Podcast: What's the Future of B2B SEO

Shahin Hoda 23  mins read September 9th, 2020 (Updated: January 9th, 2024)

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The Future of B2B SEO Kate Toon - Banner

Episode’s topic: The future of B2B SEO - Building a personal brand, developing relationships and 'Good Karma SEO'

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda speaks with Kate Toon, an expert on SEO and digital marketing, to unveil how the future will look for B2B marketers.

Kate shares her valuable insight into some of SEO and marketing’s hottest topics. Join Shahin and her while they discuss the importance of building a personal brand and nurturing relationships as key elements in marketing.

This episode’s guest:

kate-toon-1

Kate Toon, SEO Copywriter and Consultant

While she is not a fan of the term “entrepreneur”, Kate is the owner of three amazing businesses: Kate Toon Copywriting, The Recipe for SEO Success and the Clever Copywriting School.

She is an award-winning copywriter, SEO consultant, author, podcaster and speaker with over two decades of experience in all things advertising, digital and writing. She has worked with many major brands and is passionate about teaching how digital marketing can help build more successful businesses. 

You can visit her website and connect with her on LinkedIn

 

Conversation segments on this episode:

  • [00:46] About Kate's work and businesses
  • [01:37] How SEO and marketing as a whole are changing
  • [03:36] The importance of building a personal brand
  • [05:31] How building a personal brand influences search results in Google
  • [08:24] Kate's input on whether backlinks are important for SEO
  • [12:12] Good Karma SEO
  • [14:29] Marketing is about relationships
  • [17:58] Why business owners should have a basic understanding of what they outsource
  • [24:37] Kate’s view on the bigger increase in voice search

Resources mentioned on this episode:

About the Growth Colony Podcast:

On this podcast, you'll be hearing from B2B founders, CMOs, marketing & sales leaders about their successes, failures, what is working for them today in the B2B marketing world and everything in between.

Hosted by Shahin Hoda & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

Get in touch!

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au


Episode Full Transcript:

[00:24] Shahin Hoda  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another show. I'm Shahin Hoda with xGrowth and today I'm talking with Kate Toon, founder of CopyCon and Recipe for SEO success. But the future of B2B SEO and what should B2B marketers pay close attention when it comes to SEO in 2020 and beyond? On that note, let's dive in. Kate, thanks for joining us. 

[00:43] Kate Toon  Hello, it's lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. 

[00:46] Shahin Hoda  It's an absolute pleasure having you. Kate, for those who might not be familiar with you, can you give us a quick intro? 

[00:54] Kate Toon  Yeah, so I guess I'm an entrepreneur. I don't really like that term because it's associated with people lying on horses with lots of money. But I've got three different businesses you mentioned a couple of them clever copywriting school where I teach copywriters how to have a successful and enjoyable business and that enjoyable is a bit important. And then The Recipe for SEO Success, which is a collection of courses, resources, or podcasts of various bits, that teaches business owners ecommerce stores, marketeers how to grapple Google and you know, get more traffic and more importantly, more conversions. Yeah, and then my third business is my own membership. So I teach people digital marketing, you know, how to use it to build, you know, more successful businesses. 

[01:37] Shahin Hoda  Yeah, and you've done them yourself with three companies. We were just talking about it before I hit the record button, about the number of launches that you had this year, about for your different products and courses that you're offering. So it's amazing. And you know, we're talking about B2B marketing today, and specifically SEO, in that space. The first thing that I want to ask is you know, is there anything in particular different for B2B marketing or in the B2B space when it comes to SEO versus you know, other verticals? You know, an ecommerce company that has thousands and thousands of pages versus a B2B? Are there any differences or not really? 

[02:17] Kate Toon  Well, I think I mean, I think the scale and scale brings different challenges, especially from an SEO perspective, you know, the way that you handle your SEO for 10,000 products ecommerce store is a little bit different than a 20 page advertising agency website, you know. But no, and I think that's an important change that's really happened I've seen over the last 10 years in terms of the way that you market to B2B customers and the way that you manage your SEO is closer and closer than as with consumers, so that you know, the language, I'm a copywriter at heart and you know, this conversational tone. It's kind of building relationships with your customers is having a personal brand within the company. 

