E352: I ranked #1 on Google within 24 hours of publishing my SEO content - twice within the last week.
This is the greatest thing I have discovered in my SEO career.
Put your keyword at the beginning of your video description on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
If the video gets over 5,000 views, it will likely rank 1-5 the next day. Make sure to check Google with mobile before checking with desktop.
The best part, this is entirely white hat.
Guilt-free dessert.
Listen to the episode for more.
I'll also be giving a deep breakdown on my digital marketing newsletter, this Sunday. Get it here: https://edwardsturm.com/newsletter/
00:00 Introduction: Ranking #1 on Google 00:28 Previous Discoveries: TwitterX and Instagram Glitches 02:32 The Best Opportunity: User-Generated Content 04:39 Testing the Theory: Link Echoes and Ryan Reynolds 08:07 Why This Strategy Works 12:26 Conclusion: The Future of SEO and Video Content
#seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #socialmediamarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
In the last four days, I have ranked number one on Google two times in under 24 hours of publishing my content. I am not exaggerating. This is the greatest thing that I have discovered in my SEO career. And I think it is the biggest opportunity in digital marketing right now and nobody else knows this. And this is what you're going to get on this episode of the Edward Show. This is episode 352 of my daily digital marketing podcast. You know, this is the third amazing thing that I have discovered in the last year about digital marketing that I've discovered. The first thing was the Twitter ex ads glitch. I discovered this glitch for getting millions of impressions for a dollar a day ad spend, one dollar per day ad spend on Twitter ex ads. And for that one dollar, you would get four plus million impressions. I use this for months, months and months for so many different things. Made a bunch of money off of it, got a bunch of press off of it, and then it was patched. The next thing that I discovered, it was the organic Instagram glitch. Instagram had this glitch where if you toggled off a certain setting when you posted an Instagram reel, it would get like 10 times or 20 times the reach. So I would routinely have videos that would get four million views, five million views, just very routinely. And I was blowing up fast. And now I'm blowing up fast again because I just figured out how to do it in a white hat way. But it was so much easier. If that was still around and I was doing my posting strategy now, posting as often as I am now, I would grow even faster than I'm growing now. I'm already growing fast, but it would be even crazier. So I would routinely getting just millions of views for posts by toggling this on. I would just take videos that had had performed well on TikTok over the last year. I would have them uploaded to Google Drive without the TikTok watermark using reuse video.com. This is a syndication tool, an automatic syndication tool. Download the videos from Google Drive. These were videos that were validated by TikTok. I would upload them to Instagram, toggle off, show to existing followers. So this would only show to new followers. And these videos would crush hundreds of thousands or millions of views. And it was very routine, it was amazing. And then in January, this feature was removed. This ability was removed from Instagram. So then that stopped existing. You know, I said, this is OK, because in the last two months, I've discovered these two great things, I wonder what will be next. And I think this is what's next. So let me share what happened. I talked about this a little bit on yesterday's episode, but I was able to do it two days in a row, what two days in a row. So it is a known thing that Google is boosting user generated content in its search results. This is because it's becoming harder to trust small websites. So many small websites are using AI generated text to try to game Google. And so Google just doesn't have as many trustworthy things to share. And so it's hard for Google to find what is trustworthy, but also users are having a hard time figuring out what is trustworthy with so many people using AI generated text. And then you have user generated content like Reddit and Quora, especially places where there are comments. Comments are not as big on small blogs anymore. People just don't use a comment sections for articles on small blogs. However, on Reddit and Quora, lots of people do. So if an original post has some false information, people in the comments will correct it, which adds more detail to the post. And for that reason, a lot of users and searchers are trusting the answers that they get in Reddit and Quora more than they will get on a personal website. And that brings us to video and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts. One of the reasons people like Reddit and Quora, another reason is that it is fast, it is easy to consume. And that's also what you get with short form vertical video on TikTok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. And because people want comments, you also get that on these platforms. So if somebody in a video says something that is wrong, people in the comments will correct the person in the video. And then I noticed that I was seeing a bunch of my own videos. When I wasn't doing much SEO at all, I wasn't thinking about SEO at all. But I was still seeing a bunch of my own videos in the search engine results pages for keywords around the things that I was