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Welcome to the Digital Marketing

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Podcast, brought to you by

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Target internet.com. My name

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is Kieran Rogers. I'm Louise

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Crossley. And I'm Daniel Oles. And

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today we are discussing, is E.O.

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Dead, the 2025 edition. You

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I was trying to track back how

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long I've been doing is SCO Dead

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podcasts and presentations and it goes back

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at least a decade or maybe even

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longer than that I think. It's a good

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gig. It's a good gig. It's the gig

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that keeps on paying right? Now people may

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be quite cynical of this but the reason

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being is I've just started teaching my

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MSC program at Imperial College again.

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So hello to my MSC students

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or my digital acting students and

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there's 330 of them. Okay, thank

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you. Thank you very much for that.

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High energy levels today. Yeah, yeah,

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beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. And

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what they keep coming up and

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asking, we keep talking about SEO,

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but then we keep talking about generative

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AI and generative search. And they

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go, surely, I'm looking at careers,

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SEO would be a bad direction to

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go in, because it's going to disappear

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and it's going to change. Now, before

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we get into that, I would like

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to make Kiren and sick in his

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mouth a little, It is SEO. Now

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that might confuse you a bit and

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this is going to go in circles

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this podcast with it. It's search everywhere

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optimization. Oh for crying out loud. Okay

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so this was on a Neil Patel

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blog. I think he did coin the

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phrase but search everywhere optimization which is

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very valid but you're not happy about

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this are you? No but it's not

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big and it's not clever. Honestly I'm

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just I'm over it. It's like... Web

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4.0. Well this this is what I

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wanted to get to this is the

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full circle. I mean it is different

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but actually the concept is still still

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still the same. So big news everybody

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search engines apparently aren't where you

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get all these traffic from anymore

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like don't quite believe that yeah hasn't

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quite happened as I've seen it yet?

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Well interestingly if something like 80% of

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all web traffic is still coming from

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search engines but the reality is we're

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not spending 80% of our time in

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the search engines so this is a

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this is a really important point so

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it is completely valid but what I

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would say is that we are spending

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our time in social media we spend

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our website and apps but Search is

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still coming from search engines. That is

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shifting. We are, the second biggest search

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engine is Instagram now, where it was

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YouTube for a long time. So we

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are searching in social media. And I

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think this is, this is the point.

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We did an episode previously where we

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said search engine optimization, generative engine optimization,

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you know, is a top of chat

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activity, answer engine optimization, which was really

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about initially about voice assistance and all

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those kind of things as well. Search,

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generative experience, which is the results within,

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within, within, within Google. The reality is

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we are searching in more and more

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places, which is fine. Does that mean

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SEO is dead? No. I was asked

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the question by students, Roger, that was

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really interesting, and saying, well, with SGE,

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with the AI results in Google itself,

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search gym, to experience, they may call

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the money from paid search. And if

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everyone's getting their answers from those AI

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answers, are they going to stop making

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any money? And does that mean that

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they've to change things? And I think

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it's very valid to say if we

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were getting our answers from those AI

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answers in Google, we would stop clicking

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on the ads. But you could be

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absolutely sure, bearing in mind that Google

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makes 80% of its profit from paid

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search ads still, if they find it's

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working really effectively, they're not just going

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to stop there. They'll go, well, would

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just stop selling ads then if this

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is working really effectively? So I think

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you've got to see how Google evolve

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with this and what they do differently.

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So search engine optimization itself will change

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within Google, which will start to have

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elements of generative engine optimization baked into

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it because... you're getting both of those

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things from the same place. Do you

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know what? I found a flashback to

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one of the first people we interviewed

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on the podcast. Do you remember Heather

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Lutz? Yes I do actually. Findability expert.

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Yeah. And she argued actually it was

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all about findability. Right. And this was

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what was about. Back in 2012. So

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sorry Neil, but Heather. God bless her.

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You got there first and you. Heather

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and it still listens I think. If

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you're listing how the big shout out,

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big whoop, whoop! Another whoop, multi-woop today.

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So my key thing with this is

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like, okay, search engine optimization has evolved

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and has changed significantly over the years.

