The Future of SEO: From Search Rankings to Organic GTM Engines

Jeffro (00:01.841)
SEO isn’t just about keywords and backlinks anymore. It’s evolving into a strategic layer that touches everything from content and brand to AI and customer experience. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Tom Jacobs, a growth strategist and founder of Gouda Market. Tom helps SaaS and tech companies build full stack organic engines by aligning SEO, content, and emerging AI search behaviors into one cohesive go-to-market strategy.

So that’s a mouthful, whether you’re confused about where SEO is headed or just trying to stay visible in this age of AI search and zero click results, this conversation I think will help you rethink how organic growth actually works. So welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom Jacobs (00:43.916)
Thank you, Jefferyl. Excited to chat through this as I’m having these conversations pretty much every single day.

Jeffro (00:51.039)
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a lot of business owners that still think of SEO as this technical thing that someone handles in the background. But the way things are going, it’s starting to feel more like a go-to-market channel in its own right. And you yourself have said that SEO is becoming more of an organic GTM function. So maybe we can start by having you explain what that looks like in practice.

Tom Jacobs (01:11.842)
Yeah, I think people are starting to get tripped up between have it being like an all or nothing kind of thing. It’s like either you’re doing SEO or you’re doing the new like GEO. But I’m kind of, I’m kind of thinking of it as like the entire organic realm is pushing these two down to more of a tactical level. So you’ll use SEO, you use GEO as tools to accomplish what you’re accomplishing. But like the breadth of the things that

Jeffro (01:22.893)
GEO, yeah.

Tom Jacobs (01:41.474)
business owners are having to worry about now is increased like tenfold. It’s like not only are you optimizing for Google, which we could have got away with five years ago, it’s just like washing your hands of optimized for Google. Ninety eight percent of the traffic and the search traffic on the Internet is going to go through that portal. You’re kind of just like chilling. But now it’s like you have you have to look at the entire realm of like what an LLM is going to pull in.

So it’s gonna pull in like your LinkedIn posts, it’s gonna pull in your Reddit threads, it’s gonna pull in articles about your company, the G2 kind of like aggregate review sites, and then give you a holistic view of what it sees about your company.

Jeffro (02:27.319)
Yeah, so I mean, that is interesting because there’s so much there, right? We’ll get into a little bit more, but let’s talk about what’s your take on the AI mode, know, the changes we’re seeing in search, how is this changing what even shows up in a Google search result and even how it affects how people search in the first place.

Tom Jacobs (02:49.112)
Yeah, it’s it’s kind of a scary world for most of even us. So like I can’t imagine service business owners having to look at this and say, what am I going to do next? But I did a study of like rankings over time. And even if you maintained a number one ranking for the same term over about six months, that one number one ranking on organic is getting pushed further and further down. And then, as you say, once AI mode rolls out, It’s just a mention. It’s just a suggestion. Like here are the top companies, but there’s no link to your site. So it’s, we’re kind of like getting back to like traditional marketing where like your brand is going to be a lot more important to your reputation. I’m starting to pull in some PR firms to say like, what do you offer for the smaller business? If you want to get mentioned across the web. Cause I think relationships are going to be huge.

Like your knowledge of your target audience is going to be absolutely vital because you need to figure out like what they’re actually prompting, the queries, the questions that they’re asking and the queries that they’re searching for. In the AI mode, it’s gonna be tough because you have to kind of like start gaming the system again as like, how do I get mentioned? But even if you get mentioned, it doesn’t guarantee anybody reaches your site.

So it’s like a whole new world.

Jeffro (04:20.81)
Yeah, so this, mean, the AI overviews and the zero click results, it’s like, maybe they got their answer. So they’re not going to go to your site and they’re not, you don’t get that chance with your messaging to hook them in further, right? They got what they needed, they left. And so now your traffic is down. Even though, like, like you said, you’re still ranking for the keyword, but now you have fewer opportunities to be in front of those people. It’s just about, they grabbed the information that they wanted.

It was a transaction and now they’re gone.

Tom Jacobs (04:51.64)
Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen a big dip in the sites you’re working on?

