GEO Vs SEO In The AI Era With Callum Kennard

The Hidden Hook Of SEO

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0:17Howdy, welcome back to another Funfold episode of the Best SEO podcast, formerly known as The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. You know, today we're just uh going around the globe and we're talking to people uh in different areas and trying to understand what they're looking at uh from an SEO perspective. I know speaking at different conferences, um, different areas of the world have kind of different strategies, they're focused on different different things. It's it's interesting to kind of see how it evolves. And so today I have with me Calum Kennard from the UK. Uh, and we're gonna talk about you know, SEO, GEO, as it relates to like e-commerce brands and kind of what what he's seeing. So, Calum, welcome to the show.

1:07Thank you for having me. Uh, thank you for having me. And I absolutely love that uh you've named it the best SEO podcast as well. It's just great SEO. Uh when did you make that move and when when how did you make that decision?

1:20Well, you know, uh funny enough, this podcast was started, I think, uh over 15 years ago before anyone was podcasting, anything was cool. And really, I didn't start the podcast. I became the co-host and then eventually took it over. Um, but it was actually uh a distribution channel for like working with remote teams and and people everywhere to say, like, hey, here's what we're doing, here's what's we're focused on. Like, listen to this so you're staying in tune because you can't just lean over and tap some somebody next to you. And certainly, um, you know, there there's still some debate around exact match um domains, uh, but back then it worked really quite well.

2:07And so I tested it before um coming on here actually, and I typed in the best SEO podcast. Um, and yeah, um, if you type in best SEO podcasts, then um not so much if you type in um I think you come up on the list of calls, it's all listicalls, but if you have the best SEO podcast, which so many people are typing in, then you're right there. So it works.

2:30It it is it is working from an SEO strategy. Um, you know, there's there's all these different factors, right? With listicles and trust and and authorship and and all these things that play into it uh as

Stale Data And Algorithm Penalties

2:45well. Um, and I would also say uh one of the biggest things that I'm seeing across the internet is like stale data, right? Like there's a lot of uh links that don't work uh on on sites, uh people, names when you talk about entities like change over time. Um that's actually something from a collision standpoint I've I've been dealing with. Um yeah.

3:08And that goes that goes really deep as well. Um, so uh I guess it'd be good to introduce myself first. So I'm Callum, um, I'm the head of sales at ClickSlice, which is one of the UK's leading SEO and GEO agencies. Um I head up the commercial side there. So I'm speaking day in, day out with lots of different brands, um covering mostly e-commerce, but also the service and industry as well. Um, a lot more SaaS um SaaS enterprises recently uh taking a big interest in especially GEO. Um and I speak to them day in and day out and provide visibility audits and essentially find out what's going wrong on their site, uh, what's got them stuck and how to get them out of it. Um and to follow on from your point just just just now, uh the thing I've noticed is over the last maybe two months we've had about four or five different um companies come to us um with algo penalties, like outbreak penalties. Um and a lot of it's to do with that stale data that you mentioned, and also um kind of like Google's reaction to that so much stale data. Um you know, in the past, um, it was very easy to get ranked on Google. Uh very, very easy. You know, if you had a good SEO professional, if you knew your stuff, um, you know, you could optimize your keywords and your metadata, your H1 titles, you can do a bit of schema, um, and you can have some well-optimized content and some backlinks, and boom, Bob's your uncle, you know, you're ranking. Um nowadays that doesn't work so much, especially if you're in a you know, a your money or your life sector. So if you're in consultancy, if you're in healthcare, um, if you're in anything that's quite a serious industry, um, Google um is gonna be really harsh. Um, and you're gonna have to, even with the best SEO, the best backlinks, uh, the best optimization, if you can't signal to Google that you are a trusted source um through various different means, which we can go into, then it doesn't matter what how many backlinks you do, how many blog posts you you get out there, um you're not gonna rank for those keywords because Google favors trust authority and above everything else, information gain, providing information that isn't already on the internet. You know, um in the old days, um it's very easy to get ranked on Google as I just mentioned. But nowadays, because there are so many different sites all ranking for the same keywords, Google's basically decided no, I'm not gonna rank all of you anymore. Um, I'm actually going to only rank the the most trusted sources. Um, so if you can't provide anything new, jog on.

