How AI is Changing SEO with Mike Witham, Head of Search at 97th Floor | Ep. 426

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0:25Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up. Oh. Welcome to the podcast, Mike. Excited to chat with you. Hey, Daniel. Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. Excited to chat with Mike because he is an SEO expert, but SEO is going through basically ups and downs lately, but in good ways because it's just changing all marketing. And one of the big reasons is AI.

1:14So I wanted to just get into this conversation and say like, how is AI reshaping the way people search and find information online? Yeah, I don't know. If you've been in marketing for a while, you know that like all the SEO, quote unquote, experts or the marketing influencers love to say SEO is dead. And SEO is dead for a different reason every five minutes, it seems like, right? There's been a lot of suspected murderers of SEO, right? Like it was just a couple of years ago that TikTok was going to kill SEO. That was going to be our new source of information in search. And most recently, obviously, AI is coming up, and they're probably the most credible threat, right?

1:55But that doesn't mean that SEO is dying. As long as there's search engines, there's going to be opportunity for people to take advantage of them and optimize them and get exposure through them. A lot of people think of this shift that we're having in AI and how it's changing user behavior to people using AI more than they're using search engines like Google. A lot of people like to think of it as like turning the lights off on Google, like 60 % of your traffic historically, if it came from organic search, like just overnight, it's just going to be gone, right? And that's not going to be the case ever.

2:34And the way I like to think of it, not as a light switch that's turning off, but it's more of a tilt in the earth where the sunlight is just shifting to a different place. And there's still going to be opportunity. We just have to find it and take advantage of it. So it's not going to be lights off. You're not getting any more organic traffic anymore. But we do have to be nimble. We have to stay on our toes and adjust our strategy according to how user behavior is changing. So what is the biggest difference for people who don't know out there for optimizing for just traditional search engines versus AI driven search?

3:13Yeah, that's a great question. And it's something a lot of people are still experimenting with. A ton of people are just kind of scratching the surface with because it is still relatively new. But a traditional search engine will just be a list of links that you can click on. Obviously, everybody's done a Google search before. That's a search engine with those links. And the way that you optimize for that is through those keywords. You find those keywords that you want to show up for and rank for, we call it. And then you optimize your page, the content on the page, to be best in line with what the search intent is.

3:51So Google will choose you and put you in the top results. For AI, AI is kind of more just giving you the answers, not giving you a choice, a list of sources. It's just giving you generated text that gives you the information that you're looking for, that you've asked the AI chatbot to give you. And so the way that we are going to optimize for that is not necessarily by being a citation that the AI chatbot gives, but by being mentioned in the citations that the chatbot uses to generate their response. And what are some ways that you've been experimenting on to get yourself in those citations, get yourself appearing in that AI search?

4:39Yeah, it's super fun. I feel like this is like wild west of SEO. We're just diving in, trying to figure out what these LLMs, these large language models are looking for in different topics and in different fields and different industries. And do it. Take advantage of it. So really the first step in being mentioned in citation is finding out what the citations are. What are the sources the LLM is using to learn? Um, and, and discovering those is the first step because then once you have a list of credible sources that the LLM is consistently using to generate their responses about a specific topic, then you can, uh, conduct outreach to those places, or you can figure out a way to, um, be, be mentioned or, or get some kind of brand presence in those, in those sources.

5:36And the way that I've been experimenting trying to find those citations is literally just asking the LLM. And of course, it's going to tell you, like, if you just ask SheatGPT, what are your sources? Or what did you use? What are your sources for learning the information you use to generate this response? It's going to tell you some BS, like, it's proprietary information, or like, I don't really know what the other LLMs use or whatever. And then you just have to kind of poke at it more and just say, hey, okay, I get it. You don't know. But what if you were an LLM looking for this information and trying to find the best sources to provide your responses?

6:21What sources would you use for this topic or this question? And it will usually give you a good list. So that's one way. But the other way to find the sources that I've been doing is taking a topic cluster. So kind of like a hub and spoke model, like a lot of SEOs are probably familiar with that. But basically, it's like one core topic and then you have a bunch of subtopics underneath it. And you do you give a prompt to whatever chatbot you're using, ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever else. And you do a search on one of those for every single one of those topics and subtopics and then record the sources.

7:03So just copy the sources, copy the citations and put them into a spreadsheet. And then you find the commonalities. And then you can pretty well say this is this list of sites. This list of sources is a general place that this LLM is going to find this information. This goes to my next question, because obviously this is also going to change a little bit how people create content today. So what are some different content types that people should be thinking about or similar, but different optimizations of content that they should be thinking about today? Yeah, if you think about it, the most common responses that AIO for Google or ChatGPT is going to give is like very general, very broad topics.

