Is SEO Still a Thing?

Patience Jones: Hello, and welcome to As Built, the podcast from Graphicmachine about architecture firms, buildings, and how both get built. I'm your co-host, Patience Jones. With me is...  

Brian Jones: Brian Jones.  

Patience Jones: Your other co-host. Today, we're asking the question, “Is SEO still a thing?” Very high level: SEO means search engine optimization, which is the process by which you try to make sure that you're found when people are searching search engines like Google and Yahoo! for things that you sell or offer. There are so many new things in the world that exist today that didn't exist five years ago when everybody was very, very hot and heavy about SEO, things like AI and Reddit and other social media channels, and more advanced paid digital ads. With all of these new things coming out, people are using AI as a search engine instead of using things like Google and Bing. We ask the question, “Is SEO still a thing?” Do we still need to optimize for search?  

Brian Jones: I mean, I think, the answer is yes, I mean, you do. But it-  

Patience Jones: End of episode. We're done.  

Brian Jones: But what that means is a little bit larger thing of like, in which ways are you discoverable? There are a number of ways that you have to think about optimizing yourself for search, and “search” now is a much bigger term that incorporates a lot of things that you noted. Social media is definitely among that now. It's even more important because especially with AI, the way that people are doing research, at least 54% of people are using AI as a research method to find new services and service offerings.  

Patience Jones: And SEO doesn't operate in a vacuum. It's not like search engines are only looking at things that are on your website to determine where you fall in search results. They actually look at pretty much everything, and AI looks at pretty much everything. So by continuing to optimize for traditional search, you're also helping yourself be found by AI and in other media. They do look at social media to see what are you talking about, is what you're talking about on social media the same thing as what you're talking about on your website? When people talk about you in Reddit, are they saying the same things that you claim to do on your site?  

Brian Jones: I think too, what we're kind of talking about a little bit with this is not just the places that you might be found, but the ways in which you have to structure your data a little bit on your website in order to be found in those places too. One of the big things is that with AI, your search structure is fundamentally different in the way that it likes to crawl information. It prefers things definitely in a “frequently asked questions” format, for sure.  

Patience Jones: It's different. I wouldn't say it's fundamentally different. I think what it does more than anything is reinforce good SEO practices. If you're somebody that's optimized your site well over the past however many years, then you're well-positioned to be found by AI because it looks at the same types of content. But you’re right, it functions a little bit differently. I feel like Roko’s basilisk means I'm going to end up in AI prison in five years for saying this, but AI is sort of like a cranky toddler a little bit, and it wants to be fed things. And the easier you make it for it to masticate and swallow those things, the better off you are. Things like FAQs are good because the information is presented in a question and answer format, which is exactly how the information comes and goes in AI. People ask it questions, it gives answers. It understands that hierarchy and that structure. So an FAQ is a great place to create basically the cheat sheet for AI. “If somebody asks this, here's what you tell it.” And that is easier for AI than if you present it with, "Well, here's our white paper on, you know, why we do what we do." It's just not going to spend the time going through that. AI is different from search engine bots, in that it is premised on efficiency. What is the most efficient way to do the thing? And the most efficient way for AI to get information and spit information back out is through FAQs.  

Brian Jones: I think what FAQs can also do is a little bit of a reinforcing of things that should already be on your website anyway. And I think what a lot of people have found over the course of building out their FAQs is that there was a fair amount of information that wasn't readily available or in any sort of format that was findable, and I think that that is a great thing that it does for you, even beyond its benefits to AI, is that it definitely helps you make your website more robust, makes the information more attainable, and it's more consistent across all platforms.  

Patience Jones: Consider that if you're creating an FAQ, you don't want that FAQ to be off-putting to humans, but humans are not your primary audience for that FAQ. Your primary audience is AI, so the FAQ is not the place to be cute or snarky or use double entendres or sarcasm because AI doesn't yet process those things. You want to be straightforward, clear, don't use a lot of jargon. If you're using jargon, explain it. And to Brian's point, that's really what you should be doing on the rest of your website anyway. But if not, definitely don't do that in your FAQ.  

Brian Jones: One of the things that can be really helpful too from a content development standpoint is also figuring out how this filters into your social content. It's easy to say that this stops at, "I've built an FAQ for AI and I have a website, so I'm done." Well, surprise, there's more. Social is really, really important to making sure that people are able to find you in a meaningful way, especially younger people looking for things online.  

Patience Jones: I feel like the through line here is SEO not dead, because also at the end of the day, all of these different things are looking back to your website, and they want to send people back to your website. And if no one can find your website or it's not clear what your website is about, all of the rest of it doesn't really matter.  

Brian Jones: That is really true. What is also true is that you're kind of meeting people where they are, and that's an important thing. The digital space is more and more fragmented. People may not make it to your website, and so you want to make sure that the representative of your content carries the water in the way that it needs to on whatever platform people happen to find you.  

Patience Jones: You should be measuring your SEO efforts, but it's important when you're looking at those measurements to not get hung up on a particular number or one particular stat in a vacuum. Look at the entire thing. What are you measuring? Where is your traffic coming from? What are people doing when they get to your site? It's not about, "Oh, we have 50,000 keywords." It's about, "Are we being found by the people and AI that we need to be found by? And when they come to us, are they doing the things that we want them to do in the next step of their process of working with us?"  

Brian Jones: Absolutely.  

Patience Jones:  All right. So the answer is no. SEO is not dead. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.