September 28, 2025 • 39 mins
The digital marketing landscape is undergoing a radical transformation. While SEO professionals have spent years mastering Google's algorithm, the rise of AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini is creating an entirely new paradigm for online visibility.
Kevin Roy, founder of Green Banana SEO, reveals a startling statistic: 60% of Google's 405 billion monthly searches are now "zero-click" searches, where users get answers without visiting websites. This fundamental shift requires businesses to rethink their approach to digital visibility.
Roy introduces us to "answer engine optimization," explaining how AI models differ from traditional search engines. Unlike keyword-focused algorithms, these language models—"built by linguists, not developers"—are inherently conversational. They don't just match keywords; they aim to create comprehensive stories about businesses and their offerings.
For businesses seeking visibility in this new landscape, Roy offers practical advice that goes beyond conventional SEO wisdom. Small businesses should leverage reviews strategically, responding to customer feedback with location-specific language. Website schema markup becomes increasingly important as AI models use this structured data to understand your business context. Tools like wakeai.io can reveal what information AI engines might be seeking but not finding on your website.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable is Roy's balanced perspective. While embracing the technological shift, he reminds us that "people buy from people"—the human connection remains essential in the AI age. Personal branding, authorship, and establishing expertise become even more critical as ways to build trust with both algorithms and audiences.
Whether you're a small business owner, marketing professional, or digital strategist, this episode provides actionable insights for navigating the evolving search landscape. How will you adapt your digital presence to ensure visibility not just on Google, but in the AI-powered tools reshaping how people find information online?
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
.
And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/
See you next time on Follow The Brand!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:01):
Welcome everybody to the Foud Brand Podcast.
This is your host, Grant McGall.
We're going to talk about a veryinteresting subject today.
A lot of people have heard ofSEO, search engine optimization.
Um, so when we are creatingcertain content, you want to
make sure it's SEO ready.
So it's searchable, so peoplefind it.
(00:22):
You want to be top of the feed,like in search engines like
Google, Bing, and the like.
But things have now changed withAI, you know, that's just
overtaking a lot of differentthings, right?
A lot of people are going to aChat GPT, a perplexity, a
Gemini, a Claude, and the likefirst before they're going to
(00:44):
Google.
So, how do you now rank in thatkind of setting?
We're going to ask these kindsof questions to Kevin Roy, who
is a visionary in this field,he's very innovative.
I want to get him up to thestates right now so we can talk
about this because this isimportant information.
So, Kevin, you like to introduceyourself?
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Uh Kevin Roy, Bring Banana SEO.
Uh our 17th year now doingsearch engine optimization.
And you know, we have a full-onum answer engine optimization uh
process and protocol that I'mjust excited to talk about.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Well, we got to talk about it because now you said 17
years, and you've been the, youknow, and I I figure you've been
ahead of the curve when it comesto performance-based SEO or
search engine optimization.
But what I want to know is whatinspired you to break away from
traditional models and then thisis important, guarantee results.
SPEAKER_00 (01:43):
So we'll start with we never guarantee results.
We guarantee that if we get youright, you pay.
If we don't get you right, youdon't pay.
Right.
So that's the if you when whenclients call and say, I
absolutely have to be on pageone next week, and this keyword,
I'm like, great, we have aGoogle AdWords program for that.
So um how I got into it, it's sowe had been doing SEO like
(02:08):
everybody else, but just howmaterials.
You know, we're we're writingthe content, building good
links, you know, it's changed alot in the last you know, 16, 17
years.
Um, but we were doing it forabout two years, and we had a we
we still have but this one ofour clients, we had a larger
client, and um, I had to go inand present to the board, the
(02:30):
boardroom, um, all of the stuffthat we've been doing.
And I had spent all nightcrafting this, what I thought
was absolutely spectacular uhpamphlet of data of all the
stuff that we're doing, all thestuff that we had been doing for
them, and handed it out toeverybody.
And I'm not kidding, I spentliterally all night.
I remember I'd I had gone to uhum staples and I was I was
(02:53):
collating things at like threeo'clock in the morning.
Yeah I brought it into them andand and showed it to them, and
they looked at me and said, Sowhat are we paying you for
again?
And I realized that when you'retalking about late semantic
indexing, schema, metadata, um,keyword quality, content,
(03:15):
linking to a room ofexceptionally intelligent
executives, they don't it's allwhite noise.
So in the middle of the meeting,I said, How about this?
I know I can rank you for thesekeyword phrases.
I get you on page one for these,you pay me.
If I don't get you on page one,you don't pay me.
(03:36):
But I'm never doing this reportagain because I spent all night
building this report.
And they're like, great, let'sdo it.
And I came back and said to thethe you know, the team, I either
made a massive mistake or Ithink we have a great model.
And so that's you know, that'sreally what did it because if
you are if you're following therules that Google puts out and
(03:58):
doing things that are generatingquality content and generating
high-quality links that arepointing back to the page and
you know, following some somethe you know the solid SEO
principles, you're going torank.
It takes a while, but you'regonna rank for most keyboard
traces.
You know, that save a you know,if if someone came in and said,
(04:19):
Hey, I have a brand new datingsite and I want to outwrite
MASH.com, you know, by the youknow, by the end of the year,
we're gonna say, well, MASH.comhas you know four million links
and you know zero, so it's gonnatake us a while.
We're not gonna get one pageoverhead.
SPEAKER_01 (04:35):
Very important to understand and set expectations
early and understand what you'redoing.
Big risk, but yet you have theconfidence to know what you're
doing, and uh you can take it tothe next level, and we're gonna
get paid because we know we canmake this happen, we're gonna
make it done.
Now, you've also said thattraditional SEO isn't enough
(04:58):
anymore.
So I would like you to becausethis is the big elephant in the
room right now.
We know you've mastered, youunderstand the Google algorithm,
you understand where you're at,and all the rankings that are
there, what it takes to get onthat first page, those first 10
blue links or whatever it may beis very important because that's
where you want to, you know,your ad spin, people are gonna
(05:19):
you get eyeballs onto whatyou're doing in the right
audience.
Now, can you explain what LLMSEO, that's large language model
SEO, is and how it transformsthe way businesses should now
think about visibility?
SPEAKER_00 (05:40):
So that's a that's a great question.
Um, I think I would I wouldstart by saying that as of June,
um 60% of Google's 405 billionsearches a month, so about 260
billion searches a month are nowzero-click searches.
So what that means is thatthey're getting the answer and
(06:03):
not having to click on anything.
So we're seeing in in in yourlike everyone that's listening
to this is probably seeing adrop in some of their organic
traffic.
So even if they're on page onenumber once or something, then
uh they're seeing, even ifyou're popping in the answer
engines, you're seeing a littlebit of a drop, but you might get
(06:25):
in more direct traffic or morecalls or more or more mentions.
Um so it's important that youpop up in the top of a grop or a
chat or a Gemini or a Claudesearch.
Um those engines are looking fordifferent things, but to kind of
(06:46):
assuage everybody, um we'refinding that if you're following
the proper principles ofgenerating good content and
having high quality matchinglinks that go to the page that
you're trying to rank, thosepeople seem to be doing a lot
better in the answer enginesthan people that that haven't
done that.
(07:06):
Um, there are things the answerengines are looking for, like
schema or markup language.
Um, I guess uh for people thatdon't know what that is, um you
Google Taylor Swift tickets andthe ticket prices and the the
venues are going to come up inthe search bar, right?
Right?
The search that's that is markuplanguage that's on your page.
(07:29):
The the user can't really seethat part of it, but the the
Google is pulling that out andsticking it up in the search for
the search result.
Um, so what we're finding isthat the answer engines seem to
be looking at that faster,having more access to it, or
maybe they're just morecomfortable with it.
And they're pulling informationfrom there.
(07:50):
So we're spending more timemaking sure that we have quality
content and quality questionsand answers in the cinema as
well as on the page.
SPEAKER_01 (08:02):
QA.
So a question and answer,because you said something.
I I like how you frame that.
Because I would we were askingtalking about this earlier.
What do you call this now?
LLM SEO?
You said answer engine.
So you look at an LLM as ananswer engine, it's responsive
and it's going, and to yourpoint, when now when you uh uh
let's say even you Googlesomething, the first thing that
(08:24):
pops up is something probablystraight out of Gemini, right?
