"You never know what you’re gonna get." – Forrest Gump
Unless, of course, you know how to optimize for search engine results that target your ideal audience with relevant information.
Not to date myself too much, but I began my professional career around the time search engines were just emerging and marketers were starting to figure out how they worked. Both the algorithms and I were learning together. Google, which dominates the SEO market share, has evolved dramatically over the years.
Every time I do a public speaking event or train non-technical stakeholders on search, I start with a box of chocolates.
My example goes like this: if a customer comes to me and says, “I want to be the #1 search result on Google!” my first question is, “For what search term?” If they say, “Chocolate,” my follow-up is a candid, “Is your company Hershey or Godiva?”
“No.”
Then, unless you have an exorbitant budget, it’s highly unlikely you’ll rank #1 for a generic term like “chocolate.” But—yes, there’s a “but”—“What kind of chocolate do you sell?”
If you’re a locally owned chocolatier in a small suburb, we can absolutely work with that. We can localize your search presence so that when someone searches “chocolate near me,” your business shows up.
In the early days, search was driven by whoever had the most matching keywords. That led to “black hat” tactics like keyword stuffing in footers—and who remembers white text on a white background? Then came those link-building farms, purely created to game the SEO system.
But Google has grown up—and so have search results. Even Godiva no longer ranks #1 for “chocolate,” because Google now understands that users might be looking for a definition, how chocolate is made, its origins, or nutritional facts. Results like where to buy it locally or shop online often appear before any traditional brand listings.
SEO is really about understanding user intent and speaking to people in their language. Plastering your site with generic keywords can actually hurt you. You want relevant traffic, not just more traffic—because more irrelevant traffic leads to higher bounce rates.
Today, it's no longer just SEO—it has evolved into AEO: Answer Engine Optimization, thanks to AI. Businesses need to start encoding their content with proper schema markup to appear as direct answers and prepare for Zero-Click Results—where Google displays the answer without sending the user to your site. Sounds scary, right?
Not if your company is the answer.
So when someone uses AI search and asks, “Where can I get the best chocolate?”—you want to be the solution that gets served up.