Diversify your skillset beyond just organic search

Luke says: “We need to diversify. The potency of search is not what it was, and we need to be in a situation where we're sufficient on channels outside of the search engine.

In particular, this is an opportunity for the revival of email, as email is one of the most fascinating and profitable channels available to us. SEOs spend a lot of time and effort creating content, ranking for keywords, and driving traffic. The disconnect that a lot of brands have is connecting that to commercial impact. It's great to have traffic and give people advice, but you need to turn the wheels and keep the lights on. This is where email comes in.

Whatever space you’re in, there will always be a handful of FAQs that are the top burning questions that people have. You can turn that into a valuable resource and allow people to download it for free, in addition to coming onto your blog through those juicy blog posts that you're driving via organic traffic. From top-of-funnel (asking questions research-based queries, lots of good content), you get them into your funnel, they sign up via email, and you nurture them into customers.

We're just not doing enough on email to maximise revenue, especially with a lot of what’s going on with AI. The way Google Bard has taken up all the real estate, organic search is only going to get worse, so we have to diversify.

We don’t need less SEO, but SEOs need to do more. Don’t put as many eggs purely into the art of driving organic traffic. There are a lot more levers to pull that can drive performance, outside of organic keywords.”

Do you use another channel to make users aware of the brand, so that they can opt in and continue their journey through email?

“Absolutely. Recently, I was working with a brand in the world of leather. They were in a situation where they couldn't grow organically, and they were stagnating. We pushed a lot of content – like ‘leather care’, ‘how to choose good leather’, and ‘leather repair’ – which drives a lot of good traffic but doesn't necessarily result in more sales.

So, we stitched that content into their email. We had a welcome series which talked the customer through the family, who owns the business, what they're about, their culture, their skills, etc. Building an idea of who the company is really helps customers to make a purchase.

Then, you can trickle that across other parts of the business, such as social channels. If you have workshops, events, or promotions that are exclusive to certain customers, that can all go on TikTok, Instagram, etc. Email just works harder at being able to drive and engage more customers.

Organic brings them in, and it's still an important pillar. There is lots of ‘free traffic’ to be gained. At the other end, though, you have to mop all of that up and turn that traffic into conversions, loyal customers, retention, and awareness. Organic doesn't do that very well, especially with the increasing pressure from paid, above-the-fold, the knowledge graph, and everything else.”

Can email be effective for initial contact or should the user opt-in first?

“I work on the side of the buyer and the purchase funnel, so outreach is not my area of expertise. As a consumer or a potential consumer, it is wildly powerful.

You can also think about the fact that email is data. Think about lists for paid socials and building an audience on TikTok. That can happen because you have a list of genuinely engaged people who want to be involved or have purchased from you before. We’re in a situation where we can begin to diversify where we spend our time and money, and where we reach our customers.

In 2024, there is going to be more organic erosion and more pressure on trying to make organic profitable. It’s a real shame, but we've seen it before. Lily Ray is a great advocate of AI, and staying on the cutting edge of what Google are up to with their Bard search experience. It's all going in the same direction: less real estate and fewer buys on the classic 10 blue links. This year, we are going to get less from organic, so we have to work harder elsewhere to bring the pounds/dollars/euros to client sales.

Is social media optimization a form of SEO?

“Yes. A paying client (someone who is investing cash into the service of SEO) only genuinely cares about a couple of things. One is return on investment, and the other is increased X – whether that's revenue, leads, a bit of both, or another core KPI. They don’t care about where that comes from.

With that in mind, social media could well be roped into SEO. There's been a bit of noise about TikTok becoming a competitor to Google for search. The younger generation is heading to TikTok for advice, tips, things to do, places to eat, etc. All of those local searches are starting to gain traction on TikTok. It would be crazy to leave it off the table.

Of course, it’s very early on, and I'm not a TikTok expert. There are trailblazers out there, who are leaders in the space and making a difference. However, the younger audience is definitely using TikTok as a search experience and research platform rather than Google. We might not expect TikTok to become the number one search engine, but it's creating more noise, so we should be paying attention to it.”

What tasks are best done by humans and what tasks can be given to AI?

