Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, I'm Nate Turner, co founder and CEO of 10 Speed. Today I'm joined again with co founder Kevin King and we are excited to be jumping back in the studio after a few weeks and really going to focus today on a lot of things that have been happening lately, I guess, kind of like some stuff that's dropped. So coming out of HubSpot's inbound conference, some data studies and big state of SEO report from search Engine Journal is kind of the. The bulk of it. So all things you've potentially seen flying around on the Internet and LinkedIn, but going to kind of run through those today and chat through what they mean for marketing teams and marketers trying to do their jobs today. Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Exciting stuff.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, super exciting.
Yeah. So Inbound is the name of HubSpot's conference? Yes, I've been a couple times. You've been a couple times. It's always been in Boston. It was in San Francisco this year, first time, switched it up.
And I think one of the big things coming out of there was people talking about how they dropped the concept of loop marketing.
So they were famously the ones who pioneered the concept of inbound marketing and in many ways seems like kind of their way to try to stay on inbound 2.0. Yeah, like evolve and realize that the idea of the funnel just doesn't really make sense anymore. So trying to stay relevant.
So they pitched it as four pieces being express, tailor, amplify and evolve. And you are able to move throughout that infinity loop at any point, jump in at any point, move through it. We'll link article and video explaining it in more detail. But just wanted to kind of react and think through some of that. So Kevin, I don't know if you want to just start off and just give some of the initial reactions to all the buzz around that.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's logical.
Makes sense HubSpot would come out with, you know, the next like trying to be like trend setting framework for how marketing is supposed to be in the digital age. I guess. I don't know. It's because it's not necessarily. You can put it over content marketing, you can put over organic marketing, but I think it applies to all channels and within each of those specific sections of the infinity loop, it does touch on specific channels. So I mean, I think, yeah, it's, it's in a logical evolution to some extent. I think it's not super innovative in, I guess in general, in general.
But like, I, I don't want to just come off super, like, critical of it. Like, I think it makes sense that they would be someone to have that put plant a flag and be like, hey, this is the way you should be thinking about it. And there's some good. Good and bad things about it. Let's just say just not to be overly critical. So I'll say stop there to let you react a little bit. Yeah.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: I think it's. I think it's dumb.
I agree. I think they have to do something.
And when I say that, like, to guess to. To pull it apart a bit, it's not groundbreaking in any way.
I think it's kind of just an attempt to.
To brand what people already have been doing for a while. You know, understand who your audience is, tailor some of the stuff you're doing. It's just, it was very like, I think people have moved off of the funnel concept and understand that, like, buyers are not on this, like, very nice and neat linear journey for a really long time.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: And so thinking about that, I feel like this is just sort of an attempt to heavily plug their product and kind of instill some AI use cases at each turn.
Is really kind of what it felt like more than like, we're showing you the way forward on the world of marketing and growth.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: I agree. I think there's also some concepts being conflated.
Like, even what with what they're talking about here, even just kind of talking about this in the same breath is like the funnel, which I get, is not like a linear journey. And lots of people haven't talked about that in that way for a long time. Is that like, the whole framework isn't even a funnel. Like, it's not like they're saying this is the new way you should think about funnel. The funnel, it's more of a, like, workflow for how you create content across all channels.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: So it's like, I don't know, nothing.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: To do with the buyer journey.
No, like, it's. It's more.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: And I think that that's operator. Yeah. And I think if anything, it comes off more confusing. Even if you, you know, take your. Take a look at the video and explainer and everything, it kind of speaks to it in those terms, though, that it is this way that you get, like, it says the old way of, of how brand people discover brands is through this old traditional funnel. But this is how we should be thinking about it. And then it shifts to the express, tailor, amplify, evolve concept. But that's not a natural shift from funnel to this. It's if anything, this two different things. Yeah. You could argue this still is a way you should have been thinking about this in this way and a lot of you should have been thinking about this this way for a long time. Even to support the traditional funnel.
