The Complete SEO & AI SEO Course for 2026 (Full Beginner’s Guide) Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 In the next 60 minutes or so, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about getting your website ranking on Google and [music] showing up in AI search results, even if you're a complete beginner. [music] And at the end, I'll give you a 30-day action plan, so you know exactly what to do when this video ends. This video will be very comprehensive, so feel free to watch in multiple settings or go straight to the sections most relevant to you via the timestamps in the description.

00:29 Okay, so first we have to address the elephant in the room. AI chatbots are answering questions, AI overviews are taking over Google, and everywhere you look, someone is claiming SEO is dead, for real this time. So, if you're wondering whether SEO is still worth your time, I mean, that's a fair question, but here are the facts. Google still processes billions of searches every single day.

00:53 That number grew 20% last year, and Google sends 190 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT. Google is not shrinking, but the way people find information is changing. There are now two places your business needs to show up, traditional search and AI-powered search. This video covers both. And here's something the folks selling expensive GEO services don't want you to know.

01:21 Those AI assistants, they're built on top of traditional search infrastructure. ChatGPT uses Bing's index when it searches the web. Perplexity runs its own crawler, but still leans heavily on Bing's index underneath. Even the ones building their own indexes, like Perplexity, are crawling the same pages that already rank in traditional search. So, if your site doesn't show up in Google or Bing, there's a good chance it's invisible to AI assistants, too.

01:51 SEO is not competing with AI search, it's the foundation AI search is built on. Learning SEO means learning to show up everywhere, and by the end of this video, you'll have everything you need to do just that. Chapter one, what SEO actually is. SEO has historically stood for search engine optimization, but as of late, I'm much more inclined to Ashley Laddell's definition, search everywhere optimization.

02:20 In a sentence, SEO is getting your website to show up wherever people search for things related to your business or the solutions you provide. That's it. Everything else is details. Uh admittedly, there are a lot of details. Google search works in three steps. Crawl, index, and rank. Crawling is when Google sends automated bots to read every page on the internet, or at least the vast majority of them.

02:49 They follow links from page to page, reading everything they find in code. Indexing is the process of Google storing what those bots find in a massive library, its index. If your page isn't in the index, it can't show up in search results, simple as that. And lastly, ranking. When someone searches, Google looks through its index and picks the results it thinks are the most relevant, most trustworthy, and most useful.

03:14 The order that it puts them in, that's the ranking, and that is what we're trying to influence. Now, let me show you what a search results page actually looks like right now. At the top, you might see an AI overview. This is relatively new in Google's history, Google's AI summarizing an answer directly in the results. Below that, sponsored ads, then the organic results, the ones you can earn through SEO.

03:39 Over here, people also ask boxes, sometimes you'll see video carousels, a local map pack if the search has a location angle, or knowledge panels. Basically, we've come a long way from 10 blue links, and our SEO strategy needs to reflect that. So, how does SEO directly impact your business? Well, I think it's important to clarify, you shouldn't ultimately have an SEO goal.

04:05 You should have a business goal, more customers, more revenue, more leads. SEO is one of the most reliable ways to get there, because you're reaching people at the exact moment they're looking for what you sell. I mean, think about it, when you're on your phone, scrolling Instagram, and you see an ad, you're interrupted. You were in the middle of doing something, and someone showed you their ad.

04:27 Someone who Googles "best proposal software for agencies" is actively looking for a solution. They have a problem, they want answers. Now, SEO puts your business in front of them at that moment. Hopefully. The difference is intent, and that's what makes SEO so valuable. Now, to make this real, I'm going to look at three different businesses throughout the course of this video, a SaaS company that sells proposal software, an e-commerce brand that sells specialty coffee, and a managed cybersecurity platform that protects

04:58 small and mid-size businesses. Because, despite what you may have heard, SEO is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. The mindset, workflows, and principles are the same, but the decisions you make change completely depending on your business. I'll show you what I mean throughout the video. So, I've run dozens and dozens of SEO campaigns for clients, and before I make a single change on the website, I always ask one key question.

05:20 What are people actually searching for, and what do they want when they search it? That second part is so important that it gets its own chapter. Chapter two, mastering search intent. Before we get into keyword research, tools, or any tactics, you need to understand the single most important concept in SEO, and it's called search intent. So, every time someone types something into Google, they're looking for something specific, and your job is to figure out what that is and give it to them.

05:54 Broadly speaking, there are four types of intent. Let's look at a few example keywords. "How to train your puppy." This is informational. They want to learn something. "Best dog training classes." This is commercial. They're willing to spend money to solve their problem, but they're not quite sure what they want to buy. They're comparing options. Next, "dog training class near me sign up."

