The Vault Unlocked - SEO Is Dying? How to Win Search Everywhere in the Age of AI

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

If your traffic is down, your rankings are unstable, or ChatGPT can't even find your brand, this conversation matters. Search has changed faster in the last three years than it did in the previous twenty. If you're still playing by old SEO rules, you're already invisible. In this episode, Kayvon sits down with Wes Towers, a 20-year SEO operator who watched traffic drop, buyer behavior fracture, and AI reshape how decisions are made in real time. They break down what's actually happening behind the scenes: Why websites are getting fewer visitors but better leads. Why traditional lead magnets are losing power. Why backlinks don't carry the weight they used to. And why "ranking in Google" is no longer the full game. This is a conversation about Search Everywhere Optimization, showing up not just in Google, but inside ChatGPT, large language models, voice queries, YouTube, and scattered buyer journeys that no longer follow a clean funnel. You'll hear how AI is compressing the buying cycle, why trust signals like Google reviews now matter more than ever, how to create content LLMs actually surface, the difference between SEO tactics and authority positioning, and why the businesses winning aren't anti-AI, they're AI-leveraged. This isn't just theory. Wes shares real client examples, including a $140K deal closed because ChatGPT labeled his client "the best in Australia." If your revenue depends on being found, this is a strategic conversation about business visibility, authority, and survival in the AI era. This episode is for founders, operators, agency owners, service businesses who rely on inbound, and executives who care about predictable lead flow.  If you're building real revenue and not chasing vanity metrics, this is for you. If you're looking for hacks, shortcuts, or black-hat tricks, it's not. Business growth today is no longer about ranking for a keyword. It's about building digital authority strong enough that search engines, AI systems, and conversational models surface you as the trusted option. The rules of digital marketing, sales funnels, and content distribution are being rewritten in real time. If you lead a company, ignoring this shift isn't neutral — it's expensive. Topics Covered: What "Search Everywhere Optimization" actually means Why AI isn't killing SEO — but it is exposing weak businesses How buyer behavior has changed in the last 2–3 years The death of traditional lead magnets Ranking inside ChatGPT and large language models Why human connection is still the conversion advantage How to use AI without becoming replaceable Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Wes Towers and Uplift 360: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn X Website Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right sales people

Welcome back to The Vault Unlocked. I'm Kvon K. And today's episode dives into a real-time conversation about what's actually happening in business right now. AI is reshaping search. SEO is evolving into something bigger. And most founders are either panicking or pretending it's not happening. So the question becomes, are you going to be replaced or are you going to adapt? Today I'm joined by West Towers, digital agency founder, SEO strategist and a man who spent over 20 years in the search game, now navigating what AI has done to traffic, trust, and visibility. We break down why showing up everywhere matters more than ever, why AI won't replace you, but someone using it will. The real shift from SEO to GEO and why trust, human connection, and Google reviews are now business critical. This isn't hype. This is about survival, adaptation, and building authority in the new digital age. If you're a

founder wondering how to stand out when everyone has access to AI tools, this one's for you. Let's unlock it. Wes, welcome to the show. Thanks, Kevin. It's fantastic to be with you today. A real privilege to be in a show. I've been watching quite a few episodes of late and really compelling content. Love it.

Oh, well, I appreciate that. West, then if you're watching the show, you know, this is the point where I asked first, you know, for those who are listening that don't know West Tower, is don't know, you know your story and how you got to hear today, why don't you to do it? Tell us a little bit about who you are and fill us in. Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm up to now is I run a digital agency, website design, SEO, all that kind of fun stuff.

And we do it for the trades and construction niche. It wasn't always that way. We've sort of niched down over the course of the years. But, I mean, it's always felt like an industry that's evolved super fast. I've always said if I stopped doing what I, the business has been running over 20 years now, but I've always said if we stopped for one moment and came back in a year's time, everything would have changed. It's always felt that way.

