[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:00] Andy Crestodina: here is what I think is the proper paradigm shift for this moment.

User behaviors are changing. People are still searching, a lot. Apparently.

Google views hasn't declined whatsoever.

But the growth of use of chatbots is crazy and, and accelerating.

So, to understand the difference in the, in what's happening in these two use cases or tools, people use traditional search to find options. But people use AI to get recommendations. 

[00:00:25] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast.

I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out. 

So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

[00:00:46] Crystal: Welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. I am here with a really amazing mind. Amazing marketing mind.

And his name is Andy Crestodina.

The founder of Orbit Media.

Is that right?

[00:00:59] Andy Crestodina: [00:01:00] Yep. 

[00:01:00] Crystal: Yeah.

[00:01:00] Andy Crestodina: started many years ago. It was me and my buddy Barrett who. It's still here. 

[00:01:03] Crystal: Yay.

[00:01:04] Andy Crestodina: yep.

[00:01:04] Meeting Andy Cress and His Marketing Journey

[00:01:04] Crystal: Well, I found you years ago, and you guys, Andy is one of the most down to earth teachers of marketing that I've come across in, you know, like my seven year SEO and marketing journey. So I'm, I've been wanting to talk to you for years. So Andy, thank you so much for coming on this simple and smart SEO show podcast.

I'm so excited to talk to you today.

[00:01:24] Andy Crestodina: Well now I'm excited. That sounds great. I think this

[00:01:27] Crystal: Thank you.

[00:01:28] Andy Crestodina: this will be super fun. So thanks for the invite and I'm glad to be here.

[00:01:30] From Teaching to Marketing

[00:01:30] Crystal: So we met at BrightonSEO last year in San Diego. But I had seen your webinars for a few years. So I knew who you were. I can't remember, you know, who you had partnered with the first time I saw one of your webinars. But I thought to myself, I was like, oh my gosh, this is a guy that like talks marketing like a normal person, you know, not just like in KPIs and all of this, you know.

Acronym coded language. And so I really appreciated that about you.

And then I [00:02:00] heard you say that you actually went to school initially to be a teacher.

And I thought that's awesome because one thing I didn't tell you is I used to be a teacher,

[00:02:09] Andy Crestodina: Really? What subject?

[00:02:11] Crystal: I taught special needs, physical education.

[00:02:14] Andy Crestodina: Wow. That is so cool.

[00:02:15] Crystal: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Andy Crestodina: you. It's rewarding, right? So rewarding teaching is the

[00:02:18] Crystal: Oh yeah, exactly.

I love kids and I love people. And I love teaching.

I think that's why the podcast is such a great fit. 

[00:02:25] Founding Orbit Media

[00:02:25] Crystal: But you were gonna be a teacher and then you ended up in marketing. So maybe you could kind of tell us how that went.

[00:02:32] Andy Crestodina: Yeah, and, and then ironically, marketing turned into teaching.

[00:02:35] Crystal: Yeah,

[00:02:35] Andy Crestodina: So it's like a full circle story. I, 

got a foreign language degree. Didn't know what I was gonna do with it.

So also got a, a teaching certificate. And there were only two schools in that state that taught that language. It was Mandarin. And then decided not to do that.

Went and lived in China, came back.

It was like, the mid to late nineties and like the interesting things are happening, I don't think I'm gonna be in the classroom. I think it's more I'll try something else. so I started working on personal projects at night. Interactive [00:03:00] stuff.

Macromedia Flash, this is like ancient history.

Then joined Barrett who was already building websites. So January of 2000 gave up the, the, the day job and started. Building websites with Barrett.

And by April of 2001, we'd formed Orbit Media. And then I'm kind of the guy who never pivoted. I just we're still building and optimizing websites.

Mostly B2B lead gen websites. And 2007 started writing and teaching and speaking making videos and giving presentations. now I've just been doing this a long time.

