February 25, 2025 • 16 mins
In this episode, host Vera Shafiq discusses the evolving SEO environment influenced by AI-driven search technologies. She emphasizes that while traditional SEO practices remain relevant, there is a growing need for marketers to adapt to newer AI tools like ChatGPT and diversified platforms beyond Google and Bing. Vera discusses the necessity of maintaining a comprehensive digital presence, optimizing for AI search results, and revisiting KPIs to better measure engagement and conversions. Additionally, she highlights the significance of voice and image search in the current landscape and provides actionable steps for businesses to future-proof their SEO strategies in light of these advancements. The episode aims to equip marketers with the insights needed to stay ahead of the curve in AI and SEO.
00:00 Introduction to the Evolving SEO Landscape
01:31 The Impact of AI on SEO
03:02 Traditional vs. AI-Driven Search
06:00 Expanding Beyond Google and Bing
08:52 Shifting Audiences and AI Adoption
11:24 Actionable Steps for Future-Proofing SEO
15:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Vera (00:13):
hello, and welcome back to the podcast where we have real
and relevant discussions onfranchise business, marketing,
and technology.
I'm Vera Shafiq, and today weare going to explore how the
evolving digital landscape isbeing impacted by AI driven
search and how SEO is evolvinginto something a little bit
(00:37):
different than what we are usedto as marketers.
So I wanted to dive into thechanging SEO environment.
It's another hot button topicthat I wanted to address here.
And before we get started, Ijust wanted to acknowledge the
fact that we are almost inMarch.
This year is flying by.
(00:58):
Does anyone else feel that way?
We are almost Towards the endpart of Q1, 2025 and what a year
it's been so far.
There's been so much indevelopment in terms of AI.
And while I don't like to focustoo much into the AI side of
things, because after allmarketing is so much more than
(01:21):
just AI, I do think that itdeserves.
A spotlight in some of thediscussions and today's no
exception.
We are going to talk about howAI has affected the SEO
landscape.
So one of the most recent mediadiscussions that has been going
(01:41):
around is that HubSpot has lost81 percent of their organic
traffic to their blog in a yearover year study.
And as a result of this, we'vebeen seeing a lot of memes and a
lot of posts going around thatSEO is dead and you know that
SEO no longer works.
(02:04):
I honestly don't think this istrue.
SEO is absolutely not dead.
I think HubSpot knows why thathappened and have addressed
that.
So that's actually not an issueat all.
I think, I just think it hit themedia and became a story.
Because really people arepanicking a little bit in terms
(02:26):
of that the SEO performance thatthey're seeing.
On their traffic, their organictraffic results specifically.
Right now, I don't think there'sany need to panic.
I just think it's an, it's amatter of looking to the future
and being prepared for howconsumers are going to evolve
the way that they interact.
With search engines like Googleand Bing, we're already seeing
(02:50):
it.
It's not happening everywhereright now.
I think it's more of the earlyadopters, but I think as
marketers, we just need to beahead of the curve.
And if you're already thinkingabout this, then I think you are
ahead of the curve.
So let's just talk about howsearch has traditionally been
handled and then how we need tolook at it going into the
(03:10):
future.
So, historically the channels orthe platform, such as Google
Bing YouTube, they have beenlike the top search engines for
where people go to search forinformation, whether that be For
news, for entertainment, forpurchasing products, for how to
(03:31):
do this, how to do that.
That has been where we asmarketers have put our focus in
terms of, okay, we need tooptimize for Google and Bing and
then maybe YouTube as well.
Now people are more and morestarting to rely on AI search.
Whether that be AI overviewswithin the Google platform
(03:53):
itself or the Bing platform theAI equivalent of that or if
people are going into chat GPTperplexity, that kind of thing,
in order to search for thingsthat they're looking for.
More and more people are doingthat, and I'm sure as a marketer
you are doing that and you'reprobably One of the fewer
percentage of people that aregoing into these AI platforms
(04:19):
for searches rather than Googlenow.
