ï»żSEO for Sales: The Evolution of Digital Communication (00:00)
Brad Eather: Hello and welcome to the Selling's Creative Podcast, a podcast exploring creativity's role in sales. I'm your host, Brad Eather, a digital communication sales consultant applying communications, media, and insights to help ordinary businesses sell on social. Today, I'm joined by an old friend from my days at Sydney University âa very smart man who not only graduated and then went back to Sydney Uni to lecture, but has also successfully applied his digital communications education to the world of SEO.
I know what many of you will be thinking: what the hell does SEO have to do with sales? Well, the way that buyers make purchasing decisions is changing every day. If there's a man who can answer that question, it's without a doubt going to be Bruno Rodriguez.
Bruno: Very good, thank you, Brad.
Brad Eather: Thanks for joining me on the Selling's Creative Podcast, mate.
Bruno: Appreciate it, appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me. You and I met back at uni. The first time we met we were both students, and the second time around, I think I was teaching one of the classes you were attending.
Brad Eather: Yeah. I started out full-time and then finished off part-time. By the time I came back for the part-time aspect, which took me two years, you were already lecturing.
Bruno: Yeah, it was fun. I originally came to Australia for a year and a half just to do a master's degree, get my title from an English-speaking university, and go back to Spain. But then they offered me the opportunity to teach there, my career took off, and it has been ten years now. I'm actually moving back to Spain in April, so my Australian dream had an expiration date, but it was a great experience that I still cherish.
Brad Eather: That's awesome. I want to go back to the beginning and compare our experiences. To put this into perspective, at the time, the digital communications and culture degree that we both did was only offered by Sydney University. I believe it was the only one of its kind in the world. How did you think about the internet before you started that degree compared to how you think about it now? What did you think you were getting into when you started?
Bruno: That is such an interesting question. I worked in digital marketing before starting that course. From that perspective, I already had a baseline level of knowledge regarding the different digital marketing channels, the main platforms, user percentages, and demographic breakdowns.
But this degree looked at things from an almost anthropological perspective regarding how people use the internet. It asked questions completely separate from marketing or sales, focusing instead on what we win and what we lose as people when we use these tools.
The main shift for me was being exposed to research about how social media affects our brains. During my studies at the University of Sydney, I completely disappeared from social media. This was about ten years ago, so I stopped using Facebook and Instagram. To this day, I still don't really use them. I keep the accounts active, and I recently realized that Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Claude are scraping updated information from them, so I will have to do something about that. For Instagram, whenever I go on a trip, I download the app, upload the pictures, and immediately uninstall it. I am just much more aware of the dangers of overuse, screen overexposure, and how it impacts our brains. That was my main takeaway.
Brad Eather: The degree sat under the media and communications school, but it had a heavy humanities umbrella. From my own experience, some of the concepts we were exposed to made the internet seem like such a scary place that it initially turned me off from using it. For a long time, I probably felt like I knew too much and was too unwilling to participate. It was only much later down the track that I decided to apply this information because I truly understood the psychological interplay between humans and digital platforms. I've since begun leveraging these tools and developing organizational structures to help businesses use social media effectively.
Bruno: You're doing great. You've been super successful on LinkedIn, and I'm a big fan of yours.
Brad Eather: Thank you, mate. I was wondering if you experienced that same initial aversion to the internet.
Bruno: To an extent. I have an interesting story involving my sister. She is 24, so there is a 13-year age difference between us. We were having a conversation about social media, and I wasn't preaching, but I was sharing my opinion on its dangers.
She pointed out that I am very active on LinkedIn and said, "You're kind of a LinkedIn influencer. It's a shame you focused on the least profitable social network." I asked her what she meant, and she said, "Well, if you are an influencer on Instagram, you get free meals, fame, and money. You can't do that on LinkedIn."
I looked at her and said, "How do you think I get the professional opportunities I receive? How do you think I got to where I am?" It is entirely through my personal brand and my network. Cultivating a professional network is an incredible opportunity. In my opinion, LinkedIn is the most interesting social network for developing your career, improving your financial situation, and achieving financial freedom. It was a very interesting clash in how she perceived social media versus how I did.
