Is SEO dead? 

That’s what everyone wants to know.

We do love drama.

Well, the answer is "no," according to today’s guest on the Marketing Mentor Podcast, Atlanta-based SEO & AI Visibility Consultant, Jenny Munn.

"They’ve been trying to kill SEO for years," says Jenny. "But no, it’s not dead – however, as with everything, it is changing."

And this shift requires a reframe because what really matters – whether AI is involved or not – is being findable by the people you want to find you.

Whether it’s via Google search or one of the AI platforms or on a social media platform – to be findable you have to know what language your people use to describe their needs.

And that’s just one of the topics we covered with Jenny, whose speciality is AI related to SEO.

Jenny had so much great info to share -- I especially love her advice to stay on top of what’s changing without being overwhelmed by it.

That is a best practice for sure, if you plan to survive this exciting but unknown future.

So listen here (or below):

If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session. 

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Read the transcript

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ilise: All right, Jenny, welcome to the podcast. And please introduce yourself.

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Jenny Munn: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Ilise. I am Jenny Munn from Atlanta, and I am introducing myself now as an AI SEO consultant, which is new the past few months. I used to just say, I am an SEO consultant and trainer. And I help marketers learn how to do SEO, so they can do it for their organization as well as I have a few retainer clients that I'm their in-house SEO person for so.

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ilise: Yeah, I noticed that you had adjusted your title or your elevator pitch to include AI. I thought that was interesting. We're obviously going to talk a lot about that

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ilise: and is it just you in your business.

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Jenny Munn: It is. It's just me and my trusty assistant chat. Gpt, yeah.

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ilise: And.

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Jenny Munn: Best assistant I ever had. Yep, I've been a solo solopreneur for 15 years now for my own business. My! When I say I'm Jenny with jennymunn.com for 15 years now.

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ilise: Excellent, all right, and give us a little background about you, and just the evolution of your business model, because I imagine you didn't start this way.

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Jenny Munn: Yeah, I've evolved quite a bit, but I do feel like when people like, Oh, what are you up to these days? I'm like same old, same old actually, you know. But I I started out in about 2008 ish. I had just had my my 1st son, and I knew I wanted to control my own schedule, and I could pick him up off the school bus at 2 30, and I would work early in the mornings and weekends to make that happen. But I

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Jenny Munn: was researching what I wanted to do. And I was like, you know what I think. I really want to be a blogger. Blogging was kind of new at that time, and upon doing that I found someone named Peter Bowerman, who was a copywriter, and that really kind of took my background when I worked for companies in sales and marketing and my love for writing and put those together. So I was like, okay, I'm going to be a freelance copywriter now. And I put up my little website, jennymunn.com. I taught myself Wordpress

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Jenny Munn: and I went to meetups free meetups, because I had, you know, had no money right? I just thought I'd start my own little business, my little freelance business, and I met a business owner, and he paid me $75 to write 2 press releases, and I went back to my office and I wrote those. And then I sat there and was like, Okay, bring on the next client, you know, and and I waited and waited a while, and then finally, I feel like.

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Jenny Munn: Couple months later, after I tinkered with my website and changed my my writing around the Banner and everything. And my husband was like, so are you going to start bringing in any money, or maybe think about going back to get a job. So we can have health insurance because he was independent. Also, I was like, Okay, I guess I need to figure out what I need to do to bring in clients. So I started going out more. I started talking to people and business owners about how they

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Jenny Munn: hired copywriters. And they said, Well, I went to Google, and I Googled Atlanta copywriters, and I just kind of reached out to the few couple who were at the top. This is like, okay. Well, then, I need to figure out what to do to get myself to the top, and in the meantime I would go out and meet people. I went to a lot of freelance events and.

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ilise: Lots of networking.

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Jenny Munn: Lots of networking referrals were my best source of revenue and getting clients, because I met people who had been freelancing for a while, and they would refer business to me because they were too busy, or they wanted bigger fish. And so other copywriters were my best source of referrals. And you know, again, I just grew to love

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Jenny Munn: our colleagues and ourselves, and like really adopt the mindset that there really is enough business out there, and we can all help each other. And then, when people started asking me so I did. Copywriting. I love copywriting is absolutely like my heart what I love the most. And but when people started asking me how I got to the top of Google because I started getting really busy with leads who were finding me.

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Jenny Munn: they said, Well, can you teach me how to do that? She was like I can? So I went from copywriting to SEO copywriting to then, finally

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Jenny Munn: doing all the things as SEO got less technical because I am a very much non technical person, as you guys will find out later in the AI part where I talk in very non-technical terms about it. I am not technical, but but with Cmss and Wordpress, and the ability to put a title, tag and a meta description into a plugin. So you don't have to know how to code like that became where SEO really opened up to non-technical

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Jenny Munn: people who are good at good writing and knowing who your audience is. And so that's how I got into SEO consulting and then training. I love teaching people what I know, and and then finally adopting the last evolution recently is adopting the the AI part of it all.

