Get Found In AI Search

Google still matters, but the way people search is shifting under our feet. More buyers are starting with AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, then making decisions from the answer they get back. When that happens, ranking well is not the whole game anymore. The new question becomes: will an answer engine cite your business by name when someone asks where to buy a shed near them?

Kimberly Reynolds from AI Advantage Agency joins us to explain Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) in plain terms and connect it to what shed dealers care about most: leads, calls, and sales. We dig into the practical building blocks that help AI systems understand your business, including schema markup, entity signals, and why WordPress tools like Rank Math can simplify setup. We also talk about content strategy that works for AI search, like answering one question per page, leading with the answer, and adding FAQs with the right schema so your site becomes easy for AI to parse and trust.

We also cover what is changing in paid media, including how Meta’s ad algorithm now relies heavily on creative and copy, plus why Google Business Profile and reviews are even more important as Google rolls out AI Overviews and more searches end without a click. If you’ve got a solid website, a local presence, and a limited marketing budget, you’ll walk away with a clear 90 day plan to improve SEO, AEO, and local SEO together. Subscribe for more shed sales and marketing breakdowns, share this with a dealer friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Shed Pro

Velocity 360
J Money LLC
Cardinal Leasing
iFAB LLC
Identigrow

Transcript

INTRO 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Shed Geek Podcast. A quick word about our studio sponsor. One thing the team at Shed Pro has been hearing lately from Shed businesses is that many of them aren't struggling because of lack of demand. Things just kind of stall out. The lot is busy, but growth plans. And it's not always obvious why. Usually it's something small. The website, the follow-up. How customers interact with you before they ever pick up the phone. So Shed Pro put something together called the Shed Sales Audit. It helps you to get a clearer picture of where you might be losing people. It takes a couple of minutes. And if you want to dig deeper, their team will walk you through it. Here's the thing. Nine times out of ten, the fix isn't more lead, it's a tighter operation underneath that the rest of the Shed Pro platform. Configurate point of sale, RTO contract, inventory, deliveries, and dealer tools. All in one place. Start with the audit at ShedPro.co/ ShedGeek. Thank you, Shed Pro, for being our Wednesday studio sponsor and for building something that helps the industry.

Midwest Catch Up And Ways To Connect

Shannon 1:16

Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Um goodness, can we get any more rain here in the Midwest lately? I've talked to someone who said they're going to have a bumper crop this year. So, I don't know if you guys out there that are farmers uh are seeing anything like that, but what a good year. Uh today I'm joined uh by Kimberly Reynolds. I'm going to introduce her here shortly and chat with her. I think you guys will enjoy it. But before we get started, a few ways to stay connected with us. Uh just give me a call at 618-309-3648, which is my personal sale. If you have questions, comments, or uh want to be a guest on the show, if you want to talk about your product, service, or just your story. We really would enjoy having you. Uh info at shedge.com if you want to email us and www.shedgeek.com. Uh as if you need to say www. anymore, Kim. I think that's strange. And in our Facebook page, our Shed Sales Professionals group, please join them for the call-in landline number, 330-997-3055. Uh, and a shout out to Velocity360, our friends over there at Velocity have the best thing going with CRMs that you've seen, Joe Ignace and Brandon Tobin. I think you guys have seen them. They're going to be at the show, the Shed Expo again this year in Knoxville. Um, let's see, they've got a booth there at the Shed Sales Summit. Um, gosh, they're just they're they're all over the place. Uh, and you guys saw them last year as speakers at the Shed Sales Summit, but a big fan of the conversions that they're actually seeing. And that's what really matters is um they're actually improving customer interactions by up to 40% in many cases. So, please give Joe and Brandon a call over at Velocity360 or check them out at velocity360.com. Okay, now that we got all that stuff out of the way, we've got Kimberly Reynolds here today. And

Meet Kim And The Shift Beyond Google

Shannon 3:14

Kim, do you care to just um the audience knows who you are, do you care to just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Kim Reynolds 3:22

Sure. So, my name is Kim Reynolds, and I have an agency called AI Advantage Agency. And what we do is we help people, businesses get found through the AI engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity, whatnot. Um, we offer marketing services and um a little bit about myself, my background. I've been in marketing for over 20 years. I started out with my own e-commerce websites, um, selling GPS equipment and using Google Ads. And I didn't come from a marketing background, I had to learn that to sell the products. So um that's how I learn on the ground and you know, hit the ground running trying to anyway. And um about me personally, I have eight kids and uh husband named Brandon. So he's yeah, you're mentioning one of the guys from Velocity is Brandon. So um uh I love Jesus and I love marketing, so that's pretty much who I am.

Shannon 4:31

I feel like we're uh we're we're uh the same people in different locations, is all you're located in uh, I think you said San Diego.

Kim Reynolds 4:40

San Diego, yes.

Shannon 4:41

Yeah, very nice. You you just got the better weather. There's no doubt about that.

Kim Reynolds 4:46

We do. We pay for the weather, though, unfortunately. We we pay through the nose for the weather.

