Become worthy of citations

Aleyda says: “Optimize for citation-worthiness.

This is easier said than done. It's about establishing yourself as an authority in your field, but in order to do that, you have to make it very clear what your unique selling proposition is and create and optimize your assets and web presence accordingly – both within your own website and externally as well.

We have heard so much regarding how LLMs are getting citations from social media, and all of these features are giving visibility to Reddit, YouTube, etc., so we need to put some content out there. However, a lot of those conversations aren’t thinking about the alignment with your product, your brand, your USP, and what actually matters business-wise.

Time and time again, we have seen how Google updates have negatively affected the rankings and the traffic of topics that are too shallow, too broad, and are not aligned with the subject matter expertise and uniqueness of the brand. We have also seen a lot of comments saying, ‘Because of the Crocodile Effect, it's no longer worth targeting broader informational queries,’ which I also think is too simplistic an approach.

The truth lies in the middle. What actually matters is the angles, topics, or specific areas that you can cover as a brand. The topics that make sense business-wise won't be fulfilled by generic concepts, and will incentivise the potential customer to learn more about your brand.

It's still worth targeting, not only because it will maximise the chances of a click, but even if it doesn't end up generating a click, it will be worth it just to be visible, because that will help the user make their decision later on in the process.”

Is the subject matter expertise of the brand closely related to individual subject matter expertise within the organisation?

“It is definitely related to subject matter experts.

For example, if you are an online invoicing company, you very likely have in-house experts in accounting and invoicing. One of the ways for you to establish citation-worthiness is by sharing unique, in-depth, and helpful insights, resources, or advice that have to do with how to help users who are looking to start invoicing with their businesses or as a sole practitioner, if those are your target audiences.

Leveraging that internal know-how that you do have, because you provide real products or services in that area, can differentiate you from being just a middleman or blog website, aggregating information from others that doesn't offer helpful, unique insights with real experience and real expertise. You will be able to provide much more meaningful answers to potential customers and establish your authority in the field.

Why should users choose your invoicing software? Because you are always advising your customers. You are always making things easier for people, and you offer a lot of resources that show not only that you care, but that you know what you’re talking about.

I know that this can be a little bit tricky, depending on the business, but there are ways to work around that in order to leverage that internal expertise.”

How do you define the audiences that you're writing for, and do you write for multiple audiences or hone it down to one audience or persona?

“This actually goes beyond pure SEO; it's an alignment that we have with marketing. Who are your meaningful customers? Who actually buys your products or services? Who do you want to appeal to the most? Who should you target in general, and what new cohorts of potential customers do you want to expand to?

This is why, more than ever, it is fundamental to avoid being in a silo. You need to work with the marketing department, the brand department, and the community management department so that you are aligned and all of your activities follow the same guidelines and criteria, and you target the audiences that make sense for your business.

Even if the effort that you put in doesn't always end up having the impact that you expected, it will compound in different ways because you are producing resources and information that are helpful, and can help users in the decision-making journey – both before the purchasing decision and in post-sales support as well.”

How do you decide what type of content to create, what to incorporate within it, how to structure it, and what the intent should be?

“Think about what resources you can create that will actually be meaningful and helpful for the users throughout their customer journey. Should they be white papers? Should they be case studies? Should they be webinars, depending on where your audience is?

We have a tonne of tools now that allow you to understand what is being covered and spoken about in relation to your brand, not only in Google, but in any web platform out there. In SparkToro, for example, you can put in any topic, and it will tell you the audience for that topic. Where do they hang out? Where do they share their thoughts?

Then you have tools like buzzabout.ai, which allow you to identify the top social platforms, and tools like Similarweb, which will tell you that visitors who come to X types of websites also tend to visit Y other types of websites as well. You can identify a bit of the behaviour, needs, and what these users are already consuming – beyond your own content, and the typical organic search results or what is driving most of the traffic to your competitors or the leaders in your sector.

