If you build for humans but ignore how machines interpret your brand, you risk becoming invisible in the very places people now get answers, comparisons, and buying decisions without ever clicking your site.

Should we ignore AI and LLMs in marketing is a real question now. The internet has changed the rules on all of us. Not overnight, but fast enough that you can feel it in the numbers, in the ads dashboard, and in the way people behave.

They scroll more than they click. They ask platforms for answers instead of visiting websites (as if there’s a clear choice). They trust summaries. They trust “best of” lists regardless of who wrote them. They trust screenshots. They trust the first thing that looks confident.

That shift is exactly why this topic matters, and it is why I want to be careful with my tone here.

Should We Ignore AI and LLMs in Marketing?

What Sparked the Question in the First Place?

This post was sparked by a LinkedIn post from Rand Fishkin, who is one of the most influential voices in modern SEO. He is thoughtful, principled, and skeptical by design, and I mean that as a compliment. His job has often been to call out hype cycles and warn marketers when they are about to chase something shiny and get burned.

After spending a long day in the code, I responded quickly and matter-of-factly, and Rand replied to me directly. That made me stop. It made me slow down. It made me think harder about what I actually meant, so I’m grateful that Rand even noticed.

To be clear, this is not a “Greg versus Rand” post. This is me clarifying a position I care about, and tying it back to what I do every day for small business clients who cannot afford to guess.

Here’s the core of my viewpoint:

1. I agree with the idea that great content and a great product matter most. This is non-negotiable. As an example, I argue everyday about the viability of thoughtful blog posts. Clients from 20+ years ago will tell you I’ve always advocated this.
2. I also believe you cannot ignore LLMs, not because they are replacing everything today, but because they are already shaping discovery, trust, and visibility in meaningful and measurable ways. There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye.
3. If I am wrong, we will all know soon enough. The best marketing always gets measured.

The conversation that started this, and why I respect it

Rand’s argument on zero-click marketing is hard to ignore, because it matches what we are seeing in the wild:

• People have been trained to stay inside platforms.
• Platforms often restrict or suppress links.
• Machines decide what gets shown, more than ever.

That is not controversial. That is observation. Where I think people talk past each other is the word “ignore.” When someone says “you can ignore LLMs,” what I hear as a practitioner is, “You can choose not to spend time there.” Sure. You can choose not to. People choose not to do a lot of things. But when I’m advising a small business owner whose leads are getting more expensive and whose organic traffic is harder to earn, my job is to reduce risk. And ignoring a major shift is a risk.

…my job is to reduce risk. And ignoring a major shift is a risk.

I am not saying “ditch SEO and go all-in on AI.” Just the opposite, I am saying: keep the fundamentals tight, because fundamentals are what machines consume at scale. And that leads directly into what we have been doing at GoGo.

GoGo Marketing LLC is a Bakersfield, California–based digital marketing agency specializing in high-performance WordPress websites, SEO, and conversion-focused systems for small and mid-sized businesses.

To me, that sentence is not just branding. It is a signal. It is a repeatable identity statement. It is an anchor.

I have been intentionally using the exact same core phrase across the website, author bio, and platform profiles because I want consistency. I want machines and humans to triangulate the same answer when they ask: “Who is this company, what do they do, and are they credible?”

That seems to be the game now. Credibility is not a single page. It is a pattern.

The shift nobody wants to say out loud is CPC is not the deal it used to be.

A lot of business owners still think the relationship is simple: Pay for ads > get clicks > get customers. But it has always been more complicated than that, and it’s getting more expensive.

CPC literally means cost per click, not cost per customer, not cost per sale, and not cost per booked appointment. You pay for the visit. Then the visitor still has to trust you, understand you, want you, and choose you.

Whether you succeed or fail, platforms get smarter. They learn your funnels. They learn your offers. They learn what converts. They learn your audience. They learn your creative. They learn your landing pages. The platform benefits whether you succeed or fail, beacuse the transaction ends at the click, not the outcome.

And as the environment becomes more zero-click, the incentive to send traffic out gets weaker.

That does not mean ads are dead. It means you have to earn your conversions harder. You have to tighten your fundamentals. You have to make sure the click is worth paying for. It also means you need a plan that is not limited to “rent attention” forever.

This is one reason I wrote Before You Build It. Entrepreneurs keep getting sold the wrong thing: a “simple website” that becomes expensive the second real marketing begins.

Control Feels Optional Until You Need It

Here’s a real life, small business example. Supposes a company has 20 worthwhile SKUs. They have two comon paths:

They can pay a freelancer or agency a couple hundred dollars a month to manage a WordPress website they own. Hosting, content updates, and basic SEO are handled. Nothing flashy, but the business controls the domain, the data, the structure, and the future. If strategy changes, the site can change with it.

