Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to give you a five step framework that will put you ahead of 90% of the businesses in your industry. And I'm not exaggerating. I mean that literally. Why? Because 90% of the businesses haven't even heard about what I'm going to talk to you about. It's called GEO or generative engine optimization. It's how you get AI like chat, GPT, perplexity, Google's ai, Claude, all of them to recommend you when somebody asks a question about what you do. And the reason that I'm so fired up about this is because essentially it's one of those rare windows where the playing field is genuinely level. It doesn't matter if you're a startup in your university halls with one GCSE like me, or if you've got a hundred employees in a marketing department, the rules are new. Nobody has a headstart.

(00:43):
And the five things that I'm about to walk you through, they are totally free, they're practical, and if you actually do them, not just nod along and save this for later, they will compound into genuine long-term unfair advantages. Sound good? Well, here's what we're going to cover. We're going to cover how to restructure your content so that AI actually picks it up. How to create things that only you can create so you become essentially uncapable. How to make sure that AI can actually see your website because there's a high chance right now that AI actually can't and how to build what I like to call the citation surface area. So your name is everywhere AI looks, and most importantly, how to stay fresh because AI has a very short memory, and if you're not updating, then you're essentially disappearing. But before we dive into the episode, and I really hope you find it useful, I want to ask a quick favour of you guys.

(01:30):
I'd be hugely grateful if you could share this with a friend, a colleague, someone who is just starting out. As you know, knowledge unlocks a world of opportunity. Anyway, let's get into the episode. Hey, it's Oliver Bruce and welcome to the Unlock. Previously known as Success is in the Mind. I'm a UK entrepreneur, angel investor, a neurodivergent founder, and I recently exited my first business, which I scaled from my university halls into a multimillion dollar agency with no backing, no funding, just grit, mistakes and determination. I want to pass on some of the lessons that I've learned, the barriers that I had to overcome and the challenges that I'm still coming up against today. This podcast doesn't grow by itself, it grows with you. If you could possibly share this with friends, family, colleagues, anybody you're in business with, somebody that you think might find this useful, I would be greatly appreciative.

(02:18):
Anyway, let's get into it. So before we get into the first step, let me explain why this is super urgent, because if you don't understand the why, then it's maybe not going to work for you. So traditional search, Google the blue links, the whole thing if you will, is shrinking. Garner. One of the biggest research firms on the planet predicted that traditional search volumes would drop by 25% in 2026. Now guess what? We're in 2026. It is happening in front of your own eyes chat. GPT alone has 800 million weekly users. Perplexity is doing nearly 800 million queries a month. Google's own AI overviews are now showing up in over half of all searches. And when those AI overviews appear, click through rates on the normal results drop by 61%. When AI shows up in Google, 61% fewer people click on the regular results, the results you have spent years trying to rank for.

(03:18):
So where are those clicks essentially going? Well, they're going nowhere because the AI answered the question. The person got what they needed and moved on. They never visited your site, they never saw your brand. You were essentially invisible. Now here's the flip side, and this is where the opportunity is. When AI does cite you, when your name comes up, your brand comes up, someone clicks on the link, someone goes through to your website, the traffic you get from that converts a significantly higher rate than traditional search. Some studies are showing five times higher conversion rates. Why? Because the AI is basically the answer to their query. This is the answer, and here is where it came from. It's like a built-in endorsement, if you will. So the stakes are shrinking traffic from old search, massively higher converting traffic from AI search and a wide open playing field because most people haven't even started.

(04:17):
That is the best bit. Most people haven't even started. So let's get into step one. Step one is answer first story later. The first thing you need to change is the structure of your content. And this is where most entrepreneurs, most businesses get it wrong because they've been taught to write content like a university essay, introduction, buildup, context, background. Then finally, the answer buried halfway down the page. It doesn't work. AI doesn't care about your buildup. It doesn't care about your story. It's scanning essentially your content, asking one question. Does this page directly answer what the user has asked? And it decides that in the first 200 words, not the entire essay. Let me give you an analogy just to kind of make this clear. Imagine you're at a networking event and someone asks you, Hey, what's the best accounting software for a small e-commerce business?

