SEO is Changing in 2025 - Here's What Small Businesses Need to Know
36:14 Share

they've changed completely how they go about picking good quality websites. Vivian, I don't know if you've heard about EAT or is it E-Eat? It's E-E-A-T, okay? The E is long. Yeah, the E is long. It's E-E-A-T.

Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet, we mean small owned business. We don't mean SOB. Listen, we know that as a small business owner, you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you,

If we're being honest with each other, I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything. Our commitment here at the SOB Marketing Podcast is to give you the real talk

what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, promoting your business, and then what doesn't really work. And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real. Please do me a favor, leave them a review. They promised me a bottle of bourbon. Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in small owned business, I promise we are not calling you guys names.

Before we get started, I just wanted to say thank you so much for listening. And if you could, pretty, pretty please leave us a review. It helps us get in front of other small business owners so we can help everyone and share the marketing knowledge online.

Also, if you have a topic that you want us to talk about, let us know. You can send us an email at help at the season marketer. You could leave a comment, send us a DM. We're on the platforms across the board at the season marketer. Whatever works best for you. We do check all that stuff. So,

If you have a topic, we want to talk about it. So just let us know. And everybody, we do have a TLDL chapter. Too long, didn't listen. So if you do not have the time right now to listen to this entire episode, just go to that chapter. I will give you a summary.

Real short. But then I want you guys later on when you finally have time to go listen to the entire episode, okay? This is good information. Mama Chelsea has spoken. Vivian, what are we talking about today? Let me start this topic with a statement. If you are keyword stuffing, that is so 2000 and late in the words of Fergie, okay? Okay.

SEO, search engine optimization is changing. You are listening in 2025, which means we want you to bookmark this episode because we guarantee you're going to want to come back and listen to it again sometime throughout this year because it is changing fast and there are just a lot of updates that are coming out there. You know, Chelsea and I

We're talking a little earlier about changes that we personally are making to our blog post. Thank you. Thank you, Chelsea, for staying on top of that and for getting our blog post up, you know, and updated and just kind of fitting some of these newer, I don't want to say rules, but just recommendations that people are putting out there. So where do you want to start the discussion today? Okay.

Well, Vivian, I want to start this conversation with the thing that's making us have to change all of our SEO, which is S-G-E.

Google is pushing SGE out more and more. It's their search generative experience. And if you want to learn more about SGE specifically, we did do a podcast episode on this, so go listen to that. But

S-G-E is the reason for the season. It's the reason that everything's changing in terms of SEO. All right. So let me, I do want to, yes, we recommend that you go back and listen to that podcast episode because it is an entire episode that just kind of walks you through all of Google's S-G-E. If there's a very simple way for you to

Understand this if it's the first time you're hearing those letters S-G-E.

All right. It does not replace SEO. Okay. SEO is search engine optimization. One of those search engines is Google. One of the most popular ones. Google released a new experience where they are integrating AI. Shocker. I know because we're in 2025 and just, you know, all the cool kids are doing it. So, yeah.

What they're doing is essentially when you open up Google, if you have chosen to activate SGE, why are you laughing? I just thought for a second, I was like, well, if you're listening to this before 2025, and I was like, wait, hold up, Chelsea, they can't.

Unless they're time travelers. Time travel. A wrinkle in time. If you have figured out a wrinkle in time. Sorry. Yes. So everybody, we're just going to put that out there. Everybody is listening in 2025. Yes. Okay. So let's say that you have...

opted to start using SGE on Google. It was actually a setting that I went in and turned on on my Google. I don't know if it just did it for you, Chelsea, or if you had to turn it on. I didn't turn it on. It just does it now. It just does it now. Okay. So the reason...

I bring this up is back in 2024, early 2024, they were just starting to kind of roll this out. And so it was something that you were having to opt into. Obviously now it's just standard. So.

So if you're using Google, you're seeing SGE. And what it basically is, is when you're in that search bar and you type a question in, Google is going to utilize AI to try to nicely package the response back. And you'll see that packaging at the very top of Google where it answers your question. So as opposed to me back in the day having to ask, um,

how to build a chicken coop and then it

I would have to click on each of the individual links it supplied me. Now it's going to try to, in a paragraph format, answer my question at the top. It's going to detail it. And then to the right, it's going to have the sources, the web pages that it pulled that info from. Yes, Vivian, I don't know if you remember, but early 2024, there was a lot of heat from Google about SGE because...

