It's Time To Start Thinking About AI SEO

Most people think SEO is dead thanks to AI.

But that's the wrong way of looking at it. ❌

As someone who used to oversee $40M in annual SEO-dependent affiliate revenue, here's what I think every creator, marketer, and business owner should be doing RIGHT NOW to adapt.

First, some context…

While it's true that AI is eating traditional search results, someone still needs to feed the AI.

Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all cite their responses, especially on transactional queries.

Seen here: Perplexity results for highly-valuable "draftkings promo code"

So how does one feed this hungry AI?

Most of the current best practices apply-- linking, tagging, authoritative content.

Cool. Keep doing that so they can eat up. Nom nom nom 🍪

But based on hours of research, here's what ELSE you must be doing for LLMs to like your content:

1| Structured Data

Use JSON-LD Schema such as "Article", "Person", "Product" on your content, and "sameAs" where possible.

This helps AI LLMs quickly contextualize and understand your data, improving chances of landing in Snippets, AI Overviews, and chatbot results.

2| Intent-Based Phrases and Questions

AI search is multimodal. In order of appearance:

• Chatbot

• Voice

• Image and Video

People ask natural language questions in chats and through voice. The more your content is framed to match conversational queries, the better it will do.

3| TAG EVERYTHING!

Most content doesn't live on just a website anymore.

It's X posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, newsletters on @beehiiv or @SubstackInc, and so much more.

There will be a gold rush for data licensing on everything from influencer content to medical records.

The more everything is tagged, the better.

That means using alt tags on images, transcripts on podcasts, captions on videos, and descriptions on images and videos posted to X and LinkedIn.

4| Implement llms.txt

Use a tool like @mintlify or @firecrawl_dev to generate an llms.txt file (h/t @zenorocha) that LLMs can easily crawl.

While this isn't industry standard yet, many expect AI bots to ingest these files much the same way search engines crawl robots.txt.

5| Vision Optimized

ChatGPT's latest video chat feature shows what's coming.

The use case?

Look at something -> ask questions about it

First with phones, then glasses.

For physical products and in-person experiences: use high contrast text and easily-readable fonts (Optical Character Recognition), large 2D barcodes, QR codes, NFC and RFID tags, AR markers... whatever!

Use what you can to help AI-enabled devices quickly identify items.

Make sure you connect things like QR codes to online assets that are properly tagged with Schema (bringing things full circle here).

An example of the "vision experience" since it's hard for most to imagine today, even though the technology exists:

-- Someone looks at a pair of ski boots in a store window while wearing Meta Ray-Bans. The glasses quickly scan the QR code and present the user with the product name, price, and sizes available, thanks to integration with Shopify. The store's website that the QR code points to has "Product" and "sameAs" Schema so the glasses present the user with similar products and reviews. --

All possible because the glasses easily identified the product.

To recap:

1| Structure your data

2| Use natural language phrasing

3| TAG EVERYTHING!

4| Implement llms.txt (or similar)

5| Think about visual search

This is all just scratching the surface. It's early days.

But search isn't dead. You just have to think about it differently.

Listen to my latest podcast and learn how Michael Kauffman built a 6-figure local newsletter in under a year with Catskill Crew:

Be sure to follow me on X (@KyleScottL) and LinkedIn.

My background:

15+ years experience in digital media

Founded CrossingBroad.com → sold to XLMedia in 2020 as one of the largest US sports betting affiliates

SVP, North America Sports, XLMedia 2020-2022: oversaw $40M annual SEO affiliate business

Now:

Local Newsletters: Founded WalkingTheBoards.com (18k subscribers)

President, Access Media: 15 hyperlocal news websites and newsletters throughout Philly area and South Jersey + sports site OnPattison.com 

Owner, Tip News: Tip.News Unbiased daily news newsletter (50k subscribers)

Affiliate Consulting: Help publishers monetize through affiliate marketing

Just hit reply to chat!