January 5, 2025 • 29 mins
This episode builds a case for the evolution of SEO in a post-AI landscape, urging listeners to adapt by embracing new platforms and focus areas while maintaining authenticity in their content. Experts discuss the transition from traditional search engines to social media, the importance of local SEO, and how to leverage AI for better audience engagement.
• Discussing the shifts in SEO since the rise of AI
• Exploring the role of social media as search engines
• Emphasizing local SEO for geographically fenced businesses
• Leveraging AI tools for efficient content creation
• Highlighting the need for authenticity and uniqueness
• Understanding voice search's growing importance
• Personalization's role in future marketing strategies
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Tiny Marketing.
This is Sarah Noelle Block, andthis is a podcast that helps
B2B service businesses do morewith less.
Learn lean, actionable, organicmarketing strategies you can
implement today.
No fluff, just powerful growthtactics that work.
Ready to scale smarter?
Hit that subscribe button andstart growing your business with
(00:20):
tiny marketing.
Hello and welcome to episode118.
I'm Sarah Noelle Black andyou're watching the tiny
marketing show, or listening, Isuppose.
However, you're consuming thisshow.
Today, we're talking about howSEO has changed.
We all know it's changed sincearound like early 2023, when
(00:45):
ChatGPT came out.
Everything has changed.
It's just been a whirlwind ofhow we have adapted to search
engines.
We used to go automatically toGoogle and we knew how to get on
Google too.
It was just a matter of havingthe right keywords in your
(01:06):
articles and making sure yourtitle tags were correct and all
of that.
But it is completely differentsince AI has entered the scene
and a lot of people have claimedit is dead, that SEO is dead,
but that is far from the truth.
It's more of it's dead forpeople who haven't evolved, and
(01:28):
I think that that's the case fora lot of things.
If you didn't evolve with theemergence of AI, a lot of things
have died.
If you're listening to this,you don't realize that I just
did quote, unquote.
They're not actually dead,though.
You have to adjust the way youdo things to adapt to the way
(01:51):
things change, and that'sexactly the case with SEO.
So today I have Greg Brooks andhe is teaching us everything
that we need to know about SEOwhen it comes to 2025 and the
things that matter now.
In search, we need to look atthe fact that people are using
(02:14):
social media channels as searchengines.
Now, more people are going toTikTok and searching for
something than they're going toGoogle.
In Gen Z, more people are goingto chat GPT than going to
Google than they used to.
Things have changed, so we needto adapt the way we use search
engines and the way that weoptimize our content to be found
(02:37):
by these search engines,because search engines are not
just DuckDuckGo, bing, googleanymore.
Now they're YouTube, now theyare TikTok, now they're LinkedIn
, now they're ChatGPT.
There's a whole other way tolook at it.
So I'm excited to share all ofthe insights that Greg Brooks
(03:00):
shared with me.
Let's get started shared withme.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And let's get started .
My name is Greg Brooks, Hiaudience.
I am a CMO and I'm a partner atSearch Tides, which is a hub
for all things search and SEOand social search the future of
how humans look and acquireknowledge online.
Search Tides has existed forabout 13 years.
We've worked with all differenttypes of large companies.
We worked with some smallcompanies in there as well and
we've really learned a lot oflessons on how marketing
(03:32):
channels and specific marketingchannels ebb and flow and evolve
over time and where they'regoing to specifically, and some
things we think are intuitiveand a lot of stuff we think is
really going against the grainin our opinions.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Ooh, okay.
Well, now I'm curious can youjust, can you give me a little,
a little teaser on that?
What, what do you have that'sgoing against the grain.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I think right now the grain is that Google is
collapsing and it its empire,and it's being split up across
chat, gpt and perplexity, dot AIand social search across like
TikTok and YouTube, and I think,ironically, google has probably
by far the best chance to bethe winning AI bot.
(04:19):
It's called AI overviews, usedto be called Google SGE, and the
reason is because almost everywebsite in the world blocks chat
GPT.
They block GPT models becausethey don't want their data being
crawled for no reason, but theymake sure that Google can crawl
their website and so now youhave the number one biggest
(04:42):
search company in the world thatalso has the number one largest
data set to train its AI modelon that no one else has.
So I think people are kind ofcalling for the end of something
, but you know, those rootingfor Google's demise might have
some surprising news.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Damn Before we get into.
Okay, I'm not going to rabbithole, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay, the portal's right here.
I'm just saying I'm so good atit.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I'm so good at rabbit holing I'm like, okay, I need
to dig right there, but I'm notgoing to, because today we're
focusing on the things that areshifting and what we should plan
for in SEO in 2025.
And we're specifically talkingto those solo marketing
departments and marketing orfounder-led businesses that are
(05:30):
stuck in the marketing role.
So they really need tounderstand what they need to
focus on.
And, quick and dirty ows, howdo you make it work?
So the first thing I want todig in on is AI, because that I
have zero clue on how that workswith SEO Zero.
So I'm a fresh, spongy brainright now.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, well, here we go.
I got some.
I'll get some quick tips forthat.
Ultimately, if you're a solomarketer, or you're a
founder-led marketer, then, orreally a founder masquerading as
a marketer, then we just haveto be realistic, right?
I think the number one thingthat you need to decide is if a
(06:16):
given marketing channel is worthyour time.
So I'll just say this rightaway Search organic search
results on Google.
If you are a national searchresult, so you're not like a
location-specific business orstuff like that, as a single
person, you're gonna have a lotof difficulty being competitive
(06:38):
against larger companies andorganizations who have marketing
departments, who have SEO teams, who have built out a website
over the last 10 to 15 years andhave done things like link
building and content creation,and you're playing somebody
else's game, and so the firstthing that I would say is maybe
don't do that.
