Search Everywhere®: Reimagining SEO Across All Platforms with Ashley Liddell

In this episode of The Simple and Smart SEO Show, I'm stitting down with Ashley Liddell, co-founder of Deviation, to explore the concept of “Search Everywhere® .” 

From Sephora’s “Black Beauty Is Beauty” campaign to understanding the evolution of search across platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit, Ashley shares his journey to building a unique SEO agency. 

We discuss the fragmentation of the customer journey, optimizing across platforms, and why traditional SEO alone is no longer enough.

Key Takeaways:

• Search Everywhere®  Philosophy: SEO now means being discoverable on every platform where your audience is already spending time—not just Google.
• Brand Discovery vs. Intent Search: Ashley explains the difference between interruptive discovery (social platforms) vs. intentional problem-solving (search engines).
• Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding platform intent and audience behavior is essential to building omnichannel search strategies.
• Sephora’s Case Study: A missed opportunity to capitalize on a 7,000% search lift after a viral campaign highlights the need for integrated internal comms between marketing and SEO teams.
• Platform-Specific Optimization: Brands must tailor content (video, visual, text) based on platform expectations and user intent.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Search Everywhere®  is about engineering brand discovery where your audience actually hangs out.” – Ashley Liddell
• “We’ve always conformed to Google’s expectations—but what if your audience doesn’t?” – Ashley Liddell
• “That 7,000% spike in brand search was completely missed because of internal silos.” – Ashley Liddell

Listener Action Items:

1. Reevaluate Your Search Strategy: Consider where your audience spends time—beyond Google—and start optimizing there.
2. Audit Internal Communication: Ensure your marketing, social, and SEO teams are aligned and sharing data.
3. Review Campaign Metrics Holistically: Don’t just track social performance—look at how it influences branded search and on-site behavior.

Co

Does SEO feel confusing, overwhelming, or just plain impossible to figure out? You’re not alone. That’s why I created the AI SEO Foundations course, powered by Crystal GPT: your personal AI SEO coach designed for busy, creative business owners like you.

Ditch the overwhelm and discover what SEO can do for your business! Head to SEOin7days.com (with the number 7!) and get started today—let’s make your brand easy to find and impossible to ignore.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Black Beauty Campaign
• 1:18 Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO Show
• 1:32 Meet Ashley Liddell: Co-Founder of Deviation
• 2:14 Ashley's Journey into SEO
• 3:01 From Rise at Seven to Deviation
• 6:18 The Concept of Search Everywhere
• 8:05 Crystal's Pinterest Success Story
• 10:29 Customer Journey Mapping in SEO
• 16:02 The Importance of Internal Communication
• 17:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction to Sephora's Black Beauty Campaign

[00:00:00] Ashley (Deviation): The first ever real search Everywhere style campaign that I saw in the Wild that wasn't one of ours. Was by Sephora. And Sephora ran a campaign called Black Beauty Is Beauty. 

Which essentially recognized that the conversation on TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest around black beauty was obviously black owned makeup brands. Was black creators talking about the latest beauty trends, makeup trends, cosmetics trends. And that community was thriving on social platforms.

But when you searched for "black beauty" on Google. You received queries about a film from the eighties, which was about a black horse.

There was a massive gap there between what the community was demanding, and what Google was serving.

So they launched this campaign with a hero video to call out this stigma. To celebrate like the contribution of the black community to the makeup and cosmetic industry. And, and to the trends that take place within that.

And generated like mass brand awareness on the back of it. They [00:01:00] partnered with more black owned brands than ever before.

They did more for black owned brands. Put them in like better shelf positions and things like that in the store, in real life. And it was this first connected campaign.

And what it led to was like a 7000% increase in the number of people searching for Sephora at the time. 

[00:01:18] Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO Show

[00:01:18] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast.

I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success.

So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. and let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

[00:01:32] Meet Ashley Liddell: Co-Founder of Deviation

[00:01:32] Crystal: I'm here with another friend from across the pond, Ashley Liddell.

And we were joking together because we both have similar pronunciations of our last name. Very fancy at the end in that second syllable.

Ashley is the co-founder of Deviation. Not just an SEO agency. We'll talk about that in just a minute.

So Ashley, welcome To the simple and smart SEO show podcast!

I can't wait to talk to you about all of your innovative ideas around SEO.

[00:01:59] Ashley (Deviation): Hello. [00:02:00] Hello. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, we're gonna have a good chat.

[00:02:03] Crystal: Was so sad that I missed your talk in San Diego.

I think I was probably running my mouth somewhere.

But I was so excited to hear about everything that you guys are doing over there at Deviation.

[00:02:14] Ashley's Journey into SEO

[00:02:14] Crystal: I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit about your background of SEO.

[00:02:18] Ashley (Deviation): Mm-hmm.

