SEO for Manufacturers: How AI Search is Changing Google Results

Damon Pistulka  00:00

Little spinning, alright? It is Friday. You know what that means? Curt, it is time for our Stop Being the Best Kept Secret Show. We are going to have some fun today, because talking about something that we talk about almost every day, both SEO and AI search we were just talking about before we got on. I am one of the hosts, Damon Pistulka, but that pretty gentleman right over there is Mr. Curt Anderson, and he’s going to take it away because we’re going to have some fun talking. So if you got some questions, if you got comments about AI search, we want to hear them today.

Curt Anderson  00:37

Yeah, as a matter of fact, happy Friday, Damon, dude man, welcome, and I’m looking down like there’s no guests here today. Like, where’s the guest? Yeah, yeah, man, they’re just stuck with with you and me. And so I’m man, I’m sorry for anybody out there just running with scissors today. We’re running with running the street, running with scissors. So, yeah, hey, Happy Friday to you. Drop us a note, let us know that you’re out there. And so combination things. If you have questions, drop us a note, if you have tips, if you are crushing it on AI, man, it’s like, it is so new right now. It’s really, you know, anybody that says, like, Hey, I’m an AI expert, you know, like, Dale Bertrand, in my opinion, is an AI expert. A guy was doing AI like, in the 90s or something, yeah. But for the rest of us, I mean, like, this is a pretty new game, and, man, we’re all trying to figure it out together. And if we can just share these tips now. Damon, for those of us in the States, I’m going to go, you know, I’m going to get a little I’m going to get a series for a minute. It’s D Day today. It’s D day anniversary today. So for anybody I actually, I love my grandfather’s brother was, we lost two of my great uncles, and one was right AFTER D DAY. So for our friends family out there, man, go out watch Saving Private Ryan, just to celebrate. Man, what a what a powerful movie that is. But you know, man, salute anybody that’s in the military. Any of your family members have been in military. I know we just had Memorial Day, but today is D day when, when the Allies went and snuck into France and so lost a lot of lives that day. So anyway, let’s get back. I don’t know any thoughts comments on the on D day that you want to share. I

Damon Pistulka  02:14

really it, it’s, it was an undertaking. It wasn’t. It was, it was, I don’t know, and it’s hard to talk about it, tired

Curt Anderson  02:23

to talk about it. So alright, go out and celebrate D Day today for our friends in the states here, and for our friends in the UK and our allied friends. And so let’s dive into we’re talking SEO for manufacturers and man, SEO is just changing on a daily basis. People like, Hey, is SEO dead? No, not that AI is still using SDO tactics and strategies. We’re going to show a couple examples here, but Damon your thoughts when you hear AI and like, you know, we were just talking about some things, you just discovered something that you wanted to share. But what’s going through your mind with AI?

Damon Pistulka  02:56

Well, I think that the big thing with AI is it’s changing so fast that, as you said before, if anyone says they’re expert, they’re probably not completely telling the truth, because there’s 17 other things that were developed yesterday and they didn’t know about. I mean, I think if you’re not, if you’re not walking into this like a one year old baby learning what the world is like, you just it is like a fire hose right on steroids right

Curt Anderson  03:23

now. And there are plenty of people out there that are diving in and like, you know, and so again, I don’t, I don’t want to claim I’m a very passionate person trying to help folks in particular. We’re helping manufacturers. We’re trying to figure this out ourselves for our own company. But so, you know, let’s get into a couple examples here. Damon, so yeah, I want to dive into, I’m going to dive into shirts. So I’m going to share my screen real quick here. And we’ve got some fun things going on. So let me see if I can. Let me, let’s, let’s go here. You remember my dear friends at Falconer Electronics? Remember these? Yeah, yep. So if you do a search now, here’s the thing people are talking about, like, hey, keywords are changing, right? Is it keywords, or is it asking the question? But as we’re as we’ve if this is new to you, and so this is for our friends that are maybe not marketing on a daily basis, or, you know, our manufacturing friends out there. So when you do a Google search, now, Google has added their AI here is at the top. So what it’s done. It’s really pushed a lot of the SEO down. Okay, yeah, and that’s, I know a lot of people aren’t real happy about that from an SEO standpoint. That’s not crazy. But Damon, what we’re finding here is this is a dear friend of ours, client that we worked with for many years, Falcon Electronics. And when you they are a ground strap manufacturer, so ground straps, those little things you know, like every device that draws a curt needs to be grounded. Otherwise you’d, you’d end up looking like me. Man, it wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be good, right? So this is a ground strap manufacturer. So what’s cool? They’ve been putting out just hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content about their expertise, and so we see here in the AI, they’re the i right at the top. And so they’re just thrilled and excited that they are coming up. Now let me just let me, I’m going to stop sharing that screen. Let me show you another one. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  05:07

that is super cool that they’re coming up in the AI. And I think, you know, not knowing what’s going on in the background, they’re, they’re definitely helping people, because that’s what AI wants to do,

