How Joel Miller of The SkyFloor Is Navigating AI, Audience, and the New SEO Reality

I spend a lot of time talking to agency operators about how they’re threading the needle between the old SEO playbook and the new reality of AI Overviews, GEO, and declining organic click-through rates. Most conversations stay surface-level. My conversation with <a href=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelelliottmiller”>Joel Miller</a> of <a href=”https://www.theskyfloor.com/”>The SkyFloor</a> — a digital agency he runs with his identical twin brother — went somewhere different. Joel has been doing this since 2008, and the way he’s thinking about human value, owned audiences, and the practical limits of AI tooling is worth unpacking in full.

🎙️ <a href=”https://the-unscripted-seo-interview-podcast.castos.com/episodes/why-human-judgment-still-scales-joel-miller-on-ai-seo-and-owned-audiences”>Listen to the episode</a>
▶️ <a href=”https://youtu.be/CQHM2Ml6QSc”>Watch on YouTube</a>

<h2>The Pyramid of Value: Why “I Do SEO” Is No Longer Enough</h2>
Joel opens with something I’ve been wrestling with myself in how I position my own work at <a href=”https://seoarcade.com/”>SEO Arcade</a>. He describes The SkyFloor not as a digital marketing agency but as problem solvers — their job is to understand what outcome a client actually needs, then use whatever tools get them there. That framing maps directly onto a pyramid of value I’ve referenced in previous episodes: at the base is executing a specific tactic, the middle tier is saving client time, and the top tier is enabling them to become who or what they want to be.
Joel puts it cleanly: the human ingenuity to genuinely partner with a client and say “we know where you’ve been and where you’re going” is something a computer will never fully replicate. That partnership is the highest-value offering any agency can sell — and it’s the one thing AI can’t commoditize.

<h2>Where AI Genuinely Helps — and Where It Falls Flat</h2>
Joel walked me through a real case study: using a custom GPT for sales call analysis. He spent 30–40 hours listening to incoming lead calls for a client — in full, taking notes by hand. The human listening was non-negotiable: AI can analyze transcripts, but it misses tone, the weight of a pause, and the difference between “that’s great” and “that’s just great.” Once Joel had mapped the problem patterns himself, he fed that framework into a custom GPT connected to CallRail, which then auto-grades incoming calls against those human-defined categories. The human does the judgment work; the AI does the repetitive scoring.
This is the model that actually works: AI executes what humans define. The failure mode — which Joel and I agreed on — is treating LLMs as objective analysis engines. Ask an AI for an answer and you’ve already biased the output. It’s an answer machine, not a thinking partner.

<h2>AI Overviews, Click Collapse, and the Keyword Graveyard</h2>
Joel is seeing what most agency operators are seeing in 2025: impressions up, clicks down ~40%, and an ever-shrinking slice of SERP real estate where organic results actually live. For some keyword sets, the first page is now AI Overview → local pack → sponsored results — and organic never appears at all. This matches what I’ve been covering on <a href=”https://seoarcade.com/the-seo-strategy-hidden-in-plain-sight-why-every-business-should-start-a-podcast-tomorrow/”>the podcast</a> — the traditional search volume number is no longer sufficient. You have to understand what type of SERP you’re competing in.
On the paid side, Joel is seeing keywords that used to deliver reliable Google Ads results simply disappear — the overview content occupies that space. His adaptation: heavier investment in high-intent, near-me query combinations that still reliably trigger standard ad placements.

<h2>Own Your Audience or Lose It to the Next Algorithm Update</h2>
The most durable piece of advice Joel gave applies regardless of what Google does next: build an audience you own. Email lists. Direct subscribers. An audience stored in Google’s algorithm is rented; one stored in your CRM is owned. Joel is actively transitioning clients away from a “put money in, get leads out” mentality toward a longer-term audience-building model.
The catch, as Joel freely admits: building that owned audience requires personality. Someone at the organization has to be out front — LinkedIn personal pages outperform business pages by roughly 8x on reach. That’s a culture shift for many B2B clients, and Joel’s team is doing the quiet work of coaching them into it.

<blockquote>”An audience can’t just be taken away if it’s your audience, no matter what Google does next.” — Joel Miller, The SkyFloor</blockquote>

<h2>The Human Renaissance Is Already Underway</h2>
Joel and I landed on the same conclusion from different angles: the flood of low-effort AI content has made authentic human presence the scarcest commodity online. Gen Alpha is already using “that’s so AI” as a pejorative. The brands and creators who built audiences around real personality and genuine expertise are pulling away from the AI slop layer.
Joel’s tutoring client, <a href=”https://www.theskyfloor.com/work/”>Academic Approach</a>, is a live example. Competitors are launching AI tutoring subscriptions. Joel’s advice: don’t chase that model. Their value is in the high-touch, personalized service that understands a specific student’s struggles over time — an AI tutor can deliver content, but it can’t deliver that. The differentiation is the human.
Even as AI levels the production playing field — Claude Code one-shotting apps, Sora generating video — the question that remains constant is: why does anyone care? Marketing still has to answer that. Audiences still form around people and ideas, not prompts. That’s the enduring business.

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🎙️ Listen to the full conversation: <a href=”https://the-unscripted-seo-interview-podcast.castos.com/episodes/why-human-judgment-still-scales-joel-miller-on-ai-seo-and-owned-audiences”>Unscripted SEO Podcast — Joel Miller Episode</a>
▶️ Watch on YouTube: <a href=”https://youtu.be/CQHM2Ml6QSc”>youtu.be/CQHM2Ml6QSc</a>
Find Joel at <a href=”https://www.theskyfloor.com/”>theskyfloor.com</a>, read his <a href=”https://www.theskyfloor.com/ideas/”>blog</a>, and follow him on <a href=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelelliottmiller”>LinkedIn</a>. Subscribe to the <a href=”https://unscriptedseo.com/”>Unscripted SEO Podcast</a> wherever you listen.