SEO vs AEO: What Every Business Needs to Know

0:00Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Impromptu Roland's having challenges with his computer. Ryan's having challenges with his computer podcast of business lunch. special, what is it, special no AI agents fixing our stuff edition. Yeah, like let's have every single audiovisual setup that we have break at the same time in multiple locations. But we're still here and we're still really freaking smart. At least we play smart people on TV. Yeah, and I wanted to chat about, I think that this is so, as we're recording this, ChatGPT just announced that ChatGPT ads are going to be available.

0:41And, um, that caused us to say, you know, that's definitely something we should get into and test. And then we got into, um, the, you know, the platform and, um, kind of looked at like ads are supposed to be run a little bit differently. That way you're really building to, um, you know, to get the recommendation more than you are like you're building to get into the conversation more than you are just like, you know, buy my stuff right now. We'll see how that ultimately works. But it caused us to dive into a different pit that was SEO versus AEO. And so for those of you that don't know, SEO is search engine optimization and AEO is answer engine optimization, which is what they're, it doesn't flow to me as well as SEO, but it's, it seems to be the, would you say that's the accepted thing to call?

1:33I hear that and I hear GEO. So generative engine optimization. I'm not really sure on the differences. And yeah, this, you know, this came up. I was on a, I was on a client call and the client asked like, you know, so should I be investing? I had an SEO agency come to me and, you know, pitched me on their services. Should I be investing in SEO? And I was kind of like, I don't know. I mean, if you're not doing SEO right now, now feels like kind of a strange time to dive in and to say, I'm really going to look to optimize for standard, you know, search engines when they seem to be, you know, the future seems to be AI.

2:04And, you know, and she's like, well, what they said is that if you're optimizing for SEO, you're also optimizing for AEO and GEO. And I was like, ah, and I just, I kind of had to plead ignorance. Like, I don't know if that's right or not. And I, there were other smart people in the call and they didn't either. So I would love for you, since you're the smartest person about literally everything, you know more than everything, more than anybody about everything else for you just to tell us like what the heck it all is. No pressure. I like that. No pressure at all. Yeah. So, so to me, like kind of diving down it, I think that it's not correct that it's the same thing.

2:46And I think that's a big challenge that people are going to face. And I think SEO agencies are going to be inclined to attack this the same way that they attacked before. And, you know, I heard somebody say, you know, oh, my SEO people told me I just need to get more reviews because they all draw on review engines. And I think that it's important to think about what what is this? How is it different from from traditional SEO? How do we get to go from invisible in these answer engines, which are replacing the search engines, I think, and ultimately will largely replace the search engines for queries?

3:21And they're not delivering, at least currently, they're not delivering a a link to take you to their site, to, you know, to your site, they're delivering information about you and recommending, you know, you as the person who's the authority. And, and they're really, even the search engines themselves are, I think are evolving into that as well. And so I think, yeah, when was the last time, by the way, you just did a normal Google search? You know, I still use it. It's, it's the question of, because, because I think that's a good question. But for me, it's, I need to, I need to learn more about something directly from the source.

3:56So I will search for the direct sources site, but I'm not searching for an answer on Google. That's my difference, right? I don't use the search engines anymore for research. I don't use them for finding, you know, lists of potential things. I use them after I've gotten the authority recommendation from the answer engine to go and check out the site that's the direct source that I'm going to. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, you use it for its original intended thing. I need to find something. And, you know, that's kind of what Google, but you know what you're looking for. And so I think that's interesting.

4:34It's almost always now, if you think about the levels of awareness, right, you've got unaware, you got problem aware, solution aware, category aware. And then the last one is, you know, when we're product aware and most aware. And so it's now kind of, you know, search engines are less now about the top level, top of funnel discovery and they're becoming more about, I need to find the brand that I'm looking for. I don't know exactly what their website is or I don't want to go in. That's it. That's it. It's, it's, it's basically effectively direct type in traffic, except you don't know what to type in.

