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Local SEO Unlocked
Local SEO Unlocked is your go-to podcast for mastering the art of local search dominance. Each episode dives deep into the latest strategies, expert insights, and actionable tips to help businesses rank higher in local search results, attract more customers, and maximize their online visibility. Whether you're a business owner, marketer, or SEO pro, this show will equip you with the tools you need to unlock the full potential of Local SEO and stay ahead of the competition.
Local SEO Unlocked
Invisible Online? GEO Is Your New Survival Strategy
The digital landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. Millions of online searches now end without a single click as AI-generated answers satisfy users' needs instantly. For brands and marketers, this shift represents both an existential challenge and a remarkable opportunity.
Welcome to the age of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) – where being visible online means being cited directly by AI systems rather than simply ranking well in search results. With 58% of US searches resulting in zero clicks and 42% of AI users relying on platforms like ChatGPT for product discovery, traditional SEO strategies alone no longer guarantee digital visibility.
Drawing on expert insights from Don Phelps, a pioneer in this emerging field, we explore the practical strategies that enable content to thrive in AI-first environments. From structuring content for optimal AI comprehension (clear HTML hierarchy, Q&A formats, conversational language) to building trust signals that convince AI of your authority (properly tagged quotations, statistics, credible citations), we break down the technical and strategic elements of successful GEO implementation. You'll discover why schema markup matters more than ever, how off-page signals influence AI trust, and what fundamental shifts in content strategy can position your brand as the authoritative voice in AI-generated answers.
As we look toward a future of multimodal AI that processes text, images, video, and audio simultaneously, one thing becomes clear: GEO isn't just another marketing tactic – it's a complete mindset shift that will determine which brands thrive and which fade into digital obscurity in the coming years. The question isn't whether you'll optimize for AI, but how effectively you'll do it. What steps will you take today to ensure your content becomes the trusted source for the next generation of answers?
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Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we're really plunging headfirst into something big. It's well. It's fundamentally reshaping how we all get information online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We're talking about generative engine optimization GEO.
Speaker 1:Exactly GEO. And you know, think about it, you search for something and instead of just links, boom. The AI gives you the perfect answer.
Speaker 2:And maybe it cites your brand directly. That's the goal.
Speaker 1:That's the new reality we're diving into. So this deep dive, it's all about understanding what geo actually is, why it's suddenly so critical for you know online visibility and, really importantly, how you can make sure your content gets seen, gets used by these new AI systems. Right, we've pulled together a lot of expert insights for this. Practical, practical guides too. We're featuring quite a bit from Don Phelps.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Don Phelps, a real veteran in SEO and now a leader in this AI-driven search space.
Speaker 1:For sure His research, his practical work on GEO strategies. It's really helping brands stay visible when AI answers are becoming, well, the main way people find stuff.
Speaker 2:It's a massive shift.
Speaker 1:So our mission today? Basically give you a shortcut to understanding this huge move from traditional SEO to GEO, so you can adapt, you know, thrive in this AI first world.
Speaker 2:And what's truly fascinating here, I think, is that we're talking about a complete paradigm shift, like a whole new way of thinking. It's not just about ranking and search results anymore. It's about actually being the answer that the AI delivers.
Speaker 1:Being the answer. That's a really powerful way to put it. So okay, let's tackle the big question first. Why GEO? Now, what's actually changed from good old SEO?
Speaker 2:Well, traditional SEO, the stuff we've been doing for years that was all about getting visibility in the SRPs, the search engine results pages.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Keywords links Exactly Keywords links, trying to rank high so people click through to your website. Simple enough, right? But GEO targets something totally different. It's about getting your content cited or summarized or just surfaced directly in those AI answers you know from Google's AI overviews chat, gpt, bing, copilot, things like that.
Speaker 1:Got it. So less about the click, more about being used in the answer.
Speaker 2:Precisely, and Don Phelps's core insight here is just critical. He points out that millions, literally millions of searches. They don't end in a click anymore. Instead, people just get the AI response and they're done so. If your content isn't cited or used there, you're basically invisible where decisions are actually being made now hmm, it's like the difference between being listed in the bibliography versus being quoted directly in the papers.
Speaker 1:Summary that's a great analogy and that shift from click, to quote. Wow the data. The data really backed it up. Our sources show like 58% of US searches zero clicks. Now 58%.
Speaker 2:That's staggering.
Speaker 1:It really is. More than half the time people get what they need without visiting a single website. And it's not just that users are getting answers this way 60% of users now expect AI results.
