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Josh Maraney - SEO, Google Ads and Answer Engine Optimisation Podcast

Josh Maraney from Top Click Media

Josh Maraney is CEO of Top Click Media, the leading South African digital marketing agency specialising in SEO, Google Ads and answer engine optimisation for clients worldwide. www.topclick.co.za

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  • Yesterday · 56 sec

    Create Animated Videos for Free with HeyGen HyperFrames and Claude Code

    Create Animated Videos for Free with HeyGen HyperFrames and Claude Code You can now create animated videos using HeyGen HyperFrames and Claude Code, and it’s incredibly simple. HyperFrames itself is free and open-source, and local rendering doesn’t use HeyGen credits. You may still pay for your Claude Code usage or any optional hosted AI services you use. Install the HyperFrames skill inside Claude Code, then simply tell Claude what you want to create. I’ve already tried things like: • Animating my logo• Creating an animated video from my website• Making a Claude character dance You don’t need to write some massive production brief either. Give Claude the idea, let HyperFrames create the first version, then keep refining it. It’s ridiculously fun to play around with and opens up a lot of possibilities for motion graphics, website videos and social media content. Instructions are here: https://hyperframes.heygen.com/quickstart/ #HeyGen #HyperFrames #ClaudeCode #MotionGraphics #AIVideo

  • Monday · 1 min

    Are You Embarrassed Of Your Website?

    Are You Embarrassed Of Your Website? Be honest with yourself. When you give someone your website address, are you actually proud of what they’re going to see? Does it represent your business properly? Does it explain what you do? Does it make people trust you? Because if you’re embarrassed about your own website, that’s a problem. Your website is one of the most important parts of your business online. It’s where people research you, judge you, compare you and decide whether they want to contact you or buy from you. And this isn’t me trying to sell website development. I don’t build websites. I just see businesses cutting corners on them every single day. Going with the cheapest option usually looks cheap. Filling the whole thing with generic AI slop looks like AI slop. Your website needs to represent your brand, your quality and your business properly. You should be able to give somebody your website address and confidently say: “Go check out my website.” Don’t be embarrassed by it. Invest in it and be proud of it. #WebsiteDesign #DigitalMarketing #WebDesign #OnlineMarketing #BusinessMarketing

  • Sunday · 1 min

    Your Slow Website Is Hurting Your SEO

    Your Slow Website Is Hurting Your SEO I don’t care what anyone tells you, if your website is painfully slow, it is going to hurt your results. And often, the slow website is only the presenting problem. The real problem could be underneath: • Poor hosting • Too many plugins • Heavy scripts • Oversized images • Bad development • Technical problems across the site Site speed and Core Web Vitals form part of Google’s overall page experience signals, but the impact goes much further than SEO. A slow website means people wait longer, leave sooner and are less likely to convert. So you could be spending money on Google Ads, SEO and social media, bringing people to your website, only to lose them because the site takes forever to load. Don’t just accept a slow website as normal. Find the underlying problem and fix it. A faster website is better for your users, better for conversions and better for SEO. #SEO #WebsiteSpeed #websites #CoreWebVitals #SearchEngineOptimization

  • Friday · 1 min

    Giving Back to the Next Generation of Digital Marketers at Rosebank International

    Giving Back to the Next Generation of Digital Marketers at Rosebank International The other day I had the privilege of being a guest speaker at Rosebank International in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. I recently saw that they were teaching digital marketing and thought, I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years, I love this industry, why not give something back? I was supposed to speak for 30 minutes. I ended up speaking for an hour and a half. And I probably would have carried on if my PA hadn’t called to remind me that I actually had meetings to get to. One of the biggest things I told the students was how lucky they are to be able to learn digital marketing in a structured environment. When I started nearly 20 years ago, there weren’t digital marketing degrees, diplomas and courses everywhere. Most of us learnt by actually doing it, reading whatever we could find and figuring things out along the way. I also told them: don’t try to be brilliant at everything. Learn digital marketing broadly, but then find something you really enjoy and specialise in it, whether that’s SEO, Google Ads, social media or another area. And most importantly, you need to actually love it. Digital marketing changes constantly. If you don’t enjoy reading, testing, learning and keeping up, it’s going to be very difficult to become really good at it. I’ve already been invited back, and I’m looking forward to it. I love this industry, and if I can share some of what I’ve learnt over the last two decades with people starting their careers, I’m very happy to do it. #DigitalMarketing #SEO #GoogleAds #MarketingCareers #SouthAfrica

  • Thursday · 1 min

    Is Your Company and Brand Being Mentioned and Cited in ChatGPT and Other AI Models?

