Episode 135

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Published on:

10th Apr 2026

#135 AI & SEO in 2026: Are You Sharing Too Much? Google's New Rules Explained

In this episode of the 90-Day Website Mastery Podcast, Jonny Ross and Pascal Fintoni tackle two of the most talked-about topics coming out of their recent Web Proud in-person masterclass in Leeds:

> Should you be worried about sharing your website tactics with AI tools?

> And how has Google's AI Mode permanently changed the rules of SEO?

Drawing directly on Neil Patel's data-driven YouTube breakdown of five new SEO rules, Jonny and Pascal layer on their own decade of experience to bring you sharp, practical guidance.

The episode also introduces a tool for Shopify and subscription businesses, and brings back a powerful (and often forgotten) SEO benchmarking tool. And closes with two immediately actionable calls to action: one for your email deliverability, and one for understanding your search presence right now.

❓ Should I Worry About Sharing My Website Tactics with AI Tools?

This question was raised multiple times at Jonny and Pascal's Notebook LM for Website Masterclass in Leeds, and here's what they had to say:

  • The instinct to protect everything is understandable, but the default level of concern is often set too high.
  • Ask yourself honestly: what is the realistic likelihood of a competitor actively searching an LLM for your specific tactics?
  • The real risk is not exposure, it's hesitation over action. Over-worry leads to under-using tools that could genuinely improve your website.
  • Practical steps to protect yourself where it matters:Review your privacy settings on every AI platform you use.
  • If you're on a free plan, be aware that your data may be used for training β€” consider upgrading to a paid plan to reduce that risk.
  • For sensitive or tactical work, use private cloud environments such as Microsoft 365 Copilot or Notebook LM, which offer more ring-fenced data environments.
  • Never share client data, financial data, or genuinely confidential intellectual property.
  • The biggest real risk, according to Pascal: using AI without a well-crafted briefing, leading to superficial, generic recommendations rather than truly useful insights.

The golden rule: Be cautious about the things that genuinely need caution and stop worrying about the things that don't.

❓ How Has Google's AI Mode Changed SEO Forever? Neil Patel's 5 New Rules

Jonny and Pascal review and reflect on Neil Patel's landmark nine-minute YouTube video: Google's AI Mode Changed SEO Forever. Here Are the 5 New Rules. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q3WBkSoANA

1. From the Traffic Economy to the Citation Economy

  • The central shift: stop measuring success purely in traffic, and start building for citations.
  • As AI Overviews become the norm, the key question is: Are you credible and trustworthy enough for the AI to select you over your competitor?
  • What are you doing, this week, this month, this year, to build your authority through citations and guest contributions on other platforms?

2. The Complexity Moat

  • Data shows that short search queries trigger AI Overviews with sources only around 23% of the time.
  • Queries of six or more words trigger source citations 77% of the time.
  • The opportunity: build a strategic "moat" or defence by creating content that answers specific, nuanced, complex questions, not just chasing short keywords.
  • Jonny's take: think in keyword clusters. Become the genuine expert in a topic by going deep, not just broad.

3. The Zero-Click Reality

  • Clicks and traffic figures are no longer sufficient measures of SEO success.
  • Google is evolving into the answer destination, users may get what they need without ever visiting your site.
  • The shift in mindset: from chasing clicks to building trust, citations, and brand presence within AI-generated answers.

4. The Authority Tax

  • Traditional SEO is now the baseline, it's the price of entry, not a competitive advantage.
  • If you've been consistently building authority for the past 3, 5, or 10 years, you are already ahead.
  • Neil Patel's four actions to build authority now, endorsed by Jonny and Pascal:
  1. Post on the platforms where your audience actually lives, not just your website.
  2. Get mentioned in publications that AI systems already trust and cite.
  3. Build and implement Schema Markup so AI can properly scrape and understand your content.
  4. Create content that demonstrates depth, not just coverage of a topic.

5. The Search Everywhere Shift

  • Search is no longer just Google, it spans social networks, forums, app stores, Spotify, Claude, eBay, Vinted, and beyond.
  • The new mindset: it's not about "Googling", it's about searching, and understanding every place your customers might look.
  • Ask yourself: do you truly know where your audience searches for answers?

As Jonny and Pascal have been saying for years: it all comes back to E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Tip: paste your own content into your favourite AI tool and ask it to evaluate and improve your E-E-A-T (you'll understand the concept immediately).