So I want to just point outthat, mainstream America is
probably not doing that.
Those people that are doing thatare those that are the knowledge
workers.
So when I say knowledge workers,I'm talking about marketers, the
lawyers, the coders, like thesoftware engineers, people who
(04:40):
rely on knowledge in order to dotheir jobs.
And they're realizing that AI isthe way to go.
And they're using AI for notjust their professional, but for
their personal use.
However, this is going toproliferate and more and more
people are going to startcatching on to using chat GPT.
And All the other platforms inorder to get information.
(05:03):
So as marketers, we just need tobe aware of that and be ahead of
the curve.
On top of that, there are thingssuch as voice search, right?
Voice search has been around formany years.
I did a podcast on voice searchand how to optimize for voice at
least three or four years ago.
(05:23):
And so it's, that's nothing new.
But with these LLMs being verysemantically oriented, they
understand natural language alot better.
And also, on top of voicesearch, with the ability to now
do image search, which means wecan give the LLM an image, or
(05:43):
even a video, or even a liveversion of what our environment
looks like, and the LLM can do asearch based on that.
These are the kinds of advancedfunctionalities and use cases
that we need to start lookinginto as marketers.
And that being said, the focusof SEO has expanded well beyond
(06:04):
optimizing for Google or Bingalone.
We need to start looking outsideof Google and Bing.
AI platforms, as we know them,are now actively searching for
and accessing websites that areall over the internet.
So not only are they accessingwebsites all over the internet,
(06:26):
but they're also accessing thehuge corpus of training data
that they have been trained on.
And incidentally, when we talkabout a chat GPT or perplexity
going to a website and pullinginformation from them, these are
automated agent interactionsnow, so they are not going to
show up in your Google Analyticstraffic reports.
(06:48):
They could potentially beshowing up under bot traffic
because these agents aretechnically bots.
But just know that as more andmore people start to use these
AI tools for search, your GAtraffic reports are going to
look very different.
More importantly, businesses nowface the challenge of ensuring
(07:10):
that their value proposition iseffectively communicated across
a wide array of digitalenvironments, not just their
owned channels, such as theirwebsite or their social media
pages.
So as a business now, you needto double down on things that
you may have already been doing,but.
Things like review sites andshowing up as a citation on a
(07:34):
high authority publication, evenshowing up on platforms such as
Reddit, which I know has been anSEO strategy, but we know now
that ChatGPT and all the othersare scraping Reddit pages as
well and pulling results fromthere.
So I think we really need toexpand our horizons and not
(07:58):
spend so much time optimizingour websites, but also looking
at the bigger picture and howour brand is represented across
the whole web.
A recent study by Buzzstreamshowed that LLMs actually may
prioritize data fromauthoritative high domain
authority publishers.
(08:19):
So when they are pullinginformation, it showed that
their training.
Has been based on heavilycurated data sets.
And this means that getting yourbrand cited on high domain
authority websites still makessense.
Generally speaking, your SEOstrategy needs to look way
(08:39):
further than the four walls ofyour owned properties.
And so you need to be growingthose tentacles, right?
Many tentacles out into othersources of high quality
information and publishers.
So let's talk a little bit aboutshifting audiences and what that
looks like for your brand.
So we talked about how thoseknowledge workers are the ones
(09:03):
that are really the earlyadopters of AI.
We talked about people in IT,people in marketing, people who
are lawyers or whose professionsrely on research and other
professional fields.
And that also includesentrepreneurs and high net worth
individuals.
These are the types of groups ofpeople that are increasingly
exposed to AI search in boththeir work and personal lives.
(09:25):
So if you are marketing for abrand, whose target audience
falls into one of these cohorts,I really think that, there's
more of an urgency to addressthe AI search impact of SEO.
Incidentally, this will impactFrandev quite significantly
because the franchisedevelopment audience, like
(09:47):
prospective franchisees, thataudience falls within those
early adopters of AI searchtools.
