Takeaways from an Irish Locksmith: Listing Spam Scandal

“I did what people normally would do — Googled ‘locksmiths near me.’”

These telltale words preface a scandalous account of listing spam I recently ran into on an Irish call-in radio show on RTÉ. I’m going to share a summary of it in today’s column, offer my best understanding of the root of the problem, and close with takeaways both for consumers and for local business owners who operate in Your-Money-Or-Your-Life (YMYL) industries, like security.

When local search reads like a mystery novel

Host, Katie Hannon, and her team did a good job of structuring this unfolding mystery on the Liveline with Joe Duffy show. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would definitely have gotten hooked into this plot.

Caller #1

On a bank holiday, a woman came home to find herself locked out of her house. She called the first locksmith she found on the web. The locksmith told her the lock cylinder needed to be replaced, did the work, and 5-6 minutes later, presented her with a bill for €391 ($419.35 USD). She had been so frazzled by the ordeal, that it wasn’t until the next day that she began to wonder why the charge was so high, but when she re-contacted the company to ask for a breakdown of the cost, she was informed that while the fee might appear large, it reflected the expertise of their staff.

Later, a licensed locksmith would confirm for the customer that, on a bank holiday, the charge should have been about €200.

Caller #2

“I did what people normally would do - Googled ‘locksmiths near me.’ I needed it done as quickly as I could. I took the first one that popped up. I spoke with a young lady, and she said she’d have someone get in touch with me,” said the next caller of his experience of hiring a locksmith when his door handle stopped working, when questioned about the locksmith’s online presence, he answered, “It looks very professional with very good reviews. There was certainly nothing to warn you.”

After a series of non-fixes, the locksmith got the caller’s door open but said he’d leave it without any lock unless the customer was willing to pay for replacement of the mechanism. Not wanting to risk having a door that couldn’t be made secure, the customer found himself with a bill for €1,143 ($1,225.87 USD) and began to worry he’d been overcharged when friends remarked that he could have gotten a whole new door for that amount.

Later, a licensed locksmith would confirm that the charge for the work should have totaled less than €500.

Caller #3

When one woman needed a rusty door lock replaced, she did what most of us would do,

“I just Googled ‘Dublin locksmith.’ It had reviews and everything.”

The locksmith who arrived charged her €60 for the service call but told her he’d need to order a €400 ($429 USD) replacement lock. When some days had gone by with no follow-up, she re-located the Google Business Profile she’d clicked on and again spoke to a receptionist. The receptionist told her she’d need to email the man on the invoice she’d received, but when her email went unanswered, the customer set out to find the elusive locksmith.

Via the Internet, she located a street address, and that took her to the house of a completely different person…

The Case of the Retired Locksmith

Caller #4 was the gentleman whom the woman with the rusty door lock found at the Dublin residence, and he is a retired licensed locksmith who served the industry for 45 years. I won’t do screenshots in this piece, but my own research confirmed that he appears to be the victim of impersonation via a Google Business Profile, and other local business listings. The top-ranked listing I found for the search in question featured the retired locksmith’s name and a 4-star rating on the basis of some questionable reviews + a few complaints.

It turns out that not only does the retired licensed locksmith know about this scandal, but he has felt so upset by customers being overcharged by the alleged impersonator, that he has been going to their homes to explain that he is not the service person they contacted and to offer them advice on what steps they might take. He is proud of the reputation he worked hard to build over more than four decades and is understandably unhappy to find his good name being tarnished, saying,

“I wouldn’t have survived this long in business if I had given a bad service to people.”

He has reported the issue to the authorities but has yet to receive a response, and unfortunately, there isn’t much he can tell these homeowners to do. In most cases, they did receive the work they paid for, but the charges simply were not commensurate with industry standards.

Google… I don’t know how they operate their business

During the radio program, Caller #5 phoned in to say that she, too, is a licensed locksmith, and has had four local people reach out to her lately after apparently receiving outrageous charges for basic services from this same entity. She stated:

“Google, I feel, is partly responsible for providing disinformation, but I don’t know how they operate their business. I would really like to know what is going on beneath all this because I do feel that there is an establishment that may be running companies like this. They’ve seen a niche in the market, and they’ve grabbed onto it, and they are making an absolute fortune. They’re unlicensed, and they are ripping people off.”

And therein lies a very large key to this common problem. Neither consumers nor legitimate business owners in this case (and in many) have a clear idea of what Google’s omnipresent local search results consist of, how they are ranked, or how often they contain spam.

Vulnerabilities in Google’s local search platform make it quite possible for a scenario like this one to take place, of an individual apparently spoofing the identity of another company and creating a listing around it. It’s also possible to hijack the listing of another business and insert your own phone number so that you receive the calls that should be going to your competitor. It’s possible to pay for fake reviews that make a dubious business look trustworthy, and as my honored colleague Joy Hawkins recently reported, you can repeatedly spam Google’s review component without any lasting consequences.

Lack of meaningful competition in the local search space has not motivated Google to fix this problem of listing spam over the past several decades, despite volumes of reporting both by major media outlets and industry journalists. At the same time, Google has never succeeded at widely engaging with or offering adequate support to the millions of local business owners whose data they use to populate their local search results. No matter how many times they rebrand and reshape local search, Google just isn’t getting the basics right to create a trustworthy, manageable platform or consumer experience.

So, where does that leave local business owners and Google users?

The cause and effect of local online scams

“You have to be so careful about who you have come to your home to fix a lock or deal with your security.” — Katie Hannon, RTÉ host

Misinformation, disinformation, and web spam are a threat to public safety in YMYL scenarios. I remember writing an article nearly twenty years ago about having a medical emergency and realizing that Google’s local pack results were full of inaccurate listings for ERs and hospitals. And clearly, when it comes to home security, no one would want someone untrustworthy working on their locks.

Meanwhile, I was listening to another Irish call-in show recently in which guests had lost tens of thousands of euros to scammers allegedly claiming to be from the online finance app Revolut, and the subsequent nightmare they’ve gone through in realizing that even the real Revolut isn’t like a real-world local back with an office and phone number you can contact for emergency help if you’re robbed.

Imagine spending 12 hours with a chatbot because it’s the only source of customer service available to you after having $10,000 dollars taken from your account! One of these callers even wondered afterward if the person she was speaking to at the scam company was a real human being or AI with a Dublin accent. Scenarios like these seem to me to stem from and create the following cascade:

1. Civil societies function on members having a certain degree of respect for authority, whether the authorities are teachers, medical experts, licensed professionals, or government leaders.

