From SEO to AEO: Why Your Business Needs an AI Growth Architect

From Thomas Guides to AI: The Shift to Answer Engine Optimization

Episode Summary:

Just as GPS replaced the Thomas Guide, Artificial Intelligence is replacing traditional Search Engine Optimization. In this episode, Connor with Honor explains why businesses must pivot to "Answer Engine Optimization" (AEO) to stay visible in the age of AI.

Full Show Notes:

If you were around before 2007, you likely remember the Thomas Guide—that thick, county-organized book of maps sold at office supply stores and Costco (or Price Club)1. Just as technology evolved from those paper maps to GPS, the digital landscape is currently undergoing a massive shift from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Artificial Intelligence Optimization2.

In this episode, Connor with Honor (the AI Growth Architect) breaks down why the old methods of "blue link" searching are fading and how Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming the new gatekeepers of information3.

Key Topics Covered:

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• The Evolution of Search: Why relying on old SEO tactics is like using a paper map in a GPS world4.
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• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): The transition to a "Question and Answer" format where content must directly solve user problems—whether it’s about real estate inspections, plumbing, or roofing—to be picked up by AI5.
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• The AI Landscape: Navigating the different models available today, including ChatGPT (OpenAI), Grok (xAI), Meta, Claude (Anthropic), Copilot (Microsoft), and Gemini (Google)6.
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• The "Playbook" Warning: A look at how AI systems know your psychological "playbook," how they are aligned (often with a Silicon Valley bias), and why you must be vigilant to avoid being distracted or influenced by them7.
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• Business Positioning: How to audit your business to ensure you are the best resource found online when clients ask AI for help8.
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Resources & Links:

📘 Read the Book:

For a complete blueprint on navigating this shift, check out Connor's book, AI Growth Architect.

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• Amazon Link: AI Growth Architect 9
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🤖 Agency & Consulting:

Connor with Honor operates Santa Clarita Artificial Intelligence. His agency, Honor Elevate, helps businesses build agentic systems and optimize for the AI era10.

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• Agency Website:

