[00:00:00] JT: it's not long until I'm scrolling through my LinkedIn feed that I find out that SEO is dead. To my surprise, [00:00:06] Aleyda: Again. [00:00:07] SEO is yet again, evolving as The principles, in SEO remain, Also in AI search, You need to also allow AI crawlers to, access, to crawl, your content, the validation that you need to, take action on, your hosting or your CDN is a little bit different because the user agents are different as well. [00:00:26] the ability for Google to index our content, they are very sophisticated at it, and they render JavaScript with challenges. Of course, when this is done at scale and depending on the scenario. But the reality is that AI crawlers don't do it at all. [00:00:41] So if you rely on, clients that render JavaScript for critical content or navigation and so on, well, this is information that [00:00:50] ​ [00:01:17] In This Episode --- [00:01:17] Phil: What's up everyone? Today we had the honor of sitting down with Alida Soli International SEO consultant. In this episode, we tackle Crawlability requirements for AI search engines. [00:01:27] Why LLMs are just a new search channel, not a new function. AI search visibility analysis for SEO teams. Why LL M search rewards brands with real community signals and how topic level analysis shapes AI search strategy, all that, and a bunch more stuff after a quick word from two of awesome partners. [00:01:44] ​ [00:03:41] Phil: Aleyda,. Thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat. [00:03:45] Aleyda: you very much for the opportunity. It has been a little bit crazy for me lately with so many in-person events, so it's even refreshing to be able to, to speak with you online like this a little bit different, more laid back as well. [00:03:58] Phil: Nice. Awesome. Yeah, I saw all the [00:04:00] posts on, on LinkedIn about your, your frequent traveling. Right now, I think it's conference season for a lot of folks, but yeah, it's not every day that we have an SEO powerhouse like yourself on the podcast. We were joined by Mike King, uh, in the early days of the podcasts, but I've actually invited my old co-founder and co-host today to help me with this episode. [00:04:18] He's super deep in the SE. Base, and I feel like the conversation will be on a different bar with him. So Mr. John Taylor, thank you so much for your time. That welcome back. [00:04:27] JT: Thanks for welcoming back. I hope you enjoy all the artwork behind me as this is what I've been doing the last year is trying to become an artist. [00:04:35] Phil: Is there some kids, uh, kids artwork in there too? Uh, I've got the riverside recording here, so it's, it's all blurry. But the, the folks on YouTube will get to see the beauty. [00:04:44] JT: Yeah. Beautiful art. All, all printed midjourney, coloring books. [00:04:47] Phil: Oh yes. [00:04:48] You're telling me [00:04:49] JT: guys. AI for everything. [00:04:52] Phil: Very cool. All right, let's get into it. Ala um, the [00:04:55] 1. Crawlability Requirements for AI Search Engines --- [00:04:55] Phil: first question I wanted to ask you is this idea that you've echoed the sentiment that good SEO is good, GEO, you're basically implying that like fundamentals of SEO carry over to AI search. But you've also talked about how, whether that's enough, depends on how well you're already addressing AI search behaviors versus your competitors. [00:05:15] Which core SEO practices do you think remain critical for success in this like AI driven search results that we deal with today? [00:05:24] Aleyda: Indeed and, and thank you for bringing that up. I think that is the hot topic right now in the search word indeed. And in digital marketing as well. Um, I can say that the principles, uh, in SEO remain, uh. Also in AI search, um, remain valid and, and very, very relevant from a crawlability standpoint. You need to also allow AI crawlers to, to access, to crawl, uh, your content, your information. [00:05:55] The thing is, the rules that you might want to set might be different [00:06:00] depending on your own context as well, right? Um, the, the validation that you need to, uh, also do and, and, and. And, uh, take action on, uh, on your hosting or your CDN is, is a little bit different because the, the user agents are different as well. [00:06:18] So maybe you have allow, uh, traditional search changing scrollers to access your content, but you're. Not only blocking AI crawlers, so it's an extra step that you need to do. But yes, crawlability remains important in index ability as well. Um, we love in SEO to, uh, complain about the ability for Google to index our content, but the reality is that they are very sophisticated at it, uh, at at this point because of. [00:06:47] All of the, the years of experience and they render JavaScript with challenges. Of course, when this is done at scale and depending on the scenario. Um, that the speed or how, how long does it take to [00:07:00] render your content that relies on JavaScript and so on. But the reality is that AI crawlers don't do it at all. [00:07:06] So if you rely on, uh, clients that render JavaScript for critical content or navigation and so on, uh, well, this is information that Right. And, and then you mentioned D. Uh, search behaviors, right? It was this open AI research that was finally published, I believe, a month ago or so, that I was so very happy with because this was, uh, something that, uh, many, uh, independent platforms, third party tools were already, uh, sharing about this new intents, uh, that had to do with creating task oriented. [00:07:46] Uh, type of actions that didn't existed with traditional search and um, may or might not necessarily be relevant to, to address or to target, right. Uh, from a marketing standpoint, but that, that [00:08:00] definitely different behaviors. Right? And, and also the, the role of citations and mentions in popularity as a senior of, of authority, right. [00:08:07] If you were doing. Sophisticated enough SEO at this point. Uh, if you had a mature program, you were very likely already aligned with your digital PR and community management, um, activities and efforts, um, and, and, and, and very likely were already making the most out of it. But very likely you also were very focused on getting back links, getting links, uh, from external sources, uh, from relevant, highly authoritative, et cetera. [00:08:37] But. Very likely we'll focus much, much more on links than on mentions. Right? I go the shift, uh, and the weight and the importance that mentions have now, now changed and, and then finally because of the, the diff the difference and, and shift in interface as well of what we can expect and the, the outcome of the behavior of the user within the