We will continue to conduct our own informal research — assessing how and when our own website pages and posts appear in both AI/Answer Engine Prompt results and traditional search engine results — but based on what we are seeing as of the date of this blog post, the items outlined in the image and bulleted section below seem to be common features or characteristics of website content that is being served up most frequently in any kind of AI or search engine.
How To Be Found Online? Do The Following Related To Your Website Content
Always keep your target audience in mind — what content/information would be helpful to them vs. content/information you want to share. Don’t be self-serving!
Keep your content clean and easily consumable by using bulleted or numbered lists
Don’t be afraid to take a different approach to what other experts are saying on a particular topic
Citing experts on your website demonstrates to search engines:
Your organization makes and takes the time to follow and learn from experts
Your organization is not too self-serving, i.e., only focused on your needs and self-promotion vs. wanting to provide valuable information to your readers/target audiences, even if it means sharing information about other organizations
How Do I Know What Experts To Cite?
One of the easiest and best ways to figure out who to cite on your website is to use LinkedIn’s search tool to enter search terms/keywords related to the topic for which you want to identify experts. You’ll likely want to select “posts,” “people,” or “services” by clicking on those buttons to generate lists to review after you’ve entered the keywords in the main search tool on the left top of your LinkedIn homepage.
Review the bios and posts of some of the individuals LinkedIn has served up to you, and begin following those that interest you. Their posts will start appearing in your newsfeed. You’ll soon see/learn which individuals resonate with you and whose websites you want to share on your website in appropriate places. And, keep in mind, you don’t have to share links to their website on your website, you can also share links to their LinkedIn profiles, as we’ve done below.
Here’s Some Of The SEO/AEO/GEO Experts We Like To Follow On LinkedIn
The above individuals are just a handful of those we follow on LinkedIn because there’s so many experts, like us, who regularly create and share content about search engine optimization (SEO), answer engine/AI engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO).
Need Help Identifying Which Experts You Should Follow On LinkedIn?
The answer to the above question is pretty straightforward, and in most cases, “yes.” Given that we are in the day and age where individuals are using what’s known as answer engines — think ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude — more and more for both business and personal purposes, if an organization wants to continue to be found online, it DOES need to regularly produce and publish new content. Unless your site is one that is only meant to provide very static information and credibility to people who already know or have found your organization, your organization will need to do the following to support your organization’s name being mentioned or a link to your organization being served up by answer engines in response to relevant prompts.
What Types Of Content Do I Need To Create If I Want To Be Found In Answer Engine Results?
Blog posts or questions that reside within a website FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that answer questions that your organization regularly gets asked by prospective clients and existing clients
Blog posts that speak to topics that are “tangential” to the particular products and services you offer, but that are important ones for your target audiences. For example, you might offer seniors in-home care, but write and publish some blog posts about senior fraud, aging in place/aging at home, and exercises for seniors. You get the picture!
Even if you’ve already published such content, target audiences’ questions and needs change/evolve, and both from a marketing standpoint and a search-engine standpoint, you need to demonstrate that you are staying current/relevant/up-to-date. It’s not good to have clients or prospective clients visit your site and see that you haven’t put up any new content in many months and/or content is outdated — it looks like you’re not minding your shop, and if you aren’t, what else might you neglect? And, search engines are more likely to serve up new, fresh content than content that is old and dated.
In sum, a static site will NOT help your organization be found online by target audiences, given how individuals gather information these days. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but regularly producing and posting new content answering questions and providing information that benefit your target audiences needs to be an ongoing marketing activity. As we’ve always said, “SEO (search engine optimization) is NOT a one-and-done exercise.
Need Help Figuring Out What To Blog About And How Frequently?
There’s so much talk these days about what tactics to use to be found in answer engines or AI tools. I like to refer to solutions like Google AI mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity as answer engines or AI tools vs. search engines because these tools go far beyond search. Many individuals are using such tools to complete tasks, such as asking them to create formulas or work plans for them, or to come up with trip itineraries or write content/copy for them.
I wanted to come up with and share a recipe for being found in both traditional search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and answer engines that felt authentic to those following the recipe. Something that felt comfortable and right vs. complicated and didn’t leave the cook feeling stressed out and confused and wondering how to “game” the answer engines. Below is a simple recipe for SEO (search engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) success that I came up with.
A Simple Recipe For SEO and AEO Success
Start by answering questions via a main FAQ page, or in shorter FAQs housed within main pages of your website, that target audiences have about your organization and your specific products and services.
Add in answers to questions that target audiences have, in general, about your industry/business line and the different products and services associated with it – again, these should be more general vs. about your specific products and services and could be answered in an FAQ, or in one or a series of blog posts.
Sift in some website blog post content that is helpful to your target audiences that is “tangential, i.e., not directly related to your products or services, but information that would be valuable to your target audiences.
A great example of this is an estate planning law firm client who is sharing information about aging well with clients since many are seniors.
And, voila, you’ve created a recipe that all adds up to being helpful and kind, and created an approach that should feel comfortable and authentic to every organization!
We can’t believe it either, but today (April 1, 2025) marks 11 years of Results Communications & Research (Results C & R) being in the marketing agency and SEO company business.
As we always have been, we are very grateful to the many talented marketing consultants, marketing agencies and their staff, and other marketing professionals we’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with, and to learn from. We mention a few of those marketing collaborators on our Our Team page, but the list is so long, it’s hard to give a shout-out to everyone we’ve enjoyed meeting, knowing and working with the last 11 years!
And, we are incredibly grateful to the close to 150 client organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — with whom we’ve brainstormed and strategized to achieve the best possible level of awareness, sales leads, and actual sales (both product and service sales). Many of our current clients have been with us a number of years. You can access a list of our past and current clients to see examples of industries we’ve served by visiting the Clients page of our website.
AI Is Not New To Google Ads/Google Ads Is Not New To AI
Related to our above desire to continue to grow our Google Ads skills, we want to remind our readers that AI is not new to Google Ads and Google Ads is not new to AI. For years, Google Ads has been able to offer “display” ad campaigns that are targeted to individuals who show affinity to certain products or services because of past buying or researching of them, having interests related to them, visiting websites focused on them, or reading about them on a variety of diverse websites.
AI and Writing Website Content, Particularly Blog Posts
And, speaking of AI, another area in which we hope to do more client work in the coming year is blog writing for clients. We’ve offered blog-writing services for years — and a number of clients have taken us up on it — but because we really enjoy writing, we hope to do more of this work for clients.
We don’t think AI search-engine/tools like ChatGPT will, or should ever, replace humans when it comes to website content and blog post writing. There’s great evidence that, at least some of what is spit back by AI search engines is not accurate. Plus, we don’t think an AI tool can ever bring the behinds-the-scenes knowledge or heart ‘n soul of an organization to website content writing or blogging. Only the organizations, themselves, truly understand what challenges their target audiences face — what their pain points are — and what they most need help with and how the organization’s products and services make a difference in their client’s/customer’s lives.
Traditional Marketing Opportunities Are Often Missed Ones
Our Principal, Gail Snow Moraski, in a photo from around 2014, the year she founded Results C & R
Many Thanks and Let’s Catch Up!
Many thanks to the clients and marketing professionals we continue to collaborate with!
If you’re a past client, a prospective client we spoke with, or a fellow marketing professional with whom we collaborated in the past, or if you’ve interned with us in the past, let’s catch up. Schedule a time to do so today!
As we called out in our recent blog post that highlighted the SEO (search engine optimization) benefits of running website diagnostics reports, often organizations neglect to position their website as well as possible from an SEO standpoint, and therefore, miss out on opportunities to be found by searchers conducting relevant searches in relevant geographies.
One missed SEO opportunity that would be identified by running website diagnostics reports is if your website has a lot of what’s known as “orphan” pages or blog posts.
Sure as an SEO consulting firm and company, we love inner-page and inner-post links because they support websites ranking well in search engines, but we also believe the following. Every business owner’s and every employee’s time is precious. A lot of time and energy goes into creating helpful and interesting website content, so why not capitalize on it by making sure as many as possible visitors to your website who might have an interest in the content are made aware of it.
Inner-Page Links Help You Avoid A Huge SEO Mistake
Per our recent blog post about why you should avoid duplicate content, it’s far better from an SEO standpoint to link to content (from which visitors would benefit) that appears on another site page or vs. to duplicate/repeat it.
So, don’t leave your priceless and helpful website content stranded and feeling like an orphan, start linking to it from other appropriate places on your website!
Struggling To Understand SEO Opportunities and SEO Errors?
If you’re considering a career in digital marketing, and particularly within that, a specialty or expertise in SEO (search engine optimization), read on to learn what a typical work day look likes.
How An SEO Consultant Starts Her Day
8:30a.m. – 9:30a.m.
Check/read (and send response e-mail) e-mails, which inevitably include the following:
Notifications from paid search (SEM) ad platforms (Google Ads or Microsoft (Bing) Ads) about:
Policy changes that have caused a Google or Bing Search Ad to be disapproved
Ad extensions and ads that have become disapproved because “page destinations” are no longer working (sometimes, clients of ours take down or move website pages to which site links (one form of ad extension/asset) point or ads point and forget to let me know that pages have been taken down, moved, etc.
Payment form (credit card) can’t be charged — therefore, the credit card information that a client provided to Google Ads or Microsoft Ads is no longer accurate/has changed
E-blasts and e-newsletters about SEO and invites to various SEO webinars and classes (due to the large # of search engine optimization experts we follow)
Client questions about how well their website is or isn’t ranking in search engines, particularly Google
Use Google Analytics data, Google Search Console data, paid search platforms, and SEO rankings audit reports to analyze and document KPIs (key performance indicators) for upcoming monthly/standing client meetings
Have a mid-to-late morning #SEOStrong snack, particularly one with lots of protein like swiss cheese or hummus because you definitely need a sharp brain and a lot of energy to do SEO work!
Employ “Answer The Public” and Google Ads keyword planner tools to conduct keyword research in relevant geographies using approved “inputs” from client about what terms they believe their target audiences would use to identify someone who offers the services, products, and solutions to problems they offer
Check client Google Ad and Microsoft Bing Ad campaigns (including Google Nonprofit Ad Grant ones) to see how they are performing, including reviewing cost-per-click (CPC) and click-thru rate (CTR); plus, review and apply or dismiss recommendations from Ad platform to improve optimization score, and check for appropriateness of “search terms” for which ad platforms are serving up ads.
12p.m. – 6:00p.m.
Review SEO diagnostics reports to determine possible website issues and/or missed SEO opportunities related to a particular client’s website ranking situation.
Facilitate client discussion about next steps/implications of their SEO rankings audit, diagnostics reports, and/or monthly KPIs. Where do we go from here to move the SEO needle and drive more relevant searchers to the client’s website in the month ahead?
Write and enter SEO page/post title tags (this might be in WIX, GoDaddy, Joomla, WordPress, Expression Engine, or a propriety software such as a CMS platform used in a particular industry), and submit the revised pages/posts for indexing by Google and/or Bing using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.
7:00p.m. – 8:30pm
Check e-mail again and/or continue to complete client SEO work of the nature outlined above. Being an SEO consultant is not just a 9 to 5 job!
Mark Knopfler fans will understand where the quoted phrase in our blog headline comes from. I was first introduced to Mark’s wonderful storytelling abilities by my husband, Jay, when we were dating or first married. One of Mark’s songs that I first took a great liking to was his song “Quality Shoe.” Be prepared for the earworm that comes from wanting to listen to this song over and over!
