Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

From Google to AI: Evolving Your SEO Tactics for Maximum Visibility

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 384

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SEO. You might think you know everything about search engine optimization, but AI is changing the game more rapidly than ever. The new search landscape isn't just about Google anymore—AI-driven tools like Chat GPT are redefining visibility and relevance. How can your business adapt and even thrive in this evolving scenario? I'm diving into the latest trends and offering practical steps to future-proof your SEO strategy. So stay tuned to this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, SEO as we know it is changing, and if you're still optimizing just for Google, you're already behind In the age of AI. Search engines are evolving. Whether it's traditional results or new AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, the rules of the game are shifting. In the next episode, I'm diving into how you can adapt your SEO strategy to not only stay visible, but thrive in this new era of AI-powered search. We'll talk about how search engines are getting smarter, how AI chatbots are influencing search results and the practical steps you can take today to future-proof your business.

Speaker 2:

But you got to stay tuned for this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Digital Social media Content, influencer Marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktok, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing Whew, there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time.

Speaker 1:

This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schafer. Hey everybody, this is Neil Schafer. Welcome to episode number 384 of this podcast. I am your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, and it is a pleasure and honor to serve you Today.

Speaker 1:

We're going to start with the latest news that I think you should know about. Well, first of all, your website may not be hosted on WordPress, but if it is, there's been a little bit of drama that you might want to know about a legal dispute between WP Engine and Automatic. Now, for those of you that don't know, automatic is actually the company that I guess I mean. Wordpress is open source, but Automatic, I guess, owns the implementation of that code or offers services around it, and I believe that WP Engine is a web host that Automatic actually invested in, wp Engine being one of the first enterprise-grade WordPress-specific web hosting services that I also used to host neilschafercom I guess back then it was maximizesocialbusinesscom on their web hosting services, but now there has been a trademark issue and there are some WP Engine written plugins that no longer appear in the WordPress repository. Anyway, there's a lot of bad blood being spilled between the two. If you are not on WP Engine, you have nothing to be worried about, but if you are on WP Engine, you might want to worried about, but if you are on WP Engine, you might want to. Well, you probably already know about the situation, but you might want to look for alternatives. I switch from WP Engine to BigScoots and if you go to my affiliate link, you might get a special deal. It's neilschafercom slash BigScoots S-C-O-O-T-S. We'll put the link in the show notes as well, and I am saving a lot of money and the performance is actually even better. And they are obviously WordPress only as well. So that would be my quick advice for you if you're looking for a shortcut into how to resolve that situation.

Speaker 1:

And today, well, we're going to be talking about Google and SEO, but, interestingly enough, we know that Google search results have been impacted by their generative AI search results. Have been impacted by their generative AI search results, and now they are doing the same thing for online shopping. So if you have a Shopify store or if any of your products and services are integrated, you know your catalog is integrated with Google shopping. They are now using AI features that will determine just like search results that are being influenced by AI. Google Shopping is as well, so you'll want to if you haven't looked recently where you are ranking for Google Shopping who's in front and really start to reverse engineer. What is it that Google is doing to decide what products are ranking in their online shopping experience is doing to decide what products are ranking in their online shopping experience?

Speaker 1:

Another really interesting bit of news is that SEMrush, one of the leading SEO tools, bought a company called Third Door Media. You might not have heard of Third Door Media, but you've probably heard of Search Engine Land and Martech. These are media sites that have conferences, but they also have really really good search engine optimization. They've published a lot of blog posts and, if you didn't know, semrush actually acquired Brian Dean's Backlinko, another website that has tremendous search engine optimization. Acquired them some time ago and you know well this isn't under NDA, but there was an agency working on behalf of SEMRush that actually contacted me, believe it or not, asking if there was a possibility of collaborating with SEMRush in a similar way of basically forwarding SEO-related content SEMRush's way. So they have been really really aggressive in doing this and I believe I checked this the other night. If you do a search for what is SEO, you know Backlinko comes up, semrush comes up, search Engine Land comes up. So basically they own three of the top 10 results for that keyword term. And this actually is really related to what I'm going to talk about today, which is how AI is changing SEO, and we're still very, very early on, but there is some early advice I want to give you. This is one of the ways in which you can future-proof your business and basically buy search engine rankings organically by purchasing other media sites. I believe we're going to see more of this. We've seen it in the podcast world how HubSpot they have the HubSpot network and they basically bought out various podcasts, for lack of a better word. It would not surprise me if we see the same thing with blogs, and I think SEMRush is really smart for doing what they did. So if you want to be the first to find out about this news, make sure you go to neilschafercom slash newsletter. All the articles I share with you actually come from that newsletter and sometimes are shared before I even record podcast episodes, as it is this week.

