SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as we know it has been evolving largely due to AI.
This week on the S.O.B. (Small Owned Business) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are discussing new SEO terms like AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization), and SEO (search EVERYWHERE optimization).
We also mention how these new SEO terms highlight the changing landscape of being found online and what small businesses can do to stay competitive in the marketing world, especially as AI continues to influence search engines and consumer behavior.
This week’s Marketing HOT TAKE: Small business owners can no longer ignore how AI is being used in the business world. Are you Team AI or Team No AI? Let us know in the comments!
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Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to our Marketing Cult! Please Leave Us a Review
03:27 Marketing Hot Take: Do We Have to Stay Up to Date With AI?
06:45 Understanding SEO and Its Evolution
12:20 SEO: Search Everywhere Optimization
19:09 GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
26:27 AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
40:19 TLDL; New SEO Terms You Need To Know
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𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓:
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE): https://youtu.be/pyhLbSnfglI?si=i7UdgauhdyBgDgXH
𝐒.𝐎.𝐁 (𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬) 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲: https://theseasonedmarketer.myflodesk.com/sob
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*Intro* Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: And we're back you guys for another episode of the S.O.B., Small Owned Business Marketing Podcast. I'm here with my beautiful sister, Chelsea.
Chelsea: Hey Vivian.
Vivian: Hi, how's everything going?
Chelsea: You know, really great. I love this time of year. I also hate this time of year. No one has money, right?
Vivian: She's a spooky girl, you guys. So inching up towards Halloween, she's all about that jazz. Now, before we get into today's discussion, let me just remind you guys very quickly, if you are listening, we have over 120 episodes for you guys to go binge and listen to right now. Go ahead and do that. We promise that you're always going to learn something new, something about marketing and promoting your business. Just to spur a little competition here, you guys. We have a lot of people listening to us on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts, congrats you guys because you are blowing away the people over on Spotify. On Spotify we only have 26 subscribers. So you guys are listening but you're not hitting that subscribe button on Spotify.
Chelsea: How dare you?
Vivian: How dare you? By comparison though, over on Apple we have over a hundred and how many subscribers?
Chelsea: We have a hundred and seventeen. I mean there are still a good number of you guys who are listening but not subscribed. Which I mean, I guess if that's your prerogative. If that's your thing. Kind of hurtful.
Vivian: We want your thing to be avid fans though of our podcast. So go ahead and subscribe. The other thing is we do something a little different around here. It's what we call a TLDL section. Chelsea, do you want to explain what TLDL is?
Chelsea: Yeah, TLDL is too long, didn't listen. So if you are strapped for time, I have a chapter at the end of all of our episodes where I summarize our entire conversation. So you can get a brief summary before you go back and listen to the entire conversation. You're really going to want to listen to the entire conversation this week. I know I say that every week. I really mean it this week though.
Vivian: She really really really really though, means it this week.
Chelsea: I do because this week, Vivian can I go ahead and say what we're talking about?
Vivian: Yeah, let's do it.
Chelsea: We are talking about SEO and how it is evolving now because of AI and this brings me into, Vivian, our marketing hot take.
Vivian: She's getting too good at that you guys.
Chelsea: I've been practicing. Marketing hot take, Vivian. As a small business owner at this point, we're at the end of 2025. We're going to go into 2026. Okay, y'all cannot be ignoring AI anymore. I'm not saying you have to like AI. I'm going to be honest. I don't enjoy AI. It's not my thing. I still need to know what's going on though. I still need to keep it in mind when we write our content, when we're publishing things. You have to at least be aware of what's going on and you can't ignore it anymore.
Vivian: For once, I actually do agree with your hot take. It's very unusual. Small business owners, you can't keep putting off AI. You have to address it. We have to keep it in consideration, especially with where we're at in 2025, going into 2026 as customers. If anything, remember, it's not all about you. It's about your customers because they're the ones that impact your bottom line. So if they have these options out there that are integrating AI tools or just AI features. We have to know what's going on with them so that we could take full advantage of them to be sure that our business is being promoted in those areas. The other thing I want to say is, you know, contrary to my baby sister here who hates all the machines, I want this written. In record, AI machines, I'm on your side. I've always been advocates for you. So when you take over the world, just remember me, please.
