The core theme is the urgent need for businesses to adapt their strategies for AI-driven search engines, as traditional SEO is becoming less effective, and visibility in AI overviews and Large Language Models (LLMs) is crucial for future success.
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This is a can't miss episode. Today we
are breaking down the AI search engine
optimization playbook. Everything you
need to do to get visibility and
awareness and traffic from services like
Chat GPT. We've got an amazing SEO
expert Asia joining us today and we're
going to break down the playbook. We got
some amazing data to share with you all
and we're going to give you the
step-by-step approach at the very end.
So you want to watch this whole show.
Okay. So you are busy doing SEO. It's
where I started my career. It's where
Kip and Asia has spent a lot of time. We
used to get a ton of traffic from Google
search the blue links and all of that
traffic is disappearing into the AI
ether. It is appearing. It is
disappearing into AI search. And what we
are going to go through today is how to
do AI search optimization. That really
is the new thing you have to focus on if
you want to get visibility for your
brand. But the thing is it's so new it's
really hard to understand like what is
the playbooks? What should I do? How do
I make sure that my brand my product
appears in AI search? We're here to give
you the full playbook for AI search
optimization. We are lucky to be joined
by Asia Frost works at HubSpot one of
the best minds on this topic. Asia
welcome to the show. I wanted to kick
off with this. Uh, I was actually
looking at the growth in AI companies in
general, just how quickly they are
growing revenue. And I thought this was
a pretty amazing chart just to kind of
help people understand what's happening
because for the average business
sometimes I hear I hear like two types
of stories. I hear, wow, this is really
starting to impact us. We don't know
what we're we should do. We have decline
in organic search traffic. What do I do?
Do I do SEO? Do I optimize for Google
AIO views? Do I optimize for LLMs? And
then you have other businesses who say,
"No, I don't believe this. This is not
this is going to take forever to
actually impact us. It's going to happen
over a long, very long period of time."
And what this chart shows here is the
time to reach 1 billion users. Chat GBT
took two and a half years. Google took
13 years. So Chat GBT did it 10 years
earlier. And so it feels like this is
telling us that users are voting with
their thumbs and fingers and actually
going to actually type all of their
deepest darkest thoughts into chat
versus Google. Yeah, I I think that's
right. The more and more that I talk to
our customers, the more and more I'm
just eavesdropping in on people on the
street, I'm hearing them say, "I am
going to chat GBT." And my next question
is always, "And how much are you using
Google?" and they pause and they say,
you know, I'm using it a lot less. This
is the other one I really caught my
attention, which is the what I'm showing
here is a chart that shows the estimated
LLM versus organic search value. Like if
you had told people in 2025, not not
even 2025, I remember when we did the
first show, like I think around this in
2023 and and we were talking about the
fact that this is going to really
disrupt Google because it's a much
better experience. So even if you pull
this chart back to 2023,
how quickly traditional search has
become unbundled into these AI chat
LLMs, it's actually one of the wildest
disruptions that I can ever remember.
It's happened incredibly quickly,
probably more quickly than we had anticipated.
anticipated.
The other really interesting thing about
this chart that you're showing is the
total LLM value, which we can see is
more than just the traffic that's being
attributed to LLMs. In other words,
someone coming from an LLM is worth more
to us than someone coming from
traditional search. And why do we think
that is? It's because someone is
completing their entire buyer's journey
in AI search. They're going from I have
a problem to this is the solution very
quickly. And because people feel like
these LLMs are giving them very
objective, unbiased results, I think
they're also trusting those answers a
lot more than the answers than they
would have found on say Google. I think
that's right. And I think if you're
watching this show today and it means
you're pretty in the know and you kind
of have a sense of what's going on, but
you're probably working with a lot of
people who don't have this level of
context and you're trying to get them on
board. And the thing I would urge you to
kind of the the most simple explanation
is like Google and those 10 blue links
that was an answer engine. And if you
were a company, you could create some
articles that provide some answers and
get some traffic for it. LLMs and AI
overviews and all the ways AI is
changing search. That's an action
engine. People can go and take very
specific action. They can buy, they can
research, they can take the next step of
the problem they're trying to solve in a
much more actionable way and you have to
that's one more valuable to the in
business but also takes a very different
approach which we're going to talk about
in this show of what you need to do
differently. But that's like the
simplest heristic that I can provide if
you were just like talking to your CEO
to try to explain what is happening. But
I think Kieran and Asia the what Kieran
is showing here is the thing we have to
talk about is that the LLM visitor is
worth way more than a traditional search
visitor. And Asia, you've really dug
into this. So I want you to kind of like
break that down for us. But like one of
our early hypothesis is like, hey, we're
gonna get less traffic from LM, but that
traffic is going to be worth more. And
SCM Rush is saying it's worth four over
4x more, but like break that down for
us. Help us understand what that
actually means. Sure. When you have
traditionally captured someone from
organic search, you know, you're
capturing them at all different parts of
the buyer's journey. Maybe they are, to
use a HubSpot example, just trying to
learn what content marketing is. So,
they go to our blog, they read a content
marketing guide 101, maybe they download
a kit to help them start implementing
content marketing techniques. And we
hope that over, you know, two to three
weeks, maybe two to three months, maybe
two to three years, as we continue to
educate them about concepts related to
our product, they eventually decide to
talk to our sales team or become a free
customer. So, that entire journey takes
a very long time. And along the way, we
are giving them helpful resources to
help them understand that HubSpot is the
answer to their content marketing need.
