Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is Alyssa Laubacher and Lauren Leroux. Alyssa, why don't you remind listeners of your role with us here at Innis Maggiore?

Alyssa Laubacher
So I am the media and digital marketing manager. So I handle everything, both traditional and digital advertising.

Mark Vandegrift 
Very good. Well thank you. Lauren, why don't you let our listeners know a little bit more about you?

Lauren Leroux 
I am also one of our media and digital marketing managers and Alyssa and I have a very collaborative department. So we work hand in hand, communicating with vendors, clients, reporting, all sorts of things.

Mark Vandegrift 
Awesome. Let's dive in. I think this topic applies to you guys today. We'll see. If not, it'll be a really short podcast. So we're going to discuss marketing strategies for something that's relatively new. Some of our listeners may not even know these terms. So we'll start out with giving a little bit of a definition on these. But the topic is marketing strategies for AEO, SEO, and GEO. So in a recent episode, we dove into SEO and content marketing with our director of PR, Jim Cyphert. And if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure to check it out. It's really informative and did a good job of kind of covering how content and SEO marry up. But Alyssa, let's start with you because we need kind of a basic definition here of what these terms are. And so for our listeners who aren't familiar with it, can you tell us what SEO, AEO, and GEO stand for as acronyms, and then give us a little bit of background as to what they mean and what they are.

Alyssa Laubacher
Sure thing. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. AEO is answer engine optimization. And GEO is generative engine optimization. So the three of these are related, but they have distinct approaches for how websites are able to be found online, more specifically through different layers of search visibility that complement each other. So to simplify this just a little bit, you would use SEO to help rank your website higher on Google's organic search results page. You would use AEO to be captured in things like featured snippets and Google AI overviews, and then you would use GEO to get cited in things such as larger conversational AI chats.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay. So SEO is kind of what we've always known as SEO to be. It hasn't shifted significantly. AEO is for the really short stuff, like when you do a search and Gemini comes up with a summary at the top. And then GEO would be like a chat GPT chat, right?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yep. Yeah, you have to be like off of Google.

Mark Vandegrift
Is that are we capturing that right?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay. Okay. So Lauren, I'll jump over to you. How has SEO evolved if it has? And why is it important to think about AEO and GEO when you're doing your content and your digital strategies and such?

Lauren Leroux 
So since the creation of search engines, it's almost like evolution started almost immediately and it continues to evolve what seems like a daily basis. In the early days, search was very focused upon basic keyword matching. Then we kind of introduced intent. And then now searches are far more conversational. So as we navigate this shift to AI-driven search results and conversational queries, we're also seeing far more searches that aren't even resulting in clicks because most of the heavy lifting, for lack of better terms, is done. People don't have to do as much research because all the information is right at their fingertips in one little query. So even though we've seen this shift, at the end of the day, SEO, AEO, and GEO are all still important pieces of the puzzle, and incorporating them is crucial. SEO acts as kind of like the baseline for bots to crawl your website. AEO focuses on the quick wins, and then lastly, GEO focuses on the more specific citations. So implementing all three of these is necessary so that you can appease both humans and bots. And then you also ensure that you're not losing any visibility, whether it's across Google or some of the other AI platforms that have been introduced. And then this is especially important when multi-channel strategies are in place, because at the end of the day, your website and content needs to be in these search results in prime positioning when your brand is top of mind.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay, so we I think have been evaluating even our own SEO and found that we don't need to adjust it. In fact, is it true that we have more leads coming from like chat GPT now than we do organic search, like typical organic search clicks?

Lauren Leroux 
I say that it's, Chat GPT and those type of searches are definitely increasing. I don't know if it's surpassing organic search quite yet because it's so new. However, we are seeing that increasing far more than organic searches at this time.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, it's amazing because we have things come through that we've written, for example, our service pages, and it's funny to kind of track what is popular. And one of the things that we've seen is sweepstakes marketing and event marketing are two things where perplexity AI has shifted us way up in the rankings and in terms of the like the typical chat conversation. I think someone told us that they did a search for the top sweepstakes advertising agencies in the country and we were listed number one or number two. And it's like there's no actual ranking out there, but it seems like ChatGPT is trying to interpret what it sees from a landscape standpoint. Would you, is that the sense that you get?

