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🐊 Wrestling the SEO Crocodile
21 Plays23 days ago
SEO teams know the “crocodile” all too well: impressions rise, clicks fall, and the graph starts to look like the profile of a very hungry reptile.
But for B2B executives who do not live in Google Search Console every day, the pattern can be confusing, alarming, and easy to misread.
In this episode of B2B Marketing Pint, Brian and Brendan welcome Adrianna Shukla, a demand gen leader with deep experience scaling marketing engines, to explain what the SEO crocodile really means, why it matters, and what marketing leaders should do about it.
The conversation moves past panic and into practical action: how AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and other answer engines are changing buyer behaviour; why page views alone no longer tell the full story; and how to focus SEO reporting on pipeline, engaged visits, branded search, and conversion quality.
Adrianna also tackles one of marketing’s most stubborn myths: that better SEO always means creating more content. Her advice is sharper: fix what you already have, structure it clearly, answer real buyer questions, and make it easier for both humans and AI systems to understand.
Grab a pint and learn how to wrestle the SEO crocodile without losing sight of what matters most: qualified buyers, better intent signals, and revenue impact.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:27
Brendan Ziolo
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the B2B Marketing Pint. Super excited for today's topic.
Guest Introduction: Adriana Shukla
00:00:37
Brendan Ziolo
But before we get there, Brian, who's joining us today?
00:00:41
Brian O'Grady
Thank you for asking, Brendan. This is going to be a goodie today. I'm happy to introduce to you Miss Adriana Shukla. Adriana wave, there you go. Adriana is out of Boston.
00:00:51
Adrianna Shukla
Hi everybody.
00:00:52
Brian O'Grady
There you go.
00:00:52
Adrianna Shukla
Hi.
Role and Marketing Focus at Snowplow
00:00:53
Brian O'Grady
Adriana is a demand gen leader and Adriana has built a lot of demand gen and scaled marketing engines across various companies. We work together at some of them, others not so much, but I'm intrigued to find out all about it.
Recollecting Past Collaborations
00:01:07
Brian O'Grady
And today, Adriana, correct me if I'm wrong, you were director of demand gen at Snowplow and you've got all the pipeline growth and the whole marketing stack. I see i see you nodding.
00:01:18
Brian O'Grady
So, okay, that's that's a nice little portfolio to have to yourself. And Adriana and I go back to a place where we worked together called Canaxis. I think you owned Webb at the time, Adriana.
00:01:28
Adrianna Shukla
All right.
00:01:28
Brian O'Grady
Search Warrant Digital was an agency that supported you folks. We did some good things there, had some fun, won some awards. But what we did there has changed a lot. That was a few years ago now and there was a lot of SEO there and that has all changed or has it?
00:01:44
Brian O'Grady
this is the This is the question we will be reviewing today. And one of the reasons we wanted to talk to Adriana, let's be honest, you've got a neat mix to your personality type, Adriana, which is, you know stuff and you're not afraid to say it, yet you're still good fun to work with.
00:02:01
Brian O'Grady
I know lots of people of it have one of those attributes. I don't know too many people who have all three of those attributes. I really value the folks who are not shy, will tell you what they think, but don't don't need to be mean about it.
00:02:14
Brian O'Grady
I think that's that's a not a bad description of you in a nutshell. So thank you for joining us today. And thank you for not being vague or wishy-washy. This is going to be a lot of fun.
00:02:26
Brian O'Grady
And the most important question I have for you is, what are you sipping today?
Casual Segment: What Are We Drinking?
00:02:30
Adrianna Shukla
So i have a unicorn sangria.
00:02:32
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:02:34
Adrianna Shukla
Okay. Yes. It's raspberry, blue raspberry, strawberries and peaches with a white wine. So that is what I am.
00:02:44
Brian O'Grady
Wow.
00:02:45
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. So that is what I am sipping on today.
00:02:48
Brian O'Grady
So it's not made with real unicorns.
00:02:50
Adrianna Shukla
No, no, it's actually, it's called a skinny mix and yeah, mix it in with your white wine and you've got your unicorn sangria.
00:02:54
Brian O'Grady
Okay.
00:03:00
Adrianna Shukla
So, so that's what I'm drinking today, guys.
00:03:03
Brendan Ziolo
And we don't have to, yeah, we don't have to change our tagline of no unicorns were harmed in the filming of this podcast. i that That's also super helpful. Thank you, Andrew.
00:03:15
Adrianna Shukla
what are you drinking?
00:03:17
Brian O'Grady
I just seem so boring in comparison. This is a classic. We've done it once before another episode. It's a dab. It's a German beer, which is my shorthand for good beer.
00:03:25
Adrianna Shukla
Mm-hmm.
00:03:28
Brian O'Grady
And I'm almost to the point of not caring what part of Germany or what style if it comes from that country and it's beer, I probably want to drink it. And that's one of these. How about you, Brendan?
