#181 – AI Changed How People Find Websites & What That Means for Web Designers with Meg Casebolt

Shannon Mattern (00:01.528)

Hello everyone and welcome back to the profitable web designer podcast. Today I am joined by my friend Meg Casebolt. She's founder of love it for search, which is an agency devoted to helping online businesses get found in AI focus search, including chat, GBT and helping businesses turn them into leads subscribers and sales. So welcome back to the show, Meg.

Meg Casebolt (00:19.833)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (00:28.569)

Thank you. Third time's a charm. I think this is number three, right? Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (00:30.878)

Yeah, this is number three. think number two on the profitable web designer. We go way back. We go back to pep talks for side hustlers.

Meg Casebolt (00:35.971)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (00:42.629)

And I do want to say in terms of the bio, AI, including chat, chat, PT and Google, because I've been doing Google for the last 10 years and I think people aren't recognizing that Google is AI. So we can talk about that too, but the changes are happening at a faster rate than the bios can be updated.

Shannon Mattern (00:48.589)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (00:53.571)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (01:00.29)

For sure. Yeah. So let's just, you know, I would love for you to just share with our listeners who this might be their first introduction to you, a little bit about you and your background. And then, yeah, I would love to dive into like these really massive shifts that we're seeing, you know, and just kind of dig into that too. So just tell everybody who's Meg Casebolt.

Meg Casebolt (01:26.885)

Who's Kaiser Sozei? For our usual suspect fans out there. So I think on our last episode, if y'all want to go back and listen to that one, I went through the full evolution of, you know, entering the design space, becoming a web designer, specializing into SEO, partnering with other web designers in order to support their client projects as my primary business model. And I spent

Shannon Mattern (01:29.774)

Right

Hahaha.

Meg Casebolt (01:55.109)

Probably six or seven years with that as my business model where I was the SEO strategist who was working with web designers, with copywriters, with marketing strategists, with sort of the implementers to say,

based on what I see on your website, here are the keywords that you're ranking for, and here are the keywords that you may wanna target, and here's the content that you wanna produce, and here's the order that you wanna produce it in, and here's why it matters for search, and here are the opportunities, and here are the risks, and here are the competitors, and I did all of that, right? And I still do a lot of that. However, it's not here are the keywords anymore, because...

The way that Google and ChetchPT and Perplexity and AI and Gemini, any of these systems are parsing and organizing information has changed so drastically in the last three years that if we're still clinging to here's the checklist that somebody gave me in 2018, we're doing a bit of a disservice for our clients in terms of how we're explaining.

how these systems work and how they can show up for them and how they can get clients from them. So that's sort of the evolution that I pitched you last month. And I was like, we need to update your people because this has changed so drastically.

Shannon Mattern (03:09.58)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (03:14.604)

Yeah. I mean, even my behavior in the past month has changed drastically in terms of like, I'm now opening Gemini before I'm opening Google for everything. Like, you know, I was just booking a trip with my sister and I'm like going to Gemini first to like find information on this area and hotels and things like that. Like I'm not going to Google for.

Meg Casebolt (03:25.091)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (03:43.854)

most things. And so I'm watching my behavior change. And I'm, you know, like doing different things. So, you know, just this whole thing is fascinating. So where do where do we start in this discussion? Of? Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (04:02.981)

think we start there. Let's start there because I think that's so fascinating and whatever your tool of choice is, whether you go straight to chat.jpt, you're going to Gemini, which is probably because you're already in the Google workspace zone. Yeah. I have a very clear delineation. I have a blog post that I'm sort of planning to write about how I brainstorm and...

Shannon Mattern (04:16.129)

I go to chat GPT for some things, Gemini for other things.

Meg Casebolt (04:29.157)

a pressure test in chat GPT, but then when I get to a point where I'm thinking about writing or publishing, I move it to Claude, and the ways that I'm using Gemini is more of a synthesis, and these tools, some of them are embedded, some of them are things that we are going out to discover, but even with Google, even if people who are still going to Google, those AI search results are showing up. So the user behavior has changed and

Shannon Mattern (04:48.429)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (04:53.945)

The tools that we're using have changed too. So the way that Google used to organize things was more like a card catalog where you would say, I'm looking for vacation advice and I want to go to either Barcelona or Madrid. And then you would type in Barcelona or Madrid and it would give you some travel blogger who has that exact comparison of Barcelona versus Madrid. And here's the different, if you like,

architecture, you want to go to Barcelona, and if you want more art, then you want to go to, you know, modern art, want to go to Madrid, and here's the different food things, and it did the comparison for you, it did a little bit of the diagnostic for you in the blog post. But now, instead of the card catalog of, here are the resources, now you have to go into the library, and you have to go to the books, and you have to find those resources.

It's like having a conversation with a travel agent or a librarian or someone like that who can answer those initial questions for you and then give you the resources based on your follow-up questions. So instead of it being, you know, these tools going, this is the phrase that somebody typed in. Let me search the internet for that phrase. Let me point them to that aisle of the grocery store or library or whatever our metaphor of the day is. Now it's you're sitting down with that person and they're going, great.

