Thanks for all the support from everyone. Appreciate it!
Also, I thought you were younger because your profile picture here shows a much younger you. You’ve gotten old already.
I waited 10 years because I was afraid of those comments LOL
I was about 32 in that profile pic. I'm 44 now.
It's also the worst camera angle. Laptop camera UNDER me.
Plus, my makeup artist was on holiday that went.
Not bad for a first video. You’ll get used to being on camera.
Thanks! Yeah, it is difficult which is why I put it off for so long. Especially unscripted with no plan.
Congratulations on your first video! Launching with a forty minute breakdown right out of the gate is an ambitious move. I completely agree that traditional keywords are dead, entities and deep topical clusters are what matter now. I'll be sure to watch it today and leave any questions in the comments. Best of luck with the new channel.
It's easy once you get talking. The hardest part is the first minute. The first 10 attempts I made I couldn't get started. I'd just freeze like a deer in headlights.
But then I started thinking.. why. I can talk on the phone to someone for 3 hours, so why can't I talk in front of a camera.
The trick is this: Minimize the video so you can't see yourself. Also, standing helps, but I was moving around and rubbing my eyes too much
thank you for sharing, i am definitely a person who likes longer videos!
Thanks, you're who I made this for. I'm not trying to compete with the tiktok, brain-fried, "give me entertainment" crowd.
People want "processes" and "structure", but it's not how the brain learns.
You can't create a process from this if you want to learn it deeply. You earn it by experience, or by watching someone take you through their thinking process.
Where I would improve though is there was too much chat before diving in, but this was mostly because I wasn't relaxed enough for the first 5 minutes. I wasn't nervous, but I didn't get into the flow for a few minutes, and to do it properly you need to be in the flow-state otherwise your brain just dries up.
Congrats on the first video.
The beginning is a bit difficult, until you get used to the camera.
Naturally it will be better, as you keep on being consistent.
Yep it's super hard at the start. It took me 10 takes to get this. Every time I would just freeze after 10-15 seconds.
the "keywords are dead" part is what interests me most.
when you're deciding whether something deserves its own page, what are you using instead of keyword data to draw that line?
for example if 10 different queries basically represent the same intent/entity, are you building one strong page around the whole thing or is there still a point where you'd split them into separate pages?
i think thats where a lot of people still get stuck even if they understand topical authority.
This is a fantastic question.
And it's a VERY nuanced question. There are multiple things to consider.
Remember, Google is not trying to match your page with a query. It's trying to match the SERPS with a query.
This is a huge shift in thinking, but it's central to approaching this.
Here's the part that makes this not a clear cut answer.
Let's take an example:
Take the search queries 'answer engine optimisation' and 'generative engine optimisation'
They are basically the same thing, but only some people know this, and Google's algorithm isn't one of them, so it's treating them differently.
However, the actual parts you have to put on the page to rank for both of them overlap like 80-90%. The only real difference is the title.
Remembering also that title is still a keyword match. It has weight outside the embeddings.
You have to use judgement in many cases and PICK a page.
You can see this even at the lanes level.
Take the search term "ir saunas"
Most are ecom category pages.
But we can see these:
Again, nm.org is VERY interesting. You won't beat that. They're pulling in "health benefits" of the "thing" from a site with authority/topical authority in health.
You can see the direction Google is going. They aren't just pulling in based on the page, they're choosing what kind of page you can contribute to the centroid, lane, results based on your SITE.
They actually have 2 health benefits ones, both from health sites. You can see mayoclinic too.
So if you're a health site, you would target the health aspects as they overlap into different areas. Your ranking pages are where your topical authority intersects with other niches that require a "health article" that can't be satisfied by that niche.
Add timestamps in the description so people can jump to the example part
I did, are they not showing for you?
Keywords aren’t dead, but they matter less as exact-match targets than they used to. Search intent, topical coverage, internal linking, and whether the page actually satisfies the query seem much more important now.
They are dead dead. Really.
Title and domain have separate weights, and obviously you do need to use the keyword on the page, as you can't talk about "persian cats" without saying persian cats.
But this is a tiny % of what will cause you to rank.
There's a reason people are frustrated by the Google updates. The old way of ranking is not working.
You can see this exactly with one of the persian cat examples.
And the farm article is now PAGE 1.
Seriously, that right there is absolute proof.
An article with "Now there are three persian cats at my farm", page 1 for the broad "persian cats".
No one can argue keywords aren't dead after that.
You have an Irish accent in real life
It's Scottish, but thank you. Irish accents are beautiful too.
The shift away from focusing heavily on keywords is interesting. I’m more curious about how much the overall page quality and usefulness matter compared with the older keyword-focused approach.
Google can't measure quality easily and they gave up long ago. They shifted instead to matching meaning with intent, then letting users determine quality.
They use their re-ranking part of the algorithm, based on user signals once you rank.
This is why you'll often see slop sites with lots of content shoot up for 2 months then die. This is the re-ranking algorithm in action.
