EP 8 - Ellie Sumner FINAL
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Liz Nable: [00:00:00] Today's episode dives into a topic that is brand new for a lot of small business owners, but is about to become impossible to ignore GEO generative engine optimization and how it can supercharge the impact of the media coverage. You work so hard to get. I am joined by digital PR director Ellie Sumner from Prosperity Media, an SEO and digital PR agency that specializes in using research driven PR campaigns and backlinks to boost brands.
Visibility in search. Ellie breaks down in simple non-techie language. What digital PR is, how it differs from traditional PR and why backlinks and online mentions are now critical signals for both Google and AI models like Chat GT and Perplexity when they decide which brands to surface. We talk about how AI search is changing the way people discover products and services, why conversion rates from AI [00:01:00] recommendations can be more than four times higher.
Then from traditional search and what that means for small businesses, if you're a small business owner who is already pitching for earned media, the good news is you don't need to start from scratch. You just need to get more strategic about how that coverage appears online. And where it's published.
In this conversation, Ellie shares practical, beginner friendly tips on choosing the right publications, chasing those all important links, reverse engineering, AI, search results, and setting your brand up to be the trusted answer. These new search engines recommend first.
Hello and welcome to Medium Magnet, the podcast for female founders and women owned businesses, startups, and side hustlers who want to learn how to grow their business, leveraging the media and free pr. I am Liz Nale, and I'm your host, personal publicist, PR [00:02:00] strategist, and dedicated hype woman. My goal with this show is to give you a behind the scenes tour of how the media works to break down the barriers between your business and the big ma heads.
So you can see how easy it is to get featured simply by giving journalists what they want at Media Magnet. You'll also get access to the top journals, editors, writers, and PR people in your industry and beyond sharing their secrets and expertise on the how, why, what. And when of pitching and getting featured in the media consistently, I will share with you how to build your reputation as an industry expert so successfully the media will be knocking down your door.
When I first started in small business 12 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had spent 15 years as a television news reporter working at several major networks in Australia, and then as a freelancer in the US and around the world. I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a [00:03:00] news desk and traveling the world chasing stories.
It was unpredictable and exciting until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next and where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business, but getting media and great free PR was not one of them.
I already knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made news, and I knew how to leverage those media outlets to build my business, get more exposure, and ultimately make more sales. I was featured in every major media outlet in the country, and I never spent a single cent on pr. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other businesses.
Let them in on the secret, and they too could build their brands with organic media and pr. [00:04:00] Let me help you take your brand from Best Kept Secret to household name. This is Media Magnet. The podcast and I'm pretty pumped to have you here.
Hi Ellie. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you for having me. We are gonna be talking today about something that I admit is new to me and probably new to most of the listeners of the podcast. We're talking about GEO and the rise of its importance in terms of authority and credibility, um, in both the medium and PR space, but also in, um, the general kinda landscape of small business and how to use that to our advantage.
Can you start by telling me a little bit about, um, who you are and what you do?
Ellie Sumner: Yes, so my name's Ellie and I'm the digital PR director at Prosperity Media, which is a [00:05:00] specialized SEO Digital PR and Content agency. So I've worked in the PR space for five years now, and four of that has been in digital pr.
And with digital pr, our main goal is to get back links to our client's websites through PR tactics. So the main way we do this is by doing research and data led studies, which we then pitch to press, um, through outreach and targeting the relevant contacts, the usual kind of PR tactics you'd see in traditional pr.
But rather than the main goal being coverage and brand awareness, what you'd usually think about when you are talking about pr, our main goal is to get a link back to our, our client's website. So how we do this is we create assets that go, uh, publish on the client's site. So this is usually in kind of a blog post and we produce copy and assets, which are then uploaded to site.
And this gives something journalists. [00:06:00] Something for journalists to link back to because journalists often require something too tangible to link back to on a website, and then if a link isn't added, we'll chase up the journalists and ask them to add one in, which is something. When I worked in traditional pr, people didn't seem to do that often.
And the main reason we do this is because links from your site, um, links from news publications to your site, help send signals to search engines. So often we'll talk about Google. In this case that your website is trustworthy, and these signals then help increase your rankings on Google. So when people search for key terms to do of your product or service, you'll then be shown higher up in the search results, which is important as when people are searching on Google, they don't often go to the next page of search results.
It's just usually the first page. I think only three quar. I think three quarters of people don't scroll past the first page of results. So that's [00:07:00] really important for your brand to be discovered. But now with the rise of LLMs, which is large language models, which are associated with products like Chat, GPT, they use the LLMs to kind of pull their queries.
