SEO benefits in the AI new era of AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation.
2025 AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation, the evolved form of SEO where the goal is not just to rank, but to be read aloud by a machine trained to predict what the user might have meant. Previously derided voice search is now the fresh spaghetti of schema. YouTube releases communities like Reddit .. and Alphabet Inc. is the Daddy of both Google and YouTube. Hmmm are we holding the first clod of earth? This is behavioural harvesting with a rose scented comment box.
Your know that your discussions are now search features and your posts are prompts, right? Reddit, once the home of anonymous ranting, now a public data lake for AI training with a shiny Alphabet stamp on the API access.
All three hold the power. Reddit, YouTube and Google all get the upsurge in data harvesting, audience segmentation and niche advertising revenue. As I’ve said before, Speak To Your Tribe. Shrink the Mountain. Maintain channel activities and produce content for the exact eyes you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for an exceptional and deeply passionate SEO though leader, Digital project Manager with vast experience of Change Management and team building, coaching and cross collaboration, you need to contact me now.
Google partnered with Reddit in early 2024, which allows Google to use Reddit’s content for AI training.
This week, YouTube, the sibling of Google (both are children of #AlphabetInc we all know) released a very familiar Reddit-like community discussion feature.
For channels with 1,000+ subscribers, YouTube introduced the Community Tab in September 2016 as a beta feature, allowing creators to share text, images, GIFs, live videos, and polls directly with subscribers between uploads.
The subscription threshold has been severed in half by 50%, Thank you YouTube.. or maybe we should get paid for our time and unique content too? You gotta reel in
The YouTube NLP system quietly powering all this behind the scenes is called “Dream Screen” for Shorts generation, and “Aloud” for dubbing. The broader backbone of their content parsing engine rides on Google’s Unified Multimodal Models.
BERT is the OG – MUM is the power-up.
.. and the Sonic Tails AI sibling names PaLM.
YouTube doesn’t use a single branded NLP name for sentiment analysis or parsing community posts. It atomic wedgies Google’s DeepMind-backed language models and BERT-derived pipelines to categorise, interpret, and surface this content across search.
So while there’s no officially public-facing “YouTube NLP system” name for community content yet, the machinery includes:
- BERT for intent understanding
- MUM for multimodal input blending (text, video, image)
- DeepMind’s Flamingo and Gemini family models, likely testing internally
- PaLM for LLM-level summarisation and training – A 540 billion-parameter dense decoder-only transformer-based large language model (LLM) developed by Google AI. Researchers also trained smaller versions of PaLM (with 8 and 62 billion parameters) to test the effects of model scale.
- Aloud for automatic voiceovers and global distribution which was beta tested by Mr Beast on YouTube to swell channel authority. I use the Entity and Topic modelling methods for all SEO and optimisation projects. The link is an overview that I wrote a while ago.
I’ll bet my last slice of cheddar that data flagged YouTube was excluding a potential audience of millions worldwide. In the hip age of AI content, before propaganda will rule (Not too long to wait).
Why exclude a huge amount of content creators when they could engage, draw in niche comment discussions and spend more time on platform? A 24/7 datasets feeding the algorithm and the seeds of future advertising data harvesting.
How Community Posts Influence the Almighty YouTube Algorithm
Let’s stop pretending Community posts are a cute afterthought for influencers with too much time and not enough eyeliner. YouTube’s algorithm, powered by a cocktail of DeepMind brilliance and user obsession, now treats these little engagement nuggets as full-blown signal generators. No, they won’t replace your 12-minute tutorial on GA4 dashboards, but they will absolutely manipulate the machine into liking you more. Which, let’s be honest, is the whole point.
Session Depth: YouTube’s Favourite Drug: The Digital Defibrillator
YouTube’s primary kink is keeping people online longer than they intended to be. Community posts help extend session depth — that delicious metric where someone clicks into your poll about “best keyword tracking tools” and then magically ends up binge-watching your five-video funnel. Every click, comment or post view contributes to session metrics. It’s basically algorithmic foreplay.
Got dead subscribers? Of course you do — it’s YouTube. But guess what? A Community post is like poking them gently with a sharp stick. They see a poll, they click it out of boredom or guilt, and BAM — YouTube decides your channel still deserves air. It’s retention reactivation with zero video editing. Cheaper than therapy, faster than rebranding.
