In this episode of Demand Gen Studio we sat down with SEO expert Tim Lowry, founder of TipTop Search and Marketing. Tim shares insights from his decade of experience working with e-commerce and B2B clients, diving into the evolving landscape of SEO and the disruptive influence of AI on search behavior.
We discussed how search is shifting from traditional keyword-based queries to a more conversational, problem-solving approach, reshaping how users interact with the internet.
Tim introduced us to the C.L.A.R.I.T.Y Framework that he developed as a way for marketers and businesses to stay ahead of these transformative changes.
Watch on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Brand Representation in Today's SEO Landscape
In today’s SEO landscape, brand representation extends far beyond traditional search engines like Google. The buying journey still follows familiar stages — research, comparison, and decision-making — but the platforms where these steps occur is starting to shift.
People are increasingly using AI-driven tools, conversational interfaces, and alternative information sources in lieu of the traditional search process, ultimately bypassing Google entirely.
This shift challenges brands to ensure they’re accurately represented across a variety of emerging platforms, not just search engines. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company like Salesforce or a smaller SaaS startup, appearing in the platforms where your customers are researching can influence leads and buying decisions.
If a significant share of traffic or leads starts originating from these alternative sources, staying visible and credible there becomes essential to avoid falling behind.
What is the C.L.A.R.I.T.Y Framework
The C.L.A.R.I.T.Y Framework is a framework that Tim developed for brands to begin navigating AI in search. Clarity is an acronym for the steps of the process:
- Crawl
- Learn
- Analyze
- Respond
- Integrate
- Train
- Yield
It can be used as a step-by-step guide for how businesses can be proactive in managing their online presence.
By walking through each step of the framework you can help ensure your brand has online visibility across traditional search engines as well as emerging AI-driven platforms.
C - Crawl
The "Crawl" step in the framework focuses on ensuring that your business's digital presence can be crawled and discovered by search engines and AI models.
This involves checking whether your website and content are accessible to bots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others — and ensuring there’s nothing unintentionally blocking them, such as outdated robots.txt files.
The goal is to make sure your business surfaces correctly in search and AI-generated overviews. If your brand's information is inconsistent across platforms — using different names, handles, or descriptions — it can fragment your online presence and lead to confusion or misinformation.
Standardizing naming conventions and maintaining a consistent brand identity across all digital assets can improve how your business is recognized and represented, ultimately influencing your brand perception.
L - Learn
The "Learn" step in the Clarity framework involves manually exploring what major AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini know about your company.
This involves running brand-related queries — asking questions like "What does company X do?" or "Is company X a good company to work with?" — and documenting the results.
The goal is to uncover gaps, outdated information, and misrepresentations. By tracking this data in a spreadsheet and analyzing it from both an internal perspective and a potential customer’s point of view, companies can identify what AI is getting wrong or leaving out.
This step helps pinpoint where to focus efforts to improve how the company is represented, forming the foundation for the next steps in the framework.
A - Analyze
The "Analyze" step focuses on evaluating the insights gathered during the Learn phase, digging into gaps, misrepresentations, and overall sentiment about your brand.
This involves assessing whether the perception is positive or negative, factoring in sources like Glassdoor or the Better Business Bureau that may influence how AI models portray your company.
A key part of this step is comparing AI outputs to your website — your "digital sales rep" as Tim refers to it — to ensure it communicates essential details like what you offer, who you serve, and why you’re the right choice. If crucial information is missing or unclear, AI may pull data from less reliable sources.
This stage also highlights the importance of reducing perceived risk for B2B buyers, who often weigh career-impacting decisions. To counter this, businesses should fill gaps with trust-building content like testimonials, case studies, and thought leadership — empowering AI (and potential customers) with credible, up-to-date information to represent the brand accurately.
R - Respond
The "Respond" step is all about closing the gaps identified during the Analyze phase and ensuring your website and content reflect an accurate, compelling version of your brand.
This starts with revising your key pages to they are driving a clear and consistent message. Adding a robust FAQ section can help preemptively address common questions, while incorporating diverse content formats, like video testimonials or audio interviews, enhances credibility and emotional depth, which AI models now interpret alongside text.
Tim also mentions that it's important to keep details fresh, from leadership changes to awards and media recognition, ensuring your website remains a trustworthy, up-to-date source.
This phase may uncover months of work ahead, but the goal is clear: make your brand’s digital presence so strong and consistent that AI — and your audience — have no choice but to get the right story.
I - Integrate
Next, the "Integrate" step focuses on ensuring your brand’s messaging and reputation are consistent not only on your website but across all key external platforms where AI models pull data such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, and review sites.
This ensuring employee LinkedIn profiles align with the company’s positioning, updating outdated pages (like Wikipedia), and ensuring your presence on forums and review sites reflects your current brand story.
AI ties together information from various sources to build an understanding of your business. A cohesive, accurate, and up-to-date representation across these platforms boosts your credibility and visibility.
Beyond AI, this effort enhances your overall marketing strength — making it easier for any potential buyer to understand what you do and who you serve, reducing misinformation, and improving your chances of attracting the right customers faster.
T - Train
The "Train" step covers two parts: training for yourself and training for the AI.
Training for yourself means learning how to create content that consistently ties together who you are, what you do, and who you serve. This clarity helps both humans and AI quickly grasp your business’s value.
For the AI, training involves recognizing that large language models update less frequently than traditional search engines. So, between those updates, you monitor what the AI understands, spot gaps, and refine content for the next cycle.
Since AI connects concepts and entities from across its knowledge base, you want to ensure your content creates strong, unmistakable associations — preventing the AI from making wrong assumptions.
By repeatedly reinforcing a clear, consistent structure ("We are X, we do Y for Z"), you guide the AI to represent your brand accurately and help future versions of the model better understand and surface your business.
Y - Yield
The "Yield" step focuses on measuring performance — ensuring your efforts translate into visibility and recognition.
Unlike traditional SEO rankings, emerging tools like Knowatoa track whether your brand appears in AI-driven answers to critical business questions, like "Who’s the best CRM provider?" or "Is this company reliable?"
You can define key questions where your brand must be present, then monitor results. If you’re missing from those answers, that signals a content gap you can capitalize on to create or refine on-site and off-site content to strengthen your brand’s presence.
It’s a long-term strategy, especially for competitive, high-value queries. Like SEO, you won’t outrank established leaders overnight, but consistently reinforcing your positioning moves you closer to that north star goal of becoming the go-to brand for those essential topics.
Conclusion
In summary, the C.L.A.R.I.T.Y framework isn’t just about increasing visibility, but helping you take full control of your brand's online presence. By understanding how language models interpret and surface information, you can shape the narrative around your business.
It starts with diagnosing where you stand, moves into creating and refining content, and ends with measuring performance and iterating. While results won’t be instant — with realistic timelines stretching to 12 months or more — the long-term payoff is a stronger, more resilient digital presence.
Ultimately, the work you put into your website and off-site efforts ensures that both AI and traditional search engines understand, trust, and consistently position your brand accurately and prominently.
Thanks so much for joining us, Tim! For more topics about demand generation and thought leader interviews check out the rest of our episodes on Demand Gen Studio. Till next time!
