Does SEO still matter for AI search?

Transcript

Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another week of e-commerce marketing chats. Yeah, it’s been a couple of weeks and Jimmy how things what sir what’s been going on your end?

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, sorry. It’s been under the weather last week and kids were sick, but, yeah, back into it today. And, ⁓ keen to jump straight in just before the chat. You told me about the updates that are coming on Google and, kind of, on the AI stuff. So I’m literally keen to just jump straight in man and find out, what you’ve got in that space. And after that, I might just chat a little bit about the, the new kind of search campaign that’s been announced for Google ads, which is kind AI. It’s called AI max. It’s like a, it’s basically like the AI, AI for but they’re incorporating it into shopping now, which I think is going to be very interesting. And it’s going to rely heavily on the quality of your data feeds. So be interesting to see what that looks like. But yeah, keen to hear, cause I actually haven’t read report yet that you just mentioned about Google and the AI stuff coming and everything that’s involved. yeah, keen to find out a little bit more about what’s in the works on the Google AI side of things.

Charles Travers: Yeah, sure. yeah, basically Google released some official documentation finally regarding kind of AI search. think people were certainly the SEO world and the this new kind of AI search sphere. They a bit unsure about, you know, exactly what ranking signals are impacting AI search. But cut a story short. Basically Google come out and said look good quality SEO equates to results in AI search results. You know, literally i’m just looking at the document there it here it just it it basically says it the question it It poses is seo still relevant for generative ai search? In short, yes, the best practices for seo continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google search are rooted in our core search rankings and quality systems. These features rely on AI techniques to highlight content from our search index. funny it’s even got some more information here at the bottom in this of colored box. And it says, what about AEO and GEO? So for those of you that… unsure what all these different acronyms are I mean it’s confusing enough as as marketers in the space but I AEO is answer engine optimization and geo is generative engine optimization and these are kind of the terms that are being coined by You know the SEO industry the people that are now selling these these specific services is really just branding actually quite confusing because no one’s actually taking ownership and know, I think Google could have come out and just coined it a term and I think probably the industry is a hot Yeah, and used both exactly. So no one’s making the decision I know that like being a Microsoft they also came out with some documentations a while ago and they also refer to it as either a or GEO so it’s yeah, it’s very

Jimmy Dalgleish: And they’ve used both. ⁓

Charles Travers: I think someone

Jimmy Dalgleish: I’m just glad they didn’t go. know I’ve said this before, but I’m glad they didn’t go with Elio because my son is named Leo. And I’m like, I don’t want an acronym like named Leo. Driven me nuts.

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah, it’s I mean, I just think they should I think they should just quit it, you know AI search optimization or AI search I think it yes, there are kind of weird nuances between you know, you can go into the semantics, but the reality is it’s all related to ranking for AI searches on various different platforms But what he basically says here he says what about a AEO and GEO?

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I agree.

Charles Travers: AEO stands for answer engine optimization, GEO for generative engine optimization. These are both terms you may used to describe work specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences. From Google search perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, thus still SEO. So from a Google’s perspective in terms of ranking on AI overviews, shown on probably Gemini and all of their different AI platforms, SEO still apply. I do there are some nuances, particularly between different platforms like ChatGPT, showing up on And what I would ⁓ One thing I’ve learned about Google over the years is what Google say versus what? Actually works sometimes are two different things So yeah, that’s there’s always gonna be Techniques and which Google say doesn’t work. But in reality when you when you try them, they do actually work so You know that comes with experience and you do have to be careful

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

Charles Travers: You know not to use spammy tactics. They’re have a negative impact Yeah, your your rankings and your your AI search visibility now, But it’s good to see some some clarity from Google on this because I think You know, you’ve got the the SEO guys in one cab and then you’ve got the the new geo and aeo guys in another and ⁓ You know, the SEO guys are saying, really, you know, to rank for AI searches is just good quality SEO. And the the GEO and AEO guys are saying, no, this is something brand new. And yeah, yeah, fundamentally, the foundations of SEO still apply for both traditional and generative AI search.