    Is Your Company and Brand Being Mentioned and Cited in ChatGPT and Other AI Models? Do you actually know whether your company is being mentioned or cited in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok or Google AI Overviews? Most businesses have no idea how to check. I’ve been testing @OtterlyAI, and I’m really impressed with it. You can put in your own brand or a competitor and see: • Where your brand is being mentioned • Which prompts you appear for • Which sources are being cited • How competitors compare • Where you have opportunities to improve One of the features I really like is its Query Fan-Out tool, which helps you understand the related searches AI systems may use when answering a question. It also has keyword research, competitor research and tools to help identify why your website may not be appearing in AI results. If you’re working on Answer Engine Optimisation, go check out OtterlyAI. #OtterlyAI #AnswerEngineOptimization #AISEO #aeo #geo

  • September 30 · 1 min

    SEO and Ads Bring Traffic. Websites Convert

    SEO and Ads Bring Traffic. Websites Convert Getting people to your website is only half the job. Google Ads can bring you clicks. SEO can bring you organic traffic. Social media can send people to your site. But none of that guarantees a sale. The website still has to convert. If your prices aren’t competitive, your product range is weak, your shipping is poor, your warranties aren’t clear, or people simply don’t trust the website, you can send as much traffic as you want and still struggle to make sales. This is something I see all the time. People blame Google Ads because the traffic isn’t converting. But getting somebody to click is not the same as convincing them to buy. Your website has to make people feel comfortable. It has to look professional. The offer has to make sense. The product or service has to be good. The checkout or enquiry process has to be easy. Consumers are far more educated online than they used to be. They compare prices. They check competitors. They look at reviews. They look at delivery. They look at guarantees. They decide whether they trust you. SEO and ads bring traffic. Websites convert. If your traffic is good but your sales are bad, don’t only look at the marketing. Look at the website. #SEO #GoogleAds #ConversionRateOptimization #ux #Website

  • September 29 · 1 min

    Your Camera Isn’t the Problem. Clean Your Damn Lens.

    Your Camera Isn’t the Problem. Clean Your Damn Lens. If you’re filming content on your phone or camera, do one simple thing before you start: Clean your lens. It sounds obvious, but I see people getting this wrong all the time. Your phone is in your hand all day. You touch it, put it down on tables, put it in your pocket, and the camera lens picks up fingerprints, dust and dirt. Then people start filming and wonder why the video looks soft, blurry or low quality. You don’t necessarily need a more expensive camera. You might just need to clean the lens. Take a proper lens wipe and clean: • Your back camera• Your front camera if you use it• Your normal camera lens Personally, I prefer using the back camera on a phone where possible, but whichever camera you use, clean it first. I spoke to someone recently who told me their videos weren’t looking good because they weren’t using an expensive camera. My first question was: “Do you clean your lenses?” The answer was no. Come on, bro. It takes a few seconds and can make an immediate difference to the quality of your content. Before you film anything: clean your damn lens. #ContentCreation #VideoMarketing #SocialMediaTips #iPhoneVideo #VideoContent www.topclick.co.za

  • September 28 · 1 min

    Bad Google Ads Leads? The GIGO Principle Explains Why

    Bad Google Ads Leads? The GIGO Principle Explains Why If your Google Ads campaigns are not producing the conversions you want, the problem may be the data you are feeding back into Google. There is a simple principle called GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. And it applies perfectly to Google Ads. Automated bidding can work extremely well, but only when Google is receiving accurate conversion data. If you are feeding Google real leads, qualified opportunities, sales and proper CRM data, it has a much better idea of what type of customer to look for. But if you are counting things like: • Someone visiting your Contact Us page • Someone clicking a button • Someone completing an action that is not actually a lead Then you are feeding Google rubbish. And if you give Google rubbish data, you should not be surprised when it sends you rubbish leads. Ideally, your CRM, whether that is HubSpot, Salesforce or another system, should become your source of truth and feed the real outcomes back into Google Ads. I do hundreds of Google Ads audits, and incorrect conversion tracking is one of the most common problems I see. Before changing your keywords, bidding strategy or budget, make sure the data going into Google Ads is actually correct. Garbage in. Garbage out. Gold in. Gold out. #GoogleAds #leads #conversions #ConversionTracking #crm

