Why AEO Matters More Than SEO Now - 20 MINUTES #21

Speaker A: Hello everybody and welcome back to 20 Minutes by Noco. I am joined here by Yar, uh, one of our usual suspects. How's it going, Yar?

Speaker B: Great, great. Starting the year strong 26.

Speaker A: Yes sir. And ah, with a new year come new trends and developments in the landscape. Um, so one of the things I noticed, uh, that for example just the other week we got a lead in our inbox and most of the time we know where that lead comes from because we follow the GClit, we know that the campaign that led them through our website or to our uh, conversion, uh, points. Uh, but in this case, uh, I didn't, I couldn't see it in our CRM. So I asked them, as I always do then, like, hey guys, uh, where did you actually find us? And then uh, the Prospect said, uh, ChatGPT. Like ah, that's cool because we see more and more of that. So what were you looking for? What was the kind of the process that led you to us? It uh, was quite interesting because uh, it's a company that has multiple businesses, multiple brands under a parent brand and they are looking to consolidate basically all their marketing efforts in terms of brand strategy, but also in terms of how they manage their website, which is currently, you know, how it goes, very fragmented. WordPress here, another one there, uh, different logins, different management systems, uh, a bit of chaos. So it turned out that they were basically asking questions about brand strategy, uh, and also how to give a new home to those multiple websites in webflow and how that works under one management account and stuff like that. Turned out that they landed on a page where we elaborate on that. Um, so I figured we must be doing something right there. So let's unpack this. People use LLMs more and more for search queries. Uh, I do it myself. We all have our own process. But what are the early learnings here when it comes to being findable as a company in those LLMs? Like where are we with this?

Speaker B: Um, so right now there's this term that is, um, getting trend, trendy as aeo, which is answer engine optimization. And it's not very different from SEO itself. I mean it's almost the same thing. It's just AEO has a little bit, uh, more steps to it. You just need to take extra steps on it. So what happens is that if, let's say you have the content and the answers that the prospects are looking for. So if my prospects are asking for the best, uh, agencies in the Netherlands and I have the answers to that question and not just the first answers. Keep in mind that the prospect is always going to have a follow up question. So I have a detailed answer and I have the detailed answer for the follow up question and so on. And um, of course the AI will read from my content. Will, will, will either read my articles or go through even my videos on YouTube. They go to the transcript. So the more answers you have to this question, the more probably that you're going to show in the search result or the conversation with ChatGPT. Now what happens is, um, let's say you have your website ranking number one on the Google search. This is back in SEO. Um, that doesn't necessarily mean that your brand will be mentioned in the answer when talking to ChatGPT because, um, what happens back in the SEO, it was more m of a technical game. So it's more about numbers, it's more about the right data, the right words and you plug it in and you win in the SEO game. However, right now with backlinks. Exactly. So that was the, the strategy to go about. However, when AI is now introduced and the search is no longer just terms and we're having conversations and we're asking more questions and we're trying to understand based on our situations. So it's more about creating a unique content that gives the answers to those users because it's not just about rewriting what's already there. It's about giving something unique. And the AI is looking for that because they understand that. Okay, this is a new perspective on this topic. So that's what I want to share. That's what I understand. Something new. And um, yeah, so I think like we're doing really good. I mean we're, we're doing these podcasts, we have content, uh, going on in our blog posts. Um, uh, also we're active on, let's say social media. On LinkedIn, the members of Knocko are very active. And this gives more uh, authority, um, like we saw on the webflow maturity model. So the authority is the ultimate goal and you need to give authority on your brand, on what you're saying, uh, on the topics that you share. And that's how uh, the AI will always find us or give us um, as a, as a result in the search.

Speaker A: Yeah. Before we dive into the webflow playbook, uh, because you mentioned that just now, I think it's excellent, as you also mentioned in the video, uh, that you, that you did on this topic. But can you try and explain to me, so how does an AI, how does an LLM, how does it behave when, when searching like what, what are the, what are its characteristics? What is it, what is it looking for compared to a human? Or is it very similar to how a human uh, queries? What can we already say about this?

Speaker B: So since it's something new and um, AI is very complex, uh, we still, all of us don't know every little detail of how this actually works. Uh, however we have a lot of data from what we have so far, uh, that tells us how this is working. Um, uh, back then when Google, like with Google, not back then, it's still there. So when we want to do some research with Google, uh, it's very easy because through the Google um, Ads API, we get the data about say specific keywords, specific search uh, queries. So we get this data through the API. However with ChatGPT, it doesn't give this data so we, we don't know the volume of, let's say the, these questions. We don't know the questions. It's still not there yet. Um, I was, I was watching another podcast and they said it might be there when they introduce ads and then we'll have more data and they will give us more data. But right now it's not.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's rumors that Chat GPT will launch some sort of an ad, an ad feature. But I'm, I, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, okay.

Speaker B: Um, I hope not.

Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, uh, I hope not. You know, I don't hope so either. But uh, well you never know. It's not the most attractive model from a user perspective. Um, anyway, uh, also, you know, for the people watching this, I would highly recommend to also watch Yars, um, I guess you know, in depth talking head video about this topic. If you want to have a very quick and high over um, uh, and high over overview of this topic. Um, it's, it's really excellent. It's, it's a super, super concise breakdown of I guess all you need to know and also all you need to know to dive deeper into this topic. And um, yeah, diving deeper into this topic is exactly uh, what we're going to do uh, today as well. And um, trying to close your video here, but the webflow AEO Playbook, you mentioned it already. Um, what can we learn from that? What does it give us?

Speaker B: Woflow has been very active and very uh, up to date with uh, with the information when it comes to search or AEO or SEO. Advanced SEO, let's call it. Um, and they, they have been introducing features, they have been Introducing um, content like this Playbook, which is excellent by the way. Um, it goes over how search is changing from simple keywords, backlinks, type of thing to more detailed uh, and more personalized experience that serves a specific uh, function for our prospect or for our users. Um, the Playbook goes through different parts more like the content, the numbers, the data that you get, the traffic goes through all of it and it explains it like this maturity model. It explains how you, you have content and you go from, through the levels, so from level one to level five. So first keywords and that's what we usually do and then it's answers and you get more detailed content. Um, and then it's structured content. This is where like we have more answers and then like we talked about the follow up questions is where structure comes in and then pillar where you, you become, you have a lot of these uh, answers to the specific topic and you're, you're kind of moving towards the level five which is authority. And that's where um, the AI considers you the credible source for uh, this specific topic or the specific query. And this is how you move through it. Now technical as well. Uh, we also do that in noco, uh, in the development side we go through these steps and we stay also up to date with how um AEO is reading our website. AEO is scanning through our pages. Uh, because also all this comes into play when it comes to aeo. Um, another good uh, strategy with content um, that I'm hearing a lot is repurposing content. So uh, also in the Playbook it talks about how the AI looks for the most up to date information and it tries to find the most recent information. So um, a lot of companies or a lot of brands, like let's say our clients, we do recommend uh, repurposing of older content into a newer version so that it becomes up to date and that More probably the ChatGPT will use it and recommend it.

Speaker A: That's very interesting because I'm reading a lot about refreshing content or that refreshed uh, content is an important factor. So if I understand you correctly, it is not just about reposting it, but it's about iterating it and sort of making it, bringing it up to date with current trends and developments and then reposting it. Republishing it basically. Or is it simply. For example you have blog posts on your website, they have relevancy when you post them. Um, that relevancy wanes over time in a lot of cases. Is it just taking that same blog article, uh, updating that same article, that same entry basically and publishing it again. Or are there specific rules? Just trying to make this a little bit practical, uh, for the viewer.

Speaker B: I mean of course, uh, like you said, it's taken that article finding uh, you know, making it up to date with the most up to date information. Up to date recent um, events and um, of course m mentioning the date, um, on the article somewhere. So this is, this was last updated, let's say on the 1st of January. Mentioning that date is good because the LLM can also go through this. And also, I mean mentioning that on the main page is very good. Uh, also mentioning that let's say the schema markup so that the AI knows exactly when this was updated last.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, another thing, all this as well being mentioned in the playbook, another thing is um, having an author or like, um, a source of where this information comes from and an author like a more author than let's say a company. And this gives it even more credibility because the AI can go through this author's profile and find out how credible what they say is. So this also helps with ao.

Speaker A: Yeah. And should you also link uh, uh, to an author's page, whether that's on the website or his or her social presence or what is the best play here?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So linking, linking to let's say your profile page or LinkedIn page, uh, gives more uh, I mean LinkedIn page is very, is very good because the AI can, can understand that this is real.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and for, let's say I wrote an article about development in wlow and I'm the author, then the AI will go through my LinkedIn profile and make sure that. Okay, if I'm a senior developer at W, then my article about development can be credible because I know what I'm talking about and that's how it treats it.

