How to optimize your website for AI visitors

0:05All right, let's do it. Hello everyone. Welcome to What's Up? >> Sorry. Somebody, it's either Remington or something is scratching >> his heels >> out. Okay, he's just walking. Let me put him in the bed. >> He's like, where's he going? You know, it's a small place. >> Remington. >> I can't trim his nails, so he just perpetually makes noise. with every single step that he takes. All right, let's do it. >> Hey everybody, welcome to the factory floor. Um, I am Nick and I'm joined by my uh beautiful, lovely assistants. Uh, to my right and left in my current video format, uh, we have Zach Stevens and Corey Haynes. And we're here to talk about something that I don't know anything about. Okay. Well, kind of. Um,

1:00Corey suggested and would like us to discuss LLM SEO. Okay. Um, so this is like the melding of SEO and AI in a way. Um, forewarning to both of you, I've been out of the social media zeitgeist, which also means that I haven't really been looking at what people are talking about on Twitter for a little bit. So, I'm completely in the dark on this thing. I've just kind of been nose to the grind. So, Cy, why don't you just give us like what what are you talking about? Jared, let let me frame the conversation. Have either of you in the last two months, let's just say, asked an AI search tool like a chatbt, Claude, even Google. Um, let's not let's not put Google in there. let's say chatbt or claude or perplexity for a product

1:55recommendation in the last two months. >> I've actually done Yes, I have done a lot of this. Um >> Okay, I had it >> well I had it research companies for us to reach out to for a project manager role which was super cool and I gave it advice or suggestions and said we want to have this kind of hour overlap with Pacific Standard Time. Um we're looking to fit within this budget. We're looking to I gave it a long list of things to do and 03 researched a lot and pulled back a bunch of results, gave it to me in a table of pros and cons and with all of the amounts and either alphabetical order or um descending, ascending. It was really cool. Um I think I could just pull up my chat actually. I could see

2:43what other things have have I looked at. >> That's a good one though. I I just need one example. I'll pull that up though just so you have it in front of you. So, um, for the both of you, where do you think that it got the information to be able to make a recommendation about what types of companies or products or services to use based on your question pulled from the web pages? My my guess is from the either their website or some kind of like cross reference with uh like review platforms like Trust Pilot or something like that where it takes maybe some of the top search results and crosses them with reviews or positive feedback from customers. That's my guess. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, you're both spot on. the

3:26the top two there. There's a third one in there, but the top two are definitely going to be like the direct sources of the websites in question of the company's, you know, brands, products, services that you're looking to investigate. Number two is going to be review sites, and that can also include uh social media forums like Reddit or Kora, for example, which LM historically have pulled really, really heavily from. And number three is going to be like blogs andor uh podcast content, YouTube content, but like usually blogs and people who are making a list of like best x for y or best you know whatever uh is going to pull from that as well and it's just trying to find subjective experiences. So, one of the

4:10big differences between Google uh and or Bing, just like traditional search engines and LLMs and the AI chat tools that we use today, is that Google is looking for kind of like objective facts, right? It's like, hey, you're looking for um a remote talent recruiting company. Let me just give you like a big list of them and you can go and like find the differences yourself and kind of do some research, book a call, so on and so forth. Yeah, >> I was going to say, but this is actually reading the sentiment and, you know, assigning a lot more value and taking a judgment on its own, so to speak, but in a far more unbiased way. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. LLMs and AI chats are essentially going to try to replicate the user

4:59behavior of what you would do with all the Google search results if you were doing the research just by yourself. And so they're going to look through all the the website content themselves. They're going to look at review sites and then they're going to try to find subjective stories and experiences of bloggers, people on social media sites, mentions in podcasts, YouTube videos, so on and so forth to try to get like kind of fill in the gaps of maybe what those websites are not covering or what the reviews aren't covering. Um, so this is actually really good news because previously when you're searching for products, it was up to the user, the searcher, to go and like fill in all the blanks and find all the research and

5:41hold it in your head. A lot of people are basically kind of doing spreadsheet work in their brains where they're like, "Yep, all right, let me open up 10 tabs. let me like read through as much as I can, try to sort out the differences and then kind of figure out like what's most important to me along the way. The AI tools do a lot of that work for you. The only scary part is that now it's up to the websites and it's up to the review sites to give the information that AI LM need in order to do that thinking for you. M >> and so let's just say for example we're talking about the remote talent recruiting platforms or services um their positioning their website content is going to bias and weigh the most