Um, that answers to
Liz Nable: queries in, let me jump in here because I feel like we are gonna overwhelm people with too much content too soon. Let's just wind back slightly. What is digital pr. What is the difference between digital PR and traditional PR or agency pr? I imagining that, um, I don't know anything about public relations and how it works.
Like, explain to me, I guess, in simple terms what digital PR is.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so digital PR is, let me, I'll get a definition up so I can make sure I'm saying the exact definition and I can kind of explain the difference. Um. So it's basically using online channels, um, [00:08:00] to generate backlinks to your website. So the different, the main difference is, is that first of all, our goal is to, our main goal is to get backlinks.
So that's the goal. What's a, what's a backlink? So a backlink is when a, a publication, so let's say we're pitching to Australian media and we get a piece of coverage on news.com au. If they include a link back to your client, to the client's website or your brand's website, that counts as a backlink. So it's just a news publication link into your website basically.
Liz Nable: Okay, so your goal isn't, tradition isn't, isn't like traditional PR agencies where you are necessarily trying to build authority and reputation in traditional media, although that's a nice kind of byproduct of what you do, but you're trying to drive organic traffic using that media coverage back to the brand's website.
Is that correct?
Ellie Sumner: Kind of, yeah, [00:09:00] with the backlink as well as people clicking through and visiting the website. From there, it helps, um, send these signals to Google. So when Google is, um, pulling the search results, there's a number of different things that influences where your brand will sit in the results for key terms.
So let's say you are searching for a new handbag and you just type in red handbag on Google. Google will use a lot of different. Um, factors to determine how they'll rank the website. So you might have, um, David Jones, you might have Maya, then you might have the iconic. And the way it ranks them is using different signals, and one of these signals is links.
So the more links you get to your website, they're more authoritative. Google sees your site and therefore will rank you higher in their results. If that makes sense.
Liz Nable: Got it, got it. Completely, yes. Crystal clear. Okay. So traditionally, um, that is [00:10:00] how people would search for, um, a product or a service or a recommendation would be through Google.
But now with the, I guess even in the last just 12 months with the incredible like evolution of AI and how much it's being used now by everyone, not just AI experts, but like. Consumers, brands, products, services. Tell us a little bit about how that search process is changing and how GEO plays into that.
And also more importantly, what is GEO um, explaining again, because this is a new subject for a lot of the listeners.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, and it's still honestly new to kind of everyone in the space. We're constantly adapting, learning new things about, um, these LMS and AI search. So it's kind of new for everyone, but for GEO stands for generative, generative generative engine optimization.
And we're bas This is basically just a strategy [00:11:00] focused on making a brand visible in AI generated search results. So when people are searching on places like Chat, GPT or Perplexity trying to get your brand to be featured in their answers, um, which is really important as while Google still holds a major share in search, AI is expected to overtake that by 2028.
And places like Chat, GPT, they have 800 million weekly active users, which is one of the fastest pla, fastest growing platforms in the world. So people are coming to that more and more, 70%. 77%. Um, and I STAT here is 77% of Chachi PT users say they use it as a search engine. So people are coming into Chachi, PT perplexity, these models to search what they would typically search on Google.
And over a third have said that they've discovered [00:12:00] new PR products or brand through Chachi pt, and this rises even more to Gen Z who are using these platforms more than other generations. So it's a real, real growing area of people discovering new products, services, brands by searching on these platforms.
Liz Nable: So why So first of all, that sounds like a huge kind of. Crossover between the way people are starting to search for brands and products and services, uh, like a quite a quick, um, rise in popularity, but also why would you want your brand or your business to get featured in those, um, in those search engines?
In terms of perplexity or chat GPT, is it a very similar function to like how you would traditionally search Google?
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so a lot of people now, especially the younger generations, are searching. Starting there [00:13:00] kind of searches on chat, GBT. So for example, someone, there's kind of two ways. So someone might be searching for online shopping on there.
And before I, I was doing some research into stats and actually 13% of people have said they're doing online shopping on these AI models. So someone might start a shop there and say something like, where is the best place to buy a new mattress? And then the LLMs will pull all their kind of sources that they've been trained in and it will come out with the answer.
And if your brand is on the list of the best places to buy a mattress, people are more likely to click through, discover your brand. And actually the conversion rate is 4.4 times higher on trap GPT than traditional search engines. So people are seeing more conversions on there. And why is that, do you think?
