I’ve been a guest for the third time on the Unmiss podcast – Anatolii Utilovskyi’s show (you can view the first episode and the other here). So much has changed since 2022, since we did the last show. In this episode, we discussed A.I. and how it redefines the digital marketing landscape. Oh, and props to Anatolii’s team for choosing an image where I am at least five years younger.
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Show notes/highlights
AI: A Catalyst for Strategic Transformation
The digital marketing realm is undergoing a revolution, underscored by AI’s ability to enhance customer engagement and retention, as evidenced by successful implementations like Netflix’s recommendation engine. The adoption of AI by marketing leaders is not just prevalent but essential for staying competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Measurable Success with AI Integration
AI’s influence extends beyond theoretical advantages, offering tangible benefits such as significant increases in leads and conversions. These practical outcomes underscore the importance of AI in achieving business growth and enhancing customer relationships.
Broadening Horizons: AI’s Versatile Applications
AI technology transcends traditional marketing boundaries, introducing user-friendly tools that simplify complex tasks. This accessibility invites marketers of all skill levels to leverage AI’s potential in innovative ways.
Future Prospects: Embracing AI in Marketing
The future of digital marketing is inextricably linked with AI. Emerging trends like predictive analytics and AI-driven user experiences signify a shift towards more intelligent, responsive marketing strategies. Businesses hesitant to adopt AI risk falling behind in this dynamic environment.
Conclusion: Stay Ahead with AI Insights
Our discussion on the UNmiss podcast serves as a compelling invitation to explore AI’s role in reshaping digital marketing. By embracing AI’s capabilities, marketers can secure a competitive edge and lead in the digital era. Join us for this insightful exploration into AI’s expanding role in marketing, and stay at the forefront of industry innovation.
Quotes from the show:
“It’s not just about automating tasks; it’s about enhancing the quality of content.” In our latest episode, I share insights into how AI is reshaping digital marketing. Watch the full conversation on my podcast 🎧👉 https://emanuelp.com/ai-redefining-digital-marketing/
“The digital marketing landscape is rapidly evolving, and AI plays a crucial role in this transformation.” Join the conversation as we explore the integration of AI in creating impactful content. Tune in to the episode here 📺👉 https://emanuelp.com/ai-redefining-digital-marketing/
“The sooner you start implementing what you learn, especially with AI, the faster you’ll grow.” Discover how AI can revolutionize your marketing strategy in our in-depth discussion. Check out the full episode 🤖👉 https://emanuelp.com/ai-redefining-digital-marketing/
“Finding a balance between work, hobbies, and family is essential.” I share my approach to navigating the changes in SEO and digital marketing while maintaining balance. Explore the topic with me in this episode 🚀👉 https://emanuelp.com/ai-redefining-digital-marketing/
“The future of SEO and digital marketing is uncertain, but adapting to new technologies and tools fast gives you an edge.” Hear my perspective on staying ahead in the ever-changing digital landscape. Join our detailed conversation 🌱👉 https://emanuelp.com/ai-redefining-digital-marketing/
Episode Transcript
Anatolii: Hello good people! Welcome to our show. Today, we are going to discuss more about AI, and how this tool can help you in digital marketing to get more results because I use AI a lot. I grew my results. I had cases when we got from zero to 2,000 daily users; it’s a lot, especially about trading, and investing niches when we compete with billion-dollar companies, and we use AI. I don’t care if someone can tell that Google hates AI. I think Google loves AI if you use it right if you can create high-quality content. I spoke with Fabrice Canel who said to me, “Bing doesn’t care about AI or not; Bing cares about quality.” Google is on the same boat. If you know how to create quality with AI, then results will come. I’m so excited to discuss a lot more. Before we proceed, Emanue, how are you?
Emanuel: Hello Anatolii, and hello again to all of our listeners and people who are watching us. It’s a great pleasure and a privilege to be back.
Anatolii: Yeah, of course, you spoke two times on my podcast. A big pleasure. Want to learn more. I know digital marketing is a quickly changing world; we need to adapt, we need to use new technologies, and we need to adapt with AI. If you ignore this tool, it’s a big, big mistake. And let me explain why.
