564: Blogging Is Dead…Or Is It? What’s Actually Happening With Google

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Blogging Is Dead…Or Is It? What’s Actually Happening With Google"

The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
Host: Steve Chou
Co-Host: Tony
Episode: 564
Release Date: November 20, 2024
Topic: The viability of blogging in the current digital landscape, particularly focusing on Google's algorithm changes and their impact on ecommerce businesses.

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1. Introduction to Blogging's Current Landscape

In this episode, Steve Chou and co-host Tony delve into the relevance of blogging in today's digital ecosystem. Continuing a four-part series on content creation for business promotion, they specifically address whether blogging remains a viable strategy.

Steve Chou [00:00-05:21]:
Steve sets the stage by expressing skepticism about traditional standalone blogging. He highlights that Google's recent algorithm updates have adversely affected standalone blogs, diminishing their search rankings unless they are tied to an established ecommerce business.

2. Google's Algorithm Changes Impacting Blogs

The discussion centers on how Google's algorithm now penalizes standalone blogs that do not support a business, adversely affecting their visibility and traffic.

Steve Chou [02:59-07:15]:
Steve explains, "Google's algorithm changes pretty much penalized every standalone blog in existence. So, if you have a blog without a business under it, they really hurt you in the search rankings."

Tony [07:15-07:20]:
Tony counters by emphasizing that ecommerce blogs, which are tied to active businesses, continue to thrive despite these changes.

3. The Importance of Web Content Formatting

Tony underscores the necessity of proper content formatting tailored for web and mobile consumption, diverging from traditional writing norms.

Tony [05:21-10:49]:
He states, "You have to have a home base... Even if you're not building out a 300 post blog... understanding how to format things for the web, understanding how to write for the Internet, which is not like writing a book."

4. Enhancing Content Aesthetics and Accuracy

The hosts discuss the critical role of aesthetic presentation and grammatical precision in maintaining reader trust and engagement.

Tony [12:43-17:46]:
Tony emphasizes, "If you see typos on a brand site, that is a red flag for that product... everything that you put out on the web is building up trust in your brand."

Steve Chou [15:56-17:46]:
Steve agrees, advocating for the use of AI tools to ensure content is free from grammatical errors: "Just run everything through AI... there's no excuse."

5. The Impact of AI on SEO and Future of Search

A significant portion of the conversation explores how AI, particularly tools like ChatGPT, influences SEO and the future dynamics of search engines.

Steve Chou [17:54-27:05]:
He addresses concerns about AI diminishing the effectiveness of SEO: "I think SEO is going to die eventually. But it'll probably take a while." However, he remains optimistic that current SEO efforts will translate to AI-enhanced search environments in the long run.

Tony [24:55-25:46]:
Tony adds, "Sometime no one really trusts what AI says and then they actually click on the links to just verify what AI is saying," suggesting that AI overviews might actually drive more traffic to traditional search results.

6. SEO Strategies for Ecommerce Blogs

The hosts provide actionable SEO tips tailored for ecommerce blogs, emphasizing keyword research and concise content.

Steve Chou [20:59-22:26]:
"Basically, you want to figure out which keywords that you're trying to target and then you want to use a keyword tool to figure out what the best word is to target."

Tony [21:34-22:56]:
He recommends budget-friendly tools like Ubersuggest for those who find Ahrefs too expensive, noting, "They have the best data of any company."

7. Alternative Content Strategies Beyond Blogging

Acknowledging that blogging may not suit all niches, Steve and Tony discuss alternative content forms such as video and influencer marketing.

Tony [31:00-36:10]:
Tony argues, "You need to be creating that blog style content for your website," but also recognizes that for visual products like fashion, video content might be more effective.

Steve Chou [30:44-36:48]:
Steve concurs, stating, "If you're in fashion and you sell like dresses, I don't think blogging is going to be the right medium for you."

8. Establishing a Home Base for Content Creators

The importance of having a centralized online presence, or "home base," is stressed as crucial for maintaining audience engagement and ownership.

Tony [36:10-42:07]:
Tony emphasizes, "You need to have a website that's home base... if you want to create content, give yourself a home base." He warns against relying solely on social media platforms, citing their vulnerability to algorithm changes that can abruptly reduce an influencer's reach.

Steve Chou [40:06-42:07]:
Steve supports this by sharing personal experiences: "If you have your own email list, that's yours and no one can take that away from you."

Conclusion: Navigating the Future of Blogging in Ecommerce

Steve wraps up the discussion by reiterating his stance on blogging's viability based on its integration with ecommerce efforts. He encourages listeners to leverage content creation strategically within their ecommerce platforms while being adaptable to evolving search engine algorithms and AI technologies.

