Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use

Meredith: 0:58

a,

Meredith's Husband: 0:59

you're talking about AI?

Meredith: 1:01

Oh boy, do I ever know

Meredith's Husband: 1:03

how to use AI and how not to use AI from CoA? We've done a couple of these, but this is kind of an ever evolving topic. A. And there's been some new developments,

Meredith: 1:14

there always going to be new developments with AI.

Meredith's Husband: 1:16

Yeah. You know, I'm gonna give you not the newest developments. I'm like, I gotta tell you what Google has said. Since our last episode on AI, Google has come out and said, in response to somebody asking, Hey, does content written by AI? How do you be wise? And John Mueller? Who is the spokesperson on things like this has said, Is it helpful content? We reward helpful content, which has always been the case you remember it? We had an episode, there was a big Google update, like if you Yes, I do. Actually do. It was called the helpful content update. Yeah. And it was like really big news. And I was kind of surprised, because this is always what Google has been done. They've always since I can remember, tried to reward content that is helpful and promote content that is helpful. So this update was just the first time they really kind of named put that put that into words. That was the last update. That was one that was the last major Google update to the whole group.

Meredith: 2:14

Okay, you addressed here?

Meredith's Husband: 2:16

I did. But what does that mean? What is helpful content? Yeah, and this is, again, this is something that Google has come out, and they have verbalized it. And this is all they're saying about AI and content generated current AI. Currently, right now, they're saying, Is it helpful content? So that seems to suggest they don't care if it's written by a machine or a person? Is it helpful to people? So I'm going to talk about how to what does that mean, how to go about that? How do you use AI to create helpful content? What is helpful content?

Meredith: 2:45

Because wasn't initially wasn't a band, weren't they? Weren't they saying that? No, I didn't buy a I

Meredith's Husband: 2:52

wasn't AI. And that's what I talked about in one of the earlier episodes on AI. And I'll talk about that. And I'll kind of clarify, because Google is protecting against something. And you want to know what they're protecting against, so that you don't do it? Yes, because then you'll be demoted in rankings. So to put this into a little bit of context, do you remember my client named Anil? Now years ago, years and years and years, he was an Indian gentleman? Oh, yeah, I really didn't like him very much.

Meredith: 3:27

Maybe you'll be bout his name. Maybe? I think you should be not listening. Doesn't matter. Just be bad.

Meredith's Husband: 3:33

So anyway, I would believe that he had a business he was located in India, he had a business that targeted a an audience inside the United States, which, which is why he hired me. Yes, he had two different websites serving this business. Okay, it was really one business, he had two different websites, because basically, in those days, you could do that. And it would help you get more rankings like you could, if you could have two websites rank, you'd get more traffic than if you had just one, right?

Meredith: 4:02

It's kind of like when Dunkin Donuts and Mr. donuts or whatever the second one was called, would be side by side. And they were secretly and they were my brothers.

Meredith's Husband: 4:11

Oh, really? Well, that doesn't mean they're the same. Maybe their brothers are actually competing. Oh, mate, that would be shitty. Anyway, so Anil had hundreds of employees. This was a decent sized company. And he had lots of content. And he had pretty good rankings. He was doing a lot of business through these two websites. Yeah. And one thing that he was doing was he would, he would create content every day, even then content was important. So he would create content every day. But what he did is when somebody else on another website, published an article about one of the topics he was trying to address, he would just scrape it. And the day after it was published on another website, he would put it on his own. What do you mean scrape it? He would, that's what you call when you just when you have like a bot out there looking for articles or looking for content, and it just collects it and it brings it gives it to you. So it's like you're you're you're scraping up content from other places. So okay, okay. He would just take that content exactly as is put it on his blog, on his on his

Meredith: 5:12

credit where he got it from No, no, no, no. Okay. Is that kosher?

