AI Search Meets Jobs To Be Done: Discoverability > SEO with Heather Physioc (Part 2)

In this powerful continuation of the conversation with Heather Physioc, we explore how AI is reshaping the SEO landscape and why human-centered strategy still matters. 

Heather shares her framework for applying "Jobs to Be Done" thinking in SEO, especially for small businesses and creators. 

From empathy maps to AI content sourcing, this episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating modern discoverability. 

We also dive into how platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are sourcing content—and what it means for brands big and small.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Jobs to Be Done Is the SEO Framework You’re Missing: Learn how understanding your audience's "job" is the key to creating meaningful content.
• AI Is Changing the Web’s Economy: Heather argues that platforms like Google and ChatGPT are “stealing content” without offering equivalent value back.
• Empathy Mapping for Better Content: Mapping customer emotions, actions, and pain points can guide your SEO strategy more effectively than keywords alone.
• AI Search Results Are Not Created Equal: Different LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) source and synthesize information very differently.
• Discoverability Is the New SEO: Heather introduces a broader lens for search—beyond rankings and into audience engagement and real-world results.

💬 Memorable Quotes:

• “Discoverability all day, every day. It is encompassing of all of those things.”
• “AI can synthesize information, but it can’t synthesize a room full of humans creatively brainstorming.”
• “Clicks and eyeballs might not be the transaction of the future.”

🎯 Listener Action Items:

1. Map the Jobs to Be Done: Think beyond demographics—what problem is your customer trying to solve?
2. Create an Empathy Map: Define what your audience is thinking, feeling, and searching for.
3. Diversify Your AI Testing: Try different platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) to see how they interpret your niche.

Does SEO feel confusing, overwhelming, or just plain impossible to figure out? You’re not alone. That’s why I created the AI SEO Foundations course, powered by Crystal GPT: your personal AI SEO coach designed for busy, creative business owners like you.

Ditch the overwhelm and discover what SEO can do for your business! Head to SEOin7days.com (with the number 7!) and get started today—let’s make your brand easy to find and impossible to ignore.

Chapters

• 0:00 Heather Physioc: the deal that we all had as publishers and brands is, Hey, Google.
• 1:57 Implementing Jobs to Be Done for Small Businesses
• 4:50 The Importance of AI Citations
• 5:43 Challenges with AI Content Sourcing
• 7:12 Personal Experience with AI and Small Business
• 8:01 Understanding Customer Needs
• 8:23 Empathy Mapping for Better Marketing
• 8:33 Introduction to Collage and Wood
• 9:01 Rapid Fire Questions
• 12:25 Future of SEO Jobs
• 13:15 Human-Centered Thinking in AI
• 16:05 Final Thoughts and Personal Reflections

Transcript

[00:00:00] Heather Physioc: the deal that we all had as publishers and brands is, Hey, Google.

We will provide the substance.

That allows you to create this index of all the substance. And become a portal, or a gateway for other people to find it.

Now. Worse than we've ever seen in my history, in search.

Like when they first rolled out featured snippets and such. Now, they are stealing the content, in my opinion.

They're stealing the content from these creators. Without returning the same value.

[00:00:29] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast.

I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out. 

So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.​

[00:00:51] Crystal: I think I shared with you, or you might've saw it on LinkedIn.

How I took your tips for jobs to be done and I created a GPT for it.

It's kinda like the framework for how I make [00:01:00] all of my content.

Whether it's a product page, a collection page, blog post, whatever.

And I asked the GPT to answer: what is the job to be done of the page?

What is the job to be done of the person searching on the page?

But I wanted to tell you. I think that's why those pages have just done so well for me. Because I implemented like both sides of your insights.

[00:01:20] Heather Physioc: How rewarding that is, right? To hear that somebody likes the work that you did, to think about it and research it and try stuff out.

And then they went and tried it and here it's actually successful. That's huge and just so validating.

[00:01:31] Crystal: Yeah.

[00:01:32] Heather Physioc: that

[00:01:32] Crystal: Well, I'm glad because even how you explain all of the tabs open.

It's like, okay, I know I like chat, GPT. Yeah, but why do I like chat GPT?

Oh, I like it because it takes all my tabs and brings it in. Yeah. And it does that heavy intellectual load for me.

That I don't have to remember or do this or that.

It helps so much when someone provides a framework.

And that's what your work has done. 

[00:01:57] Implementing Jobs to Be Done for Small Businesses

[00:01:57] Crystal: let's say that I'm building my own [00:02:00] service or e-commerce site and I wanna use jobs be done.

What are the first steps to try to figure out the jobs my customers are trying to get done? And then turn that into content on my site?

You kind of answered that a little bit, I guess with the, the resources of a larger company, but let's say we're a smaller company.

Do you have any other insights to add there?

