The Future of AI and SEO. Is Search Engine Optimization Dead?
Make it Loud Studios presents improving your digital marketing with John and Cliff.
John:Cliffy, it's good
Cliff:to see you. Good to be seen. Been a
John:long time. Minutes. Minutes. Minutes. Hours and days.
John:A little bit. So we had our foosball tournament or our our daily grudge match
Cliff:Yes.
John:A little earlier today. Winning. You are, but we gotta have redemption after lunch. We will. Yeah.
John:I won yesterday Yeah. Because it's the year of John.
Cliff:I won the day before.
John:So So that was the day of Cliff.
Cliff:I'm glad I got my
John:own day.
Cliff:Wasn't even my birthday.
John:It wasn't. Nope. So what are you gonna talk about today? I think we're gonna talk about SEO and SEO and AI. What?
Cliff:AI. Quit whispering to a deaf guy. It's mean.
John:Okay.
Cliff:You gonna steal my lunch money next? Probably. I don't think so.
John:You don't think?
Cliff:No. I don't think you can take me.
John:I that's probably true. You'll put me in one of those sleeper holds.
Cliff:If I can't You've
John:been dying you've been dying to do that. Always. Always. Hoping it stops the heart when you do. Oh, no.
Cliff:I just want you to take a little nap. Okay.
John:Fair enough.
Cliff:Get a little rest. A little rest. Aggressive napping.
John:So so we've got lot of people are saying the word the word on the street.
Cliff:Yeah. You've been talking on the street?
John:Not really.
Cliff:Okay.
John:But the word on the street is that SEO is dead.
Cliff:Yeah. They say that about every year. The the you'll see a barrage of articles.
John:A barrage. Of SEO articles?
Cliff:Barrage. Yes. That's a lot.
John:Are they breath well?
Cliff:A plethora. I can't even say the word now.
John:Breathra? Plethora. Maybe
Cliff:I've been choked out What too many times? A myriad of articles that say, SEO is dead. Well
John:been saying that for years. It's really not true.
Cliff:It's so untrue. It's clickbait and that's what we all need to just relax Yeah. And take a deep breath. Now, has AI changed things?
John:Absolutely. Well, yes.
Cliff:Yeah. No. It absolutely has. Now, it's not just a a on the fence yes. It's a full whole wholehearted yes.
Cliff:Because, you know, SEO always changes. That's the one thing about it. I mean, very professions, you, you know, wake up the next day and everything's changed. And SEO is like that.
John:Well, it is. And that's why you have to be a perpetual learner.
Cliff:Correct. And that is me. I am a constant learning nerd. A learning nerd. A learning nerd.
Cliff:I read almost I mean, I read voraciously about this garbage.
John:And you have to to stay on top
Cliff:of it.
John:You know, we we joke about this. We probably said in a prior podcast. We started doing SEO by reading a book, SEO for Dummies. A timeless classic. We went over to Barnes and Noble and started making money SEO learning how to go do it.
John:We kept our first client for seven years.
Cliff:Yeah. Oh, well, the SEO for Dummies, that that title sang to me.
John:No. I'm sure. It reached me.
Cliff:It it really did touch me.
John:It hit me in the in my core.
Cliff:Right. Identified so hard. So well, I mean, people were asking back in the that was back in the the inner the yellow page days. Internet was new, so people were saying, hey. Do you do SEO?
Cliff:And I'm like, SEO?
John:What is that? Is that CEO?
Cliff:No. No. That's you.
John:I'm COO. Okay. That's right.
Cliff:Yeah. Get that straight. No. I mean and and we I came back to you, I said we gotta do it. So we drove to Barnes and Noble, bought five books.
Cliff:I read them, and I went, alright. We're ready to do this now. And he went, great. They'll find somebody to pay us to do it. And we did.
Cliff:Now the dumb part is we didn't know the difference between local SEO and national SEO.
John:And Well, the good news is well, actually, we our first client was a national client.
Cliff:Well, no. He wasn't. Not on purpose. No. He wasn't.
Cliff:He We turned him into a national client.
John:Happens.
Cliff:Because we did national SEO inadvertently. And Well,
John:it was new.
Cliff:So It was new.
John:Us, but we overdid it.
Cliff:And we we resonated with the dummies part. So so we inadvertently made him a national company. So
John:Yeah. Not bad. Yeah. Is. Actually, but he only wanted stuff this side of the Mississippi.
