Hello readers of ours,
It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a blog and more importantly, it’s even crazier that 10 years have passed since Executive Digital was founded. Of the 30 years that I’ve been in SEO, these last 12 months have been the most complicated and more importantly, full circle for all of us in the Digital Marketing/SEO industries. I think one of the challenges for us experts is that we’ve been explaining SEO for so long that it’s become second nature for us to assume that business owners and stakeholders understand this by now as well. That’s our bad for assuming.
I personally feel vindicated for droning on and on and on about the value of search engine optimization for small, medium and enterprise businesses for so many years, that this feels almost like a win, now that AI has taken over everybody’s minds in the business industries that they belong to. The new challenge is, we have to explain to people that SEO is no longer optional and is now the core foundation of your brand’s presence online (as it always was). I mean, who doesn’t want to be found when Grok, Chat GPT, Ask perplexity, Gemini, and other engines which are seeking to answer the very thing that you do with your company?
So now, in September of 2025, we have a resurgence of new clients and even old clients asking great questions like…what is AI SEO, or GEO, or artificial intelligence optimization or however you want to word this newfound world and I answer the same thing I’ve been answering for 30 years and that is…this is SEO, brand development core for your company. Deja vu. Again.
This is the core reason why it feels like we’ve come full circle. We spent 10 years explaining to companies why they should have SEO, why it’s the core to the brand, and yes, it’s painful and yes, it takes forever to do, but SEO is the very heart of this new AI world and is now the thing you must invest in, or be left behind. I think the choice is yours, but besides the technical information skill sets, everybody now understands that if you yourself use any of the LLMs to search for things online, or to write a piece of information, or to evaluate a document, it’s only obvious that you want your your brand represented in those results, or more importantly, you want to be able to get citations and links and people writing about your business on those very same AI search engines. Huh. Sounds remotely like SEO. Who knew.
And so, the question is, what should you be doing to get your company new clients and customers via AISEO? The answer is: everything you should’ve been doing via SEO for your company these last ten years, but you didn’t listen to me or your SEO consultant of choice, so here you are, AI-less and sad.
Now you HAVE to do everything or get left behind (that is, if you care about being found via AIEO/AISEO/GEO). I’m fully aware that many companies are “just fine” with their digital marketing. Sure you are.
I’m not going to write this blog about the technical skillsets or techniques necessary to get yourself ranked in LLMs. That’s why you would hire us anyway, but it is pretty self-serving (and a self-fulfilling prophecy) that while so many of the “industry experts” were calling for the death of SEO and social influencers and affiliates were taking over the digital marketing world, here we are in 2025 and the need for a true expert team in SEO (now AIO, or AI SEO, or GEO, or whatever you want to call it) comes back to haunt your organization or company.
We now spend our days explaining the same thing we’ve been saying for the last 10 years. Yes, you can build a business without SEO, but why would you want to? You want to actively IGNORE the audiences on Google (and now AI search engines) looking for what you do or sell? Do you know how crazy that makes you look?
So fine, you ignored our advice to do SEO for years, but the real question is, can you afford to ignore our advice about SEO, as well as ignore our advice about being on ChatGpt and other AI engines? Time will tell who was right.
Or just keep calling your influencers. I’m sure they’ll keep you growing…right?
Thanks for hearing me out.
Sasha
PS yes, call us to help your business grow. That’s what we do.