Jeffro (04:56.593)
I have seen some, I’ve got a couple sites that are still doing okay in spite of the shift, but others, like I’m looking at it and I’m watching this and like, hey, we’re still ranking. Well, like we’re going up in rankings on keywords and yet overall volume is going down because everyone’s shifting over to AI searches and chat dbt. And like, okay, maybe they didn’t need to actually hire that person. They’re just looking for a question about a thing that they happen to talk about. So on the one hand, like you need to understand that what the numbers actually mean and look more at the

Tom Jacobs (05:09.891)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Jacobs (05:15.48)
Yeah.

Jeffro (05:26.516)
percentages maybe of like click through rates, like those sort of things. But yeah, if you were judging performance based on sheer volume before, like, okay, you probably need to get a little more nuance anyways. But let’s, I like that you had mentioned brand is going to be taking a later, a larger picture as we move forward. So how does that factor into SEO in ways that it didn’t before? Is there a direct correlation or is it just kind of, you know, related?

Tom Jacobs (05:56.51)
I think a lot of this will start and end with your content and your quality of like the narrative of the story unique to your business and the, I don’t know, like the helpfulness and the time to information almost. A lot of the branded people on LinkedIn and the influencers are already kind of pivoting toward providing data around brand success, which is a crucial, I used to be like, the biggest brand hater, because I was like, why are they getting paid? Because, but if you apply some success metrics to like a brand uptick and you actually drive up demand for your brand and your company, I think that’s where it starts to pay off. The narrative is built around your content, but then holistically, you’re showing up on six different channels with like a consistent voice in the market.

Jeffro (06:51.454)
Yeah. I mean, it’s almost like everybody who wants to stick around long-term has to not only think about brand, but you’re kind of becoming a media company or at least having a media subdivision to keep your company in front of the world. Right. And be the expert in your area so that you will be found when someone needs something.

Tom Jacobs (07:11.106)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffro (07:14.184)
Yeah, and I’ve noticed also it’s interesting on like perplexity, especially in some recent searches. If I search for a recipe or something like, hey, how do I cook this roast like a steak? You know, it’ll tell me. And then it’s got its little footnotes that link to a site. And usually when I click on one of those, I want a more detailed like recipe from whoever said how this works. But I’m finding it takes me to a lot of YouTube videos.

Tom Jacobs (07:41.571)
Really.

Jeffro (07:41.757)
where, it read the transcript and say, okay, this guy talks about it. But I’m not always in a position to watch a video. so in some ways it’s less helpful. Like it’s great that it found the information. Maybe it is more specific and he actually walks me through it. Okay, that probably is a good way to learn. But it would also be interesting to see if going forward, are there ways to set those kinds of preferences? Like don’t show me video results, only show me websites. And on the flip side, if you’re the… the recipe website, you’re no longer getting this traffic because now somebody posted a video about it, right? And they’re getting, is YouTube more authoritative? Like maybe, I don’t know.

Tom Jacobs (08:15.715)
Yeah.

Tom Jacobs (08:20.182)
Yeah, the recipe thing is the funniest example I usually use. It’s like 10 stories about how your grandma made this recipe 10 years ago. And then the AdSense ads are popping up and then you’re like, I just want the recipe. But I think that’s what Google is trying to figure out with AI mode. It’s like you, Jeff Rowe have certain preferences on what you like and what you click on. It’s going to build you a personal kind of search engine customized to one. So it’s like in our realm of service-based businesses, like how do you build some website or some entity online that services the highest amount of people who prefer that kind of medium? And it gets so, so many levels deeper that it’s like, what do we even charge for retainers anymore? Because it’s like, you’re now taking on like the role of content. You’re taking on PR, you’re taking on like, web design and technical SEO, and then you’re optimizing the site, but then you’re optimizing the AI platforms. It’s getting so large on the scope of what you’re actually accomplishing for businesses that it’s like, I guess, what do they say about eating the elephant by the one bite at a time? But like, that’s kind of where you begin.

Jeffro (09:41.296)
Yeah, so let’s talk about actually tracking this visibility. So yes, we’re now doing all these different things and trying to be everywhere all at once. But what are the better metrics to watch if traffic and keyword rankings are declining because of the way things are changing?