6:28heavily because that's what catcht and LM are going to see as like the the primary source material. It's going to augment that with review sites, with bloggers, with external sources, but it's always going to look at like the website itself and the the raw content from directly from the source as the primary source and try to weight that the most heavily. And so this really got me thinking because I think previously in the last 10 to 20 years, most websites historically have had pretty bad copy because it's very diluted. It's agreed upon by consensus. people are kind of trying to um summarize and provide kind of fluffy copy that sounds good but maybe doesn't have a lot of substance. And that's kind

7:14of been okay because people end up booking a call, starting a free trial anyways, and then they're going to figure out that information for themselves. But that doesn't work with this new paradigm of LLMs and AI chats because if the LLM can't figure out what you do based off of the content that you have on your website, then it cannot recommend you to anyone looking for a recommendation. And so your positioning and the content you have on your website actually becomes one of the most important things that you can put out there about yourself because that is what an LLM and AI chat tool is going to be using to decide if it should recommend you to someone like Zach and why and actually have like a tangible

7:56reason. Well, Zach, you're looking for someone in Latin America or South Africa in this price range who can, you know, in in these job titles and maybe for part-time contract bases, not full-time. Cool. There's only one option and it's this option because we scraped all the content from all the different services and we found that this is the only one that fits your criteria. If they didn't have that information on there, they are not getting a booked call. Um, and so it's just a really new paradigm that now people are realizing, oh shoot, I need to have my positioning in order so that like my website content can actually be used by an LLM to get me customers from AI chat tools. >> I feel like um this it feels like it's

8:43kind of forcing the hand of marketers. Does that make sense? like you like there's no more room for like smoking mirrors or like we can use this tactic to like kind of get them in and like we don't have to show our pricing because we're going to go do this over here. But like if I'm like hey I'm pulling a list and there's 10 options and there's one of them that like says like hey they don't list their pricing. I'm like we'll just okay just throw that one out. Like I want to see the pricing. Like I want to cut through all the BS and get straight to like how the service is provided, how much it costs, or even if I'm looking at a product and not a service, the same thing. Like if they're pricing is listed or something, I'm

9:19going to be more focused on the ones where I get that information. It kind of like cuts forces marketers to cut through some of the stuff that they might try to do. Um, but maybe that's uh that's assuming that people use this in a majority of cases where they're shopping for a product versus like just oh I heard from a friend I should try this out like like what percentage of the like uh discoverability of the products is this specific uh method? You know what I'm saying? >> Good question. I I don't know, but I feel like it's picking up really quick. Like once I discovered 03 and all the things that it could do as far as research and looking at stuff on my behalf, I was like, "Game over Google.

10:03I'm not looking at these search engine results pages anymore. I am just going to go straight to GPT." And the cool thing as well is that it will also prompt you with additional questions of, well, have you considered these things as well alongside your criteria? Or if you're really smart, which people are actively becoming better and better and better at prompting GPT to get it exactly what you want, you can have it tell you some of the things that you should be looking for um when searching for X thing. Uh, another aspect of this I think is really interesting is how it requires you to drop the gobbledygook headlines from your site like revenue orchestration platform which means nothing.

10:50>> Yeah. >> Like how the AI can't read that and make a clear assessment of whether to include you in a a category that this person is looking for. >> Yeah. Yeah. cuz someone's in a in a search tool in a in an AI chat tool is going to be asking chatbt, hey, I'm looking for a new uh cold email sending platform. What would you recommend? And if you're calling yourself a revenue orchestration tool, you're just like not even in the conversation. Like you would be lucky if it picked you up and had you in that conversation, but it's probably going to be so muddied up that even chatbt is going to have a hard time recommending you because it's going to be like, well, they kind of do this, they do this other thing, too. And if

11:34this is the only thing that you're looking for and this is like I'm trying to answer the question, then you know that's not going to be at the top of the list, right? Which is really interesting because again forever for the past like 20 years in the internet it's kind of been true especially for software tools that a lot of times the best product doesn't win. The company with the best marketing wins but not necessarily the best product. And I think that that's ripe for change because now the AI can do so much of the thinking and evaluating in the buying process that again it skips through all the goblygook. It's it skips through all the smoke and mirrors of kind of the the marketingness of hype and brand and um

