Do !think like a robot: SEO decision making for humans

With endless ‘playbooks’, GEO guides, growth hacks, and AI-fuelled FOMO, the biggest problems most search marketers face is figuring out where to spend their time.

In this talk Mark shares his over 20 years of experience making successful SEO strategies, by highlighting some of the most common traps in 2026, and some tricks he uses to decide what to focus on and what to cast aside.

Transcript

1. Mark Williams-Cook Director at Candour / Founder of AlsoAsked Topic: Do !think like a robot: SEO decision making for humans Panel: SEO in the Age of AI
2. what my talk is called
3. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about getting my car washed*
4. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about getting my car washed* *not my actual car
5. what my talk is called Trap #1 Trusting AI with strategic analysis or decisions
6. what my talk is called “I want to get my car washed. The nearest car wash is 100 metres away. Should I walk or drive there?ˮ
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10. what my talk is called “Itʼs only 100m, you should definitely walk!ˮ
11. what my talk is called “Itʼs only 100m, you should definitely walk!ˮ
12. what my talk is called “...you need the carˮ
13. what my talk is called The convergence problem
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16. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about awesome cats*
17. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about awesome cats* *not my cat (but he is real)
18. what my talk is called Trap #2 Getting baited into faulty thinking
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20. what my talk is called “It has been crawled by LLM bots!ˮ
21. what my talk is called “It was indexed by Google!ˮ
22. what my talk is called “ChatGPT returned information only in my llms.txt file!ˮ
23. what my talk is called “ChatGPT even says llms.txt is a thing that can help!ˮ
24. what my talk is called NONE OF THIS MEANS ANYTHING
25. what my talk is called Introducing the cats.txt standard
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29. what my talk is called “It has been crawled by all the bots!ˮ
30. what my talk is called “It has been indexed by Google!ˮ
31. what my talk is called “LLM returned information from cats.txt!ˮ
32. what my talk is called “Says that itʼs a thing that helps!ˮ
33. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about playing poker*
34. what my talk is called Letʼs talk about playing poker* *not my chips
35. what my talk is called Expected value EV
36. what my talk is called Value you could win
37. what my talk is called Value you could win % chance it happens x
38. what my talk is called Value you could win % chance it happens Cost of trying x -
39. what my talk is called Value you could win % chance it happens Cost of trying x - = expected value
40. what my talk is called £3,000 % chance it happens Cost of trying x - = expected value
41. what my talk is called £3,000 50% Cost of trying x - = expected value
42. what my talk is called £3,000 50% £500 x - = expected value
43. what my talk is called £3,000 50% £500 x - = £1,000 EV
44. what my talk is called £3,000 10% £500 x - = £200 EV
45. what my talk is called Which SEO strategies are the most EV?
46. what my talk is called Know what game youʼre playing
47. what my talk is called Know what game youʼre playing Cash games - Rebuy - Play aggressively
48. what my talk is called Know what game youʼre playing Cash games - Rebuy - Play aggressively Tournaments - One ‘lifeʼ - Play conservatively
49. what my talk is called Know what game youʼre playing Blackhat SEO - Get new domain - Play aggressively Whitehat SEO - One ‘lifeʼ - Play conservatively
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52. what my talk is called 10k casino traffic in 48hrs lol
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54. what my talk is called Timothy Malmros Genach
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57. what my talk is called This was a programmatic SEO play
58. what my talk is called Jan ‘self-promotionalʼ update killed them
59. what my talk is called Jan ‘self-promotionalʼ update killed them
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61. what my talk is called What is optimal play?
62. what my talk is called What can we be doing?
63. what my talk is called Long term EV = system alignment
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69. Some SEOs are already trying!
70. Dan Petrovic “Emotional Geometryˮ
71. what my talk is called Use your brain spaghetti
72. what my talk is called Do the idea you canʼt measure Do the idea you canʼt measure
73. what my talk is called Do the idea you canʼt measure
74. what my talk is called Would I be doing this …if search engines didnʼt exist?
75. what my talk is called Competitive private drug rehab
76. what my talk is called Key takeaways
77. what my talk is called Key takeaways - Pick a game; cheat hard or donʼt cheat at all
78. what my talk is called Key takeaways - Pick a game; cheat hard or donʼt cheat at all - Donʼt be pressured into playing badly
79. what my talk is called Key takeaways - Pick a game; cheat hard or donʼt cheat at all - Donʼt be pressured into playing badly - Do things for the business, not for SEO/GEO
80. what my talk is called Key takeaways - Pick a game; cheat hard or donʼt cheat at all - Donʼt be pressured into playing badly - Do things for the business, not for SEO/GEO - Donʼt try to think like a robot and donʼt try to get robots to think like a humans
81. what my talk is called Find me: markwilliamscook.com Mark Williams-Cook Thank you! D