Speaker A: Interesting. Very interesting. Just to go back to the uh, freshness aspect of it, so there's a quote I think in this webflow playbook as well that says freshness wins. 95% of citations come from content updated in the last 10 months. That's very interesting. Uh, to be honest, um, you know, in the old days, if we can call it like that, when I was doing search queries, I would also look for recent articles. I still do that actually when I want to have advice on something. So if I see that it's from 2018 or something, then man, I'm less, um, you know, motivated or less willing to click on it because I Think it's probably not up to date, even though it might be. But in my mind. So that's actually quite similar to how I think a human would search. You search for recent, fresh, updated stuff because you know, the assumption is that it's, that it's better. Right. That it's more accurate.

Speaker B: So um, yeah, of course now with all the updates, I mean, and how quick updates are being made, um, and technology and events around the world, so we always look for the most up to date content. I have uh, with my colleagues we call it before 2020 as BC, which

Speaker A: is before COVID Oh my God.

Speaker B: So yeah, so everything in BC actually is like old stuff. Like now. Anything before 2020 is like kind of old because after 2020 there was a lot of advancements and a lot of new perspectives came into place. So uh, that information is more relevant to current times.

Speaker A: Shouldn't it be like BGPT or something

Speaker B: before GPT as well? Yeah, that was another world.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. All right. So yeah, another interesting quote that you probably just do to capture what you said in the beginning of the episode a little bit. So AEO is about being understood and not just about being found. I think that's the big difference. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, like we said, the user is going to go and ask questions, going to have a conversation and in that conversation it's preferably that you have the answers to that question so that you are more credible uh, as a brand than you're mentioned in that search result. Um, these can be like for example, if a brand wants uh, to optimize for ao, they can look for the questions that are being asked in let's say sales calls that are being asked by customer, uh, service, um, inquiries. So all these questions, um, that are there already, uh, can be repurposed so you can answer them in a very detailed way and put that information online. And then usually when the user comes and asks chatgpt this question, your answers are there and they're more credible now.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I think that's great. And I think that's something that we could optimize as well. Because as you know, and as a lot of people and companies do these days, we transcribe basically all our meetings. We have all, all that raw, all these raw transcripts. We have them all. So we could mine them for the key questions. Of course we also know because you're there and you kind of know, but you could more structurally you could mine them and then turn them into FAQ sections, for example, or write articles that in A structured way with a good uh, content hierarchy. Answer those questions. So those are already very practical, you know, immediately actionable items that you can do as a, as a marketing team. Um, and you don't really even have to be technical for it. Right. That's the beauty of it. You just have to make sure that you uh, answer the right questions, answer the right follow up questions and structure it properly, which is maybe a little bit more technical. Talking schema markups, but also just I think simple H1, H2 hierarchies are already uh, very effective if you do that properly.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course the, the, the, let's say the CSS or the styles hygiene of the page is very important that the page is very clean and it can be easily read. The code is very uh, well done. H1, H2, H3 the hierarchy and all that. Um, schema markups help majorly. So they're, they've been very helpful because they just give the data instead of going through the page with styles and all that. Yeah, um, and webflow now actually again they're introducing a lot of features. One of them is auto schema markups. So on the page you can just click and generate schema markup for you automatically. Um, and a specific field that they made for it. So this can even be easier for marketers to go into uh, this detail. Um, so yeah, so I think these are great ways for marketers to have more presence in aeo, which is refreshing old content, uh, going through transcribes of meetings. Um, I mean this is gold. I mean there's a lot of uh, information there that you can use and repurpose for a content strategy.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And uh, as they always say, SEO is dead, right? I've been hearing that for 20 years. But this is just I guess a new iteration of it and uh, they call it the aeo. Um, so maybe it's just cool to um, um, go over some sort of checklist or at least a list of some items of more practical stuff. Right. Just to keep this comprehensible for non technical people such as myself. So I wrote some notes down that I got from basically the website playbook, your video and just talking about it. So I have four pillars here and I'm not sure if that's correct actually, but I came with four pillars which is content with a focus on clarity and structure for AI comprehension. So key actions, answer questions directly, use headings, lists and FAQs, cluster topics, refresh regularly the freshness aspect of it and make content scannable and Codable by AI. That's basically the overarching goal of this. Feel uh, free to uh, correct me when wrong or make additions. So, so then pillar two is technical. So focus is a machine readable site. Key actions, schema markups, FAQ page, how to organization, uh, fast and mobile, secure site, uh, XML sitemaps and canonicals, um, LLMs txt file. We talked about this before. So it's index of key pages for LLMs. And then specific webflow wins are auto generated, clean codes, high speed, built in schema support. Um, is that correct? Those webflow wins.