Yeah, and it creates your eyes,you're probably gonna go read
through that, and either you'rementioned as a source, or now do
you have a clickable link inthat little box up there?
Because people may not bescrolling down.
SPEAKER_00 (08:41):
Yep, you do have a clickable link in the box if
Gemini and Chat and Claude theydecide to show that link.
Um, I know that that Google hasGoogle has actually outpaced
now, Chat GPT and and how andthe complexity and the
thoroughness of Gemini.
And it's probably because theydon't want to lose their revenue
(09:04):
for search.
And so now inside of GoogleAdWords, you can actually pay
its sponsor and be in those topbasis with your link.
Um, that's that's rolled out acouple months ago, and it's
become becoming more and more uhpopular.
But I think what so one of myfavorite quotes in when you
asked about questions andanswers and why that's
(09:25):
important, one of the favoritequotes that I've heard this year
is that the large languagemodels were built by linguists,
not developers.
So the developers are toweringit up, right?
Using things to create agentsand um, but the linguists
created the large languagemodels.
(09:47):
So that's conversational.
It's asking a question andanswering a question.
It's not best pizza Bostonanymore.
It's where can I get the mostdelicious deep dish pepperoni
pizza in Boston?
And it's gonna go out and try toanswer that question for you.
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
This is important understanding because what I
heard there, and a lot of peopleI know they're tuning in,
they're leaning in right nowbecause this this is this is
hot.
You need to understand your addollars of where you want to
position your business to getthe the most amount of uh
opportunities uh out of your ofyour efforts.
So you you mentioned somethinglike how do businesses actually
(10:27):
get their brand mentioned inwhether it's chat GPT or Cloud
or H Gemini because this isimportant.
And then you also stated Googledoes not want to lose their ad
spin because you know thatthat's a huge revenue source for
them.
So is there a way to reverseengineer that so that you're in
(10:47):
both locations?
SPEAKER_00 (10:50):
Yes.
So um there are tools there,there's a tool that we use
called um I I don't get any uh Ihave no affiliation with this
company, I just think it's agrand tool.
It's it's it, I I don't love thename.
It's I shouldn't say that, butit's wakeai.io.
And what that does is you canput your company in, you can put
(11:12):
your top two competitors in, andit will tell you, hey, chat,
Claude, Perplexity, Sonar, umyou know, Jen and I are looking
for this type of content toanswer questions about your
brand that they're finding onyour competitor's site, but not
finding on yours.
So for example, we have a wehave a really large client that
(11:34):
um doesn't spend a lot of timetalking about pricing on their
website, and the language modelsto create a story about their
company are looking for pricingand they're not seeing it.
And their competitors areaddressing that.
So um when what we're seeing isthat like chat perplexity,
(11:57):
claude, sonar, Gemini um aretrying to create a complete
story about you so they cananswer the question.
So they're trying to get as muchdetailed information about your
product or your service, um youknow, so that they can create a
story to give proper input backto the user.
SPEAKER_01 (12:16):
So you said it's so important there story versus
just information.
You know, and that's what I gotout of that.
Like when you do a Googlesearch, well, you're really just
getting information or potentialinformation.
It's not really story-like,right?
It's just information, it'slinks, it's there.
If it captures your like thatone-sentence hook that captures
(12:40):
your attention, and then youclick on it, like you say,
non-clickable links.
You just said that.
You go to that that first boxthat you're seeing, and then
it's story-like, well, peoplelove stories, right?
Right.
It's a and you know how thealgorithm is working, it wants a
complete story, it wants a goodstory, within that probably like
a paragraph or two, maybe, andit's there, then you want your
(13:04):
company to show up there,obviously, because that's where
the eyeballs are.
Because if people again aren'tscrolling down as much, you've
got to have the informationright there.
So many leaders, I think, stillthink that ranking on Google is
the ultimate finish line.
My question to you is what arethey missing about where search
(13:27):
is really headed in the AI era?
SPEAKER_00 (13:31):
Uh, so search from everything that I spend a
significant amount of time everyweek um keeping up with the you
know AI trends.
I'm also really fortunate enoughto be part of the uh SEO
mastermind group, and we'realways sharing information when
we meet once a week.
Um, what we're the the generalconsensus is is that Google is
(13:53):
gonna keep their um location ortheir GDP information because
they do really well with that.
They're making a lot of money onthat.
Um, on that, they may actuallyget rid of the links at the
bottom of the page.
Um so that that is that is acause for a lot of debate to
whether they're gonna get rid ofthat and then pop the
(14:13):
information just in the answerengine up top.
So that's something that peoplehave to think about and say,
hey, I I I really want to makesure that I'm comp that my brand
is strong and that I'm that I'mcreating a complete story about
my service or my brand, um, sothat so that these answer
(14:33):
engines are getting all theinformation about me.
So one of my favorite analogiesis the peanut butter and jelly
analogy.
So imagine if if you and I wantto write for the um how to make
the best peanut butter and jellysandwich.
We're gonna create acomprehensive page about how to
make the best peanut butter andjelly sandwich.
But then we're gonna create apage about bread, page about
jelly, and a page about peanutbutter.
(14:55):
And on our bread page, we'regonna go and say, here's how to
make, here's how to make thebest bread, here's how here's
where to get the besthigh-quality flour.
And you know, here's where toget the the best eggs, you know,
to to go and make that bread.
So we're gonna tell this storythat creates an uh a complete
picture for, you know what, thisreally is the best peanut butter
(15:17):
and jelly sandwich because Iknow absolutely everything there
is to know about how to makeone.
SPEAKER_01 (15:24):
This is important.
Now, let me ask you, and how isthat different from traditional
SEO, where you're making sureyou have the right words, the
right, you know, phrasing.
SPEAKER_00 (15:37):
Is it similar or different?
It's it's actually similar.
So what so one of the one of themethodologies that we use is we
go and look at everybody that'son page one for a specific
keyword phrase and look at thecontent that they all have
that's similar.
The keywords that are so whenGoogle is looking at a page,
(15:57):
peanut butter and jellysandwich, for example, um, in
order to tell a story aboutpeanut butter and jelly
sandwich, it needs to see theword bread, it needs to see
butter knife, it needs to seecrust, it needs to see oven, uh,
it needs to see the word spread,right?
So um it's it's trying toformulate like why is this the
(16:18):
most important page for thisspecific keyword phrase?
So we extract all of thosekeywords that are mentioned the
most frequently and then build apage using that we call a
recipe, a recipe of the keywordsum to write our content.
We find that that the languagemodels are looking for the same
thing, but it's because they'retrying to complete the the
(16:41):
story.
They're trying to get an entirestory on that specific piece of
content.
So a lot of times if you're ifyou're building your pages that
way, you're probably in a reallygood spot.
What's not gonna work is is ifyou're just over-repeating a
keyword phrase on a page, whichwhich actually still works to
(17:02):
rhyme for, but it's not tellinga story.
It's not giving the personenough information.
Um if if you want to go down therabbit hole on this, I think an
important thing to think aboutisn't just um getting people to
the page, but getting them toconvert.
Yeah.
And that's where you want tohave that.
So those digestible bytes, thereally important information out
(17:25):
top, then you can dump all theFAQs and all the keyword density
down in the bottom of it.
Um, so the in the languagemodels fortuitously like those.
So a lot of the pages that we'vebeen building, I think we might
have just gotten lucky.
And they're looking at a lot ofthis.
SPEAKER_01 (17:42):
But you're on the right, right, right.
And and it flowed there.
But I like how you just saidbecause there's a model that's
out there, right?
Especially in sales, we allunderstand it.
Usually you're you're creatingawareness uh about your program,
right?
And then you get considerationfor your if they're in the
market to buy, and then youconvert.
(18:03):
So understanding that conversionmodel, I think is so important
because that ultimately that'swhat you want as a business.
You're spending the the uh,especially if you're doing paid
advertisement, maybe you havesome organic traffic, but
ultimately you want them toconvert, either pick up the
phone, give you an opportunityto present your product or
service.
I think that's important.
(18:23):
Here's my question for you.
