How to Become an
AI-Recommended Expert

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and light edits for readability. The conversation and opinions reflect the date of recording.

Brad Hauck 00:14

If someone asked ChatGPT to recommend a speaker or an author on your topic, would your name come up? If they ask Gemini for a book that solves the problem you write about, would it suggest yours? You've put lots of years into building your expertise, but can these tools find enough information to recommend you? Today we're going to explore how speakers and authors can get found in tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, with 10 practical steps, if we get through them all, to make your expertise more visible and help the right people discover your work.

Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:48

Good morning, Brad. How lovely to see you today. I am excited about this topic because ChatGPT and AI and Gemini and Claude and all of those things seem to be flavour of the day, and everyone's got opinions. And I always love talking to you about AI.

Brad Hauck 01:03

Absolutely. There's a lot happening with AI in many different areas of businesses. So one of the most staggering things that I came across recently was the fact that 68% of all searches on Google now result in zero clicks going through the websites because of the AI overview. And that's going to make a big difference to people's businesses.

Dixie Carlton 01:26

Wow. That's that zero is a big number in that respect. Wow.

Brad Hauck 01:32

Yeah. So it's really important that we take AI and our visibility in AI seriously as experts, because otherwise we're going to lose out on a lot of traffic that we might have had access to in the past. But there is things that we can do to actually make our site and ourselves more visible to AI. And hopefully, if we do it right, we'll get indexed by them.

Dixie Carlton 01:54

Well, fingers crossed, talk me through it. I'm all ears, and I'm sure everybody listening is leaning in now. So how do we where do we start with making sure that we are more visible on AI when someone starts searching for us?

Brad Hauck 02:08

Well, the first thing we need to do is actually make sure that AI search tools can actually index our website. So you might have heard of a thing called a site map, which is how we used to submit all our pages to the search engines. And now we need to make sure that all of the pages in our website can also be indexed by AI. And sometimes we have a tool called robots text on the website, and your webmaster knows about this, that blocks that happening.

So it's really important that you talk to your webmaster. And if that's you need to go and check that you're actually allowing the AI bots to index the information on your website. Because if you stop that, it's a bit like stopping search engines indexing you. It just they won't show you at all.

Dixie Carlton 02:50

Just a quick question on there. Is it possible that if you're working with a webmaster that's been in the business for a long time, that they may or may not have kept up with that kind of thinking and that kind of training and knowledge?

Brad Hauck 03:03

It depends if that person has like search engine optimisation specialty. Some things will automatically happen because of the plugins that you might use on your website, but other things you've actually got to go in and manually ask. Other things you have to manually go in and add. And I found that even with my site, I was missing some background information that needs to be added to a page, even though I do this all the time.

Dixie Carlton 03:28

Okay. So it is a specialty thing, and we do need to make sure that our webmasters are up to date, right? Yes.

Brad Hauck 03:36

It's really important.

Dixie Carlton 03:40

Okay, so if your AI is being optimized by your webmaster, what else do we need to do to make sure we're that our websites are ready for action?

Brad Hauck 03:49

Okay, so something that we need to do is actually explain who we are and what we do really clearly. So your about page is a common page on a website, but you need to go back over it and clearly explain what your expertise is, what your awards are, all the key points about yourself. Often when I look at people's about pages, they're very kind of generic in a lot of ways. They're kind of just a very quick, glossy overview of you. But you need to go in there now and break it down a little bit more detail.

A bit like you probably do with your LinkedIn profile where you've got everything listed in there. That's a good indication of what really should be on your about page if it's about you. As an expert, you need to kind of put all your qualifications out there. You need to clearly say what they are. And if you can link them or reference them to other places where you're listed, that's even better.

Dixie Carlton 04:43

Okay. So rewriting our biographies and making sure that we've listed everything that we do, is worthwhile getting AI like ChatGPT or Claude to do this for us so that it is optimized language? Or do we need to be going back to the basics with just using good keywords and doing it, doing it without the use of AI to create that?

Brad Hauck 05:07

Look, it can be a mixture of both. You can get AI to view it and say, is this good? Is it covering everything I need to say? But that said, AI itself is constantly changing. So it's not going to tell you specifically. What I can tell you is that there is ranking factors that Google gives us under their developers list that you can look up. And if you look up AI visibility factors or something like that, Google actually has information about that, about what they're looking for.

But in the end, it's all about being clear. Who do you help with what problem and why should they trust you?