Yes.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the part where I think I got hung up on it. So yeah, it's a good point that it is different because I think they talked about inbound before as like attract, engage and then like retain or something.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Like that for the. Oh, for the traditional funnel.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of what they had talked about as like the thing. And yeah, again, so like they created this concept ultimately of like helping people understand like, that just was not a thing before, like, very much kudos to them for creating kind of the world of inbound marketing. In many ways, I think that's just a tough sophomore album dilemma to try to follow up that.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Although they didn't follow this up as quickly as a sophomore album.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Correct. Yes.
So, yeah, I think it's.
I saw varying takes on people reacting to it and whatnot, and I just don't think it's.
Nothing about it screams like, this is the next 10 to 15 year. I don't anticipate CEOs being like, are we doing loop marketing? Should we be doing loop marketing?
That is just not a thing at all.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, they're making fetch. Trying to make fetch happen.
I think the other thing that's specific to it, when you get more into the details of. Of what it is, it's AI plays a big part through all the loop.
And you know, if you look at each stage, so it's like, right, Express, Taylor, amplify, evolve. It is. I mean it is an AI playbook. It even says in some of the descriptions. Yeah, but it's all like, each stage is quite literally a.
This is how you should use AI to inform some sort of content creation or targeting throughout this like, workflow, which is. Is not a bad thing to go out and educate. But like, yeah, I don't think it's going to be. It's going to be something that everyone is championing for a long time. If anything, most people just be like, are we using AI today in certain areas of how we're creating our content? But yeah, yeah.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: I mean, for two examples in like if you were to watch the loop marketing video, one she says, you know, like, I've pulled six months worth of paid ads performance data and I'm going to give it to AI and have it like, tell me how to optimize My campaigns, like, you know, change your ad sets or rules or targeting or whatever.
Makes sense, logical.
And then the other was like, I'm going to feed it a bunch of reviews that this company has gotten and have it like, update my positioning to like differentiation, voice of the customer.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: And like, yeah, those cool. Like, I, you know, I don't think that in any way that's like novel to loop marketing and everything else. Loop marketing should be pretty straightforward. I guess I can't claim that everyone already does it, but know who your audience is, figure out how to tailor and segment appropriately, promote it to them, do the right things and then analyze the data, make adjustments and start over. So that, yeah, that should be a pretty typical ongoing marketing motion for most people.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And like, again, just those, the, the things that are mapped to each stage in terms of tactics, like what you said around feeding it, reviews to incorporate into update positioning, all those things are, are good advice. Especially it. Maybe it's more for where you're at on the marketing spectrum. It's like if you're now just getting in and this is the first thing you're learning as a marketer, I could see it being a pretty helpful concept. Sure. But like, yeah, I don't know if like you're trying, if you're running a play, if you're, you know, trying to update your strategy at a series BC company that's been around and has tons of content, has a successful program, they're gonna go like, oh, have you seen this loop marketing framework?
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. That's where I kind of get hung up on is it's. I agree. If you're, if you're just coming into the industry, you know, zero to two years of experience or something like that, like, I think that there's good stuff to grow from that. I don't think anyone is, you know, bringing this to a leadership meeting or an executive meeting on how their company can grow 40% again next year.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Because I think if I were a CMO and someone said this is how we're going to grow, I'd say you should already be doing all this.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: And again, I think this comes back to your point on it's different. It's not like inventing a new way of growing a business. It's just more of an operating.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yes. It's also to call it what it is too. It's is a content marketing play. There are things in here that are promoting HubSpot's products within each stage. There's specific functionality within HubSpot that they're using to map to each thing, like AI, newer AI functionality or like their CRM functionality or something.
So like loot marketing works really well if you're using HubSpot.
So that's something which I, I wouldn't ne. I wouldn't not advocate for hopes of HubSpot's powerful and everything.
