S2. Ep43 - How We Got Cited by AI Over 1,000 Times in 6 Weeks

Katie (00:27)

Hello and welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello, I'm Katie, and as always I have Noel here with me today. Hi Noel, how are you doing?

Noel (00:37)

Yeah, I'm having a wonderful week this week. How are you doing?

Katie (00:40)

Yeah, all good, thank you. So we always start the podcast off with any news, any updates in the AI and automation world that are relevant for our audience, which is mainly people who run their own businesses. So, any updates for us this week?

Noel (01:06)

It's gone a bit quiet in the last week, so I've not really got anything that's worth mentioning. Which makes a change.

Katie (01:13)

Okay. I feel like the last couple of weeks have actually been quite heavy on updates, so I'm not really surprised that there's not much going on to report back this week.

Noel (01:31)

Yeah, exactly. Maybe that AI slowdown they talked about in the summer has finally started happening. Who knows? Because it didn't happen in the weeks after, did it?

Katie (01:39)

No, it did not. And I don't think it's actually happened at all really, if I'm honest. So, interesting.

Noel (01:49)

Very much so. But hopefully something cool might happen this week. We'll have to find out.

Katie (01:58)

We'll find out as soon as we hit record on this episode. That's usually when something comes out, isn't it?

Noel (02:07)

Very true, yeah.

Katie (02:10)

So a few episodes ago, in Episode 40, titled How to Build Your Business Website With Claude Code, we mentioned something and said that we would report back. And we didn't.

Noel (02:28)

Oops.

Katie (02:32)

Thank you to those of you who have let us know about that. We did sort of forget. So Noel, what did we forget to update people on?

Noel (02:44)

So in that episode we talked about AI and how we can appear better in standard SEO search as well as AI search. I had some preliminary numbers in that episode, and we were going to report back on how well we did and how we did it. And it slipped through the cracks, unfortunately. But now we have more data, which is great.

Katie (03:08)

Yeah, more data always means you get a better overview. So let's talk about it, then. Where would you like to start?

Noel (03:27)

So we'll start with the results we've had, and then we'll talk about how we got there. We've got some really nice round numbers, because we've got six weeks' worth of data. We did a complete refresh of our website and went down a different AI SEO strategy, and everything since that date is what we're going to talk about today.

Noel (03:55)

I guess the big one is when you do a Google search and you get the AI results at the top of the page. Our website, makeautomations.ai, has appeared just over a thousand times in that six week period. Before we made the update, we were probably showing up maybe once or twice a month. So we've gone quite big in that area. I think we had one day where we had over a hundred AI citations in Google search. So it's all going great.

Noel (04:30)

Our normal SEO also improved. By improving your AI search, your standard SEO also improves. We've gone from almost nothing in terms of impressions to, within the last six weeks, ten thousand Google search impressions. Which again is fantastic, because before that date it was a flat line. Looking at the chart, it looks a bit silly on my screen, but it has improved an incredible amount.

Noel (05:00)

The other thing we mentioned in Episode 40 was how many times things like ChatGPT or Claude, these sorts of AI agents, are ending up on our website. What we've found is that in the last 30 days, AI platforms have come to our website over five and a half thousand times, just to check us out and start learning about our site. These are AI crawlers that come across and are used for things like training data, so they start to learn more about your website. Then if somebody ever asks, they can just answer the question in the future without wasting time searching the internet, which is really handy.

Noel (05:50)

But we've also had nearly 2,000 AI assistant sessions come to our website. That's people asking questions, and whichever platform it might be, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, has given an answer which has partly come from us, and we've been cited in it. So really quite exciting numbers, from nothing to quite a lot in six weeks.

Katie (06:30)

Yeah, okay, that's really interesting.

Noel (06:34)

It is, because it just goes to show, with old school SEO it used to take months to start getting results. These days I think we can start getting those results really, really quickly.

