Google's about to make a change that will make traditional SEO completely useless. This change can have absolutely disastrous effects on your business's ability to be found, get clients, and make money. And if you're not ready for it, you're gonna lose out to the competitor who is prepared to pivot.
But don't worry, in this post, we will show you why traditional SEO is a complete waste of time in 2024 for the new strategy that's replacing it and the easy way to get started toward massive results that SEO could never deliver. But to understand the new opportunity headed our way, we need to look at the big problem that SEO always had.
Back in the 2010s, SEO was easier. We were able to create a bare-bones website for our business without a bunch of blog posts or anything like that. And because it was easy to reach out to other blog owners and get them to agree to us writing a guest article for them, they'd give us backlinks.
And we got to number one in Google for our desired keyword. Great, mission accomplished, right? Well, not so fast. Most businesses approach ranking number one in Google as the goal itself, but it's really only valid when it leads to making more sales, right?
So clients would find us on Google, and they'd schedule a consult call, for example. But when We were on those calls, We were still strangers to these people. And now, we will show you how to fix this sales problem. But the point is, even when SEO was easy, it still only solved half the problem.
And as time passed, more businesses flooded the Internet with tons of SEO content. Backlinks got harder and harder to get, and the whole process of SEO just got a lot more intense.
Fast forward to 2024, and there's a new challenge to SEO, and that's AI. It's like a new, powerful gardening tool meant to make our work more accessible, but it's also accidentally pulling up some good plants along with the weeds. And it's those unintended consequences that are really shaking things up.
So before we get to the way around this, let's just unpack the three main reasons why AI, while helpful, is making SEO way less effective for small businesses.
First, you know all those helpful articles they tell you to write for SEO that are meant to answer people's questions? Well, AI is just going to be answering those instead. People have already started going straight to chat GPT to get quick answers to their questions rather than googling them. In response, Google is now rolling out its own AI search feature that they're calling a search generative experience. And that's just going to answer people's questions.
Imagine searching for best chocolate chip cookie recipe and getting an AI generated answer along with some follow up questions to narrow down your search. And this is being rolled out as we speak. We would expect it to be available for everyone and pretty much answering every major search midway through 2024.
The next reason is tools like chat GPT that have made it incredibly easy for everyone to create SEO content at scale, which means everyone is doing it, pumping out articles faster, crowding the Internet with content like never before. It's like everyone suddenly got the same megaphone and they're all just shouting over each other. So if you want to stand out, you'll have to yell even louder than your competition.
And the third way that AI is killing SEO is it is actively destroying your ability to get backlinks. If you don't know, backlinks are those links from other websites to yours, and they're really important for getting your site ranked on Google. Just like AI is making it way too easy for everyone to write articles for their own blogs.
The same is true for writing articles to put on other people's blogs, which is a really common way to get backlinks in the past. You can just ask a blog, hey, can I write something for you? In exchange for the content, they would put a link back to your website in the author bio. And a lot of blogs would say, yes, backlink achieved. SEO wins for you.
But now, with so many people using AI and trying to do the same thing, it's incredibly hard to get anyone to even respond to you, let alone agree to it. You're going to waste more time trying to find one backlink opportunity than it would take to write 20 posts.
So even though backlinks are still needed to rank high on Google, getting them is a lot harder than it used to be.
Now, We are not here to talk about AI. We actually think it's a fantastic tool that no business can afford to ignore. But it's had lots of unintended SEO consequences that we really have to pay attention to.
So, what's the new wave of SEO going to look like not just in 2024 but well into the future? Now, a lot of people are going to be shocked by what We are going to say next. And some of them may even be scared off by it. And that's the exact reason why those of you who lean into this are going to see such tremendous results.
You're willing to do what others aren't. So, this pivot is simple. Stop trying to be found on Google and go for the next most significant search engine. Instead. We are talking about YouTube. Yep, YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet. But it's so much more than that.