But man, oh man, the last three years have been hectic with AI transforming the way in which every business does stuff. But certainly for us, we're doing search engine optimization for a long, long time. And all of a sudden, people were seeing less traffic. So that was a bit of a kick in the teeth and a challenge to overcome. Because as you can understand, and you're probably bumped into it these days. People are getting their answer on platform. So Google gives the answer right there and then, or they're using large language,

models to research. There's a whole bunch of different things happening right now and we've needed to adapt really fast to keep our clients in front of the right people. So let's just take a step back here because there's a lot here and I know a lot of people are, they're trying to jump into, you know, AI. They're scared of AI. They're misunderstanding of the powers of AI because we're being told, you know, AI is going to take over every single, you know, the next couple months. It's going to take over every job. And I always kind of go, really? Because it doesn't even listen to you when you just use it in language model. So no, I don't think it's taking over anybody's job anytime soon. Now, can it help you? Yes. Is it going to take over some

redundancies and jobs for sure? But I personally don't think we're here. However, when it comes to the AI, let's just talk about what, because you work with a lot of business owners and as an agency, what do you seeing business owners are doing when it comes to AI? Are they adopting it? Are they trying to understand? are they still pushing it away what's your landscape when it comes to AI so so for us working with trades and construction businesses mostly they're typically that those founder led businesses oftentimes they're really practical pragmatic hands-on people so they're not necessarily all that tech savvy so they're not necessarily looking at it a whole lot of in a whole lot of ways for their own internal

businesses just yet i think they will eventually but certainly they're wanting to show up wherever people are looking for businesses and their services. And so that's why we've really adapted the way we work to help them show up in the large language models. When people are asking their phone, they jump in on chat, but they're having a discussion about, hey, who's the very best of X, Y, Z in our region. And they're having a detailed conversation. It's not just, you know, back in the old school, Dave, search plumber, Melbourne, for example.

They're really looking for nuance because they understand the tools, understand the whole context of the language. So that's kind of what they're, they're just really pragmatic. I love our clients. They're really pragmatic. And they're thinking, okay, how do we adapt so we can keep growing our businesses? Yeah, yeah. I mean, but I can appreciate a lot of people are scared because I got a business valuation three years ago.

And it came incredibly low. It was ridiculously low, a real kick in the teeth. And the value is said, look, your whole industry is at threat right now due to the rise of AI. and no one's going to buy uncertainty. They want some level of predictability when they're buying a business. I had everything lined up perfectly what you would want for a sellable business. And this guy kicked me in the teeth with that. So, you know, three years ago, it was just kind of taking shape and I can understand where he's coming from.

But off the back of that, I've doubled down on a whole bunch of stuff. And we had our most profitable year ever using AI and doing a whole bunch of other things. So, you know, slap in the face, you've got to just take it and find a way to adapt. and improve things. I get it. I think you just kind of tested my theory, which is everyone's so worried about being replaced by AI. And I just believe right now, first, we're at the level where AI won't replace humans.

However, humans using AI will 100% replace humans who are not. So I think as you adapt, you jump in or you're going to be a thing in the past for sure. how are you seeing when it comes to specifically, you know, your expertise around SEO, how are you seeing AI hurting the business and then how are you using it to be able to offset that and actually help the business? Yeah, so from a marketing standpoint, it's so easy to crunch out content and it reads really well and it can sound pretty compelling and, you know, with a few prompts, you can create some pretty great content perceived to be great content.

But what that does is everyone's doing it. So therefore there's just an overwhelm of information out there. And there's an erosion of trust. So everything that we do and teach our clients to do is to use the tools. Firstly, if we're thinking about social media, the goal of social media is to get them off social media. What do we want them to do? Go to the website. What's the goal of the website?