making videos on. And this all got me thinking. I wonder if Google is also prioritizing video for the same reasons that it is prioritizing Reddit and Quora, it would make sense. So let's test. And so what I did is I made a video about link echoes. Link echoes are also called link ghost. This is when you get a backlink, you get the positive effects of that backlink, the backlink is indexed, then the backlink is removed, but the positive effects remain for months or even years. This is called link echoes in SEO or link ghosts. So I make a video about this and I put link echoes, AKA link ghosts right at the beginning of the description for the video. I put the video up, it's a few thousand views. And the next day, I see it ranking between number one and five because it's volatile between number one and five on Google search for link echoes SEO. And I say, this is crazy. And then yesterday I spent all day at the Forbes icon, a class summit. This is a small event around 150 people showed up. It's all top people, mostly finance. And there's over $20 trillion in assets under management in this room. It's crazy. The speakers were wild, the president of Blackstone. Lindsay Vaughn, Michael Strahan, the final speaker was Ryan Reynolds. Last year, Ray Dalio came. Last year, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs came. So many other people here, it was really, really, really, really crazy. So I got a lot of video, I'm going to be making podcasts about this and videos about this, but I get home and I say, OK, I got to make my video for the day. What is it going to be on? And I got some great video of Ryan Reynolds talking about his Markin strategy and about how much he loves using storytelling in his marketing. Ryan Reynolds is a billionaire because he's such a good marketer and entertainer. And I got amazing footage of him talking about marketing. So make a video about his marketing strategy. I put the video up and right at the beginning of the description for that video, I write Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. So actually, I'll just say, I'll read the exact first sentence for that. Ryan Reynolds marking strategy, his secret, he always chooses storytelling. And then I literally just take my video script, my transcript and put that in below for the rest of the description because I use long descriptions for SEO. But previously, I was just doing SEO on Instagram and TikTok. But it turns out this is also very valuable for Google. Who would have thought, of course, and it just didn't even occur to me. I was just doing it for the internal search engines on Instagram and TikTok. And it's also very valuable for Google. And so I go to sleep. I go to sleep. I don't know how well this video is going to do and I wake up. This video is doing pretty well so far. Now it's a bit over 12 hours since posting and it's up to 46,000 views on Instagram around 30,000 on TikTok. But when I woke up, I think it was only at 20,000, maybe even 15,000. However, it was ranking number one on Google for Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. I had the featured snippet when I searched Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. This is what I saw. His secret, he always chooses storytelling. Storytelling is one of the most undervalued tools and scaling businesses. The thing I will bet on 10 times out of 10 is emotional investment. And that is just taken from the extra script that I put in my video. I made a video about what I just discovered on TikTok. I am freaking the f out. I share this with my friends and co-founders. We are all freaking the f out. One of my co-founders said, genius, man, you could become dumb, famous overnight way, just make videos on hot topics, bang. Man, this is going to blow up now. I don't even think this is black hat. Let me share more. So could this be exploited in a bad way where harms Google's results? No, I think this is entirely white hat. If the video isn't good enough to get an engagement, then it's not going to rank on Google, Google will only use videos that are getting engagement. So first of all, the video has to be good enough. Now, for someone like me, it's pretty easy to make videos that are good enough. I have a lot of experience making videos now. I think today was day number five hundred and ninety nine or something of making videos in a row every single day, but also I have an existing audience. So all of my videos do well. If you're just starting, you'll have to put up with a few months of learning and just starting, which really isn't that much three months of learning to consider this. If you want to rank number one on Google for a keyword, just using written text on a blog, if you want to do that within 24 hours, it's going to be really hard. Or if you want to do it at all, you're still going to have to spend a lot of time on a page, whereas you can make a video in 30 minutes or an hour. And then the next day, have it ranked number one. That's crazy. That is so much better than spending days or weeks or months crafting a great piece of content and then waiting months for it to rank so much better. So this is wild. And while you're doing this, you're also building an audience on social media with video, you're building a brand and video itself. That's nothing to laugh at because these videos get get views, tens of thousands, millions, hundreds of thousands, whatever it is, you're also getting tons of views, organic views. Now, those are more top of funnel. The beauty of this strategy is you can use this to target bottom of funnel