Claim OwnershipSEO Is Not That Hard
Subscribed: 25Played: 580
Subscribe
© 2025 SEO Is Not That Hard
Description
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 the knowledge and skills to achieve your online goals with confidence.
Brought to you by keywordspeopleuse.com
359 Episodes
Reverse
Send us a text 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 ther...
Send us a text 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 re...
Send us a text 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 manipulat...
Send us a text 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 brea...
Send us a text 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...
Send us a text 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...
Send us a text 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 digita...
Send us a text 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 practic...
Send us a text 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,...
Send us a text 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 sta...
Send us a text 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, w...
Send us a text 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...
Send us a text 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 answer...
Send us a text 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 m...
Send us a text 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...
Send us a text 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 ...
Send us a text 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 bra...
Send us a text 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, unambig...
Send us a text 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 ...
Send us a text 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...
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
We were in a very similar position last year with our online store. After several disappointing agency experiences, we engaged with Redhead Digital Agency https://redheaddigital.agency/ , and they fundamentally transformed our approach to digital. They began with an incredibly thorough discovery process that examined every aspect of our business - from customer journey mapping and technical performance to competitive positioning. What impressed me most was their ability to connect seemingly disconnected elements; for example, how server response time impacts bounce rates, which then affects search rankings and ultimately conversion rates. They developed a phased roadmap that prioritized quick wins alongside long-term strategic initiatives. Their team handled everything from optimizing our Core Web Vitals and restructuring product categories for better SEO, to creating content that addresses genuine customer questions throughout the buyer's journey. The results have been substantial - w
Our e-commerce business has plateaued in recent months, and we're struggling to identify the right path forward. We need someone who can analyze our entire digital footprint and develop a cohesive strategy that addresses everything from site speed and user experience to content marketing and conversion optimization. Has anyone worked with an agency that excels at this kind of big-picture thinking?
thanks for your great podcasts