So Crystal, this will be a good conversation because I, I love teaching and I love search. And I probably will have a few good things to share.

[00:03:32] Crystal: I think the industry is great for those who love education,

[00:03:36] Andy Crestodina: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:36] Crystal: it's, you know, educating other people. Or just learning new things.

Because things are changing so much. I feel like it's the perfect time for the people who are lifelong learners to be in this industry because there's just so much to learn all the time, every day. 

[00:03:50] Andy Crestodina: Every day is a school day for me, for all of 

[00:03:52] Crystal: Okay. So this is gonna take you way back All right. To your, your very first beginning days. 

[00:03:57] Early Challenges and Learning SEO

[00:04:02] Crystal: But as I made the transition [00:04:00] from teacher to entrepreneur. And trying to help people with their Shopify websites.

How did you figure out like the pricing side of it?

How, how did you get to a point where you're like, oh yeah, I can do this! And replace my my other day job so many moons ago?

[00:04:13] Andy Crestodina: Oh, well there's a golden opportunity when you're scrappy and small because I didn't really have a lot of expenses.

I had just rent. And no kids or anything. This is, this is many years ago. I sort of went broke, but didn't care.

Because I was just so motivated to make stuff and be a creator. Do design work.

Even though my income was terrible for like, at least those first two years.

It didn't really matter.

We were just trying to get experience. And kind of decode marketing and figure out how to generate, generate our own leads.

I was just starting to understand search and just then starting to understand analytics. This is like 2000-2005. This was pre so many things. You know, pre-social and mobile. And all the, all those things. 

[00:04:57] Pricing and Packaging Strategies

[00:05:11] Andy Crestodina: So it, it wasn't until I [00:05:00] had, you know, my, our services and my expectations and, you know, financial things all kind of changed. But we used to do websites for like $800. We once traded a website for a coffee table with this custom furniture maker. So really just, I think it's a natural progression. And in the beginning, if you're. If you're really hungry and you're just believe in the category and believe in yourself, the initial goals maybe aren't that financial.

Maybe it's just about learning and networking and growth.

Other types of personal growth. and so it was very slow. And nobody would've invested in us, and we were not, I mean, this is, it's a. I, I don't recommend necessarily the way that we did it. I could have learned many things much faster.

But in the end, no, it was just we didn't really figure out good pricing and packages and how to you know, accurately scope things until later.

So wasn't really any rigor here until later when we gradually grew up. But.

No regrets.

[00:05:52] The Importance of Teaching in Marketing

[00:05:52] Crystal: I always love to hear how people, you know, started and then kind of transformed.

I'm always learning things to apply to my business and I [00:06:00] love getting insight from people who have been there. So thank you for that. Okay. 

[00:06:03] AI and SEO: A New Paradigm

[00:06:03] Crystal: from me listening to you in another podcast: you mentioned eight words to help you show up better in LLMs and AI search.

Do you remember that piece of the conversation ?

[00:06:16] Andy Crestodina: The the specific eight words may be not. But I could share with you my latest thinking on how to train the AI to recommend your brand.

[00:06:23] Crystal: Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:25] Andy Crestodina: so here is what I think is the proper paradigm shift for this moment.

User behaviors are changing. People are still searching a lot. Apparently.

Google views hasn't declined whatsoever.

But the growth of use of chatbots is crazy! And, and accelerating.

So, to understand the difference in the, in what's happening in these two use cases or tools, people use traditional search to find options. But people use AI to get recommendations.

So AI is really more about both awareness and consideration. The top and the middle of the funnel.

People are talking a lot about AI visibility. I think that's shortsighted.[00:07:00] 

I think the way that people prompt is to ask for recommendations, options, who are the best for this? How, you know help me find a good provider. Right? It's, it's actually going deeper.

So if the typical prompt has things like the role and the task and the context and the output, that's prompt engineering, right?

It should have those, those things. 

