Large Language Model Optimization is about RICH SEMANTIC CONTENT and WELL-BUILT SCHEMA...we're sorry it's so complicated...
Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping the digital landscape, taking over the role traditionally held by search engines. In this post-Google-dominance world, the rules of the game are changing, and it's crucial to adapt your strategies accordingly.
We're confident that you already know LLM doesn't stand for Llamas, Lemurs, and Moths. And we're fairly sure that most people reading this understand that it refers to Large Language Models. If you didn't know that, you're welcome :).
But here's the deal.
The phrases LLM and Large Language Model Optimization are so technical that when it comes to explaining them to the public they might as well be stand-ins for random words (like Llamas, Lemurs, and Moths). We still regularly have to explain to folks what SEO stands for. How are people going to cope with something so much more technical?
And you might be saying to yourself right now as you read this, I don't need to learn any new tricks - I have 10+ years of experience as a business owner, or a digital marketer, or maybe even an SEO strategist. Why is it important that I learn how this new technology works? It's actually very simple: people are already using LLMs for all of their online searches - even if they don't understand how LLMs work...even if YOU don't understand how LLMs work, people are choosing services like chatGPT for answers over Google.com. Google.com is folding LLM interfaces into all of their new versions of search (as of July, 2023, this isn't open to everyone but can be viewed here). Bing has already done this (read more about it here).
The Medium Is The Message
Put another way, Google, Bing, and Yahoo are already being replaced by Bard, chatGPT, and a myriad of open source LLMs. So much so that they're attempting to fold those LLMs into their existing products.
This likely won't win out, though. It's far more likely that, 12-24 months from now, the reverse has happened.
In media there is an interesting trend noticed by Marshall McLuhan when he wrote "The Medium Is The Message". Simply put, whatever the previous medium is, it tends to become the content of the new medium. And not the other way around.
So theatre became the content for movies, which became the content for television, which became the content for online streaming services, etc., etc. It's far more complex than all of that, but the end result is the same: the new medium tends to consume the old one.
Mind you, the old one doesn't entirely go away - it just gets ingested.
Bringing this back to our task at hand, attempting to dominate your industry online, whatever your business, is going to become more and more a futile task if you're trying to optimize your content for an outdated medium.
This requires that we, as marketers and business owners alike, roll up our sleeves and map out the new territory together. But it's vital that we recognize the geography of online marketing has shifted, and continues to shift beneath our feet.
However accomplished our collective navigational prowess in the realm of digital marketing, we are most assuredly in uncharted waters.
If you ask Google's Bard, for example, for the best rated service (pick a service, any service), you might get a few results from Google, but many if not most will be taken from other platforms like Yelp or NextDoor. If all of us don't change our approach for getting organic traffic, we'll soon have better luck trying to lasso a comet.
It's best we all realize this early on, or we'll collectively waste precious time playing checkers as the world embarks on its first game of 5D chess.
