Kyle Roof: AI SEO, Avatars and Ranking AI Content

Kyle Roof, how are we doing? Julian Goldie, we're doing great. You're doing great, how are you? I'm good, I'm good.

I was just watching your AI avatar. It's amazing. You know what I realized is I need to wear more sweatshirts. I look really, really sexy in a sweatshirt.

That's your look. You should do like a yearly calendar. It's going to be a lot of brown and beige and tan sweatshirts, I think. It's good.

It's good. Like winter colors. Yeah. You could do the summer outfit as well.

Good stuff. So what you've been working on in SEO recently? The focus is on Page Optimizer Pro and we're trying to give the people what they want, essentially. So we've got like an AI visibility tool that we're releasing actually today.

And we've got like an AI assistant that is actually like AI Kyle. And has watched my, has taken my courses and watched the YouTube shows and podcasts and stuff like that. And it's actually pretty cool. It gives really good advice.

That's good. That's good. It's one of those, isn't it? I've seen a lot of people do it half-heartedly, but I can imagine you put like a lot of training and a lot of preparation into like making that AI assistant really good.

The interesting thing about it was it's not just teaching it, because it can also do everything within the tool for you as well. So you can kind of have a conversation with it and say, I'd like to rank this page for this keyword or it can even help you find the keyword. But what was interesting is it's not just like training it to use the tool, because that's a whole thing, obviously. But then teaching it the logic to go through like each step, like the questions to ask, how to give assistance, what's a good answer, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so I know you said, given the people what they want, what have you seen people want like over the last year? I think people want to know how they're doing in AI search. I think that's a huge part of it is it's a whole new world of visibility.

Do I have visibility there? And then even what does that mean? Because, you know, I think the first AI trackers that came out were kind of giving like a ranking position, kind of like normal rank trackers. And that's not really, I think, an accurate description of what's happening within AI search.

And so I'm trying to do that. And not just, okay, here's how you rank, but here's what you can do about it. No, those kind of things. So you can give the types of suggestions, like how you can improve that visibility.

And then people want to decrease learning curve. You know, even people who are high level, still don't want a learning curve when they're going into something, but they want the data, you know, they want the performance, they want the effectiveness. And so that's kind of where the idea of the AI assistant came from, was the idea that I can be there over somebody's shoulder, essentially. And here's how I would do it.

You know, this is the advice that I would give. Yeah, that's exactly what people want, I think. When it comes to ranking inside AI, what have you seen working? Well, that's what's been kind of fun in playing with the tool, because you kind of build it and then you kind of look at what the results turn out to be.

It's interesting to me that even huge brands do not have amazing visibility, like you would think, within AI search. And I think part of that is, I don't think a lot of people are going into AI search and being like, I need a plumber, you know, that's not the... But maybe they're like, what are good qualities to have in a plumber? Or like, what are the right skills, you know, kind of thing.

So kind of like getting like, that kind of information seems maybe what it's best suited for. And so, like, just going to buy, say, Nike shoes or... That's on my brain, because that's an example I've been working with a lot recently. But I'm not sure that that's exactly what people are doing.

But I'm kind of thinking about, you know, what are the best running shoes? How do I know what are the best running shoes? Or, you know, what are the best trainers for basketball or something like that? And so it's not necessarily I'm looking for this type of brand, or what is this brand?

Or I want to buy this type of brand, but just more like informational, top of funnel kind of searches seem to be prevalent within that. So do you recommend like going after more informational top of funnel keywords as well? Yeah, for sure. There's the two types where you're looking at comparison pages seem to do very, very well.

This versus that. Listicles, of course, we've known listicles for quite some time in AI search, but they still are a good method to get there. And then kind of supporting content, top of funnel content. But purposefully done, not just topical authority for the sake of topical authority.

But this is what it looks like the AI is breaking search down into. And you should probably have that information somewhere on your site, if not on a certain page that you're targeting, to just having it supporting pages that are linking together, because it does seem like they really do enjoy it. Yeah, that makes sense. One thing that's worked really well for us recently is like getting mentions on other people's sites, then also getting, you know, going for those keywords as well directly on a website.

