MY Journey Into YouTube 4m This video is going to be a little bit different than my usual. In it I talk about my journey of venturing into YouTube and talk about why I'm creating the channel. In short I'm creating this channel to offer free advice for the people who want to tackle the marketing on their own. Here is the link to submit your website for the Live SEO Audits that I'll be offering on Wednesdays: https://www.chicagoseoscholar.com/live-seo-audit Video Transcript: What's up, guys? You might be wondering why I am so close to the camera right now. That’s because we need to have a very serious conversation. Well, actually, this is one of my first YouTube videos, so I’m still trying to figure out all the angles and things like that—just being dramatic. Nevertheless, my name is Kenny Phillips, and I’m the owner of Chicago SEO Scholar. And of course, my camera did its thing. I’m keeping it in because I’m tired of redoing this video. Take two: Hey, guys! Thanks for sticking around. Like I mentioned before, this is still new to me—creating these videos—so there are going to be some mistakes. Every once in a while, I’m just going to keep them in to make things transparent and, well, more... what is that word I’m looking for? Authentic! That’s it—authentic. So yeah, that’s what I’m going to do for these videos. I’ll try to make them less polished because I don’t really like that style of video. I want you to get to know who I am. I do make mistakes—actually, more than once in a while—but I do my best to clean them up. Like I mentioned earlier, my name is Kenny, and I’m the owner of a digital marketing agency called Chicago SEO Scholar. What I want to do with this particular YouTube channel is help business owners, enterprise owners, or even someone on your team who doesn’t know SEO that well. Basically, I want to catch them up to speed so they can help you grow your business, get more clients or customers, and ultimately increase your company’s revenue. That way, you can give more raises, feed your family, donate to your church, or support charities you care about. That’s what this YouTube channel is all about—sharing free, valuable advice based on my years of experience. The Three Types of Videos I’ll Create With that said, there are three main types of videos I want to create. There might be a fourth one if you guys want to see the daily life of an SEO specialist. I can certainly do that, but honestly, I think my life is pretty boring. I don’t think those videos would be as beneficial to you. However, if you’d like to see how I live my life, let me know, and I can make that happen. For now, the three main types of videos I plan to focus on are: Shorter, Step-by-Step Style Videos These will be concise and provide a clear step-by-step process. For example, I could show you how to do keyword research or perform a backlink gap analysis for your competitors. This will help you understand which keywords to rank for—whether they’re commercial intent keywords that drive leads or informational keywords that bring in visitors. Case Studies These will include experiments and comparisons, like determining whether AI-generated content is better than human-written content. I can do a case study comparing the two to see which one ranks better on Google. SEO Audit Videos Every Wednesday (or every other Wednesday), I’d like to do a live YouTube session where I review someone’s website. Subscribers can submit their websites using a form I’ll link below. I’ll go through the site live, provide SEO optimization recommendations, and tailor the advice to the business owner’s goals. It’s important to align SEO strategies with what the business owner wants to achieve. If you’re interested in the vlogger-style videos, I can sprinkle those in occasionally. But for the most part, the channel will focus on these three video styles. Wrapping Up So yeah, that’s pretty much it! If you have any questions, my email information is below. Feel free to reach out. Thanks for watching, and I’ll talk to you guys later!

