How to win in the era of AI search

SEO, AIO and GEO. What's the difference in all three and how to move forward on all without giving up on any. All three's are interlinked. In this episode we deconstruct all the elements needed to win in the era of LLM search. How brands can look at the correct metrics and work together with agencies to build out their AEO traffic. 

What is The operators edge?

This podcast series provides practical, real-world insights on scaling digital businesses and adapting to major marketing shifts.

Krishan: 00:00

Every week or so, we sit down and talk about what happens with digital marketing and digital marketing businesses. This is a podcast series focused on building and running digital marketing agencies, not what you see every day or hear, you know, consistent stories. This is about what it's taken for us to build our digital marketing company and also all the ways that we've failed but come out the other side. Welcome to The operators edge. This is episode four, winning in AI search, what brands need to do now in specificity.

Manav: 00:47

So last episode, we asked everybody to go to an AI tool and put in a query their customer would ask and see if their brand would show up. We ran this exercise for numerous brands just before this episode, and the results were exactly what you expected. Some showed up, some did not show up, and the worst, some showed up with the description which you ideally would not want your brand to look like. So in this episode, we're going

Krishan: 01:16

to deconstruct that. So last episode, we discussed the internal brand that we have and the transformative change that has happened over the last, let's say, six months from having basically no conversions on AI or Answer to being the most, the highest impact for new clients. And that was really the eye opening data point for us as a brand and also really, demonstrating the success in how, the SEO team has transformed how they execute for answers in answer engine optimization. So what we're going to do now in this episode is break down how all of that happened and provide the details so that we can make sure that you understand that you got to do something, but you can't do something that's useless. It has to be effective.

Krishan: 02:27

So Manav and I are going to go through this now so that you guys can understand what those details are. And the first one is don't give up on SEO. Correct. All right. So can you sort of unpack that for us?

Manav: 02:40

Right. So I mean, I think we touched on it a little bit last time. The noise now in the market is, you know, SEO is dying, everything is moving, it's all going to be this, it's going to be that. That's not true because there's a massive overlap between, you know, the activities that you're doing for SEO and the activities you need to do for any sort of AI, or LLM citation, right? So how can you just give up on that?

Krishan: 03:10

That's ridiculous. So we're not talking about something completely unknown to an SEO team.

Manav: 03:18

Absolutely not.

Krishan: 03:19

Yeah. We're talking about skills that they already have and deploying them in a focused manner specific to respond to the requirements of AEO. Absolutely. These are not like new terms which have

Manav: 03:37

come, right? They're all rechristened a little bit or they've just been repurposed. But you're looking at the same things, right? You're looking at structured schemas, schema markups, right? Structured data.

Manav: 03:48

You're looking at content clarity. You're looking at listicles, you're looking at all these tools and mechanisms and, and techniques. Topical authority, It's, yes, you do have to repurpose. Yes, you do have to rework a lot of these things. You're looking at, again, you're looking at, you know, technical SEO, right?

Manav: 04:11

I mean, you need to be found by the AI.

Krishan: 04:16

And the AI is not human. So the way that it reads your website is not the story about my grandmother and our hat business. Absolutely. If you listen to our last episode, you remember about my grandma and the hat business and the beautiful story that we told. And that's not the way AI is searching your website.

Krishan: 04:38

It's not, right? It's looking, it's going straight to the answer. It's skipping over the fluff, right? And if content is structured that way, you want to

Manav: 04:47

get cited better. That's it. And that is a content side. But you also have to have your technical nuts and bolts and peas so that they can find you, right? Your machine discoverable.

Manav: 04:59

That's where the technical side comes in, your technical SEO stuff comes in, your site structure comes in, your speed comes in, your LCPs and your, you know, all of that comes in. So none of this is so different from what Nothing

Krishan: 05:12

earth shattering.

Manav: 05:13

No, it's not.

Krishan: 05:13

And your SEO team, if you have one or if your agency has one already knows how to do it. They just have to sort of tweak the engine. Right.