Dixie Carlton 05:45

I've heard this mentioned a number of times over the years, where some people say the more web pages you have, the better. Some say, well, it doesn't matter how many web pages you have, as long as it's well easy to navigate, but that fewer pages is not such a good thing. So I want to know do you genuinely need to have a different page for each keynote and each workshop and each book and each everything that you do, each service, or shouldn't you be combining them?

Brad Hauck 06:13

It's a really good question because it's often one of those things that you've really got not a lot to say. So if I have to write a new page, I've got to expand on that. So you kind of question the amount of work that goes into it. But the fact of the matter is that in that area, nothing's ever changed. The more pages you've got, the more chances you have of being indexed for a specific keyword or search phrase. And the way I like to look at it is you can throw one hook out on the end of a line, or you can throw 10 lines into the creek to catch fish.

One hook has got just as much chance of catching a fish as 10, but 10 really does kind of increase your chances of being seen. So the more pages you've got, the more hooks you've got out there to attract people. And because each page can target a specific search phrase. So you might be an expert in leadership and you might talk about crisis management. So you have a page where you specifically talk about crisis management, that's better than crisis management just being mentioned on a large page full of information.

Dixie Carlton 07:16

Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense. So for every individual keynote, do we need to have an individual page for each keynote as well? And each book?

Brad Hauck 07:26

I recommend that you do, even though it takes more effort to do that. It makes more sense. One of the key things about producing content for AI visibility is you're trying to create useful answers to questions that your audience might ask. And this is a slight change from what we used to do with just SEO. We're being really specific about the common questions. And so when Google brings up an answer, if you go to Google and you search for I need an AI visibility audit, it will then bring back some information about what that is, first of all.

And then it might bring up some sites that it recommends. And that all sits above the actual search results that we've always traditionally seen there. And that's why we're getting zero clicks, because people are reading that search overview, that AI overview, and they're not going any further because they're getting their answer. They don't need to come to your website because the AI has pulled the information from your website.

Dixie Carlton 08:25

So let me just summarize a little bit. You're saying that if the website is feeding AI all of the answers, that people then don't need to go to the website to get all the information. That's kind of a catch-22, right?

Brad Hauck 08:37

It does seem like a catch-22, doesn't it? Okay. So here's the rub. The fact is that Google actually has the link to your website next to its answer. So when it gives the answer in the overview, and I'm talking about Google specifically because that's where most people go to search for things, and ChatGPT does this as well, is they actually link the website beside it. So people can click on that and go and read more. And so while they might get the short answer, if they want to read more, then they click through to your website.

And that's where you will get the clicks coming to you. I've noticed that on Google, under the AI overviews, if you ask for a specific area like AI Visibility Audit Gold Coast, it will have the overview, but then underneath it'll actually recommend businesses that have got specific information about the overview and even show things like the pricing that you've got. You know, shows up like normal search results almost that you would click through to the websites.

Dixie Carlton 09:37

So when we're talking about useful answers, like I have a subscription to Answer the Public. So if you look for the questions that Answer the Public has on something like that, so that you know what kind of people, what kind of things people are looking for, then obviously you can feed that into your AI to help develop that in the same way that we might have once just used keywords. So this is a slight twist on the use of keywords factor, isn't it?

Brad Hauck 10:05

Yes, this is something that people have done in the past. We've done this sort of thing in the past, but it was never as important as it is now. It was just a way of creating content. When you answer a question, it's easier to write content. Whereas now the AI is searching for the answers to display. And one of the really interesting things is it's also looking for pricing. So, for example, I have never had prices on my website before. Have always met with clients, talked with them, and then given them my prices for the services I provide.

I now actually have pricing on my website, and the AI overview is using that pricing to tell people about my business and how much it would cost if they were interested in using a service like the one I provide.

Dixie Carlton 10:54

Well, that's great in a way of not having people just take up a lot of time questioning what you do and asking for a quote and then never getting back to you, which is endemic in this industry. But how do you then control the likelihood that they will still come through and click through formal conversation?

Brad Hauck 11:15

Well, I think again, it's about the fact that you showed up. It really comes down to that recognition factor. So one of the things that we're seeing that's really happening is that because of this zero-click phenomenon, we're seeing that building a brand has become more important than ever. So building your name, doing your social media, running your podcasts, doing your YouTube videos, all those sorts of things, speaking on stage, the things that we do around our website to build our brand. And then people are going to the search engines and looking for you or for what you do.

And then they see your name come up and then they click through because they recognize your brand. So it's a little bit of one of those things where you've going on here and it'd be going on here, but you need both of them for everything to work. So doing all the other things that you always have done is still super, super important because that gets indexed as well. But also, you want to be in that AI overview when people search for your brand or your name so that you come up.

