Episode 1: Beyond the Basics: Unconventional Strategies for SEO Audience Targeting

🎙️ Welcome to the latest episode of OUTCOMES, the podcast where we delve into digital-first marketing strategies for healthcare and biopharma organizations. Today we’re going "Beyond the Basics: Unconventional Strategies for SEO Audience Targeting in Biopharma." 💊 With over 20 years of experience, our hosts debunk the myths and misconceptions 🕸️ surrounding SEO and highlight its relevance to businesses in the biopharma sector.

With Bill Gadless - Founding Partner of emagineHealth - hosting, our guest for this episode - Brent Williams, emagine's Director of SEO - brings his extensive experience working with healthcare and biopharma clients in the SEO space. He breaks down the common pitfalls marketers encounter, stressing that more traffic 🚦 doesn't always equate to success, and that a well-implemented SEO strategy can provide long-term business value. 💰

Brent encourages a shift in mindset for marketers entering SEO engagement, emphasizing the importance of growing an inventory of assets 📚 aimed at introducing your brand to new users. He also shares the benefits of having a well-rounded content strategy, which includes creating and sharing valuable content from your brand's properties. 📝

The episode takes a more tactical turn as Brent discusses a real-world scenario involving a Contract Research Organization (CRO) looking to grow their service line. He underscores the importance of understanding the audience 👥 and targeting specific terms that align with the services offered.

Finally, Brent examines the impact of AI 🤖 and natural language processing models like ChatGPT on the vast amount of content being created online. He discusses Google's E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) principles and the role of structured data in ensuring the reliability of the content. 💡

🔊 Tune in to this episode for a deeper understanding of SEO in the healthcare and biopharma space, and learn how to leverage these strategies to achieve better outcomes for your organization. 🎯

Thank you for listening to OUTCOMES. Please find more healthcare and biopharma marketing thought leadership in the Insights section of our website and follow us on LinkedIn!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Outcomes, the Healthcare and Biopharma Marketing podcast, where marketing leaders discuss the most effective strategies for the health sectors coming from a digital first AI powered perspective. Hello everyone. I'm Bill Gadless from emagine and emagineHealth. I have, here with me our director of Seo at Imagine Brent Williams. I want to welcome to you, you to the first episode of our new podcast Outcomes. The purpose of this podcast is to share, discuss, and uncover marketing strategies and tactics. That lead to better outcomes for healthcare and biopharma organizations, outcomes from their marketing and ultimately better outcomes for patients, which is why this whole industry exists at the end of the day. Although we might occasionally switch it up, you'll find that most of the topics we cover will come from a digital first perspective with AI playing an increasingly important role as well. Here's what we won't do. We won't waste time catching up on each other's weekends or chit-chatting about sports or weather or pets. Our objective is to deliver the most effective up to date. Marketing insights based on a lot of real world experience that we live here every day with our clients. So I'll ask you audience to, to hold us to that. So without further ado, we're gonna talk today about seo as I said, Brent here is the director of of SEO at emagine SEO is an interesting topic. It, it always has been. We've been, we've been doing SEO o here for, for 20 plus years and it's always been a very unique topic of conversation. It's fascinating to a lot of people. There's always been a lot of mystique around it. But I also think it, it's, it's probably the topic of, of all the things that we do here that, that comes with the most misconceptions. For some reason, SEO is, it's, it's one of those things that. Most companies think just isn't relevant to their particular business. That's why here even, you know, 20 plus years into the world of, of, of seo. I still think far too few companies do any of it or, or certainly don't do it well enough. Since you and I have been working together, Brent, now for few years, I've, I've always been impressed with the way that you talk about seo. from a, from a strategic perspective, you and I don't talk a lot about the technical aspects of seo. I'm, first of all, I'm, I'm not a very technical person. Second of all, I don't care a lot about what happens under the hood. I'm, I'm a marketing person and, And, and, but you always bring. Very interesting thoughts, and perspectives as to how marketers should be thinking about s e o and, and ultimately reaching their audiences. And, and that's where we're gonna focus here today. I don't, I don't think we're gonna talk much about nuts and bolts and tactics with s e o, but really marketing strategy. so Brian, you, you and your SEO team, you, you work with a lot of. Healthcare and biopharma clients. And before we dive into some of the, the