AI SEO Explained Why Updating Content Beats Publishing More | Jen Cornwell

SEO is changing faster than ever.

AI search, conversational queries, and large language models (LLMs) are transforming how people discover and evaluate businesses online.

In this episode of The Website Growth Show, Rana Shahbaz sits down with SEO expert Jen Cornwell to break down what AI SEO really means—and what businesses must do to stay visible.

Jen shares why traditional keyword-based SEO is evolving into persona- and topic-driven strategies, and why understanding your customer journey is now more important than rankings alone.

They also dive into one of the biggest shifts in content strategy:
 Instead of publishing more content, businesses should focus on improving what already exists—making it clearer, more structured, and genuinely useful.

You’ll also learn how AI search platforms evaluate websites, what metrics actually matter today, and why brand mentions, structured content, and clarity are becoming more valuable than backlinks.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  What AI SEO is and how it differs from traditional SEO 
•  Why persona-based search is replacing keyword-first thinking 
•  Why updating existing content outperforms publishing new posts 
•  How FAQs and structured content boost AI visibility 
•  Why brand mentions matter more than backlinks 
•  How platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and reviews influence AI search 
•  How quickly AI SEO results can show compared to traditional SEO 
•  What KPIs matter now (including visibility and citations) 
•  How to start optimizing your website for AI-driven search 

Key Takeaway:

SEO isn’t disappearing—it’s evolving.

Businesses that adapt their content, structure, and strategy early will gain visibility faster in AI-powered search.

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•  Website growth strategy 
•  SEO and AI search 
•  Conversion optimization 
•  Content strategies that drive real business results 

 #AISEO #WebsiteGrowth #SEO2026 #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing #GrowthShow #SearchEvolution 

Transcript

Rana Shahbaz 0:00

How important are the links in AISU?

Jen Cornwell 0:02

Yeah, that's been super interesting. So in AI search, we have seen much less value in the link itself because um I use a golf bag example pretty often. If you sold golf bags, um, you were probably competing for golf bags as a term and maybe a couple variations of it. Now someone goes into AI mode, ChatGPT, they're gonna put in, I need a golf bag. I am a consumer, or well, they won't say I'm a consumer, right? But they'll say, I'm a seasoned golfer, uh, I golf every weekend, I'm interested in spending X amount of dollars, investing in this hobby, and that will get very different results than the same person putting in, I want to buy a golf bag.

Rana Shahbaz 0:40

What are the couple of uh one or two mistakes you see uh businesses making when it comes to AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 0:46

Um, I won't call it a mistake, but I do think there's a lot of misinformation that exists right now. LLM's TXT, no proof that they do anything. So yeah, you can go do it. Might not do anything.

Rana Shahbaz 0:57

For those uh people who are worried about uh zero clicks uh and uh these AI overviews, what would you say still uh SEO is still the good investment for business for growth? Welcome to the Website Growth Show, brought to you by WP Minds. I'm your host, Rana Shadaz. On this show, we speak with business owners, agency leaders, and marketers to learn what's working to improve their websites and grow their businesses. Most businesses think search changes when algorithms change. That is the only half the story. Search really changes when people change how they ask questions. Today's guest understands that shift better than most. Jen Cornwell has spent more than a decade in SEO, working at the intersection of strategy, consumer behavior, and technology. She did not start as a technical SEO. She came from advertising and psychology, which is why her work focuses less on tricks and more on how people actually think, search, and decide. In this conversation, Jen explains why AI Search is not about abandoning SEO, but about evolving it. Why keywords alone no longer tell the full story and why the future belongs to brands that understand personas, intent and clarity, not just rankings. If your website feels visible but not effective, this episode will help you rethink what it really means to show up in search today. Jen, welcome to the website growth show.

Jen Cornwell 2:13

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Rana Shahbaz 2:15

Amazing. And uh I'm really excited to you know learn from you how businesses can make their website their number one business growth tool. Before we get into the hot topic AI SEO, can we start with uh your why? Why are you doing SEO and what keeps you going for the last 10 years?

