In March 2011, Entrepreneur magazine featured me and BigFishTackle.com in an article titled “Business in Motion.”
At the time, the internet was going through a major transition.
Smartphones were growing rapidly, but most business websites were still designed primarily around desktop computers. Many companies were trying to determine whether mobile was simply another device they needed to accommodate or whether it represented a fundamental change in how people would use the web.
At BigFishTackle, we had already begun adapting.
Our community had approximately 100,000 forum members, many of whom wanted fishing reports, local information, conversations and updates while they were actually out fishing—not hours later when they returned home to a desktop computer.
That created a simple business problem
The information was useful, but the way people accessed it was changing.
We began experimenting with mobile-accessible websites, approximately 30 .mobi domains and opportunities that could eventually allow anglers to do things directly from their phones that previously required a desktop computer.
Fifteen years later, I find myself watching another transformation.
This time, it is AI-assisted search.
And many of the questions businesses are asking today sound surprisingly familiar
In 2011, Entrepreneur magazine featured me and BigFishTackle.com during the early transition from desktop-first websites to the mobile web. Fifteen years later, businesses are facing another major shift: AI-assisted search. The technologies are different, but the strategic challenge is remarkably similar—understand how customer behavior is changing, determine what matters to the business, and adapt before the new behavior becomes standard.
Michael Hodgdon, Founder, Elite SEO Consulting
Table of contents
- In 2011, the Web Was Still Primarily a Desktop Experience
- The Technology Changed. The Business Question Didn’t
- My Career Has Crossed Several Versions of This Transition
- What AI Search Is Actually Changing
- What Elite SEO Consulting Is Doing About AI Search
- Early Adoption Does Not Mean Chasing Every New Technology
- AI Does Not Make SEO Obsolete
- The Lesson From 2011
- From the Mobile Web to AI Search FAQs
In 2011, the Web Was Still Primarily a Desktop Experience
It is easy to look backward and assume everyone knew exactly where mobile was heading.
They didn’t.
Smartphones were clearly becoming more capable. Mobile internet use was growing. But desktop-first thinking still dominated business websites.
Responsive web design itself was still relatively new. Google’s mobile-first indexing was years away. Businesses were still deciding how much time, money and attention mobile deserved.
That is what makes the Entrepreneur article interesting to me today.
I can’t point to an old magazine and say, “I predicted mobile.”
That would oversimplify what actually happened.
What matters is that the article captured a business adapting while the transition was still underway.
BigFishTackle’s challenge was particularly obvious.
Fishing information can lose value quickly.
A report about where fish are biting is much more useful while someone is near the water than when that person gets home several hours later.
The emerging mobile web could close that gap.
That meant we had to think beyond simply shrinking a desktop website onto a smaller screen.
We had to think about how customer behavior itself was changing.
That distinction matters just as much today.
The Technology Changed. The Business Question Didn’t
In 2011, companies were asking questions like:
Will customers really use their phones this way?
Do we need a mobile strategy in addition to our normal website?
How much should we invest before we know where mobile is going?
Today, the questions sound different—but not by much.
Will customers really use ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and other AI systems to find businesses?
Do we need an AI-search strategy in addition to traditional SEO?
Should we change our content because search engines are generating answers instead of only displaying links?
How much should we invest before we know exactly where AI search is going?
The mistake in both transitions is framing the question as either/or.
Mobile did not eliminate websites.
AI is not eliminating SEO.
Instead, new technologies change how people discover information, how they interact with businesses and what our digital assets need to accomplish.
My Career Has Crossed Several Versions of This Transition
The mobile transformation wasn’t the first major change I had worked through, and it certainly wasn’t the last.
I began working with websites, search, online advertising, and internet businesses in the late 1990s, when the commercial web itself was still developing.
By 2008, work involving BigFishSearch and First Light Net received recognition in the Internet Advertising Competition for Best Advertising Email Message Campaign.
In 2011, Entrepreneur featured BigFishTackle during the transition toward mobile access.
From 2013 through 2019, I built and led the SEO department at Infront Webworks, growing the operation from one person into a 17-person team. During that period, the team earned industry recognition including wins at the U.S. Search Awards, Landy Awards and Global Search Awards.
In 2018, I was selected as one of 101 digital marketing specialists included in Matt Chiera’s Digital Marketers Sound Off, where I contributed to the SEO section on strategy, measurement, tools and where search was heading.
In 2019, I completed certificate programs in Marketing Strategy and Digital Marketing through Cornell University’s eCornell programs.
Then, in 2023, I founded Elite SEO Consulting around an approach I had become increasingly convinced businesses needed:
Prioritize the work most likely to produce measurable business value first.
In 2025, Elite SEO Consulting was named Best New Agency at the U.S. Agency Awards.
Today, another major shift is happening.
Traditional search is increasingly intersecting with generative AI, answer engines and conversational discovery.
And once again, the important question isn’t whether the technology is interesting.
The question is:
How is it changing the way customers find businesses?
What AI Search Is Actually Changing
AI search is not simply traditional search with a chatbot placed on top.
The discovery process itself is expanding.
A prospective customer might:
- search Google,
- view a Google Map Pack,
- read an AI Overview,
- ask ChatGPT for recommendations,
- compare providers in Gemini,
- research a decision in Perplexity,
- use Copilot during their workday,
- or move between several of those environments before ever contacting a company.