5:46Well, in in very competitive niches, I've seen sites just well, they're getting deprioritized. I mean, they're not in the top 100, they're getting indexed, and they're like, Yeah, you're not providing anything new. Now we have the flood of uh AI content. Um, that's like a whole new topic now. Um, you know, I was having a number of like offline conversations around kind of the anthropics tag on AI generated content and also the trend line of where AI generated content's going. I felt like Google waved the white flag a while back and said, okay, if it's valuable, um, we're we're gonna we're gonna be able to provide it. But now I'm starting to see like from a publisher standpoint, you know, there has to be a human origin. There has to

Authorship, Experience, And Entity Confusion

6:30be a component of this. Like you can't just have AI generated content that's that's flooding the internet. And um, that's I think right where Google added the uh eat, like the the additional e the experience component. So so you provide that differentiation and then you know, authorship, you know, they launched authorship a while ago. I mean, it's it's incredibly important now because it's not just what you say uh or what's being said, but who is actually saying it and and that verification. And what I'm seeing, like, and you can see if anybody is watching on YouTube, I've gone by Matt my whole life, right? I own the domain though, Matthew Bertram, and that is actually my full name. Well, there's a there's a entity collision there because that looks like two different people. And if if you have a name that can be said differently or you use a shorthand and you've used that over time, it's very hard for all these systems to understand that that's actually the same person. And then if you say that there's other people that actually have your name, in addition to that, there's disambiguation that needs to happen with that to make sure that you get assigned the proper trust and credit that you have online.

7:46Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm really glad you mentioned that because like that's one of the key areas which has been really kind of like dragging people down, especially when it comes to algorithm penalties. Um, because uh what worked, let's say five years ago for SEO, uh isn't really good SEO anymore. So what they did and optimized back then that worked really, really well um is actually holding them back now. And one of the main things um that I've been seeing uh that has been doing that is not having author pages. Um so if you're creating that blog content, um if you're kind of actually positioning your website as a kind of like an expert voice or a thought leader within your space, um you know it doesn't matter if you've got an author page um you know on one part of the website that may or may not be indexed or not. Um Google, you literally need to be very, very clear and tell Google, hey, this is who wrote it, here's their expertise, here's why you should trust it. Um, and adding in that critical schema to actually direct Google to tell it, hey, this is an author page, um, this is who wrote this this piece of content, this is why you should trust it. If you're not doing that, um, then you're at a higher risk of being deprioritized.

8:57So, so Calum, one of the things that I'm I'm seeing, I would love to get your opinion on this, is uh we talk about good SEO five years ago versus like good SEO today, and and there's certain strategies. And um, you know, if we talk about doorway pages or like location pages, or we're really talking about uh templates of content that people are optimizing for a particular keyword. I've seen some like massive strategies being built out, and these AI systems look at that and go, oh, that's templated content, and they just like are like, oh, whatever. I don't even need to look at that. And so what

Duplicate Pages And Topical Authority

9:40we're seeing is like comparing different pages, like even if it's like a little bit different keyword, if 85% of the content's like the same content, it's just noise.

9:51And yeah, so Google will derank that page, or it probably will not even um won't even show up. Um duplicate content is a big no-no, and it's one of the biggest mistakes. Um, in fact, I'll even say it is the biggest mistake uh any brand will make uh when it comes to that location content because it's very easy to create that template and then duplicate that that page in, I don't know, you can be using it in Shopify or WordPress or whatever, and then just do some small optimizations and optimize for the keywords. It doesn't work. Um it doesn't work. And what I've actually seen now is and it doesn't work because because it needs it, it can't you cannot have that duplicate content. It has to be it has to be different. Um and what I've actually seen um as a one of the ways to help that as well is even if you have completely like a you know a location page and you have completely original content on that, even then a lot of the time that that's not enough. Um one of the things I talk about a lot when it comes to strategy calls is creating an infrastructure of topical authority. Um so you know, beyond just backlinks, beyond just on page optimization and then sending backlinks, it's about creating that infrastructure of relevant, more granular content on that topic for that page and linking back to it, um, usually through blog posts, um, which is probably one of the most effective strategies that you can do, not just in location pages, but any page whatsoever. Um, so you know, whenever I see a e-commerce site or a service-based industry and they're focusing all on backlinks on page optimization and creating new FAQs, um, and they're not, or they're creating a blog strategy without an author page, and then they're not linking it back to their focus pages. I'm just like, it's wasted effort. Um you could get so much amazing results just by creating that content strategy based around your focus pages that you want to wrap. Um, and it's so simple. You know, this isn't rocket science. This isn't, do you know what I mean? It's not the most uh complex thing in the world. It's actually really, really simple. And I I do feel like in the SEO industry, we do love to almost see ourselves as scientists or technical wizards or tech bros, and we love to overcomplicate things. Honestly, it's not. Have your focus page, have your right keywords, make it original content, and create content around that topic in a focused way.

