How SEO Copywriting Has Evolved With GenAI Search —What Works, What’s Dead, and How to Stay Ahead

[Music] AI content can be horrible I can understand why people wouldn't trust it if you're just kicking out stuff and you're not training what you're using in your brand voice and using human but that's on you that's not because of where the industry is at hello and welcome to is rankings do follow podcast here we hold regular talks with SEO and digital marketing experts to discuss hot too topics and share actionable insights with the SEO community so subscribe to stay on top of everything going on in SEO today we're going to be discussing how SEO copyrighting has evolved with Gen search what works what's dead and how to stay ahead to shed some light on this topic we've invited Heather Lloyd Martin to come on who is an experienced SEO consultant SEO copywriter trainer and success Works SEO copyrighting founder at the SEO constant Institute and a LinkedIn learning instructor welcome to the do follow podcast Heather it's great to have you with us hey thank you so much it's good to be here we have a lot to get to today because it's a very exciting topic and I just wanted to jump right in and ask you to tell us a

bit more about your journey through the SEO industry and how you became known as the pioneer of SEO copyrighting wow so I have been in the industry since the very very beginning which is wild to think about that back in the day conferences were very small we were just a a very intimate group of search Geeks that would travel around and talk about this stuff and what I came from a marketing background before I got into SEO so how I was looking at things as a Content like I knew that keywords were a thing back then I mean keywords were a thing back then but I was more focused on well how do you create content that has these keywords in them so people will be able to find what they needed to find in Al to Vista because back then we weren't even thinking about Google Google was just a thing but it wasn't a big thing and wow have things changed since then so since that time back in say 1998 I have watched the SEO content uh industry

evolve from we don't want content don't put any content on the pages because people won't read it to we want all the content create long form content to okay we can create content and then have it spun and just swap out the keywords and Syndicate that to different places and to where we are now where we're using generative art AI to create content that we're posting on Google so it's wild to see how the industry has changed so much and the opportunities have changed so much but one of the things we'll talk about is the foundations of SEO writing what the what it was meant for what we're doing with it what the intent has stayed consistent over time the tactics how we play with Google all of that has definitely shifted so it's been a very fun ride over this over 20 some odd years great then let's just dive in specifically to the topic about of AI helping us create different texts so with the rise of these tools AI

generative AI tools how have you seen SEO copyrighting evolve in the recent year or two oh yeah that's been fascinating so uh if you look back in anything that I created or spoke about even like a year and a half ago I was very I won't quite say anti- aai with writing but I was very very hesitant and a lot of that came from I had seen what had happened in the SEO writing industry and and in industry across the board where people were thinking oh well gez if I can get chat GPT for 20 bucks a month it cost me $75,000 to have a decent writer du do the math um and so in that way I see that at the very beginning I wasn't too down with it now what I'm seeing around how it can help is that although I don't see Chad GPT right now or generative AI being able to completely replace the human in everything we do there's a lot there that I think that just for accuracy's sake um being able to storytelling people talk about all of this we still

need the writers right we still need that talented person who understands our brand voice however when we have ai tools we are able to create writing assets faster than before and look at our writing in a different way so even for someone like me who has over 30 plus years experiences as a copywriter I have been doing this forever once I dug into what I can do in terms of productivity with say CH GPT or Claude I realized that that is the big game Cher right now for writers and for companies is learning how to leverage that in a way to where they can still create the assets they need to using those SEO writing best practices and they can use generative AI tools to make that process slightly easier and let the writers do what they do best it doesn't replace but it allows them to focus on higher level things which I think is amazingly cool across the board yeah I totally

agree uh one of the things I want to stop on straight away is the main principles of SEO copyrighting what has changed what has remain the same maybe some principles have become obsolete with the AI advance but maybe we don't need to do as much desk research because it just everything is in there how traditional SEO copyrighting has changed specifically with regard to the advance of AI different tools part is interesting because it's more of like what Google is looking at now and and that has changed what how SEO copywriting has evolved so back in the day we were talking about okay you need to optimize every page on your site for like one maybe two main keywords running shoes then another page for blue running shoes now what we're looking at is okay we don't need to do that anymore what we do need to do is look at search intent and write according to entities and and write in a conversational way so all of that has definitely shifted over the years for what Google is rewarding and with chat GPT coming into that especially and I have not played with

