The Edward Show

E1217: Craig Campbell has spent 25 years testing what works in SEO, including tactics Google says shouldn't work.
In this interview, he explains how SEOs manipulate Google rankings and ChatGPT answers, which older link-building methods still have uses, and why he now avoids many of those tactics on businesses he wants to keep for years.
We discuss real tests, specific tools, and the difference between a tactic that gets results for a few months and a strategy that can support a business long-term.
In this episode:
- How a Chinese restaurant website can rank for online casino searches through canonical abuse, and why Craig won't reveal the full process.
- How an expired French aquapony domain was used to convince ChatGPT and other AI tools that Craig coached an Olympic aquapony team.
- Why press releases and mentions on trusted publications can influence what ChatGPT says about a business.
- Craig's preferred press release services, including The News Guy, Magic PR, and Press Advantage, and how Yahoo Finance placements matter to him.
- Why he uses Scrapebox, blog comments, and automated links to try to keep press releases and other pages in Google's index.
- What separates a useful private blog network (PBN) from one with obvious footprints, including hosting, IP addresses, content quality, and outbound links.
- How Backrefs automates lower-tier link building, and what Craig says those links can and cannot accomplish.
- How Craig bought an affiliate website for £10,000, spent another £4,000 improving it, and sold it for £48,000 four months later.
- The experiment where Craig published 1,200 unedited AI articles, watched traffic rise, then saw the site lose its rankings after about six months. He says replacing the content did not restore the site.
- How he used an expired domain from a bankrupt hotel chain to create a new affiliate site.
- Why he wouldn't use many of those tactics on a long-term business today, even when he thinks they might work.
- How Craig uses interviews with football players to develop news stories, pitch journalists, and earn links to his own website.
- Why a podcast can become a way to build relationships with bloggers, journalists, and future link partners.
- How he's building a sports trading card business using live streams, marketplaces, and SEO rather than relying on Google alone.
- Why Craig believes brand searches matter and says he wouldn't trust AI to run SEO tasks without human review.
- What 25 years in SEO changed about how much Craig trusts Google's public guidance.
Craig also shares why his priorities have moved from finding every possible ranking loophole to building businesses that generate revenue without depending on one search algorithm.
⭐️ Craig Campbell's website - https://craigcampbellseo.com/ 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CraigcampbellseoUk 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craigcampbellseo 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@craigcampbellseo 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigcampbell0302 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on 𝕏 - https://x.com/craigcampbell03 
⭐️ Craig Campbell on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/craigcampbellseo03 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Craig Campbell Joins
00:24 Google Lies And Tactics
02:40 Canonical Abuse
06:10 LLM Manipulation Tactics
10:27 SEO Testing Competitions
17:11 Aquapony LLM Prank
22:40 Press Releases For ChatGPT
25:55 Indexing With Spam Links
30:49 Nofollow Links Still Work
33:36 Kyle Roof Lorem Ipsum
35:25 Building Undetectable PBNs
38:09 PBN Upkeep Reality
40:22 Modern PBN Tools
41:51 White Hat Wins
44:32 Clean Niches Strategy
46:00 Programmatic Cards SEO
53:12 Marketplaces vs Search
58:36 PR Link Building Playbook
01:07:54 Automated Tiered Links
01:12:43 Affiliate Site Flip Lessons
01:17:22 Seasonal Site Flip
01:19:24 AI Slop Penalty
01:22:35 Churn and Burn Debate
01:23:04 Expired Domain Leverage
01:27:47 Diversify Traffic Sources
01:30:56 Agency Advice Reality
01:35:40 Journalist Connections
01:38:27 AI Needs Supervision
01:40:51 Google Trust Shift
01:45:45 Quiet Life Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#blackhatseo #searchengineoptimization #privateblognetwork #seo

E1216: Anthropic is expanding AI text watermarking to more Claude models on November 3. Other AI companies have also committed to watermarking their outputs. What does this mean for SEO? Will Google start penalizing AI-generated pages, and can it tell the difference between content written entirely by AI and content edited with AI?
I break down the risks of publishing unedited AI content, what Google's recent guidance suggests, and why I still expect carefully reviewed, AI-assisted pages to rank and even be trained upon.
In this episode:
- Claude's expanding text watermarking: Which models Anthropic says will next receive watermarks why this matters for publishers.
- The Ahrefs AI content study: 5.3% of top-ranking pages were classified as fully AI-generated, another 9% as at least 80% AI-generated, and 80% of high-AI pages were indexed compared with 49% of low-AI pages.