But then also with a combination of that, creating AI avatar content, because AI avatar is really easy to create for a specific keyword that we're targeting, and then plugging that into YouTube as well. So we rank almost three different ways, if that makes sense. But it seems to change the AI rankings pretty quickly, too. I would agree with that, because it is very citation based, you know, where it's looking for multiple points of confirmation.

And then even when, you know, when you ask it the same question a couple times, you're going to see different sources and where it is actually pulling from. So it's not just pulling from one source, it's looking at several that it likes. It's using kind of, I think, those as complete confirmation. And so as you said, it's on your site, it's somewhere else authoritative.

And then you got it on something that it likes, like YouTube or Reddit or something like that. And, you know, then it's got the kind of that circle of confirmation that it needed. Do you think as well, like it's worth at this point going after like the second or third page for rankings too? Because I guess that influences like the overall AI overview, right?

Absolutely. Not everything that goes into AI search is on page one. I think there's that study that came out recently that said that, I think the majority of what they found in AI search is on page one. You know, that is one of the strongest signals.

But a lot of it still isn't, you know, they are pulling from sources that are on page two, page three, they're pulling from sources that are what I'd consider supporting content on your site. You can become your own citation. We've done that a couple of times where, you know, like what's the best LLM for SEO? You know, we were always at the top of that within AI search.

And we're our own source for it. Yeah, I like that. That's what we've been doing as well. It's like listicles, you know, dropping like the top 10.

But then we always put ourselves number one, of course, right? That never occurred to me. Wait, wait, wait. I've been putting myself not even on the list.

I'm just doing a list first. Yeah, I didn't make the cut. We only had room for 10. What are you gonna do?

That's great. Yeah, so that's working well. Yeah, and then the other thing I've seen recently is like, if you let's say you rank like page one, and there's some keywords where you can get on to page one within 24 hours. Have you found that sometimes AI takes a lot longer to update than the actual first page of Google?

Oh, that's interesting. I haven't observed that too much, but I would defer to you on that one. I could see that. They can't be crawling at nearly the rate that Google's crawling.

They have other things going on. In addition to being sort of a search engine, they also have a much more primary function in terms of being a production tool. So you have to figure their crawlers aren't crawling at the same rate, for sure. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, for sure.

Anything else you've seen working? Those are the big things. Multiple sources of citation are huge. Having the content on your site is big.

I think that's supporting content. It's been query fan out after that last couple reports came out. I think people don't like to talk about that as much, but I still like it a lot. Because that's a lot of your top of funnel type searches, type content that you would put out anyway to show Google your authority on the issue.

And then it turns out AI seems to like it as well. So it's something that was- What is query fan out? Sorry. That's the concept when an AI does a search, if you ask it for a certain search, it actually breaks that down into other things, other related things to that main.

So it can kind of get a holistic or comprehensive view of what you're asking. But it still needs to get those questions answered from somewhere. And I would advocate it to be your site rather than your competitor's site. Wait, wait, I've been putting my competitors on the list.

That's right. And you're not even putting yourself on your listicles. You might as well just write content and just hand it to your competitors and let them do it. What else?

So you've got the assistant on POP. And by the way, anyone watching, if you're not checked out POP, definitely check it out. Great tool for on-page optimization and writing content as well. So you've got the assistant inside there.

And then also you're working on the rank tracker too. How do you calculate that? How does that work behind the scenes? For the rank tracker?

Yeah, yeah. For the AI ranking. So it's looking at how we approach it is by like, what are kind of like five questions that people would be asking about your brand? Is what we're looking at.

So five kind of main concepts about your brand that you would like to be visible for. And then it's breaking that down into which competitors you're looking at, what the citation sources are for those things. If you're appearing in those, it's giving a visibility score, much more so than a ranking score for a particular thing. We'll show you where you are, where you're showing up, of course.

But it's more how visible are you for these concepts that are important for your brand? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Are you still working on some crazy experiments ranking Lorem Ipsum inside AI reviews?

You know what? I haven't done that yet. That'd be pretty funny. No, but the Lorem Ipsum still works.

The last round of talks that I did, invariably, because everybody wants to hear kind of a Lorem Ipsum story. And so I'll often tell it when I'm on stage. But everyone, the very first question is, well, that doesn't work today, right? And it's like, yeah, actually, it still does.

