AI-Powered Search With Pam Aungst Cronin on PR Patter!
Good morning. I’m Julie Livingston of Want Leverage Communications, a Public Relations and LinkedIn Consultancy, and I’m back for another episode of PR Patter. After a few technical difficulties this morning, I’m really delighted to welcome my guest, Pam Aungst Cronin. Pam. Let me bring you on here. There you go. Pam is the owner of Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics. She’s well known for her expertise in SEO, PPC analytics, and WordPress. Pam kicked off her own agency in 2011, and she’s been rocking and rolling ever since, being featured in four books, tons of podcasts, and several major media outlets as an SEO expert.
She’s also landed a spot in SERP stats Top 10 women in SEO. Armed with a marketing MBA and nearly two decades in the industry. She’s all about helping brands level up their online marketing strategies and is very good at helping people like me figure out technology that’s not working. Anyway, Pam, it’s great to see you again, and I’m glad to have you back on the show. I know you were here a while ago.
Pam:
So thanks for having me again. Excited to nerd out again.
Pam Aungst Cronin’s Background
Julie:
So there’s so much going on in SEO. I don’t know. It seems like this year in particular, earlier this year, there was the Google algorithm leak. I’d love you to kind of first of all, tell us a little bit more about your back story and then maybe you could tell and how you got here today and then give us kind of a little overview of what’s been happening in the past year and kind of where we are right now.
Pam:
Sure. So, the shortest version of the backstory is I’ve always been a tech nerd. I’ve always just loved this kind of stuff. I started playing with computers at six years old, and instead of popping in the games, like most normal kids would do, I started looking at the coding examples and the user manual.
I’ve just been drawn to technology and things like this from day one. I also love marketing, so I wiggled my way into having a career before starting my own company of blending marketing and website technology.
Basically, an e-commerce marketing manager was my role. And then I started getting requests for side consultations, like side gigs, particularly with SEO. I guess I just kind of latched onto SEO as my main thing.
So I was like, I’m getting these consulting gigs without even trying. Imagine if I tried, and Pam Ann Marketing was born, 13, almost 14 years ago, and has been rocking and rolling and nerding out ever since.
Julie:
I mean, there’s been so much happening in the world of SEO this past year. Maybe you could give us a little recap.
Pam:
Sure. And I will start by saying that I’ve been in the SEO game a long time, as I just said, and I can’t remember another year where things evolved as rapidly as they have this past 12 months. I really can’t. And so I can only imagine what next year is going to be like. And it’s, and it all comes from. AI and the integration of AI into search, but also search into AI. It’s going both ways, and they’re kind of morphing into one, which is super interesting.
What is an AI-Powered Search?
Julie:
Wow. So, what is AI-powered search?
Pam:
All right, so there are the AI chatbots that we probably all know by now, like ChatGPT. Some other ones are, that are well known are Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot.
Julie:
I use Perplexity.
Pam:
Okay. Perplexity. Yep. That is gaining steam pretty quickly as well. And then there are search engines, obviously Google and Bing, and the search engines are adding AI chatbot functionality,y and the AI chatbots are adding search engine functionality.
So they’re really kind of morphing into one like Perplexity was like the first one that I know of to really integrate. They positioned themselves as an AI powered search engine. But just recently, Chat GPT announced Search GPT, which was kind of a prototype name. And now they’ve just rolled that web search functionality right into the platform into Chat GPT itself.
So Chat GPT can search the web. Microsoft’s Co-Pilot is kind of based on Chat GPT, and that can search the web. And now Google is bringing in Gemini, formerly known as BARD. Thank God they renamed it. So, now the AI overviews that you see at the top of the search engine results in Google are being powered by Google’s chatbot, Gemini.
But really, it’s amazing how they’re all coming together into this one thing that’s AI-powered search, whether it was born of traditional search engines adding in AI chatbot functionality or AI chatbots adding in search functionality. It’s morphing into one thing, which we’re calling AI-powered search.
How Does AI Digest Information?
Julie:
Wow. It’s getting, it’s complicated. That’s why we need people like you.