5% of marketers lost their jobs when Chat GPT appeared, and I got much better results with AI because I adapt and move fast. AI tools don’t replace marketers; people who adopt AI can replace marketers who don’t. It’s only one reason, at least before Terminators when they will kill all human beings, we still have time to use, to cooperate with AI 😉
Before we start, just tell more about yourself, experience, background, remind about your background because I have new listeners who might not know you, but they will know and follow you after this podcast.
Emanuel: Thank you, Anatolii. My name is Emanuel Petrescu. I’m originally from Romania, but for the past eight years already, I’ve been living in Toronto, Canada, and focusing and working exclusively, addressing the North American Market, Canada and US.
I’m a digital marketer with an emphasis on SEO; that’s where I come from, and that’s my background, but I also tackle all other channels such as email marketing, social media, paid advertising, and whatnot. But my core and my first love is always SEO.
I worked for several companies, and did some freelance consulting, now the digital marketing manager, in-house at a company – always looking to drive the best results possible.
Anatolii: Nice, nice. I know that you started your SEO audit course on Udemy, so I love learning, and I know people who want to learn something new. I have my course, but it’s not my business model. I usually earn money in other ways, but I created this course with the goal to help some customers to understand how SEO works. And we combined a lot with digital marketing.
The main reason was to explain the basics. You can’t be an expert after learning one course, even a few courses. You need to practice, you need to get your hands dirty. But if you learn from courses, you know the way where you need to go. You can cooperate with other experts; you can go ahead to practice. Let us know about your course, what kind of benefits, and differences you have compared to others, and how your course can help others.
Emanuel: Thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity. Before anything else, congratulations on your course. I just finished it a few days ago. It took me a while because I actually went through all the modules; I didn’t skip any. If you don’t know, Anatoly has put together a very comprehensive, complete course on SEO, on what search engine optimization is, and it’s not just Anatolii but many other experts in the industry who have compiled information for you, so I highly recommend it.
As for my course, as I said, I come from SEO, I love SEO, and what I love the most are SEO audits, doing SEO audits for small businesses, medium, and large enterprises, and so on. So I’ve put together, shared my knowledge and compiled all this information into an SEO audit course. I call it an SEO master class for 2024 and beyond, where, I wouldn’t say newbies, but some people who have experience in SEO can enhance their knowledge and be able to perform SEO audits that, at the end of the day, will result in getting new customers but also be able to highlight, pinpoint what’s wrong with the website and how they can improve it to get better results.
Anatolii: Nice, nice. Let’s talk about the future of SEO. When Chat GPT appeared, many users switched attention to asking questions about AI bots, and I did it myself. I always speak with chat GPT; I can ask a lot of questions, I can learn from this tool, I can’t say that it’s not accurate, most replies are so accurate, and I can save time by using chat GPT that Google itself.
I shared many examples in previous podcast episodes. For example, when I asked about Tesla on chat GPT, basically, the question was, “Can I use the self-driver feature pilot in Florida?” because each state has different laws on that, and I got this reply for a few seconds. I couldn’t find the answer on Google. So I searched on Google, and I got a lot of information about Tesla, and why we need to save this world.
Of course, we need to save this world, but I don’t need to know the information how we need to save this world, probably I need, but at that time, I just searched for this feature, a specific feature. So I have great experience with chatbots, and I think many customers switch attention.
According to data, 12% of users use chatbots more than Google. And I remember when content creators complain about feature snippets, about other blocks on Google because Google can steal our content, but at least Google links to our content. Chat GPT just rewrites, and rephrases, and we can save our time to get this information. So my question about the future, you know, I spent so much time in SEO, we wrote a bunch of blog posts to get results, and according to data, blog posts acquire more traffic than any other channel.
And if chatbots can win more and more users during the time, is it a good idea to keep doing this, or is it better to switch attention to other channels? What do you think?
Emanuel: That’s an interesting question. I think, first of all, we need to detach ourselves from being a regular user and SEO or digital marketing professional because we are doing things slightly differently. In my opinion, I believe there’s a generational distinction here. I tend to go to Google for most of my searches, and my queries.
Younger generations, for example, go straight on TikTok to even search for something they hear about, let’s say, a new place in town, a new pub, a new show, or anything like that, they go straight to TikTok to research.
