Is GEO The New SEO? Optimizing For AI Search.

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, and today I am joined by Maurice White and Chris Harihar. Maurice is a leader for Mod Op and SEO, helping our clients optimize their content to increase discoverability. Chris leads our strategic communications and PR team.

[00:00:22] Tessa Burg: I’m so excited to jump into this topic. Thank you both for being here. This is gonna be a panel style episode today. Uh, before we jump in to GEO in this evolution of how people are learning more about products and services and brands, let’s start with having each of you introduce yourselves. Uh, Maurice, you wanna go first?

[00:00:43] Maurice White: Yep, absolutely. Um, Maurice White here. Um, I work as senior search strategist at Mod Op. Been with Mod Op for the past eight years. Um, have a background in technical project management and really been focusing in on search and SEO, uh, for the last six years or so.

[00:01:03] Tessa Burg: Awesome,

[00:01:04] Chris Harihar: Awesome. Uh, yeah, I, I’m Chris Harihar I’m, uh, EVP of Strategic Communications at Mod Op.

[00:01:10] Chris Harihar: And, uh, I have over, I have roughly 15 years in the space, uh, working with large, uh, enterprise technology clients and, and customers. Um, and yeah, we’re, you know, we’re very focused on helping them with earned visibility. And increasingly that means helping clients, uh, show up, not just in traditional media, of course, but in emerging discovery environments with large language models and generated AI search being one of them. And so, yeah, really excited about the opportunity to have this conversation today.

[00:01:43] Tessa Burg: So, before we begin, some people might be listening and maybe they have not heard about the phenomenon of GEO. So Maurice, can you help by giving us a definition of what that means?

[00:01:56] Maurice White: Yeah. Uh, GEO or generative engine optimization is a practice where you want be able to optimize your website content in order to be able to return in a response from an LLM like Perplexity or ChatGPT or Claude. Uh, so it’s all about being able to deliver answers because that’s one of the things people are using LMS for, really the main thing, is they have a question that they would like answer. So GEO is being able to optimize your website’s content to appear in those answers within the LLM.

[00:02:37] Chris Harihar: Yeah. And, and just to add to that, what, what’s great to have Maurice and myself on for this conversation is because he’s talking about the website and then for us on the PR side, we’re talking more about third-party media, uh, and, and, uh, earned visibility and publications, um, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, or whoever it might be, or more niche, uh, trade media.

[00:02:59] Chris Harihar: And so really if you’re looking at. Like the, the range of media that exists. Um, you know, we, there’s this broader range of media that allows you to, to better be represented in, you know, in generative search. Um, and making sure that you’re optimized for those environments. So it’s making sure that obviously, that you have your own assets optimized, like your website, um, but also making sure that you have.

[00:03:26] Chris Harihar: You know, you’re optimized, uh, by having, by being represented in other publications and other media, which also contribute and inform, contribute to, and inform, um, what, uh, large language models are saying about you or questions that are relevant to your, uh, customers as they search for, you know, uh, partners to work with.

[00:03:48] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think it’s interesting because as we were talking about before we started the call. GEO, much like the start of SEO is like a black box. So Chris, starting with you, when you are approaching this from a PR standpoint, what are some of the things you’re taking into consideration to either select the right websites or optimize the copy and content to maximize that visibility for the client’s PR efforts?

[00:04:17] Chris Harihar: Yeah, it’s really fascinating because there’s not really like a clear set of best practices. To your point, these are black box models and ChatGPT, for example, has its own model. Uh, Claude or Anthropic has their own model. And so I, I think ultimately the same rules apply from like an SEO perspective in that you want to create high-value content.

[00:04:41] Chris Harihar: Um, you want to make sure that you’re appearing in places that are relevant for your audiences. Um, and you want to make sure that you’re having a wide range of content. So it’s not just, you know, doing one type of content. You want to have Q&As. You want to have, uh, white papers that are searchable.

