The Ultimate Guide to Modern Website Searchability Across All Platforms

The digital landscape is shifting rapidly, but contrary to popular belief, SEO isn't disappearing in the age of AI—it's evolving. Jason breaks down exactly how to make your website discoverable across all platforms, whether through traditional Google searches, voice commands, or AI-powered tools.

At the heart of modern searchability is the E-E-A-T principle: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This framework helps you create content that not only attracts your ideal clients but also signals to search engines that you're a credible source in your specific location and field. With AI-generated content creating unprecedented noise online, standing out requires a more strategic approach than ever before.

Jason emphasizes that AI should be your assistant, not your replacement. While using AI to generate outlines or identify keywords can be valuable, simply copying and pasting AI-generated content makes your site indistinguishable from countless others. The magic happens when you personalize that foundation with your unique perspective and expertise. Beyond content, technical elements like schema markup help search engines understand exactly what services you offer, while properly structured individual service pages allow you to demonstrate deep expertise in each area rather than providing surface-level information on a single page.

Ready to transform how your website performs across all search platforms? Join our Academy membership where we, the Designer Discussions podcast hosts, serve as your personal coaches. We'll show you how to customize your marketing strategy through weekly live sessions, exclusive community resources, and expert guidance tailored to your unique business. Visit designerdiscussions.com today to learn more!

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• https://www.designerdiscussions.com/episodes/episode-138-How-to-get-your-website-found-by-all-search-engines

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Designer Discussions is a partnership of three experts: Jason Lockhart, CEO of KABMS; Maria Martin, founder of DesignAppy; and Mirjam Lippuner, founder of Get Ink DIY

Episode Transcript

Maria Martin (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions with
Miriam, jason and Maria.
Today we're going to talk abouthow to make your website
searchable by all of the engines.

Mirjam Lippuner (00:12):
Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast
with Jason, maria and MiriamTune in each week, where we talk
about marketing, pr andbusiness advice for design
professionals.

Maria Martin (00:27):
We're going to talk to Jason and he's going to
inform us on what is new forwebsite SEO, so that your page
pulls up fast and you arecompletely up to date with all
of the new ways that we're goingto be finding websites now via
voice, ai and just a standardGoogle searches.

(00:50):
So Jason's going to cover allof that for us today and I'm
super excited to learn moreabout this.

Jason Lockhart (00:56):
So I often hear this a lot when I do
presentations.
I actually did one for KBizlast month and one of the
questions that I always get isis SEO going away because of AI?
And I always say it's not goingaway, it's evolving.
And that's what we're going totalk about today is some of the

(01:17):
ways you can actually optimizeyour site so it can be found
anywhere, no matter if you'redoing a voice search, ai or if
you're doing a traditionalsearch.
And I would say you need tostart with the E-E-A-T principle
.
So that's expertise, experience, authoritativeness and
trustworthiness, and that'ssomething that you'll hear a lot

(01:39):
in the SEO terms is the E-E-A-Tand it's just talking about
creating content that's actuallyaimed at your target audience.
And I'm always start therebecause if you hear me talk, I'm
always say you have to know whoyour target audience is, and we
have exercises on our website.
You could head to designdiscussions dot com and find all

(02:02):
of the client avatars we havethere, voiceconcussionscom and
find all of the client avatarswe have there, and that's just
to help you understand whoyou're creating content for,
because, at the end of the day,ai what AI is trying to do is
trying to find the right sourcefor whatever your question is
and if you're responding and ifyou're creating content for your

(02:24):
audience the right way, you canbe one of the sources that AI
voice command, traditionalsearch, whatever it is finds you
over your competition.
And I'll often say that AI,even though it's great, it has
created a lot of noise in theindustry and there's a lot of

(02:44):
content out there and it'seasier to create content now
because now anybody can say youknow, create me a 1500 word blog
around creating light in thespace, to copy and paste that

(03:08):
onto your website as the blog,because now you're just one of
millions that have that sametype of content, because AI
derived that content from theinternet, from other sources,
but it's not unique to you.
So if you use that tactic, usethat as an outline to then alter
the blog and add your emphasison it for your ideal audience,
and now you have authoritativecontent, a part of the EAT that

(03:32):
ties into what you want to aimat your end user or at your
ideal client.
So actually personalizingcontent is one of the ways you
get found because, like I said,there's a lot of content out
there.
So, being able to take what AIgives you.
If you use AI to help youcreate the content but then add

(03:52):
your own spin to it, helps youhave content that is unique to
you and actually personalizedfor your specific audience.
Okay, so that's one of the ways.
Use AI also to help youdetermine what the keywords are
that you want to have thecontent for.
So you can.
There are simple prompts outthere that you can look at or

(04:15):
create in terms of the keywordsfor your audience.
If you listen to Maria how shetalks to how to create a prompt,
you have to know the area, thelocation.
You have to know the audience.
You have to know what it isthat you want to do.
So when you're creating theprompt, you're creating a prompt
around what you do, what yourservices are, who your audience

(04:37):
is, where you're located andwhat you want to get out of it
it.
So, by creating a prompt aroundthat and being the keywords
that others were searching tofind you, now AI will give you
certain keywords that you wantto write content for or rank for
, and now you know the type ofcontent you need to create
content around.

(04:57):
So that's a way that you canuse AI to help you and then you
could create the content aroundthat.
So that's one of the On thetechnical side, this is a little
technical for most businessowners but in terms of schema
data.
So that's the behind the scenes,that's the technical
information on your website onhow it's organized for the

(05:20):
search engines, what they lookfor, the site map and all that.
So you could do a simple promptto have AI do schema data on
your website.
What that does is that thathelps the search engine to know
what your site is about.
Because, yes, you may have aremodeling website, but you may

(05:41):
also do roofing, you may dosiding, you may do windows, and
if you do a lot of otherservices besides just remodeling
, it can get confusing to thesearch engine to know exactly
what you do.
But with the schema markup,that helps the search engines
know okay, they do remodelingand that's their main service,

(06:02):
sub-services below that, orroofing, siding, whatever,
whatever.
And so that's the purpose ofthe schema data is to let the
search engines know exactly whatyour site is about, how it's
organized, what are the maintopics, what are the subtopics,
on and on from there.
But at the high level it's justabout organizing your site,
having a site map to tell thesearch engines, what you are,

(06:25):
what you do, what you're allabout.
Something else in terms of AI isreally monitoring what is
happening, and that I always sayanytime I talk about web
starter SEO making sure, at thefoundational level, you have
Google Search Console, googleAnalytics installed on your site

(06:48):
, because those two propertiescan help you analyze what's
happening on your site so youcan look at in terms of the
keywords that you're ranking for.
You could look at who'svisiting your website, when.
Who is actually clicking on apage, how long are they there.
This is all information thatyou should analyze from

(07:09):
analytics and search console.
Then you could take thatinformation into AI and help it
create you an SEO plan around itthat helps you to say, ok, this
is the type of content, alongwith the keywords, that I should
write for.
These are the people that arelooking for me, this is how they
are looking for me, these arethe keywords that they're typing

(07:31):
in and all of that.
So that's in terms of theanalytical side that you need to
understand.
What are the end users searchingfor?
What is it that they're tryingto find when they search for
either a design company or amodeling company, whatever it is
, so you can understand that, soyou can, in turn, write content

(07:52):
, have your site respondaccordingly and that'll help you
on the SEO side.
And if you answer it that way,you're answering for whether
they're searching for youtraditionally on a computer or a
mobile device, whether they'reusing AI, chat, gpt or any of
the other search engines, or ifthey're doing voice search.

(08:13):
So using the EEAT principle asa foundation will help you, no
matter what platform they'researching for you on, and then
using AI to help you.
Like I said, help you, not dothe work for you.
Again, help you.
So AI should be able to provideyou an outline, not provide you

(08:34):
the work.
If AI provides you the work,then everything I'm talking
about is null and void Because,again, if AI does the work,
there's no reason for a searchto choose you over anybody else,
because it's not unique, it'snot personalized.
So remember, use AI as a tool,not as the worker.