Now, someone is going to chatbt. They're
saying, "ChatBT, tell me everything I
need to know about content marketing."
And Chat GBT is doing that in an
incredibly personalized, helpful way.
They are reaching the understanding that
they need a content marketing solution a
lot more quickly. And they are also
learning about all the potential options
for content marketing solutions much
more quickly. By the time they decide
that HubSpot is the content marketing
solution for them and go to our website,
all of that earlier nurturing has
already happened and they want to talk
to sales really quickly. And we see this
actually in our gone calls. I have a
habit of looking at our sales call
transcripts every week and I see over
and over and over again. Yeah, chatbt
said you were the best, so I came to
you. ChatBT is my best friend. They said
HubSpot is the CRM I need to use. And
there was a pretty uh incredible stat
recently uh well not incredible stat but
because I think we know this is
happening which is 80% of the B2B buyer
journey has typically started with
Google and over time that's going to
become LLMs. They believe it's going to
reach around 95% will start their
journey with an LLM. But I think what
you're talking to is it's not just they
start their journey with an LLM. It's
like they don't really end it. Like it
it's all self-contained within the LLM.
And so there's just a harder it gets
much much harder to actually reach that
consumer because they do all of their
research. They can do so much more in
the LLM and they trust LLM. They believe
it can give them the right answers. It's
unbiased. the other, you know, I think
part of that is, and we're going to get
into giving you some actual actionable
things you can do, but I think uh this
was the other one I think is related to
that, which is like troubling a
challenge for brands, which is they're
in the LLM. They're doing a bunch of
that research. And what this is showing
us is what the LLM's reference are not
really vendor websites. They're all of
these kind of thirdparty websites that
aggregate together different vendors.
And so like when they did this study, so
shout out to Jason Tablin, he uh looked
at a bunch of data and he said that the
brand brand's actual website was only
mentioned 9% of the time. So only 9% of
the times for these queries was a brand
website mentioned in the links. That's
pretty that's pretty incredible. Like
when you look at what they're citing and
the sources they're citing, it's not
really like vendor websites. I'm not
sure. Have you seen that Asia in your
analysis or has that kind of been one
thing that has stood out? Yeah, I think
that this is really interesting data
because I think what we don't know yet
is whether LLMs prefer third-party
websites because they consider them less
biased than vendor websites or if they
prefer that content because that content
is inherently more ingestable for an
LLM. So when we transition to how do you
optimize for AI search, a lot of the AI
search emerging best practices are
things that these third-party websites
have already been doing. It's just how
their content is set up and displayed.
So I think that there's a real advantage
if you are a vendor to start applying
these AI search best practices and
become a much more cited domain in your space.
space.
Hey, if you are enjoying our
conversation with Asia, you're going to
want to listen up. AI is completely
rewriting the search game. ChatGpt,
Gemini, Perplexity, that's where people
are searching now. Those are becoming
the modern search engines. But for most
businesses, they're completely invisible
on those sites. That's why we put
together the AI search domination kit.
This kit's incredible. You're going to
get a full checklist of how you get more
visible in these large language models,
how you actually create and track your
content for these LLMs, and proven
prompts for creating and auditing your
content for AI SEO. This is going to
completely change the game for how you
show up in ChatGpt, Gemini, and
Perplexity. You can get it right now.
Either scan the QR code or click the
link in the description below. Now,
let's get back to today's show. Before
we get into the how, I want there's a
couple things I want to talk about. Part
of the topic that you you're talking
about, which is like who is showing up
in LLMs. I think it's important for us
to give everybody the context is that
Google has been on a decade plus long
journey and fight to do two things. one
deliver a personalized search experience
and things like chat GPT with memory
have kind of trumped that experience and
I think have been able to deliver a
personalized search experience in the
way that Google always wanted to. The
second thing is that Google laid this
road map where it was totally embroiled
in all these lawsuits with publishers
like Google stealing our traffic, Google
stealing our revenue. And I think we can
it's safe to say that OpenAI has seen
that and wants to avoid those problems,
right? And they're going to likely make
decisions and I think are making
decisions in terms of content
partnerships and things to avoid those
problems. And so as you're thinking
about your strategy, I I' I'd encourage
us all to have those two factors
involved, which is one, search has
gotten way more personal, and two, if
OpenAI has a partnership or has a lower
risk with a site or a service that that
is probably going to have some
likelihood it's going to be included in
results versus something that they have
a higher risk for. Is that right?