Shannon 4:52

I'm sure. I'm sure there is a benefit to it. So, I'm very curious that like your story. One of the things that we've talked about is uh you know, marketing and you know, your all the things, uh Meta Blueprint certified, 20 years in in this business. Uh one thing I find interesting about your profile was you know AEO. You talk about AEO versus SEO, and some people are still struggling to kind of understand the full nature of SEO search engine optimization and how a website in and of itself isn't just the solution that you think you need. Uh right, having a website just gets you a presence, but the SEO is the road that leads people to your website, is the way I like to say it. And uh I always compare it to a shed lot, and I'm like, what good is it to have a beautiful shed lot where you're selling sheds to the public and uh it's well- manicured and uh you've got it you know fixed up really nice, good facing buildings, everything looks perfect, and it's in the middle of a cornfield where no one sees it. Well, that's your nice expensive website that someone sold you. Uh, but now it's got to be seen because the whole goal is to be seen, and the way to be seen is off these search queries, right? Like the keywords that people are actually searching for, where Google's become part of our everyday vernacular, and we say just go Google it. That's changing. Would wouldn't you agree?

Kim Reynolds 6:24

Oh, absolutely. I just was reading a statistic right before this uh this call, and 30% of all searches now begin with chat GPT. Well, uh 79% of them start with chat GPT, but chat GPT Perplexity, Claude, people um 37% of the time are no longer going to Google to start their searches. And that's really interesting because it's such a leap from last year, and I'm sure that next year it's gonna be an even bigger leap. It's just the way the market is turning. And you know, SEO is really important. Um SEO is the foundation of good AEO. Uh, but SEO lets you lets Google send people, you become visible in Google with good SEO. AEO lets you become visible to the AI engines, so they're they kind of go hand in hand. Good AEO is good SEO.

Shannon 7:23

Very nice. Um, so yeah, it it was interesting when I was at the shed show last year. Um I actually asked someone, because we do this just as a joke, we say, Where can I find a shed? Like if I wanted storage, like a shed manufacturer, there's not really a whole lot of national brands, Kim. And uh uh, if any, and it's always like, Where do I go? And you get the standard answers, right? Like Home Depot Lowe's or a hardware store or something like that. They don't call a brand out specifically by name, but I was like, uh, where would I find one? And instead of the guy saying, you know, I'm not sure, let me Google it. He said, Let me chat that. And this is a year ago, uh, you know, two years ago, maybe that I've that I've heard this. It's just changing even our right, it's changing even the way we talk.

Kim Reynolds 8:09

Yeah, it is. And um, it's funny because people will refer to it's you know, they'll chat that, but they're not even using chat GPT necessarily. They might be using Claude or they might be using Perplexity or Google Gemini, and but it's that has become the term, and it's I use Claude personally um more than Chat GPT. I use Chat GPT to create images, like blog post images, because their image GPT or GPT image, however you want to call it, is just superior to anything else.

AEO Vs SEO And How It Works

Shannon 8:46

So, walk me through uh AEO. Like I understand SEO on a on a on a fairly decent level, but AEO is a new thing to me. Kind of break down the difference for the audience. So, I'm a student here too. Just uh I'm this is my attempt to be educated as well.

Kim Reynolds 9:06

Okay, well, I'm gonna try my best here. So, AEO stands for answer engine optimization, and instead of optimizing to be found by Google in search results, you're optimizing to be discovered by the AI engines. And the ultimate goal is citations, meaning when someone is in Chat GPT and they say, Oh, well, you know, where's I'm in, you know, such and such a place, where's the best place to get a shed? Um you want Chat GPT or whatever. I'm just gonna use Chat GPT as the you know the example. And you want them to come back and say, your business. And so, there's different ways of accomplishing that. It doesn't Google can discover your content even if you don't. Well, SEO is very important for that, but you still can get lucky with the answer engines. There's no real getting lucky. You have to do specific things. Your website needs to be set up in a specific way. Um, you need to have something called schema. And schema is the little bits of information that the AI engines can read and understand. They call it parsing. They can parse that information. And it tells it tells the AI engine not just your website, but who that website as an entity is, like who the owners are, um, what you sell, how you sell it, um, your philosophy behind. I mean, all of these things the AI engines can learn from your website as long as you have that schema in place.

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Kim Reynolds 12:18

And

Schema And Content That AI Understands

Kim Reynolds 12:19

then the second component of that is content. Like the AI engines thrive on lots of content because there's lots of people asking lots of different questions, and the more they know the AI engines, the more they know, the better they can answer the questions. So, you want to be creating content around what you do, and that content also needs to have schema. So um I can even if you're interested, I can get into some of the some of the Yeah, go for it.

Shannon 12:51

Um I'm geeking out on on some of this right now, so go for it.

Kim Reynolds 12:56

Well, so schema for blog contents is um there's different types of schema. There's blog schema, which tells the AI agents, oh, this is a blog post and this it's about this. It was written by this person, and um, this person is connected to this entity, or this person is also the same person that's on LinkedIn, or um maybe this person also has a podcast, and this is where it is. So, all of this schema connects all of those little dots and article schema again talks about what you're talking about in the post, but then you want to um one very important component to that is you want to have FAQs on every blog post, and those FAQs have schema. Now, all all of this doesn't help you rank better in Google search, but it does help the AI engines find and discover and understand who you are and what you're writing about. And most of the time, I find that if you have good AEO content, it also ranks, but you can have really good SEO content that's totally not discovered at all. And I kind of love this because it's I look at it as kind of like the great equalizer. With AEO, you can have these little brands that maybe didn't rank on the first page of Google because they are a small brand or maybe a mom and pop store, or they're just they don't have the budget behind them that some of the bigger brands have, but they're doing their AEO properly and they're getting discovered even without ranking on Google at all. So, just because you have a good Google ranking does not mean you're gonna be discovered by the AI engines. And even if you don't have a Google ranking at all, you still can be discovered. So, I think that it's a great opportunity right now.

