- Neil Patel, a renowned marketer, started his career at 16 and has helped companies generate revenue through digital marketing
- He founded NP Digital, a global ad agency, and is joined by William and Brittany to discuss the biggest SEO opportunity of 2024
- Despite changes in Google's algorithms and the rise of AI, SEO is not dead and still generates traffic and revenue
- The future of search is AI, but keywords still matter in guiding content creation
- Many content creators are using AI to generate at least 50% of their content, leading to concerns about content overload

- Many content creators are using AI to generate at least 50% of their content
- AI-generated content is not ranking as well as human-generated content
- People can't always tell if content is written by AI or humans
- AI is limited in expertise, authority, trust, and experience
- Long-tail keywords and user intent are important for successful content
- AI lacks personal experiences and emotions, providing an opportunity for human-generated content

- Focus on building a personal, easily digestible story using verified sources
- Exploit media types that are less accessible with AI, such as video and user-generated content
- Create resources and tools that AI cannot compete with
- SEO is not dead, but it's important to optimize for SGE (Search Generated Experiences) module
- Unique content, anecdotes, and user-generated experiences are difficult for AI to replicate and can help with optimization
- Citing sources, using statistics and data, and being inviting in content are important for AI citation
- Different industries are impacted differently by SGE, with healthcare being a touchy subject
- Factors that influence AI module promotion include brand mentions, relevancy, reviews, authority, and recommendations
- Capitalize on this by increasing online mentions and obtaining high-quality reviews.

- Building brand authority and awareness is crucial for setting your business apart from competitors in saturated markets
- Backlinks and domain authority still matter for SEO, as they correlate with higher rankings and send important authority signals to Google
- Digital PR, unlinked brand mention opportunities, and link reclamation are effective tactics for improving brand awareness and visibility
- User experience is essential for keeping users engaged on your site and can lead to increased page views and conversion rates
- Factors such as page speed, responsive design, website copy, intuitive navigation, and well-designed user interface are crucial for creating a positive user experience
- An omnichannel approach integrates all channels and has 1 unified goal and message, allowing businesses to appear to users at various touch points and increase conversions
- SEO and omnichannel marketing are complementary and can help increase organic visibility and foot traffic for businesses with physical locations.

- Omnichannel strategy can increase foot traffic for businesses with physical locations
- Data from omnichannel strategy can improve user engagement experience and inform content strategy
- Strong social signals boost brand authority and trust
- Multi-channel campaign for a college loan provider resulted in 74% of new contacts and 334 complete submissions
- Ways to get started with an omnichannel strategy include testing different channels and evaluating their performance
- AI can be used for efficiency gains in content creation and ideation, as well as visualizing and interpreting data
- AI can also help with user queries, keyword research, and content calendars for content creation and inspiration.

- The speaker discusses the benefits of using AI in content creation and optimization
- They give a case study of using AI for local search optimization for a college
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of combining AI and human input for best results
- They mention the limitations of AI in creating truly unique and new content
- The webinar also discusses tools for finding long-tail keywords and trending keyword suggestions
- The issue of duplicate content is also addressed, with the recommendation to focus on creating new and unique content.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of human intervention in content creation to ensure double E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and to check for plagiarism
- The discussion includes whether webmasters should block AI crawlers like Chat GPT from accessing their content, with the answer being industry-specific and dependent on how the website monetizes
- It is recommended to start with competitor research in digital marketing, but to ultimately make the content better and unique
- The speaker, Neil Patel, shares his background and expertise in digital marketing, offering help to companies through his company NP Digital
- He emphasizes that marketing is not expensive or difficult, and there is a formula for success, even for those without technical knowledge.

- Neil Patel, a renowned marketer, discussed the future of SEO and the rise of AI in digital marketing
- Despite the importance of AI, human-generated content still holds value in SEO
- An omnichannel approach can increase foot traffic for businesses with physical locations
- AI can be used for efficiency gains in content creation and optimization, but human input is crucial for best results
- The importance of unique and new content creation, combining AI and human input, and the limitations of AI in content creation were emphasized
- Neil Patel shared his background and expertise in digital marketing, offering help to companies through his company NP Digital

Forget robotic algorithms and keyword stuffing. This webinar explores the myth of AI domination and reveals the secret weapon for SEO success: you. ​Learn the SEO tactics you need to propel your website to the top of Google's search rankings in 2024.