5:08Yeah. Which is funny because if you're, if you're even close, I mean, one of the, I've always told people if you're, you're, you're very first, if you've a fixed budget for what you're going to spend on on marketing and advertising and basically everybody does to a certain extent the first bit that you spend should be branded search like go ahead and bid on your own search on your own brand names and on the basic kind of stuff that you know people looking for when they're looking for you just to make sure they find you it's frustrating to feel like we have to pay for our own name in google but if not you your competitor probably is and it's just not going to be that much money and so it's kind of now at that at that base level is is yeah where I see search is.

5:46And I love, I agree with you when you said, I don't, and in all seriousness, I think it's important that we do disclaim this. Neither of us are pretending to be absolute experts in this area. But the other thing that we can say is we don't have a dog in this hunt. Neither of us are selling SEO services or AES or, you know, any of this stuff yet. And so we're just sharing what we believe to be true and what we figured out. And one of the things that I I believe to be true is, yeah, the way that you optimize for the search engines is not going to be the same way, ultimately, that you optimize for the answer engines.

6:19Yeah, and I think it changes your paid strategy for paid search. So it's a lot of people miss the opportunity to bid on their own name. And and that's interesting. And you can't bid generally. You know, my understanding is that you can't effectively bid on trademark names. but if you are trying to compete with a company, knowing, like if you have a competitor that's getting the recommendation on the answer engine, think about this, this is kind of a cool strategy, I think. If you have a competitor that's getting the recommendation on the answer engine and somebody then wants to go and research that competitor to find their site, which I think is gonna happen a lot, then they go to the search engine and search for that.

7:00If you can buy the top one or two rankings for paid search for the company, like the things they're gonna search for to find that company's site, that's pretty cool because that traffic should cost way less than the terms they're searching for. So if you were searching for a business operating system and let's say that Scalable came up on Claude is what you were looking at. You're just like, you know, who has a good business operating system? And we came back as the recommended number one choice, right? So it's like, hey, Scalable has an operating system and it says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

7:38And it doesn't link you to that or anything. And you're like, oh, that's interesting. I'd like to go check out this Scalable company. And so then you put in Scalable.co. Well, if I can bid on Scalable.co or the Scalable company, then that's going to cost me a whole lot less than bidding for business operating system or other high cost money words. And what would a better example be, Ryan? What's a search term that costs a bunch of money? financial advisor, right? Let's say it's financial advisor. If you were competing against Ryan Dice's, Ryan Dice financial advisory and Ryan Dice financial advisory, when you searched chat GPT came up as the recommended, you know, you should definitely check out when I'm like, who's a good financial advisor.

8:24And it says Ryan Dice financial advisory is a good one. Then I'm going to go to the search engine and buy Ryan Dice financial advisory, Ryan Dice financial advisor and it's going to cost way less than I would have to pay for a click on financial advisor. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you're saying basically look at what, at what the answer engines, what, what, you know, and by the answer engine, all we're basically referring to is the main, you know, Chad Gbt, Claude, Gemini, look at what they're already talking about and, um, and make sure that if they're not talking about you, knowing that the people who are looking for this, you know, they're probably going to do what you're talking about, which is, okay, I'm going to go back to Google and I'm going to do more research, make sure that you at least show up when they search for it on the Google machine because you can still go and bid there, you know, on your competitor's terms.

9:12And you can bid on competitor's terms. There's sometimes limitations on putting trademark names in the ads themselves. You can bid on their terms all day long. But think about this, though, that what's cool about it is because you will get answer engine traffic going to that site and to be a competitor, to buy an ad for the keyword that's gonna pull that site that somebody's searching for, that keyword's gonna cost so much less. Like maybe it's$70 for a click for Financial Advisor, but it's$3 or 50 cents for a click to Ryan Dice Financial Advisory, and you effectively pick up the people that are, the traffic that's coming from the answer engines at 70, 80, 90 % off.

