How To Build Category Authority In AI Search

Welcome To The AI Search Era

0:00Howdy, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing or the best SEO podcast. We're best SEO on all the channels. We've been talking about SEO for well, over 17 years. It continues to change. There's a lot of turns, there's a lot of twists. And now we're in the new era of AI search. And so there's it's really fascinating, actually. If you if you've been in this industry, things have changed. Not for like for so long, it was pretty standard. And now it's changing at such a pace that um there's there's new tools, there's new ways of looking at things, there's new tests that are happening that that people are using. And um it's a a new era of discovery. Um, and and and really bringing on people and tech enabled firms and and agencies to talk about what they're doing and how they're approaching it. Uh and uh so today I wanted to bring on uh Andrew with Skyward, who's like a tech enabled firm, had roots as an agency. They're kind of moving up the value chain, they've helped started to develop like what we're doing, um, rating systems, looking at things a different way. Uh, there's a lot of tools kind of out there. And so wanted to bring him on and share his unique perspective on how he's tackling this new era of AI search. So welcome to the show, Andrew.

1:25Thank you, Matt. Appreciate it. Happy to be here.

1:28Awesome. Well, why don't you just kind of give us a little bit of a history lesson of kind of where you came from and then kind of what's going on to set the table for some of the things you're seeing?

Skyward’s Hybrid Agency Plus AI Model

1:37Yeah, we'd be happy to. Thanks again for having me. Uh, a little background, I've spent my entire career in digital marketing, uh, a little over eight years at iProspect on the search marketing side, a couple years in the paid social technology space, and now a little over 13 years at Skyward, the last six uh as CEO. Um, when I get asked about Skyward, because we've we've taken on a few different forms over uh over my time, but uh I would say where traditional agencies lack technology and AI first platforms lack human depth, Skyward is really that enterprise content marketing agency that leverages a technology, a patented AI platform that delivers both of those things. And the question we're helping clients answer is really when someone is researching their category, their space, can those people understand what makes them valuable? Um, you know, who what their solution actually solves and why somebody should choose you? And we've worked with brands like IBM, GE Healthcare, MasterCard, um, you know, Fortune 500 enterprise brands for going on 15 years, and they lean on us to help plan, produce, and activate authoritative content at scale.

2:55Great. I thought that was a great commercial for everybody. So go check out Skyward. Um uh Andrew, I'd love to kind of

Enterprise Pain Points In AI Search

3:03dig into it. Okay, so like what were we doing for Visa? What were we doing for these big brands? Like, let's let's dig into like actually what are the what are the issues that they're dealing with and why are they reaching out looking for a solution? Uh trying to kind of understand what's going on behind the hood because a lot of people are looking at this space going, hey, I don't I don't know where to turn, I don't know what to do. Things have changed. Old SEO from four years ago, even doesn't work the way it used to. There's now AI um, you know, agents that are or or chatbots that you're communicating with that are finding the answer. So, like, can we let's dig, let's pull the layer back and and go, okay, what are these conversations that are having? What where where are the pain points of these larger brands?

3:53Yeah, I don't even know where to start with that question, but I'll I'll just pick. Um, because I think, meaning there's not one or ten. I think there's lots of challenges and problems that brands are facing and marketers are facing, right? Just to rattle off a few and we can talk about the whys and the what's. I think one, everybody's chasing AI search. What does that mean? Um, it means they know that folks are doing their research uh in these in these LOMs and in these chats, and it's not as straightforward as traditional SEO. You have content in your site, it gets indexed, you can optimize for it, people find you. I mean, there are a lot of similarities, but there's a lot of differences, as as I know you know. Um the the challenge is if you, you know, with SEO, if you're putting out content, putting it in your site, that's what is indexed, that's what you become known for. But with AI, it's so different because it's not just the content that you're creating to talk about who you are. If you have legacy content sitting on your site that represents a different era, it's gonna hurt you because it's not the LMs aren't delineating old content, new content. They're looking at the content around you to describe who you are. So it's really important, and one of the things that we talk a lot about is you know, auditing content before you even start talking about creating anything net new, because that can have as big of an impact. But listen, I think marketers are faced with trying to do more with less. They're being told they have to lean in on AI, but they don't know where to start. They are probably taking calls and emails every day from some of these AI sort of search discovery tools. What was an SEO technology is now a GEO technology. They're being presented with dashboards that you know talk about where they're being cited, and they just they're overwhelmed, they don't know where to start. Um, so we're we're helping brands find the right starting point. Um, and you know, we believe that that starts with thinking about it from a category perspective.

