Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The very nature of how local businesses get discovered is shifting in the biggest way since probably social media with AI. And so today we are going to discuss that shift and what we're calling the Alphabet soup of modern SEO or search engine optimization, and how that's shifting.
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[00:00:46] Speaker B: I don't know how much a local business owner actually hears this terminology. Is somebody proposing that as services today? Large language model optimization, ask engine optimization or generative engine optimization. In the end we'll get it, we'll break it down, but at the end it doesn't really matter, right? Like all things change but nothing changes, right? Like an SEO, it's just this big circle that comes around and at the end of the day, guess what all of these search engines want? They want to satisfy the user and the user intent. That's it.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: They want content that's awesome that somebody clicks over and boom, that's the exact answer I'm looking for. I don't need to click over anywhere else. That's everything I wanted very good coverage of the topic and then you can even like FAQs or extra little questions at the bottom to, to round it out and then that's it. So in that respect, nothing's really changed.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: The more you get into it. I think if I were to sum up, at least from my perspective, the main difference is it's just more shit to think about, but it's fundamentally, it's the same. The way I'm approaching it is this, I'm adopting this search everywhere mentality where so when I either go in or I have someone go into a restaurant, I want them to. The outcome I want is like 20 to 30 little clips of videos that I can then put keywords in the captions and then transcript, whatever, and then put that across YouTube shorts, Instagram, TikTok, Google business profile and just have all these. Because we all like all these platforms, surface those results and people use them as search engines more and more. So anyways, that's in a really simple way how I think about search everywhere optimization.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: That's again, that's back to just getting mileage from the content that you're producing, right? And this is not a new thing at all. I did a presentation on this 12 years ago or something I think for metamin on how to repurpose your content essentially, right. So now we're just finding more platforms that we have to push it out on. Unfortunately, it puts more work and effort on the shoulders of the business owner. But the more social platforms are out there and the more ways that people are engaging and finding information, as a business owner, you have to be there, right? If they're, if, if you're a business owner and you're 65 years old and you're like, I'm retiring soon and I don't really understand this tech stuff and that ticket thing and you just, you don't know and you're not up to date on the current whatever and maybe you're just a Facebook guy or something or even that, right? So you're like, I'm not gonna do tick tock. But you don't realize that your target market is like feeding off of that, right? And they're actually looking for local businesses while they're tick tocking. So while they're scrolling through all the videos, there's local business owners that are putting in awesome videos about what they do. Just like showing got fame. Famous was like a carpet cleaning company, right? Because it was satisfying to, to watch the carpets being cleaned and something like. And you wouldn't really realize that. But just showing what they do every day, it really blew up their channel. And through that kind of getting a lot of popularity, then their local business obviously got a lot of popularity. There was news pieces and articles all over the place and then their business blew up from it. Do you have to go TikTok crazy? No, but you need to know where you need to be as a business owner, where you need to be found for sure.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Today's episode, we thought we'd talk about the acronyms, right? A lot of different acronyms floating around for SEO being Search Engine optimization and that's what we, or what I, I do primarily and then digital marketing, every other thing of digital marketing as well. So SEO is the common term that everybody throws around if you're going to optimize your website. But now with AI, there's more terms and more terminology and more acronyms coming out.
So some of those are aeo, which is Answer Engine Optimization and then geo.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Generative Engine Optimization and then llmo, Large Language Model Optimization.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: So that sounds like that lmfo, LMFAO or whatever, like band or something. But anyway, large language model being what? ChatGPT is or Flow Grok. So it's just a language model that's meant to give that has covers a wide swath of information. And for ChatGPT, that's like the Internet plus some other sources and stuff. All of those acronyms get confusing and essentially people come up with them and anytime something new comes out with for SEO or for online presence, they say, oh, that's it. No, no, I think it's SEO like people like us that, that we just put a label on something and then there's a lot of fear mongering and stuff. Right. So I've seen it. Oh, this is dead. And I think it's like more the SEO industry that's just trying to sell more SEO and finding a different angle or to sell a different service or maybe some scammy people that come in and every time there's a new thing they're like, oh, hey, here, I'm gonna go sell that service.