Shannon 14:59

Yeah, no doubt. It's there's still so much to learn with like, I mean, we call it uh, you know, whatever, race to face, you know, speed to lead. There's so many different things. I mean, I mentioned Joe and our uh partners at Velocity over there because they you know they're seeing that in real time. They're seeing um uh the industry is so unique, you know. I I heard a story recently about somebody saying, you know, I really need me one of those CRMs. And this is just uh to kind of show like the under understanding of the uh some of the industry. And this is why I believe education is so valuable in like the podcast and the shed business journal and things like that that are providing that content and educational content are so important. Um this is why you should go to the expos. This is why you should go to like you know these events and like learn. Um, you know, I really feel like uh uh somebody was saying, I need one of those CRMs, but like, do you have a lead problem? And they're like, no, not really. It's just kind of a buzzword. Like, I know I need a CRM, but why do you need a CRM to organize all of your leads if you don't have leads? You've dealt in Google Ads, you've dealt in meta-ads for years, you know, trying to bring organic um leads in onto a website uh through SEO, now AEO. Um it's cool whenever you have all these leads coming in and then you need to organize them or do something with them or automate the the information so that you're filtering out the the real customers, the true customers or the the most beneficial uh leads. Um how do you feel like AEO will will help in that like organic search, like in that organic lead generation? With

Organic Leads From ChatGPT

Shannon 16:43

that, is that different than Google? Is that different than Meta?

Kim Reynolds 16:47

Yeah, well, so I'll give you an example. I just had someone book a call and we're actually meeting today, a discovery call, and they found me through content. And, I'm not paying for an ad. Um, I'm not running any ads right now. Um, you know, I do for other people. And so, what is that the cobbler's son has no shoes? So, I'm running ads for other people, but not running ads for myself, but um, but they found us organically just by asking Chat GPT, and that is happening more and more often. This is actually the second time that this has happened in the past month, and that is directly because of the content that we're creating. And I only started really creating a lot of content for ourselves about two months ago. So, that's when the vast majority of the content started getting created. So, that shows you that this can happen pretty quickly. SEO, AEO, like SEO, is a longer game. You run an ad, you can get a sale that same day, right? It it can be pretty quick. And um SEO and AEO are a longer play, but I think that AEO actually is has a shorter cycle than SEO as far as getting you those leads and sales.

Shannon 18:15

So, I've got a couple couple questions here as they're related to AI content. Here's a here's a funny thing about excuse me, like me and you uh doing this podcast here today. One of the first things I did was run your profile through chat and and asked for the most beneficial questions that I can ask so that the audience can get the most beneficial or the most benefit out of the answers and things like that. And sometimes the conversations happen naturally, and sometimes they happen because you have some help. Um and I think it's how do you distinguish those different things? And I'll get to those questions, but the two questions I wanted to ask you first more personally and not AI generated, is like what kind of content have you been putting out? Video content, have you found that that's been the most helpful? I believe that you know the to be able to see somebody changes the nature of things. To be able to see them in person changes it that much further. I think this still comes back to like your five senses, right? Like, and I think that whenever you like see somebody, you pick up on uh their body language. There's a lot of unspoken language that's happening during a sale. Uh and so I think that happens even through your video content that you're putting out to try and like drive in customers. So, I'm just curious what kind of content you've been generating, video content or otherwise.

Kim Reynolds 19:39

Um,

Why YouTube Transcripts Matter

Kim Reynolds 19:40

most of all the content that I've been generating is written content, blog posts. But I will tell you this, and this is what a lot of people don't know yet, and it's very exciting that you brought that up. YouTube is actually the best source of AEO content, meaning the AI engines source content from YouTube, not the video, not the video itself, but the transcripts. And so, when you're putting out those transcripts, it's really important that you AEO optimize the transcript also, because they are going to YouTube. And everyone talks about Reddit, how Reddit is this great source for AEO. It is, but YouTube is even better, and a lot of people just don't know that. So, there's additional value to creating those videos. And I actually that's I have a couple things on my list that I want to accomplish in July, and one of them is starting to create video content around the topics that I write about. But it's not gonna necessarily be me talking on the video, it's um it's probably gonna be more um well, I'm gonna have AI help me. I'm not positive exactly what it's gonna look like, but it's not gonna all be me talking.

Shannon 20:57

No, it makes a lot of sense. Uh was it Google that bought Reddit or whatever? Because they are who has the bought Reddit recently in the last year because they wanted the more uh organic answers from people as opposed to like a more AI-generated answer. But I hadn't thought about what you're saying. Like YouTube's so well known for its visual, but like to pull those transcripts, there's a ton of help because if I need to change a battery on a 2009 Kawasaki Vulcan, and I'm just not sure about something, it's real easy to go Google it. And Google usually recommends a YouTube video that I watch in a step by step direction where I walk through it, or I can go straight to YouTube. But I can only imagine pulling the transcripts from those and like running it through AI and like just the amount of like information that you can kick out. I mean, we've talked about doing that for all of our shows. We're 500 shows in now, and like if we just we do have all those. generated into an AI right now where it's you know you could put out a book you could put out just about anything just based off of information and the whole idea is not to get caught up in the technology of it. It's I think some people get disconnected Kim whenever it's like how does this help people? And I think that's the whole point is like you're doing all of this to help people to serve people because you have a business line doing that.

Kim Reynolds 22:29

Right.