Audit Legacy Content Before New Work

5:55If you are um ADP, are you trying to own the payroll systems? Are you trying to own the HR um sort of information systems? Are you appealing to a CHRO? Are you appealing to um HR leaders? So it it really matters to sort of start there and think about where content should be created. And honestly, Matt, you're a you're you have to appeal to two masters. And I think that's the interesting thing, right? You have to win uh or uh win over the AI um and and LLMs and what's being indexed and used in their uh in their learnings, but you also still have to create for the human. Because if you do one and not the other, there's no point. If you just appeal to the AI and you're cited, but you're not recommended, or you're cited, and then somebody comes to your site later and they're not reinforced, like they don't have the same messaging, that's not gonna actually produce any sort of outcome. And if you're only trying to appeal to the human without any aspect of thinking about AI, how are you ever gonna be found? And so it's there's a lot of challenges right now, and it's really, really overwhelming. And at the same exact time, I think marketers are being pushed by their leaders to do it with a lot less budget. And so it the budget conflates using more AI, but they don't know where to start. And so I think you see a lot of different tactics being used.

7:24So just to break down some of what you're talking about, I think that categorization, categorization has been something that uh I've seen a lot when it was traditional SEO, you could start to see the words uh like top 100 of what you were getting indexed for. And you could see really quickly that the search engines didn't understand what your site was about. Like they didn't understand the keyword theme. Like if you're trying to optimize for certain keywords or certain things are popping, you would see sites and you'd you you would be able to see, okay, this is not being categorized correctly. Whether, you know, like I've seen it on uh internet marketing service versus internet marketing agency, right? Like, are are you a platform or are you an agency? Those are two different searches when it fans out that you're gonna hit. And and I think that that's kind of evolved into with AI's, uh, like entity SEO and and and understanding um the the strength of of the authority that you're broadcasting. And what I've seen when I'm talking to uh marketing

Category Focus And Two Masters Problem

8:33leaders is really the discussion around you can't own everything. Like a lot of times we're talking to stakeholders, they want to own every category all at once. And it's like you're local or you're regional or you're national, but you you you can't use all your authority in that same way. So you have to figure out what you can win, where do you really want to be, where do you want to show up? And again, I've I've been talking about it, it's really probabilistic. Like, where do you want to show up most often? But but but you you got to use these tools, which you know, I always looked at all these different tools as like triangulation tools because they're all coming up with their own kind of uh you know, uh authority and ranking and ma score, and like you're you're looking at these and and you're you're just using them as an estimate. And I I feel like these AI tools that are popping up uh all over the place are kind of the same thing. They run the prompt every day and they tell you how often you showed up. And then now you got listicles. There, there's a lot of different ways to to tackle this, but you're you're trying to kind of guide them in the right direction, but but again, it's almost swinging back to just good branding, good marketing, like going back to the basics and making sure that that that the data integrity, um, the data hygiene is there. I mean, that's that's what I'm seeing happening in the space. I mean, are you are you seeing something different?

From Being Cited To Being Chosen

10:00No, I think I I think a lot of similarities. Um, I was I was thinking of an example as you were talking, right? Like in also drawing on the differences between traditional SEO and kind of the state of the state these days with with AI and you know folks that are in Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini daily. You know, if I was searching for a solution 10 years ago in a Google search box and then presented with you know the blue links and any one marketer, the content that's being surfaced to me as the user is always it was always content that the brand created and owned, because it was what was indexed and then presented back in the search results. But the the vast difference today is that all of that content is being meshed together and then reformatted back to somebody who's prompting in the best way to respond to their prompt, meaning the content is a mixture of it, could be your content, your message, what you represent, as well as your competitors. And that's posing to be like really, really problematic because if you're really good at educating folks around, and I have a real example, and it happens to be in the banking space and around HELOCs, where this particular bank is really, really good with thoughtful content on their site around HELOCs and prompting around how to identify best HELOC, like they were cited like crazy.

