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GEO vs SEO: James Dooley Says Only 1% of SEOs Can Actually Do It — Transcript

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0:00We've got James Douly and David Quaid
0:02back on the podcast. Two of the
0:04greatest, most respected search engine
0:07optimization folks of all time. And
0:10James, you said getting AI visibility.
0:13Geo is different from SEO from search
0:16engine optimization. And David, you've
0:18been on the podcast dozens of times now
0:20saying SEO and geo are the same things
0:23with different names. So, we're gonna
0:26have a little bit of a debate. James,
0:28why is why is getting AI visibility
0:31different than search engine
0:32optimization?
0:34>> I just want to start by saying I have
0:35absolutely put myself on a death wish
0:37because I've seen the previous episodes
0:39of GEO versus SEO and David has
0:42absolutely schooled them. So I think
0:44it's very different. Um, and what's very
0:47interesting be when we get started is
0:49we've set up now an AEO department or a
0:52GEO department, whatever you want to
0:53call it, for increased AI visibility.
0:55So, not only do I think it's different,
0:57I've literally set this different
0:58department up. And I didn't want to cuz
1:01I initially was in the exact same boat
1:03as David Qu to say, GEO is just SEO with
1:06a different label. However, I got proven
1:09wrong several times by internal members
1:11of staff. And now I've got people that
1:13live and breathe GEO. And there's lots
1:16of different reasons why. And I'll I'll
1:18give you a few reasons. So I know quite
1:20a lot of my team internally are great at
1:23ranking position number one in Google
1:25but they struggle to increase AI
1:27citations in chat GPT. I know people
1:30that could rank position number one by
1:31doing good quality content and decent
1:34back links and stuff like that to rank
1:36number one in Google but struggle to get
1:38in the AI overview and there is
1:40different nuances and trying to retrain
1:43some of these people then to add the
1:45extra layer of GEO became harder work
1:48where it's just like I have my SEO
1:49department doing the S SEO search engine
1:51optimization the AI visibility there's
1:55lots of different nuances which we can
1:57dig deeper into of how you get yourself
2:00into AI overview, AI mode, claude, and
2:04chat GPT. So, there's different nuances
2:06per LLM, which we can dive into. And I
2:09know David's going to say, is that not
2:10just SEO for us internally and for a lot
2:13of others that I've spoken to? No,
2:15there's different things that need to be
2:17done on top of that.
2:23>> Interesting. Um so let's start with um
2:27what what what does OM do?
2:31>> What does OM do? Uh OM is generally
2:34reputation management. So obviously
2:35you're trying to get the brand to be
2:37seen in a positive manner. Um not only
2:40do you want to rank on page position
2:42number one, you want to cover the whole
2:44of the first page. Um ideally first two
2:46pages in an ideal kind of way. I would
2:49say that GEO is is SEO plus OM. um is
2:53kind of my mantra behind all of it. But
2:56let me let me fire back with one there.
2:58Do you think that if someone wants ORM,
3:01they would go to an SEO agency or would
3:04they go to an OM agency?
3:06>> I think many do. I think the starting
3:09point for anyone looking at um you know,
3:12I've got these websites are saying X
3:14about me, these websites are saying X, I
3:17want to get rid of it. they go to they
3:18go to an SEO agency or they go to an SEO
3:20forum or they go to an SEO community.
3:23The companies that
3:25tend to offer OM
3:28I would say the overlap is like one like
3:30100% are all SEO agencies. The
3:33difference is that they're ranking
3:36multiple pages, multiple domains. In
3:39fact, they might even try a 100
3:41different domains because each set of
3:43results is is is limited to two. And so
3:47not every SEO agency can do OM, but
3:50every OM agency is an SEO agency just
3:53like not every local SEO agency is an is
3:56a regular SEO agency and vice versa,
3:59right? Cuz like local SEO can be very
4:01different. I mean, if you can't figure
4:03out Google business profile, you're
4:05everything else is going to help you,
4:07right? This method of marketing is so
4:09effective, I had to make sure it wasn't
4:11against Google's rules before I kept
4:13doing it. It's a form of SEO I call
4:15compact keywords. Whereas most SEO
4:18focuses on putting up articles to answer
4:20questions, how, what, when, compact
4:22keywords focuses on putting up dozens of
4:24pages that sell to searchers who are
4:26actually looking to buy. These pages
4:29rank on Google and convert so much
4:31better than normal that when I
4:33discovered this years ago, I couldn't
4:35believe this was allowed. It's less
4:37work, too. The average compact keywords
4:39page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords
4:43is a 13-hour deep course on getting
4:46sales with SEO. A customer recently
4:48said, "Each lesson is dense with
4:51information. You're giving years worth
4:53of experience boiled down into 15 to 30
4:56minute lessons with no filler or fluff.
4:58I feel like I'm gaining a new
5:00superpower. Compact Keywords is about
5:02setting up an SEO funnel that brings you
5:04sales for years and years and years. It
5:07works with AI. It's less work than
5:09traditional SEO and it makes way more
5:12money. You can get it now at
5:14compactkeywords.com.
5:16Back to the podcast. For very very
5:18competitive uh local SEO, I think
5:22authority comes into play. Like if
5:23you're talking about law, plumbers,
5:25electricians in a big city where there's
5:27like a hundred, I think big SEO, page
5:30rank SEO comes into play. So I think one
5:34of the challenges with
5:36SEO versus GEO being two different
5:39things is how the market is bifurcated,
5:42right? Where you have SEO agencies
5:44saying it's absolutely the same thing
5:46and then you have geo agencies saying if
5:49you build a great brand LLM will come
5:51and find you which I think is complete
5:53hogwash, right? That's not how engineers
5:56design LLM. They're not out there trying
5:59to make sure that you're pitching to
6:00your ICP and you've got your brand
6:02strategy right and your messaging is on
6:04point. And if you do that, they'll find
6:06you. And there are hundreds of two penny
6:10uh geos shouting that. Uh just before we
6:12joined the show, some someone tried to
6:14tell me that um geo SEO is dead. No
6:18shade. Um guy called Mike um because
6:22like uh more people are moving. So I was
6:24like, okay, that's that's great. That
6:26that's interesting. do you have data to
6:27back it up? And then he blocked me. Um,
6:29but he also forgot I have like more than
6:30one X account. So I replied back and I
6:32was like, here's my here's my analytics,
6:35right? Here's a company that got getting
6:37leads and AI assistant has made up 0.6%
6:41of the leads, right? So um I think this
6:44idea that SEOs are trying to hold on to
6:49something that's dead or changed or that
6:51geo is fund so such a big mindset change
6:54is fundamentally different are flawed in
6:56the sense that your agency is an SEO
7:00agency and while you recognize that the
7:03query fan out changes
7:06the way you get those clients in is
7:10through SEO Right.
7:12>> Yeah. I so partially agree with what
7:14you're saying. Um the bit that I
7:16definitely disagree with um is that an O
7:20if someone wants online reputation
7:22management, they would go and find a
7:24search engine optimization agency. I
7:26completely disagree with that part and
7:28the reason being is there's different
7:29pots of money that's being spent and
7:31there's different pots of money for SEO
7:33and there's different pots of money for
7:34OM and branding. And I think the biggest
7:36part if we're moving into online
7:38reputation management of where I believe
7:40personally in house and from speaking to
7:42a lot of others who spend the money on
7:44GEO versus SEO being different pots of
7:46money is that we start we need to start
7:49looking at not just rankings but I know
7:52a lot of people that do OM and they do
7:54OM and GEO and guess what they don't
7:57even do SEO and just just listen hear me
8:00out on this they mainly spend the money
8:02on PPC on Facebook ads but what they're
8:04wanting to do is they increase their
8:06rorowass if they get cited better in the
8:09AI overview. So I know certain people
8:11that have just got a landing page that
8:14they're sending it through to and their
8:15brand they're not even bothered about
8:18their own website. What they care about
8:20is the third party cooperative sources
8:22saying how amazing that they are. So at
8:24the 11th hour when they've gone and gone
8:26and clicked through and decided oh we
8:28might go with this let's say mortgage
8:29broker they might say should I go with
8:31these or these and AI is saying how
8:34amazing that they are not through
8:36anything of their own website all
8:37through third party validation now you
8:39could say that third party validation
8:41was all to do with what was they doing
8:43they was doing search engine
8:44optimization but that really doesn't
8:47boil down to they don't go to an SEO
8:49agency for that like prime example
8:52Edward I just want to throw you under
8:53the bus here a little bit and bring you
8:55into the conversation.
8:57Do you believe that if somebody had a
9:00pot of money to go and do link building,
9:04do you think they would go to a link
9:05building agency or an SEO agency? Be
9:09truthful on that.
9:11>> Somebody had a lot of money to do link
9:13building, who would they go to?
9:15>> An SEO agency or a link building agency?
9:19Yeah, they they would probably go to I
9:22mean, you know, it really depends. SEO
9:25agencies can do great link building. So,
9:28like I it's like they're Yeah, they're
9:30going to go to a link building agency,
9:32but that doesn't mean that an SEO agency
9:34wouldn't do great link building.
9:36>> So, if you I completely agree with that
9:38part, but you just said you'd go to a
9:39link building agency.
9:40>> I said that they're going to go to a
9:42link building agency. I don't know about
9:43what I would do. I know lots of great
9:45SEOs. So, like if I was in that
9:47position, I might go to an SEO agency.
9:50>> So, so, so let's ask then.
9:52>> I also know lots of link building
9:53agencies that do really bad link
9:55building and are scammers.
9:57>> I I completely agree with it. But let's
9:58just try to think to start with about
10:01the brand positioning that if generally
10:03speaking, if you go into a new city and
10:05you want a stake, more than likely
10:07you're going to go
10:07>> Yeah. But but we're we're discussing
10:09we're discussing positioning versus the
10:12actual uh what is being performed. So
10:15David's argument is that what is being
10:18performed is the same for both terms.
10:21Your argument is that like I like that
10:26there are just
10:28specialties of like I'm not even Can you
10:32>> let me please?
10:33>> Yeah. Let me let me ask it a different
10:34let me ask it a different way.
10:36>> Yeah.
10:36>> So let me steal man your argument.
10:40If you
10:42if you knew that o that geo was a
10:44different service, right? And you you're
10:46like, I want to rank in AI and you go
10:48and search for the best geo agency and
10:51an SEO agency ranks for it. Would you
10:54hire them?
10:55>> Yeah.
10:56>> Okay.
10:57>> But I'm searching for GEO agency. Well,
10:59I'm not.
11:00>> Yes.
11:00>> But I'm saying the people that are
11:02looking for a GEO agency are searching
11:05for a GEO agency. So I think before we
11:07get on to the hooks and crux of what's
11:09different which we will get into as well
11:11is that from a brand positioning point
11:12of view I believe I also when we talked
11:15about OM if you speak to majority if
11:18anyone's watching this they're an OM
11:19they'll comment on this and agree if
11:21you're an OM specialist you are not
11:24doing SEO agency work because OM gets
11:272030,000 a month where an SEO agency
11:30gets paid a lot less. If you're an OM
11:32agency, you are an SEO on steroids
11:34because you don't just rank your own
11:36website. You're owning the first page.
11:37>> You're saying branding. You're That's
11:39what it is. You're saying branding, not
11:41actually what's being done.
11:43>> And like, okay, fine. Like, branding and
11:45positioning is very different. David's
11:47argument is that the activities being
11:50performed are the same.
11:52>> David, am I wrong about that?
11:54>> Yeah. In other words, can you do geo
11:57without doing any SEO? In other words,
11:59zero link building, zero web planning
12:02for for SEO.
12:03>> Yes, you can. Yeah.
12:05>> So, you you're talking about completely
12:06failing at SEO.
12:08>> Yeah. I'm saying that you can go and get
12:10um a Yelp listing and then you go and
12:13get loads of reviews on Yelp. I'm saying
12:15that you can go and get a trust Trip
12:17Advisor and go and get you loads of
12:18reviews on Trip without even having a
12:20website. Would you would you call that
12:22SEO? I wouldn't. I would then say
12:24>> so.