Meredith's Husband: 5:16

So? No, it wasn't. I mean, inside the SEO industry, I knew that was not kosher, right. However, it was still working. Like it remember all sorts of tactics. When people devise these schemes for SEO, they they tend to work for a while until they don't work and I told him I told him again and again and again and again and again that he couldn't get it that he couldn't do this, that it wasn't going to work that I was going to burn it. And, you know, this was very early in my career. Yeah, it was a really good client for me financially. Although I didn't, I was watching him do things. And I, there's nothing I could really do. But I was at least I would, I could tell him that he shouldn't be doing this. However, he was see he was seeing that it worked. I was telling him a and he was seeing be right. And he evidently didn't thought he knew better. He would, he would literally tell me every single time and he said, Well, it's always worked. It's always worked before. Anyway, one day, he wakes up and one of his websites is not showing up in Google. Because Google came up with another update. Yeah, I believe that one was called panda or Penguin or

Meredith: 6:26

something. Oh, to my favorite N

Meredith's Husband: 6:29

for like, 10 years, good. Probably maybe even 15 years. All of the Google updates were named after like cute animals. People have suggested that it's because it's to take attention away from the fact that it ruined people's businesses. Yeah, exactly. Fuzzy bunnies. Anyway, so uh, Neil's business was cut in half, literally, instantly. Right now he has his website wasn't kicked out of Google. But he would hit he had like literally hundreds of number one, number two number three rankings. And suddenly he was in the 90s or not even on top 100. So at that point, the writing was kind of on the wall. Yeah. And you're looking, Mike. Oddly, oddly enough, he then came to me and asked why I never told him. Are you kidding me? Yeah, yeah. At that point, I dropped him as a client. At that point, I dropped him. And he still had one website that was functioning. But he had a lot of work to do, because it had 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of pages of content that was just taken from other websites. Gosh, I don't know what has happened to him since but I looked for that website a few years ago. And it's, I think they vanish shed. Yeah. So that was an example of content. That was not helpful. Right? You're not helping and you're just stealing dealing with content. Yeah. Google put an end to that. But what did people do? Instead, they tried to do the same thing. They look for other solutions. And one of the things that came about soon after was article spinners. This is something this is like it's not not AI. But it's like some sort of software where you write an article, you you upload your article to this software, and it changes it enough. So that it's a new, it looks like a new article. But it does it in like 60 seconds. And you can take one article, you can turn it into 10.

Meredith: 8:13

I think they'd still do that. Right?

Meredith's Husband: 8:16

Probably a newer, newer and newer versions of that. Yeah.

Meredith: 8:19

Because I've seen there was just an article about this TV show and that the people running it were horrible. And then I, you know, I Googled people's names. And there's a whole bunch of articles that pretty much all say the same thing.

Meredith's Husband: 8:33

Maybe. Yeah, all those all the early ones did was they basically put in synonyms, I think, and they got more advanced over the years. But again, is that helpful content? When you create that sort of content? Is it? Are you creating it because it's helpful content? You write one article, you turn it into 10? Did you just create 10 helpful pieces of content?

Meredith: 8:53

If the first was helpful? Yes, no, there's

Meredith's Husband: 8:55

one, there's one piece. I mean, I would I would say there's one piece of helpful content, you're creating the other nine or 10 articles for SEO, you're not trying to help anybody with those articles.

Meredith: 9:04

Okay, but couldn't it then be more accessible for people to help?

Meredith's Husband: 9:09

Would you so if I said to you, hey, I have a blog. Yeah, I have 100 posts on my blog. Yeah. It's talks about how to do X, how to become a better photographer. And then you look at those articles. And you realize somehow, it's just one article.

Meredith: 9:23

Oh, I see. I see. Okay. Yeah, I didn't have the context. Yes, yes. Okay. Right. Yeah. Then if you keep looking at other articles thinking you're gonna get more information, but it's the same brand thing,

Meredith's Husband: 9:34

same one with items. And so

Meredith: 9:38

yes, I'm awake.

Meredith's Husband: 9:39

Now, alone, cups are many years late. And there's been numerous iterations of that. Along comes AI. Okay. And one of the early promises of AI is that it can do that it can do it can do a bunch of stuff. But in terms of generating content, especially for SEO, it can do a couple things, it can do that exact thing. You can spin content can also create content from scratch. You know, one of the first appearances of AI in software that consumers could use was like, let's write your blog, right? And it would just write something from scratch. You just give it your keyword and it would write an article. Now, how do you suppose a Neil would use that? If we could go back in time and I could, I could take AI and I can say, here, here you go. Now Anil knows that he can't steal other people's content. He knows that he can't take an article and spin it. How do you suppose he would use it? A

Meredith: 10:34

What do you just put in one thing? And then

Meredith's Husband: 10:38

I would bet that he would put in his keywords and tell AI to just write a bunch of articles for right wouldn't really care. Yeah. Does that sound like it would be helpful content? And and let's also consider, where does AI get its information? That's

Meredith: 10:54

what I was just gonna say, because it seems like a is AI reading everyone's blog.