Speaker 1:

On personal news, I'm really excited to announce that my book, digital Threads, has won its first award. Digital Threads as you know, I did a Kickstarter for it in August. I distributed those books in September. It wasn't on sale on Amazon until October 1st, but it already won first place in the Fire Book Awards and it was first place in the Entrepreneurship and Small Business Division of Business Books. Really, this book was written for small businesses and entrepreneurs, so really excited that it has gotten that recognition that I was hoping it would get. And well, there's a number of other awards I've applied to. We'll see what happens, but the reviews are coming in.

Speaker 1:

The paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook are all now available. Actually, if you don't have an Audible account, I'll be putting a link in the show notes where you can actually go and, for free, get access to my book Digital Threads, the audiobook version. But it only works if you have never subscribed to Audible before. In fact, I've yet to share this with anyone, so you're the first to hear this. But if you go to digitalthreads neilschafercom right N-E-A-L-S-C-H-A-F-F-E-Rcom slash digitalthreadsaudible one word you will be able to sign up there and get Digital Threads audiobook for free. That Digital Threads audiobook for free that is a $20 value. Once again, you have to be a first-time subscriber to Audible and that also is an affiliate link. It is called a bounty link or a hunter bounty. I forgot what the word is, but I'm basically helping Audible gain new customers. But it's a win-win because you get to hear my recording because I narrated it personally of Digital Threads. So I highly encourage you to check that out and, in addition to digital threads, the reviews coming in sales coming in. Same thing for maximizing LinkedIn for business growth. I have been selling it for 99 cents. It will go up to $1.99 and it will continue to increase from there, starting pretty much a day or two after this is recorded. So if you haven't gotten it at that price, it is available. Anywhere you get eBooks, I highly recommend you grab it now while you can, at that ridiculously, if I may say so cheap price, all righty.

Speaker 1:

So let's get into today's topic, which is really the changing landscape of SEO in the face of AI, and obviously we are still very, very early on in what is going on. I've had a lot of people ask me questions. We've had a lot of conversations about this in the Digital First group coaching community, which I encourage you to check out as well if you'd like to take part in those conversations. But nobody knows for sure what is going on. Right, we can only sort of guess and I have yet to see any data, but there are a lot of people that are starting to say similar things, similarly enough that make enough sense. I think it's time for me to sort of share my perspective with you. So there have been people like Neil Patel and Christopher Penn as well, I think.

Speaker 1:

They talk about SEO is not search engine optimization, it's search everywhere optimization. And the idea being now, there's two different facets to this. There are the search engine results that the AI generative search experience in Google gives out, which I believe and even when I look at perplexity results I still see it is based on pretty much top ranking spots in the Google search ranking algorithm. So with that aspect, I've always thought not much has changed. But when you have AI search engines like chat, gpt, the difference is that they don't necessarily need to, and I guess perplexity is another example of that. To some extent, you know search engines.

Speaker 1:

Uh, one of the ways that Google constructed its search engine to try to figure out domain authority was looking at backlinks and digital threads. For that reason, I have a dedicated chapter on backlinks. It is one of the 20 strategies that I go into details on. I still think it is very important, because how else does a search engine know what site has authority if it can't see backlinks? If it can see backlinks, it can try to see which sites are more popularly attributed to or linked to, and therefore, that is one point, not the only point, but one point which, or one signal which indicates the authority of that website. But with AI right, ai doesn't need to look at backlinks in order to be able to give out the information. It could leverage what search engines already have, or it could just look not at necessarily backlinks, but at brand mentions. And this is where the search everywhere optimization is. Hey, the more you are talked about anywhere and everywhere, the easier it's going to be for the AI to catch you.