But I think the other interesting thing about it is when you really look at is this isn't like a hot take necessarily, but like I think it is trying to push the, the industry shifter narrative around like marketers becoming more of a generalist or like a unicorn. Because if you are one marketer that does the way it's framed in the video, doing all those things, like in one stage, I think it is in the personalization or stage. It's like that, you know, segmenting your email marketing campaigns and all that like within, you know, 30 seconds of the video, it's like displacing like a whole, like a email marketing function to some extent down to one marketer.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: But also being like the person who should be creating the content before that and all that. I don't know, I think it's, it's. That's where it's kind of like eye opening is that it seems to be kind of, you know, maybe amplifying that. Like you don't need as many resources from market. Which also makes sense too, to some extent. But.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Fair point. Yeah, Yeah, I, I didn't think about it through that lens, but I suppose that is potentially what they're banking on or, or see in their own data is like a, an increase in single marketing. Single person marketing teams.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Using their platform and doing a lot of that.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: But that's why I think it also seems to be probably targeting that, hey, you're just getting started with marketing kind of thing.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Yes.
Okay. So I mean, the only other thing I would ask is do you think they'll rename their conference from Inbound to Loop?
[00:13:11] Speaker B: That is great. Yeah.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Or do you think it'll be like just kind of this thing that doesn't get a lot of traction and.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's sad that I didn't think of that throughout all of this prep.
Maybe. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I mean like in a lot of the materials that promote it and especially how the community is perceiving it, it is a, like either inbound 2.0, which could. Can this facilitate them keeping Inbound? But there's a lot of people saying like, you know, inbound is Dead. Or the inbound funnel is quote, unquote, dead. This is like the new way to look at it. So I don't know, they might have created a. A little bit of a mess on their hands.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Time will tell.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Loop. Are you going to the Loop conference? I don't know. I don't know how that sounds.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess shifting gears a little bit.
You know, we've talked a decent amount about Geo LLMs, a lot of that shift, and we've talked a bit about even just seeing in our own client data how a lot of the traffic that does come from the LLM that you pick up in Google Analytics or whatever platform seems to be more qualified.
It's something that we've talked about.
In one of these sessions.
AMSIV released a study where they specifically dug in to try to understand does LLM traffic convert better than organic?
And I appreciate they actually do have like. It is a very well done study.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's awesome.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: They share methodology and all that stuff.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: One of the better pieces on this topic.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yep. So we'll link that.
But it's just clear it's not just someone's opinion. You know, there's a lot there.
Should we bury the lead or come out ahead?
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Lead with it. Don't bury it.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: I think the interesting thing is while there is a lot of data, I applaud them for publishing it still because the conclusion is it's inconclusive.
It appeared that there was slightly better conversion rates from traffic from LLMs, but nothing that was statistically significant. So I think they could easily just scrapped it and said, all right, there's not really anything here, but I think that that is useful for a lot of people. And that's why we wanted to talk about a little bit because everyone's just still grasping for context and understanding the shift and everything that's happening. And so even inconclusive data is still helpful in kind of painting that picture.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because within that Article 2, it talks about how organic still drives. It says approximately 32% of sessions. Basically, like LLM traffic is still less than 1% on most sites. So even though it's inconclusive, there's really interesting data points that should hopefully bring not relief, but like, should help justify not scrapping everything you're doing and giving good talking points to like your leadership teams on where you should be focused.
Because I think there is still just, which we've talked about a lot, people abandoning ship on certain things that are going to hurt them in the long run.
One thing we didn't add into this, but this pairs nicely with, I think it was last month there's been some other articles talking about how LLM traffic has actually gone down and like search has been up and all that. So like I don't know, hard to see where it'll go. But I think the one less than 1% of LLM, less than 1% of traffic being driven by LLMs is a very important aspect of all this.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's, it's interesting how it's evolved because to some extent there is a little bit of a denominator issue as well where I think it's possible that you still have more.
There's just a lot of learning curve for people using LLMs and so are there potentially a lot more clicks that are kind of pulling down that conversion rate? Ultimately it is better. But separately I think that the less than 1% of total site traffic, to me that just kind of makes sense because most of what people are using ChatGPT or Gemini or any of those for is not necessarily to try to get to websites.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: In a navigating way. It's like you're getting what you need without clicking through. So it just makes sense that it's not going to represent as big of a traffic but is a bigger piece in terms of like people being aware of your brand and understanding that.
However the, so it's, it's not a big percentage of the traffic.
But also if you think about whatever, what's the best project management tool for X type of company?
