SEO Is Not That Hard
Are you eager to boost your website's performance on search engines like Google but unsure where to start or what truly makes a difference in SEO?Then "SEO Is Not That Hard" hosted by Edd Dawson, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in building and successfully ranking websites, is for you. Edd shares actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable insights to help you improve your Google rankings and create better websites for your users.Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned SEO professional, this podcast offers something for everyone. Join us as we simplify SEO and give you t...
Is OpenAI about to launch a 'Search Console' ?
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For years, SEOs have had Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools but for ChatGPT, the platform hundreds of millions of people now consult before they ever reach Google, there has been no first-party data at all. Every AI visibility tool on the market works from the outside, firing sample prompts at the models and hoping the results mean something. This week, that may be about to change.
In this episode, Edd looks at screenshots shared on LinkedIn by Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, showing a “Cla...
Why I built Salience.com
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For eleven months I stopped podcasting and built a company with my co-founders. This episode is the full story of Salience: what it is, why server logs matter more than ever, and how three people built an enterprise product using a team of AI agents.
Every request to your website is written to a server log. Every person, every Googlebot visit, every AI agent, every failed request and every hacking attempt, recorded with no JavaScript, no cookies and no way to opt out. It is the most complete first-party data you...
The biggest year in SEO I've ever known
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This has been the biggest year of change in search I've known in over twenty years of doing this. In one episode, here's what actually happened while the podcast was on hiatus, and what still works.
I start with the shift that hit every dashboard: Google switching off the num=100 parameter in September 2025. Impressions fell overnight, average positions improved, clicks stayed flat, and it exposed how much "search traffic" was never a person at all. Then the results page itself: AI Overviews now sit above the links on more than half...
The pause experiment: 11 months later
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On the 1st of December last year I paused this podcast for a month, as an experiment. The month lasted eleven. This episode is a hello, an apology and the results, all at once.
First, the experiment. What actually happens to a 361-episode evergreen podcast when you stop publishing? Downloads dipped over Christmas, bounced back in January, and have sat on a plateau at roughly half the old level ever since: new listeners still find the show, binge the back catalogue, then run out. I share which episodes kept pulling people...
Update and December Plans
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Ever wondered why people in Glasgow ask different questions than people in London about the same service? We pull back the curtain on a major update: city-level People Also Ask targeting that lets you research real local queries and build content that matches each neighbourhood’s language, concerns, and intent. It’s a simple shift with powerful results—clearer clusters, tighter FAQs, and topical authority that feels grounded in place rather than padded with generic terms.
We also share what’s changing behind the scenes. A refreshed interface is on the way to s...
Link Building SEO Megapod!
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Links still move the needle, but the way we earn them has changed. We pull together the best of our link building series and lay out a clear, low-risk path to stronger rankings and lasting authority. No gimmicks, no cloak-and-dagger—just assets people want to cite.
We start by cleaning up the language of links: what “good, bad, and ugly” backlinks look like, why Penguin still shapes risk, and how AI-driven answers increase the value of being cited. From there, we get practical with linkable assets that compound: tools that solve real p...
Link Building ep 10 : Promoting your content to get links
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Want links without cold emails or sketchy deals? We dive into a practical system for earning citations by putting useful work in front of the right people, then letting trust and timing do the heavy lifting. Ed Dawson, founder of Keywords People Use, unpacks why links still drive rankings and why they matter even more as AI search surfaces sources in responses.
We start with the reality check: buying links and anchor manipulation can waste money or trigger penalties. From there we map a cleaner path for new sites stuck in...
Link Building ep 9 : Link Building with Ego Bait
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Want links people actually want to share? We unpack ego bait link building and show how to turn recognition into rankings, authority, and AI-era citations. Instead of waiting for links, we create reasons for people and brands to amplify our work by featuring their expertise fairly and visibly.
We start with the foundations: why links still matter for Google and why they matter even more as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity cite sources. From there, we break down three reliable ego bait formats. First, interviews that spotlight a single expert with...
