SEO and PR Are Finally Married (And AI Search Is Why)

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Brand visibility doesn't mean what it used to. For years, SEO and PR operated in completely separate lanes. One chased rankings, the other chased coverage. AI search collapsed that wall. Now, getting cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews depends on whether other people are talking about you, not just whether your own pages rank.

Cassie sits down with Basha Coleman, lead program manager on HubSpot's content strategy and operations team and an SEO and AEO consultant with seven years of experience, to talk about what brand visibility actually looks like in an AI-first search environment.

In this episode:

• Why SEO and PR are finally operating as one function, and what that means for your strategy
• The most undervalued citation channel most brands are completely ignoring
• What actually counts as "news" if you're a B2B software company
• How to measure success when AI answers the question and the click never happens
• Why top of funnel content matters more than ever, even though you can't track it
• Whether AEO and GEO are really just brand work, and Basha's "yes, and"

If you're listening to this and thinking I need someone to lead this for me, that's what I do.

I'm an AI search visibility consultant and a fractional content strategist for startups and enterprise brands. If that sounds like the kind of help you're looking for, email me at cassie@cassieclarkmarketing.com. 

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

Let’s connect:

LinkedIn → Cassie Clark | AI Search Visibility Consultant
Website → https://cassieclarkmarketing.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back to Found in AI. I'm Cassie Clark, a fractional content strategist and AI search optimization expert. And this is a show where we talk about what's actually changing in AI search so you don't get left behind. Today we're talking about brain visibility, specifically what it means now that your buyers are getting answers from chat GPT, perplexity, whichever one they're using, instead of scrolling through those Google results, the short version, SEO and PR have finally start flirting and they have gotten married. And if your content strategy hasn't caught up to that yet, then this is the episode for you. My guest today is Basha Coleman. I'll let her introduce herself.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah. Well, hello, I'm Basha Coleman. I currently work full-time for HubSpot and I'm a lead program manager there on our content strategy and operations team. This sits in our media department. So whenever you see our HubSpot blogs or our newsletters or any of our YouTube channels, that is going to be the team that I work on and do operations for. Somewhere in the background, you probably won't see me on camera. In my spare time, I have a marketing agency. And so I do SEO and AEO consulting. And that's been really fun. I've worked with businesses across the spectrum in market research, cybersecurity, healthcare. It's just been running the gamut, but it's really how I enjoy spending my time.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah. Okay. So I have a bunch of questions, both on the consulting side and on the HubSpot side. But how long have you been in SEO consulting that part of it?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

That has been, I would say the better part of seven years.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

So when did you start really filling the crunch with, oh, this is different? Like we are moving to AI engines and not just Google.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Oh, let me see. I feel like that happened in phases. Um, so the first phase was probably end of 2022, going into 2023, where it's like, okay, these new AI tools are out. You know, what are they capable of? Um, just something to kind of be aware of. We thought they were cool, like a little novelty.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

My first question is so you've made this transition here with HubSpot. And in your view, how has brand visibility changed now that audiences are asking these chat bots and not just Google?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah. So um years ago, I always thought there was an intersection of SEO and PR that wasn't talked about enough. Um, and I thought that was really evident in the music industry, um, where PR really was the brand machine. Um, but we didn't really see it that way in tech. You know, the brand team did its own thing, um, SEO and demand did its own thing, and the two never really crossed. Um, but now we're really seeing that relationship form. I cannot remember who um on LinkedIn I saw talking about it, but they were like, you know, SEO and brand are finally like um, they used to kind of flirt with each other, but now they're married. Um I think that's exactly what's happening. And so um brand visibility means like having other people talk about you now. Before it used to be how can we make ourselves rank number one in Google? And now it's how can we get other people who are already ranking, you know, top 10 talk about us. And that's a very different um mind, uh, a way to switch your mind around to try to get uh gain brand visibility.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So if if I'm an SEO and I'm listening to this, and I've listened to the podcast before, I'm like, okay, we'll use quoted or something like that. But what are your tips for doing that? Say it again. If I'm if I'm an SEO and I'm listening to this, and I just heard you say that, and I've listened to the podcast before, and I've like quoted is a big thing, like that's a way we can get mentioned, but what are your tips? Do you have anything different that the audience might like to hear about?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, I think one of the most under underlooked um or undervalued channels is going to be local news sources. A lot of people forget, you know, people are still interested in watching the news, listening to the radio, uh, things like that. And LLMs really like those because it's kind of like that social proof aspect. Um you can't, I mean, you can kind of do your editorial things, but uh for the most part, people don't really fake news. So um getting placed in, you know, your smaller publications, your smaller newspapers, um digital publications, stuff like that is gonna be really big. Um and usually it can be less expensive than doing like traditional advertising, which don't have as much of an impact on uh brand visibility when it comes to AI engines anyway.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah, so my follow-up question to that. What counts as news? Like if you are a brand and you're thinking, like, okay, well, local news, like I do software. No one here cares about software. I'm thinking about I live in the middle of nowhere in Virginia. Like healthcare is what's the big here. So what counts? Like, how would we go about hey, news station, look at me?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, so of course, you don't want to lead with um, you know, we just got a new CEO, you know, we want to write up about that. Nobody cares about that, really. Um, but if you have some new data or new research from your team that's come out um and only you have this research, that can be very interesting to a news organization, even if it's something, you know, related to tech, like you know, this new software, you know, has X whatever data, um, that could be interesting to someone that's watching the news because they can't get that from anyone else but you and this news station.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So, how should companies be measuring success when an AI answer or an AI provides the answer directly and then those traditional click-throughs are gone?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Um, so when an AI provides an answer directly in the like how should they be measuring success in that way?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Yeah. So then you go bottom of funnel. You're looking at leads. Um, you know, you're looking at signups if if that's how your your product is set up. Um, we well, I like to think top of funnel is kind of more fragmented than it used to be. Um and so you really just have to look at your bottom line numbers, which is hard, um, especially because we talked about brand earlier. We never had to measure um, you know, bottom of funnel metrics for brand level work. Um, you know, people look at you kind of crazy if you try to do that, but that's just where we are now, uh, which means you might not be able to attribute um, you know, leads to every single piece of content you do or every single play you run. Um, and that we just have to be okay with a little ambiguity in that way. As long as the bottom level number is going up, um, you know, keep doing what you're doing. But if you start to see fluctuations in that, then maybe look at, you know, does this make sense from a cost perspective? If we're running, you know, um a podcast that's not, you know, generating any revenue, does it make sense to keep doing that or not? Um, but yeah, you just kind of have to look at at your bottom of funnel.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