this yet but I would love to um where that I can see it can being really fun for writers is like even now with say Persona research things that it would take time and effort and and a lot of back and forth with the client to be able to pull all that information now what we can do with chat GPT is be able to pull things into it and have it create content or at least a Persona that's pretty good that we can start asking questions and start making determinations with how we look at our content with that uh we can look at chat GPT in a way that can help us say if we have a very large article slice and dice it into different ways that repurpose it into social posts create YouTube summaries do do things that I don't want to say that they are like lower level task because they are important but they're things that can be automated and that kind of automation is a big deal now what I think where Chad GPT can go

wrong is that for some folks if they're not used to what they're doing and they're writing with it for the first time and they do not know SEO copyrighting best practices they might just start typing stuff into Chad GPT and say I want a top rank article on Law and because they don't know what they don't know then that can spit out the same type of crap that used to flood the search results a long time ago so where I see the the research going with Chad GPT is it helps us streamline it helps us repurpose it helps us do more things with our writing but in terms of best practices where the danger is is that if you like I said if you don't know what you don't know you can create content inadvertently that's not very good that sounds very homogeneous and that's something that I've heard across the board from agencies who did try to get rid of their writers and then realize that they needed to bring people back to be able to write better content I also one of the aspects that I love about having a human author in there is that

you can connect with a person and you can go attend an event network with that person build a connection and then you have something there but if you just replace everything with AI how do you actually build up on that connection other than just attracting people to your blog you know exactly and one of the cool things that AI will do to that with the human connection is let's say you and are talking and I'm asking you hey um I'm curious what do you think about my community can you test drive it can you give me some ideas I want to know what's going on we we get a transcript I start adding all of those transcripts into jet GPT and I say help me understand what the trends are what are the pain points what do people love what do people not dig as much so with us as people we might be biased towards our own product and think every we thing we do is is wonderful we might think that certain things or what needs to be fixed what that can do is it can help us expand those human conversations and give us actionable data so then we're able to say okay when I'm writing the sales page this is what I know is

important to Andrew my Persona this is what I want to make sure is is in there which you may not have done or noticed before even as a skilled copywriter even if you did notice it having that instant transcript and data pulled in is amazingly time saving with regard to pull pulling that data uh um because right now I'm when I'm thinking about copyrighting using AI it does not know the search volume of any keywords like the way I see it my question is how can content creators leverage generative AI to enhance their specifically SEO strategies you're making sure their content is of high quality as well but just with regard to making sure that it's not just well written text but with regard to the thing that you said earlier like creating text and helping people find it on Google so just with with regard to specifically enhancing your SEO strategy is there any way we can take advantage of of AI tools right now I use I mean there's certainly there are certainly AI writing tools so for

example Bruce clay has his preiter doai that he is promoting to folks as a way to help writers get the information without having to research as much so there is that but let's say you don't want that you don't have that you're looking at traditional claw chck GPT um I don't dig it so much for the seo's part because it doesn't always do a great job for people who don't dig into it a lot but what it can do is you can start saying okay here is an example of a web page can you provide me keyword ideas based on different types of search intent and get a list there that you can research further I've taken content and I've said okay can you search I'm serving this back into you this is content that I've written before these are the key phrases that I'm using do you see any other opportunities places where I could change the headlines or sub headlines make it more key phrase Rich make it better for for the reader and that can produce information too so where I see the the

time saen for that is that back and forth that you can do with a tool where you can get information and it's always a trust pit verify here are the key phrases here are the search and C here's a page extract what you see as a search intent and the key phrases from it and then let me see what I can do writing it those types of tips can make it can give you that like enhanced double check especially if you're writing by yourself or you are writing within a group of folks that aren't as Savvy with SEO but in terms of like do I use it to research key phrases and and do something that would be more based around a tool no for stuff like that is where I still stick with semrush other tools I see rankings because I find those are more reliable for what I need to do and give me another broader view of the data yeah that was just the question I was about to ask you like what what are the risks if you just rely too heavily on it because I've heard stories of people just for an experiment thing just try getting uh suggestions on how to best promote an article what keywords best to

