AI is changing everything for SEO. Remain calm… and get good help. Here are 7 pro tips.

TL;DR Key Takeaways:

  • AI is changing the digital marketing landscape for SMBs and B2B companies, and the changes need to be embraced.
  • Content & relevancy is still the name of the game.
  • Adjusting your content approach for AI results creates a competitive advantage.
  • Organic search visitors are more valuable than ever – do whatever it takes to convert them!

It’s no secret that the SEO landscape has been changing dramatically for a few years now as AI-powered “LLM” (Large Language Model) search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta, Copilot, etc. are all taking the world by storm. The advent of the “clickless search” has companies – especially consumer companies – scrambling. There’s also been a very real sense of chaos among SEO professionals and agencies as they struggle to answer the most basic question: “What do we do now?!”

B2B companies have always been a bit sheltered from the leading-edge of the impact of changes to the SEO landscape, and so many have been slow to adjust their SEO strategies – often because their internal marketing team or their external SEO providers haven’t had satisfactory answers to guide them. But we do. Here’s a few!

Content is the king of SEO – and GEO too

First of all – the good news is that if you’ve been doing SEO right the entire time, your world is not being turned upside down right now. The goal has always been to be real-world relevant, no matter how the algorithms have changed or what technologies and new brands have emerged. Gaming the system hasn’t worked in over 20 years. Your site needs to be a relevant, credible resource to your target market. If it is, it’ll increase in visibility. And the way to create that relevance is, and we expect always will be: excellent, optimized content. Creating content that contributes to the conversation, content that answers relevant questions and provides valuable resources… this is still the way to win.

Here are some key ways we’re helping our clients maximize their visibility in AI searches…

1) Add More Structure – Front-End

AI tools are seeking to provide the perfect blend of a fast result that is highly relevant and extremely helpful to the user. The goal of the AI engine (which is, unfortunately, different than our goal) is to provide the user the information they seek without requiring the user to do more work – no more clicks, no more digging…you got what you needed. Obviously that’s not what a B2B company wants to hear – we want the user to dig deeper, to get more in-depth and ultimately to reach out for a conversation. But in the new world, we have to work harder to earn that opportunity.

AI engines want to pull from clear, structured explanations without having to sift through a pile of marketing fluff. So we are working with our clients to adjust the content we produce with them to have a clear, concise structure that’s built for providing direct summarized answers – the “deep dive” – and maybe even the “fluff” has its place, but it comes later.

AI models prefer:

  • Structured summaries
  • Clear definitions
  • Direct explanations
  • FAQ-style clarity

So we’re crafting our content to include:

  • Concise “TL;DR” summary sections above our more standard introductions (see above)
  • Using our HTML headings (H2/H3) to provide replies to natural questions
  • Add content that defines terms, provides solutions, or demonstrates applications – in other words, provide brief answers to questions like “What is…”, “How does…”, “Best for…”
  • When possible, we add FAQ’s, since they’re a cheat-code to provide real world, natural questions accompanied by straightforward answers.

Watch this!

What’s an example of text that’s been re-optimized for AI search?

Instead of this old-style text:

“Our enterprise-grade workflow solution leverages dynamic integration architecture…”

We’d now go with something like:

“What is our workflow solution?
[Product X] is a workflow automation platform designed for mid-sized logistics companies that need X, Y, and Z.”

2) Add More Structure Behind-the-Scenes

We won’t get too in-depth here, because every client and their services and products are different – as well as their sites themselves. But whether AI or traditional search, you’re still ultimately talking about web crawlers/bots coming to visit your site and parse its code. So we focus significantly on making sure our engine is running smoothly. Some tips:

  • Take full advantage of structured data/schema that’s appropriate for your industry, products and services – provide metadata that will help engines categorize, tag, and display your data.
  • Don’t sleep on site loading speed – it should be an ongoing battle for your SEO team to be looking for ways to ensure your site loads quickly.
  • Do the work of on-page SEO – image descriptions, internal links, etc.

3) Optimize Content to Answer Questions & Conversations

Instead of searching by keywords like “SMB ERP software,” a user is now often asking AI long-form, familiar-language questions – and also in sequences like this example:

  • “What’s the best ERP for a 50-person construction company?”
  • “What’s a good alternative to [the ERP I just read about]?”
  • “What questions should I ask about it during the sales call?”

Remember that to keep users engaged, the AI engines even offer additional steps and carry on their side of the conversation. So the AI might be the one to offer exploring alternatives and all the user needs to say is “Sure!”

So instead of creating content that targets keyphrases and waxes poetic on a given topic, write content that anticipates and carries on the flow of the conversation.