Chelsea: Whoa, okay.
Vivian: I actually enjoy using AI. I will 100% take full advantage of anything that's going to provide me a good option for a shortcut or is going to make my life a little easier. I love using ChatGPT. I like how we use platforms that are all integrating AI. For example, one of them, this podcast, we stream through a platform called Riverside. Riverside has incorporated a lot of AI tools to make the editing process a lot easier. I'm a big fan of that. We agree on the hot take.
Chelsea: On the hot take.
Vivian: On the use, we differ a little bit.
Chelsea: Yeah. I'm not, there are some uses of AI that I'm cool with. I'm just worried about the ecological devastation that may come with using ChatGPT. We're not going to get into that, if you're interested in that, you go do your research, okay?
Vivian: That's right. If you're a doomsday person like Chelsea here, go ahead and connect with her on Instagram. All right. So let's dive into, what is the best way for us to introduce what we're going to be talking about? You know, the meat and potatoes of the conversation we're having today.
Chelsea: Okay. So today we are going to be talking about new terms in relation to SEO. Let's start with what SEO is. I'm sure everyone here knows, but let's just double check.
Vivian: Okay. So before you say it though, I want you guys to pause right now. What does SEO mean?
Chelsea: Okay. Write it down. Yeah.
Vivian: Say it to yourself out loud. In harmony.
Chelsea: Love that. Okay. It's search engine optimization. It's the process of making sure that your website and your content is going to be visible to people that matter to you by improving your ranking on search engines.
Vivian: Yes, and remember like we've talked about you guys. We've actually talked about SEO a little bit on this podcast. You can search in our previous episodes that word, search engine optimization, and we have a couple episodes that will pop up and you can listen to that.
Chelsea: Actually, I want you guys to go listen to our SGE episode. Because that's also a newer term, SEO term in relation to AI.
Vivian: Yes. SGE: search generative experience. Go listen to that because I think it will help you kind of put some of these puzzle pieces together as we evolve in the conversation. I say that though to just remind you guys, if you've listened to any of that conversation in the past that we've had, we have told you that the old school thought process with SEO is, we recommend you put up a blog on your website and that way you are able to write out keywords that you want your small business to appear for in the search results. That was very much the, I'm just going to call it the caveman way of doing SEO. It was very outdated. It's when it was a newer topic and we as small business owners were being introduced to it. That since has changed with then it's evolved into what we talked about, search generative experience. How Google specifically is going in there and changing that search engine, right? Now the next step is, SEO is not necessarily what we think it is. What is it evolving into?
Chelsea: Well, Vivian, before we actually get into that, I want to reiterate why this is changing. So according to a study done by Gartner, by 2026, 25% of organic traffic will shift to AI chatbots and other virtual agents. Okay, the reason why we're moving away from this old caveman version of SEO is because there are so many people using chatbots and AI to search for things. Those systems, AI crawls things differently than original search engines.
Vivian: Because quote unquote they're smarter, well trained, better trained.
Chelsea: Sure. I would love to have Maya, my best friend is a computer, I don't want to say computer nerd, computer bro. She could talk all about this. Is it smarter? I mean, I guess. I don't actually know. But it's a different process.
Vivian: Well, that's what I'm saying, it's a different process. It's not thinking on its own necessarily. It's trained itself very well. Well, not itself, but it's been trained on all of this stuff and it's able to tap in and access information a lot quicker than we're used to. So remember, let me just walk you through what the caveman, with search engine when we were still talking about keywords and all of that. As a customer, let's say I'm out there searching for a black dress. When I would go to Google or my preferred search engine, I literally would type in there a keyword phrase. It evolved into phrases, right? Because we were like, hey, I want to, in the least amount of time, be able to find the exact thing I'm looking for. Therefore it turns from a broad term of "black dress" to "black knee length lace dress". I got really good at narrowing down. Then SEO was like, we got to be really good at being able to match as many of those keyword terms as possible to give her the best results. I still, in that caveman day was having to filter through websites myself. Yes, I knew the first three results at that top of the page were probably going to be the best fit, but I still had eight other pages of results if I wanted to continue looking. AI replaces all of that. It basically is like now I can go somewhere and like you said, ask a chat bot, ask whatever, even within Google, it's going to give me something way more tailored to what I need.
Chelsea: Which also changes the way that people now search. Now we're actually searching questions instead of phrases.
Vivian: So keep that in mind. Now do we want to talk about?
Chelsea: Let's do it. So SEO, Vivian, has been replaced with SEO.
Vivian: It's been replaced, but it hasn't been replaced. What's up with that?
Chelsea: So let's explain. So SEO originally is search engine optimization. Now moving forward, we are evolving and changing and the new updated version is SEO as in, search everywhere optimization.
So really what we're doing is we're moving away from focusing on the search engine.
Vivian: Google. I would say Ask Jeeves. That's not a search engine anymore.
Chelsea: Bing. I don't know what Ask Jeeves is. Duck Duck Go.
So those are search engines. So we're moving away from focusing on the search engine and we're focusing on everywhere that people may be searching for things. So yes, search engines, but also social media platforms and also AI platforms like ChatGPT. We're evolving to include all of those things because all of these platforms, one are using AI and two, they all relate to each other and we're all using them to search for things.
Vivian: Okay, so if you're a visual gal like me, what I visualize is an umbrella and search engine optimization SEO as we used to know it and still kind of refer to it today. Chelsea made a good point, we are morphing and moving into this other SEO term.
Chelsea: I like that word morphing. That's perfect.
Vivian: So what I envision is this umbrella whereas under the umbrella it used to just be the search engine. Now the umbrella is getting bigger and opening up and now it's not just search engines but it's ChatGPTs, all of the AI stuff. They use the term everywhere for a reason, okay?
Chelsea: Yeah, it's everywhere.
Vivian: So now the umbrella, you can't call it SEO, search engine optimization. You have to start incorporating and calling it something more global, search everywhere optimization. Keep that in mind as we move into 2026 and 2027.
Chelsea: And this makes sense, Vivian, because, do you guys remember the graph that we brought a couple of weeks ago that was daily searches? What was number two? It was Instagram.
Vivian: So I love that you bring this up because it's not, it's weird. We've touched on this before in our community call, by the way, you guys, if you don't know, we have a membership community, $50 a month. You can join us every week on a zoom call. We just talk about marketing updates and then also specifically your marketing. One of the things that we had touched on before in there was that Instagram and TikTok, all of these reels and videos, all of that are now appearing in the search engines. They have a tab on there for short videos and your videos that you're posting to Instagram as a small business could start to appear in those results. I think we still are very much geared towards, hey, I go to Google and ask it a question. That's not the case. People are going to TikTok. They're going to Instagram. They're going to Snapchat. I don't know what you're asking Snapchat, but apparently y'all going over a Snapchat. Now they're going to the AI bots.
Chelsea: Yeah, exactly. So I do want to, before we move on to our next new term, new SEO related term. I want to touch on some things to focus on with this new SEO. Search everywhere optimization. Just so you guys can feel kind of comfortable, these are things I should focus on.
Consistency across platforms. This does not mean all platforms okay? You do not need to be on all of the platforms. Pick the ones where your target audience is, one, and where you can actually handle showing up consistently.
Vivian: Yeah, if you hate TikTok, do not pick TikTok, okay?
Chelsea: That's why Vivian's in charge of the TikTok, because I'm not doing it.
Vivian: Yes. We don't want you guys to be miserable while you're doing your marketing. Marketing does not love misery.
Chelsea: When you are picking your platforms, understanding your target audience, are they on these platforms? Also think about how they are using the platforms. GenZ is using TikTok to search for things. So keep that in mind when you're sharing things on TikTok. Also, and we kind of already touched on this, but prioritize specific platforms. Again, you don't need to be on everywhere. So just really focus on the ones that you can handle.
