Rev & Reach Episode 12 – AI Search is Here: Is Your Marketing Strategy Ready? – Transcript

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jovest. Welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach. I am the founder and partner of Pop Speed Digital Marketing in Troy, Michigan, and with me is our lead social specialist, Kiley Metcalf. Say hi, Kiley.

KILEY: Hi everybody, and we are here today to talk about SEO and some of the crazy changes that are happening in that space and how it might impact your other digital marketing on social media and in other places.

LORI: So, Kiley, what have we noticed?

KILEY: Well, I think, I am sure at this point, everybody’s kind of noticed when you go to Google search or even Safari, if you have, you know, Apple products, when you go to search, the first things that pop up are no longer articles from trusted websites or other sources. It is now AI-generated information that is most often, I would say, accompanied by the leading sources and links there. But one of the things we’ve really noticed with this as it continues to kind of take search by storm, really, is that pretty much across all of our clients, website traffic is decreasing because of it.

And that’s because, if you turn to Google to search for something, you no longer have to click through to any website to get the information that you’re looking for. All you have to do is read the AI response that pretty accurately, I would say most often, gives you the answers that you’re looking for, and then you don’t really have to dig very deep. So is it convenient? Absolutely. Is it good for websites and digital marketing and SEO? No, it’s not.

02:04
LORI: And it is really hard to rank on those searches. So basically, what you’ve got is you’ve got a huge transition from searches leading to website listings to searches now becoming something the question gets answered by AI. They give you the sources along the side, they’ll show like the top three, and then you have to scroll down a little bit to find other ones. So ranking is becoming a lot more difficult.

And what we do? I follow Neil Patel—I think it’s N-E-I-L P-A-T-E-L—and he sends out emails consistently and constantly. And he’s one of the few he could send me an email every day, and I would look at it because his information is so valuable. And what he says is that instead of, like, search engine optimization, now it’s optimization for all channels, so it’s search everywhere. And I thought that was really interesting, because what that points to is that Google is actually pulling up social results, but people are also using the social channels for search.

And we looked at it. We looked at a really interesting grid, right? That had all the different channels on that were searched and where they ranked for probably the last year, or something like that. And Snapchat was ahead of Instagram, which cracked me up. I’m like, “Really, what?” But people are searching TikTok, they’re searching YouTube, they’re searching Meta to look for answers to questions and to search for topics.

So how do we counter that? And Kiley, you and I have talked about this a lot, so I’ll let you take this one.

03:51
KILEY: Yeah, absolutely, one of the key ways to counter it—and it’s something that we’ve kind of been trying to incorporate more into our digital strategies for a few years now, but now it’s more important than ever—is to use keywords in your social, in your copy, in your, I would say, in your assets. It’s a little bit less important, but it helps to get the attention of anybody that might be interested, but primarily in your copy, because that’s where it’ll show up in those searches, right?

It works pretty similarly to how normal SEO on Google used to work, really, in the sense that if your copy includes a, you know, a specific keyword—we’ll go back to our dental clients once again—you know, if it includes “dental implants” or “full arch dental implants,” or “dentures,” or things of that nature that people are searching on social media, you’ll rank higher in people, you know, turning to social platforms to search for that type of content. And, you know, once again, that’s one of those things that’s really easy to kind of work the algorithm when you’re writing SEO-tailored content for Google. It’s just taking that strategy and flipping it into your social, right?

And can that get a little bit awkward if you’re trying too hard sometimes? Sure. But it’s important to get creative, especially now with how difficult, like Lori said, it’s becoming to rank in those Google searches, because I’m pretty sure, Lori correct me if I’m wrong, that in that grid that we spent some time looking at, Google is still number one, and I don’t think it’s close. So because so many websites and brands and companies are starting to lose that juice that AI is stealing, it’s really important to, even though it might get a little bit awkward and even though it might get a little bit tedious, to really make it work and find a way to fit that into your strategy, whether that’s with hashtags, whether that’s making sure that, you know, let’s say you are a dental practice, right, that’s working on dental implant clients—using that language in your copy extremely consistently is going to help bridge that gap with the audience members really that you’re going to start kind of missing now that AI is taking over Google.

06:20
LORI: Yeah, and let me give you an example of what that means. When we say, “use your keywords in your copy,” a lot of us that are creating social content will, you know, we have the phrases we use. If it’s, for example, a dental implant clinic, we might say, “Are you ready for your new smile? We can help. Start here.” Short copy. Maybe it’s a video of one of the docs talking about, you know, why they’re the best, because they’ve been around forever.

And what you would normally say wouldn’t include the word “dental implants” or the phrase “dental implants.” So you would want to include that. And we have a client that promotes the benefits of steel to manufacturers. And one of the things that we’re doing over there is there’s a product called—or a type of steel called—advanced high strength steels. And so instead of just saying AHSS, I’m going to be spelling it out, because that’s what the search is likely to be, or put them both, right? And just make sure you’re consistently using that keyword in your copy, in your posts, repeatedly, so that the search function on that particular social channel will see that you’ve got a ton of content with that particular keyword.

So it’s not hard. It just might sound nicer to just use, you know, to leave it out, or to use an acronym, but try to really look at sources like Answer the Public. Have you ever been on Answer the Public, Kiley?

07:59
KILEY: Yeah, we’ve spent some time there. Yeah, it’s extremely helpful for kind of getting a better gauge and idea of what people are actually asking search platforms and search engines when it comes to, you know, relative to specific brands, right? And that’s not just for Google. I think we’ve seen it, I would say, particularly with YouTube and TikTok in the last several years, increasingly becoming really, really highly used search engines, right? And obviously they’re social platforms.

But you know, I think we’ve said it on Rev and Reach before, that you can learn how to do anything on YouTube, right? And TikTok is really following suit in a shorter form way. So, you know, if you’re, let’s think of an example, if you’re a restaurant and you’re wondering what people in your area are looking for, like what they want to eat, and you know, what it is that’s most important to them when they’re going to spend their dollars at a restaurant on a Friday night, and what they’re searching for and, you know, like menu items and cocktails and things like that—turn to Answer the Public, because it’s a really great way, whether you’re writing for Google or your social channels, to tailor your content to what people are genuinely looking for.

09:23
LORI: Yeah, I love it. It’s a great, great tool. And you know, back to YouTube, if you are not using YouTube as one of your social channels, get on it with YouTube Shorts. You are put into the feeds of people that are following the subject that you talk about, as well as search, and it’s related. YouTube is tied to Google Ads, so you can set everything up in Google Ads and it will use those demographics.

And we’re seeing a really nice low cost per click on Google AdWords right now for some clients and some really interesting results. So search is changing. It’s constantly evolving, just like everything else. If you need a vendor or a digital marketing supplier that is on top of those changes as they occur, it can be difficult if you’re a marketer trying to keep track of all that yourself, right? You can’t be on every webinar and get every email announcement from every type of social or digital channel, right?

So we would love to hear from you. We are happy to network with you. We are open networkers on LinkedIn. If you have questions, reach out to either me or Kiley, and we are here to help. If there’s a topic you’d like us to talk about on Rev and Reach, please get in touch with us, because we’re covering all the different things that we do, how we do them, what’s hot right now, what’s working, what’s not working, so that you can be a better digital marketer. And you know, we’re here to help. So I think that’s all we’ve got for today, right?

KILEY: Yeah, kind of a short and sweet one, but one that’s really important. So, yeah, I would say so.

LORI: So we’ll be back again soon with some more advice on how to get more ROI from your digital marketing. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon.