How to Make Your Brand Rank in AI Search (Before Your Competitors Do) – with Jon Mest

[: 00:00

Welcome back to Ecom Growth Insider, where we go deep on what actually works to grow D2C brands today. Today, we're diving into a massive shift that most e commerce brands aren't ready for. How AI is transforming how customers discover research and by products.

[: 00:15

joined by John Mest, an expert in digital discovery, search behavior and content strategy. and in this episode, we unpack what this shift means for your brand and what you have to do now to make sure that your brand stays visible, relevant and trusted. Hey, John, how are you doing?

[: 00:31

Doing great, thank you. How are you? Yeah, doing great. Excited to have you here. So, to kick things off, how did you get interested in how people discover products and brands online? I think at a base level, I'm a consumer as well.

[: 00:47

And like, I'm a millennial. I shop online, I do my research. And so for me, brand discovery and kind of branding itself has just always been fascinating to me. But especially in the world of like, like Internet shopping, e commerce, it's just been like a kind of a new way of thinking about how do you get discovered, how do you find brands, how do you find the right information?

[: 01:04

So I mean, I could go into more of like, the detail, like my background as like in technology and software. But like, overall, just being a consumer first has just always been like, kind of how I ground myself and how we help our brands. It's like, would I follow this advice? Would I do this? If that's not true, that's not going to be very helpful to our clients.

[: 01:19

And so we kind of know that at its core. And so, yeah, so the way that brands are being discovered, even online is just shifting so rapidly now. It's just an exciting time, but also an opportunity for a lot of brands to get ahead of some of these things. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And what have you personally noticed, like, from, from your own experience, like, how has the, how has it changed?

[: 01:41

Yeah, I think the first thing I'd say overall is like, if you know exactly what you want to purchase. So I need to buy a pair of Nike running shoes, size 12. You go on Google, you search that, you buy them and you just, that's it, you just check out, you find the lowest price and you buy them like that. I don't, that's like a very simple search.

[: 01:58

But most shopping experiences are not that you want to, want to do a little homework, do a little research. And so today you can like, try to look up. For example, I recently buy a new, backpack for my laptop to bring to work. And so I could have searched, you know, good laptop for a good backpack for bringing my laptop to work.

[: 02:14

But like, then I'm going to be sifting through Google, like searches. I'm going to be finding, okay, what who wrote a good, you know, list of goal, but basically are those sponsored? Is somebody like, paying for that placement? Like, how does this all work? It's a very like, kind of convoluted way of finding answers. So I went to ChatGPT and I said, like, I'M looking for.

[: 02:30

This is exactly I'm looking for. I want an all black, no branding, water resistant. Because I ride my bike to work. I wanted to have a laptop sleeve. I wanted to have enough space that I could always do like an overnight bike trip if I need to go to New York or something else. It's. It's like I give it very specific instructions. And I said, Give me three options. They gave me three excellent options.

[: 02:46

I took those three. I went to each one of their websites, watched YouTube video on each, and then purchased one. And it's my favorite bag I've ever owned. It's a fantastic bag. And so like, for me as a shopper, like I did, I purchased directly from ChatGPT. No, I didn't. I actually ended up going to like, their direct website and then searching through them like on my own and watching a YouTube video to learn more about the bag and then purchasing.

[: 03:07

But like that, that journey, that kind of buying journey, it was almost like the AI tool is my billboard. It's like, it's like more like a meta ad than anything else. It's like you're actually out there making sure your brand is relevant for what I described. And so we'll talk more about kind of like actual practical tips for brands, but like making sure that you are very prominent with what you do well and what you focus on.

[: 03:27

For example, like for backpack, water resistance, you know, certain size, certain space colors, all that kind of stuff is so important because that's how I was discovering the brand. I'd never heard of this brand before and I'm so excited. I'm a huge evangelist for them now. I love it. But like, I would have never known about them without ChatGPT referencing them to me.

[: 03:43

In that moment. Yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing is on the one side, it's like the, for the discovery phase itself. So when you're just starting to look for a certain product and you look at the different options, but then also when you maybe already have some ideas, some options, and basically want to figure out what is the best option to go with, you can also use ChatGPT to get help with that, right?

[: 04:07

Yeah, of course. And it's not just chatgpt, it's any of these large language models. But the idea being that, yes, discovery is happening here, research is happening here, and the future of this, which is kind of slowly starting to come out now, is just actually direct purchasing through these tools. That is the future of what's going to be happening here.