Speaker 2:They expect it. It's becoming the norm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and get this 42% of AI users rely on things like chat, gpt for product discovery. That's huge for businesses.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we're seeing the impact already. Organic traffic is down, sometimes as much as 25% for certain brands, just because AI summaries are replacing those traditional blue links 25%, that's a serious hit. It is, and the implication is pretty stark Brands that don't adapt, they risk just vanishing, becoming invisible online.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Don Phelps puts it bluntly. He says we're not just optimizing for search engines anymore, we're optimizing for the systems that summarize the internet.
Speaker 1:Summarize the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he adds if we're not present in those summaries, we don't exist. In the new search paradigm, the AI is essentially the new home page for a huge chunk of searches.
Speaker 1:OK, so for you listening, what does this all mean? It means you've got to shift your content strategy. You need to ensure your brand becomes the source gets cited by AI, even if people never click your link.
Speaker 2:Because that kind of placement being cited by the AI, it builds trust authority brand recall probably faster than any old link could.
Speaker 1:It's about becoming that trusted voice inside the machine.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Okay, the why is crystal clear. Now Urgent even so, let's get practical. How do we actually do this? What are the core strategies from Don Phelps, from the other sources, to make content AI ready?
Speaker 2:All right, let's dig in. The first big piece is content, structure and readability. This is like absolutely fundamental for AI models to easily process and well reuse your information.
Speaker 1:Okay, structure and readability. Why is that so critical for an AI?
Speaker 2:Think of the AI as this super efficient librarian, maybe a bit impatient it doesn't have time to decode messy, poorly organized stuff. Oh, okay. So structured writing isn't just nice to have, it's basically a requirement for the AI to even consider your content as a reliable source. It's the difference between getting found and just being ignored.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. So what does good structure look like for AI?
Speaker 2:Well, these generative engines, they really favor clear, fluent, structured writing. Messy, overly complex stuff, it might just get skipped. So the advice is write for fluency and readability.
Speaker 1:Tools, maybe Like Grammarly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tools like Grammarly or Hemingway can help simplify your language and, crucially, follow a clean HTML hierarchy. That's like giving the AI a clear table of contents for your page.
Speaker 1:You mean like H1, H2 tags?
Speaker 2:Exactly 1H1 for the main title, then H2s for main sections, h3s for subsections and so on. Don't skip levels, like going from an H2 straight to an H4. That confuses things.
Speaker 1:Got it, keep it.
Speaker 2:Logical like going from an H2 straight to an H4. That confuses things, got it? Keep it logical, right, and break your ideas into short paragraphs Two to four lines max, ideally Much easier to digest, and definitely definitely avoid keyword stuffing. Ai is way past that.
Speaker 1:Okay, short paragraphs, no stuffing, what else?
Speaker 2:AI-optimized content often works really well in a Q&A format or an answer-first format Directly answer common questions people ask.
Speaker 1:Like an FAQ section.
Speaker 2:Precisely Don Phelps' research actually shows a really strong link between well-structured FAQs and getting included more often in things like Google's AI overviews.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And finally write in natural conversational language Mirror how real people talk and ask questions. Use those longer, more conversational keywords people actually type or speak.
Speaker 1:That makes total sense. The AI is trying to sound human, so our content should probably meet it halfway right.
Speaker 2:Exactly You're trying to make it easy for the AI to understand and to repurpose naturally.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we make it easy to understand, but how do we convince the AI that our content is actually trustworthy? How does it decide what to believe?
Speaker 2:Ah, that's the next crucial piece Building trust and authority. It's huge AI models. They really value factual accuracy and credible sources.
Speaker 1:So EEAT again experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Eeat is maybe even more important for GEO than it was for traditional SEO. The AI acts like a super meticulous fact checker.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how do we signal that trustworthiness?
Speaker 2:For starters, including quotations and statistics. This is interesting.
Speaker 1:The source material suggests this alone can boost performance by up to 40%.
Speaker 2:40%, wow just from quotes and stats. Yeah, it seems so. It's not just about what you say, but how you back it up, how you prove it to the AI.
Speaker 1:So how do we format those? Does it matter?
Speaker 2:It does seem to, the advice is to add source-ready quotes using specific HTML tags like block quote for longer quotes or queue for shorter inline ones.
Speaker 1:Okay, like actually tagging the quote itself.
Speaker 2:Right. For example, qai will reshape every industry within five years. Dot Q, ceo, acme, ai and use tags like strong or M for key data points to make them stand out.
