Standing Out in Search When Anyone Can Use AI

Introduction & Welcome

Jules White: So, hi, welcome back to the Website Success Show. It is Jules here and I'm really looking forward to recording today's episode. I don't have that many guests come on to the show, just bringing in people who I know can really help you to grow your business, escape social media, hopefully make the most of the content that you are already creating, and just get really clear on your messaging. I just really want to bring people on that you'll find are interesting conversations, and I know this is definitely going to be a good one today. So I'm very excited to welcome a special guest who has helped me in my own business, the lovely Rebecca Mackay Miller from BLOC + ROSE.

Rebecca and I met through the Female Founders Rise community, which is a fantastic community of women entrepreneurs. You know, I'm all about community and really making the most of the people we meet, getting to know people and building on relationships. So welcome Rebecca, it's so lovely to have you here.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Thank you so much for inviting me onto this. I was reflecting this morning on how we met, and it was through Female Founders Rise, but you very kindly offered to be part of some research I was doing into how to build a brand as a multi-hyphenate, as a multi-passionate person. And I feel like now we've gone full circle, right? Because you helped me through that, and then I supported you in some stuff, and now here we are, sharing the fruits of all of that collaboration and work we've done together. So yeah, really excited.

Jules White: Absolutely. And I think it does just show the power of collaboration. It's definitely been helpful. I saw you post something in the FFR group after we'd already met and worked together, and I just thought, oh, that would be a great chat to have. So part of this is that the world of search is changing massively, and has already changed. Lots of things haven't changed, and I've talked about that over the last few episodes: the things we don't need to worry about, but also the foundations that are often the same. There's so much people need to have set up to get their SEO working and their business showing up on Google. We can often skip to "how can I get AI to recommend me?", but we get the foundations in place first, and set our website up well in a way that's going to work for us.

But one of the big things, and the reason I wanted to chat with you, was about the ways we can stand out. Because anybody can create content. Anybody can generate content using AI. The thing that helps us stand out, especially from an SEO point of view, is our unique human lived experience, our own perspectives. That's really the only way we can stand out now and show we're an expert in what we do, rather than just somebody who knows how to use an AI tool to create content that makes us look like an expert. So that's why I wanted to have this chat. I'd love you to introduce yourself and let us know what you do.

Meet Rebecca Mackay Miller

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Sure. So I'm Rebecca. On paper, it's personal positioning and personal brand for multifaceted, multi-hyphenate, multi-passionate founders. What that looks like is getting them known, helping them stand out for their one big ownable idea, perspective or philosophy that doesn't separate from what they do but encompasses it. So imagine the kind of person I imagine many of your listeners are, who might do group programmes, some consulting for corporates, a creative pursuit on the side, be really active in a cause somewhere else, and potentially have something completely different going on too.

This is who my clients are, and when they come to me they're exhausted from marketing multiple versions of themselves, or feeling like they're a slave to the algorithm because they constantly have to show up in different places. Often they feel like their different facets undermine each other. I had a conversation with someone who had been an actor and lots of other things, and at the time she was a singing coach teaching singing to kids, which is the most beautiful thing to do, and she was also a presentation coach to corporates. She didn't feel she could talk about the singing lessons because she felt it undermined her authority in the corporate space. And to me that's so sad, because none of us are one thing. It's so sad and so exhausting, especially when you get to a certain age and you're done with feeling you have to show up in a certain way and be one thing to be heard or understood or credible.

So the work I do is to really mine and uncover the beliefs, thoughts, ideas and philosophies that connect all the different things a client does, find the thread, and translate that thread into a really ownable, punchy idea and positioning platform that they become known for. They use that to rise the tide on everything else they do. So rather than walking into a room and saying, "oh, I've got a group programme, and I consult over here, and I do a lot for that cause", you say, "I do lots of things, but really what I'm interested in is this", or "what I'm known for is this". And that becomes the spark of the conversation, and the thing you're known for and recommended for. So in quite a big nutshell, that's what I do.