[: 04:23

And so again, I'm sure we can talk more about that, but the direct purchase through these tools is also, you know, very like, much happening. And so that, that's gonna be a fun new, interesting twist to some of this as well. But yes, absolutely, like for, I mean it's not just. By the way I mentioned, I'm a millennial. Like, like any age group, including like my mom is like using ChatGPT to do the research on things.

[: 04:41

This is like what, how people are doing their, their, their homework now. And so these different types of, of large language models are being used universally now to kind of discover. And so as a brand, especially as an e commerce brand where, you know, you have to call it like acquire customers, you have to bring customers to your, to your site to purchase or to kind of purchase your products.

[: 04:58

You want them to be researching and finding you. That is the ultimate goal. Yeah. How many products have you already purchased based on or used? Like ChatGPT or AI in general in the research process, pretty much everything. I mean like, if it's so simple that I don't need like much help, it's like, oh, I need to buy laundry detergent.

[: 05:16

Okay, I'll just go and buy that on Amazon or somewhere else. That doesn't think pretty straightforward. But no, if I'm making any sort of purchase, it's not even about high ticket either. It's not like it has to be a $500 purchase. It could be like I said, my backpack, which is, I don't know, I think under $100. It's like it doesn't matter the purchase price. It's just if I'm not aware of what's out there or maybe it's been a while.

[: 05:34

It was like 10 years since I last purchased, a work bag because I just, I use mine. I like to buy high quality and then just use it a long time. So it's been a long time since I did that research. I didn't know what brands are relevant, who I should be caring about. And so for me, any kind of industry or place where I don't know much about it and I need to do some research that's a prime candidate for this.

[: 05:52

And so I mentioned running shoes earlier. Like, I know, for example, I like certain brands when it comes to running shoes. But like if I'm like a new runner and I'm getting into the hobby and I want to learn about like what I should care about, oh, I have wide feet, I have this issue. I have those things all add up and they all matter.

[: 06:08

And so for any brand thinking about this, it's really about, you know, making sure that you own your niche, you own your kind of specifications in, in these tools. And it's a pretty, it's like, I'm not saying it's easy to do, but it's like once you have owned this, you'd be surprised at how much these AI models will kind of just trust you and use your.

[: 06:25

To recommend your products. So for me, it's pretty much everything I want to buy that I don't really know a lot about ahead of time. Interesting for me right now, to be honest, I still don't use it that much for the product research. So I use AI in a lot of different areas of my life a lot.

[: 06:42

But when it comes to products, for some reason I still tend to rely more heavily on YouTube videos and people that I know, at least on an online basis, like influencers, authorities, and would rather listen their opinion rather than ask ChatGPT or AI.

[: 07:00

Yeah, I mean, that's very fair actually. Interestingly enough, these AI models are actually using video content and social content a lot more than they ever have before. This is actually, in the last couple months this has been happening because people, like I mentioned before, people do like watching YouTube videos and learning more about products. It's very much a thing.

[: 07:16

And so they are very much like using that to their advantage and they're trying to figure out which of these YouTubers or these, these social media influencers actually have the best, like reviews and content. Like, who are they? Who should I trust? And so that's as a, as a influencer, as a, as a brand, like also that's a really important, like, if you're going to say like product, place your, your, your products into these, like these, these videos are into these, these influencers or these, these YouTubes, like YouTube, studio creators, like picking the right one is important.

[: 07:43

Are they the ones that are showing up best? Like, that is also like more important because like, that is kind of a level of trust and authority you can gain by partnering with them so it all plays together. But also like, for example, if I need to buy a new vacuum, I might just go to Wirecutter because I just trust that they've tested every single vacuum ever.

[: 07:58

And so yeah, like, probably the AI models will probably recommend whatever Wirecutter tests anyway because they're the most reputable on vacuums, say. But like, I still do like my research outside of that too. But I'd say that overall, for Me, I just like having a conversation in natural language with an objective third party that is like to me the most important aspect of the research is that I don't feel like I'm being influenced by Google's like search algorithm or you know, like whoever paid for a sponsored link there.

[: 08:22

It's kind of like I feel a little more objective when I'm talking to AI. They might not give me the right answer, but at least I feel like I have a good sense of it being objective. Got it. Yeah. And when would you say, when did you first discover or realize that AI is changing how people research products and brands in general?

[: 08:41

I think the first time I heard my mother in law using ChatGPT I was like, oh man, she's in her 60s. Like if she's using these tools, I feel like this is here to stay. This is not just going to be a fad. But realistically I think that what we're learning more and more is that like these tools, whether you use them all day, every day for everything or just for like one or two things, like they're being adopted more than ever I think like you can look at the charts of like the adoption of software platforms in the past.