Vivian: I think that's a great reminder overall. If you've been feeling a little stressed as a small business owner because you're like, I need to start YouTube. I need to be on Pinterest. I'm on Instagram. I don't like it. I can hardly keep up with it, but I also need to try TikTok because that's where all the business is at and blah, blah. You're stressing yourself out. It is impossible nowadays to do all of the things, okay? Trust me, I have to remind myself of this because there are times where I'm like, we're missing a really big opportunity by not being on LinkedIn. I'm sorry, I don't like LinkedIn. I also just, it's pulling teeth for me. And then also one more thing to add when maybe I could be putting forth my effort on improving something that I actually do like working through.
Chelsea: Exactly. I also bring this up because the fun part, y'all, each one of these platforms are a little different and what works on each of these platforms are different and changes. So when you prioritize your platforms, you can get really good at marketing yourself and sharing your stuff on those specific platforms because you're going to have to play around with it and find what works best for you. Y'all, we are still figuring out Instagram. We're still figuring out TikTok because it's all...
Vivian: True.
Chelsea: Because it's all a process.
Vivian: All right. So do we then want to move into the new keyword terms? Or the new terms. I'm sorry. New terms.
Chelsea: Yeah, new terms. Okay. So we got: GEO. Generative Engine Optimization.
Vivian: Generative Engine Optimization.
Chelsea: This focuses on creating content that will be recognized and cited by AI tools.
Vivian: Generative engine optimization.
Chelsea: Yep. So think about, now Google has the AI overview or even ChatGPT. This term relates to you wanting to show up in that AI overview or you wanting to show up on ChatGPT when people are searching for something that relates to your small business.
Vivian: So perfect example of this. Every month, actually every week, Chelsea and I check our podcast analytics because we love you guys so much.
Chelsea: For the website, for our website specifically.
Vivian: Yes, for the website. so we have on there, you could go to sobmarketing.com. We have all of the podcast episodes there, some other information on there as well.
In there when we were looking at the analytics, it tells us where people are coming from to the website. So it gives us the referring source. We thought it was interesting because it actually showed ChatGPT for the first time as one of them. Meaning that somebody prompted ChatGPT in a particular subject and ChatGPT responded, including our podcast website and then they clicked on it.
Chelsea: Yeah. Isn't that so exciting?
Vivian: It is. I mean, I'm excited because and this is...
Chelsea: Can I also say y'all, if you ask ChatGPT what the prompt was, they're not going to tell you. Yeah. Because I tried. I wanted to know.
Vivian: Are you trying to outsmart the AI here? You're trying to...
Chelsea: I just wanted to know.
Vivian: The reason we get excited about stuff like this is because this is now another opportunity. So imagine if you guys, maybe you don't have a podcast, but if you have products or services that you're looking to sell and people could potentially find you online for this, that's another avenue you're like, if I get ahead of the game and I can appear in all of these marketing inquiries that people are going to ChatGPT for, if we have a podcast episode that fits and then that would increase the views on that episode or the listens, why wouldn't we want to figure that out now? Because that's more where it's shifting to going into 2026.
Chelsea: Absolutely. Okay. So things to focus on if you're trying to really optimize your GEO, right? Okay. Generative Engine Optimization.
Conversational. We're no longer focusing on keywords, but we're answering specific questions that our target audience would have. Actually answer the question. This is so important. If you're focusing on showing up for a specific query, you need to answer that query. Yeah. OK.
Also, credibility is going to become very important in the coming years with AI and GEO and the next term that we're going to talk about. Backlinks is one way that you can boost your credibility. So Vivian, do you want to explain what backlinks are?
Vivian: Yeah, not black links. Backlinks.
Chelsea: I'm sorry.
Vivian: Backlinks are nothing more than just when another source actually tags you pretty much like in their website or something. So let's say you sell sweaters and it's the holidays.
Chelsea: Love a good sweater.
Vivian: Yeah, love a good sweater. It's the holiday and somebody did a gift guide. They did a post on their blog about the best gifts to give this Christmas season.
Chelsea: Oh, I love this.
Vivian: Your sweater is included in the top 10 gifts and it has a link to your website. That's a back link.
So essentially it's something that drives potential customers or actually just a website visit to your traffic. That's what I was looking for. It drives traffic to your website.
