← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Applying Journalistic Thinking & Principles to SEO
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- [00:00]
Tyson Stockton
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]
SEO professionals face endless content demands. Marketing teams need fresh approaches. Audience expectations keep rising. Journalists bring a unique skill set to content creation. Yet traditional SEO often prioritizes algorithms over humans. Keyword focused content frequently misses emotional connections. And search engines as they continue to evolve, these tactics don't hold the same weight that they used to. How can you balance technical requirements with genuine audience engagement? This is the Voice of Search Podcast. My name is Tyson and joining us today is Dena Rickman, senior director at GoFundMe. GoFundMe helps people raise funds for personal causes worldwide. Today, Dean and I are going to be discussing journalistic principles and how they can transform your content strategy and amplify your search performance. Dina, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:34]
Dena Rickman
Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. How are you?
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Tyson Stockton
I'm doing well. I mean, we were talking earlier, it's hot there in the uk, so I mean, it seems like a fair amount of entertainment behind that aspect.
- [01:48]
Dena Rickman
We enjoy. Yes. Well, British people love any weather event, so there's a lot to talk about here. Yeah. Actually, when I left journalism, I think they, in my leaving card, they always mock up like a kind of front page. And I got one about like, I think they were basically just laughing at my obsession with people writing about the weather because I was like, you need to write an article about the weather because people are going to read it. We have this thing in England called the Met Office and you can just phone them. They're the kind of meteorologists, but they're so nice to journalists. You phone them and they give you a personal weather forecast. It is insane. And I'd be like, just phone them up, ask them if it's going to rain. I and it worked. It was great. Got some content.
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Tyson Stockton
And do you have to be a journalist to phone them? Or can just the general public call and be like, I'm curious to know what's going on today.
- [02:37]
Dena Rickman
I'm going to ruin inundated now you have to say you're a journalist, but they never, ever checked. So, I mean, I think you probably get away with it. Once, one of my colleagues, her surname was Rainy, and when she phoned them up, which is kind of a common surname, they thought that she was joking and they did hang up on her. So if they sense that you're not serious.
- [02:59]
Tyson Stockton
Oh, that's good. Well, that gives me something. Next time I visit the uk, I'm definitely going to have to get that number and give them a call, phone them.
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Dena Rickman
Now we've got WhatsApp.
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Tyson Stockton
True. Yeah. And just be like, hey, I'm in Germany. What can you tell me about the weather?
- [03:16]
Dena Rickman
Something like that.
- [03:17]
Tyson Stockton
Well, I'm excited for this conversation today because I feel like oftentimes we're just talking this podcast from the core SEO professionals. And even though you've worked in SEO for quite some time, you come from the journalist background. And so I feel like you're bringing a new angle, a new kind of dynamic, which, especially in this age of content as search engines, LLMs are changing how content is being perceived. And in some ways I feel like. I mean, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like if I was a journalist or someone that was more on the content side, I would be almost happy about some of these changes because it feels less, maybe programmatic or kind of less tactical in the sense of content in the world of search right now versus where it was maybe five years ago.
