E42 – SEO and AI in Modern Marketing with Zach Jalbert
In this episode, Gary meets with Zach Jalbert, a consultant and author of ‘SEO for ROI: Navigating Online Authority for AI-driven Customer Experiences.’ Zach shares his journey from launching a Wix website to becoming an industry leader in digital marketing. They discuss how AI has reshaped SEO, the importance of building authoritative and unique content, and the necessity of multimedia approaches in modern marketing. Zach also offers insights into maintaining brand authority across various digital platforms and navigating the complexities of AI-driven customer experiences.
Discover:
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:30 Zach Jalbert’s Journey to SEO Expertise
02:13 The Evolution of SEO in the Age of AI
04:38 Content Strategy in the AI Era
09:06 The Importance of Video and Multimedia
12:46 Maintaining Authority Across Platforms
23:16 AI in Customer Experiences
30:18 Consulting Services and Contact Information
32:43 Conclusion
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-jalbert/
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: Hello, and welcome everybody to another episode of the Pipelineology podcast. Today I have a very special guest. I’m excited to be joined by Zach Jalbert, consultant and author of SEO for ROI. Zach, welcome to the show.
[00:00:16] Zach Jalbert: Hey, Gary, awesome to be here.
[00:00:18] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I’m, I’m excited for, for today’s conversation. we’re talk, talk, talking about things like, some of my favorite topics, SEO and AI.
But before we jump into all that. Can you just tell people a little bit, you know, about your background, how you got here, kind of tell that story of, how you became the author of, of, the new book you’re launching.
[00:00:38] Zach Jalbert: Alright. I am, I’m at home, so I, I actually just walked, down the stairs. That’s how I got here. No, I, I’ve been a marketer for over a decade, and, I started, started, actually by watching Shark Tank over 10 years ago. I created a Wix website then I drove myself into San Francisco and showed a few people and they said, they said, cool, we need an e-commerce site built.
And within a week I was teaching myself HTML and, redesigning product catalogs. I’ve always kind of had, I always had a creative spirit. And then, really the, as the technology was developing, I, I gathered more of, more of a, a role as like a technical lead. And now I, now I’m a consultant and we offer, we offer, done for you or done with you? Or also just coaching services for companies that are looking to modernize all revenue operations, nowadays. So we’ve expanded. We’ve expanded. I mean, we are very proficient in search engine, search engine marketing tactics. But we find more and more. companies really, need everything to connect.
They need the dots to, to all connect nowadays. And that’s a conversation I’ve been having a lot on. So I wrote, SEO for ROI.
[00:02:03] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. So got here. Says SEO for ROI: Navigating Online Authority For AI Driven Customer Experiences. I know, gosh, I think I was in a conversation with somebody yesterday about all the new black hat tech techniques people have are bringing back from the dead from 2005 to try and trick now the AI agents to be optimized for them.
So I’m, I’m kind of curious, what are you, what are you really seeing now of how SEO is evolving to, for these large language models?
[00:02:39] Zach Jalbert: What a great question. So one thing is, even though Google to, to the everyday person, Google looks pretty much the same. For now there’s a bun-, there’s a lot more ads and there’s more summaries. You’ll have, you’ll have more questions being directly answered on the search engine results page. You’ll also have these overviews of the topic. What, what’s happening is, AI has really changed search, from looking for answers to seeking solutions. And so what that means is now, Google’s, Google’s infrastructure is really upgrading to not just give answers, but to help you perform tasks faster.
So we’re in a, we’re in a multitask world now where, you know, an answer is very easy to get. AI is extremely smart. It’s knowledgeable. And, you know, if it’s not learning something new by visiting your website, it really can just summarize the answer for users. So there’s, there’s a lot of differences in the way that Google’s technologies have completely upgraded to, to, to make things better, make things safer. And really what that means is, the market is a lot more competitive now, and you, you really have to be authoritative. You know, you have to have, have to have a real identity and you need to offer something unique. Just not, not just with, not just with your, your product and your experience, which is extremely important, but, marketing really has to stand out.
You know, five years ago, generic content, generic blogs might’ve, might’ve moved the needle, for you. Does that less and less in competitive markets. Now we’re really seeing a big shift.