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ilise: Awesome, interesting.

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ilise: I mean, you've mentioned networking. And you were part of my coaching groups early on. So you know the 3 tools of the simplest marketing plan, outreach, content marketing, and networking, as you perhaps have noticed, I never talk about SEO,

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ilise: and there's a reason a part of it is, and I'd love to get your take on this before we go into more detail about SEO. But I really feel like for service providers, creative professionals, copywriters, designers, coaches, consultants.

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ilise: It's better to choose who you want to work with and go after them versus.

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ilise: you know, waiting for ones to find you, because I have also found that the people who find you are not necessarily the best quality, the highest quality prospects. So what do you think of that?

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ilise: Maybe from the point of view where you were coming up early on as the Atlanta copywriter. But how and if that has changed now.

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Jenny Munn: Yeah. And I always love debating this with you, because I remember a couple of years ago, when I was in your group, we kind of talked about it a little bit, too, and my mind is it's it's not an either or -- it could be an and

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Jenny Munn: I got one of my best clients early on, who's still one of my clients through Linkedin, because he typed in something about SEO. Atlanta, consultant and found me on Linkedin, and so to mention also at 1 point, I, my Google leads started dropping, and especially, that is when Google decided to take the paid ads that used to be on the side and put them at the top, and that pushed all the organic

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Jenny Munn: listings down. And then here comes freelancer.com, and all these other websites that get above the independents.

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Jenny Munn: I started getting more leads through Linkedin than I did through Google right? But again, I didn't look at it like, well, SEO is dead. I looked at it like, well, I definitely need to be visible here, but to me it's just something to supplement. I still very much believe in it for creatives. And then, when people would get to your website or land, you know, if they were to type in something, I just, I feel like it's a no brainer to kind of

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Jenny Munn: do the one time work that's required to like, optimize yourself. And then, while you're doing all this great work people can be finding you. And I do think the language on your website, and who you say you work with will qualify people in or out, and they might still reach out to you, but then you could pass them along to a colleague or somebody else. And so in my mind, SEO, even if it's not the most

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Jenny Munn: qualified person is not wasted. I still like what you say. People, you know, referrals, or when you meet someone, a networking event. Right? Those are

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Jenny Munn: great referrals, too, but I've gotten some amazing leads with SEO. So I really think it could be both. Now, SEO does require a like one time and some ongoing work right? Which can be kind of a pain. That's why a lot of people creative professionals choose not to do it, but I think it could be both.

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ilise: Interesting. Good.

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ilise: So

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ilise: that big question that you've mentioned is SEO dead? Because here we are at the end of July 2025 for people who are listening in the future. We'll see if it's dead. But you know AI is on the rise, and there's a lot of talk about it overtaking the Google results. Where are you with that these days.

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Jenny Munn: Yeah, such a good question. And you know I have been like sitting and observing all of this happening for a year. I kind of stopped my training because I felt like I wasn't qualified to train up like nobody knows what's going on right now. But I do feel like we're we're at a point where

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Jenny Munn: I can comfortably talk about it again, like what to make sense of it. So everybody's always tried to kill SEO, and we all laugh about it right? Like everybody's always trying to kill SEO. And I and I get it right. Most people do want SEO to die, and they're like rooting for SEO to die. I think part of it is because of the very shady past of the black hat SEO, and doing the bad things, and again

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Jenny Munn: again, like I didn't even know, even if I wanted to. I didn't even know how to do that, because that took like the technical guys, you know, figuring out how to game the system, a lot of it.

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Jenny Munn: But things have changed. And what has really changed is that a significant and growing number of people are not using Google anymore. They are turning to these AI platforms. And so people are like, well, Google is synonymous with SEO. And so SEO is dead. But how I truly look at SEO is the

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Jenny Munn: the art, the science, and the art, and the discipline of being findable. And so, if you truly look at it like, how do I bridge the gap of what my audience is searching? What are their pain points? What are their dreams? What is the known in their mind. And then here is an organization. And here's how they're presenting their products and services. And how do you bridge that gap? I truly feel like. That's what SEO does. It helps bridge the gap between what people are looking

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Jenny Munn: for. People's pain points. Talking about Covid and the pandemic have changed so much if your business didn't keep up with the new needs and the pain points and and the new. You know it used to be

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Jenny Munn: free shipping. That was the big thing. And then it turned into fast shipping. Right? So it's about keeping your language updated based on what your audience wants. And so to me, that is never going to die. The platforms might shift and change right. But to me you need to be findable, whether it's on Linkedin, whether it's on Google, whether it's in Gemini or Chatgpt or Bing, I mean again to me. I'm hoping it's not

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Jenny Munn: well, I want to be found in Chat Gpt, hopefully. It is everywhere right. Of course you can't do all the things you do need to prioritize, but to me the discipline of doing the things it takes to be findable like, how is that going to die? I truly believe it, and I do think that's what comes from

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Jenny Munn: great marketing and great copywriting principles of knowing who your audience is, where they are, and showing up.

