401 - AI SEO (for Web Designers) with Michelle Bourbonniere

Today we have a guest host for the podcast, my persona SEO Guru and Copy Strategist Michelle Bourbonniere who’s sharing what you need to know about the latest with AI SEO.

Specifically, five things that are changing, and five things that are staying in regard to “on and off-site SEO.”

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Chapters

• 1:43 Special Edition & Guest Host
• 3:33 Why AI Search Matters Now
• 5:24 What’s the Same in SEO
• 10:47 Google’s Edge and User Defaults
• 14:29 Websites Still Drive Conversions
• 16:17 What’s Different in AI Search
• 18:36 Shifting Search Behavior
• 21:56 Freeform, Personalized Results
• 24:14 Real Competition Beyond Google
• 27:03 Less Visibility, Less Control
• 32:11 The Three R’s for Small Sites

Transcript

Josh Hall: 0:52

Hello, my friend. It's great to have you here for a special edition episode of the Web Design Business Podcast. And this one, we're actually bringing on a guest host. This is my personal SEO, copywriting, and keyword specialist expert guru, Michelle Bourbonnier, who is gonna be sharing with you what you need to know right now as a web designer in regards to AI and SEO and how things are changing, but also as you find out, how a lot of things are actually staying the same. So that's what we're gonna dive into in this one. One reason we're bringing on Michelle as a guest host is as you may or may not have heard, my daughter is having a major surgery at the time of this episode coming out this week. So we are planning on a two to three day hospital stay, and then we're gonna have a very intensive recovery period when we get home. So I'm gonna be stepping back for two to three weeks here with a lot of the content. So we will be getting back to our normal interviews here very shortly on the podcast. But Michelle was kind enough and gracious enough to fill in for me this week to share with you a very, very timely talk here about AI and SEO. This is actually based off a talk that she did inside of our community, Web Designer Pro here recently. Just last month, she did a special guest training that went really deep into AI and SEO. So if you like this, I think you're really gonna enjoy the next level of where AI is in SEO right now. So it's a great time to jump into Web Designer Pro, join the community, get access to that training. And before I bring on Michelle, make sure to go to the show notes for this episode at joshhall.co slash 401. The link will be below as well because Michelle has a free AI and SEO cheat sheet for you. Completely free that you can sign up for. It'll be at the show notes below. So make sure you check that out and nab that up. And without further ado, here's Michelle to fill us in as web designers on what we need to know about AI and SEO.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love.

Michelle Bourbonniere: 2:54

I am a curious person. And about a year ago, I started having my SEO clients come to me saying, you wouldn't believe what happened. I got my first clients through Chat GPT. Um and that to me was a big sign that the small sites that I like to work on, the small sites that I've long worked on as an SEO, have a chance in this new world of AI search. And so I needed to know more. And so I've been doing a lot of research into how AI search works. So I've read Google Patents, I've read research papers, I've read books, basically anything that I can get my hand on to really understand how generative AI answers questions. Um, the results of that research is a presentation that I recently did in Web Designer Pro on how AI search works. Um, and for this presentation, for the podcast, I wanted to go a little bit higher level and just explain to you the state of the AI field right now and sort of what is happening, and in particular, what is the same and what is different. Because I think if you've spent any time on LinkedIn, you'll see that there's a lot of people out there that are going to tell you that this is a whole new world and it's a whole new set of ways to optimize. And as somebody who's been in the industry for a while, I kind of see it differently. I see it more as an evolution of search, that the ways in which people are finding information is changing and the ways in which that information is presented is changing. But under the hood, it's quite similar. So I have a list of five ways in which the new SEO is really the same as the old SEO, and then five ways in which it is genuinely different. So let's get into it. Number one, the SEO fundamentals are actually the same. So anything that you have learned about making Google-friendly sites, anything you've done with alt tags, with great site structure, with crawlability and indexing and page speed, all of these things are just as important as they have always been. And so as a web designer, I want you to like take heart that the learning that you have done is just as important as it always has been, and that you don't need to throw that away. There's nothing like particularly new about how you make sites that doesn't serve you well in this new version of AI search. Um so the SEO fundamentals are the same. All those things, those, those things that you've long been doing to make Google-friendly sites, you need to keep doing. And SEO is still really quite important. Um, the reason why is number two, which is that chatbots use the same search index. So just by way of story, a year ago, my clients started coming to me and saying, you wouldn't believe what happened. I got my first lead through ChatGPT. Um, and of course I just needed to know more, and then I did a lot of research. Um, but what's actually happening under the hood is that these chatbots, AI overviews, chat GPT, perplexity, all of them are now using search indexes to inform their