Sep 24 2025
From SEO To GEO: How Can Marketers Adapt To The New Era Of Search Visibility? via @sejournal, @Semji_fr

This post was sponsored by Semji. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

For three decades, SEO has been the cornerstone of digital visibility.

Keywords, backlinks, and technical optimization determined whether your brand appeared at the top of search results.

However, the landscape is shifting, and it’s likely that if you’re reading this article, you already know it.

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With generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, or Perplexity, users no longer rely solely on lists of blue links.

Instead, searchers and researchers receive synthesized, conversational answers that draw content from high-authority sources.

The message is clear: ranking alone is no longer enough.

To be visible in the age of AI, marketers need a complementary discipline, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

To do so, you need concrete methods and best practices to add GEO efficiently into your strategy.

What Is Generative Search Optimization (GEO)?

Generative Search Optimization (GEO) is the practice of ensuring that your content is selected, understood, and cited by large language models (LLMs) and generative engines.

How Does GEO Differ From Traditional SEO?

Traditional search engines use bots to crawl webpages and rank them.

LLMs synthesize patterns from massive pre-ingested datasets. LLMs and answer engines don’t index; they use them as their conversational padding.

What Is A Pre-Ingested Data Set?

Pre-ingested datasets are content that is pulled from websites, reviews, directories, forums, and even brand-owned assets.

This means your visibility no longer depends only on keywords

What Do I Need To Do To Show Up In AI Overviews & SERPs?

To increase your visibility in LLMs, your content must be:

Put simply: GEO ensures your brand shows up in the answers themselves as well as in the links beneath them.

How To Optimize For LLMs In GEO

Optimizing for LLMs is about aligning with how these systems select and reuse content.

From our analysis, three core principles stand out in consistently GEO-friendly content:

1. Provide Structure & Clarity

Generative models prioritize content that is well-organized and easy to parse. Clear headings, bullet points, tables, summaries… help engines extract information and recompose it into human-like answers.

2. Include Trust & Reliability Signals

LLMs reward factual accuracy, consistency, and transparency. Contradictions between your site, profiles, and third-party sources weaken credibility. Conversely, quoting sources, citing data, and showcasing expertise increase your chances of being cited!

3. Contextual & Semantic Depth Are Key

Engines rely less on keywords and more on contextual signals (as it has been more and more the case with Google these last years–hello BERT, haven’t heard from you in a while!). Content enriched with synonyms, related terms, and variations is more flexible and better aligned with diverse queries, which is especially important as AI queries are conversational, not just transactional.

3 Tips For Creating GEO-Friendly Content

In the GEO guide we’re sharing with you in this article, 15 tips are delivered–here are 3 of the most important ones:

1. Be Comprehensive & Intent-Driven

LLMs favor complete answers.

Cover not just the main query but related terms, variations, and natural follow-ups.

For example, if writing about “content ROI,” anticipate adjacent questions like “How do you measure ROI in SEO?” or “What KPIs prove content ROI?”!

By aligning with user intent, not just keywords, you increase the likelihood of your content being surfaced as the “best available answer” for the LLMs.

Learn how to do this.

2. Showcase E-E-A-T Signals

GEO is inseparable from trust. Engines look for identifiable signals of credibility:

  • Author bylines with expertise.
  • Real-world examples, roles, or case insights.
  • Transparent sourcing of statistics and references.
  • And many more opportunities to prove your credibility and authority.

Think of it as content that doesn’t just “read well,” but feels safe to reuse by the LLMs.

3. Optimize format for machine & human readability

Beyond clarity, formats like FAQs, how-tos, comparisons, and lists make your content both user-friendly and machine-friendly. Many SEO techniques are just as powerful and efficient in GEO:

  • Add alt text for visuals.
  • Include summaries and key takeaways in long-form content.
  • Use structured data and schema where relevant.

This dual optimization increases both discoverability and reusability in AI-generated answers.

Why It’s Essential To Optimize For LLMs

Skeptical about GEO? Consider this: 74% of problem-solving searches now surface AI-generated responses, and AI Overviews already appear in more than 1 in 10 Google queries in the U.S. AI Overviews, Perplexity summaries, and Gemini snapshots are becoming default behaviors in information-seeking. The line between “search” and “chat” is blurring.

The risk of ignoring GEO is not just lower traffic—it’s invisibility in the answer layer where trust and decisions are increasingly formed.

By contrast, marketers who embrace GEO can:

  • Defend brand presence where AI engines consolidate attention.
  • Create future-forward SEO strategies as search continues to evolve.
  • Maximize ROI by aligning content with both human expectations and machine logic.

In other words, GEO is not a trend: it’s a structural shift in digital visibility, where SEO remains essential but is no longer sufficient. GEO adds the missing layer: being cited, trusted, and reused by the engines that increasingly mediate how users access information.

GEO As A New Competitive Advantage

The age of GEO is here. For marketing and SEO leaders, the opportunity is to adapt faster than competitors—aligning content with the standards of generative search while continuing to refine SEO.

To win visibility in this environment, prioritize:

  • Auditing your current content for GEO readiness.
  • Enhancing clarity, trust signals, and semantic richness.
  • Monitoring your presence in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other generative engines.

Those who invest in GEO today will shape how tomorrow’s answers are written.

Want to explore the full framework of GEO?

Download the complete guide on Generative Engine Optimization

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Semji. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Sep 23 2025
SERP Visibility Decline: How To Grow Brand Awareness When Organic Traffic Stalls

This post was sponsored by AdRoll. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Text‑heavy AI Overviews blocking your brand?

The “People Also Ask” that you could scroll through forever, effectively hiding position 1?

Knowledge panels and rich snippets hogging the view?

The majority of people who entered a search query never made it past the top of the search result page (SERP) in 2024.

For users, these updates to Google’s SERPs are technically efficient.

For you, changes like AI Overviews are another strategy to master, and at worst, a direct competitor for attention.

So how do you increase brand awareness and search presence when Google is taking away your bids for top-of-funnel (TOFU) content?

The Rise of Zero-Click: Why Rankings Don’t Equal Traffic Anymore

As search evolves, AI-powered summaries now appear in more than 13% of queries.

This resulted in nearly 60% of Google searches ending without a click last year, dramatically shrinking the traditional flow of search traffic to a website.

Not only are you fighting for space against the usual blue links, you’re now competing with AI-generated answers that package everything up before a user even considers a click.

Which means that “we made it to the top” moment doesn’t guarantee anyone actually sees your brand.

So, even if your brand earns a top ranking, it may never translate into visibility. That’s the reality of today’s zero-click environment, and it is what creates the awareness gap — a challenge that every marketer now has to solve.

What Is Zero Click?

A “zero-click” search happens when a user gets their answer directly on the search results page through featured snippets, knowledge panels, or AI-generated overviews without ever clicking through to a website.

For users, it’s fast and convenient. For brands, it means fewer chances for visitors to actually land on your site, even when you’ve earned a top ranking. Think of it as Google (and increasingly, AI) keeping people inside its own ecosystem rather than sending them out to explore yours.

This is where the awareness gap comes in.

What Is The Awareness Gap?

The awareness gap is the space in which your content is seen, but it is not tied to your brand.

Even if your brand appears in these results, you may never see the traditional signals like traffic or time on site that prove your influence. People might recognize your name or absorb part of your story, but that exposure is not reflected in your metrics.

The gap is the difference between being seen and being measured, and closing it requires a new playbook for visibility and recall.

How Zero-Click Reshapes Discovery

The zero-click trend is most disruptive at the very start of the customer journey. Your website used to be Rome; eventually, all roads led there. Now? Fewer and fewer organic roads exist. That means the earliest brand touchpoints are disappearing.

Here’s what that means for marketers today:

  • Fewer chances for discovery. If users never click, they never see your story. All things that shape early perception, such as your messaging, your visuals, your value props, get skipped.
  • SEO loses some steam. While organic optimization still matters for long-term discoverability (hello, LLMs absorbing and citing content), its ability to drive top-of-funnel awareness isn’t what it used to be. In a zero-click world, amazing content may rank, but still never get seen.
  • Competition gets fiercer. If you’ve relied heavily on organic strategies alone, competitors who invest in paid ads are now likely to edge you out. Ads still sit above AI overviews in many results, and that’s prime real estate that’s hard to ignore.
  • Research shifts elsewhere. With crowded SERPs and often confusing AI answers, users are taking their research off of traditional search platforms to other places. Social media, communities, and unowned channels are becoming important sources for educational content that feels clearer and more trustworthy.

Bottom line: the early doors to discovering your brand are closing faster than they’re opening. It takes a new mix of channels to ensure you’re still part of the conversation.

3 Steps to Reclaim Top-of-Funnel Presence

So what’s a marketer to do? Is all hope lost?

Show up where they are still landing: relevant active sites that deliver clear ad space to your target audience.

Advertising offers a direct and reliable solution to the awareness gap.

Unlike organic results, paid campaigns guarantee an immediate and prominent presence on SERPs and other digital platforms. That means eyeballs on your ads, even if a user doesn’t click on them.

Consider paid campaigns as a type of insurance policy against brand invisibility on the SERP.

Remember: early impressions = stronger recall later in the funnel. The power of showing up first cannot be overstated. Even if a user doesn’t click on your ad, the exposure to your name, logo, or key message fosters familiarity. Early recognition makes your brand more memorable when it comes time to convert.

Step 1: Implement An Awareness-Focused Advertising Strategy

If you’ve made it this far, you’re likely nodding along: zero-click is here, and advertising has to play a bigger role. But where do you start? The good news is you don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. Instead, think of paid as a strategic layer that enhances the visibility you’ve already worked hard to build organically.

Here’s the first step in making that shift in a way that feels purposeful, not scattered:

Leverage common queries

Run search and display ads tied to common zero-click queries. Many of the searches most impacted by zero-click are informational: “what is,” “how to,” and “why does” questions that rarely result in clicks. Instead of letting that traffic disappear into AI overviews, run search and display campaigns against these queries. Your brand may not get the click, but it will get the visibility, ensuring you stay part of the conversation even when Google is trying to keep people on the page.

Connect with tomorrow’s customers today. AdRoll makes brand awareness ads work for you. Get started with a demo.

Use what you already know

Build awareness campaigns in categories where your brand already shows up. If you’ve earned a featured snippet or knowledge panel, don’t leave it unsupported. Pair that organic placement with a targeted ad so your brand appears twice on the same page. This kind of overlap creates a halo effect: users perceive your brand as both authoritative and unavoidable. It’s one of the fastest ways to reinforce recall.

