The WP Minute+

Matt Medeiros (00:01)
Lindsay Halsey, welcome to the WP Minute.

Lindsay Halsey (00:04)
Thanks so much, Matt. Excited to be here.

Matt Medeiros (00:06)
Second time guest though, when I interviewed you the first time, it was on Mariport. So I'm excited to always chat SEO with you. Pathfinder SEO, you sent me an email say, hey, there's this thing called AI. There's this thing called SEO. The world is wondering, does any of this stuff even matter anymore? Websites, SEO. I'm sitting over here doing things like,

Does what asking chat GPT is the best WordPress podcast the WP minute and why like trying to train it? And see if it can up my chances at I think what's known as like geo these days I don't know but for folks who don't know who you are and what you do What do you do these days in SEO?

Lindsay Halsey (00:55)
I ⁓ live in Basalt, Colorado and I work in search engine optimization. I've been in the field for about the last 15 years as an agency owner at WebShine and then also leading an SEO community at Pathfinder SEO. So ⁓ everything that's happening in AI right now is both sort of threatening my existence and also creating a tremendous amount of opportunity. ⁓ And there's a lot happening ⁓ as AI sort of reshapes the world of search.

And so it's actually been a really exciting time lately to help clients navigate this transition and then also to help other web designers and agencies as well.

Matt Medeiros (01:35)
I, you know, honestly, I think we probably talked about this on our last podcast. ⁓ I do the things, like just in terms of like word, let's just like in the lens of WordPress, the extent of my SEO ⁓ strategy is to just like do the things that WordPress or maybe like an SEO plugin gives me. Titles, description, alt text on images. ⁓ For me,

I've never had an SEO strategy, which I know is like the worst thing. And I promise that there's a question here. ⁓ I've always just been like, I'm gonna publish content, because literally that's all I have time for. And then I'm going to ask people to like do the thing I need, which might be join the newsletter, you know, become a member of the WP minute, or like get a sponsorship. And it's always been like this roll up my sleeves and do.

hard work and never really like think about maybe I could create like pillar content and like funnel all this stuff into like a ⁓ lead flow process. I've never been I've never done that. And I'm kind of reaffirming when I see things happening in chat GPT like results. It's like all blog posts that it's like recommending. And I'm going, wait a minute, is AI really overtaking this SEO thing? And it seems like creating content is still the thing to do.

In terms of AI, I could be getting it all wrong. What's your take on how SEO is surviving in the world of AI?

Lindsay Halsey (03:08)
Great question, but to go back to your SEO strategy versus ⁓ kind of what you're doing, I would argue that you are doing exactly what you should be to get found on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Chat, GPT, Gemini, Perplexity, because you're doing a couple of things right, and you don't really need to necessarily think about your pillar content and all of these kinds of things. But the number one thing is you're creating content that shares genuine expertise and experience for your target audience.

So you're serving your audience and ⁓ you're serving your audience with the right calls to action, to join a newsletter, et cetera. And that's really what it's all about. And that's what it's always been all about. ⁓ And a lot of these acronyms, SEO, AEO, GEO, and different things, ⁓ they're sort of distracting from what we're really trying to do on the web and through our content, which is to create helpful content that genuinely shares that expertise.

in a way that serves your target audience. So think you're already doing everything right, ⁓ which is the good news and that ⁓ SEO isn't dead and that content marketing isn't dead in this era. And in fact, what people want more than ever is to connect with the real humans behind a business and a brand and that the learning language models and getting found on chat GPT or the search engine algorithms and getting found on Google, they're all still rewarding ⁓ content as the backbone.

Matt Medeiros (04:10)
Yeah.

Lindsay Halsey (04:35)
surrounded by ⁓ this concept of expertise and authority and trust. So we also need to kind of get out there and not just create content, but get out there and do so in a way that echoes kind of the who behind the content and why we should trust it. And that's probably bigger than ever right now, because I know some people are reluctant to trust the AI and we still want to connect with that brand or that human.

Matt Medeiros (05:00)
Yeah, I still often on do the Matt Report podcast is just like an outlet of like I have a thought and I want to publish it because I think it might be helpful to other people. And I mean, I know you have been saying it for years or a lot of people have been saying it for years, like connecting with humans. But now. It was a couple of episodes ago, I'll try to link it up in the show notes of this episode, but I'm just like.

Now in the face of AI when people are just getting like summarized news content or like ⁓ whatever, I do these daily, I do these things just to experiment like what these AI platforms are doing with like GROK and ChatGPT where you can set up the tasks for it to like do automatically every day. So I'm like, if AI is gonna replace like what I do with the WP Minute, which is, hey, helpful news for WordPress, for WordPress professionals like.