[00:04:37] Gary Ruplinger: That’s a, that kinda brings me to my next question, kind of revolving around content in, in general and how that needs to, to change. Because I, I see the, you know, gloom, doom and gloom posts on, on LinkedIn and things like that of, you know, our traffic’s dropped 80% and stuff like that.
[00:04:53] Zach Jalbert: Yeah just fun, just fun graphs with, with cliffs, they’re really great. It may, it’s really encouraging to see that all over, LinkedIn and the internet. But you know what, you, you know, SEO has, SEO has died. It has nine lives. It’s like a cat and it’s on, its, it’s on its eighth or ninth lives, life. So, but there, yeah. I mean, we, you see that a lot. Reference is the new reach. Visibility is, is very important in markets. You know, if you’re, if you’re employing SEOs who are, maybe they’re kind of incentivized to, to do more tricks to try and inflate rankings or inflate traffic. You know, Google, like I said, their technology is a lot better at recognizing SEO content. And it doesn’t have, so easy to produce SEO content now with generative tools. I mean, imagine if Google, imagine if Google still crawled and tried to rank every single page that was optimized for SEO, I mean, it would, it would, it would just fry itself. You know, there’s so much content being created. We went very quickly from helpful content a couple years ago. So ChatGPT came out, everyone started writing content, creating these long blogs. And so then this update came out called the Helpful Content Update, and we’re moving really fast into, usefulness or just thought leadership, helpful, isn’t helpful, has, has already been depreciated quite a bit too. So you’re, we’re seeing a lot of that. We’re seeing a lot of traffic drop, traffic, traffic drops. We’re seeing less impressions being mapped to keyword rankings. You know, you’re, you, you really have to be used as a source. So there, there’s a lot of changes and, and really the first thing that everyone sees. That’s gonna be that disruption in metrics every time. I mean, that’s, that’s really the only, because once, once leadership sees that, or once, once founders see that their visibility is just dropping it, it typically does signal, exactly what we’re on this podcast talk about, which is your pipeline is gonna be affected really soon.
[00:07:23] Gary Ruplinger: I think I saw in your, your bio you had mentioned, you know, if your, your blog isn’t helping you convert, you know, people you know isn’t helping your sales team convert your deals, you know, you’re, you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong. So I’m kind of. So I’m, I’m curious, what should you be doing with your blog and what are you kind of seeing that, you know, kind of make that shift in terms of, well, we just used to have lots and lots of generic content and that, that kept everything running.
Okay. But now AI has taken over the generic answer position. What should be going into the blog now? What should you be posting on your website to still, I believe you said, you know, get those references now from, from the LLMs.
[00:08:10] Zach Jalbert: Yeah. and there’s, so there’s the first part of the question. you know, I, I think that most marketers, you know, they’ve really felt, they’ve really felt kind of separated from the responsibilities of product and sales, since, since really the start of their career. Most of us, and slowly but surely marketing and sales and, and product, as they all start to rely more on content to to make an impact. They all need to, they all need to kind of things clearly and work the same way and collaborate. I think the bottom line, for the first part of, of, you know, what should you put on your website or like, you know, how do you upgrade your website or your content?
And that’s a big question because, you know, Google itself, you know, they own YouTube. So a lot of the times I talk to companies, I say we really, if we want to be competitive or if we want an edge, video’s gonna go a long way. But in terms of, in terms of how traditional SEO content needs to evolve, you know, customers really, they really experience business through multimedia now. And credible companies have a lot of really good information and a lot of content that they can provide customers to speed up the process, speed up the sales cycle. And, and oftentimes what happens is, you know, sales has a brochure over here. Marketing has a couple of topics over here. And I, and I think more content you can create that bridges the experience of product marketing and sales together, and then if you can actually create, you know, with, with, with new, newer websites, and you can see Google actually does this on their website too, is they break the resources section down so that you can quickly navigate rows, so based on headlines. So I think one, making things usable, functional, easy to navigate, purposeful, all of these kind of intangibles. That you know, I mean, they’re not, they’re not gonna be tied to KPIs. You don’t have a, you don’t necessarily have yet, a usefulness score or a, you know, a a, a score tied to a score tied to, anything other than engagement or people liking this. But you certainly can have more ownership across the board and say, hey, you know, content seems to impact a lot of engagement and a lot of our credibility no matter where the customer interacts with us at. So then, so then that’s the first part. And the second part is content needs to have, you need your own opinions, you need your own narratives. You need to be able to, to really drive the conversation to a new place, no matter whatever the topic is. AI really likes to rely on steps, data, navigating, navigating very real consequences of trade-offs related to decisions. and I mean, I guess for, for my book, there’s a very clear, there’s a very clear, part of the, of the book that explains that, you know, a lot of SEO content is topical and it’s it’s question related. but it doesn’t really help customers what decisions they have to make. It doesn’t, it doesn’t frame outcomes of what their, of what the, what the, the, actual next steps will amount to.