John:Correct. Because shipping was too hard on the other side.
Cliff:It was pretty hard, but he figured it out.
John:He did?
Cliff:Yeah. So we we did good. We did right by that guy, and we that's what we always wanna do, make our clients more money because that's kind of the goal. They're happier that way.
John:So we're talking about AI and its implications in I'm primarily Google. We're talking about Google because that's where 90 of search is still done. People are still using the big g, for search. And and the question is really, you know, we've got this new AI overview thing in there, which confuses me anyways. I just I just think Google kinda hasn't it it feels like we're in a transition phase in Google.
John:Like, they just kinda they go they went, oh my gosh. Chat GPT is here. We need to go do something AI. And they try to figure out how to integrate it into Google, and it is what it is. And some searches you see it on and some you don't.
John:And does it impact search? Yes. Does it impact commercial search? Maybe. Not as much.
John:So let's talk about that a little bit. So we got this new AI overview thing.
Cliff:Yeah. And and it came from a red alert that Google issued. And when Google Red alert. Warning danger, Robinson. Old reference.
John:Very old.
Cliff:Yeah. I mean, what what let's go back because November 20, 2022, ChatGPT went online. It quickly became the the fastest growing website in the history of the Internet. People flock to it to use it for everything.
John:It reminds me of the days when Google became a thing, and I remember starting to use it because Yahoo was so much information on the page, and Google just had this white page with the search box, It was like, wow. Yeah. And these and and everybody started using this thing from two guys who created this business in their garage.
Cliff:Right.
John:And and it became what it is today, which is arguably one of the most wealthy and used companies in the world. There isn't anybody that really, at least in civilization modern civilization that hasn't hasn't used Google in some way, shape, or form.
Cliff:There's a tribe in The Congo.
John:I'm sure there
Cliff:is. But no. I mean, anytime that your brand becomes a verb, you've made it. You're gonna be okay. You're gonna you're gonna pull through financially if your, you know, brand is a verb.
Cliff:Very true. So and people are googling all over the place. So, what happened is ChatGPT became so popular that, you know and then ChatTPT, you know, OpenAI formed a relationship with Bing, and that's when Google panicked because, Bing has been, you know, their their main competitor ish, but they still don't have multiple you know, they don't have double digit, search utilization. But, you know, and Google has for decades, twenty five years of Google, and it's on all our our devices, yada yada. So, you know, Google panicked and went, oh, no.
Cliff:They've got a relationship with AI, and AI is now form you know, showing up in Bing search, and we need to figure this out.
John:Now now are you now Google's been using AI for a long time, haven't they?
Cliff:Oh, yeah. As part of their one of their many algorithms, you know, RankBrain has been around. And and we know AI is is the fundamental core of all of our social media algorithms and all of that. So AI is not new in that sense. So it's new in the sense of being used for all the different usage that we're using it now, because ChatGeePity kind of opened a lot of doors.
Cliff:But Google went to form something called Search Generative Experience, SGE, and tested that for a while. And that was fun because, it hallucinated wildly at first.
John:AI tends to do that in some respects.
Cliff:Sometimes you really do have to check your your stuff, their output. They finally launched it and then, of course, did what Google does, which means they changed the name promptly to confuse everyone.
John:They do that a lot. Like Google Maps to Google Business to Google My Business to Google Business profile,
Cliff:and it's all business.
John:Yo business?
Cliff:Yo business. Yeah. That's next. No. I don't know.
Cliff:I don't know what's next. But but now it's AI overview. And like you said, it's showing up in more than 70% of the informational searches, the who, what, where, how, kind of
John:stuff. Well, that's the thing. You know? I I mean, I've not personally so, like, if I'm doing a location search looking for a business like, you know, Olive Garden in Buford, you know, Olive Garden shows up, but I don't I don't get AI stuff on that or car wash near me doesn't necessarily give me AI on that. So so for for business searches that are kinda location based, I don't see a whole lot of AI overview in that.
John:Now that that may be that may change, you know, in the days ahead. I don't know. I personally don't know what else it could tell me.
Cliff:Right. Well And and let's back up a little bit because AI overview is essentially a a third party or entity searching for you because apparently and and I like I've said before, it seems like it's solving a problem that I've never had. I have no problem searching
John:for myself. Enough. I mean, the AI overview takes information from it waits I think from what I've seen, I've got no data on this, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. It it seems to wait the top two websites and take a lot of information out of those top two sites and then kinda smattering out of the the others from there on down.
