Interview w/ Katie Wagner-Journalism & SEO Are The Power Couple You Need

"For me, the journalistic perspective is sort of the bedrock that hasn't changed. It's just shifted its place in our content strategy. Brand journalism is creating deeper stories around the humans in a business—interviews with our clients, case studies, stats, metrics. It's more about the use case and the examples than it is about features and benefits."

"We create top of funnel content that's aimed at the AI overviews—informational, educational, and not designed to convert. What we're trying to do is get mentioned there because the more you show up in those overviews, the more your deeper content gets seeded in the first page rankings."

"Those brand journalism pieces designed to convert hit people later on in the decision funnel. We get fewer clicks than we have, but most of those clicks will convert because at that point they've got the educational information they need on the SERP, but they're clicking through really only to convert now."

"I like metrics just as much as the next person does. But what I really like is revenue. I can tell you for each of our clients, how much revenue we're generating every month, every year—not just how many clicks, how many conversions. I actually need to know that translated into money because that's the ROI we're providing."

"I don't actually care that less traffic is coming back to the website. I care that more of it converts. If we can let go of the ego around getting less click through, this world isn't bad as long as you know how to play in it."

"You're giving a great example of a brand that became brand journalists and put out their own media—content with value in and of itself beyond promoting the product. Can you put out really engaging, valuable content that doesn't necessarily directly promote your products, but welcomes consumers into that ecosystem?"

"Sometimes the partner is your existing client. If you're doing a case study or testimonial video and leverage that as content, now you're getting in front of their audience and they're like, 'hey, that's Jeremy, and he used Katie's company.' Anytime you can leverage those additional people in your ecosystem, that's the warmest lead you can get."

"Gone are the days when one tactic in a vacuum is going to generate all the business you need. Fifteen years ago when I started the agency, that was true. We could do SEO in a vacuum or digital ads, and it would work. These days, it doesn't work alone. You have to have that entire infrastructure built out."

"Every brand has to be a content creator and they have to be journalists of their own brand and putting out their own stuff or else they're going to get lost in the sea of content out there—either from brands already doing it or from people using AI to create just volume."