How Is AI Changing Search Experience Optimization?

Luke Hayes (00:02) Human touch is still needed. And if now it's even more necessary, even though our businesses, our large scale businesses don't realize that yet, you still have to have that human touch because AI will just generically throw it out. The human touch is needed to curate that and optimize that to understand the true audience and the user behaviors. Benjamin Ard (00:46) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Luke. Luke, welcome to the show. Luke Hayes (00:51) Thank you for having me. Benjamin Ard (00:52) Yeah, Luke, I'm excited. This is a very relevant and timely subject. It's going to be a ton of fun. It's going to be a great conversation. But before we dive in, let's get to know you. Tell us about your work background, career, and all that kind of fun stuff. Luke Hayes (01:04) I've been lucky enough to start in digital a while back with AT &T doing local search, but local search in Espanol. As a polyglot, I speak several foreign languages. Spanish was the first one I started doing local search for and they paid me for it. From there, they went on. AT &T was kind enough at the time to pay for my MBA in e-commerce and stayed with them then to move on to digital marketing and e-support as well as mobile. Walgreens then recruited me, got me up to Chicago for several years and did mobile. as well as B2B and B2C with some of their pharmacists and then their customer base and the pharmaceuticals. Then went on to Sonopar USA, which is a privately held B2B, which is more electrical and large scale construction. And then finished up with Honeywell during COVID. And lately I've been doing my own kind of contracting on the side for nonprofit and some mid-sized firms, law firms, as well as some vitamin packed companies or political campaigns as well. Benjamin Ard (01:57) Very cool. I love it. Well, Luke, when we're going to talk about today, it's going to be fun. We're going to talk about kind of the new age of SEO and what that looks like and how big of an impact AI is making. So SEO has taken a giant turn, like bigger than ever before. It's not just about keywords and backlinks. AI has kind of changed that forever. What does search look like now with AI and everything going on in today's market? Luke Hayes (02:22) Wow. I think we used to sit there and wait for Google's next release on mobile or seeing what would happen next between Apple, what they would bring out. AI is changing it now weekly, if not daily. We're seeing it's breaking out into, I would say it's more SXO, Search Experience Optimization. I know that lot of many people in the field are going to be saying that, Hey, there's also AIO search engine, which is AI based optimization. Then there's geographic, um, as well as, um, and answer engine drone, uh, which is A E O and then S E S X O would be the, search experience, but it's coming to all of that into one. And it's not just your keywords. You're correct. It's voice keywords. It's how you're searching on your phone. It's purchasing. It's your Amazon history. So it truly is your personalized online experience, which is Google's product, Their product is search results, and the more optimized it is to your habits and to who you are, the better those results are. They don't want you going to binger at any of these others. So with the implementation now of AI, you're really seeing search change rapidly, not just from a mobile perspective, which used to be one of the biggest ones with desktop or mobile. Well, now it's your voice top or your buying history. Amazon's got its own critical list of all their clients, what they bought, how they searched. They now know where you live, what you bought. If you've got 1.2 kids, I have a dog, they have it all. And all of that now is going in a split second to your personalized search results. The most personal thing you have is your data and saving your data at all points as best you can. Keep it closed, don't have your voice always on, protecting your data to that because all this now is truly being recorded. And for that optimized personal experience, like if you had a discussion in your kitchen and then all of a sudden you see these prompts on these displays for that exact product. Yeah, they know what you're, they know what you're looking for and they know what you need. And a truly good product retailer, e-commerce person. I always say, we try to get the product in front of you before you know you even need it. And that's because all of the data that's available now is being recorded. And it doesn't have to be just for your private data. We can find this now just on the regular internet search with the right tools. Benjamin Ard (04:33) Yeah, that's incredible. So AI has changed the game in a big way. SEO is different. Like you said, there's so many factors now, lots of things going on. It's not just waiting for the next Google algorithm. And like I said, AI is playing a big role. And every marketing group wants to kind of understand how to use AI to the best of their abilities. And that means most of them are going straight for chat GPT. And they're using that for everything. But there's obviously a lot of AI models and things like that out there. How do you like think about finding the right AI system to assist you in your marketing efforts, whether it be SEO or otherwise? How do you kind of look at that? What are your recommendations having spent so much time in SEO and in AI? Like what, do you recommend for marketers looking to really take full advantage of it? Luke Hayes (05:21) That's a really great question because people do jump in and they grab the brand name, what's most known to them Gemini or ChatGBT. And they don't realize that there are niche AI products out there, just like their niche search engines or unique ways to search for different products or services. And there's several different types of architects just inside of AI. And I would say learn or just discover what those are. Like if you need a large language model or You're looking for a more conceptual model. It depends on what you're selling or some like a small language model, or do you need something that takes action based on those? And then after you figure out which one of these is best for you, and it might be a hybrid, you might have to figure, you know, it's going to be some trial and error. There's no wrong way to do that actually. But after you figure that out and test a few, again, a simple Google search is always good too. Or I'm a big fan of Reddit, go into a Reddit room and