Optimize Episode 006: Dave Rathmanner on Strategies and Techniques To Optimize Content, Backlinks, and Publicity

Learn More About Dave Rathmanner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-rathmanner-23101a7a/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daverathmanner 

Website:  https://upper9media.com/  and https://oddsassist.com/ 

What to Listen For:

03:06 Dave’s background

05:45 Dave reflects: Technical changes to organic search and SEO since 2014

08:13 Dave reflects: Changing costs of organic search, 2014 to present

10:43 What does a piece of content cost in 2023?

11:55 Revisiting previously published content

15:56 Are backlinks important in 2023?

21:52 Techniques to building backlinks (small + large scale)

23:40 Storytelling: How to capitalize on free data sources and current news cycle

28:01 How to get a journalist to pick up your content

30:08 Is AI content valuable?

37:02 Is SEO finally dead?

41:33 Lightning question round

Episode Transcript

Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:00:00

Yeah, I think revisiting content is vital, and it doesn't sound like a secret strategy, but I think a lot of people don't do it. And it's hugely impactful, and we've seen you update a piece of content, update the data on it, and almost instantly it always jumps into rankings. So yeah, I think creating a system to make sure you're checking those old pieces, seeing what you can optimize for, and spending time on that is hugely impactful and one of my favorite SEO strategies that might not be used as much. I think going out and building 100 links to your most important page probably has much less of an impact than it would back in 2012 and a couple of years after that. Building backlinks to your site in general doesn't have to be to your money pages. Building up your domain authority and really driving brand awareness more than anything is kind of crucial to the SEO now and I think more important, especially with AI coming in, definitely changing the search results real estate a lot with the AI-generated answers at the top of posts. I think to compete for that landscape, you're gonna have to have a known brand. And I don't think that comes from, you know, buying links or building a ton of spammy links. I think you really need to have links that are about your brand.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:01:08

Hi, and welcome to the Optimize Podcast. My name is Nate Matherson, and I'm your host. On this weekly podcast, we sit down with some of the smartest minds in content marketing and SEO. Our goal is to give you perspective and insights on what's moving the needle in organic search right now. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with Dave Rathmanner. Dave is a good friend and former colleague, and truly one of the best in organic search. He's experienced scaling organic search channels in a variety of very competitive industries like consumer finance and sports betting, and he's built a portfolio of his own websites in a variety of different industries. I consider Dave one of the best when it comes to building backlinks and technical SEO, and I'm thrilled that we are chatting with him today. There's a lot for us to cover. 

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Ad Spot

This episode of the Optimize Podcast is brought to you by Positional. And on July 20th, Positional is hosting a webinar where I'm going to tear down three or four websites and provide actual feedback, tactical advice, and tough love for improving the search rankings in those websites. If you'd like your website submitted for consideration in my roast, you can submit it using the contact form submitted and provided on the show notes of this episode. And if you're just interested in attending the webinar, we've provided a link to the Zoom registration where you can sign up to be a guest and view the teardowns live as I do them.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:02:36

Hey Dave, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. It’s awesome to talk with you today.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:02:41

Hey Nate, thanks for having me. Excited to be on. 

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0:02:45

Yeah, there's a lot for us to cover, and I'm really excited to do this episode. Hopefully, we can talk about everything from link building to technical SEO and scaling websites and competitive industries. And then I definitely want to get your thoughts on how content marketing and search is changing from here. But first, I'd love to hear about your journey. How did you get into content marketing and SEO? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:03:06

Actually, I got into content and SEO by working with you. We were both seniors at the University of Delaware. I was studying biomedical engineering, but you and Matt needed help with LendEDU. So you asked me to help out. I was always interested in entrepreneurship. So, you know, figured why not? So at the very beginning I was managing the writers, editing, posting articles — kind of the basics of content. And then from there we went to Y Combinator, raised some money, and then kind of scaled up from there. We, I think, scaled up the content team to about 10 people. And I learned a lot over the years, all about technical SEO, link building … kind of manage each of the parts of the process and build out teams to manage those. So yeah, did that until I guess I joined LendEDU in late 2015. Company sold early 2020, and I stuck around for a few months and then really had an itch to go start some of my own sites. Didn't feel like I had enough time to do it on the side. So I decided to quit my full-time job, launch a few of my own sites, do some consulting work, and that's where I'm at today. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Yeah. And just a little background for the listeners, like Dave mentioned, we worked together for a number of years at LendEDU. And Dave was one of our very first hires. When we first hired him, I think we gave him the pick of what he could do at our company. Our goal was just to bring on really talented and smart folks. And Dave quickly became a critical part of our go-to-market function, taking on content marketing and SEO as a core strategy for our business. And over those years, it was fantastic working with you, Dave. It was a good five-, six-year journey together. And you played an incredibly important role in terms of scaling our website from zero readers per month to well over 400,000 readers per month from organic search by the time we sold that company. I just want to say thank you for being a big part of that journey. I know that there's a lot we can talk about about that journey and then kind of where you've gone from there.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:05:02