You want to go on vacation? Let's talk everywhere in Spain because I've been to every city in Spain. I have that information. Where do you want to go? And then you can have this back and forth conversation. And it's not about what is the phrase that Shannon typed into the bar that we can then go find the information in stacks. It's saying, what's the intent?

What's the outcome that Shannon is trying to achieve here? What's the information that already exists on the internet that I can parse, which is a way of saying read. I can parse it. I can summarize it. I can synthesize it. I can give an answer. And sometimes those answers include citations. Sometimes they don't, depending on how the prompt is asked. So the way that people are searching has changed.

Meg Casebolt (07:02.819)

and the way that these tools that are answering questions has changed in order to answer the questions in the way that is the most appropriate. But it's no longer exact match, know, Barcelona v Spain, no one's typing that simplicity into chat chippity or Gemini or whatever they're going. I want to, let's just make this a travel planning episode.

My family wanted to go on a cruise for my mom's upcoming birthday. so I went, you know, I did the initial, you know, if we're going out of this port, what are the cruise lines that go out of New York City or which is Newark? And should we go out of Baltimore? Should we go out of here? And I started there. And then my next questions were like, OK, we have these times that it could work. How big are the ships? And then by the end of it, Shannon, I was on the phone with Royal Caribbean typing into chat GBT. Should I choose room?

7211 or 7204 and it's like

Shannon Mattern (07:59.042)

That is exactly my recent experience in planning this trip with my sister. We're going to Spain. I don't know if I mentioned that when you were saying this. Yeah, we're going to outside of, yeah, we're going outside of Barcelona. We're getting like a lot of alignment today.

Meg Casebolt (08:07.525)

I don't know, or if I just sort of went to Spain because I just watched people we meet on vacation and they went to Spain. So maybe that's where it came from. I don't know.

Shannon Mattern (08:19.297)

And yes, we were asking, like we were booking the hotel literally this morning. And it was like, bed and breakfast or half pension? I'm like, I don't know what that means. I'm in Gemini, like, tell me the difference between bed and breakfast and half pension at this specific hotel. And it's like, this is what this means. And I'm like, and this is what this means. So what do we want to do? And then we're like, OK, like, boop, make the decision, like, check out, you know?

Meg Casebolt (08:38.947)

Yeah. This is breakfast only. This is half your meals. This is, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it makes a huge difference in the way that people are searching and therefore we can't depend on traffic from search anymore. But that doesn't mean like, SEO is dead.

Shannon Mattern (08:48.887)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (08:56.14)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (09:04.193)

Right.

Meg Casebolt (09:05.282)

Right? People are still searching, but the way that the answers are being presented has changed dramatically. And the way that the answers are being cited has changed dramatically. And if you were to, let's say that, you know, we'll talk about this B &B in Spain. How did ChatGP2 choose that B &B instead of the other B &Bs in the other towns around Barcelona?

Probably because that BNB had done some of this AI optimization work. And a lot of it is similar to what they would have done for SEO work back in the day. What's their address? What are their client reviews say? What's their pitch? How many rooms do they have? Do you want something more intimate or do you want something more like a resort? Like that information is very similar. The way that we're presenting information is probably

Shannon Mattern (09:37.698)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (10:02.085)

75 or 80 percent the same. But we don't need to worry so much about like optimizing for a specific phrase so much as optimizing for topical authority.

because AI is not looking at one specific page. AI is looking at not just what's that one page of that one website that talks about the distance between that B &B and downtown Barcelona train station. It's now talking about what are all of the reviews everywhere online saying about that. It's searching through the TripAdvisor reviews and the Yelp reviews and the, I don't know, Barcelona.com reviews or whatever.

And it's going, based on what you told me, my recommendation is this, which is not just what shows up number one for Airbnb near Barcelona. It's you can then optimize for those specific things. So if you're looking for something that's sweet and intimate and quiet, and it's not on Las Ramblas, and it's not in the Arts District, it's a little bit closer to the beach, then it's going to make those recommendations based on what you are telling it, not just.

optimizing for an algorithm and trying to game the system. And so by being more specific, that B &B's website can show up in more search results because it is tighter, the signal is clearer, it's more organized, it's more obvious exactly what the value proposition is and how it's differentiated from those big hotels.

Shannon Mattern (11:33.112)

This is fascinating. And here's where my mind is going. It's like, okay, so by the time I even get to that website, my intent is very different than before, right? Before I'm like, okay, I'm like getting Google results. I'm clicking, I'm trying to decipher all of this information that's already been deciphered for me.

Meg Casebolt (11:34.181)

Right?

Meg Casebolt (11:47.438)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (12:00.101)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (12:01.021)

Now by the time I got there this morning, I'm like, I want to see what this place looks like. Because that's the only thing that is missing. I'm like, is this going to be? Well, sure. Yeah, I didn't ask. Because I'm still learning what's even available to me. I'm like,

Meg Casebolt (12:13.669)

Oh, maybe, I think Gemini probably could have pulled some of those photos for you. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (12:24.609)

this is a whole new world. I can just be like, show me pictures. Like, it didn't even occur to me that I could probably have asked that. So I'm wanting to click onto their website and see. And of course, they have a video background of going through the whole resort, caught my attention immediately. And I'm like, OK, this place is nicer than I thought it might be. And we're like, booking.