use because I personally been writing articles as well and uh maybe 10 years ago I was focused on the keywords then I stoed focusing on how on like the keyword density I just wanted to have a naturally sounding text so I stopped focusing on making sure that the word sandals is in my article about sandals text times I would just write it maybe like 10 times and then I would have synonyms in there as long as it just reads naturally because you know you have to love writing putting words together into sentences first of all and then yeah so because I I always struggled struggled having an intro cutting down the intro I just loved having I don't know just sharing all of my knowledge in every article you know I dig that I completely understand and actually that is one of the ways that I will use chat DPT and it will say cut this introduction it's too long and not adding value like oh come on and often it's right you know if I pull my ego out of the way yeah killing Your Darlings you know but obviously not in such a big T with Stephen King but still we love we love our stuff what I wanted to ask you next is um how does AI generated content

impact user engagement and conversion rates compared to human written content do you have any data on that the way I see it is if an article is Well written I wouldn't complain if it's written by AI as long as I get I get what I want right exactly and um when I saw that question I did a search in perplexity um I was because I was curious about the different sources that would tell me how AI content is performing and so there are studies that say that it actually saw a greater engagement rate creating content for social and I can see that for some people because for creating content for social sometimes it's easier to have ai just spit it out that you modify and instead of like sitting there and trying to stress how to create a post that is funny and engaged and on topic with the called action so there's that um but then there are people that do not trust at content that they believe is AI generated that extends to the brand right so if your brand is continuously kicking out content that is not that great it reads like AI you know

then that can not be a negative thing for you um so personally there I'm sure I am reading good AI articles that have been enhanced by a person all the time and like you said I'm getting the information that I need I don't necessarily care about that I just want to get the information however I know that in say the freelance copywriting world uh where I I still will Mentor some writers that there would be clients that say do use AI for anything any part of your process and if they say yes I use it for brainstorming I use it to double check keyword research I use it for something else that will be the end of the conversation because AI content today is like SE content was considered back in the day is evil you shouldn't do it there's something wrong with you if you do and you're lazy if you're drawing it that way and it's funny how that attitude is coming back around so I remember training print

copywriters you know 10 15 20 years ago said I hate SEO because it's fake and it's artificial and it makes my writing sound formulaic same thing that you hear today my argument back then was it can if you do it wrong but you don't have to same argument of today AI content can be horrible I can understand why people wouldn't trust it if you're just kicking out stuff and you're not training the what you're using in your brand voice and using human um but that's on you that's that's not because of where the industry is heading with regard to people analyzing AI text we get that it's it's about just solving the person's issues the search answering the search query that intent in that in that specific moment but with regard to Google most of the time we're thinking about double eat eat how do we fit in that experience part and uh because I I can see that like the expertise the trust and Authority can be sort of simulated by AI how do you work with the

experience part just to make sure that Google sees that AI generated article and it satisfies those guidelines with regard to experience expertise trust and Authority what are your thoughts on that exactly so uh there has been one person I have not tested this so I cannot say if this is valid um that have all of her stories you know we as if you are writing enough content you have the stories that you share that you might modify a little bit throughout the years but basically you have five or six core stories how did you start in search what are you doing now blah she uploaded that to Chad gbt and then when she needed to insert story here it would modify her story so it added that little Personal Touch that to me is trusting the robots just to Tad more that I'm really comfortable doing so what I will do with that and what I share with people is they're like how do I add this in is I look at is like what kind of story what kind of theme before

you start writing do you want to talk about or share do you have a case study do you have a story where somebody came in and talked to you or somebody sent you an email or something happened to where that interaction is what allowed you to Showcase your expertise so it's a little bit of Storytelling a little bit of showing off what you can do which the best articles will have you know add in those studies add in everything that you have to make it sound personal so when you have that say General outline that either you fed into chat gbt or Claude and it kicked it back and Improvement or it might give you something to initially work with at then that's when you can look for opportunities to add in that bit of expertise especially and this is so important if you know what has already been positioning Google and you can do something that is different unique stands out than what is already positioning and where a lot of good content writers go wrong in general

