Can You Still Win at SEO in the AI Era? Yes – Here’s How!

In this episode of WeMarketers Podcast, Andrew speaks with Caroline Blijlevens, owner of Digital Marketing Agency Digitmind. Caroline, with extensive experience since 2009, shares insights on adapting SEO strategies to the evolving Google landscape, the relevance of AI tools, and the continued importance of great quality content.

Learn how to optimize your content in the AI era, the importance of website performance, and effective strategies for new websites to achieve good SEO results. Stay tuned for recommendations on SEO tools and practical hacks to improve your website’s rankings.

____________

Connect with Caroline Blijlevens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolineblijlevens/

Connect with Andrew Demianenko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-demian

____________

WeMarketers RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/wemarketers/feed.xml

____________

Do you want tp become a guest? Do you know someone who could be a great fit? Drop us a line at info@wemarketerspodcast.com

Key Takeaways

🔍 AI Tools for Content Creation

• Perplexity AI is great for real-time research and surfacing authoritative sources quickly.
• ChatGPT is ideal for structuring and creatively rewriting that research into engaging content.
• The best workflow is combining both: Perplexity for insights, ChatGPT for expression.

⚠️ Risks of AI-Generated Content

Caroline tested publishing 100% AI-generated content and surprisingly got real inquiries from it.

• However, both agreed that:
  • Search engines will likely improve at detecting AI-only content.
  • Long-term success will depend on value to the reader, not volume.
  • AI lacks true original thinking and can hallucinate (fabricate information).
  • If most content online becomes AI-generated, quality and trust could decline.

📐 Best Practices for SEO in the Age of AI

• Add structure to your content:
  • Use Q&A format.
  • Include FAQ sections.
  • Technically label content in code (e.g., recipes, jobs, videos) so that search engines and AI models can better understand and categorize it.
• Example: Structured data helps Google Jobs show listings directly.

🚀 Content Strategy Hacks

• Website speed is crucial – a slow site hurts SEO.
• Don’t publish one-off pieces – build content “clouds” around topics to build authority.
• Repurpose content:
  • Start with a video, then turn it into a transcript, blog post, email, and social snippets.
  • This extends reach and reduces effort over time.

Transcription

[00:01:14] Andrew: Hello and welcome to the WeMarketers Podcast. I’m Andrew and I’m happy to introduce my guest today, Caroline Blijlevens, owner of the digital marketing agency Digitmind. Since 2009, Caroline has been helping businesses grow through search engine optimization, paid advertising, and social media. Today, we’re going to talk about effective sales strategies in the AI era and how we can do our best to thrive.

[00:01:45] Andrew: Caroline, happy to have you today.

[00:01:48] Caroline: I’m so happy to be here. I’m honored to be on the podcast today and

[00:01:54] Caroline: talk about SEO. Yeah, a lot is going on these days.

[00:02:02] Andrew: Yeah, I agree. To kick off our conversation, could you please share a bit about your background, what you do, and yeah, what’s going on with SEO today and how we can prepare?

[00:02:17] Caroline: Sure, I have had my digital agency since 2009, so we’ve been through several stages SEO-wise, technology-wise, and advertising-wise. Google is evolving all the time. There are some differences now, also some similarities, which always remain consistent. We adapt to that and really embrace new technologies. We take advantage of everything possible with ChatGPT, Jasper, and all the tools out there. But we try to give it a human touch because the human touch brings energy to the text and to the content we create.

[00:03:08] Andrew: But if we look, for example, at the SEO strategies that we applied when you started the agency more than 20 years ago and compare them to today, what is different?

[00:03:23] Caroline: Years ago, when I started,

[00:03:25] Caroline: you could really just fill out keywords in the meta text. So we used a lot of good keywords in our

[00:03:38] Caroline: pages, and we optimized the meta title, meta description, and meta keywords. That does not exist anymore. Yeah, you can still fill them out, but Google does nothing with them. It was just like some sort of checklist: repeat your keywords dozens of times, make sure your texts are really long. Nowadays, it’s more topic-based. So if you have a topic, it needs a little bit more context.

