The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – SEO Insider Phillip Stemann on Optimizing Technical Foundations, Building Content Clusters, and Preparing for an AI-Powered Future

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Starting point is 00:00:40 The Cradle of Superbowl. There you go. When the Iron Lady sings it, ladies and gentlemen. That makes it official. As always, welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys being a part of it. And coming and seeing the amazing guests we have every day. For 15 years, we've been bringing you the CEOs, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the people in the government, you name it, the billionaires.

Starting point is 00:01:00 They've all been on the show and a part of it and bringing you their stories, their journeys, their life, their lessons, everything you can possibly learn from it. As I always say on the Chris Voss Show, stories are the owner's manual to life. And these are the people who are going to bring it to you and make you learn more. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. Philip Stemmon joins us to show. He's a SEO enthusiast. He's going to be talking about his trade and how to improve the quality of your marketing, your websites, and everything that goes into them, all your B2B stuff, all your B2C consumer stuff, and all that good stuff that goes on there. He is an SEO expert.

Starting point is 00:01:37 He started as a programmer and transitioned into the technical aspect of SEO. He's always found it interesting and then focused on content, using the right tools, and he has a great YouTube channel that he shares his details on and how to use SEO combined with content and dependence on each other. Welcome to the show, Philip. How are you? Thank you so much and what an awesome introduction. I'm very good. There you go. There you go. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So my full name is philipsdemon.com.

Starting point is 00:02:09 That's my website where I share all my knowledge about SEO when I test stuff and basically just what I learn about SEO that I explore every single day. Then I'm on Twitter as well on my name, philipsdemon. I'm a little bit on Instagram and then i'm on linkedin but mainly twitter and my website is where i'm very up to date and then i have my youtube channel which is again just seo with philip steeman so those are the places to be if you want to know more about seo and what i work with there you go and i noticed you also have an app as well is that correct no i don't have an app no i've worked with us before but I don't have personally an app now. Okay, there's something called a Planzer on your website that has a phone app.

Starting point is 00:02:49 So I wasn't sure if that was a phone app or not. All right, yeah, no, there's no phone app. It's a web app, and it's basically a web app that I made just because I was missing a tool to plan my day, and then I just created it myself, and now I'm using it. Then I'm also sharing it with others. So people are using it daily. So it's very nice. There you go. Planzer.

Starting point is 00:03:09 I'll have to check it out. You've tested hundreds of SEO tools and shared more than 160 of them on your YouTube channel. So you've got a lot of data there that can help people do the thing. You've got a free ebook for the seven best AI copywriting tools. That sounds excellent as well. Right. Yeah. I think it's also back from my programming days. I do still program today

Starting point is 00:03:32 with Planter and some clients, but I've just always had this edge about tools and I just love to test tools and basically just find the best tool for my niche and my needs, basically. And also just, I thought to myself, why not share it with everyone on my YouTube channel? So that was how it started. And that's how I'm doing it today, where I'm just testing tools and sharing it. Whereas, of course, I'm only sharing the most interesting tools, because there are a lot of tools that are still fairly new, and they need a lot before they are able to really surface and be used by the major. There you go.

Starting point is 00:04:08 We've been using some AI tools for help us with SEO and also like show notes and different things for the show. There's a lot of really incredible stuff out there. It's really amazing. Give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it. Yeah, definitely. So today, everything i work with is seo related everything from the technical setup to to content producing and content optimization so basically from a to c within within seo and and i really like the technical aspect that's

Starting point is 00:04:39 definitely where i specialized to begin with and until I later on as you said transitioned into the content part because those two they play so well together and I just I think in my programming days I really found out how important it is to have this solid technical foundation for your website for your content to really succeed and and be empowered as much as possible because you can write as good content as you want. But if you have a website that takes 10 seconds to load and the images looks off and it's just not running well, then forget about it. Google won't index your content. So that's why those two elements are so important.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And that's what I work with every single day. Wow, that's pretty interesting. So what got you into this business? Tell us about your journey that you went through in life that got you into SEO work. Yeah, definitely. It's quite funny because I think I was 13 when I changed the first line of code in a PHP file. And I was simply just amazed that something like text could become something visual. I was blown away by that.

