With Special Guest Fernando Angulo, Senior Market Research Manager At SEMRush
Uncover the future of search engine optimization with this captivating video that explores the impact of artificial intelligence on SEO practices.
Learn about advancements such as machine learning algorithms and natural language processing that are revolutionizing how websites are ranked and discovered online. Get expert advice on leveraging AI tools for keyword research, competitor analysis, and content optimization strategies.
#1 – Fernando, What are your thoughts connected to how Google sees AI-generated content, and will people’s websites be penalized if they use AI-generated content?
#2 – A lot of niche focus websites have been penalized recently by Google September’s HCU (helpful content update). Can you give some insight connected to this SEO update?
#3 – Because of COVID-19, the mobile growth trend seemed to get semi-suspended; what is the situation now, and what do people who develop or own websites need to know about this?
#4 – What are your personal recommendations connected to link building, and what are a couple of major mistakes you see people making regularly connected to link building?
#5 – What are some of the business tools and services that you use to run your business daily that you could recommend to the audience?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
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The Show Main Links & Notes
[00:00:11.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress and SaaS. This is Episode 884. We’ve got a really great guest. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. We’ve got Fernando Angulo, Senior Marketing… I’m a search manager at SEM Rush. I’ll probably butcher Fernando’s surname, but tribe, you’re used to that. My ability to destroy my guest names is legendary. But he doesn’t seem too upset. He seems that I’ve done a reasonable job. You should be thankful for that if I do a reasonable job.
[00:00:51.440] – Fernando Angulo
Absolutely, well.
[00:00:52.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. It’s become a joke in the show, actually, my inability to pronounce even my own name. Don’t get upset. Would you like to give us a quick 30-second intro, Fernando?
[00:01:09.880] – Fernando Angulo
Sure. Well, as you mentioned, I’m from Angola. I’ve been working in the digital marketing environment and digital industry for the last 15 years. For the last 11 years, I’ve been part of the Samrush world. Actually, I was one of the first marketers in the company. When we were about 20 people, I was the marketer number one or two, something like that. Right now, we are more than one and a half thousand people. We have offices in nine countries, starting offices in nine countries. Our HQs are in Boston. I’ve been to an SEO conference. I’ve been doing SEO for the last 10 years. I’ve been hit and penalized several times. I’ve been doing referral marketing as well. Right now, I’m more into data analytics. I work for a unit inside Semrard that is called Trends. We are working basically with traffic sources. We try to understand what is happening inside of direct traffic, organic traffic, paid advertisement, social, and of course, referral traffic as well.
[00:02:29.400] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. It should be a feast. We’re going to be talking about AI, mobile, a load of stuff that will affect your websites or your current websites. It should be a fantastic discussion. Plus, I’ve got my great co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to do a quick intro to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:51.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt Van Anen. I own an agency called Manyana No Mas. We focus on membership and learning websites. I also work directly with WP-Tonic and Lifter LMS.
[00:03:03.260] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of the show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Are you?
[00:03:14.030] – Fernando Angulo
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[00:03:43.030] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks, so I just want to point out we got some great special deals from the major sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plug-ins, which you can use for your client website buildouts, save you a ton of time, scroll in the internet or talking to AI. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. W-p-tonic. Com. Com/deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that particular page. There we go. This goes straight in, dear Fernando. Only a small question, but what are your own thoughts about AI and how Google is seeing at the present moment content that AI generates? There seem to be a few confusing messages from the big team at Google. That’s such a surprise, isn’t it? Confusion from Google. But what are your own views about what you think Google sees AI generate content?
[00:05:07.810] – Fernando Angulo
Well, something that needs to be really clear from the very beginning is that Google is not your friend. It’s not on your side. Well, they’re a business. They’re running a business, but they’re not your friends. In terms of AI, well, they have established a few times that they are not penalizing. They’re not willing to penalize any AI-generated content. They don’t care about the tool itself. The problem is that they need to have some specifics related to the content that you are creating. The tool is not the problem. Obviously, it needs to have quality, the content that you are creating. Ai-generated content, they lack sometimes, more often, of the quality of the content. Iand of course, they have a little bit of poor experience when you’re creating it, so you need to edit that type of content. The second thing that the content that you’re generating needs to be original and you need to be knowledge about it. Ai-generated content is not original per se, it’s a replication of already existing content. It can impact SEO negatively because it’s something that someone already wrote in the past. The third thing, and this is very important, is the relevance of the content that you’re creating used to have.