“As an analogy, I like to think about self-service checkouts. We love and loathe them in equal measure. The queues are short and there are 10 of them in the space of 2/3 tills. However, there always has to be somebody there to sort it out when you scan a cabbage, and the machine thinks it's the wrong weight.

The same methodology can be applied to AI. It’s an incredible thing and it's getting more and more advanced as we move forward. It's hugely powerful, but there has to be an expert in that particular field to validate the information that's been spat out of it and make sure it makes sense. That’s particularly true when you're in a space where personal safety is at risk: medicine, health, etc.

AI can be really useful for efficiencies and monotonous tasks, like data analysis. If you've got 10,000 keywords, from research or supplied by a client, AI can be wonderful for helping you slice that data up to give you information and insights. It can take a day's project of running through monotonous data and creating notes, and do it for you in a handful of minutes.

It’s like any other SEO tool. We all have tools that do 95% of the work, crawling URLs for us, etc. However, there has to be the right person at the other end to make sense of the data. AI needs to be applied in the same way. The downside is that it's sometimes sold as a completely comprehensive solution that can function without any intervention. That's where it gets dangerous.”

Should an SEO be a specialist in a certain aspect of SEO while also knowing a bit about every other aspect of marketing?

“Yes. My experience is in e-commerce, so there may be slightly different opinions and perspectives in other sectors, but I think T-shaped marketers are wonderful people. You have a core specialist area and then you know enough about certain things to be more effective.

If we think about all of the platforms across the tech stack, there is data at the heart of them. Data is where they make their money. In a cookieless world, where privacy is becoming increasingly important, having that data is much more valuable than just having traffic by itself.

However, it’s a multitude mix. It's traffic, it's data, it's social – it's a bit of everything. A good mix of everything is a lot more powerful than investing solely in one element which may erode over time.”

How do you know which platform is right for a particular part of the customer buying journey?

“The SERPS hold a lot of that information and data. If you search for ‘skincare’, you start to get an idea of what people are looking for. If you get more social, TikTok videos, and YouTube above the fold, then that gives you a good indication. Normally, you get makeup tutorials, one-on-one basics, reviews, do's and don'ts, and more controversial things at the side. All of this screams discovery.

SparkToro is a tool that really helps you to understand where your audience exists. It can tell you what kind of podcasts they might listen to, what Twitter followers they have, what news outlets they read, which YouTube channels they subscribe to, etc. That can really help you identify which voices matter in their discovery phase, and how people narrow down.

Google it first, then go on TikTok and search to see what's happening there. That will give you a good idea of where you can expect to find your audience, and you can move forward from there.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“I'm a big advocate of R&D and I think everyone should spend some time being in the ‘uncomfortable’. The problem is that's normally the first thing to go because, of course, it's uncomfortable. However, there is normally something that's carrying a bit of dead weight.

Stop being in a world where you do the same thing over and over again. Analytics is incredible, but you can spend time on it until you're blue in the face. If you're not getting more insight, spend less time doing that and experiment with something else. Keyword research is vastly powerful, but you can spend days, weeks, or months going into the finite.

Think about the broader picture. Throw things into TikTok and see what happens. See what experiences you get out and where the engagements are. If you have a client who is in an industry that you're not familiar with, TikTok can be a great eye-opener. The more virality a particular video has, the more it will help – as long as the comments are positive and constructive, and it's not just controversial clickbait.

In the world of skincare, I look into all sorts of trends like the things that people are avoiding, controversial products that have been banned, and ingredients that people shouldn't mess with. That gives me inspiration, and it can feed into the content strategy beyond narrow, traditional keyword research. I can broaden my horizons and look into specific ingredients, like the negatives of peptides. I only know about peptides because I went into TikTok, searched for ‘skincare’, started reading, and moved on from there.

It's a wonderful place to get new ideas, kill your writer's block, give you inspiration, and get you thinking outside the box. Of course, you can get carried away and spend half an hour scrolling through stuff before realising you haven’t got anywhere. It's a fine balance, as with all social media.

Ultimately, you want to get out of your comfort zone. Put the typical tools down, experiment a little bit more, and pay more attention to things that are happening outside of the SERPs to see where things are going. Also, listen to a podcast that is in your field. You can put that on in the background and learn new things as you go.”

Luke Carthy is an E-commerce Consultant, and you can find him over at LukeCarthy.com.