outside of the whole AI thing is that they are they have the same content as everyone else because they think if this is positioning I should do it too or they just are right fast and they don't think of ways to differentiate so sometimes the way to differentiate and show expertise is to Zig while everyone else is zagging and say this is what people say in the industry but yeah I think they're wrong I mean as an SEO copywriter who came from direct response there are people that think why are you talking about AI it's the devil I don't mean to use it as a differentiator but it does it does change the conversation a little bit when I say I've gone from this and I now I I'm kind of embracing it looking at where you can add a different type of value that was already there not only does it help with Google and all of that stuff but it helps your brand and I think in today's world where we can't really trust Google to position our content like we used to anything that we can do to build brand awareness across channels get people talking about

our stories and expertise that's a good thing and so being able to add that expertise in through those stories through the the interactions we have every day uh Rand fishkin is an ex excellent example of using everyday stuff that he does to be able to illustrate a point and that is what people will remember and have them start seeking out your content rather than relying on them eventually finding it in a search engine yeah he actually calms me down that once he said this because I was thinking like oh my God if it's going to just take care of the experience part as well and it's going to look real enough authentic enough it's that fine line right and and someday maybe they'll be able to fake it really well and that's just what's going to happen I hope not because I think that the backlash for AI will be is that we want that authenticity we connect with people I connect with you I see your face I like you you I feel like we're friends we've been talking for you know 30 some odd minutes and that's what we want as as people as humans and kicking out too much stuff that sounds

automated that encourages that separation and and just for a lot of people just clunks right now my next question is with regards to search engines how do they perceive and rank AI generated content if that is something that you know about and maybe what steps um sto professionals can take to optimize their content to appear in AI in AI search that's been a fascinating long story so Google has been like we don't like it it's awful and today it's like well it's okay um as long as you're not kicking out like thousands of AI generated pieces in order to spam Google and and manipulate search rankings so Google Google has always kind of bowed to the reality of how things are today and in this case how things are today is hey we are we are using these tools they they are being used to to create content whether we like it or not so in that way I I kind of put that to the side of the table it's like you're okay if you're spamming Google that's another story but it always has been so the secondary

question is like okay so you what do you want to do do you want to be in an AI take Google's AI overviews you know or appear in um chat GPT search and that is an interesting question to chase um Andy from orbit media he did a fantastic breakdown on this about you know here's how to position AI overviews is it really worth it and so one of the things that we look at with AI overviews like what is currently positioning are people reading and are people taking action all of that stuff we know that some people just hate AI overviews because they don't want to read that kind of noise but assuming it's important your brand um it would be interest one first thing to look at is like what kind of search is it and is that search important enough to you to try to manipulate your content around an AI overview because if people are just looking at what the content says they're getting their quick answer and they're booing out then that might not be worth it to do all the

little turky things that you can do to be able to get in an AI overview instead I would say this optimize your content well write it the way you would write it anyway there if you you might be pulled in just because but to focus your efforts on doing what you would normally do and instead what Andy was mentioning is that especially if you're a B2B consider would it be more worthwhile instead of looking at Ai overviews and being cited is to create things like case studies uh do original research have videos with your subject matter experts or have your subject matter experts write things content that expands upon your brand assets and for people that are looking for someone to purchase from would say okay they they have I like their subject matter experts I read their case studies I trust them as a company I now feel more comfortable making a purchase so for example you have Microsoft that appears a lot in AI

overviews because it's Microsoft right and so for a company like them it might make sense for them to be everywhere because again they're Microsoft they have good content it would naturally position anyway because of brand Authority blah all of that but for everyone else who are looking at how to figure out how to spend their time and how to look at where to send their writers if they don't have that much money to work with or or they can only produce a little bit of content every month then it may be more more worthwhile to dig into your sales data and try to figure out what kind of content has helped push leads into sales or help Drive leads and in those cases you may not want to play with AI reviews instead create something that you know will help that conversion and make you money because in the old way of SEO copywriting you wanted to be everywhere you would optimize for every single keyword no matter what and back then it was kind of easier to do so it made more sense uh but today it's not as easy to