Chelsea: You were going to get there.
Vivian: Yeah, I was like, wait, wait, that's not quite the word. So it just drives traffic to your website. That's a backlink. A lot of times what people do is they forget that that is a good way to get a lot of that traffic, okay? The way you do that is, if you haven't done so in a while, go ahead and Google your business name. All right. See what appears in those search results, because the possibility is that you have been included. Somebody may have written about you or your product or service, but they haven't linked it. That's an opportunity where you could say, hey, by the way, I appreciate that you included me in this write up. Can you go ahead and link to my website, though? That's an extra backlink.
Chelsea: Yes. Love. Again, it's all about building credibility. Vivian, I think another great way that businesses can build credibility is having reviews on your website. Think about when you're on Amazon and you see all of those reviews. That's really important. That gives you credibility. So as much as you can, try to get people to review your products on your website.
Vivian: If you're on Amazon and you have two products that are very similar, maybe they're exactly alike. One of them has 1500 reviews. It's ranked 4.5 out of 5 stars. The other one has zero reviews. You know you're going be taking a gamble if you choose that one with zero reviews. That's where the reviews, like Chelsea said, it kind of gives you a little bit of that extra trust. Also for people like me, I was doing this yesterday. We were ordering a backdrop and I'm sitting there, I click on the reviews to look specifically for the images. I want to see what it actually looks like. I don't want to see the polished version photo that you put on Amazon. I want to see the packaging that people receive it in and what it looks like once they've set it up. I know it's a legit photo from an actual customer.
*S.O.B. Community Halloween Ad*
Chelsea: Ahh! I'm sorry. I'm sorry, your marketing really scared me. No, no, it's fine. I just have some thoughts, but I can't share them with you unless you join the S.O.B. Community. You won't just get my professional opinion, but also Vivian's, and other small business owners like you sharing their thoughts. That's weekly accountability, but don't get spooked. If you can't make a weekly call you'll get access in our membership dashboard to the recording, along with a discussion forum that's accessible 24/7. Visit skool.com/sob to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's S-K-O-O-L dot come slash S-O-B.
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Chelsea: GEO is the overall strategy, Vivian.
I'm going to use marketing versus advertising to explain this. Because we've had this discussion before, but marketing is different from advertising. Advertising is a piece of marketing. Marketing is the whole pie. So GEO is the whole pie. Now we're going to talk about a slice of it, and that's AEO. So AEO is answer engine optimization.
So what we're doing now is we're focusing and niching down and narrowing down on zero click searches.
Vivian: All right, explain a zero click search.
Chelsea: So a zero click search specifically, when we're going to Google, we now have the AI overview, right? So someone, let's say I'm looking for, what's a good question to have?
Vivian: How to make an apple pie?
Chelsea: How to make an apple pie. I put it into Google.
Now, because of AI overview, it literally gives me a snippet, a summary at the top, giving me all the steps on how to make an apple pie.
Vivian: So literally think about this. That means I no longer have to continue scrolling to click on a specific recipe. They have picked the best recipe according to what they see, reviews and a combination of this, and this and that. They have picked what they think is the best recipe and put it on top for me.
Chelsea: Yes. So I am not clicking on anything. It's a zero click search. Now they have to pull that information from somewhere and they show you on the side next to your summary, your response, they show you on the side where they pull the information from. So if you need more information, you can visit that website.
Vivian: So they provide you the source.
Chelsea: They provide you the source. That's what you want. You want to be that source for the zero click summaries, for those zero click searches.
Vivian: Let me tell you the other way I've seen this, which is it kind of gives an homage to what we talked about at the beginning of this episode, which is remember now Google has a completely separate tab for short videos. But the reason we brought that up is because now what you post on Instagram, what you post on TikTok, those can now appear in these results, whether that be for ChatGPT, for anything else, okay? What I've seen Google do with their AI overview at the top is, if I ask a question and they find a video on TikTok that matches the answer, they literally will give me a very brief synopsis, and then they will embed the video right there at the top. So literally they're encouraging me to check out the full length video. They will even tell me what part of the video speaks specifically to what I'm looking for. So they will time stamp it for me. You guys, that's what Chelsea's talking about. That no click search. That's it. Your goal is to basically have the information laid out very specific to how people are searching for it.