Cliff:Yeah. The way it works is it it looks at what's the top ranking sites. I'd say top three to five maybe.
John:Something like that. Maybe.
Cliff:Four, whatever. I don't know. I think that's gonna vary. But, they it takes content from there, and then it takes content from sites that aren't ranking on page one that do a very good job of concisely answering, the query, whatever search, you know, whatever you search, it's trying to grab content that answers that that's that query as concisely and and and succinctly as possible. So good content that that tells you right there what one of the factors is to get seen in AI overview is good, solid content that answers a bunch of, different queries.
John:Interesting.
Cliff:Yeah. So, I mean, it's there. And and like you said, if you're searching a business, that's considered a commercial search, and it's not showing up there. So we're in a bit of a bubble here for now. I expect that to change and AI overview to to do more to to be seen more for those searches.
John:You think you think it's gonna show up in searches that are even just for location?
Cliff:I think eventually. Yeah. Yeah. Because, again, keep in mind, Google I'm I'm gonna speak for Google. They sorta hate SEO.
John:That's no I mean, I I you know, they make they make their most money at at paid ads.
Cliff:They do. So and that's
John:You know? And they don't make any money at all on search engine optimization.
Cliff:Right.
John:So you you you could see why they'd rather SEO kinda go away.
Cliff:Yeah. Ideally. So, I mean, will it all? I don't think so. I I really don't.
Cliff:In fact, I think the, you know, the is SEO dead question is answered by, no, it's more alive than it's ever been because search is now much more fragmented than it's ever been. Not, you know, people are searching on AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, you know, all the rest of them. And and, you know, we're seeing more evidence of that. We just got our first,
John:we did just get our first, potential client off
Cliff:the
John:chat GPT about three weeks ago.
Cliff:Right. So I mean, more and more businesses are going to see that. And, we're working on tracking that and certainly working on getting our clients seen in AI overview.
John:And so some of that's going to be generational too. Mean, you've got younger folks who are kind of quick to adapt to newer stuff and, particularly the, you know, the the college and under crowd are using chat GPT and all of those kinds of tools to write all of their term papers. Sure. Sure. Makes sense that they're already using these kinds of things.
John:It makes sense that they'll will start asking questions about search and businesses and things like that. So
Cliff:Which makes me wonder if if a marketing tool in the future is we don't write our content with AI. We use humans. Who knows?
John:We'll see. I I always think there's gonna be a place for human intervention in all of this. No. I agree. Gonna there's going to you're there's going you're you're going to need humans to kind of figure out figure out all of this stuff and and how these things work together.
John:It's not just talking about one AI necessarily. There are lots of AIs like when Cliff was talking about Google has their own AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Twitter X has their own as well. Everybody's working on AI, and these things are not going away.
Cliff:Right.
John:So nor necessarily are they gonna talk to each other. Nope. Because, again, owned by separate businesses. So there's there's always gonna be a need to kinda sort it out in the days ahead. And, you know, you and I have discussed what what we think is coming in the days ahead, and it's you know, you used the word already.
John:It's fragmentation. Search is is going to be gonna be fragmented in some respects. You know, what and initially, Yahoo was the, you know, was was the was the big guy in the room Right.
Cliff:For for search and AOL days.
John:Back in the AOL days. Yeah. And Prodigy. Stop that. So so, again, they were big and two guys show up in the garage with a server and set up Google.
John:And and it goes to kind of the opposite of what Yahoo is from lots of information on the page to just a search bar, and they they changed the world and kinda made Google what it is today.
Cliff:And what's interesting about that, that that simplicity of the website Yeah. The simpler a website, the more complex it is.
John:Absolutely true.
Cliff:The back end of Google is a monster.
John:Of the most ridiculously complicated pieces of software ever when you think about its integrations with all the Android devices and Sure. And all the other stuff on the planet. But, you know, Google kinda rose up, it seems like ChatGPT is kinda and AI has kinda done the same thing.
Cliff:Right.
John:We've seen that kind of traffic, move towards AI.
Cliff:Well, it's fascinating to watch the the growth of ChatGPT because it it went from not in our lives at all to not, you know, can't avoid it at this point. It's everywhere.
John:Yeah.
