SEO Is Dying? How to Win Search Everywhere in the Age of AI

Welcome back to the Vault Unlocked, I'm Kevan Kay, and today's episode

dives into a real-time conversation about what's actually happening in business right now.

AI is reshaping search. SEO is evolving into something bigger, and most founders are either

panicking or pretending it's not happening. So the question becomes, are you going to be replaced

or are you going to adapt? Today, I'm joined by West Towers, digital agency founder,

SEO strategist and a man who spent over 20 years in the search game, now navigating what AI has

done to traffic, trust, and visibility. We break down why showing up everywhere matters more than

ever, why AI won't replace you, but someone using it will. The real shift from SEO to Geo,

and why trust, human connection, and Google reviews are now business critical. This isn't hype.

This is about survival, adaptation, and building authority in the new digital age.

If you're a founder wondering how to stand out when everyone has access to AI tools,

this one's for you. Let's unlock it.

West, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Kevan. It's fantastic to be with you today. A real privilege to be in the show. I've been

watching quite a few episodes of late, and really compelling content. Love it.

I appreciate that. If you're watching the show, this is the point where I asked first, for those

who are listening that don't know West Towers, don't know your story and how you got to hear today,

why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and fill us in.

Yeah, absolutely. What I'm up to now is I run a digital agency, website design, SEO,

all that kind of fun stuff, and we do it for the trades and construction niche.

It wasn't always that way. We've sort of nicheed down over the course of the years, but I mean,

it's always felt like an industry that's evolved super fast. I've always said if I stopped doing

what I... The business has been running over 20 years now, but I've always said if we stopped

for one moment and came back in a years' time, everything would have changed. It's always felt

that way. But man, oh man, the last three years have been hectic with the AI, transforming the

way in which every business does stuff, but certainly for us, we're doing search engine

optimization for a long, long time, and all of a sudden people were seeing less traffic. So that

was a bit of a kick in the teeth and a challenge to overcome, because as you can understand,

and you're probably bumped into it these days, people are getting their answer on platform.

So Google gives the answer right there, and then, and all they're using large language models

to research, there's a whole bunch of different things happening right now, and we've needed to

adapt really fast to KBAC clients in front of the right people.

So let's just take a step back here, because there's a lot here, and I know that a lot of people

are trying to jump into AI. They're scared of AI. They're misunderstanding of the powers of AI,

because we're being told AI is going to take over every single... The next couple of months,

it's going to take over every job, and I always kind of go really, because it doesn't even listen to

you when you just use it in language models. So no, I don't think it's taking over anybody's job

any time soon. Now can I help you? Yes, is it going to take over some redundancies and jobs for sure,

but I personally don't think we're here. However, when it comes to the AI, let's just talk about what,

because you work with a lot of business owners and as an agency, what do you see in business owners

are doing when it comes to AI? Are they adopting it? Are they trying to understand it? Are they still

pushing it away? What's your landscape when it comes to AI? So for us working with trades and

construction businesses mostly, they're... Typically, those founder-led businesses oftentimes,

they're really practical pragmatic hands-on people, so they're not necessarily all that tech savvy,

so they're not necessarily looking at it a whole lot in a whole lot of ways for their own internal

businesses just yet. I think they will eventually, but certainly they're wanting to show up,

wherever people are looking for businesses and their services, and so that's why we've really

adapted the way we work to help them show up in the large language models. When people are asking

their phone, they're jumping on chatchapity, having a discussion about who's the very best of

XYZ in our region, and they're having a detailed conversation. It's not just, you know,

back in the old-school day search plumber Melbourne, for example, they're really looking for new

ones because they understand the tools, understand the whole context of the language, so that's

kind of what they're just really pragmatic. I love our clients, they're really pragmatic, and they

thinking, okay, how do we adapt so we keep growing our businesses? Yeah, yeah. Maybe I can

appreciate a lot of people are scared because I got a business valuation three years ago,

and it came incredibly low. It was ridiculously low, a real kick in the teeth, and the value

is said, look, your whole industry is at threat right now due to the rise of AI, and no one's going

to buy uncertainty. They want some level of predictability when they're buying a business. I had

everything lined up perfectly what you would want for a sellable business, and this guy kicked me