How Does SEO Help Sales Teams Lower Lead Acquisition Costs? (10:01)
Brad Eather: There is a distinct delineation there. On Instagram or TikTok, being an influencer is essentially the primary job role. On LinkedIn, it's secondary. You are a professional first; you have a specific service or good to offer, and you are using the platform to promote it.
I look at it slightly differently. I don't necessarily see the role of individual salespeople as marketing, but it definitely supports marketing objectives. As sales teams have moved onto the internet, the scope of sales is changing. Marketing handles the strategic delivery, the SEO side of things, and leveraging insights to reach a broader audience. Meanwhile, sales is focused on networking, socializing ideas, and gathering localized insights from those direct interactions. It is then marketing's role to leverage those insights on a grander scale.
Bruno: Correct. The internet has made the functional differentiation between the two clearer, even if the absolute boundaries are blurred. You mentioned SEO before, which serves as a good segue to explain what it is and what I do.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When you go into Google and search for something like, "I need a new barbecue," Google presents a page of results. Generally, there are paid ads at the very top, which most people can differentiate. Companies pay for those ads on a pay-per-click, bidding system where they tell Google exactly how much they are willing to pay for a click.
Beneath those ads sit the organic results, which capture about 90% of all search clicks. That means nine out of ten clicks go to organic listings where Google is simply trying to surface the best possible answer. SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to be that best result so you pull in traffic, leads, clients, and sales without paying for the direct visibility.
If you are a salesperson within a company, the role of the SEO teamâor an external partnerâis to build an organic funnel of highly interested users. It frees the business from having to pay for every single click or inbound lead. It brings inbound prospects who are already actively searching for your solution, making them far easier for a sales team to convert. Does that make sense?
Brad Eather: Yes, it does. Within that organic ecosystem, effective SEO gives a business organic visibility inside search engines.
Bruno: Exactly. You can either pay for that real estate continuously via advertising, or earn it organically through SEO, which is my specialization.
A lot of people think SEO is a form of black magic. Clients often come to me saying, "I have this website, I want you to do your SEO magic to the page." But it's not a massive mystery. What Google ultimately wants to see is authority: it wants to know that you are a subject matter expert, that you are providing genuine information, and that you are a trustworthy actor in your field. It requires technical execution, but the core concept isn't that complicated. I have a real passion for it, and I think everyone in business should have a baseline understanding of how search engines function so they can benefit from them.
Aligning Sales and Marketing for SEO Content Generation (20:04)
Brad Eather: You say it's not that complicated, but to an outsider, it certainly sounds complex. On a basic level, what are the practical inputs you implement on a website to teach Google what it needs to know and influence search results?
Bruno: One of the easiest areas where sales and SEO can collaborate effectively right now is by leveraging LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude to distill customer needs from existing sales data. When working with B2B SaaS companies, I like to request the raw chat logs and call recordings from their sales teams.
Once I have that data file, I feed it into an LLM and ask it to distill the key insights, customer pain points, and core feature demands. I look through those insights to generate highly targeted content ideas. From there, as SEO specialists, we use professional keyword tools to verify exactly how many people are actively searching for those terms online.
By matching real search data with the exact pain points handled by the sales team, we can create incredibly valuable content. It works both ways: salespeople can tell me, "Every prospect who calls asks this specific question, but the answer doesn't exist on our website." I can then work directly with the sales team to build that specific content and ensure it ranks on Google.
Brad Eather: That makes perfect sense. It's about looking internally, pulling information, and creating targeted content. That is very similar to what I do with social selling. We explain complex problems by providing clear, reliable resources across different mediums. When you are crafting a piece of content to rank on Google, what specific elements are you optimizing? Are you targeting the headline, the body copy, or other technical factors?
Bruno: Without getting too lost in the technical woods, the primary requirement is that your content must answer the user's question better than anyone else on the web. Before writing, you have to verify that actual search demand exists.