00:03:39
Brendan Ziolo
I think I'm also repeating again. I'm doing a sober carpenter. This one's a session IPA. Fingers crossed. It's a great summer beer. It's a lighter IPA for anyone who likes an IPA. This one's non-alcohol, but session IPAs are all good. I'm hoping that signals to start a summer someday, week, month, or whatever we're at.
00:03:59
Brian O'Grady
Someday. I mean i mean cut speak
00:04:01
Adrianna Shukla
Now.
00:04:03
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, now. Any day now would be good.
00:04:05
Brian O'Grady
i may have gotten sleep all over me this morning and what I was up to this morning.
00:04:05
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:04:09
Brian O'Grady
So let's let's not do that.
00:04:11
Brendan Ziolo
All right. well, I think Adriana beat us to the opening. I didn't open, so I will do that now and pour.
00:04:18
Brian O'Grady
And I'm not even using a glass. I'm being a barbarian today.
00:04:20
Brendan Ziolo
Oh boy.
00:04:21
Adrianna Shukla
Cheers.
00:04:21
Brendan Ziolo
I have a draft, a glass.
00:04:21
Brian O'Grady
Yeah.
00:04:23
Brendan Ziolo
All right. Here we go. All right. Cheers everyone.
00:04:26
Brian O'Grady
Cheers to good podcasting.
00:04:26
Adrianna Shukla
Cheers.
00:04:31
Brendan Ziolo
All right. Uh, Brian, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask the first question today. I'm not sure who's supposed to, but why not?
00:04:35
Brian O'Grady
will be like that then.
Key SEO Focus Questions
00:04:39
Brendan Ziolo
so Adriana, as Brian highlighted, you have a great background, a lot of insights in a lot of different areas, but I'm going to kick this off with one area that I know a lot of our listeners are talking about and thinking about, and that's, you know, they're not in the weeds on SEO like you are and like Brian is as well, but they're responsible for results.
00:05:02
Brendan Ziolo
So if you're CMO, a VP, a senior marketing leader,
00:05:02
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:05:07
Brendan Ziolo
you know Walking into the room right now, what are two or three things that they should be asking their SEO team to focus on? I know a lot has changed, so feel free to also bring us up to speed on a lot of the changes. But what what are you looking at? What are you seeing? And what do you think people should be focusing on?
00:05:26
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. So I'd say that when I'm talking to my team, there's a couple questions that I ask, you know, first to myself and to them. Are we being used by AI, not just ranked by Google, but like, are we showing up in results for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, et cetera?
00:05:47
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. and not just being ranked by Google in like search results, because as we all know, we now have AI that is kind of our search engine. And then are we capturing like big problems, high intent problems, not just traffic.
00:06:04
Adrianna Shukla
So sure, we could all day say, what is Z? Or, know, what is, you know, a certain subset of problems.
00:06:15
Adrianna Shukla
But really what we want to do is how do I fix X or compare versus B and try to capture those that are,
00:06:29
Adrianna Shukla
making transactional or or informative decisions or high intent problems, as I call them.
Measuring and Adapting SEO Strategies
00:06:39
Adrianna Shukla
And then we also want to tie our SEO as much as we can to pipeline, not just like are we getting page views, which from a brand awareness perspective, you know, I'm sure that I'll get a chance to talk about brand awareness. But from that perspective we always want to tie it back to pipeline so you know are we actually influencing the opportunities that are coming through uh to us not just are we seeing our page views you know staying the same plateauing growing etc so i would say that i stick to those three questions and there are a variety of tools out there that you can use to
00:07:22
Adrianna Shukla
measure these things. But if you don't have the budget to be able to do that, like I say to start off simple and go to chat GPT or perplexity or Gemini and have a spreadsheet, literally. And I literally say to my team, here's our spreadsheet.
00:07:41
Adrianna Shukla
Here are the queries that we want to show up for. And week over week, we just say, did we show up in these queries where we mentioned yes or no?
00:07:53
Adrianna Shukla
Were competitors listed? Yes or no? Which ones? And the source links that they used, you know, the the AI used in order to come up with that distinction. Yeah.
00:08:06
Adrianna Shukla
And that will allow you to see like what are competitors also popping up for it, like how are they getting ranked as well as, you know, if you weren't ranked, why or how could you be for those queries?
00:08:19
Adrianna Shukla
And then just mark that over time, like week over week and see if there's any changes. And that's kind of. you know from my perspective, those are the main things that I focus on in order to see, you know, are we making a difference in this SEO world and how do we move the needle?
00:08:38
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:08:40
Brian O'Grady
Fair enough.
00:08:40
Brendan Ziolo
Wow. Wow. She she she she didn't you know drop any any good hints for us to follow up on.
00:08:45
Adrianna Shukla
Let's
00:08:45
Brendan Ziolo
Keep it simple. Focus on the problem.
00:08:48
Adrianna Shukla
go.
