SEO Rankings Are Dead (Here's What Replaced Them)

I've been doing SEO since 2015, and we've ranked home service businesses number 1 for hundreds of keywords. The problem is, is that ranking number 1 is not the advantage that it used to be. Search is shifting from keywords to conversations, and if you're paying an SEO company that's chasing the number 1 rankings, you're about to waste a lot of money. In this video, I'll show you what Google's telling us about the future of SEO, what AI platforms are rewarding the number 1 spot for now, and how to position your business to take advantage of that. Alright, so ranking number 1 is not the advantage that it used to be, and here's the problem is that right now when you do a Google search like HVAC repair near me, Google goes through all these things, then it gets to the organic ranking of ranking number 1. So let's just say you do HVAC repair near me, you have Google Local Service Ads, you have Google Search Ads, you have the Map Pack, which is local SEO, then you have your on-site rankings. This is your organic rankings, but you got to go through Yelp and now you're down here. So imagine how many scrolls you have to get to to even get to the number 1 ranking. This is fundamentally the first part of why number 1 doesn't matter, because it's the 6th or 7th thing that someone sees. But even worse is that Google changed how search happens. So when someone goes to Google here and you type in HVAC repair near me, notice here it's AI mode. This does not pull up your traditional Google search engine results page, which is what I just showed you. It's literally showing AI mode interaction with Gemini. This is fundamentally changing why ranking number 1 doesn't matter. Because ranking number 1 is an old thing. Keywords are dead. Conversations are the future. So why are keywords out? Instead of people searching roof repairing near me, people are now searching for my roof is leaking after a storm, should I repair it or replace it? So I just showed you that AI mode is the thing that Google is sending people to. But here's the more important piece is that Google AI mode, this is a blog that they put out. One of the big things that they found was that People are asking longer questions in AI mode. While we're seeing growth in both short and long queries in AI mode, the average AI mode search is triple the length of a traditional search query. And this is fundamentally what this is, the shift from keywords to conversations. People are not searching for roof repair near me, they're searching for triple that number. My roof is leaking after a storm, should I repair it or replace it? They're asking a lot more conversational style questions, and this is why fundamentally SEO has to change. What we were doing before to now match this new, more conversational search. It's not the keyword search, it's the conversation. Google knows this, ChatGPT knows this, Perplexity knows this. They all know that people are changing the way that people are searching. So Google already told you in Google's own documentation, which I have pulled up right here and I'm going to show you in a second, what they want right now. So the first thing that they say is that, does SEO, is it still relevant? Is SEO still relevant for generative AI search? In short, yes. The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in our core search ranking and quality system. I'm not saying SEO is dead. I'm saying that ranking number one is not the advantage that it used to be. And there's another thing that we want, which is AI platforms to recommend us. And what they talk about in this is specifically what you need to be doing. So creating valuable non-commodity content, apply foundational SEO practices to generative AI search. But here's the most important piece, because I hear this all the time, like you need to do listicles, you need to do this thing. What they say here is creating non-commodity content that's helpful, reliable, and people-first. Be sure that you're writing non-commodity content that your readers will find helpful. What is commodity content? 7 tips for first-time home buyers. Imagine if your SEO company is writing these generic commodity content pieces. This is based on common knowledge because they don't know anything about your business, which could originate from anyone and typically adds little unique insight for readers. In contrast, non-commodity content such as why we waive the inspection and save money look inside the sewer line, provides unique expert experience takes that go beyond common knowledge and that, and the ordinary. This is the big shift here, and this is why I prefaced the SEO agencies, is because SEO agencies are creating commodity content if they don't have any context on your business. And if you're not creating content on your own, how are you going to win in this new age of SEO, AI search, all that stuff? Google just told us SEO matters, but do not create commodity content. So the old SEO playbook, and this is what most marketing companies were doing, my company included, and this is what I was paying for when I was at my home service business, was we create service area pages. This is like HVAC repair Dallas, HVAC repair Austin. You're creating specific pages for service areas. This