Katie (06:49)

I can remember when we first did our AI SEO, and we did a podcast episode on it back in series one. It was basically a step by step on how to do it, it was so in depth, it was amazing. But obviously everything with AI changes so quickly, so the things we were doing then now need slightly tweaking, don't they? So we've been doing AI SEO for over a year now. But why do you think this time around, with this new website that we've built with Claude Code, all of a sudden in these six weeks we've had these incredible results?

Noel (07:51)

I think it comes down to the type of content that we started putting on the website. That's really where... I guess last year, when we started putting it in place, we got some good initial results, which is great. But we didn't really follow through with it and target it.

Noel (08:15)

So what we're doing now is creating question and answer content, which is ideal for AI. People are asking it questions, and it's like, who can answer this for me? And we're starting to pick those off one by one, so we're showing up more and more. I think that's really the big change we've made in the last six weeks.

Katie (08:39)

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Noel (08:42)

I mean, it's not changed that much in a year when it comes to question and answer content, I think. The structure, how it's done and how AI finds you is fairly static. It's maybe moved a little in how it does it, and I think it's probably a bit better at it these days than it was a year ago. So that's probably why we're seeing results far quicker than we did before.

Katie (09:10)

Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So from the results you've mentioned, do you think that's possible for other people to achieve as well? Or do you feel like it's a bit of a fluke? Because I often think, when people talk about SEO, it's like, well, you've got years of content, which we don't have. We have, what, 18 months' worth of content, which isn't a lot really, is it?

Noel (09:55)

No, not in the grand scheme of things. We're pretty young in the website space, I guess.

Katie (10:02)

I would say so. When I was doing SEO for my business, I was always comparing myself to people who had another five years of content ahead of me, and thinking, well, that's why they get greater results, because they've got all this content. But I guess now, with AI SEO, you don't have to have years and years of content. You just have to have the right content.

Noel (10:36)

Yes, exactly. As long as you're giving the AI something it can use and send back to whoever's asking that question, you'll start showing up in searches far, far quicker.

Noel (10:52)

Where a lot of websites maybe fall over is that yes, they talk about their services on the homepage, but how many of them have things like FAQs that would help people who are looking to find that service? Because all the AI is doing is going off and looking for those questions and going, right, does this page answer this question? Does one of your competitors answer it better? If so, I'll give that answer back. So it's interesting how you've got to structure it. You're almost trying to figure out how you can answer that question better than your competitors.

Katie (11:36)

I guess one way to do it is, a lot of people just give a very surface level answer, but really you want to go really deep. Say you help women with women's health, and it's, do you feel like you've lost your sparkle? Well, that can mean a hundred different things.

Noel (12:14)

Yes.

Katie (12:15)

But if you start describing the symptoms more, like, are you getting 10 hours' sleep but still waking up really tired, and then you go into the whole description of how they feel throughout the day, that's going to be picked up much better than, have you lost your sparkle? Because I guess, as well, no one's really googling "I've lost my sparkle".

Noel (12:48)

Well, they might be now.

Katie (12:50)

Well, they might. "I've lost my sparkle, please tell me what to do. Where has it gone? Could you return it to me ASAP? Thank you very much. Kind regards."

Katie (13:09)

So I think that really helps, doesn't it? Really going into detail.

Noel (13:16)

Yes, it does. And it doesn't all have to be on your homepage either. Don't think you need to put 200 FAQs on your homepage. That's a bad idea. There's a happy medium when it comes to answering an AI question. Give it enough, but don't flood it with loads of other stuff that it doesn't really care about.

Noel (13:45)

So your page might answer a specific question, and there might be five or six FAQs which go into a bit more detail. That's great, that's what it really likes, that sort of detail. But if you start going off on a tangent in your FAQs, that could start penalising you, because it'll be like, why is it telling me this? I'm not interested in this. And it probably won't surface that back to the user.

Noel (14:10)

So what we've done is target specific things, and then within those pages we target the specific questions people are asking. And if you get stuck thinking, what are people asking about? You can always fire up ChatGPT or Claude, give it your website and say, this is what I do, what are people going to be asking? What questions are they going to have? Obviously it can't tell you what Joe Bloggs searched in their session, it won't give you that detail.

