RSS 77: From SEO to GEO: How to Win Visibility in the New Age of AI Search

0:00Every single industry is different. They have their own quirks. They have their own strengths. They have their own unique things that make their buyers different. They make their customers different. Accounting is not the same as marketing. Marketing is not the same as HR. Recruitment is not the same as management consulting and so on and so on. But one thing that they all have in common is this. AI is fundamentally transforming the way in which they operate internally, but also how they show up for customers externally. The way in which people navigate this world has changed. We all know that.

0:36We have the ability to just look at our own devices and our own habits and our own listening behaviors to recognize that, yeah, things are different. AI has fundamentally changed the way in which we work. We operate, and for the most part, we even live. Today's episode, I'm going to be plugging you into a conversation that I had on an accounting-related podcast. This podcast isn't made for marketers. This podcast isn't made for CMOs. It's specifically created to help accountants, financial professionals, understand the things that are influencing them. And you might be wondering, hmm, this might not be relevant to me.

1:19I would argue it might actually be super relevant to you. In this conversation, we dove into the rise of AEO and GEO. We dove into the fundamentals that are really actionable ideas for how accountants, but also maybe even you, if you run a professional service firm, can tap into the power of content, distribution, and optimization to increase your visibility on the internet. Folks, if you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show.

2:05Welcome to the Accountant's Flight Plan podcast. I've got a fellow EO-er on today, Ross Simmons. He is the founder and CEO of Foundation, which is a B2B content marketing agency. He's also the founder of Distribution.ai, which is a platform to help brands and creators scale content distribution. Ross is the Amazon bestselling author of Create Once, Distribute Forever, and has been ranked among the top content marketers in the world by Buzz Sumo. Did I say that right? That's right. He's worked with brands ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 companies. and he's built his career around a simple idea hitting publish is the starting line, not the finish line.

2:53So we're going to talk today about AI and search and content. So why does a CPA firm owner need to care about content and distribution? We're going to get into that. As you know, the professions always run on referrals and reputation, and that reputation is increasingly being built or missed online. So, yes, I'm really interested in so many topics because it affects our business too. So I'm going to kind of come at this from a little bit of a personal inquisitiveness as well. But yeah, Ross is going to walk us through kind of what it takes for a firm to build that kind of some good visibility, and how generative engine optimization is changing the game as search shifts from Google to AI.

3:45Ross, welcome to the show. Brent, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me, a fellow EOer. I'm excited. This is going to be a fun chat. Yeah. And for those of you listening that don't know what EO is, it stands for Entrepreneurs Organization. It's a worldwide volunteer-run organization of entrepreneurs. And Ross is in the Nova Scotia area in Canada. I'm a member of EO here in Charleston, South Carolina. So I do find that when EOers connect all over the world, there's this sort of like - It's definitely a bond. Natural connection. Yeah. So true. So true. But yeah, I'm thrilled to be here.

4:24Excited to dive in. You were speaking my love language when you talk about GEO and distribution and search. So we're going to have some fun today. It's going to be a good time. Love it. Love it. Well, I'm going to switch up the order of my questions because I feel like one of the things that I've been, we've noticed because, you know, we're a marketing company, not like most CPA firms. I mean, we're selling CPA firms and a lot of what we do is marketing. and we monitor like our Google reports every month and our traffic and our search, um, volume search traffic. And it has really shifted a lot in terms of, I think people are just going right to chat GPT or right to, um, Claude and just doing their search there.

5:12Right. Um, kind of give us some context around how search is changing. Yeah. Yeah. Everywhere. So there's definitely been a big shift. When you look back about two and a half years ago, Google put out a pretty strong alarm internally saying red alert. And that red alert was that there needed to be a fundamental shift in their business because of the launch of this thing that we're all now familiar with called ChatGPT. ChatGPT introduced this new way of searching, where instead of just typing in words and then being met with 10 blue links, and then you have to go and learn and absorb content and consume it and read it with your own eyes, they were giving you the answer directly in this platform.

5:55And while today, when people hear that, they're like, oh yeah, that's obvious. At the moment, it was groundbreaking. It was mind-blowing that we didn't need to click on a link to understand what we need to do to get ready for tax season. That we didn't need to read a blog post that an accountant wrote about what things you need to know for your year-end filings, that we could just ask ChatGPT that question and get the answer. And an experience like that was wild because it was kind of like you were talking to a friend. Now, you fast forward a little bit and the adoption rates of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, you name it, all of these platforms has been some of the fastest technological adoption since the mobile phone, since social media.

