As an entrepreneur in San Francisco, Mark Spera realised that a major step after the creation of an e-commerce site is getting people through the virtual door. In the thousands of pages online how do make sure yours stands out and people can find you on Google?
Well after various successful enterprises, Mark and his associate Hailey Friedman have cracked the code. Growth Marketing Pro is a successful blog with over 50 000 users/month answering all the questions small businesses need the answer to in order to crack the Google algorithm. To make things even easier Mark and his team have developed GrowthbarSEO, a tool based on latest AI in language processing to help businesses write content that will rank highly and convert into customers.
Mark joined us on out AI guides podcast to tell us a bit more.
Why is ranking on Google so difficult?
Like everything, Google ranking can seem overly complicated as articles all over the internet talk about “The Algorithm” and search engine optimization. The sheer quantity of information can scare people off. At the base level, Google uses AI to help its users find the content they are looking for. In 2015 they rolled out RankBrain, a new AI to help better understand user’s needs and find the best content for them. Google wants happy users who find the best content, so the best content ranks higher. This makes it easier to show up as long as you are producing the best content. We realised content creators just needed a simple tool to help guide writers to creating the best content according to Google’s metrics. That is where GrowthBar comes in.
Growth bar is the tool for content teams to make Google friendly content at scale, it helps you structure your article to rank highly on Google and assists with content generation. GrowthBar analyses similar articles in the domain you are writing about and helps optimize word count, number of images, backlinks to help get your content to show up and be found by the right people.
Is this a case of AI vs AI, Growthbar vs Google for search optimization?
Yes and no. To some degree that is the case. GrowthBar generates Google friendly content using decision algorithms and GPT-3 to help creators write the best blog for their subject. In some ways our AI goes up against Google but the way Google uses AI is to have it learning on the fly: Google is constantly learning from their data and adjusting their algorithm.
GrowthBar is doing something a bit simpler using GPT-3 that learnt about language processing after having been set loose on the internet on websites such as Wikipedia. Currently GrowthBar isn’t learning on the fly yet. A next step to ingest quality and rating information from content created using the tool and feed that back in to the decision making process to help it continue to learn and improve.
So in some ways our AI is working to try and “hack” the algorithm and get ranked but for content to rank on Google quality has to follow. And Google wants good quality content, so we are also working with Google towards same goal which is for internet users to find the content they are looking for and for creators to have their content be found.
You mentioned GPT-3. Can you tell us a little bit more about you partenership with OpenAI and how that came about?
To start off we partnered with a developer to turn the ideas in our heads into decision algorithms and a final user product. We could take GrowthBar most of the way without OpenAI but the natural language part was the missing piece. This is where GPT-3 comes in for content generation.
We first heard of OpenAI and their language processing AI from networking and online. Just by staying up to date and keeping an eye out on forums and twitter at the cutting edge of the industry you can here about up and coming trends. I first heard rumblings of OpenAI a few years ago and I went to their blog to learn and understand it.
I realised that if you paired the language processing with some decision algorithms you could make a very useful tool. When we heard about the early beta we were eager to get on board but couldn’t get access. Through mutual contacts we were able to get in touch with the CTO and finally get in the door.
So if there is anything to take away from this other than having the good idea it is to stay up to date in your industry, learn from your community, be persistent and use your network to get your idea off the ground.
What are the next steps for GrowthBar
Next steps coming up in GrowthBar is to identify keywords as they are emerging. So not only to help creators write on their subject but also help them choose what to write about. The end goal is for writers to produce a high quality, well-ranking blog in 30 minutes
Finally, the main thig is we want all small businesses to be able to use GrowthBar, feel free to contact us we are always available to answer questions and help.
Some key take aways :
- Google rewards giving good answers to user’s questions. A better answer leads to better content which leads to better ranking
- AI can assist creators to write quality content that ranks highly quickly and efficiently. Language processing can help overcome writers block, suggest content, and optimize blog structure so no energy is wasted
