Latest / Orthodontic Products Podcast / Is Your Website Ready for ChatGPT, Siri, and Google’s AI Overviews? Understanding AEO and GEO
Transcript
- Alison Werner (00:05) Hello and welcome to the Orthodontic Products podcast. I'm your host, Alison Werner. Search habits are shifting. Patients are asking full questions, often to AI tools like Siri, ChatGPT, and Google's new AI search. In this episode, we explore answer engine optimization and what orthodontic practices need to do to stay visible in this new search landscape. Our guest is Jeff Slater. He is the VP of Operations at Kaleidoscope, an orthodontic digital marketing company. He recently wrote an article for our July - August issue on this. topic and so we wanted to go more in depth. In this interview he's going to break down how AEO differs from traditional SEO, what patients are really searching for, and how orthodontists can update their websites to meet the moment. Jeff, thank you for joining me. It's great to have you. Jeff Slater (00:49) Yeah, absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Alison Werner (00:52) So let's start with the basics. And these are the basics even for me, because I learned a lot reading your article. But what exactly is Answer Engine Optimization, AEO? And how is it different from traditional SEO orthodontic practices are used to? Jeff Slater (01:08) Yeah, I think the biggest thing to take away for AEO is it's the AI overviews that we're seeing on Google search. So when you go to Google and type in a question, you've probably seen this in your own experience, you get that snippet right at the top that says AI overview, and it's basically a paragraph answer to your question, and that shows up above. the traditional search results, right? Where we're used to seeing Google Maps and a list of website results, which we call organic. So, AEO or answer engine optimization is really the practice of optimizing your content to show up in those AI overviews. Alison Werner (01:46) So we're seeing patients turn to tools like Siri, Alexa and ChatGPT when they're looking for orthodontic care. So not just the Google search that we're used to. How is that shifting search? How is that shift in search behavior affecting how practices should structure their websites? Jeff Slater (02:03) Yeah, think, you one thing to remember is AEO, or I'll throw another acronym at you, GEO, which is Generative Engine Optimization. They're really subsets of what we think of as traditional SEO. So search engine optimization, more of a broad term, and we're used to search engine optimization thinking about backlinks and keywords and all those types of things. Alison Werner (02:12) huh. Jeff Slater (02:27) So where the answer engine optimization comes in and then the generative engine optimization is just an extension of traditional SEO and structuring your content so that it ranks both in traditional forms of search that we've been working on for the last 10, 15 years. And now as AI comes to the forefront and has more of an impact on these results, structuring your content also in a kind of a question and answer format, we're really trying to optimize it so that these artificial intelligence programs Alison Werner (02:34) Mm-hmm. Jeff Slater (02:57) are gonna pick up your data. One way I would present it to your audience is AEO, or answer engine optimization, mostly deals with the AI overviews on Google. And then when we talk about ChatGPT or BARD, Gemini, Perplexity, Google also has SGE, which is their search generative experience. That all falls under GEO, generative engine optimization. So ChatGPT Alison Werner (03:07) Okay. Okay. Jeff Slater (03:24) is under GEO, if that part makes sense. That's how I've been remembering it. This is all very new, right? So it's kind of, we're learning this as we go, but AEO is for AI overviews, GEO is for ChatGPT and those other language learning models that people are starting to use more and more. Alison Werner (03:24) Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay, the ones where you're having like a conversation with the tool. ⁓ Jeff Slater (03:46) Yes, exactly. Alison Werner (03:47) Okay. So does that, because I'm learning to, does that, is there a difference then in how you approach those two? Or is it kind of the same approach that you're going to go with AEO Jeff Slater (04:01) There's definitely similarities. Now the way with the AI overviews is kind of just you test it, right? You just do the searches in your area, see what shows up. What we're even doing is a little bit of reverse engineering. So if you're asking a question to Google and you're looking at that AI overview, if you're not there, look at the practices or the competitors who are there and what does that snippet say? And then can you locate that snippet on their website and see how they've got it formatted, how they've got it presented, where is it located on their website? We're still in the very early stages so there's a lot of testing going on and one of the best ways to test for this is find the results that have already achieved this and then reverse engineer from there based on what they've got in their setup. Alison Werner (04:45) Oh, OK. That's smart. OK, so in the article you wrote for our July August issue, you we talked about this