And in my case, I am a smallbusiness, and if I am a small
business owner and I'm listeningto me and you right now, what's
the one action, the one thingthat I could do this week to
improve my visibility inAI-driven search?
SPEAKER_00 (18:46):
Okay, if you're a small business and if you're a
service business, I haven'taddressed this yet, but you need
to focus on reviews andanswering or responding to your
reviews with a if if you're alocation-based business with a
location and your service-basedor your product-based keyword.
(19:09):
So to the best of my knowledge,Google gives as much credit for
a review as a review replied.
So it's going to sound corny,but Grant, I'm really happy that
you were excited about ourkitchen remodel in Minneapolis.
(19:32):
Uh, you know, uh, next timeyou're looking for someone to
upgrade your kitchen, or youknow, please think of us again.
We've we've enjoyed working withyou.
So you're so I'm I'm putting akeyword phrase and I'm putting a
location in the response.
Yeah.
When people say that soundsreally corny, I say, Do you want
to make money or do you want tobite to be okay being corny?
(19:53):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (19:54):
Well, to your point is that there's machine language
and then there's human languagein a conversational style.
What is the machine?
Could because ultimately youwant the platform to amplify
your message.
You want it to amplify yourselfwithin your target audience so
that they see it.
And I love you know, the adviceyou just gave is is awesome.
(20:17):
Because a lot of you don'trealize, well, how do you, you
know, you you you you may beranking on Google, you're there,
but are you optimized on theplatform so that it's showing it
to as many eyeballs that thatthat it can to get you to a
point, like they said, if I am Iam looking for the best Peter
peanut butter and jelly serviceprovider in my area, you need to
(20:41):
be there.
And your story needs to bethere.
It's not just okay, yeah, theythey they provide it, but then
you go into depth about it, andthen it makes me want to go buy
it.
I'm gonna go drive over there ororder it or have it sent to me
or whatever it may be, it'sgonna convert.
I think that's so important.
Now, here here's the question: what mistakes do most agencies (20:59):
undefined
make when it comes to AI searchoptimization?
And how can business ownersprotect themselves from empty
promises?
SPEAKER_00 (21:15):
So I don't know what mistakes that they're making
because I'm really not standingpaying any attention to looking
at what competitors are doingbecause we're just trying to
produce the best results for ourcustomers.
But using a tool that can talkabout how many times you're
cited in an AI um model, andthen looking at that are we
being cited more or are we beingcited less?
Another thing, um I um it if youknow anything about me, you know
(21:40):
that I'm a huge fan of data thatcannot be skewed.
Um, and that's Google Analytics.
Um so I I don't have enoughmoney power and influence to
tell Google Analytics to changethe data to make it look better
in a customer's website, right?
I don't think anybody does, butI'm not sure there are some
people that it's not me.
Um so the they're starting topull in clicks from Grok, clicks
(22:06):
from Perplexity, clicks fromGemini, clicks from um ChatGPT
in the um traffic acquisitiontab.
So that will, even though wementioned that there's a lot of
zero click search and people areclicking, some people are still
clicking.
So you can look at, hey, I'vebeen working with this company,
(22:27):
I'm getting more clicks inChatGPT than I've ever done
before.
Yeah.
You know, so even if you don't,when you look at their reports,
because there's so manydifferent types of reporting,
um, the one that we use isgreat.
Is it the best?
Uh there may be there may bebetter ones.
Um, is it uh I have to trust thecreators of the tool for the
(22:49):
accuracy.
Yeah, I don't have to worryabout when I look in Google
Analytics if that data is valid,right?
If that is true coming fromGoogle.
So you can also you can alwayslook at Google Analytics, and
albeit the number will besmaller, seeing if you're
getting more interactions fromthose engines.
SPEAKER_01 (23:07):
I think that's important.
I know in my world, especiallyin information technology,
cybersecurity, we always usethese two words, trust but
verify.
SPEAKER_00 (23:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (23:16):
Trust but verify.
So if you can get verifiablestatistics and analytics, you
just pointed that out.
Google Analytics doesn't lie, itdoesn't need to.
So it's not competing from anagency standpoint.
My question for a green bananais that how did you position
yourself to become the SEOagency AI platform that now
(23:39):
becomes actually recommended inthese engines?
SPEAKER_00 (23:44):
Um uh our clients kept asking us for it.
And so we, you know, we have alot, we were really fortunate to
have a lot of great clients thatwe collaborate with.
We we kind of work with ourclients as partners.
So we're we like to think ofourselves as an extension of the
team, and they're sharing asmuch data with us as we're
sharing with them.
And and all of our moreaggressive clients have been
(24:07):
saying, we need this, we needthis, we need this.
So it's something that that Ihad to really, as the as the
resident SEO geek of GreenBanana, I had to you know deep
dive and figure out um how itcould start appearing in all of
these um answer engines.
And what was fortuitous is a lotof the stuff that we were doing
(24:27):
already was what were the thingsthat that I was reading as
recommendations.
SPEAKER_01 (24:33):
This is important.
I want to ask you this becausenow we're we're kind of morphing
now into agentic AI.
You have agents, there's a lotof automation orchestration
taking place.
So you may not be the human HIintelligence actually looking
things up anymore.
Have you optimized for that?
SPEAKER_00 (24:53):
So we've we're optimizing for all of the
engines that are using theagents.
The thing about an agent, onething that's going to be
exceptionally difficult to trackas as it moves on, is if you had
to have an agent on your machineand I have an agent on my
machine, it is verypersonalized.
It is reading all my emails if Iwanted to, it is looking at my
(25:14):
calendar, it is looking at mysocial media channels, it is
getting and that's something youcould go on for weeks talking
about how frightening that is.
Um, but so it's it's giving youpersonalized information.
Um, so a search on your computerand a search on mine are going
to be different with the output.
(25:35):
Um, but we're still going toknow what gets mentioned the
most.
Like one of the things that thatum Gemini has done, Google's
product, is that there istraining that when they show the
reporting, they show trainingdata and grounded data.
Um, training data is all theinformation that the answer
engines already have, they'vealready compiled about you.
(25:58):
The grounded data is they'reactually using Google to go do
research.
So they are continually pullinginformation from Google to
create, to increase the trainingmodel that they have to get more
information for that.
So that's really important.
That I think if you continue tofocus on high-quality SEO, high
(26:20):
quality content, high qualitylinks, not like farm junk, um,
you're gonna do really well onthese things.
SPEAKER_01 (26:28):
Good advice for people trying to understand, get
a handle on this change thatthat's happening, uh, because
the machine-to-machine languageis just becoming dominant, the
the conversations, the types ofthings that you need to do to
get your your the visibility uhthat you're looking for and that
conversion that you're lookingyou're looking for.
(26:49):
Now you you have worked acrossindustries from biotech to
retail.
My question is, what lessonsabout brand growth and then
customer connection have provenuniversal throughout your
experience?
SPEAKER_00 (27:06):
Uh, one phrase people buy from people.
So it's that human connection.
That's why social media is soimportant.
That's why a lot of people aregetting great information from
Reddit and Substack and Quora.
People buy from people.
SPEAKER_01 (27:22):
See, we gotta double down on that.
I want people to understand.
Now, like I said, I've been ininformation technology for
probably 30 years.
And I've I've been I work forcompanies like uh Avaya that
were big into uh customerservice engines, uh, you know,
the CE uh world when it came touh platforms.
(27:43):
Yeah, remember the firstvoicemails were even coming up
and that type of thing.
Automation is good to a certaindegree, but we always knew that
the purpose of the technology isto enable a human-to-human
connection as quickly aspossible.
You don't want to substitute,you know, or keep the human
(28:04):
always talking to it in AI, soto speak.
AI, you know, you could definethat, it's been around for a
long time.
Anytime you interact with anykind of capital, boom.
Yeah.
But it also proved to be um umit can have negative impact uh
uh as well because it's justdissonant, there's there's
(28:25):
social dissonance there.
People still like talking topeople.
So when we go into this AI andthe gentec AI world, and people
are like, oh, that's great,yeah, but you can also distance
yourself from your client, andthen and then you you're not
really interacting with them,you're interacting with the
machine.
As far as I know, machines don'thave money, but I guess maybe
(28:47):
digital currency, maybe they do,maybe they they start buying
things on your behalf.
