Is SEO Dead? What to do if you still have a blog

Man, anyone else seeing those website traffic numbers take a bath?

We’ve seen clients go from 30,000 unique visitors per month down to less than 5,000, and in very short order.

But simultaneously, I’m hearing from more and more clients that they’re getting referral lead – from AI!

In fact, being the Bitcoin Bro that I am, I’ve been researching lending products to borrow against my Bitcoin rather than sell.

In other words, using Bitcoin as collateral, which is 1000% coming, and fast.

In fact, it will very likely strip a significant amount of liquidity out of more traditional investments as a store of value, like real estate.

But I digress, a topic for another day.

I was talking to this forward-thinking lender about borrowing money to buy a house using a crypto loan, and he asked how I found him.

I said, Grok actually recommended you to me when I was asking about available programs in my area.

Much to my surprise, he said he’s getting enough leads from AI to not even have to do marketing (as a marketer, that was a foolish statement I overlooked).

He said he’s getting multiple leads per DAY from AI recommendations, and was obviously very excited about it.

Now, this all has confirmed what I’ve long speculated.

Let me share what I mean by that.

LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Claude, etc., are basically just hyper-scraping engines.

Someone jokingly said from an article I was reading, “it’s plagiarism at scale”.

And while I chuckled at the framing, the sentiment is true.

So here’s why that matters for you.

AI NEEDS new data to scrape to give the most relevant and up-to-date feedback to users.

This is a similar race to the Search Engine race of yesteryear.

The most relevant search results led to users opting for Google over Yahoo, Bing, etc.

LLMs are now faced with the same dilemma, but worse.

Why?

Because let’s think back, even before search engines or the internet itself.

You, as a user, had to go full analog to first discover what you were looking for, and then curate the data you found.

Think of it like going to the library to do research.

You had to leave your house, search for a handful of books that applied to your subject matter, and then curate the data inside those books to (hopefully) arrive at your intended outcome.

Google said ixnay to the discovery part.

Meaning, you no longer had to do the arduous lift of going to a library and rummaging through a bunch of random books (ie. discovery).

But the curation?

Well, that part was still up to you.

You still had to curate the links, go down a click hole, and hopefully find meaningful takeaways from relevant/credible sources.

Fast forward to today, and these LLMs are promising BOTH Discovery & Curation, which is a tall order.

Why?

Because you’re asking a tool to take ALL the possible information in the world, and whittle it down to a single answer that is most applicable to you.

Let’s take health for example:

If you just provide a broad response, like “how to deal with IBS,” you’re going to get everything from the most Western Medicine answer, all the way to the hippie in Sedona answer.

There’s an argument here to be made about you being a good pilot, but we’ll save that one as well for another day.

The bottom line is that effective curation is a really tall order as a core promise for a tool.

And these LLMs can’t do relevant, up-to-date, highly qualified curation if they don’t have updated content to crawl.

This is where I’m about to tell you why you need to be a content machine, and say “goodbye” to the old ways of thinking about SEO, and start thinking about SEO+.

Currently, the users are not being rewarded for content contributions nearly enough as they should be.

These tools are new, and “playing ball” with content generators is yet to be a concern.

But what happens when people become disincentivized to no longer create content because “everyone’s using ChatGPT anyways.”?

They’re going to have to create incentive for people to create new content – aka new information and data for it to crawl.

This is where ChatGPT has a huge, screaming business model flaw, by the way.

It’s also another shining example of why Elon Musk plays 5D chess, and is years ahead of the pack.

He spent $44 Billion on X.

And yes, to save Free Speech was part of it.

But you better believe he saw it as real-time, every second of the day, global data sourcing engine.

Everything he does is now being positioned as a data-AI company – even Tesla.

And he got ahead of rewarding users for content creation and engagement long before the others have taken a similar course of action.

Paid/verified accounts?

Also likely a post-AI world measure (AI bot account counter-measure), in addition to making sound business sense.

Back to my point, Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude – they are going to need US to continue feeding the curation machine.

And that’s where you have a chance to get ahead of the of the “SEO is dead” pack.

And look, my prediction is it’s not going to stop at referrals.

I think a “Contributor Fee” Model is coming too, much similar to YouTube.

In other words, if ChatGPT uses your website or data to provide a curated answer for someone, you get a partial payment for providing a credible resource it could cite.

Either way, the name of the game is to follow the money – always.

And this AI race is all about getting people to use their platform over other options.

It’s Google/Yahoo/Bing all over again, just with a more enhanced value proposition.

SEO+ (Traditional SEO + AIO)

And in this era in human history, where information is now at your literal fingertips, it’s your game to win if you can provide a vault of information to be curated.

Best part?

All those amazing, juicy, value-packed blogs you wrote 7 years ago that no one reads anymore…

All that amazing Instagram content you posted in 2017 when you realized the platform could be more than just a place to post pictures of your food…

That amazing summary you gave of your services with that awesome testimonial that could close clients left and right if they just knew about it…

Guess who DOES know about it, and can package it all together in seconds for a potential customer or client?

Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.

If you use it right, it won’t just help your website rank #1 overall on Google, it will literally package up an entire thesis on you, your services, why you’re the best fit, and the incredible work you’ve done.

So, get to creating. And make sure the content you’re putting out is exactly what you want people to know about you.

Your new hyperdrive salesman is going to start doing the rest.

**Email me at Chris@chrismichaelharris or DM me on Instagram if you’re ready to take your marketing game to the next level and start generating more revenue from your content efforts.