FIR #479: Hacking AI Optimization vs. Doing the Hard Work

Posts and videos featuring Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) hacks and formulas are flooding the web. We reported recently on one such hack focusing on press releases. But when you consider the kind of content on which the AI models rely for their answers, it may be more efficient to revert to good, old-fashioned PR and marketing. Links from this episode: 2025 Report Reveals Average B2B Content Volume Triples: Budgets Barely BudgeChatGPT is sending less traffic to websites – down 52% in a monthHow a content brand became a trusted resource for LLMsNetworks, Not AI or Search, Are the #1 Trusted Source Amid Information OverloadMany are sharing charts about Reddit and Wikipedia dominating AI search mentions, desperately trying to crack the codeAI-Powered Search: Adapting Your SEO StrategyHow AI is reshaping SEO: Challenges, opportunities, and brand strategies for 20252025 AI SERP Changes: New Strategies To Gain Local Search VisibilityGoogle users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the resultsAI Mode in Search gets new agentic features and expands globally The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [e-mail]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Hi everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 479. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shel Holtz on Thursday Neville, you and I are going to interview Stephanie Grover, who is the marketing and PR director at Horowitz Agency. This is a marketing agency that works with law firms, production companies, and other professional service providers in the US and Canada. And we’re going to talk, be talking about GEO generative. Optimization, generative engine optimization. I’m not altogether sure, but it’s a hot topic and I thought I would take today’s episode to set the stage for that because we’ve all seen the headlines recently. Chat, GPT, traffic referrals to websites plummeted more than 50% in a single month. This summer, and that’s not a blip. It’s a structural change in how these large language models are surfacing content. [00:01:00] OpenAI tweaked its ranking and suddenly chat GPT Beca became began citing fewer sources, leaning more heavily on places like Wikipedia and Reddit. Useful for users. Yeah. But if you’re a brand counting on visibility, it’s a gut punch. And meanwhile, the volume of content keeps exploding. A new B2B study found content production has tripled year over year, which could be partly attributable marketers flooding the zone with content in the hopes. LLMs will hoover it up and they’ll show up in AI search results. Interestingly, that tripling of content volume has not been accompanied by commensurate budget increases. Mm-hmm. But we’re producing more content than ever but it’s not necessarily better content or content that LLMs are actually going to use. So no surprise that there’s a scramble for the supposed hack that will unlock, sorry. Unlock. Okay. Unlock [00:02:00] rhymes with hack. What can I say? So no surprise that there’s a scramble for the supposed hack that will unlock generative engine optimization. GEO. Some companies are starting to figure out that it’s not about gaming the algorithm, though. It’s about trust. Sylvia la this chief marketing officer at Kenji shared a fascinating case study on LinkedIn. Her team created the sequence, it’s a standalone content brand with its own domain separate from the corporate site. The idea was simple. Create a community driven media hub. Human high quality, free of fluff. The unexpected bonus that came from this is that LLM started treating the sequence as an external authority. When asked about can g chat, GPT doesn’t just reference the company, it references the sequence. In other words, by building a trusted resource that stands on its own apart from the central [00:03:00] brand site, they built credibility, not just with their human audience. But with the algorithms too that aligns perfectly with something else I saw from Liza Adams, another CMO. Who pointed out that the reason Wikipedia and Reddit dominate AI citations isn’t mysterious, it’s because they directly answer real questions using the same plain language. Real people use Adams contrasts two types of marketing teams, the ones who do the hard work of auditing their content, listening to customer ...