So it’s not impossible for people to switch to a chat GPT-like experience for their regular searches. And to an extent, now here, I like to make the distinction, the generative AI experience that’s actually on Google right now, which is more conversational than it is right now, it’s only available in the US.
So, for example, in Canada, I don’t have it, and most people in most parts of the world don’t have this generative experience from Google.
But it’s kind of like going there, right? Google itself is transforming into a conversational type. And to an extent, I believe that was always the intention, right? Now, they have the possibility to do so. And I want to address one more point, to address something that you said at the beginning about the AI content and ranking and how much Google or Bing or the search engines don’t care.
They always care to provide the user the best possible experience for that query, for what they’re looking for. So if I were to summarize all of the SEO work and what it means, it means that we need to help the search engines, Google, understand that the websites we’re working on have the best possible answer a user can get for that specific query. Why would it matter if it’s AI-generated?
Anatolii: Yeah, I think AI-generated, it depends on quality. I think Google can complain about AI generators because most of them, plus 90% are nonsense, nothing special, generic. And it doesn’t mean that AI-generated doesn’t work; it works well if you do it right, if you check manually, if you proofread results. And we do it; we have a team of writers who can use chat GPT, and other tools.
I don’t deny these tools exist, but I need the quality. You can use it or not; I don’t care. I need quality content. And if chatbots can help to create this quality, if chatbots can help to increase the speed, then okay, I need this content.
And SEO is still a powerful tool; most traffic is coming from SEO, and it takes time to change habits. It takes time; I don’t know what the future will be. For example, when I ask my son to search some information on Google, he uses TikTok; he doesn’t care about Google, he doesn’t know anything about Google. He loves TikTok. And what I think, we need to adapt. Whatever happens, digital marketers on TV and radio didn’t lose their jobs; they adapted to digital. We can do it with any other channel. And if you have experience with SEO, you know how to create high-quality content, you know how to increase website speed, you know how to disavow links, and mentions with white-hat SEO that will bring traffic.
It’s not like to pay attention to get more domain authority on Ahrefs or other tools. It’s more about getting valuable traffic, and great mentions when people can see your content and share it with others. So if you have experience with SEO, you can adapt to any other channel. You know, for me, it’s…you can acquire experience learning in one specific case, just adapt to another.
So, and I remember when Gary Vaynerchuk said about that, he saw someone ask if the US will ban TikTok, is it a good idea to start TikTok. He replied, of course, it’s a good idea. Of course, you can learn from it. You can get experience on TikTok. If it’s banned, then you can use this experience on other channels. So, yeah, I agree with you.
Emanuel: Before moving forward, I want to say something because I saved the definition here in a book I found, the notion of strategic inflection point, which is a major change in a competitive environment that requires a fundamental change in the business strategy. So AI is one of these strategic inflection points.
Depending on how we adapt and how we embrace AI or not, will determine the future of our organizations, of the success of a company, and so forth. I like to compare it to the internet, having as much of an impact as the internet had in the ’90s, right?
And the companies that went bankrupt, didn’t go bankrupt overnight. It took some time, but you can see where I’m going with this.
Now, when it comes to a solid SEO and digital marketing strategy, and incorporating and embracing the AI technologies, I can only say that there are so many ways you can view it.
I personally, I like to chat with the chatbot myself. “I am a digital marketer, and I’m trying to help this organization. They are operating in these geographical areas, and here’s the data that I have.”
You can feed him with some data about the types of customers you’re going for, the competitors, the data that you already have, the type of customers that already purchased from you, the personas, and so on.
And it will be able to give you more and more accurate information and action points than I believe any other team of experts couldn’t do. You can also say, “I’m limited on the budget, so instead of wasting my efforts on some channels that might not work, where should I focus more?”
Because each business, business is slightly different. If we’re talking about B2B, but even for small businesses, even for a plumber, you can still get tremendous help and get some information that you yourself wouldn’t have thought about it.
Anatolii: Yeah, yeah. I want to ask about finding the right copywriters. I think writing is the main part of any content. We can’t rank content without great writing. And I prefer, personally, to have great text over a nice-looking design. For example, Wikipedia invested. Many big websites can get traffic because of great writing rather than a nice-looking design. And it’s tough, it’s tough to find writers. And I remember in 2008, I hired a team of writers who wrote about anything, all topics. Today, after, I think, we usually search for people with experience in one specific topic.