It will list companies but the links and the citation are not always that company as well. So it may be like I'm going to take you to this listicle that explains that. So there's also that aspect of like the logical thing is to go to search organic search and go like search that brand.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: So I think that's where you have to then watch brand queries and how that's shaping in organic traffic as well. I just don't like. I think it's really good and it's a really good talking point. I just don't know that like traffic from LLMs feels that significant to me.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Significant in terms of like its impact.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Well, it's just not a very, it's not like a one to one apples to apples thing. Like right. If I search best project management tool in Google, here's what I get. I'll click through search that in ChatGPT I might get, you know, some sort of Listicle from HubSpot. And then I go from there and it's referral traffic or I just search the company.
So I think that aspect of it is hard to fully compare them or fully diminish.
Like, oh, it's just, it's less than 1%.
Don't worry about it. And not that I'm saying that that's what you were saying. No, I don't think you were, but.
But yeah, just the more I've thought about it from reading this study, that's like some of the stuff that was coming to mind was just there's some really challenging aspects of how to really interpret what's meaningful and what's not.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: I think it's still early in the sense that.
I agree, I agree with you.
I think this is the experimentation phase. Right.
You should probably just still continue to see how you get visibility in them and like, what does that traffic do for you? It's always, I think it's probably going to be a business by business case. Right. But if anything, I'd say one of the good takeaways for me, and it's kind of what I said at top is just like this push to be like all in on aio, which we've had plenty of conversations with prospects and businesses we work with on the viability of that, is that like, you should not be doing that just now, like experiment, but, you know, focus on the things that have been working for you already because right now this is not statistically significant to be showing you that it's going to do anything meaningful for your business.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Aio and just like all the GEO and stuff.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah, geo, yeah, yeah. I'm getting them all mixed up.
Yeah, it's. It's interesting. Oh, but the other thing too, I. They just released, you know, a few weeks ago or that grouping in GA4 for LLM referrals.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: So if anything, there's a cleaner way to track this now moving forward. That was going to be one of the, I think clear, better, actionable takeaways now is like, if anything, there's less of a black box on that traffic for every business because you can actually see it now, which is a good step forward in terms of like transparency and understanding of how it's performing versus.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: How we were doing it and knowing what to look for and, you know, having the filters.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And most, yeah. Like most businesses being scrappy right now to like build dashboards. We talked about in an episode a few episodes ago, like, hey, build a dashboard, get scrappy and all that. And it's like, well you still be able to have a dashboard but now you might, it might be easier to do so now.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And then you know we've talked before as well like the tools and our newsletter just went out this week.
Newsletter TenSpeed IE talks a little bit about that middle ground that's difficult between marketers being able to vibe code something that's fully effective and useful versus needing to use off the shelf sas. And the example that I used was some of the stuff we were working on with LLM visibility reporting. And so yeah I think there's some of that as well that it's good that that's been updated in Google Analytics but now kind of still need that other side of the puzzle and understanding LLM visibility even when there's not clicks where you're showing up.
Yeah, you're showing up all that.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And again I want to be clear, be, be experimenting, be trying to optimize for this channel. This is not a like don't do it. This data and this, these numbers are saying like oh, it's not worth it. I think the more you understand it now, I think a better way to say it is that that experimentation takeaway like this is the time to do create a lane consistent enough internally or however whoever you're working with to make sure that when it does start to probably it will pick up at some point it's going to probably make up, it'll make up a bigger percentage.
I think that's the natural assumption. But is just future proofing yourself there to make sure that like you could potentially be the number one within your category or something or whatever what it is for the queries and prompts that people are using to find your type of product.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. In no way was I, was I suggesting.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Totally, totally.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Well I think that's a good pivot. So Search Engine Journal did their release their State of SEO 2026 and so we had a chance to look through that.
They surveyed 371 mostly senior SEO professionals, mostly senior.
Most of the 371 is what I mean by that.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: And most of the questions were framed around you know, over, like over the last 12 months. There are obviously some that are forward looking that we'll get into. There's 10 we'll, we'll go through them quickly. I don't want to like dwell too long and drag this out, but I think it's definitely even just compared to State of SEO 2025 is just an Interesting time to look at some of this data and kind of get some of that context. So the first one, again, this has kind of all been framed over the last 12 months.
