SEO Isn’t Dead: How to Win Google and AI Search in 2026! with Tom Jacobs

Episode Summary

You can find Tom Jacobs at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaspjacobs/

Tom Jacobs Podcast Interview

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward. And today in the house we have Tom Jacobs and he is a B2B SEO agency owner. Now listen, hold on before you think, oh, SEO, that’s what I thought for a long time. Or is SEO dead, but even when it wasn’t.

Supposedly dead. Whenever I heard it, it just sounded so dry and so much work. And I’m here to tell you, we have done something here that we don’t do very often. We brought Tom back because my gosh, I learned so much from him the first time and he made it heaven help us. He made SEO sound interesting and yes, it is alive and and we do need it.

So let’s dive right into it. Welcome back Tom. 

[00:00:43] Tom Jacobs: Thank you, Kris. I guess I’m here to make this sound exciting and approachable. 

[00:00:49] Kris Ward: It is, and you did such a good job in the first one, and I really encourage everyone to listen to it. But let’s just give a quick summary for those that might, have not gotten to that show yet.

With all that’s [00:01:00] changing, the sky is always falling, the world’s coming to an end, and a big part of that right now is AI has gobbled up SEO and we don’t need SEO anymore. So can you just clarify that before we dive into some more of your absolutely fantastic insights and tips? 

[00:01:15] Tom Jacobs: Sure. So I think there are, is like a movement and kind of a melodramatic, where are we?

In the industry of do I chase AI or do I do the fundamentals? 

[00:01:29] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:01:29] Tom Jacobs: And a lot of people make it seem all or nothing okay, you have to start chasing AI, otherwise you’ll fall behind. You’ll never catch up. Where everybody’s discounting Google, they’re still driving 88 or so percent of the search market.

Everybody’s still going there and they. Already have like Gemini, so they themselves are AI which will eventually train their algorithms that we’ve optimized for 10, 15 [00:02:00] years. 

[00:02:00] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:02:00] Tom Jacobs: So my big thing going into 2026 is going to be like a balanced approach where you build the foundations of search, you write good quality content, you’re doing the things the right way that we’ve always done, and then 20%, 10% experimenting into that AI space. 

[00:02:21] Kris Ward: Okay, you bring up a couple really good points right off the bat. So first of all, I believe currently if you slept in this morning an extra 35 minutes, you could be behind on AI. Oh my gosh, I slept in, I don’t know what’s happening in the world. And you’re right, it can get a little hysterical and it could, that could absolutely be your new full-time job.

So we cannot get seduced into that we have to stay the course of what it is that we are really doing, and what are we really focusing on. So there is that. And then I think you also brought up another really pertinent piece of information that I think for so many of us, Google was the God for so long, and it is shocking when you take something for granted [00:03:00] and then something comes along and per se puts a dent in it.

So I think that dent makes a lot of people hysterical. Oh, we never thought anything could touch that. And here it is. But to your other point. But Google itself has been around all these years and dominated, and they have AI and they have done all their domination with insights and analytics and components of AI.

So they’re not just sitting there going, oh, we didn’t see AI coming. What is this thing you, what is this thing you speak of? So you’re right, it’s not gonna be a victim because of anything. It’s a car. It’s a car with a powerful engine. So if we’re changing some of the features in the engine, great. But they already have the engine. 

[00:03:40] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. I think it’s the behavior that we’ve always had and a lot of people always regress to what they’re comfortable with. 

[00:03:46] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:03:47] Tom Jacobs: And recently Google released their new Gemini product and it was the highest adopted, I think 650 million adoption rate to make Sam Altman say. [00:04:00] Here’s the red flag, like we need to go, 

[00:04:02] Kris Ward: right? 

[00:04:02] Tom Jacobs: So there are like the political implications of all this in the market and things are definitely happening, but you spend a decade at 99% of the market, you’re not going to lose when a player takes five to 10%. 

[00:04:19] Kris Ward: That is a good point. And also a lot of people may correct me if I’m wrong, have explained that when I’m doing a search in chatGPT, it’s pulling from Google, so it’s almost like having a librarian.

So we haven’t eliminated SEO, we just may change the road in which we get there. 

[00:04:35] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, Google and Bing are still heavily influencing. Okay. And just because you rank number one in Google doesn’t mean you’re going to parlay that into top rankings. 

