BluShark Digital
Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
Thrilled to be here. This is a joint collaboration between Alex Valencia's, "We Do Content Marketing Hour" and the SEO Insider Law Firm Blueprint. We are here to talk. What are we talking about today, Alex?
Alex Valencia
ChatGPT.
Seth Price
It has taken the country by storm. You know, we wake up one day and we think that the world is one way, we had seen some inklings, this Jasper AI, maybe, maybe some help with SEO, but all of a sudden, everything's different. What's your initial take, Mr. Content?
Alex Valencia
Um, I think it's a great tool. Everyone is absolutely going crazy and playing with it. Even some people internally here are playing it with it to this build lists and respond to some emails. You know, it's kind of fun if people outside of the space are using it internally for our law firms and in the digital marketing space. I don't believe ChatGPT is there yet. I like to think of it as the old time spinning with only a small amount of knowledge base that it currently has to actually really generate really useful content for at least what we do in the SEO and content world.
Seth Price
Look, at the end of the day, our thoughts, we've talked about this at conferences, we've spoken NCL about this on stage together, but then, you know, at the end of the day, I'll take the opposite view, right? We're seeing 1.0 right now. 4.0 is already practically delivered. I haven't seen it, but I understand. It's freaking awesome. You know, it does, from an SEO, SEO point of view at this very minute, too dangerous, right? Clearly, Google, if it wants to, and it clearly isn't happy with ChatGPT, not that it's not working on its own AI, right? They're not going to be left in the dark for long, but, you know, understanding, today, great for building lists, great for responding, awesome for updating old content, figuring out something you've professed for a long time, figuring out how to raise the bar for existing content, things like that. But my question is, we live in an SEO bubble, right? We're up, you know, we care about certain things they don't. Do you think if we fast forward a few years, If, let's take a person who doesn't care about SEO for a second, where you're building a no index, no follow page for whatever reason? Is this going to be changing the makeup of who's working in a content shop? Are we going to be using this as first drafts? At some point in the near future, with editors layering? How does this play out? Understanding today is too dangerous for SEO, but where, where at, what are the different pieces, and how does this play out? Are we at the beginning of Uber and Lyft versus taxi cabs? Or what's the best analogy to what we're looking at?
Alex Valencia
Um, I wish I could have that forecast from internal thinking as far as a company that hires and trains writers and editors specifically for SEO, I don't know that it's there yet. I hope it's not, you know, I would love the idea that maybe it would help with an initial first draft at one point in going to an editor, but, again, that would have to translate into the cost to the client, you know, obviously minimizing that. But Google's really pushed the new EEAT, which is the experience expertise...
Seth Price
Great, they are like the same world but with content, if you- with it at your peril.
Alex Valencia
Exactly. So, you know, I think there are some sites, some test sites, ad sites that are come-and-go sites that could potentially use this to really launch something quickly without the expertise and experience of someone like a law firm would, but for our lawyers, you got to have that experience. I mean, we talked about this at MTL, the importance of having that authorship and that approval by the law firm show you're showing that experience beneath every piece of content, which I think is going to be helpful and Google's going to want to see.
Seth Price
No, absolutely. Let, let me ask you this couple, a couple of things, you know, the ADHD mind is going all these different directions. When it comes to spinning, that was the old world, right? So that's, you take an article and then you just change the words around. One of the dances, particularly in the B2C legal space, is that the law generally doesn't change statewide, and that, this is the dance we do with Google that we need original count content for every county-state municipality you want to be in. At the same time, you can do everything you can to localize it, but there are elements of it that are not. Or is there, are there places where this is going to help us? Take what we already know, a bullet-proofed FAQ page on Utah Provo content, and know that it can be used for other areas. Does this is there a point where this is part of the production where it is high-tech spinning? Is that something that you even foresee as a possibility? So that you, because one of the frustrations is like, we've all been through it, where a writer at some point gave you something you read through Copyscape, you're like, ¨ah, ah, ah¨, right? So, are we, is there, is there a tool? Like, I'm always looking at, right now, the bane of my existence are typos, grammatical errors, etc. It should be zero tolerance. We both, we all know humans are there. This stuff is pretty clean, you know? And so what, what is that belt? Where, where can we? Again, I'm, this is pushing forward. This is, we put this in a time capsule. We'll look at this in nine months to a year to see how it plays out, but is there some piece where this can help raise the bar, understanding it may not be the writing of the original content?