platform. [00:08:59] [00:09:00] Um, tra traditional search has been considered and treated historically as a performance. Uh, channel, right? And this is what we were always look into and what we care about in terms of KPIs and goals, right? Um, rankings, uh, uh, clicks, uh, traffic conversions, right? Very like that. And they were already, um. [00:09:24] Let's say challenges in attribution that we can all agree, but it was very performance focused. Now it, it will be very myopic to treat, uh, AI search and a lamps like that right there, there's a layer there of, uh, brand, uh, branding and, and to consider it as a, as a branding channel as well. And, and the inclusion, the visibility, the share of voice, the sentiment. [00:09:49] Of the inclusion of dimension. Even if it doesn't carry a link and it doesn't refer, um, direct traffic or traffic or a user, uh, to your site right [00:10:00] away, it plays a role within the purchasing journey and as a marketing channel that should be accounted for and should be monitor and address and taking into account and so on, right? [00:10:12] So as you can see like that quite a few differences in different areas and principles and the pillars of. Of, of search, um, and it, how much does it change from what you were already doing? So it depends on your context, what. The level of maturity that you already had, the level of sophistication, um, how much do you have in the backlog or do you had in the backlog, in the, in the past and, and also you run vertical, your own, your own audiences, right? [00:10:41] And, and depending on, uh, know the, the, the level of visibility and, uh, that you already have versus competitors, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, it depends a lot on the context. And unfortunately, especially in SEO, uh, we have the challenge that I believe that. We always love to say it depends, and then we share a lot of [00:11:00] the, the context factors and criteria and so on. [00:11:03] And, and sadly decision makers, many, many times, uh, c level, they, they, they don't like that complexity, right? And they, they, they expect a very straightforward answer. And, um, it, it's challenging to communicate that and to clarify all that, but hopefully little by little, especially ones that we have access to more data, uh, to more insights, uh, more research like the ones that are being published, um, now more and more, um, it will get easier, let's say, to align it and, and to tie it in order to, uh, make the most out of it. [00:11:36] Eliminating while eliminating all of this noise, uh, as well. [00:11:41] JT: I think your, your take is in is spot on and, and a fascinating illumination of how we're seeing the space evolve, right? What you've described, I think is the key differences between SEO and geo, but I think also you described the tools and processes that SEOs today are gonna [00:12:00] use to solve the problems of geo tomorrow, right? [00:12:01] Like an SEO is gonna understand how to talk about, Hey, should we move to server side rendering? This could make a lot of sense for indexing. Are we. Able to, uh, make sure that all the bots are crawling our site cleanly. So working with these teams, I feel personally that the SEO mandate gets expanded by the geo versus, it's like a brand new field. [00:12:21] 2. LLMs As A New Search Channel In A Multi Platform Discovery System --- [00:12:21] JT: One of the things that I don't go online often anymore is Phil knows I'm not on social media a ton, but when I do sign into social media, it's not long until I'm scrolling through my LinkedIn feed that I find out that SEO is dead. To my surprise, [00:12:33] Aleyda: Again. [00:12:34] JT: being an active consultant, I'm like, oh, it's dead. [00:12:37] Dang. I should have switched gears a long time ago. Uh, but what you described as well also kind of encapsulates what I see when I'm working with clients is a great confusion around what is geo, where does it fit in the, in the roadmap? I think SEOs are, are struggling still to articulate how, how it's the same and how it's different. [00:12:57] One of the ways that I've been meditating on this is [00:13:00] thinking about LLMs as actually just a new channel within a broader, a broader medium, right? You have Google search with a side of Bing and Yahoo, uh, but now you have LLMs. This is like TikTok to our YouTube. What do you think about that? Do you, how do we communicate this to the stakeholders in our organization? [00:13:18] Is this a new channel within a, the same [00:13:20] Aleyda: Hundred percent. 100%. I, I love that take, and I completely agree. And you know what, it's, it's funny and it's a little bit ironic because in SEO we have, um. In the Western world, we have traditionally complained about the role of Google as the big monopoly. Well, there are even trials and and so on, right? Uh, because of that in the us. [00:13:41] Uh, but yes, because of everybody uses Google. So for some people, SEO is a synonym of Google focus. Optimization, organic optimization for their SERPs and their SERPs are in certain format and so on, right? So once that the SERPs start [00:14:00] to shift and, and, and, uh, diversify a little bit in different formats that don't necessarily complying with what they expected, and then all the competitors of the platform start also taking part and have a role into this new interfaces and ways of platforms to search. [00:14:18] Then all of a sudden the reaction, rather than saying like SEO is evolving, they need to take into account these additional platforms that are also now used to search, to look, to discover information, to consume information that may or might not be commercial, but the might be, uh, uh, again, uh, mix of informational, commercial, transactional, so on, and might be useful for my clients and, and, and, um, companies to attract. [00:14:45] Potential customers from, and rather than saying yes, it's evolving, it's like, oh, it's dying. Because they connect, unfortunately because of the, the, the position in the market that go has historically had in the, in the Western world. [00:15:00] However, we can also say that for. Um, quite a few industries and depending on who your target market is, uh, well that was already sort of diversified. [00:15:10] So for example, if you were targeting like younger generations, like TikTok for example, or, or Instagram, depending on which retailer, whatever. And you also, and I have clients that are in the retail space that also ask me for information like what are the best practices from a searchability standpoint that we should. [00:15:31] Start, uh, integrating and, and taking into account to maximize the visibility besides the ads, right? So I think that finally we have gotten into that, um, space in