#126 20 Urgent SEO Actions for the AI Summaries Era, GEO, Content & Authority

Jonny Ross

-: 00:24

Hi, welcome. We're live on LinkedIn. You might be with us on YouTube. We're also on Instagram as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 00:28

This is a special episode. I'm with my co-host, Pascal. How are you, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 00:33

And everyone should be excited for this very special edition of the Website Mastery podcast.

Jonny Ross

-: 00:46

Listen, we are live right now. I know that there's a lot of you that are joining us on LinkedIn, perhaps YouTube as well. If you're listening on the podcast, it's going to be a bit different this episode. So we're going to take some comments and questions.

Jonny Ross

-: 00:54

There'll be a lot more live today. But we don't want to spend time editing this. We just want to get it launched on the podcast. So welcome if you're listening to the replay.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:16

and Bear With Us. This is a special edition of the 90-Day Website Mastery Podcast, your trusted companion to the 90-Day Website Mastery Program and our book, Web Proud. It's our 46th episode. We're pressing pause on our usual format to bring you a timely and urgent update because the way people find and engage with websites is changing faster than ever.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:38

With the rise of AI-powered search engines like Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, traditional SEO just isn't enough. So that's why today's episode is dedicated to helping you stay visible, relevant, and competitive with 20 urgent actions that you can implement right now. So let's dive in. Pascal, tell us about what to expect today.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:03

Well, listen, thank you very much for this great introduction and mentioning my favorite AI tool, Perplexity. But listen, you and I have been tracking the evolution of AI in Search and AI Summaries. It's been part of the usual podcast series. If I may, it was mentioned quite a few times in our book, We're Proud, and actually we dedicated the final chapter on the evolution of what we call at the time, if you remember, the AI-powered website visitor.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:28

And a couple of things really that have happened recently that has made me and you wanted to do this special episode, which is the announcement, the formal announcement by Google that they're going all in on AI mode. And we're going to see some massive changes in the search experience. And as a result, we're going to see some impact on website traffic, on what people would expect from the website, and so on and so forth. And I thought it was really important to stop for a moment.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:45

You and I put some ideas together. We're going to break down our recommendation across three key sections. One would be the immediate actions, things you should be doing right now. We'll be looking at particular on-site optimization as a second segment.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:47

And the third one would be looking at off-site. And

Jonny Ross

-: 02:52

that's right. It might have been my side. You carry on. Sorry, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:54

I've got lots of

Jonny Ross

-: 02:54

tech issues today.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 03:16

On the third section, we'll be looking at off-site activities as well. Each time, we'll give you three tactics, three from Jonny, three from me, which if you do the math, that's six times three, that's 18. And because I love to round things up, we're also going to give you two bonuses. So we get just to 20, 20 actions you should be doing right now to be ready for what is coming very, very soon now.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 03:23

It's a matter of weeks, not months. of the AI summaries being the default search experience for your visitors.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:43

Listen, if you are with us right now, please do start commenting. If you've got questions, please throw them into the chat as well. We want to just hear that you, if you're here, let us know. And we want to find out what your understanding of where AI search is heading.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:52

Let me just give you, Pascal, would you mind if I just give a bit of context to what's going on here in terms of the shift of search engine optimization to AI?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 03:58

Yeah, no, before I ask you for your top three for the essentials, let's go for the context and the why.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:14

Yeah, so ultimately, SEO is changing fast. Search habits and results have completely transformed. And just to give you some idea of the timeline, I think I've got a picture here. This one here.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:40

Chat GPT was launched in November 22. which actually is quite a long time ago in tech. In May 24, Google AI overviews were visible on SERPs results on Google, and we were seeing click-through rates dropping by 34%. Come May 25, Google launch AI mode fully for the USA.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:57

This was at the conference, which you've got a nice little screenshot here, which was the IO conference. And in fact, Pascal, just tell us a tiny bit more, because I've just brought this slide up as well. This isn't being rolled out, not just on search, is it?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:30

No, so, you know, the closed, obviously, the entire conference was about AI, which became a little monotonous, I will confess, because I was looking for a more, you know, kind of different perspective. But ultimately, the claim was that if you look carefully in the right in the middle, you'll see the term AI mode, and that's going to be across mobile laptops, you're going to have glasses, but every single product that are driven by the Google Engine, if I may use that term, will have that AI power and AI overview. whether it's in a car and that kind of things.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:41

And I think for me it was just that they were so clear and they were so precise about that vision for the future that I think was important to discuss it today.