Cliff:You know, and people are using it for amazing things. Even, you know, I saw a a chat GPT based AI or a therapy tool.
John:Oh, really?
Cliff:Which I'm dead set against.
John:Well, it's you know, we got to talk about the accuracy of AI. Right? So so Google's AI is taking information off the first two websites and some other places. And and again, the question is is one of fact checking. It's it's essentially doing your work for you and trying to figure out what the most what's most true.
John:Right? But some of those things are rather subjectively assessed.
Cliff:And some of them are flat out wrong. I mean, that's my concern is that in an in an an age where we don't trust the government or most people I know don't trust the government, But yet now we're gonna go to a search engine and trust that to search for me because I'm too lazy to search for myself. I don't know about that one. So I mean and when it first came out, and AI is getting better. There's no question about that.
Cliff:When it first came out, there was
John:a lot some pretty egregious fails.
Cliff:It's had again, they call it hallucinations. But yeah.
John:Pizza thing.
Cliff:The pizza thing was
John:It's a
Cliff:big deal. Which was you know, what happened was they you know, somebody searched how do you keep your cheese from sliding off your pizza, and, the AI responded with put glue on your pizza. Of course, for all you glue eaters out there.
John:Don't you do that?
Cliff:Love that. I never
John:Gotta use gotta use Elmer's, though.
Cliff:Never ate glue. Edible. No. No. I knew I sat next to some glue eaters.
John:Did you really?
Cliff:Yeah. You
John:kinda make, like, literally
Cliff:Yeah. And as nerdy as I was, they they got their lunch money stolen a lot more than blue
John:boogers and flick them at people. I did that. I would Did you really?
Cliff:Glue in my hand, wad it up, throw it at somebody. That
John:I do. We found the little orange tip kinda goes up the nose religiously.
Cliff:That'll happen to you? I
John:will not Too soon to talk about
Cliff:Too soon to talk
John:about it. Probably. Yeah.
Cliff:But yeah. So I mean, AI, you know, that's a the classic example of AI hallucination. Where that came from, by the way, is that Google and AI pulls from a lot of user generated content, and it pulled straight up from a joke that somebody put on Reddit about that. You wanna keep cheese on your pizza? Just glue it.
Cliff:And AI didn't differentiate didn't didn't get the joke. Didn't get the humor. Right. It went, here. Here's your accurate Right.
John:Yeah. Right. You got something that doesn't doesn't stick? Just glue it.
Cliff:You know, I I didn't have as much of a sense of humor as we do.
John:And it had it had issues with math initially, didn't
Cliff:it?
John:It did.
Cliff:I don't remember that.
John:There's some math issues.
Cliff:I mean, certain ones. Yeah. You're right. Certain ones did. You could convince it that two plus two equal five.
Cliff:Yeah. That was a thing. You're right.
John:It did. Well, I mean, these things are scraping the Internet for information. Right? And in fact, I read the other day that that they're kind that most of these AI tools are kinda out of information. They've kinda read the Internet already.
Cliff:I
John:And and you have to ask the question, okay. Well, how much of the the Internet is true?
Cliff:Four things.
John:Four. Yeah. Maybe less. So it's very hard it's very hard as a human to to draw a conclusion on these kinds of things. And and AI is taking in all of this information and trying to draw conclusions, not necessarily an easy thing for us to discern truth, much less one of these these AI jokers.
Cliff:Right. Yeah. That's that's the biggest challenge of AI, I think.
John:Yeah. What what's true, what's not.
Cliff:Right. Yeah. So where it all ends up, it'll it'll remains to be seen. But one of the reasons they keep talking about SEO or traditional SEO being dead is because the 10 blue links have, been hit with traffic losses. We haven't seen that, which is nice to to say out loud.
John:Yeah. What the there's a difference, though, also between between like an informational kind of search and and say a business search. Right? So an informational search could be, you know, how much does Chris Evans weigh and Five pounds. Well, I think it's more than that.
John:It depends upon whether he's in his Captain America days or in his Fantastic Four days.
Cliff:Right. Right.
John:So so, I mean, these kinds of things, that that would be a question that it might find different answers and aggregated all the information in AI overview. So you're asking it to kinda think or give you an opinion on something versus show me the closest car wash, right? And that's a very simple thing. I don't need AI overview for that. Right.
John:Just show me three locations, the map does that and perhaps the the organic search as well will will dial in the the closest location.
