maya SEO

Summary:

1. Share personal experiences with amateurs won’t know when they turn to the internet for advice in their DIY pursuits. Any time you can remember from your first day of work to today where you found a new practice and thought ‘Wow, this makes things a lot easier.’
2. Find ideas for problems to share your expertise on by using Google Trends; simply search queries related to amateur, residential painting (or whatever fits you best).
3. Painters are uniquely privileged in having a goldmine of social media content by taking before-and-after pictures of every job. One can multiply these benefits by captioning such posts with your informative content.
4. Content, on your site and social media, should display expertise by providing value as concisely as possible before elaborating further for those who need more.

The new paradigms of AI are laying siege to the efficacy of traditional SEO habits. Increasingly, AI is being used as a search engine, to the point Google has integrated it into the algorithm so their AI dominates the first half page of search results. Why is this? Because AI is able to simulate an understanding of concept more similar to humans. This places less emphasis on keywords except as a mean of accelerating the sorting process, and more emphasis on an article’s ability to break down a problem and analyze its details in a way which would be more receptive to humans. More receptive to humans than what? More receptive than traditional search engine algorithm standards, which weren’t really able to rank the quality of a piece of content beyond the amount of time users spent on a given page. But needing to spend a long time on a page isn’t always a good thing, especially when you’re having to sort through repetitive filler and unnecessary keyword use to find the information you came for. This makes the more natural, intuitive standards of AI much more conducive to human use than the previous standards of search engine algorithms.

The bad news is mostly bad news for industry incumbents; the pay-to-play theme that AI has developed is being shaken up, and smaller content creators are given more frequent opportunities to rank no, as explained in our article on the general function of AI in search. However, pay-to-play has always been the underlying theme in any market, so they don’t need to worry.

The good news is much more abundant; things are becoming more intuitive and, ironically, less robotic. The more of a role AI has in search ranking, the less value article templates, keyword carpet bombs, and AI (or, underpaid) content will have. While keywords will always play an important part in sorting and categorization, the ranking of content is finally starting to be judged on the experience of the author and ability to provide unique details and context rather than regurgitating facts.

How does this effect painters? Contractors in general have experience with things that amateurs seeking advice on Google may have no way to intuit. One of thee biggest realizations which saved me hours of labor per job as a painter was finding that I didn’t need tape 90% of the time if I bought higher quality brushes with a wider range of sizes for different angles. A beginner is going to be happy to know how to save on time and tape, and AI/underpaid writers aren’t going to have experiences like that to share. In the past, experiences were valued less than metrics like keywords and backlinks, but now you can skip the line if you’ve positioned yourself where an AI things you might have unique insights worth referencing (as most AI chatbots paraphrase their source while providing a link as citation).

You can easily find inspiration for topics you can share your experience on by using Google Trends. Search keywords related to residential DIY where you could display your expertise and provide value, such as ‘When is the roller better than a paint sprayer,’ ‘How to prepare for a paint sprayer,’ ‘How to paint 20+ ft ceilings,’ ‘Why is brush quality and width so important when painting corners?’

Also, social media. Painters tend to use social media to showcase before/after images of their work. It’s one of the many rewarding factors of this industry (as well as being largely recession-proof and immune to AI commodification). However, AI searches—as well as AI being integrated into social media search engines—are doing more to bring different platforms together in their search results. This means that re-posting your detailed advice as image captions on your social media posts will itself help your social media. For painters, there may even be a case to be made for dumping the website entirely and focusing on social media—where traditional search engine optimization practices actually work more quickly than on Google’s current algorithm.

Keep this in mind when writing your content; its goal is to provide value, but you’re also trying to give very practical advice. Also, you’re trying to represent your company’s expertise to a potential client, and straightforward brevity is essential for conveying that.