Johnny and Clayton Wood, a seasoned digital marketer with 18 years of experience, discussed the intersection of AI and SEO, particularly how these advancements are affecting business growth online. Clayton introduced his company, Volado Labs, and discussed its collaboration with Bottle on AI-related projects. They highlighted the significant shift in consumer search behaviors, with more users leaning towards AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini for product and service searches. This shift has led to a decrease in organic web traffic as AI overviews in search results increasingly provide direct answers. Clayton emphasized the importance of optimizing Google Business profiles, creating high-quality, original content, and obtaining reviews to maintain visibility in AI-driven search results. They also discussed the potential impact of AI on local SEO and shared strategies for local businesses to stay competitive, including the use of social media and engagement with local publications. Clayton concluded with the necessity of reporting and tracking SEO efforts using tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush.
Leveraging AI and SEO for Local Business Growth: Insights from Digital Marketing Veteran Clayton Wood
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In this live discussion, Clayton Wood, an 18-year veteran in digital marketing, joins Johnny on Facebook Live to talk about the evolving landscape of SEO in the age of AI. Clayton discusses his extensive experience in SEO, particularly his work with high-growth startups in Silicon Valley. The conversation delves into how AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini are reshaping user search behavior and what strategies local businesses can adopt to stay ahead. They cover practical steps for improving local SEO, including the importance of blogging, optimizing Google Business profiles, gathering customer reviews, and leveraging content on social media and local publications. The session concludes with Clayton emphasizing the need for unique, high-value content and continuous tracking and analytics.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:35 Clayton's Background in Digital Marketing
01:46 Impact of AI on SEO and Search Behavior
03:42 Google's AI Overview and Competitors
07:29 AI's Influence on Local Business Search
16:06 Optimizing for Local SEO and AI
17:37 Leveraging Content and Reviews for SEO
29:45 Tools and Strategies for SEO Success
37:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
[00:00:08] Johnny Watson: We are live. Clayton, thanks for joining us today.
As people are, are joining the live here on Facebook, feel free to just share the name of your service, where you're calling in from, and, uh, yeah, Clayton would love a little intro. Maybe you can share the kind of work we're doing together, the work you've worked on in the past and why we're having this conversation today.
[00:00:33] Clayton Wood: Sure. Thanks Johnny. Appreciate it. And hey everybody. Um, my name's Clayton Wood. Uh, I've been working in digital marketing for about 18 years, um, and it's nice to be with Bottle today. Bottle and my company, Volado Labs, are doing some interesting work together. Uh, around AI and how it relates to SEO Probably heard, uh, about this if you've been, uh, looking at how to grow your business online, uh, because everybody's talking about it.
I've been doing SEO specifically for going on 18 years and got my start in Silicon Valley, uh, in San Francisco. Um. I moved to Florida during COVID, so I'm in south Florida, um, where the weather's always hot and beautiful and there's beaches everywhere. I love it here. But I've had the good fortune of working on some really interesting products, mostly high growth startups.
direct to consumer B2B and have just worked on hundreds of projects, uh, over the years. Worked, uh, on DoorDash and WebEx, and Cisco, and a lot of others. so I think Johnny, what might be good is if we talk a little bit about. How AI is changing the, the SEO industry, and how how people are searching for things.
I think that behavior's probably changing, and that's really where everybody is interested to understand what, what's happening, how people are making decisions online to go with different brands.
[00:02:10] Johnny Watson: Definitely. And you know, I, I've experienced this in my own life. There's still a handful of things.
I'll go to Google Maps. Directly to search for. There's plenty, but when it comes to like a product purchase and decision, I'm definitely leaning on ChatGPT, that's my LLM of choice. Um, but yeah, I'm curious what your view of Clayton is on this shift and how people can prepare for it.
[00:02:36] Clayton Wood: Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting.
I'm curious, do you have the ChatGPT app on your phone and you talk to it audibly?
[00:02:43] Johnny Watson: I do. Yeah. Um, I'm not a fan of the voices yet, so I don't, I don't tend to use the, the voice because of it. I remember when they first released the voice feature, they had almost a, like, for like clone with Scarlett Johansson's voice from the movie her.
It was like a whole lawsuit because of it, and I recognized it immediately as I used it. I was like, this is the voice from her and we've already like stepped into that future. Me too. Since we've removed it, I, I don't tend to use the voice chat very often. No.