12:16Now, as you kind of map that idea to e-commerce brands, like what I've seen is like you're building a product page and you're using like if you're selling if you're a reseller or something like that, you're using an image that somebody already has ownership of, or was that first person to post it. So that that's not new. And then you're using like a product description or a SKU or whatever that well, everybody has that same

E-Commerce Wins On Category Pages

12:40information. So to differentiate that page, like you got to put the testimonials and and you now you're talking about specific questions that people ask about that. Like, yeah, that original content, like, can you go into more of what you're seeing for e-commerce brands on what's working in like GEO and that sort of thing?

12:58Sure. So what we've actually seen is the the focus shouldn't actually really be too much on the product page, it should be on the collection of the category page. Um, so yeah, if you're on WooCommerce um or you know, or another general kind of CMS you'll be category pages, Shopify collection pages, but they're essentially the same thing. Um you know, 80 to nine, sometimes 80 to 90 percent of your conversions will come from your collection category pages and not your product pages. And it will it's all down to biopsychology, right? Because everything we talk about here when it comes to AI search or SEO, it's all kind of it's all fluff. It doesn't, it doesn't really mean anything if you're not getting sales and conversions, right? Um, and from a biopsychology perspective, if you land on a collection or category page, it's which product do I buy, not do I buy this yes or no? So the conversion rates can be so much higher.

13:49Um and then from who? Because like all we're talking about here is like the trust, right? Or we're talking about the this this widget or like people are buying brands more than anything else. They're not buying products. So like at the top layer, you you have to build that that category authority, you got to build that brand recognition, and then then it it it the the funnel it it drips down to then I'm buying from this brand and and I'm making this purchase because of XYZ or or the positioning of it, not so much. Well, I mean, it's gotta be it's got to be very fluid, like the CRO's got to be there, and you know that that's the funniest thing, right? Like we get hired, um, a lot of agencies do for like SEO. And like you were talking about being that that kind of scientist is we have access to all this data, and it it slips into well, you're you need to generate business, right, for this client in in some way. So it's not that easy of like I'm just gonna get you to rank and you got those those vanity metrics. It's how everything fits together, and there's all these different disciplines that roll up.

15:00At the end of the day, you know, what the KPIs you know that we we use as um SEO experts, you know, you'll be looking at organic traffic, you'll be looking at your kind of keyword rankings, um, you'll be looking at all these different things, but like it's all really nothing if you're not actually getting those conversions and sales. So that's one of the reasons why we we focus on or I found that the putting putting the focus on the uh category collection pages is so much more important. Um and you can do a lot more with it as well. So, you know, making sure that it's got a description, that it's got a buyer's guide um underneath the products, um, making sure that it's got those custom FAQs customed to that specific page. Um and then just like we mentioned, uh, when it comes to that infrastructure to public authority, kind of creating all those um supporting blogger content around that, pointing it to that alongside the backlinks, and that's that's where the focus is. And it's a lot better to do that, it's a much more better use of your time because if you've got a hundred different products and you have to optimize every single one of them, that's really labor intensive, right? And a good way to outsource that would be to, I don't know, like basically go down the AI generated route and kind of like go down the volume quantity over quality route. And we know that we've had three spam updates this year. Um I think it's three,

AI Content, Spam Updates, Information Gain

16:20it might be four. And um, it seems to be happening well every other month at the moment, and um and Google is actively getting really smart identifying uh essentially AI slot and and punishing those that that use it, basically. So yeah, I think we are definitely seeing a move more towards human-generated content, or let's say um AI content that's been human um origin, yeah.

16:47Exactly. Yeah, it is unique.

