Shaun Kanary is VP of SEO, SEM & Marketing Growth Strategies at Kuno Creative, and a College Professor teaching digital marketing. In this episode, Shaun breaks down why traditional SEO is no longer enough in the age of AI and what brands need to do right now to stay visible.
We cover how AI has shifted ranking authority from backlinks to trust validation, why your first-party data is your biggest competitive moat, and how to build topical authority that AI systems actually recognise. Shaun also shares the exact steps any founder, CEO, or marketer can take to start dominating a niche and becoming the go-to expert in their space.
We talked about:
- Why AI does not care about your domain authority
- How off-page SEO signals have evolved beyond backlinks
- First-party data and why it matters more than ever
- The new AI-era funnel: visibility, trust, confidence, conversion, and advocacy
- How to build topical authority from scratch
- Why niching down is the fastest path to authority
- LinkedIn thought leadership and executive personal branding
- The five steps to clarify your point of view and build your entity
Takeaways:
- AI has shifted SEO from backlink authority to trust validation and entity confidence.
- First-party data inside your CRM is your most powerful competitive moat in the AI era.
- Off-page signals now include brand mentions without links, Reddit threads, and LinkedIn engagement.
- The new funnel is visibility, trust, confidence, conversion, and advocacy, not TOFU, MOFU, BOFU
- Brands that win with AI produce the strongest content, not the most content.
- The narrower your expertise positioning, the faster you can build topical authority.
- Your CEO or founder's authentic LinkedIn presence directly impacts brand entity recognition.
- Publishing original insights consistently earns mentions that give link-building campaigns real fuel.