πŸ› οΈ The Website Engine Room: Two Tools to Know

Jonny's Pick: Loopwork πŸ”— https://www.loopwork.co/

  • A powerful Shopify add-on for businesses with subscription-based products.
  • Creates unique, intelligent subscriber journeys designed to keep customers engaged.
  • Particularly clever at retention: when a subscriber tries to cancel, Loopwork steps in with smart prompts, offers, and alternatives β€” dramatically reducing churn.
  • Whether you already have subscriptions running or want to turn existing products into recurring revenue, Loopwork is worth exploring.

Pascal's Pick: MOZ Domain Authority Checker πŸ”— https://moz.com/domain-analysis

  • A free, trusted SEO benchmarking tool that gives your website a domain authority score out of 100.
  • Use it to understand your current search authority, your top-performing pages and keywords, and how you compare to competitors.
  • Context: the average website typically scores around 20–25 out of 100. The BBC scores around 95. Don't be disheartened by a low score β€” it's easier to climb from 10 to 20 than from 30 to 40.
  • Pascal's recommendation: check your score today, get on with the work, then revisit in three months to track your progress β€” especially as click and traffic data becomes harder to rely on.

βœ… The Website Call to Action: Two Things to Do This Week

Jonny's Call to Action: Boost Your Email Deliverability

With inboxes flooded and spam filters increasingly aggressive, getting your newsletter into the primary inbox is harder than ever. Here's a simple but powerful fix: ask your subscribers to reply to your email.

A reply sends a strong signal to email providers that your audience is genuinely engaged and this directly improves your deliverability, open rates, and click-throughs.

Try this exact message in your next newsletter:

"To make sure our newsletters reach you without any issues, reply 'AI' to this email so we know you're human 🦾, and be sure to move this email to your Primary inbox."

Think about what quirky, on-brand reply prompt would resonate with your audience β€” and make it work for you.

Pascal's Call to Action: Build Your Search CV

Google yourself, right now, and search in three ways:

  1. Your name as an individual
  2. Your name plus your job title or occupation
  3. Your business name

On each results page, save the full page as a PDF (click the three dots, top right in Google Chrome). Do this across All results, Images, News, and any other relevant tabs.

Then study what has been selected by Google, and ask yourself why each result is showing up.

  • You don't need to be an SEO expert to draw conclusions. Logic will guide you.
  • Understanding your current search presence is the foundation for everything else.
  • Repeat this exercise every quarter and track the evolution of your visibility over time.
  • For a deeper view, also try this in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude to see how AI platforms represent you.

🎯 Key Takeaways for Website Managers and Business (with timestamps)

Here are the selected timestamps, drawn directly from the transcript and written in UK English:

00:54 – How the Leeds Web Proud masterclass inspired this episode

03:14 – You Ask, We Answer: Should I worry about sharing my website tactics with AI?

07:12 – Three practical rules for sharing safely with AI tools

08:54 – Website Stories: Neil Patel's five new rules of SEO in the age of AI

11:08 – Rule 1: Moving from the traffic economy to the citation economy

12:18 – Rule 2: Building a complexity moat with long-form, nuanced content

13:27 – Rule 3: The zero-click reality and why traffic figures no longer tell the full story

13:46 – Rule 4: The authority tax , why traditional SEO is now just the baseline

14:34 – Rule 5: The search everywhere shift, it's not just Google anymore

18:43 – Website Engine Room - Jonny's pick is Loopwork: subscriber journeys optimiser for Shopify businesses

20:34 – Pascal's pick: dusting off the MOZ Domain Authority Checker to better plan your new SEO tactics

22:08 – How to read your domain authority score and what it means for your website

24:22 – Jonny's Call to Action: improving email deliverability with a human reply prompt

26:47 – Pascal's Call to Action: building your Search CV across Google and AI platforms

29:30 – Final reflections and episode roundup

πŸ”Ž SEO Keywords & Tags:

Primary Keywords: AI SEO 2026, Google AI Mode SEO, citation economy, E-E-A-T guidelines, zero click search reality, domain authority checker, schema markup SEO, search everywhere strategy, Shopify subscription management, email deliverability tips

Secondary Keywords: complexity moat content strategy, Loopwork Shopify app, MOZ domain authority score, Neil Patel SEO rules, Notebook LM website review, subscriber journey optimisation, Search CV strategy, long-form content SEO, AI overviews citations

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πŸ‘‰ Subscribe to the 90-Day Website Mastery Podcast for more expert insights on SEO, content marketing, and website growth.

