Amanda Kern Podcast Interview
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Audio Only - All Participants: [00:00:00] Hi everybody and welcome back to the ALC Changemakers Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Sconyers, and today I'm with Amanda Kern. Welcome Amanda. Hi everybody. Amanda and I met last fall in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, so we got to spend some time together. About three, three and a half months.
It felt like three years. That's time. It was three months. And we also have been at the same coworking space that I've mentioned before, Haven Collective in Columbus, Ohio. So welcome, Amanda. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I'm so excited to be here. Absolutely. So tell our listeners about yourself, who you are, and your leadership journey.
Absolutely. So I am Amanda Kern. I'm the founder and CEO of Emerald Creative Content. We're a different type of marketing agency that does everything through the lens of search [00:01:00] engine optimization, so we help. Create audiences, um, for small businesses and now moving up the market to mid-size businesses as well.
And whether we're building a website or a landing page, or we're doing social media marketing or creating a video, we're always thinking about how do we get the most reach for our clients. That's awesome. So what inspired you to do SEO Marketing and optimization? That's such a niche. What, what brought you here?
Yeah. A lot of SEOs. The last stat that I checked, it's between 80 and 90% of SEOs. Are males. And so I started out as a copywriter and I would get these briefs from my clients and their SEO agencies that would say, Hey, we're looking for you to create a piece of content that uses these primary keywords, these secondary keywords.
Here's where the keywords need to appear. And it would, it was a formula, but [00:02:00] then they would also say, but it needs to be creative and readable, and people actually have to be able to enjoy it. And so it was sort of like putting a puzzle together. And after a while I got really curious. About how these formulas were created, why these keywords, how does this blog post that I'm writing, or this webpage I'm writing, fit into the services that this business provides?
How is this helping this business grow? And I really went down a rabbit hole and I was fortunate enough to have an SEO agency that one of my clients was working with that was woman owned. And the woman in the agency was like, Hey, you seem really interested in this. I can mentor you. And so she was kind enough to extend the ladder down to me and to give me the tea on CEO and how it meshes with copywriting.
And so that's really how Emerald was born because once I really dug my claws into search engine optimization and how powerful it can be for small businesses that. Maybe don't have a gigantic marketing budget for paid ads, [00:03:00] but they've got a little bit of a budget and SEO could be such a big bang for their buck.
Yeah. Um, I got really excited and so, um, I married together the SEO component of what I do with the creative content creation side of what we do, and that created Emerald. Created Emerald. Well, I know, um, you know, in class I was always intrigued because you always had such interesting insights and ways to optimize people's websites.
We were all small business owners, so nobody has a budget. Right. You know what I mean? We're on shoestrings. So what are some things you tell small business owners in terms of just best practices or ways to start? Yeah, there's a myth that SEO is this very technical mystery thing that you need to pay a lot of money for someone to optimize the backend of your website.
And while technical SEO is important, it's such a small component of a much larger puzzle. And the best thing a business owner [00:04:00] can do is to build up what's called their EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. This is the most important thing that Google looks for when it's trying to decide what content it wants to rank.
And there's a lot of competition in your niche. And essentially what that means is know what you're an expert in. What is it that makes you an expert in your industry, and how can you showcase and demonstrate that expertise through your content, whether that's video content or whether that's. Text-based content and you should post that content on YouTube, your website, your social media accounts as uh, consistently as you can, and build up authority in your expertise, in your niche.
Mm-hmm. And that is the most foundational piece of SEO. So if you can do that as a business owner, then the traffic will come. Yeah. Well that's great. Well, for listeners, I sat down with Amanda and just like, what am I doing? Because [00:05:00] this is, this is not my expertise. I think I've shared to my sort listeners many, many moons ago when I was, you know, an infant.
I worked in marketing, but it was in the advertising side and it was ad specialties. And so that's like very niche. And I realized, you know, I like promotional items, but I'm not gonna live and die by it. So I just chose a whole other career path. So I'm grateful for the experiences, but that's what taught me the importance of storytelling and how a company or an organization tells its story.
It's why we have this podcast. People can tell their stories. So I'm super curious in this current marketplace, Amanda, there's the emergence of AI. AI is not brand new. It's been around for a few years, but I feel like people are, within the last couple years are realizing its importance. What are the smart ways, ethical ways, even for people to use AI for SEO purposes?
That's a great question. Um, so really what people should be thinking about is, uh, for their own business mm-hmm. Generative [00:06:00] engine optimization. Mm-hmm. How can you make sure that your business is appearing in AI searches? Mm-hmm. And if you have a solid SEO strategy, meaning you're building your authority for your own website, you're demonstrating EEAT, you're publishing content that's original, it's got your original voice, your original ideas.