SEO Audit for Organic Self-Care Products Website 14m In todays over the shoulder video I wanted to go over how I would SEO optimize a e-commerce website that sells self care products. This is a tough industry if your website is new however their are things you can do to still see success. What You'll Learn: How do Find Easier Keywords to Target in Ahrefs. When You Should Create New Collection Pages. Video Transcript: All right, so I just want to share what I would do to optimize this website if it was brought over to me. The first thing I would want to do is figure out what type of products they are trying to sell and try to figure out what type of collection pages we can create from those. The first thing I would do is take a look at their shop and see what type of products they have. So, we can see here that they have a good amount of products like soaps, lip balms, beard care, pillow mists, rollers, and shower steamers. They have a collection of a bunch of different things. Without doing much research, I can tell this is going to be a difficult campaign to rank for unless they have a very large budget. If they were trying to go after something such as just “pillow mist” or “beard care” or even “bath salts and soaks,” all these keywords on their own would be extremely difficult to rank for because there are so many websites out there with significant authority that have been optimizing for these categories for 10-plus years. For something like this, we would have to get a little bit more strategic. What I mean by that is we’d need to dig deeper into what people are actually searching for in categories like beard care. If someone is looking for beard oil, again, this is a competitive keyword. If the client only wants to rank for “beard oil,” it’s going to be challenging. They’d have to go after something more specific, tied to the user journey. Let’s use a tool like Ahrefs as an example. If you input “beard oil” into the keyword section, it will generate 1,300 keywords that people are typing into Google. However, we don’t need all of these. For instance, the keyword difficulty for “beard oil” might say 12, but we can see that many of the top-ranking pages have higher Domain Ratings (DR). Comparing this to the site in question, which has a DR of 0, makes it clear that competing with these high-DR sites isn’t realistic—unless the client has a massive budget. To narrow the focus, we’d filter keywords by lowest DR and concentrate on the top five results since that’s where most of the traffic comes from. For example, “beard oil for black men” has 1.7K searches per month, and one of the top-ranking pages has a DR of 12. This tells me it’s a good keyword opportunity. Other examples include “rosemary oil for beard,” which gets 300 searches per month, and “beard oil for sensitive skin,” which gets around 200. For these opportunities, we’d create tailored collection pages, such as: Beard oil for black men Beard oil for white men Beard oil for sensitive skin Each page would need to be optimized with specific keywords and relevant content linking to the product being sold. Now, let’s apply the same strategy to other products. For instance, “shower steamers” might initially seem challenging. By filtering for lower DR keywords, we could uncover options like “essential oil shower steamers” or “shower steamers for congestion,” which might be easier to rank for. Collection pages for these variations, like “shower steamers for sinus relief,” would be created to target these keywords. Some products, like “hot flash spray,” might not have significant search volume because users don’t know they exist. In such cases, a PPC campaign could be more effective. For instance, running Facebook ads with a tagline like, “Are you experiencing hot flashes? Try our cooling spray!” could drive awareness and sales. For handmade soaps, we could target keywords like “handmade soaps,” which get around 600 searches per month. Similar collection pages could be created for these terms as well. In addition to collection pages, blog content would be essential for driving traffic and building authority. Informational blog topics like “beard care tips” or “how to use shower steamers for sinus relief” would internally link back to commercial pages. Internal linking helps build relevancy and improves the likelihood of ranking for transactional pages. For the proposal, I would suggest the following: Keyword Research : Identify long-tail keywords with low competition that align with the client’s products. Collection Pages : Create 15 new collection pages in the first month, each with 250–300 words of optimized content. Continue creating 2–3 pages per month as needed. Blog Content : Develop 10 blogs per month to build topical authority and link back to commercial pages. Backlinking : Acquire at least 10 backlinks per month to improve domain authority. By starting with long-tail keywords, we can build traffic and trust with Google, eventually allowing the site to rank for more competitive terms like “beard oil.” If you have any questions or need clarification, please feel free to reach out.

