Sometimes I wonder if complex products are actually that hard to understand or if we’ve just become bad at explaining them.
Simplify too much and you lose what makes the product interesting but explain everything and you lose the audience - where’s the sweet spot?
I feel most conversations about AI in marketing still revolve around content generation, questions like “Which AI writes the best blog posts?” or “Which AI creates the best social captions?” These are certainly useful, but they aren’t where I spend the bulk of my time.
A big part of my day is spent trying to connect the dots between different sources of information.
For example, last week I was trying to understand why one campaign performed better than another. I ended up pulling data from a few different places:
- Meta/TikTok ad performance
- comments and replies from social posts
- customer reviews
- competitor content
- sales/support feedback
Then came the painful part: cleaning everything up, finding patterns, and turning all those scattered pieces into something actionable. Things like: “Why are customers actually choosing us?” “What words do they use when describing the problem?” “Which objections keep coming up?” “What content themes are competitors pushing that we’re missing?”
The funny thing is, we already have most of this information somewhere. It’s just spread across different platforms and teams. I’m just curious what tools people are actually using for this part of marketing work.
I’m specifically looking for answers from people who have actually worked on end-to-end SEO projects for different types of clients and have deep practical knowledge.
By that, I mean people who have worked with,
I'm not really looking for answers based only on theory, tools, checklists or SEO terminology.
I'm asking because I'm an SEO person myself with over 4+ years of experience, but honestly, keyword research is one area where I still don't feel I have complete clarity on the practical side.
I've read a LOT of articles and posts about,
→ How to do keyword research
→ How to find core/seed keywords
→ How to choose the primary keyword
→ How many keywords should be targeted on one page
→ How to select unique keywords for different pages
→ How to write content naturally while still targeting keywords
→ How to avoid keyword cannibalization
→ How to decide which keywords are actually worth targeting
→ How to build keyword/topic clusters
→ How to decide what blog topics to create
→ How to map keywords to pages
→ How to find & decide search intent
→ And how all of this changes depending on the business/industry
I've read articles on Google, Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn, SEO blogs, etc.
But here's my problem.
I still haven't found a practical answer that makes everything click.
Most of the articles I read basically follow the same pattern,
Use Ahrefs/SEMrush/Keyword Planner → enter your seed keyword → look at search volume → check keyword difficulty → find related keywords → check SERPs → select keywords → create content. that's it.
Or they explain some feature inside a tool,
Go here → enter this keyword → the tool will suggest these keywords → filter by volume → export the list…..
And then there are a lot of SEO checklists.
But when I actually think about doing SEO for a real client, I keep wondering,
Is that really how experienced SEOs make these decisions?
Because every time I read a different article, I feel like I've found the "correct" method.
Then I read another one and think "Oh… maybe THIS is the correct way."
Then another one "Wait, so this is actually more important?"
At some point it becomes confusing because there are so many different versions of keyword research methodology.
I understand that tools are useful.
I understand search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, competition, SERPs, search intent, etc.
But I'm trying to understand the actual decision-making process behind keyword research.
For example:
If you have a completely new client tomorrow, how do you actually start?
How do you go from,
Business → market → products/services → customer problems → search behaviour → seed keywords → keyword universe → keyword selection → page mapping → content strategy → topic clusters
in a real project?
How do you decide,
This keyword deserves its own page.
These 5 keywords should be targeted by the same page.
This keyword should NOT have a separate page.
This keyword is better for a blog.
This keyword should be a commercial/service page.
This keyword looks good in a tool, but we shouldn't target it.
These two keywords have different wording but actually belong to the same page.
These two keywords look similar but need separate pages.
This keyword should be the primary keyword.
These are supporting/secondary terms.
This topic should become a cluster.
This keyword/topic should be ignored completely.
And most importantly,
How do you make those decisions when the keyword tool data doesn't give you an obvious answer?
I’m also really interested in how this changes between different types of websites.
For example, would your process be different for,
A SaaS company starting from zero Vs an established SaaS company with hundreds of pages and existing organic traffic.
a local clinic Vs a real estate company
an e-commerce website Vs a B2B service company?
And what changes when you are doing SEO for an established website where there are already hundreds/thousands of pages, existing rankings, existing content, and potential keyword cannibalization?