Pam:
Its SEO has always been complicated, but the learning curve when it comes to the AI part. What was steep even for a tech nerd like me, I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grip on it. Now I am learning the backend, you know, ways that, as that, uh, AI chatbots work, and how AI digests information, and that we could pivot into one of the key takeaways for today’s talk, which is that AI chatbots digest information in chunks.
So. Everything that it learns, and these chatbots like Chat GPT have been trained on knowledge from the entirety of the internet, plus like every book known to man, it’s insane how much information it’s taken in, but when it takes information in, the first thing it does is that it chunks it out, separate it out into little chunks.
You’ll probably notice when you use a chatbot or when you look at the AI overview at the top of Google search results, everything’s always in like bullets and lists, or short little subsections deliver you information in chunks. And that’s because. It digests information in chunks, and so it learns one little tidbit at a time, and it files away one little tidbit at a time as opposed to a whole article or a whole book, and so for us SEOs, that’s like a totally new way of thinking.
It’s always been, although we’ve had featured snippets where a little bit of an excerpt of a web page shows up in Google, it’s always been a matter of traditionally optimizing the entirety of a web page or an article as one thing. We have to totally retrain our brains now that with AI-powered search, it’s digesting our content and our websites, and our clients’ websites in small chunks. So every little subsection is a separate opportunity to get found in AI-powered search. And that’s an entirely new way of thinking.
How can People Optimize Their Websites?
Julie:
Wow. It’s a lot. Should I be overwhelmed about it? What can people do to their websites to optimize for this?
Pam:
I will tell you that, first and foremost, you do have to have all your traditional SEO boxes checked. Most of the results that get picked to be included in an AI-powered search result are part of the traditional top 10 search results for that search. So you’ve got to be doing well in SEO anyway.
So you can start with the basics of SEO. We’ve talked about it before, but you should have…
- Technically friendly website that doesn’t have any errors in its code,
- That loads quickly,
- That is very mobile-friendly,
- Has information neatly organized.
- And then keywords that people search for,
- So on and so forth,
Getting PR so that you get those inbound links, all that still applies. Yes. So no worries, Julie. Brands will still need their PR people. Perhaps more than ever. Yes, you gotta still get those really good inbound links. The one thing that you could layer on top of that is to start to think of the content in chunks, um, kind of nicknamed it chunk SEO.
Instead of thinking when you are working on that keyword optimization part, instead of thinking of a page as a single thing or an article as a single opportunity to get found. Start to think about all the individual subsections of that page or article. And if you don’t have things broken out into subsections, that is definitely the number one thing to start doing.
You want to have It may almost feel unnatural, especially to those of us who were trained in traditional college essay writing and how many sentences are supposed to be in a paragraph and so on to chunk things up in such tiny little snippets with so many subtitles and short little answers under each subtitle feels a bit unnatural because it is for us humans, but that’s how the AI chatbots work.
How is This Different Than Before?
Julie:
So it’s more of a layering of a new tactic on top.
Pam:
I think that the real revolution is really in the minds of us SEOs who have been doing this for so long. It’s been hardest for us to change our approach. So what should I be doing to optimize for it? So first of all, if you are already working with an SEO agency or consultant, and they’re not talking to you about this, that’s a red flag.
Talk to your SEO consultant or agency about why we aren’t doing SEO research and AI, optimizing titles and subtitles, and chunks of our content for getting found in AI-powered search.
If you’re not working with an SEO agency, if you kind of DIY it, depending upon how you did your keyword research, traditionally, if you had a keyword research tool that you use, SEMrush, etcetera. You still use that. That’s like I said, all the basics still apply.
What you want to layer on top of that is doing AI research, meaning going into ChatGPT. Telling it to search the web for the thing that you want to get found for and look, just look at and like, try to understand how it presents, what websites it selected, and try to infer what snippets it took, what chunks it took from those websites for its answer.