For example, my husband and I,we were recently exploring
franchise opportunities usingChatGPT.
So we're looking at potentiallybuying a franchise and I thought
let's use ChatGPT to give ussome insight into what kind of
brands we might be interested inlooking into.
(10:10):
So we engaged with the tool andconducted A detailed interview
about our expertise, like whatwe are experts in and what our
preferences might be in terms ofpurchasing a franchise.
And chat GPT gave us quite a fewwell matched recommendations,
but I'd be willing to bet thatthe recommendations that chat
GPT gave us were biased towardsthe brands who have a wide
(10:32):
presence across the web.
The brands that have highreviews, testimonials, a lot of
published content on high domainauthority sites.
Maybe on those franchise relatedpublications, right?
So while the recommendationsthat chat GPT gave us were
excellent and really did matchwhat we thought we would be
interested in terms ofpurchasing a franchise, I think
(10:55):
there was room for other brandsto be showing up, but the reason
that they didn't show up wasthat they were potentially not
optimized.
Enough for chat GPT to be ableto find them.
So this experience underscoresthe value of AI platforms as
tools for decision making andmarket research, and also
underscores the importance thatwe as marketers need to put into
(11:20):
how we're showing up for thesetools.
So let's sum up some of thethings that you can do in terms
of an actionable next step toreally make sure that your SEO
strategy is future proofed forthis shift in media consumption,
right?
First thing I would do is acomprehensive digital presence
(11:43):
review.
So evaluate your brand'smessaging across all platforms.
and ensure that your brand'svalue proposition, which is
unique is consistently andaccurately represented
everywhere.
So not just on your own website,not just on your own social
media channels, but continuingon through high authority
(12:05):
publications, franchisedevelopment sites, if you're
interested in franchisedevelopment across your reviews
ecosystem.
On video platforms like YouTubeand even on platforms such as
Reddit, but you're even, this istable stakes, right?
This is something that we'vebeen working towards any way
from an SEO perspective.
(12:27):
I think you need to start reallylooking broader and
understanding.
Where you need to be featured inorder to show up for these AI
results.
So in order to do that, and inorder to see where you stand
right now, I think the next stepwould be to engage with AI
platforms yourself and pretendthat you are a consumer of your
(12:48):
brand.
So actively test out how aChatGPT or a Claude or a Gemini
or a perplexity are respondingto queries about your company's
offerings.
Get on the platforms, use theinsights that you see to
identify strengths and gaps inyour current SEO strategy.
For example, if I'm a plumbingfranchise and I prompt ChatGPT
(13:14):
to recommend a great plumber inmy area, if my brand isn't
featuring in the response, Thenthat means I've got some work to
do.
And I think at that point youcan start to work towards, okay
I'm not showing up in an AIsearch.
What do I need to do?
Where do I need to be featuringmy brand in order for the
(13:34):
platform to start to pick up on,on the things that, my brand is
doing.
And then the third action item Iwould say is you need to update
your metrics and your KPIs.
So recognize that traditionalorganic traffic metrics are
probably going to decline.
(13:55):
So if you continue to countorganic traffic and rankings,
these metrics are likely goingto be declining.
And that does not mean that yourSEO isn't working anymore.
What you really need to do isincorporate new KPIs That
account for performance acrossdiverse platforms and channels.
(14:15):
You probably will want to startlooking at direct traffic
engagement and conversions asmore of a focus, and also
looking into lift KPIs tomeasure incrementally.
How these organic strategies areadding to your your outcomes,
your business outcomes.
(14:36):
So I would definitely take alook at the metrics that you're
measuring in terms ofdetermining if SEO is successful
or not, because those metricsare going to change.
And as I mentioned, directtraffic might now start to be
more important than everbecause.
That's the traffic that peopleare how they're getting to your
website now through a chat GPT,for example.
(15:00):
And then finally, you'll want tomaintain a forward thinking
approach and communicate itfrequently to your executive
team and franchisees.
So really letting them know whatyour strategy is how you're
approaching this new AIenvironment.