specific strategies we're gonna focus on in this episode, can you explain to me, just how, how a typical marketer in, in these industries usually comes into an s e o engagement? How they're thinking, and what some of the more common pitfalls and mis misconceptions are. Yeah, thanks for the introduction, bill. you know, one of the, and as I listened to you explain our conversations over the years, it, it brings to mind several thoughts. the, the, I'd say the, the one thing that people come into it as with a lot of questions, they're always looking for the, you know, SEO's always kind of this mystery activity that marketers. Don't necessarily understand, but they know they need it. And over the years it evolves. I mean, heck, month to month, it evolves, with the way the algorithms and everything work. But SEO is a long-term process, and it, it's a, it's a compounding process. One of the, one of the conversations I have seemingly at least once a week, is when you're. When you're doing SEO correctly, it's content creation, but you're designing that content creation to reach a specific audience, and every piece of content acts as a, a target for that audience. Over time, that content doesn't expire. When you look at other types of marketing, you know, you, you do a, a social post, and then the next day you have to do another social post or that traffic goes away because feeds are constantly, being updated and, and being fed. with paid, you, you have to pay for an ad to run. Once somebody clicks on that or you close that campaign, you gotta do it all again. With seo, it compounds that. You build a piece of content that targets an audience, and once it settles in at a top pos in the top position in search, it's gonna stay there. And yes, competition comes along. We have to maintain it. There might take updates, might need. Some tweaking based on the way that the algorithms work, but it can be maintained then while you're creating the next piece of content. And over time you've built several pieces, you know, hopefully a lot of pieces of content targeting slightly different audiences, and that that continues to work. And while, like I said, there is maintenance that has to be done on that and maintaining that. You're allowed the freedom to then keep adding more content, identifying new pieces of audience or new segments of the industry that you're in, that you want to target and, and go after those on top of all the other stuff that's still working. And that's really what, what we struggle with to, to have clients understand is that SEO isn't just waving a wand. We have, we have the, the. The joke in the industry of SEO in a can. Like I'll just, you know, fix it and it'll work. And it doesn't, it's a competitive industry that we're always competing against being the best possible option for Google's users. And I'd say when you get into misconceptions, that's what a lot of people don't understand is that we're not serving. Our customers, yet we're serving Google's customers and Google has a reputation of providing the best possible answer, the content that has the best possible answer. If they stop holding themselves to that standard, then their audience goes away. They go to other search engines. Same thing with any of the search engines. They're all competing. Trying to show the best product. Their product is hopefully your website. And you have to give the best answer to that question, and that's where the competition level comes in is, is being able to, to look at what is being rewarded by Google, what Google has found through their algorithm to be the best answer and provide a better answer or, or a, a more complete answer. And, and get that user engagement when people click on your search result. With your content that show that sends signals to Google's algorithm that says, you know, this is serving the need. And when you back up to that progressive, you know, accumulation of content inventory over time that builds up. You build a lot of authority. Google sees that your website is serving 50 keywords. Worth of audience very well. Well, obviously you're delivering really good content. They're going to show you more, build your authority on your website. So that's kind of the basis of where we're always working from, is that the piece of content we create today, ideally, and usually a year from now, is still generating traffic. While we've created a lot of other content along the way, that's also still working. In terms of the types of content and, and search phrases that, that are targeted, I mean, I assume it's probably pretty common. This is what it was like 20 years ago when I was talking to people directly about their seo, which, you know, I, I never really knew what I was doing, but, this is when we were first starting out and. You know, people come into an SEO strategy and I would be one of them with certain phrases that they wanna be showing up for when people are searching for them. If use a very simple example, like us, it would be marketing in healthcare, marketing and pharma. we actually do come up a lot under a lot of those types of things. However, a lot of, a lot of the most obvious phrases to your clients are, are, I would assume, Just like years ago. They're, they're