Teri Holland (00:01.599)
Welcome Tianna, thanks for joining me today.
Tianna Mamalick (00:04.434)
Thanks for having me.
Teri Holland (00:06.226)
I want to jump right into the big picture of SEO. So in plain English, for people who maybe don't know much about SEO, what has AI changed in regards to SEO and what hasn't changed?
Tianna Mamalick (00:24.238)
That's a good question. Big question. So I want to sit back for a second and always remind people that right now, everybody is talking about AI and SEO and that is great. And I think it's really important to be prepared for that. But most of the AI chachi-pati referrals we're seeing are less than less than 10 % of the traffic on even large websites. So AI is important.
Teri Holland (00:26.338)
Big question, yeah.
Teri Holland (00:49.484)
Wow.
Tianna Mamalick (00:52.436)
in SEO, but it is not currently what is the big conversion factor. So I've started monitoring this a bit closer. We do know that it's going to have an exponential exponential increase, but as of right now, it's important to be prepared for AI, but not necessarily like drop everything to move it. Going into your actual question, what has changed?
Teri Holland (01:14.029)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (01:16.64)
the thing that is changing very quickly and it's happening on both Google and in any of the chat, to be T AI, you know, Claude's is, AI is teaching us to search less in keywords and more in questions. So you used to go on Google and type in real estate agent to Vancouver. And now a lot of people will even go to Google and type in the question, I need a real estate agent in Vancouver who sells small homes.
or who sells three bedrooms plus a den. So people are getting much more comfortable typing a lot more into the search bar than they used to.
Teri Holland (01:48.781)
Okay.
Teri Holland (01:54.422)
It's funny you say that because I just noticed that yesterday and myself when I was searching for stuff, was like, why am I typing so much? I'm, I think this is different. Normally I would be that person who would just be like, I need a realtor, realtor, Vancouver, wherever. But I just noticed that yesterday. I'm like, I am typing a lot into the search bar and getting really specific and granular too.
Tianna Mamalick (02:18.338)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're asking it the micro questions. And the reason that's starting to happen is that because of the advances in the algorithm and the advances in the way AI preps responses, we're getting better responses. So now we're more comfortable asking it the questions. Like a lot of people will ask for a female real estate agent, a male real estate agent, specific locations, specific type of homes. And they are exposed
affecting the response to be accurate because with AI we are getting much more accurate data because it's not just taking information from your website. It's taking information from your social media, your website, the reviews, and I mean the algorithm used to do that, but AI does it in a much more succinct way. So now we are searching differently because we're getting better answers.
Teri Holland (03:07.118)
Yeah.
That's so cool. And it's also something I have noticed is that I'm getting much more well-rounded answers. Like I searched for a workshop that my business partner and I have coming up and we're very new on the internet. There's not a lot of information about us, but I was curious what it would pull and it pulled so much information about his background, my background, what the workshop's about. It knew so much about us already as being a new entity on the internet. And it was kind of fascinating.
Tianna Mamalick (03:40.756)
Yes. Yes. I kind of love how it does that. It takes everything to and puts it into a better picture because I mean, I love us as small business owners, but to be honest, we're not always the greatest at selling ourselves. actually when it comes to putting it on Google, it does a better job. yeah.
Teri Holland (03:57.296)
that's good. It's like our secret sales partner. Yeah. So if you were starting an SEO strategy today, how would it look different than maybe what you would have done a few years ago?
Tianna Mamalick (04:00.984)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (04:10.86)
Yeah, so the two main things I would really focus on are making sure that questions are answered. So FAQs used to be something we kind of had and it was a nice to have because it would add content to your website. But because AI answers a lot of questions, you really want to have FAQs on the top questions people are asking in your industry and you want to answer them in a succinct way. Some articles even you could put like a very succinct answer on the top and then a lot of your headers should be a bit more question focused because people are
Teri Holland (04:29.152)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (04:39.758)
If you start watching your own search right now, you'll notice that like 50 to 75 % of the searches you do are actually questions now, instead of, you don't ask it like, I don't know, something for no response, you ask it a question to respond. So because we're doing that, we really wanna focus on answering questions. And then the other thing that's happening is see how people are using that. We'll take the Realtor example, how people are asking for...
Teri Holland (04:53.869)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (05:05.908)
exactly that type of person and that type of dwelling and that, you know, those specifics in your sales pages, service pages on your homepage, you need to really explain who you help, who your services are for, which a lot of the time we didn't do because people would kind of put themselves in the shoes and that, you know, would just automatically happen. But now Google needs the information. Are you a female real estate?
agent, do you do specific home types? What type of families do you support most? So throughout all of the content on your site, you really, and the content on your social media, you really need to start explaining the type of clients that you support so that when people are searching for your exact unique specific, you know, service, you come up for those.
Teri Holland (05:55.15)
So cool. okay, so say like take the female realtor example. Like where would where would she put that she's a female realtor? Like where would you actually say that on your site and not have it sound like you're just stuffing it in?
Tianna Mamalick (06:12.28)
So there is some intuitive pieces to this. So you wanna make sure the content is there. You don't necessarily have to. We used to have to like, I've been an SEO for almost 12 years now. We used to have to like straight up state like I am a female real estate agent and I help ex families. The AI and Google and all the algorithms, they can kind of parse the data and figure out who you are. if you have...