[00:02:16] Heather Physioc: Yes, absolutely. So I'm actually doing a workshop at the Outdoor Writers Association next week.

So taking the modern search journey and the jobs to be done thinking and helping individual journalists and creators and media and destination marketing organizations.

Small individuals and groups that don't have the same resources I do in the enterprise world, right?

But I'm going to go meet with them. And hopefully educate and enable them to do some of this stuff themselves.

Even in an organic way when you're being thoughtful and intentional, can improve the outcomes of your work. It just improves your work.

So what I am going to be starting with them. Here's a sneak preview of what I'm gonna do.

We're gonna first come in and inventory what their assets are like. Do you have a website? Do you have social? What do you have? [00:03:00] Where are you seeing other people like you, engaging? And start to picture like your best, ideal, perfect target audience in your head.

Forget the science for a minute.

This isn't an agency, this is a conversation. Who is it you are trying to serve?

And then from there, using some freely available research tools and some just manual searching.

I'm gonna help them do what's called an empathy map. Maybe you've done these where you put your customer at the center and you start to ask yourself what are they feeling?

What are they hearing out in the world? What are they experiencing, seeing? What are their friends seeing? And you start to just go through that mental exercise of putting yourself in your customer's shoes.

Then we're gonna take it to the next step. And with that, education on the different types of search engines.

Is it commerce? Is it inspiration? Is it synthesis? And what we think that customer's trying to do. Where are they most likely to perform the search? And thus, where should we focus our effort?

Then I'm gonna help 'em figure out how to find out what people are looking for in those spaces, manually.

Roughly map their own search journey. And that [00:04:00] search journey is gonna be different for different customers of the same business.

Maybe there'll be overlap, but they may have different people, different needs.

So we can really flex to any kind of business or person there is.

[00:04:10] Crystal: Oh man, that sounds like an awesome workshop.

And when you said empathy map.

I feel like your approach, taking in all of those UX ideas.

Because as I was learning about SEO, I was also learning about user experience, and I fell in love with ux.

I was like, this is where the answers are at. Like, that's where SEO really should start!

So I just think it's so helpful.

And it leads into your searcher journey map.

How do you see jobs be done in the search or journey map Working together?

Now that AI often answers people's questions before they click through to a website?

[00:04:41] Heather Physioc: Yeah, I almost two different questions.

One is figuring out all the places we could intercept that customer and determining do we wanna be there or not?

And if we do, how do we go about it? 

[00:04:50] The Importance of AI Citations

[00:04:50] Heather Physioc: If we wanna be the ones they cite in those AI overviews, in hopes that those citations improve.

And or they say our name out loud.

And or somebody actually clicks through who [00:05:00] is qualified.

Those are all still great outcomes.

But we have to decide if we wanna work toward that or not. Each brand. Each problem, each customer. That we're sort of trying to serve.

 I also think about how these AI overviews and AI answers are going to source the content we created.

To serve different jobs to be done, in context. So remember, those AI search queries are highly personalized, contextual compound questions.

The AI LLM search engine has to go find the information to understand it and then to synthesize it into a meaningful, actionable, answer.

So that jobs to be done work is actually fueling our ability to appear in that environment.

And that environment is changing in real time. 

[00:05:43] Challenges with AI Content Sourcing

[00:05:43] Heather Physioc: And I do think that there's a lot of negotiations still to be done on the economy of the web.

With the Googles of the world and ChatGPTs of the world.

So I don't think this is a static situation where we will never get clicks again or something like that.

[00:05:58] Crystal: I thought chat was like [00:06:00] creating its own search engine.

And then people were saying that it was actually pulling from Google still as well and not as much as Bing. 

What is all of that convolution?

[00:06:09] Heather Physioc: Yeah. I think I saw a chart the other day that it was showing like Reddit, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia were very heavily sourced for these platforms.

And when we have tested the same types of queries and questions across the different platforms, it's clear that they source this information very differently from one to the next.

I think I searched for something like Low Earth Orbit satellite something. And a couple of questions associated with it.

I think it was ChatGPT sourced a bunch of.gov.edu, dot org.

And it was very focused on brand.

And perplexity. Was weird sources. The answers were right, but it was just like weird.

I couldn't figure out what about these sources made you source these? What? What makes them trustworthy?

And then, what was the other one?

Gemini, I think, was really focused on the brand.

Whereas ChatGPT was a little bit more focused on, these are the big things about [00:07:00] lower satellite orbits.

Whereas Gemini was more like, spaceX is a thing. Such and such is a thing.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of work to be done on how they're cited. What they source, and so on.

And it's just shifting in real time and we have to watch and learn.

[00:07:12] Personal Experience with AI and Small Business

[00:07:13] Crystal: Yeah, I know that even with my own company, collage and Wood, which I'm gonna throw it to an ad here in just a second.