Yeah, I think we've seen that in the
data about which LLM's prefer which
sources. If you map those preferences by
the media and content sites that each
LLM has partnered with, you can see
clear relationships. Like for example,
both Google and OpenAI have partnerships
with Reddit and Reddit shows up very
frequently for both. Reddit and Quora
are the two biggest sites. Like who
would have thought Kora would be such a
lynch pin of well I guess it is because
if you look at the data what they're
really relying on is user generated
content. Corora was never able to make a
real business out of its actual
business. They probably are making a
pretty good business out of selling
training data but they're the two
biggest sites that appear in these LLMs.
And then as you're saying so like the
example there would be if you go to
CatchBT you're likely not going to find
anything from the New York Times because
they have an upcoming court case. And
not sure if like I do agree with you
Keep I'm not sure if OpenAI are doing
that good of a job of at avoiding
copyright they're incentivized to do
that is what I'm saying and more often
or not are probably going to at least
try to do that is what I'm saying. The
the follow-up question I have to both of
you is can you have an effective AI
search optimization strategy without
engaging on communities like Reddit and
having a strategy on communities like
Reddit? I think it's a good question,
but I think the setup here for Asia is
okay, I'm a business. I can spend my
time on the blue links, which I have
always, which I just want to say, even
though I said from the outset the blue
links are going to die, the best times
in my marketing career were messing
around with the blue links. Everyone,
that was like a good time. Hold on. Are
you link are you Blue Link nostalgic?
Have you reached the nostalgia part of
Blue Links? I think we're going to miss
the times where you could really scale
an engine that was predictable. You
could generate a ton of revenue and uh
you could do it in a way that actually
you could have like limited amount of
resources but pretty good knowledge and
actually make some real impact. And I
think that's going to be a a tough uh I
think you're being a little I think
you're being a little Kier and negative
on this one. Go ahead. I'm not being I'm
not being negative. Let me let me finish
the setup. Right. So like I think I
think that the blue links go away for
informationational content. We can talk
about that. But like you can spend your
time optimizing for blue links and we
should talk about what what if anything
the person should do there. Then they
can optimize for Google AI overviews. So
we're going to talk about this. AI
overviews are becoming the prevalent way
for uh Google to start to surface up
search. They said that AI mode is going
to be the default mode in very soon and
lots of lots of SEO people went on X and
LinkedIn and cried themselves. uh I
cried cried a lot because that is a
tough thing to navigate as well. when an
AI when I when I've seen an when an AI
overview apparently appears for a search
result that's number one click the
number one blue link gets around 33%
less traffic so like there's some real
lower lowering of the traffic and then
you could optimize for LLMs right so you
have your search traditional blue links
you have your AIO view which is Google
and you have your LLM and so what are
you telling people why do you think I'm
overly negative around the blue links
and what are you telling people to do
Asia I understand the nostalgia for the
blue links. I spent some time in the
grief period as well. Here's what I'll
say. I think that I I used to daydream
and this probably gives you a peak into
my psyche about what it would be like to
go back to the early days of SEO and
just have an open field of
experimentation. I will be totally
honest. In the past couple years, SEO
had gotten pretty stale. We knew what
worked and we just did what worked and
it was really predictable and it was
really boring. And now we have a brand
new open field again. And as everyone is
starting to figure things out, that
means that no matter where you're
starting from, you could be a startup,
you could be a big company like HubSpot,
no one has a big edge right now. The
edge goes to the people who figure out
the new tactics the most quickly. And I
think a lot of it is going to rely on AI
powered content systems, which as y'all
have talked about on this podcast pretty
much every time you talk means you don't
need a ton of people. You don't need a
huge team or a lot of money to get these
systems going. And so I I really think
it I think that people in 20 years are
going to be nostalgic for this period.
Yeah. So I I actually agree with I think
Kip and I agree with this. I agree. I I
would swap out SEO with marketing. I
thought marketing was really boring
actually. I was so bored. I got driving
me crazy. I was going to go and open a
coffee shop. I used to tell kids about
that. I was like, "This is boring." We
did have a lot of conversations about
like, "Oh, maybe we should just like do
something different. It's a little
boring." I I I agree. I'm all back in
now because it's all being rebuilt.
Yeah. So, so back to the core question
of all right, well, I have a bunch of
different audiences or platforms.