Manav: 05:23

They have to tweak the engine. They have to get under the hood and start making adjustments. That doesn't mean that would take the entire engine out and put it in new one. Right. Okay.

Krishan: 05:30

So that's really important. So we're not deconstructing an engine here. We're fine tuning it and making it more performance oriented.

Manav: 05:40

Right. This does not mean that it's not going be laborious. There is going to be a certain amount of time and effort and energy dedicated to this.

Krishan: 05:50

I mean, there's no quick fix.

Manav: 05:51

There's no quick fix, right? I mean, that's what I

Krishan: 05:53

kind kind sucks because that would be great.

Manav: 05:54

That would be great, right? Then everybody would do it. Then everybody would be doing it and everybody would be having the same sort of a result, but it's going to take its time. It's going to go step by step, piece by piece, right? So it's not like you change two things in your site structure and suddenly you're optimized for, you know, LLMs.

Manav: 06:11

No, it's not going to happen like that. It's going to be rapid, sorry, it's going to be these time consuming things you have to do, but it's not something which people don't know. You don't have to hire a separately new team for that. What you would need to do as a brand is have that conversation with your team, be it an agency or in house, and give them more information about if you still already haven't about what you're doing, what you're selling, who your customer is. Get your metrics correct so you can manage them better.

Manav: 06:44

That's the real key takeaway for the brand here. Do not expect them to know all of this automatically, right? Something which has been working for like five or six years, and suddenly you want them to change anything, they know everything, that's not going to happen. So that's on the brand side. The agencies, if they know SEO, they'll be able to do this.

Manav: 07:01

Right. Right. It's just who can, which brand, which agency can, you know, do it faster, better, cleaner. That's what it is, right?

Krishan: 07:12

So there's no cutting corners.

Manav: 07:13

There's no cutting corners here.

Krishan: 07:14

This is sort of the standard, let's call it AEO playbook now, which is, congruent with the SEO playbook of you've got to go to the gym. Yes. Right? Right. Taking that hit on that steroid and it sounds like such a crazy analogy, but like injecting it and pumping up and then losing that mass two weeks later after whatever you're supposed to do.

Krishan: 07:41

But this is about building consistency and discipline and that muscle mass, which will keep producing results even after you stop going to the gym.

Manav: 07:49

Absolutely. Right. So, and that's like, that's a part of the entire shift conversation that we were having. Right. And to a large extent, that's entire, like, that's what I've learned so far in about digital marketing.

Manav: 08:01

This is about all of it. You have to do it for everyone. You have to do it for all of it. It's just not about SEO. SEO is more time consuming.

Manav: 08:10

People are, you know, they get frustrated with it faster, but it is, it's the only, it's the biggest asset you build.

Krishan: 08:16

Let's just talk about AEO today, right? And now let's get into the details. Okay, so the first pillar in clarifying what needs to be done is answer the question clearly. So can you explain what that means? So that the audience understands that we're...

Krishan: 08:38

Yeah, just you do it, man, because I think you can do it better than

Manav: 08:41

I can. Right. So, so answer one. Answer one, right? Structure the content clearly.

Manav: 08:48

Right. Right. The first thing comes in the structure, right? Maybe, you know, listicles help a lot more than this.

Krishan: 08:54

Yes. And that used to be hot maybe like four years ago.

Manav: 08:57

It's hot again. Yeah. Right. It's hot again. It's come back.

Manav: 08:59

Right. Again, SEO, right?

Krishan: 09:00

It's all those same, you know, Because public it's a clear answer.

Manav: 09:04

It's a clear answer, right? You're not going around and dancing around the fluff. The fluff. You're not, you know, making the answer scrolling two pages down and having...

Krishan: 09:14

Because your audience is what? It's the bot. It's It's

Manav: 09:18

the AI engine. If it's not finding the answer, it's not gonna cite you. If it's not clear, it's not gonna cite you. Build your answer around the question.

Krishan: 09:26

That's important. So if it's not finding the answer, what's happening? It's just moving on.