not the realistic approach to to, to getting traffic to their site and reaching their audiences because they're gonna be too competitive or too broad. I would assume that is probably still the case with you and your team oftentimes, correct? Yeah. The, the, we have clients come in and they wanna rank for a very popular term, and we have to look at what's being served to. People searching for that is it, has Google identified similar content that is aligns with the client, the client's product or service? a lot of times the intent isn't there. You know, we're dealing a lot in the, the B2B space as opposed to the B2C space. And say you're talking about a condition, Say, asthma, and you're developing a, a product to serve people that have asthma, but yet developing that product is different than the commercialized side of it where you're targeting the people with asthma. You're, building your product. Or your service around building that product to a sponsor or to a, you know, the, the original developer and maybe your service is the, the management of clinical trials, or your service is the manufacturing of that product. So the client isn't directly targeting asthma or asthma symptoms. They're targeting asthma, develop asthma therapy, dev development, and that that's a much smaller audience. But that's your audience. That's the right audience. So I always like to tell people, you know, more isn't better when it comes to traffic, when it, just because there's a, a lot of search volume around a term doesn't mean it's the right term for you. And in a lot of cases it, it, it isn't, the definitely isn't the place to start because that's not where your, your clients are looking. That's not where your potential clients are looking. They're looking for somebody to develop a therapeutic for asthma. As opposed to a therapeutic for asthma. And there's a, a vast difference in the search results there as well as, the, the competition. It could be that there are a hundred people a month looking for your service and you're playing in a, a, you're trying to play in a. A pool of a thousand hundred thousand, people searching that is maybe more of a b2c, a consumer-based, search. So if we can narrow that down and say that we're not gonna bring you a hundred thousand users to this site cuz you don't need that. Your audience is a hundred people for this, let's target that. And we measured the, the value of that based on the conversions. So we, we have metrics set up on the website. To to measure. They landed on this page, they went to this page, which is how we directed them to, and then they filled out a form or they clicked a link to call. And if I can, if we can deliver the right conversions to you, it really doesn't matter how many users you get on your site, as long as it's the right users. Yeah, that makes sense. And I, I would assume in a lot of cases, You know, marketers are looking at certain vanity metrics that are going to possibly sound most impressive to their c e o or, or c f O. I remember one of the, one of the first books I ever read on, on advertising was Ogilvy on Advertising, and David Ogilvy said in, in that book that, That anybody who, this was back in the day where print was, was a thing and, and, digital wasn't even here. But, that anybody who takes out a full page ad in a magazine or a newspaper is not, is not concerned with their roi. They're concerned with the vanity of saying, we got the full page ad. and I would assume that when it comes to all digital marketing, including seo, that. Some of the metrics that people are concerned with and maybe holding you and your team to sometimes are. More, ones that are gonna sound good and look really good to their bosses as opposed to the ones like you're saying, that might really mean effectiveness like conversions and the right traffic, which might be at a lower volume. yeah, and I, I mean, I understand brand awareness, I'm, and, and thought leadership. it's not really where we spend a lot of time on the SEO side, but there is value there that we can, we can glean from, sometimes slightly realigning content to. Match a, an audience keyword of some kind. I, I think there's, there's a lot of traditional marketers out there that still go after the billboard at the busiest intersection. And, you know, if you think back, and I'm been around long enough to, to understand that mentality, we weren't able to measure a lot of the marketing that was done 20 years ago. Even for that matter, 10 years ago, we didn't have the, the measurement, of, of the whole marketing funnel at that point. So, you know, you spend the most money to buy the busiest billboard. You get the most cars driving by hoping that your target audience is part of that, part of that, that audience going by Now, we can laser focus content. At a specific audience based on what they're looking for and what their intent is. If it's informational, then the, the marketing funnel is gonna be longer, but it's still a funnel. We can still guide that through using, you know, UX in the bringing UX into the mix that, Hey, we're getting you an audience. Let's see if we can capitalize on that and improve the, the conversion rate by say 2%. We can, if we improve a conversion rate even