Human Friend Digital

Jacob and Jeff read Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things for the second episode of their book club series. The good news: the book is genuinely insightful about why some products work and others don't. The bad news: it's also kind of boring.

But they made it through, and in this episode they talk about what they learned. They discuss concepts like affordances and signifiers, the language of how objects communicate what they do. They compare streaming service interfaces, debate the merits of old versus new technology, and talk through Jacob's experiences designing forms that actually work. There are tangents about rental cars, vintage cameras, and why some design decisions from decades ago are still with us today.

The conversation ranges from websites to everyday objects, touching on legacy constraints, cultural differences in design, and why sometimes simpler is genuinely better. By the end, you might start noticing design decisions everywhere… for better or worse.

Sites Discussed:
Rabbit Tech

Nothing Tech

Yale School of Art

Duolingo

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

De-Coding the technical side of search

Some websites get star ratings in Google search results. Others don't. Some searches give you answers without ever leaving Google's page. There's a reason for all of it.

In this episode of the Human Friend Digital Podcast, Jacob and Jeff break down schema - the structured data that helps search engines understand what your website is actually about. They explain rich snippets, those extra details that make some search results stand out. They cover knowledge graphs, the panels that answer questions directly on Google. And they get into zero-click searches, where visibility matters even when no one clicks through to your site.

The technical side of SEO can feel overwhelming, especially when terms like JSON and structured data get thrown around. However, understanding how search engines read your website is crucial for appearing in the right way. Jacob walks through the mechanics while Jeff asks the practical questions. By the end, you'll know why this invisible layer of code matters for your business's online visibility

LINKS:

• Schema - https://schema.org/
• Schema Testers
  • Google Validator - https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
  • Shema Vaidator - https://validator.schema.org/
• Schema Generator https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/
• Types of Rich Snippets Available https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/search-gallery
• Remove the first 50 results from a Google search result page:
  • Sadly almost all varieties of these tool have become obsolete after changes in Google. There is one still going, but it is a paid service. 
  • https://millionshort.com/
  • We are not affiliated with Million Short in any way.
  • Here’s the Wired article Jeff mentions:
    Million Short: A Search Engine for the Very Long Tail | WIRED

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

Google just turned off an old search parameter that's been around for over a decade. SEO tracking tools are scrambling to adapt, and companies are watching their ranking data change overnight. On this episode of the Human Friend Digital Podcast, Jacob and Jeff break down what actually happened and why it might not impact your business as much as you'd think. They discuss what metrics really matter for measuring online success, the difference between vanity numbers and real results, and why chasing rankings doesn't always translate to revenue.

Links:

CEO of SpyFu’s post mentioned in the episode: Post | LinkedIn

Other articles worth reading:

Google Search rank and position tracking is a mess right now

The Future Of Rank Tracking Can Go Two Ways

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

How one woman turned her own search for community into Cincinnati's home for indie film.

In this episode of the Human Friend Digital Podcast, Jacob and Jeff talk with Allyson West, founder of the Cindependent Film Festival, about how one person’s search for belonging became an international arts movement.

Allyson left New York to return to Cincinnati for love, only to feel like she had traded her creative community for a city that didn’t know what to do with her. Cincinnati had theater, opera, ballet, murals—but not independent film. And so, rather than accept that loss, she began to write, to direct, and ultimately to build the community she was missing.

That effort became the Cindependent Film Festival. In its first year, just over 200 filmmakers and writers submitted their work; this year, more than 800 did the same, representing voices from over 30 countries around the globe. But the numbers aren’t the point: its deeper success lies in how it reframes film as community. Screenings are curated like conversations. Masterclasses invite learning, while after-parties invite connection. What makes Cindependent a gem for Cincinnati is its ethos: that film festivals are not just about films, but about the people who gather around them.

For Cincinnati, Cindependent filled a cultural gap. For Allyson, it gave back the sense of connection she thought she had left behind.

Links:

Cindependent Film Festival
2025 Programing
CindeFan Membership Program
2025 Cindependent Film Festival Trailer

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

In this episode, the first “Book Club” of the Human Friend Digital Podcast, Jacob and Jeff unpack The Art of War, finding in its pages not the call to conquer, but timeless lessons in patience, balance, and leadership that still shape how we work and live today.

When most people hear The Art of War, they picture battlefields—armies clashing, banners raised, empires in peril. But when Jacob opened it for the first time, he found something different. The book begins not with weapons, but with a list: benevolence, discipline, patience. Sun Tzu insists that a general must be kind before he can be strict. It’s an unexpected truth, that even in the language of war leadership begins with compassion.