πŸ‘‰ Leave us a review β€” your feedback helps others discover the show!

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About the Hosts

Jonny Ross is a leading digital marketing consultant and SEO strategist with decades of experience helping businesses transform their online presence.

Pascal Fintoni is a digital skills trainer and video marketing expert, known for making complex tech topics accessible and actionable.

Transcript

Jonny Ross

-:

Hello, thanks for joining us. This is the 90 Day Website Mastery Podcast. We are absolutely grateful that you are here with us today. This is the perfect companion to our 90 Day Website Mastery Program and our recently published book, Web Proud.

Jonny Ross

-:

It's our 54th episode. I'm here with my co-host, Pascal Finterni. Good morning, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Good morning, and yeah, thank you very much for joining us live or on replay. It's been a while. We've been busy. We've been out and about delivering, actually, our first web-proud in-person masterclass in Leeds as well.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

I still have a very fond memory of the event and the lovely people in the room as well. And in fact, in fairness, Johnny, today's episode is entirely inspired by the many conversations we had about websites, AI, AI overviews, and the new SEO. So looking forward to our conversation.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yeah, for sure. It's AI and SEO in 2026. Are you sharing too much? And Google's new rules explained.

Jonny Ross

-:

Of course, we have four segments in all of our episodes. We have the You Ask, We Answer, where you've submitted a question from our community, and we explore that. We've got the website stories, where we found perhaps an article or a video, and we dissect it and see what we can learn from it. We've got the website engine room where we'll share a piece of tech or an app to help you as a website manager, a website content creator, feel proud of your website.

Jonny Ross

-:

And of course, the website call to action. Every piece of content has to have a call to action. So it's the one change or adjustment that you could be making right now to your website. Yeah, it was the workshop that we were doing was all about Notebook LM, wasn't it?

Jonny Ross

-:

And well, that's just yet another tool that we absolutely love. Yeah. You enjoyed delivering that workshop, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Oh, yeah. Well, I think there was another reason. One was rather symbolically almost 10 years from the day when we first met in Leeds. So that was a bit of an anniversary celebration of you and I, Johnny, meeting 10 years prior to a...

Pascal Fintoni

-:

It was actually called a mastermind day, called How to Get More Inquiries from Your Website. So going back to 2016, which is quite incredible. And then our journey leading to being back at the lovely venue called The Studio in Leeds to talk about Nod Bukalem and Websign, how to use the assistant to critique the Websign, give you some recommendations and actually to be also a creative thinking and content creation partner. six hours of kind of hard-hitting tactics and it was delightful to really have all that time.

Jonny Ross

-:

It was the light bulb moments that I saw across every table when they started seeing some of the output that they were getting and how relatable it was to their audience and their business. It was a great day. Okay, let's start with our first segment. You ask, we answer.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Now, this is the question that was asked a couple of times actually during our time together in Leeds at the Notebook LM for Website Masterclass. So I'm going to paraphrase for you, Johnny. I use AI the way you showed me to critique my website. Should I worry about sharing my website tactics with the large language models and my competitors?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

What say you, Johnny Ross?

Jonny Ross

-:

Well, as a business owner, I think we do have this automatic default that we don't want our competitors to know anything. And we're really protective. And I think that our default is actually just a bit too... We need to sort of lower our default, I think.

Jonny Ross

-:

And I think we sort of... We go to it far too often i think the certain things that are really intellectual property of a business and you know no question but i think i think we assume that. Everything is on the tiniest bit of detail if it got out there you know we're gonna be you know our business will be screwed. And I just don't think it's like that whatsoever.

Jonny Ross

-:

So I think the first thing is we need the way we think about it, is that we just need to change our thinking here, because you've got to weigh up the pros and cons. And actually, you know, what really is going to change if someone, if some kind of machine or someone saw that? However, also, there's privacy settings. So, you know, you can choose the right privacy settings.

Jonny Ross

-:

You can go for paid plans. And so I think it's about, you know, having a look at your, going into the settings and making sure that you're ticking the right boxes, making sure that, you know, if you've got the option of a free plan or a paid plan, well, you don't get a free lunch and, you know, a free plan. Basically, you are giving your data, whereas on a pay plan, there is lowering the risk.

Jonny Ross

-:

Pascal, there's also cloud LLMs. You've got a bit more experience with that. So is it co-pilot that you were talking about that you'd...