The Social Media Is Optional Story

Jules White: That's amazing, and it does say in a nutshell the work we did together. I had a session with Rebecca, and it was the spark that brought together the whole social media is optional philosophy for my business. Since I embraced that, the first thing I did was create a podcast series, and you can go back and listen to those episodes from 102 to 106. I've recorded lots since then about social media being optional, and in fact even before that, episode two is all about social media being optional in one way or another. It's always been there.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: It's always there.

Jules White: Having that chat with you helped me map out those four or five episodes that became a series I felt really proud of. I talked about the damaging effects of the algorithm and why women in particular are affected by this. They were all things we'd chatted about, and you helped me get together a plan to make it something tangible I could use in my business. Episode 102, the one that kicked off the series, is my most downloaded episode ever. It's called Social Media Is Optional: How to Grow a Business Without Constant Posting, and it's far and away the one that still gets the most downloads, so it clearly resonated.

I'm still working on this, still building the confidence to say "this is the thing, this is what I do." I help people with their SEO, but the thing I'm becoming more known for is that social media is optional. I've just launched a community, Success Without Socials, and I've been blown away by how many people wanted to join straight away. I can't say I'm surprised, because it comes from conversations I have every day with people who hate social media and the constant posting. But having that chat with you was so powerful, just to get those ideas in one place. So thanks for that.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: I love hearing these stories. You've got your new community, your old community and your SEO work, and it's all always centred around that. I got the sense from our call that you almost felt you had to explain or justify what you did, or justify why someone should spend their money with you rather than elsewhere. Under the skin this was always there, but now you've got this positioning piece, this platform. One of my favourite things about our session, and all my sessions, is that as soon as this escapes your lips, the energy shifts. You came alive, and the podcast series you mapped out afterwards was all the narratives and supporting beliefs you could use to expand on and substantiate that belief. Once you got going, there was so much you found you had to say.

And this is the magic of it. Suddenly you're not talking about the things you do, you're talking about the things you believe, and there's so much more passion and energy coming through every word you say and write. People pick up on that. They think, "yes, I believe that too", or "I hadn't thought of that, but I want to know more". It's a far more effective way of connecting and cutting through than just talking about the benefits of SEO, which anyone could ask in a chat and get content back that isn't wrong.

Jules White: Well, sometimes it is, but often it's maybe a thousand people's voices. That's the trouble.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Exactly. It will be boring and bland and forgettable.

Jules White: And quite often not necessarily wrong, but maybe out of date, or not right for your unique business, or not coming at it from the point of view that social media is optional. So there are two sides to this. There's the human side, and this is true with websites too: you're thinking about the person reading your website, but also the bots reading through and understanding what you do. We have to use the words people are searching for. That can be difficult, and I see it a lot doing website audits. It's a common thread that it's just not clear. I look at a website and I'm not a hundred percent sure what people do. That can be hard when we use very emotive language and we're multi-passionate people who don't want to be boxed in.

Clear Messaging for Humans and Bots

Jules White: In terms of getting these things into plain language that somebody can understand, what are your thoughts? Because it's really important for the bots and for people. I always say if my 11-year-old nephew or my 82-year-old mum can understand what you do, that's helpful to even be considered to show up in search.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: A hundred percent. My filter is: would my daughter understand it, because she's eight? That might be challenging myself a bit too much, but a 12-year-old feels like the base level. Could a 12-year-old understand what I do? And actually I'm giving my daughter a hard time, because someone asked her the other day and she said I help people find their voice. It's not necessarily language I'd use, but that is it, that is what I do. It can be challenging because sometimes the thoughts and philosophies run deep and are expansive, and it requires a lot of distillation and organising. So much of my work is what I call the soft end and the sharp end of the stick.