How do you approach keyword research differently in that situation compared to a brand-new website?
I'd also love to understand the execution side.
Once you've completed your keyword research, how do you actually turn that research into
keyword mapping → URL structure → landing/service pages → category pages → supporting blogs → internal linking → topic clusters → content briefs
without ending up with 50 pages targeting basically the same thing?
And how do you revisit the keyword strategy after 3–6 months when Google starts ranking the site for keywords you didn't originally target?
Do you change the strategy based on actual GSC data?
Do you create new pages?
Merge pages?
Change the primary keyword?
Expand existing content?
Build supporting content?
Or leave it alone?
Basically, I'm looking for the real thought process of someone who has done this repeatedly in actual SEO campaigns, not a checklist or theory.
I'm not saying tools are useless, obviously they are extremely useful.
I just don't want the answer to be:
Use Ahrefs, find keywords with good volume and low KD.
I want to understand how an experienced SEO person thinks about the data and makes the final decision.
If you have genuinely worked on SEO from scratch through execution and results across multiple industries and types of clients, I'd really appreciate it if you could walk through your process.
Even better if you can give a realistic hypothetical example like:
I get a brand-new SaaS client tomorrow. This is exactly what I would do in Week 1, this is how I build the keyword universe, this is how I filter it, this is how I map it to pages, this is how I decide clusters, and this is how I validate the strategy after publishing.
You can use your own framework or methodology.
I'm genuinely trying to understand this at a deeper practical level, because I feel like I've read enough SEO articles already. Now I want to understand how people who have actually done this for years make these decisions in the real world.
And I'm sure I'm not the only SEO person who has had this confusion.
So if you're one of those experienced SEOs, please share your actual process.
I'll probably have more questions after reading the answers, because this is exactly the kind of thing I want to get properly clear on.
Hi everyone! I've been a digital marketing manager and a freelance marketing consultant, and now I'm looking for a remote role with a company that treats their employees like humans with a $65k-$80k salary. Any suggestions on where to look would be helpful, I've been on Indeed and linkedin daily and I've been checking out BuiltinChicago since I'm near the city. I've worked in various industries but mostly fashion and jewelry.
To those with remote roles:
Where did you find it?
How long was the interview process?
Any words of encouragement are appreciated!
Have a good day 💓
I recently visited an ecommerce store and explored some categories there.
I didn’t add any product to cart, or did any checkout.
After 40-45min, I got a whatsapp message from the same brand introducing their brand, products range etc.
How’s it possible?
I believe this is some insane level of targeting where companies are sending campaigns just as you visit the website.
Ultra curious to know how is it working?
I 'm trying to compare creative, messages, and landing pages across different competitors on the Facebook Ad Library, but checking one advertiser at a time is time consuming. I also wnt to stick to public creative stuff, not anything private .
What's actually worked for you for this kind of ongoing research? Spreadsheets, tools, browser extensions, whatever you've got.
Why Reddit ads work
I feel like Reddit ads do not get nearly enough attention. They are CRAZY good for reach.
On most platforms, you build an audience using broad interests, demographics, and behaviors. Then you hope the algorithm eventually puts your ad in front of the right people, then of course their are bots, and most of your budget ends up going to waste.
Reddit makes this much simpler because your ideal customers have already organized themselves into specific communities. All the hard work is essentially done for you.
How to choose the subreddits
Start by finding the subreddits where your ideal customers already spend their time.
Look for communities where people are:
These people already understand the problem. You do not need to spend as much time convincing them that the problem exists. You simply need to consistently put your product in front of them and show them why it is relevant.
Organic marketing is great, but it's not scalable
Organic marketing is great for building trust, but it is not always the best way to generate reach.
You can spend months creating content and still reach only a small percentage of your ideal customers. Paid ads allow you to reach a relevant audience much faster and more consistently.
A strong strategy is to use organic content to build credibility and paid advertising to expand your reach. Why do you think all of these people selling cources / how to get rich get SOOO many people? They are using crazy amounts of capital / profits to reach more people. Same thing with SAAS that has BIG investor funding. They may spend $100 dollars to get one customer who pays $10/month, this is who you are competing with.
You need a realistic budget
Advertising requires testing. Your first ad might not work, so you need enough money to test different communities, messages, and creative ideas.
