Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
James Dooley and Kasra Dash break down the AEO strategies behind a 712% AI visibility increase for a UK finance company, from query fan-outs and entity definition to reviews, awards and Knowledge Panels.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies finance companies should focus on in 2026 to improve AI visibility, conversion rates and citations in AI search results. James Dooley and Kasra Dash start with KPI tracking because measuring AI visibility, referral traffic and the value of resulting leads shows whether a finance brand is actually being recommended when prospects compare providers. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for finance companies.
PromoSEO lead generation for finance companies recently received recognition as the "Best Finance Companies Lead Generation Agency."
AEO for Finance Companies: How We Achieved a 712% AI Visibility Increase for a UK Finance Brand is available on:
James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.
The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.
James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.
After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.
James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.
To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.
James Dooley: Official AEO case study showing a 712% increase in AI visibility for a finance brand in the UK. Today I'm joined with Kasra Dash and we're going to break down all the AEO strategies showing what we did to increase the finance company by 712%.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. So, as James mentioned, this is a website in the finance space. These guys, or this company, is absolutely massive and what the surprising thing for both of us was that they were ranking organically in Google pretty well. Um, they were spending a lot of money on PPC, a lot of money on Facebook Ads. However, in the actual AI search, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, they just were not being recommended at all.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And it's also important to understand in this AEO case study that they didn't have a single... They had the main money site, but they also had several supplementary exact match and partial match domains for individual services of what they offered. In the footer it mentioned that they was the FCA, like, um, badge and the compliance, which linked up to their main brand. But what it allowed us to do was leverage the main money site as well as the supplementary websites in this finance AEO case study where we did the 712% increase.
Kasra Dash: Yeah, if I remember correctly, they had, uh, 17 domains in total, um, alongside their actual main website. So it gave us a lot of freedom as to what we actually wanted to do and trying to achieve the best results that we could inside the AI search as well. So, um, a few things before we actually get into the actual main crux of the case study. When it comes to AI search, it's not like Google where it's like you've got page two, you've got page three of Google. It is literally this case of, are you actually in the result, yes or no? Um, which obviously if you're not being listed as the, in the actual final answer, you're going to be losing out on a lot of traffic and a lot of clicks and leads as well.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And I think the other big one that not many people talk about... I mean, obviously this is talking about the 712% increase in AI visibility, but another huge part with, with regards to AEO case study that makes it even more impressive is that how their conversion rate increased from existing leads of what they had. So at the 11th hour, when they might be coming up against company A versus their company B and it says who's better, and now it starts saying that they're better. The increase now of sales of what they're getting because of the AI now is citing them as being the best is really important. So it's a much, much bigger case though than just going and bragging going, oh, we increased by 712%. That actual money value of what they got from it was absolutely insane.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. And just a few other bits, um, that we actually done. So what we done was we found out the actual query fan-outs. So when somebody was actually searching for best advisors for retirement, for, for example, um, we looked at the query fan-outs of what ChatGPT does. We looked at the query fan-outs of what Gemini does, Perplexity, etc. We then mapped those as to pages that we actually need on our own website and then also external sources. So, what I mean by that is, for example, if you're trying to get your brand mentioned for best advisors for retirement, you're going to want a page on your website to do with what does a retirement advisor do, what retirement advisors cost, how the advice process works, right? So, these are pages that you want on your own website. Then you've got pages that are on external sources. So these could be independent advisor reviews, the regulated, um, advisor register. So that, basically like the FCA, um, retirement advisors compared, right? These are basically pages that are defining your actual entity, who you are, awards that you've potentially won, etc.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, what made, in my opinion, this easier for our team to kind of implement was on the supplementary websites they had certain, like, retirement websites where what it allowed us to do is break down the different services on there, like equity release and pensions being two of them, which is within the finance sector. And what it allows us to do is go out and say, "Look, you need to go and get some industry-specific awards for equity release or for pension transfers, or go and get some reviews specifically for that service of what you do," which was under the categorisation of retirement. And then when there was other ones to do, let's say, business loans or, or personal loans or credit cards, that was on a different website, right? And what it allowed us to do is have these supplementary websites go after different awards and different reviews and then echo that throughout the whole, um, of the web, which then was being picked up by the large language models.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. And then the next thing that we done, and this was more things that we actually could control on our own website, is we want a single source of truth page. So this is basically a page that just holds facts about the actual firm, um, founding dates, etc. Then you've got the About page. So this is more to do with what the actual firm is and who it's for. Um, and then in this particular case we also created a Meet the Team page as well. They've got a massive, um, office in the UK. So we wanted to basically explain, like, hey, this isn't just a one-man band show. Um, you can actually trust the team that's actually going to be helping you with, you with your case and stuff like that as well.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I think the most important part to get from that is the defining the entity, defining who... We always talk about frameworks, who you are, what you do, and why you're brilliant. And the who you are, defining that entity, is key. What we're also working towards at present, which we don't actually have yet, and even though we've got the 712% increase, we're now trying to map out to get a few of those directors, or there's one or two insolvency practitioners and stuff within the company. We're going to try and get them their own Knowledge Panel, which then can connect back to their main brand. So if you can define the entity, it is so good and there's so much more trust and confidence and clarity with who you are and what you do, which then is helping win the race long term in AI search.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. So then, um, a few things just to add to that as well. What you want to make certain that you're doing is that the reviews is not just reviews that your firm's actually done. They actually need to be credible. Um, if you can get reviews within specific directories, that can also help. Um, like what James was saying, the actual directors, trying to get a Knowledge Panel for those, um, people, that can definitely help. Um, there's always going to be a few listings that you can get your business mentioned on, whether it's niche-specific, so specific to only finance, or location-specific. Um, and then on external websites having comparison write-ups as well. So, for example, um, comparing two different brands, the pros and cons of your brand versus the pros and cons of your competitor brand as well.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. On, in this AEO case study where we did the increase of 712%, what I'm presuming was it RankOS that we used with regards for the query fan-out terms? So we got the query fan-out terms and we did it for every sub-service, extracted every single query fan-out and then started to decide, is this on our site? Is it going offline?