see what people have played around with. and then understand how you need to write prompts for that search for that AI tool. Prompt writing is critical because it just goes back to how well you understand your audience and you got to teach that AI agent what classroom they're in. Are they in a math class? Are they in a science class? If so, what level, how fast should it go? Where should we make orders of it? should it, should it branch off into say physics in different areas? The more, the better you define that cert, your prompts. the better your data pool is going to be. Otherwise, it's just going to go out there on Taunt and keep pulling all this data in that is quasi-related, but it pollutes your results. It'll make it more difficult to really get to that optimized level faster. So it's worth it to spend the time to really understand how to write prompts correctly and how to practice writing them. There are a lot of tools out there as well that you could go in and just say you take like Albert. I Albert Einstein, Albert AI is a great one just to like play around with your prompts and see what differences you get or how to isolate it out based on what you perceive your audience to be. It might come back with a ton of other like sub audiences or they have a different, it has a different way of defining your personas or where your persona lives, which are all vital because if you don't have your optimization there for where your persona is in each channel. If I'm just going for one demographic, say the suburban housewife, well, she's going to be on different channels at different times. And all of those channels require a different sort of communication or a different image. In the morning when she's running around with the kids trying to get on the mat right away, she's probably not on Facebook. You know, maybe that's a Twitter time or maybe that's a better time just to push like an image because she's not going to read any. At night, which is winding down, has a glass of wine, maybe that's the time she might stroll through her summer for communities. And that would be a better time to push an ad. But yet each point of that journey, even though it's the same persona, that communication needs to be different. And the best way to do that is optimize out an A-B test. Benjamin Ard (08:12) I love that. Okay, I love that. So you use the magic word persona and a lot of times and it's really interesting before we got on this podcast, you had created this really cool presentation and let me see some of it and you go into depth about personas. Now we all know like the persona of a certain job title and a specific role in like the really, you know, hierarchy, no reviews, your perception of a full persona. Goes a little bit deeper, like what, what in your opinion do we need to do to actually build a full meaningful persona so we can do all this cool stuff with AI and everything else we're doing in SEO as well. Luke Hayes (08:51) And I think also in today's day and age with AI, preserve your budget. ⁓ Even the novice coming in, I mean, we've all made our mistakes with paid or even social and you blew through your budget 10 minutes. The better you define the more time you take to learn how your audience and your persona is living, the better you will be at really getting to that audience. Not only just from a competitive and industry standpoint, but also it creates Benjamin Ard (08:57) True. ⁓ Luke Hayes (09:19) that your user will be more in tune with you. So it also builds some loyalty because they're like, wow, they understand me. I'm a pet owner. I want to be communicated to in this matter. And when I'm talking about their pet, I want to be communicated to in more of a casual tone. But when I'm looking at my tap, when I need turbo tax or stretch out taxis, I want a very different tone, even though it's still my audience for that product or that service, depending on which one it is, it's like whether it be Angie's List or even a localized company, the better you define that and where they live at different times of either their customer cycle or their funnel for their customer journey. And now the customer journey is really from when you capture that first lead to when do they pull the trigger, when do they actually have that product or service, and how often should they be communicated to during that process and even after? Do you bother them? Do you send all those reviews? When should you do it? What if it's an unhappy customer? That really is staying in tune with your true customer base and understanding that persona. So it's gone into not just your audience or even the persona, it's going down into almost like an individual type person. Because now we have all their demographics. We know where they live. We know how they purchase. Thanks to Amazon, we know how often you purchase or where you're purchasing. And around Christmas time, it's like, well, I know they have kids. If I'm at Walgreens, I know that Halloween is one of my biggest times of the year. So I'm pushing Halloween candy. If they have prescriptions, I'm going to be pushing different things to different prescriptions saying, okay, it's two parents. I know they got two kids. One kid has asthma. So we might want to push some Sudafed on sale as well. know, flu season is coming. We're going to be pushing shop. So all of that now and all that, that is readily available. So, which is a little bit scary. But by taking the right AI agent in there, not only does it help my mobile pieces as far as what do I need to push the sales, but when they come to visit the site, I can create better content for what they need that's more optimized for what they're looking for and their life. it right, you can jump ahead of some of the local companies. Benjamin Ard (11:20) I love that. makes perfect sense. So. you nail your personas going back to SEO a little bit. How does the influence of personas actually help you find the right keywords or things of that nature? How do you target? How do you do that? Especially with AI and everything going on? What does that research actually look like and how do you focus on that area? Luke Hayes (11:42) That is one of the best questions asked right now. And I see a lot of digital agencies and a lot of digital experts are arguing over that exact path. Because there's a lot of tools that you can grab out, especially from like Google search console, which has your traffic. And then you might be applying like Alfred's or BrightEdge and you're tracking them across the internet and their journeys across the