← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
AI & SEO Meet Micro-SEO Strategies
00:25:38
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
Tyson Stockton
Hey, what's going on? My name is Tyson from Previsible IO, and joining me today is Chris Rolfe, who is the Founder and President Chief Visionary at Boulder SEO Marketing. Boulder SEO Marketing specializes in innovative and effective SEO solutions. The company focuses on transparency and tailored tactics to help clients dominate search results, boost conversions in an ever evolving digital landscape.
- [01:09]
Podcast Announcer
This podcast is also sponsored by ahrefs. What if I told you that you could monitor your website's SEO health backlinks and organic rankings at no cost? Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not, because my friends at Ahrefs just launched Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Ahrefs new Webmaster Tools product quickly helps you improve your site's visibility by pointing solutions to over 100 technical technical issues that might be holding your search performance down. Plus, AWT monitors for backlinks so you'll know the most linked to pages and how those links are affecting your rankings. And AWT shares what keywords your website ranks for and compares how you stack up against competitors for key metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty and traffic value. Look, monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools and now, thanks to Ahrefs, that's not the case anymore because AWT will help you monitor your SEO health backlinks and keywords for free. And no, it's not one of those 14 day free trial offers. It's a powerful site audit tool that will keep working for you for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's a H R E F S.comAWT yesterday.
- [02:28]
Tyson Stockton
Chris and I talked about human driven AI assisted SEO and today we're continuing the conversation by discussing AI and SEO. Meet Micro SEO Strategies. With that, here's my conversation with Chris Ralph, Founder and President at Boulder SEO Marketing. Chris, welcome back.
- [02:46]
Chris Rolfe
Hey Tyson, thanks so much again for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [02:50]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, I loved the conversation yesterday. I think you offered Quite a bit of insight for the listeners on kind of how to be thinking about AI, the advocation of using it in within the workflows and really dissecting the different parts of how we do work to find those different application points. Today we're changing it up a little bit and so we're talking AI and SEO, but like within the constructs of micro SEO. So maybe to start off, could you kind of just break down for the listeners, what do you mean by micro SEO strategies?
- [03:27]
Chris Rolfe
Great question. So we coined that term and let me quickly tell you the backstory, how and why we developed micro SEO strategies. Our own website got hit by a core algorithm update at the end of June of 2021. We're so busy helping other website owners, you know, get to the top in Google, we completely neglected our own website. We lost 80% or like I think nearly 90% of our organic search traffic. We went from having too many inbound leads to basically zero inbound leads. As, you know, you're a, you know, agency owner yourself, that's probably going to freak the heck out of you. You know, I took a breather, I thought about the situation and I realized something had to be done very quickly and it had to be really good, right? So at that time Google was rapidly updating its algorithm. It went from. It basically is starting to infuse more and more machine learning, AI, etc. It became better at surfacing high quality content instead of just like reboarding the entire entire web website for doing a good job, you know, optimizing the entire website. So I realized the opportunity that by creating basically the best piece of content on the Internet in relation to closer related search terms, we're going to have an opportunity to get back to the top in Google in a relatively short amount of time. There was nothing really wrong with our website. We just hadn't updated it in a long time. It still had a high domain authority. So I felt like, you know, if I am going to develop a methodology that focuses on creating the ultimate, best piece of content on the Internet and then have, you know, 20, 30, 40 supporting tasks that will get the job done. So that's, you know, how we developed micro SEO strategies. So it focuses on one, you know, sort of like a pillar page and then many, many supporting tasks that all support that piece of content. So then we trademarked that term because I saw a opportunity to make a splash with this methodology in the future. I'm thrilled to announce that we launched two micro SEO strategies within the first three months of getting hit by this core algorithm update and within four or five months those pieces of content ranked at the very top in Google for their target SEO keywords. And we were basically back to normal, getting a steady flow of inbound leads through organic search. Ever since we have updated this methodology, it's now very AI supported and driven. So that's a long backstory about micro SEO strategies.
- [06:44]
Tyson Stockton
Interesting. And can you kind of go on a little bit of where and how is the AI application in this sense?