Tom Jacobs (09:59.886)
Yeah, I’m, I’m looking a lot at conversion rate and pipeline just to ensure that like the traffic that does make it to your site. If we eliminate the top of funnel kind of fluff and informational educational kind of stuff that people in the middle of the bottom of the funnel intent levels are still coming in, taking action, converting, and the pipeline remains smooth. Um, I’m also tracking like referrals from, um, the LLMs individually in GA four.

And then I’m starting to experiment with like the peak AIs of the world, but I feel like that’s a reactive tool that you have to put in the prompt that you want to track. And it’s not like an all encompassing, like your brand shows up for this many prompts in the LLMs. So I’m kind of like, that’s the biggest gap that I’m having right now is like a holistic view of you’re mentioned here, here, here, and here. This is where you need to work on it. but then it’s like, Focusing on revenue is like the, you’ll never lose that way.

Jeffro (11:01.615)
Yeah, I mean, so at its core, SEO used to be simple to understand, right? Like, okay, get people to link to you, write better stuff, rank higher for some keywords. People find you, great. Like, I can comprehend that. But now as we’re talking about this, like entering into the AI world, it isn’t as clear how to actually do this. And the answer is, well, be everywhere, do everything all at once, right? And I imagine a lot of smaller businesses are just going to say,

Tom Jacobs (11:25.998)
Yeah.

Jeffro (11:29.927)
this isn’t worth it. Like the prices are going up. It doesn’t make sense. It’s harder to measure. like, I can’t see an ROI in the short term. So I imagine they might just abandon it, go to PPC or something, or some of the older traditional methods maybe. So I’m curious, you you’ve worked with a lot of different size of companies. Is there something that a smaller or growing service business could borrow from a, you know, SaaS style content engine that they could still hang onto and have success with?

Tom Jacobs (12:00.258)
Yeah, I think being scrappy with your content and kind of filling the gaps that the bigger companies are leaving out, like if you’re a local service company, you focus on like user kind of positivity, user reviews and Google maps and those kind of smaller aggregators. I think the, the LLMs will eventually move towards like a paid sponsored model. like that’s an entirely different conversation. But I will usually on smaller businesses will usually just start creating content on a level of short-term wins. I’m really trying to get into the gaps in the market where you’re niching down from the most broad keyword to something that has intent. And it’s like this problem for this niche and this geo or something like that. So through blog content and there’s consistent.

Writing of that, you kind of start prompting everything and then you kind of answer questions. Like the biggest thing for GEO is like frequently asked questions, like real short, quippy kind of content that directly engages what the prompt is and what the answer is without going on a bunch of tangents. That’s what I usually recommend for like localized smaller businesses that don’t have a ton of budget.

Jeffro (13:26.31)
So that makes sense. And it made me think of another question because SEO has been around a long time, right? And all the main search platforms have their APIs and we’ve got third party providers of data, like the Ahrefs, the Moz, SEMrush and everything, where you can actually get, you know, and make informed decisions about what keywords to go after and how much search volume there is. Do we have reliable data from the LLMs for this type of thing that we can start looking at now?

Tom Jacobs (13:57.442)
You say that again, you kind of broke up.

Jeffro (14:02.046)
sorry. Yeah. So, I mean, with SEO and the large search engines, they’ve got APIs, like giving us data, third party tools, HRF, SEMrush, and all that. Do we have reliable data for the LLMs where we can see what people are searching for, what keywords they’re using, in order to kind of give us guidance as where to put our effort?

Tom Jacobs (14:22.658)
Yeah, I think that’s the toughest part right now. It’s like everybody gets an individual answer customized to the historical conversations that they’re having. That’s why I usually will include in the prompt, like either tell me what you know, without searching the wider web or tell me what you know, without referencing our previous conversations. It has to be an entirely neutralized, like a incognito window kind of thing to trust that it’s not pulling from your influence, but I don’t think, I don’t think we’re quite there yet with those tools because Ahrefs has such a high gate for charging for that. It’s like, okay, I’m not going to pay 6,000 bucks for that information quite yet.

