Get Mentioned By ChatGPT? Use Trustworthy AEO Content!

Welcome And The AI Search Shift

Thank you for having me, Peter.

Let's start by first of all defining what is an Answer Engine Optimization and how it compares to other new search engines.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you nailed it in your intro, but you might hear it also referred to as GEO or generative engine optimization. Those are essentially interchangeable terms. I like to use the term AEO. But yeah, it is essentially just the way that you structure your content so that AI notices it. So how do you

What AEO Means Versus SEO

make it so that the content that you're putting out there, whether it is earned media or owned media, making it so that AI or LLMs, large language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity Claude, et cetera, are able to easily read and cite you as a source in it. And so when you think of traditional optimization, a lot of times you're looking at SEO or search engine optimization. And I know that you all have kind of covered in the past LLMs and visibility and what that means. But it's a the biggest difference when you're looking at AEO is something called the zero click phenomenon, which if you think about SEO, most of the times what you're focusing on is rankings. How do I make sure that I or my client, whoever it is that I'm representing, pops up in that first page of results if I'm Googling something, just standard Googling. Whereas with AEO, you're focusing a lot more on the actual answer, not just the search. And so let's say I am on Chat GPT and I am searching for maybe I'm a restaurant owner. I own a pizza restaurant. I might go to Chat GPT and ask it, hey, what's the best point of sale system for a fast casual pizza restaurant? And the interesting thing is that you might be able to get an answer without ever clicking a single link, which is different from SEO, where you might get ranked on that first page, but typically a potential customer is still gonna do their research. They're gonna click through the first few links, go to different websites, uh, maybe request demos on those websites to get some answers there. But with AEO, instead, ChatGPT or Gemini is probably gonna be giving you the direct answers. So they might recommend the top three point of sale systems, and it might give you some specifics within that. Like here's what you should be looking for if you are this size restaurant, and if you're more focused on this, then this would be your best bet. It's really going to give you the solutions right there to where you might find your answer without ever having to do any click-throughs, which I'd say is probably the biggest difference and the biggest way that the landscape has changed. And uh, I'm sure we'll get into it, but it's actually incredibly exciting for PR because you mentioned trust in your intro. And that is a huge, huge part of this is figuring out not just how how can Google find me, because that's really the big thing with SEO, is how do how does Google find you? But with AEO, your focus is much more on how do I make AI trust me? And that's really what the the focus is here and what a great AEO program should focus on as well.

Now, when you said that uh your label will get direct answers, does that mean they will actually give the name of the uh company or organization uh uh that you're actually looking for?

Oh yeah, and with a lot of these systems now, you can even

Zero Click Answers Change Everything

go in and and purchase things directly from ChatGPT. So if I'm just a consumer and I'm looking for a product, maybe I want to find like the best face cream for a specific skin condition, I can go in and it'll give me the exact names, it'll give me links, and it'll even give me the purchasing power to be able to do it right through the platform, which is wild, but it makes everything so much simpler. And it essentially makes it so that if you are not showing up in those results, you don't exist. There's no scrolling through to multiple pages to see if I can find something I want. If if you want to show up at all, you've got to be in those trusted few answers that pop up in that initial prompt search.

Well, you know, that that brings on an interesting question. Then now, how do I go about forming the verbiage, if you will, that gets me uh picked up by uh AEO uh engines? What do I need to do to make sure that I'm let's say in the top five of the group that it it might identify as what I'm looking for?

