{"id":1623,"date":"2025-10-07T22:49:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T22:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2025-10-08T17:46:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:46:04","slug":"gtm-166-seo-%e2%86%92-aeo-the-next-big-shift-in-how-people-discover-your-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/07\/gtm-166-seo-%e2%86%92-aeo-the-next-big-shift-in-how-people-discover-your-product\/","title":{"rendered":"GTM 166: SEO \u2192 AEO: The Next Big Shift in How People Discover Your Product"},"content":{"rendered":"
The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including:<\/p>\n
Guy Yalif<\/a> is Chief Evangelist at Webflow and a veteran B2B marketing leader with 20+ years across Twitter, Yahoo, BrightRoll, and as co-founder\/CEO of Intellimize (acquired by Webflow). He champions AI-driven optimization for sites and content, bringing a rare blend of aerospace-engineer rigor and operator experience from four successful exits to help teams win the shift from SEO to AEO.<\/p>\n 00:21 \u2014 \u201cYour SEO resources are your AEO resources. This is an evolution, not a reset.\u201d 01:15 \u2014 Webflow\u2019s AEO promise: answer engines are a massive arbitrage\u2014akin to early SEO\/SEM\/mobile. 03:00 \u2014 Why \u201cranking for keywords\u201d is obsolete; topics = clusters of questions across the funnel. 07:49 \u2014 The 4-part AEO framework: content, technical (schema & structure), authority, measurement. 10:11 \u2014 Case study: Add ~6 FAQs + inline schema to product pages \u2192 half of new citations came from 6 pages; +24% organic in 2 weeks. 15:23 \u2014 If you only do two things: (1) answer questions comprehensively, (2) add schema metadata. 21:46 \u2014 Webflow data: AI-search traffic converts ~6x better than non-branded organic; unbranded share grew from 0%\u219242% in a year. 24:02 \u2014 How buyers actually use LLMs in-flow; why your website still matters (to humans and machines). 29:58 \u2014 The learning curve is back: why AEO is resetting the playing field and rewarding curiosity. 1. Focus on questions, not keywords.<\/strong> 2. Ship schema everywhere.<\/strong> 3. Freshness is a ranking primitive again.<\/strong> 4. Brand and PR are back in the loop.<\/strong> 5. Measure what LLMs actually show.<\/strong> 6. Optimize for humans and machines.<\/strong> 7. Start narrow, then scale.<\/strong> 8. Treat AEO as resourcing, not reorg.<\/strong> 9. Expect faster feedback cycles.<\/strong> 10. Qualify > volume.<\/strong> ZoomInfo is the GTM Intelligence Platform built for sales, marketing, and RevOps. It\u2019s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.<\/p>\n Learn more at zoominfo.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sophie: 0:00<\/strong><\/p>\n AI is advancing at such a rapid rate.<\/p>\n Guy: 0:02<\/strong><\/p>\n What if you mean? With LLMs crawling the web almost every query, you can have an impact this afternoon. You can use it to outsource your thinking. You can use it to think more deeply. And door number two seems to be ranking a whole lot better.<\/p>\n Sophie: 0:17<\/strong><\/p>\n And what else do people need to really think about at the macro scale of AEO?<\/p>\n Guy: 0:21<\/strong><\/p>\n Somebody was like, hey, if this Fortune 500 CMO fired his or her entire SEO team, we\u2019re doing a huge mistake. Your SEO resources are your AEO resources. Your SEO agency is your AEO agency because this is an evolution.<\/p>\n Sophie: 1:15<\/strong><\/p>\n And for founders and operators, this is one of the biggest arbitrage opportunities since the early days of SEO. Guy Yalif, chief evangelist at Webflow, has seen this movie before. And because he has, he\u2019s taking action and has the data to show. In this conversation, you\u2019ll learn Webflow\u2019s four-part AEO framework why answering questions, not keywords, is the new growth edge, and how early adopters can turn this uncertainty into leverage. Or, as Guy puts it, in other words, the kind of upside we haven\u2019t seen since the early days of search, SEM, and mobile. All right, let\u2019s get into it. Guy, welcome to the podcast.<\/p>\n Guy: 1:50<\/strong><\/p>\n Thanks, Sophie. Thanks for having me. Excited to talk with you again.<\/p>\n Sophie: 1:54<\/strong><\/p>\n It is great to have you here. And nobody better to learn about AEO from right now at this inflection point. And you\u2019ve lived through the big SEO boom, you\u2019ve felt it. What does this inflection point feel like compared to that?<\/p>\n Guy: 2:11<\/strong><\/p>\n Very similar, actually. Um, like the early days of search, there are a bunch of different players. Things are changing all the time, like they did back then. I mean, it makes the news now that Google updated their algorithm because it happens a few times a year, because it\u2019s a settled space. And here, you know, things are changing very rapidly. The rules of what matter are updating frequently enough that everybody feels behind, and there\u2019s real opportunity. Like any new medium, those that take action early, they\u2019ll find bargains, basically effective bargains, you know, return relative to the effort they put in.