[00:06:36.160] – Fernando Angulo
Ai-generated content should be carefully revealed from the very beginning to ensure that aligns with the user intent. You don’t need to have content that is really poor in terms of relevance. You need to be talking about specific things related to the user intent. Of course, the last and most important thing is the user experience. Ai-generated content, well or not, should contribute to a positive user experience, including being well-written, easy to read, and engaging. That’s all my thoughts. Google is not your friend, but they have already established some rules of AI, automated generated funded. They don’t care about the tool, but they have some rules that they need to be pursuing.
[00:07:28.540] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic because you confirmed some of the way I was leaning, the research I was doing and the so-called goods in the SEO area, that was my own synopsis to some extent of what the situation. You did a fabulous job. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:07:48.350] – Fernando Angulo
Well.
[00:07:49.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
As one of these people that gets confused with search engine optimization discussions, especially with AI, I just want to extend in that. Let’s say someone uses AI to draft the outline and they make the narration, or they create the narration through ChatGPT or something, but then they add 20 %, 30 % original content to that. How do you think Google analyzes that AI content then? Do you think it’s fully AI in Google’s minds, or do you think they recognize that there’s real narrative content there?
[00:08:24.640] – Fernando Angulo
Well, something to be touched on that has been happening during the last three months. We have a core update, then we have another update, which is the helpful content update. Then we have another core update. We didn’t recover from the previous one, and we need to be checking what is happening right now. We need to be patient. Right now, it’s going to be November, we’re going to be for sure having a new start update or maybe November or December. It’s something like Google, they are testing us. This is my own opinion, of course. It’s a machine learning that is testing how we are going to be reacting with our website, how we’re going to be changing our strategy. It’s a huge experiment that they are constantly doing with us, of course. But the majority of their results that we have, for example, in September, we have the Sensor tool. We analyze all the changes that we have in the server. The majority of the changes that we recognized during the last September, the October 1, which that’s a very recent one, but during the September, was related to the changes on the people also ask.
[00:09:47.430] – Jonathan Denwood
The.
[00:09:49.210] – Fernando Angulo
Snippet and also the e-commerce, the snippet in the images. Those changes right now are important because we are going to be having, of course, the Black Friday, Silver Monday, but they are not so related to the explanation of, okay, what is happening with the older. It’s a mix of things right now. I believe we need just to be a little bit calm with the changes because we have, in other words, the crazy changes that we have with the helpful content that if you are an SEO, I’m sure that you notice the changes. But do we have the core updates on the other side. We don’t know yet all the impact that had because it’s a core update, it’s the whole algorithm. And we have two on there. Well, we just need to be patient about what’s going to be with the core update, when the helpful content update. They’re testing a lot of our stuff lately.
[00:10:54.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, thanks for following up, Fernando. You mentioned in your answer a couple of times the helpful content update, the helpful content update. That’s part of that second question that we were prepared for, and that’s a lot of niche-focused websites, they seem to have been penalized by this helpful content update. I was wondering if you could give us some insight connected to that update and what that really means. Yes.
[00:11:18.880] – Fernando Angulo
Well, this is not the first time that the helpful content update appear. We had one last year, actually, it was also known in October. There are some major differences in different niches. We have a study. We gathered our research based on, okay, what are the losers and the winners of each niche in this case. Comparing the December, it was from December, the last 2022, the last helpful content update. In comparison with December, this September update, the major changes were mademade.
[00:12:00.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well.