[00:03:14] Clayton Wood: Yeah. If I remember correctly, she had a problem with it and was like, no, take that down.
I don't want to be this voice, but
[00:03:21] Johnny Watson: That's right. Yeah.
[00:03:22] Clayton Wood: Yeah. I was just watching something on the news that was saying how many jobs. Are gonna change roles, uh, because of AI, and that's a larger conversation. But Google seems to have really started dumping a lot of money into catching up with ChatGPT. So they have Gemini.
Um, I don't know if, if anybody out there uses Gemini, but when you search for something, either on your phone, on the Google app or on Google.com on your desktop, and you look at the search results. Uh, you may have noticed, at the top there's a couple of paragraphs and it's labeled AI Overview, um, from Google, and, uh, that's powered by Google's LLM, called Gemini.
So there's this big race of course between ChatGPT and Gemini, and then Twitter has GROK and a number of other, LLMs like Claude and Perplexity. And uh, it's pretty interesting. and it's sort of changed the way that, that people look for stuff. Like Johnny said, he's, interacting with ChatGPT also interact with ChatGPT quite a bit, but what we've found is that most, uh, people that are using, uh, an AI to, to find information are using it. In the top or middle of the funnel and the funnel, example that we're using is, like this. So at the top of the funnel, um, questions and inquiries might be very general.
Like, Hey, what's a good meal prep plan for a diet if I'm trying to lose X number of pounds, or if I'm trying to gain muscle, or whatever it is. It's a really general inquiry that I'm sure ChatGPT or any AI could, could spit out the answer and it's very good. Uh, those people at the top of the funnel are still in research phase.
They're asking general questions about perhaps nutrition or options. So there's a lot of people that are doing these very top of funnel general inquiry type of questions with AI now, either with ChatGPT or or Google's Gemini. And if you think about it, a lot of those questions and a lot of those.
Sessions of research used to be done in Google search. You know, you would type it into your phone, ask that question, and then you'd get the 10 blue links, uh, with what Google thought was the, the best websites to answer that question for you. Well, now Google's just taking, the Google Gemini, the AI is, is taking whatever information it knows in its brain, which is pretty much everything out there on the web, and it's serving you an answer.
And what that means is that if you're just asking a general inquiry like what, what's a good meal prep schedule or strategy it spit the answer back out to you. And if you're not ready to make a decision on anything, if you were just wanting more information, then you have that information. It's answered your question.
And. You may not click through to a website. It, maybe it's not time, for the user to start looking for an actual solution or, or a subscription or, or a company to choose from. So we're actually seeing a lot of web traffic going down, um, because Google is answering a lot of users top of funnel questions.
Right in the search results in the AI overview box, and the user doesn't need to click through to the, uh, to the websites. So it really, yeah.
[00:07:05] Johnny Watson: Sorry to cut you off there, Clayton. It's just, it's such an interesting point 'cause I, I can see how as like a jour online journalist, publication or any business that provides information to other human beings.
This is pretty catastrophic in a way where Google is now completely cannibalizing that traffic and, and that demand for the answer to that question.
[00:07:28] Clayton Wood: Yep.
[00:07:29] Johnny Watson: When we think about local business and how the ai uh, search response is being presented at the top of some Google queries, what do you think it means for businesses, uh, meal prep owners around, uh, the US Canada, who.
When you search meal prep near me in a given city, let's say Denver, that's where I am, and you can see the top three, um, meal prep companies in the map pack. How do you think AI search is gonna impact traffic that are getting mapped through to businesses there who have the best keywords and the best reviews?
Like what's your view on that?
[00:08:09] Clayton Wood: Yeah, great question. I think there's probably always going to be a place in the search results for local businesses, uh, brick and mortar businesses where Google can tell that somebody wants to find out where geographically something is. So that map pack, I think is, is going to be around in some form.
And all of the normal things that, that Bottle, uh, and, and the other companies that. That know how to rank high on Google Maps. Uh, all of their recommendations and advice are really, really important. Um, with things like reviews and you know, fully optimized profiles and services and prices and all that stuff.
Citations. But I think the near me, qualifier in the search term example that you just gave is probably the most important part. If you notice, if you do a lot of searches in Google, if Google thinks at all that you're looking for something local, and there is a local business that it feels is relevant, they will serve that on a map.
Um, and I don't think that's going away, but with ai, the, the whole idea of, uh, of getting more impressions and more mentions. For relevant search terms or questions in an AI is content on, on the website. Uh, so the written words on the website, and I think the format is really important. Meaning is it long form?