Maybe there's better uses ofyour time if you're somebody who
(06:59):
is already in a role that'sgoing to be wearing a variety of
hats.
Now, if you're in a businessthat is geographically fenced,
then search is going to be afantastic option for you,
because it's not about youroverall authority or power or
how long you've been in theindustry, for it's about your
relevance to someone searchingCapital R relevance.
(07:20):
What that means, sarah, is thatwhere you want to be the best
option in a given location,which means you're just
competing against.
If you're, for example, like acar dealership, you're just
competing against the other cardealerships, and that also means
that you'd want to show Googleor any other search engine that
you are the most relevant.
Well, what would that look like?
(07:40):
You mentioned Chicago.
Well, we'd probably be talkingabout different neighborhoods in
Chicago, if we're being honest,and maybe a major metropolitan
area is not the best example touse for a car dealership, so
we're going to use a differentone.
Let's just say, someplace insome sort of outside suburb of
Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We'll say Hanover Park.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Beautiful.
So Hanover Park.
So I'm a car dealership inHanover Park.
I should be outreaching to thelocal chamber of commerce or
local other business entitiesthat exist around that community
, be part of them, interact withthem or at least minimally get
a link from them back to mywebsite.
My local reviews on Google myBusiness are going to be really,
(08:23):
really important.
I can go have conversationswith people who are in the
dealership and ask them aboutthat.
I, if I'm selling Audis, I cango, and I can go to the regional
Audi dealership and say, hey,can you put a link to my website
from your website?
So I'm gaining up relevance anddoing literally those three
things and nothing else is goingto take you a lot further on
(08:45):
the local side of things thanprobably most of the other
things that people would knowand obviously the basic things
like meta descriptions, titletags.
That stuff's important.
So, in terms of AI and how thisall plays into things, let's
scoot back to nationally and say, okay, well, what if I'm not a
specific location for a business?
How does AI impact?
How I think about search or SEO?
(09:06):
And the answer is what does itlook like?
How does your content that youcreate live and win in a world
which 99.9% of content is AIgenerated and this is not the
content of today.
Yet we're probably only at 99%.
We still got another 10X to go,you know.
But really, what it means is wehave chat GPT 4.0 right now and
(09:30):
if you try to push a button andcreate a piece of content, it's
it's not.
It's not great, it's not great.
But for chat GPT, 10.0, itmight be great, or 15.0.
It might be great.
So at some point in the futureit is going to get easy quote
unquote to make good content,quote unquote.
So how do you shine throughthat?
(09:50):
You bring the human element.
You talk about your uniqueexpertise.
You talk about your uniqueexperience.
You talk about the things thatyou know because you've been
doing.
And if you don't have thingsthat you know because you
haven't been doing, I might askwhether or not you should be the
person writing about that onthe internet, because now you're
just only as good as everybodyelse's one-button-click-push
(10:14):
article creation software.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Okay Question.
So whenever I'm Googling lately, it's always I get the AI
summary first.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
How do you get your website to be the one cited in
that AI summary?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, well, it's a three-step process.
Step one and two does, in fact,require us to sprinkle fairy
dust in two specific places sothat we can make it happen, but
once you do that, it's all aboutunderstanding that Google, even
its AI, even anything on theinternet, anything that someone
calls AI or machine learning thebest way to think about that is
(10:54):
as an instruction manual.
It's just this robot followingan instruction manual, and when
we call it machine learning,that means that we don't know
what the instruction manuallooks like.
We didn't write it.
We don't know what's in there.
It's crazy.
We just said get better at thisthing and don't blow us up.
So that's it and it's going anddoing that, but it is following
that instruction.
(11:14):
It and it's going and doingthat, but it is following that
instruction.
So when, when, uh, whensomething from Google or any
other website crawls your site,it is inherently not as smart as
we think it is.
And so what does that mean?
Well, if you have a question,put the answer right under the
question.
If you're writing about acertain topic in the first
sentence of your first paragraph, answer and the rest of your
(11:35):
first paragraph answer and therest of your first paragraph
provide context about thatanswer, then the rest of the
article should be about furthercontext, or the rest of the
piece of content, furthercontext or zooming in deeper
into certain areas of the answer, or elaborating on if I'm
thinking about this.
(11:55):
I actually need to know theseother three things.
So I'm going to answer anunasked question which is going
to help someone on theircustomer journey, and what
you're doing is, yes, you'reproviding a comprehensive,
basically guide, but on the flipside, you are writing it in the
way, assuming that robots,spiders, ai things, whatever's
on your website these daysaren't actually good at guessing
(12:20):
what it's about.
So you're like here's aquestion, here's the answer.
That's the number one way toget into the AI overviews right
now.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, that's good to know.
So anyone who is tempted to bereally creative and write
engaging content, you have to doQ&A, dumb it down first before
you get into the story piece andwhat you were talking about
earlier, your personalexperiences, that type of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Sure and just a sentence.
You don't have to eliminateyour creativity or anything.
We're just talking about theend of.
I look up a recipe online andyou tell me about your
grandmother's cabin in the woods, Like that era doesn't exist
anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh no, I absolutely hated that.
Every time I have a recipepulled I'm like I don't care
about this story.
I just want the ingredients andthe order they need to go in
the thing.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Right, I mean people don't even realize this, but,
like grandmothers also hatestories about their cabin, so
there's no winner in any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Everyone was the loser in this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Exactly.
So.
That's really to answer yourquestion.
That is the shift in what'shappening.
We're getting rid of the fluff,we're getting rid of the
information for the sake ofinformation, or words for the
sake of words, or video for thesake of video.
We use a metric called valueper word and value per second,
(13:47):
depending on if we're talkingabout written or video.