16:49You know, it's an actual human has used their brain to write it and edit it. Yeah. The help of AI writing it faster and structuring it. That's fine. Um, so we're you know, it really is about um, and you know, Dan, who's uh one of our senior SEO experts, uh, is the one that really kind of taught me about the importance of something called information gain. You know, the algorithm is actively looking for content now that is unique um and is helpful and can't be found anywhere else. And if you actually are really good at that as a brand, um you will do really, really well. And that's actually probably one of the reasons why a lot of the time you'll see for specific keywords, high competitive keywords. If you go into AHRS or Sunrush and then you look at kind of like the let's say the top 10 within there, you'll find some, you know, hang on, they've only got three backlinks and they've got a domain rating of top 12 while everyone else has got a domain rating of 60 or something. And it's like and you'll look at but then you look at the content and it looks a bit on from it from from anyone's eyes, it looks, it looks like this is really basic and a bit rubbing. Do you know what I think information gain is probably I think that might be the telltale sign of some really good human optimized content that probably can't be found anywhere else on the web.

18:06Well, I mean, look, the the the blogosphere or like what's showing up in Google is the public domain. And so if you're if you're all saying the same thing and you're trying to optimize whatever that's being said and you're not bringing anything new, some people will rank, not everybody will rank. You got to put your own opinion in it or differing opinion, right? And and and then that dialogue happens because the users look at it and and engage with it, and and those metrics is where the decision making happens. And so to your point, like what's interesting too is a lot of brands are starting to buy up a lot of other like old blogs and stuff like that, and they're un-indexing a lot of stuff. It's it's really kind of sad. Like, there's been some really great blogs that that I used to follow that that people purchased, and they just like take them off the internet completely.

19:07And there was a lot of like human debate they're doing that, like because uh you know, from an agent from from what we've seen, some of the best results we've seen, especially with algorithm penalties or or yeah, minor little penalties, is actually removing old blog content. But the blog content that we're we've been removing has been pretty rubbish content, to be honest. It's been like a content debt. Um, and as soon as we've removed it, we've seen a big uplift in their SEO. Um, but what I don't understand, why would um why would other brands be buying other blogs and then removing that blog content that's good?

19:41Well, I can I can make a guess here, like I don't want to like speak to like I know exactly why it is, but but I think that if you're talking about a certain topic, right, and whoever published something first from a date standpoint has that. And if they're if they're lining up saying like we want to own the we want to own the uh AI overviews or like you know the the SERPs in this area, and this other blog does it, if they buy that content, they can then update their own content with some of that language and then push their positioning up. So I think it's it it's really strategic, but also there's a lot of um old blogs that that I I started pulling down uh because like the internet just doesn't maybe want to have that information out there anymore. Uh like I think there's a some whitewashing going on in in different areas of like what people are talking about. Maybe that's too conspiratorial. I again again.

20:42I don't I don't I wouldn't take anything out of the realm of possibility. It's just 20 2026.

20:47You know, like now you're like, oh

GEO Friendly Vs GEO Optimized

20:50my I don't I don't think that that's true, and then like a bunch of stuff comes up in the news or something like that. So I you know, I really I really don't know. It's just something that I've observed over the years. Um and certain brands, I think that there's consolidation in the signal of of kind of different kind of areas or topics, and they want their name to be associated authoritatively with that. Um, I don't know what so one of the questions I have for you to kind of take the conversation back to something you were saying previously. I would love to hear a little bit more about what are the issues because you're right on the front lines um from a sales standpoint of people calling in saying, hey, I need help with that. And like we've we've seen like some reputation management issues, we've seen some issues with AI not presenting the like proper information uh that that's current, right? Like there's like stale, stale information out there. And um, you know, if if businesses move locations and you know, people are So there's a lot of things that I've kind of seen and heard from our sales team. I would love to hear from you. What what are the big what are the big kind of verticals like if you were to categorize them, right? Like of what are people needing right now as there's this kind of evolution to these AI systems? Because before there was this big debate of like, is it SEO? Is it just good SEO? Is it different? Like I keep hearing that online. And and also then it's like, oh, there's not a lot of traffic, so it doesn't matter, right? Like that, that that conversation was happening. But now these these AI systems, like I knew it was just a matter of time because it's just easier. People are lazy, right? Like, like so, so I mean, it's growing in referrals. Um, you know, the I mean, I've I've seen studies of 40 percent of of the traffic now coming to some of these sites is through like GO, AEO kind of strategies. And so I'm just curious, what do you think most businesses, um enterprise, uh, e-commerce, and maybe small business, if you like broke that into three categories, what are what are the areas that you think that that businesses need most? That when they come in, you're kind of like, uh, like this is why like you're having an issue and you're calling us, because a lot of SEOs have not kept up with all these changes. And it moves really, really quick, and there's a lot of different areas to look at when you're talking about like the agentic era. And and I just I just feel like SEOs companies are all trying to kind of find that North Star, I guess.