The Sharp End vs Soft End of the Stick

Rebecca Mackay Miller: The sharp end has to be the very basic stuff: who are you building this for, what do they need, how do you deliver it, how will they measure success, what's actually going to change for them. Really base-level stuff you can answer in a short sentence, and you want that really clear. The softer end is where you elaborate: why that outcome matters, how your perspective on achieving it is different, or how the problem they're facing connects to something on a cultural level, the bigger patterns and shifts feeding into it.

What that means is you can explain what you do, its impact and who it's for to humans and bots in really simple language, but you also don't get bored, because then you have all this material, thought-leading narratives that let you ladder out and expand on every point, giving it substance, tissue and fabric. By developing the narratives that sit around and cushion the sharp-end stuff, like you did with your podcast, you find you've got a series of works you can talk about. This is the basis of a body of work. These things can become the chapters of your book, the sections of your Substack, the series on your podcast. But you can't overindulge, because then people think, "it sounds great, but how's that going to help me?"

And often people say to me, "I've thought all of this, but it's out there, it's in my other life, it isn't connected to work, and I don't know how to merge the two." That's what this work is. Traditionally, messaging and positioning frameworks have been quite hierarchical, with a vision statement at the top and everything slotting into place. But that produces static statements that might look great as a headline or a social media post yet end the conversation, because there's no depth behind them. Even though the thinking is there, you haven't built the narrative to expand on it in conversation. So the way we build it is more like an ecosystem: the positioning concept in the middle, then building out from there. It might even look like a spider's web, with concentric rings expanding out. One day you talk about this ring, another day you go over there. Everything feels interesting and rich, but it's all connected, and it all connects back to the central positioning piece, which in your case is social media is optional.

Jules White: That's really important. When you explained it to me, I pictured it like spokes on a wheel, with that hub in the middle of social media is optional. It all comes back through that message and the different ideas, but back to that fundamental principle. And this is relevant to another core thing I believe: that we create content we own first. You mentioned Substack there.

Content Strategy & SEO Foundations

Jules White: I would always say let's get it back onto our own domains. If you can get that strong message on your own website, your website is the hub of your business and everything should come back to that, the spokes coming back to that point. And we don't have to do it all at once. The other thing I really believe is that we create content that has a purpose. We're not churning it out for the sake of it, and I'm leaning into this more than ever. Businesses start with their core pages, the ones closest to the sale. Get those set up first, weave the core topics and that one idea through them, and then create cornerstone pieces of content, the thought leadership pieces.

Then you've got those webs to expand from, but you don't have to do it all at once, and you never have to worry about running out of ideas. From an SEO point of view, this helps you build a bank of content, especially if you link it all together, so the bots crawling your site can see it linked and see that you know the topic inside out, rather than covering it at a surface level, which is what AI can generate. There's a term now, commodity versus non-commodity content. Commodity content is what any AI bot could create, the top-ten lists we'd have seen on blogs years ago. Non-commodity content is your unique lived experience. It's powerful, and it means we don't have to churn content out for the sake of it.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: I love that. One of the things clients say is, "it sounds great, but what if I don't actually have an opinion?"

Finding Your Unique Perspective

Rebecca Mackay Miller: "What if I don't have something really unique to say?" Or they do, but they think it's too distant from their work. Once we start pulling ideas out, you can almost see a visceral exhale, shoulders dropping, a sense of belief and then relief that they've got this wealth of rich ideas within them. It's not that they were never there, it's that they've never been able to organise them because they're too close to it. Because it felt too complex or messy or scattered, they defaulted to commodity content, because you've got to get something out there, right? You have to show up, you have to be visible. But it's about doing less of that and more of the stuff that makes an impact.

The way you and I and everyone synthesises what we learn and experience, how we move through the world, no one else does it the same way. Even if people have had similar journeys or do the same thing, no one is going to synthesise it in the same way you do. No one is going to anchor it into a specific perspective or use the same lens to tell that story. Now more than ever, that's all we've got going for us, in a world where anyone can spit out content.