If your business cannot fund that testing yet, you may need another source of income. That could be a job, freelance work, consulting, or a separate service.
There is nothing wrong with using another income source to fund your business while you figure out what works. Just make sure you are only investing money you can afford to lose. Your essential expenses should always come first. Please... don't use credit cards and think this will just make you rich overnight.
How to retarget interested people
Use Reddit ads to introduce your product to people in relevant communities.
Once someone visits your website, you can retarget them with Facebook ads. They are no longer seeing your product for the first time, so your Facebook ads can focus on benefits, reviews, results, and reasons to buy.
Reddit creates awareness. Facebook keeps your product visible and helps turn that awareness into sales. If you're going to run JUST reddit ads, you're already doing it wrong. It takes people many different times points of touch to buy.
Our current case study (SAAS industry):
Reddit daily Adspend: $100
User sign ups: 20-22 users
Facebook retargeting: $25
Digital marketing keeps changing with AI, search updates, social media algorithms, and automation. For experienced marketers, which skill currently gives the biggest return—SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, analytics, email marketing, or something else?
AI has definitely made some marketing tasks faster, but I've also found that some of the time saved gets spent reviewing, fact-checking, and editing the output.
I'm curious how it's been for everyone else.
What marketing task has AI genuinely made faster for you?
And where did you find that it actually created more work?
I spent a big part of my career thinking about paid traffic, conversion and sales.
Basically: how do we get more people into the funnel and make the economics work?
Now I’m building software and I’ve noticed an interesting change in how I think.
When you’re responsible for acquisition, it’s easy to think growth is primarily a distribution problem.
When you’re building the product too, you start seeing everything that happens before distribution:
Why would someone come back?
What part actually saves them time?
What looks useful in a demo but becomes irrelevant after a week?
What causes someone to stop using the product?
I still think distribution is incredibly important.
But building has made me much more skeptical of trying to market your way out of product problems.
Curious if anyone else here moved from marketing/sales into product and had the same realization.
Trying to figure out what's realistic before we commit. Agencies quote us a lot and the output looks generic. Doing it in house sounds cheaper until you count the hours.
If you're publishing consistently, who's doing what? One person filming and editing everything, or a scripter plus an editor? How many videos a month is that getting you?
Mostly trying to work out the minimum setup that produces something people would actually watch.
I'm a content marketer at a small agency. For the first time this month I noticed that we've got traffic referrals from Gemini showing up for a handful of our client accounts. It's not a ton of volume but I'm happy to have this data. Now I'm trying to figure out if the Gemini traffic is happening because of something we did on purpose or if we just got lucky with some random user prompts.
Last quarter we started reformatting posts to include key takeaway summaries at the top, using clearer H2/H3 Q&A structures, removing fluff in general, and including as much first-party data as we can get our hands on from clients.
I'd like to think that what we're doing is actually working but it's hard to tell since the referral traffic data is new and I can't really benchmark before and after.
For anyone here who knows more than I do (probably most of you lol) how are you approaching content for Gemini specifically?
What kind of workflows are you using and what results have you seen?
I’m building a company but I lack skills in marketing so the obvious thing to do is fill in my skill gap. But I don’t have the money for an actual marketing team so I outsource most task to AI as a implementation. But recently I have been having trouble finding a AI agent/tool that builds ad creatives and basically runs marketing or helps plan it.
I think this is something many new marketers realize after running a few campaigns.
A high CTR looks great at first. You see lots of people clicking your ad and think "This ad is working really well." But then, you check the actual conversions and sometimes.....not much is happening.
Well the reason is simple. A click doesn't always mean someone is genuinely interested.
Maybe the ad was really good at creating curiosity. Maybe the hardline caught the attention. Or maybe the ad reached people who weren't actually the right audience.
So you can have an ad with a great CTR but still get poor results. Instead of looking only at CTR, I think it's better to look at the whole journey:
Impression - Click - Landing Page - Conversion
For example, if you are getting plenty of clicks but very few conversions, I'd look at the landing page, the offer, and whether the people clicking are actually the right audience.
This is something I'd tell anyone who's just starting with paid ads, Don't celebrate the clicks too early.
A high CTR is nice, but what happens after the click is what really matters.