a little bit, but you mentioned that patients are asking those full questions now instead of typing short keywords. what type of questions should you talk a little bit about there? What kind of type what types of questions should orthodontic websites be answering and how should you be presenting those answers? Because I know in your article, you kind of break down like using, you know, having the full question and then having a very concise answer, not leading the answer down at the bottom. Jeff Slater (05:16) Mm-hmm. Right. You know, it's kind of a little bit predictive, right? Like trying to anticipate what are your prospective patients going to be asking. And a lot of it has to do with cost, know, cost of braces in. your city or how long does Invisalign take in your city and adding in those local keywords to try to connect it to your geographic area. So a little bit of it is really just almost like the FAQ pages of old. If you remember when websites were first becoming a thing and all the businesses were starting to websites, it seemed like everyone had an FAQ page, a frequently asked questions page. And then they kind of aged out and sort of became an outdated type of content on website. And it almost seems like everything is Alison Werner (05:46) ⁓ Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff Slater (06:03) and history repeats itself, we're almost coming full circle back to the FAQ, know, the frequently asked questions, and having the page on your site for frequently asked questions I think makes sense, but also trying to work those frequently asked questions into your content more organically, because what all of these... Alison Werner (06:05) you Yeah. Okay. Jeff Slater (06:25) Google and ChatGPT, they'll tell you to write your content for humans, don't write your content for machines. And I think there's still a lot of truth to that. You don't want to be out here trying to game the system or manipulate the results because for every loophole you think you find, there's a bunch of programs that are designed to find and close those loopholes, right? So you really want to stick to the basics and try to anticipate what your target audience is going to be looking for. And it goes back Alison Werner (06:36) Okay. Mm-hmm. Right. Jeff Slater (06:55) to an old adage that I've been saying for years and I got it from Mary Kay Miller, the CEO, owner of Kaleidoscope. It's tell your audience what they want to know, not what you want to tell them. And I think we get stuck sometimes as business owners, web developers, when we're writing content, we want to talk about what we think matters or why we think we're great. And what we really need to do is put our thinking cap on and get inside the head of our target audience and our prospective patients. Alison Werner (07:02) Yeah. Right. Jeff Slater (07:25) what do they actually care about, what are they most likely to be searching for, and then work from there. Alison Werner (07:31) You know, I know when I've had to work on search engine optimization, it's always like, you know, it's embedding that keyword throughout the text. you know, it forces you sometimes to have that longer text with AEO and answering the question. Should you be as concerned with that full text that's getting that keyword? Jeff Slater (07:38) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alison Werner (07:55) you know, running through there a number of times and instead just being really in a way concise, because I know in the article you had a question about how long does Invisalign teen treatment take? And the answer was very short and concise, whereas I think, you know, old SEO would have been like mentioning Invisalign teen over the course of many paragraphs. So is there a shift there in style as well or length? Jeff Slater (08:05) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think what you're getting at is keyword density. So how many times are we repeating the keyword in this piece of content? And that used to be a more effective strategy, right? Where when the algorithm was a little more primitive, it would just sort of tally up how many times is this keyword mentioned on a specific page, and then whatever page mentioned it the most times would usually rank higher. That's sort of how Google established or determined authority years ago. Now the algorithms are a lot smarter, Alison Werner (08:22) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeff Slater (08:49) they're looking big picture at your entire content profile. So hammering the same keyword over and over again is not going to have the same impact that it did in the past. So I think we look at authority as something you build over time and it's a more well-rounded content profile versus hammering one thing. And what I do wanna mention for your audience is not to keep going back to all the acronyms under the sun, but Google's had one for years. Originally it was EAT, E-A-T, Alison Werner (08:58) Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. you Jeff Slater (09:19) expertise, authority and trust. Now there's two E's in front of that. It's experience, expertise, authority and trust. look at your content through that lens of experience, expertise, authority, and trust, and make sure you're kind of checking