00:08:50
Brendan Ziolo
Tie it to pipeline. Wow. Yeah, this is, I mean, all good marketing points. And yeah, definitely takes us beyond the SEO conversation. So maybe, Brian, you can take over and get her with a harder question since mine was too easy.
00:09:07
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:09:07
Brian O'Grady
I don't know if I've ever stumped Adrienne. I don't know if this will be the this'll be the day to try. I do like the suggestion, I'll paraphrase what you said, of let's not just do random acts of SEO.
00:09:17
Brian O'Grady
Let's actually know what we're trying to achieve and then figure out, point that in a direction of a goalpost. I like that a lot. Exactly.
00:09:17
Adrianna Shukla
No.
00:09:23
Adrianna Shukla
I mean, we did that a lot with you, Brian, you know? Like, we always had, you know, like, this goalpost that we were trying to hit. And, like, are we up, down?
00:09:33
Adrianna Shukla
Like, you know, where are we at from that, you know? So, you know.
00:09:36
Brian O'Grady
exactly And I know later on when we're goingnna talk about, we can either make the case that everything's different than it used to be, or everything's actually the same as it used to be.
00:09:45
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:09:45
Brian O'Grady
And I think we can make either argument. I'm intrigued to figure out which one comes out later. But before we go there, I want to talk about monsters. I want to talk about crocodiles in particular.
00:09:57
Brian O'Grady
For those who are in the industry, their eyes just all started rolling because they know for the last about a year, year and a half ago or so, people all started to see these graphs that looked like, these are SEO graphs, folks, graphs that look like a profile of a crocodile's mouth opening.
00:10:13
Brian O'Grady
If you're not, and yeah, exactly. There you go. I was looking for a visual. I should have brought a visual to this and I didn't. And.
00:10:18
Brendan Ziolo
I was going to ask for a what i was asked for a whiteboard here.
00:10:18
Adrianna Shukla
That's what I'm here for, Ryan. That's what I'm here for.
00:10:22
Brendan Ziolo
was going to ask for a whiteboard sketch, but apparently we just need Adriana's hand signals.
00:10:22
Brian O'Grady
yeah.
00:10:27
Brian O'Grady
So this is your crocodile from the side and these, this is search console or other tools you're looking at. These are all of your impressions going up and to the right. And that makes you kind of happy because it's better than them going down.
00:10:37
Brian O'Grady
But this down here, the bottom of the crocodile's jaw is all of your visits or your traffic or your sessions going down and to the right. And that's happening at the same time. And that's plain weird. People in the industry have been dealing with this for a little while, but if you don't spend every day, every moment talking SEO, that might be fresh and new.
00:10:56
Brian O'Grady
So Adriana, what's what's your take on it?
00:10:57
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:10:59
Brian O'Grady
What's going on there? What, if anything, should you do about that situation?
00:11:05
Adrianna Shukla
I'm one of the many that had also seen the crocodile mouth on my on my data. And, you know, it really came down to when Google released their AI overview information and they kind changed some of their algorithms to you know accommodate for that.
00:11:22
Adrianna Shukla
You're really, what you're seeing is that you're becoming visible.
00:11:25
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:11:26
Adrianna Shukla
But it's they're not landing on your site anymore because they're getting their answers from the AI engine, right? So they don't have to come to your site. They just, they got the answers that they needed. And, you know, a lot of people, I mean, I sat in several, you know, meetings with folks on my team saying, well, how the hell do we get them back to their our site?
00:11:49
Brian O'Grady
Yeah,
00:11:50
Adrianna Shukla
We can't have them leave. We can't have them get our... you know, the data and the information and all that stuff and then not get something for it. so
00:11:58
Brian O'Grady
I can't give them meal for free.
00:12:00
Adrianna Shukla
yeah, exactly. so
00:12:01
Brian O'Grady
If crocodiles were mammals, I guess. But anyway, please proceed.
00:12:06
Adrianna Shukla
So yeah, we, you know, there was a lot of, there was a couple of weeks there where we were trying to figure out what the hell did we do? You know, and at first we were like, is something broken? That was the first thing.
00:12:16
Adrianna Shukla
And then we were like, a oh, nope.
00:12:16
Brian O'Grady
Good instinct.
00:12:19
Adrianna Shukla
All of this information started to come out of what was actually causing it. So when we started to like unpack it a little bit, we said, well, you know what? If they get the answer that they're looking for in that,
00:12:35
Adrianna Shukla
We need to figure out how we get them to want to know more. Because sure, they can read the AI overview. And let's say it's what is Adriana have in her hand, right, for a drink.
00:12:48
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:12:51
Adrianna Shukla
And it's like, oh, that's intriguing. It's pink, you know, whatever. And they get their answer. Right. But it's like, oh, I want to know how that's made because I want to try it.
00:13:01
Adrianna Shukla
And so that essentially we started to think about, well, it it actually brought up some really good questions for us internally of like, well, how the hell do we make people want to learn more? Like what what do they want to learn post that information?