12:25>> I'd say that's your review base. But by
12:28if you go and check in certain
12:29industries prime another example right
12:31if you go and type in web design in
12:33Canada and you look at the query fan out
12:35terms they're looking at certain places
12:37like now they changed the query fan out
12:39to like site colon design rush or site
12:43clutch they're literally looking for
12:46design rush and clutch they're not
12:47looking at they're not looking at Google
12:49anymore they're looking on that specific
12:51website within query find out for
12:53specific websites in certain local terms
12:55like plumbers They're looking for site
12:57call on Yelp. And then what they then
12:59doing is to type in the brand with
13:01reviews. And at that point, what you
13:03then need to be doing is you need to be
13:05getting the reviews on Yelp. You need to
13:06be getting the reviews on Clutch or
13:08within Design Rush. And per industry,
13:10that can change. That isn't doing good
13:13quality content, building topical
13:14authority, and building links, which is
13:16kind of what SEO for your own website
13:19is. It's a very different set of tasks
13:22that you're getting the team to perform
13:25than what standard SEO practices do
13:27within SEO agencies.
13:30>> All right, let's take that. Let's just
13:31stop right there cuz that that's really
13:33interesting. Let's dive in here. So,
13:35what percentage of plumbers would and
13:38electricians would you say are on Yelp
13:40in the UK and US
13:42>> if you had to guess? 90% 99.
13:45>> No, no, no.
13:4795
13:47>> 30% 40%.
13:50>> Only 30 or 40% of I don't I don't mean I
13:53don't mean I don't mean paying. I mean
13:54they're listed they don't know majority
13:56of them are not on Yelp.
13:58>> They're not on Yelp but on Yel and
14:00stuff. I'd say definitely below 50%.
14:03>> Okay. So let's go to let's take a big
14:05let's take big cities big metropolan
14:07areas, right? There's at least 10
14:10electricians on Yelp per city, right?
14:13So, is creating a listing on Yelp
14:17going to guarantee you ranking in an
14:20LLM?
14:22>> Uh, no. But then what you then do is
14:24let's say you do let's say you do Yelp
14:25and Checker Trade and those two together
14:28certainly can. So, also social media
14:31marketing I I know certain people that's
14:33increased AI visibility by just doing
14:36social media. So then the increase of it
14:39then alongside then having Yelp and
14:41having um Trip Advisor is now getting
14:44them cited website not ranked at all
14:46just over
14:47>> so early
14:49days of the internet right so the same
14:51thing when when Facebook and X launched
14:53I saw a lot of people saying I'm giving
14:54up my website I'm just going to have a
14:55Facebook page
14:56>> y
14:58>> give me a scenario where an electrician
15:01or a plumber or a lawyer isn't on Yelp
15:05or BBB or one of those sites
15:07and an SEO agency and let's say like the
15:10other nine people hire an SEO agency.
15:14>> So
15:14>> not a geo a just an SEO agency. How long
15:17how whose money are you putting on those
15:20the nine versus the one of ranking
15:22first?
15:23>> Absolutely. On the SEO agency now now
15:25bear in mind as well like I'm on I'm on
15:27this show and I've got to be very
15:28careful because
15:3190% of SEO and GEO does overlap. I'm not
15:34denying that fact. Right? So, if you
15:36start saying you can't do SEO and I do
15:38SEO and you just do off paid signals,
15:40who's going to win? And you're able to
15:41do off paid signals, you're going to
15:43win. You need to do everything. But what
15:44I'm saying is I believe there's enough
15:46nuances and difference to brand it as
15:49being different. And I believe there's
15:51enough services of what needs to be done
15:53that needs to be different than than
15:55just SEO. I believe it's I believe OM
15:58isn't just SEO. I don't believe it is
16:01just SEO. think OM are better than SEO
16:03agencies because they can do a lot more.
16:05I think that people that majority people
16:08that once they get really good at SEO
16:09moving to OM. I also believe David Quaid
16:13isn't and this is what I've said off air
16:15to you several times. I believe by you
16:17saying GEO is just SEO. I think you do
16:20yourself a disservice because I think
16:22you're a brilliant SEO as well as a
16:24brilliant GEO. And I feel that you
16:26should rebrand yourself as being both
16:29GEO and SEO. And that's what I'm hoping
16:32at the end of this episode you do. Um,
16:34but I believe you're too good to just be
16:36an SEO because I believe there's a lot
16:37more to it that gets you cited in AI.
16:40And I believe there's pots of money that
16:43people are looking for a GEO specialist
16:44and might not come to David Quig because
16:46he's an SEO specialist, not a GEO
16:48specialist. Does that make sense?
16:51>> Thank you very much for the kind words.
16:52I'm not going to go easy on you. I'm
16:54just
16:54>> Going
16:56I'm well up for it. So here here's
16:59here's here's another way of looking at
17:00it, right? I completely agree that SEO
17:03sitting on X and Reddit going SEO and
17:05GEO are the same thing. Let's just call
17:07it SEO are doing themselves a massive
17:09disfavor. I think that the geo agencies
17:12over on LinkedIn
17:14um spreading manure saying that LLMs are
17:18here to finally recognize you brand CMO
17:20because you've hated Google your whole
17:21life and now it's going to come along
17:23and read your robot your LLM.ext text
17:25file and realize that you are actually
17:27the number one producer of cornstarch
17:31sugar and turning it into candy and LM
17:34are just going to start funneling money
17:36into you like a Ponzi scheme. I I think
17:40SEO is expecting the market to turn
17:44is gone and it's not because
17:48that geo is substantially different from
17:50SEO. It's actually because the mindset
17:53of the people hiring geos have a
17:56predisposition to hate SEO, right? They
17:59dislike SEO. They think backlinks are
18:03black hat. They think page rank is
18:07mysticism. It's undone everything
18:09they've learned at brand school. And
18:12they wouldn't hire an SEO if there was
18:14no marketing channel left on the world,
18:16right? They've been told good content.
18:19They write great content. What they
18:20don't realize is they're just producing
18:23brand messaging as content, right?
18:25They're just it's just sales pitch as
18:26content. And now LLMs have come in. It's
18:30it's like that guy that like those
18:32people on LinkedIn who keep calling SEO
18:34dead and they love it. They're so happy
18:35like like the guy who just told me an ex
18:37that SEO is dead, right? It may be, but
18:41it's an empirical question, right? And
18:43so if someone like Shopify comes out
18:45with a report and says that we're still
18:47getting the same amount of Google
18:48traffic and now we're also getting this
18:50AI component, that's data. But he's not
18:52quoting data cuz he doesn't have data.
18:54What he has is an emotional argument.
18:56What we have is an emotional problem.
18:58The people that are doing a fantastic
19:00job like searchable, I think Chris Long
19:03is the CEO out of London, not Chris
19:05Long, no someone else. I think that they
19:08are doing a phenomenal job, but I think
19:11that they are presenting a huge amount
19:14of disinformation, but people are
19:16lapping it up. And I think SEOs
19:20see that partially as a
19:24um
19:25a misinformation versus information
19:28program and that's pushing them away
19:30from the geo label. But if somebody is
19:35going to buy geo, they're going to look
19:37for a geo agency, not an SEO agency.
19:40However, if somebody like a law a
19:42lawyer, a law firm, a venture capital
19:44firm, a startup needs OM, I think they
19:48have to start an SEO because they don't
19:49know what OM means. And the actual route
19:52to OM is actually via SEO. So we're
19:56actually like on both sides of the coin
20:00or different sides of the same coin
20:01looking at it completely different. I
20:03think that the problem with geo versus
20:05SEO is much more an emotive problem. But
20:09one side SEOs refusing to take on the
20:12moniker and two the CMO CEOs who want to
20:16be associated with the next trend
20:17already dislike SEO. And so branding
20:21yourself as an SEO agency only versus
20:23SEO only agency is the problem. and that
20:27if you ignore whereas I think like you
20:29just said if an SEO agency ranked for
20:32best geo agency they would actually get
20:34hired. The problem is can they as the
20:38French say hold their nose and add a geo
20:41tag to their site.
20:44>> Right. But I think they need to from a
20:45brand positioning point of view. I think
20:46they need to. I also believe that with
20:48regards to when they're saying let's say
20:51on the from the paid ads point of view
20:53and I can I'm just talking from
20:54experience on this where they wanted to
20:57improve their AI visibility and what AI
20:59was saying about them. I know that they
21:01were spending a lot of money on PPC and
21:04they actually went out to a a brand
21:07positioning consultant and they would
21:10put them in touch with an OM. So, it
21:12didn't actually go through to an SEO
21:13agency. It was brand position. Your
21:15brand's not good enough. Therefore, you
21:17need a GEO ai SEO specialist. Now, I
21:21think someone like yourself would be
21:22brilliant at doing stuff like that. And
21:24the reason they're doing it is because
21:25they need fast results. They want to get
21:27quick off- page signals. And I believe
21:30again if we start talking about the
21:32difference between AEO and SEO, I think
21:35AEO is so much more off- page signals
21:38and validation on third-party sources
21:40than what a good quality SEO could with
21:43topical authority and working through
21:46the traffic tiers and only with a few
21:48amount of links could easily rank. Not
21:50saying easily, but can rank in Google.
21:53You need to echo that offline to be good
21:55at GEO. And the consensus of what you
21:58need to build offline is where I believe
22:00the main difference comes into. But I
22:03want to I want to throw some stuff at
22:04you, right? This could be built as a as
22:07a YouTube short, this part. Because how
22:09can you say that AEO is just SEO when
22:14you have different competitors for AEO
22:16versus SEO? when you've got different
22:19keywords that you're tracking and going
22:21after as part of the query find out
22:23terms that you're going after. When
22:25you're using different tools and you've
22:27got different reports of KPIs and data
22:31of what you're tracking, how can you
22:33then say that it's the same thing when
22:35all them things are different?
22:37>> Do I have to answer this honestly?
22:39>> Yeah.
22:40>> Okay. So the simple answer is as I said
22:44on the last call, I don't use any AIO
22:46tools anymore because they weren't
22:47providing me with any information with
22:49the exception of Microsoft Clarity which
22:50unfortunately I can't get to work on all
22:52my client sites. But
22:55the way I do SEO and I am doing
23:00increasingly more and more geo work,
23:01right, is the exact same way as I do SEO
23:06with the fundamental change that when
23:09I'm now asking for clients to
23:11collaborate on projects with other
23:14companies, right, collaboration,
23:17um, we're looking at
23:20echoing the same story,
23:22But I'm still using the same techniques
23:24of establishing relationships for the
23:27purpose of link building. So how do we
23:29help? I still need both parties to rank.
23:33I still use the same tools. So if I go
23:36to um find out what a prompt translates
23:40to into query fanout, I still take the
23:42same queries, build content the same
23:44way, or I use H2. So it's either a new
23:47page or it's a H2. And I still use a SER
23:49tracker to tell me if I'm ranking in
23:51Google or not. Nothing nothing
23:54fundamentally has changed in any way in
23:57that whole process except the number of
24:00keywords has gotten bigger. But I don't
24:02in any way use uh any different tools
24:05because my SER tool also does a AI
24:08overview monitoring and that for me is
24:10good enough.
24:11>> So we use profound peak um radar kit. Um
24:16we do use semrush one and brand radar
24:18which is ah revs and semrush and you say
24:19they are big SEO tools as well.
24:22The query find out terms of what they
24:24bring back is very different than what I
24:26would want on my own website. Um so it's
24:29not just about and not only that with
24:30the claim frame and prove model I need
24:33the third party corroboration the third
24:35party validation off page. So this can't
24:37just be a new page or a new H2 on my own
24:39website. It needs to be validated on a
24:42third-party source and building that
24:44consensus repeating who I am, what I do,
24:46and why I'm brilliant. And I think the
24:48why I'm brilliant needs to be about
24:50awards and testimonials and reviews that
24:52you want off offsite. So on like Clutch,
24:55on Design Rush, on uh Trip Adviser and
24:58all these other platforms, yes, you can
25:00do some amazing techniques which you two
25:02have already spoken about like have a
25:04supplementary website for the brand plus
25:07reviews. That is a great strategy that
25:09echoes on a on a on a a different
25:11website and you're getting all the best
25:13fivestar reviews of what you have. I
25:15would say that's a great GEO strategy. I
25:17won't say it's an SEO strategy. You
25:19could say it's an SEO strategy if you
25:21want to do, but I would say that's more
25:22GEO. And also the other big pain point
25:27from when people talk about SEO versus
25:29GEO or AEO is that if someone's got a
25:32pot if you're an SEO agency and you're
25:34listening to this and you've got $2,000
25:36a month from your client. And I'm saying
25:38you need to echo what's on your website
25:41offsite and build that up. That cost the
25:43SEO agency more money. And at times when
25:46it's like, well, is that going to
25:48increase rankings as an SEO agency?