which like there won't be necessarily a single platform anymore, or at least in the next few years. Like everybody starts shifting a little bit in their behavior and, and, uh, adopting these new channels. [00:15:57] Let's see, maybe it's not only Google anymore, [00:16:00] but Google and ti and perplexity and there are three big platforms, et cetera, et cetera. But, but yes, I, I, this should be, I, uh, I agree the vision that SEO is yet again, evolving as it always has, and now it doesn't need to account only for a single. Platform and way to do things and, uh, or, or search, um, byum, uh, and, and a single, uh, search format, but, uh, different channels because now the behavior is more split and diversified. [00:16:32] Uh, interesting enough, I was, um, a couple of months ago at this event in Chen in. And, uh, it blew my mind how Baidu there doesn't have nowhere the weight, uh, uh, than as, as Google in the Western world. Uh, their knowledge. Also, the challenges that Baidu, uh, has providing. Honest, accurate balance answers man fields. [00:16:57] So they use a variety of platforms to gather [00:17:00] information. So if you really want to maximize your organic reach, let's say in China, they will say, okay, yes, optimize for bio. But yes, maybe you should also use Red Note. That is their Instagram like app that they use their, uh, to post everything. Um, and, and I'm very focused on commercial oriented, uh, products and services as well. [00:17:22] Uh, and also go. Uh, go for TikTok. And, and so they, I think that because of this, they are much more used to. Diversifying and having presence across all of this. And I believe that this will happen also more and more in the western world and, and when we finally realized that SEO is not only for Google, well, we will be much more used, I guess, to stop saying that. [00:17:46] It's that and just like making sure that we optimize for whatever platform it is now used by the audience and shift, let's say the principles and priorities and factors that we optimize for depending on. What's taking [00:18:00] into account in that part, in those particular platforms that are actually useful and relevant for our audience? [00:18:06] JT: It, it's fascinating. The SEO space itself is so opaque, right? When we're looking at a single provider like Google. I remember years ago you mentioned lawsuits, but I remember breathlessly sitting on a Twitter thread where Rand Fishkin was watching a US Congressional hearing to kind of understand and deconstruct how Google was ranking things. [00:18:25] And I know last year there was this, this big leak that came out. It's a, it's fascinating and, and from my perspective, I find it actually somewhat liberating to have, to be able to elevate some of the principles of SEO to, uh, to, to, to general principles. I'm curious, I think, you know, [00:18:42] 3. AI Search Visibility Analysis for SEO Teams --- [00:18:42] JT: coming back to the idea of how do SEO and geo mesh together, I think there are, you know, again, sometimes on social media I see this, hey, we should have a separate geo function. [00:18:54] But I clearly, I don't think that's what you are thinking, but what I would be interested in asking is how do [00:19:00] you layer in that geo, how do you talk with like a mature SEO team about, okay, now we're gonna have a geo focus. What are the kind of jobs to be done, the tasks that, that you break out? How do you earmark certain, uh, roles for, for a geo focus versus an SEO focus to get to that, like, that nuance that I think we all see as a value point of these new engines. [00:19:24] Aleyda: Well, the two things, uh, on one hand, how much, uh, are LLMs driving to your side? What, what is the current revenue? What is the current traffic? Um, also, um, doing a little bit of research, all the audience research in those top platforms that are already driving a lot of traffic to your own website and among your top competitors, you can use third party tools, uh, to take a look at which are the biggest driver for traffic, uh, not only to your own side, but to, to DURs, right? [00:19:57] And, and, uh, go and, [00:20:00] and, and, and take a look at. What is your visibility in there for the top questions, the top queries that you have have been historically used and useful. Um, we know that there's a personalization, uh, as well, uh, that is much, uh, bigger and heavier, uh, in, in LMS than in traditional search. [00:20:23] But if you do quite a few of them. Uh, for the different audiences and personas and, and use cases, you can get a little bit, if, if you already mentioned, if the, the, the visibility that you have is consistently good and above and or the same level, or even better than your competitors, or is it worse? Um, where are the citations comings? [00:20:45] Are this, um, web properties or platforms, um, coming from those? That you have actively optimized already or where you have proper presence, uh, or are this coming from platforms that where you don't have any [00:21:00] presence at all and you're not con controlling or influencing, influencing at all. And depending if the answers here are positive or negative or you're included, and all of the sudden you realize that unlike the traditional SERPs. [00:21:15] For many of these questions that are much more converse, uh, commercially driven, comparing you versus your competitors, uh, the, the, the results are actually negative. You're included, but, uh, you are mentioned. With bad ratings and, and, uh, and, and shown in a negative light. So you start identifying where is this coming or this, this, this coming from all of these red threats that, uh, were in the serve, but somehow they are used as a source here. [00:21:46] So, hmm, probably I should align more with my community manager, uh, to better understand what they're already doing and if they're taking. Them into account at all or there there's any plans to do that, et cetera, et [00:22:00] cetera. So I, I think in like, let's start doing a research and analysis and now it a validation. [00:22:05] And depending on how I am shown or not, maybe I discover, and this is something interesting that happened to me not so long ago. That my hosting company was actually blocking the access of AI bots to a few of my sites, and I was like, what? What is going on? Why all of the information that is provided, when I asked regarding this. [00:22:27] The, the topic, the content of, of the site, like trying to force even, because when I was, when I was seeing that the, the information was not coming or the, the share of voice that I expected was very poor, and I started to dig forward further. And then I realized it was because, uh, the, the hosting platform was blocking, right? [00:22:44] So I