AI SEO Optimization & Content Creation w/ Nina Clapperton

podcast

Aug 22

Written By Brittany Herzberg

AI SEO optimization is greatly impacting content creation. Today, we’re exploring best practices!

LISTEN TO PART 1 OF THE CONVERSATION

***“We’re not just doing this for sh*ts & giggles—we’re doing this to actually make money in our businesses.”***

Nina Clapperton, a fellow SEO specialist and Thriend of mine (translation: we met on Threads), is baaaack!

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of our conversation, you’re gonna want to do that first! We recorded this in one go, so it will make much more sense with both parts. 😉

We're digging even deeper into all things AI, SEO, & content creation.

You’ll discover our favorite tools, workflows to follow (whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been doing this for a hot minute), & Nina even proposes a challenge for us all…

It’s a juicy one! Tune in, take notes, & save this episode for future reference. 📝

Topics covered in this podcast episode:

Why 0-volume searches aren’t something to avoid
The MOST efficient way to make content people actually want
Why Nina is on a mission to reclaim the word “lazy”
How to monetize content easily with the help of SEO
The fastest way to build trust as an entrepreneur
How client reviews & testimonials can improve your funnel
Why a Facebook or Instagram page for a business is NOT good for business
What “SameAs” schema is & why you need it for AI searches
A next step to take with SEO content creation
An SEO mindset nugget

OPTIMIZE MY HOME PAGE FOR SEO ($77)

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Meet: Nina Clapperton

Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO. She turned a passion for blogging into profit using what she calls her search-powered business framework—scaling income without needing massive traffic. She’s had $100K months with audiences under 1,000, all while working 10–20 hours a week due to chronic illness. Now she teaches thousands of bloggers and business owners how to do the same using SEO, community, and AI that actually works like a teammate, not a robot

Mentioned Resources:

Keysearch (20% off with KSDISC)

Free SEO Content Audit Checklist

Scroll down to #12 for RankMath SameAs Schema

This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!

The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows

Brittany Herzberg:

We are back with part two of my conversation with Nina where we are getting into a meaningful and practical conversation about AI and SEO. If you have not listened to part one, you're going to want to go do that first. So go do that and then come back and join us. The link is below and we'll see you in the show. I so agree that SEO often feels exclusionary and it doesn't have to be, and it even doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it. So I also love your take on you can check the search volume, but it's not that big of a deal at the end of the day. And I used to be so afraid of like, oh my gosh, this one has a search volume of zero. And then after a while I was like, wait, but this is filling a gap that people are actually talking about. So you did a really great job of articulating all of that. And if it's a conversation that you're having with a person, a real human who is either an ideal client or an actual client or previous client of yours, that's definitely an indicator that you should be talking about that thing, because probably no one else is.

Nina Clapperton: And I think, like, that's been something I've done really well as well, like on socials. But the main thing is, like, if someone asks me a question one time, it's becoming a short form piece of content. So it's becoming like something that I'm going to publish on thread, something that I'll make a quick Instagram story around, something that I'll post to my Facebook groups, whatever. If I get asked the question three or more times, it is becoming a standalone piece of content I can direct people to. Because again, I'm lazy. Don't want to answer the same question more than three times. See, I think that's efficient.

Brittany Herzberg: I wouldn't even call that lazy. I'm like, yes, do that.

