Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO
SEO for people who don't like SEO. I run an SEO agency. My wife Meredith is a family photographer. Our podcast explains how I got Meredith's website to the top of Google and answers questions from photographers about SEO and website marketing.
Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO
Attention Deficits & Building Trust for AI
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This episode explores the shift from the “attention economy” to the emerging “trust economy,” why we’re all overwhelmed, and how creators can stand out in an era of AI-generated content. Meredith’s Husband breaks down practical ways website owners can build trust, create pattern-breaking content, and avoid blending in with generic AI blogs.
Timestamps
[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] The rise of social media and attention as currency
[1:33] Spending 110% of our attention
[2:28] ADHD-like overwhelm in modern life
[3:27] Phones and constant content access
[4:27] AI’s coming explosion in content creation
[4:51] Oversaturation and the end of the attention economy
[5:11] The trust recession
[6:07] Trust as the new currency
[6:54] How to create content AI cannot replicate
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https://www.meredithshusband.com/podcast
2008. Do you remember that year? I remember thereabouts. Social media. That's right about the time social media started kind of going mainstream.
MeredithWas that like Friendster time?
Meredith's husbandNo, Friendster was before. So like because when I we met in 2006.
MeredithWe did?
Meredith's husbandYeah. News flash. And when we met, you were already using Friendster. I
Remembering Social Media’s Rise
Meredith's husbandthink you were probably already on MySpace. There were a few things. Facebook, I think, technically came out in 2006. No, yeah. Nobody was, because it was just for colleges. And then I think they kind of opened up and they in 2008-ish, I'm going to say it went mainstream. Pretty soon thereafter, people started talking about this thing called the attention economy. Especially in marketing, in my world. It was all about the attention economy. Because if you can get somebody's attention, you could monetize that. That's literally how you made money.
MeredithRight.
Meredith's husbandI mean, I guess that's always been a little bit true. But social media was like, hey, if somebody could get your attention for a minute, they could somehow make money off that. If they could make if they could get your
The Attention Economy Explained
Meredith's husbandattention for 10 minutes, better. For four hours, way better. So and you can see where social media took that.
MeredithYeah.
Meredith's husbandSo until so now, let's fast forward, we're at the point where the money's gone. We have spent all the attention that we have.
MeredithYes.
Meredith's husbandWe're out of it. We're fresh out.
MeredithWe're overwhelmed.
Meredith's husbandYes. As individuals, as a society in general, I would say we have spent probably 110% of the attention that we have to spend.
MeredithYes. I agree.
Meredith's husbandAnd I don't know about you, but I like I don't remember feeling like this 20 years ago. At the end of the day, they just feeling like sitting down and being like, oh, just I'm just it's too much. Everything is too much.
MeredithAaron Powell Oh, I often feel that it's different. Also, we're way older and we run our, you know, like things are way different.
Meredith's husbandFor whatever reason, where you're running on an attention deficit.
MeredithTrevor Burrus, Jr. We are.
Meredith's husbandAnd I would say there's probably no it's no surprise that the people realizing they have attention deficit disorder has exploded.
MeredithYes.
Meredith's husbandI mean, how many people do you know who have some sort of ADHD?
MeredithYeah.
Meredith's husbandYeah, a lot. There's even a uh I I don't know if it's a clinical name, but there's a name for the the ADHD that people get by just living in society now.
MeredithV-A-S-D.
Meredith's husbandYeah. It's like and it's kind of you know minor symptoms of ADHD that you forget just as a result of existing in this world. Yeah. Yeah. Or this country. I guess I can't speak for other countries so much, but certainly this country. So one reason for that is obviously the explosion in just the amount of content. You figure when you go on social media, you're getting a uh one millionth of one percent
Living In Perpetual Overload
Meredith's husbandof all the content that's out there, and that's plenty to keep you occupied 24-7. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
MeredithAnd also it's right with us all the time on our phones. It used to be billboards or commercials or advertisements and magazines that you would flip through.
Meredith's husbandYeah, I think that like literally is how we have ended up to be able to spend 110% of our attention. Is it is always, always, always an option.
MeredithYeah.
Meredith's husbandMore than one option. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
MeredithOh, uh many, many at the same time.
Meredith's husbandAaron Ross Powell And so one one cause of this has been the explosion in the creation of content. Obviously, there's tons of people creating content. By the way, AI, I think, is going to allow this is my prediction for the future. Okay. AI is going to allow platforms themselves to just create the content for us because it knows, its algorithm knows exactly what we like. AI is getting very good at creating content.
Phones, Feeds, And Endless Options
Meredith's husbandAI is getting very good at generating concepts and scripts and then the whatever to go along with it. I don't see why. I think content creators are doomed. Not 100%, but like say the bottom 90 percent are going to be replaced with AI-generated content. Not like this podcast.
