{"id":2715,"date":"2026-05-20T17:20:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/?p=2715"},"modified":"2026-07-13T09:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:16:16","slug":"seo-is-not-enough-anymore-webflows-ceo-on-the-rise-of-aeo-linda-tong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/seo-is-not-enough-anymore-webflows-ceo-on-the-rise-of-aeo-linda-tong\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO Is Not Enough Anymore: Webflow\u2019s CEO on the Rise of AEO | Linda Tong"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<p>The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/in\/podcast\/seo-is-not-enough-anymore-webflows-ceo-on-the-rise\/id1369291464?i=1000768753134\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/4JWXhJD5Gyg3s2lbZpWaaB?si=iZWbswTbT1SN2_C_GRGC_w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>The future of websites isn\u2019t a builder problem anymore. It\u2019s an agent problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In this episode of GTMnow, Sophie Buonassisi sits down with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/lktong\/\">Linda Tong<\/a>, CEO of Webflow, to unpack how the entire web is being rewritten for a world where humans AND AI agents are your audience.<\/p>\n<p>Linda breaks down why Webflow is no longer \u201cjust a website builder\u201d (it\u2019s an agentic web marketing platform), what the Vidoso acquisition unlocks for AI-generated brand assets, and how the rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is forcing marketers to rethink content from the ground up. She also shares the practical playbooks her team uses to \u201cvibe\u201d sites into production with the Webflow MCP server, why human creativity is the only real moat left, and how she built her own personal CRM using Claude Code.<\/p>\n<p>If you run a GTM team, lead marketing, or are trying to figure out what your website should even look like in 2026, this one is essential.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Discussed in this episode:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why your website is now the #1 source of truth for humans, bots, and agents<\/li>\n<li>The shift from static sites to continuously optimizing, dynamic experiences<\/li>\n<li>How \u201cvibe coding\u201d with MCP is changing the way teams build on the web<\/li>\n<li>Inside the Vidoso acquisition and what \u201cbrand-governed AI\u201d actually means<\/li>\n<li>AppGen: going from prompt to production without losing brand consistency<\/li>\n<li>Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): the non-obvious mistakes marketers are making<\/li>\n<li>How to structure a marketing team made of humans plus agent swarms<\/li>\n<li>The \u201c5 words\u201d exercise every CEO should run inside their company<\/li>\n<li>Linda\u2019s personal CRM built with Claude Code (and how Webflow scales internal AI)<\/li>\n<li>Why \u201cunlimited credits\u201d and Builder Days unlock real AI productivity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2 data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Episode highlights<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=101\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1:41<\/a> \u2013 From static to dynamic<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=192\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">3:12<\/a> \u2013 Inside the Vidoso acquisition<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=338\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">5:38<\/a> \u2013 The human moat<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=437\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">7:17<\/a> \u2013 Beyond the website builder<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=535\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">8:55<\/a> \u2013 Structuring human + agent teams<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=598\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">9:58<\/a> \u2013 AppGen, explained<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=645\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">10:45<\/a> \u2013 Prompt to production<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=731\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">12:11<\/a> \u2013 AEO misconceptions<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=880\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">14:40<\/a> \u2013 Holistic AEO strategy<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=998\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">16:38<\/a> \u2013 The 5 words exercise<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=1090\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">18:10<\/a> \u2013 Linda\u2019s personal CRM<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=1171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">19:31<\/a> \u2013 Central vs. individual AI<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pLnJgkn4qpE?t=1244\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">20:44<\/a> \u2013 Inside Webflow\u2019s Builder Days<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2 data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Key takeaways<\/h2>\n<p><strong>1. Your website is no longer a destination, it\u2019s a source of truth:<br \/><\/strong>Humans visit it, but agents and answer engines crawl it to represent you everywhere else on the web. How you write your site now determines how AI talks about you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Static sites are dead. Dynamic is finally real:<br \/><\/strong>AI makes it possible to spin up site variants on the fly for different audiences, locales, and intents. The dream of true personalization is here, just not where most teams are looking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. The human moat is creativity, taste, and judgment:<br \/><\/strong>When the cost of creation drops to zero, what you choose to build and why becomes the entire game. Execution is no longer the bottleneck.