Episode 4: Closing the Gap and Winning Brand Citations

Mike Downer: Hey everybody, Mike Downer, Chief Storytelling Strategist for JAR Consulting. Again, I am here with the President and CEO of JAR, Kevin Wosmansky. How are you doing today, Kevin?

Kevin Wosmansky: Doing great, Mike. Thanks for signing in and getting to work today. I appreciate it, bud.

Mike Downer: You know what? I don’t work very often, so this is a privilege for me as well.

laughter

Mike Downer: That’s great. Hey, Kevin, today I know that you wanted to talk about how to close the gap and win brand citations in 2026. Can you go into that a little bit for me?

Kevin Wosmansky: Yeah. We’ve had a lot of our clients—we’ve been doing a lot of GEO, Generative Engine Optimization—helping businesses really prepare for this shift with AI. One of the biggest things I’m finding is that a lot of our clients, and business owners in general, need to understand how the world of traditional SEO—or more importantly, how customers are looking for things—is changing.

You know, the phrase “the death of the two-word keyword.” Right now, people search things like “plumbers Iowa” or “plumbers near me.” Traditionally, with keywords, we’ve lived over the last two, maybe three decades, where people go out and search for products, businesses, and services using just a couple of keywords. They go on Google or Bing or Yahoo or any search engine, and they put a couple of keywords in.

So that’s really what we mean when we talk about the death of the two-word keyword. Traditional SEO has relied on short-tail keywords because users had to adapt to search engines’ limited ability to understand context.

When we talk about this seismic shift that’s happening, Mike, and as I’m trying to educate all of our clients, the shift in 2026 is that search is becoming conversational—not controversial—and it’s becoming answer-oriented. What I mean by that is users now enter full-sentence prompts. They have conversations with their AI.

I do it, and I love it. I don’t put into Gemini, “I’m looking for a plumber near me.” What I’m doing is having this conversation with Gemini, because that’s the main AI I use. I use quite a few, but I’ll say:

“Hey Gemini, my sink broke. I had to shut the water off at the main. I’m looking for a great plumber with great reviews. I want somebody who is probably within a 15- to 20-minute drive of where I live. Who can you recommend to me?”

That is a whole conversation.

Why Conversational Search Matters

Mike Downer: Yeah, no, I get it. Why does that matter?

Kevin Wosmansky: Good question. It matters because AI models like Gemini or GPT synthesize single, coherent answers from multiple sources rather than just links.

What I mean by that is they’re not just looking at a blue link, pulling that up, and serving it to you. They’re going through all of these different sources in a matter of seconds—or less—to come up with an answer for you. So the more of a conversation I have with it, the more information I’m giving it about what I’m looking for.

Remember, we’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the number one goal of any agentic model you work with is to please you. It’s to give you the answer you’re looking for.

So that’s really why it matters. When we say these AI models are synthesizing single, coherent answers from all these different sources, that’s very different from just finding a link to a website that has some information and saying, “Here’s the link—go look for it.”

The Strategy for 2026

Mike Downer: Okay, so now that you’ve kind of explained why guys like me don’t just put in “plumbers Ankeny” or “plumber near me,” and you’ve shown me why it matters, because even me, being old, I’m starting to use ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok—I’m going through all these things that you told me.

So now let’s say I’m a business. What’s the strategy? What kind of strategy does a business need to really optimize their results, and how can you help them?

Kevin Wosmansky: Yeah, good question. We’re working with businesses all across the country, and we’re telling them about this. They’ll ask, “Okay, great. What’s the strategy? What do we do?”

The first thing we tell them is: you’ve got to stop targeting high-volume, vague terms, and you’ve got to start targeting high-intent, specific questions. Questions that require expert synthesis, which is what AI overviews prioritize for citations.

We’ll talk all about citations and getting cited in another conversation, but for right now, I guess the key takeaway is this: businesses need to understand that they need to shift their strategy. You have to start targeting high-intent, specific questions rather than optimizing for one, two, or three keywords.

We could go on for hours about that, but the strategy, Mike, really is right there. We have to change the way that we think as business owners, and we have to reset in this new world. That reset has to be this: we need to start thinking about what questions our customers are going to ask that AI is looking to answer. Then we want to be that answer.

That is the entire shift in mental thinking, and it’s crazy because, as humans, Mike, I’m seeing this every single day with clients. Every single day. It’s like, we’ve got to change how we think about this. That’s probably the slowest part about AI: how fast we humans are going to be able to change our thinking and our habits to adapt to a solution that answers questions for us in real time.

The “When” is Now

Mike Downer: I’m going to throw one more thing at you. We went over the what, the why, and the how. Last question I have for you—it’s real short—the when. When should business owners start thinking about this?

Because, you know, you hear stuff on the Today Show or whatever show is out there on TV, or any newscast, and they always say, “Oh, you know, 10 or 20 years from now, AI is going to be taking over.” So when’s the when?

Kevin Wosmansky: The easy question. The “when” is about six months ago—that’s when they should have already changed their mindset.

Now, for most businesses, the “when” is as we slowly kind of evolve. But for businesses that are going to stay relevant as we move forward into this new world—and by “new world,” we’re already there—the “when” is they need to do it right now. They need to start adapting to this today and get a little ahead of the curve.

Final Thoughts

Mike Downer: So, Kevin, you’ve given us a lot of information. I know all this stuff probably seems a little overwhelming to a lot of people, but the nice part about it is we all have you to help simplify it for us.

Kevin Wosmansky: I appreciate that. Mike, this has been kind of fun doing this because we’re seeing this every single day with businesses across all verticals—in construction, retail, finance, all different sectors. We have clients that we’re working with.

One of our clients actually said, “Why don’t you start putting this information out there? It’d be a lot easier if I could just jump in and watch a little video.” And that’s kind of the genesis of what we’re doing right here. The genesis is: let’s go and start doing that.

So, just being able to take questions and real-life stories and scenarios that are happening every single day, every week in our business—we just want to share and get this information out. We’ll have plenty more to talk about on these.

I believe that, Mike, as we were talking about this, the idea was: how do you close that gap and win brand citations? We’ll talk about some of the other steps in all this in some upcoming episodes.

So, thanks for asking great questions today, Mike. I appreciate it.

Mike Downer: Hey, buddy. Thanks. Thanks for all the good information, and we’ll see you in part two.

Kevin Wosmansky: Sounds good, bud. Take care. Bye.