Renee Francis - Own The Algorithm: SEO & PR for Web3 Power Players

Hi everyone. Okay, it's working. Uh it's me again. It's uh time for the next panel. Uh we are going to talk about uh search and discovery uh in um in Google.

It has changed a lot in the last months. Uh it has been rewritten by the EI the uh like the the research on uh um let's say online. Um right now with the Renee we're going to uh uh go deep into uh how the web 3 technology can actually help uh project to be uh founded also uh by by AI. So thank you very much Rene. Um the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Thank you. Hi everyone. Good morning and thanks for coming to my talk. Do you want me to come this way a bit? Is that better?

Yeah. Um, so yeah, thanks for coming uh to the talk today. So I'm going to start with a question and that's if your protocol or your project or your product or your token disappeared tomorrow, would Google or chat GPT even notice? Now, when I entered the world of web 3 about five years ago, I thought I had entered this like digital masquerade ball. You know, everything was an avatar.

Uh profile pictures were cartoons or animals or pixelated punks and Discord handles were replacing people's real names and in Telegram, we didn't know who people were, but they were making some very major decisions. And this was like a very different world from where I came from, which was 15 years in the traditional web 2 marketing world. And in that world, visibility is what equaled credibility. And visibility actually equaled trust. And to gain visibility, it was by being on Google and it was by being in media and it was by being in these big um public outlets.

So while I understood coming into web 3 why some people wanted needed to remain anonymous, it was still very different from what we were used to. But through the last five years of web 3, uh what we have noticed is that there is a big major shift, right? So you might be wondering who am I? So my name is Renee Francis. Uh I'm the founder of Take Three.

We're a leading marketing agency uh dedicated to web 3 founded in Australia but we now have offices in Sydney, London and Dubai. Now we have been around for two and a half years and my background is that I also have a web 2 agency which has been around for 10 years. And some of our clients, you may recognize them, but we work with clients like Coinbase, we've worked with Binance, we run the entire stand with crypto movement down in Australia. And we work with web 3 gaming companies, layer 1 blockchains and various uh different applications. And I've spoken on stages about web 3 marketing all over the world.

I've listed some places here. So, London, Scotland, in Amsterdam and now I can add Italy to that list. But let's go back to what the problem is that we're facing and it's that visibility and education is missing and it's broken and unfortunately the algorithm on Google and these major platforms it's not actually on your side. So, in web 3, there's a new visibility game that's emerging. And while many web 3 projects are still relying on hype and just a Discord community, what we have learned through working with our clients directly is that having a community does not equal being discovered by new audiences.

And if we want web 3 to be adapt adopted by the masses, we need to find ways to bring more people into the market and not just relying on web 3 natives who are already in this industry. So there's essentially a new visibility stack in web 3 and it starts with SEO which is search engine optimization and this is yes traditional web 2 SEO and then what we add to it is LLMO and that's large language model optimization. So this is optimizing for the um AI models like chat GBT, Gemini, Claude, per P perplexity for example. And thirdly, PR because this is where we really gain reputation and trust in this space. And as you would all know, uh trust is one of the biggest things that can be missing in in web 3 and in the crypto world.

So where SEO for web 3 is still majorly underrated and it's pretty concerning because as the statistics show this is data from just last year 2024 and 75% of all new crypto app users are still discovering them via organic search and via YouTube. Yet many web 3 natives and web 3 projects are ignoring these traditional channels. And the thing with SEO, the reason it's so important is because it actually captures really high intent users. People need to go to Google and type in a phrase, type in a keyword, so they are actually in market and and looking for potentially the product and service or or um innovation that you're offering. And with SEO, we need to think beyond blog posts.

SEO also applies to white papers to infographics, videos, um, token pages, everything. Now, from working with clients over the last 15 years and the last few years in web 3, we have identified five SEO traps that are killing your web 3 growth. And I'm going to run you through them now. So, the first one is writing content for your investors only. And the way to fix that is to write for the people that are actually going to use your product.

Now that's really important because on Google they actually prioritize content that is written for humans and written by humans as well. Secondly is not having a keyword strategy. So the most important thing with SEO is to start with a really strong and wellressearched keyword strategy. Now, we speak to too many projects and too many founders who want to assume which keywords people are using to type into Google to find products and services like what they offer. Now, as a marketing agency, we have many tools available to us where we can actually research and pinpoint the exact keywords that people are actually typing in to find what you're offering.

So, we can ensure that you guys are actually targeting and optimizing for the right keywords. The next one is relying on one platform only and sometimes it's not even your own website. So having a strong best practice website is still the digital backbone of your digital marketing strategy and not implementing on-site optimization. So not ensuring you have the right keywords, site structure, site speed, and all those things in place. And finally, many people ignore SEO because they think it's too slow.