Want my team of digital marketing professionals to do your marketing for you? Click here to get a strategy call: https://bit.ly/3SrAipG

►Subscribe: https://goo.gl/ScRTwc to learn more secret SEO tips.
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neilkpatel/
Read more on my blog: https://neilpatel.com/blog

My name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more revenue through digital marketing.

Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number 1 marketer in the world, and they also said I created 1 of the 100 most brilliant companies.

I started my first website at the age of 16.

I took all the money that I earned from working at an amusement park, and I paid a marketing firm.

The marketing firm provided no results, and I quickly learned that I wasn't alone.

Out of my frustration and from being broke, I had no choice but to learn marketing.

My first client was a power supply manufacturer.

I helped him generate another $25 million in sales, and from that point, I realized the power of marketing.

I helped everyone that I could, and I built my reputation by being honest and over-delivering.

I've helped companies like Google, NBC, Viacom, General Motors, eBay, but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed.

I founded 4 multi-million dollar companies and I've learned all the mistakes that you should avoid.

I've written about them on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Fast Company, and even on my own blogs.

It's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom.

Over the years, I've received awards from the President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the United Nations.

People believe marketing is expensive and difficult.

Even if you don't have a technical bone in your body, you can get results.

And my mission is to share this formula with you.

Today we wanted to discuss the biggest SEO opportunity of 2024.

We have a lot of slides and I know we only have an hour's worth of time.

I'm the co-founder of an ad agency called NP Digital.

And today we also have William with us and Brittany, both from the company as well.

William, you want to give a quick introduction on yourself?

I'm the VP of SEO for NP Digital's SMB branch, so I oversee SEO teams, developers, link builders, and content.

Cool, And Brittany, you want to give a quick overview?

My name is Brittany Werdewaerts and I'm an SEO manager here at NP Digital US.

I've been working in the SEO digital marketing world for about 9 years now and have worked with a variety of well-known brands and a lot of different industries.

Really excited to get started and talk SEO opportunities for 2024.

I'm going to try to do good on keeping us track on time and William and Brittany just keep track of the time, of course, as you guys are talking as well.

We have quite a bit of clients, getting close to 800 plus employees.

The stuff that we're implementing is working.

If you ever want to work with us, go to npdigital.com or you can just scan that QR code with your phone and it'll lead you there anyways.

But the reason I bring this up isn't to brag or to boast.

I think we can always learn more, always do better.

It's more so to let you know that today when we talk about SGE or GEO, some of these new terms that you may be familiar with or maybe not, keep in mind, it's coming from a place where we're testing a lot of stuff, we're seeing results for our customers.

So when we say, hey, this is where things are going, it's based on data, it's not just based on our gut.

The biggest opportunity in 2024, is it AI or is it not?

And when you look at the SEO crisis, there's a lot of things going on like, oh, Google's changing so many things, is what's going to happen to the top results?

Used to be where you would Google what's the weather in Los Angeles, California, and you would just click to weather.com.

And yes, this affects people's SEO traffic in some industries and in others, not as much.

We looked at 3,500 or 35,599 sites over the last 4 years.

And we looked at Search Console data, which gives you idea of SEO traffic.

The baseline of 2020 was 100% because whatever these sites had in their traffic, that was 100%.

And over the next 3 years, they saw growth.

In other words, you know, when Danny Sullivan from Google said, Google has consistently driven more traffic each and every single year to websites since its existence.

Based on what we're seeing here, there's a good chance that it's actually true, right?

No, you can still get a ton of traffic and it generates a ton of revenue.

And you're probably wondering, where is Google going?

Funny enough, I didn't know, but when my team made this slide, I actually had to Google what co-vedis means.

And in Latin, it means, where is it going Or where is Google going?

And they've made a lot of changes over the years.

I won't bore you with their algorithm changes.

But even with AI and SGE, they don't necessarily know where they're going either.

It is a big experiment, and you're going to see a lot of this implemented, not in the next month or 2 or 6 months.

Google's going to continually make these changes, and you're going to really know where it's going in 4 or 5 years, but you're not going to really know where it's going in the next 12 months.

They're going to test a lot of this stuff with a small fraction of their traffic to make sure it doesn't impact their ad revenue.

Google themselves, as I mentioned, is working out the details.

The general rollout is delayed, and they'll start gathering more and more data to figure out what tweaks and changes they have to make.

Google, if you look at their history, typically they test a lot of drastic changes with a fraction of a percent of their traffic, And if things look good, then they start rolling it out to more people, eventually a country, then eventually the whole world.

