The TREW Team is excited to have Dale Bertrand, CEO of Fire & Spark back on the podcast to discuss the changing nature of search marketing and how to optimize for the future of LLMs and Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE).
Dale Bertrand is the CEO and Founder of Fire&Spark, an SEO agency. Dale is also a popular speaker, sharing his expertise at conferences like INBOUND and Content Marketing World. We invited Dale to share what he's learned in 2023 - specifically in regards to the changing nature of search marketing and how marketers should update their strategies to optimize for Large Language Models (LLMs) and Google's future Search Generative Experience (SGE).
Dale and I discussed how AI has had major implications on how search engines operate and how AI has changed user search behavior. For marketers, we've moved well-beyond "gaming the system" for SEO and instead should broaden SEO strategy to focus on optimizing for each channel (LLMs, SGE, bots, YouTube, etc.) and focusing on being seen as a trusted thought leader in the eyes of Google.
Dale theorized that Google is going to determine which author has the expertise to write about a topic and who Google trusts to provide the answers users are looking for. We discussed this is the perfect time to develop internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and leverage them for the signals Google is looking for.