Starting point is 00:05:43 And since then, I just explored it and I read everything about PHP, HTML, CSS, and basically took that route until JavaScript and worked with both front-end and back-end development. And that technical aspect was also what made me transition into SEO. And even though I was working in the programming industry, both as an agency, as a freelancer, and as a CTO as well, then I just, I needed a change of scene. I needed something new. And I have always been working with SEO on the side. And it's always caught my attention.

Starting point is 00:06:16 I've always find it interesting because there's so many ways you can handle it. It's not like there's one way of doing it. And that's just the result of it. There's so many ways you can tweak and do things and get a better result. And I find it so interesting just to analyze the huge amounts of data that are available. And you can simply just dive into basically everything. And I just love that aspect of it that you can tweak every single little detail and then get much more out of it in the end. There you go. Quite interesting and all that good stuff that goes into it.

Starting point is 00:06:51 So now you do the SEO and you're teaching people how to do it properly and get it done and stuff. I can't. All right, we're having a little bit of slowness here on the internet. So there you go. On your YouTube channel, I mean, you talk to people about how to improve their SEO. What are they going to find

Starting point is 00:07:09 over there, I guess? Yeah, so what I started with was basically just reviewing SEO tools. And then later on, I've transitioned into more SEO tips. So the more early videos and also some videos coming out today, that's where I take an SEO video

Starting point is 00:07:23 and sorry, an SEO tool and then just break it apart. I go through it from, from A to Z to see what is it capable of? What target group is this specific tool for? Because there's so many great SEO tools out there and they each serve each purpose. So it's so interesting to basically test all of these tools and try different things with them. And that's what I did to begin with. And now I'm slowly transitioning into more general SEO videos

Starting point is 00:07:48 that help the more broad audience. And this can be anything from how you optimize specific parts of your content, like headings, to more blown up videos of SEO strategies and what you should focus on with your topical maps, keyword research, and all of these interesting elements. So definitely a lot of interesting videos coming in the near future also where it's more SEO focused, where we don't look so much at the tools, but where I more go into practical tips.

Starting point is 00:08:16 And I love to be practical. I really want that people watch my videos and then they take something from there that they can implement immediately, whether it's something that takes five minutes or that takes multiple days and even weeks, depending on whether it's an SEO strategy or small tweaks you need to do to your content. There you go. What are some low-hanging fruits in SEO that people can easily adopt and learn and utilize on their websites? Yeah, so I always have a small checklist that goes through when I look at a website. And one thing that has really surprised me is how few people are actually using Google Search Console. And Google Search Console is a completely free tool from Google you can use.

Starting point is 00:09:01 And this is where you can basically analyze your website on Google, where you get all the data from Google. And it's simply brilliant. And it's completely free, as I mentioned, to set up. And in there, you can see all the clicks you're getting on what keywords and what pages. And you can see impressions as well. So you can use it for so many things. You can really dive into it and see whether you need to optimize your titles

Starting point is 00:09:18 because you rank well, but you don't get so many clicks. Or maybe you need to optimize your content because a certain piece of your content is ranking, but people are not clicking on that either. Or if you can see that people are searching for something that your article is not covering, then maybe you have to add that as well. So you can see you can really use Google Search Console to optimize your content on so many parameters. But it also takes a look at your website overall and really dives into the technical aspect. Are Google able to crawl your website? And do you have specific pages that are