Jen Cornwell 2:32

I fell into SEO. I think that's one of my favorite interview questions to ask any SEO is how did you get into it? Because a lot of the time it is like, I had a boss who asked me how to make this thing work. Mine's a little different. I actually went to grad school and to get my master's in advertising at Syracuse. Left there thinking I wanted to do account management strategy, wasn't getting a job, and took a actually a part-time paid internship at a local SEO, like proprietary agency working with small businesses. And that is really where I learned the foundations. But over the years, I have realized that SEO is this sort of amalgamation of creative strategy, creative problem solving, meeting people and user behavior, a lot of like consumer insights. And so that's been really interesting for me, getting to navigate the different platforms. This evolution into AI search and understanding LLMs has been really exciting. But prior to that, it was the algorithm updates and how do these platforms start to try to better serve users and then understanding what the user problem is and then figuring out where they meet in the middle with brands, which is true for all marketing. But I think it's a really unique place to be in search, especially organic, because we are the catch-all for most other marketing channels. So we get a lot of that insight. We get a lot of know a lot about the consumers and the customers and have to understand some of the psychology behind how they they operate. So that has always been really interesting to me. And yeah, this move into like AI search space, definitely, definitely really, really interesting time right now to be in SEO.

Rana Shahbaz 4:15

So amazing. So what is AI SEO? What is the main difference between the traditional SEO and AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 4:22

Yeah. Well, okay, well, we call it AI SEO. A lot of people call it a lot of things, right? There's a lot of conversation in the industry about which acronym we're gonna adopt. But the way we think about it is there's a lot of overlap in traditional SEO tactics, what works for traditional SEO and what works well for AI search. What we know is there are things that the LLMs weight more heavily from a tactical perspective, that they care about more, different structures. FAQs were always maybe a part of your content strategy, but now we know they're a little bit more relevant. Having a specific structure of question-answer as an example, structured data, schema markup, always a part of your strategy, maybe further down on the list, a different place in the roadmap, where with an AI search strategy, you're really thinking about what are those, um, what is an AI-led strategy, is how we're talking to clients about it. So still a lot of value for your traditional organic typically and the uh interventions you take for AI search. But I'd say that's the big difference. The other thing, a little less tactically, is the shift in consumer behavior. So I think AI search and this move to conversational search are sort of being used interchangeably. Um, and conversational search, you know, not no longer a three-word query or a two-word query. It's expanded. Bob telling you his life story so that he can pick the best golf bag or whatever problem he's trying to solve. There's just so much more conversational context with the way the platforms have developed. So I think that's a really interesting thing for brands to start to think about too, because it is less tactical, less technical, and more about thinking about like what is your consumer search journeys look like in an AI search world. So those are the two big things we're really thinking about as far as differences.

Rana Shahbaz 6:07

Amazing. And uh why brands need to pay attention to AI search at this time?

Jen Cornwell 6:12

Well, right now, AI search is additive to the search journey. So what we're seeing, well, and what a lot of studies have shown is that someone's going into Google, they're maybe doing some searching, or then they're going into ChatGPT or in AI mode, you know, insert chatbot here. But then they're still coming back into a traditional search engine to do some more of their own research. So I think in this moment, users are adjusting, adapting, adapting. And that is one of the biggest questions we get from brands is what is adoption like? How much do I need to worry about this? I'd say if you're only focused on today, December, 2026, whatever it is, sure, that's not where all of your user base is. But with the way all of these platforms are rolling out their features, we know Google still has not 100%, but a really large portion of the market share for search. They are rolling those AI features out for your customers. And so they will start to get more adopted. They will start to understand how to use them better differently in navigating a search journey, and it will be pushed upon them at some point. So I think right now it's thinking about future proofing. Um, and then thinking about where your audience is. I think for different industries, we don't see as much impact from AI search in like the local space, multi-location businesses, uh, general foot traffic, those near me searches. Um, those are probably still happening in a traditional search engine and a lot of traditional things really still make a big impact. But SaaS, uh more like lead gen, B2B, those categories where maybe they're already using AI or Chat GPT in their day-to-day work. So they have a propensity to be more likely to be in the platforms, then maybe yeah, it's more of a priority. So I think really understanding where your audience is right now, but also knowing the direction of the platforms. Because we are kind of caught up in the platform wars of all of these different models, trying to figure out what their business model is, how they're gonna make money, all the secrets they want to keep from each other that they will also keep from marketers. And I think that, you know, it's a hard time to navigate SEO and be concerned about something you don't have real data for. But at the same time, we know that that's the direction of search behavior. So important to prepare.

Rana Shahbaz 8:20

Got it. So we know the importance of the AI SEO and the businesses and brands should pay attention to uh AI SEO at the moment. So on a traditional search, normally the starting point was the keyword research. So what is the starting point of AI SEO if businesses are looking to incorporate AI SEO in in their marketing strategy?

Jen Cornwell 8:40

Yeah, it's a little different, right? Because um, I use a golf bag example pretty often. If you sold golf bags, you were probably competing for golf bags as a term and maybe a couple of variations of it. Now someone goes into AI mode, ChatGPT, they're gonna put in, I need a golf bag. I am a consumer, or well, they won't say I'm a consumer, right? But they'll say, I'm a seasoned golfer, uh, I golf every weekend, I'm interested in spending X amount of dollars, investing in this hobby. And that will get very different results than the same person putting in, I want to buy a golf bag for my father-in-law. This is a gift. He is 70 plus. This is a hobby for him. Those are two different uh persona ultimately, right? Two different people who are looking to solve different user needs, um, whether it's cost or or whatever is relevant to the categories. Um, taking one step back out of keyword research, because typical keyword research, you're gonna just see a lot of overlap category to category. What is the persona user journey? I think is really uh the most important place to start now, especially because we are not getting real user behavior data from these platforms. We don't really have, we don't know, there's no search console equivalent for Chat GPT or AI mode ultimately. So you have to start to predict a little bit, think through like what are those questions that they ask? What are the things that are important to them? Is it a gift category, a beginner category, a cost-specific audience need? And then I think layering in also some third-party insights into where your users are. So SparkToro is great. Uh, Similar Web, I think does something similar as well, where you could see, you know, if they visited your website, what other websites were they on? I think that's a real thing that's really thrown people off in this like AI search world is that even before this, search was getting very fragmented with the addition of social search and YouTube, right, as a platform, Reddit becoming much more prevalent in a place where really people started their research journeys. So understanding where your audience is so that you can figure out where your resources need to go. And yes, it is still, I think, a search engine or an AI SEO. But what part of the funnel are they in when they get there? Where, how far in the research journey are they? Are you really focused on bottom of funnel, top of funnel? It's become much more complicated. There's a lot more layers to it. But that is what gets you to now what is prompt research, right? Which is the sort of keyword research equivalent of what are those questions or topics, even going at the topic level, the things that your customer is really going to care about because you know what their search journey starts to look like.

Rana Shahbaz 11:18

Wow. This is so much to you know understand. It's it's really complicated. So you used to be in a traditional SEO. I'm not a technical SEO. Um we we build websites, I have a knowledge of, you know, basic knowledge of SEO. But what I know is we used to maybe pick keywords or keywords main categories and try to build content around that. So are we saying now that we have to build content? Content is still important in AI search. Is that right?

Jen Cornwell 11:45

Yes.

Rana Shahbaz 11:45

And instead of instead of keyword-based, we have to go on a persona-based content. Is that what are we saying?

Jen Cornwell 11:52

Yeah. Yeah. We're switching maybe keywords out for topic, right? Because with keywords, with my golf bag example, there's only one way to ask about the best golf bags in a traditional search engine. But in a chat bot, because of conversational search, there are a million ways to ask about the best golf bags, right? Because it is specific to the person. So that is where layering in personas and then thinking about topics more generally, whether it's your products or um a budget, right? Cost conscious consumer, maybe that exists for you. At Tenuity, we have quite a few clients in the beauty space. So, what are their skincare needs, right? There are different stages of life, uh, different price points. So, how do we start to consider all of that when we're thinking about what those prompts are that they will start to put into each of these platforms? How can we answer those questions for them?

Rana Shahbaz 12:40

Got it. And as you already mentioned that there is no data or actual data out there, like a keyword research equivalent or search console equivalent. So, what how how do you start to creating content around these persona? Is this just your own personal research, guesswork, or how how do you start?

Jen Cornwell 12:59

Yeah, we are using well, we're partnered with Profound right now, which is a LLM visibility monitoring tool. There are a lot of them that exist now. Profound is maybe 15 months old at this point. They're all, you know, super new, but uh really heavily relied on in the space to create the synthetic data. So the the methodology for all of the platforms is very similar. It's let's run this set of prompts against all of these models every day on a regular cadence, average out all of those responses and then extract insights from those. So what we're looking at is when we put in a topic, right, like a cost-based set of prompts or product-based, where are the gaps? Is our brand getting included? I think KPIs have really shifted, right, for AI search. We haven't even talked about zero click in this conversation yet, but attribution is really difficult for organic now. So thinking about, you know, just is your answer included or not? Are you being cited? Are you getting a link within your category? What are the factors and what we're calling this topic ecosystem? How do you start to influence your visibility inside of a platform? What does visibility even mean for some of these platforms? So we are using the tool to start to give us some directionals on topics that we maybe have more or less visibility for. So brand characteristics or brand discovery and exploring, looking at some comparative terms as well, right? A lot of people do that inside these platforms, brand versus brand, uh, and trying to really just understand where does it extract those insights from? Are they factually accurate? Do we have control over the sources that it's referencing the information from to try to adjust or shift the narrative? But yeah, it's a lot of we we don't have the same data that we used to, right? We don't have like the SEM RET or the Search Console. So it's uh they're they're really helpful for directionals, though, these different tracking tools.

