Powerful SEO Strategies for Membership Sites in the AI Age

Discover powerful SEO strategies for membership sites in the AI age. Boost visibility, retention & revenue with proven tactics. Read now.

In this insightful video, we explore powerful SEO strategies specifically tailored for membership sites in the era of artificial intelligence. Discover how AI tools can enhance keyword research, optimize content, and improve user engagement. Learn actionable techniques to boost your site’s visibility and attract more members. Don’t miss out on these essential strategies! Click to watch the video and revolutionize your membership site’s SEO today.

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:16.800] -Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 162. In this episode ,we’re going to be talking about how get more membership, more people signing up for your membership website, how the landscape at the beginning of 2026 is changing. What you need to know about SEO and the changes there. Both me and Kirk, we’ve got a lot of experience in this. We’re trying oo do everything that we’re going to be discussing in in this show ourselves. And I think Kirk would agree that I spend a lot of time on this. It’s the main focus of my time, apart from keeping our clients happy. But on the other hand, a lot of membership websites, if they’re starting up, have no plan how to get members. But also this will be of great interest to those that have already got memberships and members and I just want to grow their business in 2026. The opportunities are there but you got to know what these changes are so and have a plan of action basically. So, Kurt, before we go into the meat and potatoes, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:50.870] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:01:51.110] – Kurt von Ahnen

My name is Kurt Von Ahnin. I own an agency called Manana Nomas and work alongside the team with WP

[00:01:57.710] -Jonathan Denwood

Tonic with Jonathan and I’m the founder of WP Tonic. Kirk helps me there. We’ve got a small team but a dedicated team and we host membership and community websites, we build membership and community website and we also help people get more members to their membership website. But it’s all about membership and it’s all about community at WP Tonic. So. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this insightful show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments folks.

[00:02:41.170] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:03:14.450] -Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back back folks. I also want to point out we’ve got Some fantastic deals from the major sponsors, plus a course written by Kirk himself that shows you how to build the easy way and the effective way of building a membership community focused website using WordPress. At the beginning of 2026, you get it at a discount. Plus there’s a load of other free goodies. You can get all this stuff by going over to wp-tonic.com deals wp-tonic.com Deals so things are changing, you know, getting people to see your new membership website, new community website, or your established player, and you want to see growth in 26. Things are changing. So I’m gonna throw it over to you initially. What are you seeing and what are the main challenges? Kurt?

[00:04:30.390] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think what I’m seeing from people with existing projects, you know, that maybe have plateaued on, on new memberships or something like that, they might mistakenly say, well, I guess we’ve saturated our market or, you know, we’ve plateaued. You can only go so far. Like, like they’ll, they’ll discount the, the lack of growth because of something else. But I think if we’re being honest with ourselves, Jonathan, and feel free to correct me on this one, but I feel like 10, 12, maybe 15 years ago, I felt like I could put out some content, a few blog posts, maybe hit a couple of keywords here or there that resonated with my message, publish that stuff. And it seemed like it generated traffic. I can remember when our agency was growing in 2008, which I know is a ways back, but we would literally launch the website with all their social channels, integrate everything, and pretty instantly get them like 2500 followers on their Twitter account or Facebook fan page or something like that. That’s back when they had fan pages and it seemed it, there were some boxes to check, but it seemed fairly easy and simple and straightforward.

[00:05:40.170] – Kurt von Ahnen

I don’t see that now. What I see now is this, this kind of fluid environment where you, you have to constantly be like, is this heading work? Is. Does this call to action work? Is this the right graphic?

[00:05:53.530] -Jonathan Denwood

Is this is.

[00:05:54.100] – Kurt von Ahnen

Does this align with our YouTube? Does this align with our X? What is Facebook doing right now? I feel like there’s all these things going on at once and it’s become a much more integrated approach and, and right when people are getting upset and down on the mouth about it. I’m starting to see that maybe there’s actually some opportunity in all this.

