SEO Is Dying? How to Win Search Everywhere in the Age of AI

0:00Wes Towers:Welcome back to The Vault Unlocked. I'm Kayvon Kay, and today's episode dives into a real-time conversation about what's actually happening in business right now. AI is reshaping search, SEO is evolving into something bigger, and most founders are either panicking or pretending it's not happening. So the question becomes, are you going to be replaced or are you going to adapt? Today, I'm joined by Wes Towers, digital agency founder, SEO strategist, and a man who spent over 20 years in the search game, now navigating what AI has done to traffic, trust, and visibility. We break down why showing up everywhere matters more than ever, why AI won't replace you, but someone using it will.

0:44Wes Towers:The real shift from SEO to GEO and why trust, human connection, and Google reviews are now business critical. This isn't hype. This is about survival, adaptation, and building authority in the new digital age. If you're a founder wondering how to stand out when everyone has access to AI tools, this one's for you. Let's unlock it.

1:14Wes Towers:Wes, welcome to the show.

1:16Kayvon:Thanks, Kevin. It's fantastic to be with you today. A real privilege to be on the show. I've been watching quite a few episodes of late and really compelling content. Love it.

1:26Wes Towers:Oh, I appreciate that. Wes, then if you're watching the show, you know, this is the point where I ask first, you know, for those who are listening that don't know West Towers, don't know, you know, your story and how you got to here today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and fill us in?

1:40Kayvon:Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm up to now is I run a digital agency, website design, SEO, all that kind of fun stuff. And we do it for the trades and construction niche. Wasn't always that way. We've sort of niched down over the course of the years. But, I mean, it's always felt like an industry that's evolved super fast. I've always said if I stopped doing what I – the business has been running over 20 years now, but I've always said if we stopped for one moment and came back in a year's time, everything would have changed. It's always felt that way. But, man, oh, man, the last three years have been hectic with AI transforming the way in which every business does stuff.

2:16Kayvon:But certainly for us, we're doing search engine optimization for a long, long time, and all of a sudden people were seeing less traffic. So that was a bit of a kick in the teeth and a challenge to overcome because as you can understand, and you probably bumped into it these days, people are getting their answer on platform. So Google gives the answer right there and then, and or they're using large language models to research it. There's a whole bunch of different things happening right now, and we've needed to adapt really fast to keep our clients in front of the right people.

2:44Wes Towers:So let's just take a step back here because there's a lot here. And I know a lot of people are trying to jump into AI. They're scared of AI. They're misunderstanding of the powers of AI because we're being told AI is going to take over every single – in the next couple of months, it's going to take over every job. And I always kind of go, really? Because it doesn't even listen to you when you just use it in the language model. So no, I don't think it's taking over anybody's job anytime soon. Now, can it help you? Yes. Is it going to take over some redundancies and jobs for sure? But I personally don't think we're here.

3:20Wes Towers:However, when it comes to the AI, let's just talk about what, because you work with a lot of business owners and as an agency, what are you seeing business owners are doing when it comes to AI? Are they adopting it? Are they trying to understand it? Are they still pushing it away? What's your landscape when it comes to AI?

3:38Kayvon:So for us working with trades and construction businesses mostly, typically those founder-led businesses oftentimes, they're really practical, pragmatic, hands-on people. So they're not necessarily all that tech savvy. So they're not necessarily looking at it in a whole lot of ways for their own internal businesses just yet. I think they will eventually. But certainly they're wanting to show up wherever people are looking for businesses and their services. And so that's why we've really adapted the way we work to help them show up in the large language models. When people are asking their phone, they jump in on chat, but they're having a discussion about, hey, who's the very best of X, Y, Z in our region?

4:19Kayvon:And they're having a detailed conversation. It's not just, you know, back in the old school, Dave, search plumber Melbourne, for example. They're really looking for nuance because they understand the tools, understand the whole context of the language. So that's kind of what they're just really pragmatic. I love our clients. They're really pragmatic and they're thinking, okay, how do we adapt so we can keep growing our businesses? Yeah, yeah. I mean, but I can appreciate a lot of people are scared because I got a business valuation three years ago and it came incredibly low. It was ridiculously low, a real kick in the teeth.

4:54Kayvon:And the valuer said, look, your whole industry is at threat right now due to the rise of AI and no one's going to buy uncertainty. They want some level of predictability when they're buying a business. I had everything lined up perfectly what you would want for a sellable business. And this guy kicked me in the teeth with that. So, you know, three years ago, I was just kind of taking shape and I can understand where he's coming from. But off the back of that, I've doubled down on a whole bunch of stuff and we had our most profitable year ever using AI and doing a whole bunch of other things. So, you know, slap in the face, you got to just take it and find a way to adapt and improve things.

