Tips Tuesday – AI SEO Workshops, Google Search at Risk

Tips Tuesday – AI SEO Workshops, Google Search at Risk

Tips this week include:

• New DIY SEO workshops
• How to show up in AI Search
• Is the Google Search ecosystem at risk?
• Crap AI content is all we’ll have left soon
• Being a trusted source will matter again
• Update on progress with my 2 YouTube channels

DIY SEO Happenings

A couple of weeks ago I sent a survey to members of the DIY SEO course.

And our next series of workshops will be on the topics they want to know more about.

The top platform requested is YouTube, so we’ll be doing that one this week.

And folks want to know more about using Claude AI to make improvement suggestions on their posts, as well as using it to help create Instagram and videos from the blog content. So, we’ll be doing those soon too.

We’ll also be reviewing some of the workshops we did last year on these topics, as well as other platforms where you can get more eyeballs on your content.

AI SEO Tips

How to Show Up in AI Search

This has to be the worst, most all-over-the-place, non-answer article I have ever read about SEO for AI, and it comes straight out of the mouth of Google.

When Google reps were point blank asked what SEOs should do to ensure their content and products show up on Search, they received either a deflection response, or a generic “try to provide value” answer.

How generic, early 2000s can you get with that reply?

On top of that, they suggested using AI to help check grammar.

Are you kidding me?

Using AI response grammar is what gets your content flagged for being written by AI.

Is the Google Search Ecosystem at Risk?

Bottom line on the article above – even the heads of Google AI Search have no idea why the content that is showing up in AI now is there, or how to ensure it’s the best content that could be there.

On top of that, they are actually concerned that AI may take their own jobs.

In my mind, Google has lost its soul to AI and has zero idea what will become of all Search as we’ve known it.

Crap AI Content is All We’ll Have Left Soon

The AI model training is a snake that is feeding on its tail.

It’s now consuming web content that it wrote – and that no true expert has verified.

On top of that, the human checkers who are in the loop have serious bias in what they approve.

Joost de Valk recently posted on the Descartes Reflex where we all need to start being suspicious of everything we read online, especially results from AI queries.

And Amanda King took that notion a grand step forward on her Floq blog with Who Watches the Watchmen?

It talks about the bias in human overseers who are mainly low-payed folks from countries other than the target audience of the content. And she clearly draws out her concerns for the future of AI search.

It’s a solid 30 minute read, and worth it. 

But, knowing most of you won’t read it, here are a few quotes from it that I believe are super important for you to know.

“In two years, we’ll have reached a tipping point, where synthetic content outweighs human crafted to the point of no return.”

And this:

“So the question of who watches the watchmen? has a second layer. It’s not only about who recognises the biases inherent in the training data and how it’s chosen and classed and tagged and by whom. It’s about whether the thing we’re building on — the training data itself — is crumbling underneath our feet while we train the next model on top of it.”

And this:

“At Anthropic, you can name the people accountable for training governance: Jared Kaplan, Jan Leike, Amanda Askell, the Surge AI team under Edwin Chen. At OpenAI, the safety leads keep leaving and the training labour is contracted through companies that have been sued for exploitation. At Google, a decade-plus-old bias remains an open ticket. At Meta, you can download the model weights and not a technical report. At DeepSeek, the Party mandates the output. At Mistral, the CEO lobbied against the regulation that would have required him to disclose what’s in the training data. At xAI, there’s one man, a score of 14/100, and an autoreply that says “Legacy Media Lies.”

And finally, this:

“Understand the impact of the corporate structures behind the tools you’re building strategies around. A company heading toward an IPO at $852 billion has different incentives than one that just got labelled a national security threat for maintaining safety guardrails. Both have different incentives than one legally required to comply with Party directives.”

Being a Trusted Source Will Matter Again

Most AI model experts say that they will be out of training data by 2028.

And over these next couple of years folks are going to realize that AI replies are not vetted and mostly junk.

Eventually they are going to stop searching for answers from it.

Instead, they will increasingly flock to platforms where they think they can get a straight answer from someone who they believe knows the truth.

That trend has already started.

TikTok has become the top source for news.

Reddit has long been a trusted source for reviews and for getting help with a specific how-to question. Reliance on it is growing, as clicks in Search to a Reddit post are out-performing clicks in AI Search results.

YouTube talking head videos rival podcast streams for going deeper into topics of interest.

So, what does all of this mean for bloggers?

You’ve created trust-worthy content. And that’s what folks are increasingly wanting now instead of AI results.

The problem you face is getting eyeballs on it.

You can’t just rely on Google and Pinterest anymore.

You have to show up on the platforms folks are turning to for real answers from real people.

Once you get those eyeballs, you can point them back to your site for more info.

My YouTube Channel Updates

Heartwood Art

The new CAD videos on my Heartwood Art channel are getting good views.

More importantly, they are getting comments that they are THE best beginner tutorials – and that is exactly my goal for them.

So, I’m thrilled with the way they are being received, and they were most definitely a good addition to the channel.

The homeowner product reviews I did last year are doing well too, and garnering some affiliate sales as well.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the channel’s performance.

This is the seasonal slow time for viewership, so I’ve backed off making more CAD tutorials for a bit.

Instead, I’m in my shop doing a new nightstand build and tutorial – and I modeled it in CAD first, so I’ll have that tutorial to release too and cross promote both to each other.

I’ve made CAD models of my previous builds and the cross promotion has worked well for them too.

Unreal for Reels 

Now for the big reveal.

The new YouTube channel I started late last year is Unreal for Reels and it includes tutorials for Unreal Engine – but not for making games. It focuses on making landscapes for scenes.

This is the same software that is being used by movie studios for cinematic backdrops. And the actors perform in front of a greenscreen.

You may recall a few weeks ago that I was distraught over the way things have changed with the software and that the original tutorial plans I had would no longer work.

You may also recall that I said I was switching to learning and teaching the “new ways” to do things.

That worked!!

The channel has been revived and is getting views, comments, and subscribers.

You may also recall that I said I found new things in my recent research about just making pretty things, not tutorials. And that’s what I’m creating now.

And I’m definitely going to return to doing soundscape videos with a new channel. It will take me a while to build up inventory so that I can have a stockpile of them to release before I start the channel.

But I can definitely see how all of this works together so that I can learn “new ways” and build multiple projects to use for different purposes.

I’ll keep you posted on when the new soundscape channel launches, as that will likely be in the fall.