keywords. You can use this to to target lucrative purchase intent keywords, which I'm going to be doing a ton. But OK, I'm getting sidetracked. The video still has to be engaging. Google wants to show engaging content. And if it's not engaging, it's not going to rank. OK, but what if someone wanted to exploit this by taking an engaging video and it's unrelated and you put your keyword at the beginning of the description anyway, this is what will happen. So maybe you have a keyword around collaboration software for enterprises. And then the video just meant to be super engaging is one of those engagement videos, where it's like bottles rolling down stairs or people doing pleasing ASMR things completely unrelated to collaboration software for for enterprises. Here's what will happen. And let's say you're really savvy. So you're putting in a lengthy description about why X, Y and Z software is the best collaboration software for enterprises. And that's showing up. People are still going to click that to see the video around it. They're going to go to the video. They're going to see that the video has nothing to do with the search term and they are going to bounce. They're going to bounce quickly. And then this post, which is showing on Google will become de-ranked. And if an account, if a handle on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube does this enough, does this spammy tactic enough, eventually Google will just stop showing posts in their search results from this account. So I don't think this can be exploited really easily. One, if a video isn't engaging, it's not going to rank. Two, if it's engaging, but unrelated to the keyword, searchers are going to bounce. And then the video is going to become de-ranked. And if that is done enough, the account is put at risk of having its videos not shown in the Google search results anymore. So I believe that this is actually white hat. And I also think the reason why I'm the one who finds it is because there are few SEOs out there who are willing to make videos. Most SEOs, they want to just sit behind a keyboard instead of a camera and make text content and it's hard for them to be engaging. I mean, I know a lot of SEOs and I love my SEO brothers and sisters, but a lot of them aren't the most engaging speakers like I am. In fact, my friend who I was with yesterday at the Forbes event, he called me magnetic, magnetic, that's nice. There's just not that many people who can talk like this or make videos. Now, I believe anybody can learn with practice and I think this is so worth investing in, but not that many SEOs are comfortable enough, even trying it in the first place it makes them uncomfortable. And this is why I think people haven't learned about this sooner. This is why I think not that many SEOs are talking about this opportunity, but it is an opportunity. Like I said, you rank on Google immediately. You do this while building a brand that people trust, an organic brand that people trust, you get the best organic channels. You get Google and you get social media marketing and don't think that open AI and Gemini are not training off the text in video descriptions because they are, they definitely are. So you're making engaging video content with long video descriptions. You're getting views from video, then you're getting views from Google, then open AI and Google are also training their generative AI chatbots on your descriptions where you are recommending your brand. I hope you understand how freaking wild this is. So, you know, a couple of months ago, when the Instagram glitch stopped working, I said, it's OK, I'm kind of bummed, but I'm going to figure something else out. And here is the something else. This is this is hack number three that I have discovered. I am so excited. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. And I hope you're excited too. I hope you understand how huge this is. I've already made two videos about this. This is just ridiculous that this opportunity exists. If you're using this opportunity, please share some stories with me. It would love to hear it. If you're not subscribed to my newsletter, I'm sending out a long newsletter about this about everything that I'm thinking, everything that I discovered around this with more exact instructions. It's going out on Sunday, Edward Serum.com forward slash newsletter. That's Edward Serum.com forward slash newsletter. Also put that in the description, but it is a it is a beautiful day here in New York City and back from Europe had an amazing day at this Forbes event yesterday. And then this morning, I confirmed this theory, two videos in two days. Come on, this is crazy. I hope you're excited too. And this is episode three hundred fifty two of my daily digital marketing podcast, daily growth hacking daily growth marketing podcast. You know, not every video is about growth hacking and growth marketing because I don't always have the hottest growth hacks. But today I do. And I think this is one of the hottest growth hacks on the freaking internet. I mean, OK, I'm just going to end it. All right, first of all, I think you can use this for purchase intent terms for brands to just sell lots, lots, lots. But I also like what my co-founder said, my co-founder for one of my projects. And he said, genius, man, you could become dumb, famous overnight this way. Just make videos on hot topics, bang. Man, that's going to blow up. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again tomorrow. Hope you have some stories from me, but then I will talk to you again tomorrow.
