6 easy ways to adapt your SEO strategy for stronger AI visibility

With the rise of AI-powered search and steady increases in monthly LLM referral traffic, many of our SEO clients are asking how they can improve their visibility and brand sentiment in AI responses.

One of the biggest challenges, though, is that most marketing teams don’t have a dedicated generative engine optimization (GEO) budget or team members with the bandwidth to fully support large-scale AI search optimization initiatives.

The good news?

There are several strategies that can benefit both your traditional SEO and AI visibility.

These optimizations can help make your content digestible for search engines, relevant for AI-generated responses, and more valuable to your audience.

ChatGPT and other LLMs are not replacing Google, and SEO is not dead. SEO is simply evolving. And if you start taking steps to adapt your strategy now, you can keep pace instead of falling behind.

• “SEO is evolving into Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), where success is no longer just about ranking but about being contextually relevant in AI-generated search experiences,” said Ryan Fortin, Global Head of SEO at Lenovo.

Here are six ways to adapt your traditional SEO strategy to strengthen visibility in AI-powered search results.

1. Prioritize long-tail keywords

As search evolves, traditional keyword research and selection is shifting.

Instead of focusing only on high volume, high competition “head” terms, brands should also prioritize long tail keywords that align with conversational queries and natural language processing.

AI search models often favor these more specific and intent driven queries over head terms, and users are increasingly searching with full questions or complex phrases rather than short keywords. Also, long tail keywords are typically less competitive than head terms, making it easier to rank for the average site.

Also, according to Google, 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before, so there is demand for fresh, niche content optimized for new and potentially growing search  trends.

How to adapt

• Go low: Stop filtering out keywords with low search volumes. Gone are the days where you automatically filter out keywords just because they don’t meet your arbitrary minimums. You need to be mapping more terms with lower monthly searches than you may have historically.
• Be conversational: Spend time identifying conversational queries from places like Google’s People Also Ask, tools like AnswerThePublic and discussions on forums like Reddit. If you want to be an authority within a topic online, you will want to help answer as many of the long tail questions people have about that topic.
• Use variations: Optimize for semantic search by using related phrases, synonyms, and natural language variations in your content.

• Use FAQs: Create helpful FAQ sections within your content where you can add actual questions and capture multiple long-tail queries in a structured format. The Kiehl’s content above, for example, is helping their domain achieve over 550 AI Overview rankings currently.

2. Improve content clarity and structure

AI models extract concise and structured information from content. To enhance visibility in AI search (and to improve your user experience, because people want things faster than ever) your content should be organized, skimmable, and clearly summarized.

How to adapt

• Adjust Your Process: Include key takeaways at the top of content, write clear and concise summaries for main sections, and ensure you are breaking up text with proper heading structures (e.g. H1, H2s, H3s).

• TOC: Use tables of contents for longer content, and bonus if you use jumps links to make the user experience that much better.
• Refresh existing content: In addition to updating your content structures going forward, I also suggest you get a paid ChatGPT or Claude account and leverage AI support on refreshing your existing content. It doesn’t take new content creation to improve your SEO and AI visibility. Adding key takeaways and improving structure on content you’ve already invested in can go a long way.

Tweaking your existing process with these tips can go a long way when it comes to getting your content referenced in AI answers. Our agency has seen that re-formatting content in these ways gets our clients cited in AI Overviews in as little as 24 hours after implementation in some cases.

3. Present balanced perspectives

AI models are trained on massive data sets and are designed to avoid bias, weigh various viewpoints, and present balanced, easy-to-digest summaries.

This is especially true when users are looking for specific recommendations or making comparisons.

If you frequent ChatGPT, you’ve probably noticed answers often summarize pros and cons. This means that balanced and unbiased content is more likely to get cited.

How to adapt

• Pros and cons: Clearly state pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, or benefits and drawbacks within content.
• Tables: If you’re comparing things, consider adding a summary table, which is great for both users and AI extraction.
• Comparative language: Use less absolute wording and more comparative language, as AI prefers neutral and nuanced language over definitive opinions. Where it makes sense, use phrases like “best for” or “more ideal when” instead of speaking in absolutes.
• Counterarguments: Address potential concerns and provide a more comprehensive point of view in your content by adding sections such as Things to Consider, When It’s Not Worth It, Before You Go, etc.

4. Strengthen technical SEO 

AI models don’t crawl your site in real time like traditional search engine crawlers, but they do rely, in part, on well-structured, semantically rich content to interpret and represent your site’s information accurately.

So, while content quality and optimization matter, technical SEO forms the foundation that determines whether your content is accessible and interpretable. 

• “Now is a good time to double down on technical SEO,” according to Kai Blum, Global SEO Lead at Mailchimp. “I strongly believe that sites that are easily crawlable and pages that load fast perform better in AI Search. Besides, improving the user experience by increasing page speed is always a good investment. And getting your Schema markup in order across the entire site almost goes without saying.”

How to adapt

• LLMS.txt: Before you start thinking of an llms.txt as a robots.txt but for AI, know that while robots.txt files have clear guidelines of what should or shouldn’t be included, and the directives are always followed by Googlebot, there’s no telling how or even if these AI platforms are going to use what’s in an llms.txt. However, it is a potential opportunity for site owners to surface content and information that is otherwise not directly available via traditional crawling e.g. product data feeds, inventory APIs if they are configured, general APIs, support and customer service content, software developer documentation, etc. 
• Schema Markup: Schema markup provides explicit signals about the meaning of your content, making it easier for AI search tools to surface accurate and relevant information from your site. Implement article, FAQ, how to, products, review, event, speakable, breadcrumb and local business schema. Automate where possible, using CMS plugins or structured data generators to scale schema deployment. If this isn’t already part of your process, build schema markup into your standard content delivery process going forward while you work on an audit across your existing content.
• Crawlability and Indexation: Users, search engines, and LLMs alike cannot digest your content if they cannot find/access it. Focus on a logical site architecture, a strong internal linking structure, minimize unnecessary re-directs, maintain your robots.txt file properly, and ensure you have fast loading pages. 
• JavaScript: While traditional search engines like Google have evolved to render JavaScript when crawling websites, many AI crawlers, including OpenAI’s GPTBot and Anthropic’s ClaudeBot, do not execute JavaScript. Ensure your important content is server-rendered or visible in the raw HTML, not just loaded via JavaScript.

5. Be data driven

AI models are trained to prioritize authoritative and credible information.

With the right data driven approach, you can increase your content’s credibility and make it more attractive for AI citations.

Also, in a world where it’s getting increasingly hard to tell what’s machine created, what’s regurgitated and what’s truly unique, leveraging proprietary data within your content helps you stand apart from the crowd, and makes your content easier to pitch to the media.

• “The future belongs to authentic voices who bring unique perspectives,” said Britney Muller, AI educator and consultant. “In a world where AI can generate endless generic content, being memorably human becomes your biggest competitive advantage. Focus on being genuinely quotable rather than technically optimized. This isn’t just another shift in search; it’s a return to what actually matters: saying something worth repeating.” 

How to adapt:

• Use proprietary data: When possible, leverage proprietary data, tailored data collection (e.g. surveys), case studies, or other research to create unique data sets for your content. This makes your content stand out, offering something truly valuable and unique in a world riddled with low quality, regurgitated content.
• Cite sources: Reference credible, authoritative sources and up to date content. When citing external sources, link directly to the original data and mention it within your content. If you’re using AI to scale your content, make sure you run everything through a plagiarism checker.

6. Measure and monitor

If you’re going to put effort into impacting your AI visibility, then you most certainly want to put some effort into measuring the impact and monitoring over time. And if you’re looking to build a business case for an AI optimization budget or resources, this will be crucial.

Think about what your leadership team or client will need to see to get on board. Even if you’re not able to make the case for budget right away, having the reporting structure in place will be helpful.

• “We encourage organizations to focus on what can be concretely measured — AI crawler and agent visits, referral traffic from AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others, and citations in AI-generated answers,” said Chris Andrew, CEO & Co-Founder of Scrunch AI. “Across our customers, we’ve consistently seen that traffic from AI search is not just growing — it’s also the highest-converting source of inbound traffic. The brands that track these signals now will have a massive edge as AI-native discovery becomes the norm.”

How to adapt

• Dashboard: Set up a dashboard or update your existing SEO dashboard to track metrics like LLM referral traffic, top LLM referral traffic source, Organic Search:LLM traffic ratios, and LLM referral conversions.
• AI Overviews: Use an SEO tool like Semrush to track your vs. competitor AI overview presence over time.

• Tools: Consider budgeting for a tool like Scrunch AI or the Semrush AI toolkit to monitor LLM visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms. There are a ton of AI visibility platform options to choose from now, so I’d recommend setting up a demo with at least a couple to weigh the different features, cost, and value.

Advanced tactics to bolster AI visibility

If you want to take your AI optimization strategy further, consider these two more advanced tactics below. While they take more effort than the tactics above, they’re high impact.

Leverage digital PR for authority building

AI search engines factor in online mentions, citations, and brand authority when generating responses. A strong digital PR strategy will help you become a trusted source in the new AI search space.

• “Beyond the easier tactics like optimizing for long-tail keywords and using clear formats that AI can parse, the real winners will be those who understand that your digital footprint is now measured by who’s talking about you across the web. Getting mentioned in semantically similar conversations increases your probability of showing up in AI overviews,” Muller said.
• “While everyone is obsessing over technical AI optimization, they’re missing the fundamental shift: brand mentions are becoming the new backlinks. Google counts links, but AI counts conversations.”

Set up and optimize a Wikipedia page

Wikipedia plays a critical role in the digital information ecosystem. It is one of the most commonly used sources for training AI models, helping them verify facts, define entities, and assess credibility.

A well-crafted, properly sourced Wikipedia page can significantly enhance your brand’s online authority and increase the likelihood of being referenced in AI-generated content, including search engine answers and virtual assistants.

However, creating and maintaining a Wikipedia page is no small task. The platform enforces strict notability and sourcing guidelines, and content must be written in a neutral, encyclopedic tone.

Success requires strong third-party coverage from reputable publications, thoughtful page structure, and ongoing updates to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Despite the upfront effort, a Wikipedia presence is a valuable long-term asset for brand visibility, trust, and authority.

What’s next?

Adapting to this new era of AI-driven search is a must. By making adjustments now, you’ll position yourself ahead of the curve as AI continues to reshape search and content discovery.