  • September 27 · 1 min

    Use Claude Cowork Chrome Extension to Optimise Your Google Business Listing

    Use Claude Cowork Chrome Extension to Optimise Your Google Business Listing If you want better local SEO results, your Google Business Profile needs to be properly optimised. One of the easiest ways I’ve found to do this is using Claude Cowork with the Claude Chrome extension. Open your Google Business Profile, make sure it’s ready to edit, then ask Claude to first read your website and understand exactly what your business does. From there, you can get it to help optimise: • Your main business categories • Your services under each category • Service descriptions • Products • Images • Other important profile information The services section is especially useful because a lot of businesses either leave it incomplete or don’t optimise it properly. Give Claude clear instructions, keep the text concise, make sure everything matches your actual website, and review the changes before publishing. It can save a huge amount of time and help you build a much stronger Google Business Profile. #GoogleBusinessProfile #LocalSEO #Claude #ClaudeCowork #chrome

  • September 25 · 51 sec

    The Google September 2026 Spam Update Is Rolling Out. What You Have to Know

    The Google September 2026 Spam Update Is Rolling Out. What You Have to Know Google has started rolling out its September 2026 Spam Update, and if you’re involved in SEO, keep an eye on your rankings over the next couple of weeks. The update started on 24 September 2026, is global, applies to all languages and may take up to two weeks to complete. So what does it mean? Google continually updates its systems for identifying websites and content that violate its spam policies. That includes things like: • Scaled low-value content • Scraped or copied content • Expired domain abuse • Site reputation abuse • Cloaking and doorway pages • Manipulative link practices And obviously, one of the big conversations at the moment is AI-written content. Using AI does not automatically mean your content is spam. The problem is creating huge amounts of low-quality or unoriginal content purely to manipulate search rankings. It doesn’t really matter whether that content was created by AI or by a person. This is also the fourth confirmed Google spam update of 2026, so Google is clearly continuing to put a lot of focus into cleaning up search results. If your rankings start moving, don’t immediately change everything. Watch your Google Search Console data, organic traffic and important keywords while the update finishes rolling out. The simple takeaway is the same as always: Create useful original content, avoid shortcuts and don’t try to game Google. #SEO #GoogleSEO #GoogleSpamUpdate #SEOUpdate #searchengineoptimization

  • September 24 · 2 min

    What are the most popular AI Brands and AI Chatbots in South Africa (August 2026)

    What are most popular AI Brands and AI Chatbots in South Africa (August 2026) I pulled together data from Similarweb, DataForSEO and Google Keyword Planner to get a clearer picture of which AI brands South Africans are actually searching for and using. Here is what the data shows. Most searched AI brands on Google in South Africa: ChatGPT Gemini DeepSeek Claude ChatGPT is in a league of its own, with at least 11 million Google searches per month in South Africa. When looking at website traffic from South Africa, the order changes slightly: ChatGPT Gemini Claude DeepSeek ChatGPT receives approximately 52 million monthly visits from South African users. Then looking specifically at monthly users, the ranking is: ChatGPT Gemini Claude DeepSeek Grok Copilot ChatGPT leads again with approximately 2.69 million monthly South African users. The biggest takeaway is pretty clear. ChatGPT is currently by far the dominant AI brand in South Africa, whether you look at searches, website visits or users. Gemini is firmly in second place, while Claude and DeepSeek are competing for the positions behind it depending on which metric you look at. It is also interesting to see DeepSeek ranking so highly for search interest compared with its actual usage. The AI market in South Africa is moving incredibly quickly, and it will be interesting to see how these numbers change over the next year. #ChatGPT #AI #AIChatbots #ArtificialIntelligence #SouthAfrica