- [04:13]
Dena Rickman
I think journalists are never happy. We're not happy people. I mean, I say that, and I'm not a journalist anymore, that you never get out of that mindset. But I think the world of search right now is really exciting. And actually what is exciting about it is that there's a constant change and that, you know, you become an expert in May and you've lost all your expertise by July because you're like, everything has suddenly changed again. You think you know exactly what's going on, and then, bam. Google AI. And I'm sure that by the time this podcast goes out, 17 different things will have happened that will completely change the game. So that is exciting because it reminds me actually of when I first got into journalism, which is in the kind of like, it was kind of early late 2009, early 2010, and it was at the time when the Internet was fundamentally changing the way that newspapers were kind of set up. And it was this challenge to their sort of their core being, their raison d'. Etre. And you had these editors who would know their audience so incredibly well. And they had this idea of like, this is my person, this is the person I'm targeting, like a kind of ICP now. But, you know, and they could know that sometimes because of the buyers and then SEO and digital publishing, it opened everything up and they had to basically relearn everything. And in a way, it was easier to relearn. Right. Because when you're online, you've got real time data. So, like, I know exactly how many people are reading past, like the third or fourth paragraph, because I can set up on page analytics to see that, and I know what sentence people are sharing and that kind of thing. But at the time, they didn't see that. And it was actually an extremely challenging and difficult time, which for me was a good time to enter the industry, because I didn't really have any preconceptions. I was just like, oh, I'm young, I'm green, I really want to learn this. And I'll just kind of. And I mean, one thing that was scary, it was like people who I thought had loads to teach me, they were like, I don't actually know what's going on anymore anymore. They were basically like, you will know more than me because you are a digital native. Because back in the day when millennials were young, we were digital natives. But look at us now, not to perceive anything about your age. Yeah. So we just got to work, we got to experimenting and we got to learning. And then I think that's something that's served me well throughout my career. And I think that that kind of the fundamental principle of journalism is to kind of find out what's going on and tell everyone else. And that's very similar to what you do in this podcast. Right. You're gaining a lot of knowledge from speaking to other kind of industry experts, a lot of them with a different perspective. And you're kind of bundling that knowledge and telling other people. That becomes useful and it becomes a kind of tool, which I'm sure you're kind of using to help further. Not that I'm saying that you're doing this just for you, but I'm sure it's helpful for different parts of context.
- [07:21]
Tyson Stockton
No, I mean, there's definitely a selfish side to this. I mean, it's like I get to pick the people that, hey, this will sound like an interesting conversation, but it is. It's like you're able to learn that firsthand knowledge, that firsthand experience. And I feel like in content and search. Right now and I'm hopeful that that type of reward will continue where it feels like, you know, especially in the age of like generative content, where it's a regurgitation of everything that exists already, that that firsthand experience, like net new contribution to something to like the knowledge base, you know, should and hopefully is rewarded from it. Because, you know, we don't want to just read the same thing over and over and over again. Like we want to hear something new, a new take, a new perspective. And it does feel like some of maybe the fundamental principles of journalism.
- [08:19]
Dena Rickman
Yeah, exactly. Because it's all about human attention, right? I mean journalism wants to tell you something that you don't already know. So the number one thing to do is find out what that thing is and then present it in a way that will be interesting to other people because there's lots of. And make it something that's relevant because there's lots of things that not everyone knows for very good reason, like what I had for breakfast. We don't need to go into that. But something like corruption or a way to make your life easier or something that will kind of add value and benefit to how you spend a weekend or a product that can save you 20 minutes. These are all important things to kind of know and talk about. I don't know. One of my favourite quotes of journalism, and I don't know who said it, is that you kind of need rat like cunning and a plausible manner and then a little literary ability. That's quite true probably of SEO writing now that we have LLMs. You just need to find out what it is, add that kind of context, add that interest and then make sure that it's not written in a very AI way. Although I think with really good GPTs, that should be okay, great segue.
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Tyson Stockton
And I feel like we wouldn't be able to get out of this conversation without kind of asking what's your perspective on this as far as generative content? Someone as a coming up from that content creation and a journalist. It feels like maybe it's a double edged sword or there's some bittersweet to it. What's your kind of, I guess personal take on it?
- [09:55]
Dena Rickman
I mean it was quite funny. I was talking to someone at a former large British news institution and I was like, are you using genai? And they were like, I think I said are you using ChatGPT? And this is in 2023. And they were like, what's ChatGPT? So I wouldn't, I mean in terms of. And remember these Are journalists. They really should know. There was no excuse. I was like, how has this passed you by? I mean, I know that we think about it all the time, but it hasn't permeated in the whole of society in a way that you might imagine. And I think it's helpful. Obviously, I'm British and I'm cynical, and I feel sick when I say the word storytelling. But it is really about, like, unfortunately, it's true. Like, storytelling is important, and you need to ensure that your stories are compelling. But the number one way to do that is it's much easier to find a good story than to be a brilliant writer. Like, you know, like, there's a reason why they call it the great American novel. It's not like there's loads of them hanging around. So you've got more time to find your great story and to think through what it is you're trying to tell people and how to do that in an interesting way. And then the writing is almost less of a stress. And again, I think it is making sure that you do have a unique voice. But I think it's a net positive, really, just in terms of actually allowing people to focus on the why and the more interesting parts of it.
