After helping many B2B companies recover from losing their organic traffic due to Google’s core updates, I’ve learned a key lesson: traditional SEO is fading, but search optimization is not.
In this guide, I will try to show as much as possible how to optimize your content for AI search.
(Advice: this guide is not for those who are still stuck in 2022 and are afraid of using ChatGPT to write their blog content. The arena has changed.)
Want to future-proof your AI-search visibility? Book a free AI SEO audit to see how your content performs in AI search results and get a tailored optimization roadmap.
AI search optimization means shaping your content so AI search engines can easily find it, understand it, and include it in their answers.
Unlike classic SEO, where the goal is to rank high in search results, AI search optimization aims to get your content featured inside the actual AI-generated response.
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity a question about your niche, you want your insights to show up.
This is important because nearly all companies that depend on SEO have seen traffic drop. Research shows that:
Google users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary.
That means there’s a big shift, and you must work to increase your AI search visibility.
A research showing what users typically do when there's an AI summary on their search page vs. what they do when there is no AI summary on the search page.
AI search tools don’t work like Google. They don’t rank whole pages. Instead, they break content into smaller chunks and pull out the most useful parts to build an answer.
Kevin Indig studied over 7,000 AI chatbot citations and found three key patterns:
Pages that get cited the most in AI search are longer and more detailed. When your content goes deep into a topic, it’s more likely to answer a wide range of questions. That gives AI tools more chances to find and include your insights.
AI tools are more likely to mention brands that people search for often. There’s a clear connection between how popular your brand is and how often it gets picked up in AI answers. If your brand is well-known, you’re more likely to show up.
Old SEO metrics like backlinks and domain authority don’t have as much weight in AI search. What matters most now is how complete and helpful your content is.
Bottom line: If you want your company to show up in AI answers, focus on writing content that is deep, clear, and easy to understand.
According to Kevin Indig's research, these are the factors that influence AI search visibility the most.
AI search platforms scan content in chunks, not full pages. This means every section of your content needs to stand alone.
Following Aleyda Solis's AI Search Checklist, structure your content so each passage can be understood independently:
AI platforms love content that directly answers questions. Structure your sections like this:
Question: What is predictive maintenance?
Answer: Predictive maintenance uses data analysis to predict when equipment will fail, allowing companies to perform maintenance just before problems occur.
This format makes it easy for AI systems to extract and cite your information.
Add schema markup to help AI models better classify your content:
Getting cited by AI platforms requires content that meets high trust and clarity standards.
Your content should include:
You can't compete with the big guys in everything. But if you use tools like AI automation, generative AI content creation, you can at least beat the big guys in one thing and then just max it out. - Lari Numminen
AI platforms prioritize content that demonstrates E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness):
AI systems prefer recently updated content (who doesn't, right?).
Add timestamps to your articles and refresh key statistics regularly.
This shows that your information is up to date and reliable.
Imagine a site visitor reading a blog post titled "The Best Tips for [Something] in 2025," only to find that it was last updated in 2022.
That's not the best proof of worthiness.
A list of quick fixes by Matt Diggity
💡Would you like to improve your company's AI search visibility with a trustworthy GEO agency? We created a list of the top GEO agencies that can help you.
AI search engines use query fan-out techniques, breaking complex searches into multiple related sub-queries. This rewards sites with comprehensive topical coverage.
Develop a hub-and-spoke content model:
For example, if you sell integration software, create:
Covering multiple intents for the same topic increases your chances of being featured. Create content that addresses:
AI search systems increasingly use images, charts, and videos alongside text. This creates opportunities for richer content experiences.
Following Aleyda's recommendations:
Use semantic HTML markup:
This helps AI systems understand and extract your visual content more effectively.
AI platforms need to access your content to feature it. Technical issues can completely block your visibility.
Check your robots.txt file and ensure you're not blocking important AI crawlers:
Blocking these bots means missing opportunities for AI citations.
You can check whether AI bots are crawling your site by using Screaming Frog's log analysis.
Many AI systems can't render JavaScript-heavy content. Ensure your key content is:
Unlike traditional SEO, AI search optimization requires different measurement approaches.
Monitor when your brand or content gets mentioned in:
Set up Google Alerts for your brand name plus AI-related terms to catch mentions.
Some tools cost more, some tools cost less. I found Writesonic to be quite useful without costing too much.
Look beyond traditional metrics such as impressions and traffic. Here are some content performance metrics you should take into account instead:
Regularly test your content in different AI platforms:
From working with dozens of companies, I've seen these recurring mistakes:
AI search optimization is ultimately about providing better, more accessible answers to your audience's questions. Focus on that, and the visibility will follow.
The future of search marketing belongs to companies that can adapt quickly to new technologies.
AI search optimization is your opportunity to get ahead of that curve and capture attention while your competitors are still figuring out the rules.
Ready to optimize your content for AI search? Book a discovery call with our team of AI Search experts.