And kind of giving them thetrust and the confidence that
(15:21):
you understand this newlandscape of search and that you
have a plan of action toimplementing that and making
sure that you are on the leadingedge.
Of this new shift.
Well, thank you for listening tothe podcast today.
I hope today's discussion hasprovided you with a clearer
(15:42):
understanding of the shiftingSEO landscape and practical
steps to staying ahead.
Subscribe for more insights onfranchise business, marketing,
and technology.
Until next time, stay informedand keep evolving.
hello, and welcome back to the podcast where we have real
and relevant discussions onfranchise business, marketing,
and technology.
I'm Vera Shafiq, and today weare going to explore how the
evolving digital landscape isbeing impacted by AI driven
search and how SEO is evolvinginto something a little bit
(00:37):
different than what we are usedto as marketers.
So I wanted to dive into thechanging SEO environment.
It's another hot button topicthat I wanted to address here.
And before we get started, Ijust wanted to acknowledge the
fact that we are almost inMarch.
This year is flying by.
(00:58):
Does anyone else feel that way?
We are almost Towards the endpart of Q1, 2025 and what a year
it's been so far.
There's been so much indevelopment in terms of AI.
And while I don't like to focustoo much into the AI side of
things, because after allmarketing is so much more than
(01:21):
just AI, I do think that itdeserves.
A spotlight in some of thediscussions and today's no
exception.
We are going to talk about howAI has affected the SEO
landscape.
So one of the most recent mediadiscussions that has been going
(01:41):
around is that HubSpot has lost81 percent of their organic
traffic to their blog in a yearover year study.
And as a result of this, we'vebeen seeing a lot of memes and a
lot of posts going around thatSEO is dead and you know that
SEO no longer works.
(02:04):
I honestly don't think this istrue.
SEO is absolutely not dead.
I think HubSpot knows why thathappened and have addressed
that.
So that's actually not an issueat all.
I think, I just think it hit themedia and became a story.
Because really people arepanicking a little bit in terms
(02:26):
of that the SEO performance thatthey're seeing.
On their traffic, their organictraffic results specifically.
Right now, I don't think there'sany need to panic.
I just think it's an, it's amatter of looking to the future
and being prepared for howconsumers are going to evolve
the way that they interact.
With search engines like Googleand Bing, we're already seeing
(02:50):
it.
It's not happening everywhereright now.
I think it's more of the earlyadopters, but I think as
marketers, we just need to beahead of the curve.
And if you're already thinkingabout this, then I think you are
ahead of the curve.
So let's just talk about howsearch has traditionally been
handled and then how we need tolook at it going into the
(03:10):
future.
So, historically the channels orthe platform, such as Google
Bing YouTube, they have beenlike the top search engines for
where people go to search forinformation, whether that be For
news, for entertainment, forpurchasing products, for how to
(03:31):
do this, how to do that.
That has been where we asmarketers have put our focus in
terms of, okay, we need tooptimize for Google and Bing and
then maybe YouTube as well.
Now people are more and morestarting to rely on AI search.
Whether that be AI overviewswithin the Google platform
(03:53):
itself or the Bing platform theAI equivalent of that or if
people are going into chat GPTperplexity, that kind of thing,
in order to search for thingsthat they're looking for.
More and more people are doingthat, and I'm sure as a marketer
you are doing that and you'reprobably One of the fewer
percentage of people that aregoing into these AI platforms
(04:19):
for searches rather than Googlenow.
So I want to just point outthat, mainstream America is
probably not doing that.
Those people that are doing thatare those that are the knowledge
workers.
So when I say knowledge workers,I'm talking about marketers, the
lawyers, the coders, like thesoftware engineers, people who
(04:40):
rely on knowledge in order to dotheir jobs.
And they're realizing that AI isthe way to go.
And they're using AI for notjust their professional, but for
their personal use.
However, this is going toproliferate and more and more
people are going to startcatching on to using chat GPT.