[00:02:19] Crystal: The TLDR of how you got started to how you co-founded deviation. And then we'll jump in.

[00:02:24] Ashley (Deviation): Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, no worries.

So I was a bit of a late bloomer in the SEO game, to be fair. I. Got into SEO through my marketing degree that I was doing at the time.

At the University of Hull, which is a small city in the uk.

And SEO really started to pique my interest because it allowed me to be creative whilst also having data to back up the decisions.

You weren't playing guesswork or guessing. You had the data to inform that creativity. So I started doing SEO whilst at university. Through my assignments. And then through small local businesses.

After university, I got a [00:03:00] bit of a fortunate lucky break. 

[00:03:01] From Rise at Seven to Deviation

[00:03:02] Ashley (Deviation): And used a PPC campaign where I would basically bid on the terms "rise at seven" and "Carrie Rose" so that when you Google search for those terms, my CV appeared above their website.

So then Carrie basically saw my CV. And underneath the CV was like a, a link to jump on a Zoom call or a teams call with me. And I managed to get a job out the back of that and started properly in the SEO space at Rise at seven. This was when they were massively on their climb. And in their sort of like assurgance.

So I managed to get involved in a lot of cool stuff there.

Then the time came to move on from there. 'cause I was ready to progress.

And I was in their SEO team and it probably just wasn't possible to progress to where I needed to be at the time.

So I moved on to Conessa IPG media brands. and that was very different to Rise. 

Rise was very as I say in their assurgance. So they, they would let you get involved in a lot of things. [00:04:00] Let you test and learn, fail to succeed. And then when you go to a brand like IPG Media Brands, it was very regimented. But they had a lot of multinational large accounts.

So then I got to experience working with larger brands. And multinational brands, which was a really good experience. At that time as well, I was also developing this idea that I'm sure we're gonna get into of Search Everywhere.

And noticing that search was starting to change. And the time came where I was like, okay, I can either build this proposition at IPG media brands and try and build it at Conessa.

Or go and build it for myself. And I'd kept in touch with a couple of people that I was speaking to at Rise. We had a chat at our friend's wedding, funnily enough, which was quite cool. And said, should we go for it? They was like, yes. And then that was the startings or the rumblings of deviation. And then it's just gone from there really.

We launched soft launch April, 2024.

And then the full launch was in January of this year. So it's been a bit of a, a [00:05:00] whirlwind few years to be, to be fair.

[00:05:02] Crystal: I see your post on LinkedIn. How you're hiring again. And expanding. And I'm just like oh that's so awesome. Congratulations.

[00:05:08] Ashley (Deviation): Thank you, thank you. You have these different sort of journeys where you're like, okay, it is scary now 'cause we've got a client and then it's like, oh, now it's scary 'cause we've got to hire people. And now it's scary 'cause we've got to hire more people. So I don't think it'll ever stop being scary, but it's a lot of fun as well.

So it's really cool.

[00:05:24] Crystal: watching a thing with this guy from Shark Tank, Mr Wonderful.

Somebody asked him a question: can anybody be an entrepreneur? Was like no, they can't.

He talked about just having that tolerance for everything you just spoke about. That risk tolerance. And the painful ups and downs of learning and growing and all that.

So yeah I love to be in the presence of other entrepreneurs

[00:05:45] Ashley (Deviation): We're a weird bunch, aren't we?

It is that risk, that ability to accept that you're, you're taking a risk. Or putting yourself in the, in the shot window. So to so speak. But yeah, it's it's a weird old life.

I remember when we started Deviation, I spoke to my [00:06:00] partner about it and she basically said, oh yeah, if you're going for it, you've got to go for it now.

And it was like, okay, that's great. Like awesome.

And then I spoke to my mum who's very risk averse.

And she was like, oh, I don't know if you should be doing this. But luckily it's it's worked out. But you are right. I don't think it's, it's the lifestyle for everybody, for sure. 

[00:06:18] The Concept of Search Everywhere

[00:06:18] Crystal: So tell us about this concept of search everywhere

[00:06:21] Ashley (Deviation): So search everywhere. It's, it's quite a simple thing on the surface, but then as you dig deeper and deeper, it gets more convoluted.

And there's lots of like arms to it, which makes it really fun.

On the surface, it's essentially engineering brand discovery on the platforms that your audiences spend time engaging on.

So it is recognizing that actually. Even before AI search emerged, even before TikTok became a search engine, we don't actually spend that much time on a Google SERP. 

We go there when we realize we've got a problem, we input a query and we look for a solution. And Spark Toro have done some really cool research on this [00:07:00] recently.

Actually, we spend more of our time on. Social media platforms, news platforms, productivity platforms.

So Search Everywhere originally started is this idea of let's go to those platforms. Because the ocean is bigger and people are spending more time there.

And we can connect with our audiences more effectively and more efficiently.