Enhance, don’t replace SEO

Paid advertising isn’t a substitute for strong organic presence, it’s an amplifier. Use ads to reinforce your authority and extend the reach of your organic work, not cover for it. Think of the two channels as partners: SEO earns you credibility, while ads guarantee visibility. Together, they create a more holistic visibility strategy that keeps you top of mind across formats and touchpoints. And don’t forget: LLMs and AI overviews are still learning from organic signals. If your content isn’t strong, your ads won’t carry the same weight.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about abandoning what has always worked. It’s about making sure your brand shows up where discovery is actually happening, whether that’s in a blue link, a snippet, or a sponsored placement.

Step 2: Measure Zero-Click Strategies The Right Way

Here’s the tricky part: in a zero-click world, traditional metrics don’t always tell the whole story. If you’re only watching organic traffic, it may look like your efforts are failing. But the reality is that influence is happening upstream, before a user ever lands on your site.

Here’s what to measure instead:

  • Branded search volume. If more people are searching for your brand name specifically, you know your awareness strategy is working. This is often the clearest leading indicator of recall.
  • Visibility share. Track how often your brand appears in SERPs, featured snippets, AI overviews, and paid placements, even if it doesn’t result in a click.
  • Impression lift. Ads may not drive immediate conversions, but consistent exposure increases recognition. Measuring impressions alongside recall surveys can help connect the dots.
  • Engagement on unowned channels. As research moves to social and communities, track where your educational content sparks conversations and shares outside of your own site.

The key is to shift from measuring traffic to measuring presence. Visibility in high-authority spaces, whether through organic or paid efforts, is the new top-of-funnel KPI.

Step 3: Connect The C-Suite To Zero-Click Strategies

Of course, metrics only matter if your leadership team understands them. However, many executives are still trained to see organic traffic as the gold standard. So when traffic dips, even for reasons outside your control, it can look like a problem.

This is where your role as translator becomes critical. You need to reframe the conversation from clicks to visibility, from pageviews to presence. The message to the C-suite should sound less like an apology and more like a strategic shift:

  • A decline in organic traffic doesn’t equal a decline in influence. Zero-click means users may never land on your site, but they’re still seeing your brand. Visibility is impact.
  • Your brand may actually be showing up more often. The problem is measurement, not presence. Snippets, AI overviews, and social conversations don’t show up in traffic charts, but they absolutely shape perception.
  • Advertising fills the gap. Paid campaigns guarantee your brand isn’t invisible at the exact moment prospects are forming their first impressions, making it the perfect complement to organic efforts.

The way to make this stick with leaders is through narrative. Show them that early impressions are building brand memory. Connect branded search growth to that recall. Paint the picture that what looks like “less traffic” is often “more visibility in new places.”

Executives care about competitive positioning and long-term growth, not just line graphs. So remind them: being the brand people remember when it’s time to buy is the real win. Presence is what creates that memory, and memory is what drives future pipeline.

Zero-Click Isn’t the End. It’s Your Advantage If You Move First

Zero-click isn’t the end of marketing as we know it. It’s just the latest evolution in how people discover and remember brands. The marketers who win will be the ones who adapt their strategies, blending organic authority with paid presence, reframing their KPIs, and helping their companies understand what visibility really means today.

The awareness gap is real, but it’s also an opportunity. By rethinking how you measure, how you communicate results, and how you show up at the top of the funnel, you can set your brand up to thrive in an environment where discovery no longer depends on a click.

And this is only Part 1. In Part 2, we’ll dig into the real secret weapon in a clickless world: recall. Because the brands that stay top of mind are the ones that get chosen later. Advertising’s biggest power isn’t in driving a click, it’s in building the kind of recognition that lasts.

Check back soon on the AdRoll website for Part 2: How to Build Recall in a Clickless World.

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Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by AdRoll. Used with permission.

In-Post Images: Image by AdRoll. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Sep 10 2025
GEO: How To Position Your Agency As An AI Search Authority

This post was sponsored by Visto. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Clients keep asking a new question: “Are we visible in AI search?”

This is the reality: Google’s AI Overviews are reducing organic traffic by 30-70% for many businesses.

In fact, we’re seeing that SEO agencies that incorporate GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) tactics into their SEO strategy and offerings are charging $4,000/month for these additional menu services.

However, when it comes to GEO, a newly evolved and still-evolving branch of SEO, answering the AI visibility question is:

  • Less about grand strategy.
  • More about a quick field check.

But if you skip the check and jump straight to fixes, you risk solving the wrong problem.

Phase 1. Perform An AI Visibility Audit To Confirm If There Is A Visibility Gap

Start with a simple AI Visibility Audit:

  1. Select five to 10 key phrases that align with the business’s goals.
  2. Search those phrases across Google’s AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.
  3. Look at the AI answer first, not the classic blue links.
  4. Do you show up? Are you cited? Which competitors are visible and cited? Notate this for each phrase.
  5. Notate down which competitors are cited and where any links point; take screenshots to showcase in any presentations.

Once you identify which phrases you display and those you do not, you can begin to build a comprehensive audit, repeating the steps as you would for keyword research or, traditionally, People Also Ask research.

The Easy Way: Use this AI Visibility audit and bring the snapshot to your next client call. It gets you out of the “we think” zone and into “here’s what we saw today.”

Phase 2. Interpret Your AI Visibility From The Audit Results

Once you have your audit results in hand, it’s time to determine where you stand:

  • Highly visible: Your brand is named inside the answer. Great. Assess what’s working, and expand upon it.
  • Partially visible: Your content fuels the answer, but the brand is missing. That erodes authority over time.
  • Absent: The answer engines are leaning on other sources. That’s your gap, and your opportunity.

Notice how some of this is traditional ranking talk, and other facets are new.

So, it’s time for a new lens here.

Look at GEO as more of a traffic channel, as opposed to a new technique: Do we show up in the answer people actually read?

This is where agencies need to act fast. If you’re not helping clients with GEO now, they’ll find someone who will.

Phase 3. Showcase The Real Problem Behind Falling Organic Traffic

In this step, it’s time to connect the dots for everyone outside of your SEO team.

How will clients or bosses handle a change to your reporting?

What is the best way to convince a stakeholder that they need additional SEO services to stay ahead during the GEO boom?

How To Clarify The AI Addition To SEO For Clients & Stakeholders

This is how to turn a vague “traffic is down” conversation into “here’s where we’re missing in the answer and what we’ll fix.”

Within your audit presentation, the AI Search findings should follow this structure:

  1. Rule out serving issues that can tank crawl or clicks. Do not include these in the report during this part of the conversation.
  2. Split branded from non-branded terms, as AI answers often cluster around certain intents. Display this information broken out.

Pro Tip: Leverage a side-by-side comparison. The left side could include the AI answer with your brand’s status. The right side a quick look at on-site metrics for those same topics.

Phase 4. Consider The Perfect Mix Of Traditional SEO & GEO

Once your audit is approved, and a contract is in place to expand your SEO offerings to include GEO techniques, it’s time to apply the perfect mix of traditional SEO and GEO to improve visibility in the areas you’ve identified in the audit.

From a high level, there are two constraints that change the game, especially when adding GEO tactics to your SEO offerings:

  • Speed (“time to first token”). AI systems have to answer fast. Crawlers are impatient, so pages that surface the right answer early tend to win the tie.
  • Context window. Models skim and compress. Think skim-friendly, middle-school clarity: straightforward headings, unambiguous entities, and no padding.

That’s why old habits can backfire. You’re optimizing for clarity, entities, and extractability, not density.

How Do I Approach SEO & GEO The Right Way?

The way we think about it is this: if SEO is about ranking for keywords, GEO is about showing up for prompts.

How Does A Prompt Differ From Keywords?

When someone types a prompt, modern AI doesn’t just “look up” one thing. It:

  1. Breaks the prompt into sub-questions.
  2. Runs background searches.
  3. Shortlists a small set of pages worth crawling right now.

From our perspective, that’s the bridge between SEO and GEO: your classic search visibility still matters, but only as a feeder into which sources the AI decides to read.

What To Focus On When Incorporating GEO Into Your SEO Strategies

You will see overlaps here; that’s because there are slight changes to traditional methods that you’ll need to consider when optimizing for answer engines.

What to focus on, from a traditional SEO angle:

  • On-page SEO: answer-first structure, clean headings, scannable evidence.
  • Technical SEO (or GEO for Answer Engines): Fast paths to answers; crawlability that supports quick fetches.
  • Content gaps your competitors are filling in AI answers. We’re consistently surprised by how often the “nearly there” pages win. If the AI crawler already understands a page, one sharp paragraph and a clearer H1 can push it over the top.
  • Link analysis to strengthen credible citations.
  • Competitor analysis of who’s being named in answers (and why).
  • Sentiment analysis to catch how your brand is described when it’s mentioned.

What to focus on, from the GEO perspective:

  • The semantic space AI explores vs. the entity mapping in your content.
  • Technical GEO (or SEO for Answer Engines): Fast paths to answers; crawlability that supports quick fetches.
  • Content gaps your competitors are filling in AI answers.

The Easy Way: Visto can consolidate these checks into a single workflow, allowing you to baseline quickly and track progress without needing a dozen tools.

Phase 5. Implement GEO Tactics Into Your SEO Strategy To Regain & Grow Visibility

Step 1. Provide Answers Upfront

Within traditional SEO, this refers to improving readability.

Your goal here is to give the answer engine what it needs as quickly as a good support team would:

  • Lead your most important pages with the plain-English answer your buyer is after.
  • One or two sentences up top, then the detail and sources.

If the reader needs to scroll to find the point, the crawler will likely give up at that same point.

Step 2. Strengthen Entity Clarity

Next, make the page unambiguous with consistent:

  • Product names.
  • Categories.
  • Specs.
  • Simple schema to help the system map your entity to the right concepts.

Think of this as labeling the shelves in a small shop. If the labels are clear, the model finds what it came for without guessing.

Step 3. Implement Technical GEO

Then handle the technical side of GEO. AI crawlers care about time to the first useful token, so shorten the path to the answer.

Tighten titles and H1s, move key facts above the fold, and keep interstitials from blocking the first read. The AI crawler has a limited context window and reads fast. Help it skim the right lines.

Step 4. Assess Comparison Coverage

If your customers compare options, publish a straightforward comparison that highlights only the differences people ask about.

What we’ve seen is that honest tables and short “who it’s for” notes get cited more than glossy positioning.

Step 5. Manage Links & Sentiment

Finally, reinforce what supports the page. Link credible sources to the version you want cited. Check how your brand is described in the existing answers. If the tone is off, correct the original source you’re referencing.

Then, regularly review your metrics: presence, named mentions, and competitor share. GEO isn’t a set-and-forget channel, so a light monthly review helps prevent drift.

Visto’s platform automates much of this tracking, giving agencies the tools to prove value with measurable, prompt-level insights and easy-to-share reports.

Examples: Learn From Early GEO Adopters Who Are Rebuilding Traffic

“In the first two quarters, we have seen an 88% year-over-year increase in organic traffic and a 42% YoY increase in unique pageviews from organic traffic.“

Agencies using a platform like Visto’s see their clients’ brands referenced more in AI answers after tightening entities and updating a handful of high-value pages.

