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The SEO opportunity ahead
There’s never been a better time to invest in SEO.
Yeah, I said it.
If you listen to “thought leaders” on LinkedIn or X with no skin in the game, you might think otherwise.
But I truly believe right now is the best time to be both:
A search-driven media publisher (someone who creates content with search in mind)
And/or someone just getting into SEO
This past week, I got an email from the founder of this cool AI rank tracker (it’s the website of the week in this email — scroll down).
They reached out saying how Marketer Milk had been showing up a lot in ChatGPT and other AI search engines.
And I personally had noticed that a handful of new subscribers to this newsletter had come from ChatGPT through an article I wrote a while back going over some of my favorite hero sections from different websites.
So I looked up the keyword in the AI rank tracker and I saw all the brands being showcased — Notion, Webflow, Airbnb, etc… some brands I had mentioned in that article.
LLM rankings for the search query "hero section examples"
And to think that only being a citation has led people to Marketer Milk is wild.
But what’s even more wild is that all the citations are from media companies or businesses investing in content.
It feels like a new Search paradigm where we have two winners:
The actual brands being mentioned — a sort of “earned media” for them.
The publishers who are cited — they become the “owned media” gatekeepers of influencing LLM results.
The reality is that SEO has (mostly) always been like this, even though everyone says SEO is evolving or that it’s dead.
The principles are the same, there’s are just more mediums now.
More search engines + a sentiment that SEO is not good to invest in = biggest opportunity for contrarian SEO marketers.
Yes, it might be a bit harder right now to try and convince clients to continue investing in SEO. If you’re an agency or freelancer, I feel you.
But now is when most larger businesses will deprioritize SEO, creating the perfect opportunity for an underdog to go against the grain and start producing amazing content that will eventually be cited in LLMs (and Google’s AI Mode).
With 10 years in SEO, I’ve seen this time and time again. Companies stop investing in SEO, the law of entropy kicks in, their content goes out of date and loses its rankings, some little blogger (like me) comes in and eventually outranks the big brands.
This is happening right now.
In the past, I’m talking pre-2023 ChatGPT era, most core Google algorithm updates caused a step-function in increased traffic for my site (and my clients’ sites). It takes a lot of computing power to continually scrape the web and sift through content.
What has generally happened is a brand produces great content, there are little to no results in rankings for some time, a core algorithm update hits, and it becomes a tide that lifts all boats for that brand’s content in search.
I see this happening again with Google’s AI Mode and LLMs.
Right now, there are lots of citations from 2021–2024 being shown in LLMs. Those who continue to create content (with an SEO mindset) will be the new citations when AI search engines eventually “rescrape” the web again in future updates.
And then, those publishers will reap the benefits.
But…
What I will say is different is the ability for publishers to just produce informational content and monetize it with just ads. This, while not dead, is a very unknown area I still have no insights on.
What I do know for certain is that the brands that will benefit the most from the changes in SEO are the companies that have an amazing product AND create their own media arm within their organization.
So when it comes to AI Search, best case is to be both a brand mentioned in chat results and the source of the citation.
One company quietly crushing it with this strategy is Brex:
Brex owns a citation that they use to get a brand mention in LLMs and AI Search. They get the benefit of website traffic from their citation, and the brand affinity (and most likely increase in branded search) from being recommended as a product of choice.
So long story short, I’ve never been so bullish on SEO.
So much so, that I’m experimenting with new ways to get mentioned in these AI Search experiences. Here’s an article I literally wrote last week that is already #1 in Google’s AI Mode:
And the funny thing is, my SEO strategy has not changed since 2019. It’s still all the stuff I teach in my Content Marketing Course.
But, in the next edition, I’ll show you some clever ways on how to stay ahead of the AI SEO wave.
With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):
Marketing news from the past week
Marketing ideas you can steal
Google’s guidelines for ranking in AI
Forbes Advisor SEO case study
The platform of choice for social media marketers
Ad in the wild
Website of the week
Cool marketing jobs
And much more
🗞 In the news
🚀 All things growth & product
💭 Guess the riddle
I am an odd number. Take away one letter and I become even. What number am I?
Answer is at the bottom of this email
💌 Email marketing, copywriting, & psychology
✍️ SEO & content marketing
🧠 For your career
📣 Ad in the wild
No texting and driving campaign
Spotted an ad in the wild that caught your eye? Reply to this email with the ad and your @ for credit to get it featured!
💻 Website of the week
🏝 Cool marketing jobs
Seeing an uptick in product marketing related roles 👀
Okay, that's it for now 🩶. See you in the next edition!
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“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” — C.S. Lewis
Riddle answer: Seven (remove the 's' to become 'even').
🤳 Social media, branding, & paid ads