What Should You Do With 404s on a Website? 5m 404's can lead to a poor user experience, waste "link juice" and also make it harder for Google to crawl your website. I created this over the shoulder video to help you clean up the 404's on your website. What You'll Learn: How do you find broken links that trigger 404s? When is the best time to redirect them to reclaim link juice? When is the best to leave them as a 404? When is it best to recreate content for the 404 page? Video Transcript: Hey, what's up guys? I just wanted to create this video to show you what 404 errors are and what you should do with them. Right now, we’re in the Ahrefs audit, and I’ve already navigated to the 404 page section. There are two tabs to focus on: 404 pages and links to 404 pages . The 404 pages tab lists pages on your website that return a 404 error when someone visits them. The links to 404 pages tab shows live pages on your website that link to those 404 pages. These links need to be cleaned up by either redirecting them, creating content for the missing URL, or removing the link entirely. Step 1: Assess the 404 Error To decide which approach to take, start by going to the page itself. For example, let’s look at the "fighting gingivitis" page. Once there, you can figure out where it’s linking out from. You’ll see the anchor text that links to the 404 page. The easiest way to locate it is to copy the anchor text, paste it into the find bar, and identify where it appears on the page. Clicking the link will show that it leads to a 404 error, which is not a good user experience. Step 2: Determine the Best Fix From here, you want to decide the best course of action. For example, the anchor text might say, “at every regular dental exam.” Check if there’s a relevant blog on the website that discusses regular dental exams. If so, you can redirect the 404 page to that blog. Alternatively, instead of a redirect, you could update the link to point directly to the relevant blog post. If no relevant content exists, another option is to create a new piece of content about regular dental exams. This will take more time but could be a great long-term solution. Finally, if none of these options are viable, you can simply remove the link and the surrounding content that references the 404 page. Step 3: Additional Example Let’s go through another example. Say you find an anchor text that says, “schedule dental cleaning.” If the link points to a 404 page, you could redirect it to a service page about dental cleanings or the contact page. For instance, if the link was meant to lead to a “routine checkups and cleanings” page that no longer exists, you could update it to the contact page. This makes sense because users looking to schedule a dental cleaning are likely seeking a lead form or contact information for the dental practice. Key Considerations For each 404 error, use your best judgment to decide: Should you create a new page? Should you do a 301 redirect to a relevant page (such as a blog, service page, or contact page)? Should you remove the link entirely? Each situation will vary, so choose the approach that best fits the context of the broken link and your website’s structure. Wrapping Up That’s pretty much all I wanted to cover in this video. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Thanks for watching!

Should you exclusively use AI content to generate the content of your website? No. Now let me explain. Since November 30, 2022, AI has been on the rise. This was the initial release date of ChatGPT and ever since it has been popping up on news feeds with how advanced it has become. Nowadays, you can use ChatGPT to spit out an article in seconds. As of today, which is November 24, 2024, you can even chat with ChatGPT with its advanced voice mode . Due to this advancement in the technology of ChatGPT, many people have been wondering if they can use AI to create some or all of the content on their websites. This whole article is going to be about whether you should use AI or human-written content when creating the content for your website. I already gave you my answer at the beginning, but I do want to explain myself so you can have a better understanding of why I believe you should continue using human-generated content for the content on your website. Understanding AI-Generated Content AI-generated content can include multiple things such as blogs, summarization of content, marketing, product, descriptions, etc. It works by having a user input, a phrase, or a topic into an input box and then the AI is able to process this information to create an article or blog. The technology uses machine learning and natural language processing to produce a piece of content that mimics human writing. AI can also produce images, and help with data analysis. The advantages of AI are truly remarkable because it can help speed things up and cut costs on certain activities, such as data entry, but it can come with a cost if you are relying on it too much. Google's Stance on AI Content I want to start this section by saying, that Google's stance on AI content is this: if it is high quality and people-first content, then it's OK in their eyes. If you were to go to the Google Search Central blog, it would say “rewarding high-quality content, however it is produced” on the blog titled Google Search’s guidance about AI-Generated content . Google wants content that demonstrates E-E-A-T, which stands for expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It used to be E-A-T, but this changed to E-E-A-T on Dec 15, 2022 , because they realized experience plays a large role in the helpfulness of content. For example, if you're looking for information on how to rewire a Chandelier, that's probably a situation in which you would only want to see content produced by an expert. Otherwise, you run the risk of electrocuting yourself. However, in a different scenario, you might be wondering, what is the best chandelier to buy and want to read reviews. In this instance, maybe Reddit is the best option because people on Reddit might have firsthand experience with the type of chandelier you're trying to buy. In the end, it comes down to the experience the person has when they