How do you plan your SEO strategy for the coming year? Is it best to plan your SEO activities for a whole year or is it more effective to break down your overarching plan into smaller chunks?
That’s what David Bain will be discussing with Araminta Robertson from Mint Studios, Becky Simms from Reflect Digital and Adrijana Vujadin from AV Coaching.
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Transcript
David Bain
What should you include in your 2025 SEO strategy? Hello and welcome to the January 2025 edition of the Majestic SEO panel, where we’re discussing what an SEO should include in their 2025 SEO strategy. I’m your host, David Bain, and joining me today are three wonderful guests, so let’s meet them starting off with Becky.
Becky Simms
Hi, David. I’m Becky Simms. I’m founder and CEO at Reflect Digital.
David Bain
Thank you so much for joining us Becky, also with us today is Araminta.
Araminta Robertson
Hey everyone, I’m Araminta. I’m the managing director at Mint Studios. We’re a content marketing agency for the financial services industry, and I also run a community for FinTech marketers, and there’s a lot of SEO in there as well. So I’m looking forward to this discussion.
David Bain
Great to have you here Araminta, and also with us today is Adrijana.
Adrijana Vujadin
Hello. Hello everyone. I’m Adrijana Vujadin, and I was Head of SEO for the five for the last five years, and then I moved full time to being a mindset coach for SEOs.
David Bain
Thank you for joining us Adrijana, so let’s get straight into the core question. We’ve got a few people watching live there, Happy New Year to everyone watching live and anyone listening to the podcast. This show is available as a podcast, which is where probably the majority of people will actually consume this content on, but if you’re live with us now, that’s a bonus point to you.
Becky, should we start off with you? What should SEOs include in their 2025 SEO strategy?
Becky Simms
Definitely happy to chat about this one. So I’m gonna lose the prize for being the first person to say AI. But looking at it from a slightly different angle, what we’re trying to do at the moment with our clients is try to look at what search behavior is going to be doing, and how people are changing their search behavior.
It’s been happening for years, and we’ve been already been looking at it and thinking about how people move to social media to search for things, for example, that previously would have always been on Google. But actually, you have our Gen Zs that are turning to TikTok to look for their advice and to look for information.
But actually, with the rise of AI, we’ve got a plethora already, but we’re going to have even more options. There’s more tools dropping on the market all the time, and it’s starting to understand how your customer will search in the future, and what they will do on your traditional search engines like Google, and therefore, when it comes to traditional SEO, what that will look like and where you should focus your efforts, but also what searches might move away from Google, and is there a way in your strategy to capitalize on that, and is there going to be new ways to optimize, or would it be things that you need to be doing on social platforms, or will it be through AI? I don’t know and I don’t have all the answers, but it’s being aware of it and aware that things are changing.
I’ll give you a good example. I was on holiday a couple of months ago, and we were in Miami, and we had one day in Miami before traveling on, so I started on Google, and I did my search for like 24 hours in Miami, what should I do? And I got these blog posts that were the traditional way that people would have done SEO, and they were interesting blog posts, but they weren’t personalized to me. So I was kind of going, well, I like a bit of that one, that’s not very me, or I’ll read this one. And then I thought, well, hold on, I’m going to just give ChatGPT ago, and I’m going to say I’ve got 24 hours in Miami, I love food, we want to be outside, all my criteria, and I got the perfect plan, and that was the plan I went to use.
So we’re going to start to see things changing and we’re not necessarily going to be able to stop it. Like humans are going to change differently depending on your audience as well. Probably my parents age, they’re maybe not going to be as up for doing that and changing in that direction. But probably a Gen Z wouldn’t have even thought of putting it in Google, where I started my search in Google.
It’s about knowing your audience, understanding what their behaviors are going to be and how it’s going to change different types of searches, and therefore what you don’t want to be doing is putting all your effort into trying to rank for something that actually no one’s looking for on Google anymore, and you’re actually just becoming further and further away from your customer because you haven’t really understood how they’re searching.
David Bain
You finished off by talking about knowing your audience and understanding their behaviors, but you also started off with talking about AI tools and how they’re rapidly evolving. So where does an SEO start with their SEO strategy? Is it about actually being aware of what different tools can do, and to a certain degree, tailoring their strategy to that, or do you have to always start off with your audience, and then find a find a tool that can actually deliver what you’re looking to do for your them?
