In this week's episode of The Best Guest podcast we welcome SEO expert Silvia Del Corso for a deep dive into the evolving landscape of search engine optimisation. Silvia breaks down how SEO has transformed what business owners need to focus on today and why data-driven decision-making is essential. From domain authority to the rise of AI in search, Silvia offers invaluable insights into how to stay competitive online in 2025.

About Silvia Del Corso

Silvia Del Corso is the Founder and Director of PinkSEO Ltd, an award-winning SEO agency based in West London, recognised as Creative Media Business of the Year. With over 13 years of experience in search engine optimisation, she specialises in helping business owners—especially in the medical sector—enhance their online visibility and turn website visitors into patients. Passionate about making SEO accessible, Silvia frequently speaks at industry events, sharing practical, actionable strategies that drive real results.

Key Takeaways

• Conducting an SEO audit can uncover hidden issues, like having six homepages, without the site owner knowing.
• Google trusts websites that have been around longer and have earned reputable backlinks.
• Outdated or irrelevant content can hurt your site - auditing and updating is more powerful than constant publishing.
• Learn how the rise of AI and tools like ChatGPT are reshaping how websites are ranked and how users search.
• Google's latest updates prioritize useful, current, and relevant content, especially in fields like health, finance, and law.

Quote

"SEO, everything you do and you choose and you want to prove needs to be backed by a number... So from the search terms, the keywords that you choose to actually proving the results everything needs to be measurable." Silvia Del Corso

Mentioned in This Episode

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Connect with Silvia Del Corso

Free SEO Website Audit

Complimentary audit of your site, expert SEO review and a 1-hour consultation https://pinkseo.marketing/free-seo-website-audit/

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Silvia runs regular free webinars to help you with your SEO. Learn more at http://pinkseo.marketing/next-webinar

Website: www.pinkseo.marketing

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silviadelcorso/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinkseo.marketing/

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Transcript

SEO And What Really Matters in 2025 with Silvia Del Corso

Victoria Bennion: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Victoria

Bennion, and the founder of the best podcast guest booking agency. And you're

listening to the best guest, the podcast for business owners, creatives, and

entrepreneurs who want to harness the power of podcasts to grow their platforms

and increase their visibility.

Victoria Bennion:

We're here to support you on your journey, bringing you actionable tips with

each episode. Now let's begin.

Victoria Bennion:

Today I'm joined by Silvia Del Corso, a seasoned. SEO expert, with over 15

years of experience helping businesses decode the mysteries of Google, and stay

ahead in the ever changing world of search. In this episode, Silvia breaks down

what SEO really is, why your website might not be ranking

Victoria Bennion: and

how tools like Chat, GPT, and AI are reshaping the future of search. Whether

you are brand new to SEO or you've been working on your site for years, this

conversation is packed with practical [00:01:00]

insights from the power of domain authority. To the importance of data audits

and high quality content, get ready to rethink your digital strategy because

what worked last year won't cut it today.

Victoria Bennion:

Hello and welcome to the podcast, Silvia.

Silvia Del Corso: Hi.

Thank you so much for having me here, Victoria.

Victoria Bennion: Oh,

it's lovely to have you here today.

Victoria Bennion:

Could we begin by talking about your journey? How did you find yourself working

in SEO

Silvia Del Corso:

it's been a long journey 'cause I've been doing this job for now more than 15

years and I was initially doing it in Italy where I'm from. As you can clearly

tell from the accent, I apologize.

Victoria Bennion:

It's a great accent. Don't apologize.

Silvia Del Corso: , I

started back in Tuscany when we used to have the marketing agency and it was

different back then, but out of all the possible marketing. Sciences. That was

the one that I liked the most because it's numbers two and I can understand the

word [00:02:00] better if I see it in numbers.

If you tell me something is good, I need to understand if it's good seven or

79, if I see the number.

Silvia Del Corso: I

understand. SEO, everything you do and you choose and you want to prove needs.

To be backed by a number. So from the search terms, the keywords that you

choose to actually proving the results everything needs to be measurable. And

that's why actually it gives me confidence. 'Cause it's no opinions it's

actually data.

Silvia Del Corso: So

that's how I chose it. And it was the most complicated one at the time. So it

was more of a challenge that I'm driven by challenges. So it wasn't the time,

the one that wasn't. So easy to grasp. And it was something that wasn't usually

made by women. Because I, when I was going to the conference back then in

particular, it was a whole room all full of men.