- [11:27]
Tyson Stockton
So to that point, I feel like search right now feels like there's this momentum swing back towards almost like core consumer behavior principles, where it's less on the kind of formulaic checklist kind of approach. And I've had more and more conversations where people are talking about. I mean, it's said in different ways, but essentially it's consumer behavior. As you're describing some of these journalist elements, it's like, sure, you want something new, you want something kind of real to present to the readers or the listeners in this case, but it feels like also there's some elements too, that have been a part of it where it's like you still need to grab the listener. And like you were saying back a little earlier in the conversation of kind of that grabbing. And I think you made the reference towards make your life easier or. And I forget it now. So it seems like some of those principles of consumer behavior have been in journalism, at least from a principal standpoint, for quite some time.
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Dena Rickman
Oh, yeah, exactly. It's all about light and shade. I know no one reads a physical newspaper anymore, but the way that you would lay out a newspaper, and I'm just explaining this, and this might be of interest to people 10 years younger than me as a historical artifact, is that the first page would be the serious news the most important thing that's going on. And then you would kind of be like, oh, that's a bit heavy. And then you would turn over and you would probably not look at page two, which is full of the boring news that you have to tell everyone. And then page three would be like the fun story. So something quirky, something interesting, like something that might go viral on Facebook six years ago. And that's kind of the principles of journalism. Light and shade. Keep it really interesting. And I think, thinking back to editors, and I've worked with some amazing editors who have this intuition about what their readers will be interested in. And they were so gifted. And actually what is amazing now is that we can all be that editor. Like, you don't need to. You know, it's just about looking through the data and kind of understanding. Because before it was a kind of intuition and a gift, and now it's like, okay, well, we dig deep into user behavior and we can kind of understand this. Then we can all create something and have this vision of who we're talking to. And I think that that's the key thing. And that is kind of what SEO is now. But SEO is becoming. I think before SEO, maybe sometimes people would sort of think of it as like, I think we've all done had conversations like, oh, is it brand or is it SEO? And it's like, SEO is brand and SEO is marketing, and SEO is everything, and it is the content and the things that people are most interested in is what SEO is. And it has to be. And to that point, it has to be interesting. And not just like, oh, bang, hitting this keyword. Bang, hitting this keyword. But I think really good people have known that all of the time. I don't think that that's a new insight. I think the people who are really good at this have always done that and it hasn't changed. And in fact, they're in a really good position now.
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Tyson Stockton
Well, going back to that editor component, like you said, the really good editors have that intuition of what their audience wants to read. How does someone develop that? Because that to me feels like at the crux of where SEO and kind of content should be living. Because it's like, that's what we need to know. And I feel like that's what we should be striving for in that sense. So it's like, what do you think leads in someone to be able to be that type of editor?
- [15:12]
Dena Rickman
I mean, I think you do. It's easier now, right? Because we have data. So if I Put out a piece of content, we can talk about entry points. And I suppose when you have a newspaper, you have a physical product that you know people are reading, you know, people are interacting with, but also within a newspaper or within even digital products where people. Before we had other. When we were thinking about what's the entry point for people to come online. So I used to work for a magazine called the Week, which I think is kind of across Europe and America as well. And then it was like, well, why would. And the whole point of the magazine was it was a digest of the news in that particular week. So then it was like, why would you come online? What's the entry point? What's the reason? And it's about kind of thinking through what that person is and then thinking through the way that that publisher would kind of attract those people and then having an idea, looking at what the data says, experimenting and iterating and then in a previous newspaper. So I used to work freelance for a newspaper and I would suggest kind of weekly or bi weekly columns that I would write about and they would be. Some of them would go viral, some of them would not. Kind of depended and we kind of learned together about what those readers were interested in, what might be a better topic, what people responded to. So I mean, it's the same thing that an SEO would do, right? Or anyone who's working in content, put stuff out, see what the reaction is, see what the entry points are, see what's worked, what hasn't, and then iterate. It doesn't have to be a gift, it can just be something you learn.
