AI vs SEO: The New Rules of Content, Search & Visibility

Speaker A: AI has gotten so much better, particularly chatgpt about finding the most unique piece of content. So my advice always is, if you're using AI to write your content, which is fine. I mean, everyone's doing it, it's going to be derivative. I mean, there's this great quote by Seth Godin, um, I hope I get it right. Is that AI writes, um, poetry, but it can't write poems foreign.

Speaker B: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Agents of Change. I am Danielle o', Neill, and I'm sitting here today with Nick Franfelder, CEO of SH Oak. And today we are going to talk all things SEO for AI. This is not the SEO that we all knew five years ago. This is not the SEO that we all knew five months ago. So, Nick, welcome. I'm excited to get your perspective.

Speaker A: Oh, fired up. Be on Agents of Change. I have a podcast. I'm not used to giving my own interest or, uh, I usually. I do the same thing. I let them do it. So, yeah, for me. Um, so last 15 years, uh, before I bought Shoroke two years ago, um, I was a chief revenue officer and also a founder of a couple of startups here in the Atlanta area. So I always like to say anything I say is practice, not, not, not philosophy. Um, um, so, you know, anything that we do, um, is really focused around, you know, driving more lead generation and having those conversations. And so, you know, from our perspective at Shorok, we are always an organic or earned media, uh, company first. Um, so let's. What does that mean? So if you have authority, you have experience. Experience, expertise that eeat that Google always says we need to put into our content. Well, how do you distribute it? Distribute that and actually get mentions on either the search engine result page or the AI overviews. And that's all that we're really about. Uh, sure. Oak's been around seven years. Um, I've been the CEO too. Um, we have about. Gosh, we're up to about 70 clients. You got 35 people, and it's been a very wild ride. We focus mostly on B2B. Um, organic. Uh, again, people have needs in organic. Um, so that includes link building content, writing, um, and then helping with strategy around all things. Um, trying to get more SEO and organic leads.

Speaker B: What does that look like? You know, going from paid ads to organic and even as paid specialists. How do you think about it and why do we have this renewed focus on SEO currently?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I guess two things. One is just the consumer behavior. So the first part is we now are seeing just massive Uptick. I mean, I think the, you know, the engagement levels for chat GPT, I think they're like doubling every month the number of users hopping on chat GPT. So informational searches, um, which was the bread and butter of SEO, are happening in a chat prompt that's all organic. So if you got paid and you have earned, everything in there is just earned, uh, earned media. The other side is the reaction by like Google, you know, now you have AI overviews via their Gemini engine and where did they give that real estate to where the paid ads used to be, Right? So now it's, now it's AI overview paid ads and then your organic search engine results. And so now, um, you know, just technology, the UI interface, which may change again, who knows, another three to six months. But right now the best real estate is given is taken away from ads. And so I think the interesting thing that ad people or paid media strategists are thinking is, well, winner ads going to start coming back, you know, when are they going to start showing up in chat GPT perplexity, um, or these AI overviews? Then I want to be ready to have strategy with that, that. And I think the answer is somewhere around like, well, what is, how are these models? Are LLMs going to make money? Um, I like the Hulu subscription model. So there'll be like some free version where you get lots of ads, but you still get to use like a decent, you know, LLM model. But like you've already seen, um, you know, $25 a month for Gemini Pro. But if you want to use ultra, it's like 150, $200 grok, uh, four just came out this week. Uh, so if you want to use Grok 4 head heavy, that's like 300amonth. And that gives you all the AI bells and whistles. Right? So can these models make money with subscription and ads? I mean, Google makes billions with ads, right? So they don't want to lose that, but they do want to like, probably replace that with some type of subscription. So I'm really curious what happens. I mean, I'm loving the limelight. It might be only a year. Um, but you know, ads will come back in some form, but it won't be like, it won't be like your, uh, you can't say your father's ads because he, it's happening too fast. Like, I don't know what you're, uh, you know, my day, I guess.

Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly, exactly. Back in the early days of marketing,

Speaker A: for early days, like six Months ago.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So with that, uh, you know, one of the things we had talked about was the organic social and how that's going to feed into some of this. I, um, know that we had mentioned an increase in traffic, about 70%, um, coming from organic, so social. And so knowing that we've got all these kind of shifts in, in the marketplace and looking at where this information is being fed into for the AI LLMs and search engine, why is this critical? And what do we need to be thinking of as B2B marketers for this?