Now you're going to see people leveraging AI in all aspects, in addition to search, whether it's to create content, whether it's to get answers when they're searching, people start looking at Chad GPT, Chad GPT won't necessarily crush Google, There'll be a place for both.

Just like Facebook didn't crush Snapchat, or Snapchat didn't crush Facebook, or Instagram didn't crush TikTok.

There's different use cases for all of them as well.

A lot of people are thinking though, with AI, do keywords really matter?

They help search engines understand what people are looking for and what kind of content to show.

It also allows you to target your right customer more accurately, and also guides you to figure out what kind of content you should create.

But the keyword strategy that you're used to in the past may not necessarily be relevant today, it really isn't.

The big AI dilemma though is, with all these rapid tools, and a lot of them are focused on creating content, we're just going to get overloaded.

So even though AI makes content easier to create, do you use it?

We surveyed over, technically, we actually surveyed exactly 1,051 people and asked them, are you creating your content based on, you know, humans or through AI or a combination of both?

Majority said either AI 640 out of the 1,051 or a combination of both, which is 282.

If you add both of them up, by far, the majority is using AI to create their content.

When we ask the people who are creating content through AI with the combination of humans, as you can see, the majority are having AI create at least 50% of their content, if not more, right?

And marketers are flocking to AI like, it's the best thing since sliced bread.

But if you just use AI on its own, we're not necessarily seeing the AI content rank as well.

And I believe the exact stat was 94.12% of the time when we ran the experiment, it was somewhere around there.

Don't quote me on the exact number, I could be off on that.

But it's somewhere in the 90 percentile, I believe it was 94.12% of the time, AI content, or human-based content, written content was outranking AI-based content.

And here's some quick screenshots, as you can see, it's flooding the web.

But meanwhile, when we ask people, hey, do you like content that's written by AI more from chat GPT or BART or humans?

And funny enough, we actually asked people, we surveyed them specifically.

And the question was, is this content, which piece of content do you like better and was it written by human or AI?

And we did this with both BARD articles and which is now Gemini or, and ChatGPT.

And what we found was more people felt that chat GPT articles were written by AI and more people felt that BARD articles or Gemini articles were written by humans.

And It's a nice even split roughly, but people in many cases can't tell if it's AI written or human written.

And that's the big thing that you should take away from this slide.

People may say 1 thing, but when you ask them and you show it to them, they are not always able to tell and that's gonna actually get even worse in the future because AI is getting better.

Yeah, so you know AI is such a new concept to the mainstream, right?

It's been integrated into search engines for a while now, but now that it's a conversational module that anyone can interact with, people are using it in any way they can possibly think of.

And because of that, it becomes a double-edged sword, like Neil was talking about before.

You know, a lot of people just say, oh, hey, wow, I can just generate as much content as I want, and I don't have to write it.

That's not the case, and you could actually, it could be a detriment to your website and your performance if you don't do it carefully.

Having a human element or a human-written article is still usually the more successful piece of content, and there are a few reasons for that that we'll dig into now.

So we have 7 different strategies, some bullet points here that we're going to go over of what is a good use of AI, and what you might want to stay away from, and why humans are still important to generating content on the web.

So the first 1 is 1 that Google has been focusing on for years and years now, and it was EAT, now it's EEAT, expertise, authority, trust, and experience.

If you think of those words, experience, expertise, trust, authority, how is AI going to be able to score on those markers over humans, right?

So Google has come out and said that There's nothing like AI detection in the algorithm that's going to hurt or help AI content.

But if you're talking about quality content that Google's gonna reward, how are you going to build these modules into AI generated content instead of using like an actual authoritative writer that has clout online.

And so when we're taking a look at what we wanna focus on and what differentiates an AI generated article from a human generated article, Here's some of those things.

So with expertise, are you citing reputable sources?

AI can't really have author credentials unless you get a little gray hat there, have in-depth analysis.

So 1 of the things that Google has mentioned that they're focusing on is 1, helpful content updates, which you saw earlier in the slides, iteration on like reviews, and also what Google is calling hidden gems.

And so a lot of what AI does is regurgitate what's already there online and what is already very present and obvious online.

And so if you want to separate yourself, you can make sure that you establish yourself as a reputable author, but also make sure that you're talking about things that AI can't talk about because AI is a lot of the time just regurgitating what's already there.