all of those boxes. And I think as far as our industry, because in orthodontics, we're a very niche specialty. So when you're listening to podcasts or reading articles about AEO and GEO and the future of local search, remember that orthodontics is only a small part of what we look at as the wider internet, right? That what AI and ChatGPT are doing to the web. Alison Werner (09:30) you Yeah. Jeff Slater (09:58) orthodontics may not need all of the adjustments that e-commerce might need or some of these national sites. We are dealing with local businesses in a relatively small target area. Orthodontic practices are not optimizing for national search or thousands of searches. We really want to drill down and focus on the most important pieces. And I think leaning on the expertise of the doctor, the experience of the doctor and sharing maybe even a little bit of the credentials Alison Werner (10:03) right. Okay. Jeff Slater (10:27) the history of the practice, I think that's a good way to sort of show those signals to the algorithm is, you know, how long has the practice been open? How long has the doctor been certified for? What are some of those certifications? I think sprinkling some of those in might make sense. Doing it in a natural way, but some of the things that these algorithms are looking for is how can they, you know, kind of differentiate between a dental practice that's offering orthodontic services versus an orthodontic practice that has, you Alison Werner (10:33) Mm-hmm. ⁓ ⁓ Yeah. Jeff Slater (10:57) specialized doctor who's been trained and has been practicing for 25 years, I think that could be a differentiating factor as well. So you want to get in as much information as you can without seeming like you're trying to spam or keyword stuff or game the system. Alison Werner (11:08) Mm-hmm. ⁓ So from what I'm getting here is that the AI is smart enough to look at the whole picture then to look at that experience that bio and then also look at the content that's being provided on the site to whether this is an authority or not. Jeff Slater (11:23) Mm-hmm. Yep. And also, you know, the uniqueness of the content because there's only so many ways that you can talk about braces and Invisalign and that kind of thing. And the recency of the content also matters. So publishing fresh content to your website or updating the content that is on your site can also have an impact. And we have to remember that this is all still relatively new and the AI is learning on the fly. It's really failing forward. I think in a lot of cases we see this with Google ads. all the time that the AI is making decisions that maybe it's not ready to make just yet, but Google is sort of allowing for that to say, fail forward, learn on the job. so whatever might be working now may not be working in six months. So it just goes back to keeping things, know, writing your content for humans, not getting overly carried away with trying to feed the machine. You still want the structure and the optimization to kind of... Alison Werner (12:23) huh. Jeff Slater (12:27) take that into account as far as the AI and the algorithms. But at the end of the day, the algorithms and programs are smart enough to know when a website is trying to trick them or trying to keyword stuff or trying to spam. So even if it works in the short term, odds are that that loophole will be closed before long and then you're going to lose whatever ground you might have gained. So don't get too carried away trying to solve the riddle as opposed to just, you know, creating good content and keeping some things fresh. You don't want your website or your blog to get overly Alison Werner (12:29) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jeff Slater (12:57) stale because then you know the AI is going to look to sites that are producing newer, fresher, more relevant content and they're probably going to win out. Alison Werner (12:58) Yeah. Well, I think that's a good point to make because a lot of ⁓ a lot of websites tend to be very static once you get it up and running. And there's not a lot of going in there and updating the content. So that's a good point. Jeff Slater (13:22) Yeah, absolutely, especially in our industry, because like I said, there's only so many ways you can talk about braces and Invisalign and aligners. So putting your own spin on it, putting your own voice on it, and I also think attributing things to the doctor. as much as possible can also help. In the past, a lot of our sites just had standard orthodontic content. say our, that's not unique to Kaleidoscope, that's industry wide. So I think trying to frame your content and attribute it to the professional, which in this case is the doctor, and present it so that it looks like it's coming from an authority. It goes back to that EAT or E-E-A-T, right? The expertise, the authority, the trust. If it's tied back to a professional, Alison Werner (13:37) Okay. Yeah, just industry, yeah. Yeah. Jeff Slater (14:05) who is trained, educated, and certified in this industry. Early signs indicate that these algorithms and AI programs are going to trust that more if they can attach that information to a credible, certified, qualified source. Alison Werner (14:21) Okay. And then just because of that need to kind of