And so I always have a page or two. It's currently ranking that I can show of that working. And I'm really breaking down. And I don't think AI search is much different.

It's all math based. It really is. As brilliant as Google is, and as brilliant as AI search looks, at the end of the day, they're still crunching numbers. And that's all they can do.

And you have to give it the math that it wants. And if you do, you can be very, very successful still to this day. Now, what's really kind of fun is a lot of the research concepts that I've worked on throughout my career, which have really worked well on Google, are, I think, working even better now with AI search. You know, getting kind of like, what are not just what are the topical terms to post on my site, but what can my site actually win right now?

You know, like what is something that I can put on and Google will instantly trust me for this term. And that's knowing how strong your site is. What's within kind of a topical relevance, what's in a, what would go into a silo sort of a thing. And then that seems to be working extremely well with AI search at the same time.

So it's kind of what's old is new. Yeah, it's the same. That's always how it's been, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, like when we were, I mean, the first, probably the first time we chatted after Chachi Boutier had come out, we were basically saying it's still the same thing, right?

It's like, essentially, SEO is just the same. The fundamentals are still the same even today, right? Yeah. And then what people like to always make it too fancy, you know, they always want, they're chasing shiny objects, they're, they're looking for this latest and greatest technique.

And really at the end of the day, it's that foundational stuff that, you know, works will continue to work. Yeah, I mean, you kind of have to tweak slightly, but the tweak slightly is obvious tweaks in terms of, all right, you know, Google kind of prefers, maybe this into the will go into their AI overviews or their featured AI overviews, I think it's just featured snippets 2.0, to be honest. And then, you know, maybe you have to go a little bit farther out at an expansion on on AI search. But you can see that within the citations that they're using and the sources that they're using.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. One thing I wanted to ask you about, you're creating content with your AI avatar on YouTube. I can see this doing pretty well, especially for the SEO niche, like really, really good. Yeah.

And one thing I was gonna ask was like, how do you find like it still converts at the same sort of percentage? Actually, I think, like, at least in terms of viewage, it seems to be doing a lot better. A lot of I think, you know, in anybody's audience, there is saturation, the people that are watching are the people that have watched before. So but with our viewage numbers being up so much higher, we're clearly reaching a new audience, you know, and we're posting on Instagram now.

I don't really even understand Instagram. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure how it works. But you know, once you have the system down, you know, and you have the content to give it obviously, you know that you can create the scripts and whatnot, but once you once you have that, you know, if each of those are getting a few hundred views, that's an Instagram audience that I didn't have before.

And getting even just a few hundred views on each one. It's fantastic. And you can post them out at a much higher clip than I could ever do. I really am terrible at at scripted, scripted videos.

I really suck at it. And to have just the ability to give it a script and let it go is truly an amazing thing, at least in terms of getting my ideas out. Yeah, 100%. And sometimes I actually see the same on my channel.

It's like my AI avatar will often outperform me, you know, and it's like, we'll literally talk about the same topic within 24 hours, the AI will always do better, get like better watch time and everything. Yeah. Is it disappointing for you that people prefer the Blade Runner version of you, the Android version than the real? I think one of the disappointing things is like, when I look at the comments, sometimes people like, you know, bring the human version of me back, but then I look at the analytics and I tell them about the analytics.

And they're still like, no, no, you have to bring the human version back. So it's kind of one of those where it's like, I think from the outside, some people don't understand it. Yeah, I guess, you know, the thing about it, too, is I can I can hear the argument for Uncanny Valley, but it's almost not there, right? The one video that I put out, a friend of ours was like, is this you making fun of AI?

Like this is you, right? And you're and you're telling people it's AI, and I was like, no, that's crazy. I was like, no, that is actually AI and he didn't believe me for a bit. That's how good it's got.

Yeah, you thought I was doing a video to make fun of AI. That's pretty scary in itself, right? Yeah, right. It's it's kind of hitting them on the other way.

Yeah. I think one thing that's worked really well for us, we actually did this this year, which is like we kind of separate the channels out. So you have one where we primarily focus on like AI content and one focus on human content. It's like the people who want the human stuff are over here and the people want the AI stuff are over here.