What do I optimize for? If I was a
business starting with very little
organic traffic, I would be all in on
LLMs because I think the amount of time
that it would take you to establish an
SEO strategy that works by that time all
your personas are using chat GBT as or
Google's AI mode as their core way of
getting information. If you have an
existing SEO infrastructure and you have
a lot of traffic to protect, then this
is not a flip switch scenario, I think
you need to protect what you've got
while investing and scaling your AI
search optimization tactics over time.
And the best AI search tactics will not
be bad for Google. And I think that
that's a little counterintuitive, but if
you are doing AI search, well, it will
not hurt your Google rankings and
hopefully it will even help. I think
that is one of the most important points
of the entire show is that these are not
mutually exclusive things is what you're
telling everybody, right? It's like if
you really focus on AI SEO, you are
going to get LLM and AI overview
traffic, but you're also going to get
some traditional blue link traffic from
those efforts. Exactly. My the one thing
I want to tee up before we get into the
deep how-to on everything because I want
to hear from both of you because I have
a controversial take because we're we're
talking about how how this is a new era
and there's a bunch of new
opportunities. And I think what stops
people from taking advantage of new new
marketing eras, opportunities, arbitrage
is because they look at the world in the
old way versus the new way. And one of
the things about the old way is that
visits were highly correlated
to customers and revenue because what
would happen is you could you had much
more control of your visits through
advertising through traditional Google
search and your conversion of those
visits to customers would stay pretty
flat, pretty consistent, right? You
didn't have as much control of the
conversion rate and so it's like, oh, I
know that 1% of my visits are going to
convert into customers. I just got to go
get some more visits was kind of the old
way of thinking of it. We and I think
everybody watching the show and I get
emails from founders, financial
analysts, all these people like, "Oh,
what are the visits doing here?" And I'm
I want to come out and be like, I think
visits are fundamentally less important
and in some ways
in some ways unimportant. And that's
like the hottest take I've had in a
while because of the new ways people are
discovering sites and brands. And I want
to see if you all agree or disagree with
me there. I want to hear from Asia given
that she has spent a lot of her career
Talk about something I'm nostalgic for.
Uh no,
I'm I completely agree and not just
because, you know, that would be easier
for me if uh we all felt that way over
the next few years. Here's the thing. If
we go back to what we were talking about
earlier, how someone was going to visit
HubSpot many times over the course of a
few weeks to a few years before they
eventually convert. If we say all of
those interactions are now happening in
LLMs, but they're still eventually
coming to HubSpot and buying, then yeah,
the value of an individual visit matters
a lot less. What we care about is that
ultimate visit, that visit where they
decide to become a user or a customer.
And what we what HubSpot's growth team
is increasingly shifting to is
visibility in LLMs. How often are we
showing up as the recommended solution
for the questions for the challenges
that our personas have? And I I think
this is a great segue into a couple of
things. Why you should listen to the
next segment of the show because Asia
and her team have done a pretty great
job of You're kicking everybody's ass.
Let's be let's let's be real. It's not
really visible. So, what are we looking
at here? We're looking at one of the
metrics from the tool we use to measure
our awareness in these LLMs. And I think
one of the things that will jump out of
you straight away is share of voice.
This is in quote unquote a AI search
optimization tool. And that is a brand
metric. And I think that's one of the
things to wrap your head around is that
you have to kind of think much more like
a traditional marketeer, brand
marketeer. You're looking for
impressions. You're looking for
visibility. you're looking to make sure
that your brand is more visible than
other brands in these LLMs. Why don't I
pass it back to you, Asia, you can kind
of jump into the tool and maybe talk a
little bit about how we use it. So, this
is Xfunnel. There are a bunch of tools
out there that will uh show you LLM
visibility and which websites are being
cited in LLMs. We chose Xfunnel because
uh the the founder and his team, they're
really experimentation centric and I
think that this era is all about
experimenting as quickly as possible,
learning as quickly as possible, and
then feeding those learnings back into
your playbook. Asia, on the on the tool
selection, because you and I have had a
little bit of conversation on this
because we're going to get questions
about it. There's a bunch of people
doing it. Xfunnel Hall, like there's
literally like 10 companies doing this.
Yeah, the different Yeah, the the
differentiation I have been told from
you is that is that it's pretty low and
like you should pick the one that like
you just kind of like the best and you
think is going to evolve at a fast rate,
which is one of the reasons you picked
XFunnel, but like they're all using kind
of the same approach and kind of the
same data. So, it's not like that
there's one that is far and way better
than everything else at this moment.
There's no moat in this space at this
moment. I think if someone can figure
out how to really simulate all the
context that an LLM has about a person
or a user when they're talking, that
would be a real competitive advantage if
someone can nail the volume piece.