Yeah, that that is the golden question. And it's it's part of uh definitely a larger conversation. And AEO as a service or as a program, so if you're focused on optimizing for answer engines, there are a lot of different components that fall into that. And fortunately for us, PR is a very, very big piece of that because as we talked about, trust matters a lot, consistency. I'd say probably like my my thesis statement of of this entire conversation would just be the fact that the the principles and fundamentals of PR are essentially the exact same principles and fundamentals of AEO. And so if you are a PR professional who is wanting to get into AEO a little bit more, you already have that foundation. You do not need to be a technical expert to be able to start operationally putting some of these things in place. You already have the idea of consistency, of trust, of validity and credibility. Those are all of the same things that matter. And so a big part of this, like take expert commentary, for example. That's a good way to think through how I can structure my content. So if I'm representing a subject matter expert, the same way that I would advise my client on hey, when you are talking to journalists, make sure that the quotes that you're putting out there are meaningful. You know, we probably talk a lot about a press release, for example, and putting a quote in a press release. There's like the dreaded never say in a quote in a press release, we're excited to announce, or whatever it might be. The same principle goes for LLMs. So you wouldn't want to say anything that wouldn't matter to them. And the ultimate way to think through this is any content that you put out there, whether it's a quote for a journalist or a blog post, is it answering a question? Can it stand alone as an answer and think through like if I were to be quoted, what would the prompt be that led to this quote? And does my quote answer that prompt? Because ultimately that's what AI is going to care about is concise answers, maybe some stats when it's relevant, a very structured framework for your

The Trust Problem PR Solves

content, direct recommendations if you can do that too, making sure that you're defining things, so not overly speaking with jargon, but making sure that anything that you are saying is properly defined, and comparisons as well. So if you have the opportunity to make comparisons between what it is that you're talking about or other solutions on the market, that's also important too. So that's a good way to look at it is no matter what you're doing, make sure that you are answering the question, which is what this is ultimately all about. Answer engine optimization, how do you appear in those answers? Um that's a a good example of a way to start with it. I would also say thinking about working backwards from the prompt. That's another thing, too, that we talk about all the time in PR is working backwards. We say that a lot at our agency of when you're trying to come up with a good story for a client, try to work backwards from the headline. So think through if you could visualize the perfect piece of coverage for this story, what would it look like? What would that headline read? Once again, those same principles you would want to apply to AEO. So instead of working backwards from the headline, now you want to work backwards from the prompt. So think through, let's say, again, the we'll do the skincare routine. So if I think of what are some prompts for skincare, let's say I represent a face lotion brand. I might think of, okay, if I'm working backwards from what potential customers would be searching, I might think through like best skincare for rosacea or whatever it might be. Those are the prompts that I want to think through. What could fall into those prompts? How could potential customers be putting these into LLMs? And from there, I want to think through how does my content answer that directly? If I'm putting out my spokesperson and I'm connecting them with journalists, is that answering that prompt, the quotes that we're putting out there? If we're doing a press release, does the press release also answer those prompts? If we are putting out a blog post, same deal. This is how you structure your AEO strategy. It is not solely PR, it's also what you're putting on your website, what you're putting on your blog, uh, what you're putting on your social media. But all of these need to be connected, and you have to ultimately think through

Quotes That Stand Alone As Answers

does it answer the questions of the prompts that your customers are likely asking?

You know, I mean that really sounds very, very detailed. And as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about, you know, let's say my podcast. You know, it's uh it's one of the ranked one of the top podcasts, not only country, but around the world. So maybe I need to think my way through that. So can I ask uh perplexed that question? What would I need to further improve? What verbiage would I further need to improve my podcast to uh to increase my listenership?