Do you find any beginners mistake any newbie make? What are the most common ones in your opinion?
What’s your workflow for cold emailing or any other emailing methods to acquire clients
I know AI is already doing a lot of SEO work, and honestly probably much more than most of us expected a few years ago. But I'm curious about where the limits are. Are there any SEO processes where you still feel that AI can't really do the job properly without human involvement?
I'm especially interested in things that require real experience, judgment, relationships, or understanding the business behind a website.
What have you personally found AI is still not good at?
Hey everyone! 👋🏼
So I'm launching a health and wellness/supplement brand and want to leverage Al for creating content consistently and cost effectively.
At the moment l've hit my weekly limit on ChatGPT Plus and it won't allow me to send any messages or attachment's.
Which at the moment is very unfortunate for me.
I'm specifically looking for community recommendations on:
IMAGE CREATION:
-What free Al image tools do you recommend?
(Quality, ease of use etc.)
-What paid tools are actually worth the investment?
-Which ones work best for health/wellness aesthetics? (product shots, lifestyle imagery and educational graphics)
ent?
VIDEO GENERATION:
-Any free Al video generators that produce decent quality?
-What paid tools would you recommend for supplement/wellness content?
-How's the video quality for social media content (Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts)?
Context: I need to create content regularly for social platforms but don't want to spend a fortune upfront while testing what resonates with my audience.
Would love to hear what you all are using and whether it's worth the cost!
Any wins or fails with specific tools?
Thanks in advance! :)
Curious how other small agencies deal with this. It takes forever and clients still ask questions we thought we'd already answered.
How does your agency do it... dashboard, manual deck, something else? And what's the part that eats the most time?
I handle marketing for a handful of small service businesses. One client's form went from about ten leads a month to forty after I rewrote the landing page, and the client says almost none of them are worth calling back. I haven't touched targeting or budget since, only the page copy and the form fields.
For the people who've untangled this before, what turned out to be the part of the page causing it?
I’m curious whether other marketing, SEO, or web development agencies have had similar experiences with **Rotate Digital**.
I recently came across a public post from someone in the industry describing a situation where Rotate Digital allegedly took credit for a website that had originally been built by another agency.
I’m intentionally **keeping the original poster anonymous** because the purpose of this discussion isn’t to expose or involve any individual agency owner. The bigger issue is whether this is part of a broader pattern.
According to the allegations, after Rotate Digital became involved with an established client, the website was later presented with credit suggesting Rotate Digital handled the “Website & SEO,” despite another agency reportedly being responsible for the original website development.
There were also allegations of repeatedly approaching or taking over clients previously serviced by other agencies.
Clients are obviously free to change marketing companies. That’s normal business.
What concerns me is **attribution and transparency after the switch**.
Established SEO campaigns often have years of work behind them—technical optimization, content, backlinks, local SEO, citations, Google Business Profile optimization, conversion work, website development, authority building, and rankings.
If a new agency takes over an established account and later presents those rankings, traffic numbers, websites, or businesses as examples of what *they* built or achieved, without acknowledging what existed before they arrived, that can create a misleading picture of their actual contribution.
The same applies to website development.
If another agency designed and built the website, taking over the SEO account afterward shouldn’t automatically mean taking credit for building the website itself.
I’d genuinely like to know whether other agencies have experienced something similar:
Have you lost a client to Rotate Digital and later seen work your agency created presented as theirs?
Have websites your agency originally designed or developed later been credited to Rotate Digital?
Have SEO rankings or organic traffic established by your team later appeared to be presented as results generated by another agency?
Have your existing clients been directly approached while they were actively working with you?
Do you have archived website versions, screenshots, contracts, analytics history, Search Console data, invoices, or other records showing when the original work was completed?
This isn’t intended to attack anyone simply for competing for clients.
**Competition is normal. Misrepresenting who created the work is a different issue.**
If multiple agencies have experienced the same thing, it would be useful to document those experiences with evidence rather than rumors.
If you’ve dealt with something similar involving Rotate Digital, feel free to share your experience—but please stick to what you can personally verify and avoid posting private information about clients or individuals.
**If sharing screenshots, please blur names, profile photos, client information, and any other identifying details.**
The question is simple:
**Are agencies seeing their established SEO work and websites later being represented as someone else’s work?**