[00:07:20] Training AI to Recommend Your Brand

[00:07:20] Andy Crestodina: If that's true, then teaching AI to recommend your brand is partly maybe about prompt reverse engineering. And making sure that our content and our key pages have those elements.

Which is partly SEO, but a bit beyond traditional SEO.

SEOs probably aren't putting the job titles of their buyers on their key pages. I certainly never did. SEOs aren't necessarily adding all the proof points and evidence and credentials on their pages as text.

My site just has logos of awards we've won. I didn't spell them out as text.

You know, the very specific outcomes of the work you do. ' cause that's how people are prompting, right?

Like I've got a Shopify site, it's not visible. I'm looking for a company that will help my category [00:08:00] pages rank higher for commercial intent phrases.

If you pretend to be your audience for a minute and use AI to get a recommendation, you'll quickly realize the gaps between traditional SEO and AI training type content.

And that's likely the, the little adaptation. And it's all based on this understanding that search is just visibility. AI is visibility plus consideration. That visitor's going deeper into the funnel.

AI is giving them, you know, options that are a good fit. And that's probably why conversion rates from visitor into lead an e-commerce visitor into customer. Are higher from ChatGPT than from Google. Two X on my site.

[00:08:35] Optimizing Content for AI and SEO

[00:08:35] Andy Crestodina: It's just dramatic, like people who come from AI are much more ready to buy because AI was helping to make a decision.

[00:08:40] Crystal: Yeah. And that's true. I, I'm sure most business owners have done something like this. But, I like to build my SEO strategy around synonyms, you know, that I wanna be known for.

And so, you know, my number one synonym is senior night and Senior Night Gifts, right?

So I put that in there. Hey, where's the best place to get senior night gifts?

And [00:09:00] of course, Etsy showed up, Amazon showed up. Zazzle. Different, you know, big name personalization type websites. And I was like, Hey!

What about collageandwood.com? You know, like where, where are they at in the mix?

And so chat was explaining to me like, oh. I didn't realize you wanted a small, boutique, handmade experience.

That was so interesting. It's really like trying to figure out how you can position yourself for what you wanna be found for. And so that's kind of like the quest that I'm on to try to figure that out for my own business.

[00:09:33] Andy Crestodina: Yeah, so it gave you some clues right there. You know, handmade. That's a differentiator. And that's the type of thing that, that would help the right buyer find you.

Actually in search or in traditional search or in a chat bot.

But that you can actually just say, who are the best providers for this? give you a list. If you're not in there, you can say, add me to the mix.

Now there's a list, plus you. you could say, where are these brands strong or weak? You know, what are the pros and cons of each [00:10:00] of these options?

And it'll make for you a buyer guide or a table, a comparison table.

Then you'll be looking right in front of you. This is where AI thinks that I'm weak, and this is where AI thinks that they're strong.

And wherever relevant and appropriate, you can then just go address that attack, that hit that hard with the language that trains the AI to believe that you're a good option for that. '

Cause frequently it's just sort of, you know, these pages just aren't detailed enough. And e-commerce website owners just make what they think the page should have.

Without ever taking that tiny step to do that little audit to identify the gaps.

Which are good for search, good for ai, good for visitors, finding the right page for them. You know, these tools are segmentation engines from our point of view.

It's a search or discovery engine from their point of view, but for us, it's about the world filtering itself into people who really. Might love exactly what we do. So in that case, yeah, handmade.

You'd put that in there. Put the outcomes. This is the surprise. These are the, you know, these are the testimonials. This is who we're good for. This is who appreciates us. This is all the synonyms, semantically related phrases, anything that AI spots the gap.

That's the [00:11:00] copywriting tweaks that we'll be making as these channels evolve.

[00:11:02] Crystal: Wow. Okay, so I'm smiling over here because I, I told you I have a group, it's called the SEO squad.

Where I help other Shopify store owners optimize their websites. And I love to make them custom GPTs.