[00:04:59] Chris Harihar: You wanna make sure that you’re creating fresh and regularly updated content, uh, you know, in the, in, in a broad way. Because ultimately it’s not, again, it’s not entirely clear what always works. And so I think we’re in this really interesting moment where. Um, experimentation and measurement is incredibly important and, and, and just testing things and trying to like, you know, for, for some of our clients, we’re actually going into these platforms and asking them questions that we think a customer would ask so that we could better understand, uh, what the output is from the large language model so that that can factor into our thinking about where we wanna be.

[00:05:42] Chris Harihar: Feature from a PR perspective. So for example, if the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal are more represented in the, you know, in the results when we’re looking, you know, when we’re using these platforms, um, maybe we want to over index it there, or you know, depending on how niche. The, the vertical might be that the customer is in, maybe the LLMs are surfacing more content from niche and trade publications.

[00:06:09] Chris Harihar: And so we wanna make sure that we’re documenting that and logging that. So we’re better represented there. So it really ranges, you know, depending on a whole host of factors. And there’s not, again, there’s not a ton of clarity right now, so I do think we’re just in this. Awkward, but fun sort of experimentation and testing phase where we’re trying to really like uncover for each client what makes the most sense.

[00:06:31] Chris Harihar: Um, and you know, it’s still early days. I think there are gonna be some like, you know, bumps and bruises, uh, as we work on that. Um, and there’s no magic bullet. But I do think that many of the same, you know, best practices that apply to just traditional SEO will apply here. But it’s just, you know, a lot of testing to sort of figure out what works best.

[00:06:53] Tessa Burg: I think in your process, what I found really interesting, one, there’s a big similarity to the early days of SEO. That’s exactly what I remember doing. Keyword research was against, well, what kinds of questions are your clients asking? And we would have people, especially salespeople, tell us, well, this is what they say when they’re in the consideration stage, and we go through the whole journey.

[00:07:15] Tessa Burg: So I love that you’re taking some of that discoverability and. You mentioned that you look at what websites actually get listed, and that’s sort of a signal that the LLM might value that website’s content over others, or they might be doing something that similar publications are not in regards to how they deliver content in an efficient way for the LLM to understand.

[00:07:44] Tessa Burg: So, Maurice, I’m curious though, because it’s pretty rare. When I’m using an LLM that I see a company’s website cited. So when we think about how we take GEO into consideration for optimizing a single company’s website, what are you doing or what do you think people need to consider to increase their discoverability?

[00:08:09] Tessa Burg: Can they decrease their, increase their discoverability in LLMs?

[00:08:15] Maurice White: Absolutely. Um, companies can definitely increase their, uh, visibility in LLMs. I second Chris’s sentiment that, you know, optimizing for LLM really breaks down to fundamental SEO practices, understanding search intent, understanding how your content can be helpful to your visitors answering questions, right?

[00:08:38] Maurice White: So in doing.

[00:08:46] Maurice White: Research and understanding how LLMs, one of the most important, uh, factors is being cited in other content, right? Mm-hmm. So not necessarily, like traditionally in SEO you would think of backlinks where you’ll have a link from an authoritative site that links back to your website showing that your content is the authority on that particular subject.

[00:09:07] Maurice White: For generative optimization or LLMs, having your brand mentioned in an authoritative piece of content is enough to get their eyes on your particular, you know, brand and services. Then with regards to optimizing your website, having a summary of what you are talking about at the top of the page, really optimizing to have content that is recognized by the, uh, LLM, content that they could quote, right.

[00:09:38] Maurice White: So being able to answer questions within your content, having FAQ sections, having structured data, having other cited content cited, sources that you know proves the factuality of your content, and depending on the industry or services, including statistical data. Other data points within the content that when the LMS are reading the content, first of all, they’re taking a look at the structured data, making sure fundamental SEO is in place, right?

[00:10:07] Maurice White: Secondly, they’re looking to see the relevancy. Is it answering the question that’s being queried? Is there a depth of knowledge and expertise, right? Your traditional EEAT with search, so optimization and visibility is. It’s all about how you structure your content and being able to answer those questions in a concise way that can then be picked up by the lms and then, you know, shown to the inquiry.

[00:10:37] Maurice White: Because as you and yourself, Chris mentioned, when we’re speaking directly to B2B, the searchers already have their mind made up on what they’re gonna go with. They’re looking for all, you know, supporting documentation or supporting queries to support their decision. That’s what the LMS are returning answers to their questions.

