Transcription
What separates the businesses who are crushing it with SEO right now from the ones who are watching their traffic slowly disappear? Well, after analyzing hundreds of websites and working with dozens of service businesses, I discovered something shocking. SEO has already evolved, but most businesses are still optimizing for a version of search that just doesn't exist anymore. And unless you change how you're doing things now, your leads are going to continue to dry up. That's why, in this video, I'm going to show you the shift that's already making traditional SEO obsolete, the weird thing working for businesses right now that nobody's talking about, and the exact playbook you can use to get more leads and sales from search in 2025, even if you've never ranked for a single keyword before.
But to understand how search has evolved, we should look at another industry that had to make a pretty hard pivot just to survive; specifically, what happened to restaurants during the COVID shutdown. So when they were all forced to close, most restaurant owners panicked and did what seemed obvious—right? They threw their menus up on every delivery app they could find. But the fees were pretty brutal; you know, these apps were taking up to 30% of every order. That right there put a lot of restaurants out of business within weeks. But the smart restaurants, like in Mexico and New York, they realized something had to change. So instead of just accepting those crushing fees, they launched their own delivery service. And then something crazy happened: in the very first week, their orders exploded—not because they had a better menu or lower prices, but because they stopped trying to make their old business model work in a new world. They built something specifically designed for how people were actually ordering food now—that still made the money.
The exact same thing is happening with search in 2025, except unlike the lockdowns, this change isn't temporary. So your potential customers are still looking for your services, but they're finding them in completely different ways. And just like those restaurants, if you're only optimizing for an already outdated method—in this case, traditional Google search—you're missing out on a massive opportunity. Let me show you exactly what I mean. This is what a typical Google search looked like 5 years ago. Now let's do the exact same search today, and this is what you get: this big AI-generated answer, because Google just tries to answer the question themselves now. Then we have a few YouTube videos, then whatever this is. Then, if you're actually lucky enough and have done all the hard work to rank number one, congratulations—you're still basically pushed down to page two. And if you're not number one, we have all this other stuff: people also ask, Reddit threads. Then here's your number two spot, and God forbid your number three. Year after that, you've got more YouTube videos and Quora threads before we even get to the rest. Think about that for a second. So even if you achieve those mythical, you know, number one through three rankings that SEO companies have been promising for years, your potential customers need to scroll past pages worth of other stuff just to find you. Oh, and by the way, that search I showed you didn't even include any ads.
I watched this happen to dozens of my service business owners and students. You know, one of them is a local consulting firm. They were getting around 80% of their leads from Google search just 2 years ago; they were ranking number one for their main keywords; life was good. Then these changes started rolling out, and their actual leads from Google dropped by almost 60%. So this might be happening to you right now too, and it isn't going back. Here's what's wild, though: even though the leads Google was sending them went down, their overall traffic stayed the same. Know why? It's because they saw the shift coming, and they adapted to it, just like those smart restaurant owners who built their own delivery service. They stopped trying to make their old strategy work in a new world.
But before I show you what they did instead, we need to talk about something that's completely changing how people find businesses online. It's not just that Google search isn't working like it used to; people are actually getting tired of doing all the work themselves. Think about it: when you're researching something important, like finding a business to work with, do you really want to wade through 15 different websites trying to, you know, piece together who's actually good? Or would you rather have someone just tell you, "Here are the best three," or better yet, "Here's the single best option, and here's why"? This is why tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT are exploding in popularity right now. You know, instead of getting a page full of links to sort through, you just get an actual answer—and not just any answer, a recommendation. Right? It's almost like the old days when your friend or neighbor just told you who they used and you should use them too, but with a 2025 twist. Let me show you what I mean. So I just tested this myself. I asked Perplexity, "Who are the best pool builders in Austin?" Now, in the old days of Google, you would just get a bunch of links to pool company websites, maybe some Yelp reviews, and you'd have to piece it all together yourself, and that would just basically become your weekend project. But Perplexity instantly analyzed hundreds of sources and gave me three specific recommendations, complete with why each one stood out. And this is where GEO comes in: Generative Engine Optimization. It's about making sure when these AI tools are making recommendations, your business is the one they're going to recommend. And unlike traditional SEO, where, you know, you just stuffed some keywords on a page and hoped for the best, AI is way smarter than that. So it's looking for things like actual proof that you're worth recommending.
So how do you become that top recommendation? Okay, so let me show you the five specific strategies that will get AI to recommend your business, including one controversial hack that's actually really easy and effective. First, and this is absolutely foundational, you need to make your website crystal clear about what you do, who you help, and what makes you different. Because most businesses just hide behind vague jargon and, you know, marketing speak. So let me show you what I mean. One of my students is a marketing agency, and last month they had this on their homepage: "We partner with growing businesses to optimize their efficiency and streamline processes." And of course, I had no idea what that meant. So I asked them to explain what they actually do in plain English, like they're talking to a friend. Turns out they help small law firms automate their client intake process to save them time and get more cases. So we changed their homepage to say exactly that: "We help small law firms save 10+ hours per week by automating their client intake process." And with that one change, their AI visibility shot up because now both humans and AI can instantly understand exactly who they help and how they help them. That's the level of clarity that your website needs. When an AI tool is trying to recommend the best business to someone, it needs to know exactly what you do, not wade through fancy language trying to figure it all out.