If you can showcase somethingin a shorter, more efficient
period of time, do that.
Number one it's going to bebetter for the person who's
interacting with that content.
Number two you actually can'tdo that unless you're an expert.
You actually can't do thatunless you can synthesize.
Well, even though this is whattheory says, in reality this is
(14:10):
what's real.
So I'm going to ignore thisstuff.
I'm going to hone in on thisstuff, and so you're in.
You're, in essence, showcasingyour experience and your
expertise.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, so short to the point.
Showcase your expertise.
What's your, your take oninserting personality and
stories into the content?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I love it.
I mean, at Search Sites, we wedivide a search into three
different parts of they're, youknow, from the bottom up.
The bottom is the foundationalera, which is all the
traditional SEO stuff linkbuilding, content creation,
technical robots.
Who knows what's in there?
It's a black box.
The second one is where we'reat right now.
It's called the influence era,and that's like am I an expert?
(14:53):
Am I, do I have trustworthiness?
Am I an expert?
Do I have trustworthiness, am Ian authority, if I'm writing
about something that has to dowith giving people medicine,
should I actually do I have theunderstanding to provide that
advice or financial advice?
And then the top of the pyramidis the future.
That's where all the AI contentera is going to exist, but
we're actually calling it thehuman era, and that is the
equivalent of once things startbeing able to be mass produced
(15:16):
in a factory, that you can gobuy it at a Kia and, other than
nearly destroying yourrelationship, you could put the
furniture together and it'llwork.
But what do people then go andwant?
Well, they want handmadefurniture, and so be the
handmade furniture of content,and that, by definition, sarah,
that should have yourpersonality in.
That should have your ownpersonal story in, so really
(15:37):
embrace that stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
That's going back.
That's what I've been tellingpeople is like be more
authentically, you and you'llstand out, because everyone else
is just becoming more bland asthey rely on ChatGPT to crank it
all out.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yes, people always believe that technology replaces
, but what it does is it givesmore leverage to the two experts
, and I don't mean in the sensethat we've been talking about.
If you know what it is thatyou're doing, if you're a
developer and you use ChatGPT,you're going to be a way better
developer.
If you're a writer and you usechat GPT, it's going to help you
(16:22):
out.
We, we use chat GPT.
We bring all of our articlesthrough there and we go.
Or all of our scripts and we gohey, can you remove the fluff?
Remove the fluff, sure, and hegoes yeah, no problem.
And we're like, oh my heart,but it really.
You know it works, it worksreally well.
Hey, can you go and look at thetop five search results for a
given keyword and give me a listof all the subtopics that
(16:43):
they're writing about?
And so I want an outline ofthat.
Okay, well, if I didn't know todo that, chatgpt is not going
to help me, but if I, since Iknow to do that, I'm going to
get a more effective use.
How about this one?
Hey, here's Google'shelpfulness guidelines that talk
about experience, expertise,authoritativeness,
trustworthiness, chatgpt I'muploading this to you.
(17:04):
Hey, here's my article.
Hey, can you identify placeswhere I can add more experience
or trustworthiness?
Can you find some quotes thatare relevant, some statistics
and data that are relevant?
If you don't know that that'sjust inherently a good thing to
do to create high quality,you're never going to get that,
but if you know that now yourjob becomes, you know way easier
(17:26):
.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Oh, and so much faster.
Yeah, I have become obsessedwith creating custom chats and
like inserting brand voiceguidelines and all of that
because it just makes everythingfaster.
But a question that I alwaysask is is there anything I'm
missing?
Like I'll upload a piece ofcontent, is there something that
(17:46):
this audience would want toknow, that I didn't think to say
, and usually comes up withsomething pretty brilliant.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, I mean, that's so insightful and so okay, how
does all of this work in termsof search and SEO?
And so, again, like, if you'reon a national capacity, you
should care less aboutoptimizing your article keywords
for Google and you should caremore about meeting your customer
on their customer journey Oncethey become brand aware of you.
If you want to go down to thediscoverability route, do that
(18:17):
on social.
So, depending on where youraudience is, you can win way
earlier in your brand's careeron TikTok, on YouTube, on
Instagram, whatever it is,pinterest.
You have a way better chance oftreating that search bar like
an SEO search bar and doing theresearch to see, if I type in
how to you know vacation ideasfor blah, blah, blah.
(18:40):
What are the types of contentthat are there, what, who are
the creators who are creatingthat content?
A lot of times, it's way easierto get discovered there.
So it's really just aboutunderstanding where you, where
your customers are and whereyour audience is and then just
being really relentless in yourprioritizing, gaining in front
of them, which is going to besaying no to things that are
(19:03):
good ideas for others.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I love that and I want to highlight it in case
anybody missed the brilliance ofthat that social media engines
are search engines and that youcan build your audience there
and you can use SEO to be ableto become more discoverable on
those platforms.
I know a lot of people find meon LinkedIn using the search bar
(19:26):
, just using keywords that arein my profile, so you got to
take advantage of that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Right, right, and especially as a one-person
marketing department, you haveto choose what you're going to
do and what you're not going todo, and most of the time, your
success comes from choosing whatyou're not going to do, and
most of the time, that meansthat your success will come from
choosing something that youbelieve is reasonable enough and
(19:52):
then spending enough time andconcerted effort on it until you
push the snowball down from themountain and you go okay, now
this is turning something for me.
So I think I think patience andperseverance are both necessary
when you are kind of a smallermarketing department team person
is really, really aboutprioritization, which is a trap.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It's really about deprioritization really about
prioritization, which is a trap.
It's really aboutdeprioritization.
Yeah yeah, there's so muchpower in saying no, that thing's
not.
