SEO Is Dying? How to Win Search Everywhere in the Age of AI

dives into a real-time conversation about what's actually happening in business right now.

“AI is reshaping search. SEO is evolving into something bigger, and most founders are either”

panicking or pretending it's not happening. So the question becomes, "Are you going to be replaced or are you going to adapt?" Today, I'm joined by West Towers, digital agency founder, SEO strategist, and a man who spent over 20 years in the search game. Now navigating what AI has done to traffic, trust, and visibility. We break down why showing up everywhere matters more than ever. Why AI won't replace you, but someone using it will. The real shift from SEO

to GEO and why trust, human connection, and Google reviews are now business critical. This isn't

hype. This is about survival, adaptation, and building authority in the new digital age. If you're a founder wondering how to stand out when everyone has access to AI tools, this one's for you. Let's unlock it. Well, welcome to the show.

“Thanks, Kevin. It's a fantastic debate with you. Today, I'm real privileged to be an”

chef. I've been watching quite a few episodes of late and really compelling content. Love it. Oh, I appreciate that. Well, it's then if you're watching the show, you know, this is the point where I ask first, you know, for those who are listening that don't know West Towers, don't know, you know, your story and how you got to hear today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and fill us in? Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm up to now is I run a digital agency

website design SEO or that kind of fun stuff and we do work for the trades and construction niche.

Wasn't always that way. We've sort of niche down over the course of the years, but

I mean, it's always felt like an industry that's evolved super fast. I've always said if I stopped doing what I up, the business been running over 20 years now, but I've always said if we stopped for one moment and came back in a years time, everything would have changed. It's always felt that way. But man, oh, man, the last three years have been hectic with the AI transforming the way in which every business that does stuff, but I certainly, for us, we're doing

search engine optimization for a long long time and a lot of sudden people were seeing less traffic. So that was a bit of a kick in the teeth and a challenge to overcome because as you can understand and you're probably bumped into it these days, people are getting their answer on platforms. So Google gives the answer right there and then and all they're using large language models to research. There's a whole bunch of different things happening right now and we've

made it to adapt to really fast to keep our clients in front of the right people. So let's just take us back here because there's a lot here and I know that a lot of people are, they're trying to jump into AI, they're scared of AI. They're misunderstanding of the powers of AI because we're being told, AI is going to take over every single, you know,

the next couple months, it's going to take over every job and I always kind of go really

because it doesn't even listen to you when you just use it in language models. So no, I don't think it's taking over anybody's job any time soon. Now, kind of help you, yes, is it going to take over some redundancies and jobs for sure, but I personally don't think we're here. However, when it comes to the AI, let's just talk about what, because you work with a lot of business owners and as an agency, what do you see in business owners are doing when it comes to

AI? Are they adopting it? Are they trying to understand it? Are they still pushing it away? What's your landscape when it comes to AI? So, for us working with trades and construction businesses, mostly, they're typically that those founder-led businesses often times, they're really practical pragmatic hands-on people, so they're not necessarily all that tech savvy. So they're not necessarily looking at it a whole lot of ways for their own internal businesses,

just yet I think they will eventually, but certainly they're wanting to show up wherever

“people are looking for businesses and their services, and so that's why we're really adapted”

the way we work to help them show up in the large language models. When people are asking their phone, they jump it on chatchip, if you're having a discussion about who's the very best of XYZ in our region, and they're having a detailed conversation. It's not just, you know, back in the old school day, search Plama Melbourne, for example, they're looking for new ones, because they understand the tools, understand the whole context of the language. So that's kind

of what they're, they're just really pragmatic, I love our clients, they're really pragmatic, and they're thinking, "Okay, how do we adapt?" So we keep growing our businesses, yeah, yeah. I mean, but I can appreciate a lot of people as scared, because I got a business valuation three years ago, and it came in incredibly low, it was ridiculously low, a real kick in the teeth, and the value is said, look, your whole industry is at threat right now due to the rise of AI,

and no one's going to buy uncertainty. They want some level of predictability, and they're buying

and this guy kicked me in the teeth with that. So, you know, three years ago, it was just kind of taking shape, and I can understand where he's coming from, but off the back of that, I've doubled down on a whole bunch of stuff, and we had a most profitable year ever, using AI and doing a whole bunch of other things. So you know, it's like in the face, you got to just take it, and find a way to adapt and improve things.

