Google Bard Prompts to Improve Your SEO Rankings

I want to end up breaking down my favorite prompt that I've been using for a while now.

Why is Eric so handsome?

I haven't used that prompt, but I'm going to try it out to improve my SEO rankings. And you can end up doing the same thing. So most people get this wrong. Like whenever you do a Google search, you'll find that sometimes someone ranks above you and you're like, man, my content's so much better. Why are they ranking above me? This doesn't make sense. You know, and what people don't realize, and Google has admitted this publicly and they admitted this to the DOJ, in their words, they do not understand documents, they fake it. In other words, it's hard for Google to understand content quality, they fake it. So just because someone has better content in your opinion or the mass audience's opinion, it doesn't mean Google sees it that way. So what I like doing, I take this prompt and it's a 2-part prompt. And it works with Bard. It does not work with ChatGPT. I also like using it with Bard because Bard is more up to date. So the prompt is, you, well, first off, you go and Google a term that you want to rank for. You need to have a webpage already on this term. If you don't, go and create it. But first off, Google for the term that you want to rank for. Go take some of the top results and say to Bard, can you tell me the differences between the content on this page? You're inserting the URL of a competitor who's ranking high. And this page. And you're just taking another URL of another competitor who's ranking really high. On page 1? That's it. You end up putting out the prompt. Google will break down, or Bard will break down the differences in the page and everything they see, and it'll give you ideas on what you need to do to make your content better. It'll also help you find the gaps of where one content piece that's ranking maybe number 1 is not doing that number 2 is doing and vice versa. So then you can cover the stuff that each of them are missing out on so that way your page can be way more thorough in the eyes of a robot or AI or machine learning or whatever you want to end up calling it. And then I'll do a second prompt. And this is what I tell Bard. I pretty much say, and I'm repeating the first part again, can you tell me the main differences between the content on this page, insert the URL of a competitor that ranks above you, and this page, insert the URL of another competitor that ranks above you, pretty much the same 2 URLs that it uses above. And then after analyzing both pages, can you tell me how to make the content on my page better On my webpage.

And are these prompts are one after another, right? For the same thing?

So I did the first prompt that we talked about and then the second prompt. That's all that. Plus I end it with, here's a URL from my webpage. So you insert the URL of the webpage that you want to rank for the keyword. So in essence, what you're telling Bard is the reason you're having it in 2 prompts. The first prompt, when you're having them compare 2 webpages, it gives you a lot of feedback. The second prompt, you're having it compare 2 webpages and you're also having it analyze your webpage on the same topic and telling you what you should do better. The reason you want to do 2 separate prompts, when you combine it into all one prompt, Bard actually doesn't give you enough of analysis on the 2 competing URLs. It's too relaxed in word count and thoroughness. Here's a reason why.

You're letting it think. This is really important. ChatGPT has also said this in their guide, right? Like, you need to give the prompt time to think. And then because you've separated it, you're letting it think more.

Yes.

Gives you better results. That's why I'm asking.

I try not to have prompts that are too long. When they're too long of prompts, it ends up coming up with stuff that I'm not looking for. And Eric's spot on. Part of it is because it needs to think, so it gives them time to analyze and then do each thing separately, right? Because it's a computer. Computers aren't instant. The second thing is I found that when you go too in-depth with your prompt, They only show you a limited amount of word count. It doesn't matter what you end up telling them, how long you want it. A lot of times they don't follow your instructions on word count and they just make it as short or as long as they want. But when you do multiple prompts, you get many more words or much more of a thorough analysis, which then ends up giving you more content to figure out what you need to do with.

Yeah. And ultimately it's a conversation too, so you get better results.

Yes.

So we are going to talk about if removing Google Analytics results in a 47% page speed increase. So this is something I saw from a friend that he tweeted this out. His name's Eric Van Hulz and he has a company called Beardbrand. And funny enough, Eric has a beard, right? And so they sell stuff to manage your beard. And so here's what he said here. Google Analytics pixels have been removed from the website. It feels so liberating. Major bumps in our page speed. Mobile went from 38 to 54, okay, out of 100. Right? The higher the better. Desktop went from 63 to 93. That is immense, right?

Wow.

And then, so he shares all these screenshots and then all these people are posting. And the only thing he's using now, Neil, is Shopify Analytics. So he's not installing Clicky or any of these other analytics tools. It's just Shopify Analytics. That's it. And so I put something here. I'm like, hey, I'm going to check back in like a month or two. I'm curious to see how— It might not do anything, but it might affect your search engine rankings.

We'll see. Well, you can just remove Google Analytics if you want to do a test and just look at your Search Console traffic.

You can do it first.

I'm not going to do it. I can do it on— actually, I'll do it on one of my sites and see if it has an impact on rankings. That's a good test. I'll do it on probably like 20, 30 sites because we have so many.

He was like, I doubt it'll have much effect. I'm like, I'm just going to check in a month or two and see. And then someone else responded here. It's like, if you increase your performance even minimally, it should increase your rankings, not because of performance, but because the user experience is better, which is a fair point.