06:20 This is transactional. They're willing to spend their money, they know the broad category of the thing they want to spend their money on, and they're ready to buy. Lastly, "PetSmart dog training." This is navigational or branded intent, either one works. The sale is as good as one. They're basically just using Google as a digital Uber driver to take them to the brand's website.

06:42 So, how do you figure out search intent? It's actually super simple. You just Google your keyword, and you look at what's ranking. That's what Google thinks the intent is. Now, Google has already done the research for you. The top 10 results are Google telling you exactly what this searcher wants, and your job is to match that intent and do [music] it better than anyone else.

07:04 By the way, SERP is just an acronym for search engine results page. Every keyword has their own, and due to a variety of factors, they change quite a bit. Now, quick rule of thumb. The shorter the keyword, usually the more competitive, higher volume, and less useful it is. For example, take the keyword coffee. Over 650,000 searches in a month in the US alone.

07:28 It sounds awesome. But Google doesn't know what the heck you want. The SERP is a mess, shops, definitions, news, brands, every major site on the internet is competing for it. What do you want? What do you want? It's not that simple. >> What do you want? Now, try "best dark roast coffee beans for espresso." [music] It's a lower volume, maybe a few hundred searches a month, but man, look at that SERP.

07:57 All comparison posts and buying guides, the intent is crystal clear. The competition, it's a fraction of what coffee attracts. Now, SEOs call these long-tail keywords, longer, more specific phrases. They've got lower volume individually, but the intent is focused. The competition is very manageable. And taken together, they can send your site a respectable amount of traffic.

08:21 Now, if your site is newer, this is where you start. You build authority on the long-tail keywords, and then you work your way up to the big ones as the business requires. But, I'm getting ahead of myself, we're going to talk a lot about keyword research and prioritization later in the video. For now, I want you to do something. I want you to pause this video, or just open another tab while you're watching, and Google your main keyword, the thing that you want your customers to know you the most for, and look at the

08:50 top results. What type of content is ranking? Blog posts, product pages, tools, YouTube videos? That's the intent. Now, remember that, it'll come in handy later in the video. Now, let's talk about intent in the AI era. So, AI overviews aren't just showing up for informational queries anymore. Google's AI now summarizes results across all types of searches, including commercial and transactional.

09:18 That means even when someone is comparing products or ready to buy, Google might answer them before they click a single link. This is called zero-click marketing, and it's got consumers making entire buying decisions completely outside of your brand's ecosystem. So, your content needs to go deeper than whatever that summary covers to earn the click.

09:39 Surface-level content will not cut it anymore, and we'll talk way more about how to create content like that in the chapter on content creation and on-page optimization. So, now that you understand intent, let's move on to the lifeblood of any SEO strategy, keywords. Chapter three, finding the right keywords. So, as we've covered, a keyword is the phrase someone types into Google.

10:07 Doesn't matter how many words it is, by the way. Keyword can be one word, five words, 10 words, 20 words. In fact, I don't even really think there's a limit. I think you could probably paste a whole essay into Google. But, that's beside the point. Your job is to figure out which phrases matter for your business, and then build pages that rank for them.

10:26 But, not all keywords are created equal. I use a framework I call the keyword sweet spot. Four attributes that make a keyword worth targeting. The first is demand. Are people actually searching for this? If nobody's Googling it, ranking number one has little benefit. See, I've worked with many clients who have ideas that they feel are important to their audience, which is certainly valuable from a thought leadership perspective.

10:57 Just don't expect to get a ton of organic traffic to those topics. The second is fit. Where does the keyword sit in your funnel? Is it someone just learning about the topic or someone ready to buy? Is it relevant enough to the products or services you're offering or the audience you're reaching? Each of these can be valuable, but you need to know which one you're dealing with.

11:18 The next attribute is intent. You already understand this from the last chapter. What does the searcher actually want, and can you satisfy that want? If that's a YouTube video, which are very common appearances in the modern SERP, well, you better get your Tarantino on because you're going to need to film a YouTube video if you want to rank. Lastly, we have keyword difficulty.

11:41 Can you realistically rank for this given your site's current authority? A brand new website is not going to outrank Amazon for running shoes, but it might have a fighting chance for a less competitive keyword like best running shoes for flat feet in winter. You won't always find keywords that score highly on all four metrics. In fact, sometimes they can be unicorns, but if you do find those keywords, you should absolutely prioritize ranking for them.

12:09 So, let me show you how this works in practice with two real companies. PandaDoc sells proposal software. The keyword contract template gets approximately 300,000 searches a month. Now, nobody who's searching that is buying proposal software today, at least not likely. Conventional wisdom would say, "Skip it." But, PandaDoc consistently ranks highly for contract template.