[00:04:45] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:04:46] Tom Jacobs: So I think AI is putting together, assumed or like a combination of answers.

[00:04:54] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:04:54] Tom Jacobs: It’s still like a purist kind of feel to it where 

[00:04:58] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:04:58] Tom Jacobs: Open AI tried to [00:05:00] release like a little bit of sponsored ad types that they like completely denied that was paid, but it clearly was and it was outraged. Where Google’s been monetizing this whole time. So like they have that advantage already.

[00:05:13] Kris Ward: It must I don’t know. Is it not hard to be you then when you’re going around and everyone is, I would say 90% of us are misunderstanding this or getting it wrong like this. Must be frustrating. ’cause the clarity here that you speak of all makes such sense. And most of what I see online has no logic tied into it all.

Even I know that I’m not an SSEO expert in any capacity, and yet I’m like, that sounds extremist. I just don’t see how I don’t have any facts, but that seems alarming and confusing. 

[00:05:44] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, you shouldn’t. Business owners shouldn’t have to be that expert though. 

[00:05:47] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:05:48] Tom Jacobs: And it’s hard to trust voices who are always here on fire.

Yeah. It’s constantly

[00:05:53] Kris Ward: yeah, 

[00:05:53] Tom Jacobs: I’m saying something. I’m putting it into market. It’s as polarizing as possible so I can get to a place where I’m selling [00:06:00] you the solution. Like only I know how to optimize for AI, where like I’ve never really seen pipeline close as effectively as talking through AI.

Yeah. 

Which is good. I always have to build that piece and that narrative behind. We’re doing traditional things that have always worked, and then we’re going to parlay that into AI optimization. 

[00:06:24] Kris Ward: That’s a good point. So we can’t forego the governing principles. Even when we get back to the day of print and direct marketing.

It’s still is the fundamentals and maybe a few of the technology or the routes we took are being tweaked, but the fundamentals still have to be there. 

[00:06:41] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. 

[00:06:42] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:06:42] Tom Jacobs: It just becomes so much noise in the market. 

[00:06:44] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:06:44] Tom Jacobs: Like it’s hard for business owners to pick and choose what to invest in and what to put their hard earned dollars into knowing they’re gonna get a return out of it 

[00:06:53] Kris Ward: or just your time, yeah, exactly. Even if it’s free. Okay. Alright, so let’s get into some fundamentals. Get, [00:07:00] let’s get, what is it you are going to be doing? Or what should we be doing as we move into the next year?

[00:07:06] Tom Jacobs: I think it’s a proactive approach to content. 

[00:07:11] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:07:11] Tom Jacobs: It’s saying the things you wanna be known for. 

[00:07:14] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:07:15] Tom Jacobs: Instead of being cute.

I think I, you and I talked about this earlier in the first podcast, but just being literal about who you are, what you do, and who it’s for. Yeah. We’ll take you 70% of the way instead of cute marketing language. 

[00:07:31] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:07:31] Tom Jacobs: I’m now writing question and answer. Frequently asked questions. Things that will appear on traditional search engines, and then breaking that into top of funnel, informational, middle of funnel.

Okay, I am starting to consider what I need, problem solution, right? And the bottom of the funnel is actually I’m two steps away from making the purchase, making the partnership. What do I need to know to feel comfortable to sign the contract? 

[00:07:59] Kris Ward: Okay, [00:08:00] so the old philosophy, be clear, not cute, and nevermind your like Taz marketing angle.

Stopping the scroll, all that stuff. Let’s be clear. But more than being clear, which I think we can’t say enough, is break it down into questions and answers. It’s not even like philosophies and things like, what is the question? Put in the answer. Because we now know that AI really utilizes that much more powerfully.

[00:08:23] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. They’re, I think right now they’re bad at contextual clues. They just want the answer, they want the data point. Oh, okay. They want something unique and they want it quickly. 

[00:08:32] Kris Ward: Okay. 

,

[00:08:32] Kris Ward: Okay on that makes sense. 

[00:08:33] Tom Jacobs: Like helpful tables, bullet points, summaries, things that read really easily. 

[00:08:39] Kris Ward: Okay. And when we’re doing that, I know, we could be looking at our competitors and this is the part where we have to be mindful.