had to get in touch with them to ask why. Like, unfortunately for and I, this, I, this is something that you should be aware of, be aware of that many housing companies will. Proactively block and you should opt out of that if, if [00:23:00] you don't want to. I mean, by all means, I believe that the, the you there are reasonable scenarios for which you might not necessarily want, uh, AI bots to access to your, to your website, but you should be aware of it and you should be like more of, of an optin type of behavior rather than opt out always with the information in front and being aware of the implications and so on. [00:23:23] In any case, I ended up. Opting out, opting out of, of that. And I realized that it happened because I had taken the steps to validate, et cetera. So my recommendation will be, you should, uh, definitely take the steps to validate that. And I do believe that, uh, the best professionals in marketing. And in any area to take these steps to understand the criteria, the, the, the type of factors, uh, and having access already to tools, many, uh, SEO tools already and run trackers already provide this sort of, of, of, of data already SEOs, right? [00:23:59] So I [00:24:00] don't think that you should create yet another role just for this or yet another discipline. Only if you want to throw money potentially. To the beam. And another thing that is something that you want because you already have someone and, and people, agencies, your agencies, your consultants already know about this or your in-house SEO. [00:24:18] So why not leveraging already their know-how to cover and to target this yet another platform, as I mentioned, not, it's not a completely new discipline, yet another platform. Now, if it becomes, let's say in, in a few years. Everything is evolving a lot. It's changing a lot. Imagine that in a few years every single platforms behave and, and has that interface that is so very different to each other and is are driving so many, uh, powerful impact to your organization in many different ways. [00:24:51] They might even require specific specialization and yes, at that point, maybe you do my one. To have in a few years time, like your L [00:25:00] lms, expert optimization, just just for chat, gt another for AI mode. Another for like, as like, like we have a TikTok specialist right now and, and, and, and YouTube specialists just because of how their algorithms and, and, and characteristics differ so much from, from the, the ones from Google, for example. [00:25:18] You, you might in the future, right? But right now, this is just starting right at, at, at the end of the day, marketing is about impact. Uh. And, and, and revenue and ROI, right? So I don't, I don't see the ROI yet there, right? So leverage what you already have. You have a good SEO, uh, they should know about it. Or in-house agency consultant. [00:25:41] They should be able to, to know about this, how to do this and, and tell you if the gap is very big. Uh, if you do need to invest. More and and very likely also align what is going to have impact in AI search with a lot of those tasks, tasks that have been [00:26:00] left in the backlog, in traditional search, uh, that will also driving, but very likely in traditional search. [00:26:06] ​ [00:28:09] Phil: I'm curious to ask you, like the SEOs listening right now, or, or folks that are really deep in, in Google or in a certain channel for SEO, do you think that without question LLM or AI search is the next one that they 100% should be investing most of their eggs into in the next few years? [00:28:29] Aleyda: The, it's definitely, these are definitely channels that if you see the evolution, uh, of, of usage, it's, it's growing a lot. Uh, so they, they should be definitely, uh, accounted for, that you should definitely need to take into account and, and, and put them into your different PLA platforms that you should be validating, assessing, researching, to identify potential. [00:28:52] Maybe the potential that you identify is low, maybe the potential is big and depending on what you identify and that. [00:29:00] Research. Um, you will need to allocate more and invest and want to invest more, but at least to validate and assess the potential. Yes, 100%. [00:29:09] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. That the whole question about like assessing that potential and, and validating it is, is tricky. Like you mentioned at the top of your last answer, um, [00:29:17] 4. Creating Brand Led Informational Content for AI Search --- [00:29:17] Phil: how much traffic is coming from lms, how much revenue are coming from mentions. I think that's one of the biggest question marks I see on LinkedIn with Geo is what do we even track when it comes to geo? [00:29:29] Uh, we don't really have access to clean data sets or any type of. Predictive volume that SEOs are used to. So do we just go back to first principles here? Is that your advice, like JT was just talking about in his consulting work, he's leading to more like persona, narrative driven content in an LLM driven environment. [00:29:47] Like do you think the top of funnel model even makes sense anymore? What are your thoughts there? ~Sorry, did you lose me?~ [00:29:53] Aleyda: ~Sorry, this question was for jt, or sorry it ~ [00:29:53] Phil: ~No, ~ [00:29:53] Aleyda: ~me. Sorry. I was waiting for JT~ [00:29:53] ~because ~ [00:29:53] ~you mentioned him. ~ [00:29:53] Phil: ~Sorry. I was just like pointing out, um, what JayZ, what JayZ had just said about ~ [00:29:53] Aleyda: ~Sorry~ [00:29:53] ~about, ~ [00:29:53] Phil: ~more persona driven stuff.~ [00:29:53] Aleyda: ~sorry. So you can cut that. Sorry, now that you mentioned. Okay. More than happy to answer that. So~ yes, I, I do believe that, um, it's definitely achieved with this [00:30:00] traditional, unfortunately a traditional SEO sort of tactic in the past. That was to create and invest a lot of top of the funeral. [00:30:08] Content to attract traffic. Um, but funnily enough, this was something that was already not, was not necessarily being, uh, very cost effect lately with AI overviews already, uh, because this was. Well, very conceptually driven, very informational type of, of content for which Google was already or is already given more AI overviews, uh, because they can be easily, let's say, answer, uh, and the user will tend to be very easily satisfied if these are high level, uh, generic sort of questions, informational needs that they can easily solve by just. [00:30:56] Seeing a little bit of a summary regarding this, the concept, right? [00:31:00] Uh, however, there's also the point about, well, if you want to establish authority in your field, you cannot just say, don't invest in informational content. Don't