AI Issues in Content Creation: Striking a Balance Between SEO and Authenticity

Doug Downs (00:03):

Every week as we publish a new podcast episode, I have to wrestle with a dilemma, what to call the episode. For example, we did an episode recently that we titled Public Relations Strategies When Companies Hire Controversial Leaders. Alright, straightforward enough from the title, you have an idea of what the episode is about. You know what I really wanted to call the episode? How to put Lipstick on a Pig for me, if I saw that headline, I think I would click on it because it sounds less corporate. It breaks the normal pattern of what we see from brands. I think it's a better title. And hey, as public relations and marketing Pros, whom among us hasn't had to put lipstick on a pig? It's relatable. But ultimately, I went with the first title, public Relations Strategies When Companies Hire Controversial Leaders. Why did I do that?

(00:59):

Because I'm constantly looking at SEO Analytics for search terms people are using to find this podcast and other PR podcasts. One of the most common terms is, duh, public relations. Others that are peripherally connected are company's controversial and leaders. So did I sell out? Yeah, I did. But here's why. When we started this podcast, we called it Stories and Strategies, that's all I ever call it verbally. And we grew at a modest pace, but it wasn't until we changed the formal name of the podcast to Stories and Strategies for public relations and marketing that the podcast really started to take off. More people found it because we added two critical search terms to the title. So there's the challenge today on stories and strategies, whom to please human beings or search engine algorithms that help bring those human beings to us in the first place.

(02:14):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Vince Nero, joining today from Greenwich, Connecticut. Hey Vince. Hey, Doug. How you doing? You're in the fancy part of the New York area, right? You're in Connecticut, but this is where the fancy New Yorkers go for their cottages and their chalets. How is life in Greenwich? It's pretty fancy here.

Vince Nero (02:36):

I am just renting. We are in kind of this weird spot where it turns very blue collar very quickly. So unfortunately I'm not in a mansion, but we are close to mansions and I am very jealous.

Doug Downs (02:51):

Awesome. Vince, you are the director of content marketing with Buzzstream.com, one of my favorite newsletters, and you've been doing content marketing for over 10 years. You've also got a Bachelor of music jazz performance from the Manhattan School of Music someday. I don't know when, but you and I'll have to do a music episode. I love jazz. I do appreciate jazz, but I love playing music myself.

Vince Nero (03:17):

Awesome. Yeah, that's another podcast. We'll get to it.

Doug Downs (03:20):

Another one. Yeah. So let me ask you point blank. When you're writing something, are you thinking about the human reader, viewer, listener, or are you thinking about the algorithm

Vince Nero (03:34):

As a general rule? Always lean on the human side, but you can use the algorithm as a guide. Although these days it seems like it's moving more and more towards the human side of things. What we're seeing, I think through a lot of different changes in the SEO world right now, and the Google monster is a handful of things that are kind of coming at once. And by the time this goes live, something might have even changed. But so the past few years, Google's been pushing this thing called helpful content, and they've been rolling out these updates every couple months. They eventually rolled out a real big one in March, 2024. That was not necessarily a, and I might get the terminology wrong here, it's a core update or it's more of a system, the helpful content system. So it's essentially how their algorithm acts rather than a pointed change. So how it acts, it evaluates content. And this is something that I think kind of rolled out in conjunction with ai. And this is happening at the same time that Google's been getting all this kind of push from chat, GPT, open, AI, perplexity, all these other search engines that Google, I think is just in the stakeholders starting to worry about chat gt taking some of their traffic and taking some of their users. So absolutely what you saw is Google trying to rush to get there.

(05:31):

Now they call it AI overviews, which is this little snippet that appears at the beginning of some of the search engine results page when you search for something, sometimes it doesn't. And they rolled that out first for a while and got a lot of negative feedback and they tweaked it and they're rolling it out somewhat nowadays. You also have seen Google took a big investment in Reddit. So that happened around the same time as helpful content. And what you were starting to see is all of a sudden people were complaining because Reddit was outranking you in the SERPs seeing a lot of Reddit. And that, I think caused a lot of what you saw in the original AI overviews where it was saying put glue on pizza and all this crazy stuff. It was because Google was training some of its data, I think, off of Reddit.