Because it was giving people like crazy wrong answers. Do you remember that? Yeah, I can't even remember the last example I saw, but it was something like it was telling people to use glue.

for something that was digestible and that was not. Oh, no. Yeah, so they had a lot of kinks and it's still back in early 2024. Yes. I won't say that they've smoothed it out completely. Like, I'm not going to say it's always right, but I will say they are –

investing money and time into this search experience. So hopefully now you're feeling a little more comfortable with what it is. Why are we even talking about this? Why does it even matter for you as a small business owner? For one, it's going to change the way that people search the web, right? And browse the web. People are already seeing an increase in no-click searches, right?

And what that means is you get to that front page, Google page, your search page. And because Google is giving you that paragraph at the top, you don't have to click on a website to get your answer. Yeah. One of the things that we've been really seeing consistently across the board is people are sharing that their organic search reach has gone down.

All right, guys. And so the important thing to note there is if you have a website, you know, one of the ways...

that people used to tell you, great, you built the website out. Now you got to get traffic to the website. The best way to get traffic to the website is by doing these SEO tips. Okay. Some of the SEO tips that we used to recommend, Chelsea, would be what? Using keywords. Yeah. I want to say using keywords is still important. Our SEO tips haven't necessarily changed. They have changed in

It's a change in thinking. At this point, there is no way to cheat the algorithm.

Okay. These algorithms are smart. You can't be spammy. You can't do keyword stuffing to reach the top of the list. You actually have to provide good information. That's the only thing that's going to work at this point. Yeah. And you guys, this is because think about it. Think of it this way. You always have hardware and software. Okay. The

the software is changing. Okay. And what we mean by that is, whereas Chelsea just said the term keyword stuffing back in the day, the way the search engine worked. Okay. Vivian wants to look up, uh, what do you call it? Um,

Great Dane puppies. Okay. Or let's say I'm trying to buy a Great Dane puppy. Okay. Or rescuing a Great Dane puppy. Okay. Rescue. Adopt not shop. Yeah. Adopt not shop. Great Dane puppy rescue. That would be the term that I would put into Google. Okay.

If back in the day you were keyword stuffing, the reason you were doing that is because you knew that the more times you said the phrase Great Dane Puppy Rescue on your website, the more likely it would be to rank at the top for that phrase. That

That was the thinking. The software now has gotten so good that the software is like, we're not even doing that. What we're doing now is we are going to look at what the actual question is and we're going to go out there and look at all the websites to see who has the best response and we're going to take snippets

from each website and put together a comprehensive answer for this person. And so if I were now to type in Great Dane Puppy Rescue in Charleston, South Carolina, I'm

The SGE response at the top would say, here are a few Great Dane puppy rescue shelters in Charleston, South Carolina, and it would bullet point them. And then to the right, it would show me those webpages of the rescues. And so that's the whole thing is, I'm guessing, Chelsea, we're going to go through what

you know, how to kind of change our mindset with it. But like you said, the keywords are still important. It's just the way that they're now looking at keywords is going to be completely different. Absolutely. It's quality over quantity. That's what it is. It's not that keywords aren't important. It's that the quality matters over the quantity. So

We have said this so many times and keyword stuffing has been outdated for a while now. Then why do I still see it, y'all? Why are y'all still doing this? Please, please stop with the keyword stuffing. Another outdated option, outdated idea is

was, oh, we want to pump out blog posts. We want to share content. It's all about content, content, sharing content. So let's use AI to write these blog posts. No. Yes. Using AI for content creation is out for communication. AI, ChatGPT is wonderful for ideation.

for coming up with ideas, helping you when you have a little bit of like a writer's block maybe.

It is not something that you want to ask to generate blog posts and then copy and paste those blog posts. For one, Chelsea and I have told you repeatedly now, you are at the mercy of the chat GPT tool as far as how often they update it. So if you're copying and pasting information, it could be outdated information. Absolutely. Also, can I say, you can tell...

When AI has written something, it sounds like AI, you know? Well, the whole thing too, and, you know, we'll probably have several of these types of discussions as 2025 Progressive in other areas of marketing because AI is going to be so prevalent in just everything that we do. I just want to say, I've been reading a ton about AI lately and

It's not as sophisticated as we think. Okay. And so, and, and this is coming from the people that have built it. Okay. I've listened to podcast episodes for the people that have built these algorithms and these databases and these technologies that the AI is using now to come up with some of this stuff. And so they always say it's still very primitive. Okay. So please just understand that. And then second of all,

To Chelsea's point, your biggest advantage as a small business owner is you. The way you think, your creativity, and just how you package information and the fact that you know your product or service inside and out better than anybody else does. Do not downplay that.