For me, it's so easy to fallinto this trap of wanting to try
all of the things and justseeing what works, but you're
going to suck at all of them ifyou're doing all of them because
you won't have time or energyto focus in on that one thing.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So the other thing that I wanted to touch on in
this conversation was voicesearch, which I truly have no
idea how SEO works with voicesearch, so please enlighten me.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, no, well, you know we've been looking for the
person who knows how voicesearch works.
We haven't found them.
We'll let you know if we foundthem.
But yeah, I think it works, thesame as all of the other
searches work.
The difference is essentiallyone of two things is happening.
So you're just gettingeffectively the top search
result.
That's effectively what'scoming back.
(21:16):
You're not going to get therest unless you're specifically
asking for it.
So voice search is going to beeven more top heavy, which means
it's going to be even morecompetitive if you're a national
brand or you have nogeographical relevance, which
also means that on the you know,hey, I'm looking for a
restaurant to go eat at, orwhatever it is, this is where
(21:37):
I'm at.
Or hey, you know it's going touse gas stations.
I don't think gas stations aredoing SEO, it's more of a
convenience purchase.
Yeah, exactly so.
Relevance locational relevancethen becomes more important
again on voice search, andthat's again things that you
actually can do as a singleperson marketing search, and
(21:58):
that's again things that youactually can do as a single
person marketing department.
So that could be an effect ofdoubling down.
But the future for all of thisstuff, sarah, is personalization
.
Like the one thing that I thinkenough people agree with with
AI is that we don't know, youknow, I don't know if we're
going to be going through anysort of like.
I don't know if we're going tobe going through any sort of
(22:18):
like.
I don't know how much spaceexploration AI is going to be
generating in the next 10 years,but there is going to be this
one-to-one effect that existswhen you have an algorithm
tailoring something to youspecifically, compared to a
person trying to tailorsomething to an entire audience,
and so you will get morepersonalized results, which
(22:41):
means that brands need to shifttheir messaging to stand for
more things and be more vocalabout what their own eye.
We're super product oriented.
We really care about product.
If you want somebody to respondto your emails four hours after
you write them, at any time inthe day, please don't choose us,
(23:01):
because that's not us.
If you want somebody who's justfocused on getting you the
absolute best product, that isus.
If you want somebody to pick upthe phone 24 seven and help you
out, no matter what yourproblem is, including if it's
with your in-laws, that's us,because customer support is
super, super important.
Like it's with your in-laws,that's us, because customer
support is super, superimportant.
Like it's really aboutvocalizing those brand values
I'm not talking about.
Like.
Here's our 10 thoughts aboutthe political landscape of the
(23:23):
United States.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You know like those values.
It's like your differentiator,your values, your mission.
Yes, those are the things thatwill get you to stand out.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
A hundred percent, because what AI is going to do
is create more consumer choice.
We already saw this withcontent.
We had three televisionstations, then 15 channels, then
50, 500.
And now we have millions acrosssocial media, because, instead
of a whole setup, you just needyour phone which, by the way,
you have anyways and AI will dosomething similar.
With the amount of businessesthat are out there, it'll be
easier for one or three peopleto start a business that used to
take five, maybe 10 people todo, and so that just means
(24:02):
there's going to be morebusinesses in a given area, and
that means there's going to bemore consumer choice in that
area, which means you're goingto have to stand out more, so
you're going to have to talkabout your own values and who
the perfect customer is for you,and you're also going to have
to know them more and what theirpain points are and where they
are in the customer journey andwhere they hang out and, again,
all the stuff that you say no to.
(24:23):
That is the thing that's goingto put you in a position to be
successful in the future.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So my big takeaways from this is with AI, if you
want to rank with that or befeatured in that, it has to be
straight QA, QA, QA to evenpossibly rank there.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The top of the article.
Yes, the rest of your article.
You talk about whatever.
You can get creative, but interms of like, this thing comes
to this website and is going tograb one thing, this is where I
need to put it for to grab it.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Takeaway two is social media is also a search
engine, so make sure to optimizethere.
And takeaway three was howimportant it is to be you.
Show your expertise, show yourpersonalities, talk about your
values, what makes you different, and that is what will get you
(25:17):
to stand out.
Is there anything that I'mmissing or anything that you
want to just end on?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Don't we ask chat GPT that.
Let me just pull it up.
No, I think that doing all ofthose things in the context of
you are only a human being ableto do so many things, and so you
have to choose what it is thatyou do and therefore choose what
it is that you don't do, which,especially in marketing.
(25:45):
I think that that's really likeyou can't hear that enough.
So I think that's a really nicesummary.
Thank you, Sarah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Oh, thank you.
Thanks for joining me, and canyou, before we wrap up, tell
everyone where they can find you, how they can work with you?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, well, you can work with Search Tides at
searchtidescom.
We essentially help people inone of four very specific
marketing channels, two of whichare SEO and social search, and
you can find me specifically.
We're also on LinkedIn atSearch Tides.
We're on YouTube at SearchTides.
I'm on LinkedIn at Gregory BBrooks, if you want to get in
touch with me.
Yeah, you can hit me up onLinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
There are people who will be looking for you All
right.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Sarah, thank you for joining me and Greg in this wild
ride of SEO in 2025.
I hope that you enjoy thesetakeaways that search engines
are not only search enginesanymore.
We need to look at social media, we need to look at ChatGPT and
we need to add more personalityand personal stories to our
(26:57):
content to really stand out fromeverybody else.
So I hope you listened, youtook notes and you're going to
take some of what you learnedfrom this episode and bring it
into your marketing this year.
If you liked this episode,please like, subscribe, comment
and let me know if you had anyquestions.
(27:18):
I'll see you next week.