Teri Holland (06:24.258)
amazing.
Teri Holland (06:37.419)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (06:40.086)
your pronouns on your site, if you say she in a lot of the about page, if you have specific sections about your team, you have different people who can speak different languages on your team, and you state those in their bio pages, Google and the algorithm can pull those pieces out without you having to state like, we speak X, Y, Z, although I do think when it comes to speaking different languages, that should be like called out as many places as you possibly can.
Teri Holland (07:06.582)
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (07:08.226)
And then when it comes to the like explaining what type of family or person you support most, that I think you just need to start writing it more and feeling comfortable stating it. So you really need to outline it. Like do you do best with families who have small budgets who need to live in Vancouver with two bedrooms or less? You need to state that somewhere. And I think it's okay to just write that or.
Teri Holland (07:27.916)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (07:32.588)
blogs on why you support this person over this person or who works best with you on your social media, those types of like little pieces, Google will pull those out for you.
Teri Holland (07:42.578)
Okay, so speaking of blogs, so are blogs still relevant as they used to be? Are they more important? Where do blogs fit into this?
Tianna Mamalick (07:51.246)
blogs are not dead and I will die on that Hill. People are still searching for blogs. So we are getting more, we're calling them zero clicks searches. So when you have an information, truly information-based blog, those are, I wanna say dying, but they're much harder to get to rank properly. So if you're just answering a question, there's nothing added to it. Those used to be really good for SEO. Those are really not very good for SEO anymore.
Teri Holland (07:53.095)
Hahaha.
Tianna Mamalick (08:18.254)
but we're also seeing that on social media. used to have these like teach them five things that help them do X, Y, Z. Those posts aren't good anymore either because someone can just go to Google and say, what five things can I, and Google will, know, the AI is so good. It's actually usually better than your response. So those posts or those blog posts, not so great case studies and stories and information within. So if you're teaching something and you use
Teri Holland (08:38.913)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (08:46.03)
clear examples, like instead of that case study where it's like, this is the problem, this is the solution, this is the results, like we don't want those. We want a story, people wanna be entertained. Those pieces of content are still ranking and people are still reading them and they are still converting off of it. You just have to get a little more strategic about how you use your content and you have to be careful that you're not just regurgitating information because as we've noticed with AI, we're doing the whole.
Teri Holland (08:52.535)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (09:13.998)
think someone once said it's like the snake biting its own tail, where we're just continuing to regurgitate the same information that will not rank anymore. And it's gonna start to decreed. We're not seeing like a total drop. Some industries we are like healthcare, there's a total drop in that type of content. But we are starting to see it go down a little bit. So you can't just regurgitate what Google's already said. You kind of have to add to the story in some capacity.
Teri Holland (09:21.176)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (09:30.241)
Interesting.
Teri Holland (09:38.05)
Yeah. Now, do you think that's because people are using AI to write their content and that's how AI would write it? Because it doesn't have your stories, right? So it's going to, okay, okay, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So we, you can't just go to AI and say, write me a blog about X, Y, and Z. Not that we should do that anyway, but we really need to put our own stories and our own, our own experience into it.
Tianna Mamalick (10:07.278)
And as small business owners, I mean, we don't have a lot of time. So sometimes it really is like you want support writing an article. Just edit after Chat GPT gives you the information. One, take out some of the stuff that is very commonly there. Like the intros are usually very similar. The outros are usually very similar. We don't need those. They're filler anyways. And then start adding things that Chat GPT doesn't know. And this is what I think a lot of people are like, I'm not a good writer. I can't do this. Well,
Teri Holland (10:14.509)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (10:24.674)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (10:34.83)
if you just, you know, bullet point it and then give it back to Chat GPT, you could just write it for you. It's not like it won't be able to do that, but it can't create these stories from nothing. So once you kind of get an article, say you're like a nutritionist and then you had a family who had a really bad experience with, um, like a specific type of like gut health issue for their toddler and you tell that story, you don't even need to add names. Now, all of a sudden you have all this extra beautiful information. You didn't need to write that story. You can just do the bullet points, give it back to Chat GPT.
Teri Holland (10:40.526)
Tianna Mamalick (11:04.786)
re-edit it and now you have an article that is so different from anybody else's and probably really very highly relevant to people looking for support with their toddlers for nutrition. So when you're writing it's just about making sure that you're not just like leaning into Chat GPT and expecting it and a lot of people are starting to say this you can't expect it to just write the perfect article right away it's just not going to do that.
Teri Holland (11:16.077)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (11:28.556)
Yeah, which is good. It's good, right? We need to use our brains and we still need to be a part of the process. That's good. What would you say is the biggest misconception that you're seeing with small business owners when it comes to AI and SEO right now?
Tianna Mamalick (11:30.179)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (11:44.406)
A lot of people are very concerned that SEO is dying. I've heard it so many times, although it has started to decrease a little bit, but yes, people are saying that SEO is dying. And my best response to that is that people will always search the internet and small business owners are not always great at explaining their services. So SEO will never truly die. We may like designers have less positions later on.
Teri Holland (11:49.358)
See you.
