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The Edward Show

The Edward Show

By: Edward Sturm
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Summary

 Daily SEO advice, hacks, and interviews with some of the top voices in search engine optimization, as well as sit-downs with many undiscovered talents.2026 Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Managing 90 SEOs: What Actually Scales (And What Breaks)

    Managing 90 SEOs: What Actually Scales (And What Breaks)
    May 15 2026
    E1045: This is what it takes to carry the responsibility of managing 90 SEOs AT THE SAME TIME. I sit down with Travis Tallent, former Managing Director of AI SEO at Brainlabs, where he led a team of 90 SEOs, CROs, digital PR specialists, and content strategists across enterprise clients like Microsoft and GitHub. We break down what scales inside a large SEO organization, what quietly breaks, and what most people get wrong about hiring, systems, and AI. This is not surface-level advice. It's what happens when you grow a team from 15 people to 90 in four and a half years and have to build the infrastructure to support it. What we cover: Leadership and scale - What leading 90 SEOs is really like day to day - The growing pains of scaling from 15 to 90 people - Why process matters more than talent at scale - How to build systems for communication across large teams - Decision rights, hierarchy, and why clarity prevents chaos - How to stop teams from getting in each other's way Hiring and onboarding - The most underrated skill in SEO hires - How to screen for real operators, not surface-level knowledge - The interview question that reveals everything - What a three-month onboarding program actually looks like - Why mock calls and repetition build communication skill - How to design onboarding that produces confident, client-ready SEOs Digital PR and link building - Why traditional outreach often fails at enterprise scale - What actually works in digital PR today - How to build data-driven linkable assets - Personalizing outreach without burning your domain reputation - Creative examples of assets that generate thousands of backlinks - Why brand investment matters more in the AI era CRO and conversion strategy - Why incremental button tests rarely move the needle - When full funnel redesigns drive major revenue gains - Common CRO mistakes that hurt SEO - How poor design damages both traffic and conversions - Why cross-functional alignment between SEO, paid, design, and CRO is critical AI, automation, and hype cycles - The real risks of migrating from .com to .ai - How executives think about AI branding decisions - Why most companies are trying to automate too early - The danger of vibe-coded sites without real strategy - What AI search actually requires to win Enterprise SEO lessons - How to fix cannibalization at scale - Why internal linking and taxonomy are often overlooked - What separates plateauing sites from compounding ones - How to push back on clients using data instead of ego - The metrics that actually matter when you lead a large SEO team This conversation is about ownership, discipline, and long-term thinking. Scaling SEO is not about adding more people. It's about building clarity into hiring, onboarding, communication, and execution. If you're running an agency, managing a marketing team, or building a SaaS company that depends on search, this episode will give you a more realistic view of what scale actually requires. ⭐️ Travis Tallent on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/travistallent/ ⭐️ Out in AI, Travis's LGBTQ+ & ally AI group: https://outinai.com/ ⭐️ Travis's company - Daynova - AI Change Management - https://daynova.ai/ 🚀 Edward's SEO Articles - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/ 💎 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 Managing 90 SEOs 01:51 Underrated SEO Skills 03:14 Communication Systems 05:31 Mock Calls Training 07:22 Scaling Team Onboarding 11:15 Fastest Way Learn SEO 13:37 First Three SEO Hires 17:23 Digital PR That Works 20:04 Creative Linkable Assets 27:55 Weird SEO Stories 30:42 Com to AI Migration Risks 36:24 Screening SEO Candidates 37:49 SEO Audit Process 41:07 GitHub Content Win 44:46 Preventing Team Mayhem 46:41 CRO Big Wins 48:24 Revamp Funnels Not Buttons 49:46 CRO Mistakes To Avoid 51:48 Design And SEO Alignment 53:28 Clarity Beats Cleverness 55:11 Measuring Team Success 56:25 Systems RACI And Tools 01:00:44 AI Scales Chaos 01:03:50 Pushing Back On Clients 01:05:36 Compounding SEO Investment 01:10:13 Overlooked SEO Tactics 01:11:57 Source SEO For AI Search 01:15:48 AI Impact On SEO Teams 01:17:43 SEO Disaster Story 01:20:09 Becoming Top One Percent 01:22:11 Final Lessons And Wrap The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #searchengineoptimization #marketingagencies #seo #digitalmarketing
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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • Why Smart SEOs Don't Use the Same Brand Message Everywhere

    Why Smart SEOs Don't Use the Same Brand Message Everywhere
    May 14 2026

    E1044: Most companies use the exact same brand description everywhere online.