And as a result of that, we can facilitate a brand search back on Google. Where they realize they've got a problem. They're then taking a brand search rather than a non-branded search.

The reason it starts to get convoluted is then AI and LLMs have started to enter the conversation. The likes of Reddit, Pinterest and TikTok have realized that.

This is happening. So therefore they are almost like mini search engines, if you like.

So it starts to get convoluted because then there's all these sort of, okay, well how do you optimize for TikTok? How do you optimize for YouTube?

When originally when I was thinking of it, it was just making sure you was searchable or findable on those [00:08:00] platforms.

So yeah, that's the top level and I'm sure we can get into it more.

We 

[00:08:05] Crystal's Pinterest Success Story

[00:08:05] Crystal: talked a little bit about how I got started in SEO with Shopify. And helping other small creators build their Shopify stores.

And for me my Big generator of buzz I guess you could say about my business. It's on Pinterest. I am a creative I make athlete gifts and wooden signs. And different things like that.

Pinterest really made sense for my business as a visual type of search engine. 

[00:08:29] Ashley (Deviation): Mm-hmm.

[00:08:29] Crystal: Pinterest has a lot of like SEO principles embedded in it that I didn't even realize I was

[00:08:35] Ashley (Deviation): Yes.

[00:08:35] Crystal: SEO as I was Optimizing everything for Pinterest.

From text overlays to graphics. To descriptions that type of stuff.

So it was just really interesting to me as I moved through learning about SEO like I could see parallels or the intersections or just like the crossover of search. Across platforms. And a lot of people would talk about optimizing their website. [00:09:00] But I was thinking I was like even how I search, I don't just go to Google.

And so because I was so ingrained in Pinterest it really opened my eyes beyond just that traditional "create content for your website. Build links for your website" that's it. And so I love this idea of search everywhere

[00:09:18] Ashley (Deviation): Yeah, I mean that's like a really good sort of use case example here. It's that idea of, actually for a lot of brands, the Google search engine result page provides a lot of friction that doesn't necessarily have to be there for you.

Historically, we've always sort of conformed to the requirements of Google and given into what they expect from content. And how they like decide what they're gonna rank. 

And that's been set by what's easiest to create, typically.

So that will always be. Blogs for informational queries, historically. With H one, H two, some FAQs chunked content, for example.

And that was the be all and end all. Now, what we're realizing is [00:10:00] that actually, search can exist as a Pinterest board that then moves people through to Aa PLP, PDP. 

It can just be an infographic on Instagram. Or Pinterest, again.

It can be short form video. Actually, you're better to decide what your, or look to what your audience is demanding from the query or from the intent.

Rather than just shoehorning content into a structure that historically worked for Google SERP.

So yeah, I'm glad that we're sort of aligned on that search everywhere idea. 

[00:10:29] Customer Journey Mapping in SEO

[00:10:29] Crystal: this also brings me the idea of like customer journey mapping. And understanding your customer journey. Like how does that play into how you, help other businesses?

[00:10:38] Ashley (Deviation): It is a massive part. If we take a typical client, it's a massive part of our strategy development. We'll, essentially. Take the learnings of what we historically did for traditional SEO. So things like keyword research.

Things like understanding persona profiles. And obviously business goals and objectives.

And then we dial them up to a hundred for [00:11:00] our search everywhere.

Sort of like strategy generation. So we want to understand which platforms users are leveraging for the intent relevant to that brand. So if a brand comes to us for running shoes, for example. Nice easy example.

We want to understand, okay, well for the conversation of running shoes.

Is it a visual query? Is it a short form video query?

Is it that text based content on the website is gonna be king? What type of content needs to be part of that conversation?

And then that will always drive the pieces of content that we ultimately create. And then in terms of the actual understanding.

Well, your primary audience has saved up on this platform or are spending time on this platform. We'll lean on like various tools that I'm sure we can get into.

To understand the 18 to 34s are really enjoying content on Snapchat at the moment, for example. Or the over fifties are an emerging market on TikTok.

So if there's an opportunity [00:12:00] there for a brand to get ahead of the curve. And speak to over fifties on TikTok that are starting to populate the platform more and more so that they are.

Infiltrating that new market, for example. So it's just understanding where we believe our brand should be showing up to meet their ideal audience. 

[00:12:16] Crystal: Up a situation that I encountered probably in the last couple months that I've talked about it a couple times.

Because, I'm a older person. I look a lot younger than I am.

But I'm an older person and I was an athlete my whole

[00:12:28] Ashley (Deviation): Mm-hmm.

[00:12:28] Crystal: So I didn't discover hair and makeup until about five years ago. And I thought oh this is so fun It's so fun to be girly.

And the first place I went was TikTok.

Because TikTok has like really good makeup tutorials. And they also have a variety of people Who look different from one another. So I can type in like my skin tone my eye color what I'm looking for in terms of what's going to fit my needs, right?