Nina Clapperton: I think this is the thing. I think my version of lazy is efficient. Yeah, with SEO, it's the laziest form of marketing to some extent because it has the longest lifespan. And so that's why those blog posts are great. Like if I get asked that question three or more times, even if I can't like get search volume for it, clearly it mattered to people. And so it's going to save me time in the long run. And I can give it as a link to people. But also if that many people are asking if I internal link it, even if they don't know to search for it yet, Because a lot of people don't. And it's something that, like I hired a sales page writer for the first time and we were doing like conversion optimization, which, like, I would not have searched for. I wouldn't have been like, oh, how do I, like, improve the conversions of my FAQs? And we were looking at for SEO keywords and it's like they don't exist because people don't even know that's a need that they have yet. But all of her clients end up needing it. So I was like, why don't you have some blog posts around that so you stop spending a hundred hours a year emailing people about it. And that's, I think, so important. Like if you can spend an hour, two hours writing a blog post, do that. Create that services page, answer it in the FAQs on the services page, put your expertise on your about page. If people keep being like, why you? Why would I hire you? And it's not somewhere on your website. That's a problem. So put it there. Then if someone asks the question five or more times, that's when I create something that's like a freebie. They can download and join my email list. I create like a workshop around it or I create a paid offer around it because people are struggling. And I actually had like a Jasper AI course. I don't rep them anymore. I do not recommend Jasper. Would highly recommend people avoid them, actually because of some scammy business stuff that they started doing that I didn't love. Use ChatGPT or Claude. They're better. But anyway, I started a course on it. It was like a 50 course. I made $30,000 on it in I think, a year and a half. I think is how long I sold it. And the way that I did that largely was I started talking about Jasper like crazy because I liked it. People were like, hey, I want more. And I was like, cool, here's a bunch of videos. They were like, cool, I want more. I was like, great. I found a sponsor to like co host a webinar with me. People were like, I still want more. Make a course. And I was like, okay. So I made a course and then it just sold like crazy. I wasn't holding back information. In fact, I was like giving the milk away for free constantly because that builds trust. I call it the Costco free sample policy. I'm like, I'm not going to buy a box of 800 egg rolls if I haven't had one egg roll. Like, I'm not committing to this so that's a big thing to me. And I think that again, like you were talking about with filling the content gaps, we also have to go back to traditional marketing here, where for a while their SEO was about every blog post on its own. They all existed in their own little sphere. I think your website is an ecosystem and you actually have to think about how it all works together. And so everything needs to have conte to exist together. Nothing can exist in a vacuum or else it doesn't help anybody. And really everything should add context to each other and should be easy to internal link. It should be easy to drive people through the Aida funnel into making a purchase of something. Because like, let's be real, we're not just doing this for shits and gigs. We're doing this to like actually make money in our business. And the best thing you can do is map out what does your audience want from point A to point B. And point B is going to be that they're buying from you. So like, what helps people get there? And like you were talking about with testimonials. Because I'm also so bad at testimonials, I always forget to ask. I feel weird asking. But with that I'm like, you need to ask. And it's great to set up automations for it. So with those testimonials, look at like how they actually decided to purchase and what made them purchase and then put that in the funnel because you need to be like, oh, okay, someone bought off of this like emotional email or this logical thing or this case study. You want to know that. That way you can then create a funnel that's going to make sure you include that. Because if you don't, then you're just like leaving this leaky funnel. That's not going to help you. And I know funnels like such a buzz marketing term, but like, I'm just.

Brittany Herzberg: Gonna take that one back too.

Nina Clapperton: Honestly, all these terms, it's only clickbait, it's only buzzwords if they don't actually do anything. So I'm like, let's take them back, let's reclaim them. But yeah, I think ultimately like SEO can be really cozy. I think SEO can be so powerful. And I think like you're saying people overthink it and a lot of the reason they overthink it is because they feel like they need to do it at 110%, no posts, 110%, no page is 110%. You're always around 80 and that's fine. The main Thing is focus on that audience and focus on the ecosystem. That's when you're going to have success. Because SEO is site wide. It is not at a single post. And if you're like, this single post needs to rank to, like, make my business, I'm like, your business shouldn't hinge on a single blog post or a singular page on your website. It really should be everything together.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I could not agree more. And plus, even, like, expanding from there. Your podcast, guest interviews, your social media profiles, like, all these other things factor in. And I've heard a lot of, like, our mutual friends talking about, like, search everywhere optimization, which is something that I've been doing in practice and I'm sure so many of us have been doing in practice, but actually having it reframed, I think is getting a lot more people on board, which I'm grateful for. But it's also like, you know, that's the thing.

