I recently sat down with Josh Squires, Associate Director of SEO at Amsive, for an episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast. With 17 years spanning freelance, in-house, agency, and consultancy work, Josh brought perspectives that challenge how most of us think about SEO success.
The Skill Nobody Teaches: Being an SEO Diplomat
What separates good SEOs from great ones? It’s not technical prowess. “I think the most effective SEOs could probably just leave work and go work at the UN,” Josh told me. “Your job requires you to be part translator, part diplomat.”
This resonated deeply with my own experience building SEO Arcade’s forecasting tools. I’ve learned that explaining SEO forecast potential to a CFO requires entirely different language than communicating with developers.
“You could be the smartest, most innovative SEO, but if you can’t get any of it implemented, none of it means anything,” Josh explained. Every audience needs different language, different detail. “It is our job to sort of bring that to that conversation.”
Content Volume is Dead
Josh didn’t mince words about the biggest shift in SEO over the past few years: “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.”
Publishers felt this pain three years ago. Everyone else is feeling it now.
“We have gone probably 10 or 15 years of just creating content and creating content has been for the purpose of building traffic,” Josh said. That era is over. The gung-ho push of 100 blog posts a month isn’t just seeing diminishing returns—”it’s starting to actually hurt traffic.”
The solution? Focus on middle and bottom-funnel content that directly supports conversions. “We are frequently surprised at the number of websites that are missing middle of funnel content, brand comparisons, product comparisons, use cases.”
The Missing Middle: Comparison Content
Here’s where it gets interesting for those of us doing keyword research. With LLMs creating product comparisons anyway, Josh argues brands need fearlessness: “Everybody is afraid to pit their brand against the other brand. That’s been a long standing thing. But now with the introduction of LLMs, that’s happening whether you want it to or not.”
He uses Perplexity and Gemini for Hi-Fi audio equipment comparisons when he’s “price concerned” and wants “the best value.” Your customers are doing the same thing.
“Figuring out who your audience is and what matters to them and then being fearless and speaking to those things, that’s what’s going to matter.”
Systems Thinking: The SEO Superpower
This is where Josh really challenged conventional SEO thinking. “Now is the time for SEOs who are systems thinkers to really shine,” he said. “If you are a systems thinker, you’re acknowledging other channels, but you’re also acknowledging technological states, you’re acknowledging how NLPs work.”
At Amsive, they’ve changed their approach to competitor research: “We’re looking at social, we’re looking at direct traffic, we’re looking at email.” Josh’s advice? “Go sign up for your client or your company’s email list. See what those emails look like. Go sign up for competitors, see what those look like.”
This multi-channel thinking matters more than ever. “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.”
Entity Building Requires Real Investment
Our conversation turned to entity optimization—a topic I’ve explored extensively with Jason Barnard of Kalicube. Josh’s perspective brought practical reality to the theory.
“The first and easiest one is just do a branded search and see if you get a knowledge graph entity. If you don’t, boy, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.”
But here’s what most SEOs miss: entity building isn’t just about on-page optimization. Josh emphasized making sure “all of the information about your business is there, that it’s consistent, that it’s correct, and that your business descriptions, your product descriptions, all of those listings are mentioning proper entities.”
Even more importantly: “One of the biggest challenges to establishing a new entity is getting people to talk about your entity, right? Getting people to talk about your brand.”
This requires budget. “As part of an entity building plan, know that you’re going to have to spend some ad dollars. You’re going to have to do some PR. You’re going to have to do some pretty heavy hitting audience research.”
The Coca-Cola Philosophy
Josh has told his teams for years: “The best advice to clients is be a brand.”
He uses Coca-Cola as the ultimate example. “There’s a reason that a Coca-Cola truck is so heavily branded. They don’t move Coca-Cola in unbranded, unmarked trucks. And that is because they want to be omnipresent.”
“There’s always value in visibility,” Josh emphasized. “Coca-Cola wouldn’t spend the insane amount of money it costs to paint those trucks if there wasn’t value in visibility.”
This philosophy extends to every channel: “How are we being visible? How are we showing up? How are we working our way into the fabric of the customer’s life in a way that whenever they’re ready for us, we’re just right there. We’re top of mind.”
Google Discover: Handle with Caution
I asked Josh about Google Discover—a topic many SEOs either ignore or misunderstand. His team actively drives Discover traffic, but with major caveats.
“Amsive does actively caution people that Discover can’t be counted on,” Josh explained. “Anything you get from that, any traffic you get from that, count it as a happy accident.”
The barrier to entry is high, and “it’s still pretty much a black box.” When major world events happen, “entertainment, for example, will drop off in feeds because hard news takes over.”
For those pursuing it: “Let’s meet the minimum criteria. We can’t force Google to include us, but we can provide Google everything it says it needs and start there.”
Final Thoughts: Beyond the SERP
This conversation reminded me why I started the Unscripted SEO Podcast. The real insights come from practitioners like Josh who’ve spent years implementing strategies across different contexts.
Whether you’re building white-label podcasts for link building, running local cleanup events for community links, or doing keyword forecasting for in-house teams, the principles Josh outlined apply universally.
SEO isn’t just about ranking anymore. It’s about understanding systems, communicating effectively across teams, building genuine brand recognition, and creating content that actually serves user intent.
As Josh put it: “The friction to reach out to us and engage us for the solution we provide is minimized relative to our competition.”
That’s the game we’re all playing now.
Listen to the full episode: Unscripted SEO with Josh Squires
Connect with Josh Squires: LinkedIn
Jeremy Rivera is the founder of SEO Arcade and host of the Unscripted SEO Podcast. He’s been doing SEO since 2007 and recently published “I Self Published An SEO Book & All I Got Was This Lousy Knowledge Panel.”
