The End of Traditional SEO: Jason Kocina on Getting Found in the Age of AI

You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory. No fluff. No shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always teaching you a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It always comes back to business and marketing, typically. There's a lot changing. You got AI happening. You got the mediums always seem to move from one to the other. But at the end of the day, there's some tried and true, and that's what we're gonna talk about today with Jason Kosina. He was the founder of Checkerboard Strategic Web Development. He's an OG like myself. Now he's the director of digital marketing, media relations.

Oh, just real quick on AI. I know you just mentioned it, but I haven't felt the way I feel about AI since the 90s. I felt that was a revolutionary time with the Internet. And we're going to another one. And then people said Google's never going to lose traffic to see it happen. Oh, my gosh. Something's happening. Mainstreaming of these tools that we've been looking at now for years, but they're becoming accepted. And it's a new world all of a sudden. It is. Yeah. Let me just go right at it, Jason. What works today from your standpoint? And I know we can get into B2B and B2C and this type of company and that type of company. But I'm going to ask you broadly on the PR earned media side, what's working today for your clients?

problem. What has changed is really the other side of our business. We're kind of putting a publicist more in charge of PR and SEO and AI visibility and content marketing. These things all kind of flow together nicely, but what hasn't changed is understanding your messaging, getting it down, documenting it. It's the only way to let someone else do your marketing for you is if you go through that process to some extent. They'll be saying whatever they want to say, and that kind of defeats the purpose. If they're not spreading the message you want to the right people, then that's no good. But earned media still works to grow brand awareness blanket. You have to be aware of you to buy from you. I love performance marketing better than anyone, but...

Unless you're hitting them at the moment of truth with a pack of gum in the checkout line and they need a pack of gum. Short of that, there usually has to be some awareness and then consideration in purchase. I think we've shortened that cycle with digital marketing, but PR has always had a role in that awareness bucket. Hopefully I don't take it too far off. I was just the whole time you're saying the gum aisle, I was thinking, or that happens is the AI visibility side or the SEO optimization side. They're ready to buy. They're going and looking for stuff now. Boy, you're crazy. Yeah. Then you find them. That's who I want. I want someone who already knows what they want. I don't need to teach it to them.

But you're right on the other side, too. You need to get the word out there. I would say that the number of shits. possible channels has changed. It used to be, boy, if we can get USA Today, everyone reads that and it's going to be out of the park. Now we can split it down to, I only want to target people who build things out of plastic from Western United States or something. And there's a show for them. There's a show out there for them. In some ways, it's really fine-tuned the targeted instead of the shotgun approach. But again, it's just the landscape changes and it has changed a lot.

But boy, you're asking me, where do people go? I think that we always lay it out based upon who their target markets are. Do a little research on that. And any kind of marketing competitive analysis helps. Let's see what other people are doing, what keywords are they're targeting for. And, how are they coming up number one for this? So marketing is, I learned it as marketing is always played with your cards face out. So everyone can see what you're doing, right? So incorporating that into your strategy a little bit, or at least understanding it helps. You kind of were asking which channels? I think that the channels that we do have been broadened dramatically. 95% of our business was through earned media in the past, and now it's less than 50%.

We're doing paid media, marketing automation tools. Sales was always like the fifth element that we partnered with, but we didn't necessarily get involved with. But then that automation stuff, you start to work with the salespeople. Whenever I've talked to a salesperson and asked if they had enough leads, they've always answered, no, we need more leads. So I like helping those people out too. If SEO is changing and AI is starting to erode traditional SEO, how should small to medium businesses be thinking about how to show up from an AI perspective? Focusing just on the AI, it kind of encompasses both elements of those shopping you mentioned before. For the people that are browsing or just starting to look at it, the AI element is often would place it right in the top.

Say Google, you go to Google, you do a search. Well, Gemini puts up there the answer. If you're not shopping, you're just researching, you might see the answer there. It's important that you're getting at least... referenced there that helps so that your name gets out there more. And then when they do get into the part where they're actually ready to buy, then you want to make sure that you're coming up in search. Obviously, search is important to me, but I have seen, partially because what we just talked about, traffic from search going down for our customers, organic traffic going down, seeing more traffic coming from ChatGPT, from Gemini, from Grok or the other platforms. But This episode is brought to you by HighLevel. Make sure to check out the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial.

