What Does It Take To Actually Get Cited in AI Search? (Hint: SEO, PR, and Reputation Management)

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In this episode of Found in AI, Cassie sits down with Jonathan Bentz, Growth Strategist at Direct Online Marketing, to challenge one of the longest-standing mantras in marketing: "content is king." Jonathan makes a compelling case that AI search visibility isn't a content production problem—it's a validation problem. 

If your strategy stops at your own website, you're only giving AI engines one source to work with. Jonathan breaks down the three disciplines that need to work together for AI visibility—SEO, reputation management, and digital PR—and explains why most teams are only doing one of them. Cassie connects his insights back to the FSA Framework and walks through exactly how press releases, review platforms, and unified messaging map to Freshness, Structure, and Authority.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "content is king" no longer applies to AI search — and what Jonathan means when he calls AI visibility a validation problem
• The three marketing disciplines that need to come together for AI search success, and why SEO alone isn't enough
• How AI engines use platforms like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius to build agreement about your brand — and what happens when that agreement isn't in your favor
• Why press releases are making a comeback as an authority and freshness strategy, even on a shoestring budget
• The role customer service and customer experience now play in how AI engines perceive your brand
• How reputation management has shifted from a defensive play to an offensive AI visibility strategy
• Why unified messaging across PR, marketing, social, and customer support is now a structural signal AI engines rely on
• How Jonathan's three disciplines map directly to the FSA Framework (Freshness, Structure, Authority) — and what to prioritize first if you only have 90 days

Resources:

Webinar (March 26, 2026, at 1 pm EST): Boardroom Ready: A CMO's Guide to GEO

Let’s connect:

LinkedIn → Cassie Clark | Fractional Content Strategist
Website → https://cassieclarkmarketing.com

Download Freshness, Structure, Authority: The Framework for AI Search Visibility:

Amazon

P.S. Is your brand losing its "Answer Authority"?

Most series A/B and enterprise brands are being "nudged" out of AI search results because of entity gaps and "stale" content. I am opening a limited number of specialized audit slots to help you reclaim your Share of Voice using the FSA Framework (Freshness, Structure, Authority).

Request your 7-Day AI Search Visibility Audit: https://cassieclarkmarketing.com/ai-search-visibility-audit/

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:00

Hey marketers, welcome back to Found in AI. I'm Cassie Clark, a fractional content strategist and an AI search optimization expert, and this is the show where we talk about AI search optimization, GEO, AEO strategies, and what all this means that we don't get left behind in a new wave of user search behavior. Okay, so I want to start today with something that might ruffle a few feathers. Content is king. We have all heard it. And we've all lived by it, and for a long time, a really long time, it worked. You scaled content production on your own site, you treated your marketing team like a media company, and in the long term, you won. But then AI engines showed up on the scene and they kind of took a playbook and crumpled it all up. And AI search publishing more content on your website is not enough to get cited. AI models don't just look at what you say about yourself, they look at what the rest of the digital ecosystem says about you. And if your entire strategy is, well, we'll just produce more blog posts, well, you're solving the wrong problem. Today's guest, Jonathan Bentz, causes a validation problem, not so much a content production problem. Jonathan is a growth strategist at direct online marketing in Pittsburgh. He's been an SEO for over 20 years. He's been published in Entrepreneur, Business.com, and G2, and he works with companies across industries to build search strategies to actually hold up in an AI-verse world. In this conversation, we get into three disciplines that need to come together for AI search visibility to really work. And I will tell you right now, most teams are only doing one of them. We talk about reputation management, the role of platforms like G2 and Captera, why press releases are making a serious comeback, and how customer service is now a GEO conversation. Before we jump in, I want to give you a little heads up. Jonathan is also one of the leads on a free webinar called Boardroom Ready, a CMO's guide to GEO, that's happening on March 25th at 1 p.m. Eastern through direct online marketing. I'll link it in the show notes. If you're a marketing leader trying to figure out how to explain GEO to your leadership team, that's when you might want to attend. So just think about it. All right, let's get into it.

Speaker 2:34

Yeah, uh, Cassie, thank you for having me on. My name is Jonathan Bentz, and I am a growth strategist for direct online marketing in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2 2:45

In Pittsburgh. Okay, so it's currently February. How cold are you right now?

Speaker 2:49

I know this is unrelated, but well, uh, it's not as bad right now as it was.

Speaker 2 2:57

Yeah, it's been rough.