Jonny Ross

-: 05:52

Yeah. And, and, um, I've seen people are chatting already, uh, commenting, we, this was recorded. So if you just follow this link afterwards, there's, it'll be on the podcast. It'll be on, on YouTube as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:25

Uh, so similar web released a report only a few days ago that shows since the launch of Google AI in may 24, what's clusters sort of zero click search. So people going to Google. and Googling something, but perhaps getting the answer before they then click through to a website has risen from 56% in May 24 to 69% in May 25. So that's two out of three people are visiting Google's search pages and getting the answer they want before they even click through to a website.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:44

So I think traditional search is likely to be gone by, well, 2027, if not, far before. Search is no longer just Google. People are searching on Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, across all the different AI platforms as well. And the question is, is this SEO?

Jonny Ross

-: 06:54

Is it Search Engine Optimization? Is it Geo Generative Engine Optimization? Is it AEO, Answer Engine Optimization? Is it LLMO?

Jonny Ross

-: 07:22

large language model optimization. I mean, ultimately this is about being found across all the different platforms. And I think the thing to, I just want to add some context, if you don't mind, just for another couple of minutes, just to try and help everyone that's watching or listening right now, understand what's changing and how it, how this is all working. And I guess the thing to think about is that AI is acting a bit like a DJ, there's access to millions of songs.

Jonny Ross

-: 07:37

But the question is, is the DJ, is AI going to mention the song it's playing, or is it just going to play the song? And that's the key thing here. Are your brands going to be mentioned? Are you in the conversation or not?

Jonny Ross

-: 08:02

And I think the thing to think about is, you know, we used to think about keywords. So as an example, if you were looking for some CRM software, you might Google best CRM software, but AI now breaks that down into 20 plus sub queries. So it might turn it into CRMs versus spreadsheets. It might turn it into HubSpot versus pipe drive, CRM for small businesses, CRM reviews.

Jonny Ross

-: 08:24

So AI goes off and searches on all of these terms to then come up with what it believes to be the best across them all. So you might not rank very well for the best CRM software, but actually if you're ranking well for some of the other things, then you've got a higher chance of then being in the combined results. So what does this mean for content? Well, it means more comprehensive clusters of content.

Jonny Ross

-: 08:48

AI traffic is small, but it's likely to convert three times more than Google. And the other thing to think about is the new search vocabulary that we use. So in old SEO, it's things like keywords, SERPs, ranks, backlinks, traffic. Now we need to be thinking about prompts, responses, mentions, citations and visibility.

Jonny Ross

-: 09:07

So we need to change our vocab as well. The other interesting thing is that search queries back in 2020, a search query had an average of two words. So CRM software, for example. we're now seeing in 2025, an average of 23 words, 23 words.

Jonny Ross

-: 09:28

So for example, what's the best CRM for a B2B SaaS startup with 20 employees under a hundred pound a month that integrates with Slack and has a mobile app? I mean, that's, you know, that's what we want AI to be able to then go off and find out the answer for us, don't we? Can you believe 23 words now, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:54

That's rather brief because I write like such long prompts on the eye. But what is interesting, I want to kind of wrap up the intro and then ask you for your top three. We're still looking at the evolution of good SEO practices. We're still looking at good in our content marketing mindset, we're still looking at this idea of wanting to be seen and heard being helpful by your ideal customers.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:18

And what we're seeing is the evolution of the search service, not necessarily the search behaviors. So we're still going to be grounded in things that we're very comfortable with and we're very familiar with. We're just going to add to our toolkit so that we marry up to the behavior out there. Now, what came first, chicken and egg, was the AI summaries that came first, was the desire for people to have their search experience made easier or more relevant.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:35

That's going to be for another time. So we start with part number one, which is this idea of, well, things have changed and will change for quite a while. What are your top three essentials? What are your top three kind of non-negotiable actions you should be taking right now?

Jonny Ross

-: 10:59

Yeah, so I'm going to start because I'm going to go with the technical aspect today and Pascal is going to focus more on the content side of things. And so I'm going to go quite technical quite quickly, but it's to try it. It's sort of all of the best SEO practices with some extra things as well. So there's a new file that we can create.

Jonny Ross

-: 11:30

So some of you will be familiar with robots.txt and that was the file on a website that sort of sits in the back end that tells Google crawlers and Bing crawlers what it's allowed to look at. There's an experimental new file called llms.txt. Now I don't believe this is, you know, not one of these things on its own isn't going to solve everything by the way, but all of these things together is how it's going to work. So my first action would be to create an llms.txt file.

Jonny Ross

-: 11:50

Listen, you can use chat GPT to help you create this file. You can also go to, there's a LLMS text website being set up to help you understand it. But ultimately it's a bit like a signpost to the AI search engines that basically say, look, these are our best bits of content. And here's a bit about this page.

Jonny Ross

-: 12:17

And here's a bit about this page. So my first one is llms.txt and it's just setting that up and being that sort of signpost to say to the AI bots that here's our best content and this is what it's about. The next thing is to start tracking and measuring AI citations, so not just clicks but mentions. So even just using platforms yourselves, like going to chat GPT perplexity or SGE to test if your brand is being cited.