So I think it’s just an idea of, know, it needs to really be experience backed. And it, and it needs to clearly, clearly help someone kind of like predict the future based on what they’re reading. You know it, keyword content is still gonna be important, but there’s, there’s kind of this next level that, that adds credibility nowadays and, and usability.
So, really, big topic, super important topic. something that not every, not, not every marketing team even has what they need to, to fulfill that mission too.
[00:12:44] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. I’ve seen you mention that you want to keep authority consistent everywhere, you know, across YouTube, LinkedIn, your website partner listings. Just kinda curious if you could kind of talk a little bit more about that, why it’s important and what it, you know, what it does for, for your brand.
[00:13:03] Zach Jalbert: Well, well Google can see, just about anything publicly across the internet. So I’d say if you, if it can index on the search engine results page, then it’s, it’s impacting your brand. You know? Because people are, people are finding it, and it is usable. So I mean, I mean in terms of, in terms of marketing, you know, there’s certain places that customers, depending on the industry are gonna research you. I mean, it’s that, and I think it’s that simple. Also, video drives like eight times. engagement than anything. So, so I, I think that, I think that one statistically is, is pretty much proven. Think it’s like eight out of 10 people prefer watching a video to learn about something rather than, than reading. So that’s, that’s really the fastest one. And video can go everywhere. Every platform is really trying to drive video interactions. That’s why we’re here today. Right.
[00:14:04] Gary Ruplinger: Absolutely. You know, I, when we record these, these, episodes, we’ve, you know, record it. A podcast is generally an audio asset. I record the, the video ones, so I have video clips to use to promote, to promote the episode. Because it, that helps promote it better than just saying, here’s a link to the audio thing that you can listen to in your car.
[00:14:26] Zach Jalbert: Yeah, and I mean, I, I’d say nine times outta 10 in the last year. people have asked me for audits. They said, Hey, I’m really interested in an audit. And I said, well, why don’t we just skip the audit and just say you probably, you probably just need to understand that that more video is gonna be better than less. you know, we can improve content, we can improve photos, we can improve text, we can make your website prettier, but you probably want a subject matter expert out there. Speaking, speaking and, and building credibility for you. Google’s, So Google is, it’s so much more advanced nowadays. You know, it can really pinpoint, all the nouns tied to you and your business.
So, so yeah, I’d, say, I’d say credibility nowadays just calls for you to be where people expect. And that goes for every industry. Local services, sa, you know, SaaS, healthcare, automotive. local organizations, charities, not-for-profits. You name it. name it. People are looking for video. They’re looking for the quickest way to learn about you.
[00:15:39] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. Yeah, I know, I know. I’ve, I’ve told, I’ve told, I’ve had this conversation with people many times, even if your video doesn’t get as many views as maybe your, your text stuff or your memes, I, I like memes, so I post a lot of those.
[00:15:53] Zach Jalbert: Yeah, yeah,
[00:15:55] Gary Ruplinger: But even if it doesn’t get the same amount of, of, you know, push.
It’s doing a lot more heavy lifting because people are more engaged. It’s moving them more towards the outcome of hopefully eventually reaching out or working with you, compared to just, you know, having, having fun with the text.
[00:16:14] Zach Jalbert: Well, well, a picture’s worth a thousand words, but a video really proves that you’re real. Really does.