You love all things tinymarketing.
Head down to the show notespage and sign up for the wait
list to join the tiny marketingclub, where you get to work
one-on-one with me withtrainings, feedback with me with
(27:41):
trainings, feedback and pop-upcoaching.
That will help you scale yourmarketing as a B2B service
business.
So I'll see you over in theclub.
Welcome to Tiny Marketing.
This is Sarah Noelle Block, andthis is a podcast that helps
B2B service businesses do morewith less.
Learn lean, actionable, organicmarketing strategies you can
implement today.
No fluff, just powerful growthtactics that work.
Ready to scale smarter?
Hit that subscribe button andstart growing your business with
(00:20):
tiny marketing.
Hello and welcome to episode118.
I'm Sarah Noelle Black andyou're watching the tiny
marketing show, or listening, Isuppose.
However, you're consuming thisshow.
Today, we're talking about howSEO has changed.
We all know it's changed sincearound like early 2023, when
(00:45):
ChatGPT came out.
Everything has changed.
It's just been a whirlwind ofhow we have adapted to search
engines.
We used to go automatically toGoogle and we knew how to get on
Google too.
It was just a matter of havingthe right keywords in your
(01:06):
articles and making sure yourtitle tags were correct and all
of that.
But it is completely differentsince AI has entered the scene
and a lot of people have claimedit is dead, that SEO is dead,
but that is far from the truth.
It's more of it's dead forpeople who haven't evolved, and
(01:28):
I think that that's the case fora lot of things.
If you didn't evolve with theemergence of AI, a lot of things
have died.
If you're listening to this,you don't realize that I just
did quote, unquote.
They're not actually dead,though.
You have to adjust the way youdo things to adapt to the way
(01:51):
things change, and that'sexactly the case with SEO.
So today I have Greg Brooks andhe is teaching us everything
that we need to know about SEOwhen it comes to 2025 and the
things that matter now.
In search, we need to look atthe fact that people are using
(02:14):
social media channels as searchengines.
Now, more people are going toTikTok and searching for
something than they're going toGoogle.
In Gen Z, more people are goingto chat GPT than going to
Google than they used to.
Things have changed, so we needto adapt the way we use search
engines and the way that weoptimize our content to be found
(02:37):
by these search engines,because search engines are not
just DuckDuckGo, bing, googleanymore.
Now they're YouTube, now theyare TikTok, now they're LinkedIn
, now they're ChatGPT.
There's a whole other way tolook at it.
So I'm excited to share all ofthe insights that Greg Brooks
(03:00):
shared with me.
Let's get started shared withme.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And let's get started .
My name is Greg Brooks, Hiaudience.
I am a CMO and I'm a partner atSearch Tides, which is a hub
for all things search and SEOand social search the future of
how humans look and acquireknowledge online.
Search Tides has existed forabout 13 years.
We've worked with all differenttypes of large companies.
We worked with some smallcompanies in there as well and
we've really learned a lot oflessons on how marketing
(03:32):
channels and specific marketingchannels ebb and flow and evolve
over time and where they'regoing to specifically, and some
things we think are intuitiveand a lot of stuff we think is
really going against the grainin our opinions.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Ooh, okay.
Well, now I'm curious can youjust, can you give me a little,
a little teaser on that?
What, what do you have that'sgoing against the grain.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I think right now the grain is that Google is
collapsing and it its empire,and it's being split up across
chat, gpt and perplexity, dot AIand social search across like
TikTok and YouTube, and I think,ironically, google has probably
by far the best chance to bethe winning AI bot.
(04:19):
It's called AI overviews, usedto be called Google SGE, and the
reason is because almost everywebsite in the world blocks chat
GPT.
They block GPT models becausethey don't want their data being
crawled for no reason, but theymake sure that Google can crawl
their website and so now youhave the number one biggest
(04:42):
search company in the world thatalso has the number one largest
data set to train its AI modelon that no one else has.
So I think people are kind ofcalling for the end of something
, but you know, those rootingfor Google's demise might have
some surprising news.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Damn Before we get into.
Okay, I'm not going to rabbithole, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay, the portal's right here.
I'm just saying I'm so good atit.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I'm so good at rabbit holing I'm like, okay, I need
to dig right there, but I'm notgoing to, because today we're
focusing on the things that areshifting and what we should plan
for in SEO in 2025.
And we're specifically talkingto those solo marketing
departments and marketing orfounder-led businesses that are
(05:30):
stuck in the marketing role.
So they really need tounderstand what they need to
focus on.
And, quick and dirty ows, howdo you make it work?
So the first thing I want todig in on is AI, because that I
have zero clue on how that workswith SEO Zero.
So I'm a fresh, spongy brainright now.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, well, here we go.
I got some.
I'll get some quick tips forthat.
Ultimately, if you're a solomarketer, or you're a
founder-led marketer, then, orreally a founder masquerading as
a marketer, then we just haveto be realistic, right?
I think the number one thingthat you need to decide is if a
(06:16):
given marketing channel is worthyour time.
So I'll just say this rightaway Search organic search
results on Google.
If you are a national searchresult, so you're not like a
location-specific business orstuff like that, as a single
person, you're gonna have a lotof difficulty being competitive
(06:38):
against larger companies andorganizations who have marketing
departments, who have SEO teams, who have built out a website
over the last 10 to 15 years andhave done things like link
building and content creation,and you're playing somebody
else's game, and so the firstthing that I would say is maybe
don't do that.
Maybe there's better uses ofyour time if you're somebody who
(06:59):
is already in a role that'sgoing to be wearing a variety of
hats.
Now, if you're in a businessthat is geographically fenced,
then search is going to be afantastic option for you,
because it's not about youroverall authority or power or
how long you've been in theindustry, for it's about your
relevance to someone searchingCapital R relevance.