So first-hand accounts and anecdotes, subject matter expertise, quotes and interviews, you know, any personal experiences or things that might not be super apparent online, Those hidden gems are 1 of the ways in to beat out AI-generated content.

Yeah, and also clarify 1 thing, nor is Will or anyone here trying to tell you if you use AI to fake author credentials, right?

We wholeheartedly believe that if it's AI written, you should be transparent and let people know.

And you can see the ones that have success with AI generated articles, some of the bigger players out there, they do mention in the byline that this was assisted by AI or something along those lines.

But also, so another thing that it's it's been an issue since the beginning of SEO is people wanting, you know, what are called halo keywords or trophy phrases, those really high search volume, really short tail 1 word, 2 word, 3 word keywords.

But especially now with the SGE modules coming out, Users are faster to search more granularly, just like we're faster to create the content in ideation.

So now a user doesn't have to search 1 thing and then do a bunch of reading of a bunch of blogs.

They can get down that sales funnel a bit faster and because of that it's even more Important now and it always has been to focus on long tail keywords that have very specific Intent and very often that intent is revenue driving more so than that those shorter tail keywords So when you're talking about say in this example, print photos from phone, you don't know, you know, it's more of a research intent but when you get more granular now they're they're looking to convert more often.

And so it's really good to make sure that you're optimizing for longer tail keywords and understanding the intent of the users when they're searching those long-term tail keywords.

And if you can cater your content to those exact needs, you're building that trust with the user because you're talking about exactly what they're looking to solve.

And that's contributing to that EADS score that we're talking about.

So and like we said, you know, we've done the studies, we've run the data.

There's a lot of qualified leads in the like 3 to 6 word category, but a lot of revenue driving keywords are like 7 or more because as AI becomes conversational, users are also becoming more conversational when they search on Google.

And so they're asking a long form question because now they're confident that Google can understand the context of that question.

And When you do that, you have to have more granular, very detailed content that addresses those specific questions.

I also want to say that while we say 3 to 6 words, 7 words, in general, this is what the data shows, but it's also very different on a case-by-case basis.

If you're looking for those keywords and wanting to do keyword research with longer tail keywords, a good resource is Answer the Public, which is going to be able to plug in keywords that are shorter tail.

And it's going to expand that and show you what users are searching for when they're getting more granular with that topic that you've entered into Answer the Public.

So when we're talking about the focus areas that AI can't touch, How can you differentiate from even quality AI as AI continues to get better and better?

There are some key areas you can focus on here.

Make sure you understand how AI is limited.

Like I said, it is regurgitating the content and information that is already out there.

Also, in ChatGPT's case, it is outdated information.

It is not running and crawling and absorbing all of the data of new content in real time.

And So you might have a fresher perspective than what AI can generate.

Also AI doesn't have personal experiences or emotions.

And it can have inaccuracies based on context and contextual prompts that you might be giving it.

So there are some key issues that still haven't been solved yet in the AI space.

And those are things that you can exploit when you want to build a personal story, that's easily digestible, is very important.

On verified sources and point out to people how long does a user need to engage with their issue that they're trying to resolve, you've helped them with that.

And also, focus on media types that aren't as accessible with AI.

So AI, everybody could jump on, download an app right now, and generate content using AI, textual content.

Video becomes a little bit more difficult.

Even imagery is still not perfect, and you get a lot of seven-fingered hands and things when you try to generate images.

So focus on a multimedia approach that allows you to optimize and claim search volumes that are more difficult for AI to claim.

For example, YouTube is a very powerful search engine in and of itself.

So where else can you enter spaces that aren't necessarily getting drowned out by a massive amount of AI-generated content right now?

So yeah, also make sure that you're in that same vein of videos and multimedia.

Think about other things that AI can't do, user generated content.

Google is loving user generated content right now.

You might have noticed with some core algorithm updates over the last year that Reddit has blown up.

And it's This human interaction, this unique content that is being generated by users from personal experience and anecdotes that Google is really rewarding right now.

If you create a bunch of tools that AI hasn't, you're creating resources that can easily enter the market.

So what does your user base need that AI can't achieve?

Is there something, a product you can develop that is going to get a significant amount of engagement that AI can't even compete with?

So when you focus on AI-powered search, We're talking about SGE right here, so search generated experiences.

If you're in the beta in the US, and I believe Canada right now, you can start seeing some of those generated answers that Google is providing, and they're continuing to roll it out to more and more of the demographic.