Meg Casebolt (12:31.385)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (12:54.327)

But yeah, I didn't even think that I could. Yeah, it did. Yes, absolutely. It did. And so that's, know, where I'm thinking of like, okay, how does that change or influence or impact what our listeners are doing for their clients when they're out there building the website? And now we want to.

Meg Casebolt (12:55.141)

but AI did all the pre-sale work for you. AI did every step of that pre-sale work for you.

Shannon Mattern (13:24.043)

Make sure we're giving AI what it needs. Maybe the buyer's and the person's intent by the time they get there is very different. Maybe they're beyond your freebie by the time they get there. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (13:32.729)

Yeah. Yep.

I hope so. I hope they're ready to buy from you and you don't have to do as much work because you've done the pre-work. You've done the work to point out to these systems, I'm the best choice for this solution. And you've done the work and you know, for many, many years in the SEO space, we talked about E E A T, expertise, experience, authority, trust. Those signals are to a great extent, the same signals that AI is based on.

You know, open AI has a really strong correlation to Microsoft, which owns Bing, right? Like there's there's some very clear overlaps in the way that these systems are evaluating the same information. It's not like ChachiPT is going to Bing or Google and typing it in and looking at those results. It's doing the same work that Google is doing underneath the hood and often coming up with the same results because it cares about the same signals of credibility. But

It's not just going to those search results and doing the initial research for you. It's going and looking at the source material and deciding, should I trust this website? How is this particular entity, and I'm choosing that word very specifically, how is this entity related to other entities and how is it differentiated from other entities? Not, does this match the phrase that people are searching for? Very different approach.

with the same inputs.

Shannon Mattern (15:12.429)

I'm just like processing over here. I'm just like, OK, so that do it. Do it. Go. Just keep going because I'm just like, I don't even know what my question is because I'm just like, I have 2,000 questions. So let me have it.

Meg Casebolt (15:14.125)

I know.

Meg Casebolt (15:19.309)

holding back from like launching into 20 different answers. Cause I'm like, let me see where Shannon's questions go. Like, let's see.

Meg Casebolt (15:33.284)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (15:36.998)

Okay. I gotta like shake it out. Let me crack some knuckles here. Let me get comfortable. Okay, so like I said, it used to be that Google would go search the internet. It would prioritize. It would rank. would say, here's what that is. It would say, what are the phrases in these different places that matter? When I say, now it's looking at entities and entity relationships. The way that I'm finding is the best version of

Shannon Mattern (15:45.471)

settling in.

Shannon Mattern (16:00.003)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (16:06.041)

the way to describe this is that it's no longer a list of resources, it's a map of constellations. And you, Shannon Maddern, are the person, entity, that is the host of the web designer podcast, Profitable Web Designer podcast. You are the host of the Profitable Web Designer Summit. You are the owner of the Profitable Web Designer Academy. I'm sorry, I might be getting some of these names wrong, but I'm doing them on the fly.

Shannon Mattern (16:24.193)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (16:34.849)

That's okay.

Meg Casebolt (16:35.779)

You are, and so every single one of those entities is like a star. And the relationship between Shannon Madder and the host is she is the owner of the entity that is the podcast entity. And the owner of the, or maybe founder of the Web Designer Academy. And the, you know, you are part of this system.

Shannon Mattern (16:43.489)

Okay.

Meg Casebolt (17:03.885)

And then you have an audience entity, which is web designers. And you have a service entity. maybe you have a framework that you follow in the Web Designer Academy that is a methodology entity. And every single one of these entities has that relationship and is related to other entities. There are plenty of other resources around the internet for web designers to grow their businesses.

they would be close in the constellations to the other web designer service providers or web designer business coaches. And then we have to figure out in, then those like groups of all of the web designer business coaches would be near each other in this constellation. And maybe that you have some of those similar, we could call them keywords. We could call them semantic relationships.

which is just a fancy way of saying you're doing the same thing for the same people. So if we were to go to chat GPT and say, I'm a web designer and I want to make my, my web design business more profitable, more streamlined. I want to work on my proposals. I want to get fewer clients. I want to do a better job of marketing myself. Who should I work with? I would like to think that because you have consistently produced content that taps that same

need and that same urge for that same audience for years, you're going to show up in that top five list. But who else is going to show up in that top five list? And part of that is what is their language that they have on their website? they saying instead of saying profitable web designer, are they saying streamlined web design business? I don't know. Right. What are the overlapping spaces?

Shannon Mattern (18:38.849)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (18:58.467)

that your constellation and their constellations are touching. What are the vectors? Is the language for it. What are the vectors that are touching here? And what's the differentiation? How are you different from those people? And then Chat GPT will sometimes even write up for you. if you're looking for a business coach for web designers, here are the top five I recommend. And go to Shannon if this. And go to Steve if this. And go to Alice if this.

Shannon Mattern (19:04.375)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (19:26.775)

And it looks at all of that information to say, what are those vectors where they touch? And what are the opportunities where they don't touch? How much is overlapping in that Venn diagram and how much is different? And that is how you get cited in those search results, is you need to center yourself on a concept that people are curious about. But then you also have to say, and here's what my entity is.

as a unique organization person that can be clearly done. This is called named entity recognition, right? And once you have that clarity of here's who I am, here's who I serve, here are the outcomes I can help them achieve, then you can differentiate from, and here's how I'm different from Bob, Steve, Alice, whoever else is in this space. And that's when you start to show up is the very clear signal of this is my lane.