Teri Holland (12:07.021)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (12:13.078)
We may not be working on Google. We may be working on some social platforms. But Joe the plumber doesn't know how to explain his services very well. He doesn't want to write his own website. So you're always going to have search in some capacity. And on the flip side of that, focusing on your search is very important because if people are searching on, they can now search on Instagram. You can actually talk to Instagram and search it. And people are looking for
Vancouver real estate agents, plumbers in Surrey, like especially the younger audiences, they're searching right on these social platforms. So you can't negate search because no matter what platform we're on, we're always going to need to search for people.
Teri Holland (12:55.074)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. what does that, when you say focus on search, like what does that mean when we're focusing on it? What are we doing?
Tianna Mamalick (13:04.205)
making sure that you are being very clear about what you do. sometimes people will say, especially when they're looking at certain marketing tactics, if we're focusing on social media, we want to get our social views up. If we're focusing on, you know, our content, we're focusing on our blog posts over here. Search kind of encompasses all these things now. So it used to be like SEO was on its own and you would do SEO and it was very technical. That sort of SEO is
slowly decreasing. So yes, I do think there's things that you can benefit from technical. I think they're far less important than they used to be. And I think SEO and search in general need to be more like if you're doing social media, put the thought process in for your search as well. If you're doing content on your website, that is still you know, content marketing, it's for search, but you have to make sure you're thinking of those pieces as well. And then connecting those two. So instead of SEO kind of being its own
Teri Holland (13:42.254)
Yes.
Teri Holland (13:52.227)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (14:02.53)
I mean, it's still its own place, but you need to start kind of building it into other pieces. And that's how you're prepping for the future of what AI is going to do.
Teri Holland (14:11.562)
Okay, can you tell us more about how social media is now playing into it? Because I know there was a big announcement not long ago about Instagram is now searchable. And how does that affect or how should it affect our social media strategy?
Tianna Mamalick (14:26.892)
Yeah, so it's kind of funny that everybody's like, my gosh, your social matters for search. Instagram was like the last platform to do it. TikTok's always pulled into search engines. Reddit has always been one of the biggest tools for search and all of their responses pull into search engines. And then Pinterest too has been another huge one for SEO. So Instagram or meta, sorry, in general, Instagram and Facebook.
Teri Holland (14:31.477)
Okay.
Teri Holland (14:35.256)
Wow.
Tianna Mamalick (14:54.03)
we're kind of like the last ones to be like, we're also going to pull into Google. So it's something that I think people weren't talking about because no one really thought about it. But your social has always mattered, especially for search. And it's been kind of growing, I would say the last two years, because even before Metta was pulling into Google, people were using Instagram or Facebook to search for different companies. And again, I'm going to lean into the younger audience does this more.
But we are starting to see like there's a lot of an older audience on Facebook that will search on Facebook for things. So people are using the social platforms as its own search engine. And then social posts are also being pulled into Google and chat GBT. So there's kind of two different ways that social works with search.
Teri Holland (15:29.582)
Okay.
Teri Holland (15:35.8)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (15:43.864)
Thank you.
Tianna Mamalick (15:44.994)
The advice on how to make that look good is essentially make sure that you're posting the same things on your website that you are on your social media. And if they really match, you'll, you don't, there's definitely more thought you could put into that, but it'll just start building like a really good kind of strategy for you without you having to do too much thought in the back end.
Teri Holland (15:47.405)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (16:04.47)
Okay, good to know. That's good. it's, yeah, I'm thinking about how like I use social media to search things. And it's always restaurants on Instagram. If we're going to a new restaurant, I always go to their Instagram because I want to see pictures of the food. I don't just want to read their menu. I want to know like, what does this look like? What will the experience be like? So yeah, good points. Okay, so now I've heard you call it GEO.
Tianna Mamalick (16:18.894)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (16:34.316)
And I've heard other people are calling it AI SEO and that there's maybe some, we're just not sure what we're calling it yet. So how can we start navigating and updating strategy to rank for the new world that's coming of, as you call it, GEO?
Tianna Mamalick (16:53.134)
So, GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. And I prefer GEO over AISEO, but there's like seven other names people are trying to coin. I think people just also like coining names because they want it to be like, I named it.
Teri Holland (17:05.282)
Yeah.
I named this. Well, an AISCO to me sounds like old McDonald's had a farm. Like, it's like AISCO. I like GEO. I'm with you. Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (17:16.674)
Yeah. And eventually too, think it is sort of AI, but like AI on social platforms, like are we also going to call that AI SEO? I don't know. Yeah. So the names are, people always get stuck on that, but when it comes to what should you do to prep for this?
Teri Holland (17:29.112)
Right, right.
Tianna Mamalick (17:36.91)
Different industries will need different things. So one of the things I've started telling people is really, really stop and think like if you were looking for your own services, how would you use it? Cause industries are also going to be different and we're you're gonna see because AI is so I don't want say hard to use, but you have to be pretty techie to use it. Like my grandma is not using AI anytime soon. And to be honest with you, she's probably not going to use AI in her lifetime. So we need to start looking at industries.