Curt Anderson  05:19

yeah? And so like, now some people could push back and say, Hey, tough guy, good for you. You know you’re coming up there. But how about on chat, you know. So now we come over to chat and we say, hey, what’s the best us supplier for ground straps. And here’s our dear friends right here, Falcon Electronics, and you see their website, link to their website, so on so forth. So I click there, and you know, it takes us over to this search. So again, you know, it’s just so this is why, having all that content, we have a great friend that’s going to be on the show here in a few weeks, Holly from Protocol 80. Yeah, I was talking with her this morning, and man, dude, like they are, in my opinion, they’re on the cutting edge, and they’re going back and helping clients like repurpose. We’re talking about clients that that we’ve worked on together from like, 10 years ago, eight years ago, and what they’re doing is they’re taking content of theirs and just repurposing a lot of their previous old content to help them for their AI strategies. So yeah, SEO and for AI. So

Damon Pistulka  06:19

I can imagine that taken a different focus on a piece of content that might have been more like straight informational and and then turn it into something that’s more AI friendly, that’s more answering questions rather than stating about something. It’s really thinking about the questions that people ask around and ask those and answering those questions. So you’re you’ve still got your original content, right? But now this new content, you create this more AI friendly. You could actually create a different blog post about the same topic, but you’re answering questions, common questions about this, or whatever it is, really to help feed the AI more information.

Curt Anderson  07:02

That’s right? And that’s, you know, shamelessly, you and I talk a lot about the B2B tell digital game plan. And that’s where that, you know, going through that step by step of you know, it’s, you know, I hate to say it. It’s like, I don’t care if it was 100 years ago, right? It’s understanding that human behavior and what changes is what technology changes. But the more that you understand your ICP, your ideal customer. You know, our dear friend Michael regal just put out a post on LinkedIn this morning, and he was like, Hey, I’m giving a shout out to my buddy Curt Anderson, because he’s always preaching. Know your ICP, know your ideal customer, who’s your avatar. We call them soulmates, but you know, again, it’s it’s more relevant today than ever. I guess you know it was, it was relevant 200 years

Damon Pistulka  07:44

ago, right? Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny, because I was just talking to someone this morning myself, yeah. And we got into the talking about the digital game plan. He said that is exactly right. If you don’t know your customer really well, if you don’t talk to them and get get their what their problems are, what they’re having trouble with how you can help them, the better you know that, the better you can provide the things they need exactly,

Curt Anderson  08:06

you know. And I’m going to digress for one second. You know, one thing that I’ve in my entire career, I’ve been totally, total victim, not victim. I’m a corporate that’s a word I want is like trying to service too many people. You know what? I mean? Like, hey, we’re gonna do this market. We’re gonna do this market. This market. And the more you know, and actually, we’re actually going through, like, a little bit of a transformation ourselves, of like, the more that you can lean. So if you feel like, Man, I’m just not getting traction, I encourage you, challenge you, welcome you to think, am I trying to hit too many people? Am I trying to hit too big of a market? And so as things are changing on a daily basis, and maybe have a chat with chat and say like chat, are there particular customers that are not profitable for me? Are there customers that maybe I should maybe lean away from, but really, are there other customers I should be doubling down on? And as you go in that direction, understanding their questions might be different than these other customers that might not be ideal. And you know, you and I like to call, you know, those profit killers time wasters, right? Yep. So if you’re I always you know, like, if you’re not hitting your sales goals, there’s something in the way that’s preventing and denying you of hitting those goals. Really take a hard look. And I’m not saying it’s easy, right? Take a hard look at, like, who’s on your plate, right? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  09:25

it’s super it’s not easy, especially when you especially when someone walks up off the street and says, Hey, would you do this for us? And it could be a big deal, right? And you really have to be able to go, is it the right deal as well as a big deal and but as you said, when we focus in, we can get so much more concise on the help we give and the value we provide to somebody or their company. When you

