Business
Cliff Tillery, Digital Marketing Consultant at Make It Loud Web Design, has spent 22 years building an SEO agency, and in this episode, he breaks down how he's evolving his service offerings as AI reshapes search behavior. He shares how he's building custom data-driven research studies for clients, like storm damage reports for roofers and CPR survival statistics for first responder training companies, that double as lead magnets and authority-building content.
Cliff explains the difference between optimizing for Google versus optimizing for AI visibility, focusing on the idea of brand entity and how AI pulls data points from press releases, reviews, and other digital assets across the internet to define a business. He also shares his approach to vibe coding internal tools, including an app he built called Henry that automates alt tags, meta descriptions, and schema markup, cutting page production from 15 a day down to over 100 in two days.
The conversation covers the shift away from city-targeted landing pages, why AI content scores well on graders but still needs heavy editing, and why he believes the SEO industry needs to move from a vendor mindset to a partner mindset, especially as 45 percent of consumers turn to AI to search for local businesses while still converting at low rates compared to direct Google traffic.
Cliff also unpacks why he no longer trusts visibility score as a core metric after issues with his rank tracking tool, and what KPIs actually matter now: form fills, phone calls, and Google Business Profile engagement.
If you are an SEO professional, agency owner, or business owner trying to understand how AI search is changing client acquisition and reporting, this conversation is full of practical takeaways.
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In this episode, we discuss:
00:00 - 01:00: Introduction
01:00 - 03:30: Building Custom Research Studies for Clients
03:30 - 07:30: The Roofing Storm Report Case Study
07:30 - 10:00: Brand Entity and AI Visibility Explained
10:00 - 13:20: Building Henry: An Internal SEO Automation Tool
13:20 - 15:50: From Computer Science to Counseling to SEO
15:50 - 19:30: AI Content Quality vs Human Editing
19:30 - 22:00: The Decline of City-Targeted Landing Pages
22:00 - 24:30: Client Onboarding and Digital Asset Audits
24:30 - 27:00: The Vendor vs Partner Mindset Shift
27:00 - 30:30: Why Visibility Score Lost Trust as a Metric
30:30 - 32:00: The KPIs That Actually Matter Now
32:00 - 33:24: Where to Find Cliff and Closing
Connect with Cliff Tillery
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clifftillery/
https://makeitloud.net/
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