For nearly 18 months I’ve been writing and speaking about the rapid demise of traditional Google search (first here and more recently here).
A lot of firms are bleeding traffic, but they’re just shrugging it off to be dealt with later (or, more likely, no one’s paying attention). After all, traditional Google search volume still dwarfs AI-enabled search, and that’s not predicted to change until 2028. So, why be alarmed?
But here’s the thing…
- Roughly 50% of ChatGPT users are under the age of 25. You’re going to care DEEPLY about this in the next 5-10 years (the AI era).
- It takes times for the strategies and tactics you need to employ to work so that you can get featured and cited in AI overviews and LLM search queries. So, the sooner you start the better.
- If I could transport you back 2005 and do it all over again, I’m willing to bet you would’ve prioritized traditional search more in your thought leadership strategies (or maybe you just would’ve shorted housing, loaded up on Amazon stock, bought some bitcoin and retired to Malibu).
Now, I’ve written about how to adjust your thought leadership strategy to respond in detail in previous posts. But the situation is fluid, and I want to offer a clear roadmap for what to do and in what order of priority.
5 Tactics to Get Featured in AI-Search Queries
To be clear, there are A LOT of opinions about what works and how to go about this. I’ve done my best to coalesce on those things that evidence, experts, and personal experience have demonstrated as keys to success.
-
INVEST IN ORIGINAL PRIMARY RESEARCH:
Generative AI search tools, like traditional search tools before them, want to provide accurate answers to the questions posed by their users. “Hallucinations” aside, LLMs want to provide facts and are being trained to try and discern facts as best as possible. As such, these tools love data and tend to prioritize content that offers original, useful data that can be used to substantiate the answer to a user’s question. For professional services firms, this generally means prioritizing original primary research to provide data that no one else can so you can show up in chat-based conversations others can’t.
-
Prioritize High Authority Content Placements:
Traditional search was largely built on “indicators” of quality content. Backlinks from quality sites were always prized possessions. Google couldn’t tell you what sites and brands were good. But it could assume that something was good if lots of people linked to it. In a sense, generative AI search tools function less like algorithms and more like humans. They understand, just like you do, that people trust certain sites and publications more than others based solely on brand reputation. AI recognizes that a bylined article published in HBR is significantly more trustworthy than one that you self-publish – regardless of your site’s speed or domain authority. It’s learned this by parsing billions of lines of text written by humans. As it turns out, the best place to start is where thought leadership started in the first place, with earned media. (Hint – that’s why we built our Elevate an Expert program…to reliably generate guaranteed article placements in high authority publications).
-
Get to the Point:
Getting found in Google always started with making content easy for Google to understand. In the traditional search world, this meant managing the indicators that Google uses to understand what something is about. This generally meant optimizing a few key pieces of metadata – an article headline, a URL, and a page title. In some ways, getting found for AI search is no different. You must make sure your content is on point so LLMs can understand it. Now, it’s less about metadata, and more about providing clear, succinct and direct answers to very specific questions clients might ask about a topic. This requires content that is both comprehensive and “parsible.” That’s why you’re likely noticing FAQs and article summaries pop-up everywhere.
-
Execute a “Traditional PR” Strategy:
The need for this will become a little clearer below, but believe it or not now is a good time to revisit “traditional” approaches to PR. By traditional, I mean working with a PR partner to get business journals and industry publications talking about your firm. For years we’ve advised clients to spend less resources on this and more resources on securing full-length, bylined articles in trusted business publications (see 1 above). But for a variety of reasons, getting people talking about your firm, your culture, and the work you do is becoming important again. For many A/E firms this is just part of the process. Much of the work they do is high-profile. The redesign of a major hospital, airport, or stadium tends to get widely covered in local business and industry media. But for consulting and IT services firms this can be a little trickier. So, getting a partner might make sense.
-
Tend To WIKIS AND FORUMS:
Regardless of what you might think about Wikipedia, several researchers have pointed to the propensity of LLMs to reference it as a source for facts. This is likely because it covers an incredibly wide-range of topics and the content is essentially all user-generated, curated and free of copyright issues. Also, the community does a pretty good job of weeding out overly persuasive and promotional content. Wiki editors tend to find consensus on the facts (more or less). That said, to even have a Wikipedia presence, a company must clear Wikipedia’s “notability” hurdles. At its heart, Wikipedia, after all is an encyclopedia. In short, you’re not really supposed to author your own Wikipedia page. Rather, once you’ve achieved some level of notability, the community will author a page on your behalf. There are paid Wikipedia consultants and editors that can help move things along. But you make things much easier for them (and avoid asking them to damage their reputation) if your firm is truly notable (see point 4 above). I wrote about Wikipedia extensively earlier this year.
A lot of AI search research has also pointed to the fact that LLMs frequently source content from Quora and Reddit discussion groups. This is because these forums are very robust. There are literally millions of discussion threads on just about any topic you can possibly think of. They offer tons of content to train on. And, unlike the WSJ, that content has little to no copyright protection. A clarifying query I ran just this morning on Google about Disneyland tickets provided an “AI Overview” that surfaced links to several Reddit boards with very specific answers to my question. These are answers that I NEVER would’ve found using traditional Google search. This could be a smart tactic, but you can’t just go buy some Reddit ads and call it a day. I’m not sure how long this will last, but to be successful with this approach you’ll need to train your SMEs on how to find and engage in effective online discussions within their areas of expertise. In short, you’ll have to inspire them to want to engage for personal and professional reasons rather than just because you asked them to.
Thought Leadership Strategy in the AI Era
All of this, of course, should comprise just one piece of your thought leadership strategy going forward. For the last 18 months we’ve been advising clients to build a two-prong strategy that accounts for:
- “Bots” – Doing the things above to help your firm get found for its expertise in the new and emerging domain of AI-assisted search and AI overviews.
- “People” – Giving reasons for clients to specifically SEEK OUT YOUR FIRM (not just its expertise) based on its reputation in the market. One way to influence this, as a marketer, is through branded content experiences, which I’ve also written about in-length, in the past.
If your firm is one that’s relied heavily on organic search or inbound marketing over the last decade, my best advice is to take some action now to ensure you’re not completely invisible soon.