Manav: 09:30

It's moving on. So it's

Krishan: 09:31

not going to the next page. Like, it's not human where we're like, Okay, you know what? I'm on this beautiful website, and I'm on the About Us page, and there's just... Just something's off, I can't find the information. Let me click through the rest of the site.

Krishan: 09:45

So the AI engine is saying, Just thank you very much. I'm done.

Manav: 09:51

I'm not citing you. Right. That's it. It's kind of sucks. Yeah.

Manav: 09:54

You know, so if earlier on, if you had a broken page or a four zero four error coming, you would, you know, look around, find a little way. The AI is not going to do that, right?

Krishan: 10:04

It's going

Manav: 10:04

to move That's the thing. So have your answers around the question. That is number one. Listicles, be clear, right? So easy for them to read, right?

Manav: 10:14

And by them, I'm just using it very largely. It should be easy to read, easy to find and answering the questions, right? I mean, is no- And

Krishan: 10:23

that's it.

Manav: 10:24

That's it. You know, get into technicalities and all that.

Krishan: 10:26

But really it's the simplicity of answer the question.

Manav: 10:28

Answer the question. And I think from a 30,000 foot level, that's what it is, right? That's what you're trying to do. And that's what these AI agents are looking for, AI tools are looking for, right? Okay.

Manav: 10:41

So that's step one. That's step one.

Krishan: 10:43

All right. So pillar one is answer the question and you're answering the question for the AI tool. Yes. You're not answering it for Krishnan Romanov. No, because that AI tool is

Manav: 10:55

going to synthesize and then give it to the user. It's given to you, me.

Krishan: 10:58

All right. So that's step one or pillar one. Let's go to pillar two. Pillar two is an extension of pillar one.

Manav: 11:05

Yes.

Krishan: 11:05

But more defined. More defined. So what is pillar two?

Manav: 11:08

Make your content machine searchable. Right? Simple. It finds your, so, you know, FAQs is a great way of doing that. Yes.

Manav: 11:17

Like frequently asked questions, again, SEO, how tos, right? All

Krishan: 11:23

of that.

Manav: 11:24

Your company to those answers, link the questions to those answers again. So the machine should be able to find it. Yeah. Right? That is pillar two.

Krishan: 11:33

And it's not searching everywhere.

Manav: 11:35

It's looking around because gonna it's

Krishan: 11:38

It's do only attention span is like now or never. Yeah. Some more

Manav: 11:43

or less Structure your content very carefully.

Krishan: 11:46

Okay. So now we've clarified pillar one and pillar two. What is pillar three?

Manav: 11:51

So be very clear on who you are, what you do, right? A lot of time on your own side, if you don't have clarity on what your specialty or your niche is or whatever you're really good at, that confuses or can confuse the messaging. Again, this is for the AI tool. Yes.

Krishan: 12:10

Right? So I think people have to recognize that the entire purpose of this for the answer engine optimization is for the answer to be published to the user or to the person searching.

Manav: 12:29

Right.

Krishan: 12:30

And then once they have that answer, which is highly trustworthy. Right. Right. The trust element is high. Then they click on that and they go to the website.

Krishan: 12:40

But when they go to the website, you still need the brand story. You still need the fluff. Right. Right. So you still have to have that angle for the user, which I don't want to diminish.

Krishan: 12:56

Of course not. But remember the audience for what we're talking about is the AI tool. Exactly. Okay. So let's just clarify.

Manav: 13:02

That's the whole talk conversation around structuring the content, right?

Krishan: 13:06

Because I don't think the brand story and the fluff is unimportant.

Manav: 13:10

No, it's not.

Krishan: 13:10

Very important. The person has come to the site. That's what you need to do. The clarity.

Manav: 13:14

Clarity, right? And so the pillar three is about being very clear about who you are. You know, don't give mixed messaging. Do not put in everything that you can think of. You know this, and you know what we used to earlier called keyword stuffing so that you get more visitors and hopefully some converts.

Manav: 13:31

So that is pillar three. And then pillar four is keeping the content fresh. Okay.