This is what I do best. This is how I'm different. It's not, here's everything I can possibly do for web designers, because if you start to do that, then you are diluting your value and your authority. But you, by saying profitable, this isn't just the web designer podcast. This is profitable. That's your differentiator. That's your value proposition, and that's part of your named entity. Okay, I have no idea if this is followable.

Shannon Mattern (20:51.328)

This is fascinating. No, this is fascinating. And so where I'm coming from, where I'm like, where I'm, I'm sitting here thinking like, okay, so, you know, like you said earlier, the strategy doesn't change much. It's a, it's a, it's a new understanding of like,

Meg Casebolt (20:54.661)

You

Meg Casebolt (21:07.438)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (21:13.918)

we don't have to, when you said earlier, like the keywords aren't so important anymore. It's like, what a breath of fresh air, because it makes me feel like, we can even be more, not authentic, but just like focused and clear and all in on this thing without having to be like, but I have to say it this way to feed the robots where we can just.

Meg Casebolt (21:20.612)

Yeah!

Meg Casebolt (21:30.777)

Yes, yes, yes.

Meg Casebolt (21:37.219)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (21:40.868)

be who we really are without trying to like push all of these buttons and

Meg Casebolt (21:48.058)

And I think there's a difference of like volume versus clarity, signal versus noise, you know? So it used to be, well, if you want to be found for this, you have to produce a certain foundational level of informational content about what is web design. You have to do the definition work, which kind of basic used to be important, much less important than it used to be. Now what I'm telling people is,

Shannon Mattern (21:51.916)

Sure, Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (22:13.462)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (22:17.677)

If you can find a moment where your expertise can shine through in a way that you can say, why is nobody talking about this? That's an opportunity. That's a space where, especially if you say, man, I've noticed this behavior. I have this pattern recognition. So many of the members of Web Design Academy are struggling with this. And when I go to Google, all that shows up is like weak Quora results. Boom.

That's your lane. That's your opportunity. That's your way to say, yes, I'm really good at this. And then maybe once you write down your ideas, then maybe you take it to AI and say, I want to be found for this. How can I improve this? What else do I need to create in this semantic cluster? That's what it's called when we have multiple blog posts that say the same thing on a variety of different entry points and display that topical authority of, yes, I know enough that I can write 10 blog posts on this concept.

Shannon Mattern (22:46.474)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (23:01.386)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (23:13.509)

It's more important to me now that you have 10 blog posts on one concept than 100 blog posts on 100 concepts.

Shannon Mattern (23:22.422)

So here's, just like, so this is awesome because the lane we've picked in the past few months is proposals and how a lot of what the challenges that we see with pricing and raising your prices and like all of the things have to do with how you're actually structuring your proposal and how you're using like a cost-based, like pricing a proposal built on cost-based

Meg Casebolt (23:24.301)

I'm

Meg Casebolt (23:32.442)

Yes!

Shannon Mattern (23:52.319)

base pricing to sell something that's value based and really kind of leaning into like, here are the mistakes that we see people make in their proposals that are costing them thousands of dollars and like just that type of thing. And so that's really the, it's been the through line of everything we've done at the web designer Academy for the past 10 years. I've just never led with it. And this year I'm like, well our proposals will underpins the whole entire program.

Meg Casebolt (23:52.773)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (24:21.996)

I'm going to finally start talking about this.

Meg Casebolt (24:25.157)

I am so excited to hear you say this. This is so, so foundational. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (24:27.848)

So what you're telling me is like how timely that I finally decided that like, it's not that I'm differentiating on women web designers, we still do, but like it's the proposal solves a lot of the challenges that women web designers have when it comes to feeling bad about how much they'll charge or worrying that their clients.

will say, dare you? Or who do you think you are? Or I'll lose all my clients if I raise my prices. Our proposal process solves those core fundamental things that we see people do that have them keeping their prices low. And so I could write 17 blog posts on all of that. And I appreciate that because I've.

Meg Casebolt (25:17.093)

I'll shoot you a message after this for exactly what 17 blog posts you should write. Because now I'm like, I'm so curious and I'll go do the research.

Shannon Mattern (25:21.868)

Awesome. So that's super interesting. And I think that there's so much opportunity. But I'm thinking about the web designer who's listening to this. And they're like, OK, where do I fall into this? Not necessarily for their own business, yes, but also how they talk to their clients now.

about what we're building for them and why, and it's not search results. It's not like page views and search position and, you know, all of these things that clients think are still the end all be all. And it's not, you know, what, what needs to change, what doesn't need to change about like what we're actually creating for people.

Meg Casebolt (26:00.896)

Meg Casebolt (26:21.591)

obsessed with this question. And I'm going to go back to the example of the proposals to answer it. Because I like to have really concrete examples of not just like, well, you need to create more targeted content. Let's use this, right? Let's use this example of people are going to chat CPT and they're saying I'm a business coach, I want to hire somebody to help me. No, I'm web designer and I want to hire a business coach.