11:30Well, cited, cited and influenced are different, right?

11:33Totally, totally. So what ended up happening is um you know, you could see in the in the results that ultimately, if you're in the research phase, they're being cited. But when you start to drill down and get closer to decision making, they're basically setting up their competitor to swoop in and and and get that customer. And that's problematic, right? So how how do you advise that bank? How do I, in this case, advise that bank to flip the script, right? Like, I don't want to create content to be cited or optimized to be cited. I want to create content and optimize to be recommended. And to your point, you brought up the word influence. You do that by bringing in uh truly authentic and authoritative lived experience expertise that lives with the brand. And it's not just the same best rate for a HELOC, best solutions for a HELOC, what you should consider when doing. I mean, these are SEO 15, 20 years ago, sort of uh, you know, the 101s, right? You need to put on uh you know original research, you need to offer value beyond what everybody else is doing so that you're cited, but also recommended. Um, and we've broken that down and have some you know thoughts behind how to do that at scale.

Why AI Content Farms Get Crushed

12:52Yeah, I mean, the the last there was just another uh update, like the like the spam update in August was just uh a lot of people are spinning up AI content or content farms and they're not offering any real value to the market. And you know, now you got the watermarking, which everybody's worried about. I I'm seeing sites that are just content factory sites get taken down left and right. So if you're not offering anything of value to the marketplace and you're not a legitimate, like I mean, one of the things you always got to look for when you're looking at these sites is like, does it have a location? Right? Like, like, is there a contact person? Is there anybody behind this faceless site that is an expert? And then they're the AI is tracking back like authorship. Google's kind of bringing back authorship, like who's saying it, who's supporting who's saying it, who's verifying it, and and they're they're vetting it a lot more closely, where the search engines will just like agree to it, and the AIs with the fan out now is is going, okay, where where is there agreement across the internet, not just on this site or on your own site, like you have to have third-party validation and you have to have like consensus into what's happening, and and that's becoming such such a huge deal.

Using AI For Planning Not Writing

14:17A hundred percent we for all the reasons you just said, uh, we do not create content with AI. We use AI for planning, we use uh AI for ideation, we can lean on AI to help with editing, we can lean on AI to all the aspects around it, but we create with humans. Um, and we believe that's really, really important. And we've given them better technology and AI to use to make their job easier, more efficient, but also to go deeper. Meaning, I can review content through our platform and it can identify where wow, if you had a quote or a testimonial or a data point that you could associate with this paragraph, it would make it that much stronger, that much more unique, that much more likely to be cited. Like that's a great use of AI versus AI, write me a piece that talks about the XYZ. We we won't do it. Um, so really we approach it by like thinking about, you know, how can we help you as a brand be the source that your buyers trust? AI system site, remember and recommend.

15:25Um, and we think about it in a very sort of yeah, and that that's where I kind of want to take the to the conversation.

Category Authority Index Explained

15:33I'm gonna share screen of your site, uh, and we can talk through. I thought it was interesting, the the category authority index. Like this is this is something I think like indexes are where I'm seeing things go. So I would love for you to kind of explain the thought process behind the uh presence and share of model citation yield, uh entity strength, narrative assessment. Guys, if you're listening to this, uh go check out Best SEO podcast on YouTube. Um, you know, we're gonna be doing a lot more stuff there. Uh, but but I want to go into this because I'm sharing screen here. I would love for you to kind of talk about each step, and then we can get down in here into kind of your your different uh quadrants. I think it was it was kind of quite fascinating.

16:27Yeah. So the CAI is is really trying to assess you overall. And uh I'll be careful here because all these acronyms, right? You always run the risk of uh the introducing new vocabulary, but there's this the the category authority index, um, which basically helps you understand where your brand fits from a couple different perspectives. One, how often you know is it showing up, which is kind of that presence and share of model. Um the citation yield, which is the more important piece, right? So when you are mentioned, um, how often is it linking back? How often is it actually driving um, you know, somebody? How often is it identifying you as the source?