answers. Remember before when you used to not be able to ask any chat bots questions after a certain cutoff date? That doesn't apply anymore. Um, all of the chatbots are using live search results to inform their answers. And under the hood, they are actually searching much like humans do to compose those answers. So the end result looks really different, but how you get into those answers is the same way as before. It's the same way as ranking relatively well for the types of words and phrases that are important for the industry that you're working in. And so chatbots are using the search index instead of humans using the search index, but like it's the same search index. And so it's just presented differently, but under the hood, it's actually quite similar. So it's another way in which the old SEO and the new SEO are kind of on the same foundation. It's on the same foundation using literally the same search index. Number three is that Google is still the number one referrer of traffic. So I mean, forever, Google has been the website in the world that gives the most traffic to all websites. And it still is the website that gives the most traffic to websites, um, to the open web. Um, the way I actually see this current moment is that I need to keep two things true at the same time. Number one, traditional SEO is still really important. People are still clicking on ranked results in Google search. And to lose sight of that and to imagine that that's the old SEO and it doesn't matter anymore is really a missed opportunity because while things are changing, they're not changing overnight. And that old SEO, those ranked results are still quite significant. Most of the time, people are still clicking on links in Google the same way that they always have. And yet, at the same time, we need to remember and recognize that we see the writing on the wall. We know that people are changing their behaviors. And frankly, AI organized results, AI-generated answers are a really great user experience. Um, it's it's a way that people are finding information that's much more personalized and much more tailored to them. And they're finding things in Google that they've never been able to find before. And so, like, as user behavior changes, things are changing, but it doesn't happen overnight. So it's like both of those things are true right now. And so, as SEOs, as web designers, we need to sort of keep both of those things alive in our head at once. Understand that we sort of see where the future is, but also understand that like the past is not over and that we'd be silly to ignore traditional SEO at this particular moment in late 2025. Another thing that I think is really the same, and this has long been true, is that I personally think that Google still has a lot of unfair advantages. So there's a lot of ways that I think this is true, and this is really more of my opinion rather than some sort of eternal truth. Um, but Google invented the technology in 2017 that underpinned the LLM revolution. And so large language models, like the FEM, the Transformer model, they invented that. They have the expertise in-house to do this stuff. And so just to say, even though it sort of looks like at the current moment, open AI and ChatGPT is quote unquote winning, I still think that Google has quite a few advantages in this l in this race. I mean, they also have, of course, the most to lose. Another thing that they have that other um other companies don't is they have a lot of our data. They have our calendar, they have our, you know, so many people live in their Google calendars, they have access to Google documents, they have access to Gmail. And as these things get more and more personalized, Google has that context that other companies don't. And that context is what's going to make really great results. And so I think that that's another unfair advantage they have. And then finally, they just have default user behaviors. If there's one thing that we've learned, it's that changing how people do things is really hard. And that like the default is really important. And so right now, most people are going to Google to get their answers. And as long as Google more or less keeps up, they're likely to do that. I'm not saying that people aren't going to Chat GPT or perplexity for answers. They absolutely are. But that's pretty niche behavior compared to the sort of everyday person who just mostly goes to Google because that's what they've always done. So I think that they have a first, the the sort of the background of Google remains like quite strong. And so they really do still have some advantages. So one thing that is the same is that sort of Google has at least the potential to stay in the lead because they have all of this sort of a head start on other companies. And then, of course, the final thing that they have that no one else has is the search index, right? So they have um a much better way than any other company of understanding what's good on the internet, what's authoritative on the internet, what's trustworthy on the internet versus what um is spam on the internet. And as all of the search results are being powered, sorry, as all of the AI generated answers are powered by search results, the trustworthiness of the underlying sources is actually quite significant. So in the current moment, just like forever, Google has a lot of advantages. Um the last point actually has more to do with you as a web designer. The last point of what's the same is that websites are as important as ever. And I believe this so strongly. It's so easy to sort of think, oh, everything's just gonna happen inside of a chatbot now. Who even needs a website? And like I beg to differ. The truth is that the websites are still the point of conversion, right? The websites are still the place where a brand