Remember in the early 2000s when savvy marketers scrambled to understand this mysterious thing called “SEO”?
And remember what followed? Those who mastered it from the get-go reaped enormous rewards in the wild, wild west that was search engine optimisation. Meanwhile, those who didn’t act fast played catch-up for years.
Today, we’re witnessing a similar revolution, and the stakes might be even higher.
As Mat Honan, Editor-in-Chief at MIT Technology Review, recently said, “We are at a new inflection point. The biggest change to the way search engines have delivered information to us since the 1990s is happening right now… We’re entering an era of conversational search.”
When Google became the dominant search engine, understanding how to get your content properly indexed and ranked became crucial for business success. The rules were new, the landscape was shifting, and expertise was at a premium.
Sound familiar? It should.
Today’s large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are rapidly becoming the new gatekeepers of information:
- They’re powering search engine results directly
- They’re the knowledge base behind smart speakers and digital assistants
- They’re becoming the primary way people find information
As Kelsey Libert, co-founder of Fractl, notes in her recent SearchEngineLand analysis: “LLMs don’t ‘rank’ content the same way Google does… They generate responses based on pre-trained data, considering word frequency, contextual relevance, and surrounding content.”
But here’s the crucial bit: as with early SEO, specific approaches determine whether these AI systems properly “understand” and index your content.
The businesses that adapt fastest to this new reality will gain significant advantages:
- Your content becomes discoverable through AI-powered searches
- Your expertise gets cited in AI responses
- Your brand becomes part of the AI knowledge ecosystem
In MIT Technology Review’s January 2025 analysis, Honan emphasises: “The way AI can put together a well-reasoned answer to just about any kind of question, drawing on real-time data from across the web, just offers a better experience.”
And just like with early SEO, there’s a first-mover advantage that won’t last forever.
Creating content for the AI age requires understanding both human readers and AI systems. It’s not about keyword stuffing or tricks – it’s about creating genuinely valuable content structured and presented in ways AI systems can properly index and reference.
Libert’s research reveals: “Ultimately, appearing in trusted, widely referenced sources – especially those with a strong likelihood of being part of an LLM’s training data – significantly increases your brand’s chances of being mentioned in AI-generated answers.”
This is where I can help. I’ve made it my mission to track how these systems index and prioritise content, what factors influence their “memory” of information, and how to create content that satisfies both human readers and AI systems.
Are you curious how your current content strategy measures up in the AI age? What specific changes help leading AI systems properly index your expertise?
“Companies that embrace this evolving search landscape will be the ones dominating brand visibility in the future of AI-driven search over the next 12-36 months,” Libert writes. “Brands that hesitate may find themselves losing valuable traffic to competitors who were early adopters.”
Send me a message, and let’s arrange a chat. We live in remarkable times, and I’d like to help businesses understand their current situation and the opportunities they might be missing.
The SEO gold rush created digital marketing winners and losers. The AI content revolution will do the same – which side would you rather be on?
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