Rich: Is SEO really complicated, or are you just overthinking it?
Zac: Hey Zach, welcome back. Welcome back.
Rich: Because my Lego city is over here and used to be in the background, I’ve had people complaining. So there is—let me see if you can see it—there is a little Lego guy up at the very top with the book. I thought that was awesome when I had both of those things because they didn’t come together. And then back here, I have the Fringe Bistro. It’ll move over to the shelf, but what I’m doing as I build the rest of mine, because I have all of them, I’m going to set it here for like a week or two so people can see it, and then it’ll move in with the rest of the city. So that one will go next to the Natural History Museum when I get it done on the second shelf from the bottom.
So a little tangent for you there, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. We are talking about SEO. And is it really super hard, or can you break it down and make it simple—or at least simpler—to understand?
Zac: I mean, for a lot of people from the outside looking in who don’t do SEO tactics or really know SEO at all, it seems super complex.
Rich: Yeah, and I think we might want to step back for anybody who isn’t an SEO person. SEO is search engine optimization. So it’s really how you show up in Google search organically without paying for it.
There’s also now an emerging practice called AEO, which is AI engine optimization. So how do you show up in AI engines? And yes, they are different. We could probably have Riley on to talk about that in a future episode.
Zac: Oh yeah, 100%.
Rich: Stick a little note on that one.
All right, so we’re going to get into that in a little bit, but first we’re going to start with the Earl Grey Martini—and that’s spelled M-A-R-T-E-A-N-I. So I’m guessing it’s an Earl Grey tea and a martini.
Zac: Basically, yeah. So this was created by Audrey Saunders at the Pegu Club. And I have a little quote here from Dale DeGroff: “With the opening of Pegu, Audrey’s singular mission was to get people used to drinking gin again.” So this is kind of her way of letting people enjoy gin again, because I guess people weren’t drinking enough gin.
Rich: I mean, I feel like gin’s made a comeback. So I don’t know when Pegu opened, but I think obviously Caitlin loves gin. I used to hate gin. I never drank gin. We never had gin in the house. And then I got into the botanicals and some of the Hendrick’s stuff—really interesting flavors. And then I realized that gin doesn’t have to taste like you’re chewing on pine needles. It can actually have other flavors.
Zac: I think I prefer gin to vodka in cocktails just because vodka—there are some good-tasting vodkas—but I think the flavor of gin is more pronounced, and I think it does a little more for me personally.
Rich: Yeah, and a really good vodka is supposed to be odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Like you’re actually not supposed to taste it, which is really wild to me. But I think vodka just tastes like alcohol, right?
Zac: It’s like a lighter Everclear or something, or it just tastes like whatever flavors you’re trying to give it.
Rich: So I did look through the notes, and I want to get onto this breakfast martini she has as well. She was doing some really interesting things, this Audrey Saunders.
Zac: Yeah. And apparently the breakfast martini uses orange marmalade, and then there’s another drink that uses pomegranate syrup called a Juniperotivo.
Rich: Juniperotivo?
Zac: Yeah, there you go.
Rich: Interesting. So that one, I’m guessing, is more pine-forward because it has juniper in the name, but probably balanced a little bit with that pomegranate syrup. So that’s interesting.
Zac: They consider this to be kind of a classic sour too. There’s an egg white in it and three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, which I’ll let you get into with the actual recipe.
Rich: So first thing, you’ve got to infuse some gin with Earl Grey tea. I have not seen an Earl Grey-flavored or infused gin. I’ve also learned the difference between actual infusion and just flavoring. So I was looking at spicy tequilas, and there’s one brand that actually infuses habaneros or jalapeños. All the other ones are using the flavor and then putting the heat in differently. They’re not actually infusing them. It’s more of a manufactured process. That was interesting to me.
So yeah, infusing is super easy. You take a 750 milliliter bottle of gin—Tanqueray has a really great flavor and high proof. I really like Plymouth, but I don’t think I’d use it for this, just because Plymouth is a much lighter, milder gin, and I think you want this one to be gin-forward. Then just four tablespoons of loose Earl Grey tea. And if you have tea bags, open them up and measure out four tablespoons of that.
