Sarvesh Shrivastava: AI Is Killing Generic SEO

Sarvesh, welcome to the show. How's it going? All good, mate. Thank you for having me.

I've been an avid consumer of all of the content that you put out, so it's finally nice to put a face to the name. You too, you too, mate. I've seen you popping off on Twitter, doing really good with SEO content, so congrats, man. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So what sort of stuff are you working on right now when it comes to AI and SEO? So I've been, I run an SEO agency, that's what we primarily do, and so mostly it's local SEO, that's what we specialize in, and just a tiny bit is also into e-commerce. I see some of our clients are into e-commerce as well, but mostly local. So yeah, we use AI, typically just like every other SEO agency, to help AI help us in ranking those clients, as well as using AI to rank well in AI, both.

So that is where we are primarily looking for. And with local, I mean, though, yes, it's not like SaaS or any other industry where it has transformed a lot for AI yet. So with local, the search habits of people are still very similar to what it used to be. They're still looking at Google Maps, they're still looking at all of those reviews.

So our work is slightly easier as compared to maybe a SaaS agency, for that matter, where things have changed a lot rapidly. But yes, this is what we do. I do an SEO agency and I use a lot of cloud, I use a lot of cloud co-work for and within my agency for all of it. So yes, that's to answer your question, this is what we do.

And what's your approach, like what's your workflow when it comes to, let's say you're trying to do some local SEO for a client in cloud co-work. Could you break down your workflow step by step? So a first thing that's there is I still have a 40 people team working for me. So I have not kind of automated it to the point where we still use cloud and or any AI for that matter very extensively, but still it's a human running the whole show, running the whole system.

So we have not been able to eliminate people from the system. I don't want to do that either because with AI, I mean, it could at any point be that everything is going well and good and all of a sudden AI just hallucinates and the output is something that you don't expect. So we don't want to take risks with active client projects. So that is the reason why we have a full team in-house, even we have a content team in-house as well.

It's their role to ensure that every word that goes out on live on the site is vetted. So we are not mass generating content as such, but we are utilizing AI for the content for that matter. In terms of the systems that we're using, we start with creating a brain inside cloud co-work for any new client that we sign. So we create a project for it and that project contains almost everything, all of that information that we need for that project.

So while we are signing up the client, while we are onboarding the client, we get as much information as we can from the client about their business, including everything. So in local, particularly what you'd want to know is what are all services they provide and what is the pricing of each of their services, particularly in the ROI order and what kind of services is what makes them more money and or what are some of the services that they would want to ignore or not want to go after. So all of this information is put together into a master file and that master file is provided to Claude as the input file for the project, which I'm sure you also do, that just this preliminary step itself makes the output much more better than if you are just saying that, okay, this is a plumber and you have to do SEO for this plumbing site because then Claude or any AI for that matter is seeing and sees that what business they're working on, who all their competitors are. So yeah, what my team also does is we go out and do a thorough competitor research right at the start itself and all of that data is also included within that brain.

So every time you do not have to repeat that who all the competition is, what is it that they do? And all of that information is included once and the brain is built once and that makes our job easier for the next round of things that we do. So that is how we start things. And then obviously we have different prompts for the next subsequent actions.

Nice. Actually, have you seen, it was just announced today that Claude are going to start watermarking AI generated content. Have you seen this? No, I have not yet.

No. What's your thoughts on this? I'll pull it up right now because I'm just looking at this as well. It's something that I've not had a chance to have a proper look at, but basically there's been a recent update in legal practices, I think when it comes to the EU AI Act.

And one thing they've updated is like basically helping people detect or helping other AI engines, I guess, and other people detect the watermark behind AI generated content. And I'm wondering like, is this the end of using Claude for SEO? Okay. It's going to be a challenge.

I mean, but at the end of the day, we are most SEO agencies for that matter, they're not really hiding that the content is being generated through AI. And at this point, if you're not using AI clients, in fact, clients, they do ask why you are not using AI at this point, because the content and everything, they themselves use AI and then they come to you. And at that point, if you're not utilizing all of the tools of the trade that are there, that are available right now, A, it's much more expensive if you're not using AI for the content, it will become much more expensive if your content is completely human for the SEO. And B, at least for us, from our perspective, we do not hide it from our clients that we actively use AI.

So from the client's perspective, that should not be a problem. And from Google's perspective, I think they already have a very sophisticated algorithm to know the content was AI generated. So as long as any SEO agency is not hiding it from their clients that the content is being generated through AI, I don't think they should add something very peculiar into the process. But what are your thoughts?

I agree. I think you've just got to be transparent with your clients and be like, I mean, we've already done it from the start, which is like, we're using AI generated content. You'd be crazy not to at this point, to be fair, as long as you quality control it and you're transparent with the client, I don't think there's any issues there. I know Google themselves have said, we don't care if you're using AI or not for SEO, but the point is, it's got to be quality and it's got to have some sort of information gain in it as well.

Correct. And I mean, Google has, I think in their quality documents, they have written that it does not matter how the content is generated, as long as it's adding value to the internet, that is what they are looking for. But what we have seen and I've also seen is if you're mass generating AI content, yes, it just takes up and then it just falls down as well and very quickly in the same manner. So I agree information gain is something that's very, very important that what you are adding to the article, what you're adding to any post that you're publishing is equally important.