SEO is not a blanket solution for every business model. For example, if you are launching a completely revolutionary product that no one has ever heard of beforeâthe classic Apple approachâSEO won't work initially. People can't search for a solution they don't know exists. If you were launching the original iPod, SEO would be a poor launch channel because there was no existing search volume. An innovative concept like that needs to be pushed via social media, display advertising, and disruptive marketing channels.
SEO is built for capturing existing intent. It is for industries where a clear need already existsâwhether that's a need for sales training, a legal software platform, or a barbecue.
Once you establish that search demand exists using tools like Ubersuggest, Moz, or SEMrush, the second step is ensuring your content is definitively superior to what is currently ranking. Go onto Google, perform the search yourself, and analyze the top results.
It's also important to realize that not every brand can compete for every keyword. If you want to rank for highly competitive terms in sectors like AI or cloud technology, you are competing directly against digital giants like AWS, Microsoft, and Google. When you see those authoritative domains commanding the top spots, you have to pivot your strategy. You need to target highly specific, long-tail questions or focus deeply on niche topics where you can establish clear, localized authority.
Empowering Employees and Building Personal Authority for Search (30:04)
Brad Eather: So you have to get granular and highly targeted. Many businesses hear the acronym SEO, assume they automatically need to buy it, but fail to realize that proper execution requires a deep, customer-centric understanding of search intent.
Bruno: Exactly. For most small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) operating with limited marketing budgetsâsay, $1,000 to $2,000 a monthâI frequently advise that the founder, director, or sole internal marketer should manage the SEO themselves rather than outsourcing it to an agency. You know your business, your product, and your clients better than any external partner ever could.
SEO is not some magical substance you just sprinkle on top of existing pages. It fundamentally comes down to a simple question: are you genuinely answering your client's needs? If the demand is there, go as niche as possible and make your content completely unique.
Brad Eather: This is where our strategies align regarding content generation. Social media acts as an active distribution channel, whereas your website operates as a separate distribution hub where content is indexed and discovered via SEO. Is that a fair distinction?
Bruno: To an extent, yes, but website content can serve a much broader purpose than just capturing organic search traffic. For instance, you might build an extensive library of onboarding resources, tutorials, or guides designed purely to elevate the customer experience for your existing clients. That content isn't built for SEO ranking, but it adds immense value to your business operations.
In marketing, we look at channels. Organic SEO is one channel, paid search is another, alongside display, paid social, and organic social media networks. All of these distinct channels can drive traffic back to your website or your personal profiles. SEO is just one piece of the puzzle.
Shifting Search Habits: Optimizing Content for AI Search Results (36:03)
Brad Eather: Once you start creating content, you quickly realize that every format has a distinct function. You might have direct sales copy, educational articles built for SEO search intent, or paid training courses. When a business is not actively producing content, the landscape looks like a confusing minefield. But once you adopt the practice, everything clicks into place.
If a business wants to branch out beyond written text into video content to bolster their search presence, how should they look at a platform like YouTube? How can an SMB leverage video SEO to dominate search results and pull traffic back to their site?
Bruno: That is an excellent question. Google implemented unified vertical search decades ago, meaning standard search results integrate images and videos directly into the main page. Video results are becoming prominent search elements. Furthermore, YouTube functions as the second largest search engine in the worldâmore people use it to search for answers than TikTok, Bing, or Amazon.
If a target problem is best solved visuallyâlike showing someone how to fix a bicycle mechanical issueâvideo content is the natural choice. To execute this, look at what video content currently ranks for your target topic, identify the gaps they missed, and provide your own unique expertise.
In SEO today, we focus heavily on a concept called Net Information Gain.
Net Information Gain means that search engines explicitly reward you for adding entirely new information, data, or unique perspectives to the web index on a topic. If you simply search a topic, read the top ten ranking pages, and synthesize them into a new article or video without adding any original value, your content will not perform well. Search engines want subject matter experts who bring an original point of view. Produce the expert video, write the complementary post, embed the video natively onto your page, and upload it to YouTube. This creates a compounding engine where the collective search visibility is far greater than the sum of its parts.