And they scam the customers or whatever, but they can do it because the customer is not aware of that new thing. So they're like, oh, black box, yeah. Oh, A, E, O. I need to know. A, E, O.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Can you do it for me? Oh, yes, yes, I can. For whatever amount of money. I think just clarifying the air, the acronym AIR and letting people know what it is and then at the end of it, letting people know that they don't need to know what it is.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. Perfect. Yeah. I was doing some research this morning and I saw that the SEO industry, some source valued it at 100 to $107 billion a year annually. And it's huge. It's huge because the nature of how local businesses and businesses in general get discovered is like changing in the fastest way possible. And this hundred to $107 billion industry is completely shot shifting, which is the case for many industries. But I think that's why we're talking about this before we start. I just like to simplify the whole thing by the hook and the frame of it. So I think that is the frame of it. The frame is the very nature. The way people discover your business is changing in the biggest way it has in probably two decades since the dawn of the Internet or the.
Yeah, yes, okay, so. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was going to say the invention of the search engine, but I think you're right. I think this is the biggest shift since social media. And so I think that is, that's a frame. That's why it matters. That's why people are going to pay attention. I think that the frame of this episode is the very nature of it is changing and when that happens, there's all kinds of new stuff that there's jargon, there's confusion, there's this chaos. Right?
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the only thing that really matters. Right. Is a business has to be present where people are searching for where their target market is searching for them. Yeah. And that could be on Facebook or on TikTok or it could be on, on zero social media platforms. Maybe the new age kids are just searching on my platforms and they're getting their answers through ChatGPT. And it's not even a social platform that we're talking about anymore, but it's being on social and Google and these chat GPT directories and search engines like Perplexity, these AI search engines. So it's first keeping up with it, that's our job I guess, is to keep on top of what's coming out and what's available and then distill it all down to something that is. Here's what you need to know about all this stuff. So forget this, forget that. Focus on this. SEO search engine optimization, ask engine optimization, Generative engine optimization. That's the gist of the conversation today.
But to start it off, we're not talking about SEO morphing, we're talking about, we touched on this before. Everything is coming full circle and it's all the same thing. It's all coming up with outstanding content that provides a ton of value to the end user. Right. So the all these search engines doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter perplexity or code or ChatGPT or Google or Bing. It doesn't matter who it is. They all want the same thing for the user because the user is their client. They want the best experience possible for their user. And so that best experience is that person asks a question or types of the keyword and all of the information that they're getting on the other side of that click satisfies their curiosity so they don't have to go anywhere else. They have the answers that they're looking for just by clicking over that or maybe even the ability to add follow up questions via a search like Perplexity or something. But they get the best experience and the best full complete answer from wherever they're clicking. That's what every search engine wants and that's what we need to optimize for in the new future. In the new AI future is to be present and in all these places as possible with as little extra effort as possible.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: No one, not even enterprise clients, have the bandwidth to do all of this shit, let alone the local business owner who like has to go to their shop and manage their team and do all these other things that matter when it comes to serving your customers. And so if, if the biggest dogs in the world don't have the bandwidth for it, what is the local business owner to do? That's what we're going to clarify. And I think that a lot of it just is going to come down to the fundamentals anyways. So the very nature of how local businesses get discovered is, is shifting in the biggest way since probably social media with AI. And so today we are going to discuss that shift and what we're calling the Alphabet soup of modern SEO or search engine optimization, and how that's shifting to different terms like AEO or answer engine optimization, LLM or large language model optimization, all of this jargon. And we're going to cut all of the fluff and, and just set the stage, talk about this change where it's going and where we believe the biggest opportunity for impact is for the local business owner. How's that sound to you, Rhys?