Speaker B: Yeah. So of course webflow as well optimizes their hosting services for better uh, performance, faster uh, load times. I mean having clean website of course helps uh, the AI reads it better, helps AI, gives it more authority. Um, so yeah, I think from the technical point of view this is uh, woflow really helps the sites rank better.

Speaker A: Yeah, they seem to be on top of all this new stuff. So that's good then. Uh, authority, uh, we talked about this as well. So the focus is credibility signals that AI trusts. You gave the example about the authors in the blog article, backlinking to for example a credible page, social page, like a LinkedIn page. Um, some other notes here for key actions that you can take for authority. Um, expert and byline content, earn third party mentions and citations, consistent brand storytelling, uh, monitor and fix AI representations, misrepresentations. Let's focus on that Yara, because what can you do when an AI scrapes, you know, searches and scrapes your website and things are misrepresented? Like can you, can you fix that? And how do you fix that? Do you just fix it by refreshing content and you know, overriding it?

Speaker B: I mean, yeah, for sure. I mean some brands have a lot of content out there. It uh, can get messy and if your information is not say, consistent across different pages or across different sources, um, the AI definitely will cite you wrong. Will, will maybe say something wrong or something not true or something outdated about you. So it's always better to, when you're doing this strategy, uh, is that you also try to, you know, do the search yourself and do the search manually and try to find out what ChatGPT is saying and how they're talking about your brand. Um, and of course if it's something that is not true, then uh, the mission is to update that information, remove the old information or update it with new information, redirect links and all that so you can make a whole strategy about. Okay, we're refreshing our information, we're making sure the Internet talks through about us or the Internet has all the right information, the faults or outdated information are removed. Uh, and of course uh, the chatgpt will, will, will cite you better. Now with, with Chat GPT, it's actually much faster the, the process than Google. So in Google it used to take time. Uh, it was harder. Uh, it used to take time. Um, smaller companies used to kind of fail or fall behind on, on this game because bigger companies with more authority they can just like let's say I'm a bit, I have um, the budget, I can buy um, a mention on Forbes or something like that and I automatically get, get ranked higher. However with ChatGPT it's not necessarily like that and uh, the more unique and valuable the information you put out there of course on a good technical page with everything's clean, the information that you put is unique, then you might, you might be able to get mentioned today or tomorrow if you do, if you do it right, you know, so you, so there is a difference and there's

Speaker A: more personalized experience that's very interesting and it seems also more rewarding and maybe even a bit more democratized this way. Uh, that's the benign scenario, that's the positive scenario. So we'll see how that plays out. Okay, cool. Uh, I also have uh, one last pillar which is measurement. Um, so focus is to track AI visibility and not just the rankings. Um, this really ties into what you just said. So monitor citations and mentions and AI answers, uh, share of voice, sentiment, accuracy audits, cross team workflows. Yeah but it's also, it seems like a little bit of a needle in a haystack. Right, because you're not going to search for your name specifically in most cases because that is not the point of your AEO efforts. You want to ask the questions that your ICP might ask in order to, you know, end up with a mention of you, your company. So in noco's case, we're not going to ask like hey, what is the current reputation uh, of noco? No, you're going to probably want to ask the questions that lead to what we can solve for them or what we can contribute. So um, yeah, I think that internally it's also a matter of just having sort of testing playbooks ready of the questions that you want them to find you with to ask those questions yourself. And ah, that's actually a great KPI to be honest. You know, a great AEO KPI could be to just have a set of questions at the beginning of the year, like, okay, at the end of the year we want to be found for these five at least main questions or key questions. And then you have follow ups and then um, you do, you know, I guess quarterly test sessions where you just start, start conversing with AIs based on those questions and you start elaborating and making uh, variations. You can do that with, with a couple of people for example. And then you can, I guess countermeasure. It's not an exact measurement system, but it's more of a contextual, uh, um, measurement system. But it's, it's something, right? Or do you have another suggestion on how to measure the progress that you make as a company, as a brand on, on aeo?