is not necessarily dead. This helps build out your map around where you serve, but this is old school SEO playbook. City pages, same thing. Not just your service area pages, but specific neighborhood pages or city pages based off of the actual service. So let's say you did HVAC repair, You also did installs, you did service, you did repairs. This is like a fan out of those service pages. Keyword blogs, these are dead, okay? Commodity content keyword stuff blogs are dead. Just to have blogs up on your website, this is old school playbook. AI-written articles, dead. If you are starting with AI slop and you're going just writing content 'cause you think that you need to put content up there and that you're gonna magically train AI on things that it already knows, like dead. Keyword stuffing, old school, putting a bunch of keywords into your stuff so that way it says that you do this. This is old school trying to rank for keywords. Dead, dead, dead. So to be fair, some of these pages still have value, like service area pages, city pages, like creating content because those are unique content to your area. You're training Google AI platforms that you service this area and you do this service in that area. Keyword blogs, AI-written articles, keyword stuffing, dead, dead, dead. Here's the thing, if all your content could belong to an HVAC company in America, it's commodity content. AI has already seen it. So if you're training AI or teaching AI things that it already knows, like you're not going to be standing out as a subject matter expert. This is all dead. So here's the thing that you want to do. You want to highlight your real content sources. The best content comes from your business. That's information that AI can't get anywhere else. This is the most important piece of this. So your customer calls, first and foremost, all your customer calls, you should be taking them and turning them into content. 2, your technicians. If your technicians record their conversations, you should be using that conversation to create content. 3, your sales team. If your sales teams are going out and selling things, they get a lot of objections. Those objections and conversation pieces should be turned into content. Your reviews. Okay, this is a very important one because your reviews that sit on Google Business Profile have a lot of great content in them, a lot of good information. But if you never use them to create content, you're missing out on a goldmine of what your customers actually say about working with your business. And then your real customer questions. A lot of times people go to ChatGPT and say, what are the common questions that people have about gutter cleaning or whatever the service is? And it's like, don't ask it. Ask your real customer questions and use all these tools here to get the information. That is the biggest shift. So here's what I would recommend going forward, and this is what we're doing for our clients. So if you're listening to this, here's what you should be doing. One, you, you need two things. One, you need a knowledge base. So what we built for our clients, and you could do this for yourself, you could use a tool like NotebookLM and you could build this out. We took it a step further than NotebookLM and built out these knowledge bases for our clients. But you can do this. Take your customer calls, use Google Search Console questions, take meeting transcripts from if you're doing virtual meetings, whatever. Take your website content, take your social media content that you're creating, and then any other documentation, reviews, whatever else. And you want to create a digital twin. It's not some vendor that you talk to every 30 minutes, like an SEO company that doesn't know anything about your business, but a digital twin for your brand. And the tool NotebookLM that I mentioned is free. You could set it up, you could put 50 things in there. This is what we were doing before, about like, like a year ago, we had this set up for our clients. The problem is, is that you can't really automate things to go into NotebookLMs. It's more of a manual process to pull these things in. What we did as a company is we actually build knowledge bases for our clients by having everything connect into a brain. So that way, as a marketing company, we know everything about their business, what their client says, what they do, how they do it, all the stuff. And then the second piece is real customer questions. So once you have the knowledge base and the brain around your business, then you can take your customer questions from the calls, from your sales team, from whatever, and you can build content off of your specific knowledge brain, your specific business, create unique content. The real questions live in your customer calls and Search Console data. That's where content creation actually starts, in your customer questions, and then is nurtured by a knowledge base that's built on your business. Then you might layer in some type of AI context. It's not start with AI context and then let me review it and just like add a little sauce here and there. No, you got to start with real customer questions. Then you build on your knowledge base. Then you might layer in some AI context in it. Build off your knowledge base first. Now, the