And even more, we search for people who know how to write in specific topics. I mean, like, you can have experience, but if you don’t know how to write, people bounce fast. And you need to know how to write text that people want to read or consume them. So can you tell, me how you decide this problem, how to find these people, great writers who can bring something new and valuable to a specific topic?
Emanuel: Happy you asked that question. It is nothing, not necessarily something new. It comes naturally. It was the natural way for Google to develop this. Remember a few years ago, like 10 or 12 years, there was this thing, Google authorship, that was linked to your Google+ profile and whatnot.
So it’s kind of like the same thing that EEAT, that was the initial phase. It was hard for Google to link everything, but right now, they obviously got better.
So I believe this authorship is actually something relevant, something useful. You should, if I write something on the topic of SEO or digital marketing, you should probably read Emanuel’s blog.
But if I write something about investing or the stock market, you probably should look for someone else. So to that extent, you may have seen, and that’s something I’ve implemented a while back, of major websites that have now a section, “This article has been reviewed by this person.”
So if it’s something medical related or even let’s say supplements, right, they add a blurb right now saying, “This article has been reviewed by this medic,” with that experience and whatnot. So that’s one way of viewing it. And obviously, that costs, that adds to the budget.
You need to pay, most of the time, that expert to review your content and give his approval. That’s one of my approaches. Then, of course, try to find the specific, the best possible content creator, article writer, and copywriter in that specific niche.
We’re past the stage – nobody’s a generalist anymore. You need to have experience in a specific niche, medical, financial, trades, and so on. A
nd you know, there’s a mix. Always, the winning strategy is when you find an expert in the field who will review the content that a dedicated copywriter has written, plus spice it up with the AI technology that will give you all the information that will be, I would say impossible, but it will require too much time for a person or a team to research.
Let’s say, you have 10 competitors, to analyze all of their content, why are they ranking, you know, go through all of their blogs and say, “Okay, what’s the one thing that neither of them talk about this particular subject, something that I can put on my blog so that I can differentiate from the others and stand out?”
This is one of the approaches that I have when it comes to content creation. And so far, it’s been successful.
Why? Because I try to make the best possible experience, the best possible content for that query, Google tends to prefer this type of approach.
Anatolii: Yeah, basically, if I can’t create better content, even much better content, I usually skip the topics. You know, we can find a lot of other topics, but if you are not sure that you can create something better, then why you need to create just one more piece of content for the sake of having it?
But if you know that you have the confidence to create this content, sometimes we create content because of other things, like link-worthy content or just to get topical authority.
It’s not only about SEO; we can use other digital marketing channels. We know that we can’t rank this content, but it helps to increase topical authority for other topics.
That’s okay as well. And I know, I want to ask about creating non-boring content. You know, people bounce fast, YouTube videos, TikTok, blog articles. And I like books written before digital. For example, many great books were written on how to retain audience, and it’s like human psychology, why they read, and how to catch attention.
And all these insights work even better today because it’s…people are still people; we are the same, but technologies change. And you can bring value, you can share a lot of valuable insights, but if it’s boring, people bounce fast. For example, data. I know it’s important to read business books, but it’s not like other formats.
If I read Jack London, you know, I can live on this book. I can forget about everything. I like this book. But many business books are good for sleeping. You know, just read, sleep well, you know, forget anything from this book. And it’s the same with content. If it’s valuable, who cares if it’s boring? People bounce, you know, and save time.
So I think it’s important to create non-boring content. Can you tell, me how to do it, how to catch attention in the beginning and retain it until the end?
Emanuel: When we talk about content, we’re not just referring to written content, right? We’re referring to graphics; we’re referring to videos. And I’ll stick to video because that’s what tends to grab most of our attention right now.
And you mentioned the attention span. I don’t know how much by seconds, but it significantly decreased, the attention span of everyone, not just the younger generations; even my own 🙂
I don’t have the same attention span that I had, let’s say, two, or three years ago. Right? I’m probably spending more time than I should on TikTok and reels and Instagram and whatnot. Based on what I’ve seen and what I have implemented in my content creation, I do create content, not just written content, but also video, which is what everybody should do right now.