Starting point is 00:09:52 not working? Are they not optimized for mobile and so on? So with Google Search Console, you really get a lot of interesting things. And another low-hanging fruit is to install an SEO plugin on your website. And of course, if you're using WordPress, which I think I read somewhere that more than 50% of their websites in the world, they are powered by WordPress. So my go-to SEO plugin is RankMath. They have really taken over recently. And I will just basically recommend everyone to install that because you get so much from the get-go just installing Rank Math. And even though WordPress is super SEO optimized from the start and from the ground up, you can still optimize more with Rank Math and you can

Starting point is 00:10:35 use the free version, which gives you a ton of stuff, or you can use the paid version where you can move more into using schema, which is becoming more important. And yeah, there's just a lot of interesting things with that as well. But those two are two low-hanging fruits that you can do immediately that takes less than five minutes to set up. And then you just basically crawl in data and you can optimize on the way.

Starting point is 00:10:58 There you go. So RankMath, you like that, huh? I love RankMath. It's an incredible plugin. It really is. And especially with their schema add-on where you can really show Google your content in a special way.

Starting point is 00:11:12 So for example, if you write recipes, you can show out in Google in the search results, you can show your review. You can also sometimes show your to-do for the recipe and so on. So using these schemas are basically a way of telling Google specific data about your content, and then that data will be shown in the search results, which also means that you will get more space in the search results and thereby more

Starting point is 00:11:36 attention in the search results. And that's just one small part of it. There's so many things with Rank Math that you can dive into. Oh, wow. There you go. Rank Math. I'll check that out. What is the best CMS system? What is the CMS system? Let's lay a foundation for that. Yeah, so CMS stands for Content Management System.

Starting point is 00:11:56 And my go-to is definitely WordPress. And there are a lot out there. There's Drupal. There's also something called Webflow now. And Framer. There's so many. And I think it really comes down to what type of website do you have and what is it that you want to achieve with that website? Because I will always say that WordPress is a super scalable

Starting point is 00:12:15 website. You can use it for everything, whether it's an e-commerce website, a blog or personal website, a portfolio, whatever it is that you need, then WordPress can definitely do it for you. And the cool thing about WordPress is that the community is so big that you have a plugin for almost anything that you need. For me, WordPress is simply the best because it has so many opportunities. But if you need something that's a little bit easier to build your websites, then Framer is great because that's basically track and drop and you can build beautiful websites.

Starting point is 00:12:45 And the same with Webflow. Webflow is a little bit more technical. So if you have a technical approach in the way that you build your websites, then you can easily also use Webflow. But for me, still WordPress is just my go-to. I think it's incredible. And right now they're also slowly transitioning into being a more drag and drop version where you can build an entire website simply using WordPress because right now you have to use plugins for that. And a lot of people are using Elementor, for example. And while Elementor isn't a standalone CMS system, when you install it on WordPress,

Starting point is 00:13:17 you basically get the same drag and drop opportunities and then you can build whatever type of website you want. There you go. Yeah. You know, we've been using WordPress for, I don't know, okay, Jesus, we're probably going on 20 years. Was it 2009? Or no, hold on.

Starting point is 00:13:33 Yeah, 2008, 2009 when we launched? That's incredible. I think it was 2009 when we launched the Chris Foss Show. August of 2009. It's written down somewhere. But that's when we launched the Chris Foss Show, August of 2009. It's written down somewhere. So that's when we launched the Chris Foss show. So what the hell is that? I'm getting old.

Starting point is 00:13:52 I can't do math in my head. So you go 10 plus 3 is 13 plus 1 is, that can't be right. I don't know. We'll figure it out. So there you go. On what are the best keyword search software? I think you already gave that to us right you gave us the google the google site maps and stuff yeah but but you can still dive

Starting point is 00:14:11 more into into keyword research and and there are so many different ways of doing it but recently i stumbled upon a tool called key search and that is super interesting because within seo tools there are two major tools one called sam SEMrush and one called Ahrefs. And those are just the major, they're definitely the best tools, but they're also super pricey. I think the cheapest plans to come in at $100 per month, which is super pricey for SEO tools. So there is a tool called KeySearch and it's super similar to SEMrush. And it's quite cool because the entire marketing strategy is basically going up against SEMrush. And it's quite cool because the entire marketing strategy is basically going up against SEMrush, even though SEMrush is still a bigger tool. They have more data. They have a bigger