Shannon Mattern (26:29.428)

Yeah. Okay, great.

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (26:37.718)

death.

Shannon Mattern (26:49.131)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (26:49.823)

And now we know that what you, Shannon Mettern, do differently is start with a proposal. And your content, and I'll talk about how to structure the content in just a minute, but let's talk about what that summary looks like, how the content is being surfaced, is now, if you struggle with pricing and proposals, go to Shannon.

Shannon Mattern (27:12.129)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (27:13.541)

And also, that's the point of sale where you're solution aware, right? That's when people are solution aware enough to say, I'm looking for a business coach, name me five business coaches. That's where you're gonna get the citation that says, you should go try Shannon if you're struggling with this. But.

A lot of people aren't at the solution aware phase. They're at the problem aware phase. And they don't know that the proposal is the problem. They think the pricing is the problem, or they think the audience is the problem, or they think that the pricing model, how do I, if I'm getting more efficient, how do I not have the price of my websites that I'm producing go down? What if they're there and they're not thinking about the proposal and they're not thinking about hiring a business coach or joining the academy yet, and they're just struggling with what is this thing?

Shannon Mattern (27:35.552)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (28:03.273)

If Shannon Maddern and Web Design Academy has created that series of blog posts that is diagnostic, that's what I'm hearing from you, is that you're doing diagnostic work. This isn't a list of, here are the 10 things that you need to do to make your website more presentable, right? This is diagnostic. This is if you're struggling with your pricing, if you're struggling with your client explanations, if you're struggling with the proposal software being clunky, if you're struggling with any of these things,

Here's the solution, here's the framework, here's the methodology. Diagnostic thinking is a sign of expertise. Beginners think in checklists, experts think in what are the different solutions that would solve this problem. AI, can I swear on this? AI fucking loves diagnostic frameworks.

Shannon Mattern (28:54.208)

Yeah, go for it.

Shannon Mattern (28:58.86)

You

Meg Casebolt (28:59.873)

They love them because AI wants to get people to a solution. And so let's say that somebody goes to Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, wherever, and they're like, I'm struggling with my pricing model. And WebDesignerAcademy.com has this entire series around how do you know if it's a pricing problem or if it's a proposal problem? And then ChatGPT goes in there and it pulls your language out.

And it says, maybe it's not a problem with your pricing. Maybe it's actually a problem with your proposal structure. And then it pre-sells your approach to this in the same way that it pre-sold that B &B in Spain. It's now educating people based on your framework and your methodology. And then when the person is in that chat conversation and says, great, but I don't know what to do with my proposals. It's like, give me some resources. Boom, we're going to Shannon.

Shannon Mattern (29:44.268)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (29:59.77)

because it's just sighted you 20 times. It's just pulled from you. You are now the expert. You're not just the expert. You have now changed the language in these models by publishing something with a strong point of view and a strong diagnostic framework and a way of saying, this is how it should be done. And I know that because I have had hundreds of people go through the academy. And I've seen this over and over and over. And here are the case studies.

And here are the before and afters. And here are all the ways that this has helped people, not just with their proposals, but with all these other pieces. And by the time they get to, now I'm ready to hire a business coach, they're already speaking, not just like, this sounds familiar. They are now using your language to describe the problem back to you.

Shannon Mattern (30:51.754)

Yeah. Okay, here's where my mind is going. One, it's very unlike Google search where the higher you rank, I mean, I don't know if the general population was like picking up that like,

pay like a lot of them are ads, you know, and the higher you rank, like, yeah, you've just done a lot of work to like get there. And it's just also like, I don't want to click through several several pages, I'm just gonna like, be lazy and not dig deep. But like, what I'm hearing is that chat GPT is basically being my wingman. And it's being like, hey, she's awesome. You should check her out. Like, they're just

There it's almost, we give chat GPT a lot of authority when we are, when we're like searching, we're just like, it's telling me the truth. It knows what it's talking about. It has like access to all of this information. If it's curated it down to like, tell me this, like it's almost as if to me, you're like, we're all still critical thinkers, but it's almost as if your friend told you that this is the way to go. And so like,

Meg Casebolt (32:02.211)

Yeah, because it explains the thought process behind it. It doesn't just say, here's why, or here's what you should do. It says, here's the thought process behind it. Here's where you can get more information about it. You can interrogate it a little bit. Instead of just taking it at face value, you can say, but what about this? What about this? What about this? Like it can do that.

Shannon Mattern (32:06.763)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (32:16.193)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (32:20.384)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (32:21.965)

objection work. can do the pressure testing. It can adjust. And maybe it's not just pulling from the Web Designer Academy. Maybe it's pulling from a bunch of different places to say, here are some solutions. And depending on the conditional logic of somebody is going to ask more about, here are all the things that you could do to streamline your web design business. you could

Shannon Mattern (32:29.963)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (32:35.626)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (32:41.13)

Mm-hmm

Meg Casebolt (32:42.527)

more outreach, or you could be more active on social media, or you could improve your portfolio, or you could work on your proposals. And if they say proposals, now they've self-selected into, now we're going to start talking about the content from Web Designer Academy, right? So even Chat2BT is doing some of this diagnostic work, not just pulling from you, but figuring out what your lane is so that it can pull from you for the specific things that you know are the on-ramps and the spaces that you alone are best at doing.