Jules White: And they can look like they know what they're doing.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: What's really sad is that they probably do, they're just not giving themselves a chance to share the richness they hold, because for whatever reason they're defaulting to AI.

Jules White: There are lots of interesting conversations around AI and how it can rob us of creativity, of that ability to get our ideas out of our head. Coming back to thought leadership, really.

AI's Impact on Creativity

Jules White: I created an episode about this. Episode 128 is "Is ChatGPT Making You Doubt Yourself?" I talked about how using AI too much for the thinking stuff is a danger. I'm all for using it to get rid of the work you don't need your brain for, but just going back and forth with AI and relying on it to almost think for you is a real danger point. I think we're at a point where the businesses that keep hold of their creative power and their own unique opinions will strengthen their position moving forward.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Atrophy is real. I don't think it's only down to AI, because it's been slowly happening for a long time. Since we all started scrolling rather than physically turning pages in a book, we don't have that pause to give our brains a chance to stop and process, it's just a constant scroll. But AI has accelerated it. There have been times when the brain fog has been so real that I've found myself in Claude asking, "oh, what do you think of this?" And then I have to step out and say no, because I don't recognise what I'm saying anymore. It steered the conversation away from what I actually think. You have to be really boundaried with yourself, and it's hard, because it's silently become second nature for so many people. I think it's dangerous, not just from a standing-out point of view, but for our mental agility.

Jules White: I wonder whether we're at a point where each generation has become more educated, more people able to read and write than ever in human history, and whether things will tip back the other way, especially with voice chats, so future generations become less literate. There's so much to it.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: One of my clients has this belief, and it's really a fact, that we are the last generation who knows what it was like to exist without phones and this kind of technology. So we almost have a duty of care to our kids and future generations to pass that on. That feels like such a pivotal point in human history. My daughter isn't on screens at all, but she's eight and so much of her homework is online.

Jules White: I can't even imagine growing up being connected at school and outside of school too. It must be really hard.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Yeah.

Jules White: Since I quit social media at the end of January, I'm going to do an episode in a couple of weeks about your first 90 days outside of social media, almost the detox after it. It's been interesting. I've read more books than I have in years, and a lot of the noise in my head has quietened down. Having that philosophy there and sticking my flag in the sand around it has been so helpful.

Women & Thought Leadership

Jules White: One of the things we explored when we were chatting was the feminism thread running through what I do, and I don't feel I've explored it anywhere near as much as I want to. Do you feel that for women in particular, this thought leadership, standing out and believing in something, is harder for us?

Rebecca Mackay Miller: I do, for a plenty of reasons. The obvious one is that this route hasn't been available to us for hundreds and thousands of years. This intellect, thinking, writing and storytelling was very much the realm of men. You see it through history with brilliant female authors who sold their work or pushed it out under male names.

Jules White: "A lady".

Rebecca Mackay Miller: A lady, exactly. The famous "a lady". And it still happens in the workplace today. Women are still undermined and overruled, and we've had a very strong narrative instilled, which is stay quiet, don't make a fuss.

Jules White: Don't stand out.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Don't stand out, exactly. That narrative is changing, of course, but it's still so internalised for many of us. Many of my clients are at a point in their lives where they've hit midlife and suddenly recognise they followed a path that wasn't necessarily consciously chosen. They started their own businesses, maybe a few years ago, but still followed the rules and did it the way it was supposed to be done. And suddenly they've got all these ideas screaming to come out, and they're done holding them in. But then the perfectionist rears its head: I need to be sure, I need this argument really well written, I need to be clear on the point and how I'm articulating it and who I'm saying it to before I voice it. And so it still goes unsaid.

There's a fear of raising your head above the parapet. Women are trolled, attacked, abused in comments sections online, it's awful what can happen. So it's a frightening place to be, but it's vital that we put ourselves out there, because we're paving the way for future generations. Nothing changes if nothing changes, and that change has to come from the ground up, because it's not coming from the top down fast.