Maybe you're even basing it in original research in your industry or case studies in your industry. Mm-hmm. Then you will naturally start to build what's called content clusters around some of the services or products that you provide. And once you become an authority and you have enough content in that content cluster, you will naturally start to appear in these.
Search engines in these AI search engines like chat GPT or perplexity or clot or whatever you're using. Mm-hmm. And so the best thing a business owner can do to optimize for a generative engine optimization is to build up those content clusters. Mm-hmm. As far as using AI for SEO. Mm-hmm. Um, I use AI every day in my business.
Mm-hmm. [00:07:00] And I primarily use it to help shake ideas loose. If I'm stuck staring at a page, or if I'm really trying to wrap my brain around a new industry or a new concept, I'll have AI break it down for me. Mm-hmm. And really explain it to me in a way that I can understand. Mm-hmm. It's also incredible for doing research and processing large amounts of data and compressing them into.
A bite size that you can really wrap your brain around. Mm-hmm. And so I'll often use AI to do a large amount of research or to break down data for me that would otherwise have taken hours and hours to figure out. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that's helpful. Sometimes I also use AI in my writing process, and so if you're a content creator, you're constantly having to think of new ideas.
Yes. To ideate about for your audience. Yeah. Um, you're constantly having to stare at a blank page and figure out how to take it from nothing to something and create something. Yeah. So I use AI to help me in that ideation process and sometimes in [00:08:00] the drafting process. Where I caution business owners is using AI to do the thinking for you all the way and articulate the final idea and how it, it shows up on paper when you're ready to publish.
'cause what AI does is it takes all of the data that's already out there that everyone else has already talked about, and it just regurgitates what's already out there. Mm-hmm. And Cole doesn't wanna see that. And frankly, you and I don't wanna see that. And other humans don't. That either we want your original take on things.
Mm-hmm. And so where I draw the line and where I encourage other business owners to draw the line is when it's time to get that final draft to where you want it to be. And when it comes to making sure that your own original ideas appear in the content, don't let AI do any of that for you because it's not to put the spin on things quite like you will.
Yeah, I think that's really good. Advice. 'cause I think for, you know, at ALC we work with small businesses, nonprofits, everyone who's got, they're tightening their belt, right? They're, they're trying to do a lot [00:09:00] with a little, and. There's been some real, I think, important discussions about the smart ways to incorporate AI into whatever they're doing or building and over usage has come up.
And I think, you know, part of this, especially, you know, blogging or whatever you're doing in the world, which is a part of an SEO strategy, making sure it's doing the thing it's supposed to do right, which is get more eyeballs back on you, your entity, your organization, and what you're. What you're doing.
So these are really important tips. Um, I'll share listeners. Something I think you shared with me too was even, so like taking content, right? So at a LC we do different types of training, so I know I've used a couple of AI tools and just taking even some outlines, some, some thinking that've already done.
I'm like, okay, I'm trying to generate an article about X and it's been good to take my ideas into that and make it sound coherent. If you'll absolutely like, like some [00:10:00] outlines I've put together, you know, or, and so it's been good for that. Um. I know certain AI tools, like we do, there's different research we do in, in the past, like I was a research director, so I spent all my days looking up articles.
Wow. And so I've noticed, you know, that's been helpful to use it to like, okay, well where's this? And I always ask like, what are primary sources? What are credible sources? And I check them all. You know what I mean? So it's, you're still human. Absolutely. Um, and doing that. Something you mentioned to me when we chatted before Amanda was, and it was like how to use some of these AI tools for SEO was you could actually ask it for help, right?
You can actually put in to, just to generate what are like SEO tags, can you explain how to leverage AI just for that use too, for people like, I don't know where to start, but it's like, how do I use this tool? Yeah, absolutely. AI can teach you anything, including how you can use ai. And so a good place to start is if you're completely new, just start talking [00:11:00] to it like you would another person.
So if you had an AI expert who was sitting in front of you, mm-hmm. You could start by asking, you could say, Hey, I'm new to this. Help me understand how I can use you. I'm a business owner and what you're really doing is. You're engineering your prompt. And so, um, when we think about how to use ai, prompt engineering or seeding is something that you'll get better and better at as you go.
Mm-hmm. There's a saying in, in coding and web development, garbage in, garbage out, and that definitely applies when it comes to ai. The better you can be with describing. What your need is and what the context is around your need, the better the output will be that you get from ai. Mm-hmm. So, for example, if you're sitting down for the first time, tell AI as much as you can about yourself.
