[SEO agencies] have been really bad at communicating the value they’re bringing.
Sam Tomlinson, EVP at agency Warschawski
Between 40% and 50% of clients of SEO marketing firm The Hoth have focused more on ensuring they comply with Google’s crawling requirements this year, said CMO Max Gomez Montejo.
“Clients are becoming more aware that they need to enhance their websites if they want their content to be prominently featured in search snippets or, looking ahead, for AI chatbot integration,” he said.
Right now, it will be hard to measure the fruits of this labor, as, currently, ChatGPT is mostly based on information from 2021 and older. But the idea is that eventually, ChatGPT will include more recent material, and at that point, brands should be prepared.
Gomez Montejo said The Hoth is also working with clients to hone their long-tail keyword strategy, which refers to more specific groupings of keywords that get fewer searches per month and are a significantly less popular investment than branded keywords. As searches become more conversational, focusing on these phrase-like groupings becomes more important, he said.
SEO agencies are also offering new services for the traditional search interface already being remade by generative AI. Both The Hoth and NP Digital are helping clients craft the best prompts to feed to a chatbot when making AI-generated content.
Moreover, because brands are able to generate more content with ChatGPT, advertisers are asking SEO agencies to create more blog posts on their behalf to compete. Gomez Montejo said that client demand for content has doubled in the past year.
An evolution, or the end of SEO?
Even without chatbots, SEO agencies have faced challenges in recent years. Google has made links less prominent in its interface, introducing text snippet answers to queries instead of purely funneling users to websites for information, Finkelstein said.
“The results partially remove the brand from the equation, decrease visibility and the likelihood someone will visit your site or engage with your brand,” Finkelstein said, noting the chatbot interface is likely to exacerbate this problem.