Jules White: Definitely not. I had feelings around that when I created the series. A couple of the episodes brought up "I don't know that I should be talking about this, I'm not enough of an expert". On the episode about how the algorithm silences women, I wasn't sure I had enough evidence.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: I remember in our session you were really unsure, and we spent time on it. You felt you needed more stats before you could talk about it. And I said, do you know what, that's actually fine, because if you feel you need more stats to substantiate it, that creates a broader, richer narrative and argument. But so often we let that stop us.

Jules White: And I can go back and expand on that topic later. I haven't revisited it, partly for that reason, but I'm glad I got the episode out there. When I listened back, I realised I'm not claiming to be an expert, I'm just raising the topic, and it relates to all the other things too.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: That's an amazing point about not trying to be the expert. This reframe often comes with the work, because it feels safer to hide behind the deliverables: if you do this, you'll get that. When you start sharing opinions, it feels like you're really putting yourself out there. But the reframe is that by sharing this opinion and belief, it's your lens, your perspective, how you've synthesised the information. So rather than needing to be an expert or claiming to have all the answers, it's a contribution. This is just me contributing to the conversation, connecting dots people may not have seen, or my people may not have seen. And if you can see everything as a contribution, it takes the pressure away.

Jules White: It does. And thinking from a website and blog point of view, even just linking out to the places that helped me form that opinion reinforces that I've done a little research, that I've been out there having conversations and not just had AI generate it. If you're the person doing the research, like your research with founders, and you create a piece of content from it, that can be really helpful. FFR do their founder report, don't they? It doesn't have to be vast studies, but if you can generate something that shows you've done your research, it's helpful for people linking into your website and shows you've done your due diligence rather than just using AI.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: It adds depth to the opinion. And on the flip side, yes, data and insight can help, but I also believe we've massively outsourced our sense of knowing to data. One of the beliefs that underpins my business is that intuition and inner knowing should override external data and analysis every time. So it's about finding the balance. Often the inner knowing, the perspectives and philosophies come first: I inherently know this to be true, and only then do I take it out into the world to gather additional insight or validate it. For some people that's brilliant, but I don't always think clients need to, because then you're relying on external validation rather than leading with what you inherently believe, and that's the heart of your thought leadership.

Jules White: That's really important for positioning too, and it can help you stand out in search. If you give the alternative view, that's not a bad thing, especially if you've already demonstrated some knowledge and then bring your unique experience and perspective. Even if it goes against the grain, a bit like social media is optional. A big part of my messaging is that we've been sold a lie, that you cannot have a successful business without social media.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: It's contrarian.

Being Contrarian to Stand Out

Rebecca Mackay Miller: You have to be a little bit contrarian to stand out, because you have to put your flag in the ground and say this is what I stand for. Not everyone is going to stand for it, and that's fine. How boring would it be if we all said the same thing? So being contrarian is really important. When I'm teaching this with clients, I say: okay, you've done the first version of your opinions, now what's the really extreme version, the one that makes your skin prickle a little? Because without noticing, we put a vanilla filter over our beliefs to make them feel safer or more palatable. So what's the most extreme version? What would you scream about, or say to someone in the toilet at 5am? That's the version we want to start with. The exact wording might not be what goes on your website, but it needs to come through, otherwise you're not being the fullest version of yourself.

And often I say to clients, you need to view your expertise, credibility, qualifications and clients as a tick-box exercise for now. That's the base level clients expect, and it's almost par for the course, because there are thousands of people who do what we do, and most of us are at a similar level of experience. It's the lens you look at it through that's going to make you stand out.

Jules White: Absolutely.

How to Get Started: Practical Exercise

Jules White: So if somebody has no idea how to get started with this, what's the best thing to do?