update the content, does that lend itself to really having that kind of blog feature on your website? Jeff Slater (14:32) Yeah, absolutely. If you have the bandwidth and the availability to be publishing blog content to your site, I definitely would recommend it. What I say to clients a lot is if you have two websites that are relatively equal in terms of domain authority, download speed, and content, this site that is regularly adding new relevant content will probably have a leg up on the website that's remaining static and not adding anything new. Alison Werner (14:58) Okay, okay. So what would you say are some common mistakes you're seeing orthotonic practices make when it comes to optimizing for these answer engines and how can they fix them? Jeff Slater (15:08) Mm-hmm. I think the first place to start is how old is your website, how fast does it load, and how does it perform on mobile? Because if you're trying, it's a little bit of putting the cart ahead of the horse in the sense that if your site is a little bit outdated and you're trying to make these sort of futuristic updates for AEO and GEO and you're trying to make an outdated website shine in this sort of, I don't want call it futuristic local search landscape, but. Alison Werner (15:36) Right. Yeah. Jeff Slater (15:38) I think before diving headfirst into AI and AEO and GEO. Ask yourself, how old is my website? Run some tests, how does my site perform on mobile? What are the download speeds for my site? And do you maybe need to update the site to a newer framework that is meeting more of the guidelines for local search now? And then incorporating elements of AEO and GEO and these AI overviews. Because if you have a website that's four or five years old and you're trying to optimize it for AI without first updating the sort of the framework, the under the hood optimization, because if the site doesn't load fast, the AI is probably going to skip past it anyway. So I think it's getting the basics, getting the foundation in place first. And now if you have a newer website from the last year or two and you want to start incorporating some of these newer AI pieces, I think that makes more sense. But I would say one of the most common mistakes we see is we'll have a client or a prospect come to us and say, hey, I'm reading about AEO, GEO, AI, make my site compliant with this. And then we go in and look and like, well, you're Alison Werner (16:20) Mmm. Yeah. Jeff Slater (16:44) sites four, five, six years old. It's built on outdated technology. A lot of these improvements you want to make aren't really going to hold or really do anything for you until you make those foundational changes to sort of get the basics in place. Alison Werner (16:52) ⁓ Okay, so the AI is judging your site from a technical standpoint as before it even gets to maybe the content. Jeff Slater (17:04) Yeah, absolutely, and load times and download speeds are more of a ranking signal now than they've ever been before. So it used to be if your site was kind of slow, it was annoying for human users and you might lose some visits and people might leave your site if it loaded slowly, but it wouldn't really impact your ranking very much. Where you could still rank pretty high even with an outdated website that loaded pretty slowly. Nowadays, that download speed and those load times are more of a ranking signal. So if your site's not up to speed, both figure Alison Werner (17:15) Yeah. Jeff Slater (17:34) and literally if your site's not up to speed, it can actually drop you lower in the results and some of these AI and AEO updates we're talking about really won't even be impactful to your business until you get your basics, your foundation in place and get your site updated to where it's meeting the current criteria. Alison Werner (17:36) Yeah. Okay, Jeff Slater (17:55) It's the old lipstick on a pig, right? Lipstick on, you know, you can try to put AI or AEO on an outdated website and think that you're bringing it into the future, but if the framework and the under the hood setup is outdated, you're kind of spinning your wheels. Alison Werner (18:02) Right. So what's considered outdated at this point? Jeff Slater (18:13) The general shelf life for an orthodontic website is about three to five years. So right now we're kind of using COVID or the pandemic around 2020 as the benchmark and saying if your website was built before COVID and you're still rocking with it, it's probably time to update. Now I would also kind of asterisk that statement by saying that the shelf life depends on how good the site is when it's built, right? So if the site is only two or three years old, but the framework Alison Werner (18:23) Okay. Uh-huh. Jeff Slater (18:43) the quality of the site is poor and it's already slow, it becomes outdated much more quickly, right? So you could have a site, I just built it two years ago, but then we go in and look and it just wasn't done very well. So you're kind of already due for an upgrade, even though in your mind, you know, I just built this thing a couple of years ago. Whereas if a site is built on quality framework and it loads quickly and it's got the structure, the navigation, the links, the content, if a lot of those pieces are in place, you'll get more mileage out of that site. You could have a four year old orthodontic website Alison Werner (18:49) Right. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Slater (19:13) that still performs and ranks very well if it was optimized for mobile and built on a current framework that still performs. So there's definitely shades of gray. is no absolute, if this, then that, or if you do this, you'll be successful 100 % of the time. We've seen this with Google over the years where you could have a practice that does pretty much everything right and still ranks behind a competitor. And the flip side, you can have practices that kind of ignore their digital marketing and they have outdated stuff. Alison Werner (19:16) Yeah. ⁓ Right. Okay. Jeff Slater (19:43) they still rank really high and then everywhere in between. So there's nuance associated with it for sure. Alison Werner (19:45) Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. But definitely the AI is judging you now on your technical. There we go. Okay. So for practices that already have an SEO strategy in place, what are kind of those first steps they can take to start incorporating AEO or GEO without overhauling their entire set? Let's assume they have the technical, you know, standards to meet the moment. Jeff Slater (19:51) AI is very, very judgy. Super judgy. Sure. think part of that depends on what their SEO program involves, whether it's more of a monitoring thing where you can have an SEO program that's really just Google Patrol, where you're just checking your rankings and you're checking your Google business profile and you're monitoring Google Search Console for your website health. mean, that qualifies as an SEO program, but it's not exactly a proactive service that's expanding your digital footprint or building your keyword profile. Meanwhile, you could have a more proactive SEO program maybe with blogging Publishing content to your website, know once or twice a month and then maybe you're cross posting or doing some content distribution to your Google business profile or to your Facebook page That's where you might want to start to incorporate some of these content ideas more of this Q&A more conversational search more Anticipating what are the questions that people are going to be typing in to Google? One of the places I like to look the most is inside your blogs. You'll have your subheadings, right? You've got your title and then building in more subheadings, which might be also called like an H2 tag or an H3 tag if we want to get really granular and kind of nerd out on the SEO part of things. But one thing that I like to do is as I'm writing a blog, I like to chunk it out into sections and then name my subheadings or my H2 tags. Alison Werner (21:17) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff Slater (21:33) According to trying to sort of nail what's the question or what's the search term? So I want my subheadings inside my blog to match the search term or the question now we're talking more Conversational search that people are typing in so really trying to highlight front and center This is the question that this content is going to answer So I would say that would be one place to look if you're already running SEO is look at your h2 tags and your subheads and try to be more Conversational and another one would be attribution Alison Werner (21:44) Right. Jeff Slater (22:03) trying to attribute your content, connect it to a source or cite it to the doctor specifically. So these new programs and algorithms that are trying to determine authority and expertise, you know, if it's just a piece of content floating out there in the wild, that's not attributed to anyone or anything, that may not be as impactful as a piece of content that has a direct source that the algorithm or the AI program can connect it to somebody like a doctor who is a subject matter. Alison Werner (22:07) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Slater (22:33) subject matter expertise is really critical and very important and I think that's something that practices can leverage more going forward. Alison Werner (22:36) Yeah. Okay. And as AI powered search continues to evolve, what's your advice to orthodontic teams trying to kind of future proof their digital presence and maintain that visibility in a competitive local market? Jeff Slater (22:52) Mm-hmm. The big part of it again is the foundational piece, just keeping your website up to date, testing everything on mobile. I think when we are building and analyzing websites and download speeds, we're usually on a desktop. I know I'm guilty of this. I've got my desktop computer with my dual monitor. Some people have the triple wraparound monitor set up, so we're looking at things, really wide screen format. I think we sometimes have a blind spot for mobile and testing our websites on iPhones and Samsungs. Alison Werner (23:08) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff Slater (23:25) we're like, okay, who has a Galaxy, who's got a Samsung, who has an iPhone 14, who has an iPhone 16? Because all these devices have different screen sizes and making sure that your website, you know, because nowadays, pretty much all websites are responsive, right? Pretty much all websites are mobile friendly in the older sense of