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Recently, I've been working on including more AI workflows in the mentoring program because the way I do SEO now is dramatically different than the way I did SEO a year ago. And this is true for most SEO professionals, I would say. Now, the stuff we do is the same. It's the same things, the same outcome, the same objectives, but the way we go about it is completely

Why SEO Workflows Changed

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different. And the reason is very simple. It's just that AI does a lot of these tasks so much more quickly and is so much better at analyzing large amounts of data, which is an aspect of SEO. So what I have been doing, like I said, is trying to integrate that workflow into the mentoring program to show you how, yeah, you can also expedite the SEO process. Now, in doing that, there are some very basic things where you want to use AI in your SEO workflow, like writing your title tags, et cetera, you know, for example. But less obvious is the bigger and often more important things like the strategy. And that's conceptual strategy. So your approach objectives, how do you think about it? Because that's really important with SEO. But like with anything in life, if you start off something and you have some objectives that are not very good or unrealistic or likely to be very challenging, you know, that's kind

AI Helps With More Than Tasks

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of a bad omen for whatever it is you're doing there. And I found the same thing when I started discussing this, my objectives and including AI in the workflow, and I started discussing how to do it with AI, I found that the surprisingly, the strategy that it suggested, the approach that it suggested, the conceptual goals that it suggested were totally wrong. And I guess that shouldn't be surprising because most of what is out there in blogs and online is similar. And the strategy that it suggested, and that most people think about SEO, and even most a lot of professional SEOs might advise you to do this, is you know, pick your keyword. What do you want to rank for? And then you sit down and you start, you want to rank, you just start working on that keyword. And this is what I would call going

The Keyword Trap And Bad Goals

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against the flow, especially or specifically, if you are not ranking for something in Google, then let's say your main keyword and you're you're not showing up in Google for it in the first five pages, sitting down and then trying to make that your goal, you're going against the flow. Okay. Google does not think that your website is appropriate for those terms, for those keywords, whatever those key keywords are. And by doing that, like the very first thing that you are doing is you are going against the flow. You are trying to convince Google that you are good at something that it currently doesn't think you're good at. The strategy that I would use, and I would say the strategy that most quality SEO consultants would use is pretty much the exact opposite. You go with what is working and then you build on that. So what that means is what does Google already think you're good at? Okay. What keywords are you already ranking for? What sort of traffic are you already getting? What topics are you currently already getting visibility for? Okay. So what that means is that in Google's opinion, that's the stuff you're good at. That's what Google thinks you are an authority on.

Go With The Flow In Google

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Okay. It's a whole lot easier to begin and expand upon that than it is to start with something totally fresh, like a keyword that you're not ranked anywhere for. And I feel like this is pretty sound advice because when would you start with your weaknesses? Can you think of any time doing anything where you would want to present your weaknesses first and like ignore whatever you are best at? You know, do you put your worst images on your homepage? No, you I would think you want to put your best images on your homepage. You want to show people what you're really good at, what your strengths are. Or let's say you're really good at photographing in natural light, but you realize that some people want lights. They want studio lighting. So if you were like, let's say you're not good at all at studio lighting, you don't like it at all, you've never done it, you're just not good at it. Would you then at that point, because you know people want it, sit down and only do that and not do any natural lighting? No, you, I mean, you'd probably, I would hope, figure out a way to include some of what you're good at and then start to bridge the gap and then start to learn lighting, start to include some of both. I don't know what that would look like. If you want to, you know, for a shoot, let's say do half indoors and half outdoors, or if you want to try to include a mix of natural, I don't even know if that would work. I'm basically talking out of my ass here, but I'm trying to find something that is relatable. My point is start with what you're good at, get your foot in the door, and then expand. My job as a consultant, as an SEO consultant, usually I come into a team, we have a we're starting a new project for a client. The client wants to rank, they want to be more visible for some sort of topic. Now, part of the a lot, actually, a lot of what I do is competitor research to figure out who else is already doing that and who is doing it well and how are they doing it. So the people who are doing it best, how are they doing that? What did they do? But then

Competitors Matter But So Do You

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also I look at what is the client already doing well? And then how are we going to bridge the gap between those two? I don't just sit down and look at whatever keywords a client is ranking for and we start right away trying to focus on those keywords. And that's what, by the way, exactly what AI suggested is you look at your competitors, you figure out what they are ranking for, and then try to rank for the same things. Okay, that's pretty terrible advice. Try to be like other people. No, the point is to see what competitors are doing well. How did they do it? And then look at most importantly, what you are doing well, and then bridge the gap. Find a solution that's going to be unique to you. Okay, an example of this. I had a client once and they had a just a single blog that had was doing really well. They were a regional painting company. So they their geographic market was the Northeast. They were a residential and commercial painting company, and they had at some point written a blog about current color trends. Like every year, they would do a recurring blog about what colors are popular for that year. Okay, and the blog did really well. And I

The Painting Company Content Hub

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think they probably got that was there before I joined the team, and I think they probably got that idea by looking at competitors, if I had to guess. So what we did from there is we saw that blog was doing well, and we thought, well, how can we expand upon that? Because it wasn't directly related to what they were doing, right? If you're looking for color trends, popular colors, doesn't necessarily mean that you're in the market to have your house painted. But what we started to do is say, what are the color trends for living rooms, for bedrooms, for offices and dens, for kitchens? So we built off that initial blog, and then it started to become more about residential painting. Okay, so we did that for several years actually. We built up quite a content hub around the topic of color, but how it applied to residential painting. And the clients started getting a lot more traffic related to how it applies to people who want to have their house painted. So don't think, if you're ever looking at your website traffic or your impressions on Google Search Console, don't think if you have a one-off blog that is doing really well and it's not directly related to what it is that you offer. That is, like people searching for or finding your blog online are not going to be your target audience. Don't dismiss that blog. I know a lot of people do that. I know even some SEO, I'm gonna use air quotes here, SEO professionals recommend that, but that is exactly what you do not want to do. You look at that one-off blog that is doing really well

Turn A One Off Post Into Asset

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as an asset. Your website has an asset. Then figure out how you can use that asset. And the numbers don't really matter here. If your blog is only getting 20 impressions per month, say, it's okay. It's the trajectory that is going to be important, not the overall number. And if you are just starting, let's say you don't even have a blog, if your blog is not getting any impressions, then I would just say pick a niche, like pick something very specific. Don't try to blog about something very broad, like your main keyword. That's a mistake. Blog about something or a few things. If you're just getting started, you're probably going to want to have a few blogs, but blog about something very specific. And I would encourage you, if you're just starting, don't worry

Specific Niches Beat Broad Keywords

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about making it perfect, okay? Because chances are nobody's gonna see it anyway, or very few people are going to see it. And let's say, best case scenario, like people do see it. It does start to build visibility in Google. You we can redo it at that point if it's awful. So don't worry about making it great. It's more important to get something out there. And if you're just starting to make it very specific, it's gonna be a lot easier to rank something in Google if it's very specific, because there's not as much competition. Not that many other people are going for it. Okay, so this approach is, I would say it's faster and easier and probably going to produce better results than sitting down and figuring out what keyword you want to rank for that you don't rank for, and then trying to do that. Results are gonna come a whole lot easier if you start, if you begin with what's already working. All right, I hope this helps.