Krishan: 13:39

So we got pillar one, two and three. And three was really about sort of the clarity of content for the AI tool. Pillar four, Mr. Monov, is really the content that is off your site. Yes.

Krishan: 13:59

Right? And this is another SEO concept that we're now reinventing. Right. So can you unpack this for us?

Manav: 14:09

So you have to still have authority outside your own site. That means that citations...

Krishan: 14:16

What does that all mean? What is authority on somebody else's website? How does that help?

Manav: 14:20

Just in one line, another website referring or citing you or having your link. These websites or sources have to have some sort of authority themselves for it to matter.

Krishan: 14:39

Again, if it's CNN versus KJ's blog, CNN is winning every time.

Manav: 14:45

Whoever has it on CNN or... They win. Or, you know, New York Times or Washington Post is going

Krishan: 14:50

to win over KJ's block, right? That's what it is. We're pushing it, but...

Manav: 14:54

No, no, of course. And the more of these sort of authoritative sites cite you, the better the signal is to the tool. That's what it is. And the fifth one is keeping the content fresh, which means basically keep updating the content, having more current dates around it, being more current, being more topical. And I think that's...

Manav: 15:20

We don't need to really deep dive into that.

Krishan: 15:22

That's pretty clear. Okay, Manav, I just want to talk about this authority concept. There's this term now that I've heard some other industry experts talk about digital PR. Is that anything new or is that just another way of packaging up domain authority of off page SEO? So like digital PR is getting pages with higher authority to link back to your site.

Krishan: 15:57

Right. And from my perspective, it's just what we've always wanted and intended to do with SEO. Right. Yeah. And so I think it's just packaged up differently.

Manav: 16:10

It's packaged differently.

Krishan: 16:11

It's basically the way it's there that I've read it or watched it or heard it is that this is an entirely new concept for AEO. Correct. And I don't think it is.

Manav: 16:20

No, I still think the tactics are the same.

Krishan: 16:22

Right. Okay. I just want to be clear. So if you do hear something about digital PR, it's something that already should be happening with your SEO agency.

Manav: 16:33

Or within your SEO team, if you happen.

Krishan: 16:35

Right. Okay. I mean, if you're having, if you do good work and your brand espouses, you know, or has great clients and also brand advocates, then there's no issue for, you know, you should definitely have positive PR no matter what. Absolutely. Okay.

Krishan: 16:55

All right. Good. So what's five? That's keeping everything fresh.

Manav: 16:59

Fresh. Yeah.

Krishan: 17:00

So what is that? What does that mean?

Manav: 17:01

So the content needs to be, you know, current. The more current it is, the topical it is.

Krishan: 17:08

So for us, we've had clients for, let's say six years. We've published blogs for the past six years.

Manav: 17:15

So we've

Krishan: 17:15

got blogs hitting our site from 2020.

Manav: 17:18

So what happens to those blogs? Refresh those, right?

Krishan: 17:21

So what does that mean?

Manav: 17:22

So you can either, you know, change around some of the content which is not relevant in

Krishan: 17:27

that. Right.

Manav: 17:27

So it's

Krishan: 17:28

six years later.

Manav: 17:28

It's six years later. So a lot of those things would have gone out. Images. Images, styles, you know, SKUs, whatever it is, right? So you can change those out.

Manav: 17:38

You can give more, you know, put in more topical content, right? You can just keep updating it if it needs to be.

Krishan: 17:47

And I think that the thing that you talked to me about earlier, you know, outside of this podcast, is that letting signaling to the AI tool that it is new, right? Which is basically putting in today's date after you're publishing it today. Because you can't forget that.

Manav: 18:04

You can't forget that.

Krishan: 18:05

And the AI tool reads the newest and freshest content and gives it priority. Is that what I understand?

Manav: 18:13

Well, that's what we've observed. And, know, when you're talking about this, it's also, it's evolved like this you know, AI scene is evolving really fast and it's new and it's changing fast. So there's like every day, every week, every month, you're learning new stuff, right? You're seeing new trends, you're seeing new techniques, you're seeing new tactics, you're hearing new acronyms which you never heard before. So, you know, it's also not only for the brand, but even for the agency, it's pretty much, you know, everyone's trying to keep up.

