Is SEO dead because of AI? Not exactly — but it is changing fast.

In this episode of the Tech Savvy Dietitian Podcast, I’m joined by Michelle Bourbonniere, PhD (SEO strategist + researcher at Words on the Rise) to unpack what’s really happening with AI search and SEO right now. Michelle has spent the last six months deep in Google patents, research papers, and real-world testing, and she breaks down what it means for dietitians in private practice who want to be found online (and not misrepresented by AI summaries).

We talk about why AI search results are wildly personalized, what “showing up well” actually means, why brand mentions matter more than links now, and where to focus if you have limited time and energy.

Grab Michelle’s free resource: Cheat Sheet to Showing Up Well in AI Answers → https://wordsontherise.com/ai

Work with Declet Designs on your branding, strategy, website or local SEO → decletdesigns.com

 welcome to this week's episode of the Tech Savvy Dietitian podcast. If you've ever wondered whether SEO is still worth your time or how tools like Chat, GPT, and Google's new AI search results might change how clients find you, then you're going to love this episode. My guest today is Michelle Bourbon year, PhD and SEO strategist and researcher who spent the last six months digging into how AI search actually works.

We're talking patents, research papers, and all the behind the scenes details. She helps small business owners, including some dietitians, understand how to show up well in search and make sure that AI engines represent their brand accurately. Michelle, welcome to the Tech Savvy Dietitian podcast. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, thanks for being here. So you have such an interesting mix of deep tech knowledge and small business practicality. Can you kind of talk about how you got into SEO in the first place? Indeed, I sort of have a funny path to SEO. So my company's called Words on the Rise, and I like to say that I do SEO, but I like only do it with words.

Um, and most people don't do SEO with words. Um, so the way that I fell into this industry is I have a PhD in history. Um, I love research, like I've always loved research. And then I had kids and I couldn't travel to Africa to do archival research anymore. It just didn't make sense given my life. And so I trained to become an editor, which is a surprisingly normal post PhD path for people in the humanities.

Um, and so I trained to be an editor and the first things that I edited were websites. So I was editing like website copy and then like it was just very clear when you change the words on websites, Google notices. And so like to realize that words were this superpower for like getting Google to recognize the site and understand what it's about, like that is the rabbit hole for me.

So like once I realized that, then I like just had to know more and then, then really, I very quickly went from being a regular old editor, like copy editor to doing SEO sort. Pretty much as the only thing that I do. Um, so I've been doing this for about seven years and I work almost exclusively on small sites and I have worked with some dietitians, including inclusive dietitians.

Um, so I'm really excited to be on this podcast. Yeah. Awesome. That I love that story 'cause you're kinda like me. You started out in something that doesn't sound related at all. 'cause my first degree was political science. Awesome. And then I became a dietitian and then now I do websites. So I love hearing stories that are, you know, how in the world did we get here?

We don't know, but we followed the rabbit hole and here we are. And then it all makes sense. Once you get here, you're like, oh, all. Skills that I learned in a past life are still relevant. Um, so I've yeah, reinvented myself a couple times, but I'm, I'm happy with it. Yeah. No, that's awesome. I love that. So, let's talk a little bit about how AI is affecting things.

Um, at what point did you realize that AI was like affecting SEO and Google searches and all that? Oh, I gotta say, so in, in a sense, like, you know, when Chachi PT came on the scene, then the whole world knew about like generative AI as a category and that's the thing that was possible. But AI kind of like generative AI hit the SEO world like earlier.

So I think I've been following this since like 2021 is when I started reading papers that I was. Oh, oh, I see where this is heading. Yeah. Um, and so I was actually quite happy when it blew up when chat GPT was launched. 'cause it was like I finally found like, at least everybody else knows that it's happening.

Um, and so basically I've been following this since about 2021 and to be honest, like my initial reaction to sort of what this all meant for the web was not a very positive one for small sites and for small businesses. Mm-hmm. Um, my. My view of it, I mean, I've been doing content marketing style SEO for a long time.

So people write great articles, you know, subject matter experts writing great articles. We get them ranking people land on their sites through Google and then think, oh wow, this person's amazing and I need to hire them. Um, and then they get their clients that way. So that's worked for all my clients for a really long time.

But when generative AI came along, you know, it was really like slurping up the entire internet. Rephrasing all this content and in many cases, like not giving any kind of attribution to the original source. And that's like just how the machine was made. And so originally I wasn't, I was like, I don't know about the future of the web or the future of SEO for small sites.

Um, but I like to say like I really, truly, a year ago something happened that kind of changed everything for how I think about, um, the. Possibilities of AI search for the small websites that I like to work on. And that is that chat, GBT and all the other AI engines got access to a search engine, so they actually have access to the live search results.