What's it gonna be like if somebody just goes into ChatGPT or Grok and say, give me this on a daily update, give me this on a weekly update. I don't need to hear from Matt anymore because this thing will just tell me in a quick alert. And I've been trying to test that and it is terrible. Like, it has been giving me updates about WordPress news and it's the same thing every day. Automatic layoffs, automatic versus WP Engine and

Lindsay Halsey (06:11)
Totally agree.

Matt Medeiros (06:22)
⁓ Look at this security vulnerability and XYZ plug-in and and going back to the human side I'm like no like I think I have a fighting chance here to like give people like a human Synopsis of what's happening with with WordPress I think it's kind of safe for a little bit. I don't know if you see it trending in a different direction

Lindsay Halsey (06:45)
I agree, I see it trending in the same direction and I also have like the automated, you know, daily task, what's happening in the world of SEO, et cetera, to try to stay up on sort of the bits and pieces of things, right? So the little bits of news that maybe the ⁓ search engines and chat GPT and everything are gonna surface for me can be helpful to keep my finger on a bit of the pulse. But at the end of the day, I really think there's this like human layer that...

that comes over that and starts to synthesize this information and to share it. And I think about like, know, op-ed, ⁓ you know, journalists and the New York Times and stuff. Why do I keep going back? Will they help me make sense of the world and reframe pieces of news in a broader context? And so, yeah, I still feel the same way that we have pretty good job security and that ⁓ you can go and get a little digest of what might be happening in WordPress or SEO.

⁓ But to really frame it in the real world, you need that human connection part that comes from talking to people and being out there and also having some skin in the game and actually being in the industry space as well.

Matt Medeiros (07:53)
Here's where I feel like, and this is a bit of a self-serving question, but some of the things I've been trying to evaluate on, let's say, chat GPT or any kind of AI result from Claude, Grok, chat GPT, whatever, ⁓ is, it's almost, to me anyway, it feels like the gamification of SEO on steroids, where it's like, if I don't,

answer these kind of like, I don't wanna say hollow questions, but I feel like I have to then, this is where I'm at with my head with AI and SEO. I feel like I have to now go and make a ton of articles about like, freelancer questions in the WordPress space and just like, pump all that content into the WP minute so that I have a fighting chance to show up in AI ⁓ results.

Because of how much I still see it leveraging blog content and like, know, whatever written content in general Is that a fair assessment of what one should do if they want to start to rank in AI? like I know it's like a gamification kind of thing, but Should I like sometimes I'm in the back of my head I'm like I should just be putting out a ton of content for this stuff just to have a chance to show up in in AI results You know knowing I don't want to do it, but I feel like God

I'm not gonna have a fighting chance in AI if I don't.

Lindsay Halsey (09:26)
So I think you're going to have a fighting chance even if you don't like go heads first into what is really called answer engine optimization, right? So question and answer. And this concept of AEO or answer engine optimization has been around as sort of a sub thread within SEO for a really long time. Cause you think about what do people do on Google or chat GPT? A lot of times we ask questions ⁓ and those questions are becoming even more nuanced today.

when I expect the tool or the engine to be able to give me an output that is really specific to who I am and the situation that I'm in. And so when we think about this kind of era of answer engine optimization, I would argue it's kind of the same as if you had done this back when people also ask popped up on Google, ⁓ is that the only way to get found in that era? No, that's not the only way to get found in that era and to be part of the conversation.

But it is a tactic or something that we do weave into a lot of our content, which is, hey, if we want to be helpful, a lot of times one of the ways we're helpful is we answer questions and we answer them ⁓ in a succinct way at the beginning and then sort of unpack the answer. And that basic format of question with a brief answer and then the full version.

It still works in SEO, it still works in getting found on chat GPT, ⁓ it's part of answer engine optimization, et cetera. But I think it's not necessarily the kind of thing like clear your calendar tomorrow and go and pump out 50 ⁓ question response style pieces of content. But more, hey, how do I just weave this in when I'm already having a conversation or thinking about this thing or publishing this blog post? How do I weave this in as more of a tactic than an overarching strategy?