  • September 23 · 1 min

    Start Using Reddit To Get Clients and To Help with Research

    Start Using Reddit To Get Clients and To Help with Research Have you ever properly used Reddit? I’ve been using it a lot more over the last few months, and I honestly think a lot of businesses and marketers are completely underestimating it. Reddit is made up of communities around almost every topic imaginable. People ask questions, share ideas, give advice, talk about problems and help each other out. For me, there are two massive reasons to start using Reddit. The first is getting clients. I’m involved in communities around Google Ads, SEO and Answer Engine Optimisation. I go in there, answer questions, offer advice and try to actually help people. And I’ve signed clients from it. Just recently, we signed a new client in Malta through Reddit. I’ve also spoken to potential clients from all over the world. The second is research. I work with clients across all sorts of industries, so I’m constantly researching niches I might not know much about. The other day I was researching terrariums. I found a subreddit specifically about terrariums and learnt a huge amount just from reading what real people were discussing. I picked up ideas for blogs, SEO keywords, Google Ads keywords and content. That is incredibly valuable. Reddit is also becoming increasingly important for Answer Engine Optimisation because discussions from Reddit regularly surface across search engines and AI platforms. And look at the size of Reddit. Around 3 million active monthly users in South Africa. Around 800 million active monthly users worldwide. Those are massive numbers. Unfortunately, because Reddit has become so important for SEO and AI search, people are also trying to game it. Don’t do that. Use Reddit properly. Join relevant communities, contribute, help people, research your market and actually learn from the conversations taking place. Whether you’re looking for clients, SEO ideas, keyword research, content ideas or simply a better understanding of an industry, Reddit is something you shouldn’t be ignoring. Go check it out. You’ll probably thank me that you did. www.topclick.co.za #Reddit #RedditMarketing #RedditForBusiness #RedditSEO #RedditCommunity

  • September 22 · 1 min

    Have You Seen Nike’s Robots.txt File on Their Website?

    Have You Seen Nike’s Robots.txt File on Their Website? For those of you who don’t speak SEO, a robots.txt file is a simple text file that gives instructions to search engine crawlers about which parts of a website they can or cannot crawl. Most robots.txt files are pretty boring. Nike’s is not. Their famous slogan is: Just Do It. But inside their robots.txt file, they’ve changed it to: Just Crawl It. Very clever. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom, they’ve even recreated the Nike Swoosh using text characters. Does this help them rank? No. But as a small piece of branding hidden inside a technical SEO file, it’s actually pretty cool. Most people will never see it unless they specifically go looking for the file. If you’ve seen any other companies doing something creative with their robots.txt file, let me know. #SEO #TechnicalSEO #RobotsTxt #Nike #searchengineoptimization

  • September 21 · 2 min

    Nike’s SEO Is BROKEN. And I’ll Prove In This Video.

    Nike’s SEO Is BROKEN. And I’ll Prove In This Video. Nike are performing terribly when it comes to SEO. I put nike.com into Ahrefs and looked specifically at the United States. At first glance, the numbers look incredible. Nike were ranking for around 406,000 keywords. But then I started filtering out branded searches. Nike. Jordan. Air Force 1. Barcelona. And all the other branded terms associated with Nike and the products they sell. Once you remove all of that branded demand, the picture changes dramatically. And then look at the actual money terms people are searching for: Running shoes. Basketball shoes. Soccer boots. Hoodies. Track pants. Sweatpants. For a company the size of Nike, these are exactly the kinds of searches where you would expect them to dominate. But they don’t. I even did a real Google search here in South Africa for “running shoes.” Ads first. Then organic results. And I had to keep scrolling before I eventually found Nike. For a brand this big, that is terrible. I think one of the biggest mistakes large companies make is looking at all their branded traffic and assuming their SEO is performing brilliantly. It isn’t enough to rank when somebody already knows your name. SEO is also about being there when somebody searches for the product or service itself, before they have decided which brand to buy from. Nike could improve this enormously. And this isn’t only about Nike. I see the same thing with big companies all the time. Don’t ignore SEO just because it doesn’t give you an immediate ROAS figure. It can have a massive impact on your business. #SEO #Nike #SearchEngineOptimisation #OrganicSearch #SEOStrategy

  • September 20 · 2 min

    Nike Just Lost Mbappé. Here’s the Marketing Lesson.