Rana Shahbaz 14:58

Got it. So all this data is uh important for to build a new content. How do you manage uh existing content? Are you leaving that when you're working on an existing site, are you leaving the existing content as it is? And when you're creating new content, then you are paying attention to these, you know, uh uh AI queries and stuff, or are you uh doing a changes to the existing content as well?

Jen Cornwell 15:21

I we actually start with the existing content. I think, you know, in the SEO world, it always depends. But if you have a client who has a deep library of content, right? They already have a good amount of maybe blog content, and they have PLPs with content on them or service pages. Looking at what already exists and figuring out how do we add value to these is going to be the most beneficial versus trying to ramp up value for net new content. That said, what we have done with client is um a best listicle, which is in the industry a little bit controversial, the SEO space is, you know, whether or not that's a spammy tactic. But we tested it with a SaaS client of ours. Um, it was a brand new piece of content. Uh, it's just the best in their category. Of course, they put themselves number one because why not? But then did a comparative sort of list and citation score for them went up by like 4%. So from five to nine percent. That page saw a huge citation lift, and we saw benefit in organic search as well. So that was a net new case. So there's definitely opportunity for net new to target specifics, but we're also looking at how do we just add value. FAQs are really super simple to just go in and create better structured content for what the LLMs are looking for. So it needs to be a blend of both. Traditional search was the same. Really lean into add value to what you've got.

Rana Shahbaz 16:44

Got it. So a keyword research has changed content creation, including of FAQs and a few other optimization, how you organize the content that is changing in AI SU. How about the links? How important are the links in AI SU?

Jen Cornwell 16:59

Yeah, that's been super interesting. So in traditional space, a lot of focus on backlink quantity, volume, domain authority, which was always just kind of a made-up metric anyway. So that was always kind of directional, but that was what a lot of brands and clients were looking for in traditional space. In AI search, we have seen much less value in the link itself. So it's a lot more about just being part of the conversation. So are you being mentioned? Is someone talking about you? What is the context of that? Because the LLMs are just looking for brand mentions. They're not necessarily looking to say, oh, yeah, this one points to your website. So we're gonna trust it more or less, which was how traditional worked. So now the the other thing is sort of this expansion of off-site optimization because we're seeing influence from YouTube. We're seeing influence from Reddit, right? It's kind of like the hot topic in AI search right now. But it's a great example because it's getting pulled in there whether or not somebody links to your website. So we're seeing more sources like that. Social media playing a role here, reviews, trustpilot, some of those different review platforms, and the way they start to get integrated based on the industry and the category you're in. So it's less about the link and more about having these very targeted placements. There is a great study from Mukrak that came out probably a couple of weeks ago. On it's called Um What Are the LLMs Eating, maybe something like that. But it's a whole analysis on earned media citations and what the breakdown looks like. And it's it's really interesting. I definitely recommend it.

Rana Shahbaz 18:35

Excellent. Uh, you mentioned YouTube. So how YouTube is uh influencing AI SU?

Jen Cornwell 18:40

Yeah, YouTube, um, so YouTube is a Google-owned product, of course, right? And I think anytime Google has access to your brand through one of their tools, Google Business, Google Merchant Center, like it has all those insights about whatever. And it wants to use that in in Google search to just create better solutions for its users. So YouTube getting um included more frequently in AI overviews, in AI mode, in Gemini as well. But Google has access to the video title, description, also the transcript. Uh, ChatGPT does not have access to the video transcript inside of YouTube. So see that gets cited there much less often. But that's what that's what it's using. So we see it when we ask directly about brand sentiment. Tell me about brand plus topic. And then we will see sometimes if there's YouTube content that exists, that will get included. It's really similar to the written content that you see get cited as well, like a like a best listicle. If there's a YouTube video out there that's like the top five washing machines or best washing machines to purchase, that will get pulled in to some of the answers as well. If it's the content's really clear and it really matches what the LLMs are looking for. I think the interesting thing about YouTube is that the videos we see do well, it really is about the content clarity, less about subscriber count or views or likes, upvotes. It's not those traditional engagement metrics. It's much more focused on whether or not the content is really relevant to trying to answer the question that's being asked. So yeah, it's been, it's been very interesting to see sort of changes the uh meaning of influencer, right? Because I think influencer on YouTube, it's like, oh yeah, lots of subscribers, lots of exposure. This is much more about what is the quality of the content that's that's able to be included inside of the LLMs.

