Welcome to Generative Engine Optimization in the AI Era: Decoding SEO 2.0, proudly sponsored by Three Steps Digital Brand Management, a Kalicube Certified Agency.
In this episode, Guy and Gail Goole unpack 13 essential truths about the dramatic evolution of SEO in the age of AI. If you’re still optimizing for keywords and backlinks the way we did five years ago, this is your wake-up call. The rules have changed—and the search landscape is no longer just about Google’s 10 blue links.
Today, visibility in search is governed by entities, credibility signals, and AI trust frameworks. From Google’s SGE to Bing’s CoPilot to ChatGPT and Perplexity, generative engines are guiding the user journey, deciding what gets surfaced, summarized, and recommended.
We cover:
🔹 The shift from content-only SEO to a layered approach It’s no longer enough to just optimize your page. Search engines now evaluate the content, the creator, and the publisher. That means your brand, your authors, and your domain all need credibility.
🔹 Entity-based understanding is the new SEO foundation Google and AI engines rely on entities—people, places, brands, products—to assess relevance and authority. Building a trusted digital identity is essential to be included in AI-generated answers.
🔹 Keywords are dead; vocabulary and context are king We explore how AI interprets user intent, not keywords. It’s about matching the meaning behind the query using topical authority, semantic relationships, and natural language.
🔹 Goodbye E-A-T, hello N-E-E-A-T-T That’s Notability, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, and Transparency. These signals now apply across your content, your brand, and your publishing platform.
🔹 Your Brand SERP is your AI résumé We explain how your search results—especially for your name or company—are a direct reflection of how AI systems understand and value you. Want to be the answer? Start with your Brand SERP.
🔹 Visibility is now omnichannel Being findable means showing up not just on your website, but in podcasts, videos, social media, reviews, directories, and third-party sources. Your digital footprint must be consistent and corroborated.
🔹 Conversational, assistive search is the future AI tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Bing’s Copilot don’t just serve results—they deliver answers. That means your content and brand must be optimized to be quoted, not just linked.
🔹 Google isn’t your only algorithm anymore We emphasize the importance of optimizing for Bing, Perplexity, and other LLMs that power modern discovery. The future is multi-engine, multi-format, and multi-surface.
This isn’t optional. It’s not a trend. It’s the new reality of SEO in 2025.
Whether you’re a business owner, CMO, agency lead, or SEO professional, this episode is packed with practical, actionable insights to help you evolve your strategy, align with AI, and own your brand narrative in every digital environment.
Don’t just chase rankings. Earn trust. Get recommended.
🎧 Listen now to get ahead, stay visible, and thrive in the age of generative engines. Sponsored by Three Steps Digital Brand Management, implementing the Kalicube Process to give businesses clarity, credibility, and control in search and AI.
Guy and Gail Goole discuss this article by Jason Barnard
Transcript from 13 Harsh Truths of Modern SEO: How AI Has Changed the Rules, Ranking, and What It Takes to Be Found in 2025
[0:00] Gail Goole here, and you are listening to Generative Engine Optimization in the AI Era, Decoding SEO 2.0. I’m Guy GoOle. Welcome to the show proudly sponsored by 3 Steps Digital Brand Management. Now let’s dive right in and decode. Okay, so today we’re tackling something massive, Gail. It’s this huge shift, really, happening in modern SEO. We’re digging into the 13 truths of modern SEO. And, Guy, these aren’t just, you know, small tweaks. What we found is that the whole game has changed dramatically, mostly thanks to AI, right? So if you’re doing SEO or honestly, even if you just want your business to be found online, you need to understand this stuff. It’s essential now, foundational. Absolutely, Gail. So first big thing from these truths, just doing content level SEO. Well, it’s not cutting it anymore. Remember how we used to just obsess over the page itself? Oh, yeah.