25:49You're like, no, I'm going to try and
25:50increase AI visibility. they're spending
25:53that money elsewhere with a GEO agency.
25:55So, it's difficult and I think I know I
25:57keep coming back to the brand
25:58positioning, but I also believe is
26:00because of the different competitors,
26:02the different tools that you use and my
26:05head of GEO every single morning comes
26:07to me with updates. He lives and
26:10breathes GEO. He lives and breathes the
26:12query find out terms. So, I'll give an
26:14example. I don't know if you know this
26:15or not. This mo this morning, have you
26:18seen what's happened with SER API and
26:20Google? So now basically with SER API or
26:24or with the way Google now unless you're
26:27>> if if unless you're logged in to Google
26:29they're not showing the URLs. So the
26:32sources unless you unless you're logged
26:34in or I think you need to change
26:36something to being Latin and then it
26:37does it's a little hack of what you can
26:39do but they're trying to stop SER API
26:42won the court case last month right so
26:44>> but they had it dismissed.
26:45>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um yeah sorry I got
26:48it dismissed. So they're able to scrape
26:49and get the information from Google. So
26:52chat GPT is using SER API. It's using
26:54bright data and it uses Bing for
26:56information. However, Google now is
26:58trying to make it more difficult for
27:00scrapers like SER API to get that
27:03information. So what's going to happen
27:05there? Well, who's going to win that
27:06race? Cuz is Chat GPT solely just in in
27:09the long run if they can't get the
27:10information just going to use Bing? And
27:12Bing's information is nowhere near as as
27:15good as Google's. So you've got to be
27:18looking into all these things and
27:19looking at that and because of it the
27:21query fan outs now are changing and
27:23they're changing on literally every few
27:26days I don't know if anyone's watching
27:27this is checking the query fan outs the
27:29way they're doing the query fan outs now
27:32is changing so much like it's now using
27:35a lot more site colon it's starting to
27:37realize that all the best listicles the
27:38self- referencing best listicical the
27:41the term best now in the query find out
27:44is 42% lower than it was last month. So
27:47now they're trying not to use the word
27:49best cuz they're knowing that it just
27:50brings back listicles of the
27:52information. Does it still work? Of
27:54course it still works. Having a
27:55listical, I'm not saying it doesn't
27:57work. Doing the comparison articles all
27:58still work. Not many SEOs used to do all
28:01of that. This is all brand new sets of
28:04keywords that need to be done that I
28:07know you you'd say, but you just need to
28:08pivot as an SEO. And that's where you
28:10David would because you're a brilliant
28:12SEO and a brilliant GEO but just saying
28:15that's SEO these SEO agencies are not
28:17doing it and I don't think they're good
28:18enough to do it. I think I think there's
28:22a creativity issue right so when when I
28:25started competing with G2 and Capira my
28:27first in inclination was how do I ride
28:30their coattails? How do I build a page
28:31on my site that talks about G2 and
28:33Capira that I get their traffic? I don't
28:35want them to review me. I don't want to
28:37go to them, have them push me out of
28:39Google, and then I have to pay them in
28:42their SERs. I rather just bring all of
28:44that traffic through my own site. And so
28:47that's a tougher decision, right? Not a
28:49lot of SEOs can can do that, but it's
28:52not it it's doable, right? It's it's
28:53still called SEO. You can you can do it.
28:56Um I outrank Sim Rush and I I try to
28:59point out to them that they've got a
29:00cannibalization issue for their own
29:02brand name, right? Right. I was
29:03outranking them for seam rush
29:05alternatives and seam rush pricing uh
29:07because they had repeated it on two
29:09different pages cuz their content team
29:10has a left hand and a right hand and
29:12they don't know what they're doing. I
29:13assume. So I see it that creating those
29:17listicles and creating those comparison
29:20pages as a part of SEO that SEOs just
29:24either forgot to do or avoid doing. But
29:26to me it's still SEO, right? And so I
29:30see
29:32if you've got
29:34other pages ranking, other listicles,
29:39getting them out of the way is still
29:41through SEO, right? And that just
29:44because somebody else is ranking because
29:45they've got another page doesn't mean
29:47they hold on to it. And that brings that
29:50falls into the second problem, which is
29:52the query fan out and the drift is
29:54changing with with with the LLMs. The
29:56LLMs have got a problem. One is they've
29:59positioned themselves as SEO proof,
30:02which is a disaster. Google tried to
30:03play a game of SEO doesn't exist for a
30:05long time. I had to look it up after our
30:07last call. GSC uh Google Web Master
30:11Tools, the first iteration was actually
30:14only launched in 2009 or or a there's
30:17like an 11-year hiatus between Google
30:20launching, right? And we're what two
30:22years into the LLMs being launched.
30:24There is no information coming from Open
30:27AI or Perplexity or Anthropic on how to
30:30do SEO. In fact, the only people who've
30:33released a guide was Google, which I
30:36thought was very very clever because
30:37they really got a head start on it. Open
30:40AI is losing its head start um against
30:44Anthropic. I think Anthropic are washing
30:46the floor and Anthropic are using Brave
30:48Search, which is a Google clone.
30:52So, is it just a creativity issue where
30:55someone is saying, "Well, that's not
30:57part of my SEO suite or I don't know how
31:00to do that and I'm leaving it out." But
31:02if another SEO agency says that is part
31:04of my suite and I can also rank and if
31:08if you're if I just going to say this
31:10for the for the smarter folks who are
31:12listening to this. If you're listening
31:13to James, what James and I are saying
31:16not out loud is go and add geo to your
31:19sites and be a good SEO and make them
31:21come up number one, right?
31:24Because you're going to use SEO to do
31:26that. And if you basically get found
31:28while you leave all the other SEOs
31:31arguing about why they're not putting
31:33geo on their page because it doesn't
31:35suit them, then as an SEO agency, you
31:39can actually go and make money. Unless
31:41the phrase geo becomes ruined by all of
31:44the geo agencies saying, "We're going to
31:46entity stack you out the wazoo and we're
31:48going to put schema on every page and
31:50we're going to do a ton of PR and lo and
31:54behold, the LLMs don't come and find
31:55you." Um, and here's the thing. Whenever
31:58I look at um somebody making statements
32:02about Jio or announcing a geo tool, the
32:04first thing I do is is I explore their
32:06domain name in Simrush. Do they have
32:08backlinks? are they ranking? If they're
32:10not, I'll go and steal their rank
32:12positions for fun. Um, so
32:17another way to look at it is if a geo
32:19agency actually practices what they
32:21preach and says, well, if we build a
32:23really good social media campaign and we
32:25build a really good this, the LLM will
32:28come and find us and recommend us,
32:29right? They the LLMs cannot recommend
32:32all of the geo agencies that are out
32:34there. So, to me, the geo strategy falls
32:39over, fails on its own because it's a
32:41it's a it's a it's a two-sided mirror,
32:43right? It's not they're not really doing
32:44what they're saying they're doing. The
32:46ones that are good are actually really
32:48good at SEO.
32:50>> So, I I want to throw I completely agree
32:53with what you're saying there, by the
32:54way. Um, I want to I want to spin it up
32:57a little bit because I want to I want to
32:58I don't know how how blackout we can
33:00talk or not.
33:02>> Yeah, go for it.
33:03>> Right. So, let's do it. I know there's
33:05some Google engineers, so I need to be
33:06very careful with some of the stuff of
33:07what we're talking about. So in I gam in
33:09SEO, if you want to rank in I gaming
33:10SEO,
33:11>> no, just spill it. Spill it. Just spill
33:12just spill it all the beans. Spill the
33:14beans. If you want to rank in I gam in
33:15SEO, right, you need to be very good
33:17with obviously the 301 techniques. You
33:19need to be very, very, very good with
33:21viral. So CTR manipulation, you need to
33:24be very good with social media virality.
33:27So lots and lots of traffic through the
33:29Twitter redirect link and you hit 10,000
33:32hits in a single day. Boom. jump from
33:34position number six to position number
33:35one. Anyone who's watching this in the
33:37eye gaming space knows exactly what I'm
33:39talking about. It needs to be generally
33:41speaking above 6,000 hits in a single
33:43day to to get the viral kind of spike
33:46within there from Twitter.
33:49That doesn't influence AI AI brand AI um
33:53SEO doesn't manipulate the AI overview.
33:55It doesn't manipulate chat GPT mentions.
33:58That's a great strategy for SEO. So
34:01that's an SEO strategy, right? You've
34:04then got the canonical confusion that
34:06they do. So they go and get a site, they
34:08rank it, it gets taken down because of
34:10like in certain countries the ISP block
34:12it, they then canonicalize it one way
34:14and ah revang it the other way and they
34:17start mixing it up and going round and
34:19they're doing this and they're getting a
34:20new site that pops back in. Again, this
34:22is just SEO. This is very very different
34:24to ranking within AI overviews and
34:28within chat GPT. These are very great
34:31strategies for SEO for I gaming.
34:33However, the GEO specialists for I
34:36gaming are doing data poisoning. They're
34:39doing the the doing a lot of stuff with
34:41LLM poisoning. They're doing a lot of
34:44searches arguing searches arguing going
34:46back and forth. They're also doing and
34:49it and it works. And they're also doing
34:51a lot of mass press releases that's
34:53being done and viability to the mass
34:54press releases. Now, some of these don't
34:56have any links through to the website on
34:58the press releases, but it manipulates
35:00the AI overview. It manipulates chat
35:02GPT.
35:04Now, if that's not manipulating the
35:06search engine results rankings and
35:08there's no links going through to it and
35:10all the only reason why they're doing it
35:11is to increase LLM visibility and chat
35:14GPT visibility. I believe they're two
35:16different strategies again from a
35:18blackout technique. One's very much off
35:20page, not bothered about links, not
35:22bothered about a website, just bothered
35:23about LLM visibility, and one is trying
35:26to manipulate Bing and try and
35:28manipulate Google search with advanced
35:30blackout strategies. What would you say
35:32on that front?
35:35>> So, I think it depends again on your
35:38definition of SEO and whether or not
35:40like I I consider
35:42how to convert people once they land in
35:44a page a part of SEO, right? like how
35:47like I'm not just going to land you on a
35:49page with just text, right? I want to
35:52make sure you go and make a purchase,
35:53right? So, I'm going to start talking
35:56about language programming, calls to
35:59action, getting you to do something. Um,
36:02now that I know that there's something
36:05in between, right, a referral mechanism
36:08if you want, I know that I need to
36:10change the content. I also know that
36:13there's no point in me just appearing on
36:16another listicle because if there's 10
36:18pages of listicles, right, which is the,
36:20you know, the you've got peak and
36:21profound, they say, "Oh, email Ed, ask
36:24Ed to put your brand on his page cuz
36:27he's ranking first in Google." Um, to
36:30me, I see that as a threat because if
36:32there's 10 pages and there's potentially
36:3550% difference in brands, there's going
36:37to be 500 brands mentioned and standing
36:39out of that's going to be difficult. So,
36:41I'm going to go back to my SEO toolkit,
36:43pull out my EMD strategy, pull out the
36:46Reddit um page strategy that Ed and I
36:48did on a show before, which is something
36:50I use 100%. And there were two people
36:53who said like, "Oh, this is going to get
36:54you banned to Google." That's a that's
36:57another classic example of emotions
37:00driving tactical decisions, right?
37:03Though, like having a Reddit page is
37:05first of all, the only way to actually
37:06get keyword data, right? like you said,
37:09why aren't you putting your YouTube in
37:11your GSSE? Why aren't you putting your X
37:12in your GSE so you can see that they're
37:13ranking? And you should get those you
37:15should make sure that those are getting
37:17indexed and you should make sure that
37:18those are being referenced because
37:19they're they're just adding and
37:21amplifying your message, right, through
37:24search engines.