Meredith's Husband: 11:00

So AI gets all of its knowledge from information that's already out there. Right. So these

Meredith: 11:07

AI cycling, yeah, your information

Meredith's Husband: 11:11

right. Now, you could argue that that is helpful. You could argue it could put together there's no really right or wrong answer here.

Meredith: 11:19

Right. And Neil would continue to be in now and not listen to the right things.

Meredith's Husband: 11:23

If you try to find a shortcut. Yeah. Yeah. What? What would I do? Not that if I were? Because there certainly there are ways to use AI to create helpful content. I'm not saying there are no ways to do that. Yeah. But the you got to think about how would you do that?

Meredith: 11:41

You would probably find what? Not out there. And you'd create your own thingies? And then do you'd write half of it or outline it and then give it to AI to complete?

Meredith's Husband: 11:57

Pretty kind of Yes. Hey, come on. Now. That's pretty good. Come on down from

Meredith: 12:03

the bag and receive your car Meritus.

Meredith's Husband: 12:06

Come on, what did they say on? Come on? Down? Yeah, so I'll give you a few.

Meredith: 12:14

Come on down.

Meredith's Husband: 12:16

That's a long name tag. Am I right? Yes. Yeah, that is one of the ways a couple of the ways. I would call it supplemental, or a way to supplement an article. So let's say a little while ago, I wrote an article about how to do something. And it was a step by step article about how you do something with SEO. In that article, I also wanted to put it into the context like, Hey, why is this important? What does this do for you? I didn't really want to sit down and write that. Right. I asked chat GPT to write that. Give me a summary of why this is important. What are the benefits, what are the advantages, etc, etc. It did a great job. But what I created was the step by step portion, which I would argue is the valuable portion of that this tool. The reason the reason that blog existed was because of that step by step guide, right? Not because of the introduction, right? That's one way that I and I, again, there's no right or wrong. But that's the way I look at that as being a helpful article.

Meredith: 13:17

Right, saving you time. Let's also just add to the fact that I have never used chat GBT. So I don't know what,

Meredith's Husband: 13:25

I think that's obvious. But yes, Meredith says not used chat. Another way, which I use it is these podcasts. So I take these podcasts, I have them transcribed, I put them on the blog. But to be honest, a transcription is between specially between two people not very easy to read. A lot of times now, it gets the words on the page for Google, so Google can see and index the words, but as a user, it's not really helpful. Okay. What Chet GPT can do is I could give it that transcript, and I can say summarize this does a really great job of that creates an outline, he puts it into a different a much more user friendly format.

Meredith: 14:08

And then you use that to describe each episode. Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 14:13

And so it does that and never 60 seconds. That would take me a few hours, at least. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another way I'm taking content. Again, this is content I'm creating. Like, I am the generator. And AI is a tool. Yeah, help make it more consumable, more kind of

Meredith: 14:32

like your assistant. Yes. You say, hey, here. Okay. I'm doing good today.

Meredith's Husband: 14:38

You are doing good.

Meredith: 14:39

I get cookies and ice cream. That it's you have all the here all the points, I'd like you to write out.

Meredith's Husband: 14:47

Yeah, you can hopefully see that AI is a tool. It is not the solution.

Meredith: 14:53

Right? Does he have a sense of humor? If I say hey, write this

Meredith's Husband: 14:59

funny. I have no idea. I haven't tried that yet. That would be the first thing I will do. Next episode. The next time we talk about AI. I'll ask AI to write a joke about and I'll share it. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait. Actually, I'm kind of curious. I'm very curious. So the important thing is to remember, AI is a tool and your objective is to create helpful content. You can use AI to create helpful content. Don't look at AI as a shortcut to create your blogs for you. Be wary of that. Yeah, just be careful of that. Knowing what's happened to Anil, and people like Anil heap in the past.

Meredith: 15:39

Thank you. It's incredibly exciting. I mean, I know that you could do that easily if

Meredith's Husband: 15:49

I want, I wanted more of a challenge. So that's a pretty good one. If you're finding these episodes helpful, I created something that I think you're going to find even more helpful. It explains the SEO process similar to these episodes in a way that I hope is new for you. But it also puts them in order so that you know what to do first and second, and third through the entire SEO process. And I hope saves you a lot of time by giving you an actionable step by step plan. It's called the SEO roadmap, and you can find it at Meritus husband.com/roadmap.