5 Things Businesses Should Do Today to Stay Visible in AI Search

Although basic SEO strategies used to be enough, successful business sites now want to be visible in AI-generated search results across the big tech giants (OpenAI, Yandex, Google, Bing, etc.). As a result, new and old sites alike need to update their content and data to reflect modern GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) strategies. In this article, we discuss five essential things any business should do today to stay visible in the modern AI search landscape.

1. Restructure Your Content

One of the most important ways you can make your business site more visible in search is by restructuring your content to be AI-friendly. Start by making sure that everything on your site is super readable to both humans and machines. Each website should have a clear layout with headings, subheadings, bulleted lists, and other elements. You can also use structural elements like FAQs and product placements. The aim here is to make your content easily digestible and summarizable by AI.

The content on every page of your business site should also be divided into content clusters. AI models prefer when information is separated into small and discrete but interrelated clusters so that it can easily crawl and summarize what your team has written. Instead of writing incredibly long pieces, break your content up into smaller, interconnected pieces that each address a unique part of each topic.

Once you have made all your content easier to digest, work on the schema (data structure) on your site. Schema markup allows your site to tell the AI models behind modern search engines what everything is and the context of each page. Schema markup also increases the likelihood of mentions and citations.

2. Get Quality Backlinks

To show up high in AI-generated search or to show up in AI Overviews, your business site will also need quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites to your business site, and quality backlinks are from the most reputable and authoritative sources. These were very important as part of any SEO strategy and remain important now that most modern search engines run on AI.

Having high-quality backlinks to your business site is important for AI visibility because it helps demonstrate to large language models (LLMs) that your brand is trustworthy and authoritative in your specific industry. You can develop them organically through high-quality, backlink-worthy content, or you can sometimes work directly with major movers in your market to earn backlinks to your site. Quality backlinks will drive referral traffic, which should lead to even more backlinks.

3. Increase Brand Authority

Another major way to make your site more visible in AI search is by increasing your brand authority. The algorithms behind modern search engines look for relevant content from sources they consider authoritative. The simplest way to do this is to write accurate content and include citations and backlinks to your sources to demonstrate that you have done your research. You can also demonstrate brand authority by partnering with major brands in your industry.

Another basic way to improve brand authority is to continuously publish new, unique content on your site. These new search algorithms are trained to find information that is new or recently updated, so make sure that you are comprehensively covering everything that you should. Look for gaps and stay on top of current trends so that you can post on a regular publishing schedule.

4. Improve Your Technical SEO

Your business site will also be much more visible in AI search if you optimize its infrastructure (technical SEO). Start by ensuring there are no technical glitches, including broken links, missing tags, or slow-loading pages. AI should be able to easily crawl and index your site in milliseconds, so remove any obstacles that might slow the process.

Part of your technical SEO strategy should also be to optimize your business site for mobile use. Double-check that everything is structured so that it runs smoothly and quickly on both laptops/desktops and mobile devices. While you’re at it, add accessibility improvements, such as intuitive navigation and alt text for images.

5. Use the Right Metrics

Part of staying visible in AI search is also tracking the right metrics. Helpful tools like Semrush or Google Search Console will provide you with basic info like clicks, impressions, and queries so that you can understand how often your content is appearing in AI search. 

On top of that foundation, you need to track metrics like search volume and click-through rates to see how often you are being searched for and whether users are actually clicking through summaries and results pages to your site. Any of the metrics you track can inform your content strategy.

You should track brand sentiment to see not only how often your brand is mentioned online but also whether those mentions portray it in a positive, neutral, or negative light. Track competitive share of voice as well to see what percentage of mentions and citations your site is generating compared to major competitors.