Link Building ep 8 : Building versus Buying Backlinks
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If your backlink comes with a receipt, it’s probably a liability. We break down the crucial difference between buying placements and earning genuine editorial links, tracing the story from PageRank to Penguin to today’s AI-driven search where citations and trust decide who gets surfaced. Along the way, we show how to avoid risky shortcuts and build a durable system for attracting links that actually move rankings.
We start by unpacking why Google treats paid links as manipulation and how that pollutes the link graph, making results worse for everyone. Then...
Link Building ep 7 : Engineering as Marketing
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What if one small, free tool could earn you more backlinks, leads, and trust than months of blogging? We dive into engineering as marketing, a strategy that turns lightweight, useful tools into link magnets and lead engines, especially powerful as AI search surfaces cited, authoritative resources.
I walk through the core idea: build a free tool that solves a real problem right next to your product’s value. From HubSpot’s Website Grader to Ahrefs’ free Backlink Checker, we break down why these tools spread so fast, how they capture qualified intere...
Link Building ep 6 : Link Building Using Awards
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Want more high‑quality links without playing whack‑a‑mole with paid placements or low‑value directories? We walk through a strategy that flips the usual script: stop entering awards and start running them. By becoming the awarding body in your niche, you can earn relevant backlinks from major brands, spark press coverage, and build durable authority that search engines and AI assistants recognise.
We begin with why links still matter, especially as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity cite trusted sources. Then we compare two paths: paying to enter business awards versus d...
Link Building ep 5 : When Guest Posting Goes Wrong
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Guest posting sounds harmless: write for a reputable site, add a link, meet a new audience. But when that link is part of the deal—and it passes PageRank—you could be stepping straight into “unnatural links” territory. We break down a real manual action that cited a guest article as the example, then map a clear path to promote your work without risking your domain.
I walk through Google’s stance on guest posts, why intent matters more than money changing hands, and how manual actions differ from algorithmic hits. You’ll hea...
Link Building ep 4 : Linkbuilding with Digital PR
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Want links that don’t vanish with the next algorithm update? We dive into digital PR and show how to earn authoritative coverage that boosts rankings, brand searches, and even AI search citations. Instead of paying for links, we focus on creative stories and credible data that journalists choose to share.
We start with why links still move the needle and how AI-driven results increasingly reward sources that get referenced across the web. From there we unpack what makes digital PR “white hat,” tracing the shift after Penguin from paid link scheme...
Link Building ep 3 : Content That People Link To: Tools
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Want links that arrive without endless cold emails or paid placements? We make the case for building interactive tools that solve real problems, create a defensible moat, and keep earning citations for years. From consumer broadband to B2B keyword research, we unpack why tools outperform blog posts when your goal is authority, rankings, and revenue.
We start by reframing “content” as an action: a page that lets users calculate, compare, discover, or decide. Then we get practical with four examples. A broadband postcode checker personalises deals by location and wins link...
Link Building ep 2 : Understanding Blackhat - PBN's
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Ever wondered why PBNs still tempt smart SEOs? We pull back the curtain on private blog networks—how they’re built on expired domains, why they deliver short bursts of rankings, and where the true costs and risks hide. From anchor text control and link velocity to detection patterns, manual actions, and painful clean-ups, we map the full lifecycle of a PBN so you can make informed choices about your link strategy.
I share a straight-talking breakdown of link economics in 2025, including why links drive not just rankings but citations across AI s...
Link Building ep 1 : Backlinks - the Good, the Bad & the Ugly
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Want search visibility that survives the next update and shows up in AI answers? We dive straight into the real calculus of link building: what still works, what crumbles under scrutiny, and how to build a backlink profile that compounds rather than collapses. Drawing on two decades of building, buying, and selling sites, Ed breaks down backlinks into three buckets—good, bad, and ugly—and explains the risks behind each, from short‑term bumps to long, painful recoveries.