Rana Shahbaz 20:33

Wow. That's lots of opportunity for new quality content creators. So if you don't have a subscriber, so if you can produce a quality content, so there is opportunity. So that's where that's fascinating. How do you define uh AI SEO project success?

Jen Cornwell 20:48

So right now Yeah, it does depend. It does depend. It depends on the category a little bit, right? Like we see certain spaces really dominated by third-party review sites. And then other spaces where, yeah, like getting a higher citation lift because there's opportunity for branded content. That is that is one of the goals, if if we think there's the the space for it. Right now, I think for brands, it's are you included in the answers for the critical questions? We are starting to talk to our clients about agentic commerce, right? It's really relevant in the e-commerce space. But when we get to a point, and then this will be true for lead gen businesses as well, where it's agents speaking to agents and you never actually visit a website, which sounds very futuristic, but all of this has been rapidly evolving. So who knows? This might be, you know, 2027. But when you when you have that, uh, I think understanding what success starts to look like because your brand is included, knowing that that is then going to lead to a transaction eventually when that becomes an opportunity. So the first step that you could take right now is just are you in those important, relevant questions? I think the other piece we're focused on is the factual accuracy, sentiment. Little bit. What are the themes that come up about your brand? Are there, you know, old lawsuits? Those are some of the things that pop up that the brand doesn't worry about anymore because it happened 15 years ago and nobody's talking about it. But guess who's finding that article from 2005? It's ChatGPT. And it will include it when somebody asks you about something related to it, right? If it thinks it's a good source. So some of what we're doing as well is figuring out how do we start to sculpt brand sentiment, brand narrative, run other PR campaigns, maybe own more of a negative narrative just so you have control over what the conversation is. I think, you know, this evolution into a branded exercise of sorts. Like search has really evolved into what does your brand represent? What are those things that you want to represent as a brand? And is that very clear and apparent? So that's a long-winded answer to your question about KPI success, but visibility and inclusion, sentiment and citation shares are the big KPIs we're looking at.

Rana Shahbaz 22:57

Excellent. And are there tools available to measure these KPIs?

Jen Cornwell 23:01

Yeah, that's what we're what we're using Profound for. You will find startups like Profound, Grunch, Bluefish, Athena. There are a lot of them that exist. You will also see some of the legacy SEO tools that have these baked in. So SEMrush, Hrefs, Conductor, some of those tools that we've known for a long time in the SEO industry building out their own as well. So they're both there, they all run on very similar KPIs.

Rana Shahbaz 23:26

Excellent. Whatever we discussed about AI SEO so far, do you have any recent example or bus or business or brand you worked on? You did all these things and what results you achieved. Can can we share that?

Jen Cornwell 23:38

Yeah. I mean, that SaaS client, I think, is a really great example. And I think the other interesting thing about that that I'll mention that is different than traditional search is the time frame to results, to being able to measure results. So we launched the page, I don't know, we'll say on a Monday. We saw it get picked up and citation share improve and profound by Wednesday. So it was starting to get included in answers almost immediately. And then yeah, we saw the increase of for like 5% to 9% for the domain as a whole with just the um addition of that one page. And then the organic results came maybe two or three weeks later after the page had existed for a little while, but ranking in the top 10 for non-branded terms. So yeah, I mean, I think that is that's really interesting because SEO has always been like, it's a long game. And I think there are still parts of that that are the off-site piece of it, building out a better brand reputation, like that takes time, but you can start to measure things a little more instantly. Similar, we have another client who they sell out-of-home advertising and they sell within some specific markets or you know, major markets where people would be looking for billboards in city. So we launched some really specific pages with a very specific set of FAQs that we then took those questions, added them into profound, launched the pages, and saw visibility for the questions again improve in like a matter of days with the pages existing. And they're also driving organic results. So yeah, I think the timeliness has been really interesting. The question, right, for me and for our clients is like, what conversion did that lead to? And that has been the tough part is attributing some of the ROI because we don't have that attribution, but we can at least see that, hey, like this is working. This does influence visibility, and it is improving overall traffic, acquisition, exposure, visibility results. But yeah, the last the missing piece is how do we start to talk about the value of adding things like that?

