How to Adapt Your SEO Strategy for AI-Driven Search

AI search is here, and it’s shaping how your customers discover, compare, and buy. For years, ranking in search meant showing up on Google. Now, it means being mentioned and cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, or showing up in AI overviews.

So if you’re a brand wondering what you need to do about it, our recommendation is to adapt. Adapt quickly and purposefully. If you’re not adapting your SEO strategy to focus on both traditional and AI-driven search, you’re losing visibility in crucial decision-making moments for your customers.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) isn’t entirely different from SEO, just with some additional considerations. Here’s how to approach it.

Strengthen Your Technical Foundation

AI won’t recommend what it can’t understand. Unlike humans, who can visually navigate a complex website, AI relies on code and structure to interpret content. If your site isn’t technically sound, these tools may struggle to understand your products or content well enough to include them in results. Here’s what to prioritize:

• Product schema: Use structured product data on product pages so search engines and AI tools can clearly understand what you sell, how much it costs, and whether it’s in stock. This makes it easier for your products to appear in rich results and AI-powered comparisons.
• Filter navigation: Make filters crawlable so AI understands your full product range, but use canonical tags so you don’t get penalized for duplicate content from filtered URLs.
• Internal linking: Link your category pages to buying guides, FAQs, and related products. This helps clarify how your content fits together and how customers move toward a purchase.
• Speed and mobile performance: Slow sites or poor mobile experiences can limit how often content is surfaced, both in traditional search and AI-driven results.

Update Content to Stay Relevant

LLMs surface content that is accurate, current, and useful for real user questions. When content is outdated or no longer aligned with how people search and make decisions, it becomes less likely to be surfaced in AI-driven results. Keeping content up to date helps maintain relevance, trust, and visibility over time. Here’s what to focus on:

• Stay current: Update key pages, like buying guides, FAQs, and product pages, at least every six months. Stale content gets deprioritized by AI, and outdated information damages trust with customers.
• Make it skimmable: Use clear headings, bullet points, and tables to break information into digestible sections. AI tools often pull snippets from well-structured content, so formatting matters almost as much as the copy itself.
• Write conversationally: Add Q&A-style sections and use natural language that mirrors how people actually search. If consumers are asking, “What’s the best sunscreen for sensitive skin?” in ChatGPT, your content should answer that question in plain, straightforward terms.

Go Beyond Basic Explanations

When someone asks, “What’s the difference between a waterproof jacket and a water-resistant one?” they’re not looking for a definition. They’re evaluating trade-offs. They want to know how each option handles rain, how warm it is, and whether it’s meant for light or heavy weather conditions. When your content directly addresses these underlying questions, AI tools are more likely to surface it when people are comparing options. Here’s how to do this effectively:

• Add context: Use comparisons, pros and cons lists, and real examples that help users evaluate their options. Tables that compare features side by side, or sections that break down trade-offs, make it easier for both AI tools and readers to extract useful information.
• Offer insight: Don’t just explain what something is, explain why it matters to their decision. Connect product attributes to real outcomes, like how it holds up over time, how it feels, and what it takes to maintain.
• Build trust: AI systems tend to favor original, helpful content over generic descriptions repeated across multiple sites. Content that demonstrates subject-matter expertise and supports informed decision-making is more likely to be referenced.

Build Authority Beyond Your Website

AI tools don’t just analyze your website; they assess how your brand shows up across the entire web. Media mentions, reviews, affiliate content, and third-party coverage all signal authority. The more credible sources referencing your brand, the more likely AI tools are to surface it. Here’s how to strengthen off-site signals:

• Digital PR: Earn coverage and backlinks from trusted publications and industry sites. AI weighs the credibility of sources that mention you, so quality matters more than volume.
• Affiliate partnerships: Work with reputable affiliate publishers that review or recommend products in your category. Strong affiliate content drives traffic and reinforces brand authority signals.
• Link reclamation: If someone mentions your brand online without linking back to your site, reach out and request one. It’s a low-effort way to convert existing visibility into signals AI can recognize.
• Shareable content: Create content people want to reference, like in-depth guides, original research, tools, or infographics. The more your content is cited and shared, the more authority you build.

Show Up Where People Ask Questions

Large language models are trained on publicly available web data, including Reddit, Quora, and other forums. If your brand isn’t part of these conversations, you’re missing opportunities for visibility.

There’s a fine line between spamming these platforms and building your reputation. The difference comes down to intent and authenticity. Spam is self-serving and prioritizes volume over value. Reputation building is genuinely helpful and focused on contributing to the conversation, not dominating it.

• Monitor relevant threads: Track conversations in your category where people are asking questions you can answer. Look for content gaps where questions exist, but helpful responses don’t.
• Contribute helpful responses: Share non-promotional advice that solves real problems. When you consistently add value to discussions in your industry, consumers start associating your brand with expertise in those areas.
• Encourage reviews: Ask customers to share their experiences on public platforms. Authentic reviews not only help potential buyers make decisions, but they also give AI tools more context about your products and brand reputation.
• Stay consistent: Align messaging across your website, product listings, and public profiles. Consistency helps AI tools clearly understand what your brand offers.

Search Has Changed. So Should Your Strategy.

The shift to AI search might feel overwhelming, especially with how quickly the landscape is evolving. But the fundamentals haven’t changed. The work you do to show up in AI responses, by fixing your technical foundation, refreshing your content, and engaging where customers ask questions,  also strengthens your traditional search rankings and improves the overall customer experience with your brand.

At WITHIN, we help brands navigate how discovery is changing. Our approach brings together strong SEO fundamentals with AEO and GEO strategies, so your content doesn’t just rank in search results, but shows up in answers, summaries, and AI-driven experiences.

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Authors
Christina Hatzipanagiotis, SEO Account Manager