SEO vs AIO: What Actually Matters for Your Website Now?

Is SEO dead? 

Or is it just… different now? 

Because if you’ve been paying attention lately, it feels like everything is changing. 

People are asking questions in ChatGPT instead of Google. 
AI is summarizing answers instead of sending traffic to websites. 

And it leaves a lot of business owners wondering: 

“Is SEO even worth it anymore?” 

Or maybe more importantly… 

“What should I actually be focusing on now?” 

In this episode, we’re breaking down SEO vs what I’m calling AIO—AI Optimization… 

What’s changing, what’s not, and how to make sure your website is still working for you in this new landscape. 

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Transcript

Is SEO Dead Or Evolving?

Carrie Saunders 0:00

Is SEO dead or is it just different now? Because if you've been paying attention lately, it feels like everything is changing. People are asking questions in ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI instead of Google. AI is summarizing answers instead of sending traffic to websites. And that leaves a lot of business owners wondering, is SEO even worth it anymore? Or maybe more importantly, what should I be focusing on now? In this episode, we're breaking down SEO versus what most people call AIO, AI optimization. What's changing, what's not, and how to make sure your website is still working for you in this new landscape. And I'll share the one thing that hasn't changed at all, and it's actually more important now than ever. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about SEO search engine optimization versus AIO AI optimization. What actually matters to your website now? So let's first go over what SEO used to be. So SEO used to be focused on keywords, ranking in Google and major search engines, blog content, backlinks, and the goal was really simple: get traffic from search engines to your website. We have quite a few episodes on this, and they're still very valid today. So then what is changing with AIO? Now we're seeing a shift. People are asking AI tools instead of searching. I know I've done this myself. Getting summaries to answers from the search engines as well, not always clicking through to websites. Platforms like Google, ChatGBT, Claude, Bing, and others are all integrating AI into how results are delivered. So really it's more of a mental shift at the moment. We want to no longer think how do I rank in a search engine. We want to also think about how do I get referenced and surfaced or trusted by AI. So does that mean that SEO doesn't matter anymore? The answer is no, but there's some nuances here, and really they go back to the basics of SEO. So what hasn't changed? The foundation of SEO is still helpful, clear, trustworthy content. Search engines and AI tools both want good answers, clear explanations, and trusted sources. So this is why my myself hasn't haven't personally freaked out over the new AI rage. Is if your content has good answers to problems that you solve for your customers, you have clear explanations and you're a trusted source, that's what both types want. AI didn't really replace SEO, it just raised a bar for it. If you really think about it, search engines have been kind of AI-ish anyway in the background. They're taking lots of data, sifting through it, and giving you what they think is the best answer. So then what hasn't changed? What hasn't changed now that we have AI, which is obviously more advanced and complex than what we were used to before, as far as the functionality we were finding in search engines? You know, so what hasn't changed? Clearity and usefulness. Your content needs to be clear and it needs to be useful. If it clearly answers your real questions, your customers are having, you're still in a strong position to rank well in both. So then what is really the difference between SEO and AIO? Because there is a bit of a difference here. SEO or search engine optimization is we want to rank well in search engines. You want to be in the top of page one. The goal is to drive traffic to your site organically from search engines. And for AIO, AI optimization, we want to be referenced or serviced by AI when people are asking product comparison or service comparison questions in it. We want to be part of that answer. So the overlap again is that it just relies on clear content, structured information, and authority and trust. So then what should you do now? What what I want to make sure that we stay a bit calm about this because I have seen a lot of people get really uh nervous and not sure what to do. But instead of chasing algorithms, I want you to focus on answering real questions. That is the core of search engine optimization, and that's the core of AI optimization. Create real content based upon what your audience is actually asking. And then I want you to be clear and direct. Avoid the fluff, make answers easy to understand. This is especially even important for AI optimization. The more clear and direct your answers are, the better you're going to rank. And I want you to structure your content well. Just like we've always talked about on this podcast. We want to have headings. We want to have subheadings to support those headings. We want to have paragraphs that support those headings too. We want to potentially have lists to make it easier to digest and read. We want to have clear sections of what each section is about. This helps both search engine optimization as well as AI to understand your content. And then building authority. This is still as important as it ever was. Consistency matters when you're building this authority. The more helpful content you create, the more the trust you build. It's like how I talk about, you know, having some sort of regular piece of content. If that's a blog, that's great. Have that out regularly. That's how we're building authority. If you're using YouTube for your main source of content, maybe you should repurpose that into an article on your website that references your YouTube video. That way your website has you know regular new content on it. So that's how we can build authority still with search engines as well as AI. So then I also want you to think beyond the click. Even if someone doesn't click, you're still your content is still being referenced. You're still building awareness and authority. Sometimes we just need that awareness and authority to show up more often to get that confidence and then get a buyer down the road. So then I want you to think about this mindset shift. I know for many, many years our clients are like, how do I rank number one in search engines? So instead of that, and this is something I've always directed them to, but it's even more a strong point that we need to make now is I want you to start asking, how do I become the best answer? That's always been the goal, but most people didn't think about it that way. They want to they want to think about how do I become number one? But if we try to be the best answer instead, we help solve search engine optimization as well as AI optimization too. That can change everything and it can change your mindset when you're thinking about the content on your web page. And then that bonus tip I promise, I want you to ask yourself if someone asked AI a question related to your business, would your content be a strong candidate to be part of that answer? If not, that's where I want you to focus. How can you be a candidate for a strong part of that answer? Again, we're coming back to clarity and we're coming back to really supporting our audience here. So in closing, SEO is not dead, it's evolving. And when you focus on clarity, usefulness, and helping real people, your website will continue to work for you no matter how search changes. It's always been that way. We always wanted to focus on clarity, usefulness, and helping real people, but now it feels like it's even more important while we throw AI in the mix. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. And if you ever have specific questions that you'd love for me to answer for you, head on over to SmarterOnline Business.com forward slash Facebook and join our free Facebook group where you can ask me questions at any time. Thank you again for listening to this week's episode of the Smarter Online Business Podcast. Be sure to rate and review it wherever you listen to podcasts as that greatly helps us spread the word and get more of our message to other business owners just like you. And we will see you next week.