[00:11:15] Andy Crestodina: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:15] Crystal: To apply, like what we learn. Or what we talk about on the podcast. And so I'm gonna make that very GPT.

[00:11:22] Andy Crestodina: it!

[00:11:22] Crystal: So that we can work through it together.

'Cause one thing I've found is a lot of times. That analysis and, and just the openness to the analysis.

I don't think a lot of people think like that. I think maybe that's kinda like that teacher mind, like, here, let's lead you to how you could look at this differently.

Or see some hidden opportunities that you didn't see before.

But that's one of the use cases I love, you know, from chat, GBT is just being able to create structures for, for thought and reflection. And then find those very things that you just laid out like that was so perfect. Thank you.

[00:11:52] Andy Crestodina: you can ask it. It, it's there. It's unlike Google, you can really prompt data to discover what is in its training [00:12:00] data.

How it perceives your brand compared to other brands.

Why it's less likely to recommend you for certain people. And it will just tell you. It's, it's like there is no way to just say, Hey Google. What do you think of these pages? What are the gaps in these pages? What are my missed keyword opportunities? How could I get this page to rank higher? Google doesn't really do that. I guess maybe

Gemini is. Now, but we're used to black boxes in algorithm marketing,

[00:12:22] Crystal: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:23] Andy Crestodina: is actually quite transparent.

You could just say. What do you know about my brand? Where did you learn that about my brand? What do you think of me compared to these others?

Everyone should make a comparison table that compares them to their competitors. And if there's any gaps on that, then go right into those topics.

[00:12:35] Crystal: Oh, that is awesome. I'm so excited to do that. Probably will do that right after we jump off of here. 

[00:12:39] Video Content Strategies for E-commerce

[00:12:39] Crystal: But another thing you said, you had mentioned that maybe it's not the best practice anymore to embed a video on our website from YouTube.

Rather than using some sort of native video player on our website. So I was wondering when it comes to like product pages and collection pages. That type [00:13:00] of commerce page. What are your thoughts on video?

[00:13:03] Andy Crestodina: I use YouTube for content marketing. If I made an article, I think it's helpful. I'll make a video version of it. I'll post it on YouTube. I'll embed it in the article. Because I want to pump up the views on YouTube. I want that algorithm to like me.

I want it to suggest to other people. The person clicks from the article to go to YouTube.

'cause you can't remove those UX elements on the player. They're landing in a channel that's active or there's engagement.

They might subscribe. So that's content marketing. That's higher in the funnel.

The question's always just, what's the true story in the life of this visitor? If the visitor has information intent, sure. Give 'em YouTube. Embed YouTube.

Be a YouTuber.

If the true story in life of their visitor is that they have commercial intent, like they're on a money page or a product page or a service page. I would never use YouTube.

I just wouldn't do that because there's too many ways for them to sneak away.

Or they could click to watch the video on YouTube and the views are low.

And that's like negative social proof, you know?

Or the player can't really be customized. You can no longer remove the suggested videos.

Remember, you could remove them before? Now you can't.

So I've been on websites of, you know, [00:14:00] $500 million companies literally watching a CAT video on their website. Why would you do that?

You're trying to save $50, not even, I think it's like $25 a month for some of these players.

Yeah, conversion focused videos. You need a pro player. You can customize the player.

You can make the colors look bright. You can choose the thumbnail. It should look polished.

I mean YouTube, you can choose thumbnails, but conversion focused videos, the about page video, the homepage video, the sales page video, the product video. YouTube is totally inappropriate.

YouTube is a content platform. Those pages are conversion focused pages. So I think that's super weird that people still do that.

Help me spread the word if you can. 

Yeah.

YouTube is not right for money pages. 

[00:14:38] Crystal: Well, and I'm so guilty of it, like, say on a product page.

The reasoning behind it was that it loads faster. So I thought from like a user experience, it's like, okay, it's not bogging down my site. Like these YouTube videos load faster and that type of thing.

So, you know, I'm just curious.