We start with first principles: why links remain a core ranking signal and why AI...
The Complete Entity Series Megapod
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What if your site could be read like a map of meaning instead of a pile of keywords? Edd walks through a complete reframe of SEO around entities — the people, organisations, products, places, and ideas that define your niche — and shows how to turn that model into durable authority across search and AI.
We start with how modern search reads the web: extracting entities, resolving ambiguity, and linking to public knowledge bases that feed Google’s Knowledge Graph. From there, we break down why entities power rich SERP features like knowledge panels...
Entities Part 12 : Beyond Your Website: Building Off-Page Authority
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Authority doesn’t live on your site alone—it’s earned in public, where other trusted names choose to cite, invite, and stand beside you. We wrap our entities series by moving beyond links-as-votes and into the richer world of entity association: the patterns of mentions, partnerships, and consistent identity signals that teach search engines and LLMs who you are and why you matter.
We start by reframing off-page SEO for the semantic era. Links still help, but the deeper win is co-occurrence with respected brands, experts, and publications in your niche...
Entities Part 11 : Future-Proofing for Answer Engines
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Search is quietly rewiring how people find answers, and the biggest shift isn’t on the results page—it’s inside the models that compose those answers. We dig into a practical playbook for turning your content into the source that ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity cite, so your brand earns authority even when no click happens.
First, we map the path from traditional rankings to AI citations and explain why “position zero” is now the reference text behind generative answers. Then we get tactical. You’ll learn how to build a heading hi...
Entities Part 10 : Speaking Machine - Your Practical Guide to Schema Markup
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Tool mentioned in the podcast: https://validator.schema.org/
Machines don’t reward guesses; they reward clarity. We walk through a practical, four‑step framework to make search engines and LLMs understand your brand, your people, and your offers without ambiguity. The focus is on schema markup that scales: JSON‑LD for clean implementation, @id for stable references, and a connected entity graph that links Organisation, Website, Person, Product, and Service into one coherent map of your business.
We start by establishing a site...
Entities Part 9 : Content That Builds Authority
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Ready to stop sprinkling keywords and start building authority that lasts? We take one neglected concept in your niche and turn it into a structured topic cluster that both readers and search engines recognise as a trusted resource. From mapping entities to designing a pillar page and the right cluster coverage, we show how to move beyond thin posts and build a small, focused library that stands up to scrutiny.
We break down the hub-and-spoke model in plain terms: what belongs on a pillar, how to choose cluster pages, and why...
Entities Part 8: Your Competitors Entities
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The prompt mentioned in the episode is:
You are an expert SEO analyst specializing in Natural Language Processing and entity-based optimization. I will provide you with the text from a competitor's webpage. Your task is to perform a Named Entity Recognition (NER) analysis on this text.
Please identify all the significant entities mentioned in the text. For each entity, classify it into one of the following categories: Person, Organization, Location, Product, Event, or Concept (for abstract ideas, theories, or topics).
Please present...
Entities Part 7 : The Audit - Identifying Your Core Entities
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Search engines understand the world through entities, not just keywords, and that changes how we plan, write, and structure content. We take the entity conversation out of theory and into practice by building a simple, durable audit you can complete today. The result is a living blueprint that gives your brand a clear centre of gravity online and helps algorithms connect your pages to real people, products, and ideas.
We start by anchoring your commercial core with precise brand and product entities—official names, common variants, sub-brands, and flagship offerings. Then we...
Entities Part 6 : Fighting AI Fiction: Grounding Your Brand in Reality
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Tired of confident AI answers that crumble under scrutiny? We pull back the curtain on why large language models hallucinate—and how to stop the damage by turning your website into a source AIs can safely cite. Instead of treating models like fact vaults, we treat them like brilliant writers who need trustworthy notes. That shift unlocks a practical playbook: ground responses in real documents, use retrieval‑augmented generation, and structure your content around clear, unambiguous entities.