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Kim Reynolds 23:33

Great

Paid Ads After Meta’s Algorithm Shift

Kim Reynolds 23:34

well, you know it's interesting you bring that up because of a friend of mine a colleague and I are doing a webinar tomorrow on AEO and we started marketing it really bad time to try to market something during 4th of July. I will just let you know that right now. That was a our bad but we were marketing it as oh are you in are you visible are you invisible to AI and um it wasn't resonating at all. So, we changed the messaging and the messaging was, are you finding that you're not getting the leads you used to get or you're not getting the traffic to your website you used to get and so we started leading with what matters to the business. Now AEO is the answer but we stopped leading with that we started thinking about what does the business actually care about? They don't care about AI. They only care about AI or AEO to the extent that it's going to help them with their business.

Shannon 24:32

So, it was kind of a messaging shift but it's also a kind of a mind change shift too so I'm gonna go through a few questions that I feel like will uh just allow you to add lib. I'm gonna go through a few of yours I'm gonna go through a few of what ChatGPT created and just like let you uh let you educate us here and to tell us tell us what your thoughts are and maybe we've covered some of these things a little bit uh but we'll get granular here a little bit a little more specific um uh what's the biggest mistake businesses are making with their content strategy right now ignoring AEO um people are kind of overwhelmed they're just now starting to understand that yes 40% of all searches are starting in chat GPT and maybe I need to be there too that's a big number and so, I'd say the biggest mistake people are making is just not doing it. I like this one paid media has changed dramatically in the last two years what still works and what's effectively dead. I'm so curious at your answer here.

Kim Reynolds 25:43

So, paid media I'll speak more to Facebook because that's my primary network. Facebook changed a couple years ago um and well end of 25 really and they brought out something called Andromeda and Andromeda is part of their algorithm that decides which ads get shown with it used to be that when you created ads it was very much all about your targeting you need to pick those interests and you know get those look like audiences and all of that well Andromeda flipped the switch and a lot of people doing ads don't know that still and now what Andromeda looks like looks at rather is your content your creative it looks at the graphics it looks at your copy so you don't even really do targeting anymore. Targeting is just uh most of the time left up to Facebook they determine who your perfect audience is based on your ad creative and so that's the biggest change that out there and it has totally changed the game and Google is moving that way a lot too I think this is why we hear so many people talking about how their meta ads have really changed especially over the last 12 months or 24 months they're just seeing uh a change in that it certainly makes a lot of sense and lines up um if a business has zero AI strategy right now where do they start real world application like where where's the best place to go what do I do um I would say the best thing to do will go to YouTube and start watching a bunch of AEO videos but um or come to my site and read our all our content we have over 400 blog posts on oh wow very nice um yeah a lot of content but um really where to start is get their website a optimized get um if you have a WordPress site get a plugin called schema um schema pro and um or no I'm sorry I just totally blew that um get a plugin called rank math and it handles all your schema there is another plugin called schema pro but rank math is the best one and it's free so it's a free plugin you can get the pro version which adds some extra bells and whistles but you want to get that plugin and start um making sure that the AI engines when they come to your website they can understand who you are and have the schema on your pages that really answers those questions and then the second thing to start is creating that content. And if you have an e-commerce store um if you're on Shopify it's a lot easier because Shopify has just a little switch you need to flip that lets you become uh your products automatically have schema added to them which is really great. Shopify has definitely been on the forefront of the whole uh agentic commerce which agentic commerce is something it can be lightly uh referenced as using AI agents or chat GPT whatever to discover products or helping people discover your products but what agentic commerce really means in the long term is when these AI agents make the purchases for you or rather your customers are no longer going in and making the purchase but the AI agent is doing it for them. So, that's the future it's very close not quite here yet but AI uh is definitely suggesting products and helping people make those purchase decisions so you want to have content out there where they can know what you're selling in details factual details not like oh this is a really you know awesome shed and you know your goat's gonna love it. I don't know I'm making that up but you want to know and dimensions you know what are the actual uh specifics regarding each product and what is it made out of um those are things that the AI engines can use to compare your products to other people's products here's this is the beauty really of like um um where the world is meeting retail versus regardless of what you sell if you're in retail just in general um these are just general knowledge things these are just things worth exploring these are things worth going after there are some storage specific shed specific things to take a look at but even here and you talk about schema you know uh the audience may remember this is why I feel like it's so important not to do the podcast just for some like self-righteousness like selling advertising or marketing or RTO services that we do or consultative services.

Shannon 30:40

But it's really like we heard about schema even with real work labs. You know if people remember who were listening to the podcast even three years ago we were starting to talk about you know like some of these things and what was coming out. I think that's the coolest thing about taking in content whether it's YouTube content, podcast content, like there's so much information available there's more available at our fingertips than there's ever been at any point in history and like we're still struggling to like learn and understand because it takes a long time to turn a big plane and uh it seems like trying to educate you know uh we have the big turn which is the this big plane trying to turn uh in the sky which is all of this information and then inside of that we have things turning within a month it seems like uh phones are outdated within a year. I mean there's just technology moves at such a fast rate that sometimes it's difficult the uh uh uh to learn these things it doesn't you don't have generations to learn about them and there are people that understand these things at a at a high level and they're able to turn that into a business model and that's really important when it actually helps you so again it comes back to results matter uh you know for those listen to the Friday show with Cord he always says that results matter and at the end of the day we're having all these conversations to say how can I help you sell more sheds and like if you can figure out how to make that connection between talking about high level things like schema uh you know WordPress plugins that people haven't heard about yet or things like that. I'm even curious with AEO you mentioned WordPress does it matter if it's a WordPress side or if it's a custom coded HTML side or uh even a simple you know Wix or GoDaddy side or something like that. Does any of that play a role in AEO?