Becky Simms
Audience first, always, because I think if you go tool first, you’ll be looking at what you know about and what’s in your world, but there’s a really good chance you’re not your customer, and you’re not a good profile for your customer. So you need to start audience first, and you might have different audience groups as well because you might be a business that sells products to all different ages and has different types of products that suit different age ranges or different interests, and they might buy for different reasons.
So it’s trying to understand because, again, it’s demographically driven isn’t always the route to go. It’s thinking about what’s the driver? Why does someone buy what they buy? What are they looking for? And trying to understand who they are, and then actually start to talk to them especially when we’re talking about something, that’s going to keep changing, because how it is today is not likely to be how it is in six or twelve months time, etc.
I think the key for SEOs and maybe for the wider business that they sit in, is to think, how are we going to keep on top of this changing and how can we get a pulse on our customers and be able to see as it changes, and get this live information? Because we can see some stuff in the platforms and data by just knowing how many searches are happening, etc. But how can we almost have a forum of customers that we can be getting this from regularly, so we can chart as it changes and make sure we’re moving with our customers and not just sticking with what we think is the right thing.
David Bain
Andy Simpson saying the chat morning, David, I’ve got your book here and now I just to find some time to sit down and read it. There’s a big, chunky volume. If anyone hasn’t seen it as the Majestic SEO in 2025, SEOin2025.com and that’s out now.
Becky, just sticking with you for one more second. How do you go about then, if you’ve defined your audience and what their behaviors are of selecting the tool that is most likely to match their needs?
You mentioned ChatGPT there as well, so is ChatGPT something that you should optimize for every audience, so there’s more likely to be a certain type of audience that skews to use that particular tool?
Becky Simms
Yeah, I think that’s part of what you need to find out from your customers. So you’re learning more about what it is that they’re interested in and what their motivations are, where are they hanging out online, where they are turning to, etc. Because, again, if you just assume, and just use ChatGPT, you could be completely wrong.
All of these platforms are still so new, and they’re changing. And actually, what’s trendy today might not be trendy in three months time, six months time, so we need to hear from them. So that kind of customer journey mapping piece of where do they spend their time online? Where are the opportunities to influence? Where do they want to be influenced as well? And where do they want to just be left alone to do their own thing?
And again, the more you can understand that about your customer, the more that you can find the right spots to appear and how to build that journey and be in the right place at the right time with the right message, is obviously the ideal that we’re trying to get.
David Bain
Araminta, what should SEO is include in their 2025 SEO strategy?
Araminta Robertson
Yeah, I agree with everything that Becky said, and I would just add that also don’t forget that a lot of these tools are based on Google, and so this is why a lot of SEO is still very relevant in today’s world. Because if you want to appear a lot on ChatGPT, Perplexity, et cetera, you need to be also appearing high on Google as well, so still very interlinked with with AI tools. I think that’s why that’s very interesting to see how that further develops.
But to answer your question, I think there’s three kind of key things for SEOs to look at in 2025 the first one, I would say, is content is more important now than ever. That content stands out, that content is well written. We’re being inundated with AI content, and it’s very generic. It’s maybe giving the user what they’re looking for, but only like someone who’s looking for high level information.
So in 2025 SEOs that want to not just rank well, but also bring in more readers, more prospects, and therefore more customers need to really focus on creating content that is written at the level of the reader, and that means basing your content in our world on interviews with experts, or bringing in the experts wherever that’s possible, because that’s something that AI still can’t do very well, and I don’t know how or when it will be able to but creating content that is written for the level of the reader, that is technical when necessary, that goes into level of detail that an AI content can’t do. I think that’s going to be more important than ever in 2025.
The other thing I would say is with AI overviews and the way the search is changing. I’ve written a LinkedIn post about this today, but I would say top of the funnel content is perhaps less important this year, because someone who’s just looking for what is x, y, z, that AI Overview will probably satisfy that question, and they’re less likely to go and click through to other websites.
I would say it depends a little bit on the authority of the website, but in general, I would say most companies, or most SEOs are better focusing on middle or bottom of the funnel content where that reader is really looking for more in depth information, and just two or three sentences are the topics I’m going to satisfy that.