<\/p>\n Sophie: 2:50<\/strong><\/p>\n Mm-hmm. That\u2019s really interesting. And if you were explaining this kind of new world, even though it feels a little bit more similar, but to a founder, what are the key differences?<\/p>\n Guy: 3:00<\/strong><\/p>\n I think there are some that are saying, look, SEO is dead, and this is a whole new world, respectfully. I 180 degrees, black and white could not disagree more. I think AEO is an evolution of what good SEO always should have been. You know, genuinely valuable original content, it\u2019s getting rewarded. The the LLMs, they get to see more context about what\u2019s good. When we all learn to speak Google, our average query was four words long. The average query in an LLM is 23 words long. So they get more context, they have a conversation. So if I were explaining it to a founder, I would say, look, take SEO, minus one thing plus a couple. The thing that\u2019s minus is the concept of ranking for keywords doesn\u2019t exist anymore. Because you got paragraphs now. What\u2019s the plus? Plus is topics used to be a basket of keywords, a cluster of keywords, and you try to make sure you have them in your content. Now a topic is a group of questions that your prospects may be asking in the funnel clustered together. So shift from counting keywords to answering questions, that\u2019d be one, to help the LLM understand the structure and meaning of your content. We\u2019ve been doing that with SEO forever, right? We have the metadata. There\u2019s a bit more. Do this thing called schema. And the last would be we focused on backlakes for years. They still matter. They don\u2019t not matter, but incrementally more important than an SEO is repeated mentions in plain text on other sites saying, oh, GTM Now is awesome. Oh, this is one of the top podcasts that matters more than it did with search.<\/p>\n Sophie: 4:38<\/strong><\/p>\n Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The pendulum is almost shifting back to that third party. It\u2019s bringing PR and all these different things back. But, you know, had had the moment of not not adding less by any means, but maybe less emphasis on them. And now we\u2019re getting highlighted more, which is really interesting.<\/p>\n Guy: 4:53<\/strong><\/p>\n PR is back, brand is back. Those things matter more than they did before, yes.<\/p>\n Sophie: 4:58<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah. And those things matter. So we know definitively what\u2019s important. But what what about overall just knowing? Like, how do you know? Does anyone actually know what\u2019s working with AEO? Or are these best guesses? How are we thinking about a single source of truth around AEO?<\/p>\n Guy: 5:17<\/strong><\/p>\n So you said definitively no, and I\u2019m glad you asked the question because anyone who says they definitively know is lying. Like no one knows. But in the same thing that no one knows for SEO, right? We all we all try a bunch of things, we observe the results of an experiment. Oh, I added more keywords, fewer keywords, longer metadata, shorter metadata, and they saw what works. But no one actually knows what\u2019s happening in the Google algorithm. Now with LL Lens, not even the LLM providers themselves know what\u2019s actually happening in there. So when we talk about these rules of thumb, they are very well educated, very well researched, data-driven guesses. They\u2019re the current best thinking about what one should do to go manage the risk and opportunity of LLMs, which is really to take back control of our brand narrative and drive more traffic to our websites to go generate revenue.<\/p>\n Sophie: 6:10<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely. And AI is advancing at such a rapid rate.<\/p>\n Guy: 6:15<\/strong><\/p>\n What do you mean?<\/p>\n Sophie: 6:16<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, yeah. Never heard of it. What what do you think that changes about the SEO adoption to AEO? So when you think say they\u2019re all educated best guesses, are those guesses changing at a pace that is faster than SEO? Or would you say they\u2019re evolving at the same pace as they did?<\/p>\n Guy: 6:35<\/strong><\/p>\n My humble opinion is faster, exactly for the reason you described. The LLMs are improving their ability to understand meaning and structure and content, what on like a monthly basis every couple of months? Had to hit to Google and Yahoo and Bing and everyone, but like it didn\u2019t go that fast. I don\u2019t recall from back in the day that it did. Um mercifully, we have skipped over a whole generation of spam where if you look at the stuff that ranks top in Google, 85% of it is either entirely human generated, that\u2019s about 65%, and another 20% is like a little bit of AI. So the notion that I can create an infinite content within LLM and I\u2019m just gonna go spam out zillions of pages, it\u2019s not working. Thankfully.