- [06:54]
Chris Rolfe
So initially, so we use tools to develop these micro SEO strategy pages. So you need to use the latest AI technology, such as we're using a tool called SE Ranking. It's a very innovative SEO tool, similar to AATrefs or one of the other SEO tools out there. They came out with a content editor addition to their tool where you basically use AI to perform really well in depth competitor analysis against the pages that you want to rank out in Google. So that was like sort of like the first way we used AI to do something like competitor analysis. Obviously it's a pretty complex component, but that was one of the tools, the first AI tools that we used as part of this microstrategy methodology. And ever since we now have enhanced it with, you know, using Google Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, chatgpt, GPT, where we let those tools do, you know, a lot of the research, even on keyword research, you know, what are potentially good content clusters that we should pursue. So as this methodology has evolved over time, we're using more and more AI to do more and more of the steps that are required to complete one of those micro strategies.
- [08:44]
Tyson Stockton
Interesting. And I feel like from that it also pulls from some elements in the conversation yesterday about taking this approach. It sounds like you kind of took a similar approach for looking at the different areas of work. What were you doing, what's being included and where the injection points are from A transition in process. How was it with your team members adopting to this new process, clients being comfortable with having maybe a shift in strategy? What was kind of like the people side of a role out there?
- [09:20]
Chris Rolfe
Oh man, this is a great question. It's something that I am, I don't want to say struggle with right now, but that is, it's probably one of the most important things that I am dealing with right now. So the old SEO, that's like, hey, we're going to develop four blog posts for you, we're going to do some technical SEO SEO, we're going to do this and that, right? It's not like very static SEO is transitioning, it's becoming very agile because of AI. Right. So SEO for me was sort of like a hobby. I got into it in 96, before Google was called Google. So I was always fascinated by these search engines. And then now it has dramatically evolved. Now it's a very AI infused process for somebody like me and you, Tyson, we probably get it. This is evolving at a very rapid pace. It's not easy for everybody to make that switch to become a very agile, forward looking thinker. So, yes, you're right. When I work on updating our micro SEO strategy methodology or any new processes that will allow us to get better results in a short amount of time for our clients, it is sometimes a challenge to convey that strategy to the team to make sure they fully understand and embrace what we're trying to do here. But in my opinion, that is the new SEO agencies that can think in a very agile, forward looking way. They will be the winners of this whole AI revolution that we're going through right now. The old SEO simply will not work anymore. So things will change faster. There's going to be more changes in a very short amount of time. So that is what we're dealing with right now with the team here. And while everybody's excited where this is going with AI, I think they're also a little bit skeptic. You know, can I keep up with what's going on? So, great question. I hope that sort of answers your question.
- [11:48]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, it's, it's a really tough one because I think when you're dealing with human behavior and also habits, it always becomes a little bit tougher to break those because it's like you are having to establish a different mindset. But then especially when people get stressed, overwhelmed, it's like a natural human reaction to fall back into the familiar. And so I think that's been something that I've noticed and kind of, you know, also struggled with, is like, how do you keep them leaning into that area when the natural reaction is probably to go back to what's familiar to you, like what you've done before. And that's something that I think is really challenging.
- [12:31]
Chris Rolfe
Yeah. So a lot of people, they're used to just following instructions, hey, this is what we're going to do and this is how you're going to do it. And These are the 8, 10, 15, whatever steps that you need to implement to get that done. The new SEO, let's say if we take a look at prompt engineering, that is a new job that emerged because of you know, ChatGPT and all these generative AI tools were created. Prompt engineering that's going to require a high level of thinking outside of the box. I actually spent the entire weekend working on updating a process. Basically do prompt engineering where I'm trying to get a process that is currently taking us about 10, 12 hours to be done in about two hours. Absolutely possible, but you need to think outside of the box and it's a completely prompt engineering based. So can I task somebody who's used to just follow instructions, you know, very clear, you know, here's the eight steps that you need to follow to get this done? Absolutely not. Right. So that is the challenge that I'm dealing with right now. Trying to up our game and get everybody on board so that they are able, willing and excited to think outside of the box. That's probably one of the biggest things I'm dealing with right now.