As I was exploring this, makeup is foreign to me.

These girls were using all [00:13:00] sorts of crazy stuff. And I was like I didn't even know that existed.

I didn't find out people actually had fake eyelashes or could put fake eyelashes on until I was like in my thirties I'm not kidding people used to always ask me, do you curl your eyelash?

I'm like with a curling iron? What are you talking about?

I didn't know that girls did that.

Anyway, on TikTok, I found a makeup brand that I really loved.

It really made sense for me and I went to their website to find the product that I was looking for.

This video and the videos around it had hundreds of thousands of views. tons of comments tons of engagement. All that type of stuff.

But I could not find that particular product [on the website].

And I'm like if I was a big brand that would be one of the first connections I would make is with some of these influencers. So you're nodding your head tell me what you think about that and how that inspires you

[00:13:45] Ashley (Deviation): So there's a funny story around this actually.

With makeup and beauty, especially.

The first ever real search Everywhere style campaign that I saw in the Wild that wasn't one of ours. Was by Sephora. [00:14:00] And Sephora ran a campaign called Black Beauty Is Beauty. 

Which essentially recognized that the conversation on TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest around black beauty was obviously black owned makeup brands. Was black creators talking about the latest beauty trends, makeup trends, cosmetics trends. And that community was thriving on social platforms.

But when you searched for "black beauty" on Google. You received queries about a film from the eighties, which was about a black horse.

There was a massive gap there between what the community was demanding, and what Google was serving.

So they launched this campaign with a hero video to call out this stigma. To celebrate like the contribution of the black community to the makeup and cosmetic industry. And, and to the trends that take place within that.

And generated like mass brand awareness on the back of it. They partnered with more black owned brands than ever before.

They did more for black owned brands. Put them in like better shelf positions and things like that in the store, in real [00:15:00] life. And it was this first connected campaign.

And what it led to was like a 7000% increase in the number of people searching for Sephora at the time.

We later spoke to the CMO who oversaw this campaign. They didn't know that that had took place.

They didn't know that there was a 7000% increase in people searching on Google for Sephora plus black owned products.

The CMO was just like, if we'd have seen this spike and known about this, we would've kept the campaign going.

We would've made it like a hero campaign for a longer period of time. Instead of it having a clear start and end date.

This idea of, okay. We've seen this on social search.

And then there's a massive disconnect with the website or with the traditional SEO that's not alien to the industry.

Because it's happening at this huge brand like Sephora. That have done such a great creative campaign from a social and from a brand point of view.

But then completely missed the the boat when it came to the SEO slash brand search play.

So yeah, in terms of [00:16:00] how that's working and what's happening there. 

[00:16:02] The Importance of Internal Communication

[00:16:02] Ashley (Deviation): There's just this massive need to communicate more internally at any brand.

But especially at the biggest brands in the world. Where when we're doing these social search campaigns, when we're doing brand campaigns.

There needs to be integration between all of the potential stakeholders. Because.

As you rightly point out, if you can't find a product that you are celebrating and creating buzz about for on TikTok.

That's a massive issue for the SEO team or the search team that they could quite easily fix, quite quickly, fix.

And then have massive results on the back of and all that's needed to take place.

There is a little bit of internal comms. Historically, we've always struggled to get those internal comms moving. Now as search moves and people start to accept that actually, we need brand mentions for ai, LL LLM search.

We need conversations going and taking place on social search. And then we need a good, strong traditional SEO foundation to build this all from. 

There's a need to break down those [00:17:00] silos and have those conversations. So hopefully we'll see that happen more and more.

But yeah, that was always our go-to example in the early days. I say early days like we're 10 years old, but like for our first three, four months until we built our own case study.

That was the case study that we used. And what they managed to do as well, is they managed to move the black beauty film down the SERP.

 And make the Sephora stuff come up.

When you did search for Black beauty. That's since changed again. 'cause the knowledge graph has gone back to well actually people are searching for this film from the eighties. 

Because Sephora haven't kept up with it.

So, yeah, it is a good sort of analogy, if you like, of exactly what you was just saying.

[00:17:39] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:17:39] Crystal: And that was gonna be my question is okay then did they follow through on that suggestion?

And then it's wow if it was doing so well I wonder why they didn't continue to do it? Or if it started to decline?

And these silos.

Every element from creating the title, descriptions, taking photos. Optimizing pages.

Like actually figuring out that there was a [00:18:00] h one and a title tag and meta description on a Shopify page. Like I did all of that. So it's so hard for me to understand about this communication breakdown. That is happening in these larger brands.

Because the clients appear to be creating the demand for these products.

Which is exactly what we're set up for now It's like you wanna create the demand so that you're searched for.

How can companies do a better job of recognizing that?