Yeah, it was a great time. Definitely learned a lot coming in knowing nothing about content or SEO and then in five years kind of getting a crash course by leading it with you. It was a fun time and I learned a lot. I think it taught me a lot, to have the confidence to go start my own things and help other companies now as a contractor/consultant.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:05:22

And Dave, you've been in content marketing and SEO now for a number of years back to, like, 2014, 2015, when we first started working together. And I know that content marketing and SEO has changed quite a bit over the years. I think, like, the core principles are still the same: like, pick the right keywords, create good content, build some backlinks, and it'll work. But from your view, what has changed? How is SEO changing from here? It'd be great to get your thoughts on that.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:05:45

Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is it's a lot more competitive, both in terms of the sites that are competing for the keywords as well as how good your content has to be. More recently, maybe in the past three years or so, four years, a lot of large publishers have gotten into the … at least into the affiliate marketing space. So like with LendEDU, we saw Forbes and U.S. News and I think even, like, CNBC start producing content about the best student loans, best personal loans — which is difficult because they have such a high domain rating. They can just immediately compete on a lot of those keywords, even if they don't really have any other relevant content to them. And then in terms of content itself, I think when we first started, you could kind of just put out the longest piece of content that covered as much as possible, was as long as possible, and frankly a lot of fluff content, and rank well. And I think now you really have to serve the user's intent. No more including a big, like, fluff intros to articles or, you know, just irrelevant things that people aren't interested in. I think Google has gotten good at figuring out what people want and then serving them truly the best content that can quickly answer their question. So I think that's a big change. And then of course, like, the changing, sort of, real estate — we saw featured snippets start getting more prevalent. I don't know when they first started … maybe, like, 2016, around then. Yeah, really having to not only just figure out what keywords to go for, but actually looking at the search results and seeing, OK, are these keywords even going to get clicks, or are people just going to see the featured snippet and move on with their journey? So those are some of the first things that come to mind. I think link building is another one if you want to get into that.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:07:29

Yeah, I definitely want to talk about link building. But just taking a step back, I agree with you. I think search intent is more important than it's ever been. Like you said, back in, like, 2014, ’15, ’16, you can just create, like, one massive mega-guide at, like, 6,000 words and rank it for, like, every keyword in that category. But it feels like in 2023, like, the better approach is to have very specific pieces of content that align to, like, every single type of search intent within, like, a category of keywords. And frankly, that probably means creating a lot more content or at least individualized posts. Do you think, like, from a competitive sense, it's more expensive to build out a content marketing channel and SEO channel than it might've been back in, like, 2015 or 2016?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:08:13

That's a good question. I would, I think so, just because you need, I think, better content, and that usually means better writers, which costs more. And then also, you know, using optimization tools like Positional that can really actually move the needle on content is also a big, big part of my strategy. And I know a lot of people's strategies. So instead of just finding a keyword, kind of stuffing all the related keywords into an article and publishing it, yeah, you have to, like you said, produce more content, hopefully shorter articles, but also a lot of tools to help optimize the content and really give it the best chance of ranking. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Yeah, I agree with you. And I appreciate the product plug. SEO and content marketing has definitely gotten more data-driven. I think over the years, I think SEO and content is definitely like an art and a science. And the art in it is creating fantastic pieces of content. And then the science is tweaking and editing those posts and then doing everything right from a technical SEO standpoint to make sure that those pieces actually rank well. I'm curious, the content you create, do you typically use freelance teams? Do you create that content internally? With the sites and the clients you work with right now, how do you actually create these pieces of content?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:09:32

Yeah, it's kind of a mix. For my main site I'm working on, Odds Assist, it's a sports betting affiliate site. I use an agency that writes a lot of the content. I still handle the outlining process, which I think is the most crucial to the final quality of the article and giving it the best chance of ranking. Not only what's included, but in what order. I create really in-depth outlines for all the content I create, pretty much going over each section that should be included, as well as what should be included in the section. So I use an agency for my site. For the sites I work with, other startups, I usually hire writers off Upwork. So I'll look for an expert in the space. If it's a healthcare site, I might look for a doctor that has a lot of writing experience and hire them and then kind of manage that process, manage that myself.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:10:27

Yeah, and what does a piece of content cost in 2023? I know it varies depending on your industry or, like, the length of the piece of content, but in general, like, what are you spending either for your own sites or for the sites that you work with to actually, like, create a piece of content?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:10:43