Alex Valencia
I think it can be used kind of like Grammarly and Copyscape can be, eventually, especially any new versions that can act as an editor. You know, that would be amazing if it could do that because now it's pulling knowledge, but, again, it's still a bot, right? A human still had to create the coding for it. So, you know, we're using it to be more efficient, to obviously save more calls, to save more time, but at the end of the day, you know, there, we still have humans on both sides, and there's still possibilities for errors, but an editing software at some point where it's absolutely catching everything and syntax better than a Grammarly would, would be absolutely awesome. Do we see ourselves using it three, four or five years down the road? I don't know, I think we're going to have to keep watching it. Do we really want to limit that human experience that comes from them really getting to know the client? You know, I know my team's really not on board for it, and obviously, there are jobs on the line because of it. As far as a cost thing, you know, I think we charge our clients enough to give them that expert experience and expertise and authority and trust when it comes to what we're creating, but, you know, you never know.
Seth Price
What you're saying, like, look, I'm gonna play devil's advocate, right? Again, we are not abandoning writers. We have our writers, and you have your writers. This is sort of like a crystal ball. Where do we end up? And to sort of think that this is not going to be part of it, to me, again, how it plays out, I'm not smart enough to know, but the idea that our content creation, you being the king of all content and us being, you know, SEO players that content is a huge, huge piece of that, is that I can't imagine that it's not going to have some integration into this. But, you know, the, the idea that, the personalization absolutely, the question is, is it a tool that your team is using actively or is it like that's, that's for sort of lower quality nonsense, this is not for us? I'm just, but the speed at which it appears to be learning is significant. And, you know, is, is the makeup in a year, and that's the sort of my gut is that the makeup of our content departments will be forced to be changed with this over time, like it or not. That there's going to be a component that we need to keep up, with that said at a premium price, you know, there's going to be a demand for people who are, you know, this is, the last thing you want to do is mess with anything, you and I lived through the spammy link updates, where people that place really bad links were hurt really badly. So, Google, got a bunch of levels, doesn't want to see people regurgitating nonsense, but if it is, if it resonates with the consumer, that's the question, if the consumer likes it, you know, and wants to see it, do that, will that way affect, you know, if they see it for, at some point, the written Word through a bot comes out, easier to digest than the human? Like, those are the things I struggle with, where, you know, will there be a point where this is something that is doing things at a level that we can't do fast and that our job is going to be directing it? Like, would you, you know, you've, we have buddies that, that have Tesla's that sit there on automatic pilot for hours, should they do it, blindly? No, and those that really do it blindly end up dying, but I know plenty of people that have commuted from DC to New York and never touched anything.
Alex Valencia
The vehicle, yeah.
Seth Price
Right.
Alex Valencia
Right.
Seth Price
So, the question is, you know, where, like, as this advances, and obviously, you never want to be in the situation where it flips over and kills you because that would be the equivalent of Google penalizing your site heavily, but are there pieces where you're going to end up trusting the judgment of the automatic braking over somebody who's like multitasking with the phone and kids crying in the car?
Alex Valencia
Yeah, I think, you know, there's so many arguments, right? I think if we let bots do everything, we become that lazy society, but I think it has its place.
Seth Price
I'm not cool with that, but it is likely to say that it is a piece of it.
Alex Valencia
Yeah. You know, like, you know, we're testing it out and we're using it for the optimization of patients, right? So it pulls that data automatically, and, you know, pages that are already ranking, we want to rank better, we will try to use that software to see how it enhances it, and then go in and edit that copy and see how it performs. You know, we tried it with actual page, but again, it's just not there yet. I do see a place in the future for, you know, some of that regurgitating content that... For instance, there was a client that came to us that wanted to do a lemon law site, there was tons of information on lemon law that doesn't need a human to write it, where it's just pulling data from GMC on all the codes that are out there for any recalls, right? So, if you do GMC re-, ChatGPT give me the all the GMC recalls for 2020 to 2023, I think there's a great opportunity to pull that data from there, use a lot of it, sources...
Seth Price
Theoretically, Google search right now, that's not, it's the idea that's coming tied up, you know, the memory, and you could, you will appreciate this, do you remember when Copyscape first became viable? And at the moment, I was guilty of it. I remember looking at my own site and seeing people that, like, literally lifted off other than, I like what they wrote, but they changed the location. And there was that moment, you're like, okay, we got to raise our content game, I have this feeling that we're going to be now having two levels of search, Copyscape, and there's going to be some version of API scape, where we're going to be, every single page is going to have to be tested before it goes live to protect the client, right? Or, as I say, much of our job is protecting the client from themselves, but that is the, is idea that a first draft that has information. The question is, will you get, yes and you'll know that by testing it, because in theory, let's, let's sort of pretend for a second that my hypothesis that this becomes a first draft at some point in the future is something, then the question is, how much is a change? I think you alluded to this before, if the cost of editing is more than if you just did it in the first place, that's going to be; that will answer our question, right? There, right, that's the first question. But the second one is, if it's something where you can get to an Alex Valencia-approved page of content better, cheaper, and faster with a different process, that is the piece. Again, that, it means that is the piece. Have we just opened Pandora's box? Where not, you're still gonna have writers, and you're still gonna have editors. The question is, is, is ChatGPT going to be on the payroll as part of that formula? And, again, not standalone, because if somebody, just a client, just didn't throw it up there. That's, that's my motto as they would say, but if you, if you do have a process where you're taking this, and then extracting what you need as almost a research tool, and then formulating it the way you want it, is that something you know because I'm seeing a vision like that in the future. It sounds like you're still, like, too early to tell if that's really going to be positive.
Alex Valencia
Totally to tell, but what I, you know, it sparks up the idea as a business owner and entrepreneur, how could I offer our clients if it was in the area that it was and being transparent and letting them know, hey, you have the option of human writers, human editors, you know, our full proprietary software content that's going to be on the high-end costs? Or we can do some of these pages through ChatGPT. It's still going through an editor and still the process, but it's not an original writer, and we disclose that to the client. There might be a low-cost option for them in the future that we might want to test out if we can get approval from Google.
Seth Price
Right. Well, there's an issue, and I saw this. So, remember when there was the, like today, you know, you and our buddies are smart enough that if we want to manipulate a site much, much faster, black hectic, black hat techniques still work, right?
Alex Valencia
Oh, yeah.
Seth Price
Well, that's full on, but they will. You can do things to gain the system in ways that Google doesn't want, do that at your peril, right? And, to me, the analogy, I've always loved your thing, because you know, you have family or friends in this world, if you have friends who are contractors, or you've ever renovated a house and flipped it, right? You have a bunch of decisions to make, right? What are you pulling permits for? Are you pulling permits for drywall? Are you pulling permits for electrical? Now, if you do a house for yourself, and you're gonna live in it, you could pull out, you could cut a bunch of corners because God forbid something happens, it's on you. But if you do something, not the drywall, but if you do something plumbing or electrical, and there's a massive catastrophe, and somebody looks back, and they see that you didn't do that, it's all on you.
Alex Valencia
Exactly.
Seth Price
This is the thing that I always, this is a thought, this's where I, you know, I'm the type of person who thinks about these things. Is there a way to legitimately get consent from a client that won't be, I didn't understand, it wasn't clear? Will it still come down on your head when it doesn't work? And that, to me, I have shied away from Blackhat, where somebody says, oh, I get the risks because it's all fun and games until the risk happens.