Website Platforms JavaScript And Parsing

Kim Reynolds 32:32

It does actually um WordPress is easiest because it does have those plugins that are made to make AEO easier for you and a they add the schema and they kind of take the legwork out of it you can do these things but it's a little just more difficult. And then you have some sites like um I can't speak to Wix but I can speak to GoDaddy that are just not really set up for AEO. There's people now building websites using Claude or ChatGPT and the problem with those sites is a lot of them are very beautiful sites but the problem with them is they're made using something called JavaScript. Well the AI bots can't parse that they can't really read the JavaScript so they read HTML but not the JavaScript so if you have a site that's primarily all built on JavaScript you're at a very much a disadvantage so I personally encourage people if you're um if you're building a site wordpress is great for AEO Shopify is not bad Shopify automatically adds in in in I think for e-commerce Shopify is the way to go personally I mean that's from an AO standpoint but um shopify not only adds product schema to your products automatically but it also generates the entity the um local business or of I'm blanking on the word basically your corporate entity information it autumn it will automatically generate that for you so um based on everything that it knows about your business that's not to say that's the end of what you need to do with schema it's not it's the beginning but it's a very good beginning.

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Shannon 35:42

What's the uh oh gosh I'm blanking now on Google what's the uh is Google Commerce um is that is that what it is yeah the merchant center I was trying to come up with that now how does that uh play a role because Google has such I mean like look they're still the cats meow or whatever you want to say it you know they're they still have I mean they've effectively dwarfed um anything else over the last 15 years I mean I still remember Ask Jeeves I don't know if you remember uh you know like all these things that come out but Duck Duck Go I mean there's obviously a couple sites out there that that are good search engines but Google really still uh so what do you think about the Merchant Center? Do you feel like that that plays a role in AEO as well?

Kim Reynolds 36:29

Definitely for product discoverability for sure. And so, Google came out with something in conjunction with Shopify and several other organizations um called Universal Commerce Protocol. And what that is it's made for agentic commerce eventually where those AI agents can make the purchases. So, there's the payment like I think they stripe was one of the companies also involved in this so what it is it's creating this protocol much like HTTP is a protocol um for websites it's creating this protocol so the a agents can make purchases and a big part of that protocol is the product feed through Merchant Center. So it all ties in together it all it's um and Google really is at the forefront chat GPT has their own protocol or open AI rather the owners of chat gpt have their own protocol um we've got protocol wars going on but I think that Google has a better shot. Though I don't know chat GPT there are 79% of all searches through AI are done through chat GPT.

AI Overviews Zero Click Searches

Shannon 37:48

So, let's talk about like that real world application whenever you say like you know Gemini or an AI overview. A lot of people probably noticed this recently whenever you go to Google something the first option that you get doesn't show up in the map pack right like you're not seeing like you're actually seeing an AI overview.

Kim Reynolds 38:08

Why is that and like how how's that going to affect the future it's kind of um it's hard for businesses because if you're not part of that AI overview you're basically invisible and people do see that first it is Google's doing it because I'm not gonna say they don't care about your website but you know what they want is they want to provide the best search experience. And now they understand that's AI enabled search and experience and so they're providing these AI overviews is part of it's possible to be part of the AI overviews by having the content out there and by having your website AEO optimized um but it definitely um what was the latest statistic I think it was something really crazy high like something like 60% of all searches now don't end in a click. Yeah people aren't clicking through to websites. So, if you pay attention to your Google analytics or you just know you're not getting the clicks you used to get that's just a reality and um that's why the AEO content is so important and having your website optimized for that is so important.

Shannon 39:28

I've even found myself doing it Kim I you know just looking at the AI overview and not actually going to a website which is the whole purpose of Google right is to get you the best answer possible based off your search query. So, you know if you can if you can get that information quick in an AI overview now you're not actually navigating to a website now you're not navigating through the website to see what else is available. It's so much harder to catch people's attention now be because you know um so many things are changing technology is changing the way that we do business the way that we see business uh the way that we experience things, I'm perplexed I'm looking at one of your questions what does marketing look like in three years if AI answer uh if AI answer engines keep growing at this pace how will it change the landscape?

Kim Reynolds 40:26

it's gonna be all about AI visibility it really is it's going to be are you able to be found and can you be a part of those answers because you know Google and the other engines they're taking information from a bunch of different websites and they're synthesizing it into one answer one overview and so are you going to be part of that answer is really the question um you know they they'll put especially Perplexity is really good at this putting links to all of the sources that they cite so people can still you know click those links but if they're getting the complete answer and they're getting that more and more and better answers I mean AI is just getting better every day um if they're getting those answers and they don't need to click through um it's even more important that you have your website and you think oh well maybe I don't need a website anymore at all well you do because that's where you house all your content that's where the AI engines discover who you are what matters who you're connected to um it they it's called an entity graph and you it's the signals and the information that you tell those AI engines okay well this is our website and we're acme sheds okay I don't think there may be an actual acme sheds I don't know but I'm just making that.

Shannon 41:54

None that I know of so you might be safe.

Kim Reynolds 41:56

So, acme shed and this is their website and this is their YouTube channel and this is the founders um LinkedIn profile and this is the uh their chief technology officer this is their uh their LinkedIn or their Twitter or whatever Instagram account showing all of the beautiful sheds and so um but in order for them to discover that you have to tell them and that's where schema comes in.