Lauren Leroux 
Yeah, I would agree. And I think too that these this information a lot of times users find it to be far more credible because it pulls from so much information. So there's user reviews, there's testimonials, there's information about the business, services, all the things that they provide. And so people feel like the information is far more true than some of the other searches that they're finding when they're doing their own research.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, that's great. And then of course, when they click to our site and they see that we're delivering on what ChatGPT or Perplexity or any of them kind of told them in that chat, then it's just confirmation that, okay, these guys do do this or do get it and understand it.

Lauren Leroux 
Yes, absolutely.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Yeah, Alyssa, I'm gonna jump back over to you. Let me ask it this way. How do AEO, GEO, and SEO work together. And if they're all like if we're doing one set of content, how do they differ from each other? Is it what we're doing input or is it more like what the output is?

Alyssa Laubacher
So I would say that they're more along the lines of different layers of search visibility. So essentially they work together to ensure that your brand would have full visibility across the new search landscape. So I would say an easy way to remember it would be that SEO is what helps you get found in the first place. AEO is then what gets you quoted or cited, like we were mentioning in the AI overviews. And GEO is what gets you recommended in the AI chats. So in terms of differences, it really kind of boils down to where the overall visibility happens, whether that's on the search results page, in the little AI answer box and the top of Google Overviews, or in an actual AI platform in an AI response. So it's not necessarily content strategy that is different when you're comparing all three. It's the overall visibility itself changes depending on where the user engages. So that's why brands need to think about winning across all three instead of just focusing on one.

Mark Vandegrift 
okay, that's very good insight. So Lauren, what are the best marketing strategies for these three? Would you say that it's just all content, content, content, or there are other things in there that we need to think about?

Lauren Leroux 
I think content is a really big piece, but there's a couple other things that we need to think about. But at the end of the day, the good news is that all the SEO best practices that our team has been using for almost 30 years have all proven to be very applicable. So ensuring that there's strong keyword research done, optimal page development, and then long-form unique content is the best strategy. When it comes to AEO, implementing concise snippets or question and answer content such as FAQ pages is the best way for AI to almost copy and paste the content into those AI overviews that Alyssa mentioned. Doing this in a way that seems almost natural and conversational, especially with these voice-to-talk applications that are available, is important to make sure that these conversational queries are matching the intent of the user. And then lastly, publishing content where you really position yourself as the expert helps brands show up as a credible resource in the search from a GEO standpoint. So using facts, data, other sources is almost like a thesis paper would be the best framework. So white papers and research articles are really valued by GEO strategies. And then not only does this content and these types of strategies really matter, but on top of these, ensuring your off-site platforms such as Google Business Profile is up to date with accurate information and reviews is also just as important.

Mark Vandegrift 
Very good. Well, it seems like that the adjustment is just like we just put an FAQs on our on our page and it was really the same amount of content and it was similar content to other places we have on the site, but it's more of in a question answer format. So when you're talking about the answers being conversational, is it just you're talking about the way we talk rather than the maybe the way we write. Is that what you're talking about?

Lauren Leroux 
Yes, because now it's almost like these chat bots are people. So people are almost thinking like they're talking with another person. So they're typing in queries like you and I are having a conversation or they're clicking that little microphone and the voice memo thing and actually speaking into the search engine, I guess.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay. That makes sense. I think the engineers that are listening are gonna be really happy about the GEO side of it because they love doing white papers and research articles. 

Lauren Leroux 
Yes, absolutely.