Jonny Ross

-: 12:39

So what do you think your customers would type in? Start typing these things in, having a look at what is being shown and what's not being shown. There's a tool called RightSonic. Now they've just developed a, there's a lot of emerging tools doing this, but they've just developed a tool to track your brand in AI and it's not cheap.

Jonny Ross

-: 13:13

So I think it's about $240 a month at the moment. But having been on the beta and testing it, it is seriously impressive in terms of really understanding how your brand is being used and how your competitors are being used to understand exact queries and there's some real very rich information. So depending on the size of business you are, that might be something that might be worth investing in. And the third thing is that understanding what geo is, understanding that generative engine optimization is not replacing SEO, it's expanding it.

Jonny Ross

-: 13:35

So it's about focusing on AI models as new browsers, they need structure, they need authority and clarity to use your content. So some of that's about trust, some of that's about authority. And not worrying that your organic traffic is going down, but thinking about, you know, are we being mentioned? Are we being cited?

Jonny Ross

-: 13:39

Um, and what's being said about the brand. There's three for a starter.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 13:57

Thank you very much. Great. And you know what is interesting is that it is actually inviting everybody to reflect on how we're going to measure success, how we're going to be reporting. So if you are a team leader, if you are the marketing director or the CEO, you're going to have to start to support your team in terms of they're going to have to be busier than ever before.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 14:17

But the manner in which they're going to report success to you has to change. And you're going to have to make sure that they don't feel too demoralized if on paper it looks as though the website traffic is dropping, you know, it's not the case. Can I just quickly say a quick hello to Victoria, to Andy and Norma as well, because I've spotted the names in the chat box there. So my top three around the kind of content element.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 14:48

So people will be pleased to know that for years and years and years, Johnny and I have been telling you to go long form with your content. And if you have, you're going to be very, very pleased, because right now, of course, this is all about making sure that you have what you need on those long-form pages. So to begin with, you've all seen this before on many news websites, the too-long-did-not-read section, you know, that kind of grayed-out box sometimes, Johnny, with the blip points that summarizes the key takeaways, sometimes also the reason why you should read this content or watch this video and so on.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 15:28

So creating a TLDR or key takeaways box or section just before the main body of the article, that could be a product page, that could be an about section, do those because they tend to be the little nuggets of knowledge that will be used by AI summaries. On the subject of, you know, AI summaries taking extracts from your content, go back and if already you've applied this idea of breaking down the copy into paragraph and creating white spaces and making sure that everything is in more quotable or extractable kind of format, that's going to work very well. So number two, I would say go back to your long-form content and start to break things down.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 15:44

And imagine that someone could just take one paragraph or one section and understand what you are referring to. It's almost like self-contained pockets of knowledge. And then number three, you've got to come forward. So you've got to be the named author.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:20

And importantly, you've got to make sure that you're writing your own voice and be very consistent. Because the AI summaries will actually put on the B list or C list or in the bin, anything oddly johnny that is great purely using ai so as an author as a content creator in bring forward what i call the elegant clumsiness of the written form the real way we write and we speak as opposed to the perfect way which i put it together so number three you are the voice you are the authority make sure that they are written by you put your name against that content as well. Make sure you sign off properly and so on and so forth.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:25

But they would be my top three, which ideally are simply building on what you've done already.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:52

Yeah, interestingly about mentioning your name, that's authored the content. So Google authorship, some of you might be familiar with that's coming back. So that's about having a link to the author page, the about you, the sort of any awards, any accreditations and building that trust to then semantically link that author to that content and that builds that trust. Really good points there, Pascal.

Jonny Ross

-: 17:01

Ned and Nikki and Gwen are also with us, so hi to you. Feel free to drop your questions in the comments, we'll come to them afterwards, but it's great to have you all here.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:24

Can we move on to part two then? And so these are the essentials, six of them that you can do immediately. So now that we have more time, now we have the essentials already in place, what are the on-site optimizations? So what can we do on the website itself to be essentially friendly to the AI summary and to the AI search?

Jonny Ross

-: 17:57

Yeah, so I've talked about schema for a long time, and that's about structuring content. So my first out of the next three, my first one is going to focus on structured data. So it's about using schema, which I've said for a long time, but it's about taking it even to the next level. So you can, for example, use organization schema, but you can, within that, you can use things like same as, which is, you know, this organization is the same as this official LinkedIn profile, this official Twitter account.

Jonny Ross

-: 18:13

But you can use things like known for, where you can then put, you know, known for whatever your business is. So thinking about the sort of the sector or the industry. and area served. So within that, you can either UK wide or nationwide.