Steve Chou [42:07]:
"For ecommerce, blogging is still a viable traffic strategy. Hope you enjoyed this episode... tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale... sign up for my free 6-day mini course."

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Key Takeaways:

• Standalone Blogging Decline: Google's algorithm changes have reduced the effectiveness of standalone blogs without associated businesses.
• Ecommerce Blogging Still Relevant: Blogs tied to active ecommerce businesses continue to perform well in search rankings.
• Content Formatting Matters: Proper formatting for web and mobile enhances readability and user engagement.
• Grammatical Precision Builds Trust: Ensuring content is free from errors is crucial for maintaining brand credibility.
• AI's Dual Role in SEO: While AI poses challenges to traditional SEO, it also offers new opportunities for content discovery and search optimization.
• Diversify Content Strategies: Depending on the product niche, alternative content forms like video may be more effective than traditional blogging.
• Maintain a Home Base: Owning a centralized online presence, such as a website with an email list, is essential for long-term audience engagement and control.

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Notable Quotes:

• Steve Chou [02:59]: "Google's algorithm changes pretty much penalized every standalone blog in existence."
• Tony [05:21]: "You have to have a home base... understanding how to write for the Internet."
• Tony [12:43]: "If you see typos on a brand site, that is a red flag for that product."
• Steve Chou [17:54]: "I think SEO is going to die eventually. But it'll probably take a while."
• Tony [36:10]: "You need to be creating that blog style content for your website."
• Steve Chou [40:06]: "If you have your own email list, that's yours and no one can take that away from you."

This comprehensive discussion offers valuable insights for ecommerce entrepreneurs contemplating the role of blogging in their content strategies, emphasizing adaptability and strategic integration with business objectives.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

You're listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e commerce and online business. Today we're going to continue with our four part series on creating content to promote your business. In this episode, we're resuming from where we left off to talk about blogging and whether it's still a viable option today. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale For Seller Summit 2025 over at sellers summit.com the Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we've sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. And finally, if you haven't picked up my Wall Street Journal best selling book the Family First Entrepreneur yet, it's actually available on Amazon at 38% off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn't require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still get my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting. When you grab the book over at my wife quither job.com book. So go to my wife with their job, fill out the form and I'll send you the bonuses right away. Now on to the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we're going to talk about content creation and specifically blogging, which is actually a topic I didn't really want to talk about today, but Tony wanted to talk about it mainly because I'm kind of down on just regular blogging. And just to be clear, this is blogging not for e Commerce. Not when you have a business already established. I'm just talking about blogging in general.

[Tony]

So I know you're very down on blogging right now.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Tony]

But we're doing a blogging basics series, or content creation basics, and so we can't not talk about writing in the series.

[Steve Chou]

That's correct. So maybe like the way I can, otherwise I'm just gonna be in a bad mood the whole time.

[Tony]

I know, I know. I'm trying to redirect here.

[Steve Chou]

We can just frame it in terms of blogging for E commerce, which is still working very well. And if all of you listening out there, the reason why I'm down is because Google's algorithm changes pretty much penalized every standalone blog in existence. So basically, if you have a blog without a business under it, they really hurt you in the search rankings. Whereas. So for example, my wifequitterjob.com is down, whereas the Bumblebee Linens blog is kind of taking off, actually. Yeah, but you know, my wife quit her job. I've, I've spent so many, so many years working on it. And I, I, I've talked to a bunch of SEOs, and Google has pretty much admitted that they've overcorrected. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if things change. But as of right now, I'm actually down on it.

[Tony]

I think that's.

[Steve Chou]

How's that to start the podcast, huh, Tony?

[Tony]

I think that's fair. But here's here, here's what I think. And I know you're down and I know you just got a quote for some stuff that was absolutely insane to help fix some of the issues. So, I mean, I didn't even, I usually over guess when you say, guess how much this would cost. I usually like wildly over guess. And I was like six times under when I guessed initially. So I know why you're down. And I know that for a lot of people who have made a living off of SEO and ranking, that all of the changes has, I mean, I hate to say the word decimated, but it really has decimated a lot of people's businesses that were, I would say, providing really helpful and great content. So I understand the frustration. I also find it just side note, very entertaining to watch all of these SEO guys make TikToks now. So as for my own entertainment. But here's why I think it's important to talk about, because no matter what, even if you are like, listen, I'm not even, I don't even want to do a blog. I Just want to be on TikTok. I just want to make my Instagram reels. Just give me my YouTube. You have to have that home base. And we talk about this all the time. We talk about it in our webinars, we talk about it in the course. You have to have a place where people can go to, if absolutely nothing else, get on your email list.

[Steve Chou]

Sure, but that's not a blog, right?