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ilise: I love that just the idea, like extrapolating the idea of being findable as opposed to search being inextricably associated with Google, right being found on Google. And you did mention Linkedin a couple times especially that that's where someone found you. So let's just take a little tangent to talk about search on Linkedin, because I think it's horrible right from a searcher's point of view. It's like.

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ilise: I don't know. It never feels satisfying. So I'd love to hear your take on search on Linkedin.

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Jenny Munn: That is so funny, you know, and I guess from the point of view that I don't do a lot of search on Linkedin right. I don't necessarily need to hire someone. I'm not looking for peers. I don't need to go out and look for clients that way, although I certainly could, but so that from a perspective of I'm trying to think I do find I haven't found anyone lately who has necessarily

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Jenny Munn: found me on Linkedin, have I, and said, Oh, I mean, I do get a lot of Linkedin invitations, but unless there's like a personal invite there, I ignore it. So if it is a lead. I guess I wouldn't even know it, although maybe they you know time in. I just think that it. That's where your audience is. It just makes sense that you use the language that they might type in and in Linkedin there is a feature where you can see, what did people type in to land on your profile

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Jenny Munn: like it makes sense to look through there. I saw a lot of search engine optimization consultant right? So to certainly know what are people typing? And is there a fit? And so again, I just think it's 1 of those things that it makes sense to optimize your profile, to know who this is. The whole thing behind SEO, too, is the who behind a search right? Who are you trying to attract what is their language.

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Jenny Munn: and then just make sure that's in there, and to try to be findable. So I don't put a whole lot of effort into it. But once you do that. And you kind of adopt that mindset. Who are you trying to reach? It just becomes a lot easier to target what I was also going to quickly mention that

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Jenny Munn: the past few years social has become such a huge search engine. Right? We know younger generations are using search. They don't go to Google, they go to tick tock SEO, right? Like, I talked to my kids and they all go to tick tock. Right? Instagram is anything with a I used to anything with a search bar is a search engine. So traffic has been drawing up from Google over the past few years. So

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Jenny Munn: most people go to. I mean, not most young audiences go to social, and that's why, again, search. The whole concept is being everywhere. But for us service providers. It is great to just be visible. If someone is looking.

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ilise: And that question of who sounds super simple. But it's not obviously, and a lot of people, not anyone in this room with us today, of course, but a lot of people who might be listening.

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ilise: You know, we're basically saying, you need to know your niche. You need to choose who you want to work with, and that becomes an obstacle. And I've actually been teaching people how to use AI to remove that obstacle. But here we're talking about, you know, using search once you have removed that obstacle, and I totally agree. It's really important to decide who at least you're trying to attract, not

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ilise: these are the only people I will work with, so I don't know is part of your work to help people figure out the who.

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Jenny Munn: That is the figuring out the who usually, when people come to me, they do tend to know who they're who they want, but their language doesn't reflect it like what we always say is that, like, you know, you think this is a copywriting thing, but like a megaphone, most 99% of companies I work with. They are so

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Jenny Munn: inside their own business, they're just like using a megaphone to like shout out, Here's what I do. And here's here's our services. And here's how I help you. And here's what I call my services. And this is like, this is what I want to tell you, instead of when you flip around the megaphone, it's listening to the words and the language and everything the audience is saying, and then reflecting that back to them. And so you know, most businesses kind of know who in general, but we can certainly use SEO to like dig in to find out. Well.

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Jenny Munn: let's search on those keywords. You think and hear the businesses that are coming up like. Is this really who you? So we can refine it a lot. But a lot of what I do is what I call like saving companies from themselves, right and just like knowing the who like you, cannot succeed in SEO. And this has been this way for 1015 years. If you don't.

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Jenny Munn: the better you know your audience the better. SEO you're going to have the better marketing you're going to have like knowing who you want to attract is SEO 101. And that's really I feel like the bulk of what I do to help customers. And still it's like still, to this day.

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Jenny Munn: the mismatch of the keywords and the language of the audience. It still blows my mind how we're getting back to such one on one basics that the company and people who were helping have forgotten that, like they've forgotten, they just want to say what they want to say in the language and the words and and call, you know. And it's it doesn't work that way. So.

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ilise: So interesting, and I love the megaphone metaphor of turning it around. That's beautiful. I may have to borrow that.

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Jenny Munn: It's yeah, and it's not mine. It's from, I think, Karen Thaxton, who I've had so many copywriting and wonderful marketing mentors over the years, and it just like those things like stick with you right like, cause. It's such mistakes people make.

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ilise: All right. Let's talk a little bit about AI, as it relates to search then, and as always, I like to start with definitions, and I gave you a few that I've heard of, but you know you're welcome to define any of the ones that you think are important. But I keep hearing about AI mode on Google

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ilise: Search. Gpt. Someone said, LLMO. The other day, a IOAE OGEO like

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ilise: talk to explain. "splain," please, as Ricky Ricardo used to say.