[: 09:04

It's like every single major like platform like an Instagram or a Facebook or like a TikTok. Like all the growth is like this, it's exponential. OpenAI's growth is like a straight line up. It's just like they grew faster than anybody ever has before. It's because it's just like it's a completely new way of kind of utilizing information and kind of getting retrieving answers.

[: 09:22

And so for me, just like that adoption, that ability to kind of get answers quickly, you have to trust in the models, you have to trust that they're going to give you good information. And I feel like we're getting better and better that as the years go on. But like overall just like that conviction came to me when like realizing just I hated searching for information and having to read a 2000 word blog post just to find out at the bottom, this is the answer that I was looking for the whole time.

[: 09:43

It's like that was a waste of my time. I just wanted to know the answer. Like they're just giving me the answer. And so to me there's almost immediate adoption. Got it. Yeah. And how would you say, how does AI do it differently than the search engines? Back in the days, people were stoked when Google came out and when the search algorithm Became so good that you got a result that was very, very accurate and very good for what you searched.

[: 10:09

But nowadays for a lot of people it's not enough. It's not as good as if they searched something on, on AI, on ChatGPT for example. So from your perspective, like what is the main difference? What does AI do better? Yeah. So fundamentally Google is a search Engine and these LLMs, these AI tools are answer engines.

[: 10:28

So it's a bit of a nuanced answer, but I'll explain it quickly. Just like when you search in Google, Google's algorithm is set up to provide for you like links that would lead you to the best information based on their idea of what they call authority, meaning that other authoritative sites have given you the nod saying, okay, like they think you're good, throw a backlink, they linking to your website.

[: 10:48

There's this whole like backlink profile and this linking like analysis that kind of tells the algo algorithm, hey, we should trust this brand. Because they've done, they're around, they've been long around long enough. They're not brand new, they have a profile of like people referencing them and talking about them. And that's the only way we can kind of algorithm, algorithmically create this version of authority.

[: 11:05

And then we'll just provide you links. It's why when you search things like a Yelp or certain types of those sites will just jump to the top automatically. Because like they just like they're trusted sites in general, even if they don't have the best information about you're searching for, they'll always be number one or like a Wikipedia or something like that will be ahead of like what the actual best answer is because again they've just like established that trust with Google.

[: 11:24

Overall the answer engines are just trying to give you the best answer. They actually don't care as much about, you know, like yes, they do matter. It doesn't matter that people reference you and talk about you. The idea of this linking, this backlinking to your site, this idea of creating an authority score, they create their own version of authority score. There's nothing to do with like a backlink profile has to do with just like, should we trust your information?

[: 11:43

Do you have good information? We cross referencing it against what we know. Does it match kind of like what people are talking about on other social platforms, like a YouTube, TikTok, comments, Reddit, all those things really matter, to like giving them like the social proof that this is a good answer, like that is what matters to the AI, so it's much more like meritocratic in that way.

[: 12:01

Can't really cheat or like kind of win your way into it. You have to just actually have the best answers and those surface that what they bleed to that best answer. Are they perfect? No, of course not. But I find them to be much, much more effective at giving that answer. And so I give that nuanced answer, like the kind of explanation of the search engine versus the answer engine.

[: 12:16

Because like for me, like if I want to do research, like I want to like basically say what are the best running shoes? And then say, oh, well, I need like this, this and this, I need them to be in this kind of store and I need to be able to try them on. And I live in this city. And like all those kinds of things. You can have a conversation in natural language to get you to the best answer for you and your situation.

[: 12:34

Whereas search, it's very hard to do that. It's just like, what are the best shoes? Then you have to then go figure out in another session like, okay, well where can I go find them and try them on? It's just like a much more like complicated way of doing things. Whereas the AI, it's just very simple to kind of get you that eventually that answer of here's your best choice, go buy these shoes. Okay, that makes sense.

[: 12:52

And in terms of the, you said like backlinks are not as important as like with traditional SEO and with Google, but the references are still important or that it's still important that the information that you're saying like other people are confirmed, affirming that. Is that right?

[: 13:07

Yeah. So the backlinks can still matter. I'm not going to say that they're not, they don't matter at all. But like what matters is that the brand is like some other third party site is talking about you, that you're like, you all have good reviews on a third party review site and that's what matters more so than the actual link itself. And so it's like that social proof, the ability to explain to the AI that like not just you, you were obviously going to say you're great on your own website, but you need other people to say you're good too.

[: 13:29

And like whether they link to your site or just say you're good doesn't really matter as much anymore. It's really about just do you have social proof from outside your own like website? And that again can be done through Reddit, review sites like YouTube comments like TikTok it doesn't really matter. It has to be coming from somewhere that's not you.