Activities with the greatest positive impact.
First was reported as original content creation at 66%. 43% said content updates and 42% said technical SEO enhancements.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah. One in one clarifying point on that Original content creation is basically just net new content creation, right?
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, like not. Not that they. They didn't like survey or qualify creativity or unique.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Correct. Yes.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Yeah. They're. That's not.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Things that have never been created.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I think that makes sense. Like we've said before, I mean content's going to fuel everything.
Content should fuel your marketing.
Everything you create and put out into the world as a piece of content. The better you can tie back to.
To that previous point though, like a truly unique new Net new content that's going to be even better.
But also just like maintaining the. The universe of topics that you're an authority on being number two. That makes sense. That's something we advocate for.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: And do on a daily basis. And then the technical SEO enhancements, I don't know, it's. I guess at the end of the day all three just seems pretty. Pretty classic.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah. It doesn't change.
Yeah. I think that it may be just a slightly different flavor but yeah, it is like nothing really surprising there. I think if anything to me the fact that technical SEO enhancements was almost number two, just shy of content updates.
But yeah, I think certainly can keep rolling through the next was most critical tools.
56 reported analytics and performance reporting as the number one.
51% said cross functional platforms.
We know entirely what that means. And 47% said technical health and auditing.
So I think that ties pretty well with the first part. And we'll also talk a little bit about.
I think I don't need to dwell on this a lot, but I think some of the stuff we'll get into in a moment. The analytics and performance reporting is not surprising that that's kind of listed as number one.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: No.
Yeah. I think this maps well to the first one. Nothing too crazy there.
I think clarifying cross functional platforms is probably pretty important, so I'm trying to do that. But yeah, technical health and auditing, actually I say the same thing. I'm surprised that that's almost too.
I have a feeling that there's like a subtext here around these things actually being impactful because they're helping them with the GEO visibility as well.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah. I mean because yeah, over the. If it was taken recently and over the last 12 months, then we certainly are encompassing a lot of that shift in this as well. I do want to clarify nearly all these had like 8 to 10 options. I only pulled. It wasn't worth writing all the way down to the 6% said this.
So I've only pulled top three or maybe four for these.
But there certainly were more options for the folks in the survey.
Most improved outcomes, 60% said organic traffic growth, 58% said keyword rankings improvement and 35% said brand visibility increase. So this is one where I think we are seeing maybe some of that influence of LLMs coming into play here where I don't feel like in the past SEOs would have been reporting brand visibility increase as like a top three most improved outcome.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Agree.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: I think that's definitely a shift that's come about with this.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean be good to have. It would be interesting to see some sort of like adoption with those, those tools like analytics and performance reporting from the previous one is high. Obviously within there there's going to be brand visibility, performance or tools. I, I would be curious to see if like some of those are LLM AI driven tools. But yeah, I mean I think that that's a, an interesting shift for the SEO function or skill set in general is that they're reporting on that which is good. I think that's a good thing. Like it's.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Because following that up top performance measurement priorities. Sadly organic Traffic was number one, 75% and thankfully number two was qualified leads and sales conversions at 60% and then keyword visibility and rankings at 57%.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: So yeah, I think that that's the weird one here. Especially with what seems to be a growing understanding that traffic shouldn't. Traffic can be in a lot of instances of vanity metric and we're educating and consulting a lot on focusing on quality versus quantity.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: So I don't know, maybe there's more nuance to that.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, this is the one where I kind of went like, like who, who's filling this out? Because it's a little disappointing that two of the top three are.
Feel a little more old school.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Maybe it did mean mostly senior SEOs.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: That's my summary of how they broke down. Who was junior, who's senior for sure.
Yeah. So I mean great to see 60% of people saying qualified leads sales conversions five, 10 years ago. That probably wasn't nearly as high. Nope.