[Tony]

That's not a blog. That's not a blog. You have to have a home base. But my argument would be your home base should have a little bit of content on it, even if you're not building out a 300 post blog. Right. Like you're, I don't know how. I know you've culled your posts a lot, but you know, not saying that you need three, you know, a thousand posts or even 25 posts, but I think the creation of content, understanding how to format things for the web, understanding how to write for the Internet, which is not like writing a book. And I think people get very confused about that. Those are still things that you need to know even if you are going to do just like the bare minimum of blogging.

[Steve Chou]

I guess I could agree with that. I mean the format of writing that we were teaching was how to rank in search. Right. For a standalone blog. And we can go over those principles and they still apply if you have a business underneath it. Let me just take a step back and in case people are just not up to date on all this stuff. So thanks to AI, people just started generating all this AI spam like all over the Internet and it was working for a while. And so I think Google was not able to control any of this. So they just put the hammer down and just said, hey, anyone who's creating content that doesn't have like a business underneath it, we're just going to devalue those blogs. Right. And so let's just take my wife, quitterjob.com I don't sell anything on that blog. It is a pure content site and so that's why it was devalued. Whereas Bumblebee Linens, it's got an E commerce store behind it and it has sales, it has reviews and that sort of thing. So it's a legit business. So hence that blog actually got promoted.

[Tony]

Yeah. Which is I think great news for E commerce store owners. Right. Because a lot of people we know struggled for a long time to get their stores to rank in search against blogs. Right. Against your traditional content based sites. So I think in The E commerce world. This is exciting news. Right? But you also have to. Once again, and I think you said we taught how to write for search. We also taught how to read for. How to write for readability. Because if you go back to your English, you know, ninth grade English class and you think about everything that you had to do, or if you ever took like a creative writing class in college or anything like that, basically you have to throw all of those things out the window that you learned in writing class. All of the things that you can remember from 8th grade on are garbage when it comes to writing for the web. And this is if you have an E commerce store blog or if you have just a traditional website, because people don't read that way on the web.

[Steve Chou]

I don't know if I agree with that statement. Okay, what you said is true if you're writing for search, but it's definitely not true if you're just like. Like, take Mark Manson. Do you read his stuff? This stuff is amazing. He writes it like a book. It's not like the way we teach it. Because he doesn't care about search at all. Yeah, he writes stories. It's excellent. He's developed an audience without depending on search at all.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So, yeah, the style of writing that. I don't know where you want to go with this, but what you just described is writing for the search engines to me.

[Tony]

Well, I was meaning more about, you know, just things that we would traditionally not do. So what did you learn? What paragraph was in high school? Four sentences. Right. And usually the bigger, the better. Right, Right. For these paragraphs.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, you're talking about aesthetic formatting.

[Tony]

Yes, yes. Which is very important. And I think this is the easiest thing for people to learn. Right. This is the easiest shift that you can make. And this is really important in E commerce because I guarantee most people are probably looking on mobile. So this becomes far more important when you think about the size of. Even though these new iPhones are gigantic, but it's still a much smaller screen than a desktop computer. So. So just basic things like using bold and heading tags to break up your text, adding images into your content, making your paragraphs one to two sentences, which to me was like the hardest thing. As someone who wrote a ton before the blogging world, to think that you could have a paragraph that was one sentence is absolutely nuts. And then one of the biggest things that I think we don't talk about a lot, but this was a tip I think I got from our friend JD Roth, who's a great writer is that after you write something, you walk away from it and then you come back and you trim as much as you can off of it. Right. It's not about like I remember certain classes in high school and college where it was like you just had to get the word count in. Right. Like the more words the better. And I know, you know, there was a time in SEO where you were, I think you were doing like 5,000 word posts or something crazy like that. But nowadays, just for the reader, you know, for the, the use case. Right. Is go cut all the fat off the content. Right. You don't need to overwrite and over explain. Figure out how you can say the same exact thing in as least words possible and you'll give your reader a much better experience when they come to your website.

[Steve Chou]

And again, I think this just depends on the type of content we're talking about. If they're looking for answers, then yes, most people don't even read the content. They just look at the heading tags to get an idea. But if you're writing a narrative, like your however many page thing that you wrote about your life.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Which was like 15 pages or whatever, I don't think any of that stuff matters. Right. What I will say is that if you have a blog and it's like the full width screen, it's actually really difficult to read something that's super wide on a desktop. Also because I like lose track when I go back to the left where the sentence actually left off.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So even though you have all that screen real estate, you don't want to make your content the entire width of the screen either.

[Tony]

Yeah. And the nice thing is whether I think you're on WordPress or even if you're just building a blog on Shopify, you can have a mobile view of your content before you ever publish it.