Matt Medeiros (11:14)
Yeah, I guess when I was asking that question, I forgot the feeling part of it and the feeling like the reason why and I know I'm not alone. Maybe you've your clients ask you the same question too. But like the feeling I have is. Well, look, if if if these chat bots are just going to give people. A three paragraph or bulleted response of of an answer. And they're never going to have a chance to go and actually like see my site.

or like see the other content that I do. It's almost like I feel like, well, it's almost training me as a content creator to be like, screw it. Like, you know, they just want me to answer a question. I'll just answer a question. You know, just like when I'm not a big like TikTok person or I'm not a person who creates content that disappears. Like I don't like the shorts. I don't like content that disappears. I like content that lasts. But it's like kind of forcing me to feel like

screw it, I'll just answer the question for you. Like if that's what you want. And that's sort of like where I was going with that. ⁓

Lindsay Halsey (12:21)
Yeah,

and I think in that moment, in that answer, you just see the bullet points or the very structured response or the snippet. But why does chat GPT or the learning language model, why does Google even look to you at all for that short version, et cetera? It's not because you asked a question and answered it in a really formulaic, simple way and then moved on to the next question. It's because there's this whole cloud of expertise.

that surrounds you and your brand. And so really the world of SEO, the world of answer engine optimization or generative engine optimization, it's all converging. But again, at the end of the day, I always have a couple of gut checks of like, am I playing towards the game or am I playing towards the audience? And we just constantly want to be pushing ourselves to playing towards the audience because your audience generally speaking doesn't change. It might evolve or grow, et cetera. But your audience is kind of the static piece of all of this.

And we know that ⁓ everything we do when it kind of makes real world marketing sense and you get that gut check of like, yeah, this is where I should spend my time. This makes sense. Or this actually impacts SEO and email marketing and social media. And I'm on YouTube. It's Omni or multi-channel, however you want to think about it. That's the type of work that's really having an impact today and I'll feel good about in the future. Whereas when we play into like the game and say, okay,

divert resources here and go towards this sort short-term tactic. That's the kind of stuff that we probably won't be talking about the next time we're chatting in a podcast a year or two from now.

Matt Medeiros (13:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

⁓ Attribution has always been a pain in the neck, right? For those just listening, Lizzie just had like a break neck reaction, like, my God, attribution. And I remember, again, like careers at Pagely and a podcast hosting company after that, like we're in the marketing teams, like we're always looking for attribution. Luckily we don't talk about that as much with Gravity Forms because the brand, brand is pretty strong with Gravity Forms. And that kind of leads me into like,

attribution for these LLM responses must be, I guess, near impossible for most. So do you, like when you're, if your client ever asks, like, well, how many are, am I ranking in chat GPT? Like, are they coming from chat GPT? Do you start shifting that conversation now to like brand sentiment and brand awareness more? Or is there like a particular term you lead with to say, no, it's the umbrella of everything now?

Lindsay Halsey (14:58)
Great question. And I could chat about attribution probably for far too long. ⁓ But again, I want to put it in a frame of like over the course of time. And that is, I kind of think about basically when we all started getting invested in digital marketing, one of the big wins was this concept of attribution, right? And we treated things along the lines of like, okay, your Google ads campaign, you spent X and you got Y. Your SEO campaign, you spent X and you got Z. And we went through all of our channels.

Matt Medeiros (15:02)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Lindsay Halsey (15:27)
And just having the data was like magical, right? Because this is coming out of, you know, an era of businesses investing more in print and ⁓ TV and commercials and different things, right? So it felt like, my gosh, as marketers, this is the golden era. We have attribution. And ⁓ I remember at the time I was going to like Google Analytics ⁓ conferences at Google and there was just like so much resource being put into.

getting your tracking set up so that you could just measure that experience perfectly and make business decisions based on it. And then we were like, wait a second, that's not really how the real world works, right? There's multi touch points. So most businesses don't just engage with the visitor once to get the conversion, but they actually might have 10 touch points over like seven different channels, something like that on average, right?

⁓ You have to be in a lot of different places and in a lot of different times and really treat it more of as a marketing acquisition funnel. And so we started trying to play around with different models to actually kind of, you know, bring that picture together and things got better. And then we moved into this like cookie consent world where now we can't even track everybody if we wanted to. And so things got even muddier and along the way ⁓ now we've layered in AI and we're saying, okay, this is getting even trickier because from an SEO standpoint, it used to be

Increased rankings led to increased traffic led to increased sales simple story, right? Well now it's not nearly as simple even if we could track all of that perfectly because we know that people are interacting with our business and our brands in ways that never bring them to the website and if we are short-sighted and we say it only counts if they come to the website ⁓ we may be actually like missing what's really happening there and what's leading to a sale

might be really hard to measure. And so you're gonna see, and we already are, ⁓ more emphasis on things like AI visibility, AI mentions, et cetera. How much are you part of the conversation that's being had out there? And a little less weight on you rank number one for this keyword. So that's what we're seeing, but it's been part of this arc and trajectory of having to kind of ⁓ reduce that dependence on winning the session is the only victory.

