Never_Waste_a_Good_Crisis_with_notes.pdf

For years, SEOs have struggled to break out of their technical silos and get executive buy-in. But now? LLMs have CEOs terrified that their entire marketing model is about to break.

This is your moment. Chris will show you how to use executive AI anxiety as a master unlock to elevate search to its rightful place in the marketing mix.

Learn how to translate the complex shift from keywords to LLM optimization into strategic language senior leadership understands, and use this shift to finally unify search, social, PR, and brand strategy.

Transcript

1. Good morning! I hope everyone’s day is off to a great start. First, I apologize for the click bait title of my talk. It’s not my usual style, but it is apt to the situation we find ourselves in right now. It feels like we’re living in perpetual chaos right now! 1
2. WHO CAN RELATE TO THIS? Let’s get into it. 2
3. WHO CAN RELATE TO THIS? I’d be willing to wager that most of you have had an experience like this. Maybe a lot of them. Am I right? Now don’t go Googling “Alex Vance”. Names have been changed for obvious reasons. Our teams and our day-to-day clients have been getting messages like this regularly for the last couple of years. And they’ve really ramped up in past 12 months. I think it’s a little bit ironic. We’ve been trying to get executive attention for years. I’ve been on the agency side of the search insights space for just shy of 15 years. The group I’m part of is extremely analytics focused and over many years, we have developed an ever-evolving solution called Consumer Intent Modeling, or CIM. It’s really smart and it delivers all sorts of intelligence and insights. We realized a long time ago that the value of that intelligence extended way beyond search. It directly informed content strategy and activation, but it is also an amazing source of intelligence about brand health and customer interest. It even has applications for product development and customer support. It’s all just there for the taking, but have executives 3
4. been interested? Not really. Senior executives would see that we and the date came from search and, by and large, we were discounted. If we did manage an audience, we’d typically get polite nods of appreciation and acknowledgement that “this is really smart” and then not much else would come to pass. Well, my friends, the worm has turned. With the advent of LLMs, suddenly the c-suite is all ears. They’re actively reaching out to us. The first message we got like this came in January, 2023 – less than two months after the launch of ChatGPT and they haven’t stopped. Senior executives are reading the news, experiencing LLMs themselves and they’re scared. A collegue, Devin Bramill, calls this “executive swoop and poop”. It can be annoying when it lands in your chat, but it’s actually the opportunity we’ve all been waiting for. 3
5. What has executives worried? 32% 60% 20% of searches now Gen AI of searches now results in zero clicks drop in website visits It’s not all that hard to understand what has the c-suite worried. There is an existential concern that their entire marketing approach is falling apart in real time. These statistics are justifiably unnerving. In just the last year, generative search has grown from 8% of searches to 32%. Your executives see that and wonder: “Does that mean my SEO and SEM strategies no longer work?” 60% of Google searches now don’t result in a click and the click thru rate for searches on LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are much lower yet. In fact, I saw a statistic just last week that now 70% of searches are zero-click. Who knows what the actual number is, but the trajectory is clear. And , they can see the proof in the reporting – traffic is declining. On average, organic visits to websites have dropped 20% and some predictions suggest that traffic will ultimately be only 25% of what it was 4
6. pre-LLMs. Executives are questioning their discoverability strategies across the board. I’ve even heard executives question whether or not they even need their websites anymore – “If nobody is coming to our site, what’s the point?” There are dozens more statistics like this and endless news headlines that are keeping our bosses up at night. That all sounds like a crisis, but it’s actually our opportunity. You all have the experience, the facility with data and the ability to evolve that can bring stability to the chaos. Search has been evolving since it began – it’s never been static. And, you’ve evolved with it. With each new algorithm update or SERP feature change, you’ve updated your practice and moved forward. You’re already doing the same to adapt to the LLM discovery era. Executives are opening the door to us and they’re more willing to change than they’ve been in the last 25 years. This is the opportunity to transform our place and our role. 4
7. SEO ISN’T DEAD It has evolved, rebranded and become a more urgent concern Headlines have been predicting the death of SEO for well more than a decade. The emergence of LLMs in search isn’t killing SEO, it’s forcing a major evolution. SEO effectively has become GSO or AEO or whatever you want to call it. If we were a TV network, we’d have already rebranded ourselves SEO Plus or SEO Max. Our roles haven’t been displaced, they’ve expanded. The advent and growth of generative AI discovery is a triggering event. And It’s a Trojan Horse for SEOs. Maybe for the first time, senior executives are actively seeking your expertise because they have genuine fear for the future of their brands and fear is a great change agent. Those alarming midnight Slack chains are our invitation to join the big kid table. A place we’ve been mostly trying in vain to get to for years. We need to be ready to take advantage. 5
8. EVOLVE Our skills Our language Our ways of working A former boss of mine used to say, “when the spotlight hits you, it’s time to dance.” The rapid emergence of LLM search is our spotlight moment. We’re being invited into the conversation at a much higher level, but approaching that conversation the same way we’ve done with SEO in the past isn’t going to be effective. This is going to require some growth. First, our skills. Given you’re here this week, I’m guessing that development is well underway. Brighton SEO has curated some amazing content today and tomorrow that will help you uplevel your expertise. Less obvious, but just as important, is the need to evolve the way we talk about what we need to do. Once again, I’d wager that you all have a ton of examples of times where you’re brought the “right” solution to a problem only to have it ignored. Senior executives don’t want to hear us talk about this new world the same way we’ve talked about SEO for the last 20 years – they’ll tune us out if we do. The opportunity will be missed. Finally, we need to learn to play well with others more than ever before. A technically sound website filled with exceptional content that ticks every 6
9. modern best practice box is great, but it’s only 20-30% of the equation – in some industries it’s even less. You also need outside entities talking about your brand to reinforce your authority - coverage in digital publications and recommendations on social platforms like reddit, YouTube, Trust Pilot and others. Finally, you need media to strengthen your brand so more people include you directly in their searches and prompts. Success in LLM discovery requires a level of cross-channel coordination and cooperation that is just different and more critical than in the pre-LLM era. I think of it like this – being successful in LLM discovery isn’t something you do, it’s what happens when you do everything else right. 6
10. You have the c-suite’s attention… …now what? I challenge you to adopt a team leader mindset. Be Gordon Pibb, not Milton Waddams. Too obscure? I’m showing my age here, but if you don’t know, Milton was the grumbly guy in the movie Office Space who was obsessed with his red Swingline stapler. He was played by the great and talented Stephen Root. Nobody wanted to work with him and they ultimately moved his office to the basement. And then he burned down the building, but that’s beside the point. Just a few years later, Stephen Root showed up again in the movie Dodgeball as Gordon Pibb. Unlike Milton, Gordon was a pivotal member of a successful team, in fact he came up with the idea to form the team in the first place to save their beloved gym. You see where I’m going here? OK, this is a tortured analogy, but its message is relevant. We need to transform from a siloed function to a pivotal member of the strategic cross-functional team that is required to be successful in LLM discovery. This is the opportunity to bring SEO up out of the basement and establish our value at the center of the planning framework. 7
11. SEO GSO is now How do we do this? I have thoughts. First, words matter. SEO is now GSO. Adopt the title and reinvent yourself in the eyes of your executives and your broader organization. I’ll give you a personal example of what can happen if you don’t. We just recently had an experience with one of our very long-time clients. This team has been embedded with the client for more than 15 years. They’re beloved and treated as members of the family – the relationship is really strong. As part of our engagement, our team was actively doing sophisticated LLM visibility analysis and presented cross-channel recommendations to build our client’s visibility. When the team delivered the work, it landed with a dull thud. We’re search people. What do we know from LLMs? In parallel, and unbeknownst to us, another group within the client had contracted with another firm specifically to do LLM visibility analysis and provide recommendations. You know what this other firm came back with? Essentially the same analysis and recommendations that we had already delivered, but the reception was very different. The lesson for us was that familiarity isn’t always beneficial. These clients 8
12. saw our team through a specific lens that had developed over many years and we didn’t do enough to change that view in step with the environment. The result is someone else is now occupying the seat that should be ours. Not because we weren’t doing the work and not because the other firm undercut us on price. It is because we didn’t change our client’s perspective of who we are and what we can do. Don’t make that same mistake. 8
13. Upleveling the vocabulary: Speaking c-suite FROM TO: AI-ERA METRIC WHY THE C-SUITE CARES Share of Search Share of Answer Are we the answer AI gives our buyers? Keyword Ranking Recommendation Rate Do LLMs recommend our brand and products? Organic Sessions 0-Click Conversions Revenue we're already winning but not getting credit for Backlink Volume 3rd-Party Brand Mentions The trust signals that get AI to recommend us Search Volume Prompt Sentiment & Intent Earliest read on demand and brand perception Next, get out of the weeds. Historically, we have been our own worst enemy when it comes to communicating with non-technical audiences. What we do is complex and often technical and a lot of us love that about it. I used to have a client, who was a really great and smart guy, who told me his idea of a good evening was sipping whisky and blogging about SEO. If you don’t know, not everyone shares that passion. When you’re talking to the c-suite, know that they don’t want to hear or debate every detail. Focus your conversations with executives on business value and impact. You need modern success metrics like share of answer and recommendation rate, but they must directly tie to the value they represent to the business in plain language. Think in terms of the righthand column of this slide. Introduce and promote modern metrics then tie them to the value they deliver to the organization. This shift in communication will go a long way to making your work relevant to the csuite. That unlocks opportunity, and budget, for you and your teams. 9
14. Be the architect of reconstruction It’s no secret that marketing organizations, particularly at the enterprise level, are typically silo’d fiefdoms. This has been a problem for a long time and it’s never had a more negative impact than in this LLM discovery era. Performing well in LLMs requires multiple channels to work together in concert. Content and the web team combine to create the opportunity to earn citations. Social and PR combine to create the opportunity for brand mentions and recommendations. And media raises the profile of your brand, encouraging searchers to directly include your brand in their prompts. We just can’t afford to have those functions working independently of one another anymore. It’s imperative that we break down the silos and you’re in a unique position to be the architect of the modern model for the LLM era. I’m not suggesting that you become the new CMO, but the data you possess and 10