in the teeth with that. So, you know, three years ago, I was just kind of taking shape, and I can

understand where he's coming from, but off the back of that, I've doubled down on a whole bunch

of stuff, and we had our most profitable year ever, using AI and doing a whole bunch of other

things. So, you know, slapping the face, you got to just take it and find a way to adapt and improve

things. I get it. I think you just kind of tested my theory, which is everyone's so worried about

being replaced by AI, and I just believe right now, first, we're at the level where AI won't replace

humans. However, humans using AI will 100% replace humans who are not. So, I think it's you

a duck, you jump in, or you're going to be a thing of the past. For sure, how are you seeing when

it comes to specifically, you know, your expertise around SEO, how are you seeing AI hurting the

business, and then how are you using it to be able to offset that and actually help the business?

Yes, so from a marketing standpoint, it's so easy to crunch out content, and it reads really

well, and it can sound pretty compelling, and you know, you can, with a few prompts, you can create

some pretty great content, perceived to be great content. But what that does is everyone's doing

it. So therefore, there's just an overwhelm of information out there, and there's an erosion of trust.

So everything that we do and teach our clients to do is to use the tools, firstly, if we're thinking

about social media, the goal of social media is to get them off social media. What do we want them

to do? Go to the website. What's the goal of the website? We want to get them off the website

into a human conversation for our clients, for the salespeople to do their work. So everything's

got to be geared around building trust and authority, as best you can, but it's all about creating a

human connection, because the humans who are able to connect relationships, build, understand the client,

sell what they're buying. I mean, if we can understand what the client's wanting, and then just give

it to them, everybody's winning, and everyone's happy. So that's everything we do is geared around

building trust and authority. Yeah. So again, the question is, I mean, how important is trust now

more than ever? Oh, man, more than ever. You're right. Yeah. Absolutely. It's just so hard to cut

through the noise. I mean, it's just so much out there. And anyone can say anything they want.

Question, right? Like, let's deep dive in here, because we're just, you know, I want to really

help people understand, like, there is a lot of noise. Anybody can go to an LAM and say,

ramey up 20 SEO blogs based on this, and that everyone's doing it. Next thing, you know, it's LML

against ML, you know, LAM, right? So how can we, how can we separate ourselves from this? How can

we stand out not only to our competitors and, you know, and stand out in the light to our

avatars, but how do we stand out so that the AIs are picking us up in the GEO, like, did new

GEO thing of SEO is the thing in the past is GEO, but for my understanding, there is no GEO without

SEO. Yeah, it's all the sort of the same. Yeah. Well, they're all, they're all trying to do the same

thing and surface the very best information. So that's precisely that you need the best information.

And you can't get that by relying on the tool to do it for you because all that's doing is collating

the average sum total of what everyone else has already said. You've got to bring something unique,

distinct, compelling, you've got to, you've got to lift your level, go to a higher level and

produce the content that really stands out and really specific to your ideal client. So you've got

to be super, super clear here, your ideal client is so you can speak directly to them. That's all

going to help with the trust factors that you can build that are kind of outside your control

to a degree. So Google reviews, for example, or any of those reviewing platforms that you can't

easily manipulate, they're super important. So you can definitely help people

leave that just by asking for a great review and you know, you've had a good relationship and

someone might do that for you. Even when you do do a great job, some people that sort of

they forget and they need a gentle reminder to say, hey, do you mind if you jump in? It really

helps a business like ours if you would leave it a quick review. So how important are reviews for

SEO? Not just for SEO, but just for everyone anecdotally, for our clients, we certainly have

recognised because we're always asking them to ask, hey, what prompted you to make a decision to

call us or to buy those sorts of things because that face interaction, you just get so much more

info, but there's a significant increase in the people who have said, hey, we checked out all your

reviews and it looked like you do exactly what we wanted to do. So yeah, so that's that's

increased dramatically over the last couple of years, but everybody's telling me it's a Google

review decision maker. Do you have a specific way that you can ask your clients or your customers

for reviews to actually, because it's interesting, before I finish this question, it's interesting

because from what I see is it's a lot easier to get the negative review than it is the positive

review. Someone's more likely to go and complain about you than they are to actually just even give

you a five star thumbs up. Yeah, on a hundred percent, there's a negative emotions in him,

it's human nature, these negative emotions are just so more strong to prompt someone to take action.