12:34 Their template directory drives hundreds of thousands of visits every month, and here's the play. Watch this. Free template download, email capture, nurture sequence, product sign-up. That top of funnel keyword feeds their entire pipeline. Now, contract template is not a bad keyword. It's just a top of funnel keyword, and it's brilliant if you have a plan for what happens after someone lands on the page.

13:01 And by the way, if you ever need a dog breeding contract template, apparently, PandaDoc's got you covered. Now, look at Counter Culture Coffee. The keyword pour over coffee has around 34,000 searches a month. Now, does Counter Culture get a lot of immediate purchases from that keyword? Maybe. Probably not, though. Those people could be looking for pour over coffee near them or trying to understand what it is or how to do it.

13:30 Counter Culture gets this, and they don't try to target that keyword with a conversion focused page. Instead, they rank high for that keyword with a brew guide on their blog. They also rank highly for pour over coffee ratio at 10,000 searches, as well as cold brew ratio at 6,800 and coffee brewing methods at 5,200. All educational content. They became an authority in specialty coffee through tutorials, thus building trust, and the product sales followed.

14:04 >> [music] >> And the important thing to know is where each keyword sits in your funnel, and to have a strategy for that particular stage. A keyword without a conversion path is just wasted traffic. It's vanity metrics. A keyword with a conversion path could be an automated pipeline for your business. Okay, so how do we, number one, identify the terms our target customers are searching for, and number two, evaluate them against the keyword sweet spot framework?

14:31 So, I like to break up the keyword research process into three separate disciplines to keep things nice and organized. Number one, keyword ideation. Number two, keyword validation. And number three, keyword clustering. Now, there are so many ways to find keyword ideas. If I explained all of them, this video would be three hours long. So, I'm going to rapid-fire through some techniques, and you should feel free to pause or rewind the video as you try them yourself.

14:59 Now, if you already have it set up, Google Search Console is by far your single best source of keyword ideas. It shows you exactly what people are searching for to find your site straight from Google's own data. You simply cannot get more [clears throat] accurate than this. Start typing your topic into Google and watch what it suggests. Those are real searches real people are making right now.

15:25 Every people also ask box on Google is a keyword goldmine. Click one, more appear, and you can mine a dozen content ideas in minutes. Scroll to the bottom of any Google results page, and you'll find a section called people also search for. This is Google literally telling you what else people search for around your topic. You can find the subreddits where your customers hang out and read how they describe their problems.

15:50 That language is often the exact phrasing they type into Google. You can paste your sitemap URL into ChatGPT and ask it to identify content gaps. [music] It'll cross-reference your existing pages against what a site like yours should cover. You can also paste a competitor sitemap in and see what they're covering that you are not. You can ask an AI assistant, "Give me 30 questions someone would ask before buying your [music] product category."

16:18 You'll get a seed list in 15 seconds that would have taken 20 minutes to brainstorm alone. Now, Surfer also has a completely free Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer. Install it, and you'll see search volume, CPC, and related keyword ideas right inside Google every time you search. I don't leave home without it. Now, any of these methods will give you tons of ideas.

16:38 But, ideas are cheap, and they may not even be a good fit for your business, which is where step two, keyword validation, comes into play. So, keyword validation is the process of taking all these keyword ideas that we've curated, assessing their search volume, difficulty, business fit, and intent, and figuring out which to target first to best benefit your business.

17:05 If this is the first you're hearing about this process, I have very good news for you, dear reader. You have entered SEO at the perfect time. The same AI technology that people think is killing SEO has made keyword validation and clustering and research, for that matter, dramatically faster and easier. What used to take days now takes minutes. So, there are two ways to do this.

17:27 The DIY route is to connect an SEO data API to an AI coding tool and have it pull search volumes, difficulty scores, and intent classifications for you. It takes some technical setup, but it's the cheapest option if you're comfortable tinkering. Now, if you'd rather skip the setup entirely, Surfer handles keyword validation in one screen. You simply paste your keywords in, you get search volume, difficulty, and intent without touching an API.

17:57 Now, either way, once you've validated your keywords, the next step is organizing them. Because a giant spreadsheet of keywords, even validated keywords, really doesn't do you much good if they're not organized or prioritized. Now, keyword clustering, step three, is the process of taking keywords that naturally belong together, either because they're topically related or because Google regards them as meaning the same thing, and grouping them.

18:25 Surfer's keyword research automates this for your entire website. You just enter a seed topic, and it maps out every cluster you should be covering with pre-grouped keywords you can start writing about straight in the content editor. While keyword targets for Counter Culture, PandaDoc, and Huntress will likely all have very different intent ratios, the next step is the same, no matter what kind of business you're in.