[00:10:56] Maurice White: So if you’re able to structure your content in a way that answers those questions, you’ll be visible. But the first thing is having your brand cited in other content, not necessarily linking back to your website, but because your brand is being mentioned, it’s given the LLMs that signal like, Hey, we should go to them to see how we can respond to.

[00:11:21] Chris Harihar: What Maurice just said is, is really fascinating because I think it, it also highlights the shift that we’re seeing in the model overall, which is quite a significant shift. I mean, before SEO was optimizing so that your website appeared at the top of a ranking, now we’re shifting to something entirely different where the goal is ultimately to inform the model’s training data.

[00:11:46] Chris Harihar: Uh, or reinforce citations in real-time lookups so that you’re better represented ultimately in, uh, in the response to a, a, a direct question. So it’s such a, you know, fundamental shift in terms of the way that we’re behaving with discovering content. It’s really kind of fascinating because I think before Almo, and I could be wrong about this for sure, Maurice checked me on this.

[00:12:13] Chris Harihar: If, if this is not the case. But I, I feel like before. Like content obviously was important, but there was, you know, technical wizard wizardry that was also really fundamentally necessary in order to be like, you know, high, you know, surfacing where you needed to be in serp. Now it feels like content is so fundamental and even more important than it was before because you have to, you have to basically showcase topical authority on a number of things.

[00:12:42] Chris Harihar: In order to be relevant and to appear, and who knows what search is, you know

[00:12:48] Maurice White: mm-hmm.

[00:12:48] Chris Harihar: That are related to your buyer, your, your buyer’s journey. Um, and so it’s, it’s really fascinating. You also have to really think like a customer and search like a customer in order to experiment and figure out the best, you know, way to be represented in, in, in, you know, geo and, and, and, uh, generative AI search.

[00:13:10] Chris Harihar: It’s kind of fascinating when you think about it ’cause it’s like, it’s completely different. And actually I saw this staff from SimilarWeb, uh, that they tweeted earlier today or, or posted, posted on X, I don’t know if tweet’s still the word, but, um, six months ago ChatGPT, uh, in turn in terms of, um, general AI traffic share up.

[00:13:31] Chris Harihar: It was a general AI traffic share update. Chatt 86%, uh, 86.7%. Google 6.2%. Uh, today we’re looking at ChatGPT 80%, uh, deep seek 6.5%, Google, 5.6% GR 2.6. It’s like so diverse and varied now, and it goes to show like a lot of that, a lot of that’s happening because folks are using these other platforms for search, you know?

[00:13:56] Chris Harihar: Mm-hmm. So there’s like a lot of fragmentation in market and I don’t know, and like to, to plan and prepare for all of these. It’s, it’s hard, you know, it’s, that’s where. We hopefully come in to help you know, customers so that they can better sort of, you know, so that they can have stewardship of, you know, these platforms and be better represented.

[00:14:17] Chris Harihar: But it, it’s, it’s difficult right now. So you do need partners.

[00:14:20] Maurice White: Yep. And um, just to kind of add to that, I mean, you are right, it’s very fascinating. Like we’re transitioning from traditional search, which is a ranking engine to this generative search, which is an answer engine. So Google has been, you know, they’ve been releasing helpful content updates over the last several years.

[00:14:40] Maurice White: The semantic indexing all of these different tools to kind of lead us into this, right? Because Google has also been testing generative responses for several years now, and content. Is the focus, how you structure that content and the technical wizardry doesn’t go away. Like you do have to have your site set up technically for SEO, your tech stack, your performance, your on page content structure along with your keyword research and traditional things.

[00:15:09] Maurice White: But now it’s all about marrying certain content. You feel me, with answers about your services and products. Right. You know what I mean? And that’s really what the people are searching for deeper levels of information and the LMS are able to parse that information and surface those answers a lot faster.

[00:15:30] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point. That is an answer engine. And when you take the technical wizardry and you layer it over. How well you understand buyers’ questions, what they need to make a decision, where their blockers are. It makes it easier for the LLM to pick it up. It also, I hope, in my heart of hearts, prevents people from using Gen AI to just create more content.