And that makes like all the difference for like what small sites can do with AI search. And so for me, that kicked off a. A much deeper research phase where I just like had to know how the machine worked. Um, and so I started reading like, um, papers, uh, like research papers and machine learning research papers, um, as well as like patents.

Like all these patents are available, right? Like if they want patent something, it has to be public. So I read a bunch of Google patents. Um, and any books that I could get my hands on to really understand, like deeply how AI search works so that I can help my clients to show up better in AI search. But also one of the things that I've always really prided myself on in doing SEO is taking like pretty complicated like.

Complicated topics and then finding a way to explain them simply so that we sort of have my clients and people I work with can have in their head like how this thing works. And so as I was reading all these papers, I had like a side document going on, which was like analogies and like, how can I explain this in a non-technical way?

So that's kind of what I'm up to these days, is doing AI search. Optimization for clients, but also like trying to tell the world how the machine works in a way that like, I think, I think we all sort of deserve to know. Um, and so that's kind of what I've been doing. No, I love that. And I am a big fan of analogies.

I'm always trying to think of analogies of how to like explain how websites and hosting and WordPress and all of that works together because most people don't understand how they work together. Mm-hmm. Um, my daughter does not love analogies, so it's really hard because that's. That's how I teach. So every time I try to do something like, well, imagine if, and she's like, no mom, I don't wanna hear another analogy, but I love an analogy.

'cause I feel like they just make things easier and more understandable. So, I think so too. Um, for most people. Yeah. So out of all the things that you have read, all the papers and the patents, what was the thing that was the most surprising or maybe even slightly terrifying that you found where to even start?

Um, I'll just give you one specific example, which I think brings home how personalized AI search results really are. Um, so in the, the patent that pretty much underpins Google's AI mode, so Google has. Sort of an answer to chat, GPT, which is a conversational search engine. You can get it everywhere now.

There's buttons all over the web for it. Um, but AI mode, that patent, um, one of the ways in which it personalizes the results to you is it goes and it looks at the documents that you have read versus the documents that you haven't read. And it, and it. When it's doing its background research to answer your question, it's taking that into account.

So it's like grounding the answer in what you've seen and making sure that there's new stuff that you haven't seen and sort of building on what it sort of is assumes is your knowledge base because you know, Google can see what you read on the internet. Mm-hmm. Um, so once I saw that, I was just like, wow.

Like I don't think anyone really understands how my experience with AI search is just so different from your experience with AI search and like how deeply personalized it is down to what is like. Arguably very useful, but also arguably very creepy. Like looking at like what did you read and what you, did you not read as that influences like the actual answer that you're getting.

Do you think that it influences the answer that it gives as far as like telling you what you wanna hear? I. Probably. Yeah. Um, I mean, it's hard to say, right? Yeah. Like, they've trained these models to be, you know, helpful companions that always say yes and then add to it, right? Like, when's the last time that you asked an AI engine such and such and such?

And then it says, oh, I can't help you there. Right? Like, it's always gonna give you an answer. Yeah. Whether or not that answer is true or not is like very much, you know, very much. Uh, that's your job to try to figure out if it's true or not. Um, but yes, I do think that. Uh, the deep personalization honestly poses real problems for those of us that are trying to optimize for it.

But also it like means that you never really know why it's giving you the answer that it's giving you because it has a deeper understanding of which documents it thinks is relevant that you read versus the ones that it didn't. So, yeah, I mean, I think it makes things very difficult when you're using it.

Yeah. I mean, it's useful, but it's so quietly useful that it's kind of hard to untangle where everything's coming from. So I bounce back and forth between like, chat, GPT, Claude, and Perplexity all day, depending on what I'm doing. Um, and I always say like, if you want someone to just be a yes man and agree with you, you can go to chat GPT because mm-hmm.

It's just going to agree with whatever you say, unless you tell it to be mean to you, which I often do. Like, stop being nice to me. Tell me what you really think or you know, what quote, quote unquote think, quote unquote think. Uh, tell me like an unbiased answer. Like, based on facts is what I'll tell it. Um, or if you.

I feel like Claude is a little quote unquote smarter, or at least mine is. Mm-hmm. It does a better job with code and stuff like that. When I. Want something like that. So that's where I go. Mm-hmm. And then if I want someone to be mean to me, I go to perplexity. That's so funny that perplexity is the mean one.

And it's funny 'cause I find having read a lot of these papers and a lot of like the, the, the underpinnings of how they trained it, I actually tend to, towards Gemini. 'cause I've read their papers on how they did the thing and sort of like, what is the ethics that are built into the system? And for example, one of the things that Gemini is trained to do is to never act like a human.