Teri Holland (18:04.045)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (18:06.858)
a lot differently than we used to. So there was a solid like 10 years there where everyone was like, everyone's on Google. We're just going doing Google being as a, you know, kind of a background. If you're doing Google, you're doing Bing, like everything should work out. We're all in one platform and we all felt very comfortable there. People are shifting how they do things. And there's so many different platforms now that you do have to like stop and think, okay, with my specific service, where are people? I recently
It's interesting because I'm very AI focused. I love social media, but I needed a spa guy to come and fix like a pool. And for that, like, and I think everybody wants to fill out forms. But when I went to book this spa, I looked it up on Google and I called him, which I don't use the phone very often. But for this specific example, I wanted to talk to him right away because I had kind of an emergency, so to speak.
Teri Holland (18:56.75)
yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (19:03.95)
where something was leaking. So when you're thinking of like, how do people actually look this up? think it's almost worth asking a few people, like if you were looking for this service, what would you do? Um, cause if we're talking about like a coach, um, a business coach, like we're not, I don't, you don't usually go to Google to look for a business coach. Um, that's not how you'd find it. So
Teri Holland (19:21.335)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (19:24.43)
For this one, I think it's a lot harder to be like, this is the strategy. But when it comes to search as a whole, I think you just need to kind of pick the like five services you do and be really, really clear. I love branding, but let's not be branded here. Be really clear on every social post you do and on every blog post you do and on your website as a whole, what five services do you do? Or I mean, if you have 10, that's a lot to manage, I'm so sorry. But 10 or 15 services.
Teri Holland (19:47.245)
Thanks.
Tianna Mamalick (19:53.442)
They all need to have their own page. And when you're posting on social, you need to be posting about the ones that you want to sell. And once you pick the words for those, like if you are doing emergency plumbing services, like you need to kind of keep that a little bit consistent so that it's easy on all platforms to be picked up.
Teri Holland (19:59.181)
Okay.
Teri Holland (20:11.52)
Okay, and so can you tell us more about how we're managing having these multiple services? Because I'm thinking, I can see that with the website that you have a page for each one, but then how do you translate that into your social media and still make it clear for the search engines to understand like you're doing these different things?
Tianna Mamalick (20:30.69)
We are seeing a bit of a shift in people kind of like decreasing their services. And I do, as a small business owner who's been focusing on figuring out my services, I do think it's very important to start shifting to your kind of like core three to five. It's really hard to sell 10 services nowadays. Like if you think I need to rank 10 services and a lot of, you used to see a lot of coaches who have multiple services. It's really, I think making it more succinct will be easier for you.
Teri Holland (20:36.28)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (20:46.444)
Okay. Yeah.
Teri Holland (20:55.182)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (20:58.984)
and then picking the platforms, making the decision I'm going to be on these three. You don't need to be on all of them, but I need to be on these three platforms and staying consistent on them. So almost having like a, have a cheat sheet for a lot of clients where we just call it the same thing everywhere.
Teri Holland (20:59.084)
Okay.
Teri Holland (21:05.677)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (21:14.848)
Nice. Nice. That's good. So how like you've talked a bit about keywords, how important are keywords in today's world and going forward?
Tianna Mamalick (21:17.826)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (21:26.634)
Yes, so keyword, the way we use keywords has changed. People don't search for keywords anymore, but if you're doing your SEO, if you are trying to figure out what people are searching for, I do think keywords still have a very big place in search because you need to figure out what people are kind of, what topics people are searching for. So.
Teri Holland (21:43.723)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (21:50.474)
I would instead of using keywords as it used to be like, okay, this is the keyword we have to use. This is exactly what we need on the website. It's kind of changed to like topical understanding. So you're really looking for the keywords to understand like what people are asking about in these different topics and then using those to tailor your content, but in a more broad sense. So you don't need to directly have the keyword anymore. It's just,
If something in your industry, like a really good one is dietitian versus nutritionist. In the industry, people call it two things. Dietitian has more, I believe it was dietitian has more search than nutritionist. So if you're doing a website, strategically, do you want more or do you want less competition? So more volume or less competition? So when you're looking at keywords, you use them a bit more in that way.
Teri Holland (22:29.804)
Okay.
Teri Holland (22:37.934)
Hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (22:42.306)
and then looking at like the full topics. So if we're talking about a nutritionist and we wanna work on their website, what type of questions are people talking about within nutrition? What type of questions do they have about their family? Is in sports, like which ones have more search volume? So you would use the keywords to figure out where you should be and then make sure you're kind of writing the content around those keywords.
Teri Holland (23:06.944)
Okay. And do you have any tools or suggestions for how people can start to figure out like, what are those words or what are people asking the search engine? I mean, we can ask people, like I know that's probably the number one is just ask our clients like, what are you searching? But sometimes they don't even know what they searched to find us or they don't remember what they put in. So what are, do you have any suggestions for that?
Tianna Mamalick (23:31.726)
Yeah, I there's a lot of tools out there that you can use. My two favorite are actually Uber Suggest, which is like a lighter version of some rushes like the like some Russian a trust or kind of like the SEO, you know, whoo, these are the best. Uber Suggest, I think it's like 20 ish dollars a month. So if you're a smaller business, it's much more approachable.
Teri Holland (23:53.346)
Nice. Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (23:55.602)
and it has this section and it's called keyword ideas. And I think this is like a really cool spot where you put three keywords in and it shows you what topics people are searching around that. And it'll give you the search volume and the, like competition within that keyword. And then Google keyword planner is another good one, but usually have to have a Google account for that one. So, yeah, but those two are kind of my favorite. And then, little hidden fun.
