Google’s about to make a change that’s going to make traditional SEO completely useless. This change can have absolutely disastrous effects on your business’s ability to be found, get clients, and make money. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re going to lose out to the competitor who is prepared to pivot. But don’t worry; in this article, I’m going to show you why traditional SEO is a complete waste of time in 2024, the new strategy that’s replacing it, and the easy way you can get started toward massive results that SEO could never deliver.
SEO Challenges Over the Years: The Evolution from 2012 to 2024
But to understand the new opportunity headed our way, we need to look at the big problem that SEOs always had. When I started my own agency back in 2012, SEO was a little bit easier. I was able to create a pretty barebones website for my business without a bunch of blog posts or anything like that. And because it was easy to reach out to other blog owners and get them to agree to me writing a guest article for them, they’d give me backlinks, and I was able to get to number one in Google for web design Los Angeles. Great, mission accomplished, right? Well, not so fast.
Most businesses approach ranking number one in Google as the goal itself, but it’s really only useful when it leads to making more sales, right? So clients would find me on Google and they’d schedule a consult call. But when I was on those calls, I was still a stranger to these people, and I had to sell my off to get their business. And being a better web designer than a salesperson, I lost a lot more of those jobs than I won. And I will show you, in a bit, how I fixed my sales problem. But the point is, even when SEO was easy, it still only solved half the problem. And as time went on, more businesses started flooding the internet with tons of SEO content. Backlinks got harder and harder to get, and the whole process of SEO just got a lot more intense.
The Unintended Consequences of AI on SEO
Fast forward to 2024, and there’s a new challenge to SEO, and that’s AI. It’s like a new powerful gardening tool meant to make our work easier, but it’s also accidentally pulling up some good plants along with the weeds. And it’s those unintended consequences that are really shaking things up. So before we get to the way around this, let’s just unpack the three main reasons why AI, while helpful, is making SEO way less effective for small businesses.
The Three Ways AI is Diminishing SEO Effectiveness
First, you know all those helpful articles they tell you to write for SEO that are meant to answer people’s questions? Well, AI is just going to be answering those instead. People have already started going straight to ChatGPT to get quick answers to their questions rather than Googling them. And in response, Google is now rolling out their own AI search feature that they’re calling Search Generative Experience, and that’s just going to answer people’s questions itself. Imagine searching for the best chocolate chip cookie recipes and getting an AI-generated answer along with some follow-up questions to narrow down your search. And this is being rolled out as we speak. I would expect it to be available for everyone and pretty much answering every major search midway through 2024.
The next reason is tools like ChatGPT have made it incredibly easy for everyone to create SEO content at scale, which means everyone is doing it, pumping out articles faster, crowding the internet with content like never before. It’s like everyone’s suddenly got the same megaphone, and they’re all just shouting over each other. So if you want to stand out, you’ll have to yell even louder than your competition.
And the third way that AI is killing SEO is it is actively destroying your ability to get backlinks. If you don’t know, backlinks are those links from other websites to yours, and they’re really important for getting your site ranked on Google. Just like AI is making it way too easy for everyone to write articles for their own blogs, the same is true for writing articles to put on other people’s blogs, which is a really common way to get backlinks. In the past, you could just ask a blog, “Hey, can I write something for you?” and in exchange for the content, they would put a link back to your website in the author bio. And a lot of blogs would say yes, backlink achieved, SEO win for you. But now, with so many people using AI and trying to do the same thing, it’s incredibly hard to get anyone to even respond to you, let alone agree to it. You’re going to waste more time trying to find one backlink opportunity than it would take to write 20 posts. So even though backlinks are still needed to rank high in Google, getting them is a lot harder than it used to be.
Looking Beyond AI: The New Wave of SEO
Now, I am not here to talk bad about AI. I actually think it’s an amazing tool that no business can afford to ignore. But it’s had lots of unintended SEO consequences that we really have to pay attention to. So what’s the new wave of SEO going to look like, not just in 2024 but well into the future? A lot of people are going to be shocked by what I’m going to say next, and some of them may even be scared off by it. And that’s the exact reason why those of you who lean into this are going to see such huge results. You’re willing to do what others aren’t, so this pivot is simple.
The YouTube Solution: Leveraging the Second-Largest Search Engine
Stop trying to be found on Google and go for the next biggest search engine instead. I’m talking about YouTube. Yep, YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet, but it’s so much more than that. Remember my problem I had with sales? That was because SEO is great for marketing, but YouTube is marketing and sales rolled into one.