<\/p>\n Sophie: 7:20<\/strong><\/p>\n Thankfully. Less noise. Yes. Less noise is always good. And when you\u2019re thinking about overall frameworks or advice to people that are leaning into AEO, do you have any kind of recommendations? I know at Webflow, you\u2019re doing a ton of work in the space and know those best practices and have implemented them yourself. And we\u2019d love to hear a little bit more around that work. And I guess your best educated guess, not in necessarily what is technically working, but what are your best educated guesses right now?<\/p>\n Guy: 7:49<\/strong><\/p>\n Um Vivian, who leads our SEO and AEO team, has done some amazing work. And uh, we went and looked for examples, case studies, spent lots of time, many hours looking. There aren\u2019t any. My best guess about why is that people are doing the work. They aren\u2019t yet, it\u2019s not yet repeatable enough that they\u2019re sharing it externally. So we\u2019re sharing a lot of what we\u2019re doing externally. All the research we\u2019ve done, talking with other experts in the space, looking at the data, humbly, we would suggest thinking about the transition from SEO to AEO in four categories. The first is content, where you go from counting keywords to answering clusters of questions to making content super relevant with personalization. So this is all about like the content you own. The second is technical, where you go from on-page SEO to helping LLMs understand the structure and meaning of your content by giving them more metadata. Like we all did it with Facebook\u2019s Open Graph. Yeah. Now there\u2019s this thing that many know about, but I many also don\u2019t call schema, that is just another form of metadata that Google, being Yahoo, Yandex, and others came up with. And it\u2019s like, oh, here\u2019s how you specify an events page, a product page, a bio page. 88% of sites don\u2019t have schema, but 73% of Google\u2019s top results do. So, like, tons of opportunity there. Coming back to technical, and you want that on a super fast cycle. Third area is authority, where we went from backlinks that still matter, they don\u2019t not matter, to repeated positive, plain text mentions about your brand, pointing to a visually stunning, emotionally evocative experience, because that\u2019s a signal about authority too. And the last is measurement, where we go from keyword ranking, which no longer exists, to did I show up in the questions I care about? To what\u2019s my share of voice relative to my competitors and what\u2019s the sentiment? Because over here in search, the Google was using our words. Here at the LLMs are reformulating everything. So the notion of sentiment being important exists. So those four buckets uh content, technical, authority, and measurement.<\/p>\n Sophie: 10:05<\/strong><\/p>\n Incredible. And from implementing, though, as you said, the team\u2019s been doing a great job. What kind of results did we see?<\/p>\n Guy: 10:11<\/strong><\/p>\n Vivian and team have done a bunch. They partnered with our SEO and AEO for Graphite, and a couple of things come to mind. Um, she recently took our top half dozen product pages and tried to put some structure on them so the LLMs could understand the meaning and structure of them. What did she do? She put FAQs at the bottom of the page, so about half a dozen FAQs. She then put schema, that metadata, there in line with those FAQs. In two weeks, half of the incremental citations Webflow got were from those six pages. Six pages out of thousands that we have.<\/p>\n Sophie: 10:47<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 10:48<\/strong><\/p>\n And organic traffic to those pages is up 24% in two weeks. So that was one thing she did, and it\u2019s great, and that\u2019s the beginning. We\u2019re gonna do more. The second is that freshness matters. So the content machine is as hungry as ever for good original content. Um 85, maybe 95% of the content GP Chat GPT sites was updated in the last 10 months. So she worked with another part of ours, AirOps, to increase the speed with which we refreshed content. She did that and uh found 20%, 20, 40, 40 more traffic coming from AI search because we were updating the content more regularly. Uh, and and we see that content with freshness indicator, like last updated date, gets 1.8x more citations. So giving structure and updating more regularly. Two experiments that have worked really well for us.<\/p>\n Sophie: 11:47<\/strong><\/p>\n Wow. That\u2019s a huge difference just from updating content.