As a Southern guy in South Carolina. But GPT still isn't as good as local stuff, I don't think, as like Google is. But if we're moving towards that space, I just wonder how will there be selection if there's only one answer? You know, those are the things that I think about, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of has been that way to some extent, though, right? You're going to Google and typing that same question in there, and it's going to give you the answer. Number one. Whoever's number one in the search result wins. Yeah. But I will say that I would consider a technology user. I would be someone that's kind of out ahead of a lot of people in my usage for tech support stuff.

Here's... Here's a hint. I don't know everything. You know what I mean? When people ask me, why is my email not work or whatever question they have? Nine times out of 10, I know enough about it to ask the right question. And it was Google before and now it's ChatGPT or whatever. My habits have changed that much. And now we're seeing that apply to the... Are you seeing the companies that you guys work with? With ChadGPT, you've got AI that can act as agents and do things. Are savvy businesses needing more agencies or less agency help? It is becoming, to some extent, more about having responsive, high-quality people that can execute on those programs. Use the ChadGPT or whatever to really formulate what you're asking for.

better. That's always been a challenge and something that you need someone in there to kind of smooth that process out. Smart marketing people can use the tool, but I would say it's probably best to formulate a plan or starts of a plan so that you can make a request and then have professionals execute on it. I like it. It's a great tool. I have plenty of SEO prompts and ways to really use these tools to their maximum to get the most out of it. But it always goes to our professional writing team because they make it unique. To some extent, people that are smart in a particular topic are going to be more efficient with the tool. But I don't know that you're going to be able to sit someone down that has no idea how to program and say, just program me everything.

And it'll just do everything. I set up one of our programmers in front of it and they ask very specific questions and they get to the answer a lot faster, if that makes sense. No, it seems to be making us more efficient. So we might can bill less hours. You still need some amount of hours to get the final output that are needed. It brings more value that way as far as the efficiencies brought into it. The more paid advertising, getting out of sort of the PR side and even the SEO side, which is organic to a degree. Social media has such an impact and it's where so much attention is. It's hard to ignore. Is it knee deep in your playbook with just about every client?

I wouldn't say every client, but certainly channels of our, we have a B2B customer that's doing stuff and they have a great LinkedIn program and they're putting out content on LinkedIn and they're using it to expand the networking that they do at trade events. And do you remember the days of Facebook for local marketing before they removed a lot of our capabilities? I still miss that some days where you could say, I want to target friends of all our friends that are interested in this in this area. And it just worked so spectacular. I don't see it as well, but I still see it as an awareness tool. Facebook advertising and most of the product work we do where we're doing retail stuff. Yes, we are doing awareness in some direct sales through that channel, but a lot of Google stuff for that Google shopping.

I go there and I'm like, Oh, what is this garbage? When they produce the videos for you. Yeah, I haven't correct the code on that one either. It's been more time than if I just edited some B-roll or footage we already have or something. So I don't know. Jury's out on that one for us too. And a lot of what I do with it is just, hey, my ideas don't always flow linear order. So I'm going to dump all my content into the system and then I'm going to say, OK, clean it up. Make it make sense. Put it in order. Or whatever. I'm feeding it what I want it to say, and then I'm just saying clean it up. Jason, as we finished out here, any tips, tricks?

It makes it easier when you're focusing on all the stuff that changes every day. It feels like I can't do anything because I start a Facebook page and then Facebook's no longer popular anymore or whatever. That's what I'd say. Get your messaging down. I know it's not very exciting, but it sure will make your efforts more effective. Yeah. And allow you to pivot as needed when channels change. Pivot as needed. Yep.

I think that also people need kind of that. We have this paper interview side where we do a ton of PR and it's all based on how big the audience is and those types of things, depending upon how much it costs. We only charge when you get in the news, when it actually airs. But on the other side of it is the adaptable side where you have a sharp publicist that's more than just someone that is pitching the media for you. They're also, they have enough understanding to talk with our other talent, SEO guy or... How do I be found in ChatGPT? That's kind of where our business has been going more towards that type of thing, where you have just someone that can smart and pivot, work with you to get your messaging down, and then try, analyze, measure what's working.

And here's what we should do next. Jason, drop some links or places they can keep up with what you guys are up to. The CEO's Guide to Marketing is on Amazon. And publicity.com, we're in the midst of a brand new changeover to a new site. So that one, I'm excited for that new site because it just simplifies how people can onboard with us and get to understand us. But publicity.com is where you find more information about us. Perfect. Publicity.com. We'll have that in the show notes. Jason, really appreciate you for coming on. Thank you. Hey, guys, you don't find us. RyanIsRight.com. We'll have the highlight clips, the show notes, and the links to Publicity.com there where you can get in touch with Jason and their team.