Rana Shahbaz 25:42

Amazing. Uh this uh SaaS uh business uh example, what I understood is uh you launched a listicle and they were on the top of it. So how did you decide how to which listicles to publish?

Jen Cornwell 25:54

This one, well, we just did a test. And I will say, I will give credit to the client because they're they're very, very engaged. They really wanted to try and test some things. And we said, well, we don't know, but okay, we'll try it. So um I think there are ways that brands can get creative about how they include competitor comparisons on their own website. But when you put yourself at the top and you have that piece of content, you at least get the chance to be included in the narrative or control a little bit of it. So I'm not a hundred per, I think it was a general, you know, what their general category is with what we started with, just best application. But that I think, how do you start to expand and extend that? Do you look at best application for industry or best application for cost, some of those persona variations that might cover some of those other opportunities that are more specific that people are asking for? Um, that would be probably like a phase two that I would look at and recommend.

Rana Shahbaz 26:49

Got it. And on the sec other example, you mentioned FAQs. So did you add FAQs to the uh existing page or you launched a new page with FAQs?

Jen Cornwell 26:58

We launched some new pages that were specifically optimized for billboards in city, um, or and use some traditional organic optimization sort of methods, right? Which works well for AI search too, but clear headers, uh clear, concise paragraphs that follow that. And then really the question-answer was kind of a test of okay, can we one-to-one match measurement and what we know is 100% for certain included on the page? So, yes, it was a combination of things, but that was all we did. Launch them onto the website, right? There's no linking other than internal, no backlink building there. It was really just uh fresh content that was very specifically optimized.

Rana Shahbaz 27:38

Amazing. And uh for those businesses who are looking to do get into AI SEO, what is your uh best advice? What is the first starting point they should take to optimize their website for AI?

Jen Cornwell 27:51

I have been talking to brands about it in phases, right? If you have limited bandwidth and resource constraints, phase one is what are your own entities that you have control over? So website number one, are you technically sound? Is the website crawlable? Um, are you indexable? Can it access all of your content? I say it, LLMs, the crawlers themselves. Um I think that's really important. So having great foundations to be built, build this content on, because you can build all the content in the world, but if the crawlers can't get to it, it's kind of a moot point. Um but then the content is the second piece. What is the content that you have? What can you add to it? Um, understand the structures LLMs are looking for. They will say, I'll just say, like more generally, it's a little bit old school. They like HTML tables and bullet lists and uh readability. Things you would do for your user for readability really fall into the LLM structure. Um, so how do you go and look at the content that you already have and maybe retrofit it for some of those structure needs? I think that is the easiest, lowest hanging fruit because you have the most control over those things. Um, and then extending into sort of off-site optimization. What are your profiles, like your G2? Does that accurately represent your business, your YouTube page you have control over? And then the third piece is starting to really think about affiliate marketing, those digital PR, maybe more kind of traditional guest blog opportunity, things that require a little bit more uh research, outreach, Reddit, right? I have a lot of brands who are like, oh, should we be in Reddit? I'm like, ugh, I mean, yeah, if it makes sense, but also it's I would not put that at the number one thing on your list, right? You have so much more control over a lot of other things that have more influence.

Rana Shahbaz 29:29

Reddit is a really hot topic nowadays for promotion. So when you say brand should be on Reddit, so what should they be doing on Reddit?

Jen Cornwell 29:37

Yeah, I minimum um listening, right? I think minimum is do you own your subreddit? Does a subreddit exist for you? And then the other piece is what are people saying about your brand on Reddit? So I believe with Reddit Pro, you can get some of those insights, some trend insights into your brand. Um, but that's also something we could see with with profound, not to plug profound again, but we can get into what are the subreddits that are being cited for some of these conversations. And how often are they being cited? Which topics are they being associated with? So starting to understand what the conversations are, because I think the reason brands are scared of Reddit is very valid. It's a very organic space, and there's a lot, there's an an an anomity, not anomaly. Anonymousity. Yeah, right. People, people are putting their real name out there. So when they put out their real opinion, you know, they it's different. They just have that sort of like protectedness of being able to really voice true opinions about a brand, which includes a brand going in being very inauthentic in the space and saying, hey, yeah, this is some marketing BS that you're trying to put in this platform. So I think for brands, like starting just with, okay, what does it look like to start to play in this space? What is our community here? Do we even have a community here? I think that most in most points, most industries do, but there are definitely ones that are stronger than others. I do not work on this client. We have not worked on this client, but I at the Loops brand, their social media manager I chatted with a couple months ago. And that Reddit is a space they've invested a lot in over the last couple of years. And you said they have some real like brand ambassadors there, right? People who come in and loops is earplugs, right? I don't know, they're real passionate about the earplugs and they want to come and talk about earplugs. And so they've built these relationships with their customer there and they're able to reach out to them to send new product to or talk to them about different features that they're adding, things, things that really get them bought into the brand itself. But that is where I'm sending people. If you want to go see a really great Reddit community, go check out Loop's headphones, um, doing it organically.