[00:16:22] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I think it’s right. I think with so much AI written content, kind of the other side of this where it’s the, the bots and the people who aren’t, you know, you know, real, it’s, you know, just clone, clone, clone. Doing video is still, I mean, the, the, the machines are getting better at it. But yeah, it’s still is.
It’s, you know, this is a real person. This is somebody I can actually work with.
[00:16:44] Zach Jalbert: It, it, and you know what, you mentioned that the, the machines. So Google can actually build consensus between text, images, and video all at one time. It’s, it’s the most mind blowing thing when I, when you find that out, that, it really does, really does search, it seeks out video. It really does seeks out video and it likes learning the nuances.
You know, I mean, remember, imagine how far we’ve gone. You could just kind of, you could create a website and it could, it could talk about the industry just in like general speak. And as long as you talked about the right topics and you were active enough and you kind of were, were you know, engaging some people in the market, that was good enough. Now, nowadays, nowadays it’s, it’s like saying the right thing at the right time is still very important, we’ve kind of moved in, we’ve kind of moved away from the idea that you could just, you could kind of like talk about the industry, but you didn’t, like Google didn’t necessarily want you to be yourself or selling yourself as much.
A lot of that has changed. Identity is, is really important. so I, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s really fascinating when you look at some of the technical upgrades to the Google stack. and, and really I cover this stuff in my book, like what is the research that they have released in the last two or three years that that really signals next two to three decades? Because it’s really clear. They’ve put everything out they’ve said, they said, hey, this is how our retrieval stacks have been upgraded. this is, this is what our content expectations are this is how, this is how, you know, multi multimodal. frameworks are, are gonna be deployed or used, and we’re gonna rely more on, diverse media formats.
We can serve all of ’em. We can serve PDFs, we can serve videos, we can serve infographics, and, it’s just the bars higher. And Google, Google basically has done a great job of, of really explaining to the market like it’s time to move forward. the, the problem is, just keeping a lot of people up at night. That, that’s the trade off. They’ve done a great job of explaining to everyone and, and enforcing to everyone that it’s changed. It’s just that now people are losing sleep because they don’t know what to do.
[00:19:29] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, it’s tough. It’s tough when you don’t have a, you know, a team of PhDs to, to, to translate it for you.
[00:19:35] Zach Jalbert: I, I mean, hey, the PhDs are, the PhDs are out there. you know, it’s funny, I was reading a study from Cornell, so DeepMind. I’m sorry, partnered with Cornell to talk about, this new upgrade to, the Google stack and, the average SEO even me, you know, it’s, it’s, I mean, a lot of it is over my head. you know, we’re not gonna be talk. I mean, there’s so many acronyms that, really do a great job of. Confusing the average person, even the average SEO. but that’s, you know, my book, my book came out, to really say, hey, this is what the future is gonna look like. And this is why there’s so many challenges. And you, you opened it up in the, in the beginning. I mean, I, I’m, trust me, I, I look great in black hats. I look really good at, in them, way better than I do in white hats. but, but I, I really want to help. Companies move forward in the right way. So it’s just a fashion statement for me is, is the best way I can, I can, explain that one.
[00:20:50] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. So I guess that kind of brings me to my next question of if you want to get more, your brand, you know, referenced as an answer in an an AI, an LLM, one of those, I’m guessing that the solution isn’t, and I kid you not, I saw this yesterday and a and one of the social media sites, somebody saying, yeah, just go back to doing white text on a white background.
And, you know, that’s, that’s working. I’m like. This stopped working 20 years ago. So it was, it was a bad technique in 2005, much less 2025. But there must must be catching somebody. So I’m curious, what, what is the, the real, you know, what, what should you really be doing there? If you know you, you’re trying to get some of those reference, references for your brand in, in an AI summary or using chat GPT that you know, they’re, they’re gonna reference you.
[00:21:41] Zach Jalbert: No, perfect. I’d say I’d, I’d say find where you’re the most credible. Find where you have the most understanding of a topic. Find somewhere, find, find a narrative or a topic where you really, give more perspective than what you can find out there already. You know? So the, the first thing for anyone who, anyone who’s ambitious, when you just start writing a lot, start really, focusing on content creation and, and adding to the, the industry narratives that are out there. your own narratives, create your own methods. you know, be someone who, be someone who can, can evolve the average person’s understanding so that they can educate someone they can become more authoritative. I, I think there’s a trickle down effect to where if you really find a credible source of information, the, the number one factor is if people can rely on you to make themselves look better. and so I would, I would really focus on that first, and just, and just go from there and say, Hey, this is, this is absolutely where we can make a really great impact. and, and that’s really the number one, the number one step in my opinion.