Jimmy Dalgleish: I’ve had a bit of like a SEO deep dive, not so much on the AI side, but been looking at a few e-commerce stores and some them have like a lot of blog content. ⁓ And that I was looking at today had probably about 14 blogs. And I was like, okay. So I went to a Google search console like I do, and just to hey, how many clicks they’re getting organically through the search console. I literally had to look after the, like the last 12 months and 14 blog that combined for zero organic clicks. I think, I think this is one of the things I just, I see it happen so often. business owners are told blog, but they just don’t know what to blog about. And they, I’m almost tempted to make mini course, like how to drive traffic with your blog, like in e-commerce, cause it’s just, it’s getting like that ridiculous now that. people should have like a system or a module that they can just follow and gain some traffic from it. But yeah, it I feel like sometimes the data is there. So the business owners need to be aware of it. But like, if you’re spending all this time writing blogs and you’re getting ⁓ zero organic clicks over 12 months, the point? And I mean, it’s, I don’t think it would be, your opinion on like, even if it’s not ranking Charles, can you see those kinds of blog posts having any impact in AI search or not?

Charles Travers: there are situations but in my experience from what I’m seeing from kind of my clients data the are performing well on from a traditional SEO perspective also I get excited on AI search as well so reality is you know I think ⁓ from I see Jimmy that I mean over the years there’s

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: Ecommerce sites sit in two camps when it comes to Driving traffic from blogs they either stop and And they stop, you know, I was just looking at a site this morning and you know last posted December 2024 so they started and they they’ve probably not seen the traction that they’ve wanted or They’ve decided they didn’t have you know house writer or they don’t have an AI content system in place which they can execute it kind of gets pushed on the back burner. It’s like okay. This isn’t Directly relating to sales. So ⁓ got more important things to worry about so it kind of gets shelved so it’s either dormant you’ve got a dormant blog ⁓ The store has started posting but they have no real ⁓ SEO strategy behind it. There’s no understanding that you need to at you know, what people are actually searching for have the right keyword strategy in place and hence They don’t see any results. They’re like, I’m posting like twice a week or I’m posting Six blogs a month, but I’m not seeing any traffic at all for me that that shows that the strategy is wrong Fundamentally something’s wrong Having said that, what I would say is if it is a relatively new e-commerce store and it hasn’t got much authority, ⁓ haven’t built any backlinks to the site, you haven’t optimized the site, it’s still indexed in Google and it’s gonna take longer. It’s gonna take longer to seize traction and the higher your domain authority score,

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I agree. Mm.

Charles Travers: the easier it’s going to be for you to rank those blogs. again, you still need to have the right strategy behind it.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I agree. Actually, I went to, on the kind of the ranking and AI as well. So I went to, basically at marketing and AI little seminar tonight, only just got back like an hour or so ago, but One of the things that I kind of had a gripe with, and I don’t know how you feel about this is like, the presenter said, you know, we’ve, we’ve been working with this business for the last 12 months. We’re finally showing up in like AI. I’m thinking to myself, what the hell I could get like an e-commerce store to show up in AI. over the weekend. So what are you been doing for 12 months? Like, you know what I mean? And I was literally, I was literally speaking to, uh, one of the students that I coach and they literally said they connected Claude.

Charles Travers: Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: to their site and ask Claude to basically do an SEO audit for them to shop more in AI search. And one of the things that it recommended was like updating the Shopify sites like schema across the board. he ended up using AI to help him like rewrite all the schema on his website. and he said, after that, after the weekend, like he was showing up in all the AI recommendations and he tested on his friends’ phones and other people’s devices and things like that. And he’s like, else was showing up in searches for all the queries that I was asking for the schema stuff that I’d done. So like hearing, that, like, ⁓ we we’ve worked on something for 12 months and we’re finally showing up in the AI search. I’m just like, ⁓ my gosh, it sounds like the. Sounds like the old SEO, you know, ⁓ yeah, we’ll do all this work and you know, you might see results at six months. I’m just like, surely we’re not going through that phase again with AI. like AI is not this six months wait and see like fucking garbage. It’s just, yeah, if you are, if you, you’re so early at the moment, if you’re doing any of this stuff related to like showing up in AI, like there’s no reason that you couldn’t. like make a significant impact in your, on your website showing up in AI over the course of a weekend. So that’s my personal thoughts. Like what are your thoughts on, you know, ranking in an e-commerce store, quite quickly in AI Charles.