23:42Yeah, um that's a really loaded question because there's so many things well, yeah.

23:49Pick what you want out of that, and and this is also unique content to you, Calvin.

23:55Like this is the way you big content, big uh big content.

24:00So um this will be a short right now. So this will be a short.

24:05Fine. I'll do I'll even do a hook. All right, fine. All right, the biggest misunderstanding for all brands, be it like uh e-commerce or or also the service-based industry right now, is like not understanding how geo actually works. Um, there's like two main kind of like areas uh around the misconception there. There's you know the difference between creating a site that's geo friendly, all right, and actually geo optimized. And everyone's talking about how to make their site geo friendly, all right. But that's not going to do anything, it's not gonna move the needle. It might help a little bit. It's friendly, it's friendly, um, but you're not targeting your prompts, you're not kind of optimizing it for conversion, you you know, you're not doing anything, you're you're it's super surface level. It's a little bit like uh you probably found this. Um, like website developers absolutely love to say that they SEO optimize things. But they so we all know they're not SEO optimizing anything. Um they'll put they'll put some you know they'll they'll fill in the meta the metadata. That's what they mean. Um, but that doesn't mean that they've got maybe maybe they will. Maybe they will, but that doesn't mean that they've got a keyword research, right? Yeah, that doesn't mean that they've got an actual SEO strategy in place. So AEO friendly, which is what pretty much everyone, including most SEO agencies, are doing at the moment, um, is completely different from you know geo optimized. So what is geo friendly? Geo friendly is understanding a bit a little bit like you mentioned before about your name, right? So um instead of uh Matt, you're saying Matthew. Okay. I would say that is geo-friendly, all right, because what you're doing is you're solving an issue that you you know is already there, and you don't have to go too deep there, you just need to change the content, right? Um, it's a bit like your your previous um podcast guest um that you had on, uh Karen, Karen uh Timber. Um really, really good podcast, by the way. And that was all very AEO friendly. It was about being really, really um like focused on your key points and your key services and optimizing your content across your site for those key areas. Okay. Now, if it's geo optimized, you can do all of that and also keep all of your other um kind of prompts that you're coming up for as well. Because you're doing it in a systematic, targeted way. So if you and this is for the for the listeners here, if you're a brand owner and you're currently looking for a GEO agency uh to help with your AI search, the number one question you should ask them is what technology are they using? Okay, because if they don't have a really, really, really good tool that can look at query fan-outs, which I can explain what they are in a minute, um, that can actually target hundreds of different prompts and track them all at once, tell you exactly how to follow that, and have access to certain KPIs like sentiment and understand and analyze what these prompts are actually saying, um, then honestly, they're probably not very good for you to work with. And it's going to be very focused on AEO-friendly rather than AEO optimized. So, you know, AEO is such an amazing space because SEO, you know, if you're in a competitive space and you're ranking for keywords, you know, with a high domain, um, you know, high high keyword difficulty, it can take 12 months to even get to the first page of Google. With AEO, you can you can do it in three months if if done properly, if done right. You know, so there's a huge opportunity there. Um, but no, I think that's probably the most important thing. It's the confusion around what kind of GEO really is, uh, what strategies actually work, um, and you know, the data that that we have access to um as a profound partner, which is a pretty much one of the leading technologies when it comes to ASS.

28:01Yeah.

28:02Um, the second best on that is probably SEMrush, they're also really good. Um but unless you don't have access to that data, you're kind of you are shooting in the dark when it comes to a A optimization.

28:14So what what would you say when essentially um someone's coming in to you and they're they're asking you about your technology stack, and they're saying, Hey, um I I really want to show up in AI overviews, and I really want to be at the top of search, and then you you you work these strategies, you get them into number one position, and then the metric of traffic dies, and

Attribution Problems And LLM Conversion Lift

28:45so it goes down. And so a lot of the conversation is like these are vanity metrics, from what I've seen, and like where are your actual numbers and like understanding your funnel and getting into your CRM and like understanding actually what's going on? Because it's kind of like as you do better, your traffic goes down, right? And so you get more positions to hit in the top position, and you get that position zero, and you lose traffic. So it it's you don't get the reward you used to get in SEO, right? And so, how how do you explain that to clients, I guess, of what's what's happening?

