SEO Q+A: How SEO Can Help You Show Up in AI Searches
“I have never had AI give me a good SEO strategy.”
I heard you! You want to know what it’s going to take to show up in AI search. You also want to know if you can do keyword research in Claude or create meta descriptions in ChatGPT.
…so I made an entire Q+A episode for you about all things SEO and AI!
In this one I’m getting specific about where AI can be helpful, where it hurts your SEO, & what I said that floored my SEO Sprinters on a recent coaching call.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Can I use ChatGPT to write my blog posts?
The blog prompt I swear by if you’re going to use AI to create it
The reason your AI-written blog post isn't showing up on Google
Can AI be trusted to create effective SEO strategies?
What I tell clients to do to draft good meta descriptions
The 3 things that get you showing up in AI search
A client SEO win that just happened this week!
AI and SEO can work well together, but understanding the capabilities of AI and how they can support one another is a super important part of the process!
To get my eyes on your SEO (website, content, & social media), book your SEO Game Plan (get $47 off with this link)!
Mentioned Resources:
Keysearch (get 20% off w/ code KSDISC)
SEO Game Plan (get $47 off with this link!)
Blog Prompt for AI Tools (like Claude):
I’m writing a blog post answering this question: [insert question] Ask me anything you need to know the answer to in order to write a blog post that is helpful and unique. It should include my experience, expertise, case studies, examples, opinions, etc. Keep it limited to 10 questions. Ask me one question at a time. When you put the blog post together, don’t paraphrase my answers.
Steps:
Give Claude or whatever AI tool the prompt above
Grab questions from Matt’s site
Or keep a running list of questions you actually get asked
Answer the questions it asks you (either type or talk, you can use Wispr Flow, a talk-to-text tool)
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome to the Basic B Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Brittany Hertzberg. I get this question quite often, so I wanted to bring it to the podcast, but I'm going to be doing this in a QA kind of episode. We haven't done one of these in a while, so let's bring it back. And actually the timing feels really perfect because I just got off an SEO sprint call with my sprinters. So question that we're gonna be talking about what do I need to do in order to show up in AI searches? So many people are like, it's gotta be this fancy trick or tool or thing and
No, showing up in AI searches does not require a shiny object or slapping FAQs on every single flipping page or blog post. It requires you to do the basics and to do them well. With an SEO game plan, I'm coming in to review your website, social media profiles, and content to see if those basics have been done and have been done well. I audit those three areas, create a custom report, no graphs, no charts, just literally here is what is going on, here's what I recommend in straight up.
plain English. And then we have two weeks together, one-to-one in Telegram to talk it out. In the end, you walk away knowing exactly what to work on next, what those tasks are going to be, and who's doing what. It doesn't matter. Whether you decide DIY or to bring in help or to join a program, you're gonna have the help and you're gonna have a plan. Use code podcast at checkout to get your game plan for $150. It's regularly $197. So it's totally worth going and using that thing.
Alrighty, now for the main show, the main adventure, if you will. I'm gonna go through each of these questions and then I'll give you answers. Of course, you know all of the links will be below. First question: Can I use Chat GPT to write my blog posts? Yes, you can, but you darn well better make sure that at least one human is reading through them before you publish. I have a favorite blog prompt, which I actually saw originally from Matt Diamante, and I have judged it. This will be the show notes.
let me read it to you though. It says, I am writing a blog post answering this question. Answer it question. Ask me anything you need to know the answer to in order to write a blog post that is helpful and unique. It should include my experience, expertise, case studies, examples, opinions, etc. Keep it limited to 10 questions. Ask me one question at a time. When you put the blog post together, don't paraphrase my answers. So that is the kind of thing that you want to be doing. This is a really cool prompt because
Brittany Herzberg (02:30.176) It's this question and answer thing. So it's not just feeding it a transcript or feeding it something and hoping that the AI software is gonna pop out a blog post that sounds like you. Because that is the number one thing that drives me bonkers with blog posts that are just created straight up from AI without doing something like this, without a prompt like this, because it just summarizes stuff or it repeats things and it's just weird. It's not how humans would actually write things, which is why I'm like
At least one person needs to be reading through these blog posts. No matter what. If AI is creating it, at least one person needs to be reading through it to put that human touch on it. AI just it's it's a robot. It is a robot. We all need to accept that it's a robot and it's not going to do the human things like a human's going to do. But having that blog prompt will be very helpful and will really shrink the time from you creating the blog post.