We want to get them off the website into a human conversation for our clients for the salespeople to do their work. So everything's got to be geared around building. trust and authority as best you can, but it's all about creating a human connection because the humans who are able to connect relationships, build, understand the client, sell what they're buying. I mean, if we can understand what the client's wanting and then just give it to them, everybody's winning and everyone's happy. So that's everything we do is geared around building trust and authority. Yeah. So again, the question is, I mean, how important is trust now more than ever? Oh man, more than ever. You're right. Yeah, absolutely. It's just so hard to,

to cut through the noise. I mean, it's just so much out there. And anyone can say anything they want. So how do you know, like that's the question, right? Like, let's deep dive in here because we're just, you know,

I want to really help people and understand like, there is a lot of noise. Anybody can go to an LM and say, write me up, 20 SEO blogs based on this and that. Everyone's doing it. Next thing you know, it's LML against ML,

you know, MLM, LLM against LM, right? So. Yeah, 100%. How can we, how can we separate ourselves from this? How can we stand out not only to our competitors and, you know,

and stand out in the light to our avatars, but how do we stand out so that the AIs are picking us up in the GE, like the new GEO thing of SEO? Yeah. Because SEO is the thing of the past is GEO, but from my understanding, there is no GEO without SEO. Yeah, it's all the sort of the same. Yeah.

Well, they're all trying to do the same thing. surface the very best information. So that's precisely that you need the best information. And you can't get that by relying on the tool to do it for you because all that's doing is collating all the average sum total of what everyone else has already said. You've got to bring something unique, distinct, compelling. You've got to lift your level. Go to go to a higher level and produce the content that really stands out and really specific to your ideal client. So you've got to be super, super clear who your ideal client is so you can speak directly to them. That's all going to help.

But the trust factors that you can build that are kind of outside your control to a degree. So Google reviews, for example, or any of those reviewing platforms that you can't easily manipulate, they're super important. So you can definitely help people leave that just by asking for a great review. And you know, you've had a good relationship and someone might do that for you. Even when you do do a great job, people are sort of, they forget and they need a gentle reminder to say, hey, do you mind if you jump in? It really helps a business like ours if you would leave a quick review. So how important our Google reviews for SEO?

Huge, huge, huge, not just for SEO, but just for everyone, anecdotally for our clients, we certainly have recognized, because we're always asking them to ask, hey, what prompted you to make a decision to call us or to buy those sorts of things? Because that face interaction, you just get so much more info. but there's a significant increase in the people who have said, hey, we checked out all your reviews, and it looked like you do exactly what we want you to do.

So, yeah, so that's increased dramatically over the last couple of years, but everybody's telling me it's their Google reviews. Do you have a specific way that you can ask your clients or your customers for reviews to actually, because it's interesting before I finish this question? question. It's interesting because from what I see is it's a lot easier to get the negative review than it is the positive review. Someone's more likely to go and complain about you than they are to actually just even give you a five-star thumbs up. Yeah, I know 100%. Those negative emotions

in it's human nature, those negative emotions are just so more strong to prompt someone to take action. So it's hard to wow people to the degree which a negative thing. A negative the opposite emotion could arise. But you just need to, I think the human relationship aspect of business has never been more important. As we digitalize, as we make things automated, there's kind of a pushback and a reluctance for people to want to engage with this kind of stuff.

So, I mean, people, while we think it's kind of cool and fun to see some of the videos that are produced by AI, it's sort of novel right now. But you can kind of sense people are, growing a distrust and a dissatisfaction with it. It's kind of like artificial food. I mean, we know artificial food has never been healthy or good for us, but we consume it because it's quick and easy and palatable and all that kind of stuff. But we know it's not good for us,

and it feels to me like a lot of this artificial intelligence. It's artificial. So it lacks those pieces that make it healthy and vibrant and sustainable for the long term. So I think the way in which we're using it, massively AI in our business and helping our business clients show up in all the right places with it. But everything's geared around human connections for us. That's what I think the big winners are going to be in the new world. It feels like a lot of career paths are going to be lost if people don't stay adaptable and flexible and rise to the new new way of doing things. So yeah,

that's that's kind of what we're thinking about right now. It's interesting you use the word human connection because it seems like human connections is showing up a lot right now. I know like one of my sales philosophies is human centric selling. My company that we've done, you know, $375 million sales is called the sales connection. Everything is always for me is about energy and connection. And I do believe with AI we're going to lose a lot of connection. However, there are people who are thriving and craving. for that human connection.