Chelsea: That's what you want, to be the direct answer to the question.
Vivian: And that's the answer engine optimization side of it. So kind of like you were saying, it's almost like, what are those little dolls? I can never remember the name. The Russian dolls. So it's like, the GEO is the bigger doll. Then inside of that is a smaller doll, which is the AEO.
Chelsea: So things to focus on with AEO. Okay, we're once again saying answer the question because that's important. You really, really want to answer the question for this one. Do your research. I love this one. Do your research and find what questions your target audience is searching for because if you can find the question that your target audience searches the most and you can answer it like so perfectly.
Vivian: Succinctly.
Chelsea: Succinctly, well, yes, succinctly was probably a better word than so perfectly, but that's perfect, that's gold. So do your research. Make it easy for search engines to crawl your website. This is a big one, this is big for all SEO, but very specifically for AEO because they are looking for specifics.
So this could be making an XML sitemap. This could be having three to five internal backlinks on a page. So that's when you're linking to your own website. You're just making it very easy to find information on your website.
Good quality content. This is true again for everything. Don't put out bad quality content, period, point blank. But I'm going to mention it. Make sure you claim all of your local listings. Try to get more backlinks. We've discussed this already. Be active on social media. I'm so glad you explained that video because that is a big thing. If you can answer it in video, it will show the video. So that's great.
Vivian: Yeah. The detailed part is always interesting to me because remember we had once accused Google of being a matchmaker. It is. They are hell bound on being sure that they provide you with results that are actually going to work for the information that you're looking for, because if they don't, they know you could go somewhere else with this, especially now with ChatGPT and all that stuff. The more information you put in there for them to understand and know what topic you're talking about or what the information is that you're serving or writing about, the better because then they're able to search it, understand it, and then kind of regurgitate it back appropriately.
So think of it this way. If you're doing what we call listicles, you guys, it's nothing more than just a bulleted list of something. So let's say on a blog post, you're writing about my top 10 favorite cities. In there you're like, great, Boston, Charleston, blah, blah, blah. You're just listing them out, but you're not providing it any descriptors or any more information. I mean, you're really not going to be able to appear for any of these things, whether that's the GEO, generative engine optimization or even the AEO, the answer engine optimization part of it. Now, if you add more to it, right: the reason I love Charleston, South Carolina is because, and then you list out. It's a very walkable city.
Chelsea: It's haunted.
Vivian: It's haunted. It's got very good restaurants. Here are my favorite restaurants.
Chelsea: Here are my favorite ghosts.
Vivian: Yeah, here are the top...my favorite ghosts.
Isn't there, there are a lot of like, not sailor ghost, but people that were embarking from the boats. If you guys are in Charleston, see, one of the things you can put in there is the ghost tours. Think of it this way. You start talking about the ghost tours and how one of them in particular is an old prison that they say is haunted.
Chelsea: And that they turned into an event venue.
Vivian: Yes, and they make a ton of money off of and basically they take you there in the dark. But if someone then is saying like I really love ghost tours. What are the top cities for ghost tours? You best bet that based off of what you answered or the descriptors you put in there, at least you're in the running to show up. Your blog is in the running to show up because you've now included that Charleston is a really big ghost tour town. Good thing we do not work for the tourism center here in Charleston. But that's the point. You got to give it, even if you're doing something that's simple bullet points, consider adding some descriptors. You don't want to, you don't need to fluff it up. But like Chelsea said, if you start with the end in mind, what is my target audience searching for? What questions are they asking? Ask yourself the question and then type out the response.
Chelsea: I have one last point that I want to make. When explaining and talking about these terms, GEO and AEO, I used Google as an example. That is because we all think of Google, right? We think of Google when it comes to SEO. All of this is relevant for AI bots as well, like ChatGPT.