Speaker A: Right, yeah. So, you know, you, you do a lot of work in the social world and um, that's earned, that's earned search results. Right? Just like, like organic is. But what's happened is they now collided and it's because of the way the Internet structured. So most of the data, 80% of all web traffic is happening on social media platforms and that is publicly available to the models to train on. So largely, um, what we're seeing, which is very different for SEO, it used to be, um, you get a backlink. Is it a do follow link? Is it someone else's webpage of authority? Well, now it's like, hey, is it also mentioned on, you know, X or Facebook? And what's the engagement with it? You know, is, know, somebody very famous engaging with it and getting lots of likes and follows that is now informing because it's got lots of comments under the post and that's all data. That's training. And now we have live search happening. It's also searching what's happening on social media. I mean, one of the most easy acquisitions you ever saw was X buying XAI because of the training data. Right. I mean it was, it was going to happen anyway because it's the same, you know, founder. But, but the idea is that the only way grok's going to be competitive if it has that training data to make it more competitive. And so that's what people are looking for. Um, so I forget what the original question is, but like the collision of, um, SEO or what we call AI SEO, um, A I S O G E O, it doesn't really matter. No one really has figured out a term, but it's colliding with social. And so what social's always been really good at is getting likes, follows, engagement. But what they haven't been thinking about is maybe keywords, key conversations. And so, um, our worlds are colliding. So I'm always looking to, um, you know, that's just an area we haven't been that comfortable in that we're pushing in too hard. So as the paid people are coming into my space, I'm going into the social people space. So it's very, it's a, it's a weird shift for agencies for sure. And probably chief marketing officers are probably trying to figure out what this all means for their budget.

Speaker B: Oh, I guarantee. And it's, it's still so new. You know, we're trying to figure out how the world of AI and SEO and organic and paid and it's all coming together. And, you know, we're just at the very tip of it. If you and I have this conversation again in 12 months, I guarantee it's going to be a completely different conversation with different stats and different starting points.

Speaker A: Yeah, I hope they start investing more in their authority and their organic. Um, the bigger challenge will be the distribution of that authority because now I just had to do it on my website or maybe a couple other, you know, backlinks. Now I have to do it across five different social platforms. And it's got to be engaging, it has got to be good for the training data. It's got to be found. Um, and we can get into, like, what type of content AI likes. But yeah, that, that is really probably the, the pressure point for me, if I was a cmo, is like, what channel? Like, how do I distribute my authority Now I work so hard to build this authority in this brand. So this, it's a real, like, unanswered question on how to allocate budget.

Speaker B: Well. And, uh, that leads perfectly to the next point here. That content piece. What is the content that the AI is looking for? How are they getting this information? And then what does that mean going back to SEO and back to those conversations. So how do we think about it and how do we feed it the correct content?

Speaker A: Right. Um, this part frustrates me. So there's three. So much noise out there about the way AI does search and what's all that? It just reminds me of, like, early SEO and you got into these like, spammy tactics like word stuffing. And so everyone's like, oh, uh, well, how do I hack the AI to mention me. So I would say 80% of it is just traditional SEO. How good is your content? How thorough were you? It's like that investing thing, uh, again, like, what are the fundamentals around what is good content? That, that, that needs to happen. The, the, the nuance is that, um, AI has gotten so much better, particularly chat GPT about finding the most unique piece of content so my advice always is, if you're using AI to write your content, which is fine, I mean, everyone's doing it, it's going to be derivative. I mean, there's this great quote by Seth Goden. Um, you know, he. I hope I get it right. He is that AI writes poetry, um, but it can't write poems. So it knows the technical, like, you know, writing haiku. It knows the formula, it can write it, but it misses the soul or the intent or the connection with the audience. And that's what I always really encourage. Like, I can't believe an SEO guy is saying this, right? But the SEO we're now telling, like, you gotta tell a unique story because the AI is trying to serve up content that is the most useful to the human, um, in engagement. So, and we could talk about robots then, writing for robots. We'll get into that. But for now, the AI is trying to serve up content that's very unique, that's going to answer that query very specifically. Um, so the other thing that's happening that's really important to point out, so one unique content, the other is we've gone from keywords, five words in a search bar, to conversation. So keywords to key conversations. The conversation, even what you write in the chat prompt is five times longer than the keyword or the traditional keyword written in Google. I say Google, but Bing, whatever. I just say search engine. So now we have to start thinking about, okay, I don't just type in Dennis near me. I start with I have a toothache. Oh, uh, it looks like you have an abscess. What's an abscessed? Well, who has the. Who's a dentist near me that does that treatment? Well, are they any good? That is way different than typing in, trying to get into the four box of like, hey, the closest dentist to me. And they have the best reviews. So now these local dentists are starting to write about their case studies and their, their client engagement and everything more on the research, um, on their outcomes and how they're a part of the community, um, how the personal dentist, their brand, not just the name of the, of the practice. All of these things are now being put into, um, what, what people are looking for. And that's what ChatGPT is trying to serve up, a very detailed conversation, the best fit for the query.

