Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

2025: The Year of the Democratization of Discoverability

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 390

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Unlock the future of digital marketing with me as I guide you through the transformative concept of the democratization of discoverability. Ever wondered how to maintain your business's visibility without constantly churning out social media content? This episode promises to reveal how long-lasting content like blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos can be your key to enduring discoverability. We'll explore the rapidly changing landscape of search, driven by large language models and AI, and discuss how platforms such as Bing and ChatGPT are becoming pivotal in driving traffic. Learn why adapting to these shifts is essential for sustaining your business's online presence in 2025 and beyond.

Explore the evolution of search algorithms and the shift toward an audience-centric approach as AI redefines how content is discovered. Say goodbye to the days of keyword obsession and welcome a future where AI and social media reshape the discoverability landscape. As platforms like Google, YouTube, Amazon, and TikTok develop AI-driven user experiences, I'll share insights on the expanding influence of generative AI and large language models. These tools are not just changing how we find content; they're creating new pathways for discovery beyond traditional search engines.

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Speaker 1:

The key word that I want you to know for 2025 is the democratization of discoverability, and it's going to impact your digital marketing efforts far and wide, so make sure you keep listening in to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover.

Speaker 2:

Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. 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. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 390 of this podcast. Well, first of all, I want to be one of the first well, maybe one of the first podcasts to wish you a very happy new year. I'm actually recording this on December 31st. I was hoping to get out another episode or two in 2024, but that is not going to happen. No worries, I am in catch-up mode for 2025. And by the end of 2025, I am committing to getting to episode number 450.

Speaker 1:

So, lots to come, really excited for the new year, and I want to go deep into a concept called the democratization of discoverability, based on what I see happening out there in digital as we end the year. So a few things to talk about here. I talk about discoverability in digital threads. For those that have read it, go to neilschafercom, slash digital threads, amazon, to pick it up on Amazon. And I have a chapter called Rethink Search, and I want to begin this podcast by reading you an excerpt from that chapter on long-term discoverability. If you can't be everywhere and you don't want to waste more time than necessary in content creation, then you must be strategic and lean into content that is discoverable long-term Blog content, podcasts and YouTube videos have a longer shelf life in search engines.

Speaker 1:

That simply means that they are discoverable for a longer period of time than most other types of content. The discoverability and longevity of content on those networks far outweighs social media content. It is said that the half-life of social media content the time that it takes a post to receive half of its total engagement ranges from an hour or two on X or Facebook to a day or two on Instagram or LinkedIn. In contrast, the median age of the top ranking URL in a search engine results page is somewhere between three and five years. Youtube videos and podcasts like this one will fall in between, making each of them an attractive option in terms of the value of longevity when compared to social media content.

Speaker 1:

When you stop focusing on long-term discoverable content and instead try to post to every social media site, you will find yourself on the dreaded hamster wheel of content. You'll keep creating content trying to find what works, and that will take you away from your work and, like a poor hamster on a wheel, you'll be chasing what's just ahead of you instead of what you really want. That is why we begin content creation thinking of search engines first, people need to find you and, to do so, find your content. That's why making your content discoverable where it has a long shelf life is your best chance to be found. Once they find your content through search engines, they will visit your website or your YouTube channel or subscribe to your podcast. When the content is there and online, it stays there. When people come along and connect with you, then some will go back through your archives and catch up on content, binge reading, the same way they might be binge watching on Netflix, for example, and this is a true story.

Speaker 1:

When I dive into a podcast, it's normal for me to listen to the very first episodes, even if they were from years ago, to catch up on what the podcast was covering and make sure I don't miss any nuggets. And, by the way, if I'm not impressed by the first five episodes, I usually tune it out and subscribe to another podcast because there's so many out there. When you create one piece of content focused on long-term discoverability that is unearthed via a search engine, it can open tens, hundreds or even thousands of entry doors leading to your content and your business. Now what is really interesting is that that content was written well in 2023, right Published. Well, beginning of 2024 is when I finished it and it was published on October 1st 2024. So it is still fairly recent only three months old, right. But what's really interesting is that when I look at my search engine traffic in Google Analytics those of you that have been a listener to the podcast know that I, along with many other independent bloggers and content publishers, got hit pretty hard by Google's helpful content updates and other algorithmic changes, to the point where I am looking at my December Google Analytics and, for the first time, I see that Bing is actually giving me more traffic than Google. That's pretty amazing. But what's also amazing is, if I look at my top traffic sources, I see Bing, I see Google, I see direct not set right, I see DuckDuckGo and then I see ChatGPT, which actually is generating more traffic than my own email list. Which comes up next and this is the reality is that search is changing, discoverability is changing, being indexed by a search engine and being indexed by a large language model.