Silvia Del Corso: And

you could [00:03:00] have to come to your women

attendees and in one hand. So it was quite exciting and new stimulating. And it

has remained. It's it still changes. It changes every day. Been more stable for

a while and now it's changing again crazily. But yeah, it's it's fun. It's

fascinating.

Victoria Bennion:

Excellent. So for anyone listening who's not quite sure what the term SEO

means, would you be able to just talk about that and why it's important?

Silvia Del Corso:

Yeah, it stands for search engine optimization, and it's the type of activities

that you do when you are working on a website to make it more easily readable

and understandable from Google and the value search engines including. AI in

search, so there are lots of. Practical activities that comprehend different

sorts of skills [00:04:00] from coding

technical content strategy and so on.

Silvia Del Corso:

Different things that you do so that your site can rank and when somebody's

searching for something if they find you instead of somebody else. It's

definitely an economic advantage so it can become more business, more clients,

more inquiries. And the nice thing for me was that it was a transferable

science.

Silvia Del Corso: So

the knowledge that I was using in Italy when I moved here to London in 2016,

it's the same 'cause Google doesn't change the way it operates in really

different country databases. Yeah.

Victoria Bennion:

That's really interesting. Okay, so if a business owner is thinking, I think I

need to do something about my SEO, I need to get my website ranking, what are

the top things that they should be looking at?

Silvia Del Corso:

First of all, you need to understand what is the current situation and what are

your goals. So there are tools to analyze a website and. We run it [00:05:00] every day regularly for respecting new

clients or people that we have a conversation with to actually the website or

scan it. It's quite enlightening sometimes 'cause we find things that the web,

the website owners would've never expected.

Silvia Del Corso: The

other day we were. Scanning a website for a friend. And I found out they've got

six home pages and they didn't know. So Yeah. 'cause they, when the site was

published, there was lots of theme content that was things that they weren't

immediately visible and they weren't connected in the navigation manual.

Silvia Del Corso:

They were just hidden. They can be found by Google and the crawl bot. So

sometimes when you do these things, you find something so you would never

expect. And I see the other person that I'm talking to, the. Like that. Trying

to understand how, but yeah, it is enlightening because if you understand

what's going on, it's if your car is making a funny [00:06:00]

noise you can ignore it, but it's better if you actually understand why and you

get it fixed.

Victoria Bennion:

Absolutely, and something I've had. Is your domain authority checking your

domain authority? Is that important?

Silvia Del Corso: It

is, that is basically when you are trusting a business. It's also called domain

trust and Google needs to have it because every second, I think the last number

is seven new websites like created. So if we are counting 1, 2, 3, we got 21

new websites just coming up and Google is.

Silvia Del Corso:

Kind of I opinionated by this amount of content and websites. And now with AI

content creation, it's only become easy and cheap for everybody to just churn

out stuff. So Google needs to understand if something is valid and they do a

little bit like you would do if somebody's recommending you.[00:07:00]

Silvia Del Corso:

Business. For example, if you're looking for an accountant, you would start

asking your friends and you might get some recommendations. And then if some

names end up repeating, like two, three people tell you the same name. If

someone who's important to you is telling you the same name as, I don't know, a

family member or friend, then this name will.

Silvia Del Corso:

Stick to your mind and you want to have a chat. And with Google, it happens the

same with so many websites to choose from. And the final goal is given the best

possible results and user experience to the Google users, then they need to

choose, and all things being equal the domain authority is the left numeric

volume and it changes.

Silvia Del Corso:

It's a kind of a little arbitrary thing because if you use three different

tools domain authority might differ. So there are some famous tools they used

by many people, but sometimes it's different. But it's done [00:08:00] by a combination of factors, which is the

age of existence of this site. Again, a new business coming up as a newcomer,

you wouldn't trust them immediately.

Silvia Del Corso: You

want to see them for a while. And Google does the same with all of these new

websites popping up every minute. They don't know 'cause many are created for

practices. They're black hat as in spamy against the guidelines. They're

created to create fake network of links. It's a spam bid practice.

Silvia Del Corso: So

Google needs to see if a website is a real thing, and at the beginning they

will intentionally keep it a little bit dampened in the ranking. So sandbox to

see are you really doing well? Is there some social signals, is there some

traffic that I can see? See, are you giving good quality? So for a wider,

they're checking you out.

