SEO Agencies Have 2 Years Left

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If your SEO agency is still selling you the same playbook they sold you in 2022, this episode is going to be uncomfortable. And it should be.

Cassie sits down with Gilad Bechar, CEO and Founder of Moburst — a 13-year-old growth agency working with Google, Reddit, Uber, and Samsung — to talk about why traditional SEO no longer moves the needle in AI search, and what brands need to be doing instead.

They get into why ChatGPT being trained on Bing changes your entire infrastructure strategy, how each AI engine (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok) ranks content differently, the right way to think about Reddit as a long-term visibility play, and the mental model shift that separates the brands earning AI citations from the ones still treating AEO like SEO with a different name.

Gilad's prediction: a lot of SEO-only agencies won't make it to 2028. Here's why he's probably right.

Key Topics Covered

• Why SEO points and AI search points are not the same currency
• How ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok each rank content differently — and why you need to reverse-engineer each one
• The Bing infrastructure problem: why ChatGPT visibility starts with Microsoft, not Google
• Why claiming your business in the Microsoft ecosystem matters as much as Google Business Profile
• How to match the AI engine to your audience (developers vs. older generation vs. tech-savvy)
• The Reddit recency rule: why you should target threads from the last 7–12 months, not 5 years ago
• Why a one-person marketing team can't realistically execute full AI search visibility
• The holistic strategy: PR, podcasting, LinkedIn thought leadership, video, Wikipedia, and digital PR working together
• Gilad's prediction on SEO agencies and the next two years

Let’s connect:

LinkedIn → Cassie Clark | Fractional Content Strategist
Website → https://cassieclarkmarketing.com

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P.S. Is your brand losing its "Answer Authority"?

Most series A/B and enterprise brands are being "nudged" out of AI search results because of entity gaps and "stale" content. I am opening a limited number of specialized audit slots to help you reclaim your Share of Voice using the FSA Framework (Freshness, Structure, Authority).

Request your 7-Day AI Search Visibility Audit: https://cassieclarkmarketing.com/ai-search-visibility-audit/

If you're listening to this and thinking I need someone to lead this for me, that's what I do.

I'm an AI search optimization expert and a fractional content strategist for startups and enterprise brands. If that sounds like the kind of help you're looking for, email me at cassie@cassieclarkmarketing.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Hey marketers, welcome back to Found and AI. I'm Cassie Clark, a fractional content strategist and an AI search optimization expert. This is a show where we break down AI search optimization, GEO and AEO strategies, and what all of this means so you don't get left behind in this new wave of user search behavior. Okay, I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this. If you're an SEO agency right now, or you're working with one, today's episode is probably gonna sting a little. I'm gonna tell you this up front. Because my guest said something when we talked that is a smidge uncomfy. He seems to think that many SEO agencies won't make it through the next two years. This is not because SEO is dead. If you listen to the show or follow me on LinkedIn or wherever, I'm constantly saying SEO is not dead, I will die on the hill. He seems to think that they won't make it because doing SEO the way it's been done since say 2005 just does not do anything for visibility anymore. We need to keep up with the times, is where we're getting at. And that's the whole energy of this conversation. I sat down with Gilead Pichar. He is CEO and founder of MoBurst, and he runs a growth agency that's been around for 13 years working with brands that you have absolutely heard of, like Google, Reddit, Uber, and Samsung. So when Gilead talks about what's working in AI Search, this is not theoretical, but more so like pattern matching across global brands and testing this all in real time. We get into a lot in this episode, like why each AI engine, like ChatGPT, Cloud, Perplexity, Grok, whichever one that you're using, why it retrieves content differently, and how to think about that. Why Chat GPT being trained on Bing instead of Google changes your entire infrastructure strategy. How to think about Reddit as a long-term play, like we not a one-off comment drop. We talk about Reddit quite a bit, but this one's really important still. And then the mental model shift that separates the brand's winning right now from the ones still treating AEO like SEO, but with a different name. And again, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I harp on this every day. All right, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Amazing. So my name is Gilad, and I'm the CEO and founder of Moburst. Uh and Moburst basically has been around the last 13 years helping our clients to overachieve their growth goals. So we're a growth agency. We help on the creative strategy, media, organic, and product of how to actually get the right architecture from the right website to the right messaging to the right uh uh uh impact on the right type of a platform. So what you need to do on Facebook and Google and Snapchat and Pinterest and Quora and Ed Networks and RTBs and exchanges and influencers, all of that into one place where the problem and the solution and basically how to actually architect the right type of uh impacting the right user with the right message at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