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. AEO is a brand clarity problem, not a technical one:<br \/><\/strong>Most marketing copy is too fluffy for LLMs to parse. If a human can\u2019t tell what you do from your H1, neither can ChatGPT or Perplexity. Answer the basic questions directly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Pick your 5 words:<br \/><\/strong>If you asked 10 employees to describe your company, you\u2019d get 20 answers. In an AI-saturated web, that inconsistency gets amplified across every channel. Brand discipline is now a GTM lever.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\"><strong>Thank you to our sponsor:<\/strong><u><\/u><\/h3>\n<h3>.Tech<\/h3>\n<p>One critical and surprisingly complicated decision is naming your startup. Founders often spend weeks chasing the perfect .com, only to overpay or settle for a name that doesn\u2019t quite click.<\/p>\n<p>Before you spend a ton securing a .com, we recommend checking out\u00a0<strong>.tech domains<\/strong>.<br \/><strong>.Tech<\/strong>\u00a0tells the world \u2013 your customers, your investors, anyone Googling you: that you\u2019re building in technology.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re building a tech startup, secure your .tech domain today from any registrar of your choice. Learn more at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/startup.tech\/\">https:\/\/startup.tech<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 data-pm-slice=\"1 3 []\">Follow Linda Tong<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/lktong\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/lktong<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X (Twitter): <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/YayLT\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">https:\/\/x.com\/YayLT<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Webflow\u2019s LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/webflow-inc-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/webflow-inc-<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Webflow\u2019s website: <a href=\"https:\/\/webflow.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">https:\/\/webflow.com<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 data-pm-slice=\"1 3 []\">Follow Sophie Buonassisi<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sophiebuonassisi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sophiebuonassisi<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X (Twitter): <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/sophiebuona\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/x.com\/sophiebuona<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Newsletter: https:\/\/thegtmnewsletter.substack.com\/<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 data-pm-slice=\"1 3 []\">Follow GTMnow<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmnow\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmnow<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X \/ Twitter: <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GTMnow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/x.com\/GTMnow<\/a>_<\/li>\n<li>YouTube: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@GTM_now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@GTM_now<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Podcast directories: <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/tag\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/tag\/podcast<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 data-pm-slice=\"1 3 []\">Follow GTMfund<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Newsletter: You\u2019re in it <img src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"\ud83d\ude42\" class=\"wp-smiley lazyload\" style=\"height: 1em;max-height: 1em\" data-src=\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/17.0.2\/72x72\/1f642.png\"> If this was forwarded to you, you can subscribe <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. GTMnow is our main brand for content, but we also have two around our investments:<\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmfund\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmfund<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X: <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/gtmfund\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/x.com\/gtmfund<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>GTM 191 Episode Transcript<\/h2>\n<p>00:00 \u2013 00:02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Linda, welcome to GTM now.<\/p>\n<p>00:02 \u2013 00:04<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Thank you for having me. I\u2019m so excited to be here.<\/p>\n<p>00:04 \u2013 00:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Absolutely excited to have you here. Excited to pick your brain on all things brand new System website, because it is massively changing right now. And what we\u2019re seeing is a lot of people are are uncertain about what that future looks like. So curious to kind of pick your brain on that perspective. If you could summarize, you know, what has changed with websites now?<\/p>\n<p>00:28 \u2013 00:28<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>What would that be?