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Journalist Outreach: How to Earn High-Authority Links in 9 Steps

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Want backlinks from Forbes, HubSpot, or Insider? Without paying a cent?

Journalist outreach is how you do it.

And in 2025, it’s still one of the most effective ways to earn authority links that actually move the needle.

We also run Traffic Think Tank, and we used this tactic to 10x visibility and revenue in the past year.

Domain Overview – TTT – Organic Traffic & Keywords

And built our authority in the increasingly important AI / LLM ecosystem:

AI Strategic Insights – TTT

This guide was created with insights from the team at Jolly SEO — the pros behind thousands of earned media wins.

Plus, we’re including our free Journalist Outreach Toolkit to help you implement everything immediately.

In this post, you’ll learn how to:

  • Manage the overwhelming flow of media requests
  • Write pitches journalists actually use
  • Earn backlinks that boost rankings and trust
  • Track ROI and prove value to stakeholders

Let’s break it down.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

If you don’t know what success looks like, you’ll waste time chasing the wrong wins.

Before you write a single pitch, get clear on what your business needs from journalist outreach.

Are you after stronger SEO performance? Brand visibility? Long-term relationships with the media?

Your goals will shape everything — from the platforms you prioritize to how you evaluate results.

Goal What to Prioritize Why It Matters What to Do
SEO Results – Dofollow links
– DR 40+ sites (Domain Rating similar to Semrush’s Authority Score)
– Relevant anchor text		 These links pass authority and help improve rankings — essential if organic growth is your focus. -Target niche queries on platforms like HARO or Qwoted
-Use keyword-aligned quotes
-Track DRs
Brand Visibility – Top-tier publication mentions
– Branded search lift
– Repurposable social proof		 Coverage builds trust and legitimacy — even without links — and can drive branded search or leads. -Prioritize name-brand publications
-Craft quotable insights tied to your expertise
-Reshare wins
Relationships – Repeat contributions
– Off-platform journalist invites
– Helpful follow-ups		 Trusted contributors get invited back and land bigger features faster. -Send thank-yous
-Offer value beyond the pitch
-Track warm journalist relationships in a simple CRM

For instance, let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS marketer trying to rank a key feature page.

Look for HARO or Qwoted queries where the topic aligns with the problem your product solves.

If you can offer a helpful, relevant perspective — one that happens to mention your company or approach — that’s a win. Even if the link doesn’t show up right away.

The bottom line?
When you know what wins you’re aiming for, you’re far more likely to hit them.

Greg Heilers, co-founder of Jolly SEO, puts it simply:

“Depending on your criteria, writing skill, and site/figurehead optimization, you can achieve a win as frequently as 1 in every 3 pitches.”

Step 2: Establish Realistic Expectations (This Will Save Your Sanity)

Most people give up on journalist outreach too soon.

Not because the tactic doesn’t work — but because their expectations are wildly off.

They expect quick wins, a high response rate, and instant SEO impact.

The reality is slower, less glamorous, and a lot more sustainable if you approach it with the right mindset.

Typical Success Rates (and What to Expect Over Time)

Even top-tier media outreach experts don’t land every pitch.

For beginners, a 3–5% response rate is normal. As you gain experience, that can climb to 8–12%, and with refined systems and strong positioning, 15–20% is achievable.

That means you might need to send 10–30 pitches just to earn one mention.

This isn’t failure — it’s the math behind consistent results.

So, what does that actually look like over time?

  • Month 1: You’re learning the workflow. Scanning opportunities, testing your messaging, and getting familiar with the process. Landing even one or two mentions is a meaningful start.
  • Month 3: You start to see patterns. Which types of queries are worth your time. Which angles tend to get picked up. You might even get quoted by the same journalist twice.
  • Month 6: You have momentum. Pitches get easier. You might even start getting inbound requests from writers who’ve seen your previous contributions.

The payoff builds slowly — but it compounds.

Beyond the byline: Search is evolving fast. Journalist quotes are now surfacing in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If you’re featured in a top-tier article, there’s a real chance your name, company, or insight will show up in AI-generated answers.

Why Most Pitches Fail (And It’s Not Your Fault)

The biggest myth in journalist outreach is that great writing is enough.

Spoiler: It’s not.

Journalists get dozens — sometimes hundreds — of pitches for a single request.

Many already have sources in mind.

Others are on tight deadlines and go with the first relevant response they see. If your pitch arrives an hour late, it might not get opened at all.

This doesn’t mean your pitch was bad. It means timing and fit beat polish more often than not.

Step 3: Set Up Your Inbox and Tracking

The fastest way to burn out in journalist outreach?

Drowning in irrelevant pitches, deadlines you’ll never meet, and inbox chaos.

Gmail – Inbox chaos

Here’s the good news: A few quick workflows can save you hours a week and help you stay consistent over time.

Make Your Emails Credible at a Glance

Journalists scan dozens of emails a day, and first impressions matter.

A polished inbox setup instantly signals trust and professionalism.

Include:

  • Branded email address: Avoid generic Gmail accounts when possible. Use a domain-linked email to show legitimacy.
  • Uploaded headshot: Many platforms now require it
  • Branded signature: Add your name, title, company, LinkedIn, and a link to your website. Make it easy for journalists to verify who you are.

    Branded Signature – Leigh

You don’t need a huge platform. You just need to look like someone worth quoting.

Build a Simple Filtering System

Start by organizing your inbox to reduce the cognitive load.

Create folders or labels by platform (e.g., “HARO Outreach”), and add filters to automatically route incoming queries.

Gmail – Create New label

Then, block off 15-minute review windows, no more than three times a day.

You don’t need to monitor your inbox all day — just be consistent.

Use the “5-second scan” rule: if it’s not clearly relevant within a few seconds, archive and move on.

Use Fast, Practical Qualification Criteria

Not every opportunity is worth your time — and trying to pitch everything will tank your efficiency.

For each request, ask:

  • Is this in my area of expertise? If not, don’t force a fit. Weak relevance leads to ignored pitches.
  • Do I meet the specific requirements? Many queries ask for certain job titles or credentials. Skip it if you’re not eligible.
  • Is the deadline realistic? If you can’t hit the cutoff, don’t let it clog your pipeline.
  • Is the publication worth your time? Not every outlet will align with your goals. Use your win criteria (from Step 1) to filter.

For instance, if you’re a freelance content strategist, a request asking for insights from “Fortune 500 CEOs” is a clear pass.

Save your effort for a request that matches your actual experience.

Step 4: Choose Your Platforms Strategically

Not all journalist outreach platforms are created equal.

Some are great for quick wins. Others shine when you’re targeting high-authority publications or niche audiences.

The key isn’t choosing the platform with the most opportunities — it’s choosing the one that aligns with your actual goals.

That means considering more than just volume.

You’ll want to look at average link quality, pitch-to-publication turnaround, cost, and whether the requests match your expertise.

Note: We’re gathering updated data on additional platforms like Qwoted and will expand this comparison in future updates.
Platform Best For Avg DR Cost Turnaround
Featured Easy wins, building confidence 70 Free/Paid 23 days
Help a B2B Writer B2B content, SaaS brands 73 Free 44 days
ProfNet Premium publications 79 Paid 39 days
HARO Broad topics 76 Free/Paid 37 days
Source of Sources Niche expertise 81 Free 35 days

Don’t feel like you need to master every platform out of the gate.

Start with one or two that align with your goals, get really good at using them, and expand once your workflow is dialed in.

How to Choose the Right Platform (Fast)

Not sure where to start? Think of this as your cheat sheet for getting started.

  • Just getting your reps in? Start with Featured — it’s simple, fast, and great for building confidence early.
  • Need high-authority links that actually move rankings? Go with Qwoted — it consistently surfaces high domain rating (DR) opportunities from recognizable media outlets.
  • Want placements in premium, name-brand publications? Choose ProfNet — fewer opportunities, but often higher caliber if you have the budget.
  • Targeting marketers, founders, or SaaS buyers? Help a B2B Writer delivers curated, niche-relevant requests in your exact lane.
  • Need a high volume of relevant opportunities to work with? Source of Sources gives you a steady stream of niche pitches — just be ready to filter.
  • Looking for general-topic visibility at scale? HARO still delivers breadth and quantity — just expect to dig for quality.

Looking for country-specific platforms?

Many regions have their own journalist request tools worth exploring. For example, SourceBottle is widely used in Australia, and ResponseSource is popular among PR pros and journalists in the U.K.

Just try a quick Google search like “journalist request platform [your country].”

You’ll usually uncover a few local options — no massive directory needed.

Google SERP – Journalist request platform Australia

Step 5: Write Pitches That Win (Without Taking Forever)

The best pitches don’t win because they’re long or clever.

They win because they’re skimmable, useful, and immediately quotable.

Your job isn’t to impress the journalist — it’s to make their job easier.

Establish Credibility in 8 Words or Less

Start with a strong subject line. Greg emphasizes combining relevance with instant credibility.

Use this structure:

Subject line formula: [Your credentials] + [specific value] + [topic]

Examples:

  • SaaS CEO’s Take on Fixing Churn
  • SEO Consultant’s Local Link Playbook
  • Copywriter’s Formula for High-Converting Headlines

Then, build your pitch. It should look something like this:

Pro tip: AI tools can help you brainstorm angles — but the final quotes should sound human, specific, and ready to publish. Use AI for speed, not substitution.

Make Your Quotes Instantly Usable

Journalists aren’t grading your writing.