[02:57] Kate Toon  So at least somebody is a figurehead as become much more invoke. And that in turn influences how you plan your keyword strategy, the kind of content you write, the kind of articles you're putting out there, it's changed, it's become much more familiar and less formal. And I think we see this most clearly on like a platform like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is really changing. And some people aren't happy about it. They like keep that stuff on Facebook and other people like no, because we don't just want to know this business by its, you know, grand avatar, we want to know what goes on behind the scenes. That's interesting. That's genuine that builds trust. And I think that's changing marketing as a whole and SEO. 

[03:36] Shahin Hoda  And this is a big topic that you we have, again, spoken before around building a personal brand for an organisation, right? How is that related? Why is that important for SEO and for brands in general? 

[03:52] Kate Toon  Because ultimately, it's always going to be easier to be found for who you are than what you do. So if someone out there is looking for copywriter in Sydney, what do they do? You know, they don't sit on Instagram hoping a meme pops up or, you know, go on Facebook and hope one of their friends casually mentioned somebody, they go straight to Google, they type in what they're looking for, you know, if they can't find it, they add more and more terms. 

[04:15] Kate Toon  But what those terms are going to bring back is a collection of humans, you know, copywriter, Sydney into Google and see what you get. You get me at number one. Yay, and I don't even do copywriting anymore. But what you also get is 10 of my top competitors. And that's not ideal. Because even if you wanted me, you're still gonna see me in comparison with all these other people. And maybe you started off wanting me but now hey, they look pretty good. And off, you go on to their website, and I've lost you. 

[04:40] Kate Toon  Where if someone's typing in Kate Toon copywriter, it doesn't bring back anybody else, you know. And the goal of owning your own brand term is that you actually own the first page of the search engine results page or SERPs. So it's not just, you know, typing Kate Toon copywriter. It's not just your website that comes up. It's your LinkedIn profile, your YouTube channel, your photos, your videos, your Twitter, articles you've written for other people, guest blogs, directory listings. So you just own that front page, and the customer has no other option. Obviously, that's all about the sales funnel and where they're at. And you have to get them to the point with other marketing methods that they are, that you're the first person they think of, and that that's the challenge. And that's why SEO can't just be put in a little box, because it's influenced by every other thing that you do in your marketing, you know, and that's the challenge. I think. 

[05:31] Shahin Hoda  I really like that you're connecting, building a personal brand to SEO, right? I feel like that is not necessarily a connection that a lot of people make, a lot of gurus of personal branding if you want to call them where you know, and a lot of situations is like just put yourself out there and make videos and do this and it's a bit ad hoc. But I really like that you make that connection. And I guess the next question would be, you know, how would you persuade Google that you are definitely the the subject matter expert in the field that you are. You know, how do you translate that and you touched on that a little bit? But how do you translate your personal brand into something that Google also has the stamp of approval? 

[06:15] Kate Toon  Well, it's funny, they often say that Google's like the most popular girl at school, you have to make everyone else fall in love with you before Google will even take a look at you. So a lot of the work is done off site. You know, a lot of the work is done, as you said, it is slightly ad hoc. And the ROI is quite hard to see. And it can feel a bit abstract, but a lot of the work is done by appearing on podcasts. You know, I'll be on this podcast, will I immediately see a sale that I immediately understand how this podcast influences my brand? No, but it's kind of a snowball effect. And it all adds up. 

[06:48] Kate Toon  So you know, appearing on podcasts, writing guest blogs, speaking at events, and getting your name out there so that when someone thinks Kate Toon, they think SEO. If you do that enough, then people start going to the search engines with different queries. So maybe they're typing Kate Toon or Kate Toon SEO, and then Google monitors our behavior. We don't know exactly how much engagement factors influence the algorithm. But if someone searches Kate Toon, they go to my site, they stay on my site, they interact with my site, they comment on my site, that says to Google, this is the right result for that term. And we are going to keep it at number one, that is the right result. 

