The SEO Tree Framework: How Every Piece of Content Should Connect

If you’re doing SEO and just pumping out random articles hoping something sticks, you’re doing it wrong. Every piece of content you create needs to fit within a larger structure, what we call the SEO Tree. In this training, Dylan Haugen and I walk through exactly how this framework works, why most people get it wrong, and how to fix it.

Context over chaos

The number one mistake we see from VAs, freelancers, and even experienced marketers is that they create content without understanding the business behind it. They know how to use tools. They know how to write. But they don’t understand the goals, content, and targeting of the business they’re working for.

If you’re turning a video into an article and you don’t understand the topic, the client’s customers, or how that content fits into everything else the business has published, you’re creating what I call unintentional, well-meaning vandalism. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are with Adobe Premiere or ChatGPT. Without context, the content you produce will either be useless or actively harmful to the site’s SEO.

Take Dylan Haugen as an example. He wrote an article on his personal website honoring his friend Travis Reynolds, a professional dunker.

The goal was simple: rank on Travis’s name since there wasn’t much information about him online. But then Dylan went to North Carolina, spent 10 days training with Travis, and created more videos and content from that trip.

Later, Travis did more notable things in dunking competitions. Each new piece of content reinforced that original article about who Travis Reynolds is. The specific articles rank on the specific things, while the main article ranks on his name. That’s the tree in action.

Now imagine someone else is assigned to process one of those dunking videos. If they don’t understand the difference between professional dunking and just playing basketball, they won’t process the images, social media posts, or video clips correctly. They lack the context. And that’s why we call our approach Learn, Do, Teach. If you’re turning a video into an article, you’re teaching, even if you don’t realize it. So you need to actually understand what you’re teaching.

And those connections go deeper. Jordan Kannon has met with Dylan and talked with Travis. Travis was already on the Dunk Talk podcast hosted by Dylan. If you don’t know who the other dunkers are, why they go to competitions, what kinds of awards and prizes and money they might win, you can’t properly repurpose that content. The goals, content, and targeting for Dylan’s dunking content is a whole tree of its own.

I was at a retreat a few days ago in Idaho called Startups with Stu, with a lot of LDS entrepreneurs.

Stuart Draper was there, who sold Stu Kent for high double-digit millions earlier this year.

Jeremy Barker, the founder of Murphy Door, was there. Some people had just gotten back from their two-year missions telling the world about Jesus, knocking on doors and selling pest control. Without understanding that context, we wouldn’t be able to write an article that properly honored the people we met at that mastermind. And even if we wrote an okay article using deep research tools, for it to be valuable it has to make money somehow.

That article would need to link to our AI Apprentice program, which is related. It would need to link to the Four-Stage Content Factory, which is how we process content.

It would link to how to start a podcast and interview someone, because I interviewed Sam McLeod on my podcast, the Coach Yu Show. You’d need the context that our mission is to create jobs for young adults doing digital marketing to drive revenue for local service businesses. Without that context, the article doesn’t fit into the tree and doesn’t help drive business.

The SEO tree framework

Think about a website’s content like a tree. At the top, you have the root, which is usually the homepage or brand name. That’s where the most authority lives. From there, you have the trunk, which branches into major topics. Those branches split into smaller subtopics, and at the very tips you have leaves, the specific examples, blog posts, and detailed content.

When you move up the tree, you’re moving toward higher authority. When you move down, you’re getting into more specific detail. When you move across, you’re looking at related topics on the same level.

Every piece of content needs to connect back through the tree. If you publish an article that sits by itself with no links to related content, no connection to the main topic, and no relationship to the rest of the site, it confuses Google. It confuses ChatGPT. It hurts your rankings instead of helping them.

As Dylan put it, the biggest thing is having everything reinforce itself. Not just making the same thing over and over again, but having everything fit into the concept of the tree.

The key insight is that most of the time, new content should enhance existing content rather than stand alone. If an article is already ranking, make it better by adding more examples, more links, and more depth. You only create new standalone articles when you already dominate a topic and want to branch into a related subtopic.

EEAT: why real experience matters

Google introduced EEAT, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. They added the extra E for Experience right before ChatGPT launched because they knew people would flood the internet with AI-generated content. We wrote a key article called I Love to EEAT that everyone should study carefully.

What Google wants to see is real, unique experience. When there’s a webinar, a dunking event in North Carolina, or the Startups with Stu mastermind in Idaho, there are specific experiences. A camera capturing a scene of specific people doing specific things in a specific place at a specific time. Those connections between real people, real companies, and real customers are the raw ingredients that Google and ChatGPT look for to determine if content is real, helpful, and unique.

As Dylan develops his relationship with Travis Reynolds over time, there are more connections. As Travis continues to win awards or unlock new dunks, that enhances his EEAT, which means we need to go back and enhance those articles and strengthen the connections between those related topics.

If you’re just generating content with AI and not adding real experience, real examples, and real proof, you’re building on a foundation that will eventually collapse. Look at Jeremy Mayer in Phoenix who does home remodeling. There was a lot of black hat SEO working for a while. We’re replacing that. Black hat always gets found out eventually.

