Every week someone asks me a version of the same question. "Is there any point doing SEO now everyone just asks ChatGPT?" Usually followed by "and do I need to be doing something about AI?" and a slightly worried face.
So I went to BrightonSEO, the big search marketing conference that takes over Brighton's seafront twice a year, to find out what the people who do this all day are seeing. Thousands of marketers, rooms full of slides about AI, and one very large otter in a pink jacket.
I came home with a notebook full of scribbles. Most of it was for people running SEO for big brands. But a lot of it matters if you run a small business, and some of it you can act on this week. Here are my eight.
1. AI is a truffle hunter
My favourite slide of the whole event was a piglet sitting next to a pile of truffles. The point: AI tools go sniffing for original, useful knowledge, and they walk straight past anything they've seen a thousand times before.
There's a name for this. Google filed a patent back in 2018 (granted in 2024) describing an "information gain" score: roughly, how much new stuff a page adds compared with everything else on the same topic. One speaker shared the scoring scale his team uses. Content that repeats what's already in textbooks and popular blogs sits at the very bottom. Content built on your own data, your own processes and your own findings sits at the top.
What that means for you: another "10 top tips for social media" post scores close to zero, however well it's written. What only you know scores well. Your prices and why they are what they are. The mistakes you see customers make. Your opinion on the thing everyone in your industry gets wrong. Those are the truffles.
2. Your sales calls are full of content ideas
This came up in more than one talk. Every question a customer asks you on a call is a question someone else is typing into ChatGPT or Google. The speakers' advice was to record your sales calls (with permission), write down every question that comes up, and build your content around answering them properly.
Most small business owners I meet are sitting on a goldmine of these and don't know it. They answer the same five questions every week and then stare at a blank page wondering what to post.
One more thing worth stealing: when someone gets in touch, ask how they found you, and add "an AI chatbot like ChatGPT" to the options. If you can, ask what they asked it. You'll learn more from that than from any analytics dashboard. If you want to go further, our guide to getting sales and marketing working together has a simple exercise using your last ten enquiries.
3. If your website vanished tomorrow, would AI still know what you do?
This question from Jean Sarunporn's talk has stuck with me. AI tools don't only read your website. They build their picture of your business from everywhere: reviews, social profiles, directory listings, press coverage, forums like Reddit, and what other people say about you.
So if your Instagram bio says one thing, your LinkedIn says another and your Google Business Profile hasn't been touched since 2021, AI gets a muddled picture, and a muddled picture doesn't get recommended.
The fix is simple, though it takes some effort. Decide the one thing you want to be known for. Then say it the same way everywhere: your homepage, your bios, your Google profile, how you introduce yourself. Make it easy for AI to repeat what you do, because it will repeat it. If you'd like an outside eye on how consistent your socials are, that's part of our Social Insight & Content Review.
4. Same facts, different words, only one gets cited
One slide showed two versions of the same paragraph. Same facts, different wording. One was vague and clever. The other was specific and clear. Only the clear one got quoted in AI answers.
Another speaker made a related point about writing in sections that make sense on their own. AI tools often lift a single passage out of a page to answer a question. If that passage only makes sense after reading the three paragraphs above it, it won't get picked.
So: answer the question first, in the first line. Use the words your customers use. Give each section a heading that says what's in it.
5. Accessible marketing is findable marketing
This was the one that stuck with me most, and I didn't expect it to be.
Mo Kanjilal's talk opened with numbers that should make every business owner sit up. Around 1 in 4 people in the UK are disabled. About 1 in 6 adults in England have very poor literacy skills. Around 1 in 7 people are neurodivergent. That's a lot of your potential customers who might be struggling with your website right now.
Here's the twist. The things that help those people use your site, like clear structure, proper headings, captions, real text instead of pictures of text, and links that say where they go, are exactly what AI needs to understand it. Another talk put it as a formula: inclusive marketing equals sustainable AI visibility. Do right by people, and you get found.
The quick wins shared on the day, which most people can do without a developer:
Write alt text that says what an image does: "Download our price list", not "icon-14.png"
Unplug your mouse and try to get round your site using the Tab key. If you get stuck, so does anyone who uses a keyboard
Caption your videos and Reels, and check the auto-captions, because they get things wrong
Use one main heading per page, with subheadings in order
Check your colour contrast with WebAIM's free contrast checker
Turn important PDFs into proper web pages
Swap "learn more" and "click here" links for ones that say where they go
And one to try tonight: turn on a screen reader and listen to your homepage. On a Mac it's Cmd + F5 (VoiceOver). On Windows it's Windows + Ctrl + Enter (Narrator). It's an eye opener.
6. Local search is changing fast
If you rely on people finding you on Google Maps, Greg Gifford's local SEO talk was the one to catch. AI is creeping into the map results, Google is adding Gemini-powered chat to Maps, and the results are shifting more often than they used to.
The advice that came through: being mentioned and recommended is what matters now. Keep your reviews coming regularly rather than in one big burst, because fresh and specific reviews count. Don't rely on Google reviews alone, as AI pulls from other review sites too. And look at what people say in your competitors' reviews, particularly the complaints, then make sure your own site answers those worries.
If you're local to us, our guide to choosing a marketing consultant in Liverpool touches on getting your Google Business Profile right.
7. Everyone has the same tools now
Ryan Law from Ahrefs showed how his team built an AI pipeline that takes a blog post from keyword research to publish-ready draft in around ten minutes, for a dollar or two a time. Impressive. Also a bit of a warning. If anyone can produce decent content in ten minutes, decent content stops being a reason to choose you.
Patrick Stox summed it up in the line I've been quoting at everyone since: "In a world where everyone has the same automated tools, the winner will be the one with the best human strategist."
AI tools are brilliant. I use them. But the thinking behind them, knowing what to say, who to say it to and what to leave out, is what makes the difference. It's also exactly what a lot of small businesses are missing, which is why fractional marketing leadership has become such a popular option.
8. Start with what's holding you back right now
My last takeaway is the simplest. Jean Sarunporn finished with a question for anyone who felt overwhelmed by all of the above: "What's the biggest thing holding us back right now?"
You don't need to do all eight of these. You need to find the one that's costing you the most and fix that first. For some businesses it's a website nobody can find. For others it's a brilliant website that nobody with a screen reader can use. For plenty, it's no content at all, because there's never time.
If you're not sure which yours is, our guide to why your marketing isn't working is a good place to start, and our marketing audit checklist will help you find the gaps before you spend another penny.
What I'm doing with all this
I'll be digging into these topics properly over the next few weeks, with practical guides on getting your business recommended by AI, accessibility fixes for small business websites and turning customer questions into content. And if your rankings have been jumping about this week, here's what to do about Google's November 2026 core update.
In the meantime, if you'd like help working out which of these matters most for your business, that's exactly what we do. Book a free half hour chat, or join Qrios Minds for £59 a month and bring your questions to the monthly group call (and the WhatsApp group in between). I'll bring the otter stories.