[07:26] Kate Toon  And it's kind of like a rising tide lifts all boats. If you're doing well, for one term, it has an influence on your other terms, and obviously related brand term. So people could be searching for the stem word Kate Toon, but what about Kate Toon SEO, Kate Toon podcast, Kate Toon copywriting. Then you start to see an improvement for ranking for all of those. 

[07:44] Kate Toon  But over time, Google is almost like, it's so much crap collecting like a CIA profile honest, it's like a environmental footprint. Every time it sees your name, you know, it's associated with something you're talking about, and it starts to go okay. Well, you know, Shahin is always talking about this, that and the other, so he must be an expert. He's hit with hearing here, here and here. And it's not just about getting backlinks to your site, which we all know influence SEO, but simply your name constantly being next to what you talk about or your subject matter. Google sees that, and it's building up this big profile of you. And that influences how it displays your content in the search results. 

[038:24] Shahin Hoda  Gotcha. Gotcha. You talked about backlinks over there, and that's obviously a sensitive topic when it comes to SEO has the importance of that change over time. I mean, we're here talking about what the future of B2B SEO is going to look like, right? Has that changed and its importance changed over the past five years, let's say and do you think that the importance of getting links pointing to you and your website is going to change as well in the future or do you see that as kind of like a constant? 

[08:54] Kate Toon  Think it's a hard one. There's a great article the other day by Barry Schwartz. He's a kind of SEO guru, listing all the things that people have said aren't in the algorithm, you know. And it's like everything. It's everything, like backlinks don't matter anymore. Keyword research doesn't matter anymore. You know, nothing matters anymore. And that Google is just, you know, at Google keeps on saying, just make a great website. And that's all you need to do. 

[09:16] Kate Toon  And it's like, it can't be that. Because how does this site do so well and this site not, you know, and they're both good. So look, I do think backlinks are still an influence. I think Google is much more sophisticated at understanding quality over quantity. I think it maybe doesn't put the onus on them than it used to. But even if we take away the SEO-ness of the backlink.  Obviously, if you link to me, and people travel through that link to my site, it's traffic. Traffic in and of itself is not part of the algorithm. Pretty much everyone agrees on that. 

[09:45] Kate Toon  You can get 1000 visitors to your site or one visitor, it's not gonna improve your ranking necessarily. But what that traffic does can influence your ranking. Because if someone comes to my site, they love my content. They share it on socials. Great, more people see it. Someone comes to My sight loves it so much they add a link to it from their website that does influence SEO. So I think the backlinks are still a factor. I think the way that we, you know, Google says we shouldn't build links, we should earn links just by being awesome. But of course, sometimes we have to tell people that we're awesome, sometimes. 

[10:18] Kate Toon  And I think you probably get emails like this all the time. I probably get 30 a week, I shared a post about this on LinkedIn. Can I be on your podcast? You know, I juggle hamsters for a living and I really think it'd be great on your SEO podcast is like what but you know, that outreach, that desperation to be seen is still there, because it obviously it has an influence, I think. So, maybe it's not quite what it was five years ago. And I think you have to be much more sophisticated. 

[10:42] Kate Toon  And I think it's much more about building relationships than just getting a backlink from a directory or writing a rubbish guest blog. It's you know, the, the attitude that you take is the harder the link is to get, the better quality it is and spend an hour with someone on their podcast, write a really great pitch, promote that on social sites. A lot of work, that link is going to be worth so much more to you than that free one, you've got off Yellow Pages, because anyone can get that. But not everyone can build that relationship with someone and get their audience and do all that stuff. 

[12:12] Shahin Hoda  Right, gotcha. And relationships is a massive, massive component of this, right? This is I know, again, this is something that you truly believe in, where you basically say that SEO is a relationship game. Is that correct? 