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Thank you, Jenny. I've done a lot of work, particularly in the product sector, where there's all different levels of safety and security with data and more. But I think I would agree with you, which is, what is it that people will find out that is truly going to give you a disadvantage and then an advantage? And I think if you use a logic, Johnny, what is the likelihood of a competitor having the time and inclination to ask an LLM, or by the way, tell me more about Johnny and these kind of practices on AI?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

I just don't think it's going to happen. Now, I would agree with the word tactic, though. So if you go from a critique that he's using essentially that public knowledge out there, you know, all that amazing content produced by others like Johnny and Pascal, and you get to the point where you want to then act on the critique, yeah, maybe actually would be good practice, you know, leading to a future where the AI platforms are perhaps used more to move away from, you know, using these insights and moving into a platform like Bookelum.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

which give you almost like a ring-fenced environment with information, or to use into the Microsoft 365 version of Copilot, and all the different sectors as well. So I have some sympathy with the idea of, if I'm going to get Tactical and come up with a campaign that is unique to me, Maybe actually pure psychology, I'd rather work in a private room. And I would say, yeah, by all means, use non-book element called Pilot Microsoft 365. But it remains, though, that the likelihood of you having something so unique that you're going to literally make cloud or cloud better.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

and for your competitors to actually say, you know what, let me spend my precious time in asking what Johnny's been up to on AI. I just don't think it's going to happen. So I would agree. Lower the bar, because otherwise you're going to move into hesitation as opposed to action.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And this is really important to us. Yeah.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yeah, I think there's three threads here. There's the thing of the mindset. So really challenging the mindset on whether you can share something or not. I think that's the first thing.

Jonny Ross

-:

Second thing is check all your settings, of course. And it's very easy to make sure that you are ticking the right boxes. And then use tools that actually are private and are in private places. And of course, I guess the fourth bonus one is don't share things that actually you shouldn't be sharing.

Jonny Ross

-:

So client data, financial data, et cetera, et cetera. And just be cautious about the things that you should be cautious about. That's the point, isn't it? Be cautious about the things you should be cautious about.

Jonny Ross

-:

And don't worry about the things you actually don't need to worry about.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

The biggest worry, Tony, would be that actually the manner in which you are inviting your assistant to help you gives you superficial recommendations and superficial critique. So we worked very, very hard, didn't we, with the Notebook LM4 website masterclass to give people advanced AI briefings. Because by default now, and ChatGP, I think, is the first one to be guilty of that, by default now, the platform is giving very superficial, simplistic, populist answers. as opposed to kind of more, yeah, thought-provoking, kind of, you know, motivating answers.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So I think to me that's more the real problem, which is that you're going to get plain, kind of, plethora of answers, and you're not going to get really the right kind of level of support. That would be my major concern.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yeah, the more context, the better the output. Great question. Thanks for bringing that, Pascal. And hopefully that removes a block for some people to start getting a bit more help towards how they could improve their website.

Jonny Ross

-:

Let's move to our next segment, which is website stories.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Now in the green room earlier, Johnny, we, you know, we're talking about how, you know, one-to-one kind of mentoring consultancy work. We get one more questions about AI overviews, you know, the, the becoming the kind of the new internet. And then the question is always, how do I get myself listed in the AI overviews or how can I improve what the AI overviews say about me? So I still used to this day.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

this technique called the google cv where i ask people to google themselves as individuals or businesses and literally print as a pdf you know the page of results and then almost track the evolution of their search results and and you know linking that to actions as a result of which i guess you know the youtube algorithm i've done that that bit because i was suggested a video by neil patel Now, if memory serves, you and I had a bit of a, you know, kind of, there's a link here between ourselves and Neil Patel.

Jonny Ross

-:

There sure is. We obviously talk about different apps in the website engine room in our podcast. We were featuring Answer the Public. And yeah, Neil Patel's social team clearly picked up on it and cut down one of our podcasts and shared it onto their platform of us talking about Answer the Public.