Ah. And so like, it's never supposed to say, I like, it's supposed to be like just the facts, please. And honestly, that's. Less engaging. Yeah, it's less addictive for sure. Yes. Um, but to me that's kind of what I want. That's what I want to engine. I don't need it. I kind of feel like every time I go to chat GPT and I'm, I'm, it's because, because the tools that I have are like taking the same prompt and like measuring it against three different sources.

So you start to see the trends of like, yeah. Like how this one is so different from this one. Mm-hmm. Um, and like chat. GPT kind of drives me nuts, um, because of it. It's so like. Fakely human. Yes. And, and so I'll give a specific example, which actually might be somewhat relevant to your audience. Mm-hmm. One of my, um, clients that I'm working on with right now is a fertility educator.

So she actually teaches people a specific method of how to not get pregnant naturally. So that's the context. Yeah. Um, and so one of the prompts that we're checking is like, I have PCOS, like, you know, my cycles are a mess. Like I'm looking for an X, Y, Z instructor, who's the person that I should hire?

Mm-hmm. Um, and one of the, you know, it, the results change. Every time you run the results. That's just the nature of ai, the nature of like a probabilistic system, you're not always gonna get the same result. Um, but one of them that came back just struck me because the first sentence was like, I understand how hard it can be to have irregular cycles.

And I'm like. Gross. Just gross. Gross. Gross. Like gross in the sense that like, yeah, it's, you are a large language model. Yeah. You do not have cycles. Right. And pretending and empathizing with a sort of like, I understand how hard it can be and I'm like, it should have been trained not to do that. Right. And where Gemini has been, Gemini has been trained, not pretend that it has menstrual cycles.

Yeah. Um, and like that's an important thing and, and yeah. The, the consequences of the output really change depending on the fine tuning of the model and sort of what it's been trained to privilege, like this kind of result versus this kind of result. Um, so personally I tend to use Gemini because it's the most boring.

Um, but also 'cause I've read the papers on it and I'm like, okay, I, I, I basically agree with the ethics with how you trained this. And so like, I kind of know where it's coming with and it's quite, after having read the Google paper, it's so clear to me that like they did not follow those rules when they were making chat.

GBT. Yeah. No, that's so good to know because I, I mean, I am pretty like, dry with my chat GPT like only recently I, so I, I use it only outside of work for like when I need like a reality check. Like this is something that happened. This is an email that was sent. I need to be like, not emotional at all about this.

So how should I, how should I do this? Like, I need, I, I, it helps me be not emotional. That's awesome. No, I'm talking to a robot, so I'm, make me a robot like I'd like to be like you actually. Yeah. Um, that's so interesting because it also brings up that we come to these AI engines with really different intents.

Yeah. Right. So that's one really important thing to keep in mind with kind of when you're imagining your audience, finding your business or not on an AI engine, is that. A lot of the time in a generative AI experience, we're not searching, like we're bringing in an an email and another email and we're saying, tell me how I should respond.

But it's not, there's no like business behind that. Like you're not about to hire anybody on the other end of that interaction. And so we're using them for more like actual generative purposes. Mm-hmm. Like, write me an email or like write me a script. Um, and so those. That's kind of a, it's, it's as these engines can do many things, right?

They're just a chat bot. It's an open box. Mm-hmm. And so I'm more interested, I mean, just in my own business, the, the parts of it that we really need to focus on are when people are trying to find information or trying to find recommendations. Like those are the things that could help us. All those other generative tasks.

Very interesting, but like less business relevant. Yeah. Yeah. So do you find that. Like people are actually, I don't know. I know. I don't think I've ever gone to chat GBT for like a local service. Mm. Are people doing that? Are they likes, help me, me find like the best roofer near me. They do well. So I don't know.

We have so little visibility into like how people are using chat g pt, there is one paper that's literally called How people use Chat, GPT that was published a couple months ago. I can give you the link afterwards. Yeah. And that's like, it was an analysis. It was an analysis of like 80,000 prompts that chat g BT gave to the research organization.

So we do have some idea of how people are using it, but like nothing like Google Search Console, nothing like actual visibility into other people's chat conversations. Mm-hmm. So no one really knows deeply how much people are using it for local services. However, um, boy, are they localized. So like, I live in Canada and even AI overviews.

So AI overviews is the generative result that's often at the top of really most Google searches these days, right? So, mm-hmm. Important to keep in mind because most people are still using Google, Google most of the time. And so like most of the time when people are seeing generative answers, it's at the top of a Google search result.

Um, and those are so personalized. I know because I'm in Canada and I'll ask like, you know, I'll do a, a keyword like anyone else. And then halfway down the gendered results, it's like, and in Canada, yeah. Like, it's just so obviously localized and personalized in my local place. Mm-hmm. And often even in chat gt, when I see the results.