Teri Holland (24:08.888)
Cool.
Teri Holland (24:18.2)
Alright.
Tianna Mamalick (24:25.102)
keyword stuff is if you have the Google tool called Google Search Console, it's free. Everybody should have it. It gives you the information on how people got to your website through organic search. So specifically what people typed in Google to find you.
Teri Holland (24:39.948)
Nice.
Teri Holland (24:44.504)
Great. Great. Those are great tips. Thank you for that. Now, how does our Google Business Profile play into all of this? Is it still important to have that, and where does it fit?
Tianna Mamalick (24:47.01)
Best keywords. Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (24:55.756)
Yes. So Google business profile is another free option from Google. It is, I think, more important now than it even used to be. And it was pretty important before. So if you don't have a Google business profile, unless you are a global company, highly recommend getting it. One, you need to own your name. You should own your name. And two, even if you're a service provider, you can put service location. So what a Google business profile is, is it's a profile on Google that
Teri Holland (25:12.749)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (25:21.358)
tells it all of the information about your business. So where you service, what you do, the types of, you can do it for products or services. You can have a brick and mortar location, or you can say, I service X area. And it's, if you ever look up a business, it's kind of like the right-hand side column. It's all the information on that business. makes you look very professional. It takes up a very large amount of that first part of the search. And it is definitely well worth getting for anybody.
Local search is one of the, like if we're thinking of how people search the internet, search traffic is cold and the most common keyword people use is near me. That is the most common keyword in the world in most languages. So if people are looking for near me, even if they're service providers, it's because we want to work with someone close to us. So always focus on local first, you will get the traffic faster and then if you want to move global, that's okay too.
Teri Holland (26:03.457)
it.
Teri Holland (26:13.634)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (26:20.334)
And Google My Business is one of those things where you don't have to care what it looks like. So I don't want to say go on and keyword stuff it, but you can really be very clear. It's not your website. It doesn't need to be branded. It just needs to say what you do. So you have a lot less rules, I think, on business profile than you would on say your website.
Teri Holland (26:41.966)
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, and I'm thinking as you're talking, I'm like, I need to update mine. I think it's out of date. yeah. Yeah, good point. And how do your reviews play into, like, do they play into our SEO strategy?
Tianna Mamalick (26:47.126)
Yeah reviews too if you have reviews that's where I would suggest putting them.
Tianna Mamalick (26:59.508)
Yeah, so your reviews on Google are actually pulling right into AI too. So ChatGPT is now pulling, they'll pull reviews, they'll pull your map. It's called the map pack. So your Google business profile, if you ever see that map on the top of Google and there's like a little pin and it has the name, the way you rank on map pack is through your Google business profile specifically. And then some strategic things on your website, but essentially that's it.
Teri Holland (27:03.854)
Hey.
Tianna Mamalick (27:23.338)
And those are all being pulled into AI. So as people start asking for more recommendations, like restaurants, especially like restaurants are a big one right now. You want to have all your reviews there. I know there's lots of other places to have reviews. I personally think fill up your Google first before you do anything else.
Teri Holland (27:40.832)
Okay, good to know. Good to know. Now, can you give examples like we go back to the content on the website, you have some examples of maybe how we could structure a blog to make it the most effective to feed the information to Google and to AI in the most effective way like is, is there a structure we should be following or looking at?
Tianna Mamalick (28:03.542)
It kind of depends on the industry, but I would say you used to be able to kind of like get to your point later in the article. I really think you need to get to the point at the top. Some people are just gonna come to your article. We're so used to like automatic responses now that we kind of want to, if we're just looking for an answer, we want to find it right away and they're gonna bounce and that's okay. That's what they were there for. Then the rest of your article kind of adds to the story. So,
Teri Holland (28:28.429)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (28:32.942)
if you had, we go back to the nutritionist, if you had an article on how to run a marathon, the very, very first part, or like how to prep for a marathon if you haven't run one in five years, that's probably a much better topic. The first part would be like the things you have to do. And then you could start with a story on like how this nutritionist supported someone who hadn't run in 10 years. And then you can start going into diet, which is also part of the topic. And then you could go into like,
Teri Holland (28:45.148)
Hahaha
Tianna Mamalick (29:01.518)
how do you also like stretch and wind down and make sure your muscles don't atrophy. So the article can still be everything you want it to be, but I would kind of get to the point really quickly. And then what we've started doing to make search better, because we still want the traffic from zero click searches. We still want to show up in those AI call outs, because it still gives you very, very good, it essentially triggers to Google like this content is good. So when people are looking for like a...
Teri Holland (29:19.607)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (29:29.836)
direct referral, you are more likely to get pulled when you have all these AI call outs. So at the bottom, we also like to have the FAQ section. Those are becoming really big. And FAQ is like, do you help ex this is where you can put the type of person you help. Do you help runners who have been running for a long time? Do you have nutrition plans in your services? And then, you know, questions about the actual article itself. those pieces at the bottom are like a really good kind of catch all for your article.
Teri Holland (29:46.126)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (29:53.507)
Hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (29:59.534)
and they're so worth doing.
Teri Holland (30:00.238)
that's so cool. I never thought about putting an FAQ in an article. So smart. Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (30:05.582)
Make them look nice though. It's well worth it. Pay someone to do it to, you know, do the little like add the plus and then it comes down. So worth it.