shows up and has complete control over the messaging, over the organization, over how they are presenting themselves on the internet. And even if clients are getting recommendations from Chat GPT, it's still the website that does the conversion. And if you don't have a strong website, then people are gonna bounce. And so websites are still just as important as they have always been because the sale is happening on a website or the lead is getting convinced on a website. And so these websites that you are making, like you are not out of a job because those websites are just as important as they have always been. Because at the end of the day, a lot of websites are about business online, and that business is still happening on websites. So those are all the things that are the same. But what is different? What is genuinely different about this new moment in SEO? Well, Google still is the number one referrer of traffic on the internet, but the amount of traffic that they are sending to the open web is declining. So AHREFs did a study that when an AI overview is present at the top of the search results, clicks to the open web, clicks to websites go down by 34%. That is a huge number. Um, Ren Fishkin has long called this the rise of zero-click searches, meaning people search on Google, but then they never leave Google. It's a zero-click environment. So zero-click searches are certainly going up. And so, truthfully, like all websites are losing traffic. And in particular, they are losing traffic to informational pages. So a lot of blog posts that people have written so lovingly for years are now being like rephrased and put into AI answers, put into uh AI overviews or part of chatbot conversations. And while there is often a citation, so you know, there's a link that you can click, it's not usual behavior for people to click them because they're getting the information that they need, they're getting the answers to their questions within Google or within ChatGPT. And so Google traffic is declining. And so that is something that is genuinely different about this new moment is that less traffic, less and less traffic is moving out to the open web, and more and more of the action is happening on other people's platforms, either within Google or within ChatGPT or perplexity. Another thing that's really changing, and as an SEO, this is kind of the most interesting part of it to me, is that search behavior is changing. And so, you know, a long time ago, we used to put in three or four words into the Google search box. That was the average length of a keyword of a search. And as we've come to recognize that Google and Chat GPT can answer deeper questions, can answer multi-step questions, can actually like give us personalized answers no matter how specific we get, uh search behavior is changing. And so as the machines become more advanced at finding the right information for the right person at the right moment, we're starting to get more demanding of the search engines. And we're sort of writing in more of our problems and more of our context into those prompt boxes or into that search box. And so search behavior is genuinely changing. And as people who make websites, we need to make sure that the content that we are creating is responsive to those changed intents. It's not so much that like there's been a drastic shift in what people want to find on the internet, it's more that it's now possible for them to find really specific stuff in a way that it wasn't before. So I can imagine like a 34-word prompt, which is actually the average of a prompt in ChatGPT. If you had put that into Google like five years ago, you would have gotten absolute gibberish results. Like it wouldn't have been giving you anything genuinely useful. And yet now that same prompt gives people something that's genuinely useful. And so more and more people are learning that they can do this and then they do. And so search behavior is changing, and that's actually a very big change in this new world of AI search, and something that as an SEO, we need to really pay attention to. I mean, this seems such a weird thing to dig into, but imagine how different it really is. Uh, we used to get ranked results that was, you know, one, two, three, four, position one, position two, position three, position four, with links out to websites. And now the results look completely different. And now it's much, much more personalized. Google is much more personalized than it has ever been. Um, it's conversational, right? It used to be that when you searched something, more or less you got answers, and that was the end of it. Where now, when you're in a chatbot experience, it's a conversation. Conversational search is something that is genuinely new. And then the structure of the results is also very different. So, and and really poses a lot of complexities for SEOs as we try to like actually measure and understand how things are working and what is working and what's not working. Now we have free form text results, and really we even have images and videos being embedded in these results as well. So, just to say that we've gone from a world of ranked results where it was very easy to tell if you were doing well or if you're doing badly, and now we have freeform results. We have free form text that's generated on the fly. Um, and actually, even just parsing how you're doing in that is a is a whole different world. And so the structure of what a result looks like is just completely different. That is genuinely different. Number four about what's different is that Google has competition. Um, so even though I do believe that Google has a bit of an advantage at the current moment, even if they might not look like they do right now, um, I think that the difference is that Google is really does have to compete. And so I think