That's that's a fair way to do it. I mean, if somebody complains, they just point them to the channel, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, OK, if you don't like it, just go over here instead. Yeah. There you go. Problem solved.

Yeah. And then like, but then you start giving them FOMO and say like, you know, I do share better tips over there. But, you know, this guy, he talks smoother than me, right? That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. 100 percent. How about on the link building side?

What sort of stuff you working on there? Funny you mentioned that's our next big, big project. We've done a lot of work to find metrics that seem to support consistent effectiveness of links. So not just let's go buy a 20 link package, but what are the links we actually need?

Building citation sources for AI is a big part of that as well. You know, if we can get a link and this has traffic and it looks good and on top of that, it's being used as a source within AI, that's a powerful thing. So and then within the concepts that we have with topical authority within POP, like within the silos that we build, they also go along with your tier, the strength that Google will trust you immediately for a keyword. We're adding in a backlink element right now.

It's just it's done. We have it through our done for you service, but we're building that out to be done automatically through the platform as well. So if you guys, so it's like, Hey, here, if people are interested, it's like, Hey, here are five links. They're probably pretty good for you.

And most effective, like giving you the best chance to do what you want to do. But yeah, that's our next big project. So once we get AI visibility, which is soft launching today, definitely crash the site for an hour and a half. That's fun.

If you've ever done a product launch, you've got everything lined up and it's like, and go and the site's down. Oh, no. Yeah, I can just imagine. But we definitely try to do things.

I think we annoy more Europeans than we do Americans in terms of our, our launch schedule. Yeah. It usually seems you got morning time in Europe. So it's kind of nighttime in the US, but yeah, so once the AI visibility goes out, that's soft launching today.

We're going to do an internal launch next week for the, for the AI assistant tool. And then that'll soft launch the week after let that dust settle. And then from there, that's when we've got our, our, our backlink tool going. And one other thing that we're doing that we've, we've been doing now for almost a year, it's really starting to take off as well is a done for you service kind of, we have like two brands of it.

One for people that want an a la carte, mainly like people that are white labeling, a small medium sized agency. And then we've got a version for small business that is a little more structured. This is what you'll be getting every month, sort of a thing. And both of those are going really, really well.

The, the one that we're doing for small business, we're actually only allowing a couple of people in at a time. We have that wait list on that, which is a nice place to be in, in terms of business, but also it allows us to provide quality and making sure that we're doing something that is going to be good. Is that like, is that actual, like people kind of like an agency service or is it fully done? Very similar.

Yeah. So it's a, it's a hybrid model where you do have like an account manager. So there's somebody there to kind of talk you through what the plan is. But then a lot of it is us kind of pushing the buttons for you within the tool.

There are a few extra bells and whistles that we have on the done for you side that we don't offer on the self-service side, but simply because they're a little too hard to explain to people. People have enough trouble using tools as it is. And there are a couple of things that are just like, nah, we, we kind of have to do that ourselves. But yeah, so it's kind of, I like to call it like a SAS, like software as a serviced service where again, cutting out that learning curve, you know, it's effective, you know, you want it here's, here's a good price point for you if we do it for you.

And then rather than you paying for a monthly subscription, you're not going to use, you pay just a little bit more and you actually get the output that you need. That's nice. Yeah. That's pretty smart.

I mean, that's a really good way to do it. It's like kind of a fusion between agency and done for you service, right? Yeah. So it's not a full price of an agent and a lot of agencies use it because there's, there's still a margin for them so that they can provide, you know, the, the content plan, the, the page building plan, how these are all things are going to link together.

We're going to do them on that week that can be provided for them. And then there's still margin for them to take that to a client and they're still servicing that client because they're still making those decisions as to, okay, the output looks like this, but let's do, here's the direction. They're the kind of the final decision maker and it allows them to put their SEO on top of what this is, but it kind of provides them that foundation. So that effective SEO will continue to be done the entire time.

The other thing I was thinking of you is like, you, we've that system, especially if you're selling done for you as a kind of upsell on your SaaS, it's kind of like, you don't need a big sales team. People can just buy through the tool, right? Yep. For the, for the done for you, we do ask that you jump on a 10 minute call with us.