Cliff:Not only do you need it, you probably don't want it.
John:But it is in the way for me when I'm doing a a search like that. So I I do think that that Google is smart and not having AI for those kinds of searches, but those are the kinds of searches most people are doing for businesses with respect to SEO. Now can you get AI overview in a in a commercial search or a business search? Yes. Tell me the best website for this.
Cliff:Right.
John:You know? I know the the the the question that chat GPT got for us was was a very interesting question too. The man was kind of faith based, and I have a background in in in faith. And somebody asked the question, you give me a faith based web design company.
Cliff:I'm gonna say it. You used to be a pastor.
John:I did Yeah. Back in the day.
Cliff:I know somebody you married, you know, did the ceremony for.
John:I did. Really?
Cliff:Yeah. Yeah.
John:I'll never forget your ceremony too. That was really funny.
Cliff:Was fun.
John:Yeah. That was fun. Do you take this, man? Yeah. Okay.
Cliff:Yeah. I
John:guess. That was hilarious.
Cliff:It was fun.
John:But but he he put that in and and chat GPT put the pieces together that I used to be in the ministry, and suddenly we're a faith based organization. Although, you know
Cliff:I'll take it. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. That's fine.
Cliff:We are. You know, I'm not gonna lie. But, yeah, that's a great example of that. I mean, is AI gonna show up in more commercial stuff? I think it's going to be interesting to see.
Cliff:I would guess yes. But let's be clear. Google has a 10,000 mile view of the Internet, and clicking on a site is a ranking factor. So it makes sense that they're measuring the clicks in AI overview if there's there's an ability.
John:Well, interestingly enough, I mean, a lot of the AI overview stuff, don't necessarily see links in the overview. Now they give it below to kind of show where the information came from, but it's not really in the AI overview
Cliff:so I don't think they're encouraging clicks like they say they are. What what's interesting is right now, you cannot find click through rate data or data on how frequently people click on anything in AI overview. Why is that? Because Google wants to keep it close to their vest, and they say the click through rate's phenomenal. Well, okay.
Cliff:They say a lot of things that aren't necessarily completely accurate.
John:Well, this way, if you if you say it's great and don't have the data, then then you're surely the winner.
Cliff:I'll just believe them then. Yes. Sure. And I'll just go out and play in traffic. That's likely too.
Cliff:So yeah. I mean, whatever. Google tends to you know, while they started off as a, you know, a quote good company, you know, always do good or whatever their motto was.
John:I think that was it. I think it was always do good.
Cliff:Always do good? I think so, Sue. But, you know, now they've got a history of let's just not call it lie.
John:Now it's always make money.
Cliff:Make money and let's not necessarily let's mislead. Let's not lie. But for example, you know, the ranking factors. Everything you read says there's 200 over 200 ranking factors. Well, that's true.
Cliff:There's probably over 400 ranking factors. And doing SEO is like putting a 10,000 piece puzzle together. The ones that, you know, have the the proper ranking factors present on their site, you know, the most, they're gonna win a spot on page one. So is 400 more than 200? I think so.
John:Last I checked. I'm not good at math, but you never know.
Cliff:You're better at it than I am even though I've got an MBA. But, yeah, I I busy putting words in sentences and stuff.
John:Yep.
Cliff:So, yeah, I mean, that's one way they've misled in the past, and there's a ton of others. And let's face it. Another example's the Google algorithm. Oh, they changed the Google algorithm. Well, there's more than one algorithm.
Cliff:There's at least five algorithms with every search you do. And, you know, they they changed last year, they changed the algorithms, plural, over 5,000 times.
John:So That's that's a lot. Daily.
Cliff:That's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of changes. And do they announce them all? Not even a little bit.
John:Well, they they kinda announce them retrospectively.
Cliff:Not even that.
John:Honestly. Hey. We changed it back in
Cliff:Yeah. No. They'll they'll make some announcements. And if they make an announcement, it's a big deal. It's it's almost a a tectonic type of change.
Cliff:But, you know, we don't we haven't been our clients haven't been hit by algorithm changes in years.
John:Because we do good SEO.
Cliff:Yeah, we're okay at it. I'm not going to brag. I mean, we get the job done.
John:We do.
Cliff:The good news is, you know, our clients are seeing more traffic, they're seeing more conversions and customers. And when they make more money, they're happy. And that's our whole goal. So that works.