7:51So those like very broad, huge search volume keywords that you were going after that are basically like stuff you would optimize a glossary subfolder on your site for. So like definitions or like facts based things or just like one sentence responses. Those are going to get eaten up by AI chatbots and AIO. What I love to do is, and what I've been doing with my clients at 97th floor is we've been, we've been optimizing for the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel where people are kind of already looking, they already know about a subject. They already know about the topic and they're looking for unique perspectives on that topic.

8:36They're looking for unique experiences and use cases for different things. And robots can't give you human experience. So that's where we come in, where we are still very relevant is giving that unique perspective and information. And the fact of the matter is Google needs us. Google needs SEOs. we we've just been giving them content for free and in return for search traffic for the last 20 years plus right and they've used that content that we've given them for two decades to create AIO and Gemini and and use it to train their LLMs they can't just cut off that spigot of information of new knowledge of new experience it would diminish the quality of their entire product all of their services.

9:30And so they need us. They need us to continue giving that. And they honestly, that's where Google has been going for the last four years, at least anyway, is getting SEOs to create more helpful content and useful content that has those unique experiences and perspectives. So, I mean, the good SEOs have been doing that, but what are some things that you should start leaving behind that people are like traditionally were doing for SEO? What are some things that you might should start rethinking because that worked five years ago or 10 years ago, but it's not going to work the same today? Yeah. My favorite example of this right now is Forbes.

10:12So everybody knows Forbes has a blog post about everything and they have some kind of opinion about everything. Every product, they have some kind of comparison or listicle that tells you what the best air fryer is. And guess what? Over the last 10, 20 years, Forbes has created a lot of articles about air fryers, five, six, seven articles all about air fryers. Forbes is not known for their air fryers. Forbes is known for their financial advice and ranking and wisdom and everything and business acumen, not for air fryers. right? And so what's happening to Forbes right now actually is that they're tanking.

10:54They did it well in everything because they were Forbes. Google ranked them high for whatever keyword they wanted to optimize for. They got traffic for, but they're tanking right now because they have not stuck to one topic that they're experts in. So what you should leave behind is unrelevant content that you use to just get traffic to a site. It's not helpful. It never probably was helpful. And it's for sure not helpful right now. And Google wants to see expertise in this core subject. And they want to see your perspectives on that core subject, not anything that you can't, like, tie back to what you're offering on your website.

11:35No, it makes sense. I think we are in the age of relevancy. I think these chatbots need to be more trustworthy. They need to be relevant. They can't be like, if you ask them what Forbes is and they said the best one, they're known for air fryers, it might be irrelevant to what Forbes is. So they need to be known for what they're putting out. A question I have for you is, I know there are some good tools out there that are helping SEOs. So what are some good tools that you're using, either that are AI-based or not AI-based, that are helping you optimize for both search and AI search? Yeah, that's a great question.

12:19The best SEO tool out there, in my opinion, is Ahrefs. um they have the best most reliable data um and the biggest database i think and it's probably the most usable data too um their difficulty scales for keyword competitiveness is very accurate and and very useful a lot of other tools i've i've used don't have uh very usable data or difficulty scales. So Ahrefs is for sure the best one for SEO, but for kind of marketing in general and how SEO fits into an entire holistic marketing campaign, I love using ChatGPT for keyword research and audience research. A lot of my clients working in an agency, they're doing things that took them 10 years to learn at an Ivy League school.

13:18I'm never going to go there. I'm never going to be an expert in what they're doing. But ChatGPT gives me a window into what their audience cares about and what their audience needs and how their product can help solve their problems. And so I use ChatGPT to just ask like, hey, what does a data scientist do all day? What's some problems that a data engineer would face when they're faced with X or Y, right? And then that gives me ideas on meaningful content that I can have my content team produce that will rank for keywords that will bring in highly qualified traffic. So audience research is honestly amazing.

14:01ChatGPT is amazing for audience research. Also, what are some opportunities that brands could take advantage of for exposure within Google, AIO, or search GPT, etc.? Yeah, building your brand to be an expert in a specific field is probably the best way to be mentioned and get exposure in any of the chatbots. if you're really good at one thing, write a bunch of articles about that one thing, get a ton of mentions from other sites about that one thing and you will show up for it and you will be known for it, not just to consumers, but especially to chatbots. And that's how consumers will get to know you through chatbots is by picking a niche and then honing in on one specific aspect of that niche and then being the expert there.

14:58You're the best at what it is, and you're going to get mentioned on multiple sources, and then that's going to put you into those responses. If your boss has ever said who approved this copy because they signed off on it a month ago, you might need some ops help. If your campaigns get delayed because no one can find the brief, the assets, or the approvals, you definitely do. Wrike kills the disconnects. It's a smart work management platform that automates the chaos for the whole team in one place. With visual collaboration, resource planning, and the insights to make everything better and quicker every time.