But I think there might be alittle bit of oversight on that.
Tell us the core about what youthink about that hi to hi
interaction, and you is justenabling that interaction.
SPEAKER_00 (29:04):
I I so I think so.
When you're writing content, youwant to have authorship of that.
So I don't there's there'ssomething that a principle that
that Google was really pushingyears ago, and it's still really
prevalent.
It's called Eat, it's the youknow, um, expertise, experience,
authority, and trust.
Um, and so I think actually it'sit's probably a brilliant way
(29:30):
for them to try to mitigate someof the AI generated content by
having people take authorship orownership of that content.
So it was really big in financeand health mode first started
coming out.
So they they weren't evenranking sites that didn't say,
Hey, here's the doctor thatpublished this, and here's the
(29:52):
school that you went to.
Right.
So it's looking for things likethat.
So when you're writing content,you become an author in a good
super secret happen.
To this is you put your authorpage on your bio and LinkedIn.
So Google is going to say, hey,we trust LinkedIn.
It's a really big high authoritypublication.
(30:12):
It mentions your author page andit links back to the author page
on your site.
So you're giving yourself a highquality, um, direct link to
that.
And it's it's you're giving yourauthorship a little bit more
credibility.
SPEAKER_01 (30:26):
I think that's so important.
It's me as a personal brandstrategist.
I've been uh known as a personalbrand uh guru.
Like I think I got ranked uh sofar in the top 30 on global
gurus just here at 45, which Ilike.
And I I've been preaching thisfor a while, especially my
knowledge and understanding howmachines actually work, is that
(30:48):
you've got to give it the rightdata.
You have to give it the rightdata from a personal brand
perspective.
You create the digital footprintso that when uh Google, let's
say you Google Grant McGall, Iknow exactly the information
that's gonna come up.
And I'm starting to notice evennow, as I go into the different,
and I like how you say answerengines, because I think it
(31:08):
sounds better than LLM.
Answer engines sounds kind ofcool.
I'm gonna coin that one.
SPEAKER_00 (31:13):
It's easier to say, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:15):
Yeah, I like it.
It sounds better to me than LLMbecause you got to define
further defined it.
Right.
Um, but if someone goes to uhChat GPT or Cloud or whatnot and
they put in Grant Magall, I wantto see what's coming up.
They're not gonna be exactly thesame, but it's very similar as
far as the information becauseit's pulling information
(31:38):
directly from what I've givenit, whether I've given it from
LinkedIn, whether I've given itfrom my my um my website, press
releases, things like that,because I know in the background
is gonna pull and it's gonnapull from credible sources, and
that's gonna bring you uhforward.
Am I correct on that assumption?
SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
Yeah, and I think that's a really important thing
to highlight.
You're controlling the narrativeof your story.
Yeah.
Very, very, very, very smart andimportant, or someone else is
gonna do it for you, and youdon't want that.
Right.
And you get negative press,right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:08):
And negative employees.
SPEAKER_00 (32:09):
Right, negative press or no press, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:11):
Or or no press.
SPEAKER_00 (32:12):
Or not or not.
SPEAKER_01 (32:13):
Or nothing, nothing at all.
Right, right.
Right.
So so here's the question.
Last question.
Maybe I I can't guarantee that,but you know, but outside of
business, you're deeply engagedin your community and mentoring.
I want to understand what doesthat leadership philosophy, how
does it show up in the way thatyou run your company?
SPEAKER_00 (32:37):
I think it gives me a different perspective.
So I'm the I'm the president ofthe board of my local YMCA.
Um uh I um one of the thingsthat the YMCA does that that
means a lot to me, and which iswhy I want to be involved, is
the amount of uh things theygive back to people.
(32:59):
Um, there are so many people inin the community that I live in
that um can't work because theycan't afford daycare, that they
they uh um don't have a place tolive, they can't afford a gym
membership.
And the why is is is donatingall that stuff and helping
people so that they can becomethat.
(33:20):
Um and so when I when I one ofthe reasons that I joined is
when they had first asked me, myfirst thought is I'm too busy, I
have a lot of stuff to do atwork.
And then I thought to myself,you know what, I'm just pushing
ones and zeros on a computer andI'm helping my clients make more
money.
That's not helping the world.
So how can I give a little back?
(33:42):
And I think that has helped meidentify a lot more with people,
identify a lot more with my myemployees.
Um you know, there's uh um, Idon't know, it just it part of
it.
I just feel good to it makes itfeel good to tell people.
SPEAKER_01 (33:58):
Absolutely.
Social impact.
I I'm I'm on the in the circleof making money for money's
sake, you know, it it is good,but it has no value.
It's like being on a desertedisland.
If you have a bunch of money,what what good is it?
You know, so what are you doingto circulate uh the things that
you're doing and bringing backthe good work that's there?
(34:19):
That should the money again itshould not be the end of the
road, it's part of the road,it's part of the journey, right?
Um, but it's not the that's notcyclical in a way, you know.
So, what is how do you take thatgood um that goodwill and then
regenerizing the socialcommunity?
Because that same community isaccessing networks, they're
accessing websites, they'regoing to Google, but if you're
(34:42):
not enabling them in a certainway to be able to be able to do
that, then what are you doing?
So I I like how you positionthat.
Now, here's my last question,and I like asking this question
because I like to ask them of myguest in real time.
This is your first experiencewith the Follow Rant podcast.
(35:02):
Now you've gone through theinterview process with me as the
host.
How did you like this interview?
SPEAKER_00 (35:09):
The quality of the questions that you asked were
fantastic.
So, this was a this for me was areally stimulating conversation.
I enjoyed it, and I I I learneda little bit more um after
speaking with you.
So I think like those are thethe you know, it was fun, it was
informative, it was challenging.
SPEAKER_01 (35:28):
Those are you know the three perfect pieces to uh
uh absolutely and I learned agreat deal.
I think the audience learned agreat deal about something again
that's very pressing, it's justtop of mind right now because
things are just changing uhrapidly.
So I like to see what what'shappening, like you know, open
(35:49):
up the hood, let's let's look atthe engine down here, our answer
engine, right?
Or yeah, our social uhengineering optimization.
These are all these engines thatare going on, but I really
appreciate you taking the timeand uh do this.
Okay, and you gotta let us knowhow to contact you at Green
Banana, and what is the bestpossible way?
SPEAKER_00 (36:09):
So you can go to greenbanana sf.com or this but
you can't ask this to an answerengine because it's gonna answer
differently.
But I kept losing my businesscards years ago or forgetting
them.
So I ended up optimizing I justmet Kevin.
So if you Google I just metKevin, you can get to my contact
information.
If you ask Chat TP GTP, I justmet Kevin, they're gonna say,
(36:32):
big deal.
Who's Kevin?
Right?
Right?
So I just met Kevin, or you cango to greenbanana SEO.com.
And if I could say one morething, I think that will will be
helpful.
When I first saw, learned aboutAI, I was nervous about it.
I'm scared, like this is gonna,you know, this could be taking
(36:54):
over my business.
Um and the more that I study itand the more that I learn about
it, the more I realize it is anit is an amazing opportunity for
growth, no matter what businessyou're in.
So if you're listening to thisand you're nervous, don't be
nervous and learn more about itbecause it it will help you in
(37:16):
some way or another, and it'snot going away.
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
Absolutely.
I I encourage everyone.
I just had this discussion withanother group of people, and I I
I put it in this way just likeyou need to understand, let's
say, the Microsoft suite of uhsoftware um packages, whether
it's email, PowerPoint, Excel,Word, you needed to know these
(37:43):
things.
You need to know these things intoday's business environment.
You need to know AI.
And AI is a lot of differentthings.
It's not just an answer engine,you know, that's LLM launch.
That's part of it.
That's what people kind of usedto know, but it's a lot more
than that.
There's a lot of uh uhautomation that's taking place,
content generation, whether it'svideo, audio, text.
(38:05):
This is how business is gettingdone.
This is speed to market.
You cannot sleep on thesethings.
I implore everyone to getinvolved with any kind of AI
workshop that's gonna upskillyou on these platforms so that
they you become proficient atit.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
Yeah, or just even just download Gemini or Chat GPT
and start doing stupid thingswith it.