[00:04:13] Caroline: You need to have more pages around the topic. And in the end, it really should be beneficial for the one who’s reading or watching it. That’s the biggest difference. Fifteen years ago, you could almost program

[00:04:30] Caroline: Google to find your content. Nowadays it’s a bit more complicated, but the good part is that it has to be relevant to the users. So I hope content will get better.

[00:04:46] Andrew: I remember that exciting time when we just collected a huge amount of keywords, clustered them, and then ordered $3 articles and just placed them on the pages. These pages boosted in terms of website traffic. It was so easy and so exciting to do this, especially in new niches.

[00:05:12] Andrew: And for now, what do you see? Does it still make sense to do keyword research or is it more about topics, user intention, and so on?

[00:05:23] Caroline: Yes, we use keyword research. We still use Semrush for it. It gives us suggestions and context.

[00:05:32] Caroline: For example, if you have a keyword like “car repair,” it finds all different kinds of words that are somehow connected to car repair. This creates a content cloud. And if you create that and work on that, you will still have success ranking high. But yeah, you have to find the gap—the gap in keywords. You really have to do your research.

[00:06:07] Andrew: And what about new websites? Because it was a problem previously, and now for people who do not have very authoritative domains—Is it realistic today to start absolutely from scratch and get some results? Not just some, but good results from SEO?

[00:06:28] Caroline: Yes, I still believe so.

[00:06:30] Caroline: Backlinks are still relevant and are still working very well, but also a high-performing website—a fast website which Google can crawl and index—makes all the difference. That really has not changed, but your website should be really user-friendly. UX is important nowadays.

[00:06:56] Caroline: Performance is really important. The fastest websites get the best results. That’s why we also work with headless technology—so a fast front end. And the funny part is because we can create all the content with AI, but the search engines themselves also use AI.

[00:07:20] Caroline: So it’s AI everywhere now. But performance, backlinks, great quality content, valuable content, relevant content is super important, and you can still get good results.

[00:07:33] Andrew: You mentioned headless websites. You mean Next.js, right?

[00:07:38] Caroline: Yes, exactly. Yes. We use WordPress as the backend because so many people know WordPress. And on top of that, we build a React front end. And we don’t have to load the entire database all the time. So the performance is the best. We can also optimize images and make sure that content is delivered super fast, and we see good results from that. Also, we use the data so that Google knows exactly what data you’re displaying—for videos, for software, for recipes, for jobs.

[00:08:23] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:24] Caroline: When you have this all in place technically, Google understands your intent much better and you’ll be ranked well.

[00:08:35] Andrew: That’s great—that it’s possible to use WordPress as a backend and Next.js for the frontend. I was thinking about moving to Next.js as I saw websites working on this platform. It is amazing in terms of how it performs. You just open the website and no—

[00:08:57] Caroline: Yeah, it’s—

[00:08:58] Andrew: —delays and so on. It’s amazing.

[00:09:00] Caroline: It is. I will send you some examples after the podcast.

[00:09:03] Andrew: Ah, great, great. Thanks.

[00:09:06] Caroline: Then the good part is, you can keep your content in WordPress because it’s already there. We just have to show it on the frontend, and we

[00:09:15] Caroline: Probably have to get rid of a few plugins. That’s what we always do. We use as few plugins as possible because they all come with a bunch of code, security issues, and your website will just get slower and

[00:09:33] Caroline: Slower.

[00:09:35] Andrew: Website speed and other technical factors are very important in rankings. What other things are really important that we, as marketers, should keep in mind to improve and get better results?

[00:09:50] Caroline: We should

[00:09:51] Caroline: Keep our customer in mind first. What exactly are we solving? What

[00:09:57] Caroline: Exactly are we explaining? Is it of value?

[00:10:02] Caroline: It’s such an open door, basically, but I really believe in the quality of content. You should really be able to give value to your reader, listener, or viewer. If that’s not the case, nobody will consume your content.

[00:10:21] Caroline: And the willingness to consume your content is key for search engine optimization—definitely.

[00:10:30] Andrew: And so many businesses right now are using AI for content production. We can see this almost everywhere, right? From your experience, how can we find this balance between AI and human touch in content creation?

[00:10:49] Caroline: Yes, that’s a very interesting question because I think everybody is finding this balance nowadays.

