Why traditional SEO won't save you

Michael King

Founder, iPullRank

• Claim to fame: Michael has won Search Engine Land’s Marketer of the Year award — twice.

Lesson 1: Traditional SEO isn't enough anymore

It’s time to shape up or ship out.

AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, is “the art and science of getting visibility in AI surfaces like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.,” King told two of my colleagues last year. Sounds straightforward enough, but it’s not exactly SEO 2.0.

"Everyone is like, ‘It‘s just regular SEO — just do that, then you’ll be fine.’ And frankly, that's not enough,” King tells me.

For the less technically minded marketer, there’s not a quick fix here, but “you can audit [your website] with relatively inexpensive tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider,” King says. (I would be remiss here if I didn’t also mention HubSpot’s free AEO grader. My boss reads this thing. Hi, Ben!)

If you’re a one-person marketing department (been there), or just need a couple simple places to start, King’s got your back.

Free AEO Guide: HubSpot's Guide to AI Engine Optimization

Navigate the AI revolution with proven strategies to optimize your content for AI-powered discovery.

• How AI engines rank and choose content
• Practical templates and checklists
• AEO strategies that convert 27% of AI traffic to leads
• Real examples from HubSpot's AEO implementation

Download for Free

Lesson 2: Write paragraphs like atomic units: one idea each.

I ask King if AEO techniques have met with any friction from human editors. (He politely demurs; “not yet.”) He even gives me an example that makes this editor’s heart feel hopeful — during one webinar, he gave an example where “I literally had a paragraph that I split in half, and improved the relevance for both. I didn’t change anything — except for making it two paragraphs.”

In fact, he says, “you can be a bit more elegant now than you could before.” That’s because semantic search “can still understand what you’re saying, even if you word them differently.”

When you’re reviewing your content, King suggests looking for situations “where a paragraph is low relevance and covering multiple topics.” That’s not going to play nice with the LLMs.

Lesson 3: Microsites give smaller brands a fighting chance.

Given limited resources, it might be tempting to skip this one, but King thinks it’s worth your consideration.

"I think [microsites are] actually a bit more effective for a small business” than for large brands or franchises, he says. “But if instead you can have two sources that are very bespoke to your situation, it's going to give you more bang for your buck than trying to chase nine different channels."

So if your brand is struggling to get its message out effectively, a microsite gives you more “raffle tickets,” King’s analogy for the AEO tactic of repeating a stat or message across the web. But ultimately, he says, it’s always about the content ecosystem.

“If you‘ve got great social media presence, you’ve got great digital PR, you're able to manage UGC campaigns quite well” — you may have all the raffle tickets you need.

Lingering Questions

This Week’s Question

How do we measure real trust and influence in B2B beyond impressions, clicks, and last-touch attribution? —Jennifer Phan, Co-founder and CEO, Passionfroot

This Week’s Answer

King says: I‘d say the growth in branded search volume. So if somebody trusts your brand, they’ve learned about your brand, they‘re going to start searching for it more, or there’s going to be a general sentiment in the world that's reflected in the growth of your branded search traffic.

Next Week’s Lingering Question

King asks: Reddit is where authentic expertise and lived experience surface before they ever show up in polished content. As search and AI systems increasingly rely on community signals, how should brands participate in Reddit without collapsing trust, and what does “earning relevance” look like in a system that actively resists marketing theater?

Free AEO Guide: HubSpot's Guide to AI Engine Optimization

Navigate the AI revolution with proven strategies to optimize your content for AI-powered discovery.

• How AI engines rank and choose content
• Practical templates and checklists
• AEO strategies that convert 27% of AI traffic to leads
• Real examples from HubSpot's AEO implementation

Download for Free