I think it's because people are doing wider searches. So with Google, someone might type in [00:14:00] mattresses and then they're searching for, for lots of different results. But then on things like chat, EPT, and perplexity, people are kind of being more conversational asking. The engines, what, what are the best mattresses, which are the comfiest?
What's at the best price point? They kind of delve into it a bit deeper and they start their journey. They ask more questions, and they're kind of the very trusted these search engines among users because it's like having a conversation with someone.
Liz Nable: Yeah, so they're so, they're warmer customer or they're warmer prospects, I guess when they're, when they're deciding when they're coming to that.
Point where they're making a decision, they're far more likely to go ahead and purchase that mattress. That's been recommended to them because they trust that ai, I guess, is more sophisticated in, its in its search functions and it's, yeah, like you say, it's sort of like asking a friend for a recommendation.
It feels personal.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, exactly. And they often, like on, if you are on Google, you have to click into [00:15:00] different sites and you are opening a lot of tabs and reading information. Whereas on these, um, AI search engines, you've got it all there in front of you. It's summarizing it, so it's a lot easier to kind of navigate.
Liz Nable: Right. Okay. So next step. How does getting traditional media coverage, um, you know, featured in the news, um, or you know, covered in the media help you be more searchable, um, on these AI models? How does that work? Like, where's that relationship there? Can you explain a little bit more about that?
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so these AI engines will cite reliable sources, and this is why PI is so beneficial because it creates credible content, the AI systems trust.
So having your brand mentioned online helps build these trust signals. And then when a user's typing in relevant queries. Your brand will then come up, hopefully. Um, the, [00:16:00] honestly, the, the results change every day. It depends what's, what's they're pulling from, but that's the goal. Um, so things like having, um, highly reputable coverage, so looking at positive coverage, um, looking at the context of coverage, so where your brand is mentioned and relevant.
Content. So if you're, if you sell products, product Roundups, um, is a great, is a great place to be featured because they'll directly take an article that says, like the best microwaves, and kind of regurgitate it in their, in their results. It's also good to have expert commentary. As this helps, um, develop trust, expertise, authority for your brand, any spokespeople, which then again, helps come up in the search and having, um, your brand mentioned a lot online as well.
So the frequency of mentions really helps, [00:17:00] um, outperform competitors. The more, the more you get online, the more likely you are to be generated in these, in AI an in these AI generated answers.
Liz Nable: So I know in the past, um, and you're the expert here, not me, but from, correct me if I'm wrong, so a Google search is completely separate to, you know, social media platforms and the algorithms that work out what to serve you, all that content stuff.
So two separate kinds of ways to search Google search, um, engine optimization, and then you have your social media platforms. Are they now all included in those searches that happen on those AI platforms? How does that work?
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so the AI platforms can pull from social media and use social media as a source.
So one example of something we've done in house is, um, with one of our clients is they're a small business accounting software. And we did a study on the best places [00:18:00] to start a small business, and they, if you go, if you search on these platforms, the best place to start a business in Australia, it actually pulls in one of their Instagram posts that they posted about the study.
So it is, it is pulling in information from social media as well as on blogs as well as then the earned media. So it's, if that makes sense.
Liz Nable: Yeah, absolutely. So it, it seems like it's just a, a far more sophisticated search platform than Google was, although I know they're, they're now in competition. Um, that, you know, with chat PT and perplexity and those sorts of places, so it's like a race, a race for them all, and I'm sure they'll evolve, um, even before this podcast episode goes to air.
It'll probably change. Um, so what would be your advice for small business owners? Like, for a lot of my community, a lot of my, my clients and my students, I teach them how to get earned media. [00:19:00] So traditional media coverage, newspapers, magazines. Podcast, radio tv. Is that still the way for them? Obviously they have the benefit of being in those traditional media outlets, but I mean, it sounds like you can really double down on the outcome of being featured in there because it's now going to, you know, help you accelerate the way you show up in ai.
How would you, sort of, what's your opinion on how that works and, and the way to do that? Well.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so firstly, if you're selling a product or a service that might be relevant to journalists like Product Roundups, they're great, um, to be featured on LLMs Love when there's like a listicle of the best X, Y, Z.
So if you can get featured on them, that's great. There is some news publications can't be crawled by the. Um, LLMs. So that basically means they can't access the information on [00:20:00] those websites. It just kind of depends on the bot they use. But there is a website called MRS, digital AI Crawler Access Checker, and you can just put the website in and it comes up with which public, um, which AI platforms can, um, crawl it.
So you can kind of see who you should be targeting by doing that. Um, I'd make sure to try and hit publications which are really high authority. So we're looking at, um, tier one press like news.com. But also really if you are in a niche, these high authority niche sites. So if you are. I'm trying to think of like if you are maybe like a motoring.
