How to Rank in AI Search Results

The AI revolution is ramping up as more people discover the value of Google Gemini, SearchGPT, and other AI-powered search tools.

As if Organic Search optimization wasn’t complex enough already, the proliferation of AI has compounded the issues faced by digital marketers across all industries.

To complement your SEO and boost your visibility in AI search results, it’s time to explore GEO: Generative Engine Optimization.

This guide will help you understand, prioritize, and act on opportunities to enhance your digital presence by optimizing for AI search.

Users continue to rapidly adopt standalone AI search tools like SearchGPT and Perplexity. However, most people (about 90% of them) still use Google, so the most widely recognized AI search feature is Google’s AI Overview. 

Known as AIOs, these appear for anywhere from 4% to 50% of searches, depending on which study you believe.

But here’s something the various studies agree on: AIOs overwhelmingly show for informational keywords. Transactional, commercial, and navigational keywords rarely trigger AIOs.

What does that mean? If your brand is pursuing AI visibility, you should target informational keywords.

Why do AIOs appear almost exclusively for informational queries? Because these are the queries where the AIO can provide maximum value to users.

Showing an AIO on the average transactional keyword (e.g., “men’s running shoes” or “SPF moisturizer”) wouldn’t tend to benefit the user.

Whether a query triggers an AIO or not, Google is trying to satisfy user intent first and foremost. Successful digital marketing teams are doing the same.

From Google’s AIOs to Komo, Yep Chat, and more, the user intent behind each query or prompt is the primary consideration in returning results.

As you research keywords, ask yourself:

These AI systems have impressive capabilities, but most users are asking questions. To rank in AI search results, you should provide clear, concise answers to those questions.

When it comes to structuring your content, it’s best to include the question within your answer, as shown below.

Question: What’s the best way to hard boil eggs?

Answer: To hard boil eggs, you can place eggs in boiling water, then immediately put them in an ice bath to stop the cooking process. [Answer from Google’s AIO]

But simple answers aren’t enough to rank. Your content should be comprehensive, covering all angles of the query topic and expanding into related topics as appropriate.

Content is King, especially when it comes to AI search.

Users aren’t searching for superficial information, and AI search systems have no interest in providing shallow answers.

Here are some key considerations for optimizing content that you want to surface in AI search results.

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. That’s what Google looks for in high-quality content, so that’s what your content should aim to exemplify.

Although E-E-A-T technically isn’t a ranking factor, it’s a crucial element of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, because E-E-A-T is what real users are looking for in content.

The best way to demonstrate E-E-A-T is by having genuine subject matter experts write your brand’s content. Short of that, conduct thorough research and link to well-renowned sources.

Comprehensive content benefits the user and your site by showing search engines and AI systems you’re a trustworthy source for helpful, accurate, and complete information.

Individually, a comprehensive piece of content serves users by answering their original question and any additional questions that arise.

As a whole, all of your comprehensive content helps search engines and AI search systems understand how experienced, authoritative, and trustworthy your site is.

The more comprehensive your content, the more opportunities you have to include related terms to cement your relevance and help AI systems understand your site.

Remember, Google catalogs entities in its Knowledge Graph. In addition, search tools understand content, not just keywords, which is why it’s wise to include these additional terms and entities.

This helps your visibility across the queries and keywords you’re trying to rank for, as well as those you may not have considered.

Search experiences are becoming increasingly personalized as search engines adapt to help users in the moment. Rather than asking what each user wants, search engines work to interpret what the user is trying to do.

For this reason, contextual relevance is a key element of optimized content. Winning content isn’t just on-topic; it’s designed to help the user accomplish something in the moment.

How-to content is a prime example of high contextual relevance. By creating content that helps a user complete their present activity, you can enhance your brand’s search visibility on relevant SERPs.

Tech giants like Google recognize that a healthy digital ecosystem is constantly evolving in an effort to satisfy users. Content freshness is a crucial signal that demonstrates how your brand is keeping up or, better yet, setting the bar.

Regularly publishing new content is a must. Think about it: Would you trust thought leadership content (or, for that matter, the products/services) offered by a brand that hasn’t published anything since 2022?

Most users wouldn’t, either.

Regularly publishing fresh content shows users and search engines alike that your brand is consistently adding value to your vertical and the broader ecosystem, which helps enhance visibility.

SERPs have changed considerably since the dawn of search engines, and the rate of change has increased over the past couple of years. Now, features such as answer boxes, knowledge panels, ads, and AI Overviews occupy valuable real estate. 

This pushes down the “10 blue links” that come to mind when we think of Organic Search results, reducing click-through rates and even resulting in zero-click searches, where a user finds what they need on the SERP itself without having to visit any page listed in the query results.

These SERP features add unique value to results, making each SERP more likely to satisfy user intent and helping users get more out of each query. With AI-organized search results, uniqueness is a significant factor that determines which pages make it into the organic results.