Speaker 1:Make the numbers pop for the AI.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Numbers add weight, make it feel factually grounded. Especially important in fields like law, finance, health. You get the idea Like, according to the WHO, strong over 70% of the global population, strong will live in urban areas by 2050.
Speaker 1:Ah, I see. Using the tags isn't just visual, it's semantic. It tells the AI this bit is important data, or this is a direct quote.
Speaker 2:You got it. It's like giving the AI clear labels. Then they're citing reliable sources. This is fundamental. Ges prefer content that links out to credible places.
Speaker 1:Like government sites Studies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, government sites, academic studies, reputable publishers, use standard links or maybe the site tags specifically for citations, like according to WHO, 70% of people will live in cities by 2050. And maybe link WHO to their official site.
Speaker 1:Okay, makes sense. What about authority signals on the page itself?
Speaker 2:Good point. Authoritative signals, things like clear author information, published dates, timestamps for updates these all matter, plus having clear about contact and privacy policy pages Basic trust stuff, but important for AI too.
Speaker 1:And what about off-page stuff like PR?
Speaker 2:Yes, digital PR and external mentions Summarization tools often pull info from press releases. Media coverage awards your company might have won.
Speaker 1:So having a press page is actually useful for GEO.
Speaker 2:Definitely Post a press page or newsroom on your site Link out to articles where you've been featured interviews you've given. Don Phelps really emphasizes building that brand credibility offsite too. How often your brand is cited elsewhere seems to be a strong signal for inclusion in AI answers.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. So it's about making it easy for the AI to understand us, easy for it to trust us, almost like building a case providing evidence for the machine.
Speaker 2:That's a really good way to think about it. Evidence-based content.
Speaker 1:But OK, even the best, most trustworthy content, it's useless if the AI can't technically get to it right. So what about the technical side, the nuts and bolts?
Speaker 2:Right, you need solid technical foundations. It's all about making sure AI can technically access and efficiently process your content.
Speaker 1:First up.
Speaker 2:Structured data, also known as schemaorg markup. This one sounds technical, but it's super important.
Speaker 1:Beema. Okay, break that down.
Speaker 2:Think of it like adding hidden labels to your content that explicitly tell the AI what things are Not just words, but concepts. Is this an article, a product, a person? An FAQ section?
Speaker 1:Ah, like metadata for the AI.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah. Generative engines use this structured data to grasp the context and pull out facts more accurately. So you'd use schemaorg tags for article, person, organization, faq page, how-to product, whatever fits your content. And how do you add that? Usually using a format called JSON-LD. It's a standardized way to embed these labels on your page, and definitely use Google's rich results test tool to make sure you've set it up correctly.
Speaker 1:Okay, so schema first, what's next?
Speaker 2:Optimize meta descriptions and titles. These are still crucial. They're like the AI's first impression, helping it quickly understand your page's main point or intent.
Speaker 1:So write good titles and descriptions still matters.
Speaker 2:Still matters. You can even use AI tools like ChatGPT to help draft unique, concise meta descriptions, maybe 150, 160 characters, that really nail the key value. Make sure your title tag, your meta name description tag, are solid and open graph tags to ogtitle. Ogdescription for social sharing appearance MELANIE.
Speaker 1:WARRICK Got it. What else on the technical checklist?
Speaker 2:MARK MIRCHANDANI Page speed and core web vitals. Speed matters a lot.
Speaker 1:MELANIE WARRICK why, for AI, does it get impatient too?
Speaker 2:Huh, maybe, but seriously, fast loading content is favored AI systems, just like us, prioritize good user experience. Key things to watch are first contentful paint how fast stuff appears, largest contentful paint, how fast the main thing loads. And cumulative layout shift. Does the page jump around annoyingly? Yeah, Faster, more stable pages, signal quality.
Speaker 1:Okay, speed. What else Quick hits?
Speaker 2:All right, quick list Canonical URLs tell the AI which page is the main one if you have similar content. Avoids duplicate issues. Https, secure connection. It's a basic trust signal now, non-negotiable, really Right. Mobile friendly, responsive design. Critical Google uses mobile first indexing, meaning it looks at your mobile site first. If it's bad on mobile, ai might ignore it too. Rick says alt text on all your images Describe what's in the image. Good for accessibility. Traditional SEO and for these newer multimodal AIs that can understand images Good point, multimodal. And finally, internal linking Linking related pages together on your own site helps AI understand your topic. Clusters how your content connects and make sure it can find all your valuable deeper content. Builds a map for the AI.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, that's a comprehensive list. It really covers a lot, from content structure to deep technical details, which brings up a big question how does all this GEO stuff fit with what we already know about traditional SEO? Are we throwing SEO out? Is GEO replacing it, or what's the relationship?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and a really important clarification. No, GEO absolutely does not replace traditional SEO. It builds on it.