That creates a larger visibility problem.
A business can rank well for traditional keywords and still be poorly represented when AI systems try to understand:
- what the company does,
- where it operates,
- what makes it different,
- who its experts are,
- whether claims are supported,
- and whether the business appears credible enough to recommend.
This is one reason I don’t view AI optimization as a separate discipline that replaces SEO.
I view it as an expansion of search strategy.
What Elite SEO Consulting Is Doing About AI Search
At Elite SEO Consulting, we are incorporating AI visibility into the SEO process rather than treating it as a disconnected service built around the latest trend.
That means evaluating whether search engines and AI systems can clearly understand the fundamental facts surrounding a business.
We look at signals such as:
- business and entity clarity;
- services and product relationships;
- geographic relevance;
- structured data;
- clear answers to customer questions;
- topical authority;
- internal linking;
- external citations and corroboration;
- brand mentions;
- reputation and trust signals;
- Google organic rankings;
- Google Maps visibility;
- AI-generated answers;
- LLM recommendations;
- and the conversion paths that turn visibility into inquiries and revenue.
We also evaluate visibility across evolving AI and answer platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, You.com and DeepSeek, along with Google’s increasingly AI-driven search experience.
But there is an important qualification.
Being visible in AI is not the final business objective.
Revenue still matters.
Leads still matter.
Customers still matter.
That is why our AI work remains tied to the same prioritization philosophy we use in traditional SEO.
Early Adoption Does Not Mean Chasing Every New Technology
One of the most useful lessons I’ve learned over more than 27 years in digital marketing is that being early and chasing everything are not the same thing.
New technology creates enormous pressure to act.
Sometimes that pressure produces smart experimentation.
Sometimes it produces wasted money.
AI is no exception.
Businesses are being told they need:
- hundreds of AI-generated pages,
- entirely new websites,
- expensive proprietary platforms,
- new acronyms,
- new metrics,
- and strategies that supposedly replace everything they were doing six months ago.
I don’t believe that’s the right approach.
The better process is much less exciting:
Test. Measure. Validate. Prioritize.
Determine whether customer behavior is actually changing.
Identify where your business may be losing visibility.
Determine whether the opportunity is commercially meaningful.
Then prioritize the work most likely to produce a return.
That is essentially the same principle behind our Quickest Path to ROI SEO™ framework.
New technology doesn’t remove the need for prioritization.
It makes prioritization more important.
AI Does Not Make SEO Obsolete
I’ve heard some version of “SEO is dead” throughout much of my career.
New search engines were supposed to kill SEO.
Social media was supposed to kill SEO.
Mobile apps were supposed to kill websites.
Voice search was going to replace typed searches.
Now AI is supposedly going to eliminate traditional search.
What actually happens is usually more complicated.
Customer behavior expands.
The interfaces change.
New discovery channels emerge.
Old channels evolve.
And businesses have to adapt.
AI does not make SEO obsolete. It makes weak prioritization, unclear entities, vague intent and undifferentiated content more expensive.
Traditional SEO still matters because many of the signals that help conventional search engines understand a business also help AI systems interpret it.
Clear site architecture matters.
Relevant content matters.
Authority matters.
Citations matter.
Links matter.
Business information matters.
Reputation matters.
Technical accessibility matters.
What changes is the environment in which those signals are being interpreted.
The Lesson From 2011
I still have the March 2011 copy of Entrepreneur that featured BigFishTackle.
Looking at it today, what strikes me isn’t how old the phones or mobile websites now appear.
It’s how familiar the business questions sound.
A new technology was changing customer behavior.
Businesses had choices.
They could dismiss it.
They could overreact to it.
Or they could determine where the change created legitimate business opportunities and begin adapting accordingly.
Fifteen years later, we are asking many of those questions again.
Only now the transition is artificial intelligence.
My approach hasn’t changed very much.
Understand what is actually changing.
Determine how that change affects customers.
Measure what matters.
Then invest first in the opportunities most likely to produce a return.
That worked when the web moved from desktop computers to people’s pockets.
I believe it is the right way to approach the transition from traditional search to AI-assisted discovery as well.
From the Mobile Web to AI Search FAQs
No. AI-assisted search is expanding the ways customers discover information, but traditional organic search, local search and website optimization remain important. Many of the same signals that help search engines understand a business—authority, relevance, entities, structured content, links and trustworthy information—also contribute to AI visibility.
AI search optimization is the process of making a business, website and its supporting information easier for AI-driven search and answer systems to understand, retrieve and potentially reference or recommend. It can include entity optimization, structured data, direct-answer content, authority building, citations, traditional SEO and reputation signals.
Both represent changes in how customers access information. During the early mobile transition, businesses had to adapt websites designed primarily for desktop users to changing mobile behavior. AI search presents a similar strategic challenge as customers increasingly use conversational and generated answers alongside traditional search results.
Not necessarily. For many businesses, AI visibility should be integrated into a broader SEO and digital-discovery strategy rather than treated as a completely separate discipline. The right approach depends on where customers search, how the business currently performs and which improvements are most likely to influence qualified leads and revenue.
Elite SEO Consulting evaluates AI search as part of a broader ROI-focused search strategy. That includes traditional SEO, local search, entity clarity, structured data, authority signals, content quality, AI-answer readiness and visibility across major AI-assisted discovery platforms.
