Benjamin Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Jeramy. Jeramy, welcome to the show.
Jeramy Gordon00:05 — Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Benjamin Ard00:06 — Yeah, Jeramy, I'm excited. This is going to be a ton of fun. We're going to dive into a subject that a lot of marketers are literally scratching their heads at wondering, okay, I have to relearn the playbook. And I think this is going to be good advice and people are going to love it. But before we dive in, Jeramy, let's let people get to know you, who you are, work history background, just so the audience knows who you are.
Jeramy Gordon00:28 — Yeah, so my name is Jeramy Gordon. I am the VP of marketing at a background screening company called Cisive. We are a global background screening company that does pre-employment and post-employment background checks all across the world. I have been in marketing for 14 years now, which is crazy to think about. But prior to my marketing career, I had an entire career in journalism where I spent 12 years in the newspaper industry.
Benjamin Ard00:54 — Love it. And then also, hopefully you're okay with me saying this, you're a publisher of several books as well. Tell me about those.
Jeramy Gordon00:59 — I am, yes. Yeah, I've written a couple books. My most recent two, one is called The Power of 10. It's sort of my personal method for how I get things done in life. I focus specifically 10 minutes a day on areas that I wanna improve. And so I wrote the book based on four principles, faith, family, fitness, and finance, and how you can really improve in those areas by spending just 10 intentional minutes per day. And then probably my most recent book, which is more of a labor of love for me, is called Opinionated Not Judgmental, where I talk about how you can hold strong convictions this day and age without treating people differently who disagree.
Benjamin Ard01:37 — Love it. This is so cool. And both of the books sound amazing. And so hats off. I mean, writing a book is no small feat. And so congratulations. That's incredible. For everyone listening, Jeramy did not ask me to do this. I'm just going to do it. If you scroll the show notes, we will link to both books as well. So you can check those out. So for anyone interested in either of those, Jeramy, diving into the subject, we had the aside kind of stuff.
Jeramy Gordon01:58 — Thank you, appreciate that.
Benjamin Ard02:02 — We're going to talk about AIO and GEO today, best practices, all that kind of fun stuff. So first and foremost, those are a couple of new acronyms, maybe, maybe to kick things off, what is AIO, GEO, and then maybe also explain kind of what this is and how it's maybe a little bit different and how marketers should pay attention.
Jeramy Gordon02:20 — Sure, so AIO is the AI overview, or the artificial intelligence overview, which is the first, if you've done a Google search in the last six to 12 months, it's the very first thing that shows up where a generative chat kind of shows up and answers your search query. That alone has fundamentally changed how we view SEO. The second acronym thrown out there is GEO, which is Generative Engine Optimization. And generative engines are these large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, things like that. So for the past 25 years, the game was rank on Google, rank on Google. And I used to always say, when I was talking about SEO, that the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of a Google search result, because no one goes past the second page of a Google search result. Well, now, no one scrolls past the AI overview, right? So you used to be able to rank three, four, five, and still get a ton of traffic from your keywords. Now, if you're not being referenced in the AI overview, it's game over. So that's the shift that's happened.
Benjamin Ard03:26 — I love that. And I have heard that analogy several times. I love it. Still to this day, it makes me giggle to think about the fact that the second page of Google is just as good as not having any kind of a ranking in any way, shape, or form. So I love it. Great.
Jeramy Gordon03:39 — Well, yeah, and it's crazy how quick this shift happened too. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this because I think it's like 40% of all queries, and this is just in the last six months, right, are answered in the AI overview. So that's an instant 40% drop in traffic to your websites that aren't going down and clicking through to the search results. And there was a study, I believe it was Adobe that did it. But Adobe saw a 12, I mean, 12 times, so 1200% increase in AI driven traffic to their website, which means the AI is mentioning Adobe in these GEOs and then sending traffic to the website. So while a 40% decrease in organic, with a 1200% increase in AI is, I mean, you can't beat those numbers, right?
Benjamin Ard04:38 — 100%. And I love how you talked about that because it's not that people aren't looking for answers. It's not that people just stop searching. It's just how and why and where they do it has completely changed the game. So with the new landscape where people are doing search and looking for knowledge and answers, how do we optimize for these systems that is different than SEO. What has changed? What do we need to shift? Even like just the mental model around the idea of what does content actually do for search nowadays with these new systems?