So where does the line happen between maximizing AI and getting the job done versus slowing down, going deeper and creating authentic real connection? Yeah. Yeah, it's a real balancing. It feels like a bit of a yin and yang thing. You've got to get those both things working together for your own circumstances. I mean, for me, just personally, I try to avoid. being on social media too much.

I mean, I have team to publish a whole bunch of stuff. We're pretty active out there, particularly with the podcasting and sharing the podcast, because that's a collaboration. And it's something I love. It's that human collaboration and connection that two people are creating something meaningful and sharing it to their audiences.

So I love that kind of stuff, but I don't spend too much, and we share it far and wide, but I don't do it personally because I don't want to be bogged down in the tools. I'm using the tools for those that are out there on those platforms, on those platforms, that's great. It's just not me. I'm not going to waste my time too much there.

I can use the tools and the people to do that for me. You can use the tools and leverage the tools, but not being, it's kind of working on the tools, not being in the tools. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I hear what you're saying there. So, I mean, it's interesting because you're helping, so you're helping business owners leverage AI specific.

around SEO so that they can be seen show up. What was the quote you said earlier? I wrote it down. What did you say? Wildly everywhere. Would you say SEO everywhere? Search everywhere optimization. Because we did SEO.

Everywhere optimization. So what is that? Search everywhere optimization. What does that mean to you? Yeah. So for us, a large part of that is to show up in chat, GBT and all the other large language models.

So we've taken, because we got a, bashed around a little bit with this. We did SEO for many years and all of us and some of the clients been with us, you know, it could be over 10 years now. I'm not sure, but a long time. And so that would say incremental improvement month on month. It was super easy. You would have a set of keywords. You would see the ranks improve. You'd see the traffic improve. You'd see the return on investment. Quite clear, obvious. Then all of a sudden, they're not getting the traffic that they once did because there's less reason to visit a website. So I get a few phone calls and say,

hey what the hell is going on here we've been doing this for a long time and what's going on is moving in the wrong way so uh i had to have those discussions with with the clients and explain what what was causing that the i um the way in which things work right now uh but that the interesting part was they weren't getting less qualified um leads through the door through the websites it was just that they were getting less people researching and so on because of getting the answers elsewhere so getting the answer, quicker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes even those things we used to give away, like the lead magnets,

they were really cool and the funnels and all that kind of stuff. Because information is available at our fingertips without giving away our emails. I mean, we used to think we're giving away something for free, but everyone knew it's not free. You're giving away your email and your privacy, and that means you're going to be spam. So I need to replace that. Truly, hey, download my free e-book. Download my free lead magnet.

Download my 10-step checklist. download my quick survey. What are marketers doing now to get the email? Because anybody that's even using AI, even at 30, 40%, can get probably better answer if they know how to prove. Yeah, yeah, yeah. PDF. Yeah, that's it.

100% most of the time. And everyone's saying that. There's these things that, that sales funnel process that was online for so many years and working like magic doesn't work in the same way it once did. What we're doing is providing that information freely without giving away the, you know, people having to part ways with their email address. That's a challenge, obviously, from a marketing perspective, because it's wonderful to be

able to build a list and keep marketing to them. But we've just got to adapt and think about, okay, you just want to be the thought leader and the expert in the field. So they get what they need from you and your brand gets mentioned. And you might show up even as a brand mentioned in a lot. large language model. You're not even aware someone's reading it, but it's pulling information that you've published. So that's kind of the way. It's harder to track. So we as marketers don't like it because we like things to be tracked and we can show a fancy report to the client,

