FreePress Directory’s News Room sits down with Andrew Ruditser, CEO and co-founder of MAXBURST, Inc., to explore how B2B companies must approach brand optimization in an increasingly AI-driven search landscape.
FreePress Directory: Andrew, thank you for joining us today. Let’s dive right into brand optimization. How has the role of brand optimization changed in this AI-focused environment?
Andrew Ruditser: This is where things get really interesting. Brand optimization used to be about consistent messaging and visual identity across touchpoints. Now, it’s fundamentally about establishing your company as a trusted, authoritative source that AI systems can confidently reference and recommend.
Think about it – when ChatGPT or Google’s AI generates an answer about solutions in your industry, it’s making editorial decisions about which sources to trust. Your brand isn’t just competing for human attention anymore; it’s competing for AI credibility. This requires a completely different approach to how you establish and demonstrate expertise online.
FreePress Directory: Can you explain what “AI credibility” means for B2B brands?
Andrew Ruditser: AI systems evaluate trustworthiness through what Google calls E-E-A-T signals – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. For B2B brands, this means your digital presence must clearly demonstrate that you’re not just marketing to prospects, but that you’re genuine industry authorities.
At MAXBURST, we’ve seen this play out dramatically. Companies with strong E-E-A-T signals are getting featured in AI-generated responses, while those with weak authority signals are essentially invisible to AI systems. It’s creating a new kind of digital divide between brands that understand these requirements and those that don’t.
FreePress Directory: How should B2B companies be building these authority signals?
Andrew Ruditser: It starts with authentic expertise demonstration. Gone are the days when you could just claim to be experts – you need to prove it in ways that both humans and AI can verify. This means showcasing your team’s credentials, publishing detailed case studies that demonstrate real-world experience, and maintaining thought leadership content that shows deep industry knowledge.
But here’s what many companies miss – it’s not enough to just publish this content. It needs to be structured and organized in ways that AI systems can understand and validate. Our IXO framework ensures that expertise signals are properly encoded through structured data, clear authorship attribution, and contextual relationships that help AI systems understand your authority in specific subject areas.
FreePress Directory: What about companies in highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare? Are there special considerations?
Andrew Ruditser: Absolutely. Google classifies these as YMYL – Your Money or Your Life – topics, and the standards are much higher. For these B2B companies, trust isn’t just important, it’s existential. AI systems are extremely cautious about recommending sources for sensitive topics.
We implement enhanced trust signals for these clients – additional credential verification, more frequent content updates, stricter fact-checking protocols, and enhanced security measures. The technical implementation also needs to be flawless because any technical issues can undermine trust signals.
FreePress Directory: How does this connect to the customer journey for B2B buyers?
Andrew Ruditser: The B2B buying journey has fundamentally changed. Prospects are doing much more research before they ever contact you, and increasingly, that research involves AI tools. By the time someone reaches your website, they may have already formed opinions based on how AI systems present your brand.
This means your brand optimization needs to work at every stage of the AI-mediated research process. When someone asks an AI tool about solutions in your space, you want your company mentioned. When they ask follow-up questions about specific capabilities, you want your expertise highlighted. When they’re ready to evaluate vendors, you want your authority signals to be unmistakable.
FreePress Directory: What role does content play in this new brand optimization approach?
Andrew Ruditser: Content is absolutely central, but the rules have changed completely. Surface-level, marketing-focused content doesn’t work anymore. AI systems can detect thin content and promotional fluff – they’re looking for substantial, authoritative information that actually helps users.
For B2B brands, this means your content strategy needs to focus on genuinely helpful, in-depth resources. Industry guides, detailed technical explanations, comprehensive case studies, research findings – content that demonstrates real expertise and provides substantial value. And it all needs to be clearly attributed to credentialed authors within your organization.
FreePress Directory: How do you measure success in this new landscape?
Andrew Ruditser: Traditional brand metrics like awareness and recall are still important, but we’re tracking new indicators. How often does your brand appear in AI-generated responses? When people ask AI tools about your industry, are you mentioned as an authority? Are your team members recognized as experts in AI-curated content?
Through our S.T.E.P. process, we continuously monitor these AI interactions. We track which of our clients’ content is being referenced by AI systems, how their expertise is being presented in generated responses, and how their authority signals are performing across different AI platforms.
FreePress Directory: What mistakes are you seeing B2B companies make with brand optimization?
Andrew Ruditser: The biggest mistake is treating AI optimization as a technical problem rather than a brand strategy issue. Companies invest in AI-friendly code but neglect the authority-building content that AI systems actually care about.
Another common error is inconsistent expertise demonstration. You can’t just claim expertise on your about page – it needs to be woven throughout your entire digital presence in ways that AI can verify and understand. We see companies with impressive teams whose expertise is essentially invisible to AI systems because it’s not properly structured or attributed.
FreePress Directory: How should companies evaluate whether their current brand optimization is AI-ready?
Andrew Ruditser: Ask yourself some hard questions. When you search for topics related to your expertise, do AI tools mention your company? Can AI systems clearly identify who the experts are within your organization? Is your industry knowledge presented in ways that AI can understand and reference?
Also, look at your content from an AI perspective. If an AI system were trying to determine whether your company is a trusted authority in your field, what evidence would it find? Clear authorship? Detailed credentials? Substantial, helpful content? Or would it find generic marketing copy and vague claims?
FreePress Directory: What’s the long-term outlook for brand optimization in B2B?
Andrew Ruditser: We’re moving toward a world where brand authority will be largely determined by AI systems. The companies that establish strong E-E-A-T signals now will have compounding advantages as AI becomes more central to business research and decision-making.
I think we’ll see increasing polarization between brands that AI systems trust and recommend versus those that are essentially invisible to AI. For B2B companies, this isn’t just about marketing efficiency – it’s about long-term business viability.
FreePress Directory: Any final advice for B2B leaders thinking about brand optimization?
Andrew Ruditser: Start now, and think holistically. Brand optimization in the AI era isn’t something you can bolt on afterward – it needs to be integrated into your entire digital strategy from the ground up. This means aligning your content strategy, technical implementation, and expertise demonstration in ways that work for both human prospects and AI systems.
Most importantly, be authentic. AI systems are getting increasingly sophisticated at detecting genuine expertise versus marketing claims. The companies that succeed will be those that genuinely are authorities in their fields and can demonstrate that expertise in AI-understandable ways. Authenticity isn’t just good brand strategy anymore – it’s a technical requirement for AI visibility.
Andrew Ruditser is CEO and co-founder of MAXBURST, Inc., a digital experience optimization company that helps B2B brands establish authority and trust in AI-driven search environments. MAXBURST’s Intelligent Experience Optimization (IXO) framework has enabled numerous B2B companies to build stronger brand authority signals and improve their visibility across AI-powered platforms.