Always, you should know your audience. So I would, again, I wouldn’t start creating videos on the stock market and how you should invest your money and whatnot, because I don’t have expertise, and I don’t particularly want to be known in that field.
So I would talk about digital marketing, I would talk about SEO, I would talk about paid advertising, and so on, something I have experience with.
And because I have experience, I also know what the major pain points of my customers or most of the people who would be interested, in my targeted audience, are.
“Are you spending too much time, too much money on your ads? Why don’t you try this instead? Have you invested so many, so much money into SEO but seen no results? Here’s what you could do. Is your website slow on speed? Try this.”
So these types of approaches, based on the pain points that I know my target audience tend to work better when you start with this. And obviously, what I would recommend is try to experiment in all the formats possible. Start with the ending at the beginning of the video, and so on, until you get it right.
And when do you know yo got it right? Because of the AI again, because of the algorithms, right? TikTok, YouTube, and YouTube shorts, right, are booming right now, are growing faster than the others, the reels and whatnot.
They push your videos to those they think will enjoy more because they want people to spend more time, right?
They feed you the information that you want to watch because they want you to spend more time on that app. So once you do all these tweaks and start doing it constantly, you’ll be able to see what’s working because the algorithm will reward you by showing it to more users.
You’ll be able to see more views, you’ll be able to see more comments, you’ll be able to see more interaction. And once you get a few of these right, then you can replicate and get even more. And by the way, it’s the long-term game. If you do 10 videos or even 50 videos, that would mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. So if you’re embarking on a campaign like that, be ready to do so for the next, I don’t know, for the rest of your life, basically.
That’s how I like to think about it. Because even if you look at somebody like Mr. Beast, let’s say, right? He has billions of views, millions, billions of followers and whatnot, but when did he start it, how long did he actually take, and how many videos did he put on until he got that payment? And you can be the Mr. Beast of your industry. Why not?
Anatolii: Yeah, I watched a few of his interviews about achieving success, and patience is the main issue, I think. Patience is very important in SEO. By the way, I think patience is important for paid marketing as well. I think it takes time to craft the right landing page, to unite with your buying persona, and to collect data.
It’s not like you can do it in one day; it takes time. Even I know companies can lose 500k because of the wrong strategy with paid marketing. However professionals collect data, analyze, compare, and then decide.
SEO takes time; social media takes time. I don’t know how to become an Instagram star overnight. You need to be consistent, to bring value, to, I don’t know, like, to attract your audience in different directions.
And SEO is a long game, but it’s the same with any other channel. And it’s okay. When you film bad videos on YouTube, as MrBeast did, he filmed a lot of bad videos. He recommends filming bad videos but improving a little bit, step by step. In SEO, you can do it as well, just write, create content, and fail. For example, I decided to jump in the PR field because we use PR PR-like link-building strategy.
We paid $6,000 for one press release, $6,000, and we needed to write 12 press releases a week. So it’s like $72,000 a week. Then what we did, was I wrote a bunch of press releases; I failed with all of them, nothing, no results, no mentions, nothing. But I learned how it works.
Then we hired specialists. We didn’t hire them because they wrote for our blog, and most of them are great writers who can post on Bloomberg, Investor, big websites. We ask them to adopt this PR format, 300, 500 words, bullet points, to share an expert opinion, and bring something new, and valuable, about trending topics.
And we took like a few months to craft this strategy, to write great press releases. Then we pitched all of them, and after a few months, we got mentions, CNN, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Investopedia, and Coindesk. And today, we can save $3,700,000 a year because we write press releases ourselves; we don’t pay to PR agencies.
And yeah, I think we get even better results because PR agencies usually hire journalists who can share about trending topics, but we hire experts who know the topic and can adapt to this format. So when we cooperated with these agencies, I didn’t get mentions on CNN, but when we crafted the process, we got mentions on CNN, Bloomberg, and other big websites.
So I think it takes time, and we use today PR like link-building strategy. We replace some standard methods of link building, especially for trading, and investing. It’s tough to get results with white-hat SEO, but if you use PR, it works well, and perfectly fine.
You can get great results. So I recommend to anyone just to spend time, to make your hands dirty, to analyze, to learn, and to go ahead.