[: 13:45

And so that's the really like the difference in shift and kind of like, you know, call it traditional SEO versus what we're calling now. I mean, it's got a million names now. I like to just call like AI visibility. Just like making sure your brand is visible in AI is a different game than SEO is. And it's just like, completely shifted. It's not. SEO is not dead.

[: 14:00

Like, I hate that people say SEO is dead. It's not dead, it's just different. And brands that are smart are getting ahead of those differences and making sure they're optimized for those differences. Okay. And now we work with a lot of different E commerce brands, and over the past few months they keep noticing how they get some traffic from ChatGPT or from other AI models.

[: 14:22

And they also notice themselves, as you mentioned, that they use the AI to research products. And they obviously also try to, find their own products in ChatGPT and research it and ask the right questions or the right prompts to find their own products.

[: 14:41

How would you say, how can brands become more AI visible? And I think there's a lot of things that come into it, but just broadly speaking, yeah, I think the first thing I'll mention this is a cross multiple industries, but especially applies to E commerce, and we see this all the time with our customers, is like, own your niche, like, own what you do well.

[: 15:00

Like really, really well. So for example, if you are like, you make, you make shoes. If your shoes are like just less expensive, they're more affordable, then make sure that all of your content, every page of your website talks about that you have the best, most affordable shoes. Like, don't. Just like, don't. If you're a luxury brand, like, make sure that you experience luxury and we cost more because we're luxury.

[: 15:20

Like, kind of lean into that more. What you don't want to do is confuse the AI. So lots of fluffy language and confusing, like language on your website can actually confuse the AI to like, figure out who you are. They'll get confused, they won't really get it, and then they won't recommend you for anything because they don't really understand. Are, you luxury? Are you affordable? Like what? Like, they kind of need to just know.

[: 15:35

So the best thing to do as a brand is to be really strong with your brand message across your website and be very clear about what you are. So, like, I don't know if you notice, like, Google will pull out these, what these are called, these snippets, these like one sentence, like answers to stuff. Like those snippets are so important. Like having like, we are a brand that does X because X because we do this.

[: 15:52

Well, like that, whatever that is. Like, just own that thing and make sure you lean into it really hard because that way you won't confuse the AI. And then when people like come to search for that thing, you'll be topping like right there because AI will know like, oh, like these people do this really well because they focus on this, this and this.

[: 16:07

I guess that's like the step one is just like really own your examples. And I can give much more examples of that in a second. But I think too from there is like, just be really kind of clear about like very simply going into these AI tools, like a Claude or a ChatGPT or even just Google and searching like, what are the best, like, you know, area, like places to buy, you know, this T shirt or whatever that is.

[: 16:29

And so, and see what they reference and see what they rank and say, oh, well, actually I live in Helsinki, I live in London or I live in New York. Like, where should I go now that you know that I live there? And they say, oh, well, like that changes my answer to this. And be like, okay, well, if my brand's still not showing up, say, well, okay, well, why didn't you mention my brand?

[: 16:44

Very simple, just very simple. Why didn't you mention me? And you'll realize by doing that it'll actually tell you. It'll say, we didn't mention you because we used this like, external site that said told us where the best T shirts are in New York and you weren't on that list. Boom. Reach out to that person and see if you can get on that list. Like, that's like, that's step one.

[: 16:59

Or like, oh, you didn't have enough product reviews. We use this review site. We use you, know, this site here. You don't have enough like Google reviews on your store. So we just didn't even include you because you need at least 100 reviews for us to think about you. Great. Okay, I gotta get my customers to give me more Google reviews. Like you can kind of ask the LLMs like what you could be doing to improve.

[: 17:15

That's at a base level, like, that's just like a very simple thing you can be doing. There's a lot more deeper, like, kind of like contextual things you can do as well. But overall, just like the LLMs will explain to you how they make their decisions and it might change over time. And that's why you have to kind of stay on top of this. This is like what our software does, but basically that, that kind of core understanding of like what your brand is and like how, like why you're not showing up.

[: 17:33

And if you, if you think that you're like the best affordable T shirt brand and they don't list you there and they say, oh, we didn't know you were affordable, double down on the, on the content and the blog post and explaining like why you are like the affordable brand that you should choose here. Like, these are all the things you can be leaning into and thinking more about. Just as like without doesn't cost you anything.

[: 17:49

That's just a little research and a little like, you know, maybe writing a blog post. Yeah, I love that approach because with, with Google you can't just ask Google, like, why am I not ranking at the top? Like, there are a lot of tools that try to figure out what the reason is and how you can rank better. But with ChatGPT or with LLMs, you can just ask them and they will point you in the right direction.

