Digital Word of Mouth: Building Third-Party Proof for LLM Visibility with Karl Hudson

James Dooley: Building digital word of mouth to increase LLM visibility. Why is it important, Carl, to be building this digital word of mouth on these third-party sources in comparison to just writing on your own website of why you are great?

Carl: Primarily, you know, everyone writes on their own website that they're great at something. Then you'd be very weird if you didn't do that. Like everyone does that. So, when it comes to LLMs, it needs to understand that it knows everyone does that. So, you know, your own website one and you offer service plastering or whatever. And you're going to say you're the best plasterer. What it needs to then understand is it goes, "Right, he says he's the best, but I need to find out from other people what are they saying about him? Is he the best?" Um and then that's like almost a confidence score. Um and then in time, you know, it builds a consensus on whether or not it thinks you are the best at service X or Y. And it only does that through third-party sources, which is like the word of mouth.

James Dooley: Yeah, I think for me with regards to the digital word of mouth kind of third-party proof of sources, it boils down to a lot of things in semantics boil down to freeze. And this free triplet is claim, frame, and prove. So, you've got the claim part that's on your website that says you you're the greatest, you're the best. But then everybody else has got that. You need to frame it in a specific way of why you are the best. But then the the digital word of mouth marketing that needs to be done is the proof part. So, on that point, it needs to be case studies. And within that case study, it needs to have a testimonial from not you, but from a client that basically says they came and they did this job and they did brilliantly. And then the next job that you've done, so let's say um we work in a school and we do a new roof for the school, the the headteacher comes back and says, "They was a breath of fresh air. They did it on time. They was it within budget. The quality of the workmanship was brilliant." And they're ticking the box. We've got before and after photos. We've got this third-party authoritative source saying how amazing we are. That is also reporting now. You are an amazing roofer. And then consistently with consensus, you then want to keep doing that. And the more case studies you start to build, you hopefully then can send those into some local meetups and you might be able to win an award. And when you win the award, now you're an award-winning roofer. And the LLMs are picking all this up on the internet. And Google's indexing them all if it's done in the correct manner, right? But that's the important part. If it's done in the correct manner, cuz this digital word of mouth means nothing if the microsemantics are wrong. And they say, "They was great." Who's they? So, what you're able to do is grab the testimonials and grab the reviews and grab the case studies. And then if you've got an agency that's able then to get that, put it in a way and package it up in a way with the right microsemantics, that's being put on the right sources. It could be on a press release. It could be on a guest post. It could be anywhere digital PR campaigns. Anywhere that's repeating that you are great on these third-party sources that then's coming back to you, defining the entity, defining what you do, defining the reputation, and defining potentially why you are better than competition. Putting all that together, that digital word of mouth on the third-party sources is the proof part of the claim frame and proof. How long like for me, it was only really when I started to understand the semantics and everything came in phrase the claim frame and brief. I feel like I used to do the claim and the frame and I feel like my backlinks was just there for backlinks. I don't feel I used to put enough emphasis on my micro semantics off page is as important. I never really used to bother even about relevance too much. I was like I'm more bothered about page rank and link juice. How long now have you been understanding that the proof part is actually I believe it's up there as being the number one ranking factor cuz without that part there's a there's a missing link.

Carl: Well, I think we were mentioning before, you know, I'm very much very pro links especially when it comes to ranking in Google. Um when it comes to ranking in LLMs though the crazy part is you don't even need the link. You know, if you're if you're setting up the micro semantics in the correct way you don't need that article to link to your brand and people would be like well well, that's a waste of money. No, it's not. You you're filling in a different gap. You're you're creating the LLM. You know, you're feeding the LLMs. You get it on a decent source. Most of the time most people um when you outreach to them like you don't want a link in it. Like no. Okay, I'll do it cheaper.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Carl: Cuz they don't think you're trying to game the system. They think you're just wanting to add content to their site to help to help them.

