In this episode of Unscripted SEO, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Erica D'Arcangelo, CEO of Love Content Development, to discuss the evolution of digital marketing agencies, the hybrid work model, and navigating the AI revolution in content creation.

Erica D'Arcangelo is the CEO of Love Content Development, a full-service marketing agency with 14 years in business. She also owns Create One (video production company) and V12 Strategies (marketing technology company). Over her career, Erica has worked with approximately 800 companies and generated nearly $300 million across all marketing contracts. She's also an Amazon bestselling author of "A Story About Pizza," chronicling her grandfather's journey as an Italian immigrant opening a pizzeria in 1960.

• Started in healthcare marketing in 2001, learning everything from HTML coding to early social media
• Launched her own agency in 2013 as a single mom seeking flexibility
• Evolved from freelancer to "real agency" in 2017-2018 with organizational structure, office space, and full team

• Creating organizational charts and hiring strategies
• Client retention and process development
• The transition from "doing marketing" to "running a business"

• Evolution from office-only to remote during COVID to current hybrid approach
• Managing employees across locations (UK and Tampa, Florida)
• Balancing flexibility with the needs of different roles and positions

• Why "SEO is dead" has been declared repeatedly since 2001 (and why it's not)
• Bringing back the "Webmaster" mentality for interconnected digital marketing
• The shift from keyword-focused SEO to multi-channel audience acquisition

Guest: Lorraine Ball, Host of More Than a Few Words Podcast
Experience: 19 years running a digital marketing agency, sold in 2021
Current Focus: Marketing consulting, teaching, and podcasting

Building and Scaling an Agency

• Started in 2002 as traditional marketing company
• Evolved into digital agency with social media emergence
• Strategic decision to cap at 10 employees and raise prices instead of scaling
• Maintained 30% client maximum rule to avoid dependency risk
• Focused on home services (HVAC, plumbing, roofing) and restaurants

Business Philosophy

• "Hire for attitude, train for skill" - Southwest Airlines model
• Phones answered on first ring by anyone, including CEO
• Personal touch as competitive advantage
• Long-term client relationships (10+ years typical)

Strategic Insights

• Capacity management: Stay below capacity line, raise prices when at capacity
• Risk management: No single client over 30% of business
• Market positioning: Answer the questions your ideal clients have
• Content strategy: Focus on answers, not just keywords

Guest: Lorrie Thomas Ross, CEO of Web Marketing Therapy
Title: "The Marketing Therapist"
Experience: 19 years as Chief Enthusiasm Officer, former UC Santa Barbara & UC Berkeley instructor

The Five Factor Framework

1. Credibility - Know, like, and trust through design, copy, and photography
2. Usability - Seamless user experience across all touchpoints
3. Visibility - Strategic presence across search and social media, ads, email, and PR
4. Sellability - Clear differentiation and value proposition
5. Scalability - Treating marketing as investment, not expense

"MarkEDing" Philosophy...

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO podcast, host Jeremy Rivera interviews Katie Wagner, President & CEO of KWSM Digital Marketing Agency. They dive deep into the evolution of SEO, the importance of brand journalism, and how businesses can adapt to the changing digital landscape including AI overviews and LLM-based search.

Katie Wagner

• President & CEO, KWSM Digital Marketing
• Former CNN Television Anchor (15 years in journalism)
• Founded KWSM in 2010
• Expert in lead generation and brand journalism

Connect with Katie:

• Website: kwsmdigital.com
• LinkedIn: Katie Wagner (red dress profile picture)

Jeremy Rivera

• Founder, SEO Arcade
• Host, Unscripted SEO Podcast
• SEO Expert & Consultant

Connect with Jeremy:

• About: Jeremy Rivera Bio
• Podcast: Unscripted SEO

• From Google reverse engineering to brand journalism
• Impact of AI overviews and rich snippets
• The rise of LLM-based search (ChatGPT, Claude)
• How E-E-A-T and helpful content updates changed the game

• Creating deeper stories around the humans in a business
• Two-tier content approach: top-funnel educational vs. bottom-funnel conversion
• Quality over quantity in traffic and conversions
• Building credibility through authentic storytelling

• Moving beyond vanity metrics to actual...