Speaker 1:

And what I thought was really interesting was I was at a B2B marketing expo. This is a conference that is nationwide I think it's mainly small businesses, although there were some enterprises speaking but it comes every year to the Los Angeles Convention Center. I know it comes to maybe 10 or 15 cities in North America. Not sure if it's in New York or not, but it's free to attend and I go to sort of keep my finger on the pulse of what is going on in B2B marketing. So, as you can imagine, there were a ton of booths and speeches about AI and there was some generative AI, but a lot of it was sort of like AI in your organization, ai in HR, ai in accounting, ai to automate workflows what have you Obviously the word generative AI boots and speech as well, but there was one particular speech, which was basically a speech called SEO 3.0, visibility in chatbots plus AI meets B2B marketing, put on by a guy named Kevin Lee. Kevin, it turns out we were connected on LinkedIn without knowing it. His website is diditcom. We'll have to have him come on the podcast at some point, but he gave a pretty convincing conversation about what are the things that you need to consider doing with this emergence of using chatbots for search, as well as the generative AI search experience within search engines like Google. So we have this search everywhere optimization concept. He actually looked at it with a different concept called Barnacle SEO.

Speaker 1:

Now some also refer to this as Parasite SEO, and I reflect back to SEMrush. If you can't appear, I mean Google is not going to put the same website on all 10 links, you know, on all first page search results, unless it's a branded keyword like SEMrush. I can imagine them doing it so you can try to appear on the other posts or you can buy out. You know the media companies, which is what SEMrush did. But normally the concept of Barnacle SEO or Parasite SEO is that we are going to try to rank, or I should say we're going to try to get mentioned in every one of those pages on the first page of Google search. So let me give you another explanation. I think that SEMrush has a great article, basically semrushcom slash. Blog slash Barnacle SEO B-A-R-N-A-C-L-E hyphen SEO. So let me read what their definition is, because I think this will give you a clear understanding.

Speaker 1:

Barnacle SEO is a practice that involves attaching your website or business to a larger website that ranks highly for your target keywords to leverage their authority to your advantage. The term Barnacle SEO was coined by Will Scott of Search Influence way back in 2008. So this is nothing new, and the primary goal of this approach is to boost your own website's performance, typically through increased traffic and lead generation. So when you compare it to traditional SEO, it gets really interesting. Barnacle SEO involves performing traditional keyword research in a way that goes against how you do it for traditional SEO. So for traditional SEO, you target search terms with a relatively low keyword difficulty, which often rules out terms with very high search volumes. Right, because it gives you a higher chance to rank on the first page. But with Barnacle SEO, you're going after competitive keywords you wouldn't normally not be able to rank for, just not in the same way. So, for example, small business owners often use Barnacle SEO with local business listings like Yelp and TripAdvisor. So New York City Hotel, you might not appear in the top 10, but if Yelp and TripAdvisor do, and you could be mentioned in Yelp and TripAdvisor in a best New York City hotel list I know that I often see these results coming from Yelp. You are therefore being mentioned in one of the top 10 articles in the search engine results. So these websites have high authority and a greater presence in search results. So a small business can improve their visibility by creating a profile on these sites and rank for competitive terms with their profile page rather than their own website. So the blog post goes into further barnacle SEO techniques. Use Google business profile as well as other listing websites. This is a best practice of SEO.

Speaker 1:

Reach out to top ranking websites. So if there are search engine rankings for specific keywords that you want to rank for and it is not a business directory of sorts or a citation site of actually reaching out and developing a relationship with the webmaster and maybe submitting a guest blog post or other sort of collaboration. This is the sort of thing that I talk about in digital threads. So the third one is submit guest posts to authoritative websites. Obviously, if the website accepts guest posts, then that's really the shortcut here. And number four pitch your expertise to journalists and hope that when they publish something like the New York Times and it becomes a first page ranking, that you are noted in it. Obviously, social media platforms also have become search engines so they can be valuable for referral traffic. So build a robust social media presence and then use Reddit and other forums.