17:09So pro like uh perplexity is a really good way when you're doing research to look for citation yield. They're they're one of the best of like showing a lot of different links because Chat GBT doesn't show as many uh links when you're looking at it, right? And is that like so what's what's getting pulled into your kind of citation yield? Like, talk about the presence and share a model, like kind of what what's underneath the hood there of how you're coming up with that number, and then kind of go into the citation yield of how you're building that. I was just trying to kind of break it down a little bit more.

17:44Yeah, and I mean us the the score is is a score, right? It's not meant to be, oh my goodness, we go from this score to that score. It's it's meant to represent uh a way for you to be able to progress the brand narrative and the content that you're creating. Um, you know, we we look at it from uh, and there's a category authority ladder that we should talk

The Quality Gate Ten Point Standard

18:06about as well. I think another one we haven't thrown in there yet. Um, but the ladder is basically a roadmap. It's a it's a six-step framework, and it's probably further down on the page. It's a six-step framework mapping the path from you know, invisible participant to a brand that you know is never cited to being the category authority leader, right? It's the the brand that AI uses to define the industry. So it sort of acts as the roadmap. The the index, which you were asking me about, is really the I would call it the mathematical analysis of your content showing how often AI tools cite the brand in the most critical categories to your brand with specific instructions to improve your position, meaning our technology will surface. I was kind of saying it before, um, specific instructions of how to improve the position, of incorporating more uh lived experience, more you know, first-party data, more quotes, more um, you know, testimonials. So it's actually study on that.

19:07Yeah, there was a big study on that that showed that when you're providing quotes, when you're providing statistics, uh you tend to rank better, right?

19:17Exactly. Well, it's also offering unique value that is just not out there, more of the same, AI generated, or somebody trying to create the next article to show up on a particular prompt. Um I I get more excited, you know. I think the category authority system that we've created is great. I get the most excited around the category authority standard, which is very specific to an individual asset. I like it because I refer to it as the quality gate or the quality firewall. Um, it's giving anybody that's in our platform, whether they're an editor or a content creator, um, a 10-point automated checklist. Uh, it ensures that every single piece of content contains the unique expert insights, data, structure, and it requires you to ensure these things are there before content progresses through the workflow. Um and it holds everybody accountable so that you're not just producing content for the sake of content's sake. And I know you've seen it, I've seen it in my in my days and being an SEO, and it was a volume game. We are not in that space anymore. This is not a volume game. Um, and it's not just as simple as saying quality over quantity either. This is about truly surfacing the expertise that is buried behind a lot of these brands. Um, as a content marketer, it's a struggle. Um, the folks that hold the insights and the information are not necessarily, it's not their full-time job. So they are they are busy, they are reluctant. Our technology helps extract that a lot, a lot better, a lot faster. And what you're looking at is some of these um archetypes, it helps give brands an understanding of you know where they fall currently in an effort for us to get to work, create the right content, optimize, measure, and show progress over time, um, and make it real for marketing leaders so that it's not just a here's a data dump of you know prompts that people are using. Let's go create content around it and let's check a month later to see if you're now showing up on the prompts. Okay. It's a very piecemeal approach.

21:30So, what I'm taking away from this is the current everybody's putting together all these prompts, right? Here are the 50 prompts or the hundred prompts that you know, fan out that you could be ranking for long tail keywords, and like here's how you're doing in those prompts. Your your approach is more of like buckets, right? Of like, here's kind of in general how how you're doing based on the aggregate. Of uh a certain points of where you kind of fall on the quand and we're trying to shift you again, probabilistic versus deterministic. Like, okay, we're gonna try to move you into the next quadrant in general to start kind of checking some of these boxes. How we're gonna do that is we have this 10-point system uh when we're analyzing content to make sure that these things are included, to make sure that like we're tripping as many gates as we can, so

Personalization Breaks Old Ranking Metrics

22:31that AI is gonna really consider you because it's looking for certain things based on the data that's making a determination of authority.