And All the other platforms inorder to get information.
(05:03):
So as marketers, we just need tobe aware of that and be ahead of
the curve.
On top of that, there are thingssuch as voice search, right?
Voice search has been around formany years.
I did a podcast on voice searchand how to optimize for voice at
least three or four years ago.
(05:23):
And so it's, that's nothing new.
But with these LLMs being verysemantically oriented, they
understand natural language alot better.
And also, on top of voicesearch, with the ability to now
do image search, which means wecan give the LLM an image, or
(05:43):
even a video, or even a liveversion of what our environment
looks like, and the LLM can do asearch based on that.
These are the kinds of advancedfunctionalities and use cases
that we need to start lookinginto as marketers.
And that being said, the focusof SEO has expanded well beyond
(06:04):
optimizing for Google or Bingalone.
We need to start looking outsideof Google and Bing.
AI platforms, as we know them,are now actively searching for
and accessing websites that areall over the internet.
So not only are they accessingwebsites all over the internet,
(06:26):
but they're also accessing thehuge corpus of training data
that they have been trained on.
And incidentally, when we talkabout a chat GPT or perplexity
going to a website and pullinginformation from them, these are
automated agent interactionsnow, so they are not going to
show up in your Google Analyticstraffic reports.
(06:48):
They could potentially beshowing up under bot traffic
because these agents aretechnically bots.
But just know that as more andmore people start to use these
AI tools for search, your GAtraffic reports are going to
look very different.
More importantly, businesses nowface the challenge of ensuring
(07:10):
that their value proposition iseffectively communicated across
a wide array of digitalenvironments, not just their
owned channels, such as theirwebsite or their social media
pages.
So as a business now, you needto double down on things that
you may have already been doing,but.
Things like review sites andshowing up as a citation on a
(07:34):
high authority publication, evenshowing up on platforms such as
Reddit, which I know has been anSEO strategy, but we know now
that ChatGPT and all the othersare scraping Reddit pages as
well and pulling results fromthere.
So I think we really need toexpand our horizons and not
(07:58):
spend so much time optimizingour websites, but also looking
at the bigger picture and howour brand is represented across
the whole web.
A recent study by Buzzstreamshowed that LLMs actually may
prioritize data fromauthoritative high domain
authority publishers.
(08:19):
So when they are pullinginformation, it showed that
their training.
Has been based on heavilycurated data sets.
And this means that getting yourbrand cited on high domain
authority websites still makessense.
Generally speaking, your SEOstrategy needs to look way
(08:39):
further than the four walls ofyour owned properties.
And so you need to be growingthose tentacles, right?
Many tentacles out into othersources of high quality
information and publishers.
So let's talk a little bit aboutshifting audiences and what that
looks like for your brand.
So we talked about how thoseknowledge workers are the ones
(09:03):
that are really the earlyadopters of AI.
We talked about people in IT,people in marketing, people who
are lawyers or whose professionsrely on research and other
professional fields.
And that also includesentrepreneurs and high net worth
individuals.
These are the types of groups ofpeople that are increasingly
exposed to AI search in boththeir work and personal lives.
(09:25):
So if you are marketing for abrand, whose target audience
falls into one of these cohorts,I really think that, there's
more of an urgency to addressthe AI search impact of SEO.
Incidentally, this will impactFrandev quite significantly
because the franchisedevelopment audience, like
(09:47):
prospective franchisees, thataudience falls within those
early adopters of AI searchtools.
For example, my husband and I,we were recently exploring
franchise opportunities usingChatGPT.
So we're looking at potentiallybuying a franchise and I thought
let's use ChatGPT to give ussome insight into what kind of
brands we might be interested inlooking into.
(10:10):
So we engaged with the tool andconducted A detailed interview
about our expertise, like whatwe are experts in and what our
preferences might be in terms ofpurchasing a franchise.
And chat GPT gave us quite a fewwell matched recommendations,
but I'd be willing to bet thatthe recommendations that chat
GPT gave us were biased towardsthe brands who have a wide
(10:32):
presence across the web.