(05:18):
You wouldn't say, well, let me tell you about the history of accounting software and how it's evolved over the last 20 years. What you would say is honestly zero, and here's why. That's how your content needs to be read, answer first reasoning, second story. Third, and here's a practical hack. Here's one that you can do today whilst you're listening to this podcast. If you go to your top 10 blog posts on your page, look at the first 200 words of each one and ask yourself, if somebody read only these 200 words, would they have a clear direct answer to the question this page is supposed to answer? If the answer is no, rewrite those 200 words. Put the answer upfront, then keep all the context and deal below. Hey guys, sorry for interrupting the podcast, but I thought you might find this useful. If like me, you found that one of the biggest headaches when running a business is managing money across different tools, currencies, and expenses.

(06:15):
Then I think I've got the solution for you. Incar is built to fix this headache. Incar is a new financial platform designed specifically for high growth modern businesses. It gives you multicurrency, accounts, connected banking and smart spend management all in one place. The really cool part is the rewards. With incar, you earn up to 2% cash back on things that you are probably already spending money on, like advertising, SaaS, tools and travel. Every time you spend, you generate points and you redeem them instantly for cash directly in the platform. So if you are building or scaling an online business and you want a smarter way to manage your finances, check out in card using the link in the description. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to this. Let's get back to the episode. The second thing, and this is genuinely one of the highest return on effort changes that you can make is rewriting your headings as questions.

(07:09):
For instance, you might have a heading that says, our email marketing approach, change that to what's the best email marketing strategy for small businesses. And again, you might have one that says, pricing overview. Change that to how much does X cost in 2026 Y because AI engines essentially pattern match headings to the questions that people ask. So when someone asks chat GPTA question, it literally scans the internet for headings that match that question. If your heading is the question you've just made its job so much easier and AI will reward you specifically for that brucey bonus 1 0 1, and this is your action step to follow up on. So open Google search console, look at the actual search queries that people are using to find your content and now make those queries. Your H two headings word for word, that is it. That is the hack.

(08:04):
That is the bonus. It's free. It takes an afternoon, but the impact will be seismic. So step two, create things only you can create. This is my favourite step because it's where entrepreneurs have a genuine advantage over big companies. AI has a problem, right? It needs to cite sources. It needs to back up what it says with real data, real numbers, real evidence, and it can't make those numbers up. It has to find them somewhere on the internet. So think about this. If there are thousands of articles about how to grow and the e-commerce business and they all say the same generic thing, build an email list, invest in paid ads, focus on customer retention, then the AI essentially has thousands of sources that all look the same. Nothing stands out, nothing is uniquely sizeable. But if your article says, we tested seven different email sequences on our 12,000 person list over 90 days, the plain text sequence with no images outperformed the designed template by 34% in click-through rate.

(09:16):
Now you've got something that nobody else has. You've got original data, you've got specific verifiable claims, and AI loves that because it can cite you for something nobody else can provide. That's how you climb the ranks. This is what I'm calling being UNC copyable, and you don't need to research thousands and thousands of documents to do it. You just need to be yourself. Step three is remove the padlock from your front door. And I will caveat this because it's a little bit boring, but you need to get through step three. Otherwise, essentially nothing else matters, but we need AI essentially to access your content, remove that padlock from the front door. AI has to access your content. And here's what's happening right now to a scary number of businesses. AI crawlers, like chat GT perplexity claws are sending out to read the internet, right? And they're being blocked.