Thinking about, you know, what what we
were saying around it's getting a lot
harder to measure. We have a lot less um
direct visibility between what made
someone convert. If someone can figure
out, okay, here are the the number of
times that a question is being asked in
LLMs, that would be a huge competitive
advantage. Yeah, I think the tool that
will win here uh and I think it's only
doable if they if if OpenAI or these
kind of models decide to have a
partnership is the tool that can
actually log in with your chatbt and
integrate your memory because then they
can mimic the memory in the tool. And I
think that's the big thing is like
because memory is just drastically changes
changes
what our results are going to be. But I
do wonder, I don't think it's a business
model that they're going to particularly
want to get into. Unless the only the
only kind of wrinkle here is if they do
a premium tier and they have a paid
platform, then they will give
optimization tools. And I don't know if
they get when they give those optimiz
optimization tools to to businesses,
will there be something there that would
help you better track visibility across
that premium tier? Look, I would bet my
house that they're going to do ads and
there's going to be some analytics
around ads is what I think you're
saying, Kieran. Right. And that will
probably be a next important step of the
journey of understanding of what needs
to happen. I am very much looking
forward to getting some data. Google has
started introducing ads into AI mode and
we are a Google advertiser and so we
should start getting some data from from
A mode which I'm I'm excited to dive
into. Yeah, I think the the memory piece
is really hard and what Berry and the
team at Xfunnel have done to try to
simulate that as much as possible is
forcing the LLM to think as a persona.
So, as a VP of sales, as an enterprise
AE, we have about 10 personas that we've
loaded into here across our core
products. It's a very crude solution,
but Kieran, I think it it gets to what
you're talking about. So over here you
can see our visibility across all the
LLMs that Xfunnel tracks. I would say
we're really focusing on search GBT,
chat GBT, and Gemini right now because
that's where we see the majority of
usage happening. tell people about
what's search GPT just so that people
because I I think that's not a common
moniker and so I'm just trying to
represent the view viewers here. Sure.
Search GBT is the searching system that
chat GBT uses. So you can have regular
Chat GBT responses where the web is not
actively being searched and then you can
layer in search. Now I think as these
models get more and more sophisticated
or I should say as the LMS get more and
more sophisticated you probably won't
have a choice. So this we will probably
at some point just see as chat GBT this
will probably just be Google. Does
Gemini include AI overviews in Google or
is that actually just like I need to be
in the Gemini experience? Fantastic
question just in the Gemini experience.
So, we actually use a completely
separate tool. This is what I'm getting
at. Yeah. We use a separate tool to
track AI overviews, which are those AI
generated summaries at the top of a SER.
You don't have to be logged into any
special experience or really do anything
to opt into that. You're getting it by
default. And the third Google experience
is AI mode, which users in the US are
now seeing as a tab on their Google
experience. At some point, AI mode will
become the primary Google experience.
That's going to be like a 7.7 earthquake
on the uh the marketing RTOR scale.
Yeah, you're probably underelling it in actuality.
actuality.
How how far up does it go? Like are we
talking about it goes to 10? It goes to
10. Yeah. All right. We'll say it's a 10 earthquake.
earthquake.
It's going to be real. It's going to be
real. Yeah. So So but I think the the
question under the question is uh well
how how much can we learn just from
looking at Gemini? And Gemini is the
system that powers AI mode. It powers AI
overviews and it obviously powers the
Gemini specific experience. But it is
only a a piece of the puzzle right now.
Yeah. Okay. And then
I think we we should just, you know,
blow this up, print this out, hang it on
our walls. Um we are uh right now
HubSpot does have the the majority or
not majority has the most share of voice
for the queries and the personas that we
are tracking. Um, now if I was going to
be skeptical about this chart, if I was
Kieran, I would say, "Well, how are
those queries chosen is that for every
conversation that HubSpot could ever
show up in?" and we hand selected these
queries. Um, we said, "Okay, these are
all the queries that we think our
personas are asking, which is obviously
pretty different from how SEO works
where you can literally go into AHFS or
search console and see the actual
queries um that people have asked and
and how much volume is behind them. So
super imperfect, but I think that this
this tells us that we are definitely on
the right track for the topics that we
care about. We should just quickly touch
on this because this is like a version
of a aided/ unated awareness study where
you have to kind of guess the survey
questions. Like it's just so much
different from what we were able to do
in search where you could see the
keywords and just figure out what are
the ones you should actually go and look
at to see if you appear. And the other
the other thing is and we're gonna I
think you're going to give some guidance
in this in the AI when you get into like
how you actually manage to do this. How
how did you manage to get house to be so
visible the actionable takeaways is uh
people the how they ask questions in AI
is going to be so much different than
search. Like search taught us to ask in
key phrases. Now AI is just how you
conversate. that is hugely different in
trying to like predict how people talk
to another person. That's how they treat AI.
