The Truth About SEO & AI 🤖

Hello Reader,

The last thing I really want to do is use valuable newsletter space talking about AI and SEO. It's actually not the most interesting subject.

However! The more I see about what other folks say, the more I feel like I have a responsibility to provide clarity and facts to you all. I've heard too many horror stories this year, it really is truly upsetting.

So, let's break things down.

First, let's talk vocab.

1. SEO. This stands for search engine optimization and it means implementing a strategy to help your website show up when people search for specific topics. There are many aspects of this, and there are over 200 factors that lead to a page or post being displayed in Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and other search engines.

2. Ranking factor. These are the elements that contribute to whether or not your website is displayed in a search engine. No one ranking factor is the be all and end all of search. For example, you can have a slightly slower website and perform well because you have excellent content. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, we're looking at a whole marketing ecosystem here—not singular elements.

3. AEO/GEO/AIO. These are various acronyms for the same thing. Answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization, AI optimization, etc. I think I've seen seven or eight different terms used, and while there are very small differences in what people mean when they use those terms, for the average business owner, you can think of them as one in the same. The idea behind these terms is that there are specific techniques you need to use to have your website surface in generative AI software like ChatGPT.

4. Keyword. This is the word or phrase people type into search engines or chatbots when they're looking for answers. For example, if you're looking for tips on how to keep your dog from pulling on the leash, you may search in any of these tools for phrases like "How to stop leash pulling" "Do harnesses encourage pulling" "Why is my dog pulling on the leash" "Ideas for teaching loose leash walking" and the list goes on. Each one of these phrases is a keyword (I know, it's confusing because they're multiple words).

5. Generative AI. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content generated by learning patterns from a large amount of existing data. (This comes from websites, forums, and other sources that already exist on the internet.) It can generate various outputs, including text, images, code, and audio or video. This is not new, original content and it is not sentient. The output is, for lack of a better term, remixed from other sources. There are other types of AI, but for the purposes of our discussion, we'll be limited to discussing only genAI. Important: I often use the terms AI, genAI, and LLM (large language models) interchangeably, for better or worse.

There are other important terms, but for our discussion, this is a good start!

Next, let's talk the reality of generative AI searches right now.

Claim: ChatGPT is replacing traditional search engines.

Reality: Google searches increase when people use ChatGPT.

According to data from SEMRush, when people use ChatGPT, they end up using Google more. People who don't using ChatGPT conduct 10 Google Search sessions per week, while people who use this software 5 times per week, search in Google 12.5 times per week. This graphic illustrates this quite well.​

Correlation isn't causation, but I believe these two things are most likely interrelated.

Claim: People don't search anymore.

Reality: Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo have actually grown the average number of searches performed vs. years past.

This may seem like the same like a repetition of the claim above, but it's somewhat different in that it's a broader dataset. Most of these claims about the demise of search come from PR efforts, and I have to admit, it's been very effective PR at that. SparkToro digs into the numbers, but, contrary to the narrative we've seen, people are still searching—and searching more than ever.

Claim: You can block all AI from your website.

Reality: Unfortunately, right now, you cannot—but you can try.

I long-suspected, after doing some tests using both Squarespace and WordPress, that requests to block AI scraping were being ignored by some bad actors in that industry. But, I'm just one person with good analysis skills, and don't have access to comprehensive data on this.

​However, Cloudflare recently revealed that Perplexity, the Jeff Bezos-backed genAI chatbot and browser ignored their requests to not crawl sites. I suspect we'll hear more about this down the line. If you're concerned about copyright and AI (and you should be!), just know that there's no quick fix here, it's a complex situation and the effectiveness of requests to not crawl are reliant the developers of these bots to act ethically. Which they clearly are not.

Claim: Businesses should pivot to AI-first optimizations.

Reality: SEO and AI optimization are the same thing. No pivot needed.

I don't know how to be more clear about this, so I'm going to say it again: The techniques that help a website surface in search engines like Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and more are the same techniques that help your website surface in chatbots, LLMs, and other generative AI software. For example, my own website is served to people asking LLMs questions about my target keywords AND those same keywords surface my site on page one of Google. I have so many examples of this.

Claim: Use conversational content to improve reach in generative AI tools.

Reality: You should be doing this in a foundational SEO strategy anyway.

Somewhere along the way, fly by night companies that exploit cheap labor in lower income countries (sidebar: whenever I've worked with someone outside of my own country, I've paid them the same as I would someone in my own country—this is basic decency) started implementing cheap, high volume "SEO" and this resulted in robotic, low-conversion "search optimized" copy on websites. This created the perception that engaging copy and search-optimized copy were two different things. This is untrue and has never worked particularly well. Talk to humans in real human language, all the bots will be happy!