[12:26] Kate Toon  Yeah. I mean, I've got this whole notion of good karma SEO that you kind of, you give and then you get back in return, you know. So like, for example, when I'm a podcast guest, I'm a good guest, you know, I help the podcast person with the note and then I will share the bejesus out of it because I understand the effort that goes into producing just one hour a podcast content. And then you know, another nice thing I do is when someone is a supplier to me, I will take time out of my day. I have an hour a week in my diary, where I will literally sit and write testimonials and make videos for people saying how great they are, so that they can have that content on their site. And it's a nice thing to do and it gives back but obviously What does someone do when you give them a testimonial, put it on their site with your name and backlink to you and give you a backlink. 

[13:10] Kate Toon  I consciously get involved in a lot of charities and donate and give me we didn't talk about that. But there's a positive benefit to that.  You know, just scratching each other's back. And a big thing for naive, I think SEO and business owners is when they're trying to kind of do I guess, influence the marketing. They do it in such a false way, that cheesy outreach email, I know you've never listened to an episode of my podcast, I know. You know, I know it, you know it. 

[13:35] Kate Toon  Whereas if you take time and go, this is something I enjoy. I'm going to comment on their stuff on LinkedIn, I'm going to share them, I'm going to promote them, even though there's no benefit to me. And you may do that for a long time. And then when you do are ready to reach out for them to kind of get your back scratch back. They know who you are, and they remember you and not necessarily reaching up to the mega famous, you know, God, I'm going to go off to Pat Flynn and get him to have me on your show. He's probably not going to do that, and try to instead reach out to people who are similar to you.

[14:04] Kate Toon  You know, they are your peers, and they get as much out of experience of working with you as you do out of them. I think that's my approach you know. So building relationships with peers, and building relationships with kindness and good karma, and slightly, you know, pushing down the expectation that it's immediately going to come back, or that it's necessarily going to come back from the person you gave it to, you know? 

[14:25] Shahin Hoda  Yeah, gotcha. 

[14:26] Kate Toon  That's woowoo, isn't it? I don't know. 

[14:29] Shahin Hoda  No, I think you definitely have a point there. No, you have, well, you have a very solid point in terms of you have to build those relationships. And I guess it works in many ways. Some time ago, years ago, I spoke to one of the founder in Sydney, and I asked him, what was what's his favorite book, and his favorite book was the Little Prince. And he said, whenever someone asked me what I could do to get better at sales, I tell them to read the low prints.

[14:58] Shahin Hoda  And I say why is that? And I had to go and read and he said, there's a part in there where the Little Prince is trying to become friend with this Fox, I think it's a fox or it's a dog, but the way they portray it and the way they show that how slowly, slowly, he moves closer, and then he says something, and then they feed the fox something and then, you know, it's a very gradual process, where in a lot of transactions in our life, we want an instantly, we want it right away. We want it, you know, can we do this right now? 

[15:32] Shahin Hoda  And he talks about how gradually building that equity of relationship equity is so important, and that's the fundamental in sales. And I guess it's fundamental in relationship building in general, because sales at the end of the day is you know, whether you argue a lot of people I guess, would argue it's not a relationship thing. But you know, there is you have to build some sort of relationship in that process and getting on a podcast or getting backlinks, all of that is basically selling right? 

[16:02] Kate Toon  It is. I mean, it's I've never, I've never quite kind of been able to define clearly in my head the difference between sales and marketing. You know, I know what the textbook definition is. But marketing is just you know, slicker sales, really slower sales, being not realizing you're being sold to quite as quickly. And marketing is all about relationships, really, you know, trying to understand your customers, trying to get the insight so that when they see your content they go god that's that was you could have written that for me. It's like you're in my head. That's what you want people to think, isn't it? 

[16:33] Kate Toon  And then, you know, having those opportunities. This is why as, for B2B, business owners, SEO is so often something that they farm out to an agency, and they don't quite understand what they're paying for. They just get that big bill every month. They don't quite get what the agency is doing. They don't understand if the agency is doing good SEO or bad SEO and there is a distinction. And also, it's just not as sincere because as I said, like, and I'm using the podcast as an example because we're on a podcast. 

[16:59] Kate Toon  But if I got email from somebody who's actually the business owner, who's actually the person that wants to be on the pod. And they're like, I've listened. And I like, and it's actually them, not some agency that's called podcastoutreach.com. Sorry, if that's you. It might be somebody. But you know what I mean, if it's actually from you, or from me, then and there's some personality in there, then I'm much more likely to take it seriously. 

