In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by Louisa Frahm, an experienced SEO strategist who has worked with some of the world’s biggest media and publishing brands including ESPN, Google, LA Times, People Magazine, TMZ, Yahoo, and E! Online. Louisa has built her career specialising in news SEO, audience strategy, and helping editorial teams understand how search can support their content goals. She has also recently launched her own search consultancy, Frahm Focus.

In this conversation, we look at why news SEO is such a unique discipline, how search strategies differ across entertainment, sports, and breaking news environments, and why successful SEO in publishing requires far more than simply optimising articles.

Louisa shares her experience working inside some of the biggest newsrooms in the world, explaining how SEOs can build trust with journalists, train editorial teams, and create sustainable search cultures where SEO becomes embedded into the content workflow.

We also discuss the future of publishing in an AI-driven search landscape, the rise of Google Discover, personalised search, Reddit, multimodal content, and why SEOs increasingly need to think beyond rankings and become audience strategists.

Louisa discusses:

- Why news SEO is fundamentally different from traditional SEO

- The challenges of working in fast-paced editorial environments

- How SEOs can build relationships with journalists and editorial teams

- Why education and training are essential for scalable SEO success

- How to create SEO advocates within newsrooms

- Why performance measurement is changing beyond clicks and page views

- The impact of AI Overviews and AI search on publishers

- Why publishers need to think beyond Google Search results

- How Google Discover and personalised search are changing visibility

- Why SEO teams need to collaborate more closely with social, video, and editorial teams

Topics covered include:

- The differences between SEO for news, entertainment, sports, and traditional websites

- Working as the only SEO within large editorial organisations

- Managing the speed and pressure of breaking news SEO

- Training journalists and editors to understand search behaviour

- Building trust between SEO teams and editorial teams

- Using performance data and “receipts” to prove SEO value

- Creating post-mortem reports after major editorial events- Preparing SEO guides ahead of major news moments and tentpole events

- Google I/O, AI Mode, and the changing search experience

- The impact of AI Overviews on publisher traffic and click-through rates

- Why publishers need to diversify beyond Google

- TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and the growth of alternative search behaviours

- Multimodal search and creating content across different formats

- The rise of audience strategy as the next evolution of SEO

- Google Discover, preferred sources, and personalised search

- How user-generated content is influencing search visibility

- Breaking down silos between SEO, social, video, and editorial teams

- How to get more value from Google Trends data

- Using regional, seasonal, and rising query insights for content planning

In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by Ash Nallawalla, an SEO consultant with over 25 years of experience in enterprise SEO, digital strategy, and in-house search operations across large organisations including banking, insurance, telecoms, and global brands. Ash has worked both agency-side and in-house throughout his career and is widely recognised for his focus on governance, operational SEO, and scalable search systems.

In this conversation, Ash introduces a completely new way of thinking about SEO performance and organisational readiness through the lens of governance maturity rather than rankings. Instead of focusing on traditional SEO audits, he outlines a framework designed to future-proof brand visibility across search engines and AI systems by strengthening internal processes, decision-making structures, and operational resilience.

We look at why SEO performance often disappears after improvements are made, not because of external algorithm changes, but due to internal organisational failures such as poor documentation, unclear ownership, and weak change control processes.

Ash also introduces his Visibility Governance Maturity Model (VGMM), a structured workshop-based framework that scores organisations across maturity levels and identifies critical single points of failure (SPOFs) that silently undermine long-term SEO performance.

Ash discusses:

- Why SEO improvements often degrade due to internal organisational issues, not algorithms

- The concept of governance gaps as the hidden cause of SEO performance loss

- Why SEO is a cross-functional responsibility, not a single-team ownership

- How “accidental SEO managers” create structural risk in large organisations

- The importance of documentation, accountability, and decision ownership

- Why crisis response planning is essential for maintaining search visibility

- How pre- and post-migration processes can make or break organic performance

- Why structured data governance is often missing in enterprise environments

- How AI systems increase the importance of structured, well-governed content

- Why visibility now depends on organisational systems, not just optimisation

Topics covered include:

- The Visibility Governance Maturity Model (VGMM) and how it works

- Moving from SEO audits to governance and maturity assessments

- The five-level maturity scale used to evaluate organisational readiness

- Why most organisations operate at a low maturity level without realising it

- Single Points of Failure (SPOF) and how they silently break SEO performance

- Lack of ownership for SEO outcomes across teams

- Absence of structured change approval processes for SEO impact

- Missing pre-release SEO checklists in deployment workflows

- Weak crisis response structures and undefined escalation paths

- Migration risks: pre-audit and post-launch validation failures

- The role of structured data governance in AI and search understanding

- Why AI and search engines reward structurally resilient organisations

- The difference between firefighting SEO and mature SEO operations

- How governance maturity becomes a measurable business capability

- Why documentation and process discipline outperform tactical SEO fixes

- Building organisational resilience against platform and algorithm changes

- Why SEO success depends on enterprise systems, not individual effort

Connect with Ash - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashnallawalla/

Thank you to our partner, SEO Gets, the easy-to-use analytics and reporting tool for your GSC & GA4 data. Be sure to check out the tool and use code search10 for 10% off: https://seogets.com/

In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by Amit Raj, founder of The Link Guys, a specialist link building agency and training provider focused on modern off-page SEO, outreach strategy, and authority building. Amit also runs The Link Letter, a newsletter sharing practical insights into link acquisition, digital PR, and evolving search visibility tactics.

In this conversation, we look at how link building has evolved from a metric-led discipline into a more nuanced, relevance-driven practice shaped by editorial quality, brand trust, and AI-influenced search systems. Amit breaks down why traditional authority metrics like DR and traffic are becoming less reliable on their own, and what SEOs should focus on instead.

We also discuss how AI is reshaping outreach workflows, why human judgment is still essential in evaluating link opportunities, and how automation can support but not replace strategic decision-making in off-page SEO.A key part of the discussion also looks at Reddit and community-driven platforms, and how they can be used (carefully) as part of modern visibility and link strategies when aligned with audience intent and platform behaviour.

Amit discusses:

- Why link building is experiencing a resurgence in modern SEO

- The limitations of DR, DA, and other third-party authority metrics

- Why relevance and editorial quality matter more than numerical scores

- How AI is changing prospecting, outreach, and evaluation workflows

- Why “human in the loop” remains essential for quality link building

- The risks and limitations of link marketplaces and scaled link buying

- How Reddit and community platforms can contribute to visibility and brand signals

- Why authenticity matters more than scale in community-driven SEO

- How to define “quality links” beyond traffic and authority metrics

- Why traditional link tactics are becoming less effective over time

Topics covered include:

- The evolution of link building from volume-based to relevance-based strategy

- Third-party SEO metrics vs real-world authority signals

- Evaluating websites using editorial quality and brand trust signals

- AI-assisted link building workflows and their limitations

- The importance of contextual relevance in outreach campaigns

- Building sustainable authority vs short-term ranking gains

- The impact of AI-generated content on link ecosystems and trust

- Why editorial standards are rising across publishers and niche sites

- How agencies are adapting off-page SEO for AI-driven search

- The decline of low-quality link marketplaces and commoditised links

- Reddit strategy: engagement, risks, and opportunity for brand visibility

- Balancing automation tools with human-led decision making

- Why link building remains a core ranking and visibility factor

Connect with Amit - https://www.linkedin.com/in/link-building-expert/https://academy.thelinksguy.com/

Thank you to our partner, SEO Gets, the easy-to-use analytics and reporting tool for your GSC & GA4 data. Be sure to check out the tool and use code search10 for 10% off: https://seogets.com/