16.08.2026

80 min listen

With , &

Season 4 Episode 84

The overlap of SEO, brand and design

Search with Candour podcast thumbnail (S4 E84) on a bright pink background. Text reads 'SEO, design and brand in the age of AI' alongside names 'Mark Salisbury' and 'Brendan Bennett'. Black-and-white portrait photos of both men appear on the right.

Mark Salisbury and Brendan Bennett join Search with Candour to discuss the growing overlap between SEO, design, UX, and brand, and how AI/LLMs and emerging agentic experiences affect the way we build and use websites.

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Show overview

The Candour trio also explore what brand means beyond just a logo, how third-party signals like reviews, Reddit, and search results shape perception, and how SEOs measure brand through metrics such as brand search volume, sentiment, and frameworks like Google’s HEART.

The conversation covers trust signals, page clarity, semantic HTML, the tension between brand-led copy and keyword-focused headings, and the risk of AI-generated “slop” versus human differentiation.

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Mark Williams-Cook (holding Snoop the dog) and Jack Chambers-Ward standing together, smiling. Jack is wearing an Opeth t-shirt. They are a cool Scandinavian metal band, apparently.