[17:21] Kate Toon  And I just think SEO is something that really should be done in-house as much as you possibly can. And maybe with the support of an SEO agency, but since such a large part of it once you've optimised your site, and you've sped it up, and it's mobile friendly, and all that is backlinks or authority building citations in such a large part of it is that and that requires relationships. It's weird to have someone else building the relationship on your behalf. I find that weird. It's like someone going on a date for you. Go No, he's great bloke is really great. And you're like sitting over in the corner going, I'm pretty cool. You know? No, I want to have a date with you. Not with some random you know, that was a weird analogy, but I hope it makes sense. 

[17:58] Shahin Hoda  Nah, I love it. I love the analogy, but that's a good, that's a good point. What is the the right split, right? Or what is the right combination? Because you're right, we talked about how SEO is all about building relationships and somebody else, it's very different, difficult for somebody else to build relationships for you. So what is that right balance? Yes, you mentioned the technical stuff, maybe they can take care of and you can outsource them, you can give that someone. But after that, what have you seen being a successful combination? 

[18:30] Kate Toon  Well, I think there's an onus on every business owner to understand what they're breathing out, you know, like, I would not hire an accountant without understanding a little bit about my accounts. You know, I wouldn't I just think so many people put me on a box of too hard and then they don't even understand what they're paying for. So I think it's a degree that every business owner has to understand it before they can outsource it with empowerment and intelligence, I guess, and not get ripped off. 

[18:53] Kate Toon  And then yeah, I think look, the tech stuff, it's kind of fairly black and white. Once you've fixed it. It's not like something else. To keep fixing, and so the tech stuff, I think is something that you could outsource with confidence. I think keyword research can be quite challenging. It's quite time consuming and difficult to kind of go well, is this one better than this one and look at all the different factors. So I think that's something that can be outsourced. 

[19:16] Kate Toon  SEO copywriting, even, I think if there's a way of matching the desires of the consumer and Google and that can be quite hard to balance. You know, people think I just shove this keyword in 17 times and they lose the engagement. So maybe that's something you can outsource. But most SEO agencies don't, you know, focus on that. They focus on the backlink building, and that's when you have this intermediary. And the analogy I was gonna use the date analogy again, it's like when you're young and you're dating, you say to your friend, you go and ask that girl if she likes me, and they go across and you don't know what they're saying about you. I mean, if they're a good friend, you hope they're saying good stuff, but you know, a lot of SEO agencies, they will write guest posts blogs on your behalf and I as a writer that would  kill me inside You know, they can list you on directories that are a little bit touchy and that you really wouldn't want to be associated with. 

[20:05] Kate Toon  So I just don't think I think you can work with an SEO agency, but there just needs to be such trust and transparency. And if you have that trust and transparency, you can outsource the lot. But if you don't have that trust and transparency, or you don't fully understand it, I think it's just about asking questions. And you know, when they say, oh, we're going to build backlinks for you saying, Where? Where are you building them? I want to see them. I want to have some ownership of that. Because the big issue I have with people coming on my course is maybe they've worked with an SEO agency, and then they look at their backlink profile, and it's Russian porn sites, it's Chinese directories. You know, it's not good stuff, because Google is pretty smart.

[20:44] Kate Toon  But at the beginning, when you start getting backlinks, it just goes yeah, backlinks, and then it takes a while to crawl through them and go, hey, these backlinks are really bad. And by that point, maybe your SEO agency has hotfooted out there, or they wash their hands of you and it can be tricky. Now I'm not saying all SEO agencies are bad though. Absolutely not. The ones that are good, they're the ones that don't pretend they have a secret. They don't pretend as any magic juju, and they are transparent about their methodology and processes because there is no secret there is a process or things that work better for some brands and others, but there is no magic relationship with Google and no button you can press to make one website go crazy, you know. It's still a bit murky, and sometimes things work and sometimes they don't. 