I think the average I pay is probably around 10 cents a word, so $100 for a thousand-word article. I've seen writers apply for my jobs that want 25 cents or 50 cents or even more. So it varies a lot. I think it depends on what industry you're in. If it's highly technical content, I know that can cost a lot more, especially if it's including coding examples and things like that, but it definitely varies. You can still get content for probably a penny a word, but it's probably not going to be super good. So yeah, I think around 10 cents a word is the average I pay, but I wouldn't be surprised if people are paying a lot more. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Yeah. One of the biggest mistakes that I see startups make is they'll publish a lot of really crappy content really quickly up front. And I think to a degree, we may have done this at LendEDU. You probably remember back in 2016, 2017, 2018, I think we threw away a lot of the content that we had already published on our site and then republished it and rewrote it, basically essentially built these articles again from scratch. In terms of improving content that's already on your website or revisiting and reworking previously published content, is that something that you spend a lot of time thinking about in your sites and the customers that you work with? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

Yeah, definitely. I have systems built out that based on how important the article is, how much traffic it gets or how much revenue it drives, it's a system to revisit that content later on to update it. And sometimes it's as simple as making a few tweaks here and there, maybe changing 10% or less of the content. And then in other cases, it might be redoing half the article or adding a lot of new content. So yeah, I think revisiting content is crucial, and it doesn't sound kind of like a secret strategy, but I think a lot of people don't do it. And it's hugely impactful. We've seen you update a piece of content, update the data on it, and almost instantly it always jumps into rankings. So yeah, I think creating a system to make sure you're checking those old pieces, seeing what you can optimize for, and spending time on that is hugely impactful. And one of my favorite SEO strategies that might not be used as much.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:12:57

Yeah, I totally agree, especially with our customers. They'll have published 50 or 100 pieces over the last two or three years, and then maybe a new person will come into that role and have this portfolio of previously published content that they had never touched before. And it almost feels to them as, like, a different website. But, like, one of the first tips I always give them is, go back to that previously published content, see what's already ranking, see if we can improve those rankings by updating and optimizing those pieces. Because for one, it's going to be a lot cheaper, I think, right, to go back and improve what's already on your website, versus going and creating, like, brand new pieces of content.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

Definitely. Yeah. Because when I optimize posts, I'll usually just handle it myself, mainly because I wanna look at the data, look at Search Console, see what it's ranking for, see what … maybe I could serve the intent for specific keywords better on that page. And then also, if you see a page is ranking fourth page or lower for a keyword, that gets a lot of volume that isn't exactly related to the topic, that could be a sign that that's a good new article to get made. So yeah, definitely revisit old content regularly, update it, update the date. Aside from, I think, signaling to Google that the post was updated, the dates also often get pulled into the search results. So, you know, if you have an article from 2018 now, someone might be less likely to click it since it's five years old.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:14:27

Yeah. It always amazes me when I see, like, a vertical where, like, the top-ranking posts are from, like, 2014. And then I say to the, uh, the startup or the website, like, “Wow, this is, like, a huge opportunity for you.” If, like, the top-ranking posts are from 2014 and 2015, like, from a user perspective, I think I would much rather click on a post from 2023. And I do want to, like, push back there a little bit. I thought Google said that your publishing dates don't matter? Is that something they said? I know that I update all my blog posts, but do your publishing dates actually matter, in your opinion?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:15:00

I think they do. I think it depends on the content. So I think there's something. I don't know if this is a Google term or something that someone else said, but query deserves freshness. So essentially, when someone searches this, they should get a recent result. So for keywords like that, definitely. I think maybe, like, landing pages and more evergreen content that the information doesn't change often, maybe not as much. Any page that is on a topic that changes frequently, I think definitely plays some impact. It's hard to know how much, but ... and also, I feel like Google's always changing what they say and contradicting themselves. So who really knows? 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

We do really want to talk about building backlinks, because almost every single day I'm asked about backlinks and if they should be building them and if they're important, or if they should be buying them. And so maybe it's a starting point, like, are backlinks still important in 2023? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:15:56

Yeah, I think they're definitely still important. My thoughts have been changing on them, especially more recently with AI. But I guess going back to 2012, I think you could buy backlinks, buy a lot of links on maybe not the best sites, and they could have a big impact, especially to the page you built them to. I think more recently, over the past five years or so, my theory is that page-specific backlinks don't have as much of an impact as your domain authority as a whole. So I think going out and building a hundred links to your most important page probably has much less of an impact than it would back in 2012 and a couple of years after that. Building backlinks to your site in general doesn't have to be to your money pages, building up your domain authority and really driving brand awareness more than anything is kind of crucial to SEO now, and I think more important, especially with AI coming in, possibly changing or definitely changing the search results real estate a lot with the AI-generated answers at the top of posts. I think to compete for that landscape, you're going to have to have a known brand. And I don't think that comes from buying links or building a ton of spammy links. I think you really need to have links that are about your brand.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:17:28

