This week’s #SEOForLunch sponsors are AirOps and Jolly Search.
Over the course of this year, we’ve talked about the “easy button” and how many corporate leaders are blindly trusting AI to run their businesses.
Since we already covered AI scams, the legal consequences of using AI, and what happens when people are held accountable for their AI slop, I want to try something different.
I want to try to defend the AI “easy button”.
Despite my months and months of ranting about easy buttons, AI easy buttons absolutely exist. The problem is that companies keep pressuring AI, over and over, to make decisions that require experience, context, and accountability.
The best AI easy buttons don’t replace judgment. They eliminate the tedious work surrounding it.
Thank you to Airops for sponsoring this week’s #SEOForLunch
The Marketing Leaders Reality Index
We asked more than 300 marketing execs to share what’s actually happening inside their teams right now, not the polished version that shows up on LinkedIn. They gave us the real picture on budgets, headcount, AI adoption, and channel performance.
Some key findings:
86.6% are prioritizing AI search
75.4% got higher pipeline or revenue targets
Only 43.0% got a bigger budget to hit them
Only 23% feel confident measuring it
Our biggest takeaway was that the teams that are growing aren’t simply those with the biggest budgets. Teams that are increasing targets, headcount, and budgets are also changing their KPIs, shifting their channel mix, and building AI capacity inside their organization.
Go deep on how these marketing leaders are balancing increasing targets, changing channels, and AI pressure.
Turn Meetings Into To-Do Lists
This, personally, has been one of the most transformative areas of my consulting business. See, maybe it’s my ADHD brain, but I can either have a great conversation with someone OR take great notes. If I try to do both, I do a poor job at both.
For me, AI transcription and summarization may be the most obvious legitimate easy button. Who would have thought we could have our cake and eat it too!
I personally use Fireflies.ai (no affiliate relationship), but select your favorite note-taking app and have it start recording meetings and extract the following:
Decisions made
Questions requiring follow-up
Assigned tasks and owners
Deadlines mentioned — this is my favorite!
Unresolved debates (I’ll come back to this one)
The person who owns the meeting (and sets up AI note-taking) reviews the AI's output and sends it to the team. AI isn’t deciding what the business should do; it’s documenting what people already decided and attempts to hold them accountable.
re: accountability: Ever had someone say they would do something and then, when confronted on that deliverable/action, they tell you, “no, that wasn’t me…” You can figure out a nice way to be like, “Yeah, so my AI notes back on XX/YY had you commit to this”. If they still fight you, then you can bring out voice recordings :)~
Measurable value:
Time spent writing notes during the meeting.
Percentage of tasks with an owner and due date.
Missed or overdue follow-ups.
Reduction in “what did we talk about last time” meetings.
Identifying Data and Patterns Before Analysis
Give AI access to exports from approved, non-sensitive datasets and ask it to categorize, summarize, identify efficiencies, or flag items that stand out.
SEO examples:
Group thousands of Search Console queries by intent (Better yet, your competitor’s keyword data!)
Categorize declining pages by template or content type
Compare winners and losers after an update (good timing with Google’s spam update, rigght!?)
Surface unusual changes requiring investigation
Convert messy exports into usable tables and graphics
The boundary matters! AI can identify where something changed. It should not be trusted to determine why it changed without validation.
Measurable value:
Number of rows reviewed
Analysis hours saved
Percentage of the dataset categorized
Additional opportunities or data anomalies discovered
Transform Existing Work Into New Formats
Yes, I know we all want the easy button to take the prompt “take this idea and provide me a fully polished deliverable,” but that’s just not gonna happen, trust me!.
Instead, leverage AI to recreate formats!
Examples:
Convert podcast/webinar video into LinkedIn posts
Create executive summaries from detailed public reports
Draft meta descriptions from existing page copy
Convert documentation into FAQs or training materials
AI handles transformation. A human protects the substance, voice, and accuracy of the end product.
You get it by now; you're not asking it to THINK for you, just execute the grunt work you don’t actually want to do yourself. QA is the new superpower we need to adopt!
Measurable value:
Production time savings (per asset creation).
Number of assets created from one source (This was always the goal since day 1!)
Editing time (but do not let it blindly rewrite; make it give you recommendations or challenge the structure.)
Use AI as a First-Pass Editor
Most companies obsess over using AI to create more. But handing AI the final draft is like letting the ball boy call the game-winning play.
Let AI review the tape. Your experienced people should still make the call. (Anyone else getting excited for football!?)
Ask AI to review your work for:
Missing information
Contradictions
Unanswered customer questions
Confusing language
Requirements that weren’t addressed
This isn’t final approval. It’s an extra set of eyes that can spot missed opportunities before a credentialed or knowledge human signs off.
AI is far less dangerous when its job is to raise questions, identify gaps, and suggest opportunities—not write, approve, and submit the final answer.
Measurable value:
Issues (big or small) caught before submitting your final work.
Revision cycles and general review time
Post-publication corrections if content is online
Stakeholder feedback
Eliminate Repetitive Technical Work
In my opinion, this is one of the best use cases for AI. Use AI to produce small, testable pieces of technical work such as:
Spreadsheet formulas
Regex expressions
SQL queries
Schema markup
Redirect mapping
Basic scripts (I especially love this for Apps Script within G Sheets!)
Looker Studio calculated fields
The output either works or it doesn’t, which makes your QA pretty straightforward.
You still define the desired outcome, own QA of the result, and control the implementation. Nobody should deploy AI-generated code across a production site without reviewing it. (OK, I might have done this a time or two for SEOJobs.com, but let’s just say lessons were learned)
The safest easy buttons produce testable outputs. Not opinions that merely sound convincing.
Measurable value:
Time required to complete the task
Manual steps eliminated
Error rate
Number of records processed
Cost compared with manual execution
Delegate the Labor, Not the Accountability
The true concept of an AI easy button was never the problem. The problem was deciding what we were willing to allow the button to control and its impact.
Meeting notes, data organization, content transformation, editing/reviews, and repetitive technical tasks are all tedious, measurable, and relatively easy to QA.
Go ahead, press the button for all of these!
Strategy, expertise, prioritization, and final approval are 100% different. Those require context and someone willing to accept responsibility when the answer is wrong.
Use AI to remove time from the larger process. Use people to determine whether the work is accurate, useful, and worth acting on.
Don’t allow AI to push its own easy button. It shouldn’t decide what matters, simply what the options are and details surrounding them.
Press the easy button all you want. Just don’t act surprised when it mass-produces your incompetence.
~Nick
Thank you to Jolly for sponsoring this week’s #SEOForLunch
One Reddit Thread. Three Days. Four AI Engines.
Brought to you by Jolly, the team behind the new Own A Prompt service.
A Jolly client–a B2B equipment retailer in a delightfully unglamorous niche–wanted to win exactly one buying question: “equipment dealers that ship nationwide?”
We built the evidence AI needed to see. Within days of publishing:
Our Reddit thread hit #1 in Google for the exact prompt
Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews began recommending the client by name
Perplexity listed them as the top pick, and Grok cited their site too
Same playbook, next prompt: their onsite blog is now getting pulled into AI answers as well.
That’s Own A Prompt. You pick the question your buyers ask. We make you the answer.