I know, you ask, they answer, I never know if I get that title right. They ask, you answer, somebody’s asking and somebody’s answering. And he’s been talking about that a long time. Marcus Sheridan. He’s been talking [00:09:00] about comparing yourself to competitors, even on your own website and giving prices.

And that’s all very controversial. So when you’re comparing yourself to your competitors, what are some things that we should do and not do? And again, I guess fundamentally that would be a question to answer philosophy. 

[00:09:16] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. I like to find who’s in the top 10 

[00:09:19] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:09:19] Tom Jacobs: Rankings and what they’re doing. 

[00:09:21] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:09:22] Tom Jacobs: So I’ll take a look in, I’ll say I need to rank for, I don’t know, a term top accounting firm near me or like a local business, fine. Yeah. 

If there are articles, blogs, or product pages in the top 10, then those are the ones that are working. So I know that’s an example of something that has been written well or ranks for some reason, or has an exact URL domain name and I try to figure out why that is.

So I’ll reverse engineer the top three, but the average word count. The sections that they map out, [00:10:00] the actual like title tag, meta description, like what are you optimizing around? And then I will try to write a better piece. 

[00:10:08] Kris Ward: Okay. That to me is very insightful because I think where most of us go wrong is, let’s say, so we’re not a, we find, hire and onboard virtual assistants and put them in our leadership program.

We’re not a VA agency ’cause we don’t take the money from the VAs and the VA’s. It’s very VA agencies, very billable hours. They just give you a VA and then they’re billing you and if you end your contract with the agency, you lose the VA. It’s very expensive. All that stuff. So our leadership program is fundamentally very different.

The VA say we’re interrupting disrupting the marketplace. So I would be looking at the competitor’s websites and I humbly tell you that there’s none out there doing it the way we do it. Fine. But in the past, whether I was comparing it to something that we did that’s similar or apples and apples, when I look at the website, I would be going, oh, they say this.

[00:11:00] Or they’re doing this part of their program. Like I wouldn’t think to look at when you’re saying, Hey, we’re looking at the top websites, looking at the machinery of the website because it is the construction of that website that’s helping them, if not the only reason they’re ranking. And to us with layman terms, I’d be like.

I’ve even seen people go oh, their website is red, and red is a dominant color and all this foolishness. You know what I mean? And I knew that was foolish, but I think we would get caught up in the messaging like, oh, you know what? They’re really doing good. They keep talking about whatever, they’ve got more success stories up than us or something.

I don’t know. So I just think nine outta 10 of us would look at that website and we would get distracted by some element of their program and not be looking at a big, huge part of why they’re ranking is the mechanics and the machinery of the website and how it’s set up. 

[00:11:50] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. 

[00:11:50] Kris Ward: I think we’re missing the boat on that a lot.

[00:11:53] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. The difficulty to peel back your situation specifically is the difficulty of being like a unique, innovative player in the market. People don’t know exactly how to search for that. So the most common term would probably be VA agency. 

[00:12:08] Kris Ward: Right? 

[00:12:08] Tom Jacobs: And you’re like, I do it completely differently. I’m like creating this new thing. 

[00:12:13] Kris Ward: But can we not put that, we would have, we have that in our thing. We’re not a VA agency. We can keep using the word VA agency. 

[00:12:19] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. 

[00:12:19] Kris Ward: And we have compared, we’ve got what do you call it? A table? That’s the big word I was looking for. Write it down table showing, comparing us to a VA agency and how you save money.

Yeah. So we still can use the word. 

[00:12:30] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, that’s exactly how we do. 

[00:12:31] Kris Ward: But I do agree with you. Like I, you, if you’re a unicorn, it’s, they’re not looking for a unicorn. 

That’s some of the hardest SEO projects that I’ve done. It’s who are we? What do we do and what’s the parallel avenue to what we’re trying to accomplish, 

right?

[00:12:45] Tom Jacobs: How do we pull that in, like positives of an a VA agency? Negatives, like things to avoid when hiring a VA agency. You’re like trying to steal this audience over here and convert them to believing that your product is the answer.

[00:12:59] Kris Ward: Right? 

[00:12:59] Tom Jacobs: [00:13:00] It’s pretty tough. 

[00:13:02] Kris Ward: So keep it simple. Question and answer.

Take a look at your competitors.