[00:16:01] Tessa Burg: Thinking that that is going to be the thing that levels up their credibility. Like I could see some marketers being like, oh, I heard Maurice say FAQs, and that’s gonna be an answer engine. Let’s take everything we’ve gotten out of our chat bot service, throw it into ChatGPT and have it spit out as many FAQs as possible like that, uh, would be a great starting point maybe, but I think you, like marketers need to understand that.

[00:16:31] Tessa Burg: At least from some of the testing I’ve done, I’ve not seen where quantity and flooding has resulted in increased visibility, and I even wonder if it could hurt, like the thing that the LLMs are trying to do or doing pretty well from what I can see. That Google always had as a mission is quality. They want the highest quality, the most credible content to be the top.

[00:16:57] Tessa Burg: And I think that if you get way too broad and if you do way too much, you’re almost giving this signal of we’re not credible.

[00:17:04] Maurice White: That’s absolutely correct. Uh, Tessa, and that’s why cited content is important to the LLM. The authority of your content, right? The quality of your content is also important. It’s not about, like you say, how much, uh, content you can put out there, but is it helpful for your visitors?

[00:17:23] Maurice White: Is it answering their questions? Is it helping them in their decision-making process to do business with you? Right? So it is really important on the quality of your content to be able to, you know, uh, have that human touch within your content.

[00:17:37] Chris Harihar: And what’s, what’s kind of fascinating, and sometimes the complexity is more fascinating than the answers.

[00:17:43] Chris Harihar: Uh, and that’s where I end, end up finding myself quite a bit. So forgive me if, if, if that’s where I focus here. But like the, the example of Google for instance, uh, Google has a legacy search business where the search business likely informs what occurs with Gemini and some of the more generative AI search functionality.

[00:18:06] Chris Harihar: That could be quite different from somebody like a ChatGPT, who doesn’t necessarily have that legacy search business, but might have a paid partnership or relationship with certain media outlets, certain listing platforms like Yelp and others. And so it goes to show that there’s so much complexity here and optimizing for everything.

[00:18:31] Chris Harihar: Is difficult. Um, and so you have to have really sort of this like full toolkit in place to make sure that you’re considering that the variety and the menu that is out there and, you know, creating content and, and demonstrating topical authority while applying that, you know, technical knowhow from an SEO perspective.

[00:18:53] Chris Harihar: To everything that you’re doing so that you can hopefully appear in the broadest search down in the more, more, you know, specific searches. And, um, so it’s, it’s really, you know, fascinating to think about how challenging it is for a marketer today, you know, to, to, and, and you don’t have insight into like whether or not you know, you, how you appeared in, in what searches in ChatGPT for example.

[00:19:20] Chris Harihar: So it’s, it’s like, it’s very difficult. Um, because there’s no real transparency on that other end. And so you have to kind of optimize for a whole host of use cases and platforms and, you know, that investment can sometimes be considerable. Um, but you, you almost have to do it for now until there’s more clarity on the other side, you know?

[00:19:42] Chris Harihar: And so, um, uh, that’s why it’s, you know, it’s incredibly important, I think, just broadly and comprehensively about all of this stuff right now.

[00:19:52] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. I remember back in the day when I worked on e-commerce websites, a couple of the businesses, um, that I worked on and then was a part of our total revenue was entirely dependent on our SEO traffic, like we were built and spent a lot of our time optimizing content for traffic.

[00:20:12] Tessa Burg: And do you remember like Google would do these big updates and if we dropped. Immediately sales went down, and that was such a scary place to be. Where the good thing is with this shift, you know, LLMs don’t quote, and what you are proposing is make quotable material to get discovered. But at the same time, if you are so dependent on SEO traffic.

[00:20:44] Tessa Burg: There might also be an opportunity to start creating more quotable content at the top of the funnel so that people are looking for you and coming to you for your brand expertise for the value that you bring. And, but I do, I sometimes get, like, I’m curious about what’s gonna happen with some of those companies that were so dependent on the SEO traffic as really their, their primary driver of sales.