22:39Is that that's right? Yeah, uh, it's totally accurate. And on top of that, what you're doing along the way is you're also appealing to people because turns out people want that unique lived experience value as well as what the LLMs are looking for.

22:55Yeah, no, I I see there being a divergence for sure of uh speaking to robots or AI and speaking to humans and optimizing for both. And I'm even starting to see kind of this divergent like at the beginning of it, of uh agentic e-commerce where you know you're making all your decision inside the uh your your your AI of choice, and then it you're hooking in credit cards and connectors and all this sort of thing, and then it's buying with tokens or whatever, it's buying it, and and a lot of people I'm seeing okay, some people are going and looking at it, some people are starting to like make purchases, and that's I I think Google, uh, at the end of like when they were doing the the launch and the kind of the shift towards YouTube, they they were talking about the collapsing of of the agentic economy or the e-commerce inside search. So it's funny, it's like Google's like at a very good multiple right now, comparatively historically, because people think that advertising is gonna collapse. But it's interesting because I think Google's gonna eat some of the market share of Amazon is like you're making the purchases like in in the search or or in the in the chat bot. You know, I I don't know. I I don't know if you're seeing any of those.

24:19The question is like how much of that in the chat bot is just pointing back to Amazon, anyways.

24:24Sure, sure, sure. But and and that perplexity with the affiliate marketing links, which I thought was was really a fascinating business model. But I I like this for humans to understand buckets or categories versus trying to synthesize all these different search terms. And and I I think that what I'm hearing in the conversations I'm having with clients and and stakeholders is when I did this search, right? And and we you you kind of hit on it is personalization, is like when I when I did this search, I got something different. And then if you had 10 different people at the company do the search, they all got something different based upon the prompts that they had, based upon their history, based on the search. So when you're looking at these prompts that are are running kind of cold, like even how accurate is that? I I think that we haven't found good metrics yet.

25:24We saw it with SEO from like a local perspective, right? Like you and I would see different results because I'm in the Boston area and you're not in the Boston area, and people started to optimize for local search. And God, back then it seemed like that was an impossible task. Well, fast forward to today, right? Prompting uh and my prompt, if you and I use the exact same prompt, just based off of right our history and how it's been personalized, it's gotten to know us. I mean, it's a fascinating exercise to just jump into whatever you're using the most. Um, I happen to bounce between Gemini and chat and uh the most, uh maybe a little bit of Claude, asking it what it knows about me, unprompted. Like what have I not told it directly, but it has inferred? It's kind of scary. Um, and the fact that you and I are using the same prompt, but just based off our history, it's just it's it's not how I would advise a Fortune 500 brand to go and start creating content based off of these synthetic prompts that they're, you know, these dashboards are reporting. So it's it's a really interesting time, I will say that. And uh, you know, the the way that buyers have adapted to AI in such short time. Um, I think there's a lot of enterprise that are struggling to keep up with that pace.

26:43Absolutely.

The Six Rungs Of Category Authority

26:44I want to jump into for everyone listening and following along. Let me share my screen again. Uh, I found your category authority ladder. Uh, I would love to have you kind of go through these different steps. So, people I'm trying to help people that are trying to wrap their mind around the new world of AI and how to optimize for it, give them some practical steps that they they can do today. I mean, I I think uh a lot before some of these tools really started to launch, and and we we ended up launching a tool uh as well, and they're they're they're off um and and and off to the races, whatever you want to call it. But essentially, um you were doing a lot of stuff cold searching, like and you can find a lot of stuff cold searching. And um what are the things that when people because because AI people are handing all the decision making over to AI, and if they don't put enough data in, they don't have enough APIs and they don't prompt it clear enough, there's gonna be blind spots and there's gonna be gaps. And so I I I still feel right now there's there's so much that can be done manually, and and people need to have a a really good mental model or a really good framework to understand how to approach this. And checklists, I think, are fantastic. Um, I would love to kind of you to go through this the category authority ladder here and kind of talk about what you put together in these different buckets and how people should should think about it.