invest in, in, uh, the content that will on one hand establish authority to attract citations, um, to, to establish your brand. [00:31:20] But also this is how you become personalization resilient in lms cover the different intents through the full customer journey, targeting your different personas across use cases right from the start. But the point is like then deciding what is the type of content that actually makes sense that is informational, but that also makes sense to create because it's very on brand and it needs to be very brand. [00:31:44] It cannot be fluffy glossary. Type of content addressing generic questions that is, are not necessarily about your product or service or your brand, right? So think more about industry insights, like research, stats, trends, um, case studies, [00:32:00] uh, top leadership, um, or, um, comparisons versus, uh, competitors or, or FAQs. [00:32:09] Uh, leverage from your community that you start publishing on, on your side. Uh, providing more context for decision making and so on. Uh, help centers and forums, uh, also make a lot of sense to optimize further in order to target a lot of this, what you could consider informational. Uh, questions and, and, and queries at the start of the journey as well. [00:32:33] Not only post-purchase. So think about that. So this is the, this is content that doesn't only make sense just to get traffic and, and, and easy traffic at the start of the search journey, uh, top of the funnel traffic, but also makes sense to address, um, their clients well and to provide a good, uh, pre-sales and post-sales support as well. [00:32:56] Uh, so I. This is what I recommend to clients. No, you need to [00:33:00] continue investing, but just be more mindful of what you invest. This should be on brandand content. That should be helpful. Even if you take SEO out of the equation, even if you take l LMS out of the equation. This is the type, this is the type of content that you want to have in there because it's useful for your customers and will make you, uh, sell more. [00:33:19] And this is indeed the, the content that will then, even if. There is an AI overview or the, the user, uh, the, or the potential customers end up going to l LMS to get an answer. They will likely not be satisfied just with a simple answer. They will want to dig more and want to know the, the source. Um, and because it is some brand, I will expect that they recognize you, they engage with, with, with you, and well, this where, when the visit is generated, and even if they don't generate the visit right away, uh. [00:33:53] Now they know you. They now they know you brand. Whenever they continue researching about the products or service, [00:34:00] later on in the process, they will recognize you and very likely will, they will be more keen to purchase from you because they already recognize you. Uh, that you were one of the sources that provided the answers at the beginning of the journey. [00:34:12] And this how we need to think about it. Now, the complexity here is attribution. And how do you, uh, manage cost effectiveness and so on and, and, and, and, uh, yes, that is the challenge pretty much. But, uh, but yes, 100%. We need to establish a brand comprehensive topical authority targeting the full customer journey with helpful, multimodal, indexable information that highlight your unique selling propositions and generally helps customers. [00:34:37] And this how I see it, like just eliminating top of the funeral that, that, that's, I would say like the least lazy. Um, approach, uh, to avoid, uh, bleeding resources, let's say. But, uh, the actual strategical way to address the design, how you continue doing it in a way that actually makes sense and is on brand. [00:34:59] JT: One of my [00:35:00] hopes out of this, and I think you're touching on it, uh, quite a bit, so I'm gonna enunciate it a little bit more, is that we end up starting in the SEO world, in the content marketing world, creating. Content that is persona driven and customer focused versus just the traditional, I don't even wanna call it traditional, but too often SEO gets typecast as we go to SEMrush or HS, and we find a list of keywords and then we write to those keywords. [00:35:26] Whereas nowadays, I'm finding personally my own work is that the L-L-M-S-E-O game has allowed me to get permission to talk to people that in the organization I wouldn't typically talk to. Some of my most fruitful conversations, as Phil alluded to, uh, was talking to salespeople and just saying, what are the customers saying to you? [00:35:45] Like, what are their pain points? What are they, what are the words that they use? And then getting into transcripts, like [00:35:51] 5. Choosing SEO Topics That Drive Brand-Aligned Demand --- [00:35:51] JT: I think there's an art form in picking content that is more LLM focused, but still underneath that, SEO, that SEO banner, right? We've always had keyword volume zero and we're introducing zero click into, into the story. [00:36:06] But I'm curious about your perspective on how do we as marketers, SEOs mine content that is relevant? Like what sources do you find working, uh, and how do you kind of take some of those? I think some of this is experimentation. You have to experiment, you have to try something to see, to see what comes back if your approach land lands, but being aligned to the persona and the customer journey seems to make the most sense. [00:36:30] So. Here's your process there. [00:36:33] Aleyda: so I, I believe that, that, that is an, an issue that we have had historically, right? Like thinking of SEO very tact as very tactical oriented channel, uh, without applying even the same type of principles that you will apply to any other channel from a marketing standpoint, that is a reality and is, and is. [00:36:51] Um, uh, so going and looking for queries or topics to target. Through tools and, and, and, um, letting [00:37:00] yourself only drive, uh, which to pick, bake based on the search volume rather than asking the, your customers or at least leveraging your customer support, uh, or insights and, and validating what the product or the marketing. [00:37:18] Person who knows more about the pains, et cetera, which in many, many occasions were not yet documented in, in, in those tools. Right. Or, or the words so blended and, um, that we're not necessarily accounted there yet, right? In many occasions, uh, that, that is a problem. That was a challenge that we historically had. [00:37:40] Um, but good SEO, uh, that actually, uh, well. It's scalable and resistance to all of this. Changes and evolution is the one that yes, talks with product, talks with, with customer service talks, with digital pr, uh, with [00:38:00] social