And that makes a lot of sense now, since AI search optimization is kind of forcing everyone to think about every channel. So you said you've been doing this for the last 13 years. At what point did you start realizing that AI search is becoming a thing?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I think that AI search is has been a thing for a long time. When you're thinking about uh, let's say the last two years or so, I feel like there is a massive surge of it. Uh, we were playing with it uh on earlier days to try to be ahead of the curve. Uh, but I feel like uh in general, when you're thinking about all of those engines um and how to actually get ranked really highly and how to get the best possible position, that's something that every SEO company on earth kind of trying to master in the last 20 years or so. Um, and that was just another growth lever that you can actually try to tap into. Uh, it used to be very small, today is a massive, massive thing. And and it becomes so much more complicated where you're thinking about how those engines are actually ranking things on Cloud, GPT, uh, Gemini Perplexity, Groc, each of them is working in a different way, each of them was trained in a different way, and each of them is featuring things based on different results that they see on the web. So um obviously things that you do well on the PR side or things that you do well on the podcasting side and getting like more of those thrustiness from the outside, it always helps. Uh, but there are things that how to actually play within Reddit, within LinkedIn, within Instagram, within each and every one of those things actually gives you another type of a way to train the algorithm to explain what you do and to basically be sharper and bolder um uh within those bots compared to you know your biggest competitors.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I like to think of like every piece of content that you're putting out there as just another brick for your training data. But it's interesting that you bring up like the ranking and positioning. So we know based on everything we've learned so far about it, there's like no true ranking inside of Chat GPT, or it's just probabilistic kind of thing. So for listeners who have content that's already ranking well in traditional search and they don't want to blow it up, like where do you start when a brain wants AI visibility but can't afford to destabilize what's already working?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

I think that when you're looking on on things that are getting ranked well on Google, Google only gives you, let's say, let's look at it as a point system. So you're getting three points, for example. But three points not necessarily going to get you high enough on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude. Um, so basically, with the way of how to actually use that content, if you're also having the same type of a piece of content as a video on YouTube, it gives you more of those points. If you'll be able to get the same type of value proposition in different types of formats, and it will get going to be featured also on Reddit, and it will also be uh and like another article on Forbes that was just launched last week that's gonna be talking about your nation will display you as one of the key ones that were actually getting an interview or getting a quote from you. It gives you like much higher score to say they are much more relevant, they are much more being perceived as the as the as the thought leader in this space, and because of that, it gives you more points to the article that you already wrote on your website and things of that nature. How to actually add all of the frequently asked questions into that specific article. So when a bot comes in, they'll be able to get exactly what they want in a matter of a little second instead of trying to search and look and like try to digest it and only then being able to speed and answer. So uh the things about schema, the things about how Bing is seeing you, not just Google, like Google is one thing, and Google is fantastic for most of the uh most of the the people around the world. But if you are relying on ChatGPT, ChatGPT relies heavily on Bing and not on Google, it was trained on Bing and not on Google. So if you're not appearing well on Bing, ChatGPT will probably weren't gonna like you that much. And then on Bing, you have uh uh like on with the with the Microsoft integration, Microsoft didn't just invest uh billions of billions of dollars into OpenAI, they created a very close collaboration there with Copilot and many other things. And if you're not taking the the Microsoft ecosystem into it with uh with things like uh uh you know everyone uh claiming their Google Maps, for example, but not a lot of people are claiming their uh Google Maps uh uh approach of like you have the same thing for Microsoft uh uh for for your own uh business. And then if you don't know that and you're not tracking it and you're not actually tying it back to you, ChatGPT will not get the same level of signals. So there are so many technical things about what you do on Cloud and Gemini and ChatGPT that are just different, and you need to reverse engineer each and every one of those engines to understand how it thinks, so understand what it ranks, and based on that, where do I impact the trust signals in the best possible way to generate the growth that I need?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

So if I'm listening to this answer, my my question now is okay, so there are like what six different AI engines. I'm just guessing, I don't know the number off my head, but let's pretend which one, like if I'm a brand, which one should I focus on? What's your tip for that?