Speaker 2:59

Uh, but yeah, here in, you know, certainly here in the uh western, eastern, mid Pittsburgh is in a weird spot, right? Where it's like it is it it is Midwest, but it's also still in the mid-Atlantic uh at the same time. So uh yeah, we are in a season to timestamp us a little bit. Uh we're in a season where we just had fern come through and uh ice storms. I have a I have a parfait of ice and snow outside my door, but uh we're trekking along anyway.

Speaker 2 3:33

Yeah. Okay, so when I put out a call that I was looking for guests, you in the form, you said most teams misunderstand where AI's trust comes from. Yes, they treat AI search as a content production problem, not unlike the content is kink SEO approach, believing that if they just publish enough AI friendly content on their site, they will be cited.

Speaker 4:00

You want to explain that for a second? Yeah, you're right. I did. Man, that was a very eloquent message that I typed into that submission. The I I have conversations every single week, whether it's with existing clients at our agency or prospective clients at our agency that want to get a game plan together for AI search. And what I'm seeing where as we're going through those conversations, a lot of times they the belief is that it's an extension of a content of a of an on-site content strategy or just an extension of search engine optimization the way we're all kind of used to thinking about it. And I don't, and so there's always in in traditional SEO, there's always been that mantra of content is king. And so if you create, continue to scale content production on your own site, treat your own website like you would treat if you were a media team or a media pub publishing company, that in the long term you're going to win. I don't know that that's the case anymore.

Speaker 2 5:18

That kind of pushes back on the whole theory. I had a client a couple months ago, and they're like to be recognized, and this was really before the whole AI search conversation, but they're like to be recognized, you have to be a media company. Sure, you might sell software, but now you're also media. That kind of pushes back on that a little.

Speaker 5:39

It it does because from what I have seen, the to really have success in AI search, you actually need to have really from our perspective, three different disciplines put together to have three marketing disciplines together to have success with AI search.

Speaker 2 6:04

And what are those three disciplines that you're seeing?

Speaker 6:07

Great. Thank you for asking that. So it is there is an element of traditional SEO that goes along with that. So you will have your technical, and there are going to be content additions that you need to make to pages. And there probably are some content gaps where you need to have new articles, or to that analogy about treating your marketing team like a media and publishing company, having that regular content production happening that needs to be done. Content needs to load fast, all of those, all of the traditional SEO stuff. But the other two elements that don't always get considered if you're just thinking about SEO are reputation management. What we know traditionally is reputation management and digital PR. And those three disciplines coming together to form your AI search strategy seems to be the right mix. In this day and time, that seems to be the right mix to go from being a an entity to being a cited, trustworthy entity, and then ultimately a recommended entity when someone is asking the AI tools to recommend a solution or a service or a business.

Speaker 2 7:37

So we've talked a little bit about digital PR on this podcast. Um, do you have any other recommendations other than like go into use quoted or help a reporter out hero or any of those? Aside from just maybe hiring a PR team to do it for you. Like if we are on a two-stream budget, what is your suggestion?

Speaker 7:56

I have seen that. I've seen all of those approaches be taken. By the way, the found the original founder of Help a Reporter Out has gone back in and started a second source for help a reporter out. So if you're if your listeners aren't familiar with that, go find Peter Shankman online and check out his new his he basically went ahead and redid what he originally did with Help a Reporter out. So go check that one out. Yes, quoted is great. Yes, Harrow is great, but there's another one emerging and it's it's very legitimate. So check that one out. Um the now the other strategy that we are seeing in addition to digital to digital PR and earned media being a portion of that is the just the uh the the mass uh pr production of consistent information. So from a thinking about that from a PR perspective, make sure that you're putting press releases out through some type of wire service. I don't care if your business is spending a thousand dollars a release or a hundred dollars a release. If you want that consensus of information to be present in AI search, you need to be the provider of that information to drive that consensus.

Speaker 2 9:37

It's really interesting that you bring that up because I attended Podfest a couple weeks ago, and so many of the sessions I attended said for your podcast, you need to be pushing out a PR release somewhere. And I have not heard that one, granted, you know, a newbie podcaster, but it was so it was interesting. So I want to go back to reputation management because that is also very specific. Now, when you say repu reputation management, what do you mean exactly?