5:31Wes Towers:I get it. And I think you just kind of tested my theory, which is everyone's so worried about being replaced by AI. And I just believe right now, first, we're at the level where AI won't replace humans. However, humans using AI will 100 % replace humans who are not. So I think as you adapt, you jump in or you're going to be a thing of the past, for sure. How are you seeing when it comes to specifically, you know, your expertise around SEO? How are you seeing AI hurting the business? And then how are you using it to be able to offset that and actually help the business?

6:12Kayvon:Yeah, so from a marketing standpoint, it's so easy to crunch out content and it reads really well and it can sound pretty compelling. And, you know, you can with a few prompts, you can create some pretty great content perceived to be great content. But what that does is everyone's doing it. So therefore, there's just an overwhelm of information out there and there's an erosion of trust. So everything that we do and teach our clients to do is to use the tools. Firstly, if we're thinking about social media, the goal of social media is to get them off social media. What do we want them to do? Go to the website.

6:45Kayvon:What's the goal of the website? Well, we want to get them off the website into a human conversation for our clients, for the salespeople to do their work. so everything's got to be geared around building trust and authority as best you can but it's all about creating a human connection because the humans who are able to connect relationships build uh understand the client sell what they're buying i mean if we can understand what the client's wanting and then just give it to them everybody's winning and everyone's happy so that's everything we do is geared around building trust and authority yeah so again the question is i mean

7:17Wes Towers:how important is trust now more than ever?

7:20Kayvon:Oh man, more than ever. You're right. Yeah, absolutely. It's just so hard to cut through the noise. I mean, it's just so much out there and anyone can say anything they want. So how do you know the question, right?

7:32Wes Towers:Like how, let's, let's deep dive in here. Cause we're just, you know, I want to really help people and understand like there is a lot of noise. Anybody can go to an LM and say, write me up, uh, 20 SEO blogs based on this and that everyone's doing it next thing you know it's lml against ml you know ml lm against lm right so yeah how can we how can we separate ourselves from this how can we stand out not only to our competitors and you know and stand out in the light to our avatars but how do we stand out so that the AIs are picking us up in the new GEO thing of SEO. Because SEO is the thing of the past.

8:15Wes Towers:It's GEO. But from my understanding, there is no GEO without SEO.

8:19Kayvon:Yeah, it's all sort of the same. Yeah. Well, they're all trying to do the same thing and surface the very best information. So that's precisely that. You need the best information. And you can't get that by relying on the tool to do it for you because all that's doing is collating all the average sum total of what everyone else has already said. You've got to bring something unique, distinct, compelling. You've got to lift your level. Go to a higher level and produce the content that really stands out and really specific to your ideal client. So you've got to be super, super clear who your ideal client is so you can speak directly to them.

8:54Kayvon:That's all going to help. But the trust factors that you can build that are kind of outside your control to a degree, So Google reviews, for example, or any of those reviewing platforms that you can't easily manipulate, they're super important. So you can definitely help people leave that just by asking for a great review when you know you've had a good relationship and someone might do that for you. Even when you do do a great job, people are sort of – they forget and they need a gentle reminder to say, hey, do you mind if you jump in? It really helps a business like ours if you would leave a quick review.

9:28Kayvon:So how important are Google reviews for SEO? Huge, huge, huge. Not just for SEO, but just for everyone. Anecdotally, for our clients, we certainly have recognized, because we're always asking them to ask, hey, what prompted you to make a decision to call us or to buy those sorts of things? Because that face interaction, you just get so much more info. But there's a significant increase in the people who have said, hey, we checked out all your reviews and it looked like you do exactly what we want you to do. So, yeah, so that's increased dramatically over the last couple of years. But everybody's telling me it's their Google reviews.

10:10Wes Towers:Do you have a specific way that you can ask your clients or your customers for reviews to actually? because it's interesting before I finish this question. It's interesting because from what I see is it's a lot easier to get the negative review than it is the positive review. Someone's more likely to go and complain about you than they are to actually just even give you a five-star thumbs up.

10:36Kayvon:Yeah, I know. A hundred percent. Those negative emotions in human nature, those negative emotions, they're just so more strong to prompt someone to take action. so um it's it's it's hard to wow people to the fact to the degree in which a negative the opposite emotion could arise so but you just need to i think the human relationship aspect of business has never been more important as we digitalize as we make things automated there's kind of a pushback and a reluctance um for people to want to engage with this kind of stuff so i mean people while we think it's kind of cool and fun to see some of the videos that are produced by AI.

11:17Kayvon:It's sort of novel right now, but you can kind of sense people are growing a distrust and a dissatisfaction with it. It's kind of like artificial food. I mean, we know artificial food has never been healthy or good for us, but we consume it because it's quick and easy and palatable and all that kind of stuff, but we know it's not good for us. And it feels to me like a lot of this artificial intelligence, It's artificial. So it lacks those pieces that make it healthy and vibrant and sustainable for the long term. So I think the way in which we're using it massively, AI, in our business and helping our business clients show up in all the right places with it, but everything's geared around human connections for us.