Shannon Mattern (32:53.642)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (33:01.29)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (33:07.724)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (33:12.638)

Mm-hmm. And it's giving those people credibility, a credibility signal, I would think. I mean, if I'm thinking in terms of behavioral economics, it's a little bit different when this entity is like, I've parsed all of it. And this is what I'm putting in front of you versus Google's like, here's a list. And you go through it yourself.

Meg Casebolt (33:33.178)

Here's a list. And I think there's also a level of Google rewards simplicity, especially for those earlier questions. So if it was, know, what should I put, if you go to Google and say, what are the elements of a proposal? That's not doing the diagnostic work. That's a checklist. And so very novice.

And I'm not gonna say bad, very novice people think that they have the answers to that. They have not done the critical thinking that you have. They have not served the clients that you have. And so they're gonna create a very simple checklist that's gonna do very well and they might, might outrank you. And honestly, Shannon, it might make you feel like shit because you're like, I have done years, fucking years, hundreds of podcasts on this topic and

Shannon Mattern (34:00.182)

Sure.

Shannon Mattern (34:14.86)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (34:19.02)

you

Meg Casebolt (34:27.151)

this bitch comes out and she's like, here's a checklist. Look, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. And because she only has three posts on her site and one of them is about the checklist of what you need in a proposal, and that's clearer because you've done so much breadth, it's infuriating. You're laughing because it's true, right?

Shannon Mattern (34:45.132)

Yes, I just don't even look anymore. I just pay other people to look for me. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (34:55.653)

actually like it's it's the expert paradox it's that you know so much that your content is going to go deeper because you're you're critically thinking about it and you're hedging things and you're saying it's not as simple as here's the elements the five elements that every proposal should include is too basic for your thought process and you would be doing people a disservice if you tried to cram everything you know into a one-page PDF checklist

Shannon Mattern (35:06.677)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (35:14.058)

Right.

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (35:24.597)

Right?

Meg Casebolt (35:25.271)

It wouldn't do the work that you wanna do with people. So therefore those much simpler, much easier to comprehend posts sometimes outrank us in the Google search and we are just, it hits us in the, it's like a knife to the throat. What the hell? How does that person get the traffic and I don't get the traffic, I, you know? But.

Shannon Mattern (35:28.171)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (35:50.166)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (35:53.412)

because we have the experience. And I'm gonna say something a little crappy, which is that sometimes people have to go through the basic stuff to realize it doesn't work, to ask the harder questions, to get to the experts. You know, there's gonna be all of those how to, I still, I've been designing, unfortunately I bought a Divi lifetime license a decade ago, so I've been designing on Divi.

Shannon Mattern (36:06.057)

Yeah? Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (36:17.163)

And you're committed.

Meg Casebolt (36:20.899)

for so long, I don't love it, but I'm locked in, it's a sunk cost, I don't wanna learn how to mentor, so I still have to go in probably once or twice every couple months and go, how do I do the CSS for the Divi button? And I get the answer and I copy paste it and I put it in. And it's not painful enough for me yet to bother with hiring somebody. But at some point when I do a full redesign, I'm gonna be like,

Shannon Mattern (36:34.974)

Yep.

Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Meg Casebolt (36:46.551)

This is now painful enough that I'm going to ask the harder questions and I'm going to go find the experts who already know the CSS code. So I don't have to copy paste it in all the places and then stress test it. And, did I put the margin in the right place? God, I hate that shit. I don't want to do it anymore. And you have to go through the pain to get to the point where you're ready to hire the expert and pay for the high cost proposal.

Shannon Mattern (36:48.373)

Yeah.

Yep.

Shannon Mattern (36:59.819)

Hahahaha

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Meg Casebolt (37:11.265)

If that's what you want, if you want to teach people the Divi CSS, then you can teach people the Divi CSS and that can be your business model, but nobody really wants that, do they?

Shannon Mattern (37:19.252)

Yeah.

Yeah, this is so interesting. someone already has done a lot of legwork on their own by the time they even get to me or your client if you're listening to this. So what does that change about what our websites even need to look like by the time someone gets there?

Meg Casebolt (37:45.828)

Yeah, it means that we have to be clearer about our entities. We can't just say, I'm a web designer in Pasadena. We have to be very clear about, I'm a web designer who helps this audience in this location with this outcome to achieve this thing. And the more nuanced and the more targeted you can get in that value proposition. And every single one of your entities can have that too.

Shannon Mattern (37:50.475)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (37:54.57)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (38:02.706)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (38:14.755)

The profitable web designer podcast does this and this and this for this audience, you know, and we have to be incredibly clear in terms of who we're trying to reach and what we can help them achieve. And we have to have these authority signals. And some of the authority signals are things that you create to show your expertise, right? So it can be, I've worked with this many clients. Here's the case studies. Here's the testimonials. Here's what happened.

Shannon Mattern (38:18.091)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (38:22.536)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (38:44.665)

Here's why I built this methodology the way that I did. Here's what I learned about proposals. Here's how Jenna has used her proposals to double her pricing in less time. All of that is expertise. Then we have the authority pieces. What other podcasts have you been on? What other summits have you spoken at? Who's talking about you? Who's verifying that you know what you're talking about?