6:40So there's no question that the shift is real. However, two things can be true at the same time. And one reality is that consumer behavior is actually slower than a lot of the hype that the market is articulating. So the actual average number of Americans who use a paid subscription for AI is still less than 5%. So most people aren't actually paying for LLMs. However, inside of organizations, the adoption rate has been massive. The vast majority of businesses today are in some way, shape or form paying for Gemini, Co-Pilot, paying for an AI system that's built into their platforms, ChatGPT, et cetera, looking for efficiencies because unlike the consumer, who's just trying to live and have a good life, businesses are trying to be more profitable, generate revenue, and drive more results.

7:37So in an accountant's world, when you're thinking about your customers, don't think of them as you think of yourself as a consumer thinking about, oh, I don't use AI to figure out what I should buy my kids for Christmas or holidays. No, that's not the mindset. You have to think about how they would use AI to make a decision around a service that they need for themselves. And a lot of the search traffic that used to go to Google has shifted into Claude, has shifted into perplexity into all of these platforms. In business in particular, Anthropics platforms are actually over-indexing than ChatGPT.

8:15So that's an interesting nugget. But the other thing is they're uploading lots of information. They might ask you for a proposal and they'll take your proposal and they'll upload it to LLMs. They might take your actual website, your LinkedIn account, your resume. They'll take all of the info they can, upload it to an LLM and say, tell me if I should actually use this account. They might go to a group chat with other founders and say, hey folks, who are you using? So that referral mechanism still exists, but then they're taking a bunch of screenshots of all the names, uploading that to Claude and saying, Claude, go look up these people and tell me who you think is right for me.

8:53So for your listeners, there's a simple reality that is important. And that is that the way that people buy has shifted. The way that we do marketing, the way that we do business needs to shift with it as well. But a lot of folks are still doing the same things, not realizing that the game and the way in which you show up and influence the LLMs is actually quite different than it used to be. Yeah, it is fascinating. And I mean, I've seen it from our perspective, because we watch it more closely than others. We're seeing this shift. We're also seeing like we get more leads from chat GPT and search and more people are because we ask our clients, like, how did you hear about us?

9:35And we talk to them. And when we first get on with the prospect, we generally try to ask them, how did you find out about us? And we're hearing, we're hearing, you know, chat GPT. What I hadn't thought of that you were just explaining is how people are using it not only to find options, but to evaluate options. And that is something that makes sense, but I hadn't really put that together yet. Yeah, the entire buyer's journey has changed because of this. Even at the forefront, let's pretend, take a second, let's use Charleston as an example. if I'm a small business owner, my first initial prompt at the discovery stage might be going to an LLM and asking, who is the best accountant for a small business?

10:21And then I'm going to see five different responses and it's going to be five different accounting firms. But the LLM is probably going to actually ask me another question. It's probably going to say, what size is your company? Right? So then I'm going to tell them my size and then it might tailor that around information it gathers online. Now, this is where you have an opportunity as an accounting firm. you have an opportunity to have landing pages that describe who you serve. Some businesses will have one individual page that just says, we are a Charleston accounting service company. But the best ones recognize that they should also have a page called who we serve with sub pages that say, we serve professional services.

11:00We serve HVAC. We serve small businesses. We serve lawyers. We serve agencies, tech companies, software companies, mining companies, all of the different categories that are relevant to your clientele. You want pages on your site that speak directly to them because the LLM is crawling your site looking to see if contextually you serve that individual user. So if you ask for an accountant and I ask for an accountant, we're both going to get very different results because your LLM has context around you and my LLM has context around me. So it's going to actually modify it to say for Ross, oh, he's a marketing firm.

11:42So let's find some accounting firms that specialize in marketing services. For you, it might be completely different. Right? So that's at the discovery phase. Then as you start to move into consideration, you have to start talking deeply. And I know no one likes to brag, especially in accounting, But you kind of have to speak to your awards. You have to speak to your successes, any type of case studies. If you have major logos, some major accounts that you've worked with, history in the community, if you've provided sponsorships or scholarships, you need to speak to all of those things. because once you get to the comparison page, when people are trying to compare you versus someone else, the LLM is looking for those signals.

