Take it back to the old school

Gordon says: “It's time to put your old school digital marketing hat on, as we move forward in this new age.”

What does that mean in practice?

“We know that search behaviour is changing. ChatGPT, and LLMs in general, have basically given birth to a new way of searching that we never knew before. We were always 10 blue links on a page. LLMs have changed that.

With how people want their answers now, I don't think you can put it back in the box. I think the biggest thing is the uncertainty around where Google search itself is going. Will Google search even be a thing once AI Mode comes in and the adoption rates increase for LLMs and these types of answers?

I think it's going to go back to how we used to market years ago. For me, once Google released AI Mode, it was the end of SEO – and I don't say that lightly. They also broke an unwritten rule with publishers, which was always: we create the content, we live by your rules, you send us traffic. That paradigm has now shifted.

People are putting all their eggs into LLM optimization, but LLMs are not marketing channels as of yet. They might be in the future, but they're not right now. We don't know what's happening, but it's important to be on channels where your audience is. That could be Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Pinterest. You need to have a presence on these platforms, where your audience is, and find ways to engage them on those platforms.

Having all your eggs in an SEO basket, right now, is one of the worst marketing decisions you could make. I know lots of companies that just do SEO, and that's all they've done for ages, but that's going to have diminishing returns going forward. You need to have a more robust marketing strategy. For me, this is old school digital marketing: being on multiple channels, meeting your audience where they are, and then being able to convert that into engagement, then into your funnel.”

Is SEO changing to optimizing for organic discovery on different platforms, or is it still SEO?

“I like the term ‘Search Everywhere Optimization’, which is a buzzword we're seeing around the community at the moment.

There is still a very important role for SEOs in this new world. As an SEO, you have to optimize platforms for keywords X, Y, and Z, but there was always more to SEO than just that. There's the market research in the background. Is my audience here? How many of them are here? Are they engaging with my competitors on these platforms? How much engagement are my competitors getting?

That deeper analysis of the competitor sphere, and where they are, is what SEO is for me, and it’s what we were brought up on. Keyword optimization is great, but it's that market competitor optimization/analysis in the back end that was always core to any SEO strategy.”

What is the most effective way to determine who your audience is and where they hang out online?

“It depends on your niche. In SEO, we know that LinkedIn is going to be one of the big powerhouses to generate visibility, traffic, and leads. YouTube is another great discovery platform for our niche, but YouTube is also pretty good for most businesses that have an educational side.

Whereas if I’m an e-commerce store, maybe YouTube is not good for me, but Instagram and TikTok are probably awesome for me. It's understanding what you do as a business and where your audience might be. You need to break down, what does my product really do?

If you’re in a niche where you sell air conditioners to factories, maybe Instagram is not going to be the best place for you. You need to find out where your audience is hanging out. Is it on forums? Is Facebook where they are? You need to find it because Google will diminish – but it's not over for Google. You have to understand that, with the way LLMs work today, they're frozen in time. They are only as up-to-date as their latest training, but Google is still there.

What you will find is that certain searches are not easily answered by AI overviews or LLMs, particularly when the intent of the search is further down the funnel. These are queries that the users have that won't be satisfied by an AI overview. The query itself tells you that they would need more information to satisfy it.

Understand the intent. Are you LLM resistant? Are your queries LLM resistant? What this means is, if you could be eaten up by an overview, then you probably shouldn't be looking at that content. However, content where that deeper step is needed by the searcher is going to survive.

I'm not sure what it looks like on Google’s ten blue links going forward, but content like that will never be answered by an LLM.”

Do you recommend producing content to be consumed on LLMs, trusting that users will discover you, come back, and purchase from you in the future?

“No, I think it's too much of an ask.

Also, if you’re creating new, optimized, top-of-funnel content for LLMs, that’s great, but that content will not be seen until the next LLM update. You cannot appear in LLMs if you're not already there. It doesn't matter what you do now; they won't see it, unless it's a prompt that triggers a live search.

There are a lot of misconceptions around that because, when LLMs do that, they don't look at the entire internet. They don't look at your web footprint for that query. Simply, they look at the top results in Google. So, the best way to appear in LLMs today, for those queries that trigger live searches, is to get your page at the top of Google. That is it.

People think that LLMs look at your footprint. They don't. They might look at that in their next training data set, but not for live queries. You have to understand that, and then you have to understand that you cannot optimize for LLMs and get into them today if you're not already in it. Not for queries where they fall back on their training.”

If you do want to appear in LLMs, are there different types of queries that you need to optimize for?

“There are two things on that. If your content is already in LLMs, they surface it, and you see citations. You can't optimize your content to make it appear better. LLMs don't see that either. They're frozen in time from when they were trained.