2. Many members of society have mistaken tech companies and their products for authorities, implicitly trusting that if something is as big and powerful as Google, it must be vetted, regulated, accurate, and authoritative.

3. In non-daily circumstances like suddenly needing a lock changed, having a medical emergency, or thinking your finances might have been compromised, people are flustered. They reach out for the quickest possible help to get themselves out of trouble and are not in any state to use their best critical thinking. Very intelligent people who say they would normally know not to give out sensitive information to strangers find themselves doing so in emergencies.

4. Because scammers know people are vulnerable during a time of stress, they build business models around exploiting others during these episodes.

5. This is a global problem that no government, regulatory body, or tech company has effectively solved. It has been nearly 20 years since Google Maps first appeared, and in the US, there are still no meaningful consequences for a search engine that profits from publishing spam that fools, misleads, misdirects, and even harms people. Regulation does not keep pace with rapid technological development.

6. Invested tech companies are now actively worsening this problem by presenting AI as an authoritative source of information rather than as an amalgamation of whatever data it has been fed, good or bad, real or not real. If countless people have already been scammed by others who use platforms like Google Business Profile to misrepresent themselves via spam listings and reviews, there’s pretty much no end to what bad actors could do with the opportunities AI will offer to spoof legitimate entities to disastrous consequence.

The effects of scams on communities are deeply serious. Scams undermine how humans feel about the societies they live in. Living in a setting in which people have to be constantly suspicious of their neighbors is stressful, and long-term stress undermines physical health. Some callers I listened to expressed shame at having been fooled, and others were reticent about admitting to anyone that they were swindled for fear of looking out-of-step with the times and the tech. All of them suffered financially, which is especially difficult in Ireland right now given that its people are experiencing what they call a “cost of living crisis,” which appears to have its same root as the 40-year transfer-of-wealth scam American economists cite as the cause of our present state of poverty in the US.

Thieves have always existed. The internet has simply allowed them to scale up and cause harm to vast numbers of people. When societies are unprepared and unprotected from swindles, an unfortunate outcome is that people have to look out for themselves (a very anti-social state of affairs that improves life for no one), but this is where I believe we’re at in the absence of better regulation, and I’ve got a few tips to share.

Tips for increased safety amid Google Business Profile spam

Let’s start with tips for customers — folks like you and me who are using the internet to navigate our local landscape:

1. Understand that spam is widespread on Google

Know that it is very easy to create illegitimate Google Business Profile listings and that a recent large-scale study by Uberall found that Google is the platform with the highest percentage of suspicious local business reviews. Know that Google does not have adequate safeguards in place to identify and remove fraudulent information from their product. The local results you see when you search for nearby businesses may well contain both fake listings and fake reviews and do not deserve your unqualified trust.

2. In a quiet moment, create a list

To protect yourself from being manipulated in a time of stress, consider the types of sudden incidents that take people unawares at some point or another in many of our lives. These might include:

• Medical incidents requiring emergency assistance

• Auto accidents and malfunctions requiring roadside assistance, auto repairs, and sometimes legal assistance

• Security needs, like locksmith assistance or home security malfunctions

• Damages from weather events like storms or fires, requiring rescue or urgent remediation services

• Household malfunctions like septic overflows or plumbing problems, garage door failures, major appliance repairs or replacements, and other needs that require urgent assistance

• Financial emergencies, such as fearing your banking card has been lost or stolen

It may sound like I’m trying to turn back the hands of the clock to pre-internet times, but at this point, you will be better off writing a list of the names, phone numbers, and addresses of reputable resources and keeping a copy of it in your wallet, purse, vehicle, and home rather than trusting random local business listings for YMYL scenarios. You could definitely put the list on your mobile phone, but you might want a paper copy as well in case your phone gets hacked, lost, or runs out of juice.

When you are not in the middle of an emergency, you can thoroughly research and contact your options to vet them. You can ask your friends and family for recommendations. And if you are traveling even a little distance from home, you can make such a list to protect yourself from being scammed in an unfamiliar setting.

In short, Google may be fine for helping find a quick cup of coffee or a slice of pizza, but don’t trust the local packs or Google Maps if your money, health, bank account, or life is at stake. Don’t invest Google’s results with an authority or accuracy they don’t possess. As a seasoned local SEO, I don’t like having to say this, but it’s my honest take on the state of affairs.

3. Start relying more on people in your life and less on the internet for YMYL decisions

Speaking of ethical scandals, we all need to be bracing ourselves right now. Large publishers you once trusted for vetted, fact-checked information that is hand-researched and hand-written by experts and authorities, may be making decisions right now to replace some of their staff with AI. We are already seeing results in the form of shocking pieces being published like this one (now removed) from Microsoft, which advised tourists to Ottawa to enjoy visiting a local food bank on an empty stomach.

The combination of spam local business listings and reviews + the increase of what could be a real mess of AI-generated nonsense in both chat-based and organic results could mean you should be very careful of letting the internet be your guide when making decisions that involve your life, health, money, security, or major purchases. Publishers have profit goals in view in replacing human authors with AI-generated information, but you need recommendations from people who have your best interests in mind. And that, of course, lands you back in the circle of your friends and family.

You are likely better off asking your mother, your neighbor, or your friend from work where to find a trustworthy outfit to replace your broken windshield than you are asking ChatGPT, Bard, New Bing, local listings, or organic results. You are likely better off steering clear of the web and asking your existing doctor where to find a specialist, if the need arises. Word-of-mouth recommendations are a tried-and-true method that long pre-dates the internet of finding reliable help, and it works on the basis of trusting that real people in your life want the best for you. They may not always get it right, but lived experiences are a rich source of useful information we all can share.

4. Know that asking to see credentials is not bad manners

Know the licensing laws of your country and/or state and request that any service provider show you proof of their credentials before you contract with them. I’ve heard kind people say they worry it sounds rude to ask for this documentation, but remember that legitimate service providers have to go through all kinds of steps to earn their credentials, and they will not be in any way annoyed by sharing the results of their efforts to be compliant with regulations. These credentials set them apart from scammers they already know exist in their geographic markets. If a potential contractor makes a fuss about proving they are licensed, it’s a red flag to you that they don’t have the necessary proof.

In sum, the internet can be a great place for local consumers to browse their communities and connect with local businesses, but when it comes to specific high-risk categories and transactions, you will be safer if you do your research ahead of sudden events and make sure you are working with licensed professionals with legitimate business credentials and contact information.