[00:06:13.660] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I, I think there is, but you got to understand the new environment and you’ve got to construct in your own mind. Some plan of action and I, I’ve been adapting really doing a deep dive and what I’ve learned I hopefully I’m going to share to with our listeners and with you. You know we’ve had, I’ve had numerous discussions with you but hopefully this episode puts everything in a kind of clear structure. So. But they’re definitely changing. I think. Let’s start with some facts. I think one of the main factors that has reduced traffic to websites in general and it affects membership websites. You’re providing education and I think in the beginning of 2026 it should be added with coaching with personalized elements as well. Group coaching, individual coaching and the courses as well at different price levels. I think that you’ll be very wise to utilize that combination because the one thing that definitely can’t be replaced if you’re effective is you or if you’ve got a small chance, team of coaches, instructors, people are buying in not only into the education element but the training, the personal element as well.

[00:07:54.980] – Kurt von Ahnen

The, the relationships. Like so when, when I’m coaching people in the business space, I tell them all the time focus on the relationship more than transactions. Because if you focus on transactions you might not hit them. But if you focus on relationships, the transactions will happen naturally.

[00:08:12.060] -Jonathan Denwood

Now most sites are seeing more impressions. Impressions is a term that your content shows up in Google when people do certain links. If you go into your Google Console Search Console, that’s a free. It’s not Google Analytics that’s also free but it’s much more complicated and there’s been changes with Google Analytics and for the average person, I don’t recommend it. I think if you’re in E commerce or high volume website, it’s probably worth the effort. But Google Search Console, you definitely want to set that up and, and when you do it will show a very large number for website impressions, but then it will show clicks, clicks to your actual website. And what everybody is seeing is a lot of people is a large increase in impressions but a decrease in clicks. Right. And that’s caused by Google Insights, Google Overviews. You know they introduced them over a year ago and most people and this fluctuates depending what industry you’re in. But in general most people are seeing almost a 35% reduction in the traffic they’re getting to their website. Which sounds dreadful but there is opportunity to this as well. Is that with good with AI, with AI and AI searches with open AI or Perplexity or Gemini or Grok, whatever person’s using, there’s the opportunity of Being the product, the service, the course that’s recommended by AI and that’s in only going to increase.

[00:10:36.400] -Jonathan Denwood

So with Google AI overviews that has resulted and it does depend on, on the kind of content you’re producing for your website. If it’s what is called top of funnel that’s very for, very aimed at the beginner, very aimed at the general search aimed at very broad information terms and answers. Parmi, you’re gonna find the greatest hit from AI overviews that that type of content is probably not going to generate many clicks in the beginning of 2026. The other factor that’s happened is what is called the buyer’s journey in, in SEO terms folks, it’s, it’s classified as intent. What, how, what is the intent of the search? Is it just a very information gathering search or is it in the middle road? Does it show the person still trying to gather information but they’re also trying to clarify what service or product they’re going to buy or does the search intent. They’re putting a brand term, they’re putting in your brand, they’re putting in indication that they’re ready to buy. And what we’re finding with AI search is a compression of the buyer’s journey that people are doing a lot more research in AI tools.

[00:12:41.790] -Jonathan Denwood

The bulk of their and they’re already coming to your website to buy almost and it’s up to your website to. For you to lose the sale in a way for I. The website slow, it’s very muddled content, it’s contradictory content. It doesn’t really get to the point. It doesn’t really speak in the voice of the average of the customer that would want to buy your service or product. Is this making sense, Kurt?

[00:13:21.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

It is, it is. I think people that are new to the conversation will get a little bit lost on things like when we say the type of content that you’re creating or the, the, the top of Funnel for instance when we say that that is you know, more of an entry point. We’re talking about an entry point in the sales process. So there’s people that are just kind of looking for information and then there’s people that are ready to make a purchase and then there’s a whole gamut of people in between that. And so top of funnel is dealing with the, those people at the, at the, at the very beginning of the process. One thing that’s interesting to note like you, you were mentioning like facts. I remember it wasn’t that long ago in marketing training they would say or Sales training. They would say the average buyer needs to be exposed to your brand or your product five times before they make a purchase. And I’ve been hearing from all kinds of people in the last couple of years that that number’s climbed to between 13 and 15 exposures before they make a purchase.