are creating the content. They might be an expert electrician so they can give you first-hand experience of how to rewire a chandelier or, in the case of the second scenario, they have first-hand experience of a particular chandelier so they can give you an honest review. These are things we have to take into consideration when creating content that Google thinks is high quality. Here are Google’s guidelines for creating reliable, people-first content that I highly recommend you check out. Google Helpful Content Update (HCU) On August 25, 2022, Google released a sitewide classifier that targets unhelpful content called the Helpful Content Update (HCU) . Google says the “helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well.” An example they gave of unhelpful content was a movie website that had auto-aggregated reviews from other websites without putting in any additional insight themselves. Here are some other notable things to mention: "Sites identified by this system may find the signal applied to them over a period of months" ( source ) "Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value, or is otherwise not particularly helpful." ( source ) "The system generates a site-wide signal" ( source ) Let's go over these real quick. If your site does end up getting hit by the HCU update, it will take a period of months to recover. Now Google isn't clear on how many months it will take to recover. It might take three months. It might take nine months. It's not clear, which means you’ll have this indefinite period of your website not getting traffic. This could cost your business revenue for many months. I also want to mention that it is a site-wide signal. Even if you have great high-quality content on your website, it can get pulled down the rankings if your website has enough low-quality content. Google is able to detect all of this automatically through its machine learning. Risks of Mass-Producing AI Content the risk of mass-producing AI content is that Google is most likely able to pick this up very easily. The fact that Google uses machine learning to detect low-value content, it's very likely they know when content is produced by AI. Now, at the beginning of this article, Google's stance does say that it comes down to the quality of the content and not how it was produced. However, they also gave an example from the HCU update that low-quality content can be content that is added to a website with no additional effort. This is just a hypothesis but based on the research that I've done, I believe that Google is putting an HCU classification on websites that exclusively use AI-generated content. AI content typically produces content that doesn't have depth, human touch, or originality. There's also the aspect of experience, which we talked about earlier. AI doesn't have the experience that a human would have so it lacks the EEAT that Google is looking for in high-quality people-first content. This is the main reason why I say creating human content is going to be best for your website. It will minimize the risk of your site getting hit by a Google penalty that can last an indefinite amount of time. With all this said, the human content has to be high quality and follow the guidelines Google provided us. Case Studies and Example Here are two case studies of websites that used 100 percent AI to create their content. Both of them were ranking very well until the HCU rolled out which demolished their rankings. The first screenshot is for Chipper Birds and the second is for Bonsimary.

For this article, I want to help you pick the right keywords so you can attract the right visitors (visitors who will convert into leads) to your website. If you are new, a keyword is something that people type into a search engine such as Google or Bing. Our goal is to get in front of these people, and this is what this article is going to be about. TLDR for Tools Needed + Free Ones (only need one): Ahrefs - $129/mo Semrush - $139/mo Google Keyword Planner - Free Ubersuggest - Free Understand Your Audience This is probably the most important thing when it comes to doing keyword research. I talk to a lot of business owners and a lot of them think that everyone is their ideal client. This isn't necessarily true when it comes to search engine optimization. We really want to hone in on who our ideal customer profile is, because it makes it a lot easier to go after keywords that people are typing in. We want to target an audience who is trying to solve a very specific problem for your industry and then create a custom landing page that solves that problem. Solving the problem could either come in the form of them calling your business or filling out an opt-in form or it could come in the form of you giving them the information needed on how to solve that problem on their own. Recent example: I had a personal injury attorney in Las Vegas and one of the keywords they wanted to rank for was, “attorneys in Las Vegas”. This wasn’t the best use for this attorney's investment so I deterred them from trying to rank for this keyword. Here's why: If someone is typing and attorneys in Las Vegas, what is the first thing that comes to your mind about what this user wants to solve? Exactly, you probably already have concluded what I'm getting to. Someone who's typing in this broad of a keyboard could be looking for any type of lawyer in Las Vegas. They might be looking for a personal injury attorney, tax attorney, family law attorney, etc. It's a very broad term and it will be hit or miss if this user is looking for the law you practice. Sure some of those users might be looking for a personal injury attorney in Las Vegas, but it would be very little. This is why it would be better to put more of that investment that you're spending on SEO towards more targeted keywords. Which we will cover now. Think Like Your Customers After you come up with your ideal customer profile (ICP), it's time to write down queries your ICP might search on Google at the “end” of their buying cycle. These are known as commercial intent keywords. Here are some examples for different industries: Lawyer : divorce attorney near me Painter: cabinet painters near me Dentist: emergency