Shannon 42:26

Very nice, I'm gonna go through we're up right around 40 minutes I'm gonna go through a couple of questions here that are specific for the shed industry these are AI generated so I can't take credit for them uh but I'm curious your thoughts and I know that you don't know the shed industry necessarily inside and out but you know what there's opportunity there and uh I certainly hope people give you a call because uh you know whether they use you for marketing um you know whether they use you for the AEO side of what you do I mean obviously you know your way around uh you can explain it well so maybe these might be a little tough specifically to the shed industry let's see how you do.

90 Day Plan For A Local Dealer

Shannon 43:07

If you if you owned a local shed dealership with one location and limited marketing budget this is very common what are the first three things you would do over the next 90 days to prepare for AI search I would get my website um are we assuming they have a website already or no?

Kim Reynolds 43:28

Yes I think so okay so I would um make sure that I have the organization and local business schema on my website so that it can be discovered I would make sure that all of my product pages have product schema on them

AD-IDENTIGROW 43:46

oh no Sam what's going on are you okay? Yes, I'm fine Lisa, I was just trying to get a screwdriver and all. This other stuff fell down. I'm ready to go buy a shed so we can have some space and this garage again. I agree. I keep looking at the shed Mr. Jenkins bought. Let's ask him where I got his. Howdy, neighbor. We're wondering, how do you like your shed? I love it. It's exactly what I needed, and I couldn't have asked for a better service. And where did you get it? I can't remember, but let me check. Something this nice will probably have the builder's name on it somewhere. No, I'm sorry. I can't find a name anywhere. Well, we finally got a shed. Yes. I just hope we're happy. The thing is a lot more shoddy than I expected, and I'm sure I told him I wanted a window, but they didn't have it in the paperwork, so I couldn't argue. Boy, is this a lousy shed. We haven't even had it two years, have we? Barely. It was just a bad deal all the way around. Mr. Jenkins told me the other day that he likes his shed so much he wants to get a second one. But he still can't remember where he got it. Your product is your best advertising. At Identigrow, we provide nameplates that ensure your quality products are never forgotten. Identify your products, grow your business. For more information, visit identicrow.com. Or give them a call at 540-283-9193.

Kim Reynolds 45:29

I would go to um Google and start looking for what people are searching for as far as questions. What questions are people asking Google? And there's some different sites you can go to discover those questions that are being asked, or go to Reddit. And I'm sure there's subreddits about sheds. I'm positive there are. And go there and see what questions are people asking. Start writing content to answer those questions specifically. One question at a time. One question, one article. And um, and then the third thing I would do probably is I would invest a little bit in paid ads.

Shannon 46:10

Yeah, they still work. There's still the switch to turn. And no, the way we do it is we try to explain it to people in a way that it's a, it's a it's a volume knob on the car radio. You know, uh you want to get as much AEO or SEO, the organic traffic to your website, and then you want to dial in those Google ads and meta ads. And uh, you know, hey, business is down, organic leads are down. Well, let's just turn that knob up on your ads, spend a little bit more ad budget, get the leads in. Because to me, this all this all comes down to your philosophy, but mine is you know, a full um uh as long as you have a uh a CRM full of leads, then you're always gonna be good. Like we quote, you know, 10 marketing quotes a month, but we might only close two. But we've we can't just rely on those two. No, like it's to say with rent to own, we can't just hope we win those. We have to have all these business quotes out there because to me, a full pipeline is really where sales comes in. If you were if I were selling cars today, I would want 60 people looking at buying cars right now because I know I'm I might only get 10. And so I can't just and there's nothing wrong with taking care of that and that customer entirely. I just can't imagine just like resting on just having those two leads. Uh anyway, uh most shed dealers rely heavily on Google business profile. This is true. Does AI search engine uh change the importance of local SEO uh or does it make it even more important?

Google Business Profile Reviews And Maps

Kim Reynolds 47:49

Makes it even more important. Um that those signals that Google especially picks up from your Google Business profile, they are using those directly to determine, especially reviews. Reviews are not less important, they're more important now. And Google's changed Google Business profiles. You no longer used to be you could kind of gain the system by um having all the FAQs and having all of those questions, and you can create your own questions and um and gear them with your uh toward your business and your keywords, etc. Well, Google removed that recently, and they instead uh instituted something called Ask Maps, where you can ask in within maps questions about businesses. Well, your Google business profile needs to be fully, fully completed and as information-packed as possible, because that is where not only maps are drawing that information from your profile, but the AI engines and Google overviews and Gemini, that type of thing. So, I'd say they're more, it's more important than it's ever been.

Shannon 48:54

I love it. We sound like a couple nerds on here.

Kim Reynolds 48:57

Total nerds. That's okay. I like being a nerd.

Shannon 49:01

Yeah, that's right. Uh, all right, let's go. I've got a couple more. Um, many of our listeners have invested thousands in SEO. This is true. We've, you know, we've done SEO ourselves. We've got a developer who actually built a specific tool, you know, to like be able to advantage us in SEO. Um, we still believe that that's the best place to start. Websites, SEO, and then move into Google Ads Meta Ads. We're a big fan of the 3D uh configurators that exist in our space, you know, CRMs, um, you know, uh, and more. Uh, but we really try to focus on a good website and a present website. So this is true. Many have invested thousands in SEO. Should they keep investing there or should they move some of that budget toward AEO? I think I know your answer, but yeah, uh go ahead and add lib. Um, I want people to call you.