And so in the WordPress space, think a lot of that also, if you're working with clients, et cetera, it's helping clients understand what's happening here, that we're not just measuring the success of an investment in any channel, just based purely on sessions, but rather need to look at the business success as a whole.

Matt Medeiros (17:58)
I had John Doherty on from Editor Ninja a few months ago and we're sort of like talking about like when he started, are you familiar with John's work in Editor Ninja? Okay. So we were just talking about like he starts this like editing business or like call it a content business and all of a sudden ChatGPD comes out and he's like, well now what the hell am I gonna do? Like this, now people are just gonna be able to like create all this content but it had like this inverse effect where customers were like,

Lindsay Halsey (18:07)
Yes.

Matt Medeiros (18:26)
great. We can go and make a ton of content through AI and now we'll hire John to fix it all. And I was kind of just like, well, that's interesting. ⁓ How has how has AI affected your space where I think maybe now a lot of people can go, well, I'll just I'll just ask Chachi to I'll just send my site map dot XML through Chachi PT and have it do keyword ⁓ metadata descriptions and titles and all this stuff. Like how has AI impacted you?

positively or negatively through this sort of like roller coaster ride we've had for the last couple of years.

Lindsay Halsey (19:03)
Great question. And the answer is it's sort of a mixed bag where, you know, on the agency side, we've had a couple of clients pull back their budgets because like, hey, I'm going to go have AI write my blog posts so we don't need your copywriting. Or, ⁓ you know, they're just like, hey, we're going to try to, you know, I can put into AI, create an SEO strategy, outline it into bullet points, what I should do, et cetera.

And so there's a percentage of businesses that have made that decision and we witnessed. I'd put it in the like 5 % range. So pretty, pretty small of people really pulling back and basically replacing us with a role, like treating AI as a role. And so replacing our role, more often we're in more of John's world where clients are leaning in and trying to use it as a tool.

⁓ and they're using it as a tool, but they're realizing there's still a role to be had. And so where it's used as a tool, it's like an accelerator to create that first draft of content, but then actually might create more work for the editing side. So we see that human role still playing a lot. for us, it's a lot of coaching and education with clients. What are we seeing in ⁓ AI? How are we using it? What's the opportunity space look like?

How do we think they should get as much value and accelerator out of AI as they can without losing that value and that human touch? ⁓ So it's a little bit of a kind of a mixed boat, but right now we're seeing the swing pretty quickly this year come back into more demand for services and people saying, okay, SEO isn't dead.

And what I did before probably needs to be refined or improved upon. And now I want to get found ⁓ on Google and chat GPT and Gemini and Perplexity. And I need somebody, strategist to kind of lead that for us. So we're seeing ⁓ kind of that demand pick back up here and people to say, hey, the tooling is great, but just like there's been a lot of bad SEO work out there over the years, now you see a lot of bad AI kind of fueling.

people's SEO strategy and the smart businesses and brands are staying away from that.

Matt Medeiros (21:11)
So I have two next questions. The second question is how people interact with your service. But the first question is who is the best customer, or what's the best customer fit? What's your best customer avatar that you like to work with for SEO stuff? And then how do you work with them after that?

Lindsay Halsey (21:35)
Good question. So ⁓ that's always been a challenge for ⁓ both Pathfinder and our agency because we actually like working with a lot of different audiences and customers ⁓ because I always feel like it kind of keeps my thinking hat on ⁓ and I'm just intrigued by different people's businesses and business models, et cetera, and layering in the SEO. ⁓ At our agency, we work with a lot of local and small businesses. And what I like there is that we can have impact quickly.

⁓ So for us, that's sort of the fun. And so when we think about that small business or local business mindset, we see them constrained on budget and how much time they can put in wearing a lot of hats. So they're going to like kind of come in and come out of being able to think about SEO or Google ads, et cetera, ⁓ and how we can help them have a really focused budget and take it as far as they ⁓ can and drive as much reach.

⁓ At Pathfinder, our SEO community, we work with those local business owners too that are kind of taking a DIY approach to all of this, but also like working with fellow web designers and agencies. And so in that case, we're talking about people that want to serve their clients better, build their recurring revenue, and evolve their SEO strategy as SEO is evolving.

Matt Medeiros (22:51)
Yeah, and sort of that was like setting the stage for this other like thought that I have and especially coming out of that conversation with John and other folks, you know, and then of course, like all the headlines of AI is replacing all of us. Will we have jobs in five years? What I'm thinking is, is my theory is, like maybe there'll be more of an acceptance to fractional work where somebody will hire you because you are the expert in

SEO and of course on the agency side as well. But if we're just talking SEO, like somebody wants that person who's like leading like the 10 percent. Like I'm I'm ahead by 10 percent. Like, sure, LLMs can tell you this stuff, but that's still dated. I'm out here at the at the tip of the spear and that's where you need me. Maybe you don't need me full time, ⁓ but I think people will be more open to fractional.