[: 18:12

Yeah. And the same thing for your competitors. Check out why your competitors are winning. If they are, oh, why did you choose them? It seems like they're number one on your list and they'll say, oh, it's because they did this. Well, again, use that information to your advantage. Make sure that you're doing those similar things. So it's always kind of like a game here of kind of like a little offensive defense too.

[: 18:28

Yeah. And what kind of content is most likely to get pulled into, into AI generated answers. Because you mentioned like blog posts, videos, product data, all of those things. So it all matters. I'd say the number one thing you can be doing is making sure that your content is good, authoritative and unique.

[: 18:47

Like that is what you really wanted to kind of lean into. Like the LLMs are much more like I mentioned, meritocratic in that way where they will just give the best information. Like they'll just give that as the answer. So that's kind of the first thing you can be doing, to make sure that like your content overall just needs to be like, you know, clear, crisp, no fluffy language, no, you know, like long paragraph answers, just like quick punchy bullet points.

[: 19:06

Here's the answer. Quick takeaways are always like, really effective there as a, as a style of writing for these AI models. To retrieve information more quickly and more effectively. Now when it comes to what kind of content, that's actually much more tricky. And so every prompt in every situation might be different.

[: 19:22

Again, this is something that a software does uniquely well is that like we'll explain, you know, like for this individual prompt, a list based article would be really good to the top 10 t shirt brands in New York. Like that's what you want to do. Whereas this one, you know, educational content would be really, really effective. Or this one, like a landing page laying out the information that the client needs would be really effective.

[: 19:38

Like it'll tell. We can like understand and like look at kind of LLMs will reference when they give answers, how they come up with their answer. So you can kind of look at all click on all those little like little icons next to the answer and like those are citations. That's what the LLMs are using. Click on those little buttons and click and see like oh, this answer.

[: 19:54

They used a bunch of these different listicles, these list articles. Well that's true. I know that for this prompt I need to just get into these listicles because that's what I need to be doing. That's what the LLMs are telling me how they respond there. Whereas you know, when it comes to like certain other kinds of prompts, it might be like, you know, more blog educational content for your blog. So like thought leadership type of content really depends.

[: 20:10

There's no correct, there's no right answer there. It actually depends on the individual unique prompts people are searching for and just identifying those and then like kind of leaning into that those answers is really how to kind of win here. And that's like again it's not very simple to do, but once you figure it out, it actually is like the best way to kind of attack some of these prompts individually. What's your opinion on AI generated content?

[: 20:30

Because the first thing that comes to mind to me is like basically asking the AI what is missing for me to rank well and then basically just ask the AI to create that content and then just copy and paste it completely on the website. So people, this is a nuanced thing because frankly there are a lot of companies out there that are providing just AI generated content to fill in these gaps.

[: 20:53

We might get there one day. I personally don't believe that to be effective today. And again we're recording now in October, like this could all change tomorrow. But like for us, even in person we always say like AI assisted content is always best. So have the AI help You do research, have it help you curly skeleton, help you like even made a first draft.

[: 21:11

But like, you, the human, you know your brand better than AI ever could. Inserting your like, flair and your kind of information into it and your kind of your style into your content. One will be good for your readers because they want to like, read something that sounds like it's coming from you, the owner, you like, whoever, the content writer. So that's like really important. But two is just like what you don't want to do is if the AI kind of thinks that you're just pumping out AI generated content, they're actually going to ding you for that.

[: 21:32

They actually don't like that at all because it just, it makes it seem like you're trying to game the system. So any, any platform that says, hey, we'll just write you a thousand new pages on your website to like, hit up for everything, like, these are kind of old SEO, like black hat tricks. Like, they don't work. Like, AI is too smart for that. They will, they will ding you for that. And usually it's hard to claw back.

[: 21:49

There's a famous case of HubSpot actually doing this and they actually got smoked in the rankings by just like, they created too much AI content too quickly and they just, they had to claw the way back for a while. But like, as a brand, really what we focus on is like having AI help you craft messaging, like do some research, help you kind of structure things, but then from there, like actually, like have some humans involved in writing it.

[: 22:06

And that's how we, that's how we approach it. And like I said, maybe that'll change someday, like where we can actually have AI generate a lot of this. But right now we feel pretty strongly that human assisted is always best. Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. And that's also what I tell our clients. Like, you don't want full AI generated content.

[: 22:24

Like, you can use it to get the first draft, the first idea, the structure, but then you still want to rewrite it also to just make it sound more natural, more like you and doesn't sound AI generated. Yep, absolutely. What would you say, how does AI change the.