dentist near me Car Detailers: car detailers near me Roofer: roofing company near me Arborist: Tree service near me Start with Local Keywords The reason we want to start with commercial intent keywords is because these are going to be the ones that convert the easiest into a lead. Fortunately, these are the easiest keywords to discover. Pretty much what you would want to do is figure out all the different services that you offer your client and then attach and near me or a city at the end of it. Let me give you another example in the personal injury space. The services an injury law firm typically provides are car accidents, motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, slip and fall accidents, etc. Here are a few keyword ideas that you could use. Keyword Ideas for an Injury Law Firm in Las Vegas: personal injury law firm in Las Vegas car accident attorney in Las Vegas truck accident attorney in Las Vegas slip and fall attorney in Las Vegas motorcycle accident in Las Vegas These are all great keywords to target, for an Injury Firm in Las Vegas, because someone looking for any of these terms is likely to convert into a lead. When we do our initial keyword research, we want to work from the bottom up. Meaning, that we want to target the bottom of the funnel keywords first, which are going to be keywords that convert the highest. Then, once we establish our bottom-of-the-funnel keywords, we will want to work on the middle and top-of-the-funnel keywords. The middle and the top of the keyboards are going to be more informational, so these will likely be blogs as opposed to service pages. Use Keyword Research Tools If you have access to a paid keyword research tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush , it will make your keyword research a lot easier. However, there are still free tools, such as the Google keyword planner , and Ubersuggest that can help you with keyword research. I’ll create a video doing research on Ahrefs and the Google Keyword planner to help you out with this part. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords Above, I mentioned that we should also target the middle and the top of the funnel keywords. These are going to be what are called long-tail keywords. People who are at the beginning of their buying journey are going to be typing longer queries into Google. We want to reach these users as well since they can eventually turn into leads. These types of users are looking for information but are not necessarily ready to opt into a lead form or call your business yet. The reason why these keywords are beneficial is because they raise brand awareness. So if you're a personal injury lawyer and someone is looking for what to do after a car accident and your website pops up, this user is aware of your business. Then when they are ready to hire an attorney and type in “car accident attorney near me”, they will most likely click on your website because they are familiar with your brand already. This is why long-tail terms are still beneficial. The easiest way to find these long tail keywords is by using a keyword tool but if you don't have these, you can also use the people also ask section on Google. Here is an example of how to find long tail keywords on Ahrefs:

There are a lot of SEO basics that you have to know about before you can make it work for you. SEO stands for search optimization and is a way to get your website to the top of search results for specific keywords that people search for. Here are some of the basics to help you get started.

Growing your law practice can be difficult in this day and age because there is a lot of competition and also a lot of noise on and offline. However, we are going to go through four different strategies that you can use today to grow your practice and start getting new leads to your law firm. 1. Build Your Online Presence The first step that you can take is building an online presence, since over 76% of consumers research a business online before taking any action with them. This comes in the form of optimizing your website for targeted keywords that will bring in leads, or doing social ads such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook ads. Any of these channels will bring new leads to your business. If I had to rate these from one to four, I would first choose SEO because it would bring in the most qualified leads due to its very nature of people searching exactly what they want. Then from there, I would go to Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram ads because it allows you to cast a larger net to people who aren't specifically looking for an attorney at the moment. I must say that since these people are not specifically looking for an attorney when they're scrolling through social media, the conversion rate will be significantly lower than someone searching on Google. 2. Establish Yourself in the Community Establishing yourself in the community means more than plastering your law firm on buses, billboards, bus stops, etc. While these are good advertisements to participate in, you also want to get engaged with the community by engaging in nonprofit activities or donating to a local school or hospital, etc. Here are several other things that you can get involved with: Sponsoring a children's sports team Teaching a class or giving a seminar Participating in a giveaway Creating scholarships Participating in a charity Doing a pro bono case These tasks will help establish you in the community as a caring and involved member of the community. 