(07:20):
What that means, sarah, is thatwhere you want to be the best
option in a given location,which means you're just
competing against.
If you're, for example, like acar dealership, you're just
competing against the other cardealerships, and that also means
that you'd want to show Googleor any other search engine that
you are the most relevant.
Well, what would that look like?
(07:40):
You mentioned Chicago.
Well, we'd probably be talkingabout different neighborhoods in
Chicago, if we're being honest,and maybe a major metropolitan
area is not the best example touse for a car dealership, so
we're going to use a differentone.
Let's just say, someplace insome sort of outside suburb of
Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We'll say Hanover Park.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Beautiful.
So Hanover Park.
So I'm a car dealership inHanover Park.
I should be outreaching to thelocal chamber of commerce or
local other business entitiesthat exist around that community
, be part of them, interact withthem or at least minimally get
a link from them back to mywebsite.
My local reviews on Google myBusiness are going to be really,
(08:23):
really important.
I can go have conversationswith people who are in the
dealership and ask them aboutthat.
I, if I'm selling Audis, I cango, and I can go to the regional
Audi dealership and say, hey,can you put a link to my website
from your website?
So I'm gaining up relevance anddoing literally those three
things and nothing else is goingto take you a lot further on
(08:45):
the local side of things thanprobably most of the other
things that people would knowand obviously the basic things
like meta descriptions, titletags.
That stuff's important.
So, in terms of AI and how thisall plays into things, let's
scoot back to nationally and say, okay, well, what if I'm not a
specific location for a business?
How does AI impact?
How I think about search or SEO?
(09:06):
And the answer is what does itlook like?
How does your content that youcreate live and win in a world
which 99.9% of content is AIgenerated and this is not the
content of today.
Yet we're probably only at 99%.
We still got another 10X to go,you know.
But really, what it means is wehave chat GPT 4.0 right now and
(09:30):
if you try to push a button andcreate a piece of content, it's
it's not.
It's not great, it's not great.
But for chat GPT, 10.0, itmight be great, or 15.0.
It might be great.
So at some point in the futureit is going to get easy quote
unquote to make good content,quote unquote.
So how do you shine throughthat?
(09:50):
You bring the human element.
You talk about your uniqueexpertise.
You talk about your uniqueexperience.
You talk about the things thatyou know because you've been
doing.
And if you don't have thingsthat you know because you
haven't been doing, I might askwhether or not you should be the
person writing about that onthe internet, because now you're
just only as good as everybodyelse's one-button-click-push
(10:14):
article creation software.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Okay Question.
So whenever I'm Googling lately, it's always I get the AI
summary first.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
How do you get your website to be the one cited in
that AI summary?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, well, it's a three-step process.
Step one and two does, in fact,require us to sprinkle fairy
dust in two specific places sothat we can make it happen, but
once you do that, it's all aboutunderstanding that Google, even
its AI, even anything on theinternet, anything that someone
calls AI or machine learning thebest way to think about that is
(10:54):
as an instruction manual.
It's just this robot followingan instruction manual, and when
we call it machine learning,that means that we don't know
what the instruction manuallooks like.
We didn't write it.
We don't know what's in there.
It's crazy.
We just said get better at thisthing and don't blow us up.
So that's it and it's going anddoing that, but it is following
that instruction.
(11:14):
It and it's going and doingthat, but it is following that
instruction.
So when, when, uh, whensomething from Google or any
other website crawls your site,it is inherently not as smart as
we think it is.
And so what does that mean?
Well, if you have a question,put the answer right under the
question.
If you're writing about acertain topic in the first
sentence of your first paragraph, answer and the rest of your
(11:35):
first paragraph answer and therest of your first paragraph
provide context about thatanswer, then the rest of the
article should be about furthercontext, or the rest of the
piece of content, furthercontext or zooming in deeper
into certain areas of the answer, or elaborating on if I'm
thinking about this.
(11:55):
I actually need to know theseother three things.
So I'm going to answer anunasked question which is going
to help someone on theircustomer journey, and what
you're doing is, yes, you'reproviding a comprehensive,
basically guide, but on the flipside, you are writing it in the
way, assuming that robots,spiders, ai things, whatever's
on your website these daysaren't actually good at guessing
(12:20):
what it's about.
So you're like here's aquestion, here's the answer.
That's the number one way toget into the AI overviews right
now.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, that's good to know.
So anyone who is tempted to bereally creative and write
engaging content, you have to doQ&A, dumb it down first before
you get into the story piece andwhat you were talking about
earlier, your personalexperiences, that type of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Sure and just a sentence.
You don't have to eliminateyour creativity or anything.
We're just talking about theend of.
I look up a recipe online andyou tell me about your
grandmother's cabin in the woods, Like that era doesn't exist
anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh no, I absolutely hated that.
Every time I have a recipepulled I'm like I don't care
about this story.
I just want the ingredients andthe order they need to go in
the thing.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Right, I mean people don't even realize this, but,
like grandmothers also hatestories about their cabin, so
there's no winner in any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Everyone was the loser in this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Exactly.
So.
That's really to answer yourquestion.
That is the shift in what'shappening.
We're getting rid of the fluff,we're getting rid of the
information for the sake ofinformation, or words for the
sake of words, or video for thesake of video.
We use a metric called valueper word and value per second,
(13:47):
depending on if we're talkingabout written or video.
If you can showcase somethingin a shorter, more efficient
period of time, do that.
Number one it's going to bebetter for the person who's
interacting with that content.
Number two you actually can'tdo that unless you're an expert.
You actually can't do thatunless you can synthesize.
Well, even though this is whattheory says, in reality this is
(14:10):
what's real.