These are, and these sound like fundamentally basic stuff that we’ve all heard before, but I have to say the way you frame it, I’m hearing and seeing this differently. So what are some other things that you think we might perhaps be misunderstanding or just missing?

[00:13:22] Tom Jacobs: For 2026, a big one is gonna be partnerships. 

[00:13:26] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:13:27] Tom Jacobs: So like link building used to be link to link exchanging. It’s now being mentioned in lists and blog articles, so if you have good partnerships or relationships with other companies, either in your frame or complimentary services, 

[00:13:44] Kris Ward: okay. 

[00:13:44] Tom Jacobs: You do a blog swap and kind of mention each other by name.

That’s gonna get you pretty far. Another one is to figure out like, are there alternative search channels that your audience spends time on? Okay. Reddit, Quora,  question and answer kind of stuff, 

[00:14:01] Kris Ward: right? 

[00:14:01] Tom Jacobs: And then index, spend a little time there. Is your audience on LinkedIn? Are you gonna build a brand there?

Some of that stuff will be pulled in from the AI platforms as a secondary source that mention you. 

[00:14:17] Kris Ward: Okay, so that’s a good point. So I think for a second, as you’re talking. I was thinking about still Google or your website going, all right, if we comment on something on Reddit or even, I’ve seen things where I’ve Googled on, and then LinkedIn things come up, right?

Because it’s such a large platform. But again, you have to remind us that we’re also talking about how a AI scrapes the information. So if we’re in different platforms like Reddit, like LinkedIn, and making comments or giving tips or whatever, that just validates our authority or expertise on different platforms.

So then to AI with our website, which we made a comment on Reddit. Now we’re here on LinkedIn. [00:15:00] We’ve got questions, answers. We look like a more viable resource for them. 

[00:15:05] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, the more Google’s gonna give you credit for AI too, is like how many people are vouching for this company? 

[00:15:14] Kris Ward: Oh, 

[00:15:14] Tom Jacobs: okay. Or this business or this service.

How many people are saying, I trust this, I’m going to write about it and maybe link to it. 

[00:15:21] Kris Ward: Makes sense. 

[00:15:21] Tom Jacobs: Okay. So that’ll be the new signal. 

[00:15:23] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:15:23] Tom Jacobs: In the new year. 

[00:15:26] Kris Ward: And so what would be your strategy, like not to get all up? Into organizing this, but how do we not make this just something that we spray and pray and we’re running around doing all different things.

Like what would be your suggested pattern? Do we say, okay, once a month we go to Reddit? Like how do we not make this just busy work? 

[00:15:46] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. I would say as focused as possible. 

[00:15:49] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:15:49] Tom Jacobs: I’m trying to figure out a way to get press releases or like digital PR. It’s like a big thing that’s gonna come [00:16:00] up because I need a lot of times, like Wall Street Journal types, like any journalistic medium is gonna get pulled in as a authoritative source, but also there’s local, there’s all these other things.

There’s industry, pull it into there to answer your question and not get too far outta left field. I would focus on three at a time. 

[00:16:22] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:16:22] Tom Jacobs: I would say what’s going on in Reddit? Are there subreddits where my potential customers are hanging out? Can I organically be helpful and then present my business secondarily?

A lot of times that’s what customers are doing at the moment. I wouldn’t get too bogged down by trying to be everywhere. 

[00:16:42] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:16:42] Tom Jacobs: But just going deeper into one or two channels. And seeing if it’s viable. It’s worth your time. 

[00:16:49] Kris Ward: And I think even mentioning Reddit, I think it’s very easy to get lost into a narrow focus.

Okay, we all have to be on LinkedIn. That’s it. LinkedIn, we’re all gonna be on LinkedIn. We all swear we’re gonna be on LinkedIn. Yes, [00:17:00] we’ll be on LinkedIn. And then that’s all fine until the wheels fall off. Or we start hearing again the whisper in the jungle. No. LinkedIn is not the thing it used to be anymore, and the algorithm blah, blah, blah.

So I think even just whether, we’re also using other platforms like Reddit, but even just being on Reddit. For by and by virtue of taking something and repurposing it and putting it on Reddit and answering a few questions, it also gives us exposure to what’s opens our eyes more too. ’cause we get institutionalized on the platform that we’re on.

So I think being more open to it is really also what I’m learning from you. 