00:13:17
Adrianna Shukla
I used Google Search Console a lot to look at like queries that we were showing showing up for, you know, and and trying to figure out what what are people searching on that we're actually showing up for and to to at least start there.
00:13:31
Adrianna Shukla
You know, and we we looked at a variety of of topics and ultimately ended up just coming down to like a goalpost and saying, what are the ones that are the most important for us to where we're losing traffic to our site that actually ended up driving us pipeline. So looking at the data and saying, okay, what search keywords and things like that did people come in off of?
00:13:57
Adrianna Shukla
And then we, you know, and we actually also looked at our search our paid search data too. We actually looked at our paid search too to see, you know, what were what were some of the queries that had the the most benefit to us. And from there, we we just whittled it down to what are our like 20 queries that we want to show up for that we ultimately want people to look for more information. And we actually ended up seeing our branded search traffic actually increase. So we saw our branded traffic increase and...
00:14:33
Adrianna Shukla
And so we ended up saying, okay, well, what's the correlation? You know, let's see if there's a correlation between where, when it started to increase or when it increases to when we release certain information, when we make big changes to content that we have.
00:14:51
Adrianna Shukla
When, you know, when I, when we put out like a LinkedIn ad campaign or something like that, what is the correlation that we're seeing there? Because less and less people are clicking and they're doing more searching. We also like look at, you know, what is the referral traffic from AI platforms as well to look at, you know, which platforms are driving the most.
00:15:13
Brendan Ziolo
you
00:15:19
Adrianna Shukla
And they all have different ways of going about it. So we kind of distill that information down into what are is our referral traffic What is Google Search Console saying from the query perspective that we should be focusing on?
00:15:33
Adrianna Shukla
And then what's driving ultimately pipeline for us? what are the What are the keywords and stuff that are driving? And then we focused on 20 to start.
00:15:42
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:15:43
Adrianna Shukla
And we essentially said, okay, we're gonna alter the content we already have. Don't create more content. Don't don't do that. i'll Yeah, I could go on all day about that.
00:15:53
Adrianna Shukla
Don't create more content. But go into the content you already have and alter it so that
00:15:59
Brian O'Grady
assuming you have Assuming you have some content in the first place.
00:16:02
Adrianna Shukla
Yes. Assuming you have content in the first place. Yes. I mean, if you already have a plethora of content, that's what I'm saying. If you don't have any content, well, yeah, let's work on that.
00:16:10
Brian O'Grady
you've got other You've got other problems.
00:16:12
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah, yeah. But if you have the content and you just want to show up, alter it so that it can be. and And you also have to think about how an AI platform, you know, actually ingests this information.
00:16:25
Adrianna Shukla
So, you know, going into bulleted information, making sure you have an LLMS.txt file, you know, making sure that you have schema data on your pages.
00:16:34
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:16:36
Adrianna Shukla
You know, there's like a variety of things that you need to make sure of. But Ultimately, when we saw this crocodile, I had a heart attack like everybody else.
00:16:47
Adrianna Shukla
And started yeah, they're scary.
00:16:48
Brian O'Grady
Parchediles are scary.
00:16:50
Adrianna Shukla
you know There were five little monkeys and there's no more five little monkeys. So swinging from the tree, just saying. it I don't know if you guys have ever heard that song. Maybe I'm the only one, but i have a five-year-old at home.
00:17:01
Brian O'Grady
The segway is working Brendan.
00:17:03
Adrianna Shukla
So you know five little monkeys swinging from the tree.
00:17:04
Brian O'Grady
i think
00:17:06
Brian O'Grady
I know where you're coming from.
00:17:06
Adrianna Shukla
i don't
00:17:08
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:17:08
Brian O'Grady
You're not, you're not.
00:17:10
Adrianna Shukla
so yeah that's you know that's where we're at and i think i i think the crocodile isn't as scary now now that we know how to how to attack the crocodile yeah yeah yeah
00:17:22
Brian O'Grady
what it means and what to do about it. Yeah, I do remember you're right though. When it first started happening, there was a lot of the closest thing to panic. I think I've seen heard in the SEO industry.
00:17:31
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah, I mean, like the panic across everybody's eyes when the data started showing. And honestly, I didn't have answers, you know, so it's like the hardest thing to when everybody's panicking and you're like, I don't have any answers for you right now. Let me figure out what we have to do. You know, and honestly, like we didn't have all the answers until well into the crocodile mouth, you know?
00:17:55
Adrianna Shukla
So, yeah, it's been it's been a journey.
00:17:56
Brian O'Grady
true.
00:17:59
Adrianna Shukla
It's been a journey. So,
New SEO KPIs and Their Impact
00:18:01
Brendan Ziolo
Right. So and in listening to you, Adriana, you know, it's clear that some of the metrics we've been using and KPIs that we've been using for the past number of years don't make sense anymore or or could be misleading because we don't we don't want more crocodiles.
00:18:15
Adrianna Shukla
Sure.