Manav: 18:49

So we must also keep that in mind when you're talking about any of the AI stuff, which is going on, the transformational shift, which is happening.

Krishan: 18:58

But refresh is not just refresh, it's also create.

Manav: 19:01

It also create. And this is again, I mean, we would suggest this back in the day, like, you know, eight, seven years ago, six years ago, we would suggest that, that refresh your content, your content needs to, you know, change a little bit. So, again, these are, you know, things which Okay, be

Krishan: 19:17

like I'm just going to digress here. So, you know, people will say we can find questions or prompts inside the AI tool that people are already searching for about our industry or brands like us?

Manav: 19:35

Right.

Krishan: 19:36

And should we be writing content or revising our content to answer those questions or topics?

Manav: 19:46

Yeah, you should be. Okay.

Krishan: 19:48

I mean, you say like that's... So you're basically...

Manav: 19:50

You spoke about this the whole...

Krishan: 19:51

No. Like I'm saying, like, if you... Like, theoretically, if you put in... Like if you put in the top 10 reasons to buy sun hats, right? And it provides you the top 10 reasons.

Krishan: 20:06

Are you writing blogs on those top 10 reasons? Or are you writing blogs on really what's specific to your clients and not really to what the AI tool is, you know, So if you

Manav: 20:19

want more authority, then you should write blogs on the top 10 reasons. Every reason should have a small little micro blog.

Krishan: 20:26

And so you are using the AI tool to generate the content that the AI tool deems important. Do you understand? It's like a loop, right?

Manav: 20:38

No, you know, so we do not use AI tools to generate the content completely. That's not what we do. Okay. I would not do that.

Krishan: 20:44

Not the content completely, but the topics for the content?

Manav: 20:49

So it, again, the AI tool is going to help you strategize, right? And the content team is going to decide whether the strategy or the, given by the AI tool or you're working with the tool.

Krishan: 21:03

Not the Bible.

Manav: 21:04

Not just going take what it says. The content team is going to decide whether you want to take that strategy from the AI tool and utilize it or not, or you need to change it or you need to completely discard it. Right? I got it. So this is very important to know also that if you just don't have AI write your content thinking that the AI will write the best content for you.

Manav: 21:27

Well, that's

Krishan: 21:27

what I'm asking.

Manav: 21:28

No, that's

Krishan: 21:28

because if it's writing the content, shouldn't it like source that content or like recognize that's the best content?

Manav: 21:34

No, that that's not how it's working so far. It that way, you know, want to be just everybody's just going to have the same content. Right? It's going to generalize everything then. So the engines are smart enough to know this, right?

Manav: 21:49

Just like Google is, they're also smart enough to know this. So that's one thing I would not suggest anybody to blindly do is just have it, definitely use it, have it strategized, have it give out a

Krishan: 22:03

couple It's of guidance

Manav: 22:05

is Your judgment is important here. And your judgment has to be on top of this. Cannot just throw AI on slop and, you know, say, okay, now it's an AI automated, you know, AI generated stuff. No, no, no, no. You have to have the data set first and then put the AI on top.

Krishan: 22:22

Okay.

Manav: 22:23

That's the thing.

Krishan: 22:24

All right. So I mean, look, we did digress, but I thought, so that's important. I think that's an important point here that you can use it for guidance. You know, it can help you with some of the social media stuff, but from an AEO perspective, you're still having to create, or still, your team still has to be the ones producing the content, revising refreshing the content.

Manav: 22:51

Being the final judge and yes, absolutely. I find that more effective than just taking something out of it. That's what the data tells us. That's what the data says and that's what I think everyone is.

Krishan: 23:03

That's why we're seeing the results we are.