15. your understanding of how LLMs work, gives you the opportunity to be indispensable and a major influence on how your business transforms how marketing goes to work. 10
16. What good looks like Owned Content Media THIS IS YOU! Centralized Data & Insights (search & LLM) Social/ UGC Earned/ PR Here’s an example that we’ve seen work for large enterprises. If we’re to truly integrate the disparate marketing functions that influence LLMs, we need a central rallying point that connects and guides them all. We’ve had success creating GSO Centers of Excellence with several of our clients. The concept puts a shared set of data, insights and measurement at the center to bind the channels together. You have the opportunity to be the nucleus and the electromagnetic force that holds the activation channels together. Your data and insights can be that rallying point. Surfacing topical citation gaps focuses the efforts of the owned content team. Identifying the online publications that are influential to LLMs fuels the PR team. Highlighting the subreddits, YouTube channels and other social and user generated content sources that are cited frequently in your universe is grist for the social team. 11
17. And, finally, identifying the areas where your brand lacks credibility and relevance helps target media spend. In this scenario, you become air traffic control for the combined effort. You identify the areas of need and supply the insights that allow the relevant channels to go to work effectively and in coordination. I’ll give you a quick example… 11
18. It works – a quick example Identify the opportunity Q: Why is Arizona State University’s admission rate so high? A: r/applyingtocollege: subreddit comments characterized ASU’s high acceptance rate as a signal of lower quality – AIO was not favorable Take action Identify high priority “questions” where you’re not the answer Activate across channels to build influence Arizona State University is one of our most progressive clients. They were one of the quickest to understand the nature and implications of LLM discovery. They formed a cross-channel task force to address it holistically – a true LLM discovery Center of Excellence that reports to very senior University leadership. They have owned content, the web team, PR, social and media all organized around a centralized data and insights engine run by our GSO team. Guess what: Our GSO team is what used to be called the SEO team. The example I’d like to share today is near real time. Just a few weeks ago, our GSO team shared an LLM visibility audit that they’d prepared with ASU’s LLM discovery COE. One of the findings that stood out is that a lot of important questions being posed online about the university were being answered in AI Overviews and LLM responses by sources that were not ASU themselves. Reddit, YouTube, bloggers were commonly cited as sources for these responses and the answers were frequently incorrect, incomplete or unfavorable. ASU needed to retake control of their narrative as it was being expressed through AI. 12
19. To do this, the COE used a combination of factors to prioritize their work, including topical interest volume, whether or not ASU was a source for the answer, and the answer’s accuracy. One that they targeted was “Why is Arizona State University’s admission rate so high? ASU admits about 80% of the students who apply – basically anyone who meets their admission standards and they’re proud of that because their mission is to educate as many people as possible. This is a high-volume topic for ASU, but Reddit was the source for the answer in AI Overviews. And the answer wasn’t favorable. Sadly, nobody took a screen shot of the original answer, but it was along the lines of “ASU’s high acceptance rate may be a sign of lower quality.” Something had to be done. The COE went to work across channels. In this case, owned content, reddit and YouTube. The decision and activation was data-driven, agile, collaborative and coordinated. So, how did it work out? 12
20. (almost) Instant Success The owned content team quickly posted an article on their website expressing their philosophy for why they maintain a high acceptance rate. They also engaged on the subreddits we had identified as influential and produced YouTube Shorts. Within days of posting the article, this was the result. Insights and guidance from the GSO team drove action across channels that are now united and a negative turned into a positive. Of course, there is never a guarantee of this type of immediate impact, and this is just one small example, but it’s illustrative of the power of the integrated COE model to drive effectiveness. 13
21. When you get back to work… START THE CONVERSATION So, how to get started in this new direction. When you get back to work, start the conversation, if it hasn’t started already: Conduct an LLM visibility audit to illustrate your ecosystem of discovery and the systems of influence impacting your business. We use our own proprietary solution to do this, but there are more than a dozen 3rd party point solutions available as well – I’m sure most of you are using one or more of them already. Focus the findings of the audit on the entities that are influencing answers relevant to your business. You’ll see your brand relative to competitors, digital publications and social entities. Mapping this ecosystem will demonstrate the need to establish the Cross-Channel COE. Your executives will reflexively want to focus on how your brands are performing but keep their attention on the factors influencing that performance. That’s where the gold is. 14
22. Start making music Get your band together: As the source of insights, you may be the leader, but you don’t want to be a solo act. Find your partners from owned content, social, PR and media and show them their roles in influencing LLM responses. Start working together to build an integration plan that includes data sources, insights, workstreams and measurement frameworks that will enable you to intelligently execute then get to work. 15
23. In this agentic era be the agent of change Finally, the spotlight’s swung our way. It’s time to dance. In this agentic era, be your organization’s agent of change. 16
24. THANK YOU Access the deck on Speaker Deck Thank you very much for this opportunity. I hope you have a fantastic time here in San Diego and at Brighton SEO. 17