(10:11):
And this is by business owners that have no idea that these AI agents, AI crawlers, are unable to access their actual content. CloudFlare, which something like 20% of the internet runs behind recently changed its default settings to block AI bots automatically. So if you use CloudFlare and it's worth looking into, there is a decent chance that your site is currently invisible to ai, not poorly ranked, not underperforming. Literally invisible. AI will not find your website. It cannot read a single word on your website. Similarly, your robot's TX file, for instance, which is a little text file on your server that tells bots what they can and can't access, might be telling AI crawlers essentially to go away. A lot of default configurations can do this. So just double check your backend. A little bit technical, I admit. So you might want to ask if you've got an IT department or someone technical in the business to have a look at it because it's certainly worth spending the time going through.

(11:10):
Here's the sort of checklist, if you will, that you want to put in front of them and say, can you just check this? Do it today. It'll take you 15 minutes, but it's definitely worth getting done. So check your robots TX file, go to your domain.com/robots.tx. Look for lines that block user agents like chat gpt, user G, PT bot, andro, ai, Claude bot, perplexity bot. If they're blocked, make sure you unblock them straight away. As I said, you can get someone a bit more technical if you can't do this to have a go, but head over to your domain.com/robots tx and check that out. Number two, check your CDN slash firewall settings, right? So if you use CloudFlare, go into your dashboard and check the AI bot settings. Make sure you're not blocking the ones you actually want to read your content. Again, you can make that decision.

(12:05):
You are in control. Check your content rendering. If your site is a single page java script app, and the content only loads after JavaScript runs, AI bots might see a blank page. Your important content needs to be server-side rendered. Again, a little bit technical, but it needs to be server-side. Server-side rendered, meaning it's essentially in the HTML before any JavaScript loads. So number four of this quick checklist is remove unnecessary gates. If your best content is behind a login, for instance, or a paywall or an email gate for that matter, or a click to expand any of those, then AI simply can't see it. Okay? Any kind of gate, any kind of wall ai, can't see it. Your most citable content, your best content may well be behind the paywall, the stuff you want AI to see, make sure it isn't. Make sure it is visible.

(12:58):
Make sure it is citable. It needs to be open and accessible, right? And step five, the last one in this checklist, consider creating, sorry, I'll go again. Consider creating LLMs text files, right? LLM meaning large language model, this is relatively new, but it's essentially a bit like robots tx, but specifically designed to help AI systems understand the structure of your site, the LLM bit large language model, essentially chat, GPT, et cetera. Think of this as a table of contents. It tells the ai, here are our most important pages. Here's what they cover, and here's how they're organised. It's not mandatory, as I said, but it is a free way to help essentially guide AI around your website to make sure that it's using it your site in a better way. I know it's not that exciting, and I know it's pretty technical, but try and take this away.

(13:52):
Try and put this in front of someone that is maybe more technical than yourself, maybe has a bit more time than yourself, and get them to have a look at your website. Have a look at the CMS, have a look at the backend, because these are quick wins that frankly may have been overlooked completely, understandably so let's get into step four, which is a little bit more exciting. Get talked about everywhere, right? So here's something that most people don't understand about ai. It decides what to site. It doesn't just look at your website, it looks at everything. Reddit threads, YouTube transcripts, news articles, podcasts, show notes, industry publications, social media forums, et cetera. And AI essentially is asking, is this brand being talked about in credible places across the internet? If the answer is yes, it trusts you a little bit more, right? If the answer is no, obviously I'll trust you a little bit less.

(14:41):
If the only place your brand exists is your own website, however, then you look like you are just shouting into a void. Nobody else is citing you. You're not necessarily that credible. I think of this as a citation surface area, as I mentioned at the very beginning. So the more places your brand shows up in the more credible context, the more surface area that you're covering, you're giving AI a better chance to actually find your brand trust. You understand that you're credible, and this is where entrepreneurs have a massive advantage over companies that are maybe slightly bigger. For instance, we can publish our own content, we can publish our own blogs, we can get pr, we can get digital pr. We can make noise on social across multiple channels and backlink to our website in places that are maybe more credible than just putting things out onto our website.

