Hi Reader,
This email is part of my What’s Working Now email series, where I’m bringing in some of my internet friends to share their perspective on what smart service-based business owners are doing in their branding and marketing.
You can check out past emails here, or invite your friends to join the fun here.
This week we’re featuring Laura Jawad, who helps service-based business owners become more discoverable on Google and AI search through search engine optimization rooted in their website, their content, and their online reputation. She’s a discoverability genius and I love how she transforms what can often feel technical or overwhelming into something clear and doable. Let’s go!
Oh hey Reader,
SEO is having a moment.
Google is answering questions directly in the search results. People are asking ChatGPT for recommendations. Every week, someone announces a new tactic you supposedly needed to implement yesterday.
But underneath all that change, people are still searching. Businesses are still getting found. Search systems still have to decide which sources to draw from.
And the businesses getting found are doing five things particularly well.
1. They’re still doing the boring SEO
Keywords still matter. So do the on-page SEO basics, including descriptive page titles, useful headings, internal links, fast-loading pages, and service pages that clearly explain what the business does.
Whether we're talking traditional Google search or ChatGPT, your website still needs to help search systems understand:
- What you offer
- Who you help
- What subjects you know
- Which pages are most important
- How all of those pieces fit together
AI search hasn't made those fundamentals obsolete.
Boring? Maybe.
Dead? Not even a little.
2. They’re building depth instead of breadth
Search systems form an understanding of your expertise from the body of work you create. A scattered collection of loosely related posts sends a much weaker signal than a focused, connected library built around the subject you actually want to be known for.
Depth means covering your core subject from multiple useful angles:
- The questions clients ask before hiring you
- The problems that lead them to seek help
- The options they are comparing
- What your process involves
- Where common advice falls short
- What they need to know to make a good decision
Each piece adds context to the others. Over time, they reinforce the same conclusion:
This business knows this subject.
Choose the subjects closest to your services and cover them with enough specificity, experience, and detail that your expertise becomes hard to miss.
3. They’re creating content from actual experience
Search results are full of articles that summarize the same ten points in slightly different words.
Your advantage is what you know from doing the work.
That might include:
- A mistake you see clients make repeatedly
- An example from your own process
- A distinction other articles leave out
- An opinion you can support
- A result you have observed
- A situation where the standard advice does not apply
If AI already knows it from its training data, it has not reason to cite your website. Your experience gives your content something an AI can't generate on its own.
4. They’re putting the answer first
Don't open every article with a lengthy story about why the topic matters (think --> recipe blogs).
When someone searches for a question, give them a quick overview of the take home message near the top of the page. Then provide the context, examples, exceptions, and supporting detail.
This is better for the reader. It also makes the main point easier for search engines and AI systems to identify and thus more likely to cite.
Answer-first writing doesn't mean flattening every nuanced subject into an oversimplified sentence.
It means giving the reader a firm place to start before asking her to continue through 1,500 words.
5. They’re building a reputation beyond their own website
This is the part that gets left out of a lot of SEO advice.
Anyone can publish a website and call herself an expert. Search systems also look for evidence that other people recognize her expertise.
That evidence can come from:
- Podcast interviews
- Guest articles
- Speaking appearances
- Media mentions
- Reviews
- Recommendations and conversations on other websites
Your website tells search systems what you know.
Your wider online reputation helps substantiate it.
So, what’s working now in SEO?
Strong website foundations. Focused subject-matter depth. Content grounded in real experience. Useful answers delivered early. And a reputation that extends beyond the website you control.
There are new formats and new search systems to consider. But the central job remains remarkably steady:
Make it easy to understand what you know, and give people enough evidence to trust you as a source.
See you in the search results-
Laura
Next steps / how to dive deeper:
Download the Hero Helper Claude skill. It will review your homepage hero, ask for the context it needs about your business, and help you improve that section for both the person landing on your site and the search systems trying to understand when your business belongs in a result.
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Thank you so much to Laura for taking over the email this week! To connect with her and say thanks for contributing, you can visit her website or find her on LinkedIn.
And don't forget to read the past emails in our series here, or share the signup linkwith someone who would enjoy this!
Have a great weekend!
Kristen