Read on to learn about both free and paid opportunities to create awareness of your organization and its products and services on the Nextdoor social media platfform!
And, keep in mind, that while your organic/free presence may only reach local consumers and businesses, your organization can purchase online advertising that can be served up to businesses and consumers throughout the U.S. And, you can choose the city or state location of individuals to whom you want your ad served up!
Free Promotional Opportunities On Nextdoor.com
If you or your organization is not familiar with, and maintaining an organic/free business page on the social media platform geared toward sharing community news and event — nextdoor.com — you are likely missing out on a free and easy way to create awareness of your organization’s products and services locally. Once you set up a business page — something our digital marketing team can help you with — and provide documentation to nextdoor.com to verify your business is legitimate, fans of your organization can start posting recommendations/reviews to your page. Plus, you can start posting updates to your nextdoor.com business page the way you do to other forms of social media and to your Google My Business Profile.
Paid Advertising/Promotional Opportunities On Nextdoor.com
In addition, nextdoor.com offers the opportunity to run display ads (image ads) that are similar to ads that you can run on other social media platforms, like Instagram or Facebook, or on discussion-forums like Reddit. We are currently testing this advertising vehicle for our own business, as well as for a client’s business, and will be sure to provide updates on our experience with the tool and the results it does or doesn’t deliver!
With answer-engine use (think ChatGPT, Google AI modes, etc.) on the uptick, it can be much harder to be found online by relevant searchers. So, maybe it’s time to get creative, think outside the box, and consider this “push” marketing activity, in addition to “pull” ones that you’ve relied on in the past. Learn more about the difference between pull and push marketing and why, particularly, with the introduction of AI, you’ll want to create and implement both a push and a pull marketing strategy.
Need Help With Setting Up A Nextdoor Business Page Or Nextdoor Paid Advertising Campaign?
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!
And, I’m going to continue to use Facebook to promote my various fundraising walks and community causes I’m involved with. Why? Because that was the original intent of “social” media – to share beneficial/helpful information that would make the world a better place.
What I Don’t Like About Using Facebook From A Personal Vs. Business Standpoint
What bugs me most about Facebook is this: there’s no way for personal vs. business posters to apply a filter. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t do any of the following related to a text or e-mail you send a friend or family member, or when talking with them via Facetime, Zoom, or in-person:
Mention you just had lunch with your mom or played golf with your dad if they recently lost their mother or father
Talk about an extravagant vacation to someone who either can’t afford one or whose circumstances don’t allow them to travel, such as someone who is a caregiver to an ill spouse, child, or other family member and has no flexibility to travel; they could also be unable to travel because of illness or disability
Share photos of a new baby or grandbaby with someone who is struggling to conceive or adopt, or who just had a miscarriage, or maybe even with a childless friend who always wanted to be a parent
Share photos of a romantic date with or a gift from a significant other with a friend you know is lonely on the day in-question or on holidays like Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve, e.g., someone who doesn’t enjoy being single or who just lost a spouse or a significant other
You get the picture!
So, if we’re connected on Facebook personally vs. following each other’s businesses, expect to see me on Facebook even less than you have in past years, except for the fundraising and community-cause promotion reasons above. And, of yeah, I’ll probably be celebrating Celtics victories or ranting about losses, and promoting my favorite local musical artists.
Given the inability to “filter” who sees your various personal posts — as well as to know what is going on in each and every Facebook connection’s life at any point in time, I encourage those who continue to post regularly on Facebook to ask themselves if they’d be better supporting their friends and family if they held off on posting about certain topics that might cause a sub-set of their friends and family discomfort, sadness, anxiety or envy on any given day vs. posting about things that might lift them up!
Using Facebook For Business Purposes
Of course, the above need to be careful and kind when posting on Facebook applies to businesses and organizations too. Need help developing a Facebook organic posting or paid advertising strategy that won’t offend your customers or prospective customers? Reach out today!