I was asking, where could you get a really thoughtful senior night gift? You know? 'cause that's what I make. I make giant wooden letters and numbers and gifts for athletes when they graduate high school or college.

And they were like, Amazon, obviously.

Zazzle. All the big brands that do like custom online gifts.

And I was like, well, what about collage and wood? And chat was like, oh, well. They're a small brand. But they do do, yeah.

And so I was like, man, how am I going to compete with that?

How am I going to get up there? This is how chat sees what's trustworthy or common or the best answer.

It's like, gosh, how can I get up in there with the big guys? 

[00:07:53] Heather Physioc: Jobs to be done really comes back around for me again and again in the search intelligence.

Just anticipating all the different [00:08:00] contextual things that people might ask. 

[00:08:01] Understanding Customer Needs

[00:08:01] Heather Physioc: You talked about these decorations and this art that you're making. For specific situations.

You specifically talked about seniors and athletes and things like that.

What kinds of things are they going to be looking for? And then how can we serve those jobs to be done with our content?

And then just like classic search. Increasing the relevance, authority, credibility, backlinks, et cetera.

[00:08:23] Empathy Mapping for Better Marketing

[00:08:23] Crystal: I need to do a new empathy map on moms and coaches. Some dads, but really moms, you know?

Because they're just trying to hold on to what's leaving. It's just so much more than just that particular night.

[00:08:33] Introduction to Collage and Wood

[00:08:33] Crystal: let's talk really quick about collage and wood, because I believe that your, your brand is unforgettable and your wall should be too. So I don't just make senior night gifts. I make giant wall lettering.

And over here at Collage and Wood, we handcraft your logo into a bold wooden masterpiece that makes your home office pop. So it's perfect for zoom calls, client meetings, or just wowing yourself every day.

So make your space so you. And order [00:09:00] now@collageandwood.com.

That was fun. 

[00:09:01] Rapid Fire Questions

[00:09:01] Crystal: I told you that we are gonna have some rapid fire questions. I think this would be a good time to do that.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to just say a statement.

And you're going to either say yes or no. Or choose your answer from the options given. Or what pops into your head.

Sound good?

Okay. So here we go.

Number one s-E-O-G-E-O-A-I-O-I-D-C.

Or ID. K.

[00:09:26] Heather Physioc: Can I say none of the above? It's discoverability all day, every day. It is encompassing of all of those things.

[00:09:32] Crystal: I love that. Okay. SEO is dying. Yes or no?

[00:09:36] Heather Physioc: I think the word SEO is losing its luster. But the act of optimizing is not dying.

[00:09:43] Crystal: Okay. Gemini Perplexity, Claude ChatGPT, or something else?

[00:09:48] Heather Physioc: I do use all of them for distinct purposes, but a shameless plug for WPP Open.

Our network actually built a proprietary ai platform that is more secure. So we're [00:10:00] able to work in a private space with client information using all of the major models like Claude, GPT, Gemini, and so on.

[00:10:06] Crystal: Very cool. Best use case for AI and SEO.

[00:10:10] Heather Physioc: For actually executing SEO?

Like doing the work? The best use case that I have found for SEO is taking very large data sets. Like rows and rows of keywords. That we have to parse through manually and categorize. And just making it make sense. So much faster and drawing meaningful insights out for my colleagues and other disciplines

[00:10:29] Crystal: AI agents: hype or breakthrough?

[00:10:32] Heather Physioc: Breakthrough. We are absolutely investigating what it's gonna mean. The kinds of best practices and other related areas that might be relevant to this future.

For me, chats and conversational, is definitely very relevant. On site search is very relevant in how we're gonna think about agent.

And those things being able to complete tasks and access information.

[00:10:52] Crystal: Google AI overviews: good, bad, or ugly?

[00:10:55] Heather Physioc: Both. Ugly right now, because it is fundamentally changing the economy of the web.

[00:11:00] This was the deal that we all had as publishers and brands is, Hey, Google.

We will provide the substance.

That allows you to create this index of all the substance. And become a portal, or a gateway for other people to find it.

Now. Worse than we've ever seen in my history, in search.

Like when they first rolled out featured snippets and such. Now, they are stealing the content, in my opinion.

They're stealing the content from these creators. Without returning the same value. So they're certainly hitting the press junket.

Saying people are getting just as many clicks.

Clicks aren't going down.

It's empirically not true from what we can see out in the wild. I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing.

It's just a reality that clicks and eyeballs might not be the- to websites anyway- might not be the transaction of the future. And so I would like to see the AI platforms slow down a bit.

And work this out with the publishers and creators. Because their [00:12:00] economy and our economy depends on it long term.

It's just that we, the creators, or media and publishers.

Suffer now, while the AI platforms get all the gains now.