John:You know, interestingly enough, I I think, you know, we've talked about this, you know, the AI stuff kind of being in transition in Google. I hope that you don't see the AI overview in business search. It's it's just in the way.
Cliff:Well, that's what I'm that's what
John:I'm that's kind of what what else do I need? You know, show me show me, you know, what what are the the the web design companies near me and just give me the that's all I need. I only need the list.
Cliff:And and what I'm my point I was making on that, thank you for bringing me back to that because apparently I'm ADD, is because they're measuring the click data and that because that is a ranking factor for your site and anybody else's, why would they not measure that for AI overview?
John:Absolutely. Well, I I personally think that that the AI overview is a mistake anyways. I do too. To me, I think they should have kind of preserved the search engine the way it was and come up with their own AI, you know, by Google or, you know, come up with some Yeah. Handy name for it.
John:And you go to that instead, and it and it can aggregate the they got they got the information out of the search engines anyways at their available at at their disposal. So just have that stuff there. And if you wanna link back into Google, you can link back into Google. But it seems muddy to me, and it it seems cumbersome. And oftentimes for me personally, the AI stuff is in the way.
John:Because I think I mean, you're a researcher. I I just like to see the websites for myself.
Cliff:Right.
John:And make those decisions for me versus an AI.
Cliff:Well, Bing has it right. I mean, Bing, they they put it out and, you know, both of you people out there doing you know, using Bing regularly, you know, you see the results and then you see a tab that if you wanna use a a I overview or AI, not overview, that's Google, you can click on that and go to town. And that's That
John:that's the choice. Way way better sense to me.
Cliff:Me too. Because AI overviews just slaps you in the face and, you know, you gotta search your
John:Like it or not. I think it's a panic move on their part, to be honest with you. You know? You said red alert. They're like, oh my gosh.
John:Yeah. ChatGPT is here. We gotta go do something and kinda have a presence. We've already put the thing. Well, we got a search engine that kinda tells you everything you'd need already.
John:So how do we go improve that? Whatever engineer went.
Cliff:Slap him in the face with it. I guess he won.
John:Put it put it at the top. Right.
Cliff:Smack them with it. Okay.
John:Yeah. We'll call it AI overview. You know? And do
Cliff:all your searching for you
John:because you're
Cliff:too lazy to sit design their
John:It's in the way, and I don't necessarily need it. You know?
Cliff:Right. I mean, I have clicked on it a little bit just to see what's there and, you know, to find clients and all that. But generally, I'm I'm not using it, but I'm old. So that might be a So
John:Could be.
Cliff:Yeah. Could
John:be. So but its impact on search at this point in time, at least for businesses, and that's where we really kinda confine ourselves to this. You know? You're you're searching for how heavy Chris Evans is. You might find something AI related.
John:But if you're doing a business search for something near you, quite honestly, it's just kinda not there so much.
Cliff:Well, let's hope it stays away for now because I like that part. Yeah. But as far as is SEO dead? No. SEO is completely alive and well and bringing in new clients.
Cliff:And now we're having to expand, you know, the visibility of our clients business in other ways in AI, you know. So we're we're seeing some success in showing up in chat GPT and other AI platforms. You know, video, let's not ignore that video is still people have been for years saying how important it is to do video, for SEO. Well, AI videos are easier to make now than they've ever been.
John:Yeah.
Cliff:And that's you can download them and add them to YouTube and Mhmm. Optimize them as well. So search everywhere is really the the the backbone now of all SEO, good SEO agencies. You'll so a vetting question, if you're out there looking for somebody to optimize your site and get you on page one, is how much are you paying attention to getting my business displayed in AI? If they look at you like a cow in a passing train, move on.
Cliff:Move.
John:Move on. You know, I've been working together far too long. Now we're thinking the same jokes.
Cliff:We did not plan that, ladies and gentlemen. That was completely spontaneous, believe it or not. So no. I mean, that that's that's just the way to to deal with it because if you're not paying attention to that, you're missing a big segment.
John:And, again, we we really think, you know, if we we fast forward, you know, what does it what does it look like ten years from now? One, SEO agencies aren't going to go away. There's still going to be need for human intervention in again, because they're they're different AIs, they don't necessarily talk to each other. And somebody's gonna have to figure that out. So SEO people are the natural, that's a natural evolution for an SEO guy trying to figure out how to get listed in all of that stuff.