In my world of financial technology, financial services, someone who’s looking for a payment provider, that’s a very complex decision that cannot be, you know, solved with just a one AI generated article is someone they’re going to want to read multiple in depth articles, videos, podcasts, they’re going to do their research. And this is the kind of content, again, that we want to be focusing on and ranking for in 2025 and then finally.
I think one very interesting thing that Becky brought up was attribution, right? So if people are starting their search process in ChatGPT, how can we attribute a conversion to ChatGPT to maybe content? So I think that first party tools are more important now than ever. So your HubSpot, your Salesforce, and to be able to see, you know, once someone submits a newsletter or submits a form to see what they’re reading, what they’re interested in.
So I think it’s more important now than ever to have a really good understanding how people are interacting with your website, people who you know have already submitted a form, so you have a better understanding of what they’re looking at. So yeah, I think attribution is going to be a very interesting one.
Over the next few years, people are saying it’s going to be we’ve moved away from a world of digital marketing, where it’s really easy to track everything, and maybe now we’re moving to a world where attribution is harder, and I’m very curious to see what that looks like. Yeah, definitely it’s going to be an interesting year, and I’m excited to see what will happen in that coming months.
David Bain
A lot to think about there. Going back to the first topic that you mentioned there and subject matter experts. How do you determine who is the ideal subject matter expert, and how do you determine what questions to ask them?
Araminta Robertson
I’d start with the topic, what are you writing about? And then you know, if you’re in a team, so I’m talking about brands here, more than agencies or your clients, or if you’re working at a company, you hopefully can ask around and say, Okay, who knows the most about this topic in our world, it’s typically their product person or salesperson, product person, because they know the product really well. They can talk about it in detail, and therefore the industry really well. A sales person is ideal, because they’re constantly talking to clients and customers, they know the pain points and they know what the message is and what messaging to use. So that’s probably how I would select the subject matter expert.
In terms of questions, there’s a few different types of questions we like to ask, for example, one is someone who’s searching this up. What do you think they’re looking for? What is our pain point? And then the questions would be typically around the topic, you know, when is this important? Why does this matter? Now, what are the different details that we need to know about? Why does the product how can the product help this? What are the pain points that this product solves for? I have an article that goes into more detail that I’m happy to share, but generally, these are the type of questions that we ask.
David Bain
I might as well stay with you for this particular question, because it seems to be in the industry that you tend to operate in, Sanjay in the chat is asking, What do you think about one page websites and the finance or legal industry? Because obviously we’ve been talking about interviewing subject matter experts and producing bottom of the funnel content. So I would imagine you’re talking about multiple pages. Is there ever a place to be successful in your industry and having a very limited website?
Araminta Robertson
Yeah, I think in certain industries where your target market isn’t doing research online, maybe a one page website is enough. So for example, financial advisors, I just know from experience, there are people who are in a network industry, so it’s all about who you know, so for them, I would say maybe a one page website is enough.
Generally, if you’re targeting a person who is all via network, they don’t really go to Google much, or they don’t really do research online. I would say maybe a website is enough, but it all depends on who you’re targeting.
David Bain
Adrijana. What should SEOs include in their 2025, SEO strategy?
Adrijana Vujadin
I think that the first question here is because, especially in January, with new goals, resolutions, and everything, we’re creating the strategy and we tend to Google a lot of trends, and then we are listening a lot of SEO experts. We are listening their unique perspectives, and we just get overwhelmed, and we just don’t know who we should listen to.
But my actual approach, what we need to include in strategy, is actually not losing ourselves, our client, our niche, our brand, so we can listen to different trends and what is going on, but still keeping on the niche trend, you know, like, is it e-commerce? Is it like small businesses to be always having that kind of additional question, is it for me, you know, like, because they can be a lot of popular experts, a lot of knowledge, a lot of everything.
But if sometimes that is not just like for me, for my client, for my brand, for my industry, for my niche, so definitely not losing myself and like asking, is it for me? And then using all these trends for our strategy in terms that is trend is for us, not is not the trend is against us, especially AI automation, like technical things, you know, like, we tend to gain all this information, and then we are just, like, so stressed because we don’t know so much about this. We need to gain additional knowledge. We need to watch additional video. We need to read more. And then all of this, what is happening in the market we are using against us. So we are stressed, we are anxious, we are not enjoying our life, because all these things.