James Dooley: I mean in an ideal world as well like people like search words they reach out. If you go and do a job in Manchester and it's a really good job for a college and you've done a good job and the head and the head says that you've done a great job or it could be the the kind of land manager or the caretaker says you've done an amazing job and you're going to share that in Manchester even in the news. They want to write about cool facilities that are improving the facilities and stuff like that. So all that you're doing is bridging the gap in a correct manner with semantic triples. You might be doing certain trickery of like tier twos or bad virality or sharing on social media. But again, that's what real businesses should be doing. They're just not quite doing it in the correct manner. And I think it's that doing it in the correct manner that that digital word of mouth is key for feeding the LLMs to be done in a specific way. And I want to move that on to the AI reputation tree. Um you explain how if a company has got great case studies and testimonials and they've won some awards, how the AI reputation tree, if accepted, and I know you don't accept everybody cuz you need to have some sort of clout to be able to show and screen that then feeds the LLMs. If someone was to come to Search True and order the AI reputation tree, what what what is needed and why is that important the way it's done, the way you do it?

Carl: Yeah, so it's basically from the moment of through our process, you know, you you come on to Search True to come, you send us a message, we'll send you a big list of questions. Chances are if you can't answer some of these questions, you're going to be rejected. It's just as simple as that because we can't help. But we will try to guide you on how you can fill in those spots and hopefully come back to us. You know, it usually doesn't take that long to fill in at least one element of each of them. And then guess what? You work with us and you start focusing on building those elements you weaken and then in time it just becomes like a snowball effect on the campaign. Um so yeah, it's like super important that you basically fill in the entire form that we give you. And yeah, we will we'll see where you currently rank within the LLMs and how how your visibility is, what elements you weak in, what elements you strong in as well. So it's not just all about weakness. Actually, you strong here. You might need some tweaks in this strength. You might be able to tweak it to connect it to this element. Um and that's like fundamental.

James Dooley: I think for me, the by far the most important part for any business owners that are listening to this, digital word of mouth marketing. Like, word of mouth marketing, generally speaking, if you go and get a lead from someone from a word of mouth that someone's referred you in, they're the best leads that you can get. Cold web leads don't convert anywhere near as well as word of mouth referrals that's coming in. AI now is able, and people are trusting AI as if it's a referral from a friend, and the conversion rate of what's happening when you get referred from the LLMs, the conversion rate is sky high. They are so much more educated nowadays. And LLMs are becoming your 24/7 sales engine. And if you can feed it all the information that you need to feed it of who you are, what you do, why you're freaking great, and why you're better than the competition, done via the AI reputation tree that Search Tree does, and the amount of time and effort we've put into it, it's not about the backlinks, it's about trying to make certain that the AI is your sales team now. You're getting that word of mouth referral, and literally across all the brands that I'm working with, just there's times we're getting less volume of leads nowadays, but they're way more educated, and the conversion rate is sky high. I've got one business, and we're down 40% on lead volume, but we're up 72% on revenue of orders that are coming in, which is insane when you think you're down on the leads, but then up on the sales, how much better that conversion rate was, cuz a cold web lead was converting at like it was anything from like 8 to 10%, and I think we're up at like 43% now. So, we're converting four times more on the volume of what's coming in, and it's just like, wow, so the The team are just like, I almost at times now don't feel I need to sell cuz they're just saying, "Where do I sign?" Yeah, it's like where they come to you and I've gone, "I've gone and done my research. You're better than them and now I want where do I sign and when can you start?" And they're like they're like some of them like I feel like I'm not needed anymore.

Carl: [laughter]

James Dooley: And I'm like, "No, mate. You you just bring them on and onboard them and make certain that we're delivering what we say we're going to deliver." That word of mouth marketing now is key, I think. People should be building that digital footprint. They should be looking for better LLM visibility and they should be trying to do everything they can to amplify everything about what's great about the brand. Carl, it's been an absolute pleasure.