by 2% at the level of, of clientele that we're, we're speaking to, 2% might be five more deals within a, a set period of time. And we're not talking about, you know,$50 pair of tennis shoes. We're talking about a hundred thousand dollars opportunities that, that are being brought to them that. May be, you know, lost in the mix normally, or, or, or lost completely cuz we don't have content targeted towards that. So it, it's a matter of looking at the, the entire revenue cycle and what that, what that lead means to you. And on the paid media side, that's always something very much in focus because you buy an ad, you get a set amount of clicks for the amount of money that you purchased. We need to get a, we need to get a definite ROI on that immediately, or at least have the metrics behind why, what the roi, or, you know, what the, what the conversion rate was. But with seo, we can look at that on a longer scale and say, okay, this article is in front of this audience. And this audience we have determined is, you know, has the right intent. They're looking for a service, they're looking for help. we know that there's only maybe. You know, 50 people a, a month looking for that. But we know that our conversion rate is 10%. So once that article's there and is ranking, that becomes a, a, a reoccurring revenue source at that point. That you could be off making other pieces of content to be targeting other audiences that hopefully also get a couple percent conversion and it doesn't take a whole lot of maintenance to, to keep all of that content going. So it's the more content you're able to generate. That's, you know, thoughtfully curated through, keyword targeting and audience evaluation. The more you're able to do that, the more, your net expands and allows more relevant users to come in and become, become customers. Now, the, you know, the example you used where it's about. Sales and conversions, it could ultimately lead to a hundred thousand dollars or, or really millions of dollars in, in contract. If you're talking, you know, big CROs and potentially managing clinical trials For pharma, the b2b, price tag can be pretty high. But let's talk about other KPIs and, and you know, tell me what else you guys look at. Because for instance, like, again, that's pretty, pretty easy when it comes to a b2b, I don't mean easy to achieve and not always easy to see cuz we don't always have insight into. the complete sales loop in, in our client's CRM and marketing automation systems and all that. But, but in terms of what you're trying to achieve, it's ultimately, it's a conversion that will ultimately lead to sa lead to sales. However, talking about a biotech where it's their pre-commercial and some of their objectives are just to, improve investor sentiment and investor awareness or. Possibly recruiting for, top scientific talent. so the objectives for these other companies are not always about a conversion that will lead to a sale in those cases, what are some of the other KPIs that you guys will still look at and that you consider important other than just a conversion? Sure. so in the past we were a little bit limited with our scope that we were able to look at. So there was, a metric that everybody kind of hung their hat on, which was called bounce rate, which means somebody showed up on your website and then they left immediately without, without doing anything. And that was basically, did the door open? Did they stay? If not, then you, you know, it marked against the bounce rate. What we're seeing is that that is going, that is. Pretty much been sunsetted as of July 1st. That will be sunsetted. But what we're switching to is actually much, much more engaging because it's around the engagement of people on your site. So it's not enough to just get'em, to get'em there and get'em to stay. It's get'em there and get'em to do something else. And you only do that by targeting the correct audience. you know, from the SEO side, we gotta make sure that we're bringing the right people in because if you show up. On a website, and it doesn't speak to what your needs are or what you're, what you're looking for, you're not gonna engage with it. So, engagement on a website is anything from scrolling through the site, staying on that page long, you know, longer than a couple seconds, to clicking links, to downloading resources, to watching videos, listening to podcasts, you know, staying on that page and engaging with it. Send signals back to the algorithm that this user showed up. They found what they wanted and they spent time looking into it. So taking a website visitor, a webpage visitor from 10 to 20 seconds to. A minute, minute and a half can have a real, a, a really a major impact on your, on your website's performance. And that comes from curating the right content that is engaging multimedia, because everybody absorbs content in different ways. So having multiple ways of, of website use and tailoring that, looking at the metrics of that engagement of an audience, and then tailoring more content towards that. So if you understand that you're. Your users really like watching videos, then you need to do more video. If, if they spend a lot of time looking at a chart or a graphic that is informative, then