18:50 Because honestly, this is where things can get very overwhelming. Speaking from experience, it's very easy to get paralyzed here. Even after clustering, we have an abundance of keyword ideas, but finite resources and finite time. So, where do we begin? Well, I've spent many a night banging my head against the keyboard asking myself this same question, and I've come out the other side with this dead simple, but proven framework.

19:21 We start at the bottom of the funnel, and we work [music] our way upward. Here's the three-step prioritization plan. Step one, money pages >> [music] >> first. Now, these are the pages that directly convert. Think product pages, service pages, pricing pages, feature [music] pages. The keywords behind them are almost always transactional or commercial.

19:44 Proposal software for agencies, buy espresso beans online, cybersecurity assessment services. Now, these pages are the foundation your entire [music] site is built on. They're what pay the bills. Without them, all the traffic in the world really doesn't matter. See, a lot of brands go wrong by starting with high-level blog posts because they see that they get a lot of search volume or maybe they're not very competitive, so they write 10 informational articles and then they wonder why nobody's buying.

20:11 It's because they neglected their money pages. There's nowhere compelling for the traffic to convert. Step two is to pick a topical cluster and to build it out. So, once your money pages exist, you don't scatter your content across 10 different topics. You pick one cluster that connects to a money page and you build the full funnel for it. So, let me be crystal clear here.

20:36 In our money page stage, we go wide. Oops, I just hit my mic. We build a foundation across all topics, but now we're narrowing in on one funnel and building that up extensively. So, let me give you an example. If our money page is Counter Culture's subscription page, which already ranks for coffee subscription at 15,000 searches a month, we'd build the funnel from bottom to top like this.

21:02 The money page is obviously the subscription page itself. That's transactional. That's what converts. Someone searching coffee subscription is ready to buy. One step up, we'd target commercial intent keywords like best coffee subscription or coffee subscription box. Comparison content where someone is weighing their options. Now, Counter Culture writes a piece showing why their subscription stands out and links it back to the subscription page.

21:29 Then, at the top of the funnel, we go educational. Counter Culture already has a coffee basic series covering brewing ratios, brewing methods, grind size, tasting notes, and single origin coffee. Every piece feeds the one below it as well as internally links to [music] other related posts forming a traffic-generating web-like powerhouse [music] we call a topic cluster.

21:56 Now step three is to repeat cluster by cluster. Finish one before starting the next. I know it's tempting. So, one of the early ways I learned to do SEO was to get all your keywords in one big list, sort them by lowest competition and highest search volume, and then plug away one by one down the list. So, for PandaDoc, for example, that might mean writing two blog posts on contract management, then a comparison page on e-signature tools, then you jump to an unrelated guide on sales forecasting.

22:29 Now, that can work fine, but what you're essentially doing is spreading yourself thin across a bunch of topical clusters, which could really prolong your ability to see results in search. Here's the thing, Google doesn't evaluate your page in isolation. See, when someone searches how to prevent ransomware attacks, Google checks whether your site also covers things like what is ransomware, signs that your network has been compromised, ransomware incident response checklist.

22:58 All of those live in the same funnel. They're the same person at different stages of the same problem. So, if your site covers that full journey, Google trusts you more on the whole subject. Now, this is what SEOs call topical authority. The more comprehensively you cover a topic cluster, the easier it becomes to rank for every keyword in that cluster, including the very competitive ones.

23:24 So, to review, the money pages come first because they're the reason that the content exists. They're the reason that the whole business exists, really. Then, you build out one cluster at a time. Okay. Now you know what to create, let's talk about how to create it. Chapter four, creating content that ranks. You've got your keywords, your clusters, and a plan for which funnel to target first.

23:50 Now you need to create content that actually ranks. But before we go pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, we need to do some groundwork. I usually tackle content creation in four phases. The first is research. What already exists? What's ranking for this keyword? And more importantly, what are the competitors missing that you could provide to make your content as valuable as possible?

24:18 Next, structure. Build an outline that matches the intent and covers the topic thoroughly. Third, we write. We draft content that combines real expertise with optimization, and lastly, we optimize. We refine based on data, not guesswork. Let's start with research. Now before you write a single word, I want you to open the top five results for your target keyword.

24:41 Read them. All of them. I know that sounds tedious, do it anyway. You're looking for four things. Number one is what topics do they cover? Those are the table stakes. You have to cover those, too. But secondly, you want to look for what they missed, cuz that's going to be your opportunity, the gap that nobody's filling. Thirdly, you want to look at the average length.