Yeah. And I agree with you that I think backlinks are still really important at a domain level. I always like to say, like, backlinks get you in the running. So if we're trying to, like, qualify for, like, the Boston Marathon, we need a qualifying time. And that gets us into the race, at least able to compete. And I think at, like, a domain level, building some backlinks gets you into that race with a qualifying time. But I agree with you that, like, building backlinks to a specific page — you can't move the needle maybe quite as well as you could, you know, five or six years ago. At least in 2023, I probably wouldn't focus as much on specific pages myself and just focus on our domain as you described. And as far as buying backlinks goes, there's a few things I want to unpack here. The first is unknowingly buying backlinks. I'll see a lot of startups hire these link-building agencies who are effectively just going out and buying backlinks for them and the startup actually doesn't know it. Would you ever work with a link-building agency?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:18:29

Me personally, I would like to own it internally. I definitely like to look at the sites that I'll be getting links on or the sites that I'm trying to build links on, if it's through outreach or another method. So I wouldn't recommend just hiring an agency and letting them go out and buy a bunch of backlinks and charge you twice as much as they paid for them. I think Google has gotten a lot better at figuring out what backlinks are paid for and maybe not penalizing your site, but just discrediting them. So if you're spending five grand a month on backlinks, you might be only getting, of those 50 links or whatever it is, maybe only 10 of them actually have a factor in Google's eyes. So yeah, I think you have to be really careful. Buying links can work, but you have to make sure the sites you're buying links on aren't just spammy sites, aren't just made specifically to sell backlinks. I think if you go to a site, go to the blog and look at the first five posts or so, you can pretty quickly tell if it's a legit site or not, as well as how the site's performing in organic search. So if you see a site that had 100,000 traffic a month, a couple of months ago, and now they're down to 10,000, you probably don't want to buy a link on that site or even try to outreach to that site to get a link.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:19:50

Yeah, I agree with you. I think Google has certainly gotten a lot better at identifying, like, what would be a low-quality or a paid backlink.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:19:57

Yeah, I think good sites now — like, you'll see people claiming they can get you a link on Forbes and other big sites like that, but it's always $1,000 or $5,000. $5,000 for a backlink?

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:20:09

Yeah. And I'm sure people are paying for it, too. Geez, maybe we should be in that business and not our current business. I think one thing I do want to get your thoughts on are link swaps. I get these emails every other day, and I'm sure you get them, too. I get them from, like, very large established brands. We're talking, like, series D enterprise SaaS companies and some publicly traded firms who will reach out and say, like, “Hey, we'll trade you. We'll give you a link if you give us a link.” Is that something I should be doing? Is that something our customers should be even thinking about, or is that essentially in the same camp as buying a backlink?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:20:50

Yeah, I think the latter there. I wouldn't recommend it as, like, a sole link-building strategy or even as a part of the strategy. I think if it's natural … like, if you're working with a software company in a similar space and, you know, you think some of their readers could be interested in your tool and you're doing a guest post, that is actually useful and a good piece of content. I think … I'm not sure how much the link would count if Google can understand that there's a swap going down. I think in cases like that, where it makes sense for the business to have a post, it can be good to do a few times, but I wouldn't go out and try to swap links with a hundred websites. I think it should be easy for Google to understand that. If you link to website B and, a week later, they link to you, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to figure out what's going on.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:21:38

Yeah, and you and I are both a fan of building backlinks the old-fashioned way, and we build backlinks using a number of different methods. What are some of your favorite strategies or techniques to building backlinks at either a small scale or at a very large scale?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:21:52

I think if you asked me the question five years ago or seven years ago, it'd be just outreach to websites. More recently, it's just become too oversaturated. I get the emails all the time, like, multiple a day, saying, “Hey, we've published this new resource guide. I think it would be a good fit in this article to help your readers.” And I think webmasters and people running sites are kind of understanding what's going on now. I think it can still work, but it seems like it's getting less effective. So that's one. My favorite, I think, is finding survey data or running surveys, finding publicly available data and crafting them into a study, and then reaching out to journalists, letting them know about the findings and trying to get coverage, I think we've gotten covered by all major media outlets like New York Times, CNBC, all the big ones. So I think that's a really good strategy, and it not only gets your brand out there through getting mentioned on CNBC or Forbes, whatever it is — that gives you some brand recognition, and then you also get a super strong backlink to your site. So I think that's my favorite. I haven't done much of that myself lately. I haven't actually really spent much time at all building links over the past year. I think when I do start scaling up link building, that'll be the main strategy there.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:23:12

