If search can’t understand you, it won’t show you

Retail visibility isn’t just about ranking on Google anymore. It’s about showing up wherever customers are actually making decisions—across social platforms, search and increasingly, AI-driven tools.

That’s where Rembrandt Flores comes in. He calls himself an “amplification consultant,” helping brands not just get seen, but become the answer customers trust. His work sits at the intersection of culture, commerce and technology, with a focus on building relevance that compounds over time—not just short-term traffic.

As search shifts from keywords to context and from clicks to credibility, many retailers are still playing by outdated rules. Here, Flores breaks down the biggest mistakes he sees, and what it takes to stay visible, competitive and chosen.

—Interview by Marcy Medina, edited by Bianca Prieto

When you meet with a small business owner who is trying to improve their SEO and GEO, what's the first thing you tell them?

I usually start by reframing how they think about SEO and GEO. The first thing I tell them is, “You don’t have a traffic problem, you have a clarity problem.” Most retailers aren’t losing because they’re invisible. They’re losing because search engines—and now AI—don’t clearly understand who it’s for and why it’s better.

If that’s unclear, you won’t rank, you won’t get recommended by AI, and even if you do get traffic, it won’t convert. So before we talk tactics, we get crystal clear on intent plus positioning plus structure.

What are the biggest mistakes retailers make, and how do you help them improve their businesses? 

Treating content like decoration instead of infrastructure. A lot of brands focus on aesthetics—beautiful imagery, polished branding—but their content doesn’t actually answer anything.

They have no FAQs, no comparisons, no use-case driven content and no alignment with what people are actually searching. I help them shift to utility-first content. Every page and post should solve a problem or answer a question.

Also, ignoring search intent. Retailers often write what they want to say instead of what customers are searching for. For example, they say, “premium handcrafted leather sneakers.” But the customer searches for “comfortable sneakers for walking all day.” That’s how you go from competing…to being chosen.

What are three things that retailers can do in the next seven days to improve their chances of getting "seen" by search engines and generative AI agents?

If you think about how discovery is evolving, it’s no longer just “ranking on Google,” it’s about being understood by algorithms and referenced by AI systems. Retailers who win are the ones who structure their content so both search engines and generative AI can easily interpret, trust and surface it.

First, turn your product pages into answer engines. Most product pages are still written like catalogs, not like search assets.

Add FAQ sections using real customer queries (think: “Is this true to size?”, “How does this compare to X?”). Include benefit-driven, keyword-aligned descriptions (not just features). Optimize titles and meta descriptions with high-intent keywords. This helps you rank on traditional search and gives AI models clean, structured answers to pull from.

Next, capture “social search” with short-form content. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are now search engines. Create 10–20 short-form videos answering specific questions. Use searchable captions (e.g., “best white sneakers for summer 2026”). Say the keywords out loud in the video (this matters for indexing). This dramatically increases your chances of being surfaced in both social search and AI-generated recommendations.

Finally, clean up your site structure and indexability. If bots can’t crawl or understand your site, nothing else matters. Fix broken links, duplicate pages and slow load times; ensure all key pages are indexed (Google Search Console check); add structured data (schema markup for products, reviews, FAQs). This is foundational for both Google and AI systems that rely on structured, crawlable data.

What about in the next seven weeks? 

Build a keyword and intent content engine. Move beyond one-off posts and build a system. Map out 50–100 high-intent keywords across your category; create content clusters (blogs, videos, landing pages) around each; continuously update content based on performance. This positions you as an authority, which is exactly what both search engines and AI prioritize.

Invest in creator-led, UGC-driven content at scale. AI and search engines increasingly value real usage signals. Partner with 10–30 creators to produce authentic product content; focus on reviews, comparisons and “in-the-wild” usage; repurpose this content across site, social and product pages. This builds trust signals that influence rankings and AI recommendations.

Become a source, not just a store. Brands need to act like publishers. Launch a blog or resource hub tied to your niche; create “best of,” “how to,” and comparison content; answer category-level questions, not just product-level ones.

This is how you get cited in AI-generated answers–not just listed as a product.

Thanks for reading this week's edition!

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The SKUpe is curated and written by Marcy Medina and edited by Bianca Prieto.