25:05 This gives you a benchmark. You don't need to match it exactly, but if every top result for this keyword is 3,000 words, a big ultimate guide, and you're writing 500, you're probably not being comprehensive enough. Also, what unique angles does anyone take? This tells you where there's room to differentiate. Now, there are ways to automate this, but honestly, if I'm teaching someone SEO, I recommend you do this manually for your first few pieces of content just to understand what it is you're actually automating.

25:35 After a couple times, you will see just how tedious this is, and honestly, this was our life doing SEO in the 2010s until Surfer came along. Now, Surfer's content editor completely automates this research. You enter your keyword and it analyzes the top ranking pages for you with topics they cover, which terms appear most often, how comprehensive the content needs to be.

26:02 It does in 60 seconds what would manually take 20 minutes or more. Once your research is done, it's time to build an outline before you write. Do not skip this step. Trust me, you will save yourself so much grief. So, you can feed research notes into Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to draft an outline structure. It usually gives me a solid starting point, or you can create a search-optimized outline straight from Surfer with just a click, saving you even more time and effort.

26:31 All right, so let's just get this out of the way now. AI can write, like actually write really well now. So, I found the most effective way to use AI in your content writing process is to let it handle the structure, the scaffolding, the basic definitions, research, and sentence flow when things start to feel a little clunky. Now, Surfer AI does this really, really well because it's already optimized against the top ranking pages for your keyword.

27:05 So, you're not starting from a blank page. You're starting from a search-informed draft. But then you add what AI can't because in a sea of AI slop, that's what's going to stand out. I'm talking about things like your experience. [music] What actually happened when you try to think. Your opinion. What you think is overrated, underrated, or just plain wrong.

27:28 Original data. Your results. Your experiments. Your case studies or your conversations with customers. Expert insights. This could be interviews, quotes, proprietary knowledge. And by the way, these don't need to be from you. Like there's nothing saying you can't source quotes from experts on podcasts or YouTube videos or books or scholarly journals.

27:53 Next, specific examples. So, real businesses, real numbers, real case studies, and real outcomes. [music] Now, when it comes to making sure your writing is both valuable to humans and optimized for robots, the content editor gives you a real-time content score from zero to 100. It's tracking whether you've covered the right topics, used the right terms, and hit the right depth for your keyword.

28:18 This includes topical coverage for both traditional search and AI search. Now, I always aim to beat the highest score on the dashboard. From what I've seen, and Surfer's own data backs this up, pages that clear that threshold tend to rank better than pages that don't. It turns the vague question of is this comprehensive enough into a number that you can actually chase.

28:41 Now, I can't overemphasize the role of a thorough human touch in SEO content. According to Ahrefs study of 14 billion web pages, over 96% get zero traffic from Google. I'm like, 96%? Where are all these pages living? The point is most content fails, not because it's terrible, but because it's the same as everything else. The bar isn't just good. The bar is at least five times better than what already exists for this specific search.

29:15 The human-added layer looks different for every business. For PandaDoc, it's customer stories, workflow screenshots, and free downloadable assets. For Counter Culture, it's roasting expertise, likely a lot of video content, which is a great idea for differentiation, by the way. Every business has unique knowledge locked in the heads of their people.

29:38 And if for some reason you don't, then find expertise. Interview subject matter experts. Find and comb through paper books and scholarly journals. Go places that AI spun content mills can't or won't go to truly differentiate yourself. That will be your SEO content moat. Now that your content exists, let's make sure Google can read it. Chapter five, on-page SEO.

30:08 Now on-page SEO is the technical stuff that you do on each individual page to help Google understand what it's about. It's time to kind of shift from our creative content writing mindset to a detail-oriented checklist mindset. I'll demonstrate this with two real pages from Huntress, their ransomware recovery guide and their managed EDR product page.

30:29 One's an educational page and the other's a money page. Same checklist, different execution. The first and most important element is your title tag. Include your target keyword, keep it under 60 characters, and make it compelling enough to click. Huntress's recovery guide has the title ransomware recovery guide for businesses. >> [music] >> The keyword is front-loaded and it tells you exactly what you're getting.

30:55 Their managed EDR page takes a different approach. >> [music] >> End point detection and response built for every business. It's still very keyword rich, but also benefit-driven because it's not just teaching, it's [music] selling. Next, your header tags. So, H1 is your page title. You should have one per page and I usually recommend it exactly mirrors the title tag.

31:17 [music] H2s are your main sections and H3s are subsections. Use your keywords naturally in these. So, Huntress's ransomware guide uses H1 for the title, then H2s for each major section like what is ransomware, first steps after a ransomware attack, and building an effective ransomware recovery strategy. Now, under those H2s, they nest H3s like why a ransomware recovery plan is non-negotiable.