37:26So, if I go back to my toolkit and say I
37:28can bring out an exact match domain and
37:30I can start to displace all of these
37:32other people, not only am I saving money
37:34against it, but I'm also building a moat
37:38of security because I can just instead
37:41of creating a listicle about 10 other
37:42people, I can just recreate one listicle
37:44about myself, which I think is a far
37:46better strategy, which I know is one
37:47that you're already deploying. But I
37:50don't know that that's not SEO. I think
37:52that just comes down into your, like I
37:54said, that's part of been part of my SEO
37:56toolkit for 15 years. Um, but however, I
38:03do concede that the buyer
38:08has to be the focus point in SEO, right?
38:10For example, when I see SEOs giving
38:12advice to Google, I start laughing. I'm
38:14like, Google's not reading your advice.
38:16Like, be honest. Right? If SEOs think
38:18that that that Google's full of spam,
38:20Google's not getting their advice from
38:22SEOs, right? If if the user elects to
38:26search for the word cheap, you have to
38:28have cheap on your site. That was also
38:29one of your great points, right? And how
38:31many brands have done themselves a
38:33disfavor by refusing to do that in SEO,
38:36right? So, it's the same thing. It comes
38:38down to your creativity and your
38:41interpretation of what you're a capable
38:43of doing and b willing to do. So at the
38:46same time, if as an SEO you're not smart
38:48enough to realize that like OM you need
38:51to peer in other pages,
38:53that doesn't get away from the challenge
38:55of what all of the other geo agencies
38:57are saying you need to do, which we both
39:00agree is hogwash. And so that just
39:02perpetuates the problem.
39:05Is GIO a framework that's going to fall
39:08over? That a lot of people that have
39:11come to me looking for geo help are like
39:14the geo is nonsense. I I spoke spoke to
39:17a guy, really smart guy. Um he built a
39:20billion dollar business for a huge
39:22company, right? And he was in the cadre
39:25of the very first beta sites for one of
39:28the P companies, right? One of the AI
39:30tools. And after 3 months, he realized
39:34that all of his buying traffic was
39:36coming through SEO. In other words, he'd
39:37done SEO by mistake by doing good geo.
39:42And he said the problem is that the geo
39:44was just recommending him being on other
39:47sites. What he needed is his pages to
39:48start ranking. And the more his pages
39:50started ranking, the more direct buyers
39:53he was getting. And his company was
39:54scaling super super fast. So we also
39:58have to assume that the whole industry
40:01is fluid, that people are educable,
40:04right? Even if they've held a a grudge
40:06against SEO for 15, 20 years, right? As
40:09I know some people have, they if they
40:13start hiring these geo agencies and they
40:15get nowhere, right? So let's pretend
40:18let's divide the sea and put SEOs on
40:20this side and go on this side. Well, 90%
40:23of these geo agencies aren't ranking for
40:25anything. They're doing a phenomenal job
40:27on LinkedIn feeding the marketers what
40:29they want to hear. Feeding them your
40:31brand is important. Your messaging will
40:33recognize your messaging and your hard
40:35work. Just feeding them what they want
40:36to hear like crack cocaine, right? What
40:38happens when that facade collapses?
40:42>> It's a nightmare completely. Like so the
40:44people that are then saying that I think
40:47a lot of G so what I would say I think
40:49there's a lot of people that can't do
40:51SEO and they've not ranked for SEO. So
40:53they've jumped in the GEO bandwagon to
40:56make it that it's something different. I
40:57get that. I get I definitely get that. I
41:00don't really hang about on Twitter and
41:01on LinkedIn to see it because it would
41:03frustrate me and I would be arguing with
41:05him saying you've never ranked a site in
41:07your life. Now the truth of the matter
41:09is and this is where the core difference
41:11is. I believe only about 1% of decent
41:14SEOs can actually do GEO because I feel
41:16that it's it is SEO but there's
41:18additional layers on top of it that
41:20needs to be done. I also believe that is
41:22the same with OM. And that's why I think
41:24that many people that do OM don't do SEO
41:26because they think SEO is for peasants.
41:29We want to do OM because we we can do it
41:32and we can charge a lot more money and
41:34and so on. But on at the start when you
41:37were speaking and you said about
41:39conversion of your website again this is
41:41where sometimes different rappers come
41:43in and maybe I just break things down
41:45too much but I would say the conversion
41:47of your page it comes down to conversion
41:49rate optimization. So, we've got a
41:50conversion rate optimization team. Maybe
41:52I just break things down too much, but I
41:53have someone that lives and breathes in
41:56VWO and Hot Jar and checks to see what's
41:58going on with the page and changed
42:00certain words for conversion and they're
42:03doing that. I would say that's different
42:04again to SEO. And I think at times
42:07potentially
42:08if I needed my shower room being done,
42:10David, I think you could come and do my
42:12shower room and complete it all from
42:13start to finish. I think you could do
42:15the plumbing and I think you could do
42:16the tiling and do everything else. But
42:19that doesn't mean that a plumber is a
42:20tyler. I just think they're multi
42:22multi-killed and I think you're very
42:24multi-killed and able to adapt and some
42:26of the things you talk about like well
42:28I'll just outrank Reddit and I think
42:30that's genius and I think it's
42:32absolutely genius with what you do and
42:34and you're looking at the query find out
42:35terms and you're going I'll just make a
42:36supplementary website or an EMD for
42:39that. I mean that's genius and I think
42:42that that's where you are in the top 1%
42:45in the world and the best SEOs in the
42:46world. That's why you are king of SEO.
42:49Do you know what I mean? But like
42:50majority of the others don't do that and
42:53and and just to say it's the same at
42:55times I think it frustrates me because
42:57the GEO specialist out there are only
43:00doing it because they're at SEO and
43:01they can't rank. So now they put a new
43:03label on it. But then some of them that
43:05are saying it's just the same. I'm like,
43:07you're too good to say it's just the
43:08same because you can do the additional
43:10work that wins you the big and people
43:12have got much bigger pots of money.
43:14These I'm sat on some of these
43:16investment tables and they got
43:18>> that's what I want to ask you about.
43:19>> They've got bigger pots of money for GEO
43:21than they have SEO. If anything, they're
43:23spending less on SEO because they're
43:25saying the clicks are down and they're
43:26moving the all the money over because
43:28they're not just seeing it as being
43:30clicks. They're seeing it as branding
43:32and they're seeing it as reputation
43:33management and they're seeing that
43:35actually it increases the rorowass on
43:37Facebook ads and PPC and at that
43:40>> Can I ask you about that?
43:40>> Yeah. Yeah. Go on. Sorry.
43:42>> Yeah. Before we go to before we go any
43:44further down because I think you've
43:45you've brought up a really big topic.
43:46So, sorry for interrupting. I want to
43:48explore this. I I think the audience
43:50will will enjoy this clip. So, we'll
43:52make a chapter out of it. Uh, maybe. So,
43:55also, I wanted to guarantee that if you
43:57did hire me to do your bathroom, it
43:59would be from start to finish because it
44:01would be finished. You would never be
44:02able to use it again cuz I I I I once
44:05hung a mirror in our first house and it
44:08fell down 15 minutes later. Like, I
44:10guarantee you that bathroom will be
44:12finished. Um, but here here's another
44:15question, right? So you're as an adviser
44:17and and and I think that so it actually
44:20brings up a second question but I think
44:22that's a phenomenal idea that companies
44:24are hiring you as an adviser. I think
44:26that's something that's lacking in the
44:27market. I think that a lot of SEOs could
44:29fulfill right as an adviser to these
44:32companies that are and and I want to
44:34commend them for being doing their due
44:36diligence. Instead of just going to Yelp
44:38or going to Reddit and asking for
44:41information, they've got someone like
44:43you as an independent adviser.
44:46You've been So, let's just say they've
44:47the CEO's got some recommendations from
44:49LinkedIn, his network. He So, they've
44:51they've got a short list of 10 companies
44:54to do geo, right? So, they've gone to
44:57the market, asked for advice on geo.
45:00One or two of the agencies might be an
45:02SEO company also sticking on as a brand,
45:05right? But you've never heard of these
45:08companies before. So you've never heard
45:09of the SEO companies or the geo
45:11companies and you're now being asked for
45:14your £50,000 fee as as being the adviser
45:17to the board. What are the criteria that
45:21you're going to look at for these geo
45:24agencies to deliver for your client? Now
45:28you throw me under the bus here. I know
45:30you are. I know.
45:33I'm looking for the best SEOs in the
45:35world. And you're going, well then SEO
45:36GEO is just SEO, right? I'm looking for
45:39the best SEOs in the world that
45:41understand GEO properly, not just
45:43putting a label on it. So this is why
45:44I'm agreeing with you because they need
45:47to understand how to manipulate Google,
45:50Bing, and also the other third party
45:52sources. So it's a great question what
45:54you're asking. And yes, as an adviser,
45:58I'm not just looking for someone to go
45:59geoexpert.co.uk UK that can rank that
46:02one term and go therefore that I'm going
46:04to hire them as being the GEO specialist
46:07when they haven't got the case studies.
46:08I'm saying the best SEOs in the world
46:10can do GEO but there's an extra layer on
46:13top of the GEO like you've got. I would
46:15go to somebody like yourself. So if 32
46:18red are a big casino came and they sat
46:21on the board which we sat on the board
46:22for quite a few of them and they say
46:24look our ad spend is going up on PPC on
46:28Facebook ads because AI overview and and
46:33also I don't you've seen this with this
46:34with the search queries what started to
46:36happen is a lot of businesses narrow
46:38down into I want to go with Edward Sturm
46:41or David Quaid right and what they
46:44normally end up doing is they start
46:45doing certain searches like to chat GBT.
46:48If I had to choose one company in Edward
46:52Stern SEO versus David Quaid SEO, do not
46:56sit on the fence and tell me one company
46:58and why. And they're letting AI make the
47:01answer. And it's like, why? We've broken
47:03it down all the way. We're happy with
47:04these two and AI then spitting out the
47:06answer. So if you can get and this is
47:09way more than just manipulating it for
47:11query fo because now this is actually
47:14increasing your profitability because
47:16bear in mind we actually don't do AEO
47:19and and SEO as a as a public service to
47:22people. We do lead generation but our
47:24lead generation is normally based on a
47:25commission based. So we need to make
47:27certain that our companies that we work
47:30with look good and we need to make
47:32certain because if they don't look good
47:33at the 11th hour they don't convert. We
47:35don't get paid for a quality lead. So,
47:38this is where the AEO agency kit, the
47:40AEO department came from to work with
47:42all of our clients to say your branding
47:44is not good enough and your reputation
47:46is not good enough and therefore you
47:47need to be doing it. In answer, if I was
47:49doing it to third party, I'd be going
47:51out to people like yourself, David
47:54Charles Flo, the people that understand
47:56parasite SEO, like off- page ranking
47:58signals that can validate how great you
48:02are on third-party sources. That is
48:05majority of what AEOs yes obviously you
48:07want your topical authority you want to
48:09build that up supplementary websites the
48:12best SEOs in the world are the best GEOs
48:15in the world if you get what I mean I
48:16agree with that but only the best and I
48:19think there's added layers to it and I
48:21think Parasite SEO and online reputation
48:23management those type of companies it
48:26just so happens to be that the the best
48:28online reputation management companies
48:30in the world are the ones that have got
48:32the best success when it comes to
48:34increasing AI citations for their
48:36clients. Why? Because they're doing the
48:38consensus automatic because they want
48:39the own page for the brand plus awards,
48:42the PL, the brand plus reviews, the
48:45brand plus case studies, is the brand
48:48legit, is the brand safe, all the other
48:50queries that show up in the query find
48:52out. They want to own the first page
48:53because that's the way their mindset
48:55works. So now it's not just their own,
48:57it's now owning that first page. Boom.
48:59LM visibility. you look at any of the
49:01graphs in profound or peak or radar kit
49:04or any of the other platforms, it's just
49:06boom boom boom boom because of the off-
49:09page corroboration that's being done.