Jonny Ross

-: 18:43

And I think I'll come on to the phrase UK wide and nationwide a bit later on anyway, but using schema, but taking it to a much deeper level and using different types of schema. So FAQ schema, of course, but how to schema. So that's a really good one. So coming up within your content, and I love what you were saying about the, too long, don't read part at the top, having that sort of summary that potentially AI would then use as a summary, having those bullet points right at the top as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:31

But within the content of the page, having a section, a how-to section, so perhaps you've got a question, you then, you know, step one, step two, step three, and you can mark that up using how-to schema, and AI loves that type of stuff. So my number two in this section would be thinking about using the location within your headings. So if you're just focusing on a, let's say a Yorkshire audience or a Leeds audience, You might want to be mentioning the word Leeds, mentioning the word Yorkshire, mentioning some of the towns within some of the headings. If you're nationwide or worldwide, you want to start using UK wide, nationwide, worldwide within some of the headings on the page.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:49

Now, some of this can start feeling a bit spammy. And, you know, if we go back many years, there was the sort of SEO spammy versus brand and usability and how the user feels. You know, there's no question here that it has to be focused on the user. But you have to also think of the AI engines and you have to understand how they work.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:15

And adding that UK wide and nationwide really helps them understand what's going on. Also boldening phrases as well within your content. It's nothing new from an SEO point of view, but we're seeing it make a big difference. And then the third one, would be making sure that your website is crawlable for AI systems and that the site loads quickly, that you're using proper semantic HTML, you're not hiding stuff with JavaScript.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:45

AI crawlers hate JavaScript, they hate hidden content, so it's about making sure that the structure is really rewarding for an AI bot. And lastly, making sure that your server isn't blocking the bots because Cloudflare came out only a day or two ago saying that they're going to have a default setting that they're going to block AI bots because publishers are not wanting AI to steal their content and they want to be paid for that content. So the Cloudflare is going for the default of blocking AI bots.

Jonny Ross

-: 21:07

Well, if you want to be part of the conversation, if you want your brand in there, you need to make sure that you're not blocking the AI bots. You can turn that off on Cloudflare. You need to make sure, check in with your host or your server provider and make sure that you are allowing AI bots onto your site. And right, Sonic, just very quickly, I mentioned their brand earlier for tracking mentions within AI engines.

Jonny Ross

-: 21:19

have another tool that also tracks what bots are visiting your site and when and how often and the different types of bots. So that gives you a bit of visibility as well. That's my next three, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:30

Thank you very much. I remind everybody, you know, we'll be able to give you a checklist of all the things we're sharing today. So I know you've been making notes and so on, but we also have a little handout. We'll tell you how to get hold of that in a minute.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:39

Just quickly, thank you to Teresa and LinkedIn user. They liked my elegant, clumsiness statement earlier. That's pretty much how we run the podcast anyway, isn't it? It

Jonny Ross

-: 21:40

certainly is.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:02

So in that section on site optimization, very quickly, I want to talk about the content elements. So you've got the great architecture. Thanks to Johnny. And I want to ask everybody, so when you use ChatGP to your Gemiini, Perplexity, MetaEdit and so on, have you noticed how as you go through the exchange with the AI assistant, there are then some suggestions.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:22

So you have the interaction at the bottom, you have three, four, five sometimes suggestions about the follow-up questions or the follow-up conversations you should be having. Use that to your advantage, because essentially, I think that we should all start to write our content and expand our content using that kind of AI follow-ups or AI suggestions model. So here's the thing I want people to do. Go on Google.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:47

You know, the old-fashioned way of doing things. Go on Bing. And then what you should do against the terms that would identify your services or maybe the questions that you would be answering, I want you to kind of scroll easy on the laptop, I will argue, and look for the people also ask or the people also search boxes. And usually you'll find that you have five, six different suggestions about related searches and related queries.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:19

And I want you to kind of jot them down because these are essentially the suggestion, the ideas of the content that you should be creating to supplement what you do already. So you have your star content, and then below you should be making suggestions to link to other kind of content and get people to stay longer on your website journey to begin with, but also for the AI to see that you have followed the logic that they would follow themselves, means that extracts from your website are more likely to be featured. So write with AI follow-ups in mind and seek them out.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:40

Number one, a very, very micro tactic, Johnny, but I want people to completely rethink the About Us section. I think people are far too modest to begin with. It's usually very brief, it's very succinct, and therefore lacks content, context, and so on. So I want people to imagine that they are actually being interviewed by journalists.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:14

So use Q&A format for your extended biography, so that makes it more interesting to read anyway. But because you have the Q&A journey, that creates the quotable, the extractable summary sections for AI about what you do and what you've been up to, particularly if you want to give a bit of a positive history of your career. And within that, don't hesitate, of course, within the Q&A with that journalist. And by the way, AI can be a very good journalist write the brief correctly, don't hesitate to drop the location-specific information as Johnny mentioned.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:37

And then eventually, for me, most of us by now will have quite a content-rich website. And what's going to be very, very helpful for the AI search experience and the AI summaries is for you to start to organize your content into clusters and start to bring them together into little mini hubs or mini groupings. You can use navigation for that. You can use all sorts of things.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 25:00