28:27Yeah, I'm happy to. And there's also a pretty in-depth uh sort of uh uh blueprint, if you will, on our on our site that I can point out to you later that you could include here. But, anyways, um the the category authority ladder really represents um a framework for establishing distinctive topical authority that AI engine site, buyers trust, competitors can't replicate easily. Um and what you're looking at is again, sort of the stepped approach, starting with the basics. Um, the basics you can really think of as foundational definitions, core concepts, explainers, right? It's it's your brand's content that just gives AI systems a basic understanding of what you believe and sort of basic domain expertise. Definition pages, glossaries. Um I think you use the word listicles, haven't heard that in a little while. Um, short video explainers of what the brand is, basics. Conversation, sort of shifting to number two, is really that problem first product agnostic guidance that's mapped to specific buyer triggers. Um, so you can think of this more like you know, comparison pages, um appearances on like industry-specific podcasts, what to do when type of guides. So it's it's getting into sort of problem solving, um, but it's product at product agnostic. The the third here, the the solution, um, is really you know decision-making content that connects your products to the scenarios that were established in the previous step, the conversation. Um, so you know, your brand proves how it's purpose-built for specific problems. So use space use case-specific guides. Um the conversation was comparison pages. Now, this is product comparison tables, um, ROI calculations. If we go back to my HELOC example a little while ago, it could be like a HELOC calculator. Um, so it's starting to take it a bit further with the depth and solve for a particular user. I think it gets interesting at step four. This is where you start to bring in, you know, SME perspectives, um, original perspectives from named experts that have credibility, that have, you know, some knownness to them. Um, you know, and you look at this, this is more like interviews, um, POV-led video posts, podcasts, bylined articles, bringing the brand's expertise and new insights into the content. Um, very referenceable, quotable, um, and more likely to be cited. Um extracting SME, you know, understanding expertise, it's it's hard. Like I said, we leverage technology to do it at scale, but it's it's it's a very hard aspect of bringing that into content. Um the fifth, the fifth layer, the fifth level, the fifth rung of the ladder um is really the evidence, right? So this is the the data proof that de-risks the decision. So HELOC example, how can I be confident that this particular bank is the right bank to go with um to do the HELOC? What data supports that? I want to see case studies, um, I want to see customer stories, customer results. I want to know other folks that have moved forward with this particular bank and if there's a video testimonial of what that process looked like and how they were able to access resources. Um, so it's consistent quantified results across use cases, um, real evidence. And then uh lastly, here, six is sort of signature stories, um, proprietary research frameworks that define how the category thinks. So ironically, my reference, the fact that I have a blueprint category authority ladder PDF that folks could download is, you know, it's our version of this. Um, it includes proprietary research that defines how folks should be thinking about category authority. Um, we want to be known as the brand that is helping brands establish category authority. So we we put effort into the research and brought the data into the piece. So think of it as like proprietary benchmark, um, a proprietary index, um, industry reports, um, you know, proprietary frameworks that help brands sort of bring trends or new concepts uh to the market.

33:19Yeah, no, I think that that's great.