[0:51] Keywords, metas. It felt simpler then, didn’t it? But now SEO is like three layers. There’s the content, sure, but also the creator of the content and the publisher, the website itself. Exactly. It’s a whole different way of thinking. Google needs to know who is saying what and where. Big signal shift. Right. And speaking of old ways, that whole focus on links based purely on domain authority. Well, our sources say that’s much less important now for pure credibility. Doesn’t mean links are dead. No, not dead, but things like brand mentions, how known entities connect to URLs, and the credibility of the actual creator and publisher. Those are weighing much heavier now. Which leads right into keywords, doesn’t it? Forget counting them, that’s out. Totally out. It’s all about what does the user really want? Using the right vocabulary, understanding context, and entities. People, places, brands, concepts, optimizing for those. AI is getting scary good at that. and that Entity Focus Scale.
[1:50] That brings us to maybe the biggest truth. Brand Bob. Google’s AI understands entities, your brand, key people, products way better now. It’s like a core understanding that can, you know, override the older signals. Yeah. Like if Google shows your brand name confidently in results, that’s powerful. If it just shows your domain, maybe it sees the site, but not quite the established brand behind it yet. It’s something experts like Jason Barnard really focus on building that entity understanding. Right. And entity optimization. It’s fundamental now, but complex. It’s not just slapping on some schema markup anymore. No, that was just a start, wasn’t it? It’s about building this whole, like, verifiable network around your entity. Relationships, attributes. Yeah. Making it so search engines can really trust who you are across the web, like a digital passport. And that trust, it connects directly to the new credibility signals. Remember, E-A-T. Expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Yeah. Well, get ready for N-E-E-A-T-T. Okay. What’s the extra N, T and the extra E? Notability, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, and Transparency. N-E-E-A-T-T. Wow. Okay. That’s a lot. And it’s not just for the content. No. That’s the kicker. It applies across all three levels. The content, the creator, and the publisher.
[3:11] So, showing real experience or being a notable expert or being transparent about how you publish those… Our ranking factors now, major ones. Okay, this really is generative engine optimization in the AI era.
[3:22] Decoding SEO 2.0. You got it. And the changes keep coming. Visibility isn’t just about blue links anymore. Or even just your website. Right, like written text. It’s becoming less of the main focus as things like video, audio, images get more priority. Makes sense. It’s how people consume info. And the ranking itself. Those 10 blue links. Less and less central. You’ve got SERP features everywhere.
[3:46] AI overviews summarizing. Well, the AI overviews, yeah. And this idea of implicit ranking where the engine figures things out behind the scenes and gives you an answer, maybe without even sending you to one specific site first. So your website is still vital, like your home base or source of truth. Exactly. But it’s not the only place people find you, or maybe not even the first place. Which means websites are less like the only hub for your brand’s visibility now. You need to be findable everywhere. Social media, review sites, Wikipedia, if relevant, directories. Your digital footprint. It’s got to be consistent and clear across multiple channels. And the big future, according to these truths, it’s conversational, assistive search. Think ChatGPT, perplexity, Bing’s AI search, Google’s overviews. People are getting answers directly from these AI tools, not just clicking links. So you need to optimize so your info, your brand, your experts get represented accurately in those synthesized answers. It’s a whole different optimization target, which brings us to the last really critical point from our deep dive. You absolutely have to look beyond just Google now. Yeah, Google’s still the giant, obviously, but AI is everywhere. You need a strategy for other major search algorithms, other AI systems.
[4:55] Think Bing. It powers a lot of this generative AI stuff. Suddenly very important. It really feels like SEO has turned a corner, Guy. The old playbook. Well, it’s outdated. You have to adapt. Mandatory. No question. For survival, really, let alone success. It is. But here’s a final thought for you listening. Okay. Optimizing for all these algorithms and channels sounds daunting. A challenge, for sure. But if you lean into it, if you embrace this new reality, it actually cracks open huge new ways to get seen, to find customers, opportunities that just didn’t exist when it was all about those 10 blue links. We dived, decoded, and deciphered SEO. Two-point solvers. Oh, thanks to our sponsor, Three Steps Digital Brand Management. And thank you for listening. See you next time for another new necessary nugget of knowledge.