Let’s talk about mistakes. You mentioned mistakes; I mentioned how I failed with PR. I didn’t give up; Mr. Beast didn’t give up, achieved unreal success. You share that it’s important about that. So can you list mistakes that we can avoid?
For example, let’s imagine we need to make mistakes; we need to analyze. In marketing, I think it’s a must-have. If you don’t analyze, if you don’t test, nothing will work because we start from generic strategies, and best practices, but you need to be creative, you need to stand out from the rest, and you need to craft your message. Can you tell us mistakes that we can avoid in SEO today, from your experience?
Emanuel: Of course, there are many that we can list; we can probably have a podcast just on that. I would say the biggest one is to think that you know better than anyone else or think that you know it better.
I always approach everything with the beginner mindset, it’s called shoshin mentality,which comes from Zen, Japanese Zen Buddhism. But this is one of the things: always have an open mind and always try to approach, remember that there are always different industries, different geographical locations that don’t correlate with the other.
I’ve seen very many great digital marketers who were extremely successful in one industry, let’s say the fashion industry, and when they move to something else, they couldn’t replicate the same, the same results because they don’t correspond.
So that’s one of the things that I will look for. I don’t have anything specific because there are too many that I can think of right now. I would say the traditional way of approaching stuff is changing when it comes to research when it comes to keywords when it comes to competitors and whatnot.
So having an open mind, trying to zig when others zag, trying to look beyond and be a little brave, you know? We all know that there’s value in zero-volume keywords, right? Even if the tools that we’re using, Semrush, Ahrefs, and whatnot, show us zero volume, we know that there’s value in those, and we can start creating some content around those. Those were the things that I would say are important to look out for.
Anatolii: Got it, got it.
Emanuel: I want to say this: have a culture of making mistakes and learning from them. I didn’t say it, Ray Dalio said it. You know, the companies that learn from them are the ones who are successful in the long run.
Anatolii: Yeah, love it, love it. I want to ask about your experience. Let’s help students who are looking for ways to learn from scratch, especially today when we have AI, and help founders of companies who are looking for ways to get the basics before hiring or outsourcing experts, and consultants.
So if you started today from scratch, without any experience, knowledge, or skills, it’s your first day, what will you do today to learn about SEO and AI?
Emanuel: I would start doing stuff myself. Obviously, learning, reading, taking courses,and participating in conversations are important, but the sooner you start doing and implementing the things yourself, the better, and the faster you’ll become a professional in the industry.
There’s no doubt about it. I spend, and still spend, much time reading, learning, and whatnot, but nothing compares to actually hitting your head because naturally, in digital marketing, everything changes all the time.
So whatever you learn in a tutorial or a class is not available anymore when you try to implement it. But you can have your personal assistant, the AI, who can help you.
And I’ll give you an example right now. I was trying to set up a server on Google Cloud and working with some APIs, trying to determine something, and I found some tutorials on the internet, but obviously, things don’t look the way they were in the tutorials, right? The buttons are not there anymore, the interface changes, the functionality changes, and whatnot. So what I do, and I do this more and more, is I go to chat GPT, in my case, and I ask him, “I have this problem. I’m in this situation. I’m getting this error. How, what can I do about it?”
And be sure that he has knowledge to share, and multiple options that you can have because he doesn’t get it right most of the time, but eventually, he will. And he can help you with that. So that’s the thing. You asked me about what I do if I were to start. I would simply go ahead and do stuff and ask AI, the chat GPTs, and the likes, because it’s not just chat GPT, to assist me in achieving what I want to achieve.
Have you ever told yourself, “Oh, if I can only clone myself to have two of me to work on stuff”? Well, to an extent, chat GPT and the AI can mean that digital clone of yourself if you train him enough and have enough patience with him.
Anatolii: Nice, nice. I want to ask about your personal life, not your personal life, I mean, like, how to find the balance between job, and family, and how to prioritize things, about your daily routine, and schedule. It’s still important for many people to find this balance, to optimize time because we have many disruptions, and many things to do.
And I, you know, I have like plus 100 things to do every single day, but I can’t, I can’t.
So basically, I choose priorities, which ones are important for me. So tell me, how did you decide on this issue,? It’s not like working in SEO; it’s more about enjoying the process.