do uh you're not necessarily going to position even if you're an authority even if you write good content even if you love what you created so it's time to look beyond that and see where else can you create content that will add value make you money and resonate with the people who buy from you help help build up that brand awareness and and turn them into fans great points Heather um yeah we've had Andy cadino on as well he shared how he gets feedback from Chad GP like what you said at the very beginning not writing stuff but like uh getting the persona communication right getting feedback on a longer article so we're very excited to have him on and just like we're excited to have you on and hopefully continue to have this conversation later on in the future um one of the things I wanted to ask you is um more to the general like philosophical questions that are more closer to the end of the of our our conversation how do you see our role changing in SEO copywriting as these tools become even more sophisticated one thing that I want that I want to say additionally is that for example my brother was working at a company where he developed a tool that replaced him

for example what you could do is just send all of your 30 years of Texs into it and say okay continue working as as Heather Lloyd Martin and I'll just be be taking the backseat and just looking at it everything how everything's going but that is not what you want right you want to still be active and put words together so going back to the question is as these tool become even more sophisticated once we get uh artificial super intelligence how do you see what is your prediction how how are we going to write is is writing even going to be a thing or is it just going to be all in our thoughts and everybody's individ ual super intelligence is going to be communicating specifically with one another I have no idea I'm just also spitballing here but just interesting and your thoughts it's fascinating because if you would have asked me even a couple of years ago would we be here now today where Chad GPT is able to put out you know sort of okayish content depending on what you do I would say not not quite yet so I mean that's a real question so there's a couple ways I can answer that and the one is like does AI

make writers or cont content creators lazy and and suck out their creativity and that is kind of a valid question in a way because you can if you um are working fast and not really into what you're doing kind of get into this Vibe where you use chat GPT instead of an assistant you use it as your boss and whatever you write it's like if it says something yeah whatever it's good I'm fine um and that reminds me of like trusting SEO tools who will say like you got you have a red Circle right here that means something's bad on your content and you as a writer know it's okay you don't necessarily want something like that to tell you how your writing should flow so in that way I think that there is for some writers of at some times the risk of not being as creative and in all many cases I see that also being company-driven because the companies think oh well you can create more with with less time now so

we're just going to increase scope of everything that you do and that no matter what even if we weren't talking about AI sucks the creativity right out of things because you can't you don't have time but let's say it's 10 years from now ai can suck stuff out of our brains and and instead of talking to Heather the person you can talk to Heather the chatbot and it can almost be a real experience and that you don't really need to write anymore it's just kind of provide a brief prompt about how you're feeling that day and everything spills out of you I would predict that if we were to to get to that level that there would still be opportunities for human level interaction and content because we have always been creative beings since the very beginning of time that we need to be able to express ourselves in ways through stories and although that will provide people an outlet at people that might not be writers an outlet to be able to communicate and do things that they never did before which I see as an

advantage of chat gbt now um if it could do everything for us there would still be those core people that would create because that's what they have to do they have to create and there will be people that will always resonate because we want to connect with people at this point we don't necessarily want to connect with Bots or with uh with people that we know are not real even though it kept being thrown at us because we want that authenticity I would like to say that although can probably get 95% there someday with how the technology is going that 5% from people like you and me of what we can offer the writing what we can do and how we connect with the people who want to connect with us that is going to be the magic and we're the ones that will always hold that magic as people and AI will never be able to pull that from us so I'm optimistic AI may take some jobs sure but for the folks that what they do it's never going to

take that away from us how can future SEO copywriters prepare themselves what can they do to maintain their create creativity in a time when we are just bombarded with solutions that just help us all the time and just hey do you want this even like on Google word Google Docs I just write something and it can predict sometimes the next word and just help me finish my sentence I'm like okay thank you and I was like maybe five years me that's too much maybe like four years ago I started happening and I was already s of sort of thinking like okay that's pretty pretty good uh so how do you see um young professionals eager to become copywriters how can they what can they do to sort of avoid all the noise and still focus on being creative creative what what was your secret how what is your story to becoming the pioneer of a c specifically like how do you what skills do you think you got as a child maybe LED you to this point probably the biggest skills for me is that I am very much a research geek where I want to go back to Source materials and I want to learn from the people who taught stuff who are like for

example when I was learning my skills I was reading a lot of Bob bl's Books I I got to meet him later on in life and that was really fun and the way he taught me things the way that the way he shared information helped for me click about what it meant to be a writer how exciting it would be to take a turn of phrase and make something really boring a widget into something that sounds exciting and that people wanted to do so for me it was always a challenge and always getting into the research learning from the people who came before me so I could take that information and be able to do something different and better with it um for the people that are coming up today there are um and I see this through my my trainings there are people there are writers that have that kind of hunger that want to learn everything from everyone so they're not necessarily looking at I want to learn copywriting from Google and have J AI teach me it's I want to okay here's a