[Steve Chou]

Yes. And you should be arguably designing your blog for mobile phone first instead of desktop because I mean, that's probably 75% of my traffic, maybe even more. Actually, I haven't checked. My wife quit her job recently.

[Tony]

I found that the store websites, their traffic is so mobile heavy, right? Yes. And so, you know, I'm 99% sure that every Shopify theme allows you to do this, but you have to check this stuff right before you hit publish. Because what you don't want to do is drive an ad to something or a lead ad. Right. Or even send out an email where you want to drive people to your E commerce content and then have people scrolling around like crazy, not able to read it because it looks wonky on mobile. And so often it does if you don't do mobile first.

[Steve Chou]

And I think really the, the mistake that most people make is embedding images and videos. So for example, let's say you're going to embed a YouTube video by default. If you were to cut and paste that code into your site, it would not look right on mobile. In fact, I don't, I don't know why YouTube does this. Actually. I always have to add extra code just to make sure it automatically sizes to the, to the container that it's done. But yeah, yeah, videos can look wonky if you don't do it right. And then images also. Yeah, you got to just make sure that like I, I, I remember looking at my blog once and I had an image that almost fit the entire width, but then there was space on the right side of the image where it could fit just one word. So the paragraph started with, you know what I'm saying?

[Tony]

Yes, I've had that happen before or like one letter going down. So yeah, I think that's a big thing for sure. Is the, the aesthetic of the content is actually really important these days. I also think that, and this drives me nuts and I, I do this too. So I'm not, I'm talking to myself. But like, people do not grammatically check their content. And I feel like we're just in this world where it's like we have spell check. If it doesn't check it, it's fine. If it doesn't catch it, it's fine. But you know, it doesn't always catch the correct use of their, their, your, your, you know, like all these things and depending on what type of content you have, and I think, especially if you're a brand, like, if you're selling something that to me, if I see typos on a brand site, that is a red flag for that product. Especially if you think about this, right? Like, everyone's competing against Amazon to get people to buy their stuff. Amazon is a trusted resource for the buyer. I know for the seller, they might not call it a trusted resource, but for consumers, like, they know Amazon, they order it, it comes in two days. If there's a problem, Amazon fixes it immediately. Their experience is very positive. So if you're trying to compete with Amazon on your Shopify or BigCommerce store and your content is loaded with typos, just mistakes, to me, that immediately diminishes the trust in the brand.

[Steve Chou]

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. Yeah, you know what I do these days? I just cut and paste everything in the chat GPT and just say fix grammatical errors without changing the content.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Spelling and grammatical errors. And then it does that. And you should. There's no excuse. Basically.

[Tony]

Yeah, there's no. Yeah, there's no reason to have this. I mean there really isn't ever a reason. But you know, there. You should absolutely make sure that everything is written correctly.

[Steve Chou]

I mean when you. Back in the old days before AI, I mean, be very easy to miss. Like.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

For some reason I always had this problem where I would miss like an A or something. Like because you're reading it fast, right.

[Tony]

And you've also written it typically. So you're reading what you already wrote. So you're reading what you thought you wrote, not necessarily what you actually wrote.

[Steve Chou]

And honestly, as I get older, I like fully omit words. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Tony]

Or I have found that like I will just absolutely forget how to spell something. Like last night we were texting back and forth with friends and I mean this is kind of a word that not many people know how to spell. But we were talking about the two different types of salami because we were doing. We're doing charcuterie and so there's a meet called Sopriceta. It's probably not being pronounced correctly, but I just couldn't even get to like the fourth letter. Right. I was just like. And it was so poorly spelled that like my phone wouldn't autocorrect it. It was so bad. And I have no idea how to spell this word. Like absolutely no clue. I just went completely blank. And I feel like that happens every once in a while with writing. There's just like, there's a word where you're like I don't have any idea or I'm always like, is it Principal or principle. Like there's those words that, you know, have the double spelling. So anyway, that kind of stuff's actually important, especially if you're a brand, because I feel like everything that you put out on the web is building up trust in your brand. And so, you know, having the least amount of problems on, on your pages is going to help people realize that you're a place where they can, you know, confidently buy.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So just run everything through AI. Really. So are we talking about E commerce blogging right now then or.

[Tony]

I mean, I think we're talking in general, but I think it's just so much more important for E commerce.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And you know, it's hard for me to hide the fact that I think SEO is going to die.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Eventually. But it'll probably take a while. I don't know if we've talked about the Google antitrust case much.

[Tony]

We talked about it once, but I.

[Steve Chou]

Don'T know if you listen to the all in podcast and there's some other podcasts that I listen to that specifically cover this and it looks like it's going towards the direction of breaking up Google and the separate companies. And all those deals were like, Google's paying Apple like billions of dollars to be the default search engine.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Will likely not happen anymore.