[00:21:11] Chris Harihar: And even if you take company out of it and put publisher in, like if you were a legacy publisher, you are incredibly scared right now because. You rely, you have relied on. And many publishers rely solely off of SEOI mean, like they, not everybody has the brand recognition or reputation or the audience of that, or loyal, loyal audience of a New York Times or a Forbes or whatever.

[00:21:36] Chris Harihar: Uh, and so they’re, you know, hundreds of thousands of publishers, most likely that are just, you know, we’re really relying on SEO and they know now that that’s not gonna be a, as a reliable. You know, means to traffic anymore. And so they have to diversify and companies need to think the same way.

[00:21:56] Chris Harihar: Interestingly, it can vary in terms of what customer or what, uh, in terms of, uh, I’m sorry. What company or brand needs to really like, focus on, on GEO? You know, for example, if you were McDonald’s or Starbucks or a large multi-location, you know, brand that has a lot of brick and mortar businesses.

[00:22:16] Chris Harihar: Traditional search is still gonna be very important for you, and listings are still gonna be very important for you because, you know, I, I would trust Google Maps, you know, in searching on Google, traditional Google for like the Starbucks near me, or H&M near me. And that’s a use case that I don’t know will be co-opted, you know, by, uh, ChatGPT, or other AI search services.

[00:22:41] Chris Harihar: Um, soon I think that that will remain for a while. Um. So it’s fascinating to think about the use cases and like the companies that, uh, are, are gonna be most affected, you know, by the, the shift and, you know, figure out from there which ones have to diversify how, you know, audience development essentially, and traffic development.

[00:23:02] Chris Harihar: So it’s kind of fascinating to think about it that way as well.

[00:23:05] Maurice White: Yeah. And I also, um, think that’s an interesting point, uh, Tessa because it opens up the opportunity like Chris is, Chris is mentioning to diversify into other marketing mediums like working hand in hand between PR and SEO, where PR builds brand authority gets your name out there and brand mentions.

[00:23:26] Maurice White: Get making it visible for you, not only just in lms, but in traditional search. Right. So I think it’s the opportunity to, you know, work together with PR and other marketing mediums to kind of shift that focus from a hundred percent SEO to now we have other medium driving clients higher in the funnel.

[00:23:45] Maurice White: And the SEO was closing the field down below, right? Like there’s many ways.

[00:23:49] Chris Harihar: And that’s such a good point by Maurice, because ultimately generative AI search or search. There is like some degree of like in market ness by the customer. They’re like looking for something potentially, and you, you hope to be relevant enough to be surfaced.

[00:24:05] Chris Harihar: Ultimately, like pull marketing is, is evolving as we know, and it makes push marketing even more important. Um, and push marketing, you know, that could be PR, it could be, you know, uh, you know, ensuring that you’re appearing in incredible. News, media, newsletters, you know, so like push marketing also obviously includes social amplification, influencer amplification.

[00:24:28] Chris Harihar: Um, and so push marketing is even more important I think, in this, uh, AI era. Uh, and if fewer people are searching, you know, ultimately in the traditional sense, um, then your brand needs to show up sort of uninvited in the right places. And that’s where, you know, PR in particular I think is useful. Uh, while also.

[00:24:47] Chris Harihar: Benefiting, you know, you by informing the, the dataset that the LLMs are trained on.

[00:24:53] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I could not agree more. We were just on a call yesterday with an analyst from Forrester and there will be a study coming out on this concept of the need to shift to preference marketing, and there was a lot of conversation on, well, it’s doing the same thing marketers have always wanted to do.

[00:25:12] Tessa Burg: Show up at the right place, right time with the right message. Four people sitting in the seat of being measured on. How many email addresses do I get? What’s the conversion rate on my website? I’m managing paid search. What’s my click-through rate? This is a massive, massive shift. When I was in more of the manager seats, I remember the CEO of our company.

[00:25:38] Tessa Burg: Wanting to cut all brand marketing and reallocate the budget just to paid search because it more aligned with our goals and that being closing conversion and sales and attribution management was just emerging at the time. And so we were trying to show this analysis of like, well, if we only do bottom funnel, that funnel will dry up.