<\/p>\n Guy: 11:51<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n Sophie: 11:52<\/strong><\/p>\n What and maybe this is getting into the tactics, I need to give her a call, but what constitutes updating? How much work would you say? There\u2019s there\u2019s a lot of companies essentially that have a ton of content, but it\u2019s not necessarily optimized for AI engines and they want to refresh them. How much work is it to refresh existing content?<\/p>\n Guy: 12:12<\/strong><\/p>\n The direct answer is I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Sophie: 12:14<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 12:15<\/strong><\/p>\n Exactly. And I haven\u2019t survived her a ring. Totally. I do believe it first, it\u2019s worth running the experiment. Somebody said, hey, wait a minute. If you need fresh content, what if you just change the last outdated? Is that enough? I hope it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n Sophie: 12:29<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not. At least from the SEO side, I know it\u2019s not. I I don\u2019t know if AI engines differ, but from the SEO side, you need something in the main body. You need like a little bit of a main point and the date. So I would imagine it\u2019s the same, but I don\u2019t know. I got a call by viewing.<\/p>\n Guy: 12:44<\/strong><\/p>\n I that\u2019s not one I would bet without data. Only those stuff was data driven. This is hypothesis. And the other hypothesis would be that um AirOps, the tool we partner with, makes it easy to do that in a workflow and with LLMs, but that can\u2019t be it. Right? If you just pump out an LLM updated page, you need human review, you need human editorial. I\u2019ve got friends who started companies, I don\u2019t know, maybe GTM Fund invested in one, where it\u2019s like, I can detect if this was entirely LLM created using statistical pattern matching on the content. And so uh we touch with the human every piece of content in a material way before it goes out the door.<\/p>\n Sophie: 13:25<\/strong><\/p>\n Interesting.<\/p>\n Guy: 13:26<\/strong><\/p>\n So both hypotheses rather than data driven, but you\u2019ve got the SEO data there.<\/p>\n Sophie: 13:31<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah. And it sounds like the common theme of you can\u2019t rely on AI to get from zero to a hundred. It\u2019ll take you part of the way there, but you do need that process for actually implementing the human touch.<\/p>\n Guy: 13:42<\/strong><\/p>\n Totally. And I feel like one of the one of the underspoken but foundational things in LLMs as like kindergartners through to CEOs learn about them and how they change everything, is you can use it to outsource your thinking. You can use it to think more deeply. And door number two seems to be ranking a whole lot better with answer engines than door number one. And by the way, it helps to make all of us more employable. So I feel like it\u2019s something we aren\u2019t talking about enough, but it\u2019s it looks the same on the surface you used in LLM.<\/p>\n Sophie: 14:19<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 14:19<\/strong><\/p>\n But what\u2019s going on inside your head could be completely different.<\/p>\n Sophie: 14:21<\/strong><\/p>\n A quick pause to tell you about a company you need to know. ZoomInfo is the go-to-market intelligence platform built for sales, marketing, and revops. By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-marketplace faster, and drive predictable growth. With industry leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets. It\u2019s trusted by the fastest growing companies and has become the category leader in go-to-market intelligence. Learn more at zoominfo.com. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it\u2019s tempting to go the quick route, but always play the long game and actually invest in the depth. And you at least you mentioned two points that you did that had a huge impact. And one of them was updating and refreshing pages for, let\u2019s say, founders or early stage companies that are really looking in to implement AEO tactics, but there\u2019s a lot out there. You listed off a lot of different really interesting points that people could dive into. What are the two big ones that you\u2019d recommend? Are those the two, or would you recommend two others?<\/p>\n Guy: 15:23<\/strong><\/p>\n If you only did two things, I would suggest you shift, you answer questions. So shift from keywords to questions and answer them comprehensively. And the second is add schema metadata to your site so that you can help the LLMs understand the meaning of your site more effectively. Those are the easily the top two things I would suggest doing. They\u2019re the right place to start.<\/p>\n Sophie: 15:44<\/strong><\/p>\n Keywords, metadata, answers and answers. Sorry. No, no. This is how much is ingrained in my brain.<\/p>\n Guy: 15:53<\/strong><\/p>\n You too have many years of search.<\/p>\n Sophie: 15:55<\/strong><\/p>\n I I do, yeah. It\u2019s a bit of a rewiring. So it is a process. Okay. Super helpful.