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Most of the AI search optimization stuff your agency is selling you doesn't actually work.
llms.txt files, schema for LLMs, "GEO" packages, AEO audits.
None of these have documented proof they move the needle.
The industry blew up in 2024 with a new acronym every quarter.
Each one packaged as a new discipline with its own retainer and certification, just ask any of them for a real case study and watch them dodge.
What's actually getting brands cited in LLMs is the same boring work that's always worked.
Clean SEO, content that answers real questions, reviews, earned media in publications AI tools trust, and being a business people genuinely want to recommend.
That's the playbook. The fancy words are mostly non sense.
If you're paying for "AI optimization" as a separate retainer and your agency can't show you a real outcome, you're paying for marketing that hasn't been proven to work.
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Client Red flags, AI Edition
🚩 Comes with a full brief made entirely of AI-generated designs.
🚩 Wants a custom brand identity, but only if it looks exactly like the AI images they generated.
🚩 Runs every concept that you created (the professional designer) through AI for "design feedback."
Any AI-related red flags you'd add to the list?
I started SEO when keyword stuffing was a legitimate strategy.
I survived Panda. Penguin. Helpful Content. Every update that made half the industry panic and quit.
Nothing has changed how I work the way Claude just did.
I am a Technical SEO specialist. The bottleneck was never my knowledge — it was always time.
Claude removes that bottleneck.
Crawl audit summaries. Schema markup. Client-friendly explanations of complex technical issues. Content architecture maps. What used to take me half a day now takes 15 minutes.
But let me be honest
Claude does not have 20 years of pattern recognition. It cannot look at a site and feel what is wrong before the data confirms it.
That part is still mine.
AI is not replacing SEO. It is separating the experts from the order takers.
Which one are you?
Amazing journey so far
How do you figure out AI when AI hasn’t figured itself out yet?
I was with a potential client this week.
They had ChatGPT and Claude open.
And I’ll be honest, this was a terrible idea.
Because who knows what AI is going to say?
It might get it right.
It might say something completely off the wall.
It might decide a courier company in Kansas City is actually a bicycle shop in Toledo.
That’s kind of the point.
I had them ask one question about a company I already work with:
Who is this company in Kansas City?
Both AIs came back with our exact words.
Word for word.
That’s GEO.
Then I had them ask the harder one, the one that is an even worse idea:
Who is the best in this category in Kansas City?
No name. No hint.
My client came up first (yep, did a little dance in my head).
That’s Pick Rate.
Not just known. Picked.
And honestly, that’s still a little wild.
Because AI can be dead on one minute and completely off in the weeds the next.
The honest answer is simpler than that:
You can’t fully figure out AI right now, because it hasn’t fully figured itself out.
It changes fast.
We’re all studying something while it’s still deciding what it is.
That’s why I keep digging into the actual research and the actual server data, not just the hype. Many late nights deep diving Perplexity for reputable and unbiased data and stats.
And the weird part is, the best independent research right now says the files we use for this barely get read by AI.
I believe that research. Way too many reputable companies and incredibly smart people saying similar things to discount it.
But then I watch two of the biggest AIs on earth do the exact thing that research says shouldn’t happen because we believe it does read our files in real time, not cached data.
So I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’ve cracked it.
Nobody has.
AI changes too fast for anybody to act like they’ve got it all figured out.
So I just try to stay honest about what I’m seeing and learn from it.
Clear gets you read.
Backed up gets you picked.
That’s the part I trust.
The rest I keep asking why.
My Substack link in the comments.
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