Very like results that are around recommendations, like mm-hmm. Again, like I wanna hire an X, Y, Z dietitian, or like a dietitian that specializes in this particular thing. Chat. GPD quite often prompts people to be like, do you want me to find someone who's local to you? Mm-hmm. Um, so just to say that local is very much built into these systems, probably even more so than kind of regular Google search was.

So yes, people might not be going. Specifically looking for local, but it seems like the algorithms are tuned to localized people. Okay, good. That's good to know. 'cause I'm a big fan of blue request, you know, especially for my dietitians, people who are, you know, they're limited to where they're licensed. So Yes, indeed you have have to have a location based kind of search.

Totally. So, okay. So let's see. So something that people have been asking a lot or, you know, they come to me and they don't say it like this, but basically they're wanting to know, is regular SEO dead? Yeah, I've certainly got that question. Yeah. Um. I mean, there was a moment where I would've said yes, right?

Like in 2021, when I first saw this coming, it wasn't that SEO was dead, but it was dead to the people that I wanted to work with, which were like small sites. Um, however, this, this, this change that chat and, uh, sorry, that AI engines now have access to search indexes really made a huge difference. And no, for these small sites that I'm working on, SEO O is not dead.

However, it is changing. So like. I mean the, the foundations are still the same. You have to have a website. It has to have clear copy on it. Like it needs to be structured in a smart way. Um, Google needs to be able to crawl it and index it. I mean, that's because it's all, um, based on a search index, like that's still important to get into that search index and rank well in that search index so that you can be pulled up into AI answers.

Um, but I think the things that are really changing is that, um, with old style traditional SEO, we could always. Pretty much know that whatever we wrote on our website was what was going to be presented to the user. Where now we have this interpretive layer where whatever we write on our website is being gobbled up by an AI search engine and then rewritten rephrased.

Um, and so that interpretation is, that is genuinely new. Um, and so then tracking the results of that and making sure that that interpretation is in fact true. Um, and is, is, is. Giving your messaging the way you would want to give to your messaging is now like kind of an added layer of work that we really need to do to make sure that we're showing up.

I have this, uh, this. Phrase, which is like not just showing up, but showing up well, and so like showing up accurately is now a little bit more our job as people who write websites and people who optimize websites, where before we could always kind of trust that whatever we wrote on our website is, you know, what would be in the featured snippet.

The featured snippets were never rewritten, but now the AI overview is rewritten and like it gets things wrong a lot and no one's gonna fix it if you don't. Yeah. So do you think this is something, uh, that just kinda popped into my mind? I talk to clients a lot about, you know, who are you talking to? If you're talking to everyone you're talking to, no one.

It's kind of how I feel a little bit. Mm-hmm. So do you feel like it's even more important for people with websites to be, I don't, I hate the word niche or niche or whatever you wanna say, but you have to have a target audience. It can't just be, for example. dietitian. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I mean, I do think that that's the one bright spot in this new mode of search is that because there's such a deep level of personalization.

So I talked about the sort of what you've read and what you haven't read, but like under the hood, each of these, um, searches, like when people use AI search, it's, it's influenced, like strongly influenced by who the AI engine thinks that that person is. So like the example would be, um, say. You know, you're in chatt PT and you're asking for like a vegan recipe.

So like one week you're asking for a vegan recipe. It's almost as if Chachi PT then tags you as like she's vegan. And then later on, all of your results are, are tailored towards the fact that she's vegan. And so, not just recipes though, 'cause there's other things that might change about your life if you're vegan.

And so when you're looking for shoes, it's going to give you like synthetic leather shoes. Because you probably don't want real leather shoes 'cause you're vegan. Um, and so this kind of deep level of personalization means that the new AI engines. Have the possibility to kind of play matchmaker between like a very specific person with a very specific problem and a company that solves that very specific problem for that very specific person.

And so some of the best kind of success stories that I've had are when a. A very niche to down product with a very niche down audience. And then they find each other and like, I think that is really useful for small sites. 'cause that's often, especially when you're like working online and not locally, I mean, locally is its own thing.

You have to niche down last if you're also with a local audience. But if you are kind of nationally focused, you do need to have something specific. Otherwise you're talking to everybody and you'll get no traffic. Um, and so I think that. AI is uniquely positioned to do that better than traditional search.

I don't know how much it's actually working yet, but like in theory, that is sort of how it should work. So for like a private practice that has multiple, two, two kind of funnels here. Like one is that they're licensed in multiple states. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of like an an an, an extended localization.

Mm-hmm. But then they also work, they have, like, say they're a group practice, so they have multiple um, conditions that they work with. Like say they work with eating disorders and they work with PCOS and they work with everything, diabetes, everything. Does that make it harder for them to show up in these like.