“Quality Shoe” by Mark Knopfler YouTube video
What Do Shoes Have To Do With SEO?
The answer to the question above is this: a great deal!
As we’ve called out in a number of blog posts over the past year, the SEO landscape continues to shift — and on a daily basis. As we recently expressed in this blog post about thriving — not just surviving — in the SEO jungle, it’s our belief at our Boston SEO Company/digital marketing agency that the organizations who will continue rank well in search-engine results, despite all the change on the search-engine front, are those that really try to walk in their target audiences’ shoes and answer the questions and concerns they have. And, keep in mind, that these questions and concerns may be related to the product or service the organizations who succeed at SEO offer, or they may be unrelated, or only distantly related.
Sure, as we discussed in another blog post about succeeding at SEO, entitled “Give The People What They Want, you can use keyword research tools to determine on which topics, particularly questions, your target audiences are regularly conducting Google searches. But part of walking in your target audiences’ shoes also includes:
digging down deep mentally and emotionally to really understand your marketplace and your organization’s place in it
brainstorming with individuals at all levels of your organization, particularly those who are in customer-service roles, or who actually provide or deliver your product or service, to determine what client “pain points” your product or service addresses
reaching out to customers with whom you have a strong and longstanding relationship to ask them for feedback about why they chose to work with your organization or buy your product, and how the product or service has made their life or job easier
In addition to chatting with your organization’s staff and clients about the problems your products or services solve and using those to inform website and other online content your organization publishes, as part of such internal and external discussions, ask about other pains/challenges your target audiences deal with regularly (even if you don’t offer a solution to them). Simply providing helpful information online on topics or questions that are tangential to your products or services, but important to your target audiences, is a great way to have search engines serve up your website or Google My Business Profile in related to searches being conducted by your target audiences even if they aren’t directly related to your organization. It’s a win-win.
Because one of the services my agency offers is PR — and we’ve had some decent success obtaining meaningful media coverage for some of our for-profit and non-profit clients (as documented in our Public Relations Portfolio) — of course, we reached out to The Patriot Ledger to see if they wanted to do a “then and now” story about our South Shore organization since they covered our story nine years back. We’re still awaiting news, literally and figuratively on that one, but we figured why not go ahead and share a similar version of that story on our blog using the highlights we shared with them? So, here goes…
I prefer to refer to my business as a digital marketing agency vs. a marketing consultancy because we do as much as hands-on work as we do developing & recommending marketing strategies.
Our story actually began with me launching my own WordPress website without the help of anyone else, and my officially hanging my digital marketing agency’s shingle via that site. And, if I knew as much as I know about WordPress and website development now as I knew then, I would have originally launched my site with WordPress.org (the platform that it’s on now) vs. WordPress.org, so I could use the many great WordPress plug-ins from the get-go! Or, I might also have considered Joomla instead, but owning a business and getting it right is all about the journey. And, you can’t learn what you need to learn without making a few mistakes and getting your hands dirty, right?
What’s been particularly challenging as an organization who helps others with their own marketing is, sometimes, as I’ve been known to share, “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes.” That means often we are so busy helping our clients with their marketing, we don’t have time for our own. The aforementioned said, we make every effort to have our firm’s own marketing activities (such as our website and social media profiles) serve as a shining example of how to maintain a strong online presence, and it’s great that we’ve been able to use our own business to test and try out various marketing activities — therefore, serve as a bit of a guinea pig — before we test or try something brand new with clients.
I believe and hope my story can motivate and inspire others considering opening their own business. Before, or right after I launched my business, I was told by one individual who works with entrepreneurs that 80% of female marketing consultants fail. I refused to be a statistic, and regularly told myself that during the first 5 years, which were the hardest. It takes a good five years to get the word out there and have business come to you organically/naturally thru referrals, leads, and recommendations from others — made by former co-workers and clients, existing clients, other marketing consultants and agencies, and other organizations who serve the same vertical/target audiences whom you serve.
My philosophy and dreams when I started my business have remained pretty constant and I’m pleased to report I’ve followed them. I’m particularly proud that I’ve been able to continue to offer what I believe, based on research, are very reasonable rates to small for-profit and non-profit organizations. Due to my years of experience and expertise, clients have access to the same level of knowledge and skills that they’d have access to via a larger marketing agency, but at much lower rates than what a larger agency might offer. And, because we have significant experience in both traditional marketing AND digital marketing, we can offer the majority of services a larger, full-service agency can.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned that I’d love to share with others starting a business is this: don’t think of others in your space as competitors. Think of them as collaborators – people who serve the same target audiences who may need your services.
Our Impact: Local (South Shore of Boston), National, and International
I’ve helped a number of young adults who grew up on the South Shore, or elsewhere in MA, get hands-on experience that they were able to parlay into a post-graduation job elsewhere.
Related to the above, I’ve had the great fun and pleasure of working with my nephews, my brother, my brother-in-law, and my late sister-in-law on various client projects.
I’ve also met with a number of college or graduate school students looking to pick my brain about careers in marketing and learn from me – including one in my neighborhood who found me thru a Google search! Yes, because early on I recognized I needed to create a Google My Business Profile for my own business to be found by local, relevant searchers and this is something I regularly help my clients with now!
I’ve given a large number of pro bono hours to nonprofits as part of a totally free consulting/volunteer situation or discussion, or as part of their paid arrangement with me. I’ve had a number of very interesting local nonprofit clients, including ones in the faith-based space, arts and music space, ones serving vulnerable populations, ones serving individuals with special needs, and one providing financially challenged teens the opportunity to serve vulnerable teens abroad, and more! Some have an international impact.
One of my specialties is helping nonprofits apply for a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant. I, then, often stay on and manage the Grant for them – $120,000 in free Google Search advertising annually. I can explain more.
I also have a number of for-profit clients on the South Shore, but my client base is national and I have had clients in New Orleans, CA, Texas, and more!
I’ve served over 120 for-profit and non-profit organizations in the 10 years I’ve been running my digital marketing agency/SEO company.
I had no idea when I launched my business that I would become an expert in something that I only had very little knowledge of at the time when I launched my business – search engine optimization (SEO). Many of my referrals for or sub-contracted work come from other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers who need to pull someone into their client work/project who knows how to get websites and Google My Business Profiles ranking well in Google via organic and paid search (Google Ads) SEO activities. I’ve become a self-taught SEO expert and very proud of it. I just read and watched everything I could get my hands on, took Google Ads certification classes, and attended free webinars. I still do that daily as Google’s Search Engine will be switching to an AI one, and I’m already helping my clients be proactive about that and prep for it (Google SGE).
As indicated above, while I do sub-contracted or referred work for other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers, many of my clients are my own clients, and I usually have a plate of about 12 – 15 clients for whom I’m doing ongoing, digital marketing work for on a monthly basis, plus also juggling several one-off/one-time clients at the same time. At any given point in time, I’m normally doing work for about 17 – 25 clients with the help of some fabulous interns and associates, as they were/are available.
I’ve given a number of free workshops for SCORE and other organizations serving entrepreneurs, and I’m a SCORE volunteer and have provided tons of free advice to entrepreneurs by meeting with them on a complimentary basis. And, related to all of this, I’ve had a blast partnering with fellow marketing experts to give presentations that address multiple marketing areas of expertise! Thank you! You know who you are!
I’m a data geek and SEO geek and proud of it. I’m a huge data slicer and dicer and that’s what separates me from a lot of others in my space. I always say I won’t encourage clients to start or continue with marketing activities that don’t make sense for them based on what data is showing. I consider myself to be my clients’ accountability partner, and I’m not afraid to give tough love when I need to. I’m not afraid to voice a different opinion than other marketers. If I think something isn’t going to work, or isn’t working, I speak up.