So I'm going to ignore thisstuff.
I'm going to hone in on thisstuff, and so you're in.
You're, in essence, showcasingyour experience and your
expertise.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, so short to the point.
Showcase your expertise.
What's your, your take oninserting personality and
stories into the content?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I love it.
I mean, at Search Sites, we wedivide a search into three
different parts of they're, youknow, from the bottom up.
The bottom is the foundationalera, which is all the
traditional SEO stuff linkbuilding, content creation,
technical robots.
Who knows what's in there?
It's a black box.
The second one is where we'reat right now.
It's called the influence era,and that's like am I an expert?
(14:53):
Am I, do I have trustworthiness?
Am I an expert?
Do I have trustworthiness, am Ian authority, if I'm writing
about something that has to dowith giving people medicine,
should I actually do I have theunderstanding to provide that
advice or financial advice?
And then the top of the pyramidis the future.
That's where all the AI contentera is going to exist, but
we're actually calling it thehuman era, and that is the
equivalent of once things startbeing able to be mass produced
(15:16):
in a factory, that you can gobuy it at a Kia and, other than
nearly destroying yourrelationship, you could put the
furniture together and it'llwork.
But what do people then go andwant?
Well, they want handmadefurniture, and so be the
handmade furniture of content,and that, by definition, sarah,
that should have yourpersonality in.
That should have your ownpersonal story in, so really
(15:37):
embrace that stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
That's going back.
That's what I've been tellingpeople is like be more
authentically, you and you'llstand out, because everyone else
is just becoming more bland asthey rely on ChatGPT to crank it
all out.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yes, people always believe that technology replaces
, but what it does is it givesmore leverage to the two experts
, and I don't mean in the sensethat we've been talking about.
If you know what it is thatyou're doing, if you're a
developer and you use ChatGPT,you're going to be a way better
developer.
If you're a writer and you usechat GPT, it's going to help you
(16:22):
out.
We, we use chat GPT.
We bring all of our articlesthrough there and we go.
Or all of our scripts and we gohey, can you remove the fluff?
Remove the fluff, sure, and hegoes yeah, no problem.
And we're like, oh my heart,but it really.
You know it works, it worksreally well.
Hey, can you go and look at thetop five search results for a
given keyword and give me a listof all the subtopics that
(16:43):
they're writing about?
And so I want an outline ofthat.
Okay, well, if I didn't know todo that, chatgpt is not going
to help me, but if I, since Iknow to do that, I'm going to
get a more effective use.
How about this one?
Hey, here's Google'shelpfulness guidelines that talk
about experience, expertise,authoritativeness,
trustworthiness, chatgpt I'muploading this to you.
(17:04):
Hey, here's my article.
Hey, can you identify placeswhere I can add more experience
or trustworthiness?
Can you find some quotes thatare relevant, some statistics
and data that are relevant?
If you don't know that that'sjust inherently a good thing to
do to create high quality,you're never going to get that,
but if you know that now yourjob becomes, you know way easier
(17:26):
.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Oh, and so much faster.
Yeah, I have become obsessedwith creating custom chats and
like inserting brand voiceguidelines and all of that
because it just makes everythingfaster.
But a question that I alwaysask is is there anything I'm
missing?
Like I'll upload a piece ofcontent, is there something that
(17:46):
this audience would want toknow, that I didn't think to say
, and usually comes up withsomething pretty brilliant.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, I mean, that's so insightful and so okay, how
does all of this work in termsof search and SEO?
And so, again, like, if you'reon a national capacity, you
should care less aboutoptimizing your article keywords
for Google and you should caremore about meeting your customer
on their customer journey Oncethey become brand aware of you.
If you want to go down to thediscoverability route, do that
(18:17):
on social.
So, depending on where youraudience is, you can win way
earlier in your brand's careeron TikTok, on YouTube, on
Instagram, whatever it is,pinterest.
You have a way better chance oftreating that search bar like
an SEO search bar and doing theresearch to see, if I type in
how to you know vacation ideasfor blah, blah, blah.
(18:40):
What are the types of contentthat are there, what, who are
the creators who are creatingthat content?
A lot of times, it's way easierto get discovered there.
So it's really just aboutunderstanding where you, where
your customers are and whereyour audience is and then just
being really relentless in yourprioritizing, gaining in front
of them, which is going to besaying no to things that are
(19:03):
good ideas for others.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I love that and I want to highlight it in case
anybody missed the brilliance ofthat that social media engines
are search engines and that youcan build your audience there
and you can use SEO to be ableto become more discoverable on
those platforms.
I know a lot of people find meon LinkedIn using the search bar
(19:26):
, just using keywords that arein my profile, so you got to
take advantage of that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Right, right, and especially as a one-person
marketing department, you haveto choose what you're going to
do and what you're not going todo, and most of the time, your
success comes from choosing whatyou're not going to do, and
most of the time, that meansthat your success will come from
choosing something that youbelieve is reasonable enough and
(19:52):
then spending enough time andconcerted effort on it until you
push the snowball down from themountain and you go okay, now
this is turning something for me.
So I think I think patience andperseverance are both necessary
when you are kind of a smallermarketing department team person
is really, really aboutprioritization, which is a trap.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It's really about deprioritization really about
prioritization, which is a trap.
It's really aboutdeprioritization.
Yeah yeah, there's so muchpower in saying no, that thing's
not.
For me, it's so easy to fallinto this trap of wanting to try
all of the things and justseeing what works, but you're
going to suck at all of them ifyou're doing all of them because
you won't have time or energyto focus in on that one thing.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So the other thing that I wanted to touch on in
this conversation was voicesearch, which I truly have no
idea how SEO works with voicesearch, so please enlighten me.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, no, well, you know we've been looking for the
person who knows how voicesearch works.
