[Fully Managed] Igor Avidon of Avidon Marketing Ep. 203

Daniela: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast. You know what this podcast is about. We talk about business, we talk about marketing, and we give you guys tips to assist you in your business journeys. I’m your host, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s Partnership Coordinator. And I’m very happy because today we have a really cool guest, Igor Avidan. Hi, Igor. How are you doing? He is the founder and the CEO of Avidan Marketing Group. Hi, Igor. So excited to have you today.

Igor: Yeah, very excited to be here. I’m so excited today.

Icebreaker Game: Would You Rather

Daniela: So to get the ball rolling, break the ice a little bit, I have a little game prepared. I always have games for my guests. And today what I have for you is a would you rather. So I’m just going to give you some prompts and tell me which one would you rather do.

Igor: Sure.

Daniela: You can only use memes to communicate for one year or every time you text someone, it autocorrects it into a dad joke.

Igor: The memes for sure. Yeah, the memes.

Daniela: You’re stuck in a group chat with one hundred Elon Musks or every device you own constantly auto plays crypto bros YouTube ads.

Igor: Oh, my God. Like the Musks. The Musk.

Daniela: You can teleport anywhere, but only to IKEA locations. So you can technically go to like Switzerland, but the IKEA is there. Or you can fly, but only one inch off of the ground.

Igor: Wow. Teleporting is probably much better. Yeah.

Daniela: Next question is, oh my gosh, here we go. Last one. Every time someone says blockchain, you have to do five pushups or wear crafts to every meeting for a year.

Igor: I’ll do the pushups. Yeah, I like that. I feel like it makes a lot more sense than I feel like people don’t say blockchain as much. Yeah. I mean, it’s any extra exercise, you know, at my age is welcome. So, you know, if it’s something that makes me do that, then I’m all for it.

Daniela: Yeah, I agree. Exercise is always welcome.

About Igor and Avidan Marketing Group

Daniela: Well, thank you, Igor. That was great. We already got to know your preferences a little bit. But to talk a little bit more about your business, about marketing, can you tell us about yourself, what you do, favorite color, the whole shebang, what we got to know?

Igor: Sure. So we are a SEO and content marketing agency. We’ve been in business since two thousand seventeen officially since two thousand eighteen. But the beginnings were the foundation was late in two thousand seventeen. We’re an end provider. It is our flagship service and is the only service that we offer. And we are very good at it. And we are very, you know, highly adept at search engine optimization.

The Impact of AI on SEO

Daniela: Cool. Yeah. Actually, that’s one of the topics that we had for today, which is on search engine optimization. And I think a really hot topic amongst people in the SEO world right now is AI. AI is really sort of it’s obviously affected every industry, but I think it’s affected the marketing industry, specifically that SEO branch very much because users, right, the netizens, they’re interacting with the internet in a very different way now that AI is sort of coming into play. I think it kind of like got introduced a little bit more with ChatGPT and things like Siri and Alexa, but I think now it’s just kind of like going more and more into full-fledged. For someone who is doing so much SEO, how do you think that affects how a business should be doing that SEO approach, I guess is my question.

Igor: That’s a fantastic question, actually. So that’s something that we have been working with, you know, trying to figure out how to actually get our clients into these AI search results. So there’s even, you know, at this point, there are abbreviations like GEO, which is generative engine optimization. So basically trying to get, you know, your brand name or your product or service to be highlighted in these ChatGPT and Gemini search results and answers. And so we’ve actually been closely examining that and monitoring it since last year. And over the last, I would say, nine months, we have actually done a really good job of streamlining our internal processes to meet both the SEO and that AI search answer demand.

And there’s a lot of overlap to be completely honest. I think that a lot of what we already do kind of naturally lends itself to allow brands to become visible in search results within ai tools. So for example, you know, you kind of have to understand how ai works right it works on data sets and it essentially just gathers as much information from every corner of the web to give users their best options, the best answer. And so oftentimes when there are, you know, commercial queries like, you know, how do I find the best software for HR? Right. Something like that. In order to be included as one of the solutions there, you actually have to do a lot of the same things that you would do for a kind of a digital PR slash content marketing slash SEO campaign in-house. And so a lot of what we already do is actually geared towards that. And there’s so much overlap that we are naturally kind of transitioning into offering that as part of the service.