Speaker 10:10

There are sources of information. The the AI tools like to go to resources and will trust resources where they can get they can build a lot of consensus efficiently. Reddit. Reddit is one. Reddit is one. There's also there's also an API with some financial consideration taken into account with the prevalence of Reddit, but I'm not here for that podcast today. The with but thinking about thinking about this in the SaaS, just use an example in the SaaS industry. So in the SaaS industry, you look at G2 as a mass collection of information and on a lot of different sources. You look at Captera, you look at Trust Radius, you look at those other uh uh publishing sites, review sites owned by previously owned by Gartner that G2 has now recently acquired. And you take those, and because those bots can go out and process all of that information in a structured way, and all of that information in from one source in an efficient manner, those platforms now, what is being said on those platforms now matters, it's always mattered, but it now matters even more because those AI tools are using platforms like those as a way to quickly establish consensus on what you're saying on your website or what some of these tertiary sources are saying. And if you have low ratings or bad reviews on some of those mass-produced platforms, mass published platforms, you're going to struggle to have your message trumped over those other, some of those other messages.

Speaker 2 12:19

So one of the things I've been thinking about lately is who owns GEO within an organization. And I've been thinking about how it really spans far beyond SEO to both your social team, which most most organizations have a social team, but is it aligned with the message that you're trying to send out? And I think some struggle there. But I've also been thinking about how customer service now really plays a part in this. Because if your customer service is bad, what happens when you have a poor customer experience? What do those people do?

Speaker 12:59

Right. You don't you don't have a lot of people going online to leave reviews for a mid-experience, or you will right statistically, it'll always be the polar ends, right? You knocked it out of the park and you delivered great customer service, or you missed the mark and you delivered really bad customer service, and that's and those are going to those are going to impact those. And so, yeah, I think it's a volume. You're right. I think there's an element of customer service that can play into that. Or they need to be it needs to be uh the the customer experience, customer support department needs to be mindful of that as they're crafting their messaging and their communications and their uh how they're enabling their team, their their team to move with autonomy. So you're right about that. How are they delivering client delight? That's going to matter. The other thing that's going to matter, too, is the a unified message coming down from leadership or from a communications department, where to your point, a lot of this stuff has been self-contained in marketing. Sometimes marketing and communications are in alignment, but also sometimes at companies they kind of move in, they move in. Yeah, they're not together. They're they're kind of overlapping with each other. And so I think having that, it's always great to have a alignment in business, but that messaging, that core messaging, having that aligned with your PR, your communications, your marketing, all the way down through social, and then even over into customer service and customer experience is a great is a great consideration as well.

Speaker 2 15:00

Yeah. So the rest of your message in your form said to me, AI search visibility is actually a validation problem. AI models don't just look at what you say about yourself, they look about at what the rest of the digital ecosystem in your niche says about you.

Speaker 15:17

Yes.

Speaker 2 15:18

So if you're noticing that you have a reputation management problem, so everyone is in the comments on Captera or G2, and they're just really trashing, really trashing your service or your product, what do you do?

Speaker 15:33

What what do you do? How do you fix it? Great question. Great, great comment. What the approach that we're recommending right now is a is a blast approach. Like you need to be more active in having the message that you want out in the market to be prevalent. So is there an element to that where you're using some of those top-sided websites to influence that? Yes. That's a part of it. Digital PR is going to play a role in that. One of my favorite analogies and expectation sets for companies considering this, as whether it's an extension of their SEO or it's a net new campaign for them, is that your website, the one that you hold so dear when you get people in, to the AI bots that's just one entity. There is so much other stuff out there on the internet. And they're going to use your website, but they're not going to trust you as the only source of truth. So they're going to go out and generate that consensus. How are you going to generate, how are you going to go about generating that consensus? Are you going to create so much noise in another direction that the noise ultimately becomes the signal? Right. And that's that's through the digital PR pushes and some of those things. Or are you going to take a more intentional surgical approach to keep building positivity on some of those most frequently cited platforms? I ultimately, I think it's a balance of both.

Speaker 2 17:33

Yeah, I think what's interesting about AI search optimization or generative search optimization, whatever you want to call it. I think what's interesting is there are so many different facets to this. Like you can do one thing really well forever and ever, and it might work, but there's also a hundred other different strategies that you can also implement. So last question for you.

