Why your SEO strategy is obsolete (and what's next)

AI with ALLIE

The professional’s guide to quick AI bites for your personal life, work life, and beyond.

AI is reshaping how customers find, compare, and buy from brands, and it's happening faster than most businesses realize.

This newsletter explores how AI is transforming customer interactions and why staying ahead of these changes is critical. Get ready to rethink everything from SEO to personalized experiences.

Let's jump into it 👇

Your customers are using AI. Are you?

I can tell you from experience that the majority of leading companies out there are on the offensive when it comes to AI.

They're sprinting to integrate AI into their operations, products, and services. But there is one curve ball that many of these leaders are missing: while you're busy planning your next big AI play, your customers are suiting up with their own AI arsenal. (Fair warning, I decided to include a bunch of sports analogies in this edition because that’s just the mood I was in after watching the Falcons-Eagles game.)

Think about it. For centuries, businesses only had to appeal to human decision-makers. They sold cars, lipstick, crackers, firewood, and vacations…and a friendly salesperson, an eye-catching store front, or sassy ad campaign in a magazine could make an actual dent in your P&L.

Then came the era of algorithm optimization. Marketers raced to learn dozens of tools like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, SEO, Optimizely, TikTok Shopping, and partnered with top influencers all over the world. They became data-driven storytellers that had to play to both the human-decision maker and whatever the heck formula Instagram was using for their feed. The algorithm (with a human viewer) became the new powerbroker.

Well, friends, the go-to-market game has changed yet again. And it’s because of AI.

We're entering a whole new ballgame where AI is and will be acting as the gatekeeper, advisor, and negotiator for your potential customers. And if you're not prepared to play both offense and defense in the AI age, you might find yourself benched before the game even begins.

The reality of this paradigm shift is that it’s not just about you using AI. You should be thinking about how your customers are using AI in their research, evaluation, and decision-making process.

Let that sink in.

Your customers are using AI to:

• Compare you with competitors

• Make purchase decisions

• Fix your products

This is a fundamental restructuring of how businesses and consumers interact. And though this is not yet mainstream (after all, there are only 1M global paying users on ChatGPT), the trend is growing. I can feel it, it’s happening faster than many realize, and that is why I regularly demo these changes to my clients.

Let me show you a few examples.

AI as the New Search Engine

Imagine a potential customer using an AI search tool like Perplexity or ChatGPT to find solutions in your industry. They're not just getting a list of links—they're getting curated, synthesized information.

If your marketing team isn't thinking about AI-optimization (or AIO)—the next evolution of SEO—you risk becoming invisible in this new landscape.

AI as a Comparison Shopper

Picture a customer using a tool like Claude to create a decision matrix, comparing your product against competitors in minutes, not hours or days.

So first, maybe a potential customer searches you and your competitor and takes lazy screenshots of your offerings.

Now your customer takes these screenshots and throws them into AI to ask for help on the shopping process.

And instead of you spending hours evaluating all of the options available to you, well…

But maybe you want something a little fancier, so you ask Claude for a little help…

And Claude gets to work and build a quick disposable micro app to help you out…

And not only does it code it for you, it has a ready-to-use interface too…

Now yes, the AI system may not be perfect. The system might hallucinate information, spit out outdated details, miss key features, or pin you against competitors unfairly. But you’ve dealt with inaccurate blogs, bad press, or outdated brand perceptions before. This is just the next version.

And if your product and engineering teams aren't considering how AI agents might scrape and analyze your web presence, you could be left out of crucial comparisons.

AI as the Customer's Advocate

So you adeptly navigated the AI waters and converted the customer. Boom. They want to buy your credit card. Well now, consider a scenario where a customer, having chosen your credit card, uses an AI to coach them through negotiating a lower annual fee.

If your customer support and finance teams aren't prepared for a surge in sophisticated, AI-assisted requests (and eventually AI agents themselves), you could find yourself outmaneuvered at the negotiation table with a meaningfully impacted profit margin.

Allie, what should I tell my boss?

1. SEO is dead.

Forget everything you know about SEO. Those top 10 blue links? Nope. It’s all about the top answer now.