Teri Holland (30:12.91)
Yeah. Nice. such a good tip. Now, how do we demonstrate our authority and build trust using like, so for SEO and AI, how do we do that? What's going to build our authority?
Tianna Mamalick (30:30.964)
the your about pages and author pages really help with that. So if you are trying to build authority, and especially if you're in like a health care, health care is kind of the one that it took the biggest hit when AI came in, when Google did its massive update, health care kind of, unless you were in the very beginning of it, it was really bad unless you were one of those like three top like health line, you didn't get any traffic, you lost all of it.
Teri Holland (30:49.731)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (30:57.742)
Finally. Wow.
Tianna Mamalick (31:00.878)
Keep the systems want to see your specific credentials. So you have to have a really good bio page author page. However, whatever your builder calls it, you want to outline exactly what you've done in your career, not just your schooling, but the extra certifications you've gotten.
Teri Holland (31:07.917)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (31:21.39)
Any extra courses you've taken any special people helped any like conferences you've gone to that make you even more of an expert like we want to start actually listing these on our bio pages and being very clear some people will say like I graduated university and it's like cool. That's that's not enough anymore. Like why do you specialize in this one specific thing? And then all of sudden, you know, I had a lawyer who did a study on like a specific type of law. We added that because that's so cool and it cares.
Teri Holland (31:23.852)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (31:34.049)
Okay.
Teri Holland (31:48.216)
Wow. Yeah. good to know. Because I often wonder, and I'm sure other business owners too, like, does anyone actually care about the credentials? But they do, and the search engines care. So that's good to know. And how about backlinks? Are backlinks still relevant today, as they were before? Or where do they fit?
Tianna Mamalick (31:58.702)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (32:07.982)
Yes. I think so back links, if anybody doesn't know what a backlink is, is a link from someone else's site to your site. And for a while people were, I think focusing a bit less on them because we weren't sure how they would function or react to AI. And the thing is AI kind of pulls data the same way the Google algorithm does. We need authority to figure out whether your site should rank or not. The more views and visitors you get,
Teri Holland (32:22.166)
Right.
Tianna Mamalick (32:37.922)
the more time people spend on page, the more authority you have. Backlinks, proper backlinks, get people from one site to your site. PR is a really good example of this. Like if you have really good PR and you're doing good backlinking through PR, you're getting a lot of really good traffic from a high quality site to your site. And then Google or any of the AIs will look at this and say, okay, that is a, like if you're posted on Forbes, like that is an authority piece.
Teri Holland (32:42.766)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (33:07.16)
So focusing on those or like for me, for example, BC business would be a really good one. Like those, that traffic referral is a huge automatic like authority piece. And then you putting that on your author page as well or your bio page or whatever you want to call it. Like I was, you know, highlighted in Forbes, but Google's going to look at that and say, okay, well if Forbes, which is a very, very big company and has lots and lots of, know, domain rating is what it's called. So I like to call it like Google juice.
Teri Holland (33:07.533)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (33:26.296)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (33:36.366)
Google is going to be like, okay, if Forbes says yes to this site, then I'm going to say yes to this site. And then you're more likely to get picked up. So backlinks are still just as important, even though we thought maybe AI might take them out. They are working the same way they used to. So they're still building the same type of authority.
Teri Holland (33:43.714)
Okay.
Teri Holland (33:52.59)
Okay, great to know. And now I asked my Instagram community if they had any questions. And Laurie asked, what are your tips to help people overcome their fear of AI for SEO for content strategies and just marketing in general?
Tianna Mamalick (34:01.772)
who are that.
Tianna Mamalick (34:13.206)
I think it's important. This is a hard one because I get it. And to be honest with you, two years ago, I was worried that I would be out of a job because we were so concerned that AI was going to take over SEO in general. AI is a really good tool and there is going to be a point where it continues to get better. At this time, I mean, like people make the jokes, like it can't even do hands. It's starting to do hands better. So it is going to get better. I think.
Teri Holland (34:22.446)
yeah.
Teri Holland (34:39.703)
it.
Tianna Mamalick (34:43.462)
start small and really focus on playing around with the tool. So before you just go in and say like, I'm gonna write this, know, beautiful article right on Chatjibutee, ask it some questions, start to feel comfortable. I actually have mine pretty primed to sound like me. And I have a really good business coach that had helped me with creating these blueprint pages that are like scan pages that you put into your AI that help you with even more information.
Teri Holland (34:57.816)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (35:13.166)
The more information you give it, the better. So I wouldn't go into ChatGifT as a small business owner and be like, yeah, I'm gonna write a blog post today. If it's your first time using it, you need time to feel comfortable and confident with it. And you don't have to expect anything from it either. I also like, I named mine, her name is Juliet. That helps me feel a little bit better when I'm chatting with her, because it is kind of weird at first too, but they're so good as a tool.
Teri Holland (35:13.495)
Nice.
Teri Holland (35:23.426)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (35:36.727)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (35:43.042)
just don't let it replace what you're doing. Cause we did that. Everybody was doing it. We can all admit it. Maybe we step back from that. And this is just my like hot take on the topic. I think that people are going to revolt a bit from AI. I think it's going to have its place and we're going to start to, you know, notch it into the place it places it needs to be. But in-person events have started to increase.