[00:10:33] Speaker B: It sounds awesome.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Sick.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: So I think we should go through each of the what SEO is now and then we can talk about AEO and GEO and stuff and then get into what does it all really mean and where to focus our energies or where should the business owner be focusing their energy. SEO has always been two separate entities. There's always been organic search and then maps essentially. Right. So it's two different search platforms within the Google sphere and they've changed over time, how connected or interconnected they were and how they related to each other and how they ranked each other. So it's changed from being very connected and if you had your site was ranked and your Google business profile would be up there as well. And then they've deconnected it throughout time a little bit. And so you can now have one ranking and not the other one. I guess the idea being they don't want to give the entire first page to a company. So there's been some movement about decoupling the search results from the Maps results. But that being said, it's the search results that are getting affected mostly by AI. So Google is going, is losing search or losing market share to perplexity in ChatGPT because people like myself, I'm not using Google as a search engine anymore because I find more value in using, in paying for perplexity. But the fact that I find enough value in it to pay for that. So it just means that all these people are looking in different places. So Google search is being impacted massively by AI and even their own snippets and stuff. AI snippets at the beginning, that's getting a ton of traffic for them. But then Google Maps is essentially as of now, untouched by AI. And Google Maps is something that everybody uses, everybody's on their phone now, and it's what people go to. Whether you're on Apple Maps or Google Maps, you go to that maps to find local businesses. So for local business, Maps is massively important. You can think about all the other stuff, the AI engines and stuff, but focus on your big money ticket for the money item. Really optimize the hell out of your Google Business Profile.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think that Google is going to be dethroned from their Maps product anytime soon. So I actually think that that is where I would tend to. And it is where we, when we're working with restaurants, it is one of the first places we start is that map pack, right. Which is more international or national businesses. They're going to be trying to fight up the mountain of the blue links at the top. Right. And obviously this is changing in a big way, but for local business businesses, it is that map pack. The three results that oftentimes Google will surface at the very top as well. But those are all built on the Google Business Profile. I'd love to hear how you approach this, but.
So what we generally tend to do is we'll go into a tool called Local Falcon and we will draw up heat maps and show exactly where restaurants are showing up for key search terms like best tacos, city in my city or best tacos near me, that kind of thing. And then what we'll do is we'll begin to identify 5 to 10 high value keywords that we can show up for in the local map pack. And then we start to not only optimize their Google Business profile, but we also get on another tool called yext, which is all about publishing your listings and making sure that your name, address and phone number, that nap is consistent across the Internet. And so that's kind of, I think that's ground zero, is just making sure that your Google Business profile is solid. What say you?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: I mean, it's the easiest thing to do and it's the most valuable thing to do for sure. There's a bunch of different tools that you can find if you want to find out how you're ranking Locally. So here's the difference between ranking on Google search and ranking on Google Maps. So if you rank on Google search, you don't. Location doesn't really come into it. Right. There's going to be location based on someone's typing in. If they're in Victoria and they're typing back pain or something and then it's going to be a local listing that comes up on, on search. Right. And it's going to be chiropractors in their local area. Right. Location in that sense beyond the city doesn't really have any relevance. But then on maps where you are in the city is, is plays a role in what kind of results you're going to see. So these maps, heat maps, they're essentially little pinpoint. So you, you have a pin dropped on all different locations all around the area, all around the city. So in all these different neighborhoods and each of those pins represents if somebody was sitting there searching on their phone for that specific keyword, where, where would your business show up? If you have like chiropractor in Victoria and I'm in, in downtown Victoria, I type that in. I'm going to get a different set of results than if I go outside of the city a little bit and I type in the same thing again, I'm going to get that. I'm going to get different results because it is location based. And so Google thinks that, okay, anybody that's using maps is looking for direction. So they're obviously trying to go someplace. If they're trying to go someplace, we don't want to give them directions to the chiropractor in the next town or the next city. We want to make sure that they're getting the best service from the best, the closest possible.