00:18:18
Brendan Ziolo
what are some of the KPIs that you're using now or that you're recommending people use when it, when it looks at, I guess, SEO, uh, but even more broadly, I, based on your previous answers, I have a guess for one of them, but but what do you, what you, what have you got? What are the KPIs you're following now or tracking?
00:18:36
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. So before all of this, right, you would kind of look at your, your page views, your MQLs, your, you know, potentially time on site and things like that. But I think I,
00:18:51
Adrianna Shukla
harp on the most are pipeline influence. So ultimately it doesn't matter if people are on your site, if they don't make it to an opportunity, right?
00:18:59
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:19:00
Adrianna Shukla
To, to pipeline. So that's the first one. And people will be like, well, how do you directly correlate that? Well, we have to look at, you know, a lot of people look at marketing attribution and they say like last touch type scenarios. Well,
00:19:14
Adrianna Shukla
Our team anyways, like has a variety of different methods. So we look at first touch, last touch, we have like a yeah U-shaped model to to kind of weight the they all the touch points that happen within within that. And I would say that like when you look at first touch, you need to see what ultimately brought them in.
00:19:32
Adrianna Shukla
Where where did they come from, like from a referrer? You know, what type of search terms did they come in off of?
00:19:37
Brendan Ziolo
So,
00:19:39
Adrianna Shukla
If you can gather that information. and drive that to pipeline. So we do that from a first touch perspective and look at that from a pipeline influence situation.
00:19:51
Adrianna Shukla
Now, a lot of people say, well, I get direct lot. Like, oh, my traffic is direct. how do I, how do I get that?
00:20:02
Adrianna Shukla
Well, first I'm going to tell you, you have to get a tool that gets way more granular than direct for you. And I know I get, I get frustrated with Google analytics. So don't start me on that, on that train, but, but,
00:20:11
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:20:15
Adrianna Shukla
From there, you need you need to look at, okay, so some some of them will, you know, even actually Salesforce is catching up on this, right? They'll they'll actually look at, you know, ChatGPT or Perplexity. You'll see that as like the referrer that's coming in. But there are tools out there that can help you to distill that information, you know, down to what's driving it. So get that information and then tie that to your opportunities so you can see that.
00:20:44
Adrianna Shukla
then because this traffic is coming in after they've already done research, right? They've already gone on the AI platforms.
00:20:52
Brian O'Grady
Thank you.
00:20:54
Adrianna Shukla
They've already researched. They've done this stuff. They land on your website. They don't really need need to answer much more than what they already have gotten. So they're a little bit more middle to bottom funnel when they come in now.
00:21:08
Adrianna Shukla
So I look at... how many pages within their visit are they viewing? Are they at all? Or are they engaged? You know, like what are they looking at? And a lot of times actually our our traffic on our doc site and like our documentation went up because they're middle bottom now. So now they're looking at more of that technical content.
00:21:32
Brendan Ziolo
you
00:21:38
Adrianna Shukla
more case studies which are always valuable documentation pages and being more technical and you know use cases and looking at like how are people actually utilizing the product not like what we're offering but what is the end outcome that you're trying to solve for And so that is, I look at engaged visits and that's kind of broken out into, you know, how many pages within their session so that we have a benchmark.
00:21:58
Brian O'Grady
you
00:22:08
Adrianna Shukla
And then what is the depth or time on those pages? And we can look at scroll depth as well.
00:22:14
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:22:15
Adrianna Shukla
Like, are they actually reading the pages or they just clicking around, et cetera? So that's kind of the second metric. So pipeline, engaged sessions and kind of depth of reading. And then what's the quality of that traffic that's coming in?
00:22:30
Adrianna Shukla
So we look at and we rank the people that come in and convert with us. And it we have like high intent form submissions. We have score outs, as we like to call them. And then we have like outreach, you know, outreach,
00:22:48
Adrianna Shukla
I can't even, my brain's not thinking right now, but like people that come in from our outbound outreach and and things of that nature, right?
00:22:51
Brian O'Grady
That's the unicorns.
00:22:56
Adrianna Shukla
And the high intent form submissions, they we look at that on a scale of one to five and we rank them.
00:23:00
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:23:06
Adrianna Shukla
And we we say, OK, how close to our ICP do those people fit? And we look at that over time.
00:23:17
Adrianna Shukla
What percentage of the people that are coming in actually fit our ICP?
00:23:23
Adrianna Shukla
We also do this on people that don't convert with us. So we have a variety of de-anonymization tools on our site to be able to de-anonymize the folks that are coming. And then we rank those people as well.
00:23:34
Adrianna Shukla
And we look at that over time too. To say like, are we hitting the right queries? are the people that are coming in, they may be the right persona, but maybe it's not the right team within the the company that we need to go after, things of that nature.
00:23:52
Adrianna Shukla
So it's a lot of learning for us. And it's a lot of shifting quickly too. So we do like six week sprints, essentially, of changes and It's important to look at it on a regular basis.