The brands that have highreviews, testimonials, a lot of
published content on high domainauthority sites.
Maybe on those franchise relatedpublications, right?
So while the recommendationsthat chat GPT gave us were
excellent and really did matchwhat we thought we would be
interested in terms ofpurchasing a franchise, I think
(10:55):
there was room for other brandsto be showing up, but the reason
that they didn't show up wasthat they were potentially not
optimized.
Enough for chat GPT to be ableto find them.
So this experience underscoresthe value of AI platforms as
tools for decision making andmarket research, and also
underscores the importance thatwe as marketers need to put into
(11:20):
how we're showing up for thesetools.
So let's sum up some of thethings that you can do in terms
of an actionable next step toreally make sure that your SEO
strategy is future proofed forthis shift in media consumption,
right?
First thing I would do is acomprehensive digital presence
(11:43):
review.
So evaluate your brand'smessaging across all platforms.
and ensure that your brand'svalue proposition, which is
unique is consistently andaccurately represented
everywhere.
So not just on your own website,not just on your own social
media channels, but continuingon through high authority
(12:05):
publications, franchisedevelopment sites, if you're
interested in franchisedevelopment across your reviews
ecosystem.
On video platforms like YouTubeand even on platforms such as
Reddit, but you're even, this istable stakes, right?
This is something that we'vebeen working towards any way
from an SEO perspective.
(12:27):
I think you need to start reallylooking broader and
understanding.
Where you need to be featured inorder to show up for these AI
results.
So in order to do that, and inorder to see where you stand
right now, I think the next stepwould be to engage with AI
platforms yourself and pretendthat you are a consumer of your
(12:48):
brand.
So actively test out how aChatGPT or a Claude or a Gemini
or a perplexity are respondingto queries about your company's
offerings.
Get on the platforms, use theinsights that you see to
identify strengths and gaps inyour current SEO strategy.
For example, if I'm a plumbingfranchise and I prompt ChatGPT
(13:14):
to recommend a great plumber inmy area, if my brand isn't
featuring in the response, Thenthat means I've got some work to
do.
And I think at that point youcan start to work towards, okay
I'm not showing up in an AIsearch.
What do I need to do?
Where do I need to be featuringmy brand in order for the
(13:34):
platform to start to pick up on,on the things that, my brand is
doing.
And then the third action item Iwould say is you need to update
your metrics and your KPIs.
So recognize that traditionalorganic traffic metrics are
probably going to decline.
(13:55):
So if you continue to countorganic traffic and rankings,
these metrics are likely goingto be declining.
And that does not mean that yourSEO isn't working anymore.
What you really need to do isincorporate new KPIs That
account for performance acrossdiverse platforms and channels.
(14:15):
You probably will want to startlooking at direct traffic
engagement and conversions asmore of a focus, and also
looking into lift KPIs tomeasure incrementally.
How these organic strategies areadding to your your outcomes,
your business outcomes.
(14:36):
So I would definitely take alook at the metrics that you're
measuring in terms ofdetermining if SEO is successful
or not, because those metricsare going to change.
And as I mentioned, directtraffic might now start to be
more important than everbecause.
That's the traffic that peopleare how they're getting to your
website now through a chat GPT,for example.
(15:00):
And then finally, you'll want tomaintain a forward thinking
approach and communicate itfrequently to your executive
team and franchisees.
So really letting them know whatyour strategy is how you're
approaching this new AIenvironment.
And kind of giving them thetrust and the confidence that
(15:21):
you understand this newlandscape of search and that you
have a plan of action toimplementing that and making
sure that you are on the leadingedge.
Of this new shift.
Well, thank you for listening tothe podcast today.
I hope today's discussion hasprovided you with a clearer
(15:42):
understanding of the shiftingSEO landscape and practical
steps to staying ahead.
Subscribe for more insights onfranchise business, marketing,
and technology.
Until next time, stay informedand keep evolving.
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