Amsive's Josh Squires: Evolve Your SEO Strategy Or Perish

The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

Josh Squires is an Associate Director of SEO at Amsive with 17 years of experience spanning freelance, in-house, agency, and consultancy work. He helped launch the SEO practice at Tableau and has worked extensively across DTC, e-commerce, Shopify, and SaaS sectors.

Connect with Josh:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshsquiresrva/
• SEO Slack: No Learners SEO Slack channel

Key Takeaways

Communication is SEO's Hidden Superpower - The most effective SEOs function like UN diplomats, translating technical requirements into language that resonates with developers, executives, and stakeholders. Without implementation, even the smartest SEO strategy means nothing.

Content Volume is Dead, Strategic Relevance is King - Google is actively rejecting low-quality blog content that doesn't serve user intent. The winning strategy focuses on middle and bottom-funnel content that directly supports conversions, including brand comparisons and product use cases that audiences are already searching for in LLMs.

Systems Thinking Separates Good SEOs from Great Ones - Modern SEO requires understanding how search engines, LLMs, social platforms, and email systems interconnect. Success comes from pulling levers that create ripple effects across multiple channels, not just optimizing for a single platform.

Entity Building Requires Multi-Channel Brand Investment - Establishing a recognized entity goes far beyond on-page optimization. It demands consistent NAP data across directories, strategic backlink building from industry publications, social proof in relevant communities, and yes—actual ad spend and PR investment to get people talking about your brand.

Killer Quotes

"I think the most effective SEOs could probably just leave work and go work at the UN. Your job requires you to be part translator, part diplomat."

"You could be the smartest, most innovative SEO, but if you can't get any of it implemented, none of it means anything."

"Google is ceasing to rank these pages, ceasing to index them in some cases we've seen, Google just doesn't want your junk traffic anymore."

"Now is the time for SEOs who are systems thinkers to really shine. If you are a systems thinker, you're acknowledging other channels, but you're also acknowledging technological states, you're acknowledging how NLPs work."

"We gotta stop being so self-reliant and think more outside the box and give other channels their credit. Because that's where you're gonna see the amplitude."

"I have been saying for years, the teams that report to me are, I know, so sick of hearing me say this. The best advice to clients is be a brand."

"There's always value in visibility. Coca-Cola wouldn't spend the insane amount of money it costs to paint those trucks if there wasn't value in visibility."

Episode Highlights

The Many Faces of SEO: Different Contexts, Different Challenges

Josh breaks down his experiences across freelance, in-house, agency, and consultancy work, explaining why consultancy offers the cleanest separation between strategy and implementation, while in-house roles often require the broadest technical skillset.

Communication: The Underappreciated SEO Skill

Young SEOs often struggle with tailoring communication to different audiences. Developers need precise technical specifications, executives need business outcomes, and designers need creative direction—all from the same SEO initiative.

Local SEO: Finding the Right Level of Specificity

Hyper-local content works—when done right. Josh explains when to target neighborhoods versus cities, using search volume and user intent as guides. The key is being hyper-local in ways that actually help users find your business, not just stuffing location keywords.

What Belongs in the SEO Dustbin: The Death of Volume Strategy

After 10-15 years of "just create content," Google is rejecting low-quality blog posts that don't serve user intent. Publishers felt this shift years ago; everyone else is feeling it now. The winning approach focuses on middle and bottom-funnel content that directly supports conversions.

Middle-Funnel Content: The Missing Piece

Most websites lack crucial comparison content—brand vs. brand, product vs. product, use case scenarios. With LLMs creating these comparisons anyway, brands need to fearlessly address how they stack up against competitors, especially on price and value propositions.

LLMs and the Human Sandwich

Modern SEO exists in a world where both SEOs and customers use LLMs. Content must be optimized for machine consumption while serving actual human needs—requiring deeper understanding of unique selling propositions, market positioning, and business funnels beyond simple keyword research.

Systems Thinking: The Future Belongs to Multi-Channel SEOs

The best SEOs understand how search engines, LLMs, social platforms, and email systems interconnect. They research competitors across all channels, sign up for email lists, track social presence, and think about ripple effects across platforms.

Google Discover: The Black Box Opportunity

While Discover traffic can't be counted on reliably, meeting the minimum criteria and sending clear entity signals can drive significant visibility. Hard news dominates the feed, but there's opportunity for brands that understand their audience's digital footprints.

Entity Building: Beyond On-Page Optimization

Establishing an entity requires consistent NAP data across directories, backlinks from industry publications, presence in relevant social communities, and people actually talking about your brand—which means investing in ads, PR, and community engagement.

Be a Brand: The Coca-Cola Philosophy

Coca-Cola doesn't move products in unbranded trucks because visibility has value. Being omnipresent in your customer's life—even without direct attribution—builds the brand recognition that minimizes friction when customers are ready to buy.

Resources Mentioned

• Amsive - Josh's agency with specialized local SEO, technical SEO, and other specialty teams
• Bambi Frazier - Leading Amsive's local SEO team, excellent speaker on hyper-local content
• Lily Ray - Josh's colleague at Amsive, frequent conference speaker (recently at MozCon)
• Dan Petrovic - Follow for deep technical SEO insights on algorithms, machine learning, and NLP
• Jason Barnard (Kalicube) - Entity optimization expert with resources on finding your machine ID
• Mark Williams-Cook - SEO expert who publishes the Core Updates newsletter with Google Discover insights

About Amsive

Amsive's SEO team is organized into specialty groups including local SEO, technical SEO, and other focused practices. The agency emphasizes systems thinking, multi-channel research, and institutional knowledge sharing across their 40-person SEO team.

Catch Lily Ray speaking: Check Moz for her MozCon presentation on SEO, GEO, AEO, and the evolving search landscape.

Looking to transform your podcast content into comprehensive SEO assets? Connect with Jeremy Rivera at Unscripted SEO.