Teri Holland (36:02.072)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (36:11.982)
people speaking to people, in-person meetings. We are already tired of AI. We don't want to talk to a computer anymore. We want real people. So remember that when you're using it.
Teri Holland (36:25.548)
Yeah, such a good point. it's interesting. I've been using it much less than I was this time last year, using it far less as just to help me create content, but I'm putting more of the work back on myself. And I find it's more satisfying. I feel like I started to feel so disconnected from what I was creating that I was like, need to bring it back again. So yeah, I definitely see what you're saying.
Tianna Mamalick (36:33.923)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (36:55.98)
We've stepped back too. So we used to have, we started doing AI first content and then we would optimize it from there. And we're actually looking at stepping back and doing content first, then optimizing through AI.
Teri Holland (36:56.28)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (37:07.746)
That's what I'm doing. Because I found, and I don't know if you found this, but I found that it was much harder for me to think creatively when I was already given something. Because AI is really good at sounding good. So it sounded so good already. And then I was like, well, I don't really know where to put me into this. And it was almost too structured where I couldn't think creatively of now, how do I make this more me?
So yeah, I've gone that way where now I create and then I get chat GPT to help me clean it up or make sure the message is clear, take out some extraneous pieces that maybe don't make sense or don't quite fit. So I'm using it more, guess, to edit than create something.
Tianna Mamalick (37:44.91)
Yeah.
Yeah, and if you have like, if you're a business or a business owner that is very nervous about writing, which is actually quite a lot of us, if you do like, I like to call it word vomit. If you do word vomit on a page, AI is actually really good at turning that word vomit into real honest, like good stories. So if you want to try to start writing when you're not really comfortable with writing, if you just take a Google doc and you just start writing, it can be the ugliest thing in the world.
Teri Holland (38:05.389)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (38:15.654)
that's where Chat GPT can actually make you sound really good. And you do have to prompt it, like say, don't take out my ideas. Because to be honest with you, Chat GPT specifically clots a little bit better at writing, so it tends to take out a bit less. So I do recommend that one over. But Chat GPT will take you right out of your article unless you tell it, please do not remove my thoughts, my feelings, or my voice.
Teri Holland (38:19.199)
Nice.
Teri Holland (38:38.018)
Nice, nice. And then the other question that came in was from Megan, and she asked, what AI platforms do you prefer for optimizing keyword strategy?
Tianna Mamalick (38:50.296)
So I am very invested in ChatGPT only because I have GPTs built. So I've spent a lot of time on those GPTs. are very, they have like 15 pages of backend data. So I'm very invested in it. Now, when it comes to writing, I have started actually using Claude a bit more because it is a better writer. know, ChatGPT has the, like if you read something from ChatGPT, you're like, that was probably written by ChatGPT. Claude takes out a bit of that and sounds a bit more like a person.
Teri Holland (38:55.416)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (39:11.085)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (39:16.611)
Yep.
Tianna Mamalick (39:20.206)
So we have been using it a bit more. I've tested a few other guys, nobody's been as consistent. And then Google, I think Google Workspace is bringing theirs out too. We're currently working on testing that one, but I don't know. Yeah, if it's worth it.
Teri Holland (39:20.567)
or
Teri Holland (39:34.606)
Okay, good. Good. Now, let's give them some action steps to do. So if someone listening has maybe five hours this week to focus a bit on their SEO, what should they spend their time on? What's going to give them the biggest bang for their time?
Tianna Mamalick (39:45.614)
Mm-hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (39:53.952)
Okay, I love this question. This is my favorite. So number one, if you have one service page on your website and it explains all your services, create a service page for each service, hands down. My prediction for the future of how AI is going to work five to 10 years from now, I don't think we're gonna necessarily have the same type of websites. We're always gonna have websites or a hub or a place that you write your content. But I think they're gonna be more like we're calling them AI scan pages.
where you just write for the AI and the AI takes that information and then sends it to whoever it needs to. So I do think that's how we're going. So number one, products or services. If you have products, you should have a category page for each product type automatically. So you need to tell the systems what you sell or what you offer. And if you just, you know, lump it in one paragraph somewhere on your homepage, like that's not enough. It needs its own page needs to be super, super clear. Then from there,
Teri Holland (40:34.701)
Okay.
Teri Holland (40:47.864)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (40:49.748)
If you're nervous about writing content, I would say just get started. One of the best advice like pieces I ever got in business was consistency over anything else. So even if your articles suck, it's okay if they suck. Eventually you will write a good one. I've wrote a lot of horrible articles that nobody reads and that's okay because there are five articles on my site that people do read and care very much about. And if you only have five,
that's still a significant, like most of the time your website actually only ranks for about 10 pages in total. Like a hundred page site, I have a law firm that has 200 plus pages and I think 10 of their pages rank really high and everything else gets like trickle in traffic.
Teri Holland (41:25.23)
Okay.
Teri Holland (41:38.542)
Okay.
Tianna Mamalick (41:39.438)
So you don't need to write the perfect article. You just need to keep doing it. It's kind of like posting on social where like the more articles you write, the better you'll kind of get and use the tools to help you if you, especially if you have blockers, if you have a blocker when you're writing, the tools are great, but just get started. Don't get stuck on the technical. Don't get stuck on, have to have FAQs. You'll get to those, but just having content on your site is really where you need to start.