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Jenny Munn: I will, and I laugh because I'm always like EIEIO, you know, like, you know, like the song. It is like

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Jenny Munn: stupid. How many acronyms there are now. And when you said Search Gpt, I literally went in and I googled it because I'm like, what is that compared to just these other Gpt, so I am still Googling some of these things. One of the biggest problems right now that I think SEO is facing is that.

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Jenny Munn: and this is me on my, and I haven't had a soapbox, because I've just been so overwhelmed and trying to like soak in all of this AI stuff right? And just trying to keep up while trying to do my day job of client work right? It's hard

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ilise: No, but get up on your soapbox. Go ahead.

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Jenny Munn: Yeah, that the words that the acronym SEO has to evolve into something else right? The the discipline of making yourself findable, because when you go to chat, Gpt or Gemini. You're not doing a search, you know. It is called prompting right? Because you want you're doing a command. You're summarizing. You're doing an action. I don't go to chat, gpt like I'm going to go search this like. Sometimes I want information like, what is search, Gpt. I could have easily gone to Chat Gpt.

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ilise: I wondered why you didn't right. Why did you go to Google for that.

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Jenny Munn: You know, because I I turn, you know, personally, and this is something where I have very carefully been watching my own actions of when do I? I used to put up Chat Gpt, Claude Gemini. I used to do this Google and I would for months I would do the same search in all 4 platforms to truly try to understand how they were all different. And then I gave up after a while, because that is a lot of work, and who's got time for that?

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Jenny Munn: But I still, I guess by habit, right when I go to Chat Gpt, I want to like, get stuff done. And I am talking to my handy assistant. And I want to like I'm there for serious business. When I want quick information, I go to Google, because I know I'm going to get the AI overview, which is basically if you guys remember the term featured snippets, which is when Google started placing a snippet of content at the top of search results.

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Jenny Munn: and people went into a tizzy about that right? This is just like the next evolution. This is like the snippet on steroids. I know, if I go to Google, I'm going to get like a quick information like, I'm just going to get the little highlight I want versus. I do feel like when I go to chat, gpt. It's so verbose I'm like, just give me you know what I mean again. I don't want to type. Give me the super quick. I just what is it? Right? So I will go to Google for quick little things along.

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ilise: That's really interesting, though, that idea, because I hear people calling the Gbts or the Ais like an answer.

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ilise: Yeah, you're looking for an answer as opposed to a thing, a product, a resource. But I like that distinction between I want a little, or I want a lot.

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Jenny Munn: Well, and and one of your acronyms was Aeo answer, engine optimization. Right? So, Aeos answer, engine aio is artificial intelligence. Optimization. Geo is generative engine optimization. So everybody is calling all of these things all of these different terms. And it's very fragmented right now. But what it is still kind of is.

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Jenny Munn: it's all about optimization, right? Everybody is.

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ilise: An O in all of them. Yeah.

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Jenny Munn: Everybody's like. Oh, my goodness! My audience is flocking over to AI. I need to optimize myself to get into there, and that is absolutely the wrong way to think about it 1st of all. But going back to gosh, one of your questions was about, but about search, so the word search SEO cannot apply. I don't think I think it's like a misnomer than with what we do, and so we have to evolve the word SEO. But what is it going to be? Is it going to be, I think another acronym you had thrown out? Was Llmo

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Jenny Munn: Llm. Optimization right? And it so Llm sge. Search right like these are all acronyms that kind of describe the whole like what these tools are. Now, it's like either the the model behind it or the actual tool itself. But it is very confusing and overwhelming, and I think that there's no like standard glossary that we can all use, and we don't all have the same language right now. So with SEO,

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Jenny Munn: all of these agencies are coming out. Now. I do sge services, and I'm going to help you get to the top of Chat Gpt, and it's not like that. So it's a little bit. I feel like we're in like the dark days of SEO again. When people are promising, they're gonna get companies, the top of Chat Gpt, and that's just not how it operates.

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Jenny Munn: So it it's everywhere.

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ilise: Yeah. And I mean the the common thread, though, is the oh, the optimization which I'm thinking is what you said about being findable right, just making sure you're findable.

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Jenny Munn: It is, but you can't. Keyword stuff your way into these ais, right? Or what I call Llms. So AI is like the very broad umbrella. Right? Llms. Are the tools. Search generative.

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Jenny Munn: The sge search. Generative engine is where text comes back so an AI could be that they do the like mid journey, they do the graphics. There could be AI that creates video for you like the the sge is where, replies text back. And it does great images now, too. But so an Llm is basically like those tools again, I don't talk semantics because I kind of use different words synonymously as well.