Katie (14:46)

No. "I've lost my sparkle."

Noel (14:54)

But it will at least give you a starting point. And that's the exact starting point we had for our website. What are people looking for? What are they asking?

Noel (15:09)

That's great, because AI will give you the answer straight away. But you also need to back that up with some hard data. You need to go off and research it and say, is anybody actually asking this question? Is it going to be a waste of time answering something specific here, when I could be answering a slightly different question on the same topic, which is what people are actually looking for?

Katie (15:37)

Yeah, that's the tweak I was mentioning. It's really figuring out who it is you want to work with, what their problems are, and what solutions you're giving them.

Noel (16:01)

Yes, absolutely. And there are lots of tools out there that help you with keyword research and give you that sort of data, but they cost a lot of money, I'll have to admit. They're not cheap, are they?

Katie (16:15)

No, they're not, but there are some free ones. I used to use a couple of different websites, and I'm really sorry, this is going to be really annoying, but I cannot remember for the life of me what they are.

Katie (16:40)

I used to send a weekly newsletter, and for me a really important part of that newsletter was what the email subject line was going to be. Because your open rates are one of the most important things. If people are opening your emails, then it's rare that they're going to go into junk. So for me it was working out the right subject line. Sorry, we've gone off on a tangent here, I promise it's relevant.

Katie (17:15)

So I would create my own subject line and then check it in one of these keyword checkers. It might tell me to remove a word so it was punchier, it did all sorts of things. So if you Google email subject line generator, or keywords for email subject lines, I'm sure they'll come up. There were a couple that were free and they were really good, and they did more than just subject lines, they did keywords and all sorts. So just have a Google and have a play around.

Noel (18:20)

Absolutely.

Katie (18:22)

Maybe ask AI, what on earth is Katie trying to explain, and what websites did she use, because she cannot remember. And it might tell you to listen to another podcast, and I apologise for that, but please stick with us.

Noel (18:44)

So I actually have a better recommendation as well. One that we can actually name.

Katie (18:50)

You've got a better recommendation than the one I've just given? What?

Noel (18:54)

Yeah, exactly, would you believe it? And it's actually quite cheap as well, which is why I use it all the time. Because then you've got platforms like Ahrefs, which is a hundred dollars a month for the starting plan, which is bonkers. I would never use it enough. So I use a platform called DataForSEO.

Noel (19:20)

It's basically a platform where you can run searches and only pay for what you use. So it's really, really cheap when you're doing simple searches, and it comes up with all the data for you. I think they give you five dollars for free when you sign up as well, and it'll take you a while to get through that five dollars, to be fair.

Noel (19:40)

One thing I've done with Claude and Claude Code is this. DataForSEO has its own API, so I've gone off and created my own application which I use for my keyword research, and it gives me all of the data. So I'm not trying to figure it out myself. It gets all the information, I can export it and put it straight back into Claude to understand it.

Noel (20:05)

And with that data, it's about finding different sub-niches that we can target. There might be loads of search volume for a certain keyword, and then we send that back to Claude and go, hold on a minute, what if we expand that? Here are another five search terms to put into your tool, let's see what that comes back with. And then we start to dig around and find those real diamonds in the rough. So DataForSEO is definitely one to check out if you're on a budget.

Noel (20:40)

If you already have Ahrefs, then I'm sure you can get all the data there as well. But you can gather all sorts from DataForSEO. You can do AI search visibility, it's got APIs for that, it's got all kinds of weird and wonderful tools. And if you have Claude Code, you can just describe what you want and it will go off and do it. It can understand the API documentation, so if you're non-technical, don't worry about it. All you need to do is go off and get an API key and you're good to go, really.

Noel (21:19)

So that's my recommendation. That's what I use for our website. I wouldn't say I'm doing it every day, but every two weeks or so I'm going back into Claude with my data. Here are the impressions, here's the stuff from Google Search Console, where else should we go? What else should we be looking at? And having those conversations, and then building our blog portfolio from that point.