That is also great to take into account, but you want to connect it with your current know-how and your current capacity to create and optimize for that type of content. Also, whether or not it makes sense business-wise. Potentially, for other players, the most critical aspect will be a certain product line that it doesn't make sense for you to highlight at this point.

You’re making a connection between the audience behaviour that you see online (the kind of content that is already driving most of the value, traffic, and conversions – not only to your site, but also to your competitors) and your marketing and business goals, in order to make it truly meaningful.

An example of this was at the beginning of last year, with very well-known websites that had fairly generic blog posts that weren’t necessarily aligned with their expertise. They were attracting a tonne of traffic, but they suddenly lost it all in one of the core Google updates.

My question was, why were these marketing websites writing about topics that were so off-brand and were not meaningful at all? Many of these topics were like, ‘How can I create a CD?’ or, ‘How can I type X emoji on my phone?’ They had nothing to do with the actual business. The traffic was lost, but was that traffic meaningful for their marketing goals and objectives? That is the kind of criteria that is fundamental to have from now on.

Is it on brand? That should be the question that you ask whenever you create anything, and that is the type of information that will not only get more traffic from the SERPs but will also get cited in LLMs, because it's something that you actually stand for, and are worthy of being cited for.”

Do you advocate using AI within your content production process?

“Whenever it makes sense to accelerate, but without taking out the quality and uniqueness that make you, you.

I was talking about this at an event recently, and someone was making the point that you can have your own internal custom-trained AI system. That makes it possible to create content that is actually unique to you, is very aligned with your brand voice, and can make sense in specific scenarios, like creating FAQs at scale.

However, it is also important to align with the workflow of the actual humans in your company, and the insights and data that come from you. You can embed that into the content in order to make it unique, different, and worthy of being cited.

There are activities and content production phases where AI might be very meaningful to accelerate the process, but it shouldn't be the final solution. You shouldn't be looking to replace actual human expertise or experience with it either. Otherwise, all of the content generated out there will look too similar, too generic, and not very insightful.”

How do you track the impact of citations and measure the ROI of getting them?

“Thankfully, we now have more and more tracking platforms that allow us to identify the dimensions of our brands. This has a little bit to do with branding and reputation management as well. Because of the format, UI, and interface of LLMs, the outcome and user behaviour we expect are not the same.

It's not the top 10 ranked pages, where the outcome should be a click. Across so many scenarios and types of answers, the outcome you can expect is that the user will be fulfilled and be influenced to make X or Y decision further along in their purchase journey. They might follow up directly or come to you in another session in the future. The outcome won’t necessarily be a click.

What’s important is, if you are a top SEO consultant, whenever someone searches for anything regarding top SEO consultants or consultancies, you need to be there and be referenced in a way that is aligned with your expertise. I don't want to be showcased as a link builder, because I am not one. I want to be showcased as a strategic SEO who works with global brands, etc. That is important.

The sentiment of the answers is also important, and more and more LLM trackers allow you to identify that. It is crucial to better understand that sentiment across many scenarios and in many different circumstances. You might be included, but maybe it doesn’t show your brand in a good light, and other brands are being presented more positively.

This is something that I do for both branded and non-branded queries. Already, tools are showing that people are using LLMs for comparison, analysis, and decision-making – beyond the typical requests for recommendations. They are asking for comprehensive comparisons of multiple brands, looking at the pros and cons for the specific scenario or functionality that they need for their unique situation.

It is fundamental that you take that into account. Make sure that you have enough information that is aligned with that topic and allows you to be showcased for those queries – not only on your website, but across the web in general. You want to be citation-worthy for these types of answers.”

Aleyda, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Make sure that whatever you do is on brand, whether it’s optimizing content, your web structure, web architecture, or how you promote externally, not only on-page but off-page. To become citation-worthy, you need to stay on brand.

As long as it is aligned with that, it should have a positive impact in one way or another. Then, you will avoid falling into the trap of efforts that don't pay off, and are far away from the ROI that you're looking to achieve.”

Aleyda Solis is an SEO Consultant and Founder. Find out more over at AleydaSolis.com.