And John has got a great tip for you at the end of this recording. But I think for the searcher to begin with, and then for the AI summaries, to have pages about the same theme but spread across the website can become very, very complicated to understand. So can you bring it together into many hubs and many groupings on your website around the central theme or a content cluster that would be very helpful for both humans and AI.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:27

Yeah, I mean, what you're tapping into there in that last point is internal linking. So important to really help the AI engines understand those clusters really well. So making sure that all the copy that's all the pages that are within that cluster are really linking heavily to each other, using the right anchor text, etc. LinkedIn user. I'm doing a lot of backlinking at the moment to build my presence and content across different platforms.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:58

I'm going to be talking about off-site shortly. It's also worth mentioning, as Pascal said, we are going to give you a checklist. If you would like the checklist, you just need to comment on LinkedIn or on YouTube, wherever you are, or Instagram, wherever you're watching the word checklist, and we will come back to you and we'll send you the checklist. If you are following us on the podcast afterwards, just reach out onto any of our social platforms and just write the word check AI checklist and we'll find you and we'll send it to you with absolute pleasure.

Jonny Ross

-: 26:01

Shall we go to our next segment?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:30

Yes, we said ultimately this is the evolution of SEO, and one of the signals that the search engines are looking for are others validating your claims that you know what you're doing, that the advice you share is valid. So that kind of confirmation and concurrence of information is very, very important. Offsite optimization, the signals, the reputation, all those things. What has been the impact of AI summaries and what can we do about it?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:32

What are your top three, Johnny?

Jonny Ross

-: 26:42

Yeah, and just before I do that, hello to Miguel and Rob Wilkinson there. We'll come back to your questions afterwards. Hopefully we'll have some time. Louise, good to see you and Shelley as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:16

So yeah, please do keep asking questions on the comments and if you want the checklist, just type checklist. You were asking for my next sort of off-site signals and reputation and the sort of strategic shift there. The next three for me would be, this isn't about links now, this is heavily about mentions. So I think you need to start tracking mentions across not just AI search, but also other news websites and other platforms as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:56

So have a look at tools like Brand24, SEMrush or Mention to start monitoring your brand and to start understanding where it's being mentioned so that you can start either engaging in those conversations or really trying to power those relationships and actually creating partnerships. You know, I was at the London Tech Week a couple of weeks ago and one of my five top things that I took away from that room was it's all about partnerships. So I think having sight of mentions then creates, then gives you the ability to create partnerships because we need to be thinking about It's sort of touching into my third point here, which I will come back to, but we need to be thinking about the future of visitorless websites.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:24

This isn't about getting clicks and getting conversion on a website potentially anymore. This is about a website being used very differently in a different part of the journey. So, you know, we need to really think about all the different ways we can start growing our business and not just relying on the website, but thinking about where the website plays a part in the journey. Number two of this section for me would be, so in the olden days, in old money, we took backlinks.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:51

Someone mentioned it on LinkedIn a moment ago. Here, we need to be thinking about conversation around the World Wide Web. Again, nothing new from an SEO point of view, really. But what's really interesting is if you have a look at some of the stats, when you have a look at the answers that these machines are giving, they, this, where they're getting this information from is, is, is quite, uh, you might not guess where they were getting it

Jonny Ross

-: 29:03

from. Um, and so, um, the, uh, chat GPT, the majority of, uh, so I, the stats have disappeared from me. Just give me one second to get them in front of me. Hold on one second.

Jonny Ross

-: 29:26

So, uh, great doing stuff live. Isn't that, um, Right, so yes, this is what I wanted to mention. Google, I'd start with ChatGPT, didn't I? Google AI, 21%, one in five of their answers where they give a citation is from Reddit.

Jonny Ross

-: 29:48

ChatGPT, their second most cited source is Reddit following their first is Wikipedia. And thirdly, perplexity, 47% of citations are coming from Reddit. It's mental. Google are paying Reddit to have access to the platform, 47% on perplexity.

Jonny Ross

-: 30:14

So every other citation on perplexity the answer that it's giving is including a citation to Reddit. So what I'm trying to say here is that you need to start having conversations across different platforms. And the ones that I would suggest you need to consider are Reddit, Quora and YouTube. So YouTube is about creating video content, again, nothing new, but it creating different types of video content.

Jonny Ross

-: 30:51

So under two minute, and long form as well so a mixture of content on so you've got shorts in sort of the vertical and you've got long form in the in the uh the traditional horizontal and then looking at platforms like quora and reddit because they are these ai searches are really trusting these platforms whether we we agree or not and whether that takes us into a very dark place in terms of some of the thinking on Reddit is a whole different question. But if you want your brand mentioned, unfortunately, you've got to start engaging with those platforms. And lastly, sorry, point three in this was the visitor-less website.