MeredithWho could be that witty? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Meredith's husbandAI could never replace AI.
MeredithOh my gosh, are you kidding me?
Meredith's husbandAll right. So I th so that's just my personal prediction. But anyway, the question becomes how do you stand out in what has been an explosion in content and what will inevitably be the moody. Inevitably be even a bigger explosion, an explosion of explosions.
MeredithAaron Powell You don't think that it's just people are going to be so oversaturated?
Meredith's husbandAaron Ross Powell Well, I think they are. And I think that what we have I think the attention economy is going to come to an end. Because we like I said, we don't have any more to give. And it will be more the trust economy.
MeredithAaron Powell Yeah, there which there's a trust recession.
Meredith's husbandTrevor Burrus Yeah. You sent me an email about that, and I 100% agree because now it's you have so much content. What do you trust? What do you believe?
MeredithAaron Powell That's exactly it.
Meredith's husbandTrevor Burrus The 20 think I think of the news cycle, the 24-hour news cycle, and who knows what you see. I automatically, if I see a news story, I figure it's not true.
MeredithAaron Powell Right. I really believed that all of the late night hosts were gonna get their own network and do their own shows. No, lies.
Meredith's husbandSomebody writing an article that said that to grab your attention and they got it. Right. And now it's like, who knows if it's true? That's the problem. So how do you build trust? So trust is the new uh economy. It's the new uh buzzword. What do you call money? Money. It's new money. Trust is the new money.
MeredithCurrency.
Meredith's husbandCurrency. That's the word you're looking for. Yeah.
MeredithWe're married.
Meredith's husbandYeah. Okay. So how do you do that? How do you do that? So pretty good question. That's really kind of where my industry is. The insiders?
MeredithYes.
Meredith's husbandLike in my industry, like where it's like the real good thinkers inside my industry. Sometimes they let me into that room so I can listen. Yeah. So they are uh talking about how do you disrupt the pattern? How do you create content that stands out?
MeredithYeah.
Meredith's husbandOkay. And that is a sense, this is marketing. I mean, this is like that is marketing. How do you stand out? Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So how do we stand out for AI? Well, how do you you've got to create content that AI cannot generate itself because so much content is going to be AI generated? So what what types of things? I'm
AI’s Content Explosion Forecast
Meredith's husbandjust going to go over a few types of things. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
MeredithOh, it wasn't a question to me.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
Meredith's husbandNo, it was not. Trust me. I know better than that. Things like case studies. Okay. AI can't just it's not going to just generate case studies. I mean, it technically has done that when it does those hallucinations, but those in general, it does not. AI does just not generate fake facts and like they're real. I did. When you are creating any sort of content, if you can, include times and dates. Okay. AI is not going to just do stuff like that out of the blue. Include your author name, your person with links to your any bios, any uh professional references like LinkedIn. And notice this sort of is an expansion of the EEAT principles that we've talked about before.
MeredithI understand.
Meredith's husbandA lot of the same things, something else, uh your stance or your opinion, your philosophy, your principles, something that you have specifically that only you have.
MeredithYeah.
Meredith's husbandIf you have contrarian views on anything, those are those are pattern breakers. Those are going to stand out. Remember, anything that only you can produce, your your goal should be to distinguish yourself from other content, from specifically, probably AI-generated content.
MeredithRight.
Meredith's husbandAnd like I have said, I feel like I've said many times on the podcast, don't use an AI tool to blog for you. That's not going to help you stand out from other blogs. In fact, it I know people say all the time, you got a blog, you got a blog, you got a blog, you got a blog. Oh, and then there's this tool that will blog for you. Done. Having no blog is better than having an AI-generated blog.
MeredithCan you say that one more time?
Meredith's husbandAaron Ross Powell Having no blog It would be better for you to not have a blog than to have a blog that AI wrote.
MeredithThank you.
Meredith's husbandSomething else that is good, and this also is along the EEAT lines, clarity. Clarity. Clarity is good for people who are reading it. It is good for SEO. It always has been. And it's really good for AI. It's a win-win-win. You gotta be clear. Things like bullet lists. Make sure your stuff is organized. Next week I'll I think we'll talk a little bit more about the specifics of that. Like technically, how do you organize stuff?
MeredithThis is more of a learning how to organize.
Meredith's husbandI think that's it.
MeredithThose are good. Remember when I was saying last night how so I I'm I always forget my camera settings and all these things just because of my brain. And if I I went to AI, to Chatty G, asked her, like, what are the optimum, blah, blah, blah. She just kept it, it got it wasted so much time. And then I went to the manuals, no help. And then on YouTube, and everyone is all over the place. But then finally I found this one person who simplifies and clarifies, and it makes sense to me.
Meredith's husbandThere you go.
MeredithCase in point. What you hear are the soothing sounds of our dog Marcel.