Speaker 1:

So when you think about the top 10 search results, you might see a LinkedIn Pulse article, you might see a Reddit forum article or a Quora article. So you know, this is the reason of search everywhere. Optimization is not just to be everywhere but to be strategic about where you appear, where it makes sense, where these sites and really Google is sort of, with the latest update, has really prioritized these sites to make sure that you have brand visibility in those sites and when you have brand visibility in all the top search engine results because of the ability of AI and go back and listen to the previous episode with Dennis Yu, who talks about AI's ability to basically grab as much information as it can take and be able to connect the dots between people and who is thought of as an authority, what have you? You can begin to see that if you are mentioned everywhere and AI doesn't care about backlinks and they're just analyzing the top 10 search results for a keyword, that this approach will increase the chances that you will appear in AI search results. Now, when I asked Kevin at the end of the presentation, do you have any specific data to back this up? He said what we have we can't share, but he does say that Barnacle SEO is something that his SEO agency has been doing for some time, and especially for longer tail keywords. Obviously, the longer tail keyword, the easier it is for you to be able to rank. So some of the other advice that he gave that I thought was really interesting.

Speaker 1:

And we think of search engine results as only being blogs, but obviously we have forums, we have social media. We can't forget YouTube as well, and we know that the transcripts of YouTube that's being ingested by LLMs or large language models as well, and we know that the transcripts of YouTube that's being ingested by LLMs or large language models as well. So YouTube becomes critically important If you think about the volume of content as well. Right, a podcast which I also have as a live stream on YouTube. So you know, you have a YouTube transcript, you have a podcast transcript. You know the YouTube video or this podcast interview as an example, is human content, right, and the thing is, you can try to create AI-generated content in your blog, but because AI-generated content is regurgitated, it won't rank because it's not helpful and simply regurgitated. Right, because what search engines want and we begin to see why Google doesn't say you can't use AI, but it's not going to help you, because they're looking for really, really useful and almost personal and really, really original content.

Speaker 1:

And this is another thing that Kevin made clear in his presentation. So he also mentioned and this is still really experimental and he mentioned so as well and I sort of asked him about this as well and he mentioned so as well and I sort of asked him about this as well he brought up the concept of LLMO optimization and this is really optimizing the chatbots, the LLMs, you know, optimizing Claude and Google, gemini and ChatGPT, so that if someone was to type in you know what are the best-selling marketing books of 2024, that you would have mentioned it enough in your conversations. In chat GPT that you can actually influence how it gives the information to other people. This has the potential to be spammy, right? You remember the backlink factories and the private SEO networks and we've gone through a lot of these spammy things, blackout things in the SEO world. This might be another one. We do not know how effective it is because then you could have these link farms basically become LLM optimization farms.

Speaker 1:

But it is something that he mentioned, that he has been experimenting with. But he also said it requires a year for LLMs to ingest new information. So not sure if that is going to be a valid strategy. You can try it and if you do try it, you want to make sure that you use a chat GPT, if possible in incognito mode, so that it doesn't attach the information to you personally, and obviously you have it set so that it shares the results. You know you have that setting where you can share the results with the LLM. You obviously want to turn that on, but, I think, more important you know what Kevin was saying that I agree with.

Speaker 1:

When you think about how LLM ingests information and the potential for, you know, transcripts from videos and podcasts, this notion of becoming multimodal, right of having all of your basis covered content-wise, does become more important and can become a strategic differentiator. I've already noticed I'm getting more and more requests to be on this podcast and, as you know, I'm very selective as to who I invite. And you know I see more and more companies that are launching their own podcast and I think it makes a lot of sense. So we've seen a renewed interest in YouTube for a lot of reasons, but without a doubt, this AI and the way the LLMs ingest information is a way in which you can potentially tip the scales in your favor. So the net of this is you still need to be doing traditional SEO. I still believe and unless data proves me otherwise, that backlinks are one way. I mean it's just a natural way in which Google is going to recognize authority. Can it be gamed? Yes, is it the only point in which they look at? No, but I still think it is one of many points, but it still has its importance for that reason.