Silvia Del Corso: But

if a domain has been [00:09:00] existing for a

long time then it gets so much easier to rank. After the first year, things

start to become much, much easier. Domain trust, domain authorities given

mainly by these. Time of existence and the number of back links pointing to the

site, which is all the third party websites pointing to your site with a link.

Silvia Del Corso:

It's like the recommendations that people are giving for this accountant

fictional one. So if you have accumulated lots of good quality, not spammy boat

real, I don't know. PR endorsements being featured in places being mentioned,

those backlinks, they accumulate into domain authority together with the age of

existence.

Silvia Del Corso:

Sorry if I.

Victoria Bennion: No

I wasn't aware of that about the a, the length of existence. I didn't know that

was important, so that's really interesting.

Silvia Del Corso:

That's so tricky, for example, for startups because it's [00:10:00] the sort of vicious circle when you start

and you're really eager and you really want to get off the ground. And it's.

Frustrating because these sites are not getting anywhere. 'cause domain trust

is zero and you really want to get something going.

Silvia Del Corso: So

that's one of the reasons why we do the audits is to actually keep people a bit

of realistic expectations, telling them based on what we are seeing, this is

what you to realistic exp expect, realistically expect. Expect, and people are

grateful sometimes because if you're promising them something that won't happen

it's it's a violation of their trust.

Silvia Del Corso:

Instead, even just hearing that this is something that's going to take a while.

SEO might be something they want to consider when the business is a bit more

established. It's been running for a while even because it's not something that

it just. To do and forget by nature, SEO is a sort of ongoing [00:11:00] thing.

Silvia Del Corso:

Because it's data driven. So you do things and then you need to test and

measure and see if it's improving. Otherwise, you need to change the strategy,

the approach a little bit, and then test it again. So it's not something that

you don't forget. It's better than nothing if you do it and forget. But if you

want to actually see the results and climb the, your competitors, then you need

to give it climb.

Silvia Del Corso:

People need to be explained clearly what to expect, what's yeah, realistic.

Victoria Bennion: so

how can you tell if it's beginning to work?

Silvia Del Corso: You

measure things, as I was saying, it is so important to have, even if not

everybody is as excited by numbers and as I am it, there are things that you

need to measure and usually they get. Very excited by the conversions. As in, I

don't know, we work a lot with medical [00:12:00]

practices, private medical practice owners, consultants, and so on.

Silvia Del Corso: In

that case, it's patient food fall into the clinic or if you've got an

e-commerce, it's. Safe through the site, or it can be inquiries through the

website. So that is what excites business owners usually because it's revenue

but they don't understand that it's the final step of a series of stepping

stones, and you don't get that.

Silvia Del Corso: If

you don't have the prerequisite steps, so you don't get inquiries if you

haven't generated traffic on the website. And even if you have generated

traffic on the website you cannot for tell that they will become conversions.

Because it's like when you say you can bring somebody to the you cannot make

them drink.

Silvia Del Corso: You

can make them thirsty, but you cannot make them drink. So that's it. User

experience, then kind of consideration that gets into the conversion fine.

Step, [00:13:00] but if you don't have that

traffic, it will never happen. And to get that traffic, you need another

prerequisite step, which is ranking for those keywords.

Silvia Del Corso: So

if somebody's searching for something and they can find you, you're on page.

Five. Nobody ever goes. There is a c says, if you want the safest place to hide

at dead body, it's page two or two ago. Because nobody ever goes there. But now

it's getting like first page end of the page. 'cause AI overviews, everything

is being blurted down.

Silvia Del Corso: If

you are not ranking. You can't generate that traffic at least organically from

search engine. So that's the other prerequisite steps. So you need to get your

rankings and then your traffic and then the conversions will appear. But these

are all things that you can track and measure and you need, I would say you

need to be able to become a little bit more converse, something, knowing your

numbers and tracking if you have a business, at least a little [00:14:00] bit of familiarity with your numbers is.

Silvia Del Corso:

Necessary checking. For example, Google Analytics, which is a free resource

that every website owner can have, and you just connect it to the site and it

starts tracking. And the sooner you connect it, the sooner you can start

actually accumulating historic data. It's like when you used to have the DHS

recorders, I know I sound very old.

Silvia Del Corso: If

you didn't press play, you weren't recording it, you would've lost it 'cause

you couldn't get it back on demand. You need to start...