Shannon Mattern (38:55.519)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (39:10.105)

We also have the customer generated pieces, the reviews that people are giving that aren't on your website, but the ways that people are talking about you, the experiences. This is especially important in local businesses where it can show up in Yelp reviews or in Google Business Profile reviews, right? So anywhere that people are talking about you is also there. And then there's the trust factor of how do we make sure that you're

Shannon Mattern (39:17.012)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (39:35.652)

that you are showcasing that you know what you're talking about and that you do have trustworthiness. And a huge part of that is just consistency. One blog post is not going to make or break your website. One viral blog post or Instagram post or anything like that is actually like, AI is a little nervous about viral shit. Cause it's not consistent signals. AI would rather pull from somebody who has a very slowly generating YouTube channel.

Shannon Mattern (39:56.83)

Interesting.

Meg Casebolt (40:04.889)

than something that spikes and drops because it can't predict that behavior and AI wants to predict everything. And then, you know, we also have to think about consistent signals across multiple channels. So if you have a podcast and you have a website, you can showcase your expertise in different ways, but reinforcing the fact that you have expertise on that and organized and content architecture that makes sense, which has always been huge for SEO of.

Shannon Mattern (40:11.893)

So.

Shannon Mattern (40:16.969)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (40:30.319)

How do things link together? How do we prove our depth through our linking structure? How do we make sure that the most important things are being linked in the right ways? All of that is still relevant. I just threw a lot at you about how to do this.

Shannon Mattern (40:44.979)

No, you know, I'm, I'm here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that, you know, the people listening to this who are like, okay, I've been doing things the way I've been doing things for my clients in terms of like, let me build you a technically sound, like technical SEO, making sure that, that the website is like ready for, you know, the, the SEO strategist to come and take over.

Meg Casebolt (41:03.065)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (41:15.083)

what I, what I'm thinking of that person listening to this right now is like you've given them a whole new language to describe to their client why they need to consider more. Again, we've always said this, but now more than ever, they need to consider

their whole overall strategy because if they're just going to build the website and think that they can figure out, you know, how to just get it to rank on, you know, page one of Google search results and they don't want to invest any more time, effort and energy into driving traffic.

Meg Casebolt (41:57.647)

for one term.

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (42:08.359)

then that's just a different conversation to have with that client of like where your website now falls in this ecosystem that your website used to be the sun and it's no longer the sun. know, probably AI search is the sun and your website's somewhere out in the orbit.

Meg Casebolt (42:23.353)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (42:32.303)

say it more like if you go search for yourself on Chat Cheapie Tea, if you go type in who is Meg Casebolt, who is Shannon Manor, and who is Kaiser Soze, right? And then say, give me citations. Where did you get this information? When I do that for my clients, 40 to 50 % of it does come from their website.

Shannon Mattern (42:39.199)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (42:46.251)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (42:51.683)

So we need to have those clear signals on their website. And some of this is platform dependent, perplexity tends to go a little bit more outside the website. Some of it depends on how deep the website goes into specific topics. But even with my clients who have really strong topical authority, I usually see 40 to 50 % is coming from your website. And then the other 50 to 60 % is other places around the internet. Some of that you can also control.

Shannon Mattern (42:51.722)

Okay.

Meg Casebolt (43:18.947)

So it could be not just your website channel, but it could be your podcast. It could be your YouTube channel. So those are those omni-channel signals that are reinforcing the same things because you're distributing it to multiple places that you own. And then it's also who else is talking about you. It's the testimonials where clients are linking to you. It's the other podcast that you've been on where you're telling these stories and AI can go read the summaries of those transcripts.

Shannon Mattern (43:18.953)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (43:22.527)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (43:47.01)

so many different ways that this information is being parsed and aggregated that your website is the nucleus, but there are other planets orbiting around it.

Shannon Mattern (43:52.159)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (43:59.456)

Yeah, which there always have been.

Meg Casebolt (44:02.551)

Yes. Which is why when somebody gets canceled, it doesn't matter if their website is still there because there's enough people who are bitching about it.

Shannon Mattern (44:04.765)

It's just...

Shannon Mattern (44:12.491)

All right.

Meg Casebolt (44:13.923)

I don't know why that was the example that came to mind.

Shannon Mattern (44:20.331)

This is, yeah, like my brain is just like cranking as I'm sure our listeners are. So yes.

Meg Casebolt (44:27.481)

Let me also like, let me give you a framework that's an acronym. I came up with this because I wanted to have like a clear way to explain all these different pieces of the puzzle and all the different levers that we can pull. And that might also help for framing the conversation. And I'd love to be able to create enough that then AI starts to talk about it this way too. okay, so the framework, the six levers that we can pull to show up in AI search results, I use the term beacon.

Shannon Mattern (44:34.001)

Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (44:40.586)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (44:45.757)

Yeah. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (44:55.695)

Beacon is your brand entity, or B, brand entities. E, expertise. That's what you put on your website, what you talk about for yourself, how you promote yourself. A is your authority, that's other people talking about you. C is your content, that's the architecture, that's making sure that everything on your website shows your very clear perspective, your brand voice. It's consistent, it's clear what it is that you do. O is that omni-channel, that's reinforcing.

across multiple places around the internet and N is your network. Who else is talking about you? What else can you leverage?