And that is where maybe having a team that is writing or that is ensuring that information gain is happening within the article that can also be done through the right systems within AI, within the AI that you're working on. But yes, at the end of the day, is there any information gain within the article that you're publishing is very, very important. Yeah, a hundred percent. Like one thing that's working really well for us is like, we'll take our tutorials, for example, let's say we're talking about how to use Hermes agent with DeepSeek or something like that.

So we'll take that tutorial and then we'll use in addition to an SEO skill that we give to Claude and then it's taken the real world experience and the skill for quality control and it creates something that's like 10 times better than any human I personally know could do. Correct. Yeah. So that way, you have given something new to the internet, right?

That is because that was not something that is just, you have given a text or you have given a skill. It is an eventual mix of a skill plus the text that was there. And ultimately, and that is what ultimately Google would also call as an information gain. So I completely agree that with AI, just repeating what's already available on the internet is going to go away.

And it has already gone away because, I mean, I'm sure you'd remember the Netsite days where you could just rewrite the same article using a human and it would rank perfectly fine. Now, not so much. If you're just going after the same keywords with the same article, it just does not work. So that's what AI has.

It has made publishing so much easier, but then that is where it has increased the barrier to entry. Yeah. And the other thing I would say here is like, if you just have generic information content, and I'll pull up a classic example that's happened recently. You probably know these guys, right?

Savage, Backlinko. Backlinko, ironically, they have a website about SEO and marketing and they were absolutely crushing it before AI. And now those tutorials, that information content that they mainly focus on has absolutely decimated their rankings since the rise of AI, really. You look over the last year and it's just going down and down and down and down.

It was fun while it lasted. This is exactly what I was talking about. That initially just took off and then now it has completely decimated it. And the amount of pages and everything, and you can see they have a domain rating of 90.

So it's not even like a new site that has just come out of nowhere and has just started ranking. They are, I mean, if a 90 site is not being ranked right now with generic content, then that means no one else will be ranked by Google at this point. Yeah, that's a great point for sure. The other thing I wonder as well is like, they can't really, they can't make any drastic changes to the website because they're ranking so well in AI.

And so it's like one of those where they've got a great website, they can't really fix the problems they have because they're ranking so well inside AI. And if they, if they, for example, like cut a lot of the content that they have, it's going to hurt their AI rankings, even if it improves their Google rankings. And I think that signals the end of an era. I think particularly for someone like you, you're pretty smart because SEO agency in the niche for local sites, like that's probably more sustainable and more future-proof than, for example, these informational like blog-style websites like Backlinko.

Great. And similarly, the same thing applies to other types of agencies as well. Maybe, for example, I take SaaS as an example. SaaS used to rank and rely very heavily on these information articles.

Like, for example, if you have any SaaS based in the finance space, you do a lot of listicles like best X, Y, Z apps for that matter. And these type of articles would rank really well earlier, and they would get you a lot of eyeballs and all of that. Now, at this time, and as a SaaS agency, this is the strategy that you'd follow, that you do for a lot of your clients. Now, that strategy does not work as well.

So you have to then pivot to just ranking them in the actual very, very high competitive, for the high competitive keywords. And so that makes it more, your job much more difficult. That is why, one of the reasons why we decided that, and we would want to be in something where in local, what we have seen is the habits of people have not changed as much. Even though we are, at this point, I would say, yes, we are moving towards the peak of AI, but we have already kind of, we are moving towards the peak already.

AI has taken over a lot of the things. People are starting to search more and more in AI. But at the end of the day, Google has also been smart. Even their AI and all of that, they have been able to track the way, when ChatGPT came in, yes, it felt that Google was, whether Google would be left behind in the AI race, but they have been able to catch up there.

And the advantage that Google has in the local space, at least, is their map system, their reviews, their algorithm, everything is very dialed in. That is something that ChatGPT does not have for that matter. So they all rely a lot on the signals that Google already have dialed in over the course of a very long time. That is the mode that Google has.

So a business that has collected reviews for, let's say, five years, six years, or 10 years, that is not going to go away anywhere anytime soon. So any AI that is going to make any detection on or any results on, okay, who would be the number one, ultimately has to decide on these factors on of who has the best reviews, who has the best citations, who has the best overall business presence. And that is where Google has the mode. So as an SEO agency, it becomes easier for us to focus, still continue focusing on what the traditional SEO is.

And that also helps us simultaneously work and rank on the AI side of things. So it makes our job slightly easier as compared to different types of agencies that have been doing because for them, they have to reinvent the wheel now or just perish. Whereas with local, it has been more of, okay, what has been working so far, you continue working on that. And that is the base for the AI side.

I hope I'm making sense. Yeah, 100%. I think it's one of those where, I think it's Alice or Mosey quote, they could copy your offer or they could copy your strategy on social media, but they can't take your proof. And that's the same with SEO.