<\/p>\n<p>00:28 \u2013 00:57<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Oh my gosh. So one yeah, I think now is the most exciting time in history when you think about the future of the web. So yeah, being scared about it, I think it\u2019s like the wrong response. I think people should be so Stopes yeah. The thing that we\u2019re seeing change and you know, what people are feeling is the website has actually become ten times or a million times more important than it ever has been before, because now it\u2019s not just this one destination that you go to, but actually it becomes your source of truth as a brand.<\/p>\n<p>00:57 \u2013 01:20<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And it\u2019s a place that, yes, humans are still going to come and navigate and experience, but it\u2019s also now the place that bots and agents are coming to to understand you, represent you, and then reflect you in other channels, whether it\u2019s, answer engine or through other sorts of like experiences. Your website now becomes like a multi sort of channel like endpoint.<\/p>\n<p>01:20 \u2013 01:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And it\u2019s a place that AI becomes like sort of like the holy grail of how you represent yourself on the web.<\/p>\n<p>01:27 \u2013 01:41<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah, definitely. Holy Grail is a good, good word for it. And, you know, you\u2019ve talked about websites as kind of living systems that continuously optimize. What does that look like with that holy grail in mind?<\/p>\n<p>01:41 \u2013 02:00<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So I think it\u2019s finally actualizing the dream that we\u2019ve always had about the web. Yeah. I mean, I\u2019ve been around for quite some time. I won\u2019t age myself. But I since I began my career, people talked about being able to have customized experiences that when I go to website, I should get experience built for me and you should get one built for you.<\/p>\n<p>02:00 \u2013 02:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>The thing is, that never really happened because teams said, like doing personalization or optimization or experimentation was just so hard it required more resources and time, and you\u2019re building all these versions of your website and standing them up and trying to do this weird targeting. Now is finally the time that your website goes from being the static experience to dynamic, because suddenly in the age of AI, the idea of creating variants of your site on the fly is possible.<\/p>\n<p>02:27 \u2013 02:46<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Having the experience showcased to a different audience based on who they are as a human, as an agent. Is it someone who\u2019s been here before? Is it like, you know, what do I know about the person coming to the site, and how do I cater that experience to them? Like that is entirely possible now. And so I think this big shift is really it\u2019s a shift from static to dynamic experiences.<\/p>\n<p>02:46 \u2013 02:53<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And as a result of that continuous optimization or continuous iteration of your site becomes totally possible.<\/p>\n<p>02:53 \u2013 03:12<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>And I think you\u2019ve you\u2019ve absolutely nailed it that this is something people want. We\u2019ve wanted this for so long, and so it\u2019s a very exciting time that we can actually be here and now. Web flow in March of 2026, you actually acquired video. So yeah. And video SEO was a company that generates brand aligned visual assets at scale using AI agents.<\/p>\n<p>03:12 \u2013 03:30<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>You\u2019ve also integrated cloud MCP for development. You partnered with cursor. So all these things combined kind of point towards you\u2019re building for a future where humans and agents are actually coexisting from an accessing website standpoint. Absolutely. What do people need to know about the future? When we think about who\u2019s actually coming to the website?<\/p>\n<p>03:31 \u2013 03:52<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You know, the future is really important. In that one, you have this dual audience, humans and agents, but also it\u2019s how you actually operate and run. It\u2019s fundamentally different. And the reason why, you know, our MPP server exists is because before, if you were building a website, someone would come in and design it by hand and iterate that website or even code it.<\/p>\n<p>03:52 \u2013 04:15<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Now with an MTP server, you can actually vibe it, right? You can actually talk to it with natural language and build your website. And so we\u2019re creating new creation points with new different sort of experiences based on how you want to build. We\u2019re also creating, automations on top of that that allow you to run experimentation, do a company\u2019s marketing spin up campaigns and then video.<\/p>\n<p>04:15 \u2013 04:34<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So the thing is, when you build a website, it\u2019s not just text or a landing page. It\u2019s actually, you know, it\u2019s media, it\u2019s assets, it\u2019s images, it\u2019s video. And what you need to be able to do is when you\u2019re going to create this stuff, whether you\u2019re going to create it with AI or you want to create it manually, or you want to do a little bit of both, you\u2019re going to need something that generates all of that type of content for you.