Second, you need to get your business mentioned across as many trustworthy websites as possible. Here's why that matters: AI isn't just looking at your website; you know, it's scanning the entire internet trying to build a really complete picture of your business. It's checking how often you're mentioned, what others say about you, and whether you're consistently described the same way across different platforms. Think of it like building your business's digital reputation. Third, and this is a super powerful way to get those mentions quickly, you want to use AI-optimized press releases to do it. It's actually a really easy process. You just want to start with one of your best case studies that shows how you got a really good result for one of your clients, and then use this specific prompt to turn that case study into an AI-optimized press release. You can use whichever AI writing tool you like best; I personally think Claude does the best job with writing right now. Now, the prompt itself is pretty long and boring, so I'm not going to read the whole thing, but feel free to pause it, or better yet, just grab it in the description below. But you're going to run this prompt, attaching your case study to it, then it should give you back a really well-structured press release, something like this. Then just use a service like Brand24 to distribute that press release. So when you do this right, that press release should get picked up by hundreds of reputable websites, and because you've written it specifically to train AI, each one of those mentions is teaching AI exactly why they should recommend you.
Fourth, here is that controversial hack that I promised you that's working incredibly well right now. So all you got to do is create a detailed listicle post on your own website, probably as a blog post, that lists the best businesses in your category, with guess what—you—as number one. Now, look, is this spammy? Yes, I'm not going to deny that, and that's why this trick probably won't work forever; you know, AI will likely get smarter about this kind of self-promotion, but right now it's one of the easiest and most effective shortcuts to get yourself recommended by AI tools. Just make sure that your comparisons are actually detailed and helpful; explain the real pros and cons of different options, including your competition. Finally, number five, and this one's really important: you need to be religious about asking for detailed positive reviews everywhere you can because these AI tools are really heavily weighting reviews in their recommendations, and they're looking everywhere—you know, not just Google reviews, but Yelp, industry-specific review sites, social media mentions, anywhere they can find them. But here's the key: don't just ask for reviews; right, give your happy customers specific prompts, like, "Would you mind sharing what specific results you got from working with us?" Those kind of detailed success stories then become the perfect training data for AI to understand exactly why you're worth recommending.
So all of these strategies are working great right now for getting AI to recommend you, but there's another platform that's becoming possibly the best search play available long-term, and unlike Google, it hasn't been and likely won't be affected by AI at all: video. Video is about to surpass traditional search, and I'll tell you exactly why. So when we look at where people are actually going for answers in 2025, YouTube isn't just the second biggest search engine anymore; it's really becoming the primary place people go to to find real wisdom, not just information. And what's really powerful about YouTube right now is that, unlike Google, the algorithm is still laser-focused on showing the best content. There's no AI pushing you down the page, no endless amount of ads before people find you. So if you make great content that actually helps people, YouTube's going to show it to the right audience. And I saw this firsthand working with hundreds of my service business students. You know, the ones who shifted their focus to YouTube are seeing 10 times the results they used to get from Google. And when I say 10 times, it's not just about the number of leads; it's about the quality of those leads. So when someone finds you through Google, you're just another search result to them, right? They've still got a lot of questions, and you've got a lot of selling to do. But when they find you on YouTube and they watch one, two, three, 10 of your videos, everything suddenly changes. You're a whole lot more to them than a search result now; you're someone they feel like they know and trust. In other words, not only is it going to be way more sustainable to use YouTube as your primary search strategy moving forward, but the leads you get from it are just so much better than the leads you get from Google. Fight me on that in the comments if you want, but I know it to be true. And let's not forget that Google search that I showed you from before—how many YouTube videos did it show before it showed even one website link? So yeah, YouTube lets you double-dip like that and get the same upside from Google searches too.
But now let's talk about exactly what kind of content works on YouTube, especially for search. So start with what you already know that your clients want to learn, right? Every time a client asks you a question, that's not just a question—that can be your next video topic. So start building your channel by answering those frequently asked questions, the ones you find yourself explaining over and over again. For example, if you're a business coach, your clients probably ask things like, "How much should I charge?" or "Who should I hire first?" Those exact phrases can then become your video titles. No clever title tricks or clickbait needed; just the straightforward search terms that people, people are actually typing into YouTube. And here's a small detail that makes a really big difference: so you want to take that exact same phrase and use it word for word in your video description too. So if your title is "How much to charge for web design in 2025," your description should start with, "In this video, I'll show you how much to charge for web design in 2025." This really simple alignment tells YouTube exactly what your video is about and is going to help you show whenever anyone actually searches for that question. Once you've covered those core FAQs, that's when you can graduate to how-to type content. So these are the step-by-step processes you use in your business. Financial advisors might create "How to start saving for retirement in your 30s" or even just "How to start investing," right? Again, you want to keep those titles exactly matching what people search for, so save the personality and the insights for the thumbnail and your content itself. Because hard truth is, people can't benefit from your expertise if they never find your video to begin with.
But wait, won't AI start taking over YouTube too? The beautiful thing about video content is that while AI can summarize videos all day long, people who are looking for videos aren't looking for that, right? An AI summary can't replace the experience of learning from a real expert. Sure, AI might be able to give someone that quick overview of what you said in your video, but but anyone who prefers that quick AI summary over actually watching your expertise in action, they were never your ideal client to begin with.
Now, the one thing we do still need to cover here is the idea of local SEO. So what if you're trying to rank right here in the map listings for your local business? That's kind of a different story, and it can be tricky to do, especially if you want to be found for searchers across your whole service area. But lucky for you, I have a pretty amazing strategy for that as well. But honestly, it's so big that it deserves its own video. So click right here, and I'm going to show you the whole thing so you can get clients in your whole service area, even in towns that you're not physically present in. So click here, and I'm going to show you exactly what you've got to do.