you need more charts and graphics. It, it, it just applies kind of across the board at that point. What a lot of people miss the mark on is that they'll have multiple type, multiple segments that they're targeting and they'll try to apply those elements to. Universally across the site and, you know, say, say, you know, on the clinical site, say you've got somebody that you know needs, needs a surgery, a, a, a routine surgery, that's not gonna take as much engagement as somebody that's researching a major condition that is life-threatening or, they're looking for a second opinion. So they're gonna engage with that longer. So you have to tailor that content correctly based on what you see in that, that segment. for what, what is engaging people? if I just need to, need to find a second opinion for a condition. I don't need a whole lot of content. I just need to see that you have a second opinion option. On the, on the other side of it, certain services that you offer, say in a biotech situation, some of those are well defined and people know what they are. They just wanna see your expertise at it. So maybe more case studies, maybe more examples of your work. statistics around the work that you've done, whereas somebody that is more informative or it's more a technical situation, they may take a longer view of that and, and need more information in order for them to be convinced to, to move to the next level or to contact you And to simplify, I mean, it sounds like basically it's, you know, when it's not all about a conversion and a sale, it's driving people to content that, you know, you know, based on understanding those personas, their journeys, those audience's objectives, driving them to content that, you know, appeal to them, and then measuring your success based on how much engagement you had with that intended content. right, exactly. I think from the outside, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You, you mentioned investors and, you know, building content for investors. You, you have to, to look and see what they're engaging with, what's making them want to take that next step or learn more about your organization in order to, you know, make the investment. And, and sometimes that's not the, the nuts and bolts. Sometimes that's the culture of the, the organization. Sometimes that's the accolades that the, the organization has, has received, statistics behind the work that's been done and. And the, the revenue cycle, you know, that's, that's obviously a big part of investing is making sure the company makes money. so there's, there's all of these elements and while most of your content on your site may be focused towards the technical side, that takes a a completely different type of content. Potentially than what you're, what you've rolled out for the, the, the consumer. you know, your potential customers are much different audience than what your investor is. So, you know, basically we go back to identifying the right audience for the right content or vice versa. Yeah, and I think, you know, we preach it a lot, which is every company needs to take a step back before any marketing tactic and develop their personas, those personas. Distinct journeys, which are all different from one another. You know, you're talking, you're talking investors, patients, HCPs, B2B buyers. Again, when we're talking about those B2B companies, employment candidates, I mean the, the audiences are endless. And, and for any marketing activity, just take a step back, whether you do it professionally, Or you do it in a couple hours in your own conference room or on a Zoom meeting on the back of a napkin. Take the time to find your audiences and their journeys, and that will help you determine the content that they need, which is instrumental to any marketing strategy, whether it's. Content marketing, seo, paid social, your website, and so forth. And then the whole, from an outsider again, who's not an, an SEO o person like you and, and your team. You know, I'm just seeing the importance of data analytics. Coming more and more into play and how much more complex that is for you. More because you simply have more, more data to look at and, and more KPIs to, to define and measure. whereas, you know, again, going back. A decade or two, it was, well, where am I ranked under this phrase? and you know, how much traffic am I getting under that phrase? Which is, you know, it's still, I know that's still a K P I, but there's so much more to it. And now with AI coming into play and. And, and ways to do, data analytics at a whole other level. you know, that in itself is, is a, is a podcast topic that, that we'll have to get to. So, you know, moving on, I'd like to like, use a, use a real life example and, and not a real example in that. I don't want you to re reveal anything about any specific clients, obviously, but, we reference CROs as, as, as a general example here because we've always, we've always done a lot of work with CROs, and sorry for anybody who's sick of all the acronyms, but that's a contract. Research organizations. These are the companies that manage clinical trials and all of the data, for biopharma companies that are developing a drug. And, and so we've, we've always worked