Alex Valencia
Right.
Seth Price
Is this something that we have as professionals, and I say this all the time, I look at part of my job as an agency owner is to protect clients from themselves, right? And so that it's one of those things where there are places to get that shortcut. The question is, what is the cost gonna be? And while we all say, oh, of course, we're gonna take this and rewrite the whole thing, just like Copyscape, we very often find that the best-laid intentions of a writer or editor may not come to fruition. Similarly, here, it's a great idea, and the first day, they may completely rewrite it, and it's great, but laziness will kick in, and you're given, an open Pandora's box where they're putting out content. Again, there'll be checks and balances, but that's what comes to mind is, is it a waivable risk that somebody will actually say, I get it, I could get tanked, but I want to live with it? And are you willing as that arbiter of, or standard bearer of content, willing to even go there? And that's, to me, the interesting thought questions.
Alex Valencia
Yeah, not yet, nowhere near. It's funny, though, we left NTL, and someone who was at one of our shows or at our ChatGPT talk was asked me to reach out to them to write regular content and also create GPT, edited ChatGPT content for them for their site, even after listening to it, was, which was funny. But...
Seth Price
The people in that room are entrepreneurs. They're pushing the, the like, if you could, if, you know, the question is if you could have ChatGPT content that is, that if, if it is editable beyond the point of recognition, the question is, is that, is that going to be a thing? And that person just sort of identify that sort of jonesing for peace.
Alex Valencia
Right, already? Yep. Now, again, to reiterate, I think I love the idea that it's created. I think there's a lot of use for it, where you want to dive in further into using it, you know, as far as research and outline, and maybe even, you know, try some first drafts, so far the first drafts have not been great, but we'll see what the continued versions of it look like. But, again, you know, it's only pulling from so much information, so when you start, you know, being in the legal space, when you start driving into different practice areas that it doesn't have the content info for, it's, it's hard to develop it, but there are so many areas that do. I actually tried to play around for, my brother's site uses, he's got to be really like a safety removal business, and there just was no information in the database to actually pull anything, any good data or outlines.
Seth Price
Let me ask you, though, do you think there's going to be a point where, you know, BluShark, for we do have content or preferably jointly, reads databases with its own content and can use its own? This is not just the public, but you're saying, Hey, these are the pages we like and have done. What can you do, not being affected by the outside world, but can you learn from what we're doing and how we're doing it to create stuff for us? That's the stuff that sort of really excites me.
Alex Valencia
Yeah, that excites me too. So, since we built our software, that is something we haven't implemented yet because it's taken so long to even launch it to the public, but we're finally starting to work on our own software internally, was since we have millions and millions of words since 2008 of content that we've developed, is how do we have that database? You know, even have content strategies that we could reuse all that data and use the AI to actually formulate what would be the best average of this content or those pages. It would be excellent if it could totally do that, right? Like, here are the top 100 pages we created for car accidents and all these different markets. Pull the best information on this, you know, from it, and an articulated page would be excellent.
Seth Price
Awesome. Well, any final thoughts before we wrap up here?
Alex Valencia
No, man, I'm excited to see where it goes. You know, excited to see where we're at and what Google does in response to it. I know there's a kid out of Stanford who's creating the anti-chat, like the way to actually catch it and understand it. So just like when viruses came out in computers, somebody created the antivirus for it. So, we'll see how that plays out. But it's super exciting that we're moving in such quick technology to make SEO and search a lot easier. Just hopefully, it doesn't fall into a lazy man's game.
Seth Price
Absolutely. Alex, thank you so much. This is awesome.
Alex Valencia
Thank you, Seth.
Seth Price
I'm sure this will not be the first of many because this story is just beginning.
Alex Valencia
Yes, sir. Awesome. Thank you very much.
Seth Price
Bye for now.
Alex Valencia
Goodbye.
BluShark Digital
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.