Speaker 1:

While there is still some overlap, 2025 is really where we need to prepare for this big change, and I mentioned this because it was actually the CEO of Google who just announced this, and let me read you the article. This comes from Search Engine Journal. It's probably when I come out with my weekly newsletter by the time you hear this. That'll be coming out soon, but go to newsletterneilschafercom A great article called Google CEO's 2025 AI Strategy Deemphasizes Search Box. This will be published on January 3rd, if you go to my website with my analysis, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai and I'm gonna read a little bit from the article because I think it's really hinting at where we're going, based on what I was just talking about.

Speaker 1:

Google, sundar Pichai outlined the 2025 strategy for Google, emphasizing consumer focused AI, rapid development of agentic apps, a Chrome AI prototype called Project Mariner and upgrades to Gemini and Project Astra, signaling a shift toward AI apps as the user interface for search. Although Pichai did not say Google is de-emphasizing the Google search box, he did emphasize 2025 is all about increasing the focus on AI apps as the main point of contact between users and how they interact with Google. This is twofold Obviously using Google Gemini, and Google Gemini has a new research mode which I don't have access to because I don't have a paid account, but I hear it's amazing. It's like perplexityai and steroids and obviously we are going to chat GPT more and more as a search engine. In addition to perplexity, right Project Mariner, is the advent of agents, ai agents. So instead of us typing something into a or engaging with a chat bot, we are literally giving the AI instructions on going out into the internet and doing things for us. So, for example, project Mariner is a Chrome AI extension that can do things like take a top 10 restaurants list from TripAdvisor and drop it into Google Maps.

Speaker 1:

This focus on AI shows that Google is in transition toward AI-based user experiences that represent a larger interpretation of what search means, a search experience that goes far beyond textual question and answering. So what we're seeing here and in another chapter in Digital Threads I want to mention this because I sort of hinted this as well I end the chapter on Rethink Search with a little snippet called Beyond Traditional Search Engines that I'd like to read you as well. It's amazing because I self-publish, I have all the copyright and I can read this to you without having to first confirm with my publisher. But I digress. Okay, if we limit ourselves to traditional search engines in our quest to be found, we are leaving money on the table.

Speaker 1:

Not every search engine works in the same way, and thus requires distinct efforts, to be seen On Amazon, because the platform can see actual sales conversion data. Your product's conversion rate and sales history will help determine its visibility in search rankings. Reviews from other Amazon users also influence the algorithm. Youtube stands out because recommendations in the platform generate 70% of its views, and I have a source for that in the footnotes. These recommendations are visible on your homepage upon logging in or in the up next panel. These are not searches, but videos pushed to you by the algorithm. This is how the TikTok for you page works as well.

Speaker 1:

The YouTube algorithm has one job to keep people watching. It's trying to give viewers the right video to keep them watching after the current one finishes. To get your video in front of people on YouTube, you cannot rely solely on SEO. Instead, the algorithm heavily favors customer satisfaction. Are people watching your content for longer than a few seconds? Are they engaging with it and watching the entire video through? Do they watch your other videos? If not, then that's a sign that the video doesn't answer the question people were searching for. Search engines also favor customer satisfaction. When you click on a link, google cannot continue to show your suggestions like YouTube can. That's because Google monetizes from ads that appear within search results, but YouTube makes money from how long you stay on the platform to watch as many of their video ads as possible.

Speaker 1:

To tap into that power of the algorithm, we must look at content not from a promotion and business perspective, but from a viewer experience, and I'm going to add that goes the same for TikTok and short-form videos as it does for long-form videos on YouTube. Viewers already have to sit through an ad or two before the video starts. Looking at another video that looks just like an ad will not tick that box of viewer satisfaction. Hurting your video in the algorithm and I end this chapter with rethinking search requires you to reassess your approach from a technical, keyword-centric approach to a more holistic, audience-pleasing approach, understanding the role that each search engine plays it's not just one, there's many now in the user's journey, and aligning your content with it is your best chance for success in a digital-first landscape. Now, when I was talking there about discoverability, I was already saying we are moving from a textual, traditional search engine based world to one that is more fragmented.