Uh, is it easy to understand? Are there spaces between the paragraphs? Are there questions and answers written on the, the website? If you think about. Uh, like a conversational type of text, perhaps the transcription to, to this, live stream that we're doing or anything that follows, like regular spoken language format.
I think that's what that, that's what Google is looking for and what Google shows the most in the top of the search results. Questions and answers are big shorter scannable paragraphs and bullet points and lists and recipes and all of that stuff that is easy for the AIs to aggregate out to serve to the user.
Yeah,
[00:10:29] Johnny Watson: that makes sense. So it seems like when someone does search for. I'll say Meal Prep Dallas, because we have Brad from, uh, Punch Drunk Chef meal prep, PDC, who, who joined us on the podcast two weeks ago. he just shared in the chat here that, uh, he isn't currently using Chat GPT to find products or services, but Ariel, who works hand in hand with Brad is, um, I think that's pretty.
That's probably a good stat right now is for every person in a team who's still just getting into it, there's someone else who has been using it a little bit more for the past few months, and I can imagine that trend's gonna increase. But for Brad, who is in Dallas and someone searches meal prep Dallas, that's probably gonna be what a com we'd consider a commercial search, and it's probably gonna surface businesses.
Yeah, but there's probably also some traffic in, uh, Dallas who are searching like, what is meal prep, for example? And that's probably the type of question that is gonna start to, to appear in those like AI search results, especially if someone's searching for that in Chat GPT, for example.
[00:11:41] Clayton Wood: Absolutely. You wanna have all of your bases covered because for many searches in Google.
If you just analyze what it gives you, you can tell that it may not be sure exactly what you're looking for, whether it's local or an actual product or research. And in those cases it shows you everything. I don't know if we can screen share on this effectively so everybody could see it, but if we can I'll show you what I'm talking about.
[00:12:08] Johnny Watson: Yeah, we definitely can.
[00:12:10] Clayton Wood: Alright, cool. So can you see this? Yes. Uh, the Google search results great. Yeah. So I'm in South Florida in Palm Beach County. You can see that it's telling me clearly it's giving me results for a local market, and I didn't give it anything that is, uh, local specific. because I'm asking about a meal delivery service for healthy food, maybe it's not sure if I'm talking about.
DoorDash or Uber Eats, or maybe it thinks I'm looking for a, an actual meal prep company or a subscription. So you can see the different components of the search results. First of all, there's a bunch of sponsored, uh, Google Ads listings that come up first, but if you scroll down here, it's got the AI overview and it's already listing some meal prep companies.
So it's given me. What it thinks I'm asking for, even though I didn't say anything, uh, about subscription or anything. I just said delivery service. Mm-hmm. So it's given me some from the meal prep industry and then it gives me, the sponsored results with like, lists of things. But what's interesting is, and here it gives me videos, you can tell it's not sure what exactly I'm looking for, so it's giving me everything.
Even down here now it starts giving me local results, but in this case, the maps is way down the page. ' cause
[00:13:40] Johnny Watson: it's really prioritizing answering the the person's question first.
[00:13:45] Clayton Wood: Yes. Whereas if you go and look at this, it's probably gonna be a lot higher on the page. Yeah. So we still have the sponsored ads, but then here's the local.
Folks that are relevant,
[00:13:59] Johnny Watson: and that top three is typically always where the majority of clicks are gonna be for any given search.
[00:14:06] Clayton Wood: Without a doubt. I don't wanna say an exact percentage, but it is uh, the overwhelming majority. And it's because, uh, the, the only way to get to more listings on the map is to click this more places down here.
And whether you have dark mode or light mode on. this button isn't standing out very much. It's very easy to to miss. and there's so much data on this page that you're probably going to click on something here before you come and click on more places and then bring up the entire map. So,
[00:14:42] Johnny Watson: Let's kind of just, you know, riff on this and brainstorm 'cause I think we're. The industry in general in meal prep and outside. Anyone who's trying to get ahead of this change and how humans are searching for things online. Let's brainstorm what the best use of, uh, time and energy would be for a business owner in meal prep.
So when someone is asking one of those questions. What are, like, what are healthy meal prep options or the more informational questions, the one that you just search for, does a local business really have a shot at getting suggested higher up on Google for answering that question when they're up against some of the, the nationwide players in meal prep, like factor, or as we saw on the screen there in the meal kit space?
