Steve O’Brien Interview on Building Authority and Trust in the Age of AI Search

Steve O’Brien is CEO of Woya Digital and founder of Fleet Street News, with 20 years’ experience in SEO and digital marketing. Known for reframing SEO as an authority-building discipline rather than a ranking exercise, he works with businesses in finance, healthcare, and other professional sectors to build lasting visibility and trust. In this interview, he shares his perspective on how AI is reshaping search, why Digital PR has become essential to online authority, and what businesses and the leaders behind them need to prioritise to stay discoverable and trusted in the years ahead.

After two decades in SEO, what has kept you excited about helping businesses grow through search?

I entered the industry in 2006, when it was all keyword stuffing and easy backlinks; people leaned into Yellow Pages more than Google (actually a little like ChatGPT today vs. Google). What keeps me excited two decades on is that the core challenge never actually goes away; businesses still need to be found, trusted, and chosen; only the mechanics keep changing. We built Woya Digital from the ground up, watched it grow into an international team, and more recently launched Fleet Street News and an upcoming repositioned version of Woya to align with an evolving market. There is nothing quite like taking a business that felt invisible online and turning it into one that customers actively seek out and trust. Search has gone from ten blue links to AI systems that summarise and recommend brands, and that shift is the most interesting the industry has ever faced. Being able to guide businesses through that, rather than just watch it happen, is what still gets me up early every morning.

You often describe SEO as an authority-building discipline rather than a ranking exercise, so what does that difference look like in practice?

Ranking is a snapshot, authority is a reputation. In practice, that means looking well beyond your own website. It’s technical SEO done properly, yes, but it’s also expert content, consistent information across the web, reviews, brand mentions and genuine third-party coverage that together tell Google and AI platforms you can be trusted. I see businesses that rank page one but are still invisible in AI answers, because they’ve optimised for the algorithm and ignored the trust signals sitting around it. Authority building means every channel, your site, your Google Business Profile, your press coverage, your social presence, saying the same credible thing consistently. It’s slower to build than a ranking, but far harder for a competitor to copy, and it’s what actually converts, because people buy from businesses they trust, not just ones they can find. That’s the difference I try to get clients focused on before anything else.

"SEO used to be about being found. Now it's about being credible enough to be the answer." – Steve O’Brien - Woya

Fleet Street News brings Digital PR into the search conversation. Why do you believe trusted third-party coverage has become so valuable for online visibility?

Because authority today is machine-readable. AI systems summarise, cite and recommend brands based on structured, trusted information, and if you’re not present in credible news sources, you’re invisible to that next generation of discovery engines. We built Fleet Street after seeing a genuine gap: businesses were choosing between cheap automated distribution, fast but low-trust, or traditional PR agencies, high-authority but slow, unpredictable, and retainer-based. Neither served businesses that needed real coverage on a real timeline. Fleet Street is placement-led, fixed price, with guaranteed publication within five days of approval, no gamble, just a platform with results. Third-party coverage matters because it’s independent validation. Your own website telling people you’re trustworthy is marketing; a respected publication saying it is evidence. That distinction is exactly what search engines and AI platforms are now built to weigh, which is why digital PR has moved from a nice-to-have to a core visibility discipline.

AI has sparked constant predictions about the end of SEO. Which changes do you think are genuinely transformative, and which do you see as overhyped?

Genuinely transformative is the shift from “where do we rank” to “are we trusted enough to be used as the answer.” AI Overviews and conversational platforms are absorbing clicks before people even reach a website, and that is a real, permanent change to how visibility works. What’s overhyped is the idea that SEO is dead or that AI visibility can be tracked as cleanly as a Google ranking report. AI answers vary by platform, prompt, and context; they are not fixed, and a lot of the industry is overselling tools that claim precision they can’t deliver. What you can genuinely track is clicks and conversions from AI platforms, branded search growth, referral traffic and citations, and that’s plenty to work with. The fundamentals, technical health, quality content, and real trust signals still matter enormously. AI / GEO or AEO hasn’t replaced SEO; it’s raised the bar for what counts as visibility, and businesses that treat it as a bolt-on rather than a core strategy will fall behind quickly.

Businesses in sectors like finance and healthcare face unique trust challenges. What separates an effective search strategy in those industries from one in less regulated markets?

In finance, healthcare and legal, every claim gets scrutinised by regulators, by journalists and increasingly by consumers who’ve grown wary of scam ads and empty promises. An effective strategy in these sectors leans much harder into verifiable credibility, expert-authored content, consistent business information everywhere it appears, genuine reviews, and third-party coverage from publications people already trust. You can’t shortcut it with volume or aggressive claims; that approach backfires fast in regulated industries and increasingly gets flagged by AI systems too, which are learning to weigh source credibility heavily. I’ve spent most of my career in these sectors, and the businesses that win are the ones that treat trust as the product, not just the marketing message. Less regulated markets can sometimes get away with speed over substance. In finance and healthcare, substance has to come first; the visibility follows once people believe what they’re seeing is genuinely credible.