31:42 Google and large language models for that matter read this hierarchy to understand the structure [music] and depth of the page. And not to mention, it also makes it a whole lot easier for human readers to skim the content and stay engaged. And I mean, that's kind of the whole point, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we are writing for other human beings.

32:02 Right? Right? Next, your URL structure. This should be short, descriptive, and include the keyword. Huntress uses cybersecurity 101/topic/ransomware recovery guide for the guide. It's clean, categorized, keyword rich. For the product page, it's Short and descriptive, it's all you need. Compare either of those to a string of random letters and numbers that some CMSs have the bad habit of outputting when you publish a page, which tells Google and the searcher absolutely nothing.

32:38 Next, your meta description. Now, this is the snippet that appears under your title in search results. 150 to 160 characters. It's not a direct ranking factor, but it can affect whether or not people click. Huntress's recovery guide uses learn how to effectively recover from ransomware attacks with our comprehensive guide. Understand the importance of a ransomware recovery strategy and essential steps to minimize impact.

33:03 It's action-oriented, includes the keyword, and tells the searcher exactly what they'll get. Write it like ad copy. Now, we get to one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO, and that is internal [music] linking. This involves adding contextual links inside the body copy of your content to other relevant pages. Remember those content clusters we talked about?

33:26 Internal links are how you connect them. Huntress's ransomware guide links to their ransomware handbook, a blog post about Cowa Locker ransomware, their cybersecurity compliance solutions page, their managed EDR product page, and their security awareness training page. Every piece of content links back to related content and to the money pages. This is how Google discovers your content and understands how your pages relate to each other.

33:54 Now, Surfer's content editor has an auto internal links feature that handles this for you. It scans your site and it inserts the right internal links automatically. I beg you, do not skip this step. It can be super tempting to just publish the page and get it out there and then move on to the next topic. But, internal linking has one of the best effort-to-value ratios of any SEO tactic.

34:20 Finally, we have image optimization. Nothing crazy here. Descriptive file names, alt text that describes what the image shows, and compressed file sizes. I really like the WebP format for this. Huntress's managed EDR page uses alt text like malicious process behavior and ransomware canaries. Those are decent alt tags, but I'd be a bit more specific.

34:43 Like you're describing the image to a person who can't see it because after all, people who use screen readers, they depend on these alt tags. Their ransomware guide, on the other hand, repeats glitch effect for most images. A missed opportunity. This goes to show that even well-optimized sites leave SEO on the table sometimes. Every image is an opportunity to tell Google what your page is about and to show up in image search.

35:09 So far, everything we've covered is within your control. Your keywords, your content, your on-page optimization. The next part isn't. And that's what makes it hard. Chapter six, link building. Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Think of them as votes of confidence. When a reputable site links to your content, Google sees that as a signal that your content is trustworthy and valuable.

35:38 Now, not all links are created equal. A link from a major industry publication carries far more weight than a link from a random web directory. Now, link building is the hardest part of SEO, full stop. It's time-consuming, it often feels like cold outreach into the void, and there are really no shortcuts that don't eventually get you penalized. I know some people may clown me for this, but uh I'm a firm believer that if you create genuinely great content, content with original data, unique insights, or practical tools,

36:06 links come more naturally than you'd think. Now, I'm not against outreach or anything like that. I'm actually a big fan of that. I'm just saying in my experience building websites and working with clients, the best links have come from simply creating something worth linking to. But, I'm not just going to leave you with that platitude. Here are some practical ways to build quality links to your site.

36:30 Tactic one is to be the source. This means creating original data, original analysis, or original resources that journalists and bloggers will cite. Counter Culture's pour-over brew guide is linked to by WikiHow, Gear Patrol, Breville, and dozens of coffee blogs because, frankly, it's the most thorough guide on the topic. Huntress's blog posts on ransomware and data breaches get cited by Google Cloud's threat intelligence team and referenced on Wikipedia.

36:59 Every business is sitting on knowledge that other people want to reference. Most people just never unearth it or publish it. Tactic two are journalist query platforms. So, here's what I want you to do. Sign up for Source of Sources. It's free. It's created by the original founder of HARO, Help A Reporter Out, if any SEOs remember that. Anyway, journalists post queries when they need experts sources for articles.

37:25 You respond with quotes and insights, and when they publish, you get a link. This is the most accessible link building tactic for beginners. You're providing genuine expertise to journalists who need sources. Takes maybe 15 minutes a day to monitor. Now, I will say this, it is a numbers game. You might submit 100 inquiries or 100 requests for a link or 100 quotes and only get one out of those.

37:49 So, keep at it and eventually you will get a hit. Tactic number three is to create linkable assets. Free tools, calculators, templates, comprehensive guides, things that become reference material for your industry. Now, if your content is the definitive resource on a topic, people link to it because it makes their content better. And thanks to tools like Claude Code and Codex, it's never been easier for non-technical marketers like me to vibe code real, valuable browser-based tools.