Now let’s turn to the local business side of this story. What can you do if you know your Google Business Profile categories are polluted with spammers, putting your neighbors and potential customers at risk of being scammed?

1. Report what you can

This shouldn’t be part of your job description; it should be Google’s responsibility to keep their index as free as possible from spam listings and reviews that violate their own guidelines. Nevertheless, you can report spammers to Google, and sometimes they will act on those reports, and that may help you move up in the local rankings. However, do go into this knowing Google often won’t act and that spammers will often simply come back. It’s not ideal, but you do have the following options for reporting:

• Use the Business Redressal Complaint Form to report Google listings you are convinced are spam and in violation of the guidelines, or review profiles you believe are the result of forbidden activities.

• If three weeks pass and you have seen no movement on what you’ve reported, you also have the option to post your redressal case ID in the Google Business Profile Community help forum to ask a product expert to consider escalating your case.
  

2. Treat credential content as central rather than as an afterthought

On your website, social profiles, and in areas of your listings like Google Updates (formerly known as Google Posts), create content that explains what your credentials are, and why you have them. Too often, service providers’ sites simply have a license number in the header or footer, with no explanation of why it matters. Build core content that educates potential customers as to what legal requirements there are in your field for licensed or credentialed providers, and take the opportunity to warn your community against spammers and scammers by teaching people to ask to see credentials before they hire anyone.

3. Don’t abandon business cards and fridge magnets

Tech news might make you think that everything has to happen online these days, but the truth is, being generous with handing out business cards, magnets, car stickers, and other tangible marketing assets with your contact and credential information on them is a great way to ensure customers come back to you in a moment of stress, instead of going with another random provider they find online. The oil change business I go to always places a little transparent window cling on my car that is branded with their name, contact info, and the date I should come in for my next service. Any service provider can offer a physical reminder to the customer of whom they should trust when the time comes.

4. Build a simple referral program

This is very easy to do when your business is a cafe or grocery store that locals visit on a regular basis. Offering a free cup of coffee after a customer’s fifth visit or a coupon for ½ off dinner with a friend is simple. But when you are in a YMYL category, chances are good that the same customer isn’t going to need you on a regular basis. What you want is for them to share your good name with their friends and family in advance of the need arising, and a branded merchandise campaign could be one good option for accomplishing this.

For example, imagine you own an auto glass repair company. You might invest in branded stainless steel water bottles that people can take in their cars instead of plastic. Your branding can include your name, phone number, address, and credentials, as well as your logo. When completing a job for a customer, you could let them know you have a special offer of one of these bottles if they agree to give a second one to a local friend or family member. You’ll not only be reducing plastic consumption in your community, but you’ll also be getting your brand name into people’s cars so that they remember it right away if their car window gets damaged. A plumber might offer a toilet brush set. A locksmith might offer a cool keychain charm. The point is to get your trusted name into the hands of your neighbors when they need you, making them safer from scammers and earning you new business.

In sum, you have some options for reporting online spam to Google, but your strongest bet will be to build real-world relationships with the people in your community so that they learn to trust you and recommend you to their circle.

Local listing and review spam harms communities, and AI is likely to take scams to as-yet-undreamt-of levels. While the internet is an amazing tool for finding things, it cannot replace the offline social contract of trust that surrounds time-honored word-of-mouth recommendations amongst family and friends. When your money or life is on the line, or if your business provides services for people with urgent, unexpected needs, trust is a must.

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4 Stats About SGE – Whiteboard Friday

Discover key statistics on Google's Search Generative Experience and their impact on SEO, ads, and user experience. Dive into the latest trends shaping the search landscape in this insightful Whiteboard Friday with Tom Capper.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans. I'm here today to share with you some quick stats, four quick stats about Google's search generative experiences.

So in case you've not heard of those before or not seen these before, this is a new kind of search result, a new kind of SERP feature, I suppose that Google started testing earlier this year. Currently, this is not generally rolled out. You can only see this if you are opted in, in Google Labs. You are logged in, you're using Chrome and you have a US IP address, although VPNs do work.

So this is maybe a bit of a hint about a direction that Google might be considering. Maybe not. I might publish some blog posts about whether I think they'll stick to this plan but I still think it's interesting to take a look at what they're doing right now and yeah see what we can observe.

The structure of Google’s Search Generative Experience

So the basic structure of the SGE is, it's stuck onto the top of a search engine results page above all of the other kinds of results and SERP features. And you've got a little warning. So generative AI is experimental. Then a block of of content, normally text, then some questions. So ask a follow-up and then some suggested questions.

So for example, I've searched for Mozcon. One of the suggested questions is where is Mozcon? And this would just link through to a follow-up search. And then there's these three links on the right and these look kind of like portrait organic results but they're actually supposed to be the articles that this AI generated text is based on.

Key SGE Statistics

So what are the stats that I want to share with you?

Links in the SGE

Well, these three links, I think it's very interesting. You might reasonably assume that this would just be like the top three organic results or something like that but actually that's not the case. So in only 13% of cases in the 100 SGE SERPS that I studied in only 13% of cases, were all three of these links actually present in the top 10 organic.

I should say a bit about the data that I'm using here. So this is the top few keywords from every MozCast vertical. So it's a hundred SERPS in total tracked in the US on desktop. So relatively small scale study but enough to get an idea of what's going on here. So yeah, 13% of of SGE SERPs had 100% overlap between these three links. Then also appearing in organic beneath which I think is surprisingly low. And in 41% of cases, there was none at all that none of these links actually appeared in the organic results, which I, yeah I find that very surprising. It shows that this is a different system. This is not built on top of organic.

Ads are beneath the SGE

The second stat I want to share with you is about ads. So you'll notice I've not put any ads above the the SGE here and that's not an accident. I didn't see that even once, ads when they exist are beneath the SGE, so pushed right down and in only 30% of the SERPs I looked at were there any ads at all? Which I would say is quite low when you're looking at sort of competitive head terms which MozCast keywords are, but also think about how far down they've been pushed. So this is not a particularly commercially great situation for Google if they were to go with this as it is.

Suggested questions

The third stat I want to share with you is about these questions. So you've got, like I say ask a follow-up and then some suggested questions here. Now these look a bit like people also ask questions. And indeed, often the questions that you see here will also appear in a people also ask box further down. I think that's a bit odd. I think it's very un Google-like to have duplicated functionality like this, got two SERP features that are essentially doing the same thing. Got both people also asked box somewhere further down. And then these questions often even with the same questions. So in 83% of SGE SERPs also had people also ask as a SERP feature, which like I say, I think that makes me think they kind of rushed this, you know if they had thought about this a little bit more maybe they would've changed the SERPs beneath to not include features that are overlapping. I've got some other stats on this that I'll share later on.

