Moving From Search Engines to Answer Engines

Joe Apfelbaum went from struggling with SEO to building Evvy AI, a tool that helps you draft LinkedIn posts and analyze profiles. He's now focused on answer engine optimization: getting AI models like ChatGPT and Perplexus to recommend you as an expert, rather than chasing search rankings.
Chapters
I know a lot about you by just clicking one button. I'm able to see all that. Every podcast you've been on, every article you've written, everything is right in front of me at my fingertips. Evvy AI is a sales assistant that helps people. I built many, many websites, but nobody came, dude. Nobody came. Nobody was coming. So I had to figure out, okay, how do I make people come? And then I realized, holy shit, I, I can do SEO. I can be number one on Google. I can do search engine optimization because I know how websites work. And so I started doing that for people and I ended up growing one of the fastest growing companies in America because SEO was hot in the 2000s. That's when it was super, super hot and I was an expert at it. And so, you know, hundreds of companies were coming over and they were like, dude, we need, we need, we need to do this. And Before you know it, I'm generating millions of dollars in revenue. I also discovered that Microsoft paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn. And so I started teaching people how to use LinkedIn cuz I was particularly good at it. And now that I already know how to teach people, teach people how to use Google, I can teach people how to use LinkedIn as well. And so I had this new skill. Um, and so that's basically what I did, build relationships, get to know people. And I built this new company that I taught people how to use LinkedIn. And then from that, um, when ChatGPT came out a couple years ago, I decided I'm gonna finally do what I've always dreamt of doing, which is building a software company. And so Evvy AI is the birth of that software company that came as a result of me learning how to leverage LinkedIn, teaching it, but me overcoming my insecurities. And so Evvy AI is a sales assistant that helps people be able to write comments. It helps people be able to write posts. It helps analyze profiles like, About you, I found out that you are the creator and host of the Deep Voice Man Show, a podcast with listeners in all 50 states and more than 110 countries and 6 continents. And you position yourself as a personal development educator, voice actor, singer, life coach, and entrepreneur who uses content, podcasting, writing, and speaking to help others build authority and design a life outside the traditional 9 to 5. So I know a lot about you. By just clicking one button, I'm able to see all that. I have conversation starters that I can talk to you about. Like for example, your 3P framework, people, productivity, personality for leaving the 9 to 5. And, and I have, you know, I, I researched you all over, all over. I've every podcast you've been on, every article you've written, everything is right in front of me at my fingertips. I'm sure you heard of SEO, right? Yeah. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. The new thing that people are doing is people are not typing in keywords right now into search engines. They're not doing that. You know what people are doing instead? They're doing— when you go to ChatGPT, do you type in, you know, LinkedIn strategy? No, you don't do that. What you do instead is you type in something like, like what? You type in like, tell me who's the best at LinkedIn strategy, or tell me, yeah, or tell me what I need to know in order for me to be successful on LinkedIn strategy. You know what I mean? That's much more pow— that's much, much more powerful than just writing LinkedIn strategy in Google and seeing what websites come up for that. So you're actually asking a question, in other words, a prompt, and you're looking for an answer to your prompt. Do you get what I'm saying? Sure. So the way that you need to be marketing now is for people that are asking questions and you're actually answering those questions for those people. So somebody in an LLM, even in LinkedIn, if you ask LinkedIn a question now, you can actually ask LinkedIn a question and have LinkedIn answer the question for you. Like, tell me all my connections that are podcasters that I would be likely that they would want me on the podcast when I wanna talk about LinkedIn strategy. And then the AI will present to you people that are podcasters that you're currently connected to on LinkedIn. And then you might say, show me all the people that I'm not connected to on LinkedIn that are podcasters that would wanna host me to talk about LinkedIn strategy. So that's the concept of answer engine optimization where you need to train the AI using a very specific method now for you to rank within ChatGPT. I get customers from ChatGPT. How crazy is that? I get customers from Gemini. I get customers. I see them coming to my website. I see them buying my products and services. I speak to them like, what did you search? He's like, oh, I went to Perplexity, asked it a question, and it told me that you're the guy. What? What? I'm the guy? Why? The reason I'm the guy is because I trained the AI to consider me the guy. And how many conversations are you having with your ideal target market? That's really the idea. Like you can count, Your network from today till tomorrow and how many connections you have and all that. But if you're not actually having conversations, I love that you're having conversations and you're recording them, cuz that's powerful. You can go back to this conversation and you can learn a lot about me by history, who I am, what I'm about. I mean, we actually spoke and, and you asked me all these amazing questions and you have more questions to ask me, but like what I always tell people is like, how many conversations are you having? If you have 7,000 connections, how many of them have you, have you spoken to? Even for 5 minutes, even for 10 minutes. How many of them have you actually spoken to? You know what I mean? Want to make networking easier and more effective? Try Evvy AI, your AI-powered sidekick that helps you connect, engage, and grow your network faster than ever. Click the link and start building smarter relationships today.
More from Joe

How to Beat the Algorithm: Remove Hidden Watermarks & Scale Content with evyAI

AEO & GEO: SEO's Future Explained! Master Answer & Generative Engines! #shorts