12:01Kayvon:That's what I think the big winners are going to be in the new world. It feels like a lot of career paths are going to be lost if people don't stay adaptable and flexible and rise to the new way of doing things. So, yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about right now.

12:18Wes Towers:It's interesting you use the word human connection because it seems like human connections is showing up a lot right now. I know like one of my sales philosophies is human-centric selling. My company that we've done, you know,$375 million sales is called The Sales Connection. everything is always for me is about energy and connection and uh i do believe with ai we're going to lose a lot of connection uh however there are people who are thriving and craving for that human connection so where does the line happen because you know between maximizing ai and getting the job done versus slowing down, going deeper and creating authentic, real connection?

13:07Kayvon:Yeah. Yeah. It's a real balancing. It feels like a bit of a yin and yang thing. You've got to get those both things working together for your own circumstances. I mean, for me, just personally, I try to avoid being on social media too much. I mean, I have team to publish a whole bunch of stuff. We're pretty active out there, particularly with the podcasting and sharing the podcast, because that's a collaboration. And it's something I love. It's that human collaboration and connection that two people are creating something meaningful and sharing it to their audiences. So I love that kind of stuff, but I don't spend too much and we share it far and wide, but I don't do it personally because I don't want to be bogged down in the tools.

13:46Kayvon:I'm using the tools for those that are out there on those platforms. That's great. It's just not me. I'm not going to waste my time too much there i can i can use um uh the tools and and the people to

13:58Wes Towers:to uh to do that you can use the tools and leverage the tools but not being uh it's kind of working on the tools not being in the tools yeah 100 yeah i hear what you're saying there so i mean it's interesting because you you're helping so you're helping business owners uh leverage ai specifically around SEO so that they can be seen show up. What was the quote you said earlier? I wrote it down. What did you say? Widely everywhere. Would you say SEO everywhere?

14:31Kayvon:Yeah, search everywhere optimization. Yeah, search everywhere optimization.

14:37Wes Towers:So what does that mean? Search everywhere optimization. What does that mean to you?

14:41Kayvon:Yeah, so for us, a large part of that is to show up in ChatGBT and all the other large language models. So we've taken, because we got bashed around a little bit with this, we did SEO for many years and all of us and some of the clients been with us, you know, it could be over 10 years now. I'm not sure, but a long time. And so they would say incremental improvement month on month. It was super easy. You would have a set of keywords. You would see the ranks improve. You'd see the traffic improve. You'd see the return on investment. Quite clear, obvious. Then all of a sudden they're not getting the traffic that they once did because there's less reason to visit a website.

15:15Kayvon:So I get a few phone calls and say, hey, what the hell is going on here? We've been doing this for a long time and what's going on is moving in the wrong way. So I had to have those discussions with the clients and explain what was causing that, the way in which things work right now. But the interesting part was they weren't getting less qualified leads through the door, through the websites. It was just that they were getting less people researching and so on because they're getting the answers elsewhere. They're getting the answers quicker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes even those things we used to give away, like the lead magnets that were really cool and the funnels and all that kind of stuff because information is available at our fingertips without giving away our emails.

16:01Kayvon:I mean, we used to think we're giving away something for free, but everyone knew it's not free. You're giving away your email and your privacy, and that means you're going to be spammed. So how do you replace that?

16:10Wes Towers:Truly, hey, download my free e-book, download my free lead magnet, download my 10-step checklist, download my quick survey. What are marketers doing now to get the email? Because anybody that's even using AI, even at 30%, 40 % can get probably better answer if they know how to prompt your PDF.

16:32Kayvon:Yeah, that's it. 100 % most of the time. And everyone's saying that. There's these things that sales funnel process that was online for so many years and working like magic doesn't work in the same way it once did. What we're doing is providing that information freely without giving away the, you know, people having to part ways with their email address. That's a challenge obviously from a marketing perspective because it's wonderful to be able to build a list and keep marketing to them. But we've just got to adapt and think about, okay, you just want to be the thought leader and the expert in the field So they get what they need from you and your brand gets mentioned.

17:13Kayvon:And you might show up even as a brand mentioned in a large language model. You're not even aware someone's reading it, but it's pulling information that you've published. So that's kind of the way. It's harder to track. So we as marketers don't like it because we like things to be tracked and we can show a fancy report to the client, which is really cool. that's really difficult now but we've still got to be out there to to grow the brand reputation and the trust authority signals so that then they make an inquiry when they're ready to buy so that that inquiry point is happening much closer to the buying point so you need to have like this is why what you're providing people sales training and expertise those few leads that come through they're so close to making a buying decision it's not funny you can't drop them at that at that really red hot moment.

18:01Kayvon:You can't let them slide because they're super ready.

18:05Wes Towers:Someone else is going to pick them up because there's 10 ,000 other ones ready to go. Yeah. So how does a business owner start ranking in the LM, so in say GPT from SEO? What are the steps that a business owner can do or start thinking about so they can start ranking in GPT?