And sure enough, you know, the startups that are popping up right now, a lot of them are obviously forward thinking and a lot of them want that kind of a service. And, you know, even like e-commerce sites are also starting to, you know, think about this. How do we get our name into the search results?

So you know there’s definitely an impact I do still think that it’s important to note that ai search results are going to be still very limited in terms of the amount of traffic that a brand will get from those search results but on a brand awareness kind of from from a brand awareness perspective I do think it’s important to start accommodating and start you know thinking about how do I get in there for gemini for chat gpt to mention me as you know as an important product or service provider

Platform-Specific AI Strategies

Daniela: Do you think that with Gemini, ChatGPT, I’m assuming more of these are going to be coming up. I know there’s one Roku, the one on X. I don’t remember what the AI one is for X, but I know that they have one. Do you think that it’s going to eventually lead to having to create different strategies for different platforms? So I would ask like, you know, like what someone inputs into chat GPT might be different than what they’re putting into Gemini and then what they’re putting into that X one, do you think that you’re gonna like as a business, are we going to have to start to try to streamline into these different sort of platforms?

Igor: I think yes and no, right? So even right now, you know, for kind of historically for SEO, for example, most people will optimize for Google, right? But there are still other search engines, right? Like Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, et cetera. And all of them have their own proprietary algorithms. And, you know, there are similarities. I think that there are a lot of similar factors that impact, you know, how well you rank there. but they might be way differently. So links might be more important on Yahoo, whereas on-page optimization and user behavior metrics might be more important for Google.

So I think that a similar thing will happen with these AI searches. People will interact differently. So for example, voice searches are going to be a lot more conversational. So How do I do something? Or tell me the best brand of clothing that is ethically sourced. So there are just all of these different variables that are going to dictate how each AI platform is being interacted with. And that’s going to dictate a lot of how people are going to try to optimize for that.

Now, because it’s so new, you know, it’s very difficult to say exactly how it’s going to be done. You know, we have little to no insights. There’s like no data, right? Like for Google, we have Google Search Console, we have Google Analytics. There’s there are, you know, and there are third party tools that offer us insights into how people search. Whereas with, you know, chat GPT and Gemini and all of them, there is no there isn’t really a good, you know, data set that we can tap into to discover that and learn that. So that’s, you know, again, that just speaks to the, you know, how early this technology is, you know, hitting us. But, you know, I think that with time, we’re going to figure some of these things out.

We are actually on our end studying how, you know, specifically how ChatGPT and Gemini behave in terms of how they, you know, how they provide answers and how they generate it. And, you know, one of the simplest way to do it is to literally ask it, you know, what made you give us that answer, right?

Daniela: So that’s a nice thing is that you can literally ask it and hope and pray that that’s the honest answer.

Igor: Yeah.

Adapting to AI Rather Than Rejecting It

Daniela: I think what’s interesting to me is just how much it’s going, how it’s moving so fast, right? I think a lot of people, when it comes to AI, are very skeptical because they feel like it’s like, oh, it’s like robots taking over Terminator, right? or because they’re like offended that it’s especially creative artists. I think I’ve seen a lot of people sort of have that complaint of, of it being, you know, like stealing their work and all of this effort and demotivating in a lot of ways. But I think like, I just don’t see it sort of going away. And so I think the best thing that we can do is sort of try to adapt to it and work around it instead of rejecting it, because I feel like it’s at a point where it’s also growing at a really fast rate. And even though I feel like you still see some kind of weird glitches within AI services, it’s only going to get better, right?

Content Strategy in the AI Era

Daniela: Which actually leads me to the question that I had for you regarding SEO, which is like, I think a big thing that we have heard about SEO is, content is key, right? You want to have content so that you can rank really high on search. You can have like be the first one in search results of like, I don’t know, cookie places in my area. And then that cookie shop should just be like right up there, right? I think with the introduction of AI, that sort of focus is a little bit different. I think people, because like if you’re looking for a cookie shop, I think there comes in, in my opinion, sort of like the behavior of the user is also very different than what it was before, right? People are not really scrolling through links as much as they’re just like taking that one answer that they get on the top at face value. Some people are using ChatGPT as the new search engine, et cetera.