Jeramy Gordon05:14 — Yeah, I mean, so SEO was all about fighting for position, right? We just had to figure out how do we get from the number four position to the number one position? Or how do we get from the number 10 position to the number four position? Like that's all we were trying to do for years and decades, really, with SEO. GEO is fighting for inclusion, right? How do we just get referenced in the search results? And the AI is the reader now. So all the content we're creating, we have to be writing for both the human, but also specifically for the AI so that we're showing up in these generative engine search results. So that takes a different form of expertise because whether we knew it or not for the last 10, 15 years, we as users, as end users have been training these AI tools with the content that we're posting online. When you think of like reCAPTCHA, the whole idea of what reCAPTCHA was, you know that's the thing when you go on a website and it shows you an image and you have to point out like where the red stoplights are, or it gives you like a skewed word and you have to type in what the word is. The whole idea behind that was security. But what they realized was that the tools they were using were words that the computers couldn't read. They scanned a book and the computer couldn't read the word. And so they were using humans to tell the computer what the word was. So now the computer has decades of these tools at its disposal. So it's way smarter, but now we're having to write our content specifically so that it shows up in these GEOs.
Benjamin Ard06:45 — Okay. I love that. And the inclusion being the mindset shift. And I think that's really important. So let's go down a layer deeper. So Jeramy, what are some actual tactics that I can actually implement today to get me included, to be a part of the reference materials in AI and actually start getting some of that, you know, like Adobe said, 1200 increase in traffic. How do I start to take advantage of that and what can I do today to actually make a difference?
Jeramy Gordon07:15 — Yeah, I guess it's understanding how people are searching. And most of it is question based searching, right? So we need to be structuring our content for that extraction. And we've already been doing this to a certain extent for SEO for a long time, question based, but question based SEO kind of went out about five years ago because the way people were searching kind of changed, but question based is completely back, right? So our headers need to be structured for the question that we're answering, our title tags, our meta descriptions, all that kind of stuff. Going back to SEO basics from that perspective. And then there also is we have to go deep. So back to this sort of long form content that ruled the SEO roost for a long time and then kind of faded away in the last couple of years. All that's back, right? These 3000 word definitive guides, like that's gonna be king right now for getting a citation in ChatGPT, because that's the kind of content it's looking for in scanning. So it can think it's providing the best answer possible to the question. So that's it, it's your structure. It's going deep and not broad. I guess the best way to just tell you this is that AI models are trained on the web and they build a model of who you are as an entity, not just your site, but that means your LinkedIn, your Wikipedia, all of these different third party mentions that are out there. And your press coverage, any podcasts you're doing, all that kind of stuff is formulated and scannable now by these AI engines. So when someone asks, you know, who's the best carpet cleaning business out there? It literally, it's not just relying on your website where you say I'm the best carpet cleaning business out there. It's looking at your Yelp reviews. It's looking at literally every kind of user generated component. And it's compiling this and putting it out. So the strategy has just expanded significantly beyond just your website.
Benjamin Ard09:20 — I love that. So a lot of the onsite optimization questions, long form, also the entity itself. So for the kind of offsite optimization, we're talking about having a presence in multiple locations, making sure that we're publishing content in different areas, proving our expertise. Now, a lot of people really love this concept of press releases have started to make a comeback in this space. What about inbound links? What about those two in particular? I'm just kind of curious, like, are those popular? Is that a fad? What do you kind of see in there?
Jeramy Gordon09:52 — I mean, it's definitely popular right now. It could end up becoming a fad. Honestly, these LLM algorithms are going to constantly be changing, right? And so what they put an emphasis on today could be completely different tomorrow, to be quite honest. So you have to be willing to pivot. But right now, third party citations are huge for these LLMs. So they want to make sure that you're not just saying you're the best, that other websites are saying you're the best as well. And so they're compiling all that information to determine who they cite in their answers. So yes, that's kind of the strategy at the moment. And we saw, you know, a couple months ago, it came out that like Reddit was a huge source for LLMs, right? And so everyone's pivoted, and they started focusing on Reddit, well, all of a sudden that changed, right? And all of a sudden, Reddit isn't given the same authority that it was. So again, you have to take everything sort of with a grain of salt, but the ultimate thing I will leave you with is you have to be willing to pivot quickly and change your strategy on a moment's notice because that's how these algorithms will change.