Using ChatGPT to write all of your blog posts is downplaying your ability to be able to go in there and put information together in only the way that you can. I'm going to take it a step further and say using ChatGPT to write anything on your website, you're diminishing your voice and your branding voice just completely.

don't use chat gbt to to write content like for content and communication don't copy and paste also not only that so not only because you want to give your consumers good relevant content but also google wants to promote content written by humans what a concept they they are real they've changed completely how they go about

picking good quality websites. Vivian, I don't know if you've heard about EAT or is it E-Eat? It's E-E-A-T, okay? The E is long. Yeah, the E is long. It's E-E-A-T. It's E-E-A-T and it's Google's new guidelines for creating content that they will actually

I don't want to say promote, but content that they won't... They'll give priority to. Give priority to. Thank you. They won't flag. That's what I was looking for. They won't flag this content. Okay. So it is experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness.

Those are the four things in trustworthiness. And so how does one individually go in? You know, earlier I mentioned in this episode that Chelsea is doing our blog post and she was showing me today how she's changing the format. There are certain things that she's going in and doing. So Chelsea, what are, under each one of those, what could they be doing to kind of increase their likelihood of eat? Yeah.

Let's go through each letter. So experience. AI does not have experience, right? They're not alive. They don't do things. Humans have experience. So if you can find a way to show that you have experience in what you're talking about,

Give examples. So for one of our blog posts, let's say we're talking about postcards. I would say, oh, we sent out postcards for Barrow County. I would give that example. I would talk about that experience. So that's one. Expertise. Are you an expert in your field? How do you show that? You can show that by, you know,

Giving knowledge that only someone an expert in your field would know. An easy way to do this is if you have a blog post or if you write articles, add the name of the author and a little blurb about why people should bother to listen. So I've added to our blog post,

Each blog, each post, I have a little blurb either at the beginning or at the end saying about the author and talking about who we are at The Season Marketer and why we know what we're talking about when it comes to marketing. Authoritativeness. So are you known as a go-to source for

for this type of information. I'll give you an interesting example. Google Now will also show you social media content as well in their Google searches. So Rob over at Black Circle Records has created such a strong social media presence that he's now appearing at the top of Google searches when it comes to records because he's established himself as an authority figure when it comes to vinyl records.

So Google is going to show his content more. Trustworthiness, the last one, the T, is your website spammy? That's really what it is. Do you have all of the eat, eat, eat, eat without the T? Do you have all of the following things? A really interesting example that I saw when I was reading up on this was that

The page or website is not trustworthy for its purpose. Example, a shopping page with minimal customer service information. I found that very interesting because that can be something that a small business owner might forget about. But it's a big deal when it comes to Google's new website.

guidelines. You know what we keep hearing from you fellow SOBs? Small owned businesses. Yes, small owned businesses. You guys are so overwhelmed with your marketing. And we totally get that. You didn't start your bakery or your boutique store or your jewelry business to become full-time marketers.

or content creators, or ad designers. Marketing can feel really overwhelming. Oh yeah, then you SOBs try to go figure it out because that's what you do. You Google stuff, watch videos, and end up spending hours trying to figure it out only to sometimes end up more confused. This is my full-time job, and trust me, the way marketing is talked about in the World Wide Web can be really misleading. And let's not even talk about trying to hire an agency for help.

It's daunting. They don't know your small business like you do. And so they're not as effective. And let's not even talk about the cost. We understand why a lot of you SOBs feel ready to give up. And that's why we even bothered to create the Season Marketer.

That's also why we started the SOB community. We wanted to create something practical and affordable for people who can't or simply don't want to outsource their marketing. Right. So for $50 a month, members can get free downloads and templates, step-by-step tutorial videos, a weekly live Q&A call with both of us, marketing professionals and other SOBs.

you also become a part of a supportive community to bounce ideas off of. It's like having a boardroom of like-minded individuals and marketing professionals where you can talk through all of your marketing questions without having to pay boardroom marketing agency prices.

So if you're tired of wasting time trying to figure it all out on your own or spending money on things that don't work, join us over at the SOB community. We'll help you turn your marketing stress into marketing success. And hey, it's just $50 a month. So click the link in the description to join and we can't wait to see you in the SOB community. Now back to the episode. Yeah, I'm loving all of this because there are a couple of

mindset shifts. You mentioned it earlier, Chelsea, in the episode, but all of this reminds me of the way you view blog posts nowadays. It used to be that like

You were writing these blog posts to be able to refer people to your website and for the SEO stuff, it's picking up keywords, it's picking up the information. But truly now, the way you need to look at it is a little more of a professional sense.