[00:23:11] Gary Ruplinger: Love it. So kind of switching gears here a little bit, just would love to cut. To get your take on AI customer experiences, because I know kind of a, a big topic from anywhere from I know.
[00:23:22] Zach Jalbert: Chat GPT. ChatGPT just came out with, with like shopping comparisons. The same week my book came out and I was, I like, I almost fainted. I was like, I was like, wow. Good thing I started writing about this exact thing years ago. I mean, I was like. I was like, oh, okay. Well, I guess that’s a sign.
Yeah, what,what in particular? What in particular can I answer? Because it’s very new. it’s, it’s kind. I mean, that’s a big topic.
[00:23:50] Gary Ruplinger: I, yeah. So I guess, you know, as I’m kind of thinking about it from, you know, a, a customer standpoint, like this past week, like my, my non-business hat, if I take that off for a second here, I think just as a consumer, what have I experienced with ai? And it’s, you know, I had a customer. A couple of customer support tickets that I opened up in.
In both cases, the front line now is now ai. It’s either a chat bot or something like that, but, and I’m, I’m finding, you know what? I don’t mind interacting with AI as long as you tell me that I’m interacting with ai. I think for me, it’s when you’re trying to pretend it’s a real person. And then, you know, I’m like, is this a real person?
Are you not a real person? I’m, I’m confused now. Can you actually help me? What, what’s going on? And then I get frustrated.
[00:24:40] Zach Jalbert: It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere too. Yeah. yeah. I mean, what, right. But how I, and sometimes I think that a lot of this isn’t necessarily an AI topic. I think it’s, I I think this is the same topic we’ve ever, we’ve always had with the internet, which is like, what’s trustworthy? You know what I’m saying?
Like, what can I, what, who can I give my credit card to that I feel safe with? yeah. I, you know, thi this, one of the hardest things a technologist is explaining that the battle really is adoption, compliance and security. That’s really the whole thing with AI. so if it, the more, the more that that people rely on AI, the harder this stuff is gonna get because it, because there’s more who are trying to manipulate it. So, so that’s how, that’s how you know that, you know, opportunity is out there because people are trying to cut corners to get to the prize. And that is a really big problem for Silicon Valley. It’s a big problem for the United States government. It’s a big problem for insurance companies. anyone who deals with sensitive information, you know, or anyone who, anyone where the stakes are, are higher, there’s gonna be more consequences. This, this is a big challenge. So it is a significant challenge. so I, I think that, I think naturally things are gonna get better and we’re, we’re not gonna be asking as many questions. We’re just gonna trust things that they’re gonna work more and more. and, and realistically, yeah, I mean transparency and trust and disclosure. Are, are pretty much one of the hardest things I think, I think for a sales team is really where it gets interesting for me because for instance, like so if people aren’t going to your website as much anymore with zero click, right? Or if they’re using agents to just summarize everything about you, but then you’re, you know, all of your, all of your website content is just generic stuff that you could learn at any other website. If you, if you try to, if you try to play the game, that a lot of product led growth, uh, kind of campaigns and strategies relied on where Well, we’re just gonna get ’em on the call, we’re gonna make some claims. They’re a little vague, but we can, but we have some case studies and we’re gonna wait to disclose as much as we can on the sales call. And, well if people don’t go to your website or if, if AI just finds the people who actually have pricing ready and just says, well, these are the people who have the most information out there, I think that’s gonna be a real big problem. I think that’s gonna be, an issue. So, I think transparency goes a long way.
I think the more you can disclose, the better. I’ve had a lot of conversations with, with business owners where. Yeah, you have a team of chatbot AI. but what, what, how well are the answers programmed and what do they rely on to, to solve problems? You know, who are they sending, where, where are they sending customers?
So resource sections can be real big and, you know, having your policies, having your policies outlined and the details disclosed, can save a lot of headaches and a lot of time for a business.