Why Are SEO Experts, AEO Experts, and Digital Marketers Talking About Wikipedia So Much In 2025?
Two key factors for all the marketing and AEO hype related to Wikipedia include:
Tests and research completed by SEO and AEO (answer engine optimization) experts indicate that often content from a relevant Wikipedia page is more likely to be served up to individuals using AI, answer, and chat search engines than content from the brand-in-question’s, or company-in-question’s, own website.
When AI search engines like chat engines were initially taught to crawl and index information, they were trained to do so using Wikipedia content.
Wikipedia Company Page
How To Set Up A Wikipedia Page and Hurdles To Getting Approved For a Company Page
How To Set Up A Website Page That Might Perform As Well As A Wikipedia Page When It Comes To Answer Engines
How Can I Set Up Website Pages On My Own Website To Mirror Wikipedia Pages?
If it ends up holding true, and honestly it’s far too early to tell, that structuring/setting up your website page to mirror attributes of a Wikipedia page will cause its content to appear more frequently in answers to relevant questions spit back by AI search/chat/answer engines, then the aforementioned set-up work will have been worth it. But, what does the work entail? To structure a website page so that it mirrors Wikipedia page content that AI search/chat/answer engines seem to adore, we advise the following:
Throughout website page content, include inner-page and inner-post links to relevant content, particularly content that provides additional information on a term or topic.
Reference/give credit to external resources used to inform website page content and link to reputable external sites that might answer additional questions that website page readers might have.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we tried to make this website page/blog post mirror a Wikipedia page to some degree, and since we recently had the good fortune of seeing the musical highlighted in this Wikipedia page at the Huntington Theater In Boston with a friend, we’ll use this page as an example. As you’ll see if you visit this hyperlinked page, the page is really easy to read. No paragraphs are crazy long. The page uses a lot of headers/sub-headers to break up and segment/categorize content. Through reference and external links at the bottom, the page also includes links to creditable resources that provide information on where facts and data contained on the page came from. And, throughout the page, hyperlinks are included to relevant Wikipedia or non-Wikipedia pages that contain further information/explanation on a particular topic/particular data included in the Wikipedia page.
How To Write Content That AI Search Engines Like To Crawl And Index
When Google first announced and began rolling out Google SGE, we published a blog post about how to write content for that particular AI search engine. You’ll see that the still appropriate advice provided there is very similar to what was provided above, keep your content clean and make it easily digested and understood by both humans and answer engines!
June 2025 Update To OurOriginal Blog PostBelow: As digital marketers and SEO experts scramble to learn and express all the changes happening in the “being found online” world because of AI, I’m seeing yet another acronym being used related to being found in content served up in AI search/chat/answer engines, and that is GEO.
What Is GEO And How Is It Different From SEO?
According to Google AI Overviews, “SEO (Search Engine Optimization) focuses on optimizing website content for traditional search engines like Google to improve rankings and visibility in search results. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), on the other hand, focuses on optimizing content for AI-powered search engines and generative AI models like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. While both share the goal of increasing online visibility, their strategies and target search engines differ.”
For now, I think it’s safe to say that people are using the acronyms GEO and AEO pretty interchangeably. Read on to learn about AEO!
Original Blog Post:
Every since I learned that Google rolled out Google AI Mode to all of U.S. users of its search tool in late May 2025, I’ve been educating myself as much as possible about the impact. In fact, I just posted the following on LinkedIn:
But, while we need to be ready for greater use of AI search engines by searchers, we can’t lose site that many individuals will continue to search using the former, traditional forms of search engines offered by Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Hence the reason for our image below.
What Is The Overlap Between AEO and SEO?
So, where is the overlap between optimizing your online presence so that information and data you share appears in generative AI results (AEO), but also appears in traditional search results (SEO)?