<\/p>\n<p>04:34 \u2013 05:06<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And so video so for us is about being able to generate images or video that\u2019s tied to like the landing page or the website or the experience that you\u2019re creating. And so for like for people who are thinking about it, it\u2019s how do you create infinite experiences dynamically with AI to serve a myriad of customers who are coming, not just human and agent, but even within human and agents like from different locales, from different, industries, people who you\u2019ve seen before, you haven\u2019t seen before, agents that are just trying to understand you versus agents that are trying to action on you.<\/p>\n<p>05:06 \u2013 05:13<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>It\u2019s the purposes and the reasons why different audience members are interacting with your site is fundamentally changed.<\/p>\n<p>05:13 \u2013 05:38<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>And I like the the terminology you use. You had you vibe in. Yeah I think that\u2019s very catchy. There\u2019s something shorthand about that vibe is very catchy. Okay. So when people are thinking about actually building the website experience with that in mind, are there any kind of tactical nuggets that you\u2019ve seen with your purview across so many different websites that people should have in mind when they\u2019re building?<\/p>\n<p>05:38 \u2013 06:00<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>I mean, the thing that we don\u2019t talk about enough is often with AI, everyone\u2019s like, I can go faster, right? I, I can tell my engineer, I can text my designer. The thing is, yes, you can execute faster, but the thing that makes us really unique as a species is that humans are innately creative. We have judgment, we have taste.<\/p>\n<p>06:00 \u2013 06:15<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And like that\u2019s a thing that if you\u2019re going to build a website, I don\u2019t care whether you want to build with AI or you want to build yourself, but like it\u2019s so important to think about what you uniquely want to create and what what do you want to make special about it? And why should this even exist? Like, why should a website exist on the internet?<\/p>\n<p>06:15 \u2013 06:39<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Like why are you putting another set of, you know, markdown into like hosted on something to show people like, what are you trying to accomplish? I think that\u2019s the most important key, because now that the cost of creation of anything a website, an app, whatever has more or less commoditized down to zero the purpose of what you\u2019re creating and how you want to delight your audience and be innovative and unique, that is like where all the value is.<\/p>\n<p>06:39 \u2013 06:49<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>I mean, that\u2019s fantastic advice to for anyone thinking about how do you build leverage in your career? Yeah, at the same time, in addition to hiring, too, on the flip side, for sure.<\/p>\n<p>06:50 \u2013 06:58<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You know, it\u2019s always like, what is what is my most as a as a human right? Like what? What can I uniquely do that I can\u2019t? I never say is the heart of it.<\/p>\n<p>06:58 \u2013 07:17<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>We talk about moats for software companies all the time. We should be talking about modes for human species now. Total creativity, judgment, taste are things that I heard you say. Yeah, I would absolutely agree with. And we talked a little bit about the acquisition. Yeah. And video. So web flow has been growing tremendously. And a big part of that is the shift away from the website builder.<\/p>\n<p>07:17 \u2013 07:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah. So for anyone who may be familiar with web flow as maybe a web flow as maybe a no code website builder itself, like what is web flow now that people should now.<\/p>\n<p>07:28 \u2013 07:48<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>We are in a web marketing platform which is so different from a website builder. We, you know, a lot of people think you can come and build a website with web flow, but if you think about it, just the capability to create something, a website and app, whatever, that\u2019s maybe 1% of the lifetime of that experience, right? Once you\u2019ve built a website and you\u2019ve launched it, then comes all the work.<\/p>\n<p>07:48 \u2013 08:13<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>It\u2019s things like looking at the analytics, running tests on it, iterating the content, making sure it\u2019s actually being discovered. You\u2019re doing performance marketing around its entire body of work. It\u2019s hundreds of people in your organization who are running and operating this website. And so what we have done over the past few years is we\u2019ve expanded to ensure that everything you need to do with that website, all the analytics, experimentation, the asset management that can all come within our platform.<\/p>\n<p>08:13 \u2013 08:31<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But where we we\u2019re taking it to the next level is it\u2019s not just the software that runs your website, it\u2019s the team. And I think the future of marketing teams are a mix of humans and agents working collaboratively to run the myriad of experiences that come through marketing. And so we\u2019re building the identity layer. We\u2019re building an entire suite of agents.<\/p>\n<p>08:31 \u2013 08:47<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>We\u2019re going to partner with our marketing teams and with all of our customers. Marketing teams actually run the really complex world that is web, because now you have to be dynamic and and interesting. You can\u2019t do it with just like a couple of people you really need, you know, this swarm of agents to support you.<\/p>\n<p>08:47 \u2013 08:55<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Definitely. What does that structure look like when we talk about the swarm of agents? How can leaders think about actually structuring their teams based on the.<\/p>\n<p>08:55 \u2013 09:20<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You know, I spent a lot of time talking our own team about it because it\u2019s, you know, if you think about the structure of any team, you have a mix of managers with ICS who have specialties, and then you also have senior ICS, who are your architecture strategist, are, you know, your principals. I think what you\u2019ll find is humans are going to shift more into these senior strategist and principals, as well as managers, folks who hold the bigger picture in their heads, who coordinate and own the strategy.<\/p>\n<p>09:20 \u2013 09:41<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And then I think what you will find is you\u2019re going to see more and more agents owning individual tasks and capabilities that get orchestrated, either by agents or by managers. And so you\u2019re going to start to see the human layer inside of an organization really own, like the big picture, the strategy, the thought, the innovation. Are you going to have agents execute like very specific domains?<\/p>\n<p>09:41 \u2013 09:48<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Very cool. Yeah. And we\u2019re already seeing team structure that way. And I\u2019m sure at Web Flow, it\u2019s quite interesting to see how you\u2019ve evolved and shipped in teams.<\/p>\n<p>09:48 \u2013 09:49<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Absolutely.<\/p>\n<p>09:49 \u2013 09:58<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah, absolutely. And one aspect that web flow is after and after and I believe is in public beta. Yep. And it sounds like people are reporting react\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n<p>09:58 \u2013 10:00<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>There\u2019s a ton of gross ton.<\/p>\n<p>10:00 \u2013 10:01<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Of growth already.<\/p>\n<p>10:01 \u2013 10:19<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So they\u2019re saying oh, there\u2019s action. And what they\u2019re also using is they\u2019re using our AoE product. Yeah. So EO is driving growth and action is it\u2019s enriching the experiences that they can create. So with action you can not only build, you know a lot of people build websites, but those websites are really complex are actually applications there.<\/p>\n<p>10:19 \u2013 10:36<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You might want to build a pricing calculator or a booking engine, or you might want to build a game with App Jen. You can build that, that deeper application experience into your website or just a standalone app hosted on Web Flow Cloud. And you know, whatever thing you want to build on the web, you can build with web flow.<\/p>\n<p>10:36 \u2013 10:45<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And then with EO, you can drive visibility with an answer engines and drive growth in terms of experience and opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>10:45 \u2013 11:10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Okay, let\u2019s break both of those out because both are areas that are fascinating to go down for sure. So first with App Jen, you know, one pattern that we\u2019ve seen at least is it\u2019s one thing to prompt. It\u2019s another thing to actually prototype. Yeah. And get something operationalized. Yeah. It\u2019s I\u2019m curious what you\u2019re seeing there around. How can teams make sure that they\u2019re not just prompting and creating, you know, utility variances, but it\u2019s actually being operationalized?<\/p>\n<p>11:10 \u2013 11:10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>11:10 \u2013 11:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Yeah. So for us it\u2019s, any third sort of creation, we want to go prompt in production. Like that\u2019s our stance. And so what we built around is, you know, there\u2019s a million tools out there where you can prompt an app, prompt a site prompt, you know, whatever, what we built around it is what we\u2019ve been calling our marketing harness.<\/p>\n<p>11:27 \u2013 11:46<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>It brings the context of your brand, your tone of voice, your design system, all the things that make it uniquely yours. And it feeds into our AI system. When you\u2019re prompting a site or an app, it actually ensures that it\u2019s on brand and it actually meets your needs. And that allows you to actually build something that would you would ship to production.<\/p>\n<p>11:46 \u2013 12:10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And we\u2019ve built the entire flow such that once you built it, you can once like publish on our hosted cloud. So all the pieces that you need around it to, to stand it up are there so that that\u2019s the magic of app chain and more importantly, of how we\u2019ve actually leveraged AI in our product. It\u2019s AI, you know, Frontier Lab models paired with a marketing harness that\u2019s catered to your brand that ensures whatever you build is yours.<\/p>\n<p>12:10 \u2013 12:11<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Incredible.