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Jenny Munn: Oh, my goodness, I'm sorry. Now what was the year? No optimization. It's more about. You cannot keyword your way into those right. They are way too sophisticated. They are way too smart. They are going to surface brands, and that's what every SEO now is scrambling to understand. Well, how do they? Surface brands and companies. And when do they do that? And I look at my own queries, I will kind of prompt

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Jenny Munn: things, and to see our companies coming up. I feel like I very rarely ever see companies come up. That's the whole other thing. When I'm in Chat Gpt, unless I'm like doing a search for like a trip, and I'm finally at the stage where I want very specific

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Jenny Munn: companies or information or tours. Then it'll provide like I was looking for sat versus act to understand, for my son, who's a rising junior, I'm like, Oh, which one should he take? Right? So I went to Chatgpt to help quickly understand the difference. And then at 1 point it finally got to the point. I said, Hey, you're in East Cobb. Here are some companies in East Cobb that do that. And they were some of the exact same ones that I had already been seeing people recommend on Facebook.

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Jenny Munn: or I had seen them in Google. But it took a long time to get to that point before I actually saw companies displayed. That's the other thing, too. So you can't optimize. You can't force chat, Gpt, to cite you or to mention you, if that's not what it means. So it's more about right now you can influence, and you can try to do what it takes to get mentioned when they start mentioning companies. But

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Jenny Munn: they're not. I talk about these ais like they're people right, but they're not going to mention you unless they think it's the right time to do that. So

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Jenny Munn: it's it's tough. We're also trying to figure that out who gets mentioned, and why and where, and we do have some best practices that we're trying to tell people and work with companies to do. But it's the Wild West right now, a little bit.

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ilise: And what are some of those best practices? Jenny.

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Jenny Munn: Yes. So one of the things that you mentioned well, FAQ, right, and I'm still a believer that anything you do that's good for your audience is going to be good for a search engine. It is going to be good for an AI AI loves comparison content right? So you think like, what's the best website? Cms, is it shopify? Is it Wordpress? Well, let's compare it right? So because these ais are looking to like extract and find information, and they will pull from.

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Jenny Munn: They will pull from sources right? They might steal the information, but at some point they know it's you. So it's a lot of what we've been saying are SEO best practices. You have to have a website that is crawlable where the the AI. The bots, can crawl through the back end of the code. So a fast loading website, it's clean. You don't have super huge images that where your website takes 20 seconds to load because no AI bot, no search engine. Bot's going to take the time to do that. So

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Jenny Munn: a good best practice for a modern website that's clean and fast. There's something called schema structured markup, which is kind of code in the back end, saying what type of organization you are. So it is taking a little bit of technical stuff to kind of what we call markup your content. So the bots can read it and understand what type of business you are. And then being an authority in your space. And again, I feel like when I explain this. It's nothing that's like

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Jenny Munn: crazy or brand new right being an authority in your space, owning your expertise.

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Jenny Munn: A lot of what AI is looking for is for your what you say to be corroborated out there on various known websites. That's why everybody says, Oh, are you on Reddit? Are you referenced in something in your industry? Are you in Linkedin like? Is what you're saying? Corroborated and validated by outside external sources.

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Jenny Munn: But that was like SEO, too, right? Where 50% of how well you rank was, how are you doing away from your website and do other sources also back you up. Do you have those backlinks and mentions right? Because you cannot live in your own little bubble and not ever be referenced by the outside world. If you're ever going to get ranked or displayed.

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ilise: And it sounds like you're talking mostly about content marketing. Then, right.

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Jenny Munn: Yes, a large part is content marketing. However, if your website is taking 20 seconds to load, no matter how great your content is, it's probably not going to be crawled right, or you could have great content, and I think it will speak for itself. And you will. I mean hopefully. You are promoting it and

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Jenny Munn: have some kind of a network. And you're part of an industry where you're just not blogging all day long in a bubble, you know. So you do have to be a great business or brand doing good things now for us service providers

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Jenny Munn: that's not going to be us necessarily right like we can't be all out there. But I love how you teach right like you. You're getting out there, and you're owning your niche, and that's what I think 50% of the battle is like claiming your niche and who you want to work with, and then your world expands, and

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Jenny Munn: this will be picked up right like. How else would Chat Gpt have known these tiny little tutoring companies based on where I am right? So having your niche and your knowing your people and knowing your world is, I mean

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Jenny Munn: most of it.

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ilise: And one question that's coming to mind is something that's been coming up a lot lately, which is whether I feel like I know how you're going to answer this. But I still want to ask you, do you need a website? Because a lot of people, especially people who are just starting their business.

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ilise: You know, the website is not necessarily. It takes a long time to get it done, and it's not usually finished. And there are a lot of perfectionists out there, so they don't really put it up, even if it's imperfect.

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ilise: And lately I've been saying, especially if you're a service provider, and you're doing a lot of marketing on Linkedin, using the 3 tools of the simplest marketing plan. Then maybe you don't need a website. But what do you think, Jenny?