And they're super natural. You're telling a good story about your product, your brand, your data — and it's helpful from both, like, a brand perspective and also you build those highly topical and powerful backlinks like you mentioned. And you mentioned, like, you can get data from a variety of different sources, but in terms of, like, finding data, like, are there some examples of, like, free data sources or, like, data that you've gotten in the past that you've been able to use to tell a good story about your product or your industry?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:23:40

Yeah, I think the one that comes to mind is the … I guess two: The Census Bureau data, we did a lot of studies with that. You can get a lot of information about where people are living, how much they make, things like that. And then the FBI crime database we use quite a bit. There's a lot of sources out there, a lot of government sources. But yeah, there's a lot of free data out there you can use. And often the reason people aren't covering them, aren't writing a story about the FBI crime database or the Census Bureau, is it's hard to navigate. So it's not only finding the data, but figuring out how to get it into a digestible format that makes for an interesting story — so really going through, seeing what's available, and picking out what you think will be interesting.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:24:27

And I love reminiscing with you. There are a couple that came to mind for me. One was the lottery ticket study that we would do every year. We would see which states spent the most money on lottery tickets. And every time there was a big Mega Millions or Powerball drawing, we would pick up additional backlinks as people would go and source our study that we had created where the average American or the average person in New Jersey spends, you know, $500 a year or something like that on lottery tickets. But that kind of brings me to another point. In my experience, I think the data-driven studies that worked to the best was when we, like, took data and we tapped into a topic that people were already talking about. Like, we knew that, like, reporters were writing about these topics and we just needed to give them, like, interesting data to, like, inject into their articles. Do you have any thoughts on, like, how we told those stories or how we incorporated, like, our data into those narratives that journalists were already wanting to write about?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:25:30

I think just paying attention to the news cycle is key. Like, if there's an announcement about student loan forgiveness restarting, you know, running a survey to student loan borrowers and asking them what their plans are. Things like that, I think, is really the key to success with data-driven studies. We definitely did it, but it's a bit harder to write a study and craft a story that isn't relevant in the news. You might get some coverage … but yeah, if you can produce data for what is already being written about, then people are going to be much more likely to include it.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:26:03

For example, we knew it was fantasy football season, and we're like, “How can we tie in fantasy football to consumer finance?” Because we still want those stories, right, to be topically relevant to the product or our website. And I remember we did a study on how much, or how consumers are buying into their fantasy football groups. And it turned out that 80% of all Venmo transactions in a specific week or something like that were for fantasy football. I think we had to get really creative in terms of how we take that newsworthy event and actually tie it back to consumer finance, because that was ultimately what our website was about.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:26:41

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a good point. You should try to make your studies related to your business. I think we probably did a few back in the day that weren't directly related and got a lot of links, and it's a lot harder to judge how that, those links impacts the rest of your pages. But yeah, if you can tie it back to the industry you're in, I think that's always a good move. And if you're getting coverage about a study that's related to finance, for example, I think in theory it could help your finance content.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:27:12

I think I remember one of those unrelated data-driven studies that we did that ended up going viral. We did a study on should you be using Tinder or Bumble to ultimately find your life partner. And it turned out that Tinder was not the place to find your future spouse. And that story ended up going viral in all of the teen magazines. Before we move on from this, I just want to talk a little tactically, like how we actually put this into motion. So we've identified, kind of, those core news stories that people are talking about. We've gone and collected interesting data on these topics. We've put together an interesting report that tells that story with data. And then what do we do from there? Do we just email a bunch of journalists? How do you actually get a journalist to take that and run with it?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:28:01

Journalist databases you can use to find journalists that are writing about those topics. And then from there, crafting a pitch to email them. I think some of the key points there to hit: Keep it short; no one wants to read a thousand pages about your study or has the time to. So I think usually we'd have a quick intro like “Hey, I want to let you know about a study we just published. Here are the key findings.” List off maybe the five most interesting findings and then kind of sign off with “Let me know if you have any questions or want to use any of the graphics from the report; happy to help.” And then, yeah, kind of send it off. The first few times it's definitely more difficult, especially if you have a lesser-known site, but as you do more and more studies, especially on the same topics, you'll start to build relationships with journalists. And we've seen journalists come to us and ask for quotes or ask if we have data on a topic. So yeah, I think it can be difficult to start, but over time, as you build those relationships, it gets easier.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:28:59