Yeah, I never thought of that., I was wondering if.

[00:14:58] Andy Crestodina: I mean, Vimeo [00:15:00] should be fast. I, I never heard that it's slower. The technology that they all use is, is the same and it's brilliant.

Based on the bandwidth, the player switches to higher or low quality versions of that file.

It like throttles the quality somehow based on speed. All the players should do that, I would hope.

It's know, depending on the product and, and maybe if your channel's so active that if they do click to go over there, they're gonna find other things that will trigger them to buy.

But really, part of conversion is about removing distraction. And the YouTube player has a button that goes to a platform that spends hundred million dollars a year to keep their visitors on their site. So

[00:15:36] Crystal: Right.

[00:15:37] Andy Crestodina: never, under any circumstances, link from a money page, like an like a service page. even link to my own blog posts on my service pages. Because that person's going backwards.

Upwards through the funnel. So. These pages have one goal.

Ask yourself, what is the desired action on this URL? then do everything you can to focus that visitor just on that action. And part of that's removing distractions. And one of the distractions is the YouTube [00:16:00] player.

[00:16:00] Crystal: Yeah, I had a feeling you were gonna say that.

I'm a little like, oh, oh goodness, what am I gonna do?

But you know, the other great thing about Shopify is they have tons of apps. They, they have their own app store.

So I'm sure someone has created a solution for this. So if, you know, if it's not Vimeo itself, surely - Yeah.

[00:16:19] Andy Crestodina: Or maybe it's native. I mean, 20, 25, they've got tons of stuff in there. Like maybe you could just upload the video directly to Shopify. And Shopify has a player and it's, quick and nice on mobile.

Really the players, one of the success factors of videos in their ability to maximize conversion rates.

Another is simply the, the thumbnail. If you know from analytics that people who watch that video are more likely to buy. And analytics will tell you this. There's an event report. You know, just check the correlation between people who do and don't trigger that event on that URL.

You'll see it, it's there, it's on the right. Then if that's true, then your next job is to maximize the percentage of people who watch the video. to do that, you make the video more prominent or you change the thumbnail of the video. Or you get really specific about what's in the [00:17:00] video so they can so there's a so many hundreds of little factors. But anything that you see from your data that correlates with revenue, make that work even harder.

[00:17:09] Leveraging User-Generated Content

[00:17:09] Crystal: So there was something that I, I noticed the other day. It was like probably within the last year.

And it was the fact that I feel like big companies are missing out on video opportunities.

Like, say from TikTok users who are promoting their products for no reason except for the fact that they enjoy their products.

Right. This particular situation was makeup.

And like, when you are someone who likes to wear makeup, you like to find people who have your skin tone.

And say, you know what color, or what's your recommendation?

There's videos that have millions and millions of views.

And then I go to that retailer's website and there's no videos. And I'm just like, why?

I feel like these are little tiny influencers, or not even influencers at all. They just happen to create really great content that shows people what they wanna know.

And I [00:18:00] feel like the conversion could be so much greater if they would say, oh, you know, here's some of these TikTok videos that might have brought you here because you searched for our brand on TikTok.

But I think some of these brands aren't even aware that that's happening.

[00:18:13] Andy Crestodina: probably the reason is big companies have separate teams. And those teams are siloed. 

So the user generated content team who's talking to influencers and they're, they may not have any influence. They may get pushback, they may have to talk to IT.

There's a marketing leader who's disinterested. And is trying to protect the preciousness of the brand that doesn't want another, I don't know.

But there's small companies in this case, and people like me and you, crystal, have, have a bit of an advantage because we can move faster. You can capture those opportunities. There aren't really lots of silos. So what do you do?

It's like build a relationship. You know enlisted a brand ambassador. Repurpose that content.

Amplify that content. Incentivize them to create more of those. magic is happening. You're just not getting the full value of it because you didn't [00:19:00] know or didn't connect the dots. But yeah, that person don't know if I'd love to put a TikTok video directly into a product page. But if there's, if you could form a tiny partnership and they allow you, and you can. You know, send them your makeup or anything.