Nina Clapperton: I'm like, again, I don't think a business should hinge on a single marketing platform, because they are marketing platforms. They are not your business. It's like, people have like, oh, I run a photography business, but it's just an Instagram page. And I'm like, that's not a business. It's a profile on Instagram. You don't own that. And what if you got blacklisted tomorrow? What if Instagram does go away? Like, we don't control these things. So I always think it's so important. I was at, like, a conference and the way someone put it, I loved it so much, and I don't remember what her name was, but she was like, you have to have your wifey and then you have your side hoes, and you should always have at least two side hoes. And I was like, that is so well put. Because, yeah, you're putting the most energy into one thing and that's okay. We're all going to have, like, our main thing and. And then you have to have a couple others because you have to have other touch points. You have to have, like, those side pieces you're visiting one day a week or whatever. I don't know. I don't know how people are balancing this, but, like, I just thought it was so. It's so funny and visceral in the imagery that it does help you remember. Like, you need to. Yeah. Exist in multiple places. And, like, in this white paper thing that this person was telling me about, they were like, yeah, genuinely, every platform for travel blogging, you were mentioned as, like, a key resource And I was like, that's wild to me because my focus is really like, my blog with SEO, my newsletter, and then my Facebook group putting in energy or effort into these things, really. But I'm showing up and that matters. And I do think I forgot to mention same as Schema earlier when we were talking about, like, what you need for AI search and even just for normal SEO, same as Schema is the schema that says, hey, this Nina Clapperton on Instagram is the same as this Nina Clapperton running she knows SEO. You with Rank Math, it's so easy to set up. When you set up Rank Math, it's going to ask you for your social profiles. You just link them and then you're done. And basically what it's saying is, this is the same Nina, same as Nina over here, Nina over here, Nina over here. These are the branded ones. Now, if you have multiple authors on your site, you also want to do this at the author profile level. So, like, for she Knows SEO, okay, my weird dog TikTok is not going to be something for she Knows SEO, but it's a Nina Clapperton thing. So on that, I'm going to be like, she knows SEO, are all of these profiles Nina is she knows SEO and her random side quest she's doing for fun. And I think that that's, again, that element of you're showing up in more than one place. You're omnipresent, you're multimodal. But also something I think people forget about is that the search results are multimodal in terms of, like, different forms of content, different video versus blog posts versus pages, versus your business profile. For Google, my business on Google Maps, everything is getting indexed now. So if you take one piece of content, you actually have opportunities to have five places in the top 10 from one piece of effort you did. That's amazing. That's so cool. And then it lives on. So I think it's really important to get in a habit of repurposing and don't choose platforms based on popularity. Choose platforms on what you like. Because then it's easier to show up for and not be just like, oh, I've got a market there. Again, like, yeah. Also that's what helps. Like when we're talking about those lows. Enjoying the platform, enjoying the content, connecting with your audience. It gets you through those algorithm slumps. And also with, like, the SEO side of it as well. Have fun with the writing of the content. Like, have your own voice, actually bring things up. Don't Be afraid to be negative. Don't be afraid to get a little bit unhinged and messy.

Brittany Herzberg: Yep.

Nina Clapperton: Make it feel like how it's going to feel like when they call you or work with you. And a great way to do that is voice to text. So I often, like, will voice a text as I walk my dog or as I'm driving or something. But Chad, GPT, it'll clean it up for you a bit and then edit that into a post. So much simpler because you're like, starting from a point of, I'm talking to my ideal audience. So much easier.

Brittany Herzberg: It's so much easier. And then even just like something I enjoy writing, I enjoy that medium. And so I will actually, like, write things out. And I just have gotten to the point where I'm like, I'm going to write this as if I'm talking to Cecily or Val asked me this question, so I'm going to answer her. So I will actually have people in mind as I'm writing the question, whether they were the ones that asked it or whether I'm like, gosh, I really wish that I could get so and so to. To do this thing. So even just having someone in mind, whether you're doing the voice note or you're writing, I feel like all of this is like. I mean, first of all, it's like lazy marketing at its finest. It's also really bringing us back to a lot of core things that I like talking about. And one of them is authenticity. People want to know you. We've talked about that thread through this entire conversation. And also like sharing things, not being the gatekeeper. And that's one thing that people comment about me is they're like, you don't gatekeep. Nina doesn't gatekeep. There's a reason, and there's a reason that it works, and there's a reason that we're known for these things and that people still come to us for these different types of services or information. It's because we have become a source of. You can bring a question, we'll give you an answer, and if we don't know something, then we'll give you a link to somebody else's something because they have that thing, too. It really warms my heart because finding the joy, doing things that are fun, staying true to yourself, delivering the same experience, whether it's like a free thing or a paid thing or whatever the thing may be. So just like having that same personality and the same feel, the same vibe throughout everything. I think that's so huge. So I'm really grateful that you reminded us of all of that. And for anyone who wants to be in your world, tell us all of the things, tell us all the places remind us where you're active.