I’m only half kidding. SEO isn’t dead, but it is changing. We’re going to be seeing more AIO, or AI Optimization (you might have heard others refer to it as LLMO, which I think is a terrible name). But, in short, we’ll start to see AI agents or AI assistants navigating the web for information on your brand to get to one answer.

2. Decision-making is changing.

Soon, people will be asking AI, “What’s the best internet provider near me?” instead of seeing and remembering ads. So get clear on your messaging and why people should pick you, so when people search by value, you come up. AI will become a permanent part of the customer acquisition story.

3. Agentic AI will start shopping for people.

At some point, we’re going to see someone tell their AI assistant, “Buy me a new phone for work with an amazing camera and get it here by Tuesday.” We've already seen hints of this in market, but nothing has blown me away yet.

4. Everything’s getting personal.

One exec told me they’re making 1200 custom landing pages for every B2B marketing campaign they run (one for each customer). AI is allowing this market-of-one personalization.

5. This is a multi-disciplinary shift.

Marketing needs to rethink discovery in an AI-mediated world. UX teams need to run regular customer insights sessions. Research teams should stay up to date on new AI channels (or just follow me). Product and Engineering now should consider AI accessibility (yes, you read that right) in design and development and literally test with AI agents shopping the site. Customer Support should prepare for interactions with AI-empowered customers, or even AI agents. And Finance should model out potential shifts in negotiation outcomes or customer acquisition costs.

Right now, we're in this weird middle ground. I call it the liminal zone of autonomy, where there’s enough performant AI out there that people are doing interesting stuff with it, but there’s not enough performant AI out there that it’s able to make autonomous decisions for all of us. We’re in the teenage phase between human-centric interactions and autonomous AI copilots.

And in this phase, the mark of a forward-thinking executive is not just implementing AI within your organization. It's about developing a deep understanding of how AI is reshaping your customers' worlds.

I want you updating your playbook to become irresistible to AI and humans alike.

As always: stay curious, stay informed,

Allie

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Tools, courses, and blogs that caught my eye

Over the last few weeks, I’ve pulled together some of the top releases, and my take on each one. Check it out.

1. OpenAI released a new series of reasoning models — Last week, OpenAI launched the o1-preview series, introducing AI models that excel at complex reasoning tasks, outperforming previous models in science, coding, and math; access is available for ChatGPT Pro, Team, Enterprise, and EDU users (read it) (demo 1) (demo 2) (demo 3)

2. Artifacts now available on mobile for all Claude users — Artifacts are now available to all Claude users, enabling teams to collaboratively create and share work products like code snippets, prototypes, and dashboards across web and mobile platforms. I’ve had 4 mega wow moments in A the last 2 years; Artifacts is one of them (read it) (demo 1) (demo 2) (demo 3)

3. Amazon Q saves $260M and 4,500 developer-years — Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that their AI assistant, Amazon Q, has revolutionized software upgrades, drastically cutting down times and boosting efficiency across the company; interesting when you stack this productivity story against his recent strict 5-day RTO policy, Amazon is always thinking about globally scaled efficiencies (read it) (my thoughts)

4. Condé Nast partners with OpenAI to license content for AI use — A multi-year deal was signed with OpenAI and Condé Nast, allowing the AI company to use content from its major publications like Vogue, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair in AI tools like ChatGPT and SearchGPT, raising both opportunities and concerns among industry professionals (read it) (my thoughts)

5. More than 56% of Fortune 500 companies view AI as a significant risk — A new study shows a majority of Fortune 500 companies have flagged AI as a major risk, citing concerns like competition, ethical issues, and operational challenges, while only a small fraction see AI as an opportunity (read it) (my thoughts)

6. A custom AI chatbot got conspiracy theorists to back off. 50% of Americans put stock in at least one conspiracy theory (does that seem high to anyone else?). Researchers set up a custom AI chatbot using GPT-4 Turbo to chat with 1000 conspiracy theories believers—confidence in their discussed theory dropped by 21% on average, the effect lasted at least 2 months (read it)

Feedback is a Gift

I would love to know what you thought of this newsletter and any feedback you have for me. Do you have a favorite part? Wish I would change something? Felt confused? Please reply and share your thoughts or just take the poll below so I can continue to improve and deliver value for you all.