[: 22:42

The classic conversion funnel. So basically from, from awareness, like discovering the brand to considering the brand and then to. To buying. You already briefly touched on it in the beginning? Yeah. I challenge any E commerce owners out there listening to, like to actually check this out on their own brands because we do this all the time for our clients.

[: 22:59

But I'm curious, like, this Is this is holding true? Like, broadly, it's been reported and the data showing this is true. But I'm always curious individually if this is working. Reach out to me either way. Is like people that are referring into your site from a ChatGPT or another AI tool have much higher conviction to purchase than just a regular website visitor.

[: 23:17

It's generally because they've already done their research in these AI tools. And when they're actually referring into your site, meaning they actually click the link in ChatGPT, say, and referred in to me, like their escape is UTM saying they came from ChatGPT. Their conversion is so much higher than say somebody clicked on an ad or somebody that found you organically because they, again, if they're getting to your site from these AI tools, it's probably because they've done a little homework, they've at least done some level of research, if not all the research, and they're just coming to you just directly to purchase.

[: 23:41

And so right away, like, it might be hard to acquire these customers, but if you can, like, you can immediately take your business, like acquisition cost, like your customer acquisition costs scaled and make it go down, like on an individual basis by like leaning into, like having AI be like your, your primary channel, I'd call it.

[: 23:58

So the way that works is say it costs you a dollar to acquire a customer, but if you spend $5, say on like, you know, working through getting your AI presence better, you might be able to acquire a thousand customers for that $5 versus, you know, like a dollar per customer, which you think, which you might have to do to get them to click on an ad to purchase whatever that funnel might look like.

[: 24:15

And so overall we find that kind of leaning into this as a channel, sort of like SEO for organic. But this is like your new organic channel. So you have to invest money into it. You do have to invest time, money, effort, whatever it might be, whether you do it yourself, hire a third party, whatever it is, like, lean into this as a channel because you can see, like, just like organic was with SEO, you know, 10 years ago, this could be a way to kind of acquire customers at scale for much lower cost.

[: 24:36

And so it does play into the funnel. It' not guaranteed, just like any organic traffic generator is not guaranteed. But what we do find is that when they are referring in from AI, it's because they've done their homework and they are converting at a much higher rate. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the AI checkout process or like buying, buying inside the AI.

[: 24:57

I saw that ChatGPT is slowly rolling it out with like Etsy stores and then also with Shopify next that people can buy straight into insights. ChatGPT. Have you already, like, looked into that? Yeah, I mean, this is definitely going to be happening soon. Like, it's already happening, but it's going to be much, much bigger soon.

[: 25:14

Obviously you think about from the AI model perspective, they want to make some money too. And this is a way to like, you know, monetize some of their existing traffic. So they're going to be trying to push you to purchase through there. So just like when Google Shopping came out and people had to like, you know, get all these attributes into Google so they could like recommend their products, it's similar for AI, but it's going to be a little bit actually like different because again, when you go to Google and you're searching for like, you might search for like work backpack or like running shoes, like you might just search for a couple words.

[: 25:38

Whereas in AI you're going to give a paragraph like, this is exactly what I want. So being much more detailed and much more like, kind of nuanced with all the information you're giving on a per product basis to these LLMs, like, that's basically what they're doing. It's sort of like Google, like, shopping, where they, they kind of want information on each product so they can list it in their stores, but in this case, like actually listing out like very specific dimensions so that when somebody's looking for a couch, they're going to say, I have 80 inches for that couch.

[: 26:03

Or like I have two meters to fit my couch into the space. Like, do it fit? Like, you might not give that information to Google because who cares? They're going to click on your site and get to your information and look at the specs there. But in AI, they might not recommend you if you don't fit. So like, you kind of just need to like give all that information even more. So and the ones that are, and are filling in, those are kind of like, you know, narrow gaps at the bottom of the, of the kind of the product portfolios.

[: 26:21

Like, they're the ones that are going to win here because they're going to be able to say like, they're going to fit the exact needs of those, those queries, those prompts coming in and then they'll be recommended even more. So I'd say that overall, the brands that are kind of really thinking about this smartly are the ones that are kind of getting their, their like information together on their individual products and getting those ready to submit to these AI models as they kind of like roll out more of the shopping.

[: 26:41

That way they can, you know, like continue to get people to directly click through. Because again, if people are doing the research, even clicking through to the site is an extra step, whereas if they can just buy directly on there, it's going to be like maybe that much more effective. Do you think Google and traditional SEO still has a, still has a future?