AI.
I think it's different not only in how
they talk to the LLM, but in terms of
the type of content that we need to
create. And maybe maybe this is a good
segue uh into those tactics.
Yeah, I would just say as we transition,
it's just the before traditional Google,
you would search something wouldn't be
quite right and you would keep refining
your search, right? And so one search
would end up becoming 20 searches,
right? Where now like you have one
search in chat GPT, it asks you some
clarifying questions and it gives you
like a curated actionable response and
that's just a holistically different
experience. And I think what we're
trying to tell people is that experience
is different. How you measure that
experience is insanely different and you
need to start aligning your company to
look think about measuring this
differently. And I like what you were
just showing there with like the share a
voice stuff. Asia, is it perfect? No.
But I look at it as like it's you're
defining where we're playing. Here are
like the types of conversations we want
to play and are we winning where we're
playing or not? It's not like it used to
be in SEO. It's like, oh, we're going to
play everywhere and we're going to win.
It's like no, we have to really focus a
little bit more and are we winning where
we're focusing and I think I think
that's like a big evolution in how this
work is happening.
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's tell
people what they should do. Okay, so I
think the first big thing it used to be
that quality of your content was why you
won. Now I think it's about the
specificity of your content. And that
doesn't mean that quality doesn't
matter. But if you think about how much
more context someone is able to give in
AI search, they're able to tell Chad to
be all these things about them, their
business, their needs.
Now, you don't just need an answer for
what is the best X. You need an answer
for what is the best X considering that
I am a manufacturing company in New
Jersey. We've been around for 10 years.
Our growth has recently plateaued. We're
spending a lot of money on paid ads. And
so that is an explosion of content for
every persona and every problem that you
have. And it means then rather than
thinking about okay, how do I create
these one to three really good pages on
these head terms, you need to think
about how do I create these 100 to 300
great pages on all of these super
longtail terms. And no one, including
HubSpot, has the resources to do that if
you have a blogger sitting at their
keyboard typing out every word. Which
means your job as a growth marketer, as
an SEO, as an AEO, whatever you want to
call yourself, is okay, how do I build
systems for great content? How do I
build AI powered systems that will
produce really great content at scale
that is highly specific?
I think that last minute was probably
the simplest articulation anybody can
get around what is changing and what you
need to do differently. And it and what
you're really also telling people is
like you're going to need AI to solve
the AI search problem. You cannot solve
the AI search problem with manual old
school work. Yes. Exactly. So I'm a
traditional search person. I hear you
say that and I think two things. How do
you make sure that content is unique and
does it matter, right? Like does it
matter like if you just change one data
point for each industry and then have
thousands of pages where every every
page had like a singular data point. So
how different do the pages have to be?
And we one of the things you said I
think was really good for folks earlier
on the things you have to do for AI
search will not be a drag on your
traditional search. Now I could say that
is going to be a drag because we've
heard we always hear that Google doesn't
like you know paper thin content or lots
of duplication of the pages. So maybe
talk through how you think about that. I
think if we were in a world where we
didn't have to care about Google at all
then you could experiment with changing
one data point on thousands of pages and
see what happens. There are a lot of
indications that LLMs care way less
about what we've historically thought of
as thin content or doorway pages.
Basically, this this scaled content
idea. Uh we know Google cares about it
and we know that Google still matters.
So, I would not just publish a bunch of
pages with one thing different. What we
are doing, we are publishing very unique
pages with a lot of original data. And I
think that original data is the key to
making this work. Now, that original
data doesn't need to be this huge study
of, you know, something relevant to your
persona across the United States.
Doesn't need to be big or expensive. You
can use it. You can use the data that
you have on your own customers, which is
probably where you should be grounding
all these content efforts to start. So
if you know that using your product or
service that manufacturing company in
New Jersey is likely to have 3x higher
close rates because you have seen
manufacturing companies get that type of
return. That's exactly the type of data
point you want to bring into this
content. And so start with your original
data. Start with your original data on
your customers
and use that to populate these pages.
Another important point I think one of
the important things for people to take
away here is you're also talking about
content that is uh really mapped to the
buyer jour like mapped to you're in
buyin mode. This is not informational
content. This is not like how do I teach
you something and do thousands of pages.
You're specifically talking about, hey,
you're already in that buyin process and
we're going to create lots of different
variations of our pages that would help
you understand if we're the right
solution for you. Maybe talk a little
bit about that that we like do you buy
the fact there's little to no point
anymore invested in theformational
educational content and instead you
spend all your time on content that is
much more mapped to someone who's in
buying mode. I think there's a way to do
the informational content, but I think
everyone, including HubSpot, should
start with the bottom of the funnel
content. So, historically, you've had,
which is the opposite of 10 years ago.