If you've got a motoring brand, you'd wanna hit the motoring sites, um, and publications that your audience would read. So like it's not dissimilar to traditional peer in that way. When you are writing [00:21:00] any press releases or pitches to pitch out, just be really careful with how you're wording everything.
You want to make sure that. What you are writing is exactly how you want your brand to be portrayed. Um, so that if journalists are kind of copy and paste, which they often will do into the story, it's exactly how you want to kind of be seen on the, um, answers to the search queries on the AI search. Hmm.
Um, but same as traditional pr. Just position your brand spokespeople as go-to commentate commentators on industry trends and any newsjacking you can do to gain that authority and trust around your spokespeople. Um, and then there's also ano, another way we do it is that we think about what, um, your customers might be searching outside of the product.
So. With the example I gave earlier out of the campaign [00:22:00] we did on the best cities to start a small business, the, the client we work on specifically target small business owners. So we kind of try and, um, raise awareness of the brand with the small business owners before they come to decide what accounting software they need.
So thinking about what questions outside of. Outside of your brand, they might be asking, like if you are looking for a mattress, it might be, how do I get a better night's sleep, for example? Yeah. And kind of doing a study around that data led campaigns, um, any like unique data that you can push out that might.
Um, be relevant to these queries that people are searching will help be featured on these, these platforms.
Liz Nable: Yeah, so I mean, I think the good news here because for a lot of the small business owners that listen to this podcast, I know from their feedback they feel, you know, a lot of these new kind of developments that come through in marketing and [00:23:00] advertising and media feel like they've got a whole new kind of process to follow so much more content to get through so much education to learn.
It sounds to me like. Everything is very, very similar to as it always was. We are just using those AI platforms to amplify those search results. Is that correct?
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so it's very similar tactics, just being more thoughtful about how you want to appear in those results and what results you want to appear in.
Liz Nable: Yeah, so it's even more important to, I mean, the good news is obviously those traditional media outlets, we are still pitching them the same way. We are still following up with them. We are still building relationships with journalists, um, and looking for ways to, you know. Hijack the news and infuse our business or our brand into what's already happening in the news cycle.
That's all still the same, but there's, there's more ways you can leverage that media coverage once you've got it. And one of those ways is obviously this, these GEO searches, um, that AI platforms have [00:24:00] enabled us to do. Do you have any sort of top tips outside that pitching traditional media and getting those.
Authority and credibility, um, pieces out there, um, of ways business owners could, I guess, simply appear in those searches more often or, um, be, be more searchable in these new AI platforms from the work that you, you do and from your experience.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, so I mentioned links before, but if you can get a link back to your site in these articles that all not only helps with SEO, it also helps with geo.
So that's another thing you can do is push for a link and just make sure everything you are kind of writing on the website is. Kind of AI crawler friendly. If you just do a quick search on, on Google or on these AI platforms of how to kind of write your website content to be crawlable for LLMs, it [00:25:00] will give you like a step by step simple breakdown of how to do that and just apply that to your website so it can be pulled in
Liz Nable: easily.
The irony is you've gotta ask AI how to do it, and then it tells you how to do it, and then you do it to help it tell you better how to do it. Um, so any, any other, like, I guess, key takeaways from what you are seeing on the ground? Obviously you've got your finger on the pulse and you're doing this all day, every day about what 2026 will bring in this space.
Are you expecting things to just continue at this kind of. Lightning speed through next year? Um, or any sort of new things we need to be aware of on the horizon that could change the way we do things? Or is it just gonna be more and more people using these AI platforms to discover your business or your brand?
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, I think things are probably gonna change very rapidly. So it's hard to say, but it will definitely be increasing the importance and reliance on AI search among consumers. So just keeping up [00:26:00] doing everything you can to be featured on these. Um, people will be doing a lot more of different competitors will be doing a lot more of this as well.
I imagine a lot of people are asking about it and getting brand mentioned online is one of the biggest things people are talking about. So, yeah, I just, it's not too hard. I just recommend just kind of keep going with the pr, but just make sure everything you do is kind of how you want to appear in these search results.
Hmm. Um, in terms of your wording of your brand and what you want to be known for. And just keep building authority because Yeah. Essentially the more authoritative you can kind of come across, the more likely you are to be featured on, on these search engines.
Liz Nable: Is the only way to build kind of authority and reputation and credibility still just through those traditional media outlets that then land on these AI platforms that you can see,
Ellie Sumner: you can do other, if that's kind of my area of expertise.