You're gonna learn.
You're gonna say, Oh, I didn'tknow it could do this, or if if
if if it gets the answer wrongor you don't get the output you
want, who cares?
Have fun with it and you'regonna start learning learning
stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (38:38):
And you'll mold it to yourself.
We talked about customizationand personalization earlier.
Then you start to realize youhave a real assistant that's
built just for you that can helpyou uh along live sorts.
So that is great.
I want to make sure that yourall your particular audience can
tune in to all the episodes ofFollow the Brand.
They can do so at five star BDM.
(39:00):
That's number five at Star S D RD for Brand, D for Development,
Informasters.com.
This has been wonderful, Kevin.
I want to thank you so much andenjoy the rest of your weekend.
SPEAKER_00 (39:13):
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01 (39:14):
You're welcome.
Welcome everybody to the Foud Brand Podcast.
This is your host, Grant McGall.
We're going to talk about a veryinteresting subject today.
A lot of people have heard ofSEO, search engine optimization.
Um, so when we are creatingcertain content, you want to
make sure it's SEO ready.
So it's searchable, so peoplefind it.
(00:22):
You want to be top of the feed,like in search engines like
Google, Bing, and the like.
But things have now changed withAI, you know, that's just
overtaking a lot of differentthings, right?
A lot of people are going to aChat GPT, a perplexity, a
Gemini, a Claude, and the likefirst before they're going to
(00:44):
Google.
So, how do you now rank in thatkind of setting?
We're going to ask these kindsof questions to Kevin Roy, who
is a visionary in this field,he's very innovative.
I want to get him up to thestates right now so we can talk
about this because this isimportant information.
So, Kevin, you like to introduceyourself?
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Uh Kevin Roy, Bring Banana SEO.
Uh our 17th year now doingsearch engine optimization.
And you know, we have a full-onum answer engine optimization uh
process and protocol that I'mjust excited to talk about.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Well, we got to talk about it because now you said 17
years, and you've been the, youknow, and I I figure you've been
ahead of the curve when it comesto performance-based SEO or
search engine optimization.
But what I want to know is whatinspired you to break away from
traditional models and then thisis important, guarantee results.
SPEAKER_00 (01:43):
So we'll start with we never guarantee results.
We guarantee that if we get youright, you pay.
If we don't get you right, youdon't pay.
Right.
So that's the if you when whenclients call and say, I
absolutely have to be on pageone next week, and this keyword,
I'm like, great, we have aGoogle AdWords program for that.
So um how I got into it, it's sowe had been doing SEO like
(02:08):
everybody else, but just howmaterials.
You know, we're we're writingthe content, building good
links, you know, it's changed alot in the last you know, 16, 17
years.
Um, but we were doing it forabout two years, and we had a we
we still have but this one ofour clients, we had a larger
client, and um, I had to go inand present to the board, the
(02:30):
boardroom, um, all of the stuffthat we've been doing.
And I had spent all nightcrafting this, what I thought
was absolutely spectacular uhpamphlet of data of all the
stuff that we're doing, all thestuff that we had been doing for
them, and handed it out toeverybody.
And I'm not kidding, I spentliterally all night.
I remember I'd I had gone to uhum staples and I was I was
(02:53):
collating things at like threeo'clock in the morning.
Yeah I brought it into them andand and showed it to them, and
they looked at me and said, Sowhat are we paying you for
again?
And I realized that when you'retalking about late semantic
indexing, schema, metadata, um,keyword quality, content,
(03:15):
linking to a room ofexceptionally intelligent
executives, they don't it's allwhite noise.
So in the middle of the meeting,I said, How about this?
I know I can rank you for thesekeyword phrases.
I get you on page one for these,you pay me.
If I don't get you on page one,you don't pay me.
(03:36):
But I'm never doing this reportagain because I spent all night
building this report.
And they're like, great, let'sdo it.
And I came back and said to thethe you know, the team, I either
made a massive mistake or Ithink we have a great model.
And so that's you know, that'sreally what did it because if
you are if you're following therules that Google puts out and
(03:58):
doing things that are generatingquality content and generating
high-quality links that arepointing back to the page and
you know, following some somethe you know the solid SEO
principles, you're going torank.
It takes a while, but you'regonna rank for most keyboard
traces.
You know, that save a you know,if if someone came in and said,
(04:19):
Hey, I have a brand new datingsite and I want to outwrite
MASH.com, you know, by the youknow, by the end of the year,
we're gonna say, well, MASH.comhas you know four million links
and you know zero, so it's gonnatake us a while.
We're not gonna get one pageoverhead.
SPEAKER_01 (04:35):
Very important to understand and set expectations
early and understand what you'redoing.
Big risk, but yet you have theconfidence to know what you're
doing, and uh you can take it tothe next level, and we're gonna
get paid because we know we canmake this happen, we're gonna
make it done.
Now, you've also said thattraditional SEO isn't enough
(04:58):
anymore.
So I would like you to becausethis is the big elephant in the
room right now.
We know you've mastered, youunderstand the Google algorithm,
you understand where you're at,and all the rankings that are
there, what it takes to get onthat first page, those first 10
blue links or whatever it may beis very important because that's
where you want to, you know,your ad spin, people are gonna
(05:19):
you get eyeballs onto whatyou're doing in the right
audience.
Now, can you explain what LLMSEO, that's large language model
SEO, is and how it transformsthe way businesses should now
think about visibility?
SPEAKER_00 (05:40):
So that's a that's a great question.
Um, I think I would I wouldstart by saying that as of June,
um 60% of Google's 405 billionsearches a month, so about 260
billion searches a month are nowzero-click searches.
So what that means is thatthey're getting the answer and
(06:03):
not having to click on anything.
So we're seeing in in in yourlike everyone that's listening
to this is probably seeing adrop in some of their organic
traffic.
So even if they're on page onenumber once or something, then
uh they're seeing, even ifyou're popping in the answer
engines, you're seeing a littlebit of a drop, but you might get
(06:25):
in more direct traffic or morecalls or more or more mentions.
Um so it's important that youpop up in the top of a grop or a
chat or a Gemini or a Claudesearch.
Um those engines are looking fordifferent things, but to kind of
(06:46):
assuage everybody, um we'refinding that if you're following
the proper principles ofgenerating good content and
having high quality matchinglinks that go to the page that
you're trying to rank, thosepeople seem to be doing a lot
better in the answer enginesthan people that that haven't
done that.
(07:06):
Um, there are things the answerengines are looking for, like
schema or markup language.
Um, I guess uh for people thatdon't know what that is, um you
Google Taylor Swift tickets andthe ticket prices and the the
venues are going to come up inthe search bar, right?
Right?
The search that's that is markuplanguage that's on your page.
(07:29):
The the user can't really seethat part of it, but the the
Google is pulling that out andsticking it up in the search for
the search result.
Um, so what we're finding isthat the answer engines seem to
be looking at that faster,having more access to it, or
maybe they're just morecomfortable with it.
And they're pulling informationfrom there.
(07:50):
So we're spending more timemaking sure that we have quality
content and quality questionsand answers in the cinema as
well as on the page.
SPEAKER_01 (08:02):
QA.
So a question and answer,because you said something.
I I like how you frame that.
Because I would we were askingtalking about this earlier.
What do you call this now?
LLM SEO?
You said answer engine.
So you look at an LLM as ananswer engine, it's responsive
and it's going, and to yourpoint, when now when you uh uh
let's say even you Googlesomething, the first thing that
(08:24):
pops up is something probablystraight out of Gemini, right?
Yeah, and it creates your eyes,you're probably gonna go read
through that, and either you'rementioned as a source, or now do
you have a clickable link inthat little box up there?
Because people may not bescrolling down.
SPEAKER_00 (08:41):
Yep, you do have a clickable link in the box if
Gemini and Chat and Claude theydecide to show that link.
Um, I know that that Google hasGoogle has actually outpaced
now, Chat GPT and and how andthe complexity and the
thoroughness of Gemini.
And it's probably because theydon't want to lose their revenue
(09:04):
for search.
And so now inside of GoogleAdWords, you can actually pay
its sponsor and be in those topbasis with your link.
Um, that's that's rolled out acouple months ago, and it's
become becoming more and more uhpopular.
