AI’s Disruption of SEO

Guy: [: 00:00:00

At Marketing machine.pro relevant.com. Today I'm interviewing Jade Pruitt with Hello, SEO and AI and SEO are really coming together in a big way to help all of us, uh, all of us marketers to be significantly better on, on building our sites and gaining traction within Google and other search engines. Let me tell you though, a fir a little bit about Jade.

years of [: 00:01:00

That sounds pretty cool. So, uh, uh, you'll have to tell us more about that, but, uh, and so maybe just let's get started and tell us your backstory on AI in marketing and how you won the Conductors Women in Search Award.

Jade: Oh, I was just nominated one day. I'll win it.

Guy: Oh, we'll, we'll get there

Jade: eventually. Um oh,

Guy: absolutely.

Jade: Yeah, so I've been in the field for about 10 years. Uh, if you know anything about SEO, it, it changes dramatically constantly. So everything we were doing 10 years ago, you, you couldn't do now, essentially, or it's, it's just a whole new world. But one of my biggest challenges over the past five years. Is I started, hello, SEO.

In: 2020

Um, and I finally got to quit my job in October of 2022, uh, which was a huge leap. And then of course, Chachi BT hits the scene a month later in early December, which was very scary at first. The first things we were really learning about it is that people were adapting to it faster than any other SaaS product that has ever existed.

over. I have ruined my life. [: 00:03:00

And I ended up meeting with another founder who was in an incubator program that I was in, and he shared with me that the best thing you can do is be curious. About new technology instead of ignoring it. Like his, his analogy was, don't be Kodak, which is essentially, you know, convert to, to being a digital camera, be curious about the next new thing or you're basically just gonna cease to exist.

So I took that advice and I started really digging into it and I discovered that there are hundreds of ways that AI is incredibly helpful to the work I do. The work I do now is. I wouldn't say completely reliant, but it becomes so much better because I'm able to use AI in different ways and it, it does not take away the power of my expertise.

place any of these marketing [: 00:04:00

Guy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, it's funny because I think a lot of folks are afraid that their job is gonna be replaced and, uh, and they're gonna be, you know, out on the street.

And it's, it's kind of like, uh, it's not really the AI that's, and everybody says it's not the AI that's gonna take your job. It's the, the person that can wield ai, you know, significantly better than you that might, you know, be able to, um, take your job. So tell us a little bit about, uh, hello, SEO.

Jade: Yeah, so I'm the founder of Hello, SEO.

t's going to allow Google to [: 00:05:00

We create content, we do backlink acquisitions, so we kind of. Run the gamut. And what's really fun about being a small agency, and especially being me and getting to run the small agency, is just the amount of experimentation we get to do. We're not stuck to any particular SOPs or we don't have particular boxes to check.

We can just do what's best for the clients. And oftentimes my clients know if you hang around long enough, we end up running. Interesting little tests on you, on the side with your permission, uh, and get wild results from them. So it's a lot of fun.

Guy: Oh, that is interesting. You know, it's, it is so funny when you, when you get to do experiments and then see something that you really didn't expect and go, wow, aha.

I love that. You know?

Jade: Right, exactly.

what are some of the things [: 00:06:00

Jade: That's a great question and, and I, I can only speak to myself within the SEO community, everyone's using it differently.

Everyone has different beliefs about AI and how it should be used and how it shouldn't be used. Uh, one of the first big concerns with AI was, is Google going to treat this content differently Hmm. Than content that's written by a person? And that bothered me from the beginning because I was thinking, and I shared with you, I shared this with you earlier, I used to be a content writer.

And I would be writing for like cardiologists and like these other like large websites. I was 22 years old at the time and had no idea what I was talking about. So I'm just pulling information from the internet and turning it into a new blog post. And that's exactly what AI does. It's just pulling other people's information, creating something that's new, but of course, like it's not an expert on any of these things.

pulling from what's already [: 00:07:00

Um, that's EEAT, uh, that's a, a big part of SEO. And so they do not care who has written it. If it's a robot or a person, they just matter if it's good, which I think is a pretty good way to, to approach that. Um, but that was one of the big first challenges was. Can we even use this or are we gonna get penalized and thrown out of Google and, and all of that stuff.

t seems like you can kind of [: 00:08:00

There's a lot of intelligence that still has to go through putting in, you know, the prompt and, and then adjusting the prompt and, you know, and trying this and tweaking it and et cetera, et cetera. And, and until you finally get the, you know, the final content. So there is a lot of human intelligence, even though the, uh, you know, the AI is supporting you and, and it's good that, uh, that that's taken place.