[00:26:02] Tessa Burg: And this new research coming out says. That bottom funnel isn’t as big as everyone thinks it is. And in fact, senior-level decision makers have already made up their mind, especially in B2B, who they’re gonna go with what vendor. And we have spent a lot of time as marketers and attribution and conversion optimization in intent targeting.

[00:26:28] Tessa Burg: And I think that that is still important. But Chris, to your point with LLMs. Clearly being a huge part of the buyer journey. Now with cookies going away with analytics, getting a little fuzzier, it’s so important to have the presence at the top and to start to really think about influencer influencing the buying network and the buying group and what those programs look like at more top of funnel on both sides of the business.

[00:27:02] Chris Harihar: Hundred percent. Uh, you know, so like, you know, ultimately, uh, PR is really fascinating to me because it’s top of the funnel and now because of, well, because of search always, but, you know, because of generative AI search, it’s also bottom of the funnel in that it’s, it’s helping you as you’re deeper in your journey.

[00:27:22] Chris Harihar: And, and it could surface, you know, an article about a, a company that I work with, for example. Uh, as the answer, you know, uh, to a question that somebody has. So it is really important to, to not think in a silo or think in a way that’s limiting, where you’re only gonna focus on that bottom of the funnel piece.

[00:27:43] Chris Harihar: Topical authority. Is wide ranging and requires being present at the top of the funnel as well, and making sure that you are appearing and relevant to your buyers well before they’ve made up their, their mind, or, you know, have a, have a decision in mind ultimately on who they wanna partner with. B2B is, is, you know, even more complicated just because the buyer journey is increasingly flat. To your point, Tessa, like, these folks are very savvy and sophisticated decision makers. They use AI search, uh, and AI tools more than other folks. I think ultimately, when they’re considering how to, how to buy and how to invest in something and how to invest in a platform, a partner, and, um, you know, it, it’s, it’s incredibly important to make sure that you’re.

[00:28:30] Chris Harihar: Catching their attention well before they’ve got to that point. And that’s where top of the funnel comes in, into play. And that’s why PR is incredibly important, again, to making sure that you’re, um, you’re, you’re, you’re pushing not just being represented when there’s poll going on.

[00:28:45] Tessa Burg: Maurice, do you have anything to add maybe around how you see that trend even impacting the role of the website or the type of content that.

[00:28:55] Tessa Burg: Marketers may start focusing on, on websites to get that more top of funnel influence and perhaps even a landing destination for, I would say even like webinars or thought leadership, like where, where are they operating? Where can the website play a role in this more preference oriented approach?

[00:29:18] Maurice White: Absolutely. Um, you know, as we’ve been mentioning, having structured and fact-driven content on your website that’s providing answers will be able to help you gain that visibility, you know, um, being able to. Keep track of your sighted sources, the citations your brand mentions, understanding your visibility in the, I think is also important.

[00:29:44] Maurice White: Um, but as far as the website content, again, like, I mean, just to keep on reiterating. That helpful content on your website that’s structured in a way that’s answer questions, that’s cited or citing sources. Fact content is hundred percent.

[00:30:04] Chris Harihar: Yeah. And I don’t know if this fits into the, to this question necessarily, but for one client today, for example, they put out a large research report that, uh, is largely, it’s a white paper, it’s gated.

[00:30:17] Chris Harihar: Um, and that has challenges from like an SEO perspective. Uh, and from an AI search perspective, when you’re thinking about, uh, whether or not that. Content can inform an LLM. Well, one of the recommendations we made, because it was helpful from a PR perspective in terms of engaging journalists, was let’s take snippets of the content out and create a series of shorter blog posts around those topics so that we can have, you know, uh, easier conversations with press because they don’t wanna read an entire 30 page report.

[00:30:48] Chris Harihar: Each reporter has a very, you know, specific focus and they wanna, you know, have data that’s relevant to that focus. And so we’ve, we’ve carved out this series of blog posts that’s helpful to engage with the journalist. But I would also say that it’s helpful from an SEO and geo perspective because now if a, somebody’s searching for these specific things or, or questions related to these specific things, then they will also get served.

