65: The Truth About AI Search (Spoiler: It’s Still Just SEO)

Hello, and welcome to a new episode. I know it’s in the middle of summer, and we have been on hiatus, but I had a topic that was really burning a hole in my pocket, or a hole in my brain to come in and do a solo episode, for you guys because I really wanted to pass along this information. So Allison is still traveling with her kiddos and everything, so you just get me, Melissa, here to talk to you. And what is today’s topic? Today’s topic is that SEO is not dead, you guys.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen that headline on my newsfeed. I mean, to be honest with you, I haven’t seen that headline on my newsfeed for years, but the latest, you know, murderer of SEO is apparently AI or as they like to call it, AIO, AI optimization, I guess. I was gonna say what? Artificial intelligence optimization? So AIO is the new buzzword.

SEO is dead is what everyone is saying. But you know what, guys? I’m I’m gonna give it to you straight because I keep seeing ads for courses and webinars and people trying to sell you a new course on how to get your website found in AI search results, and I’m just gonna go ahead and and dispel the myth here. The secret to being found on AI platforms, it’s the same secret I’ve been using for, you know, fifteen years. It’s called SEO, guys.

SEO is not dead. Okay? It’s so much more important than ever, actually, because, you know, AI is just giving us more reasons to make sure our SEO game is strong because now it’s giving us another place to show up. So the SEO that I have done for years and years is getting me to show up not only in Google searches, but now in AI searches. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that.

So here’s the thing. You know? AI platforms and stuff, they have to pull content from somewhere. And guess where they’re pulling content from, you guys? They’re pulling it from search engines.

They are pulling it from, Google. They’re pulling it from Bing. You know, they’re pulling content from places where, you know, sites are already ranking, you know, that they’re well optimized and stuff. So that means if you’re not showing up on Google, you’re probably not gonna show up on AI searches. So you really wanna focus on making sure that your website has all the information available so that you can show up on Google and you can show up in AI searches.

You know, there’s still AI is looking at the same signals that Google has been using for years. They’re just really sophisticated. And what I find is it used to be, you know well, it still is kinda, but when when people go out to Google, you know, they might type in Charlottesville photographer. They’re just gonna be really specific about this is the search term I’m looking for versus when they go over to ChatGPT or Claude or one of the other search engines, it’s more of a conversation. So the information that they’re giving could be a little bit more nuanced.

And I actually just did this test, guys. I pulled up ChatGPT. I was not logged into it. I actually use Claude for most of my stuff. So ChatGPT doesn’t have a whole lot from me on my business, but I didn’t log in.

So kind of a I guess we’ll call it an incognito ChatGPT. I don’t know. But I I I treated it like I would have a conversation because that’s how people are using it. So I just said, hey. I would like to book a newborn session.

I don’t want, one of those post baby sessions. I want someone to come to my home. I said I want it to be more casual at home session, and I live near Charlottesville. What photographers do you recommend? So I just hit on the things a client would hit on.

I’m like, what are they looking for? And y’all guess who was the first result? It was me. And I have not done anything that is AI, optimizations on my website. I have done SEO optimizations for many, many years, so I show up in Google number one, and now I show up in AI number one.

And it’s not just me, guys. I have clients who have gone through our group coaching. I that have said, hey. I’m starting to get inquiries that actually list the lead source as ChatGPT. And it’s because they’ve worked on their website, they’re ranking well on Google, and now they’re showing up in AI searches.

So you don’t have to learn a whole new ballgame. It’s still the same ballgame, but they’re just trying people are trying to rebrand it so they can take your money. And I want you to save your money and put it for good use, and I don’t want you to worry about having to learn a whole new system when the system that is currently out there is what you should be focusing on and everything. You know? So we’ll start with just going through a real quick overview of what are some of these pillars that are gonna, you know, feed your SEO and that are eventually gonna feed AI.

You know? You still need to do keyword research. You still need to mention your locations in your area and things like that. But I think the add on to that, I would say, is, you know, if your home page is, like for me, Charlottesville photographer, I really need to make sure that all of those so that gets me found on Google. You know, I put that all over the place.

But as I talked about in chat g p in my chat g p t thing, I was really specific about, you know, I want somebody to come to my home. I wanna have a casual session. You know, I don’t want post baby. So if those things aren’t on my website, if I am not describing my ideal client’s type of session, you know, in the copy on my website, then I might not get found on AI searches. So AI searches let our clients, like, really dig deeper, you know.

So if that way, maybe they do want post baby, but when they go out to Google, the whole first page is is lifestyle newborn sessions, but they really wanna have a baby in a basket. You know, they can talk to ChatGPT about that, and ChatGPT may actually dig in, you know, two or three pages into Google, find some of the people who are are further back. But because it’s specific where they say, I want a post baby session, then ChatGPT is going through those websites and saying, well, this one mentions post baby versus my website specifically says, I don’t do post baby. And so that it’s that attract and repel. So just think about that.

Yes. You want keyword research. You wanna have your keyword on your page. That’s gonna help you get found on Google. But you also wanna make sure that you’re including anything your ideal client is looking for in your session that you offer.

