Nothing in recent memory has spurred as much debate as the rise of AI, and people all over the world are heavily-invested in how this new technology is going to change our lives. In certain ways, AI has already changed so much, particularly in terms of how we search for and find information online.
As AI has become more advanced, it is being used to give us better, faster information through AI search. Businesses in every industry are trying to capitalize on these changes, and below, we have all the information you need to stay ahead of AI visibility trends and optimize your content for this new age.
How Has AI Impacted Web Searches?
AI has fundamentally altered the way web searches through engines like Google, Bing, and others are performed and how they generate results. In the past, businesses tried to accumulate influence online with search engine optimization (SEO), using tactics like keyword research, internal linking, and mobile-friendly optimization to make their webpages appear high up in the rankings of search engine results.
These days, AI has changed the game. Now, instead of lists of results, the first thing you get when searching something online is an AI-generated overview that summarizes key details from all of the best sources into an answer for your question. Naturally, because AI overviews are front-and-center, the focus of SEO has shifted, and businesses are now trying to optimize their content to make it more likely to appear in an AI overview.
The Basics of GEO: How To Optimize Your Content For AI
The practice of optimizing your business’ content to appear in AI overviews is known by a few different names, including generative engine optimization (GEO), AI SEO, and AI optimization (AIO). There are a few basic things to know about GEO before you get started with it, so below, we’ve laid out some key elements of AI-optimized content:
Authoritative Information
AI engines aren’t looking for content that just checks all the boxes of a user’s search query. Instead, they’re looking for content that thoroughly answers a user’s question and provides authoritative information. In the past, businesses could succeed at SEO by filling their content with keywords that matched a number of different queries. That doesn’t work with AI, because AI’s job is to find a user the best and most accurate answer to their question. To optimize your content for AI, you need to prioritize facts, establish your business’ authority in the industry, and make connections with other businesses who can backlink to you and further signal your influence.
Clarity and Specificity
Solid GEO content needs to be clear, focused, and specific. Formerly, many websites could get away with throwing a few key phrases into their content to attract many users, but nowadays, you really need to up your content’s precision. Instead of trying to match short phrases, your content should include long-tail keywords and snippets that state and address very specific questions. Be sure to also include clear and relevant business details that tie into your subject matter, as AI engines are drawn to content with clear structure and local SEO tags.
Schema and Structure
AI is a machine-based system, so it makes sense that it values structure. To make your content more appealing to AI engines, it must be organized, well-structured, and readable, making the user’s experience the priority. A great way to achieve this level of structure is by including AI-specific schema in your content, which helps AI engines identify structural elements like FAQs, topics and subtopics, products placements, and other key site data.
Leveraging Technical SEO
While traditional and technical SEO is something of an older kid on the block now that AI has come around, it’s far from irrelevant. In fact, technical SEO–the way your website looks and functions–is even more relevant now that AI has hit the scene. AI engines get their information by crawling sites in milliseconds, and if your site has major technical SEO flaws like slow loading times, excessive clutter, and messy coding, you won’t have much of a shot at getting into an AI overview. Investing in technical SEO has to be high on your priority list even before you start optimizing your content.
How To Know if Your GEO Strategy Is Working
So, let’s say you put all of the tips above into practice…how will you know that your GEO strategy is working? The measurements of AI SEO success aren’t always obvious, but there are a few metrics that you can follow to track how well your strategy is working, including:
- Share of Voice (SoV): The percentage of AI answers that mention your brand.
- Citation Frequency: How often your content is cited by AI answers.
- Embedding Relevance Score: How closely your content matches a specific query.
- Chunk Retrieval Frequency: The rate at which snippets or “chunks” of your content are used by AI engines to answer queries.
- AI Sentiment: An analysis of whether AI answers present your brand positively, negatively, or neutrally.
In addition to these metrics, keep tracking traditional SEO metrics like organic traffic, click-through rate, and search volume. And if you’re struggling with AI SEO or don’t know where to start, consider consulting with an AI SEO agency that can help you form a strong content strategy!
The Future of AI Is the Future of Your Business!
AI is here to stay, and if you capitalize on it fast, your business will be as well! Not everyone is certain about AI and the changes it’s bringing, but even after only a short time, it has already proven itself to be a valuable tool for business success. Other businesses are already jumping on the AI bandwagon, so if you don’t want to be left behind, now is the time to get your piece of the pie and use AI to your advantage!
Author Bio:
Jason Khoo started freelancing in SEO in college, sold his first agency, and now is the founder of Zupo, an Orange County-based SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long-term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea daily, hiding away on weekends, catching up on reading, and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.