49:13Oh, I think there's this this shows the
49:16big challenge for business owners,
49:18right? If if if they knew nothing about
49:20SEO, they'd end up hiring the wrong SEOs
49:23and they wouldn't get good bang for
49:24their buck, right? and they they'd be
49:25sit I've read some people have been
49:27sitting around 12 months waiting for the
49:29results, right? And and it I'm sure as a
49:32businessman that breaks your heart. And
49:33I've often said when I when talking to
49:35these people like you're coming to a
49:38forum like Black Hat World or a Reddit
49:41or whatever and you're asking strangers
49:43for rec, have you got no one in your
49:45business network? And I think that's
49:46been such a vital part of SEO and now
49:50clearly geo where you need independent
49:52people who aren't pitching for your
49:54business to help you
49:56sift through the different companies,
49:58right? Because
50:00you need someone who isn't blinkered so
50:04blinkered in SEO that they're blind to
50:06what needs to be done for geo to be
50:08effective. But at the same time, the
50:11companies who are really good at
50:12branding themselves as geoexperts and
50:14having the clue about SEO aren't going
50:16to help you at all. So you really got a
50:19paradigm here, right? How do I as a
50:22businessman, business owner, business
50:24person
50:26start to shop around if a geo agency on
50:31the face of it could just be telling
50:33barefaced porkies, right? or how do I
50:37start to vet these people? Because at in
50:39the heart of a good geo company, I
50:41really need to find a good SEO. And so
50:44maybe just because I'm so small, all of
50:47the people who come to me for geo come
50:49because they're like, I've seen you talk
50:51about Jio from an SEO point of view and
50:53now it all makes sense. Um so one, I
50:56think the role of independent adviser is
50:59super crucial. Um, I don't know if you
51:02can speak to that or give people any
51:04advice or how people find you. I think
51:06it's it's a phenomenal service that
51:08people need more and more. Do you when
51:10you when you're doing that, do you
51:12>> restrict yourself from being a vendor or
51:14are you just invited as and given a a
51:17work description or
51:18>> so there's not only me that sits on so
51:20on the panel for the there's norm
51:21there's normally free people. Um, so
51:23there's normally someone who runs paid
51:25ads. I'm normally the, believe it or
51:26not, the SEO part, which is you're then
51:28going to say, "Well, I thought you g."
51:30But the um I'm normally the the the
51:32organic part of of marketing. Um you've
51:35got the paid ads and then you've got the
51:36branding specialist. Now, the branding
51:38specialist I think in time is going to
51:40get replaced because the I'm kind of
51:44fulfilling the role of the branding
51:45because it comes into being GEO and
51:47everything else and and branding is a
51:48big part of SEO anyway, which is kind of
51:51what we're saying with GEO or I'm not
51:54seeing other parts. I'm not really too
51:55bothered in this argument if whether it
51:57is GEO or SEO. I think the big part in a
52:00minute is going to come when we're
52:02talking about what you can do to getting
52:05AI overviews and getting to Jack GBT.
52:08But from a from an an independent
52:11advisor, generally speaking, you've got
52:13your paid ads and you've got your
52:14organic and generally it's only
52:16enterprise that normally spending over
52:19$100,000 a month. So they norm it's
52:21normally big budgets of what they're
52:22spending and it's where they should be
52:24distributing that money. They're also
52:26doing certain distribution on like TV
52:28ads, radio ads, billboard advertising
52:31and some of it they just don't even care
52:33about what return on investment that
52:35they're getting. They just care about
52:37exposure. So they can't put a price on
52:39billboard advertising because there's no
52:41attribution that's attached to that kind
52:43of billboard advertising. So they're
52:45kind of just looking at it as going is
52:47the brand increasing in branded search
52:49and stuff like and that's how they look
52:51at it and it's like there could be so
52:52many other ways like Facebook ads it's
52:54increasing the branded search and I'm
52:56like at times I I get annoyed with
52:58traditional marketing but it's been
53:00around forever and it does work and and
53:02I get it but this is where from an
53:05investment and independent advisor point
53:08of view I just I love ROI and I love
53:11seeing tangible results.
53:14And because of the KPIs and AI
53:16visibility, it seemed as very very
53:19different. We're using different tools.
53:20We've got we're not doing rank tracking.
53:22It's obviously share a voice and stuff
53:24like that. And I believe that the AI
53:26visibility is actually well is taking
53:29pots of money now from traditional
53:31marketing as well. So it's like branding
53:34money, pot of money is going into GEO.
53:37Uh traditional marketing money is going
53:40into GEO because they say, "No, we don't
53:41need to spend as much here. put it into
53:43here because the clicks are down on SEO.
53:46Oh, we're going to put that into GEO and
53:48because of paid ads now they're saying
53:50because it's increasing conversion
53:52because people's asking AI that goes
53:54into G. So like I'm like hang on a
53:56minute. What was $10,000 for a $200 200
54:01$200,000 a month package? What was
54:04$10,000 a month now has become the
54:07highest and now $70,000 a month for a
54:10GEO. And I'm like, where's this come
54:12from? And it's because they're seeing
54:14that they understand from a GEO
54:16perspective that yes, it does improve
54:17when they're doing GEO, it improves
54:19their SEO because they're doing and
54:20improves the branding and it improves
54:22this. So, it kind of all ties in with
54:24each other, but the biggest pot of money
54:27is the GEO pot now on the big enterprise
54:29businesses. And at that point, this is
54:31where offline and David, I love your
54:34speech. And this is where I'm like, I
54:35think you're doing yourself a
54:36disservice. I think you should brand
54:38yourself up as being a GEO expert. I
54:40feel is more money in that market than
54:44being an SEO expert than being a geo
54:46expert and it's doing SEO. Yes, there's
54:48a big on the ven diagram there's a big
54:50massive overlap but I feel you could
54:53take that business on to the next level.
54:55Does that make sense?
54:57>> It does. And while I'm listening to you,
54:59I'm I keep thinking what we really need
55:00is Jeremy Clarkson to wrap this up and
55:02say, "So, if you want to get yourself a
55:04good geoex expert, go find yourself a
55:06good SEO expert and buy a Volvo.
55:08[laughter]
55:10I don't know if uh the Jeremy Clarkson
55:13reference is lost in the US audience,
55:14but I feel like that's how he'd wrap
55:16this up. Um
55:17>> I've got a Jeremy Clark.
55:20>> I want to
55:20>> Jeremy Clarkson. Top Gear.
55:22>> Top Gear.
55:22>> Oh, yeah. Okay.
55:24>> Yeah.
55:25>> I want to throw myself under the Well,
55:26not I'm not going to throw myself under
55:27the bus.
55:28>> Wait, James, I want to I want to I want
55:29to ask so action actionable things. What
55:31are the three most sustainable tactics
55:34for getting AI visibility? And then the
55:37three fastest tactics for getting AI
55:40visibility.
55:42>> So the three f press releases is
55:44definitely still number one. Um so even
55:47though it's not working as well
55:48>> this is is this which category is this?
55:50Sustainable or fastest. Sustainable
55:53means like uh sustainable means like
55:55high high ROI. Sustainable means like
55:57you do it set it forget it. It's going
55:59to work for a long time. Fastest means
56:01it's gonna be it's going to work
56:03tomorrow or in a couple of days
56:05>> right? fastest is a press release. So,
56:08at present, um, prior to me coming on,
56:11I've got one or two notes here that I've
56:12written down to to try and help some
56:14people to be using these. I'm not
56:16affiliated to any. Um, Magic PR is
56:19working the best at present. Number two
56:22is Globe Newswire. Number three is Press
56:24Advantage. And number four is AB
56:27Newswire. AB Newswe is the cheapest. If
56:29you're going to go with AB Newswire, get
56:31the upsell of Bar Chart, which is the
56:33most cited one. Um there is one or two
56:36others. I know David, you've used um
56:38another one and it's been working well
56:39and it's got glob and mail and stuff
56:41like that that that that kind of gets
56:43into. I would say force index the URLs
56:46and if you can under bigger ones like
56:49globe and mail or on bar chart if you've
56:51got any viability systems hit that it
56:54gets itself into top stories and at
56:56times can get yourself into Google
56:58discover. So that now when I say
57:00viability, when I speak to people like
57:03David, David, he's got a huge following
57:05on Reddit and on Twitter and on
57:07LinkedIn. So he naturally runs virility
57:11by sharing it across his social media
57:12because he's got a big following. If you
57:14don't have that following, you need to
57:16be a little bit more creative in trying
57:19to get some vi viral systems. There's
57:21certain traffic boosts that you can do.
57:24Um, I don't want to share it too much in
57:25case Google engineers are watching, but
57:27>> share it, share it, share it. No, no one
57:29nobody watches this podcast. It's okay.
57:31This is like this is a small tiny
57:33podcast. You can share the CIA of
57:35podcasts.
57:36>> Yeah. Yeah. There's um there's
57:38you can use certain things like cheap
57:41Reddit ads, cheap kora ads, cheap
57:42Twitter ads. Um that can all like boost
57:45to the URL. You can run um pop under
57:48traffic um which is very cheap and you
57:50can do that via a Twitter redirect. So
57:52via a t.co O link that can boost the
57:55URL. Um, and but but I would say build a
57:59build a brand. Do what you guys are
58:01doing. Like Edward yourself, you've got
58:02massive following on Instagram. You got
58:04massive following on LinkedIn, massive
58:06following on Twitter. Build an email
58:08list. And literally, so people talk
58:11about viability. If when we go and
58:15release a an episode, I might go and get
58:18three or 4 hundred views on on the video
58:21or on on a specific um web page, the
58:24minute I send it out to one or two
58:26people's mailing list, like let's say
58:27Charles Flo, right? So, if I say to
58:29Charles, Charles, can you send this out
58:31to your mailing list? I'm getting
58:34approximately three and a half thousand
58:36clicks from Gmail that Google is picking
58:38up and my page on the rankings within
58:42three or four hours of him sending out
58:44that mail jumps from position number
58:46four or position number five to position
58:48number one. So virality and traffic
58:51through to URLs help. So if people don't
58:53understand that they need to start
58:54understanding it. Build a mailing list,
58:56have a Twitter following, have a
58:57LinkedIn following, do Reddit. But the
58:59but in answer to the fastest way of
59:01doing it would be a press release using
59:03one of those forc indexing the URLs,
59:06sharing those the main ones throughout
59:09social media or trying to get on someone
59:12to share it on the mailing list or do
59:14pop under traffic um via um t probably
59:18t.co redirect. If anyone's watching this
59:20and and they know pop under they'll know
59:22exactly what I'm talking about where
59:23they can get instant results for
59:25longerterm sustainable results.
59:28Can you go deeper into that? Can you go
59:30deeper into that rather than just say
59:31for anybody watching they'll know what
59:32I'm talking about. Can because there's a
59:34lot of newer people who are like I don't
59:35I want to know what he's talking about.
59:37>> So So you go and get um you go and do a
59:39tweet, right? And you go and put the URL
59:42to the tweet. So let's say um David
59:45Quaid doesn't go does a press release
59:46and he gets the Glob and Mail um URL,
59:50right? He shares that on a tweet. He
59:52does the right quick right click once
59:54he's published it and gets the T.CO co
59:56redirect, right? He you then go and run
1:00:00PopCash or Traffic Stars or or or
1:00:02Propeller or whatever pop ads network
1:00:04that you want to do through the T.CO
1:00:07redirect link. You send about 6,000
1:00:09clicks within probably two hours that
1:00:14URL is going to jump. If you're doing it
1:00:15on a Google News site, it normally pops
1:00:17in top stories. Sometimes can get in
1:00:19Google discover. It's an instant way.
1:00:22You can do it on subreddits, you can do
1:00:24it on tweets, you can do it on LinkedIn
1:00:26posts, you can do it on lots of
1:00:27different platforms which is going to
1:00:29give you a temporary boost. It is only a
1:00:31temporary boost. But then again, Edward
1:00:34off air, I mean, you've spoken about
1:00:35press releases where long-term just
1:00:38doing press releases isn't a great
1:00:40strategy because they purge a lot of the
1:00:41URLs. So, at that point, you're saying
1:00:44that's the fastest strategy, but it's
1:00:47not the best strategy long term. What's
1:00:48the best strategy long term? Define the
1:00:51entity. Get a knowledge panel. Do what
1:00:53you two have already done. You've got a
1:00:54knowledge panel. They know exactly who
1:00:56you are and what you do. Build the
1:00:57reputation. Go and win some awards. Go
1:00:59and get some reviews. Go and then share.
1:01:02So if you win an award, go and amplify
1:01:04it on a press release. But then go and
1:01:06get one or two guest posts that share
1:01:08it. Go and do it. Share it on Reddit. Go
1:01:10and share it on Twitter. Go and share it
1:01:12on LinkedIn. Force index that LinkedIn
1:01:15post. Force index that tweet. If you
1:01:17want to be really cool, go and send some
1:01:18viability through to those URLs as well.