You know, one thing I was talking to, um. I was at a PR event, and, uh, these reporters were being interviewed and they said, listen, if you write and send me a pitch that's been AI generated, I'm not gonna even respond. Absolutely. And, and then like about a half an hour later, they go, well, I use AI to write all my articles.

Google is, uh, is accepting [: 00:09:00

Jade: Yes. Yes. So it's, it is accepting it, but we all know what it's like to land on a blog post or an article, and your immediate instinct is this is not written by a person.

And if you're anything like me, that immediately breaks your trust with that piece of content. I was Googling something about AI the other day, actually, and a Forbes article came up first. And I opened it and it started with like in today's fast-paced digital landscape or something. And I was like, this is ai 100%.

I'm going somewhere else.

Guy: Yeah. So

Jade: while it, it can be a very helpful tool, you have to use it in, in an appropriate way. 'cause if you're breaking trust with your readers or, you know, if you're trying to get a, a press release. Uh, you know, submitted and accepted and it doesn't work then, you know, it's, it's kind of for nothing.

rst draft you get, it always [: 00:10:00

Jade: Right. I've just been trying to make a giant list of every word I don't want it to use and see if I can work around that.

I've discovered that if you just allow it to create about 10 drafts for you and you just give it more feedback every single time, you can kind of season an AI chat, for lack of a better term, and then when you give it other prompts, it will write them better. But it's like you, you have to, you know, take the time to really train it on what you want it to sound like.

Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and that does take, uh, time and it does take, um, you know, kind of a systematic approach to it, which I think is, uh, really important. You know, if you get that kind of a series of steps to your, your prompting, then the results that you get are gonna be more appropriate and more meaningful to, to you and your audience.

ere the expertise side comes [: 00:11:00

Uh, anytime soon. But that goes for, you know, people in. Social media and branding and all the other facets of, of marketing. You can't just give it to AI if you have no understanding of, of what is good.

Guy: Yeah. And I will admit there was a learning curve there the first six months or so, maybe a year. You know, we were all trying it out.

So there was definitely a learning curve. So, uh, speaking of that then, uh, what are some of the things that you should not use a AI for in, in SEO?

ch is. The foundation of any [: 00:12:00

It's gonna give you these boilerplate, very generalized keywords with no, you know, no knowledge of. Search volume or how difficult it's gonna be to rank for that keyword and things like that. So that's one area where it's like, this is just a bad idea. There's a few tools that are coming out right now that will audit your website pretty well and like even, like, tell you what you need to do.

work on your part, even if. [: 00:13:00

And, and then the final thing is any sort of content that's on your website, you have to be very careful with using ai. There's nothing that you can use just one prompt with. Mm-hmm. You can't say, Hey, write me a blog post on X and then just copy and paste what it's given you. First of all, it will not be optimized for SEO in any way whatsoever, but it's probably going to harm you more than it's going to help you.

It's, uh, it's probably going to break trust with your users and, and also not give them anything of value.

Guy: Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And uh, you know, it's funny because when you really want to get something done, um, I mean, you can use one prompt and just say, well, I'm just gonna rewrite. Uh, but at least it gives you an idea and a structure and the grammar, uh, it amazes me, you know, how well written things are.

do you do to really improve [: 00:14:00

Jade: that's a great question. The fundamentals, I know I just said. That nothing we did 10 years ago would work today.

And, and that is for the most part true. But there are some fundamentals that, that, you know, continue to work throughout time. Making sure that your header structures are are appropriate on your website. You want an H one on every page at the top. That preferably has your target keyword in it. You wanna have your target keyword in your meta title as well for each page.

Very intentional. Little details really matter like that. You want to make sure your site map is submitted to Google Search Console. That's a big one. And the big thing now, and I don't see it changing anytime soon 'cause I think it's the best we have is. Building your domain authority through backlinks.

one back to with a lot of my [: 00:15:00

Show who is trustworthy and authoritative and that's, that's what was selected. It's been around forever. And the way that you show Google that you're authoritative is you kind of get the seal of approval from other people's sites by having a link from their site to your site. So if you are website is listed on Forbes somewhere, Google's going to be like, oh my gosh, they must be very authoritative.