[: 26:58

Oh yeah, absolutely. Like we talk about like people always say, well, are people actually using AI tools? Well, like I know, you're over in Europe, I'm here in the, in the United States, like we have slightly different AI and privacy laws. So like things might be a little different. But here at least when you Google something, if it's at all like a unique or interesting question you're going to get, Gemini is going to give you an AI overview answer at the top of that page.

[: 27:19

So before you even see any links, you're going to get that answer. So right now Google still owns about, call it 95 to 97% of search, but when you search of those like searches going through Google, a large, large majority of them are actually giving, being given answers from Gemini, their AI tool to like give it like basically an AI answer.

[: 27:35

And so more and more so like you're getting these AI overviews, these AI answers no matter where you search. So overall like Google SEO, like they're still, Google's still very much around, they're not going anywhere and Google still has, is in the pole position to win here. Like I know OpenAI is like the biggest, well talked about one, but Google has the traffic, they have the users.

[: 27:52

It's like that's still like, they're still doing really, really well when it comes to, you know, actually, you know, like SEO, like I said, it's not dead, it's just changing. And so brands that are smart about it are going to know that like things like page speed, things like having your, your, your headers and your titles all good, making sure you don't have like broken links, making sure you have like all of your images tagged like with metadata, like all that stuff that, that matters, like that's still really important for SEO and for this new world of AI visibility.

[: 28:15

So the AI crawlers can find your information. That's all that all stays. The difference is like you know, getting a random blog to like link to you that have nothing to do with you, but they kind of give you a backlink Just for like the. To kind of like, like juice up the algorithm. Like that, that's not really like all that relevant anymore. Like, to me, it's really about brand mentions and really about getting your brand out there and mentioned that just getting a random link from a random site that's nothing to do with you.

[: 28:37

Got it. So if a, if a brand, like has, for example, someone on the team who does SEO for them and does content for them, what would you recommend to that person to now do different than what they were doing before? And how can they still make sure that they get the best possible results and do the traditional SEO?

[: 28:56

And the AI visibility improvement on top of that? Yeah, I mean, the first thing you probably want to do is look at the monitoring tool because you're probably using an AHREFS or SM Rush or some one of these, like, you know, traditional SEO tools to figure out, like, where you rank, how you're doing, how are your keywords doing, all that kind of fun stuff that again, Google Search still matters.

[: 29:13

Continue doing that, but also use one of the tools. I mean, we have one at Chatrank, but like, use one of the tools that is a way to kind of get you to learn more about, like, how your brand is doing in AI search. And then from there there's like, kind of tips and tractions you can make to like, kind of create the content for both, you know, call it traditional SEO as well as, you know, optimize for like, AI models.

[: 29:33

So you can absolutely do both. Sometimes it might be different pieces of content. Sometimes you can just add like, kind of a flare of the AI, like optimization into your existing content. Like, it all can, like, there's a way to kind of do both. But overall, if you're already investing in SEO internally, I'd say, like, check your organic traffic.

[: 29:49

Are you still getting the traffic you expected to get and is that traffic converting? If it is, great, then good luck. But like, we're hearing over and over again from the brands coming to us is like, well, organic traffic is trending to zero. We're just not getting organic anymore. Our paid, our paid strategy is still doing great. Maybe we're still getting acquiring customers that way, but like, organic is just not driving the traffic that's converting like it did before.

[: 30:08

And like, basically they're just shifting SEO budget towards what we do. Like, basically because, like, they're trying to figure out how to, like, get ahead in the AI world because at least they're going to try something different. They're going to like, See if it works. It is working. Basically we can get you like to rank better. So overall, if you're an SEO person inside of an internal, like an E commerce brand, like I'd say just like test it out.

[: 30:25

Just like start testing things. Try to like implement a few of the things we talked about today to try to see if you can increase your rankings in like the LLMs and then see, are you getting more referral traffic? Check your Google Analytics data. Are you getting higher referral traffic from those places? And now they're converting like that to me is like the ultimate test because like ranking better in the LLMs doesn't matter if you're not actually selling more product.

[: 30:45

Nobody wants to like, actually, you know, ranking is great, but like ranking and selling more is what you really need. You need converting traffic. And so for us as a brand, like a chat rank, this is what we do. We basically tie everything to converting traffic. Yeah, I've, I've heard rumors that, that ChatGPT is planning to, to implement ads very, very soon in the next few months.

[: 31:06

How do you think will that change, the user behavior with AI and product research? I mean, right off the bat, they're going to have to monetize these users. They have, they're paying a lot of money for them. They have to monetize them somehow. So if you have a bunch of free users using your tool, they're going to get ads.