They’re looking for clean, usable quotes they can drop straight into a draft.

As Greg puts it:

“Journalists want quotes they can immediately copy and paste into their articles, no changes needed.”

Here’s how to make that happen:

Pitch Like a Pro

Pro tip: For the full checklist — and why each step matters — use the Pitch Checklist tab in our journalist outreach toolkit.

Not all pitches are created equal.

Here’s what gets picked up — and what gets ignored.

❌ Bloated, vague, and completely unusable:

Email – Bloated & unusable

✅Clear, specific, and quote-ready:

Email – Clear & specific

Pitch Faster Without Losing Quality

Greg recommends prewriting as much as possible so you’re never starting your press outreach from scratch.

Have 3–4 versions of your bio ready to go, tailored for different beats (e.g., SaaS, marketing, AI).

Build a few quote templates for your most common talking points. And give yourself a hard limit: Aim to finish each pitch in 10 minutes or less.

The more reps you get, the easier this becomes.

Don’t forget your first line does heavy lifting. It shows up in inbox previews and often determines whether your pitch even gets opened. Make it count.

Caveat: Structure helps, but sameness kills. AI tools and mass pitching have flooded inboxes with lookalike answers. Don’t just fill in a template — say something only you would say. That’s what gets quoted.

Yes, You’re Qualified. Here’s Why.

One of the biggest blockers in journalist outreach? Thinking you’re not “qualified” to respond.

But here’s the truth: You don’t need a blue checkmark or a book deal to be helpful.

If you can help readers understand something better or offer a useful perspective, you’re already ahead.

Credibility doesn’t mean status. It means relevance.

That could be your job title, your years of experience, a client result, or just a smart way of framing the problem.

When in doubt, try this five-part framework to surface story ideas from your own work:

  • The situation: What were you working on?
  • The challenge: What made it tricky?
  • Your approach: What did you try or test?
  • The result: What changed? What worked?
  • The insight: What do you wish you’d known earlier?

The bottom line?

If you’ve solved what they’re writing about, you belong in their inbox.

Step 6: Master the Follow-Up (Without Being Annoying)

It’s tempting to send a pitch and move on.

But following up is one of the easiest ways to multiply the value of your efforts.

It’s low-effort, high-return, and totally underused.

The key is to keep it respectful, useful, and brief. Here’s how to do it without sounding pushy.

Turn Mentions Into Links

Let’s say you’ve been quoted but not linked.

Here’s a simple, polite ask that turns visibility into real SEO value:

Turn Replies Into Relationships

The journalists who quote you today could become recurring collaborators — if you give them a reason to remember you.

Done right, a follow-up turns one good pitch into long-term visibility, stronger links, and a journalist who might actually remember your name.

Step 7: Find Hidden Wins (Most People Miss These)

You might already be getting results — and not even know it.

At Jolly SEO, Greg sees it constantly.

“People message me and say, ‘I’ve sent dozens of pitches, but I can’t get any wins. What am I doing wrong?’

My first question is always: ‘Have you tried looking for them yet?’”

The good news?

You don’t need expensive tools or a manual content audit. A few smart searches and a weekly routine are all it takes.

Use Google Search Operators

Advanced search syntax lets you find live mentions with precision. Run these searches weekly to uncover wins:

  • “Your Name” + “Your Brand Name”
  • “CEO of [Brand]” site:targetpublication.com
  • “[Your unique quote]” site:[domain]

Use quotes to force exact matches and ”site:” to limit the search to specific outlets.

Set Up Google Alerts

Track new mentions passively by creating alerts for:

  • Your name + company
  • Your job title (e.g., “CMO of Backlinko”)
  • Distinctive quotes or phrasing you tend to use

Google Alerts – Leigh McKenzie Backlinko

This won’t catch everything, but it will help surface a steady stream of new wins.

Manual Checking Schedule

Most people stop after they hit “send.”

But Greg estimates you’ll never be told about 90% of your wins.

So if you don’t go looking, you’ll never even know they happened.

Build a simple check-in routine:

  • Weekly: Run your branded Google searches
  • Monthly: Review recent articles from journalists you’ve pitched
  • Quarterly: Use SEO tools (like Ahrefs or Semrush) to spot backlinks or citations

Google SERP – Leigh McKenzie Backlinko

Pro tip: Use the Win Finder (in the toolkit) to uncover hidden mentions.

Step 8: Build Your Journalist Network

Every pitch is more than a one-time shot at a link — it’s the start of a potential relationship.

If a journalist quotes you once, there’s a good chance they’ll want insights from you again.

But only if you make it easy, relevant, and respectful to stay in touch.

Track Relationships Like You Track Links

Use a simple CRM (even a spreadsheet works) to track journalist contacts the same way you’d track sales prospects:

  • Name + outlet
  • Contact info + beat
  • History (quoted, linked, mentioned)
  • Relationship stage (cold, warm, repeat, advocate)
  • Last contact date + next follow-up

Journalist Outreach Toolkit by Backlinko

If you’ve contributed to multiple stories or gotten links from the same writer, mark them as high-priority for future outreach. These are your warmest leads.

Build Trust Without Pitching

You don’t need a quote request to stay visible.

In fact, the best relationship-building moments often happen when you’re not asking for anything.

Promote their articles on social with a thoughtful comment — not just a tag. If you come across a story angle or source that fits their beat, send it their way.

If they mentioned a topic they’re covering next month, follow up. Even better: introduce them to another trusted source in your network.

These small, useful gestures build familiarity over time.

That’s how you become more than a random inbox name. You move from pitching to being pitched.

Pro tip: Use our Outreach CRM Tracker (in the toolkit) to start tracking pitches and wins instantly.

Step 9: Measure and Prove ROI

If you’re investing time, you need to show what it’s worth — to your team, your stakeholders, or your clients.

That means going beyond raw link counts and telling the full story of impact.

Track What Matters

Link counts are a starting point, but they’re not the whole picture.

Look at which platforms consistently deliver wins, how many hours go into each link, and which journalists become repeat collaborators.

Track your mentions, even when there’s no link.

Watch for traffic spikes after a story goes live, and pay attention to whether rankings improve on pages earning coverage.

For example, if a single article mention leads to a 12% lift in branded search and earns a backlink to your pricing page, that’s clear momentum.

When you combine reach, effort, and outcome, you start to see the full return.

Use a Simple ROI Framework

When you need to quantify results for stakeholders, use this basic formula to translate time and effort into value:

Link Value = (Average link cost in your industry) × (number of links)

Time Investment = (Hours spent) × (Your hourly rate)

ROI = (Total link value – Time investment) / Time investment × 100

For example:

You earned five links in a month — all from DR 70+ publications.

Let’s say the average market cost for that caliber of link is $800, and you assign a DR adjustment factor of 1 (used to reflect link quality; 1.0 = solid, relevant fit):

Link value: $800 (avg. link cost) x 5 links = $4,000

Time investment: 12 hours × $100/hr = $1,200

ROI: ($4,000 – $1,200) / $1,200 × 100 = 233%

Now compare that to sponsored content, digital PR retainers, or even PPC — and suddenly, this starts looking like a serious channel.

Build a Stakeholder-Ready Report

The final piece is packaging your results in a way that stakeholders understand and care about.

Keep it simple, visual, and focused on outcomes:

  • A summary of links earned by domain authority range
  • Growth in brand mentions across media and social
  • Traffic lift or ranking movement tied to earned placements
  • Estimated link value compared to paid alternatives
  • A standout example or case study from that month

When stakeholders can see the momentum — not just the metrics — they’re far more likely to stay bought in.

Start Earning Links That Actually Matter

You’ve got everything you need to get started. Now, it’s time to make your move.

Write a pitch today. Just one.

Don’t overthink it.

Grab the Journalist Outreach Toolkit, find a real query, and put your perspective to work.

Then, send it — and give yourself a shot at a win most people never even try for.

The post Journalist Outreach: How to Earn High-Authority Links in 9 Steps appeared first on Backlinko.

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Google traffic to news publishers is steady, but it isn’t traditional Search

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Google traffic news sites

Google has remained a stable source of traffic to news publishers over the past year. Although many websites have seen their traffic significantly impacted by Google’s AI Overviews, Chartbeat data shows that for 565 U.S. and UK news publishers:

  • Search referrals made up 19% of traffic in July, little changed since early 2019.
  • Google dominates search traffic: 96% of publisher referrals.
How publisher traffic referral types are stacking up.

Yes, but. “Search” here includes Google Discover, which is not traditional search. Discover is now the primary driver of Google referrals.

Why we care. Search traffic hasn’t collapsed. However, the stability is somewhat masked by a shift from traditional Google Search to Google Discover.

Dig deeper. Google says AI is boosting Search. Yes, but…

Direct traffic is shaky. Efforts to build a loyal, “type-in” audience have largely stalled, leaving publishers more dependent on Google and aggregators. Direct traffic to homepages and landing pages has fallen to 11.5% from a pandemic-era high of 16.3%.

Social keeps sinking. Social’s decline means fewer diversified referral sources:

  • Facebook referrals are down 50% since 2019, despite a recent bump.
  • X traffic is down 75% vs. 2019.
  • Only Reddit is surging – up 220% since 2019, boosted by Google visibility and an AI training deal (but it still sends less referrals than Facebook and X).