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Jenny Munn: So I keep going back. So I see what you're saying. And in some ways that kind of sounds nice to have to, especially giving up any expenses related to that or your website breaks again, or something it gets hacked into right. But you can't.

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Jenny Munn: You can't let your whole presence. I don't think, be a hundred percent on a domain or property or platform that you don't own or control, because who's not to say that some billionaire might take over Linkedin and gate things or make you pay for it, or something might go away. So you still have to have your home, whether you don't need to. Maybe

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Jenny Munn: blog as often as you did. Maybe you need to like, have a presence on Linkedin, even if it's a 1 page website. I still think you need your own. You need to own something right, even if most of your time is spent on Linkedin, I still don't think you should ever put

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Jenny Munn: all of your eggs in a basket

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Jenny Munn: from one of these social media giants. I think it's risky.

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ilise: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I would modify my advice lately to say, Don't worry if you don't have it yet, but work toward it so that you can get the marketing going. Don't let it be the obstacle. I have several clients who, you know, are not marketing themselves yet, because their website isn't done. And I think.

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Jenny Munn: Oh, I absolutely again. I'm like, I wish I could go back to. I think about this sometimes. Should I just let go of everything I've done and start with a 1 page website for this kind of AI evolution, right? Because a lot of my blogs and a lot of my content. I was like it's outdated.

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Jenny Munn: I talk about SEO best practices for my blogs. I love blogging over the past 15 years right? But it didn't reference. AI at all. All of my checklists, all of my ebooks, all of my trainings, everything I put together is now irrelevant, because if it doesn't touch on the latest SEO best practices and forget it. Let me just scrap and start over and have a 1 page website, right? So I even thought about that for a moment, and then I was like, I can't let go of all my stuff right. But yes, nobody.

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ilise: Can't you get AI to insert the phrase AI strategy, and just in everything, ing.

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Jenny Munn: You know you could. That sounds a little keyword, stuffy, you know. But you know. No, I don't think not having a website would ever stop you from getting a client. So if someone says, and they're just living in, I know your world, which is I don't know perfectionism or something else. So, not having a website should not stop you from going out to try to get business. It's just you don't want to build your whole

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Jenny Munn: freelance or consulting, you know, service providing world on top of a platform. You don't own right.

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ilise: I would agree with that. All right. Good.

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ilise: all right. Well, here's a question. If you serve multiple markets that are very different. How do you optimize and make yourself findable to each of those markets? And I would add, like, how many is too many? Is a landing page. Still, the best way do blog posts. Help this. So you've kind of referenced this a little bit in the last few minutes. But what would you say to that question?

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Jenny Munn: Yeah. So I absolutely think that if you have multiple markets like I do have education. Clients find me by the keyword because I can see it in my Google search console stuff around

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Jenny Munn: K. 12, SEO or SEO for K. 12. Education, right? And they land not on my homepage, but on my specific services page. But I also have, you know, portfolio or case studies. I should say I've got case studies and they point back to that services page I've got blog posts about.

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Jenny Munn: I've got this one again. It's outdated now, but it's about Facebook ads for K. 12, because I was talking about some best practices that were 4 years ago right? And people find that blog post all the time, and they'll follow that link to my services page right, and they'll kind of see that I work in K. 12. So, having what you call landing page, or a page dedicated to your industry right? But it's not just like you can't put up

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Jenny Munn: 10 pages. I think that that's really hard to do as a solo consultant or a small agency right?

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ilise: AI should be able to do that for us.

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Jenny Munn: AI could do that. But you just have to be careful of AI generic content that's not going to like. Drag your whole site down because your whole site now is going to sound like a robot. So I'm a fan of AI content, but not when it's like, well, you know this, and we would always. This goes without saying to your world and to you. But mass produced generic blog content is not going to win anyone over. It should certainly help you, for sure. But I do think, having a dedicated page

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Jenny Munn: for your and talking about your why are you in that industry? What is your experience what clients like? I'll put my education client Logos on that. I do have e-commerce. I've got case studies that they all link to each other, and I've got those Logos and that talk there right? So you know, I was part of these industries, Nace and Ednet, and whatever I talk about those on their dedicated pages. If I had 20 industries that'd be really hard to show my expertise. But I have 2, and so it does make it easier the more you niche.

 

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ilise: What, Jenny, what does ee a t stand for? Do you know.

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Jenny Munn: Yes, so experience it, doesn't. This. The second E is not

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ilise: Expertise.

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Jenny Munn: Authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Yes, yes, EEAT. I'm like, but you know those 2 kind of are they the same thing right? The 2 e's. But regardless what? What that is saying also is that I mean.