    Nike Just Lost Mbappé. Here’s the Marketing Lesson. Kylian Mbappé has ended his long relationship with Nike and joined Swiss sportswear brand On in a deal that includes both cash and equity. For On, which is pushing into football, signing one of the world’s biggest athletes gives the brand enormous global attention. The timing is particularly interesting because Nike is already going through a major turnaround. Its shares are around 80% below their 2021 all-time high, and Nike is set to leave the S&P 100 on 21 September 2026 after almost 18 years in the index. There isn’t one single reason for Nike’s problems. Its aggressive move towards direct-to-consumer sales weakened relationships with wholesale retailers, while competitors such as On and Hoka gained ground. Nike has since been rebuilding those wholesale relationships and putting sport back at the centre of the business. But there is also a much bigger marketing lesson here. One of the major criticisms of Nike’s previous strategy was that it moved too far towards digital and performance marketing while underinvesting in the type of long-term brand building that made Nike one of the world’s most powerful brands in the first place. Performance marketing matters. ROAS matters. Conversions matter. Sales matter. But not every piece of marketing should be expected to produce an immediate conversion that you can attribute back to an advert. Brand marketing works over time. It builds familiarity, preference, trust and mental availability. Research into advertising effectiveness has repeatedly found that businesses need a combination of short-term activation and long-term brand building rather than focusing exclusively on immediate ROI. That becomes especially important on social media. Millions of people might see an athlete, creator, video or campaign today without buying anything today. That exposure can still influence what they search for, talk about and eventually buy. You need performance marketing. But you also need to keep building the brand. Mbappé moving from Nike to On is going to be a fascinating example to watch. #nike #mpabbe #BrandMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #on

  • September 18 · 1 min

    Google Ads Agencies: Beware of This Fake Client Phishing Scam

    Google Ads Agencies: Beware of This Fake Client Phishing Scam If you manage Google Ads accounts for clients, you need to know about this scam. And yes, it’s real. Other PPC agencies have been reporting the same pattern. The scam often starts with what looks like an incredible new business enquiry. Someone claims to work for a large, legitimate company and says they have a massive Google Ads budget to spend. $30,000 a month. $50,000 a month. Sometimes significantly more. Everything is designed to get you excited enough to drop your guard. From there, they may send a meeting/calendar link, Google Ads access invitation, shared file or other link that leads into a phishing or malware attack. The objective can be to steal Google credentials or gain unauthorised access to a Google Ads Manager Account and the client accounts connected to it. This has become enough of a problem that multiple agencies have publicly reported fake prospects impersonating major companies. In one documented case, scammers registered a lookalike company domain only three days before contacting the agency, and the fake domain even redirected visitors to the real company’s website to appear legitimate. Some red flags to check: • The sender’s email domain doesn’t exactly match the company’s real domain • The domain was only recently registered • The supposed employee cannot be independently verified • The prospect is unusually eager to discuss a huge advertising budget immediately • They push you towards unfamiliar links, files or account-access requests • The information they give you doesn’t match the company’s actual information And don’t assume a professional-looking email means it is genuine. Google’s own security guidance recommends checking suspicious links before opening them and reporting suspected phishing. A compromised Manager Account can potentially affect multiple client accounts underneath it. I’m personally receiving these types of enquiries regularly. Verify the person. Verify the company. Verify the domain. And be extremely careful what you click. #GoogleAds #GoogleAdsAgency #PPC #scam #Phishing

  • September 16 · 1 min

    What Is the Most Popular SEO Software in South Africa? Semrush or Ahrefs?