3. Social Media This one was slightly mentioned above; however, using social media is a great way to get new clients. Most of your potential clients are going to have at least Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, which are great platforms to reach your audience. Now, I wouldn't go in with creating the standard ad where you are showcasing your law firm and only speaking about yourself on how you win cases. There is a time and place for that. However, a better route would be to follow the likes of Mike Mandell and Erika Kullberg , who provide information to people who are in need of legal help. Providing this type of information builds trust, which is one of the most important things in getting a new client to sign up. An example of this is if you were going to hire someone like myself to do your SEO. You're going to want to trust me before you hand over $5000+ per month. This is why I create these types of articles, and I have a YouTube channel where I show people how to do SEO. It creates trust because people are able to see me more, and they get an idea of what it would be like to do business with me. So, go out there, build a YouTube channel, and create useful information that would be helpful to someone that would be in need of legal help. 4. Get Client Reviews If you win a case for a client, don't be afraid to ask them for a review. It is at that point, after the case is won, that they are most likely to leave a good review. So, that is the best time to ask. You shouldn't wait until 2 to 3 months later to ask for a review because it most likely won't happen then. Now, there are some things that you have to remember as an attorney that you can't do when asking for a review, which you probably already know, but I'm still going to state them here. Be subtle - don't ask her for five-star reviews and make it seem like it's a requirement to leave feedback. Ask for feedback first to gauge their overall experience. If they didn't have the best experience, you probably don't want to ask them for a review because it would drop down your ratings. Now, if they didn't give great feedback, then you can try to do what you can to resolve that situation and then if you can resolve it then that's the time you can ask for the review because they'll leave an honest review. Make it easy for them to leave a review . You can do this by sending them links to your Google My Business, Yelp, or whatever platform you want to leave a review on. Be sure to respond to both positive and negative reviews . This shows professionalism, and that also shows that you are responsive. One word of caution though, if you are going to respond to negative reviews, please do not be petty. It does not look good. Respond back in a professional tone that you hear them out and you are willing to resolve whatever situation that they're going through with a phone call or through email. Following these four tips could help grow your practice so be sure to build your online presence, establish yourself in the community, get on social media and get client reviews.

Acquiring new clients can be challenging for law firms. One of the ways that law firms typically get new clients is through word-of-mouth and referrals, but if a law firm really wants to grow, they are going to have to expand into new marketing channels. Here are 5 ways to help your law firm get potential new clients. 1. Video Marketing If you haven't tried it already, you should try video marketing to get more potential clients coming into your law firm. Video marketing is a great marketing channel because the videos will help capture your audience and help them become more engaged. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are going to be the places that you would want to put up a video ad or even a video just going over some informational legal material that would be helpful or beneficial to your audience. Some examples of lawyers who use videos are going to be Law by Mike , Erika Kullberg , and Ugo Lord . I would highly recommend checking out their YouTube channels because they do an excellent job of creating YouTube shorts and long-form videos that will capture their audience’s attention. One of the video styles that they make is going over situations that happened in real life and giving legal feedback on what would happen if the case was taken to court. 2. Website Creation I don't want to spend too much time on this one because it should be a no-brainer. Having a website in the 21st century is a must because the majority of potential clients are going to be searching Google to find an attorney for the situation that they are in. Getting a website created will cost between $ 2500 to $5000 depending on how big your law firm is and how many pages you need to create. 3. Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a great way to get in front of your audience. The main reason I like SEO is because you can hyper-target the service you want to focus on. For example, if you want to only target motorcycle accidents in Chicago, you can create a page that specifically is about motorcycle accidents in the Chicagoland area. Once this page ranks well on Google, in the first three positions, you will get highly qualified visitors coming to your website. These visitors have a much higher chance of converting into a lead and therefore converting into a new case for your law firm. 4. Blogging Blogging for your law firm is also going to be beneficial. A lot of lawyers do not utilize creating a blog section because they don't think it is necessarily helpful, but I can assure you that creating a blog that has informational content will help bring in more leads. People who are searching for auto accident attorneys will likely first search for what to do after an accident, if there a state a no-fault state, or any variation of what they should do after an automobile accident. You will want your law firm to be there right in center when they type in those types of keywords into Google. After they do this type of research, they're going to start searching for automobile accidents attorneys in the city that they're located in, and if you're showing up on Google for those queries as well, they already know who your law firm is and most likely will fill out a lead form or call. 5. Purchase Leads As you probably already know, you can purchase leads as well. There are many sites that sell leads to attorneys; however, most of these leads are going to be sold to multiple different offices. The issue with this is that it makes it a lot harder to close on the lead, which is why the options above are going to be a better strategy for acquiring new clients

 Top 5 Sources for Personal Injury Leads Having established that buying leads is mostly suited to short-term or supplemental needs, here are some services and companies for obtaining personal injury leads. 1. 4LegalLeads.com