1:01:21Go and start doing all this Google bots
1:01:23crawling all your stuff of who you are,
1:01:26what you do, and why you're brilliant.
1:01:28And that is how you win the game. Well,
1:01:31people doing that already in the eye
1:01:33gaming space. That's how you win the
1:01:34game off site. And that's how people can
1:01:37rank like people like Jess Benson who
1:01:40talks about like social media and he
1:01:42just goes, "Oh, let's get the first five
1:01:44words on a LinkedIn post and then force
1:01:45index it." Well, if you hit virality to
1:01:48it as well, it does it ranks it even
1:01:49better. So, there's so many different
1:01:51strategies of what you can do to get and
1:01:53bear in mind, you'll need to be in the
1:01:54top 20 results or top 30 results to be
1:01:56part of consensus of the query fan out
1:01:59and majority of the query fan out terms
1:02:01are very long tail. Another little tip
1:02:04like Ed uh David you give us great the
1:02:07video that you did on people also ask
1:02:10genius love it the video that you did
1:02:12about Reddit and appending Reddit to the
1:02:14end genius love it one or two others
1:02:17that you can do exactly with the same
1:02:19strategy
1:02:20append trip advisor to the end of
1:02:24certain pages right so this is on guest
1:02:27posts so you go and do you go and get
1:02:29like um
1:02:31Edward Stern um reviews on Trip Advisor.
1:02:35Um and then you go and you go and do it
1:02:36and you try and write out rank Trip
1:02:38Advisor for compact keywords reviews
1:02:40Trip Advisor. You do it on a third
1:02:42party. You go and do tier twos or force
1:02:45index it. Do some viability. Outrank
1:02:47Trip Advisor for compact keywords Trip
1:02:49Advisor.
1:02:51Normally it on the query find out Trip
1:02:53Advisor isn't the site colon. It's just
1:02:56appending it to the end.
1:02:57>> I'm make a video about I'll make a
1:02:58social a social post. David shared the
1:03:01the Reddit one. I made a uh Instagram
1:03:04reel about that. It got like 400,000
1:03:06views. Got like a 100,000 views on X. It
1:03:09got like a 100,000 views on Tik Tok. And
1:03:11I'm like, "Oh yeah, Trip Adviser, too. I
1:03:13do the same thing. This is good
1:03:15content."
1:03:16>> Append Trip Advisor. And then look, what
1:03:17I'd say to you is in your industry, look
1:03:19at what what others appended at the end.
1:03:22So there's certain ones like G2 or
1:03:24Capira or um CL.
1:03:26>> Yeah, Capter too. So, so but some of
1:03:29them some some of them you need to be
1:03:30careful with because some of them when
1:03:32they come back in the query find out is
1:03:34site colonclutch.co.uk
1:03:37or something like that where where
1:03:39they've got a lots of different tldds
1:03:42those ones normally just append it to
1:03:43the end and when it's appended to the
1:03:45end and it's not a site colon you can do
1:03:48exactly the same strategy that David
1:03:49Quay does with regards to Reddit and
1:03:51append these review sites outrank them
1:03:54or sometimes you don't even need to
1:03:55outrank them. just get on the first
1:03:56page, be part of consensus, talk, get
1:03:59all your best reviews of what you have
1:04:01and the synthesizing those answers. I
1:04:04don't think that's SEO. I think that's
1:04:06creative geo strategies. But I know
1:04:09David's going to say, "No, that's just
1:04:11SEO." And I and he does it, but he does
1:04:13it because he's a genius at SEO. And I
1:04:15and I don't think many of us do stuff
1:04:17like that.
1:04:21>> I think that I think those are are are
1:04:23great. So, what I'm going to do is I'm
1:04:24going to play the devil's advocate for
1:04:26the for the listener, right? And so, I'm
1:04:30actually going to switch sides and I'm
1:04:31going to say
1:04:35if for both the fastest and the
1:04:37longevity, right? I think you've covered
1:04:39the fastest very well, right? And so, a
1:04:42lot of that also kind of might sound
1:04:44blackhat to some people. So, I'm going
1:04:46to offer an alternative, right? So I
1:04:49think that with the PAAA hack, the
1:04:52Reddit hack, extend that for Trip
1:04:54Advisor, extend that for um Caperia G2
1:04:58definitely
1:04:59um start playing with keywords and
1:05:02understand cornerstoneing and understand
1:05:04if you go back to one of the videos um
1:05:07where we did the CRM and I I think James
1:05:09you enjoyed this video as well. I think
1:05:11it was when when you started to see some
1:05:14of of the things we were doing. If you
1:05:16start looking at those keywords, a lot
1:05:18of them have low keyword difficulty
1:05:20scores and they they there are some they
1:05:22are things that if you're if you're
1:05:24ranking for keyword difficulty scores of
1:05:2650, something like a 10 9 10 11 is
1:05:29something you can rank for that day,
1:05:31right? So go and find keywords where
1:05:35half the keyword is yours and half the
1:05:36keyword is something else like a
1:05:38caperia, but it's just something and
1:05:39then come up with a creative way of
1:05:41engineering that into a blog post or an
1:05:44article. The second thing is build up
1:05:47your own assets, right? Because that's
1:05:49the longer play. So immediately go and
1:05:52have your your EMD, right? Immediately
1:05:55go and buy those domain names and start
1:05:57building them up and start getting
1:05:58traffic to them and help them to rank
1:06:01and and cornerstone with them as well.
1:06:03But for an EMD, you mainly only need the
1:06:06authority from your parent domain. So
1:06:08now now you've got two domains echoing
1:06:12what you're saying and ranking in the
1:06:14same query fade outs and you can start
1:06:17testing for more queries and you'll find
1:06:19an infinite number of opportunities
1:06:22because you'll start to see all of these
1:06:23searches that Simrush has no data on and
1:06:26you can start expanding on that and I
1:06:29think it's better to own them because
1:06:32subreddits get account Reddit accounts
1:06:34get deleted subreddits get changed and r
1:06:37deranked and if you have your own Reddit
1:06:39page and you've got your list of
1:06:42research articles, you can actually
1:06:44control what comes up for those
1:06:47searches. If you're really good at SEO,
1:06:50you can actually make sure that your
1:06:51LinkedIn article shows over Jespers or
1:06:54Rob's or Eds or whatever or David's,
1:06:57right? And it's better to have control
1:07:01in the longer term and have ownership of
1:07:03those assets. So, I'm now thinking like
1:07:05a real brand marketer, right? have like
1:07:07jumped over from the growth hacker, but
1:07:09I like to have control and own those
1:07:11myself, even if it takes like a couple
1:07:13of days longer. Um, and I think one of
1:07:16the fast ways to do that is to discount
1:07:19all of the and disinformation,
1:07:21right? For example, writing in a
1:07:24particular structure. One of the things
1:07:26I really enjoyed about the press release
1:07:28and that's why I found Red Press because
1:07:30I was trying to get into Bar Chart and
1:07:33that was the fastest vector I could find
1:07:34into Bar Chart is that Casra wrote this
1:07:39brilliant uh press release and I was on
1:07:42a call and I couldn't didn't have the
1:07:44time. I had to like trust Claude in a
1:07:46tab was coming up with something. And so
1:07:49I created a blog post and I I the way I
1:07:52look at how an LLM looks at content and
1:07:54this is really important for both geo
1:07:56and SEO and is that it looks at it like
1:08:00as a bunch of polygons, a bunch of
1:08:01shapes, right? It turns it takes a
1:08:04concept and it blows it up into a
1:08:06mathematical shape. And so all I had
1:08:09really had time to do is say, "Look, the
1:08:10first king of SEO was Larry Page and
1:08:13then the second king was Matt Cuts and
1:08:15then the third was me." And I just put
1:08:16it as a second page and I linked to it
1:08:18from my primary page. All I had time to
1:08:20do and all I did is give it some
1:08:22reference points and it vomited up this
1:08:25amazing story about why Larry Page was
1:08:27the best king of SEO ever, right? And we
1:08:30went from like it's a hoax and it's a
1:08:34you know it's a press release between
1:08:36David and Cas is all fun to like oh wait
1:08:38well Larry's a real person, Matt's a
1:08:41real person. These are and it it created
1:08:43a beautiful story from just some
1:08:45reference points. And I think that if
1:08:48you look at the success stories that we
1:08:50have, they probably come from failing
1:08:54at 20 other pages, but we just never
1:08:56gave up. We just went with all 20. And I
1:08:59think what people spend too much time
1:09:01trying to do is distill down to the one
1:09:04thing. But the one thing is a different
1:09:07thing for different search phrases. And
1:09:10so you really should play, right? If
1:09:13like if if my dad gave me one good piece
1:09:15of advice when I was younger that's
1:09:17always stood by me is he gave me a
1:09:19computer when I was eight and he said,
1:09:20"Don't worry, you can never break it."
1:09:21Like obviously you can smash it, right?
1:09:24But he said, "Whatever you do with the
1:09:26software, you can always fix you can
1:09:28always put the operating system back."
1:09:30And when I was 21, I actually went to
1:09:32work at Dell as a software engineer in
1:09:33their manufacturing team. And I broke
1:09:35lots of computers, which is great. But
1:09:38the the thing is that I think people are
1:09:40too scared of these LLMs and Google and
1:09:43they treat them like these artificial
1:09:45intelligence engines that they're not
1:09:47really and that you can actually have
1:09:50fun and you can actually do things that
1:09:52you think is is spammy. And if you're
1:09:55not doing that, I don't think you can
1:09:56really call yourself an SEO. If you're
1:09:58just turning out brand messaging and
1:10:00getting it indexed in Google and you're
1:10:03making sure the page doesn't 404, that's
1:10:05not SEO to me. If you're able to go and
1:10:08change what an LLM says about you or
1:10:11something or invent something or put
1:10:13something new in and realize that there
1:10:15are no consequences, the open the board
1:10:17of open AI are not going to arrive at
1:10:19your front door with a print out going
1:10:20like what do you think you're doing and
1:10:23start actually doing
1:10:25and if if we have like one message from
1:10:27the start of this call, it's James's.
1:10:30Stop procrastinating. Stop sitting
1:10:33around giving yourself excuses. get up
1:10:36and do the the thing that we did w with
1:10:38caser which I thought was so so
1:10:40interesting entertaining and a
1:10:42masterclass in getting in front of an
1:10:44LLM in in hours.
1:10:45>> Can you talk about what that was for
1:10:46people who don't know?
1:10:48>> Yeah. So I was just you know sitting
1:10:51there West Palm Beach minding my own
1:10:52business you know playing some B-ball
1:10:54with my friends right hanging on the
1:10:55courts and the next minute this tweet
1:10:58comes in on X that casually has replaced
1:11:01me as the king of SEO. So obviously my
1:11:03heart sank and I went for a cold beer
1:11:05and a cigarette. I don't I don't smoke
1:11:08and um I was like this is this is funny
1:11:11and I love the way he's like put a
1:11:13mention from me and I love the way the
1:11:15LLM's like re quoted his press release.
1:11:19So and then he sent me a DM saying like
1:11:21let's have some fun with this. So I went
1:11:24back and I thought like here are some
1:11:25things that I can do to counteract that.
1:11:27And I started reverse engineering where
1:11:28his press release came from and how long
1:11:30it was going to last. And then I had
1:11:32some other ideas and eventually I was
1:11:35able to confuse the L&Ms and then
1:11:37eventually I was able to fix replace the
1:11:39story back to where it was. And so and
1:11:42it happened in the space of like a
1:11:4312-hour window. And so um casually had a
1:11:48head start and then I think I had the
1:11:49end of the day to finish out. And it was
1:11:53so interesting because it showed the the
1:11:55the weaknesses in LLMs. It showed that
1:11:58how the same press release reiterated or
1:12:02syndicated on different sites confused
1:12:05them, changed the story. As more
1:12:07information was coming, they just jumped
1:12:09from one version of the story to the
1:12:10next. And then I just started thinking
1:12:12of ways to substantiate it. And as
1:12:16usual, I didn't use any schema and I
1:12:18didn't use any chunking and I didn't use
1:12:20any writing styles. I just went with
1:12:23what I knew and I just started there.
