🎙️ Unscripted SEO Podcast
SEO in the Age of AI: A Conversation with Jason Berkowitz
A veteran SEO on what the AI transition actually looks like from the agency trenches — and the skills that will matter most in the next five years.
Jeremy Rivera: Hello, I’m Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host and Cookeville SEO specialist. I’m here with Jason Berkowitz, who’s going to introduce himself and tell us why we should trust him as an expert.
“Marisa Cali: Leveraging Events For Branding & Long-Term ROI” — CEO of Be Present Events on the intersection of event marketing, personal branding, and digital strategies that build authority in person and online.
— Marisa Cali, Be Present Events | Listen: Marisa Cali on Events, Branding & Long-Term ROI →
Key Takeaways
- AI is a tool, not a strategy. Jason’s framing: every agency is now using AI to produce more content faster. The agencies that win are the ones using AI to produce better-researched, more strategically targeted content — not just more volume.
- E-E-A-T is now table stakes, not a differentiator. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals are what Google has been moving toward for a decade. The AI era is accelerating that preference, not reversing it.
- The clients who win are the ones willing to be the expert in their content. First-person experience, documented case studies, and genuine opinion pieces outperform generic AI-assisted content at every level of competition.
- Local SEO and national SEO are converging on the same signals. Reviews, entity clarity, expert attribution, and authoritative citations matter for a local plumber and a national SaaS company alike. The scale differs; the signals don’t.
What the AI Transition Looks Like in Practice
Jason’s honest take from running a mid-sized SEO agency through the AI transition: the biggest practical change isn’t the technology — it’s the client expectation reset. Clients who expected cheap, fast content to rank are discovering that cheap, fast, AI-generated content is now the floor, not the ceiling. The bar has risen.
The agencies that are thriving are the ones that used the efficiency gains from AI tools to reinvest in quality — better research, more specific expertise, genuine subject matter expert involvement — rather than just passing the cost savings to clients as lower prices.
Connect with Jason Berkowitz
- LinkedIn: Jason Berkowitz
The Unscripted SEO Podcast features candid, unscripted conversations with SEOs and digital marketers. Hosted by Jeremy Rivera.