It's weird to say because like, yeah, people hire other people all the time. But I also think like people hire other agencies and it feels temporary because usually it is. It's like a project. But I think what the workforce will shape up to is, yeah, I got this team of fractional people. They're with me long term. They're not full time, but they are fractional. And we all kind of understand that we treat it.

as like a full time thing. I don't know if that makes sense, that's where I think we're headed. I don't know what your thoughts are on like the future of the workforce because of AI.

Lindsay Halsey (24:22)
Yeah, mean the future of the workforce because of AI is like such a huge topic and something, yeah, to think about and is really interesting. But that is what we're seeing is sort of that, hey, if you are kind of, you're looking for like coaching or consulting or somebody to kind of give you that assurance, you're moving in the right direction or, you know, lot of the questions are like, well, what are the next three things I should focus on? And so, yeah.

Matt Medeiros (24:26)
Yeah, yeah,

Lindsay Halsey (24:45)
the ⁓ AI and the tooling out there can give you the big picture, can craft a strategy, can bullet point out everything. But adding in that sort of ⁓ expert experience piece where you can come in and really think critically about what you see in the industry space and what you're seeing in that business and be the one that puts those two things together, I still think that's a pretty unique skill set and being able to distill that and communicate it, et cetera. And so,

With a lot of web designers, a lot of what we've worked on, on if you're offering SEO services is how do we move from tactics to getting strategic? Like how do we get closer into a client's business, understand where they are today and where they're going to try to go and know what are the three things we need to do to get them there? It's probably not fix your XML sitemap, right? Like the three things that you need to do are not shortcuts or they're not small like SEO things that get found in a scanning tool.

Matt Medeiros (25:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Lindsay Halsey (25:39)
The three things ⁓ are bigger things, but they need somebody else out there to come in and be able to highlight, identify, and help kind of guide the team in that direction.

Matt Medeiros (25:49)
Yeah, yeah, I think I sometimes look at it in the lens of like, remember when like all the like the big work from home boom came because of COVID and all this other stuff. But then there was all like these headlines of people who are working multiple jobs, you know, like they're a developer at like four different companies, right, which is obviously illegal. But I think what will happen is like one of the things I think of is like, well, that's like a trust thing.

And when you hire, let's say if you're just hiring someone to build a website and the person comes in to build a website and they ask you like, what's the revenue? What's the health of the company? You're like, what are you asking me this for? Like, I just need you to build me the website. I think a future is it's fractional work, but you as the fractional worker are going to feel more embedded in that organization and that organization will trust you to like pay you more, but also realize

you've got four five other big clients, you know, that otherwise you'd have a full-time job doing, right? So I don't know, it's just like this crazy thought that's always going on in my head, especially for the work that we do anyway. I don't know about anybody else, but.

Lindsay Halsey (26:59)
Yeah, and in our space, pretty much all of our business success has landed on creating relationships and getting closer to clients and being able to ⁓ become part of a business's organization. And so we were having that conversation this morning within our team of what conferences are we going to go to this fall, et cetera.

Matt Medeiros (27:08)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Halsey (27:19)
And one of the takeaways was like, want to go and be where our customers are. So like actually going with a team, a marketing team that's in-house and we come in as that fractional kind of role. Why don't we go and, you know, attend this travel symposium conference and hear what they're hearing and get out in that space as a way of leaning in to understanding our clients' businesses, their challenges, their industry trends. Because at the end of the day, anything that we're suggesting that's going to help them in this very big space of

getting found online ⁓ is going to need to be framed within that broader context of what's happening in their industry and in their business. So obviously those are big budget clients that you can do that kind of thing with. Local businesses, you can't necessarily do that, but you can still get in there and ask better questions, right? More about the business and a little less about like, do you like a blue logo or a purple logo, et cetera.

Matt Medeiros (28:04)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. me chills thinking about agency days. ⁓ Websites. Will they stand the test of time? Will they be important as LLMs and whatever AI throws at us next? Will that still be important in the future iterations of technology?

Lindsay Halsey (28:13)
Bye.

I still think the answer is yes to that. Obviously that could change in time, but still investing in website is sort of the hub of your brand's identity online, where you share that content and then get it out beyond kind of your website and your presence. I still think that is key to the overarching kind of ⁓ way that the learning language models get trained and ⁓ Google gets trained. So without the website, like what trains up, ⁓ you know, these tools.