I'm a business owner. This is the industry that I'm in. This is how I'm hoping to learn how to use you. Here are some of the pain points that I'm looking to solve. And then it will give you some different ideas on how you can use it as a tool in your business. Mm-hmm. [00:12:00] Mm-hmm. That's great. I love it. So tell me, just based on all that's going on in our world right now, what are some things that you're experiencing in your business and are there any changes or pivots you're making?
Yeah, I mean the surge of AI being everywhere, obviously had a lot of creative industries feeling the pressure of, are all of our clients going to abandon us just to go use ai? Um, and even clients are asking, you know, is SEO dead because people are starting to use these AI tools. Should I even worry about still appearing on Google?
And so there's a lot of anxiety that's coming up now, particularly around creative work and search engine optimization. Mm-hmm. And so the way that we've had to pivot, there's a couple of things. Number one is what we're noticing is that businesses who value creative output and they value that original touch, that only a human designer or human [00:13:00] videographer has.
That that I, for these clients are starting to value the human touch even more. And so we've pivoted away from trying to appeal to all businesses, to really trying to appeal to that human side of things. Like, Hey, we've got real human artists, real human graphic designers, real videographers who studied this craft in college, and they've mm-hmm.
Tons of experience putting that, that final polish on things that you're just not gonna get with a SOA. Um, that's chat GPTs video creator, um, that you're just not going to get if you're using AI art. And so. That's something that we've started to lean into is, hey, we're not using AI to create our, our videos or our graphic designs and things.
We're using real people. Um, and so I think that that's been more helpful than hurtful. Um, and then the other thing is around the conversation of, well, should I even try for SEO [00:14:00] anymore if everybody's starting to use AI in search? And that's a really easy answer. The answer is actually, SEO is not dead.
It's just. Changing. Mm. Um, where does chat GPT get its content from? Well, it crawls, it crawls the web, just like Google sends crawlers out across different websites to index content chat. GPT is doing the exact same thing. It's crawling the web, it's looking for the most authoritative content. And so if you're able to rank your content organically for Google, you will.
Inevitably end up ranking in chat GPT and in perplexity. You will see in Google Analytics that your content is starting to show up in generative AI responses for people. And when your content is used, it often will cite a. Your website. And so it includes a hyperlink and it's answer if it's citing something from your website.
And so we're starting to see in Google Analytics, our clients are getting traffic from chat DPT and that's cool. Um, but the, the way that you optimize for GEO or generative [00:15:00] engine optimization is you've gotta have a good SEO strategy. So the, the con the, the question about is SEO dead, should we even still worry about it?
Is such a silly question to me. Absolutely you should, and you should in fact worry about it more. Because now you have to think about, am I appearing on, you know, AI searches as well? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There's a lot here. Like I said, marketing, marketing is broad. Right. And I, and I like to tell people, we had five marketers in our Goldman Sachs cohort of, I don't know, 20 some odd people.
Mm-hmm. So, and we all did different things. There was there no crossover. No. And so each of you, each of you has a niche. Mary Hoffman has been on the, on the podcast, so you know, she spoke from her perspective like, you're here, it's all, it's all different, unique, and I just wanna name for listeners. Whether you are in a nonprofit or small business or whatever the entity may be, higher education government, you, you do need a marketing strategy, and it's one that's gonna be multifaceted.
So it's [00:16:00] not, there's not like a one size fits all. It really depends on what you're doing. So, SEO optimization is a, is a piece of a strategy that's actually quite important. Especially depending on what you're doing in the world. And so for people who are, especially people who are service-based, like our services is, that's what people buy from us, that's what they get enrolled into.
And so we have to show our expertise and we have to be seen like we need eyeballs. So this is where SEO optimization is so important. They have to know we exist and our services exist. Absolutely. They come to want themselves. So this just feels like really critically important. I completely agree. It's been really interesting.
We've, we've been in business now for, we're on year four. Mm-hmm. And so we've, we've had some clients that have been with us since the very beginning. And so watching how a long-term organic strategy that evolves and keeps getting better and better and builds on itself. [00:17:00] Over time can affect a business has been pretty incredible.
We've seen businesses that started with us that were doing a quarter of a million a year, and now they're doing over a million a year, and they tell us we couldn't have done it without our SEO growing. That's where we get the majority of our traffic from our website. That's where a lot of our leads are coming from, and so it's.
The thing that's a bummer about SEO is that it takes so freaking long Yeah. To actually start working for you. It takes a, it's sort of like, you know, when you go on a health journey, you, you can't expect to see results overnight. You, you have to be consistent about it. And SEO is very similar. And so it requires patience, which a lot of business owners are very impatient.