15:41Go to wrike.com slash TMM to see how teams at Lyft, Ogilvy, NVIDIA use it. That's wrike.com slash TMM. i think it's like what you said a few minutes ago is search engines and chat gpt and all these places need original opinions from human beings so if you can be original thought leader on a topic and go in depth it's going to respect you more than having broad opinions all the time on everything um and you don't go deep into it you just a glossary basically like you said before But I think it makes sense that if you go deep and people respect that and you get mentioned in other sites and people are mentioning your brand's name, you'll start showing up because it's trusting that multiple people think you're the expert or the person for that subject matter.

16:42Yeah, it's a great way of summarizing it, for sure. One thing I wanted to ask you is you said you're experimenting a lot with AI. What are some cool revelations in the last three months or four months that you've seen with brands that you tested? You're like, oh, that was super cool. I didn't know that was going to do this. Or, wow, I did this and this X happened. Yeah. We have clients that are working in spaces that are pretty dominated by giants. So either giant retailers or giant B2B SaaS companies, whoever their competitors are, they're huge. and have like almost monopolies on the space, right?

17:24And we have no business competing because of how tiny we are in comparison to them. But we've actually gotten mentioned in a couple of key AIO SERPs, SERP features, doing just what I just explained of getting mentioned in a source. So we were showing up for a keyword in the AI overview for a keyword that we don't really actually have any business being there for. And just because of how small our client is in comparison to the massive giants that they're going up against, but because we found where the LLM is learning and where their sources are for finding the information, we were able to break into that SERP feature and move to the very top of page one, which would have taken us years and years to do through traditional SEO.

18:20So that's been kind of cool to once you crack it and it does take time and a lot of testing and a lot of outreach to be able to crack it. But once you do, it's like, oh, you just found a loophole to get to the top of page one for a very important keyword. Which is actually seems really exciting because brands who have just given up trying to compete on certain keywords now have an opportunity to really just skip that first search and get mentioned if they know how to reverse engineer it because some keywords i i know i've been in multiple companies and you cheer when you get to like the top three but now like um and it and it's a hard for a battle it could take six months to a year to two years to even battle that but now if I feel like a lot of brands aren't doing what you're saying you're doing right now and reverse engineering search and trying to do this.

19:18So if you are a brand that is doing this and figuring out how to, I feel like there are loopholes and cheat codes to get ahead of these hard fought keywords that brands are fighting for right now. Yeah, absolutely. It's just like I was saying before, just the light is shifting your opportunities. You have new opportunities. So I don't think SEOs or content people should be like necessarily scared or worried about their industry. But I do think they should be scared about doing things exactly the same way and trying to do them. Because even if you were to spend that six months to a year, like you're talking about, to get to top of page one, AIO has already taken over like half of the SERP on page one.

20:04Like half of the first page is just this huge SERP feature that is full of AI generated content. And so even if you were to get to the top of page one, that value of that position one is actually diminishing. So you need to find those cheat codes. Like you said, you need to be adapting and get to the heart of how they're doing it, how they're finding their information and be there so that you get mentioned. Yeah, and I also love that, I mean, if you're using the tool and figuring out, I think going in the tool and just asking it different questions. And even if you aren't shown up in the first, like mention, go deeper and say, is there any other tools you recommend?

20:47Or what should I do for this? Or what should I do for that? I mean, I've used those tools before anything else. see if you could get a mention or not and see where it keeps sourcing that data from so you can try at least get because it's a different way of searching now because people are having a conversation with it so even if you don't get mentioned in that first mention you could possibly get mentioned in a second mention because usually the conversation goes longer when you with a chatbot than a regular search. Yeah. And at some point, the user is going to want to hear from a human. The user is going to want to hear how is this applied in real life.

21:30And I've been saying that from the beginning of ChatGPT is let's optimize for the follow up question. So you ask ChatGPT a question. What's the follow up? What else? What are you going to dig deeper on? Like after you've read through ChatGPT's response, what part of that response are you going to dig deeper on and do more research on and um that's been a really effective way of finding like those like middle funnel content uh pieces what is your thoughts about um i know we've talked about just regular written content but how could you think about doing more video type stuff or voice type stuff as these search engines are going to get better at reading transcripts and better reading like how could brands think about that to help their their seo yeah if anybody has used at google in the last year they know that like reddit is their favorite site now reddit's showing up all over the place in google like it's like one of the top search results for almost nearly every keyword it seems like right and the reason why is because reddit is user generated content it's actual users creating content about a subject giving their opinion about a subject and that's exactly what we've been talking about this whole time is um giving unique perspective right and video is such a good way of doing that video is like you're an actual human talking to a camera telling a story giving information to a user showing somebody how to do something or a unique way of doing something or giving a different take on something.