When you love what you do, then results will come. Then you can be patient. And I see when people give up, they give up because they suffer. And for example, I can play basketball, I can play ping pong,
I love it, and nobody pays money for that because I’m so bad compared to professionals, but I love this experience, you know? I enjoy time to play chess, and many different things. And I think it’s the same with your job as well. You need to enjoy; you need to love the process. But we need to find time for family, you know, to spend time with family, to speak with them, you know. So tell me, your balance, how did you decide all this issue?
Emanuel: I’m probably not the best person to ask, or not the answer that you are waiting for because I am what you might call a workaholic. But again, to address your point, you need to be in love with the process. You truly do.
So even in my previous example, where I had these issues with setting up the Google Cloud, right, having all these errors, the APIs not working and whatnot, I was like, okay, I understand this, the process. I was a little bit nervous, and frustrated, but at the same time, I loved it, you know? I like to troubleshoot; I like to find the answer. And it’s like a game, right?
When it becomes more difficult, we’re playing at a different level right now. You know, you need to find the way to overcome it and succeed. You know, and many times, especially in digital marketing, you can potentially invent your own way of achieving that. I was having issues; I wanted to index, and have Google index a page that was not sitting on a property that I had. So it was a profile on a website. So I kind of like invented one specific approach with the help of my friend, chat GPT, you know? What can we do in this situation?
Now, coming back to the work-life and family balance, you need to be in love with what you do, to identify. But of course, you need to take some time off to do some other stuff as well that you enjoy doing. Spending time with family, that’s always important. Try to reconnect with the people you love. Try to be around them as much as you can. Try to, what I personally do, is try to schedule some time, watch TV with the wife, go to movies, and whatnot.
What I love doing myself is reading. I try to read as much as I can, actually, the real-life experience, IRL, in real life, getting a book, magazines, and whatnot.
And probably, I always lie to people that I play sports. I’m not playing or doing as much sport as I tell people, but I’m trying to incorporate more, and each year, I’m telling myself, “This year, I need to add at least two more hours of sports each week in my life.” I like ice skating right now because it’s really cold in Canada, playing tennis in the summer, the gym, and running.
So that’s where I get, that’s what I do when it’s outside of the work environment.
Anatolii: Yeah, nice. I think sport is very important. You need to act. So, and once, yeah, I don’t remember the name of this book, but I read in this book, you need to have 10 different sports activities in your life.
And in sports, it’s important; it’s okay to be jack of all trades because we can’t compete with professionals who spend all their time on sports. But when you practice 10 different activities, it helps. It helps with longevity, so you can live longer because you, I don’t know, probably different muscles can work, you can reload your mind.
And if I don’t go to play basketball, I’m not productive in my job. If I don’t play soccer, I’m not productive. If I don’t go to the gym, I’m not productive. But I’m not professional; I can’t beat professional. They can beat me inside now, but I just enjoy the process. I love it, different experiences, to jump into these fields.
Emanuel: Yeah, and it’s still competitive with people like me, you know? So I can compete in football, and basketball, but of course, I want to win, but if I lose, that’s okay. Okay, I can go ahead, you know, to try different things.
Anatolii: Yeah, love it, love it. And my final question about the future. Many things are coming fast; we need to adapt. And in digital marketing, it’s a must-have. For example, I compared it with accounting, and other niches, and almost nothing has changed since, I don’t know, like for 20 years. People still use spreadsheets, and calculators. And I spoke with my brother; they told me, no, no, nobody uses AI in these niches.
They still calculate in an old way. But in digital marketing, it’s another experience. You can’t ignore new technologies, and tools. And we see data, 5% of marketers lost their jobs because tools, new technologies can replace them, or someone who adopted these technologies.
Anyway, I want to ask your prediction about the future of SEO, especially about blogging. Let me explain why blogging because I think in 2008, I ignored blogs. We created e-commerce content; Google ranked well because, at that time, Google didn’t recognize user intent. Then things changed; we started to write more blog posts.
We use this format to submit our call-to-action, to interlink with other pages. We get traffic; we get results. But I’m not sure about the future, you know, if I write blog posts, and I replace, I mean, like, search engine, we see Google is going to launch Bard, generative experience, we have chat GPT, many different formats.