Vivian: Can I make a distinction here because I know I do this and it's probably my 40 year old brain. When somebody says a chat bot, I literally think I'm on a website and this little thing appears. If I go to my Verizon account, it's like, how can I help you today? Then it's not even a real person, it's a chat bot, and then it never lists any of the stuff that I actually need help with. But that's not, a chat bot is legitimately -
Chelsea: Yes, like an AI model, conversational AI.
Vivian: So including ChatGPT, including what's that other one?
Chelsea: We've also got Google Gemini, we have Microsoft's Co-Pilot, we have Jasper, all of these are examples of chat bots. Now I do want to say. You're correct. That is also a chatbot. Yeah. So when you go on a website.
Vivian: Your website assistant is also a chatbot. I just want to be sure that when we use the term chat bot, we're all on the same page about what we're visualizing because, like I said, 40 year old brain here thinks it's literally just that pop-up, but really we're talking about the ChatGPTs of the world and stuff.
Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. So my point is all of these terms, GEO, AEO, it all falls under the new SEO, which is search everywhere optimization. So these are things that you need to focus on, even if you're not focusing on Google. If you're on Instagram, you still need to be thinking about AEO. You still need to be answering your consumers, your target audience's questions.
Vivian: I think about this often, like when, I'm about to go to a barbecue and I have to bring a dish and I want to bring something yummy and I want to have a recipe -
Chelsea: Mashed cauliflower.
Vivian: You guys, she will not let me live that down. There was one Thanksgiving. I like healthier alternatives to stuff and instead of making mashed potatoes with a potato, I wanted to make a mashed potato-esque thing with cauliflower.
Chelsea: Okay. Can I just say in my defense, I've moved on. Tim has not moved on.
Vivian: Her partner.
Chelsea: My partner. Okay, this was also the first year we were together. This was the first family event he came to. He was like, I don't have a lot of options here because he didn't, because he wasn't ready to try new foods yet. He was still testing the waters. So he was like, you know what, I'm just going have a lot of mashed potatoes. He really went for it, and he took one bite and he has never forgiven her.
Vivian: I mean, I thought it was delicious, but I like cauliflower. Anyways, my point being that when I want to take something new, like a dish, I will go to TikTok and specifically type in there the type of dish I want to do, a quick and easy appetizer, whatever.
Chelsea: Y'all, this is why it's so important to know your target audience because I would never go to TikTok to search for it. What I usually do is when we're going to a city for a concert or something like that, I'm in charge of finding what food we're going to eat. I go to Reddit. I have never once searched. I think I did one time, I searched TikTok for restaurants because Vivian said, why don't you go to TikTok?
Vivian: And see, I use it for that. I like me a good coffee shop. I love a good iced coffee. I will actually look for coffee shops on TikTok. Case in point being, knowing your target audience is still the most important thing you can do, but we did want to bring this conversation to you. Like we said, we want you guys to go ahead and save this episode because we guarantee, trust us, you're going to hear the term SEO morph. You're going to hear that term morph, and then you're going to hear the terms GEO and AEO over the next 12 to 24 months.
So save this so you could come back and just kind of get the breakdown of it. Also, if you know a small business owner that you love, send this to them. So that they can put this on their radar and know where we're moving towards in 2026.
Chelsea: Okay. We ready for the TLDL?
Vivian: Let's do it.
Chelsea: TLDL. I don't know how I'm to do this. There are new search engine optimization phrases. They're new SEO terms. Okay.
One of them is, SEO is morphing. So it's no longer search engine optimization. It's now search everywhere optimization. We also have GEO and AEO. GEO is generative engine optimization, and AEO is answer engine optimization. The key here is understanding that this is not just about search engines anymore, but it's about all of the platforms. It's about social media and AI chat bots like ChatGPT or Jasper, stuff like that. It's also search engines as well. It's everything. It's all encompassing and you need to know these terms because this is where we're headed when it comes to being relevant to our target audience and being able to be found by our target audience.
Like Vivian said, make sure you save this episode, send it to people who will find this information relevant. Make sure you are following or subscribed, whatever it is on your platform. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, please leave a review because that really helps us build credibility and get in front of new small business owners. And you know what? Go be the best SOB you can be.