So that Feels logical. The other stuff feels like a little bit legacy hangover, but at the same time, it's performance measurement priorities. So you could also have a little bit of the opposite framing. That keyword visibility and rankings was a little bit more of like a defensive are, you know, we got to keep track of this. Are we losing position thing. If I wanted to give benefit of the doubt on that.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Biggest challenges to SEO success. This is where we get into the meat of it.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a good one.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah. 59%, number one said algorithm volatility and SERP disruptions makes sense. I was kind of surprised. So that was 59%. Then the next one drops down to 32% said content workflow challenges, and then 29% was difficulty measuring ROI and attribution. So a little bit pick apart here.
I personally don't feel like we need to belabor the point on algorithm changes volatility. That is known.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: But I think the one point to emphasize there is, which we do, is like, same thing with the LL endpoint. You shouldn't be putting all of your eggs in if that's the biggest challenge. I mean, SEO success, I guess it makes sense that it'd be algorithms, but also just diversify your distribution channels for organic.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, I think content workflow challenges was interesting to me.
Obviously, we're no stranger to content workflow challenges, but also feel like we've built quite a good process and team around that. So that's certainly a positive thing for our clients. Is good to leverage a smooth working content workflow and not have to try to build that. So seeing that challenge makes sense. But then the difficulty measuring ROI and attribution was why I was saying we'd kind of call back a little bit to that most important tools.
I think that's kind of where we're seeing people recognize the importance of it doesn't mean that everyone's figured out how to do it well, but certainly a lot of importance being put behind that. And as that difficulty measuring ROI and attribution, 29% saying that's their biggest challenge to SEO success.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I would. I'm actually just. I'm surprised that's not a.
I'm surprised it's three.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: I mean, there's a lot of people have more. More of a handle on it than I kind of assumed.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: Well, to some extent, you have to assume that some of the people who said the options one and two also feel the pain of roi. It's just maybe not as right. As painful as others.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: But yes, I agree.
Keep cruising along most time consuming, difficult to scale activities.
No surprise here. Content creation 43%, link acquisition 39% strategic content planning 38%, technical auditing and fixes 33% and content optimization 29%.
So interesting that there's a little more distribution here.
I also noticed immediately these are all the things we help our clients with.
And so the scale part is definitely a factor. And the fact that we can ramp up quickly with a client, turn it on, or an existing client scale up double, triple what we're doing within a matter of a week, two weeks, we can scale quickly like that is a big deal.
So certainly validating, you know, on some of the value we're bringing to clients, but also not surprising because I know that each one of these things is multiple SOPs and processes and things that we've built over time.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Well, and you know, doing that without sacrificing quality is big. And I think if anything that shows the, that I'm making a big assumption. But that would tell me if that is the biggest, most timec consuming to scale activity is that teams might be being still leading with quality and being more thoughtful hopefully about content.
Because hopefully you. Well, you'd think maybe, yeah, maybe if we compared it to last year's. I don't know if it would go down if that's gone down because AI, AI content creation could make it if everyone, if you believe everything that everybody's saying Online and on LinkedIn that like you should be using AI to create content. Right. But yeah, anyway, I think that that's, that's a good thing to some extent because good content shouldn't come easy.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's a good segue because the next one was future investment slash innovation plans. And the number one response, 59% said human authored content with AI support. Yeah, it is literally what you were just saying.
Number two was EEAT reinforcement at 50% and then conversion focused SEO at 38%.
So I thought this was a pretty interesting one.
You know, that's a vague, you know, for people to choose human authored content with AI support. Like, you know, AI support is, is the vague part there of like.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: You know, is that just like what does that mean? You know, give me a few options for how to title this article that I already wrote. Or is it the editing layer? Is it brief creation, all those different pieces.
But I personally feel we've talked a little bit about eeat.
That motion, all that stuff was already happened before. The LLM stuff picked up exponentially and so much of that already aligns to that like who is the authority and who is the author. All these things matter. So I think that that part of it EEAT reinforcement makes sense as a place to put your focus because it's going to be helping both organic search and the LLM side.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's going to take time. It's going to take time.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Yes. And then conversion focused SEO makes my heart happy.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: That they're coming around on the point of SEO more and really focusing there. I wouldn't call that innovation.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: But yeah, it makes sense to kind of be focusing there. And to your point earlier, maybe as a bit of a acknowledgment of traffic can be a vanity metric and really kind of focusing in. I think it then supports challenges being difficulty of measuring roi. The number one tool is analytics and performance reporting.