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Um, so it's really really depend on the niche that you're at. So if you're approaching more on the developer community, for example, I would probably go after Claude because Claude code and things of that nature, Claude is the most advanced on that side. Uh, if you're looking for like older generation and things of that nature, if the older generation is actually knowing any duals, it will probably be ChatGPT. Um, and if if you are looking on uh uh uh you know more tech savvy and things of that nature that know that now uh Gemini provides better results than um uh than uh ChatGPT, so they will probably be on Gemini. So like it really just depends on what is the niche that you are looking for, what are the specific uh uh uh uh things that you want to go after. Uh ChatGPT, you know, they have around 800 million uh um uh visitors per per week based on what they published. Uh Gemini is is probably the second biggest one, but Gemini also have something that's like AIO, which means like when you're getting the search results on Google, and that's you search for it on Google, but it gives you like the AI overview. So it's also kind of sitting on the same engine, if you will. So you have their things that are very much like the AIO takes the data from Gemini. So there are things that are kind of connected together, so it really just depends on the audience, on the stage of the company, who is your target audience and what they're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So my my dad is very much boomer, he is not a tech guy at all. Like watching this man use his iPhone is an experience. Like, I really didn't expect him to be on board with the Google AI overviews at all. But over winter, like over Christmas, I was really nerding out about AI search to him, knowing good and well that it's like probably not a topic he cares about. And I was really surprised to hear him say that he really loved the overviews compared to just having to go through Google and search for stuff. So it was interesting that you think that the older generation is going to chat DPT, which they might be, I don't know. But my dad like baby steps over here.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

But that's but that's a different experience if you're thinking about Google. Like if you're starting your search query on AI tool, I agree with you that obviously Google is uh Google is the dominant, obviously. And then within Google you see the AI overview. Like that's that that's what you're seeing in front of you. But if you're uh asking yourself, okay, what is the tool? Like if someone is starting their journey from uh uh ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or or Perplexity, for example, um, what will be the tool that I actually need to be focusing on from those? Uh again, the the path there will be different. So if someone is starting their journey from Google, I completely agree with you that Google and AI overview is going to be the dominant thing because that's the thing that you see in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah. So I mean it goes back to really knowing who your audience is, like really through and through.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

No doubt.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

So if we're talking about like content again, like what's a small change that a content team can make this week that would meaningfully improve their chances in any of those AI engines?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Um so this is a very complex question because you have lots of lots of things that you can do. So things that you are getting uh throwing on Reddit, if you know how to do uh the right type of reverse engineering, what are the things that are actually being spot by those AI engines? And then impacting the threads that are already indexed, that could make a very, very nice uh uh bump. Um, having video content on YouTube for queries that you are really that are very aggressive and you don't have content there just yet, definitely something that's gonna help you to get win you much more points. Quora will be another uh item that's gonna definitely give you exactly the same way of Reddit, like just reverse engineer the threads that are worth looking into based on what is being ranked on. And by the way, you can find it very easily on just Astra GPT or Gemini or search for it on Google. And if you see Quora or Reddit threads specifically popping out on that, you know which type of threads you would need to kind of attend. Um, and I think that uh uh again we can go into things that are a bit more complex when you think about Wikipedia, but impacting Wikipedia is is a journey, it's not as easy, or writing an article on Medium, for example, registered there to be able to post. Um, you have lots of lots of different things that you can create, like new pieces of content uh within obviously your blog and things like nature, that's always helpful if you're writing them well, uh and and making sure that all of the things that need to be there are actually being uh uh uh indexed as they should be. So um I think that there are lots of lots of different levers, like what you're doing on LinkedIn, for example, to signal the algorithm on a different level of what exactly the company is doing, and kind of the personal flavor of the CEO or C-suite, uh that can be also something that helps to signal the algorithm what you're doing and who you are. So there are lots of things that are basically being scanned and when you think about the trust signals every every single day. Um, and each of every any one of those uh angles that I just mentioned are going to be like another piece in that equation to create the right type of trust signals.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

