SEO In The AI Era: Why Your Website Still Decides Everything

About This Episode

Your website decides whether AI can answer a customer’s question about you. If it cannot, you are simply skipped, and no amount of brand work fixes that.

In this episode of SEO On-Air, host Koa Kauwe sits down with Mark Michael, founder and CEO of DevHub, the CMS platform behind multi location brands in franchise, retail, and home services.

The panel explores a blunt position. Mark’s line is that if it is not on your website, it does not exist, because an LLM that cannot crawl an answer to the customer’s question simply skips you. He walks through it with a clogged toilet before a two year old’s birthday party, where the real query carries service specificity, price, and same day availability, and a page saying we service all of Texas answers none of it. Koa pushes back that brand has outgrown the website, which sends the conversation into where off site trust actually comes from.

They also discuss the three SEO packages Mark cannot stand, why selling strategy is harder than selling output, why LLMs surface Yelp and forgotten directories, the CRM data brands have never put on their site, why domain architecture should be all subdirectory, why WordPress is excellent and why that is the problem, and the one question that filters agencies selling packages from agencies selling results.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– Why an LLM skips you if the answer is not on your site

– The three SEO packages worth walking away from

– Why selling SEO strategy is harder than selling output

– What a real customer query looks like versus a service page

– Why LLMs surface Yelp and long forgotten directories

– Where off site trust actually comes from now

– The CRM data brands have never put on their website

– Why domain architecture should be all subdirectory

– Why WordPress is great and why that is the problem

– The case study question that filters the pretenders

Whether you’re running a multi location brand, working agency side, owning a franchise marketing budget, or deciding what your website needs to do now, this episode provides actionable insights into building a site AI can actually read, structuring domains properly, and vetting the agency you hire.

Because the brand AI recommends won’t be the one with the best story about itself.

It will be the one whose website actually answers the question.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction to SEO On-Air & Meet Macy Myhill

01:30 Starting Out as a Link Builder for Mesothelioma Lawyers

07:18 The Ethics of Making Numbers Look Good for the Board

08:45 How to Tell Good AI Content From AI Slop

11:33 Is Top of Funnel Content Dead in the AI Era?

13:17 Navigating the Black Hole in LLM Data

14:54 Why Customers Brag About Finding You Through ChatGPT

17:45 Query Fan Out & How Prompts Behave Like Keywords

18:48 Why LLM Traffic Converts Four Times Better

25:37 What to Check First When a Content Program Declines

Eighteen years building websites, and only a handful of SEOs he would hire.