[00:12:01.150] – Fernando Angulo
Really, the changes were made in the automobile industry. If you are in the automobile sector, you have noticed the changes that you had, then you have a lot of changes in the pets and animal sector. If you have any niche there, we also seen the changes there. The last and the most powerful change that we see was in the shopping, e-commerce, and retail industry, all the related niches. Those changes were really few. We had several other team that were impacted, but overall the impact was pretty much the same level. Every niche was affected. We hear that at some point, well, maybe they’re going to be relocating this update, but then we’re saying that we will not be revocated anything. What is done is done. But the thing is that all those changes and all those ranks that you might have lost, they are pushing us to say, Okay, now I need to create a different strategy for each website, for each page, because in the start, we have seen several similar pages, several similar results from one single domain. Every single page of your domain are really important. You don’t need to see about one single keyword for one page.
[00:13:40.480] – Fernando Angulo
Well, I hope you were not doing that. You need to be thinking about as an entity. You have one page, you have one service of product, your core message, but you need to think about different types of content related to support and interlinking that to support that page. That seems like it’s working right now. The volatility has changed a lot for the core and beta that we had after the helpful content update. That’s why we are not sure how websites are recovering yet. It’s very recent. But some of the friends we have in the industry, they say that they have made several changes in terms of internal linking and of course, link building as a strategy overall is working. It’s been working the last 60 years. Is also something that is supporting that very well.
[00:14:39.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Excellent, man. Thank you so much, Fernando. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:14:43.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I enjoyed it. I’m just going to… This is on our list, Fernando, but it just occurred to me I should ask you this question because you mentioned it in your first statement that Google isn’t your friend, which I totally agree. Obviously, Google is facing quite a pickle, as we would say, in London. The Justice Department is taking them to court. Last week, there was some release of some prediscovery information around Google that they have been adapting their search results. They’ve always argued that their search department and their ad department has been totally separate and they put a wall between those two departments. These revelations have come out that it seems that the Justice Department is going to be a key part of their case. This isn’t the fact at all that Google has been highly manipulating natural search results to help the ad department. First of all, would you be surprised by this information that’s come public? Secondly, do you think there’s any truth to it? Or do you think Google’s got some problems?
[00:16:21.070] – Fernando Angulo
Well, they’re part of a company that is public, as Google is, so you need to be accomplishing some goals every single year in terms of growth, in terms of revenue. When you cannot accomplish those goals, well, you need to think about other strategy. What I was mentioning at the beginning that Google is not your friend, was immediately directed to that part of the Department of Justice that we are also following. We’ve seen some internal document because now the situation is really false. We saw these internal messages between the search team and the paid advertising team saying, Hey, we need to push more paid advertisement ads to grow this percentage for the next month. This department pushing this other department, and we all were thinking that they were not connected, they were not communicating at all. But they are acting as a company that they are following their goals. I follow a lot John Miller, of course, on ETH right now. He’s sick. He’s always supporting the way that HCOs are trying to elaborate in the new strategies. He’s a good person, I believe. He’s a really good person.
[00:17:54.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt. I think he’s a very honest individual and aI just don’t think he’s been… This is just my opinion, Fernando. I just think he’s been misled enormously as well. I really think when this comes all out in the open, I think a lot of people in Google have been totally misled, very honest people, and they just not been given the full information. I would imagine it’s like a Russian doll. You’ve got one doll in another and the close you, it’s a very small group of individuals that have a really tight control over the real technical core of Google. Do you think I’m on the right path there? Or have I become a conspiracy junkie in my old day?
[00:18:53.340] – Fernando Angulo
Well, you’re not naive. You are thinking about, Well, this person is very honest. His opinion is really honest. Because when we had questions about, Okay, what is happening with my website? What is happening with this update? He was there facing all the community. He was there replying, answering with very logical answers. Most of them were really helpful. He’s part of the community, I will say. But in terms of that he have been misled, well, the are ongoing. It’s not finished yet. The more things are going to be revealed, for sure, in that part, we thought that the results were natural. You just mentioned those were the organic results, the natural results, but it seems to me they are not so natural after all. They’re very push about the PPCT department in Google. Those documents are right now public, so we can comment on them. I don’t have any feelings about this situation overall because we have been supported by a new business, the call search industry that is Google. It could be other companies and it could be, I don’t know, being, for example, well, employment, it might be. But Google were handle things. It seemed that they were trying to accomplish some goals in this really short term.