Charles Travers: Yeah, I agree. think from my experience, I’ve seen sometimes you can rank quicker on be sighted quicker on some of these AI platforms than you can on Google. ⁓ I think it’s yeah, I think that’s a bit of

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. I mean, it opens it up to be gamed at the moment too. So there’s probably going to be a transition period, definitely. But at the moment, while there’s kind of like a blue ocean, like people should be going for it. should be doubling down on showing up on those platforms.

Charles Travers: Yeah, for sure. I’ll tell you one thing that think has a strong influence on showing up for AI searches that is actually kind of not necessarily related to SEO, but having a strong social media presence. So to give you some context, I probably had period maybe a month or so ago where I kind of stopped hosting on social media for whatever reason. And before when you typed in, what do you know about Charles Travers SEO, something along those lines in chat GPT, you can ask that question and use it in of incognito mode. So you’re not actually logged in. And yeah, it give a whole list of who I was, what I did. You know give various different links and then when I stopped posting and I asked it Not so long ago What do you know about Charles Travis SEO? It was like which Charles Travis are you referring to? know, there wasn’t as much context. So I guess you know cut a long story short I think having a social media strategy alongside having strong SEO as well

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, okay, interesting.

Charles Travers: That definitely has an impact certainly on from what i’m seeing on chat gbt.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Especially like if you can get, if you can get good on Reddit too, like it’s a strong platform that I’ve seen showing up a lot and being at least being referenced to.

Charles Travers: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. think reddits, it’s going to be an interesting one. It’s whether that will stay the course and like chat GBT will continue to site Reddit. And then also it’s you, that’s not an overnight strategy because you can’t gamify Reddit too much. Otherwise you’re just going to get penalized. You actually have to build a genuine community or you need to be engaging in a community and providing real value. So it’s not one of those kind of quick tactics that you can apply and it’s suddenly you’re to show up. my understanding, I must admit, do need to look into that kind of Reddit side of things a little bit more. I know that kind of brand mentions across the web is a big one, digital PR, even if you don’t have a backlink in place, just simply,

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: being mentioned on various publications will actually have an impact and get you showing up for various AI searches as well across these different LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Publexity. I don’t what you’re seeing in the data as well, Jimmy, in terms of from your e-commerce clients, what are the kind of the top AI platforms that are kind of driving the most referral traffic?

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, that’s a good question. Like while we’re on here, like I’ll just quickly bring up the client that I have done a lot of optimization on AI and just I’ll just give you a breakdown. Over the last, we’ll just have a look at the last 30 days. I’ll just, you mean just in terms of platform like ChatGPT versus Perplexity and whatnot?

Charles Travers: in your experience. Yeah, because from what i’m seeing out of those outside of google Chatgbt seems to be the one that’s not only driving sessions but actually revenue i’m getting a few ⁓ on clawed and perplexity but no attributed revenue But I also think the challenging part is you know Someone could be searching on an ai platform

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, definitely.