Yeah.

I don't know if you saw this, but Google is set to cut about 30,000 jobs and most of them are in sales. And I'm like, man, like how much— this is like AI is like a very deflationary technology. And I'm like, man, costs are going to come down for like people doing work. And like a lot of these salespeople are being cut too. I'm like, and we talked about software margins probably being squeezed down now because people are just going to be able to build software quickly. And so, I mean, this all ties in with the AI stuff that we're talking about, like Talking about Midjourney version 6 now, what used to probably cost a couple hundred dollars for like a nice, really nice blog post image now is like, will cost you a few cents, like, or like a fraction of a cent to do it.

But also Google doesn't need sales reps for a lot of their stuff. And the prime example of this, there's tons of salespeople involved in Google AdWords or Google Ads, but companies spend money on ads based on profitability. Like I've sat down with a lot of Google sales reps and we're having lunch and they're just like, yeah, look at this, what can we do to help you with your next quarter goals? or next year, how can you spend more? And they ask all these questions. It's like, I don't need a sales rep for this. All I need is someone to tell me how I can continually improve my campaigns and what you guys are seeing that we haven't tested or we're not seeing. And if we can get a better ROI, I'll spend double, triple, or as much as you let me spend, as long as it's profitable and the ROI works out within the metrics we're optimizing for.

You know what I'm telling my company this year? I'm like, hey guys, like, you know, what matters at the end of the day is truth, right? So like, okay, like, You feel like we're doing really well. How well are we really doing? What kind of ROI are we providing for our clients? Oh, but also like, how well are you doing individually too? How well am I doing? Like everything comes down to truth at the end of the day. And I think 2023 now leading into 2024, we're going to get a lot more truth from people and a lot more people focusing on results instead of all the like the dilly-dallying stuff.

On a side note, did you ever end up hiring that salesperson that came from one of the companies?

Starting on Monday.

Oh, cool.

Yeah. And we also want to start this week, strategy side.

Do you have a big sales team?

No, no.

Funny enough, we used to have so many sales reps. We've cut down our sales team to maybe a half to a third of the size that it was globally.

And, uh, it's even better.

Well, we've shifted from people just trying to sell to be more consultative and helping. And it's just like, the goal isn't to sell. The goal is to figure out how you can help people. Yeah. And that produces results. And what we've also found out too is sales shouldn't be Depending on the product or service you're selling or the price point as well, it shouldn't just be a salesperson selling. It should be a team sales, at least in B2B and enterprise, in which people from different departments are trying to figure out what problems companies are having and how we can all help together to solve them.

You know how I look at it? I look at it as like we're just talking about, because Neil and I both have service businesses, right? At the end of the day, we're the doctors and we're supposed to point them in the right direction. Like you don't go to a doctor and say, hey, like what injury should I heal today? No, it's more so like, what are the issues? What are the challenges you're facing right now? And then here's the right solution. The practitioners are going to do the best job. And interestingly enough, this guy that's starting on Monday, he has a VP of sales background. He's going to build out the sales team, but like, he's not a practitioner. He's like, but I only want to hire practitioners, right? And the company that he came from, even though he was like the best salesperson there, funny enough that you mentioned, like they had a sales team of like 30 people. They cut it down to like 3 people. And they still did amazing at the end of the day. So there's 2 takeaways there actually.

Yeah, and then on the flip side, I know a lot of people like Vivint, the company that ended up selling solar and alarms based out of Utah, I think Lehi is where they're headquartered at. They have tons of sales reps and the model's worked out for them. And that's why I clarify with like, it depends on the type of product you're serving. For alarm systems or something that's $10, $20 a month or $50 a month, you may need just a Brute force, large sales team that's just going out there knocking door to door. But if you're focusing on enterprise, not really.

Yep. All right, what else do you have?

So, you know, I know this is a podcast and you have in here—

This is actually from— these two are from the fans.

They asked these questions.

Oh cool.

We have two things that we want to wrap up this episode with on— number one was how to start a podcast with no experience. And number 2 was creative ways to grow a podcast.

Yep. So we'll start with the creative ways to grow a podcast first because we've done this a couple of times. So actually, Neil and I, we're doing a trade with 2 podcasts. One is Marketing Against the Grain, which is the HubSpot marketing podcast, which has the HubSpot CMO and then the Zapier CMO. And so Kieran Flanagan and Kit Bodnar, I believe. And then we're also going to be doing a podcast swap with Perpetual Traffic. And they're the guys that It's actually 2 agency guys as well, Ralph Burns and Kassem, I believe. I forgot his last name. But we're going to be— we're actually— they're going to be appearing on our podcast and then we're going to be appearing on theirs. So it's going to take a little more work, but we'll see how that goes. And so my point of saying all this is that we do these impression trades. Like I gave you an example with the HubSpot one, but we're also just doing the guest appearance on both.

So yeah. It's the best way to grow a podcast. I think there is no better strategy other than to do trades.