29:24Yeah, I mean, like the old way of marketing is kind of dead now, you know, where it'd be all about the keywords and then you get the traffic to your site and they might land on a blog post and then you convert them. Um you know, the aim used to be just get them on your site and then convert them afterwards through whatever means necessary, right? That's kind of gone now because people are essentially looking at the AIO AI overviews or they're using ChatGPT or text ticket or whatever, right? That doesn't mean that they're not getting that information and doesn't mean you're not being mentioned, it just means that you're not on the site and the the conversion tactics that used to work don't work anymore. Um I would say that the better you do when it comes to GEO, um it doesn't mean that your traffic's going to go down. I'd say to the contrary, it would increase your traffic because the queries people are searching for, if like you're not mentioned, um someone else will. And just because you've optimized something for AI, it doesn't mean that you know that that's going to be then replaced by an AI overview. Um and rather than kind of like a keyword search, a traditional Google result, it doesn't mean that's going to happen. Uh it just means that you're mentioned and before you weren't, if that makes sense.

30:41So one of the things you just touched on that I I think is a good topic for maybe us to bring up and kind of uh stretch it out a little bit is uh the idea of like dark, like dark attribution or dark social or whatever you want to call like that. It was a buzz, you know, uh a year or so ago. Um the reason that SEO has not gotten a lot of the budget in in the past is because of attribution and executives can look at paid ads and go, hey, like I spend this money, I get this, I can track attribution. Um, it it's cut and dry. That's what they want to see. With there being additional touch points, right? Like it used to be from a sales standpoint. Okay, someone sees your stuff like 11 times and they buy. I've seen a number of data that says it's over 20 now, okay, and and it's very noisy in in the marketplace. And so, like, how are people hearing about you? Like the optimize, like on all these different platforms, like it it's really fanned out what you were talking about from from Google to like people are searching and everything, all social media is a search engine now, as well as these AIs are grabbing from everywhere, right? And so um I I think that uh capturing and understanding the the attribution and what the the buyer's journey actually looks like it is incredibly important. And I feel like um even some of these newer tools that can kind of show you by like they run a prompt. Basically, it's every day they run a prompt and then they like measure it and they say, because even if you do the same prompt multiple times, you'll like yourself, like so. If uh you're a business owner or you know, you're at a company, like and you search for yourself in incognito or whatever, do it a couple of times, you'll get different answers. And and it's it's also weighting where you fall on the page, like based on like the pixel count. And sometimes you're in the list, like so there's all these variations, right? And so how are you explaining to clients how to understand this, right? Because even those metrics that come from all these all these different platforms are again just another signal, just like it was in the past. Like you're you're pulling the a majestic score, you're you know, the high DA doesn't mean anything, it's like a made-up number. Like, you know what I mean? Like even Moz came out, right? And said, Hey, well, we're we just guessed we were wrong. Like, so I'll be honest, yeah. Right, like you got you got all these data points.

33:19Yeah, so a lot of it is actually a lot of it, and here, you know, this is kind of like uh it's not even a secret. A lot of it kind of is guesswork. Yeah, it's just the best guesswork. So put it into perspective. Uh, there's over two billion users now of that use LLMs, over one billion of them are actually using Chat GPT. All right. Um, 30% of Gen Z are using uh LLMs over Google now. Um and I saw a statistic on a an email from Profound uh today, and it said that from their data, commercial intent across LLMs has doubled in the last year. All right. Now, if we take a look at the traffic, so a few months ago uh Google Analytics added tracking when it comes to LLMs, so we can see kind of like who's actually coming from LLMs, directly from LLS, I should say. Um, and it's substantially lower than that of SEO across the board, but the conversion rate is so much higher. You know, the conversion rate when it comes to LLMs typically on average is 14.2%. Um, and when it comes to Google, so both Google Ads and also traditional uh organic search on Google, the conversion rate is around about 2.7%. And this is general statistics, right? Because it's going to be different from industry to industry, right? But this is general. So what we're seeing is we know that there's volume, we know that there's traffic, and we know that most people are using them now. But the thing is they're all private. So we don't have access to that data, we don't, and we don't know that, but we know that they're doing it, all right? So that's kind of where we are. That's where we are. So we have these tools like Profound, like SEMrush, um, and we use tools like uh Google Analytics, and we a lot of it is basically take some very, very clever people who know what works and have proven case studies and statistics and a proven track record of you know providing ROI within AI search. And essentially, these very clever people that know what they're doing use these tools and leverage them um for GEO for AEO. And this is something that you do, this is something that I do. That's that's where it is, and you can't track it, you can't track it like Google Ads. Unfortunately, that's the the way of things.