- Google's position on AI content: Quality rater guidance for unoriginal, low-effort pages, warnings about hallucinations, and the risks of publishing AI pages at scale without proofreading.
- The possibility of tougher Google updates: How some SEOs expect more action against scaled AI content, and why that remains a prediction rather than a confirmed update.
- My GPTZero test: A roughly 400-word SEO landing page was identified as human-written and AI-polished, while an AI-generated article about me was classified as 100% AI.
- Real examples of AI hallucinations: False claims I found in an AI-generated article about my own work, videos, and audience.
- AI detection as a spectrum: Why assisted writing, AI polishing, and fully generated text shouldn't be treated as identical.
- How Google might evaluate AI-heavy sites: My theories about user behavior, sitewide patterns, branded searches, and future AI detection. These are possibilities, not confirmed ranking factors.
- AI content in model training: The concern that training on unverified AI-generated material could increase errors and hallucinations.
- How we're writing pages for a SaaS I'm funding: Using AI line by line as a writing assistant while manually reviewing the language ourselves.
- Building branded searches through short-form video: How SEO entrepreneur Ilias ISM hired creators for $500 per creator per month to post daily videos, generate millions of views, and increase searches for his brand.
My main point: AI watermarking doesn't mean every page touched by AI is destined to lose rankings. There's an important difference between publishing hundreds of unchecked AI pages and using AI as a writing assistant.
⭐️ Claude Watermark Announcement - https://pasqualepillitteri.it/en/news/27785/claude-watermark-november-3-opus-4-7-sonnet-4-6 
⭐️ Ep 1210 - The Backlinks Worth Paying $2,000 For (w/ Ilias ISM) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRS4ibsMKg 
⭐️ My Exact Social Media Posting Strategy - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/social-media-posting-strategy/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Anthropic Watermark Email
00:35 AI Content Panic
00:50 Ahrefs AI SEO Stats
01:31 Google Cracks Down
02:45 Hallucination Example
03:41 Detection Is a Scale
05:42 How Google Penalizes
07:27 Training Data Concerns
08:34 Branded Search Signals
08:59 Buy Branded Searches
11:13 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #seopodcast

E1215: Discord is coming to Google Search, and this could be one of the biggest new SEO opportunities heading into 2027.
Starting November 16, 2026, Discord will give every eligible Discoverable Server a public webpage. Beginning in mid-December, messages from public channels may also appear on those pages and in Google Search.
Imagine owning a leading Discord server in your niche, with the influence that moderators of major subreddits have over the discussions people find when researching products and services.
I break down Discord's announcement, the eligibility requirements, what to optimize for SEO, and why I think this could be a major opportunity for people who start building communities now.
What I cover:
- Why Discord is making public server discussions available on the web after years of keeping them inside the platform.
- The November 16 launch of Server Web Pages and the mid-December rollout of publicly accessible messages.
- What qualifies as an SEO-available Discoverable Server: at least 1,000 members, at least eight weeks old, and compliance with Discord's activity and safety requirements.
- How there's more than 63,000 existing Discoverable Servers.
- How Discord's domain authority of 94 and the search performance of other user-generated content platforms, particularly Reddit, could affect rankings.
- How Discord discussions could eventually be cited in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and other AI search results.
- What to optimize for SEO: your Discord server name, short description, longer About section, categories, and public messages.
- How your server name affects its URL, page title, and H1, and why those elements matter for Google rankings.
- Why putting relevant keywords at the beginning of public messages and threads could be valuable.
- How to build a community targeting top-of-funnel searches that can attract new members directly from Google.
- What happened when SEOs flooded Digg with spam, causing bans and eventually another reset of the platform.
- Why Discord could face similar problems with bot-inflated membership, spammed messages, and servers created purely for rankings.
- Why I recommend building a legitimate community that can attract members, influence buying decisions, and maintain rankings for years.
I also explain Discord's privacy and control settings.
Server admins can manage which public channels participate under Server Settings > Web Presence. Public channels are included by default unless admins change the settings.
Individual users can opt out of having their messages shown under User Settings > Data & Privacy. Private servers and DMs are not included in these changes.
The opportunity is to build an influential community before Discord's public discussions become widely available through Google. Just like owning an influential subreddit, owning a leading Discord server in your niche could become a valuable SEO asset.