It's like when it comes to local rankings, if you're getting great reviews and you've got a good system to build up more reviews from your customers, that's a mode that most people can't catch up with when it comes to local SEO for sure. The other thing is that is so true about adapting. We've seen that with SEO agencies already. Back when ChatGPT first came out, so many human writing agencies just got wiped out completely.

And we could be seeing the start of something similar, I think, in our industry because it's changing so much. Yeah, very true. I mean, I remember very vividly when content agencies used to make a bag, especially in the net side days with all of the requirement for the content and everything. But all of a sudden ChatGPT came in and overnight the requirement for content just went away.

I mean, the agencies did try to fight for a long time that human content is what would be required as an expertise, but eventually that died down. Everyone just decided that, yes, AI content would be the future. And then it's about information gained of what can be added to on top of it. But that just because the cost factor was such huge between AI content and human content that it just didn't make sense.

I hardly see any content agencies around at this point now. So it's very true with all SEO agencies or for that matter, that you have to iterate and maybe you have to keep adding new services to your roster or just keep iterating to different services, different kinds of things that you're doing otherwise with AI around. But at the same time, one thing I've also seen is since the time AI came around, it has also renewed the interest of people and businesses in the SEO industry in general, because SEO had become such a commodity that people had lost interest in it. But with AI coming in, there was that new FOMO that has gotten created that everyone wants to rank in AI search, no business wants to be left behind.

So that has caused a renewed interest into the industry, into SEO as an industry. You can call it GEO, AEO, whatever it is, but people have a new interest into SEO and all of that. So that has also brought in new business from people that otherwise were not investing into SEO. So it is a double-edged sword where yes, new interest is also coming in.

But at the same time, if you're just stringent into your old ways of doing things and you're not iterating and thinking of how you can maybe think of six months down the line where how you are iterating and offering something new, you may even perish. So it's 100% a very, very challenging time to be an agency owner. Yeah, that's it. I was actually speaking to Jason Barnard yesterday and we were saying how it is probably the most exciting time to do SEO.

Even when I used to create tutorials about SEO in general, before pre-chat GPT, nobody would watch them. They'd get like 100 views or something like that. Whereas now you do a video about AI and SEO and it absolutely pops off. People love it.

Right. And that's actually one thing I wanted to ask you about was I see you growing a lot on X and Twitter. I think you're probably a great example for anyone watching in terms of how to grow and how to also, I see that you're pretty good at squeezing the leads from Twitter as well and generating more customers. What's your strategy there?

So for Twitter, it's very similar. I mean, I've been doing active Twitter for three, four years now, probably three years, more than three years now. Just being consistent on a day to day basis, very similar to what you do across all platforms. But at the same time, Twitter revolves a lot about your hook.

What hooks you're using is a very, very important part of just stopping the scroll. And in fact, the same is true for all social medias. But Twitter has been one of the few social media where hook is the most important thing that I've seen. So a lot of my time at this point, I've trained my claw to kind of just think for me, for all of the hooks.

And then it's my responsibility and my team's responsibility to think of whether or not this hook is good enough to go live. But yes, one thing is that with Twitter, the algorithm changes the most. I'm sure you have come across their algorithm. Every week or so or every few weeks, their algorithm changes completely.

And you'd open your timeline and you'd not recognize that, or what happened to my timeline all of a sudden. So you have to be very, very on top of what is happening, what kind of posts are now ranking and getting the timeline. So yeah, it has been a very, very challenging journey there. I agree there that it has worked well.

But at the same time, so now I've also started to do a bit of YouTube and all of that to diversify all of it. But yeah, Twitter has been a game changer, but it is equally very, very challenging. So what was from that perspective is just spending a lot of time on the hooks. That has been one of the things that takes up a lot of time, but it is equally most rewarding thing that works.

Yeah. One thing that we did is we took all our best performing posts and then we gave Claude a prompt for the hook based on those previous posts that were top performing, like the top 10%. And then we also took the bottom 90% of the worst performing posts. And we put that into Claude as well to be like, don't make any like these, and then it has the best and the worst examples and knows what to do and what not to do.

Right. And what I've done is I have a full chat. That's the only chat where I do any conversation related to X with it. And then I just take screenshots and I say, okay, look at this one.

This is very good. So what I do is I also look at shoulder niches. So maybe if a post from, let's say a fitness niche does really well. So I'll take that post and I'll put that into Claude and I'll ask Claude to analyze why did this one do so well?

What kind of hook is there? What is it that made this post go viral? And then Claude would look at it and then I'll say, okay, what could be an SEO version of this post? And then it would brainstorm and give me some ideas.

And ultimately then it's your experience of doing and analyzing the posts over the course of year. You are able to differentiate whether or not this angle would work into your niche. But yes, it is equally challenging with the algorithm that keeps changing very frequently. A hundred percent.

I'm just saying, well, I appreciate you being on Salvesh. It was great chatting with you. What's the best way for anyone to contact you? We'll put a link in the description for you.

Sure. So it's alventramarketing.com. That's the agency website and Salvesh at alventramarketing.com would be the email. And then there's Twitter.

I can share all of the links and for anyone to reach out. But Twitter is good. You can just DM me and I'll add it again. Perfect.

All right. Cheers.