You gotta talk about it. If you do hair and makeup, if you pamper your clients, if you have a client wardrobe, you have to talk about that information on your website. If if your clients can’t find it, then Google and AI aren’t gonna find it. Okay. So the next one, on page SEO.

So just like I say all the time, you’ve gotta have your keyword in the right spots. You really need to we just talked about too. We you need to talk about what you’re offering. So you wanna make sure that you’re including all of those keywords in the right areas. So here’s the thing.

If you don’t say, you know, that you are a, let’s say, Richmond newborn photographer, Google and AI aren’t gonna be able to figure that out either. So you’ve gotta be really clear in making sure that is in there. You know, I also would say go through and make sure your header structure makes sense so that Google can read your page. If Google can read your page properly, AI is gonna read it properly. And AI really loves a well laid out website, you know, with your headers being correct, hitting all of the elements.

You wanna make sure everything’s in there, bullet points if you’ve got them, that kind of stuff. But really look at your websites. If you do not have that much copy on your homepage, and I’m talking I see photographers all the time with 300, 400 words of copy on their homepage. That’s not enough. You’re gonna wanna beef that up, and you’re especially gonna wanna beef it up when you think about the conversations your clients are having with Google’s with, ChatGPT or Claude or AI.

It’s gonna be much more in-depth than just searching for my location newborn photographer. You know, they really, at that point, wanna find very specific types of people. It could be something where they want hair and makeup and client wardrobe, but they want it at their house. So if you offer that, you’ve got to talk about that. Okay.

So the third, kind of pillar that we’ll talk about is off page SEO. And this is one that I think most photographers don’t even make it to, or they kinda skip. I think that’s probably more so what it is, is they just end up skipping pillar three. And that is making sure that your website is listed online. I always tell people, you know, getting your website listed in directories, getting it listed in, like, Google business profile, Bing, some of the other things, your local, Chamber of Commerce or your local business directories in your area, that all helps build your website reputation.

It’s really putting your name out there so that Google can see your business name in multiple places, and it just helps establish, like, oh, they’re credible. It’s kinda that thing. If you find a mention of a business one time in one place and you can’t find it anywhere else, you’re probably gonna go, oh, that doesn’t seem legit. Like, if I can’t find them listed in any other places, then they’re probably not a real business. So you need to make sure that your business is listed in other places.

So you wanna make sure you’re getting backlinks. You wanna try to get features. You wanna make sure you have your citations are all up to date. You know, if you can trade where you are guesting on someone’s blog in your area, if you’re getting featured in a magazine or things like that, anywhere that you can get those links back to your website are gonna help your your off page SEO. And it’s an area that I see a lot of photographers just kind of skipping because they don’t really know what to do and they’re overwhelmed with it.

So pillar number four, always my favorite. You guys probably are tired of hearing me talk about it, and it is blogging. And honestly, this is where it gets really interesting. You know, AI platforms really love helpful education content, something that they can reference, you know, when people are searching for those FAQ based stuff. So when you write about what to wear for family photos or prepping for your newborn session, you know, that’s gonna help establish to Google and to AI that you are an expert in this topic.

And you are starting to see more where I know AI tends to rip us all off. I I’m I understand that. I’m annoyed by it too. My clicks are down. My impressions are way up.

Like, I’m showing up in way more searches, but the clicks to my website are down. But what I’m finding is the people who do click then on my website are way more targeted. Like, they are very interested in my content. So it kinda becomes one of those things where the click feels richer than it was before. So even though I’m getting less clicks, the ones that are clicking are, a better fit and that kinda thing.

So keep that in mind that you may notice that your, that your your impressions are up, your clicks are down, be and it does definitely go back to AI, but you are seeing where it’s cited and stuff. And I think too, I’m finding myself, I will actually click on the full article from a person even though AI will give me the highlights because sometimes I don’t know if it’s people talk about hallucinating or it’s just wrong, especially for me if I am having, like, a a problem with a software. And I’m trying to research it, and I’m asking and I’ve learned, yeah, if you ask Claude and chat g b t, it can be helpful to, like, walk you through some steps. But sometimes it’ll say, like, oh, go click on this button. I’m like, I don’t have that button.

And so then I realized it’s, like, hallucinated a step. So then I’m looking at the actual where it’s pulling from, and I’ll go directly to those articles where a human being will show me, you know, screen grabs and tell me, yes. You wanna click over here because that button they mentioned doesn’t exist. So you wanna really focus so bringing this back to blogging for you guys, you really wanna make sure you have those blog posts out there. You wanna be blogging for FAQ type stuff.

You wanna blog for your local area, and you really wanna have that helpful content, that your clients are gonna are gonna find. And then this is actually gonna lead into the next thing that is kind of new. So keep in mind with blogging and everything, this is something we have, created for our blogging club members. I’m definitely not against AI, y’all. I love AI for helping me out with things.