So it's hard to wow people to the fact to the degree in which a negative opposite

emotion could arise, but you just need to, I think the human relationship aspect of business

has never been more important as we digitalise as we make things automated. There's kind of a pushback

in a reluctance for people to want to engage with this kind of stuff. So I mean, people

while we think it's kind of cool and fun to see some of the videos that are produced by AI,

it's sort of novel right now, but it kind of sands people are growing at distrust and dissatisfaction

with it. It's kind of like artificial food. I mean, we know artificial food has never been healthy

or good for us, but we can assume it because it's quick and easy and palatable and all that kind

of stuff, but we know it's not good for us and it feels to me like a lot of this artificial

intelligence, it's artificial. So it lacks that, those pieces that make it healthy and vibrant

and sustainable for the long term. So I think all the way in which we're using it massively AI

in our business and helping our business clients show up in all the right places with it,

but everything's geared around human connections for us. That's what I think the big winners are

going to be in the new world. It feels like a lot of career paths are going to be.

Lastly, people don't stay adaptable and flexible and rise to the new way of doing things. So

yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about right now.

It's interesting you use the word human connection because it seems like human connections

is showing up a lot of right now. I know like one of my sales philosophies is human-centric selling.

My company that we've done, you know, $375 million dollars sales is called the sales connection.

Everything is always for me is about energy and connection. And I do believe with AI,

we're going to lose a lot of connection. However, there are people who are thriving and craving

for that human connection. So where does the line happen between maximizing AI and getting

the job done versus slowing down going deeper and creating authentic real connection?

Yeah, yeah, it's a real balancing. It feels like a bit of a year-end yang thing that you've got to

get those both things working together for your own circumstances. I mean for me, just personally,

I try to avoid being on social media too much. I mean, I have team to publish a whole bunch of

stuff. We're pretty active out there, particularly the podcasting and sharing the podcast because

that's a collaboration. And it's something I love that's that human collaboration and connection

that two people are creating something meaningful and sharing it to their audiences. So I love that

kind of stuff, but I don't spend too much and we share it far and wide, but I don't do it personally

because I don't want to be bogged down in the tools. I'm using the tools for those that are out there.

On those platforms, that's great. It's just not me. I'm not going to waste my time too much there.

I can use the tools and the paper to do that.

You can use the leverage the tools, but not being it's kind of working on the tools, not being in the

tools. Yeah, 100 percent of it. Yeah, I hear what you're saying there. So I mean,

it's interesting because you're helping, so you're helping business owners

leverage AI specifically around SEO so that they can be seen show up.

What was the quote you said earlier? I wrote it down. What did you say?

Widely everywhere. Would you say SEO everywhere? Yeah, search everywhere. Optimization.

Because we don't search SEO everywhere. Optimization. Search everywhere. Optimization.

What does that mean to you? Yeah, so for us, a large part of that is to show up in chat,

JBT and all the other large language models. So we've taken because we got to

bashed around a little bit with this. We did SEO for many years and all of us,

and some of the clients being with us, you know, could be over 10 years now. I'm not sure,

but a long time. And so they would say incremental improvement. Month of month was super easy.

You would have said a key words. You would see the ranks improved. You'd see the traffic

improved. You'd see the return investment quite clear. Obviously. Then all of a sudden,

they're not getting the traffic that they once did because it's less reason to visit a website.

So they'll get a few phone calls and say, hey, what the hell's going on here? We've been doing

this for a long time. And what's going on is moving in the wrong way. So I had to have those

discussions with the clients and explain what was causing that. The way in which things were

right now. But the interesting part was they weren't getting less qualified leads through the door,

through the websites. It was just that they were getting less people researching and so on.

But it's getting the answers elsewhere. And sometimes even those things were used to give away

like the lead magnets have a really cool and the funnels and all that kind of stuff.