12:19you know making yourself seem kind of making these lofty promises that might not be backed up and it just cuts to the facts. It's like this is what you're looking for. This is the best tool for your case for whatever criteria that it is that you're looking for. And I think that's actually good news across the board because again for forever everyone's had really terrible copy on their site I think which has made pe for people to make buying decisions. And so for one they're going to have better copy which is just going to make it easier for people to make buying decisions in the first place. But for two then that copy is going to be used in LLMs which is then going to get used in the AI chats and that way they can

12:59actually get customers. And I've seen many, many, many screenshots of people showing their traffic and being like, "Dude, 6 months ago, Chad GBT wasn't referring any traffic and now it's my second highest referral source of traffic to my website. It's growing exponentially and people are realizing like this is kind of a superior experience than Googling something." Are there things that those people who are seeing that sheing seeing that kind of shift are there things that they are doing that are different to accommodate GPT or any of the other >> people are starting to >> yeah people are starting to optimize now because they're realizing okay there's there's a race now to try to gain an edge and so this kind of breaches into

13:44like okay what does LLM SEO really look like and I'm calling it LLM SEO but there's actually kind of a fracture right now in the marketing community about what to call this. Um I think >> it's not a search engine. I think it would just >> Right. Right. It's not a search engine. It's kind of a misnomer of being like it's a large language model search engine optimization tactic. It's like no that's those are two different things. So people are trying to call it GEO which is generative engine optimization. Some people are saying it's LEO like LLM optimization engine optimization something like that. Um, no one's really decided on what it is. I think that everyone understands the concept of SEO,

14:23so it's sort of like it's LLM SEO. Most people know kind of what that implies. >> Yeah, >> I don't really care to be honest what it's called, but um >> Yeah, dude. Yo, you dude, let's let's pick a brand, dude. This sounds cool. Let's >> AI search. That's what it should be called. >> Yeah. >> Well, yeah, there's also like AI >> search optimization. Yeah, AI optimization, but it's it's more specific like AI chat. And there kind of is a an argument to be made that it's sort still like a search. So it could be like AI search optimization, which would be AISO. >> ISO. >> Um ISO. >> So dope. I like that. >> I forget which company. I think it's I think it's Claude or Yeah, it's either Anthropic or one of

15:08the other big AI companies is trying to brand GEO right now. So that's kind of what people are starting to roll with. Um >> Mhm. >> But to answer your earlier question about like okay well what are companies doing about this? Uh for one I think that any smart company right now is looking through their website content right now and being like what do I give LLM to index? So they're looking through all their copy. They're looking through the headlines. They're looking through their positioning. They're probably adding more pages because the more information the better actually. And they're actually also adding just like uh there's a robots.txt file that you can add to let Google know that you're you want to be indexed.

15:50People are starting to add LLM.ext files that essentially generates the equivalent of a sitemap for LLMs to be able to scour through all your web pages and understand like these are the pages that I want to be indexed in an LLM specifically. >> So that's number one. Number two is um they are trying to kind of seoify the content that they produce for LLMs and so uh they might be creating content that they normally wouldn't because there's no search volume in Google for it but because they know the train of thought and the followup questions that AI chats normally ask then they're creating content around that. So like you said with the remote recruiting plat platforms for example if it if they see

16:42okay every time someone does a deep research option for something it asks three follow-up questions and the follow-up questions are usually around specific parameters or filters then let's create blog content or other FAQ sections on our pages that try to address those filters and those qualifiers. So, it's it's getting an insight into what additional information could we use to better make our case like cuz you can check you can check all the stuff yourself and put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is searching for something that would fall um on the lines of what your company does and then you can play out the entire scenario of you went here, you went here, you went here and you went here and we've got all

17:24those bases covered. >> Yeah, it's smart. >> It is it is so straightforward when you think about it. optimizing yourself for this because I feel like the the curtain's been lifted >> in a far more easy way. It feels like Dune where they're like, "Yeah, we don't even have robots anymore. It's just straight to the point." Like, you know, we've we've cut out all of the um the craziness in technology. >> That's why I feel like >> Yeah, cuz I mean, a lot of people didn't know how Google made their rankings. And so the entire SEO industry was built off of speculating on what factors contributed to ranking higher in Google. Now I think everyone has a really good understanding of how LLMs work. And it's

18:11also actually not so dissimilar from how Google works in the sense that one of the primary sources of what an LLM trains itself on all the data that's fed to it is off of Google uh search indexing. And so, yes, if you rank in Google number one for a specific keyword, then they're going to weight that content higher in in the LLM as well because they're kind of using it as a proxy until they start generating their own indexing of people making native searches within the AI chats and then like logging all of that and trying to create their own ranking system. They're like, why reinvent the wheel? Google has already done a pretty good job of like people trying to make sure that they're showing up in the search

18:57results, providing information, building an authoritative website, uh so on and so forth, having legitimacy and authority and expertise. It's the whole like eat e um uh framework that Google recommends people to follow and they're like this applies to LLMs, too. So, so why not? So, if you want to get better at showing up in in AI chat results, be better at SEO for Google. Like, just >> keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Just keep being better at that. Keep creating more content optimized for keywords. Keep building a higher domain uh authority website and keep making your website fast, performant, easy to scan, and technically proficient. >> Okay. Can I ask a semi adjacent question?

19:47I like there's two paths like there's okay obviously Google right now is like it's it's not AI exactly there's AI like results that sometimes pop up especially like when you're asking it a question versus just searching for something and then you have chat GPT which is like purely AI right answers and results I'll say results does one end up winning this like search engine battle where like people just stop using Google altogether and they just use chat GPT or something like that or does Google say okay now everything they're all their results are kind of AI generated too um is is that the shift that happens or is it like oh no there's two types of search >> no they're they're converging for sure I

20:32mean Google is pooping their pants right now >> and uh yeah I mean and everyone sees it and everyone's seen it coming now for about two years where they're like this could change everything because the way that most people use the internet today is they start with a Google search and even if they're not on google.com, they are still searching through Google. You know, Apple and Google have the deal where Safari is powered by Google. If you just type into a search bar in Chrome or in Firefox, like it's all powered by Google. And so they have to figure out what they're going to do because they don't want to lose that advantage and that real estate and and that that user experience of essentially

21:12being the default way that people search for things on the internet. So Google's definitely going to be incorporating a lot more AI and we see that with like the AI summary generative results. >> Um I think that they're, you know, they're they're trying to partner with companies. They're trying to incorporate things. >> Um they're working on their own LLMs. they're working on their own AI products. They're definitely going to have to basically disrupt themselves, particularly with the Google search engine in order to stay relevant because right now at this very moment, like Chat GBT is eating their lunch on the AI chat search experience. >> It it definitely does not feel the same as far as >> Oh, no. Yeah.

21:53>> searching on Google versus searching within >> Excuse me. >> Feels so much better. >> Oh, 100%. completely different, very superior. >> That's great. Okay. >> And it's just a matter of time before that catches up. Um the I think that like I can see a world too where we see with JBT, they're also coming up with more traditional search experience type of results with like deep research for example. They make citations and um they're going to ask follow-up questions. They might give you a list of things instead of just one thing, right? Okay. So, if you say, "Hey, I'm looking for the best talent recruiting agency for Latin America." They're not just going to give you one, they're going to give you five. So, that's kind of the

22:34same as like the first page of Google, right? One of the other big paradigms in here that people haven't really figured out what to do with is advertising because again, Google makes a lot of money from serving ads in search results. Currently, there aren't really any ads in Chat GPT. I think that there will be and we're also seeing opportunities for example where uh Shopify is building a direct integration with open AAI and chatbt so that if people search for you know best men's uh razor that it's actually going to have a list and and like a link to purchase directly within ChachBT. You don't have to like leave ChachiBT to go buy a razor >> off of you know beard brands or I'm sure that Amazon is trying to be in that

23:20conversation. Yeah. Uh, anything that you would do again within Google, we're going to see that same paradigm in chatbt and maybe even more because they can move faster and they're a little bit more nimble as a startup. Can I make a prediction? Because there's there's people like us who are on our computers working and doing things all day like the internet folk uh and like younger people and some older people. And then there's this whole like giant swath of people that are like, you know, they're not sitting behind a desk all day or they're not on a computer a lot and when they need to find something they go to Google and they're not wondering about Chat GPT. They've heard about it, they don't care,