But it's, it's, it's the least pressurized sales situation you've ever seen. It's more like, here it is, is this what you thought it was? Because they have to go through, you know, they've seen like the sales page, they've probably been through a couple of videos. So they, they always have a good idea about what they're getting into, but it's just that final, is this the right fit?

And if it's the right fit, then we go forward from there. And most people, like an audit is 275, you know, and that gets you a three month plan. And then if you need the content created, then you order it all a cart as you need the content. So cheap.

Maybe you've got a team already and just need outlines, that's 20 bucks a page if you need it done. So it's like maybe 85, 90% of the way as draft content, that's 45 bucks, 47 bucks, 60 is human edited. So, and then, yeah, so it's kind of, again, just what you need when you need it. And then we've got our link building right now through that as well.

So we do a whole like audit and says like, okay, with the topics you're going after, these are the domains and we're foolish. We even like show the domains. Like, so if you can, we show you the wholesale price too that we can get for you, but if you think you can beat it, that's fine with us as well. That's interesting.

Yeah. Fully transparent. I think the clients would like that. It's kind of like, okay, this is what you're getting into.

You can take it and leave it. But I can tell you the, so we were giving this to small, medium sized agency and then also small business. And what we realized is that while small business really wants that like that price point and they want what the product is, they still struggle month to month. in terms of making the orders.

Because they've got other things going on, they're running their business. And so now we've got kind of like a small business, medium sized business version of it, where it is a little more hands off. Once the plan is made, then the next three months are just kind of good. And we can even publish on your site for you, if you need.

Yeah, I mean, do you know, actually there's something interesting that I learned probably over the last 12 months, which is like, when I was trying to scale agency services, which is like a bit more high ticket, it's like, you're paying minimum one to two K a month. That up to a certain point that scales, but then we actually found like my community, which is much lower ticket. And that comes with a SAS, comes with an agent operating system. At a $59 price point, scales way faster, way, way faster.

And I think it is like that, it's that churn, isn't it? It's like, if someone's paying one to two K a month, eventually you're gonna churn if things are temperamental, right? And especially if they can't see a clear path for how they can continue. Like the more friction there is in terms of the product making it onto the website, the harder it's gonna be for them to stay in.

Even if, say that service you're charging one to two is actually worth five to six, it's worth nothing if nothing's getting on the site, you know, and if nothing's, if like there's that bottleneck of, here's the deliverables to it getting onto the site. Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, that's interesting. I wish you think more about that.

Low ticket SEO soft, low ticket SEO services. One thing that I found kind of from a psychology standpoint that I found really interesting was, you know, you can get the unlimited reports version of our tool for like 70 bucks a month. And when people would ask, say, a conference is how much is your tool? And you say, oh, it's 70.

You can kind of see like, ah, that's a little pricey, but they're taking that number and they're tacking it on to the 2000 or 3000 they're paying every month in software and they're kind of adding onto that price point. But if you say, how much is a three month content plan? It's gonna show you exactly what you, the content that you need to publish on the site for the next three months. And you say it's 275, like, oh, that's a good price.

Even though it's, you know, nearly four times as much. Yeah, that's interesting. I think because it's tangible, it's the output from the tool and they didn't, there was no learning curve involved. And it was just, here you go, here's the data and this is what you should publish.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Do you do white label for the actual tool? Like people, agencies can sell like the actual. We have an API that people use and they plug that into their own tools.

And mostly people do it for dashboards. I would say more than anything, but if you wanted to create a tool and use our data, because we do our own math, our API is a cost. Nice, nice. We're not reskinning somebody else's API.

So we can give you a pretty good price on our API. That's awesome. How about, are you speaking at Changmai SEO this year? I opted for a panel.

I'm trying to reduce the speaking a little bit. It got, it's been a bit much over the last two, three years. And mainly from a mental health perspective, I needed a break. And so I still wanna be involved in Changmai SEO.

I love Carl and Matt and the new team and the legacy team. They're all fantastic. So I still wanna be involved in that, but I asked them, is there anything else I can do? And I think I'm getting, I don't know who's rounding out the panel, but I think Kaz or Dash is gonna be on it.