with a lot of CROs, so Brent, if you. Let's just use an example like a cro, r o. again, this is B2B and so, so pretend a new c r o was coming in for an SEO engagement today, and they had usually, you know, a CRO is gonna have a number of different services and solutions that, that they're selling. But they want to grow this particular service line. And they've given you that, that set of phrases, they've told you a little bit about those particular audiences. Walk me through that real world scenario in, in working with you or one of your team members in terms of. You know, how you would go about formulating a strategy and, and targeting their appropriate audiences in, you know, one of the things that, that we wanna talk about here is in unconventional ways, ways that they might not be coming into it. Thinking of, and giving them different perspectives, other than just again, the obvious we want to show up under this phrase. So just walk me through that conversation. Well, you know this, this is a very common situation where, you know, we need to apply industry or what the industry's doing, where the audience is. If your audience is calling a specific service by a name, it's fine to add branding to that name or, or, Put your own spin on it, but you still have to talk about what the audience is talking about. the, the, the algorithm serves search results mechanically, you know, it measures the, the, the relevancy of content, mechanically. So it's, it's basically does, does this string of characters that equals this term. Appear on the content that we're, we're evaluating here, and if you don't call it what your audience is calling it, it's not gonna show up. And it, it seems like an obvious statement, but the, the, the spin that is put on to entice the audience on page. It doesn't always equate to the content that, or to, to the content that the, the algorithms are looking for. So, you know, it, it's a kind of a, a, a joke in our realm is, you know, if you wanna rank for it, you gotta talk about it. And that sounds, again, that sounds very simplistic, but that is something we run into a lot. The other thing that a lot of people don't want to talk about are the basics of their industry to build that authority around. The, around the topics that they're really pushing, you know, the services that they're really pushing. So you don't, it, it seems like people wanna stay away from the basics of the industry and always be the cut on the cutting edge of thought leadership and innovation. When that's fine. Like I said earlier, you know, we, we support that by all, by all means. cuz that has a lot of marketing value. But I always put myself in somebody that just got the job wherever it is. you know, a as the potential client, and I don't fully understand the industry, I'm looking for those basic terms and definitions. And, and the idea is, is that if you're the one that provides that in a, in a way that helps them do their job or understand their job better, that builds trust and and authority with that person. And. They're gonna be the ones that re you know, you're gonna be the one that they remember when they need a provider for that. and the algorithm's kind of the same way that you can't just throw a, a piece of content out there that is not connected to anything else on your website that demonstrates authority and expect a rank for it without having supporting content around all of the other things that, that, make up that, that term. So, You know, aspects of it, treatments, therapeutics, experience, all that stuff has to be well orchestrated on the site and architected in order to lead to that, that main sales pitch of this is what we do, we do it very well, we've got a lot of experience and we really want to help you. That's fine to have that, but you gotta have all the supporting content that, that expands the, the footprint in order to bring those people in from the fringes that, that aren't directly looking for your brand and your service. And, and you know, when you talk about back to the beginning when we talked about misconceptions, that's one of the biggest misconceptions is that I want this page to rank. Not only rank for search terms, but I also want it to be the sales page. And that those two don't always work together. You gotta lead people through the journey. Yeah. And these, you know, this part of the conversation again, is where I've always just appreciated the value that you bring, because again, I know a big part of the value that any seo. Firm or an SEO person is gonna bring to a company is, is a lot of the technical knowledge. Again, a lot of the tactics that are going on, but. But you really, you, you need the right strategy and approach to your audiences in, in thinking about the ways that you're gonna reach them, aside from, you know, how you're optimizing a title tag and, and, and what technical things you're doing under the hood. Again, it's, it's it all, it's all about the audiences, and, and how you're gonna reach them. So, I wanna shift gears a little bit and thank you for all of that. and talk a little bit about, I mean, the thing that, that everybody's talking about, which is ai, and how, I mean, first of all, we as an agency are, are leveraging AI