Generative results since they're not just one thing. I don't think so because in most cases this is really just how I see it playing out in real life. Yeah, it's a really specific, it's like if you're showing up in the search results, like the Google search results for like a specific specialty in a specific place, it's likely to pull it in and then regurgitate it.

Like it's really all based off the search results. So I don't think you have to just choose one niche, like maybe. Mm-hmm. With Google, you a little bit more had to do that, where now it's mostly important that like you have all of those things on your website. Right. Without the information on your website, you have no chance of coming in.

Yeah. So if you do PCOS and you specialize in PCOS, but you never mention that, then you're not gonna show up when somebody who has PCOS is looking for a dietitian. Mm-hmm. Um, but uh, if you have that kind of clearly stated on your website, you have a chance and ideally. That you're also ranking for it organically in the old kind of SEO, um, and then you really have a really good chance.

Um, but it's a, it's both that your site needs to be structured that way. And then also one of the major differences with like old SEO, new SEO is that your offsite mentions matter a lot more than they used to. So like. Ideally, you wouldn't just have it on your site saying, I'm a, I'm a dietitian who specializes in PCOS in Kentucky.

But also there's somewhere else where you talk maybe on your social media profile, you're also talking about the fact that you do have this specialty and maybe you went on a podcast and, you know, once you go on a podcast, like that thing gets syndicated everywhere. And so like, you have a ton of references.

You know, you've, you've gone on a podcast where you talked about. Diet, being a dietitian that specializes in P-O-C-O-S, that's enough trust signals that, um, that repetition, that consistency, um, can really help you show up in AI answers because it's not just coming from one place. You wanna have it on your site as the single source of truth, but then you wanna like spread the news elsewhere, like really brand marketing around that concept so that your business is kind of frequently mentioned along with PCOS dietitian.

Mm-hmm. No, I love that. This is exactly what I tell all my people and I feel like the mom that's like, you know, always telling the kid like, you need to do this thing, but they, they need to hear it from someone else, like another adult. So hearing it from you, I feel like is like a double, you know, boost that they need to know that they have to do off page SEO.

I know it can't just be like, we can structure it. I always say like, we can build it, but they may not come, you know? Yeah. Like it can be the best restaurant in the world, but if it's in the middle of a desert and you've not told anyone you exist. Doesn't really matter. Yeah, and the thing is, is that like offsite, SEO is hard, right?

Like that's why I love doing onsite SEO. I mean, most of the work that I do is changing the words on people's websites, right? Same. Getting out and doing brand marketing and like actually promoting yourself and doing like the real like. Here I am in my body doing promotions for my company. That's hard.

Yeah. I understand why people don't do it because it's really like, it's, it's exacting work and it's emotional work. Mm-hmm. Um, but it is really important. Yeah. I think the major difference, which makes it slightly less hard, is that in the old SEO it was all about links. Like you went on the podcast so that you could get the link back to your website.

Mm-hmm. And like these AI engines just slurp all that text up and they're not paying attention to the link. And so really like the brand mention itself is what matters more in AI search, whereas in traditional search it was the mention along with the link. Mm-hmm. So in a sense it does open up what offsite SEO is, because just getting mentioned is useful.

So all, all the times, especially like if you're getting mentioned in Reddit, um, that's like a brand mention. So if, if. If a conversation happens and a subreddit that's like relevant to your niche and someone says, I worked with such and such. I've got PCOS. I worked with such and such, and she was just a great dietitian.

Mm-hmm. That's really helping your brand mentions and that isn't necessarily something that you have to engineer. Like that just means you need to have people to love you. That happened to use Reddit. Yeah, I was gonna say, I've read. A lot about how Reddit is showing up more in this results than I sometimes I specifically search for things like put Reddit, like show me Reddit things, um, because that's like one of the only social media things I actually read anymore uhhuh.

Um, but so for dietitians though, like I feel like that would be really, I mean, not hard, but kind of hard to get mentioned organically like that. Um. Does, I mean, not saying they should do this, but does the, does the chat GBT know when you're like in there and you're like, Hey, I'm a dietitian and I work at PCS, I could help you.

So it is no, it doesn't know. 'cause it's really like dumb actually. So really, truly, there's no deepness there. I think the other people in Reddit will know. So they know by all means, go and be a part of the conversation in Reddit. But like, first make sure that you read up on etiquette, like there's an actual etiquette, like you can get or you're gonna get down voted to oblivion.

Yeah. You really need to like, and, and like be genuinely helpful each time. Correct. So if you are doing that, so there are Reddit monitoring tools that are super helpful. So the one that's called is F five bot. It's really just like every, every time. PCOS and dietitian get, uh, mentioned together. You're gonna get an email, it's gonna fill up your email box.