Speaker 1:

That is also YouTube. It could also be podcasts, it definitely social media. Tiktok is a great example and now we're seeing the acceleration of that with the acceleration of large language models and how they are indexing content. See, traditional search engines might want to serve up the best content because they want you to keep coming back so that they can sell you more ads and what the chat, gpts and the new AI search engines and the perplexityais? They also want to serve you the best answer. But they may not be looking at traditional things like backlinks. They may not just limit themselves to textual content. They may be, and it's pretty much confirmed that they are indexing content from YouTube, content from podcasts, and maybe that YouTube transcript is gonna be many more words than a 1,000-word blog post and maybe it's best to invest in those areas.

Speaker 1:

So what we're seeing now, with the emergence of AI and with all the amount of time we're spending on social media and social media especially TikTok and short-form videos becoming more of a discoverability play, we are seeing the democratization of discoverability which, until very recent, was very much search engine dominated organic search engine, your traditional search engine dominated. But over time, especially with the acceleration of generative AI and AI search engines, that world is slowly going away. You know I had the director of AI for Tailwind on this podcast many episodes ago, but we were talking about generative AI and he was saying that a leading executive at Microsoft said in two years search engine traffic will be down 50%. Now I don't know, and it's already been about a year and a half, so we'll see what happens. But maybe search engine traffic has come to a plateau, right, when more and more people, especially younger generations, go to these new ways of finding content.

Speaker 1:

So what's really interesting here is we have seen the democratization of many things, and I talk about this when I teach influencer marketing. I talk about it in the Age of Influence, my book on influencer marketing. I talk about the impact of digital media and social media on influence, right. The democratization of media publishing used to be just newspapers, radios, tvs. Anybody can be a publisher. The democratization of media consumption we are consuming content everywhere, on every platform. We are being attracted to our own micro communities, right. We're attracted to different creators, different influencers, because of their vibe. The democratization of content creation, because anyone can be a content creator. And, ultimately, the democratization of media influence, meaning that the media are also going out to podcasters, youtubers, content creators, influencers, to try to influence them, to get the word out about their product or their new book or whatever it might be they're working on. And now comes the democratization of discoverability. So what this means and I want to paint this in a picture that we are slowly beginning to understand the way that large language models work.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to think juxtaposing the ChatGPT and the Google right, which is a very, very interesting juxtaposition. Now I still get very, very little traffic on ChatGPT compared to Google. Interestingly enough, the people that come from Chatachi BT are staying on my sites longer, like 15% longer, not converting as much. But if I look at the conversion ratio, I'm going to say that the conversion ratio actually is much higher, like a 1% conversion ratio, in other words, opting into my email list through one of my different lead magnets, versus 0.25% on Google organic. Once again, just looking at December of 2024, looking at the most recent information.

Speaker 1:

But what we know about the way these generative AI search engines work is and I want to quote my friend, chris Penn I don't think he's been on this podcast before. I should definitely bring him on because he is one of these AI experts that is really out there and really an authority on the subject, and he is saying that you need to have the best, most content on the internet. Basically, large language models are always looking for new content, so you want to appear everywhere and when you appear everywhere, you want to have your best content. So I talk about, in digital threads, the concept of this library of content. If you want to be seen as an authority in the search engine eyes like Google, you need to have a certain mass of content, and it is the exact same concept for large language models.

Speaker 1:

But considering that it's not just textual content, it's video content. Youtube transcripts, podcast transcripts are supplying a lot of natural conversation data. A lot of people now, a lot of businesses now, a lot of marketers now, are sort of shifting to this video first world, in other words, the democratization of discoverability. We've always been doing textual based content. What we lack is video basedbased content or maybe audio-based content. So I'm seeing now a new wave of businesses that are looking to launch a podcast, more content creators launching podcasts and obviously a bigger interest in video, including the short form video. Right when at least you can gain a presence, you can gain a following. And if you're creating long form video, it's not hard to really break that up into short form video, and if you're at all looking into the LinkedIn algorithm and LinkedIn videos, I do believe, even on a platform like LinkedIn, video is going to be huge in 2025, especially on the mobile app, where people are spending more time.

