John Mueller from Google had Danny Sullivan from Google on the Search Off the Record podcast to talk about "Thoughts on SEO & SEO for AI."
In short, they both said SEO for AI is the same as SEO for traditional search but then they got into it.
You should really build out great, unique, and original content for end users. Sure, there may be shortcuts that pop up, like with SEO, but those won't last. So your best bet is to create original content. People also want authentic content.
Also, don't just focus on textual content but also video, audio, visual, and other formats.
In fact, Danny Sullivan said he feels that AI for SEO, GEO or whatever you want to call it, should be under SEO, as a subset of SEO.
Here is the 37-minute part one recording:
I took notes on this and posted it yesterday on X but I figured I'd post them here as well:
- Traditional SEO is the same as optimization for AI Search
- If anything, GEO/AIO, etc would be a subset of SEO, under SEO
- "it is still SEO" but the format is different
- Still, don't worry about SEO, write for users
- I do SEO but my clients are saying, I need the new stuff. So if you need to "dress it up" more, you should say the long term strategy is the same as it was with SEO.
- Just because the format is changing, doesn't mean you need to change what you do.
- Technical SEO is built into most CMS platforms now
- So just focus on the content these days
- Old days of SEO, you would make a version for each search engine but they werent that different
- So the effort was not worth it
- Over time, the differences became less
- So stop focusing on specific search engines and on the user
- With AI, focus on originality of your content (not new, not new for AI or SEO but...)
- LLMs/AI systems are doing a good job of covering non-original content
- Every year, publishers would create an article on "What time does the Super Bowl start" and this is something AI can do and is not original
- People are seeking original content; videos, podcasts, first hand experience from forums
- Expert takes should include this too
- These are things to consider
- Authentic content can't be artificially created
- Does your content resonate with people (like what Danny sees on social media from who he follows)
- The core is you are authentic to people who follow you, because you are simply authentic he added
- Danny Sullivan hates the term "Multimodal", he doesn't like using that term to explain it
- Instead, you search one way and get a response back another way
- So maybe start to do more content in more formats, not just text, but video, audio, etc
- How do you know if you are succesful in AI formats?
- It is not just about clicks; it is about quality clicks/conversions
- With these new formats, people are "more engaged"
- We know "the time of visits," people are spending more time on those pages
- AI formats are better at getting people to know what they are going to click on
- Query fan out: John Mueller says it does a whole bunch of searches for you, so you don't have to
- It then puts all that into an AI answer
- AI Mode gives you a lot more context and you end up where you want to be
- So maybe the clicks you got in traditional search were not as good as AI search clicks
- AI formats feel good to searchers, because you search more the way you want to search
- It is like you go to a library and you ask the librarian a question and then the librarian asks you questions to dig into what you really want
- Danny Sullivan gives examples of using geo and search trends on Google today
- Tracking needs to improve for AI Search
- Including changes to Search Console
- So site owners can understand what they are being found for and should they adjust their content
- But search engines are smarter and can figure out your content, so you don't need to do this anymore
Forum discussion at X.
