The New SEO Playbook: AI Search, GEO & What Actually Drives Conversions

Technical SEO equals the foundation. Content and public relations equals the catalyst. Social media equals the amplifier. Geogenerative engine optimization equals growing real estate. These are notes from Brighton SEO from Maltand. Go and Gotra sent them to me. These notes are so good, so authentic. And I said I got to share them on the podcast. And if you are watching on YouTube, I am out and about and I have an amazing background behind me. I'm on a rooftop in Manhattan and that's where I'm doing this SEO podcast from today. So, Malt continues with his notes. And by the way, if you don't know, Brighton SEO, it's one of the biggest SEO conferences every year. So, yeah, these notes really, really insightful and interesting. And number two, have shared KPIs and a shared forecast for all organic channels. Three, only move to the next question if you can say yes to the previous question. Is there demand? And then, is this space winnable for you? And then are you indexable? And then are you visible? Are you differentiated? Do you have social proof? Do you have positive brand sentiment? Measure and optimize. The thing about these notes is they are really packed with information. So you might want to watch this on like.5 times or take notes. Like this is a crazy just jam-packed post that Malt put up with info. Treat generative engine optimization like poker. Nobody knows all the cards, but you know some cards, so make decisions based on that. Half the players are bluffing. Not playing is a risk. Never playing means you lose. Good players do not need a perfect hand to win. That means that you can see the searches AI is doing through query fanouts. You can literally see the searches that AI is doing. It's not going to be the same searches every time and it's going to depend on the prompt, but you can get some idea for the types of language AI is using and you can use that to inform the SEO content that you make. Crawlability and indexibility still matter. Pages with bad core web vitals are cited less often. I want to make a note on that and say just don't get too caught up in core web vitals. Test for yourself to see if your site and your pages are fast enough. That's my advice. and have multiple friends around the world, friends and family. Test if you can and then oh do a site crawl as well. Most marketing is overengineered. Marketing is about human intent. Your KPI should not hide that. So true. Understand your consumers pain points and turn that into growth. Also very true. That's why it's so important to do keyword research and actually talk to customers. This is so cool. This is compact keywords. Pretty little things. I guess this is a brand. switched from traditional category pages like jeans to intent-driven category pages like airport outfits, leading to an 841% uplift. Every single item featured on these intent-driven category pages sold out of stock. Come on. If you want to learn how to do intent driven search engine optimization, that is the thing on my shirt, compact keywords.com. It's my 13 and 1/2 hour SEO course that is about doing SEO that gets you customers, that gets you users, that gets you warm leads calling you up. It is literally about doing SEO that focuses on conversions, not top offunnel content and articles, but literally conversion-based SEO landing pages. People who take the course love it because it focuses on getting results, on getting sales. Analyze problems, not keywords. Here's a thought experiment, and this is me going back to Maltese's post. If your next 1 million customers never visited your website, what would that mean for your branding, marketing, and content production? do exactly that for AI visibility. Not every brand mentioned in LLM is a recommendation. That's true. LLM struggle with understanding implied emotions, atmosphere, metaphors, irony, sarcasm, ambiguity. You know what? I'm going to say something. A lot of people struggle with that, too. The bare minimum to keep your SEO job is doing two things daily. Take a shower and use the latest LLMs. Yeah, that's that's true in marketing companies. But too many SEOs rely on LLMs to do their job, and as a result, they do really bad SEO. You should know how to use LLMs well enough to make you higher converting to make you more efficient, but not so much that you are doing SEO that results in less sales, less brand fondness, less people liking your brand. Actually made an episode about this explicitly, and it's a really important episode. Episode 1 of this show. AI is flooding SEO and that's why it's about to get easier. That's a great one. How much value you get out of using AI is directly correlated to your ability to spot when it is making mistakes. There it is. The highest value thing you should do when working with AI agents is letting smart agents validate the work of other agents. SEO traffic and geo traffic are correlated and this correlation is increasing from quarter to quarter. Oh my god. 43% of URLs cited by AI overviews are ranking in the Google top 20. For AI mode, it's only 20%. 60% of AI search clicks go to the homepage. With SEO, it was less than 20%. But keep in mind that AI will also do research and come across SEO content and then refer you to the homepage. When asking questions about brands, AI mode sites official websites, Google Maps, social media, and review platforms. Aim for an aggregated review score of 4.5 or more to increase click-through rate. SEO used to be technical SEO plus content plus back links. Nowadays, it is so much more. I would argue that it was always so much more, but I still like this point. Optimize for passages, not pages. Each paragraph should cleanly answer one specific question. build both brand authority and topical authority. Mine a lot of fanout queries and answer them with various content pieces. You know, it's cool because as I'm recording this, we're going to see the sun setting over Manhattan as I'm recording this. It's literally 6:43 p.m. As I'm recording this, use social proof for credibility. Highlight and amplify positive reviews and testimonials. Oh my gosh, yes. Your chances of influencing grounding/rag are much higher than your chances of influencing model training data. Your battleground are prompts that trigger a web search. Remember that. Don't try to influence the training data. Try to influence the query fanouts. LMS do not read your whole page only individual parts. The LLM is a judge. Sources are witnesses that influence the verdict. You are the lawyer who has to prepare and influence the witnesses. AI overviews reduce clicks by 36%. This figure is all over the place. 