For businesses who have sort of always been doing that model of creating a bunch of content, having words to rank higher on search, do you think that that is still a method that is worth pursuing? Do you think it’s going outdated and it’s good to sort of continue to ride that wave of trying to find something new? Or do you think that a combination of both is what is going to be happening?

Igor: Well, I do think it’s important to have both. So remember that content is ultimately what creates a larger presence for you, right? So for example, if you have a, let’s say you’re an e-commerce store and you sell, again, let’s say you sell Christmas sweaters, right? You’re gonna want to be present, right? So there’s, you could take just the commercial intent keywords, like, you know, buy Christmas sweaters, right? Or Christmas sweaters online or, or cheap Christmas sweaters, something like that. But those are just your commercial keywords, right?

So how do you expand your reach? Right? So for example, Christmas party ideas, right? Like, or, you know, office Christmas party ideas. That’s the kind of content that’s going to be, you know, if you can rank for a query like that, for a topic like that, then you’re going to kind of expand your, you know, you’re like a kind of cast like a wider net, right? So your reach is going to be far, far more significant.

I do think that it works the same way with AI search, right? Because again, you know, if somebody is looking for ideas on SEO, You know, like ugly Christmas sweater, office party idea, something like that, you know, like, or they want to create their own sweater, right? Again, that influence comes from somewhere, right? And so sometimes ChatGPT and Gemini will actually include certain, you know, will include certain websites or brands or maybe even reference certain, you know, articles where it’s pulling that information from.

Now that’s a little bit optimistic thinking I don’t know if there’s you know if that’s going to be the case if they’re continually going to offer up their sources but users if they ask for a source right if they’re like hey give me a good article about you know how to knit my own sweater you know that with step-by-step instructions and pictures right then chat gpt will actually be forced to give them something and then if you rank well if your article has good visibility then you automatically become you know you you could become you know one of the articles that’s actually pitched to the users right

So this is there is a significant amount of overlap again I think that in many ways the you know AI and AI search and SEO like traditional Google SEO I think there’s a lot of overlap there and strategies to get visibilities for brands overlap heavily I just don’t think people really realize that because they don’t know how it works oftentimes right So it does take some education.

But overall, it’s absolutely worth to keep an eye on AI search results, because guess what? Those are new opportunities. Right. And I think that that’s ultimately that’s the way that you have to look at it is, yes, it’s small. It’s I think it’s only like point one percent of all referral traffic, not even other channels. Right. Not organic, not direct traffic, but referral traffic. is coming from chat GPT and Gemini. So that’s a very insignificant amount, but at the same time, that’s rapidly growing. And I do think it’s here to stay. I don’t think that people can discount these AI searches because I think that Gen Z and Gen Alpha and on are going to continue to use this.

I do think that there’s, you know, there’s room for both. Some people, you know, millennials and older generations will continue to use Google primarily, in my opinion, whereas Gen Z and Gen Alpha will start to use kind of more of these generative answers.

Generational Differences in Platform Usage

Daniela: Yeah, I think it’s definitely going to change as generations grow. I’ve also seen that Gen Z uses a lot of social media platforms as search engines, which I think is really interesting. I heard someone talking to me about content marketing and how if you want to target Gen Z, you have to be on TikTok and Instagram and the trendy social media platforms. But I was thinking, But Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they’re going to grow up, right? They’re going to be thirty, forty, whatever adult age you want them to be. And so at one point, that platform that you are thinking as like the young people audience one is going to be for those thirty year old Gen Z who are on TikTok and so forth. Or actually, I don’t know, because like since they grow up with technology, it’s a very different than from like millennials who I think sort of tend to stay in their own lane. But I have seen sort of that big change kind of coming in.

SEO Budget Considerations

Daniela: I also have noticed that a lot of businesses were kind of resistant because of budgeting. I think when a business has a low budget, it can be a little bit difficult to sort of figure out what they’re cutting out of a marketing strategy, right? When you are talking to someone who has budgetary restraints, do you think that SEO and all of these things that are happening with AI should be something that they should still want to put some or allocate some funds into? Or it’s something that maybe they can sort of put to the side for when the business has gotten a little bit bigger and they can target these other types of people? at a future date? Or do you think that SEO is one of the things that a business should prioritize from the get?

