The Exchanges

Q What's been the ways that you've been describing it? I see you on LinkedIn. You've got posts. A lot of the posts are kind of referring back to things that you've done in other places, like a blog post, like your most recent Lenny podcast. Where, where else are you writing and posting the stuff that's actually useful?

A I write playbooks and studies on our site. So we do how, like how to do answer engine optimization or how to do internal links, how to do topical authority. So we have long posts on our site. And then we have, uh, studies. So the studies we have, there, there's almost very little studies in our category. I think Ahrefs and SEMrush both do pretty good studies, but there's not a lot of original research. And so we just do original research. Like we just posted an original piece of original research showing that half of the content published on the internet is generated by AI. And no one had looked at that. So we post that on our site. And then I write about that in LinkedIn posts. And then I do webinars like this one. Uh, and that's it. And I just started using Reddit. So I'm starting to comment on Reddit threads, but I'm like two weeks in.

AI assessment note: “I write playbooks and studies on our site.”

Q know if something works? They're not telling you what you should be doing, right? And you're trying to get an advantage over anyone else who might have any publicly traded, publicly available information. How do you, Ethan, know if you've done a thing that you got a result because of the thing that you do, and how do you get that iterative process fast enough so you can keep iterating?

A The way that you know anything is true is with a scientific method. So you come up with a hypothesis, you test it and you reproduce it. So how do you come up with hypotheses? You come up with hypotheses by doing analysis. So you do analysis and you say something like best website builder. It seems like these sites are ranking. Maybe that the reason why is for this, like, it seems like YouTube is appearing. So hypothesis, so analysis. Pattern match. YouTube videos are showing up. Red threads are showing up. Hypothesis, adding a YouTube video will, uh, show up in citations and will cause my answer to, will cause me to become an answer and to rank better within the answer. So then you set up a analysis. You take a control and, uh, and a test group. So for Webflow, there's a hundred topics or a hundred questions we want to rank for. For 50 of those, we're not going to do anything. And for 50 of them, we're going to do something. We're going to add YouTube videos for those 50. I'm going to set up tracking for all 100 for, let's say, for two weeks, four weeks, so that I have a baseline, and then for these 50, I'm going to add YouTube videos, and for these other 50, I'm going to do nothing at all, and then I'm going to see if the ones with YouTube videos, uh, showed up. So did the YouTube video appear in the citations, and did my answer go up? And then I look at that. The reason why t…

AI assessment note: “The way that you know anything is true is with a scientific method.”

Q Okay. All right. So help center, uh, what about how to articles on the site that's helpful is, is help center enough?

A The more, the better. An interesting thing when you search for, when you search for, uh, rippling and pave, or sorry, when you search for which payroll management software integrates with pave. There's multiple articles that show up saying rippling. There's a rippling pave integration page. I believe there's a pave rippling integration page on pave.com. And I believe there's a help center article. Another example is a meeting note transcription that works with zoom and otter shows up with a feature, a zoom feature page, a, uh, help center article saying how to do this. And I believe there's a page on zoom, but basically there's multiple pages and all of these are getting otter to show up. And so it's as I wouldn't say that, you know, the more, the better forever, but I would do multiple versions, help center article, how to do X article, paying the company that you're integrating with and ask them to do both of these things.

AI assessment note: “The more, the better.”

Q And so do I now need to create all these different answers? Isn't the AI smart enough to grab three different answers, combine them, and say, here's, here's what my user needs?

A Yes, you do not need to create millions of pages for every single question. You need to generally answer the question. So an example of that would be, Which, which, uh, for Rippling, uh, I want a payroll management software that has these different features like, uh, uh, attendance tracking and, and, um, time tracking and off-boarding and this. So Rippling has a page for each persona, uh, HR, IT, finance, and all of the use cases and features that they have, but there's one page for each. So it's not that you need one page for every single use case in every single Question. It's grouping and theming them. And the AI is indeed smart enough to just find the answer. So you don't need it explicitly verbatim exact match for every single question.

AI assessment note: “you do not need to create millions of pages for every single question.”

Q It's not so much that people aren't using search engines. They're gonna use it for a long time. There's some people using the white and yellow pages, I think. It's not that it's dead that it doesn't work. It's just that there are killers like you out there who are so good at it, I can't compete. What do you say about the SEO is death worry that I have?

A Yeah. So there's a few different, let's break it down into a few different arguments. So argument one is what you just said, which is it's too hard. It's crowded. And I, I mean, I do think that it's hard. Uh, I think it's hard for early stage companies, which is why I mentioned when, when a startup asked me what they should do in SEO, I say, don't work on it and wait until you're larger. Wait until you're, you know, series A or later, maybe series B and later, because it's, it's, it's hard. Like maybe you could get a little bit of impact, but you're not going to get millions of visits if you're a small company. But if you're a big company, you can do really well. It's, you know, it's a massive channel. It's, uh, I think it's the second largest channel after paid advertising. So, uh, I think it's five X, at least five X LMs, maybe 10 X, depending on the category. So it's way bigger than, than AEO. Uh, so it's a massive channel, but yeah, I mean, it is hard. So depending on how big you are, you should decide whether or not it's, it's too hard, but it's not that I am so good. It's that authority is You need enough sufficient authority to compete on competitive terms. But if you have that, then, then you can be competitive. So it's not so crowded that no one can do it. It just depends on who. So that's argument one. Argument two is that, uh, SEO is, or sorry, search is being used l…

AI assessment note: “it's not so crowded that no one can do it. It just depends on who.”