that term, but really testing everything on mobile to make sure it loads quickly because a lot of people don't realize Google has switched to mobile first indexing and that's not new information. Alison Werner (23:27) Right. ⁓ Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeff Slater (23:55) It's been a few years since that happened, but the mobile version of your website is the primary version that's used for ranking. It's not the desktop. It's not the full width, full screen version. So we want to make sure that we're testing all of our content, all of our pages, all of our forms, all of our links. Like really paying close attention to mobile, I think is the best way to, I don't know if it's future-proofing, but the majority of your traffic and your website visits are happening on mobile. So I tell our clients all the time, know, pull up your site on your phone. How does it load? How does it look? Alison Werner (24:16) Yeah. Jeff Slater (24:25) is the right information and center. Is your phone number connected? Alison Werner (24:27) Woof! Woof! Woof! Jeff Slater (24:31) and all that kind of in terms of future proofing your site, I do think the mobile version is key. Load speed, download times are key as well. And also video content. It's not a direct correlation from video to AI, but Google's getting a lot better at being able to read images and scan through videos and get the transcripts and things like that. So YouTube continues to grow and having video content on your website and on your social media, I think that's a really great way practices to stay current where when your prospective patients are doing their research and they're checking three four websites and three four social media accounts You know that the average I think is two and a half orthodontic practices that the average orthodontic consumer is going to Look at or review or consider two and a half orthodontic practices meaning They're not just getting a name from a friend and only going to that place and not researching anybody else so there's gonna be a contrasting compare happening and if your website is a Alison Werner (25:03) Yeah. Jeff Slater (25:31) a little outdated or if your competitors are cranking out video content and the doctor is on camera answering questions, that's really gonna give them an advantage both from that content is more digestible, video content you can get a lot more information across much more quickly. It also presents your practice in a much more current and modern light and way that you're presenting content in a format that's easily digestible. And also people have such short attention spans now, right? You only have a few seconds to grab these people's Alison Werner (25:43) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Slater (26:01) So if your content is not structured and organized and easy to digest, you're gonna lose prospective patients to the competitors who have, you know, better structure, better organization, and potentially video, which is just easier for people to digest. Alison Werner (26:16) Yeah, definitely. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on to kind of break this down for us. I really appreciate it. I've learned a lot of things. ⁓ What's the best way for someone to get in contact with you if they're interested in working with you or have questions? Jeff Slater (26:31) Yeah, absolutely. Our website is thekaleidoscope.com. and you can Google us, you can find us there. We have contact forms on the site to get in touch with us. In the article that was published, I'm not sure if my email was in there or not, but my email address is a little cumbersome. It's jeff.slator at thekaleidoscope.com. ⁓ yeah, I mean, we are a marketing and digital and SEO agency, so we rank pretty well for most of the searches. So if you search kaleidoscope digital marketing, we'll come right up for many of those other orthodontic searches as well. So fill out a contact form, get in Alison Werner (26:44) It will be. Yeah Jeff Slater (27:05) with us, we do a free audit and analysis for any orthodontic or dental practice. So if you want to just honestly have a chat with me and have us do a quick sort of research of, how does your website score on these testing tools? We can do an audit of your online brand and then I can meet you on a zoom just to say, hey, here's what we found. Here's the game plan we might recommend. And of course, getting input from the practice always very important. What's your strategy? What are your goals? I'm trying to find ways to fit this growth within your budget because practices have all different types of ⁓ needs and strategies and budgets. So we really try to look at every practice as its own unique situation. There is no cookie cutter, one size fits all, you know, do this and you'll be successful. Every practice is different. Every competitive landscape is different. So one thing with Kaleidoscope is we always want to look at things through the lens of what does this specific practice already have in terms of strengths and also where can we help and what are some weaknesses that we might want to try to improve. Alison Werner (28:03) Great. Well, thanks again and be sure to check out Jeff's article in our July-August issue. You can also find it online. Thanks again.