How to get AI to mention your client’s brand

Organic search has long been a valuable source of traffic for many businesses. However, search engine results pages (SERPs) are now filled with various features, including AI overviews, that reduce click-through rates to organic listings, particularly for informational content like blog posts. While commercial intent pages have been less affected, the rise of AI necessitates a shift in SEO strategy.

In particular, agencies need to think more than ever about user intent. That means focusing less-so on “what” someone is searching for and rather, more specifically, “why” they’ve decided to search. Some SEOs may already be familiar with the concept of search intent. We often separate informational intent, where someone is planning to learn about something, from commercial intent, where someone plans to purchase something.

Thanks to the ever-changing search landscape, we now need to think about intent a little differently than before. What if the user doesn’t particularly intend to visit any website at all? In a previous article discussing the rise of zero-click searches, I shared an anecdote about how I was able to find out when street sweeping ended in the City of Denver without ever visiting a website. This was extremely predictable behavior, and is, in fact, a behavior that many searchers have grown to expect. 

Dates, ages, and even restaurant recommendations have largely become examples of search topics where users don’t actually intend on visiting a website. If you’re out of town, for example, and know that you want to visit a local coffee shop, you’re very likely to interact exclusively with the results that appear within the SERP. This is a search with no “visit website intent.”

AI Overviews are poised to exacerbate this. Today, they run the risk of intercepting users, discouraging them from visiting you or your client’s site. In the future, users may grow to expect these results, similar to how users have grown to expect other rich search experiences. In that scenario, we need to be prepared for an “AI overview intent,” where the user expects an answer from AI with no desire to ever navigate to a website.

This all begs the question; how do we market for this?

Optimizing for AI mentions: A new marketing category

The need to optimize for AI mentions has created a new marketing category that requires a new skill set and new tools. While the name for this new field is yet to be determined, the goal is to increase the likelihood of AI recommending your brand.

To effectively optimize for AI mentions, it’s essential to understand your target audience and how they use AI platforms. Here's a step-by-step approach:

1. Turn off personalization: In AI platforms like ChatGPT, disable memory or personalization settings to see unbiased results.
2. Use commercial intent prompts: Enter prompts or queries that your target audience would use when searching for your products or services.
3. Competitive analysis: Analyze the sources that the AI uses to generate its recommendations. This will help you identify your competitors in the AI space and understand how they are being mentioned.

Next, you’ll want to put in a little effort to optimize your website for AI. These platforms use crawlers, not unlike search engines, so this advice may seem a little familiar.

1. Ensure that your website can be crawled: This is very likely already the case unless your or a team-member specifically disallowed access to these crawlers. If you aren’t administering your own website, check with your team!
2. Optimize your content for expertise: Identify the main entities, sub-entities, and modifiers related to your brand, then create content that establishes your expertise in these areas.
3. Get listed in relevant directories and review sites: Being mentioned on other websites improves your credibility and increases the likelihood that you’ll be mentioned by AI.

Measuring your performance is a little less straightforward. Andy recommends using tools like Otterly to track AI mentions of your brand, or working within GA4 to create dashboards that track traffic from AI sources. This will help you understand which AI models are sending traffic to your site, as well a hich pages are attracting AI traffic.

Everything is changing—expect marketing

Despite the changes brought about by AI, many of the fundamental marketing principles you know and love remain the same. As always, the needs of your audience comes first. Understand them and prioritize initiatives that help them in key moments. Additionally, brand building continues to play an important role in any marketing strategy, as does classic word-of-mouth. Consumers rely on social proof, testimonials, and name recognition to drive their decisions. AI won’t be changing that any time soon.

More importantly, for web professionals, is that content is still king. AI cannot conduct research, and AI cannot form opinions. These weaknesses are your opportunities. Create content that is original, citing new data that you’ve sourced yourself. Form strong opinions on topics, then write about those opinions. Not only will this kind of content stand out, it is, and always has been, significantly more shareable and interesting. Your audience will love it!

In summary

The rise of AI presents both challenges and opportunities for marketers. By understanding how AI platforms work and optimizing your content and digital footprint accordingly, you can increase the likelihood of AI mentioning your brand and drive valuable traffic to your website. While the landscape is constantly evolving, by staying informed and adaptable, and by focusing on creating high-quality, human-first content, you can ensure that your brand thrives in the age of AI.