Primarily, though, although most people are accustomed to ChatGPT primarily, this research should probably be done in Google Gemini because Google is still the best for now, and I think it will remain to be the market leader for quite some time. Of course, once you test all these changes and new players in the game.
Yes, a lot is changing, but for the foreseeable future, Google is still going to hold the lion’s share of the market.
How Do Other Competitors like Bing Effect This?
Julie:
So we don’t have to worry about Bing at the moment?
Pam:
Well, Bing is important; it’s more important than it was. Yes, because in the past, with just traditional SEO, you could optimize for Google, and because Bing basically copied Google and everything in traditional SEO, Bing would just kind of come along with it. Like, your Google Bing results would just kind of come along with your Google results. Still applies to a degree, but less so since Bing’s AI overviews use a different chatbot engine than Google’s. And there’s these new players in the game, Perplexity and ChatGPT in particular. So yeah, you gotta look in more places.
But the main idea, if you just want to start with playing with this, is to go to Google Gemini. You can use it for free, just like ChatGPT. And start to ask it, um, maybe not even questions. Just Regular searches like the best PR Agency in New York City and see what it says.
And if you don’t see any links in Gemini, there’s a little Google icon at the bottom of the results that says double check this result. It doesn’t always show up, but it usually shows up, and then it will give you the links.
But it’s starting to give the links by default now. And so you want to look at that. Just start to do it a lot. You’ll start to notice how these chatbots search the web and why they select what they select, what chunks of text they select, and you’ll get a feel for what you need to do.
How Do We Measure Results?
Julie:
Okay, so how do we measure results?
Pam:
That is also changing of course, of course, as is everything. Ttraditionally you would go into Google Analytics and look at your organic search bucket and that channel of organic search would automatically sum up for you all the organic search engine traffic you got from whether it’s Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, wherever all your organic traditional search engine stuff would show up in one bucket.
This also, of course, is subject to change, but for now, the AI-powered search, other than Google’s own, and the one that’s integrated directly in Bing, other than that, they’re showing up as referral traffic. We’re seeing Chat GPT and Perplexity. And AI chatbots like that, but those two are the biggest, showing up in referral traffic. So, go dig into that bucket if you don’t usually look at that and pay attention to how much traffic you’re getting, from Chat GPT and Perplexity in your referral traffic. And. Again, just try to infer why, why does it seem like this article or this page is getting a lot of AI chatbot traffic, and some others aren’t.
And then I think, again, you’ll just start to see what you need to do. Um, but that’s measuring, yeah, has a little, little trick to it right now, which is that you have to dig into the referral traffic to see the AI powered search. Traffic from Perplexity and Chat GPT.
What About Voice Search Optimization?
Julie:
Tell us about voice search optimization.
Pam:
Okay, so that was when Alexa first came out, which – fun fact – was over 10 years ago. Can you believe that? 10 years ago? But when that first came out, the SEO industry went wild with, “voice search is going to be number one.” It never took off the way that we all thought it would at the time.
I feel part of the blame goes to Amazon and how badly it did at evolving. They kind of have essentially abandoned Ms. A L E X A. She’s going to answer me if I say it.
They’ve essentially abandoned her and her development. She’s just as stupid as she was on day one. But they are talking about kind of reviving her by integrating a ChatGPT-type functionality and making her a lot better.
I already see a bunch of my friends using the Chat GPT voice conversation and assistant on their phones, which works amazingly well. It just has such a natural conversation with you. So, I have been craving that functionality.
Miss Alexa. So if that comes out, well, not if when I’m sure they will do it at some point, but also I’m sure other devices will start to integrate like Google Home with Gemini.
For example, it’s not integrated at this moment, but I’m sure any day now, and I know they have plans. You’re going to be able to talk to Gemini and and you probably might have seen some commercials for Gemini’s talking functionality where the people on the phone are talking to it. to where it goes. Hey, I’m a Gemini. We can have a conversation. So they’re starting to market it, and I’m sure it’s going to come to Google Home devices any day.
So, for people who have those anyway, in short, old devices will get new technology, and new devices will come out with the new technology. And I think then voice search will become more important than ever before. But still, it’s all AI-powered. So it’s optimizing everything we already talked about before.
