The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

Joel Miller is the co-founder of The SkyFloor, a digital agency he has run alongside his identical twin brother since 2008. The SkyFloor works across industries — churches, retail, education, and service organizations — with a philosophy centered on long-term partnerships and outcome-driven strategy rather than one-off deliverables. Joel writes regularly on digital strategy and business growth at theskyfloor.com/ideas. What We Cover Why the highest-value work any agency or consultant does is enabling clients to become who they want to be — and why AI can't replicate that A real-world custom GPT case study: how 30–40 hours of human listening made AI call analysis actually work What AI Overviews are doing to organic click-through rates, ad keyword availability, and SERP composition Why owned audience channels — especially email — are now the most durable marketing asset in a Google-disrupted world The AI slop problem and why authentic human presence is becoming the scarcest commodity online Episode Highlights Joel opens by reframing what The SkyFloor actually sells: not services, but outcomes. He describes their team as problem solvers who work backward from what a client wants to become — whether that's a more efficient church, a retail brand competing online, or an education company ready to grow beyond referrals. That outcome-first philosophy maps onto what Jeremy calls the pyramid of value: executing a tactic at the base, saving time in the middle, and enabling the client to become who they want to be at the top. As Joel puts it, the human ingenuity required to genuinely partner with a client is still a distinctly human task — one AI cannot replicate at the top of that pyramid. The conversation gets practical fast with Joel's sales call analysis case study. A client had lead conversion problems, and rather than feeding transcripts into a model, Joel listened to 30–40 hours of incoming calls himself — catching tone, the weight of a specific pause, the difference between enthusiasm and polite deflection. Once he'd mapped those human-observed patterns, he built a custom GPT framework and connected it to CallRail for automatic call scoring. The human defines the problem; AI scales the execution. Joel was equally candid about LLM limitations: ask an LLM for an answer and you've already biased the output. It is an answer engine, not an objective analyst — and the good prompt engineers know how to work around that tendency. "An audience can't just be taken away if it's your audience, no matter what Google does next." Joel is watching AI Overview impact in real time across his client accounts: impressions holding or growing, clicks down ~40%, and SERP layouts restructured so that for many queries, organic results appear nowhere above the fold. The composition is now AI Overview, then local pack, then sponsored results — organic is buried or absent. On the paid side, keyword categories that used to reliably trigger ad placements have been absorbed by overview content. His adaptation: heavier investment in high-intent near-me queries that still trigger standard ad slots, and a shift away from treating search volume as the primary planning input toward full SERP composition audits. The most durable advice from the episode is Joel's audience ownership argument. He's actively steering clients toward email lists and direct subscriber relationships — assets that t...

Unscripted SEO Podcast ️ Listen: unscriptedseo.com Guest: Timothy Malmros on LinkedIn Full Episode dialog with Timothy Malmros exposing blackhat SEO on SEO Arcade Guest Bio Timothy Malmros is a former gambling affiliate SEO with nearly two decades in the industry. After retiring from active affiliation, he turned his focus to investigating and documenting black hat SEO techniques — particularly in the gambling and sweepstakes space — through detailed posts on LinkedIn. His work offers a rare, transparent look at how spam tactics actually function, why they succeed, and why Google takes so long to stop them.In his own words: "Finished 12th grade. Got fired from Mcdonalds. Moved to Israel back in 2005. Applied to 20 jobs, got one reply and started working as a ”live person” human chatbot in an online casino. Promoted to affiliate manager 10 months later, did that for a bit over a year. Decided, lets try to become an affiliate, if I after a year can earn 3000 euro a month I wont go back to school. Sold my company in 2016 to gaming innovation group, joined as director of seo as employee nr 6 for gig media. Gig media grew to 200+ people and became a bit to pc for me, quit in 2018, rebuilt going hard on grey hat SEO then decided to take a break from the stress of SEO in November 2024 and basically retire but quickly got bored and started writing articles instead." Follow Timothy's ongoing research: linkedin.com/in/timothy-m-59a216b/ Episode Summary In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Timothy Malmros — a former gambling affiliate SEO turned black hat investigator — for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about how spam evolves, why Google keeps losing the spam war, and what the rise of AI really means for the internet's content ecosystem. Timothy shares his hands-on research into drop domains and the canonical trick, a modern black hat method that combines expired high-authority domains with spam link bombardment and canonical redirects to game Google's rankings in the gambling and sweepstakes space. The conversation expands into Trust Rank theory, click metric manipulation, the collapse of the anti-spam team, and the disturbing implications of AI-generated content replacing original human publishing. A refreshingly honest, technically deep episode for anyone who wants to understand what's actually happening beneath the surface of modern search. Key Topics Covered How black hat SEO evolved from hidden white-text links and site counter injection to the sophisticated drop domain / canonical trick What the canonical trick is and how it creates an infinite $10 ranking loop using expired high-authority domains Why gambling markets reveal emerging black hat techniques before any other niche Trust Rank theory and the Medic update — distance from seed sites and why Healthline beat Dr. Josh Axe overnight Why some drop domains work and others don't — the mixed signals Timothy is still investigating The dismantling of Google's anti-spam team and its connection to the ChatGPT competitive threat HCU as the reintroduction of Panda/Penguin — and whether it's algorithmic or hybrid Google creating then killing its own monsters — from recipe sites to AI overviews Click metric manipulation: Android bot farms with VPN rotation and what fake branding actually looks like Rank tracker visits inflating GSC impressions — and why Google finally cut off 100-page results Reddit as a...

