In today’s technological space, understanding how to use artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more important in order to stay ahead of your competition and maintain an online presence that can be seen by your customers. In the past, there were lots of ways that businesses could market their products and grow their business. Some of those options include things such as: posting ads in the local newspaper, sending out sales flyers to your customers, and marketing your business through local television or radio stations.
While these advertising methods can still be effective to some degree, there is no way to deny the fact that online marketing has taken the lead in the world of marketing. Learning how AI search engines sort and prioritize content is important for the continued exposure and growth of your business products. In today’s blog, we will focus our attention on some ways that you can strategically position your content and improve your AI visibility.
Publish Content That Is Compatible With AI Citation
So now that it has been established that AI visibility is crucial to the success of your business and products, let’s dive into some of the ways that you can increase the probability that your content will get cited by AI. Here is a list of things that you can do to get you moving in the right direction.
- Establish Topical Authority - Generative AI gives high priority to content that has credibility across the web. The credibility of your content could include: backlinks from trusted domains, brand mentions from third-party sites, and presence within well respected publications.
- Use Structured Data And Schema Markup -The use of structured data is important because it makes it easier for AI models to index and comprehend your online content. The use of schema markup can also be beneficial in providing context regarding the purpose and structure of content.
- Participate In Thought Leadership And Initiatives - Participating in leadership sessions, professional collaboration, and creating content for reputable publications will help increase the amount of exposure you get on websites that AI considers to be credible. This will increase the chance that you will receive more AI citations.
- Optimize For Conversational Queries - It is important to understand the type of results that AI searches for when a search engine is asked a question. AI tends to retrieve answers to direct or specific questions. For this reason, it is important to create content that provides direct answers to questions about topics related to your business industry. It is also important to format your content in a way that makes it easier for AI to find your content quickly. This could include using headings, diagrams, and lists to organize your content.
- Combine Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - A combination of GEO and SEO is important for AI citation. Generative engine optimization seeks to find content that is credible, easy to interpret, and easy to retrieve. Gone are the days of simply incorporating a few trending keywords into a blog or social media post. Incorporating GEO best practices will help your business stay on its feet and thrive in a changing technological landscape. While there is some overlap, there are also some key differences between GEO and SEO.
- Focus on the depth, originality, and comprehensiveness of your content - Generative AI often cite sources that are original, fact-driven, and offer a thorough analysis. Staying aware of AI search engine trends has great deal of value to your business. There are a couple of trends that have been showing up regarding the way that AI prioritizes content. ChatGPT tends to give priority to content that is factual, clear, and neutral. This is particularly true for websites that use both internal and external references. There has also been indications that Perplexity and Gemini also tend to cite content that involves original data and firsthand experience.
Prioritize The E-E-A-T Formula
While the E-E-A-T method may not be a ranking factor, it is an element that is used in Google’s AI training, and is being more frequently used by other language learning models (LLM). E-E-A-T is an acronym that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. There are a few things that should be noted about the role of E-E-A-T in AI narratives.
- Experience - As has already been mentioned, AI models prioritize first-hand knowledge. If your business website demonstrates first-hand knowledge or thorough research from reputable sources, you have a better chance of receiving a citation.
- Expertise - AI search engine answers give preference to expert-backed content. If you want to receive AI citation, it is advisable to make sure that your website contains content that is written by experts in the field of a particular subject. Elements such as: credentials, author bylines, and expert contributions will boost your credibility with AI.
- Authoritativeness - Having authority over a topic or industry will get your brand or business noticed by AI.Answers generated by LLM’s and AI overviews will get precedence to companies that are well-refenced across the web and recognized as a leader in a specific industry.
- Trustworthiness - If you want to get AI cited and become a trusted source of information, creating content that is accurate, well-researched and relevant to the needs of today’s world will help build confidence and improve your business or brand.
- Structure your content - Learning how to structure your content for AI visibility plays an important role in getting AI cited. This is because AI does not read content in the same way as a human. AI tools need structure in order to interpret content. AiI tools sort content using things such as: semantic HTML, headings, and schema to understand what is on the page and where it is located.
Optimize Content For Semantic Search
Semantic search refers to the idea that AI search engines interpret a query beyond just its keywords. In other words, AI search engines can think beyond the basic clues given by a few keywords. Rather than gathering information from sources that include certain keywords, they have the ability to make searches based on concepts that can be derived from a particular search. The search engine will use a query fan-out to break the query into subsections. Basically, the AI search engines will break the question down, and try to find a complete answer to the question, not just the basics. Optimizing content for semantic search can help you beat your competitors at garnering the attention and priority of AI search engines.
Some ways that you can improve your content for semantic searches include:
- Cover Full Query Intent - As was already stated, AI seeks to answer questions to the fullest extent. For this reason, it is important to provide answers to in-depth questions. For example, If someone asks the question: “How Do I Register For Classes?” It would be wise for your website to include answers to other related questions such as: “Where Do I Register For Classes,” “When Can I Register For Classes,” “ When Is The Deadline For Class Registration,” etc. Offering information that exceeds a direct answer to the question will help increase your chances of getting AI cited.
- Use Headings That AI can Interpret Easily - When deciding what to use for your heading, it is important to give AI the best information possible. It is not advisable to use vague or general statements that have little or no significance to the topic that you are addressing in your blog or webpage. For instance, using the phrase “What does it mean for my business” could mean multiple different things. It is very unspecific and offers no direct guidance for the AI search engine to follow. On the other hand, if you use a heading like: “Why Is AI Optimization Important For The Growth of My Business?,” now the search engine has a clear understanding of how it can best assist the user in finding the answer that they desire.
- Structure Your Answers So That They Can Be Found Quickly - By directly answering questions early in the writing, AI will be able to find the answer quicker, which will improve the chances of citation. Remember, AI wants to find answers quickly, and pass the information on to the user.
- Use Schema To Define Connections - The implementation of FAQ Page, How To, and Article schema signals to AI that your content is structured and relevant to use as the answer to a question.
- Use Variety Throughout Your Content - Instead of using a single phrase statement repeatedly throughout your blog post, implement the use of similar phrases that are all connected to each other in some way.
Woodside Ventures Can Help Get Your Business Get AI Cited
As the owner of a startup company or small business, it can be difficult trying to keep up with larger competitors. As AI becomes more prevalent in the world of business and technology, understanding the way AI citation works can help you narrow this gap.
If you are in need of some guidance about what steps you should take to grow your business, please feel free to reach out to the Woodside team. Owning a successful and financially profitable business is still achievable, and we would love to help you along your journey. Additionally, Woodside provides strategies to improve SEO and a data science approach to optimizing internal link structures.