“I get it. I think you just kind of tested the my theory, which is everyone's so”

worried about being replaced by AI, and I just believe right now, first, we're at the level where

AI won't replace humans. However, humans using AI will 100% replace humans who are not. So, I think, as you adapt, you jump in, or you're going to be a thing of the past, for sure, how are you seeing when it comes to specifically, you know, your expertise around SEO? How are you seeing AI hurting the business, and then how are you using it to be able to offset that and actually help the business?

Yes, so from a marketing standpoint, it's so easy to crunch out content, and it reads really well, and it can sound pretty compelling, and you know, you can, with a few prompts, you can create some pretty great content, perceived to be great content, but what that does is everyone's doing

it, so therefore there's just an overwhelming information out there, and there's an erosion of trust.

So, everything that we do and teach our clients to do is to use the tools, firstly, if we're thinking about social media, the goal of social media is to get them off social media. What do we want them to do? Go to the website. What's the goal of the website? We want to get them off the website into a human conversation for our clients from the community to do their work, so everything's got to be geared around building trust and authority.

It's best you can, but it's all about creating a human connection because the humans who are able to connect relationships, build, understand the client, sell what they're buying. I mean, if we can understand what the client's wanting, and then just give it to them, everybody's winning, and everyone's happy. So that's everything we do is geared around building trust and authority.

“Yeah, so again, the question is, I mean, how important is trust now more than ever?”

Oh man, more than ever, you're right. Yeah, absolutely. It's just so hard to cut through the noise. I mean, it's just so much out there. And anyway, it's so unique. They won. Yeah. So, how do you deal with the passion rate? Like, let's deep dive in here, because we're just, you know, I want to really help people understand, like, there is a lot of noise. Anybody can go to an LM and say,

"Rammy up 20 SEO blogs based on this and that. Everyone's doing it. Next thing you know, it's LML against MS, you know, LML against LM, right?" So, how can we, how can we separate ourselves from this? How can we stand out? Not only to our competitors and, you know, stand out in the light to our avatars, but how do we stand out so that the AI's are picking us up in the GE, like the new GE O thing of SEO? Because the SEO is the thing of the past is GE O,

but for my understanding, there is no GE O without SEO. Yeah, it's all the sort of the same. Yeah. Well, they're all trying to do the same thing in service for very best information. So, that's precisely that you need the best information. And you can't get that by relying on the tool to do it for you, because all that's doing is collating all that reach some title of what everyone else has already said. You've got to bring something unique, distinct compelling.

You've got to lift your level. Go to high level and produce the content that really stands out and really specific to your ideal clients. So, you've got to be super, super clear here. Your ideal client is, they can speak directly to them. That's all going to help, but the trust factors that you can build that are outside your control to a degree, say Google reviews, for example,

“any of those reviewing platforms that you can't easily manipulate. They are super important.”

So, you can definitely help people leave that just by asking for a great review and you know, you've had a good relationship and someone might do that for you. Even when you do do a great job. Some people sort of, they forget and they need a gentle reminder to say, hey, do you mind if you're jumping, it really helps a business like ours, if you would leave that quick review. So, how long has it been reviewed for SEO?

Huge, huge, not just for SEO, but just for everyone, anecdotally, for our clients, we certainly

have recognized because we are always asking them to ask, hey, what prompted you to make a decision

to call us or to buy those sorts of things because that face interaction, you just get so much more in-fibet. There's a significant increase in the people who have said, hey, we checked out all your reviews and it looked like you do exactly what we want you to do. So, yeah, so that's increased

review. Do you have a specific way that you can ask your clients or your customers for reviews

to actually, because it's interesting, before I finish this question, it's interesting because from what I see is, it's a lot easier to get the negative review than it is the positive review. Someone's more likely to go and complain about you than they are to actually just even give you five star thumbs up. Yeah, I know, 100%, there's negative emotions in him, it's human nature, there's negative emotions, they're just so strong to come, some of take action. So, it's hard to

wow people to the fact to the degree in which a negative opposite emotion could arise. But you just

“need to, I think the human relationship aspect of business has never been more important as we”

digitalize as we've made things automated. There's a kind of a pushback in a reluctance for people to want to engage with this kind of stuff. So, I mean, while we think it's kind of cool and fun to see some of the videos that are produced by AI, it's sort of novel right now. But you kind of sense people are growing at distrust and at dissatisfaction with it. It's kind of like artificial food.