Sometimes that kind of like it might defeat the purpose. If it's like a, I want the best lawyer in town. I don't care where he is in, in those situations, maybe it's not as helpful. And I'm not going to drive across town for best pizza. I want something a little more local maybe. So it depends on what it is. But that's the way that Google lays out the search or the rankings is proximity based. So really the biggest thing you could do is be in the center of the actual city or town that you're trying to rank for. And, but that's obviously not always possible. But that's the biggest identifier or ranking feature there is. So that's the best way to rank is to be center stage. Next is to put some keywords in your title but that's against Google's terms of service. So on that note, your Google Business profile title should only ever be your business name. And if your business name is like Joe's Plumbing limited and on your sign it says Joe's Plumbing, then it's whatever your signage is, that's fine. So it's so on your Google business profile it's Joe's Plumbing. Don't do Joe's plumbing near me. 247 open emergency. That's not your name and you're going to get suspended. Your profile gets suspended for that.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: A it works to drive results. But what I do see Google do is they just revert it back to the kind of name with without any keywords. Have you ever actually had a GBP get suspended a client?
[00:16:52] Speaker B: So if a client comes to us and they have a keyword or name stuffed Google Business Profile and it's working for them, we don't touch it. They're ranked and Google's their favoring it because absolutely Google, if you put in a keyword or a city absolutely you will rank higher for doing that but you will also potentially incur a suspension or maybe they take down, they have a bunch of different little things that they can do. Maybe remove some reviews or suspend you for a little bit or make you go through a verification again. So all of it's a big pain in the ass. We won't add. We don't do the black hat. We follow Google's rules and regulations as much as possible and so we don't stuff any keywords into it. But we have left them until Google finds them or a competitor reports them. Right. We tell our clients if you see something out there, duty as Google moderators to to make sure that everybody has legit, they're on the same playing field. Nobody's allowed to cheat in this game just like in any other game. And if somebody does, it means that they're cheating you. Right. So that may not matter Joe's Plumbing and you're not a plumber but if it's your business and then you see that somebody else has so whatever, you're a plumber and then everybody else has plumber Victoria Best plumber Victoria as their Google business name. That's not their name obviously. And so you need to report them. There's the three dots. Click the three dots, you know, and report that profile because it's going against Google's terms of service. It's not helpful for the users and it's not and it's not fair to you as somebody that's actually following the rules and stuff. Right. So the easiest way that you can climb up the ranks is getting rid of the people that are gaming system first.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: I do think a very effective and authentic way to get keywords in your Google business profile and your website is through reviews. And also maybe you like in for restaurants, for example. Sometimes what we'll have our clients do is just make a little table talker or a QR code card that you give guests at the end of their experience. And on that card it could be like you could have a little prompt or an instruction that says hey, did, was this one of the best steaks you had in city name? Or what do you would you say this is one of the best restaurants or one of the best dining experiences you've had? That kind of thing. And then you can sometimes will sprinkle those in and then not only do those get included in your reviews, but my understanding is that the keywords in reviews can also show up in rankings. And we do know that AI answers or answer engine responses or whatever you want to call them, they often do. They source their data from reviews both on the Google business profile but also on your website. And I say this all the time. I fundamentally believe one of the highest leverage, highest impact things a local business can do is drive the shit out of reviews, ask for them at every point possible.