Curt Anderson  09:52

think about your expertise, like your God given talent, like what you’re best at, what your company is best at. You know, the other resources that you’ve put behind to deliver the amazing, incredible service that you put out there on a daily basis. I think I listen to podcasts and they said, like, focus on like, what are your superpowers, as opposed to your kryptonite, right? I like that line. So if you focus on your superpowers and dive into that ideal customer, and now we can focus on, like, all right content. How do we get out there? How do we get found, from either AI standpoint or search and and I don’t know, you know, is Google going away? I don’t, you know. I, you know, it’s to me, it’s like, unfathomable, but you know, like, I’m almost reluctant to predict anything, but I want to, I’m going to pull up a couple more screenshots. And you know what we’ve been preaching is, like this, subject matter expertise content, right that? Subject matter expertise content, I know a lot of folks are putting that out there. And again, if you have any feedback, or, you know what, Damon, we should encourage people, if they disagree with anything we’re saying, Get that in the chat, because we drop

Damon Pistulka  10:58

it in the chat. I mean, we want to understand, you know, the contrarian views of this as well, because we we’re here today, because we see things working, like helping educate your the customer, our customers helping them educate their customers, and when they’re answering those questions and helping them helping Our customers, customers make better decisions. It is working for us.

Curt Anderson  11:23

So, you know, here’s an example. So if you Google, AI marketing for manufacturers. Now, that’s a term that folks are using. That’s, you know, hey, we’re trying to sharpen our edge and, you know, step things up. So now here’s the again, like, if, if, if this is new to you, you’re like, hey, you know, I’m not sure exactly how Google works. Well, you have, like, your paid ads, you have your organic, you know, your free traffic, or SEO, and now they’re adding AI. And so now, Damon, I’m going to scroll down here. So this is kind of cool. So, you know, I don’t see us. We’re not populating here in AI, but when you come down here, like, this is pretty cool. Like, we’ve got a couple video Hey, look at I’m wearing the same sweatshirt here than I was. I was on December 23 How about that? So there you go, here, you know. So what we’re strongly encouraging people to consider is, hey, how about video? You know, now I’m going to change screens. And now this is not a crazy, you know, traffic keyword. This is digital game plan. This is proprietary to us, but if you Google digital game plan again. What’s cool, this was you and I just did this live stream here on Monday, two day look at this two days ago. Yep, right here’s our your two buddies, right here, and you come down here. Here we are again. So again, like, what we’re trying to do is we’re encouraging, like, we’re trying to do this ourselves, and we’re encouraging clients, like, hey, consider getting that video content. Yeah. Now I’m going to stop sharing Damon, let’s dive into like, how many ways that you can repurpose that video content. Let’s go there for

Damon Pistulka  12:49

a minute. Yeah. And this does really help your SEO, because unless you you work for a massive company, your your domain authority, your, in Google’s eyes, is not going to be as high as, say, a social media platform where you put it. So like us today, we’re going live on LinkedIn, we’re live on on x, we’re live on on Facebook, we’re live on YouTube. And then these turn into other places. Well, when people search for the title of this show, it’s likely going to come up like you were showing there YouTube first, because YouTube is a Google product and and we’re there on Google searching, that it’s just so powerful these different ways that you can repurpose that. Then you take the the audio track of this, and you put that on a podcast. Now I’m out on Apple Podcast. I’m on Spotify. I’m on all these big podcast platforms with the same information. So when someone comes typing in into Google or AI for that, you are the one that’s just pounding the pounding the internet from all these different sources. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  13:54

And so again, like focusing on, like, what’s the question that my ideal customer is asking? What’s the problem that? And I know I feel like I’m being a little bit of Captain Obvious. But if this is new to you, you know, and that’s the thing is, like, for you know, think about, you know, for our friends out there, if you know, think about, like, your expertise, which, like, you know, you could eat, drink, breathe and sleep. You could do this while you’re you’re sleeping, like your expertise. And so, like, you know, how if you take a step back and say, like, Hey, let me not take my expertise for granted. I’ve put in five years, 10 years, or whatever time frame is that you’ve put into your superpower, your expertise, how you make the world a better place. And, man, just get it out there. And like Damon was saying, you know, if you could either do it on like this, on a live stream, you could grab your phone and talking to, like, talk to text. You could use otter or a transcription tool, talk into something and get that expertise. If you’re like, you know, Hey, man, I’m not gonna sit here. Knock down a, you know, 500 word blog post, talk it out, you know, talk it on a walk, talk while you’re driving, talking talk, you know, whatever, on the plane, wherever you are talking to. X dropping into AI and say, Hey, clean us up and give me a really nice blog post that’s going to help, you know, get that content out there. So I’m going to show one more example. Then we’re we’re going to wind we’ll wrap up. I should have showed this before with we were talking, if you just joined us, we’re talking about a couple different examples. But so you know, if you look here. So if I come down here, let me share look at this one. So before, it was always like, keywords, keywords, keywords, right? Like, what’s a keyword that somebody’s going to type? So I’m showing you see my screen, Damon, right? Okay, so I’m just, I’m showing ground straps. So this is traditionally what this is going to look like. But now we’re saying, Well, wait a minute, the ideal customer is asking the question, you know? So it’s not just keywords, it’s asking the question. So here I just typed like, Hey, what is the best manufacturer for us? Ground straps we were showing our friend previously a few minutes ago. And you take a look here. What’s kind of cool is like, look at this population. See that right there? Falcon electronics. Mm, hmm. And then I scroll down here. Now, Thomas net, the big bad guys, Thomas, that are right here, but our little friends here at Falcon with China.