So we've talked about bottom of funnel on on the podcast before. Um I mean, we talk about it constantly, I feel like, but I feel like when people hear, okay, bottom of funnel is more important now. Do you think top of funnel is going anywhere? Like, should we still be creating that content for top of funnel?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Absolutely, because the top of funnel content is what the LLMs need to give these citations, to give the answers. Um, they're not going to look at a white paper necessarily and talk about you from that. They're looking at the news sources. Um, they're looking at other competitors talking about you. And that's how they're they're generating these answers. So I don't think it's invaluable to do brand work. It's more important than ever. We just can't really track its success anymore. And so it just puts the onus on marketers to stop um forcing attribution where it doesn't fit. Um, it's easy, it's pretty, it makes sense. We like our charts. Um, but we're just getting in an era where that probably doesn't make sense at this time. Maybe in the future we'll figure out, you know, attribution for LLMs um and for brand level work. But right now, no, but we still have to do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

So you keep mentioning brand level, and I've heard other people on LinkedIn talking about it and like making the connection to like AEO, GEO is mostly brand. It's mostly brand. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Um, yes, and so I agree that um AEO, SEO still, um, GEO work is brand, but it's not only for brand, it's for bottom of funnel too. Uh, because these LLMs can also at the same time of recommending you, recommend somewhere for them to sign up for you know your newsletter or your podcast or uh subscribe to your YouTube channel right there in the conversation. So you're doing both top of funnel and bottom of funnel work in the same five-minute interaction with your your chosen LLM.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Um, so we can't ignore either.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, I have noticed like if I'm in there and I'm looking at like, okay, for actual content strategist, I'm just looking to see how I'm being recommended, it does pull up the newsletter and it'll say, She also runs a newsletter and it links directly to it, which is really nice. It is really nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, so we can't. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Go no, go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I was just gonna say we we can't uh separate the two. We need both because they're both happening in the same conversation. Whereas before in traditional search, um, it was kind of on the user to make the connection. They would search a brand term or they'd search a um a broad term and find your brand, and then they would go through that journey based on you know how your website was was uh functioning. But now AI is doing that for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

So yeah, it's kind of removed the whole burden of research from the user and it just does it, which is both nice and also kind of scary at the same time. When you think about it, maybe too long.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yes, yeah, it is a little scary.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

So, okay, so fine final question here. Like we used to optimize for keywords, and now we seem to be optimizing for trust. Um, does brand authority become the only metric that kind of matters here? Or is there another thing that we should be looking at?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Um, no, I don't think brand authority is the only thing that's gonna matter. Like we talked about before, uh bottom of funnel metrics, lead, signups, revenue, we still need to be looking at that more closely than we ever have. Um, but also just kind of like, you know, looking at the human sentiment. What are people saying about you? Um, social listening tools are still gonna be really important because AI is not gonna tell you that. Um, but you know, how your brand is being perceived and digested by your audience is gonna be important because just because the numbers look good, people could still not be a fan or not actually trust you. Um, and so you still want to optimize for that.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Okay, that's it for this episode. But before you go, here's what I'd actually do this week coming out of this conversation. If you listen to the show and you've been a longtime listener, you know I like to leave you with some kind of actionable tip. This one might sound repetitive, but it is truly the first place that we're gonna start. You're gonna go prompt those engines to find out what it's saying about our brand. These AI engines truly are mirrors. So whatever your team is putting out, it's gonna reflect that back. Now, when I tell you this, I want you to think more of the organization as a whole, not just your content or SEO team. Because AI engines, what they reflect back, truly is a reflection of your entire organization. Think about your customer service team. Stuff that they say or do ends up on the internet somewhere. Think about your sales team, think about PR, think about digital, social, all of the things. We need that to be in agreement. So the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna look at that AI answer about our brand. We're gonna ask, is it accurate? Does it mention our newsletter or community or whatever thing that you have going on? Is your expertise frame that you'd want it to be? That is the baseline. My cat has found something to play with. It's a box. Second, if you don't have proprietary data or research that you're pitching to local news or digital publications, put that on the list. That is one of the most underrated citation plays in AI Search right now, and truly I don't think it gets enough airtime. If you want this kind of breakdown every week, I put out a free newsletter on Fridays called the Visibility Report, where I go a bit deeper into all of this. The link it to the show notes. And if you're ready to do a full audit of where your brand stands in AI Search, head to CassieClarkmarketing.com. I'm gonna go find out what my cat is actually doing. Until then, stay visible.