Formatting wise, you want to be sure that these blog posts are easy to read because the last thing somebody is going to do is sit there and read something that's not

um, appeasing to the eye. Okay. So using headers, organizing your information in a way that makes sense, using lists, all of that. Additionally, Chelsea just mentioned that one of the pro tips now is to include information about yourself as the contributor, as the writer. Shocking. What does this remind you of you guys? News organizations. Yeah.

Okay, you read an article in the Post and Courier online, you read an article from the Washington Post, at the bottom, it's going to tell you about the writer, what their experience is, or what their role is within the organization. That, like she said, is going to establish your authoritativeness or your reputation, the trust, right? And then the other thing is that

Whenever we have always talked about search engine optimization, there's almost like the generic stuff that people know. And then there's the little more high level stuff that we really don't talk too much about because it gets people confused. Backlinks.

All right, so backlinks, a good blog post is basically going to serve as a reference for other blog posts. All right, we see this all the time. Let's say I read something called social media today. It's a website and it's all about social media, okay? So I could go in there and I could say, give me the latest news on TikTok. It will show me the articles for it. I click on one of the articles. They typically are referencing other,

other blog posts because they are pulling the most relevant news, which means they need to credit the source, which is the news stations, right? Whichever CNN, whoever they're pulling it from. That is a backlink because at the end of the day, social media today is then linking back to the source article, which is online.

on CNN. The more of those that you get, the more organic traffic you're getting to your website. That is what you want. Okay. You want people to backlink to your blog post. If they are back linking to your blog post, they don't know anything about you. They need to know who you are. That

description, that introduction is going to be wonderful, right? Now they know who you are, what you do, what you're a professional at, and all your credentials. All right. And then on top of it, the more backlinks you have, the better it's going to be because it indicates to Google's AI now, hey, this is a trusted source and it's very good information because it has 20 backlinks.

from other sources, and therefore the probability that it's solid information is high. Exactly, Vivian. Y'all, this sounds like so much work. I know. SEO is a long-term game. You're not going to get backlinks as soon as you start writing articles. You need to be consistent with it, and you need to share information.

good, solid information to be able to grow that to get backlinks, to grow your trustworthiness, to grow your authoritativeness. Like this is, SEO is a long-term marketing strategy. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just going to say most of the really good marketing initiatives that are worthwhile are, and I just,

want to remind you guys that it's a muscle. It's a muscle. Writing blog posts, doing all this stuff, it's a muscle. And Chelsea can tell you probably better than anybody because she's been going through and updating ours and being sure that now she's taking some of this information, including it, reformatting, all of that good stuff. And I'm sure, Chelsea, it gets a little easier the more you practice it, right? Absolutely. You have to get comfortable with

Sometimes it can be like, oh, do I really need to go this extra step? Yeah, probably. Google's whole goal is to provide good information for their consumers so that people still continue to use Google. If you're not giving the best information and information

wrapping it up in a way that is easy to read and it is comprehensible, all of that, Google's not going to show it to people because Google wants to share the best information possible. I always like telling people that Google is a matchmaker. Yeah. Right? It wants to do its job well and find that perfect match.

piece of content that you're looking for so that you don't have to keep searching. And if it's not good at that, if your content is not helping it to do that, it's not going to promote it. Absolutely. I do have Vivian. I have Stanford persuasive technology lab. They created a list of 10 rules to follow to build credibility and

based off of a three-year research study. So they studied for three years, they gather research, and they're like, these are the 10 things you need to do to build credibility and to

Get your content in front of Google. You need to make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. You need to show that there's a real organization behind your site. Don't look like spam, right? Don't look like you're a fake website. Look like an actual website, right? If you're using ChatGPT, you may look like a... Yeah, because a robot's writing it. Exactly. That's why you need to write it yourself.

You need to highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and the services you provide. A great way to boost your SEO at this point is to have an about us page because you're explaining why you're an expert in your field. All of that stuff, right? Okay. You need to show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your website.

Just like you were talking about backlinks. Backlinks are a great way to do this, but to show that people like, you know, are actually interested in what you're doing and actually believe the content you're sharing.

Make it easy to contact you. This is really important. The best way to prove that you are a human is to make it easy to contact you. You'll never believe it, but that's true. Okay, number six, design your site so it looks professional or appropriate for whatever your purpose is. Make your site easy to use and useful. Update your site's content often.