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Tyson Stockton
Fair enough. And I can see that. I feel like as you're using that data tool, it's like you just become trained and you learn, you know, to quickly kind of like identify it. But beyond kind of like the SEO journalist combination, obviously you're British, you mentioned kind of working for US company. I feel like, you know, there's an interesting kind of combination to that. And I don't know this is going to sound random, but like one thing that I've wondered is as just a user and as an American, like I see a lot of British media and so it's like there's one piece that it's like, okay, yeah, shared language. I mean some people will argue on that, but it's like there's that element, but it's still, it's like search engines typically really try to target and it's like we've been taught of even having hreflang tags of like US English British, English. But it's like, what resonates so much on kind of like the British media. Like, where, where does that come from?
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Dena Rickman
I mean, okay, so we've always had British exports to America in the media. So I think, you know Tina Brown, who edited Vanity Fair, what was that, 80s, 90s? She's. Well, was she British or was her husband British? But, you know, they kind of were in the UK and they came over. There's some very famous examples of sort of British exports. And I think the British media, and this is only true in the media, I cannot talk about it as being true in the corporate world before my colleagues get really, get really kind of annoyed at me, is that British people would kind of push the boundaries quite a lot more in a way that was. In a way that kind of worked. And we talked about working in the 2010s in newspaper, in newspapers, and it was so much fun because it was like the game had changed and everything was for the taking. And we knew what people were interested in and to the point of shared language. And I do think it's a shared language every time I speak to my American colleagues. Oh, are you going to have a bottle of water? Because we were kind of heavily aware that you could attract American traffic by writing about American things. And I never worked for the Guardian, but you can see there that they actually changed their domain to a dot com because they realized that the US traffic was bigger. And I think Britain is a smallish country. It doesn't maybe always feel that way to us, but when you begin to kind of look at it, I work across 20 countries in my job now. Britain has 70 million people. I mean, I think the U.S. what are we talking about, like 300 million?
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Tyson Stockton
Bit more like three. Three hundred and fifty or so.
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Dena Rickman
Three hundred and fifty, give or take. Yeah. So, you know, that level of scale, you immediately begin to realize as the traffic comes in, as the data comes in, as the business come in to scale in the uk, you've got to go abroad. And America is such a big country to scale there, you don't need to really think about crossing borders. So I think that might be the key difference. And. And then, yeah, it was clear to us that we could also attract quite a lot of American viewers. Or another example of the time where we were acutely aware of American interest. So what we could say is we were acutely aware of American interest in the early 2010s and the 2011s with the marriage of Prince William, with Prince George being born. And I think that that was a really, really key time when we realized that we could att lot of global attention. And then we began to realize that a lot of the time we were able to kind of attract and keep these audiences. And I think a lot of that is maybe because the tone of British tabloids is very, very different from the American tabloids quite a lot. Like, so, I mean, when you think about a product like the Mail online and it is a product and the sidebar of shame we used to call it, and, you know, people would get stuck on that website for hours and hours and hours, and I did too. And they knew exactly what they were doing and they were producing thing that was incredibly compelling. And a lot of the time people were like, well, I don't think they should write about this, I don't think they should write about that. I don't think they should write in this way. But they were winning because they were ahead of the time of the conversation. And they began and they expanded, I think, to America before pretty much any other newspaper. And then the newspaper that I used to work for, the Independent, they had an office in America. I think they still do. I mean, it was about seven or eight years ago, but they were doing extremely well now. And they seem to be doing extremely well now. Obviously the Guardian, so you have these huge exports, but most British people want to crack America in some way. You know, it's a very normal thing over here. And we grow up with a lot of American culture, like, so I think we kind of feel slightly American sometimes, especially because the Internet has kind of broken those barriers down as you're describing.
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Tyson Stockton
Kind of like those pieces on the Royal Family and this. I mean, now we're really going kind of off script. But it was giving me some. It was making me think of reality tv. And so as I'm thinking, this is. Is the Royal Family, Is that the original reality Housewives of the Royal uk? Is that what really is happening now?
- [22:11]
Dena Rickman
Well, I mean, I don't know why, like, I'm deeply offended by that as a royalist.
