Why did Charles leave Semrush for SE Ranking?

Transcript

Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another week of e commerce marketing chats with myself Charles and Jimmy. Jimmy, how’s the last week going, mate?

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, good. We were just ⁓ having a brief conversation before the chat about a fable, and how I asked you whether you tested it or not before it went down. So I’ve got pretty much like eighty percent of the way through building my new website on it. So I had a good play with it and I thought it was yeah, it’s pretty it was pretty decent. So, the website’s looking I’ll have to ⁓ I’ll have to show you later. But But yeah, did some rebranding too, did a new logo. ⁓ that was with Chat GPT though. So I say this to a lot of people. People are like, ⁓ what AI do you use? I’m like, ⁓ it really depends what I’m using it for. Like Chat GPT, the image generation is way better than Claude’s, but Claude ⁓ ⁓ better for code. So ⁓

Charles Travers: Have you tried clawed design, Jimmy? ’Cause I’ve been using that a bit recently. Yeah. It’s ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I’m use Yeah. Yeah, so I’ve actually been using Design today because I have a I have a presentation that I have to do on Google Ads tomorrow and optimizing performance max and I had the information for the slides that wanted to produce and I just punched it into Claude Design and it designed the whole slideshow for me. And usually that takes me so long. just the formatting and all that. And ⁓ it it knocked up a a kind of I guess slide deck ⁓ I could ever done. So I’m pretty I’m pretty happy with it actually. ⁓

Charles Travers: Yeah, I used I started using it for proposals actually. so I I won a client recently from a Claude design proposal. and actually last week ⁓ I so fed it in one of my clients blog pages because felt that there were some things that we could do to improve the UX and design. So I fed it the current design it as a screenshot. I just took a screenshot of the existing design, t told it okay we need add

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: This, this, and this, and then it gave me basically a HTML version of the blog, which I could then hand off to their developer to actually develop it. so yeah, I was I’ve been really impressed with it, and how you build out like effectively different design systems. So basically I have a design system built out for each of my clients now, including my own brand as well. So you can add like, you know, your colour palette and any any assets like visual assets that you’ve got ⁓ then it will be able to kinda train Claude on your brand and and it is that you do as well. So yeah, I’m using that a l a lot more recently.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I need to I need to update my like agreement document and yeah, I probably should start to well definitely be doing proposals in it now because my proposals look horrible. But like if you can get a if you can get a template that you’re happy with on on then yeah, it just it pretty much just saves that whole formatting time, that whole process. just ⁓ yeah, it’s it’s just Done. It’s crazy. So I’ve been I’ve been super I’ve been super impressed with the design aspect for it. I think ⁓ you’re still when you’re creating images for like social media and stuff, I still think that Chat BT is way but who claw design might catch up, not sure. So these things are these things are constantly changing. So Yeah, when someone’s like, ⁓ what AI are you using? It’s always always, you know, ⁓ depends. Depends depends what I’m doing. So yeah. ⁓

Charles Travers: ⁓ yeah. Depends which one you get hold of and the US government doesn’t doesn’t suspend. That could be yeah, it’s gonna be interesting actually. yeah, I was a bit gutted that couldn’t test out this clawed fable. I well instead I watched the

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: W World Cup basically. I was binge watching World Cup highlights. the World Cup’s on. I saw the I saw the Aussies bit of an upset against the against the Turkish which was ⁓ which yeah Yeah, good

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah. Turn it Turnil against Turkey. Yeah. Really yeah, it was it’s a great game. I didn’t know any of the players’ names ’cause they’re all it’s a pretty young team. and I think I think ten of the eleven were like World Cup debutons. So ⁓ yeah, got a a young squad. No, not really, no. So but we get we’re getting there. We got a we got a good team, so yeah.