But I think what so one of myfavorite quotes in when you
asked about questions andanswers and why that's
(09:25):
important, one of the favoritequotes that I've heard this year
is that the large languagemodels were built by linguists,
not developers.
So the developers are toweringit up, right?
Using things to create agentsand um, but the linguists
created the large languagemodels.
(09:47):
So that's conversational.
It's asking a question andanswering a question.
It's not best pizza Bostonanymore.
It's where can I get the mostdelicious deep dish pepperoni
pizza in Boston?
And it's gonna go out and try toanswer that question for you.
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
This is important understanding because what I
heard there, and a lot of peopleI know they're tuning in,
they're leaning in right nowbecause this this is this is
hot.
You need to understand your addollars of where you want to
position your business to getthe the most amount of uh
opportunities uh out of your ofyour efforts.
So you you mentioned somethinglike how do businesses actually
(10:27):
get their brand mentioned inwhether it's chat GPT or Cloud
or H Gemini because this isimportant.
And then you also stated Googledoes not want to lose their ad
spin because you know thatthat's a huge revenue source for
them.
So is there a way to reverseengineer that so that you're in
(10:47):
both locations?
SPEAKER_00 (10:50):
Yes.
So um there are tools there,there's a tool that we use
called um I I don't get any uh Ihave no affiliation with this
company, I just think it's agrand tool.
It's it's it, I I don't love thename.
It's I shouldn't say that, butit's wakeai.io.
And what that does is you canput your company in, you can put
(11:12):
your top two competitors in, andit will tell you, hey, chat,
Claude, Perplexity, Sonar, umyou know, Jen and I are looking
for this type of content toanswer questions about your
brand that they're finding onyour competitor's site, but not
finding on yours.
So for example, we have a wehave a really large client that
(11:34):
um doesn't spend a lot of timetalking about pricing on their
website, and the language modelsto create a story about their
company are looking for pricingand they're not seeing it.
And their competitors areaddressing that.
So um when what we're seeing isthat like chat perplexity,
(11:57):
claude, sonar, Gemini um aretrying to create a complete
story about you so they cananswer the question.
So they're trying to get as muchdetailed information about your
product or your service, um youknow, so that they can create a
story to give proper input backto the user.
SPEAKER_01 (12:16):
So you said it's so important there story versus
just information.
You know, and that's what I gotout of that.
Like when you do a Googlesearch, well, you're really just
getting information or potentialinformation.
It's not really story-like,right?
It's just information, it'slinks, it's there.
If it captures your like thatone-sentence hook that captures
(12:40):
your attention, and then youclick on it, like you say,
non-clickable links.
You just said that.
You go to that that first boxthat you're seeing, and then
it's story-like, well, peoplelove stories, right?
Right.
It's a and you know how thealgorithm is working, it wants a
complete story, it wants a goodstory, within that probably like
a paragraph or two, maybe, andit's there, then you want your
(13:04):
company to show up there,obviously, because that's where
the eyeballs are.
Because if people again aren'tscrolling down as much, you've
got to have the informationright there.
So many leaders, I think, stillthink that ranking on Google is
the ultimate finish line.
My question to you is what arethey missing about where search
(13:27):
is really headed in the AI era?
SPEAKER_00 (13:31):
Uh, so search from everything that I spend a
significant amount of time everyweek um keeping up with the you
know AI trends.
I'm also really fortunate enoughto be part of the uh SEO
mastermind group, and we'realways sharing information when
we meet once a week.
Um, what we're the the generalconsensus is is that Google is
(13:53):
gonna keep their um location ortheir GDP information because
they do really well with that.
They're making a lot of money onthat.
Um, on that, they may actuallyget rid of the links at the
bottom of the page.
Um so that that is that is acause for a lot of debate to
whether they're gonna get rid ofthat and then pop the
(14:13):
information just in the answerengine up top.
So that's something that peoplehave to think about and say,
hey, I I I really want to makesure that I'm comp that my brand
is strong and that I'm that I'mcreating a complete story about
my service or my brand, um, sothat so that these answer
(14:33):
engines are getting all theinformation about me.
So one of my favorite analogiesis the peanut butter and jelly
analogy.
So imagine if if you and I wantto write for the um how to make
the best peanut butter and jellysandwich.
We're gonna create acomprehensive page about how to
make the best peanut butter andjelly sandwich.
But then we're gonna create apage about bread, page about
jelly, and a page about peanutbutter.
(14:55):
And on our bread page, we'regonna go and say, here's how to
make, here's how to make thebest bread, here's how here's
where to get the besthigh-quality flour.
And you know, here's where toget the the best eggs, you know,
to to go and make that bread.
So we're gonna tell this storythat creates an uh a complete
picture for, you know what, thisreally is the best peanut butter
(15:17):
and jelly sandwich because Iknow absolutely everything there
is to know about how to makeone.
SPEAKER_01 (15:24):
This is important.
Now, let me ask you, and how isthat different from traditional
SEO, where you're making sureyou have the right words, the
right, you know, phrasing.
SPEAKER_00 (15:37):
Is it similar or different?
It's it's actually similar.
So what so one of the one of themethodologies that we use is we
go and look at everybody that'son page one for a specific
keyword phrase and look at thecontent that they all have
that's similar.
The keywords that are so whenGoogle is looking at a page,
(15:57):
peanut butter and jellysandwich, for example, um, in
order to tell a story aboutpeanut butter and jelly
sandwich, it needs to see theword bread, it needs to see
butter knife, it needs to seecrust, it needs to see oven, uh,
it needs to see the word spread,right?
So um it's it's trying toformulate like why is this the
(16:18):
most important page for thisspecific keyword phrase?
So we extract all of thosekeywords that are mentioned the
most frequently and then build apage using that we call a
recipe, a recipe of the keywordsum to write our content.
We find that that the languagemodels are looking for the same
thing, but it's because they'retrying to complete the the
(16:41):
story.
They're trying to get an entirestory on that specific piece of
content.
So a lot of times if you're ifyou're building your pages that
way, you're probably in a reallygood spot.
What's not gonna work is is ifyou're just over-repeating a
keyword phrase on a page, whichwhich actually still works to
(17:02):
rhyme for, but it's not tellinga story.
It's not giving the personenough information.
Um if if you want to go down therabbit hole on this, I think an
important thing to think aboutisn't just um getting people to
the page, but getting them toconvert.
Yeah.
And that's where you want tohave that.
So those digestible bytes, thereally important information out
(17:25):
top, then you can dump all theFAQs and all the keyword density
down in the bottom of it.
Um, so the in the languagemodels fortuitously like those.
So a lot of the pages that we'vebeen building, I think we might
have just gotten lucky.
And they're looking at a lot ofthis.
SPEAKER_01 (17:42):
But you're on the right, right, right.
And and it flowed there.
But I like how you just saidbecause there's a model that's
out there, right?
Especially in sales, we allunderstand it.
Usually you're you're creatingawareness uh about your program,
right?
And then you get considerationfor your if they're in the
market to buy, and then youconvert.
(18:03):
So understanding that conversionmodel, I think is so important
because that ultimately that'swhat you want as a business.
You're spending the the uh,especially if you're doing paid
advertisement, maybe you havesome organic traffic, but
ultimately you want them toconvert, either pick up the
phone, give you an opportunityto present your product or
service.
I think that's important.
(18:23):
Here's my question for you.
And in my case, I am a smallbusiness, and if I am a small
business owner and I'm listeningto me and you right now, what's
the one action, the one thingthat I could do this week to
improve my visibility inAI-driven search?
SPEAKER_00 (18:46):
Okay, if you're a small business and if you're a
service business, I haven'taddressed this yet, but you need
to focus on reviews andanswering or responding to your
reviews with a if if you're alocation-based business with a
location and your service-basedor your product-based keyword.
(19:09):
So to the best of my knowledge,Google gives as much credit for
a review as a review replied.
So it's going to sound corny,but Grant, I'm really happy that
you were excited about ourkitchen remodel in Minneapolis.
(19:32):
Uh, you know, uh, next timeyou're looking for someone to
upgrade your kitchen, or youknow, please think of us again.
We've we've enjoyed working withyou.
So you're so I'm I'm putting akeyword phrase and I'm putting a
location in the response.