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It's got more and more advanced because

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Google became more and more complex over

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a period of time. So we kind

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of evolved. And every time it got

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really complex, we said, well, is it

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dead because now they're so good at

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understanding user signals. We don't even need

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to think about it anymore. don't need

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to think about it anywhere, so we

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need to think about it everywhere, it's

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worth it. The thing is, I quite

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like this kind of way of looking

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at it, because actually it's all about

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findability. And of course, it doesn't matter

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what platforms come along, and actually it

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always has been. Do you know what,

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I'm not so subtle that people aren't

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finding answers on search engines in large

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enough numbers to make SCO be a

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dead thing. I think a far bigger

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problem, kind of the elephant in the

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room, is AI... like scraped results. I

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mean you don't need to visit websites

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that are giving all the answers in

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the first place. Like search and energy

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of experience is kind of the same

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thing. Yeah, it is, it is. But

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you know the search engines using AI

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to just give you the answers, see

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down, to visit someone's website to read

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their blog is a much bigger kind

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of slice of pie. What I would

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argue though is that that traffic never

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converted anyway, because people just came, they

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viewed your blog or your web page,

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they got the answer and they disappeared

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off again. It's just shifting your focus

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isn't it because like you say with

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SGA you want to focus your content

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so that you're going to be the

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website that featured in those snippets and

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it's going to be your website that

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Google pulls that data from and then

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people will go find out more. It's

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it's about thinking about your customer thinking

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about your audience thinking about well not

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back to this pest guilt for you

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again. Not really changed is it that's

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the thing we can give it all

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sorts of fancy names like GEO and

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SGO and blah blah blah but it

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actually it's just about being found and

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it's traditional marketing has always done this

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done it for hundreds of hundreds of

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years at work out what your audience

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have got their eyebals on. make it

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really easy for you to pop out

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of them. Well, well, well, on that

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exact note, I have come up with

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a new three-letter acronym. You're pleased to

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hear here. Joy! Deep Joy! Come on,

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hit me with it. Let on me.

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Well, well, this new model, so we've

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got, you know, searches in search engines.

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We've got generative engine AI searches. We've

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got social optimization, where we're optimising our

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social media content. we've got media optimization

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where we're optimizing our video content and

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our podcast content to make it discoverable

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and we've also got voice assistant discoverability

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which to be honest will just be

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AI stuff because it's just going to

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be the AIs with a voice on

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top of it like chat GTT already

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is. So what we're really talking about

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is talking about the user journey and

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optimizing throughout the user journey. So on

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that note what we're going to start

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calling it. is search journey optimization SJO,

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but, but, this search journey is basically

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across a whole number of different engines,

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like a search engine and a generative

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engine and maybe a social engine. So

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really, we could call it search engine

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optimization. There you go. So yeah, so

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search journey optimization is now, you know,

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simpler to remember as SEO, but remember

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you heard it here first, SEO has

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become SJO, which is in fact SEO,

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so I'm being kind of slightly facetious.

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I think the problem is, right? we're

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kind of proving this very short but

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to the point podcast is that SEO

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has always evolved it will always evolve

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now we can get really specific and

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say well it's not a search engine

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it's a social media platform or it's

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a generative AI tool yeah okay but

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really what we're doing is focusing on

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discoverability throughout the user journey call it

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what you will there will be agency

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spinning off that specializing these different things

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and so on but it just comes

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down to who's your target audience what's

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their journey are you making yourself discoverable

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at each of those different stages. I

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am going to do a diagram and

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a guide to SJO and I'm going

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to see if I can make this

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take off. I'm going to get t-shirts.

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There'll be agencies out there fighting fighting

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for the glory of the UK's number

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one SJO agency. I think that's it.

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I want someone to start an agency

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that talks about SJO and then just

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refer back to this podcast and say

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it's nonsense. It's nonsense. We started a

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whole whole industry by accident by trying

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to spoof people. S-J-O. So there you

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go. I think it's catchy. It's catchy.

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It's catchy. It's catchet and S-O, the

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new S-O. Yeah. But yeah. So S-O

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is dead long of S-O. That's a

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real quick one from us at the

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Digital Marketing Podcast. We have got some

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live updates and deep drive master classes

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on this in a more serious note

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coming up as well, but don't be

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misled by all these new acronyms. just

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go back to basics. And thank you

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for listening to the Digital Marketing Podcast

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and we'll speak to you again very

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very soon. For more episodes, resources, to

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leave a review or to get in

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contact, go to target internet.com/podcast.