Because I mean, there's more than one of you in the world. So chances are if they search for you, they may come up with someone different.

Dixie Carlton 12:23

Well, we had Andrew Griffiths on last week, and we were talking about at the beginning, there's Andrew Griffiths, the politician in in Britain, and Andrew Griffiths, our futurist, entrepreneurial futurist. And then we also talked about with Andrew the importance of Googling yourself. So one of the things that I want to go back around to, is it still important to Google yourself, or is it more important to ask ChatGPT about yourself? Or is it completely two different things?

Brad Hauck 12:53

I think both are important, to be honest. I mean, in the end, you want to come up, or if you're going to search for yourself through ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever, come up with a set of questions that aren't necessarily asking for you, but asking for what you do and how you help people and see if you come up. You can also search for your name, obviously. So there's kind of a little bit of both each way. I know when we're doing AI visibility stuff, we're looking for the fact that we come up for what we do, know, or sell, which is traditionally what businesses want to show up for.

If you're a mechanic, you want to show up for being a mechanic, not for your name. If you're a speaker, you want to show up for the topic that you speak about because people may not have a brand recognition, as well as if you do already have brand recognition. So there's kind of that there's that balancing act going on now as well.

Dixie Carlton 13:46

So one of the things that we're obviously, because we work in this all the time, we're good at because we have taken the time and effort to train our own AI facilities. But many people that I'm still talking to don't know how to do that, or they're relative novices at using AI. And I find that AI can be still very sycophantic in the answers that it gives you. So if you're working closely with your own AI product, it's going to give you a lot of information because about yourself because it already has that.

So should in fact you be asking other people to do AI searches on your behalf?

Brad Hauck 14:26

Yeah, that's one of the reasons that we offer a visibility audit, is because we can actually do the searches from outside your system and get a more realistic point of view. It's a bit like if you want to Google yourself, open another browser that you don't normally use, that you're not logged in on, and do the search in another browser entirely. So on my machine, I normally work in Chrome, but I'll open Safari and do searches because I know that it doesn't know me because I've never logged in on it.

So that's certainly one thing to do. But yeah, you do need to look at those searches from an external perspective. And there is tools that we've developed that can do that. But you can get a friend to do the searches, of course.

Dixie Carlton 15:08

Yeah. So you actually offer a service that specifically helps people to do their own visibility navigation and audits.

Brad Hauck 15:16

Is that what you're starting? Yeah, and I'll actually run a report and it'll come back with a range of searches that it's run, your visibility for those searches, but also it'll also tell me what the issues are with your website that need to actually be updated and fixed to help overcome that initially. Plus, then you can move on to the production of the right content. So one of the key things I think for speakers and authors is that one of the things that they're looking for is unique content that is related to the topic.

So one of the we bring stories to the table that no one else does, and we tell things from our perspective rather than someone else's perspective. So you talked about us having our own AI that kind of knows us, so therefore we need to search from outside. On the other hand, we actually need to build our AI tools that we use with all our stories, with all our transcripts from stuff we've done, so that it knows more and more about us and more of our stories and our unique perspective, so that if you are going to use AI to actually create some of the content that goes on your website, it comes out with a uniqueness that only you can bring.

Now, obviously, you want to curate and edit all this stuff, but if you get your AI to produce the outline and then you write the content, you're going to get some unique content that still answers the questions that people are asking, but it's going to give ChatGPT and Claude a different perspective on the problem and how to solve it. And that's one of the key things that you can do that number one sets you apart from everybody else, but also that they're looking for. They're really looking for that uniqueness because if you think of it this way, AI has gone to a thousand websites about leadership.

And every one of those websites says you need safe goals, S-A-F-E goals. And you come up and say, no, you need goals based on the flame principle, F-L-A-M-E. You are suddenly unique compared to a thousand other sites. And they go, Well, here's two things I can say to that person who asked me. I can say you can do safe goals or you can try flame goals. One of these might suit you. So it actually increases your chances of being found because your information is unique. So your frameworks, your documented, your case studies, your research, and your lessons are all invaluable to make you stand out from the millions of other answers that AI already has.

Dixie Carlton 17:50

What if you are putting all of that information into your own ring-fenced aspects of your own ChatGPT? Does it still filter out in terms of searchability?

Brad Hauck 18:02

No. Well, it depends on which AI you're using. So a lot of people have moved to desktop AI. For example, Copilots, you can lock it off. So it only works on your desktop and doesn't share information. Or you might be running Llama locally to run your own AI within your own PC or Mac. And that is isolated. Now, if you're using ChatGPT, there is actually a business plan where it will isolate your information. So you've got to just read a little further into what you're doing to understand whether it will come out.

