The Edward Show

E1008: break down what we're seeing so far from Google's March Core Update - and how to interpret the data correctly. This update is still rolling out, but several patterns are already becoming clear. There was a reporting issue in Semrush between April 2nd and April 4th that showed large traffic spikes across many sites.  These spikes are not reflected in Google Search Console. I walk through wha...

E1007: The exact local SEO strategy that helped a garage door company turn $18,000 into $1.7 million in just 11 months. This is based on a real case study from Sarvesh Shrivastava, who will be joining the podcast once again soon. I go through Sarvesh's full written breakdown and add my own insights on what worked, why it worked, and how you can apply the same approach. These are practical SEO acti...

E1006: Mr. David Quaid joins the podcast for a deep, practical discussion about what is really working in SaaS SEO right now. Edward and David start with audience questions on link building and break down the real risk-to-reward tradeoffs behind different approaches. David explains why relying too heavily on domain authority misses the bigger picture, why page-level context matters more than most...

E1005: How to get high-quality backlinks for health websites. I came across a discussion from someone struggling to compete with sites that have thousands of backlinks, many of them low quality. This episode walks through what matters in YMYL niches like health, and why chasing volume is often the wrong approach. If you understand the principles in this episode, you can apply them to any niche whe...

E1004: Answering listener questions about some of the biggest topics in SEO right now: AI writing, outbound links, ranking without backlinks, and whether SEO is still worth doing. I talk through when it makes sense to link out from your content, including blog posts and bottom-of-funnel pages, and why linking to useful sources can make your content more credible. I also explain how I think about c...

E1003: Breaking down an SEO video funnel that can work especially well for high-ticket offers. You create short videos that answer real top-of-funnel keywords people already have. Those videos rank and send people to a form. The form qualifies them. AI buckets the leads. Then, before the sales call, you automatically send follow-up videos tailored to the type of prospect they are. This works well...

E1002: We break down one of the most persistent SEO myths: the idea that you can "hoard" or control SEO authority by using nofollow links. This belief has been around for over a decade, and despite Google addressing it years ago, many SEOs and marketers still structure their sites around it. They avoid linking out. They overuse nofollow. They try to channel authority internally. It doesn't work. T...

E1001: Guest blogging for SEO has declined, what Google said about it, and how most people are using it the wrong way in 2026. Back in 2014, Google's head of web spam, Matt Cutts, published a post called "The Decay and Fall of Guest Blogging for SEO." His message was clear: guest blogging as a link building tactic had become too spammy to trust. More than a decade later, many SEOs are still relyin...

E1000: Julian Goldie, Charles Floate, and Alejandro Meyerhans join this milestone episode to break down a simple but important question: if you had to start from zero today, with almost no budget, how would you build an SEO business to $10,000 per month? Each guest approaches the problem differently. We go deep into what actually works right now, what has changed, and what is being overlooked by m...

E999: If your content sounds like it was written by AI, people can tell. And when they can tell, trust drops. That leads to higher bounce rates, more pogo sticking, and lower conversions. In this episode, I break down exactly why obvious AI writing is a problem for SEO and what to do instead. This is an updated take on humanizing AI content. The rules have changed over the past year, and what work...

E998: Google's March 2026 Core Update is rolling out, and early data shows significant volatility across search results. I break down what's happening, what people in the SEO community are reporting, and what you should actually do if you want to avoid losing traffic. We're still in the early phase of the rollout, which means most of what you're seeing right now is speculation mixed with early sig...

E997: Most people think "GEO" is replacing SEO, and that getting cited by tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity requires a totally different strategy. I break down why that narrative is wrong. Using a real discussion from the SEO subreddit, I walk through what's actually happening behind the scenes in AI search - and why, after six months of testing, even experienced "GEO" practitioners still can't fig...

E996: Google's March 2026 spam update just dropped and it's one of the fastest rollouts we've ever seen. The update launched on March 24 and finished rolling out by March 25. Unlike previous updates that took weeks, this one was completed in just a couple of days, which suggests a more targeted and specific change rather than a broad algorithm shift. We go through what's been observed so far, what...