they're being pushed by other companies to launch AI search products kind of more quickly than they would have otherwise. Um AI overviews in AI mode are being pushed out and really being promoted within the Google search results, much more so than they maybe would have done if they didn't have competition. And they do have competition. Um, so while still, you know, Google has much more user traction than ChatGPT or perplexity, they do have real competition that's nipping at their heels. From an SEO's perspective and from a web designer's perspective, why this is significant is that we can't just do Google search tracking anymore. It's really important that we are actually paying attention to how brands that we care about are showing up in Chat GPT. How are theirs showing up in perplexity? Um, you know, in a sense, the the old world of SEO where you only had to care about Google, that was a really nice world because it was real simple. But right now, we do need to pay attention to more, more searches, more search platforms. Um, I do want to though say that doesn't mean that you need to search, you need to track everything. Um, a lot of the AI tracking tools right now are sort of trying to outdo themselves with how many different platforms they will track. But I want to encourage people to like focus on consumer behavior. At the end of the day, what really matters to us as SEOs, to web designers who are trying to get results for our clients, is that we're tracking things that matter, things that other people are seeing, things where consumers are actually there seeing the results. And so I would encourage you not to worry about what DeepSeq is saying about your brand because there's very few people right now, this moment, that are using DeepSeek to find their answers. It's not zero, but it's not worth optimizing for, at least not yet. So pay attention to real user behavior, pay attention to real consumer behavior, and track the places where people are actually, you know, a significant number of people in your audience are actually using that product to find answers. So personally, for me, what I'm paying the most attention to right now is Chat GPT, AI overviews, and AI mode. AI mode is, of course, Google's um chat GPT answer. And it's not even AI mode. I track it not just because not because it has tons of traction right now because it was just recently launched, but because it has Google behind it and you know that they're going to be pushing it within the Google search results and it will get more traction. Um, so those are, I think, are the most important ones to track right now. But keep your eyes open. And like there are, there's very much a possibility that other ones are going to get a significant amount of market share, and then you should track those two. Um, so that's number four about what is different. Google has competition, and that means that we need to be tracking more than just Google. And number five is that we have less visibility and less control. So, I mean, on some level, we've all been losing control and losing visibility into how we rank in search. Like increasingly in Google Search Console, Google gives less data about how people are arriving at our websites than ever before. Um, there's a lot of uh searches that you just don't know. You you see that somebody showed up at your website, you can see the click that it happened and that they showed up on a particular page on your site. But when you actually dig into the details, they're often not giving the keyword that led somebody there. They're called anonymized searches and they are very common. And yet, it's even worse in this particular world. In this particular world, we have almost no visibility as to like how we are showing up in AI search conversations. Um and that's because there's no, there's no equivalent to Google Search Console that's made by Open AI. ChatGPT is not giving away that information. And even Google is not separating out AI search traffic from regular traffic. So it's kind of meaningless inside of Google Search Console. Like those clicks are technically there, the ones that are coming from AI mode, but you're never gonna know that they came from AI mode. And so you don't really know how well you're doing in AI mode because it's not being tracked separately. And I don't think that they're gonna add that as much as SEOs would love it if they did. I kind of don't think that they're gonna give us that information. And so we have less visibility, and so then that imposes on us a responsibility to kind of make our own data. So, what I'm personally doing with clients is coming up with prompt lists, like actually devising custom prompt lists about the customer journey for that client and tracking that. So the truth is, is that it the the you can get that visibility, but you just have to make the data yourself and you need to track things yourself. The other thing, and I kind of shoved this into number five, it's almost a number six, is that we have less control in this new world. And I want to explain this in a in a way that's in reference to the old featured snippets. So Google used to have featured snippets at the top of the Google search results, right? This is where they gave you like a paragraph that was like a two or three sentences from a website, and then they gave a link, and then a lot of people would click through to the website to sort of read the rest of the answer. Now, as somebody who has optimized for featured snippets for a long time, there was an art to writing those featured snippets so that Google sort of thought that it was the whole answer, but that any human reading it would realize that if they really wanted the full answer, they had to click through to the website. We had a lot of control over the actual words that were showing up in the featured