Is that a good use of time or do you think there's ways to be able to rank higher in local SEO, like the map pack and how, you know, people searching in chat, GPT and in Gemini, how the results are surfaced based on their positioning in the map pack? Like any just high level views. Based on, on that kind of question.
[00:16:01] Clayton Wood: Yeah. I think it's both. I think both are really critical. So I would be blogging at least once a week as a local, let's say Dallas meal prep company. I would be talking about, uh, what makes, your company unique? I would be putting near me in, in the content of those blogs each week, and that would be at minimum.
Then there's some really good, uh, requirements that we know trigger some ranking factors in Google when you're blogging. That's probably another, uh, another live stream for another time. 'cause it gets pretty intricate. But the longer word count, the better. The, the, the better the formatting or the shorter the formatting.
Lots of subheadings, interlinking, all sorts of interesting stuff. If anybody wants more information about that, they can reach out to me afterwards and I'll share what I know with them. But to your point about better local rankings, I think having a system in place that is. Absolutely working. Every possible review that you could get is really critical, and there's platforms out there for that or just, asking for it, and creating a culture of getting that review on Google.
Um, so getting Bottles help with that, uh, is really critical and making sure that. There's something in it for 'em. You know, you want an honest review, but those reviews are very heavily weighted. another thing that I've seen get some traction with local SEO, and, and I know everybody teaches this certainly Bottle, but the, the optimization of the Google business profile is really critical.
And there's some key places inside of the Google business profile that I don't think are used a lot. And the idea is that we want to use, we wanna put our best foot forward to Google. So anything that Google has for us to use in the Google business profile, we should use it and we should use it as much as we possibly can.
So our small stuff like hours of operation or the service categories, of course. Um, but some of the lesser known ones are there's a posting capability inside of Google Business profile. You can post sales, you can post packages, you can post, um, promotions. It's not quite a social media feed, but it does have a little bit of, uh, space in the, in the maps, in the search results when you post that kind of stuff on a regular basis.
So I would really encourage everybody to, uh, get into their Google business profile, become very familiar with it, and not only get all of the reviews that you can, but uh, use all of the features of the Google Business profile. We don't know how much that matters to Google, but if we're, if we're doing full court press, like everything that we can, all the time.
Then I think it's a good practice to adopt using Google's products how they're supposed to be used and as much as possible.
[00:19:21] Johnny Watson: I really like that. And I know Brad is, is, is joining on the call here, but he shared a story last time we were on the pod together, that he had a customer who came in and one of the higher average, cart values. So it was someone who came in and really built their week out around Brad and his meal prep service, and they found him initially through a ChatGPT search, I believe it was. And then they cross-referenced it on Gemini. They were like, I don't know if it was the same search twice, or it was like, I learned this over here.
Can you validate that they are the best meal prep option in Dallas? But that was a way that he won a customer who sounds like the exact type of customer a meal prep, uh, service wants to win. As someone who has a high likelihood of ordering week to week. So how much do you, Clayton think that the current Google Map rankings impacts a question being asked on ChatGPT, for example, and then also Gemini.
I know there's nuances between the two. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
[00:20:29] Clayton Wood: I don't think that it's a major contributing factor for the LLMs, Gemini and ChatGPT to associate a brand name with particular keywords. I think that typically comes from the words on the the website, which is why blogging is so important.
So the idea is if LLMs large language models and AI. If what they're doing is just trying to predict the next word that, that should be put in a sentence, then there's got to be something that triggers, uh, their database and their algorithm associated with, brand. Let's say PDC, meal prep and meal prep Dallas.
And we want to always be mentioning these things together. As much as we possibly can. In fact, if PDC doesn't mind, I'll show We've got this really cool, um, SaaS product that allows us to, to see, uh, that PDC has 40 keywords that are relevant but are not linking. To the PDC Meal Prep domain. Okay. So when you asked earlier, do you think that it's possible for a smaller local business to have significant representation in the Chat GPT output or Google Gemini output?
Yes. The answer's yes. In fact, we can see, uh, if, if we can see how much representation there, there's an opportunity for. So the idea would be, and that this is what we help our, our projects do. This is our service, is go and blog about or write about these 40 keywords. Make it so that it's in the format, um, and optimized for the AI search engines and Chad g Bt, and you will start seeing, uh, your brand.