sales formula of Pas I want to know what that means I want to know how to do it in a way to be able to differentiate what's good and what's not now not all copy writers going to want to do that right there's going to be some that are just going to be like I want to write it's going to be okay I'll use chap GPT that's great but for the writers that really want to dig into their craft where I've seen that success happen are the folks that are a blend of old school a new school who know where things come from to be able to evaluate if the information that we're getting from Claud chat gbt whatever is good if it flows if it works for us because if we just always trust the robots and and let them to whatever and and give our creativity over to them then going back to the question before I think we lose that but for copywriters coming up today especially copywriters that want to differentiate themselves and say I know how to do more than write a really good prompt having that kind of holistic

standpoint of what came before me and here's what could be coming after me can make the difference between a good copywriter that gets does pretty okay and a copywriter that's at the top of their game and able to write content that make people just salivate for more and have fun with it um but again it kind of goes back into that fire are you doing it because you love it and it's fun and you want to do dig in and learn more because it's exciting that's why I dig SEO and AI because it's always different it's never going to be static for me that part is fun but if I were to just let AI tell me what's going on and never do anything different then I think that that would make life sad and I would not be able to produce as well so for new copywriters learn dig in find this kind of stuff because what chap GPT has trained on is stuff that the the oldtime copy writers have mastered over Generations right yeah I'm definitely uh was at a stage where I was thinking like

what am I in it for am I in it for just to put up a lot of freelance articles and just get the money and after after a while I started understanding that I'm ined for the art of writing and that's exactly that's what keeps me coming back every day to throw another question at you is going to be basically like a a takeaway what is the most um important thing that you would that you want our listeners who are specifically people engaged in copyrighting or CEOs who are thinking about how to sort of fastpac this process so what is your main takeaway for people who are trying to navigate this evolving landscape of SEO copyrighting during a time where AI is just helping us everywhere yeah that's a really good question so there's a couple ways I would answer that is one is focus on one tool at first right so it's very tempting when you read all of the things that the latest cha GPT or Cloud whatever can do to start doing all the things and trying to pay or not pay just just use a free version to do all the things um and then it becomes confusing

because they're different they have like different personalities there's one that you can use that might be slightly better than the other so and to train those systems takes time to work with them back and forth so that's where I see a lot of of writers immediately burning out is that they overwhelm they don't know where to focus their efforts and because of that they do nothing like I'm done this isn't for me I'll dip back and in another year maybe it'll be better so there's that aspect of it but also see I'm trying to think of like and there's like 15 different ways that I could answer this question about like how to integrate it uh but probably the second most important thing is that if you're brand new to it and you're thinking about how do I bring it into my life think about what drives me nuts what do I hate doing for me as weird as it sounds I have a hard time taking a blog post that I wrote and creating a summary for social it's a weird block it takes me almost sometimes as much time as it does to to write the darn Post in

the first place to write a teeny tiny subm I don't know why uh and so that was the first things that I started playing with is how can I do this to where it still sounded authenic to me with some tweaking um so if you focus your efforts down to what your pain points are then it becomes a little bit easier of things that you can do later that can make your life even better like I had an idea of what I could do with some training materials in a float tank of all places like oh I can use CLA to do this and that's the kind of experience that you have after you've had some time kind of working through the use case for you initially so I would say don't be afraid of it but don't figure that it's going to solve every problem in your life especially at the beginning dip in and see what works for you and then if you become like into it it becomes really fun like the person you mentioned like happen the B care of all the things that you can do to I mean just play I just play with it and it is a fun thing to play with fantastic Heather today

Heather Lloyd Martin shared with us her expertise and insights on how SEO copyrighting has evolved with geni search what works what's dead and how to stay ahead I hope our listeners got inspired and are already coming up with new ideas on how to create better content using AI thank you heather for making time for for us today and sharing your knowledge with our community and to our listeners thank you for tuning in be sure to subscribe to the doall podcast and we'll see you in the next episode [Music]