I really think that is happening for the user, for the customer, for us. So we should really have that perspective, and not kind of having that, like, fixed negative mindset, like, oh, how much I need to learn. Oh, this is crazy world on everything which is impacting our daily, you know, like small lives, but which I consider very important. And then, you know, like always, whatever we do for the content for the strategy is actually bringing our authentic approach by asking those questions, like, hey, what I really think about this?
I know that we tend to put popular experts on the pedestal and believe them whatever they say. But just take a small step back and ask, what do I really think about this? Is it aligned with me? Is it like something that I would like to do, or is it just like trend? What should I include in the strategy? Instead of including that no matter what.
David Bain
Do you focus on keyword volume at all? because you talk about what you think about things, and perhaps adapting your content to your feeling about the content. But I guess that’s not necessarily optimizing it to search volume.
Adrijana Vujadin
I think keyword volume is becoming less and less important, because I really strongly agree with what Araminta said about not creating like top-of-funnel content as much. Because in this world where we are having just like small attention, we really need to help user to make decisions as soon as possible. We really need to help as soon as possible, like how we can help the user by making the content that is really helping them to make a decision as soon as possible.
We always know that the customer, when they are looking for the solution, the solution is actually to buy the thing. When they buy, they will get help. So if we are just using our insecurities to overwhelm them with information and we put everything on the page, we are not helping them. We are helping our insecurities to follow all these SEO rules, to follow all these SEO guidelines. But in the end of the day, we are not helping our company. We are not helping our user. We are not helping ourselves to really distinct like what’s there for the user, and what is our insecurity putting on the on the page, in on the content itself.
David Bain
And when you’re talking about changes in trends, Adrijana, are you talking about changes in technology, changes in user behavior, in terms of how they go about research and finding what you have to offer so using different platforms, or are you talking about changes in trends in a particular marketplace? What people are talking about from a subject matter perspective?
Adrijana Vujadin
I think the base of everything that you mentioned is a technology, because technology is degrading the trends, trends on the market, and trends how customers is behaving, and also the technology is bringing all these consequences and like new things.
But again, if we are just like following the technology and trends blindly, we are, we are just like not going in the good direction, because we can see our feelings are coming and I think bringing us to ourselves is actually what is kind of, like the fight with the technology, and like what technology is bringing to us.
David Bain
Talking about different technology and trends, Becky, you also talk about what’s happening on other channels to inform your SEO strategy. So how do you go about researching what’s happening on other channels, and how does that impact your SEO strategy?
Becky Simms
So I guess you start again from a customer perspective of understanding what they say they’re doing. So typically, if we were doing a customer journey mapping exercise, we’d look to get a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data. We’d look to find some people that the ideal customer profile for the audience persona we’re looking at, to do some interviews so we can actually ask them some questions.
The journey we’ve been on over the last six, seven years at Reflect bringing in behavioral science into what we do. I used to realize how easy it was to bias people in the questions we ask, and that we just naturally end up doing it. Not even meaning to have done it, just how we ask questions if you’re not tuned in and aware. So making sure we’ve got someone that knows how to ask questions and try to give as much freedom of choice to the person to tell us what they want to tell us.
But the qualitative is there to kind of get into the detail a bit more and to really get to the essence, because you can have more of a conversation. The quantitative, where we might do a large scale survey, so we might go to 1000, 2000 people of an ideal audience, and ask them questions that, again, have been written by a behavioral expert to help make sure we’ve got good questions to really get their open answers, but to understand the process they go through when it when they are buying X or booking whatever, basically whatever it is that the end customer, our client, is trying to do. Or for those listening, whatever your job is at work, whatever strategy you’re trying to get your customers to do you want to find out how they go about doing it in as much detail as you can. You then can go onto the channel platforms and start to do the research to marry up with it.
All different platforms have got different levels of analytics and levels of data of what we can find out. Some are better than others, but you also can see what others are optimizing for. You can start to kind of take that journey as the customer that you’ve now understood what they do, and start to see what data they are being presented with, and if your brand is appearing, if it’s not, and trying to understand. It could be Instagram, it could be TikTok, it could be YouTube, or it could be Google. It could be the key place where they’re looking, but it’s trying to understand, and therefore being able to inform, I think, to Araminta’s point, around all the different types of content we need to be able to understand what type of content we need for different points in the journey. And that could be long form, it could be short form, it could be video, it could be a podcast, it could be a live stream that we want them to sign up to, and then we’ve captured their email, and so it gets much bigger than SEO.