Exactly. You've you've always had the
most top offunnel content because that
answers the broadest number of questions
and that's again where everyone has been
starting their journey. And then you
would have the least bottom ofunnel
content and now I think it's flipped. I
think you want the most bottom offunnel
content. And yeah, Karen, I think it's a
great call out because we went to data
and it's probably hard to conceptualize
where that data would even come in
before you understand the type of
content that we are talking about. We
are talking about content that says here
is why this product or service is the
best solution for this persona with this
context. And the idea is that when an
LLM is formulating an answer for a user,
they are pulling on that content that so
they can say here is why this product or
service is the best for your problem and
that's when you get that visibility in
the LLM for the queries you really care
about. The way I think about this is you
went from starting at the top to
starting at the bottom. The leverage in
AI search is around the breadth and
ultra long tail of product related
information and queries. And if you
don't have a lot of public product
information, pricing information, buying
action data and information, you're not
going to be successful. And so you're
going to need to change your business
there. At the top of the funnel, we've
gone from teaching people how to do
things to needing to give them tools to
do the things themselves. And Kieran,
you and I have talked about, we're going
to do a whole tools episode. We're going
to build a couple mocks of if you were
like the average B2B business, what are
some tools that you would try to to
build and use to capture people maybe a
little further up the buyer's journey? I
do want to talk a little bit about this
as a segue into we should talk about
citations because that really is your on
page strategy. One one quick clarifying
question we should get into there is
like any optimization in the structure
of those pages we should quickly talk
about. But the the thing I wanted to
quickly reference on the citations was
because we're talking about it here is I
was doing a ton of research on putting
together this whole like what we know
about LLMs everything you could uh want
to know about how you can appear in
LLMs. And so I one of the questions I've
always asked I go back and keep asking
is like what are all of the signals that
have been uh wrote about that would
actually h tell us how LLM's recommend
products like is there anything be
released and like why an LLM recommends
a certain product and it give me back
this answer and it referenced it I do
think chat is starting to reference
websites much much more and so in every
answer it give me it had this these
websites referenced there was one one
website it referenced um several times
that kind of really stood out to me was
like wow this this website has got itself
itself
in the answers a lot for thisformational
query. And I went to it and it was like
a pretty newish website. It's actually
an agency who does AI search
optimization. So kudos to them. It's
called Growth Marshall. I don't know
anything about them. But the reason I it
really stood out to me is like because
of this chart. It is a brand newish site
and this chart is and and it didn't it
didn't appear in Google searches for
those same queries. And what this is
telling us here, the chart we're looking
at is the ranking positions of LLM sited
search results. I think this is pretty
interesting in that these AI search
assistants are referencing sites that
are not in Google's top 20 results. Can
you explain this chart? I don't think
this chart is obvious to everybody.
Explain this means because this is a
really interesting chart. Yeah, it's
basically saying chatbt search primarily
sites lower rank in search results and
then what this on traditional Google
search, right? Yeah. ranking position in
Google of the sites that it's pulling
into its resources and you can see here
the majority are outside of the top 20
and I think that's fascinating because
we have taught to like we Google works
on page rank trusted sites so what is
chatbt doing differently where it is
referencing sites that are completely
different than Google how Google think
about trust like obviously chat think
about trust in a very different way I
don't know you have insights on that Asia
Asia
I think it's all about specificity. I
think that these websites that are being
cited are targeting much more specific
queries that have historically made no
sense to target
and that's why they're getting pulled
in. Yeah, does not care about site authority.
authority.
I think what's interesting is this
minute towards the end of the show is
the glimmer of sunshine, the glimmer of
hope in this whole episode. It used to
be if you were starting a business or
you wanted to really change the
trajectory of your business, somebody
would come to you Asia and you'd be
like, "Okay, well, all right. You got to
set up a website. You got to create all
this content. You got to hire these
people to create content. It's going to
take you six to eight months to build
your authority. And I think in a year we
can get you to this level of traffic. Is
that roughly right?" And now I think
we're saying, "Hey, you can start a new
site, have a very focused strategy for
LLMs, and start getting traffic from
LLMs in days.
