00:09:33 · Elias Curtis
[00:09:33] S1: Right. So what we have to understand is data that's being collected. So there's data all over the internet, as you know. It's very information overload, right? You can literally find anything wrong on there. But to understand the technical part of it, you first have to know what these acronyms actually stand for. A lot of us know what SEO stands for, search engine optimization. That's traditional search. You have a web page, you have web pages, and then you have them indexed. What that means is Google, Yahoo, and Bing crawls the website, it grabs the information that's on the pages that pretty much structured in what is called a site map. That site map gets stored on the search engines, That's how it's able to index pages and when the pages are actually indexed, that's when they're able to be seen online. When pages don't get indexed, they're not going to be seen online. Let's keep it very straightforward. Now when you get into the GEO, generative engine optimization, then we also got to get into AEO, Answers Engine Optimization, because they all have different functions. So when we're talking about the GEO, you have to be thinking about backlinks. You have to be thinking about trustworthy sources that your business is affiliated with, partnered with, or has a visibility or profile with that company. What ends up happening is once you have a profile with any of those third party platforms that have authority already in the market, then now your site or your business is being cited. It's called citations. The citations are being is what's being sourced into the AI models. That's why if you go on Gemini and you start typing about any company or product that you're looking for, your business will pop up and it'll recommend you and it'll explain your business, right? AI is explaining it and it's pulling from all these sources. That's why you'll see two sources, maybe from Yelp or Yellow Pages or something like that. It'll pull from social media channels, Facebook, Instagram. So it's all being pulled from all this data and that's why it's important to be active on all of these channels because it pulls real live data, right? That's constantly being as relevant to what people are looking for. That's how the GEO part works. Now the AEO's answers, People are just looking for answers.
00:12:05 · Elias Curtis, Ezekiel Iferia
If you are an expert in your field and you have an answer for a specific question and you are an expert, basically you know what you're talking about, then you just build on that, then you're most likely going to rank higher within those those search as well. So you just keep building up on top of what you're good at doing. So what if you're doing brand awareness or you're selling a product, it works the same way on a technical level. [00:12:35] S0: Alright. So now if a local business or start up wants, you to make sure they are... The answer an AI engine gives a user, So what should they be doing right now?
00:12:49 · Elias Curtis
[00:12:49] S1: For startups, I mean, the best thing you can do is ask the questions. What am I building? What am I doing? Who am I representing? Who am I? So you wanna go into this knowing exactly what you are doing. Because the thing is once you start building a business, and this has always been the same since forever, right? You build a business and you're in there two, three years and you're not where you're supposed to be, right? You have to end up either pivoting or rebranding or doing something completely different altogether, right? And so that's why it's important to get it right in the beginning as much as you can, but as technology evolves and as the market changes and so forth, you have to look for demand. What do people value? And then you build on that. Then you have goals. You set goals for your business of like, okay, whether it's a financial goal or it's something that's work goal or whatever it is, then that also needs to be planned out. So put together a plan, thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, one year, five years, ten years, and I'm encouraging guys, who's listening, to think long term. Because we live in a time now where you can literally, and it's like a whole another discussion, you could literally build digital assets online and you can sell them online. So whether it's a business or whether it's a digital product, you can make sales online doing all kinds of things like building sites and brochures and digital courses and just so many things that opportunities are limitless. But at the same time, you can be building a business that whether it's a SaaS product or an affiliate site and then you can sell that and exit out of there. We live in a time where mostly everybody who has access to their internet or AI tools can start their own business. So it's very, very exciting times for a lot of us.
00:14:53 · Ezekiel Iferia
[00:14:53] S0: Okay. So, Elias, you bridge the gap between beautiful, creative brand design and, you know, hard technical data like SEO and lead conversion. So why is it dangerous for a business to prioritize one over the other? You know, what happens when a beautiful website, you know, doesn't convert or a technically brilliant site looks terrible?
00:15:21 · Elias Curtis
[00:15:21] S1: So the order is important. Right? So order is a big one. So fragmentation is a problem, but in order to solve that problem, order is the solution. Okay? So, you know it's very difficult to work on projects that are done in the wrong order because the thing is it can be time consuming, it can also be a waste of money as well. And so what I encourage anybody listening to this is when you start a brand you have to be looking at colors, fonts, messaging, logo, that's all part of the brand. And then once you build a brand, you just chew on it and just digest it and get opinions around that. Get some feedback, what do you think about this brand? Because the thing is if you build on it for years to come, we're talking five, ten years, you don't want to look back ten years and be like, this brand has to app and redo the whole thing because it's just not working. And so we don't want that, you want to avoid that as much as possible. So yeah, you want to build a brand, right? Then you want to build your website and across the board, you're right, if you get into print material, social media, online listings, that brand is literally going everywhere now. And so the thing is if we do it out of order, for example, if let's say you just jump into social media and you start creating a brand on your social media accounts just on the fly, that's gonna hurt you more than help you. And the reason for that is where people are gonna be looking for your website, you don't have a website, but you have a social media presence. Your brand messaging is not getting across the way that it should, so nothing's converting, right? And so now you have to start from the ground zero already anyways, right? Because the misorder or the disorder with the pieces, if you will, of the entire system. I'll go back to that system again. So yeah, logo, brand, website, know, then social media, online listings, SEO, marketing, Right? So that's pretty much the flow of how it works as far as the auto. And you do it that in that order, that's gonna help you tremendously to be able to do what you wanna do.
00:17:49 · Ezekiel Iferia, Elias Curtis
[00:17:49] S0: Mhmm. Okay. So, you know, what's the conversation like, you know, with a client? You know, when's... With with someone who wants to actually spend all their budget on design and none on structural and order? [00:18:03] S1: Well, it's going to cost. It's about quality. It's about getting it done right. You're gonna have to pay. You just have to pay. Now how you pay and who you pay to do this is totally different situation, right? I know for our business, we make our services very affordable for anybody who's willing to do this kind of work. We're not the cheapest in the market, but we're not the most expensive, right? So and services that we offer are global, so somebody in other countries want to adopt the services that we do, can always reach out to me and we can set something up that helps them build their business and to grow and scale. That's our whole motto, right? Build, grow and scale and that's pretty much how we work. Now it doesn't mean that we're gonna say no to one off services or like, hey, I want a website. We can do the website, but we know that this is much more than a website, right? Because there's people in business to make a profit and generate revenue. So we have to help them with that as well and that takes it from more of a client based relationship to more of a partner based relationship and that's kind of where we're heading as a company as a whole is being more partner based rather than just being client based.