A Super Duper Marketing Strategy: AI Referrals
Did you know that AI is now helping you build your business through referrals? The Search Engine Journal reports 64% of users now rely on AI powered summaries or chat before clicking any result. So, if you want to be found online, search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t the only magic bullet it once was.
People now enter their questions into AI to find a plumber, landscaper, living accommodations, a new author, a qualified employee or a local place to buy heirloom tomatoes. And if you’ve made some small changes to your marketing efforts and website, you may well be mentioned in the results that prospective customer gets after they submit their AI query.
So here are 6 ways to improve your chances to get that treasured AI referral:
- Update Content: Avoid putting up a website and just leaving it there, gathering dust. Regularly edit your content on your most important pages. That periodic change will improve AI visibility and referrals by 28% over those who just leave their site sitting there untouched. And shorten up your paragraphs while you’re at it. AI (and most readers) likes that too!
- Add Questions to Pages: Change your page titles on your website to pose questions, just like the phrasing people use in their queries. Mirror what their question might be. Example: Are you looking for an experienced plumber in Centennial, Colorado? And if you’re not sure how those questions should be stated, ask your friends and family this question: “What would you enter into an AI to find someone who does what I do?”
- Create Start Pages and/or FAQs: Make it easy for visitors, search engines and AI to find everything they need on one website page. We think it should be self-explanatory what people should do next on your site, but too often they have to bounce all over to find what they want. And if people bounce all over, AI might too, but only for so long.
- Get Cited and Quoted: Submit a few substantive articles to local reporters or your industry trade journal as an expert source. Most articles end up online these days, which increases your chances of AI seeing you as an authority. And as an authority, you’ll be more likely to end up in AI referrals. Be sure those articles are educational, not self-promotional.
- Create a Virtual Press Kit: Journalists, podcasters, reporters and even university professors look for expert sources and they typically look for a Press Kit in the bottom navigation of your site. Fill it with a short and long bio, photographs, links to other places you’ve been quoted or recorded, speaker program titles, quotable quotes, etc.
Remember: Authority, Relevance, Clarity. Don’t be shy — share your expertise, use plain English (not cryptic navigation titles) and be relevant to what problems you can solve for your target audience.
Two Marketing Tips on Domain Names
1. Domain names for my kids. I recently bought the domain names for each of my adult children, just in case they ever want to use them. Yes, long term it will be an investment at about $15.99/year, but they may appreciate it when they get ready to write a book, start a business or even run for political office.
2. Buy the domain when you find it. After our wildfire in 2013, I wrote a tips book for other wildfire survivors to help them recover from future wildfires. So I bought the WildfireSurvivors dot com domain name. Years later, I mistakenly let it go. Well, this week I decided I wanted it back to link to where the book now lives here. To my delight, the domain name was still available — but to my horror it was priced at $1595.00! So the lesson is: buy it when you find it, and keep it!
Shameless Self-promotion
Feedback from the Websites, Blogs, SEO, AI Referrals class I presented for Alice Crider’s MasterClass Coaching Group:
“After Laura helped me improve the SEO on my own website, I invited her to teach a MasterClass for my community of writers and authors on SEO and how to help AI discover their websites and books.
Our group included everyone from published authors with established websites to aspiring writers who haven’t yet published or created an online presence. Laura skillfully met each person where they were, explaining complex concepts in clear, practical language and giving everyone actionable next steps they could implement right away.
Here are just a few comments from participants:
- “Great information in today’s MasterClass! I appreciated her layman’s terms for tech-ese and the practical next steps, no matter where we are in our process.”
- “The class and Laura’s SEO booklet are exactly what I need at this time in my writing life!”
I highly recommend Laura to any business owner, author, or entrepreneur who wants to expand their online visibility. She has a rare ability to make SEO understandable, approachable, and immediately useful.” —Alice Crider