That’s it. Put that in the bottle, cap it, shake it, let it sit at room temperature for two hours, and then strain it through a sieve or coffee filter into a bowl. Rinse out the bottle to remove loose tea and pour it back in. You’re going to want to have a funnel for that. It should store indefinitely refrigerated because tea doesn’t really go bad, and alcohol kind of kills everything. So yeah, you can make one of these and just hold onto it.
Once you’ve done that, take three-quarters of an ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice, an ounce of simple syrup, one and a half ounces of your Earl Grey tea-infused gin, and an egg white. Put all of them into a mixing glass, add ice, and shake it hard for about 10 seconds. Sometimes we say shake until your hand is freezing, but this one is more of a 10-second count because you’re doing some specific things with that egg white and you don’t want to overdo it.
Then strain it into a chilled martini glass. You can rim half of it with sugar if you’d like. You could rim half of it with sugar and lemon zest. You could rim the whole thing with sugar if you want to. It doesn’t really matter. Then garnish with your lemon zest, and you are good to go. This is easy.
Zac: I’ve been trying to find the easier ones that are a little more interesting, and this one I’ve been excited about for a couple weeks. So I’m glad we’re finally recording it. It’s pretty easy, minus the Earl Grey-infused gin, but even that is super simple.
Rich: As long as you have Earl Grey tea, it’s easy.
I will tell you, Zac, on the infusion side of things, when you infuse fruits or vegetables into an alcohol, generally you want to check it about every 12 hours, especially if it’s something spicy.
I have a friend who, every time I go somewhere to get a margarita, complains that it’s not spicy enough. And then his other complaint is margarita mix, but that’s neither here nor there. So it’s never spicy enough. His birthday was actually yesterday, but we went out to dinner last week. So I went to get a bottle of his favorite tequila, which is Altos Blanco, and I bought a serrano pepper, a habanero pepper, and a jalapeño.
As I was doing that, the guy in the liquor section was like, hey, have you tried this brand? And I’m like, no, never heard of it. He showed me the two that were actually infused, so I got him the habanero version of one of those. But then with the Altos, I had to pour out probably about four ounces of the tequila because I’m shoving peppers in there and there’s displacement. Physics, I think.
So anyway, I sliced the jalapeño, habanero, and serrano thin and tucked them in there, seeds and all, because he can’t have it hot enough. Then I had to read up on it. They do say every 12 hours you should check the heat level because it will keep heating up. If you take the peppers and seeds out and strain them, it stops heating. Otherwise, it continues to get hotter and hotter for about three days.
It’s been over three days, and he said it is fantastic and he’s dying to make a margarita with it, but he’s in New York for work. So yeah, if you’re infusing with fruit, you can kind of leave it in there. If you’re doing something that adds spice or heat or a unique flavor that could get overpowering, about three days is your max, and you definitely want to do your little taste test.
Zac: So that’s my little tip on infusing.
Rich: Nice little infusion tangent.
Yeah, it was interesting to me that with this one, you don’t want an overpowering Earl Grey tea. That’s why they have you take it out after a couple of hours. If you leave it in there, it’s much like leaving your tea bag in your hot tea—it’s going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. So I would definitely take it out. It’s also just four tablespoons in 750 milliliters, so it’s not like you’re shoving 10 tea bags in there or anything. So I like it.
Zac: Yeah, it’s a good one. We should probably get into the main part of the episode.
Rich: Yeah, I mean, we’re still under 10 minutes, we’re good—but yeah, let’s get on with the SEO conversation.
All right, so welcome back. Hope you enjoyed the dance break. I think we’re still using the same music we’ve been using for like two years—however long it is. It works. It’s very cocktail-y and fun.
So we’re going to talk about SEO. It’s not like anyone can do it necessarily, but it is very learnable. It is very teachable. I’ve actually taught classes on it. And it’s something I think everyone can do if you kind of understand some of the main underlying reasons you would do SEO and how it works.