[00:14:24.900] -Jonathan Denwood

That is a general. I’ve heard the same information. I haven’t been able to quantify that where they got that particular data from. I’ve never been able to quantify where it came so I could make a judgment call. But I have heard the same things. I I think being on one of the other factors which you mentioned that it was a lot easier around 28, 2010, 2012. I can’t believe where the time’s gone is I think one of the factors is that social media is still important but they’ve really penalized your content. If you have links going to your website they really want you to produce content that keeps people on that particular social media platform and they don’t really appreciate obviously you can put links in the comments other workarounds but in general they don’t want to see people moving away from their platform. But they are various workarounds but they just made it much harder, haven’t they? But I think, you know, short, you know I’ve been producing more short video content. I need to produce some more I need and I’ve been pushing it more regularly. I need to keep at that because brand recognition is important for these AI platforms folks.

[00:16:10.220] -Jonathan Denwood

So having a social media campaign that’s consistent is important now. So. Why is SEO memberships for membership sites still important? Well, if you got no real content and it’s it’s really linked to all the things that we’ve discussed in various episodes of the Membership Machine show. I think people tend to throw all their energy in some very large course and and they tend to neglect building content on their website. Making sure that the language is the language of the target audience. I’m not saying you’re going to have to produce a ton of content, but doing research and find and producing some blog content with video with elements that keep what you want to avoid is what is called the pinpoint pin pin bong effect where people come to your page and then bounce off. It’s one of the key factors that Google really doesn’t like. So I do think you need to build have a plan to build out some content for your membership website because is one of the key factors that these AI models is going to be utilized also they’re Going to be looking at what other people are saying about you, your course especially.

[00:18:00.890] -Jonathan Denwood

And this is very important if you want to continue growing. So I think, I think, I think it’s got to be reasonably long form and it’s got to be detailed, short paragraphs though, you know, photographs. I would cut down on the use of AI photography. I think people getting a little bit resistant to that. Having videos, having audio, anything that adds value and breaks up the article is important. But what, what’s your response to what I’ve just outlined?

[00:18:48.800] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I definitely agree with you on the varied content, you know, text, audio, video, graphics, pictures. I, I think the more that people can mix it up, it’s not just making the AI happy or making the, you know, the algorithm happy. We also need to remember that everyone has a different learning style, a different communication style. And so some people like that long form content. They want to get into the nitty gritty and other people want it bullet pointed. You know, at, at, at the risk of patting ourselves on the back, I think, Jonathan, what you’ve been doing with a lot of the posts in the, in the WP tonic is like the perfect example. You know, you’ve got a summary in a lot of cases, you’ve got a table of contents, so like a bullet point of where to get the things. Things are segmented very well and then you’ve got some pictures and video in there as well. And I think that by layering the content in that way, not only does it make SEO happy, not only does it make search engines happy, like to show diversified content, but I think in the end it’s what the readers want as well.

[00:19:57.340] – Kurt von Ahnen

Because if they want all the information, it’s there, but if they want to shortcut it and, and look at the bullets and the videos, it’s there too.

[00:20:04.290] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, and I’m always trying to improve it, find ways that gives me the bandwidth to add the quality possible. So blogging is still important, folks. You’re not. What you hoping for, folks, is yes, you’re not going to get the volume, but a lot of that volume was what was called top funnel. There was a lot of people producing content that had some linkage to the course, but it was loose and they were just hoping to get a high volume of people to the website and some of that volume would relate to the course. You’re going to get less traffic, but if you’re doing things right, it’s going to be more qualified traffic and it’s up to you to provide the answer. The solutions that These people are looking for when they hit your website right now. Keyword research, how to get it right. I think this is, I never my mythology for keyword research even three years ago was slightly different than most people that would be recommended to do. I use, I utilize them and I, I still have access to it on a lower plan and I might be upgrading that to a tool called a ref.

[00:21:49.940] -Jonathan Denwood

And what I used to do was use a hybrid of a system called the skyscraper. Basically you look at the competitions. I had a list of competitors in my industry, in my sector or I considered my sector and I would href would tell me what this top articles were that were getting the most traffic and then I would look at that article, that page and I would make the decision through my domain authority and other factors. Can I, if I produce something a bit better or a bit newer, a bit better add video to it, could I out compete that article? Right? Could I, would I get in the top three would. And that’s how I used to do it. Where other people look at, at get a list of the top terms, a top word, a three word phrase and then they would compete for it. Well, because we’re in hosting new membership, it’s very competitive and, and there’s some major players out there that got. I’ve got excellent. For a small player, I’ve got excellent domain authority. That wise domain authority folks, that, that is thing that href or Semrush or some of these leading SEO professional tools, they, they look at your whole website and between 0 and 100 they give you a mark of how Google sees your whole website.