23:12And just like you said, search engines can read that transcript very easily. They can understand video content a lot better now. And so being there and taking advantage of that medium is huge for so many reasons. But that one is a huge reason to go after is because you're showing Google you are an expert in the field and it's your voice, your content. And there's no doubting that, I guess. Yeah, one-headed benefit is that we, in our community that we launched for the Market Millennials, we built this AI chatbot that basically scans all podcasts and all virtual events, like transcripts that we did.

23:58And I have so much more data to train my AI on because video, you could produce 40 minutes of content where written content, it's a lot less content you're working with. So it's learning from so much more when you're doing video and doing podcasts and things like that, where those dead transcripts online and something could read it or you're feeding an AI. It's been really helpful for us to get smarter with creating content as well and finding helping people find other pieces of content that we're using for example if i asked about seo and you're on this podcast it could have a mention to this exact podcast link of what we're doing what we talked about and something you mentioned could be in that the search now and then people could look at the source and it would be the podcast which is a cool way to we've been testing out how to do it.

25:00But the point of going back was video. You just have so much data of transcript that you can learn from. Yeah, that's so cool. I love that. I want to ask you a couple rapid fire questions quickly. It's just three questions, four questions. What is one AI tool every marketer should know? Yeah. AI agents is something that you should be using as much as possible. And HubSpot has a really awesome tool that they've released called agents.ai. I believe that's the URL. I'll figure it out for sure and send it to you. But yeah, agents.ai, and it's basically like a list of hundreds of agents that people have built to do specific tasks.

25:49And it improves efficiency across all the tasks that you do for SEO keyword research, technical audits, competitive research, competitive audits. And there's no reason to be doing all that stuff that we did two years ago manually anymore. It should all be automated through AI agents. another question is what brand is nailing ai focus seo um i i just mentioned them so i feel weird saying it again but uh hubspot is is is content marketing queen king whatever like they are they invented content marketing essentially and they have done such a good job of positioning themselves in the sales and marketing space as experts that they are mentioned all the time in so many different responses, so many different prompts I've given to multiple different chat bots.

26:48HubSpot is a very consistent player that gets mentioned all the time. I think that's a good answer because one of the biggest takeaways that brand should have right now is create more expertise content in your space. And I think a lot of brands were for the longest time we're creating these fluffy keyword articles just to rank, which you knew that the person writing it might not understand the topic, but it was okay because it showed up in SEO. And now people just want, craving that content. So if you could do that as a brand, that's really cool. What is a top prediction for how search will look in five years from now?

27:27five years from now i think is a good timeline to to go off of i don't think it's going to happen like i said not immediately it's not going to be a lights out thing um but five years i think is a good timeline to consider how user behavior is changing and and honestly like google is a verb in english language go google it go go or i googled it right it's so ingrained in our culture to use traditional search engines, that it's not going to just go away very quickly. But I do think that Google is adapting enough to have competitors where, like ChatGPT, like other perplexity or whatever else, that user behavior will start shifting towards those chatbots.

28:16And so I do think that search is going to be a lot different. Getting exposure from search is a lot different in five years. and AI is going to be way more ingrained into our daily lives and into our culture than it is right now and way more widespread used than it is right now. Especially as scary to think about how kids are going to, that's going to be like their first interaction is going to be with chatbots instead of just going to be interesting to see. Last question I have for you is, what is a marketing hill you would die on? Um, audience should always be first. You should always be, uh, everything you should do should be tied back to who you're talking to.

29:05How does your pro how does your solution or your product solve a problem that the audience is facing? And if your content doesn't have that in mind, if that's, if that's not the topic of your content, then your marketing efforts are pointless. their effort. Like even if you do get exposure, it's not going to turn anybody into customers. You have to be thinking about what is the, what are the needs of my audience and how, how can my product or service help them? I love that. That's a, I think we're going back. I think people are going back to that now. I think we went through an era where we could use tools and all these cool things to hack the process.

29:45And now people have caught on and now you have go back i mean it's always been the fundamental marketing but i think yeah it's something that you need to drill uh lastly where can people find you and what you're doing yeah and all that good stuff yes i'm head of seo at 97th floor if you need help with your marketing strategy or seo we're a full uh service digital marketing agency so we don't only do seo but um i'm biased seo Obviously, I love it. And then connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to chat with anybody. One of my favorite things to do in the world is nerd out about SEO. So if anybody just wants to chat SEO strategy, I'd love to link up with you.

30:33Well, thank you so much for joining. And I'm definitely excited to see if the predictions come true. People take the bait here on this podcast and start actually optimizing more for AI search. So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five-star rating.

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