Are You Only Winning at AI SEO Because LLMs are Dumb?

Some real estate agents are succeeding today at AI SEO because the SEO company/consultant they hired is using short-term tactics that take advantage of the fact that today's LLMs are dumb.

"What do you mean LLMs are dumb, Matt? They're really smart!!"

Okay, here's what I mean:

1. You can publish a blog post calling yourself the "Best Realtor in [LOCATION]," and LLMs will tell people you're the best Realtor in that location. (Because they're dumb.)

2. You can send out press releases saying you're the #1 agent in town, and LLMs will take it at face value and tell people it's true. (Because they're dumb.)

3. Your SEO consultant can write a "listicle" with a fake ranking of real estate agents in your market, rank you #1, and LLMs will believe it. (Say it with me...because they're dumb!)

These are all tactics that I see other real estate SEO consultants and vendors using every day!!

They Work Now...

It's like SEO in the pre-Google days, when you could stuff the keywords meta tag or just repeat a keyword ad nauseam on a page and you would rank for those terms. A lot of today's AI SEO tactics look like yesterday's SEO spam.

I was on a Zoom a couple weeks ago with about 8-10 other agents, and the subject of websites and SEO/AI SEO came up. One agent bragged about how she loved her SEO company because she'd recently gotten a new listing from a ChatGPT lead. During the conversation, she attributed her success to the "great SEO blog posts" that the company writes for her.

It was a company I'm very familiar with. I didn't have the heart to tell her in that moment that the blog posts aren't the reason she shows up in some AI answers. The reason is that her SEO company is using several of the tactics I mentioned above that take advantage of the fact that LLMs are -- at least right now -- dumb.

That stuff works right now, so knock yourself out if you want to be today's AI answer.

...But They Won't Work Forever

There's always a "but," isn't there?

We're seeing signs that those tactics aren't working as well as they used to and may not work much longer. Consider this recent LinkedIn post from a guy who works for the AI analytics platform, Peec AI: ChatGPT is falling out of love with listicles. Or consider this from Lily Ray, who says ranking yourself #1 can help your competition more than it helps you.

You have to ask yourself: Is it in ChatGPT's best interest to be so easily gamed by stupid tricks? Of course not.

Been There, Done That, Here's a Better Plan

Tactics like those have come and gone for 25+ years. Trust me, none of these AI SEO tactics are new.

As we say in SEO, everything works until it doesn't. So when these things stop working -- and they will -- you're back to square one.

Or perhaps this is a better plan: Focus on longterm tactics that have been working for the past 15+ years in SEO and will continue to work as long as people need high-quality information from trusted sources, and LLMs/search engines want to deliver it to them.

Don't pin your success on the fact that LLMs are dumb right now. They won't be like that forever.

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