<\/p>\n<p>12:11 \u2013 12:35<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>And let\u2019s switch to the second one. And I saved it for last or second because it\u2019s one that you hear everywhere. Oh, answer engine optimization. There\u2019s a lot of talk around what people need to do and people action what they need to do well, what are people not thinking about? What are the non-obvious things of EO that people may have misconceptions about or may not be aware of?<\/p>\n<p>12:35 \u2013 13:02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You know, it\u2019s it\u2019s the obvious things that people don\u2019t do because they feel like they\u2019ve done it so easily. You know, the the thing that everyone keeps talking about like, oh, site schema, I need to worry about my site. I\u2019m like, we can solve that for you. That\u2019s really easy. But it\u2019s actually if you think about the purpose of a website, it was such like if someone came to your website and they could understand what it is you do, what your value proposition is, get information so that if they wanted to become a customer, they could easily become a customer.<\/p>\n<p>13:02 \u2013 13:26<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But now if you think about how marketing is evolved, people put this there\u2019s a language on their website, it\u2019s, you know, really fluffy. It\u2019s really unclear, you know, the number of times when people introduce themselves, they\u2019re like, oh, I\u2019m in AI Business Insights platform. And you\u2019re like, what does that mean? Yeah. And so because of that broad language answer engines are like, I don\u2019t really know what you do and they don\u2019t represent you well.<\/p>\n<p>13:26 \u2013 13:42<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And so it\u2019s really important to think about what story you\u2019re telling on your website. It\u2019s not even an ego thing. It\u2019s just how did you want to explain what you are to your customers? And one of the top areas of Am is, authoritative content. Part of it is the structure of the content, and part of it is the meat of the content.<\/p>\n<p>13:42 \u2013 14:02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>It\u2019s actually answering the important questions about what it is you do in an FAQ style. Super basic, but like answering the questions directly and clearly so that when an LM reviews your site, it can actually represent it accordingly in some sort of answer engine. And a lot of people miss that because they feel like they need to use this really like sexy marketing language.<\/p>\n<p>14:02 \u2013 14:07<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But it\u2019s also undecipherable. And so you\u2019re like, I don\u2019t know what this company does. Still.<\/p>\n<p>14:07 \u2013 14:17<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>I always think a fun game is when you kind of blur out parts of the website, you just look at the H1 or the header, for example, and you can I guess what this is half the time you can.<\/p>\n<p>14:17 \u2013 14:19<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>We should start a talk show and just do that.<\/p>\n<p>14:19 \u2013 14:40<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Where it would, it would be quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So clarity and it\u2019s funny because that\u2019s not something that necessarily changes. Like if you take fundamentally first principles we should always be clear about what we do. But we\u2019ve kind of leaned towards this lens of like the fun, sexy buzzwords that now is swinging the other way. So non-obvious things.<\/p>\n<p>14:40 \u2013 15:02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Okay. And what about, how website and how should people should be thinking about their holistic EO, their holistic EO strategy? Yeah, because I know we field a lot of questions around, should I be on Reddit? Should I be doing stuff with my website? People are really having this prioritization. Yeah. Problem. So I\u2019m curious how you think about the prioritization metrics around EO.<\/p>\n<p>15:03 \u2013 15:24<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Yeah. And what\u2019s challenging is EO is another channel, right? It\u2019s we only worried about SEO before now. You have to think about both. And anytime you introduce a new channel it introduces complexity. And it\u2019s, you know, crazy sort of like exponential increases and like how you have to think about how you run your business. And the challenge with EO is it is not just like your website is a source of truth.<\/p>\n<p>15:25 \u2013 15:40<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>It is a place that it will prioritize as primary content, authoritative content. So you do want to think about, like I was saying, like things like site schema, you want to think about the content of your site. You want to see, think about your site structure, the basics that you would do in SEO, like alt tags and like images.<\/p>\n<p>15:40 \u2013 16:07<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So you want to do all of that. But you\u2019re right. You have to think about more than your website. You have to think about how you\u2019re showing up in third parties like Reddit. Your UGC is representative of your brand, what content you publish externally. If you\u2019re telling a different story on Reddit than you\u2019re telling on your website, and you\u2019re telling in some article that you\u2019re printing with some third party like publisher, when I goes and looks at all these sources, it\u2019s going to get confused because you\u2019re telling fundamentally different stories across all these channels.