Now, yes, SEO is a long-term strategy, but doing it right means that you will have longevity with the results as well. And with things implemented correctly, you can start to see results within weeks instead of months. Now, I'll leave you with one SEO hot tip, which is if you want to get featured in the people also ask section on Google's uh you know, search engine results page, that's the question and answers that you see on the the first page. One strategy is to create a frequently asked questions page of content on your website and make sure it has the schema markup in place as well. Now moving into optimizing for LLMs.

So this is the new world, the new frontier of SEO. SEO is no longer just about Google. SEO is now about chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini. SEO is now about all these new AI tools that people are using more and more to search for things. Hands up if you use chat GPT on a daily basis.

Okay, most people hands up if you find yourself going to chat GBT over Google these days, right? So a few people putting their hands up. So these tools are getting their content from a few areas. One, high authority websites like GitHub, Wikipedia for example. two from structured data and schema markup which I just mentioned you should implement for the FAQs and the frequently asked questions and then pre-training data as well.

So all that content that you create for your website and your other channels um is all contributing towards getting recognized in these AI tools. So do you want to know how to get chat GPT to recommend you? I'm going to run you through a list of things now. So what you will find as I mentioned is that a lot of the ways to get recognized by these AI tools is very similar to traditional SEO as well plus a few things. So firstly when you're creating content for your website you need to have a very clear summary at the top like a TLDDR too long didn't read or a one-s sentence pitch you need to use facts figures and statistics but the most important thing is that you need to reference and source where you got this data from.

That's what helps J GBT reference your data as long as it's referenced and sourced as to where you got that um statistic from. Adding a frequently asked questions section as I mentioned getting mentioned on trusted sources. So I'm going to run you through PR in a moment and how you can do that. Now one thing that's really important is to use your brand name consistently across all channels. If you use capitals in one page and like uh lowercase te text in another or you change the way that your brand is referenced then you're going to make it very confusing and hard for these tools to reference you and recognize and identify you.

You also need to as I mentioned publish publish stat heavy or fact heavy content and then you can pitch it to media. So you can pitch those articles to one or two journalists and if you can get mentioned on a domain that chat GPT trusts um and then link that article to a landing page that you control. So these things really really help you. Now most of you put your hand up when I asked do you use chat GPT on a daily basis. Now tell me has anyone here used chat GPT and it has totally flipped out and given you some very weird answer.

Has that happened to anyone here? Yes. Cool. So I once gave an article about a female founder in web 3 and um she has founded a health company in web 3 and I asked Chad GPT to summarize the article into 100 words for me. Chad GBT then spat back at me and gave me a story about a female activist who from decades ago from decades ago and some story and it had nothing to do with the article and so one thing I can tell you is if you um give these tools structure and you follow the best p practices they don't hallucinate and give you crazy answers.

Okay. Okay. Okay. And now moving into PR. So press releases alone just don't cut it anymore.

You need to have a really wellthought out and uh detailed um PR strategy. And having a good PR strategy actually helps supercharge your SEO and your LLM coverage as well. So PR that sticks and PR that actually works is all about thought leadership over single single announcements. So when we work with our clients to get them featured and on in on in media and PR we make sure that they are featured in web 3 native media and as well as mainstream traditional press. And the reason for that is because that's what gives balanced credibility.

So, everyone here, we all know and love Web 3 and crypto. Hopefully, that's why you're here. And we know which channels and which publications we trust in web 3. But unfortunately, the majority of people out there still don't trust crypto and still don't trust the web 3 industry as much as we'd like them to. So, when we get our clients featured in the channels that they trust, like mainstream media, it provides this balanced credibility and authority uh for their projects.

So the final piece of this PR puzzle here is to use your network to amplify the story as well. So you need to use your network, your investors, your community um and your partners to really uh amplify the story that's out there. So let's talk about seven PR moves that don't suck and that actually work. So number one is pitching a bold idea and not a boring update. So for example, why decentralized identity will kill passwords is always going to be more interesting to the media than our V2 is live for example.

The next one is using the earned and own combo. So if you publish a really punchy opinion post on your blog and then you pitch that to the media or you pitch an angle of it to the media, the media, as you would know, they love catchy headlines. So they love clickbaity headlines and they love um that example like why decentralized identity will kill passwords. So having very bold language in your headlines. The next one is to name drop your ecosystem.