[00:28:33] Gary Ruplinger: That makes, makes a lot of sense and I can say, again, if I just put my consumer hat on, I, something I surely appreciate is, you know, the, you know, being able to find the information I’m looking for.
[00:28:45] Zach Jalbert: It’s, it’s like, it’s like when you see a job listing and the salary’s not there, you know what I’m saying? It’s, it’s like just, you know, there’s just, there’s scenarios where, is there a problem with doing that? No. No. I mean, you don’t have to disclose anything if you don’t want to, but, But as things get more competitive, you know, you really, you really need to understand, your place and kind of, kind of what people need to know to trust you.
[00:29:14] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, it reminds me if I go, you know, go way back in time, you know, to when I was still working in car dealerships, I remember we had, this is when people still used Craigslist and we had. Our listings on, on there. And, you know, the, the, the general manager was saying, well, how do we get more calls from it?
And the, the, the vendor comes up with this, this idea. He is like, just take the prices off. And I said, sorry, what? I was like, the, the calls will triple. And you know what, he was right. The calls did in fact, triple by taking the prices off. Sales went to zero. We didn’t sell any cars doing it that way.
[00:29:56] Zach Jalbert: I didn’t expect that. That’s great. But hey. Hey, we met our KPIs.
[00:30:04] Gary Ruplinger: We did. The, the leads were, we had a lot of leads. That was our best lead source that month.
[00:30:09] Zach Jalbert: Oh, that’s hilarious.
[00:30:13] Gary Ruplinger: But, yeah, sorry to derail you there. So, I guess for somebody who’s, you know, looking for some help with, with some of this stuff, especially with everything’s moving so fast and they’re like, Zach, I need some help. Who should they, how should they get in touch? What, what do you guys offer for them?
[00:30:33] Zach Jalbert: Well, we we have a few things. We we’re always happy. We’re always happy to just give friendly advice, you know, so, however I can be helpful, right. Love to connect, love to learn about people doing interesting things. would love to learn about your mission. Now what I can, what we offer specifically, I mean, as consultants, we, we’ve actually helped with, really just modernizing anything from website to content to full revenue operations. realistically, you, you know, if you’re looking to build a competitive advantage or if you’re in a market, where you’re trying to build more credibility and, and ultimately growth. Then we, we will help you understand the fastest route to building authority in your industry. And we’ll also help you, we’ll, we’ll help you navigate basically, what is the maze of marketing, just from top to bottom.
We’ll say, Hey, this is, this is what we see, here’s where the opportunities are. and then we’ll, we’ll also give you. We’ll also give you a plan to how you could operate and compete cost effectively by, by either by either finding vendors or collaborating or empowering your team, that you already have existing.
We’re, we’re there to support. We partner with, with, we with leaders in companies.
[00:32:06] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. And if they wanna get in touch, is your website the best place to go or should they find you somewhere else?
[00:32:11] Zach Jalbert: Yeah. Website’s great. LinkedIn. You can find, you can just search my name, Zach Jalbert. and I’ll pop up, connect with me anywhere. Connect to me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I’m not shy. Love to love to meet people. So that’d be the, that’d be the best step is, Just gimme a message and let’s set up a time to chat or let me know what, whatever I can, I can help point out.
[00:32:38] Gary Ruplinger: Sounds great. Well, we’ll make sure we get, get those, resources linked to people. Be sure to check out Zach’s book, SEO for ROI: Navigating Online Authority For AI Driven Customer Experiences. I know it’s available on Amazon. Is that the best place for people to pick up a copy?
[00:32:55] Zach Jalbert: That’s it. That’s it right now. not on the New York Times bestseller list yet, and so until then, did, it just, just, launched. yeah, I, I’d say search it. Amazon was, reached it, it did reach number one on the search engine optimization category. We, wanna get it back up there, so take a look.
[00:33:18] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. Well, Zach, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate you sharing some of these insights and, hope you have a great rest of your day.
[00:33:25] Zach Jalbert: Awesome, Gary. Had a great time.
[00:33:27] Gary Ruplinger: Thanks.
[00:33:27] Zach Jalbert: Thanks again.
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