Let's send more people to this website. So going on podcasts gets you really good back links. Guest posting is like the oldest one in the book, uh, where you just trade guest posts with another service provider. For me, I love to do guest posts with other people in marketing in different ways, and those work incredibly well from an SEO perspective.

they also just drive traffic [: 00:16:00

Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Interesting. Um, that, uh, back links are, are so powerful and, um, so, you know, it sounds like what you're saying is that the. Kind of the overall kind of strategy, the same things kind of still work, but then there's a lot of nuances as, uh, I guess as a Google changes there, their search. What about search on like Amazon and, uh, I don't know if there's search optimization for Etsy or some of these other, you know, retail sites.

Is that the case or what, what happens there?

u can see search data within [: 00:17:00

Um, or like on, on YouTube. Etsy actually has a. There's a keyword tool for Etsy in particular where you can see what people are searching for on there. We've actually had a lot of luck with it. I haven't had an Etsy client per se, that's paid me anything, but I've had friends who are selling things on Etsy and we can, we can optimize them, but Amazon is a massive search engine.

Mm-hmm. One of the biggest, and also for most e-commerce search terms, Amazon's going to be listed number one anyway. Mm-hmm. So if you're selling, you know, baby onesies. And someone, Googles baby ones using Google, Amazon's gonna come up first. So it really serves you to also be ranking really high within Amazon.

y fast if you're in the, in, [: 00:18:00

So, um, uh, now what about, uh, you mentioned marketing, a little bit of pr. How do both of those really fit in? Uh, is one more important than the other or? I.

Jade: That probably depends on who you ask. I have a few PR clients who would definitely say do PR before marketing. And I of course would say in almost every case, do SEO first, just 'cause that's my world.

Uh, and it's, you know, what I focus on all day every day. So I'm, I'm totally lost in it. I, it, I think it really depends on what type of business you have. And especially with e-commerce. I see PR. Doing a lot of good early on as opposed to marketing, which just sometimes takes a while to, to get going. Uh, but it really depends on who your target audience is, where they are online.

d from an SEO perspective is [: 00:19:00

Mm-hmm. So it really, it really is a, a case by case situation.

Guy: Yeah. Well, and I would imagine too, it's the, uh, maturity of the brand. If you're looking at like a startup, you know, and you're designing your site or you're redesigning your site, um, you know, then building that properly right from the start is gonna be definitely more important than pr.

But once you have your site kind of done, I. You know, it would seem to me anyway, then the PR is definitely gonna be, you know, much better. It'd be great to get a link from the New York Times or whatever to, you know, like you said, the 10 best, you know, baby onesies, you know, for the Christmas season, you know, and be listed on that, no question about it.

s necessarily gonna help you [: 00:20:00

Jade: Right. And there's a lot of benefits to paid marketing. I'm, again, so on the SEO side that I, you know, I often butt heads with the, the paid people, but it's one of those things where if you need to be at the top tomorrow and you need to be getting sales immediately, paying for ads. Is probably your best bet just because SEO takes a really long time, so does organic social or, or any sort of organic marketing.

Uh, but the ads put you right in front of people's eyeballs, which is where you want to be. The problem is the moment you turn it off, it's over. So you can invest tons in ads. If you're getting a good ROI like. That's great. Go for it. But it's something where I've had clients that I haven't worked with in three years, and they're still ranking on the first page of Google.

ut then of course, you know, [: 00:21:00

Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, you're right. It's, uh, it is an on and off. Although for larger brands, I don't think that's necessarily a, an issue, but for certainly mid-size maybe and smaller where you're advertising a bunch and then your budgets get cut or you, you know, you're done with your campaign and then you're off and, and then that, you know, can have a, you know, a very short term effect.

Whereas to your point, you know, if you get the SEO right and you're ranking way up there, and that stays there for a long time, then that's, that can be very, very valuable.

Jade: Absolutely. I used to work for a semiconductor company doing SEO, and we would have marketing meetings every Tuesday, and it was me and then the paid ads guy.

coming from, even though it [: 00:22:00

To be, to be throwing out there.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what do you see as, uh, the future then for AI in, uh, SEO?

Jade: Oh my gosh. So Chachi, bt, just as an example, has its own search engine now, and it's incredible. It's so cool and we don't have a, a very clear way of tracking exactly how it's choosing who it's putting in there and, and all that kind of stuff.