9:58I think that's kind of a fun strategy. Yeah, it could be definitely worth the test. So pulling, going all the way back, you know, you weren't on that client call when this conversation came up, but how should business owners be thinking about, you know, AEO and, you know, GEO, Generative and all this? How should, like, what should the approach be right now, you know, if you're a business owner? Because there's going to be, there's a lot of hype right now. There's only going to be more. Based on what you've seen out there that's working and not working that we've tested, kind of any do's and don'ts?

10:30Well, let's talk about what the differences are first, because they're not the same. The old game was search engine optimization. The game was rankings. What you're trying to do is get ranked in the search engine in those top spots. You are optimizing for position. So, you know, first result, ideally your site. The second site would be a competitor. Third site would be another competitor. But the game has changed in the AEO era where we're not trying to get rankings. We're trying to get recommendations. So it's kind of like the buy box, the one box that kind of evolved with Google was like a boxed, this is kind of the place that you're going to go and everything else fell away.

11:15That's kind of where we are now, I feel like. And so the game that is that we're optimizing for recommendations, not rankings, and we're optimizing for selection by the site, not position and the placement instead of number one, it's going to be in a list. It's going to be the recommendation chosen as the best answer. And then the second best answer is going to be considered. And the third one might be mentioned. But like that's a big difference because search is going to reward relevance and recommendation is going to reward something new, which is to me the big breakthrough is evidence. It's going to reward whoever can create the most evidence to show that they are the best answer.

12:04That's really what we're trying to get. Give an example of what you mean by that evidence. evidence. So, yeah. So the difference would be we're looking for proof. So before it was like proof came from page authority, you know, like how many links do you have and things like that. But what's much, much more important these days is going to be the actual evidence that shows that you are the right answer. And so what that means is we're going to be looking at, reviews are gonna be kind of third tier. The first most important things are going to be data, results, testimonials, proof, third-party recommendations, that kind of stuff.

12:54The things that show that you've got the authority, the distribution, the uniqueness, you know, the trust you've been cited, referenced and recommended by other people. You've got original proprietary content. Those are all to me, the things that are creating the evidence that's going to show that you are the best answer. So how practically does a business think about, you know, optimizing for that right now? I mean, Because in the past, it used to be, okay, the old SEO playbook, and obviously this is an oversimplification, but it was basically, all right, figure out the keywords that you want to rank for.

13:32And then you're going to create some content and write some articles that are optimized around those keywords. And then we're going to try to get some links going into those keywords. And then, you know, let the cake bake for a little bit. And eventually, if you can get more links and have higher quality content as determined by whatever the algorithm decides it is this month, then you're going to rank if somebody searches for one of those keywords or its related cousin. Like that was the basic strategy. What is it now then for AEO? I mean, does it still start as original content on a website?

14:05I think it's helpful, but it really is. To me, it's like our hypothesis is that having a better graph is going to get you better recommendations. And it's kind of like a neural network that your business, like it used to be a blog network, right? So that like when I started in SEO, I built private blog network and I had multiple servers that were on different, you know, different networks linking back to my site for the keywords that I wanted to be ranked for. And, you know, that that was fairly effective in search engine optimization. And so the the private blog network of today is that you really build your own and it can be on your site.

14:52It's not like it doesn't have to be the private blog network where you had the different server game and all that kind of stuff. It's really creating the ability for the AI to find out that you are, in fact, the person that has the greatest evidence or you are the answer that has the greatest evidence that supports it being the best answer. And so on your site, you need to be it. And it doesn't really, you know, a lot of people are saying, well, it's all about schema and things like that. But it doesn't have to be that because the AI is looking in a very similar way to how we look. I mean, having good schema helps, you know.

15:29What is schema for those who don't know? Basically just the way to present it in a way that the machine can understand it. So when a machine crawls your site, right? Yeah. So I mean, an extreme example would be if everything on your website was just one giant image, that would be bad schema. Yes. Because it's hard for, you know, bots and things like that to just read every little bit of an entire gigantic image. So making sure, and yeah, we're not going to get into schema on this episode. I will want to turn us off. Yeah. And so I think it's basically building the brain, right? So building a brain that can be accessed by AI.