I don't know. Whatever the, the path toward friendship looks like. Which I think is the highest level of influence. Marketing is just being buddies with people. Put that endorsement, right? That's a, that's an influencer endorsement. That's social proof. That's credibility.

It's the most powerful thing you can possibly do for two reasons.

It upgrades the, the messenger from the brand to a influencer. And it upgrades the format from text to video. So video testimonials and video product reviews are the atomic bomb of marketing. You can never have enough. They, they're the the best thing you'll ever find. So yeah, if they're just being created randomly over there and you're not even watching.

Great point. Huge missed opportunity.

[00:19:49] Networking and Influencer Marketing

[00:19:49] Crystal: Yeah, and since you talk about reverse engineering, the other thing I thought next was, okay, how could I capture that for myself? Or help other Shopify store [00:20:00] owners capture that? Because like getting mentioned online is so important now.

It's like, okay. How would you do that? How would you find the people that could be genuine mouthpieces for your brand?

[00:20:13] Andy Crestodina: Yeah. One way that I look at content marketing is a networking opportunity. As a general rule, I never publish anything without adding a contributor quote to it. And if I appear in something somewhere else and that starts a conversation, I'm going to extend that conversation and try to keep in touch and grow a relationship. simply networking. It. That's, that's the, that's the big unlock. So if you're making anything. Right, a report, a guide, you know, you mentioned a piece of content a minute ago, like the, like whatever it happens to be.

You use that as a pretext to connect with people who are creating content or advocating for brands somewhere else. Hey, I know you've got a point of view here. You know, I'm doing a guide about that skin tone. I'm just gonna stick with makeup. Would you be open to, I love your content. your point of view is fantastic. It would take [00:21:00] you just minutes, hopefully. Could you just send me a quick quote? An influencer quote or your point of view? Your best idea for this or, or perspective?

And really that's like a press hit for them because we're all publishers now. It's like a press hit. So very rare for anyone unless they're megastar. To decline to provide their point of view that makes that content instantly in whatever format it's in. Right? YouTubers all figured this out a long time ago.

They cameo in each other's videos. But use every content creation opportunity as an opportunity to enlist a an ally. An ally in content creation is an ally in content promotion. Gonna grow your network. 

[00:21:36] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:21:36] Andy Crestodina: So right before we jumped on, you saw I was wearing a sweatshirt from a brand.

[00:21:39] Crystal: Uhhuh.

[00:21:39] Andy Crestodina: Why? Where do you think I got that right?

It's from collaborating with them. I love that sweatshirt. But it's and now that those people are my friends. I'd help them however I can.

[00:21:47] Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. I think I may have heard you say something like this before, because it's sounding familiar. And I guess the next step then too would be that people who are mentioned, like to share that they're [00:22:00] mentioned.

So therefore now you're getting in front of their audience when they say, I was featured in dah, dah, dah.

Or you could create a little, you know, graphic for them to. Mm-hmm. Celebrate that.

[00:22:10] Andy Crestodina: it's, it's you just spotlighted somebody in content.

So most people will take a minute to help amplify that because it just, it's credibility for them. I mean, it's a, it sounds a bit mercenary, but it most influencer marketing is a, is sort of transactional you know?

It's an exchange of expertise and reach. Put simply, both parties benefit from that. And people really enjoy connecting with people. It's also future proof. This isn't a format that AI can really do. And it's so many of us are predicting that the, the power of influencers will grow over time. that's just one of the many things that we should focus on.

I think it has a very powerful long-term benefit. 

If you're in SEO, it can grow links. If those collaborators are editors or bloggers, you're a a, you know, a consumer brand, it can grow your visibility, your reach. If those collaborators are active on [00:23:00] those social platforms. So, I don't know, I just, it, the cost is zero.

Why

wouldn't we all do this? 

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