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Jenny Munn: there is a difference in content when you have 1st person experience and can put that into your content. And that's where Google's algorithm favors the experts. Right? And so I'm always like, I don't want to. I need to talk to the experts. Find me the expert in your company, and that's the content we're going to surface and start with, because I could

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Jenny Munn: ask, chatgpt like, what is it like to be a principal and write me a page to help my education companies target principals right? But getting the feedback from the person who is in the classroom doing walkthroughs with the principal is

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Jenny Munn: a hundred times over. If I concede in some of that going to win out over Chat Gpt all day long, and so that that experience and expertise has to come across. Still, that's why it would be hard to have like 20 service pages on your website. But if you can truly talk to your industries and put that into your content, then you're gonna do well all day long that just has to like come that firsthand knowledge. And that's what AI is looking for as well. Right? What we keep saying is with AI

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Jenny Munn: being able to write good content.

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Jenny Munn: I mean, that's just going to like Flood, the Internet again, right? But what these AI bots and what they're looking for and what Google is looking to surface is the experts, and that's why you've got to show that you are a brand. You got to like what I keep calling like you've got to like. Put your you know your stake into the ground of what you can own. What is your topic, and make sure that that's out there everywhere, and that's what I tell my clients and my

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Jenny Munn: companies right now. That's what it's going to take to win is owning your expertise and making sure that that's out there.

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ilise: Interesting. Yeah. So more about your niche and your point of view, and your voice.

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Jenny Munn: Exactly in your audience. It it all comes back to. This is what I really think is the piece that we don't know yet. Is our audiences right? So talking about people who are hiring us, I do see it where I talk to my SEO colleagues and agencies.

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Jenny Munn: They're not getting leads like SEO, I think, is like, I do think my audience does believe that SEO is dying, and maybe they are looking for chat. Gpt optimization. Right? So, even though I know there's not a difference. I do need to go after that term, because I need to stay relevant and aligned with my audience, and then I can educate them. But I need to use the language they're using. And that's why who your audience is, and your audience is probably not like, unless you guys are attracting a super technical

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Jenny Munn: client clientele, they might be over using perplexity or Claude. But if, like the general business owner still could be on Linkedin, and they might be using chat. We don't need to know what the whole world is doing. As far as AI. We need to know, for our own businesses, for our own leads. What is our audience doing? Are they going to Google? Are they going to Linkedin? Are they on Chat Gpt, and just like focus on who we're trying to attract. And that makes all of this AI so much less overwhelming. I think.

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ilise: And one thing I heard on a webinar this week. You tell me if you know whether or not this is true is that chatgpt in terms of what it surfaced favors Youtube videos, whereas Gemini, which owns Google and Google Docs, or vice versa, actually favors Google docs in terms of what they surface. Do you know, if that's true.

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Jenny Munn: You know that? Because that's part of well, where do I put my content? And where do I time? Right? It used to be the thing. If you're going to be in chat, Gpt, you've got to be in bing right because Chatgpt was pulling from Microsoft right and copilot. And so if you're not found in Bing, then you're not going to get into Chat Gpt. Well, also, this week I read that that chat. Gpt surfaced something that was only in Google because some SEO person did a test. They they blocked

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Jenny Munn: Bing. They blocked Microsoft, and they only had in Google. And sure enough, it was found in Chat Gpt, and so it's like they are crawling. And then also right. The data was only trained on information up to 2023, and 24. But that's not true, because now they do have web crawlers. Who can find, you say, what was the result of the braves game last night, is it? Last night? Tuesday? No. 2 nights ago? Right? So it will surface the information so it can find up to date. So

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Jenny Munn: you know, I don't know if we can definitively say you've got to have it in Youtube. And you've got to have this in Google docs like.

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Jenny Munn: I just don't think we can definitively say that. Yet I think we're still trying to figure it out for sure.

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Jenny Munn: Yes, oh, such a great question. And so the top of Google is now the AI overviews. And at least that was another term. I think you threw out was AI for Google or AI overviews. And so what I have seen is that either information is very specific up there, or you know they are referencing and citing the sources right? Which is nice versus right, like Chat Gpt might not provide a link, or at least so you got the link, and you've got the source, and you can see the brand up there.

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Jenny Munn: I what I've seen is that mostly, if you're already ranking on page one, or you're pretty visible, you are more likely to be up in the in the AI overviews. So you got, and that's the thing with like SEO is that you can't just like SEO once, and then hope you stay there like if your client is continuing to do the good

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Jenny Munn: business practices, and maybe they are doing their content marketing. They are still out there. They are still getting mentions, or I don't even want to say the word backlinks. But if they're continuing to keep up hopefully, they do stay at the top unless they have a super savvy new competitor that comes in. But I think keeping up with what content if it is comparison? If it is FAQ

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Jenny Munn: there are tools like I use semrush, and that tells me what keywords are producing an AI overview for my clients. Right? It's got like the fun little AI Logo, if it's an AI overview ranking versus like a regular Google ranking. So I do keep up that way with tracking. But again, like, I don't

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Jenny Munn: overly worry about it, because we know that clicks are decreasing anyway. So is he doing it just like, is he obsessed with it? Just because for brand recognition? Or does he think he's getting clicks with it? So yes, it is good to be there. But you you kind of like, have to be.