Jonny Ross

-:

So that was very nice of them. And well-deserved as well on both sides, I think.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you, Neil Patel and the team. We've been big fans and big supporters of the content. So the video on YouTube with Neil Patel, the title goes as follows.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Google's AI mode changed SEO forever. And here are the five new rules. And I think for me, it's kind of interesting that we should revisit that. We did a special, obviously, episode on the whole AI, SEO, Geo, and so on.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

But I think sometimes it's nice to hear it repeated from a different perspective. And what is nice about Neil Patel's work is this is based on data, which is always his favored kind of approach. And what he's done, he has essentially a core message, one central message, but he's looked at five different ways to argue the case, if you like, for a reset of the way we think about it. So Please, everybody, watch the video.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

It's only nine minutes, and it's great. It's got five chapters. It's got data to back up the recommendations. But in terms of the core message, it's this idea of moving from a traffic economy or a traffic-centered mindset of, this is how I'm going to get more success and grow my business, moving from traffic to citation.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

That has to be the core message. And what Neil is explaining is that As more and more AI overviews come to the fore, it is only natural to ask the question, what have you done to be credible enough and trustworthy enough for the AI machinery to select you and not your competitor? And essentially, the central question is, what have you done for the past few years, the past few months, and the past few weeks to build your authority using citations? That is to say, your business, you as an individual, and your expertise is being cited on other platforms.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And what have you done by extension in terms of your guest contribution as an activity? So we move through five key elements. I love the title. There's one called the complexity mode.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

This idea of putting together a defense, a barrier around your content strategy, because you're going to choose to go for complex and long questions, if you will. So we're saying is using data. If a customer is putting a short query, the likelihood of the AI overview, including sources, is in the realms of 23%. So otherwise, you just say, here's the answer, and stay on Google or stay on Bing or whatever.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

If, however, the user is using six, seven plus words, the likelihood of having a citation that says your business, your blog, you know, your kind of podcast and so on, goes up to 77% of chance of the likelihood of having a source being mentioned. So the question Neil is asking us is, what have you done to be answering more specific, more nuanced, complex questions, as opposed to going for the keyword research, three words, therefore, that's what I use, you know, so that's kind of interesting. He kind of reinforces the message about the zero click reality, which I think you know, I've mentioned many a time. So asking, you know, what are you doing as an entity?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

What are you doing as marketing pros to educate your colleagues that we can no longer use clicks and traffic figures to measure, you know, the success of our campaigns. We need to look at trust. We need to look at citations and that kind of things. Then he has a lovely, lovely term he calls the authority tax, authority tax.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And what he's saying is that the old SEO is still working. You must, you must crack on with that, but that's your baseline. That's the price of entry. And then from there, you have to build on that.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So, you know, what are you doing? And he gives four key actions there. I'm going to mention them very quickly. Are you posting on all the platforms that where your audience lives or just your website?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Are you getting mentioned on publications that are already cited by AI? Have you done your research? Your advice from the get-go, Johnny? Are you building schema markups as part of your website management?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And of course, are you going for depth, not coverage? So that, to me, is kind of interesting. And then this final point, one that we covered during our special episode, search everywhere. It's not just Google.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

People can search on social networks. They can search on forums. They can search in the app store. They can search everywhere.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So searching is almost going to become, I would say, the new way of thinking about it. It's not going to be about Googling. It's going to be about searching it and opening your mind to possibilities. But I'm going to close on this.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

by saying, listen everyone, if you've been following Johnny and I for the last 10 years and more, you know we've been saying this for many years now, we talked about experience, we talked about expertise, we talked about authority and trustworthiness, the infamous EEAT.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yeah, a great summary, really solid advice there. I'm really glad you've highlighted this video, to be perfectly honest. It does get summed up by EEAT, Google's measure of whether content is worthy or not. And the beauty is, I've said this in workshops, you could go to your favorite AI tool and you could copy some content into that AI tool and say, look, how's the EEAT on this?

Jonny Ross

-:

How could I improve my EEAT? And whether you understand what that means or not, within a few seconds you'll start understanding what it does mean by using a tool. But yeah, I love the recommendations. I like the idea of building a complexity moat around your content.

Jonny Ross

-:

Great idea. So I typically would talk about keyword clusters. So you have a cluster and then you create lots of clusters of content around that. You need to become the expert in that.

Jonny Ross

-:

And yeah, no longer just going for a short keyword by any means. It's about being dominating in a topic and really demonstrating your skills in that topic by being really helpful, really resourceful, really knowledgeable, showing expertise, showing authenticity within that topic, and really sort of going quite deep into it. And the old SEO is still really important, making sure that you've got the content marked up using schema, making sure that you're posting not just on your website, but where your audience lives. I love that as well.

Jonny Ross

-:

And lastly, You talked about the shift that, you know, it's not all about just Google. It's, it could be anywhere. They could be searching in Spotify. It could be anywhere.