Or like, also the other thing, I don't know if I told you this, but we're also partnering. Like I'm talking again with LinkedIn Podcast Network. I'm talking again with the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, talking with HubSpot Podcast Network.

We used to be part of the Entrepreneur, right? Podcast Network. It drives a lot of views.

They, uh, I think they're interested. So yeah.

Dude, I was telling you the other day, Jeff Fenster was telling me how he gets like hundreds and thousands of views.

No, you brought it up. So I emailed and they're like, yeah, let's meet.

So I think you emailed right when we were recording too.

Yeah.

And then what was the other thing on the podcast?

How to start one with no experience.

So you tell me on this because I was actually bad. You were the one who actually started our podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been podcasting since 2014, maybe, maybe late 2013 or so. So maybe 11 years. And when I started out, I had no experience, right? The main thing for me is like, okay, by the way, this is like pre-Tim Ferriss podcast, but there's a guy, our mutual friend Andrew Warner, Mixer G, remember?

Yeah.

And so he was actually the Tim Ferriss before Tim Ferriss. He was interviewing a lot of entrepreneurs. And I was like, man, this is really amazing. I'm like, you know, there's nobody really interviewing tech people from like a marketing and business standpoint. And I'm like, I think that's what my angle is. And then so I started Growth Everywhere, which is now called Leveling Up, and I just started interviewing people. And I think if you're going to do a podcast, you have to have some type of angle, right? So there's a good example of a guy, David Perell. He's had Marc Andreessen, he's had Chamath Palihapitiya, He's had Tim Urban, Tim Ferriss, like these are all very popular authors or maybe investors as well. And his podcast is called How I Write. And he mostly talks about writing, right? For Marketing School, the angle here is Neil and I are both operators, but we're also marketers too. And we can share a lot of experiences and stories too. So that's our angle here. And it's like, it's every day basically, right? Monday through Friday now. For Leveling Up, my angle is like, I've done over 400 of those. These are now 2-hour interviews where it's like business, it's personal growth, and it's marketing. But like, that's my angle. And so I think if you're going to start something, you have to have an angle and you have to—

Be passionate too. It's not just the angle, because if you don't like what you're talking about, you're not going to create enough episodes where you're going to keep going to get the traction.

That's a major thing, right? People are like, oh yeah, let's just start a podcast. And I see so many, they started for maybe 5 or 10 episodes and they just give up because the passion was never there in the beginning. And there's some where like they have a nice setup and everything, they're bringing nice guests, but I'm like, man, your heart is not in it. You just want to get views at the end of the day. But me, I'm genuinely curious and like we get to nerd out on this stuff. So it's like, it's stuff that we actually like.

Dude, when's the last time you checked our podcast analytics?

Yesterday.

Okay, I haven't checked it in over 30 days.

I have to give you the new login.

Oh, I didn't even know it changed. But either way, like we do this podcast not because we want to see our stats go up. Like it's nice, don't get us wrong, but we love doing it and that keeps us being consistent. We've done an episode every single day for how many years straight?

7, 8 years.

And then we ended up switching our model to 5 episodes a week, longer format. It takes more time. Instead of 5-minute episodes, they're 15 minutes. So it's quite a bit more time from us, but we do enjoy it. And another thing to just keep in mind is when you're starting off a new podcast, you don't have to have the best setup. When we started off, we didn't have the best setup. What's the software that people should use? Microphones?

Dude, okay, let me, let me tell everyone the first setup we had, and now here's our setup. So when we started Marketing School 7, 8 years ago, I would go to Vegas, record Summertime at Neil's place. We used a Blue Yeti and we're sitting right next to each other, right? Blue Yeti is like a $100 mic, so it's not that expensive. And we recorded on his laptop and he turned the AC off because it was too loud. And so it'd get really hot and we start sweating. And like, that's how we started it. My first podcast, I used the Blue Yeti as well and I had like a little backdrop, but then like one part was like missing. And then I wore like a single grain shirt. And I had like spiky hair back then. So like, if, if it's not embarrassing the first time, like you're waiting too long. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to double down on Neil's point too. Like, if you're not also, if you're not continuing to learn and you're not getting better yourself, your questions are going to suck and the podcast is going to suck. So like even us doing this podcast right now, like the format's changed. Neil brings ideas, I bring ideas. It actually holds us each accountable to bringing it.

And if you don't have an audience, you can just hit a lot of people up and ask them to be interviewed. A lot of people say yes. Your normal So, your normal podcasts, when you put out an episode on YouTube and then the one you put out with the Hormozis, what was the difference in view count? Was it like 35 times or something?

Oh my God, yeah, 35 times. Yeah. So, because my YouTube was on the recovery, right? Like each video would maybe get 200, 500 views or something like that. Alex Hormozi was 74,000. Leila's at 44,000 right now. And I have a new one that's rising really quickly right now that's about like 40,000 too.

So, just shows interviewing people can also help you get way more traction during the early days.

Yeah.

But that's it for this episode. Please make sure you rate, review this podcast. We love the 5 stars. Thank you for listening.

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