I mean, we know artificial food has never been healthy or good for us, but we consume it because

it's quick and easy and palatable and all that kind of stuff. But we know it's not good for us. And it feels to me like a lot of this artificial intelligence that's artificial. So, it lacks that those pieces that make it healthy and vibrant and sustainable for the long term. So, I think all the way in which we're using it massively AI in our business and helping our business clients show up in all the right places with it. But everything's get around human connections for us.

“That's what I think the big winners are going to be in the new world. It feels like a lot of”

create paths are going to be, lastly, people don't stay adaptable and flexible and rise to the new way of doing things. So, yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about right now. It's interesting you use the word human connection because it seems like human connections is showing up a lot to right now. I know one of my sales philosophy is human centric selling. My company that we've done three hundred and five million dollars sales is called the sales

connection. Everything is always from me is about energy and connection. And I do believe

with AI we're going to lose a lot of connection. However, there are people who are thriving and craving for that human connection. So where does the line happen between maximizing AI and getting the job done versus slowing down going deeper and creating authentic real connection?

“Yeah, yeah, it's a real balance. It feels like a bit of a year in the young thing that you've”

got to get those both things working together for your own circumstances. I mean, for me, it's just personally, I try to avoid being on social media too much. I mean, I have team to publish a whole bunch of stuff where pretty active, particularly with the podcast, singing and sharing the podcast, because that's a collaboration. And it's something I love that's that human collaboration and connection that two people are creating something meaningful and sharing it to their audiences.

So I love that kind of stuff, but I don't spend too much and we share it far and wide, but I don't do it personally because I don't want to be bogged down in the tools. I'm using the tools for those that are out there. On those platforms, that's great. It's just not me. I'm not going to waste my time too much there. I can use the tools and the people to do, to do the leverage the tools, but not being, it's kind of working on the tools, not being in the tools.

100% of it. Yeah, I hear what you're saying there. So I mean, it's interesting because you're helping, you're helping business owners leverage AI specifically around SEO, so that they can be seen, show up. What was the quote you said earlier? Come, I wrote it down. What did you say? Why do you, uh, everywhere? Do you say SEO? Yeah, such, such everywhere optimization, because we don't see everywhere, optimization,

where's that? I'm search everywhere optimization. What does that mean to you? Yeah, so for us, a large part of that is to show up in chatchivity and all the other large language models. So we've taken, because we've got to baste around a little bit with this. We did SEO for many years, and all of us, and some of the clients being with us, you know, could be over 10 years now. I'm not sure, but a long time. And so they would say incremental improvement month or month was super easy.

You would have to set a key words. You would see the ranks improve. You'd see the traffic improved.

they want to see because less reason to visit a website. So I get a few phone calls and say,

hey, what the hell is going on here? We've been doing this for a long time. What's going on?

“It's moving in the wrong way. So that's how those discussions with the clients and explain”

what was causing that. The way in which things were right now. But the interesting part was, I weren't getting the less qualified leads through the door, through the websites. It was just that without getting less people researching, and so on, because they're getting the answers elsewhere. So we're starting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes even those things were used to give away like the lead man that's how we're really cool and funnels and all that kind of stuff.

Because information is available at a fingertips without giving away emails. I mean, we used

to think we're giving away something for free, but everyone knew it's not free. You're giving away your email and your privacy and the need to kind of be spammed. So I knew it was great. True. Hey, download my free ebook, download my free lead magnet, download my 10 step

“checklist, download my quick survey. What are marketers doing now to get the email?”