There's a lot that goes on in Reddit, so set up a filter. Um, but you can, you can see without actually wasting your time on Reddit, you can see when, um, conversations that are relevant to your business are coming up. And then you can show up in the, you can show up and comment. Um, but I always recommend that people don't just say like, hi, I do that.

Yeah. Like, I could, I can do that for you. Here's my free consult link. Yeah. Um, instead come in and like, be genuinely helpful. Mm-hmm. Give as much information as you can, you know, without giving medical advice on the internet, without knowing them. Obviously there's a line. Um, and then go ahead and say like, if you wanna get in touch, I do this.

You can say that. Mm-hmm. Um, but again, just check. The Reddit about sort of Reddit in general as well as the specific subreddit. Yeah, no, I think that's what my people need to hear 'cause they would be too afraid to do anything. So I think like hearing that if you're, they would be genuinely helpful. So hearing like someone say, it's okay if you're being genuinely helpful, you're not being gross.

Like you're just, I always tell them marketing is just connection. Like, just connect with these people and help them. You want to, anyways. So, and a great way to get started in it is to do like zero brand marketing associated with it. Yeah. Like, just go be a redditer. Yeah. And see what happens. Right. Get yourself used to the, by just giving your personal experience.

Mm-hmm. Um, get into the conversation, see how to play this game. And then, you know, once you feel really comfortable with it and once you kind of know how it works. And really, once you've established, I think they actually call it karma. Yes. Like, once you've established some karma in the Reddit system, then people trust you more.

Then you can kind of like, like. Occasionally put in a link and say, oh yeah, of course I do this. And like, I'd be glad to. Like, but also a, a good way to do it is just in the, without offering the service, um, just putting in your credentials, like saying who you are and your credentials. That's, that's a brand mention, right?

Yeah. And that's associating you with your very important credentials that like allow you to do the thing. Um, so putting those things in. And kind of self introducing is like, I'm actually a dietitian who's trained in this and this is what I think. Mm-hmm. Um, this is my answer. Um, that helps. And it's not salesy, but it also gives some weight to your answer, which is, I'm not just someone on the internet.

Um, I'm somebody with real qualifications and real experience that's giving you an answer that's genuinely helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Or even if you just give a genuine answer and then at the end, if you wanna put in parentheses like, disclaimer, I am a dietitian. Like totally. It, it completely be naturally inserted in there.

Yeah. I love it. Okay, so you mentioned earlier the idea of showing up well and not just showing up. So how could that work and what would that actually mean for a small private practice owner? So, I mean, the first thing is that you probably should be tracking some of this. So like right now there's, you probably have no visibility into how you are showing up or not in AI answers.

Um, so I've actually come up with a simple little three Rs and this is all part of my, like, making it simple. Um, so the three Rs. That I think kind of all small businesses should be aiming for. Number one is recognition. So brand recognition. So when you go to an AI engine, does it know that your business name is in fact a business?

Does it know who you are? And it does generally give a good little summary of you. So that's like number one is like aim to make sure that you're understood as a brand. Um, and then number two is reputation, because a lot of. People who are about to hire you are gonna search something like, you know, Courtney Vickery reviews.

Mm-hmm. And you wanna make sure that the things that come up there are in fact true and complimentary. Right? Like you wanna make sure that you're showing up well, when. Somebody who's about to hire you, you wanna make sure that if the AI is talking smack about you behind your back, you know about it. Yeah.

So you need to go check that. Um, and then the last one where like the actual money is, is when people who don't know about you yet go in and say, who's the best dietitian, um, for PCOS. Near me. And then you wanna see if you're coming up in those results. Like that's the, I mean, that's where the actual money would be.

Um, and so, but the other two are really important too, right? Like those, those initial things of like being recognized as a brand and having a good reputation in the AI engines. Like, it doesn't sound very exciting, but I think for small brands, that's like most of the work that needs to be done, um, because those people are already like brand aware.

They know who you are and you wanna make sure that they can actually find you. Yeah. No, I love that. I love a good acronym. All right, so let's see. Do do. All right, so. Where should dietitians or anyone in private practice focus their limited amount of energy that they have, uh, when it comes to SEO and AI search right now, like what would be the most beneficial thing they could do?

Assuming that they have a site that has a sound foundation. So, I mean, the first thing is really like start with recognition. So what I would recommend you do, which is simple and free, is just open up an incognito window in your browser. 'cause of course all this stuff is so personalized. You wanna make sure you're not going to your chat GPT and asking questions about yourself.

'cause you probably have already said that you, you know, are a dietitian and that changes the results completely. So go to an incognito window, don't log in, um, and just ask questions as if you were your audience. So kinda like. Play your audience. Kinda imagine the types of things that they might be asking and see where you do and don't show up and the results.

