Rob Murray sits down with Intrigue Media’s Mick Selman and Aaron Towlson to cut through the AI SEO noise and explain what actually earns trust with Google and AI tools: the EEAT framework, real backlinks, and consistent content. They also debunk AI visibility scores as an unreliable metric landscapers shouldn't pay to fix.
00:29 Rob introduces Mick Selman and Aaron Towlson.
01:07 Mick and Aaron explain their roles: Mick handles SEO strategy and research, Aaron applies it with clients.
02:10 Why this episode exists: a flood of AI SEO noise and questionable AI-generated SEO audits.
03:02 The two audiences every business writes for: robots and people.
03:14 What it means to earn a robot's trust, and why Google's guidelines still lead the pack.
03:37 EEAT defined: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness.
04:38 Aaron's reframe: Google is just trying to answer people's questions well.
05:38 The AI slop problem and why volume of content isn't the goal.
07:13 The biggest AI content mistake: hitting play on a tool and never reviewing the output.
08:01 Better input equals better output. Feed AI tools real experience, testimonials, and specifics.
09:06 What experience actually looks like in a blog post, not just years in business.
10:33 Why experience and content compound like an investment the earlier you start.
11:09 The case for starting SEO now even when the payoff is a year or two out.
13:11 Google Ads as the hit, SEO as the cure. Why SEO is a long term strategy, not a quick fix.
14:12 Authority score explained, and the tools that measure it: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz.
15:13 What separates a lead-generating authority score from a weak one.
15:57 The three ingredients of authority score: traffic, backlinks, and natural link profile.
17:36 How to actually move the needle: create reasons for people to visit and make the site easy to find.
19:00 Why domain authority plays differently for local landscapers than for national SaaS brands.
20:32 Social media's real role in SEO: more places for people, and AI tools, to find you.
24:29 Why backlinks matter and why most clients ignore them before working with IM Landscape.
24:50 The honest answer on backlinks: earn them with great content, or pay for them carefully.
28:32 The pillar blog and supporting blog content model, localized project by project.
30:37 AI visibility scores debunked as an unreliable, unregulated metric.
32:17 Where real AI visibility data will actually come from: Search Console and Bing.
33:44 The AI readiness checklist mirrors EEAT: helpful content, site structure, backlinks, and buzz.
35:02 Priority one for AI readiness: make sure your site is indexable and check it in Search Console.
36:35 Mick's number one starting move for landscapers: post your own content, consistently.
37:18 The gym analogy: twenty minutes a day beats fifteen hours once.
38:06 Where to go deeper: Google's own EEAT documentation as a starting point.