Kim Reynolds 49:52

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. Um, the foundation of good AEO is good SEO. So, SEO isn't going anywhere. And people like to, you know, these scandalous headlines. SEO is dead. No, it's not. It's not anywhere near dead, it's very important still. Um, especially for Google and Google AI overviews. Um, but some part of the budget should start being allocated toward AEO because just that statistic that 37% of all searches start in AI engines like ChatGPT, that's telling you something. That's nearly 40%. And it will be closer to 50 or 60 by next year, it it at minimum. So um, to take part of your budget and put it toward AEO is just smart business. It because you need to be discovered and be discoverable by the AI engines.

Shannon 50:50

There's so many questions on here that we could get through and that I want to ask you. And who knows, maybe we can hopefully you'll have a good response from the podcast, and people will call and we could follow this up with a round two or something like that. Uh but I'm such a fan, you know, of already what you're talking about. We've done. I feel like I could ask you all these questions and you would answer well. Let's go with uh let's go with uh oh gosh, this is something that AI says we should definitely ask. So, if you're if you're unhappy to uh take it up with AI here.

Kim Reynolds 51:22

Okay.

Shannon 51:23

Uh let's see. Uh let's imagine I'm a shed dealer with one location, a decent website, a Google business profile, and about a thousand dollars a month to invest in marketing. This is a very common scenario.

Kim Reynolds 51:35

Yeah.

Shannon 51:35

Um, what would you have me do over the next 90 days, week by week? Walk me through what that plan looks like. I feel like we kind of did this one in some ways.

Kim Reynolds 51:46

Well, yeah, you've in they've already invested, did you say they already invested in SEO?

Shannon 51:51

So, they're they've got a solid SEO base, solid SEO base, website, Google profile, uh GBP, and about a thousand dollars a month to invest.

Kim Reynolds 52:01

I think I would invest in content. Um, actually having someone help create content. And um, because if you've already got the solid SEO foundation, I'd spend a little bit of time and money making sure your website has schema set up properly, but I'd spend the rest of the money on AEO content. Um, because like I said before, or if I didn't, I meant to, that good AEO content tends to be good SEO content as well. So, if you hit the AEO things, the things that make content optimized for answer engines is are also a lot of them the same things that Google looks at when content. And that's you know, you want to um answer, you want to answer a question, number one. You want your one piece of content to answer one question, and you want to answer that question up front. I know the whole like marketing and sales, you kind of like lead them into it, and at the end you give them the answer. That's not the way it works with AEO. You put the answer first, and then the rest of your content answers why. It explains why that is the answer. So, you lead with the answer, and that's you know, a different mentality than it used to be. And you want to have every paragraph, um, every paragraph in your content needs to answer one concept, needs to speak to one concept only, and you don't want it to be more than three to five sentences, and you want those sentences sentence lengths to vary a little bit in between. Um, and so there's a whole bunch of different things, but these things that make an article readable are the same things that Google wants to rank for. So, if you write good SEO content and you add on that AEO layer on top, you're likely killing two birds with one stone.

Shannon 53:57

I love it. And for the people who don't know, there are paid content creators out there looking for work. You know, it is uh it is a real thing. And yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, something else that I believe you said SEO, the articles you see. I mean, I still believe in email marketing. We have uh it's we have a we have a newsletter that goes out, and uh, you know, for those listening, you know, go on there and click on those links. There's lead forms, there's information, there's podcasts that you can go to, it'll take you to their website, but we have blogs on there that you can read, you know, just the same as you enjoy seeing a magazine show up in the mail. I mean, this is the digital version of that. Um, and you know, I suffice to say, it is the future, Kim. We may even be too early now for people to be saying email marketing's dead now. I'm like, it might not have even hit its peak, in my opinion. Uh eventually, we're just going to become more digital as people, as retailer, retail buyers and even retail sellers.

Kim Reynolds 54:56

Yeah. Well, did you know that AE AEO applies to newsletter content too? That AI bots can read your newsletter, not from an email, but if you um, I don't know who you use as your uh email provider. Mail chip mail chip. So, um you can create pages, which you may have already done, but you can create a page for your newsletter every time you put it out. You can publish it as an HTML page, as well as sending it out as an email. And those HTML pages are able to be parsed by the AI engines. So, your newsletter content is another source of AEO content.

Shannon 55:37

Gosh,

Who Kim Is And How To Reach Her

Shannon 55:38

there's just there's so much here. It's so good. I've enjoyed this thoroughly. I believe people buy from people that they trust. Uh, let's take a few minutes and talk about Kim. Who is Kim? I want the industry to know them because I think the the quicker they get to know someone, the more likely they are to call you up. And I I want to make sure to give you a chance to uh talk about your services or or or like how people can get a hold of you. But who is Kim Reynolds? I had the pleasure of finding out a little bit before we talked, but uh personally and not even professionally, who is Kim?

Kim Reynolds 56:12

Um I would say first and foremost, I'm a child of God. I'm a princess, right? Um, I that my faith absolutely shapes every single thing I do. Business, personal, everything. It's it's it's the number one thing you probably could know about me because it dictates everything in my life. So that's the first thing. Um, second thing, I'm a mom. Uh I mentioned eight kids, so um, most of them are adult now. Uh still have a daughter at home who just got engaged two days ago. Uh, so she'll be at home until she gets married. And then an 18-year-old son still at home. The other kids are all out of the house. I have one married daughter and one grandbaby. Um, he motivates so much of what I do because we talked before the show, we talked a little bit about legacy, and um that really became important to me when my grandson was born. I started thinking, like I stopped living for just me and my immediate family, and I started thinking, okay, well, what what can I set up and leave? And what can I, you know, and what kind of behavior can I model for my kids and for my my grandbaby. And so faith is a big part of modeling that behavior, but also work ethic is another. And so, you know, I hope they see that. So I'd say those are probably the most important things to know about me. I've been I've worked for companies, I've worked for agencies, um, but I've kind of been an entrepreneur my whole life from the time I was 12 and stealing avocados out of the orange grove and selling them at the street corner.