The report. Publisher traffic sources: Google steady but social and direct referrals are down, as reported by PressGazette

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Generative AI is changing search, but Google is still where people start: Study

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Generative AI Google search

Generative AI is reshaping how people find information — but it hasn’t replaced search engines like Google. That’s according to a new Nielsen Norman Group study:

  • While users increasingly experiment with ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews, most still default to old habits: starting with Google.

Why we care. Google is a habit – and habits are hard to break. That gives Google a built-in edge: even as AI eats into clicks, Google remains the default starting point for users. That means organic visibility still matters for brands and businesses. AI is reshaping the journey, but it won’t erase search overnight.

The big picture. According to the study:

  • AI overviews = fewer clicks. People notice and often rely on Google’s AI summaries, reducing the need to visit websites. Not new, and still bad news for publishers.
  • AI chat boosts efficiency. Once users tried Gemini or ChatGPT for complex tasks, they found them faster and more useful than traditional search.
  • Search isn’t gone. Even heavy AI users still cross-check with Google or visit content pages. No participant relied solely on AI for all information needs.
  • Familiarity wins. Just as “Google” became a verb, some users now casually call ChatGPT “Chat.” Brand familiarity may be the biggest advantage in AI search.

Bottom line. Generative AI is changing how people research – but it’s an evolution, not a revolution. The biggest barrier to AI adoption isn’t accuracy or UX, it’s human habit.

About the data. Nielsen Norman Group conducted remote usability testing with nine participants in North America and UK, representing diverse demographics and levels of AI experience. Sessions explored how users approached real research tasks with search engines and AI tools.

The study. How AI Is Changing Search Behaviors

Dig deeper. Google’s AI Overviews are hurting clicks: Pew study

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Where Did My Traffic Go? Winning In The Age of AI Overviews

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Is the number of clicks on your top-ranking content starting to slip? It’s time to find out where your traffic has gone and how to get it back.

AI Overviews are reshaping SERPs as we know them. Google now answers user queries directly in the SERP, and traditional blue links are getting pushed further down the page. You might still be ranking, but your visibility is shrinking.

This doesn’t mean SEO is dead. It just means the playbook has changed. To stay competitive, you need to understand how AI Overview optimization works and start building content designed to earn those coveted AI citations.

Key Takeaways

  • AI Overviews are rerouting traffic, not killing it. Your rankings may hold, but clicks drop because Google satisfies user intent directly in the SERP.
  • Answer-first content wins. Structuring pages with concise answers, logical headings, and clear formatting increases your chances of being cited in AI Overviews.
  • Authority signals matter more than backlinks. Brand mentions, topical trust, and consistent visibility across multiple platforms influence AI citations.
  • Owning your audience is your safety net. Diversifying channels and building first-party data ensures long-term visibility, even as search behavior evolves.

Why You’re Ranking But Still Losing Traffic

If your content still ranks in the top 10 SERP positions but traffic is slipping, there’s a good chance AI overviews are the culprit. Google’s AI-generated summaries dominate the top of the page, pushing organic listings below the fold. Users get the answer they want without ever clicking. In fact, almost 60% of Google searches end without users even making a single click.

An example of an AI Overview.

You can see from this screenshot that when your search results load, there’s no organic results in site. In fact, in this instance, AI overviews even push sponsored results below the fold. This is the new reality of zero-click searches. Impressions might look steady, but clicks drop because users can satisfy their intent without leaving Google.

The solution is to stop thinking only in terms of traffic volume. Start focusing on visible influence: appearing in AI Overviews and being recognized as an authority, even when users don’t click.

AI Overviews And How They Are Turning The Funnel Upside-Down

Traditional search funnels start with discovery, move to consideration, and end in conversion. AI Overviews flip that script.

Users can start—and sometimes finish—their journey right on Google. With features like AI-generated summaries and featured snippets, the need to click through is lower than ever. Voice search and even short-form video integrations accelerate this shift, creating an environment where Google does the explaining for you.

An AI Overview for "What is Zero-Click."

For marketers, this means clicks are no longer the whole story. Your content has to deliver more than just clicks. It needs to capture attention inside the SERP and give users a reason to engage when they do click through. Strong on-page structure, engaging CTAs, and retention strategies like scroll-depth optimization now matter just as much as ranking. This is the essence of Search Everywhere optimization, which focuses on meeting users wherever they’re consuming content, not just on your site.

How To Optimize For AI Overviews

If you want your content featured in AI Overviews, you need to create pages that are easy for Google to summarize and trust. Here’s how to give Google what it wants:

  • Lead with an answer-first layout: Open your page with a concise, 2–3 sentence answer to the core query. This immediately gives AI a clear takeaway, increasing the odds of being cited in an overview. Expand into supporting details afterward with a logical flow.
  • Use structured formatting: Break your content into clean H2s and short paragraphs so Google can scan and interpret it quickly. Bulleted and numbered lists help AI extract step-by-step processes or summaries.
A graphic detailing an AI-friendly content structure.

Source

  • Add schema and FAQs: Implement FAQ and How-To schema to highlight your key answers for AI. Include a short FAQ section at the end of your article to increase your odds of citation for question-based queries.
  • Target long-tail, conversational keywords: AI Overviews thrive on natural, question-based searches. Integrate these phrases into headings and early sentences to align with how users talk to search engines and voice assistants.
  • Publish fresh, authoritative content: Share unique insights, proprietary data, or first-hand expertise to meet E-E-A-T signals—experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. AI favors credible, original content over generic summaries.
An E-E-A-T graphic.

Source

  • Support with media: Embed YouTube videos, charts, or screenshots to improve engagement and reinforce authority. Use descriptive alt text so search engines can understand and reference your visuals.

Combining structure, authority, and clarity makes it easy for AI to pull your content and keep your brand visible in the new SERP landscape.

YouTube and Video: Your Shortcut to Visibility

Video content—especially on YouTube—is one of the fastest ways to gain visibility in AI Overviews. Google and Gemini favor YouTube because it’s part of their ecosystem, and AI models naturally pull from sources they already trust.

Short, keyword-focused videos can surface in AI-generated results even if your text content isn’t cited. A 60–90 second explainer video that directly answers the search query gives AI a clean snippet to work with while also boosting your chances of appearing in video carousels.

The charts below show just how effective video is. They show the categories of YouTube videos that have shown up in AI overviews and how fast the trend of videos showing up in AI overviews has grown over time. 

Video presence in AIOs.

Source 1, Source 2

To maximize impact:

  • Create concise, educational videos tied to core keywords.
  • Embed them on relevant blog posts or landing pages to reinforce topical authority.
  • Add captions or transcripts so AI models can understand and summarize your video content.

Video can reclaim lost search visibility while building multi-surface authority across AI-driven and traditional search.

Off-Page Signals Matter More Than Backlinks

In the age of AI Overviews, Google and AI models are looking beyond traditional backlinks. They increasingly value off-page signals like brand mentions and expert quotes in reputable sources.

AI models evaluate whether your brand is recognized and trusted across the web. A mention in an industry publication, a quote in a news article, or a stat cited in a whitepaper can be as impactful as a link for AI visibility.

To strengthen your off-page signals:

  • Pursue public relations (PR) opportunities in industry-relevant media and blogs.
  • Share original data or research that journalists and peers want to reference.
  • Encourage brand discussions on platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora, which AI crawlers frequently mine. Internally, we’ve seen tremendous growth for our client, TurboTax, by helping them launch a branded Reddit campaign—including discussions and engagement. 

The goal is to create a trustworthy footprint online. When AI sees your brand cited in multiple credible sources, you’re far more likely to be included in its summaries, even without a traditional backlink.

Build Topical Trust Across the Web

AI Overviews reward brands that show consistent authority on a topic, not just one-off content. Google and AI models look for a pattern: Are you producing relevant, high-quality content across multiple platforms that reinforces your expertise?

To build topical trust:

  • Publish blog posts, guides, and FAQs that cover your key themes in depth.
  • Share insights across social media and YouTube, giving AI more signals that your brand is active and authoritative.
  • Leverage user-generated content (UGC), like community discussions, testimonials, and real-world examples, to demonstrate authenticity.
  • Ensure your content aligns with E-E-A-T across every channel.

Maintaining a consistent and credible presence wherever your audience searches makes it easy for AI to recognize your brand as a reliable source. That recognition is what creates a trustworthy brand footprint that AI can work with.

You Need to Diversify Your Channels Now

Relying solely on Google for traffic is riskier than ever. The shrinking SERP visibility caused by AI overviews and zero-click searches means that even top-ranking content might not deliver the same ROI it once did.

To protect your brand, you need to diversify your traffic sources:

  • Combine SEO and paid search to maintain visibility and retarget your most valuable branded keywords.
  • Invest in social media, email, and YouTube to capture attention outside of Google.
  • Build a strategy that prioritizes owning your audience instead of depending on any single platform.

Diversifying channels doesn’t just protect your current visibility. It’s a great way to grow your online brand. A strong multi-channel approach captures leads you might otherwise miss, making you less vulnerable to Google’s constant evolution. Ultimately, the brands that thrive in the AI era are the ones that meet their audience everywhere, not just in search results.

Examples of channel diversification.

Source

First-Party Data Is the Safety Net

When AI Overviews dominate search, the brands that win are the ones creating proprietary insights that can’t be found anywhere else. AI models favor content that provides original data because it signals authority and adds value beyond generic summaries. Internal research is your secret weapon.

Instead of relying solely on public stats, collect your own:

  • Run audience surveys to uncover trends or opinions in your niche.
  • Conduct polls or quizzes to generate quick, shareable insights that can be repurposed into blogs and social posts.
  • Analyze internal data like customer behavior, conversion trends, or product usage to produce unique reports.
First party data collection techniques.