But eventually, on the long range. If they don't fix these problems, they will suffer too.

Because the internet just eats itself.

[00:12:16] Crystal: Yeah. Wow. That's really insightful.

[00:12:18] Heather Physioc: not a rapid-fire answer, sorry.

[00:12:20] Crystal: That's okay! I like it. I could see that like, oh wow, that one touched a nerve. Let's go. Let's go. Okay. 

[00:12:25] Future of SEO Jobs

[00:12:25] Crystal: Jobs in SEO AI is most likely to take in 2026.

[00:12:29] Heather Physioc: We definitely see decreased demand for the most junior entry level kinds of SEOs as we used to know it.

There was a lot of learning and manual work. That needed to be done early in someone's career.

But a lot of that manual work has now been accelerated or shortened by tools. So I do worry a little bit about the next generation of SEOs.

But not because there won't be demand for discoverability experts.

More so because the things they will be expected to do will [00:13:00] be different.

And it's whether education and industry can keep up with that. And help them be ready for the new version of entry-level search careers.

[00:13:07] Crystal: I just love that name. Discoverability expert. That's genius. Okay. What about jobs least likely to be taken by ai?

[00:13:15] Human-Centered Thinking in AI

[00:13:15] Heather Physioc: I come back to the human centered thinking every single time.

Like it can fake its way to something that sounds like a plausibly human journey. But I've never had it spit one out and automatically trusted it and not revised it.

[00:13:27] Crystal: Hmm.

[00:13:27] Heather Physioc: think that human strategic thinking. That ability to empathize and understand situations that human beings get themselves into. Or need help out of, or whatever.

That's very, very hard to replace. And they can synthesize information and answers, but they can't synthesize 50 people's highly tailored expertise sitting in a room creatively spitballing and brainstorming against a problem.

It can expand it, it can augment it.

But it just can't replace it. So really those strategic thinkers who know how to connect the dots [00:14:00] and find opportunity at the intersections of things will be the most successful.

[00:14:04] Crystal: Yeah, and just a quick note, didn't you post something about Nike and Lego doing a collaboration?

[00:14:10] Heather Physioc: Maybe, and I don't remember.

[00:14:11] Crystal: I think you did. I was just thinking about that yesterday, how we all have jobs to be done. But we change forms during the day.

I might be working and have a job that I'm trying to do early in the morning.

And then in the afternoon I'm trying to help my kid figure out something or order some shoes for him.

Something in just a completely different context.

And the, the takeaway from the Lego Nike collab. Was that. It's like, Hey, wherever you are, we're there too.

That's kind of, you know, the emotional thing I got from it. And I thought that was really interesting, but I'm pretty sure I saw it on your LinkedIn.

[00:14:44] Heather Physioc: Totally escaped my brain.

[00:14:46] Crystal: Yeah, whoever posted that, they did a good job.

[00:14:48] Heather Physioc: We all have different needs different, even depending on the time of day. And where you are and what problems you are trying to solve in the moment.

Which really speaks to the power of AI search to incorporate all of that context in [00:15:00] one go.

Because what might be the right answer for you right now for a problem, may not be 12 hours from now.

[00:15:05] Crystal: Yeah. That's so interesting.

Okay, last one. And I think you might have already answered it.

But: best AI powered app for SEO that no one knows about.

[00:15:15] Heather Physioc: Oh gosh. Best AI powered app for seo. Okay, I'm not gonna say best. But I'm gonna say current personal favorite.

I'm enjoying getting to know the glimpse tools quite a bit.

It is a browser extension that overlays onto Google Trends data.

And I like what they're doing with being able to interpret seasonality and the reason behind it.

It's giving me better answers to digest the information that I see. It's getting better at showing information across platforms.

Though I would love to see more.

And my other current favorite is keyword tool.io because I'm able to work across multiple platforms very quickly to get big data sets.

And then go analyze them more quickly.

[00:15:59] Crystal: ​Cool. [00:16:00] Heather, this has been just, I knew it was gonna be awesome, but you know, it's still, it was awesome. 

[00:16:05] Final Thoughts and Personal Reflections

[00:16:05] Crystal: So I'm so glad that you were able to come and join us here on the Simple Smart SEO Show podcast. If people want to connect with you, follow you.

Dive into like all these amazing things that you've kind of shared today, that I've learned from.

What's the best way for, people to kind of follow you around online?

[00:16:21] Heather Physioc: I am Heather Physioc on all the things. But you're most likely to find me on LinkedIn or Blue Sky. At Heather Physioc.

Of course, all my material, conferences, workshops, et cetera. It's all at heatherphysioc.com.

[00:16:32] Crystal: Awesome. All right guys, go check it out and I will see you next time.

Thanks again, Heather.

[00:16:38] Heather Physioc: Thank you.