But one of the best things you can do is actually taking all your existing talks, podcasts, books, etc., and turning it into accessible web content. So putting it onto your website. So some of your strongest content can already be sitting inside the recordings you've done, your stage work, presentations, all those things. And we leave them sit cold. Whereas if we publish them onto our website as even just as simple transcripts or explanations or whatever, you're going to be producing all this content that talks about topics in a unique way because we all know when we write something like in a book or we stand on stage and we talk about something, we do not do the same thing if we're writing an article.

We generally twist things on the run and we we really do come up with unique ideas that we may never say again because of the audience that you're standing in front of. So take some of that content you've got and really think about putting it on the web because it's going to work to your advantage now.

Dixie Carlton 19:31

Yeah. Well, this is a good time to mention that the house, the last 10 and 12 episodes that we've done of this podcast, we are currently working on turning that into a book, which will be available in a few weeks' time. So that's a good time to just set that in because that's a good thing. Turning your own content into something that is obviously transferable out to multiple platforms. I mean, that's what we've been talking about forever. Multiple pages, multiple sub platforms, multiple ways of getting that content out to people.

So what are the two or three things that people need to stop? We may stop listening to this episode today, but they need to grab a piece of paper and make a note to go and do and attend to as a priority for becoming more AI visible.

Brad Hauck 20:17

The first thing they need to do is write a list of questions that they would like to show up for. That's the first thing. And then go and run those through an external browser or something, through a VPN. Turn on your VPN, come from somewhere else. But make sure you're logged out, okay? And go and run those reports and have a look at that. The second thing is go and look at all your content. Are you answering questions? Are you making sure that all your data across different platforms is the same?

So if on one website you've got a link to your website and it says your email address is info at, and every other one it's admin at, fix that. You want consistency as well. And then lastly, are you producing regular, unique content that answers common questions? And you can set AI on the path to go and do deep research about a hundred common questions people ask about this topic. And so you want them to get it from say Reddit. Reddit's a place where people go to ask questions.

So you can get it to go there and dig through and find answers. So you're looking for those, and then maybe you change the titles of some articles. Maybe you write some new articles, whatever it is. So yeah, check if you're showing up, and if you're not, that you know that now, do some research, produce some content, and make sure you're consistent across all your sites. So everything about you says the same thing.

Dixie Carlton 21:39

Look, I mean, AI saves us so much time and so much energy in certain things and prioritizing some of these things and reworking pieces of content. I love using AI. But as much as it's kept saving us time, it feels as though this business of being on top of our content management is continually an ever-ending full-time project. It never really gets any shorter than us. But but you've given us some fantastic things to think about today. That's been really helpful.

Brad Hauck 22:12

I think it's really important that you understand the difference between business the way it was and business the way it is for us as experts. You could need to consider yourself as a media organization. And I think Andrew said this last week. You're a media organization. You need to be producing media because media is what leads people to you. Now, whether that media is standing on stage, you're adding videos, you're doing YouTube, whatever. But also you then need to use that media in multiple ways. So if you do a video, get the transcript, right?

An article from the transcript for your website that answers a question someone might be searching for. You will be in a consistent content loop. If you're not, you're actually going to end up just disappearing into the bowels of Google and never to be seen again. And the same with the other AI tools as they grow more powerful. So please, you need to change your thinking. It's not one and done with the book, as Andrew said. There's so much more to making things a success, making yourself a success.

Dixie Carlton 23:14

Yeah. That's very good advice. Well, if you have really enjoyed what Brad has been talking about today, some fantastic information on AI and how to be thinking about using it to more effectively make sure you're visible, you're seen. And I like the sound of the AI visibility audit. So I'm going to come back to you about that. So if you're listening to this and you think that sounds like a good idea, please make sure you get hold of Brad at What's your website, Brad? Your time just shine.

Brad Hauck 23:45

Just go to BradHauck.com and find me through there. That's the easiest way.

Dixie Carlton 23:50

Fantastic. And if you're thinking about writing a book or you're thinking about creating new content and you need some help with that, I offer a ghostwriting as well as a supportive writing service and author services. So please get hold of us at indiexpertspublishing.com. And of course, don't forget to review and share our podcast if you love what you've had today.

Brad Hauck 24:12

Yep. And we look forward to talking to you in the next episode.

Dixie Carlton 24:16

Thanks, Brad. Take care.