(06:33):

And when it didn't have a clear answer in the SERPs, it would go to Reddit. But the fact that Google was showing Reddit a lot was starting to turn the wheels, I think in a lot of the SEO realm saying, Hey, Google doesn't think what we're writing about has enough experiential information in there. So the last thing I'll say on this is the other thing that happened was this big Google leak and Google's algorithm or API was leaked. We don't know how recent it was or how relevant it is now, but there were a lot of signals in there that talked about some of these same things that we're talking about. They didn't necessarily mention experience in there. It's really hard to quantify some of these more qualitative things. But we did just really see certain things like backlinks were a little more important than they led on certain types of backlinks, relevance of backlinks.

(07:44):

And so this started the wheels turning in the SEO community again, where it's like, well, does Google actually value links and is it the content on the page or is it the links? So the more Google has been rolling out all these changes and stuff, it's just kind of like this mishmash. But I think what it's getting down to is your brand is very important on Google right now that ties into ai. The more you can get your brand talked about, the better. The more new content you can put out there that Google can use in their large language model to put out on AI overviews, the more new information you can present, the less they have to rely on stuff like Reddit and these other forums. So when you're thinking about, to get back to your original question, when you're thinking about who are you writing for a reader or an algorithm, right?

(08:55):

It's kind of shooting and moving target, trying to hit a moving target because it is changing. But I think all the signs are pushing towards this idea that you need fresh information, fresh experiences, really talk about what you're doing and really just you need to put in the work. You can't gain the system like you couldn't. And we see cycles like this all the time. People just try to exploit something and then Google comes and wipes it out and they exploit, they find something else, exploit it and Google wipes it out. So it's not anything new, but I think the AI piece of it really has thrown a wrench into some people's projections.

Doug Downs (09:38):

Yeah, there's a new cowboy in town that's threatening Google if I make great content. And the measurement for that is people like it. If I think it's awesome, but nobody likes it, it's not very good. But if I make content that people really like, there are a lot who say, don't sweat SEO, you'll get the organic growth. And I'm sure over time they're right. I'm not debating that, but I'm an impatient person and granite growth as in two friends, tell two friends, tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. I'm not willing to wait for that because to create that great content, it took me four hours for every episode that I do here. It is actually six hours only end of work, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, depends on the episode. So that's why I look at SEO as a way to bring more eyeballs or ears to my great content. And I mean, there's the essence of this episode, and that's why I find this a chicken in the egg kind of thing. Can we focus too much at times though, on SEO? Can I create a crappy headline that I know I mentioned Joe Rogan, so as soon as I mentioned Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan for the transcript, that'll pop and the algorithm will like that. But do I sacrifice the quality of the content sometimes for that?

Vince Nero (11:08):

Yeah, I mean, there's two ways to look at it. Are you writing for your users? I mean, it gets back to your original question. Are you writing to your users or are you writing to play the game? Play the Google game?

Doug Downs (11:20):

And sometimes you are, I don't want to criticize that strategy. Sometimes that's the game.

Vince Nero (11:24):

But I think the most successful SEOs, content marketers have the foot in both. You know how to play the game enough to fulfill what you think Google needs. But then you also are taking that holistic approach where you're doing the work and putting in all the information that you need. So you can go the wrong way with SEO a hundred percent. And I mean, we've seen Google has come in and back in the day, I think you could just do that. You could say Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift, and well, it worked, but people started exploiting that and they realize, okay, and now I think it's gotten to a point where you hear a lot of talk about entity matching and then information gain and all this kind of large language model kind of speak that I am just kind of trying to wrap my head around.