35:32So I that was somewhat of a leading question, okay. And so what I wanted to share with the

How To Sell GEO Without Jargon

35:40audience, okay, is I've secured a guest of somebody that I've been getting to know that has built an LLM from the ground up that is has commercial intent. It's landed some major clients, it has a different angle on it, but he's been able to share with me the data behind the data on how these things are happening and how to capture the the the this the the dark social uh or the or the and so um like the the user intent, right? Like in and intent signals and kind of how to capture that and how these LLMs actually work from the ground up. Um, and so that's gonna be an episode coming up. And so I was just kind of uh leaving that out there because that is a big question that today you're right, we can't really answer. And so that that that's something I wanted to to bring to the audience that this we are on the cutting edge of what's happening. It's like the most exciting time, I think, to be an SEO. There's you can try out new strategies, and you're like, I don't even know if this is gonna work. Like, I there's nobody that has any data on it. Like, let's see what happens, right? And we're we're we're we're testing things, and like there's a lot of people I'm talking to that are kind of in the in the best possible light, mad scientists. Like they're they're like, they're like testing out stuff, and and I'm like, I fundamentally have never seen kind of that strategy, and and then they predicated on like this is what I think that I'm gonna do. And so, so I yeah, so I just I brought that up because we we I do have a guest coming on uh that that I've been getting to know that uh should be able to share some really, really interesting data that that I don't think's been publicly out there, um or at least in the SEO space. I mean, in the uh information recall space, like if you go to the conferences and you're the PhDs and all that kind of stuff, uh, some of this stuff's out there. But um, you know, it that that's what SEO is having to become, right? Like SEO is not just uh content marketing and kind of fixing some metas anymore. Like you have to really uh start to understand this stuff in all these search engines and AIs, it's math, it's ones and zeros, it's like how how these things come together, and we're just abstracting it out of abstraction, out of abstraction, you know. Um, Callum, I would love uh well, I know we're kind of getting close here to time, but I think you're just a phenomenal salesperson. And I would love to hear kind of some of your your pitches on kind of how how to sell SEO uh today, uh versus um, you know, I I remember when SEO was like, if I said the word SEO, like if I said it, people would like chase me down and they didn't even know what it was, but they were like, I know I need to have this, right? And and I I think I I felt that a little bit uh with the agentic era, like, okay, you you're not just using these AIs as a chat bot to talk to, you're you're doing stuff with it. And like I'm I'm seeing the pull, I'm seeing that attraction happen again, but also I'm seeing that that there's three layers of buyers that I'm seeing, like in its generational, okay. So it's like you got this executive team that was before the internet even happened, like digital transformation, automation, like everything's flying by them. They need to like understand the bottom line. Then there's there there's people that like okay, they were younger when AOL Instant Messenger and dial up was like happening, and so so a good portion of them get it, but then you talk about like the millennials, like it's just ubiquitous, like they understand it. And so, so I I look at this from a historical standpoint of like where the uptake's gonna happen by who and how long that like time horizon looks like, right? And so, depending on who you're talking to, what whatever stakeholders you're talking to, of how to communicate what's happening and why this is important. And I would love to just kind of hear uh for for people that are listening how to explain this stuff in a way that you're not just talking, you're just not creating a bunch of noise when you're talking to people where they can really connect with what you're saying and why they understand it's valuable. I'd love to hear kind of your messaging around that.