Jeffro (15:07.781)
Okay, but I imagine that will come in the future as this kind of gets standardized and we’ll get some of that information. So it’s probably just a matter of time. All right, so for someone who has been relying on content and SEO for years, you know, to bring in business and they’ve seen it’s reliable, what needs to change now if they want to stay competitive in the next 12 to 18 months?

Tom Jacobs (15:30.156)
I think building an actual AI activation strategy is kind of the cheap answer, but I think if we’re going to be tactical, it’s kind of like figuring out your partners in the market and complimentary markets. How can you leverage each other’s content, get mentioned across the web? That’s going to be huge. It’s kind of like regressing back to the mean of SEO. It’s like, we’re to get link building mentions.

Like brand mentions on different websites, a bunch of listicles, kind of like pursuing relationships with different brands, different companies, outreach, and then like telling your story through content. that’s really going to be the next key. And then like securing your schema markups and like the technical build to your websites is going to be pretty huge, for service businesses specifically.

Jeffro (16:29.774)
So is there still a role, I mean you kind of alluded to this earlier, is there still a role for the traditional blogging and long form content or is everything going to shift toward video, interactive stuff, real time AI generated things? Do we know yet? Is there any sense there of what the future holds?

Tom Jacobs (16:48.942)
Yeah, I usually reference that SEM rush study that’s like 2028 is the time where 50 50 traffic will be LLMs and search. So there still is a validity to show up and rank depending the big dependency is like does Google force everyone to roll out AI mode? If they do, this all changes and I then maybe you scrap SEO. I don’t know. But the way that I’ve been selling it is like.

SEO and GEO go together perfectly and there’s a bridge between the two. But like everything you’re doing traditionally in SEO will influence how these platforms are showing up and what it’s leveraging. I think to your point, it will get a little bit smarter in leveraging like more rich media or video, but I don’t know if small business have access to like producing that. Like that’s the hardest ask. It’s like, can we produce content?

Can you make videos? Like they don’t have time. They don’t have the budgets for that. So they’re like, all right, what’s the scrappy version of that? It’s like maybe traditional SEO is that then feeds into the LLMs.

Jeffro (17:59.64)
Yeah, and I’d almost say, okay, as you’re doing the traditional stuff, get more specific because informational queries are handled. You know, the zero-click results take care of that. So you might as well spend your time writing something deeper, more interesting, or with a unique perspective on the problem that will actually provide value to someone who’s stuck with a very niche problem and they are having trouble figuring it out.

Tom Jacobs (18:25.114)
Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s the name of the game really. Like I had one client that had a very top of funnel strategy and maybe like 30 % of their click volume got wiped out in the last three months. Like it’s crazy. Like that’s, that’s an interesting conversation to have because you’re like, okay, clicks are no longer the metric. You can no longer do apples to apples year over year comparisons with your data because it’s just not the same realm anymore.

Jeffro (18:51.844)
Yeah, it is going to be interesting to see how this plays out. What questions am I not asking, Tom?

Tom Jacobs (18:59.937)
I have you seen, well, this might be asking you a question, but have you seen a lot of updates for web builds in terms of how it relates into the LLMs?

Jeffro (19:17.532)
not directly, no.

Tom Jacobs (19:21.902)
Okay. That’s interesting.

Jeffro (19:23.293)
Sorry. I don’t have much to say there. I don’t know. Where were you going with that,

Tom Jacobs (19:32.582)
just like a lot of, a lot of like the geo recommendations are like the way that you structure your, know, it doesn’t prefer JavaScript. It prefers, you know, the straight HTML or like the LLMS dot TXT files. It’s like, do you test them?

Jeffro (19:43.444)
yeah.