Jonny Ross

-:

And I've sort of made this apology now that whenever I say the word Google, I pretty much mean any search engine from eBay to Vinted, to Spotify, to Claude. It could be, you know, absolutely anywhere. So, so I love that. Um, and, uh, yeah, really, really solid tips.

Jonny Ross

-:

A great, great one for this segment. Thank you, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

My pleasure and thanks again to the team at Neil Patel for the shout out as well.

Jonny Ross

-:

Whilst we've been on, Simon Raybould was asking about, we've talked about AI reviews of websites, can we do, you missed it and you just wanted to point it back, I think we were probably referencing using it in Notebook LM and getting AI to review your website, being a critique for your website. So it's all about sort of taking your website URL and saying, look, you know, acting as a website manager, how could you what are the three things that I could do better on this website to get better engagement, etc. Of course, we shared some more advanced prompts, but just that's, that's as a sort of face.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Sorry to jump in, Johnny, Simon being such a good friend of the show, I will email you Simon, the the prompts we use on the day.

Jonny Ross

-:

Well, there we go. And that is why it's worth mentioning and commenting whilst we are live on our show. Although if you're listening on the replay, you're very welcome. We love you that you're being here and thank you for joining us.

Jonny Ross

-:

Whatever time of day or whatever day of week it is for you, we are glad we are with you right now. Let's move on to our third segment, shall we? The website engine room.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Now in this part of the show, Jonny and I love to share with you some new discoveries that can make life easier as a website manager and content creator. So Jonny, what is your recent discovery?

Jonny Ross

-:

Uh, so this is working with many Shopify websites, e-commerce websites, uh, and, uh, I'm seeing more and more subscription based products. Uh, nothing new, you know, sort of the hello freshers of the world. God is going on on this type of thing. Um, and, uh, but it's, it's a very clever way of getting loyalty, uh, and, and getting security on sort of, um, regular income.

Jonny Ross

-:

So if you can find a product that, that becomes a subscription, then even better, the Point being is that there's an add-on for Shopify called loopwork.co, loopwork.co is the website address, it's just called loopwork, and it's brilliant at creating unique subscriber journeys. The beauty of it is that it keeps subscribers engaged, uh it's very very clever at um if if someone wants to cancel a subscription it is it is so clever at challenging them and really trying to keep them and trying to to what we would call squeeze them into staying uh so whether that be offering some kind of discount throughout the process it's it's really clear it's not just like a cancel and then it stops it's like are you sure you want to cancel what about if we offer the year this what about if we do this and it's It's like that, that thing to sort of really keep your, uh, subscribers subscribing to your product.

Jonny Ross

-:

So yeah, if you've got a Shopify website, you've got products that can turn into subscriptions, or even you, you've got subscriptions right now, have a look at Loopwork. Uh, I think it's got some really clever, uh, things inside it. And, uh, and all I've seen is it increases revenue on the bottom line.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And the example they share on the platform, because I had a quick glance, is obviously product-based. But I reckon the logic will work for any form of subscription. It could be a newsletter, it could be part of a community, it could be anything. And I think it's back to this idea of there's so much to do and think about for all of us to get a bit of support from experts like Loopwork.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

I think it is excellent. So I suppose, you know, I did share with you that it's been fascinating for me to spend more time recently to talk with my clients on website class AI overviews. And as a result of which, what I've discovered is that some of us have perhaps been a bit negligent with the search engine optimization principles, because this is a foundation. And as I was reminding people about the key principles, I was then reminded of the tools that, for a while, I used to use all the time, Johnny.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And you kind of come back and go, do you know what? Maybe almost like I've got a crate full of old cameras and all sorts that I don't use anymore, but I'm a hoarder. I can't, much to my wife's despair, I can't get rid of anything, you know? So I was thinking, maybe I should come back and dust off literally the tools that were so important to us.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So I'm going to take you back in time, I'm guessing, Johnny, to a platform called Moz, M-O-Z. And what we used to do, so we used to do the exercise or the Google CV. So we used to say to people, Google yourself, you know, you as an individual, you as a business. print as a PDF the page and then go back once a quarter and look at the evolution of your search results.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

But within that, what you can also do as a baseline is to understand actually how well regarded you are from an authority point of view. And Moz, for many, many years and still to this day, are still offering free of charge the domain authority checker. And what this will allow you to do, you just have to copy and paste your website address and will give you a score, which is a barometer. It's not exact score.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

It's not like, um, you know, anything, but it gives you a sense of, you know, where you are today, the score out of a hundred. So to give you an example, the BBC, I think scores 95 out of a hundred. So nobody's got a hundred. But where are you against maybe competitors?