Speaker 1:

But this concept of appearing basically it's digital PR, right? Another word for part of SEO, and digital PR has always been part of SEO. Well, maybe it's a little bit more important now is really the way to think about it. So it's getting onto podcasts, getting onto YouTube videos, even short form videos, but creating more videos right as owned media, creating more audio that's another great way to be indexed by the LLMs. It is human content, so you can see how that would be. That would give it a preference in the search engine results, and you can see how that would give it a preference in the search engine results.

Speaker 1:

And just maybe defocus on some of your other SEO efforts and maybe focus more on this aspect of digital PR and the aspect of Barnacle SEO and the link building is still the same right, by engaging with websites that do appear on a guest blog post or maybe offering a quote or an infographic, or even appearing or signing up with, you know, with a Google my Business profile, or with Yelp or Reddit or Quora. Some of these are pure brand mentions, but some of them can lead to backlinks as well, right, naturally speaking. So this is where I'm at, and I do believe another thing that I have seen is that search intent once again, I talk a lot about this in digital threads really changed for a lot of keywords that I follow. Now, maybe this isn't for every industry and every business, but I certainly noticed URLs that I used to get a lot of traffic for not getting nearly as much traffic anymore, and when I look at the search results, they're simply changing the content that appears there, and so I'll give you an example. Listicles are one aspect of it. Tools listicles I do a lot of, because I get asked that question, neil, what tools do you recommend? And I'm already noticing for some, I have to get to like page eight or nine before I see a listicle, whereas before these updates the listicles were. You know, there were a few of them sprinkled on the first page, including my own blog post. So I think that's one reason why this update, or these sets of updates, have hit my site more than others.

Speaker 1:

But if you haven't checked search intent, make sure you do. In fact, this is something you should be doing to maintain your library of content and other concept from digital threads on a regular basis, because it really does change and I give examples of that in the book for those that have read it. But even if you hadn't, and you think you're set with your keywords, go back in and do another search for each one of those to check your search intent. If you haven't done so in the last year, because it really has changed, and if there's a keyword you're targeting where the results are the generative AI search results from Google you need to ask yourself is it worth it Trying to compete with that? I still believe for most things it is. But if you were targeting a very simple question that's very simple for the AI to answer, I'm already starting to pull away from those keywords. I'm simply not updating posts and once the traffic drops to a certain point, I'm basically retiring them. And now I'm doing the same thing for posts that used to rank but don't anymore, not because the search intent changed, but the way that Google looks at search intent and the results it gives have changed. That has caused me to start to archive and maybe not pursue some keywords that two or three years ago I might have pursued. So that's additional advice based on old school SEO. But you know it's new tools, old rules, everything you've been doing, you still do, but you might, like I said, want to focus a little bit more on the barnacle, seo and just in general digital PR that I talked about on this episode.

Speaker 1:

All right, I want to thank you again for listening all the way to the end. You know, if you are an avid listener, you might know that there was a little bit of time gap between this episode and the last episode, and it's not that I don't love speaking with you on this podcast, because I do but I also want to maintain a certain sense of quality. I recently had a podcast episode episode number 380, for those that remember talking about it's time to ditch your social media schedule. You want to be in the time at the moment participating in social media, and I almost feel the same way for my podcast. I don't want to batch record my solo recordings way in advance. I want to be timely this week's news, what's on the top of my mind now and I want to be inspired, and I want to inspire you, and if I don't feel that, I'm not going to record an episode just for the sake of recording one for the week and lowering my quality. So that's my promise to you and I want to be completely transparent about that. I do my best to publish these once a week and now I'll be playing catch up to get to episode number 400 to start 2025. But that's the way I roll and I hope you appreciate that. Not that I've forgotten about you, don't care about you but I want to maintain the quality of this podcast.

Speaker 1:

If you enjoy this podcast, man, one thing that would make my day is to go over to Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen. If you would leave a review, that would, man you know, take a screenshot, let me know. That is the ultimate compliment you can pay me. And obviously, go to neilschafercom slash digital threads and neilschafercom slash maximizing LinkedIn for growth If you want to find out where you can buy those two new books. And that's it for another, hopefully, what you thought was an exciting episode of your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your Digital Marketing Coach, neil Schafer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastneilschafercom Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and neil shaffercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.