Because anybody that's even using AI even at 30%, 40%, can get probably better answer if they know how to run. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. PDF. Yeah, that's it. 100% most of the time. And everyone's saying that there's these things that that sales funnel process that was online for so many years and working like magic doesn't work in the same way at one state. What we're doing is providing that information freely without giving away the people having to part ways with their email address.

That's a challenge obviously from a marketing perspective because it's wonderful to be out of build a list and keep marketing to them. But we've just just got to adapt and think about, okay, you just want to be the thought leader and the expert in the field. So they get what they need from you and your brand gets mentioned. And you might show up even as a brand mentioned in a large language model. You don't even, you're not even aware someone's reading it and it's

but it's pulling information that you've published. So that's kind of the way it's harder to track so weird as marketers don't like it because we like things to be tracked, we can show a fancy report to the client, which is really cool. That's really difficult now, but we've still got to be out there to grow the brand reputation and the trust or authority signals so that then they make it inquire when they're ready to buy. So that that inquiry point is happening much closer to the buying

“point. So you need to have, like, this is why you're providing people sales training and expertise,”

those few leads that come through there so close to making a buying decision. It's not funny. You can't drop them at that really red hot moment. You can't let them slide you because that, you know, they're super pretty long. Someone else is going to pick them up because there's 10,000 other ones ready to go. How does a business owner get start ranking in the LM? So in say GPT from SEO. What are the steps that a business owner can do or start thinking about so they

can start ranking in GPT? Yeah, well, there's a whole bunch of prompts that we use to take keywords, the old school keywords, and turn them into content ideas and structures that are helpful for large language models, which are far more conversational. So the old school keywords are really kind of archaic. It was just your service or your product plus your location typically. But now it understands full sentences. So it's taking those keywords and as we've just said, you can download

them straight off the website. They're actually in the in as a blog post in our website. There's 12 prompts that we give away there. But taking your keywords and taking them and it'll turn them into topic maps and you can build up your pill of pages. It'll put the keywords into structures where you can produce content that will track to large language models. It'll create questions that real humans might be asking. It'll help you create service page, you know, really working

to keyword ideas. It's more thinking about the keywords as topics rather than just words you trying to shove into pages to try and ranking Google. Yeah, that's all. Yeah, that's a whole bunch of pages. I remember pillar pages when I was learning about SEO, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Let's go work off the pillar page, right? That's it. That's it. So it's interesting because everyone's talking about, hey, got a rank on GPT or Gem Nye, whatever, you know, the LM is,

but the reality is, you can't rank on those if you don't have proper SEO. So how important is

SEO versus the right proper backlinks? Yeah, so that, yeah, absolutely. So the backlinks

understand what websites should have authority because the theory was if there's a whole bunch of

“websites linking back to this website must be credible because the other people think it is.”

And so if everyone tried to manipulate that and they were doing dodgy backlinks from dodgy websites and so on and Google would figure it out and penalize them and give them a slap and downgrade that traffic or that kind of stuff. So it's, it really is. There's, there's no real sneaky tricks that can work anymore. It really is about being super clear on your ideal client and writing the content precisely for them to address their pain points and needs address their

questions before, you know, before they've even asked you directly because they're not going to probably ask you directly by the time they get to your front door, your digital shop front, which is your website or your physical shop front if you have one, they've already probably done a bunch of research and asked the tool of choice or the questions. So it's just a matter of

“guys helping them to make a decision. Yeah, sorry, I was going to just say like as you're thinking”

and you're talking, I'm just keep going and I keep hearing journey by your journey. You're not saying it, but you keep kind of bringing it up in a unique way. Yeah. So I'm asking, how have you seen them? I mean, because as an agency, you're working with a lot of different customers, a lot of different clients that have their different customers. How have you seen the buying journey of how someone actually purchases online now with AI? How has that changed in the last two,

three years? Man, it's crazy the way. It was never fully linear, but we like to think about that

whole, not all by his journey, the education resources material that people would downlight and slowly work their way through to making that sales decision. But it's so scattered now because they'll see you on social media, for example, on a bump into your brand and so on wherever

“they're hanging out, wherever they're wasting their time online, typically on social media.”

