How to stay visible as AI transforms SEO

With AI tools and chatbots like ChatGPT now becoming the go-to source for quick answers, the traditional SEO game is changing. People are increasingly getting their questions answered directly in the chat or through supplemental results on the search results page. This shift means potential customers have less incentive to click through to your website. 

So, the million-dollar question is: How do you build and maintain brand awareness (let alone drive revenue) in this new landscape? It all starts with leveraging what humans still deliver better than AI: original ideas.

Originality is king

Before we get into any tactics, I cannot stress this enough: You need a strong foundation of original, high-quality, expertise-driven content. 

Yes, ChatGPT is an amazing tool that is changing countless fields right now (especially marketing and sales), which is very exciting. But while you might think it’s about to give you the edge you need to get ahead, remember this: Everyone else is using it too, so you now need higher-quality content to stay competitive.

Dig deeper: Bard and ChatGPT will ultimately make the search experience better

You should aim to consistently demonstrate expertise in your industry (i.e. practice thought leadership), and be an early commentator on new developments. Writing the same stuff as everyone else is a great way to get lost in the noise.

And AI tools (ChatGPT included) simply won’t produce original content — at least not without a lot of human guidance and input.

Strategies to stay ahead as AI takes hold

Now that you understand why you can’t just outsource your brain to AI, let’s dive into the specific approaches you can take to stay visible and authoritative as AI continues to redefine SEO.

Become a recognized expert in your field

• The idea: A well-maintained blog full of original and valuable content can serve as a platform for showcasing your expertise, making it more likely that AI tools will point to your content. Establish yourself as an authority in your field by maintaining a consistent online presence.
• Why it matters: AI chatbots are increasingly sourcing information from recognized experts. By establishing your blog as a source of expert content, you increase the likelihood that AI chatbots will pull from your blog when answering questions related to your field. This is especially crucial as AI models are moving towards licensed content, making public web scraping less viable.
• The future of AI and blogging: As AI models move toward licensing content rather than scraping the web, the importance of having high-quality, authoritative blog content will grow. This makes your blog a long-term investment in your visibility in AI search results.

Write and promote a book

• The idea: A classic thought leadership tactic, authoring a book related to your field of expertise is a long-term strategy for establishing your brand and authority. 
• Why it matters: Books are frequently cited by AI chatbots, providing another channel for your content to be discovered and establishing you as an expert.
• Long-term benefits: A book serves as a cornerstone for your expertise and can be a long-lasting asset that continually reinforces your authority in your field.

Invent a new concept and own the URL

• The idea: Creating a new concept or strategy that gains traction in your industry and owning the primary URL associated with that concept. David Meerman Scott (a marketer who popularized the term “newsjacking” in its current usage) advises against trademarking the term: You want people to be able to use it more freely and widely, helping it become more popular.
• Why it matters: Owning the primary URL ensures that chatbots will likely source their information from your site, thereby increasing your visibility and authority.
• Tip: Unlike social media platforms, where the content you post is owned by the platform, a custom URL ensures that you own and control the content, so you’re not dependent on the platform’s good graces to keep your content visible.

Get started now

Despite AI advancements, search engines like Google will continue to be important. Especially because people will want to make sure they’re getting correct information, which will often require clicking a link to verify that you trust its source (whether that’s scrolling down the SERP, or following a link cited in an AI-generated response).

• Businesses have financial incentives to fact-check. We may all have different standards for what’s trustworthy online, but if your customer is a professional looking for actionable information — especially where money’s involved — they have more incentive than the general public to check sources for more info.
• AI platforms need to prove their reliability. There’s also going to be a slow adoption because AI platforms will need to prove to users that they’re reliable sources of accurate information, and right now that is not at all the case.
• AI is supplementary to search. AI tools may answer specific questions, but they probably won’t fully replace the process of searching and navigating to a page. Zero-click searches have been increasing even before AI-supplemented search was launched, but Google still sends billions of clicks to websites every day.

With all this in mind, you might not feel the rush to start implementing a thought leadership strategy right away, but starting now will put you in a much better position than your competitors in these next few years.

Final tips to prepare for AI search

To keep tabs on the future of search, try using tools like these. Their features today can help give you an indication of what AI search might become:

• Download Microsoft Edge and use Bing Search with its ChatGPT-powered AI assistant. Notice the way it links to sources sometimes, and how it pulls data from the web in different ways.
• Use Google Bard for this too, as Google tries to incorporate unique features to compete with Microsoft. While Bard may eventually head to the Google Graveyard, it offers a lot of tools and extensions with other Google products. Focus less on how broken it is right now, and more on what it could become when the kinks are worked out.
• Try apps like Perplexity.ai, which are currently leading the pack on producing accurate and well-cited information in a conversational form.

Pay attention to patterns here: How do these platforms decide what content is authoritative? As you create your own expert content, these are the types of citations you’ll be looking to win a share of. Thankfully, a lot of the best long-term strategies for SEO will help with AI too, so you might already have a head start. If not though, consider how you can better leverage your industry expertise to stand out.