Q How can I tell which questions I should be targeting? Like what are the top asked questions?

A Yeah, there's, there's, what would be great is if ChatGPT gave us a ChatGPT search console, like Google search console. I said, here's the search volume for these prompts, but they don't do that. I don't anticipate they'll do that soon. I think that they'll eventually do that as they build out ads, but they don't, they don't give you that information. So there's a couple of ways to do this. The first way is what I would suggest, which is to use search data. And so if I'm a brand new company, I would start with the keywords that I want to rank for and then make them into questions. How I would pick the keywords would probably be which keywords would I want to pay the most for. So either I'm already doing paid search and I use my paid search keywords, or I look at my competitors paid search keywords. So those are the money terms. So if I'm, uh, you know, if I'm a Rippling competitor, I would go look at Gusto deal in Rippling and, uh, see what, what are they doing for paid search in the top paid search keywords, and then just make them into questions. The other option is to use, uh, Subsets of real data, first party data through browser extensions or ISPs and things like that. Or like, there's a, you know, a bunch of LM companies that might sell you actual real data. Like there's many, many chat bots you could buy for, you know, chat GPT won't sell you their data, but maybe a less…

AI assessment note: “So there's a couple of ways to do this. The first way is”

Q You also told me before we got started that for Webflow, Help Center content was useful, and that just means that if they're, I don't know what they're using, Intercom, Help Scout, what are they using?

A Not actually sure what they're using, but, uh, yeah, Help, so the The two things that are different with answer engine optimization and SEO are the head and the tail, and the tail is larger and longer in chat. The average, I think the stat roughly was average of 25 words per prompt and average of three to six for search, something along those lines. So chat is significantly more specific. And part of that's because search is made People know that they need to translate their intention into a short keyword because they know that the search engine won't understand their actual full intention. So they don't act that they don't speak in conversational ways and they don't be, they don't get so specific that they know that the search engine will fail. Whereas chat can, you can be very specific. So you could ask a question like, what's the best website builder that has this integration and integrates with Shopify and also has this feature and is, you know, has support for You're a Korean language. You would never ask. You never put that in search, but you know, but that's what you want. And you can put that in chat and the chat can interpret that and give you an answer and help center. And people have many questions about, I want a product that fulfills my use case and help center is actually a great place to do that because help center is you talking about how your product works and …

AI assessment note: “Not actually sure what they're using, but, uh, yeah”

Q I told you before we got started that I was a little concerned about us using Webflow as the first example because Webflow has a giant team. They have a lot of resources. What does this mean for somebody who doesn't have a giant team? Is it not possible?

A It's actually the most interesting, uh, one of the most interesting channels for small companies with limited resources, and the reason why is because In search engine optimization, when early stage companies ask me for help and what their strategy should be, I tell them to not work on SEO because they're not going to perform. You need enough authority to be able to perform in search. And a lot, a lot of other channels are pretty crowded. So it's, it's, you know, especially hard, the cold start problem with, with the early stage startups. And this is one of the most interesting channels. And the reason why is because, uh, because you can do offsite optimization with no brand. So if I am a brand new Yeah. Uh, payroll management software company, and I want to compete with large incumbents. If I'm making viral YouTube videos and, uh, you know, a TikTok video and an Instagram story and a Reddit thread, I can be the best product tomorrow. So the time to impact is fast and I can grow on these other channels without really having a substantial brand. It's actually one of the most interesting channels.

AI assessment note: “one of the most interesting channels for small companies with limited resources”

Q How important is it that the LinkedIn post, the Instagram post, et cetera, has a lot of views already?

A It seems like there's a, there seems like there's a correlation, but it's not just ranked by number of views. So if you look, if you ask a question about payroll management software, website builders, the videos that are appearing are typically the most viewed, but you won't see it where it's just literally sorted by number of views. There's other signals. I don't know exactly what they are. It's probably traditional You know, search authority, like number of backlinks and shares and things like that, but it definitely does matter. Uh, what I will say is that for many questions, the number of views is not millions or hundreds of thousands, it's hundreds or a few thousands. So it's still pretty, it's still something that you could win without being an influencer.

AI assessment note: “there seems like there's a correlation, but it's not just ranked by number of views”

Q And this is all the same stuff that you would do if you wanted search engine optimization, uh, to be increased, but also that you might do for your customers, right? You're trying to show them how web flow is used by restaurants, et cetera. Okay. And so you're saying some of that just naturally will feed into traffic. From, uh, chat bots.