Shannon Mattern (45:30.197)

That's brilliant. Brilliant. No, I don't think so at all.

Meg Casebolt (45:31.385)

Thank you. The end was a stretch, but I was like, I can't just have to be beco, echo, echo, cobe, so beacon, think, really. And you have to have all those other pieces in place and then you can leverage your network. And the more, you know, there are different, some people have more of those authority signals because they've done a lot of the work to build out their network.

Some of them have more expertise signals because they're generating the content themselves. Some of them have very strong brand entity signals, and some don't. So being able to know that those are all of the different things that you can consider. Some of them have really fantastic content, and it's not organized in a way that these tools can parse. So there's so many different factors to be considered here.

Shannon Mattern (46:12.273)

It's just making me think for someone who has been doing this a long time and has had a lot of signals and maybe hasn't been so great or consistent about like very methodically strategically tying them all together that like now there's a tool out there that's just kind of like doing that for you. And maybe you'll benefit from just having been showing up for a long time doing your thing. And you know, that's.

Helping helping you get found. So I

Meg Casebolt (46:43.971)

Yeah. And this could be an opportunity for you to say, hey, chat GPT, if I wanted to show up when you talk about web design proposals, what do I already have on my website that I can emphasize? What do I need to create in order to hit those semantic clusters? Right? I can do the work for you. I can teach you how to do the work, or you can sort of stumble through it yourself.

Shannon Mattern (46:58.197)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (47:02.784)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (47:08.237)

The answers are out there. You now have a tool that you can use for this diagnostic framework, for diagnosing what you should do next. And then when you get stuck, that's when people go to an expert. So ChatGBT is doing a lot of this pre-sale, pre-qualification work for us. And after we hit a point where we're like, the AI has hit its cap, I need a human. That's when it's turning into sales, but we're not getting as much of that.

Shannon Mattern (47:15.947)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (47:30.922)

Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (47:35.161)

beginner funnel, top of funnel traffic coming into our websites anymore. It's when people get stuck or when they need someone that's responsible, that they can hold accountable. That's when they hire now.

Shannon Mattern (47:39.654)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (47:44.555)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how can people work with you? How are you working with people these days? How can they send their clients to you? Tell me all the things.

Meg Casebolt (47:51.098)

Ha ha!

Meg Casebolt (47:58.666)

I just revamped all of this. So I have two different ways that people can work with me. The one is I can create a blueprint for you for how to show up, what to create, what to emphasize, what to de-emphasize, where to post, where to post on your website, what exactly to create line by line.

Shannon Mattern (48:09.045)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Casebolt (48:22.137)

What are those 17 blog posts that Shannon needs? How do we organize them? How do we link between them? What's the architecture? What's the pillar post? What's the semantic cluster? What are the five semantic clusters we're building? What do we already have? I do all of that for people. That strategic plan is called the unmistakable authority blueprint.

Shannon Mattern (48:22.251)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (48:28.597)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (48:40.981)

So good.

Meg Casebolt (48:42.757)

And then if you're like, you know, I actually want to learn how to do this or I don't have the money to have Meg do this for me. I want to I want to go through this process. I have a year long guided program. It's called Signal Mentorship because I want that feeling of being a beacon where you're standing in one place and you're sending a very clear signal out to the AI bots out to your specific people. It doesn't have to be all the noise. It can be a very clear signal.

Shannon Mattern (49:01.257)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt (49:10.646)

And that's a thousand dollars for the year and I'm teaching it live every time, not a self-paced training because this information just changes too quickly. By the time I were to record it, I'd have to rerecord it.

Shannon Mattern (49:18.981)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (49:22.995)

Yeah. Yeah. And where can everyone go to learn more about both of those offers and take advantage of those?

Meg Casebolt (49:31.897)

Well, my website, of course, which is loveatfirstsearch.com. You cannot find that information on social media. Please do not try to track me down on social media and DM me. I will not look. I will not see it.

Shannon Mattern (49:43.499)

we have had this conversation before on the podcast about how both of us cannot be found there, you know, and it is lovely.

Meg Casebolt (49:51.575)

It's great, isn't it? I also do have a podcast if you just want to hear me rant and rave for a while. I co-host it with a business coach and it's called the Aggressively Human Podcast. So we're always analyzing and criticizing and evaluating how to keep your business feeling human, how to keep the human in your content, how to be connected to other people, even in the age of AI.

Shannon Mattern (50:14.891)

so good. So we'll link up all of that in the show notes. Meg, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's always a pleasure having you. We're excited that you're speaking at the 10th annual Simply Profitable Designer Summits. 10th, yes. So you're going to get to go even deeper on this with Meg at the summit. So yeah, just thank you. It's always a pleasure.

Meg Casebolt (50:27.589)

Ted.

Meg Casebolt (50:39.191)

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for hosting and having me Shannon.

Shannon Mattern (50:42.87)

Well, that's all for this week, everyone, and we'll see you back here next week. Bye.