across all of our competencies at the moment. And I'm not gonna claim we have that fully fleshed out. We're, we're all figuring out, like everybody is, and it's moving rapidly. but that's across building websites. It's branding, it's content, it's seo, it's paid, it's social. so. We're leveraging AI across all of our competencies. But I want to, this is an SEO episode here today, and I want to hear from you a little bit about your thoughts, what you've seen so far, maybe questions you've had from clients and how your team is, you know, starting to leverage some of that technology. And, and, and even one specific question, because we've been chatting with a few, A few marketers out there about it and people are even wondering, not just what does this mean? How can AI benefit what SEO means today? But is AI and chat G P T going to affect what SEO even means? In other words, someone asked us, do I need to be found under chat G P t? Like, is that another? And I know it's integrated with with Microsoft search engine. Bang or edge or whatever they're doing with their search engines right now. So Microsoft's got it integrated, so it, it does mean something over there in terms of what search even means. so, so kind of a multi-pronged question. you know, is it gonna change in your opinion? No one, no one has these, these answers. Is it gonna completely change what search even means? And then talk a little bit about, you know, what you guys are doing today. Sure. So, AI is like the accelerator for seo. there's a lot of behind the scenes work that we do that AI is, is cutting a lot of corners for and will continue to en enhance that. But the, the biggest impact we're seeing is that there's just a flood of content because content's so easy to generate now. there's always been hacks and, and methods to mass generate content. But it wasn't as intelligent as it is now. So we're seeing this flood of content hitting the internet that doesn't necessarily have any authority, doesn't have the, background to, to, to build it up over time. It's just being dumped out there and, you know, all the search engines are combing through it, even though they're, they're all engaged in ai. They're having to comb through that, cuz again, they still want to deliver the best possible option. Google has done a complete 180 on AI over the last year, whereas they. They said that, you know, we really don't want AI content to be in our search results to, we don't care who wrote it or what wrote it. We want the best possible content. And if that's being generated by AI or if that's being generated by, lab physician, that. That is, is signing off on content or writing it? We, we don't care as long as it's what our users want. You know, that's, that's the, the metric there. Is it engaging with, for our users? Is it delivering them the information they're wanting? So what we're doing is we're using AI to, to look at those signals. On a website and make sure that they're there, make sure that, that your content not only is better than the other content that's out there, but has those, those signals that, that verify that that. Yeah, somebody that, that knows what they're doing, somebody in a position of experience and education has reviewed this. you're a real organization as opposed to just a pop-up website meant to, get search results, and, and, and add those validating factors to the site. some of those are behind the scenes. Some of'em are, are onsite and, luckily there's mechanisms in place for that. Structured data is a big part of that. Not only are we leveraging. AI to create structured data with, with the elements, all of the elements we need, without a, without as much testing as we've had to do in the past. But we're using that to, to bolster those signals that to, to the search engines and ultimately the ai, that this is the best possible source for you to include in your. Your results, whether those are search results or, or, you know, via a chat. And, you know, luckily that's something we've been focused on for a long time is, is making sure those validation signals are there and are, you know, properly formatted and, and understandable. But by doing that, we've kind of put everybody ahead of the curve that we, you know, that we're working with on these things because. When the AI starts looking for better sources, I mean, this, it's, it's, it's just a more advanced algorithm that is looking to deliver the best answer possible and the most, most trustworthy option possible. Our clients will be there. You know, they've got those signals, they're already set up with the structured data, at least the basics to, to build on and, and, and improve their, their position as being the one that, that provides the resources to the AI for, you know, anything and anything in their industry and become that authority that the AI comes back to, to look for updates and, and new information. So, That's really kind of at the focus at the center of our focus. Plus we're also finding that, you know, content, with AI and a human eye is a very powerful thing. So, you know, you can, you can figure out what elements need to be in your content much faster using ai. you can build the framework for good content. With ai and then bring