Starting point is 00:14:49 database. It's still more features, but KeySearch, they really come close. So KeySearch has two ways of doing keyword research. They actually have more, but they have two primary keyword research methods. And one is where you enter a seed keyword. So for example, if you're writing about podcasting as that's your industry, and you want to see how you can write more content about podcasting, then your seed keyword would be podcasting. So you can enter that and then get thousands

Starting point is 00:15:17 of related keywords to this specific podcasting keyword. And then you can sort by the lowest keyword difficulty. And that means that it's easier for you to rank your website for that specific keyword. And then from there, you can start writing content. That's one way of doing it. Another way of doing it is where you compare your website to your competitors. So of course, you need to know your competitors to be able to use this feature. But this you can easily find if you don't know it already. You can basically just Google your industry and then you'll get all of your competitors.

Starting point is 00:15:49 And here you can compare your website to your competitors to see what keywords are your competitors ranking for that you are not ranking for. And then you can find all the differences and then again, start writing content for that. So KeySearch is definitely one of my favorites. And another cool one is something called low fruits. And the way that low fruits work is that it uses Google auto suggest. So you'll probably try this when you're Googling, and you start writing in this little search box, Google is suggesting you things you can search for. And low fruit is basically taking all those suggestions based on your seed keyword again. And then it's making a long list of keywords that you can pursue and you can basically write content for.

Starting point is 00:16:29 So that's a third method of doing keyword research. So there's so, I think there are maybe hundreds of ways of doing keyword research, but low fruits and key search are those tools that I really like for keyword research at the moment. They are just incredible and they are at a low price. There you go go and that's that's that's pretty good lots of good stuff low fruits yeah when you said when you said low fruits i thought it was like a term of you know low hanging fruit but it is actually a name of a company yeah it is yeah i think they are they're trying to be related to low hanging fruits but

Starting point is 00:17:02 yeah it is a company. That's funny. So the best overall SEO software, what do you feel is the best overall? Have we touched on that yet? No, I think if you have the budget for it, Ahrefs and SEMrush, they are the best. No one close to them. A little slower, what was that?

Starting point is 00:17:20 Oh, sorry. Ahrefs and SEMrush, those two are simply the best overall SEO tools by far. Ahrefs? Yeah, Ahrefs and SEMrush. Those two are simply the best overall SEO tools by far. Ahrefs? Yeah, Ahrefs. So it's Ahrefs, basically. Ahrefs. You're going to have to give me slower because your accent is mucking it up.

Starting point is 00:17:37 Ahrefs.com. There you go. Yeah, exactly. I see it now. So Ahrefs.com. Yeah, exactly.-R-E-F-S.com. Yeah, exactly. It's like an orange blue website. And what was the other website you said?

Starting point is 00:17:51 The other one is called Semrush. Semrush. Semrush, yeah. I'm going to go broke a subscribing website. Yeah, exactly. They're super pricey, but they are definitely the best. And the reason why they're the best is because of their database. They have huge databases with data, of course,

Starting point is 00:18:11 with keywords and domains and just data in general. And that's what you need with SEO. You need as much data as possible. So you can do your analysis based on as much data as possible. And that's why those two, they're simply the best. So if you have the budget for it, go with those two. Otherwise, KeySearch, as we talked about just before, they have also a lot of extra features, not only keyword research, but a lot of extra features where you can also analyze your domain, your website, and run a site audit even where it is that it analyzes your website from a technical

Starting point is 00:18:46 standpoint so it looks at whether you have broken links or you're doing something wrong with images so you're missing specific headings or similar elements so those are definitely the best overall seo tools by far there you go there you go so what do you see the future of marketing trends going in 2024? Yes, definitely interesting because AI has really just, it's everywhere now, AI in 2023. And it's funny because AI, I think the first time I started playing around with AI for text generation was in, when was that? in 2021, I think. And back then it was not that good. You can only generate very, very small text.