[00:23:52.050] -Jonathan Denwood

And the higher, the higher the mark the more, the more easier it will be to compete on very competitive terms. But all this is changing anyway. It’s all really a little bit redundant because everything we’ve just said about AI tools, about what they’re looking for but it, you know, it still has relevance. But I think using Asia, just getting a list of terms and trying to compete is probably not a good use of your time. Now how would you respond? Kurt?

[00:24:38.770] – Kurt von Ahnen

We’re starting to get into the conversation the side of the conversation where I am to just to be transparent, a fuddled mess because there’s a part of me, because people are going to say well then I don’t want to waste my time making this content because it’s not driving to this part of the funnel or it’s not answering, you know, this keyword competition for this whatever. And I go back to why did you do this in the first place? Like what was your motivation to even start the project? You wanted to share information and you want to share information with people that are passionate or interested or, you know, in that niche. And so for me, I’m still a content hound. I still love making the content. I like making the content. I like being informative, I like sharing things with people. And I almost feel like I write the content and then I try to see if it fits into like some kind of SEO kind of a shell, you know, to help me promote it better as opposed to making content specifically with the desire of SEO. And I know that that is, I know, I know that I’m like, you know, trying to separate the, the wheat from the shaft, throwing it in the air and seeing what comes down.

[00:25:55.590] – Kurt von Ahnen

But I mean, I’m, I’m being serious. It’s, I think the motivation for the content that I write in the way that I try to inspire my clients to go is like, you want to make the content, you want to inform people, you want to build relationship. You need to have content to be recognized for, for the subject matter. So make it and then let’s see what we can leverage for SEO juice out of that. And that to me seems more natural than trying to build something for the express purpose of SEO.

[00:26:24.790] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, because we’ve had previous conversations what I think I, I agree partially with Kurt, but I agree more than a, because I know what you’re saying because there was this trend to you get a list of SEO words and you’re expected to write article around those words. I think that’s very unnatural and I, I don’t think you need to do that. But on the other hand, it’s linked to the next topic which I’m going to go through before we go for our mid break and that’s on page SEO best practices for a membership website. Now do some basic, you know, use AI to get a list of article topics, do research on competitors websites, look at your own strengths and get a plan of what articles you’re going to write monthly or in the next quarter and what you know, write out, you know, a reasoning in depth, what extra value you can provide to the top three competitors. Right. And really it’s, if you do that, you’re over 70% there but you do have to do the last 30 really and that is the page titles are really important. If and normally your page title will be the H1, the page titles are important and then, and having the right word in it in that page title is important.

[00:28:18.660] -Jonathan Denwood

Having a summary, it likes you to get to the crux quickly. Having video having elements that keeps people on the page. Your internal link structure is important. You know linking to other internal pages of your website. Yeah, is important but also the meta description is important to AI and it’s in is it’s really what show the title and then the meta description shows underneath on Google searches and it’s the main thing that will influence people to actually click the link and AI reads it. So your page title, you hate your meta Description and your H2S being logically well structured and being in depth but not mega long paragraphs. Mixing it up with video, audio, images, making it scannable, readable. There are a number of SEO plugins in WordPress. A lot of them I think are well overballed. I use a very basic SEO plugin but it’s quite powerful. I use SEO Press, it’s quite reasonably priced. Another one is SEO Rank. I think both of those are pretty good. There’s a couple others that I wouldn’t recommend but those two I think do a pretty good job. SEO Rank have a very good website, give a lot of free instruction out there.

[00:30:14.280] -Jonathan Denwood

But personally myself I like SEO Press but there’s there are quite a few plug SEO plugins that report to really make a difference. They don’t basically. So that’s just the basic truth. I think we’re come to a good spot to have our break and we’re gonna. I and me and Kirk are going to give you a load more information in the second half. You’ve got any questions you could always put them. If you’re watching the video, just put them underneath the video and I will personally answer them. Or, or you can do outreach to me or Kirk and we will answer any of your questions. We will be back in a few moments folks.