(12:30):

But there's nodes within entities, and I think it again gets back to the idea of your brand and who, what do you want to be associated with? So when you're talking about SEO, when I am building content for BuzzStream, I try to link out and talk about people within the digital PR space, within the SEO space, within the link building space, because those are really the three areas that I want to play in. So if I were to go out and write something about the best Taylor Swift concerts, that's not going to work. We're not going to be able to rank, it's not applicable to our audience, doesn't help the brand at all. So that's kind of step one is always making sure that you're being relevant. And I think a lot of that, those concerns from over optimizing for SEO can start to fix themselves as long as you're staying relevant to your audience. Yes, there is a way to over optimize using even tools like keyword tools and stuff like SEMrush.

(13:53):

You can use them as a crutch, but if it's telling you to write, I mean, I still make those mistakes, don't get me wrong, Don. I have a great editor who points this stuff out to me. It's like, Hey, is this header an SEO header? It reads kind of funky and it's like trying to get these sequence of keywords within the header, or you see sites that reuse the keyword and every single header and even that I've gone through in the past, the agency life and even now, and we call it just Deming, a site where it doesn't rank for a keyword overly, there's too much keyword stuffing. And that's where you can go wrong with a lot of these tools that lead you. They guide you towards best practices, but you still have to know at the end of the day where that threshold is.

Doug Downs (14:56):

So then tell me, what advice would you give content creators who are struggling to find this right mix? It's almost like gardening. If I add too much of this, my plants don't grow, but if I add too much of that, my plants don't grow either and there is no perfect. It depends on my garden and the kind of soil that I've got. What's your advice to content creators that are wrestling with this balance?

Vince Nero (15:27):

I'd say two things. One is to test, test what you're working on, test how far you can push these boundaries, how far you can take these tactics without exploiting 'em. The other one, and this kind of falls into that, is don't just do something because you read a case study about it. Not every tactic works for every site, not every tactic works for every industry. Just because your competitors are doing something doesn't necessarily always mean you should be doing it. So it is a balancing act for sure. Sure. But I don't know. The third thing I would say is you go with your gut. If you're really, I mean, a big part of what our customers do and what our platform does at BuzzStream is allow people to do email outreach. So say you've created some piece, some data, study your website and you want to pitch it to a journalist or an industry news site and you want them to cover it to get it out there, get that content distribution.

(16:41):

There is a lot of the emails that get written are written in such a robotic way that people are trying to scale this stuff out. I'm sure you've gotten them, Doug, these types of emails. And what I tell people is when I'm training them, or even when I was back at the agency, we train new people. It's like, if you received this email, would you take action on it? Put yourself in the other person's shoes. So I think the same thing could be said for content. If you were on the other side of this, would you read this and get value out of it? And if the answer is no, or if the answer is this is a little too much, I don't even need this. I challenge you to get rid of that kind of stuff, especially now, because I think that used to work, right? I said this earlier, I think it used to work to be able to look at what everybody else was doing. It kind of do the same thing you're writing about the types of podcast microphones. You look at everybody else, oh, they use this header that says the best condenser mics, the

Doug Downs (17:54):

Best, how to find the best podcast. Everybody is writing how to in the title.

Vince Nero (18:00):

And

(18:01):

I mean, funny story too, to go along with this, and I think of this all the time now. I have a friend who just moved into a new house and he's doing some work on it. He knows I work in SEO and every couple nights at 10 30 where I know he's been working on a project all day, he'll text me and be like, Vince trying to figure out how to fix this door. And every single article that I read tells me the history of the door. It tells me every single type of doors I got to scroll like 30 times through the post and get to what I actually need. And it's like, yeah, you're right. And because that used to work, anytime you would explain a topic, you would say here, and I still sometimes do it, we talk about digital PR all the time.

(18:50):

It's like, what is digital pr? What are the types of digital pr? What, because there's kind these mental check boxes that you want to do as an SEO where it's like, oh, I got to fulfill, this is what these people are looking at and this is what my competitors are doing and their ranking. So I must have to do that too. But yeah, I think we're just getting so far away from needing to do that these days, especially because of AI and AI overviews and chat GPT, they're going to answer all those questions for us. So people don't want that stuff from us anymore. They want, I spent eight hours trying to fix this one piece on my door. Here's exactly how I did it. There's very specific detailed piece showing your actual pictures. You're not losing stock photography of doors. So that's where we're headed.