We plan to write a much more detailed blog post about that, but for now we’ll simply say that the commonality between AEO and SEO is producing and sharing content that answers questions that your target audiences have, whether those questions be about:
The broader category/nature of products and services you offer vs. your organization’s specific products and services
The specific products and services your organization offers
Your organization
Challenges or issues that your target audiences have that are tangential (not directly related to your organization and your products and services) but very important to your clients.
And, whether they are answered via ongoing, fresh website blog posts or regularly updated Q & As housed in a website FAQ like ours, or via social media posts or discussion forums like Quora and Reddit, it’s critical to both AEO and SEO that the questions you answer are helpful to your target audiences and not too self-serving!
Need Help Developing And/Or Executing A Strategy To Be Found Online?
It’s been a full year since we originally published this blog post dedicated to understanding AI Search Engine Terminology. Since this area continues to evolve rapidly, we felt it was time for an update! Any Text in GREEN below reflects information that was added to the post since we first wrote it.
A big challenge to all marketers today is the number of different terms that are being thrown around related to the use of AI search engines, or what can be called “answer engines.” These are also referred to as LLMs or LLM engines since they are powered on large language models. In addition, these terms aren’t always used consistently and mean different things to different organizations and marketers. To inform our readers about the current AI search engine landscape and help them understand what certain terms truly mean, we’ve put together the below glossary of AI search terms.
Answer Engines – as alluded to above, “answer engine” is a term used to describe interactive, conversational tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Google Gemini. In lieu of spitting back a long list of links to websites and other online/digital properties (known as SERPs), these answer engines tend to provide content blocks — often without links — that synthesize data from a number of websites to answer the searcher’s question. This can mean that your organization or your content may be mentioned/included in response to an appropriate “prompt,” but a link back to your website, known as a citation won’t always be included.
Agentic AI – it’s not yet known what the implications are related to traditional search engines and answer engines, but in the words of Nvidia, agentic AI refers to AI that “uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems. And it’s set to enhance productivity and operations across industries.” As of the date of the revisions to the blog post, many SEO experts are using this term to pertain to a tool that individuals sign up to use that allows the tool to choose and/or buy a product or service on behalf of the tool user.
AI Search – this is one of the terms that we were thinking of when we mentioned that different organizations and marketers are using this term differently since AI search can refer to the use of an answer engine like the ones we discussed above to identify external resources and external data related to a particular question, or it can be used to describe searches of organization-owned/internal data (this data may extend to data that the organization shares publicly or enters into digital tools or apps or technology, but ultimately, it’s information owned by or generated by the organization.) An example of this latter case is discussed in this guest blog post by Medullar who offers an AI productivity and collaboration tool for SMBs, and particularly consulting firms and professional-services firms.
Chat Search Engine/Chatbot Search Engine – chat search engines/chatbot search engines really are the same thing as answer engines (described above). They employ the conversational, interactive capability of chatbots, but also the capabilities of providing answers to questions from data they collect/gather across the internet the way that traditional search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo do. It’s basically a search engine that users chatbot functionality to interact with individuals asking questions vs. just searching using a statement, term, or topic.
Chatbot – technology that provides an interface for humans to communicate with that interface via voice commands, text (typed commands) or both. It is considered a form of AI and is employed in online messaging or online chat services used by organizations to answer customer or prospective customer questions like LiveChat ones.
Generative AI – generative AI is technology that pulls data/content from a variety of sources and produces (generates!) new content based on what it’s learned. The content can be viewed as a summary or synthesis of information collected by the technology.
GEO (Generative AI Optimization) – employing best practices and tactics so that your organization appears in generative AI results; basically, same as AEO with the nuance that instead of answer/AI search engines serving up verbatim the answer that you provide to a question, answer/AI search engines are “citing” your organization because they view you as an expert and are providing a link back to your website as part of their results to a relevant “prompt.”