00:24:06
Adrianna Shukla
And it's hard when you are changing so often, but the market is changing so often.
00:24:10
Brian O'Grady
The
00:24:12
Adrianna Shukla
So you have to be able to adapt. And, you know, I even say like when we're hiring.
00:24:16
Brian O'Grady
only thing worse would be staying the same.
00:24:19
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah, yeah. When we're hiring, I'm not looking for necessarily a skill set. I'm looking for the ability to adapt and change quickly and and fitting in with the team more so than anything, because guess what?
00:24:32
Adrianna Shukla
I don't know everything that's going to come out in six months, nor does the next person. And they can try to convince me on that interview as much as they want, but they don't know.
00:24:41
Brian O'Grady
Good luck.
00:24:41
Adrianna Shukla
So, yeah. So it's, it's a matter of if people can change with the times. And so to go back to the KPIs, you know, I would just recommend making sure pipeline is, you know, pipeline's my biggest thing.
00:24:54
Adrianna Shukla
You know, I I've said it probably how many times, I mean, how about drink every time Adriana says pipeline, but yeah, You know, and then and then looking at page, you know, the the depth in which they're researching. And then from from there, looking at the conversion quality and kind of ranking that to see, like, where you're going and what's what's coming in. So,
00:25:16
Brendan Ziolo
I definitely was not surprised with the pipeline one, Adriana. I'll drink because I said it.
00:25:21
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:25:22
Brendan Ziolo
but But the engaged visit i Engage Visits, I think, is an awesome one. And and how you defined it is cool. And then, yeah, we've we've covered on a couple of previous podcasts the quality over quantity. So definitely definitely aligned on that one as well.
00:25:38
Brian O'Grady
And Adrienne, you referenced a couple things separately that actually are related to the crocodile that I want to call out for folks who don't do this all day every day. But at one point you mentioned, hey, our branded traffic is going up.
00:25:49
Brian O'Grady
At another point you mentioned, hey, our direct traffic is going up. What's up with that? At the same time as this weird crocodile is happening. Those things are not disconnected and and they're almost to the point of being normal for that period of time in the industry.
00:25:55
Adrianna Shukla
Mm-hmm.
00:26:00
Brian O'Grady
So If you find the crocodile really scary, you can take some solace in the fact that those direct and branded queries are typically pretty valuable ones.
00:26:10
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot you know, people are like, well, that's great, but how the hell did they get here? It's like this, you know, this unknown. And, you know, when, when people have unknowns, they get nervous, you know, it's like it, you know, you want to have predictable, forecastable information, you know, at your fingertips.
00:26:21
Brian O'Grady
Yes.
00:26:28
Adrianna Shukla
And yeah, it's definitely turned out.
00:26:29
Brian O'Grady
Well, i can I can riff on that.
00:26:31
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:26:32
Brian O'Grady
you're You're giving me a good segue because I want to riff on some of the confusion and the unknown in this industry.
00:26:37
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:26:38
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:26:38
Brian O'Grady
And it's, I'm going to call this question, pick pick your own acronym. So we could be talking about geogenerative engine optimization. We could be talking about answer engine optimization, AEO. You'd be talking about large language model LMMO. You get the idea.
00:26:53
Brian O'Grady
There's a lot of them. They're all seem to refer to versions of the same thing. And meanwhile, uh, one of my, one of the folks I follow and have for years, Mr. Rand Fishkin, his take on it is, you know, we've already got a perfectly good acronym for this.
00:27:06
Brian O'Grady
It's SEO. It just means search everywhere optimization. You know, that was kind of an argument about a year ago on LinkedIn or so. So in this acronym soup of SEO and AI and everything in between, where do you land?
00:27:21
Brian O'Grady
you have a favorite? And are we just over complicating this entire conversation?
Simplifying Marketing Language
00:27:27
Adrianna Shukla
We're overcomplicating it, Brian.
00:27:30
Brendan Ziolo
I'm glad she picked that one.
00:27:31
Adrianna Shukla
I mean... what
00:27:34
Brendan Ziolo
That's fair.
00:27:35
Adrianna Shukla
Would we be marketers if we didn't have an acronym? I'm just saying. i
00:27:39
Brendan Ziolo
That's fair. That's fair.
00:27:40
Adrianna Shukla
you know I mean, and I swear every company that I go into has their own set of internal acronyms that take like six months to learn as well.
00:27:47
Brian O'Grady
Yes.
00:27:49
Adrianna Shukla
So it's not just out, you know, verbiage that's used in the market. It's also internal verbiage too. but yeah i uh so internally you know like i i've been using aeo however i will say that seo is definitely just the blanket term right you're searching ultimately who it's a search engine you are searching for an answer uh in some way shape or form and so
00:27:59
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:28:10
Brian O'Grady
yes
00:28:19
Adrianna Shukla
I don't think it really needs to change. Now, internally, the reason we changed it is because it was the one we were communicating about it is almost to just say there was the old method of tracking information. And now there's this new method. And when we're when we're blanket statement talking about it, we want to make sure that everybody's putting their new hat on and not thinking about all the old things.