Because information is available at a fingertips without giving away our emails. I mean,

we used to think we're giving away something for free, but everyone knew it's not free. You're

giving away your email and your privacy and that means you're going to be spammed. So,

I don't explain that. Truly, hey, download my free ebook, download my free lead magnet,

download my 10-step checklist, download my quick survey. What are marketers doing now to get the

email? Because anybody that's even using AI, even at 30%, 40% can get probably better answer

if they know how to follow up on your PDF. Yeah, that's it. 100% most of the time. And everyone's

seeing that. That's these things that that sales funnel process that was online for so many years

and working like magic doesn't work in the same way it once did. What we're doing is providing

that information freely without giving away the people having to part ways with their email address.

That's a challenge, obviously, from a marketing perspective. Because it's wonderful to be able to

build a list and keep marketing to them. But we've just got to adapt and think about, okay,

you just want to be the thought leader and the expert in the field. So they get what they need

from you and your brand gets mentioned. And you might show up even as a brand mentioned in a

large language model. You don't even, you're not even aware of someone's reading it. But it's

pulling information that you've published. So that's kind of the way it's harder to track. So

where is marketers don't like it? Because we like things to be tracked and we can show a fancy

report to the client, which is really cool. That's really difficult now. But we've still got to

be out there to grow the brand reputation and the trust authority signals so that then they make

it inquiry when they're ready to buy. So that inquiry point is happening much closer to the buying

point. So you need to have like this is why you're providing people sales training and expertise.

Those few leads that come through there so close to making a buying decision. It's not funny.

You can't drop them at that at that really red hot moment. You can't let them slide because

that, you know, they're super ready. Someone else is going to pick them up because there's 10,000

other ones ready to go. Yeah. So how does a business owner get start ranking in the LM? So in say

GPT from SEO? Like what are the steps that a business owner can do or start thinking about? So

they can start ranking in GPT? Yeah. Well, there's a whole bunch of prompts that we use to take

keywords, the old school keywords, and turn them into content, ideas and structures that are

helpful for large language models, which are far more conversational. So the old school keywords are

really kind of archaic. It was just your service or your product plus your location typically.

But now it understands full sentences. So it's taking those keywords and there's prompts and it's

as we've just said, you can download them straight off the website. They're actually in as a

blog post in our website. There's 12 prompts that we give away there. But taking your keywords and

taking them and it'll turn them into topic maps and you can build out your pillar pages. It'll

put the keywords into structures where you can produce content that'll attract large language

models. It'll create questions that real humans might be asking. It'll help you create service

page. You know, reworking the keyword ideas. It's more thinking about the keywords as topics rather

than just words you're trying to shove into pages to try and ranking Google. Yeah, that's

all right. They're talking about these pillars. I remember pillar pages when I was learning about

SEO, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go work off the pillar page, right? That's it. That's it.

So it's interesting because everyone's talking about, hey, you've got a rank on GPT or Gem

Nye, whatever, you know, the LM is, but the reality is you can't rank on those if you don't have

proper SEO. So our warning is SEO versus the right proper backlinks.

Yeah, so the yeah, absolutely. So the backlinks don't matter as much as they once did. That

was just a crude way in which Google typically would would understand what websites should have

authority because the theory was if there's a whole bunch of websites linking back to this website

must be credible because the other people think it is. And so everyone tried to manipulate that

and they were doing dodgy backlinks from dodgy websites and so on. And Google would figure it out

and penalize them and give them a slap and downgrade their traffic, all that kind of stuff. So

it's really is there's there's no real sneaky tricks that can work anymore. It really is about

being super clear on your ideal client and writing the content precisely for them to address

their pain points and needs, address their questions before, you know, before they've even asked

you directly because they're not going to probably ask you directly by the time they get to your

front door, your digital shopfront, which is your website or your physical shopfront if you have one.

They've already probably done a bunch of research and asked the tool of choice or the questions.

So it's just a matter of those helping them to make a decision.

Yeah, sorry. I was going to just say like as you're thinking and you're talking, I'm just keep

going and I keep hearing journey, by your journey, you're not seeing it but you're you're

keep kind of bringing it up in a unique way. So I'm asking how have you seen then? I mean because

you're as an agency you're working with a lot of different customers, a lot of different clients

that have their different customers. How have you seen the buying journey of how someone actually

purchases online now with AI? How has that changed in the last two, three years?

