7 Steps to a Complete Visibility Audit  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: 7 Steps to a Complete Visibility Audit - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/77055972-6ec5-44b7-af38-91059e74664a ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Visibility Replaces Rankings** - SEO is evolving from a rankings game to a broader visibility effort across channels. - John Jantsch emphasizes visibility across AI, maps, reviews, referrals, and people. Transcript: John Jantsch SEO is definitely not dead. However, I'm going to add to that conversation that I think we need to think about it differently. It is more about visibility. That's what we're really trying to get our clients. Not so much rankings. It's visibility in a lot of the different ways that people are choosing to find their answers. Are going to AI tools. Google and the other search engines are showing them AI answers. So there's no question that has become a part of the game that we have to pay attention to, but not at the absence of many of the other things. ([Time 0:00:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3581fecd-07aa-4700-b43d-7455e538c801)) - **Check AI Overview Presence** - Search Google for your top service queries and see if AI cites your brand. - Use tools like Gumshoe.ai to run reports and score your AI overview presence. Transcript: John Jantsch So the first one is, is your brand showing up in Google's AI overview? So pretty simple. 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. Now, as we go through these, and you do have the checklist, you can assign a score to that, do a dozen or so searches, and one to five, how'd you do? There's a tool out there that I've been playing around with that I'll tell you about. It's called Gumshoe, like chewing gum, 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. ([Time 0:02:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89325798-3ff1-4fea-bb48-583594b09a89)) - **Audit Local Map Pack Presence** - Run local searches and verify you appear in the Google Map Pack for location-based queries. - Audit your Google Business Profile and competitors for optimization and star reviews. Transcript: John Jantsch So on the maps, or when somebody searches and it's clearly a location-based type of search, I mean, sometimes people actually put a town in there, but even if they don't, if they're looking For something in a town, Google knows where they are. So do searches around your same thing, your business, your industry, your products and services, your brand, and do you appear in the Google Map Pack? So if you happen to be in that town, you can do your service near you. Checklisting, star reviews, optimization, not just of your own, but look at your competitors. What are they doing? ([Time 0:03:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/87a8ed2f-6670-494d-b011-97d0f4d92881)) - **Prioritize Fresh Reviews** - Maintain review volume, freshness, and positive sentiment to build trust with users and AI. - Monitor Google Business Profile and industry review sites, and respond to reviews consistently. Transcript: John Jantsch What are they doing? All right. Speaking of reviews, volume, freshness, sentiment, all really count. Google doesn't want to see that you got 100 reviews one day and then haven't gotten any for three years. So are your reviews strong and recent enough to inspire trust? Because it's not just Google. If you go somewhere and nobody's reviewed a business for four years, doesn't that make you a little suspicious? 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, but increasingly 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. ([Time 0:03:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8af6cff9-765e-415b-8fcf-2ad4d2eae49a)) - **Media Mentions Build Authority** - Media mentions and backlinks function as strong authority signals for crawlers and AI. - Even mentions without links can boost perceived credibility and visibility. Transcript: John Jantsch Media mentions an authority. A 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 get quoted in the local paper, if you get quoted in the Wall Street Journal, and they link back to your website, even if they don't link back to your website, but they mention your Business, all the crawlers are now picking that kind of information up and really assigning a lot of authority. If the Wall Street Journal talked about you, you must know something. So is your business being cited in any credible resources or sources, I should say, beyond your own website? You can look in Google News. You can do podcast searches. You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, tools like that to find citations, backlinks, mentions of your brand. And again, right now, all we're doing is auditing. ([Time 0:04:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8001138c-5deb-4f3d-80d1-236cfea991d5)) - **Implement E-E-A-T Proof Points** - Add experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T) proof points across site content and pages. - Include author bios, testimonials, case studies, pricing, schema, and original research where possible. Transcript: John Jantsch All right. You've probably heard people talk about this acronym EAT. E-E So it stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust. It's basically proof points, especially on your website. So are you adding experience, expertise, authority, and trust in any of your web pages, any of your blog posts? So do we have author bios? Do we have testimonials? Do we have pricing that's transparent? Case studies? Is there original research? Schema markup also helps identify what those various elements are. So even if you've written content three, four years ago, going back and thinking about how could we add a case study, an actual example of somebody getting a result that we're talking About here? How can we get quotes from clients or how can we get quotes from other experts that would really validate what it is that we're talking about? ([Time 0:05:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2344a732-5ea6-442b-b664-e5ded9425ec8)) - **Make Content AI-Ready** - Structure content for AI with lists, step-by-steps, FAQs, and short direct answers to conversational queries. - Add overviews, tables of contents, and question headlines to increase chances of AI citation. Transcript: John Jantsch So is your content structured for AI? There is now a somewhat formulaic way to make your content more structured for AI. So things like lists, step-by how-tos, answers. You've probably heard people talk about answer engine optimization. And a lot of times people are going to AI tools and asking very long, detailed, filtered questions. So the more you can provide these short, structured answers to the types of questions that people are asking in conversation, it's totally different than ranking for some keyword Term. You might show up for a percentage of searches on a very specific term because you've answered a very specific answer. So FAQs fit right into that as well. So you can, again, go back to your content if you've written it before and add a step-by how-to. Add an overview of what the content is. Add a table of contents to it. Add some questions. Even have some of your headlines be questions. And then answer the question in there. And then one simple way, let's say you're a remodeling contractor and you do kitchens, baths, 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 have FAQs on every single one of those pages? People have questions. And so it's very useful content to be answering the specific questions that people have. But it's also amazing search content. It's amazing AI content. ([Time 0:06:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9134474d-d0d0-45dd-8e53-99ab46da6484)) - **Optimize Clear Calls To Action** - Ensure clear calls to action (CTAs) on top pages and above the fold to convert visitors. - Offer multiple options like call, book, email, or evaluation forms in context and FAQs. Transcript: John Jantsch And lastly, what are your calls to action? I mean, once somebody finds you, is it clear what they should do next? So look at all of your top pages. Are there CTAs to call or to book or to actually buy or to contact you? Give people multiple options to just click on. Have that phone number up at the very top have that email or have that evaluation form right there 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. ([Time 0:08:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cbf5d7b9-5d30-4f02-a562-85bcb1429f36))