media, uh, with branding and make sure to target queries that actually align with the, with the brand. [00:38:06] So, um, a few years back, one of my clients was a, um, a cruise lineup, very famous cruise line, and one of the things that they mentioned right away. From the beginning, it's like you will see in the keyword research that you do, you do that, um, the most popular keyword, uh, or among the top three most popular keywords. [00:38:27] There are a couple of them that are cheap, cheap cruises and cheap cruises plus the air, things like that. It's like we are not cheap. We don't want to go for them. It doesn't matter that the search volume is high. This is the type of insight and information that we should think about when we do SEO historically, not only right now, right? [00:38:48] Unfortunately, it's usually in agencies. The person who many times end up doing the QA research [00:39:00] is a intern, right? So rather than a proper, sophisticated. Marketer who has a know-how, an understanding of the product or service or with that input, right? So of course you end up having keywords that don't necessarily make sense. [00:39:15] They have ton of search volume, but don't make sense with the tone of voice, with unique selling position, with the brand, et cetera, et cetera. And finally, I believe that we have come to the place right now in which it make us rethink of, yeah, does it really make sense going. For all of these terms, for the sake of trying to get easy, cheap, uh, traffic, straightforward traffic, traffic that we can get into. [00:39:44] Um, there was, uh, there is this platform that, uh, it was one of the biggest, uh, losers in, uh, from one of the Go updates last year. I'm going to name names, but you probably know it. [00:40:00] And, uh, these are platforms that. They had so much authority and popularity that realistically they could get away for a long time for whatever topic or content that they will publish, and it will tend to run well as long as it, if it was slightly tangentially related to their topic. [00:40:19] So a lot of the, the traffic that they were getting the top of the funeral, uh, were realistically for very likely off. Topics from what they were offering that was a little bit of more software related, and, and, and then they lost a lot of this traffic in one of these updates that go, finally ended up tweaking a little bit their, their signals to, well make sure that these on brand, that subject matter expertise actually. [00:40:49] Uh, makes a little bit of, of, of a bigger role in there. So a a lot, and a lot of people said like, oh, they, they lost one car of their traffic or something like that. But [00:41:00] yes, I was like, yes, it's true. But take a look at which were the, the, the pages that dropped a lot and yes, literally were ringing one car of their traffic, like literally five pieces of, for very broad terms that honestly, at that scale. [00:41:17] Um, I, I wonder how many of this visits ended up converting, but it were not their core areas of expertise or core, uh, solution pages or meaningful from a business standpoint and, and. 100%. This is the type of content that you will end up creating without thinking on personas or unique selling proposition or your actual, uh, brand or nothing. [00:41:46] Right? And and that is why I 100%, I believe that that has never been a better moment like today in which like, yes, you need. Be very thoughtful on what you write about, to make sure that it actually makes sense, not [00:42:00] only today, but in the future, and resist across all of this and, and using personas and using your, um, well, your proposition and, and, and, uh, the, the brand values and et cetera, et cetera. [00:42:15] Makes complete sense. And this is how we should be able to prioritize beyond any metrics. You mentioned regarding the search volume of SEO tools. We can extrapolate now that with the top pro prompts examples that a few, um, AI trackers provide. By all means, these are good to take as a reference, as an input, as examples of of, and samples of what users. [00:42:46] Might be asking there regarding your topic, but it is a mistake to start obsessing on very few prompts to try to get into them just because of [00:43:00] how personalized the answers are on one hand and um, how long tail they really are. So if these are even actual prompts, let's assume they are, they are not automatically, uh, generated. [00:43:12] They are. But imagine all of. The different wordings that there are, there like, like very few scenarios, the same prompt will be asked twice. And even if it, it is asked twice, the answers will defer quite a bit just because of the personalization of the user context, the geolocation, previous history, behavior, et cetera, et cetera. [00:43:36] So rather than obsessing on specific prompts that might have X or Y value, we should think about the topics that actually make sense for us to go for, to get visibility for independently on the wording, right? And yes, have a few prompts to assess a little bit and gauge. How we are doing, but not obsessing about ranking or being included or being showcasing specific, uh, [00:44:00] in, in a few specific one of them. [00:44:02] Yeah. [00:44:02] JT: It's, you hit on so much like the idea. I'm sure there's some SEOs who have trauma of being asked what keyword is ranking where at any given moment. But I think what you hit on is the maturity of, of the SEOs is push back and say, the content we create should be aligned with all of our marketing efforts. [00:44:19] It should be positioned the same way. What I find interesting, just to kind of take another point that you were talking about, was this idea of LLM prompts and data. Um, I built myself like a little, uh, LLM analysis tool back in February of this year. Uh, for a hot second. I thought, oh, maybe this will be useful publicly. [00:44:40] But I have all kinds of reasons why I didn't do that. But what I found most interesting was just like the idea of getting into these prompts, like. There's a moment in time when you're like, I know the first 20 prompts I want, but what about the next a hundred prompts or the next thousand? And I've long said this, uh, [00:45:00] for content marketing, but context is king, not content. [00:45:03] And I think if you understand the user's context, then you have the ability to actually connect in with them and then earn that positioning opportunity. In terms of a content, one of the things I noticed working with my own clients is this prompt. Obsession. We want to know what prompts should we track and what prompts really matter. [00:45:22] But I think that there's, there's two ways to look at this. As you mentioned, like the prompt trackers, they provide us a layer