12:24So if you don't have those signals out there, you're less likely to show up. If there's a review site that is relevant to you, Google reviews, Yelp reviews, all of these things, depending on your category, your space, your niche, your market, all of that matters, you want to understand if that's there. So long story, a little bit longer, we have to be thinking consistently around not just our site in the way in which we're positioning ourselves across the person who's writing the prompt, but we also have to think about how we are influencing the LLMs with the activities we do as a business on things like LinkedIn.

13:00Do we have a YouTube video? Do we have a podcast? Do we have billboards? And people think, what does a billboard have to do with it? People will drive around, take a photo of a billboard, to upload it to an LLM and say, is this the accountant that I should use? Like, this is the world we live in now. So you have to be thinking around the entire journey. Yeah. Well, so many accountants, and I don't know if you know this about the accounting profession in particular, but one of the biggest sort of growth obstacles isn't actually finding clients, it's finding team members, it's finding really talented people to come and work.

13:36And so So that can be kind of the thing that is blocking growth. And, you know, but the website also speaks to candidates that are looking, they're doing the same thing. Where do I want to go work? And then evaluating those workplaces. Yeah. Have you run into that, like that different sort of problem, not just a client position problem, but like a staff? It's employer branding. So yeah, like employer branding has never been more important because at the end of the day, if you don't show up in the LLMs with a certain demographic of people, you're invisible. You're not an option. You want to be one of the options, but you're invisible if when they go to Gemini, they go to Claude, they go to Perplexity, they go to ChatGPT and they ask a question.

14:25They go to Reddit answers. They go to TikTok answers. Like they go to some niche sites and they'll ask these questions. If you're not there as like, hey, should I actually apply to work at this place? If you're not one of the ones that is showing up, then you're invisible. So for brands, what I would recommend is that you actually start thinking about your values as an organization and whether or not your website speaks to them. What are the opportunities? What is your vision? What is your mission? Where are you going? What is your employer branding is very, very important. Can you create video content?

14:57Can you create stories and blog content about events that you're attending with your team? Take people behind the scenes to understand your culture. And when you do that, you think at the forefront that you're doing it for the person, which is great. But you're also kind of doing it for the robots because the robots are crawling all of this content and they're going to learn and understand the nuances about your businesses. and they'll say, well, this accounting firm actually created an entire scholarship program around CPAs in this category. So that's the one that we are going to recommend because their values align with yours.

15:34This group spends a lot of time working with this type of nonprofit. Cool. That's going to align with you. So you want to think about that as an employer and how you want to align. And then of course, the last piece, which not a lot of folks like to do, is you want to consider, can you get awards? There are local awards around businesses who are doing great things, whether it's growth, whether it's the fastest growing, whether it's the best culture. You don't always want to think about it as a founder and an entrepreneur, but you actually do need to play that game as well. Authority marketing game.

16:13Exactly. Yeah. What's funny is you were saying some of this and thinking like, we're finally in a world where it's like have your robot call my robot yeah it's true it's um all right man it's fascinating and and i will say as a marketer it's a little overwhelming the amount of things that we've had to change on our end you know just changing old blog posts revising um pages on our site like we're doing that. And it's, it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of time. Yeah, it does. The, I always say we live in the most overwhelming time, but also the greatest time. We live in an overwhelming time because the change is quickly.

17:01It's happening all the time. There's a new LLM launching every week, but the ability to do more cannot be denied. You can create things faster. You can distribute things faster. Hence the reason why I built distribution.ai. Like you can do so much now with a small team that allows you to compete. I think it's a great time to be an entrepreneur, to be a builder, to be a maker. And even as an accountant, like you can use these things for your own workflows to be more efficient in serving your clients as long as you're using the right tools, et cetera. But like you can do some very powerful things.

17:36Yeah. Well, so, all right. So there's this term we've, I think we've mentioned it a couple of times already, generative engine optimization. Is that just saying, is that just what we've been talking about? Is that kind of what we're describing here is the LLMs? Yeah. Yeah. So what we're describing there is a shift from SEO, search engine optimization to GEO. So search engine optimization was essentially, let's optimize for Google. We want to be one of the top 10 links. We want to rank number one and we want to generate traffic from Google. But with the launch of all of these LLMs, generative engine optimization is a shift where we're trying to optimize ourselves for Cloud, Perplexity, ChatGPT, all of these different platforms, including Google, because Google's forefront is AI mode and AI overviews, which is now in LLM as well.