internet, what they visited, hot jar when you're sitting there, how long did they spend in each area? It's actually all of those. And you kind of need all of that, or even then going to like, and to the public or seeing what, what words and terms a large portion is using. Then to get ahead and not bid on just one or two keywords, truly going for that long tailed experience. Cause you don't want to blow your budget and you have to do, you have to experiment until it's live. You just don't know how people are going to react. but you want to get as close as you can. So by using all these tools, and this is where AI can be very useful, taking like say Surfer AI, which is more of an AI optimization tool, that can help you very much with your content, and you can test some of that content. And if you need to go into paid for as far as a message, you can align it with a brand AI, as well as taking another tool, say like SpyFu. And it's looking at different competitors, what words they're bidding on at what times. and can help fine tune your strategy for any sort of client to get better success and don't blow through your budget as quickly and have at least learning as much as you can from each time period. Because the Google agents are useful, but they'll let you piss through your budget without much learning. So you really want to put a lot of lots on that. Yeah, it's, you know. Benjamin Ard (13:18) Very true. It's it's in their business model right people are gonna spend money they shouldn't be spending. Luke Hayes (13:26) And unfortunately, some on our side, on the digital clients or agency side, they don't mind. They'll just let it go and show you, hey, here's a win. I directed this much traffic to you. Well, was it the right traffic? Was it relevant traffic? How good were these leads? Has quantifying qualified these leads? The important thing is to sit down and learn, hey, what are our KPIs? What are we defining? Everybody's got to define Apple as Apple. And that's usually, you got to go back to step one before bringing these AI agents in that we all agree on. the success, what are the measurements are and what qualifies these measurements. And many times people do skip that one very important aspect to have complete agreement. And it helps you bring the client or the personal along on the journey. need to build the relationship to show them how the AI will work better for them instead of just flat out using the name brand, ChatGVT1 and showing them and understanding why the different prompts or helping the SEO factor of, hey, here's how we're going to optimize it. And it's not just a one-time pull. This is an ongoing thing. And Google now does search for, if you're just going to throw an AI agent on there, they knock you down. Say if you take like 10 web and you're just creating all these websites, well, Google had to optimize out for that. Again, their product is search results. If they're just sending you to these churning AI sites, That's not going to be an optimized experience for anyone. So they now look for that. Human touch is still needed. And if now it's even more necessary, even though our businesses, our large scale businesses don't realize that yet, you still have to have that human touch because AI will just generically throw it out. The human touch is needed to curate that and optimize that to understand the true audience and the user behaviors. Otherwise with the wrong data in there, the tracking, it might look fabulous, but you don't have these great you're not having this revenue or the following structure that you need because it's not optimized for the people of your audience or your persona because you're just churning it. Benjamin Ard (15:21) Yeah, that makes perfect sense. love it. Well, look, we're almost out of time. So I've got time for one more question. I'm curious about this one last thing with your extensive knowledge and experience in AI and everything in marketing. Is there anything that you feel like marketers are overlooking when it comes to AI? Maybe a different way of looking at it, a different use case or anything like that, where you feel like marketers could do a better job and take advantage of this wonderful technology. Luke Hayes (15:48) I think the first thing I would tell any marketer, doesn't matter what stage of their career, adopt an AI tool. Pick one. If it's a life organization, organizer, gym organizer, a kid organizer, whatever you practice on one daily, because this is only going to be taking over more and more of our lives. And I had one friend point out that it's even, this might even be one of the key issues for the next presidential election. because it's going to be taking over more and more jobs. What do you do with it? How do you control it? Because if you think about it, it's going to be with the taking over more and more, we're going to hit a Terminator. It's going to be Skynet sooner or later. And the AI agent is going to be based on how well we train that AI agent and understand what it needs to be trained. So the better you get at just adopting this sort of technology now, at least you'll be able to stay in front of your kids for a little bit longer. But you need to have this because it's not going away. It's only going to get more prevalent. It's just like social media as much as we didn't want to adopt it. It took over our lives. This is going to be more profound and it's going to be much more impactful because it's going to drive everything from how you drive your car to how do you live your life to how you raise your kid. There's going to be an AI piece in your life at every point within the next year if it's not already. And it's going to be tracking your data. So the better you understand it, the better you can protect yourself and you can be more successful at using it in your professional and personal life. Benjamin Ard (17:08) Love that. That's amazing. Well, Luke, I love your perspective on SEO, marketing, AI, great perspectives, great insights. If anyone listening to this episode wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Luke Hayes (17:23) So LinkedIn's an easy way with just Hayes 4402 or just my email which is hayeshaze30 at gmail. Benjamin Ard (17:29) Very cool. For anyone listening to this episode, scroll down to the show notes. We will link to Luke's profile directly there. Click on it and connect with him. Luke, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all the time and insights today. Really do appreciate it. Luke Hayes (17:42) It was my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.