of, of good data, and I think we should pay attention to that data. But then there's that other intuitive sense that we all have. I use Whisper, which is like a voice to text, uh, app. [00:45:40] I talk to chat GPT or Claude all the time. My prompts never follow a structure and there's all kinds of weirdness in them. But I get good recommendations. I've bought many products off of them. [00:45:50] 6. How Topic Level Analysis Shapes AI Search Strategy --- [00:45:50] JT: How, how do you see us getting into a mature state with prompting that we're working with stakeholders outside of SEO? [00:45:58] 'cause this is sometimes our challenge, [00:46:00] right? Is translating, uh, the key word volume into, well, actually this isn't tactics, this is strategy. How do you approach that? How do you approach like this idea of building a topical map, for instance, around prompts, uh, that might be used by customers and LLMs. [00:46:16] Aleyda: Are now tools that 10 fully provide more context, uh, around that, and they aggregate prompts per topic. So there's definitely that. I am happy to see that. So, and, and what I, what I think about is, is topics rather than prompt and think about which are the different topics, um. Brands names in case I am a retailer, for example, and I provide an uh, uh, and I sell, uh, quite a few product lines and brands like that are important for me and, and, and I want to be known for, right? [00:46:50] Um, and, and I go to this tool, thankfully, for, for example, the, a few tools that you enter the topic or the term and [00:47:00] it will provide, which are the, the top brands. Uh, the top topics and, and then of course a very long tail list of, of, of proms examples that they are taking into account. But I start gauging that rather than, oh, the generic visibility for whatever. [00:47:18] No visibility within these context of these topics. So an example, if I have sport retailer, I want to see what is my, my visibility for each of the top product lines that I sell. So, uh, what is my visibility for, uh, women's sneakers? Or, or men's, um, um, jackets or, or, or children. Um. Uh, golf, um, swag, things like that, right? [00:47:49] So I, and I will start validating my visibility of my brand versus my competitors, and which are my competitors, and how they are being cited and which are their [00:48:00] citations and so on, and take it from there. So this what I will do, I won't even obsess about brand, but I will start, start checking on the topic and, and my share of voice and my visibility and, and, and the sentiment. [00:48:12] Uh, of my brand versus my competitors for them. Then of course, what I will tend to do to track over time is to take quite a few of those prompts that, uh, I see are, are being shown in. For each one of those topics as a, as a reference and, and start tracking them to see how it shifts over time. But within that context, right, understanding that, um, to, to better understand how, how evolves over time, but not to obsess about, oh, I need to be included in these ones because otherwise it means that I felt no, my, my objective is true. [00:48:47] Track the evolution over time within this particular context and, and topic and area of expertise versus these other brands, or how many times also my brands are mentioned versus, and, and the, the, the, the, the, [00:49:00] the sentiment of the brand versus this other brands for this particular, uh, subject or area, uh, that rather than trying to, let's say, uh, going for specific prompts are. [00:49:14] It's too granular. These, they are too granular on one hand or then yeah, just trying to compare brands in a generic way. So if an example, right, like there are, there are brands like Adidas for example, they provide, uh, not only shoes, but also all type of, of sportswear, right? So, and if you only compete on shoes, I mean, if you only provide shoes, why do you want to gauge yourself? [00:49:41] For everything, Adidas? No. You want to gauge your, or assess yourself for only the sneakers, uh, particular vertical versus Adidas, right? And that that is how I start assessing and configuring it. Um, thankfully there are more and more tools out there that allows you to do that rather than [00:50:00] starting from prompts. [00:50:01] 7. LLM Search Console Reporting Expectations --- [00:50:01] JT: S so one thing that we, we, we haven't asked yet, but you've hinted at and I've seen you, uh, publicly, uh, talk about was the idea of getting a chat, GBT search console or a cloud search console, a perplexity search console. You know, we, we also talked about just like the transparency of Google, you know, SEOs have been reverse engineering the algorithm since the birth of it. [00:50:25] Do you, do you have hopes that we will see these types of consoles come out for these LLMs, uh, that we'll be more transparent in this future, or do you think we'll probably still follow the same direction? What, what is your read on it? [00:50:38] Aleyda: I believe that they will come, but once that the market is more settled and they are able to show more proof of their value, I believe that they, they, they are not there yet because. Maybe they are not referring necessarily that much of a traffic yet and the traffic is staying within them. I dunno. Maybe, possibly, um, maybe that, that [00:51:00] traffic won't make them look as good. [00:51:02] Right. And we know that there are a lot of this, not only debates, but even, uh, trials in the US and suits already going on and it's not in their benefit. Um, but I think that eventually they should, especially these channels. Whenever these channels start selling, uh, ads consistently across these new surfaces, that, that, that should be like the tipping point. [00:51:31] I, the, the, the actually ends up making the difference, I believe, because they will need to give more, more data for that and potentially that is how we are going to get access. Also with the chat GPT, with the shopping integration, I expect that they. [00:51:49] JT: Yeah. [00:51:50] Aleyda: more in terms of metrics and visibility and performance, at least of those players that integrate, right? [00:51:55] So, yes, I think that it will, it, it is a matter of time, but they, it should [00:52:00] come. [00:52:01] Phil: We got two last questions for you. Uh, this has been super fun. Uh, I wanted to end on this like positive note about this space. [00:52:09] 8. Why LLM Search Rewards Brands With Real Community Signals --- [00:52:09] Phil: There's a lot of folks that hope that, you know, advanced AI search or is finally gonna reward genuinely insightful expert content over the kind of generic SEO driven listicles that we kind of talked about that have dominated a lot of the past. [00:52:24] Um, in other