Jonny Ross

-: 31:16

So it's about reducing your dependence on visitors and rethinking where it plays a part in the journey. And are you sending people to the website for a specific reason? And what's the purpose of that website? And that really will start helping you think about the call to actions and the content and having KPIs that are away from just page views, which I think is really important.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 31:33

It's going to be important. It's not going to be easy, I think, to transition from that, because we do like to know that what we're doing is working. We do like to have signals that we're moving in the right direction. And for those signals to dissipate little by little, I think we're all going to have to be supporting each other through that transition, particularly if you're a team leader.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 32:01

So let me talk to you about my perspective on off-site, which is very much, as you know, Johnny, informed by my passion for online reputation management and is building on what you've just said. So my top three, which are content-based and reputation-based would be. So for me, it's deciding of actually creating a mapping of what is working currently already for your customers. So who are your customers currently trusting?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 32:14

And what platform are they looking to for information? And actually, we have an entire section on the book. And I made up for just for mentioning it because I know I've got some friends in the virtual room who have got copies of the book. Thank you very much.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 32:34

But for those of you who've got the book, on page 71, Johnny and I tell you how to do what we call the business investigation. So finding out what we call the trust network. What are the platforms from website to news to forums to LinkedIn groups and that kind of things? who currently has the attention of your customers.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 32:59

And doing this mapping exercise is very important in redefining where you had a moment to go about this search visibility. So number one, do the investigation, find out about the trust network and have a mapping of those websites and more. And then once you've done that, tactic number two, Johnny, is then to create and offer Reddit-style answer content or Quora-style answer content. So what is it?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 33:21

Essentially, it's like an interview. You answer multiple questions that build on each other, like an AI conversation, and you gift that to those platform managers and editors. So you come across a news website that is relevant to your industry. You come across a location-specific business support website and so on, and you gift them that Reddit-style or Quora-style content.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 33:38

You're going to very much love doing them because, literally, it's a Q&A that has been transcribed. The good thing about Q&As, then, they can form the part of a podcast discussion. You can be a guest on a podcast as well. So that kind of tactic number two, I've called it in the book, Memories of Guest Marketing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 34:02

Get your content, not just a link, but the full content, the full article, the full conversation, the full video, all from Nancy's platform. That's going to be number two. And then number three, I suppose, and that could have been just before, thinking about it now, you should, of course, get more value from the platforms that you have some element of control. So I'm thinking, Johnny, Google Business Profile, you know, you enter on Google Maps.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 34:21

Should we go back to it and look after it better and make sure that we put all that amazing content, not just on the website, but on Google Business Profile? Can we just make a bit more of a method, which I know you've mentioned in the previous episodes about getting reviews? But in some sectors, there'll be some niche directories. There'll be TrustPilo.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 34:44

There'll be CheckTrade. We all have sector-specific hubs of information. So can you do a bit more to be featured there to play that confirmation of concurrence element that is a signal for search engines and make sure that at least you have visibility, not just with the platform that you own and control, but of course the others. And that would be my top three, which makes it 18.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 34:48

So we still have to talk about the bonus actions.

Jonny Ross

-: 35:05

It does. Yeah, Google Business Profile absolutely is part of it. And this is about posting content on there, just like you would on a social channel, and also adding FAQs to it as well. Really, really good way of getting into that Google AI overviews.

Jonny Ross

-: 35:12

for absolute sure. I've just put a couple of links in the chat. Thank you. Shameless plug for the book, of course, on there.

Jonny Ross

-: 35:36

But also, if you're interested about where Reddit's come from and the stats and what's going on behind the scenes in terms of what platforms are using in terms of citations, I've just put a link in there on to a tryprofound.com, which has some really good insights into where this data has come from. So it's worth a read. Shall we go to our next bonus section?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 35:42

Yes, so move on to number 19 will be your bonus action, Johnny.

Jonny Ross

-: 36:06

Yeah, so some of this I think we've sort of talked about, but it's really, and in fact, someone was asking on the chat, I think it might have been Miguel, about what does clusters mean. You could see it as categories on blogs, but I think it's much more than that. So it's about a topic, coming over a topic and having a number of different things around that. So blogs would be one thing.

Jonny Ross

-: 36:24

whether it be articles, how-to guides, calculators. What you want to do is not be vanilla in any of this. You want to try and create something that's unique, create something that's different. It can't just make it vanilla.

Jonny Ross

-: 36:54

It has to either include your brand name or some kind of link, because perhaps you've got some kind of resource that's a bit different. A calculator would be a perfect example. Some kind of link magnet, we used to call it in the olden days. So it's about having some kind of cluster hub that maybe consolidates things like authoritative content, lots of stats that you can share, which again, aren't necessarily available on the web elsewhere.