Let's say you are a plumber. If you give someone a free consultation, after that consultation, if they received any value, I would, I'd ask for a review. Hey, if you could, if you got value from this, let me know, blah, blah, blah. And because the more reviews we drive, it is two powerful things. One is it actually increases our visibility, right? This is a standard like local SEO thing is more reviews, like we call it review velocity, the faster that velocity is. That's a very strong signal that we're sending to Google that says, oh, this business is a going concern and we are therefore going to rank them higher because people are having a good experience with them. Obviously if it's all one star reviews, that that'd be different. But for the most part it's review velocity, getting lots of them. But then so you not only increase your visibility, you also increase your conversion rate on that visibility. Because as more people see your reviews and what like the actual experiences that people are having, they're obviously going to take the action that you want them to take, which is get in touch or become a customer. And I really think that review generation, I don't really see that going anywhere, do you?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: It's not going anywhere. I'll take it from there, actually. Because AI is now going out and crawling everything, like content, blog content, comments, reviews, everything on the Internet. Then it's grabbing all sources, right? So now all those sources, if you can be in all those sources, that would be the best thing ever. So not just reviews for Google, but now go out and make sure that you're getting reviews on your Better Business Bureau, on Facebook, on your directories. Go and look at the biggest directories in your industry. Right? Like just to do a search for yourself and your business and look down, what are the directories that are ranking in the top three, three or 30 pages or 30 results of this, of the search engine. And then look at those directories and do you have a presence on those directories? If not, you should have. And if you do, is it optimized? And what does optimize mean? Just fill it in. That's it. Fill it in.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Like, fill it in thoroughly. Even the stuff that you don't think matters. Oh, is this business LGBTQ plus friendly? Respond to that. Respond to everything. True or false? No.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: True. Absolutely. So put as much. If it gives you a box to fill in the box. Right. Whether it's no. Yes. Or it asks you to upload photos. Upload photos. Videos. Upload videos. Right? And videos. Just your phone. Anybody has a phone, just take a video.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: And the other thing I absolutely love about reviews, I remember when I first started learning about copywriting. When it comes to research, what we do is we would go look at Amazon reviews so that we could find out the specific language that our customers use, what they loved about it, what they hated about it, what those middle of the road folks would say about it. Because the best, most effective copy isn't what you think it is. It is what your customers actually say about it. And so I love that about reviews because sometimes we just, often actually we just copy and paste the reviews and we put that in our ads, in our social media, on our websites, because that is the language of your customer. And you don't have to guess or make it up. It's just, it's all there. And so the more reviews you drive, the more marketing assets you build. And you can also. Yeah, so like you can use reviews everywhere.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Agreed. I actually, I'd like to take the review. And so we have, we have a system where we create like, we call them review templates, essentially. So it's just a 1200 by 1200 square with their logo and like their brand colors and their address and like a URL and a phone number on it. And then inside there, inside that frame, we just paste the actual review and then we post that out on, on social. So yeah, great to put that out on Google business profile, right? Because those people are looking for somebody to do that business. And so that's the ultimate place where you want to see reviews, right? You want to see not only the, in the embedded reviews in Google, but then these other reviews that might come from Facebook or BBB or whatever. And then you're just feeding them all into Google. So as soon as the searcher sees that, right, that's their. What's going to take them over the edge? What's going to differentiate you from the next person that's in that list? How many reviews you have, how much are people talking about you? What kind of photos do you have? Do you have a video on there? Do you have brand like certifications and stuff? Anything that provides trust and says, okay, I can trust these people and all these other people have trusted these people. I can see that by the reviews. So then it makes it that much easier to pick up the phone and make a call.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I, so I look at it in three, three layers, right? I it's generating more reviews, which is really just a function of asking for them whenever possible. Which in the restaurant space is like most restaurants don't actually ask for them. And so it can be really easy to go from them getting one Google review a week to like three to five a day just by making it easy to make the ask and then make it easy for the guests to actually leave that review. So that's layer one, Layer two is responding to the reviews you want to respond promptly. And there are all kinds of AI tools that can help you do that. And then third, and this one I think almost all local businesses really sleep on. It's just sharing those reviews as much as you possibly can. So that might mean putting out one review on your social a week. But I prefer to build like a review campaign that's just a dead simple meta campaign and it could be templatized but on an ongoing basis. It could even. You could even be spending two bucks a day on this campaign. But the whole idea is you always have ads that are saturating your local market with things that other people say. And this has a powerful kind of inception effect where it's just even though they can see that you are the business advertising your own reviews, people still perceive it as, wow, like all these People saying this stuff, all these people having these great experiences with this business, eventually that's going to seep in and they're going to take action, assuming that they're in the market for whatever it is you sell.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: So on the AI reviews, just a note there to be careful. Like anything with AI do not just self publish or auto publish a review without actually looking at it or a response to.