[00:10:57] Caroline: I think for brainstorming, a first draft of your content, ideas—it’s great to use ChatGPT,

[00:11:06] Caroline: For example.

[00:11:07] Caroline: You can also ask SEO questions to ChatGPT about your competitors. That’s really fun. Everyone should try it. But what we do is we create a first draft with ChatGPT, and then we enhance it with real frequently asked questions and use cases from our clients or our own company. ChatGPT cannot come up with that content. We have to

[00:11:34] Caroline: Create that, we have to add that. We have to add our unique voice, tone of voice. If we want to make a joke or play around with words, don’t let ChatGPT do that. That doesn’t work out well. So I think if you use ChatGPT for 60%, maybe 70%—

[00:11:56] Caroline: It gets better with good prompts. But still, 20% to 30% should be the human touch. I think positive energy—the energy you want to add to the content—comes from humans, and you have to do that yourself.

[00:12:15] Andrew: And in terms of the size of the content—text content on the pages—for me, the golden standard for a blog page is 2,000 words. From your experience, does it really make sense?

[00:12:30] Andrew: Do bigger articles rank better, or is that not relevant right now?

[00:12:36] Caroline: Oh, definitely. It’s really relevant. Long articles give more context to Google,

[00:12:41] Caroline: But still, you really want to add rich data: frequently asked questions, bullet lists, videos, images—everything. Reviews. If it’s possible to enrich your content, just do that and make use of data formatting in Google so Google can learn and understand your copy or your content better.

[00:13:16] Caroline: A 2,000-word article over a 300-word article—I would almost always choose the longer version. Definitely.

[00:13:28] Andrew: As the head of marketing, I receive several emails per day from link builders who suggest collaboration in terms of exchanging links and writing blog posts. And actually, I embrace this practice for developing our

[00:13:46] Andrew: Company blog. It’s very good in terms of receiving really good and high-quality free content for the website. But the question is: how important are links today, and is there any difference between today and, let’s say, yesterday?

[00:14:06] Caroline: It’s still really important because it creates authority.

[00:14:12] Caroline: Backlinks from trusted, good sites will only be beneficial. Of course, those link-building farms—just like buying followers on

[00:14:24] Caroline: Instagram—that does not work. That will

[00:14:27] Caroline: Only harm. But if it’s really beneficial, we do it a lot. For a software company we help to scale globally, we have some really good backlinks from valuable sites, and it gives us a ton of authority and a ton of traffic. And that’s exactly the kind of

[00:14:55] Caroline: Traffic we want to have on that website. Oh, what do you think about link building? Is it still helpful?

[00:14:55] Andrew: I just checked Semrush on the number of backlinks for our website, and I see that it grows over time. But I don’t perform active actions in terms of growing this backlink mass.

[00:15:12] Andrew: So it’s growing naturally. I also see fluctuations on our website in terms of traffic. And what I noticed—it is highly related to Google updates. For example, a recent update in March—our website traffic dropped, I think, 30% or something like that. I’m okay with this because I’ve seen it before. And let’s expect that it’ll just grow again.

[00:15:41] Andrew: I just continue implementing my strategy. But in terms of link building, I can’t share any, I would say, scientific information that really proves whether it works or not. Why I was asking is because I really receive a lot of requests—a lot—from link builders on LinkedIn or via email.

[00:16:04] Andrew: That’s why this is something that’s on top of my mind—thinking if a lot of people are working on it, maybe it really makes sense to look into this strategy.

[00:16:18] Caroline: Yeah, this is exactly what we did. We hired someone to create those backlinks because it’s quite time-consuming. And we saw a significant increase in organic traffic. I do have sites in maintenance, and they are customers for years and years. All the efforts we did in the first years—we still benefit from it.

[00:16:50] Andrew: So we are! Because we are—almost every week—we receive inbound leads through our website from people who found us on Google. Mainly from the U.S., but some leads come from Europe as well. And this is great, especially given the niche where we work—it’s a recruitment consulting company. We strive for big brands, and they are really finding us. And this is great.

[00:17:20] Andrew: So I completely believe in the power of SEO.

[00:17:24] Caroline: Yes, definitely. It’s a long-term, beneficial lead generator.