Host: Jeremy Rivera
Guest: Virginia Elder, Owner of Podcast Abundance
Topic: The evolution of SEO, podcast marketing strategy, and cross-channel content creation

In this in-depth conversation, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Virginia Elder, owner of Podcast Abundance, to explore how podcasting fits into modern SEO and content marketing strategies. They discuss the evolution from traditional website-focused SEO to a holistic, cross-channel approach that leverages podcasting, social media, and authentic human connections to build brand authority and drive business growth.

Virginia shares her journey from financial audit work to becoming a podcast production specialist for financial professionals, while Jeremy explains why genuine human conversations can't be replicated by AI and how podcasting creates valuable content ecosystems for businesses.

• The end of the "golden age" of basic SEO tactics
• Impact of Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU) on traditional SEO approaches
• Why websites are no longer the center of the digital marketing universe
• The rise of platform-based businesses (Instagram + Linktree models)

• Moving beyond website-only SEO to multi-platform strategies
• Creating "spider webs" of interconnected content across channels
• The importance of consistent branding across all digital touchpoints
• How different generations evaluate business legitimacy through different platforms

• How Google and LLM tools distinguish between people with similar names
• The role of consistent content creation in building entity authority
• Why more content leads to better AI understanding of your expertise
• The importance of video content in establishing credibility

• Why podcasting creates genuine content that AI cannot replicate
• The power of interviewing business owners to generate authentic content
• How podcasts can replace cold outreach with warm relationship building
• Cross-pollination opportunities within industry ecosystems

Episode: Unscripted SEO Podcast
Host: Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted Podcast
Guest: Chris Turnbull, Founder of Catalyst Marketing
Duration: ~45 minutes

Join Jeremy Rivera as he sits down with Chris Turnbull, founder of Catalyst Marketing, for an unfiltered discussion about how SEO has evolved over the past 13 years. From Google's monopolistic behavior to the rise of AI overviews, this conversation explores why local SEO has remained surprisingly stable while broader search continues to fragment across multiple platforms.

Chris shares insights from his journey from apprentice SEO to agency founder, specializing in performance marketing for local service businesses. The duo dives deep into the breakdown of traditional content marketing, the rise of user-generated content, and why Reddit posts now carry the same weight as backlinks from 2015.

• How Google evolved from "organizing the world's data" to "being the world's data"
• The enshitification of search results and AI overview accuracy issues
• Why we've become "beta testers" for tech corporations
• The removal of search liaison positions and lack of feedback loops

• Why local SEO fundamentals from 2008 still work today
• The continued importance of Google Business Profile, citations, and reviews
• How LLMs heavily weight reviews and local mentions
• Digital PR as the evolution of community involvement

• Google's contradictory demand to "create content for humans" while using bots to consume it
• The problem of trillion duplicate articles from marketing agencies
• How algorithm updates have created unsustainable content cycles
• The information contamination problem with...

Jeremy Rivera interviews Jason Barnard of KaliCube about entity optimization, AI assistive engines, and the future of search. This conversation explores practical strategies for controlling your digital footprint and optimizing for modern search systems.

Explore the COMPLETE Episode, and read the deep dive on SEO Arcade for further topical exploration in the same field of entities, Ai and SEO.

Jason Barnard is the founder of KaliCube and a pioneer in entity optimization. He started in 1998 with a children's website that grew to one billion page views in 2007, competing with BBC and PBS. In 2012, he successfully changed Google's perception of him from "cartoon blue dog" to "respected entrepreneur and digital marketer" - becoming one of the first to master entity transformation.

️ Similar Deep Dives: If you enjoyed this conversation about entities and AI, check out our interview with Mark Williams Cook on technical SEO innovations where we explored how machine learning is reshaping technical optimization strategies.