[Tony]

Oh, that's right, we did. Yes. So when you get your phone. Yeah, right. That's where it has the biggest, I would say one of the bigger impacts.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So I, I mean, I think things will fundamentally, the reports are saying that, you know, all this stuff just takes forever based on prior trials. So we might not see any changes for like five years. Right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So if we can talk maybe in the context of five years, things probably aren't going to change a whole lot. And yeah, in terms of just search market share, Google actually hasn't lost much market share at all. Because if you look at percentage wise, you know, we talked about people using perplexity, people using, you know, chat GPT instead of search. It's really just like a percent.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Or something like that for now. So, you know, all the things that we're talking about, if you're writing for search and you have an E commerce store, they still apply. Like the principles of ranking and search have not changed fundamentally over the years.

[Tony]

So do a quick overview for people because I know a lot of people out listening do have an E commerce store. And so, I mean, I think there is some good, there is some good news. I know you're all down on blogging right now, but I do think there's good news for store owners.

[Steve Chou]

For store owners. I'm like, really happy with the Bumblebee Linens blog, but the Bumblebee Linens blog is also not something that I spent like the last 13 years painstakingly writing the content myself. You know what I'm saying? That's why, sure, it's great on Bowling Beelinen's land, but I'm not proud of that content. Like I'm proud of the content that I've written on the blog. And that's why I'm down on it, just to be clear.

[Tony]

Probably because you're not like a big wedding hanky guy.

[Steve Chou]

No, I mean, honestly, what we're ranking for on the Bumblebee Linens blog is mainly anniversary gifts and wedding related stuff. Right. Which drives traffic to the store, which is great. But it's not like I put my blood, sweat and tears in that content, so.

[Tony]

Right. But I mean, if you sold something different, you might feel differently, but maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah, if you sold microprocessors, you would, you would be thrilled right now. So. But just for people that are listening that are like, okay, give me a 5 minute SEO basics for my E commerce blog.

[Steve Chou]

Basically, you want to figure out which keywords that you're trying to target and then you want to. You need a keyword tool to figure out what the best word is to target. And then there's a lot of related keywords that are often used with those keywords. So you can use a tool like Surfer. We use Ahrefs for keyword research and just write a post that answers the question for the keyword that you're targeting as succinctly as possible or all the different questions that are related to that. And do it in like the first sentence and be succinct.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

If I were to just. That's like a 60 second lesson, basically. I mean, there's a lot more to it, obviously. But I did want to talk about some of the other concerns about SEO that people were having and we can just focus on E commerce since I'm still. I'm very up on E commerce blogging, actually.

[Tony]

So before we go to the next topic though, because I know people ask this of us every webinar. You talked about the tools we use ahrefs. You want to say why that's your choice versus some of the other tools.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, ahrefs unfortunately is expensive, but I think they have the best data of any company. And data is the important part of these search tools. Yeah, they have this Chrome plugin also that a lot of people have installed where they're tracking people directly from the browser also in addition to the other data. So that's why they're the most accurate.

[Tony]

Yeah. And if you had to give people a budget option, what would you.

[Steve Chou]

Because probably ubersuggest.

[Tony]

Ubersuggest. Yeah. And I feel like. Yeah, I feel like Neil often offers deals on that where you can. I don't know, I feel like they're in my inbox every once in a while where if you sign up, you get a certain. A period of time free, or if you pay, you know, I don't know, I feel like there's still some deals running on that every once in a while. So if you're not on his email list, that might be a place to start.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, they have a. He always offers a lifetime deal. I think the last time.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

One of my students checked and it's still available. I think you sign up first and then they get you with a lifetime deal after a month or something like that.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

Anyway, he's got an interesting tactic, though. His. His close is always, do you want to book a call?

[Steve Chou]

Is it really? I didn't know that.

[Tony]

Yeah. I mean, you don't talk to him, but yeah, that's his close, anyway.

[Steve Chou]

Well, it's. It's very effective. Right. Because, like, if I ever wanted to blow up my course, like, if I ever want to do it, I would just hire an army of salespeople.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And just give them a commission because people want to talk to people with courses. Right?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So, okay.

[Steve Chou]

All right, so where was I? I don't remember what I was going to talk about.

[Tony]

So SEO for businesses.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, No, I was going to just talk about some of the concerns that people have been having. Some of the questions that I've been having mainly has to do with AI. Right. People often ask me, hey, is it even worth it to do this stuff anymore? Right. And if you look at Google right now, you'll notice that sometimes when you do a query, there's this, like, purple box that pops up that it's. It's called the AI Overview that basically summarizes your question.

[Tony]

I feel like that always pops up now.