Charles Travers: Yeah. Well they’re not known for their football are they, Australia? They’re but yeah, but no.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Big chance to take out the World Cup this year. We’ll see how we go. ⁓

Charles Travers: Well yeah, no, I’m I’m I’m rooting for the Aussies, alongside obviously the English, first and foremost. But ⁓ it’s good to see. It’s good to see. Good stuff. ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: So yeah, I think I think on the I think on the Fable side too, man, like just getting a getting an insight into it. It’s hard to go back even to Opus when you know i I it’s a mindset thing. You know you’re not using the best model that’s currently out there and you’re like, but before that Opus was amazing. It was the best of what was available. And then Fable came along and you’re like, ⁓ my gosh, my coding just got like another, you know, four or five levels above where it was ⁓ previously. So it’s kind of I think Fable will come back soon. It’s just a matter of time. I think there’s a bit of politics around it at the moment. But ⁓ it interesting because I was reading a lot of the comments about it and they’re like, it’s not take the Chinese models long to catch up to this kind of fable level. And they’re gonna open source it. So the the the US government isn’t gonna be able to shut it down because it’s it’s gonna be open source and on people’s local devices. So ⁓ there’s ⁓ no way you can you can shut that down. once on someone’s local device and they’re using you know, they’re not tied to ⁓ one these larger companies. be interesting to see what happens in that space because I mean, one, we’ve already seen a leak ⁓ of Ford’s code basically that went out. so yeah, I imagine I can’t imagine all these other open source models are gonna be that far off. so yeah, it’d be be interesting to see what’s coming. But I will say a lot of the students that I’ve been coaching have been using ⁓ kind of Flawed and ChatGPT or whatever kind of AI service they’re using to kind of get help managing their Google Ads account. And some of the recommendations I’ve seen have just been like wild. ⁓ Like, okay, still got a still got a little bit of time because what the AI will do is it’ll focus on one issue without context and like give them advice full context in some cases. And it’s to the right questions if you don’t know what you’re looking for. so I st I still think there’s an edge. But ⁓ don’t get me wrong, think I think the management side eventually move to business owners or teams that don’t time to go in to do it themselves because eventually ⁓ I think with all the knowledge and all the systems that are coming out, will be able to have like an internal team member or a junior operated at a pretty high level. so yeah, it’s gonna it’s gonna be an interesting transition. Obviously, you and I are both in the service space. So, you know, we’re not going into it with, you know, our eyes closed. We know that, these things are coming. people are using these things and unless they’re super time poor, then client acquisition phase ⁓ may be getting may more difficult for for agency in the future. ⁓ So yeah, be it’ll be interesting to see what happens, watch this space. But I also think a lot of the creatives that in the service space, if they if they do start dropping off, they will come up with other creative avenues to add value to the community. So ⁓ I think it’s ⁓ it’s gonna be an interesting space to see what happens, what’s kind of built from this period and kind of where things go from there.

Charles Travers: Yeah, for sure. I I mean my opinion on it as well is that you know, typically the type of clients that say me and you would go for or w end up working with, they’re not gonna always be the clients that are gonna AI on and immerse themselves ’cause they’re just too busy. so I do think really, you know, Lot of the AI is gonna be used by a kind of start up e commerce stores that are kind of building, they don’t have the budgets yet. And really t they’re replacing the AI’s replacing the Fiverr market, r ⁓ my opinion. You know, like Fiverr Fiverr.com where you go on, you get something cheap. it’s always ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: Hm. ⁓ hundred percent. Yeah. I even used to get voiceovers from Fiverr. You would just go straight to eleven labs now. Like that that kind of skill set is gone.

Charles Travers: Absolutely. So I don’t think at first, yeah, there’s all there’s always always that worry in the agency space, okay, we’re gonna you know our services and and expertise needed, but the more the AI kind of evolves and and more importantly the search market evolves. for e commerce stores, it’s like you I think real time expertise is gonna be needed more than ever because algorithms are changing, new platforms are emerging, so brands aren’t paying necessarily always for execution, but they’re paying for oversight guidance, you know, and they realise that you know, agencies, freelancers will be using AI more, but they’re looking for, okay, the output that’s been produced correct or not? and I’m finding I am helping clients with that and more. You know, like for example, just over the last week a client of mine, they were creating blog content and I was basically providing p providing them feedback based on that AI content that they produced. Or their writer was kind of involved in that editorial process as well. so yeah, I think things will evolve, but I do think there’s still a demand for agency services and consultants. I just think the the value and needs to be higher. I think a lot of those kind of fly by

Jimmy Dalgleish: Mm, I agree.