But this also happens with maps. So if there are maps in this block, then there's normally or often I should say also a local pack further down which is basically the same functionality appearing twice. It's not really very elegant as these things go.

What is actually included in the SGE?

And that brings me to the last stat I want to share which is about what you actually have in the SGE. So in 70% of cases, this is just raw text, so just like a featured snippet, except obviously AI generated. The next most common is places so you know, location listings. And when that happens, it's a bit odd because these three links tend to just be links to the the Google Maps results or Google local results that are also listed on the map. So again, it kind of comes over as a little bit clumsy. Then 7% of cases you can get products inside here. I did not see when they first demoed this at Google IO they had ads inside the AI generated block. I have never seen that in the wild. I'm not sure they actually have that functionality. It was probably just a mockup or something like this but maybe a statement of intent.

So yeah, that's four quick stats about SGEs. The main thing that I would take away, to be honest from my experience collecting this data is that at the moment this is a bit of a half-baked feature. So they probably put it out in a rush to, you know to respond to pressure from competitors and from investors. I imagine this has a long way to go. Anyway, hope you enjoyed that. Hope you found these stats interesting. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

The ROI of Accessibility in SEO

This article contains some ableist phrases that are debunked and combatted throughout the piece. They have been included to highlight better alternatives.

Accessibility should be one of the top priorities for your website in 2024

Disabled people and those with accessibility needs make up a considerable percentage of our clients and customers — but, even if they didn’t, we should care about the end-user experience of those who interact with our products, services, and content.

As an SEO professional who has been advocating for accessibility for years, I’ve heard and seen it all when it comes to excuses for not implementing accessibility best practices to a website.

“How much is this going to cost me?”

“Just focus on SEO, nothing else will benefit my business.”

“Why would I do this work when it only affects a small number of people?”

“We don’t want blind people buying our products.”

I wish I were exaggerating, especially about the last one. Don’t be like them. Providing an inaccessible website is not only a missed opportunity for users — it’s also a missed opportunity for you, as a business owner. Think about all of those potential customers who are clicking through to your inaccessible website, and finding alternative solutions!

I’ve had countless conversations trying to convince business owners to let me include basic accessibility practices into my SEO workflow; honestly, I stopped asking and started just doing. Plenty of SEO activities also benefit accessibility.

When I need to discuss accessibility with a client, it always comes back to “what’s in it for me.” I’ll then start to roll off the benefits and explore whatever seems the most important to my client:

• Larger customer base

• More returning customers

• Community-building

• Legal compliance is met

• Rank higher in Google

• Your competitors aren't doing this

• Potential revenue increase up to 18.9%

The last three typically get their attention. Don’t worry; we’ll explore the 18.9% revenue increase a little later on. In this blog post, I will share the data you need to know to justify accessibility best practices for organic search. We’ll look at revenue increases and your competitors.

Identify revenue that comes from users with disabilities

So, to identify the revenue for a client, you’ll need to understand some stats. These stats will vary depending on the country the business operates in – you will also need the business's data on organic revenue.

I will talk you through the entire process — using e-commerce as an example to break down total online spending and its intersection with accessibility.

Before we delve into the potential revenue, there are some core stats you’ll need to know and refer back to.

Stats around accessibility and internet usage in America

• The USA has a population of 340 Million

• According to the CDC, around 27% of the American population lives with some form of disability

• 90.9% of American citizens have access to the internet

• 63.8% of the American disabled population has access to the internet

• 83% of users with access needs limit their shopping to websites that they know are barrier-free

• 23% of the American disabled population state they never browse the internet at all

• In 2022, $1,04 trillion was spent through e-commerce

• 90% of websites do not meet the minimum single-A compliance with the WCAG set by W3C

Estimate revenue from customers with disabilities

With those figures in mind and a little math, we can estimate how much of our revenue (if our website is accessible) comes from customers with disabilities with the following formula.

27% of Americans live with a disability, 63.8% of the disabled community have frequent internet access, and 91% of all Americans have internet access.

27% * 63.8% / 91% = 18.9% of the total American population who use the internet have a disability.

18.9% is no number to turn your nose up at. For any sized business, 18.9% of additional revenue is life-changing money. This 18.9% is an incredibly important figure in understanding how many people you benefit by having an accessible website.

If we look at the total e-commerce revenue in 2023, we can see that $196.56 Billion ($1,04t *18.9%) was spent by people with disabilities online. This is just looking at online sales; we are not factoring in any other conversion at this point. What we are seeing is that people with disabilities are not a small portion of the population. A massive contribution to the online economy comes from users with disabilities.

You can replicate this formula for any business in the US and its revenue. Use those stats and the formula together to build a story while explaining the importance of accessibility to your client.

You can frame this data in multiple ways, but at its most simple — if you know your website is inaccessible, you can assume that you are making 18.9% less than you could be if it were accessible. Assumptions around whether a site is accessible or not are rarely wrong.

Own the market share for users with disabilities

For users with disabilities, it’s more than likely that they will struggle to find websites that they can fully navigate. Users with disabilities will have to view multiple sites to find one that caters to their needs so they can resolve their needs.

Studies have shown that over 90% of websites do not meet the minimum compliance with the WCAG guidelines.

WCAG has become the standard for online accessibility and is frequently referred to by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as the standard to meet for online accessibility. It’s also a legal requirement.

The WCAG levels of compliance are divided into three levels: A, AA, and AAA. Level A addresses the most basic accessibility issues, such as alt text and the page being navigable by keyboard. They list out the content and accessibility guidelines a website should follow, and many of them are not difficult to apply.

However, with 90% of all websites not meeting the minimum standards of accessibility, it’s a fair assumption that any given website is not entirely accessible. You can apply this to your own business but also to your competitors. If you have been overlooking accessibility, it’s likely your competitors will not be putting in the work to serve all of their potential customers either.

This creates a substantial opportunity for your business to corner the market. Working with SEOs, developers, and/or accessibility experts, you can open yourself up to potentially take the market share of users with disabilities for your specific service/niche.

It’s no small fee, but if you are already paying for SEO and development work, you may as well cover accessibility best practices, too. SEO can help you reach more users; accessibility can help you convert up to 18.9% of those users.