Rana Shahbaz 31:42

Excellent. Uh while discussing a content piece and the controlling your website in AI SEO, uh, in a traditional SEO, publishing content, regular content, and the refreshing your existing content was the quite, quite important. How does it work out in an AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 31:59

I think that's still true. One is the value add piece that I mentioned earlier. If your content's not working for your customer, um, if it's not answering a question for LLMs, probably that is an easy place to start. And yeah, adding value, refreshing. The other piece of it events, so the freshness of your content. There's been a lot of studies that show that LLMs really prefer more recent content. And I've seen that with um press releases specifically. I think it's true for your own website too. I think it's important to keep things fresh, updated, additional like that as well. But um, we had a client who uh did a study, a marriage study, and published their press release on a Monday morning. And the press release was live in a non-branded AI overview by Monday afternoon. And it was so fast. Um and they had published a blog on Sunday, right, with a write-up of that study that was ranking, I think, position two or three for the same term by Tuesday or Wednesday. So um they're still there. This was at the beginning of 2025. They still show up for that term, but at the same time, these other companies have come out and really similar studies, right? Other players in the space. They're holding on to some of their rankings, but starting to lose a little bit of it because there are more relevant, fresh content that's coming out in the meantime. Well, uh, I think, you know, going into 2026, that was part of the advantage we saw. We were the first ones to publish the study in 2025. Um, and that is what LLMs are really looking for is who is giving me the freshest, most relevant, um, data backed is another piece of it information. So I know this is a great recommendation for um the user.

Rana Shahbaz 33:33

Yeah. Uh well, freshness is good, but for most businesses, creating content regularly is a big challenge. So what what is the sweet spot here? So do they produce content regularly, on a daily basis, weekly basis, or it depends again.

Jen Cornwell 33:50

Um it does depend a little bit, but I think it's I think thinking about content is not always topical, right? If you have topical content, then yeah, do it as often as you need to. If you're a search engine land or publisher, then yeah, absolutely. You gotta have a regular good cadence of content. If that is less relevant to your industry, I think figuring out what does a monthly roadmap look like, because not every business is resource constrained, whether that's time or money. So doing the analysis to say, okay, these are the really the five important pages that we wanna keep updated. They drive the most conversions or the most visibility, whatever your business goals are. So these always need to be a part of our content strategy in some way. And then these other pages are ones that we're gonna start to slot in every month as well, um, just for regular, regular refresh cadence and updates. I say a good balance of refresh and net new is like 70-30. 70% of your resources should be on updating content you have, and then 30% is roughly on on net new content and new content development.

Rana Shahbaz 34:55

Yeah, this is this is a very important point for most businesses to learn that if you have existing content, so more resources should go on onto that instead of just keep pumping the new new content. So this is very, I think that's very important. Amazing. What is the one uh one unusual habit or hack that really helped you as a as an SEO or now AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 35:18

Man, I spent a lot of time this year understanding how LLMs work. I think that has been the most helpful thing for me as a marketer. I don't know if I would call it a hack, but um kind of rolled out rapidly. AI has been around for a long time, but all of a sudden we're introduced to chatbots and understanding how they're getting this information and what works and what doesn't, and what does it source from? And so just getting down to the logistics of how do these models operate. And I'm no expert, but I do, I do have a decent understanding of it now. So I spent a lot of time trying to just really understand that to understand what optimizations need to look like. And I will say I relied on AI to do a lot of that. Uh, been using Gemini, a notebook LM, also really great. Notebook book LM, if not familiar with it, is um you can create a content library for yourself, and then um it will create a podcast for you. It will create an article write-up, it'll do all these things so you can basically better understand a concept. So a lot of research. I will also shout out LinkedIn as a source. I think LinkedIn has really transformed with maybe this migration off of Twitter for some people, but uh definitely in the SEO industry, there are so many good people doing really interesting studies and thought leadership inside of LinkedIn. So it's kind of a fire hose of information. But I think right now it's really important for people to like learn and understand how these things work and how they're changing because it's really easy to believe someone like me and all the things I say and trust them, right? Like it's easy to read these like hot topics and hot takes, but having the context for who your brand is and how it works has been grounding for everything.