[00:17:33] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, exactly. That’s how, a lot of times I’ll make content calendars based on that. Like I’ll find a industry Reddit subreddit. 

[00:17:41] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:17:41] Tom Jacobs: And then copy and paste. What are the questions, what are people asking, what are they chatting about? And then put that into a content calendar for the next quarter. 

[00:17:49] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:17:49] Tom Jacobs: It’s what are, what do I, what should I write through? What should I optimize around? What are people actually in the market? It’s like free market research.

Besides like your customer support [00:18:00] tickets, your prospect phone calls, your discovery conversations that you’re having, that’s the second best source.

[00:18:07] Kris Ward: Okay. Fantastic. Alright. So yeah. Yeah, we don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t, you don’t actually need me here anymore, Tom. Just go ahead talk. 

[00:18:17] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. New co-host. 

[00:18:19] Kris Ward: Yeah. So what else do we not know? 

[00:18:25] Tom Jacobs: I would say content’s king. 

[00:18:28] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:18:29] Tom Jacobs: Optimize your pages the same way we’ve always been doing it for now.

Until like it’s huge fundamental shift, I think we’re better off focusing on good quality content education, balance of intent levels. And then I think this whole like GS strategy is gonna expand into a lot more once the LLMs kind of have a hold of most [00:19:00] things that we do. 

[00:19:01] Kris Ward: Okay. So you’re living in your world again.

So go back to GEO and walk us through that. 

[00:19:06] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, so it’s a strategy around building content for LMS specifically. 

[00:19:12] Kris Ward: LLM 

[00:19:13] Tom Jacobs: Yep. Large learning model. 

[00:19:16] Kris Ward: Okay. Not everybody knows these things. 

[00:19:18] Tom Jacobs: That’s fair. It’s basically chatGPT. 

[00:19:21] Kris Ward: That’s fine. We’re just, I’m just spelling it out for you. 

[00:19:23] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. They identify trends and they give you straight answers, but the way that you develop your content for AI 

[00:19:32] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:19:32] Tom Jacobs: Is gonna be a big one. I think they’re estimating like 27 2. 2027 is the year that it splits. 40, 60. 50 50 on traffic that goes through each. So that will be how you design your content different.

[00:19:49] Kris Ward: So what would be the difference in those two lanes? Clarify, like you’re going high level, so the GEO is, and the LLM is, and what would those two things look like?

[00:19:58] Tom Jacobs: It’s all the same. It’s just [00:20:00] like lingo. So generative engine optimization is essentially SEL for AI. 

[00:20:08] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:20:09] Tom Jacobs: It’s how you’re showing up in ChatGPT, how many times you’re recommended. 

[00:20:14] Kris Ward: Okay? 

[00:20:14] Tom Jacobs: And it’s just how you format your content, your website. 

[00:20:20] Kris Ward: So I think what I’m learning more and more from you is, look at the end of the day, in theory.

Perhaps nothing is changing. People still, whether we went back to the 18 hundreds and we opened up a yellow pages and we said, Hey, hold on. Is pizza under P for pizza or R for restaurant? And we have to figure that out and know what it is that everyone looks up first so that you’re on the right page.

Oh, there’s no pizza joints in my area. Oh, I didn’t know it was under R for restaurant. So we still have all the fundamentals, SEO. All that’s happening now is there is efficiencies and inefficiencies on how it’s being reorganized. And so to come up quicker and for, to keep it [00:21:00] more streamlined and more simple and to repurpose even more content so we don’t have to keep rewriting all the stuff is stop being cute and stop trying to, Raaz with some great fancy title and Hulk and but wait, now you know, like a great old infomercial. Just keep the content incredibly clear and basic, so that I’m hungry, I’m looking for pizza versus, boutique food places in your area. So it’s really just bringing it further down to basics and the route for AI finding our information.

They may take a bunch of different routes in the next few years, but at the end of the day, it’s all still gonna come to our content. So we wanna sure. Be sure that we have our content clearly laid out. 

[00:21:42] Tom Jacobs: Yeah there’s so many people online that just preach good GEO, and even Google is saying, good SEO means good GEO. 

[00:21:51] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:21:51] Tom Jacobs: If you are doing the right things organically. You’ll eventually index towards being included in [00:22:00] AI. 