[: 31:22

That's inevitable. I don't know when it's happening, but it's inevitable. They're all kind of hinting at it. As a user, you'd hope that the user would notice that this says sponsored or add on. They're going to have to know that there's no way that the AI tools can just basically have answers like bought by other brands but not like told to the user like that.

[: 31:39

That would be completely unethical and they would never do that. So that's like, the first step is just like, that's there, but then you just as a user gonna have to know that like you're being sold to now, like just like you are in Google Search and other places. And so like everybody when you're scrolling meta or like, Instagram and you see like an ad, you know it's an ad, you still might click on it anyway you like it.

[: 31:55

Like it's gonna be a good like targeted ad to you. And so I think that what OpenAI and these other tools are doing is learning like how do we personalize and do really well like what Meta and other have done so well, like then that's going to be like changing. So as a brand, like I think it should be so part of your strategy. Like if they're going to be accepting ads, like you pay for ads on Meta, you pay for ads on Google.

[: 32:13

Like maybe you pay for ads in the LLMs as well. See what you can do with it. I'd say, like, I don't know, it's going to be hard to know until like it actually comes out. But as a, as a smart e commerce brand, it probably would be like prudent to just at least try to see what, see if you can get any traffic out of it.

[: 32:28

Yeah, as an advertiser I'm really looking forward to that and I'm really excited when they roll that out and I hope it will be like the gold rush when Google Ads launched, when Meta ads launched, I mean AdWords in AdSense that took a long time to get right.

[: 32:45

I think OpenAI is being slow and careful about rolling this out, but they just brought on, I forget her name but she's a badass French woman that just came in to join OpenAI to basically run their whole ad to Play Popper. She's going to be running a lot of this for them. And so she did this at. Oh man, I'm blanking. It wasn't Shopify, it was somewhere else.

[: 33:01

But she basically is like really, really good at this thing. And like OpenAI is not. They're taking this seriously. They really are going to try to make this, this rollout really good. So that's why I said I don't know when it's going to happen. When it does, I feel like it's going to be a bit of a. Everyone's going to be trying to put some money into it and see if they can acquire customers through this channel. Yeah, if you were running an E commerce brand, like what is one thing you would implement today to make sure you're set or you at least improve your chances?

[: 33:26

I think good site hygiene is always important. So again like page speed, no broken links, like all that kind of fun stuff. It's traditional SEO type of things but really that technical SEO work like that is just so important. If the AI gets to your website, like OpenAI's crawler does not render JavaScript.

[: 33:41

So if your website is just all JavaScript, there's no actually text there to, for it to see, it's going to skip. It doesn't know what it's looking at. So like there's simple things like that you can be testing and checking against for your own website. That's like step one, there are a lot of like, you can just like use a lot of different tools to go ahead and check that out. Then tip two is like just try different things.

[: 33:57

So say like search for like your brand and like in a prompt like the best T shirt in New York City. And just like see if you show up and if you don't, again ask it why you're not and then go implement that change and see if you can get yourself ranking. Like just kind of like do that little like kind of testing mechanism there and see if you can get up there. You don't have to wait months once you post that, that content to see if it works.

[: 34:15

Like basically once Google and Bing index your pages on your website, it's available for the AI to scrape and use in their answer. So it's like we're talking like days to test this theory, not like months or years. And so I always recommend for E commerce brands just like try it out a little bit at a very low level, see if it works. If it does, maybe invest more into it and see if you might want to kind of invest more team or tools into it.

[: 34:35

That sounds great. For those of you who for those people who want to dive deeper into this topic and also connect with you, where can they finds you? Yes, I mean, check us out at ChatRank AI. So it's C H A T R A N K AI that's kind of like what we do, as far as like brands and visibility.

[: 34:54

We have a whole page like dedicated to how we work with E commerce brands because it just is such a big part of our business because it is such an important thing for E commerce to like think about. If my organic traffic's down, like how do I get that back up? Because that is again a really easy way to scale profitably. Yeah, you can reach out to me through that.

[: 35:10

Or again, I'm John Nest. So johnatrank AI is my email. Feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk. And again, like, whether you buy our product or not doesn't really matter to me. I'm just here to like help democratize this information. There's a lot of noise out there and I just want to help people like in brands learn how this all works. And if you use our tool, great.

[: 35:26

If not, hopefully you got something out of it and that's all we really care about. Awesome. John, really appreciate you coming, coming onto the show, and, yeah, that was really valuable. I really had a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having me. Awesome. Thank you. Take care.

[: 35:42

Bye. Bye.