The agencies succeeding are those positioning themselves as AI search authorities now, not waiting to see how things shake out.

Get Started With Visto

Visto helps agencies measure AI visibility and manage the work.

Built specifically for marketing agencies, the platform shows where your brand appears in AI answers, summarizes citations across engines, and highlights the pages most likely to move the needle.

Visto provides:

  • Direct access to GEO experts who understand agency needs.
  • Consistent product updates aligned with the latest AI search trends.
  • The ability to influence the roadmap with your input.
  • Education and support to confidently lead your clients through the AI shift.
  • Sales enablement tools that are purpose-built for marketing agencies to prospect clients.
  • A focus on actionability and optimization, in addition to visibility and analytics.

Don’t wait for your clients to ask why they’re invisible in AI search. Position your agency as the AI search authority they need right now.

Special Offer: For SEJ readers, sign up for three months free access and start prospecting and serving clients.

SIGN UP NOW

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Visto. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Sep 4 2025
8 Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Strategies For Boosting AI Visibility in 2025 via @sejournal, @samanyougarg

This post was sponsored by Writesonic. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

AI search now makes the first decision.

When? Before a buyer hits your website.

If you’re not part of the AI answer, you’re not part of the deal. In fact, 89% of B2B buyers use AI platforms like ChatGPT for research.

Picture this:

  • A founder at a 12-person SaaS asks, “best CRM for a 10-person B2B startup.”
  • AI answer cites:
    a TechRadar roundup,
    a r/SaaS thread,
    a fresh comparison,
    Not you.
  • Your brand is missing.
  • They book demos with two rivals.
  • You never hear about it.

Here is why. AI search works on intent, not keywords.

It reads content, then grounds answers with sources. It leans on third-party citations, community threads, and trusted publications. It trusts what others say about you more than what you say about yourself.

Most Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tools stop at the surface. They track mentions, list prompts you missed, and ship dashboards. They do not explain why you are invisible or what to fix. Brands get reports, not steps.

We went hands-on. We analyzed millions of conversations and ran controlled tests. The result is a practical playbook: eight strategies that explain the why, give a quick diagnostic, and end with actions you can ship this week.

Off-Page Authority Builders For AI Search Visibility

1. Find & Fix Your Citation Gaps

Citation gaps are the highest-leverage strategy most brands miss.

Translation: This is an easy win for you.

What Is A Citation Gap?

A citation gap is when AI platforms cite web pages that mention your competitors but not you. These cited pages become the sources AI uses to generate its answers.

Think of it like this:

  • When someone asks ChatGPT about CRMs, it pulls information from specific web pages to craft its response.
  • If those source pages mention your competitors but not you, AI recommends them instead of your brand.

Finding and fixing these gaps means getting your brand mentioned on the exact pages AI already trusts and cites as sources.

Why You Need Citations In Answer Engines

If you’re not cited in an answer engine, you are essentially invisible.

Let’s break this down.

TechRadar publishes “21 Best Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams” mentioning:

  • Asana.
  • Monday.
  • Notion.

When users ask ChatGPT about remote project management, AI cites this TechRadar article.

Your competitors appear in every response. You don’t.

How To Fix Citation Gaps

That TechRadar article gets cited for dozens of queries, including “best remote work tools,” “Monday alternatives,” “startup project management.”

Get mentioned in that article, and you appear in all those AI responses. One placement creates visibility across multiple search variations.

Contact the TechRadar author with genuine value, such as:

  • Exclusive data about remote productivity.
  • Unique use cases they missed.
  • Updated features that change the comparison.

The beauty? It’s completely scalable.

Quick Win:

  1. Identify 50 high-authority articles where competitors are mentioned but you’re not.
  2. Get into even 10 of them, and your AI visibility multiplies exponentially.

2. Engage In The Reddit & UGC Discussions That AI References

Social platformsImage created by Writesonic, August 2025

AI trusts real user conversations over marketing content.

Reddit citations in AI overviews surged from 1.3% to 7.15% in just three months, a 450% increase. User-generated content now makes up 21.74% of all AI citations.

Why You Should Add Your Brand To Reddit & UGC Conversations

Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn Pulse, and industry forums together, and you’ve found where AI gets most of its trusted information.

If you show up as “trusted” information, your visibility increases.

How To Inject Your Brand Into AI-Sourced Conversations

Let’s say a Reddit thread titled “Best project management tool for a startup with 10 people?” gets cited whenever users ask about startup tools.

Since AI already cites these, if you enter the conversation and include your thoughtful contribution, it will get included in future AI answers.

Pro Tip #1: Don’t just promote your brand. Share genuine insights, such as:

  • Hidden costs.
  • Scaling challenges.
  • Migration tips.

Quick Win:

Find and join the discussions AI seems to trust:

  • Reddit threads with 50+ responses.
  • High-upvote Quora answers in your industry.
  • LinkedIn Pulse articles from recognized experts.
  • Active forum discussions with detailed experiences.

Pro Tip #2: Finding which articles get cited and which Reddit threads AI trusts takes forever manually. GEO platforms automate this discovery, showing you exactly which publications to pitch and which discussions to join.

On-Page Optimization For GEO

3. Study Which Topics Get Cited Most, Then Write Them

Something we’re discovering: when AI gives hundreds of citations for a topic, it’s not just citing one amazing article.

Instead, AI pulls from multiple sites covering that same topic.

If you haven’t written about that topic at all, you’re invisible while competitors win.

Consider Topic Clusters To Get Cited

Let’s say you’re performing a content gap analysis for GEO.

You notice these articles all getting 100+ AI citations:

  • “Best Project Management Software for Small Teams”
  • “Top 10 Project Management Tools for Startups”
  • “Project Management Software for Teams Under 20”

Different titles, same intent: small teams need project management software.

When users ask, “PM tool for my startup,” AI might cite 2-3 of these articles together for a comprehensive answer.

Ask “affordable project management,” and AI pulls different ones. The point is that these topics cluster around the same user need.

How To Outperform Competitors In AI Generated Search Answers

Identify intent clusters for your topic and create one comprehensive piece on your own website so your own content gets cited.

In this example, we’d suggest writing “Best Project Management Software for Small Teams (Under 50 People).”

It should cover startups, SMBs, and budget considerations all in one authoritative guide.

Quick Win:

  • Find 20 high-citation topic clusters you’re missing.
  • Create comprehensive content for each cluster.
  • Study what makes the top versions work, such as structure, depth, and comparison tables.
  • Then make yours better with fresher data and broader coverage.

4. Update Content Regularly To Maintain AI Visibility

AI platforms heavily favor recent content.

Content from the past two to three months dominates AI citations, with freshness being a key ranking factor. If your content appears outdated, AI tends to overlook it in favor of newer alternatives.

Why You Should Keep Your Content Up To Date For GEO Visibility

Let’s say your “Email Marketing Best Practices” from 2023 used to get AI citations.

Now it’s losing to articles with 2025 data. AI sees the date and chooses fresher content every time.

How To Keep Your Content Fresh Enough To Be Cited In AIOs

Weekly refresh for top 10 pages:

  • Add two to three new statistics.
  • Include a recent case study.
  • Update “Last Modified” date prominently.
  • Add one new FAQ.
  • Change title to “(Updated August 2025)”.

Bi-weekly, on less important pages:

  • Replace outdated examples.
  • Update internal links.
  • Rewrite the weakest section.
  • Add seasonal relevance.

Pro Tip: Track your content’s AI visibility systematically. Certain advanced GEO tools alert you when pages lose citations, so you know exactly what to refresh and when.

5. Create “X vs Y” And “X vs Y vs Z” Comparison Pages

Users constantly ask AI to help them choose between options. AI platforms love comparison content. They even prompt users to compare features and create comparison tables.

Pages that deliver these structured comparisons dominate AI search results.

Common questions flooding AI platforms:

  • “Slack vs Microsoft Teams for remote work”
  • “HubSpot vs Salesforce for small business”
  • “Asana or Monday for creative agencies”

AI can’t answer these without citing detailed comparisons. Generic blog posts don’t work. Promotional content gets ignored.

Create comprehensive comparisons like: “Asana vs Monday vs ClickUp: Project Management for Creative Teams.”

How To Create Comparisons That Have High Visibility On SERPs

Use a content structure that wins:

  • Quick decision matrix upfront.
  • Pricing breakdown by team size.
  • Feature-by-feature comparison table.
  • Integrations.
  • Learning curve and onboarding time.
  • Best for: specific use cases.

Make it genuinely balanced:

  • Asana: “Overwhelming for teams under 5”
  • Monday: “Gets expensive with add-ons”
  • ClickUp: “Steep learning curve initially”

Include your product naturally in the comparison. Be honest about limitations while highlighting genuine advantages.

AI prefers citing fair comparisons over biased reviews. Include real limitations, actual pricing (not just “starting at”), and honest trade-offs. This builds trust that gets you cited repeatedly.

Technical GEO To Do Right Now

6. Fix Robots.txt Blocking AI Crawlers

Most websites accidentally block the very bots they want to attract. Like putting a “Do Not Enter” sign on your store while wondering why customers aren’t coming in.

ChatGPT uses three bots:

  • ChatGPT-User: Main bot serving actual queries (your money maker)
  • OAI-SearchBot: Activates when users click search toggle.
  • GPTBot: Collects training data for future models.

Strategic decision: Publications worried about content theft might block GPTBot. Product companies should allow it, however, because you want future AI models trained on your content for long-term visibility.

Essential bots to allow:

  • Claude-Web (Anthropic).
  • PerplexityBot.
  • GoogleOther (Gemini).

Add to robots.txt:

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
User-agent: Claude-Web
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Verify it’s working: Check server logs for these user agents actively crawling your content. No crawl activity means no AI visibility.

7. Fix Broken Pages For AI Crawlers

Just like Google Search Console shows Googlebot errors, you need visibility for AI crawlers. But AI bots behave differently and can be aggressive.

Monitor AI bot-specific issues:

  • 404 errors on important pages.
  • 500 server errors during crawls.
  • Timeout issues when bots access content.

If your key product pages error when ChatGPT crawls them, you’ll never appear in AI responses.

Common problems:

  • AI crawlers triggering DDoS protection.
  • CDN security blocking legitimate bots.
  • Rate limiting preventing full crawls.

Fix: Whitelist AI bots in your CDN (Cloudflare, Fastly). Set up server-side tracking to differentiate AI crawlers from regular traffic. No errors = AI can cite you.

8. Avoid JavaScript For Main Content

Most AI crawlers can’t execute JavaScript. If your content loads dynamically, you’re invisible to AI.

Quick test: Disable JavaScript in your browser. Visit key pages. Can you see the main content, product descriptions, and key information?