Have your content directly answer:

  • What a product or service is/does
  • What situations/applications it’s “best for” – try to hit the nail on the head of what pain points a user might be experiencing
  • Who it’s “best for” – seek out the “perfect fit” user (often called the ICP – Ideal Customer Profile) right away – what’s the right size of company? What industries are they in? What’s their average budget? What’s your service area? Tell AI exactly who you’re for, and AI will know it should show you to those people.
  • Alternatives to your solution – transparent comparisons work very well for AI. If we embrace that the user may not be the right fit, and provide them with evenhanded analysis of their options such as the pros & cons of each, it’ll create a competitive advantage.
  • How it’ll help – rethink the traditional description of benefits and instead provide the answer in light of a question such as “Is X worth it?” You’re still giving your value proposition – but you’re delivering it in different packaging.
  • What it costs – we encourage more transparency about, even in the B2B world where costs can vary dramatically based on each unique engagement. When it’s not possible to go into specifics, discuss the factors that are used to determine costs, so that the user is as informed as possible.

4) Freshen your content more frequently

We love to talk about “evergreen” SEO content – that it is always working for you even long after it’s been released. However, just because it’s evergreen doesn’t mean it’s always making the same impact – especially in the world of AI, content that grows stale can be expected to gradually lose visibility.

AI engines are especially eager to mine content from sites that are “fresh” – actively maintained, recently updated content is preferred. Most B2B sites have their “core content” – the pages in their main navigation – and their “ancillary content” (blogs, articles, etc). B2B companies doing diligent SEO work are continually adding to their ancillary content base, so that’s less of a concern. But companies who periodically review and revise their core content too – and include when it was last updated – will have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.

5) Show that you’re trustworthy

“Trust signals” have always been a major component for SEO, and AI is no different. Different signals will be effective for different companies, but include reviews, case studies (with as much real data and references as possible), external references/links to cite sources, author bios, certifications, social media reviews, awards received, and don’t forget good old-fashioned link building efforts to try to get your site mentioned by other trustworthy sites.

6) Highly value your visitors

As we mentioned earlier, AI is making us have to work harder to earn visitors to the site – but that also means that the visitors we do receive have been hard-won… and that they’re also showing us something in return – they’re digging deeper, and are further down the sales funnel. B2B companies are already starting to see their visitor numbers decrease from organic search sources – while in most cases, the engagement from those visitors is improving substantially. So we can operate under the conviction that an organic search visitor is more valuable than ever before, both because they’re more rare, and because more seriously interested and a higher quality lead.

So we should be doing whatever it takes to convert them. We are recommending every reasonable avenue to engage and convert customers, but two stand out as very cost-effective and future-friendly: (1) AI-powered chatbots and (2) Anonymous visitor ID for B2B companies (and bonus points for connecting both approaches with a marketing automation/CRM platform for proactive outreach).

An AI chatbot can be trained with both your site’s content and any source material you add, and it is a low-barrier means of helping a user find answers they need – while also guiding a user towards a next step – purchase, quote request, consultation, etc. Or you can connect the user to a “real person” to provide instant communication if appropriate.

Anonymous visitor ID goes a step further – removing the barrier altogether by empowering your team – or a managed service provider like us – to identify companies who visit the site, and manually determine who the most appropriate contact person(s) would be at that company. With a couple clicks, your team can kick-start a conversation by reaching out manually or activating automated outreach workflows via email or text. If desired, an AI-powered virtual employee(!!) can even be involved in the strategy. And with a CRM, every interaction is tracked and can be used to build your knowledge of what’s working.

7) Go Pro

More than ever, SEO/GEO isn’t easy to do yourself. You’ve got a business to run & can’t be expected to keep up with the latest digital marketing revolution. But thankfully, AI is also making SEO/GEO more accessible and cost-effective than ever. We have been able to streamline our offerings dramatically over the past couple years, offering far more “bang for the buck.” The dream of serious brainpower being executed with serious efficiency has never been more of a reality than with the advent of AI-infused marketing automation/CRM software that can be used to support every aspect of SEO/GEO itself.

We’ve embraced those tools, using AI to help us perform research, identify opportunities, even carrying out site updates & helping us hone our content. But the most important way we’re combining our pro-grade brains with pro-grade tech is through our partnership with HighLevel, which is quite simply the best CRM/marketing platform in the universe. Every one of our digital marketing accounts now comes standard with a full-featured HighLevel account – SEO… AI chatbots… personalized email marketing… social media… CRM… it places an insane amount of power at our disposal. Because the simple truth is – successful digital marketing goes way beyond SEO. It takes a comprehensive strategy, killer tools, and skillful hands… but one thing it doesn’t take is a huge budget. In fact most of our retainers are $500/month or less – software included – and are bringing serious ROI.

So schedule a meeting & let’s do this together.