<\/p>\n Guy: 16:01<\/strong><\/p>\n But to your point about the rewiring, it\u2019s not like throw it all out. It\u2019s adjustments. It\u2019s an evolution rather than a wholesale revolution.<\/p>\n Sophie: 16:09<\/strong><\/p>\n Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And what else do people need to really think about at the macro scale of AEO?<\/p>\n Guy: 16:17<\/strong><\/p>\n I heard, I hope it\u2019s not true. It\u2019s not validated at all, but at one of these conferences, somebody was like, hey, if this Fortune 500 CMO fired his or her entire SEO team, it\u2019s like, we\u2019re doing AEO. I think it\u2019s a huge mistake. Your SEO resources are your AEO resources. Your SEO agency is your AEO agency because this is an evolution. So SEO is dead and this is a complete revolution, I think, is one of the easiest ones to see some great articles about. And uh I I don\u2019t think the data supports it. Um and the second is just like we did with SEO, you can start small and grow. In the example we talked about with Webflow, Vivian chose half a dozen pages, saw real results. Obviously, she\u2019s then gonna go continue, but she didn\u2019t do everything all at once, day one.<\/p>\n Sophie: 17:04<\/strong><\/p>\n Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, that makes sense. Okay. Super helpful advice. I love it. It\u2019ll be interesting to see how it plays out now over time.<\/p>\n Guy: 17:14<\/strong><\/p>\n To your point, we are all learning together. Right? This this mental model we have of these four categories. We also made up a rubric of five different levels of them. That\u2019ll keep adjusting as we all learn more.<\/p>\n Sophie: 17:27<\/strong><\/p>\n And how do you learn? How do you learn about AEL and then AI overall?<\/p>\n Guy: 17:35<\/strong><\/p>\n A bunch of time. Really? It\u2019s it is it is a bunch of time experimenting, focusing on data, because it\u2019s there are uh a lot of things being said. Uh and when like I\u2019ll read an article about something and I\u2019ll dig into the source for that and the source and the source and the source. And sometimes I\u2019m like, wait, that article, it contradicts the original underlying data, but it was like a telephone game of referencing each other, uh and then staying close to the work we\u2019re doing, experimenting directly uh with both. I happen to like two podcasts. One is this one, which I listen to religiously, and the other one is um marketing AI Institutes uh podcasts, which Paul and Mike, they produce great content too.<\/p>\n Sophie: 18:24<\/strong><\/p>\n Okay. I love it. I think that\u2019s where with the fast evolution, people are learning the most on the fly. Our individuals, our networks like podcasts and channels and so forth, where it\u2019s just a little bit more live and and flexible. I know that\u2019s personally I learned the most too, is to podcast from people individually how they\u2019re learning. We\u2019re seeing a lot more content out there that is dynamic, that\u2019s actually tactical, actionable advice on AEI. And I know you\u2019re produced with a lot of content around that too, actually. So for anyone kind of curious about their own AEO strategy, what kind of resources are out there? Because I know that you are are working on a ton.<\/p>\n Guy: 19:04<\/strong><\/p>\n We wouldn\u2019t I would invite people to go to webflow.com slash resources slash AEO. There, you will not find a pitch for Webflow. What you will find is a place to go enter your domain name, hit enter, a couple of minutes later, you will get an email saying, we ran in the background a 600-line prompt. It\u2019s about to become 1700 in V2, that goes and looks at your site, goes and looks off your site, and suggests, hey, here\u2019s what we see in those four categories: content, tech, authority, measurement. Here are the gaps we see. Here are suggestions for what you might do to level up. And it bottom lines that, like you were doing earlier, if you only did two things, go do these. And then below that is detail around these four categories and the things we\u2019re seeing that can help people evolve.<\/p>\n Sophie: 19:55<\/strong><\/p>\n Amazing. And no cost? No cost. No cost. Okay. Well, then we\u2019ll drop it in the show notes. That\u2019s amazing. Yeah, what a great resource, especially after you just broke down those four points. And they\u2019re super, super important for people optimizing. And what about the people that aren\u2019t optimizing? What do you think happens if people aren\u2019t actually following an AEO strategy right now and into the future?<\/p>\n Guy:20:15<\/p>\n In my humble opinion, it is it\u2019s it\u2019s missed opportunity. I think AEO is truly threat and opportunity for us. Over time, we will lose control of our brand narrative because our carefully differentiated and crafted words are being reformulated. We\u2019ll lose traffic. Um Bain found 15 to 25% decrease in traffic, which I think is closer to reality than the headline grabbing, oh, HubSpot lost 80% of their traffic. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the norm and was cherry-picked for them as an example. And the third is we all sound the same. We\u2019re all using the same LLM. So how many people are, you know, the leader, the best, the first, the fastest? Uh and I think um uh actually I lost the train thought entirely.<\/p>\n Sophie: 20:58<\/strong><\/p>\n What was the Yeah, it\u2019s okay. Um what happens if people Oh aren\u2019t doing it, thank you. Don\u2019t yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 21:04<\/strong><\/p>\n So that so so the risk is we all sound the same. If we then go invest some in AEO, which is with your existing resources, same hours, same people, shifting strategy a little bit, you will be earlier to market, and chances are you will find opportunity. Just like we did in the early days of search, in the early days of SCM, in the early days of mobile, in the early days of native, the people that went earlier, they found relative bargains. They got more return relative to the amount of effort they were putting in before everybody was there.<\/p>\n Sophie: 21:36<\/strong><\/p>\n Early adopters advantage. Yes. And is there a certain percentage that you\u2019d recommend teens think about of reallocating resources from SEO to AEO under the same team?<\/p>\n Guy: 21:46<\/strong><\/p>\n I think it depends on how where they are seeing traffic coming from and how far along they are in their SEO journey. So I I I do suggest teams go look at traffic to their site. At Webflow, 8% of our self-serve signups come from Answer Engines today, AI search. Uh, by the way, it converts better too, because they\u2019re further down the follow. It converts six times, not six percent, six times better than non-branded organic, which is eye-opening. But so I suggest those do you look at how much traffic you\u2019re getting from answer engines, look if it\u2019s increasing. For us, in unbranded, it went from zero a year ago to 42% today.<\/p>\n Sophie: 22:25<\/strong><\/p>\n Okay. Yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 22:26<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s it\u2019s like eight, and so that\u2019s worth investing time in. That\u2019s a clear signal to go invest in AEO strategies. Um, that having been said, 25% of the top pages out there don\u2019t even have basic SEO metadata. They have broken links. That\u2019s also worth tackling if you don\u2019t have those fundamentals in place.<\/p>\n Sophie: 22:45<\/strong><\/p>\n Very good call out. And perhaps they can be done in tandem, but maybe we\u2019re skipping steps by jumping ahead when really there\u2019s a lot of SEO leverage to be had too. But 6X, that\u2019s a wild statistic. Like, talk to me about what you mean around that traffic is converting 6x better.<\/p>\n Guy: 23:04<\/strong><\/p>\n I that the traffic that comes from answer engines, you look at touch to purchase, because you were talking about self-serve sign-off. Yeah, that is 24x 24% conversion rate. Non-branded organic search is 4% conversion rate for that metric. Two of the prominent SEO firms, HRFs and SEMrush, found in their own data 4x and 23x. So our 6x is in the range. That\u2019s really interesting. It\u2019s uh and why we think because folks are further down the funnel. So you have less traffic, but it\u2019s more qualified because they have self-qualified.<\/p>\n Sophie: 23:43<\/strong><\/p>\n So what do you think behaviorally they\u2019re doing? Because I\u2019m thinking to you know, my procurement processes and yours and the way everybody individually operates. Are they researching on their own and then turning to LLMs? Are we not starting with LLNs, or do you think people are starting with LLNs?<\/p>\n Guy: 24:02<\/strong><\/p>\n Forced or surveyed B2B marketers, 95% of them said LLMs are going to be part of my buying process this year.<\/p>\n Sophie: 24:08<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.<\/p>\n Guy: 24:09<\/strong><\/p>\n And surges will be. So it\u2019s clearly something that is important. Do they literally start there? Do they start with search? Do they start with friends? I don\u2019t know. Anecdotally, I think word of mouth is easily continues to be the most trusted. That\u2019s quantitative. It is the most trusted form of recommendation. By the way, your website\u2019s number two. That was eye-opening. Um uh and so your website, so your website isn\u2019t dead. Your website\u2019s not dead at all. In fact, I firmly believe that people are going to want to hear your story told your way forever. That is not going away. To your point about how we\u2019re engaging with LLMs, often the first look is there, and people are learning well, what matters in this category? Who are the players? Some of the tofu mofu things that we\u2019ve all done, but then they are looking to see your story told your way. By the way, that website needs to then speak to humans in visually stunning, emotionally evocative, engaging ways, and to machines. And folks are talking about this like it\u2019s new, but it\u2019s not. We\u2019ve had search metadata forever. Now we have a bit more metadata for the LLMs. And so we\u2019ve been doing this for a while. I think folks are this is obviously more in the zeitgeist now. You need websites that speak to both.