So the media is more likely to care if you're backed by Coinbase for example or if you're partnered with chain link. So if you can uh drop namerop that really helps. Also there's a little strategy called thread article pitch. So if you turn your best performing X uh thread into a deeper blog and then pitch that to the media that often works well. Next one is offering exclusive data or usage insight.

So once again data and uh statistics. So for example 80% of our users are Gen Z um staking with less than $500. So giving actual facts and data that you can back up and then pitching the founder and not the feature. So media loves to tell the story of human beings and people love to hear the story of human beings. So unfortunately there's a really bad example out there in the media right now.

You've probably all seen the example of the CEO at the Coldplay concert. Um but people love hearing other human stories. So, as a founder, if you can share your story about what problem you're trying to solve um and why that what that means to you and how that resonates with other people, then that will help. And then finally, repurpose absolutely everything. So, whatever piece of content you have, turn it into a blog, a real, a LinkedIn post, everything you can.

Um even on a podcast, just to get it repurposed. Now, hands up if you create content in this room, one person. I mean, everyone creates content in some way. Um, you would know just how much time, effort, energy, cost, resources it takes into creating regular content. So, you got to repurpose that content and get the most use of out of it as much as you can.

So, now what actually makes a web 3 story newsworthy? Number one, if it's backed by a known fund or advisor. So once again, that named dropping angle. Number two, if it integrates with a chain or ecos system that's trending and that's trusted. If it solves a realworld usability problem.

Now this is an area that often is a point of contention in web 3 like is it actually solving a real problem and how can you communicate that problem in this and the solution in the simplest way so that as many people as possible can understand it if it competes directly with a major player. So once again for example let's let's take chat JPT that's uh succeeded for many many reasons but one of the reasons was it competed directly with something we all used every day called Google if it launches during a relevant news cycle. So for example, we have a client called Xmachina and they are uh one of the first RWA projects for uh real uh for robotics and the machine economy and humanoids. And every podcast I listen to lately, they mention robotics. They're mentioning this machine economy and humanoids.

and they're launching something during this uh particular cycle where it's very relevant and newsworthy and and that's what's making them have a lot of success at the moment. Um another thing is if it involves a public figure, a Dow or decentralized decision and once again if it shows metrics that defy the market trend. So for example, if you can show that you grew 500% during a bare market. So, as I mentioned earlier, we have offices in Sydney, London, and we just launched in Dubai uh just in the last month. And just this week, we pitched that to the media.

We let them know that we just launched in Dubai. And we were able to share that we actually started this company in 2022, which was the um in the middle of the longest bare market on record. And that was an angle that the media really liked. So if you Google us, you'll see a whole bunch of articles where we got featured uh just this week about take3 launching in Dubai. So it's important to remember that PR is not just earned.

It's actually it actually has a strategy behind it and it's and it's something that we engineer and it's not as uh simple as just sharing an article with the media. um our PR team actually works really closely with media to build relationships to continuously pitch and to find those opportunities. So why does PR in uh equal trust in web 3? And there's a few reasons why. So the PR does three things.

Number one, it signals legitimacy when you can be featured in a prominent publication or like I said on a website that people trust and it shows people that you're not a rug, right? and which is really important. Secondly, it builds narrative control. So if you don't control the narrative of your story, your project, your brand, someone else will and X and Crypto Twitter will go and create a story for you. And thirdly, it powers your discoverability.

So when you get featured in the press, it further powers Google and those AI LLMs for you. So without PR, you're actually invisible to new users and you're just going to keep communicating to either your existing community or people who are already in web 3. Without PR, you're actually unverified in the AI search results and you could be one tweet away from a complete trust collapse, which um we've all seen in web 3. So how do we put this all together and own the algorithm? So SEO, LLMO and PR, it all leads to basically brands authority and trust.

And this is what leads to real organic growth. And why is real organic growth so important? And for any sort of founders and in the room, it's because it's going to cost you a lot less money in the long run. If you don't build real organic growth, then you're going to be relying on paying koss, paying for paid ads, and paying high and hefty and increasing fees over time. So, when you focus on building a real organic uh community that can grow over time, um that's where the real uh value lies.

So, would anyone like to know how to audit your current visibility in 10 minutes? No, no one. Okay, we Okay, we got one person here. Um, so you can scan this QR code. We've actually got a free download.

It's called the Web 3 Visibility Starter Pack. It goes through everything that I spoke about today, plus a little bit more. There's more detail in there, and it also has a 30 and 60 and 90day action plan for you to implement some of these things that I've spoken to you about today. So, I'll let you guys just take a just grab that. And that brings me to the end of my talk today.

Thank you so much for listening and for being here. And if you scan this QR code, you'll be able to link with me on LinkedIn. Thank you.