Damon Pistulka  16:01

Oh, I’m I’m seeing your screen, but I’m seeing popular products. There we go. Now we got

Curt Anderson  16:07

so now if I type the question, what is the best manufacturer for us? Ground straps, so you see that percentage right there. So here’s Faulconer right there. And I scroll down, and then here’s the here’s the big bad guys. You know, Thomas snap. But I come back here, little fucking electronics. They’re a small family business. Here they are organically number two. So yeah, again, you know, a lot of our engineers, a lot of folks are still, you know, the people under we need to understand where our avatar, that ideal customer, that soulmate, are they on chat, doing search, or they still on Google? Are they using social media? Are they a millennial? Are they going to Tiktok? Are they going to YouTube? Like, it’s not important, like, what we think they’re doing, it’s important where your customer is actually doing that search. So that’s what’s going to be the key to that success. So,

Damon Pistulka  16:54

yeah, we got some comments here. Um, easy. I think that’s your name. Sorry if I mispronounced. She said, AI is gem, yeah. And then we got a LinkedIn user that says Damon is right. SEO is the primary reason momos HR consulting firm is and remains number one on Google since one, 119

Curt Anderson  17:14

nice man. That’s awesome job. And see that’s the thing is, like all the reps that you put in years ago back in in so if it’s one, 119 they put it. They’ve been put in reps since probably 2017 2018 Yeah, and that’s what Holly and I were talking about this morning. Now, we can’t go back in time. We don’t have time machines. But what? Hey, Damon, what’s the best? What’s there’s what’s the best day to plant a tree? Now, 20 years ago, what’s the second best today? Right? So get out there and start creating that content. Be that subject matter expert, you know, just exhaust your superpowers. Let the world know how amazing you are. Get that out there. Get that out there on social, get it on your website. And you know, AI will be picking you up, my friend, and hopefully you make a fortune, right? David, what are your thoughts as we wind down?

Damon Pistulka  18:01

Well, I think, you know, the funny thing is, for us, and talking about SEO and AI search is what we’ve been talking about for years now, is educating your customer, educating the customer, educating the customer that is friendly for AI search, that is what you want to do. You know, publishing a scientific paper really doesn’t do much for AI, but when you start talking about and answering those questions that people want to know, that’s how you really get there and rate in the search in AI. So I think it’s exciting times. I just absolutely

Curt Anderson  18:38

we’ll close out on this. And thank you. I appreciate you bringing that up. Because a little tagline that we love to shamelessly use, I use that word a lot, shamelessly, right? But how do you out teach the competition, right? How do you just out, teach the competition and just be passionate about, you know, your expertise, the solution, you know, I did a, I did a fun interview with a client yesterday, and, man, you know, young guy, and it was just like, you know, like, Man, when I do this part of my job, it’s like, the clock doesn’t, you know, it’s like, tick, tick, tick. He’s like, man, but when I do this part of my job, man, I look up and it’s like, four hours have just gone by. Like, I mean, his demeanor, his whole, you know, presence, changed when he talked about what he loves to do. I encourage you out there do the same. Because what’s a famous saying, When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Is that right? That is the way it works. I probably butchered it. So alright, Damon, let’s close out. We thank you. We appreciate you. We love you out there. We wish you massive monster success, keep making the world a better place. And you know what? We’ll be back. I think we’ll come back next week to hang out. Yes, we

Damon Pistulka  19:43

will have a great weekend. Everyone.

Curt Anderson  19:45

Peace out. You.