1:12:25And if it didn't work, then I just tried
1:12:27something else and just kept trying
1:12:28something else on top of it. I didn't
1:12:30sit down and call up 10 people and come
1:12:33up with the perfect plan cuz I didn't
1:12:36have time and I had a day job to do. And
1:12:39so I just started doing. And I think
1:12:41that's a big difference between people
1:12:43like us and people that are still trying
1:12:46to figure it out. You're never going to
1:12:47figure it out until you start doing. You
1:12:50may as well start doing now. I'm with
1:12:52all of my clients, the first thing I say
1:12:54is like, why re why write one good page
1:12:58only to find out it doesn't rank versus
1:13:00writing 50 pages, finding out that two
1:13:02ranked, and then put all of your time
1:13:04into those two.
1:13:06Getting started is the first step
1:13:08towards ranking.
1:13:10And I think that was something that came
1:13:12out of of that that I hope people
1:13:14learned. And I think a lot of people
1:13:16jumped on it. It was like a guy called
1:13:17Tom who put a LinkedIn who wrote a
1:13:20LinkedIn post and that started ranking
1:13:22straight away and then I had to outrank
1:13:24him and I thought that was really funny
1:13:26and he just did it and I don't know if
1:13:27he if he if he force indexed it or or
1:13:29not. Um but it just started ranking
1:13:32straight away. He just managed to to get
1:13:34that position and I was like playing
1:13:35around with the words you know the
1:13:37League of Sos
1:13:39um which I thought was fun and and it
1:13:40was like and it it was such a creativity
1:13:43outlet. I often look at people talking
1:13:45about SEO with these boring checklists
1:13:48going like you have to make sure it's
1:13:50crawable which means like a aka your
1:13:52page isn't broken. Well done, right?
1:13:54Like you don't have to make a whole
1:13:56chapter out of it. And so it's
1:13:58like there is so much opportunity for
1:14:01creative play in SEO. That's why I love
1:14:04it so much. It's like you can do all of
1:14:07these fantastic things if you just live
1:14:10outside of the box and don't allow
1:14:12anyone to put you inside it. And maybe
1:14:14that's where James is going with the
1:14:17tags, right?
1:14:18>> Yeah. I so I want to expand a little bit
1:14:20on on the king of SEO just so people can
1:14:23understand it um a little bit more cuz I
1:14:26don't think certain viewers are
1:14:28understanding the genius of at times
1:14:31what you talk about David where you
1:14:34create an article and semantically then
1:14:37with a contextual bridge you can't the
1:14:39the the one that I was on about was
1:14:41Edward you asked him about payroll
1:14:43software on on Reddit right and I
1:14:45watched it and I watched it three or
1:14:47four times and I knew exactly what the
1:14:49first time I knew exactly what you was
1:14:50doing and I've got my team, my content
1:14:53writers who do semantic content networks
1:14:55to sit down and understand the timing of
1:14:58doing certain articles is key and the
1:15:01timing of getting moving through the
1:15:03traffic tiers and getting that article
1:15:05to rank and it's a simple to rank for
1:15:07keyword difficulty that you can go
1:15:09after. You get that, you move on to the
1:15:11next with the contextual bridge. Classic
1:15:12cornerstone in what you two call it. One
1:15:16little add-on to it though I would say
1:15:18linking it to AEO which I think is
1:15:20genius and I think Edward you could do a
1:15:23shot on this as well is doing
1:15:24cornerstoneing with cross domains. I
1:15:26call it daisy chaining your guest
1:15:28posting. So instead of just moving
1:15:30through the traffic tiers, you can
1:15:31choose certain sites that can rank for
1:15:33specific words which can link to another
1:15:36one of your guest posts which can link
1:15:37to another one of your guest post which
1:15:39is a part of the from a GEO point of
1:15:41view is all repeating and cor
1:15:43collaborating who you are what you do
1:15:45and why you're brilliant. So it's
1:15:47cornerstone in its finest
1:15:49cross domain linking to each other and
1:15:52connecting to each other as a semantic
1:15:54off- page content network. But what I
1:15:56loved about the king of SEO example
1:15:58right initially and this is a shout out
1:16:00to Caz for for for doing this
1:16:04because I didn't think he had it in him
1:16:06to be able to do something like this is
1:16:08that he used temporal and what I mean by
1:16:11temporal is that within the semantics he
1:16:14acknowledged that the king of SEO was
1:16:18David Quaid but he had dethroned him and
1:16:21now he's the new king of SEO. Now, if he
1:16:24just said, "I am the king of SEO," it
1:16:26probably wouldn't have worked. But
1:16:28because they could acknowledge the
1:16:30entity of David G. Quaid being the king
1:16:33of SEO, and now there's a new king in
1:16:36the town and look at me with my with my
1:16:38crown on my head and I'm the new king of
1:16:40SEO and that the AI overview just says,
1:16:43"Okay, this must be true." It's exactly
1:16:46the same thing as what happened. I don't
1:16:47know if you seen the example last month
1:16:48with Sam Alman. Someone tweaked
1:16:50Wikipedia and said that he'd died and
1:16:53because of temporal
1:16:56AI overview then says that he's dead and
1:16:59it was like from one little tweak and it
1:17:00shows you what you can do when you're
1:17:02doing the cornerstoneing the contextual
1:17:04bridges and you use temporal things. So
1:17:07if someone was uh best SEO agency 2025,
1:17:11well obviously once you 2026 you can top
1:17:14a bit but what you might want to do is
1:17:16there might be certain things where you
1:17:17might want to outrank someone going they
1:17:19was the best SEO agency now I am the
1:17:22best SEO agency and and I just thought
1:17:24that whole
1:17:26bit of fun with LLM manipulation was
1:17:30cornerstoneing at its finest temporal
1:17:32semantics at its finest and they call it
1:17:35I think it's called temporal al semantic
1:17:37updating. If someone doesn't know what
1:17:38it is, go and Google it. Temporal
1:17:40semantic updating where you're
1:17:41acknowledging what was and now you're
1:17:44doing what is now. And I think that is a
1:17:47genius in semantics. And this is exactly
1:17:49what you do, David. And this is what
1:17:50exactly where people need to to jump on
1:17:54how you talk about the contextual
1:17:56bridges and what we call off- page daisy
1:17:59chaining. to where we're linking one
1:18:01press release to another to another
1:18:03guest post to another and it all sites
1:18:05back um within it. Anyway, I want to
1:18:09jump I want to change topic because I
1:18:10want to throw myself under the bus with
1:18:12regards to
1:18:15with with regards to LLMs, right? You've
1:18:19schooled a lot of people on this with
1:18:20regards to the database, the training
1:18:22data, and you're saying that no, the
1:18:24cost, the cost for them to understand
1:18:27and decide who is the best at something.
1:18:30There's something playing in my mind.
1:18:31I'm not technical, so I don't really
1:18:33understand this. I don't understand how
1:18:34big the database would need to be and
1:18:36stuff like that. However, I do get
1:18:37certain people in certain events that
1:18:40tell me that um and within a query find
1:18:43out there's certain terms if you typed
1:18:45in best plumber in London, let's say.
1:18:48There's times they're not doing a live
1:18:49search. They're doing an entity search.
1:18:53Is that just from training data? And how
1:18:55are they choosing which entities to
1:18:56choose if they're not doing rag and not
1:18:59doing a live search? How's that working
1:19:01when they're not doing a live search?
1:19:05That's a super interesting question.
1:19:07That's something that's been playing in
1:19:08my head as well. And so there's there's
1:19:11two ways to build an index. One is to
1:19:13build the whole 19 exabyte index.
1:19:17And the other is to realize that
1:19:2199% of questions are being answered from
1:19:23that top 0.1%.
1:19:26And so if you make your index just that
1:19:28top 0.1%, do you even need the other
1:19:3199.9%.
1:19:32Right? And so eventually all of the
1:19:35queries just revert back cuz like one of
1:19:38the things I noticed that that I thought
1:19:39was was so stupid is we had a site and I
1:19:43think we actually discovered it on on a
1:19:44on a live show where I opened up being
1:19:46web master tools and I was looking at it
1:19:48for the first time and we were looking
1:19:49at some of the grounding data is that
1:19:51money asset lifestyle had like 180 Bing
1:19:55clicks but like 47,000 citations and
1:19:59they were just going to fetch the same
1:20:01nine pages.
1:20:0347,000 times. And so when you look at
1:20:06how slow that takes and you know you
1:20:08have websites operating at different
1:20:10speeds, I noticed that the very first
1:20:13time it's crawled, it's not cited. It
1:20:16only gets cited on the second and
1:20:17there's almost like a stepped process.
1:20:19It's almost like I could see a page of
1:20:22mine being quoted
1:20:24supporting someone else's statement
1:20:26about eat that I was like, but I'm not
1:20:29corroborating that. But I was dragged
1:20:30into the corroborationist. And so it was
1:20:32like the synthesized content was based
1:20:35on yesterday's search and the citations
1:20:38were based on 10 seconds ago search. And
1:20:40so there is a time lag. And if like for
1:20:43example when cases press release first
1:20:47went out it was accepted as fact and it
1:20:49built the whole story. And then
1:20:52this the third search an hour later it
1:20:54was suddenly oh it's just a um a joke
1:21:00just a a a PR uh stunt right and then
1:21:04when I added the seven bullet points
1:21:06listing all the other kings of SEO then
1:21:08it went back into a story again and it
1:21:09goes through that evolution process and
1:21:12so I think that
1:21:14for a large amount of the data they
1:21:16already have they already have an index
1:21:18of
1:21:19things that are much easier to pull from
1:21:21than going out and live and crawling and
1:21:24trying to do a live synthesis. So, I
1:21:26think they weren't really doing a live
1:21:27synthesis. The synthesis was doing it
1:21:29after. It's kind of like Google doesn't
1:21:30do a search. As it's crawling the pages
1:21:33and adding the back links and the
1:21:34clickthrough rate, it just moves you up
1:21:36and down a table. When you ask for
1:21:37search, it just blurts out the table.
1:21:39And I think that's what they're doing.
1:21:41They're building tables, but with just
1:21:43the 0.1%. And then they're just
1:21:45refreshing it.
1:21:46>> Because I've got I've got some
1:21:47interesting things here. I've not got
1:21:48the data on it yet. Um, and I think
1:21:50you're going to love this test if I'm
1:21:51being honest with you. Um, so first and
1:21:53foremost, I've had one or two Bing
1:21:55engineers tell me that Chat GBT are
1:21:56building out their own knowledge, their
1:21:58own knowledge base and their own
1:21:59knowledge panel, so to speak, with what
1:22:02this entity list is.
1:22:04And I've got a guy who goes traveling
1:22:07now in all these SEO conferences called
1:22:08Steven Burns. He's a really nice lad.
1:22:10He's the web lead at Common Crawl. Right
1:22:13now, Common Crawl is a charity and
1:22:16[clears throat]
1:22:16he's going to a lot of these events and
1:22:18saying, "Don't block Common Crawl, the
1:22:21CC bot, from your website because all
1:22:24the LMS are using as part of their
1:22:26training data." And and the this is
1:22:29factual bits of information that the
1:22:31biggest contributors to Common Crawl is
1:22:35OpenAI and Thropic and even Google
1:22:37contribute to it because it it saves a
1:22:39copy of the web and it can go back and
1:22:41you can get a copy of the web. Now
1:22:42anybody can go and download common crawl
1:22:45database once a month. It goes out and
1:22:48crawls the whole of the web and saves it
1:22:50and I think it's something like 12
1:22:53pabytes or something like that for I
1:22:55mean something I don't know 25 billion
1:22:58pages or what whatever it whatever it is
1:22:59it might even be more than that and it
1:23:01goes and crawls what it can crawl of the
1:23:03web and he swears that
1:23:07all these LLM models are downloading it
1:23:10and using it as part they believe he's
1:23:12using it as part of the training data.
1:23:13So what I've gone and done which is what
1:23:15I think you'll you'll like David is
1:23:17we've set up 200 websites. Um we've
1:23:20blocked every bot that we can think of
1:23:23apart from CCbot. So only CCbot is
1:23:26crawling it. We've made up a load of
1:23:29terms. So it could be like Edward
1:23:31Sterm26492X
1:23:34and then we've gone and make tried to
1:23:35make an entity out them on on a website.
1:23:37So Edward Stern 26192X
1:23:40is born in Manchester. Edward Stern
1:23:4226192X
1:23:44was born on this day and and we're
1:23:46trying to define all this information
1:23:49and on a daily basis at present we're
1:23:51asking who is this person this this
1:23:54random term and nothing's coming back.
