What Does It Mean to Optimize Content for AI Search?
The advent of AI Overviews and newer LLMs has shaken the marketing industry to its core. My LinkedIn is filled with speculation and questionable early insights, and there’s a sense of frenzy in the air as more and more companies discover ways to monetize AI’s capabilities.
When it comes to AI, I tend to agree with Taylor Swift’s sentiment: You need to calm down.
Remember this: Every LLM is trained differently, just like every search engine has different algorithms. It’s hard to optimize content for every LLM while still maintaining best practices for organic search visibility and ensuring it’s helpful to readers. Your content is supposed to be written for human readers, not AI or search engines.
But…Hold On…Isn’t the Point to Manipulate the Algorithm?
Yes, it is. And in 2008, the algorithm was easier to manipulate with what’s now considered Black Hat tactics:
- Bolding certain words.
- Inserting keywords in unnatural spots just to get them in the content.
- Creating an entire paragraph of keywords and relevant keywords, but making the text white so it’s not visible to the reader.
- Creating blog networks to generate easy backlinks.
I have (maybe) good news for you—it’s not 2008 anymore.
I don’t care how many years of marketing experience you have. SEO is a niche within marketing as a whole, and the industry evolves literally every time an algorithm update occurs, which, if we’re focusing on Google, is around 4 to 5 times a year. If you’re not keeping up with industry changes, then you don’t understand best practices.
So What Are the Best Practices?
Best practices vary by search engine and, in the case of AI, by the LLM. Organic search and LLMs do not prioritize the same factors, but there are some common throughlines that you can keep in mind when creating content.
Generally speaking, when you’re optimizing content for AI visibility, focus on:
Relevancy
Something that I keep seeing is “How much content do I need to post for SEO? Like 3? 4?”
Please stop asking this question. The real question is “What do I have to say that is worth saying, and is it helpful for the people I am trying to target?”
The amount of content you publish does not matter. However, relevancy does help. The secret here is to look through old content pieces and refresh them as needed. This could mean updating old statistics or adding new insights to evergreen content. The point here is: why waste time creating content just to create content? All you’re doing is risking writing the same thing over and over, creating content that competes with itself.
A few things to keep in mind regarding relevancy:
- If you make updates, make sure they’re substantial (at least 20% or more of the content). Don’t just change a featured image or add a photo and then update the publication date. The content is essentially the same.
- When you modify articles, make sure your blog page is sorted by modified date rather than publication date so your refreshed content is easier to find on your website. Don’t change the publication date.
- Relevance varies based on where the user is searching from. For example, if someone is looking up garage door repair services, search engines and LLMs will populate companies located in the areas closest to them.
Content Formatting
There are certain rumors out there stating that:
- Content needs to be broken down in a certain way
- For it to show up in AI searches
This practice is called content chunking, and while it can help improve readability for certain users with shorter attention spans, there is, so far, no evidence that breaking content into 2-sentence paragraphs makes a significant difference in AI search.
Instead, look at it this way:
What format makes sense for the content you’re writing?
- If you’re making a checklist, format it as one. Consider creating a downloadable PDF to go with it so readers can actually use it like a checklist.
- Are you showing the user how to do something? Maybe include photo breakdowns or, if you have the in-house resources, a video. Videos are quite popular in AI overviews because this type of content is harder for AI to produce reliably.
- Are you trying to help the reader understand how to troubleshoot a problem? Turn it into a flow chart.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t know what my audience wants!” then think about how you would want to consume the type of content you’re writing, and start there.
Authority
I mean this nicely, but who are you and why should people listen to you? If I’m asking this question, your audience is, too. We live in an age where misinformation is constantly being spread online, whether through social media or blog posts. People have the right to be suspicious. You can optimize your content by:
- Getting information from an expert and then attributing the content to that expert. Schema helps LLMs and search engines understand why this author is experienced. Schema can include links back to the author’s LinkedIn profile, portfolio, etc.
- Having a good sense of PR. Sponsoring a community event, awarding scholarships, appearing on a podcast, and writing a guest post for an industry magazine are good ways to get links back to your website. If people are searching for your company’s name/finding you via direct search, it provides signals that you’re a source people frequently go to.
Helpfulness
In my opinion, the hardest part about content creation is coming up with helpful ideas that 1) haven’t already been covered a million times by other sources and 2) truly highlight existing problems that clients and people throughout many industries are currently experiencing and real-world solutions to those problems. I can’t be an expert in every industry, and if the idea sucks to begin with, you can insert as many keywords as you want, but it won’t improve the quality of the content.
Are you just repeating what everyone else is saying, or do you have unique insights to share?
For example, maybe you’re writing an article about common automotive lift issues and how to troubleshoot them. Instead of referencing competitors, talk to your technicians. What problems do they frequently see? How do they troubleshoot them?
There Is a Catch
Unfortunately, AI’s algorithms aren’t as advanced as those in search engines. If you’ve been using the Internet for a while, you’ll know that search has changed. In that same sense, so will LLMs as their algorithms are modified.
As a business owner, you have to think short-term/quarter-to-quarter. I’m asking you not to do that here. Black Hat tactics like keyword stuffing and bolding certain keywords do work for AI, but how long will that last?
Are you willing to risk integrating some of these tactics to rank higher in LLM searches when those same tactics could penalize your site on Google?
LLM search and search engines are not the same.
Furthermore, neither LLMs nor search engines are perfect. Bad content still ranks. It doesn’t mean that you need to create bad content, too. Google has said for years now that it no longer considers domains important for visibility/ranking, but search for a term like ‘supply chain services,’ and you’ll see that the top two results likely have that keyword in their domain name.
The online landscape is constantly changing, but you don’t need to react to every single change immediately.
Don’t Fall For These “Best Practices”
Sometimes, getting on LinkedIn feels like intentionally flinging myself into a hell filled with complaining industry professionals, misinformation, and unfounded insights.
When you’re optimizing content for AI, DO NOT feel the need to:
- Create bulleted lists for everything (I understand the irony).
- Break the content into smaller chunks unless you feel it’s genuinely helpful to the reader.
- Delete em dashes (Neither LLMs nor Google cares if your content features em dashes, and it’s not necessarily a tell-tale sign that the content is written by AI. I use them all the time, and the last I checked, I’m still a real human being)
- Add FAQs at the end of every single article. There is no substantial evidence that this helps articles appear in AI search results. Instead, write better headlines that improve scanability.
- Add your focus keyword a specific number of times. It really is not the secret sauce you think it is.
The Dangers Of Optimization Tools
Optimization tools have existed for many, many years, but now the same crappy tools are claiming that they help improve AI visibility, too. Trusting AI to optimize your content without giving the final output a second thought is so low-effort, you might as well not even create content in the first place.
When it comes to AI optimization tools:
They Don’t Consider Your Intended Audience
I’ve seen these tools add basic beginner-level information to posts intended for advanced audiences. It’d be like if I added a section in here titled “What is AI?” I trust that you know this already.
They Don’t Understand Local Nuances
This may not be relevant for every content piece you write, but if you’re trying to rank for a specific area, AI optimization tools don’t necessarily have the insights needed to help you write localized content. AI doesn’t automatically know the demographics, what the area is known for, or its culture.
They Don’t Know Your Focus Keywords
Unless you outright tell the tool what keywords you’re trying to rank for, it’s not going to give you any insight as to how your content can rank better for those specific keywords. Likewise, many optimization tools, including standard SEO tools, still think that keyword count matters, and newer AI optimization tools sometimes insert keywords in unnatural places that affect the flow of the content. If I put this article into an AI optimization tool, I would not be surprised to find that it changed the H1 to: AI Content Optimization: How to Optimize Content for AI Search.
They Don’t Include Important Context
I can tell when an article is written by AI because it favors extremely short content with little to no context. A recent example of this is an article that a client ran through an AI optimization tool. One of the new pieces of information included in the content was “There are many strict regulations in Michigan,” but it didn’t list out what they were. All I could think was “What regulations? How is this helpful to the reader if it’s not going to provide additional insight?”
Should You Worry About AI?
Yes, but not for the reason you think. AI is certainly changing search, but it’s not dominating it, even though it sometimes feels that way. When I attend industry webinars, experts still say their research shows that users prefer traditional search engines like Google and Bing to LLMs. Although I don’t speak for everyone, I rarely use LLMs to perform any search. Think about how often you use LLMs to find products or services, or how often your friends and family do.
What we need to worry about is the impact LLMs are having on the content we produce and on our ability to think critically and analyze it.
Be Authentic In an Artificial World
How have you helped shape your industry? If you don’t know, work with a partner who can help you tell your story.
Founded over 15 years ago, Momentum helps small to mid-sized businesses across the United States improve visibility through tailored, proactive digital marketing strategies. Our services include website design and development, search engine optimization, Google Ads, and LLM monitoring.
