the story + tech framework

Six signals.
One result.

AI platforms need a story they trust and a structure they can parse. Three Story signals tell them who you are. Three Tech signals let them confirm it.

03 story+03 tech=06 signals
01 narrative 02 reputation 03 authority 04 seo 05 architecture 06 schema 01 narrative 02 reputation 03 authority 04 seo 05 architecture 06 schema
how the framework fits together

Story tells AI who you are. Tech lets it confirm.

story signals · 01–03
01 Coherent brand narrative
02 Brand reputation
03 Category authority
meeting at
the AI
answer.
cited · paraphrased · recommended
tech signals · 04–06
04 Foundational SEO
05 Clear content architecture
06 Structured data & FAQs
signal by signal

What we actually do inside each one.

01
story signal

Coherent brand narrative

A single, consistent story AI systems can summarize in one sentence.

why it matters

If three pages of your site describe what you do three different ways, the model averages them into mush. A coherent narrative gives the model one clean sentence to lift.

what we ship
  • 01One-sentence positioning, applied across home, about, and services pages
  • 02Consistent vocabulary for who you serve and what you solve
  • 03Tightened bio and founder language across LinkedIn, press, and footer
  • 04Removal of contradictory legacy copy from older pages
proof we show you → Live ChatGPT response before / after, scored for narrative drift across five queries.
02
story signal

Brand reputation

Citation-worthy signals across the web that AI weighs when deciding who to recommend.

why it matters

Models trust what other trusted sources say about you. Press mentions, reviews, podcast appearances, and category-relevant directories carry far more weight than your own marketing copy.

what we ship
  • 01Audit of existing third-party mentions and how AI platforms surface them
  • 02Targeted outreach to high-trust category publications
  • 03Review and reputation hygiene across Google, G2, Clutch, BBB as relevant
  • 04Founder visibility plan — podcasts, guest posts, panels
proof we show you → Citation graph of inbound mentions, weighted by how often each appears in AI grounding.
03
story signal

Category authority

You're the obvious name when the model is asked about your slice of the market.

why it matters

AI platforms aggressively narrow categories. "Best CRM" returns four names. "Best CRM for plumbing contractors in the Mid-Atlantic" returns the one that owns the niche. We help you own the niche.

what we ship
  • 01Category mapping — every adjacent query a customer might run
  • 02Original-research content that becomes the cited source
  • 03POV pieces that establish a defensible angle inside the niche
  • 04Speaking and writing plan to compound authority over 6–12 months
proof we show you → Niche-query coverage rate across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
04
tech signal

Foundational SEO

The traditional signals that still feed retrieval and grounding.

why it matters

AI search did not replace SEO — it sits on top of it. Models retrieve via search before they generate, so a slow, broken, or thin site never enters the answer in the first place.

what we ship
  • 01Core Web Vitals, crawlability, and index coverage audit
  • 02Title, meta, and heading hierarchy tightened for both Google and LLM grounding
  • 03Internal linking re-shaped around the entities that matter
  • 04Removal of duplicate and contradictory pages
proof we show you → Indexability report + grounding-retrieval test across queries.
05
tech signal

Clear content architecture

Headings, sections, and entities AI crawlers can parse without ambiguity.

why it matters

LLMs are pattern-matchers. They lift answers from clearly-scoped sections of clearly-scoped pages. Long unstructured prose buries the answer, even if the answer is technically there.

what we ship
  • 01Page-by-page outline review — one topic per page, scoped explicitly
  • 02Heading scaffold that maps to the questions customers ask
  • 03Definition blocks, comparison tables, and TL;DRs where the model needs them
  • 04Anchor-link surfaces so platforms can deep-link inside answers
proof we show you → Side-by-side: chunk that an LLM lifts vs. chunk it ignores.
06
tech signal

Structured data & FAQs

Schema markup and FAQ blocks that let LLMs lift the right facts into their answer.

why it matters

Structured data is the easiest way to hand a model exactly the fact you want it to repeat. Most sites either skip it or implement it incorrectly. Both fail.

what we ship
  • 01Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Article, Person, and FAQ schema as applicable
  • 02FAQ blocks rewritten to match real customer queries verbatim
  • 03Implementation in your CMS or one-shot brief for your dev team
  • 04Validation against Schema.org + AI-platform grounding tests
proof we show you → Schema validator pass + before/after FAQ lift rate in Perplexity.
questions we get often

Short answers,
plainly said.

If your question isn't here, send it. We'll either answer it directly or fold the answer into the FAQ for the next person.

No. Traditional SEO optimizes for the ten blue links — what gets shown. AI search optimizes for what gets summarized. The signals overlap (foundational SEO is one of our six) but the goal is different: be the answer, not just a link inside it.

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot are the five we measure every engagement against. We also spot-check You.com and DeepSeek when relevant to a client's category.

Most clients see their first new citations within 30 days of implementation. Meaningful, repeated citations across multiple platforms typically land between months two and three. The compounding effect — being the obvious first name in your category — takes six months and counting.

No serious consultancy can. The models change weekly. What we guarantee is the work — a clear audit, six signals implemented to a documented standard, and monthly visibility reports so you can see the trend yourself.

Yes. Most engagements run that way. We deliver implementation briefs your team can ship in their own backlog. Where you need hands-on schema or content work, we have partners we bring in.

Both. The six-week baseline is a fixed-scope project. After that, most clients move to a light monthly retainer to keep the narrative sharp as AI platforms update.

your turn

See your six
signals.

The first call is a baseline read of where AI puts you today across all six signals — already done by the time we hop on.

book a discovery call → 30 min · free · no slides