Source

Turn these findings into case studies and data-driven articles. Proprietary insights make your brand more likely to appear in AI Overviews and attract backlinks and press coverage, compounding your authority across the web.

FAQs

How do I optimize for AI Overviews?

Start with an answer-first structure: give a concise response in the first 2–3 sentences, then expand with supporting details. Use a clear structure with H2s and bulleted lists so Google can easily scan and summarize your content. Implement FAQ or how-to schema, and include a dedicated FAQ section to match AI’s preferred Q&A format. Fresh, authoritative content supported by brand mentions and backlinks will boost your chances of being cited.

How are AI Overviews changing the SERPs?

AI Overviews now dominate the top of Google results, pushing organic listings further down the page. This creates more zero-click searches, where users get answers without visiting your site. Even if your rankings haven’t changed, your visibility and clicks may decline. Making AI-friendly formatting and multi-channel strategies more important than ever.

Conclusion

There’s no need to panic. AI Overviews aren’t erasing traffic, they’re simply rerouting it. Your pages may still rank, but when Google’s summaries dominate the top of the SERP, visibility doesn’t always translate into clicks. The old playbook of relying on impressions and top rankings isn’t enough anymore.

To win in this era of search, your SEO strategy has to include AI overview optimization. Content needs to be structured for AI-first discovery, with clear answers and logical formatting that gains LLMs’ trust. Now, success is about building influence. When your brand appears in AI Overviews and consistently reinforces topical expertise, you maintain visibility even when users don’t land on your site.

The final step is ownership. Diversifying channels and leveraging Search Everywhere optimization gives your brand resilience, while first-party data ensures you can nurture and convert your audience on your own terms. If done right, AI can be your biggest opportunity, not just a threat.

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5 B2B content types AI search engines love

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5 B2B content types AI search engines love

AI search is evolving fast, but early patterns are emerging. 

In our B2B client work, we’ve seen specific types of content consistently surface in LLM-driven results. 

These formats – when structured the right way – tend to get picked up, cited, and amplified by models like ChatGPT and Gemini.

This article breaks down five content types gaining notable AI search visibility, what makes them effective, and how to optimize them for LLM discovery:

  • Comparison pages.
  • Integration docs/open APIs.
  • Use case hubs.
  • Thought leadership on external platforms.
  • Product docs with schema.

1. Comparison pages

Our analysis shows that Gemini frequently surfaces “X vs. Y” content in AI Overviews and AI Mode – even when the query doesn’t ask explicitly for the comparison.

does carbon steel rust - AI Overview

What to include

  • Publish /vs/ pages with pros, cons, pricing, use case match, and schema. 
  • Do this for any competitors that bring in a decent volume of comparison queries, along with any comparisons that are easily related to your product or service.

2. Integration docs/open APIs

Our analysis has provided numerous instances of GPTs and Copilot citing SaaS APIs and dev docs in answers.

Example

  • A ChatGPT prompt for “setting up span metrics for backend services” cited a docs page from performance monitoring company Sentry in a list of best practices.
SaaS APIs and dev docs in AI answers

What to include

  • Maintain clear documentation + changelogs with versioning and schema.

Dig deeper: The future of B2B authority building in the AI search era

3. Use case hubs

We’ve seen clear indicators that AI Search prefers content that ties features to real business problems.

Example 

  • Vanta’s SOC 2 compliance resource appears prominently in a ChatGPT answer to “SOC 2 compliance automation for startups.”
SOC 2 compliance automation for startups - ChatGPT

What to include

  • Build intent-driven use case pages with testimonials and product mapping.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

See terms.

4. Thought leadership on external platforms

LLMs pick up posts from company experts, including founders, SMEs, and established thought leaders, on outlets like Medium and Dev.to for strategy-based questions.

Example

How to find the best OpenSearch provider for cerntalized logging?

What to include 

  • Syndicate posts from a company founder, SME, or brand ambassador with a unique POV, then include a canonical link back to the business website.

5. Product docs with schema

Gemini AI Mode lifts from product docs if they’re structured with FAQs, How-to sections, and/or breadcrumb structured data.

Example

Metal 3d printer - AI Mode
recommended cash flow analysis tools for doc processing - AI Mode

What to include 

  • Add FAQPage, HowTo, breadcrumb structured data, and SoftwareApplication schema types to product docs.

3 overarching recommendations

You should never veer from the E-E-A-T principles that have long underpinned traditional SEO. Those same tenets will serve you well for LLM discovery, too. 

Beyond them, however, there are a few LLM-specific steps to consider if your goal is to increase AI search visibility.

I’ll break down three key recommendations.

Optimize for multi-modal support

AI search systems are increasingly retrieving and synthesizing multimodal content (think: images, charts, tables, videos) to better answer user queries. 

Flex your content across multiple media types to provide more useful, scannable, and engaging answers for users. 

Specific recommendations:

  • Ensure images and videos remain crawlable for search and AI bots. 
  • Serve images via clean HTML and avoid lazy-loading with JavaScript-only rendering, since LLM-based scrapers may not render JavaScript-heavy elements. 
  • Images should use descriptive alt text that includes topic context. 
  • Add captions to images and videos with an explanation right below or beside the visual. 
  • Use <figure>, <table>, etc., with contextually correct markup to help parse tables, figures, and lists.
  • Avoid images of tables. Use HTML tables instead for a machine-readable format supporting tokenization and summarization.

Optimize for chunk-level retrieval

AI search engines don’t index or retrieve whole pages.

They break content into passages or “chunks” and retrieve the most relevant segments for synthesis. 

Optimize each section like a standalone snippet. 

Specific recommendations:

  • Don’t rely on needing the whole page for context. Each chunk should be independently understandable. 
  • Keep passages semantically tight and self-contained. 
  • Focus on one idea per section: keep each passage tightly focused on a single concept. 
  • Use structured, accessible, and well-formatted HTML with clear subheadings (H2/H3) for every subtopic.

Dig deeper: Chunk, cite, clarify, build: A content framework for AI search

Optimize for answer synthesis

AI search engines synthesize multiple chunks from different sources into a coherent response. 

Aim to make your content easy to extract and logically structured to fit into a multi-source answer.

Specific recommendations:

  • Summarize complex ideas clearly, then expand (A clearly structured “Summary” or “Key takeaways”).
  • Start answers with a direct, concise sentence.
  • Favor a factual, non-promotional tone. 
  • Use structured data to help AI models better classify and extract structured answers.
  • Use natural language Q&A format.

Create B2B content that wins in AI search

An added benefit of these five content types is that they span multiple intent stages – helping you attract prospects and guide them through the funnel. 

Just as important: make sure your AI search measurement systems are in place (we use Profound, GA, and qualitative research) so you can track impact over time. 

And stay tuned to reports and industry updates to keep pace with new developments. 

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A technical SEO blueprint for GEO: Optimize for AI-powered search

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Technical SEO GEO

When it comes to AI-powered search, visibility isn’t just about ranking – it’s about being included in the answer itself.

That’s why generative engine optimization (GEO) matters. The same technical SEO practices that help search engines crawl, index, evaluate, and rank your content also improve your chances of being pulled into AI-generated responses.

The good news? If your technical SEO is already strong, you’re halfway there. The rest comes down to knowing which optimizations do double duty: improving your rankings while boosting your visibility in generative results.

This article breaks down four technical pillars with the biggest impact on GEO success:

  • Schema markup.
  • Site speed and performance.
  • Content structure.
  • Technical infrastructure.

1. Schema markup: Speaking AI’s language

Schema has long been essential for SEO because it removes ambiguity. Search engines use it to understand content type, identify entities, and trigger rich results.

For GEO, schema clarity is even more important. LLMs favor structured data because it reduces ambiguity and speeds extraction. If your content is marked up clearly, it’s more likely to be selected and cited.

Priority schema types for GEO

Focus on evergreen types that improve visibility:

  • FAQPage: Clearly labeled Q&A helps LLMs match user queries and surface your answers.
  • HowTo: Structured step-by-step processes are easy for AI to extract.
  • Product / Service: Defines pricing, availability, and specifications for accurate inclusion.
  • Article / NewsArticle with Author: Authorship adds a trust signal to your content.
  • Organization / LocalBusiness: Reinforces your identity, entity clarity, and local authority.
  • Review / AggregateRating: Provides social proof that AI engines use as quality signals.
  • VideoObject / ImageObject: Makes your multimedia easier for AI to find and feature.
  • BreadcrumbList: Improves context and page hierarchy mapping.

Implementation best practices

  • Use JSON-LD format (Google’s recommended approach).
  • Test rigorously with Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator.
  • Keep markup synced with your visible content – outdated schema erodes trust.
  • Don’t overdo it: mark up only what helps explain the content.

Bottom line: Schema improves your chances of being cited in AI answers, keeping competitors out of the box.

2. Site speed and performance: A (dis)qualifying factor

In SEO, speed has been a Google ranking factor since 2010. In GEO, speed is often a qualifier.

Generative engines pull from billions of pages. If yours is slow or unstable, they can skip it in favor of faster, more reliable sources.

Quick performance wins

  • Compress images; use WebP or AVIF; enable lazy loading.
  • Eliminate render-blocking CSS and JavaScript.
  • Target a server response time (TTFB) under 200ms.
  • Use a CDN to reduce latency.

Bottom line: Speed could be a tiebreaker between equally relevant sources. Faster pages have higher odds of inclusion in AI-generated answers – and they convert better once users click through.

3. Content structure: Making information machine-readable

LLMs rely on clarity. The easier it is for machines to parse and organize your content, the more likely it is to appear in AI-generated results.

Structural essentials

  • Logical URLs: Short, descriptive paths (e.g., /services/website-design/) clarify hierarchy.
  • Internal linking: Use bidirectional linking – pillar pages to subpages and vice versa – to reinforce topical authority.
  • Header tags (H1–H6): Follow a logical hierarchy and avoid skipping levels.
  • Structured elements: Tables, lists, and ordered steps are easier for LLMs to extract than long paragraphs.

Bottom line: Well-structured content signals topical authority, giving your site a better chance of being included in comprehensive AI answers.

4. Technical infrastructure: Ensuring discovery and trust

Even the best schema, structure, and speed won’t matter if LLMs can’t access or trust your content. Your technical infrastructure underpins GEO.

Key considerations

  • Crawlability: Ensure your important pages are accessible to Googlebot and Bingbot, since many LLMs rely on those indexes.
  • Freshness signals: Use accurate publication/modification dates, XML sitemaps with <lastmod>, and visible update notes.
  • Security: HTTPS, valid SSL, and security headers (CSP, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options) establish trust.
  • JavaScript rendering: Don’t hide core content behind heavy client-side rendering. Use server-side rendering for anything essential.

Bottom line: If search or generative engines can’t crawl, verify freshness, or trust your site, your content won’t be considered – no matter how authoritative it is.

Building for search and AI success

The technical elements that drive GEO success aren’t new. They build on SEO fundamentals you already know:

  • Schema.
  • Performance.
  • Structure.
  • Infrastructure.

But in the AI era, these aren’t just best practices – they’re the deciding factors between being featured and being forgotten.

Getting this right will preserve your search visibility and put your content at the center of AI-driven answers.

Read more at Read More

Winning the local SEO game in the age of AI by Edna Chavira

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Search Engine Land live event-- Save your spot!
Search Engine Land live event-- Save your spot!

Google’s AI results are changing everything about how local businesses get discovered—and reviews are now at the center of it all. They shape visibility, build trust, and, when leveraged effectively, drive conversions.

In this live webinar, GatherUp VP of Marketing Mél Attia and renowned Local SEO expert Miriam Ellis will share never-before-seen research findings on how AI and consumer behavior are reshaping local SEO. You’ll discover:

  • How Google’s AI-powered results are prioritizing local businesses
  • What consumers really care about when evaluating businesses
  • Why reputation and reviews are the ranking lever most agencies underutilize
  • New consumer data, benchmarks, and tactical frameworks to boost your clients’ results

Whether you’re helping clients gain visibility, prove trustworthiness, or turn reviews into revenue, this session will equip your agency with actionable insights—and a narrative that makes review strategy impossible to ignore. You can save your seat here!

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Want to win at local SEO? Focus on reviews and customer sentiment

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Local SEO reviews sentiment

Search is changing fast. This year, we’ve seen more instances of search engine results sharing space with AI-powered features that are changing how people find information.

Along with the changes to how search engines display information, we’re also seeing users explore new methods to search for information. Google AI Mode, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity – there are many large language models (LLMs) capturing users’ attention, providing new ways for users online to discover and make decisions about your brand. 

Customer sentiment, shown through reviews and ratings, is becoming a key part of both local and branded search.

For brands looking to stay ahead, focusing on sentiment, review ratings, and authority signals will be key. These are the items that not only affect rankings but also impact what shows up in search snippets and LLM responses.

LLMs like Google’s AI Mode are pulling together and highlighting customer sentiment within their responses when asked about specific brands or for geo-modified search queries, think “home repair near me”. 

For businesses, paying attention to their review strategy and reputation will be key to standing apart in local results, overall organic visibility, and showing up favorably in AI responses. However, even with these changes, many of the tried-and-true best practices that have helped brands succeed in local search in the past still apply. 

Searches with local intent: Google’s AI Mode

When it comes to local search, “near me” queries continue to be highly important. In traditional search, these typically trigger a Local Pack followed by organic blue links.

In Google’s AI Mode, the experience is similar. Users are shown a list of local businesses, often with short descriptions, star ratings, and review summaries.

The links cited are usually citation platforms like Yelp or TripAdvisor, business websites, or publications, and it’s common to find Google Business Profile place cards. Clicking these opens the familiar Google Business Profile interface, keeping users within the Google ecosystem.

Running store near me Google AI Mode

What does this mean for businesses aiming to capture visibility in AI-driven local search results? Many of the foundations of local SEO still apply.

  • NAP consistency: Ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are accurate and consistent across all listings.
  • Citations: Maintain listings on trusted third-party sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and local directories to help reinforce credibility.
  • Google Business Profile optimization: Fully complete and regularly update your profile with accurate info, photos, business hours, and relevant categories.
  • Reviews: Generate and respond to reviews to build trust and signal relevance to both users and search engines.

Branded search results for local businesses

When searching for a local business using branded terms in AI Mode, it’s common to see many of the same elements and data sources as traditional search. These business overviews often include a description of the company, the products or services offered, and customer sentiment.

Often, the customer sentiment section summarizes review data pulled from multiple sources, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, industry-specific sites such as Apartments.com, and Google Business Profile.

Rachel's Ginger Beer Google AI Mode reviews

What’s unique about AI Mode is that it provides unbiased summaries of pros and cons about a business based directly on available customer reviews, which can come directly from Google Business Profile or be a mixed of review data from trusted online sources. These clear overviews include overall sentiment and often link to the business profiles.

AI Mode isn’t the first time Google has experimented with review summaries.

Some industries, like restaurants, already have “Review Summaries” in organic search results. These generative AI summaries highlight Google Business Profile review data, usually with a more positive tone, alongside the star rating and list of reviews.

Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe Google review summaries

The importance of reviews

Reviews shape how your brand appears online, whether they are displayed front and center on your Google Business Profile or surfaced as snippets in responses from LLMs. Google’s AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all returned some information or mention of customer reviews when searching for local businesses, especially for branded queries. 

Von Elrod's Beer Garden Perplexity reviews

These responses emphasize how both positive and negative offline experiences can influence what is said about your brand online and the importance of customer perception, especially when those experiences get highlighted for customers who may be discovering your brand for the first time. 

West46 reviews and vibe ChatGPT

Businesses need to pay attention to reviews, if not across all platforms, then at least on Google Business Profile. Review data is being pulled into AI-driven results and also plays a role in local search visibility.

Google is placing more emphasis on reviews. In July, Google updated its documentation on local search rankings, with the most notable change found in the Prominence section:

“Prominence means how well-known a business is. Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results. This factor’s also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”

How can businesses adapt?

By following the tactics local businesses should already be doing to succeed in local search:

  •  Focus on generating new, recent reviews.
  •  Respond to both positive and negative reviews.
  •  Read reviews to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Seeing a trend in negative reviews? That could indicate it’s time to make some changes and address those weaknesses.
  • Monitor brand mentions not just for backlinks but also to understand what people are saying about your business online, including community forums, social media platforms, and online publications.

In addition to traditional review sites, platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and Quora are showing up more frequently in branded and local search results. These conversations are also being picked up and summarized in tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT. That means the things people are saying about your business in comment threads or short-form videos can influence how your brand is being represented across both organic and AI-powered results.

What else can be done:

  • Look closely at how your business is perceived online and do the same for your competitors.
  • Compare your review count and average star rating to those of businesses showing up alongside you in the Local Pack. How does your business stack up?
  • Check how AI tools like LLMs or Google’s AI Mode describe your competitors during branded searches and identify where they source that information.
  • Try asking AI tools to compare your business and a competitor. The way these tools summarize differences can give insight into strengths, weaknesses, and areas where you may need to improve to stay competitive in the market.

LLM data sources

LLMs pull from a range of online sources to build summaries about businesses. For local and branded search queries, much of the information they use closely mirrors what shows up in traditional organic search results. This includes data from:

  • Google Business Profiles.
  • Third-party review sites.
  • Official business websites.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Online directories and aggregators.
  • News articles.
  • Public conversations on forums or social media.

LLMs don’t use the same ranking algorithm as Google Search, but they rely on much of the same publicly available information.

Why this matters:

  • The efforts businesses make to improve local SEO, such as maintaining accurate listings, collecting reviews, and building authority, also help shape how their brand is represented in AI-generated search results.
  • Reinforces the importance of managing your presence across multiple platforms and staying aware of where your brand is mentioned.
  • Highlights trusted third-party sites where your business may be listed but not actively managed. These listings still influence visibility and should not be overlooked.
  • Identifies which platforms are trusted within your specific industry, revealing opportunities to strengthen your presence on niche or vertical-specific sites.

Managing reputation at scale for multi-location businesses

For multi-location and microbrand businesses, managing sentiment at the local level adds another layer of complexity. It is not just about how the overall brand is perceived, but how each location appears in search results. This is especially important for industries like senior living, apartment communities, and healthcare, where customer experience and trust are crucial in decision-making. 

A few negative reviews tied to a single location can shape perception across the board. That is why reputation strategies need to scale while still staying localized. Each location needs a clear plan to monitor feedback, respond to reviews, and build a strong presence in both traditional and AI-powered search results.

Core local SEO principles remain

Search is evolving fast, and we can expect more LLMs and AI-powered features to continue to shape how information is delivered to users.

Customer sentiment and brand perception are now more important in shaping how a business appears online, whether it’s in traditional organic search results or another platform.

Why?

Because perception matters, both online and in real life. Tools like Google’s AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT are putting reviews, ratings, and sentiment summaries front and center, making customer feedback more visible than ever. 

Now is the time for brands to take a close look at how they appear in LLMs, understand the feedback being surfaced, and identify areas to improve. Doing this not only helps with visibility in AI-driven search but also strengthens your local market presence.

As part of a broader brand reputation and visibility strategy, it’s essential to regularly monitor how your business is showing up in both traditional and AI-powered search results. That includes checking branded SERP features like AI Overviews, People Also Ask, video carousels, and social content pull-ins. These elements shift often, and staying aware of what’s being surfaced helps inform both SEO and reputation efforts. 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. To keep up with the changing search landscape, you just need to focus your efforts in the right direction.

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How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps)

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More of your customers are using AI to research products before they buy. Are you prepared?

To put this into perspective:

Last year, you might’ve searched “best bed sheets” on Google and scrolled through a few links or a Shopping ad.

Google SERP – Best bed sheets

This year, you’re asking ChatGPT:

“I sleep hot and have sensitive skin. Can you recommend some breathable bed sheets that won’t irritate me?”

Totally different input. Totally different rules for showing up.

AI Search still cares about the fundamentals — content, crawlability, internal links, and high-quality backlinks. But now, your visibility is influenced by more than just your website.

AI models reflect the full picture:

  • What people say about your brand
  • Where you’re mentioned
  • How your product is reviewed

It’s not just keyword targeting — it’s relevance engineering.

Shoutout to Mike King @ iPullRank for coining this term.

That’s where AI Search Optimization comes in.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

  • Make your product pages visible and understandable to LLMs
  • Structure your data with schema and product feeds
  • Submit your catalog to AI search platforms
  • Shift from keyword targeting to prompts and personas
  • Build an AI-friendly brand presence across the web
  • Track your visibility in a probabilistic, answer-first world

The future of ecommerce search isn’t about rankings. It’s about being part of the answer. This guide will show you how.

Step 1: Make Your PDPs Crawlable and Renderable

Before you do anything, start here: can bots actually see your product content?

When people started taking AI tools and chatbots seriously in 2022/23, some site owners turned to blocking their crawlers from accessing their site.

But if you block the crawler, it won’t be able to serve your pages in its responses.

Don’t Block AI Crawlers in Your Robots.txt File

Unless you actively took the step to block them, you shouldn’t need to do anything here. But it’s still worth verifying there are no lines in your robots.txt file like:

code icon
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Don’t Serve Important Content Using JavaScript

The other aspect of crawlability to consider is how you’re serving your content.

Because right now, bots from the likes of ChatGPT and Perplexity do not appear to process JavaScript (although Google’s Gemini can). If your content is being loaded dynamically, they’re likely missing it completely.

That includes:

  • Product descriptions
  • Pricing
  • Images
  • Schema markup

If it’s not in the raw HTML, LLMs like these can’t see it. And if they can’t see it, you won’t show up in AI-generated product recommendations.

To make sure you’re not causing crawling issues here, you first need to understand how your ecommerce platform handles JavaScript. Every platform is different:

  • Shopify: Generally fine, but watch out for third-party apps injecting schema or content via JS.
  • WooCommerce: Depends heavily on your theme. Many use plugins that load parts of the page with JS.
  • Custom stacks: If you’re using React, Vue, or similar frameworks, check whether product pages render server-side or after load.

Next, check your PDPs manually. You can do this by right-clicking and selecting “Inspect” in your browser.

Nike – Inspecting page

Then press Command+Shift+P on Mac, or Control+Shift+P on Windows/Linux.

In the Command Menu, start typing “javascript” and then select “Disable JavaScript”:

Inspect – Disable JavaScript

Reload the page, and you’ll see how it looks without JavaScript enabled — in other words, how LLMs like ChatGPT see the page:

Nike page without JavaScript enabled

In the Nike example above, the LLM would still see key info like the product title, description, and price.

But in the example below…

Nothing appears with JavaScript disabled

…it would see nothing.

You can see on the right that there’s still page code loading. But nothing is actually displayed to the user with JavaScript disabled. Meaning AI tools wouldn’t be able to pull any info from this page.

If you are using apps or components that rely on JavaScript to display key content, talk to your dev team about server-side rendering (SSR) or prerendering. The goal is to ensure all critical product info is delivered in the first HTML response.

Further reading: What Is JavaScript SEO? 6 Best Practices to Boost Rankings

Step 2: Add Structured Schema Markup

Once your product pages are crawlable, the next step is making them understandable.

Structured data — specifically Schema.org markup in JSON-LD format — helps systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google understand what your product is, how much it costs, whether it’s in stock, and more.

In the world of SEO, we’ve long used schema markup to improve how our pages appear in traditional search results.

Here’s an example of a traditional Google results enhanced with schema markup, appearing as a rich snippets:

Review rich snippet

But for LLM visibility, schema helps the AI tools understand key details about your products. Which makes it easier for them to pull in your products when they’re making recommendations for users.

How do we know this?

Because Microsoft has told us. The tech giant, a major investor in OpenAI (behind ChatGPT), said:

“[Structured data] makes it easier for search engines not only to index your content, but to surface it accurately and richly in search results, shopping experiences, and AI-driven assistants.”

(Interestingly, Microsoft/Bing recommends combining this with IndexNow — a service that automatically pings search engines when you update your content.)

Plus, using structured data just makes sense — it helps make it easier for complex machines to understand our content. Whether that’s a search engine or an LLM, providing more context is generally always going to be a good idea.

Here’s how to use structured data to improve your ecommerce store’s LLM visibility:

Focus on Product Pages First

While there’s value in marking up other templates (like category pages, blog posts, or FAQs), your product pages are where it counts most.

This is the data that LLMs and search engines will use to:

  • Associate your product with relevant categories and attributes
  • Match your offering to long-tail purchase prompts
  • Feed structured knowledge into their product and shopping systems

Here are the fields to include:

  • @type: Product
  • GTIN, SKU, MPN
  • Brand
  • Description
  • Offer block (price, currency, availability, URL)
  • Review/rating info if available

Use your schema to reflect reality, not just fill fields. But also add as much context as you can.

If your product is eco-friendly, US-made, sweatproof — encode it. The better your markup, the more context LLMs have to surface your product in nuanced prompts.

Validate Your Schema and Confirm It’s Visible

Check your schema is valid with tools like:

Nike Schema Validator Result

Make sure the schema is present in the raw HTML — not loaded with JavaScript.

Bonus: Extend to Reviews, FAQs, HowTo

Once your product markup is solid, consider adding:

  • Review and AggregateRating blocks
  • FAQPage markup for your PDPs or Help Center
  • HowTo schema for tutorial content or sharing post-purchase use cases

These all help build context around your product and can influence how LLMs present or recommend it.

Once you’ve marked up your product pages, the next step is scaling an effective structure across your entire catalog. That’s where a high-quality product feed comes in.

Step 3: Build a High-Quality Product Feed

Structured feeds have been essential for Google Shopping, Meta Advantage+, and TikTok Shop for a while.

And now, they’re becoming equally important for AI-powered discovery. Especially as platforms like Perplexity and OpenAI build out product recommendation systems.

Think of your feed as the dataset LLMs will eventually pull from when answering questions like this:

ChatGPT – Bed sheets – Verified reviews

Perplexity has launched a Merchant Program accepting feed uploads, called the Perplexity Merchant Program. This lets ecommerce sellers have even more control over how their products can appear in AI responses.

Plus, OpenAI is quietly testing ways to let store owners upload feeds to improve their AI responses for product recommendations.

These feeds will likely drive future AI shopping experiences across chat, search, and even voice interfaces.

So how do you set your product feeds up in an LLM-friendly way?

What to Include

To optimize your product feeds for AI, start with the essentials:

  • Product title
  • Description
  • Price
  • Availability
  • Product URL
  • GTIN or MPN + Brand
  • Image URL

Note: Tools like ChatGPT may still generate their own versions of some of these (like titles). But it’ll still typically use information from places like your product feeds to inform its responses.

After you’ve added the basics, layer in high-value fields like:

  • Category or taxonomy
  • Color, material, and size variants
  • Shipping cost and speed
  • Review count and star rating
  • Custom labels for campaigns or segmentation

Use the same language your customers use.

This means writing product information the way your customers actually talk and search, not how your internal teams or suppliers describe things. For example:

Instead of:

“Athletic footwear with moisture-wicking synthetic upper”

Write:

“Running shoes that keep your feet dry”

How do you find out how they talk?

Look at your customer reviews, support tickets, and search queries that already drive traffic to your store.

For example, they might search for “cozy sweater” not “knitted pullover.” This can inform your title and description choices.

How to Submit Product Feeds to LLMs

Here’s how to submit your product feeds for three of the biggest AI interfaces.

Perplexity:

In 2024, Perplexity launched their Merchant Program. This fuels the platform’s shopping experience for Pro users. Your products may appear in carousel-style answers and shopping-focused prompts, and shoppers can buy without leaving Perplexity.

You can find out more about the program and sign up here.

OpenAI (ChatGPT):

OpenAI is piloting product discovery via ChatGPT’s “Search + Product Discovery” initiative. They’re exploring using uploaded feeds to power future buying experiences inside ChatGP.

Fill out this interest form to apply.

Google Merchant Center (AI Mode and Gemini):

Google’s Merchant Center feeds power Shopping Ads, organic Shopping listings, and likely influence how Google’s AI systems interpret and surface your products in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Step 4: Monitor LLM Crawlers

Once you’ve put all the steps in place to make your ecommerce store crawlable by LLMs, the next step is to make sure they’re actually accessing your content and product pages.

Here’s how to do that:

Set Up Bot Monitoring

Use server logs or your CDN (like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai) to track requests from:

  • GPTBot: This user agent is used by OpenAI to crawl web content that may be used in training their generative AI foundation models.
  • OAI-SearchBot: Used by OpenAI to link to and surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.
  • PerplexityBot: Identifies Perplexity’s AI search crawler when it accesses websites.
  • Google uses various Googlebot user agents to crawl the web, depending on the type of content being crawled (e.g., desktop, mobile, images). You can find a detailed list of common Googlebot user agent strings and their purposes in resources from Google for Developers.

Cloudflare – AI audit – Samrhea

For each of these bots, track:

  • Which pages they’re crawling (PDPs, collection pages, sitemap, feed)
  • How often they come back
  • How crawl patterns evolve over time

This helps confirm they’re discovering your content and gives you a baseline to measure progress.

Step 5: Shift from Keyword Lists to Prompts and Personas

Keyword research is still important. But you also need to think about how your customers are likely to prompt AI tools when looking for products like yours.

LLMs answer questions, interpret context, and make recommendations based on how people naturally speak.

That means you need to rethink how you optimize for product discovery. Not by keywords alone, but by personas, use cases, and prompt formats.

Start With What You Know

Your best-performing SEO and paid search keywords are still the foundation. They tell you:

  • Which products and categories convert
  • How people describe their intent in short-form searches
  • Which attributes drive action (e.g., “cooling sheets,” “queen size,” “organic cotton”)

Use these to anchor your prompt strategy — but expand outward.

Think in Prompts, Not Just Queries

As people become more savvy with how AI tools work, more and more shoppers are going beyond just typing in “best bed sheets.” They’re asking:

Medium-length prompts:

  • “Best cooling sheets for hot sleepers”
  • “Softest bed sheets under $100”
  • “What kind of sheets stay on the bed all night?”

Longer, context-rich prompts:

  • “I’m a side sleeper who gets hot at night. What bed sheets will stay cool and not cling to my skin?”
  • “Looking for breathable, hypoallergenic sheets that work well in humid climates”
  • “I have sensitive skin and eczema. What’s a good sheet material that won’t irritate me?”

Your goal is to build context around your products that lines up with this kind of language and framing.

Note: You can’t predict exactly what your customers will ask, and there are infinite ways they can do it. But thinking about prompts — not just keywords — will put you in a good place to be able to optimize your ecommerce pages for LLMs.

Map Your Catalog to Prompt-Based Use Cases

Think in layers:

  • By need: cooling, breathable, wrinkle-resistant, organic
  • By persona: hot sleeper, allergy sufferer, luxury buyer, college student
  • By situation: new apartment, guest bedroom, summer refresh, wedding registry
  • By problem: sheets come loose, feel scratchy, trap heat, shrink in the wash

This is how you start to think of your items like answers and solutions, not just products.

Use These Prompts to Guide Content and Merchandising

Let this prompt structure inform your:

  • Product page copy and comparison points
  • Blog posts and videos
  • Social media posts
  • FAQs and Help Center content
  • Category names and filters
  • Product feed descriptions and attributes

LLMs can pull from all of it — so make sure you’re using the kind of language your real customers use everywhere.

Step 6: Seed Your Brand Across the Web

Even if your site is crawlable, your schema is perfect, and your feed is super optimized — LLMs still learn about your brand based on what people are saying about you elsewhere.

They’re trained on massive web-scale datasets, so third-party content — like reviews, Reddit mentions, YouTube transcripts, forums, blog posts — can carry as much (or more) weight than your owned channels.

If you want to show up in AI answers, your brand needs to already exist in the wider conversation.

Where You Want to Show Up

AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude all lean on third-party review sites and forums in their answers to brand and product-related queries.

ChatGPT – Bed sheets – Forum citations

These are the places you’ll want to show up in order to be included in those answers:

  • Review sites: Trustpilot, Amazon, Google Reviews, BBB, niche review sites
  • Reddit, Quora, & niche forums: Participate in threads and subtly seed your product category (without being spammy)
  • YouTube: Appear in titles, transcripts, and product comparisons — even if you’re not the creator (consider partnering with creators to do this)
  • Affiliate content: Get included in roundups, listicles, and side-by-side comparisons

Showing up in these places is half the battle. The other component is how you show up.

Ideally, you’ll want to be mentioned alongside competitors (“like Brooklinen but…”). And in the right, relevant context (“these are some of the best cooling sheets for eczema”).

A lot of this is going to be completely out of your control (especially on platforms like Reddit). But good marketing practices can make it more likely that people will naturally talk about your brand in the way you want them to.

This Is Just Good Marketing

Gaining LLM visibility is a byproduct of an effective multichannel marketing strategy.

If you’re running a strong content program, building brand awareness, and actively participating in your category — you’re already seeding relevance.

What’s new is the urgency: LLMs are already using these signals to decide which brands deserve to be recommended.

Related: See our LLM Seeding Playbook for tactics, templates, and outreach strategies.

Step 7: Track Your AI Search Visibility

In traditional SEO, visibility was deterministic: rank #1 for a keyword, get X% of clicks.

That model is breaking.

AI-powered discovery works differently. Your brand might appear in one version of a response, but not the next.

Whether your ecommerce store is included depends on how the user phrases their prompt, how much brand recognition you have, and how often you’re referenced across the web.

So, your measurement strategy needs to adapt.

What to Track

Start by building a prompt library — real questions your customers might ask:

  • Organize prompts by topic (e.g., cooling sheets, organic materials, luxury bedding)
  • Group them by persona (e.g., hot sleepers, allergy sufferers, budget-conscious buyers)
  • Then choose a tool to test visibility: like Semrush AI SEO Toolkit, Peec.AI, or Profound

Here’s how it looks in Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit:

Semrush AI Toolkit – Questions

For each prompt, ask:

  • Does your brand show up?
  • If not, who does?
  • What sources are the tools citing?
  • What kind of language are the tools using?

Over time, this gives you a clearer picture of how visible your brand is across different use cases.

LLM Optimization Is Still New, But It’s Gaining Traction Fast

AI-driven search is already reshaping how people discover products. The shift is subtle now, but it won’t stay that way for long.

What used to be a clear SEO vs. paid search strategy is now blending into a broader question:

When someone asks a smart machine what to buy… will it know you exist?

This guide gave you a playbook to start answering that question:

  • Clean up your technical foundation (crawlability, schema, product feeds)
  • Rethink your discovery strategy around prompts and personas
  • Show up across the web in ways that reinforce what makes your brand unique

It’s a lot. But the good news?

If you’ve already invested in great products, strong messaging, and a multi-channel strategy, you’re not starting from scratch.

Still need help nailing the fundamentals?

Check out these guides:

The post How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps) appeared first on Backlinko.

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Branded GEO: How to Control What AI Says About Your Brand

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A few months back, one of my clients pinged me on Slack and said:

“We keep hearing on sales calls that ChatGPT says we don’t offer a feature we’ve had for years! How can we fix this?”

Sure enough, when prompted, ChatGPT confidently responded, “No, the platform does not have that feature, but this other competitor does!”.

For obvious reasons, this was worrying for the client.

Not only was ChatGPT spreading misinformation about their product, it was actively pitching an alternative solution.

The source of the misinformation: A single old blog post that hadn’t been updated in two years.

How many potential buyers decided not to book a sales call because of this?

How many had discovered a new competitor instead?

This issue signals a large shift in how bottom-of-funnel product research is done.

Before: Your website was the source of truth.

It was your “always on” salesperson. You kept your homepage and product pages fresh, and that was where buyers did their digging.

Now: Large language models (LLMs) are a product research assistant. A new touchpoint at a critical stage in the buying journey.

They’re the modern day gatekeepers, acting as the layer between you and your target audience, communicating on your behalf.

And their source of info? It’s often sources you’d forgotten even existed.

As marketers, it falls to us to make sure LLMs are communicating the right things in the right way about our products and services.

In this article, I’ll show you the 7-step playbook my team is developing to tackle this challenge — what we’re calling Branded Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

Free resource: For step 6, we’ve created a handy spreadsheet to help you ideate common questions. Download it here.

What is Branded GEO?

Branded GEO is the process of making sure conversational AIs and LLMs give accurate, helpful, and up-to-date answers about your brand. It focuses on branded prompts and queries.

This targets a highly valuable audience segment, including those who are:

  • In the market to buy a solution or service like yours
  • Already know you are a viable option and are exploring your offer

This segment is showing the highest intent — they’re asking questions about your product, and they’re using your brand name in their prompts.

Like branded SEO, branded GEO is easier to influence. It’s more actionable than trying to optimize for broad industry queries. For that reason, it’s a fantastic starting point if you want to explore GEO.

Note: Generative engine optimization is the broader practice of optimizing for AI-powered search systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews. Branded GEO is a specific subset focused on branded queries.

For the following exercise, I’ll use ChatGPT as the LLM and the B2B SaaS product, Airtable, as an example.

Airtable has recently undergone some serious positioning and product pivots, so it illustrates the new challenges of branded GEO.

Let’s start with a quick setup.

Step 1: Set Up Your LLM

Head to ChatGPT and turn on temporary mode. This avoids any personalization skewing your results.

ChatGPT – Temporary Chat

Also turn on the “search” feature — this ensures ChatGPT is accessing information after June 2024 when it was last trained.

This is currently the data we can influence.

Step 2: Enter Your First Branded Prompt

Next, prompt ChatGPT with a simple question: “What is [your brand name]?”.

Here are the results for Airtable:

ChatGPT – What is Airtable

Step 3: Analyze the Response

Pay attention to how ChatGPT describes your product and company.

Is it accurate? Is it how you would describe your company?

Or do things need to change?

With Airtable, we see what must be a frustrating situation playing out.

Airtable pivoted in June 2025, shifting away from their “super powerful spreadsheet” positioning and relaunching as an:

“AI-native app platform, where the magic of vibe coding meets enterprise reliability and the scalability of AI agents”.

That’s quite the change. And ChatGPT hasn’t caught up yet.

Here’s how Airtable positions themselves versus how ChatGPT does:

How Airtable describes themselves How ChatGPT describes Airtable
Website: “Next gen app building platform” “cloud-based, no-code platform”
Website: “Deploy thousands of agents inside your apps” “simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a relational database”
Homepage meta title: “AI App Building for Enterprise” “hybrid spreadsheet‑database”
LinkedIn page: “AI-Native App Platform” Common use cases: “Project management”

Luckily, most readers are unlikely to see such a drastic mismatch.

But at the current rate of technological innovation, almost all companies are undergoing continuous reinvention, and so you are likely to find outdated features and positioning.

Step 4: Find the Source of Misinformation

In this step, we start to tackle the misinformation by looking for its source.

We usually find that ChatGPT has sourced its information from:

  • An outdated article
  • A LinkedIn page that hasn’t been updated in three years
  • A landing page that reflects the “old you”
  • A hallucination due to completely missing information on that topic

As a quick example, I was recently living in Melbourne, and ChatGPT picked that up from a LinkedIn post and stated that my agency, Spicy Margarita, was founded in Melbourne. (We’re based in the UK).

Despite my travel plans, I wasn’t keen to be positioned as an Australian company, so I quickly removed that mention of Melbourne, and ChatGPT’s response adapted.

To address the misinformation you find, visit the sources used and look for a match between the language used by ChatGPT and the words on the page.

See that it says you cost $1,000? Find the source that says that and update it. Fixing the issue is often this simple (unless there is hallucination, which we address in the next step).

To operationalize this process, collate all the sources driving misinformation into a spreadsheet and note down:

  • Whether that source should be deleted or updated
  • Specific text that needs to be changed
  • Specific text that needs to be added — for example, if a feature is missing, you can spell it out in the sources

Backlinko – GEO Questions Worksheet

For our Airtable example, we can see that a highly trusted source (Wikipedia) is currently out of date.

ChatGPT – Wikipedia source

If we worked for Airtable, we’d start with the Wikipedia article. They should note this down and edit this page with their new positioning as soon as possible.

As a major, trusted source of internet knowledge, updating Wikipedia is likely to help influence LLMs, but it may not fix the positioning issue in one fell swoop.

Step 5: Publish, Update, or Delete Sources

For smaller brands with a relatively small web footprint, we find this task is more straightforward.

Take your latest positioning, messaging, and features, and make sure they are represented in key sources LLMs are referencing. Ideally, refresh every source that mentions your brand — from social media accounts to on-site and off-site web pages.

Brands with a larger web presence will find this task more challenging.

If, like Airtable, you have outdated articles written about you across 100s of websites you don’t control, outreach may need to be operationalized to update or take down those sources. If you have no luck with that, we’d suggest running a new campaign that seeds LLMs with lots of new sources that contain your up-to-date information.

Further reading: LLM Seeding: A New Strategy to Get Mentioned and Cited by LLMs

Given sources like Zapier and Airtable’s own starter guide (pictured below) still have their old positioning, there’s more work to do.

Airtable – Homepage

Here’s the branded GEO adjustment we would make for Wikipedia:

Airtable’s Wikipedia Before Airtable’s Wikipedia After
“Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid, with the features of a database but applied to a spreadsheet. The fields in an Airtable table are similar to cells in a spreadsheet, but have types such as ‘checkbox’, ‘phone number’, and ‘drop-down list’, and can reference file attachments like images.” “As of June 2025, Airtable now operates as an AI-native app platform, enabling users to build, edit, and automate production-ready business apps through natural-language prompts via its AI assistant Omni and embedded Field Agents.”

You may also find that LLMs are hallucinating something entirely. This can’t be fixed by updating or removing a source. This often happens because they didn’t find an answer in any sources.

If LLMs are hallucinating an answer, you’ll want to try to influence the answer by creating a source that answers the question with the correct information.

Start building a content roadmap with new topics to cover, directly answering those key questions your target buyer has.

These can be hosted on your blog or help center, and serve dual purposes: for branded GEO and as helpful sales material.

Step 6: Expand Your Branded Question Prompts

So far, we’ve asked just one question about your brand.

But, prospective customers are likely asking many, many questions that you’ll want to monitor.

Unfortunately, exact data on those questions is still not available.

Prompts are unlike traditional keywords. They’re often longer and more personalized. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize for the less long-tail prompts and hope that bleeds through.

We can make educated guesses at the topics LLM users are asking questions about using six methods:

1. Ask Your Inbound Leads

I ask every inbound lead who found me via ChatGPT what their prompts and journey were. One even pulled the conversation up and read the exact prompt back to me — it said “I want an SEO agency in the B2B space who is staying up-to-date with AI,” and our agency came up.

This kind of insight is gold dust.

It shows you how your audience prompts, what issues they face, and what content and GEO efforts of yours are already working.

A similar technique is to look in sales insights platforms like Gong for mentions of ChatGPT and to encourage your sales team to ask the question for you.

2. Start With Common Questions

Begin with general questions that people ask about brands. Then, tailor those questions to fit your specific situation.

We’ve made a spreadsheet template to help you find the questions people ask AI about your brand.

Backlinko – GEO Questions Worksheet – Source Tracking

3. Use a Keyword Research Tool

Head to your keyword research tool of choice and enter your brand name.

In Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, you can filter on “Questions” to pull a full list of the questions people are asking about your brand.

Keyword Magic Tool – Airtable – Questions

Find questions that someone considering your product might ask.

For example, these are a few I’d select for the Airtable before their pivot. Each question factors into the purchase decision.

 
Questions
is airtable free​
how much does airtable cost​
how much does airtable enterprise cost​
is airtable only for apple​
is airtable a crm​
does airtable have a desktop app​
can airtable send emails​
does airtable integrate with outlook​
can airtable be integrated into wordpress
can airtable be integrated with shopify​
does airtable have an api​

4. Use Google Autocomplete

Another helpful tool for finding audience questions is Google Autocomplete.

Google Search Suggest – Is Airtable b

You’ll find autocomplete is a part of normal Google Search. It anticipates and suggests search queries as you type, making predictions based on popular searches, your location, and your search history (so do this in incognito mode).

Enter these queries to see what people are asking:

  • Is [brand name]
  • How [brand name]
  • Does [brand name]
  • Where [brand name]
  • When [brand name]
  • What [brand name]

You can get more suggestions by adding each letter of the alphabet afterward, too. Like this:

Google Search Suggest – Is Airtable b

To speed things up, I recommend taking screenshots of each autocomplete and uploading them all to ChatGPT for extraction and grouping.

5. Use ChatGPT Autocomplete

If you’re lucky enough to be represented in ChatGPT autocomplete already (at the time of writing, only very large brands are), this is also a place to dig into.

ChatGPT – Search suggestion – Does Apple

6. Talk to Your Sales and Support Teams

When we do this exercise with clients, we run a Q&A session with both the sales team and customer support teams.

This first-party insight is invaluable for predicting the questions your target audience has.

Here are six top questions from our client questionnaire:

  • What common questions about your product do you get from prospects on sales calls?
  • What do prospects misunderstand or get wrong before speaking to you?
  • What common objections about your brand do you get from prospects?
  • Do prospects ever mention ChatGPT and what they found there?
  • What questions do people typically ask in your website chat about [brand name]?
  • What usually triggers prospects to book a call or sign up for [brand name] now?

Step 7: Repeat

Now you’ve gathered your questions, it’s time to see how LLMs answer them and fix up the answers.

To do this, repeat steps 1-5.

Tracking the Impact of Branded GEO Work

The impact of branded GEO is twofold:

  1. Relief: From knowing you’re being accurately represented by LLMs.
  2. Additional Conversions: From removing inaccuracies and misinformation, adequately filling content gaps in your lower sales funnel, and better informing buyers before they join sales calls.

To track the impact of this exercise, we recommend:

  1. Monitoring LLM output: Take your list of questions and compare the before and after. Monitor those regularly to confirm continued accuracy.
  2. Track conversion metrics: Compare key conversion rates (sign-ups, demo requests, sales) before and after your LLM content improvements. I suggest you add a “Where did you hear about us?” to your sales booking forms to closely monitor leads that started in LLMs.
  3. Sales team feedback: With the example in the introduction of this article, the sales team had been facing misinformation issues. If you’ve faced a similar issue, stay in close contact with them so get a pulse check on the impact.

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