[00:17:32] Andrew: And in terms of SEO tools—what tools do you use? What are your favorite ones and why?

[00:17:41] Caroline: We use SEMrush.

[00:17:42] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:43] Caroline: I really like SEMrush because it does a lot—from keyword research to backlinking to technical analysis and competitor analysis. I still use Screaming Frog. And nowadays, of course, we use Jasper.

[00:18:01] Caroline: We use ChatGPT. We’ve got

[00:18:03] Caroline: A new senior developer for $20 a month, so that’s—

[00:18:10] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Agree. Agree. I say the same—that you have a content writer for $20 who doesn’t complain, doesn’t sleep.

[00:18:20] Caroline: No, it’s incredible. It’s incredible. So for us, we are so much more productive. We can create so much more content. Still, the percentage of what a human has to do—a copywriter—is really important. But still, you can deliver so much more.

[00:18:41] Caroline: I love all those tools, and I’m always looking for new tools. I think

[00:18:46] Caroline: The image-generating tools as well are getting better—they’re not there yet. I do the voiceovers where you can speak, and they’ll read

[00:19:04] Caroline: All different

[00:19:06] Caroline: Kinds of texts in your voice.

[00:19:08] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:19:08] Andrew: And—

[00:19:09] Caroline: You use?

[00:19:11] Andrew: So I’m using SEMrush. Also, I recently connected with Mahar. He’s the founder of a content marketing platform called String. By the way, I recorded a podcast with him. I tested various platforms that write content, but this one really works perfectly for my tasks.

[00:19:36] Andrew: We have a lot of videos on our YouTube channel, and what we want to do—we want to create articles out of them. Because there are over, I think, 70 webinars or something like that, and they are just collecting dust.

[00:19:54] Andrew: So what I do, I just add transcription to this platform, and it creates the whole content piece—a very well-structured article, very good quality. And the cost is $1 per article. It’s insane.

[00:20:10] Andrew: It’s insane.

[00:20:11] Caroline: Yes, I’ll check it out.

[00:20:13] Andrew: Also, of course, ChatGPT—it’s a no-brainer. Also, what I found is Perplexity AI. It is amazing for real-time research. In Perplexity, you can write completely up-to-date content, which is great. And using it in combination—so first, you use Perplexity for, for example, market research, for topic research, to get all these authoritative sources as a basis for your content.

[00:20:43] Andrew: And then you put it into ChatGPT to give it better form, I would say, because ChatGPT is really great in creative writing.

[00:20:52] Caroline: Wow. That’s good. Yeah, that’s—so I think it’s so great to connect with fellow marketers and to share these tips and tricks, knowledge, tools. Wonderful.

[00:21:04] Caroline: Yes, it goes—

[00:21:05] Caroline: Fast. We really have to help each other.

[00:21:10] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. That’s why we are here—sharing our knowledge. With all this AI content, what risks do you see for websites in the future, especially those websites that are doing really heavy lifting on this?

[00:21:27] Caroline: I created something myself, which just created a lot of content all the time, placed it on a WordPress website, and published—

[00:21:40] Caroline: One hundred percent AI. And I was just—it was like a playground. I was just checking it out. What does it—

[00:21:46] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:21:47] Caroline: I got results. I was surprised.

[00:21:49] Caroline: I thought Google knows exactly this is 100% AI. Cannot be good. I got inquiries from it—like, last week. But I think it will be restricted a bit more. Not restricted in the sense that you can’t do it—you can do whatever you want, of course—but it will be easier to see if a piece of written content is completely AI or not.

[00:22:11] Caroline: So, of course, you have those tools, and you can scan content, and they give you feedback on the percentage of AI. If that exists, all search engines can do the same. And if it’s not beneficial to the reader, I think it won’t rank in the long term.

[00:22:51] Caroline: It’s just too easy. I think the production of content—it must have gone through the roof, of course. And quality content is still king. You have to have—

[00:23:07] Caroline: Content relevant to your customers. And if—

[00:23:11] Caroline: AI—I think it misses the long-term quality.

[00:23:19] Caroline: I’m not sure.