Advantages of YouTube Over Google for Business Ranking
In other words, YouTube fixed my problem. Once I dipped my toes into YouTube, I started having two very different types of sales calls: the ones with prospects who found me through Google (we already know how those went), and the ones who found me through YouTube. Now, to say these calls were easier was an understatement. They were more relaxed; they took me much more seriously, and most were pretty much pre-sold on me before the call even started. In other words, video accelerates the know, like, and trust factor like nothing else on the planet. To the point where eventually, as I grew on YouTube, people would literally just pay for my services right on my website without me having to talk to them at all upfront. And it’s not just me. Think Media did a study where they found that 42% of people said they would choose to work with someone on YouTube over someone who wasn’t.
Now I know you’re thinking SEO is familiar and feels safe, and YouTube feels like a completely different ball game. Well, here are five unignorable reasons why ranking your business on YouTube is ten times as good as ranking on Google.
First up, people want to watch videos made by real humans with genuine personalities and experiences. And as much as we’re talking about AI, it isn’t shaking up video search like it is over on Google. Now, sure, AI companies are really trying to create lifelike videos, but they’re not there yet. Not even close. Plus, YouTube plans to make it clear when a video is AI-generated; it’s going to require a special label for that. You know it’s way easier to pass off an article as human-written than it is to bend someone in AI video as a real person. And here’s the thing, even if YouTube gets flooded with AI videos, our preference for real human connection isn’t going to change. People naturally gravitate towards authenticity. So by keeping your videos genuine, you’ll engage your audience much more effectively, and you’re always going to outperform AI-generated content.
Next, video search lets you double-dip. So we already know that YouTube is number two behind Google in search. But if you create video over written content, you get the chance to obviously rank in YouTube, right? But Google shows video results in searches over there too. That’s because Google owns YouTube, and they know that people generally prefer videos over written content. And it only makes sense to give the people what they want. In fact, 95% of people say that they would rather watch a video on a topic over reading about it. Not to mention the fact that video platforms like YouTube and even TikTok are quickly becoming even more popular than Google for younger searchers. And if Facebook and Instagram taught us anything, whatever’s popular now with the youngs is going to trickle down and become popular with the older generations soon enough.
Next, just imagine every video you create as a dedicated salesperson for your business that you pay just one time, and it keeps showing up, attracting new clients day after day, year after year. Unlike a blog post that might get buried under newer content on Google, your YouTube videos have a much longer shelf life. They’re like evergreen pathways, funneling potential clients deeper and deeper into your business. Think about it; when someone watches one of your videos, YouTube’s recommendation engine helps them effortlessly flow from one video to the next. That creates a powerful binge session, accelerating the know, like, and trust cycle, and that makes them much more likely to convert into clients. Now, compare that to Google search where there’s no built-in way to bring searchers back to your specific content.
Simplifying SEO with YouTube: A Less Complicated Approach
The next reason to move to YouTube is SEO becomes a lot less complicated. In traditional website SEO, you’re dealing with a lot: managing content clusters, getting your keyword density just right, writing metadata, and making sure that your content is a certain length. Not to mention chasing backlinks, which is a huge time suck that you can’t really even control. You know you’re just at the mercy of other people either saying yes or, more likely, no. But YouTube simplifies all of that. When it comes to YouTube SEO, all you really have to worry about is making good videos and including your keyword phrase in the title and a couple of times in the description. That’s it. You don’t have to stress over getting other sites to link back to yours; that literally isn’t a thing with YouTube videos. And with YouTube, search is just the beginning. You know, once your videos break through, and YouTube starts showing them to people on their homepage just because they know they’re the right audience for it, that’s when you grow even faster.
Gaining a Competitive Edge: The Untapped Power of YouTube
The next reason is most of your competitors, even those who are beating you right now in traditional SEO, aren’t going to switch over to YouTube. It’s a whole different ball game, and it scares them. This is where you can leap ahead. So think about it; YouTube is an incredibly powerful opportunity, but it’s way less tapped by most businesses, especially in service industries. If your competitors are shying away from creating video content, that opens up a massive opportunity for you. By embracing YouTube, you can gain a significant edge. It’s not just about being found; it’s about being seen and heard, building a stronger connection with your audience. So by doing what your competition won’t, you’re not just catching up; you’re positioning yourself to overtake them.
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