<\/p>\n<p>16:07 \u2013 16:30<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And so you need to have clarity of your what is your brand, what is your story, what are you trying to articulate? And you have to tell it clearly and concisely and consistently more than anything else. And it\u2019s about having your internal source of truth, of like, how are you representing yourself and telling your story? Because if you don\u2019t do that, well, EO is just going to mess up understanding who you are, and it\u2019s going to probably lean heavily on your website, which is the right place to start.<\/p>\n<p>16:30 \u2013 16:38<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But it\u2019s still going to get confused everywhere else. And I think it\u2019s a it\u2019s a strategic human problem more than anything else.<\/p>\n<p>16:38 \u2013 17:03<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>It\u2019s funny how there\u2019s a lot of just consistency things that you solve a lot. I hosted a dinner last night for a bunch of founders, and one of the things that came up was and recommendation was pick your five words that represent your company. Yeah. And how you want people to feel like your company. And it was shocking how many people, late stage and early stage didn\u2019t have words documented or couldn\u2019t find an actual consensus around them as a team?<\/p>\n<p>17:04 \u2013 17:09<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah, these are like fundamental things that we\u2019re now coming back to out of necessity, out of AI are quite interesting.<\/p>\n<p>17:09 \u2013 17:29<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>I mean, if you didn\u2019t exercise, if you said, hey, every CEO, go back to your company and ask the first ten people that you see to describe what your company does, you would get ten and you probably have 20 different answers. Honestly. Yeah, that\u2019s a problem, right? Like consistency and clarity of how you describe who you are, you can\u2019t even get it right.<\/p>\n<p>17:29 \u2013 17:52<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But the people who are owning your business, how are you going to get it right with, you know, hundreds of thousands people were probably interacting with it, plus entire fleet of agents that are growing, you know, hundreds of percent year over year. And so, that is a really, really tough thing to do. And so, yeah, picking five words or repeating the same sentence again and again so that people are actually marching to the same beat and like, understanding what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n<p>17:52 \u2013 17:54<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>I think it\u2019s so critical. Yeah. Especially now.<\/p>\n<p>17:54 \u2013 18:10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah, 100%. It\u2019s like the brand touchpoints that people need to hear the same message X amount of times before to actually internalize it. So consistency I love it. And we\u2019re talking about AI. So I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t ask if there\u2019s any AI workflows that have been really transformative for you that you personally use.<\/p>\n<p>18:10 \u2013 18:21<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Oh my gosh. So for me, I got so excited when I started building with Cloud Code. I meet a lot of people and I am terrible with faces and names like just terrible. It\u2019s like such a job hazard.<\/p>\n<p>18:21 \u2013 18:25<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>I\u2019m gonna test you on this later. I\u2019ll find you. I know, I\u2019m just like.<\/p>\n<p>18:25 \u2013 18:25<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>I\u2019m so sorry.<\/p>\n<p>18:25 \u2013 18:26<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>18:26 \u2013 18:28<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But I built a personal CRM.<\/p>\n<p>18:28 \u2013 18:29<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>18:29 \u2013 18:48<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And what it does is it tracks all of my interactions. It tracks what we talked about. Any action items I have, any context I can see in a timeline view on a person by person basis, and I can always enhance it with my own notes and things like that. But more importantly, I can also give myself out rules on a per person basis or a type of person basis.<\/p>\n<p>18:48 \u2013 19:11<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And so let\u2019s say I want to make sure I\u2019m talking to certain customers every 30 days. I can actually set rules within my personal CRM that will remind me, hey, you need to reach out to this person. And if I\u2019m just thinking I\u2019m to be like, hey, what\u2019s going on? Like, that\u2019s not helpful. So what it actually does is it goes out and searches LinkedIn and like information on the company on the web, and it\u2019ll send me things on a regular basis that says, hey, this just happened.<\/p>\n<p>19:11 \u2013 19:27<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You might want to reach out to them or they just posted this. You should reach out to them to nudge them on this. And it actually makes me more, it proactively gives me the fodder to actually connect and reconnect with people and help me maintain those relationships, which is so hard as we start to, like, sort of splintered them.<\/p>\n<p>19:27 \u2013 19:31<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So many more relationships than we\u2019ve ever had to manage 100%.