Uh, be produced and, and shown up in the output of ChatGPT. You'll start getting mentioned verbally. You'll start getting mentioned in the links that Gemini provides. Uh, and this is how we do it for our, our clients.
[00:22:39] Johnny Watson: Brilliant. Are you open, uh, to sharing some examples of, of the questions that somebody might be searching to find?
Punch Drunk Chef in Dallas.
[00:22:49] Clayton Wood: Yeah, this is just one click away with, uh, right from that screen I was just on. But here's ones that do have the, all of these keywords have an AI overview at the top of Google, and the website is not mentioned in that AI overview. So it's all of the meal prep companies, local meal prep, PDC, near me.
Now, all of these may not be super relevant. The idea would be to go through and choose the relevant ones and then create content on the website that talks about food planning services if we think that would be a good keyword to show up for. Certainly, there's some obvious ones like meal prep prices.
This would be a person that's like at the bottom of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel are price related searches and high intent searches. So if somebody's searching for pricing, you can, it's a good assumption that they've already decided that they want to do meal prep, they want to find a company.
Now they're just in the pricing phase. And if, if pricing is is good and that's part of the value proposition of the brand, then this would be a. Probably a high converting keyword, uh, right here.
[00:24:06] Johnny Watson: Hmm, that's really interesting. I see a little further up on the list. I saw local meal prep, uh, position 15. Is that for pdc meal prep.com?
[00:24:18] Clayton Wood: It is. Yeah. So we've actually got a visual, uh, result of this and the PDC meal prep dot com's listing highlighted right here in yellow. Now that's 15 because if you scroll to the top, you can see, uh, this is still populating. But if it were populated, they would not be in here. And then it starts counting position 1, 2, 3, and so on.
And then they're down here in the 15th spot.
[00:24:51] Johnny Watson: That's quite incredible 'cause this is a nationwide result, right?
[00:24:54] Clayton Wood: Yeah it's encouraging. It's a nationwide search and uh, and that means that Google is probably, um, serving local results based on the user's IP address. But generally speaking, you can see we've got results from New York, um, Memphis, Phoenix, all sorts of stuff.
So the fact that they're ranking number 15, I think is very encouraging. To just note that if you do some effort, um, or partner with a, a service like ours, we could definitely rank this website significantly higher and could certainly get it into this AI overview, uh, before too long with content creation.
So
[00:25:39] Johnny Watson: I think the disclaimer here though is that this is still a nationwide search. So I saw there was like 590, um, searches a month. For local meal prep. Yeah. Um, which could be a bit of like a research keyword, not like a lot of commercial intent. Yeah. Um, so I know we're kind of talking broadly here but I I, I'd love to kind of anchor this really, uh, into the, the local SEO arena, um, because that's, that's where a lot of our.
People listening in, uh, to this episode are gonna be wanting to, to win in. So another
[00:26:14] Clayton Wood: thing, another thing they could do is, um, get these keywords that they know there's ai, uh, overviews for, and work them into the content on their Google business profile.
[00:26:27] Johnny Watson: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:28] Clayton Wood: Like local, local meal prep could probably easily fit into the Google Maps description or the service categories.
Um, so working these into their local digital footprint like Google Maps or any other sites that they're on locally, Yelp or whatever would be very beneficial as well.
[00:26:50] Johnny Watson: Amazing. And I think this brings us to a good point with the, the scenario that Brad experienced, right? Where somebody was searching for, for meal prep near me in Dallas.
Or best meal prep in Dallas. I'm imagining that was what the key, the, the search term was like. What I've heard you say in the call so far, Clayton, is that by optimizing for like the keywords we're putting in the Google business profile, putting in on the website, if there's a blog, putting content on the blog as well, that it's a high probability that Brad was able to.
Appear in that list because he was speaking to those in those locations and we saw, just based on the fact that in a nationwide search he was ranking about 15th for local meal prep, he has some pretty good domain authority. So maybe that's why Google has decided for best meal prep in Dallas. It's pulled out the, the keywords from his content.
On those locations and surfaced him as one of the options. It's not necessarily just tied to the fact that he is ranking number one and two, um, for a lot of meal prep searches in Dallas. Do you think that's right? Yeah,
[00:28:05] Clayton Wood: absolutely. Yeah. The idea is to put, uh, that your brand associated with the, the search terms that you want.
In as many, uh, appropriate places as you can, and to get Google's algorithm associating these two things together. Yeah.