Speaker B: So, and that's interesting, it's funny you say that, because I just actually had done this last night and realized after I had done the search that I searched completely different. I used to go into Google. I was trying to find a store near me. I used to go into Google and just put the name of the store, then my location and ask where it was. But instead I went to chat GPT last night and said, I'm in this location looking for this particular store. Can you tell me where I should go? And it prompted and it told me there were two different. They were about the same distance away, but this one was actually a much nicer store than this one was. So I may want to consider going to this. So it was this whole conversation to your point that if I had just done usually in Google, I probably would have picked the other store. And I was very happy that ChatGPT told me to go and check this one instead because it was nicer and it was that they had newer stuff and it was just a much better location all around.

Speaker A: Oh, that was super interesting. So like for you, I mean I know you do social and I know you do a lot around content. Like so that store, like what do you think you know from a social perspective? Because that's what I would love to get into as well. But like from a social perspective, what conversations did they do to get in to get you that direction, do you think?

Speaker B: So I actually dove into it last night, you know, being a marketer and always curious about these things and what is driving that. And it looks like it was a bunch of the Google and the Yelp reviews. Because if I go to the reviews there was of uh, the one particular store that I chose not to go to, everybody was saying like it's fine but it's very outdated. This store was built in the 80s and everybody knows and it was a lot of negative reviews on the cleanliness and even just the location of the store. Whereas the one that we chose to go to had fantastic reviews. Newer built store, beautiful shopping area, lots of places that you can go grab a bite to eat. That was all in the Yelp and the Google reviews.

Speaker A: Oh that's super. Okay, so like the four box, you just pick the one that has 50 reviews and has four and a half stars.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: From a local perspective and AI overviews, it synthesized all those comments which never, you know, as a human, I'm not going to go through each one. I might read the first three that seemed interesting. But this is synthesizing all that data, giving it to the consumer and able to make a much more informed decision. I mean that's kind of interesting. I did even notice on X, uh the other day that there was a particular topic, um, crises in the world, but it was giving a summary of both sides about, you know, the implications. Um, I thought that was interesting because obviously there's been thousands of posts and there's a new story. I'm already, I'm a day late already to the news, but a summarizing what happened, the pros and cons of the political action and what happened. And yeah, I thought that's, that's actually a beautiful use of AI to keep things more like, balanced and not because the media we get in these echo chambers. I'm like, oh, I'm so mad. I don't ever see the other side. That's kind of a, uh, beautiful thing. So better informed decisions, more, I know, egalitarian, you know, content coming out, you know, so that we can make our decisions.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Giving you kind of both sides. And so when we're thinking about the content in organic Social and some of these others, you know, the first thought that I had was, this is brilliant. So we can start to put these competitive reviews within the social post themselves. You know, if I was doing marketing for the store, I would talk about the fact that we are newly built and we're bigger and it's better lighting and, you know, things like that, that you can make fun. You don't necessarily have to take and paste that Google review, but there's ways that you can use it for that organic AI SEO kind of content keyword mapping, if you will.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean that's, that's going to be the beautiful thing when the chief Marketing officer can understand the conversation that is happening across all the platforms. And so, you know, I think what social is really good at is like, these are the type of, you know, content pieces that get high engagement. Um, this is what we want to say, but, but on the SEO side, we're really good, really good with like, hey, here's where the transactional demand is. And these are the keywords that really hit. So what we do is like, you, you just hit it on the head. The content mapping, you got four pillar keywords, um, that you want to rank for. So let's say, um, accounting software for, you know, fintech. Um, and okay, that's really. So what are the conversations that are happening around that? And so if you want to rank, um, in or you want to be mentioned or have brand mentions or personal mentions in AI, you're going to have to cover a lot more of this content. Um, I don't think you have to do it with like thousands of blogs or web pages. We Just, just go deeper, go more specific, be niche, be new, be novel and just have very, very complete um, conversations. Use video. Video is awesome. And that's a social construct as well, or social medium as well. So you know, the AI can be trained on this video. It has all the transcription data, it's a language model so it absolutely understands what's going on. That, so if you can prove higher engagement, really, you know, put a sticky table of contents on there site references, be very specific, cite the author. That's huge. That's something people miss out all the time. Those sort of things are very basic, basic SEO. Um, but they can be driven in social now as well, which is really huge.