(15:33):
Here's a quick playbook as to how to win. No surprises here, but get on podcasts. This is probably the single highest, not singlest, single highest leverage point for most entrepreneurs. So just go out there, find 10 or 20 podcasts in your space. Pitch yourself as a guest when you appear on the podcast, your name and brand, end up in the show notes, right in the transcript or the podcast website on Apple Podcast, on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever you put the podcast, you will be there. That's five or six different credible places. Mentioning your name in connection with your topic from literally one conversation. Another one, for instance, is be useful on Reddit. And I admit this takes a bit of time, and it's a bit of a rabbit warren, but find useful subreddits where your audience hangs out. Don't sell to them, don't promote. Just answer questions really, really well.

(16:22):
Give genuine helpful advice. Reddit and YouTube are among the most cited sources for AI generated responses. YouTube is very, very good. Reddit is obviously equally as good. If you are consistent on Reddit and you are relevant on Reddit, AI will eventually pick that up. And honestly, even if it didn't, you'd still be building trust with real humans who might in time, depending on what industry you are, become a customer. So there is a kind of win-win there. Either way, write for other people's audiences. So guest posts, right? LinkedIn articles, industry publications, contributions, newsletters. Every time you place content on someone else's platform, you are creating another node in the web that is AI scanning essentially. So get out there and post, get press. Easier said than done, but get press mentions. This is essentially where you might be cited in the financial times or local press or industry blogs or niche publications, and they all count.

(17:19):
They're all credible, and they're all third party sources. Mentioning your name, your brand in connection with your expertise. That is a trust signal for ai. Reach out to journalists who cover your industry or cover your space. For instance, offer yourself as a source for future stories. Send them your original data from say something that you've done specifically recently from step two earlier. For instance, journalists love original data, and just make sure that they understand that you are there to be cited, to be spoken to, and to be quoted if indeed the opportunity ever arises. And then show up on YouTube. I mentioned it earlier, but even if you don't have a YouTube channel, get mentioned or start to feature on other people's YouTube channels because it is super valuable. AI is increasingly processing video transcripts as a sort of way of citing and understanding and serving to the end user.

(18:11):
So a mention in a popular YouTube video about your industry could be cited by a source because you are in that transcript. Rome wasn't built in a day. So think of this like compound interest. So every podcast, every guest post, every Reddit answer, every press mention, they all compound over time. Six months from now, when someone asks AI about your space, your name will be everywhere in its training data and in its real time search results because you have spent the time going on to podcasts, writing copy, being authentic and allowing yourself to be cited as a credible source. That is how you become the default recommendation. Cool. So step five is stay fresh or get forgotten. And this is super important, and arguably the part where most people sort of sit there, they nod along, and then they probably won't do anything about it.

(19:00):
So I'm going to make this crystal clear. AI content citation has a decay rate, okay? This means essentially the stuff that AI is citing today will be replaced by newer stuff next month. Research amazingly suggests that roughly half of the content cited in AI responses is less than 30 weeks old, 30 that's three months, and it's being cited today, which means stuff prior to that is already out of date. Nobody cares about it. So that epic 5,000 work guide that you essentially published last year, nobody cares. It's losing ground. Someone else who published a shorter, more current version last week is now winning. This doesn't mean that you need to churn out new content every day. Just to be clear, that's a hamster wheel. Nobody wins. It just goes round and round and round. What it means is you need fresh, credible content, and I appreciate it's super difficult to be consistent and to find that battle rhythm.

(20:00):
But here's a few steps I guess that might help you along the way. So one that you could use is identifying five or 10 cornerstone pieces. These are the kind of pages that are most important to your business. It could be your main services page. It could be your best blog posts. It could be your most competitive guides. That's the kind of stuff that if AI cited it, that it would bring you the most valuable traffic, the biggest return on investment. Spend some time building five or 10 pieces that talk directly to that out. Again, set a calendar reminder every eight weeks. For instance, it could be six weeks to revisit each cornerstone piece and to make sure that you're updating them, right? Update any statistics or data points that are more current than they were. Then add new insights, add a new example, add a new case study, even one or two paragraphs French, a fresh thinking makes a difference.