<\/p>\n<p>19:31 \u2013 19:53<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>That\u2019s a fantastic use case. And what happens if, let\u2019s say, multiple people on your team want to create this? Because you yourself, you have such a unique relationship to everyone as the CEO. What if you got is that start to create this? Does that start to actually detract from one unified system of a CRM? Like are there any guardrails you\u2019re putting for other people that may be building personal CRM other than yourself?<\/p>\n<p>19:53 \u2013 20:08<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Yeah, I mean, I actually want my team to create whatever is going to help them with their workflows. Yeah. And where we see common workflows, what I really want to do is actually build central applications that we can all leverage, because there\u2019s no point in building this ten times over. It\u2019s, you know, I\u2019d rather be like, hey, let me build it.<\/p>\n<p>20:08 \u2013 20:24<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Once I figure out the off, let you create your own experience and make it relatively malleable. So if they want to like, change things up, they can. But I\u2019m actively trying to figure out how do I actually make this like a more useful application that I can roll out to the org and let them all leverage it however they see fit?<\/p>\n<p>20:24 \u2013 20:35<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But there\u2019s, you know, there\u2019s no limit to what we can build. I think as as long as you have a clear problem and use case, I want people to build and create. And then where we see commonalities, I want us to share and co-create.<\/p>\n<p>20:35 \u2013 20:44<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>I love it. That\u2019s fantastic culture. And what has been the one and biggest unlock for enabling that? I use case within companies. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>20:44 \u2013 21:03<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>One unlimited credits. Yeah. So people can burn as many tokens as they want I think bringing bringing people. Sorry. Bringing people the tools and technology they need, I think is really important. But the other part of it is, you know, right now everyone I talk to is like, I\u2019m exhausted, I\u2019m tired, I wake up and there\u2019s a million things to read about.<\/p>\n<p>21:03 \u2013 21:18<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>There\u2019s a new model, there\u2019s a new innovation. And so I think it just as it\u2019s humans we\u2019re exhausted by, like the change that\u2019s happening. And so the idea of being like, I\u2019m going to go do my full time job, and then I\u2019m going to go find some extra time and I\u2019m going to teach myself, I am going to build the thing.<\/p>\n<p>21:18 \u2013 21:41<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>And you know, when you first build, like you never get it right, it takes a long time to iterate. And so, you know the difference between learning and finding that productivity in law, you actually burn more time, and then you eventually get to that moment and nobody has a time to burn. And so what we\u2019ve invested in heavily at Web Flow, as we said, look, we\u2019re going to carve out time and we\u2019re going to recognize that that\u2019s going to have some business impact.<\/p>\n<p>21:41 \u2013 22:01<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>But you know, literally next week we have a full day builder day where we\u2019re actually telling the full company, sit down, identify the top workflow you want to fix, and spend a whole day building it and then work together in teams or do it individually. But you know, finding things like builder days or, you know, creating innovation moments or even, you know, we\u2019re spinning up a small internal team that\u2019s actually going to be building the central AI infrastructure for the company.<\/p>\n<p>22:01 \u2013 22:17<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>So things like my personal CRM, if we want to build internal apps that everyone can have, you know, they\u2019re building a library of skills, they\u2019re going to build some internal apps and workflows. We\u2019re investing in all fronts of a centralized and individualized. So you have both like having spoke model but also spokes innovating. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>22:17 \u2013 22:22<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>Yeah that\u2019s fantastic. Well really appreciate the conversation Linda. This has been fantastic.<\/p>\n<p>22:22 \u2013 22:23<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n<p>22:23 \u2013 22:28<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>For anyone interested in following along with Webflow yourself, where can they find you?<\/p>\n<p>22:28 \u2013 22:35<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Tong: <\/strong>You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter. I\u2019m guilty or welcome. Perfect. Thank you Linda, thank you so much.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/gtm-191-answer-engine-optimization-aeo-webflow-linda-tong\/\"><\/p>\n<div>SEO Is Not Enough Anymore: Webflow\u2019s CEO on the Rise of AEO | Linda Tong<\/div>\n<p><\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\">GTMnow<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube The future of websites isn\u2019t a builder problem anymore. It\u2019s an agent problem. In this episode of GTMnow, Sophie Buonassisi sits down with Linda Tong, CEO of Webflow, to unpack how the entire web is being rewritten for a world where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2716,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions\/2716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}