Charles Travers: you know, agencies that were just focused on sales and not delivery, they’re gonna be gone soon. I think a lot of brands have been burnt in the past as well and they’re looking for someone that they can trust to actually deliver a good service, provide results and also communicate Communication is a massive one which I think a lot e commerce brands are, you know, see it as an important aspect of if they’re gonna hire a service provider. You need to be able to communicate effectively and I’m amazed you how many I’ve spoken to that, you know, they’d hired in the past and communication was one of the key factors of why they fired their agency in the past.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: Jimmy, and one thing that I’m finally gonna pull the plug on this week is gonna get rid of my SEM Rush subscription. I’ve had yeah. Yeah, I’ve I’ve ⁓ I’ve

Jimmy Dalgleish: there we go. That’s a big call. Hot take. The title of this video, Charles completely gets rid of SEM rush. SEM rush gone. Clip this. ⁓ rush no longer needed. AI has completely taken over. Hot take everyone. ⁓

Charles Travers: ⁓ I’m done with it. Yeah, they were probably gonna hate me for this. If if we ever get ⁓ more visibility on this podcast, yeah, there’s ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: Maybe they contact me, but I’ve yeah, I’ve just I think the problem when you get SaaS companies that then get bought out, because basically Rush got bought out by Adobe and you find is it’s all about, you know, increasing shareholder value and driving as much profit and revenue as possible and in turn what got them to that level, is often the downfall because they’re everything is an add-on with SEM Rush now. It’s like you go I th I can’t remember what plan I’m on, but basically ⁓ yeah it will be, yeah, soon enough. I connected so I connect I integrated it with Claude with their API. SEM Rush have got a like an MCP where you can connect these kind of connectors is what they call these

Jimmy Dalgleish: Fray plan now. ⁓ Can’t tell if we’ve lost Charles or myself. So what do is yeah, we’ll going. I’m actually interested to hear about that. So we might we might bring Charles back in a moment if he comes back on. But essentially he’s got rid his SEM rush subscription. I can you now, like a lot of the keyword research that I’m doing is in ⁓ the Google Ads platform itself and keyword planner. So ⁓ I’m actually going through there a lot more to a look at the keyword research. but the places you can go like search in 10 is just the AI engines now. And I’m guessing that’s what Charles is doing, but we’ll we’ll have to have to wait see. Hopefully he comes back. But before While Charles looks like he may be having some technical issues, but I will chat about is so have been diving into open AI ads this week. Now it’s been a slow start, so burn through a couple of hundred bucks without a conversion yet, but there’s just so much to test at the moment. I don’t want to write it off too early. We need to test some different products, we need to test different product ranges and see how it goes. ⁓ here we go, Charles is back.

Charles Travers: laptop decided to suddenly cut out. actually, I just a new MacBook the weekend and I haven’t ⁓ set it up, is one of the reasons why my current laptop is, ⁓ I think it’s its course. So… ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: No, that’s all right. Yeah. Yeah, well your video quality is higher on my end now. It’s like you’ve got a fresh start. I was just saying when you left, I think I was like, I don’t know if I cut out or Charles cut out. Just in case it was Charles that cut out, I’m gonna keep talking. So I was just saying ⁓ I was testing AI ads this week and probably spent a couple of hundred dollars without a conversion yet. But I was just saying that there’s so much more to test. So I haven’t written it off yet, but ⁓ well, I haven’t written it off. I’m not writing it off. I think it’s gonna be an important platform and I think the I think the actual ad manager itself is only going to improve over time. But yeah, early testing is I’m just waiting for that first sale. So I’ll be happy to see that one come through. Getting traffic now. so the ads are live, but but yeah, you just got cut off, Charles, before you finished your SEM rush abandonment story. So what are you replacing it with?

Charles Travers: Yeah, so what I was saying before I, laptop decided to cut out on me is… The reason that I’ve finally decided to away from SEMrush is because everything is an add-on, an extra cost. If you want to add AI search ⁓ visibility and track ⁓ certain to see how you’re showing up for AI searches, that’s an additional cost. If you want to now link Claude and access their APIs, that’s an additional cost. I kind of looked at what was around and I’m 99 % sure I’m gonna go with a brand called SE Rankings. And the reason being is they just, they offer more for less in terms of tracking. So like, for example, the SEM rush plan I’m on, you can track 500 keywords, but there’s no AI search tracking with rankings. You can track 2000 keywords and you can track hundred AI search prompts. ⁓ And is across any of my clients. it doesn’t have to just be on one domain. far I’m aware you can track as many as you want. Yeah, I was looking through over the weekend and there’s a lot of cool features. You can also see with the AI search tracking, you can see the cached image. So will show you whether your is showing up for a certain search prompt and you can click and you can visually see within, say, chat GPT. you visual of it so you can see what the search was and can see what’s showing up and you can also see you can track your competitors as well so you can do a side-by-side comparison ⁓ so some yeah really useful data there it’s you their annual plan is is basically half the price of SEM rush so yeah pretty much decided I’m make that switch. I’ve just gotta pull the trigger on it. But yeah, if you are looking for a kind of all in one SEO and AI search tracking tool, yeah, maybe have a look at ⁓ SE rankings. as a competitor to or Arevs, a of others as well, that people within the search, the organic search space.