Or they can pay a commerce platform roughly the same monthly fee to access a bundled toolset that replicates much of what WordPress already does out of the box. Then they still pay a freelancer or agency a couple hundred dollars a month to manage content and basic SEO. On paper, it looks similar. In practice, the business is renting the system. The backend is abstracted. Data access is limited. Structural decisions are made by the platform, not the owner.

Both options cost money. Both can function. The difference shows up later, when the business wants to adjust, integrate, optimize, or respond to how marketing actually performs. Control feels optional until the moment you need to change direction, integrate new systems, or respond to what the data is actually telling you.

Directives, not guarantees: robots.txt and .htaccess are suggestions with teeth

Here is a nerdy truth that matters more than most people realize. A lot of what we do in technical SEO is made of directives.
Not promises. Not guarantees. Directives. Robots.txt is a directive. Canonicals are a directive. Meta tags are a directive. Even structured data is a “strong suggestion,” not a binding contract.

In a perfect world, every crawler follows every instruction exactly the way you intended. In the real world:

• Different bots behave differently.
• Some ignore instructions.
• Some partially comply.
• Some “interpret.”
• Some scrape first and ask questions later.

So what do you do?

You do the best basic work you can do, because it reduces ambiguity. It reduces misinterpretation. It increases the odds that humans and machines understand what you are and what you are not.

That is why I keep coming back to SEO fundamentals. Not because SEO is the whole universe, but because SEO is the foundation that almost every discovery system still leans on.

SEO is not dead. SEO is the crawlable foundation under the hype

Every few months, I see posts titled:

• “SEO is dead.”
• “Stop writing blogs.”
• “Google is over.”
• “Now it’s all AEO.”
• “Now it’s GEO.”
• “Now it’s AI optimization.”

I actually agree with the emotion behind those posts. People are frustrated. They are getting less organic traffic. They are paying more for ads. They feel like the goalposts moved again.

But I also believe if you want to be discovered, you need clarity. If you want clarity, you need structure. If you want structure, you need fundamentals. Even if discovery shifts from search results to AI summaries, the AI still has to learn who you are from somewhere. It still needs sources. It still needs signals. It still needs corroboration.

That is why I keep saying do not ignore LLMs, but also do not abandon the basics that make you legible.

The “signal stack” small businesses can control

Most small business owners feel powerless in this conversation because they think the only lever is “post more” or “spend more.” There is a better way to think about it. Build a signal stack you control. Here are the categories of signals that are still worth doing, even as the interface changes:

1) Identity signals / NAP

• Consistent company name, description, and services
• Consistent founder identity and author connections
• Same phone number, same address rules, same citations where applicable
• Same positioning across your site and your external profiles

2) Structural signals

• Clean site architecture
• Clear navigation and internal linking
• Proper title tags and headings
• The correct schema where it truly applies
• Fast, mobile-friendly layout

3) Content signals

• Real answers to real questions
• Clear definitions and examples
• Pages that match search intent
• Helpful, specific writing. Not generated, generic slop

4) Trust signals

• About page that reads like a real person
• Proof, case studies, and specifics
• Policies, transparency, and accessibility
• Secure site, updated plugins, and clean technical hygiene

This is the work. It is not glamorous. It is not a trick. It is a craft. And for me to call this a craft is not a casual choice. My wife cringes every time she hears an actor or artist refer to their work as a “craft,” usually said with a straight face while describing something that appears high-paid and low-skill to outsiders.

Of course, that ignores the decades of discipline, sacrifice, risk, and responsibility behind it. People who devote their lives to the work, employ others, support families, put kids through college, fund causes they believe in, and quietly carry far more weight than anyone sees. That’s exactly why the word matters to me. What I do is a craft too, even if it’s one that has been abused by people we’re not always sure we can trust.

The AEO to ZEO of “Optimization” terms (real, emerging, and plausible)

This is the part I promised myself I would write because it makes a point: the acronym soup is getting ridiculous, and it will keep getting worse. Some of these are real, some are emerging, and some are plausible enough that you will see them in a thread next week.

I’m marking the ones I am intentionally making up with an asterisk (*) so you can separate reality from satire.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Write content that answers questions clearly so it can be surfaced in snippets, voice, and AI responses.

