Authoritative Intelligence: Evolving IR, NLP, and Topical Evaluation in the Age of Infinite Content Featuring Jeff Coyle

Garrett: All right, welcome back to The Next Chapter of Search produced by SEO Week and iPullRank. If you haven’t already got your tickets, we are talking April 28th to May 1st in New York City – like the best of the best. You know, we’re talking information retrieval, SEO, AI, content, all that funny stuff. And I’ve got one of the best in the business joining me today. I am talking to Jeff Coyle, who is the Head of Strategy at Siteimprove and the co-founder of Market Muse. What’s going on, Jeff? How you doin, man.

Jeff: I am so excited. I’m so excited. I’m originally from New Jersey. Oh, I just realized I have my New York Rangers Lego guy behind me.

Garrett: Booooo!

Jeff: And I am just so excited to be, you know, part of SEO week. I am just pumped. There’s a couple people that are going to be speaking also that I haven’t seen in a little bit. And, you know, just, just pumped for the effort.

Garrett: It’s going to be so much fun. I mean, you and I, like we geek out over this stuff so many times. You’re, you’re releasing so much brand new stuff. Let’s dive right in because like we love just geeking out about this. So current state of SEO, from your experience being in the algorithms, building tools, looking at everything from AI overviews to just the way that Google search is evolving, where do we stand in our industry?

Jeff: I think that there’s a lot of validation, I think, with, with search engine optimization professionals and technical SEO pros that have been doing this for a while. It’s like, yeah, they’re finally doing the things that I, you know, that I’ve been on my soapbox speaking about. It’s, it’s, you know, the transition and the evolution that the search engines have had to make to deal with a world where there’s infinite content. And those evolution, they had to start thinking about things at a site level, at site section levels from different angles, because what do you do if you’re a search engine and you have, there’s an infinite supply. There’s no more, it’s no longer a sca- mediocre content is no longer a scarce resource. So they’ve had to evolve how they show information. They’ve had to evolve how far they go in exploring possible intents. And they’ve had to really say, “Hey, you have to be excellent. You have to be differentiated.” And so all of these kind of takeaways have to be done with science. You know, they have to be done with technology. They have to be done in ways that are scalable. And that’s really the story of the last two or three years. It’s the search engines getting ready for this, this world where they have to rethink the way that they tell us, tell us who wins. Right?

Garrett: And they’ve, and they’ve been doing a lot of that and you’ve been researching, which kind of leads perfectly into, can you give us kind of a preview of what you’ll be speaking about? Like, why should people come to SEO week to hear Jeff speak?

Jeff: Oh gosh. I am going to walk through kind of what I feel is the 101 and the 201 classes, you know, basics of information retrieval. So frequently teams or search engine optimization professionals or the marketing team is only thinking about these things in terms of what’s ranking higher or the search algorithm, where there’s so many layers of what it, what it takes to go from your actual query to a result. And there’s data sources in play. There’s, and those, and those items have evolved. And the way that manifests is really a redefinition of search results structures. And that’s really where I want to focus because what I’ve found is that when you have a general understanding of that, you can get religion quickly on how to actually treat this. And you know, Garrett, you know, this so commonly I’m like, yep, they’ve got the diagnosis close, but they can’t tell you the treatment. Right? So in my case, I want to be able to help people get to the diagnosis so that they can understand the treatment. And in a lot of cases that involves them thinking differently about how they approach content, building content strategy, like actual content efforts that maybe they wouldn’t have. And ensuring that they land the plane with quality, authority, excellence, and the great punchline there, and, you know, why they should go to the show is the punchline here is this type of approach brings teams together. This type of approach makes you part of the discussion with the editor, part of the discussion with the subject matter expert, where, you know, as you know, for many, many, many years, decades, it’s always been about who gets the resources. And a lot of cases, the SEO loses. But now where the puck’s going is a world where the teams that are the least siloed have a highest chance of winning. And that’s really exciting for me.