The Content Factory: produce, process, post, promote

We use a four-stage system called the Content Factory. Stage one is Produce, which is what the client does. They record videos, do podcasts, or create the raw content. Usually it’s a podcast format because that allows us to rank on that person’s name and our name, and they bring authority. Stage two is Process, which is where you take that raw content and turn it into articles, social posts, and other formats. Stage three is Post, distributing it across channels. Stage four is Promote, where you run ads, gather feedback, and amplify what’s working.

The important thing is that one person should be able to take content through all four stages. Henry, one of our team members, started out only knowing basic video editing.

For a while, Dylan would edit the videos and then Dylan would go post them for clients. That just doesn’t make sense. It’s much better for the person who processed the content and already understands it to go post it and promote it too.

As Dylan says, it’s really not that hard. Taking a video that’s already done and putting it on YouTube is simple. Boosting posts is simple once you do it once. Being open to learning all parts of the process is where the true value is.

Our friend Dan Leibrandt of Pest Control Millionaires demonstrates this perfectly.

He shows how he edits videos and he does almost nothing to them. Why? Because he has a good guest who’s authoritative in a certain topic, he asks good questions, and they have a good conversation. The raw video with just a couple minutes of editing is all that’s necessary. Nick Fuentes takes it even further. He just goes live, talks for two or three hours, and people pull out clips. The raw video is the content.

I’ve demonstrated this live in our Thursday Office Hours. I recorded a piece of content, processed it in Descript, turned it into a blog post, shared it on social media, and ran an ad against it in eight minutes flat. All four stages. In Descript, I press one button for Studio Sound to clean the audio, one button to remove filler words, one button to clean up other things. Descript integrates with Transistor so it automatically pushes across all podcast networks. It’s not about spending 200 hours on one video. It’s about getting quality content through the factory quickly.

Why single-tool specialists fail

If you only know one tool or one platform, you’re at risk. We don’t need someone who only does Instagram reels or only does thumbnails or only does technical SEO audits. What matters is the ability to see content all the way through from production to revenue.

Can you show that the articles you published drove rankings? Can you show those rankings drove traffic? Can you show that traffic turned into revenue? That’s what clients pay for. They know that every dollar they give us has to generate ten or more dollars back.

Being a specialist in one narrow tool makes you replaceable. Being someone who understands the full picture and can drive business results makes you invaluable. Jack Wendt, Henry, and other successful young adults on our team have demonstrated this. They didn’t just learn one thing. They learned to see it all the way through.

Real example: Murphy Door

Let me walk through a real example. Murphy Door, founded by Jeremy Barker, is a company that does over $107 million a year selling hidden doors and bookcase doors.

You know those bookcases that swing open into a hidden room? That’s what they do. They’re in Home Depot now, they have tons of great reviews, and they basically invented the category.

They rank on terms like “Murphy door,” “hidden door,” and “Murphy bed.” Their homepage is the root of the tree and carries the most authority. The SEO tools show them getting around 88,000 in traffic across their keywords.

From the homepage, they branch into topics like Murphy beds, Murphy bed desks, and various product pages. Each of those pages ranks on its own set of keywords. A page about “Murphy bed with desk” is a subtopic of “Murphy bed,” which connects up to the main brand.

When we look at that Murphy bed desk page, it ranks on 229 keywords even though they only launched it a couple months ago.

But it could be better.

It has very few actual examples of a Murphy bed with a desk. There could be blog posts showing specific customers, specific room configurations, and specific use cases, all linking back up to that product page.

If someone writes an article about “20 amazing Murphy bed desks” but doesn’t link it back through the tree, it creates confusion. The leaf has to connect to the branch, the branch to the limb, the limb to the trunk, and the trunk to the root.

We can also see something interesting: they have an article called “Creative and Practical Small Gun Room Ideas for Limited Spaces.” It drives decent traffic and ranks on 212 keywords. But it looks like AI content. It’s working now, but eventually it will get crushed. We like to do things by the book.

They also rank on Murphy bed related terms. “Wall bed” is synonymous with Murphy bed. If the article doesn’t mention “wall bed” or “full-size Murphy bed” or “Queen Murphy bed,” they lose rankings on those terms. Every variation is a branch that connects back up through the tree.

What not to do: the plumber case study

Here’s a perfect example of what goes wrong. We have a client, Sal Sciorta, who owns Plumbing Pros in Easton, Pennsylvania.

A VA working on the account decided to create dozens of location service pages for every small town in the area. Every single page was essentially the same thing. “Plumbing services in [town name]. At Plumbing Pros, we are proud to service [town name]. Reliable plumbing for [town name].”

Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. Every page identical with just the city name swapped out.

The result? Zero traffic. Zero rankings. High AI content flags.

Despite being told repeatedly to stop, the VA kept proposing to create even more of these pages.

After three in-depth private training sessions explaining why this doesn’t work, the VA’s response was “I’ll create 100 more location service pages.” No. You’re done.

