Do you find yourself wondering if you've missed the boat, if it is too late to get started with SEO in 2026 because you're hearing about ai, SEO answer engine optimization regular SEO, and you've probably heard at least one or two people tell you SEO is dead. Yeah, it's not okay. I have heard that for my entire career. Hey there, it's Rachel Lin tag and I'm so glad to have you back here with me on the podcast today. I wanna jump right in quickly by letting you know. First off, SEO is not dead. Okay? Somebody says SEO is dead every single time. That there is a change in the way that we do things. SEO has been dying for my entire career. Okay? So yes, people are gonna say that. They say that because it's clickbaity. They know they'll get you, they'll get your attention. All of that. If you are seeing people say, SEO is old. It's outdated. It's all about GEO. Just let them go on their happy, merry way. The reality is, that's also clickbait, okay? S-E-O-G-E-O answer engine ai, SEO, I don't care what you wanna call it. Honestly, it's all pretty much the same thing. It is not too late. In fact, I'm actually working on putting together a really fun training for you. I want you to get signed up. So the week of March 23rd. So coming, coming up in like two weeks, I'm going to be teaching two live training classes. That'll be the secrets to generating leads and traffic and visibility through Google and Chat GPT. I am also going to be hosting a five day popup group. It'll be a small, private Facebook group where you will be there with me. There'll be a training. Each morning you have a chance to ask questions. There'll be some engagement, all of that because. This is not dead. It is not too late, and I do really wanna make sure that you understand and see the opportunity for your business. So I ran a survey recently and the number one problem that my readers, my email lists said they were struggling with was generating leads. They didn't know how to get more leads for their business. And most people, those who were not already in my programs, their number one problem that they were seeing with their website was that they were creating content but they were not getting traffic. So we're gonna talk about those things. Why do we create content that doesn't get traffic? How do we get leads from the traffic that we get? How do we get leads from chat? GPT? How do we get 'em from Google? How in the world do you grow your business? We're gonna talk about all of that in that pop-up group and in those trainings the week of March 23rd. So do yourself a favor. Go over to. Etched marketing.com/freebies. You know where the freebie tab is? That number one option on there that says free SEO class. Sign up. Choose your day. There's two options. You'll then get the confirmation email and you'll get the information on how to join the popup group. Plan on joining that group. Each morning about eight 30, we're gonna have a quick live lesson where we talk about different things related to this. You can ask questions in that group, get a little bit of help, and then, because I want you to be able to do this and I wanna help you and guide you. A simple SEO content will have a cohort kicking off that next week, so you will get a chance to get started at the same time as other students. We're gonna have a kickoff call. I'm gonna do a special keyword research. Um, workshop with the students. I'm gonna do a special bonus workshop on how to make sure you're set up for lead tracking, lead conversion, and then I'm also going to do a special bonus workshop on content for your blog. So you're gonna get the program, you're gonna get the guidance, the calls, all of that for six months, but you're also going to get those four bonus kickoffs. Four bonus calls. Now, my current students, if you're hearing this, you can join those two. Don't worry. I'm gonna explain all about that. You don't have to pay more. You've already paid all of that. Okay? Current students, or those who are alumni who have extended and are able to stay in the group, you guys are covered as well. Okay? I am. I don't believe in that whole, I have this new thing here, and you have to pay more. I don't like that. That makes me really mad when I'm in a group and they do that. So as long as you are within your six month period for simple SEO content, you've got that. If you need to renew, you renew. You know how to do that. If you don't, email me and I'll get you the link. Alright, so let's jump in right now. Now that we've talked about that and established, SEO is definitely not dead. It definitely is not too late. It actually is still working really, really well to the point that I'm actually going to teach you all about it in a five day workshop in, uh. Two weeks. Yeah. And today's March 11th. So in two weeks my friend. Alright, so what I want you to understand is that SEO is not dead. Kinda like I alluded to at the beginning. Every time there's a major change to the algorithm, every time there's something that changes, somebody comes out and says, SEO is dead. SEO is not dead. It has not disappeared. It is not disappearing. Sorry, guys. Still fighting that cold. So what we're gonna see is that SEO as a strategy adapts things change, search engine algorithms change. New things come out like AI based search. As long as people are searching for information online, there will be a need for search engine optimization. I don't care what you call it. You can call it SEO. You can call it answer engine optimization, A-I-S-E-O-G-E-O. It's all pretty much the same thing, as long as people want information from an online world, an online source, their phone, their internet browser, their home assistant SEO will be here. Because what it is is about getting our information so it's easier for those search engines to understand it because when they understand it, they're more likely to share it with people. That really is all it amounts to. So as long as people are searching, there will continue to be information, any need for SEO. So the next thing I wanna talk about is like how AI. Changes. SEO, it really, I don't like that they're trying to rebrand it with a new acronym. It's just SEO 2.0, or just the next iteration of it. Over the years, SEO has changed many times. The algorithms have gotten better and better. When I started in the industry, back in like 20. 10 was probably no. Oh gosh. I started earlier in that 2008 was probably the first time. Oh 7 0 8 was probably the first time that I actually worked on anything that was specific for SEO and some of the tactics that we did back then, we still do today. Things like writing a title tag, writing a meta description, choosing a key word, creating content. Some of the things that we did back then we definitely wouldn't do at all. Ever because we saw things like. There used to be a recommendation to do what they call cloaking white text on a white background so that you could have a beautiful graphic heavy website and still birds for the search engines, but not actually have them show up. We wouldn't wanna clutter the page with the words that would be a bad thing. Well, that breaks the rules. That's not something we do today. We did it a long time ago. Um, back in that era. We also would stuff all the keywords, tons and tons of keywords, or we would build links from really bad spammy websites and just have like these link farms and build them. And you could. Rank a website at the top of Google just by getting more links than anyone else. Those are not things that we do anymore. Now, sometimes you'll still see people recommending those things, but they will get you in trouble each time. An algorithm update came out to address one of those things people declared. SEO was dead. When we came out in about 2012, Panda and Penguin came out. So Google attacked us with black and white animals about 15 years ago now, and one was designed to really address the quality of content on websites. The other was designed to address the quality of the backlinks to the websites. At each time people declared, SEO was dead. You couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. We can't possibly write good quality content. Right. Anybody who's ever tried to write a blog post, we couldn't possibly do that. Yes, you can. And you can write a good blog post and you can do that. Same thing with links. Oh, we can't possibly do this if we can't buy links. Yeah, you can. 