So for those that are just working in SEO, that’s great to be super focused, but it’s how can you then match up with other people in the team, in the business, or in the agency, whatever setup you have to make sure you’re having this wider conversation, because you don’t want to be doing your bit in silo and not knowing what else is going on.
I’ve used this analogy before, but I think of the customer like a baton in a relay race. It’s like, as soon as there’s a brand, you’ve picked them up. So maybe that’s on a top of funnel phrase, but maybe that was through a paid media ad they’ve seen. We then, collectively, all different departments working together, want to work out, how can we pass that baton between channels that we either own or we’ve earned content on, or we’re paying to be on, to make sure that when they get to the final point, that they’re ready to make a decision, it’s our brand that they’re buying from, it’s our brand that they’re inquiring to, and you can only do that if you’re working together.
David Bain
Okay, you talk about that ideal audience. How do you go about defining who that ideal customer is to begin with? And also, you also mentioned about maybe reaching out to 1000 people who are in that ideal audience? How do you find 1000 people that are likely to be that target customer?
Becky Simms
Good question. So we would tend to do first of all, an internal brainstorm on who we think the customer profiles are. I say internal, but we normally have the internal team from the client there as well. Now people often forget how amazing your customer service people in a business are for knowing the customer or your sales people that might be out on the road talking to customers or in retail outlets talking to customers you want to find whoever it is, because I think sometimes the marketing team themselves can be a bit further removed from the actual customer. So you want to find some people in the business that are speaking to the customer, whether that’s customer service, sales, whoever it might be, a mixture of them all. And you do a bit of a brainstorming session on who do we think our customer profiles are? And you start to kind of draw up the different types.
Some of it will be complete assumption based on what they think they know. But it’s kind of off the back of, oh yeah, I’d kind of say it’s normally this kind of person. So at this point, we’re we’re not relying on this information. This is where we’re then going to go on and do the research off the back of it. So we’ve almost got these kind of draft pen portraits of what these customers look like. And then you start to delve in deeper, to do the actual research, to back it up by doing the quantitative and qualitative research.
So the speaking to customers, ideally, that’s actually some of your customers, and then that hopefully backs up that they really do fit into a box that we said looked like this and was motivated in this way. For the data side of it, we tend to work with a survey partner. So there’s lots of different market research companies that you can go to and you say to them, right, we’ve kind of nailed it down to this is the type of person. Do you have ways to reach that type of person or and they’ll come back to you with what different attributes that they can get against the audience that they have the ability to reach, and you start to work it out.
Obviously, if you’re a massive brand yourself already, you might be able to do some of this research by just sending out a survey to your customers and asking them to answer certain questions and find that out. The only negative to that is that is only the customers that you’ve already managed to win over. So there’s probably these audiences that actually might be massive potential to you, but you’re not getting to find out about them, because you’ve just looked inwardly at who already buys from you, as opposed to outward, to say, oh, okay, well, you fit our profile, but you might not be a customer yet. Why is that? Are we missing something and that’s where you might unearth some kind of motivation, or you might find something about the fact that they spend time online in different places to where you’re visible.
I guess the crux of all of this is, as you do this and you get all this research, you’ll suddenly see this massive, wide, open picture of what your customer journey can look like. And there’ll be crossovers that different audiences are in similar places, but some audiences are just in one place. And then you have to start to make decisions, because you can’t necessarily be everywhere, yeah, unless you’ve got an unlimited budget and a massive team and everyone’s got all the time in the world, you can’t be everywhere. So you then need to start to prioritize. And that’s where, if you can get platform data, and you have got kind of audience sized data, you’ll be able to start to work out what actually makes sense, or is it that we do a little mini campaign to this audience over here as a test before we go all in and choose every channel to be really optimizing towards this group.