Shannon 57:51

Um, probably not the highlight of my career, but hey, that's that's an entrepreneurial spirit if I ever heard one.

Kim Reynolds 57:58

It was. I needed a little help directing it in the correct and you know, way.

Shannon 58:04

No doubt.

Kim Reynolds 58:05

But yeah, that's basically who I am.

Shannon 58:07

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, um, how do people uh reach you? We'll be sure to put your information uh for those who want to know more. Go to the newsletter. Uh that's where we can find this information. Uh, we'll be happy to connect you. But if people want to reach out to you, if they want to know more, and I and I do, I hope you get calls. This one thing I love about the podcast is you just never know. There's people who have made uh, you know, I almost even hate to say it, but you know, through appearances and through advertising, there are people who have made who've done well. And then there are some companies that I think I mentioned this to you earlier, you know, whether it's advertising or just an appearance on the podcast, it the message kind of falls flat. I feel like uh you've done a great job here today, and I just want to see you get phone calls. So, for the audience who's listening, please call. Uh, how do people reach you and what should they know about that?

Kim Reynolds 58:59

Well, they can call, they're always welcome to call. Um I I have a business number that I'm pretty good at answering. I have a cell phone that I'm very good at answering, so I'll give you both numbers. Um 760-695-6360 is the official business line that I try to get to. Um, but I'll give you my personal cell. I have no problem doing that. It's 760-840-9900. It's actually easier to remember than the business number, um, but I answer that definitely all the time. Um, my website, aiadvantageAgency.com. And you can always email Kim at AIAdvantageAgency.com. So, those are the best ways. I'm on LinkedIn. Um, I have an unfortunate name, Kim Reynolds, because that's also the governor of Iowa or Idaho. Iowa. She's the governor of Iowa. So, like if you Google Kim Reynolds, you're gonna get the governor, and she probably is a little busy. But um, and that's why I switched my name to Kimberly professionally, Kimberly Reynolds, hoping to avoid that. But Google's smarter now, and they know if you're Kimberly, you're also Kim. So that didn't help.

Shannon 1:00:12

Well, I'll tell you, me and you must have uh we must have been connected somehow because I was in Iowa recently and we were uh talking with someone uh about RTO investment, and um um that gentleman told me that there is a Shannon Latham, it's a female Shannon Latham, uh that's uh somewhere in the Iowa politics, it was like very well known. So, like I guess he knew her. Uh and apparently there's another Shannon Latham, you know, I've done this for five or six years now. There's another Shannon Latham that was involved with the plain community and was actually an author uh long before I came along. So, a lot of people thought I was him. I just don't feel like my name's that common, but here I've run into everybody uh somehow through the shed community or through the playing communities. Um now, do I need to mention uh if not, I can edit this out. I think you mentioned uh I just wanted to give you a plug there. Go for it.

Kim Reynolds 1:01:09

Thank you. I forgot to say um so I'm offering 25% off the first month services for anyone who finds me through the podcast, and that is regardless of size of contract. Um, I don't actually do contracts, everything's month to month, but regardless of the engagement amount, it's 25% off. So um whatever they want.

Shannon 1:01:32

We're big on the month to month around here too. We've tried not to I like I understand contracts, I know good paperwork makes for good things. At least writing things down sometimes help to clarify things, but we've always done a month to month, and we also try to make sure everybody owns all of their I don't know how you guys do this for marketing, but we try to make sure they own all their digital assets. Like we don't own or control any of that or any of the data uh that is a thing in the industry to be, you know, to think through. But we've wanted to make sure because if they have a bad experience, we want to be able to let them move on uh seamlessly. We don't want to, it's like a prenup. We don't want to try to like make them stay, right? Like, you know, my like me and my wife joke about it all the time. I say I have to continue to love you uh so that you'll stay, right? Like I don't want to trap you here, you know, after 26 years. We've been so so blessed, and uh two kids of our own and two grandkids. So like I just love your story. You're just uh a very welcome personality. I think the shed industry would take well to you, and I really hope they do call you. And uh maybe I can follow up here before too long and and we can uh you know maybe get some blog articles or something from you so that the audience can know you a little bit more.

Kim Reynolds 1:02:40

Oh, I'm happy to do that for you. Um, no charge, just if you would like me to, you know, help provide some content for you. Um more than happy to do that for you. And I really appreciate you having me on the show today, truly.

Shannon 1:02:54

Well, I've I've enjoyed it, and uh, I just hope you hope you get some calls. I hope people start to learn more about AEO, and it's been a good educational piece for me today as well, too.

Kim Reynolds 1:03:04

Oh, good. I'm glad. I'm glad.

Shannon 1:03:06

Thank you, Kim.

Kim Reynolds 1:03:08

Thank you.

OUTRO 1:03:10

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Shed Geek Podcast. A quick thank you to our studio sponsor, Shed Pro. Head over to shed pro.co/ shedgeek and take our free Shed Sales audit. It takes just a few minutes and it gives you a clearer picture of what's going on underneath. Thank you for listening as always. And thank you, Shed Pro, for being this year's Wednesday studio sponsor on the Shed Geek Podcast.