[21:23] Shahin Hoda  Yeah, it is a little bit of black magic in that space. And I feel like a lot of a lot of business owners feel that that you know, I can't get my head around this. So these guys might, that seems like they know what they're talking about. Take my money. And what are some of the ways that you've seen business owners are able to whoever it is that is responsible for SEO is able to kind of take ownership or at least build a bit of knowledge because they're busy people right business owner at a company of even 10 people, their schedules packed usually, what are some of the ways that you've seen that it can be very helpful. And they can build that knowledge so that they can take the good apples from bad apples, decide what they're going to outsource and what they're not going to outsource. What would you suggest to them? 

[22:09] Kate Toon  Well, obviously, that's my they should do my course. But you know, so a lot of people will come on my course with no intention of ever DIY-ing the SEO. Now simply coming on it, to be able to understand what the things are, understand the language so they can talk more effectively with the SEO agency. When I started my course, I got quite a lot of backlash, because back then there were no courses. Backlash about giving away secrets, but I was like, I am making you much better clients, because when you see what's involved with SEO, then that quote, for to 3000 a month doesn't seem like a ripoff. It seems like a bargain. When you understand how much work is involved. 

[22:43] Kate Toon  But you know, getting across a few simple tools, like understanding how to test your site speed. So there's a great tool called pingdom site speed, for example, which will tell you how fast your site is, you want your site to be loading in about three seconds. So if you can use that tool, and your site will load in 10 seconds, and then you breathe developer an SEO agency to bring the speed down. And they said we've done it. Well, you don't have to just trust that they have, you can go back to the tool and run the test again. 

[23:09] Kate Toon  And it's the same with lots of things. There are tools which you can use where you find this problem, this problem, this problem, and then you get them fixed, then then you run the test again and see if they have fixed them. Same with backlinks, there are tools that will show you your backlink profile. So you can see if there's a Russian porn site in there, and you can go hey, hang on, it's great you've got me 20 links this month, but seven of them look really dodgy. And having that ownership, you know, like, I'd say the two most important things in business these days are getting your finances sorted. 

[23:37] Kate Toon  Maybe people next but then the next thing your website is your biggest business asset. Why would you give your baby to somebody without understanding what they're going to do? So getting across the language, understanding the terminology, which isn't that hard. You know, I've had seniors on my course I've had people who don't even know what a browser is do my course everyone can can access it can find accessible, maybe not to the level of an extreme expert SEO. But you don't necessarily need that most businesses aren't operating at that level of SEO. 

[24:09] Kate Toon  Most sites just need some simple fixes, and then they're working better. But yeah, understanding the language, knowing a few tools and being able to detect the BS, I think is important. Because we know people are great at selling and you go into their office and they got beanbags and they give you a nice coffee and you know, it looks great. There's charts going up, and it's being able to see through that and ask them well, how are you going to do that? What are your tactics? And if you know, I think that's important. 

[24:37] Shahin Hoda  And understanding that. That's really good. Now on wrapping up, this is this has been really good. I've very much enjoyed this, but is there anything that I haven't asked that you think it's going to be valuable for people who are listening around kind of the future of SEO would be to be and things to keep in mind that are that are coming along? 

[24:58] Kate Toon  Well, I think you know you touched on it earlier. It's a really good point, you know what, what still matters and what doesn't matter as much anymore. So the basics always matter having a technically sound site that loads quickly, that looks great on a mobile device, we're seeing, you know, the amount of mobile searches just increasing exponentially. So, you know, is your site usable on a phone? Can you quickly do what you need to that's always going to be important, I think we're going to see a much bigger increase in voice search. 

[25:23] Kate Toon  So you know, people are talking to devices, you can talk to your Google Home, you can talk to your kettle, won't do anything, but you can talk to it, you know, and the way that we talk to devices and search is very different to the way that we type. We generally ask questions, we start with what, when, where, how, why. And so your content needs to reflect that, you know, you need to be thinking about the questions your customers are asking. And maybe that seems very top of funnel to you, you know, maybe they're just at the problem stage. They don't even realize you're the solution. You know, so maybe you sell the example is always blue widget. They don't even know what a blue widget is. They don't even know that a blue widget can solve their problem. They're still out there going, why is my thing not working and you go 10 reasons why your thing isn't working. And then look at the bottom, we sell blue widgets. 

