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Welcome back to Conquer AI Search, your essential guide for navigating this crazy, fast-moving world of AI search. I'm Katherine and I'm here with my colleague from the AI Monitor team. Great to be here.

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So we're on this mission together, right? Equipping you with the top 11 most effective generative engine optimization techniques. GEO, or you might know it as AI Optimization. We've already covered six really crucial strategies.

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Things like LLMs.txt file, using Reddit, authoritative citations, evolving SEO, the importance of PR, and readability. That's right, a lot of ground covered. Exactly.

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So today we're jumping into technique number seven. How to actually create quality content that AI systems recognize to boost your GEO or maybe answer engine optimization, AEO. And this isn't just, you know, ticking boxes for algorithms.

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It's really about making your content genuinely valuable, especially now in this AI-first landscape. You've really hit on something key there. For like the longest time, quality content just felt like this vague buzzword, didn't it? Totally, yeah.

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But now, with things like AI overviews and these generative engines really shaping search results, it actually has, you know, real concrete implications for your visibility. It's a fascinating shift, honestly. And we've pulled together some pretty powerful insights today from top content strategists, market data, recent research.

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Should be good. Okay, let's unpack that then. When we say quality content now with AI in the mix, what does that actually, you know, look like? What does it mean? Well, at its heart, right, quality content always needs to do two things.

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Help your audience and help your business. That hasn't changed. It could be a blog post, a video, whatever.

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But specifically thinking about AI and search, and let's be honest, mostly Google's influence here, quality content is really tightly linked to their EEAT guidelines. Ah, EEAT, right. Remind us what that stands for again.

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Yeah, it's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. So Google's saying very clearly they want creators who show they have firsthand experience, real expertise, or they seem as reputable, a trusted source. And fundamentally, is the page itself, you know, accurate, honest, safe, and reliable? They even have actual humans, these search quality raters who manually check websites.

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Wow, okay. Yeah, it's to make sure their algorithms are actually promoting helpful, reliable, genuinely people-first content. It's a huge signal.

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Write for people first. Don't just try to game the system. Okay, so it really boils down to genuine value for the human reading it.

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But why is this specific focus so critical, like right now, for websites and businesses? Because without it, honestly, your site just won't pull in as much traffic, especially organic search traffic or answers that get generated by AI tools like ChatGPT. The more quality stuff you have, the more shots you have at ranking, gaining influence, and importantly, building trust with your audience. You know, a strong online presence filled with valuable content, that fosters that connection.

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And I assume that connection then feeds directly into actual business goals. Oh, absolutely. Quality content, ultimately, is what drives traffic.

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It generates leads. It turns prospects into customers. There's this great example of Noah Greenberg, the CEO of Stacker.

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He became a HubSpot customer five years after first encountering their content, not because of a sales pitch, but because they were just consistently putting out valuable stuff. It really shows the long game aspect of content, building influence over time. That really makes sense, the long game.

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Okay, so if we're looking for actionable steps, the keys to actually writing this quality content now, in the age of AI, where do we start? I know our sources pointed to some really good advice from HubSpot strategists. Yeah, this is where it gets really practical. HubSpot's approach gives a pretty clear roadmap.

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One of their foundational ideas is to organize around topic clusters. Topic clusters, okay. Yeah, the whole idea of just ranking for random keywords, that's pretty much gone.

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Google now heavily figures what they call topical authority. The insight is, go deep. Become the recognized authority on a specific, fairly narrow niche.

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HubSpot did this. They actually split their huge blog into four separate properties, marketing, sales, service, and website. Oh, interesting.

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Yeah, and each one has its own tightly defined topic clusters. They even made the pretty bold move of deleting popular content that wasn't relevant. They had this super popular post on how to type the shrug emoji.

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Ha, I might've read that one. Right. But it got pruned, because it didn't align with their core expertise, even though it got traffic.

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It's all about signaling to Google that they are the authority in their chosen areas. That takes discipline. It does.

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And building on that authority, another huge insight is, lean into your humanity. It's your superpower. Okay, I like the sound of that.

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Yeah, AI can write text, sure, but it can't feel. It doesn't have lived experiences. Your unique perspective, your stories, the authority you've built over time, that's the stuff AI just can't replicate.

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It's your advantage. HubSpot writers are actually encouraged to inject personality, anecdotes. They even ran an experiment they call E-Sperience Soup.

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Experience Soup. Yeah, basically focusing on weaving in personal firsthand experience. And get this, it boosted clicks by something like 724% on one test.

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Wow. So while AI can maybe simulate stuff, it just can't fake that genuine human touch. That's powerful.