But it gives you better results. You can ask follow up questions. Mm. Um, the other day I just put in, you know, is Hello, SEOA good SEO agency. And it, you know, gave this full answer included reviews from one website, a video that someone had made about me from another site. It was like this lovely answer as opposed to just like getting a bunch of review sites up.

ographer client in Columbia. [: 00:23:00

And when you look her up in Chacha, BT search, she shows up in the third position. And it's, it's all just local results, which is very exciting for me and for local businesses to actually get to show up. But the problem is no one's really adapted to that search engine. Uh, everyone's still using Google.

Google lost just a tiny bit of market share in the last year, and when we look at who took it away, it was like Bing and DuckDuckGo. Like it's not, it's not even like an AI language model, but I would love, I. To see search kind of migrate over to more generative AI sources. I think that would be really cool.

to just Google. But I think [: 00:24:00

Guy: Well, I, I think it is. I, I mean even my behavior in terms of using Google and, um, and chat GPTI haven't really used chat GPT too much to do a search. Although every once in a while I kind of try it and I go, oh wow, that was a nice, um, what I like now about Google and its AI overview, I think it is right at the top there.

Mm-hmm. Uh, if I do a search and I don't get that, then I'm kind of bummed out because I'm so used to seeing that and, you know, and getting those answers. And then, um. I think, you know, Google is, uh, gonna have a challenge because in the past I may have clicked on some sponsored links, which would've generated them money.

you know, wanting to go to a [: 00:25:00

Jade: Yes.

Guy: You know, and that, and I think then once people get used to the fact that chat, GPT can, can give you, you know, search results, then I think there, you know, there will be a, a shift over there and, uh, that'll kind of hit go Google in two, you know, in two big dimensions as they're, as they're trying to, you know, keep their stock prices up and stuff like that.

Jade: Right, and there's been a lot of speculation as to why Google was putting the free generative results over their own ads lately, because of course that is how they make money. Everyone's a little curious about that and, and maybe it's a temporary thing just to get us used to the new technology and, and then it'll swap back or, or they're just experimenting or.

rom, but when we look at our [: 00:26:00

Obviously people aren't landing on their websites as much anymore, especially for informational things. And so it's, it's one of those things where is, you know, writing content and investing a lot in that as important anymore, should we, you know, be pivoting to other strategies, different things like that.

Um, and I honestly haven't seen it with my clients. I know for a lot of like large corporate. Businesses, um, they're seeing like massive drops in, in organic search right now. Mm-hmm. Wow. Mostly for just informational things.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. So, so what you're saying is if people are doing an informational search, I.

Then they're no longer getting all the clicks, even though you have great informational content. Because that's, I guess, then been summarized by Google AI overview. So you don't have to go, you know, out, you get the summary, you know, for the information you're looking for as opposed to trying to search through it on a, on a blog post or some other content.

Jade: [: 00:27:00

Guy: interesting

Jade: Back to baby onesies, but I had a client where we answered tons and tons of, of new parenting questions. In their content and, and the whole goal was to get people on the website and then eventually see their baby onesies or sign up for their emails or get into their universe somehow.

But now, if all those people are still seeing my client's information, because it's what Google is pulling from.

Guy: Mm-hmm. But we're

Jade: not getting the click. Right. We're not, we're not getting them into our universe anymore. Um, which is pretty frustrating. And also people are a little irritated that Google's just using what they wrote to, to not send people to their website anymore.

, so should these AI engines [: 00:28:00

You know, every piece of content that you have out there, or every time it gets sourced into your, into their answers. Because in, in essence, you wrote this, this is your stuff, and it's being summarized by some other thing.

Jade: Absolutely. And there's a lot of arguments towards just even being able to opt out of that.

Like, Hey, I don't want my, my work to be training AI models. Yeah. And, and currently I don't think there's any way to really regulate that.

Guy: Yeah, well, I guess you could, I don't know. So there's not a meta tag you could put in there that might, might say, you know, optimi out of, uh, the LLMs or something like that.

hen people maybe do the next [: 00:29:00

Jade: right.

Exactly. Yeah. You could pull all of your, your information out of index. You could put some robots texts in place, but that's gonna hurt you in a thousand other ways, and

Guy: it's a

Jade: mess.

Guy: But it's early day. I'm glad we got that. Yeah, I'm glad we got that cleared up. It's a mess. It's a mess. That's all. Yep. Yeah.