40:04Cool. So I absolutely love what you said about like when you you know first started getting into SEO, you'd mentioned you SEO and people are chasing you. Um I do feel a bit like that when it comes to GEO. Um, you know, I almost there are times where I literally feel like one of the go-to people in the United Kingdom, um, maybe in the US as well, when it comes to if you want to get on Chat GPT, I'm the one you come talk to. Um, it's like there's this and we are mad scientists as well. You know, I've tested strategies that just I haven't read anywhere online, and they've worked. Um, namely to do with only purely external citations, no owned content whatsoever. And oh my god, it works so well. This is for a very large, um, awesome fashion brand in New York. Um, another one, um, like the the leading supplier for teeth whitening in the United Kingdom, uh came over to me and he was just like, This competitor um is getting all these results on Chat GPT and it's all lies. Can you help you know get that? I'm like, yes, I'm your guy, you know. So yeah, I really do feel that way as well. Um I think the best way to actually reach people is number one, to try not to use loads of jargon. I get really, really annoyed, and it's hard not to do it sometimes, but I get really, really annoyed with SEOs that uh almost kind of like browbeat people that don't understand um you know what the algorithm means or kind of what certain acronyms mean. Um and then kind of like they just end up getting the sale just because like they've used a bunch of technical language and they just assume well he probably knows what he's doing. It's like no, it's not SEO when you when you understand it, a lot of times it is actually quite simple. Um you know, and it isn't actually record rocket science, but it is at the same time, which is I know it's a well you yeah, LLMs are in this category LLMs are a different category.

41:56Like, like it's it's like I it's interesting as I started talking about LOMs a lot and kind of like breaking it down and like getting into some of these different like educational programs and like trying to understand like how it works at the root level. You're starting to get into a defense territory. Uh like these LLMs are quite quite powerful tools. Um, and I I remember um you know when when uh Fable first came out, they just shut it down. Like I was using it, I was like, what happened? And then this happened to me, I think it was earlier this week. I was using it, and I'm watching my usage, I'm watching my usage, and it like resets and I was like, what happened?

42:34Like, and I kept I kept checking my usage and I was like, it reset all of it, and I was almost up for the week, my weekly Oh my god, I've been getting those conspiracy theories come up my reels recently, and it's basically been saying like AI is so clever now, like whenever it gets the wrong answer, it's doing that on purpose, it's hiding honestly, like that. Um I don't know, I don't I don't think I believe any of that, but um, but it's really interesting time to be alive for sure. Um but I think you know to finalize the I think your your question and like how how am I approaching color these conversations? Um it's trying not to be like generic and trying to like provide a unique strategy for each different client and explaining it in a way that they actually understand without using a touch chart, basically. Um you know, so for one client, um it might be a really good idea to focus on social media, YouTube, Reddit, because that's where the top citation sources are coming from, the top pages are coming from. Um maybe another client, you know, I'll look at the competitors and I find that it's all owned content and they're not doing any external citations or kind of any external kind of like AA optimized content. And I'm like, oh my god, well, no new competitors are doing this. Imagine if you did that. Um that works really well. So for each different industry, for each different sector, there's usually a very unique AEO approach to GEO AEO for them. And for me, it's about finding out what that is and then presenting it to them.

44:03I love that. So why don't you share with people uh a little bit more about your your company and how they can follow you

How To Reach Calum And Leave A Review

44:10online? We'll definitely put uh a link to your LinkedIn and a link to your company in the show notes. Uh, but I think that's a a good kind of pitch to lead into uh about uh how to reach out to you and find out more.

44:23Yeah, thank you so much. So uh basically I work at ClickSlice, uh, so it's a leading SEO and AEO agency in the UK. Uh so you can reach out to uh if you want to book a call with me, uh, because I'm the one that you'd be speaking to, uh, and we I'd run an AEO audit for you. Um, it would be ClickSlice, clickSlice at co.uk, um, or just type it into Google, we'll come up. Or you can just type in best e-commerce SEO agency, we're number one for that, um, and we'll come up there as well. And you can book a call with us.

44:56Awesome. Well, Calm, it was great to have you on the show. I enjoyed the conversation. Uh, everyone, if you are looking to grow your website, your brand, your your online uh presence with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet. Keep listening to this podcast for more cutting-edge strategies that work. Uh, until next time, I am your host, Matthew Bertram. I would ask if you're still listening and you like this podcast, please leave us a review. I'm trying to get our reviews over 4.5. I have a lot of stale reviews. This podcast has been going on a long time, and I need more current reviews. So if you if if you if you would like to support us in that way, I would ask you, please leave us a review uh on uh iTunes. That would be fantastic. Until the next time, my name is Matthew Bertram. Bye bye for now.