility on, you know, Google, on Google AIO on paid source, what have you. And then we like to dissect it by different lines of business, by different intent, by different geographies, you know, by different languages. So that's the 50,000 foot metric that we use. But that said, I do agree with you. I think a question that you want to begin to answer is, okay, if AI results are a proxy to brand visibility, then how much brand searches are you getting and is that rising? Midterm is a metric I think you should be tracking. Like if you, if you're doing the right things, even if you're not getting the click, are people remembering your brand?
- [09:17]
John Jantz
Right, right.
- [09:19]
Prasanna Dungle
And not just the brand term, but brand plus. And then there may be a time lag. For example, you know, you, when I purchase something, it might be a few weeks out, it might be a few months out or am I seeing the, you know, so one way to do this would be, you know, am I visible in these results? 0 click results and is that rising? And then after a few weeks out or so is the amount of brand searches rising and is that compounding? I mean I think that's one way I've known that brands are tracking that.
- [09:51]
John Jantz
So breakdown, share of voice, just I'm sure that every client's different but you know, essentially how do you start measuring share voice?
- [09:58]
Prasanna Dungle
Sure. So I like to give the example of running shoes, right? So imagine I am searching for running shoes, running shoes, men's, women's and so on. So when we, when you have, when you search for that keyword or a group of keywords, you want to be searching not just once, but over time across different geographies, across different devices, after across different times of the day. So you have enough sample and what you have to do is how often is your brand mentioned on the search page, right. So like for example on shopping ads, how often is Nike visible, right. Versus Adidas or polka, you know, on your classic blue links, how often is Nike visible? On virtual listings, which is a free product listings from Google, how often is it? So if you imagine like real estate on the page and there's a thousand spots in there, right? And the spots are consumed by videos, shopping, paid text and organic and even Reddit and so on, how often is Nike's domain visible or Nike mentioned? You just kind of say it's visible maybe 300 times over your sample size, then you know, we like to say you have a 30% share of voice and you might care to understand how that varies by Spanish versus English, New York versus Toronto and so on. So you slice it, but at the highest level it's how often are you visible in that real estate?
- [11:33]
Marketing Narrator
Let me ask you a few things. You feel like you know what differentiates your business from every other business out there? Can you confidently charge a premium for what you offer? Are you working from a plan, a marketing roadmap that allows you to know precisely what to do next? Look, don't worry if you can't answer yes to any or all of these questions. You're not alone. See, marketers today get so focused on the tactic of the week staring them right in the face that they forget to look at the the big picture, the overarching strategy needed to consistently grow their business. Over the years, I've worked with thousands of businesses helping them do just that. Create the perfect marketing strategy and plan that gives total clarity about what to do next, confidence to charge ahead and charge more, and complete control of the marketing tactics they choose. I would love to help you and your team do the same. Look to find out if our Strategy first program is right for you, visit DTM World/GROW and request a free consultation. That's DTM World/GROW.
- [12:43]
John Jantz
So in this AI overview world, the zero click world, are there things that you are helping brands try to understand? Like obviously we want to show up there, but is there, is there an intentional approach? Are there best practices to make sure that your brand is showing up there? Or is it simply a matter of if you're showing up high in search anyway for those, for some of those terms you're probably going to show up in the results. Or is there a way to get your content intentionally to show up in the AIOverview?
- [13:13]
Prasanna Dungle
Sure. So what we do is we dissect what are the SERP elements visible within aio, right? So you have like in retail you have maps sometimes show up on the AI results, sometimes you have a description, sometimes you have the product that shows up. You know, like you're trying to discover products. So the first thing to do is really trying to understand deconstruct aio, what exactly is visible by different types of source terms? You know, so sometimes if you are trying to, if you source for a bottom of the funnel type of a question, if AIO does show up, it's a different mix horses on the top, right? So that's one the second is we look at is your, whose brand is being mentioned, you know, by, on each of these sort of elements, like for example, who is getting the free listings on running shoes, which brand is it? And then we try to deconstruct. Okay, you know, like the why. And what we've seen is there's a few elements to, to getting picked up on aio. Sometimes the way the content is written, you know, in bullet forms versus free flow text, we've seen that that gets picked up many times. For retail, we've seen that inclusion of attributes like gtin, you know, and rich product attributes on the PTP page also helps you get picked up sometimes other attributes like reviews and ratings and pricing, these other product dimensions, you know, if they're, if it's rich, then it gets picked up. So at a high level, I think for your traditional text, having bullet forms and making it easier, understandable, having questions in there, not long content that has gotten picked up, number one for retail, it's really rich product attributes on the PDP page and making sure that if you're not getting rejected by Google Merchant center or if you're not getting flagged by Google Merchant center, then it's likely to get linked. And then the classic techniques of being cited by credible sources, those are other signals we've seen.
- [15:22]
John Jantz
So we've been talking a lot about the AI overviews, but if you scroll down pretty much any search these days, scroll down a little bit, some of the top organic results are being delivered from Reddit. And so, you know, I know a lot of people are starting to pay attention to that and go, well, how do I, how do I get my stuff to rank on Reddit? What are you telling clients, you know, about their participation in Reddit? It is much different than say Facebook and LinkedIn in terms of, of the ecosystem there and the culture there. So how are you advising folks to, to hopefully get some of their content or their, their answers, whatever it might be to show in, in Reddit?