And don't set up a system that auto does that as well. Google's cracking down on that and I've seen some suspensions come through for that. Again, not our clients, just in groups that I'm in. So just be wary that anything to do with AI, you should be reviewing it before it goes live on your website or anywhere online.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Like sharing, sharing them how will cause that suspension.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: So this was somebody that had an agency and they use their own email address to attach to client profiles, Google profiles, they use their own email address to set up the automation on behalf of the client. But they didn't get the client to log in and set that up in the CRM that they were using. And so Google saw that it's their email address that's connected to this automated response for all of these clients and then shut them all down. All clients suspended, all of the profiles. Don't keep it entirely automated is the point. There should be some type of a patch on it and it should be somebody clicking okay to post it. The point there is that he might have been doing it using his email address to spam some clients. Maybe he's sending out thousands and thousands of emails unsolicited from his own personal email address. And then he's got that connected to these other Google business profiles. So his nastiness of whatever he's doing on his own account can cause issues to any connected account. And that's the same for Google Analytics, Google Search Console, gmb, Google Business Profile, any of those connected accounts. Be careful what you're doing with the email address that's attached to that.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah, AI agents that we train to respond to reviews based on, okay, this is a one, one or two star reviews, a three star, four or five star review. And we train those agents on how to respond so it doesn't seem. And that's there's quite a bit of software that helps with that. And the idea that I'm always super spooked about anything that could possibly. Because that's like my worst nightmare is getting a client's account suspended. Review gating, you're familiar with review gating? Yeah, this is there are super established software companies that actually promote reviewgating. They'll go on social media and they'll be like, hey, here's this cool thing that we do. When your customers come into the restaurant, we send them an email that's like, hey, how was your experience? And if they click a star rating and if it's four or five stars, they go straight to Google Business profile. If it's three or less, they go to this form and then you can prevent low rating, low rank ratings on your reviews. But this is very explicitly against Google's terms of service. And for that reason I have never done it. I have. We've done like automationy things that we've done lots of automation where we'll always ask for their honest feedback. But they all go to the same place, right? You can always ask for the feedback, you can ask for the review, but you cannot divert people based on an answer. The idea that using AI agents on super established software tools could be against their policies, that's. That spooks me. I haven't heard that.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: So I would say just like anything else, right? If you were on the bad bandwagon of like just auto publishing blog articles as they came along, right, With AI or something and just not even looking at it and just throwing it on your website, same thing, at some point they'd be like wait man, there's signs in there that this is not written by a human being, right? Because it's just, there's no oversight onto it, there's no editing at all, there's no personality. It's just a machine, right? So the way that we program the AI today is very different than just auto publishing whatever comes out for our clients. We have projects inside of our LLMs like Cloud. We have a project and that project is to do entirely with that client and so that it's the client's brands and colors and tone of voice. And so everything that we produce inside of there is produced in that client's tone of voice. And it does not seem at all like it would be automated. And so that's really at the end of it. That's what Google or anybody is trying to prevent. Result is just make sure you're testing your stuff out, right? Yeah. What's going online 100%.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: And I almost think that I've been thinking a lot about this lately and because of rebuilding the our guest getter site and I'm just thinking a lot about the copy that's on there and I people are just inundated with this AI slick. It's, it's a lot of people say, oh, AI swap. I actually think it's like slickness. It's just, it's, it's just so perfect that a lot of people, I just don't think it, it lands with them. And so I've actually, I've been really valuing my own copy and just like writing it in, in all its imperfect glory. And I think that kind of copy is going to become more and more effective. Just like stuff that it's like when I'm going back and forth with AI, the amount of work it takes to get it to a point where I feel like it sounds real and honest and human takes a fuck ton of work. And so I think that this also segues well into where to wrap up this episode, where we think this is going and distill it into really as simply as I can. I think that it is the same. It's just more nuanced and even more question driven than it was before. And SEO has always been pretty question driven. If you just go to answer the public or a site like that where you can just put in tacos or whatever, and then it'll come up with all the questions that people ask. And a really sound strategy for the longest time, and I believe will continue to be a sound strategy, is just making sure that you answer those questions better than anybody else. And I know we, we talked about the book they ask, you answer, which I think will continue to be, I think that will continue to be a very effective strategy. I think the difference now though is you want to include the questions and you want to include many nuanced versions of the questions in and your answers to those questions in your content, whether it's your Google business profile, also your social media. We could talk a little bit about where this, where we see this going with the change in SEO term. And I think that's, that's it. Ultimately it's just answering those questions and coming up with nuance systems. For example, I work in restaurants, so I think while people used to search best tacos near me, right? And now what they're gonna do is instead of just typing that into a little search bar in Google or wherever, they're going to go to something like Perplexity or chatgpt and they're gonna start saying things like, hey, Tomorrow at around 5pm I'm getting into Union Station and I'm gonna be meeting a buddy for a cocktail. I wanna go somewhere cool but not too stuffy. And I don't want to have to wait in line. Right. And so now we have to begin to think about how can we show up for questions like that. And so it's gone from showing up on those blue links that Google puts out to ultimately, how can we be the very best answer for specific contexts? And that probably, I hope that doesn't sound too complicated, but that's how I'm thinking.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: So just on that. So the difference there is originally someone's typing in cocktails.
Union station. Yeah, that's the keyword. Right. And we're optimizing and SEO is optimizing for cocktails, Union station. Now you've got a whole sentence and so now you don't optimize on every word in that sentence. It's the totality of the meaning and that's how it's going to change. So it's not search engine optimization about keywords anymore, it's about the entire page itself. What does the whole page mean? And by giving those questions and answers then you're giving the AI what it needs. Perfect segue from what changes making with client content to adapt to the new AI era. Answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, they're essentially the same thing. They're just how we optimize for the new AI. So that's essentially all we're doing in Google. It's always been, at first it was eat experience, authority and trust. Then it was eat expertise, experience, authority and trust. And so Google wants to know, especially in an AI era, that the content is coming from somebody that knows what they're doing. They're authoritative, they're trustworthy, they have the experience, they have the credentials behind them too, so that I can trust the content that's coming from that. So eat has always been a big thing for Google. How do you incorporate trust signals and stuff into your content? And some of that's credentials and where did you go to school and things along those lines. What part of the community are you in? Do you have? Are you part of certain memberships and associations and stuff? Anything that kind of points to you being an integral part of the community, a human being behind the content and someone that knows what they're talking about with content. Now we're moving over, we're moving our blog content. Essentially we're changing three big things. We put in key takeaways at the Beginning, we added FAQs to all of them. We used to do it on a kind of here and there basis, but now it's across the board and we're putting in Trust and credibility where we can so saying we might say, oh we've been in business for 32 years. Oh we are this group certified or we have our licenses, our certifications or anything that you kind of just it fits and flows with. If they're installing something then our installers are all WC certified or whatever. Like some sort of group industry that gives that credibility and that trustworthiness.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Optimization, especially as social media platforms get used more and more like a search engine, because that's a great place where people can find trust signals, right? It's oh, can I'm looking for best bet burger joint, Cincinnati or wherever. Right. And so when you search social media, you'll find other people sharing their experiences. Right. And so we want to be using those keywords on those platforms as well.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: I think we should, we should come up with some action items that some people can do, our business owners can do to give them an idea of what we're talking about here or just little things that you can do moving forward that you can use forever and ever. The evolution was search engine optimization. It was the beginning and it's from the get go. And then now we have same acronym but a different meaning, more evolved meaning. So now it's search everywhere optimization. And we want to now be able to push content out everywhere that we can, right? And that content, text content, images, video, whatever, and then use that content and repurpose that content as much as possible to eliminate the amount of extra work that you need to do. So when you're on the job, if you're a trades person, one of the best things you can do on the job is get your trades guys or yourself to take pictures on the job site. One it's just great to have those pictures. When customers can see them, they can see something being built or something being made and they're very helpful for location based data. So Google especially since you're on the job and it shows that Google shows Google that you're in that location doing business. So there's location data embedded in the back of the, in the photo. And so when you get your guy, just whoever it is on the ground to upload it, all they have to do is just search for your company name. They don't need to log into anything, just go to your business profile and click the photos and upload a photo and that's it. So get them to do that as much as possible. Shoot a little video of something. Before and after are huge. But there's so very difficult to get get. Just make sure that anybody that goes on site somewhere that they're just taking like a picture or a little quick video. Hey, we're just getting to the site now. Oh, today we're doing this or we're installing this part or whatever it is. And don't think about. Oh, nobody wants to see that. Who knew that you people wanted to see rugs being cleaned? Who knew? So it could be something pretty exciting that you just think is mundane. Like maybe somebody does want to see the nastiest clog that you've ever taken out of a pipe. So just try to amass