7 Steps to a Complete Visibility Audit

John Jantsch ( 00: 01.154 )

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, and we are not guests today. I’m going to do a solo show. In fact, I’m going to host a few shows on the broad topic of SEO, which, depending on who you talk to right now, are either dead or have at least a new name. And so I’m going to add to that conversation. SEO is unquestionably alive. However, I’m going to add to that conversation that I think we need to think about it differently. More of a question is raised.

visibility. That’s what we’re really trying to achieve, not so much ranking, for our clients. It’s visibility in a lot of the different ways that people are choosing to find their answers. People are obviously using AI tools, and Google and other search engines are displaying AI solutions to them. So there’s no question that that is become a part of the game that we have to pay attention to, but not at the absence of many of the other things. People still make recommendations, after all. make her

many different businesses receive referrals. They are definitely going to Google, looking in that map pack and they’re looking at your reviews. So there are many factors that determine whether someone will accompany you on that journey. Obviously, one of the steps is about being seen and found, but it’s a lot more, it goes a lot deeper than just that element. So I want to talk about conducting a visibility audit today. I’m going to give you the elements that I think are important and talk a little bit about.

how you might approach them and how you might approach them as well. And then we’ll have a checklist in the show notes for this. So, you can also get that checklist if you want to visit Duct Tape Marketing, the podcast, and listen to the show and visibility audit. So let’s get into the steps in there. Your brand is showing up, then, right?

in Google’s AI overview. It’s really easy. Go to Google and search the top service products, questions in Google that are related to your company, your industry, your brand, and see if you get cited in any of those. If you and you do have the checklist, you can now give that a score as we go through them. Do a dozen or so searches and one to five. How did you fare?

John Jantsch ( 02: 25.902 )

There is a tool out there that I’ve been using that I’ll share with you. called Gumshoe. ai. And it will really give you, I think, some, you can run a report and get the very detailed information about where you show up in AI. Okay, to the next one, which is obviously extremely important for local businesses and that is your local pack presence. So on the maps, when somebody searches and it’s clearly a…

a search type based on location. mean, sometimes people actually put a town in there, but even if they don’t, if they’re looking for something in a town, you Google knows where they are. Do searches for your exact keyword, your business, your industry, your goods and services, your brand. And do you appear in the Google map pack? So, you’re aware that if you happen to be in that town, you can perform your service there. Checklisting star reviews.

you are aware of optimization, not just for yourself, but for your competitors. What are they doing? Okay, now. Speaking of reviews, volume, freshness, sentiment, all really count. Google doesn’t care if you’ve received 100 reviews in one day and then haven’t received any for three years. So are your reviews strong and recent enough to inspire trust? since it’s more than just Google. It’s the, know, if you go somewhere and nobody’s reviewed a business for four years, doesn’t that make you a little…

suspicious, no? So go to Google business profile, of course, but also today, you know, I used to kind of be negative on Yelp and I’m still not a huge fan of Yelp. However, more and more of those reviews are being drawn in by AI. So we need to look at all the industry review sites, look at the count rating recency responses. This can also apply to your competitors, once more.

Media mentions and authority, a big, big part of the game and showing up today is really about authority and most media sites, like it or not, are seen as authority. So, if you are quoted in a local newspaper or a Wall Street Journal article and they link back to your website, even if they mention your business but don’t link back to your website.

John Jantsch ( 04: 44.686 )

If the Wall Street Journal mentioned you, you must know something, so is your business being cited in any trustworthy sources or sources? All the crawlers are now picking that kind of information up and really assigning a lot of authority. I should say beyond your own website You can look in Google News You can do podcast searches you can use tools like refs or SM some rush

You know, tools like those to look up references to your brand mentions, backlinks, and references. And again, right now all we’re doing is auditing. These are the essential parts. Once you have a sense of, or a sense of dread, or a sense of where you stand, these, then we can start talking about how to fix them. Okay, now. You’ve probably heard people talk about this acronym EAT, E-E-A-T. So it refers to experience.

expertise, authority, and trust. It’s essentially argument, particularly on your website. So are you adding experience, expertise, authority, and trust in any of your webpages, any of your blog posts? Do you currently have author bios? Do we have testimonials? Do we have this transparent pricing? Are there case studies? Exists original research, or not? Schema markup also helps identify what those various elements are.

You know, even if you’ve written content three, four years ago, going back and thinking about, you know, how could we include a case study, an actual example of someone getting a result that we’re talking about here? How can we get quotes from other from clients or how can we get quotes from other experts that would really validate what it is that we’re talking about? Okay, now. Content fit for AI. Is your content designed for AI, then?

There is now a somewhat formulaic way to make your content more structured for AI. such as lists, step-by-step instructions, and responses. You’ve probably heard people talk about answer engine optimization. And frequently, people use AI tools and post lengthy, detailed filtered questions. So the more you can provide these short structured answers to the types of questions that people are asking in conversation,

John Jantsch ( 07: 09: 944 )

it’s totally different than ranking for some keyword term. You might appear in a percentage of searches for a very specific term because you’ve provided a very specific response. So FAQs fit right into that as well. So you can go back to your original content if you’ve already written it, add a step-by-step guide, an explanation of the content, and a table of contents…

Add some questions, even have some of your headlines be questions and then answer the question in there. Let’s say you work as a modeling contractor and you remodel homes, bathrooms, and additions. Well, you hopefully have service pages for all three of those elements that demonstrate you do lots of great work in those categories. But why not include FAQs on each and every one of those pages? People have questions.

And so it’s not only very helpful in answering the specific questions people have, but it’s also amazing search content. It’s amazing AI content. So be sure to follow through. And lastly, what are your calls to action? What does it mean when someone discovers you, is it obvious what to do next? So look at all of your top pages. Are there CTAs to call, book, order, order, or contact you directly?

give people multiple options to just click on, know, have that phone number up at the very top or have that email or have that evaluation form right there on the above the fold on the homepage so that they don’t have to go looking for it, but also in context of when they’re actually looking at a service, maybe they’re actually down to the part where they’re reading the FAQs, make sure you have CTAs there as well. Hence.

Those are some things that you might want to audit as a visibility type of approach. We’ll have the show in the show notes, like I said. We’ll actually have a checklist for this tool as well. So that’s it for today. I’m going to do another show pretty soon. Also, talk about the topics of visibility and how to create content that is both search engine-friendly. Again, we’ve got to rank for

John Jantsch ( 09: 28.502 )

for algorithms, for search engines, for AI bots, and let’s not forget, for people. So, thank you for your time today. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.