⭐️ Discord announcement - https://discord.com/blog/making-content-from-discoverable-servers-easier-to-discover 
⭐️ Mashable article - https://mashable.com/tech/discord-public-server-web-pages-messages-discoverable-in-google-search 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Discord SEO Bombshell
00:47 How Indexing Works
01:46 Admin Privacy Controls
02:16 Eligibility Requirements
03:46 Why Discord Will Rank
04:31 Server Optimization Tips
05:15 Digg Spam Cautionary Tale
06:58 Spam Risks and Long Game
08:54 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#parasiteseo #searchengineoptimization #seo #blackhatseo

E1214: Google Maps rankings are changing dramatically, and proximity to the searcher appears to have become far more important than reviews, backlinks, and business authority.
Matt Hammerton returns to the podcast with data from 40-50 local ranking scans showing what he calls the biggest proximity shift he's seen in 20 years of doing SEO.
Matt manages more than 100 Google Business Profiles and works with personal injury law firms and home service businesses. He noticed the changes on October 27, 2026, and has been investigating what happened.
In one Phoenix personal injury lawyer market, a business went from an average Google Maps ranking of 2.5 to 16.9 across the same geographic grid. It was still the highest-ranking business overall because its competitors experienced similar declines.
In another example, businesses that previously ranked from more than a mile away disappeared from the local results, replaced by businesses located just a fraction of a mile from the searcher.
We go through Matt's ranking reports, what he's seeing across different industries, and what businesses should do if these changes stick.
Topics covered:
- The Google Maps proximity changes Matt discovered between October 22 and October 27, 2026.
- How he identified the same pattern in roughly 85% of the 40-50 local ranking scans he examined.
- Why businesses that previously ranked across three to five miles are suddenly seeing their ranking areas shrink.
- A Phoenix personal injury law firm whose average map ranking fell from 2.5 to 16.9 despite remaining the strongest competitor in its market.
- Another example in Mesa, Arizona, where average rankings changed from 1.9 to 6.6.
- Why Google appears to be giving proximity significantly more weight than reviews, backlinks, and other authority signals.
- How businesses with only a handful of reviews can now outrank competitors with hundreds of reviews simply by being closer to the searcher.
- Why service area businesses, including plumbers, HVAC companies, and locksmiths, appear particularly vulnerable.
- How these changes are affecting actual phone calls and leads, not just ranking reports.
- Why businesses with thousands of reviews and established Google Business Profiles may be losing ground while smaller competitors gain visibility.
- Whether this is a permanent Google Maps algorithm change, a temporary experiment, or a mistake.
- Why opening additional legitimate business locations could become more important for local SEO.
- How Matt identifies neighborhoods with little competition before choosing locations for new offices.
- How to use Google Maps to examine competitors, review counts, and geographic opportunities.
- Why optimizing Google Business Profiles for more services and keywords may become more important when ranking areas shrink.
- The relationship between Google Business Profile rankings and the keywords on the linked website's landing page.
- Whether branded searches and stronger organic SEO can offset reduced Google Maps visibility.
- Why businesses shouldn't immediately make major changes in response to sudden ranking fluctuations.
We also discuss black hat versus white hat SEO, why building a real brand is more sustainable than chasing temporary ranking tricks, Google's history of algorithm penalties, and what Matt learned from 20 years of SEO.
These proximity findings are based on Matt's own ranking data. Google hasn't confirmed the cause, and we don't yet know whether the changes will remain in place.
⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Agency - https://www.brainspikemarketing.com/ 
⭐️ Matt Hammerton on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthammertonaktaktion 
⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MattHammerton/ 
⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aktaktion/ 
⭐️ Matt Hammerton on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OnlyDreamers 
⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Label - https://www.onlydreamersmusic.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Matt Returns and Big Finding
00:43 Proximity Pinch Explained
01:56 Rank Reports Reveal the Shift
03:34 Before and After Grid Proof
04:46 Phoenix Case Study Breakdown
08:26 Pizza Shop Effect and SAB Hit
10:08 Verified Across Tools and Dates
13:13 Mesa Example and Dot-Level Evidence
17:54 Bug or New Normal
18:36 Winners Losers and Lead Impact
21:49 Why Few People Noticed
25:11 What to Do Next Locations Strategy
28:30 Shrink Radius Keyword Strategy
30:02 Branded Searches vs Reviews
31:51 Three Month Action Plan
33:39 More Locations Survival
34:52 Finding Low Competition Areas
35:43 Ask Maps
38:16 Who Wins and Loses
40:21 False Wrap Up and Where to Find
47:07 White Hat vs Black Hat
53:41 Google Retaliation Story
01:00:25 Penguin and Big Updates
01:03:24 Final Thoughts and Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#localseo #seo #searchengineoptimization #localmarketing

E1213: Kyle Roof ranked a page written mostly in Lorem Ipsum gibberish #1 on Google for a rhinoplasty keyword. After the experiment made headlines, Google deindexed it. That same night, Google also deindexed 20 of his other SEO test sites, despite their separate hosting and lack of links between them.