Like kind of get of a bit of a baseline to see if your brand ever comes up and if your brand does come up, are you getting errors or if your brand and what, what other brands come up alongside your brands, like who is your AI competitors? Mm-hmm. Um, so just kind of like pretending to be your next customer.

Inside of an AI chat bot in a kind of depersonalized sense. I mean, it's not perfect data because it's gonna change every time. I mean, you'd have to do that every day or like multiple times to get like a, a kind of understanding of where you are and aren't showing up. But that's something free that you can kinda see where the baseline is.

Um, and then what you're likely to notice is some like strange stuff, right? So you're gonna notice, here's a great example. 'cause it AI really tends to want like short, concise. Um, standalone bits on a page. So it's gonna zoom in on parts of your site that maybe you didn't, um, foresee. And so, one really funny example that I just saw is I was asking about this company.

They, they run a 12 month program, um, probably much like your audience. Um, and of course like it's a 12 month program that has certain things that are included. You get this every week, you get that every week, like, you know, this is what's included. That's not what's included, you know? You would think that AI would pull from the main pages of the site to kind of like summarize what's included in the package.

But you know what it. Actually pulls from the terms and conditions page. Oh. Find, find that. 'cause that is the one place on the website where very concisely they have said what is included in this thing. And so that's not ideal for, for, um, the audience. 'cause like the last place you want people landing on when they just like terms and conditions, terms and conditions page like that, is you want them to go to a sales page.

Yeah. And so what you'll notice when you like, basically do this experience, but like with your thinking cap on and be like. Oh, that's funny. I never thought that. Like the most clear place on my website about what's included in this project is the terms and conditions page, which was looked over by a lawyer.

And then make sure that that same style of writing is somewhere on your main site. Yes. And so that you have like a nice, clear, concise explanation of what is and isn't included, so that. Ideally, and you know, you might even go to your terms and conditions page and deactivate it a bit. You might go over there and add a little, like separate that out over three blocks.

Yeah. So that it's still legally legit, but isn't so attractive to the AI engines. Yeah. Um, so basically when you're doing this experience, like see what's being pulled and what isn't, and then like if there's something that's not ideal, like something that's not the way that you would want it to be, like you can make changes to your site so that you know the traffic when it comes, goes to a page where you want them to be.

I always say clear is kind. Yes. So, and, and really like writing clearly concisely is like pretty much the writing clearly concisely and using numbers is pretty much like AI bait. Yes. So a spreadsheet, no, I'm kidding. Numbers inside of sentences. Yes. So co I got three questions that are kind of in the same topic.

Do you think that blog posts are still helpful or is there something that would be more helpful for them to spend their time on? So this is really funny. I have like a really, I love keyword research. One of my packages for for years has been keyword research. It brings me back to like the same researcher that I always was.

Like, I feel like doing keyword research is like doing archival research and I love it unfortunately because of the way that AI is likely to take all of your answers and regurgitate them and maybe give you a citation or maybe not. Um. Blogs are less useful than they used to be, and so I'm finding myself recommending them a lot less.

And what I've been telling people is don't write blogs just for the sake of like Google traffic or like thinking that this is gonna be how you're gonna get attention to your site. It's kind of like not really worth the effort. Um, but if there's a business reason for that blog, go ahead and write it. So like, if it's the type of thing that your next customer needs to read, like for example, how much does x, Y, Z cost, like mm-hmm.

This is the type of blog post like every single site should have. And it's, it may be useful for SEO, like it might. Pay off from an SEO perspective, that could happen. But like you kind of need that blog anyways 'cause people have questions about this and they're probably not answered by like a tiny little FAQ on your sales page.

Mm-hmm. And so like talking about like what makes it more expensive and what makes it cheaper and like really doing an in depth like analysis of cost in whatever it is that you're selling. Especially if you're in an industry where you can't say like, this is the price. Like if you don't have set prices, then like it's important to have that post.

Um, so I do think that. That informational content can be really useful. And I'm not saying people shouldn't write blogs, but I don't think that showing up on the, sadly, I don't think that showing up on the internet as an expert and sharing your expertise, like really generously pays off as much as it used to.

And so like you probably should put your efforts elsewhere. Also, like if you're locally focused, I've long thought that blogs weren't very useful, right? Like if you're a photographer and. There's just only so, or you know, like, there's just only so many articles that you can write Yeah. Um, that are actually useful and locally specific.

Mm-hmm. So like, if you're a dietitian, like, well, it's kind of the same regardless of where you live, right? Yeah. Except for maybe some, like some credentialing stuff or like, you know, these concepts are the same nationwide, and so there's nothing specifically local about what it is that you do. It's just that you do serve locally.