[00:23:21] Caroline: I cannot predict the future,

[00:23:24] Caroline: So—

[00:23:24] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:23:25] Caroline: I might be completely wrong. And maybe it’s just that I think it—it cannot be only AI. Maybe AI will become so good that it is very interesting to use AI only and just create a lot of content—dozens of pages every—

[00:23:42] Caroline: Day. But my inner feeling says no. That’s telling me—

[00:23:51] Andrew: And there is an interesting thing with AI. The problem is there is a limited amount of knowledge on the internet. So currently, what AI is doing is downloading the internet, let’s say, and replying in different ways to your questions.

[00:24:13] Andrew: But the amount of knowledge is not increasing, and AI is not producing kind of new knowledge. It can’t make scientific discoveries or something like that. And also, it hallucinates. Over time, of course, the amount of hallucination is not big—but still. And now imagine the situation: almost all the websites are using AI for creating content, with some hallucinated pieces. Over time, AI will be crawling these pages that were generated with hallucinations, and the quality of information could be reduced. It was such an exciting thing for me to think about.

[00:25:08] Caroline: Yes, I think you’re completely right. It just decreases all the time. The quality will decrease if you take these hallucinations into account.

[00:25:19] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:25:20] Caroline: And that’s where human psychology and brains come in.

[00:25:25] Caroline: And we have to think—no, this is not correct. We have to change it, and then we have a quality piece of content.

[00:25:34] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:35] Caroline: Because it’s real.

[00:25:36] Andrew: I’ve read a number of articles about how we can prepare our content for the age of AI. So they recommend different approaches, like adding FAQ, for example, to structure your content more in a way that it’ll be suitable—like question, answer, question, answer—something like that.

[00:25:58] Andrew: This is one of the approaches. Do you have any kind of approaches—maybe from your side?

[00:26:05] Caroline: Yes, exactly. I do have an approach. We use a technical approach, which I also mentioned earlier. So within the code, you can—

[00:26:17] Caroline: Give the data a label, basically, which people understand. And for different kinds of content—like frequently asked questions, videos, software, etc.—

[00:26:30] Caroline: You can label it technically in the code. And Google will crawl it and will think, “Oh, that’s a recipe. Now I know. Oh, those are the ingredients.” Google Jobs, for example—if you have a listing on your website and it has the right technical form, it’ll appear in Google Jobs. It’s also a bit futuristic, so I’m not really sure. But it gives the content context, and therefore it’ll also be easier for ChatGPTs in this world to find this content online.

[00:27:22] Caroline: We’ve done this for Google—for search engines.

[00:27:24] Caroline: But we will also—

[00:27:24] Caroline: Be doing this, I think, for a long time for all the ChatGPTs, because it makes it way easier for them to search on a website and see what the content is about. Is this a recipe? Is this a job? Or is this—whatever.

[00:27:45] Andrew: Great. Great.

[00:27:46] Caroline: Of course, you can also label it just textually with question and answer. But we prefer the technical approach as well.

[00:27:57] Andrew: Great. Maybe could you share any other hacks that you have—maybe some know-hows about how we can improve SEO?

[00:28:07] Caroline: I think a good hack or tip—or best practice, basically—is to keep your website as fast as possible. Blazing fast. That’s a good thing. Make sure you don’t only have one article about a topic, but make it more—create a cloud of—

[00:28:30] Caroline: One topic. Keep sharing and reusing your content. And that’s exactly—

[00:28:35] Caroline: What you mentioned. We work for a video editing software company, and they always work video-first. So they have a video.

[00:28:46] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:28:46] Caroline: After the transcript, we create a blog. We create a mailing.

[00:28:52] Caroline: We create social posts. And we try to reuse that content as much as—

[00:28:58] Caroline: Possible.

[00:28:58] Andrew: It’s a great practice. Out of one piece of content, you can create a lot and use it over time.

[00:29:05] Andrew: Caroline, thanks a lot for joining me today. What is the best way for our listeners to connect with you?

[00:29:12] Caroline: You can find me on LinkedIn, Caroline Blijlevens. You can also check out our website—it will be refreshed in the upcoming weeks. It’s digitmind.nl. You can also email me at caroline@digitmind.nl.

[00:29:27] Andrew: Great. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for sharing your wisdom, and bye-bye.

[00:29:34] Caroline: Thanks for having me.