Kyle, SEO legend and founder of PageOptimizer Pro, tells me exactly how he pulled it off, why he believes Google changed its spam rules afterward, and why he says his gibberish pages still rank today. We also get into what he's learned from more than 400 SEO experiments and which popular SEO recommendations his tests contradict.
In this two-hour epic pod, we cover:
- How Kyle used Lorem Ipsum mixed with target keywords, variations, and contextual terms to rank #1 in Google organic search and Maps.
- What happened when Google deindexed his original site and 20 seemingly unrelated test sites, and what Kyle suspects Google did to identify them.
- Why Kyle says his 2019 Lorem Ipsum pages are still on page one, and how he continues testing Google's algorithm with gibberish content.
- The four on-page keyword placements Kyle prioritizes: title tags, H1s, paragraph text, and URLs, plus his findings on H2s, H3s, and anchor text.
- Why misspellings, grammar, reading level, and even a 25-second page load failed to hurt rankings in his tests.
- What his tests show about click-through rate, and why bounce rate, dwell time, and pogo-sticking are harder to pin down.
- Why he thinks agencies waste money obsessing over Core Web Vitals, and why he checks time to first byte and total blocking time.
- Why he recommends buying expired domains, what he checks before buying, and how they speed up SEO testing and new businesses.
- What his GoDaddy domain tests found about exact-match domains, descriptive extensions like .florist, indexing speed, and shorter URLs.
- How hidden text and page-builder templates affect Google's word counts, and what to check before migrating a website.
- Why the Yandex algorithm leak reinforced his views about TF-IDF, BM25, and Google's ranking systems.
- Why AI-written articles often miss important contextual terms, and how to give AI word-count and keyword benchmarks that match the SERP.
- How Kyle builds content silos, links supporting pages to competitive target pages, and uses People Also Ask questions for both Google and AI search.
- Why he believes SEO and GEO rely on the same foundations, and why he questions whether ChatGPT visibility is worth chasing for every business.
- Why pages that stray too far from a website's main topic can hurt SEO, using HubSpot's organic traffic collapse as an example.
- His $1,000, 90-day SEO plan: restore pages on an expired domain, target attainable keywords, and decide whether to spend the remaining budget on Google Ads.
- How Kyle and Joy Hawkins found that nofollow backlinks can influence rankings, and his favorite way to earn links by organizing community events.
- His prediction that today's large language models will be replaced by a different technology within three years.
⭐️ PageOptimizer Pro - https://pageoptimizer.pro 
⭐️ Kyle Roof on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roof-seo/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meet Kyle Roof
00:58 SEO Barely Changes
02:59 Four Pillars of Search
05:05 Algorithms Are Math
08:29 Testing Myths Busted
12:04 Do User Signals Matter
17:10 AI Content and Context
20:11 Lorem Ipsum Rhinoplasty
27:45 Expired Domains Shortcut
35:17 On Page Signals That Win
38:16 PageOptimizer Pro and AI
41:34 What SEOs Underestimate
43:01 SERP Intent Edge Cases
45:15 Authority vs Pogo Sticking
48:42 User Signals and Metrics
49:44 Core Web Vitals Myth
51:11 Descriptive TLD Experiments
56:37 Short URLs and Subfolders
59:38 SEO Tricks vs Humans
01:00:37 Niches and YMYL Attacks
01:03:54 API Leaks and BM25
01:06:17 CMS Hidden Word Counts
01:11:31 Schema Hype Reality
01:14:31 AI Content Benchmarks
01:17:32 Content Silos for AI
01:22:03 LLMs vs Google Surfaces
01:23:38 AI Indexes and SERP Poisoning
01:26:51 Rank Tracker SERP Glitches
01:28:38 Using GSC for History
01:30:10 Query Fanout Opportunities
01:32:08 GEO vs SEO Debate
01:36:28 PAA Content Mining
01:37:45 AI Search Vanity Metrics
01:41:45 Grind Over Worrying
01:42:56 Topical Focus and HubSpot
01:48:05 90 Day SEO Gameplan
01:55:03 Link Building for Good
01:58:34 LLMs Will Be Replaced
02:02:45 Where to Find Kyle
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization