Understanding the Relationship Between AI + SEO
Lately, SEO has become a hot topic in circles that once rarely paid attention to the discipline. While extra attention and discussion of AI + SEO can certainly be exciting, it also means there may be a lot of confusion and misinformation that can be leading marketers and small business owners astray. In an effort to bring some clarity into this space, we will outline the difference between AI + SEO, how they work together, and the practices that matter most today.
What's the Difference Between Traditional SEO and AI Search Optimization?
The key difference between traditional SEO and AI search optimization is that AI search optimization is primarily focused on getting your brand, products, or content referenced or cited in AI-generated answers (ex. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI overviews, and others), whereas traditional SEO is focused on ranking your results higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). While the placements in theory may differ, a lot of the best practices for both tend to overlap. We continue to say this, but AI Search Optimization (or LLMO, AEO, GEO, or whatever other acronym you want to use) is the next evolution of SEO. SEO has never been a stagnant practice, and it certainly is not now.
How SEO + AI Work Together
AI and SEO should not be treated as separate silos; however, instead see them as complementary tools. AI helps inform, speed up, and enhance SEO workflows, while a well-executed SEO strategy helps AI systems understand and surface your content. When executed properly, they create a loop of visibility, relevance, and authority.
Here are some of the main ways that AI + SEO are working together today:
AI-powered functionalities are now a key feature in many of the long-time SEO tools, helping to make SEO more efficient and proactive
In case you haven’t noticed, all major search engines have an AI search component that understands user-intent more deeply, understanding semantics and context rather than just the search term
Google has reinforced that foundational SEO principles, such as unique content, user-experience, and technical clarity, still matter in AI-based search
Now that we have a better understanding of how SEO + AI work together, let’s go over strategies that matter to your visibility.
SEO Strategies That Optimize for AI Search
While the following SEO tactics are not new, they have been getting more traction lately for their association with AI search optimization. Good implementation of these tactics will not only help you show up in traditional search, but it will also aid you in getting visibility and citations in AI answers.
Site Health aka Technical SEO
Having a healthy site is the foundation of SEO, but some factors to focus on include:
Site speed - Users have short attention spans, so the faster you load, the better the user-experience. Ideal page load time is under 3 seconds. There are some limitations to websites here depending on your hosting, CMS, and onsite functionalities, but you should aim to be as quick as possible. You can check your site speed using Google PageSpeed Insights.
Mobile-friendly - While this was once a nice-to-have feature, it has certainly transitioned into a necessity ever since Google fully transitioned to mobile-first indexing in late 2023. Regardless of your site’s user-device breakdown, you need to have a good mobile experience. You can assess the mobile-friendliness of your site using Google Lighthouse in Chrome Developer tools or within Google Search Console Core Web Vitals, if your site has enough traffic.
Crawlability - Sites can’t be found if they can’t be crawled. When AI search and LLMs first came out, some site owners were blocking AI from crawling their site over fear of having their content stolen. In reality, what this does is prevent them from being cited in AI answers. To ensure your site can be crawled by search engines and AI, you need to make sure your robots.txt settings are correct, your individual page settings are correct, and you should submit your sitemap(s) to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. This practice, which has been around since 2022, focuses on establishing your site as a credible, trusted authority with experience in a given area. In this new search landscape, here is how each signal should be treated across your entire digital presence (not just your website):
Experience - Support your expertise with first-hand examples, documentation, and original media. This can also be viewed as content clarity. The information you provide should be easy to comprehend and organized so that humans and AI can understand the content.
Expertise - Provide accurate, detailed information on a topic. The content should be authoritative and complete. Thin content and content that is not supported throughout your site is not going to be beneficial.
Authority - Earn mentions, citations, and backlinks from others in the field. Support this via structured data, author schema, and consistent brand profiles. AI cross-references how you show up digitally, so your brand voice should be consistent on your site, social media, and 3rd party sources.
Trustworthiness - Your site is secure, transparent, and reliable because you disclose sources, methodology, and keep your information updated. You can further support your trustworthiness by collecting legitimate reviews and testimonials from your customers or clients.
Structured Data
Structured data, in how we understand it today, has been around since 2011 with the introduction of Schema.org. Its goal was and still is to standardize how meta data is added to websites to help machines (and now AI) better understand the content.
Recently, the most popular schema types are Author, FAQs, HowTo, Product, and Organization, but there are over 800 types of schema. To learn more and test your structured data, go to Schema.org.
Linkbuilding
Linkbuilding is the practice of getting other sites to link to your site. This has been a core SEO practice since search began. There have been a lot of good and bad linkbuilding practices over the last 3 decades, but we will only focus on the good practices.
Create Linkable Content - If you want people to link to you as a trusted resource, you have to create valuable content that is worth linking to!
Local Listings - If your business has a physical location, you should create local listing profiles to help with “near me” and proximity searches. This will not only help local customers, but they will also send backlinks to your site.
Partnerships - Do you partner with local organizations or groups? See if they will link to your website as a trusted partner.
Industry Associations + Groups - Are you involved in industry associations, professional organizations, or online groups for your industry? Ask for a link or provide linkable content.
Awards - Industry and local awards are great opportunities to promote your business and get a backlink at the same time.
PR - National or Local PR opportunities allow you to reach a large audience and get valuable backlinks to your site.
Expert Source - Similar to PR, but if you don’t have an entire pitch ready, you can weigh in on stories as an expert source. You can get started by creating HARO and Qwoted accounts to look for features that match your expertise.
Guest Blogs - Have a piece of content that would be appropriate for another site’s audience? Pitch them for a guest blog feature!
Social Media Profiles - If you can be active on social media (which is definitely advised), be sure to create profiles for your business. These profiles also create backlinks (albeit no-follow). Consistent posting helps extend your reach, and by sharing your site’s content, you can enhance exposure to your website.
We do want to point out that, under no circumstances, should you ever buy links or rely on spammy directories or link farms!
How to Audit + Improve Your Efforts
Now that you have a better grasp on how AI and SEO work together, you can begin auditing and improving your current tactics.
A good technical SEO health check is a great place to start. Assess where there is room for improvement on your site experience before you dive headfirst into revamping your content strategy. We typically use Google Search Console, SEMrush, and ScreamingFrog to perform technical audits of our clients’ sites.
The main areas of focus for these technical audits are:
Site Speed - What can be improved if site speed is lackluster?
Crawlability - Check sitemaps and robots.txt files and ensure the sitemaps are submitted to Google and Bing
Core Web Vitals - Is the site mobile-friendly?
Link Health - Check for internal and external broken links
Onsite Functionality - Check for internal and external broken images
Orphaned Pages and Crawl Depth - Are there pages that could be getting more attention, but they are hard to reach?
After you have taken stock of your technical performance, check in on your Google Analytics and Google Search Console performance metrics to see where your content strategy could be improved upon.
What pages are getting the most attention?
What is drawing visitors to this page?
Are the visitors engaged?
Are they seeking additional context or content?
Are they taking the desired actions?
What pages are not performing well at all?
Is the content valuable?
Is the content original or can it be found elsewhere on the site?
Is the content linked to internally?
What keywords is your site showing up for?
Are these keywords appropriate?
Is the ranked content updated? Can it be improved?
Are there appropriate CTAs on the ranked content?
What keywords should your site be showing up for?
Do you have content to support that keyword?
Is the content valuable?
Is it updated?
Do you link to it internally?
Are the title tags clear?
Is it formatted for readability and skimmability?
The findings from your technical and content audits will help guide you through your immediate and long-term next steps. Focus first on the technical, and then assess your content strategy based on what is working and what is missing. These audits should be done regularly to ensure your site is providing the most up-to-date and valuable resources for your audience. This not only helps your audience see you as an authority, but it also helps search engines and AI see you as a citable authority. While mentions and traction can happen faster in the AI era, building consistent authority takes time. Good SEO is not an overnight process; it requires consistency, upkeep, and measurement.
How to Measure Your Efforts
As with any marketing strategy, you need to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Many of the standard SEO KPIs are still critical, but there are some nuances for the AI era. Here are the KPIs we recommend keeping an eye on (without needing a special reporting tool):
Traffic Volume (how many visitors and what pages)
Traffic Sources (direct, organic, referral, paid, social)
Pay attention to referral traffic from AI platforms
Traffic Engagement (time on site, # of pages, bounce rate)
Conversions (signups, calls, purchases, etc)
Keywords (what terms are you showing up for, CTR for those terms, rankings)
Branded keyword traffic
There are many new functionalities within existing paid SEO tools for AI search metrics as well as new AI search tools. If it is within your marketing budget to subscribe to a tool that tracks AI performance, go for it!
Here is what you should measure:
AI Visibility
Specific queries your site is showing up for in AI answers
Share of voice in AI queries
TL;DR
The phrase “SEO is dead” may be all over your LinkedIn feeds, but the reality is more nuanced than that. Understanding how AI and SEO work together and what tactics are going to propel your brand forward is just the latest iteration. As with all things marketing, you should assess, refine, measure, and repeat when it comes to your strategies. We encourage you to stay informed on how this space continues to evolve. Here are some of our go-to resources: