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
As we’ve shared in recent AI-search related blog posts, a “prompt” is what an individual — related to their own personal needs or business-/work-related needs — enters into an answer engine/AI search engine, like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexi, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Co-pilot to gather information or complete a task related to a particular topic, question, or problem for which they are seeing a solution.
How Can Small Organizations Be Found In AI Search/Answer Engines and How Do They Benefit From It?
The AI train is moving fast, and while answer engines may not always serve up your content or a link to your website, known as a “citation,” to a prompter/searcher who is in a relevant geography in response to a prompt related to your organization’s products, services, or solutions, there will still be a number of times when your business or non-profit organization gets a mention or a citation served up to geographically appropriate prompters, i.e., individuals who are located in the geography your organization is able to serve.
So, if you’re a smaller shop, why not take advantage of this opportunity to have your content served up in lieu of a bigger brand’s content. You may not be able to compete with a bigger organization when it comes to ad spend/advertising dollars, and overall marketing budget, but producing easily understood, beneficial content is a low-cost way to help your organization be found online before, or more frequently than, bigger organizations.
Check Out These Resources To Help You Create Online Content That Helps Small Organizations Be Included In AI Prompt Results:
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?
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 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!
Sure, we could have titled our blog post, “what is SEO?” (and we do answer that question in the explanation about our Boston SEO Company’s SEO services), but where’s the fun in that when we’re using an SEO tool, which we regularly recommend others use, to identify what questions are asked most often about SEO (search engine optimization). “SEO Is What?” is one of the most-asked question about SEO. So, in keeping with what we advised our readers to do to prepare for and capitalize on Google SGE, we’re going to answer that great question below.
SEO What Is It?
And, while we’re at it, we’re going to answer another very similar high-volume search question. The one in our header above. Because succeeding at “search” is all about making content understandable, we’re going to keep this really simple. SEO means employing tactics, activities, and best practices that support and lead to both your organization’s website and other digital properties, such as your Google My Business profile, or your social media presences, ranking well in Google for relevant searches.
So, what’s a relevant search? A relevant search is when individuals (likely target audience members for your product or service) enter terms into a search engine, like Google, that are relevant to the products and services your organization offers and the geography in which you offer them. These relevant search terms are known as “keywords.”
What Are SEO Tactics?
Some SEO experts break down SEO tactics into these different categories. And, quite honestly, some use the category terms differently, but this should still give you a good idea of what SEO is all about. Note that on-page and off-page SEO tactics also fall into either the “organic” SEO category or the “technical” SEO category.
What Is On-Page SEO?
This category of SEO tactics includes tactics you implement on your website pages and posts, such as incorporating high-volume, relevant search terms (keywords) in your website content, like we are doing with this blog post. And, making sure behind-the-scenes tagging capabilities, known as meta tags (available with all website platforms), are used appropriately to provide Google and other search engines with essential information about your website — and ultimately the products and service you offer, and the people you serve.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
These are SEO tactics that happen “off” your website, but impact SEO results and being found on Google. A great example of off-page SEO is soliciting backlinks (links on other external sites back to your site) from organizations with whom you partner, collaborate, are a member of, etc. Another great example is making sure you establish and maintain an effective Google My Business Profile.
What Is Organic SEO?
Tactics that fall in this SEO category are tactics that focus on making sure your content is helpful and addresses target audiences’ needs and questions, and tactics that ensure Google and other search engines can easily crawl your site and know what your content is about (via the meta tags we talked about above), your location, and the location you serve.
What Is Technical SEO?
This last category of SEO tactics is often overseen by a web developer or requires a web developer’s help. It’s all about making sure your website is mobile-friendly, and can, therefore, be read by mobile devices like cell phones and tablets that access it. And, that your site loads quickly.
What Is Paid SEO?
Paid SEO means buying advertising from search engines like Google to support an ad with a link to your website appearing at the top of search engine results for desirable keywords for the geography you serve. Since Google is still used by 92% of internet searchers conducting an online search, we equate Paid SEO to Google Ads.
Need Help Ensuring Your Site Is Optimized For Search In 2024?
As we’ve shared many times on the main pages of our website and in blog posts, our Boston SEO company and digital marketing agency works with a very diverse client base, including for-profit organizations and nonprofit organizations, and organizations that offer tangible, consumer goods, as well as ones that offer services. Included in the aforementioned client mix, are organizations that offer “experiences.” To us, experiences, such as events, shows, and classes are sort of a hybrid between a service and a tangible good. You certainly take something home with you — lots of great priceless memories!