- [14:09]
Podcast Announcer
Time for a one minute break to hear from our sponsor, Pre Visible. So you're looking for SEO help and you got a couple of options. You could start replying to spam from agencies that claim they can get you to rank number one on Google. You can pay an hourly rate for a consultant who will inevitably nickel and dime you with hourly charges. Or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategyless project with low success rate. None of those sound very good now do they? Well, that's where Pre Visible's integrated consulting model comes in. Pre Visible draws From a collective 40 years of SEO and digital marketing experience to unlock your organic growth opportunities. They build custom solutions that combine strategy, technical expertise, content and reporting to effectively operationalize SEO for your business. Pre Visible's four stage approach ensures that your SEO programs thrive by starting off with a strategy first approach. Then they support you in your efforts to create quality content, help you identify technical issues, and most importantly, they'll work with your cross functional teams to integrate your SEO strategies to make sure that your SEO budget actually drives results, not just your agency's bottom line. So join brands like Yelp, eBay, Canva, Atlassian Square, all who rely on the SEO consultants at Pre Visible. For more information go to Previsible IO. That's Pre Visible. P R E V I S I B L E I O.
- [15:37]
Tyson Stockton
Going back a little bit more on the micro SEO strategies, it feels like within that and like on your description that it's really leaning into how connected the different elements like within SEO are. So it's not looking at one page in isolation, but how are the different pages within Like a website's ecosystem playing against each other and as you mentioned, like all those little components to it. What areas? And I mean, I know this is a difficult one, but like what areas are you looking to further expand that into? Or are you anticipating that you would need to expand into?
- [16:14]
Chris Rolfe
Oh man. So, yeah, let's take a little bit of deeper dive or look at what are actually micro SEO strategies. So when a new potential customer comes to us, they usually have an existing website. It's been around for a long time, usually it's a bigger website. To get a big website to rank globally higher in a relatively acceptable amount of time so that they don't fire you before you can show them the results, you have to, in my opinion, deploy what we call micro SEO. Micro SEO strategy. Right. So we use tools, as I mentioned before, SE ranking where we run a low hanging fruit keyword audit. We basically look at what does this website already rank for. You know, certain keywords that have high intent, high search volume. We then identify those pages. Maybe they rank on page two or three for that keyword. To me, that is a micro SEO strategy, low hanging fruit opportunity page, where if we can overlay our micro SEO strategy, basically completely revamp that page that it's already ranking on page two or three for high intent, high search volume keyword, we're able to get this page to rank at the top in Google. Usually within, I would say the shortest amount of time was like five weeks, usually like three, four months. That is a big win. SEO has completely changed. You will not be able to get an entire website to globally rank higher in a short amount of time. It's just, it's no longer possible. This goes in line with all the recent Google algorithm updates where, you know, if you follow John Mueller of Google, the guy that talks to us SEOs, he's like, hey, focus on content, content, content, content. So with this methodology, the micro SEO strategy, even smaller websites are now able to outrank massive websites. We're doing this on a daily basis. So in my opinion, everything has shifted. Things have shifted away from, you know, doing everything for, you know, a website to hey, let's find our low hanging fruit nuggets and then let's implement a strategy that is super hyper focused where the, you know, the micro SEO strategy page or the pillar page is the hero. But then we're going to deploy 20, 30, 40 other things that are going to support that page.
- [19:17]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, absolutely. And like, in addition to that, I know you have extensive experience in localization, multinational SEO. How does Kind of like some of that multinational like or kind of international SEO practices. How does that kind of fit in with your micro SEO strategies?
- [19:39]
Chris Rolfe
Yeah, that's a great question. So we're working with a, it's a relatively large company right now. They do pivot sprinkler technology. They are active in 8, 9 markets around the world. Right. So we implemented a micro SEO strategy for them. The results were incredible. I think we increased organic search traffic year over year for the English page by I think it was over 1000% simply by applying our micro SEO strategy methodology. So now we're applying the same methodology to the same page, but we're going to sort of like transcreate the page. We don't just translate it or localize it. We're actually using language experts that are familiar with the market. I know you have a connection to Germany, right? So instead of just translating the keywords, we're actually transcreating them. Right. And then we're sort of like pre translating the content using AI tools or you know, machine translation tools such as DeepL. It's an amazing AI machine translation tool. So we can sort of replicate the same strategy that we deployed that, you know, it took quite a bit of time to deploy in the English language to all these other markets. So we're in the process of rolling out these multilingual pages and I mean we're seeing already incredible results. So the point being here is that if your English or US market is saturated, look outside of the US See, can you legitimately go into other markets with this methodology, with this strategy, with AI, with machine translation tools, wheels, the world is at your fingertip. So this tremendous opportunity for many companies out there, even if you're a smaller company, this is absolutely doable.