️ Foundational Concepts: For more on search evolution and brand building, don't miss our conversation with Rand Fishkin on the future of SEO. Rand's perspective on sustainable organic growth strategies pairs perfectly with Jason's entity optimization methodology.

• The Algorithmic Trinity: All modern AI systems (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity) are built on three core technologies - LLM chatbots, knowledge graphs, and search results - all fed from the same data source: the web. Controlling your digital footprint impacts all three simultaneously.
• Entity Optimization Timeline: Search results update within a week, knowledge graphs take about three months to reflect changes, while LLM training data requires up to a year. Understanding these timelines helps set realistic expectations for entity optimization campaigns.
• Industry-Specific Authority Matters: Authority isn't universal - IMDB dominates for movies, Crunchbase for business, legal directories for law. The key is identifying which platforms algorithms trust within your specific industry rather than chasing generic high-authority domains.
• The Claim-Frame-Prove Method: Establishing expertise requires making a claim, framing it within existing knowledge structures, the...

Daniel Horowitz
Senior SEO Manager at Informatica
Connect: LinkedIn

Daniel Horowitz shares his decade-long journey in SEO, from agency-side link building campaigns to managing enterprise SEO at Informatica. We dive deep into the impact of Google's Helpful Content Update, the shift from traffic-focused to conversion-focused strategies, and practical tactics that still work in the AI-dominated search landscape.

• The traditional SEO content model is dead, especially for volume-based sites
• Enterprise SEO success now depends on cross-functional collaboration and subject matter expert interviews
• Internal linking remains one of the most underutilized yet effective strategies
• Platform diversification is essential as Google transitions to being an answer engine
• Community-driven digital PR creates more valuable signals than traditional link building

[00:01] - Introductions and Daniel's background at Informatica
[00:42] - Link building experiences with Shopify Exchange project
[02:09] - Evolution from link building to enterprise SEO strategies
[03:39] - Digital PR vs traditional link building approaches
[07:02] - Google's maker sessions and the "answer engine" revelation
[08:13] - The Helpful Content Update's devastating impact on travel blogging
[09:03] - Enterprise SEO evangelism and cross-functional collaboration
[11:50] - Subject Matter Expert (SME) interview series strategy
[15:05] - Moving beyond basic keyword-focused content
[15:48] - Transitioning from blogs to resource pages and use cases
[19:00] - Justifying content marketing spend with declining traffic
[21:39] - Cross-channel marketing and sentiment analysis
[25:28] - Platform diversification beyond Google
[29:54] - The future of SEO in an AI-dominated world
[37:13] - Actionable advice: The power of internal linking

• Shopify Exchange outreach campaigns
• Local directory and publication resistance
• The shift from tactical links to semantic search understanding
• Digital PR becoming more important than traditional link building

Summary

In this UnscriptedSEO conversation, Jeremy Rivera and LinkedIn expert Daniel Alfon discuss the often-overlooked potential of LinkedIn as a powerful SEO tool.

They explore the evolution of social media, the importance of authority and identity on LinkedIn, and strategies for targeting the right audience. The discussion also covers the nuances of B2B versus B2C marketing, optimizing LinkedIn profiles, the significance of recommendations, and the differences between posting articles and posts. Alfon emphasizes the importance of understanding user behavior on LinkedIn and how to convert connections into meaningful business relationships.

Takeaways

• LinkedIn is often underestimated as an SEO tool.
• Most users treat LinkedIn as a static resume.
• A mismatch between online presence and real-life personality can hinder success.
• Authority on LinkedIn can significantly impact visibility.
• Profiles are more important than content posting for success.
• Recommendations enhance credibility and trust.
• Understanding your audience is key to effective marketing.
• Content shelf life determines whether to post or write an article.
• User-generated content can boost SEO visibility.
• Conversion strategies should focus on moving users to your own domain.