And right now what we're seeing, if you think about your traffic as being in a funnel, the upper funnel is sort of what we've been talking about, like education-oriented content, question-oriented content, et cetera. That's what in our current era has been hit the hardest ⁓ with these changes, Google's AI mode and AI overviews and ⁓ those generated response from AI. ⁓ But that being said, that's because that's informational. As soon as we start to get a little more transactional and move down the funnel,

and you're actually getting in like a shopping or a buying mindset, people are starting to go back and interact with the brand. So click through rates at the top of the funnel are down like 30 to 40 % for most businesses in that kind of blog oriented content. But in the middle of the funnel, the keywords that where somebody is ripe for your product or service and sort of ready to do business, those aren't really being impacted because the transaction is still happening on the website.

And so, you I think ⁓ in this era, just like we wondered, like, would social replace SEO at one point and Google, like, could a social channel become the way we connect with all information, it just reshaped things a little bit, but they still stood the test of time. ⁓ And so AI is probably even bigger than what we would have been talking about when social was really taking ⁓ its roots, but...

That being said, I'm still investing heavily in ⁓ our own website, in content on our website, et cetera, as sort of the hub of the ecosystem around which everything else is sort of happening.

Matt Medeiros (30:31)
Do you see it as somebody who's been doing this for ⁓ a while and you've seen so many websites and ⁓ you know more I guess esoterically like how Google has impacted like web open web and content and publishing. Do you see a more closed web coming because people actually don't want LLMs to to ingest that.

Like if you thought of your website as a database of like all the stuff you just said it's like it's everything about us It's about our process. It's how you you know experience us if you have a brand or a personal brand big brand or personal brand That's my database and you know what maybe I don't want these LMS coming in Do you see a world where maybe it gets a little bit more closed web than open web for lack of a better phrase?

Lindsay Halsey (31:22)
You do, and you can already see it happening. I mean, we've seen in the news, news organizations coming after the learning language models and saying, hey, you can't train up on my content. That's not okay. And if you're an author or publisher, that makes sense. ⁓ I just had a call with an artist and she said, well, I'm fine if the learning language models study up on my written content, but I don't want them to have any access to my images because I don't want them to be able to recreate my art, my actual work product that I sell.

with AI. I don't want to be in that world. I don't want them to be able to get trained on my work. And so you start to get into a lot of these nuanced situations where you can imagine a world where you're like, no, I was good with Google getting its hands and showing me as a snippet and showing my reviews and all of these things. ⁓ But I am not okay with, you know, my actual work product or creativity, et cetera, getting replaced.

Matt Medeiros (32:06)
Yeah, sure.

Lindsay Halsey (32:18)
⁓ or getting included and then sort of morphed into something else. yeah, that's, think the big world we live in is having to make that decision for, you know, nine out of 10 businesses right now. They want to get found in chat GPT. They want to be in the conversation and they're looking for that cited link. And so that once we can measure a little bit better than we can today, that AI visibility, that'll be really reassuring. ⁓ But at the end of the day, yeah, for most businesses, they kind of want to be in there. So they're

they're letting their content, their websites, et cetera, get the full crawl, so to speak.

Matt Medeiros (32:53)
funny you know I don't often sometimes like I I have trended more to using chat GPT for questions like the typical thing I would normally Google I would switch to chat GPT now I think in the back of my head it's because I pay for it so therefore I'm using it like I'm forcing myself to use it because I pay the ⁓ 20 bucks a month ⁓

But that's not the question. The question is, like sometimes when I search things, I don't often see a sighted thing unless I ask it. unless I, it could be maybe it's just on the mobile phone is different from the desktop, which is like, I guess all other topic. But is there like some formula to always see the sighted material? Because sometimes it just spits me out an answer.

Lindsay Halsey (33:38)
Good question. I think it depends on what you're searching for and how to get more cited links. I do in my chat GPT get a lot of cited links, especially if I push it, show me the source or whatever. And so maybe there's a little bit of kind of I've trained up my $20 a month subscription because I'm in chat GPT like you are as like kind of the primary hub. But that being said, my experience recently was sort of

One of the first times I actually made a purchase and I came from ChatGPT and that was my computer was running slowly and I was frustrated and there's nowhere near me in this rural mountain town to actually take a computer and be like, can you speed this thing up? I'm not ready to throw it in the trashcan. And I'm not overly technical. And so I turned to ChatGPT this time instead of Google because I knew I could give it screenshots of a couple different things, share my nuanced information and be like, what do you think is happening here?