We break down RAG in plain terms: retrieval first, generation second. Think open‑book exam...
Entities Part 5: How ChatGPT Really Thinks About Your Brand
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Forget neat rows of facts—your brand lives inside AI as a point on a vast map of meaning. We unpack how large language models like ChatGPT convert words into vectors, arrange them in a multi‑dimensional latent space, and “reason” by navigating probabilistic paths rather than retrieving certified entries from a knowledge graph. That shift explains both the astonishing creativity of LLMs and the stubborn problem of hallucinations, and it reveals why your content choices directly influence how machines see you.
We start by separating Google’s Knowledge Graph—built on labelled...
Entities Part 4 : Beyond 10 Blue Links
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The search results page is no longer a tidy list of links—it’s a dynamic canvas where knowledge panels, rich snippets, featured snippets, and AI Overviews signal who Google trusts. We dig into how entities underpin every one of these features and why your real goal isn’t just ranking higher, but earning eligibility across the SERP. By treating features as an external readout of the knowledge graph, you can diagnose gaps in authority, spot competitor advantages, and plan content that aligns with real user questions.
We start with the crown...
Entities Part 3 : The Knowledge Graph
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Most brands still try to “tell” Google who they are. We show how Google actually decides: by stitching together a ledger of facts from your site, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, news articles, and structured data—then trusting only what aligns. This is the Knowledge Graph at work, and it’s quietly steering whether you earn a knowledge panel, sitelinks, and richer visibility across search.
We break down the four streams feeding the graph—public web pages, licensed datasets, human‑edited knowledge bases like Wikidata, and direct owner signals via schema.org—and explain how each contr...
Entities Part 2 : How Machines Learn To Read
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Keywords don’t tell the whole story—entities do. We take you inside the three-step process machines use to read your content like a detective at a crime scene: highlighting potential entities, using context to resolve ambiguity, and linking each mention to a unique identifier in a global knowledge base. By the end, you’ll see why “Jordan” only makes sense when surrounded by the right clues—and how to present those clues so search engines and AIs make the right call every time.
We start with named entity recognition, the digital high...
Entities Part 1 : Things not Strings
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Most of us were trained to think in keywords—count them, match them, stuff them. But Google no longer sees the web as a bag of words; it reads the world as a network of entities, relationships, and intent. We unpack the “things, not strings” shift and explore how Hummingbird, BERT, and advances in NLP turned SEO from phrase-matching into meaning-making. Along the way, we show how entity clarity powers knowledge panels, fuels AI answers, and builds the kind of topical authority that lasts.
I walk through a simple, practical framework for mo...
Best of : Engineering as Marketing
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Tired of churning out endless blog posts that barely move the needle? There's a powerful alternative that smart brands are using to generate leads, backlinks, and unmatched brand authority.
In this eye-opening episode, I dive deep into "engineering as marketing" – the strategy of creating free, useful tools that attract and convert your ideal customers. Unlike standard content marketing, this approach leverages your development resources to build something truly valuable that competitors can't easily replicate. I break down exactly how industry leaders like HubSpot and Ahrefs have used this strategy to build ma...
Best of : Search Intent
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Ever wondered why some websites rank well but fail to convert visitors? The missing piece is likely search intent—understanding not just what people search for, but why they're searching in the first place.
Search intent is the compass that guides effective SEO and content strategy. In this classic episode from the SEO Is Not That Hard archive, I break down the four critical types of intent that drive all searches: informational (seeking knowledge), commercial (researching options), transactional (ready to buy), and navigational (finding a specific website). Using the practical example of...
Best of - The story of Broadband.co.uk
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Success stories in digital business rarely follow a straight line, and the 18-year journey of Broadband.co.uk perfectly illustrates the rollercoaster ride of building a sustainable online business. What began almost accidentally in 2004, when the term "broadband" suddenly became associated with home internet service, evolved into one of the UK's leading comparison websites before culminating in a successful exit in 2021.