Yeah.
When people say that soundsreally corny, I say, Do you want
to make money or do you want tobite to be okay being corny?
(19:53):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (19:54):
Well, to your point is that there's machine language
and then there's human languagein a conversational style.
What is the machine?
Could because ultimately youwant the platform to amplify
your message.
You want it to amplify yourselfwithin your target audience so
that they see it.
And I love you know, the adviceyou just gave is is awesome.
(20:17):
Because a lot of you don'trealize, well, how do you, you
know, you you you you may beranking on Google, you're there,
but are you optimized on theplatform so that it's showing it
to as many eyeballs that thatthat it can to get you to a
point, like they said, if I am Iam looking for the best Peter
peanut butter and jelly serviceprovider in my area, you need to
(20:41):
be there.
And your story needs to bethere.
It's not just okay, yeah, theythey they provide it, but then
you go into depth about it, andthen it makes me want to go buy
it.
I'm gonna go drive over there ororder it or have it sent to me
or whatever it may be, it'sgonna convert.
I think that's so important.
Now, here here's the question: what mistakes do most agencies (20:59):
undefined
make when it comes to AI searchoptimization?
And how can business ownersprotect themselves from empty
promises?
SPEAKER_00 (21:15):
So I don't know what mistakes that they're making
because I'm really not standingpaying any attention to looking
at what competitors are doingbecause we're just trying to
produce the best results for ourcustomers.
But using a tool that can talkabout how many times you're
cited in an AI um model, andthen looking at that are we
being cited more or are we beingcited less?
Another thing, um I um it if youknow anything about me, you know
(21:40):
that I'm a huge fan of data thatcannot be skewed.
Um, and that's Google Analytics.
Um so I I don't have enoughmoney power and influence to
tell Google Analytics to changethe data to make it look better
in a customer's website, right?
I don't think anybody does, butI'm not sure there are some
people that it's not me.
Um so the they're starting topull in clicks from Grok, clicks
(22:06):
from Perplexity, clicks fromGemini, clicks from um ChatGPT
in the um traffic acquisitiontab.
So that will, even though wementioned that there's a lot of
zero click search and people areclicking, some people are still
clicking.
So you can look at, hey, I'vebeen working with this company,
(22:27):
I'm getting more clicks inChatGPT than I've ever done
before.
Yeah.
You know, so even if you don't,when you look at their reports,
because there's so manydifferent types of reporting,
um, the one that we use isgreat.
Is it the best?
Uh there may be there may bebetter ones.
Um, is it uh I have to trust thecreators of the tool for the
(22:49):
accuracy.
Yeah, I don't have to worryabout when I look in Google
Analytics if that data is valid,right?
If that is true coming fromGoogle.
So you can also you can alwayslook at Google Analytics, and
albeit the number will besmaller, seeing if you're
getting more interactions fromthose engines.
SPEAKER_01 (23:07):
I think that's important.
I know in my world, especiallyin information technology,
cybersecurity, we always usethese two words, trust but
verify.
SPEAKER_00 (23:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (23:16):
Trust but verify.
So if you can get verifiablestatistics and analytics, you
just pointed that out.
Google Analytics doesn't lie, itdoesn't need to.
So it's not competing from anagency standpoint.
My question for a green bananais that how did you position
yourself to become the SEOagency AI platform that now
(23:39):
becomes actually recommended inthese engines?
SPEAKER_00 (23:44):
Um uh our clients kept asking us for it.
And so we, you know, we have alot, we were really fortunate to
have a lot of great clients thatwe collaborate with.
We we kind of work with ourclients as partners.
So we're we like to think ofourselves as an extension of the
team, and they're sharing asmuch data with us as we're
sharing with them.
And and all of our moreaggressive clients have been
(24:07):
saying, we need this, we needthis, we need this.
So it's something that that Ihad to really, as the as the
resident SEO geek of GreenBanana, I had to you know deep
dive and figure out um how itcould start appearing in all of
these um answer engines.
And what was fortuitous is a lotof the stuff that we were doing
(24:27):
already was what were the thingsthat that I was reading as
recommendations.
SPEAKER_01 (24:33):
This is important.
I want to ask you this becausenow we're we're kind of morphing
now into agentic AI.
You have agents, there's a lotof automation orchestration
taking place.
So you may not be the human HIintelligence actually looking
things up anymore.
Have you optimized for that?
SPEAKER_00 (24:53):
So we've we're optimizing for all of the
engines that are using theagents.
The thing about an agent, onething that's going to be
exceptionally difficult to trackas as it moves on, is if you had
to have an agent on your machineand I have an agent on my
machine, it is verypersonalized.
It is reading all my emails if Iwanted to, it is looking at my
(25:14):
calendar, it is looking at mysocial media channels, it is
getting and that's something youcould go on for weeks talking
about how frightening that is.
Um, but so it's it's giving youpersonalized information.
Um, so a search on your computerand a search on mine are going
to be different with the output.
(25:35):
Um, but we're still going toknow what gets mentioned the
most.
Like one of the things that thatum Gemini has done, Google's
product, is that there istraining that when they show the
reporting, they show trainingdata and grounded data.
Um, training data is all theinformation that the answer
engines already have, they'vealready compiled about you.
(25:58):
The grounded data is they'reactually using Google to go do
research.
So they are continually pullinginformation from Google to
create, to increase the trainingmodel that they have to get more
information for that.
So that's really important.
That I think if you continue tofocus on high-quality SEO, high
(26:20):
quality content, high qualitylinks, not like farm junk, um,
you're gonna do really well onthese things.
SPEAKER_01 (26:28):
Good advice for people trying to understand, get
a handle on this change thatthat's happening, uh, because
the machine-to-machine languageis just becoming dominant, the
the conversations, the types ofthings that you need to do to
get your your the visibility uhthat you're looking for and that
conversion that you're lookingyou're looking for.
(26:49):
Now you you have worked acrossindustries from biotech to
retail.
My question is, what lessonsabout brand growth and then
customer connection have provenuniversal throughout your
experience?
SPEAKER_00 (27:06):
Uh, one phrase people buy from people.
So it's that human connection.
That's why social media is soimportant.
That's why a lot of people aregetting great information from
Reddit and Substack and Quora.
People buy from people.
SPEAKER_01 (27:22):
See, we gotta double down on that.
I want people to understand.
Now, like I said, I've been ininformation technology for
probably 30 years.
And I've I've been I work forcompanies like uh Avaya that
were big into uh customerservice engines, uh, you know,
the CE uh world when it came touh platforms.
(27:43):
Yeah, remember the firstvoicemails were even coming up
and that type of thing.
Automation is good to a certaindegree, but we always knew that
the purpose of the technology isto enable a human-to-human
connection as quickly aspossible.
You don't want to substitute,you know, or keep the human
(28:04):
always talking to it in AI, soto speak.
AI, you know, you could definethat, it's been around for a
long time.
Anytime you interact with anykind of capital, boom.
Yeah.
But it also proved to be um umit can have negative impact uh
uh as well because it's justdissonant, there's there's
(28:25):
social dissonance there.
People still like talking topeople.
So when we go into this AI andthe gentec AI world, and people
are like, oh, that's great,yeah, but you can also distance
yourself from your client, andthen and then you you're not
really interacting with them,you're interacting with the
machine.
As far as I know, machines don'thave money, but I guess maybe
(28:47):
digital currency, maybe they do,maybe they they start buying
things on your behalf.
But I think there might be alittle bit of oversight on that.
Tell us the core about what youthink about that hi to hi
interaction, and you is justenabling that interaction.
SPEAKER_00 (29:04):
I I so I think so.
When you're writing content, youwant to have authorship of that.
So I don't there's there'ssomething that a principle that
that Google was really pushingyears ago, and it's still really
prevalent.
It's called Eat, it's the youknow, um, expertise, experience,
authority, and trust.
Um, and so I think actually it'sit's probably a brilliant way
(29:30):
for them to try to mitigate someof the AI generated content by
having people take authorship orownership of that content.
So it was really big in financeand health mode first started
coming out.
So they they weren't evenranking sites that didn't say,
Hey, here's the doctor thatpublished this, and here's the
(29:52):
school that you went to.