Well, I thought auditing is really important here. And it sounds like you've been doing that already, which is great, of you know, seeing what comes up when you put that into perplexity, for example. But also think through not just where you're already showing up, but probably more importantly, where you're not showing up yet. So if you go into any of these platforms, and there are so many solutions, by the way, that you can look into to be able to run this for you. So there are, you could literally just Google right now, like AEO platforms, LLM visibility platforms, or you can put it into Chat GPT, and you'll be able to see all of these different engines that will essentially do an audit for you of where your brand is appearing and where it's not, which are great. But you can also start off with just kind of doing a rudimentary audit yourself of going into each of these LLMs. So Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, even Grok, you could use as an example. There's also, if you think of like the Google AI overviews, so you know when you Google and at the top of the results, there's always an AI overview. That's one you don't want to rule out either is how do you appear in the AI overview section, too. But yeah, think through first where are you not appearing? So if I go in and I search for what are the top PR podcasts in any one of these LLMs, and yours is not popping up, what you want to see is who is, and then you can find the sources. So where is it pulling from? Is it just pulling directly from the like Apple Podcast or Spotify itself, or is it pulling some aggregated lists? Is it pulling directly from the website? You want to see what are the sources and what is it pulling first? And then if there are any sources that are popping up where you're not listed, that's where you would kind of redirect your strategy of thinking, okay, these are the sources I want to be named in, and then look at the content. So in these answers that pop up, what is it saying? Are they phrasing things a certain way? Are they positioning themselves in a different way of answering that question of why it's a top podcast? So a lot of it just has to come from research and figuring out here's where I'm appearing really nicely, which is great. But again, where am I not and how can I change that? And so think through all of the possible prompts that could lead someone to you. Of course, what are the top PR podcasts, but also just like guidance on starting a PR firm or guidance on learning how to write a press release effectively, anything that could possibly lead somebody to come to your podcast, those are the prompts that you want to think through and then see where you're appearing and where you're not. Because if you ask a leading question of, hey, can you tell me more about my podcast? You're gonna get some good information, but you're not necessarily gonna see the broad landscape of where you are and where you're not. And I would encourage that of anyone else as well who is trying to start auditing for any given brand, is there's two pieces to it. It's A, how is AI seeing you as a brand right now? And then B, are you appearing in, like is AI finding you in all of

Working Backward From The Prompt

these searches? And those are two separate audits that you would need to conduct on their own. But again, there are platforms that will do this for you, but you don't necessarily have to start with that either. What I will tell you though is that podcasts as a whole, like those that can be a huge part of AEO strategy too. So I would say that to any PR professional as well, is making sure that if you are not focused on podcasts, so for example, getting your clients booked on podcasts, you should be. It is a big part of what makes what makes AI trust you. Because if you think about it, we talk about these terms like credibility and uh external validation. That's huge. We are it's a long form piece of content, especially if the transcript is available, that makes it uh even easier for AI to find it. It creates conversational expertise. So these ideas that are very consistent and repeatable can get syndicated, especially if you're thinking through again, how do I answer questions in the content that you're providing in the podcast? And then the more and more you do it, the repetition of it means that experts get associated with topics repeatedly. And so, for example, Peter, for you, just like being the host, I imagine that the repetition of having the transcript of you being a PR expert means that you would probably be indexing very well in a lot of these LLMs just because of the repetition in the long-form content alone. Because it's not just about brand awareness, it's like discoverability as well. So podcasts are a big part of that. If you're looking at like the overall AEO footprint, it's it plays a massive role for sure.

Well, one of the things I can say is that the uh one of the uh put my podcast put it. They are also discoverable. How do you make your firm discoverable so that under certain conditions you pop up at the at the head of the list?

Yeah, that is that's a great question. And again, it's it is a lot of research too, right? It's the same thing. Like SEO doesn't go away just because AEO is is here. They really are still very much connected. And I think of AEO as like whereas PR and SEO were kind of like cousins, I would say that PR and AEO are siblings. And so that's why I keep reiterating

Auditing Visibility Across LLMs

don't like test your gut as a PR expert, because that is you still you have those fundamentals. And so the how would you position this for a client? The same thing you would want to do here. So make sure that your website is optimized for AEO, which honestly, the the cool part about all of this too is that yes, having the fundamentals is important, but you don't have to be a technical expert here. You could, let's say, go to your website right now and take all of that content. You can put it into an LLM and say, How can I better optimize this for AEO? I'm a PR agency and I want to make sure that we are discoverable to people in this industry or CMOs or whatever it might be, give it some additional context, who you are and what you want, and ask it, how can I better optimize this for AEO? And it's probably going to give you some suggestions and you can ask it to say why. Like, why are you suggesting that I change this? It might be something as simple as taking your blog posts and instead of having them written in kind of like a cutesy tongue-in-chink way, maybe instead it's saying to add in some subheads that are in the form of a question, and then you're answering the question. Or maybe it's recommending on the homepage some a little bit more specific content uh for you to do. But that's the the beauty of all of this, and it's frightening in some ways, but it's also very cool is that you you can utilize what's already there and just ask these LLMs to help you with your strategy. You don't have to start from scratch. And the same way with a press release, you can write the press release in the way that you would as a PR expert, and then maybe you can run it through. I know a lot of these, even some of these newswire platforms have native ways for you to optimize it for AEO as well. But either way, you could take the content of the press release. Run it through Chat GPT. Ask it, hey, how do I better optimize this for this audience to make sure that LLMs are picking it up? And it can give you some suggestions based on that too. So just look at it from the lens of AEO. It doesn't even need to be a huge colossal strategy shift. It might just be changing up some of the wording for what you have and using the resources that are already available to you.