Speaker 1:

So I think the writing's on the wall Now. Is your traffic going to go away from Google overnight? Absolutely not. Will you see an uptick from Bing, like I have? Maybe, don't really know. So I am still sticking with the concept of the library of content. But you know what, instead of 52 blog posts a year, if you can talk about your authority and fewer blog posts, go for it right? I'm actually starting to reduce my 52 posts for authority. I am making it a little bit smaller because I want to maintain the quality of that content, make sure it's up to date and always be able to revise it. That's going to be another episode where I talk about how to manage your library of content an important concept from digital threads, from those that have read it.

Speaker 1:

But now is the time to really spend more time in these other social networks. Youtube, tiktok, podcasts are not a social network, but you already subscribed to this one, so you're already well ahead of the gang. It is not that hard to create your own. Reddit is an example of another place where discoverability happens. That is textual based right, sort of like the way that Twitter used to be.

Speaker 1:

I don't think the discoverability is there like it used to be, but maybe in certain fields like AI or the whole tech bro or crypto bro markets. But you need to work a little bit harder now to become discoverable because of this democratization, because it happens in so many different digital media, digital platforms now, and therefore, with the democratization of discoverability, your digital marketing coach's recommendation is to maybe de-emphasize SEO a little bit in 2025 and instead look for ways to become discoverable on other platforms and in other content mediums. Take a break Maybe spend 2025 focusing on just republishing old content that needs to be updated, not adding new content, assuming you already have your library content but then take that extra energy and budget. Shift more into movies videos, not movies, but you know what I mean Long-form video short into movies videos, not movies, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Long form video, short form video, podcasts right. And when you do put content online, make it a little bit longer. I mean, I've always had a 2000 word minimum, because I think if you want to be seen by a search engine as an authority, you need to go into some depth. And I still stand by that. In fact, now I still maintain my library of content, not necessarily for organic search engines, but now for generative AI search right For the large language models. I want to become a source of trusted information yeah, for the organic search engines, but equally, if not more importantly, over time, for the large language models, so that when people are looking for information that I can provide and they're chatting with a chat GPT, that my information is going to be one of the sources that come up. And that is the new world in this democratization of discoverability. That's where we're going. So I recommend you get a headstart 2025,. I'm going to be giving you more advice on AI. I want to do more regular webinars on some of these digital platforms. Seo is still important, but what's more important than that search engine ranking is the process and the art of actually creating content that people want to consume, and doing it in various formats on various platforms, all driven by this new era of the democratization of discoverability. So I'm hoping now, at this end of this podcast, you have a clear understanding of what that means, what it is, what it means and what you need to do for 2025.

Speaker 1:

Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven't, I'd appreciate. If you subscribe to this podcast. We have a lot of great interviews coming up. I wanted to say, when it comes to interviews, I have had 190 people in 2024 reach out to me to be on this podcast, and I think that alone shows you the popularity of podcasts and how more and more people and businesses realize their value, especially in this democratization of discoverability age that we live in. If you were curious, back in 2023, that number was 124. And in 2022, maybe closer to 150. When I go back to 2021, and I really only started taking the data in the fall of 2020, when I go back to 2021, that number is 159. So, yes, a big growth.

Speaker 1:

From my perspective, I don't think this podcast has gotten much bigger. It's pretty much a steady, really trying to become more popular through longevity and building a community here, but there is still this interest and therefore, from my perspective, I've really been able to pick and choose who I consider to be the best and brightest to serve you, and that is when I think of bringing on a guest for an interview, I think of you, the listener, in mind, and if I am not going to learn anything from this person, I don't think you will either. So I'm always trying to put myself in your shoes. But hey, if there's a topic or someone that you think I should interview, please feel free to reach out to me. Neil at neilschafercom Remember, I'm the real Neil. That's N-E-A-L and you know it's beginning of 2025.

Speaker 1:

So one of the objectives or I should say KPIs I'm looking at this year is I'm gonna try my best and you've heard me talk about this before to try to get to 100 Apple podcast reviews for the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. All right, we're currently at 60 and it's December 31st, so can I get to 120, 25? With your help, I think I can. So thank you in advance. If you do end up reviewing it, on whatever platform you listen Spotify, apple, wherever it is please do send me a screenshot. I would love to hear from you and personally. Thank you All right. That's it for another episode of your digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, signing off and wishing you again a very, very happy new year signing off and wishing you again a very, very happy new year.

Speaker 2:

Neilschafercom 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.