I’ve moved away slightly from saying that AI SEO is just the same as normal SEO. In many ways, of course it is, but we wouldn’t be having these conversations if it was exactly the same. Yes, of course ‘traditional’ SEO is still very important but, ultimately, even if you’re paying attention to how your brand is perceived in LLM’s and are updating your existing SEO strategy to reflect that, then you’re doing AI SEO.
And no, I’m not going to tell you to sign up loads of random Reddit accounts and comment spam your way to LLM inclusion, nor am I going to tell you to go and publish a ton of roundup articles. Like most things with SEO, these things work until they don’t. If you want to try it then by all means go ahead, it will work until it doesn’t, so just be aware of the risks.
What I’m talking about when it comes to an AI SEO strategy is how LLM’s are retrieving data, what they understand about your brand as it stands, and also what LLM trusted sources mean for your SEO approach in 2026 (again, not strictly AI SEO alone, but bringing those approaches into your current SEO tactics).
Developing an AI SEO strategy
Whether you call it AEO, AIO, AAO, LLMO, GPTO…the list goes on but you get the point here… It’s helpful to understand what you need for LLM visibility, and how this stands to benefit the organic visibility of your brand as a whole.
And let’s not forget, that’s the whole point. You’re doing SEO because you want your brand to be seen more organically, and this is done by building a real brand in a way that search engines react positively to. So, the same goes for optimising your visibility within LLM’s. Let’s see what we need to be focusing on…
1. A new approach to content planning & keyword research
By this, I don’t mean use AI tools for your keyword research. They’re notoriously bad at hallucinating the estimated search volume and traffic for keywords, so just rely on the tools that you already know and love.
By a new approach to content planning I mean that you need to take LLM’s into account from the outset. This means:
- Understanding the type of content that is being favoured within LLM’s. Start with your seed keywords and work down into the long-tail. How are the content types changing? For example, are you seeing LLM’s citing brands from articles, or from commercial pages, and how does that vary based on the specificity of the search?
- Understand the brands that are being cited at each point. What makes them stand-out brands? What are they doing that aligns with what real, reputable brands would do organically?
- Split opportunities out across commercial and informational content requirements to understand a) where LLM’s are pulling answers from in relation to the sources they’re citing, and b) the type of content they’re favouring at each level of search
This means you’re then armed with the benefit of content averages. You can see how LLM’s are citing certain brands based on their commercial and informational pages, and work backwards to understand the critical elements that you need to be part of the conversation.
For example, if the commercial pages being cited all have optimised above and below-the-fold content, strong internal links and easily readable sentences, then that’s what you need to make a goal for your commercial content. And, this only stands to benefit your ‘traditional’ SEO strategy too.
2. Understanding what makes a brand trusted
You need to think long-term about building a reputable brand, not gaming LLM systems in the short-term. And it’s then easy to see how website owners go off the deep end with certain strategies. For example, I mentioned Reddit comments earlier. Is this inherently a bad thing? Of course not. People talk about brands all the time on Reddit, and it’s normal to be part of that conversation. It’s something you want as a brand.
But what you don’t want is completely unnatural references and a trail that shows you’re just buying comments all over the place and hoping it helps your LLM visibility.
Look at the brands in your niche being cited consistently in LLM’s, and take it back to basics. Look at:
- The directories and citations they have to prove that they are who they say they are
- Reviews on trusted external platforms (vital for local SEO where LLM’s are pulling-in Google Business Profile reviews alongside external sites like TrustPilot)
- Brand conversations on platforms like Reddit and Quora
- Traditional and digital PR activity – What are they doing to get into national press and industry publications? This is where a blended approach to link building benefits external brand signals and why it’s good to have a combined approach covering digital PR campaigns, journalist request platforms, blogger outreach, passive link building and stats pieces
- Social media activity – are they genuinely putting-out good content and being helpful towards their target audience? Are they covering the social platforms you’d expect them to cover as a trusted brand in your niche? How does that differ from niche to niche?
As you can see, it’s not just about the content that is being published. In exactly the same way that you need backlinks for ‘traditional’ SEO, you need real brand activity for LLM inclusions (with link building and outreach still being a big part of that).
