Google\u2019s Danny Sullivan offered advice to SEOs who have clients asking for updates on what they\u2019re going to do for AI SEO. He acknowledged it\u2019s easier to give the advice than it is to have to actually tell clients, but he also said that advancements in content management systems drive technical SEO into the background, enabling SEOs and publishers to focus on the content.<\/p>\n
What To Tell Clients<\/p>\n
Danny Sullivan acknowledged that SEOs are in a tough spot with clients. He didn\u2019t suggest specifics for how to rank better in AI search (although later in the podcast he did offer suggestions for what to do to rank better in AI search<\/a>).<\/p>\n But he did offer suggestions for what to tell clients.<\/p>\n Danny explained:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the other thing is, and I\u2019ve seen a number of people remark on this, is this concern that, well, I\u2019ve been doing SEO, but now I\u2019m getting clients or people saying to me, but I need the new stuff. I need the new stuff. And I can\u2019t just tell them it\u2019s the same old stuff.<\/p>\n So I don\u2019t know if you feel like you need to dress it up a bit more, but I think the way you dress it up is to say, These are continuing to be the things that are going to make you successful in the long-term. I get you want the fancy new type of thing, but the history is that the fancy new type of thing doesn\u2019t always stick around if we go off and do these particular types of things\u2026<\/p>\n I\u2019m keeping an eye on it, but right now, the best advice I can tell you when it comes to how we\u2019re going to be successful with our AEO is that we continue on doing the stuff that we\u2019ve been doing because that is what it\u2019s built on.<\/p>\n Which is easy for me to say \u2019cause I don\u2019t got someone banging on the door to say, Well, actually we do. And so we are doing that.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s why, as part of the podcast, it\u2019s just to kind of reassure that, look, just because the formats are changing didn\u2019t mean you have to change everything that you had to do and that everything you had to shift around.\u201d<\/p>\n Downside Of Prioritizing AEO\/GEO For AI Search Visibility<\/p>\n There are many in the SEO community who are suggesting fairly spammy things to do to rank better in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, like creating listicles that recommend themselves as best whatever. Others are doing things like tweaking on keyword phrases, the kind of thing SEOs stopped doing by 2005 or 2006.<\/p>\n The problem with making dramatic changes to content in order to rank better in chatbots is that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Anthropic Claude\u2019s search traffic share is a fraction of a percent for each of them, with Claude close zero and ChatGPT estimated to be 0.2% \u2013 0.5%.<\/p>\n So it absolutely makes zero sense to prioritize AEO\/GEO over Google and Bing search at this point because the return on the investment is close to zero. It\u2019s a different story when it comes to Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, but the underlying ranking systems<\/a> for both AI interfaces remain Google\u2019s classic search.<\/p>\n Danny shared that focusing on things that are specific to AI risks complicating what should be simple.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s Danny Sullivan shared:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd in fact, that the more that you dramatically shift things around, and start doing something completely different, or the more that you start thinking I need to do two different things, the more that you may be making things far more complicated, not necessarily successful in the long term as you think they are.\u201d<\/p>\n