[00:22:00] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:22:01] Tom Jacobs: There are ways to speed that up. But I think right now I’m preaching the balanced approach, okay. Of, Hey, keep doing what you’re doing, keep doing what works for your actual business, and then start testing new things.

Everybody should be doing that. 

[00:22:17] Kris Ward: So keep it clean, keep it simple, keep it direct.

And something I often forget too, because I think we change our mindset when we go online, right? You’re like, okay, I gotta stop the scroll. Or you see some whatever on LinkedIn or something hilariously funny and you’re like, okay, I just wanna answer the questions and I don’t know how to be witty and humorous or I, which you can be witty and humorous and not do a good job of that online, right?

So I think it’s just coming down to, Hey, this is a question I get and here’s the damn answer. And really if we just don’t overthink it and we show up, that’s gonna serve us better. 

[00:22:54] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, exactly. There’s probably a good middle ground. Like I don’t want to [00:23:00] go I keep going in either camps, but there’s probably good middle ground of quick and easy organized content that tells a story and is valuable.

[00:23:11] Kris Ward: Right, 

[00:23:11] Tom Jacobs: and everybody has to find that middle ground to not 5,000 word guides and white papers that everybody’s writing to be ranked. Yeah, you don’t necessarily have to be the longest one to rank top, top three, but as this thing progresses, and I think AI will get a lot smarter on what it digests and develops.

So right now, this all works. I think in three to six months, it’ll probably get a lot more intelligent to say, okay, this really long piece of content is most valuable and it’ll probably start pulling in data signals. So you wanna chat about small business owner data signals could always go there too.

[00:23:57] Kris Ward: We’re here now is to take us there. [00:24:00] 

[00:24:00] Tom Jacobs: So one of the biggest things for 26 for your audience is tracking the successes of these programs. 

[00:24:08] Kris Ward: Okay? 

[00:24:08] Tom Jacobs: So a lot of people will say, Hey, I don’t rank here. What do I do? But they don’t have any gauge of what’s the benchmark? Have you been ranking? Have you been 50 and now you’re 20?

Is that good? Is that bad? I think everybody should set up a Google Analytics account and everybody should set up a Google search console account. 

[00:24:27] Kris Ward: Okay? 

[00:24:27] Tom Jacobs: Now, search Console will give you all the keywords that have driven traffic to your site and it’ll chronicle all the URL pages that have also done impressions and clicks an average ranking so you can get a good idea of like where you’re at, where you’re progressing to, how your average traffic volume will fluctuate, and then you can make optimizations based on those.

[00:24:52] Kris Ward: We, I’m not gonna lie, we’re on the wagon, fell off the wagon for that. We used to look at that more closely. And then you just get overwhelmed. ’cause then you go. [00:25:00] I dunno. Sometimes it’s inflated, like you’ll be like, okay, whatever. You got thousands of impressions. Okay. What’s really an impression?

Oh, it just means on the, it lands on the page, nobody’s really looking at it. Or you had all these people come to your website and you were like, that doesn’t make sense. I don’t think we have that many. And if we did, how come no one called? So I think understanding, looking at it is one thing, but knowing how to digest some of that data, I think is another.

[00:25:22] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, you’re exactly right. There’s levers to pull for each one of those situations. 

[00:25:26] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:25:27] Tom Jacobs: Where you’re like. As long as you get to a good place where you trust the data for the most part.

[00:25:33] Kris Ward: Right? 

[00:25:33] Tom Jacobs: To say, okay, this is a ballpark I can understand, but if you get a ton of traffic to your website, then it’s probably like a conversion rate problem.

Am I aligning the search terms that are sending users to my site with what’s on my site and my offering? Are people searching for VA agencies hitting yours and not really yeah. Getting what they need so they bounce, right? There’s things in every page. A lot of times people will write like super generic [00:26:00] blogs.

Like I worked with this biotech company that wrote a blog about how lab grown meat is actually created. It drove so many clicks to the site, but zero sales. So it’s okay, that’s great. People are coming to their site, but they’re not qualified. They’re not our ideal audience. They’re just curious.

[00:26:19] Kris Ward: Right. 

[00:26:19] Tom Jacobs: Like educational intelligence that. Maybe you’re trying to learn something 

[00:26:25] Kris Ward: like why do ducks have yellow feet? Deal like, okay, great, I’m not buying anything. 

[00:26:29] Tom Jacobs: Here’s a VA agency. 