John:But beyond that, I mean, SEO is just not disappearing anytime quickly, and what is coming is, you know, fragmentation. Sure. So so you're gonna need to list in more places than just just Google in the days ahead.
Cliff:And the good news is there's a lot of overlap between, traditional SEO and getting businesses seen in AI. So it's not like you're having to learn a brand new skill necessarily. You're having to add to the toolbox you already have. So, I mean, there's there's terms out there that you might hear, answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization. That's just trying to get you seen in AI.
Cliff:That's all that is. It's SEO on steroids, honestly. That's what I would I would say.
John:Is there a click data or search data available for like chat GPT and perplexity and things like that now with respect to business search?
Cliff:Well, tools like SEMrush and a refs and all that are starting to try to track all that. Mhmm. It's not as simple as you might think it would be, but I bet. And there are other tools that are coming up that that are going to in the future. And and Google Search Console is starting to display that.
Cliff:Analytics. Google Analytics is starting to show some of that. So, yeah, I mean, there's some native tools that we use already that are gonna help us with that. Now the one of one of the questions I got asked the other day is, you know, what about, AI SEO tools? And so far, I've tried a few and they have been dismally they just performed poorly so far.
Cliff:So, you know, I think could that in the days ahead be something that's viable? Maybe. But at the same time, think about it this way. The the purpose of AI is not to replace everybody, you know, on the planet and just have us all on universal income. The purpose of AI is to amplify what you and I are able to do individually.
Cliff:So, you know, me as as one SEO nerd with using certain AI tools, I can amplify myself to be as productive as five or 10 SEO nerds. And that's kind of to me the right mindset and the proper use of AI, to to get more done with less, essentially. And that's kind of the the theme of every business out there in my mind.
John:Well, and also, I mean, if you're looking in the days ahead, you know, back in the in the in the earlier days of Internet, there were there were a lot of search engines, Lycos, AltaVista.
Cliff:Yeah.
John:And and search was far more fragmented until
Cliff:words, but I
John:don't No. I'm not really.
Cliff:Lycos. That's hilarious.
John:Lycos.
Cliff:I can heard that.
John:There's one ask Jeeves.
Cliff:Ask Ask Jeeves. Jeeves.
John:I kinda dug that. Remember that? Yes. Back in the Netscape days.
Cliff:That was back when I had a Mindspring account.
John:Mhmm. So so even search back then was more fragmented, although you Yahoo, I think, sat on top of all of that.
Cliff:Saw it at a garage sale yesterday.
John:I know. For sale for $10.
Cliff:No. It's 15.
John:They don't need I don't even think they do their own search anymore.
Cliff:They don't. They outsourced that a long time ago. Now maybe they've changed that, but, you know, that was years ago.
John:Well, don't search there anymore. I mean, that's kind of the thing. Search where? Exactly. But I think the question will be, does a does a specific AI rise Right.
John:To prominence. Sure. Do you have any opinions
Cliff:about that? ChatGPT is leading the pack now, because it's the, you know, first to market, so to speak, and and a lot of people are familiar with it, and it does a lot of different things. It's an excellent tool for coding and, you name it. My wife, the other day, used it to to plan an exercise schedule. So, I mean, just it's insane the kind of uses you can think for it or use, you know, use it for.
Cliff:But I think that one's leading. Perplexity, I would watch because that's a very good one. Who knows?
John:X has one. What's it called again?
Cliff:I don't know. I haven't been on X in years. Really? I really haven't. Yeah.
Cliff:Twitter became such a cesspool. I just was gonna get in a fight every time I was on it. So and I know I'm sure it's better, but I don't care.
John:No. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, again, these are the kinds of questions that are gonna need to be answered and asked in the days ahead, and, and we'll see what happens because that'll direct where we invest our time
Cliff:Sure.
John:With respect to ranking websites and those kinds of things, and websites will be ever evolving too.
Cliff:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's insane how much it's gonna be in all of our lives.
John:Yeah. Good conversation.
Cliff:Yeah. Thanks. I I was here for it too.
John:I figured so. Alright. Well, you know, if you're if if you if you're having these kinds of thoughts, you wanna make sure that you talk to your search engine optimizer about about these kinds of things. If you're interested in ranking your your website, you want you want somebody who's who's proactively thinking about AI now. You have to because it is ultimately going to impact search engine optimization.
