Tweet
Tweet

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

@RyanJones EVOLVING SEO FOR EVOLVING SEARCH ENGINES Ryan Jones

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

@RyanJones Ryan Jones SVP @WeAreRazorfish Stable Genius – WTFSEO.com @RyanJones Linkedin.com/in/jonesy www.RyanMJones.com Also the guy behind: WTFSEO.com SEODataViz.com ServerHeaders.com & SEOnews.pro And NOW: SERPrecon.com

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

@RyanJones I’ll mention Google a LOT – but they weren’t first…..

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

@RyanJones AI is NOT a Search Engine

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

@RyanJones Inverted Index Next Token Prediction VS

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

@RyanJones 6 Examples: it’s not doing logic/math. It’s giving most likely completion.

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

@RyanJones 7 It’s all Just Probability. Example: next word prediction https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

@RyanJones 8 Or “Beam Search” Go Read This Article: https://ig.ft.com/generative-ai/ Example: next word prediction

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

@RyanJones 9 Which Can Lead to Weirdness…

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

@RyanJones 10 Because it’s tokens and vectors, not words.

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

@RyanJones Let’s talk about: Retrieval Augmented Generation & Factual Grounding

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

@RyanJones 12 AI Overviews are summarizing results, but not just the results for your query. Opportunity: you can get cited in a popular query by ranking for a related query!

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

@RyanJones 13 People who searched this, also searched these things.

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

@RyanJones 14 How are websites cited?

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

@RyanJones 15 You have to rank for the summary Takeaway: Even though it might be summarizing one document, it could cite one that ranks for that summary

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

@RyanJones 16 Bing Example: WebMD is cited here, but the text in this citation doesn’t appear on the WebMD page

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

@RyanJones 17 Example Answer says “according to stadium-maps.com” However that’s not one of the sites cited. Thanks @njmott for screenshot

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

@RyanJones 18 Proof: Google is telling us what text it “searched” to find a citation in the URL Hat tip @kevindoory for noticing this

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

@RyanJones 19 Guess what ranks #1 for that snippet of text……

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

@RyanJones Do I have to Rank to Be “Sourced” in AI? Source: Brightedge MAY 2024 SEPT 2024

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

@RyanJones 21 Example DO NOT RANK ON PAGE 1

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

@RyanJones How Often are AI Overviews Showing up? Source: Brightedge

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

@RyanJones Where are AI Overviews Showing up? Source: Brightedge

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

@RyanJones Let’s Talk About Spam

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

@RyanJones 25 An Example of AI SPAM Hat tip: @lilyray for the example

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

@RyanJones 26 Opportunities for Misinformation might increase Hat tip: @rustybrick for the example

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

@RyanJones 27 Opportunities for Misinformation might increase Hat tip: @rustybrick for the example

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

@RyanJones 28 Best Cigars.. No AI

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

@RyanJones 29 Best Cigars For Kids However…..

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

@RyanJones 30 Google LOVES Reddit

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

@RyanJones 31 And Reddit has figured that out

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

@RyanJones The Future of AI and Search

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

@RyanJones 33 Google Wants to Build the Star Trek Computer

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

@RyanJones 34 What Is Google Saying? AI Improves search – doesn’t replace it. - Sundar Pichai

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

@RyanJones 35 Woo Hoo! Where’s My Clicks? There Might Be an Effect on Clicks

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

@RyanJones 36 Affiliate sites are going to feel this. Remember, Google has a review platform that they can easily use AI to summarize.

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

@RyanJones Is SEO Dead? WTFSEO

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

@RyanJones The total number of searches on Google has increased every year since its inception People are just searching more – and search is built into more things

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

@RyanJones What Should SEO’s Do?

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

@RyanJones 40 First: Populate your Freaking META Descriptions H/T Sean Stahlman for this one

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

@RyanJones 41 Multiple brands means: All 4 citations are our client ☺

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

@RyanJones 42 We did a “quick answers” question project for Grey Goose. Bonus: 70% of those questions are now cited in AI too!

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

@RyanJones 43 Take Advantage & Optimize! See what Gemini Generates for popular queries. Look up related keywords & questions. Apply that to your copywriting This is why I showed you the patents & how it works!

Slide 44

Slide 44 text

@RyanJones 44 Or Reverse Engineer it! This script: 1. Scrapes google 2. Feeds content from top results, related questions, related queries to Gemini 3. Asks it to create a summary 4. Uses BERT to extract relevant queries and passages from that summary 5. Let’s the SEO team create content based on those! 6. Gets us more citations!

Slide 45

Slide 45 text

@RyanJones 45 How Do I Know If I’ll Rank?

Slide 46

Slide 46 text

@RyanJones

Slide 47

Slide 47 text

@RyanJones 47 How Do I Know If I’ll Rank?

Slide 48

Slide 48 text

@RyanJones 48 Be Like Bill: Focus on the VERBS For some queries – users never wanted a website. Focus on the ones where they do.

Slide 49

Slide 49 text

@RyanJones 49 What Is Google Saying? - Sundar Pichai

Slide 50

Slide 50 text

@RyanJones I JUST WANT THE NUMBER. Accept that not all users want websites

Slide 51

Slide 51 text

@RyanJones 51 NOT THIS

Slide 52

Slide 52 text

@RyanJones 52 I’M NOT WORRIED Retrieval Augmented Generation (the step before the AI answer is generated) is no different than a Search Engine. • Still based on a user query • Still links to websites • It’s still looking for relevant passages on relevant pages. • There’s (hopefully) still spam algorithms. • It still needs to crawl, index, and retrieve.

Slide 53

Slide 53 text

@RyanJones 53 WHICH MEANS… • We still need to understand user intent and do keyword research • We still need to meet our user’s needs and create helpful, authoritative content. • We still need to make our sites crawlable, accessible, and indexable. • We still need to do SEO, but it’s becoming real marketing!

Slide 54

Slide 54 text

@RyanJones Let’s Get The Common Questions Out Of The Way

Slide 55

Slide 55 text

@RyanJones You CAN opt-out with the nosnippet attribute.
text ignored

Slide 56

Slide 56 text

@RyanJones You CAN but should not Block AI

Slide 57

Slide 57 text

@RyanJones WHY NOT? It’s sending traffic! Source: Parse.ly

Slide 58

Slide 58 text

@RyanJones THANK YOU Ryan Jones SVP @WeAreRazorfish Stable Genius – WTFSEO.com @RyanJones Linkedin.com/in/jonesy RyanMJones.com Also the guy behind: WTFSEO.com SEODataViz.com ServerHeaders.com & SEOnews.pro Use code: “welcome3” to get 10% off for 3 months!