Benjamin Ard10:56 — So double click, I didn't prepare you for this question in any way, shape or form. So hopefully you're okay with it. But as things are changing, like you said, I love that call to action. Like be comfortable with change is kind of a big part of this. How are you finding reliable information to know what is changing in the search landscape? You know, to kind of stay on top of the news. I know back in the day there are people like Moz and you know, all these different websites people went to. Are there any good sources of knowledge that you're finding that you could share with the audience to stay on top of this?
Jeramy Gordon11:31 — Yeah, I mean, all of these tools, you know, Ahrefs and Moz and, you know, they're all starting to focus on AI as a thing. But honestly, I'm using the tools that I'm trying to get cited in. I'm seeing how they respond from a user perspective, right? So I'm on ChatGPT, I'm on Claude, I'm using Google AI overview, constantly on a regular basis to see how they're responding to questions. Not just specific to my industry and my company, but to anything I'm searching for as just a general consumer. So that and so I can see things kind of anecdotally and then I can start to test and see if this is a trend or if this is kind of a one off thing. And honestly, that's what I'm doing. I am relying on what these tools are telling me about the number of citations that we're getting from LLMs and that sort of thing. But a lot of it is my own user experience.
Benjamin Ard12:27 — I love that. And unlike SEO, we are in this cool age where if you're trying to optimize for AI search, you can ask a question like, hey, what is the best carpet cleaner? Get the results and then you can follow up and say, why did you pick that one? Why is that showing up? You can ask the why and it's not going to give away everything, but it can tell you, it's based off of the online reviews or Yelp looked really incredible or whatever. And you say, okay. So for carpet cleaning, I might need to spend some time on my Yelp profile or something like that.
Jeramy Gordon12:54 — Exactly. Yep, no, 100%. That's the thing, is it will tell you and it'll break it down to very specifics if you do that all the time in our business, right? So we'll ask prompts that we think our ICPs are asking then we'll kind of reverse engineer the output.
Benjamin Ard13:18 — I love it. Very cool. So as someone listening to the podcast today, and this has been incredible, Jeramy, I love the information. What is something I should start doing today? What are some things where I can start to update how we look at content to start showing up in AIO and GEO?
Jeramy Gordon13:35 — Yeah, I think so from a content perspective, what we're seeing and what I'm seeing is that more and more companies are relying on AI to create the content, right? So you have AI creating content, then you have AI displaying content. And it's sort of like this just vicious cycle that we're getting into. And then you kind of see this overall degradation of content overall and this authenticity kind of fading away. What we're focusing on, and I think the direction these LLMs are gonna go, which is why I'm trying to get ahead of it, is they wanna be 100% certain that the content created is human-generated content. And one of the main ways of doing that is video, right? Video content. Obviously video can be fake. There's AIs, but it's pretty easy to spot AI-generated video content versus AI-generated written content. So podcasts. Podcasts are gonna be a big thing. Video, especially video podcast, short form video is going to be a big thing. So these kind of things that are just harder to fake. And so the LLMs are going to put more emphasis on that from an authority perspective. That's kind of the direction I'm headed in.
Benjamin Ard14:42 — Love it. Very cool. That's awesome. Jeramy, thank you for the time and insights today. We have run out of time. This has been incredible. For anyone listening who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Jeramy Gordon14:54 — You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm there. Very active on LinkedIn. And yeah, that's probably the easiest way.
Benjamin Ard15:00 — Perfect. And like I said at the very beginning, and Jeramy did not self promote any of this, it's a hundred percent of me. You'll see Jeramy's LinkedIn profile on the show notes below also links to his books because I love when someone goes out there, writes authentic good content, publishes it. So let's go support Jeramy in a big way. Jeramy, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Appreciate your time and insights today.
Jeramy Gordon15:24 — Well, thanks, Ben. It was great to be here. I'll leave your audience with just one final thought because I know there's a lot of marketers watching this and I tell my team this all the time, but AI is not going to replace marketing, but AI will replace marketers who don't embrace AI.
Benjamin Ard15:40 — 100%, 100%. So embrace AI. Let's start showing up in rankings and this will be good. Again, Jeramy, thank you so much.
Jeramy Gordon15:47 — Thank you.