23:59whatever. But they're also very concerned about data privacy and Google tracking their information. When if when and if Google can figure out how to make their search function AIified and much closer to what chatbt does, these people are going to lose their minds and either be so stoked or freak out that the AI Google overlords are eating their brains alive. That's my prediction is that anyone you know who's so scared of Google is going but still uses it because that's really the only option that they see is going to lose their minds and be so afraid. >> Yeah. It's like if you were scared of Google or Facebook, wait till you hear about tragic PT. >> Yeah. >> The final boss of things that boomers

24:46are scared of. >> Don't use tragic PT for like a year and then be like, "What do you know about me?" Don't do it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Don't ask it, >> man. You'll be you'll be scared. >> Don't Don't ask questions you don't have the answer to. >> Answer that question yet. >> Yeah, it knows. >> It's It's crazy. Yeah, especially now also it knows it can like search through all of your past chats as well. >> So like it has a a really really good understanding of who I am as a person. I'm I've basically divulged every single personal detail I ever could to CHBT. And so I like my friends that I was just on this trip with on my little workation. Um, they were like, "How often do you use AI?" And I was like,

25:27"When am I not using AI?" Like, "Every day." >> I was logging all my expenses through like a chatbt chat. I was doing translations live where I would just take a picture and be like, you know, translate this menu from German to English. I was asking it for like things to do around the city. I was asking it about like recommendations for what I should eat when I had like an esophagus thing going on because I antibiotics and whatever. like I was using it multiple times a day every day. >> It gets its hooks in you pretty quick. It gets it gets its hooks in you really quick. I have I haven't been able to do it yet because I think that I it it just wasn't functioning the way that I wanted it to, but the AI chat during a drive is

26:09actually something that I thought was really useful. >> Interesting. >> Well, especially for someone like me because I I process externally. you guys know where >> my ideas aren't fully fleshed out until I've verbalized them. And that's actually when they become the most concrete, but I could do that with somebody else and or you know without there need to be a body nearby. I can instead talk to Veil who is my chat GPT voice. >> Your AI girlfriend. >> No, she's not my AI girlfriend. She's >> No, we're just friends. >> This is my wife. Yeah, >> my AI my AI assistant >> and her name is Veil. So, you know, obviously I'm going to talk with her. >> That's a great assistant >> is my AI version of you know the my veil

26:56would would have my voice and my name and I could like >> talk to yourself. >> Yeah, 100%. I would much rather have that than talk to someone I a different name. Anyway, >> I wouldn't want to talk to myself. I'd want to talk to like David David uh Edinburghough or whatever his name is. like someone with like an awesome voice. >> It's like cheesy to me. It's like cheesy to talk to someone else's voice. Like I just talk to me like I'm this is my thing talking to me. I was going to say it's funny that you mentioned that the people you were on this trip with were like how often do you use AI? I think once you once you get a positive result or something for the first time, like maybe you have a big problem you're

27:37trying to fix, technical problem, something like that. the first time you fix something and AI did 99% of the lifting, you will never escape. Like you'll never go back. Um, which is crazy. Um, yeah, I'm really curious to see how the search engine AI stuff plays out. Any final thoughts before we stop talking about this? Because we've been talking for a minute. >> Fascinating. >> Awesome. >> Yeah. Do you guys feel like you have a better understanding now? like LLM, SEO, GEO, whatever, whatever we want to call it, kind of what goes into it and why it's important. >> Well, I thought that I wasn't sure if we were going to talk more about the use of it from a programmatic front, especially with things like MCPS or

28:19um anything along those like using LLM to try and increase your SEO, but instead using them as the search engine. But you know those two might those two things might play hand in hand really well having the AI write things that it is going to find beneficial to then search for itself and then you will have completely outsourced your job to a robot >> right the AI circle jerk. So great super interesting topic. Thank you Corey for bringing it in. Um yeah curious to see like the next iteration. We'll probably have to do like a follow-up to this I'm sure in like 6 months. >> We'll check in in six months. Yeah. Jeez. Um, okay. Thanks everybody for listening to uh the factory floor. We'll see you on the next one.