Large Language Models (LLMs) – if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of understanding how LLMs work, Search Engine Land explains it well. Most organizations/lay people simply need to have a general understanding of this term because it’s often used in regards to answer engines/chatbot engines/generative AI engines because it’s the LLM technology/capability that lets the engines service engine users the way they do. As Search Engine Land states, “The core functionality of LLMs in search is to process queries and produce natural language summaries. Instead of just extracting information from existing documents, these models can generate comprehensive answers while maintaining accuracy and relevance. This is achieved through a unified framework that treats all (search-related) tasks as text generation problems. What makes this approach particularly powerful is its ability to customize answers through natural language prompts. The system first generates an initial set of query results, which the LLM refines and improves.”
Mention – this is when the name of your organization gets served up in AI search engine results. This may happen with or without the engine including a link back to your website (citation).
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) – refers to a content-generation method that takes advantage of both information information retrieval and LLM. It’s about producing content that’s both relevant and accurate by combining external data with generative AI capabilities.
Continue to Check Back For AI Search Engine Terminology Updates
We read, listen to, watch everything we can get our hands on these days related to changes in the world of search engine optimization and answer engine optimization. In keeping with the aforementioned, we will continue to update our terminology list, so please continue to check back!
Need Help Understanding The Impacts Of AI Search Engines And How To Respond To Them?
We agree with the wisdom of many marketing experts when it comes to whether or not businesses and organizations should spend less money and time on marketing during uncertain economic times — times when their customers want or need to spend less. And, that wisdom is that, in most cases, spending less money and time on marketing is only going to worsen your organization’s product sales/engagements for services when times get hard financially.
We mentioned “in most cases,” because in the situation where your organization offers a very high-ticket item that would be considered a huge luxury to MOST potential buyers, it would seem wise to cut back your spending on marketing because of the unlikelihood of clients making a purchase until the economy feels less uncertain. Still, you definitely will want to maintain some kind of marketing presence, even if it’s just continuing to post to social media, so people don’t forget about your brand and your products and services, and keep them on their “for-when-the-economy-improves” wish list.
But, getting back to the “wisdom” outlined in the first paragraph of this post, let’s first set the stage before we do. A period of economic decline could mean your consumer clients have been laid off, or if they are business owners who purchase business (B2B) services and products from you, their business may be taking a financial hit. Or, it could simply mean your customers are afraid of what the economic future holds, and believe it’s important that they are careful about spending. All of the aforementioned means that target audiences are likely spending money most on services and products they really need vs. something that might feel like a luxury, feel unnecessary, and/or feel like it could wait.
So, How Should I Spend Money On Marketing When The Economy Is Bad?
Whether yours is the type of product or service that people find or on which they get educated thru push and/or pull marketing, it’s really important you continue to maintain a presence so potential clients can find you or learn about you.
In fact, instead of cutting back on marketing efforts, you may actually want and need to spend more than you had been spending to be found by and/or to educate the right people that your product or service exists. In fact, today (5/12/25), Our Principal shared the above information on LinkedIn “Not liking what I’m seeing on the #GoogleAds/ #SEM / #paidsearch front for some of my clients right now (last 6 weeks), but much of it is what it is. It appears these two factors are currently at play for many Google Ads advertisers: 1) fewer people searching on relevant terms (relevant product and service terms in relevant geographies) — likely due to all our #economicuncertainty and #economicvolatility and people’s fears about spending money now (whether they be consumer or businesses) and 2) new advertisers creating and running #searchcampaigns because their own business volume is off and they are testing/trying Google Ads as a way to circumvent the drop in business/leads/inquiries, etc.”
Regardless of whether your organization plans to continue to spend the same amount of money and time on marketing, or decides to spend more money or less money, you still want to spend your time, energy and money wisely. Regardless of the direction in which you plan to take your organizations marketing, we recommend you go thru the following data analysis exercise to ensure you’re making the right move/to inform your next move.