[00:20:29.860] – Fernando Angulo
They were, well, the breaks of their own rules. That’s the thing. They established their own rules and they were breaking it inside. Right now, that thing has been published. Right now, it’s for the public opinion to be talking about it.
[00:20:47.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s really interesting. Another quick question that wasn’t in the list, and then we’ll probably go for our break after this. I was thinking that obviously technology is fascinating, but the dark side of it is there’s a lot of spin and puff. In around AI, I think obviously the present, there seems to be a lot of confusion between a natural language engine and general AI. I don’t think any time soon that we’re going to get, I might be wrong, that we’re going to get really true general AI intelligence. But there seems to be a lot of people confusing a natural engine and it is amazing what it can do. But we heard all this about voice search about five years ago that it was going to destroy normal search. Then we had… I felt that the stuff that was coming out, that AI was just going to destroy people doing searches. They were just going to ask. To me, it’s got a lot of the taste about the hype around voice search. What’s your own view about that?
[00:22:25.620] – Fernando Angulo
I remember the five years that you just mentioned that, okay, everything is going to be… You need to build your website thinking about the structure that is needed, the voice search, next-gen devices that are going to be appearing. Well, that didn’t happen. The voice search devices that we have, the voice assistants that we have right now, they are not so smart. We haven’t seen any Alexa or Siri using all the power of ChatGPT. Actually, we have seen being a Cortana just finished, that project is gone. We don’t have any more Cortana. There’s going to be something new, but nobody’s talking about that yet. In terms of device usage, well, we can say that, for example, at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything started in 2021, we saw that the majority of the people who were used mobile devices were actually using volume search. That was a huge percentage in comparison with today reality. Today’s reality, what our numbers are saying that, is there are not many people using voice search in mobile devices because there are not so many users in the mobile device world. Let me give you some data and some insights on this.
[00:24:02.870] – Fernando Angulo
In the US, for example, we have a research and we have actually searching for how many users in percentage. I’m not going to be talking about absolute numbers because that’s the lots of information. In percentages, 40% of the US internet users are still using a desktop device. Then only 60% in the US are using mobile device, which is a huge difference between the rest of the world, for example, in Brazil or in Spain or in Germany, the difference is more close to 75% users of mobile devices, 25% of desktop devices. That means that for an overall good experience, you need to be really using the both devices experience, not only being mobile-friendly, but you need to be also really desktop-friendly because the trendline is not going to be going down for the desktop usage. As a forecast, we have seen that it’s going to be just there in the US, 40% of the users are still using desktop devices. In terms of developing a neat experience for voice search results, we also added information about the feature as well as wewhich are the the sort. Well, 87, 89% of them are the sort for the voice search result that we have, for example, on Google device.
[00:25:41.940] – Fernando Angulo
A really good structure feature snippet, I mean, table or the paragraph or the list, those are the ones who are enabling the results for the devices. So if you have a good feature snippet on your website and it’s a paragraph with no more than 42 words, that’s really good for a published search result. Thinking about the structure in your content, that might be a good idea. Because another thing that is really connected to this are the people also ask results, which are another search feature that is great for basically any industry that they have the same structure as the feature as nippet. You have a Featured as Naive, you can have also people also as a result and you are enabling your voice as Resolve. Having a good ceremony is a good idea.
[00:26:43.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. In’t know how we do it for time. This is how I see it. I think there’s something fundamentally, even more problem with the way this has been laid out, but I’m no expert on this. It’s just my opinion, my honest opinion, is these type of, I’m looking for the right word here, adaptation to the normal search pattern, they’re great if you understand how to make the right question. If you’ve got some knowledge around your subject or you’re looking for a bit of particular factual information, it’s fine. But a lot of time when we’re doing searches, we don’t even know the funder… How to ask the fundamental questions to get. That’s why we have to do a bit of searching and looking over websites. Where I see AI being really useful is being a real assistant, where you give it a query through voice or text and then it gives you a curated list of websites that can answer your… Can answer your question, give you insight, give you more knowledge. I think the way Google, it’s all about providing the right data, which is great, but what people are looking for is knowledge and wisdom about something.