Jeff remembered reading the book back in high school, when it felt like a relic from a distant age. Yet as they compared notes, its warnings felt strangely present. Sun Tzu wrote that the greatest danger of war was letting it drag on—stretching resources, breaking morale, eroding trust in leaders. Sitting here twenty-five centuries later, it reads less like a manual on troop movements and terrain, but more like a critique of our own age: corporations chasing endless growth, governments prolonging conflicts past reason, leaders mistaking endurance for ambition.

What lingers after the tactics and the talk of fire and wind isn’t the machinery of battle, it’s the philosophy beneath it. Power without balance collapses. Leadership without kindness corrodes. And patience, even in times of urgency, can be the difference between survival and ruin.

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

This week, Jacob and Jeff unpack four pieces of SEO lingo that they’ve laid out together on the first episode of their new series, Jargon Board: link juice, link farms, breadcrumb navigation, and keyword cannibalization. One’s about reputation. One’s about cheating. One’s about not getting lost. And one’s about competing with yourself.

But in a way, they’re all about the same thing. Each term reveals the same tension: websites trying to organize themselves for machines without losing sight of real humans. The internet rewards clarity—clear signals, clean architecture, and distinct content. Overlap, clutter, and gimmicks only get in the way, and that’s when the algorithm stops looking at you altogether.

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

This week, Jacob and Jeff are in the same room for once, reflecting on how Google Ads—once a nimble tool for testing ideas—has become something heavier. Costs are up. Control is down. Running a campaign feels less like steering and more like nudging a massive, sluggish system that doesn’t always respond.

Pay-per-click didn’t break all at once: it just got crowded. What used to be cheap is now expensive, and no one seems to blink. The hands-on feel has faded, replaced by dashboards, defaults, and hoping the algorithm gets it right. It’s not a scandal. It’s just what happened.

And when small budgets don’t go far, and results feel out of reach, you start to ask different questions. Not just how to win the game, but whether it’s the right game to be playing at all.

Link:

WebX study:

https://www.webfx.com/ppc/pricing/

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

In this episode of the Human Friend Digital Podcast, Jacob and Jeff start with a simple question: how do you make digital ads that actually work? What follows is a practical conversation about pay-per-click advertising, touching on Google Ads, cost-per-click, and long-tail keywords. But at its core it’s about something much more general: how people decide to buy things.

They walk through the three stages of the buyer’s journey—awareness, consideration, decision—using examples like shopping for a car or grabbing a Snickers bar at checkout. It’s not a theory-heavy conversation, more an exploration of how everyday decisions show up in search terms.

Along the way, they talk about how bad keyword targeting wastes money, why Jeep ads are all emotion, and what happens when a business shows up too late in the process.

It’s a conversation about strategy, but also about attention: where it starts, how it builds, and what businesses miss when they skip ahead.

Answer the Public:
https://answerthepublic.com/

To see visualizations of the Buyers Journey and Keyword Intentions, check out our blog post:
https://humanfriend.digital/on-the-journey-being-intentional-with-advertising-keywords/

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

In this episode of Human Friend Digital, Jacob and Jeff tackle the growing challenge of detecting AI-generated content—images, text, and everything in between.

Starting with the viral trend of AI-generated Studio Ghibli-style portraits, they explore the ethical gray areas around using AI to imitate human art. From there, the conversation widens: how AI-generated content is becoming harder to spot, and why tools like Hive Moderation are now necessary to catch subtle digital fingerprints left behind by AI models.

Jacob and Jeff also dive into the bigger picture—the responsibility of government regulation, the dangers of deepfakes in politics, and how AI’s role should be reshaped to solve real-world problems instead of replacing creativity. Their message is clear: AI isn’t going away, but we can—and should—fight to keep truth and trust alive.

Their advice for now? Equip yourself with AI detection tools. Learn to question what you see. And maybe, just maybe, don’t encourage the machine by giving it your clicks.

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/

In this episode of Human Friend Digital, Jacob and Jeff take on a question that’s been echoing across the marketing world: is SEO dead?

The answer, it turns out, is complicated. They explore how the landscape has changed—from the early days of keyword stuffing and link farms to today's crowded, AI-inflated search space. Jacob reflects on his roots in “white hat” SEO, a strategy focused on long-term trust and quality, and how that’s becoming harder to sell in a world hungry for instant results.

They talk black hats, gray hats, and why so many SEO promises now feel like digital snake oil. Most of all, they argue that SEO isn’t dead—it’s just no longer the star of the show. It’s the old sea dog on the crew, the one who knows how to tie every knot. Not flashy, but essential.

SEO isn’t your captain anymore—but ignore it, and you may just sink.

To ask questions, or submit topics you'd like us to cover in the future, visit us at humanfriend.digital/pod/