I think what we found is, like, the key was to getting, like, one journalist to write about your data. Like, if you could get one journalist to write about your study, then all of the other journalists would copy that. And that, like, never ceased to amaze me. The journalists get their ideas from other journalists, largely. And so if a large media outlet wrote about your study or piece of content, odds are there was going to be 10 or 20 other journalists that would see that article and then also write about it, too. All right, Dave. Well, I've really enjoyed talking about link building. I want to move on into some other pressing topics that everyone is asking me about right now and get your thoughts. The first one is AI-generated content. I get asked about this every single day, like, “Should I be using AI?” And it seems like our customers kind of fall into three different camps. Like, I only want to use AI, I never want to use AI, or I want to use AI as, like, a supplement, as a strategy for going after like longer-tail keywords. So I guess my question to you is, should I be using AI to generate content on our website? Like, should our customers be using AI to generate content on their websites? And then are you using content generated by AI on your website? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:30:08

I think it's a tricky question. I think you can use AI to create content on your site, but I think there's some components. If you want your content to rank long-term and have a chance, especially as a bunch of other sites start publishing the same articles with similar prompts, that you have to do to really stand out. So, one, I think creating an in-depth outline or brief, whatever you want to call it, and thinking about how the article should be structured. I think that's really important. What should be included? I think you need to use a prompt that isn't just “write me a thousand words about ‘what is SEO.’” I think you have to really think through the article and plan it just like you would any other piece of content. And then once it comes back, add things to the content to help it stand out. So, you know, expert quotes, add sources in. Well, I don't think many of the AI content tools create or include sources right now. So I think that's important, making sure all of your facts and statements are backed up. And then, you know, some other things: maybe including video, and really edit, heavily edit, the AI-generated content for both grammar and voice, maybe trying to remove some of the repetition that tends to come from AI-generated content. So I think it can be a viable strategy. I think there's a lot more work than just, like I said, writing … giving a thousand words on this topic and then publishing it. I've seen sites that have published thousands of articles, you know, in the matter of a few days. And it does work sometimes, but almost always after a few months, you just see, like, a steep drop in their organic traffic. So I think it can be used. You just have to be smart about it and put in more work than other people that are using it. I think a good kind of quality check: Is your content as good or better than what's already ranking? And I think just entering in simple prompts and not really putting much other work into those articles, the answer will almost always be no. So yeah, really spending a lot of time on the content.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:32:09

I agree with you. I've seen a few sites go zero to 100 with AI, and it seems to work quite well for a couple of months, and then it doesn't work as well. I've also seen sites experience a lot of indexing challenges just to the sheer volume of content they're creating. I kid you not, I talked with a company that created 400,000 posts with AI and published them all at one time, and they had, like, I don't know, like, 50 sitemaps or 500 sitemaps, something crazy. And, like, none of the content was getting indexed. So I'd have to think, too, if you are using AI as a way to, like, scale up content creation, like, you probably don't want to go, like, zero to 400,000 posts. Like, you probably want to, like, ramp into it, right?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:32:49

Yeah, definitely. And I think a part of that is if you're really giving the content the time it deserves and figuring out how you can make it unique, that is going to be harder to scale. So starting slow, figuring out what needs to go into each article, and then kind of building systems to help scale that, whether that's extra people working on it or just being more efficient.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:33:10

And so I think it also, Dave, creates this interesting situation where if you are using AI to generate content, and then Google is prioritizing, like, an AI response for a given search query, all of a sudden it's using AI to then show AI. So it's AI on AI. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of that. Like, I would think that Google probably wants to prioritize, like, original content into those, like, featured snippet-times-five boxes that they're showing now possibly at the top of search results. So I think that Google probably wants to find interesting or original content and prioritize that over maybe just, like, the cookie cutter, like, boilerplate, like, evergreen pieces for a given topic. Does that make sense to you?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:33:51

Yeah, I think if ChatGPT or other services are using all the content that's already available to create this new content, it's just kind of reinforcing what's already out there. So yeah, I think including a unique perspective, expert opinions, or advice in the articles, things like that, can help you stand out and give you a better chance of getting some of that sort of real estate when there's AI-generated answers. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:34:15

Yeah. And I'm certainly not like the anti-AI guy, but as, like, a content marketer in SEO, like,we're already, like, paranoid enough. Like, I'm already waking up every day, like, making sure I didn't get whacked in the most recent algorithm update. The last thing I wanna do is introduce another variable that keeps me up at night for, like, an hour longer. I don't know. We'll see where it goes from here, but I guess the last thing I'll say on this topic is that AI-generated content maybe isn't as new of a thing as people realize. If you go back to when we first started in this business, there was that whole concept of spun content, and then Google rolled out the series of, like, Panda, I believe, updates targeting, like, low-quality or spun content at scale. And so it wouldn't surprise me if there was an algorithm update targeted at low-quality AI-generated content, because I think whether it's human-generated or AI-generated, Google's just in the business of not showing low-quality content. So I think your point on using AI, as long as it's using AI to actually increase the quality of the content you create, then that does make a ton of sense to me.