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ that could be the title of the video. Swapping to SE SE rankings, was it? ⁓ them on get them on as a sponsor, especially if you’re testing them. ⁓ yeah, no, I think I think the software as a service is definitely gonna be a race to the bottom. And like if you’re not constantly innovating and providing value, like I don’t think you especially if you’re a high priced kind of software.

Charles Travers: SE rankings, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe they’re…

Jimmy Dalgleish: Like if you’re high priced and you’re not creating value than these lower tier things, then your your are numbered. So and I think you’re right. I think actually I haven’t seen a drop off from Clavio yet, but I was worried about say Clavio, the email marketing platform, once they went public, I was like, ⁓ same thing’s gonna happen. it’s been a good run, but you know, it’s probably gonna drop It hasn’t yet, but

Charles Travers: sure.

Jimmy Dalgleish: who knows? In it in fact, if anything, they’ve probably added a f a lot more new features. So I’ve been actually pleasantly surprised that they have kind of integrated a lot more things and integrating AI in there as well and making the design of the emails easier too. So I’ve been impressed there, but yeah, like you said, who knows? Hey, I was gonna ask, is the is the AI tracker thing available in the search console for Google yet? Or no? I know we kind of touched on it last week.

Charles Travers: No, not yet. It’s being rolled out actually in the UK ⁓ hopefully, I guess, within the next couple of weeks.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Okay. I just saw someone talk about it on LinkedIn and I was like, ⁓ maybe it’s maybe it’s rolled out. So yeah, I’m yeah, okay. That makes sense.

Charles Travers: No, it’s already in the UK I think. But yeah, excited to see that data when it comes available. I think that will, yeah. If some of kind of third party tools can plug into that data as well, that’s kind of where the value will lie as well, I think. So yeah, it’d be interesting to see. And I’ve been looking, fact that Bing has that AI search performance dashboard, I’ve been looking at Bing a lot more actually to of see what types of content are performing well in their AI, their Microsoft copilot, I’m seeing a little bit of a correlation between.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, okay, interesting.

Charles Travers: Say for example blogs are ranking in AI overviews. They’re also doing well in ⁓ copilot as The algorithms ⁓ seem to relatively similar in of what performs well in Google typically performs well Bing. I have seen some differences though.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Okay, interesting.

Charles Travers: you know, in certain, for example, certain collections doing better on Bing than they are on Google in of rankings, citations ⁓ So, yeah. I I think I mentioned it before, one of clients seems, they do good on Bing in terms of visibility and revenue. It’s certainly not, it’s lower than Google, but it’s certainly not a small percentage in of visibility, and organic revenue.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, okay. I find I don’t know if you find this Charles, but I find my clients that serve kind of I guess an older demographic do well on Bing. And they the is that well the r the reason that’s suggested is anyway that the older use the default search browser on their mobile phone, whereas the younger demographic will well, including myself, I s always switch to Chrome. I don’t like the default browser, but the default browser usually uses Bing for Android phones anyway. So and Android are a huge part of the market. So if you’ve got an older demographic that aren’t swapping that browser and they’re all just defaulting directly to Bing, then yeah, you probably sh probably should be in on Bing in some capacity. If you especially if you’re in a in a service based business like building and and things like that.

Charles Travers: Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: trades they do well on Bing unsuspectingly for that type of audience too. So yeah it’s yeah it’s definitely an interesting one. But I have I s that have listened to show a few times know that I’ve got a gripe with Bing just because it’s so hard to set up and you could be waiting months to get approved and it’s just a nightmare to set up. So we’ve taken it off client side because I can’t I can’t charge a client and then say, ⁓ sorry, it’s still not up like two and a half months later. It’s just crazy. Like you can’t run a you can’t run a business like with that kind of reliability, or that kind of setup time. It’s just yeah, it’s absolutely absolutely insane. So hopefully it improves ’cause I’d like to get back on there ’cause I think I a lot of my clients would would benefit from ⁓ from being on there. But it at the moment it’s it’s just an absolute pain.

