by: Ryan Sargent

Considering I’ve made a living mostly off of SEO for more than 5 years, I’ve never loved SEO the way many people in the industry do. 

It’s not always fun to create content for SEO, and as a content consumer I haven’t missed skimming SEO content for informational queries. AIOs do about as good a job, but faster. “What’s the bag policy at the soccer game?” does not need the H2 “What is a bag policy?” I just need the information, and AI gives it to me.

Before the Robots

I come to content marketing from a creative and academic background. Unpacking and demystifying the algorithm has never intrigued me the way it does my more technical colleagues. Besides, SEO falls apart without content. All marketing falls apart without content, even in the broadest possible definition of marketing.

SEO’s saving grace was that improving rankings meant better business results. This appealed to both my competitive nature and ensured I could get buy-in for better content. “We’re going to build the thing that outranks our competitors!” I would gleefully tell the CMO as I planned my SME interviews.¹ Being told I had to add an H2 that started with “What is…” was merely an unfortunate part of the game.

Our New(ish) Overlords

AEO has changed all that. Rankings have dissolved into a cloud of citations and mentions, so volume, velocity, and having an omnipresent brand are important for success. I can win at that game just like I’ve won (and continue to win) at the SEO game, but it’s not as much fun. Don’t get me wrong, winning requires skill, experience, and effort – even with AI. I still enjoy the game, and SEO or AEO drive revenue and represent genuine opportunities for most brands.

Perhaps AEO’s saving grace is that the content isn’t really designed to be consumed by humans (after all, humans shouldn’t love eating slop). It’s designed to be ingested and regurgitated by robots. We can finally do away with the whole “write for humans and optimize for robots” bit. Just build for the robots. Do it well. Profit.² 

I think that realization – that AEO content is for robots – is hiding in the subtext of Ryan Law’s recent article. Yeah, that article. Law³ makes a persuasive argument that AI can and should handle most SEO writing tasks because it’s finally good enough.

I completely agree: AI is now good enough for that work. I think it’s good enough for that work because that content isn’t necessarily trying to do the hard work of directly influencing a human’s purchase decision or delighting a future human customer. It’s trying to get AEO results: to convince robots that it’s easy to parse, trustworthy enough to cite, and consistently appears in fan-out queries. It’s trying to persuade a robot to include its information.

I think it’s good enough for that work because that content isn’t necessarily trying to do the hard work of directly influencing a human’s purchase decision or delighting a future human customer.

In discussing this content, Law references “content marketing” several times and implies that content marketing starts and ends with SEO/AEO. That implication starts with one fallacy (false equivalency) and invites another (a fallacy of composition). “Content marketing” is far bigger than SEO content, and what is true of SEO content is not necessarily true of all content marketing.⁴

Law, having argued that SEO content is simple, takes a stab at all the rest of it in his concluding paragraph, acknowledging that there’s plenty of work he can’t and won’t outsource to AI. But I fear the damage has been done: he’s implied “content marketing” is only for the robots.

Humans Forever

If AEO content is at least partially about building for robots, and we can engineer AI to do that work, it’s time to focus on the rest of content marketing. For three years we’ve been enduring claims that “AI makes you more efficient so you can focus on the human work that matters.” 

To borrow Ryan Law’s words again: these claims are riddled with weasel words. “The strategy! The decision-making!” would get our full attention in the utopian future.

We need to build the content that does the heavy lifting and accomplishes marketing’s Job To Be Done. Make your brand rich, famous and loved. Or is it to be seen, believed, and chosen?

Either way, SEO isn’t the whole picture. If AI is building the content for robots, we have to build the content for humans.

Decoding Human Content

Building successful content for humans depends on:

1. Authenticity
2. Data no one else has
3. Judgment

Authenticity requires more than good journalism. It means a connection to the subject matter – caring, not just inquisitiveness. You have to know this stuff matters and you have to show it.

How I do this:

• Become an SME yourself. If you don’t understand this stuff, you’re in trouble.
• Use the vocabulary of your audience.
• Understand – and reference – the stakes in clear language. Don’t exaggerate.

Data is how you prove your worth and ground yourself instead of being overly philosophical.⁵ First party data from your product is best, but analysis of someone else’s data can do it in a pinch. You prove your bonafides by being clear where you get your facts. Bonus points if your data connects the dots from pain point to product.

How I do this:

• Look at what your most successful customers do, then share it
• Gather sample sets large enough to make the analysis worthwhile
• Find data that fuels your existing narratives and put it front and center

Judgment is at the heart of all the “taste” conversations that have cropped up recently. Marketers must have judgment, because that’s what separates taste from curation. Curation looks like judgment, but picking the “best” items from a sample set isn’t enough. Judgment means you might be wrong, that you have underlying values that supersede the “right” answer. Wear brown pants and a black belt.⁶

How I do this:

• Say things that everyone might not agree with but that show depth of analysis
• Constantly consume content in your space and catalog it so you can zig when others zag
• Study alchemical processes for inspiration

These three buckets come together under the umbrella of “have a thoughtful, strong opinion.” We live in a world of information overload, and simply offering information isn’t enough. If your brand and content don’t have thoughtful opinions, you’re in trouble.

An example: the guitarist in my wedding band is a consummate pro, with decades of experience. He uses an amp that’s a 14-inch cube and a pedalboard that looks too small for the different styles of pop, funk, soul, and rock we play in the course of a reception set.

The gear can be loaded fast. When you’re shoving this stuff into a ski gondola for a gig in Vail, that matters. That’s judgment and authenticity at a level beyond the obvious. His strong opinion: “Not throwing my back out matters more than sounding exactly like Nile Rodgers.”⁷

He’s choosing something, not curating it. He’s owning the decision and using his own skill to offset potential tradeoffs. That’s what expert content should look like.

Staying Human

If SEO and AEO are the right algorithms to appease, if the opportunity is there and those things will achieve your desired result, then take them to your leader. Billboards and print ads still make sense for many brands. Do it with AI, efficiently and cheaply. Do it well. Win at that game.

Then come back to content marketing’s first principles and build for humans. ■

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Ryan Sargent is VP of Product at Ten Speed, an organic marketing agency, where he designs, builds, and leads content marketing services of all shapes and sizes. He made the leap from music to marketing more than ten years ago, but still plays trombone all over Colorado when he isn’t leading content teams or puzzling on jobs-to-be-done.

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1.  I did some very cool interviews during this part of my career.
   ↩︎
2.  Relevant. ↩︎
3.  My second favorite marketing Ryan, with apologies to Levander, McReady, Baum, Severns, et. al. – seriously y’all, we need shirts or something. ↩︎
4.  To be clear, and at the risk of protesting too much: I deeply respect Ryan Law, have followed his work for years, volunteered to have him roast my writing, include his concepts in Ten Speed’s brief template, and admire him as one of the most successful minds in content. ↩︎
5.  Not something I’ve done well here. ↩︎
6.  I recognize that this is the most vanilla take. ↩︎
7.  Drunk groomsmen, unsurprisingly, cannot tell the difference. ↩︎