Right.
So it's looking for things likethat.
So when you're writing content,you become an author in a good
super secret happen.
To this is you put your authorpage on your bio and LinkedIn.
So Google is going to say, hey,we trust LinkedIn.
It's a really big high authoritypublication.
(30:12):
It mentions your author page andit links back to the author page
on your site.
So you're giving yourself a highquality, um, direct link to
that.
And it's it's you're giving yourauthorship a little bit more
credibility.
SPEAKER_01 (30:26):
I think that's so important.
It's me as a personal brandstrategist.
I've been uh known as a personalbrand uh guru.
Like I think I got ranked uh sofar in the top 30 on global
gurus just here at 45, which Ilike.
And I I've been preaching thisfor a while, especially my
knowledge and understanding howmachines actually work, is that
(30:48):
you've got to give it the rightdata.
You have to give it the rightdata from a personal brand
perspective.
You create the digital footprintso that when uh Google, let's
say you Google Grant McGall, Iknow exactly the information
that's gonna come up.
And I'm starting to notice evennow, as I go into the different,
and I like how you say answerengines, because I think it
(31:08):
sounds better than LLM.
Answer engines sounds kind ofcool.
I'm gonna coin that one.
SPEAKER_00 (31:13):
It's easier to say, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:15):
Yeah, I like it.
It sounds better to me than LLMbecause you got to define
further defined it.
Right.
Um, but if someone goes to uhChat GPT or Cloud or whatnot and
they put in Grant Magall, I wantto see what's coming up.
They're not gonna be exactly thesame, but it's very similar as
far as the information becauseit's pulling information
(31:38):
directly from what I've givenit, whether I've given it from
LinkedIn, whether I've given itfrom my my um my website, press
releases, things like that,because I know in the background
is gonna pull and it's gonnapull from credible sources, and
that's gonna bring you uhforward.
Am I correct on that assumption?
SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
Yeah, and I think that's a really important thing
to highlight.
You're controlling the narrativeof your story.
Yeah.
Very, very, very, very smart andimportant, or someone else is
gonna do it for you, and youdon't want that.
Right.
And you get negative press,right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:08):
And negative employees.
SPEAKER_00 (32:09):
Right, negative press or no press, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:11):
Or or no press.
SPEAKER_00 (32:12):
Or not or not.
SPEAKER_01 (32:13):
Or nothing, nothing at all.
Right, right.
Right.
So so here's the question.
Last question.
Maybe I I can't guarantee that,but you know, but outside of
business, you're deeply engagedin your community and mentoring.
I want to understand what doesthat leadership philosophy, how
does it show up in the way thatyou run your company?
SPEAKER_00 (32:37):
I think it gives me a different perspective.
So I'm the I'm the president ofthe board of my local YMCA.
Um uh I um one of the thingsthat the YMCA does that that
means a lot to me, and which iswhy I want to be involved, is
the amount of uh things theygive back to people.
(32:59):
Um, there are so many people inin the community that I live in
that um can't work because theycan't afford daycare, that they
they uh um don't have a place tolive, they can't afford a gym
membership.
And the why is is is donatingall that stuff and helping
people so that they can becomethat.
(33:20):
Um and so when I when I one ofthe reasons that I joined is
when they had first asked me, myfirst thought is I'm too busy, I
have a lot of stuff to do atwork.
And then I thought to myself,you know what, I'm just pushing
ones and zeros on a computer andI'm helping my clients make more
money.
That's not helping the world.
So how can I give a little back?
(33:42):
And I think that has helped meidentify a lot more with people,
identify a lot more with my myemployees.
Um you know, there's uh um, Idon't know, it just it part of
it.
I just feel good to it makes itfeel good to tell people.
SPEAKER_01 (33:58):
Absolutely.
Social impact.
I I'm I'm on the in the circleof making money for money's
sake, you know, it it is good,but it has no value.
It's like being on a desertedisland.
If you have a bunch of money,what what good is it?
You know, so what are you doingto circulate uh the things that
you're doing and bringing backthe good work that's there?
(34:19):
That should the money again itshould not be the end of the
road, it's part of the road,it's part of the journey, right?
Um, but it's not the that's notcyclical in a way, you know.
So, what is how do you take thatgood um that goodwill and then
regenerizing the socialcommunity?
Because that same community isaccessing networks, they're
accessing websites, they'regoing to Google, but if you're
(34:42):
not enabling them in a certainway to be able to be able to do
that, then what are you doing?
So I I like how you positionthat.
Now, here's my last question,and I like asking this question
because I like to ask them of myguest in real time.
This is your first experiencewith the Follow Rant podcast.
(35:02):
Now you've gone through theinterview process with me as the
host.
How did you like this interview?
SPEAKER_00 (35:09):
The quality of the questions that you asked were
fantastic.
So, this was a this for me was areally stimulating conversation.
I enjoyed it, and I I I learneda little bit more um after
speaking with you.
So I think like those are thethe you know, it was fun, it was
informative, it was challenging.
SPEAKER_01 (35:28):
Those are you know the three perfect pieces to uh
uh absolutely and I learned agreat deal.
I think the audience learned agreat deal about something again
that's very pressing, it's justtop of mind right now because
things are just changing uhrapidly.
So I like to see what what'shappening, like you know, open
(35:49):
up the hood, let's let's look atthe engine down here, our answer
engine, right?
Or yeah, our social uhengineering optimization.
These are all these engines thatare going on, but I really
appreciate you taking the timeand uh do this.
Okay, and you gotta let us knowhow to contact you at Green
Banana, and what is the bestpossible way?
SPEAKER_00 (36:09):
So you can go to greenbanana sf.com or this but
you can't ask this to an answerengine because it's gonna answer
differently.
But I kept losing my businesscards years ago or forgetting
them.
So I ended up optimizing I justmet Kevin.
So if you Google I just metKevin, you can get to my contact
information.
If you ask Chat TP GTP, I justmet Kevin, they're gonna say,
(36:32):
big deal.
Who's Kevin?
Right?
Right?
So I just met Kevin, or you cango to greenbanana SEO.com.
And if I could say one morething, I think that will will be
helpful.
When I first saw, learned aboutAI, I was nervous about it.
I'm scared, like this is gonna,you know, this could be taking
(36:54):
over my business.
Um and the more that I study itand the more that I learn about
it, the more I realize it is anit is an amazing opportunity for
growth, no matter what businessyou're in.
So if you're listening to thisand you're nervous, don't be
nervous and learn more about itbecause it it will help you in
(37:16):
some way or another, and it'snot going away.
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
Absolutely.
I I encourage everyone.
I just had this discussion withanother group of people, and I I
I put it in this way just likeyou need to understand, let's
say, the Microsoft suite of uhsoftware um packages, whether
it's email, PowerPoint, Excel,Word, you needed to know these
(37:43):
things.
You need to know these things intoday's business environment.
You need to know AI.
And AI is a lot of differentthings.
It's not just an answer engine,you know, that's LLM launch.
That's part of it.
That's what people kind of usedto know, but it's a lot more
than that.
There's a lot of uh uhautomation that's taking place,
content generation, whether it'svideo, audio, text.
(38:05):
This is how business is gettingdone.
This is speed to market.
You cannot sleep on thesethings.
I implore everyone to getinvolved with any kind of AI
workshop that's gonna upskillyou on these platforms so that
they you become proficient atit.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
Yeah, or just even just download Gemini or Chat GPT
and start doing stupid thingswith it.
You're gonna learn.
You're gonna say, Oh, I didn'tknow it could do this, or if if
if if it gets the answer wrongor you don't get the output you
want, who cares?
Have fun with it and you'regonna start learning learning
stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (38:38):
And you'll mold it to yourself.
We talked about customizationand personalization earlier.
Then you start to realize youhave a real assistant that's
built just for you that can helpyou uh along live sorts.
So that is great.
I want to make sure that yourall your particular audience can
tune in to all the episodes ofFollow the Brand.
They can do so at five star BDM.
(39:00):
That's number five at Star S D RD for Brand, D for Development,
Informasters.com.
This has been wonderful, Kevin.
I want to thank you so much andenjoy the rest of your weekend.
SPEAKER_00 (39:13):
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01 (39:14):
You're welcome.
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