[00:31:15] Chris Harihar: The, the LLM is being informed by those blog posts. So it’s, it’s funny because we’ve, I haven’t even thought about it until now, but I would recommend that to any client moving forward. These, you know, PDF white paper, uh, doesn’t make sense. In this new normal, where everybody’s using SEO, uh, everyone’s using, uh, AI search.

[00:31:35] Chris Harihar: You want to have, you wanna make sure that you’re represented in these MLMs and, and cutting it up. Makes a lot of sense. And we actually use AI to build out the content for the blog posts. And we also used AI to create the imagery for some of the blog posts. And so it was kind of fascinating to think about how, uh, it’s, it’s AI is supporting, you know, each side.

[00:31:59] Chris Harihar: AI helps you come up with great content. It shouldn’t be the only thing that you’re using because then it becomes un, it’s not differentiated in a way that I think would be rewarded by. Search platforms or the AI platforms. But, um, it’s, it’s helpful to think about sort of how you can use AI as a, as a fuller toolkit to help you be represented in search, you know, um, and, uh, with content creation, again, you don’t wanna create AI slop, you wanna create thoughtful content of that.

[00:32:28] Chris Harihar: Is supportive of your audience and customer’s journey. Um, but there’s a lot of value in having these AI tools that can help you, you know, um, with content in a way that you otherwise could. Like we couldn’t have done eight blog posts, uh, in a week with art, you know, a year ago in the way that we are now.

[00:32:46] Maurice White: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it’s also important, you know, when using AI-generated content is that it’s fact-driven, like that human touch, right. You know, so, um, you, going back to your question, Tessa, you know, working with PR to gain brand visibility, gain that authority, um, optimizing your website with fact-driven structured content that’s concise.

[00:33:09] Maurice White: You know what I mean? Summarizing the content, answering questions, including FAQs where needed, right? Most importantly, having cited sources for your content. Again, uh, you know, related in authority, right? Can help gain visibility as this trend shifts, right? They’re, we’re not just saying, talking about Google and optimizing search for Google, but you also gotta optimize for the responses and LLMs, which could be across search engines.

[00:33:40] Maurice White: So for example, prop sites most often beam content, right? So like there’s the fundamental search values that still need to be applied to. Working in a non-traditional manner, working with PR, working with paid media, creating a full, you know, focus on your market versus working with just one medium I think is important in the trend here as well.

[00:34:06] Tessa Burg: Yeah. So we are actually almost at time, you guys just unlocked, like another thought that I had that I’m just gonna throw in before we wrap up. And that is, you’ve mentioned how important it’s to really better understand your audience, how important it’s to have fact and high-quality answers, and to anticipate and get into that consideration set and that preference set before they start the buy cycle.

[00:34:30] Tessa Burg: And that is also, you know, we talked about how, you know, end of funnel, closed funnel might not be as robust. It’s gonna be harder, uh, it’s not going to generate the type of growth. That you want. Maybe it, it could be limiting, but one thing that I have found super valuable is you can use. The results that you’ve gotten from past campaigns, you can use your existing audience data and we, you know, we internally we use the brand agent.

[00:34:59] Tessa Burg: Um, put it through either an agent that you’ve built or a GPT that you’ve built, and start to pull out those segments and start to use AI to analyze where did they start, what were those triggered, what were those upfront questions? So I didn’t. I know that, you know, we said, and we all agreed, we still need to do bottom funnel stuff, but also say people might not know, they’re like sitting on a landmine of insights that they can start to pull forward to get some of those facts.

[00:35:32] Tessa Burg: And something that just machine learning does so well is pull out patterns. So if you are sitting there like, how do I get these facts? You may actually be an expert in some of the behaviors of your audience. You can start if you analyze that data extracting and pushing up to the top of the funnel as part of that content strategy.

[00:35:54] Maurice White: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that, Tessa. I think having a strong content strategy when you’re thinking about optimizing for LLMs or even search in general, is very important. Creating content that’s within that top in middle of the funnel to be able to provide that informative layer to provide answers to those questions.

[00:36:14] Maurice White: Driving then down to the bottom of the, uh, funnel content, the conversion content, right. So you’re absolutely right to focus solely on the bottom funnel content solely is you’re missing an opportunity to expand your reach, expand your search visibility, and then be able to, you know, provide informative information to help the buyer along or your visitor along that conversion journey.