18:25So it's a new holistic approach. And people tend to think, Ross, don't we just do the same things that we used to? Well, based off of the data, the things that influence AI overviews, that influence Gemini, that influence Cloud, etc., are actually not the same things that used to determine what showed up number one or two or three in Google. There's YouTube videos, there's Reddit threads, there's reviews from people on TikTok, on Instagram that are all different and every LLM is different too. So generative engine optimization is the practice of trying to distribute your story, take care of your website, and ensure that you are articulating to the robots the right message at the right time against the right prompts.

19:08Well, it's a comprehensive topic, right? It is. And it's changed really, really quickly. So is the old form of SEO, is that kind of like not applicable anymore? Is that kind of almost done? It's the foundation. So SEO still matters. You still need to have your hosts in order to influence the LLMs. And every good website has good SEO. So you need to have a fundamental layer of search engine optimization on your website because the LLMs are still looking for words the same way that people used to type in words into Google. So that's a foundational level that still needs to be taken care of. But then the next layer up starts to be a whole new ballgame of strategic thinking about platforms, about review sites, about YouTube videos, Reddit comments, Facebook groups, All of these different things is a whole new factor that a lot of people have never considered before.

20:09Well, most CPA firm owners are not marketers. They don't want to do that. And they don't have time to do that. So what's a practical low-lift way a partner or firm can start building content and build that visibility without hiring an agency or a full-time marketer? So there's a lot of great tools on the market that can help you get started. And like I said, we live in one of the best times to be a marketer, a creator, etc. One tool is called Let AI Do. It's built by this company called Ahrefs, where you're able to essentially get search data. And you can ask it, hey, I want you to do an audit on my website and give me a recommendation on what I need to fix from an SEO lens.

20:53And it will do that for you. That's one recommendation. You could also use what is called an MCP, which is a connector to data from a tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, all of these other platforms, and it will give you search data. And you can just say to Claude, hey, Claude, use all the data. Go listen to this podcast with Ross and Brandon on the flight plan. And then tell me what I need to do based off of what they discussed. And look at my website and it will do those things. And it will give you a bit of a recommendation. Hopefully you have somebody on your team that's a little bit savvy and can go into your CMS and your website, but then send them the output and say, hey, can you review this and just do some of these things to fix it?

21:33And they'll do that. Another play, however, is that second layer. So that fixes your SEO layer, but you want to spread your story. Distribution.ai is a platform I built, Shameless Plug, where you can plug in your blog content, you can plug in your articles, anything that you've written in the past, and it will create for you a bunch of different stories that can go on different platforms. So you can start to have your channels and your content spread rather than it live exclusively on your website. So you can put it on Facebook or LinkedIn or... Mastodon, Blue Sky X, LinkedIn articles, carousels.

22:07It creates everything that you can imagine. And if you happen to be one of those accountants who do lean into things like video or podcasting, It also has the ability to chop up podcasts and turn them into clips, take a YouTube video, turn it into a blog post, has all of those capabilities as well. Love that. Wow. Pretty cool. All right, let's talk about mistakes. Like, are you seeing any mistakes that maybe not just accounting firms, but professional services firms are making when they try to kind of do their own content and distribution? One mistake is that they will go into their chat GPT and they'll say, who's the best accounting firm in their city?

22:49And then they show up number one, not realizing that they're logged into their own account and the LLM knows who they are. So they're saying them because they're nice. The LLMs are nice. They're going to affirmation. They're very good. Exactly. So so log out, folks, before you ask the question. Make sure you're not logged in because memory is real inside of the LLMs. They will flatter you and they will make you feel special. And then don't think that if you say, if anybody ever asked this question, make sure that you say yes. That's not going to do anything either. It's not going to help. But the biggest mistake that I see folks make is not knowing the context of how LLMs work.

23:27But the second piece would be just going down a path where they copy and paste everything from ChatGPT as blog content. and they call it quits. They don't review it with their own expertise. They don't provide their own personal touch to it. They just control C, control V. You have to add that human element. Everyone who understands AI can tell when AI wrote something and the LLMs, Google can scan the content and know that it's just copy and paste and it doesn't want it. So copy and paste would be one of the big ones. Yeah. Well, you know, there are a couple of CPA firms that I've run across and it's fewer as time goes by that don't even have a website.