You know, I mean, this is very, very insightful. You know, one of the things that I think helps right here is that obviously my audience um they are public relations people. Uh obviously most of them are right here in the US. We've got a few around the world. Benefit from that because we've got the offerings of all sizes and shapes and software and so on. Uh and a lot of us might need this information because they might have staff that don't have the kind of information you have uh to impart to uh to to your clients. And I think that uh from from where I'm sitting here and what I'm hearing is that they could certainly benefit from this information that you know, whether they're in Wyoming or uh North Dakota or wherever they happen to be, uh, can certainly benefit uh from this because uh we all go through the same exercises, but the outcomes might not always be the same.

100%. And again, like as PR experts, you already know how to build authority, you know how to shape narratives and earn trust, and those are the exact same skills that AEO rewards. And honestly, this is it's great for us because that's that's what we've been wanting. Like PR is so notoriously difficult

Why Podcasts Boost AI Discoverability

to track ROI, and we all have our metrics that we go back to. We have our arsenal of like the volume of coverage, impression, share a voice, which there's of course still a place for all of those metrics, but this just takes it to a new level, and it only helps us. Like if you are an agency where you have clients where you feel like you are constantly having to showcase ROI, this is insanely helpful because now we're able to show, yeah, this is where you're actually being found, and you can do it yourself. You can just go into Gemini and search for terms where your client wants to pop up, and either they pop up immediately, and you can see that the it's being sourced from coverage that we secured, or if it's not, we can directly find ways to influence our strategy to change it so that we can start showing up in those. And so that's the the great part about all of this is that we don't have to prove attribution attribution as much. It is explicitly citing earned media that is where LLMs are pulling from. And I would say the if you are going to, let's say, like apply a formula to content that can benefit you and describe it to your clients. It's basically content that is easy to digest. So an LLM can easily glean something from it. It's a trusted source, of course. So if we are able to put it in a trusted publication and it answers the question. Another way, another benefit I would say as well is trade publications. That's another thing that I feel like as PR professionals and if you work at an agency, you're probably having to tell your clients quite often why trade publications matter. Like, yes, those marquee pieces in the Wall Street Journal are fantastic, but trade publications matter a lot too. And that's especially important with AEO, because just because an audience is small doesn't mean that LLMs don't heavily rely on those as a trusted vertical source. So for example, like we have a client that is a consumer product client. We get a very high volume of coverage, it's a lot of gift guides, things like that. So it's consistent coverage across the board, which is great. And when we conducted an AEO audit, we did see that they were popping up a lot, which again is great. But we also saw in some of the prompts, some of the searches where they weren't coming up as much, the sources that were being quoted were very like niche specific trade publications, some where we honestly hadn't even totally factored that into our PR strategy. And so it might even give you, as a PR professional,

Using LLMs To Improve Your Website

more avenues to chase coverage in a way that's going to be really beneficial to you and your clients because it's it's pulling from sources that maybe you hadn't thought of, maybe you thought they were too niche or you couldn't convince your client that it would be worth it, but now you actually have the tangible evidence to show why it is.

Well, let me just say this about you know those sort of publications. I I'm not sure how long ago it was, but uh we did have a a reporter or a writer from the niche publications, and they went into a lot of detail about the benefit of it part of it because as you said, uh sometimes newspapers just don't cover a particular industry or subject matter where uh whereas you have these publicators uh uh looking for it, acquiring for it, uh and you know, you have a chance that you can get a lot more coverage on your particular uh issue or topic or product or service that uh might not be available to you uh through uh normal uh everyday media. So specialized media, I think, is uh something that's folks should definitely consider if it's appropriate.