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Jenny Munn: You have to have a lot of searches like that, like you know what I mean. So I think, maintaining all the good best practices, and keeping up and just not letting things settle and thinking. Oh, I don't need to do any marketing anymore. Right? Like, you can't let your foot off the gas necessarily, because there's a competitor waiting right behind you to like. Take your spot and take that link. So keeping up and keeping up with your audience and

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Jenny Munn: doing what you can. Yeah, I think, is going to be the best way, and but but evolving.

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Jenny Munn: If someone takes over and understanding well, what is it about that piece of content? And then you have to like, analyze my content versus this competitor. Why are they being favored? Let me try to make a few tweaks and see if that changes it so still very much tweaking, optimizing, testing, looking, because there is still just no definitive rules, yet that makes it hard.

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Jenny Munn: Okay? So great question and Faqs have been popular for the fact for the last few years. But I again, I think not only like does do search engines and bots like love. That style. And part of that is because you know, the people also asked, if you're on Google, and you kind of scroll down, and there's like 4 questions, and if you toggle one, it opens up like 6 more. Those are the people also asked, and those are phrased as questions.

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Jenny Munn: So when the paas are called, people also asked are becoming popular, the FAQ content became popular. But as a user I love FAQ content because I'm always like oh, what did I not think to ask? So I love writing FAQ. Content for clients about their brand? Or here are some of the top questions. But what I'm seeing now is FAQ content on services pages.

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Jenny Munn: I just saw a really good example of it. So on. An I don't want to say competitor, but another SEO AI consultant because I'm looking at their websites to see how they're promoting themselves and positioning at the bottom of their AI SEO page. They had a list of questions, a Q&A. And I thought that was so good. So I'm seeing it at the bottom of

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Jenny Munn: location pages or service pages. Certainly. Product pages. If you think e-commerce right? There's faqs about products that you can get right? So I I mean? Yes, faqs everywhere, for sure, and not just because of it, because it's great for users.

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ilise: Yeah. And I also heard on that webinar the other day that Q&A format for the answer engine is what they're going to recognize basically as an answer.

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Jenny Munn: Yeah, it certainly does give a very strong signal, but don't turn every single piece of content you ever owned into a question. But certainly think about the questions people have. And again, I think that's just great audience optimization.

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ilise: Exactly. We learn a lot that way, too.

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Jenny Munn: Absolutely.

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ilise: All right. One last question, Jenny. I would love to know the most important lesson you've learned, whether it's about your business or the services that you offer, but just share that with us. If you would.

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Jenny Munn: That's so good. That's such a hard question. I definitely think

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Jenny Munn: the ability to filter and kind of stay the course. It has been really key, because I have sat like for the past year. Again, I've just been trying to absorb all of this AI, and keep up with all the trends happening and keeping up. And I'm like, I'm so worried I'm gonna fall behind. But at some point I'm like, Okay, I've got to move on. I've got to claim my, my.

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Jenny Munn: my, take on this space and move forward and stop trying to keep up because it does like every day there's something changing right. And so I do feel like our ability

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Jenny Munn: to like at some point filter right now and know what's important and who's important, and go back to like keeping my eye on the ball, and who I'm trying to serve. And what do they need? Not with the whole world? I sat on a Webinar. I had no business being on about how to go to these super technical websites and create these chat bots. And after I'm like, I'm not technical, I feel like I need to keep up and know what this is. But I actually don't need to. So I feel like right now being able to.

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Jenny Munn: What I call user peripherals like stay focused. But at the same time, like, Know, what's going on is important is really important right now, because it's so overwhelming right? Like it. It's like debilitating, almost, you know, right now. So I think, keep staying the course and using your peripherals is one of is this is gonna be key right now.

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ilise: I love that. I mean, I always think focus is the key, anyway, but especially when there's so much going on. And it's the hardest to be focused because you just don't know which direction. But you just have to trust your gut, basically and

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ilise: make a decision and then change later. If it's the wrong decision.

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Jenny Munn: Exactly. Yep.

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ilise: Awesome, all right. Well, tell the people where they can find you online, Jenny, spell it out for us.

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Jenny Munn: I am@jennymunn.com. And right now I tell people I would love for you to follow me on Linkedin, or join my newsletter, because I am sharing if you care about AI. So that's what I say is AI related to SEO. That is my space. I'm trying to teach people how you know what to do and how AI relates to SEO. So if you're trying to keep up with SEO, and now you need SEO

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Jenny Munn: and AI are together now, right? You can't talk about SEO anymore. If AI is not a part of it that's find me on Linkedin or Jennymunn.com.

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ilise: Awesome, and that's mun with 2 n's.

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Jenny Munn: Yes. Correct.

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ilise: Alright great! Thank you so much, Jenny.

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Jenny Munn: Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. This was so much fun.