Google’s Danny Sullivan offered advice to SEOs who have clients asking for updates on what they’re going to do for AI SEO. He acknowledged it’s easier to give the advice than it is to have to actually tell clients, but he also said that advancements in content management systems drive technical SEO into the background, enabling SEOs and publishers to focus on the content.
What To Tell Clients
Danny Sullivan acknowledged that SEOs are in a tough spot with clients. He didn’t suggest specifics for how to rank better in AI search (although later in the podcast he did offer suggestions for what to do to rank better in AI search).
But he did offer suggestions for what to tell clients.
Danny explained:
“And the other thing is, and I’ve seen a number of people remark on this, is this concern that, well, I’ve been doing SEO, but now I’m getting clients or people saying to me, but I need the new stuff. I need the new stuff. And I can’t just tell them it’s the same old stuff.
So I don’t know if you feel like you need to dress it up a bit more, but I think the way you dress it up is to say, These are continuing to be the things that are going to make you successful in the long-term. I get you want the fancy new type of thing, but the history is that the fancy new type of thing doesn’t always stick around if we go off and do these particular types of things…
I’m keeping an eye on it, but right now, the best advice I can tell you when it comes to how we’re going to be successful with our AEO is that we continue on doing the stuff that we’ve been doing because that is what it’s built on.
Which is easy for me to say ’cause I don’t got someone banging on the door to say, Well, actually we do. And so we are doing that.
So that’s why, as part of the podcast, it’s just to kind of reassure that, look, just because the formats are changing didn’t mean you have to change everything that you had to do and that everything you had to shift around.”
Downside Of Prioritizing AEO/GEO For AI Search Visibility
There are many in the SEO community who are suggesting fairly spammy things to do to rank better in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, like creating listicles that recommend themselves as best whatever. Others are doing things like tweaking on keyword phrases, the kind of thing SEOs stopped doing by 2005 or 2006.
The problem with making dramatic changes to content in order to rank better in chatbots is that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Anthropic Claude’s search traffic share is a fraction of a percent for each of them, with Claude close zero and ChatGPT estimated to be 0.2% – 0.5%.
So it absolutely makes zero sense to prioritize AEO/GEO over Google and Bing search at this point because the return on the investment is close to zero. It’s a different story when it comes to Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, but the underlying ranking systems for both AI interfaces remain Google’s classic search.
Danny shared that focusing on things that are specific to AI risks complicating what should be simple.
Google’s Danny Sullivan shared:
“And in fact, that the more that you dramatically shift things around, and start doing something completely different, or the more that you start thinking I need to do two different things, the more that you may be making things far more complicated, not necessarily successful in the long term as you think they are.”
Technical SEO Is Needed Less?
John Mueller followed up by mentioning that the advanced state of content management systems today means that SEOs and publishers no longer have to spend as much time on technical SEO issues because most CMS’s have the basics of SEO handled virtually out of the box. Danny Sullivan said that this frees up SEOs and creators to focus on their content, which he insisted will be helpful for ranking in AI search surfaces.
John Mueller commented:
“I think that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things that perhaps throws SEOs off a little bit is that in the early days, there was a lot of almost like a technical transition where people initially had to do a lot of technical specific things to make their site even kind of accessible in search. And at some point nowadays, I think if you’re using a popular CMS like WordPress or Wix or any of them, basically you don’t have to worry about any of those technical details.
So it’s almost like that technical side of things is a lot less in the foreground now, and you can really focus on the content, and that’s really what users are looking for. So it’s like that, almost like a transition from technical to content side with regards to SEO.”
This echoed a previous statement from earlier in the podcast where Danny remarked on how some people have begun worrying less about SEO and focusing on content.
Danny said:
“But we really just want you to focus on your content and not really worry about this. If your content is on the web and generally accessible as most people’s content is, that’s it.
I’ve actually been heartened that I’ve seen a number of people saying things like: I don’t even want to think about this SEO stuff anymore. I’m just getting back into the joy of writing blogs.
I’m like, yes, great. That’s what we want you to do. That’s where we think you’re going to find your most success.”
Listen to Danny Sullivan’s remarks at about the 8 minute mark:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Just dance