Yeah, and especially in this world now where we're everything is tracking toward LLMs, and you're not just trying to influence customer behavior, but you're also trying to influence AI behavior too, and making sure that it's finding you as well. And trade publications are a huge part of that and should absolutely be a part of that strategy. I would 100% agree.

You know, this has been some very, very fascinating information. I uh got my notepad here filling up the page.

I love it. I would but I would, I'd encourage you to to spend some time just kind of putting yourself in the mind of of a potential listener or somebody that you would want to to find your podcast and just start answering or start putting those prompts into the various platforms. And also every platform is different, every LLM is different. So the sources that Chat GPT pulls are very different from the sources that Gemini pulls, and the the answers you get will be very different. So play around with it. That's the best way to get some more insight is just to not only rely on one or not only rely on one style of prompt, but try a bunch of different things, see where you pop up, see where you don't, try to pick up on trends, and I think you'll you'll you'll be very interested to see what you find.

Well, you know, and I certainly do that because we want to continue to increase the the audience here. And I think this year alone, my uh audience uh in terms of uh growth, I don't know if we've jumped up now to I think we've heard in roughly about 160 countries now. That's maybe the uh growth of uh seven or eight you know around the world. I I don't really pay that much attention to out of you know out of out of country uh uh stats because you know that's a nice warm fuzzy feel. But it's the growth, uh internal growth around the US that I also appreciate that's happening here. So I am tweaking my website and the verbiage that goes into your not necessarily transcripts because of what they are, but in terms of blogs and uh other things that I put up there that people have access to once the show is done.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And seeing if there's like roundups that you could be included in as well. So again, it's not just the owned content, but the the earned content too. They both play a role and making sure that messaging is consistent. If you have a way to like, which

Proving ROI With Citations And Trades

I know of course you do, but thinking through like what is the brand, how are you positioning it, and is that brand consistent with again answering a question? So if I'm searching for a very specific type of podcast, can I make sure that yours comes up? And so it's just being intentional with the alignment of your content strategy across both your your owned and your earned content that that will get you noticed.

Well, let me say this real quick because Courtney, you have you got me excited now. I got some homework as we're doing here. But is there anything that you think we have not covered in terms of uh AEO and uh how it can benefit people?

You know, I I don't think so. I think we covered it all. I would say there are a lot of stats out there now of just how much this matters. And so if as a PR professional, you ever do need to again put more like evidence in your back pocket to show why this is so important. Um I know like MuckRack, for example, just released a great report on what AI is reading. And I think some of the recent stats have shown that like 82% of AI citations are coming from earned media. So it's not just us like saying how great PR is, it's really, really showcasing that. And I think for for decades, PR has been waiting for this type of validation. And so it's only here to help us. It's a great tool for us to have, and there's great evidence out there. Again, if you need that further validation to either show internally for your agency or for your clients, just tell how much this matters.

Mm-hmm. Well, Cordner, let me say this. I really, really appreciate having you on this program today because I mean, not only have I learned a lot, but I think that our listeners have learned a lot that's uh going to help them as well. And I'm certainly going to uh get my pencil and pad out today and start getting some things that, you know, nothing like trying to improve what you have. So I'm certainly going to be on that. And I really want to thank you for uh being a podcast guest today. There's no question about that. I really, really appreciate your coming on.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. And and yeah, I'm around. If you ever need any any guidance, it's a learning process. It's a lot of trial and error, which I'm sure anybody who's listening can relate to. So we can talk through pitfalls and and benefits all day long, I'm sure.

Okay. Well, let me say thank you so very, very much. My guest today has been Courtney Calderon. She's an executive vice president of Uproad Public Relations. And my my provides us with a boatload of good information today. It's something I know I'm excited about. And I'm certainly you're excited about it too. And also share this information with us on your colleagues. And also don't forget to listen to the next edition of the Public Relations video podcast.