[00:26:30] Kris Ward: Yeah. And I think, yeah, that, and I think to your point where the rest of us who are not SEO inclined or get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I was dumped on us about the SEO world, it’s oh, I don’t understand these stats, so here’s my coping mechanism.

I’ll just stop looking. So 

[00:26:47] Tom Jacobs: yeah, 

[00:26:48] Kris Ward: maybe that’s not the best choice. 

[00:26:50] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, the nice thing about chatGPT too is it can digest all this data. 

[00:26:54] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:26:54] Tom Jacobs: So you can always like export three months worth of data from your Google search console and say, tell [00:27:00] me what this means. Tell me my next 10 blog topics that I should write about. Tell me which pages I should reoptimize and look at. 

[00:27:06] Kris Ward: Ah, that’s right. 

[00:27:07] Tom Jacobs: That’s what I do a lot. It’s okay, that. Eliminates, you’re big on time efficiency. That eliminates a lot of tedious data analysis on my part where I could be like, this is a good starting point. 

[00:27:18] Kris Ward: I forget often.

I’m getting better at it. I, but you do forget that when you ask chat one thing, then you can ask it another, yeah. Or that when I finally get something, I’m working with chat, and I get something that really created like a, oh, this was the answer I want, and I am finally now in the practice say, okay, this is what I want.

Create me a prompt. I get this again from you, and then they give you this amazing prompt. You’re like, oh my gosh. Thank God I asked that last question. Right? 

[00:27:46] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. 

[00:27:46] Kris Ward: Or something recently that we, I’ve actually added to the personalization part of my chat and it was something like I want you to act as a ruthless mentor and I want you to keep going until this is bulletproof, and I don’t want you to quit [00:28:00] until it’s bulletproof and it has changed the answers I got.

It is night and day. 

[00:28:05] Tom Jacobs: Wow. 

[00:28:06] Kris Ward: Yeah, I was working with something on our leadership program and I was like, I was adding to the program and there’s the stuff that we give them that’s factual and then there’s the journey that they’re on and I was like, ah, but I, they’re calling in two lanes and so I fed it to chat and they said, okay.

What you’re, what you have, you don’t have an information problem, you have an organization problem. You’re now taking the emotional part of the journey and you’re making it separate than the content they’re learning. This is what you need to do. ’cause right now you’ve got them all over place and it combined it and it was just like ruthless.

Okay, here’s your problem. Like I felt like there was a coach on the sidelines of an important game. This you think you have this problem, you have this problem, and we gotta fix this fast. I’m like, oh man. All right. It was. It’s just so crazy. And that’s just me waffling through the world and finding that one little prompt so people, as we get stronger and more comfortable with the prompts and like you said, AI keeps growing.

It’s, it doesn’t [00:29:00] re like I still have to have the ideas. That’s where people go wrong. I don’t think it replaces all these people, but if you learn how to use it more and to your point, okay, take those stats from. Google analytics and stuff, and your dashboard and stuff and then say, okay, what does this mean and where is somebody leak?

And Yeah. I would forget that we can do that. Of course, we can ask chat that duh.

[00:29:21] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. You can definitely have it analyzed like top 10 competitors too. 

[00:29:25] Kris Ward: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:29:26] Tom Jacobs: Like I usually will throw that in and say, these guys are doing this. Identify gaps in vulnerabilities of what they’re not conveying.

Yeah. And what they can be tightened up and then create our own angle. 

[00:29:36] Kris Ward: Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right. You guys talk amongst yourself. I’m writing notes down. All right. Okay. Tom, where can people find more of your brilliance? 

[00:29:47] Tom Jacobs: So website’s under construction, but it’s guda market.com, like the cheese. Okay.

And then I’m on LinkedIn all the time, so I think it’s backslash Thomas P. Jacobs. 

[00:29:58] Kris Ward: Okay, [00:30:00] we’ll do that 

[00:30:00] Tom Jacobs: post another day. 

[00:30:00] Kris Ward: We will make sure it’s in the show notes. Please share this episode with a business buddy. There’s all kinds of clarifications and oh my gosh, content and just, it’s a sad world as we bang around there by ourselves trying to figure out, oh, SEOs, thank God I never learned it ’cause it’s dead.

This was hugely helpful, Tom. Thank you so much and everyone else will see you in the next episode.