00:28:42
Adrianna Shukla
methods and things like that and saying, just think outside the box for a hot second. And, and it gets people to almost switch their brain from, okay, we're gonna do these sets of things to, okay, let's think outside the box.
00:28:59
Adrianna Shukla
And there is no set things that we do anymore. And think outside the box. And actually think it's a good thing think, know your product, like,
00:29:11
Adrianna Shukla
know your customers, know what they're actually trying to get to. And it's made us think even harder than we ever have in the past. So in terms of acronym soup, I think it's just the world we live in and we always have acronyms, but it's a PETA, if you know that acronym. There's mine that I'm going to throw in there today.
00:29:36
Brian O'Grady
I'm familiar with the taco, but that's a totally different conversation.
00:29:40
Adrianna Shukla
So, you know, it's, I would say that SEO, i'm I'm right there with them. You know, SEO is where it's at. And, you know, you can use different acronyms to do different things and communicate what you're talking about in this new world.
00:29:55
Adrianna Shukla
But ultimately, I think it just goes right back.
00:29:57
Brian O'Grady
It is useful for signaling to folks in the room who've heard the same one for 10 years. That's something, there's something a little different this time to pay attention to and and pull up your socks and start listening harder.
00:30:08
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah, yeah. And do you guys, what do you guys refer to it as within your orgs?
00:30:14
Brian O'Grady
It's funny when you referenced how the acronyms change with the organization you go to. That's what happens when we go to a new client site. We'll start set speaking one language and they'll have a different one.
00:30:20
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:30:23
Brian O'Grady
like, well, we're your agency. We're going to adopt however you talk about it.
00:30:26
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:30:26
Brian O'Grady
So you can call it a lead, can call an opportunity, can call it this or that or the other thing. As an aside, I will say that I think that will for me will be a sign when the marketing industry is all grown up.
00:30:38
Brian O'Grady
is when we stop recreating the language for things that are mostly the same most of the time. I don't think plumbers and carpenters have this problem. A two by four is usually a two by four.
00:30:49
Brian O'Grady
Nope, we're calling it something different today.
00:30:49
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah. Agreed. think that would be quite confusing for the person that's hammering the nail. What about Brendan?
00:30:58
Brian O'Grady
Exactly.
00:31:00
Brendan Ziolo
Right. Well, I mean, I agree with Brian.
00:31:02
Adrianna Shukla
brendan
00:31:05
Brendan Ziolo
I mean, I think most of the time it's what the client calls it. I, although I am surprised quite often the client calls them different things internally from each other.
00:31:15
Adrianna Shukla
yeah Right.
00:31:16
Brendan Ziolo
So that's another challenge, but, but yeah, I tend to, to go with and and do what they're doing just cause you know, it's easier for us to adapt than them in in many instances.
00:31:27
Brendan Ziolo
But I think to Brian's point on the SEO term, I think going in with SEO, people still tend to think the older side of that, right? So it does help to have something at least a bit a bit different when you're talking about it today.
00:31:42
Adrianna Shukla
yeah Yeah. And then you have to like You have to think about what is going to bring everybody in the room together and on the same page.
00:31:53
Adrianna Shukla
And regardless of what the term is that they use, ultimately you just need to be talking the same language, you know?
00:32:00
Brian O'Grady
You don't want to throw a grenade in the middle of the room unless you intend to throw a grenade in the middle of the room.
00:32:04
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah, exactly. exactly i throw a lot of grenades, Brian.
00:32:07
Brian O'Grady
I know, it's one the reasons I like you.
00:32:07
Adrianna Shukla
and what's the
00:32:11
Adrianna Shukla
There's a lot of grenades being thrown. Yeah.
00:32:14
Brian O'Grady
You flak jackets and helmets, we're good.
00:32:14
Brendan Ziolo
So, yeah, I think we could go on a lot longer here as is the norm, it seems with many episodes, but I might have to bring this back to our our favorite question, Adriana.
00:32:28
Adrianna Shukla
Yeah.
00:32:30
Brendan Ziolo
If there's anything that there's, but you know, we talked about marketing have a lot having a lot of acronyms and creating a new acronym. Well, I've got one. Marketing also has a lot of myths.
00:32:39
Brendan Ziolo
And there seems to be a new one on a regular basis. So we're going to hit you with our favorite question. Again, we haven't done a poll of guests to find out if anyone likes this question, but it's our podcast. So we're going to ask it anyway.
00:32:52
Brendan Ziolo
And because we've talked a lot about SEO, and I'm going to use the Rand Fishkin's definition of SEO for this question, but if there's anything... a myth, something that bugs you, gets under your skin, that you just want to set the record straight on when it comes to SEO, you can take and interpret SEO as you
Myth-Busting: Content Quantity vs Quality
00:33:13
Brendan Ziolo
wish here.