1:23:56Now it's been this has been going on now
1:23:58for 10 weeks and still nothing's come
1:24:00back. Now that's not to say that common
1:24:02crawl isn't being used. Some people are
1:24:04saying that the training data might be
1:24:05downloaded and it could be six months
1:24:07late like ahs and semrush might not
1:24:09update their keyword data for four or
1:24:11five months. But what is going to be
1:24:13interesting is that if it does get
1:24:17picked up and it is picked up as part of
1:24:19the training data
1:24:22for and they are using common crawl
1:24:24database just as part of the training as
1:24:26well as other things
1:24:28that opens up a brand new it opens up a
1:24:31can of worms in the fact that at that
1:24:33point you could have sites that's
1:24:35penalized in Google that is being
1:24:37crawled with hormonic centrality. I
1:24:39don't know if you understand. So
1:24:40hormonic centrality is a different
1:24:43algorithm to page rank. So it starts
1:24:45with the weeb set of the trusted seed
1:24:47set of sites and then and it grows and
1:24:50crawls the web from there and those
1:24:53trusted ted set of sites there's
1:24:54something within CC rank right that you
1:24:56can do and all these websites that we've
1:24:59built are all one tier deep so that
1:25:02they've all got links specifically
1:25:05from CC rank one from the trusted seed
1:25:07set of sites. So it means that CCbot is
1:25:11crawling it heavily and we're going to
1:25:14see whether that works. And this will
1:25:16form part of is it always live
1:25:19retrieval? How much of the using of the
1:25:20training data? Do they use common crawl?
1:25:23It it it's a it's a part of me
1:25:25saying it at present because I' have no
1:25:26results on it. But what it is going to
1:25:28do is the this Steven Burns nice guy
1:25:30going traveling to all these SEO
1:25:32conferences saying that LLMs are using
1:25:34it in hopefully within 12 months I'm
1:25:37going to have that data and if they are
1:25:39it's going to then make not just for
1:25:42saying oh you go and buy penalized sites
1:25:44and do blackout techniques. What it's
1:25:46then going to do is then it's going to
1:25:47change maybe the way some people acquire
1:25:50links or try to get links of not just
1:25:53think about page rank. They're thinking
1:25:55about hormonic centrality and being as
1:25:57close to CC rank one trusted seed set of
1:26:00sites for LLM visibility long term. So
1:26:03when would you ask what's the fastest
1:26:04way? I was hoping that there might have
1:26:07been something in there that I could
1:26:08have gone, well, the slowest way is
1:26:10doing this, but I've not got that
1:26:12concrete evidence yet, but it would be
1:26:14an interesting method. And there's 200
1:26:16different sites. They've all got
1:26:17different links going into it from
1:26:19different places. All got different kind
1:26:21of terms being used. It's not you go and
1:26:24search it now in Google, it's not being
1:26:25seen in Bing, not being seen. It's just
1:26:27we don't know what this means. It'll
1:26:29just be interesting at some point.
1:26:31What's your thoughts on that, David? Do
1:26:32you think that common crawl could be
1:26:34part of the training data or do you
1:26:36think that you don't think it would pick
1:26:37them up?
1:26:39>> So here's a couple of things that I
1:26:41think we don't understand that that's
1:26:43again going back to the sort of secrecy
1:26:45that the LM pride themselves in. So the
1:26:48the training data to me I still
1:26:51understand as a huge volume of text like
1:26:55for example um Amazon just bought the
1:26:58teams database from Spirit Airlines. So
1:27:01they bought the team's um Microsoft
1:27:04teams database as an asset and not
1:27:08because so imagine two types of data
1:27:11right one type of data is just how a
1:27:14sentence is used right um you know that
1:27:17you can't end a sentence on a
1:27:18preposition like you know think about
1:27:20like going to school so it's just how to
1:27:22how to use language right so it's like
1:27:26um object adjective verb that kind of
1:27:30thing right and and and and and the
1:27:31scenarios and so that can't be retrieved
1:27:35from the real web because it's too slow.
1:27:37So like basically you have to wait for
1:27:39the next version of Claude like f we're
1:27:41in like Fable 5. So you have to wait for
1:27:43a next iteration and that's not about
1:27:46learning facts and figures and there
1:27:49will be brand names that that filter
1:27:51into that, right? Because obviously
1:27:54Spirit Airlines will be talking about
1:27:55this and you and you'll have brand names
1:27:57that almost become nouns, right? because
1:27:59they repeat it. They repeat it so much.
1:28:01That's going to be very difficult for
1:28:03companies to get into, right? You can
1:28:04that's not about schema. That's not
1:28:06about that's like where your brand is
1:28:08used as a noun in everyday speech,
1:28:11right? Like Hoover, IBM, that kind of
1:28:13thing.
1:28:15And I think that that has to be done
1:28:17offline because it's so complicated and
1:28:19so expensive. And then you have what's
1:28:21like, well, that's what we learned from
1:28:246 months ago, but that's not fresh
1:28:26current data. And how do we maintain
1:28:29that? And so Google uses nearest seed
1:28:32which is the exact same algorithm or the
1:28:35exact same premise for the algorithm as
1:28:36as common crawl which is let's take the
1:28:39New York Times, let's take Microsoft,
1:28:41let's take whatever and the distance you
1:28:44are from there. That's how much we trust
1:28:46you. So it it's it's the similar thing.
1:28:49Then layered above that you have
1:28:51Google's anti-PAM technology and then
1:28:53you have Google's precision, right? like
1:28:56we think this is a more precise answer
1:28:58which is based on clickthrough rate,
1:28:59bounce rate, pogo sticking which common
1:29:01crawl lacks, right? And so if you're
1:29:05trying to build a poor man's index, if
1:29:07you think of like a skeleton like for a
1:29:09T-Rex, so you have like the spine going
1:29:11down the tail and you have all of these
1:29:12things hanging off. So the spine is like
1:29:14the training data and then you have all
1:29:17of these other things hanging off. The
1:29:19reason that your data might not be
1:29:21quoted is because there's no reference
1:29:22coming back from a Google search.
1:29:25And so it's kind of like, do you wait
1:29:27until another whole LLM is rolled out
1:29:30and see if that common crawl is being
1:29:32built into a corpus? I'm going to I
1:29:34would guess 50 maybe 6040. know that
1:29:38that's probably a like a second tier of
1:29:41data that's playing in a refresh role,
1:29:43but it needs to come back from either
1:29:46Google or Bing in order for it to that
1:29:50data to be lifted into relevance, right?
1:29:52Because essentially what Google does is
1:29:54it indexes the entire web only to use
1:29:560.01% which I've always found funny
1:29:59about that pyramid, right? It's like so
1:30:01much of the content just never will
1:30:03never see the light of a click. But if
1:30:06you just capture that, you don't need to
1:30:08index everything. You just have to use
1:30:11Google as like a spam filter, right?
1:30:14Like as a hack, then I can see how you
1:30:17can somewhat displace Google. And so
1:30:19that's kind of really interesting in as
1:30:21to why Google is like playing its go-to
1:30:24and it's like almost forcing people off
1:30:26its index. Are they forcing a quality
1:30:29play or are they going to break that
1:30:32sort of like they're the the bridge
1:30:34between the tiers? So, another way to do
1:30:38your test might be to
1:30:41allow some of that to filter into one of
1:30:45the search engines but not the other and
1:30:47see where it comes where it becomes
1:30:49coded out. A bit like you know when you
1:30:50when you drop a liquid into a stream a
1:30:53color and to see where it comes out at,
1:30:55right?
1:30:55>> Yeah.
1:30:57Yes. And
1:30:58>> I want to I want to I want to wrap with
1:30:59uh I want each of you to just give one
1:31:02most effective thing to do to get AI
1:31:05visibility.
1:31:06Just something super easy. So we'll
1:31:08we'll leave with two takeaways. One from
1:31:11James, one from you, David, who it's
1:31:14kind of funny, David. Um on the back end
1:31:17here, I'm seeing you know my name on uh
1:31:20Dcript which we're recording this on is
1:31:21Edward Sturm. James's name uh with on
1:31:24descript which we're recording this on
1:31:26is James Douly and David's name
1:31:28>> is David in quotes the king Quaid.
1:31:32[laughter]
1:31:33>> So all right we we'll start with James
1:31:37and then we'll go next to the king.
1:31:40>> So build off page consensus build that
1:31:42reputation tree. Um do it by um doing
1:31:45press releases. Um a nice little hack is
1:31:47doing PDF sharing. So go and getting all
1:31:50of your best reviews, putting them onto
1:31:51a PDF and doing a PDF sharing blast
1:31:53which goes on slides share and all that.
1:31:55Go and grab hold of some of them um
1:31:57reviews and put them onto an image and
1:31:58do an image sharing blast and then
1:32:00within the description again putting it
1:32:02all in there. Um podcast shares if you
1:32:04can do a video and share it for a
1:32:06podcast. It goes on 47 platforms. We've
1:32:08done an episode on that previously. And
1:32:10then repeat, go and grab hold of the
1:32:12snippet of the review that's on Trust
1:32:13Pilot. Repeating this review for Fat
1:32:17Rank on Trust Pilot or on Trip Advisor
1:32:19or whatever it is. Go and get the review
1:32:21cited on Reddit force index and
1:32:24viability through to so you're trying to
1:32:26do build as much consensus off page as
1:32:28possible. They're all quite cheap ways
1:32:30of building up that off- page
1:32:32corroboration.
1:32:35Understand the query fan out. If you
1:32:37don't understand the query fan out,
1:32:39learn it. Ed and I did a great video on
1:32:41it. Um, it's paramount. Um, and the
1:32:44easiest place to start is perplexity and
1:32:47uh, Claude because they both showed the
1:32:49query fan out as part of the research.
1:32:50You have to double click to find it. But
1:32:52understand the query fan out and then
1:32:55that will drive what James just said and
1:32:58look at the search results in Google,
1:33:00Bing and Brave Search and then look at
1:33:02the gaps. Is YouTube ranking? Is Reddit
1:33:05ranking? Is LinkedIn ranking? Can I get
1:33:07If they're not, can I get in there?
1:33:09Right? If LinkedIn isn't, you can get in
1:33:11there. If YouTube isn't, you can get in
1:33:13there. If it is, you've got a different
1:33:14competition. But you start with the
1:33:16query fan out. If you don't understand
1:33:17the query fan out, this is going to be a
1:33:20mystery. Once you understand the query
1:33:21fan out, the mystery is gone.
1:33:24>> Everybody, everybody share in the
1:33:25comments who who they think the winner
1:33:27is. Or maybe it's a maybe it's a tie.
1:33:30I'll share my favorite way for getting
1:33:32AI visibility and it's actually
1:33:34something that we haven't really talked
1:33:35about and it's just amazing customer
1:33:37service and then asking people to leave
1:33:39your reviews because like if you have
1:33:42happy customers, they will go out of
1:33:44their way to do parasite SEO for you.
1:33:46They will leave you incredible reviews
1:33:48across all the major review platforms.
1:33:50They'll accidentally just use the proper
1:33:53language or you can ask them to do
1:33:55specific language. So my advice is focus
1:33:59on getting customers, satisfying those
1:34:02customers, and asking those customers to
1:34:04leave you great reviews because in the
1:34:06process of getting AI visibility, you
1:34:08also get sales, which at the end of the
1:34:11day, I think that's what all of us want.
1:34:14James Dulie, David the King, Quaid,
1:34:17thank you. Thank you both of you again
1:34:19for coming on the show. Um, this is
1:34:22episode 1,150
1:34:24of the podcast. 1,150
1:34:28days in a row doing this show. Oh my
1:34:33gosh. Yeah, [laughter]
1:34:37>> if you watch this on YouTube. Whoa, you
1:34:39got hearts.
1:34:40>> Got hearts. Oh, amazing. Maybe do I do I
1:34:43have that? Can I get that on my mic on
1:34:46my on my camera? No, I don't.
1:34:47>> What do we got? Oh, James is the only
1:34:49one of his hearts. [laughter]
1:34:50>> Uh, all right everyone, if you watch
1:34:52this on YouTube, thank you so much for
1:34:53watching. If you listened on Spotify or
1:34:55Apple Podcast, thank you so much for
1:34:57listening and I will talk to you again
1:35:01tomorrow. Bye now.

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