as much content as you can Evergreen content. And just keep on thinking like your phone is that that is your recorded with your video camera, right? You don't need to hire somebody and chase you around anymore. Anything, anybody's phone is fine. Like even if you have a flip phone, I'm pretty sure that's got a camera that's good enough. So don't worry about paying somebody a fortune. Just worry about getting content and then just upload it to a Google Drive, right? Just leave it in the Google Drive and then you can always come back to it, make videos from it, pull images for ads for blogs or whatever, right? There's. You can never have enough content. And that's the biggest. One of my biggest pet peeves for my clients is that I don't get enough content from them. And I can't create content without content.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: That's exactly why even. That's how I built my business guest getters is by going and doing media shoots for restaurants. Because I knew that was oftentimes the first bottle bottleneck for them is just getting the content. And then that's still what we do is even myself, I'll still go to restaurants sometimes and capture content. Or we'll hire a local photographer, videographer so that we don't rely on them. Because what I have learned working with local businesses is if we rely on them for anything, it will probably not get done. And so we just make sure that our systems are such that we don't need to rely on them for anything. So yes, absolutely. And content velocity is important. When we go do a shoot, we're trying to come up with 20 to 30 little video assets. And obviously in the process of getting 20 to 30 little video assets, you're also going to come up with a whole bunch of photo assets. And so that's all the raw materials of how we build trust and authority and attention and awareness in a local marketplace. I often look at it like a butcher they want to honor every piece of the meat. That's what they do. They want to make sure every piece is of the utmost integrity and is used as best as it possibly can. And that's how I look at a media shooter. When we go and we capture content and we come up with all these assets, I want to ensure that it's getting used most effectively via meta ads, Google Ads, it's put on the website, on the Google business profile, it's repurposed on TikTok, YouTube shorts, etc, etc etc and so in that way we can help the business create an omnipresent effect. And this all into exactly what we're talking about today, which is search everywhere.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Optimization media or some type of content to put out there, whether it's a podcast, an audio, a video, an image, written content, a to do list, a checklist, whatever. What is your customer looking for? Think. Talk to your salespeople, find out what are all the questions that your customers are asking and what are all the sticking points and then solve them. Solve the questions by answering those questions and providing that answer in every way that you possibly can on your site, in person, on your Google Business profile, on the FAQs, and then anything else that they have that's a sticking point. Objection. Maybe they struggle. Maybe you have a window covering company and they struggle with choosing the actual one and you show up there with fabrics and stuff, but it's just not enough. And so maybe you need to put out a PDF that's like the last 10 years color of the year and then associated colors that go along with it. And then someone can look at that, that PDF and they can see all the different colors. Oh yeah, I know, I can see that. This is my color of wall. I think I need that shade of color or that's going to contrast properly. Some people can't see that in their head. Right. So if there's some sort of objection or something that you keep on being asked on the job or on the ground, then write them down and get that information from your salespeople, share that information with your bosses and then make sure that kind of information is answered and all those objections are taken care of. Whether it's in a link magnet like something that you can produce and give away for free or lock behind an email. So some sort of a guide or walkthrough, something like that, or even like troubleshooting videos, People have issues, then solve the issue and then put it out there and then you can just guide them towards the video.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. On that note, Reese. I think that's a great spot for us to wrap up this week's episode.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Search Everywhere Optimization.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Reddit Town all right, that's it for this episode. If you're ready to grow smarter, not busier, head to localaishow.com sign up for the newsletter and get the first three moves guide. It's the fastest way to start using AI and automation to save time and grow revenue this week. Remember, you're on Main street, but you don't got to play small. See you next time on the Local AI Show.