Step 1: Employ Google Analytics To See Which Marketing Activities Have Driven The Most Traffic to Your Website In The Last 6 Months
If you spent a lot of time on sending out e-newsletters/e-mail to grow your business and/or on a social media expert to post to social media on your organization’s behalf, and Google Analytics is not showing a lot of traffic coming to the website via those defined Google Analytics channels, then, when marketing money is tight, that’s a place to cut back and consider investing in other marketing activities that HAVE driven a lot of traffic. You get the picture.
Step 2: Employ Google Analytics Data Or Other Available Analytics Tools To See What Marketing Activities Are Converting
In addition to reviewing website traffic acquisition data, even more importantly, you’ll want to look at which marketing activities are “converting,” the best, i.e., causing site visitors to take a desired action on your website such as completing an inquiry form or using a phone # or e-mail address on your site to inquire or purchase something. Check out our previous blog post about conversion generation, plus, follow the steps below to assess whether or not various marketing activities are converting.
Use Events Information In Google Analytics To See What Marketing Channels Are Generating The Events That Are Most Valuable To You
Access the “Events” report in Google Analytics, then, add a dimension such as “first user Google Ads ad group name (if you want to get really granular and look at a specific marketing vehicle and drill down on it),” or more general ones like “first user campaign,” or “first user source/medium” to allow you to see all the broader categories of marketing vehicles that are generating conversions vs. getting as specific about certain ones, and the type of conversions those vehicles are generating.
See print screens below which show where and how to access such data in Google Analytics. In the case where you want to look at “first user source/medium” or “first user campaign” to get a big-picture vs. granular information about a specific form of marketing or advertising, like Google Ads, after selecting “Traffic Source,” select “Cross Channel” and, then, you can choose “first user source/medium” or “first user campaign” from Google Analytics’ list. (Important Note: keep in mind that you may be able to get such conversion data from another marketing analytics tool or platform, including advertising ones, such as CallRail or social media platforms.)
Once you’ve generated your list of events at the marketing vehicle level you want to look at, if you have a large number of events or conversions a website visitor can complete on your site, you may want to use the search tool, as shown below, to search on the conversions that are most important to you, such as phone calls. This will streamline your analysis and make it easier for you to assess conversion results.
In keeping with step 1 above where we suggested focusing your marketing time and energy, during difficult economic times, on those activities that are driving traffic to your website, related to step 2 and analyzing conversion results, you’ll want to focus your marketing efforts on activities that are generating your most important conversions like inquiries and actual sales.
It’s important that you complete both the above step 1 and step 2 analyses because, while a certain marketing activity may drive a lot of traffic to your website, if it’s not “converting,” you’ll likely want to spend more time and energy on the activities that are “converting.” Each organization and business is different, and particularly if your product or service has a long sales cycle, and therefore, people do a lot of research and thinking before they purchase it, creating awareness thru website traffic can still be beneficial. So, you really need to consider your organization’s particular situation when drawing a conclusion about your marketing dollars and time. But, ultimately, at a minimum, your marketing activities during uncertain economic should drive website traffic, and ideally, conversions as well.
Don’t Rule Out New Marketing Vehicles During Uncertain Economic Times
We’d be remiss if we didn’t share that, if the above analyses don’t indicate you’re seeing desirable website traffic and conversion results from your existing marketing activities to inform a marketing strategy for our current economic times, maybe it’s time you consider a pilot or test of one or several new marketing vehicles. There could be a vehicle out there that would be just what you need to drive website traffic or conversions during a challenging financial time. We’re more than happy to help you figure that piece out!
Some SEO experts are saying identifying and focusing on ranking for keywords, i.e., high-volume appropriate search terms your organization wants to be found for in search engines in relevant geographies, isn’t as critical to SEO success as it used to be. In keeping with our recent blog post about SEO (search engine optimization) still being relevant, keyword research is still quite relevant to both for-profits’ and non-profits’ success.