The Changing Nature of Online Experiences and Demographics (40:04)
Brad Eather: This showcases the shifting nature of modern sales. Salespeople are actively developing digital communication skillsets and producing video content internally. Building an original content library powered by multiple expert perspectives within a business is an incredibly potent way to drive inbound business development.
Bruno: Your people are your greatest asset, and you need to empower them to create content. It creates an organic marketing funnel across social, video, and search, but it also helps your employees build their own professional brands.
Google places immense weight on authorship. It doesn't just evaluate what is written; it looks at who wrote it. If you publish a beautiful piece of content about AI, but the author has no digital footprint, Google will trust that content less. If that exact same content is published by an expert who has papers in Google Scholar, contributions in industry publications, and a LinkedIn profile focused on AI, Google recognizes that authority. Its algorithms are smart enough to surface content written by verified industry authorities. Training your team to create authoritative content is a phenomenal operational investment.
Brad Eather: To address the elephant in the room: how is AI changing the search landscape? You made a fascinating post recently about personal branding and AI search results. How is the industry shifting from your perspective?
Bruno: That post was inspired by a friend who runs a web design agency in Melbourne called Your Creative. He told me that a high-value client recently discovered his agency directly through ChatGPT. The client's specific prompt was: "I'm looking for creative design agencies in Melbourne with women in leadership roles that are also socially active with Aboriginal community projects."
ChatGPT parsed the web, evaluated those precise criteria, and served up his agency as the perfect match. That completely upends traditional keyword-stuffed SEO. LLMs introduce conversational complexity and contextual detail that cannot be grouped into simple keyword buckets. It means businesses must understand how engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude perceive their brand footprint.
I ran an analysis to see how these different models crawl data. Interestingly, early iterations of ChatGPT Search prioritized independent personal blogs, industry publications, conference websites, and podcasts over LinkedIn profiles when sourcing professional insights. Meanwhile, models like ChatGPT-4o heavily index and cite LinkedIn profiles directly.
This variance tells us that you shouldn't put all your marketing eggs in one single basket. ChatGPT Search indexes YouTube heavily, so hosting a video podcast where you interview peers is a phenomenal way to inform and influence modern LLMs. Collaborating on case studies, speaking at conferences, and appearing on external websites are all vital methods for training AI models to view you as a trusted authority.
Content Literacy: Navigating Growth in a Crowded Space (49:54)
Brad Eather: Things are moving incredibly fast. From a behavioral standpoint, what major trends are you seeing in general consumer search habits?
Bruno: We are witnessing a massive generational shift. For younger demographics, opening Google to type a search query feels old-fashionedâit's what their parents or uncles do. Instead, younger generations use LLMs and social media platforms directly as their primary search engines.
For example, younger cohorts are far more likely to use TikTok instead of Google Maps to find a local restaurant. If I need a restaurant, I go to Google Maps, filter by cuisine type, look at star ratings, check the pricing, and pick the well-reviewed Thai place next door. But younger users operate in a highly visual culture where experiences need to be inherently shareable with their digital audiences. They want to see a rich video of someone walking into the space, showcasing the decor, and lifting the noodles with chopsticks. They consume information visually, and they choose destinations that offer an aesthetic experience they can capture and share on TikTok or Instagram.
This behavior directly changes the real-world hospitality industry. Restaurant owners now design their menus, select plating styles, and invest in interior decoration explicitly to ensure their business looks beautiful on an Instagram or TikTok feed. It drives hyper-accelerated global food trends. For instance, "Dubai chocolate" went viral on social media, and within weeks, chefs in Bali and Indonesia were replicating it natively. Trends are no longer isolated digital videos; they are interconnected global phenomena shaping physical businesses in real time.