We currently are working with a number of clients offering such experiences. Several are nonprofit arts organizations offering one or several of the following: live music, theatrical performances or shows, classes, and art exhibits. One for-profit client providing a special experience is a perfume shop in New Orleans, offering both residents and tourists the opportunity to take a trip back in time to the Vieux Carre (Old Square) and to Paris via the experience of touring their historic French Quarter shop and choosing a fragrance for themselves, or as a gift or souvenir for someone else.
What do all of these organizations have in common beyond offering “experiences,” great memories, and valuable opportunities for bonding with friends and family? They all want and need to be found in search engines by searchers searching on “xyz things to do in their particular town/city/state region.” Why? Because both residents of, or individuals planning a business trip or vacation to, their area, often don’t know they and their fabulous experiences exist. Appropriate audiences for their particular experiences may not be searching on their name or even the particular experience they offer such as “live music,” but they definitely will be searching on “things list” terms such as the following:
fun things to do in Boston MA
unique things to do in Harvard Square
best things to do on Cape Cod
romantic things to do in New Orleans
special things to do in Boston Metrowest area
We think you get the picture!
Highlighting The “Things List” You Want To Be Found For On Google
There are two ways you can call out to Google, and other search engines, the “things list” terms you want your website to be found and rank well for:
Be creative about including in your public-facing website content those things lists you think your website/organization deserves to be found for. Let’s say you offer dinner and live music in an intimate, cozy atmosphere, why not include a sentence like the following in your website content? “We’re often told by visitors (or customers) that attending one of our dinner shows should be at the top of the list of romantic things to do in Boston.”
Include the things list term you want to be found for in your behind-the-scenes SEO/meta page or SEO/post title tag along with a geographic trigger like “MA” or “Copley Place” or “Braintree.”
If you don’t know what things lists your particular target audiences are searching on most frequently and/or how to compose a post or page title tag (or where to enter them on your website), reach out to our SEO services company for help.
Highlighting Solutions To Problems To Support SEO
Being found for right things list terms, is just one of many examples of how your organization needs to think beyond the exact names of your particular products and services, and about the solutions to problems you offer. As we always call out in any informal or more-formal SEO training class we facilitate, many people who conduct a search engine search, are looking to identify an organization or individual who can solve their problem. So, as we recommended above related to appearing for the right things lists, you need to incorporate these solutions to problems in your website content and page title tags. For example, nutritionists might include phrases in content and tags like “how to lose weight,” or “how to have more energy.”
Recently, as the owner of a digital marketing agency with an SEO (search engine optimization) specialty who is always looking to improve on the SEO services we offer our clients, I signed up for a subscription to “Answer The Public.” I had learned about the tool via a free webinar offered by Neil Patel, a digital marketing expert I greatly admire and follow on LinkedIn, and one of Neil’s colleagues. The aforementioned tool allows you to see what questions individuals are asking related to the products, services, and solutions to problems that your organization offers, and to see how frequently, for a particular geography, individuals are searching Google for answers to those questions.
I’ve already used the tool numerous times with various clients to inform FAQs (frequently asked questions) on their websites, as well as topics for future blog posts. And, of course, I plan to use the tool to inform future blog posts for Results C & R too.
The data available via “Answer The Public” is so in keeping with the blog post we wrote last year about the algorithm change Google shared about placing greater emphasis on “helpful content” when determining which organizations’ websites to serve up high in search results for relevant queries.
When thinking about what to write about “Answer The Public,” the song below came to mind because isn’t that what helpful content, and answering the questions people want answered, all about? Giving people what they want and need?
Reach Out To Talk About Your Marketing Challenges and Opportunities and How Our SEO Services Might Address Them
I always love a great marketing and communications brainstorm, so reach out today to talk about your awareness-, sales-, and service-engagement- challenges. I’ll always give you an honest evaluation of whether I believe your organization would benefit from pull marketing tactics (like organic and paid SEO), push marketing tactics (like social media advertising), or both. Use my calendar app to schedule a complimentary discussion at a day and time that’s convenient for you, or e-mail me at gail.moraski@allintheresults.com.
As we mentioned in this recent blog post, there’s so much discussion going on right now about whether or not, and how soon, AI (artificial intelligence) will impact how search engines like Google determine what websites, Google My Business Profiles/Google Search & Maps listings, or other digital properties to serve up in search results.