And when it comes to blogging, we added a whole bunch of new AI tools, to the blogging club, training and tools and stuff like that. We’ve got people who are putting out blog posts in an hour, two hours kind of thing with photos and all their marketing. So my favorite tool, AI tool in the blogging club is where we’ll take a week of your or we’ll take your blog post and turn it into a week’s worth of marketing. So, it’s pulling all the information from your blog post and creating social media captions and stuff like that. And I’ve always had that as kind of like, hey, this is great for just making your life easier, making marketing easier because I think I’ve talked about this before.

I’m not, like, the biggest Instagram person. We ended up kinda dropping Instagram recently because I was like, I’d rather focus on blogging because I know blog posts last for years and Instagram posts last for days kind of thing. Well, that is the one thing I will say that has been changing in the last, in the last year, and this is kind of a social media twist. Your social media posts are now getting indexed by search engines, and I did verify this with two other sources to make sure. I don’t necessarily know that we’re seeing them come up into search results quite yet, but they are getting indexed.

Social so AI, I would assume, is gonna see that also. And what that means is your social media posts just got a longer lifespan. So if your social media posts can start appearing in searches and whether it’s AI or Google, that means that post is no longer dying after two days because you didn’t get enough engagement on Instagram. Now it could have a whole other lifespan that could be a lot longer when it shows up in Google searches or it shows up on AI searches. So though that whole one week of marketing thing now, now I’m more interested because now it’s got some longevity behind it.

So now we’re helping our clients get not only their blog post indexed by Google, but the social media posts that can lead back to that blog post, those can get indexed too. So it really becomes you know, you need to be in all the places. And so we’re trying to make that a little bit easier for everybody because I know it can be really overwhelming. So make sure you continue to blog, and then you take that blog post and turn it into your social media, social media posts. Okay.

So, hopefully, for those of you that have been seeing anythings about, like, come by my course so you can learn how to get your website found in AI searches. Hopefully, you’ll you’ll hear this and you’ll realize, okay, hey, I don’t have to learn a whole new skill set. All of the SEO that I’ve learned over the years is not dead. It’s not out with the garbage. And trust me, as someone who teaches SEO, I’ve I’ve gotta be on the the cutting edge because if SEO goes away and let’s say this AIO was an actual thing, which I don’t feel like it is as much, if that was an actual thing, I’ve gotta pivot my business and stuff.

So I wanna make sure that I’m giving you guys the correct information. So my whole general opinion on this is that keep focusing on your SEO. Like I said, we’ve already seen this with clients where they’re showing up in AI searches. I mean, honestly, when the first little AI snippet started coming up, even for local search, when you would search, like, at one point in time, I think I searched, like, Richmond maternity photographer, and there was a little AI blurb at the top. It was before they actually started referencing the websites.

It was just a blurb of, like, who they recommended. And I looked at it one day, and it was three of my clients. And they were not necessarily on the top one, two, and three, you know, spots. They were on page one, but it was three of my clients. And I was like, there you go.

We’ve worked on their SEO, and they’re already in the AI search results. So, yeah, if you don’t know what to do with your SEO, if you’re like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have time for this. I don’t wanna learn it. Then definitely come check us out over at Picture Perfect Rankings.

We offer done for you services where we’ll come through, and we will help you we will actually do it for you on this one. We will take care of all of your SEO, your on page SEO, your keyword research. We’ll give you a plan for blogging with keywords and things like that, and get you found on Google. If you’re the type of person that’s like, you know, I actually am kinda curious about this. I would like to learn it myself in case I need to make changes later on, then you’re really gonna love our group coaching program.

So I have so many students who have come through it and their websites are getting found, and then they actually love the fact that they understand what’s going on and so they can pay attention. They probably were a little freaking out with the whole, like, well, great. I just learned all this SEO, and now it’s dead. And this way, I can tell them, nope. Their their information’s gonna keep going, and they can continue to keep ranking and growing with what they’ve learned.

And then if you just need help with blogging and you’re like, I just really need somebody to help make blogging easier, come check us out with the blogging club. We’ve got blog post templates. We’ve got AI training. We’ve got all kinds of tips and tools. There’s bonuses and master classes on just all kinds of things, SEO, that will just really help you start getting found and help you with your marketing.

Like, that’s the whole idea. I know marketing can be overwhelming, and I wanna make it simple for you. So if I can take blogging and turn that into a an easy task where you don’t feel like you’re sitting, staring at the blinky cursor trying to figure out what to write, like, that’s the goal. And so our blogging club members, rave about it that they don’t get caught with the blinky cursor anymore because they know exactly what to write and they can get it out there and start getting found. And I’ve definitely had clients who their blog posts are getting found and they’re connecting one of our clients, she, she’s connected with other vendors because the vendor found her blog post and was like, I really like what you have to say.

We wanna partner with you and send referrals your way. So even that, guys, it’s not necessarily a client. It could be a a partner, a marketing partner. So here’s the thing. You don’t have to chase the latest trends.

You know? Just focus on your SEO whether you work with us or you work on your own. But don’t stress. SEO is not dead. Alright, guys.

Till next time. Thanks so much.