[00:28:23] Johnny Watson: Okay. Amazing. When we think about like Instagram where a lot of meal prep owners are communicating to the world, uh, through if their page is public, is that a ranking factor?
When someone is searching for a meal prep service in a ChatGPT, for example.
[00:28:43] Clayton Wood: Yeah, I think so. The proof of that, I believe is, let's take Google for example. How many times have we searched for a brand in Google and their Instagram page is one of the search results. Um, so chat, GBT wants to have just as big or bigger of a database.
As Google. So if the page is public and it's indexed, which I'm sure they all are for chat GT's database, then yeah, it's a contributing factor. But keep in mind that the only thing that, that it can see that's public is the very small piece of information that is in the, the bio and maybe some hashtags if you have that on the, uh, in the bio.
Um, I think that the age of the Instagram or any social media page is a, a big factor and obviously the, the name of it. Um, but we're getting into naming convention with that, uh, with, with that comment
[00:29:41] Johnny Watson: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So there is a bit of a boost, it's another place to put the keywords in.
It sounds like the first step of any SEO initiative really is to understand what are people searching for? And beginning to understand what kind of keywords I wanna be putting in all of those locations.
[00:29:59] Clayton Wood: Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:00] Johnny Watson: And there was a tool you and I were looking at Otter ai where we were able to start surfacing what people might be searching in ChatGPT and Gemini, for example.
Uh, looking for a meal prep, uh, platform to help run and grow their business.
[00:30:18] Clayton Wood: Yep.
[00:30:19] Johnny Watson: And I know that it's still early days for these, but there it seems like there's a lot more tools and intelligence coming that's gonna help us know exactly what people are searching for in ChatGPT, for example.
[00:30:31] Clayton Wood: Yeah.
This scene tools or pop on the scene that, uh, can analyze and produce analytics data around what people are searching for or how many times they're mentioned in chat, GPT specifically. Is, uh, a pretty new gold rush. Like you're gonna see a, a bunch of tools start popping up. Uh, I'm sure there will be dozens, probably hundreds that all have various different user interfaces and, and reporting and analytics type.
So it's pretty interesting to see, uh, all of these tools come on the scene. I think now if you just did a, a quick search for. ChatGPT analytics or uh, business intelligence in ChatGPT, you'd probably see, uh, some serious tools that are trying to do that. Yeah.
[00:31:23] Johnny Watson: Amazing. So I'm starting to, to, to see or hear from this conversation that there is probably like a flow that a meal prep owner can go through, uh, which would be getting empowered with that insight around what keywords people are searching and still into Google for.
In their area as it relates to their service. The questions that people are now asking on chat, GPT Claw Gemini, to have their questions answered, even if they are more commercial in temp. And then it becomes the process of figuring out where do I wanna post that? Where's the best place for me to be putting those keywords?
Google was a great one because. Having more relevant keywords in the Google business profile is very helpful in getting higher in that, that map pack, which is still a lot of people, especially when they're looking for local businesses and services, are using to find businesses. And you mentioned as well, which I loved, is just really good reviews.
So finding a way of making it really organic. And, and Brad also mentioned this recently as well, where he'll ask a person, he won't ask a person for a review, but he will share like the impact of it. And, um, that often when you're delivering a premium customer experience, people are happy to, to give back and, and help you get your, service out there.
By leaving a review, and I think the keywords in there are probably gonna be more important than ever. Right. Like how they describe the service.
Yep. Um, so that's the Google business profile. I also heard you say that getting the content on site, writing a blog, that probably hasn't been very powerful in the past for helping people with local SEO, but in a world where we're moving into ai, search through all those platforms, including just in the search bar in Google.
Maybe it is time to start reexamining, getting a blog going answering all of the questions that we found in step one that people are asking about the service.
[00:33:28] Clayton Wood: Yeah.
[00:33:28] Johnny Watson: And then as you mentioned, you got a clever system for, uh, creating like a, like a hierarchy, almost a content that's linked with one another.
Someone Google does go through and looks through the site. Um, it's really starting to see that you're like a. And a leader, a thought leader and have a lot of value to provide and that's why they want to get you kind of ranking at the top.
[00:33:51] Clayton Wood: Yep, exactly.
[00:33:53] Johnny Watson: Anything I miss there in step two?
[00:33:55] Clayton Wood: No, I don't think so.
[00:33:57] Johnny Watson: Okay. And then step three, uh, one that's kind of like outside of our control. What could be is, what do you think by. Working with like local publications, for example, who have really high domain authority to help write articles like top five meal prep services in Dallas, where there's preferential treatment of course, to the person who is writing the article.
