SEOs are more desperate to learning how Google 'might work' than learning how marketing does work.
Now, I don't mind that people want to understand how Google works.
But what I care about is more SEOs learning how marketing works.
I could walk into any agency, and ask an SEO team how Google ranks a web page and I'm confident I'd get a good reply.
I'm less confident that the same SEOs would know what the 4Ps of marketing is.
And I have zero confidence that they have read How Brands Grow, let alone How Brands Grow 2.
GEO or whatever you want to call it, presents a superb opportunity for the SEO industry to reset itself and become grounded in marketing.
Yes, it's possible to influence the returns that LLMs provide users.
But it's more important to know which queries you want to be returned for.
There are too many SEOs who their job is to create and rank blog articles.
And too few SEOs who want to think about delivering marketing results.
In search, traffic is vanity. Profit is sanity.
In GEO, visibility means nothing unless it increases the liklihood of being thought of in a buying situation.
Or increases the ease or convenience of being purchased from.
There's no point influencing LLMs if that influence leads nowhere.
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