16:05If you build the brain, you improve your odds. So the more connected, consistent and trusted that your graph becomes and your graph is this neural network that you can build on your site, right? So the nodes are your assets and the signals, like what you create and what exists. The connections are the relationships, how each thing connects, like Ryan Dice built the Scalable Operating System, which is installed and available by Scalable.co, which has a mastermind called Founders Board. Those connections are really critical. And the more of those connections and the higher the quality they are, the more likely you are to be considered the right answer because those connections are the relationships of how it all connects and why it matters.

16:53And then strength would be the authority and trust. The stronger the connection, the higher odds. So to me, it's the nodes, which are the assets and the signals themselves. It's the connections, the relationships between them, how clear that is, how many there are linking to that, and then the strength, the authority, and the trust. And the stronger brain that you create, the more associations, the more relevance, the more recommendations. So you're kind of expanding your opportunities and winning more recommendations by getting more of those connections for AI to be able to see that you are in fact qualified and the obvious best answer.

17:32And so practically, how does that happen though? So, I mean, does it still come down to, I've got I've got a webpage that has some stuff on it. And then there's other things that are talking about that too. I mean, just what, give me like kind of a, I'm doing this for the first time. Do I start with the keywords that I want to rank for? Like what's kind of the starting point? Yeah. I think you start with, with say 30 questions that you want to be the obvious answer for, and then you reverse engineer from there. And so, you know, if you've got 30 questions up there, cause that, just that right there was a big shift.

18:01You're not thinking about the keywords, right. Um, that people would quote unquote search for, you're thinking about the questions that actual human beings out there are asking AI, because this is how we use AI. It's even how more and more people are using search engines now, now that especially with like with Gemini being baked into Google, we're just going in there and asking full sentence questions to AI. You don't type in, you know, dog groomer Sheboygan. You know, we're typing full-blown questions into it. So you said come up with a list of the 30 questions that I want to make sure I am the obvious answer to or I have the obvious answer to.

18:41Yes. Then what do I do? Yeah. So then I think that we get to there's seven things that I think are important. One is evidence I mentioned. So that's, well, prove it. So if you ask a question and now I want to be the best answer for who is the best blinds installer in San Diego, California, you know, who's the best electric shade installer in California, then I need evidence to prove with data and results that I am that. So on my site, and let's say that we're using our site, you know, a single site to kind of put together this neural connectivity that the answer engines are going to look at and decide is the best answer.

19:30Well, then I need, that's going to be a lot of things, right? So is there data that says that I am? Like, is there, you know, a best installer in San Diego ranking, you know, from some third party? credibility and reputation. That's going to be good. You know, are my reviews available? Am I pointing to my reviews on the site for that particular thing? You know, do I have proprietary content that I have created? Have I created tools that help people figure that out, like configurers or things like that? You know, and do I have any other intellectual property? And is that, I think that's probably the connection on the search engine that, you know, is that, is this stuff also visible on the search engines is going to be evidence from a third party, the search engine, that the things that I'm putting on my website are true.

20:24Because I don't think you can just put a bunch of lies on your website and the answer engines are going to gobble it up. I think there's going to be, you know, credibility there. And I haven't seen any, like, answer engine say, this is exactly how we do it. So everything is anecdotal for us, right? Then it's going to be distribution? Like, you know, how do you get in front of the right audiences with that? If you can get in front of larger audiences, I think that's going to be helpful. How fresh is the data? What was the recency with which it was, you know, uploaded or updated? How unique is it?

20:55Is there a unique point of view? Is there something contrarian? Is it, you know, the same answer that everybody gives, like the terrible articles in Inc. Magazine and Forbes? Or is it, you know, something that actually has value? And then are you cited? Are you referenced? Are you recommended by other things that are getting, by other sources that are considered credible in getting recommendations on the answer engine. So to me, it's evidence, authority, the assets you've got, distribution, freshness, uniqueness, and trust. How important do you think it is that, I mean, it's one of those things where AI is pretty good at telling when content was created by AI, you know, by itself.