And I did that and it walked me through, okay, can you go and grab these things too and let us help you diagnose? And then it gave me a rated response. We think this is the biggest problem and the next biggest, et cetera. But then it gave me, you need to go buy memory. Here's your computer. Here's where you should buy it. And a link over to a website. So I clicked the link. I got there and a little chat bot said, I saw you just came from a chat GPT. Would you mind what keyword you just put in? And I'm like,

what keyword? I've been in this conversation, there've been screenshots, et cetera. I can't tell you the six word phrase that brought me into your website, but I get that you'd like that information. But I did end up buying the memory, installing it, my computer is better. That all took place over 10 minutes, right? And so the cited links I'm finding in ChatGBT and just in AI General come when you're ready to get towards that transaction. And I think...

Matt Medeiros (35:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Halsey (35:25)
To me, what's also really interesting right now is, okay, where's shopping going with all of this? Because that is, are something we end up, that piece is a big part of the e-comm world. So yeah, we're thinking about the e-comm world and then where are ads gonna fit into all of it? Because we know that that ad monetization must be coming in some ways, some form, and Google's only gonna be willing to give up so much revenue.

Matt Medeiros (35:48)
It's massive. Yes.

Lindsay Halsey (35:53)
to AI overviews and AI mode without layering in ⁓ a pay-per-click or pay-per-experience. ⁓ And so, yeah, there's a lot ⁓ still coming.

Matt Medeiros (36:06)
Yeah, like the ad model, I think is really going to change perception. This would be like a three hour podcast if I had all of my not conspiracy theories, but like like I'm just sitting back going like I kind of like this stuff, but I'm also very, very skeptical about like the business model and what's happening. And I feel like we already saw this just happen with chat GPT five.

and not being as mind blowing as they were kind of saying it was going to be for like the last year. Like when Chadgy BD4 came out, everyone was like, this is pretty good. Like, look at this. And then it was like, but wait till Chadgy BD5, you know, and then we got five and it was like going from my iPhone 15 to a 16. I was like, what did I, I just spent a thousand dollars on basically a new battery. Like it's exactly what I got was a fresh battery. So I'm like super skeptical. And then when you bring in

Lindsay Halsey (36:52)
I agree.

I'm with ya.

Matt Medeiros (37:04)
the ads, what does that do to the consumer and the trust ⁓ that it has? Like I don't even like the fact that it learns and has a memory of things that I talk about because I don't want you to be influenced. I want you to just tell me the smartest answer. You know?

Lindsay Halsey (37:24)
Right.

It's like having that friend that tells you what they think you want to hear versus having the friend who tells you what they actually think. Yeah, the AI is like really interesting. I feel like you have to steer the ship and control the memory a little bit as much as you can and to get the best kind of output and push it to go against you a little and to give you the other thoughts and things. So yeah, I mean, there's so many ⁓ amazing components to it. We're like, wow, this is like

Matt Medeiros (37:29)
Yes.

Lindsay Halsey (37:53)
fabulous. It just saved me a ton of work. But again, I'm still treating it like that calculator back, you know, when you were in high school, where it's not, you know, who gets the best score on the test or, you know, comes up with the outcome. It's not the tool, it's the human behind it. And I think we're still, even in this era where the AI feels enormously powerful, ⁓ you know, that human behind it. And so just, you know, we keep kind of hitting hard on things like human centered.

AI supported as kind of our like approach to SEO and things like that. But yeah, this is all very dynamic and I agree with you on the chat GPT-5 thing. Like I don't even really notice the difference. ⁓ Yeah.

Matt Medeiros (38:33)
I tried

that, I tried that, and this stuff, yeah, this is interesting for like even your business and maybe you've already had an experience with it, but, like ChatGBT, for example, is like, we'll call it an operating system onto itself, where there's like so many features and so many things that can be done where your clients might be like, how do I get placed in that? right, whatever, regular search.

on ChatGPT, research mode on ChatGPT, but I tried out the agent mode the other day, because I was like, well, I got 10 year anniversary coming up with my wife and I, I was like, find me three options for a romantic getaway on Cape Cod, because I'm out in Massachusetts. So whatever, see it browsing, I see it doing its whole thing, it was like 22 minutes or something, like 25 minutes it took to like do all this research and come back.

Lindsay Halsey (39:09)
Yes.

Matt Medeiros (39:31)
And I was like, if I brought my wife to any of these places that you recommended, I would be in trouble because it was like one is like a Motel six. Like, how did you even how did you even do that? I thought you were supposed to be smart. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just like thinking about like so many ways to interact and so many ways to show up that I don't know what they're going to do when it's like if an agent mode recommend this.

