Smarty.Marketing

Lots of brand names are being discussed on Reddit as we speak. Most of those discussions rank in Google for branded searches (pushing people from buying) and impacting LLMs. Very few businesses have any strategy around that. Without a strategy, a better way is to do nothing. A smarter strategy is not viewing Reddit as a problem, but rather slowly and surely turning it into your competitive advantage. Let's talk about how this can be done!

For about three years now, everyone is still arguing about optimizing for AI visibility, i.e. being present in AI answers (and being cited as a source there). But do we actually know how AI answers are created? There are many steps there, and we don’t have much insights into most of them. Let's talk about what we do know and how we can optimize for it!

What gets a page cited by LLMs? There’s not much information LLM platforms would provide us with, so we have to rely on patents and independent studies looking at correlations. Cyrus Shepard has collected all those available documents, found tactics that are most mentioned everywhere, and put together a list of what seems to move the needle. I decided to take one step further here and create a bridge between traditional SEO and SEO for AI (GEO) to see how things have really changed. So let’s look at those GEO correlations and see if it is “just SEO” or if we need to start doing something differently.

Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini often provide references for users to click and find more information. These links are called citations, and they may appear in-line within the answer and in a separate panel, often to the right of the answer itself. Generative Search Optimization (GEO) services often prioritize “citation optimization,” but not many businesses understand how those AI citations work. Understanding the algorithm behind being cited is key to creating an effective GEO strategy, so let's talk about it!

The SEO industry has always been notorious for looking for shortcuts. SEOs always discover a tactic that works and massively jump into it until it becomes a problem even for those who are trying to do it right. Listicles are just one of many examples of this happening, over and over again. We know they work for LLMs, as the list format is very easy to pull entities from; the rise of self-serving and commercial listicles has been insane to watch. Brands were forced into sponsoring their mentions in listicles, and lots of publications were switching to the “Top lists” format to monetise their existence… until Google noticed. Now poorly researched, self-serving ones are losing organic visibility. Let's talk about the flaws in these shortcuts and what to do instead!