Behavioural Prediction: How YouTube Gets Creepy (In a Useful Way)
YouTube’s AI models hoover up Community post data like it’s the last buffet table in the algorithmic cafeteria. Every like, comment, and poll vote feeds DeepMind’s neural network with glorious behavioural data. That shapes who gets served your next video. You’re literally training the algo to stalk your ideal viewer. Smart, if mildly dystopian.
Strategic Edge for SaaS Founders and SEO Geeks
If you’re launching a shiny new SaaS tool, especially for website owners or the analytically curious, Community posts are your overlooked secret weapon. Here’s how they serve up organic lift with zero ad spend:
- Contextual Visibility: Don’t have a video yet? No problem. Drop a screenshot, teaser, or customer win in a Community post. Instant awareness, zero edit suite needed.
- Search Discovery: Some Community posts (especially polls) are now surfacing in Google Discover and mobile feeds. Yes, your cheeky little poll might outrank a polished landing page.
- Boosted CTR: Use a thumbnail and a one-liner CTA in your Community post when your demo goes live. Early clicks = early love from YouTube’s ranking model. You win.
- Audience Feedback Loops: Polls like “Do you use SEMrush, Ahrefs, or vibes?” let you collect segmentation data without a CRM. That’s high-signal input straight into YouTube’s targeting ecosystem.
In short: If you’re ignoring Community posts, you’re voluntarily leaving free reach, insight, and CTR on the table. Or to put it bluntly — your algorithm game is leaking, and YouTube noticed.
Speculation: Could This Result in Organic Lift?
Yes. Yes it bloody well could — and not in a vague “maybe one day you’ll go viral” sort of way. We’re talking tangible, measurable, algorithmically supported visibility lift during critical launch periods, SaaS rollouts, or that magical moment when you tease your new Chrome extension like it’s the second coming of Clippy.
The YouTube algorithm doesn’t care if your video was shot on a RED camera or an iPhone from 2014. What it’s tuned for is behaviour — high-quality, recurring audience signals that feed its recommendation engine. And guess what? Community posts deliver those signals in spades, without requiring a single second of footage or a polished edit timeline.
The Algorithm Responds to Patterns, Not Perfection
When creators post consistently and elicit engagement — even from static content like polls or image teasers — they build what the system interprets as momentum. That means if you’re clever with your cadence, you can shape a high-frequency pattern of interaction, which in turn boosts your profile’s distribution potential.
We’re no longer in the era where your entire strategy hinged on one perfectly optimised video. We’re now in an era of compound audience signals. One post leads to a click, which leads to a view, which leads to another search — and suddenly you’ve engineered a frictionless micro-funnel that outperforms your paid ads. No “skip ad” button required.
Community Posts Build Trust Without Asking for a View
Community content feels casual, human, and unintrusive. For SaaS brands, this is pure gold. You can use posts to share sneak peeks of your UI updates, dev logs from your GitHub repo, or even a candid GIF from your roadmap standup. These low-stakes assets build narrative equity, which is just a fancy way of saying: people start giving a toss about your brand before they’ve even clicked a video.
Want proof? Some posts — especially polls — now surface in Google Discover and YouTube’s mobile feed, which means your SaaS awareness campaign could land in front of non-subscribers who weren’t even looking for you yet. That’s not a hack — it’s SEO strategy with a side of behavioural psychology.
How to Engineer the Micro-Funnel
Here’s where it gets properly tasty. If you line up your Community post cadence in the run-up to a new product launch or time-sensitive feature drop, you can intentionally create a series of light-touch engagement triggers:
- Post 1: Tease the benefit. “Who needs faster SERP data extraction?” (Image of your dashboard)
- Post 2: Validate the pain point. “How long do you spend cleaning GA4 reports?” (Poll with cheeky answers)
- Post 3: Drop the CTA. “Video demo’s live – see how we clean your SEO reporting in 12 clicks.”
- Result: High CTR, early engagement velocity, and trust that carries into conversion.
Organic Visibility = Compound Gains
Every micro-interaction through the Community tab counts. The algorithm doesn’t care if the user watched a full video or tapped a poll while waiting for their coffee. It counts the session time. It notes their return frequency. And it quietly improves your content’s positioning for the next time they engage. This is how small signals scale.
So yes — if you’re launching a SaaS product, experimenting with thought leadership, or building a content flywheel around SEO, Community posts are the most underutilised SEO weapon in your toolkit. Use them. Own them. And let the algorithm carry your cleverness straight to the homepage of your dream clients.