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Makes the content feel more real, more trustworthy, too. How does this connect to how people are actually searching now? Directly ties into the next principle. Embrace the AI era by writing for LLM search, large language model search.

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Right, so thinking beyond just Google. Exactly. It's not just traditional SEO anymore.

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You need to think about influencing models like ChatGPT. There's an Elon University study found that two-thirds of LLM users are basically using them as search engines now. Two-thirds? Yeah.

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And HubSpot noticed their SVP of marketing, Kieran Flanagan, had a YouTube video about DeepSeek suddenly appearing in ChatGPT's results. Why that video? Well, because it was early, it went deep into the topic, and importantly, it was on YouTube, which seems to be a pretty strong signal for these LLMs. It tells us that timing, depth, and where your content lives matters more than ever for getting surfaced by AI.

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Timing, depth, platform. Got it. And speaking of AI.

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Right. They also stressed using AI as a catalyst, not a replacement. This is key.

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So how do you use it right? Well, the rule of thumb is, if AI isn't helping you create content faster or better, you're probably using it wrong. For example, Vasha Coleman at HubSpot built an AI agent. It identifies trending topics.

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Turned a four-hour manual weekly task into, like, less than two minutes a day. Nice efficiency gain. AI is brilliant at compiling information, analyzing data, but that human input, that's still essential for, you know, pushing the conversation forward, offering unique takes, applying critical judgment.

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So AI assists, but the human steers the ship. What about actually standing out from all the noise? There's so much content. That brings us to conducting original research.

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This is a huge differentiator. Makes sense. Unique data.

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Exactly. If you have unique data, maybe proprietary insights from your work, or fresh customer perspectives, you can own that space. HubSpot has a dedicated content innovation and research team.

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They're constantly doing surveys for their big industry reports, like this data marketing. That original data, it doesn't just make your blog post better, it becomes lead magnets. And crucially, other authoritative sites cite it, which boosts HubSpot's own authority even more.

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It's a virtuous cycle. That's smart. What else stands out in their approach? Another pretty bold strategy is, dare to give readers a peek behind the scenes.

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Basically practice radical transparency. Ooh, radical transparency. Sounds risky.

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It can feel that way. Few companies really commit to it. But these kinds of posts offer incredibly valuable, real tactical advice.

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HubSpot's blog is kind of famous for breaking down exactly how they achieve successes step-by-step. And even their failures. Like, their CMO openly talked about a blog traffic loss on a podcast.

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That conversation then became one of their most popular blog posts ever. No kidding. Yeah, because that kind of transparency builds massive trust.

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It provides unique, actionable insights you just don't get anywhere else. That level of openness definitely builds credibility. Okay, so they're creating all this great content.

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How do they keep it all fresh and effective? Good question. It's not just about pumping out new stuff. They actually dedicate a huge chunk of their writer's time, like 50 to 80% each month, just to updating old content.

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50 to 80%. Wow. Yeah, because those older pieces, they've aged.

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They've maybe already built up some authority and rank. So, refreshing them with new research, maybe some expert quotes, updated stories, it gives them a whole new lease on life. They found that these updates tend to be most effective for about six to nine months, especially in really fast-moving industries.

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Interesting time frame. And what about the flip side? Content that's not working. Ah, yes, the painful part.

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Prune your low performers. You know the phrase, kill your darlings in writing. It's like that.

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But for content, deleting stuff that isn't performing is actually crucial for staying competitive and focusing your resources. HubSpot has apparently removed thousands of pages after doing content audits. Thousands.

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Yeah, it lets them focus on the content that really aligns with their current strategy. They have a framework for it. Look at the content type, how fresh it is, its organic potential, and then decide.

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Keep it, optimize it, recycle it, or prune it. Keep, optimize, recycle, prune, K-O-R-E-P. Got it.

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Any final big tips from them? Yeah, two more key things. First, the obvious but essential. Keep up with SEO updates.

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The search world changes constantly, so following blogs, social media, thought leaders is just non-negotiable. And second, maybe even more importantly now, diversify and unify your content channels. People aren't just reading blogs anymore, just watching YouTube.

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They're everywhere. Right. Got to meet them where they are.

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Exactly. HubSpot Media really leaned into unifying content across their blog, YouTube, newsletter, podcast. So maybe a YouTube video becomes a podcast episode, which then informs a blog post.

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They call it the video flywheel effect. And the results were pretty stunning. One period, their YouTube views shot up 84% year over year, and leads from YouTube jumped 91%.

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Shows the power of making channels work together. OK, that makes a ton of sense. Now, shifting gears slightly, beyond the content creation itself, you mentioned there's a technical side to optimizing for AI, right? And it's different from old school SEO.