36% here. Hrefs first said 34.5% then they said 58% or something like that. Numbers always changing but it's just important to know the the consensus is that AI overviews reduce clicks. That's why putting up bottom ofunnel SEO landing pages, compact keywords pages, same thing is so good because even if you get an AI overview, it's still going to recommend your page. People who are doing bottom offunnel searches are literally looking to use something or purchase something or call somebody. So the AI overview is referring your business to somebody who is looking to take action. LLMs prefer objective and neutral sources with high eat written in clear and factual language. There are some SEOs who would disagree with that, but I'm going to say something. I actually really agree with that. And in general, I think it's just better to write in a neutral tone, even for searchers. When you describe your brand in a neutral tone, you sound more credible. Paying for the placements of optimized articles on media websites is the fastest way to improve AI visibility. Publishing disinformation is intentional. Misinformation can be spread accidentally and with good intentions. Both influence LLM answers. When AI models, especially AI overview, summarize, they often leave out important caveats, exceptions, and uncertainties. Trust is shifting from humans and institutions to algorithms and AI. Conversational search interfaces are the future of search. They allow for personalization, make it easy to ask follow-up questions, and give agency to searchers who can take action without having to visit websites. I literally as I was walking not too long ago was talking to Chachi PT asking it questions about how well Starlink works because I'm going to be doing some traveling soon and I get out this podcast every day and I need to make sure that I have a good connection to upload the podcast. And so this is true conversational search and I said to Chachi PT, search it to get your answers so I can make sure the answers were correct. And sometimes AI still hallucinates, but with something like Starlink facts, I trusted it to get it right. Ranking better in traditional search will increase your likelihood to get cited. Let's go. Look for common terms/concepts and fan out queries for your prompts. Use these for content creation. 80% of conversion journeys touch an LLM. 90% involve a search. God, Malt, you crushed it with these notes. I'm enjoying this so much. 40% of consumers use LLMs for shopping. 75% of them trust LLMs for product comparison. 79% say an LLM influence their purchasing decision. Consumers trust user generated content. That is true, too. Consumers don't just search anymore. They ask AI. Every marketer should work with MCPs. Entities mentioned in multiple citations are most likely to be included in AI answers. With AI, the shorthand will get smaller and the longtail will get longer and longer. 53% of non-branded prompts trigger an answer that mentions at least one brand. Oh my god, this next one is so good. Changing your navigation from using expert terminology used internally to the terms used by your customers can increase key events by 567% and revenue by 64%. That's another reason why it is important to actually do keyword research yourself and to talk to customers. Your leading metrics must predict your lagging metrics. Every SEO must be an engineer and a storyteller. So true. The amount of people doing SEO who are not focusing on getting better at storytelling. It destroys me. It is so important. AI search is already a top five touch point for brand perception. This next part is successful e-commerce sites are currently doing this comparison and recommendation content with real human input. I teach that in compact keywords by the way. Content structure for easy digestion both for readers and AI. I also teach that in compact keywords. Unique images also in compact keywords. Quick reaction to trends. That quick reaction to trends is really really critical. increases your top of- mind awareness, but it actually gets you positive SEO metrics, too, because you're putting up content for things that a lot of people are searching that is trending and you put it up fast and then you're getting a ton of clicks. And when you rank and get clicks and people aren't going back to the search results, this actually generates a lot of authority. It generates SEO authority for your brand, for your website. In-depth product reviews with proven experience. This next part is content gets cited does these things. Use a title that matches one of the fanout queries. Write a bluff. I love this. A bluff is a bottom line up front. Write definitive declarative sentences. Also super true. Be specific. Have high entity density. And the thing about writing definitive declarative sentences is you can do that without sounding really biased and still sounding neutral. This part is about AI shopping. There's not too much left of this, which is a shame because this write-up is so good. So, AI shopping, 35% of consumers use AI for shopping. Over $3 trillion will be spent on Agentic Commerce by 2030. Open AAI scaled back instant checkout, but double down on discovery. Customers who use instant buy on Perplexity spend 57% more money per order than the average shopper using generative AI. Have a declarative, self-contained 50word paragraph on every product detail page. This is the chunk you want LLM to pick up. Add Q&As's to your product detail pages and product feeds. Ideally, add additional information with each answer. Don't just repeat what is already on the product detail page. Explicitly mention product differentiators and use cases. Durable for wide feet, for running on roads, etc. on every product detail page. Enrich product attributes. A product has a carry-on case included. Mention it is portable. It is sweat resistant. Mention is great for working out. This is just such a good write up. I agree with so much of this. Concrete advice for visibility in AI shopping. Precise product titles, complete technical specifications, real-time availability and stock levels, structured shipping and delivery data, transparent returns and warranty terms, gin and mpn identifiers. Two more sections left. How to manage and grow your brand. Treat your brand as your company's most valuable asset. It regularly makes up 33% of a company's value. Trust is crucial for retention. Trust is the outcome of experiences. Yeah, really. Trust is so important. A differentiated brand can drive growth. Brand salience is important, but not enough. Consistency is key. By the way, this is episode 1,033 of the Edward Show. 1,033 days in a row doing this podcast. And the last one from Malta's writeup is a random learning which is Americans boil their water for tea in the microwave. The Britishers don't like that because Brighton SEO is in the United Kingdom. So actually here in New York I just bought an electric tea cuddle which is not that common in the United States but it's super common in Europe. I don't boil my water for tea in the microwave. That's crazy. This was such a good write up. Thank you again to Malt for writing it. Thank you to Gogan for sending me it. Thank you to the beautiful city of New York for being beautiful. And thank you for watching. If you watch us on YouTube and if you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcast, thank you so much for listening. If you want to save years learning how to do SEO that gets customers, users, and warm leads, that's at compactkeywords.com. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bino.