Claim: Stick an FAQ on every page of your website to do better with ChatGPT.

Reality: This is weird.

Listen, I love FAQs! I have a whole workshop on this subject! (Grab discounted access using the code OMGFAQ or learn more about it here.) There's a very good chance that you will improve your SEO by adding FAQs strategically to services pages and/or as standalone subject matter blog posts. Do this! It's a great lower-effort content strategy. However, folks are going WILD with this tactic, especially Squarespace users who've been prompted by the new SEO panel inside the platform to shoehorn an FAQ onto their homepages.

Claim: You can feed a chatbot the content of your website and then your website will be an answer when others use that chatbot.

Reality: This is a common scam run by online marketing grifters.

I've seen this scam a lot on meta apps in particular, typically from folks with no websites themselves and often who've emerged from nowhere without any reputation or experience behind them, and they often use obscure payment gateways or other setups for payment, which makes recourse difficult. Open AI and others have crawlers that visit websites regularly, and they look at the structure and content of your site just like Google and Bing's bots do.

Please, please, please do not pay someone do input your site into ChatGPT, Gemini, or other software. You would be better off buying a Powerball ticket than wasting your limited resources this way.

Claim: You need to "chunk optimize" your content to make it findable by Large Language Models.

Reality: This tactic is not really effective.

The content chunking tactic is one I've seen a lot, again on Meta-owned apps, and it's really misguided. The idea is that you break longer documents or pages or articles into smaller pieces and therefore generative AI will scan it and like it more. The reality is that every one of these pieces of software has different length parameters, and breaking your text into 50 or 150 word pieces has no influence on your performance. Don't sweat it—and definitely don't pay someone who claims that "chunking optimization" is the next big thing. Here's a good article if you want to read more about this.​

Claim: AI overviews increase clicks.

Reality: When Google's AI Overview appears in search results, the top-ranking page's average click-through rate (CTR) drops by 34.5%.

​AHrefs did an analysis of over 300,000 keywords and discovered that, despite claims otherwise, AI overviews reduces clicks to websites. While we don't have data about why, I believe it's fair to extrapolate that it's highly likely that searchers who rely on these overviews just want a quick answer and are not looking for deeper information.

From a marketing strategy standpoint, one could make the case that this increases the literal value of keywords that do not have AI overviews. I have been doing some experiments on my own website that supports this hypothesis, but it's just that, a hypothesis. I do, however, think there's brand value in surfacing in these overviews.

Claim: Clicks in search engines (aka what drives a lot of website traffic) are down.

Reality: This is true! (But it's complicated.)

This is where I think we should be focusing more attention. Some websites have seen significant traffic drops (here's a link with a ton of data), and that's useful information to have in our back pockets. My assertion has always been that traffic is a terrible goal. People love that metric for the same reason they love likes on Facebook: It's a quick dopamine hit that creates a feedback loop that you're on the right track. Except that's not what it tells you at all—that's just an emotional response that algorithms have trained our brains to have. Traffic numbers are literally just how much traffic you got on your website. There's not a lot if meaning there.

Better questions are around how long people stay on your site, how likely they are to take an action, and if they remember your brand. I actually love zero click searches in that they can be marvelous brand builders which facilitate people becoming familiar with your name and your expertise. As one expert put it, zero click does not mean zero sales—and I've definitely seen this in my own business.

I also don't see every single website having a decline in traffic—my own has increased year over year, but I've seen a significant increase in what I think of as niche traffic and niche searches bringing people to my site. This is something I'm keeping an eye on, because it's starting to feel very relevant.

Key Takeaways!

I know this is the longest newsletter I've sent in ages and ages. Thanks for sticking with me. I just really, really want you to have shielding when people land in your inbox with sweeping declarations or find their way into your Facebook feed with fear-mongering around generative AI and your website's viability. Here's what I'd love for you to remember:

• Google is still the dominate search engine and the number of searches in all the search engines is increasing.
• People seem to be using generative AI software and searches in tandem—it's not an either/or situation.
• If you're concerned about your website's visibility in generative AI software, focus on SEO fundamentals so you can get a double whammy of impact.
• "Zero click" is the bigger trend and savvy businesses will get strategic about how to leverage this reality to their advantage.

Before I end this ridiculously long newsletter, I wanted to draw attention to this statement from Rand Fiskin, previously the founder of Moz and current founder of Spark Toro:

This 100% parallels my current feelings on this issue as well. Looking at the data, operating from facts not vibes, that's the takeaway I'd like for you to carry with you more than anything else.

Onward & upward,

Sarah