[00:31:00.510] – Speaker 2

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[00:31:38.040] -Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back folks. Want to point out I do a newsletter. I do it every goes out normally on every Tuesday. I write it myself. It’s normally something about membership, how to get more membership, something technical and I do a list of articles that come on my radar that I create That I think will be of interest to the audience. It’s totally free. To get this newsletter all you have to do is go over to wp-tonic.com newsletter wp-tonic.com Newsletter so on to the next thing. Off page SEO for offering building your for your membership website off site well, links, external links and their quality are important. Google has been reducing its reliance on external links for a while because they were being manipulated in various ways. But a few weeks ago, to give you an example of a really good link is that we had the pleasure of having Matt Malweg on our other podcast, the WP Tonic show, which Kirk is so kind to be my co host on as well. Yes, he has two bouts of me on the same day. He really, he really uses something asking for it. Yeah, you really are.

[00:33:22.970] -Jonathan Denwood

But he came on the show and he has a blog and it’s has a very high demand domain authority and he wrote about what was discussed on the podcast and he gave us a link back to the WP Tonic that’s that you can’t put it in how much that’s worth but that does help with my domain level basically. So it’s the quality rather than the amount of backlinks you get. But how do you get good backlinks? How do you get mentioned on other websites? Because the AI large learning models like Chat G GPT they’re looking at what’s being said. Obviously you. There are agencies, there are freelancers that will go on Reddit and use dummy Reddit Reddit accounts that they own to talk about your product. So on certain categories where you’re competing which hopefully you know because it’s a third party and they will do it in a way that hopefully won’t be flagged up and that account will be banged. There’s all sorts of gray hat morphologies out there for link building. I must get about 20 emails a week people asking do you take guest blog posts? Will you, will you add my product to this particular article?

[00:35:17.680] -Jonathan Denwood

I very, very do that. But what are more legitimate ways if you’re trying to get back links to your membership website? Well, two, two mythologies which are that you will hear a lot of is podcasts going on other people’s podcasts. Most podcasts will have show notes and they will link to your. If you’re a guest they will link back to your website, your membership. It’s a great way of you know, if you choose to go on the right podcast or you’re invited to go on they should be Audiences that are interested in what your membership website is about. So it’s a good way of also getting new people that will probably buy your course. Right. Another way is press releases. There’s about. I will find the top three and put them in the show notes for this episode, folks. There’s about three to half a dozen at different price levels where you can do a press release. It doesn’t have to be that difficult. They’re not that difficult to knock out and they will. And these platforms distributed them to various. And you’ll find the press release will go on various websites and Google can’t really do much about it because it is quite legitimate.

[00:36:58.200] -Jonathan Denwood

So those two methodologies I think are quite possible and in the technical and price range. And I think they work. I think all this other kind of outreach, I don’t think it works that much myself. How would you respond to that?

[00:37:16.840] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, it’s nice that you pulled out the PR option. I, I actually was very big in the PR space, you know, 15 years ago and I still use it occasionally, especially with certain product and site launches. For instance, I had a customer that was starting a, you know, top shelf exclusive RV camping place in Utah. And so I knew that if we put out a good piece of PR and it wasn’t cheap, Jonathan, you had to, you know, you have to pay for the distribution on the, on the PR and if it has a picture, it costs more and all these things. But we put out a campaign through the PR and a ton of RV magazines and RV websites and all that picked it up and you know, that really helped with the launch of that facility. Right. Because picture it, you build something in the middle of nowhere. I mean like it’s in the middle of the desert. There’s no. The nearest town’s like 55 miles away. It’s not like you’ve got this thriving community that’s excited you’re there and going to, you know, send a bunch of people to you. So you have to spread the net to bring the people in and that the pr, again, depending on what kind of project it is, I think that’s a really great viable option, especially for a launch.

[00:38:39.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

But it’s not like for race teams that we work with and stuff. We, we use that for the race teams and for things that have events. I, I represent a race team out of Florida and you know, they, they attract teams like Ferrari to, to sublet their garages. Well, that’s, that happens because of their exposure and getting written up in magazines. And those magazines point people back to the website. And that’s where the business happens.