Jonny Ross

-: 37:21

Perhaps any press mentions to bring that trust and authority, including awards as well. And like I've sort of said, original insights, that's what you want to bring. So into all content, you want to try and bring some numbers into content. You want to try and bring some stats and some quotes from either from internal staff members, but also testimonials from clients or customers as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 37:52

and sort of bringing all those elements into that one page, but then having multiple pages around that one topic that then becomes a cluster and everything is internally linked to. So within that one page might be a guide, one page might be a blog, you might have multiple guides, multiple blogs. Uh, multiple, uh, service page, all big, all creating this cluster of content that you're, um, that you're signaling lots of trust in there and, and internally linking to each other. So yeah.

Jonny Ross

-: 38:01

Creating citation hubs, uh, that are, uh, uh, an internal and internally linked area on your website for cluster.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 38:46

Do you know what's interesting is that what you've described essentially is now what we consider to be the old-fashioned search engine page results. So what we are doing essentially is saying, well, on that subject or against that service or with that question in mind, these are all the things that are currently available on my website and there's some additional kind of signals of truth, trust, sorry, and trustworthiness. That is exactly the way a traditional search engine results page is going to be. And interestingly, that is exactly what Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, described as the future of search, which is essentially the page would build itself in front of you as a searcher with all the elements from that organization.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 39:03

And they may even convert some of that data into graphics or into audio summaries, which they do already, and so on, to make it as media rich as possible, so fantastic. And it's easily done. Everybody literally is not wishing to be crude about it. It's a copy and paste on a citation hub of everything you've got there.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 39:25

So number 20, you know, my kind of call to action, it's an oldie but it's a goodie, particularly in the context of AI summaries. So I want to imagine everybody that you have a long form bit of content, and it could be commercial, it could be obviously educational in nature. And you've done maybe the TLDR. You've already done the summary in the written form.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 39:42

How about a summary in a video or audio form? How about repurposing and summarizing your best content out there with a short video, 60 seconds, and I would say even 45 seconds, Johnny, or even just an audio. Give them both. Do a video and audio.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 40:07

We do that a lot, Johnny and I, in our own websites. And because what you want is actually to be kind to the searcher. We may favor. watching a video, particularly a short one, listen to the audio, but you might as well create multimedia content that would be part of a future search, whereby on a page, a searcher will see options to watch it, to listen to it, to read about it, and more and

Pascal Fintoni

-: 40:13

more. So for me, you know, it's easily done. You know, you can check the stats. Some content is already working well.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 40:25

It's driving traffic as it is. So just repurpose up and create that short audio or that short video summary that is already pretty much, you know, you speaking the words of the TLDL function.

Jonny Ross

-: 40:36

Yeah, I love that. And it's about different types of content, isn't it? It's about having multimedia to give lots of rich content. Someone was asking for those links.

Jonny Ross

-: 40:54

I realized that the links I'd shared were just appearing on YouTube. So I've now shared them onto LinkedIn as well. And yeah, just to remind you, if you haven't clocked, if you want the checklist, just put checklist in the comments and we'll find you and send you the checklist. That covers the 20.

Jonny Ross

-: 40:56

Do we want to go to some questions?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 40:59

Yeah, let's have a look through the chat. Is that a good

Jonny Ross

-: 41:06

idea? Ned was asking, is LinkedIn a source? So it absolutely is. So one of the tactics is LinkedIn articles.

Jonny Ross

-: 41:15

They are totally searchable. They have a lot of weight. They build authority. I mean, there's so many things you can do, isn't there?

Jonny Ross

-: 41:22

But it would absolutely be part of my roadmap, LinkedIn articles, with no doubt whatsoever. What have you spotted, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 41:48

Oh, on that very subject, if you're doing LinkedIn articles, even just LinkedIn posts that work well, make sure that they are also posted on your Google business profile, you know, because you might as well, you know, you've done all the hard work, you know, you're getting the validation from the LinkedIn community that it's of interest to them. So just make it, carry it over to your Google business profile. And, you know, why don't you do a best of LinkedIn post on your website as well?

Jonny Ross

-: 42:15

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, listen, we only have about five minutes left, by the way, so if you do have questions, please put them in now. If you're listening to the podcast afterwards, thank you for being here, thank you for listening, and reach out to us on social with pleasure to find out if you've got any questions at all, or if you want the checklist, feel free to go to the 90-day website, mastery.com website, and you can use the contact form with pleasure to contact us as well.

Jonny Ross

-: 42:46

The session is recorded, you'll be able to get it afterwards. I am concerned AI may create a monoculture. Well, I think it's fair to say that we're all concerned that AI could, you know, do lots of things. I guess we're today very heavily focusing on Not where this is heading in terms of AI worldwide, but more thinking about your business and your brand and how you can jump on the wagon now and not get left behind in terms of engaging audiences.