Blank page = AI sees nothing.

Solutions:

  • Server-side rendering (Next.js, Nuxt.js).
  • Static site generators (Gatsby, Hugo).
  • Progressive enhancement (core content works without JS).

Bottom line: If it needs JavaScript to display, AI can’t read it. Fix this or stay invisible.

Take Action Now

People ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for recommendations every day. If you’re missing from those answers, you’re missing deals.

These eight strategies boil down to three moves: get mentioned where AI already looks (high-authority sites and Reddit threads), create content AI wants to cite (comparisons and fresh updates), and fix the technical blocks keeping AI out (robots.txt and JavaScript issues).

You can do all this manually. Track mentions in spreadsheets, find citation gaps by hand, and update content weekly. It works on a smaller scale, consumes time, and requires a larger team.

Writesonic provides you with a GEO platform that goes beyond tracking to giving you precise actions to boost visibility – create new content, refresh existing pages, or reach out to sites that mention competitors but not you.

Plus, get real AI search volumes to prioritize high-impact prompts.

Track & Boost your AI Visibility with Writesonic

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Writesonic. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Image by Writesonic. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Sep 3 2025
What To Expect AT NESS 2025: Surviving The AI-First Era via @sejournal, @NewsSEO_

This post was sponsored by NESS. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

For anyone who isn’t paying attention to news SEO because they feel it isn’t their relevant niche – think again.

The foundations of SEO are underpinned by publishing content. Therefore, news SEO is relevant to all SEO. We are all publishers online.

John Shehata and Barry Adams are the experts within this vertical and, between them, have experience working with most of the top news publications worldwide.

Together, they founded the News and Editorial SEO Summit (NESS) in 2021, and in the last four years, the SEO industry has seen the most significant and rapid changes since it began 30 years ago.

I spoke to both John and Barry to get their insights into some of the current issues SEOs face, how SEO can survive this AI-first era, and to get a preview of the topics to be discussed at their upcoming fifth NESS event to be held on October 21-22, 2025.

You can watch the full interview at the end of this article.

SEO Repackaged For The AI Era

I started out by commenting that recently, at Google Search Central Live in Thailand, Gary Illyes came out to say that there is no difference between GEO, AEO, and SEO. I asked Barry what he thought about this and if the introduction of AI Mode is going to continue taking away publisher traffic.

Surprisingly, Barry agreed with Google to say, “It’s SEO. It’s just SEO. I fully agree with what the Googlers are saying on this front, and it’s not often that I fully agree with Googlers.”

He went on to say, “I have yet to find any LLM optimization strategy that is not also an SEO strategy. It’s just SEO repackaged for the AI era so that agencies can charge more money without actually creating any more added value.”

AI Mode Is A Threat To Publisher Traffic

While AI Overviews have drawn significant attention, Barry identifies AI Mode as a more serious threat to publisher traffic.

Unlike AI Overviews, which still display traditional search results alongside AI-generated summaries, AI Mode creates an immersive conversational experience that encourages users to continue their search journey within Google’s ecosystem.

Barry warns that if AI Mode becomes the default search experience, it could be “insanely damaging for the web because it’s just going to make a lot of traffic evaporate without any chance of recovery.”

He added that “If you can maintain your traffic from search at the moment, you’re already doing better than most.”

Moving Up The Value Chain

At NESS, John will be speaking about how to survive this AI-first era, and I asked him for a preview of how SEOs can survive what is happening right now.

John highlighted a major issue: “Number one, I think SEOs need to move up the value chain. And I have been saying this for a long time, SEOs cannot be only about keywords and rankings. It has to be much bigger than that.”

He then went on to talk about three key areas as solutions: building topical authority, traffic diversification, and direct audience relationships.

“They [news publishers] need to think about revenue diversification as well as going back to some traditional revenue streams, such as events or syndication. They also need to build their own direct relationships with users, either through apps or newsletters. And newsletters never got the attention they deserve in any of the different brands I’m familiar with, but now it’s gaining more traction. It’s extremely important.”

Quality Journalism Is Crucial For Publishers

Despite the AI disruption, both John and Barry stress that technical SEO fundamentals remain important, but to a point.

“You have to make sure the foundations are in place,” Barry notes, but he believes the technical can only take you so far. After that, investment in content is critical.

“When those foundations are at the level where there’s not much value in getting further optimization, then the publisher has to do the hard work of producing the content that builds the brand. The foundation can only get you so far. But if you don’t have the foundation, you are building a house on quicksand and you’re not going to be able to get much traction anyway.”

John also noted that “it’s important to double down on technical elements of the site.” He went on to say, “While I think you need to look at your schema, your speed, all of the elements, the plumbing, just to make sure that whatever channel you work with has good access and good understanding of your data.”

Barry concluded by reaffirming the importance of content quality. “The content is really what needs to shine. And if you don’t have that in place, if you don’t have that unique brand voice, that quality journalism, then why are you in business in the first place?”

The AI Agents Question

James Carson and Marie Haynes are both speaking about AI agents at NESS 2025, and when I asked Barry and John about the introduction of AI agents into newsrooms, the conversation was both optimistic and cautious.

John sees significant potential for AI to handle research tasks, document summarization, and basic content creation for standardized reporting like market updates or sports scores.

“A lot of SEO teams are using AI to recommend Google Discover headlines that intrigue curiosity, checking certain SEO elements on the site and so on. So I think more and more we have seen AI integrated not to write the content itself, but to guide the content and optimize the efficiency of the whole process.” John commented.

However, Barry remains skeptical about current AI agent reliability for enterprise environments.

“You cannot give an AI agent your credit card details to start shopping on your behalf, and then it just starts making things up and ends up spending thousands of your dollars on the wrong things … The AI agents are nowhere near that maturity level yet and I’m not entirely sure they will ever be at that maturity level because I do think the current large language model technology has fundamental limitations.”

John countered that “AI agents can save us hundreds of hours, hundreds.” He went on to say, “These three elements together, automation, AI agents, and human supervision together can be a really powerful combination, but not AI agent completely solo. And I agree with Barry, it can lead to disastrous consequences.”

Looking Forward

The AI-first era demands honest acknowledgment of changed realities. Easy search traffic growth is over, but opportunities exist for publishers willing to adapt strategically.

Success requires focusing on unique value propositions, building direct audience relationships, and maintaining technical excellence while accepting that traditional growth metrics may no longer apply.

The future belongs to publishers who understand that survival means focusing on their audience to build authentic connections that value their specific perspective and expertise.

Watch the full interview below.

If you’re a news publisher, or an SEO, you cannot afford to miss the fifth NESS on October 21-22, 2025.

SEJ readers have a special 20% discount on tickets. Just use the code “SEJ2025” at the checkout here.

Headline speakers include Marie Haynes, Mike King, Lily Ray, Kevin Indig, and of course John Shehata and Barry Adams.

Over two days, there are 20 speakers representing the best news publishers such as Carly Steven (Daily Mail), Maddie Shepherd (CBS), Christine Liang (The New York Times), Jessie Willms (The Guardian), among others.

Check out the full schedule here.

Featured Image: Shelley Walsh/Search Engine Journal/ NESS

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 29 2025
Why WooCommerce Slows Down (& How to Fix It With the Right Server Stack)

This post was sponsored by Cloudways. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Wondering why your rankings may be declining?

Just discovered your WooCommerce site has slow load times?

A slow WooCommerce site doesn’t just cost you conversions. It affects search visibility, backend performance, and customer trust.

Whether you’re a developer running your own stack or an agency managing dozens of client stores, understanding how WooCommerce performance scales under load is now considered table stakes.

Today, many WordPress sites are far more dynamic, meaning many things are happening at the same time:

  • Stores run real-time sales.
  • LMS platforms track user progress.
  • Membership sites deliver highly personalized content.

Every action a user takes, from logging in, updating a cart, or initiating checkout, relies on live data from the server. These requests cannot be cached.

Tools like Varnish or CDNs can help with public pages such as the homepage or product listings. But once someone logs in to their account or interacts with their session, caching no longer helps. Each request must be processed in real time.

This article breaks down why that happens and what kind of server setup is helping stores stay fast, stable, and ready to grow.

Why Do WooCommerce Stores Slow Down?

WooCommerce often performs well on the surface. But as traffic grows and users start interacting with the site, speed issues begin to show. These are the most common reasons why stores slow down under pressure:

1. PHP: It Struggles With High User Activity

WooCommerce depends on PHP to process dynamic actions such as cart updates, coupon logic, and checkout steps. Traditional stacks using Apache for PHP handling are slower and less efficient.

Modern environments use PHP-FPM, which improves execution speed and handles more users at once without delays.

2. A Full Database: It Becomes A Bottleneck

Order creation, cart activity, and user actions generate a high number of database writes. During busy times like flash sales, new merchandise arrivals, or course launches, the database struggles to keep up.

Platforms that support optimized query execution and better indexing handle these spikes more smoothly.

3. Caching Issues: Object Caching Is Missing Or Poorly Configured

Without proper object caching, WooCommerce queries the database repeatedly for the same information. That includes product data, imagery, cart contents, and user sessions.

Solutions that include built-in Redis support help move this data to memory, reducing server load and improving site speed.

4. Concurrency Limits Affect Performance During Spikes

Most hosting stacks today, including Apache-based ones, perform well for a wide range of WordPress and WooCommerce sites. They handle typical traffic reliably and have powered many successful stores.

As traffic increases and more users log in and interact with the site at the same time, the load on the server begins to grow. Architecture starts to play a bigger role at that point.

Stacks built on NGINX with event-driven processing can manage higher concurrency more efficiently, especially during unanticipated traffic spikes.

Rather than replacing what already works, this approach extends the performance ceiling for stores that are becoming more dynamic and need consistent responsiveness under heavier load.

5. Your WordPress Admin Slows Down During Sales Seasons

During busy periods like seasonal sales campaigns or new stock availability, stores can often slow down for the team managing the site, too. The WordPress dashboard takes longer to load, which means publishing products, managing orders, or editing pages also becomes slower.

This slowdown happens because both shoppers and staff are using the site’s resources at the same time, and the server has to handle all those requests at once.

Modern stacks reduce this friction by balancing frontend and backend resources more effectively.

How To Architect A Scalable WordPress Setup For Dynamic Workloads?

WooCommerce stores today are built for more than stable traffic. Customers are logging in, updating their carts, taking actions to manage their subscription profile, and as a result, are interacting with your backend in real time.

The traditional WordPress setup, which is primarily designed for static content, cannot handle that kind of demand.

Here’s how a typical setup compares to one built for performance and scale:

Component Basic Setup         Scalable Setup
Web Server Apache NGINX
PHP Handler mod_php or CGI PHP-FPM
Object Caching None or database transients Redis with Object Cache Pro
Scheduled Tasks WP-Cron System cron job
Caching CDN or full-page caching only Layered caching, including object cache
.htaccess Handling Built-in with Apache Manual rewrite rules in NGINX config
Concurrency Handling Limited Event-based, memory-efficient server

How To Manually Setup A Performance-Ready & Scalable WooCommerce Stack

Don’t have bandwidth? Try the easy way.