which is really cool. That's really difficult now, but we've still got to be out there to grow the brand reputation and the trust authority signals so that then they make an inquiry when they're ready to buy. So that inquiry point is happening much closer to the buying point. So you need to have like this is why you what you're providing people um sales training and expertise those few leads that come through they're so close to making a buying decision it's not funny you can't drop them at that at that really red hot moment you can't let them slide because that you know they're super ready someone else is going to pick them up because there's 10,000 other ones ready to go uh yeah how does how does a business owner get start ranking

in the LM, so in say GPT from SEO. Like what are the steps that a business owner can do or start thinking about so they can start ranking in GPT? Yeah, well, there's a whole bunch of prompts that we use to take keywords, the old school keywords, and turn them into content ideas and structures that are helpful for large language models, which are far more conversational. So the old school keywords are really kind of archaic.

It was just your service or your product plus your location typically. But now it understands full sentences. So it's taking those keywords. And there's prompts. And as we've just said, you can download them straight off the website. They're actually in the, as a blog post in our website. There's 12 prompts that we give away there. But taking your keywords and taking them and it'll turn them into topic maps.

And you can build out your pillar pages. It'll put the keywords into structures where you can produce content that will attract large language models. It'll create questions that real humans might be asking. It'll help you create a service page, you know, reworking the keyword ideas. It's more thinking about the keywords as topics rather than just words you're trying to shove into pages to try and rank in Google. Yeah. It's funny.

It's like pillar pages. I remember pillar pages when I was learning about SEO, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then all the blogs go work off the pillar page, right? That's it. That's it. So the game, so it's interesting. Because everyone's talking about, hey, you got to rank on GPT or Gemini, whatever the LM is.

But the reality is you can't rank on those if you don't have proper SEO. So how important is SEO versus the right proper backlinks? Yeah, absolutely. So the backlinks don't matter as much as they once did. That were just a crude way in which Google typically would understand what websites should have authority because the theory was if there's a whole bunch of websites linking back to this website must be credible because other people think it is. And so everyone tried to manipulate that and they were doing dodgy backlinks from dodgy websites and so on. And Google would figure

it out and penalize them and give them a slap and downgrade their traffic, all that kind of stuff. So it's, it really is, there's, there's no real sneaky tricks that can work anymore. It really is about being super clear on your ideal client and writing. the content precisely for them to address their pain points and needs, address their questions before, you know, before they've even asked you directly because they're not going to probably ask you directly by the time they get to your front door, your digital shop front, which is your website or your physical shopfront,

if you have one, they've already probably done a bunch of research and asked, ask the tool of choice or the questions. So it's just a matter of those helping them to make a decision. Yeah, sorry, I was going to just say, like as you're thinking and you're talking, I'm just keep going and I keep hearing journey, buyer journey. You're not saying it, but you're, you keep kind of bringing it up in a unique way.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm asking, how have you seen then? I mean, because you're, as an agency, you're working with a lot of different customers, a lot of different clients that have their different customers. How have you seen the buying journey of how someone actually purchases online now with AI? How does that change in the last two, three years? Oh, man.

It's crazy. either way. It was somewhat a little, it was never fully linear, but we like to think about that whole, that whole buyer's journey, the education resources material that people would download and slowly work their way through to making that sales decision. But it's so scattered now because they'll see you on social media, for example, and they'll bump into your brand and so on, wherever they're hanging out, wherever they're wasting their time online, typically on social media. And so they'll see you there, but then they might. might be having a discussion with their phone.

So their chat, JBT, I just call my friend in the phone. I'm always talking to my friend in the phone when I'm driving around after a sales meeting oftentimes and just having a new thought or an idea that I want to flesh out. So it's my brainstorming tool. Lots of people are doing that. And then they might also jump onto Google. Still Google is the number one source for traffic for a website. And still people will visit your digital shop front, as I call it.