Rebecca Mackay Miller: The exercise I always share is like a giant game of noughts and crosses, two lines across and two lines down. Set a timer for about six or seven minutes, and in each box write a belief, a philosophy, a hot take or something you believe to be true about your industry, your community, your clients, the culture we exist in, the world we live in. It can be politicised, spiritual, centred in kindness, anything. Just try not to overthink it, and write down as many as you can. Then give yourself a minute, have a drink, draw another grid and do the bolder version, giving yourself permission: if I said that in a networking room, what's the version someone would still be thinking about the next morning?

Once you've done that, look through and you might find some real threads emerging. It might be an interest, and you realise all these opinions were first formed when you were doing a particular thing, looking after horses, crafting, hiking. It might be a real sense of activism, or some rage, there's usually a lot of anger that comes through, or you might realise curiosity is a real thread. Try to identify the thread, then start to paint a picture: say curiosity or connection to nature is the thread. Now look at the different things you do, your group programmes, memberships, corporate consulting, your art, and apply that lens as the blueprint to all of your work. Once you can identify the thread, you don't need to immediately craft it into a beautiful positioning platform. You can just ask, how can I weave curiosity through my content as a starting point, and let clients know it's part of the approach, and build from there. There's always a thread.

Jules White: Fantastic.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: And if you can't uncover the thread, work with someone else to do it, because it's really hard to do this work on our own. Even though the thread exists, so much of what comes out when I work with clients isn't revelation, it's recognition. We're not coming up with something new, we're piecing the puzzle together in a way they hadn't seen before. The feedback I get more than anything is that I see what they're not yet brave enough to articulate. It's there, I just see it and give words to it before they're able to, and often that's all we need.

Jules White: That's exactly how I'd describe how we worked together. It was always there as a running thread, even before I started the podcast. I'm a member of the Female Entrepreneur Association, and I found it by searching "can you grow your business without social media?" One of Carrie Green's YouTube videos came up. That thread was there right at the beginning of my business.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: And that's an example, because people often say, if I've got this thread, how do I use it? And I say, well, that's a story. This thread has always been part of me, that's a piece of content. Once you identify the threads, you can trace them back through your life, your jobs and your experience, and go, oh my goodness, it showed up there, that's a story I can tell.

Jules White: Definitely. Amazing.

How to Work with Rebecca

Jules White: So if somebody wants to work with you, how can they get in touch, and where can they find you?

Rebecca Mackay Miller: LinkedIn is probably where I am, although I'm actually taking a slight hiatus, just to see what happens if I'm not really on LinkedIn. Or my website, which is blocandrose.com.

Jules White: blocandrose.com. I always love it when people share the content that they own.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Oh my goodness, don't say social media.

Jules White: I definitely see that social media is optional, but I do love it when people say you can find me at my website first.

Rebecca Mackay Miller: I feel like the website is a truer representation.

Jules White: Of course, because you control it, you can send people there, and you own it.

Closing Remarks & Outro

Jules White: This has been such a great conversation, I knew it would be. Thank you for joining me, and I hope it's been helpful for those listening. Just remember that social media is optional, but standing out against AI-generated content isn't, and I think this is the way to stand out. So make sure you reach out to Rebecca, say hi, and let her know you've heard her on this episode. Rebecca, before we leave, can you just remind us what you do, your 60-second pitch?

Rebecca Mackay Miller: Yes. I work with brilliant, multi-passionate, multifaceted founders who might have a million different strings to their bow and are exhausted or exasperated trying to market different versions of themselves. I help them become known for the one big, brilliant, ownable idea or philosophy that connects everything they do, so they can stop showing up as different versions of themselves and step into this identity of "this is who I am, this is what I believe, and I do this." And we do it without having to niche, without having to undermine any of your message.

Jules White: Fantastic, thank you so much. And if you've already worked with Rebecca and need help translating those messages onto the things people are actually searching for, you can always reach out to me. We can have a chat about what's missing from your website and how you can use this unique positioning to show up on Google as well. So thank you so much for listening, thanks for being here, Rebecca, and I'll see you soon. Bye.