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That's exactly right. It's not about the traditional signals we obsessed over, like backlinks or keyword density so much. It's more about how you structure your content and how you make it visible and understandable to AI crawlers.

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How so? How do these AI search engines work differently? Well, think about ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot. They operate fundamentally differently than, say, Google's traditional index. They synthesize information.

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They draw from these massive training data sets, but also access the web in real time. They're prioritizing things like statistical relevance, how often concepts are mentioned together in context, and just sheer clarity. It's a different way of understanding content.

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OK, so technically, how do we make our content ready for that kind of understanding? All right, here's some key technical steps. First, structured data and schema markup. This is huge.

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Like for recipes and stuff. Yeah, but much broader now for AI. Using schema types like how-to, FAQ page, product, article review, video object, breadcrumbs.

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It basically helps AI interpret and summarize your content accurately. It's like giving the AI a labeled diagram of your page. Support content, for instance, often gets cited in AI answers because it tends to be really well structured with things like FAQs.

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Makes sense. Give the AI clear labels. What else? Second, you need to explicitly weave EEAT into your site architecture.

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AI can't guess. Make it obvious. Exactly.

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Display author bios clearly show their credentials. Include expert commentary. Be transparent about your sources.

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Have dedicated trust pages, pricing, security info, support contacts. Make the trust signals visible on the site. OK.

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What about letting the AI bots in? All right. Third is managing your crawl settings and GPT-bot access. You need to make sure the relevant AI bots like GPT-bot for chat GPT, CloudBot, Google Extended for Google's AI stuff, CC-bot for Common Call can actually access your important public content.

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There's this proposed LLM.txt standard, kind of like Robots.txt but for AI training. But honestly, the major models aren't really using it widely yet. So direct bot access through standard controls is still key.

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Good to know. LLMs.txt isn't quite there yet. Number four.

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Fourth, focus on sitemap hygiene and internal linking. A clean, up-to-date XML sitemap and a really strong internal linking structure help these Gen AI tools understand your site's topical authority. How is your content related? Grouping content into those clear topic clusters we talked about really reinforces that authority for the AI.

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Right. Connecting the dots for the AI. What about video? Ah, yes.

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Fifth, optimize your video SEO for AI visibility. This is increasingly important. Tools like Perplexity and Gemini are actively pulling insights, even direct citations from YouTube videos.

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Need good YouTube hygiene too. Absolutely. Search-friendly titles, really detailed descriptions, full transcripts if possible, use timestamps.

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All that metadata is gold for AI trying to understand video content. Okay. Anything else on the technical checklist? Yeah, a few more general but still important technical enhancements.

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Basic stuff but crucial. Improve site speed. Make sure it's mobile-friendly.

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Use canonical tags correctly to avoid duplicate content confusing the AI. Secure your site with HTTPS. And actually monitor your server logs.

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See which AI bots are visiting, how often, what they're looking at. It gives you valuable intel. That's a solid technical list.

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Now, one thing a lot of businesses want is, you know, to show up when someone asks an AI, what are the best tools for X? How do you actually get onto those kinds of AI recommendation lists? Yeah, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? It's definitely not random chance. These AI models build those lists based on statistical patterns they find in their training data and the live web. So basically, if your brand gets mentioned frequently in the right contexts, associated with solving a particular problem and with clear value propositions, the AI starts to statistically link your brand to that solution.

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So it's about the overall pattern of mentions. Pretty much. Key factors influencing this seem to be.

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Forum credibility AI models really weigh community sources like Reddit heavily. So valuable non-spammy participation there matters. Then there's public social proof conversations on LinkedIn, on X, formerly Twitter.

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AI ingests this public discourse. Sharing value, getting quoted, engaging in industry chats helps. Also, blog and knowledge hub authority, having your own authoritative content builds that contextual relevance.

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And getting mentioned on other industry blogs. Review aggregation is huge too. AI leans heavily on platforms like G2, Captera, Trustpilot.

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Encouraging detailed specific reviews there is vital. And finally, having strong category positioning on your own site. Clearly stating what you solve, who it's for, what makes you different.

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Need to be crystal clear. Okay, so it's mostly about organic signals. Are there any direct ways to influence this? There are starting to be, yeah.

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Perplexity, for instance, has a merchant program where you can actually submit your product catalog. Oh, interesting. And OpenAI has something called the Search Product Discovery Initiative.

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It uses structured web data, remember that schema markup, for product offer review to help it suggest products. Traffic coming from these kinds of AI recommendations tends to be really high intent, often converts well. Good to know there are direct avenues opening up.

