Don’t Go All-in on A.I. – Not Now, Not Ever
I’ve lost count of the number of posts on LinkedIn on the subject of “How to get your business to show up in ChatGPT results.”
The tips always boil down to this: Answer common questions with your content.
Excuse me for a second while I let that revolutionary thought sink in.
It’s like someone smoked a joint and then gave the keynote at a marketing conference.
Guys, check this out…like…good content marketing is like...just...like, answering questions that, like, your clients ask and stuff.
Boy howdy, if that ain’t what content marketers have been doing for the last 20 years or so.
I saw another guy who shared a post where he claimed that everyone needed to rebuild their website in order to accommodate AI bots so they could show up in AI-driven search. He based this advice on the fact that bot traffic now outnumbers human traffic on the internet, which is apparently (and sadly) true.
Intrigued, I clicked through to his blog to find out what exactly goes into building a bot-friendly website. I'll save you the time and give you a few of his tips below along with a little of my commentary:
Structure your data – This has been a basic SEO best practice since Google was just a baby. Basically, you add labels that look like this <label> to help bots understand what they're looking at. If you use a standard plugin like Yoast SEO, then it's already done by default. Same with sites built in FMG or Squarespace.
Summarize clearly – In other words, make sure your website clearly describes what you do. This is more of a writing tip than groundbreaking advice.
Use CAPTCHA to guard against "bad bots" – Again, nothing new here.
There were seven tips total, but you get the idea. According to this guy, your old website will be worthless after the Great Bot Revolution, so throw it out and get a brand new one (which, of course, he'd be happy to help you build).
In reality, these are fine SEO tips, nothing more.
Marketers gonna market. That's what we do. If there's something new to hype, marketers will inevitably swarm, jockeying for position as an "expert" in this new trend.
But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the AI revolution have been greatly exaggerated.
Keep your website. Keep writing for humans. Keep investing in your humanity.