Nina Clapperton: So the main place is sheknowssseo Co. You can find me there. I've got hundreds of articles on all sorts of things and I'm constantly adding to it. You'll also find a lot of like, very in depth case studies and comparisons of things because I'm messy and I like to test things and I like to break things. So you'll find a lot of stuff there. You can also, if you want to ask me any questions, my SEO for Bloggers Facebook group is the best place to do that. I answer literally every question and it is free to join. Just come over there then my email list. I send a newsletter every Tuesday and we're starting to add some more tracks to that with some extra analogies and AI tips. Tips. But that's a very fun spot. And if you go to SheKnose SEO Co audit, you'll get my free content Audit checklist, which is more of a workbook of exactly how I took a site from 5,000 page views to 65,000 page views with a massive audit that I did largely with free tools. KeySearch is in there, so that would be a paid tool that would be in there, like Brittany's affiliate link and then come over to me and then learn how to use it is what I'd recommend. And then at the SheKnows SEO YouTube channel, you'll find all sorts of tips and tricks. I would say avoid me on threads and Instagram because it's unhinged and weird. And if you want that, it's great.

Brittany Herzberg: It's amazing.

Nina Clapperton: It's Nina Clapperton. But yeah, if you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to me. I'm always happy to answer questions and help people out. If I can challenge everyone listening to really like prioritize your SEO for a month, I want you to pick a month. I want you to be like, this is my SEO month and I want you to plan 5 to 10 pieces of content or even plan all 20, but don't write all 20 immediately. It'll be too much.

Brittany Herzberg: Don't follow Brittany. Don't, don't, don't, don't do that.

Nina Clapperton: I mean, to be fair, I've written 100 posts in a month before. So if you can do it, will you see the outside world and Your Uber eats bills will be insane. So, like, you gotta balance things. But I think it's important to, like, set yourself okay, one a week you're gonna do for like 10 to 20 weeks. What are the things your audience asks about? What are like, the things that you think other people are getting wrong? Not all of those posts need to have a keyword. To be clear, some of them are gonna have like a keyword, but it's unrankable because it's like SEO tips and tricks. Yeah, your brand new site's not going to rank for that. That's okay. But it's adding context. So, yeah, I want to give you a challenge that I would love to see you guys create this content and feel free to come. Like, when you've written it, tag me. I would love to see it. I will give you some page views. I'll click to it from socials because that does sometimes help with like, Chrome and everything. Email them to me. I don't mind. I love to, like, just go check things out and cheerlead you because I think the biggest thing you can do is, is just start working on it. You can always perfect it later. And again, like, perfect is an imaginary concept. It will never be a hundred percent perfect. You will always keep iterating and, like, tweaking it over the years. If I wrote a perfect post in SEO when I started in 2022, I would have had to rewrite it every year anyway. Like, why are you making it perfect? When things change, it's okay. So it just needs to be good enough that right now you'd be okay sending it to, like, two clients. That's all. And ultimately, if there's a typo, genuinely, no one will care.

Brittany Herzberg: My boyfriend, he's an editor and like, yeah, he's not gonna be perfect. I'm not gonna be perfect. P.S. i think I needed this therapy session more than anybody else listening. So I'm really grateful for the, like, done is better than good. That's my new phrase. But yeah, he had someone actually write him and be like, you had a typo on this blog post. And he was like, okay. Did you find the blog post helpful? What the crap?

Nina Clapperton: This is like an Instagram hack that used to be like, a really big thing is you would put a typo in because then everyone would comment. So I'm like, it gets you engagement. Like, it's a thing that people would do to, like, they'd misname something or like, even in podcasts, people will mispronounce and like, I'm from Ontario and Canada. People will pronounce it Ontario, specifically in podcasts and True Crime to get people to tag them on socials.

Brittany Herzberg: I've never thought of this thing.

Nina Clapperton: Oh, it's a huge thing.

Brittany Herzberg: You've given me so much to think about, especially not only with just how my own website works, because, frankly, I have been so focused on client work that my poor website has, like, existed. And we've only just started, like, rekindling our relationship this year.

Nina Clapperton: Oh, my God, Brittany. Like, my website is as dry and dusty as my relationship status, for sure. I think it's so common for us because, like, we're focused on client work.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, it's the whole, like, Cobbler's Kids thing, so there's definitely that. But then even, like, having the community type space, I feel like that's been something that's been intimidating to me, but something. I know this is, like, something you're definitely passionate about, and we probably have to have a whole other conversation on this, but that is something that I have been missing and haven't really figured out the right place to house it. But I've got a member vault thing now, and I want to say that that's one of the things that they offer is a community space. So maybe with that, I will be able to play around with it. But it's definitely on my radar. And, like, this is just another reminder that, like, oh, yeah, you could be doing this, Brittany, because just like you, I have had a lot of my services, my offers, my products, my workshops, my whatever. The podcast exists because people are asking me questions, and I love that. I get asked questions and I say that, and it's not fake. Like, genuinely love getting asked questions.

