Happy Thursday!

Welcome to Boringmarketing.com, where you'll find "boring" marketing tactics to grow your profits via AI, SEO, and more.
​
​In today's rundown:

• Is it even worth investing in SEO?
• Fav links of the week
• An SEO prompt for contextual internal linking
• SEO Director’s cut on good search vol for a keyword

Read time: 10 mins

Think Piece: Is it even worth investing in SEO?

SEO has faced an onslaught of disruptions recently that makes many businesses (especially startups) wonder —

Is investing time and money into organic search still worthwhile with SGE & LLMs in the picture?

And there are also all the studies on how big media giants dominate most of the search engine real estate.

Is SEO even a viable growth channel for the smaller fishes?

But, to answer these questions, we need to dig deeper:

What's Changed in SEO Recently

1. Google SGE - Features like Search Generative Experience (SGE) utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to instantly generate AI-written responses at the top of search results.
2. Democratization of content creation - Tools like ChatGPT that leverage generative AI make creating high-quality written content fast and affordable for anyone.
3. The rapid pace of Google algorithm updates - Recent months have seen huge algorithm fluxes focused on good faith content, expertise, and even deindexing low-value sites.
4. Changing searcher behavior - Shorter attention spans, more conversational/interactive queries, and shifting platform preferences all impact how people search.

With so much changing, it's natural for businesses to question if investing in SEO now makes strategic sense.

SGE hasn’t tanked organic CTRs

When SGE responses appear above search results, CTRs for the organic results below have only dropped moderately (from ~20% historically to ~10% currently based on early estimates).

This indicates there remains ample potential to attract eyes to your site through SEO.

Also, SGE is still in the experimentation mode.

AI doesn't remove the need for SEO expertise

The question on everyone’s mind—if AI can be used for content creation, why even work with an SEO agency in the first place?

Here’s my question—if AI can answer everything, why is Google still ranking the 10 blue links?

It’s because with AI content in the picture, the bar gets higher with the need for:

• Quality
• EEAT
• Perspective
• Brand
• Narrative

Some assume AI advancements like ChatGPT allow anyone to master SEO easily. But the reality is very different.

These tools provide efficiency, not inherent mastery.

What's most important for SEO success right now?

Given the evolving SEO landscape, what should be your focus areas and strategies right now to sustain and grow your organic presence:

• Obsess over content quality and comprehensiveness
• Build perspectives, POVs, and original narratives
• Create a unique, creator-first brand known for its expertise
• Relentlessly work on CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
• Adopt an agile, always-testing approach to organic growth
• AI-assisted is the way to go - 80% AI content + 20% human expertise
• Adopt a SOM (Search-Optimized-Marketing) mindset
• Authority sites >>> niche sites
• Focus on adding value over targeting the right keywords
• Be the face of your brand, build a community, get in front of your audience
• Stay patient and embrace compounding gains

Yes, SEO is undergoing an era of immense change.

It doesn’t mean you give up on SEO.

It means you should be a part of this change, and be one of the “first movers”.

Fav Links of the Week

How to use Google Trends for SEO & content marketing [LINK]

The math behind the compound effect of SEO [LINK]

AI content not indexed by Google? [LINK]

How to rank your website on ChatGPT? [LINK]

SEO case study - site architecture can make or break your traffic [LINK]

The truth about “SEO experts” [LINK]

Google testing ads between organic results [LINK]

Must-Try SEO Prompt

Today, let’s hand over the task of contextual internal linking to Claude using this prompt:

“Here is a [blog post/article/page draft] I am working on:

[Upload draft document]

Additionally, here is a CSV file with my existing website page URLs:

[Upload CSV file]

Review the document draft and CSV URL list. Suggest 5-10 opportunities to add contextual internal links using relevant anchor text. For each suggestion:

• Identify 1-2 keywords or phrases in the document draft that would make good anchor text based on the context
• Match that anchor text to a relevant URL from the CSV file
• Explain in 1-2 sentences why linking to that URL would provide useful context/detail to readers

Make sure to provide specific examples of where you would insert the links in the draft, along with the appropriate anchor text and corresponding URL from the CSV.”

This allows Claude to analyze the document and identify relevant anchor text opportunities, while also matching them to appropriate page URLs from the provided CSV file.

Director's Cut

​Sanjay Shenoy is a partner at Boringmarketing.com and the Director of Search. He’s been in SEO for 14 years and has trained over 1000 students in the latest organic search strategies. Every week, he’ll share answers to the most common questions we receive:

Q: What is a good search volume for a keyword?

A: Now, I feel that the question is fundamentally wrong.

Why?

Because good is subjective when it comes to search volume.

Before we get into what that means, let’s first understand what search volume is:

Search volume refers to the number of times a keyword is searched for in search engines like Google during a specific timeframe (typically, a month).

In simple terms, the search volume shows how popular a keyword is.

So does that mean a keyword with a high search volume is good and keywords with a low search volume are bad? Yes and no.

The art lies in understanding how much search volume is necessary for YOUR niche/industry.

And that’s why I said “GOOD” search volume is relative - it depends.

Because “GOOD” for a SaaS tool targeting other companies (B2B) might be a search volume of 10.

But that might NOT be “GOOD” enough for a company that targets a mass audience (B2C) trying to sell at a high volume.

Why? Because the value of those searches (read potential customers) can be very different for a B2B company vs a B2C company

Of course, this is an oversimplification, and there is a lot of nuance to it.

But the point is, what a GOOD search volume is, varies a lot depending on the niche you are operating in.

And if you have a standard yardstick that you can apply to every niche, you are missing the point and misusing search volume as a metric.

Search volume is just one dimension of keyword research - you also need to consider the intent, the value, and the competition to decide on a keyword.

Having said that, search volume can be a great indicator of whether you are going in the right direction or not, so use it wisely.

What other questions would you like me to answer? Hit reply & send all your questions my way.

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