Barnacle SEO And Proprietary Frameworks

33:22I I I do think that LLMs are like there is a term, uh, I don't know if you've heard it before, barnacle. Have you heard of like barnacle SEO? Uh uh essentially, um, you know, this the strategy uh I'm seeing that is effective right now is is finding something that that is uniquely yours to kind of latch on to and to build around and to kind of get some footing in in what you're doing. And you know, I think that brand names, um, proprietary research, um, you know, if you have you have your own frameworks, um, all those sort of things. Like we did we did that with LOM visibility, um, you know, we we did that around digital information governance, like we like there are things that are unique to us that are how our viewpoint is of what the market is doing from from our standpoint, right? Like from our standpoint, uh how to handle it. And I think that packaging those things in a way that um people can understand them or people that can follow them is fantastic. I think that um this gives people a good roadmap to be able to make decisions on how they need to think about it and also how they can upgrade what their existing content is, like going back kind of full circle, and we're kind of coming uh close to the end here, uh, is you you have to you have to start with evaluating who you are as an entity today. And you know, uh we purchased a brand that was like 15 years old, and for SEO purposes over those 15 years, they did a blog post every day for like four years. Okay. Now it was the 300-word posts. Um, there was an image to it. It it was fantastic. Um, but we ought to evaluate the this website of thin content. Is it holding down the site? Is it holding down the brand and where where is the brand being and analyzing what we can build on? What what is just outdated? What do we have to let go of? What can we update? Right. And there are we've done people doing podcasts for forever, and it's funny. We have podcasts like the best of 2020 or best of 2021. Don't get any views anymore, right? Like, people are like, what's new, what's current? We need to do a better job of going and updating, okay, this is where it was, this is where it is now, yeah, and and provide that that that bridge. And so kind of going back to um your your existing content, getting it cleaned up, and then figuring out, okay, I a lot of this is reverse engineering what other people are doing, but to your point, also you have to look at what is being said out there and do you agree with it? And if you don't agree with it, share why you don't agree with it and provide references and support and proprietary data to say, because that's what I'm seeing right now. That there's there's uh there's not a lot of agreement right now based on different data sets of what's working and what's not working, and what works in this category versus this category. And I I think that a lot of it is uh well, geospecific, right? Category specific. You have a three-dimensional vector of all these kind of associations of words and categories and um different companies and then different geographic areas, and and you're having to measure all this stuff so you you get this very personalized answer, even the past history. So there's just so much that goes into it. And even with your your HEWOK example, I I would love for you to kind of flush that last part out. Is it sounds like they were optimizing for top of the funnel and they were getting a lot of maybe uh reference or or brand recognition at in the top of that search funnel, but maybe the messy middle or or even down at the conversions, where was the step that they were missing that they were losing the conversions to the competitor? And how did y'all address that?

37:47Yeah, and to be clear, it's not what they were doing, it's what they had done. And I think this represents where a lot of brands are. I mean, we we suffer from it too. We've fixed a lot of it because we got to eat our own dog food, but it was because they had created a lot of top of funnel at some point, and that's the content that is still ranking well and doing well, and that's what's now being looked at by the LLMs, and that's what they're being associated with, which is why it's so important for you to a brand to audit what's there before they even worry about creating net new because it has an incredible impact.

ROC Method Retire Optimize Create

38:23Um, we we tend to talk about it from a, and I am I promise I'm coming back to your HELOC question more specifically, but I want to just plug the the way that we think about it is from a uh a rock perspective, cute acronym, ROC, right? And it's a retire, optimize, create. Um, so prune legacy content that dilutes your authority or sends conflicting signals to AI models. Optimize, strengthen your core assets with original insights, content that you know could be gated today, convert relevant gated content into formats that AI can read. People are still hanging on to their gated content because that's what drives leads. Great, hang on to it to drive the leads, but there's no way for people to get to it because it's not being surfaced in AI because it can't interact with it. And you know, yeah, that's without without people coming to it, there's no point in having it. And then the the C being create, um, build authoritative content designed to fill the gaps that AI consensus, you know, will drive AI consensus and establish you as a category leader. So for your for your HELOC example, I think there was a lot of content focused around probably more general HELOC than specific. So it was more like what is a HELOC or a glossary of terms versus, you know, why I'm just I'm trying to think of a specific one, why rate obsession leads to bad HELOC decisions, people that are shopping truly for the best HELOC, like getting the bank to drill into specific scenarios that have come up with real customers. Um, and not just tell it in their voice, but bring those customers to the table and tell their stories, have them tell their stories. Um, you know, that the patterns behind 20,000 smart home uh uh equity decisions, um, you know, getting more specific and bringing in original research and case studies, none of that had been happening, was never the focus, but given the way that they can now establish the the sort of authority here, it's like bring it down a bit.