Mark Vandegrift 
I have a few clients in mind right now that are thinking, yeah, this is awesome. I get to geek out on content, which is what we want. And really that's where a lot of your unique content comes from. And we've always said if you're truly positioning, my Vanna White moment here then of course your content is differentiated and positioned well. So good. Well, Alyssa, if we go back to these strategies that Lauren started talking about, how can incorporating these strategies work together to improve visibility and search results? What are we kind of what's the tactical side of this?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah. So like we've seen with AI advancements becoming more and more prevalent as we go on, there are of course more ways now for your business to be seen. So for instance, instead of only having one way to rank invisibility like before when we had SEO and really had to hone in on all those SEO tactics, you now have multiple ways. So like I said, those search results, those AI overviews, the AI generated responses, there's more places for people to find your business online. So with using those strategies with SEO, AEO, and GEO, each layer of those builds signals upon the other that uses values such as authority, structure, and overall relevance. So by being able to rank across all three of those, it does give your business more authority overall in the AI landscape because you're owning more space and in turn that helps improve your visibility on search.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, it's interesting because we've gone from thinking just about keywords and these little three to four word phrases. We almost have to have these conversations in our heads and go, gee, what would someone have be having a conversation about around our topic that would then we still have to think about persuading them and driving them to conversion and buying from us. So it's really been fun I would say, but it's also been a challenge to think about all those places that you're saying you could possibly show up in search. And so I guess it's fun. I mean it's fun for me, but I kinda geek out on this stuff.

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, I think it's really changing the motive from more data driven to actually more user intent driven and really understanding your target audience and what they're searching.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Yeah. We, in our episode with Jim, I was talking to him about prompts versus keywords and like trying to somehow get in the head of people that would be searching, which is almost impossible. But when you think about it, it's so much easier to focus on three to four word keyword than it is like, you know, tons of lines of prompts. But it that's what makes our job a lot of fun and also why our clients lean on us so much. So Lauren, let's pop over to you. How would a marketer know if their SEO, AEO, and GEO marketing strategies are actually successful?

Lauren Leroux 
Yeah, so because search has evolved so much, looking at just basic website traffic is not really enough anymore. It's also not the best way to understand this user search behavior. So while using platforms like GA4 is still unnegotiable due to the channel information being provided, finding additional ways to measure those zero-click searches matter just as much. So using platforms like Google Search Console and SEMrush provide a look into some of the keyword and phrase rankings as well as their positioning. You can also use platforms such as SEMrush that are introducing more AI-driven data as it continues to evolve. These platforms really help provide insight into intent, queries, and just AI visibility overall. And because we can't just look at these click clicks, metrics and impression share as well as brand mentions are also used a lot. So, lastly, due to the limited tracking capabilities, do doing your own testing is really gonna be some of your best options right now. So using platforms like ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity and actually typing in firsthand what you think your customers or your users may be looking for is the best way to see where your brand is views viewed and what type of queries you're coming up for.

Mark Vandegrift 
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we are looking at the latest Google Marketing Live, and it looks like more and more people are searching using these longer prompts that we talked about. I think it they said AI searches are three times longer than regular searches. And then brainstorm searches, I think they're called, are growing 30% faster than just your typical, you know, three four word search. So, how can marketers ensure that the strategies that we're talking about are kind of adapting or evolving with this?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, so as you had mentioned, users are switching from those shorter searches to longer, more conversational ones. So what this means for marketers is that there does need to be a switch from short tail focus to a long tail keyword focus that are more intent driven. So the content overall needs to be more exploratory. So this allows the AI models to then expand upon those certain topics within conversations while still having your brand stay top of mind. With this does come more of an importance of overall topical authority, not just page level optimization. So what this means is instead of focusing on just one specific query or keyword, your website and your business are able to become a reference point on an entire topic. So that allows those AI models to potentially cite your brand across many related conversational prompts.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay, so I think what people are gonna ask, well, do I start still write to a keyword? So what are we what are we saying to clients right now about that?