So does this change with the bigger your marketing team is, or can a solo team really work on doing AI search optimization? Like what's your thoughts on that? Because it's a lot when you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

It's a lot, and and it's a lot, you know, just Reddit by itself. It's a heavy, heavy, heavy, different thing. Like you have there so much things about every sub-community, they have their own rules and moderators, and what you can do. You have enough karma, you don't have enough karma. Uh reporting, uh posting from me as a personal person, posting as the company, as like the the the brand itself, posting as someone that's heard of something that used in, like you know, on on Reddit, like it's it's not it's not uh uh the same type of uh your public profile as as you have on on other cases. So even just one platform, when you're thinking about how to actually create the right type of impact there, there are so many different strategies of doing that activation. How do you actually getting more of upvotes into those posts? And like every single one of those things, what you're doing on X, for example, matter a lot to Grook. So how you're actually impacting different uh platforms um is a very different type of a thing for each and every platform. Uh, I don't think that nothing there is like rocket science, it's not like too too too complex, but it's just a lot of details and and knowing what to do if you're trying to just take the exact same uh uh pose that you thought of responding and you're answering in a too salesy way on Reddit, you'll be banned. Uh or you you'll be thrown from the the channel, or you won't gonna even know that you are banned and you will be banned basically. Uh uh they have ways of hiding your your content, things like nature. So there are so many things that if you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, and then if you're just copying and pasting it from Quora to Reddit to the you will be wrong and you won't gonna even know what you're doing wrong. So um I feel like uh you do need a lot of different level of expertise on each and every one of those thrust signals. Um, and to do that with if you're a one-man show or two people, I don't think it's gonna be as easy. Like the level of experience that you need on every single social platform, what to do, what not to do, what to avoid. Um again, nothing there is brain surgery, but it's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