What you don’t want to feel is overwhelmed, and then go, I just can’t do this because there’s too much, because actually, you then just have to pick and choose, test, get your data, see what works, see what doesn’t, and then as things don’t work and other things do work, you can start to go, Okay, well, I’ve got this other idea. I can test over here from this bit of research that we did
David Bain
You mentioned that top of funnel content isn’t as relevant now due to AI overviews. Why is that? And also, how should an SEO focus more on bottom of funnel content and how do you drive traffic to bottom of funnel content?
Araminta Robertson
So I’ll caveat by saying that the world I’m in is financial services, so one lead, one client or one customer is worth a lot, and usually, search volumes are low. So why is top of the funnel not so relevant?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, the big reason is a simple question like, what is a direct debit? Can now be answered with an AI tool that is summarizing that the answer to that question on the top of a Google result. So if you’re someone who’s just looking for a quick answer, well, that AI overview is now satisfying your search or your question, and therefore there’s no need to then scroll down and click through the 10 blue links to try and find an answer to that. So you’re getting zero click content, and because of that, ranking high for these kind of top of the funnel key phrases, the benefit isn’t as big as it used to be, right? There’s less brand awareness. Because the main reason, main objective of top of the funnel is often brand awareness, but if people are even clicking through to your link, then you’re not getting that brand awareness.
I think we’re seeing a really interesting trend where more content marketers are focusing on the middle and the bottom of funnel. And although there are still AI overviews for these terms as well, as I said, when you’re looking at the bottom of the funnel, you’re looking to buy a solution. And in my world, for example, you’re looking to work with a payment provider. That’s a really complex business decision that cannot be answered with an AI overview in just a few sentences. And so that person you know, a head of payments, that’s doing research, they’re going to click through multiple different links, they’re going to read, they’re going to produce some podcasts or some videos. They’re going to do in depth research.
So in that case, it makes a lot more sense to then rank high for those buying keywords that run on the funnel, also that content because they’re making a buying decision, the content has to be really well written, it has to be technical, it has to include the right information. AI cannot create the quality necessary to help a buyer make a decision. And so that’s why I’m seeing a big trend where more and more and more SEOs and content marketers are focusing on the bottom of the funnel and the middle of the funnel, because that’s where they can really stand out. That’s where really content matters a lot.
David Bain
Adrijana, you also mentioned talking about incorporating personality, authentic perspectives and energy into the client’s strategy. How do you go about methodically doing that? Is that something that you just have to see what you’ve got available in terms of different personalities within the business? Or do you go about determining what the personality of a brand should be and trying to match everyone’s content according to that personality?
Adrijana Vujadin
I think the answer after we are researching about trends, and for example, Becky mentioned a great example, like we can’t target everyone, so we don’t need to target everyone, but we can target people who are already very close to buy.
So we should do that like we shouldn’t educate people about what it is, you know, like, because in this world, we have enough people who are ready to buy now. So why we are not helping them immediately. Then, when it comes to these trends, and when it comes to content, we are getting so much information out there regarding, like, technical content, PR, and we are just, like, gaining this information and trying to execute them.
But what we are missing is actually alignment. Is it for our company? Is it for us? Because in the most of cases I’m seeing, when SEOs are experiencing burnout, what they do is not align with their values, so we are constantly trying to do something that is not good for us and something that we are not okay with. And then, from this personal perspective, we should really check is that what we are seeing there, is it really aligned with our company’s values and also with our values? And if it’s a match, then continue with a with a strategy.
If it’s not, I would strongly recommend to question this, because in today’s world, we can achieve ratings with so many different approaches. So we don’t need to follow the approach from some popular expert opinion that is working. No we can come up with some different approach that’s still working, that still comes and bringing the customer value, money and profit to our clients.
David Bain
We’ve got another couple of questions, Adrijana, we’ll stick with you for these ones, or anyone else can jump in as well, but what’s your take on backlinks in 2025 – are they still important? If yes, what’s the best way to build them without violating Google’s guidelines and also a follow on to that are sponsored posts good or bad? And if bad, how do some still use them without losing rankings?
Adrijana Vujadin
I can stick to that. Definitely backlinks, I think quality over quantity, definitely with websites that are really helping our niche, helping our product, and really it’s about our company. I would say, whenever I’m checking is it good or bad for my strategy, for my client, even if it comes to sponsored posts, I’m thinking, is this something that is helping my customer to buy the solution?