This violates everything we’ve talked about. There’s no real EEAT.

No real examples of Sal actually doing work in those towns. No videos, no photos, no customer stories. Just AI-generated filler repeated across pages.

The fix is simple. Show real examples of Sal doing actual plumbing work in those areas. Put videos of him on the job talking about the project. Include real customer reviews from those locations. That’s what Google wants to see and that’s what will actually rank.

Meanwhile, the things that are actually working for Plumbing Pros are the homepage ranking on “plumber in Easton,” the reviews page, and informational content like “does an expansion tank help with water pressure” which has a keyword difficulty of zero. Those are real, helpful pieces of content that fit into the tree.

Internal linking rules

Internal linking is not about jamming as many links as possible into an article. It’s about being genuinely helpful to the reader. Every link should make sense in context. If someone is reading your article and they see a linked phrase, clicking it should take them to something that actually deepens their understanding.

Google is looking at whether people actually click on those links. They look at clickstream behavior in the Chrome browser, which Google owns, to determine whether people find that content helpful. So you don’t want to just pick anchor text on keywords you want to rank on and slap a link on there.

The first link to a page is the one that passes the most value. Linking to the same page ten times doesn’t give you ten times the benefit. Google has known this for 25 years. You can link multiple times if it’s a call to action, like a button saying “ready to buy? click here to get started.” But that’s for the user’s benefit, not to pass extra link juice.

Don’t link to the homepage of Facebook or LinkedIn. That does nothing for anyone. I saw a submission yesterday where someone linked to the homepage of Facebook and the homepage of LinkedIn. That’s clearly not relevant and doesn’t fit into any tree unless we own LinkedIn.

Link to internal articles, to partners, and to clients when it’s specific and relevant. We have a custom GPT internal link tool, but you could also use Link Whisper, which is a partner of ours, or just ask ChatGPT to help you figure out internal links.

Enhance vs. create

Dylan and I agree that we should always be enhancing existing content first. Every piece of content reinforces other content in a different way. Some are specific examples of us practicing what we preach. Those reinforce the bigger things like our definitive articles on each subject, or the packages and services we offer.

Usually when we have new content, it’s new examples of demonstrating how something works. We enhance an existing article by adding more examples. If that article isn’t already ranking at the top, we give that one asset more power instead of creating new blog posts.

The times when we create new blog posts are when we already dominate on that topic and want to branch into a slightly related subtopic. Once you’re already winning on “Murphy bed,” then you expand to “Murphy bed with desk” or “Queen Murphy bed.”

The main time we create a new standalone article is when it’s a podcast episode. By definition, a 40-minute interview like this one becomes its own webpage, video, and set of snippets. But it links to all the other things we’re talking about, which is why in each section of this training we reference related concepts. We’re literally demonstrating the content tree in this discussion.

Banned phrases and fixes

We’ve built common AI giveaway phrases into our article guidelines. Phrases like “it’s a game changer,” “no more fluff,” and “here’s the real deal” are dead giveaways that content was AI-generated. If you use ChatGPT or any of these tools, you already know what we’re talking about. Don’t use them.

Instead, use real facts, real examples, and real names. Not just because we’re submitting for Google Knowledge Panels, but because real facts create real links. We have proof, which links to the leaf-level examples of detail. All of our content pages, like a bio for an entrepreneur, should link to the detail on what that entrepreneur has actually done. Not just “they’re a great entrepreneur and they love helping the community.” Real examples.

I’m interviewing Ethan Van De Hey later today about what he’s done for Infinity Doors and Exteriors. There are real examples of community impact that we’ll talk about, and we’ll cover the SEO impact of those real experiences.

Your assignment

If you want to work with us, here’s what to do. Go to the Facebook group Digital Marketing with Dennis Yu, pick a video that we’ve uploaded in the last couple weeks, and repurpose it into an article following our guidelines.

Show that you understand the SEO Tree, EEAT, the Content Factory, and internal linking.

Don’t tell us you have five years of experience. Don’t tell us how great you are. Show us the work. We won’t ask whether you studied the training materials. We’ll know from your submission whether you did or didn’t.

If you’re an A-player, we want to work with you. Maybe your parents own a business and can invest in the certification so you can get trained with direct access to us. Or maybe you’re a broke college kid who just got back from a mission. All the content is out here for free. There are 40,000 of us in the group. But don’t think that’s your competition. Most people don’t do anything. Your competition is yourself and your ability to do good work.

Think about Learn, Do, Teach. Think about Anthony Hilb, a landscaper in Bloomington, Indiana, who does great work out in the field, cutting down trees, training his staff, buying trucks for his people, talking to customers.

There are tons of proof of him and me hanging out at SeaWorld wearing silly hats, feeding monkeys, walking the coast in San Diego, and attending Perry Marshall’s Mastermind in Chicago. Everything we do is based on proof.

Watch this video. Watch the Nine Triangles video. Watch the Two-Sided Network video. If you understand these concepts, you’re immediately going to be a hundred times more valuable. Take action and let us know what you think.