The DEO Proof Stack: It’s Pointless Being Talked About at the Party If Everyone Says to Avoid You (James Dooley Interviews Kasra Dash)

James Dooley: The DEO proof stack. I've got a quote here that says, "It's pointless being talked about at a party if everyone's warning people to avoid you." So, just by having more people talking about you doesn't mean that that is a positive sentiment and actually doing well for your brand. Today, I'm joined with Kasra Dash. Kasra, why is it important not just to chase AI citations when you're looking and using these AI visibility tools?

Kasra Dash: So, I'll give you two examples. Um, example number one for the SEOs watching this. Um, because obviously there's that bit of overlap. It's a little bit of a grey area. Some people call it GEO. Some people call it SEO. The best example I can give to this is, um, if you had... If you came to me with a website that had tons of 404 pages, tons of technical SEO issues, you wouldn't necessarily do link building to overcome and try to outrank your competitors, right? That's very much the case when it comes to just chasing citations. Um, and then the second example as well is, like, the, the, the real-life brand that, that actually came to us and they were pleased that they had more AI citations. However, it wasn't actually mentioning their brand in a positive manner. Um, and they... This is, this is what we mean when we, we say you shouldn't be chasing citations. It's almost like trying to build as many links to a broken website. Get your foundations correct first, and then you can start to build upon that. Make certain that your brand is being cited in a positive way, not one that's been, been said like, "Avoid these guys."

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you're just chasing citations, that's the same as if it's in a negative place. The same as going, "Oh, I'll have more one-star reviews, please, just because my review count is going up." Your review count doesn't matter. You don't want more one-star reviews. So, just chasing more reviews, like chasing more citations, doesn't mean that that's a positive thing for you to do. You want to be trying to make certain that the sentiment of the reviews that you're getting is great and you're getting lots more five-star reviews. Just quantity of reviews isn't a factor that you should chase. Yet, everybody seems to be using these AI visibility tools and not looking at the sentiment. They're just looking at the volume of citations that's going up. And it's... For me, it's ludicrous. It's not what's going to get you that decision at the 11th hour, especially if you're speaking in a negative sentiment. And this is where the DEO proof stack comes along. So, trying to make certain that the LLMs can pick up everything of why you should be the trusted source. So, Kasra, can you expand a little bit? What is the DEO proof stack and why is it important?

Kasra Dash: Yeah, so the DEO proof stack is kind of there to, to help brands get mentioned and also stay being mentioned for their actual, um, for their actual service or their offering. Um, so what you want to make certain that you have is a costs page, a reviews page, a case studies page, testimonials, accreditations, um, awards. Now, a lot of companies actually have won awards, but they've not actually mentioned it anywhere on their website. Same goes with accreditations where you might already be chartered accreditations, um, but you don't actually mention on your website. And last but not least is actually having a brand SSOT page. If you have all of these things, it's very hard for AI to mention your brand in a negative stigma or in a, or a negative way.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Now, obviously, once you've got all them, what you can then start to do is sprinkle all that throughout the whole site. Some people call it proof threading. So, you're getting the proof on the claim, frame and proof model, and then you're threading it in all the areas on the website which links back to those trusted pages of what's needed. That brand single source of truth is there to define the entity. All the other things are who you are, what you do, and why you're brilliant. The why you're brilliant comes from the testimonials, the case studies and the awards that you're shouting and screaming about on your website and echoing it off your website as well. Getting that DEO proof set up is key. For anyone that wants to know more information about it, make sure you check out the episode that we're linking to in the description where myself and Kasra go on about for 15 minutes about all the different strategies and why each one of those pages is very important to get recommended and not just cited by the large language models. Kasra, it's been an absolute pleasure.