And so then in those cases. Even if you did rank, um, you're not likely to get the people coming to your site that actually could hire you. You're gonna get a whole bunch of people, like the other 49 states are gonna come to your site and get great information, but like, you're not even licensed to work with them, so what's the point?

And so like, it's just the, the value prop isn't there as much as it is for like a site that really could have like a national audience. Mm-hmm. So. That's, uh, I have like two buckets of people that I work with, right? Like the service based private practices. But then I have, you know, some clients that still do like recipe blogs.

What about those? Do you feel like that's still the same situation or do they need a different approach? So, I mean, again, it's the same. Like, it, it makes sense and actually one of the dietitian that I worked with had a recipe blog in addition to like her dietitian practice. And in that case, what I, 'cause they were very short, they were great articles.

Like they were great recipes. Um, but they weren't even getting indexed. Like if you look into Google search console quite often it's like, well if you have a chocolate chip cookie recipe and there's like literally. 7 million other chocolate chip cookie recipes. Google looks at your chocolate chip cookie recipe and says, we have enough of those and we don't need to put that one in the, in the index.

And, and so it's useful to have it again on your site for a business purpose. Like if you're working with clients and you're frequently saying like, here's your meal plan and these are the recipes, like, it makes sense that you have those on your site, right? Um, so that you can give them to people at the appropriate moments.

Um, but in that case, I actually recommended that she kept them on the site, but she actually no index. Them because what was happening is her site was so big and none of those, only like two of the recipes were getting any kind of traction, which means that there was like 300 recipes that weren't. And so then a smaller site that was kind of more tight and like from Google's perspective, the page quality of each page was higher.

Like the average page quality was higher. Um, that actually can give you a stronger site, actually. So it's not that recipe blogs are dead, like of course. You know, you can go ahead and do that and if you're getting good results from it, like keep doing it. Like don't stop doing something that's working for you.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but it's like if you haven't started this strategy yet, yeah, the day has probably passed where you can build your entire business on recipes. Yeah. Um, unless. You've got a new and interesting distribution mechanism that isn't Google search. Yeah. And if you do share it with us.

'cause I don't know what it's either. Okay. So let's see. I have about, I do have somebody at 12. I just remembered that as we were talking. Um. I wanna see what we wanna finish up in these last few minutes. Do, do, do, let's talk about your, um, your freebie. 'cause I downloaded it yesterday. Awesome. Um, so you've created a really helpful resource called Cheat Sheet to showing up well in AI answers.

Can you kind of walk us through what's inside and where can we find that? Indeed. So basically I did all this research and I wanted to leave people with not just like theory, but something actually practical to help them on their own sites or if they were a web designer on client sites. I work with a lot of web designers.

Um, and so, um, this is just like my list of five things that is just like you should probably. Imple implement on your site that you might not have in the previous world of SEO. So like what has actually changed and what does that mean for like our websites specifically? So it's just a list of five things of specific things that you should probably just go check on.

Um, and then, uh, you can get that at words on the rise.com/ai and then if you download it, you'll also get added to my email newsletter. So I, um, write. About every two weeks, um, about AI search, because this is just changing so much. Like my research project is, you know, ongoing. Yeah. And I'm learning new things.

And honestly, like the, the little things like the fact that the terms and conditions page is such a good example of concise writing, um, those types of things, like those aha moments are happening to me. All the time these days. And so I like to share them. And so it's, it's a, it's a newsletter that's specifically about AI search and traditional search, but for small sites.

Mm-hmm. Um, so not like big enterprise stuff. Like I only care about the small sites. And so if that's you and that's the kind of site that you have, you'll find it relevant. And so I usually write it every two weeks, but I am like a very like, human centered approach to marketing. So sometimes I write more, sometimes I write less.

Like if I have something to say, I write it in the newsletter. But you know, don't set your clock by my newsletter. Same, you could honestly write every week because I'm sure like, I mean, honestly, you could probably write every day. I feel like AI is like every day, every day there's a new place where AI mode has been integrated.

There's a new like browser being launched, like a whole new chat bot. Um, and so yes, I absolutely could do it every day. I read the news every day of ai, but I only give you guys the best stuff in the newsletter. Yes, and definitely go download the freebie. 'cause I downloaded it yesterday and I'm already doing the things that's on the list.

Awesome. Yay. Well, it's been so great talking to you. I love that your message isn't, you know, panic and, you know, freak out about ai, but just, you know, connection and being intentional about how you show up is the most important thing. So be sure you download Michelle's cheat sheet to showing up well in AI answers at words on the rise.com/ai.

thank you so much for being here, and thank you for tuning into the Tech Savvy Dietitian podcast. Thank you.