If you’re setting up your own server or tuning an existing one, are the most important components to get right:

1) Use NGINX For Static File Performance

NGINX is often used as a high-performance web server for handling static files and managing concurrent requests efficiently. It is well suited for stores expecting high traffic or looking to fine-tune their infrastructure for speed.

Unlike Apache, NGINX does not use .htaccess files. Rewrite rules, such as permalinks, redirects, and trailing slashes, need to be added manually to the server block. For WordPress, these rules are well-documented and only need to be set once during setup.

This approach gives more control at the server level and can be helpful for teams building out their own environment or optimizing for scale.

2) Enable PHP-FPM For Faster Request Handling

PHP-FPM separates PHP processing from the web server. It gives you more control over memory and CPU usage. Tune values like pm.max_children and pm.max_requests based on your server size to prevent overload during high activity.

3) Install Redis With Object Cache Pro

Redis allows WooCommerce to store frequently used data in memory. This includes cart contents, user sessions, and product metadata.

Pair this with Object Cache Pro to compress cache objects, reduce database load, and improve site responsiveness under load.

4) Replace WP-Cron With A System-Level Cron Job

By default, WordPress checks for scheduled tasks whenever someone visits your site. That includes sending emails, clearing inventory, and syncing data. If you have steady traffic, it works. If not, things get delayed.

You can avoid that by turning off WP-Cron. Just add define(‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’, true); to your wp-config.php file. Then, set up a real cron job at the server level to run wp-cron.php every minute. This keeps those tasks running on time without depending on visitors.

5) Add Rewrite Rules Manually For NGINX

NGINX doesn’t use .htaccess. That means you’ll need to define URL rules directly in the server block.

This includes things like permalinks, redirects, and static file handling. It’s a one-time setup, and most of the rules you need are already available from trusted WordPress documentation. Once you add them, everything works just like it would on Apache.

A Few Tradeoffs To Keep In Mind

This kind of setup brings a real speed boost. But there are some technical changes to keep in mind.

  • NGINX won’t read .htaccess. All rewrites and redirects need to be added manually.
  • WordPress Multisite may need extra tweaks, especially if you’re using subdirectory mode.
  • Security settings like IP bans or rate limits should be handled at the server level, not through plugins.

Most developers won’t find these issues difficult to work with. But if you’re using a modern platform, much of it is already taken care of.

You don’t need overly complex infrastructure to make WooCommerce fast; just a stack that aligns with how modern, dynamic stores operate today.

Next, we’ll look at how that kind of stack performs under traffic, with benchmarks that show what actually changes when the server is built for dynamic sites.

What Happens When You Switch To An Optimized Stack?

Not all performance challenges come from code or plugins. As stores grow and user interactions increase, the type of workload becomes more important, especially when handling live sessions from logged-in users.

To better understand how different environments respond to this kind of activity, Koddr.io ran an independent benchmark comparing two common production setups:

  • A hybrid stack using Apache and NGINX.
  • A stack built on NGINX with PHP-FPM, Redis, and object caching.

Both setups were fully optimized and included tuned components like PHP-FPM and Redis. The purpose of the benchmark was to observe how each performs under specific, real-world conditions.

The tests focused on uncached activity from WooCommerce and LearnDash, where logged-in users trigger dynamic server responses.

In these scenarios, the optimized stack showed higher throughput and consistency during peak loads. This highlights the value of having infrastructure tailored for dynamic, high-concurrency traffic, depending on the use case.

WooCommerce Runs Faster Under Load

One test simulated 80 users checking out at the same time. The difference was clear:

Scenario Hybrid Stack Optimized Stack Gain
WooCommerce Checkout 3,035 actions 4,809 actions +58%
Screenshot from Koddr.io, August 2025

LMS Platforms Benefit Even More

For LearnDash course browsing—a write-heavy and uncached task, the optimized stack completed 85% more requests:

Scenario Hybrid Stack Optimized Stack Gain
LearnDash Course List View 13,459 actions 25,031 actions +85%

This shows how optimized stacks handle personalized or dynamic content more efficiently. These types of requests can’t be cached, so the server’s raw efficiency becomes critical.

Screenshot from Koddr.io, August 2025

Backend Speed Improves, Too

The optimized stack wasn’t just faster for customers. It also made the WordPress admin area more responsive:

  • WordPress login times improved by up to 31%.
  • Publish actions ran 20% faster, even with high traffic.

This means your team can concurrently manage products, update pages, and respond to sales in real time, without delays or timeouts.

It Handles More Without Relying On Caching

When Koddr turned off Varnish, the hybrid stack experienced a 71% drop in performance. This shows how effectively it handles cached traffic. The optimized stack dropped just 7%, which highlights its ability to maintain speed even during uncached, logged-in sessions.

Both setups have their strengths, but for stores with real-time user activity, reducing reliance on caching can make a measurable difference.

Stack Type With Caching Without Caching Drop
Hybrid Stack 654,000 actions 184,000 actions -7%
Optimized Stack 619,000 actions 572,000 actions -7%
Screenshot from Koddr.io, August 2025

Why This Matters?

Static pages are easy to optimize. But WooCommerce stores deal with real-time traffic. Cart updates, login sessions, and checkouts all require live processing. Caching cannot help once a user has signed in.

The Koddr.io results show how an optimized server stack:

  • Reduces CPU spikes during traffic surges.
  • Keeps the backend responsive for your team.
  • Delivers more stable speed for logged-in users.
  • Helps scale without complex performance workarounds.

These are the kinds of changes that power newer stacks purpose-built for dynamic workloads like Cloudways Lightning, built for real WooCommerce workloads.

Core Web Vitals Aren’t Just About The Frontend

You can optimize every image. Minify every line of code. Switch to a faster theme. But your Core Web Vitals score will still suffer if the server can’t respond quickly.

That’s what happens when logged-in users interact with WooCommerce or LMS sites.

When a customer hits “Add to Cart,” caching is out of the picture. The server has to process the request live. That’s where TTFB (Time to First Byte) becomes a real problem.

Slow server response means Google waits longer to start rendering the page. And that delay directly affects your Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint metrics.

Frontend tuning gets you part of the way. But if the backend is slow, your scores won’t improve. Especially for logged-in experiences.

Real optimization starts at the server.

How Agencies Are Skipping The Manual Work

Every developer has a checklist for WooCommerce performance. Use NGINX. Set up Redis. Replace WP-Cron. Add a WAF. Test under load. Keep tuning.

But not every team has the bandwidth to maintain all of it.

That’s why more agencies are using pre-optimized stacks that include these upgrades by default. Cloudways Lightning, a managed stack based on NGINX + PHP-FPM, designed for dynamic workloads is a good example of that.

It’s not just about speed. It’s also about backend stability during high traffic. Admin logins stay fast. Product updates don’t hang. Orders keep flowing.

Joe Lackner, founder of Celsius LLC, shared what changed for them:

“Moving our WordPress workloads to the new Cloudways stack has been a game-changer. The console admin experience is snappier, page load times have improved by +20%, and once again Cloudways has proven to be way ahead of the game in terms of reliability and cost-to-performance value at this price point.”

This is what agencies are looking for. A way to scale without getting dragged into infrastructure management every time traffic picks up.

Final Takeaway

WooCommerce performance is no longer just about homepage load speed.

Your site handles real-time activity from both customers and your team. Once a user logs in or reaches checkout, caching no longer applies. Each action hits the server directly.

If the infrastructure isn’t optimized, site speed drops, sales suffer, and backend work slows down.

The foundations matter. A stack that’s built for high concurrency and uncached traffic keeps things fast across the board. That includes cart updates, admin changes, and product publishing.

For teams who don’t want to manage server tuning manually, options like Cloudways Lightning deliver a faster, simpler path to performance at scale.

Use promo code “SUMMER305” and get 30% off for 5 months + 15 free migrations. Signup Now!

⚡ Power Up My WooCommerce Store

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Cloudways. Used with permission.

In-Post Images: Images by Cloudways. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 28 2025
2025 AI SERP Changes: New Strategies To Gain Local Search Visibility

This post was sponsored by DAC. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

The new reality of Search and brand discovery requires an Enterprise-to-Local strategy.

Traditional keyword-driven search engine results pages (SERPs) are being disrupted by AI-driven experiences that anticipate, summarize, and even act on users’ needs.

As generative AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews and platforms such as Perplexity become more prominent in the Search journey, the marketer’s task expands: It’s no longer just about ranking well on Google but being visible wherever decisions begin.

For multilocation businesses, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. AI is flattening the competitive playing field, restructuring what influences purchasing decisions, and automating formerly human-led interactions.

Here are four key takeaways to help local marketers understand what’s changing, what strategies are needed right now, and what the future holds.

Strategy 1. You Must Navigate Google’s AI-First Search Experience To Stay Visible

Google’s inclusion of AI Overviews has introduced an entirely new kind of SERP.

These AI-generated summaries often sit atop the page, pushing traditional blue links down. Unlike the 10-blue-link layout of old, AI Overviews synthesize answers across sources, citing a few but effectively removing the need to click.

What To Look For, Learn About & Incorporate

Google’s AI Mode, now available as a Labs experiment, prioritizes user intent by stitching together information to answer nuanced queries (e.g., “best affordable Thai near me for a date”) into a conversational response.

For local queries, it factors in:

What No Longer Works

Structured data or map pack signals alone do not supply enough context to be recognized in a modern AI-first search experience.

Strategy 2. Adopt An Enterprise-To-Local Strategy To Capture Both Informational & Local Intent

DAC’s study of over 700 real SERPs across four major verticals (Apparel, Auto Services, Financial Services & Insurance, and Home Services) revealed a clear divergence between the kinds of queries that trigger AI Overviews (AIOs) and those that surface the traditional Maps Pack.

Only 1% of queries triggered both features in the same SERP. When both appeared, the AIO came first, pushing the Maps Pack below the fold.

What To Look For, Learn About & Incorporate

AIOs dominate informational queries, while Maps Packs dominate transactional or locational ones:

  • Queries beginning with question words (“how,” “why,” “what”) triggered AIOs 28% of the time, but Maps Packs <1%>
  • “Near me” queries triggered Maps Packs 100% of the time and never triggered an AIO.
  • Pluralized terms (e.g., “jackets”) were more likely to trigger AIOs than singular or specific terms.

Marketers, especially those managing multilocation brands, need a bifurcated strategy:

For AI Overviews

  • Invest in informational content that addresses common customer questions.
  • Ensure that content is structured, educational, and aligns with E-E-A-T principles (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Use clear question-answer formatting to increase chances of AIO inclusion.