Nina Clapperton: So honestly, this is thing people are like. Like, isn't it exhausting? Or, like, whenever people are like, I want to start a Facebook group, but I don't want people to talk to me. I'm like, then don't start a Facebook group. What? What are you talking about? Like, I started this business because, number one, my dog won't talk to me about this. Number two, none of my friends and family would listen to me anymore. And number three, my therapist banned me from talking about Google Analytics because I would, like, bring it up so much. I needed somewhere to talk about it and talk about it with people who get it, who get the wins and stuff. I also don't think it has to be in a group, to be honest. Like, I think even, like, on threads, you do a great job with this. Instagram comments. DMs like email replies. It doesn't always have to be public facing. It doesn't always have to be like truly like a group or forum. I think it's just about making the connections and you already do a lot of that. So I would say, like, don't stress about platform. Like pick a place that you enjoy hanging out. Like, it can just be threads. Like it needs to be somewhere where someone can start a conversation with you. So that's why to me, like, YouTube is hard because people can't just like come up to you and have a chat.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.

Nina Clapperton: With other places there's a lot of opportunity for that. And like, because you have email, people can do that. Because you have threads where they can tag you, you can do that. So you can definitely curate a place. The main thing to me is like, with community, just be accessible to the point where people feel like they can ask you questions and then they will and just like create a standard for yourself of answering. And for me, it helped to have one central place to do that because I get overwhelmed with all the socials. People still message me everywhere and I will respond. It just might take me a bit longer because I'm not on Instagram every day.

Brittany Herzberg: I like Instagram, so I don't know, maybe that's part of. I should probably go look and check. But I do, I'm, I guess, different from me, where I can bounce and I can have a conversation. One of my friends, actually, Leah, so who. She edits the podcast. We have, I don't know, at any given time, like five or six or seven different conversations, like text, email, threads, Instagram. What's the other thing? Telegram. Like, we're just like all over the place.

Nina Clapperton: I feel like I can do that with friends, but with like students or clients, the problem is because, like, they'll tell me in one spot and there's always like, there's always like 40 Jakes or like 40, like Lauras or something. And some places it's like, okay, here you have your blog name.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.

Nina Clapperton: Here you have your business name. Here you have your name, here you have a fake name. And so I'm like, I don't remember that it's the same person. And then I just get like, very embarrassed where I'm like, oh, so what's your income goal? And they're like, oh, I already told you. I'm like, yeah, you did, but you.

Brittany Herzberg: Had a different picture over there.

Nina Clapperton: Yeah, I thought that was you. So like, I don't know. So yeah, with my friends, I'm the Same, though.

Brittany Herzberg: That's kind of what my brain does. Yeah. So that's good to hear that yours says, before I forget, I want to tack on almost like an efficiency, I don't know, upgrade, let's say, to the blogging challenge. Because I really like that and I need to put myself on that blogging challenge, too. One thing that's been really helpful for me in 2025 is I realized that a lot of my conversions come from email. So I will put a lot of time and attention into the email and then I can very easily take that email because I write pretty long emails and turn it into a blog post. So if you are hearing any of this and you're like, but the blogging sounds so challenging, do you write an email once a week? I'm going to throw in the word should here. I don't normally do this, but if you want to remain top of mind, if you want to grow those connections with your community, I would say definitely put a little bit more emphasis, at least for a month. We can just do this as a trial on emailing your people once a week. Take that email, turn it into a blog post. So that will help you just be really thoughtful and intentional about everything that you're doing, and it'll make it more.

Nina Clapperton: Efficient a hundred percent, because there's no need to be creating from scratch constantly. And I agree. I think email also, there's less rules and less structure, so it's easier to start there and then get to play around with it.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, for sure. If you're listening, let us know what your aha's were. Find Nina and me on Instagram. Come in our DMs. Give us, like, your thoughts, your feedback. Make sure that you're following Nina in all the places. She's got lots of resources. I have resources. Like, between the two of us, you'll figure out SEO 100%.

Nina Clapperton: You will.

Brittany Herzberg: But thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining me. Nina and I will catch you all next time.

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