Google or YouTube is the number one. I thought YouTube was. Google is still number one for? Yeah, to get people to you. Well, yeah, probably YouTube is probably has more content and resources,

but it's probably, um, YouTube's part of Google. They're all, they're owned by the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, in terms of bringing people to your digital shop front, your website, that Google's still the number one. So people,

when they're ready to buy something, they're still probably going to Google, um, for it, but they're probably, probably going to research by other means, but that buyer's journey, I mean, it's so scattered and they're not downloading the free resource anymore. They're coming at you from all different angles. And they're seeing your brand without you even realizing. I had a client called a few weeks ago

and just mentioned he won a $140,000 customer off the back of some of the work we did. And he only found out how they found him because he was having the conversation with him. and they had a full conversation with their chat chabot. And they said, who's the very best in Australia who provides this? And he came out, and chat chabit, he said, this guy's the very best. They weren't in the same location of really quite a way, distance away. But for some of the content that we produced for him, chat chad javit believed he was the best.

Yeah, yeah. So his investment with us was only something like three grand. We did very little work for him. a minute amount of cleaning some things up and producing some content. Or whatever, like say whatever, even below 5K and SEO produced 120K. Yeah, 140. Yeah. So that's Aussie dollars.

So it's a little bit less than US dollars. But it's a good chunk of change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the power of SEO. You know, for me, it's funny because the power of SEO is there. but everyone always wants the quick wins

and unfortunately with SEO it's it's not quick wins it's it's consistency over time yeah building that reputation and trust all the all the right things and sometimes people have been penalized because they'll invest in an SEO company

to do things and they're not aware of what they're doing and they're that you mentioned backlinks so there was heaps of people just buying dodgy backlinks from like blog websites which would just created to create backlinks so that They're just this crappy content. And Google,

Google realize what the hell is going on and penalize those sites eventually. So it all comes crashing back. So it works for the short term. And so the agency is selling these dodgy services, they can show results to the end client. But then eventually. But it kills them in the long run. So it's not a long term play.

We've never done that. Like once you get a flag, it's hard to get out of that, like that great area, for sure. You're working hard. Yeah. Yeah, it's a nightmare. There's been clients I've turned away simply because they've been heavily penalized and blacklisted. And I've just said to them, look, we can do so much work, but it's like swimming with lead around our ankles.

It's just, it's going to be so hard for us to show any value to you. We can do everything right. And you're still going to be heavily slapped around by Google for many years probably to come. Eventually, they'll probably ease up on them. after they've served their time, so to speak. But for us to take them on at that time, it'll just look bad for us because we can do everything right, but they're just heavily penalized, so it's difficult.

So for businesses that are sitting there going, man, I need to get on AI, the SEO, I need to be in the new business of search everywhere optimization. How can they find you? Yeah, so our website, uplift360.com.com. And as I said, in the blog, it's a recent post, you'll find 12, I think it's called something like 12 copy paste prompts to turn your, yeah, to turn your keywords into LLM magnets. So, yeah, yeah.

So you can literally copy paste those in and put your own keywords in and your own ideal client descriptions and all that stuff. And out will pop some pretty cool results. I love it. I love it. I'm going to do that right after this. episode and go looking for that. So any last words to anybody that might be just listening and wondering, what am I going to do with AI in this world in my business? Yeah, man, it's crazy,

isn't it? It's an exciting time to be alive. So, yeah, the other thing on the website, you can book strategy calls with me directly. There's a big button straight on the home page. So if anything's piqued people's interest with what we've discussed, I'm happy to have a conversation, no obligations, of course, around how some of these things might apply in their circumstances and go from there awesome yeah well there it is that's another episode of the vault unlocked thank you so much for being here west and uh looking forward to seeing all that hard work and all the SEO you're putting out there brilliant thanks cape on it's been brilliant thank you