If that's kind of where they're headed is like I want to do conversion focused SEO, then you've got to kind of like. I think those, those pieces all start to weave together quite well.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Totally.
Um, nothing to add on that one.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: The next few are, are super interesting. So hopefully you're still hanging on with us because this, these parts are I think what a lot of people are thinking about and talking about. So structural and staffing changes.
So the responses number one response, 42% said AI integration training, loop marketing. Yeah.
38% said cross functional collaboration increase 36% current best practices upskilling 28% said no major changes.
So again this is very specifically like how is your company working and what kind of changes are you making?
So I was not surprised. AI integration training comes in first there.
I'll let you chime in on the others real quick.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Cross functional collaboration is the biggest, best one probably. Actually.
Yes. That's a great one. I'm glad that that's at number two.
SEO has always been somewhat siloed. So I think it's great that there's more of a deliberate effort to make sure that SEO is integrated or at least communicating with other teams. That's what I hope that is. And it' probably should be focused with like all, you know, all teams success product just to make sure the content is focused further down funnel and then best practices upskilling is warms my heart because I think fundamentals are still important and there's tons of fundamentals that still apply as everything is evolving. Just, you know, maybe slight tweaks and tightening of the screws.
No major changes is interesting because it's very bold to just say that, because I don't know, maybe that just means that they're, you know, they don't, maybe there's not the budget to invest in those things. Yeah, that would maybe be my only thought. But yeah, otherwise figure, figure out something else.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And I do think the cross functional collaboration increase is the one that stood out to me because it, it certainly fits with what we've talked about of like a lot of these changes that are occurring are kind of forcing people.
It's much more about being a good company, a good product, having good holistic marketing and a strong brand. It's not, oh, can we throw some more keywords on this page to make it rank better or whatever.
So I think that just the nature of SEO has become far more cross collaborative and then you know, add in the LLM twist to some of that and I think that it, it's very warranted. So that, that makes sense to me that it's driving there.
And then, you know, the, the big question.
Recent SEO investment reductions.
So no reduction in SEO Investment was number one at 57% then drops way down.
18% said they reallocated resources to other channels.
17% said they just canceled or downgraded SEO tools and 15% said reduced internal SEO headcount.
My biggest question here, is there a decent amount of people here who are work in agencies? Because I think that perhaps how that was phrased, like no, we didn't, we didn't reduce our investment in SEO.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: But maybe not reflective of like individual companies.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: That part I'm not sure. But.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. If anything cancel down great SEO tools.
Being lower is I guess interesting. I don't know, I think it's a muddle, muddied question.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: I agree. Yeah. I have a hard, I feel like it's an important one, but I have a hard time getting anything really meaningful because I don't want to sit here and be like, hey, almost 60% of people aren't decreasing their investments. Like, yeah, you shouldn't be either. I don't, I don't know that I feel good enough about it to, to definitively say that. I think across our own client base we've certainly seen varying degrees of people reallocating spend to other channels or initiatives. We've certainly seen or reducing scope. Yeah, just reducing scope.
Changes within the team internally and kind of like how we then support can change. So I think we've seen degrees, I mean and certainly no reduction in SEO investment has also been represented across some of our clients too. Yeah, for sure.
I think it's there. I just hard time really getting anything super meaningful out of that.
And then lastly, future SEO concerns and risks.
No surprises here.
Number one concern or risk. 78% said AI generated answers reducing clicks.
46% said declining SERP visibility, 37% said ROI attribution difficulties. There's that one again.
24% said diminishing content performance and 22% said ethical AI concerns.
So where do you start? What's that?
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess like if you. To go back, I think it was called out in the loop marketing like material that it was the SparkToro Rand fishkin study that said like zero click traff. That's all zero. There's more zero click behavior now. Right. So all this makes sense.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Right. AI generated answers are impacting that ser visibility is, that is declining because of that, because of AIOS and LLM referrals or like people using LLMs to get more education.
Yeah, it all makes sense.