[26:09] Kate Toon  So going after those top of funnel question based search is because that's how Voice Search works. And then as I said, building brand equity, SEO is only going to get harder, though, you know, I'm seeing more and more people getting their head around a bit more and more people getting into the game, there are only six spots-ish now by the time you've got the ad, the local pack yet that six organic spots left being in those top six spots is getting harder and harder and you're having to go for longer and longer keyword phrases. 

[26:36] Kate Toon  And the way to conquer that is to really get insight into your customers, the questions, they're asking, not just this is Clive he's 46, he drives a Landrover but this is Clive and this is what Clive searches for in the dark of the night, when he wakes up at 5am. And he can't get back to sleep because if you can help Clive in that moment, you have built a relationship and when he needs you later down the track, you're gonna be the first one that he remembers and that's that whole relationship marketing thing ties in with that as well. 

[27:03] Shahin Hoda  Right? On that note of voice search, right? Is it really, especially for B2B? Is it really a big thing? I just have a hard time seeing myself turning to Alexa, which is probably right now as alerted. And yeah, listening now and asking about a B2B problem, or a B2B challenge. Is that, in the B2B space are we seeing as much growth in there or not really? Is it picking up?

[27:33] Kate Toon  At the moment? It's very much immediate problems. So you know, where is the closest pizza parlor? It's very much personal problems. Why do I have a rash in my armpit? And it's very much simple questions, you know, and Google will only return a couple of results. You know, they say that Google is becoming less of a search engine and more of an answer engine. So yeah, at the moment, not quite as relevant to B2B. You know, you're not gonna say to Siri, hey, Siri, you know, how can I reconcile my CRO strategy for my integrative, you're not going to do that , are you? 

[28:04] Kate Toon  But you know, 10 years ago, we didn't even have Voice Search. Who knows, you know, this generation, my son doesn't type very much into Google at all. He asked everything via Google, because it's quicker for him. So we have to think about the future audiences who, you know, using a keyboard is going to be maybe become a thing of the past, you know, we're just going to think thoughts, and it's going to display on the screen. So I don't think it's something we all need to panic about nothing with Google. Although it seems like it changes all the time is vaguely glacial in the way that it changes. 

[28:36] Kate Toon  So mobile friendliness was such a big thing. Everyone's thought, got to be mobile friendly. But it's still rolling out. It's still happening. Security. It took a couple of years for security to really become a thing and voice search. I just think it's something to start investigating. And just talk to your Google you can do this after the show. Talk to Google and say hey, who is Shahin Hoda? Who is he? You know and see what results come back. Who is Kate Toom. Who is the best copywriter in Sydney? That's the one I always do at events. It's mortifying, because I'm always terrified that they won't answer me in the correct way. It's going to say, Bob Smith so far, it's been good, but just play with that, you know, see what results come back from voice search and understand that that's where it's going. Keyboards, means so antiquated. You know, so be ahead of the game, I guess. 

[29:23] Shahin Hoda  Yep. Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I like that. I'll definitely try that after. 

[29:29] Kate Toon  Yeah, I want to know 

[29:31] Shahin Hoda  Like who is Shahin Hoda? Sorry, I can't find that results. 

[29:35] Kate Toon  He is a dancer on a cruise ship in the UK. 

[29:39] Shahin Hoda  That's right. That would be very interesting. So I'm gonna test that out. But okay, before we wrap up, I'd love to know, you know, if somebody is interested in your course, and they want to know more, what is the best way for them to find out? 

[29:53] Kate Toon  Well, I've got the perfect answer. You can Google my name, personal brand Kate Toon and hopefully that will bring back everything that I do. Not just I could give you the individual brand names I could say Google SEO cause but thankfully, I built up my personal brand, create a hub site. And from there, you can jump off and explore all the various bits and bobs that I offer.

[30:13] Shahin Hoda  Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us today. 

[30:15] Kate Toon  It's been a pleasure.


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