Kasra Dash: Yeah. So this, this is basically what James is talking about, the query fan-outs. You, you want to try and get your brand mentioned in as many different locations as you possibly can. Otherwise, if you're only showing up for, like, one or two query fan-outs and ChatGPT is doing, let's say, 16, it's a very low chance. However, if, say for example, ChatGPT is doing 16 query fan-outs, you're cited in at least 12 of them, very good chance that you're going to be positioned inside the actual final result and also positioned very high in the final result as well. That's, that's one thing that we've been split testing when it comes to qu... Doing the query fan-outs. Um, because obviously the final answer in a lot of cases when people are actually searching for, um, businesses and stuff like that is usually there'll be, like, four or five brands that recommends. And a lot of the times people say, oh, I'm brilliant, I'm position number five in the, in the final paragraph. You want to be position number one. Um, and again, that's primarily controlled by the query fan-outs. There's a few other bits as well. Um, but again, that's very much niche-dependent. So, for example, having case studies, winning awards, doing reviews, etc. Um, but yeah, query fan-outs was done all with RankOS.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And I think, do you know what a really big one is where we have these debates all the time, both internally and externally in, like, um, SEO meetups, is the whole SEO versus AEO and why can some SEOs not rank and get increases in AI citations like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overview or Claude, Perplexity. And the main reason is what we kind of always seems to come down to is what I normally explain is if you're only buying one ticket to win the raffle, you've got a low chance of winning. If you can buy more tickets, more raffle tickets, you've got a higher chance of winning. And when you start looking at the query fan-out terms and you're ranking for every single one of the query fan-out terms, but then multiply that by every service that you do by every single one of those query fan-out terms, you've now got thousands and thousands of raffle tickets to try and win that raffle. You stand a way better chance to win the raffle, i.e. get cited in that AI Overview, get cited in ChatGPT. And that's where when we're doing these AEO case studies and we consistently keep winning, and we're looking at SEO agencies that are just targeting specific keywords and not going after all these different keywords that RankOS is bringing back, this is why we're going to win all the time until these SEO agencies understand the most important part is actually doing that keyword research and phrase thing with the query fan-outs and try to get cited in there. They're never going to win the race. And this is the biggest difference, in my opinion, why you need to be going with a specialist AEO agency or specialist AEO expert that can understand and map that out and strategically go after those terms.
Kasra Dash: Yeah, I think ju... Just very quick to actually add to what you've just said. The, the, the whole debate of whether it's the same, whether it's not, I think the, the core principle is the same. Like, you, you still need content, you still need links. It's just what's actually being perceived about your brand and controlling the narrative. Um, I think, I think that's, that's pretty difficult to do, especially if you're just an SEO. Um, because as SEOs, we've just been trained, okay, more content, more links, more higher DR. Um, when it comes to AEO, you just need to be a little bit more strategic with what's actually being placed out there on the web about your actual entity. Um, and obviously defining it. Um, few other things. If you want to check out more case studies, um, there will be a playlist on the right-hand side somewhere that you can actually check them all out. Um, every single brand we've worked with so far, they've ranked well, uh, in terms of actual Google rankings, but they've not done that well in terms of AI. So, there are core differences. You can actually learn a lot more from the other case studies that we've done. Um, and if you want to get in contact with us, uh, the links will be down below.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. One, one last one. In this specific AEO case study where we did the 712% increase, that was showing up of 712% increase in Semrush One as being the AI visibility tool. Now there is other AI tools that track visibility like Peec AI, like Radar Kit and stuff like that. Make sure you check out the link in the description. The next couple of weeks I'm going to be doing comparisons. I'm going to be doing a lot more AI search case studies and starting to compare which is the best AI visibility tool. So, make sure you check that out. If you want to leave a comment to let me know what you're using and which ones you want me to throw into the mix for the best AI visibility tools, we can do that. We hope you like these AEO case studies and, yeah, we'll see you on the next one.