Keyword Research Is Not All About SEO, It’s Also About Your Marketing and Business Strategy
Even if keywords were no longer important to SEO, keyword research still allows you to determine:
What products and services target audiences are searching on which can help an organization to decide to eliminate products or services or add new ones
The volume of individuals who are searching in an organization’s market area (geography) to help inform whether push or pull marketing is warranted
As the owner of a digital marketing agency and SEO consulting firm, I have to be very careful about taking a public stance on political issues. After all, it’s highly likely that not all of my prospective clients and existing clients are on the same political page as me. That’s why I don’t tend to post on social media about my political leanings and/or share political opinions, but perhaps, when I retire I will. I’ve always liked this quote attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. related to the importance of speaking out about what matters.
Actions You Can Take Now To Make A Difference For The United States Of America
The exception I’m making this year (it’s February 2025 as I post this and our country and world feel particularly out-of-control and crazy) is to publicly remind and encourage people to speak out if they are unhappy about the state of the United States and actions that POTUS and his administration are taking or plan to take related to how our country operates and serves U.S. citizens and/or world relations/affairs. That’s what I’ve been doing and that’s what I plan to continue to do. E-mail or call my two state senators and the Congressman for my Massachusetts district. Attend any town halls where senators and congressmen and congresswomen want to hear how the constituency they serve is doing and feeling and where’s there’s an opportunity to submit questions, voice concerns, and to hear answers to other MA citizens’ questions and concerns.
Holding In Or Onto Anger Is Not Healthy
I find holding a lot of anger inside is not healthy and makes things worse, and it’s far better to redirect that anger into action-taking, such as the actions I outlined above. And, it’s important to not just take the actions once, but rather, to keep taking them, unless you see the change you want to see in our country and world.
So, when you’re feeling crazy angry about the state of our country and world, why not make or take the time to let your senators and congressman or congresswoman know? This gives them information they can take back to the House or the Senate and can share about how their constituency is feeling. And, ultimately the Senate and Congress are supposed to be representing the people they serve and taking the right actions related to their wishes, so they need to keep hearing over and over again from their constituents what those wishes are.
Need Some Inspiration To Speak Out Or Speak Up?
Check out the Keep Up The Fight Page of our website and get inspired by the song shared below from the musical, “Ragtime.”
History shows that not speaking up or taking action, or turning a blind eye, has lead to horrific events like the Holocaust. Learn why and how the Holocaust happened. Be part of the solution and be part of the movement to not let something thought to be impossible like the Holocaust ever happen again!
Make Them Hear You!!!
Every voice matters. When 1,000,000 small voices join forces, change happens!!!
As I’ve been reviewing both my own website’s Google Analytics data, as well as that of my clients’ websites in recent months to see how much traffic they are getting from “organic search,” therefore, search engines, it’s become quite clear to me that an organization should no longer just rely on the results shown under the traffic acquisition and user acquisition reports, and specifically the results listed for defined traffic channel “organic search,” to assess how the site is faring from an SEO (search engine optimization standpoint).
Why? Because AI search engines are being used more and more by searchers and Google Analytics (GA4 Analytics) does not yet account for traffic coming from AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity and does not incorporate such traffic in the “organic search” volume total. Instead, that type of traffic shows up under the Google Analytics defined channel of “Referral” traffic.
How To See If Your Website Is Being Served Up In AI Search Engines
So, in addition to checking your “Organic Search” (search-engine) traffic volume, you will need to look at your referral traffic to see if any AI search engines are “referring” traffic to your site. You can do so by adding the “source/medium” dimension to your user or traffic acquisition report as shown in the print screens below related to our own website.
Click the “+” sign in the top left side of the report shown above to add another dimension to your Google Analytics report.
Look thru the immediately-above report for referral traffic coming from AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Need Help Figuring Out How To Rank Better In AI Search Engines? Reach Out Today To Speak With An SEO Consultant.
Reach out today for a complimentary discussion about the type of online content your organization needs to regularly produce and publish to rank well on all search engines, not just AI-search ones!