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Okay, we've talked a ton about optimizing for AI, but what about flipping it? Using AI to help optimize our own content. Yes, that's a really crucial distinction and a smart way to work. You can absolutely leverage AI tools, things like Surfer, ClearScope, Jasper, or even just prompting ChatGP to your cloud directly.

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How would you use them? For quality assurance, for checking structure, for doing prompt-based clarity checks. Like here's a simple test. Ask an AI tool to summarize your article.

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If the summary completely misses your main point, well, your content might not be clear enough for humans or for other AIs. That's a clever trick. What about all the buzz around AI content detection? People worry about getting flagged.

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Yeah, there's a lot of discussion, especially in places like Reddit communities. The general consensus seems to be don't just ask the AI to write me an essay on X. That often leads to generic detectable output. So what's the better approach? Use AI more strategically.

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Ask it to generate outlines, brainstorm ideas, maybe even help you spot AI-sounding patterns in your own writing that you can then smooth out. AI detectors often look for things like repetitive sentence structures, overuse of certain connector words, a lack of stylistic variation, maybe language that's just too formal or bland. The trick is to consciously infuse human variability, maybe some slight imperfections, your unique voice.

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You can even prompt an AI like rewrite this section in the style of a specific human author to try and make it sound less robotic. Interesting. So use AI as a writing partner, not a ghostwriter.

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Okay, with all these changes, how do we even measure success? The old metrics might not cut it. You're absolutely right. Traditional metrics alone are definitely inadequate now.

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You need to start monitoring a wider range of things. Like what? Okay, so referral traffic directly from AI tools. Conversions you can attribute to AI.

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This might be tricky, but maybe using how did you hear about us. Fields on forms or setting up specific tracking if possible. Watch your branded search volume.

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If more people start searching directly for your brand name, it could be because they were first introduced by an AI. It's like this inverse customer journey AI introduces, Google validates. The inverse journey.

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And obviously track your appearance in AI overviews and gen AI results. You need to be regularly testing relevant prompts and seeing if you show up. Also look for backlinks from AI surface content.

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Some tools generate live links. Monitor your content gap resolution. Are you closing the gaps where AI isn't finding you? Proactively do misrepresentation monitoring.

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If an AI starts hallucinating or saying incorrect things about your brand, you might need to publish correction pages. Yeah, that's a new one, misrepresentation monitoring. And finally, don't forget basic engagement signals on the content you're optimizing for AI.

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Time on page, bounce rate, scroll depth. These still matter to understand if the content is actually resonating. Okay, that's a much broader set of metrics to track.

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So bringing it all together, what does this actually mean big picture? We keep seeing headlines, you know, SEO is dead, isn't... Huh, yeah, not really. Mostly clickbait designed to grab attention. Fangered as much.

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What it really means is that SEO is fundamentally evolving. Look at Google's AI overviews. Yes, they've caused some significant dips in organic traffic for certain sites.

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Conductor saw drops up to 60% on some pages, like 25% fewer sessions for informational content month over month. That's real. Wow, 60% is huge.

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It is. But interestingly, conversions often aren't hit quite as hard, which kind of suggests that maybe some of that previous traffic wasn't super valuable or high intent anyway. So less quantity, maybe better quality traffic.

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Potentially. The absolute key is adaptation. You need to improve your SEO strategy, maybe by prioritizing branded searches more, creating unique content types that AI struggles to replicate, like in-depth reviews, detailed competitor comparisons, really good support documentation, maybe interactive online tools.

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Refine your content strategy itself. Focus more on how and why questions. Leverage your unique first-party data.

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Don't be afraid to have strong, well-supported opinions. And critically, critically, diversify your channel mix. Don't put all your eggs in the Google basket.

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Think PR and newsletters, maybe other search engines, definitely social media, paid ads. Authenticity is going to be paramount, especially in the social platforms getting flooded with generic AI content. You need to stand out.

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So the landscape is definitely shifting, shaking things up, but it sounds less like a death knell and more like a strong call to evolve, to adapt. Exactly. It's the perfect way to put it.

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AI search optimization isn't killing traditional SEO. It's expanding it, adding new layers. You know, those final words of advice from the HubSpot strategist really resonate here.

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Quality content, fundamentally, will always be about serving your audience well. And in this AI-driven world, your humanity, your unique perspective, that matters more than ever, AI has changed the game for sure, but your unique viewpoint, that really is your superpower now. That's a great place to leave it.

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That wraps up today's episode of Conquer AI Search. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the conversation, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you're listening, whether that's Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon Music, or right here on YouTube.

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And hey, if you got some real value out of this episode, maybe consider leaving us a rating or a review. It genuinely helps us reach more listeners like you. See you next Saturday with our eighth AI optimization or generative engine optimization technique.