[Steve Chou]

Well, it actually only pops up for 7% of search queries. Back in the day, when they first released it, it was like everything, but then it started hallucinating and they got a lot of negative press on it.

[Tony]

So they always. Seven, I don't think. I've never not seen. Seen it.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, I haven't seen it actually in a while.

[Tony]

I saw it yesterday. Anyway, go on, what are you searching for? Oh, we can't talk about that on the podcast.

[Steve Chou]

Well, the stats are it's 7% of search queries and 17 of e commerce queries.

[Tony]

Oh, interesting. I guess most of my searches are probably very AI friendly, like you know, how many cups in a quart or how many.

[Steve Chou]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony]

Those are most, most of my searches are, are, you know, how many kilometers are in a mile sort of type question. So that would make more sense. So 17 in E commerce, 7% regular. That's interesting.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, but the whole point is people will worry about creating content and those AIO reviews totally eating up the clicks, ironically. And someone did a study, I can't remember which website did the study, but the search clicks actually went up as a result of AI overviews because apparently no one really trusts what AI says and then they actually click on the links to just verify what AI is saying.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

So we're talking about low single digits here. We're not everyone expected a decrease, but surprisingly it's actually resulted in an increase.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And my long term view of all this also is all your efforts in search are probably likely going to translate over to AI eventually as well. So for example, if you're ranking number one for wedding handkerchiefs when you ask AI, and I've tried this with ChatGPT, like what's the best place to get wedding handkerchiefs? And bumblebee linens was listed, probably because they've crawled the web, maybe using Google or another search engine. And those are the ones. So even if you look forward in the long run, I still think doing SEO is worth it. It's just going to be different. You're, you're now going to try to rank in, in AI as opposed to just search. We're, we're looking like five years out, probably five, 10 years out.

[Tony]

Do you think ranking in AI is going to be significantly different than ranking in search? Like the strategy or. It's too soon to tell, I have no idea.

[Steve Chou]

But you know, AI has to get the data from somewhere, right?

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And like the authority. And it's just probably natural that it piggybacks on some ranking algorithm. Right? Nobody knows. I mean we're looking too far in the future. But if you're worried about AI overviews, it, it hasn't really been much of a factor yet.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So let's see what else. And I think I already mentioned before, like, if you're worried like chat GPT, search GPT and Perplexity are just going to eat Google's market share. Probably not going to be happening because as long as Google has those deals in place.

[Tony]

Yes, yes. Which might, which they might lose. So we'll see.

[Steve Chou]

But we're talking, you know, we're talking years out, I think.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

In case any of those things change, like I probably wouldn't. There's always going to be some sort of search engine. So I think the work that you're doing will translate to the other ones. But I mean we're talking chatgpt, we're talking like a percent right now, even if everyone went to Chachi BT now. But.

[Tony]

So do you have anything else to say about E commerce? Because I have, I have a.

[Steve Chou]

No, no, go for it.

[Tony]

Go for it for people. So I think one of the things you should take away from this podcast is that if you have an E commerce site, you need to be working on the content side of it. You need to be creating that blog style content for your website. If you have a store, if you are a content creator and you do not have a physical product to sell, I don't think that you can just jump up and down and be excited that you never have to write again. Because I do think that writing is important and understanding how to communicate via the written word is still something that you need to do. And here's where it matters. On a sales page. Now I would argue that like I would use Claude to help me write my sales page. Right. Like I would use AI tools to help me do some of these things. However, Claude, ChatGPT, all those tools are really only as good as you can prompt them to be at this point. So if you and I think whenever I, I realized this when we did the webinar where you gave the YouTube prompt that was like 16 paragraphs long.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

How to get. But the response from people of like frantically trying to like get that information down and you did it in office hours and everyone was flipping out about it and in a good way. But I think you still have to understand how to communicate well to be able to get the results you want in any sort of AI tool. So to think that like, okay, this is great, I'll never have to write again is not really true. You do have to figure out a way to create persuasive copy to be able to explain your value proposition. And you know what, if you can do that in a video, awesome. But you're still going to have some text on the page. Somewhere to continue to close the deal. And so I think. And then you're gonna have to email people, which we talked about email last week. So you're gonna be writing, you know, you're gonna be writing emails to people. So there is still something to be said about practicing your writing and understanding how to communicate in the written word. It's just not looking the same as it did when we got started 15 years ago.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And. And just to be clear, I don't think every store has to have a blog. I think every store needs to be doing some form of content.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like a blog might not make sense for certain stores, depending on what you sell.

[Tony]

True, true.

[Steve Chou]

And. And we all have limited time, so you just need to choose the right medium. Like, for example, if you're in fashion and you sell like dresses, for example, I don't think blogging is going to be the right medium for you.