38:24 For a recent Surfer video, I created a fictional company called StockPath and vibe coded an inventory calculator using Claude Code. It took me 10 minutes and I have nearly zero coding experience. But, tools like these are massive backlink magnets. Look at Counter Culture. They already rank number one for pour-over coffee ratio and cold brew ratio with blog guides.

38:48 But, coffee-to-water ratio calculator gets 500 searches a month at a keyword difficulty of eight. I mean, a simple interactive calculator could capture that traffic and earn links from every coffee blog that currently references their ratio guides. Counter Culture, you know where to find me. Actually, no. Don't find me. I'm busy enough. If you're just starting out, I don't want you to obsess over link building yet.

39:14 I want you to focus on creating 10 to 15 great pieces of content first, then start with tactic two, journalist queries, because um it's free and you can do it in 15 minutes a day. Now, links will compound over time. Your job right now is to build something worth linking to. Chapter seven, technical SEO. Now, technical SEO sounds intimidating and it can be in some cases.

39:44 For large enterprise sites, it can genuinely become a mess. But, if you're running a small to medium business on Webflow or WordPress or Shopify or even a custom CMS, you're probably 90% of the way there already. Now, I could give you a long list of all the technical things that you need to do, but I'm just going to save both of us a lot of time. I want you to download Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

40:09 It's free for up to 500 URLs. You point it at your site, it crawls every page, and it hands you a prioritized list of technical issues, broken links, missing title tags, duplicate content, redirect chains, images without alt text. Instead of manually checking each page, Screaming Frog does the audit for you in minutes, tells you what to fix, and how to fix it.

40:35 One more thing, if you have a physical location, like a store and office, a restaurant, there's a whole extra dimension called local SEO. That's a huge topic that I can't get into in this video, but I will say this, if that's you, the most important thing that you can do is claim your Google Business Profile, fill out every field, and get as many reviews as possible, as well as respond to every review.

40:59 That alone can put you in the map results when people search your category near me. Maybe an idea for a future video. The bottom line is if you're just getting started, you probably don't need to go down a technical SEO rabbit hole. The technical stuff definitely matters, but it's not what's holding most beginners back. What's holding them back is they simply haven't published anything yet.

41:23 Okay, everything I've taught you so far, that's SEO as it's existed for 20 years. What I'm about to show you is what's changed. Chapter 6, AI search, the new frontier. Google alone processes over 5 trillion searches a year, but there's a second search engine now. And no, I'm sorry, Bing. It's not you. I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry, Bing. Actually, there are several new search engines, and none of them are Bing.

41:57 ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude, Grok, Google AI mode, and who knows whatever else is coming next. Maybe Bing will release an AI and then I'll eat my words. So, as I was editing, I remembered that technically Copilot is owned by Microsoft, which is also part of Bing. But the fact that I didn't even remember that tells you everything you need to know about Bing's position in the marketplace.

42:23 Seriously, Bing, I'm sorry. I was rooting for you, man. People are asking AI assistants for recommendations, like what's the best CRM for small businesses or recommend a project management tool. What's the best way to learn SEO? And these AI assistants are answering. They're having a conversation. They're recommending specific brands and products and websites.

42:44 >> [music] >> And if your business isn't showing up in those answers, you're invisible in an explosive new discovery channel. Watch this. I'll ask ChatGPT, what's the best proposal software for agencies? There's PandaDoc. Best specialty coffee beans? There's Counter Culture. What companies can help me protect my network from ransomware? >> [music] >> There's Huntress.

43:04 Pause this video and try this yourself. Open a fresh ChatGPT window and ask a question your target audience might ask during their buying journey. Something that's likely to trigger a brand name, and make sure you're in an incognito browser, cuz ChatGPT can be a little sneaky about recognizing your preferences and feeding you what it thinks you want to hear.

43:25 Now, whatever you see there, that is your AI competition. Now, as you've likely experienced in your personal life, AI assistants don't present information like Google, like a hierarchical buffet of choices. Just about all AI assistants are structured to be more conversational. They synthesize information from across the web, and they generate an answer.

43:44 They cite sources, but they choose which sources to cite based on authority, >> [music] >> relevance, and how clearly your content answers the question. Now, here's the good news. The same things that make you rank well in Google, authoritative content, clear structure, schema markup, being cited by other sites, also help your AI visibility. Good SEO [music] is the foundation for both.

44:08 Now, here's a problem most people don't realize they have. Google Search Console cannot see traffic from ChatGPT or [music] Perplexity. If someone finds your site through an AI assistant, Search Console doesn't register the visit. And frankly, right now, nobody [music] has access to what people are actually typing into AI assistants. That data lives inside OpenAI and Perplexity, and they're certainly not sharing it.