So I think with that, the first thing you really need to know is that intent really matters. This is the same with AI. AI context also matters. But what people are looking for in general is more important than trying to nail an individual keyword. It used to be that you just jam keywords in there and you’re going to be the number one result, and that’s not the way it is anymore.
Zac: And that’s what Google has stated too. They prioritize relevance and intent over the density of keywords that you use, which means it’s still important to use keywords naturally throughout the content that you create, but actually making a good piece of content that directly answers what you’re trying to rank for and the term that people are searching is way more valuable than anything vague.
Rich: Yep. And I think the example I’ve always seen—I don’t know if this came from Google or somewhere else, or if I just made it up—is if you’re doing SEO for a website for a dog park, it used to be that you’d just have “dog park” on the page 150 times, and it was really annoying to read. AI will hate that as well because it’s too stilted.
So it’s really more about talking about the dog park and talking about secure fencing, trees, grass, balls if you’ve got them, dogs, different dog breeds, people, leashes and not leashes. It’s about the whole ecosystem around going to a dog park versus just saying “dog park” a whole lot.
And I think you see that with restaurants especially. They’re really trying to be more broad about what they are and the type of food they have, because that relevance piece and intent is so important.
Zac: I think the reason people chase high-volume keywords instead of focusing on intent is because one of the biggest things people think of when they think of SEO is keywords and how you’re using keywords. So it’s easy to fall into the trap of “I need to use as many instances of the keyword I’m trying to rank for as possible” on this blog or on my website. And it ends up doing more harm than good because you’re probably creating worse content.
Rich: And the keyword is important, of course. It’s kind of the central thing you want to look for, and you want to do some research on that and find one that’s attainable and not super difficult, but has a decent search volume.
But I think the way I always look at it—and I know HubSpot used to have a tool that did this, I think they still do, though their SEO stuff is hit and miss—is your keyword is kind of at the center, like that’s your sun. And then if you’ve got nine or ten planets revolving around the sun that are related to it—so if my keyword was solar system, I’d have sun and stars and Pluto and planet and Earth and moon and Saturn—those would be the things around solar system at the middle.
So it’s just kind of a good metaphor for how to look at it. And if you’ve got nine or ten things that don’t use that keyword but directly relate to it, you’re pretty good. Now you’ve got a good base to start working on your content.
Zac: And that’s why pillar pages do pretty well too, right? It’s like you’re answering as comprehensively as possible and linking off to those planets in your solar system.
Rich: Yep. You’re drawing a line from the sun to the Earth to Saturn or to Mars or whatever, so that people know those are all related, even though they’re independent pieces. So that’s the other piece of this: one piece of content won’t always do it. Multiple pieces of content that connect with each other and relate to one another clearly are going to be much, much better for your general SEO. So it’s kind of the basics, right?
Zac: Another thing people get wrong about SEO—and that makes it more confusing—is that they expect the things they’re doing to improve search engine optimization to come into effect right away. They think that just because they fixed a redirect or a 404 error or changed a meta description or updated headlines, they’re going to see traffic go up instantaneously. And that’s just not the case.
Rich: Nope. Google’s robots come back to your pages as often as they’re updated. So if you’re only posting one blog post a month, the robots are going to come back to your blog once a month because they get used to that timing. And if you start speeding that up, it’s going to take them a little bit to adjust.
You can also tell them, through Google Search Console, hey, I’ve updated a bunch of content. You can re-upload your sitemap or pop in the URL and tell it something’s new.
But even aside from how often they come back, it also takes time for you to be seen as quality, seen as higher and more relevant than something else, and start to climb. Now, have we done some optimization for a client and seen them jump from like 60 into the top 10? Yes. That can happen in a week or two. But that should not be your expectation. Those are your quick wins. Three to six months is really what you’re looking at in a program.
And honestly, the client we have who’s doing amazing stuff in SEO that Riley’s working on—it was about two years before it really started to take off, and then it kind of got a life of its own.
