Be careful with AI & LLM Acronyms in the optimization space

[aaronweissseo]

TLDR: There is no difference between SEO and the new AI-driven acronyms expecting to replace it.

I've been in SEO since 2008.

With the onset of AI and the disruption it has made to traditional web search, there has been an onslaught of different acronyms to describe the current state or future of search. 

SEO already had a contentious relationship with the public. Lots of scammers, charlatans, and misinformation leaving business owners burned by bad advice and bad results. AI tools has only exacerbated that relationship. With so many people coming to this forum wanting to learn and asking for advice, I wanted to be very clear about what these new acronyms are:

It's all [redacted].

AIO, AEO, GEO, LLMO, AAIO, etc, are all just empty buzzwords to take advantage of people who are unaware of what is really happening with generative AI tools. These are terms used to make you think that you'll be behind if you don't do something different.

To be fair, SEO is an outdated term. But how these other acronyms are being used to attract unknowing individuals to put their budgets into unproven AI-driven processes to improve their AI visibility will ultimately lead to more disenchanted business owners.

What you need to know: Everything you would do to improve organic web search rankings for most of the known traditional search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) would be the same things you'd do to improve your AI visibility. All the articles about how to get found more in AI/LLMs are the same things you'd do to improve SEO. Everything.

Even Google's Danny Sullivan said that good SEO is good GEO: Search Google for “danny sullivan good seo is good geo”

This is because the web is the web and no one has figured out a better way to display results authoritatively such as Google's PageRank system. SEO is essentially (in no order):

• On-page: Relevant content
• Technical: Crawlable and indexable pages
• Off-Page: Authority (links, brand mentions, citations, and even unlinked URLs)

And these are the same aspects that fuel how LLMs deliver their responses. 

Takeaways:

• AI visibility tools are very immature right now. The combination of prompts is nearly infinite and the costs to compute these possibilities, capture and store the data, and deliver it to you is expensive. Additionally, the methodologies to perform this is varied amongst providers. 
• Generative AI platforms will converge with traditional search and browsers. It's already happening. Google's AI Mode is becoming more embedded into their familiar search experience and Chrome now has built-in AI Mode capabilities into the address bar. Perplexity's Comet browser is doing this too. This will re-ignite the browser wars of the 2000s.
• Retrieval Augmented Generation: LLMs rely on monolithic data sets that require massive computation that can only be created once. As of today, ChatGPT's training is only up-to-date as of June 2024. It ensure they are relevant, they augment their responses with results from Google, Bing, and other real-time sources.
• Yes, this also means Hubspot's new  AI tools for SEO might also be a distraction. The AEO Grader is no more informative than other SEO tools and site audits from SEMRush or Ahrefs. It's a lead generation tool for themselves. Even some of their existing tools in their CMS Hub aren't that great.
• The landscape is changing week-by-week. AI tools are evolving at a rapid pace. As humans, we legitimaitely can't keep up.  It's okay to take it slow.
• Metrics and analytics are a mess. There have been so many changes as of late that common metrics that we're accustomed to are shifting. Luckiliy, HubSpot listened to my feature request and segmented traffic sources into AI-originated traffic to make it easier to surface common AI platforms' traffic to your website. But organic traffic will reduce overtime and other engagement metrics will have new benchmarks.
• Focus on CRO and User Engagement. These aren't SEO tips, these are general marketing requirements. With lower organic traffic but new AI visits (typically with more qualified traffic), ensuring that you have a goals in mind for your traffic, focus on the processes that drive revenue once the user hits your site.

What you can do:

• Read Google's SEO Starter Guide and documentation
• Watch HubSpot's SEO training
• Keep working on developing a website that leverages keywords but considers value for your users.
• Work on your Digital Public Relations
• Ensure that your website is crawlable and indexable.
• Be cautious of SEO and AI "gurus". 
• Question everything you see and hear.

At the end of the day, all the acronyms that you've heard and seen all come down to the same thing: WEB PRESENCE. Ensuring that your website and reputation is maintained throughout the internet is the best way to improve and maintain your positioning in web or AI results.

Hope you found this helpful. I manually wrote this entire thing myself and only used AI to obtain and check sources. Good luck.

[KateSkalatskaia]

As much as we crave a single magic pill and action, the world of SEO will never be the same. I agree that the key approach is focusing on benefit and high-quality content for the target audience.

[BérangèreL]

Hi @aaronweissseo and thank you so much for sharing this with the HubSpot Community!

I'd love to check with some of our Community Members from the group: Hi @DigitalRozy, @Dsore, @nisain, @KGlobal2, @NazSH, @AGonzalez94, @YashPagare and @TLuna do you have any opions or thoughts to share with @aaronweissseo and the Community?

Thanks and have a great day!
Bérangère