Speaker 18:11

Well, I mean, the perfect answer is it varies. No, that's not a perfect answer. It's not a perfect answer for that, for this question. So if you do have, if you are the type of business that only wants to put press releases out if it is content that you expect is going to be picked up by the media, you're missing the butt. You're missing the point. With at least in 2026, you're missing the point. So having a regular public press release, publication, and announcement schedule, anything that you could put out into the market that is worth commenting on. My recommendation at this point is to try to put that out. So are you making strategic hires? You're right. In the greater land, maybe in the grand scheme of media, of media pickup, that's only important to the person's hometown and their regional chamber of commerce that you made a strategic hire. But put that message out onto the web as a whole. Why? Because you get that chance to have your boilerplate republished. You get the chance to mention your brand in the market and what messaging you want out there. And you have hundreds of publications of that. And get into some kind of rhythm at least once a month, more frequently, if you can if you can accommodate that, but at the very least once a month, have some type of message going out into the market so that you can consistently have a mass publication of that message that you want to be uh adopted by the AI search tools.

Speaker 2 20:23

Yeah. And that message should be consistent across every press release that gets put out.

Speaker 20:29

100, yeah, 100%. Your your PR and communications team, however, you have that structured from consultant or freelancer down to a dedicated staff, they should be mindful of what's in that about a business section and have some kind of consistent, reiterative message throughout the body of that press release because you want that message to become the new standard for your business. And and you have the ability with that high-volume publication to influence what AI search tools are learning about your business.

Speaker 2 21:09

Alright, that was Jonathan Bents, and I hope you caught what I caught in that conversation because there is a massive reframe here. Most teams treat AI Search like it's an extension of their content strategy, their on-site content strategy. I've been saying this for a while across LinkedIn and the Visibility Report newsletter and comments on LinkedIn. A lot of what happens, like what influences AI Search visibility, a lot of it happens off-site. Jonathan laid out why on site content strategy is not enough anymore, and we really need the off site piece. AI search visibility, like you said, isn't a content production problem. It's more of a validation problem. And validation comes from what the broader ecosystem says about you, not just You're out there saying about yourself. So, in true found AI fashion, let's connect this back to the FSA framework because everything kind of ties back to it directly. So, for freshness, the F of the FSA framework. Do you remember Jonathan's recommendation to get a regular press release cadence going? That's a fresh display. Every time you put a new release into the market, you're signaling that your brand is active, evolving, and producing current information. It's like a little hand wave of hey, we're still over here. And those AI engines, they notice that. Now it doesn't need to be a massive announcement, it could be a strategic hire update or product updates or something about an event. Just anything to get your message out there. Just once a month at a minimum. Next we have structure, the S of the FSA framework. Now this one kind of lives in that conversation about unified messaging. Jonathan talked a lot about making sure that your PR, your communications, your marketing, your social media, even your customer service team are all aligned around the same core message. When that messaging is consistent and structured across every surface, those AI engines can extract it cleanly. And when they can extract it cleanly, well they sign it with confidence. Now finally we have authority, the A of FSA, and this is a big one from today. Authority in AI Search isn't domain authority. And I will say this forever because this is what tripped me up, and I know based on my analytics, a lot of people are learning about this as well right now. Authority in this instant means entity authority, and it's the agreement that forms when your brand shows up across platforms like G2, Captera, Reddit, press releases, podcasts, or media, third-party mentions, I'm leaving something out, but all the other things. And it happens when all of those things reinforce the same expertise. Jonathan called this a validation problem, and he's right. AI engines they don't trust just a single source. They're out there, they're looking for references everywhere to build that agreement. And your job is to make sure the agreement that they build about your brand is the one that you actually want. So before we wrap up this episode, here's your action list for today. Just something that you can take and put into practice. First, get a press release schedule going. Even a free option like PR log gets your boilerplate information into the ecosystem and out into the world. Two, audit your review platforms. Go look at G2, Captera, Trust Radius, any other place wherever you can be put. Go see what's being said about you. That's shaping how AI engines perceive your brand, whether you're paying attention to it or not. Three, unify your messaging from leadership all the way down to customer support. Because now every touch point is training data. And the better your training data is today, the better your visibility will be the next time these AI engines have a training data update. So if you're a CMO or a marketing director trying to figure out how to bring GEO into your budget conversations, go register for Jonathan's free webinar. It's called Boardroom Ready, a CMO's guide to GEO. It's on March 25th, 2026 at 1 p.m. Eastern. Link is in the show notes if you're interested. And I'm Cassie Clark. If you want to know where your brand actually stands in AI Search right now, head over to CassieClarkMarketing.com and book an AI Search Visibility Audit. There's also a booking link if you want to discuss this beforehand. That's the best place to start. If this episode clicked for you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a teammate who's thinking about content strategy. You do all those things, I will love you forever, and I really appreciate the effort. I will see you in the next episode. Until then, stay visible.