A peek behind the curtains at Speedie Consultants Limited
Content marketing has changed enormously since we started more than 20 years ago.
Google has changed. SEO has changed. AI has arrived. And the way people find information is changing too, with traditional search engines increasingly sitting alongside AI-powered search and answer engines.
Our approach has evolved with it.
We use AI. We use SEO and AEO tools. We analyse keywords, search intent and the questions people are asking. We research, interrogate, check and optimise.
But we don’t outsource our thinking.
Because our clients aren’t paying us simply to produce words. They’re paying for the expertise and judgement behind them.
So, how does it actually work?
We start with your business
Before we worry about keywords, prompts or word counts, we need to understand what the content is supposed to achieve.
Who are you talking to? What do they need? What are they searching for? What do you want them to do next?
We also look at your existing content, competitors, tone of voice and wider marketing activity.
For clients in regulated sectors such as financial services and insurance, there’s another important consideration: what can – and should – be said.
The best-performing content isn’t created in isolation. It needs a reason to exist.
Then we do the homework
This is the bit readers rarely see.
Depending on the project, we may look at:
- keywords and search intent
- questions potential customers are asking
- competitor content and content gaps
- authoritative sources and supporting evidence
- opportunities for internal and external linking
- SEO and AEO opportunities
- existing website content that could be improved rather than replaced
- relevant regulatory or industry developments.
In other words, we don’t just decide that 800 words on a particular subject sounds like a good idea and start typing.
Yes, we use AI
Of course we do.
Used properly, AI can be an extremely useful tool. We may use it to help analyse information, explore ideas, interrogate research, identify gaps, develop questions or look at a subject from different angles.
It can make parts of the content process faster and give us another way of interrogating the information in front of us.
What we don’t do is type a title into an AI tool, copy the result and send you an invoice.
That’s not a content strategy. And it’s certainly not what you’re paying us for.
Humans stay firmly in the loop
AI can produce a remarkably confident answer that is also remarkably wrong.
It doesn’t know your business like you do. It doesn’t necessarily understand nuance or context, and it can’t always tell whether the information it has found is reliable or current.
It also has a rather unfortunate tendency to produce the same phrases, structures and conclusions as everyone else using it.
That’s where humans come in.
We decide what’s relevant. We question claims. We check facts and sources. We remove the generic fluff. We challenge things that don’t look right.
And then we make the content sound like you, rather than like something generated for anybody.
YMYL: when getting it wrong really matters
This is particularly important when we’re creating what’s known in search as YMYL content.
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. Google uses the term for topics where inaccurate or misleading information could significantly affect someone’s health, financial stability, safety or wellbeing – or the welfare of society.
Unsurprisingly, financial services falls squarely into this territory.
Someone reading an article about insurance, mortgages, investments or other financial products may use that information to make a decision involving their money.
That raises the bar.
Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines place particular importance on E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – for YMYL topics.
Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines:
https://guidelines.raterhub.com/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
Google guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
This doesn’t mean simply adding an author’s credentials or a few authoritative links and declaring a page “YMYL optimised”.
It means thinking carefully about who created the content, where the information came from, whether claims can be substantiated, whether sources are trustworthy and current, and whether a reader could potentially be misled by what’s been written.
For us, that’s another reason human scrutiny matters.
Financial services content needs another layer of care
We’ve worked extensively across insurance and financial services, so we’re very conscious that content in these sectors needs more than a quick grammar check before it goes live.
And YMYL isn’t the only consideration.
UK financial services firms also operate within the FCA’s regulatory framework, including requirements around financial promotions and the Consumer Duty.
The FCA requires financial promotions to be fair, clear and not misleading.
https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/financial-promotions-adverts
The Consumer Duty also requires firms to act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers, including supporting consumer understanding.
https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/consumer-duty
YMYL and FCA compliance are not the same thing.
YMYL is a Google concept concerned with the potential harm that poor-quality or inaccurate information can cause and the resulting importance of trust.
FCA requirements are regulatory obligations.
But if you’re producing financial services content, both reinforce something we’ve believed for a long time:
Accuracy, clarity, evidence and trust matter.
AI doesn’t take responsibility for your regulatory obligations. You do.
That’s why FCA awareness and appropriate scrutiny remain part of our process when we’re working on financial services content.
We don’t replace a firm’s own compliance procedures or approval processes, but we understand the environment our clients operate in and write with that in mind from the outset.
It’s considerably easier than trying to bolt compliance onto a piece of content afterwards.
We write for people, search engines and then answer engines
SEO still matters.
But the way people discover information is evolving, which means we’re also thinking about AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation – and how content can be understood, surfaced and potentially referenced by AI-powered search and answer tools.
That means clear structure, useful answers, genuine expertise, credible sources and content that actually addresses what someone wants to know.
Interestingly, many of the fundamentals overlap.
Useful, well-structured, well-sourced content created with genuine knowledge and experience is good for traditional search, important for YMYL topics and valuable in an AI-search world.
But there’s another audience we refuse to forget.
Humans.
Getting found is only part of the job. Once someone arrives, the content has to be useful, credible and persuasive enough to make them want to stay.
Nothing leaves without a human review
Before content goes back to a client, we look at it as an editor rather than simply as the person who created it.
Does it answer the brief?
Is it accurate?
Are the claims supportable?
Are the sources credible and current?
Does anything sound generic or repetitive?
Does it sound like the client?
Are there YMYL or regulatory considerations?
Have we missed an obvious question?
Would we be happy putting our name to it?
That last question matters.
The tools change. Our responsibility doesn’t.
We’ve spent more than 20 years adapting to changes in search, digital marketing and the technology available to us. AI is simply the latest significant development.
We use the tools that help us research, analyse and create better content. But tools don’t replace expertise, judgement or accountability.
Our clients aren’t paying us to use AI.
They’re paying us to know what we’re doing.
I think the last three lines are particularly strong for Speedie. They turn what could otherwise become a slightly defensive “yes, we use AI” page into a statement about why clients are paying you in the first place.