snippet. In this new world, Google rarely gives word for word direct quotations for the for the AI search results. So both ChatGPT, Perplexity, anything, any Google product, they've all sort of been told not to do direct quotations and instead to paraphrase. And so what this means is that we have less control over how our information is being presented in the results. Things are getting paraphrased from our websites, sometimes accurately, sometimes inaccurately. And so it's kind of important for us to be tracking how our words are being interpreted by AI answers because it's not word for word anymore. We don't have that kind of control that we used to have, where we could pretty much be sure that what we wrote on our website is actually what showed up in the search results. Now what we write on our website is being interpreted and paraphrased and then showing up in the AI search results. And that is a genuine difference. So those are the five ways in which I think that this is a new moment and things that things that you really should be paying attention to that are changing. So, what do you do about it? Most of the conversation that's happening online around AI search optimization really focuses in on enterprise level SEO. So these are like big brands with big budgets, like very much household names. And that is not the world that I live in. I like working on small sites, and you probably also are mostly working on small sites. So I wanted to end this presentation with a quick review of what I'm calling the three R's of AI optimization. Like what are the new goals for AI search, even for small brands? Like, what should small brands be doing to make sure that they're setting themselves up well in this new world? Um, so I have three R's, and the first R is brand recognition. So brand recognition is just making sure that your brand is showing up as a brand when people look for you in AI search engines. This is analogous in traditional SEO to ranking number one for your brand name. Doesn't sound like a very exciting target, but it's so, so important because when you think about it, you're gonna be at a networking event and talk to somebody about your brand name and they're gonna remember your brand name and search you later. And so it's really important that in traditional SEO you ranked number one so that people could find you when they were looking for you. In an AI search, the analogous thing is that you need to make sure that AI engines are recognizing the brand as a brand. So the way that you check this is really quite simple. You just go into an incognito window of something like ChatGPT or AI Google's AI mode, and just search something like tell me about your brand name. Insert your brand name there and see what happens. You're gonna get one of two possible results. Either you're gonna get recognition, which is really clear, says, oh, this is what I know about this brand, and it's gonna give like a nice little summary of what your brand is really about. I mean, the advanced version of brand recognition is trying to make sure that the points that it brings up when summarizing your brand, like really match your branding, your messaging, your positioning, your offers. But the basic version is just making sure that it recognizes your brand name as a brand. If brand recognition has not yet been achieved, what you're gonna find instead is that the AI is gonna kind of answer a nonsense answer, kind of trying to answer the words of the brand name as if it were a question. So if that's the case in the brand that you're working on, if you're seeing a lot of lack of brand recognition, there's just a couple things that you can do, and they're all very simple. So number one, rank number one for your brand name. Um the truth is AI Search is still built on that same search index. So the easiest way to get brand recognition is to make sure that you're ranking number one for your brand name. And the best that you can, try to own that whole search result. So, like have your LinkedIn profile, your social media profiles, your media appearances. Like ideally, you want all 10 of those results to be about your brand, and then you're gonna have some great brand recognition in AI search engines. The other thing that will really help your AI search recognition is being mentioned elsewhere on the web. So first work on all your sort of owned properties and then work on being mentioned on Reddit, going on podcasts, having mentions in the media, just showing up on the web, participating in the World Wide Web with your brand name attached is going to help the broader recognition, and you'll have a very like robust recognition of your brand in AI engines. So, number one is work on your brand recognition, measure it, measure it quarterly, make sure that the AI engines continue to recognize your brand as a brand and start working on being recognized well, like making sure that your offers are really shining through and that that brand recognition is like very positive and kind of exactly what you would want the AI engines to be saying about you. Number two is brand reputation. So obviously it's very normal behavior that somebody who's about to work with a brand is gonna search something like brand name reviews or pros and cons of product or is brand name trustworthy? These are really normal behaviors that people have always done right before they're about to work with a brand. And so this is really important things to check in AI search because the results may surprise you. Um so it used to be really easy to know if you had a good or a bad brand reputation because most of the reviews about your brand were very clearly on your own profiles. You know, every time you get a review on Google Business Profile, it sends you an email. So whether it was negative or positive, you sort of knew. In