The cost of inaccessibility

When making your case for accessibility, you must factor in what could happen if you leave your website inaccessible. This could be covering the cost of defending a digital accessibility lawsuit — or even settling a demand letter — which is often more expensive than fixing accessibility issues in the first place.

In 2021, 265,000 website accessibility demand letters were sent out to businesses with an estimated $25,000 per case to resolve the demand letter and then proceed with fixing accessibility issues.

Accessibility lawsuits will cost you significantly more.

When it comes to accessibility, it’s better to be proactive. If you prioritize accessibility work early, you can reap the rewards and be recognized as an accessible brand to your customers.

How accessibility and SEO interlink

You may have heard that having an accessible website will help you rank better. Unfortunately, this isn’t wholly true. Google doesn’t really care if your website is completely accessible.

However, Google does care if you follow a strong heading structure. Google cares if you speak in layman's terms. Google cares if you have alt text. Google cares if your site is navigable with JavaScript disabled. Google cares if the user experience is the same on Mobile compared to desktop. Google cares about Core Web Vitals.

All of these are activities that an SEO should address during their auditing and technical optimization strategies as part of a campaign. These activities can directly impact SEO as they provide additional context to your content and create a good page experience. The very same activities are incredibly important for solving access needs for users with disabilities.

Quick tips to make your website more accessible

Want to give yourself the best chance to achieve that 18.9% increase in revenue? Here are ten tips to get you started.

1. Ensure that every page has an adequately defined heading structure. Users relying on screenreaders often jump from header to header.

2. Create content that is well-displayed and easy to read. We should outline the problems our business solves and explain them in clear terms.

3. Links should be clearly distinguished from other text.

4. All links should be descriptive.

5. Test that you can interact with everything with a keyboard like you can with a mouse. Use the tab key to navigate the website.

6. All content images should have descriptive alt text or relevant expandable descriptions.

7. Ensure that images are not used when text content would have been more appropriate.

8. Breadcrumbs aren’t just for internal linking and structured data; they are an incredibly effective method of improving the experience for users with disabilities.

9. The page does not contain harmful flashing elements, i.e. interstitials.

10. You can zoom in and out effectively while still only scrolling in one direction.

Here is a full accessibility checklist that can seamlessly be added to a technical SEO audit.

Be the one to help your company address your user’s accessibility needs. Serve the public in this way, and enjoy the boost in reputation you will receive, and watch how your bottom line increases.

GenAI and the Future of Branding: The Crucial Role of the Knowledge Graph

The one thing that brand managers, company owners, SEOs, and marketers have in common is the desire to have a very strong brand because it’s a win-win for everyone. Nowadays, from an SEO perspective, having a strong brand allows you to do more than just dominate the SERP — it also means you can be part of chatbot answers.

Generative AI (GenAI) is the technology shaping chatbots, like Bard, Bingchat, ChatGPT, and search engines, like Bing and Google. GenAI is a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) that can create content at the click of a button (text, audio, and video). Both Bing and Google use GenAI in their search engines to improve their search engine answers, and both have a related chatbot (Bard and Bingchat). As a result of search engines using GenAI, brands need to start adapting their content to this technology, or else risk decreased online visibility and, ultimately, lower conversions.

As the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. GenAI technology comes with a pitfall – hallucinations. Hallucinations are a phenomenon in which generative AI models provide responses that look authentic but are, in fact, fabricated. Hallucinations are a big problem that affects anybody using this technology.

One solution to this problem comes from another technology called a ‘Knowledge Graph.’ A Knowledge Graph is a type of database that stores information in graph format and is used to represent knowledge in a way that is easy for machines to understand and process.

Before delving further into this issue, it’s imperative to understand from a user perspective whether investing time and energy as a brand in adapting to GenAI makes sense.

Should my brand adapt to Generative AI?

To understand how GenAI can influence brands, the first step is to understand in which circumstances people use search engines and when they use chatbots.

As mentioned, both options use GenAI, but search engines still leave a bit of space for traditional results, while chatbots are entirely GenAI. Fabrice Canel brought information on how people use chatbots and search engines to marketers’ attention during Pubcon.

The image below demonstrates that when people know exactly what they want, they will use a search engine, whereas when people sort of know what they want, they will use chatbots. Now, let’s go a step further and apply this knowledge to search intent. We can assume that when a user has a navigational query, they would use search engines (Google/Bing), and when they have a commercial investigation query, they would typically ask a chatbot.

Image source: Type of intent/Pubcon Fabrice Canel

The information above comes with some significant consequences:

1. When users write a brand or product name into a search engine, you want your business to dominate the SERP. You want the complete package: GenAI experience (that pushes the user to the buying step of a funnel), your website ranking, a knowledge panel, a Twitter Card, maybe Wikipedia, top stories, videos, and everything else that can be on the SERP.

Aleyda Solis on Twitter showed what the GenAI experience looks like for the term “nike sneakers”:

2. When users ask chatbots questions, they typically want their brand to be listed in the answers. For example, if you are Nike and a user goes to Bard and writes “best sneakers”, you will want your brand/product to be there.

3. When you ask a chatbot a question, related answers are given at the end of the original answer. Those questions are important to note, as they often help push users down your sales funnel or provide clarification to questions regarding your product or brand. As a consequence, you want to be able to control the related questions that the chatbot proposes.

Now that we know why brands should make an effort to adapt, it’s time to look at the issues that this technology brings before diving into solutions and what brands should do to ensure success.

What are the pitfalls of Generative AI?

The academic paper Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap extensively explains the problems of GenAI. However, before starting, let’s clarify the difference between Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Bard (Google chatbot), and Language Models for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA).

LLMs are a type of GenAI model that predicts the “next word,” Bard is a specific LLM chatbot developed by Google AI, and LaMDA is an LLM that is specifically designed for dialogue applications.

To make it clear, Bard was based initially on LaMDA (now on PaLM), but that doesn’t mean that all Bard’s answers were coming just from LamDA. If you want to learn more about GenAI, you can take Google's introductory course on Generative AI.

As explained in the previous paragraph, LLM predicts the next word. This is based on probability. Let’s look at the image below, which shows an example from the Google video What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?

Considering the sentence that was written, it predicts the highest chance of the next word. Another option could have been the garden was full of beautiful “butterflies.” However, the model estimated that “flowers” had the highest probability. So it selected “flowers.”

Image source: YouTube: What Are Large Language Models (LLMs)?

Let’s come back to the main point here, the pitfall.