But if [00:27:00] there's any kind of blogs, um, that have high off higher authority, um, or like the smaller niche sites that you might not necessarily reach out to. Normally they can play a big role in, in this. Um, if what you can do is just go on these search en search engines and search what you want to be in. So if you want to, if you know you want to be in a search for the best mattresses, I keep using that, but just search like best mattresses on.
On chatt pt, for example, and see what comes up. And then if sometimes it will list the sources and sometimes it won't. So if it doesn't, you can just say, what sources did you use for this? And then you can kind of see where they're actually pulling this information. And then from there you can try and get featured in.
So if you see it's from a seven news product roundup, you can then try and pitch. Pitch to be in that, but you might find that it's from a [00:28:00] listicle on a blog and then you can kind of work out what sites you need to reach out to from there.
Liz Nable: Right. So sort of reverse engineer. Um, yeah, the answers first. And then you mentioned before, obviously traditional media outlets, but then really reputable, well respected, trusted blogs like, um, I guess like a Mark Burris business blog or, you know, Kashi's Business Builders is another really kind of trusted.
Business, um, newsletter that I, that I follow in my space. So those, I mean, that's not traditional media technically speaking, but I think if people are seeing you featured in those things and they trust that source, then by way of association that builds trust in your brand as well.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, absolutely. And like coachee's, business Builders, for example, is a real high authority site, so we often use, um.
Dr. Which means domain ranking, and that's a number, the A HS, which is an SEO [00:29:00] tool. Will give you, and it's out of a hundred and it kind of ranks how authoritative your site is. There's also a free one called Moz. So if people did want to kind of assess domain authorities of different sites, you can download the Moz keyboard and it will give you a number out of a hundred.
And any site with an authority over about 40, I'd say is really worth going after because. Yeah, it's kind of measures how these search engines measure their authority and coach. Business builder, for example, I'm pretty sure their DRDA is in the 60 70, so it's a real high authority site to kind of reach out to.
Liz Nable: So that's mos, MOZ? Yes. M mo z.com au I'm assuming,
Ellie Sumner: I'm not sure. Yeah, I I'm assuming so, but you can, you can get a key, like a Google, a Chrome, what do you call them? Chrome. A content.
Liz Nable: Yes, exactly. That's the word. You can just, okay, I'll pop it in the show notes as well. Guys, I'll, I'll work it out after we jump off.
[00:30:00] Um, any sort of top tips or anything we haven't sort of covered before we go? I guess in terms of small business owners who are possibly coming into this for the first time, or this is quite new to them, um, about how to get started increasing their results in that GEO search function.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, I'd probably say get your kind of in the, about your brand section of your press releases or pictures in the exact way you want it.
Do some Googling on how best to write this to make sense to LMS and to encourage journalists, include that information. Um, and then yeah, do the reverse engineering. See which sites you need to try and target. And yeah, try and get on those high, high authoritative, higher niche sites for your brand and go from there.
Liz Nable: Amazing. Thank you Ellie. This has been so informative. Um, if I'm gonna pop [00:31:00] your details in the show notes, but if anyone has any questions about today's episode, please feel free to reach out to me, liz@lizmabel.com. Um, but yeah, I'm gonna try some of these tips and see how I go. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Ellie.
Ellie Sumner: Sorry. I hope everything made sense.
Liz Nable: Absolutely. I mean, I think it's mind blowing for so many of us, but trying to keep it super simple and just, I guess doing this piece by piece rather than coming at it and trying to do all the things at once. The good news is that we are still pitching for media exactly the same way that I've always taught, which is perfect.
We are just getting more bang for our buck. That's how I see it anyway.
Ellie Sumner: Yeah, exactly, and you're probably already doing stuff that would get get in the LLMs anyway. It's probably, you've just not realized yet. So it's always good to kind of dig, dig about in them and try and find where your brand is maybe featured already.
Awesome. Thank you Ellie. Thank you.
Liz Nable: This episode of Media Magnet was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, the [00:32:00] Media Masters Academy. The Media Masters Academy is a live online six week course taught by me and designed to teach you how to become your own publicist and give you exclusive access to pitch the country's top journalists and editors doors open just three times a year.
Check it out@liznabel.com, along with a ton of free resources to help you get started taking your business from best kept secret to household name. Right now, if you love this episode of Media Magnet, please share it with your business buddies or on social media and tag me at at Liz Naval. And if there's a specific guest you wanna hear from on the show or a topic or question you want to know more about, please tell me so I can make sure the show stays dedicated, especially for you.