Charles Travers: and not always click through to that store or that brand’s website straight away come back at a later date and then search on Google directly. So actually the initial point of contact was the LLM, but not being attributed. So that’s the challenging part with actually showing the ROI from these platforms. I think there’s more people actually these platforms to search for brands, but referral traffic is not the only metric that we should be looking at.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m, looking, I’m just looking at it now, like chat, JBT. So just to context, this particular site’s probably done a hundred thousand dollars over the last 30 days. chat, JBT is 2.5 that. So chat, JBT is basically not bringing in 2.5 % traffic. It’s bringing like 2.5 % of revenue. and chat, JBT is like by far and away. ⁓ ⁓ above any other, kind of, or actually there’s some more chat GPT chat. GPT has like, I’m looking at, to at this, I’m looking at the Shopify marketing report within Shopify, but, yeah, it’s, it’s got a couple of different versions of chat GPT. it’s not always, tucked into the, the same, like category like chat, GPT organic versus chat, GPT unknown versus ⁓ chat, gbt.com. But then, yeah, the next one, the next one is, uh, perplexity. Um, but like it’s so small, like six sessions, one sales. So we’re talking like 2.5 % of revenue versus perplexity. Um, Claude, uh, I can’t even see Claude in here unless it’s attributed to something else, but, um, just trying to see if it’s in there at all. No. Copilot’s in there. Let’s have one sale too, but only four sessions. like the conversion rates on anything that’s coming from an LLM is really high. which doesn’t surprise me cause this is a, this is kind of a, I guess a supplement store. And if you’re kind of looking for that stuff in, in chat, I’d say you’d probably given it a fair kind of, Hey, this is what’s going on with me. What supplements are kind of proven to help me with this. So I think the research had already been done and like, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a high, uh, convert like the conversion rate, the conversion rate for chat. GPT is like 12%. So, um, yeah, it’s pretty high compared to just looking for Google ads. Like Google ads is like 6.4%. So it’s almost double like what you get from like paid Google ads. Um, which is pretty crazy when you think about it, but yeah, I’d still say like check GPT is like. I feel like chat GBT is almost like the Google version for just people that use like AI in the way that we use it, but use AI is basically a search engine. And I even find myself like, I I don’t want to even with my Claude, I don’t want to like dilute my messages with just stuff for like, that I want to generally search. I still go back to chat GBT ⁓ I want to do just general searches or Gemini actually. I kind of rotate between the two. yeah, I’d never use Claude for like my general searches. Cause I just don’t want that in like my message history.

Charles Travers: Yeah, I’m the same Jimmy. think when I’m doing, looking for products and I’m kind of shopping around. I would use, yeah, still Google search, but also chat GPT. Whereas Claude more for my workflow. And I think yeah. And I think that’s probably why we’re seeing that in the data. Why Claude isn’t really showing up for much. ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I’m the same.

Charles Travers: in sessions or attribute in revenue is it’s more of a Yeah, it’s more of a tool to be used in the work in the workplace opposed to you know, let me Do some research on Buying the latest pair of trainers or whatever

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah. I know what you Yeah. It’s just, it’s getting, it’s getting bigger and like, it’s getting bigger every time we chat, like chat.jpt has more revenue attributed to this particular client. And like, it’s getting close to, I’m just having a look at, so like for this client, for example, like organic, organic Google search makes up like 4.5 K. So it’s like four and a half percent.

Charles Travers: Actually, Jimmy,

Jimmy Dalgleish: Cause I know your clients are a little bit different and Google organic makes up as considerably larger portion, but like chat GBT, like looking at this data for organic, only like 2k offered. ⁓ and, the, actual so sessions, like chat chat GBT has a hundred sessions versus Google search, which has ⁓

Charles Travers: Interesting.

Jimmy Dalgleish: like 3,200 and revenue is only that far off. So the conversion rate for chat GBT and like the relevance for that traffic is just so higher intent than any other search network, whether it be Bing or Google organic or anything, just finding like, I guess quality that’s coming from chat GBT is really high.

Charles Travers: Yeah, and I guess that makes sense because You know the the the buyers already done their research. They’ve done their research and chat GPT they’ve established that this is the best brand and the time they click through to the website. They’re ready to purchase So yeah that I’m the same Jimmy in my data for for my e-commerce clients as well is the conversion rate is significantly higher for chat GPT versus Google search

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah, I think.

Charles Travers: Even though the revenue is still significant is higher from from, know, it’s quite a fair bit higher at the moment that number for chat gbt is rising in terms of revenue

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. And I think one of the arguments is like, ⁓ Chuck JPT doesn’t bring in anywhere near as much as the traffic is Google organic, which might be true, but like I’m and my clients aren’t interested in how many clicks they’re getting. They’re interested in how many people are, how much revenue is being driven. And if you can drive more revenue off a 10th of the traffic, who cares? ⁓

Charles Travers: No, exactly. Exactly, right exactly right who cares that’s the thing, you know at the end of the day Do you want to drive more traffic or do you want to make more money? Like Yeah, it’s as simple as that Actually Jimmy one of the things that I Was about AI so a couple of weeks back I was doing some research for air purifiers randomly I have now

Jimmy Dalgleish: Exactly, exactly. 100%.

Charles Travers: a couple of air pur-

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ actually, so that’s so funny. Cause so was, so was I. Yeah.