And so they'll see you there, but then they might be having a discussion with their phone, so they're Chach every day. I just call my friend in the phone, I'm always talking to my friend in the phone when I'm driving around after sales meeting, oftentimes, and just having a new thought or an idea that I want to flash out, so it's my brain's storming tool. Well, lots of people are doing that, and then they might also jump on the Google.

Still Google is the number one source for traffic for a website, and still people will visit your digital shop front as I call the website YouTube is the number one. I thought YouTube was, Google still number one for. Yeah, to get people to, well, yeah, probably YouTube is probably as more content and resources, but it's probably YouTube's part of Google there, and by the itself, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so in terms of bringing people to your digital shop front,

your website, the Google's still the number one, so people when they're ready to buy something, they're still probably going to Google for it, but they're probably going to research by other means, but that buys journey, and they're not downloading the free resource anymore, they're coming out at you from all different angles, and they're seeing your brand without you even realizing, I had a client called a few weeks ago, and just mentioned, he won $140,000

customer off the back of some of the work we did, and he only found out how they found him, because he was having the conversation with him, and they had a full conversation with their chatchewity, and they said, "Who's the very best in Australia who provides this?" and he came out a chatchewity to say, "This guy's the very best." I learned in the same location of really quite a way, a distance away, but for some of the content that we produced for him,

the chatchewity, he was the best. Yeah, yeah, so his investment with us was only something like three grand. We did, we did very little work through most of my new amount of cleaning things up, three grand of work, whatever, like say, whatever, even below 5k and SEO produced 120k. Yeah, 140, yeah, that's a little less than US dollars. It's a good chatka change. That's the power of SEO. For me, it's funny because the power of SEO is there,

but everyone always wants the quick wins, and unfortunately with SEO, it's not quick wins,

it's consistency over time. Yeah, building that reputation and trust or the right things, and sometimes people have been penalised because they're investing in SEO company to do things, and they're not aware of what they're doing, and you mentioned backlinks, so there was a heap of people just buying dodgy backlinks from blog websites, which we just created to create

and penalised their sites eventually. So it all comes crashing back. So it works for the short term,

“and so the agency selling these dodgy services, they can show results to the client,”

but then eventually. Yeah, yeah, because of me the long run. So it's not a long term play,

we've never done that. Like, once again, it's hard to get out of that. Like, that's great for sure.

You're working hard. Yeah, it's a nightmare. There's been clients I've turned away simply because they've been heavily penalised and blacklisted, and I've just said to them, "Look,

“we can do so much work, but it's like swimming with land around our ankles. It's just,”

it's going to be so hard for us to show any value to you. We can do everything right,

and you're still going to be heavily slapped around by Google for many years probably to come. Eventually, they'll probably ease up on them after they're served their time, so to speak. But for us to take them on at that time, it'll just look bad for us, because we can do everything

right, but they're just heavily penalised. So it's difficult. So for businesses that are

sitting there going, man, I need to get on AI, the SEO, I need to be in the the new business of search everywhere, optimization. How could they find you? Yes, our website, uplift360.com that are you. And as I said,

“in the blog, it's a recent post, you'll find 12. I think it's up called something like 12”

copy past prompts to turn your own copy. Yeah, it's turned your keywords into LLM magnets. So yeah, yeah, so you can really truly copy past those in and put your own keywords in and your own ideal client descriptions and all that stuff. And that will pop some pretty cool results. I love it. I love it. I'm going to do that right after this episode and go looking for that. So I can be last words to anybody that might be just listening and wondering,

"Where, what am I going to do with AI in this world and my business?" Yeah, man, it's crazy isn't it? It's exciting time to be alive. So yeah, the other thing on the website, you can book strategy calls with me directly. There's a big button straight on the home page. So if anything's picked, people's interest with what we've discussed, I'm happy to have a conversation. No, obligations have caused to around how some of these things might apply in their circumstances.

And go from there. Awesome. Yeah. Well, there it is. That's another episode of the vault on log. Thank you so much for being here at West. And looking forward to seeing all that hard work and all the SEO you're putting out there. Great. Thanks, Kevin. It's been brilliant. Thank you.