Google’s AI Mode Changed SEO Forever : My Chat With Jes Scholz

Want to learn SEO? Jes Scholz has one surprising rule: don’t use ChatGPT to learn it. 😮

At the Phuket summit, I sat down with Jes Scholz, an Australian-born SEO consultant who has spent many years in Germany and has been doing SEO for almost 20 years, for Inside A Hustler’s Brain. 🧠

We talked about share of voice, brand entities, schema, and how to launch a brand from scratch in 2026. 🔥

📊 In this episode, we unpacked:

• 🔄 How AI personalisation changed SEO
• 🤖 Jes’s Claude “brain” skill
• 📰 Do press releases still matter?
• 📊 Share of voice and omnichannel SEO
• 🏆 The signals that build trust
• 🌍 Why language matters more than market
• 🧩 Schema as a graph, and selling SEO internally
• 🚀 Her 60-day launch plan and advice for beginners

🎥 Watch the full episode:

🔄 How AI Personalisation Changed SEO

Jes sees SEO’s evolution as positive: “It’s always growing, it’s always changing, it’s always taking the next step.” 📈

What’s different now is how much algorithms can personalise. With AI tailoring everything to each person, a brand has to be “next level” to break into someone’s attention. “It’s made the industry really interesting again.” ✨

For another view on AI Mode, read Cindy Krum on mobile SEO and AI Mode. 🔗

🤖 Jes’s Claude “Brain” Skill

Her favourite tool is Claude. She’s still a fan of ChatGPT and switches between those two and Gemini depending on the use case. 🧰

She has trained a Claude skill that’s essentially her brain. She uses it to challenge her ideas, give feedback, and point out flaws in her arguments. That way, client strategies are tested against all her stored knowledge, not just what she’s thinking in the moment. 🧠

📰 Do Press Releases Still Matter?

“The press release itself is not very important. What’s important is having something to say.” 🗣️

A hundred boring press releases won’t help. One that gets picked up by the right media outlets is when it becomes notable. The question is how to contribute meaningfully to the conversation and grow your share of voice. 📣

📊 Share of Voice and Omnichannel SEO

How does she explain brand salience to marketers focused on keywords and backlinks? Isolated metrics have no context. Is 100 sessions good? Is 10,000? 🤷

Measure share of voice across surfaces like AI Mode, ChatGPT, traditional search, social, and YouTube. Then you can say, “I have 5% of the market and I want 10%. What do I need to do?” For Jes, share of voice is how you define SEO success. 🎯

Omnichannel SEO means being wherever your audience engages with your industry: YouTube, ChatGPT, TikTok, private WhatsApp groups, Slack communities, and podcasts. That drives more branded searches and engagement, which sends the right signals to every algorithm. 🌐

To avoid fragmenting your strategy, focus on the message, not the format. A good message can work as text, video, or audio, as long as it’s actually interesting. 💬

What about traffic? LLM traffic keeps growing as that surface grows, and AI Overviews are taking more of the conversation. But your traffic doesn’t have to decline. “Even as Google’s eating a slice, there’s still plenty left over if you know what you’re doing.” 🥧

🏆 The Signals That Build Trust

Jes focuses on engagement. She points to US court cases showing Google looks at click signals, on-page engagement, and scroll depth. 🖱️

When users already know your brand and feel comfortable, they engage more. So build brand familiarity by being everywhere. When people reach your site or videos, they engage because they’ve gotten value from you before. 🤝

🌍 Why Language Matters More Than Market

For global brand building, “it’s not so much market as it is language.” 🗺️

There’s more English in AI training data, so it’s much easier to influence AI outputs in a language like Bulgarian than in English. Different languages need different rule sets. 🔤

🧩 Schema as a Graph, and Selling SEO Internally

Where do teams under-use technical SEO? They don’t build schema in a graph format. 🕸️

Having separate organization, product, and author schema is “just things on a page.” Connect them to tell a story, including relationships to things off your site. For example, your organization schema can claim your YouTube profile, your Wikipedia page, and your other assets. 🔗

What does a mature enterprise search strategy look like? “A lot of politics.” Marketers often don’t use their own skills internally, and Jes says many corporate presentations are “appalling” with no story, purpose, or ask. Use storytelling to win resources, or someone else will get the budget. 📽️

🚀 Her 60-Day Launch Plan and Advice for Beginners

For a brand starting from scratch in 2026:

• 🧱 Set up the foundations: website, Google Maps profile, all your social profiles, and relevant industry directories
• ✍️ Post notable, interesting content on those platforms
• 📣 Plan a clear PR launch to get corroboration from important entities, because you only get one launch
• 🏁 Go big fast: skip the stealth mode and launch, even with an MVP, so people talk about your brand

Her advice for beginners: don’t use ChatGPT to learn SEO, because “it’s going to teach you what used to work.” Set up your own website, test things yourself, learn from industry leaders, and find your niche. 🧪

She also loves conferences: “You’re going to be getting the information before the speakers post about it, and that’s a competitive advantage.” 🎤

💬 Getting to Know Jes

In our rapid-fire round, Jes shared some lovely personal answers: 💛

• 🦘 Favourite childhood memory: patting a wombat and its baby on a family camping trip
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Grateful for: her two kids
• 🎓 One person to bring back: her grandfather, who wanted her to go to university, so he could see what she’s achieved
• 🧗 Last 24 hours: crazy adventure activities
• ⏰ Biggest regret: not starting her own consultancy sooner
• 🔋 Introvert or extrovert: an introvert who learned to put herself out there
• 🌱 Motivation: making an impact and leaving the world better
• 💍 Best investment: marrying her husband
• 📚 Book picks: How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp (who she’d love to spend a day with), The Creative Dividend, and The Long and Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field
• 🏅 Best compliment: “You’re not the secretary,” from executives who assumed she was there to take notes until she answered their technical questions
• 🌍 Favourite country: Namibia, for its diverse landscapes

📝 Key Takeaways From the Jes Scholz Interview

• 📊 Measure share of voice across surfaces, not isolated metrics
• 📰 Press releases only help if you have something worth saying
• 🌐 Be everywhere your audience talks about your industry
• 🖱️ Brand familiarity drives engagement signals
• 🕸️ Connect your schema into a graph, including off-site assets
• 🚀 Launch big with a clear PR plan
• 🧪 Learn SEO by doing it, not by asking ChatGPT

❓ FAQs About Jes Scholz

Who is Jes Scholz?

Jes Scholz is an Australian-born SEO consultant with almost 20 years of SEO experience, who has lived many years in Germany and works with enterprise brands.

How does Jes Scholz measure SEO success?

As share of voice across all platforms, including AI Mode, ChatGPT, traditional search, social, and YouTube.

Are press releases important for AI SEO?

Only if they have something to say. One release picked up by the right media outlets is worth more than a hundred boring ones.

Why shouldn’t beginners use ChatGPT to learn SEO?

Because it mostly teaches what used to work. Jes recommends building your own site and testing what works now.

🎙️ More Inside A Hustler’s Brain Interviews You’ll Love

• Liam Quirk on NEW Rules of ChatGPT SEO 💰 Why SEO Is Bigger Than Google Now
• How to Rank Inside ChatGPT & AI Search FT. Anirudh Agarwal (GetMentions.ai CEO)
• How AI KILLED 80% of His Affiliate Income 😱 ft. Anil Agarwal Every Affiliate Marketer Must Watch
• $0 to $13M: How Lawrence Hitches Scaled Studio Hawk With AI SEO

If Jes’s insights helped you, share this with a marketer who still only tracks rankings. 💬

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