The Ledger
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why aren't all 8 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Smith: Startups should ignore SEO until Series A or B
“I think it's hard for early stage companies, which is why I mentioned when a startup asked me what they should do in SEO, I say, don't work on it and wait until you're larger. Wait until you're, you know, series A or later, maybe series B and later, because it…”
Smith: Winning AI search requires offsite citations, not just on-domain pages
“And if in chat you say, what's the best website builder and Webflow's URL is the number one citation and nobody else mentions Webflow, then they won't win. And so for these popular questions, the way to win is not just a page on your site. It's pages off of yo…”
Ethan Smith: Winning AEO requires optimizing YouTube and Reddit, not pure AEO
“So actually to do answer engine optimization really well, I think it's not doing pure answer engine optimization.
It's doing all of these other channels, but doing YouTube and Reddit with the intention of helping you on answer engine optimization.”
Smith: Startups can win AI search visibility quickly via multi-channel offsite content
“If I'm making viral YouTube videos and you know, a TikTok video and an Instagram story and a Reddit thread, I can be the best product tomorrow. So the time to impact is fast and I can grow on these other channels without really having a substantial brand.”
Ethan Smith: Video marketing works best for unentertaining, high-LTV B2B products
“And the less entertaining your product is, the better, the more interesting video is.
And the reason why I say that is because video is made to be entertaining and entertaining categories like food, travel, beauty are the most crowded and the least entertainin…”
Smith: Help center optimization is critical for AEO, unlike SEO
“Help center is actually a great place to do that because help center is you talking about how your product works and what it does when it does not do. And so help center optimization is not something you would focus on for SEO, but you would for answer engine …”
Smith: AEO does not require verbatim exact-match pages for every query
“Yes, you do not need to create millions of pages for every single question. You need to generally answer the question... It's grouping and theming them. And the AI is indeed smart enough to just find the answer. So you don't need it explicitly verbatim exact m…”
Ethan Smith: AEO testing requires control groups because LLM growth inflates baseline metrics
“The reason why the control matters is because LM's are growing a lot, and charts are just going to naturally go up because they're growing a lot. So if you don't have a control, you don't know whether or not you caused an effect.”