We think, now more than ever, it’s important to return to why the internet, via which individuals are able to access various digital properties, was first launched. Certainly and initially, the internet was created to allow for easier sharing of information. We believe that, regardless of the decade in which we find ourselves living and working, websites and other digital properties should still continue to support the internet’s initial mission, and therefore, focus on the target audiences they serve and what information those target audiences expect to find on the online property in-question. Plus, focus on what information would be most helpful to those audiences.
Two Best Practices For Digital Information Sharing That Also Support SEO
So, what are two practices that are critical to effective information sharing that also support SEO (search engine optimization)/being found on Google?
As we called out in our “SEO Is Not For Sissies” blog post that we wrote seven years ago (2016), BE AUTHENTIC.
Provide the best User Experience (UX) by not overthinking, and being real and being honest about who your organization is and the services your offer. While you want external organizations to link to your site, don’t offer compensation for sites to do so. Google recognizes when the connection between organizations is forced vs. real and natural. In addition, don’t just write for SEO. Tell a good story, get people talking about you, be newsworthy, etc. Write about the things that matter most to you and your customers.
BE FRESH. Keep your website and any other digital property’s content fresh by continuing to produce and share new, content relevant to both your organization and your target audiences. Visitors to your online properties aren’t going to return if there’s no new information to be gleaned from your site, and Google and other search engines are way more likely to serve up a competitor site for relevant search terms (keywords) if that competitor site has fresher, newer content. What’s an easy way to keep your content fresh? Create and post a bi-weekly or monthly blog post!
Even if the two digital information principles/best practices above are all you have time to attend to due to limited staff, time, or $, barring any kind of technical issues with your digital properties, as Boston digital marketing experts offering SEO services, we believe you’ll be well positioned to be found on Google by the people you want most to find you. Plus, you’ll be supporting the internet’s original mission to share beneficial information effectively!
Don’t Have Time To Ensure Your Website Content Is Authentic Or Fresh?
Regardless of the size of your organization, it can be confusing to figure out what type of marketing agency or marketing consultant to hire to help you create awareness, and ultimately cause sales of your products, services, and solutions. The ability to market digitally/electronically — that came with wide-spread adoption of the internet — brought with it the following changes when it came to organizations engaging outside help for their marketing (outsourcing their marketing), whether it be for one-off/one-time work or ongoing work.
How Digital Marketing Leveled The Playing Field For Both Advertisers and Ad Agencies
Organizations who couldn’t afford the high costs associated with producing TV, radio, transit, or outdoors (billboards or other) advertising, found new, more affordable marketing activities were now available to them in the form of social media posting and advertising, tactics that support websites being found on Google and other search engines for desirable search phrases (organic search tactics/SEO tactics), paid search engine ads/marketing (SEM), e-blast and e-mail marketing, and more.
Since many organizations looking for marketing help no longer required the infrastructure and diverse skillsets associated with marketing tactics that involved large production activities and costs, some realized they no longer needed to hire a full-service large advertising agency — think the type of agency featured in the acclaimed TV series, “Mad Men,” or on “BeWitched,” as smaller marketing shops, like ours, could meet their digital marketing needs and/or traditional marketing needs related to activities that don’t require a lot of production, such as Public Relations (PR), or print advertising.
Getting back to whom your organization should consider hiring for ongoing marketing services or one-time/one-off marketing project work/help, here’s one Boston digital marketing agency’s, Boston SEO company’s, and Boston marketing consultant’s thoughts — yeah, we consider ourselves to be all of the aforementioned, and for clients who engage us for non-PR work, we can also be engaged for help with PR since our Principal has a great deal of PR experience.
How To Figure Out What Type Of Marketing Firm To Hire And Questions To Ask
Branding and Design Firm. A firm that refers to themselves as a branding/brand and design firm primarily focuses on helping you figure out the look and feel of your brand, including the logo, colors, and graphic elements that will be associated with your brand. They usually offer website design services, but not always. And, some do offer other digital marketing or traditional marketing services thru collaborations or partnerships with digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies, or marketing consultants, or marketing freelancers. So, if you know you will need particular digital and/or traditional marketing services after working with the branding firm to develop or execute a new brand identify for you, ask in advance if they offer those services, so you will know whether you will have the burden of hunting around after for someone to help with traditional and digital marketing services — particularly to drive traffic to any new site you engage them to design for you.