Igor: So obviously, I will tend to have a more biased view on this. I do think that the organic channel and SEO are critical for a business to do well. At the same time, I’m also a huge advocate for people not jumping into SEO without having a healthy budget first. So in my opinion, SEO is the organic channel. They’re kind of a supplementary channel in order to accommodate larger brand growth, right? So you have to have a profitable business in order to fund SEO. That’s my stance. That’s the way that I always… Whenever speaking to prospects, if it’s a smaller ecommerce shop that cannot afford the monthly SEO services and they’re thinking about going into debt for it, I always advise them against it because frankly, it just takes time. It’s a very slow growing channel that can take anywhere between nine to twelve months before you start seeing those returns really. And obviously, whenever you’re thinking about SEO, you’re thinking three, four, five years out. So that’s ultimately what the mindset should be for these business owners.

Now, that also means that, yes, they’re going to have to figure out how to get that initial traction, whether it’s paid search advertising, whether it’s social media advertising and influencer advertising. whatever it might take that’s what they should do but ultimately it starts in house and actually my the biggest piece of advice that I give to every prospect that to you know to whom I say don’t invest in seo right now is to learn the basics of seo and at least accommodate some of the basics so that they at least understand you know when they’re looking for professional seo help that they know what to look for, right? They know the difference between a good link and a bad link. They know the difference between great content and really poor quality content that was generated by AI or written somewhere offshore. So there are things that you should know about SEO on your own before you kind of dive into it in order to be a properly educated client and get the most out of it.

Daniela: Yeah, I feel like that’s really important. At Penji, we do graphic design and one of the services that we do is UX UI. And that’s a big thing where I think we also sort of stress that you have to be an educated client when you’re going into web design because SEO plays a part into it, right? You’re making a website and that’s going to be a part of the strategy. So you have to very much understand a lot of it before you just kind of go in and say, I want a pink website to sell my shoes. So I think that that’s like a really important thing that always sort of comes up.

Content Strategy for Budget-Limited Businesses

Daniela: My other question for you was regarding content actually. I think a lot of these sort of like when a business is getting started, when the budget is limited, aside from whether or not they put money into SEO, I think a lot of the big concern, the concerns that I see are, not having bandwidth to create content tailored for every single group that they are targeting. Obviously, you know, like a one size fits all type of thing doesn’t really go. And I think it’s like very logical. And a lot of people know this. But unfortunately, a lot of people say like, well, I don’t have money to do anything other than a one size fits approach. So what can they do? to kind of work around that if they are trying to sort of tap into that part of creating content, you know, like doing all of this SEO work, but they probably only have for like one specific thing that they can do.

Igor: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You just take, you know, you don’t need a pie starting, you know, from every edge, right. And you don’t try to eat all of it at once. You take a slice, right. And you work on that slice and then you come back to that pie and you eat the rest of it until it’s done. So, you know, ultimately I think that you just strategically, you pick What kind of content, you know, who you’re trying to market to, who do you really want to capture? You know, what is your lowest hanging fruit opportunity? And then go after that, you know, whether it’s targeting a particular audience, whether it’s going after a particular channel. That’s just a smart way to approach your, you know, business development and marketing. And, you know, ultimately it’s…

There is no one size fits all approach, but at the same time, you can make impactful gains when you take it one step at a time. And so I think that even if you can produce one article every month or if you can allocate a couple of thousand dollars worth of advertising into a single month to target your highest profit margin product, something along those lines. just do some things you know take it a little bit at a time and no matter where your budget is you know ultimately I do think that there are successful ways to you know to market and develop your business and build your brand even if you just commit you know as little as an hour you know a day to it or an hour every week to it

Daniela: Yeah for sure I think like anything I think is good even if it’s just a little as long as you’re doing it I think it’s worse to do nothing that’s and kind of just staying within that, I don’t know, mindset.

The Dangers of AI-Generated Content

Daniela: Do content, like, do you think that content is something that is easy for any business owner to create now that ChatGPT is a thing and you can literally put in a request of like, hey, come up with ideas that I can post for my business? Or do you think that it’s still something that you should sort of, you know, collaborate with other people with?