Pascal Fintoni

-:

What are your best performing pages? What are your best performing keywords? And can you just have an understanding of your current position today? Then almost ignore it.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Get on with the work that we've mentioned many a time. And then maybe three months later, check it again. And ideally, what we should see is that your domain score has gone up a few points. And some of the pages are performing a bit better.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So you could see evidence of your work And there's a reason why I'm bringing this up, Johnny, is because we're going to see less and less evidence of clicks. We're going to see less and less evidence of traffic. And all this kind of very reassuring kind of triggers, you know, a bit like social media. I know we don't get as many likes, comments, and shares, but it's kind of working still.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

We have to have faith in that. So I think that'd be a lovely way to maybe go back to older SEO tools, but actually they are so very powerful.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yeah, it's a great way to have a really quick guide on how you're performing. And by the way, if you do put your website in there and you see a really low score, I'd suggest that the average website out there, if there is such a thing, is probably only around sort of 20 to 25 out of 100. So don't get too disheartened. if you see a really low score and in fact actually a really low score is quite easy to start increasing once you get the higher up the ladder the more difficult it is to to climb uh so uh the way the the scores are measured so going from

Jonny Ross

-:

sort of you know 10 to 20 is is achievable going from 30 to 40 is actually really difficult and the higher it goes the more difficult so But as a gauge, as a sort of line in the sand and a bit of a benchmark, it's a brilliant, brilliant tool that we probably do forget about. But it's a nice little, yeah, I like it. Good benchmark.

Jonny Ross

-:

Let's move on to our final segment, which is the website call to action.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So this is about the one change, the one adjustment that can make obviously your website perform better for you and for you to enjoy running your website even more. So Johnny Ross, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross

-:

Well, interestingly, you brought up newsletters only a few moments ago. And email is becoming more and more difficult. I mean, our inboxes are just flooded, aren't they? And because of that, spam filters are becoming more difficult.

Jonny Ross

-:

But also, you've got the likes of Google sort of segmenting your email into primary, into If it can spot a newsletter, it's going to grab it and put it into promotional, isn't it? So how can we increase the chance of your email being seen and being opened? And that's one little call to action I'd like to give you. And it's a bit, um, it was something that I saw in a newsletter that I received.

Jonny Ross

-:

It's a really clever idea. So if you can get people to reply to your newsletter, that sends a huge signal to the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, all the big, um, email providers that people are engaged with you and that people are interested in your content if you can get someone to reply. So how can you get someone to reply? So I saw just it was just a paragraph I thought it was really clever and it said simply to make sure our newsletters reach you without any issues reply AI to this email so that we know that you're human and be sure to move this email to your

Jonny Ross

-:

primary inbox. Now if you could get your subscribers to reply first of all and secondly to perform the action of moving your email into the primary inbox. That sends two huge signals to the email providers that people are interested in your emails and that can have a huge effect on email deliverability Therefore open rates therefore click throughs and therefore the bottom line and it's as simple as trying to be quite clever in terms of getting someone to reply so what's quirky what's clever that you could use with your audience to give them a tiny little thing that says look you know i just want to check that you're human, any chance you could just reply, and then, you know, some kind of quirky

Jonny Ross

-:

keyword. And that would be my challenge to you, my little call to action, that's going to have a big impact on your deliverability.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Super. Thank you very much. I know, you know, how passionate you are about good email marketing practices as well. So I wanted to go back to my reference to the Google CV throughout this episode and actually explain to people what it means by that.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And actually I would go as far as saying it's going to become your search CV. So you can do this activity on ChatGPT, you can do it on Perplexity, on Cloud, and that kind of things. But what I want you to do is essentially do it three ways. You as an individual, and understand what the search is saying about you.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

So if we use Google as an example, I would go on the all section, which is the first one you get. And then literally, if you click on the three dots on the top right hand corner, you can print as a PDF and save that. And that's your kind of snapshot. And then I would go on images.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

I would go on use and maybe any others that if you are very active online on YouTube, you can do videos. But what you understand is not just obviously what is displayed, Johnny, but reflect why is it that this particular, you know, search result has been displayed here, you know, and logic is going to actually guide you. You don't have to be an SEO expert to understand that. Ah, I see.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Because I was a guest or I contributed to this newspaper, of course, this is now listed ahead of my own website. And I would give you everything you need to know about citation. So I would do it with your name as an individual. I would do it with your name and your occupation.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