Alyssa Laubacher
I would still say to keep a keyword in mind, but maybe branch more off to a topical approach. So when you're writing the content, you want to still sculpt a page to a keyword in mind, but keep the content in the forefront when you're writing and make sure that it all connects into potential topics that others would search for because Google's going to take all of that into consideration, not just necessarily your keyword.

Mark Vandegrift 
So it's still like our English teacher in high school told us, pick a topic, write to it, make sure everything credentials to it, don't get off focus. And if you do have another topic, write another article or write another web page, right?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, it's better to keep separate because one that gives you more pages to rank for than too, but it also expands your knowledge across that topic on other pages as well.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay, good. Well, Lauren, we were talking the other day about a bunch of mistakes that we've seen because this whole AEO and GEO thing that's been added is kind of making their head implode and they don't really, they don't really understand the basics of it. So can you share a little bit about some of the common things to avoid or some of the common mistakes that we've seen when marketers are writing content yet trying to I guess work within this new paradigm?

Lauren Leroux 
Sure. So some of the biggest mistakes marketers can make is viewing SEO, AEO, and GEO as completely separate entities. Now, while they're all reaching different parts of the SERP, they are intertwined with one another and they can help visibility overall if they work closely together. Another mistake is fighting for the clicks. As mentioned earlier, some of these searches are not even resulting in a click, and that's not even the intent of the user. because the user wants to know everything now. And in a time where search is based upon visibility, sacrificing the click to show up in an AI overview is almost the way to go. Because at the end of the day, this prime positioning will likely lead to an action in the future. And then my last thing I would say is to avoid using AI to write content. Sure, platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, any of those are very efficient in creating something that would normally take hours. But at the end of the day, these results are fully composed of unoriginal content. And while it's ironic that these platforms produce this content, their bots do not like it. So if nothing else, you should write your own content, even if it takes you longer than five minutes.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, I think some people would go, five minutes. If I could write an article in five minutes, I wouldn't use AI. 

Lauren Leroux 
Sure.

Mark Vandegrift 
I think maybe five hours would be more like it. But you know, we are seeing a lot of AI slop. I mentioned on the episode with Jim, I think it's four or five clients now that we've had come aboard because their former agency told them to go write their entire website and all their blogs with AI. And while I'm sure that was quick. One, I don't know how the agency could even charge for that because all you're doing is putting a prompt into AI. But these clients ended up disappearing from Google search and AI search and everything. And they were in complete panic when they came to us. And of course, the first thing when they tell us, they don't say, hey, we wrote our our website and our articles in AI. They're like, Hey, we've disappeared from the search engines. What are we doing wrong? And so of course we know the likely answer is they went and they wrote everything in AI. And it takes us like five minutes literally to go in and scan a few of the pages and see a hundred percent of the content was written by AI. So yeah, that is if I had to pick one, that's the number one mistake that we're seeing from clients and folks out there that just think, well, I'll just put it in AI and it'll do everything for me. Yeah. But just remember the consequences. I think the other thing that you brought up too about not focusing on the click, there are a lot of clients that are worried that because they don't get a click anymore, they're somehow failing. And I think what we have to help them understand is that in for most of our clients, to buy from them means they have to engage with them. So while some people may not click as much as they used to. Most of our clients are going to see a click when someone's ready to transact business with them. Cause we don't have a ton of clients where it's like Ashley Furniture where you can just buy right through Google now, which they call it. I think there's it's not Google Merchant, but it's Google EIN or something like that. But anyhow, you can buy directly through Google. There are very, very few companies right now that can do that. And when it's B2B, I'm not going to go buy like a dust control solution by clicking on a prompt in Google that says, buy this dust control solution. That's just not the way clients or the way that particular client works. And really for most businesses, they don't work that way. So if you're worried about, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose clicks and I'm not going to be able to get business anymore don't freak out. We're not at some kind of AI Armageddon that way at this point. So anyhow, let me ask about something kind of totally off topic well not off topic, but off source. Reddit is becoming very popular now. And Alyssa, I think you and I have talked a bit about it, but there's conversation in a Reddit thread over how some people seem to be getting confused over these terms. And you know, Reddit's great and it's coming high in search results, but I'm finding a lot of the answers are pretty low quality. It'll be interesting to see if it changes soon. So let's correct the Reddit crowd and explain how it's not a versus situation, it's a both and situation. How are GEO and SEO and AEO working together?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, it can be easy to treat them as if they are competing against each other, especially when we've had SEO for so many years. It's been around for quite some time. And then here comes AEO and GEO being the shiny new toy in a way. But as I had mentioned earlier, they do all draw from the same well of signals that are trying to answer the same question for a business. Is that business's content trustworthy? Is it relevant? And is it clear? Some of the things like backlinks and domain authority are still a major signal overall that's used when those AI models decide what to cite for AEO, for instance. And then the clear direct answers that you get from AEO are then what help those LLMs extract content to then use in conversational instances for GEO. So they are still all connected, it's not really pitting them against each other. And it also touches on the fact that the user journey does span across all three areas, like we've talked about with not going back to focus on just the click. They're using a lot of it for research and make making sure that your brand is there at the forefront when they're doing their research is going to be the changing point when they go to make a decision or not. And most of the time when the user is utilizing these areas, it does occur all in one session. So just being present across all three just helps your brand stay visible, like I'd mentioned earlier throughout the entire interaction across the search landscape.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. And to clarify for some of our listeners, you used LLMs. That's large language models. That's just big data. Think of it as all the algorithms and all the data, everything being thrown together. So just to clarify for our listeners. So Lauren, let's start with you and then we'll finish up with Alyssa. If you had one piece of advice to give marketers that are new to AI search, what would that be?