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Transcript

0:00

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog if you were around before 2,007 you probably remember the Thomas Guide the Thomas Guide was a very very thick book and they were organized by county a lot of the places people bought them of course were the uh the big stores that sold all of the office supplies also Costco carried them at that time probably before your time maybe it was called Price Club but you could go and you could buy this really thick book and it would have maps of all of the streets in Los Angeles County Orange County and so on so you could pick these up and it was uh it was quite a feat I remember on the police department when I first started we didn't use Thomas Guides I take that back some officers some training officers use Thomas Guides but as a brand new boot you were required to use what was called an RD map but both those types of mapping systems have really changed in with the advancement of technology now we have GPS now I believe police probably still use the old way as a backup but they do have a primary a better source which is the technology to get them from point a to point B they get a hot call code 3 call they're rolling with lights and Siren the reason why I bring this up is because with the AI architecture blueprint the thing that I wrote a book about talking about how we've just transitioned from the world of SEO or search engine optimization to artificial intelligence optimization is going to change things the way that people publish content it should change things the way you should be publishing content if you're still doing it the old way and maybe you outsource this a lot of the outsource vendors out there the people that are putting together content for various businesses they're not ascribing to the new methods that need to be in play and what I talk about in my book is getting into not just prompting prompting is important the way that you would ask an artificial intelligence engine to to do something or to produce some kind of a content or to maybe even ask answer a question giving it a role a specific title they might be doing that but it's not so much the prompting as it is the actual response that you want to get out of it so part of the prompting is going to include what the role is going to be but in addition with that you're going to want to develop how you want the response to be if you want it to be a particular way maybe you are just only interested in search engine optimization which is the old search query that basically gives you several different responses or answers but it really doesn't lay out one or even explain any of them it just gives you the top results as how they're ranked by these different search engines Google of course being one of the most famous moving from Google though into the new AI world you have chat GPT you have which is owned by open AI you have grok which is the Elon Musk brand or the Xai brand you have meta of course Zuckerberg with his Facebook open AI is Sam Altman you have anthropic you have which is the Claude models you also have um uh the Microsoft one copilot you have that one as well don't use that one very much and then of course Google yes they have their own that would be Gemini so these are different large language models that have been put together they've been programmed they've been taught and they've been educated to be able to give particular types of responses now in that education they have particular alignments a lot of people joke that this is really very much The Bay Area kind of Silicon Valley a type of alignment when you are in other countries looking at it to us maybe cause I'm in Los Angeles here in California maybe it doesn't shock me at some of the responses it gives it seems kind of I'm part of that playbook but when you go to other countries and they have a different mentality a different operating platform when they're asking a questions you know it's not the same at some point more than likely most governments are gonna have their own AI that the citizens are gonna potentially be required to use right now it seems to be a little bit of a free for all where you can kind of depending on what kind of infrastructure your country happens to have you might not be able to get access to even this video because maybe it doesn't align with whatever the propaganda from your government they're trying to establish having said that though when you get into these large language models and you start to interact with them and that's why I wrote the book there are certain things that are going to be required now when you're wanting the large language model to give your your business your real estate business your local business whatever it is as a result when you're talking when somebody's asking the question you know can you tell me a good real estate agent to use can you tell me a good plumber my pipe broke can you tell me this can you tell me that those responses are no longer going to be so much dialed in with search engine optimization techniques which would be just a lot of backlinks and hyperlinks they're going to be more in a Q&A type response question and answer you want to give answers to questions that people have so for your particular business as I put in the book maybe as a real estate agent for example people have questions about how to buy real estate how to get pre approved for real estate what does that mean what are those steps necessary to go through a real estate process and keep safe what's the inspection process look like if you have a pool should you use the same inspector that you use for the residence for the pool how do you vet to make sure that they're not just trying to get an extra few hundred dollars from you or should you actually hire a different inspector what about the roof what are the things you look at the property what if the neighbor has a very large tree in their backyard talking about neighbors should you go meet the neighbors when should you do that should you wait till you close escrow to go door knock the neighbors and see what they're like and kind of get a feel for the neighborhood I mean you're gonna be there a few years potentially 5 what is it 4.7 4.9 years on average first residence that's probably changed now those are a little bit old numbers but at least you're gonna be there for a few and that being the case when should you do that kind of neighbor meeting thing people have questions about real estate people have questions about plumbing about roofing about you know how you do hair if you happen to be a beautician or have a salon they have questions so in order to be the best resource for them and to be found online when people are using large language models cause now they're using those to search right it it used to be the Google but now you have chat GPT that's dug into Chrome if you wanna activate that whenever you type in a question or a query uh you're gonna get the response from AI not so much Google and even on Google dot com they have their Gemini overlay which is their large language model so it's gonna be giving results also so when you're putting content when you're just doing a very simple blog post a Facebook post some kind of an update you wanna make sure that in that post itself you're answering a question at least one but the content is really about answering questions serving up the best information for people and of course whenever you put any kind of content online as I referenced in the book you wanna make sure that you are making a link to some kind of page where somebody can give you their information of course there's gonna be more information there maybe you're gonna be solving a problem maybe you've given some kind of a promise I I'm going to give you this thing for free I'm gonna do I I do a a basically an AI look at their business I'll go through and their audit any particular business in my business and I will go in there and I'll look and find out where their position and how we can best improve that so that's the offering on my linked to page but also on there I have an informational page that talks about what the audit consists of it's free of course we get into that and then what I'm gonna require for them to be able to do the most complete and best audit possible and then I give them the feedback and usually that audit involves some kind of a call that we have back and forth because I need to look where they are online but in order to do that it's much easier to do it when they're on the other end whether it's them their HR manager they're advertising a marketing arm whoever that may be but they're with me on the phone and we're we're on zoom on the phone we're on zoom and we're going back and forth and I'm looking for the different tenants that are going to be required or at least need to be built out to be able to put them much better position in the AI search space that being said when you start to produce content you want to tell AI that you need to have it coordinating with answer engine optimization AEO in some spaces when that first term first started to be used more and more it was artificial intelligence engine optimization AI EO sounds like we're doing the vowel song AI E I o is there even a song and I think maybe I'm thinking um what's that uh with a oink oink here and oink oink there alright we're moving on after this once you haven't produced the content there's gonna be certain characteristics that each post or each blog post or each Facebook update is gonna have to consist of and you might as well get used to it now cause you doing it yourself is fine but businesses are gonna be incorporating AI strategies using AI to help them create content they're gonna be climbing on the very top of everything so you wanna start using it and that reminds me in the book as well something else that's important is people often wonder where am I gonna start what should I be doing how can I best position my business and my you know whatever I'm operating how can I best position that to be those results and the artificial intelligence results and the search engines the artificial intelligence uh response engines I say that you need to learn the content you need to understand the different AI systems out there if you want to make a picture where would you go do that how would you do it would you use Nano Banana and Gemini would you use Openai's model would you go to co pilot you know would you use Anthropic's Claude what would be the best system to do that now at some point there's gonna be some general system but the thing we have to remind ourselves of is you know what's the general system about what do they want from us do they just wanna be great and wonderful and just give us this fantastic opportunity to use to add you know 30 or 50 IQ points to ourselves and use their use their systems you know for $20 a month is that enough or is there gonna be some advertising and marketing component where over time and again AI is very convincing it's got our entire playbook so that's something else I get into be wary because it knows all about you it knows the best way to sell to you it knows the best way to advertise and market to you and it knows the best way to influence you if you have kids watch out if you yourself are working with AI and you're even on the social media platforms it's all controlled it's all published a majority of it by artificial intelligence and just like when you get caught up in your stream on your phone your on your video here watching YouTube or whatever it may be you just stick and hours go by and you still have done nothing productive watch out for yourselves be good to each other if you wanna get the book I'll link to it below you can search it on Amazon AI growth architect I'm here I'm Karnal with honor please let me know if I can help you of course you can get to my agency at Santa Clarita Artificial intelligence dot com my agency is known as Honor Elevate and of course that's dot com be well we'll see you in the next one thanks for watching