Oh man, it's crazy. It's crazy the way. It was somewhat, it was never fully linear but we like

to think about that whole that whole buys journey of their education resources material that people

would download and slowly work their way through to making that sales decision. But it's so

scattered now because they'll see you on social media, for example, and they'll bump into your

brand and so on, wherever they're hanging out, wherever they're wasting their time online,

typically on social media. And so they'll see you there but then they might be having a

discussion with their phone. So their chat JBT, I just call my friend in the phone. I'm always

talking to my friend in the phone when I'm driving around after a sales meeting oftentimes and

just having a new thought or an idea that I want to on a flesh out. So it's my brainstorming tool.

We're all lots of people are doing that and then they might also jump on the Google.

Still Google is the number one source for traffic for a website and still

people will visit your digital shop front as I call. Google is the number one. I thought

YouTube wise. Google is still number one for yeah to get people to yeah probably YouTube is

probably has more content and resources but it's probably YouTube's part of Google they're

owned by the same thing. So in terms of bringing people to your digital shop front, your website,

the Google's still the number one. So people when they're ready to buy something,

they're still probably going to Google for it but they're probably going to research by other

means but that buyers journey and it's so scattered and they're not downloading the free resource

anymore. They're coming at you from all different angles and they're seeing your brand without

you even realizing I had a client called a few weeks ago and just mentioned he won a $140,000

customer off the back of some of the work we did and he only found out how they found him

because he was having the conversation with him and they had a full conversation with their

chat chabit and they said who's the very best in Australia who provides this and he came out

a chat chabit to say this this guy's the very best. I'm learning the same location they've

really quite a way a distance away but for some of the content that we produce for him,

the chat chabit is the best yeah yeah so his investment with us was only something like three

grand we did we did very little work for him as a minute amount of cleaning some things up and

whatever like say whatever even below 5k and SEO produced 120k yeah yeah so that's all the that's

all the dollars so it's a little bit less than US dollars it's a good chunk of change yeah yeah

that's the power of SEO you know for me it's funny because the the power of SEO is there but everyone

always wants the quick wins and unfortunately with SEO it's it's not quick wins it's it's consistency

over time yeah building that reputation and trust all the all the right things and sometimes

people have been penalized because they'll invest in an SEO company to do things and they're not

aware of what they're doing and they're you mentioned backlinks so there was heaps of people just

buying dodgy backlinks from like blog websites which were which were just created to create

backlinks so they they're just this crappy content and and Google Google realize what the hell is

going on and and penalize those sites eventually so it all comes crashing back so it works for the

short term and and so the agency selling these dodgy services they can they can show results to

the end client but then eventually but yeah yeah it feels I mean the long run so it's not a long

term play we've never done that like what's your thing it's hard to get out of that like that

great yeah for sure you're working hard yeah it's a nightmare there's been clients I've turned away

simply because they've been heavily penalized and blacklisted and I've just said to them look

we can do so much work but it's like swimming with lead around our ankles it's just it's going

to be so hard for us to show any value to you we can do everything right and you're still

going to be heavily slapped around by Google for many years probably to come eventually they'll

probably ease up on them after they after they serve their time so to speak but for us to take

them on at that time it'll just look bad for us because we can do everything right but they they

just heavily penalized so it's difficult so for businesses that are sitting there going man I need

to get on AI the SEO I need to be in the the new business of search everywhere optimization

how can they find you yeah so our website uplift360.com.au and as I said in the blog it's a

recent post you'll find 12 I think it's up called something like 12 copy paste prompts to turn

your yeah yeah to turn your keywords into LLM magnets so yeah yeah so you can literally copy

paste those in and put your own keywords in and your own ideal client descriptions and all that

stuff in it and out pop some pretty cool results I love it I love I'm going to do that right after

this episode and go looking for that so yeah can you last words to anybody that might be just listening

and wondering where what am I going to do with AI in this world in my business yeah man it's crazy

isn't it it's exciting time to be alive um so yeah the other thing on the website you can book

strategy calls with me directly there's a big button straight on the homepage so if anything's

people's interest with what we've discussed we I'm happy to have a conversation no obligations

of course to around how some of these things might apply in their circumstances and go from there

awesome yeah while there it is that's another episode of the vault unlock thank you so much for

being here at West and looking forward to seeing all that hard work and all the SEO you're putting out

brilliant thanks guy bonus being brilliant hey thank you