The early days reflect the experimental nature of the mid-2000s internet landscape. When a web agency called Broadband Communications found themselves receiving inquiries about broadband installation because of their...
The Speed of Satisfaction: Mastering Time to Value
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The deceptively simple concept of Time to Value might be the most overlooked factor in your SEO strategy. In this eye-opening episode, I break down why the speed at which users experience the core benefit of your website directly impacts your search rankings.
Time to Value (TTV) is that magical moment when a visitor says, "Ah, I get it!" – the instant they realize your site delivers exactly what they needed. Whether it's finding the perfect product, getting a crucial answer, or completing a task, how quickly this happens determines whether they'll st...
Google Search Console data looking odd? Here's why..
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A major shift has occurred in how Google Search Console reports your website's performance data, and it all stems from a quiet technical change few noticed. Google has removed the "num=100" parameter from search results—a seemingly minor adjustment with far-reaching consequences for SEO professionals and website owners alike.
This parameter allowed SEO tools to view 100 search results on a single page, gathering vast amounts of ranking data efficiently. Its removal has thrown rank tracking companies into disarray, forcing them to make ten times more requests to collect the same data, dr...
The Dowding System: Winning Your Business Battle with Data
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Have you ever found yourself drowning in a sea of marketing data, unsure which metrics actually matter? The solution might come from an unexpected source—a smoke-filled room beneath London during the Battle of Britain.
In this fascinating episode, I draw surprising parallels between the RAF's revolutionary Dowding System—which helped a vastly outnumbered air force defeat the Luftwaffe in 1940—and the challenges modern businesses face with data management. The problem isn't a lack of information; it's making sense of the overwhelming flood of contradictory inputs coming from analytics, search console, CRMs...
Best of : There are no quick fixes in SEO
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Looking for the magic SEO shortcut that will skyrocket your rankings overnight? You won't find it here—or anywhere else legitimate. In this candid episode, I pull back the curtain on one of the most persistent myths in digital marketing: the idea that quick fixes can deliver sustainable SEO results.
Drawing from over two decades of experience building, monetizing, and selling websites, I share why patience isn't just important—it's absolutely essential. We examine the recent August 2024 core update, where sites hit by the Helpful Content Update nearly a year ago are...
Best of : Study shows slow sites don't just affect Google
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Ever wondered if your website's loading speed really matters that much? The Financial Times conducted a bold experiment that answers this question with hard data—and the results should make every website owner pay attention.
In this episode, I dive into FT.com's fascinating study where they deliberately slowed down their website for different groups of users. Some visitors experienced the site normally, while others faced delays ranging from one to five seconds on every page load. The Financial Times tracked how these delays affected user behavior over an entire month, fo...
Best of : Intent Shift vs Question Shift
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Search behavior is constantly evolving, and understanding those shifts is crucial for effective SEO. This episode dives into the fascinating distinction between "intent shift" and "question shift" – two concepts that significantly impact how we should approach content creation.
The traditional view of intent shift focuses on how the purpose behind identical search queries changes over time. Think of "Christmas trees" – in December, users want to buy one; after Christmas, they need disposal information; by summer, they might be wholesalers or researchers. Google adapts to these patterns by monitoring which results users actu...
Best of : Own Your Branded Search
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Are affiliate websites stealing your hard-earned customers by ranking for your brand name plus "coupon code" searches? This eye-opening episode reveals a critical blind spot in many brands' SEO strategies.
Drawing inspiration from SEO veteran Carl Hendy's expertise, Edd Dawson explains why controlling your branded search experience is essential for businesses of any size. When potential customers search for your brand plus terms like "discount code" or "voucher code," they've already decided to purchase from you—so why let affiliate sites intercept them at the final stage of their journey?
Best of : When is a zero volume keyword NOT a zero volume keyword?
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SEO Is Not That Hard is hosted by Edd Dawson and brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUse.com
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