I’m also proud that my marketing agency survived our recent COVID-19 pandemic and was extremely proactive about providing helpful insights from the very start of the pandemic for marketers to appropriately respond to the pandemic/pivot, such as these blog posts about using paid ads during the pandemic and how to make sure your social media presence wasn’t offensive and was relevant.
I give back significantly to the community. I was involved with the Braintree Relay For Life Committee for a while, and now, I do a number of charity walks in addition to all the other beneficial work I mentioned above.
Our Focus On Health & Wellness
If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that I’ll throw in a good blog post about walking once in a while. You can use the categories search tool/drop-down menu to search on “walking” to see the various walking topics about which I’ve written.
Since my corporate marketing days, I’ve always loved to share health & wellness tips — whether they be with fellow employees as part of an internal communications role, or with members of a health plan I worked for, and from the get-go with Results Communications & Research, I’ve aimed to inspire those with health (and other challenges) to never give up, and keep fighting via my “Keep Up The Fight” website page. And, I recently put up a new blog post about an invisible disease with which many health warriors who have battled or are battling other forms of illness have to contend.
Our Thank You
My digital marketing agency/SEO company and I would have never made it this far without all the help of great collaborators, cheerleaders (friends, family, my husband Jay, and other fellow small business owners), and most importantly, our clients who looked to us for expert marketing guidance and assistance. We have many clients with whom we’ve served as an outsourced marketing department for years, and we thank you for your faith in us! We’ve so enjoyed being a part of your business family! We also thank those who we haven’t had the opportunity to work with for as long as some of our long-term clients, but have enjoyed or are enjoying being a part of your organization’s success story.
What’s Next
I don’t know what the future holds for Results Communications & Research, but I’m excited about what’s to come! And, I know I will continue to try to give back as much as possible with the platform that this fun, educational, and interesting business provides!
Want To Benefit From The Marketing Services Of A Digital Marketing Agency/SEO With A Long Tenure And Who Gives Back?
As we mentioned in our previous blog post about how to plan and prepare for Google SGE, why wait to create website content and assets that might make it more likely Google will serve up a link to your website in relevant Generative AI/Generative Search results?
What Our Recent Audit Of Google Generative AI Results Revealed
We conducted an audit of the various content and websites that were served up in Google Generative AI results for a number of questions we posed via Google SGE and identified some commonalities among the content (content that was either shared directly in the results by Google or, indirectly, in the blog posts or website pages to which Google SGE linked in results.
As shown below, in addition to sharing content in Generative AI results, Google may serve up links to various websites below the content or in a carousel to the right of results. And, Google may even serve up an infographic!
EightCommonalities Among Content Or Websites Served Up In Google SGE Results:
Use of questions in page or post titles or in headers or sub-headers (H2, H3, etc.) on the page/post
Use of headers/sub-headers, in general, to break up content
Concise/short content (keep in mind content should still be actionable/provide enough detail to really answer someone’s question and allow them to take next steps)
Rows of space/white space to break up content
Infographics (keep in mind that Google doesn’t tend to like infographics from an SEO standpoint because they aren’t accessible; unless they are tagged on the back-end, a screen-reader used by those who are visually impaired can’t read them; if you decide to add more infographics to your site, be sure to use what’s known as “alt-tags” to make infographics accessible
Post/page title or header makes it obvious a list will follow, such as “3 Steps…” or “5 Actions To Take…”
Is It Possible To Prepare For SGE?
The answer to the above is a strong “yes,” and the above commonalities information should provide lots of insight to get you started with developing new, or revising existing, content to make it more likely to be of interest to Google SGE. Need more hands-on help with or advice about Google SGE Prep & Planning? Reach out to our team of SEO experts today!