Starting point is 00:19:32 But today you can generate an entire article in a couple of seconds. So I think in 24, I think there are three elements. Of course, we'll see much more AI. And then it's up to people whether we are going to be able to adapt it or not. I think UX is going to be a huge factor as well in 2024 because people need to be able to use these websites. And now Google is primarily indexing on mobile first. So that means that all websites where the mobile version is not that well, they're really going to have some issues in 2024

Starting point is 00:20:02 if they're not optimizing their websites. And I think, yeah, UX is just going to be huge because we can all generate content and that's about it. So UX is definitely up to you. You can't go into AI and say, can you fix my website? Maybe you can in next year because it will come more AI, but not at the moment you can't. So it will definitely be interesting.

Starting point is 00:20:24 And then the last one I will see is authority, because as we can just generate 1000 articles in a couple of minutes, then the content part is going to be less important. And it's more about the other elements where it is that Google gets the signals from the users. And that's from UX, because if people like the website, then it's because the UX is good, they have a good user experience and that sends a positive signal to Google, which means that you will get more traffic overall. And it's the same with authority because Google needs to know that your website is trustable

Starting point is 00:20:59 and that you get through authority. So I'll say those three things will definitely be super important and then it's also up to you to really i think diversify your traffic as well because there's so many websites that are just solely focused on seo but you start you need to start looking at other sources like email marketing facebook ads even twitter ads or wherever it is that you want to drive traffic for yeah i think 24 is going to be super interesting. There you go. It's always changing.

Starting point is 00:21:29 It never stays the same, does it? No, it's changing constantly. You've given us a lot of data and websites and stuff. One of the questions you had for me was ask you about three SEO techniques. Did we cover those yet or do you want to throw some at us? Three SEO techniques. Oh, let me think, or do you want to throw some at us? Three SEO techniques. Oh, let me think for a second here. There you go.

Starting point is 00:21:50 Let's throw to an easier sort of question. For people that are trying to just get out there and get things done, what are some simple techniques they can do maybe with their website to try and code things better? Or do you see AI really changing the face of SEO in the future to where everything's just going to be AI run? Because I would really like it if I didn't have to do all this shit that I'm supposed to do with my website. I could just press a button and AI would be like, hey, we just framed up the whole post and just made it so it works. That's really what I want,

Starting point is 00:22:26 a push of a button sort of thing. I don't want to sit there and read about 50,000 keywords and shit. Do you think AI is going to bring that to us and maybe help automate this thing better? I think AI is definitely going to make it easier, but

Starting point is 00:22:41 there will always be things that you can tweak on to be able to beat AI websites. But AI will definitely be able to make it a lot easier. And it's already starting to, you can generate websites with AI and you can optimize content by clicking on a button and then it's optimized based on some different terms and stuff like that. So it will definitely be easier, but I think there'll always be things we can tweak on to beat AI websites. But I think if you're getting started with SEO or if you have a website and you want some small tweaks that would give you a major impact, then I think installing plugins for caching and optimizing your images, those two are things that takes no time to do. And it's a huge benefit for you to do for your website because your website will load much faster.

Starting point is 00:23:26 For example, for caching, you can install a plugin called WP Rocket if you're using WordPress again. And WP Rocket is just by far the best caching plugin out there. It just, it gets you so, your website will load so much faster if you install that. And for image optimization, basically to compress your images and make them load faster, you can use a plugin called ShortPixel. That's my favorite plugin

Starting point is 00:23:51 because not only does it compress your images, it also ensures that it serves the images in the right size, whether you're on mobile, tablet, or desktop, it always serves the specific size so it doesn't load it too big of an image or too small of an image. So you get a crystal clear image and your website loads super fast. So those two things takes no time to set up and you just, you really benefit from it.