The pitfalls can be summarized in three points according to the paper Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap:

1. “Despite their success in many applications, LLMs have been criticized for their lack of factual knowledge.” What this means is that the machine can’t recall facts. As a result, it will invent an answer. This is a hallucination.
   
   

2. “As black-box models, LLMs are also criticized for lacking interpretability. LLMs represent knowledge implicitly in their parameters. It is difficult to interpret or validate the knowledge obtained by LLMs.” This means that, as a human, we don’t know how the machine arrived at a conclusion/decision because it used probability.
   
   

3. “LLMs trained on general corpus might not be able to generalize well to specific domains or new knowledge due to the lack of domain-specific knowledge or new training data.” If a machine is trained in the luxury domain, for example, it will not be adapted to the medical domain.

The repercussions of these problems for brands is that chatbots could invent information about your brand that is not real. They could potentially say that a brand was rebranded, invent information about a product that a brand does not sell, and much more. As a result, it’s good practice to test chatbots with everything brand-related.

This is not just a problem for brands but also for Google and Bing, so they have to find a solution. The solution comes from the Knowledge Graph.

What is a Knowledge Graph?

One of the most famous Knowledge Graphs in SEO is the Google Knowledge Graph, and Google defines it: “Our database of billions of facts about people, places, and things. The Knowledge Graph allows us to answer factual questions such as ‘How tall is the Eiffel Tower?’ or ‘Where were the 2016 Summer Olympics held?’ Our goal with the Knowledge Graph is for our systems to discover and surface publicly known, factual information when it’s determined to be useful.”

The two key pieces of information to keep in mind in this definition are:

1. It’s a database

2. That stores factual information

This is precisely the opposite of GenAI. Consequently, the solution to solving any of the previously mentioned problems, and especially hallucinations, is to use the Knowledge Graph to verify the information coming from GenAI.

Obviously, this looks very easy in theory, but it’s not in practice. This is because the two technologies are very different. However, in the paper ‘LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications,’ it looks like Google is already doing this. Naturally, if Google is doing this, we could also expect Bing to be doing the same.

The Knowledge Graph has gained even more value for brands because now the information is verified using the Knowledge Graph, meaning that you want your brand to be in the Knowledge Graph.

What a brand in the Knowledge Graph would look like

To be in the Knowledge Graph, a brand needs to be an entity. A machine is a machine; it can’t understand a brand as a human would. This is where the concept of entity comes in.

We could simplify the concept by saying an entity is a name that has a number assigned to it and which can be read by the machine. For instance, I like luxury watches; I could spend hours just looking at them.

So let’s take a famous luxury watch brand that most of you probably know — Rolex. Rolex’s machine-readable ID for the Google knowledge graph is /m/023_fz. That means that when we go to a search engine, and write the brand name “Rolex”, the machine transforms this into /m/023_fz.

Now that you understand what an entity is, let’s use a more technical definition given by Krisztian Balog in the book Entity-Oriented Search: “An entity is a uniquely identifiable object or thing, characterized by its name(s), type(s), attributes, and relationships to other entities.”

Let’s break down this definition using the Rolex example:

• Unique identifier = This is the entity; ID: /m/023_fz

• Name = Rolex

• Type = This makes reference to the semantic classification, in this case ‘Thing, Organization, Corporation.’

• Attributes = These are the characteristics of the entity, such as when the company was founded, its headquarters, and more. In the case of Rolex, the company was founded in 1905 and is headquartered in Geneva.

All this information (and much more) related to Rolex will be stored in the Knowledge Graph. However, the magic part of the Knowledge Graph is the connections between entities.

For example, the owner of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, is also an entity, and he was born in Kulmbach, which is also an entity. So, now we can see some connections in the Knowledge Graph. And these connections go on and on. However, for our example, we will take just three entities, i.e., Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, Kulmbach.

From these connections, we can see how important it is for a brand to become an entity and to provide the machine with all relevant information, which will be expanded on in the section “How can a brand maximize its chances of being on a chatbot or being part of the GenAI experience?”

However, first let’s analyze LaMDA , the old Google Large Language Model used on BARD, to understand how GenAI and the Knowledge Graph work together.

LaMDA and the Knowledge Graph

I recently spoke to Professor Shirui Pan from Griffith University, who was the leading professor for the paper “Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap,” and confirmed that he also believes that Google is using the Knowledge Graph to verify information.

For instance, he pointed me to this sentence in the document LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications:

“We demonstrate that fine-tuning with annotated data and enabling the model to consult external knowledge sources can lead to significant improvements towards the two key challenges of safety and factual grounding.”

I won’t go into detail about safety and grounding, but in short, safety implies that the model respects human values and grounding (which is the most important thing for brands), meaning that the model should consult external knowledge sources (an information retrieval system, a language translator, and a calculator).

Below is an example of how the process works. It’s possible to see from the image below that the Green box is the output from the information retrieval system tool. TS stands for toolset. Google created a toolset that expects a string (a sequence of characters) as inputs and outputs a number, a translation, or some kind of factual information. In the paper LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications, there are some clarifying examples: the calculator takes “135+7721” and outputs a list containing [“7856”].

Similarly, the translator can take “Hello in French” and output [“Bonjour”]. Finally, the information retrieval system can take “How old is Rafael Nadal?” and output [“Rafael Nadal / Age / 35”]. The response “Rafael Nadal / Age / 35” is a typical response we can get from a Knowledge Graph. As a result, it’s possible to deduce that Google uses its Knowledge Graph to verify the information.

Image source: LaMDA: Large Language Models for Dialog Applications

This brings me to the conclusion that I had already anticipated: being in the Knowledge Graph is becoming increasingly important for brands. Not only to have a rich SERP experience with a Knowledge Panel but also for new and emerging technologies. This gives Google and Bing yet another reason to present your brand instead of a competitor.

How can a brand maximize its chances of being part of a chatbot’s answers or being part of the GenAI experience?

In my opinion, one of the best approaches is to use the Kalicube process created by Jason Barnard, which is based on three steps: Understanding, Credibility, and Deliverability. I recently co-authored a white paper with Jason on content creation for GenAI; below is a summary of the three steps.

1. Understand your solution. This makes reference to becoming an entity and explaining to the machine who you are and what you do. As a brand, you need to make sure that Google or Bing have an understanding of your brand, including its identity, offerings, and target audience. In practice, this means having a machine-readable ID and feeding the machine with the right information about your brand and ecosystem. Remember the Rolex example where we concluded that the Rolex readable ID is /m/023_fz. This step is fundamental.