40:35Yeah, I I think the internet has matured. Uh, visitors and searchers and you know, prospects have matured, how they interact. These technologies and search systems and AI systems are maturing. Um, and the directory or the the the the the uh vocabulary, the glossary strategies are are very like 101, right? And somebody already owns that, right? Somebody very authoritative probably already owns that. You creating another glossary is not gonna help you get views, get cited, or convert. You gotta dig down and you gotta you gotta say, okay, my my prospect is more educated. So, how do I speak to that educated prospect in a way that helps them make the decision to buy? And what can I offer to the marketplace of that that expert level content to be able to uh help them make a better decision because they're they already know what a HELOC is, they're searching for HELOC. And unless you're kind of like you've been known for HELOCs and and everybody's gonna you know canicalize to you as like, okay, what is a HELOC? Then that that content's not not very helpful. Um, and and from what I've seen on on those strategies, uh, if you're looking at analytics, they're not even getting any views, right? Like, and and if they are getting any views, it it might be brand recognition uh at the very top of the funnel, but but you're not getting people to your site and you're not getting people to convert. And so, you know, you might be getting brand awareness. And if that's your strategy, okay, but but put it into that category and optimize for the full funnel.

42:21Yep. Well said.

42:24Well, thank you. Thank you. So, Andrew, we're kind of wrapping up. I I was curious if there's anything else. I know we covered a lot, we talked about a lot of different um uh acronyms, uh, which I think is great. Uh, I like the ROC acronym. Um, is there anything else in this discussion that you feel like is a gap that we want to make sure that that we fill when someone's listening to this, they kind of understand uh where we've taken them on this journey today.

42:52Yeah. First of all, I feel like we could talk for two more hours. I'm sure you're I'm sure your listeners don't want another two hours of this content, but uh could

Final Takeaways And Where To Follow

43:00certainly talk for two more hours. I would just say from where we started the conversation to where we've just finished talking, um, I would just say, listen, citations are useful. I would encourage marketers to keep asking the next question, right? When a buyer explains what they need, albeit in a prompt, does the available evidence give them a good reason to choose your brand? Right? AKA, it's not generic expertise. It is truly something that your brand stands for, that you have become known for, that you're offering uniquely and and add as value. So getting folks to think past just some of these dashboards and metrics being thrown out and the citation references and really ask that question. Um I would want to conclude our discussion.

43:55That's that's a good, like I wouldn't say it's an unknown secret of internet marketing, but I think you know, bringing it back to the the basics where where it's tangible and that you can grab it, I think simplification in today's age is what people are looking for, because you can really quickly get ahead of people and their heads spinning and they they they zone it out. You gotta you break down that complexity to to something simple, explain that. And also when when you're optimizing or you're building a strategy, keeping it simple, I think really uh uh is is you you don't want to confuse the LOMs, like even when you're doing tagging, right, or on these different platforms, when you throw out too many hashtags, it's like, what do you want me to optimize for? I don't understand. Like, just give me the basic category and AI can kind of figure out the rest. And and it's getting really good at optimizing and and showing the content to the right kind of people if you hand it to them in a simple format where they understand it.

44:56At the risk of ending with some sort of cliche. I I wish the word shortcut was a four-letter word because it it is, and I think you know, based off what you just said, it it's just it's marketers should not look for shortcuts. There's there's no good shortcuts uh you know in the mix right now. They really have to put a thoughtful approach behind the brand they are trying to represent.

45:18Um yeah, so totally agree. So, Andrew, you you have a lot of fascinating thoughts and different frameworks that are out there. I mean, how do people follow you? How do people get in touch with you uh if they want to know more?

45:31Yeah. Um, so for starters, there's a lot of great information on our website, skyward.com. Um, you could follow me on LinkedIn. I I definitely post my fair share and and do some um article contributions uh on LinkedIn directly. We have a newsletter on LinkedIn that folks can subscribe to. Um, so I would say any any one of those three are good ways to sort of follow the brand and follow what I'm what I'm up to.

46:00Good.

46:00We'll get we'll get some of those links in the show notes. Um everybody, if you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet, um, keep listening to this podcast for cutting edge strategies, tips, no more tricks. There's no more tricks anymore, guys. You gotta you gotta put in the work to do it the long way. But keep listening to this podcast. Please subscribe. Please leave us a comment, please leave us a review um on whatever platform you listen on. Thank you so much for staying tuned. Uh until next time, this is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.