For Maps Pack Visibility

  • Optimize your Google Business profile.
  • Encourage reviews and manage responses.
  • Create localized landing pages with clear CTAs and schema markup.
  • Use local backlinks and citations to build trust.

Strategy 3. Gain Visibility In Alternate Search Experiences With A Distributed Content Footprint

Many users, especially younger generations, are increasingly bypassing traditional search engines altogether.

Inject your brand into new channels and open your windows and doors to complete visibility.

Perplexity AI has seen a remarkable rise in adoption, with around 22 million monthly active users in 2025, positioning it as a major alternative search platform.

Perplexity can geolocate the user and surface locally-relevant searches through its own web crawling, but also offers specific Local Search functionality that is enriched by a Yelp integration, and a restaurant booking capability that integrates with OpenTable – highlighting the importance of strong business listing data partnerships for any AI-based search that wishes to challenge Google’s dominance.

Reddit has become a trusted resource for recommendations, given the importance consumers are placing on social proof. Reddit commands strong loyalty among younger users, with over 70% of its user base being Millennials or Gen Z.

Its long-lasting content delivers value over time; 34% of Reddit posts continue to be viewed more than a year after posting. While Reddit does not offer an explicitly local search function, local business discovery is discussion-based.

Local content can be prioritized in the interface through the user’s geolocation, and explicitly local subreddits (e.g., r/Vancouver) can become forums for brands to build authentic connections with local customers.

TikTok is also a strong contender. A 2024 Adobe study revealed that 64% of Gen Z and 49% of Millennials have used TikTok as a search engine. While TikTok does not provide a maps-based search, its “Nearby” feed supports the discovery of content posted by local creators.

TikTok is currently testing an experimental feature that will place user-generated reviews into the Comments section when a place or local business has been tagged in the content.

In this way, TikTok can support local brand discovery through a blend of metadata, location tagging, and algorithmic signals. TikTok’s rapidly evolving paid search capabilities also support geotargeting as granularly as the zip code level.

The generational differences in Search behavior are clear. Gen Z often turns to TikTok and Reddit for inspiration and discovery rather than Google.

Millennials blend traditional, AI-assisted, and visual search, while Gen X and Boomers still lean toward Google, though they’re increasingly open to AI-generated summaries.

What To Look For, Learn About & Incorporate

To reach these diverse platforms and audiences requires tailored content. Video-first assets optimized for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube cater well to short-form, visual-first consumption.

On forums such as Reddit and Quora, building textual credibility through authentic, conversational answers is key.

Pinterest thrives on visuals and moodboards, while FAQs, how-to guides, and structured content (with schema markup) are crucial for AI engines that reward clear, structured information.

In this evolving landscape, marketers must build a distributed content footprint to ensure a presence wherever people are searching, and where AI tools may source it.

As AI platforms increasingly summarize content from various social and community channels, your brand’s participation in those discussions becomes essential,  not just for visibility, but to be cited accurately.

Strategy 4. Prepare For The Future Of Agentic Local Search

We are entering the agentic era, where users don’t just search, they delegate.

Google’s experimental “Call with AI” feature allows users to let an AI assistant call local businesses on their behalf. This transforms search from a real-time human task into an asynchronous agentic process.

What To Look For, Learn About & Incorporate

Key Impacts:

  • Proximity matters less: If AI finds a better deal 20 minutes away, you may be willing to make the trip
  • Price pressure increases: Transparent price comparisons and AI-led negotiations could initiate a race to the bottom
  • “Vibes” matter less: Warm greetings won’t influence the AI. Decision-making shifts from emotional to transactional.
  • Big brands lose leverage: Without human biases for logos or familiarity, small businesses can compete if they meet the decision criteria

Operational Challenges

  • Call volume may spike, but call value drops; your business could receive 100 AI-generated inquiries while winning only a few sales.
  • Unanswered calls = lost sale. AI agents will move on quickly if a call goes unanswered.
  • Scalability issues: AI can contact 100 businesses in seconds. Human-staffed phones can’t scale similarly.

Long-Term Adjustments

  • Structured pricing data must be public and machine-readable.
  • Agent-to-agent negotiation will require new infrastructure, with bots communicating with each other to confirm inventory and schedule appointments.
  • Local search becomes asynchronous: Agents might initiate requests at midnight and complete transactions during business hours, with no human involved.

Evolving Local Search, Enduring Foundations

There has been a seismic shift in how users discover brands and make decisions.

Businesses, especially multilocation enterprises, must adapt to a new hybrid model where visibility is dictated by both informational depth and local precision.

What’s Changing:

  • AI reshapes SERPs: Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode prioritize synthesized answers and intent-matching over clickable links, reducing organic link visibility.
  • Query types split visibility paths: Informational queries are now more likely to trigger AI Overviews, while transactional/local queries still favor Maps Packs; rarely do both appear together.
  • New platforms drive discovery: Reddit, TikTok, Perplexity, and Pinterest are no longer fringe sources – they are now primary discovery tools for younger generations.
  • Agentic search emerges: Users increasingly delegate tasks to AI (e.g., “Call with AI”), reshaping search from human-led interactions into asynchronous, bot-to-bot transactions.
  • Operational pressure increases: Businesses must prepare for surges in AI-driven interactions, increased price competition, and reduced influence of brand familiarity or emotional cues.

What’s Staying The Same:

  • Relevance and trust still rule: Google’s EEAT ranking principles remain crucial for AI visibility.
  • Local optimization is still vital: For transactional/local intent, the Maps Pack remains dominant. Accurate business listings, reviews, and structured local content continue to impact discoverability.
  • Content matters: Informational, structured, and platform-tailored content remains the cornerstone of any successful visibility strategy, only now must it live across multiple channels and formats.
  • Brand credibility drives citations: AI systems rely on trustworthy sources, so being the “answer” in AIOs or Perplexity depends on being referenced as a reputable, visible voice across the web.

To thrive in this transformed landscape, marketers must double down on creating a distributed content footprint, intent-driven optimization, and technical readiness for AI delegation, while still leaning on the fundamentals of trust, relevance, and local authority.

At DAC, we help brands thrive in this complexity with strategies that balance informational depth, local precision, and future-ready adaptability. Our recent analysis of 700+ SERPs across four major industries reveals how AI Overviews and Maps Packs divide visibility and what multilocation brands must do to capture both.

If you’re ready to turn today’s search disruption into tomorrow’s growth, get the full insights in our new whitepaper.

Download the Whitepaper

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by DAC. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 26 2025
Ad Hijacking Explained: Over $12 Billion Lost To Hidden Tactics

This post was sponsored by Bluepear. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Have you ever seen an ad that looks just like your favorite brand’s ad, but isn’t? Ad hijacking.

Ever clicked an ad expecting to reach Nike’s website but ended up on some random store you’d never heard of? Ad hijacking.

It happens to thousands of companies that run paid ads, and you’re not immune.

More people are buying products and services online.

With $6 trillion being spent by online shoppers in 2024 (CapitalOneShopping Research), the competition for ad placement is fierce.

If someone hijacks your ads, you:

  • lose traffic.
  • lose money.
  • lose trust.

Ad hijacking harms your brand and ad performance.

Learn how to detect ad hijacking, stop affiliate abuse, and protect your traffic in 2025.

What Is Ad Hijacking?

Ad hijacking, by definition, is a form of advertising fraud where someone pretends to be your brand in paid search ads (like Google or other platforms). The fraudsters copy your brand name, your ad style, even your messaging, so the ad looks real.

But when a customer clicks, they’re sent somewhere else.

Ad Hijacking in Action: Real-World ExampleImage created by Bluepear, August 2025

There are two common types:

  • Affiliate ad hijacking.
  • Competitor ad hijacking.

What Is Affiliate Ad Hijacking?

Affiliate ad hijacking happens when partners in your affiliate program bid on your brand name.

They:

  • copy your ad (same headline, same style) so it looks like the real thing.

The Result: The customer thinks they’re clicking on your official site because the ad looks the same. But behind the scenes, the affiliate redirects the traffic through their own tracking link.

You end up paying them a commission for a customer who was already looking for you. This inflates your costs, pollutes your data, and makes it harder to measure real performance.

Example: A user searches for [Super Tools]. An affiliate runs an ad with the headline “Super Tools Official Site,” but the link is an affiliate redirect. You pay them a cut, even though they didn’t bring in new traffic.

From Detection to Evidence: DashboardImage created by Bluepear, August 2025

What Is Competitor Ad Hijacking?

Competitor ad hijacking is when a rival company copies your brand in search ads to steal your traffic.

They:

  • bid on your brand name,
  • use ad text that looks like yours,
  • sometimes even mimic your domain.

The Result: Customers click, thinking they’re going to your site. But instead, they land on the competitor’s website.

This tactic lets competitors capture high-intent traffic. As a result, you lose potential sales, while they gain market share. Without PPC brand protection, your brand presence can be weakened, allowing competitors to grow faster at your expense.

Example: A competitor bids on “Super Tools” and runs a lookalike ad. The user clicks, expecting your site, but lands on the competitor’s product page instead. You lose a sale and possibly the customer’s trust.

As you see, search hijacking is already a serious threat to your brand and budget. It’s made even worse by how well the violators hide their tracks.

Secret Tactics That Are Used To Hide Ad Hijacking

Non-compliant partners use smart tactics to avoid being seen by brand owners or their teams. Here’s how they do it:

  • GEO targeting. Ads are shown only in specific countries, cities, or regions. If you’re not in that area, you’ll never see them – but your local customers will.
  • Dayparting. Hijackers run ads at night, on weekends, or during holidays when your team is less likely to notice them.
  • Cloaking and dynamic redirects. They use scripts to show one version of the ad or landing page to Google (to pass review) and a different one to users – usually a fake or affiliate redirect.
  • Smaller search engines. Many hijackers avoid Google and run campaigns on Bing or other second-tier platforms, where rules are looser and tracking is weaker.

Without proper hijacking prevention, these tactics make it easy for hijackers to hide and hard for your team to catch them in time.

Direct Impact Of Ad Hijacking On Your Company

The impact of affiliate ad hijacking goes far beyond a few stolen clicks. It damages performance, costs money, and creates serious risks for your business:

  • Lost ad budget. You pay commissions to affiliates who didn’t bring you new traffic; they just hijacked what was already yours.
  • Higher CPC and more competition. Hijackers bid on your brand keywords, driving up your costs and competing against your own campaigns.
  • Broken attribution. Without hijacking prevention, your analytics get messy. It becomes harder to measure what’s really working because affiliate hijacking inflates performance data.
  • Reputation damage. Users may land on shady or misleading pages. They won’t know it’s not your site – they’ll just stop trusting your brand.
  • Compliance risks. If you’re in a regulated industry (finance, health, etc.), fake ads and unapproved messaging can create legal trouble or policy violations.