2. In the Kalicube process, credibility is another word for the more complex concept of E-E-A-T. This means that if you create content, you need to demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in the subject of the content piece.

A simple way of being perceived as more credible by a machine is by including data or information that can be verified on your website. For instance, if a brand has existed for 50 years, it could write on its website “We’ve been in business for 50 years.” This information is precious but needs to be verified by Google or Bing. Here is where external sources come in handy. In the Kalicube process, this is called corroborating the sources. For example, if you have a Wikipedia page with the date of founding of the company, this information can be verified. This can be applied to all contexts.

If we take an e-commerce business with client reviews on its website, and the client reviews are excellent, but there is nothing confirming this externally, then it’s a bit suspicious. But, if the internal reviews are the same as the ones on Trustpilot, for example, the brand gains credibility!

So, the key to credibility is to provide information on your website first, and that information to be corroborated externally.

The interesting part is that all this generates a cycle because by working on convincing search engines of your credibility both onsite and offsite, you will also convince your audience from the top to the bottom of your acquisition funnel.

3. The content you create needs to be deliverable. Deliverability aims to provide an excellent customer experience for each touchpoint of the buyer decision journey. This is primarily about producing targeted content in the correct format and secondly about the technical side of the website.

An excellent starting point is using the Pedowitz Group's Customer Journey model and to produce content for each step. Let’s look at an example of a funnel on BingChat that, as a brand, you want to control.

A user could write: “Can I dive with luxury watches?” As we can see from the image below, a recommended follow-up question suggested by the chatbot is “Which are some good diving watches?”

If a user clicks on that question, they get a list of luxury diving watches. As you can imagine, if you sell diving watches, you want to be included on the list.

In a few clicks, the chatbot has brought a user from a general question to a potential list of watches that they could buy.

As a brand, you need to produce content for all the touchpoints of the buyer decision journey and figure out the most effective way to produce this content, whether it’s in the form of FAQs, how-tos, white papers, blogs, or anything else.

GenAI is a powerful technology that comes with its strengths and weaknesses. One of the main challenges brands face is hallucinations when it comes to using this technology. As demonstrated by the paper LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications, a possible solution to this problem is using Knowledge Graphs to verify GenAI outputs. Being in the Google Knowledge Graph for a brand is much more than having the opportunity to have a much richer SERP. It also provides an opportunity to maximize their chances of being on Google’s new GenAI experience and chatbots — ensuring that the answers regarding their brand are accurate.

This is why, from a brand perspective, being an entity and being understood by Google and Bing is a must and no more a should!

How to Repurpose Your Old Content – Whiteboard Friday

Breathe new life into your existing content. Join Ross Simmonds in this Whiteboard Friday as he shares strategies to transform your old content into valuable assets that drive results and boost brand authority.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Howdy, "Whiteboard Friday" fans.

I am super excited to chat with you today about how to take something that we all have, you might smell it, you might smell it, it is content that is burning money in your pocket, content that you actually invested in that is collecting dust, content that no longer drives results, no longer does anything for your business, but you wish, you wish it could bring some type of life for your business, some type of joy to your business, some type of ROI for your business. And in today's "Whiteboard Friday," that's exactly what we're gonna be diving into.

Your old content is burning money

Were gonna be talking about how that content that is just burning money, just sitting on your site, not collecting any revenue, not driving any sales, driving no links, driving no results for your business, can be brought back to life. That's right, we're going to go to town on that old content, give it new life, bring it back, and ultimately give you the ability to unlock new levels of growth for content that you thought was dead.

Let's jump into it. So we're all there. We have all had content that we've invested in. We've all heard a guru speak onstage at a conference and say, "Content is king. Write more content. Create more content." And we've listened. We've developed tons of content as business owners, as marketers, as CMOs. We've invested in these assets, but the ROI of some of them has started to deprecate. It's started to go down.

At one point, it was up and to the right and everything looked beautiful, but now, eh, it's starting to tank. It is starting to tank. It's no longer driving results. The traffic is no longer there. It's no longer on page one of the SERP. You are starting to see that content that at one point was a cash cow is no longer driving the results that you and your business wants. How can you bring these pieces back to life? We're gonna talk about it.

In addition, you might've had a few pieces that were a one-hit wonder. When they hit the internet, when they went live, the internet went wild. The leads were flowing. The revenue was flowing. The links were flowing. Everything was flowing in the right direction. But time went on and those pieces that were at one point a hit, that resonated with people, that people embraced, that people shared, that people talked about, those pieces are no longer generating any buzz for you. They're no longer generating any results for you. We're gonna talk about how to bring those one-hit wonders back to life.

And finally, there might be a piece that you, your team, your organization created early on that really communicated some of the key messages that you want your audience to hear, some of the key stories, some of the key ideas, some of the key concepts that truly understand and communicate the value that you bring to the market, the pain points that your customers are having. And these key messages are messages that you want to get back out there. It's a key message that at one point resonated so closely with your audience that you feel like your team may have lost the way and have lost sight of the key message that you wanted to articulate.

How do you bring all of these pieces back to life? Things that are currently just getting zzzs, people are sleeping on them, they're not reading them, they're not engaging with them. It's essentially money just being burned because you invested time or energy in them. How do you bring 'em back to life? That's what we're gonna talk about.

We're gonna talk about how you can do that with text content, with video content, and with audio content. So these are the three primary types of content that you can repurpose, that you can repackage, on the internet.

Text content falls into the category of things like blog posts, of white papers, of e-books, resources that you created that, again, were very valuable at the time that they went live, but maybe got crickets, maybe were a one-hit wonder, or maybe they were ranking number one and now they're starting to tank. How do you bring those pieces back to life?

There's a few things that you can do with text content that will let you win. Similarly with video content. One of my favorite formats is video content because it's so versatile. That's exactly what you're looking at now. Kinda meta, but you're looking at a video asset. These video assets can be used still today. A webinar that you might've created, a actually just talking head video where you set up a camera and you talked into the screen. All of these types of assets can be repurposed. They can be remixed, and they can be reshared on your various channels. We're gonna talk about that.

Audio content is the exact same thing. There is less versatility with audio content, but audio content is powerful. But it's oftentimes misunderstood that these podcasts that you might've created two years ago, three years ago, can be repackaged even today.

How to bring your text content back to life

So let's start with text-based content. Text-based content is one of the fundamentals of the internet. When you were thinking about text-based content, let's say you have a blog post. Do you just press publish and call it a day? No, you need to take that old blog post that you created two years ago and then start to share it on social. And you do that with social media posts.