Charles Travers: Mm. Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ so I’m not sure if other people have the same experience, but yeah, my my experience with being and getting the feed on and getting all set up and showing up organically to start off with and in ads has just been like painful. I I don’t know if I’m just coming from the Google world where everything is relatively easy. yeah, Hopefully that improves ’cause I’d like to get a few more of my clients actually on Bing, see how it’s going.

Charles Travers: Yeah, no, I agree. think, you know what you’re saying with the kind of older demographic that kind of makes sense. Even the other one is that I see a little bit of a resurgence in is some of the kind of the privacy browsers like DuckDuckGo, like I’ve seen an increase. Yeah, so there’s and I think we’ll see a little bit. We’ll continue to see that. I think there is a subsection of the population.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Now yeah, say that come through a bit. There’s no there’s no ads on DuckDuckGo though, is there?

Charles Travers: No, that’s one of the main reasons is that ⁓ you can opt out of the AI. So are some users that just don’t want an AI search results. And think I a headline the other week that there was a record amount of downloads for DuckDuckGo because of that reason. Some consumers just, they want more privacy. They don’t want ⁓ Google ⁓ having their

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. How do they make revenue if there’s a if there’s not an ad there’s not an ad model base?

Charles Travers: Good question. don’t know the answer to that. Yeah, curious to know. They actually money. I don’t know. don’t believe there’s a charge for it, is there, to use the ⁓ browser.

Jimmy Dalgleish: No, no, I’ve used it. I’ve used it a couple of times just to test it. It definitely was free. But yeah. ⁓ I don’t know. Maybe they have a paid upgrade version. But I mean if you’re already got not getting ads, I don’t know what you get on the upgraded version. ⁓ But yeah, maybe I’ll look into that for next week. How ⁓ how Duck DuckGo is generating revenue.

Charles Travers: Nah. You

Jimmy Dalgleish: But yeah, I think the other things that the other I’ve been working on this week is just like integrating Claude into Shopify stores directly. continuing to test. We’ve built out a a skill for blogs now. that can can generate blogs. It’s not perfect, still got a bit of work to do, but like as a starting point, it’s bet it’s definitely better than no blog. But yeah, still a little ⁓ still a little bit of work to do there. But just just testing a lot at the moment. So much so it’s hard to keep up in the AI space. If I heard someone say if you’re trying to keep up with the A everything that’s happening in AI, just don’t because you’re gonna drive yourself insane. But you know, sometimes there are things that come out that are hard to ignore, like claw design, for example. jumping in and testing that, you can see just ⁓ The design stuff has always been my Achilles heel and now I can just it some how I want something to look and it’s and it’s done and it looks good and and it I actually think it increases my brand value a little bit, you know, when you’re going out to clients because for us just Word docs and other things, this kind of adds a bit more of a professional feel to a couple of things that I’m working on, definitely.

Charles Travers: Yeah, I agree. I agree. think like I said, gives you extra value. can just, and I do think, like I said, I do think clients will expect more now as we have those tools available. I think that naturally that will happen. Jim, I think we might be, we might be up at the 30 minute mark.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Definitely. And he was saying. Yeah, that went quick. And I will say, so next week I am actually coaching at a retreat in Noosa. So next week’s episode will well next episode I should say will be delayed by one week. But yeah, probably have a lot more testings and I’ll have some things to talk about from that mastermind event too, so we can jump into that. hopefully the the AI stuff is inside Search Console by then too, so that’s coming as well. And yeah. a lot more testing this week and I am experimenting a bit more on the design side too. I’m rebuilding my website at the moment. So be able to give some feedback on that too. It’s ⁓ it’s so funny because the people that say, you know, you can use a you can get things ⁓ eighty percent of the way pretty quickly in AI, which you can, like the first thing was done very quickly, and then I’d say like the the last twenty percent of it can take Like you can do this first eighty percent in probably a couple of hours. The last twenty percent I reckon’s gonna take me like two weeks. So ⁓ yeah, just that fine-tuning, fixing everything up, getting all the little bits and pieces added. but yeah, we’ll get there soon and looking forward to chatting to you guys all about it in couple of weeks’ time. catch you on the next episode. Thanks guys. Check us out at e commerce. ⁓

Charles Travers: Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ marketing chats on all the podcasting platforms and Shopify Marketing Secrets ⁓ Gotcha there. Take care.