Speaker 1:Builds on it. How so?
Speaker 2:Think of it like this Traditional SEO is mostly about discoverability making sure search engines and now large language models can actually find your content in the vast ocean of the Internet.
Speaker 1:Okay, SEO gets you found.
Speaker 2:Right. Geo is about selection Once your content is found. Geo is about making sure the AI engine chooses your content, trusts it and cites it as the authoritative answer. Discoverability first, then selection.
Speaker 1:Ah okay. Seo opens the door. Geo convinces the AI to quote you.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to put it. Seo opens the door. Geo convinces the AI, to quote you. That's a good way to put it. Don Phelps' research actually breaks down how these AI engines process content, which helps see the difference.
Speaker 1:Okay, what are the steps?
Speaker 2:First, crawling and parsing, basic technical accessibility. If a crawler can't get to your page, ai won't either. That's classic SEO territory.
Speaker 1:Step one be accessible.
Speaker 2:Step two ranking and relevance. Things like authority, e-e-a-t freshness they influence whether your content is even considered relevant enough. Again, overlaps heavily with SEO principles.
Speaker 1:Okay, relevance and authority.
Speaker 2:Step three, summarization, and here's where GEO really kicks in. The AI isn't just linking, it's synthesizing an answer, creating new text based on your content.
Speaker 1:It's actively using the information.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And step four, presentation. The AI presents the answer in natural language, you know, without even showing the source link prominently up front.
Speaker 1:Right, you just get the answer.
Speaker 2:So this whole process, especially steps three and four, demands content that's not just keyword rich, but semantically rich, fact dense uses that structured data we talked about, speaks in natural language and is also visible on platforms where LLMs learn and cross-reference info. So, yeah, your website, but also maybe places like Reddit, quora, trusted news sites, if your brand gets mentioned there credibly.
Speaker 1:It's really fascinating how much it boiled down to the AI understanding, meaning and trustworthiness. Isn't it Not just matching keywords? It feels much more sophisticated.
Speaker 2:It absolutely is. It's a shift from optimizing for query strings to optimizing for comprehension and synthesis.
Speaker 1:So, looking ahead, where does this go? What's the future of GEO, according to Don Phelps and others?
Speaker 2:Well, the prediction is that GDO will keep evolving rapidly. One big area is multimodal optimization.
Speaker 1:Multimodal meaning beyond just text.
Speaker 2:Exactly AI pulling answers from your voice content, your videos, your images alongside your text. Imagine asking a question and the AI answers by, like describing a key part of your infographic or playing a relevant clip from your podcast.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, that changes things.
Speaker 2:Big time. We should also anticipate hyper-personalized AI answers tailored specifically to the user's immediate context, their history, maybe even their location.
Speaker 1:Creepy, but probably useful.
Speaker 2:Ah, potentially both. Yeah, potentially both. And deeper integration with things like augmented reality, virtual reality, search journeys starting and ending entirely within an AI model, maybe without even looking at a screen.
Speaker 1:So this isn't a set it and forget it kind of optimization. It's an ongoing journey, isn't it? Constant adaptation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's a key takeaway from Don Phelps. He really stresses GEO isn't a checklist, it's a mindset shift.
Speaker 1:A mindset shift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it means constantly updating your strategies, trying to understand how machines are interpreting your brand and your content, and focusing on creating content that genuinely answers questions clearly and authoritatively, not just content that tries to rank for keywords. It's about being helpful, concise, trustworthy.
Speaker 1:That feels like a good place to start wrapping up. The core message today seems incredibly clear Generative engine optimization, GEO. It's not just a buzzword. It's fundamental to staying relevant now, in the age of AI. It's about making sure your voice, your expertise is heard and recognized, even as the digital landscape shifts under our feet. This isn't just some passing trend. It really feels like the new operating system for our feet. This isn't just some passing trend. It really feels like the new operating system for online visibility.
Speaker 2:Well said.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining us on this deep dive today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. And maybe just one final thought to leave everyone with, please. With generative search becoming so central, the question really isn't if you'll optimize for AI anymore. The question is how well you'll do it. So what steps will you take, starting now, to make sure your content becomes the source for that next generation of answers?