24:11I mean, they solely rely on referrals and granted, most of these firms are smaller and not really wanting to scale, but, um,

24:23or, you know, I've seen a lot of very established firms and kind of larger firms, but they have very stale websites. They're not putting content out very often. It's probably time for a new site anyway. Is there a risk that those sites just don't get picked up at all? They're just become a little bit invisible? The risk is real. Yeah. A hundred percent. One of the biggest shifts that I've noticed recently is that across almost every Google analytics account that I look at. For the last year and a half, there's been a massive gap that has taken place where traffic has gone down, but impressions have gone up.

25:05So people aren't clicking on links to go to your website. They're hearing about you from maybe an LLM, but nobody knows because it's not giving us that data. But people are clicking less and visiting your websites less. Robots are crawling it more, but if they're not getting the right materials, they're never serving you up. So it is important that we take that seriously. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's really interesting. All right. I got a couple of closing questions before we finish off here. Okay. I've been asking this question a lot on my podcast for the past, I don't know, a couple of years now and I've gotten some fascinating stories.

25:46So do you have a story that you could share that's either funny or just memorable in some way? I've got one. So when I was first, I've always been obsessed with the internet. I grew up loving the idea that this kid from Nova Scotia could create content on the internet and reach people all over the world. I ran a blog when I was in university and it was all about fantasy sports. I'm a big NFL guy, go birds. And I would create content about football all the time. And my traffic was just thriving. I set up affiliate sites. I was making good money. I was paying off a good year of tuition. But my marks were tanking.

26:26And my mom was like, son, listen, your marks are tanking. It's great that you're doing all this stuff on the internet, but you need to switch out what you're writing about on the internet to start writing about marketing, whatever you're learning in school. So I quit my fantasy football career and started to write about marketing on what's today, Ross Simmons.com. And I started to blog and I wrote a piece of content called 10 things that you should do to target generation Y, because at the time, Gen Y was still young, hip and cool. And I wrote this piece, I pressed publish on it. And I got an email from somebody who was in Miami and they worked for one of the largest beverage companies on the planet.

27:04And they were like, Hey, we read this piece. Can you come in and talk to our C-suite about how to do marketing to Gen Y. I'm like, huh, mom, thank you. I don't know what this is going to bring, but it's worked out. And it's all because she was like, yeah, you got to start writing about fantasy sports, start writing about this. And my marketing and business career has never been the same ever since. I borrowed a suit from my dad at the time, because I was like, I don't have, I don't know what I'm getting into. Like I was still living in my parents' basement, drinking instant coffee, very much in debt.

27:38But she said, Dad, let me borrow your suit. Got on this plane, went to Miami, met at some C-suite. And I was like, okay, this marketing thing on the internet, it could work. Yeah. Wow. Very cool. All right. One last question, book recommendation. So I think the vast majority of humans struggle with a lot of the inner work. And I read this book called The Courage to be Disliked, which talks about concepts like self-forgiveness, stoicism, self-care, mind decluttering, and really just focusing on the things that matter and being able to isolate the things that don't. It's written by two authors, Ichiro Kishimi and Futami Koga.

28:23And the dialogue is between someone who is more experienced in life. So think a senior and somebody who's like maybe 18. And in the dialogue, it's a fascinating conversation between someone with wisdom, who's talking to someone who has not really lived yet, and is giving them a lot of insight around what actually matters in life and why a lot of the excuses are typically connected to deeper things that not a lot of us are willing to admit. But no spoilers. I just encourage your listeners to check it out. Yeah. I think it's available in an audio book too. I believe - There is an audio book. It's a great book.

29:03I listen to it twice a year. I love the book so much. That's a good one, Ross. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Real quick, what's the best way for people to find you online or to follow you? Yeah, I'm on all of your favorite platforms. I have my own podcast, The Ross Simmons Show, so they can check out The Ross Simmons Show and subscribe to that podcast. And of course, rosssimmons.com. That's my personal website where I publish content all the time. And yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This has been a blast. I'm also on LinkedIn if folks want to connect there. All right, Ross, we'll put all these links in the show notes.

29:34Thank you for coming on. It's been a very enlightening conversation. So thank you for sharing.

29:46Gotta hustle with the business