Kevin Rowe is Founder and Head of Digital PR at PureLinq, a Florida-based agency focused on digital PR for SEO. Like myself, he’s been in SEO for some time and is a big advocate of digital PR strategies. Kevin writes regularly for a number of influential SEO publications, including SearchEngineLand.com and SearchEngineJournal.com.
Kevin and I will both be attending Pubcon Las Vegas 2024, a conference at which AI and its likely future influence on SEO and digital marketing is expected to be a huge topic. The 3-day conference will kick off on March 4th at the MGM Luxor Conference Center (By the way, one of my ventures, GoodPics, by Giving Forward, will be at Pubcon — if you’re attending the event, make sure you stop by to get your free headshot!).
I’m grateful to Kevin for sharing his deep knowledge of SEO, earned media, and digital PR with me in this interview for the eMarketing Association. Our talk covered a lot of topics of relevance to anyone doing SEO, PR, social media, or any kind of organic optimization today: they include:
- The importance of storytelling and social media in SEO.
- The importance of producing trustworthy content in a world where AI-generated content is becoming more prevalent.
- The importance of understanding the different layers of expertise and reputation in SEO, and how Google is now able to recognize and prioritize these factors.
- The crucial role that voice assistants like Google Home will play in the future of search.
- The possibility that the recent Helpful Content update in Google may have been influenced by AI, given that the update prioritizes unique and human-generated content over AI-generated content.
- How to use AI to thwart “Creator’s Block” (formerly known as “Writer’s Block”)
- Potential loopholes in ChatGPT’s training data, including the use of human-generated content to train the AI and the potential for abuse.
- The importance of measuring the value of PR and digital content placements beyond media equivalents.
- How brand search volume and direct navigation volume can be used as a leading indicator of paid media success.
- The growing demand for digital PR and SEO services, as indicated by a 10x increase in Google Trends search interest over the past 5 years.
