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David_Lewallen_-_bSEO_Deck_-_AI_deck.pdf

Avatar for David Lewallen David Lewallen
September 29, 2025
45

 David_Lewallen_-_bSEO_Deck_-_AI_deck.pdf

Avatar for David Lewallen

David Lewallen

September 29, 2025

Transcript

  1. How to increase your brand’s visibility in AI: proven tactics

    to reassure your CMO! David Lewallen Verbatim Digital Speakerdeck.com/username @davidilewallen @davidilewallen
  2. Which Camp are you in? “There is no GEO -

    Its just Search Everywhere Optimization (SEO)” OR “In 1 to 5 years we’ll have General AI, which will render Search Engines & humans alike, obsolete.”
  3. LLMs are not conscious beings. LLMs have translated language into

    math. And make incredibly accurate predictions that make it sound to us like they have human level consciousness. That’s why we say’ please before we ask it to do something.
  4. Entities An entity is a thing or concept that the

    AI can recognize and understand, like a person, place, product, company, or idea. Think of it like this: • When you talk to ChatGPT and mention "Taylor Sheridan", the AI recognizes that as an entity: a famous person with lots of connected information, Actor, Screenwriter, Yellowstone, etc. • If you mention "Nike", the AI knows it’s a brand associated with shoes, athletes, and sportswear. Entities help AI understand what you’re talking about. They're like mental bookmarks in the AI’s brain that link to relevant facts, relationships, and context. This helps the AI give smarter, more accurate, and more relevant responses.
  5. Tokens LLMs turn language into small pieces of meaning called

    tokens (these can be words, parts of words, or even punctuation). Each token is turned into a number, known as an embedding, which represents its meaning. These embeddings are mapped in a space where similar meanings appear close together.
  6. Salience Salience is about what stands out to the AI

    as being most relevant or meaningful at a particular moment. Example: If you're talking about apple in the context of smartphones, the AI knows the company Apple is more salient than the fruit. How it works: • AI models use context to figure out what concepts are most salient. • Salient entities or ideas are more likely to influence the AI’s response. • It's closely tied to attention mechanisms in models like GPT, which weigh, which parts of a sentence or conversation matter most. Think of salience as the AI asking: "What should I pay attention to right now?”
  7. Brand Mentions Unlinked mentions, (text written about your brand on

    other websites), have very little impact on SEO, but a much bigger impact on GEO… LLMs derive their understanding of a brand’s authority from words on the page, from the prevalence of particular words, the co-occurrence of different terms and topics, and the context in which those words are used. Work to get your brand mentioned in the datasets that AI is trained on.
  8. Prompt Research Choose prompts that illicit the AI tools to

    recommend brands, as opposed to general high level questions.
  9. What To Track: Individual prompt responses Was your brand mentioned?

    If so, what rank or position was it recommend?
  10. What To Track: For a number of prompts Number of

    times your brand was mentioned in 10, 20 or 30 prompts. Average ranking for when it was mentioned. An AI visibility score where we use the number of mentions as well as where you were mentioned to come up with one number to track visibility.
  11. Where To Track Semrush, Ahrefs, SurferSEO, Knowatowa, Profound or Otterly.ai

    Shameless plug: Verbatim Digital — verbatimdigital.com (it’s free)
  12. Don’t be fooled by GEO being repackaged as Good SEO.

    How many of you have read on Linkedin - Something like this: ChatGPT is the new Google, here’s how to optimize for AI… Proceeds to List a bunch of classic SEO tactics about Well formatted Articles, Schema, Statistics, internal linking etc… The Moral of the Story: SEO Is still just as important as ever: However…
  13. Check for Entities Run the responses through an entity tool

    like Google’s NLP Entity Tool. This will show you what the LLMs are associating the responses with. This many times will bring up ideas that traditional keyword research would not have.
  14. Check Bing With ChatGPT using Bing, it’s a good idea

    to start looking at Bing Results more than we have in the past. • Social Profiles • Business Listings • Industry Lists • Pay to Play Lists
  15. LLM vs AI Search Optimization Optimizing for LLMs is a

    long term play, optimizing for AI Search is much closer to Traditional SEO. Check how your brand is mentioned With Search Turned off.
  16. Get a Wikipedia Page Having a Wikipedia page was not

    something we prioritized in SEO but its the number 1 way to get your brand trained into the memory of AI.
  17. Competitive Mention Audit Using a tool like Buzz Sumo, check

    where your competitors are getting mentioned. Much like an unlinked mentions audit (except now we don’t need the link)
  18. Digital PR Getting mentioned in tier 1 publications has always

    been a good Marketing and SEO Strategy, but now more than ever investing here will pay off in the long term.
  19. Reddit Strategy Be authentic and work the channel over time.

    Have your engineers and those on the ground be those who contribute, this is not your marketing teams world.
  20. Comparison Pages & Best [X] Lists These are working now,

    but proceed with caution, they are in the grey area and may not work long term. Most best X lists are play to play, and they are getting more expensive.
  21. AI Search Optimization - Process 1. Prompt Research: Decide what

    to Track 2. Run your Prompts with Search On & Search Off: 3. Check For Entities 4. Write the Comparison Articles 5. Optimize for SEO as always but with emphasis on, long form, add FAQs, Stats & Quotes. Not that we weren't already doing that but doubling down is the way to go. 6. Check the link references a. Many times they are top 10 lists b. Reddit threads c. Contact the websites to get listed. Most of the time it’s pay to play.