Fantastic. So, uh, how do you see, uh, SEO really plugging into other, uh, marketing teams and within a, you know, I guess a mid-size to a large organization to really make sure that you're driving, you know, for the money that's being invested, that you're driving? Good. ROI,

Jade: that's a great question. It seems like, especially now.

ul when you're deciding what [: 00:30:00

It's, it's incredibly beneficial from all different sides of building a business. Other than just showing up in, in search, but I know I, something I've been focused on, especially in 2025, is being as involved as possible as early as possible. So I like to get involved with business owners when they have the idea for the business so that I can be there every step of the way of copy being written, the website being built.

Um, there's gonna be certain ways that you can build a site map that are gonna be more beneficial from an SEO perspective than not. Uh, from a full on branding perspective, uh, social media, all the different little elements, there's just a few little things you can just tweak typically to really benefit SEO and then also have SEO really benefit your angles of the business.

've accidentally gotten into [: 00:31:00

And I can say, Hey, if they were gonna pay for this placement, it would cost them a hundred thousand dollars a month, or something like that. Mm-hmm. And suddenly that placement looks a lot better than just, oh, hey look, you're in glamor. You know, so working on helping other people kind of manage their data as well has been interesting.

Guy: Yeah, that's interesting. And I wouldn't have thought about, uh, about using it that way, but that makes a, you know, definitely makes a whole lot of sense where you can take advantage of, uh, you know, that placement in, in Glamor Magazine or whatever. I. Exactly. And then see the results in your, in the search or whatever, you know, what's coming across the, you know, the transom and, and leads and what have you.

Oh, that [: 00:32:00

Jade: I was gonna say too, SEO is so datadriven, uh, and, and most, I won't say all, but a, a lot of the other disciplines within marketing are, are more on the creative side. And so for a lot of the clients I have, I'm also the person who understands their analytics the best, uh, which gives me some value as well.

I'm the one who has to get in there and, you know, fix all of their events and, and things like that and their analytics and, and make everything work, and then explain to them, you know, what is working, what isn't working. So having an SO around is, is helpful in general.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. No, that's, uh, that helps a lot.

Well, I wish we could keep on going, but, uh, I do have one last question for you, and that is, what advice would you give an up and coming new marketer that you know is coming right outta college and trying to compete against an AI engine, you know, for a job, so to speak?

Jade: Yeah, and I think it's gonna be challenging.

k it's, it's tough 'cause it [: 00:33:00

My advice would be stay curious with ai, learn how to use it to your advantage. Potentially start off on your own and build your own expertise as a freelancer, and then jump into a career if you so choose. Um, but find ways to stand out and discover what you can do that AI can't do, or what other people are not willing to do, and, and go from there.

Guy: Well, it's interesting, uh, the way you put that. What do you think about how can somebody coming outta college be better at using AI to add value as opposed to trying to be different from ai?

discipline. There's, I mean, [: 00:34:00

I guess for myself, I often find myself learning the fundamentals. You know, read the book, take the class, whatever it is, and then just use that as kind of a springboard to, to make it your own.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, it's, uh, it'll be an interesting ride. I mean, I'm so excited about what's coming up around the corner.

I mean, the change is just incredible. It, it, you know, it's, it's fun to see that change and be part of it. So it's truly wild. Yeah. Well anyway, uh, Jade, thank you, uh, so much for, uh, participating and being available and, and, uh, I, I learned a lot about, you know, how strategic and valuable SEO can be to really support and be a big component of your, your marketing and PR strategy.

Uh, where can people reach you and, uh, reach you and find out more about your company?

EO. Um, hello. seo.com is my [: 00:35:00

It's, it's nice in its own right, but the best part about it is then I will make you a Loom video explaining everything to you. Uh, so you'll get some actual real insights on your, your SEO within a couple of days.

Guy: Wow. Well, uh, I will take advantage of that. I'm, uh. On the board of a couple of nonprofits, and I know our sites are just bad.

Jade: Oh my gosh. I can't wait.

Guy: Yeah, so I'll, I'll submit, uh, you know, one of them in any case, just because I'm curious and we're about to, uh, actually do a little bit of marketing, uh, to get some folks to a big event we're planning. But, uh, yeah, thank you for that. That's great. So hello seo.com and then you can find Jade Pruitt on LinkedIn.

n marketing A and ai. And if [: 00:36:00

Jade, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jade: Thanks.