It will make it sound like you more so from the jump because it like I said, don't paraphrase my answers. Actually put in your what I'm telling you. The steps to walk through for this, you want to give Claude or whatever AI tool the prompt. And then you can grab questions from something like Matt has a website, I'll link that, or you can keep a running list of questions that you actually get asked. Then you want to answer the questions that it asks you. You're either going to type your answers or talk your answers, speak your answers. That would be a better way to say that. You can use whisper flow.
I believe it's a free talk to text tool. A lot of my friends end up using this and really, really like it, especially if you're a verbal processor. It's a very helpful tool for something like this. I'll add the blog prompt and these steps to the blog post. So definitely go check the show notes for that. Next one. Why isn't my AI written blog post showing up on Google? So there could be a few different things happening here, but most likely this is happening because AI gave you a crappy SEO strategy. I'm gonna say more about this coming up, but
I have never had AI give me a good SEO strategy, period. I have rewritten every single one and it really, really sucks. So that could be something that's going on. Another thing that could be going on is you never went back and had someone humanize the blog post. So the post is reading like nonsensical jargon. Again, it like repeats stuff. It says things in just a very roboty kind of way. It's so funny for the amount of people that I come across who are so concerned that.
Brittany Herzberg (04:48.066) Doing anything SEO related is going to make them sound like a robot. Using AI makes you sound like a robot. And I will say for the most part, people in my world, I feel like it's like a 75, 25% split where most of the people in my world actually don't really like using AI very much at all. If they are using it, they're not using it to create content. Maybe they're using it for like a task or, you know, gathering bullet points or gather like organizing things, something like that. But not a lot of people are actually relying on it.
For content creation, which is actually pretty cool. Another thing that could be happening is perhaps there was no heading hierarchy that was followed. And by that, I have another podcast episode that I'll link, but by that I mean headings are used to organize the information in a blog post or a web page. So you have the one H1 at the top, but then you have however many you need to of the H2 headings, of the H3 headings. You have the one H1 that's got your main point.
And then you have the H2s, which are supporting your H1, supporting that main point. And whatever H3s are under each H two, those H threes are supporting that point. So if you're not doing that, you're definitely missing out. And that could be something that's happening with your blog post. And maybe that's going on and that's going to confuse the robots. So that could be something to look at. Or maybe it's just the fact that Google and other platforms are deprioritizing AI written blog posts. That is
been happening because people, it's just filler jargon so much of the time, which is really a bummer. And it also is good for those of us who are writing our own blog posts, or at least going in and humanizing the blog post and not just taking the AI drafted blog post as the end draft, the final draft and being like, yep, here we go. I'm going to use this. You really do need to be taking a look at that. You really do need to be adding in your opinions, your stories, your successes with your clients, your
lived experience, anything that you're seeing, the stuff that we're so scared to actually say out loud is the stuff that's going to help us rank. Having those opinions, having those successes, and actually talking about them is what's going to help our blog post rank. All right, I digress. Next one. Can I use AI to do my keyword research? Or how about to create my SEO titles or meta descriptions once I have identified the target keywords? I included this one at the last minute.
Brittany Herzberg (07:05.73) Because I just got this question on that coaching call with the SEO sprinters. And I think I might have floored everyone when this question was asked because everyone knew that I talk about not using AI for keyword research. It's just it it can't get behind those paywalls. It's not going to give you the good stuff. It's going to guess. It makes up keywords. It doesn't, it's really not backed by data. It's just guessing. Like with a lot of the stuff that it does. But they were very surprised when I told them just no.