Search hijacking doesn’t just hurt your numbers. It makes you question the data you rely on, wastes hours chasing false leads, and forces you to fight for traffic that was already yours.

The Hidden Cost of Ad HijackingImage created by Bluepear, August 2025
  • 85% of consumers avoid buying from brands that generate unsafe experiences, and ad hijacking falls into that bucket (PwC Report).
  • 75% of ad hijacking comes from affiliate partners exploiting tracking gaps to earn unearned commissions (Neilpatel).
  • Up to 30% of affiliate commissions come from hijacking and similar deceptive tactics (AffiliateWP).
  • Ad hijacking caused an estimated $12.6 billion in losses in 2023, based on 15% of the $84 billion lost to ad fraud globally (Juniper Research).

How To Spot And Prevent Ad Hijacking

What actually works on PPC brand protection? To uncover real issues, you need tools and methods that go beyond surface metrics:

Step 1: Quick Manual Checks

  • Run branded keyword searches and audit SERPs – look for near-identical copy linking to another domain.
  • Watch for anomalies in performance (CPC spikes, conversion drops, affiliate surges).
  • Review affiliate conversion patterns – unusual regional spikes may signal fraud.
  • Geo-test with VPNs or third-party tools to uncover geo-targeted hijacks.
  • Track impression share – sudden drops without budget changes mean new competition.

Step 2: Scalable Prevention Tactics

  • Behavioral simulation: Mimic real user searches across devices and browsers to reveal hidden hijacks.
  • Geo-rotation & proxy use: Detect localized hijacking attempts.
  • Proof collection: Document ads, redirects, affiliate IDs, and keywords for enforcement.
  • Real-time alerts & auto takedown: Get notified instantly and stop fraudulent ads before they drain your budget.

By combining manual checks and scalable tools, you can take control before search hijacking quietly eats into your ad spend.

Manual checks can’t keep up with how ad hijacking works today. Hijackers often run ads only in certain regions, at non-working hours, or under specific conditions. They use cloaking and redirects that can’t be detected with regular checks.

Most teams lack the time and capability to ensure hijacking prevention through manual monitoring alone.

That’s why ad hijacking tools like Bluepear are essential – as PPC brand protection software, they automate continuous scanning of search results to catch every sneaky ad trying to hijack your traffic and budget.

Here’s how Bluepear helps to fight against ad hijacking:

  • Simulates real user behavior. Bluepear mimics how actual customers search (using different devices, times, and locations) to trigger hidden hijack ads.
  • Uncovers hidden redirects and de-cloaks landing pages. It follows the full click path to spot when a user is being secretly redirected or sent to a misleading page.
  • Collects clear evidence. Every violation is logged with full details: screenshots, affiliate IDs, keywords, redirect chains – all in one report.
  • Sends instant alerts and supports takedowns. When a hijack is detected, you get an alert right away. Bluepear provides clear evidence so that you can remove bad ads fast to stop further damage.

Ad hijacking tools aren’t an excess. If you want to survive in a world of smart fraud, automated PPC brand protection is a must.

Bluepear featuresImage created by Bluepear, August 2025

Protect Your Brand From Ad Hijacking

Ad hijacking quietly eats into your ad budget, distorts your performance data, and damages user trust. Manual audits rarely catch it. Hijackers use GEO targeting, dayparting, and cloaking to stay hidden while stealing high-intent traffic and commissions.

Are you sure no one is hijacking your branded ads?

Bluepear helps you catch what others miss. The ad hijacking tool automatically checks SERPs from different GEOs, devices, and browsers to keep your brand protected from fraud.

Try Bluepear free for 7 days to see if your brand is being hijacked – and stop the budget loss.

Get a free trial

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluepear. Used with permission.

In-Post Images:Image by Bluepear. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 6 2025
The Great Reversal: Why Agencies Are Replacing PPC With Predictable SEO via @sejournal, @mktbrew

This post was sponsored by Market Brew. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

What if your client’s PPC budget could fund long-term organic growth instead?

Why do organic results dominate user clicks, but get sidelined in budget discussions?

Organic Drives 5x More Traffic Than PPC. Can We Prove It?

The Short Answer: Yes!

Over the past decade, digital marketers have witnessed a dramatic shift in how search budgets are allocated.

In the past decade, companies were funding SEO teams alongside PPC teams. However, a shift towards PPC-first has dominated the inbound marketing space.

Where Have SEO Budgets Gone?

Today, more than $150 billion is spent annually on paid search in the United States alone, while only $50 billion is invested in SEO.

That’s a 3-to-1 ratio, even though 90% of search clicks go to organic results, and only 10% to ads.

It’s not because paid search is more effective. Paid search is just easier to measure.

But that’s changing with the return of attribution within predictive SEO.

What Is Attribution?

Attribution in marketing is the process of identifying which touchpoints or channels contributed to a conversion or sale.

It helps us understand the customer journey so we can allocate budget more effectively and optimize campaigns for higher ROI.

As Google’s algorithms evolved, the cause-and-effect between SEO efforts and business outcomes became harder to prove.

Ranking fluctuations seemed random. Timelines stretched.

Clients became impatient.

Trackable Digital Marketing Has Destroyed SEO

With Google Ads, every dollar has a direct, reportable outcome:

  • Impressions.
  • Clicks.
  • Conversions.

SEO, by contrast, has long been:

  • A black box.

As a result, agencies and the clients that hire them followed the money, even when SEO’s results were higher.

PPC’s Direct Attribution Makes PPC Look More Important, But SEO Still Dominates

Hard facts:

  • SEO drives 5x more traffic than PPC.
  • Companies pay 3x more on PPC than SEO.
Image created by MarketBrew, August 2025

You Can Now Trace ROI Back To SEO

As a result, many SEO professionals and agencies want a way back to organic. Now, there is one, and it’s powered by attribution.

Attribution Is the Key to Measurable SEO Performance

Instead of sitting on the edge of the search engine’s black box, guessing what might happen, we can now go inside the SEO black box, to simulate how the algorithms behave, factor by factor, and observe exactly how rankings react to each change.

This is SEO with attribution.

Image created by MarketBrew, August 2025

With this model in place, you are no longer stuck saying “trust us.”

You can say, “Here’s what we changed. Here’s how rankings moved. Here’s the value of that movement.” Whether the change was a new internal link structure or a content improvement, it’s now visible, measurable, and attributable.

For the first time, SEO teams have a way to communicate performance in terms executives understand: cause, effect, and value.

This transparency is changing the way agencies operate. It turns SEO into a predictable system, not a gamble. And it arms client-facing teams with the evidence they need to justify the budget, or win it back.

How Agencies Are Replacing PPC With Measurable Organic SEO

For agencies, attribution opens the door to something much bigger than better reporting; it enables a completely new kind of offering: performance-based SEO.

Traditionally, SEO services have been sold as retainers or hourly engagements. Clients pay for effort, not outcomes. With attribution, agencies can now flip that model and say: You only pay when results happen.

Enter Market Brew’s AdShifted feature to model this value and success as shown here:

Screenshot from a video by MarketBrew, August 2025

The AdShift tool starts by entering a keyword to discover up to 4* competitive URLs for the Keyword’s Top Clustered Similarities. (*including your own website plus 4 top-ranking competitors)

Screenshot of PPC vs. MarketBrew comparison dashboard by Marketbrew, August 2025

AdShift averages CPC and search volume across all keywords and URLs, giving you a reliable market-wide estimate and details for your brand towards a monthly PPC investment to rank #1.

The dashboard of a business dashboard.
Screenshot of a dashboard by Marketbrew, August 2025

AdShift then calculates YOUR percentage of replacement for PPC to fund SEO.

This allows you to model your own Performance Plan with variable discounts available to the Market Brew license fees with an always less than 50% of PPC Fee for clicks replaced by new SEO traffic.

The dashboard for a business account.
Screenshot of a dashboard by Marketbrew, August 2025

AdShift simulates a PPC replacement plan option selected based on its keywords footprint to instantly see savings from the associated Performance Plans.

That’s the heart of the PPC replacement plan: a strategy you can use to gradually shift a  clients’ paid search budgets into measurable performance-based SEO.

What Is A PPC Replacement Plan? Trackable SEO.

A PPC replacement plan is a strategy in which agencies gradually shift their clients’ paid search budgets into organic investments, with measurable outcomes and shared performance incentives.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Benchmark Paid Spend: Identify the current Google Ads budget, i.e., $10,000 per month or $120,000 per year.
  2. Forecast Organic Value: Use search engine modeling to predict the lift in organic traffic from specific SEO tasks.
  3. Execute & Attribute: Complete tasks and monitor real-time changes in rankings and traffic.
  4. Charge on Impact: Instead of billing for time, bill for results, often at a fraction of the client’s former ad spend.

This is not about replacing all paid spend.

Branded queries and some high-value targets may remain in PPC. But for the large, expensive middle of the keyword funnel, agencies can now offer a smarter path: predictable, attributable organic results, at a lower cost-per-click, with better margins.

And most importantly, instead of lining Google’s pockets with PPC revenue, your investments begin to fuel both organic and LLM searches!

Real-World Proof That SEO Attribution Works

Agencies exploring this new attribution-powered model aren’t just intrigued … they’re energized. For many, it’s the first time in years that SEO feels like a strategic growth engine, not just a checklist of deliverables.

“We’ve pitched performance SEO to three clients this month alone,” said one digital strategy lead. “The ability to tie ranking improvements to specific tasks changed the entire conversation.”

– Sean Myers, CEO, ThreeTech

Another partner shared,

“Instead of walking into meetings looking to justify an SEO retainer, we enter with a blueprint representing a SEO/GEO/AEO Search Engine’s ‘digital twin’ with the AI-driven tasks that show exactly what needs to be changed and the rankings it produces. Clients don’t question the value … they ask what’s next.”

– Stephen Heitz, Chief Innovation Officer, LAVIDGE

Several agencies report that new business wins are increasing simply because they offer something different. While competitors stick to vague SEO promises or expensive PPC management, partners leveraging attribution offer clarity, accountability, and control.

And when the client sees that they’re paying less and getting more, it’s not a hard sell, it’s a long-term relationship.

A Smarter, More Profitable Model for Agencies and SEOs

The traditional agency model in search has become a maze of expectations.

Managing paid search may deliver short-term wins, but it comes to a bidding war with only those with the biggest budgets winning. SEO, meanwhile, has often felt like a thankless task … necessary but underappreciated, valuable but difficult to prove.

Attribution changes that.

For agencies, this is a path back to profitability and positioning. With attribution, you’re not just selling effort … you’re selling outcomes. And because the work is modeled and measured in advance, you can confidently offer performance plans that are both client-friendly and agency-profitable.