words, like. A boutique blog with not a lot of traffic, but deep expertise could outrank high volume content mills if the content truly educates or solves a problem. Do you share this optimism that LM powered search could elevate quality over quantity? What signs, if any, have you seen that AI search might actually rank or recommend content differently [00:52:46] Aleyda: this is, this is already happening. That is already happening. I mean, I, I, I am seeing those players that you see around saying, oh, all of a sudden, um, my brand, my startup started to get [00:53:00] cited in chat, GPT and um, it is now my biggest traffic driver and I have made 90% of my clients. Or my customers from it in the, in the last six months. [00:53:16] It's because these are startups that were not really investing much or haven't been, hadn't been able to do much in SEO because they were just starting a year ago or a year and a half ago, and they had already a little bit of community going on and mentions in YouTube and, and mentioning in social platforms, et cetera, but they didn't have. [00:53:38] Powerful backlinks, yet from authoritative sources. They didn't have a proper taxonomy targeting to all of the different queries, uh, that were commercially relevant for them, for which they needed landing pages or pages or PLPs, PDPs or whatever that were properly structured [00:54:00] and optimized. Uh. With good internal linking, et cetera, et cetera. [00:54:05] And they didn't get, but then all of a sudden they started to get all of this leads because they were positively cited in this very positive light for very, this very hot topic in Lums. And of course, if they had been players that they will have been doing already SEO for five years ago, the share of these dimensions will have been like potentially 5%. [00:54:29] Of their revenue or customers, because they are quite new. They're already seeing the fruits of the little mentions, the little visibility because they had been doing like good actual product marketing, uh, for their customers base and that end up paying off like this. So I think that we have already seen that, and I expect that this, um, grows over time. [00:54:53] That the, the, the, the, also, the, the, it's not a zero sum game as well, because. We [00:55:00] know that behavior is shifting and there also new searches, new topics, new hot trends going on all the time. So yeah, this only continue to to grow over time. [00:55:10] Phil: I love it. Aleta, last question for you. [00:55:12] 9. Prioritizing Work That Matches Personal Purpose --- [00:55:12] Phil: You're an SEO consultant, obviously frequent speaker, have a traveler, uh, the SEO FOMO author for the newsletter. You're also a founder and a meetup organizer, but you're also a paddle tennis player. You were telling us before we started recording, you got a ton of stuff going on in your life. [00:55:26] One question we ask everyone on the show is how do you decide what deserves your energy at any given moment, and what's your personal system for staying aligned with what actually makes you happy? [00:55:37] Aleyda: Well, I, I believe that it all has to do with dependence on purpose, right? So [00:55:43] Phil: Hmm. [00:55:43] Aleyda: what gives me independent, not, not only, um, well, monetary, financial or, or what actually matters more for me to be able to do what I like. To do. Uh, and I really like to do SEOI really like to talk with customers. That is why I don't [00:56:00] have, like, the big agency or huge agency, but, uh, um, boutique consultancy because I still in touch with client, advise them. [00:56:07] So I, I try to design my work and prioritize my projects accordingly. I enjoy talking, uh, with people and interacting with people in the community, and I work remotely, so I have a lot of flexibility also too. To, well, the events that I go and I, and I engage with, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and the same a little bit with, with sports, right? [00:56:29] Historically, I haven't, I haven't been the most sporty person in the world, but I understand and I know that it's, it's important to keep fit, to be healthy as well, right? So I, I, I had to pick. Uh, activities that align a little bit with my preferences and I wouldn't get bored at, like, for example, going to the gym for me is not necessarily incentivizing. [00:56:54] So I, I jump rope, uh, at home, uh, which is like very complete sort of, [00:57:00] uh, exercise that I can do anywhere. And then. With paddle is a very social sport as well. It helps a little bit also with, uh, to keep yourself, uh, um, engaged with, with others in the community and it's super fun as well. So I try to blend a little bit, uh, my lifestyle and what I enjoy and what what has impact and I, uh, and is aligned with my goals and preferences, not only, uh, business and professional wise, but also at a personal space. [00:57:33] Phil: I love it. Alida, thank you so much for sharing that. Thanks so much for your time today. Um, got a few minutes left to plug some stuff if you want. We're gonna share links to the newsletters, some of the meetups that are coming up for you. But, uh, this episode is dropping early in 2026, so feel free to plug whatever you want. [00:57:47] Aleyda: Oh, thank you very much for the opportunity. I have a few resources that I have created for free that I believe that can be quite helpful for, for all of those who want to, uh, keep up with AI search, I have, uh, learning [00:58:00] ai search.com. Which is a completely free, uh, website, uh, where I aggregate reliable resources to learn or to execute, uh, some of the top activities in AI search. [00:58:12] Uh, it's like a little bit the, the counterpart of learning aio, uh, learning seo.io that I created like a few years ago. Uh, so one hand learning ai search.com. On the other hand, if you want to keep up with the latest in AI search as well as SEO, I have, um. Cmo, uh, CEO. This is my main newsletter, almost 40 k subscribers, which I expect to reach, uh, in a couple of weeks already. [00:58:40] Uh, and then I have, uh, ai marketers, uh, dot com, which is my all the newsletter as well, which I cover everything, like the top news, top trends in AI marketing as well that might be also useful and, and relevant for you to check out, uh, both completely free. Of course, [00:59:00] and yeah, I try to do my best to only pick what is actually reliable and is worthy. [00:59:08] Phil: Awesome. I I was gonna list all of those except ai uh, marketers.com. Uh, that's a new one for me, so I will, uh, be checking that out for sure. Thank you so much for everything you do for this space, Alida. Really appreciate your time today. This is super fun. [00:59:21] Aleyda: Thank you for the opportunity.