[00:36:39] Chris Harihar: Yeah. We’re often so focused on like the end result of AI that we, we don’t think thoughtfully about the fact that these tools have made it so much easier.

[00:36:50] Chris Harihar: To analyze incredibly vast data sets, uh, and, and extract patterns in the way that you described Tessa. And so it’s really, you know, it, it, it’s a, it’s a scary time, but it’s a great time to really, uh, be in marketing, um, because you could just do things in ways that you otherwise just only dreamed of like three years ago, you know?

[00:37:10] Chris Harihar: So it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, a fun time for sure. And in SEO it’s, it’s, it’s. We’re in this foundational moment, I mean, and in PR as well, we’re in this foundational moment, I expect in a few years, you know, clients will say, we’d actually only wanna be in this list of publications, and that could be based entirely off of what appears in, uh, an AI search.

[00:37:32] Chris Harihar: Right. And so it’s, it’s, you know, um, kind of interesting to think about, scary to think about, but, uh, I’m glad we’re, we’re like first movers on this versus being laggards For sure.

[00:37:45] Tessa Burg: Well before we end, um, what’s one more takeaway or one thing you’re looking forward to as it relates to anything really in AI or GEO for this year?

[00:37:57] Tessa Burg: And Maurice, I’ll let you start.

[00:38:04] Maurice White: I guess the biggest takeaway is educating clients and potential clients on the importance. Helpful content, right? Being able to provide the information that people are looking for about your product or services in a concise way that helps them along that user journey. I think, you know, again, I’m probably gonna say this and so I’m blue.

[00:38:28] Maurice White: Uh, helpful content is really the key here, along with working with pr, having a.

[00:38:41] Maurice White: Everybody continues to stick to fundamental search values. As their content strategy strengthens, they’ll gain more visibility. So, um, I think that’s super important.

[00:38:54] Chris Harihar: Yeah. And for me, just the intersection of PR and SEO, uh, that, that’s really interesting for me. And we’re doing much more of that in this new AI landscape because it’s really important to have more content.

[00:39:09] Chris Harihar: Of course to inform LLM models, um, and also to have a wealth of third-party content, you know, making sure it’s, it’s more important because it’s funny, a year ago I was thinking like, will PR matter as much if folks are primarily going to an LLM and asking them what the best answer is for something? Um, now I’m finding that it just matters more because, uh, you know, you want to be in the dataset ultimately.

[00:39:39] Chris Harihar: And, um, and so it’s, it’s funny to, to see sort of PR and SEO intersecting more than I think it ever has in the past. And I think like if there was one big takeaway for anybody, it’s really, if you’re not in the model’s memory, you’re not in the buyer’s journey. I think that’s really important and that’s the best way to think about it when you’re, you consider how to optimize for these platforms.

[00:40:01] Maurice White: Yeah. And also I’d like to add one last thing. Cause like this shift to generative AI is really important to understand that you’re not optimizing for visibility, but being a trusted answer, right? So focusing on credibility, focusing on PR integration will help ensure you’re not just found by the LLMs but by search overall. So I think it’s really important there.

[00:40:27] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think that is a great way to end, and I know just from this conversation. In the back of my mind, I started getting lots of different ideas on how to develop content to get those trusted answers. You know, whether it be from events you’re hosting, interviews you’re doing internally, I think there is an opportunity for marketers to get really creative and produce high, valuable, useful content.

[00:40:50] Tessa Burg: Get a better understanding of your audience so that you can be assured. You will be in that M’s. Memory. So thank you both for joining us today. If you wanna hear more episodes of Leader Generation, you can visit us at modop.com, click on the Van Guardian, or scroll down to the bottom of podcast. We’re also on any podcast, uh, channel that you listen to or use for your other podcast.

[00:41:15] Tessa Burg: Chris and Maurice, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:41:18] Chris Harihar: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[00:41:20] Maurice White: Yep. Anytime. Thanks, Tessa. Bye everybody.

[00:41:23] Tessa Burg: Bye. Until next time.