You start to build a picture on your minimum requirements in terms of backlinks, brand inclusions within specific publications, and even things like core content types that are non-negotiable for AI visibility in 2026.
And, I think that’s something we can be guilty of with SEO. It’s so easy just to focus on the output of content, or technical SEO tasks, or link building, and not think about broader brand activity and how that means for the perception of your brand when it comes to your target audience, and within LLM’s too.
3. Video content provides an incredible opportunity
I’ve seen this myself when comparing YouTube videos to their article equivalent. I can see YouTube videos show literally within a couple of days within AI overviews and LLM’s, with article content taking months to get to the same spot (and sometimes, it never will just based on competition levels).
With YouTube being one of the most cited sources in LLM’s, and with videos showing all of the time now within traditional search results, video content (YouTube and social media videos) presents an incredible opportunity to grow brand authority whilst also focusing on an area that LLM’s absolutely love.
This means that, going back to point one at the content planning stages, you can look at whether video content makes sense for the content you’re writing on your site (and 99% of the time it does), so you’re essentially then getting twice the coverage out of one planned piece of content stemming from your keyword research (which now will take LLM opportunities into account following this guide).
Video content puts a human face to your brand, it gets you into the LLM conversations and, above all else, it’s just so good for proving that you know what you’re talking about or can back-up your product.
You can even then clip longer videos for social content, so that one piece of content that stems from your SEO plan has now gone so much further than it ever would have, and you can reach audiences that you might not have been able to reach otherwise.
4. Follow query fan-out logic
A query fan-out is the process of an LLM essentially taking what you’ve asked it, breaking it down into multiple questions, and then looking at a variety of sources to provide an accurate response (or at least, one that is as considered as possible).
The below tools are some of the ones I’ve been using recently to get to grips with query fan-outs and what these could look like:
With this in mind, think about what this means for your content planning long-term. You’re now not just focusing on estimated search volume from third-party tools. In fact, many of these questions can be so specific that you’ll never see them recommended from a keyword research tool.
But, that’s why they’re so important, because you can instantly be part of the conversation with content that is hyper-relevant, not only for you to be a source for LLM’s, but they’re still contextual for users when they’re on your site.
You can start to build out sub clusters relating to each topic you’re looking to cover, in a way that doesn’t deviate from the main topic and makes absolute sense for you to be writing about (so it’s no longer just content for the sake of it).
5. Pay attention to how your content is structured
This has really been at the forefront of conversations recently, but it’s not something that should be new to anyone. Yes, you want to give clear and concise answers to questions. You don’t want your audience to have read giant blocks of text to get to the answers they need.
For search engines and LLM’s, you want to have structured data to convey information as quickly and easily as possible.
This is being sold as something new but, really, it’s just being aware of how easy your content is to read and understand, and how it gets to the points it’s trying to make. Avoid those long, rambling paragraphs and just get your message across in a way that is easy to read, simple to crawl, and doesn’t have loads of keywords stuffed in there just for the sake of SEO.
Also, look at your Search Console data to see what opportunities you have for updating existing content over time. This is great for SEO in general but, if you’re seeing impressions spiking around certain clusters or even specific questions, then it’s logical to get those added to your content and do your best to answer them as clearly as possible. And, this leads me on to my final point…
6. Keep content fresh
LLM’s love fresh content. And, we already know that search engines do too. But when’s the last time you actually opened-up Search Console and went through your content to see what opportunities there are to update them? What about removing irrelevant content that no longer makes any sense?
You want to always ensure that LLM’s are pulling only the most relevant, up to date information from your content. If not, then what value does it serve for your users, and for the brand you’re building?
In Conclusion
And, there we have it. Thoughts on how to get the most out of an AI SEO strategy that only serves to add to what you’re currently doing, and isn’t focused on any questionable quick-wins of the moment.
Want to talk more about AI SEO, general SEO strategies and how to ensure you’re planning your SEO correctly for organic brand visibility over the long-term? Drop me an email and I’d love to chat.