Jeffro (19:47.477)
I will say that it’s been interesting because a lot of times, I’ll do audits for people and I’ll go back and forth to chat DPT to help rewrite headlines. At a certain point, was like, I’m just going to… Here’s chat DPT, here’s a website, let’s look at it and rewrite their headline because I’ve done a bunch in the chat history and it knows what I’m looking for. All right, give me something. But then in the past month or so, every time I’ve done this, it gets it wrong rather than actually going out to it, I don’t know where it’s getting some data. It’s like, great, I just looked at the website, here’s the headline for so and so doing their thing in Wichita. And I’m like, they’re not in Wichita, they don’t offer that. what, I don’t know where this is coming from. And so if I copy the text from that site, paste it in, then it’s like, you’re right, I was way off. Here’s a better headline. Okay, then it’s fine. But it still has issues, obviously especially with going out to the web because some sites, like depending on the builder they were used, whether it’s Webflow or Wix, some of them are easier for the LLM to scan and understand compared to others. And so I am seeing that at least is impacting the quality of the results it’s giving.

Tom Jacobs (21:02.05)
Yeah. I mean, one of the bigger questions is like, does this period of time have a negative impact on the longer term of your brand? Like are the smaller companies just saying, I can save a lot of money and not hiring a marketing agency, just write the, the content with an LLM. And then they’re just using basic prompts to say, can you write this article? And then they ship it. And then the internet’s full of just slop. So it’s like, I don’t know. I, my fear is like, we’re using AI so much that like some of your creative genes and your like know how is going to go away because you’re just like, all right, yeah, AI can do that. And then we just like, so there’s like some sort of negativity around AI that I think we should be cautious about over time with the creative aspects, with the content, with everybody’s brand that we’re not cutting the corners that we should not cut. But I guess we’ll get there.

Jeffro (22:04.907)
Yeah. It’s, yeah. I mean, they’re already doing some studies to show like, people who use chat GBT all the time or getting dumber basically, because you’re, you’re not thinking as much. You’re just spitting out whatever it gives you. And so it’s like anything else, right? If you take the shortcuts in most cases, it doesn’t work out long-term. It turns out the long way is the shortcut because it’s the one that gets you there. So with AI, like you’ve got to be the one doing the thinking.

Tom Jacobs (22:13.966)
Hahaha

Jeffro (22:33.268)
and let AI sharpen your thoughts or even save you time on doing the boilerplate stuff, but you still need to be the one to edit it to put in the original ideas. Otherwise, you’re just going to get whatever else it’s picked up before and you’ll sound like everybody else.

Tom Jacobs (22:47.468)
Yeah. Yeah. I think context is a big one, like keyword research and that kind of stuff that you need a human understanding of the brand that, like you say, like it could spit you out anything that’s usually half wrong.

Jeffro (23:02.177)
Yeah, but you don’t know because it just says it so confidently. And I’m like, I can ask it, hey, what’s the top keyword for such and such? And it’ll give me a list. I OK, I’m just going to trust that. Right. Like it’s it’s easy to trust it because it’s right there. it’s like, OK, I could either spend an hour verifying all this and pay some platform a subscription to figure this out. Or I run with this and say, it’s probably close enough. And I think that’s those are the things that we’re going to start finding out the impact.

Tom Jacobs (23:13.358)
Ow.

Tom Jacobs (23:27.203)
Yeah.

Jeffro (23:32.226)
as it gets better and more accurate and all of this stuff gets played out. I appreciate you being on the show today, Tom, and I appreciate you being on the cutting edge of all of this. It’s fascinating how things are changing so quickly. Hopefully everybody listening will be able to keep up, especially as we’ve given some ideas and insights into what’s actually changing. By the way, you guys can connect with Tom and learn more about Google Market using the links in the show notes. I don’t know if he’s got any other puns in his…

Tom Jacobs (23:41.079)
Of

Jeffro (24:01.409)
work aside from the business name, but I like that. That’s a good sign. So is there one thing you want people to take away from this conversation, Tom, as we’re looking to the future of SEO and GEO for smaller service businesses?

Tom Jacobs (24:16.46)
Yeah, I would just end this to say that like it is approachable. Like from outside non-technical small business owners, it just seems so out of reach, but it’s like a few, a few sessions with somebody who you can trust really can go a long way with adopting something like this that helps the systems and operations.

Jeffro (24:39.134)
Yeah, and you’re not gonna be able live without that, the way things are going. So thanks again, Tom. Thanks to all of you guys for listening. Please share this episode with someone who would benefit from learning about how SEO is changing. That’s it for now. Take care and we’ll see you next time.