Cyrus Shepard

Haters will say it's fake, but here's how we started reporting rising Google traffic with this one simple trick 📈

New - AI Citation Ranking Factor Analysis

https://lnkd.in/gNve8YPg

It seems everyone is talking about AI Citations as a way to boost visibility and a slice of traffic, but what actually works?

To find out, I gathered nearly every academic paper, study, experiment, and case study published over the past couple of years. I then extracted, cataloged, collated, and scored the most salient findings from dozens of the most solid research pieces.

The result: 22 "Ranking Factors" most associated with earning AI citations

The good news is *most* of these AI Citation Ranking Factors align with traditional SEO - with a few tweaks.

Oh, I also created a 7-Step AI Citation checklist based on this data, to go out next week.

Honestly, couldn't have done this without the contributions of the AI researchers and thought leaders in our industry. If this interrest you, these are the folks you should follow: Dan Petrovic, Ann Smarty, Kevin Indig, Rand Fishkin, Metehan Yeşilyurt, Andrea Volpini, Britney Muller, Oshen Davidson, Michael King, Lily Ray, Dawn Anderson, David McSweeney 🙏

(and many more academic researchers without much of a public presence)

Happy citation earning

From the Google dictionary 🤔

Today, Google released the May Core Update. This update will classify all non-Google websites as spam*

Thank you for your attention to this matter

*spam websites may still be used for AI training

Here's the truth, I replaced my entire SEO agency with 8 AI Agents

Here's how: I never had an SEO agency

New— Fan-out Framework: 5 Steps to Improve SEO and AI Visibility

You already know about AI fan-out queries, the related sub-queries that AI generates to more fully answer a question.

You ALSO probably know that ranking highly for multiple fan-out queries can increase your chances of getting cited or appearing in the AI answer.

But how do you optimize for AI query fan-outs?

The process is straightforward. I see many companies follow a process like this:

1. Use a keyword you already rank for
2. Find common fan-out queries
3. Determine the most important fan-out topics
4. Optimize your page—or create new pages—for the fan-out queries
5. Measure the results

But there are many pitfalls and traps! What tools do you use? What fan-out queries are important, and what can you ignore? How do you actually optimize for these and measure the results?

I couldn't find a great guide on how to do all this, so I wrote one. Exact tools. Exact process.

Hope you find it useful!

Spammers point 1000s of spammy links at Disney

You've likely seen links similar to these in your own backlink profile

Google tells us we can safely ignore these links because Google ignores these links. No need to disavow

Yet the anchor text clearly shows up in Disney's sitelinks.

So is Google actually ignoring these links?

Let's point out that Google uses different systems for different functions. So the systems that generates sitelinks are likely different from the systems that determine rankings. But nobody wants to see this.

H/t Barry Schwartz

Easy AI optimization tip: position your company by nailing your "brand facts"

Positioning helps tell AI systems:

1) Who you are
2) What you do
3) Whom you help
4) Problems you solve
5) What you specialize in

e.g., [Brand] is a [product] targeting [customer], good at [problem] because of [differentiator]

Here's a fictional example:
"[Quarry] is a [procurement platform] targeting [mid-sized construction firms], good at [solving supply delays] because of [supplier lead-time data]."

You don't need to repeat the exact sentence everywhere, but your "facts" should be consistent across the pages + platforms you control.

Many companies have under-optimized messaging all over their websites, leading both humans and AI to basically guess and piece together what they do

Do AI systems know *exactly* what you do by reading your home/about/product pages?

Make it easy for them

What kind of content works to drive traffic in the age of AI? Great data via Siege Media

Surprisingly, "Pricing/Costs" + "Case Studies" have seen the most growth in this study

This mirrors what we're seeing across multiple industries as to what's performing effectively: Proprietary data/products, storytelling, and perspectives (reviews, comparisons) 📈

And what's not working? All the things that AI excels at: How-tos, Listicles, and Tutorials 📉

What content types are you currently investing in?

Link in comments 🔗

Friends, remember when we used to use Google Alerts? For a brief moment, it was almost useful.

But it got so bad that everyone stopped using it years ago.

Great news: our friend Rand Fishkin and his team launched Alertmouse!

It's like 100x better than Google Alerts.

Free + paid accounts, simple tracking across the web for your name, brand, topic, or whatever you want.

I think this is going to be big.

link in thread

Great + informative slide via Google's Danny Sullivan illustrating the difference between "Commodity" content vs "Non-Commodity" content

Google prefers the later

IMO, lots of evidence this is spot-on, not where Google is going in the future, but where it already is now

(p.s. if you know who originally posted this, please tag them!)

Winning comment of the day right here, folks