For SEOs, this is about getting the credit they deserve. Attribution allows practitioners to demonstrate their impact in concrete terms. Rankings don’t just move, … they move because of you. Traffic increases aren’t vague, … they’re connected to your specific strategies.

Now, you can show this.

Most importantly, this approach rebuilds trust.

Clients no longer have to guess what’s working. They see it. In dashboards, in forecasts, in side-by-side comparisons of where they were and where they are now. It restores SEO to a place of clarity and control where value is obvious, and investment is earned.

The industry has been waiting for this. And now, it’s here.

From PPC Dependence to Organic Dominance — Now Backed by Data

Search budgets have long been upside down, pouring billions into paid clicks that capture a mere fraction of user attention, while underfunding the organic channel that delivers lasting value.

Why? Because SEO lacked attribution.

That’s no longer the case.

Today, agencies and SEO professionals have the tools to prove what works, forecast what’s next, and get paid for the real value they deliver. It’s a shift that empowers agencies to move beyond bidding-war PPC management and into a lower cost & higher ROAS, performance-based SEO.

This isn’t just a new service mode it’s a rebalancing of power in search.

Organic is back. It’s measurable. It’s profitable. And it’s ready to take center stage again.

The only question is: will you be the agency or brand that leads the shift or watch as others do it first?

Citations

Get Your Predictable SEO Plan

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Market Brew. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by Market Brew. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jul 30 2025
How To Win In Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) via @sejournal, @maltelandwehr

This post was sponsored by Peec.ai. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

The first step of any good GEO campaign is creating something that LLM-driven answer machines actually want to link out to or reference.

GEO Strategy Components

Think of experiences you wouldn’t reasonably expect to find directly in ChatGPT or similar systems:

  • Engaging content like a 3D tour of the Louvre or a virtual reality concert.
  • Live data like prices, flight delays, available hotel rooms, etc. While LLMs can integrate this data via APIs, I see the opportunity to capture some of this traffic for the time being.
  • Topics that require EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness).

LLMs cannot have first-hand experience. But users want it. LLMs are incentivized to reference sources that provide first-hand experience. That’s just one of the things to keep in mind, but what else?

We need to differentiate between two approaches: influencing foundational models versus influencing LLM answers through grounding. The first is largely out of reach for most creators, while the second offers real opportunities.

Influencing Foundational Models

Foundational models are trained on fixed datasets and can’t learn new information after training. For current models like GPT-4, it is too late – they’ve already been trained.

But this matters for the future: imagine a smart fridge stuck with o4-mini from 2025 that might – hypothetically – favor Coke over Pepsi. That bias could influence purchasing decisions for years!

Optimizing For RAG/Grounding

When LLMs can’t answer from their training data alone, they use retrieval augmented generation (RAG) – pulling in current information to help generate answers. AI Overviews and ChatGPT’s web search work this way.

As SEO professionals, we want three things:

  1. Our content gets selected as a source.
  2. Our content gets quoted most within those sources.
  3. Other selected sources support our desired outcome.

Concrete Steps To Succeed With GEO

Don’t worry, it doesn’t take rocket science to optimize your content and brand mentions for LLMs. Actually, plenty of traditional SEO methods still apply, with a few new SEO tactics you can incorporate into your workflow.

Step 1: Be Crawlable

Sounds simple but it is actually an important first step. If you aim for maximum visibility in LLMs, you need to allow them to crawl your website. There are many different LLM crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic & Co.

Some of them behave so badly that they can trigger scraping and DDoS preventions. If you are automatically blocking aggressive bots, check in with your IT team and find a way to not block LLMs you care about.

If you use a CDN, like Fastly or Cloudflare, make sure LLM crawlers are not blocked by default settings.

Step 2: Continue Gaining Traditional Rankings

The most important GEO tactic is as simple as it sounds. Do traditional SEO. Rank well in Google (for Gemini and AI Overviews), Bing (for ChatGPT and Copilot), Brave (for Claude), and Baidu (for DeepSeek).

Step 3: Target the Query Fanout

The current generation of LLMs actually does a little more than simple RAG. They generate multiple queries. This is called query fanout.

For example, when I recently asked ChatGPT “What is the latest Google patent discussed by SEOs?”, it performed two web searches for “latest Google patent discussed by SEOs patent 2025 SEO forum” and “latest Google patent SEOs 2025 discussed”.

Advice: Check the typical query fanouts for your prompts and try to rank for those keywords as well.

Typical fanout-patterns I see in ChatGPT are appending the term “forums” when I ask what people are discussing and appending “interview” when I ask questions related to a person. The current year (2025) is often added as well.

Beware: fanout patterns differ between LLMs and can change over time. Patterns we see today may not be relevant anymore in 12 months.

Step 4: Keep Consistency Across Your Brand Mentions

This is something simple everyone should do – both as a person and an enterprise. Make sure you are consistently described online. On X, LinkedIn, your own website, Crunchbase, Github – always describe yourself the same way.

If your X and LinkedIn profiles say you are a “GEO consultant for small businesses”, don’t change it to “AIO expert” on Github and “LLMO Freelancer” in your press releases.

I have seen people achieve positive results within a few days on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews by simply having a consistent self description across the web. This also applies to PR coverage – the more and better coverage you can obtain for your brand, the more likely LLMs are to parrot it back to users.

Step 5: Avoid JavaScript

As an SEO, I always ask for as little JavaScript usage as possible. As a GEO, I demand it!

Most LLM crawlers cannot render JavaScript. If your main content is hidden behind JavaScript, you are out.

Step 6: Embrace Social Media & UGC

Unsurprisingly, LLMs seem to rely on reddit and Wikipedia a lot. Both platforms offer user-generated-content on virtually every topic. And thanks to multiple layers of community-driven moderation, a lot of junk and spam is already filtered out.

While both can be gamed, the average reliability of their content is still far better than on the internet as a whole. Both are also regularly updated.

reddit also provides LLM labs with data into how people discuss topics online, what language they use to describe different concepts, and knowledge on obscure niche topics.

We can reasonably assume that moderated UGC found on platforms like reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, and Stackoverflow will stay relevant for LLMs.

I do not advocate spamming these platforms. However, if you can influence how you and competitors show up there, you might want to do so.

Step 7: Create For Machine-Readability & Quotability

Write content that LLMs understand and want to cite. No one has figured this one out perfectly yet, but here’s what seems to work:

  • Use declarative and factual language. Instead of writing “We are kinda sure this shoe is good for our customers”, write “96% of buyers have self-reported to be happy with this shoe.”
  • Add schema. It has been debated many times. Recently, Fabrice Canel (Principal Product Manager at Bing) confirmed that schema markup helps LLMs to understand your content.
  • If you want to be quoted in an already existing AI Overview, have content with similar length to what is already there. While you should not just copy the current AI Overview, having high cosine similarly helps. And for the nerds: yes, given normalization, you can of course use the dot product instead of cosine similarity.
  • If you use technical terms in your content, explain them. Ideally in a simple sentence.
  • Add summaries of long text paragraphs, lists of reviews, tables, videos, and other types of difficult-to-cite content formats.

Step 8: Optimize your Content

Start of the paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv:2311.09735)The original GEO paper

If we look at GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv:2311.09735) , What Evidence Do Language Models Find Convincing? (arXiv:2402.11782v1), and similar scientific studies, the answer is clear. It depends!

To be cited for some topics in some LLMs, it helps to:

  • Add unique words.
  • Have pro/cons.
  • Gather user reviews.
  • Quote experts.
  • Include quantitative data and name your sources.
  • Use easy to understand language.
  • Write with positive sentiment.
  • Add product text with low perplexity (predictable and well-structured).
  • Include more lists (like this one!).

However, for other combinations of topics and LLMs, these measures can be counterproductive.

Until broadly accepted best practices evolve, the only advice I can give is do what is good for users and run experiments.

Step 9: Stick to the Facts

For over a decade, algorithms have extracted knowledge from text as triples like (Subject, Predicate, Object) — e.g., (Lady Liberty, Location, New York). A text that contradicts known facts may seem untrustworthy. A text that aligns with consensus but adds unique facts is ideal for LLMs and knowledge graphs.

So stick to the established facts. And add unique information.

Step 10: Invest in Digital PR

Everything discussed here is not just true for your own website. It is also true for content on other websites. The best way to influence it? Digital PR!

The more and better coverage you can obtain for your brand, the more likely LLMs are to parrot it back to users.

I have even seen cases where advertorials were used as sources!

Concrete GEO Workflows To Try

Before I joined Peec AI, I was a customer. Here is how I used the tool – and how I advise our customers to use it.

Learn Who Your Competitors Are

Just like with traditional SEO, using a good GEO tool will often reveal unexpected competitors. Regularly look at a list of automatically identified competitors. For those who surprise you, check in which prompts they are mentioned. Then check the sources that led to their inclusion. Are you represented properly in these sources? If not, act!

Is a competitor referenced because of their PeerSpot profile but you have zero reviews there? Ask customers for a review.

Was your competitor’s CEO interviewed by a Youtuber? Try to get on that show as well. Or publish your own videos targeting similar keywords.

Is your competitor regularly featured on top 10 lists where you never make it to the top 5? Offer the publisher who created the list an affiliate deal they cannot decline. With the next content update, you’re almost guaranteed to be the new number one.

Understand the Sources

When performing search grounding, LLMs rely on sources.

Typical LLM Sources: Reddit & Wikipedia

Look at the top sources for a large set of relevant prompts. Ignore your own website and your competitors for a second. You might find some of these:

  • A community like Reddit or X. Become part of the community and join the discussion. X is your best bet to influence results on Grok.
  • An influencer-driven website like YouTube or TikTok. Hire influencers to create videos. Make sure to instruct them to target the right keywords.
  • An affiliate publisher. Buy your way to the top with higher commissions.
  • A news and media publisher. Buy an advertorial and/or target them with your PR efforts. In certain cases, you might want to contact their commercial content department.

You can also check out this in-depth guide on how to deal with different kinds of source domains.

Target Query Fanout

Once you have observed which searches are triggered by query fanout for your most relevant prompts, create content to target them.

On your own website. With posts on Medium and LinkedIn. With press releases. Or simply by paying for article placements. If it ranks well in search engines, it has a chance to be cited by LLM-based answer engines.

Position Yourself for AI-Discoverability

Generative Engine Optimization is no longer optional – it’s the new frontline of organic growth. At Peec AI, we’re building the tools to track, influence, and win in this new ecosystem.

Generative Engine Optimization is no longer optional – it’s the new frontline of organic growth. We currently see clients growing their LLM traffic by 100% every 2 to 3 months. Sometimes with up to 20x the conversation rate of typical SEO traffic!

Whether you’re shaping AI answers, monitoring brand mentions, or pushing for source visibility, now is the time to act. The LLMs consumers will trust tomorrow are being trained today.

Try Peec AI

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Peec.ai Used with permission.

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