If a company wants to become more visible in both Google and AI search today, where should it focus its efforts before investing in more content?

Fix the foundations before you add volume. That means a technically sound website, an accurate and fully optimised Google Business Profile, consistent business information across every listing and platform, genuine reviews, and structured data that helps machines understand who you are. Then look at your trust signals: do you have third-party coverage, expert commentary, recognisable proof points that back up what your own site says about you? Most businesses I meet want to jump straight to publishing more content, but more content built on a shaky or inconsistent foundation just gets ignored by AI systems and users alike. This is exactly the thinking behind Woya 2.0; we built it to cover both Google ranking and AI visibility together because they now depend on the same underlying signals. Get the fundamentals and trust markers right first, then content becomes a multiplier rather than noise added to a weak base.

What are the biggest mistakes you see businesses make when they chase rankings instead of long-term authority?

The classic mistake is trying to do everything at once without a clear starting focus, running before you can walk. Businesses spread their budget across every platform and channel, which dilutes impact rather than building it. Others chase a page one ranking as the finish line, then wonder why it doesn’t translate into trust or revenue, because they’ve ignored the third-party validation and consistency that make a ranking mean something. I also see businesses neglect user experience once they’ve won the traffic, sending visitors to a slow or confusing site that loses them within seconds. And short-term tactics get treated as the whole strategy rather than one part of it. Paid ads have their place, but sustainable growth comes from authority built over time. Rankings without trust signals leave you ranked by Google and ignored by AI; that’s the pattern I see most often, and it’s entirely avoidable with the right sequencing.

Throughout your career, what principle has remained constant even as search technology has changed?

Trust. Every algorithm update, every platform shift, every AI breakthrough has ultimately been search engines and now AI systems getting better at identifying who genuinely deserves to be trusted and recommended. That was true when I started in 2006, and it’s true now with generative search. The tools, tactics and even the definition of a “search result” have changed beyond recognition, but the underlying question a business has to answer has not: can people believe what you’re telling them, and can you prove it? Consistency and authenticity have always been the keys to success, whether that’s in a keyword strategy from twenty years ago or an AI-era authority strategy today. I built both Woya Digital and Fleet Street News around that same principle, because chasing the algorithm always loses eventually, but building genuine credibility compounds. That constant is what I come back to with every client, every sector, every platform shift.

Looking ahead, what mindset will help businesses stay discoverable and trusted over the next five years?

Treat visibility as one connected discipline, not a set of separate tactics. The businesses that will thrive are the ones that stop asking “how do we rank” and start asking “how do we become the credible, trusted answer” across Google, AI platforms, local search, reviews and media coverage all at once. That means investing in real expertise and real third-party validation rather than shortcuts, because AI systems are only going to get better at spotting the difference. It also means staying adaptable, the specific platforms and mechanics will keep shifting, so businesses need a strategy built on principles, not on gaming a particular system. I’d encourage every business owner to think of online authority the way I think of building an SEO agency, define the objective, build the system, execute with discipline, and trust the process rather than chasing quick wins. The businesses that stay curious and keep their credibility intact will be the ones still visible in five years.

In your last interview, you spoke about personal branding. As AI search increasingly surfaces individual expertise alongside company websites, how should business leaders think about building their own authority, not just their brand’s?

This is only becoming more important. AI systems don’t just cite companies; they increasingly surface the individuals behind them, which means a leader’s own visibility and credibility now directly affect their business’s discoverability. My advice is to treat your personal brand with the same rigour as any SEO strategy, be consistent, be genuinely useful, and back up what you say with real expertise rather than noise. I post daily on LinkedIn about SEO, AI optimisation and digital PR within my niche areas and sectors, not for vanity, but because it builds a body of evidence that I know this space, and that reflects on Woya Digital and Fleet Street News too. Third-party coverage matters here as well; being quoted, interviewed, or featured builds the same trust signals for a person that digital PR builds for a brand. Business leaders who invest in their own authority, authentically and consistently, will find their companies more discoverable and more trusted, in Google and in AI search, than those who leave it entirely to the corporate website.

SEO, GEO, and AEO are used almost interchangeably. What's the difference, and why does it matter for how a business builds its strategy?

People’s understanding of SEO, GEO and AEO varies in the industry; we treat them as three highly connected disciplines, not a single blurry catch-all.

• SEO, search engine optimisation, is the foundation, getting a site properly indexed and ranked in traditional search. Everything else sits on top of that.

• AEO, answer engine optimisation, is about structuring content so AI systems can lift it out and use it as the direct answer to a query; that's a technical and content discipline in its own right.

• GEO, generative engine optimisation, is broader again, it's the authority-building work, digital PR, brand mentions, offsite signals, that gets a business actually mentioned and cited inside AI-generated responses, not just extracted from a page.

The distinction matters because of sequencing. You can't do AEO or GEO properly on a broken SEO foundation, and you can't buy GEO the way you buy a ranking, it has to be earned through genuine trust signals. Businesses that understand all three, and where each applies, get found, get answered, and get cited.

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