Doug Downs (19:44):

Won't it be interesting when chat GPT or an alternative can create a video for me that explains the DIY of this? Because that's the reason I use YouTube. How do I change the hinges on a door? YouTube, bam, it's right there. The days, no doubt coming when chat GPT can create that video for me either with animation or with what looks like real people.

Vince Nero (20:09):

Yeah, it's scary. And to build off of that, I just read a stat and it's like 91% of Gen Z uses TikTok as their search platform.

Doug Downs (20:22):

I saw that.

Vince Nero (20:23):

So in 10 years from now or whatever, it's like, is Google, are these people still going to be using TikTok is the whole search ecosystem might change. I even forgot one. Doug. Google lost their antitrust, which has been a huge weight on their stock of late. And so I don't necessarily think this is going to happen, but what if Google has to break up and all of a sudden it's not dominating the industry and are more people going to start using chat GPT? So there's a lot of unknowns, but I think at the end of the day, it's just, look, put yourself in your reader's shoes. Put yourself in your content consumer shoes. What do they want to hear? What's going to actually be helpful for them? And that's going to fulfill 90% of what you need to do.

Doug Downs (21:20):

Vince, in our previous episode, our guest Dallas Taylor left a question for you,

Dallas Taylor (21:27):

Out of all the things you could have been doing in your life to maybe make more money or do this or that, or you could be an accountant or a lawyer or a doctor or start a business, why have you devoted your life to, or at least this period of your life, to insert the pursuit that you're on right now? So if I'm talking to a sound designer, why have you devoted your life to sound or why have you devoted your life to auditory processing issues? And then what you hear is a big pause and then poetry usually because no one's really been asked why they do what they do.

Vince Nero (22:07):

Great question. I like it. And it made me think a lot. I mean, I am, as I went to music school, I wanted to be a jazz saxophonist in New York City, and I just wasn't making enough money to live even to live in New York City on top of it, but just to live in general. And it was getting to the point where I was doing so many side jobs that I didn't get any joy out of it anymore. So I wanted to do something that was still interesting, still let me use my right side of my brain, and I thought I wanted to get into advertising. And then I just kind of fell backwards into a marketing position. And then it led me into the world of SEO, and it kind of fits with what I was just talking about.

(23:11):

A lot of this is seemingly simple because my answer was you just write for what the people. I think what happens is you get too far down the rabbit hole with some of these tactics and some of these industries and you just lose sight of the end user. So I feel like I've always been good at just being able to stay a little away from that and keeping my head out of that so that I always can make sure that I'm writing for the user, not manipulating something. And I don't know, I just found that it was very easy to look at what other people were doing and be like, you shouldn't be doing that at all. Why? And maybe they can't see the farce in the trees, or maybe they're just trying to get some quick wins or something. But at the end of the day, what do you really want to be doing? Do you want to be creating good stuff that's going to be helpful for people or are you going to just make a couple extra bucks and it just doesn't appeal to,

Doug Downs (24:23):

And you know what? There's a little bit of jazz to what we do. We play within a band. There is kind of a structure, but we ad-lib a lot of it. And we're listening to the audience and listening to the other players in the band. We are jazz musicians. Vince.

Vince Nero (24:37):

I love it, Doug. Yeah,

Doug Downs (24:40):

We are. Awesome. Your turn. What question would you like to leave behind for our next guest?

Vince Nero (24:46):

All right. What's the one thing you don't like about your work life balance and what can you do to change it?

Doug Downs (24:55):

Wow.

Vince Nero (24:57):

It's kind of a challenge and I think it's something for me, I left an agency because I was feeling way too overwhelmed, way too stressed. It was pandemic. I was having my first kid and I couldn't deal with it. And I was like, I need to make a change. And that was a big moment for me and I want to challenge other people to try to do that as well.

Doug Downs (25:25):

I love that. Thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Vince Nero (25:30):

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Doug.

Doug Downs (25:32):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Vince Niro, we've got his contact information in the show notes, check out his newsletter, BuzzStream, sign up and subscribe. I have. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Beg thanks as always, to our producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.