We haven't found them.
We'll let you know if we foundthem.
But yeah, I think it works, thesame as all of the other
searches work.
The difference is essentiallyone of two things is happening.
So you're just gettingeffectively the top search
result.
That's effectively what'scoming back.
(21:16):
You're not going to get therest unless you're specifically
asking for it.
So voice search is going to beeven more top heavy, which means
it's going to be even morecompetitive if you're a national
brand or you have nogeographical relevance, which
also means that on the you know,hey, I'm looking for a
restaurant to go eat at, orwhatever it is, this is where
(21:37):
I'm at.
Or hey, you know it's going touse gas stations.
I don't think gas stations aredoing SEO, it's more of a
convenience purchase.
Yeah, exactly so.
Relevance locational relevancethen becomes more important
again on voice search, andthat's again things that you
actually can do as a singleperson marketing search, and
(21:58):
that's again things that youactually can do as a single
person marketing department.
So that could be an effect ofdoubling down.
But the future for all of thisstuff, sarah, is personalization
.
Like the one thing that I thinkenough people agree with with
AI is that we don't know, youknow, I don't know if we're
going to be going through anysort of like.
I don't know if we're going tobe going through any sort of
(22:18):
like.
I don't know how much spaceexploration AI is going to be
generating in the next 10 years,but there is going to be this
one-to-one effect that existswhen you have an algorithm
tailoring something to youspecifically, compared to a
person trying to tailorsomething to an entire audience,
and so you will get morepersonalized results, which
(22:41):
means that brands need to shifttheir messaging to stand for
more things and be more vocalabout what their own eye.
We're super product oriented.
We really care about product.
If you want somebody to respondto your emails four hours after
you write them, at any time inthe day, please don't choose us,
(23:01):
because that's not us.
If you want somebody who's justfocused on getting you the
absolute best product, that isus.
If you want somebody to pick upthe phone 24 seven and help you
out, no matter what yourproblem is, including if it's
with your in-laws, that's us,because customer support is
super, super important.
Like it's with your in-laws,that's us, because customer
support is super, superimportant.
Like it's really aboutvocalizing those brand values
I'm not talking about.
Like.
Here's our 10 thoughts aboutthe political landscape of the
(23:23):
United States.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You know like those values.
It's like your differentiator,your values, your mission.
Yes, those are the things thatwill get you to stand out.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
A hundred percent, because what AI is going to do
is create more consumer choice.
We already saw this withcontent.
We had three televisionstations, then 15 channels, then
50, 500.
And now we have millions acrosssocial media, because, instead
of a whole setup, you just needyour phone which, by the way,
you have anyways and AI will dosomething similar.
With the amount of businessesthat are out there, it'll be
easier for one or three peopleto start a business that used to
take five, maybe 10 people todo, and so that just means
(24:02):
there's going to be morebusinesses in a given area, and
that means there's going to bemore consumer choice in that
area, which means you're goingto have to stand out more, so
you're going to have to talkabout your own values and who
the perfect customer is for you,and you're also going to have
to know them more and what theirpain points are and where they
are in the customer journey andwhere they hang out and, again,
all the stuff that you say no to.
(24:23):
That is the thing that's goingto put you in a position to be
successful in the future.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So my big takeaways from this is with AI, if you
want to rank with that or befeatured in that, it has to be
straight QA, QA, QA to evenpossibly rank there.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The top of the article.
Yes, the rest of your article.
You talk about whatever.
You can get creative, but interms of like, this thing comes
to this website and is going tograb one thing, this is where I
need to put it for to grab it.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Takeaway two is social media is also a search
engine, so make sure to optimizethere.
And takeaway three was howimportant it is to be you.
Show your expertise, show yourpersonalities, talk about your
values, what makes you different, and that is what will get you
(25:17):
to stand out.
Is there anything that I'mmissing or anything that you
want to just end on?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Don't we ask chat GPT that.
Let me just pull it up.
No, I think that doing all ofthose things in the context of
you are only a human being ableto do so many things, and so you
have to choose what it is thatyou do and therefore choose what
it is that you don't do, which,especially in marketing.
(25:45):
I think that that's really likeyou can't hear that enough.
So I think that's a really nicesummary.
Thank you, Sarah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Oh, thank you.
Thanks for joining me, and canyou, before we wrap up, tell
everyone where they can find you, how they can work with you?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, well, you can work with Search Tides at
searchtidescom.
We essentially help people inone of four very specific
marketing channels, two of whichare SEO and social search, and
you can find me specifically.
We're also on LinkedIn atSearch Tides.
We're on YouTube at SearchTides.
I'm on LinkedIn at Gregory BBrooks, if you want to get in
touch with me.
Yeah, you can hit me up onLinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
There are people who will be looking for you All
right.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Sarah, thank you for joining me and Greg in this wild
ride of SEO in 2025.
I hope that you enjoy thesetakeaways that search engines
are not only search enginesanymore.
We need to look at social media, we need to look at ChatGPT and
we need to add more personalityand personal stories to our
(26:57):
content to really stand out fromeverybody else.
So I hope you listened, youtook notes and you're going to
take some of what you learnedfrom this episode and bring it
into your marketing this year.
If you liked this episode,please like, subscribe, comment
and let me know if you had anyquestions.
(27:18):
I'll see you next week.
You love all things tinymarketing.
Head down to the show notespage and sign up for the wait
list to join the tiny marketingclub, where you get to work
one-on-one with me withtrainings, feedback with me with
(27:41):
trainings, feedback and pop-upcoaching.
That will help you scale yourmarketing as a B2B service
business.
So I'll see you over in theclub.
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