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Tyson Stockton
Yeah, that was a little harsh. I'm sorry.
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Dena Rickman
No, I mean, I think that that's how a lot of American people maybe see the Royal Family. Because it's different, right? Like, because we're. Because they're, you know, like the heads of state for us, but for outsiders, I think the Royal Family is a sort of, like, it's a kind of entertaining thing that people are keeping tracks on of in a similar way. And maybe it is a bit like a reality TV show. There's certainly plot arcs.
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Tyson Stockton
Okay, so fair. It's not. There's an interest level, but it's, you know, there's more substance in that sense.
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Dena Rickman
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's about like fame, right? It's about like, what. What's interesting to. About, like, to people about our country. Like, why would an American person be interested in the uk? Like, probably mostly the royal family and corgis and afternoon tea and that kind of stuff.
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Tyson Stockton
I was going to say music.
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Dena Rickman
Music, yes, yes, music has been a big export. Yes, music as well. So, yeah, music and our royal family. But, you know, every country has its thing, right. That people know them for.
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Tyson Stockton
Fair. And do you. I mean, earlier we were talking about. You were saying kind of like some of the guerrilla tactics from that. So, like. Yeah, from this kind of, I guess and I mean, kind of went down the path of the royal family. But like, what if. What's like kind of this birthplace of like these guerrilla tactics in media that I feel like has like some roots in like, British media.
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Dena Rickman
I mean, I don't know why this culture developed and I don't know what is different about it to American media, because I wasn't kind of with American media in the early 2000 and tens. I saw, obviously this huge thing happened suddenly when Buzzfeed existed and when Facebook became a thing and they were producing social publishing happened. And I remember when. Then everyone pivoted to video. So there was all of that stuff. And I think in the British media, there's always been a culture experimentation. There's always been a culture of having people who really, deeply care and who want to expand readership. And then I think as well, there's a culture of kind of just. I think it was more about what developed then was about lots of smart kids, way smarter than me. Like people coming along who wanted to be reporters and then finding this new digital landscape and having the put mission to experiment in ways that became deeply, deeply kind of important. And they sort of really changed quite a lot of trajectories. When I think about the way that we used to publish and the things that we then saw happening as a result of those stories and just the attention that you can garner from highlighting different stories. So, yeah, it was important, it was fun. And then I think a lot of people that I used to work with have gone on to do deeply interesting things in tech, in other industries very, very related to culture, and even still in journalism.
- [25:32]
Tyson Stockton
And I feel like a lot of that still has. I don't know, some roots or some connection into content and SEO. And as we're looking at things like engagement metrics and I mean, Google finally came out, I guess, willing unwillingly with like nav boost of like engagement metrics, where it's like, I feel like those are the things that then start resonating. And so I think there is like an interesting kind of connection there.
- [26:02]
Dena Rickman
Yeah, I agree. I mean, because what we were doing was learning to create content in a way that SEOs now need to create content, like, you know, with helpful content updates and things like that, which is all about the kind of signals. And when we were working in journalism, we were looking at time spent on page, and these are SEO metrics too. And journalists were creating content, some of being with knowing that we would have entry points with Google News. So it's not entirely different. We would want to kind of. We know that a lot of people might be Googling something that we were writing about and we would want to rank number one and outrank our competitors, and we would be thinking about how to do that. One of the ways to do that at the time was also through share, because Facebook was kind of exploding at the time as well, and it would also show signals. So then I think that puts it into quite good standing for SEO now. But all of it, the thread that kind of ties it all together is about creating content that people want to read and want to engage with. And then. And that's everything. That's what kind of SEO is. That's what journalism is. That's what publishing is.
- [27:19]
Tyson Stockton
I totally agree, and I feel like that has that inherent connection with SEO. But with that, that's going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to dena Rickman from GoFundMe for joining us. If you'd like to contact Dina, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes, or be sure to check out her company's website at GoFundMe. If you haven't subscribed yet and want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed soon. Thanks for checking out the Voice of Search podcast and we'll see you in the next episode.
- [28:10]
Dena Rickman
Sam.