Katie (21:52)

So do you think blogs are still worth it, then? Do you think they're still worth writing and having on your website?

Noel (22:01)

Yes, definitely. As long as they're answering a specific question, and also have the answers to the other sub-questions. As long as you've got a little FAQ on every blog you do, then yes, very much worth it. Because that's how we're getting most of our traffic currently.

Katie (22:21)

Okay. And if anyone's listening and thinking, well, I already create so much content, and a blog is just another piece of content, then I want you to take your long form content. Say your blog, or maybe you do YouTube videos. Don't forget you can even embed your YouTube video into your website and then have some text alongside it, as a blog post with your video embedded, about what you're discussing.

Katie (23:00)

If you're not doing YouTube videos but you're doing a blog, write your blog and then turn parts of that blog into social media content. Don't think you have to create all of this content and that it can't be connected. A lot of the time you can turn a blog into three different pieces of social media content, all from different angles. Maybe one is a how-to, or "this is what I would do if", or it could be about a client result from that blog post, or sharing a story that's related to it. There are so many things you can do with just one piece of long form content.

Katie (23:50)

So that's my top tip for the week. Hopefully that makes up for me trying to find those websites that I have no clue about.

Noel (24:14)

We've also applied this same strategy to the podcast page on our website. We list all of our episodes on there, and you can listen to them all on our website. But if you open an episode up as an individual page, you'll find a list of FAQs for every single episode. And we actually get quite a lot of AI coming to our podcast pages to find answers, which is quite interesting. We're seeing that coming up a lot more in the search results, which is amazing.

Noel (24:50)

But I guess the real big key to this, and I know this is going to sound crazy, is a script called JSON-LD. If you've never heard of it, and code and scripts sound scary, just have a chat with your AI of choice, and it can go off and create those scripts for you. I think that is the real key, getting those right.

Noel (25:15)

Within these scripts, it'll contain information like the URL, who it is, the website, the company, and it will also list all of those FAQs. So when an AI comes to your website, it will look for this script and go, hey, look, there's an FAQ section. It'll go through and check all of those questions and answers, and then, if it wants to, it'll crawl the rest of the page to get a fuller result. So that script is incredibly important.

Noel (25:45)

Obviously I know most people listening won't know how to create one from scratch or know what it is. But Claude and ChatGPT are very well versed in what these are, and they can take you through how to upload it to your website. Because I know we all host websites in different ways, so we can't cover all of that in one episode. That might take a while.

Katie (26:21)

Yeah. Or you can reach out and ask us for help, by email at hello@makeautomations.ai. We'll put the email address below in the show notes as well.

Noel (26:35)

Absolutely, always happy to help. We do offer a specific service for AI SEO, and we'll link to that. It also includes WebMCP, which is the other part, where AI can use your site better and do certain actions. And we've done an episode on that previously as well.

Katie (26:54)

Or if you want a website built using Claude Code, Noel is your person.

Noel (27:03)

Yeah, we've got one very happy customer from the other week, haven't we?

Katie (27:06)

Yeah, very, very happy. And we should say as well, because we've got these results with our AI SEO, it has led to people finding us and wanting to work with us, which is really great. It has actually led to something. And I think that's really important, that you are doing things within your business that actually generate income, or generate clients for you.

Noel (27:36)

Absolutely. We had someone reach out to us recently, and when I first read it, I thought it was a bit of a joke. I thought, surely not. I would say they're a well known musician within their particular area. It's not Taylor Swift, don't get too excited, Katie. It wasn't her reaching out.

Katie (27:58)

You would not be able to keep your cool if it was Taylor Swift.

Noel (28:03)

No. But this guy is very popular in his particular circle, and I was like, wow, okay, that's really awesome. So we're currently helping him out, and I believe he found us via our website, asking those sorts of questions. So it's all good stuff.

Katie (28:23)

But yes, we're here if you need any help, advice, or have any questions. Do reach out to us via email, hello@makeautomations.ai. We really hope you have enjoyed this week's episode, and we will catch you next time for another episode very soon.