Lindsay Halsey (39:42)
Yeah, do you know nothing about me? Yeah.

Matt Medeiros (39:57)
brand which paid us $1,000 to show up in agent mode. It's just like, what's happening?

Lindsay Halsey (40:00)
Right?

Yeah, I mean, where is the monetization ultimately? We know that it's really enormously expensive to run all of this technology, and yet we don't quite have a full picture. Like right now, it feels like Google is willing to give away some of its ad real estate with the AI mode and AI overviews, because it's got to stay competitive. It's got to try to retain its user base, and it'll solve for the paid side of things later.

Matt Medeiros (40:06)
Yeah.

Yes.

Lindsay Halsey (40:30)
⁓ But yeah, what will chat GPT and everybody else do ⁓ and where will things be able to be bought? ⁓ It's enormously complex, but at the foundation of where are we today and what are we investing in and what are we seeing work? We're still seeing basically that foundation of what you do to get found. ⁓ What your SEO strategy looks like today is kind of both glass half full, half empty.

The half full is like it's harder to win the click, right? You're not getting always cited. Sometimes your information feels like it's being like ripped off and it's in the, you know, AI and you can see it, et cetera. So in some ways the game has gotten enormously, you know, more challenging to win the click. And on the other hand, on the optimistic side of things, your audience hasn't changed. They still want that human connection. And what you do for SEO is helping you now with this enormous emerging space, right? So we know if we invest in getting found on Google,

We are as a byproduct investing and getting found on chat GPT Gemini perplexity. We don't need two different marketing departments to handle this or two different campaigns. And that's the part I like right now is at least I feel like when I'm investing in ⁓ this kind of foundational real world SEO work that's worked, you know, last year and years past is continuing to work this year. It's kind of a rising tide that's lifting all boats and helping me, you know, in this whole new space in this brave new world.

Matt Medeiros (41:57)
All right, for the listener that has a website, they've been doing some some content stuff like I've been doing and we feel like we're in a semi comfortable place. Like we're not brand new and we've got stuff for sale. We're doing some content things. What can they do right now to sort of prepare themselves for AISO? And then how can they up their game by hiring you or working with your agency or working with Pathfinder?

Lindsay Halsey (42:22)
The number one thing I think is to showcase the who behind the content. ⁓ So whether you're an individual business or a bigger brand, ⁓ a lot of times our websites ⁓ make us look like big businesses, right? It's like we're a little step removed and behind a door. But the more you can let humans shine through in your website, the better right now. And that really resonates with this idea of human first kind of approach, audience first.

but that's what people want to connect with. And so it can look like a lot of different things. It can look like going back to your old blog posts and weaving in a personal introduction or story to something that then gets very formulaic and like kind of more how oriented or maybe something you really did create kind of with SEO in mind. Layer in the who behind the content, make sure an author is tied to the blog post and the author has an authorship page on your website that showcases who they are.

and makes you feel like you can connect with them. So anytime you can do that, add testimonials to web pages, get more Google Maps reviews and showcase them in more places. ⁓ That piece of showcasing the who behind the content is probably the number one thing we're seeing work for businesses that have already gotten past kind of just the SEO basics and have a bit of a content library out there, a bit of a presence.

And I know when I even look at our websites, which we've built and redesigned even in the last year or two, I go back in and I can just label on like so many pages where we could shine through as humans more, ⁓ taking away stock photography, all of these kinds of things. ⁓ And that at the end of the day, I think is a really good way to future proof our work while still resonating with what's working today.

Matt Medeiros (44:08)
Awesome stuff. And then they can ⁓ take it to the next level by ⁓ joining Pathfinder SEO, right? And that's a monthly sort of guided SEO experience.

Lindsay Halsey (44:20)
Yeah, we call it Guided SEO. It's for business owners, web designers, agencies, anyone who wants to kind of evolve as SEO evolves. we do this with courses and checklists, you know, sort of that basic training material that helps you go from learning to doing. But also with open office hours, we can come and ask questions and learn from others and hear what other people are experiencing and seeing, et cetera.

⁓ And so we've got that coaching and then we've got discussion threads in there as well that kind of help people stay up to date. But yeah, to me really the best part of Pathfinder is really that place to go and ask questions and see not just how chat GPT answers, but rather how do real humans who do this all day every day, you know, look at a problem, think about a problem, solve it, take action, et cetera.

Matt Medeiros (45:12)
Halsey, Halsey, thanks so much. Pathfinderseo.com. Any other URLs you want to plug?

Lindsay Halsey (45:17)
That's perfect. Thank you so much, Matt. This has been fun.