Remember our problem with sales? That was because SEO is great for marketing, but YouTube is marketing, and sales rolled into one. In other words, YouTube can fix our problem. Once You dip your toes into YouTube, You will start having two very different types of sales calls. The ones with prospects who found you through Google. We already know how those go. And the ones who found you through YouTube. The last are more relaxed, they take you much more seriously, and most were pretty much pre sold on you before the call even started.
In other words, video accelerates the know-like and trust factor like nothing else on the planet, to the point where eventually, as You grew on YouTube, people would literally just pay for your services right on your website without you having to talk to them at all upfront.
Think Media did a study where they found that 42% of people said they would choose to work with someone on YouTube over someone who wasn't. Now, We know what you're thinking. SEO is familiar and feels safe. And YouTube feels like a completely different ballgame. Well, here are five unirable reasons why ranking your business on YouTube is ten times as good as ranking on Google.
First up, people want to watch videos made by real humans with genuine personalities and experiences. And as much as we're talking about AI, it isn't shaking up video search like it is over on Google. Now, sure, AI companies are really trying to create lifelike videos, but they're not there yet. Not even close. Plus, YouTube plans to make it clear when a video is AI-generated, it's going to require a unique label for that.
You know, it's way easier to pass off an article as human-written than it is to convince someone an AI video is a real person. And here's the thing. Even if YouTube gets flooded with AI videos, our preference for real human connection isn't going to change.
People naturally gravitate toward authenticity. So by keeping your videos genuine, you'll engage your audience much more effectively. And you're always going to outperform AI-generated content.
Next, video search lets you double-dip. So we already know that YouTube is number two behind Google and search. But if you create video over written content, you get the chance to obviously rank in YouTube, right? But Google shows video results in searches over there too. That's because Google owns YouTube, and they know that people generally prefer videos over written content, and it only makes sense to give the people what they want.
In fact, 95% of people say that they would rather watch a video on a topic than read about it, not to mention the fact that video platforms like YouTube and even TikTok are quickly becoming even more popular than Google for younger searchers. And if Facebook and Instagram taught us anything, whatever's popular now with the youngs is going to trickle down and become popular with the older generation soon enough.
Next, just imagine every video you create as a dedicated salesperson for your business, that you pay just one time, and it keeps showing up, attracting new clients day after day, year after year. Unlike a blog post that might get buried under newer content on Google, your YouTube videos have a much longer shelf life.
They're like evergreen pathways, funneling potential clients deeper and deeper into your business. How? Think about it. When someone watches one of your videos, YouTube's recommendation engine helps them effortlessly flow from one video to the next. That creates a powerful binge session, accelerating the know-like and trust cycle. And that makes them much more likely to convert into clients. Now compare that to Google search, where there's no built-in way to bring searchers back to your specific content.
The following reason to move to YouTube is SEO becomes a lot less complicated. In traditional website SEO, you're dealing with a lot, managing content clusters, getting your keyword density just right, writing metadata and making sure that your content is a certain length, not to mention chasing backlinks, which is a huge time suck that you can't really even control. You're just at the mercy of other people, either saying yes or, more likely, no. But YouTube simplifies all of that.
When it comes to YouTube SEO, all you really have to worry about is making good videos and including your keyword phrase in the title and a couple of times in the description. That's it. You don't have to stress over getting other sites to link back to yours. That literally isn't a thing with YouTube videos. And with YouTube, search is just the know. Once your videos break through and YouTube starts showing them to people on their homepage just because they know they're the right audience for them, that's when you grow even faster.
The following reason is most of your competitors, even those who are beating you right now in traditional SEO, aren't going to switch over to YouTube. It's a whole different ballgame and it scares them. This is where you can leap ahead, so think about it.
YouTube is a compelling opportunity, but it's way less tapped by most businesses, especially in service industries. Suppose your competitors are shying away from creating video content. That opens up a massive opportunity for you. By embracing YouTube, you can gain a significant edge. It's not just about being found, it's about being seen and heard, building a stronger connection with your audience. So by doing what your competition won't, you're not just catching up. You're positioning yourself to overtake them.
But not every video is a winner just because you made it. You need to nail a few things if you want to attract the biggest possible audience of people you'd love to work with. But this is the topic of the next article, and then follow the publications.