- [21:51]
Tyson Stockton
I think from this conversation too. Hopefully it gives a lot of SEOs out there some additional kind of confidence because I know there's been frustrations. There's been like Rand had his study earlier in this year kind of showing how a lot of the bigger name websites are taking more of the referral traffic coming from Google. So even though we're in a space that on a macro level you might see larger websites gaining more and more traction with these kind of approaches that you're describing. There is still that opportunity for the smaller websites to have that hyper focus and, and fixation to still succeed. And I think that's like a really important piece for SEOs, is like no, it's not dead. There are still ways to compete and win in this. And it's not A world where it's just the big domains that are going to succeed.
- [22:49]
Chris Rolfe
I completely agree. So, you know, I mean, if we look at it realistically, this is the biggest change in, you know, what's happening in the online world in 20 plus years. Finally, something is changing with search. So we're at the very beginning. If you look at the hockey stick effect, we're at the very beginning of this hockey stick. To me, this is one of the most exciting times. I'm so glad I'm doing SEO right now. It's an incredible opportunity to. Not sure if you're referring to websites like Reddit where Google is showing a ton of Reddit content. What a great way to embrace those new platforms to make them part of your strategy. We're already implementing a Reddit SEO component to our Micro SEO strategies methodology. So things are changing rapidly and you have to embrace that change or you will fall behind. And that's as simple as it is.
- [24:01]
Tyson Stockton
That's a great point. And also good call out on the Reddit component. Like definitely one of the ones I was thinking of there. But I think bringing that into the strategies is a great call. I mean, you have the added benefit now that OpenAI and Google. Google are using Reddit for training their models. So I think kind of just adds fuel to that justification.
- [24:28]
Chris Rolfe
Absolutely. And then, you know, one thing. User generated content legit user generated content will have a massive impact on SEO. Google was not able to figure this out for a long time. They are now embracing user generated content by every search that you do on Google Google, you're gonna find more or less, you know, a few Reddit posts. So I, that this is something that I see that will, you know, have a big impact on SEO. And we're certainly, you know, taking a look at how can we make that part of our strategy and, you know, gain benefits by doing so.
- [25:09]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, the UGC has been an interesting area, I think, to observe over the last 10 years. I remember 10 years ago working with one of the big five e commerce websites and they had a fair amount of UGC and it was just getting obliterated in search. Like it was just huge challenges with it. Search engines hated it. It was a part of the site that was just really, really difficult to deal with. And obviously there's optimizations and areas of improvement there. But I feel like now there is this kind of shift as far as how UGC content is being interpreted. And it definitely seems like it's been like a kind of pretty big pendulum swing of how UGC content is being perceived from a search engine perspective.
- [26:03]
Chris Rolfe
Absolutely. And I think you know why. Google is still the dominant search engine right now. I think we need to be clear that this will potentially change in the future. Are we still going to use Google primarily? I do think so. But you know, think about all the other platforms, you know, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Etc. I do think search is changing rapidly. So it's definitely something I'm excited about, you know, going back to Reddit, you know, Google. I mean, if you think about it, Reddit, sort of like a search engine. Google is showing that search engine in their SERPs, the search engine results pages all the time. So I think we're going to see a massive shift in online search and I'm excited about it.
- [26:57]
Tyson Stockton
Absolutely. Well, with that, that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Chris Rolfe from Boulder SEO Marketing for joining us. If you'd like to get in touch with Chris, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show Notes or go on over and contact him on X, where his handle is swisschris, or visit his company's website at.
- [27:18]
Podcast Announcer
Boulderseomarketing.Com okay, thanks to Tyson Stockton, our guest host. If you'd like to get in touch with Tyson, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can contact him on Twitter where his handle is TysonStockton. Or if your team is interested in SEO consulting, consulting or organizational education, you can always head to their company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O. And a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore. Thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product, which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks, and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's Ahrefs a h r e f s.comAWT just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Ben Jschapp B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.