In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath, to explore the often-siloed world of paid advertising and how it intersects with SEO. Managing over $450,000 in monthly ad spend, Jeremy Yang shares brutal truths about Google Ads setup mistakes, the death of exact match keywords, and why most businesses fail at Meta advertising before they even start. From offshore Google support nightmares to the "bullets in the chamber" framework for platform selection, this conversation reveals what seven years of hands-on PPC experience teaches you about digital marketing that no certification ever will. Guest Jeremy Yang Founder, Digital Goliath Website | LinkedIn Jeremy founded Digital Goliath seven years ago and currently manages about $450,000 per month in ad spend across Google Ads and Meta platforms. Based in Sydney, Australia, he works with small to mid-sized businesses and white labels for larger agencies, specializing in high-accountability, hands-on campaign management. Key Topics Discussed The SEO-SEM Divide (00:00 - 05:00) Why paid ads and SEO teams rarely communicate Operational intensity differences between channels Knowledge-sharing culture in PPC vs. SEO communities Why Google gives advertisers more data than SEOs get Google Ads Setup Nightmares (05:00 - 10:00) The fox guarding the henhouse: letting Google set up your campaigns Offshore vs. onshore Google support experiences Most common setup errors (cramming everything into one campaign) Why following scripts doesn't work in modern PPC The Death of Exact Match (10:00 - 15:00) How Google Ads has shifted to theme-based campaigns Everything is "broad-ish" now regardless of match type settings Competitor brands sneaking into your keyword auctions Performance Max and the return of negative lists ROAS-based campaign structuring for e-commerce Display Ads: Remarketing Only (15:00 - 20:00) Why display should only be used for remarketing The spammy site problem and how to exclude them Diminishing returns on display, YouTube, and discovery feeds Strategic use of minimal display budgets ($10-20) for brand presence Platform Selection Framework (20:00 - 30:00) "How many bullets you got in the chamber?" - the content asset question Meta is about burnout: why you need consistent creative production When to go 80% Google, 20% Bing (service businesses without video) When Meta makes sense (businesses with UGC and video capabilities) Real-world example: Bubble.com Casting (children's modeling agency) Cost Realities Nobody Discusses (30:00 - 35:00) High-CPC industries: $200/click for tow trucks, $150/click for credit cards Why $30/click for lawyers isn't unusual Budget requirements for competitive industries When to rely on Performance Max vs. traditional search campaigns SEO Value Proposition for Small Business (35:00 - 45:00) If you run out of ad budget, your campaign's over SEO builds appreciable assets that compound over time The upscale effect vs. the burn rate of paid ads Working with ads teams to target expensive keywords organically Client filtering: not every client is worth acquiring AI Overviews and the Future of Search (45:00 - 55:00) ChatGPT ads platform: $60-80 CPMs for businesses spending $1M+ The "charge and forget" model vs. nuanced ad platforms AI overview impact: 25-40% traffic loss for publisher sites The mea...

What happens when a marketing coach who's also an actor sits down to talk about authenticity in business? You get one of the most unfiltered conversations about trust, AI, and human connection in marketing that we've had on this show. Kyle Merrick doesn't pull punches. As the founder of Anarchy For A Day and a marketing veteran with nearly a decade of agency experience, he's seen it all—and he's not afraid to call BS on what's broken in modern marketing. In this episode, we dive deep into the tension between performance and authenticity, why AI-generated content is killing trust, and how businesses can differentiate themselves in commodified markets. Kyle brings a unique perspective as both a marketer and an actor, understanding how to build believability while staying within boundaries. This conversation gets heated, philosophical, and practical all at once. If you're tired of the same sanitized marketing advice, this episode is for you. Key Topics Discussed Trust & Authenticity in Marketing (00:00-10:02) Why marketers have a trust problem The challenge of discerning real vs. fake in the digital age How social media has groomed us to accept mixed messages The importance of delivery over content AI vs. Human Connection (10:02-22:31) Why AI-generated marketing content fails to build trust The role of podcasting as a "safe space" for authentic conversation How LLM tools confidently lie (and why that's dangerous) The laziness trap: when efficiency kills effectiveness The Coloring Book Analogy (22:31-27:39) Finding authenticity within corporate boundaries How to differentiate without going "cray-cray" Showing customer pain points authentically The golden rule applied to business communication Market Understanding & Differentiation (27:39-37:23) Why most businesses don't truly understand their marketplace How to differentiate in commodified industries The importance of speaking your customer's language Interviewing clients as a core marketing strategy Consistency & Long-Term Thinking (37:23-40:15) Why consistency beats overnight success How search engines and humans reward sustained effort Understanding where your audience actually spends time Building trust through reliable, authentic communication Notable Quotes "No marketer is really trustworthy until you actually get to know them. So I'm not even going to try to pitch myself on that." "I don't give a shit about anything your business has to say if you're using AI. Let me see the people behind it, even if they're paid actors." "Human to human podcast. This is the very important bit." "Having been in business for myself for a decade now, it's like, this is the only kind of conversation I actually value because I know it's real, because you can sense the pain behind my words." "People don't truly understand their marketplace. Go talk to the people that you're trying to serve or provide solutions to or sell a product to, whatever. Get to know them, their world." "I always think about it like a coloring book. The lines are really what is within bound and reason for what is going to be believable." "If you want real conversation, dish it out. Maybe that's the best answer to how can we get more genuine conversation in corporate marketing. Fucking do it. It ain't that hard." "Business is still human. And if we're not accounting for that human factor, I wish you the best." "Consistency is key. You need to be doing it a while for these different robotic entities to deem, 'All right, well, you're human and you do this.'"...