Speaker B: I mean that's, this is a great strategy that you mentioned. I mean it's a great way to do this. Um, you have the questions, the, the problems that you solve, you answer them, uh, you just emphasize on answering them. Uh, gives authority. Um, also like, let's say you mentioned at the beginning of the episode that there was a client that found us through ChatGPT and came through us through answering uh, through answers and uh, sometimes say even if we get mentioned in ChatGPT, most of the times maybe the user will just open a new tab and go to noco Agency directly or uh, go on Google and search for you. And then, and then on our side it's measured as either direct traffic or a Google traffic. It's not, it's not ChatGPT anymore. So, so we still don't know how much ChatGPT, how it's working and how information is being processed there. So like you said, quarterly testing, uh, going through AIs also going through different AIs for different users because uh, sometimes it can get biased.

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker B: So doing these research can uh, be very, very uh, useful. Um, and this is the best way to get, to get measurement like the pillar, which is measurement.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is actually this specific topic of measuring your progress, uh, is actually something I would love to brainstorm a little bit more about and to see what, which best practices are already there. Because you can't really. Yeah, you can't really have sort of hard data about it. Uh, yeah, so yeah, that's an interesting one. Um, should we make it 30 minutes by Noco by the way, instead of 20 for this time?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we're almost there.

Speaker A: We're almost there. Do you have anything to add to uh, this sort of elaboration on AEO?

Speaker B: Um, so we saw in, let's say 2024. I was reading the stats the other day. In 2024, beginning of 2024, um, ChatGPT or search engines, these, these AI search engines, uh, started giving sources, started giving links, starting, uh, giving a preview of let's say Google Maps, like, let's say product. You started seeing that.

Speaker A: Yeah, these rich, rich snippets. Right, These rich product snippets and stuff like that. Web shops, you know, direct buying links.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So this made, this made the game um, a lot more interesting and made the emphasis on AEO much stronger since, since 2024. Because before that we weren't. Yeah, it was important. But we're still on Google. Google's the main thing now. It's, it's, it's getting different. Um, and the more structured data and the more we do this right, the more we appear in the search engine. Because at the end of the day, um, a lot of these, let's say links or displays makes, um, the user just goes through the process, buys the thing, doesn't even visit your website. Um, so it's always important to keep that in mind that the user is looking for, solving their problem rather than just, um, visiting a nice website.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Uh, that's something to consider. And you will probably at some point also get maybe website or even on a page level you get previews, maybe you get even interactive previews. I don't know. Um, yeah, we're going to keep an eye on it then. Also, again, I think that humans are also creatures of habit. Uh, and that psychologically a website, you know, being on an actual website, seeing the domain does still hold value because again, creatures of habit. And it's just, you know, you just want to be there, you want to go there, you want to be on something that is entirely the companies that you're looking for. So I think that that will still hold value. But I agree, you know, you can't just assume that when people, you know, uh, transfer, migrate to, to, to chat GPT for their search habits that it will be just, you know, them clicking through and, and landing on your website. So. Yeah, man. But I guess the same, you know, was true when social, when the social media boom happened, right? Like uh, like there were also predictions where they said like, like E commerce will be entirely on Facebook or something. Yet here we are, you know, 15 years later, still going to web shops, still filling up, shopping, uh, baskets. So I guess with every hype cycle it will uh, land somewhere in between. But yeah, I fully agree that and research also Shows this, right? Like the Forrester research that said that marketing teams, or 95% of marketing teams, they expect to use generative AI in their buying process. I mean, I've been reading these marketing reports for a long time and they also said this about social media. Again, you know, so it's probably, you know, those percentages are probably always a bit exaggerated. But I mean, we both agree that it will play a, uh, very, very important role and it will shift towards AEO gradually and then very quickly. So, yeah, I guess message to our ICP, to our audience, which is B2B SaaS, startups and skill ups. Predominantly time to act is now, right? You have to, you have to be prepared now because it will be more and more of an uphill battle once you let it slide.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: there's several practical, actionable items that you can execute on today. Um, so don't wait, just, you know, start auditing your website or give us a call if you need help auditing your website so we can come up with an action plan and help you do it. Because now is still the time, you're still very early. Uh, so make good use of it, is what I would say. Um, we'll link the video that Yard did on this topic, uh, in the description and we'll also link the webflow AEO Playbook, which is a very valuable research, uh, resource. Sorry. So we'll link both of those in the description and, uh, I guess we'll see you next time. Yar, uh, any last words?

Speaker B: Uh, no, thank you. I mean, um, uh, let's try to keep an eye on how AEO develops, how the search and AI develops and, uh, yeah, I'm excited to see how 2026 is going to be.

Speaker A: It's always exciting stuff like this.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, we'll be back soon. Thank you all for watching.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: All right, bye. Bye. Bye, bye.