(20:50):
Update the last updated date, for instance, to today, because that is when you're changing it. Even that helps rank with AI search engines. So all these little things will compound, as I said to you over time, if there are any new questions, for instance, that people are asking you about that specific topic, add those in FAQs. They are super useful. Have an FAQ section on your website that you update consistently. That's it. You're not necessarily having to rewrite the whole thing, you're maintaining it. It's housekeeping, it's gardening, it's looking after it, making sure that it is this kind of living, breathing entity that is consistently updated, credible, and able to be cited for being current. Think of it essentially like servicing your car. You don't rebuild the engine every month. You maybe change the oil, check the tyres, top up the fluids. It's the same kind of principle I mentioned earlier.

(21:37):
But I do think something that you guys might find super useful if you are running a business and managing multiple transactions across multiple platforms is in card. It's a new financial platform for modern online businesses, giving you guys multicurrency accounts, connected banking and smart spend managements all in one place. You can open up an account in minutes, attach cards for expenses, and earn up to 2% cash back on everyday spend like ads, SaaS, and travel. Check out incar using the link in the description. Thanks for taking the time to listen to this. Let's get back to the episode. And here's the unlock. Here's the bit that should motivate you. An entrepreneur who maintains 10 cornerstone articles on an eight week refresh cycle. We'll co outperform a competitor with 200 stale, untouched blog posts, quality and freshness, beat volume every single time in an AI world.

(22:31):
So be real, be fresh, and be current. The businesses that win at GO are not the ones that publish the most. They're the ones that maintain the best. They're the ones that do the gardening. Do the housekeeping. Look after this living, breathing entity. That is content. So lemme just summarise and bring this all together into a actionable five step guide that you can take away and hopefully implement into your business today. So step one was restructuring your content. Make sure that your answer comes first. Rewrite your headings as actual questions that people are asking. Step two was create original data. So case studies, frameworks, things that only you can create, be the source and not the echo. Number three was unlock that front door. Make sure that AI can actually access your content. Check your robots txt, your firewall, your rendering. Make sure that the AI has the key to the house.

(23:24):
Number four was build citation surface area. So that is make a bit of noise. So get on podcasts, be useful on Reddit, write on other platforms, get some press show up essentially everywhere that your audience is. And then number five will stay fresh. So maintain the best content across an eight week cycle. Update the data, add new insights, and just basically stay as current as you possibly can. Now here's the thing that I want to leave you guys with. Most of your competitors are still playing the old game, right? They're still obsessing over Google rankings and keyword density and backlink profiles. And look, those things do still matter. SEO isn't dead, but GEO is a new layer on top, a new window to get ahead of right now. It's a new playing field. It's a new area to be in. Citation authority compounds, just like domain authority did.

(24:14):
The brands that start building it today will be the ones that AI recommends over the next year and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that and so on. The ones that wait will be playing the catchup game and it gets harder every month. I can promise you that. You've got the five steps. You don't need an agency, you don't need a budget. You need literally an afternoon and the willingness to do what other people won't. So there's no excuse. Go and do it. Appreciate you listening to the podcast. Hopefully you found it useful. For those that want to read up or learn more, head over to my LinkedIn page, Oliver Bruce online, where you'll find a weekly newsletter called the Brucey Bonus, where we double click into more detail and give you more tips and tricks around how to scale your business.

(25:01):
If you want to share this with friends, family, colleagues, business owners, people that are in your circle then might find it useful. I would be super appreciative if I said at the beginning of the podcast, this does not grow on its own. This grows with you and we do it for you. So thank you so much for listening and catch you next time. I mentioned earlier, but I do think something that you guys might find super useful if you're running a business and managing multiple transactions across multiple platforms is in card. It's a new financial platform for modern online businesses, giving you guys multicurrency, accounts, connected banking and smart spend management all in one place. You can open up an account in minutes, attach cards for expenses, and earn up to 2% cash back on everyday spend like ads, SaaS, and travel. Check out incar using the link in the description.