[00:39:06.290] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Now, bottom of funnel content strategies, like I said in the first of the show, the buyer’s journey has been compressed. You know, there was a lot more back and forth. I think people through the use of AI tools are doing their research, and then if they go to a website and it’s not muddled, it seems to meet their requirements and it’s been recommended by AI, there’s a good chance that they’re gonna buy or they’re gonna buy or they’re gonna book a consultation or do something. Right. So I think you really. I. There are certain people that I listen to, certain podcasts, let’s say you all. You need to produce a lot of pages that are bottom of the funnel. I am going to be producing more pages myself that compare different products and services, and I’m going to do that in page form rather than blog form. But on the other hand, I think there, there’s processes where people are producing hundreds of these pages using AI. I think that’s the wrong way to go. I think mixing up pages with blog content and going for middle ground, slightly bottom of funnel, but not quite bottom is the way to go because otherwise you end up with a lot of similar content.

[00:40:55.540] -Jonathan Denwood

I think you got to be a bit conservative about this. One of the things that people don’t understand that’s caught people out, I’ll give you an example and because I listen to quite a few SEO podcasts myself, folks, as Kirk knows, because I’m always talking about it, aren’t I, Kurt? You are always is. There was a list, basically you did a list of different competitors and you would put yourself at the top of the list right. Now that really works well with the large language models. Actually, they. It’s a strange thing that it. The. The technology in some ways is sophisticated, but in some ways it isn’t. It’s less. It’s been proven for a number of tests. That kind of SEO that was done about 10 years ago works with these large learning models. The problem is how Google reacts to it. So I did. At the beginning of the year, I did some 2026, but we were hardly in 2026. But luckily I didn’t overdo it. I just done about half a dozen. There were other people that were knocking out hundreds of articles and they were the best whatever product for 2:26. And then they would have a list and that their product would be on the top of the list.

[00:42:42.940] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, they got a. A couple months ago, they got hammered By Google. Absolutely wiped out. So you’ve got, you’ve got to have some common sense about this. But we are in interesting times because these, some of the things that influence these large language models, like I say, is the type of stuff that gray hat SEOs were doing like 10 years ago. But Google’s technology has moved on in a way. So you’re, you got, you’ve got to keep that in mind. How would you respond to that, Kurt?

[00:43:24.590] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think you’re, you’re wrapping this thing up really, really well. I think there’s one gap in kind of our show notes, not show notes, but the way we presented today is. And I’m really hoping you can shine some light on this. I think listeners and viewers are kind of tracking the conversation. Like I don’t, I don’t think they’re missing what we’re saying. But I think there’s a gap that people, when they make content or when they think about search engine optimization for their website, I think there’s a difficulty in what determines whether some content is top of funnel or bottom of funnel or what, what types of actions are call to actions or headings or, or those types of things are giveaways for people to understand if they’re addressing.

[00:44:13.160] -Jonathan Denwood

I think you’re right. I think it’s just intent really. Just put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Yeah. What, what if I was really like your beloved Ducati, right? This take your beloved Ducati. Kirk actually worked for Ducati. Lucky bugger. And I’m not envious. I’m not envious at all.

[00:44:40.450] – Kurt von Ahnen

And get the pretty book right there.

[00:44:42.610] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, there we go. And so there’s lots of people that go to the Ducati website to look at the latest superbike and videos, but the bulk of them haven’t got the money to go and buy a brand new Ducati, have they? Obviously Ducati’s got dealerships, so. But there’s loads, there’s probably loads of people that go to the main Ducati dealership websites to see fancy photos. But what content, what kind of searches, what signals would the more serious buyer. Well, they would probably want to see what kind of maintenance package they would get for their new bike. They would probably delve, not exclusively because I’m sure there’s loads of people that want to know all the ins and outs of the bike and they still never had the money to buy a new one. But people doing more detailed about specification, about a good signal would be what bikes are at the dealership and what, how long they would have to wait to get their particular models. There’s probably all sorts of clues that kind of the more serious buyer, somebody that’s actually going to lay out the cash to actually buy that bike, then just the general person to the website.