Zac: Oh yeah. They have web pages that have been taking off from their initial release, and blogs especially. I’ve seen that with their blogs and our blogs. Some of our blogs will see a lot of direct traffic and obviously traffic from organic social, and then we’ll get consistent organic search traffic after the fact because we’re starting to rank for the keywords and answer those questions we’re trying to answer for our target audience.
Rich: And I think that’s the other thing. Everybody’s like, oh, I need to get all these websites to mention me. No, you don’t. You’ve got your site with multiple pages, you’ve got all of your social media platforms that you can link back to yourself on, which is great. And yeah, if you can get other sites to link to you relevantly, that’s fantastic. But look at your own properties first. It can really, really work well.
Zac: Mm-hmm. And don’t fall for black hat SEO tactics like buying backlinks.
Rich: That was one of our first episodes—might have been our first—about black hat SEO. Way back in the day with Christian.
Zac: It’s interesting because this is our fifth SEO episode ever, and it feels like we’ve done more than that, but it’s only been five. And the last one was a year ago, so we were definitely due for a good SEO episode.
Rich: Definitely time.
Zac: I think something to keep in mind with SEO too is once you learn one thing, it kind of snowballs into others. Once you learn how to optimize on-page stuff, then you might understand the technical stuff too. Like, when you were saying earlier, once you understand the core concepts, it becomes very simple.
Rich: Well, and the technical stuff is really stupid-simple things, like name your images what they are. Like “green-gaming-headphones” is what you would name the image of your headphones. And then if your alt text says “green and black headphones with a microphone designed specifically for gaming but can be used for other uses,” that helps with ADA compliance, but it also helps with SEO and gives AI and AEO better context.
So just stuff like that is super, super simple versus naming your image “image_3250_new_final.” That makes no sense to anybody.
Zac: And that’s a good starting point too. The easiest thing you could probably do is make sure all your images on your website and your blogs have alt text. Also make sure your meta descriptions are optimized and that you have meta descriptions. Make sure you have H2s properly throughout the page, and H1s. We’ve run into blogs before that have no H1s or H2s, and that’s obviously going to make it really hard for you to rank.
Rich: Yeah. And it’s an outline, right? Your H1 is the main point of the page. Then your H2s are the next indent, and they’re sections of the page that are all different. Then you can have H3s under those. If you think about it as an outline—like the one, the A, the little i—that’s how that works. You’ve only got one H1, and then everything else is embedded in your H2s.
Zac: Yeah. And I think that’s a really good starting point. Then maybe you’ll start learning about redirect errors and how to fix those. But if you’re looking for somewhere to start, that could be good.
Rich: I think the other thing that you’ve got in here—and I know this is really popular and getting bigger with AI—is questions.
Zac: Yep.
Rich: Like actually writing out your own FAQs. If you don’t have FAQs, start there. Write the question and write the answer.
Back in my day—and yes, I know I’m from before Google existed—we had search engines like Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, AltaVista. But when Google first came up, it was mechanical. You’d put in “Thai food Omaha” because you wanted Thai food in Omaha.
Now behavior has changed, generations have changed, search engines have changed, and people will put in “What’s the best Thai food in Omaha?” or “What’s the best Thai food near me?” They will ask a whole sentence—sometimes a whole paragraph.
Zac: Or even more specific: “Where can I get the best pad Thai in Omaha?” Or location-based too. “What’s the best restaurant in this neighborhood?” So it’s interesting.
Rich: I did one the other day. I was looking for mango chicken because I know there’s a place here that does it, and I couldn’t remember which one. It didn’t come up. And I’m like, these people need better SEO because I know they’re still open and they have mango chicken. Why is it not coming up?
Zac: That always sucks when you know a restaurant exists and you know they have something on the menu, and you search it and you can’t find it. So you’re like, am I imagining this?
Rich: Yeah, and I was really craving that. So then I started looking for recipes to make my own mango chicken because I’m like, it’s just mango purée reduced in a sauce and probably some soy in it or something, and then toss in some chicken. I’d rather have it with grilled chicken than fried, ideally.