<\/p>\n Sophie: 25:27<\/strong><\/p>\n And you\u2019ve obviously built in this space and solved in this space before. You know it so intimately. One of the quotes that I just absolutely love and I think about all the time around the work that you\u2019ve done, the work that I\u2019ve done in the past, the work that a lot of people are doing right now is people impute the quality of your product or service from the quality of your website. So even if there are third parties like LLNs, it is your story. You\u2019re still owning your story and design and visually appealing sites and emotionally invocative, like you said, are a huge, huge part of that.<\/p>\n Guy: 25:59<\/strong><\/p>\n I am very, very much with you, both quantitatively and just subjectively as an individual. Uh and I think the LLNs are going to use it as a signal of quality. That\u2019s belief. Why do I believe that? Because Google looks at bounce rate in search, right? Did somebody leave your site and come back immediately? It would be surprising if the uh answer engines weren\u2019t doing that. And you see perplexity as a browser, ChatGPT is rumored to be creating one. Why might they do that? I I believe two reasons. One, to not pay the gajillion dollars Google\u2019s paying Apple to be the default in Safari, fine. Perhaps more valuably, they get to see where you\u2019re going. They get to see what\u2019s actually valuable content. And so you having a compelling human-focused story on your website will continue to matter a lot. It may actually get you to appear in the answer engines more often because they can tell it\u2019s valuable content.<\/p>\nDiscussed in this episode<\/h2>\n
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Episode highlights<\/h2>\n
Watch:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=21<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=75<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=180<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=469<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=611<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=923<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=1306<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=1442<\/a><\/p>\n
Watch: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZBbYSDDPnnI&t=1798<\/a><\/p>\nKey takeaways<\/h2>\n
LLMs parse full queries and conversations, so win by clustering buyer questions and answering them comprehensively instead of stuffing terms. It\u2019s the new \u201ctopic model\u201d for AI search.<\/p>\n
Inline FAQs + JSON-LD help engines understand meaning and structure. Webflow saw outsized citations and traffic lift after adding schema to a handful of pages.<\/p>\n
Recently updated pages earn more LLM citations. Treat \u201clast updated\u201d as a product surface, then operationalize refreshes with editorial QA instead of na\u00efve bulk rewrites.<\/p>\n
Backlinks still matter, but repeated positive, plain-text mentions and strong brand signals increasingly influence AI output. Earn the mentions; don\u2019t chase gimmicks.<\/p>\n
Stop obsessing over keyword rank. Track whether you appear for target questions, your share of voice vs. competitors, and the sentiment of summaries that agents generate.<\/p>\n
Your site must tell a visually compelling story to people while exposing structure to machines. Design, accessibility, and metadata now co-drive AI visibility.<\/p>\n
Pilot on 5\u20136 high-intent pages to validate impact (FAQs + schema + refresh). Once you see lift in citations and conversions, templatize and roll out across the library.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t \u201cfire SEO\u201d to \u201chire AEO.\u201d Redeploy the same skills and partners toward AI-aware strategy. It\u2019s a shift in emphasis, not a brand-new department.<\/p>\n
Unlike classic SEO, AI engines crawl continuously, so changes can influence outputs the same day. Use the short loop to test, learn, and iterate quickly.<\/p>\n
AI-search visits may be fewer, but they\u2019re further down-funnel. Teams are seeing materially higher touch-to-signup rates when traffic comes from answer engines.<\/p>\n
\nThis episode is brought to you by our sponsor:<\/h3>\n
By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-market plays faster, and drive predictable growth.
With industry-leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets.<\/p>\n
\nRecommended books<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nWhere to Find GTMnow<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nGTM 166 Episode Transcript<\/h2>\n