Probably it’s not a good idea to pay so much attention to blogging, at least if you want to create strong brand recognition like the New York Times, or Forbes. I think these big publications don’t care a lot about SEO because they have direct traffic. People want to consume this content. It’s like if I take a book, I don’t search, it, I take a book because I want to read this book; it’s insightful for me. So what do you think about the future of SEO? How it will look, and how we can adapt to this possible future?
Emanuel: I don’t have my crystal ball 🔮 with me right now. I have sent it for repair 🙂
But your point about blogs and content in general: at the end of the day, Chat GPT, Google generative experience, Bing chatbot, and whatnot, they still need to pull that data from somewhere.
So having this information available is important. Coming back to the importance of EEAT, right, having Google able to pull that information from an expert and someone relevant in the field, not just anyone, it becomes even more important.
So to an extent, the future of SEO: things are not getting easier for the SEO professional, these tools also help us a lot, but things are not getting easier. So for example, I believe that having more knowledge, more technical knowledge, not necessarily coding and developing, but being able to troubleshoot yourself or creating schema or authorship and all these things, will become very, very detrimental in helping the search engines determine that you or the website you’re working with is the person that they should get their information to their users for.
So that’s one thing. It comes back to the initial statement that Google and the search engines will always try to serve their user with the best possible answer for the query they have. That might change how it looks, but the result will be the same. So I can only look, try to do that, try to put the best possible answer in that form; obviously I’m doing my research, right?
So we’re talking about content, but if I do research and I see on the SERPs that most results are videos, I won’t be writing a piece of blog on that topic, but probably creating a video on that. Actually, right now, it’s really easy to make a video and a blog topic as well, because we can use AI to generate from video to text or from text to video.
We can use both of them. I’ve seen many, many companies that do this successfully. And very important is companies outside of, let’s say, North America, that are becoming successful in North America because right now, with the use of AI, you can easily generate content, have a voice-over that you paid a lot of money in the past to read out loud or to speak about your business and whatnot.
So I would say the future of this is, as always, uncertain, but this is why we’re in this game because we love it, we like to adapt. And the fact that the search engines will try to serve their users with the best possible answer won’t change anytime soon.
If anything, I think paid advertising will play a bigger role overall, in the grand schemes, so one way or another, Google will take more money out of our pockets.
Anatolii: It’s insightful, you know. But you don’t know the future, but you know you need to adapt fast. So basically what’s working, what’s new coming? When you learn all this information, you will be fine because we are in the second stage. We can create TikTok; we can create Google; we can create chat GPT, but we can use all these tools to get results. And if you do it faster than your competitors, you will be fine. Just update what you have, focus, and don’t try to take all trends.
If you are not good with TikTok, why do you need to do it? For example, Stephen King, he dosen’t create content for TikTok because the is good at writing. So we need to combine our strong side, our, I don’t know, like, passion. If you have passion, then you can touch in your field.
I can ignore some formats because I know I can be successful in all formats.
Sometimes I can do it if I’m so bad because I enjoy the process, and I don’t care about what kind of skills you have. If you love it, if you passion, then do it. Forget about if someone can beat you today. On the one side, someone beat Mr. Beast in one day, but today he can beat anyone on this field because he was passionate about that. You know, it’s a big pleasure to get my show, to learn from you. I love this experience, so fun, and valuable. Tell, me the best way, how to keep from you, how to reach out to you, how to follow you.
Emanuel: Thank you. It’s a pleasure as well. Well, the best way to go is to my website, EmanuelP.com, EMANUELP.COM.
Over there, you’ll find links, contact forms, and links to my social profiles. I’m fairly active on LinkedIn.
You’ll find a link to my course on Udemy as well, SEO audit master class for 2024 and beyond.
Since you’re on Udemy, do check out Anatolii’s course as well, because I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve tried, I’ve implemented some small tweaks in my process because, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re doing. We’re always trying to improve, always trying to tweak, always try to experiment, and learn from each other.
But my website, EmanuelP.com, is where people can find more information about me and links to all the relevant materials that I put out there.
Anatolii: Nice, nice. Guys, you can find all links to the course, to the website, to the LinkedIn account in the description below. Listen to us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Thanks again for the time. Love it, you know, how to share value. You’re so kind on that. I think if you know how to share value, then you know how to provide great results. Okay, guys, thanks a lot for listening and watching.