Manav: 23:05

That's why the brand is seeing the results

Krishan: 23:07

it is. Right. Okay, so now that we've gone through sort of the five pillars of what to actually do, I think the next part, which is like for me personally, when you run a brand or you're working with brands, tracking and confirming and understanding measurement is super important. All right. And there are no, I think, there's no front runner for what, is a data tracking tool for AI at this point.

Krishan: 23:47

Or is there? I mean, I'm asking you.

Manav: 23:51

For what?

Krishan: 23:52

For like, for example, is, you know, if we have, you can't determine how many times you've been sourced, right? Or you've shown up in somebody's questions. So... No, there are.

Manav: 24:09

You can, there are tools which, can tell you how many times you've been cited.

Krishan: 24:14

So if I say, you know, what are the best hats for summer? Again, back to my question. How many times did, my brand, for example, my hat brand, KJ's hat brand, show up on the different AI tools. Yeah,

Manav: 24:33

are tools which can tell you how many times you've been cited.

Krishan: 24:36

Okay. And what you're visiting And is that accurate? You and I both know that if there are different platforms that we all use that provide attribution and I'd say inflate attribution, right? Because they're counting their own success.

Manav: 25:06

So this is, no, so I'll go back a step, right? This goes back to what we were discussing about how the AI is seeing you, right? So it's not so much about if I'm being cited or not. Am I being cited for the right props? That's the question you should be asking.

Krishan: 25:21

So how do you find that answer?

Manav: 25:22

So the way we do it, we have our own tools to do that, right? So what we do is we've made our own AI automations and agents, which are going to keep asking these, you know, the three, four top LLMs, your Chad GPT, your Claude, Gemini, and you know, Perplexity. Some would say Gronk, but... Some would, yeah. I mean, so, you know, let's take these four for the time.

Manav: 25:48

They will keep asking specific queries to them and seeing if your sites come up, if you get, your website comes up or you get cited in any of these. Right? So we run these on a regular basis, which is

Krishan: 26:01

But but the point I'm trying to make is So, that like, you know, if you have a search term in Google, right? Best sun hats. You can see the volume of searches on Google for that keyword. So how do you know that, you know, you are being, or that term is being searched for, or you show up that many times? I don't think it exists.

Manav: 26:22

So no, you have to run it. I mean, have not seen a tool do that right now, but there are tools which will tell you how many times you've been cited. There are tools which will tell you what your AI visibility looks like. Again, this is, you know, some of the metric the tool's made up. So there are many tools like that, But I don't want to guess.

Manav: 26:39

What we do is we've got, you know, a system made where, for example, if you're selling, let's talk about hats, are you selling

Krishan: 26:45

hats? That's going be our thing now.

Manav: 26:48

Yeah, it's going be hats.

Krishan: 26:49

Okay, so we got baseball hats and we got sun hats. Or baseball hats.

Manav: 26:52

Hiking hats. Right. So if, so I would first take in like five relevant queries, what my buyer would ask, right? So best baseball hats for Boston, right? Best baseball hats near me.

Manav: 27:09

Where can I get a baseball hat for under $25 X, Y, Z, whatever? You take these five prompts for what your ideal customer profile would ask, and then you run them side by side on five different AI tools or LLMs, right? Then you get answers, and then you are going to see if you've been cited on any of those or not, right? That's the only way which you can be 100% sure that you are being cited for the right prompts or you're not being cited.

Krishan: 27:37

Okay.

Manav: 27:38

Now for brands, it's impossible to do this daily, day in, day out, change that they... So we've got tools which we use ourselves. We've made our own automations at So

Krishan: 27:46

at two fifty three, we already have that?

Manav: 27:47

We have that. But there are other tools which you can if you have the manpower and the hours to do this yourself, then there are many tools outside which will tell you. But I have not seen one which I'm going to tell you for exact prompts and run them side by side so far. But if you search, I'm sure you'll find many tools which will tell you if you've been cited, your visibility, you know, how these things are looking at you. We've got a little more But manual,

Krishan: 28:11

granular there's no gold standard really that everybody's saying this is the one. So like in... No. Yeah. Okay.