    What Is the Most Popular SEO Software in South Africa? Semrush or Ahrefs? I wanted to see which of the two biggest SEO software platforms, Semrush or Ahrefs, attracts more traffic from South Africa, so I compared them using Similarweb. The difference surprised me. According to the Similarweb data I checked: • Semrush: approximately 92,000 monthly visits from South Africa • Ahrefs: approximately 34,000 monthly visits • Semrush: approximately 49,000 monthly unique visitors • Ahrefs: approximately 14,000 monthly unique visitors Based on those Similarweb estimates, Semrush is attracting considerably more South African website traffic than Ahrefs. But what I find even more interesting is the combined level of interest in both platforms. These are specialist SEO tools. Seeing this amount of South African traffic going to Semrush and Ahrefs is another indication of just how active the SEO industry is in South Africa. Of course, website traffic isn’t the same thing as the number of paying software users, but it gives us an interesting comparison of their relative popularity and reach. If you work in SEO in South Africa, which do you prefer: Semrush or Ahrefs? #seoSoftware #semrush #ahrefs #SEOTools #similarweb

  • September 15 · 46 sec

    Getting Less Than 200 Views on Instagram or TikTok? Your Content Might Be the Problem

    Getting Less Than 200 Views on Instagram or TikTok? Your Content Might Be the Problem It’s easy to blame the algorithm when your videos on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn aren’t getting views. “The Instagram algorithm changed.” “TikTok isn’t pushing my videos.” “My reach has been restricted.” Sometimes the answer is much simpler: your content just isn’t good enough. If people aren’t watching, engaging, commenting or sharing, ask yourself why. Are you helping people? Are you entertaining them? Are you teaching them something useful? Are you grabbing their attention quickly enough? Would you actually stop scrolling to watch your own video? Instagram and TikTok are incredibly competitive. You’re competing against thousands of other videos for someone’s attention, so simply posting content doesn’t mean people are going to watch it. Stop blaming every bad video on the algorithm. Take the time to improve your content, learn what your audience actually wants and keep practising. Create better content and give people a reason to watch. #Instagram #TikTok #SocialMedia #ContentCreation #VideoMarketing

  • September 14 · 1 min

    Get Your Business on Top of ChatGPT in South Africa and the World

    Get Your Business on Top of ChatGPT in South Africa and the World When someone asks ChatGPT for the best business, agency or service in your industry, you want your company to be one of the names that comes up first. That is where Answer Engine Optimisation comes in. At Top Click Media, we’ve applied this to our own business first. Search for: • Best digital marketing agency in South Africa • Best SEO agency in South Africa • Best Answer Engine Optimisation agency in South Africa And Top Click Media appears at the top of the answers. The point is simple. If an agency says they can help you rank in ChatGPT and other AI platforms, look at whether they can do it for themselves. Answer Engine Optimisation is about building the authority, relevance, citations and online presence that help AI platforms understand and recommend your business. If you want help getting your business on top of ChatGPT and other AI models: www.topclick.co.za/aeo #AnswerEngineOptimisation #AEO #ChatGPTSEO #AISEO #SEO

  • September 13 · 3 min

    Google Ads Audit: A Perfect Example of How Businesses Waste Money

    Google Ads Audit: A Perfect Example of How Businesses Waste Money I audited a Google Ads account for a high-end luxury safari company, and unfortunately, it’s a perfect example of how a good business with a great website can waste serious money when its Google Ads account isn’t set up correctly. The problems included: • Google automatically applying changes to the account • Page views incorrectly being counted as conversions • Performance Max spending money across Display and YouTube with auto-generated assets • One ad group trying to target around 30 completely different services • One generic ad and landing page being used for multiple search intents • Poorly researched keywords using broad match • Irrelevant search terms wasting budget One of the biggest problems was conversion tracking. If Google is being told that a simple page view is a successful conversion, its automated bidding systems are being trained on the wrong data. It thinks the campaigns are performing well and starts optimising towards more of the wrong actions. Your conversions should represent genuine business outcomes such as qualified enquiries, contact form submissions and phone calls, not someone simply viewing a page. Google Ads can be an incredibly powerful source of leads, but simply switching campaigns on isn’t enough. The account structure, keywords, search terms, negative keywords, ads, landing pages, conversion tracking and automation all need to be properly managed. If you’re spending serious money on Google Ads, make sure the person managing it knows what they’re doing. If you’d like us to audit your Google Ads account, contact me at: www.topclick.co.za #GoogleAds #GoogleAdsAudit #PPC #GoogleAdvertising #PaidSearch

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