Entity SEO In The Age Of AI

The customer journey isn't a straight line anymore, and last-click attribution may be giving marketers the wrong picture of what's actually driving revenue. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gq7M-mMiv5k Matthew Bertram sits down with Carol Larson of Marketstorm to explore how AI, changing buyer behavior, fragmented platforms, and longer decision cycles are reshaping digital marketing. They break down Google's "messy middle," the difference between creating influence and capturing existing demand, and why the channel that gets the final click shouldn't automatically get all the credit. Carol shares insights from tracking longer customer journeys, including why marketers may need much longer attribution windows and why constantly changing campaigns can interrupt the learning that makes advertising more effective. They also discuss behavioral targeting, ad fatigue, creative consistency, entity SEO, and how AI Overviews are changing the way brands need to think about search visibility. The conversation ultimately comes back to a bigger shift: marketers need to understand how people actually discover, research, remember, and choose brands across the entire journey, not just what happened immediately before the conversion. • why “ditch the last click” matters more now than in 2015 • entity consistency across website, profiles, aggregators, and forums to prevent AI confusion • the customer journey collapsing into streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping • influence layer versus demand capture layer and why Google is the cashier • cleaner data, UTMs, and CRM linkage to defend SEO and marketing spend • long-tail decision timelines and why 30-day lookbacks miss the real story • using moving averages to report marketing performance on the right horizon • mid-funnel creative that explains the why, not just the logo • why constant ad refresh can reset learning and raise costs • persona targeting versus behavioral targeting and where waste shows up • AI Overviews and conversational search pushing SEO toward “thoughts,” not keywords Guest Contact Information: Carole Lawson Website: marketstorm.ai LinkedIn: linkedin.com/caroleslawson Rate the show in your podcast app. Apple ratings are how new listeners decide whether to press play, an honest one takes about thirty seconds. Steps for iPhone, Mac and Spotify: www.bestseopodcast.com/review Is AI search citing your business? Find out free with an AI visibility audit: www.ewrdigital.com/ai-visibility-audit Support the show The Best SEO Podcast is a weekly show on how search and AI decide which businesses get found, trusted and chosen. Hosted by Matthew Bertram ( www.matthewbertram.com ), powered by EWR Digital ( www.ewrdigital.com ). Every episode: www.bestseopodcast.com