So you are going to start putting up posts on social directly on your various channels, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's X, whether it's Facebook, you name it. Whatever channel it is that you're using, you're going to take that asset and you're gonna promote it. You're gonna amplify it. You're gonna share it on those channels. Then, we have things like carousels. Carousels are a very engaging way to tell a story about a piece of content that you created but tell it in a way that the user, the audience, the people who are on these channels, might actually get value from. What do I mean by that?

So let's say, for example, you have a blog post that are five simple things that every SEO needs to know to succeed. Every single one of those slides in a carousel could represent one of those five ideas. So as someone scrolls and they start to swipe their thumb, as they go from one carousel screen to the next, they're reading a summarized version of that blog post that you created. And when you start to share those on social and use hashtags that are relevant to your ICP, it gives you the ability to now take an old asset that was burning hole in your pocket, not generating results, but give it the ability to reach new people, to reach an audience that might not have been online at the same time when you first published that piece, but also have a personal connection to more interactive content and they want to engage via a carousel. You can use tools like Canva to be able to do this, and it is an amazing tool that I strongly recommend that you check out.

Email content. All those old blog posts, a lot of brands make the mistake of pressing publish on these pieces, and then, they just call it a day. They don't go anywhere. You have people who are currently on your site probably downloading things, signing up for things. Use your email sequences to reshare these old blog posts that you created that are so important to you. Because by doing that, you're able to connect with people who are meeting you and interacting with you for the very first time. And you can bring that old content, especially if it's a one-hit wonder, and bring it back to life for your audience to love, care about, and see again.

How to bring your video content back to life

Now, another type of asset is video content. If you have blog posts, if you have e-books, if you have content that you've developed from the text lens, why don't you take that same text and turn it into a script? Turn it into a script that you can read on camera. Turn it into a script that is worth reading, worth talking about, and if you are personally not like in the whole idea of wanting to be on camera and that kind of weirds you out, then instead, maybe you do a faceless video where it's just your audio with animations in the background. But video content is an amazing play for you to repurpose, repackage some of those old text pieces that you developed and then bring them back to life.

What do you think the second most popular search engine in the world is? It's YouTube. YouTube is going to give you the ability to now take those blog posts that you created, that you hoped would rank in Google, and now rank in the second most popular search engine in the world. And it just so happens that Google owns YouTube, so eh, you can win on both sites. That is the play. Now, that's text content. When you get that video asset created, if you create it and you develop it, now you're into a trifecta of situation. Because you can now take that video content that you developed and you can turn it into a whole bunch of new content as well.

What do I mean? So that video content asset that you just created, a new video, new script that you just recorded, it's amazing. Take the audio file, extract it out of the video, and start to upload that thing to Apple Podcasts, upload it to Spotify, upload it to all of the various podcasting platforms, and let it sing. Let it reach new audiences. Optimize that for search on the podcast platform and let more people hear the audio that was in your video on these different channels.

Now, you now have two different assets. You have a podcast episode. You have that, and you have the video. Take these assets and embed them into blog posts that you have produced. That same blog post that you wrote a few years ago, update the dates, add new info, and now embed either the YouTube video that you created or the podcast audio that you created directly into that piece. And now, you have a more interactive experience for the user and the reader who is consuming that content, right? Then, once you've done that, you should be looking at pages on your site that are already ranking high.

If you have pieces of content that are ranking well, that are generating organic traffic, take these video assets, take these podcasts, embed them in these pieces so those pieces get additional reach, get additional eyeballs. And it ultimately will influence your ranking in the Spotifys, in the Apples, and in YouTube itself.

Now, if you've got video content and you are starting from ground zero with video, let's say you did not embrace the idea of going from text to video, you just happen to have video content, because over the years, again, prior to it being set on fire with just like no results, you were investing in YouTube. Let's say you were investing in webinars. A lot of brands create webinars. They put them behind a gate. They get a bunch of signups and then, they never actually use them again. Take those video assets that you've created and run this exact same playbook, folks. Run the exact same playbook. Take those old webinars, turn them into podcasts, start embedding them into blog posts, or write long-form content based off of the material within that video. Take that, an export of the transcript from the video that you just created or that you created years ago, and start to transcribe it. Rewrite all of that into content in a way that is human, friendly, people would love, people would adore, and get them to consume it.

Then, the next thing you wanna do is start chopping up that video. You wanna look for key moments within the video that you developed years ago, or basically, right off of that text, you wanna take certain clips from that and start to repackage and repurpose them. Identify a few key moments where you're saying something special, saying something impactful and important, and then clip it and then start sharing that on social. And the whole cycle begins again.

How to bring your audio content back to life

Now, another type of content that comes out of this that we talked about was podcasts, audio content. Take clips of those audio, those parts of your video, and start to chop them up into audiograms. An audiogram is essentially a visual that shows the voice wave. So again, if you're not somebody who likes to be on camera, it's a great alternative. And start distributing those on social. Share them on all of your platforms. Share them out, hashtag, let people consume them, engage. Also, turn those podcasts into long-form text, and then, again, embed them into your blog posts.

Folks, this is the playbook you need to apply to these pieces of content that you invested so much time and energy into. And if you can, run through these sequences and bring them back to life, update them, improve them, and start to repurpose them.

Gain greater return on investment, increase your brand authority, and skyrocket

You will be able to see new ROI, new revenue, new results from content that you created decades ago. And when you start to see this, you're ultimately going to start to see an increase in the amount of people talking about your brand. You're gonna see an increase in the amount of people interested in buying your solution, your product, your service, whatever it may be. And from this, by having a content engine that doesn't let content just collect dust and get on fire, you're also gonna have the ability to increase your BA.

Your brand authority in the market is going to have the ability to start to rise, right? That is the ultimate goal. You want to increase your brand authority, because if you can do that, then you are ultimately going to have net new leads, net new opportunities, and you're gonna set yourself up for long-term success, which is the game that all of us should be playing. And when you do that, you're gonna essentially set yourself up as a rocket ship. You're gonna be heading to the Moon. You are no longer going to be trying to grab scraps, and you will no longer be in the rat race of always trying to figure out what content you should create next. Because the content that you should be optimizing, the content that you should be producing has already probably been created.

The next step is simple: go back, do an audit, identify your one-hit wonders, identify the depreciating ROI assets that you invested in before, identify the key messages that you wanna reiterate to your audience. And once you have those, start to run them through this engine and give your content new life. I'm Ross Simmonds. Thank you so much for checking out my "Whiteboard Friday." I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you on the internet.