So if you want your content to rank well, find a way to offer unique value to users. Regurgitating a popular blog post from a competitor won’t cut it.

Drill down on your value proposition, your tailored service offerings, etc., as these will help you stand out to both users and search engines.

AI search is distinct from its forebears in a number of ways. First and foremost is the nature of AI algorithms, which behave dynamically and improve over time.

It’s worth noting that Google has long used machine learning in Search, and SERPs have been organized by AI since 2024. The age of static search algorithms is over.

This sea change means we must optimize differently, especially from a technical standpoint. Here’s a look at the essential technical elements of GEO.

The first objective is to help the large language models (LLMs) that power AI search engines understand your content.

Of course, that starts with using clear, natural language throughout your content.

Next is the indispensable addition of structured data.

Using the appropriate scheme markup type (such as “article,” “product,” etc.) helps AI interpret your content and how it fits into the overall digital ecosystem.

Prioritize adding structured data to your most valuable (i.e., revenue-driving) pages first and gradually spread it across your site. Use a publicly available testing tool, like the one from Google, to validate your markup and ensure AI can understand it.

Through schema markup, you can enable rich snippets to display with your pages in search results. These are the prices, star ratings, shipping information, and other details that entice users to click through.

Optimized structured data provides many benefits and is more important than ever in this new era of AI search.

While the robots.txt file tells crawlers how to access your site, an llms.txt file helps LLMs better understand your site structure and more easily index your content. 

llms.txt is a markdown file that gives LLMs a structured look at your published content. This improves AI interactions with your site by helping LLMs better understand your content and making information more accessible on your site.

That all combines to make your content more easily surfaceable in AI search, leading to heightened brand visibility.

Speaking of your robots.txt file, it’s not uncommon for configuration issues to inadvertently block AI crawlers. It’s wise to check your robots.txt file to ensure there are no hangups that would prevent your site from being crawled and indexed.

The first step is ensuring AI-specific crawlers aren’t blocked from crawling your site. You can do this using Google Search Console or similar tools.

Google and other search engines have increasingly prioritized user experience as a prime ranking factor in recent years. Page speed directly affects UX and can determine whether incoming traffic sticks around. The faster your pages load, the less likely users will be to bounce.

Grab the URL of one of your landing pages and paste it into the analyzer at pagespeed.web.dev to see what Google sees in terms of performance. It’s a useful tool that will show you where there’s room to improve your pages.

The PageSpeed Insights report also includes individual recommendations broken down by impact to help you prioritize fixes.

Remember, while this tool lets you view reports for both mobile and desktop page experiences, Google uses mobile-first indexing because over half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. For these reasons, you’ll want to focus on optimizing for mobile.

Although Google Search doesn’t use an “authority score” per se to determine page rankings, what the ecosystem thinks of your site/pages significantly impacts your ability to rank.

This is where backlinks come in.

A backlink is simply a link from another site back to yours. These links could come from blogs comparing your product to competitors, news articles sourcing information from your published thought leadership content, or other sources.

Sites that consistently receive backlinks from well-respected, authoritative websites (such as the top news sites, academic journals, industry publications, etc.) are much more likely to rank highly than sites that do not.

It’s unwise to wait for backlinks to come to you, especially if you just launched a new site. Link building and content syndication are essential parts of any digital marketing strategy.

A healthy backlink profile shows search engines, including those powered by AI, that your site is a well-respected industry authority delivering comprehensive, genuine value to users and, therefore, deserves to rank highly in AI search results.

Exploring AI search tools to understand how they see your business will help you identify opportunities to optimize the content published by or about your brand.

To start, open an AI search engine and enter a query that a prospective customer or client would ask about your business. This could be related to your offerings, industry, target audience or market, competitors, etc.

Here are some ideas to get started:

Take a close look at the sources included in the results. This shows where the search engine is getting its information.

If you aren’t fully satisfied with what the results say about your business, look for links back to your website. Whether it’s a homepage, landing page, or blog page, you can optimize the content to help AI search engines better understand your business.

You may even be able to reach out to other websites cited as sources and encourage them to update their information about your business to achieve the same goal.

AI will continue to alter the digital marketing landscape for the foreseeable future, and optimizing for AI search is a whole new ballgame. Don’t wait around while your competitors gain an edge. Instead, partner with VELOX.

VELOX is an ROI-focused digital marketing agency using leading-edge technology, the latest research, and proven techniques to help clients create more productive businesses.

Our tailored campaigns conservatively target 400 to 800% ROI and consistently exceed client expectations, which is why we’re recognized as a Google Premier Partner, ranked among the top 3% of agencies globally.

Learn how we can optimize your site for AI and achieve sustained search dominance for your brand. Contact VELOX today for your free marketing plan.