John:Is it impacting it now? It
Cliff:is. No. It is. I'm gonna say yes.
John:But but not not so much for business
Cliff:cataclysmic? No. Not even closed. No.
John:Nah. Now back in the early days, you know, when we started the company, I thought, you know, is website design gonna go away with all these DIY websites? And and I really did think in the early days, oh, yeah. Well, that's that's gonna happen. Well, they all kinda came and
Cliff:And we're still here.
John:We are still here. I changed our business cycle a little bit because, you know, when you have a small business, a lot of times people go and do the cheap website first. And when they don't get anything from it and it doesn't represent them well, because not everybody does art well Sure.
Cliff:No. A lot of folks don't do content well. They And that's what Google wants.
John:No. Absolutely correct. In fact, that's the one thing. Somebody comes in, they go, I just want a very simple website, and I don't want it to have any words on it. I go, sorry.
John:We're just kinda don't do that. Yeah. Because otherwise, your website doesn't rank in Google. If it doesn't rank in Google, why have a website? Does not matter one bit.
Cliff:We recently had a client who wanted a pretty, pretty website with very little content and wants us to optimize it and get us get her on page one. And we're like
John:It doesn't work that way.
Cliff:Okay. That's not gonna happen.
John:It's not gonna happen.
Cliff:So So we'll see how that one goes.
John:So so SEO is out there. Don't panic. You know? We've seen these kinds of things before. You're still gonna have work, and these these these new tools are probably gonna provide more opportunity instead of less for us in the days ahead.
Cliff:Now I wanna warn somebody about this. This is something I can predict will happen because I've seen it already. Not this particular slant, but when you hear somebody go, I've solved how to get you visible in AI.
John:Okay.
Cliff:I remember years ago, I had somebody say, I spent I spent three I was three Three hours.
John:I was awake one night. No. No.
Cliff:The guy goes, I was up three days and nights, I solved the Facebook algorithm. And I'm like, no. You didn't. You're bipolar. But okay.
Cliff:So if you hear somebody say we absolutely a 100 figured out how to do this, run because it's ever evolving and it's not a static thing. It's not you're not solving for one x here. You're solving for multiple x's, and that's not an issue about divorce. It's just that it's it's ever changing and ever evolving. And you can you can go to chat GPT and use the same prompt.
Cliff:Recently, I read an article. They they were doing that. We're testing it. They used the same prompt a thousand times and got different results. So they got themes that were kind of consistent.
John:No exact Replication. Some pieces.
Cliff:It was about a 20% overlap of consistency. So that tells you something with that. So it's it's not and let's face it. Google itself tries to personalize your results. You will get different results if you're logged into your Gmail versus you going to an incognito mode and search the exact same keywords.
Cliff:You can get different results from your laptop or your phone. It just I mean, so Google changes things. It's not a static thing. All SEO is based on probability and the probability of getting you on page one consistently, and that's what good SEO does. So Yep.
Cliff:It's not a one size fits all, and no one has solved it because anybody that understands SEO in in its entirety already works for Google. Mhmm. And they won't talk to you about it.
John:Yep. Well, if you got questions about this or, are interested in in getting your website ranked and improving your your marketing, that's what we're here for. You can reach out to us at w w w dot make it loud dot net. We've been at this for, twenty years now.
Cliff:Yeah.
John:Been a long time.
Cliff:It's been a long time because you're old.
John:I'm not as old as you, but yes. Yeah.
Cliff:Fair.
John:So it's been a minute. Yep. So, so feel free to reach out to us if you have questions, and, we'd be happy to help you. As always, digital marketing assessments and consultations are free, so we'd be, honored to do that. And we can work with anybody from anywhere in The United States.
John:Yeah. We can.
Cliff:And we'd love to work on trying to make you more money. Yeah.
John:Sounds good. Alright. Well, this has been improving your digital marketing Yeah. With John and Cliff, and we'll see you next time. Alright.
John:Later.
Voiceover:Thank you for listening to the improving your digital marketing podcast by Make It Loud. Be sure to follow, subscribe, and download wherever you get your podcasts. To hear other episodes, visit www.makealoud.net, and be sure to follow us on your favorite social media platform. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest on this podcast are their own. The information contained in this podcast is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be legal advice.
Voiceover:The Improving Your Digital Marketing podcast is produced in studios in Atlanta, Georgia.