Lauren Leroux 
Well, I think we gave a lot of good advice to our listeners today, but I would say one of the biggest takeaways with SEO, AEO, and GEO is the saying, slow and steady wins the race. While the implementation of these strategies seems a little bit daunting, every piece can be done one step at a time. And the more you continue to implement these things correctly and consistently, the more the bots will recognize your brand as a credible source. And ranking and search doesn't necessarily happen overnight from an organic standpoint. But implementing these things the right way now will lead to much success in the future.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay. Alyssa ask you the same question, one piece of advice to give our listeners.

Alyssa Laubacher
I would kind of piggyback off of Lauren's and say when you are going through and making adjustments to any of your content on your site, I wouldn't change everything all at once. I would do it in a way where you progressively update to make sure that you're ranking because if you do everything at once, you're gonna shock the system, so either way, it's not gonna help. So you wanna stay consistent. Slowly upgrade all of your content so that it ranks well in AI. Don't do it all at once and shock the system.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Yeah, and I guess my piece of advice would be keep adding unique content. That is something that even during our last 20 years of SEO has always been kind of our uphill battle with clients to say you have a unique point of view. And even if you can't write it, allow us to get inside your brains with just some questions so we can draw it down and keep adding to it. Because at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is add to a footprint and the bigger that footprint, the more likely someone's gonna land in that footprint. So that would be my piece of advice is content, content, content, but not AI slop, unique, differentiated, human-written content. And then you'll find how you're winning the day. We're having so much success with clients right now, it's pretty amazing that they're all like, what should we do with this stuff? And all now they're getting leads through AEO and GEO. And they go, okay. So the SEO work you did over the last 10, 15 years is still working for this. And the answer is absolutely. In fact, we're seeing it rise above all the other competitors that just did SEO tricks and black hat practices because of the conversational tone that we write with. And addressing true business challenges and solutions. So it's all good. Well, thanks, Alyssa. Thanks, Lauren, for joining us today. It's good to see you guys again on the Brand Shorthand podcast. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us. Please like, share with a friend, subscribe, subscribe, and subscribe. Hit that thumbs up button and hit the subscribe button. And until next time, have an amazing day.