Rana Shahbaz 36:59

Amazing. What are the couple of uh one or two mistakes people are you see uh businesses making when it comes to AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 37:07

I won't call it a mistake, but I do think there's a lot of misinformation that exists right now. LLM's TXT, no proof that they do anything. So yeah, you can go do it. Might not do anything, right? I think there are a lot of things like that in AI search right now. The other one that's been talked about quite a bit is schema, structured data. Do you need it or not? You do. It is important. Um, it is relevant, even if it doesn't get used exactly the way we think it does. And then the other pieces, these like microsites, or I'm sorry, not microsites, but these secondary markdown sites that people are starting to talk about. How do I create this website that's just for LLMs? There is also no proof that those do anything at this point. So because AI searches such a lawless land, I think there's a lot of room for trying and testing, which I think is important, but also a lot of room for misinformation too, because of that. So I think really look at what's gonna move the needle. Don't chase the shiny object. That's true for Reddit, too. Reddit's really important in some spaces and really not that important in other verticals. So just because everyone's talking about it doesn't mean it's gonna have a huge impact or mean a lot for your business.

Rana Shahbaz 38:19

Amazing advice. Jen, I think it's been very helpful. I think I learned so much about AI SEO, and I think it will be uh really helpful for many other who will listen to or watch this uh this podcast. Last question normally I ask uh guests that on this AI SEO topic, was there any question which I should have asked you, which I haven't?

Jen Cornwell 38:39

Oh I don't think so. I do think we could talk more about attribution and measurement, right? How do you start to the organic channel for a lot of brands is declining? Um, and it's not necessarily because you're not showing up. It's just you don't get that click opportunity the way you used to. So whether that's in a chat bot or or otherwise, um, so I think really think about the shift in what the organic channel metrics need to mean. That is um a big conversation for brands, especially at the C level. There's a lot of education that needs to happen right now with the way search behavior is changing, that and your cross channel. So paid ads are not, they're starting to show up in AI mode, but that that is sort of the next evolution is how do these organic conversations influence the paid ads that will start to show up in these spaces? Starting to think about what holistic search experience looks like. Are your channels siloed or is your SEO team able to integrate with these different platforms or the different channel owners that you have? Those would be the two things. A lot of measurement and cross-channel opportunity moving into AI search.

Rana Shahbaz 39:47

Brilliant. And for those uh people who are worried about uh zero clicks uh and uh these AI overviews, what would you say is still uh SEO is still the good investment for business for growth?

Jen Cornwell 39:59

SEO is still the reason why you will show up in those platforms. The LLMs, they don't know anything, actually, right? They really have a very limited knowledge of things and they need to go find resources to inform them. So you, your content, your brand's content, all of that is still really critical and important. I think the difference is your expectations for certain types of content, uh, top of funnel that is much more likely to get an AI overview. It's more research-based, informational. The LLM's probably gonna do a pretty good job of creating an answer for someone. And so you may not get the click for that anymore. But if it's an important part of another part of your user journey, a place where you send people internally, um, it still is critical. So I think we got to step away from what the old KPIs were of clicks and impressions and conversions directly attributed to organic and start to understand how the methods are changing and how that shifts your KPIs.

Rana Shahbaz 40:59

Brilliant, Jen. Once again, thank you so much for your you know brilliant advice advice and insights on AI SEO. Where people can connect with you and uh how do you help uh businesses with AI SEO?

Jen Cornwell 41:12

Yeah, I am on LinkedIn, that is my best platform. I'm just as Jen Cornwell. Um, and I work at Tenuity. Uh we service a variety of business verticals and types. So uh you can hit me up on LinkedIn and I'll I also like to yap about AI SEO, so I'll probably answer a question or two if you have it.

Rana Shahbaz 41:30

Amazing. Thank you very much, Jen, for your uh time today.

Jen Cornwell 41:34

Thank you.

Rana Shahbaz 41:40

That's it for this episode of the website growth show. If you find it helpful, please consider subscribing. Until next time, keep growing.