You do not want to use it to write your SEO titles and your meta descriptions. I gave that answer and I was like, that's it. But of course I gave more. So I always end up rewriting the drafts that it gives me. And actually, shout out to Dana, who ran her own experiment with this during her SEO sprint, because I actually really appreciated this because she did what so many people are like, I could probably do that. And then I'm glad that the person today asked the question because again, we just assume that we can do these things and there are limitations to these.
Wonderful tools. So when Dana ran this experiment, I could actually tell the homework that she sent in that she had done her own keyword research. But when it came time for the SEO titles and the meta descriptions, I could tell it was written by AI. One of the things I suggest to clients and that I've seen be really, really effective is to go grab a couple of sentences from your page that you're writing the meta description for. So let me say this another way. I'm drafting.
meta description for my homepage. I'm going to go to my homepage. I'm going to pull a couple of sentences from that page over into my Google Doc that I'm working on to create the SEO strategies because you better be doing that. You want to have a backup. And from there I'm going to whittle it down until it fits the 140 to 155 character limit. AI does not do that. It just straight up doesn't listen. It goes way over the character count. It will not pull in those couple of sentences from your website.
It just doesn't listen. And then you may have, this is my favorite. When you give an AI tool like Claude, let's say you're using Claude, you tell Claude, this is the target keyword. I have a podcast episode that I'm creating a blog post for, you know, here's the parameters, SEO title between 40 and 60 characters, meta description between 140 and 155 characters. Generate it. It will give you the longest SEO title. It will give you the longest meta description. And guess what? That target keyword that you gave it.
Brittany Herzberg (09:29.568) it won't even be in there at all. Or it'll try to like put stuff together that just like doesn't belong. It's the weirdest. So no, no, I do not want you using AI to do keyword research. And I really don't want you using AI to generate SEO titles and meta descriptions until I find a way to actually make this happen where it listens to me and it listens to you and it creates it that way. But until then, do your own keyword research. You know I love key search. I've got the affiliate link and I have the discount code. So I'll make sure that's linked below.
Do that for your keyword research. And then just follow best practices for the SEO titles and for the meta descriptions. That is going to save you a ton of time. And those are going to be so much more effective. Those are going to be the ones that have you showing up in AI search and Google searches, of course, too. Last question: How do I get found in AI searches? You may be surprised by this answer. You may be shocked by this answer. You may be like, that's it. You have a clear North Star. You have a website optimized for SEO.
You have a cohesive message everywhere online, including your Instagram profile, directory listings, any kind of guest speaking opportunities, et cetera. And you're publishing SEO optimized content. Blogs are most important because they're on your site, but this also applies to podcasts and YouTube videos. You're publishing this regularly, aka at least once a month. This is what you're doing. You're following the basics. You have an effective SEO strategy plugged in to those core website pages.
You are making sure that that language is also on anything else that's related to you around the internet, especially the stuff that you know about, like an Instagram profile or LinkedIn profile or something like that. And you're sharing content. Those three things, that is what you are doing. And this is where the SEO game plan really is helpful because I'm reviewing all of these elements and I'm spotting the best next step for you on your SEO journey. All of these things, following all of these practices, listening to all of this advice. This is how Meg.
is showing up in 10 AI searches. Just last month, she showed up in 10 AI searches that actually resulted in people seeing her in an AI search result and clicking over to her website. It's also how a therapy practice that I worked with booked a client from showing up in an AI search. It doesn't take anything fancy. It takes you being clear. It takes you actually like putting those good keywords, putting those quote unquote right words in the right places. And so much of that is what SEO is about, is just knowing what goes where.
Brittany Herzberg (11:51.934) SEO is not the sexy marketing strategy. I know it, you know it, but when it's done correctly, it's incredibly effective. You do actually get clients from Google and AI searches, and that grows your business. And that is what you actually want to have. Followers are cute, but a profitable business is so much cuter. All right, that is where I will leave you for today. Remember, go book your SEO game plan, you'll be able to save some monies. Use the link below, use code podcast at checkout, and remember.
I'm cheering you on on your SEO journey.