If it’s helping, my approach is then, why not? If it’s not helping, I wouldn’t go with that. So some people will say, sponsored posts are good or bad, but again, bring that question from yourself. Is this helping me, my company and my customer, to buy the solution in the healthy way? If it’s healthy way, why not? If it’s not, then I wouldn’t go with that.
David Bain
Becky. Any opinions on this?
Becky Simms
I agree. I think backlinks still have a massive place within an SEO strategy. But actually it’s bigger than that, because what it is is your digital PR strategy. So it’s really thinking about again, if I come back to my customer journey piece, part of what when you understand your customers, you’ll start to find is that this particular types of websites that they visit to go and see news, etc, and then they become your targets for digital PR, because they’re ones that not only is it great to have the backlink, but it’s great because your customers are hanging out on that website looking for content, interested in what they’re seeing.
So 100% backlinks, I think, are here to stay, and I don’t see a time that they won’t be important, whether it changes as to how important they are in Google’s algorithm, I don’t know, I don’t have a crystal ball, but in a strategy, and from a digital PR perspective, I think they’ll always be important in creating that content and being able to get a link back to your site, because it helps guide that user to the content, to your brand, etc.
I think sponsored posts, I don’t know. It depends if it’s a paid-for sponsored post with a really reputable magazine type website that is relevant to your audience that you’re not doing it for SEO, you’re doing it because we want to get a piece in front of this audience, and this is how to do it. Then, from a marketing strategy point of view, it makes perfect sense, and there should be no reason for Google to penalize that. But obviously there are still dodgy tactics going on.
I get, I don’t know, 20 emails a day of new guest post site pay us for this link. So those things are still happening, and I think people probably are still buying some of those things, and yeah, that’s not good practice. It’s not what your customers are looking for. If they’re not websites that your customers are visiting, then it doesn’t necessarily make sense to your strategy. So it’s always trying to run your strategy back through a human eye and say is, does this make sense to our audience?
David Bain
I saw you nodding away there. Araminta.
Araminta Robertson
Yeah, I wouldn’t add anything to be honest. I think both of my fellow panelists have answered it perfectly. Backlinks are definitely still important, and I think the best strategy, if possible, is to create a really strong piece of content that will then attract backlinks.
Organic link building, or whatever you want to call it, seems to be the best one at the moment, which is, like creating a really good piece of content, maybe featuring a few people, and then organically, this is then linked to by other websites. So that’s definitely the best strategy I think.
David Bain
Can we get a quick thought or two on when to amend, when to hone your SEO strategy? I mean, we were talking about it as if it’s an SEO strategy to set for 2025, but I would imagine most strategies are relatively fluid. So is it right to look at what we’re doing on a monthly basis, quarterly basis, and how often, how much do we tweak what we’re doing?
Becky Simms
I’d suggest having an annual rolling strategy, but that you look at in detail monthly. You should be doing your reporting and you should have your plans of what you’re doing, but on a quarterly basis, you do that kind of bigger performance check to go. So what happened that quarter? Did we complete everything we wanted to have the results come to what we hoped they would and then we start to decide definitely, are we sticking with what we thought we were going to do this next quarter, or do we need to make some tweaks and changes? And then annually, you can do bigger research around customers, but then throughout the year, you might do smaller pulse projects or look at research you can get from channels to back up what it is that you’re looking at. But, yeah, I’d say annual, but quarterly is your stick or twist moment, and monthly is no, we’re in it. We’ve committed to what we’re doing, unless it’s at that quarter point.
David Bain
Adrijana, would you like to add something to that?
Adrijana Vujadin
I completely agree with Becky. We just need to pay attention. Are we sticking with the tactics without paying attention? Is it aligned with the strategy? And because we stick to the tactics, I would say, for too long experimenting different issues, technical clients, and not even going back and forth, like the development and everything, then we are actually stuck in the tactics and not seeing a bigger picture, and not seeing new ideas about what’s going on and how we can implement different things.
We can achieve things by so many different approaches. So if it’s one thing is not working, let’s switch fast to another thing, because we can get results in a different way.
David Bain
Okay, so quite nimble there. Araminta, how often do you like to revisit a strategy?