Teri Holland (41:47.17)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (41:59.703)
Okay.
Teri Holland (42:04.814)
Perfect. That's great. And can you tell us about your keyword course?
Tianna Mamalick (42:09.792)
Yes. So I have a 30 minute keyword course. it walks you through exactly how I create keyword lists for clients. and once you have your first keyword list, that's where you get the topics on and ideas on how to start writing and what to start writing for those blogs. So you take that keyword list and you turn it into your content plan. It's really cool.
Teri Holland (42:18.382)
Perfect.
Teri Holland (42:29.838)
Awesome. Awesome. That'll be linked in the show notes. And now I have some rapid fire questions for you if you're game. Okay. All right. What fuels your marketing brain? Coffee or tea?
Tianna Mamalick (42:36.258)
Yes. Love this.
Tianna Mamalick (42:41.974)
coffee for sure, always. I love Starbucks. The brown sugar oat shake and espresso is my favorite. Very specific.
Teri Holland (42:43.722)
Nice, what kind of coffee? What's your go-to?
Teri Holland (42:50.052)
nice. Nice. Good call. What's your guilty pleasure social media scroll?
Tianna Mamalick (42:56.334)
I love book talk. And I'm on Instagram for that one. So I love to read my goal this year was 52 books, I've already surpassed it. So that's my
Teri Holland (43:00.642)
yeah.
Teri Holland (43:06.37)
Wow, good for you. I am way behind my goal. I won't even tell you how far behind. I am so far behind this year. It's not good. Yeah, yeah, me too, me too. What's the worst business advice you've ever heard?
Tianna Mamalick (43:14.478)
Well, everything.
Tianna Mamalick (43:24.184)
to keep your success silent and build in the background, which was originally a piece of advice. And then I learned once I started showing everybody, like, I have all these things, I'm doing all these cool things, everybody was like, now I wanna work with you. So don't build in silence. That is totally the wrong piece of
Teri Holland (43:27.692)
ooo
Teri Holland (43:35.416)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (43:44.398)
I agree. just feels, as soon as you said it, I was like, that's icky. Ew. What's a business buzzword you secretly hate?
Tianna Mamalick (43:54.508)
I actually have a lot of trouble with, I use it, but I have a lot of trouble with strategy because like we've kind of gone to the point where like, cool, I have a strategy, what do I do with it? So even if you pay me for a strategy, I actually call it a plan of action. And we put very clear, like you'll have kind of the strategic pieces on top, but then it tells you like, you need to do X, Y, and Z to get to this point. then, so I mean, strategies are great if you want this overarching thing, but.
Teri Holland (43:59.256)
No.
Teri Holland (44:04.684)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (44:09.132)
Nice.
Teri Holland (44:14.626)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (44:18.797)
Yeah.
Tianna Mamalick (44:22.924)
Essentially, I think we should all be making plans with strategic pieces on top.
Teri Holland (44:26.86)
I love it. I love that. And what's your, I can't live without it business tool, not including your phone.
Tianna Mamalick (44:35.278)
think it would be a sauna. I literally don't think I could live without a sauna anymore. It has every task, every note, every everything that I've ever done now. Yeah.
Teri Holland (44:36.994)
Yeah? Really?
Teri Holland (44:43.182)
Wow, good. And lastly, pineapple on pizza, yes or no? Good, good answer, good answer. We like that one here. I know a past guest, Erica, she asked a question to pass on to the next guest, which is you. She asked, what is one thing that you feel you have taken for granted?
Tianna Mamalick (44:48.206)
Yes, 100 % yes.
I'm fine.
Tianna Mamalick (45:06.094)
Quiet time. I used to be really bad at it and I said I never needed it and we're kind of in this world where with social media like I know 10 year olds are becoming millionaires and we should always be filling our time with with everything music, podcasts, social media and I remember when I was younger we just had so much more time to like lay on our bed with our feet up thinking about nothing and I think that
Teri Holland (45:08.482)
Hmm.
Tianna Mamalick (45:33.096)
in the space of your day, it is important to add a few minutes of that in there too. Like I love learning, I listen to tons of podcasts, I love to read, but a few minutes a day where I put my feet on my wall and just pretend I'm 10 again really gives me a lot of perspective.
Teri Holland (45:38.264)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (45:45.89)
Nice. Perfect. What's a question you would like to ask the next guest without knowing who they are?
Tianna Mamalick (45:53.678)
Cool. If you could take one business decision back, what would it be?
Teri Holland (46:00.802)
Great question. Great one. And finally, any final words for the audience? Last takeaways that you'd like them to walk away with?
Tianna Mamalick (46:09.838)
final takeaways. When it comes to SEO in marketing, we like to make it sound way more complicated than it actually is. If your clients are asking you questions and you are writing and answering those questions on your website and on your social media, you are already doing more than half of what anybody else is doing. So don't get stuck in the weeds. Don't be afraid to try. And if you can't do the technical part, that's okay.
If you wanna pay someone, pay someone. If not, keep writing the content, because it's so worth it.
Teri Holland (46:37.614)
Thank
Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. This was fantastic.
Tianna Mamalick (46:44.524)
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Teri Holland (46:48.579)
Hey.
