Navigating the Shift from SEO to LLMs Strategies for Modern Marketers

Source: YouTube auto-generated captions, lightly cleaned (repeated caption lines removed, misheard brand names corrected).

0:02Been a lot of talk been a lot of talk about how to rank on an LLM. I don't even know if we yet have a formal understanding or definition of that versus search. Let's see how they think about each other. And I have plot open too. Let's talk to them today. I was curious what nine out of 10 marketers are missing when thinking about ranking an LLM versus say or Google. So it's saying here the LLM's number one aren't indexing. They're summarizing most marketers write for SEO indexing. Few write for comprehension and recall. It makes a lot of sense to me because a lot of us are doers. That makes sense.

You're not optimizing. You're optimizing for keywords, not questions. So, Google and being matched for intent aquar returns links. LMS match for the best possible answer of often structured or as a natural conversation. So, how are we talking to one another? Which also makes sense as to why you got it. Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and PR News and Newswire and you name it. All those sources help answer question based questions. This is why Reddit's so powerful and Corora is so powerful and it's just very interesting. No real authoritiveness or trust signals. LLMs favor clear expertise, bios, credentials, and real world experience.

External trust signals. Marketers often write like a brand. I'm not a real expert. It's true. You go into Reddit, the subreddit PPC as an example, and I'm just I'm not beating it up. I'm not braiding it, but often you just get highle answers. You need more spend. Your CTR is down. what are your KPIs? A lot of people are not talking about or citing examples or how to not walking people through things step by step.

They're not even asking most a majority of folks aren't even asking for the domain. They're just giving an answer. It works and and people take it. How do we get better than that? Right? LLM's pull from diverse sources, not just your site. A lot of y'all are not trusted. It's not that. It's not this. However, you are the ones. We are the ones feeding it. So, I don't know that to not be true. And you're not structuring for LLM citation. They favor bold, clear heading, short answer followed by depth and semantic structure, not paragraphs or clever copywriting. Right? All the content creators, all the content people out there, all the experts in paid media and marketing, it is right here in front of us on what it's thinking. But I don't know this to be true. Let's take this.

Let's go to Claude. Is this true? Let's see what Claude thinks about what it says. The internet is verifying doing it. Searching the web of accurate insight is some oversimplified claims. Here's what the evidence shows. What's accurate? The shift is real. Structure matters. Authority and expertise are crucial. Diversifications matters. What's misleading is nine out of 10 marketers. Traditional SEO is obsolete. LMS don't use backlinks. measurement is impossible. Let's now take this back and play this game. And I do this with all of my stuff minus coding because I I used to do chy, but then like I couldn't move anywhere with it. I just I gave up on it. I started doing it myself and I use Claude almost exclusively. But let's go back. Well, Claude says otherwise brand Oh, it's saying uh where we're aligned, where there's nuance. There's no real stat.

3:52Traditional FCO is absolutely SEO is evolving, not dying. Me, I agree. Clarification. LM don't use CL. They still me correct. I meant LLMs don't rank based on page rank links, but they do value content is often linked to authoritative signals. worth. What about this my friends? It says that my reciliation is thoughtful and shows honesty and acknowledging where the post is again to me. Now take this and bring it all together. Can you bring this all together and don't make up anything just shoot straight from the hip as they say?

So when you're engaging with these tools, they're completely different, right? Uh number one, influence before the click, your perception is being shaped at the response level, not the website. So remember that, right? Whether it's perplexity, Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT, if you're not mentioned there, you're invisible in that ecosystem, right? Um structure and clarity beat keyword stuffing. So it's not about tricking the algorithm. So the ads and and getting to the top and all that it doesn't make sense. So content is clear, trustworthy and semantically rich matter, right? You need to optimize for multiple services. So Google being Reddit, you white papers, product reviews and yes your site um it synthesizes across place and where we all need nuance and most marketers aren't preparing. Uh some are especially large SEO agencies. Seir is a great one that I know of and I believe X is

getting there and working towards that as well too. But most strategies are still siloed. You'll hear LLM in theory, but not many teams have tactical plans for it yet. A better way to put it, marketers aren't unprepared. They're just not integrating their SEO and AI strategies. This makes sense. There's a want for engineering and marketing to become one. Makes sense, right? I'm fluid across both. I'm very fluid across both right um in fact setting up G4 and working with Inciten helping with APIs building different tools working with perplexity all of these different things including verdicts AI forget the front-end stuff it matters but how do we bring it all together there page rank is is not super important as much as the content and that still today gets you higher for page rank is is good content rightto Historically, age mattered. I don't know if that matters as much as we

6:27move forward, but again, I don't know. What should you actually do? Audit your content. Reinforce authority. Get on. Do not want to get on Twitter, also known as X, but I'm on threads lightly. I have to do it. That's what this is saying. So, today I post on Instagram every day and I post on man Tik Tok every day and on the Pelaton underore John M. Williams. If you ever want to race me, uh, you're not going to beat me. It's not going to happen. But let's go. I got five on it. Put your content out there. Diversify where it lives. Put it on Kora. I'm on Kora at it all started with idea. I'm on Reddit with it all started with an idea. LinkedIn. I'm I use my personal, but I I tie it very closely to it all started with an idea, right? And I have somebody taking my

blogs from LinkedIn and working it into my website. And I have the same thing. That content is instruct instructionbased content. Meaning if somebody wants to learn how to write a script or take all of your manual bidding campaigns and adjust it based off of impression share every hour based off of performance, I got a script on how to do that. And that was in my GitHub repository. What I'm doing is not for me. It's more for the industry and for myself, not for me personally and financially. So let me rephrase that. for me so that I can be of help and service to those that are out in the industry that need it, that ask for it, that want it, aren't just trying to make a quick buck. And then the bottom line, LM optimization isn't a replacement for SEO. It's the next layer on top of it. So, stop thinking in

silos. Start thinking about everything all together. And I'm not going to format this as a LinkedIn post or newsletter. I'm actually just going to post this as a video, you guys, on LinkedIn. And I am going to ask it for a title. I should do that now. Yeah. Can we do a title? You can watch. Can we do a title that every person passes on and that it aligns with YouTube's best practices with descriptions and hashtags and all the litics.

There we go. That's the end of it. Remember, get out of the silo of what you think it is, right? SEO is not dead, but this is what we all get wrong about it, right? Stop optimizing only for Google. Get into places that are uncomfortable. Do things that are uncomfortable. I'm sure your image might not be AI generated, but it does look junk. So does the AI image at times. So does some creative sometimes. Stop complaining. Get out and do it. You because you don't understand it doesn't make it bad. Not a good reason at all actually. And because somebody's doing something so different doesn't make it bad either. What we don't need more of is the same thing. We're in a time where we have to get over that and we have to push the industry forward. So leave you with that. Peace and love y'all.