- [16:00]
Prasanna Dungle
Sure. So we were, I'll give you a live example. We were working with a large shoe company and the first question they were asking us is, is Reddit visible on the sort for the questions that I, for the queries that I care to. And so we helped them understand how, what questions Reddit was visible on. And number two, we went into Reddit and then what we helped them understand is how they are portrayed, you know, to folks like us. Like, you know, if you're trying to source for running shoes, who is very active, like who is Active on Reddit. Is it Nike? Is it, you know, Hoka, is it Adidas? And then how large of a community that a Reddit thread has? Or say, Nike running, running shoes or Nike running shoes. And so what we tell clients is, first of all, try to understand where Reddit is visible. Number two, really try to understand your Reddit thread versus your competitor's Reddit thread. And is it one that you have a community manager running, or is it just organic? And then the other thing we do is we, we've actually helped clients answer a bunch of questions on Reddit. One is, we find that a lot of people are talking about pricing on Reddit. What does that sentiment look like? What does product quality look like? You know, and then how people are saying good or bad things about it. And so by giving that visibility, what we recommend, what we recommended to this client is you. I mean, they didn't have a community manager. And we said, you know, it's an increasing channel. You know, you get a lot of visibility. People are going there to understand what they like about your product. They're giving ideas. And so we were recommending that they have a community matcher who constantly analyzes and stays on top of it and then curates the experience. So you cannot just say whatever. But that said, remaining passive is also not a good idea. You know, you want to, you want to have a point of view, and sometimes there might be an opportunity to run an ad. When someone has a concern about the brand, then advertisement is a source of being on top of those that are looking at your brand. So you also have a strong point. So these are some of the techniques that we have been telling clients.
- [18:24]
John Jantz
So what kind of pushback are you getting on? And this is always the case, but I, you know, we went through a period there where everybody was leaning on attribution, like, if you can't prove that this got me a customer, then I don't want to pay for it. And now, you know, we're telling people, you've got to be here and here and here and some of these places, you know, a community manager, for example, is not a salesperson.
- [18:46]
Marketing Narrator
Right.
- [18:46]
John Jantz
They're not going, they're not going to create conversions. So how are you helping people kind of work through that ROI conversation when in some ways we're talking about participating and engaging in ways that you can't measure.
- [19:02]
Prasanna Dungle
Right. So your question is, how are we helping clients think through the question of, you know, if I put a dollar, you know, and the returns aren't obvious, like a community Manager, how should they think about it?
- [19:15]
John Jantz
Right.
- [19:15]
Prasanna Dungle
And so the way we like to describe this is if you use search as a proxy, okay, you know, then there is a certain amount of, you know, the search volume is a proxy on demand for your service or product. And so, you know, if what you're being exposed to is a lot of Reddit in there, right? And then a certain percentage of them clicks through, you know, your classic CTR model there, and they go in and it's a highly uncurated, poor experience, then you're losing, right? So it sometimes is defense and sometimes it's offense. So offense could be, you know, you put in a dollar and you get $3 back. Okay? But then defense is if you don't have someone in there, it's almost like insurance, right. If you don't have a community manager, then, you know, your brand perception could be tarnished, you know, and if you are Rolex as an example, and someone trashes your band and you know, next year you want to raise prices, people are not going to pay $10,000. They are actually already have an impression, you know, that Rolex is probably not $10,000 and you might want to get a thousand dollars. And the other part, you know, in my mind, John, is, you know, think about the generation that is getting into Reddit, right? Some of the brands we work with, they have a slightly more older demographic and they're trying to recruit younger demographics to in fact purchase from them. And the younger demographic are going into these communities and the first impression they have, if it is, if there is no impression or if the impression is bad, then you are not going to get them on board. So I like to even say that brands have begun to think of this investment almost as defensive. Yeah, it's like a leaky funnel, right. If you don't yet go to Home Depot and buy something to fix your faucet, then you'll just keep leaky. That's also a way that brands have in fact approached that question.
- [21:24]
John Jantz
Yeah, awesome. Well, lots of changes, lots going on. I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Is there somewhere you'd invite people to connect with you and learn more about the work that you're doing there?
- [21:34]
Prasanna Dungle
Yeah, absolutely. So you can connect with me on LinkedIn prasanthunya, or you can go to our website grow by data.com and you'll find me on the executive team. You know, you can find me on LinkedIn on Twitter PD277. Happy to be helpful. And this is a fast changing work area. And would love to be helpful and support it certainly is.
- [21:58]
John Jantz
Again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into one of these days out there on the road.
- [22:02]
Prasanna Dungle
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
- [22:08]
Marketing Narrator
Let me ask you a few things. You feel like you know what differentiates your business from every other business out there? Can you confidently charge a premium for what you offer? Are you working from a plan, a marketing roadmap that allows you to know precisely what to do next? Look, don't worry if you can't answer yes to any or all of these questions. You're not alone. See, marketers today get so focused on the tactic of the week staring them right in the face that they forget to look at the big picture, the overarching strategy needed to consistently grow their business. Over the years, I've worked with thousands of businesses helping them do just that. Create the perfect marketing strategy and plan that gives total clarity about what to do next, confidence to charge ahead and charge more, and complete control of the marketing tactics they choose. I would love to help you and your team do the same. Look to find out if our Strategy first program is right for you, visit DTM World Grow and request a free consultation. That's DTM World Grow.