'cause here we are 15 years later. Focused on earning links and creating great content. So when people are telling you SEO is dead, SEO, it's not Okay. The other thing I want you to understand is just that evolution, like I talked about, we've changed and changed and changed. Today. It's about finding answers more so than finding information to search. So in traditional SEO, it's all about. Ranking on Google and getting our website to show up and bringing people to our site where they can find the information they're looking for. Today, it's more about having the right answer. So the way that AI-based search works is people are searching for specific information. They're searching for answers. They need help. Our websites have that information. It's more likely to match and pop and show up either in the AI overviews, AI mode, in chat, JPT, perplexity, et cetera. So it's not that we're not doing SEO, we're just. Doing it slightly differently. It's the latest version. And you know what? My friends, it's gonna change again in a few years because every time something changes, people adjust, some people try to cheat the system. There is now a, an AI spam update that wiped out most of the low quality content that was written by AI in the early days because when AI first came out a couple years ago. People were like, Ooh, we can create a ton of content for our websites. We will rank really fast, we'll get a lot of traffic, and it worked for a very brief period of time. I never recommended that strategy because having been in the business long enough, I knew that that would get you into trouble because it did not follow Google's core principles of be helpful to the customer, like provide value. So everything is gonna keep changing. What you wanna do is stay focused on. Building great content. Stay focused on your ideal customer. Earn links to your website, build your authority, answer questions that people are searching for. That's gonna be. Um, especially important for AI based search. You don't need to start over. You don't need to chase trends. You don't need to do any of it. It's just keep focused on what we do. I'll be honest, I have used the same core foundation and the same core strategy for 15 years through panda, through penguin, through helpful content. Through the AI spam bot all the way through today. I have used the exact strategy. Honestly, it's probably. Almost 20 years now because we're creating the same type good content that we were creating back in 2008 when I was working on a website, um, for one of my early employers. We're doing the same things today that we were back then, and it's 2026, so just know. It's not too late. You haven't missed the opportunity, and this is worth investing in because this is going to continue to be important and continue to matter. If you want to be visible online, you need to do this and you need to make sure that you are focusing on Google and AI based search, both because we are seeing a dip in traffic for websites because so many of the queries are being answered in the AI overviews AI mode. Within chat, GPT. What that means is we need to be visible in both places because your website is likely going to get less traffic even if we've optimized it, and that's okay. We want to show up in multiple places. The way we look at that and determine is what we're doing working is by looking at our reporting. Are we getting traffic from Google? Are we getting direct traffic? Because direct traffic is people who already know our website and they know our website because we've been building our brand. Are we getting search traffic or organic traffic that is traffic coming in from searches? Are we getting referral traffic specifically from chat GPT and perplexity? Because then that tells us we are showing up in those. Search engines. We also wanna think about are we building leads? Like are we getting leads? So in the survey that I did recently with my readers. What I learned, it was interesting because I did have people leave email addresses if they wanted to. It was not a requirement, but it helped me to go through and analyze, and I was able to quickly spot patterns. My students were doing a great job of getting traffic. They were making more money, their businesses were growing. Those who are just on the email list who have not yet invested and worked with me, their number one concern. For their business was that they were creating content that nobody was finding. They were trying to do SEO on their own, but it's not working. Whereas for my students, they're at the point now. They've got the traffic. They're working on converting that traffic into leads and sales. So there's a real breakdown there if you wanna get out of that frustration of creating content that nobody finds. Join me in the program. Sign up for those trainings the week of the 23rd. Join the popup group. I'm gonna explain a lot of this, but plan on joining me in simple SEO content. Be part of this next cohort so that you really can work with me and learn how to do this because it is not too late. It actually is the perfect time to get started if you've not started yet, and if you've been trying to do this on your own and you're still there thinking, I'm not sure if it's working or not. It's not okay. I don't say that to be mean. If your SEO was done right and was working, you would know it because you would have enough leads coming in that you wouldn't be worried about generating more leads. You'd be full, you'd be booked. You wouldn't need more leads. If it was working the right way and you were getting enough leads to keep yourself busy, you wouldn't be worried about it. So if you don't have a steady stream of leads, you're not getting them. Daily, weekly, monthly, like they're not coming in on a regular basis. You've got work to do and I can help you to figure out what's not working and what to do so that it works better. Alright, that's it for today. I will see you back here next week, and I do really, truly hope to see you in our training class the week of the 23rd. Again, go to et marketing.com/freebies and get signed up and I will see you there and make sure you join the pop-up group. I don't remember what I'm calling it right now. So it's just the pop-up group. I think it is the lead generation challenge, something to that effect. Um, but get signed up and I'll see you in there and we'll have our quick Facebook Lives each morning that week where you can learn a little bit more. Alright, I'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.