Speaker B: And I just want to go back and I'm just going to have a big banner over your head that says use a, or use video. Video is awesome. You know, that's one of the things that we're, we're constantly telling our clients is more video, more video. It proves you're you. Um, but you know, going back to the conversation of the content, one thing that we as marketers kind of always have to battle sales on is this gated content.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Sales demand gen. Everybody wants this gated content because they want to get these leads, whereas marketers want to say, hey, we've got content, everybody should be able to access it. So where does the gated content fit into this conversation?

Speaker A: Yeah, so anything you put in front of um, somebody to get their email, one, I say if you gate like informational content, that's not really, I don't count that as a conversion because then you have to warm it up and you have to lead score it. And I, I don't mix mixed feelings on, on how good you can move them from like, hey, I downloaded a white paper to now I want to buy a, you know, a $1 million enterprise piece of software. Like maybe. Yeah, I'm sure it happens. Um, but you know, we all. My friend who runs an agency here called Camp Social, great guy, but he um, you know, he says give up the ghost, give up the secret. And that's because that's what's going to make you valuable to the counterparty. Um, the other thing that's really important in that is just the way that you know, media buying or ah, any buying really is now happening. It's not so much the brand anymore, it's the influencers and stuff. So like as SEO people we always tell, we'll put your author on there and make sure that author has all their credentials and their experience and their Authority really documented. And that just plays over on the social side. Like are you a valuable member to Reddit? Are you a Valuable member to LinkedIn? Are you contrib, Are you adding, adding value back? That is what's going to get more conversions, that's what's going to get people. So I mean I ran sales teams, I've read marketing teams. I just, I never believed in gating content that much. If they want to give you the email because they want to buy, then they're ready to buy. And that's who I want to talk to. I don't want to have to qualify them. And so I don't know, I do think there are private equity backed salespeople or VP of sales that come in like pipeline. We got to get more pipeline and every, every, you know, conversions number, uh, in the pipeline. Well, eventually it's like, well pipeline's great, but where are sales? You know that only lasts for six months before you actually got to start closing deals. So I'd rather have more interested parties, parties coming in and giving me their email so I can actually have a conversation, add value to what they're trying to solve.

Speaker B: Yep, yep, Absolutely. Well and I think that that kind of brings um, up another unique challenge that we have. So we know the gated content, we know how everybody kind of feels about that. But then with that is we think about heavily regulated industries. Think health tech, fintech for instance. So how does that, and knowing that they have certain limitations as far as things that they can and cannot say, how does that feed into the SEO AI conversation? And what are some solutions that we as marketers can start to apply when thinking about having these conversations?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not going to overplug Shoroke, but that is um, something that we deal with and it's really not that hard. But like, so if you're working in health, so why, why myl. Your money, your anything around that Google's going to be very stringent upon. Right? There's. You can't say cure, you can't. You got to keep your financial data or anything you say around that has to be updated I think annually. So just knowing the rules and the policies, patient information, you know, student information, all of that that's protected. You just have to know those rules and then you have to um, apply the content appropriately and you got to keep it updated. The beautiful thing about AI is you can, you know, or even the tools that are out there, like screaming frog or um, you know, web server, like these tools are out there and they shouldn't be that hard. You can give it to an agency or you have someone on your team do it, but just to be, keep like just a record of all your content. What needs to be updated? I think, you know, just the only caveat is that, you know, Google or AI is going to have more stringent requirements on you and sometimes it's going to be a little harder to break in. So you just going to have to be patient with it, which is go back and, you know, blaze a new trail, say something new and different. So.

Speaker B: Yep, yep, I like that. And especially the idea of thinking about saying something new and different. You don't want to repeat what your competitors are saying. You're never going to be found. Right? Yeah. So before we kind of wrap up today, I know we've got some really good nuggets, but what is some, um, immediate, actionable advice that you would give to marketers watching this going, I'm not sure what to do with my SEO given AI conversations.

Speaker A: Yeah, you stole my thunder right before that. This is, this is the perfect one, is like, don't, don't follow your competitors. Don't you. If you feel like they're too far ahead, they're already ranking, you know, you're at number 11 and they're at number one for the same keyword. Like, like, don't bother. I mean like you can like work at a chop wood, but like find like the long tail keywords. Find the other opportunities of high conversion. Say something unique, which you didn't have to do an SEO, let's say, you know, a year ago, now you do, and now you got to be more, you got to be more involved on, um, um, you know, on social media platforms with the same message. So you got to figure out those pillars around what makes you unique. Um, it's okay if, if you're, if you have. I forget who, who coined the term. It's like the three uniques. I think that was Gino, Wickman and Traction. You know, you can have one unique that everyone copies, but if you got three uniques, that's harder to copy. So really understand what those three things that are unique about your firm, your point of view. It's got to be a little bit, it's got to visit some, uh, it's kind of, it's got to elicit some type of emotional reaction. It's got to be a little confrontational, a little bit in your face, those sort of things. That's the kind of content you want to get out there.