Araminta Robertson
I agree with everyone. I like to keep a close eye on things on a monthly basis, typically, because things can move quite quickly, and because we’re focused on bottom of the funnel, we’re focused on lead gen. Every month, we look at all the new leads that have come in, the new contacts, trying to understand what happened, what worked, what didn’t work, and that is really good information for what are the topics we want to focus on? Because we only focus on like content marketing funnel, and the funnel is very specific, so we’re able to be nimble, and every month check on that.
I think if you’re obviously talking about multiple different channels, multiple different activities, then quarterly basis makes a lot of sense, but we like to do things on a monthly basis just because it really helps to understand what’s working and what isn’t. And then the next month, we can even be more specific, more honed in.
David Bain
So we’ve talked a lot about what we should be incorporating in our 2025 SEO strategies. Let’s finish off by asking the panel, what’s one thing that SEO shouldn’t include in their 2025 SEO strategy? Maybe it’s something that they see SEOs doing too much of and it’s not good use of their time, or just something that’s a little bit old fashioned and not likely to be as effective as it used to be. And then we just get everyone to confirm who they are and where you can find them online. So Becky, shall we start with you again?
Becky Simms
I think the thing is to not get obsessed about the big things and the trendy things, like AI, if you haven’t got your basics in place, I think the basics of SEO and getting your technical and your on-page right, they’re still so important. And I think people can get a bit swept up in the exciting stuff and some of the things we’re talking about today, but none of that’s going to be effective enough unless your basics are right. So you’ve got to get that bit right and be really strong and comfortable that you’re in a good place before you get over excited onto the good things.
David Bain
And where can people find you?
Becky Simms
You can find me on LinkedIn or on our website reflectdigital.co.uk.
David Bain
Adrijana, what’s one thing that SEOs shouldn’t include in their 2025 SEO strategy?
Adrijana Vujadin
I think one thing is not including everything at once. So especially in these months, January, February, when we are a little bit with higher energy and too enthusiastic and want to do everything at once, because we are so motivated.
So we really need to pay attention where we are focusing these things, especially in the strategy. So let’s be grounded and let’s see what is really aligned with our customers, as Becky mentioned a lot of times, where they are, where we can find them. Let’s be very, very focused on the strategy and not be overwhelmed by everything and be over the place.
David Bain
Great thoughts and where can people find you Adrijana?
Adrijana Vujadin
LinkedIn and YouTube. So if mindset coaching is something that is interested in, you find me on LinkedIn.
David Bain
Lovely and Araminta, what’s something that SEO shouldn’t include in their 2025 strategy?
Araminta Robertson
I don’t know if this phrasing works quite well in terms of shouldn’t include, but what I would like to say is what I often see happen is SEOs and marketing as Becky mentioned previously, are often too far away from like the customers that are coming in every day or every every month. So I think this year, it’s more important than ever to get into the CRM.
If you’re an agency or freelancer and it’s your client, ask them if you can have access to their HubSpot or the CRM that they use, and every month, go through the form submissions and the questions that the prospects are asking.
Looking at what people are asking, how did the deal go forward, why it was or wasn’t qualified, etc, because these insights are qualitative. They’re all about just understanding the customer. When we’ve done this, they have consistently brought in the best content ideas for us, because they’re coming directly from the people who are the prospects and are the people who are looking to buy the solution.
I think that now more than ever, it’s super important to have that close connection with your target customer, your prospects, and even if you’re the SEO or the marketing or the agency and you’re not fully inside the brand, I think that asking to get inside the CRM, asking to be closer to the target customer, can only be more helpful, because it helps you really understand where the people are hanging out, where your target customers are hanging out, what they’re researching and what topic ideas they care about.
David Bain
So essentially, stop conducting your own independent keyword research, talk to your clients and actually get access to their internal systems and base the content suggestions that you have on what the audience is actually interacting with, as well as your own keyword research?
Araminta Robertson
Yeah, as well as your own keyword research. I wouldn’t say stop it completely, but stop ONLY doing that. Do that as well as talking to getting into the CRM.
David Bain
And where can people find you Araminta?
Araminta Robertson
You can find me on LinkedIn at Araminta Robertson, or on our website, mintcopywritingstudios.com.
David Bain
I’ve been your host David Bain and you’ve been listening to the Majestic SEO panel. If you want to join us live next time, sign up at majestic.com/webinars and, of course, check out the brand new podcast, video and book series over at SEOin2025 com.
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