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:35:20

Yeah, definitely. And I think it depends a lot, too, what the content is. You know, if it's a medical topic or something that really deserves an expert to be talking about it, or maybe, like, certain just really complex topics or controversial topics, AI might not be the best case. I can give you an example. So for Odds Assist, I've been rolling out … I have a tool that can pull in the odds from some sportsbooks, and I've been rolling out articles about the odds of different future events — so, like, the NFL MVP for next season or the MLB Cy Young winner. So I've been using AI to generate just the list of, like, past winners, and then even a bit about, like, how the winners are selected — things like that, where I don't think … the core of that page isn't that content. I think it could be helpful maybe to some people who read it, but you know, for generating lists … I found that generating, like, food ideas and recipes, it's actually pretty good for. So I think certain things it makes sense for more than others; there’s a lot of nuance in it, and I think the answer of whether AI-generated content can work changes based on what industry you're in and what keywords you’re going after.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:36:34

It's an ever-changing industry. I've been in this industry long enough to know that people have claimed that SEO is dead for a long time. Like, it was dead in 2014, it was dead in 2016, it was dead in 2018. Seems like people are always saying that SEO is dead. And I know Google is rolling out, like, a large number of changes to some of the different categories in search. Is, like, SEO finally dead? Like, are we going to be out of jobs here sometime in the next couple of years?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:37:02

I'll say I'm more scared than I've ever been before, but I think there are certain things that AI can't replace or will take a long time, at least, to replace. So I think a lot of informational searches are going to produce a lot less clicks from the search results. You know, if it's a simple, straightforward answer, I think Google can display an AI-generated result and kind of leave it at that. I think that's going to be tough for a lot of people that depend on those queries. But I think things like reviews, like in-depth real reviews of products, whether it's a physical product and you're reviewing it with it in your hands on a video or a digital product that you really go in depth and find the pros and cons of it, things like that — I think that'll be harder to replace. So if you're a site solely based, solely relying on informational keywords, I'd be a little scared and start kind of planning how to handle that. But I don't think it's that. I think SEO will exist in some form forever. I think a lot of people still want to go to a website and read about things. I don't think everyone's just going to automatically start using Google's suggested AI answers as their truth. So I think AI will always exist. It might eat into a chunk of the amount of people clicking on results, but I don't think SEO is dead. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Yeah, Dave, I totally agree with you. I think that the new UX and UI of search will change the amount of traffic that publishers may get for certain queries or keywords. But it does seem like Google wants to prioritize the publishers. I think in that new UX/UI that they've showcased, there's, like, three or four different publishers being featured at the top. And so I guess it becomes a game of, like, optimizing for those positions as well, like you would optimize for a featured snippet. And I'm in the business of building products for content marketing and SEO teams. And so you can help me shape our product roadmap here. How can we build tools? Or do you have any thoughts on, like, how I can get my website included into that AI snippet at the top of the search result? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:39:09

I think a really cool tool would be something that returns what type of content is being included in that result. There's a good, really good example. I don't know if you subscribe to Kevin Indig, his newsletter, but he had a really good example where he was comparing the AI-generated results to the actual search results. So seeing where those three articles that were included in the AI snippet, where they've ranked for the keyword otherwise. I think the keyword was “corporate business credit cards” or “corporate credit cards,” something like that. And he found that one of the sites included ranked, like, 26th for the actual keyword but was included in the AI result. And it was because they were the only one that had, like, the drawbacks of corporate credit cards. So I think seeing what's being included in the result and making sure that's included on your page, as well as maybe having something unique that the other sites ranking for that keyword don't have, gives you a good chance of getting up there.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:40:11

That makes sense. So trying to figure out what those existing search results might be missing, and then are there ways that you could build a more complete answer or article that is different but uniquely helpful to a particular search and that might earn you placement into those featured boxes. 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

Yeah, I think the formatting of your content, just like with featured snippets, matters too. I think we've seen a lot of bulleted lists get pulled in or even pulling in like the H2s on a page; if it's “best credit cards,” it might pull in each H2 that has the name of the credit card. Making sure you're using headers, lists, kind of replicating what's already in the AI-generated answer, making sure you say things quickly and directly, not having a long drawn out paragraph that isn't gonna fit in that limited space that's available there. Yeah, just answering the question directly and cross your fingers and hope you get one of those spots.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:41:02

Yeah, and by the way, for, like, our listeners, if you're not using H2s or H3s, like, you should be using them. This is, like, a fairly common mistake that I see our customers use. They'll have, like, a fantastic H1, but then no H2s or H3s. And those are extremely helpful, like Dave said, for getting included into those featured placements, but also just really helpful for your users and helping them get through like a large block of text. Make sure that you include headers in your posts. It's always a best practice.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:41:33