Igor: So this is actually where AI is going to potentially harm businesses, in my opinion. So AI generated content is not great because it literally takes the, again, existing data sets, existing content that somebody else put together, and it kind of produces an answer based on that. which is not original. It’s not unique. It’s not expertise driven. Right. And ultimately great content is going to come from people who are in the thick of their industry. Right. Cause they’re going to be, they’re going to have the thought leadership. They’re going to have the expertise, the experience that comes with everything, you know, within the industry. Right. And so ultimately, you know, I think that, and unfortunately, you know, not everybody’s kind of educated on, on the side of things, but yeah, Google, for example, doesn’t want to see AI-generated content. In fact, they just come out and said, don’t use ChatGPT to write content and then publish it.

We just had a core algorithm update that literally probably targeted a lot of that thin content or content that is not originally unique. We’ve also had the kind of the EAT side of things, which is experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, which basically is it’s the importance of authorship, right? So are you somebody who’s whoever you are and you’re writing an article, are you an actual expert in that subject matter? If you are not, then Google is probably not going to rank your article for it. So this is something that’s been around for several years now, and we’ve been accommodating that within our content processes.

But that’s why we pull in our clients oftentimes. That’s why there’s review and there’s oftentimes collaboration with the clients. Because when we put together content, we’re not the experts on the subject matter. They are. Right. And so oftentimes they will actually provide the kind of unique angles, unique data sets or unique quotes that really support the meat of the article and provide those unique viewpoints.

So yeah I mean using please don’t use chat gpt to degenerate content I just I beg everybody please you know if you cannot you know if you don’t have time to do it then do it yourself you know take an hour on the weekend write an article and just put your best foot forward right just write about that topic and cover it as a true expert and I promise you that that will work better for you than anything that chat gpt will spit back out at your query

Using AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

Daniela: I think judge a PT is really helpful for getting rid of that sort of blank slate. If you know what I mean, like, I feel like I’ve, I’ve had, yeah, kind of like you’re not staring at a white piece of paper and you’re just like, what do I say? I think it can be helpful for like giving you ideas, get that, that sort of like that mind moving, get it flowing until you can come up with something. But. I agree with you. I’ve seen a lot of businesses put out a lot of like articles and content and it’s clearly AI generated. And it really turns me off because it’s like you said, ChatGPT is pulling this information from somewhere. If you are not feeding information into an algorithm so that ChatGPT can pull it, it’s going to keep getting just worse and worse unless we make sentient bots, which I honestly don’t want to get to. It doesn’t make sense. So I totally agree.

Yeah. No, really niche subject is that a lot of people, like, I think I know that a lot of writers have complained about AI generated, like creative writing, you know, for like stories and stuff. Cause a lot of people are starting to use that. And they’ve kind of complained that it’s the same thing of like, well, you know, like you can’t do like a book. Don’t write a book in AI. Like what is the worth of it if it’s made in AI? And I think like, I don’t think it’s like at least if you’ve ever tried to have sort of do an AI do that for you, you will notice that it’s like it will eventually start talking in circles and do like recurring patterns. So I don’t think that it’s even a feasible thing to do. So I think like, yeah, you definitely still need to have someone in there to sort of get in and review and see and add the human aspect of it.

Igor: Yeah, I think that even if you look at manufacturing factories that have robotic arms building things, there are still human operators that are walking around and making sure that the machinery itself works well and probably programming some of those things. Today we’re building this, tomorrow we’re building that. They still have to input the programming.

Yeah, it’s an imperfect tool. I think it has its uses. We’re actually exploring how it can be used for certain things, but to purely use it as an actual writer, that’s not a great idea. Certainly helpful, like you said, but not a great idea for permanent usage.

Closing and Contact Information

Daniela: And I think this is a great note to end the podcast on Igor. It’s been so great to have you. But before we end it, I do want to give you the space to promote anything, to plug anything. If anything we spoke about today resonated with our audience, anybody’s looking for SEO work or you’re looking for people to work with you, space is yours.

Igor: Yeah, I mean, honestly, we are, you know, we are highly competent at what we do. I personally take care of all the prospects, you know, initial communications and, and after that. So if anybody has any questions or if you’re curious about our services and would like to learn more, you know, please just reach out on our website. That is, you know, the contact forms on the website is the best way to get in touch with us. And I will be the person replying to.

Daniela: Awesome. Yeah. I will be adding the links to that on the descriptions video so that Anybody can go ahead and talk to you and see it. And thank you so much for being here, Igor. It was so great to have you on the podcast.

Igor: Thanks for having me, Daniela. It was great. It was great. Thank you.

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