Speaker B: I Like it. And what do you think is an overlooked opportunity right now in B2B Reddit Discord?

Speaker A: I mean like these, these communities were, um, you know, back to Seth Goat again. Tribes, like it's always better to go down to smaller tribes. Like it never hurts. So if you can be a value added partner influencer on some of these, uh, social platforms, it doesn't have to be Reddit. Um, but you can't pitch there. You can't, you know, oversell there. You'll get booted out of the community. So why not just be a part of it and be a leader and add value, Help people that are having problems. That's the huge opportunity. The other is founders. Get your voice out there. Don't just don't rely on your brand. I, I think that's just really, people don't buy from brands anymore. They buy from people. They're looking for that in an AI world. They're looking for humans. Um, and don't just have one influencer. If you have subject matter experts, let's build them up. They got something to say too. Put them on video. Like I could set up the studio in my house for. I mean camera's the most expensive thing. That's probably a 1500 bucks. Everything else was under 100, $200. It's not that big of. So get out there and put your name on it and get your face out there and say something unique.

Speaker B: So I'm hearing exact social and influencer and subject matter experts which are both very much in my wheelhouse and areas that we love to talk about. So yes, and so we'll, we'll definitely take that and we'll add that as more snippets for us too from this episode.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Call Danielle. I mean I'm the guest on the podcast I'm supposed to be pitching, but you should call Danielle.

Speaker B: We can help you with that. But no, I, I do agree and I think that's a big part of it too. When you think about like just using our example earlier of some of these chat questions and the responses that we're getting. A lot of the information, if you check the source, it's not coming from the brand page. It's coming from something that the founder has posted. It's coming from something that the founder has quoted in a Far Farbes article or something. It's the very rarely coming from the brand page.

Speaker A: Yeah. From a keyword perspective. Like the tools are out there. Um, so two things. If you get in those conversations, you understand what the Demand is like, what are people talking about? What do they want? And that informs the type of keywords and the content you want to write, either on your blog or videos you want to make. YouTube's the second largest search engine in the world still, right? And it's owned by the largest search engine in the world. So you've got to be on those platforms. Um, and maximizing your keyword, key conversation strategy, your content, mapping across those platforms.

Speaker B: Yep, yep, I love it. That's fantastic. So Nick, before we let you go, is there anything that you're working on right now that you're particularly excited about?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so we do, um, something called a game plan. Uh, we've been doing it for a while, but it's um, it's, it's a full on audit. But we now really include like what are the brand mentions, what is AI saying about value and is actionable items? Um, it's not like, hey, one of these overviews you get on a sales pitch, it's literally like, hey, here's how you get from A to B. Um, if you feel like you want an agency to, you know, it's just a, it's just a project. And if you feel like you need somebody to work with, you know, for, for the long term on this, we're happy to do that. Or you can take it and you know, give it to your webmaster or your content people and fix it up yourself. So that's always fun. So we always like helping people with those game plans. They're great for us. Um, so just using our expertise to help people get off the dime, I love it.

Speaker B: And so how do we find you online, nick?

Speaker A: Uh, so shoke.com um x. I'm at Nick Shurok, uh, which I guess was available. And uh, we're not overly active. They're really active on LinkedIn. I'm probably the only Nick Franfelder on LinkedIn, so if you can spell it, you could probably find me. So that's, that's, that's probably the easiest.

Speaker B: That sounds good. Well, thank you Nick, so much. I think we probably could have this conversation every week and learn something every week. So very much appreciate you coming. I know this is top of mind for a lot of marketers, so we appreciate your insights and your objectivity here.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally forgot to mention we have a podcast too. I mean every, I don't know, every white guy over 40 has a podcast. So. But um, we are talking, we're doing uh, AI Companion for Shok. We do talk about the news stories and marketing and martech. What's changing and how it's impacting? Um, it goes down rabbit holes. Like, what's this mean to our society? We don't mean to do that, but we try to keep it. Keep it practical to the CMOs as well.

Speaker B: Rabbit holes are fun on a podcast. I mean, look at how many we went down today.

Speaker A: I loved it. It was fun. We'll have to. We'll have to love to do it again. Come on ours, if you don't mind.

Speaker B: There we go. There we go. Absolutely. Happy to. Well, thank you so much, Nick. We appreciate your time today. And, uh, go check out Shorok and go learn all the things about, uh, SEO for AI.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me. It was a blast. I really appreciate it.