[Tony]

No. I would create video content somewhere.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, you know, Exactly. Or short form or influencers. Whereas if you sell something a little bit more obscure, then maybe blogging, because those keywords probably won't be that hard. And again, we're just talking about in the context of ranking or if you.

[Tony]

Have to teach people how to do something with your product.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So if you're. If your product is complex or is used in a way that, you know, it's not like a dress, where you put it on, you zip it up. Right. Like, there's not usually. Don't have to have an instruction manual to put on clothes, but a lot of people sell products that are a little more complex. And so having that content to explain or to explain to people why they need what you're selling versus a different product or a less expensive product or something like this. Especially when you don't have the name recognition.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And I'm just. People always ask me about the product descriptions and whether it's worth it to put a lot of effort in there. I think your product descriptions, again, if you're thinking about it from a source search perspective, you want to put in the keywords that you're going for in the description. But honestly, no one reads the description. Or very few people. Like, if you look on Amazon, very few people look at the description. It's mainly the image and bullet points, Right?

[Tony]

Yes. I was thinking bullet points was part of the description. So I was like, I think people do look at those. But.

[Steve Chou]

And again, it totally depends on the product. Right. If you're buying something tech that's very technical, maybe you'll look at it, right?

[Tony]

Yeah, but I always look. So that's it. This is where I think your niche is so determining of what you do. Right. Because when I, and I don't buy a lot of clothes on Amazon, but I will grab like if I need something for like a party or whatever, I'm like, what does Amazon have that can be here tomorrow? Right. And I'll go on Amazon and I don't. The only thing I care about is like what the blend of fabric is. So like I want to make sure it's not like 100% polyester so I won't swap sweat to death. But then the next thing I do immediately is scroll down where like the user generated content lives, where people take pictures of themselves in that piece of clothing, which is all like in the, it's, it's not lower carousel, but it's like where the lower carousel is on Amazon. And I will scroll through and I will find people that are like my size, my shape or close. Right. Like, okay, this person's six foot tall. So it's definitely not gonna look like that on me, you know, and that's how I make my decision. Fully, fully based on pictures of other people in the outfit. However, if I'm buying like a bookcase or you know, I'm, I'm read, I'm. What kind of wood is it? What are the dimensions? How thick are the shelves, how tall is it? Does it have a thing that bolted to the wall like right then. Then you're much more invested in the product bullet points and descriptions. So I think this is really like a niche specific.

[Steve Chou]

It is. It's funny though. There was the only reason why I said that there was a statistic somewhere which I'd have to find the article. But it's like the amount of people that actually read an Amazon description is like single digits.

[Tony]

Just me, just me over here reading the Amazon description.

[Steve Chou]

Actually when I buy clothes like I, I don't, I don't, I just look at the picture.

[Tony]

Yeah. Because you just want to see how it looks.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. But I don't buy clothes that often.

[Tony]

So yeah, I don't buy a lot of clothes on Amazon, but when I do, I'm. I'm just immediately to the lower carousel. Like show me, show me regular people. I don't want to see the six foot, the six foot Russian model wearing the outfit that looks nothing like me.

[Steve Chou]

Actually if you think about it, it's actually hard to find the description on Amazon too. You got to scroll down many pages.

[Tony]

Yes. They can they continue to hide it, which hide it.

[Steve Chou]

It's just, it just goes to show that very few people are looking at it. So why put it higher up?

[Tony]

Yeah, no, and you know, it's interesting and this is where it drives me nuts when like e commerce, like small e commerce store owners think that they know better than Amazon. Because like I noticed like Amazon did that right. Where they continued to like bury the description. And then if you go to other big websites like Lowe's or Home Depot, like I can't remember, one of them also has descriptions like significantly further down than they used to be. Right. And it's like all these other huge e commerce brands, right. Follow suit and they're like, well if Amazon's doing it, they clearly have spent millions of dollars researching and know every single thing about everyone's mouse movement on a page. But then an E commerce store owner who sells, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a year is like, no, I know better. I know better than Amazon. It's like, no, you don't just copy exactly what they're doing and, and, and move on. So, so yeah, that always, I always find that entertaining.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So I guess people are probably listening to this, wondering if they need to start a blog. Right?

[Tony]

Yes. Which we kind of have said the same thing for a while now, which is you need a website that's home base.

[Steve Chou]

Correct? Correct.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I mean that home base like in the context of E commerce can just be your store, like Shopify, you can put together landing pages and content pages.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And if you're on BigCommerce is the same thing. If you're on WooCommerce, you're on WordPress. So you already have like a home base. So.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But I would say that if you're going to start a standalone blog today without a business to do affiliate marketing or whatnot, I probably wouldn't do that right now, to be frank.

