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All right, happy Friday. Today we're going to be talking about your marketing ecosystem and the impact it has on your SEO when we talk about our marketing ecosystem, or at least the way I'm talking about it today. I'm talking about your website, third-party, social, and real world. So I'm taking it a little bit out of the digital space that we usually think about when we focus so much on the website. And we're gonna be talking about these other elements instead.

And you may be wondering why I'm focusing on these elements instead, and that's partially because we're seeing so many changes in search that it is time for us to adapt and change some of the ways that we do things.

One, we know that search engines are using LLMs (large language models), but we also know that searchers are using LLMs and generative AI as search tools, even though they're not necessarily intended for that purpose. So we want to make sure that we're doing what LLMs like — what they're looking for, so that we can essentially be chosen as the best result for those questions or things that people are putting into ChatGPT or Google or Gemini or Bing anywhere.

So with that being said, your website is one of those things. We already know so much about that. If you're watching this Whiteboard Friday, you spend a lot of time learning about websites and SEO and how they interact together, but you probably haven't spent a lot of time on social, third-party, and the real world. And these are the things that can impact your SEO that are related to these elements of your marketing ecosystem and how they relate to LLMs and AI.

So with social, there are semantic signals. So the sentiment people have about your business and the relationship, the different entities and terms have, and what they kind of give the LLMs and as the like overall arching summary of what your business is about, what you do, what you care about, and how people think of you.

Authority, so when people are sharing a lot about your business online, it's giving you some authority because it's saying like, this is a legit business. This is someplace that people actually interact with. It gives the LLMs more information, especially because we know that they do look at a lot of social media sites to get data and information, and especially forms like Reddit are extremely important too.

And that brings me to the last point was just user-generated content. LLMs are using tools like Reddit or sites like Reddit to train it to be more human, to understand us a little bit better. And having people talking about you on those platforms and it being positive sentiment and being related to your services, it being related to you being a problem solver. Those are all things that will help with your sentiment, with the semantics, with LLMs understanding your site and who you're trying serve.

Third-party, this is one of my favorites as someone who works in local SEO. So we're always looking for opportunities for our clients to get partnerships because building your like brand, building your community is so important with local SEO. The more partnerships you have with other businesses or other organizations that serve the same community or serve the same type of products or services or related to them, the stronger you are as a member of that industry, it makes you seem more authoritative. It makes you seem more trustworthy of other companies. Other businesses are working with you.

Or if you wanna take this into another level, like if you're working with influencers and social, you can tie those things together and you can partner with people who are influencers for your customers and get them to help you reach to a new audience or more of your audience.

Barnacle, when I talk about barnacle SEO, I don't mean what we typically think about. And those are those garbage sites where someone is just putting up affiliate stuff. I'm talking about a tree barnacle SEO, where like if there's a top 10 list that someone has put together on a trusted site and it is on the first page of search results, you want to be on that list. You wanna figure out what you need to do to be on that list and to be visible, because that just gives you another spot in search results. If someone doesn't click on your website and they click on this other website that puts you in the top 10 and they see you in a Reddit post too, that's also showing up in search results. All those things together, it puts you in the mind of the consumer because they're seeing your brand and your name over and over and over again when they do the search.

Next, we're gonna talk about, I guess we can talk about directories a little bit. If you're in local, you know a lot about directories. There are places where your name, address, and phone number are found online. This is more of a like validation factor. So if they can go Google search engines, generative AI, LLMs, if they can go online and find the same information about your business in several different places, it's a validating thing so that because they know that one, you're legitimate and that two, they have the right information. So it's a great way to make sure that you are highly visible online is when they can trust that the information they have about you is correct.

And then, let's finally go to real-world customer experience. We all know how customer experience impacts your SEO. Someone comes to your store and they have a bad experience and they leave you a negative review and then you start piling up in negative reviews because the underlying issue wasn't solved in the real world. That's going to impact your visibility, your rankings, and your ability to convert online still. So it's important to make sure that our customer experiences are great because that is part of the formula and that's one of the things that we know Google's looking at and we know that LLMs are considering as well.

Community, build a community, build a place where you have a culture surrounding your brand, your service, or your product. Because when you do that, your competitors can't easily copy that. That's something that belongs to you and your customers. And it's an easy way to set yourself well, not easy at first 'cause it takes a lot to build a community, but later on it's an easy way to keep the momentum of being like the thought leader or like the go-to place for information about your type of products or services.

And then sponsoring, if you're a local business, sponsor things that are going on in your community, be a legitimate part of your community. That is one of the most powerful things you can do to get people to spread awareness of your brand, of your company in the real world. And that can easily transfer over to your website. I mean, that's partially what your direct traffic is, is someone who already knows you. Well, how do they already know you? It may be because of an experience in the real world.

So you may be saying, this is all nice, Amanda. It's great to hear it, but does this actually work in the real world? Do you actually get results from this? And I do have a couple examples of results that I've seen from taking these strategies and applying them.

So Nike and a South American country where graffiti is super popular. They partnered with local graffiti artists and did limited edition drops at specific graffiti spots that they had commissioned artists to do for them. And when they put this campaign together, they actually saw a 22% increase in local traffic and a 32% increase in local sales. And that was just by being a bigger part of the local community and caring about what their customers cared about and being a part of the culture in that area. And that's something that all businesses can find ways to do. It doesn't have to be on that scale.

And I have an example of that too. Allagash Brewing, which is a brewing company in Maine, started a co-op and it started a recycling center. And now when you search for “best Maine breweries,” they are in seven of the top 10 search results for that search term. And it's because they're being seen on Reddit because people are recommending them there, they're being seen on top 10 lists from barnacle SEO because of their reputation in addition to their website. So they're getting these extra spots from being highly visible and local in their community. So people want to recommend them, they want to support them, they want them to do well. And because of that, that's impacting their SEO. They're not doing a ton on their website. Their reputation is building their SEO for them and their visibility for them.

So what should you take away from this whiteboard Friday? You should build a community. You should work on your authenticity for your community. Build a brand story. I think anyone can do this. It doesn't matter if you're a plumber or if you're like a HVAC company. There is a way for you to create a brand story that your users, your customers can connect with. And first, you need to find ops to be truly local, to be able to do these things.

Think about what matters to your customers, think about what keeps them up at night and think about how you can be a solution for them and put them first over just considering like, hey, these are the bottom of funnel keywords I wanna rank for. Think about putting it all together and using your entire marketing ecosystem to strengthen your SEO.

If you want more information on how to build a community, how to build your brand, you can find me on LinkedIn at Amanda Jordan or on X, @AmandaTJordan.