That's version two. And I would do it with just your business name, because these are the three ways people will look for you. Now, people say, I'm going to pick Pascal. There's a fourth way, which is where they just look for my services.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

They don't know my name. They don't know my business name and so on. I say, I agree, but I'm talking about foundation building here, Johnny. If you're not even happy today about the way you're being displayed as a named individual, name individual plus occupation or as a business name, then frankly, the other stuff, which is essentially to be displayed just on the basis of your services, just won't work for you, because that

Pascal Fintoni

-:

is the correlation we're looking for. So building foundation for a broader, not named search, if you will, is part of it. So work on your Google CV, understand where you stand today, use logic to then make some modification, which is probably, for all of us, more guest contribution.

Jonny Ross

-:

Yep, a bit of brand reputation management, isn't it, as well? So Google those three things that Pascal was mentioning. Take a snapshot. I agree, you don't need to be an expert in SEO to start understanding what needs fixing and what needs changing.

Jonny Ross

-:

And we're basically telling you to dominate that first page with some clever tactics. Well, what another great call to action and a great episode. We've covered, well, it's been quite AI heavy, but also Google CV heavy as well. So, you know, think about your privacy settings, but don't overthink it.

Jonny Ross

-:

So worry when you need to worry, but don't over worry, and use the right, make sure you've got your settings right, and if you are worried, use a cloud, private cloud environment, so something like Copilot or something like Notebook LM. We've talked about how to increase your AI visibility in tools with the great YouTube video that Neil Patel did, and a couple of great techniques in the website engine room from the Shopify Loomwork app for subscriptions, and of course, the good old Moz domain authority checker, and a couple of great call to actions. Thank you, Pascal, for a delightful 54th episode.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

Yes, it was lovely to reflect and relate it to our lived-in experience of hosting the masterclass in Leeds. I hope that we get the chance to do it again, because it's all part of the web prime movement. And I would like this year really to be the year where people feel proud of their website again. For sure.

Jonny Ross

-:

That is a wrap of episode 54 of the 90 Day Website Mastery Podcast, your audio companion to the 90 Day Website Mastery Program. Thank you so much for joining, whether it was live on LinkedIn or YouTube or whether you're catching us up on the replay, whether that be a video or whether that be audio and we're in your ears right now. Thank you for allowing us to. And please give us feedback, reach out to us on social, but also Perhaps leave us a review on Apple podcast.

Jonny Ross

-:

That would mean so much to us. For more information, visit nine state marketing mastery.com. We can book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal. It's goodbye for now.

Jonny Ross

-:

We'll leave you of a fun video and audio montage to enjoy whilst you review your notes and actions.

Pascal Fintoni

-:

And we'll see you on the next episode.

Jonny Ross

-:

Take care. Bye bye.

Show artwork for Jonny Ross Fractional CMO

About the Podcast

Jonny Ross Fractional CMO
Getting marketing done
Join Jonny Ross, Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) & Digital Marketing Strategist, in his podcast The Jonny Ross Fractional CMO - formerly the Jonny Ross Audio Experience.

Full of stories, marketing tips, tricks and strategy, along with interviews from inspirational business leaders.

Looking for marketing strategy? Jonny delivers marketing consultancy, marketing training and marketing campaigns on a daily basis. This podcast is a place to share his wealth of knowledge with you, and to find experts across many different business fields and bring their inspirations and learning tips right into your ear!

Find Jonny over at:

His website https://jonnyross.com
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnyross/
or on Twitter https://twitter.com/jonnyross.

He is also Founder of https://fleek.marketing and also runs a local Yorkshire Business Club https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheYorkshireBusinessClub/.

About your host

Profile picture for Jonny Ross

Jonny Ross

Jonny Ross, Founder, Digital Strategist and orator of Fleek Marketing

Having worked in business management (including retail) for over 25 years, Jonny Ross understands the needs of business owners. He has a proven track record in SEO, social media, website design and website development, including experience of successfully unlocking Google penalties.

Jonny is also an established SEO and social media speaker and trainer and was recently listed as one of Business Insider’s β€œ42 under 42” business leader rising stars.

In his spare time, Jonny enjoys spending time with his family, running, cooking and hosting dinner parties.

Jonny is a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD), a Member of the Chartered Management Institute and is also a qualified optician.