BEO (Bot Experience Optimization)

Optimizing how bots interpret your pages: clean HTML, predictable structure, stable internal linking.*

CEO (Crawler Efficiency Optimization)

Reducing crawl waste with better architecture, fewer junk URLs, and cleaner parameter handling.*

DEO (Data Entity Optimization)

Strengthening entity signals: who you are, what you do, where you operate, and how it connects.*

EEO (Entity Experience Optimization)

Making your brand identity consistent across site, profiles, author pages, and citations. Didn’t I just talk about this?*

FEO (Feed Engine Optimization)

Optimizing for social and content feeds where links are suppressed and native engagement wins.*

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Often used to describe optimizing content so it appears or is referenced in generative AI answers.

HEO (Human Experience Optimization)

Plain-language writing, scannability, strong UX, accessibility, and trust.*

IEO (Indexation Efficiency Optimization)

Making it easier for systems to discover, crawl, and index what matters.*

JEO (Journey Experience Optimization)

Mapping the path from discovery to conversion so visitors do not bounce in confusion.*

KEO (Knowledge Engine Optimization)

Optimizing for knowledge panels, entity graphs, and structured understanding.*

LEO (LLM Engine Optimization)

A tongue-in-cheek term for sending consistent signals that LLMs can pick up and corroborate. You can’t ignore this.*

MEO (Measurement and Experiment Optimization)

Tight analytics, clean events, conversion tracking, and short feedback loops.*

NEO (Narrative Experience Optimization)

Positioning, story, proof, and “why you” written like a human, not a brochure.*

OEO (Omnichannel Entity Optimization)

Same brand facts everywhere: site, LinkedIn, directories, citations, and social bios.*

PEO (Platform Experience Optimization)

Optimizing the places people stay: Google Business alternatives, LinkedIn, YouTube, socials.*

QEO (Query Experience Optimization)

Building pages around the exact wording people use when searching.*

REO (Reputation Engine Optimization)

Reviews, testimonials, third-party proof, and credibility signals.*

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Still the foundation: structure, relevance, technical health, and content that earns trust.

TEO (Trust Engine Optimization)

Security, policies, accessibility, author credibility, and transparent business info.*

UEO (User Experience Optimization)

Often described as UX, but the concept matters: speed, clarity, and ease of action.*

VEO (Visibility Engine Optimization)

*A catch-all term for increasing discoverability across search, social, and AI.

WEO (Web Ecosystem Optimization)

*How your site connects to everything else: integrations, schema, feeds, and crawl paths.

XEO (Cross-Engine Optimization)

Optimizing across multiple engines: Google, YouTube, marketplaces, AI assistants, socials.*

YEO (Yield Experience Optimization)

Improving conversion yield from the same traffic through better offers and clarity.*

ZEO (Zero-Click Experience Optimization)

Designing content and profiles to win even when nobody clicks: summaries, bios, and native value.*

If you hate this list, good. That’s the point. The acronyms will keep changing, but the fundamentals under them keep reappearing in new clothes.

What I’m actually recommending to clients right now

If you run a small business, here is the practical stance I am taking:

1. Keep building human-first value. Great product, great service, great content.
2. Keep your SEO fundamentals tight, because that is the foundation for being understood.
3. Add consistency across platforms, because AI systems learn by corroboration.
4. Expect more zero-click behavior, and adapt your content strategy accordingly.
5. Measure on a longer timeline than your emotions want to. Most changes take weeks to show impact.

I spend a meaningful percentage of my time “making the machines happy,” and that includes the boring parts: titles, slugs, headings, internal links, author pages, schema, image metadata, and consistent identity signals. Not because I worship algorithms. Because I want my clients to be findable.

How this ties back to Before You Build It and The Foundation Factor

This entire conversation is why Before You Build It exists. Most people are trying to “market” on top of a weak foundation:

• wrong platform
• wrong structure
• wrong messaging
• wrong measurement
• wrong expectations

Then they get mad at SEO, mad at Google, mad at social media, mad at ads, mad at everything. The foundation matters first. That is also why I keep teaching a simple framework: Build, Grow, Own.

• Build the right platform and structure.
• Grow attention with content, traffic, offers, and distribution.
• Own your presence so you are not trapped renting attention forever.

And yes, the upcoming work in The Foundation Factor goes deeper into how these pieces triangulate and support each other, because marketing has always been a system, not a tactic.

Final Answer – Should We Ignore AI and LLMs in Marketing?

Should you ignore LLMs? You can, in the same way you can ignore a lot of things. But if you care about being discovered over the next few years, I believe it is smarter to treat LLMs as part of the environment now, and to strengthen the signals you already control.

• SEO fundamentals
• clear messaging
• consistent identity
• trustworthy structure
• real proof
• measurable outcomes

If this turns out to be wrong, we will eventually know. But if it turns out to be right, the people who start aligning now will have an easier climb than the people who wait.

And I’ll end where I started: Thank you, Rand. Your post made me think harder than I intended to, and that’s a good thing, and I just bought your book.