Krishan: 28:17

All right. And the reason why I'm saying this is because I think AEO through its discovery trust or through the trust and discovery concept here with basically zero clicks, right? The whole concept of zero clicks and the answer component to it, really where we found the data is through conversions. Right. Right.

Krishan: 28:49

And if that's showing up, right, it's because something's happening correctly. Right. And so what we've done with our internal SEO team that you've explained to me is that we run variety of questions or prompts, and we're making sure that we're showing up in all of them. If we're not, we have to refine how the content's written. Correct.

Krishan: 29:16

Okay. And that's what's happened and shown us the success over the last six months. Correct. Okay. Now I believe you.

Krishan: 29:26

Do you know why? Because we're showing sales.

Manav: 29:28

Right. Exactly. There you go. You're showing sales. Right.

Krishan: 29:30

Right. You kept saying it's happening, it's happening. And I said, well, when and when? And now you're like, well, it's happening.

Manav: 29:38

Right. And to go back to your question, you were asking about the gold standard in these tools. Yeah. I think the closest I would get, and this is one tool which I trust the most for some data, is probably SEMrush.

Krishan: 29:52

Okay. Why is that?

Manav: 29:53

So I've always had, I've always found it probably the most reliable for external tools for this. So that would be the only one I would go to so far.

Krishan: 30:03

All right, Manav. So now we've gone through this detailed, I guess, step by step of what needs to get done. But for anybody who's new to this, it sounds overwhelming, right? I'm a new brand or I'm established brand. And I've tinkered in SEO.

Krishan: 30:25

I've really focused on paid ads. Again, I'm just making this up. But now I realize that AEO or answer engine optimization is something I have to commit to. Again, I'm a little overwhelmed. Do I start with SEO?

Krishan: 30:39

Do I start with AEO? Do I have to do both? Like, please help me God. Like what, what do I do? How do I start from zero?

Manav: 30:45

No. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, and you have to start with the foundation, which is SEO and the foundational layer remains the same. Right? So it's like we say, it's a scaffolding for AEO.

Manav: 30:57

So once you get that done, then you move on to what we had just discussed about putting in the little parts for, for you to show up on... Okay.

Krishan: 31:06

So I'm a new client and I called 253. My understanding is the first thing that needs to get done is an audit. Right.

Manav: 31:16

What is that audit? So in that audit, will first see how your site is doing, number one, right? So we've got the technical aspects of your site. See how you're ranking on Google or any search engine for keywords, for traffic, for backlinks, for referral links, what your competitors are ranking for, what the gaps are, what the opportunities are, where you have certain low hanging fruit, where it's going to be a longer play, what the content gaps are. So we're going to do all of that research.

Krishan: 31:50

So that's a site audit as well as an SEO audit? SEO audit, a site audit, technical audit. That's all in

Manav: 31:58

one because we want to see get the full picture. It's like, you know, getting, you know, like an MRI machine. We almost, you know, we put the company through an MRI machine or the brand through an MRI machine.

Krishan: 32:08

And you hope to God, it all comes out positive.

Manav: 32:09

And all comes out positive. So we know because you have to look at it holistically, you have to see it from every angle and see where you can actually make the biggest impact first and foremost in the shortest amount of time and then go from there. So you need to have all the aspects.

Krishan: 32:24

So the second thing is when you talk about low hanging fruit, and remember we're talking to, the AI tool here, right? If I under, like the second thing would be the, like the technical SEO, because that's what has to happen second. Is that what I understand? So what's the second step after the audit and the MRI?

Manav: 32:49

Is the technical SEO. Your site has to be performing. Okay. Right? It has to be responsive.

Manav: 32:55

It has to... You can send a person... So if

Krishan: 32:58

you're building the house on sand, forget

Manav: 32:59

it. Forget it. Right? I mean, imagine spending millions of dollars and sending people to a store and the store door is shut, right? It's just, you know, that's what it is, right?

Krishan: 33:09

So, and I, I've, know... So you and I have seen where we have clients that will spend money on driving traffic, whether it's SEO and or paid ads or paid social, and their website is just horrendous. Yeah.