Ethical AI concerns is probably one of the one that I'm like a little bit more curious about. Like why is that? I mean even though it's only 22% out of all the other ones, like why is that such a big concern for.
What do you guys do? What do you guys. Yeah, what are you guys doing that makes you worried? Is it more of just like the broad industry? It can't be like if you're.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Yeah, my, my only thought there was just like people having like a moral ethical obligation or objection of like AI is going to take jobs.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And also just like trademark infringements and stuff like that when it comes to stealing people's content. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Yeah. But I think what's always hard about these is that, you know, 78% saying AI generated answers reducing clicks. Like I, we've talked about this so much already. Like first of all, like the quality of that traffic that you're losing.
A lot of what we've seen is like it's not the meaningful qualified traffic that's converting. It's traffic that no one needed to come to your website. It can be answered by an LLM or an aio and therefore that's why it is happening.
And so I think, do I think that 78% of companies should be worried about that?
Not necessarily because it's just the nuance of understanding what the makeup of your traffic is, what really matters to your business. All these things we've talked about multiple times.
So I have a little bit of trouble just assigning a number and being like this is it.
Obviously that's what we're reading through here. But at the end of the day, I think this is very much reflective of people needing to be good at holistically marketing themselves and building a brand and not.
Not thinking so much about the entire journey being people coming to my website.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: There are things that are happening already. We've talked about it before in Slack communities and software review sites and all kinds of things that are part of the buyer journey. And this is just part of that acknowledgement that it is further fragmenting. It doesn't mean that you can't win. It doesn't mean that it's all lost.
There's a lot there that you can go from it. It's just accepting that it's no longer entirely about just getting people to your website. As many people as possible.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Right. And I would add in that it's like then also critical for you to have a great strong understanding of performance and.
And reporting.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: Right. Because why that came up here.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Which I don't mean to derail this. Maybe it's for a future episode, but there's a growing conspiracy theory around the dead Internet. Have you heard about this?
Where it's the growing. There's studies out there. So we. I don't want to misquote, but it's like three out of five users on the web or something are bots. Right. It could be like a search bot, an LM bot, other bots, spam bots, et cetera.
So you could argue that like, I mean, this makes sense that there's concerns about that, but it makes it even more important to your point that like, getting traffic to your site isn't. Shouldn't be the number one goal because a lot of that traffic might not be real.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: And then focusing further down on business impact and all those things that we've already talked about a million times.
But yeah, it's interesting because I think that that's like something to have a grasp on in terms of just how your overall programs are working.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot there that is a really good point on bot traffic and all that stuff that. I mean, it was like it required conscious effort to stay on top of bot filtering as we got bigger at Sprout and certainly something that most over 10 years ago. Yeah. Small companies is not even on their radar. So you get a bot that obviously there's ones that hit your site so excessively in a short period of time and then go away that you can be like, oh, this is just a ton of direct traffic or other or whatever, and you can pick it out. But the one like just this one that does it this many times, this one does it 100 times. It just builds more quietly.
You can really. And then it just goes away. At some point it can look like your traffic tanked and totally like, oh, in this whole time we thought we were here and we're actually here because there was so much bot traffic.
Yeah.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Performance. Understanding performance. That's why it's super critical in reporting.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. So.
Yeah. Anything else on this state of SEO 2026?
[00:50:39] Speaker B: No, I think it's interesting always to go like we very much advocate for this type of content. So I think it's good to good fodder for discussion for any industry, any function. And I think everybody should dive into it and take some of the data points that help them, you know, get their job done at work a little bit more or maybe support something they've been pushing.
Because I think there's stuff in here that does that.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Yep. Cool. Well, this is like a gated PDF, so I'm not going to just. I actually don't even know if I could put it in the show notes. I will link to the the page where you can get the report yourself and not circumvent their whole process.
But yeah, so we'll have shownotes there. Please be sure to like and subscribe. Get early access newsletter tentope IO we publish once a month and in addition to that, you get early access to the podcast episodes when they drop.
So be sure to check that out as well.
And for anything that we might be able to help your company, visit 10 speed IO and reach out to us there.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: Sweet.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: Cool. Thanks.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: Thank you.