E995: Nathan Gotch joins the show to talk about what it takes to build and grow an SEO SaaS in the AI era. Nathan shares what's happening behind the scenes at Rankability, including how they made 7,000 product changes in 90 days, why they eliminated free trials entirely, and how AI is changing execution without changing SEO fundamentals. We also get into real workflows, tools, and strategies that...

E994: I sit down with Yas Haque, former Head of SEO at Omnicom, to break down what actually separates the world's largest SEO agencies from smaller shops. This is how enterprise SEO works in practice - how big agencies win clients, structure work, get buy-in from massive organizations, and where they waste time and money. We cover what smaller agencies can immediately adopt, what they should ignor...

E993: I break down a real SEO case study from Charles Floate, who generated $53,000 in 45 days through organic search while operating under heavy scrutiny. Because of his reputation in black hat SEO, this campaign had to be strictly within the rules. That makes this a useful example of what actually works when you cannot take risks. We go step by step through the exact strategy, including how the...

E992: Reddit SEO is going crazy. Ann Smarty and David Quaid, both experts in Reddit marketing, join the show to explain what's happening and how to get results. Reddit has become one of the most influential platforms in search. It ranks at the top of Google, shows up heavily in AI answers, and can directly impact brand perception and revenue. But at the same time, it is being flooded with spam, au...

E991: Five user experience (UX) principles that directly improve your SEO performance and help you convert more visitors into customers, users, or leads. If people are landing on your page and leaving immediately, that sends a strong negative signal. Search engines pick up on this behavior. It affects your rankings, your site-wide performance, and ultimately your ability to grow through search. Th...

E990: Nicolas Gorroño from AI Ranking shares his screen and breaks down how to automate SEO using AI without getting penalized. There's a lot of noise right now around AI SEO. People are publishing hundreds or thousands of pages, seeing short-term gains, and then watching everything disappear. In this demonstration, we focus on what is actually working long-term. Nico walks through how he builds w...

E989: We break down Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU) - one of the most disruptive changes to search ever - and what it actually did to the internet. Entire websites lost 70-90% of their traffic overnight. Some never recovered. Others quietly adapted. And a few avoided the damage altogether. This is not a surface-level recap. This is a real conversation between people who were directly impacte...

988: Jason Barnard, founder of Kalicube and one of the early voices behind Brand SERPs and entity SEO, joins the show! Jason has been working in search since 1998, has spent the last decade focused on how search engines and AI systems understand brands, people, and organizations - (and Jason is really smart). The conversation explores how SEO is changing as search moves toward AI-driven systems. J...

E987: Lily Ray joins the show to discuss how search is evolving in the age of AI. We cover the latest Google Core Updates, the rise of generative engine optimization (GEO), and how AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and AI Overviews are changing the way websites earn visibility. Lily shares insights from years of analyzing Google updates and explains why many SEO strategies that work today even...

E896: Google has been recommending outbound links for years, yet many SEOs still avoid them. We go through Google's own documentation about linking out, an SEO experiment that tested whether outbound links help rankings, and Matt Cutts' guidance on when to use the nofollow attribute. The core idea is simple: linking to relevant, trustworthy sources can improve the usefulness of your content. It he...

E985: A lot of people say exact match domains stopped working years ago. In this episode, we take a closer look at whether that's actually true. SEO veteran David Quaid joins the show to break down how exact match domains (EMDs) still play a role in modern search strategies. We discuss when they work, when they don't, and why many companies underestimate the value of owning keyword-focused domains...

E984: Two stories that highlight a broader problem on the modern internet: systems that are easily manipulated once incentives are introduced. First, Microsoft has published research describing what it calls AI recommendation poisoning. Companies are embedding hidden instructions inside "Summarize with AI" buttons and AI prompt links. When users click these links, they can inject instructions into...