[00:28:32.340] – Jonathan Denwood
You can only get that from experts and experts are only going to invest in providing information if they get some benefit. Normally, that benefit is driving traffic to their particular website. Am I missing anything or would you think there’s anything to what I’ve just said?
[00:28:57.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’ll jump in there, John.
[00:28:59.750] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m seeing you.
[00:29:01.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
What you just said reminded me so much of that tool, answer the Public. So if you want to write content, you go to answerthepublic. Com, and you put in a subject or a question, and it gives you feedback of what hundreds or thousands of people are asking about that subject in the moment. And then that seems to help you go out and fine-tune that search or get that data or that information for that next article. And I look at that as being one of those really great AI type tools, but it’s been around for a long time.
[00:29:35.310] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Well, that’s fine. I think we’re going to go for our break and when we come back, we continue this discussion. I think it’s been fab. So far, I’ve enjoyed it. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:29:49.310] – Fernando Angulo
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[00:29:51.880] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:29:52.500] – Fernando Angulo
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[00:29:57.120] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:29:59.760] – Fernando Angulo
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[00:30:05.010] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:30:25.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Your show. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out, if you’ve got a membership or a buddy boss website for a client and you know the frustrations you can have by choosing the wrong host for that membership or buddy boss website, it can be a nightmare, why don’t you look at WP Tonic to be your hosting partner for your membership or buddy boss website that you’re building out for a client? We specialize in only membership and buddy boss websites. Plus, we got a fantastic bounty for you, a gift. I think it’s some of the highest affiliate that you can get in the industry. We would love you to join us and be part of the tribe. Why don’t you go over to wp-tonic. Com/partners, and see what we offer. We’d love you to contact us and for us to host your next client’s, membership or buddy boss website. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:31:42.640] – Fernando Angulo
I.
[00:31:43.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Think I’m going to move on to what are the personal recommendations that you have, Fernando, connected to link building? Where do you see people making progress with back linking or connecting to link building and those kinds of ideas?
[00:32:02.210] – Fernando Angulo
Fantastic. That’s one of my favorite topics because at this point, I will say that link building is a common and underestimated strategy because you need to still wait for the results. At some point, you cannot show the expected results. But at the end of the day, three, four months, or maybe less, you will have received those results. The thing is that you need to think first when you are creating your link building strategy, you need to think at the very beginning about the content that you are trying to promote, the content that you are trying to highlight, let’s say, like this, and creating several different pieces around it, so creating a hub in other places. Guest loading is still working fine. But the post, of course, there needs to be with our site quality, building relationships, is working really well. After the pandemic, I will a real person in front of you and interchange the links is still the thing. I will say that. Then social media is working really well. If you have an active presence, you need to be trying to create shareable content. The local SEO is a massive thing. When you are part of it, you can have your local listings, you can have a community engagement there.
[00:33:42.610] – Fernando Angulo
Then you need to see what is happening with your competitors. That’s the thing where tools like Semra, for example, are really active to be used in terms of analyzing your back links or thinking about which sources of traffic in terms of similar moving your competitors that they have, try to acquire leads from those similar sources as well. Those tactics are still very relevant. Some of the issues, take that people are doing today are to be very patient in terms of results. If you are having a lead building strategy, that’s an ongoing process. It’s not that, okay, we have the links, good bye. It’s an ongoing process that needs to be supervised, needs to be monitored. You need to be aware that, okay, we are building this strategy. We need to have that follow-up for the next month or for the next year in terms of activity. One important thing that you need to have is some natural link profile. Paid links, I haven’t been there since the beginning, but having this natural link profile with similar website as yours is a good thing to have. Following the Google guidelines, which are pretty much clear, all the webmaster guidelines for lean building practices and Ethica, and blah, blah, blah, they are something that you need to be following.
[00:35:20.610] – Fernando Angulo
If you can’t do that, well, you will have the quality of your funding, you will have the relevance that you need, you will have your domain authority in a good case. In this case, tools are very important. But for the strategy, an ongoing strategy is the most thing here.
[00:35:42.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. One of the things that really struck me in your answer there was when you said you can’t set it and forget it, you have to monitor it. I’ve had clients in the past where they’ve done the set and forget, and then people don’t realize other websites shut down, their links fail. And if your content is linking to content that.