Garrett: I love it. You do such a good job of marrying like the extreme technical with that higher level business value and where the creativity plays into it. And to your point about the mindset shift, executives, marketing teams, all need to think about this differently, because it’s not just those old metrics of, you know, just rankings and traffic. There’s so much more you’re talking about holistically. With that said, I mean, obviously people have to come and hear you to hear like the real the real magic there. But what is something that someone can do like right now, practically, that can implement kind of some of the things that you’re thinking about?

Jeff: You know, I have dozens of these, you know, these one things that people can do right now to influence it. And before this show, I was showing you how I’m doing one thing tests to show how, you know, these things are impacting some of these various AI outcomes. But I think the most important one, and this is really easy to do, is to examine content and look to say, do I know I or does someone on my team…or do I know somebody who would be able to willing to contribute? Do I know a way to provide unique differentiated value? Especially if I’m ranking, maybe I’m not ranking as well as I want, or maybe I’m afraid of competitors’ actions. Is there something that I can provide prominently and elegantly woven into the narrative of this page or as a secondary page? Is there something I can provide that’s really unique, differentiated value? I want to get that on the page. I want to get that in the in the cluster of content. It’s truly something that’s only going to come from me. It’s very protected from a competitive perspective. That’s your one thing. Take a collection of content that’s doing okay or not doing as well as you want. And think to yourself, what can I bring that is truly one of a kind, that’s truly my unique knowledge that has some competitive protection? Watch what happens. Because today, that equals winning.

Garrett: Absolutely. Because it’s especially in like such a generative AI world, it’s like anything human that is really, yeah, you nailed it. That unique aspect is what’s going to actually matter and not just be copycat, which is going to be so much easier to copy.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. And just to add, I know that, but a lot of people are like, “Okay, Jeff, well, like, what? What are you talking about?” Find a subject matter expert. I bet you your CEO knows something. Find the customer success person who talks to customers all day. If you’re in B2B tech, could you do a data study and bring in some facts and some knowledge? It’s not just about like the fact, oh, you know something that everybody…it’s not necessarily your opinion. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that the winning team is the one with a real point of view. And that’s repeating over and over again. So how can I make sure my point of view comes through in the form of differentiation? That’s an easy one thing to do before you go to New York City.

Garrett: I love it. And you have a point of view. So like follow this guy for more of them. What’s next, dude? So many directions that this whole industry can go in. Where do you see search, the greater ecosystem, Google, what’s happening next?

Jeff: Oh, gosh, I think that what we’re aiming, what we’re going to have is, I mean, there are some early data on this, but what you’re going to see is that as people get more used to a response being anything from a really bad book report, that was what I used to call AI overviews, a really bad book report, all the way down to really detailed, amazing research, my expectation is that it’s going to drive more overall use of these solutions. So the natural transition, there’s going to be a transition from certain types of queries to conversational. However, overall, the overall interaction with these types of solutions as an absolute number is going to go through the roof because the ways that you can integrate them into your life become so much more amazing than just search for something, right? And so more users, more searching, more desire for quick answers, more desire for deep research, all of those things bode well for marketers, for content professionals, for experts. I’ve said the subject matter expert has risen. They are the most important person in the room. And so she who collects the most subject matter experts wins is my vision for the future.

Garrett: I love it. I love it. Because the real truth is the limitations are being knocked down in terms of our capabilities and the tools are going to let us do it. Thank you so much. So if you want to talk to Jeff, either one of our cool parties afterwards, or check out his amazing presentation, get your ticket, New York City SEO week, end of April the 28th. We are so excited to see you there. Thanks again, Jeff.

Jeff: If you’re going if you’re going LinkedIn me, DM me, Twitter/X me Jeffrey_Coyle, get in touch before I am. I’m ready. I’m ready to be in New York City. It’s 18 degrees in Atlanta, Georgia right now. So I’m ready to be anywhere but here right now, fingers crossed end of April will be nice weather.

Garrett: No, it should be. We will see you there. My name is Garrett signing off.