The only way you can really optimize is for live searches. That isn't to say that you shouldn't do best practices for LLM optimization now, or expand your digital footprint, because you want to be part of that going forward. You want to future-proof yourself for the next LLM updates. I recommend it. Then, also, optimize for those prompts that trigger those live searches.”

Do you use any software to help you understand your audience and where they are?

“That is where a lot of nuance comes into research, because a keyword alone doesn't tell you much about it. It will maybe tell you the intent, but it's more about understanding pain points.

When Facebook was a thing, I used to join lots of groups that were related to my niche. Within those groups, you can have searches like ‘issues’, ‘problems’, and ‘How do I…?’, which surface conversations around these things. Now, you're actually in groups where you know your audience is, but you're embedded in the groups. When you use these issues and problems, you're surfacing real questions from real users about issues they have.

Another thing you can do is go to Amazon or a platform like that and look at products, if they are selling something related to what you do as an e-com. See what people are saying in reviews. What issues do they have with this product? Go to Trustpilot. Look for services like yours. See what customers are saying about them. This way, you get to know your audience in the first place.

Then it's about looking at different channels. If you don't know where they are, you can go to your competitors and see what social channels they are on. It's as simple as that. However, just because they're there, that doesn't mean you should be there.

Do your research. Everyone can be on Instagram, everyone can be on Facebook, but maybe you're wasting your time being there, and you should be somewhere else.”

How does this fit into an overarching strategy?

“If you've got a company, you've never engaged with an SEO or digital marketer, and you don't know much about your audience, the first part of any strategy will be what I'm saying: understanding where they are, understanding their pain points, and optimizing for the channels where you think you're going to get the most return.

Then, as you move forward, you want to be adjusting your strategy. Are you generating leads here? Are you generating clicks? Is your Instagram page optimized, with your link in bio or your link tree to drive that action? Then you're really refining messaging. Is the messaging sticking? Is the type of content you’re putting out sticking? Is it driving the actions you need to drive?

Followers, likes, etc., are all nice metrics, but you really want to be optimizing for the bottom line. Are people downloading that checklist? Are people clicking onto your website? Are they signing up to your newsletter or your email? What channels are driving that?

You can't go, ‘Instagram's not working for me’, or ‘TikTok's not working for me’. This is part of the strategy. You need to refine how you market on those channels for your business.”

How do you convince stakeholders who want you to focus solely on SEO?

“I would say, ‘I could totally focus on SEO,’ and there are lots of things we can do. We can focus on content, or we can focus on content that's further down the funnel, which is not going to be impacted by AI overviews.

We can target more long tail product/service-orientated searches. They may not have as much search volume, but combined, they're giving us a lot more qualified audience coming to our site.”

How do you measure success from an SEO perspective now?

“I have always believed that the only success is the bottom line. Everything else is a vanity metric, unless brand awareness is a key metric to what you want to achieve. It always comes down to: what do you want to achieve? Where are you now?

If you’re a tiny brand, brand awareness is going to be huge. How will you get that brand awareness? Mind you, brand awareness, in the world of LLMs and AI overviews, is very different from before. I could kill an industry with top-of-funnel content. I could be everywhere. This is good, and this is all part of SEO brand awareness, but with LLMs not even surfacing your brand name now, brand awareness as we used to do it is not the way.

It will still play a part, but maybe brand awareness is smashing LinkedIn, if that's where most of your audience is, or smashing it on TikTok. I'm not a social media guy, but this is how it is. For me, brand awareness is a key strategic tactic for any brand that is starting up.

Aside from that, I am looking at metrics like getting opt-in rates up. If that's your key metric, start with that. That's your North Star. Then, develop your strategy to get there. That's how I look at it.

If brand awareness is not part of what you want to achieve now, then what does appearing for top-of-funnel content or really mundane stuff do? The bottom line is, as always: Is it actually contributing to the bottom line? That's the North Star for any strategy.”

Gordon, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Search is changing. We don't know where it's going to be in six months – and I’m saying this with 14 years in the game.

All my life I’ve heard that SEO is dead. Every time I go, ‘No, it's not.’ This is the first time I'm actually thinking that it could be. To future-proof yourself, having all your eggs in the SEO basket is a really bad move.

Yes, you should do best practices, but stop trying to optimize for LLMs for today. That's a waste of your time, too – unless you're optimizing for those searches/problems that trigger a live search. If that's the case, make sure you're in the top ten. Other than that, future-proof yourself.

My last thing is, don't be afraid to put your face in front of a camera and do these types of things, because this is the way it is now. If you are in ChatGPT, on Instagram, and on TikTok, as long as you're in places where your audience could be, you're hitting some point in their journey. Anyone who says they can map out a whole customer journey is insane.

Don't put all your eggs in the SEO basket but, as you approach new platforms, SEO is still relevant in terms of competitor analysis, audience analysis, and messaging.”

Gordon Meagher is VP of SEO at uSERP, and you can find him over at uSERP.io.