    Same wording.
Same positioning.
Same messaging.

    That is a mistake if you care about SEO.

    I break down why offsite messaging should evolve based on the keywords you want to rank for, the audience you are speaking to, and the search intent you are targeting.

    I explain how strategic changes to your marketing blurbs can help strengthen topical authority, improve rankings for bottom-of-funnel keywords, and increase click-through rate from backlinks, podcast appearances, public relations, and other offsite placements.

    Topics covered:
    - Why using the same brand message everywhere can hurt SEO growth
    - How offsite messaging influences rankings
    - The connection between blurbs, anchor context, and topical authority
    - How to adapt messaging around new product features and use cases
    - When exact-match keyword phrasing matters
    - Why some keywords are easy to rank for and others are not
    - How to think about link building beyond just getting links
    - Why the best backlinks also send qualified referral traffic
    - How audience context should change your messaging strategy
    - Examples of SEO-focused messaging using a fictional SaaS company
    - How to use blurbs to support rankings for high-intent keywords
    - Why partial keyword coverage can still strengthen rankings
    - How AI features change the way products should position themselves off-site

    🚀 Edward's SEO Articles - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/

    💎 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 Offsite Messaging Matters
    00:14 Stop Using One Blurb
    00:27 SEO Informs Your Copy
    01:34 Meet Fizzle Client
    02:02 Targeting High-Intent Keywords
    03:16 Rewrite Blurbs For Keywords
    04:41 When To Include Keywords
    05:44 Match The Audience
    06:35 New Features Shift Messaging
    07:26 Wrap Up And Next Steps
    09:38 Final Outro

    The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/

    #searchengineoptimization #linkbuilding #publicrelations #seo
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    10 mins
  • Schema Doesn't Boost AI Citations (New Ahrefs Study)

    Schema Doesn't Boost AI Citations (New Ahrefs Study)
    May 13 2026

    E1043: Walking through a brand new study from Ahrefs that tested one of the most repeated claims in SEO: "Add schema to get cited more by AI."

    The data does not support that claim.

    Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema between August 2025 and March 2026. They matched those pages against nearly 4,000 control pages and measured citation changes across:
    - Google AI Overviews
    - Google AI Mode
    - ChatGPT

    The result: adding schema did not increase AI citations in any meaningful way.

    Here's what the study found:
    - No statistically significant citation growth in Google AI Mode
    - No statistically significant citation growth in ChatGPT
    - A small 4.6% DECLINE in AI Overviews citations (real but small, and not clearly attributable to schema)
    - Four separate statistical tests, all pointing to the same conclusion

    This matters because for years, SEO advice has claimed that structured data is essential for LLM visibility. The theory sounded logical: machines need machine-readable data, so schema must help AI systems cite your content.

    But when you isolate the variable and control for authority, content quality, and existing citation levels, the effect disappears.

    We also discuss:
    - Why 53% of AI-cited pages have schema (and why that doesn't prove causation)
    - How correlation misleads SEOs
    - Why technically sophisticated sites tend to have both schema and strong authority signals
    - A related experiment showing major AI systems ignore JSON-LD during live retrieval
    - What actually moves the needle for AI visibility

    If you're:
    - Paying an agency for schema to improve AI citations
    - Offering schema implementation as an AI visibility service
    - Trying to future-proof your SEO strategy for LLM search

    This episode is worth your time.

    If your goal is more AI citations on pages that are already visible, the current data does not support schema as a growth lever.

    My advice remains simple: Focus on relevance, building authority, internal distribution of that authority, and reducing pogo-sticking. Strong content on authoritative, relevant pages is what gets retrieved and cited.

    ⭐️ We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Barely Moved. - https://ahrefs.com/blog/schema-ai-citations/

    🚀 How to ACTUALLY get shown in LLMs - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/ai-seo-geo-aeo-get-shown-llms-2026/

    💎 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 Breaking Study Shock
    00:57 Correlation vs Causation
    02:03 Results No Uplift
    03:27 AI Overviews Decline
    04:29 Methodology Explained
    06:09 Four Tests Confirm
    07:05 Do LLMs Read Schema?
    08:16 Why Cited Pages Use Schema
    09:49 Practical Schema Advice
    10:55 Focus on Real SEO
    11:31 Wrap

    The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/

    #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing
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    13 mins
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