[00:36:03.570] – Fernando Angulo
Doesn’t exist.
[00:36:05.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can get, correct me if I’m wrong, but then you get unlisted or devalued or something happens, right?
[00:36:12.570] – Fernando Angulo
Yeah, because you’re not linking to anywhere. Actually, you have a growth holding.
[00:36:17.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s super, super important. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:36:22.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, what I’ve observed through a large CIO, I’m not… I’m not an expert in this field at all, I’m just dabble. But what I’ve heard is that a bit like what Ferrando said, you need a gradual link building attitude. But really getting the wrong links can really hurt you quickly. I don’t know if you would agree with that, Graham, though, getting some really dicey links linking to you can rapidly have a bad effect. Would you agree with that?
[00:37:09.360] – Fernando Angulo
Yes. With all these updates, these other updates in this world, with the this ad updates that we’ll add, they nurturing, non-appropriate lead, nurturing your website with leads that are not relevant, just having leads for… Just for the number of it, for the mass of the lead, it’s not something that is going to be good for you. Having three, four, five good leads with really good alternative sources, that’s a thing. But having just… Also you can have a negative SEO with some toxic links. We are still getting information about toxic website that our peers can be having an attack with toxic links because your business competitor, they want to turn your rocket up. Those things are still happening and you need to check how toxic the links that you are linked to are. That’s the part where tracking your links and tracking your leads profile. In this case, I will use the term your leads health is a really good choice by far because you will see that your write-ins are on the planet, your organic traffic is declining, and you will say, Okay, but when is it happening? I have everything in order. Then you will do your lead building audit, your links audit, and you will see that you have several tons, maybe thousands of toxic leads that are going to your website from sources that are not relevant at all, well, you need to be checking that, you need to be finally checking that.
[00:38:58.870] – Fernando Angulo
Well.
[00:38:59.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks for that. I think that’s something I’m going to have to look at myself. A bit related to the first half of the show, do you think I’m getting the impression by what’s being said on X and on YouTube that Google September HCU and the one before that. People were saying that comments, allowing comments on your blog post, encouraging running your own forum, having your own community website, more focused website where people can comment and there’s back and forth communication with your audience that Google is really highlighting these community aspects. Would you agree with that?
[00:39:58.470] – Fernando Angulo
Well, this is my personal opinion again. I believe this update part of that is to first, of course, most of us are trying to test what type of content are more relevant and the inter-transition. But the thing is when we are talking about comments and the update, we have several websites. Well, we had several websites with hundreds of comments, included comments from bots, including the real comments. That part, well, was something that Google already finished with the, I believe it was one of them, Pandor, Penguin, I can’t remember.
[00:40:53.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I can’t. But they hit it hard. That really became very unpopular after that particular update. I’m like, All right, so you’re finished with that?
[00:41:07.390] – Fernando Angulo
Yeah.
[00:41:08.430] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, fair enough. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:41:11.610] – Fernando Angulo
Well.
[00:41:12.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Fernando, you’ve been awesome talking about content. You have to have good content, good user experience, healthy links. Now the next part of the question is, what are some of the business tools that you could probably recommend to some of our listeners, whether they’re new or with us, that would help them run their business daily? Something you could recommend to the audience to help with SEO, provided that they have good content, good structure, good user experience. If they hit the marks on everything, what are some of the tools they can use to leverage that?
[00:41:46.540] – Fernando Angulo
In terms of tools, I have a huge leave about the tools that I also using. Let me start from the content creation. Overall, having the ideas in really good shape is good and having those ideas are really well organized. Well, you mentioned a tool that it was As were the public, right? Yeah. That was a fantastic tool. Still is, I believe. But we have a tool that is really helpful in terms of talking about the discovery and to create those different clusters of topic that is called topic research inside of Themra. Actually, that was one of the tools that I compared with Android, the public. But I have the older part of that SEMRA’s data as, which was the building of the keyword, the links that are attracting more and more traffic. We created this KPI, I will say, or this new parameter that is called… Let me check it. Trends or viability, how viral a topic is actually the name is for resonation, how a topic resonates more within the industry. Topic research is a great tool in terms of selecting the topic that it wants to talk and going further with the cluster of different topics.
[00:43:33.580] – Fernando Angulo
The next tool is the AI writing assistant. You can create content with AI, but you need to check the parameters of how good is ton of void, how good is the SEO structure. You have the content prepared for receiving for acquiring future snippet, and you have not only one keyword there, but you have similar keyword that will make more reach that piece of content. One of the other tools that we use a lot when we use from the past is trail, to just have everything organized. If you are a big company, of course, use Monday, where we were using Monday to track the process of every strategy and every task, and to follow up all these tasks, and to be communicated with the rest of the team, of course, we’re using Slack. I believe most of the companies are using Slack for the general communication. But to check what is happening, for example, with your content team, if they need some help about some idea, we have this tool that is called Content Shape AI. You can have the expertise, which is something that Google is looking for, and they add to creating new pieces of content.
[00:44:59.060] – Fernando Angulo
With Content Shape, with AI, with Writers and Assistant, all the power of AI can be used as a tool. But you need to have that internal insight to say this is something good for my user and this is something that I want to deliver. So the ultimate tool is common sense. Wow.
[00:45:21.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
This sounds like they could use a really good eLearning package from WPtonic to organize it. Okay.
[00:45:30.820] – Jonathan Denwood
You asked the next question because I took up a bit of time at the beginning.
[00:45:35.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan’s going to give it to me two interviews in a row. I get to ask if are you familiar with Doctor Who and The Time Machine, Fernando?
[00:45:44.170] – Fernando Angulo
Oh.
[00:45:44.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes. Perfect. Let’s pretend you have your own TARDIS. You’re going to go back in time. If you went back in time to the beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself to move forward?
[00:45:59.880] – Fernando Angulo
Yeah, at the beginning of my career, 11 years ago, in terms of more variability, I will say invest more in paid advertisement. Why I say that? Because I was working a lot with SEO. But as we have seen, paid advertising is also a great strategy and gives you a lot of results. You don’t need to wait for that. But I will say that mix the strategies, go with the SEO, but invest more in paid advertising.
[00:46:39.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. I wasn’t expecting that answer. Jonathan, how about you?
[00:46:43.530] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I totally agree with… I think, but obviously, it depends if you’ve got the budget, doesn’t it? But I think having a diverse funnel of qualified prospects is always the best way to go. I totally understand your reply, and I agree with it. Right, I think we’re coming at the end, Brando. What’s the best way for people to find out? I’ve enjoyed the interview. Hopefully, you have. I enjoyed it too, my love. I think we’ve covered some interesting stuff. I waffled on a bit. You dealt with my waffling very efficiently. What’s the best way? What is the audience used to my waffling? What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and why you’re active?
[00:47:42.160] – Fernando Angulo
Yeah, I’m more active on LinkedIn. You can find me as Fernando Angulo on LinkedIn, and you can follow me or contact me directly, and we can be in touch.
[00:47:59.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, all the links will be in the show notes, folks, plus the links to the products that Fernando has recommended. You’ll find out in the show notes. They will be up in the middle of next week, so you find it all there. Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:48:20.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, if folks are already going to LinkedIn to find Fernando, that’s the best place to find me. I’m on LinkedIn almost every day, and I’m the only Kurt Van on there, so it makes it easy to know that you have the right guy. My agency name is MananaNoMas, and I would just love to see you over there as well.
[00:48:36.780] – Jonathan Denwood
The WP, Tonic, and my other show, The Membership Machine show, I have a combined Facebook group. We love you to join us there and be part of The Tribe. It’s a mixture of WordPress developers and professionals with people trying to build a really successful membership website. It’s a great community. Please join us on there. I’m going to go over to Facebook and join us on the face, the WP-Tonic, and the membership machine show Facebook group. We love you to be part of The Tribe. We can end the show now. I’ve enjoyed the discussion. We’ll see you next week. We’ve got some fabulous guests, and in the coming months, it should be fabulous. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? Also, to keep up with the latest news, click wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. We’ll see you.
[00:49:35.330] – Fernando Angulo
Next time.
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