But as they are creating this SGE module that is knocking everything else down in the SERPs, the search engine result pages, we have to figure out how we can capitalize on that like we have had to before.

For example, with featured snippets and position 0, everyone was worried that it was going to steal all the clicks and that it's stealing the content.

But what we found was that you actually get more clicks to your website if you have that featured snippet.

And the same is likely going to be the case with optimizing for SGE, and making sure that you're actually optimizing for the AI, so it will cite you inside of that SGE module as it rolls out to the public.

So there are a lot of misconceptions around SGE as well.

And so we're talking about SGE is never going to try to answer every single question.

It's never going to be completely accurate because information fluctuates and it's going to struggle in some of these other ways as well where you can't do a lot of trend predictions or things like that that a human analyst can still do.

So SEO is not dead, but just like we had to figure out how to optimize and get featured snippets or rich snippets or review stars, any of those other results in the SERPs, we have to figure out how to get into the SGE module as well.

And so right now, it's not like if you rank number 1, you're going to be cited in SGE.

It's a separate algorithm that's trying to pull in an exact answer for the exact intent of the query that the user is searching.

And because of that, it's not always going to pick position 1 or 2.

It does often because Google wants to serve the best answer, and that might be in line.

But we also see it pulling from page 2 or beyond even.

Or like position 9 is also a very popular position.

So this allows smaller players in the market to beat out very large competitors in the market.

So if you are, if there is a conglomerate, a massive corporation that is dominating the space, but isn't getting really granular with the needs and intent of the user queries, this is an opportunity for you to capitalize on that and get on top of people that you might have given up trying to outrank organically.

So here are some of the ways that you can optimize for what the industry is calling GEO, Generative Engine Optimization basically, or Generative Experience Optimization.

And so, this is a lot of kind of, there's a theme forming here of what I'm talking about where it's unique content that AI can't necessarily pull, and that can be things like those anecdotes, that user-generated content, those experiences or authority that is very difficult for AI to show.

And There have been some studies from some universities that have taken a look at these specific areas to see how they increase the performance of being cited in AI.

There are some results we can look at from that.

So what the study showed was that these 3 strategies were very, very big deals.

Citing your sources, making sure that you're not just making stuff up, quotations from authoritative sources, statistics or data that really proves the trust of the content.

Also, an interesting finding was that you don't want to act persuasive or authoritative necessarily.

And if you've ever played around with chat GPT or those similar tools, it comes off very arrogant and very matter of fact and very authoritative, right?

But what they found during the study was that it's actually better to be more inviting and make easily digestible content that people want to read and that doesn't kind of speak down to them.

Also it is important to know that different industries are impacted differently.

Healthcare you see at the top here, but healthcare is a very touchy subject in SGE and AI because you can get into trouble with information that isn't completely accurate.

If you're dealing with that kind of information in the healthcare space, that can be a liability.

So I've seen there be very big fluctuations of how much Google is addressing SGE in the healthcare space, and you can see that based on the industry, There's a different weight being held to this kind of module that SEOs are starting to get worried about.

Getting your brand mentioned by AI, those are the kinds of things that we were just talking about.

In order to do that, the theme is kind of be human, be more human than the robot, have those personal experiences, have conversations, have hidden gems that AI isn't regurgitating.

It's just, it's very important to differentiate yourself from what we kind of as an industry have been doing over the last decade, which is regurgitating the information already out there.

Now AI is getting really good at that and we can't rely on that anymore.

So based on our research, these are some of the factors that influence what an AI module might, when the AI module might promote or recommend a product or a service or a brand.

A lot of what you're seeing here is that EEAT.

It's relevancy, reviews, authority, recommendations, all of those things that establish trust and experience and expertise.

And so, what can you do to capitalize on all of this?

There's, you know, increase your online mentions, high quality reviews.

And really all this comes down to is brand authority and domain authority, which Brittany is going to dive into a little deeper now.

So yeah, now we'll dive into our next strategy for increasing visibility, which is focusing on building your brand authority and awareness.

Building your brand in 2024 is crucial because it's 1 of the main factors that's going to set you apart from your competitors, especially in saturated markets.

If you think about search behavior and who users will choose in search results, generally users are going to gravitate toward a brand that they know and trust, so having a strong brand presence is going to be what gives you the competitive edge.

And in general, the bigger your brand is, the more search traffic you're going to get from that brand name, as seen on the right.

See all Neil Patel transcripts on Youtube

The Biggest SEO Opportunity of 2024