44:33 So, you can't really track AI the same way you would track Google searches. What you can do is monitor whether your brand shows up when those AI assistants answer questions in your space. Surfer's AI tracker does this. It runs queries across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and tracks which brands get recommended, how that shifts over time, and where your competitors are showing up and you're not.

45:01 It won't tell you how many people found you through AI, but it will tell you whether you're visible in those channels at all. So, what can you actually do to show up in AI search? If you've been paying attention, you might already see where this is going. First, create comprehensive authoritative content with clear subheadings and direct answers to specific questions.

45:25 Large language models pull from content they can parse easily, and that's exactly what we built in chapter four. Well-structured content with real expertise isn't just good for Google, it's what AI assistants site. Surfer's Content Editor now includes an AI search score alongside your regular content score, so you can see whether your content has the depth and structure that AI assistants look for when deciding what to site.

45:50 Next, build topical authority through clusters. When your site covers a topic from every angle, the definition, the how-to, the comparison, the deep dive, AI models are more likely to recognize your brand as an authority on the subject. That's the cluster strategy from chapter three. Third, earn citations from other authoritative sources. AI models weight sources that other trusted sites reference.

46:17 Every backlink from a reputable site signals to AI systems that your content is worth citing. AI assistants especially favor best-of roundup articles, so getting your brand placed in those or better yet, writing them yourself, increases your chances of getting surfaced in AI queries. Here's how to find those opportunities. Surfer has a mention gap report that shows you which queries your competitors get cited in, but you don't.

46:44 Sort by highest mentions, filter for the gaps, and there's your outreach list. The specific queries and articles where you need to earn visibility. Combine that with the outreach basics from chapter six, and you've got a prioritized list of citations to go earn. Check your AI visibility regularly, manually or with a tool like Surfer's AI tracker. AI recommendations shift dramatically over time.

47:10 The brands that track it will adapt. The ones that don't will wonder why their competitors keep showing up and they don't. If you haven't caught on yet, all of these things are basically just doing good SEO. AI search optimization isn't a separate discipline. It's what happens when you do the fundamentals well and pay attention to where the channels are heading.

47:33 Okay. So, you just sat through a lot of SEO strategy. That alone puts you ahead of the people who skimmed a blog post and called it a day. But knowing isn't the same as doing. So, let's turn this into action. This is going to be a rapid-fire 30-day plan. Here we go. Week one, foundation. Set up Google Search Console. It's free and it's essential. Set up Surfer or choose your tools and do some keyword research.

47:59 Find 10 to 15 target keywords using the keyword sweet spot framework. Analyze search intent for your top five keywords. Use the 30-second intent test. Identify your money pages. Which pages on your site directly convert visitors into customers? Do they exist yet? Week two, your most important money page. Write and publish your single most important money page or optimize an existing one.

48:25 Follow the content creation blueprint we talked about in this video. Research, structure, write, and optimize. Apply the on-page checklist. Title, meta, headers, internal links, and images. This is the page that converts. Everything else you build will link back to this page. Additional money pages are an ongoing priority, not a one-week sprint. Week three, your first funnel.

48:50 Pick one topical cluster connected to your money page. Publish a mid-funnel or top-of-funnel piece that supports it. Internally link it to your money page and other related pages. If you already have content on your site, don't just create new pages. Sometimes updating a page that's already ranking on page two or three is faster than writing it from scratch.

49:09 Now we're in week four, promote and monitor. Start responding to journalist queries on source-of-sources or featured.com, 15 minutes a day. Check your AI visibility, either manually or with Surfer's AI tracker. Review Google Search Console for early signals. Here's what you're looking for. Impressions rising, even if clicks aren't yet. New keywords appearing.

49:32 Position trending from page five to page three, say. Next, plan your next cluster, not your next random topic. Remember, SEO is a long game. You probably won't see results in 30 days, but after 30 days, you'll have the foundation, the right keywords, optimized content, and a system for creating more. That's further than 95% of businesses just spraying and praying with AI slop content ever get.

49:59 So, that is SEO in the AI era. Find what people search for, create the best content for that search, earn trust. The fundamentals haven't changed in 20 years. What's changed is how the same work now makes you visible in Google, in AI overviews, in ChatGPT, and in perplexity. I said it at the beginning, and I'll say it again. SEO is not competing with AI search.

50:27 It's the foundation AI search is built on. If this was useful, subscribe. And if you want to try Surfer, the link is in the description. You can start with the free keyword Surfer extension and go from there. Thanks for watching, and happy ranking.