Manav: 33:32

And they will not understand sometimes the need for, you know, updating and revamping that website because they're like, you know, it's been on for so long. We don't need to change that. Drive traffic to it. We're like, we'll drive traffic to it.

Krishan: 33:50

It's not going to help. Right. We're going to assume that the website is fine. So then we go with the audit and then we go with the technical SEO. Correct.

Krishan: 34:00

Okay. And just to remind us, the technical SEO is basically things like site speed, schema, and all the other things you've said about.

Manav: 34:10

The machine discoverability. So we'll go deeper than that. We'll do, you know...

Krishan: 34:14

The engines oiled and performance.

Manav: 34:15

Yeah, Basically the meta tags, the title tags, H1, H2. Okay, good. Hundreds of

Krishan: 34:20

things there, right? Again, we're starting from zero. We have now done the site audit. We've got our technical SEO done. And point three is what?

Krishan: 34:31

Content.

Manav: 34:32

The content on your site. We structure it to what we had discussed about answering the questions clearly.

Krishan: 34:38

Your best performing content or just any content?

Manav: 34:40

Again, you go through your content first. We audit the content. We see if it's been performing, non performing, what we want to change, what you don't want to change. Last thing you want to do is change something which is already working, right? So you want to first get those metrics.

Manav: 34:54

Over engineering. Don't overengineer this. Sometimes the best thing is not to do anything, right? So you first have to analyze the content,

Krishan: 35:02

then change it if necessary, where it's necessary. All right. So now we've got the first three steps done. We've got the audit, we've got the technical SEO and we've got some revised and refreshed content. What's point four?

Manav: 35:19

Make the content machine readable. That means structured, the data, the schema markups, you know, all of those technical tools.

Krishan: 35:27

Make it answerable to the AI tool. Absolutely. Right. Again, that's the whole conversation.

Manav: 35:32

That's the whole conversation.

Krishan: 35:33

Right. We're not making it for KJ and Manav to read. We're making it for chat or Claude to read. Right? Absolutely.

Krishan: 35:41

And not to skip over.

Manav: 35:41

Yes, absolutely. And then like these are all again, these are all concepts which are not alien to any decent SEO team. They will know how to do this.

Krishan: 35:50

All right, good. So now we've got the first four steps. Again, we're starting from zero. We're working with, whether it's two fifty three or another agency. We've got, the foundation set and sort of everything on the site, the plumbing's done.

Krishan: 36:08

Now what happens?

Manav: 36:10

Now you have to start working on your site authority off your page, right?

Krishan: 36:16

But this is, this could take time.

Manav: 36:17

This is going to take time.

Krishan: 36:18

It's a long game now. Right.

Manav: 36:20

This is long, it's painful. Right. It's going to take time. And so you need to do

Krishan: 36:26

it now because that's important. That's where your signals are coming from also. Okay. And so don't expect results next month?

Manav: 36:34

Nope, absolutely not. Do not expect months results in one or two months. It's going to take a while.

Krishan: 36:39

Okay. But like you said, you've got to

Manav: 36:43

start immediately. Start immediately. Start yesterday, you know, that's my suggestion. So I think the most important point is that the window of opportunity closes quickly. The difference between brands who get it and the brands who don't is pretty big.

Manav: 37:01

While the competitor is still thinking and arguing about if it matters or not, the brands who are going to start moving and start starting to work on this are the ones who are going to win. And that's pretty much the long and short

Krishan: 37:14

of it. And it's cheaper to

Manav: 37:15

do it now. It's going be it's cheap cheaper to do it now. If you've got to wait, it's going to get more and more expensive and eventually you're going to get outpriced. That's that's what's going to happen. It's a great opportunity.

Manav: 37:27

It's a great window and I would suggest everybody use it.

Krishan: 37:32

And I just want to say one last thing because this is not theory. We have a real case scenario with the brands that we own, that AEO has driven the highest new client conversions that we've ever seen, 93%, from nothing six months ago, basically, to what I just said in six months. And we're all in. Exactly.