Why Every Website Needs a Brand SSOT (Single Source of Truth) | James Dooley ft Paul Truscott (James Dooley Interviews Paul Truscott)

James Dooley: Brand SSOT, get your single source of truth for every single website. Today I'm joined with Paul Truscott and we're going to talk about what is a brand SSOT. So Paul, for anyone that doesn't know, can you briefly explain what a brand SSOT is?

Paul Truscott: Okay, so that stands for single source of truth. Essentially what it is is that everything about your brand that might be important to search engines and large language models in one place in a digestible format that they can retrieve and process easily to understand who you are, what you do, and why, in your words, why you're brilliant. That's really the key. It's because these models need to have that in one place so that they can understand your entity rather than trying to pull it together from fragments.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, that brand SSOT page on your website, just for people that's watching this, this isn't an llms.txt and me trying to have some hacky... [Snorts] ...way for getting cited better within LLMs and stuff like that. This is one single source of truth which is linked to from the footer, which you can then go and send that exact URL to any link building companies. You can go and send that exact URL if you're doing a press release or digital PR. We also have, like, RAL colours, the logo. We've got all the information in one place. And what also, just for people to understand, this isn't an About page because About page is just defining the entity. This is going to include testimonial, like the best testimonials that you want being echoed with third-party corroboration off your website. This is about awards that you might have won. This is about case studies with who you've worked with. This is one large document in a very concise, easy-to-read format that then you can then send that to other people who's going to build that off-page corroboration. And they've got that single source of truth, which is also known by some people as being your brand bible. That one place where you can send everything through that says, I am now really happy that all that information is correct. Now what I want everybody else to do is go and echo this in as many places as possible. So Paul, with regards to the brand SSOT, obviously it's massively helped all of our team. We've just got one location on every website that we work with. We know where that information is. We don't need to be sending PDF documents and images and bits and, like you said, fragmented information that we send in little bits of information here because what starts to happen is things start to... Like people start to just use ChatGPT for information and there's hallucinations that start to happen. And when they start to echo that elsewhere, it almost then starts to become, okay, this must be true because it's being repeated in many, many places. Yeah. Where if you can go back to that one source, that one document that you want to make certain is perfect, how easy does that then make it for every brand moving forward to have that brand SSOT?

Paul Truscott: It makes it super easy and convenient. But I think even more important than that is the accuracy. Because what a lot of people don't understand unless they've studied it is how these large language models, these AI search models work. They're a predictive model. Okay, this is why they can write. Like if you sit at ChatGPT and say, "Write me a poem," it will write something generally not very good, but it's doing it because it can predict what the next word should be, right? So it, it'll shortlist after these two words what's, what's the next one? What potential words can come next? And then it'll choose one. So the problem is if you give, uh, a large language model X amount of information about your brand, it will fill in the missing pieces because it will predict what should be there and it will usually be wrong. Right? So you can end up having these hallucinations on your own, um, either on your own website if you've trusted, um, these large language models to write for you without checking, which people do because I've seen it a lot, uh, or when it's, um, when your brand is mentioned elsewhere, right? Because the people who are searching for you to comment on your brand are using large language models, so they're going to get the same hallucinations and, and they're going to take it as truth.

James Dooley: Truth. I think one of the saddest things is that people just trust these large language models. They trust that what they're saying is true. Um, this is why it's so important to get everything right. It's really, really... I know another thing I will mention. When I've actually done these single source of truth documents for, uh, brands that I work with, it usually takes a large language model anywhere from half an hour to an hour to find all the fragments of information across the web and pull it all together. Then I send it to the client and, as I said, there'll be hallucinations in there. But if it's taken half an hour to an hour for OpenAI or Claude or whoever I've used to go and find that information, do you really think they're going to spend that amount of time trying to find out about you? They're not. So you, you are missing a massive opportunity by not having all of this information in one place.

Paul Truscott: Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me there, what you're talking about with the fragmented information, one of the biggest parts of defining the entity is confidence and clarity in exactly who you are. And if you don't have that confidence and clarity set out and repeated and echoed across the whole of the web, if they don't start to trust you, the foundations are wrong. In my opinion, having the brand SSOT is getting them foundations right. And if you don't have it, it's like building a million-pound house on quicksand. You just wouldn't do it. You want to get them foundations right.

James Dooley: And for anyone who's watching this with regards to a brand SSOT, we're going to send it out to every single one of our clients. Obviously, myself and Paul, we've launched Mapimal with regards to a Google Maps brand and we're looking to try to increase exposure with regards to ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and within Google Maps. But obviously I've got lots of other brands in regards to lead generation. And there's a good chance that you're watching this because me or Paul or Peter has sent this out to a client to fill in an onboarding form. And this onboarding form, it's going to be painful. It's going to take you at least an hour to get all that hyper-specific data put in place. But trust me, it's going to be the best hour you have ever spent. Because once you have it properly set up only once, and once you've got that and you've got all the best testimonials, all the awards that you've won, all the accreditations, everything that defines who you are, that consistency being echoed throughout the internet is key. So the onboarding form at times can be painful, but it's the best bit of time that you can spend to get that brand bible and get that brand SSOT on your website. And if you don't have it, then I do worry for that confidence and clarity. I do worry that people are just blindly using ChatGPT or Claude to write content that's hallucinating that information and that consistency isn't being shared throughout the internet. You want to make certain that your name, address and phone number is always consistent, but also everything else about who you are, what you do and why you're brilliant. Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Paul Truscott: And for anyone, James, doesn't know what a brand SSOT is, make certain you get that on your website. Make certain that LLMs are not guessing. And hopefully it helps you take the business to the next level. Paul, thank you very much.

James Dooley: Thank you, James.