Or at least show that it's been reviewed recently. Use restraint with any promotional content. Don't you hate it when you go on a website and they have like three pop-ups in a row? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Don't do that. And avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. If you know there's an error on your website and you're like, but it's a small little thing. No, what? Fix that.

Don't just leave it. Put your best foot forward. Exactly. So those are my, those are the 10 tips they gave. Awesome. Well, if you want a real life example of what we're doing to stay up to date with this new transition with the integration of AI and Google using SGE now, um,

Go to our website and check out our blog post because Chelsea's gone in and she started doing this for our blog post recently. And so if you just want to see what that looks like formatting wise, she also mentioned earlier she's using a lot more photos in there to help with that. And so just remember...

Anything that you're doing now is going to set you up for success. And I just want to point this out, y'all. You are at the forefront of this. How many other small business owners do you think are sitting there actually thinking about their SEO right now and how it's going to change with the use of AI and all that? Okay, not very many of them. So this could be the one thing that right now is going to set you apart if you start doing and integrating some of these tips. I have another little tip.

specifically about SGEU. I know I talked about earlier that there is an increase in no-click searches. The best thing you can do is to shoot for being a featured snippet.

of the search results. Okay. So like Vivian was saying, they'll compile the answer and on the side, they'll share where they got that content. So you want to end up in that featured snippet. So if your content is good enough, they'll just copy and paste it into that little section. And that's what you want. So the best thing you can do is to answer common questions your audience have, structure your content so that it's easy to extract information. So think lists, bullet points, that

that sort of thing, have question-based headings, clear, concise answers, long-tail keywords, high-quality content, and if you can, answer multiple questions on one page. I love it. And that's something, like Vivian was just saying, that I'm working on for our content. Yeah, all of this is, I know it sounds kind of geeky, but it's all fascinating to me because it's requiring us to...

stay on top of our game. Like y'all, you know, for how many years was the SEO tip like use keywords, use keywords, use keywords. Okay. We're beyond that now. So this is the wild west out here of AI integration and how to get your content,

onto that SGE experience, that search generative experience that Google is now unleashed and using. You know, it's just the way that things are moving towards. It's not, Chelsea and I joke because we always have the tendency, I want to

I think Chelsea sometimes says people are lazy. And what do I reframe it as, Chels? I don't know. What do you reframe it as? You reframe it. And in the back of my head, I'm like, yeah. You're like, people are still lazy. But I kindly always remind her that the onus is on us as small business owners to make it as easy as possible for people to find information. Okay? That's just part of it. It is a part of our small business practice to...

have all of the answers to the questions that they may be commonly asking. And so if you also are like, I don't have a blog post right now, I'm not, you know, sharing content like that, but I don't even know if it would be applicable to my small business. Go ahead and

Email us over at help at the season marketer. We'll help you come up with a few ideas. Even just having a frequently asked questions page can be helpful. Awesome. Well, Chelsea, thank you for doing all of that research. Of course. Okay, y'all, so I think it's time for the TLDL. Too long, didn't listen. Let's wrap up this conversation by saying...

SEO is no longer a tricking the algorithm game. It's no longer a keyword stuffing game.

just focus on the keywords, that's not going to work anymore. It is now a long-term strategy that you have to work on and you need to focus on providing good quality content for your viewers. You need to focus the content on your website on Google's EEAT standards, your EAT standards and guidelines, which are experience, expertise, ability,

authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. So that's what you want to focus your content on. As always, we want to thank you guys for listening. And hey, by the way, if you like this podcast, please leave us a review. Okay? We always accept reviews, right? You could say whatever you want in those reviews. We are just happy to have you here. And we hope that you share this podcast episode with a small business owner that you love.

Also, don't forget if you want some marketing support, if you're looking to grow your business in 2025 and you need to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, join our SOB, Small Owned Business community. It's $50 a month. Shocking. That is quite the steal, you guys.

Okay. And yes, you get weekly calls with Chelsea and I and other community members, basically an hour every week where we just sit there and talk about whatever you want to talk about. If you have questions, you bring it to us. If you have ideas, we sit there and talk through those ideas.

Also, it gives you instant access to our dashboard where we have tutorials and resources, information. Chelsea's constantly updating stuff in there, adding links, all that good stuff. And it also is a forum for all of our community members to ask questions and to interact with each other. So if you're interested, go check out school.com slash SOB. And go be the best SOB you can be.