But yeah—questions. Setting up FAQs on every page that relate to that page, little accordion or whatever, is there. We could get into schema as well, but that’s a whole other thing. If you just have the FAQs, most platforms now—WordPress and HubSpot—will auto-mark that up with FAQ schema. If it looks like an FAQ and it says it’s an FAQ and it’s a question and answer, a lot of that backend stuff will happen for you depending on your platform. I’m sure Wix and Squarespace do it too.
But just having those there is helpful, because when I come to a website, I have questions. I always have questions.
The other thing you can do is take your lead form and have a “Have a question we haven’t answered?” field. You can use those to make new FAQs. Depending on the tools you’re using, you could even use an AI agent to create an FAQ or knowledge base article for you off questions you don’t have answers to. So I think that’s a good point.
Zac: Pillar pages and FAQ content do really well for search engine rankings.
Rich: Yeah, but it’s really just your relevance and context. Do you have good quality? Does it make sense? Is it in the right context and not completely stilted? Because then you won’t get penalized either.
Zac: Yeah. So our final point—which we don’t really have time for, but we do have a little bit of time for—is structure and authority are really important. So how your site is internally linked significantly improves crawlability and ranking.
And so top pages tend to exist within well-structured topic clusters.
Rich: So yeah, whatever your top-level pages are, the pages under them need to be related to them. They all need to be clearly related. And then your URL structure should be nested—that’s what it’s called. You can Google “nested URL structure,” but essentially it would be like website.com/services/service-one and website.com/services/service-two.
Keeping that stuff organized—you’ll see it on retail with products. It’s usually /products/category/subcategory/product. Google looks at those almost like folders on your computer, and each one of those subcategories or directories should relate up to what it’s under. I don’t know if this hand gesture makes any sense.
Zac: Well, and if your pages aren’t nested correctly or if you have a page just kind of astray, it’s going to be really hard for Google to find it and crawl it. So it’s probably not going to rank at all, especially if Google can’t find it. So making sure that it’s on your sitemap and actually has inbound links that allow you to navigate through is important.
Rich: Yeah, and sitemaps look like family trees, right? It’s the oldest living relative or whatever, and then their children and their children’s children and the people who married in. That’s what a sitemap always looks like. And what you want is that everything in a group is related as you go down through that tree. If you’ve got that set up and that’s how you set your URL structure, you’re going to be light years ahead of a lot of your competition, especially if you’re a small business. So many people completely screw that up.
Zac: Yeah, 100%. Well, I think we covered everything pretty well there. I think kind of what we can take away from this is search intent really matters more than keyword density and volume. So if you’re overstuffing keywords, that’s not nearly as important as intent and context. Consistency is really important. Don’t give up just because you’re not seeing results right away. SEO is slow on purpose. And then structure and authority are really integral to how your site ranks.
Rich: All right. So I think that kind of hits everything. Technical health issues are another thing we just touched on briefly—site speed, indexing, duplicate content, all that. Be careful with it. But I think the number one thing we hit on is your intent, and the intent of the searcher matters, and how you relate to that intent—your relevance, your context, those types of things—are really important.
Getting the basics down can get you light years ahead of everybody. Just having your images tagged and having some of that technical stuff, your nested URLs, can be really great. And then think like the searcher. People ask questions today, so have questions and answers on your page. And don’t try to do everything. Just do one thing. Put an FAQ on your product pages. Just do that this week.
And then the last piece is: no, it doesn’t work like paid. It’s a slow burn. Give yourself three to six months to be able to see what you’ve got going on. That’s really the basics of SEO, breaking it down. Then just keep checking on it. Use some sort of tool—there are free tools out there—where you can see how you’re ranking, see what you want to rank for and what’s possible, and go from there.
Zac: Yeah. As always, you can find our agency at antidote71.com and all of our socials are there as well. If you have a question you’d like to send our way, head to CTAPodcast.live. Your question will make it into a future episode. And with that, we will see you next week. All right.