Yep. Which is wild. Like completely
different than like we've been used to
thinking about this problem. Yeah. Are
you still pessimistic, Kieran, or has
this raised your I I do I do want to
make sure No, like I look I I would
rather again I would not be I want to be
really honest. I would not be doing this
role if AI hadn't happened. I was going
to do something differently. I just had
got pretty tired with the same old
thing. You're very similar. I need new
stuff to go after and figure out or
there's no point me doing it, right? And
so I I couldn't be happier with what's
happening. But like my nostalgia for
search was more I was I was doing search
when it was being figured out. And I
just like the fact that I could I could
exactly see the effort go in and then
the money come out, right? And I think
that's just the the only the only
nostalgia I have is like, oh, I do this
thing and I get much more I get money
coming out of here. But I just want to
make sure we end on one thing because I
know we're going to get screamed at if
we don't. I do want to I do want you to
tell people how they should think about
citations because you've told them I
think a really great takeaway on on
page, but we do want to What is your
off- page strategy? Like how do you
think about what brand should do to
actually you know if we believe it's not
all in your website, what are the things
you should do to get mentioned offsite
and how should they do that? Yeah, I
think you want to be repeated as often
as possible in your core brand terms.
So, we have several at HubSpot, but
let's take CRM as an example because
that's always been a really important
association for us. We want to get as
many mentions, as many positive mentions
as possible across the websites that
LLMs are pulling in as HubSpot, as a as
a CRM. And in the old world, for that to
be valuable, it needed to be a backlink.
It needed to be sending people directly
to our website. But we're just trying to
train the model that HubSpot is a CRM.
And ideally, that HubSpot is a great
CRM. So, we don't really care about the
backlink. We just care about the
mention. Uh, and if I were starting from
scratch, I would use a tool like
XFunnel. I would figure out the websites
that are being cited in LLM responses
and I would reach out to those websites
and see if I could improve the number of
mentions I had for my product for my key terms.
terms.
And we'll end on this mentions not
doesn't matter if it links right it's
just like co-itations words and you want
to make sure those co-itations include
the thing you want to be ranked for. And
so uh one last question you mentioned
that you know lots more pages in
Google's index for very specific
queries. Um do you have to do you have
to have that level of spec specificity
in the co-itations? Like do I have to
have HubSpot CRM for manufacturing
company in O Ohio? In an ideal world you
would but I don't think that that's
possible for anyone to do. So I think
you you you stick with the head terms.
You stick with the big ones. I'll give
you a kieran. Dark days of SEO used to
be in black hat forms. Um I still think
that one of the takeaways for someone
like me in the chat speedy thing is
chaty doesn't care about trust. So what
I could do in the interim where it
doesn't really care about trust because
it hasn't figured that out or doesn't
want. It doesn't care about that right
now is I could like buy up websites. I
could create websites and I could just
inject a huge amount of specificity into
its index and co-site a product or a
brand. And I do wonder how it would
figure out not to like include those
things in its training model. I think it
remains to be seen whether third party
versus owned makes a difference because
if it doesn't then you might as well
just do it all on your own site and
that's actually a lot easier. You would
buy a bunch of third party sites and
then just inject all of your co-
citations into them. My sense is it
would probably work for a little bit and
then it would not. Yeah, I think it
would work for a little bit.
My bold prediction is that most
companies will have accountspecific
pages on their site. Meaning like, hey,
I'm trying to market or sell to this
account, this company, and I'm going to
have a lot of content that is specific
to that company. I think there's some
tests Asia that we're going to run
around with this, and so we can come
back with that. Um, and the the last
last question, give everybody the recap
that if they're like, hey, I'm bought
in. I want to win this new AI search
game. What are the couple of things they
should go start doing now to be
successful? Okay, if you don't already
know your personas, you need to figure
that out immediately. Then you need to
set up AI powered systems to create
highly specific content for their those
personas at scale. You need to populate
that content with as much unique
firsthand data as you have. Well, pay
attention to all the stuff we're going
to talk about next and let your CMO know
that visits don't matter how they used
to and that uh we need to buckle up for
a brave new world. Yeah. Well, you have
to change how you're measuring the
performance, right? And get an get a
team and company aligned on that and
that's that's a big thing. All right,
Kieran, any words of optimism or
pessimism before we I'm incredibly
optimistic for the people who are deeply
curious. I think it's the shift for
brands is not that this isn't cool. like
it's not great because we can it's not
there's like a ton of opportunity here.
I think the thing that's going to be a
struggle in the interim is the
attribution measurement. I think that is
a hard thing for the average company to
overcome when they're trying to figure
out how do I forecast what I'm going to
get back from all of this. That's just
not possible. I completely agree.
There's going to be lots of things we
could cover on this topic. We're going
to do follow-up shows. Leave comments
below on certain topics that you want us
to go deeper on or do follow-up shows.
Asia, we're we're going to have you back
on the show. We're going to cover a
bunch more of this stuff. Thank you for
taking some time to be on with us today
and good luck to everybody out there in
the AI search game. We'll see you real
soon on the next episode of Marketing
Against the Grain.
This data is wrong every freaking time.
Have you heard of HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform where
everything is fully integrated. Whoa. I
can see the client's whole history.
calls, support tickets, emails, and
here's a task from three days ago I
totally missed.
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