And I think they're looking for one other person or they've got one other person is what they told me, but I can't, I don't think they told me who it was. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's cool. I do think that's a smart way through it.

I just, I mean, for me personally, when I was doing speeches and speaking at these events, I would prepare for like three full months to write a speech. It takes a lot. It takes a lot. It's like, it's a three month experience for sure.

And then you get up and people tell you that they like it fine. Like you like it fine? You're kidding me. No, actually the one thing I'm concerned when I retire that I've got this giant hole in my heart that it can only be filled by strangers telling me how amazing I am.

I don't know where I'm gonna get that from. If I don't get those comments daily, it's like crack cocaine. Yeah, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

My ego is very fragile. It's a rollercoaster. Yep, for sure. No, I think there is something special about it then.

So like you come away sort of, it's more the experience than the actual learning. Yeah, and to be honest, it's the networking too. It's being visible. It's meeting new people.

It's seeing what their company is doing a lot. I enjoy walking through the sponsor area a lot because I love seeing new company. I love seeing new ideas and meeting new people that are doing it. Because I mean, you're an entrepreneur.

I'm an entrepreneur. We own businesses. It's scary. It's exciting.

It's challenging. And I love when people are taking on a new challenge and then, hey, this is our new business. We launched it this year. And now we're at this conference and it's like, tell me more.

Like, what are you guys up to? And I really enjoy doing that. Yeah, it's also so interesting. The one thing that I found like, and you've been in the SEO industry for so long, but one thing that I found is that as you grow, everyone else is growing with you.

And so you sort of see everyone else on their own journeys as well. And that's super interesting. Yeah, and it is fun where people start off kind of in one angle and 14 pivots later, then they find the thing that actually, it's the one that works, right? And- Yeah, all those affiliates after helpful content update.

Yeah, and before that, it was all the drop shippers. Yeah, that's true. That's true. There's always that one person who's like, every year they've got something new.

Yeah, which I understand. I get it. You're hustling. You're gonna make it, you're gonna make it.

That's the thing. If you have that determination where you can find the thing that maybe this is where it's at and where it's going and you can make money off of it, that's fantastic. Yeah, I always tell myself that like, during the highs and the lows, it's kind of like, as long as you just keep going, you're patient and you relentlessly improve every day. Like, you're gonna win eventually.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. And I mean, when you tell the story, when you're looking back, your story is gonna be linear. I was here and then we got to there, but in the day-to-day of it, it's definitely a little more ups and downsies.

Yeah, 100%. That's all part of the fun. Definitely, definitely. All right, cool.

Well, for anyone watching, you know, number one, thanks so much for being on, Kyle. Really appreciate it. Number two, where can people find you? Well, you can talk to A.I.Me very soon at pageoptimizer.pro.

That's what I would recommend. When you go to the homepage, what's kind of fun is you can put in, and this will be in about two weeks, the, like, you can actually try it out. So you can talk to the assistant and it'll encourage you to sign up before it answers anything too heavy. But then once you get inside, the biggest complaint we've ever had about our tool is the interface.

You know, that's the biggest thing, and this gets past all of that because you don't have to worry about the interface. You just have a conversation with me and then I'll help you out. We'll get your SEO done and we'll get your A.I. done and your A.I.

search done, and you can see all that visibility in there, and the visibility, it's all kind of coming together. It's really, really cool. Yeah, I'm excited to see, you know, how you progress even more in the future because, you know, when we first met, the stuff that you can do now versus what you could do before with Page Optimizer Pro is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, we have so many features.

And that's the other thing too that the A.I. tool does as well is it brings them all together. I do feel like sometimes they're a little disjointed, like some people were just using this part of the tool and some people were using that part, and now it helps you integrate it with minimal issues where it's like, hey, you know, now you've done this, we should probably set up, you know, a keyword tracker. We should probably set up Watchdog, which will monitor the SERPs for you.

And we can put this into A.I. visibility and turn these into questions that people are asking about your brand. It all kind of now really works together kind of through the conduit of the A.I. system.

Yeah, yeah, nice, awesome. All right, thanks so much for watching, everyone. And thanks for being on, Kyle. Thanks so much, I appreciate it.

Appreciate it.