There’s plenty of noise in the search industry about what does and doesn’t move the needle for AI visibility. Questions about FAQ schema, content volume, and llms.txt are important foundational considerations.
That said, the real goal is to drive actionable next steps from consumers — something that’s harder when AI increasingly acts as a billboard rather than a traditional conversion driver.
Brands need to understand what gets them mentioned in AI responses and, more importantly, what gets them cited — with a link back to the source, ideally an owned property. Up to 85% of top-of-funnel B2B brand mentions in AI search come from third-party content, AirOps research found.
To be found in AI, your products and messaging need to be understood by both potential customers and LLMs. To be chosen, you need to build trust and authority.
Here’s a three-phase, compounding process we use at my agency that combines AEO and SEO across owned and earned media to build trust and authority.
Phase 1: Make your pages easily accessible to LLMs
This is where much of conventional SEO comes into play, along with classic UX.
Proper, logical navigation, machine-readable page structure, SEO and accessibility-focused tagging, updates to existing website content — including product detail pages (PDPs), blog and editorial content, and company profiles — and your social content can all improve initial accessibility and understanding.
This is when initial page structure optimizations should begin. Experiment with adding key takeaways to popular editorial pieces. Make sure all PDPs follow a logical path (product-focused H1s and H2s, segmented feature bullets, descriptions, comparisons, and “Complete the look” for apparel brands) — all this feeds into retail results in AI.
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Phase 2: Create fresh content — new and repurposed
Google Search loves fresh content. LLMs love fresh takes. Brands will always say positive things about the products or services provided — that’s a given.
Both humans and LLMs know this. You need owned content to contain brand-informed messaging. It’s where the source of truth sits and allows LLMs to understand your brand.
Your website and owned social profiles must be optimized from a technical perspective and to control baseline messaging around who you are and what you offer. This will help with consistency when communicating value propositions to AI, along with Trustpilot, Reddit, TikTok, and so on.
It’s not always easy to scale this, especially outside a website update or blog post, let alone video creation. Luckily, this phase can be broken down into two parts: fresh and refreshed.
For fresh content, it’s important to target your gaps. I recently worked with an insurance provider to guide a 12-month organic content roadmap, based on 3+ years of keyword research, SEO insights from QBRs, and an analysis of assets that were being cited by AI.
Along with that roadmap came a list of seasonal editorial pieces for both on-site use and newsletter distribution, complete with first-party, proprietary, data-backed studies.
Next, the approach I use to supplement fresh content (the refresh) is simple repurposing. Have a successful informational blog post (or at least one that was successful before AI search)? Build that out as an infographic.
Is there a topic you’ve written about on-site but need to share on socials? What about those newsletter topics I mentioned earlier? Create a hub-and-spoke approach with granular breakdowns of that topic for organic social and post on Instagram or TikTok in a short-form video.
This is where growth continues to compound. Now you have an owned asset plan, a slew of topics, and identified subject matter experts that will serve you in the next step.
This will help you become one of the brands or products mentioned — called out — in AI responses. It may not help you get cited — linked back to your brand as a reference that builds up your authority.
Just because an AI understands what you offer doesn’t mean it will decide to cite you in its results. That’s where external users, partnerships, and third-party sources come in.
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Phase 3: Dig into outreach and digital PR
Organic strategy is incredibly important in the AI space, especially as major LLMs still grapple with how they interpret paid media. With that, SEO is having the time of its life — because you need those classic technical and backend optimizations to build a solid foundation for your content.
Finally, the real teamwork comes into play. Keyword research is still vital, but that must be combined with understanding the types of prompts users are asking. From there, you can build a query fan-out list to really dive into the topics and solutions your potential customers are trying to achieve.
With that list of prompts, the keywords you seeded it with, and the understanding gained from analyzing gaps in both traditional and AI results, you can see who is cited and what is shown in AI results.
The who and what are where digital PR comes into play. Connecting with authoritative third-party sources, including publications, podcasts, and Substacks, drives valuable trust from sources not directly invested in a brand, making citations from them as valuable as a Google or Yelp review.
“OK, Eric, I get what you’re saying, but I’m just a small brand with a strong, friendly customer base — how can I get third-party placement or work with influencers?”
Not everyone needs constant Tier 1 placements to win the AI results race. Targeting highly authoritative, niche blogs and editorial sites can have a lasting impact on AI citations because industry experts in your brand’s field are going to be the main storytellers for LLMs.
Most organizations already have internal members on hand who would be more than happy to produce shareable, citable insights for journalists to use when writing about your industry. These are your subject matter experts.
There are additional, specific strategies for microinfluencer outreach that mimic this approach, too. Again, working with industry-specific influencers makes more sense to human users, so it will also make sense to LLMs.
In addition, reach out to fans who have a strong, established following. Brands can also work with an agency to identify highly specific microinfluencers.
Consistency is key when gaining that trust. This means making sure brand messaging remains consistent across owned and earned media, while sticking with publications or influencers that represent what a brand stands for.
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The compounding effect
These three phases don’t work in isolation. They’re a sequence, with each one strengthening the next. Technical accessibility gets you found. Fresh, brand-informed content gets you understood. Earned coverage and digital PR get you chosen because that’s the trust no brand can manufacture about itself.
Skip any one phase, and the other two lose their leverage — a well-optimized site with no fresh content has nothing to cite, while great content with no third-party validation gets understood but may never be trusted enough to get chosen.
Run all three together, and the effect compounds. Each citation reinforces the last. Every piece of earned coverage makes your owned content more credible. Authority in AI results is built the same way it always has been in marketing: with consistency across every channel.
Key takeaways:
- Combining owned and earned media strategies helps drive improved mentions and citations in AI responses.
- It’s important for messaging to remain consistent across first- and third-party platforms, so LLMs can find, understand, and connect your brand proposition across owned and earned assets.
- Outlining a combined organic content marketing plan, with optimizations to owned properties and guidance for earned partners, can improve sentiment in LLM responses, increasing citation rates.