the human element in to add those verifications, whether it's a, a doctor review or, you know, a, a marketer's eye to add some, CTAs or called, you know, specific convertible actions to it. It, it, it's, it's becoming really, A super handy tool to Im make those improvements, much faster. Whereas, you know, before we were kind of at the mercy of, of, of the process and it shortcuts the process and allows us to do a lot more work, a lot better work faster. Mm-hmm. And again, there's so much unknown. One of the, so Brett Cohen, my partner here at Imagine we're, we're. Having, again, a lot of conversations with people, just hearing their questions, their concerns, sharing with them what we do know about AI and, and, and one of the things he's telling people is, don't go investing much money in anything AI right now because, It's gonna change tomorrow, and then it's gonna change next week and it's gonna change next month. This is so new and nothing as we've all seen, nothing has ever moved this fast, ever. and there's, there's a lot of things we, we don't know about SEO and because one of the, one of the big questions is, you know, will chat G P t generated content with human editing without human editing. Will it be penalized by Google? I don't think anyone has that answer. There's, I've seen opinions out there. I've seen some people post that they saw five or 7% lower ranking with content generated by chat G P T versus one completely written by himself. But I can speak a couple blog posts we've posted have done well. So, I mean, it's, it's there. I don't think anybody has the answers. We're all gonna see. I also was, you know, without, with the AI wards happening now already we're seeing how that's gonna shake out and definitely Google and Microsoft right at the top of, of that battle. you know, there could even be legal repercussions if Google penalizes, chat GP degenerated content because then we're getting into an antitrust situation where, Google's, penalizing people that are using Microsoft's technology because they're the competitor. So again, we'll see. no one knows for sure where all this stuff is gonna go, but, but it's certainly fascinating over the years I've heard SEO's dead so many times because tech new technology came along and the, the, the deciding factor there. And, you know, Google has put out a, a document saying, Basically what I said earlier, that, we don't care as long as it serves our customers the best. And that's really what it boils down to. So if, if a human is looking for something and whether it's in chat G p t or on being or on Google, and it's not serving their needs, it's gonna send signals that say, this is not a good piece of content. If you go there and it, it's repetitive and uses, wrong terminology. It's not gonna stick, it's not gonna be a engaging piece that, that people use. and so the, the audience is ultimately gonna be the deciding factor, right? Is, is this content useful, helpful? Can I trust it? And if so, it's good content. Does it matter, you know, who wrote it? It, it literally just has to serve the purpose. You can't put up a storefront and not build a store behind it and expect to make money, and that's really what it boils down to. I, I can write bad content. I have written bad content. I don't like to admit that all the time, but I've written bad content that didn't work and just what didn't serve the answer, or didn't answer the question and serve the user like it was like, like they expected, and it tanked, and that we're seeing the same thing with ai. some AI generated content does very well. it does better with, with the human element to filter out, make it readable, make it understandable, make it, and, and by making it readable and understandable, you make it trustworthy. And by making it trustworthy, you know, people, people stick to it and, and they use it and they share it and they, they link to it and it, that's the whole cycle that's seo is, is. Does your content do what the user needs it to do? And if it doesn't, then either you, you don't have good content or you've targeted it to the wrong person, and all those signals go back and feed the algorithm. Whether that's a, a search engine algorithm, which, you know, is a, i, I would say at this point, an elementary version of ai or serve the AI algorithm, which is, you know, far advanced but still is. Algorithm that that measures the, the engagement of, of content. Yeah. I don't wanna say content is king, but without saying it, I'm, I'm gonna say it because it's still at the end of the day Absolutely. It's, it's what it's all about. What do audiences want, what brings value to the person using that search engine, that website, everything we talked here about today, it ultimately comes down to. What content brings value to the audience. and I think we'll, we'll definitely be talking a lot more about ai. I think you and I will have, plenty of future episodes on, on that topic. But I think, with that, I wanna thank you for all your insights here today. This was great, and I'm sure you know, we'll be bringing you on many more episodes in the future as well as members of your team. so thanks Brent and everybody who joined. until next time, thanks for joining. Thanks Bill