this new world of AI search, we have to go a little bit broader. Um, because AI is kind of just as likely to pull reviews from Reddit as it is to pull reviews from your branded Google Business Profile or your trust pilot reviews. Um, so it's really important to pay attention to your brand reputation outside of your own platforms because those are really important sources of like real consumer behavior for AI search engines. And really, in particular, pay attention to Reddit right at this particular moment, and this could change, but at this particular moment when somebody searches something like is brand name trustworthy in Chat GPT, halfway down the page is usually four or five references to Reddit. So pay attention to how your brand is or is not showing up in Reddit. Um, and one tool that I love for doing this, which is free, is you can set up for F5Bot. It's a free service. You can actually get a get an email every time that your brand name is mentioned on Reddit. So set them up in a filter because otherwise you're gonna get a lot of emails. Um, but by all means, kind of check in real time how your brand is being mentioned on Reddit, because that's actually a really important source for these AI search engines. What Reddit and Wikipedia are the two most cited sources, and so those are places that you definitely want to pay attention to how your brand is showing up. And then number three is the fun one. Number three is brand recommendations. So, I mean, this is how I got into this myself is that my small brands were actually getting recommended by search engines. And part of this is because of this deep level of personalization that AI search engines are really achieving. There is a way in which this new world of AI search is even more niched and even more personalized than Google ever could be. And so people are really being connected up with companies that they maybe never would have found before. And so some of the most kind of positive aspects of this new world of AI search is I've heard so many stories of people kind of finding something that they never thought existed through a chatbot. So one story that I've heard is, you know, somebody who for years and years was just looking for the perfect ergonomic keyboard for them. They knew exactly what they wanted it to look like, they knew exactly how they wanted it to work and they could never find it. And then they asked a chatbot, and lo and behold, it led them to a keyboard that they had been looking for for years. And then they bought that keyboard and they loved it. And so just to say that like there is some real potential for small brands to show up in AI search because it's so personalized. And so, one way that you can encourage a brand to recommend you at the appropriate moments to the right people is to get really niched down and get really clear on who your target audience is. Like these personas, like paying attention to your ideal client avatar, has never been so important as in this moment because finally AI chatbots are able to sort of play matchmaker at a level of detail that Google never could. And so I think that that is probably the most, the most encouraging thing for small brands in this new world of AI search is that we get rewarded for being specific. We get rewarded. Rewarded for being unique and there's a moment of matchmaking that's actually happening out there right now that is more detailed and more tailored. And that means that that AI chatbots might not send a lot of traffic to your site, but when they do, it's really good traffic. And that's just what I'm seeing with my clients is that like there it's playing a matchmaking role that I don't think anyone quite quite saw coming, but it's actually quite positive for small brands and not just for big brands. So those are my three R's of AI optimization. I think these are the goals that any small website should really be aiming for, at least in the short term and at least over the next couple years. If you work on these things, you're going to be set up well in this new world of AI search to sort of show up and show up well in AI search engines when people are sort of engaging with your brand. Now, if you enjoyed this presentation and you want more of it, I have a thing for you. So I created this free resource, which is called Cheat Sheet to Showing Up Well in AI Answers. And in this cheat sheet, I get into the five things that I think web designers just need to add to their SOPs. One thing I've always loved about working with web designers is that you guys know the foundations so, so well. You're so good at making AI-friendly sites that you know Google understands and show up really well. And like all of those foundational things that you guys have long been doing are so important and they continue to be important. But I think there's five things that you need to sort of pay attention to in this new world to add to your web design SOP. And I have put them in this cheat sheet. So if you head on over to wordsontherise.com backslash AI, you can sign up to get it. It'll get instantly sent to your mailbox. And you'll also get added to my newsletter. So I talk about AI search for small brands every week in my newsletter. Um and I'd love for you to join me there. Uh the first emails that you'll actually get are kind of a deep dive into each of those three R's of AI search, like going much deeper than I went in here about how to actually check for them and how to actually optimize for them. Um, so you sort of know what's coming, and then every week or every two weeks, depending on how much I have to say, um, I will be sending out emails. I send out emails to my list about what's happening in AI search, in particular for small brands. So thank you so much, Josh, for having me. It was a joy uh to be on this podcast and have a lovely day.