Uh, we, we tend to be very type A. We wanna see results fast. Um, and so that's something that. Always takes time to help clients understand is like we, mm-hmm. We gotta be in it to win it. It's a marathon. It's not a race. Yeah. So what's the, what's the average period of time like, and what would you say is, is, is timing for [00:18:00] people so they can create, have a cadence or a rhythm so that they have momentum?
Like what does that typically look like if you are dedicating at least, um, you know, some something every week you're doing one thing per week. To help with your SEO, maybe that's optimizing a page on your website, maybe that's posting a new blog. Mm-hmm. Um, whatever that looks like for you. It should be something that's based around either improving content on your website or adding new content to your website.
And if you're doing that once a week and you do it for three months. You will start to see results. Okay. Now the things that will prevent that, there's a couple of things. Number one is if the technical SEO on your website is broken and it's back, oh, so a little bit of technical issues going on in your site, not a big deal.
Mm-hmm. Um, however, if you've got some major issues going on, like your site's loading really slowly, okay. Or you've got some issues where for some reason Google is not able to index your content, um, then you might. You might see stalling. Um, and [00:19:00] so you gotta make sure that those issues are taken care of.
Uh, assuming that that's not an issue though, then you will probably see results. The other thing that could be an obstacle is how competitive is your industry. We had a client who was in the diamond industry. Mm-hmm. And obviously that's an, an incredibly difficult niche to see results. Yeah. So we had to get really creative about how we started to see results for that client.
And after a year of working together, we finally started to see like the tremendous. Results that we for, but it took a really long time to build that EEAT to find the right keywords and like to get the content really going on their site. Um, and so the, yeah. If, if you're not in an industry that's hyper competitive and all of the technical things on your site are, are squared away and taken care of, yeah.
Then about three months is when you'll start to see progress. Mm-hmm. At the six month mark is when we start to hear business owners say, I can see it. In my bottom line, like I can, I'm getting more leads. Okay. I'm starting [00:20:00] to generate more revenue. Gotcha. So yeah, that three month mark, you should start to see movement.
We should start feeling a pulse. And then that six month mark is typically when we hear, okay, this is working. This was worth my investment. Gotcha. And then for movement, what does that mean? Is people just seeing you and making inquiries or like what does that typically look like for people? That looks like content on your website is actually starting to generate organic traffic for you.
Okay, so let's say you've been blogging consistently for three months. Yeah. You might start to see a good piece of content you published. Maybe the first month is starting to rank really well, and so you're starting to see that that one blog post is driving a pretty significant portion of traffic to your site.
Um, and it's usually through the blog that we start to see movement first landing pages where you're using what are called commercial keywords. Those tend to be much more competitive. But they're also further down the funnel. So that's people that are much closer to making a purchasing decision. Yeah.
Those take a longer amount of time before you start seeing like a [00:21:00] landing page where the result, the intended result is, I'm getting a lead from this. Those take longer. Okay. Um, so you'll, you'll typically start to see the more informational blog posts that are targeting easier keywords. Generating organic traffic first.
So that's really the first metric we look for is are people finding this? Are they clicking on it, and are they coming to the site to engage with the content? Love it. Well, these are all helpful tips and tricks for our listeners. Amanda, do you have any events coming up and where can people find you?
People can find us, uh, if they wanna head to our website at emeraldcontent.com, and they are welcome to book a free SEO audit with us. That's something that I love to offer to my friends whenever I come to have a conversation like this or I host a workshop. Um, so Jennifer, I'll send you the link to book a free SEO audit with me and you can link it in the show notes.
Great folks can also find us on Instagram at Emerald Creative Content. Um, or you're welcome to [00:22:00] connect with me on LinkedIn and you can just search Amanda Kern Emerald creative content and I will pop right up for you. Awesome. Well, any final thoughts or words of wisdom for folks who are just wanna try their, their hand at, at some of these tips and, and yeah, just wanna start their SEO practice.
I would say that doing something for your SEO is better than doing nothing. You're gonna feel really overwhelmed. The deeper you go, you're gonna be like, there's literally a thousand things that are on my to-do list. For SEO, just make your list and just try and, and as you go, you're going to refine your process and just create that time in your week and in your month.
And over time you'll start to get the hang of it. So don't feel overwhelmed and just remember, just start somewhere and. Don't, don't give up. You, you just gotta stick with it. Awesome. Well, this was a great conversation. As Amanda said, we're going include her information and Emerald, um, Emerald Creative her [00:23:00] company in the show notes.
You can find her too. Thank you so much, Amanda. This was awesome. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Jennifer. You're so welcome. All right. Until next time.