What are E.E.A.T. Principles?
Julie:
Can you go? Would you mind going over the EEAT principles again?
Pam:
Sure. So it used to be EAT, which made a lot more sense than EEAT, but Google originally came up with an acronym of…
- Expertise,
- Authoritativeness,
- Trustworthiness.
And they recently added another E, which is experience.
This is an acronym to tell you what to do with your content, to demonstrate your expertise, authoritativeness, and your trustworthiness, basically the credibility of your company and yourself.
Like, who wrote this? Why do they know what they’re talking about? It’s from Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, which are the guidelines they give human testers of their search engine, and they get feedback from human testers who have used these guidelines and then they tweak their algorithm accordingly so they added the new e at the end of, I think it was end of 2023. That is experience, and they added it because the Internet was starting to get flooded with bland AI-generated content, content that was written by ChatGPT.
Basically, as soon as people noticed that it could write a blog post for them, they just started doing it like crazy. And it all kind of is kind of comes out the same. Yes, it writes it differently every single time, but it’s bland, generic. Information that, yes, may be credible, may come from authoritative sources and therefore be trustworthy.
But what Google now wants you to do is start talking about your personal firsthand experience as either a brand or, you know, in a company or as a person. Whoever is writing the content should include personal firsthand experience because that is the one thing that a chatbot can’t replicate for you. The ability to say here at Pam Ann marketing, we’ve seen our clients’ results shift when they do X, Y, Z, like an AI-generated article is just like, Oh, to get results to X, Y, Z, you should be writing from that position of.
In our experience, or my experience, I have seen this, or we have seen that. Yeah, I’m trying to do that more and more. That’s what they want from you. Cause basically they need a shortcut to be able to see that. Cause now they’re coming out with tools that like hide the fact that it’s AI-written content. But I still think that’s crap because nothing spots AI better than AI. But anyway, if you want to rise above the tidal wave of generic AI bland content, boring content that’s being firehosed onto the internet, the way to rise above is to have that custom, firsthand experience approach in your content.
What Should The Readers Take Away?
Julie:
Okay, so to wrap things up, can you give us a few steps that people should take, um, around AI-powered search?
Pam:
Sure. First and foremost, just start using it. Start using Perplexity, start using Gemini, start asking ChatGPT if you use ChatGPT, ask it to search the web and give you results, and just start to get a feel for what the experience is like. Like I said before, what sources it chooses to include in its answers, why you think it included that source, is that source in the top 10 on traditional search results, and really, particularly what piece of content it took from the source.
So go, don’t just look at the answer. Go look at the sources that it got its answers from. And you’ll start to see patterns in the way that it selects things and what text it selects. And you can adjust your content.
On your website make sure to chunk up your content into ridiculously small chunks and lots and lots and lots of subsections. Use lots and lots and lots of subtitles, obviously don’t go too, too crazy, but, more so than you would otherwise do chunk up your content. In each chunk, even if your subtitle isn’t necessarily a question, if it is, then in each chunk, the first sentence should be either the answer to the question, if your subtitle is a question, or just a super succinct sentence that totally summarizes what you’re about to talk about. Think about it as a conclusion sentence. Ah, okay. It’s a little unnatural, but you want to.
That’s getting found in AI-powered search is basically part of the art of it is to put your conclusion sentence at the beginning of your paragraph, and then go into further detail.
Thank you, Pam!
Julie:
Well, these are great tips, Pam. And as always, you’re, you just offer so much great expertise and insights. Thank you so much for joining me today and for your patience at the beginning of the show. I really appreciate that. How could people get in touch with you?
Pam:
Sure. So, um, Pamannmarketing.com is my website. You can submit a contact form there or find me at Pamannmarketing on all the socials on TikTok, and I do a lot of videos on TikTok, Instagram, also I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on all of them to search for him in marketing.
Julie:
Fantastic. All right. We’ll have a great day, and everyone else. I’ll see you next time on another episode of PR Patter.