Maria Martin (08:55):
I'd like to pick your brain on this topic.
So now that we're using AI andvoice search for websites, does
that mean that we need to,because you were saying our
schema and our schema isbasically like our outline right
and the pages of our websiteDoes all of this new technology
impact the organization of ourwebsites that we've been using

(09:22):
historically in any way, or arewe still okay with the way that
we've been setting up websites,would you say?

Jason Lockhart (09:28):
Basically, it hasn't changed.
It's just that a lot of webdesigners may not have designed
in this way.
Oftentimes they'll just designaround what the end user or the
client wants to do, but theydon't take into account the SEO
of it as well and the impact ofit.
And so that's something if youare doing either a refresh to

(09:50):
your website or you're hiring aweb designer to do your website
for the first time, make surethey're taking into account SEO
tactics, ai tactics into whatthey design not just creating
the pages and the layout and thelook, but all of the behind the
scenes as well.
So if you're working with a webcompany that has already done

(10:11):
this, there really is no change.
But, like I said, a lot of webdesign companies don't actually
think about AI SEO until afterthe end, until after about the
launch.
Now you really need to thinkabout this in the foundational
talk of when you're developingthe site.

Maria Martin (10:29):
Thank you.
And then I have one morequestion.
You know how we talked aboutour blogs dead right, and our
principles about the conceptbehind blogs are that you need
that longer format content thatis like specific to your
business, and that you reallyneed to update and refresh pages

(10:50):
more than adding on more pages.
Refresh pages more than addingon more pages.
How does that apply now withthe AI search of a website?
Does that still apply in thoseprinciples or do we need to look
at changing some of that aswell?

Jason Lockhart (11:06):
moving forward, you can use it as long as the
original content is original toyou and it's actually
personalized to your audience.
If the content was createdgenerically for a generic
audience in nature, now you maywant to alter it to make sure it
ties into your ideal client orto the audience that you want to

(11:27):
aim at.
But as long as it's aimed at anaudience, it's okay.
But if it's generic in natureyou want to alter it.

Maria Martin (11:35):
Okay, and do we need, like, more pages to our
websites?
Or we're good with the kind oflike the status quo to date and
then we just add pages throughblog and that kind of stuff?
What would you say for that?

Jason Lockhart (11:49):
I will say with the pages.
That's, you know, a loadedquestion.
It just honestly depends onaudience.
So it depends on if you'veanswered enough of the
information.
Like, for instance, if you area remodeler and you have
different services, one of theways, instead of having all of
the services on one page, youmay want to break that up into

(12:10):
different pages.
So if you do kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling, whatever
it is, as opposed to having itall on one page, you may want to
break that up into individualpages.
Because those individual pagesyou can have more expert content
on those individual pages thanon one long page that can throw
forever.

(12:31):
Now you can have one page whereyou have a lot of expert content
with images, video explanations, testimonials, project examples
about that specific service.
That leads into the EEATprinciple in terms of having
expert content that shows you asthe authority on that topic in

(12:54):
your field in your specificlocation.
Because, remember, it's aboutbeing an expert on the topic in
the field in your location.
You're not an expert in all ofthe US.
You're an expert in Sheboygan,You're an expert in Austin,
You're an expert in Chicago forthat specific topic.

Maria Martin (13:15):
No, thank you so much.
That clarifies and helps us tounderstand more about.
It's more of a tidy up anorganization than it is about,
like a whole new perspective onhow to handle SEO.
And then would you remind uswhat E-E-A-T stands for?

Jason Lockhart (13:32):
Okay, and would you remind us what E-E-A-T
stands for?
Okay, so E-E-A-T expertiseexperience authoritativeness and
trustworthiness Excellent.

Maria Martin (13:44):
Thank you so much, jason.
I really learned a lot from youin this episode.
Join us again next, in twoweeks, for the next episode of
Designer Discussions.

Mirjam Lippuner (13:53):
Your business is unique and your marketing
should be too.
Discover how to personalizeyour approach for SEO, pr and
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In our Academy membership withus Designer Discussions podcast
hosts as your personal coaches.
We show you how to customizeyour marketing.

(14:14):
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Maria Martin (14:30):
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