problem is, is that most businesses hear this and like, wow, that's a lot of work, or how do I build this out, or how do I get my marketing company to do this? This is why I mentioned that a lot of these SEO companies are going to be a race to the bottom because the results are not going to be there. Because when we shift from keywords to conversations, as I mentioned, we need the real customer questions in the conversation with the real data that they want to see, the non-commodity content. So here's the biggest part to this. People usually ask me at this point of the conversation when I share this with them, it's like, okay, well, how do I know what's going to be good in the future? Because if rankings are dead, keywords are dead, how do I like know if it's actually going to help me on the next piece of it? So when we talk about measuring visibility on AI platforms, there's two metrics. And I made a whole video about this, about the new wave of this, but we use a tool called BrightLocal. It's probably one of the top local SEO tracker 'cause, you know, we do home service stuff and we have a beta test with them. And there's two key metrics. There's share of voice. How often does AI surface your business when people ask relevant questions? So let's say that they ask a question about my thermostat is on, but it's blowing hot air. The different types of content that you have, a blog post, a long-form YouTube video, a short-form YouTube video, a short-form reel, a static image post on Facebook. Like, those are all different content pieces that you can have a share of voice. You could have 5 of the 10 pieces of share of voice. So 5 out of 10 times they're sharing your content. So you have a share of voice. The second thing is mention rate. When AI answers those questions, how often does it actually mention your company? And mention rate is how much do they trust you? So mention rate is like, okay, so out of all this information that we just gave you, here's the company that we would recommend to reach out to. And then they actually cite or link to your business. There's two different things that you have to do. The first thing is share a voice is that you need a volume of content to be happening for your business so that way they can share your voice, literally, and then they have to trust you enough to mention your business, and there's two parts to this. So this is why ranking number one, I just showed you, doesn't matter, but now what are we going to be looking at and evaluating from an SEO, AEO content perspective going forward? And this is it. It's becoming far more valuable than whether you're position one or position three What matters is that you have enough share of voice so that it's sharing your voice and that it's mentioning your business to be the one that you should be working with. All right, so it's a completely different game plan. So no, SEO is not dead. Google tells us that, but SEO does not look like SEO from 5 years ago. And the businesses that win won't be the ones stuffing keywords in a blog post. They'll be the ones creating the best, most trustworthy, most unique information in their industry for optimizing from keywords to now optimizing for conversation. Now, if you own a home service business and you are like, hey, I would love someone to help me with this, this is exactly why we built this AI agent for home service business and why we position our clients for success. So I'll put a link down below. You can set up some time to talk. We'd love the opportunity to at least show you what we built and see if it might help you. I want to go side by side, old SEO versus new SEO, just to show you if you're paying for SEO, this is what you need to be looking at. Old school is rank number 1 in search results. New school, get mentioned in AI answers. So does my SEO company actually Look at, am I getting mentioned? Am I share of voice? Am I helping me create unique content? Content. It's not just generic keyword blogs that they send you some random blogs or postings on your website. It's creating unique content that's specific to your business and your customer questions. Also metrics. Are they just looking at your keyword rankings or are they measuring share of voice and mention rates? The source. Are they using templates and competitor copy that's generic stuff? This is probably the most important one. Or are they using your customer calls and real questions with like a knowledge base or brain, like what I was talking about? This is exactly why we built this knowledge brain for people. Are they built by writers guessing keywords or AI slop that's just layering in a bunch of keywords to try to help you rank for number one? Or is it built off of a knowledge base and real customer questions from your business? The most important piece. All right, so here's 5 things to remember. Number 1, rankings aren't the number one spot anymore. AI overviews, map pack, ads come first. Search is becoming conversation, not keywords. Google wants unique content, not commodity blogs. Your best content comes from calls, technicians, and real customer questions. Track share of voice and mention rate, not just rankings. If you like content like this, be sure to hit like and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video.