Charles Travers: really? Okay, yeah, ⁓ I an air purifier a couple of weeks back and I could that purchase to AI because and I will out the brand because it’s a brand called Oasis and basically they’re based in US and I was trying to figure out I had a few questions I was trying to figure out

Jimmy Dalgleish: or Aeroasis, if you’re listening to this, please sponsor this episode.

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah, well, they do very good very good air purifiers as well like kind of they say top of the range anyway cut long story short I I had a few questions. I wanted to know specifically whether I could get it shipped from the us to indonesia where i’m where i’m living and sent them an email which was in the middle of the day for me, but would have been ⁓ probably early hours of the morning for the US. So I wasn’t expecting a response, but I got response literally instantly within a minute. And I was like, this can’t be a human or this can’t be one of their ⁓ responding at this time in the night unless they have staff in Asia. But actually says at the bottom, generated by AI. I actually having a conversation by email.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: And it effectively was able to close me. Okay, here’s the product page. I would suggest this. Yes, we can ship to Indonesia. and I went ahead and purchased. So I think I, I, I trying to look into see what technology they were using, whether it was a custom built thing or whether they, I assume they’re probably using a, some of a SAS tool.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Crazy. You can actually, so I’ve done this a few times too. You can actually ask the bot like what it’s built on. And sometimes it will just tell you.

Charles Travers: ⁓ interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s just, you know, a classic example of how you can improve the customer experience by integrating AI into that process. I know we’ll see there’s chat bots and, but I think even being able to have it on email.

Jimmy Dalgleish: It’s interesting. It’s interesting. say that because in the meeting that I was at tonight, they were talking about how chat bots are like, guess diminishing brands because the experience isn’t great, but from some of the chat bots I’ve seen recently, it’s actually enhancing the experience. So I think people that are still preaching this, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve got an AI bot on your store, it just, you know, diminishes the experience cause it’s not a human. Don’t get me wrong. There’s some horrible AI bots out there, but it’s not the AI’s fault. It’s the person that set it up’s fault. So I wouldn’t be writing off AI chat bots at the moment because actually if, if it gets me to the solution and it gets me the help that I want, I’m happy speaking to a bot like other than a human. Like if it, it answers my question and it gives me the information that I need, I don’t care if it comes from a human or a bot. but as long as

Charles Travers: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,

Jimmy Dalgleish: long as, as long as that quality is there, ⁓ in like what you said, Charles, it can kind of just enhance that experience because you’re getting real time conversations. You’re still getting the information that you want. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a human or a bot. there will be some instances where, you know, a human interaction may needed, but I think for the majority of simple purchasing questions or decisions, they can be answered by bots.

Charles Travers: Yeah, as long as you’re proving the customer experience, like I said, who cares, whether it’s a human or an AI bot. ones that are infuriated is when you’re trying call customer service and you want to put in a complaint or you want a specific, you’re dealing a complex issue and then you get the automated But in this specific where, like you said, ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ shit.

Charles Travers: It’s it’s a pretty question To able to get those instant responses rather than have to wait for hours to get a response from a human Yeah, makes total sense and it means that sales, know I think some the time as well. It’s it’s If you don’t have those things in place, you can’t sales can slip through You know if if a a brand doesn’t respond to a customer inquiry You know within Like say they don’t get a response within say 12 to 24 hours sometimes that customer may have gone elsewhere They may have done a bit more research in the meantime and then purchase from one of your competitors. So Yeah, having that instant response I think is really valuable and if you can integrate that into your customer experience then yeah, it can only enhance things

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I agree. Definitely. Let’s leave it there. I think that’s a good note to finish on and not just for chatbots, but if you’re running an e-commerce store, do everything that you can to improve the customer experience at like every part of the journey. So it’s heavily underrated and I think a lot of buying decisions are made from good experiences. So if you can make those experiences as enjoyable as possible for your clients, you’re going to go a long way to converting them in the future. If you want to hear more of these episodes, you can check us out at eCommerce marketing chats on all the podcasting platforms or come say hello to us on at Shopify marketing secrets. So we’ll leave it there this week and look forward to having another chat around everything that’s happening in eCom next week. Catch you guys then.