21:36How important do you think it is that if you're going to build credibility, if you're going to be showing up in the answer engines, that what you have to say is actually a unique take, contrarian, original, not necessarily AI generated. Because it seems like there's a lot of people out there just producing AI slop in the hopes of, you know, AI finding it. And I just don't know that that's necessarily what AI is looking for because wait for it, it already has it. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that Brian D is it Brian Dean that has the skyscraper strategy for SEO. I think it's, I think that's a very good model for what we're talking about here is like his, his skyscraper strategy is basically find somebody that's already the, the top source that the search engines like, and then just make a five times more in depth article, um, with five times more value than they've gotten.

22:31and ultimately you're likely to overtake them. I think that it's similar here in that, that basically whoever's getting the answer recommendation right now, why are they getting that? What is the evidence that they've got? What's the authority they've got? What kind of distribution do they have? What are the unique assets they've got? How fresh is their content? How unique is it? And then we need to trump in as many of those categories as we can. And what you just said there, I think is the ultimate key. and it's how all this stuff is going to get figured out and it's how it's going to get re-figured out when it ultimately changes 15 billion times.

23:06It's just looking at, you know, play customer, come up with those 30 questions, go into ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and ask questions and see the kinds of things that get recommended and ask it. What are the sources for this if it's not clear? And then do the kind of reverse engineering of saying, okay, what do they have that I don't have? What are they doing that I'm not doing? And play around with that. Because one of the best places to start is in any time, this has always been the thing with search engine optimization, is what's the person doing who's winning and can we do it a little bit better?

23:44It really is as simple as that. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that one thing that's another hypothesis that I have as to how you would kind of hack into this. And I think SEO as a supplemental amplifier of your odds of getting recommended is the way to look at SEO now in terms of kind of everything. So my hypothesis is that if you look at, if you search for something, you know, who's the best landscaping service in Austin, Texas, and you see that AI is giving Richards Landscaping the, you know, the primary recommendation, then I would look because it shows you the sources that are cited, right? So I would look at the sources that it shows that are supporting its recommendation.

24:45And then I would go to each of those and find out how can I penetrate and become the number one answer on those sources. So if it's looking at Austin Garden Times and Austin Magazine and an article that that group published on Garden Times and things like that, I would be looking to go in and replace those people as the number one source in each of the cited sources. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to the reverse engineering and just looking at what they're doing. And I think also at that point, then deciding, is this something you want to do? And, you know, if you've got more to say about the on the AEO front, tactic wise, we can we can defer this.

25:32But I guess a lot of this just kind of comes down to, is this something that the average business owner should be focused on right now? Or are there other things that are more worthy of their time and attention? That's that's the same decision you're always making, right? I mean, if your business is falling apart, if you are working so much that you have no time if you're unable to fulfill the customers that you've got, if you've got an F rating from the extortive BBB, you know, if you've got that kind of stuff as challenges, I would say that you probably have more important things to do than AEO.

26:05But I think AEO is going to be absolutely increasing in importance. And if you are or were dependent on SEO, everyone that I know that was dependent on SEO is half or worse in terms of traffic because that's gone away. And it's only going to get worse. So I think I definitely think I would take my SEO budget and move it over to AEO, if nothing else. If you don't have one and you haven't started at all, I'd probably start with AEO because it's much easier to build the assets and know that they're going to be helpful with AEO than it is with SEO. And I definitely think that it's, it should be a significant part of your budget.

26:48I'd love to get your take, because I know you talk about embedded influencer and, you know, in content marketing. If you were choosing between AEO and content marketing, like I'm going to write ads and, you know, I'm going to create reels for, for Instagram, and I'm going to do stories for, you know, Snap or whatever. Where would you say people should put their efforts? Yeah, I mean, it's hard. I'm biased because this isn't something that, you know, we're always thinking about this through like an, you know, I score impact confidence and ease. And like, so AEO could have this massive impact. But my confidence level of being able to pull it off is very, very low because we're not experts in it.