Jonny Ross

-: 42:51

So, you know, the question about AI is certainly a bigger one. I've

Pascal Fintoni

-: 43:07

got a question from Sam there, just before it disappears as it's being scrolled up. Would you change the way blogs are written to be more Q&A formats from Sam Lewis? So I would do both, actually, Sam. So I would stick to, let's call it the traditional way of doing a blog, which is that kind of essay-style writing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 43:17

And I would add a completely different series and look at the naming, look at the graphics and so on, so people can actually clock that. So more of the Q&A formats, I would do both at the same time.

Jonny Ross

-: 43:37

And in terms of just a quick bonus, another bonus tip here on FAQs, I would absolutely be mentioning your brand in probably 20 to 30% of them. I would be bringing in some stats and some local words. So, well, again, you know, are you targeting local or are you targeting national? So if it's local, bring in some local towns.

Jonny Ross

-: 43:48

If it's national, bring in the phrase UK wide and nationwide. So in those, keep the answer short as well. We're talking two to three sentences maximum. and bring some brand in.

Jonny Ross

-: 43:57

Conversational content as well. Really helpful conversational content. Doing a lot of backlinking at the moment. So I talked about that.

Jonny Ross

-: 44:11

So I think the new backlinking is conversation on other platforms. It's LinkedIn articles. It's conversation on Reddit. Yes, backlinks are gonna help, but I think that strategy is quite different now.

Jonny Ross

-: 44:14

Have you spotted any other?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 44:25

Yeah, Gawain asking, do LinkedIn hashtags still work? Actually, LinkedIn themselves have suggested that they don't use them anymore to be discovered. So what do we do? Well, I use them for me now.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 44:39

I use them to be able to search my own content by using very unique hashtags. I sometimes use them just to confirm to the reader what the subject matter is, but for me, to be discovered, tactic on LinkedIn, even LinkedIn themselves, so that they don't use it anymore.

Jonny Ross

-: 45:04

Yeah, it's good to see that a lot of you are doing these clusters, whether it be through blogs or linking from your own portfolio of websites to each other. That's really good. And Andy Turner, I'm noticing GPT quoting a lot of stats that have been completely made up by websites. Well, yeah, you know, there's no question there's hallucinations.

Jonny Ross

-: 45:25

You've got to fact check. And really interesting. So if you're interested in that, I'll share another article, which is if windows, if fake windows keys can get into into the AI, then then our brands can. Really, really great article.

Jonny Ross

-: 45:34

I'll put it on to YouTube and LinkedIn now. Really worth a read. Highly recommend it. Any other questions there?

Jonny Ross

-: 45:35

I think we've covered all the questions, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 45:51

Yeah, I've done very well. So listen, everybody. It was, A, very enjoyable for us to capture all that thinking, everything we've been tracking for a while now. I would say for a good year and a half now, I've been talking about the future of search and AI summaries and what's coming and so on and so forth.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 46:15

The trigger event as some of you will know from how we started this was that conference hosted by Google 3D conference where they talked about AI search, the experience for the searchers, not necessarily for the businesses. So what we wanted to do is translate what that meant to us. Hopefully, those 20 actions are going to be very helpful. You don't have to do all of them at the same time.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 46:35

We don't recommend it whatsoever. Just start by making sure that your well-established SEO practices are in place, and then you can build on that, and the checklist will keep you right. But thank you very much for being with us, because we enjoyed preparing for this special episode, and we enjoyed delivering it too.

Jonny Ross

-: 46:44

Absolutely. Listen, this is fast paced. Things are moving quickly. We're seeing stats that organic traffic is really going down.

Jonny Ross

-: 46:58

I've seen organic traffic go down on up to even 65% in the last few months on websites. And that's not because of bad SEO, by the way. Um, it's, uh, you know, AI is really changing how search, uh, happens. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jonny Ross

-: 47:15

If this has been helpful, please do let us know, comment on social, uh, go to Apple podcasts, find our podcast. Uh, it's Johnny Ross, fractional CMO and leave a review because that. would make a huge difference to both of us. That's really where you can move our dial, leaving a review.

Jonny Ross

-: 47:36

If you want the checklist, please mention it. Whether you've been live or whether you've been on the replay, we are so grateful that you've joined. This is a wrap for this very special episode, the 46th of the 90-Day Website Mastery Podcast, your audio companion to the 90-Day Website Mastery Program. For more information, visit 90daymarketingmastery.com, where you can book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal.

Jonny Ross

-: 47:49

It's goodbye for now. We'll leave you with a fun video and audio montage whilst you make tons of notes or perhaps watch the replay or start on that checklist. Pascal, thank you so much for joining everyone for being here. Thank you.

Jonny Ross

-: 47:50

We'll see you all soon. Take

Pascal Fintoni

-: 47:52

care. Thank you everyone. Thank you for the thank you messages.