[00:46:24.500] -Jonathan Denwood

Is that making sense? Good.

[00:46:26.340] – Kurt von Ahnen

It is, it is. Would you say that top funnel would be more informational and bottom of funnel would be more activity like action, like web forms and calls to action with buttons to click and things like that?

[00:46:43.150] -Jonathan Denwood

Probably. But it is a little bit tricky because there’s a. It’s not black and white. There’s a bit of overlap with all this. I, I don’t know people that make out it’s black and white. I think they’re kind of misleading people a bit really. So. But there’s definitely, there’s definitely a. You can see really top of funnel content then more action orientate people that are kind of mate and I think they do tend to put different search terms in than the top one. But there’s also over that. So right now when it comes there are some new tools and there’s some traditional SEO. These are all not cheap, they’re not mega expensive, but they’re not cheap either. There’s a couple that are from the traditional SEO background but they are, they are adding where you can put prompt search and they will tell you they will recommend prompt searches or they, if you put in a search they will tell you if you’re showing up in the leading large learning models. One of them is a product called profound. It’s typeprofound.com I’m going to make sure these links are in the show notes. There’s another one called Peak AI that’s P E P E E C AI and then you got a ref and you got some rush which are more traditional SEO tools but they’re morphing more into helping you identify what the large learning models want, what search, what they’re looking for, blah blah, blah.

[00:48:46.290] -Jonathan Denwood

So make sure final thoughts. So I think there’s opportunities there. I’m not so down. I feel bruised and battered over the last year because I’ve had my ups and downs. But I think I can see now some of the mistakes I’ve made with my own content strategy. I think it’s got a lot better recently. But on the other hand I’ve probably been a bit too critical folks because the market’s changed enormously. But I can now see clear strategies that will enable to get the kind of customers that are best suited for WP Tonic that we can really Help. If you’re starting your membership website or you already got a membership website and you just want get to get more traffic, more members, more interest. But I think everybody in online marketing are being challenged at the pres or me at the present moment. So Kurt, what are your final thoughts on this?

[00:50:02.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

I. I said this on one of our previous episodes and I think people almost get offended. So I want to say as nicely as possible, sometimes you just need to hire an expert. Like we talk about certain things in this web space and you can’t be all things to all people. If you are an expert in working on motorcycles, rebuilding boats, you know, cutting down trees, running a coffee shop, and that’s what you want to focus on, I don’t blame you. Focus on that. This SEO topic, to me personally is a very fluid environment and it’s something that you need to stay on top of, which requires time, energy and dedication. And so if this doesn’t fall in alignment with like what you enjoy to do. This is one of those things where I truly believe that this is one of those items where hire somebody at Manana Nomas. I don’t do the SEO. I have someone on my team that does SEO. I try to stay aware, I try to stay educated. I talk Jonathan at length about stuff. But realistically, I am not personally doing SEO for anybody because it’s not my strongest suit.

[00:51:13.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so I, I really feel that way. And I know that that’s not the most popular answer in a world where everybody on the podcast is supposed to be the expert, but this is one of those things where I’ll gladly defer to someone else and let them take the spotlight.

[00:51:27.790] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I totally understand that position, but I think there’s opportunities. But like I say, folks, don’t build a mega course. Build your minimum viable course, get some students, start building out content, getting on social media, getting on YouTube, providing content and having some plan of action. Just don’t build a mega course and think, think people are going to come to it. And if you already got a membership website and you’ve got some success and you’re just finding your traffic numbers are down and you’re a bit disheartened because you’re not getting the growth that you hope for, I think with what we’ve outlined, and if you are one of those people and you’re listening to this, you can always contact us on the WP Tonic website and I, we are going to be offering a audit to help if you’re stuck like this and you’ll be able to get a free audit from us that will give you a plan of action. We’re going to be there for you and hopefully become your part there in helping you grow your membership website. We will be back next week with another great topic. I hope to get some guests as well in the coming months as well for the podcast to help you build that membership for not yourself, but also for your family so you can get that success that you’re looking for.

[00:53:03.880] -Jonathan Denwood

We will be back next week folks. Bye.

[00:53:07.320] – Speaker 2

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