But obviously you know, in the case of Brad and PDC, they've worked really hard for years to. To build a brand and deliver an amazing customer experience where being number one is defensible. Um, but it seems, it's like that is a strategy that any meal prep service out there could take if they could find somebody locally who has influence and, and write a piece of content there.
Do you think that's worth exploring?
[00:34:48] Clayton Wood: Yes. Um, because we see that, uh, local publications. And that specific style of an article rank really, really well in Google. So you've potentially got an opportunity to be mentioned in the AI overview and potentially be mentioned on a few websites that are also ranking on the first page.
So partnering with those, uh, type of publications is really impactful.
[00:35:17] Johnny Watson: Amazing. Uh. I would love to find a step forward just to complete the four step process, but there's nothing kind of jumping out at me, like what do you think is missing to kind of close the loop on like a successful strategy to, to try to try and get ahead of this, the shift in human search?
[00:35:33] Clayton Wood: I think one of the biggest things that is easy to get lost in or frustrated in with marketing and, and the online world is the inability to quickly know where you are currently. So I would suggest for the last point to be, reporting and, and tracking it you're doing all this work for months and months.
How can we see, uh, if that work is causing any sort of an increase in other than, uh, you know, new customers, new subscriptions? Um, so I would say Google Analytics. Is a really great place to, to track some of that effort, um, whether it be, inside of, uh, the website itself or partnering with a local media company or, or, a newspaper or a publication.
then the other one that you talked about uh, having some analytics in ChatGPT was pretty cool when you saw that. Saw that showed that to me.
[00:36:31] Johnny Watson: You mentioned, uh, SEMrush as a good way of doing keyword research as if we were to surface some tools that if people did wanna go and experiment on their own.
[00:36:41] Clayton Wood: Yeah. Sim SEMrush is a good, that's
[00:36:43] Johnny Watson: a good one.
[00:36:44] Clayton Wood: Uh, Google Analytics is a, a classic and free, um, and SEMrush has keyword research and it tracks, uh, keywords that are mentioned in the AI overview. So that, that's my main one that I use.
[00:36:59] Johnny Watson: Great. And then it was alternately AI is the, the search, the AI search monitoring for, for ChatGPT perplexity, and then also Google AI overviews, um, which I'm sure there's a lot of overlap with SEM rush there.
Uh, amazing. Clayton, thanks so much for, for joining us today. So if people do wanna learn more, maybe they've got a burning question they want to ask you, uh, what's a good way for them to reach you?
[00:37:25] Clayton Wood: Yeah, you can go to my website, VoladoLabs.ai, V-O-L-A-D-O labs, LABS, dot ai, or you can email me at Clayton@voladolabs.com.
Happy to share whatever it is that, that I know and I'm a huge fan of, of small businesses. I've been a part of one for almost 20 years, so anything I can do to help a fellow small business owner, happy to do it.
[00:37:54] Johnny Watson: Amazing. Thank you, Clayton. let's just leave some, like, closing thoughts. What do you think, um, what, what would you like to leave the audience with as it relates to advice?
A recommendation or like a prediction of where we're heading and how people can get ahead and when?
[00:38:11] Clayton Wood: Yeah. I, I think the more content that you publish either on your website or at other publications, the better. Um, and it needs to be original and high value content. So I'm sure everybody, uh, that is a partner with Bottle, has some really awesome, uh, unique value proposition, uh, that they, that, that is the DNA in their business.
Uh, talk about that and explain what it is and get into great detail. If you have a, a really impactful story to tell, tell it. On the website, on the Google Business profile. Um, Google's really good and ChatGPT's really good at filtering out fluff content or stuff that is meaningful and has a lot of meat on the bone.
Um, so if you've got a story, tell it. And I think the more you do that, the, the more you'll win online.
[00:39:12] Johnny Watson: I really love that. What a great way to, to add to. end the podcast. Clayton, thank you so much. Thanks for giving the advice. If anyone has any questions, please reach out to, to Clayton. We'll include the, your email address on the transcription, um, of this as well.
[00:39:28] Clayton Wood: Sure. Sounds good. Thanks Johnny and thanks for doing this.
[00:39:31] Johnny Watson: Yeah, thank you. Talk soon man. Bye.
[00:39:34] Clayton Wood: Alright, bye.