Digital Marketing Agency. Digital marketing agencies tend to offer both higher-level strategic planning services, as well as hands-on/execution services, related to any marketing tactic that is digital or electronic related, including: e-blast/e-mail strategy and execution services, social media strategy and voice (actually writing and scheduling of social media posts), online advertising (social media/display advertising, Google Ads or other search engine advertising), blog strategy and voice work (actually writing and posting of blogs to your website), and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Most will offer content marketing services as well to help you figure out what content your target audiences are most interested in, and an editorial calendar for serving up such content on your website. Website content writing services likely will be available as well.
Marketing Consultant. In the almost nine years since we launched Results C & R, we’ve met a large number of marketing consultants. The degree to which they offer hands-on/execution work vs. developing high-level strategic plans tends to really vary. Some offer a number of hands-on services, in addition to helping you develop a strategic marketing plan, while others don’t do the actual marketing tactic execution work. If your organization has a number of internal marketing people who can actually oversee or execute the marketing plan developed by a consultant, a marketing consultant may be just what and all that you need.
Public Relations Firm/PR Firm. The focus of public relations firms is to get your organization unpaid-for-advertising/marketing. By helping your organization develop a strategy for causing various reporters and media to cover your story, they help your organization get mentions and attention without the cost of an expensive advertising campaign. PR firms also tend to offer event planning services since an event may be the perfect way to create awareness of your organization and/or create good will among your target audiences. Keep in mind that if you only need help with putting on an event vs. getting regular/ongoing press coverage, you could consider hiring an event planning firm. Many event planning firms also have experience getting media/reporter coverage for an event as well.
In general, the biggest overlap between a digital marketing agency and a Public Relations firm is that they both tend to offer social media services, since social media posts — particularly organic vs. paid/boosted social media posts — can help to generate good will and create awareness of an organization’s products, services, and solutions.
Advertising Agency. Nowadays, when people think of, or decide to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency, it’s related to the fact that advertising agencies can pull in the right team members or hire the right contractors for a marketing campaign that requires heavy-duty production. As we mentioned above, scripting and executing a radio, TV (network or cable) or streaming advertisement requires the collaboration of a bunch of individuals with diverse skillsets, the renting of studios and/or locations in which to film, the hiring of “talent” for the broadcast spot — whether it be aired on the radio or TV. Activities like the aforementioned are often the reason why, in our current day and age, an organization would look to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency. Although, most advertising agencies offer digital marketing services, in addition to traditional ones.
Web Design/Web Development Firm. Web design and web development firms are exactly what their name indicates — firms who help design and develop websites for clients. Many also offer logo design or other graphic design services because of their web designers’ ability to successfully complete such work. All web design/web development firms DO NOT offer SEO services nor do they always understand SEO, so if you expect or want to receive SEO services as part of your new website launch, be sure to ask any firms you are considering to design and develop your site, what knowledge they have of SEO and/or who they have on their team that has an SEO background. Otherwise, as we explain in this blog post, you’ll end up with a website that is not easily found via search engine searches.
Unfortunately, we regularly interact with prospective clients who had someone develop a beautiful, effective site for them, but the site is not being visited/found by target audiences because SEO tactics weren’t put in place by the web design/web development firm as part of the site development and design engagement.
What Should I Expect To Pay A Marketing Agency Or A Marketing Consultant?
Based, again, on our 9 years of marketing agency and marketing consulting experience at the time of writing this post, we’ve found that, in general, the bigger the agency/marketing shop, the more expensive their hourly rate and marketing project fees are. Why? It mainly comes down to overhead and the costs of maintaining and marketing a larger organization, offering a large number of employees benefits, etc.
If your organization doesn’t expect to need the type of traditional advertising production work outlined above under the “Advertising Agency” section, you’ll very likely fare better financially hiring a smaller digital marketing agency or PR firm or a marketing consultant. Plus, you may end up getting more personal attention than you would with a larger agency. And, most smaller shops can pull in a collaborator, freelancer, or other agency or consultant, as needed.
We’re A Boston Digital Marketing Agency, Boston SEO Company, Boston Marketing Consultant, and Boston PR Firm All In One!
Due to our Principal’s more than 30 years of corporate marketing and consulting experience, we offer all the services called out in the heading directly above! We regularly meet with both start-ups and long-standing organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — for complimentary discussions about their marketing challenges and opportunities, so feel free to use our calendar app to schedule a FREE initial consultation https://calendly.com/gail-moraski.