It is a lot. I do want to go back to something that you said a minute ago about Reddit. We talk about Reddit on every episode because for a while Reddit has been, if you want to show up in those answers, get your brand in the comments. But you mentioned going back to threads that have already been posted and they're already being pulled into answers. Have you noticed a difference when you go in and comment on those threads if they've not been locked after a year of being pulled into an answer, even if the threads are already existing?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yes, absolutely. The the question is just how often do they reread some of those threads? Because with social, for example, is getting rescanned because it knows that it has new comments, it knows that it has new things that are happening, it knows that uh, you know, if if that if that uh uh thread was blocked, like it was closed, uh, it probably will not come back. Uh, but then if if it's still open, it means that more people can comment on it, it means that more people might actually join the conversation. Um, and that means that at the end of the day, if you're there, you could be relevant. If you're not there, you know, it will just skip you as as part of that. So um I feel like it's definitely something that we saw, like direct correlation of getting uh on top of those things. We try also not to go after like posts that are that are being there for five years or eight years, probably not the places that we're going to be investing too much of our time because usually it's like uh most of the suggestions that uh that people are asking is also 2026. Like we want recent news, we want recent uh recommendations. So if you are if you if the LLM just read a post from eight years ago about these are the solutions for you, those solutions might be completely different today because they're there it's so it's so uh uh it was so long ago. So um basically you need to know the recency of what you are actually uh commenting on. And we did see the recorrelation of using things that are not just you know a day old or a week old, but also things that are kind of a year old or let's say seven months old, definitely working well for us.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah, that's it that's an interesting tip. Like I don't think anyone has mentioned that so far. But the thing about Reddit is even after the thread gets closed, those comments stay there forever and ever. So even if someone's not using chat, GPT, perplexity, whatever, and they're just using regular Google, it could still show up in those Reddit in the Reddit answers right there at the top. Anyway, that's interesting. I'll be thinking about that probably longer than I should be. Um so I here's my last question for you. Like a lot of marketers are still treating GEO, AEO, whatever we're calling it, like SEO, but just with a different name. So, what's the mental model shift that actually goes into how you approach content now that we have all these things together?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I have to tell you that I feel like um a lot of SEO agencies, I feel like gonna be dying in the next two years. And the reason that I'm saying it is that I feel like if you are just doing SEO, like you used to do SEO, I just don't think that it will cut it anymore. I don't think that you will be able to make enough impact to keep the clients around and to keep them happy because the results will not show up. Um, so you have the technical knowledge about what to do in the website and schema and indexing and non-indexing, uh, all important, but it's one piece of the new equation when you're thinking about AEO or GEO. And I think that um agencies that will actually start acquiring or merging or opening additional departments of PR and podcasting and and lots of other elements that are kind of about like really understanding LinkedIn and how to do the thought leadership on LinkedIn and how to do Reddit uh promotions and how to actually uh getting new things on on Wikipedia, like actually managing the entire brand presence. If you'll just keep on trying to do, hey, we you used to call it the CEO, now we're calling it AEO, but it's the same thing in a different disguise. Yeah, now we're doing different things on schema, but it's like it's not frequently asked questions to the every page, but that's the that's the new best practice. Uh that that's so kind of of surface level. And I feel like uh uh the right companies that will be able to outshine the others are going to be the ones that will have a holistic solution when you're also making sure that you have three uh articles posted every single month on Forbes and Business Insider and I don't know New York New York Times, um, and those things getting with so much better credibility than 500 or 5,000 links that you just bought last month, uh, or actually getting an interview on on the BBC uh or CNN, for example, like you're just seeing what are the things that are ranked the most or what are the things that look like the highest caliber. Uh getting something with uh with Gartner, for example, it's not as easy, or getting something on uh on Forbes to cover you or to get you a quote, it's not as easy. And if you don't have the right relationships, partnerships, the the right level of knowing how to impact all of the trust signals from uh from outside, I don't think that you'll be able to win in this type of evolving uh market. I feel like SEO is kind of the the the fight of 2000 and till 2025-ish. And I feel like in from 2025 to and onwards, it's just it's not enough anymore. Like if you're just doing everything right on the website, it will still not move the needle. We saw that. Um, and I feel like that's that's where uh like a holistic approach when you're doing also the social part of things and also looking on on the PR and the podcast appearances and like the the things that all of the trustings from outside and video productions, like creating lots and lots of videos in order to uh impact uh a YouTube that will impact those engines. Like it's it's a lot of different things that if you're just doing a CEO, it will not cut it.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Alright, so let's talk about what to actually do with all this. The biggest takeaway from this conversation for me is that AI search visibility is not a website problem, it's more of an ecosystem problem. Your blog post on its own does not earn you a citation. What earns you a citation is the same value proposition. Okay, so let's talk about what to actually do with all of this. The biggest takeaway from this conversation for me is that AI Search Visibility is not a website problem. It's an entire ecosystem problem. So your blog post on its own does not earn you a citation. What earns you a citation is the same value proposition showing up in multiple formats, on multiple platforms, reinforcing the same expertise. So your website plus YouTube plus Reddit plus a podcast plus a Forbes mention plus your LinkedIn. That's how AI engines build trust or ad your brand entity. So here's something that you can do today. Go pick one piece of content on your website, something that's already performing well in traditional search. That could be a blog post, it could be a landing page, it could be a resource. Then ask Does this exist in any other format? Is there a YouTube video covering it? Is there a Reddit thread where you've shown up in the comments? Has anyone outside of your domain referenced it? If the answer is no, start here. Pick one off site surface that could be Reddit, it could be YouTube, it could be LinkedIn. If you're doing LinkedIn, it could be an employee account or it could be the actual brand account, it could be a podcast pitch. Just extend that piece of content there this week. That's it. That's how you build an entity authority. Piece by piece, brick by brick. If you want help mapping where your brand actually shows up across AI engines and where it doesn't, head over to CassieClark Marketing.com. I run AI Search Visibility Audits that show you exactly which engines are citing you, which ones aren't, and what to do about it. If this episode helped you in any way, do me a favor and rate the show. It genuinely helps more marketers find it. Okay, I'm Cassie Clark. I will see you on Thursday. Until then, stay visible.