A So I would say most of the signups from LMS were from SEO work that we had already done or we're doing. Uh, in addition to that, we did things specifically for a, uh, France engine optimization that, that we would not have otherwise done for SEO. And so those are mostly offsite, uh, optimizations. So if you search for best website designer, And Webflow's URL ranks number one on Google. That's a big win. And if in chat you say, what's the best website builder and Webflow's URL is the number one citation and nobody else mentions Webflow, then they won't win. And so for these popular questions, the way to win is not just a page on your site. It's pages off of your site. And so offsite is that that's one of the, there's two differences with answer engine optimization and SEO is, uh, offsite and the long tail. And so for offsite, we, uh, the Webflow team, and we worked to get them mentioned on other platforms. And so there's earned and owned offsite. So, uh, owned offsite would be Webflow has a YouTube channel and there's tons of videos about how to use Webflow. And then Webflow can also, uh, engage in Reddit, uh, threads. So there's a lot of the Reddit threads either asking about how to use Webflow or asking about how to do things that Webflow can do. And so, uh, we collaborated with the, with the Webflow team, the Webflow team themselves. So the Reddit's an interesting thing. When…

AI assessment note: “most of the signups from LMS were from SEO work that we had already done”

Q Didn't you do Lenny's podcast like two years ago?

A I did Lenny's podcast. I think it was two or three years ago, but I didn't do that much. I, um, and before Lenny's podcast, We, we built the agency before Lenny's podcast, uh, five years ago. So it's, it's been around for five years. And so all of our early deal, we, we've never done any sales. So we, uh, we've never done any outbound sales and all of our deals early on were, uh, referral based. So it's just people that I knew are people asking who's good at something. And so that the, that was caused by getting, doing really good work and getting, uh, great outcomes. And then People refer. And, uh, so then I finally did marketing in earnest starting in January. It's a lot of work to do marketing because there's traditional marketing, and then there's the marketing that I, we do. Traditional marketing is mediocre content, and that does well, but I don't want to do mediocre content, and I cannot I cannot hire someone to do my thought leadership for me. I have to personally do this. And it's very challenging to write a 5000 word article about how to do answer engine optimization. And so then I just didn't do that until January. So then I said, I'm just going to spend my weekends writing out all of my ideas into content and hopefully it does well. And then it did better than I expected. So, uh, the, the marketing is only Like, the marketing in earnest has only been around for, for…

AI assessment note: “I did Lenny's podcast. I think it was two or three years ago”

Q so they're fully open about it, and give a detailed answer, and that's one thing that you, that you all did as a consistent rhythm to your day. And then the second thing, if I'm understanding you right, is just posting YouTube videos, which I wouldn't have thought would help. Does YouTube videos help with Gemini? Does it help with Claude? Does it help with ChatGPT? Where does it work?

A It generally, so LMs, the, the classes of domain, uh, types of domains that are cited frequently, video and UGC are huge. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, I am not seeing X that much. And then video and, and YouTube shows up a lot. And the less entertaining your product is, the better, the more interesting video is. And the reason why I say that is because video is made to be entertaining and entertaining categories like food, travel, beauty, uh, are the most crowded and the least entertaining things are the least crowded. So website builders is moderately entertaining. We work with a lot of SaaS companies like payroll management software is not entertaining at all. So these are not crowded. And so the less, less entertaining and more niche your pro high LTV your product is. Video is the most interesting. Uh, so, uh, and it shows up a lot and there are all these AI adjacent channels. So there's answer engine optimization, and then there's stuff that's next to answer engine optimization, which is Reddit, affiliates, video, LinkedIn, Instagram. And a lot of these have not been optimized and actually each has its own unique special strategy. That's completely unrelated to answer engine optimization, but it's adjacent to it. So actually to do answer engine optimization really well, I think it's not doing pure answer engine optimization. It's doing all of these other channels, but doing…

AI assessment note: “types of domains that are cited frequently, video and UGC are huge”

Q I'm on your LinkedIn profile right now. I look at Masterclass, it says you were an advisor, and then it says, Basically, you helped grow organic growth. There's no numbers, two sentences. Like, what were you able to take them from where to where?

A Well, they didn't have SEO, uh, before. So I, right. And then, um, I worked with their team. I mean, their team is, uh, you know, it's interesting that there's the, the LinkedIn mafia and the PayPal mafia, and then there's the masterclass mafia, I think. So the people that I worked with are all doing amazing things like, uh, the CEO of air ops, Alex, I worked with at masterclass, who's now building air ops, which is like a hugely successful company. Um, so, so yeah, uh, there was no SEO. We bought the strategy, uh, From scratch. Uh, I think it, I don't know exactly what it went to. It's probably a ten million plus per month, but, um.

AI assessment note: “there was no SEO... I think it, I don't know exactly... probably ten million plus”