Okay, Dave, I think we've covered a lot and I've really enjoyed doing this. And so I think we're going to try out, like, a quick rapid fire round, five or six questions. You can just give me a really quick answer. Does that sound good to you? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

Yeah.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:41:48

What is your favorite SEO tool or tool set?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

I think Ahrefs, that's the one I use every day. I check ranking movements, look at competitors, keyword research, looking at what backlinks are coming in, pretty much anything, I'll use that for. I have the Chrome extension, too. So when I'm looking at search results, I can quickly see the DR of the sites that are ranking, how much traffic they're getting with one click, see what keywords those pages are ranking for. That's what I use pretty much anything I do with SEO. So yeah, that's my number one. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

And what are one or two things that you see content marketers or SEO spending time on that is just a total waste of time and not worth doing?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:42:28

I think the two things we've talked about in this episode: mass producing AI content, I think that's — without putting much work into it, that's definitely one. And then buying links on spammy sites; I don't think those are bringing much value and it's a waste of time.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:42:42

And as far as technical SEO goes, what's, like, the must-do thing or that technical SEO concept that you're constantly coming back to and making sure that you're doing it right?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:42:52

I think having just a good user experience on your site, so basically the things that Core Web Vitals look at, making sure your site loads fast, making sure it's not moving around on users as they try to scroll or click through. Yeah, I think having a good user experience is key. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

And I know that you've recently, like, sold one of your websites. I'd love to just quickly hear how they valued it. Like, how did they decide how much money to give you?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:43:20

Primarily based on how much it currently earns. It was a little tricky because it recently had a big upswing in rankings and it was getting a lot more traffic than previously. So I don't think I would have sold it unless that was factored into the sale price. Having a higher monthly multiple than kind of what you normally see on marketplaces like Flippa or Empire Flippers. I think most sites are going for anywhere from 30 to 50X monthly profit. Yeah, I think with that recent growth, like, factoring that into the multiple was really key.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

0:43:53

Yeah, Dave, as we've talked about, like, content marketing SEO is changing quite rapidly and also the UX/UI of search is changing. And I think that might press us to think about what other types of content we should be creating beyond just, like, your standard blog posts or landing pages. How are you thinking about the changing marketing landscape and maybe inbound in general as you think about building your websites and your brands from here into the future? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

For me, for my sites, the one thing I'm doing is trying to give people a reason to come back to the site. I think of a lot of sites that are solely dependent on SEO kind of have readers come to their site, get their answer, maybe click through and buy something, but don't really come back to the site because they don't have a reason to. So some ways I think about doing that, and I think could apply to most industries: Building tools, like helpful tools that people can use; building a newsletter, so capturing those people's emails that come onto your site, which could have been the only time — if you can get their email, you can remarket other offers to them, keep them engaged, keep them coming back to the site; video I think is going to be an important one. I'm not sure if you saw Google announced … I think they're calling it Perspectives, which is like a new tab in the search results. The few examples I saw from that included a lot of TikTok and YouTube. So I think creating video content and review articles that really highlight your personal experience can be impactful and give you a chance to still get some organic traffic to your site. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Are videos also, like, a core component of building a good piece of content that will rank in search? 

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

Maybe not every piece, but I think you can kind of intuitively think, OK, like, would a video be more helpful on this topic or more interesting in cases like that? I think it could make sense. And if you're using AI to create articles, I think that can be one way to differentiate your content from the other AI-generated articles that are out there or will likely be coming soon. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

My final question is on domain names. Do domain names actually matter? Like, does your URL or your TLD actually have, like, an impact from your perspective?

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Dave Rathmanner (Speaking)

0:46:06

I think dot-coms are always the best if it's available. I think it also can change based on the industry you're in. If you're creating an AI company, like, I think having .ai is fine, and people wouldn't be less likely to click that. But I think .nets and some of the other — I think you can get, like, .money and .“insert random words.”

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Thanks so much, Dave, for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed having this conversation with you, and I think we covered some really interesting topics today, and given that we don't have external ad placements here on the podcast, I do want to give you a quick one. For all of the listeners who are interested in learning about sports betting and getting the most up-to-date odds before they place their next bet, you can go over to Dave's site, oddsassist.com and get all that great information and videos in one place. And then I know Dave also mentioned he'd be happy to connect with any of the listeners on this podcast. You can reach out to him directly via LinkedIn. His name is Dave Rathmanner. He's always interested in learning about new projects and opportunities or just answering any general questions you might have about content or SEO related to this podcast. So if you'd like to connect with Dave, head over to LinkedIn and add him. I've already done that. He's a great person to connect with. I encourage you to do so. Thanks again, Dave. It's been great to have you on. 

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