Eric Siu explains why marketers should focus content on ChatGPT and AI topics, which drive 5-10x more traffic than other LLMs. A study of 100+ sites shows ChatGPT recommends brands based on context, thoroughness, and mentions across platforms, not domain authority. The strategy: build citations everywhere, not just traditional SEO.
No one talks about LLMs. No one talks about Grok. No one talks about Perplexity. They just assume everything is ChatGPT. So I'm like, we should just nail it head on and just focus our messaging purely around ChatGPT.
Yep.
And yes, we can do Perplexity and all the other ones, but ChatGPT is what everyone's talking about, so we should just focus on that.
That's what we call the first mover advantage. Typically first mover, if you have a good product and you're, you're, you're known as the brand in the space, you're going to get the attention. And you know what's interesting? I was looking at our traffic stats, just website traffic. And whenever we talk about like AIO or ChatGPT optimization or like any of these LLM or whatever, it's always 5 to 10 times more traffic than anything else that we publish right now. So I'm just like, guys, why don't we just keep doing that? Like, forget all the other stuff, right?
Same with social content.
Yeah, just forget about it. Oh, and by the way, I was reading something. A bunch of SEOs were complaining again, haha, right? They're complaining again on X.
About?
They were complaining about how traditional SEO is dying, but there was a silver lining to it. The silver lining is they've never been busier than ever right now. So we have some mutual friends, maybe some mutual enemies as well in there. And they were just saying that they'd never been busier because when things get tough with traditional SEO, people are like, they want to get that traffic back. They want the same thing back. And it's no different than this Reach SaaS Founders Retreat I was at where everyone wants to get their traffic back. I'm like, guys, like, It's on its way down. Don't abandon it, but it's a sunk cost thing where you don't, just don't, it's okay if you spent money on it, it's time to move on.
Yes, when Eric says move on though, because I think a lot of people are going to—
Not throw it away.
Use it in a wrong context. He's not saying SEO is dead. He's not saying Google is dead. He's saying that you need to adapt with the platforms and you need to be there when people ask questions to Google in AI mode or whether it's in the AI overviews, but also you need to be there whether it's Perplexity, Grok, or ChatGPT. Not just for bottom of funnel, but also top of funnel, middle of funnel, and you need to adapt. What he's saying is throw away your mindset of, oh, I spent all this money on traditional SEO and I'm losing traffic. What Eric is specifically saying is that's fine. A lot of those factors are very relevant to optimizing for AI and LLMs. Adapt with it. Don't fight and go against the grain.
And you know, we talk about search everywhere optimization, it's a term you coined, but it's more so You need citations everywhere. So I had that group, that SaaS group, I was like, hey guys, just go to ChatGPT right now, search for what's the best marketing podcast. 7 out of 8 people, Marketing School was at least number 2, if not higher, right?
Yeah.
And so, but what's the reason for that? It's 'cause we're cited on YouTube. We've been publishing, we're over 3,000 episodes on Marketing School. I don't know if you know that.
Wow.
Yeah. You publish all the time on your YouTube. I publish all the time on YouTube. We're publishing on Twitter, we're everywhere, right? It's not just links anymore. And you actually published something on X today. I don't even know if you know this. You scheduled something. Yeah, I was like, I don't know what I'm talking about. But basically it does talk about how like, yeah, you need to have like some type of brand reputation. There's sentimentality around your brand as well.
Oh yeah, we did one on how ChatGPT evaluates brand mentions. Yeah.
So why don't you talk about that? Because I think this is related to this. All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com/eric.
Yeah, so I had a post on, a data post that my team ended up creating. I can't see the footnote. Oh, there you go. I can see the footnote in it. So looked at over 100 sites in 14 different verticals to see why ChatGPT recommends certain brands more than others. And we wanted to really look at brand mentions and we looked at domain authority. It doesn't really have too much of an impact on ChatGPT. So if you get mentioned on a high domain authority versus low domain authority, not too much. Context, like what is the context of that you're being mentioned in? That has a high score. The thoroughness. If someone just says like, oh, NP Digital or Single Grain is good, but without being super thorough and giving reasons why, the thoroughness does matter. Age, the age of the business and the more people mentioning you over time, that's helped. Quantity was another one that was really high. Relevance of the site, a little bit lower. That was medium-ish. And I think that's going to change over time. Sentiment had a high rating as well. Is what they're saying about your company positive or negative? So if you had to pick the main factors, you want to focus on context, thoroughness, quantity. So a lot of these brand mentions and sentiment, they want to be positive. Those are the 4 main factors to focus on when it comes to brand mentions to get site ChatGPT to cite you more often.
Yep. So again, it's not just based on like links still matter, but like you look at the internet now, if you're an LLM, you're crawling a bunch of different things, you're multimodal and you want to try to be as in as many places as possible. And by the way, a lot of this stuff now is just republishing. You're republishing short-form content. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. And we'll see you tomorrow.