Starting point is 00:24:16 Wow. There's just so many, I'm going to go broke with all the payments I have to make. And I'm already broke from all the payments I have to make. Like I have, I have so much stuff that comes through my, my account and then I'm like, from all the payments I have to make. I have so much stuff that comes through my account, and I'm like, what is that for? Oh, it's that one service. Are we using that service? It's so easy just to get poor from buying all these services

Starting point is 00:24:36 because there's so many interesting things. But it's probably important to get the targeting right. Everything is about the first page of Google. If you're not on the first page of Google, just jump off a cliff, really. Yeah, exactly. It's a sad fact of life these days.

Starting point is 00:24:51 Even if you're putting out a lot of great content, it doesn't seem to mean shit unless it's coded right, which is really pathetic. But I don't make the rules. So if you have all the gold, you get to make all the rules. Yeah, it's really interesting, all these different aspects of stuff. What haven't we talked about or asked you about

Starting point is 00:25:11 that we should ask you about before we go? Yeah, so I'll just touch base on something called a topical map, which is something that is really missed by a lot of websites. Because what I often see is that either people, they just start a website they do a simple keyword research and then they're just starting writing content content content

Starting point is 00:25:30 content and it's one way of doing it it's not the best way of doing it but that's definitely one way but the best way of doing it is to build something called a topical map first and that should be your first thing before you write any content for your website. Oh, really? And yeah. And topical map is basically where you line out all of your content categories and then subcategories below your categories and then topics within those subcategories. So you will end up with probably thousands of topics that you can start writing. And why this is important is because Google is valuing when you can cover a topic cluster or topic category entirely. And that's what you need to do. You

Starting point is 00:26:11 really need to start writing content in one small subcategory. So you show Google that you have authority in this subcategory and you have an answer for whatever it is that Google is looking for. So whether Google is searching for A, B, or C within this subcategory, then you have an article on it that shows Google that you know what you're talking about and you have authority in this subcategory. And it does take some time building out this topical map.

Starting point is 00:26:37 Even if you're experienced, it does take time, but it will really benefit you in the long run because you work towards smaller goals of first exhausting one subcategory before you move on. And the difficult part is to exhaust the subcategory before you move on because maybe there is an article over in subcategory C that is super low keyword difficulty that you really want to write, but it will really hurt you if you write articles all over the place. So build a topical map with categories, subcategories,

Starting point is 00:27:09 and then topics here under, and then start to exhaust one subcategory before you move on to the next one. That's the best way of building up a website. There you go. There you go. So give us a pitch out on how people can onboard with you, reach out to you.

Starting point is 00:27:22 You've got a number of services that you offer in your services tab on your website. How people can onboard with you, reach out to you. You've got a number of services that you offer in your services tab on your website. How people can onboard with you, utilize your services, hire you, work with you, find out if you're a good fit, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So on my website, I have a lot of information, but I also love to take consultation calls. So I love to take a 30 minute free of charge call where we just go through your SEO strategy, what you're doing now, and what you want to achieve. And even though you're not doing anything now,

Starting point is 00:27:48 then still just reach out to me and I would love to go through your website. I have a long list that I usually go through with. And then either you can just take those with you and do what you want, or we can start working towards whatever it is you want to achieve with your SEO, which is often more conversions.

Starting point is 00:28:03 So definitely reach out to me on my website on philipsdemon.com. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been fun to have you on the show and interesting. It's very insightful. You've given us a lot of great tools. Thank you very much, Philip. Thank you for having me.

Starting point is 00:28:16 It's been joyful. There you go. And thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the big 130,000 LinkedIn group as well. Chris Foss, Facebook.com, and Chris Foss1 on the TikTok. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Starting point is 00:28:32 Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – SEO Insider Phillip Stemann on Optimizing Technical Foundations, Building Content Clusters, and Preparing for an AI-Powered Future

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.