[Tony]

No, seriously, burn it down.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I'm just giving it to you straight. Like if you're doing it like in a pure affiliate blog today, I just wouldn't do it. But you do need a website. Like let's say you want to sell course or whatever. You definitely need what you said, a home base to collect emails, to talk about your offer, to talk about yourself. Kind of like a portfolio sort of website.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Today.

[Tony]

Because I will, I will say as someone who has worked on the brand side and on the content creator side, it is frustrating to me to find a content creator on TikTok or Instagram who has no website at all. Like, the only way to contact them is like through a dm. Like, to me, that is if you want to put your. If, if you want to become a content creator and you want to educate people through whatever medium it is. Video podcasting, the written word. If you want to write a book, you want to put a book on Amazon, right? You have to have some sort of home base because if you get, you know, you don't have to get that famous or that big or that many views for people to want to reach out to you. And a perfect example of this is. I don't. We are in such different TikTok feeds. Every time I bring up a TikTok reference, I know you're gonna have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Have you seen the 17 diaper mom?

[Steve Chou]

What do you think?

[Tony]

Well, only because she ended up on Good Morning America or one of the morning shows. I don't either. But like, at that point it's like in national news, right? So she made a tick tock. She has a newborn kid and she posted a. I don't. I didn't even see the original video, but it was like, you know, here I am, you know, I got a four day old baby and I'm going around the house collecting all the dirty diapers from three the day before, right? And they're not in like a diaper pail or anything like that. They're literally like three on the coffee table and one on the floor and one on the couch. Okay, but if you've had a newborn baby, you know that sometimes in the middle of the night, you're changing that baby on the couch and you're just leaving that tiny little newborn diaper. It doesn't matter. Like, how bad is that thing? Not that bad, right? So people like came after her, right? Like, how could you do this? Whatever. But then. And of course, the Internet is a wild place, right? So then she had all these people defending her and basically, basically people were making videos, moms that were like, this is my 17 diaper moment. When I had a 2 week old, you know, baby. I had. I had such severe postpartum that when my husband came home from work, I would give him the baby and drive the car around my neighborhood for two and a half hours every night. Like, and they were sharing like, it's okay to have 17 diapers because everybody handles like having a baby. And it got to be so viral that she got invited on a morning show. And, you know, she made this. I saw the video she made Where I was basically like these, this video changed my life. Right. But you never know when you're creating content when you have the 17 diaper moment. Right. If you make that video that, like the girl that Elise Myers a couple years ago who posted the bit about the date at Taco Bell where she went on a Tinder date and he said let's go to Taco Bell and they get in the drive thru, he orders 100 tacos and then he doesn't have his wallet. Right. She blew up from that one video. Ended up leveraging it into a lot of different things. But if you don't have that website where people can contact you, sign up for your. I mean if people are trying to find you, let them find you. You know, give them that place to. You can grab their email address, they can fill out a contact form, all those things. You want to make it as easy as possible for people. Cause especially when they're watching it on their phone, if it's not super easy, they're going to move on to the next person.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, I have a counter example. I, I actually know a lot of people who don't have a home base and collecting emails and they're just depending on, you know, whatever social media platforms built in audience like, like they're just relying on Instagram, for example, like the Instagram lists and whatnot. And I know this is just a story. Back in the day when Facebook allowed you to collect messenger subscribers, there were a lot of people, including myself, building a list on that platform until Facebook basically decided to destroy it.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So all that work was just gone in the span of, of an announcement.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Whereas, you know, if you have your own email list, that's yours and no one can take that away from you. So even if you think you have an audience on a social media platform, anything can happen when you, when you don't own the list yourself.

[Tony]

Yeah. So I think if, you know, before you go cry over Steve's depressing.

[Steve Chou]

I know I've been very negative this episode.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I'm telling you, I didn't want to record this.

[Tony]

I know you didn't. But I think it's important for people to understand just the basic stuff. I think if you're thinking about that content creation, give yourself a home base. If nothing else, you know, that's, that's important thing, that's an important step because I, you and I both know way too many influencers who have. The algorithm changes, Facebook changes the rules, they stop showing things to groups, whatever it is. Right. Where then all of a sudden their reach that used to be a million is now 10,000, right? So you want to be able to capture as many of those people as you can, especially while you're riding the wave of virality. And if you have an e commerce store, you should be creating some kind of content, whether that's written, video, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest. You need to have something out there so people can discover you and learn more about your brand, but it definitely needs to be something that you think about when you're creating that online store.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. As you can probably tell, I'm a little down on blogging, but only when it comes to a pure content site. For e commerce, blogging is still a viable traffic strategy. For more information and resources go to mywifequit her job.com Episode563 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellers summit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.