00:33:14
Brendan Ziolo
What is the myth that you want to set everyone straight on today?
00:33:18
Adrianna Shukla
I think you heard it earlier today, so I'm going to repeat it.
00:33:23
Brendan Ziolo
That's OK.
00:33:23
Adrianna Shukla
you You do not need to create more content to have better SEO. You do. You do not. And I know people are going to be like, well, everybody tells me to create all of this extra content, like for different keywords and this and that.
00:33:41
Adrianna Shukla
And if you just like automate all these blog posts, et cetera, like that did work at one point.
00:33:43
Brendan Ziolo
Okay.
00:33:46
Adrianna Shukla
I'm going to, yes, it did work at one point.
00:33:47
Brian O'Grady
Yep. A lot of these things did work briefly at one point in previous times here.
00:33:52
Adrianna Shukla
It did. it did. But I'm going to say that you do not need to create more content unless you don't have any. brian center You to create more content. But don't create more content.
00:34:06
Adrianna Shukla
Take the content that you already have, structure it so that when somebody's reading it, they have the who, what, where, why, when, how, et cetera, nicely outlined.
00:34:20
Adrianna Shukla
And that's the same way that the LLMs are going to read it as well, digest it, and spit it out to the person that's searching for them.
00:34:25
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:34:28
Adrianna Shukla
So you still, you just have to be, get rid of the fluff, Get rid of the, you know, buzzy acronym terms and buzzwords and all that stuff. And just get down to the point. Like if somebody says, why should I buy your product?
00:34:43
Brian O'Grady
Have an answer.
00:34:43
Adrianna Shukla
Well, here you go. You know, and and don't beat around the bush. and And it's causing a lot of people to actually try to figure out and distill down What do I say?
00:34:54
Adrianna Shukla
Like, what what do I, if I had only, you know, and it's a good exercise actually to do with your team. If I had 120 characters, what would I say? What would I say?
00:35:05
Adrianna Shukla
You know, and and then making sure that everything wraps around back to that North Star of that 120 word description. And ultimately that's how, and it it kind of reminds me of like pillar content.
00:35:20
Adrianna Shukla
You know, Brian, remember when we used to do all those pillars?
00:35:21
Brian O'Grady
I remember those. Remember those pages? Who are pages?
00:35:25
Adrianna Shukla
Find what your pillar is and wrap all that content around it and make sure, though, that it is structured in a way that an LLM can read it. Because an LLM is different than a search engine and it ultimately likes to scan.
00:35:42
Adrianna Shukla
It likes to scan. So still still going back to your fundamentals of H1s, H2s, H3s, how your body works.
00:35:48
Brian O'Grady
which were all made to help humans scan in the first place in print.
00:35:53
Adrianna Shukla
Oh, interesting. So wait, we were doing that and now we have to do it for an AI bot. Yeah,
00:36:01
Brian O'Grady
Who's trying to be you like kind of like human, yeah.
00:36:03
Adrianna Shukla
yeah exactly. Exactly. So, you know, i I'm probably going to get eaten alive for saying, you know, don't make more content because there are a ton of people out there that are saying to do it, but Don't, don't do it.
00:36:18
Adrianna Shukla
Structure your content, you know, make it readable, make it digestible quickly, fast. I mean, you saw I'm going over right now.
00:36:25
Brian O'Grady
This is starting to sound like a quality versus quantity argument.
00:36:27
Adrianna Shukla
So clearly I'm really bad at this, but.
00:36:30
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:36:34
Brian O'Grady
I quite i like it a lot.
00:36:36
Adrianna Shukla
Yep, yep. So that's, that's what I recommend. And that's my myth buster for today.
Conclusion and Thank You
00:36:43
Brian O'Grady
And andts to be clear, there's no unicorns were harmed in any of this.
00:36:48
Adrianna Shukla
none none
00:36:49
Brian O'Grady
OK.
00:36:51
Adrianna Shukla
yeah
00:36:51
Brian O'Grady
In that case, I will bring us home because I can tell I've got about nine more things I want to ask you about, and we we're not to do that in this episode. So we might have to do another one at a later date. But I want to say on behalf of the the whole crew here, thank you for taking time. If you're if you're running that whole team and that whole situation that we described off the top at snow cloud probably have busy days so we appreciate you taking the time to spend some of it with us and bust some myths and share where things are at and where they aren't at with this crazy world of seo so thanks so much
00:37:24
Adrianna Shukla
Absolutely. Only for you you guys.
00:37:25
Brendan Ziolo
All right.
00:37:25
Adrianna Shukla
and Only for you guys. Cheers with the last sip.
00:37:27
Brendan Ziolo
Thanks, Adriana. Chair.
00:37:29
Adrianna Shukla
Let's go.
00:37:30
Brendan Ziolo
no
00:37:31
Brian O'Grady
cheers