What Is Net Information Gain in SEO? (AI & Taste Definition) (56:01)
Brad Eather: It's a brave new world. While people view the internet as one single entity, it is highly fragmented. When you look at demographic trends, different generations hang out in entirely different digital spaces. I call these distinct spaces digital communities. Before choosing a marketing channel, a business must ask: where does my specific target audience actually hang out online?
Bruno: 100%. You must know your audience, find where they congregate, and meet them there. Rand Fishkin, a prominent figure in the SEO world, built an audience intelligence tool called SparkToro built for this exact purpose. It helps businesses identify exactly what social networks their target buyers use, what accounts they follow, and what specific topics they search for.
Fishkin notes that the original promise of digital marketingâthat you would be able to track and measure every single metric, click, and dollar spentâwas a myth. Consumer behavior is far too complex to measure perfectly. With modern privacy regulations, cookie limitations, and AI search tools acting as a data black box, tracking is becoming even more difficult. As a result, marketing is returning to foundational principles: who is your audience, what is your message, and are you showing up authentically in the exact spaces where they hang out?
The digital landscape changes completely every decade. Ten years ago, Facebook was at its absolute peak, TikTok didn't exist, Instagram was nascent, and podcasts were niche audio files. Today, these platforms are mature marketplaces competing fiercely for human attention, constantly shifting their algorithms to keep users locked inside their specific walled gardens.
Brad Eather: The internet moves so fast that a post can disappear from a feed within half an hour, which intimidates many business owners from starting. But the fact that the web is so crowded actually provides a hidden layer of privacy when you are starting out. When you launch your content journey, your initial posts will only get 50 or 100 impressions. No one is watching you fail. If you treat those early days as a safe learning experience focused purely on consistency and honing your skills, you will gradually build a loyal audience over time.
Bruno: Creating content is a long, unrewarding journey at the start. I began building my personal brand last year. Sometimes I will spend 20 hours deep in research producing an original piece I'm incredibly proud of, only for it to get 300 impressions and three clicks. Then another day, I will post a brief opinion piece and 500 people engage with it immediately.
You have to understand the platform incentives. These social networks want to maximize the time users spend on their apps, and they reward creators who post consistently. If you feed the algorithm high-engagement content regularly, it will reward you with reach. For example, LinkedIn wants to keep users inside its ecosystem. If you place an external link directly in the body of your post, LinkedIn's algorithm will drastically restrict your views because it doesn't want traffic leaving its site. That is why everyone writes, "Link in the comments."
Understand the platform mechanics, but focus heavily on the user experience. Your content should clearly demonstrate who you are, what you sell, and what your unique strengths are. When a prospect reaches the final moment of making a purchase decision, your personal authority is what they will remember.
Brad Eather: I want to finish our chat with the signature question I ask every guest. Based on your experiences in the digital and SEO worlds, what is your personal definition of creativity?
Bruno: In the context of generative AI, creativity fundamentally comes down to taste. Today, anyone can generate an image, a block of copy, or an entire website simply by typing a short text prompt into an AI model. Yet, people routinely use AI to generate awful copy and terrible websites because they lack the taste required to differentiate good from bad. In a world flooded with automated content, creativity is defined by having the refined taste, critical thought, and artistic discernment to curate exceptional outputs.
Brad Eather: That definition makes me think of a professional DJ. A DJ doesn't necessarily write every single note of music; their creative value lies in their ability to search the world, select tracks that match their distinct taste, and blend them together to deliver an incredible experience for an audience. In an AI era, if you maintain critical thought and your own original opinions, you can leverage AI to act as your production engine while you curate the output as the master DJ. That is a beautiful definition.
Bruno, it has been an absolute pleasure. Where can people find you online?
Bruno: You can find me on LinkedIn under Bruno Rodriguez Armesto. I specialize in enterprise-level SEO for global companies like Amazon Web Services, Expedia, and Skyscanner. If you manage marketing at an enterprise organization and want to talk shop, please send me a message.
Brad Eather: I'm sure everyone listening will be incredibly interested in your insights. To everyone tuning in to the Selling's Creative Podcast, thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe, and in the meantime, happy selling.
