3 SEO lessons for the AI era
ChatGPT doesn’t rank websites the way Google used to. It fuses results from multiple searches. Here’s what that means for your SEO strategy (and why brand mentions now matter more than backlinks).
Just wrapped up an SEO workshop with the founder of Answer Socrates. Here’s our takeaway:
You can watch the live replay here:
Biggest lessons:
1 - ChatGPT uses Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF)
When you ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI, they don’t just run one search. They run multiple searches with different terms and combine all the results.
If you ask about “coffee makers”, behind the scenes they search:
- “Coffee makers”
- “Best coffee makers”
- “How to choose coffee machine”
- “Home coffee maker reviews”
In layman terms: You get cited AI Overviews, if you rank #4 - #7 for multiple keywords instead of #1 for a single keyword.
2 - Brand > Backlinks
In traditional SEO, everyone was obsessed with backlinks. But ChatGPT references multiple sources – Google rankings, forums, YouTube, social media and decides whether to feature a brand.
In short, SEO is now a brand play.
Get your brand mentioned everywhere – Reddit, YouTube, work with creators, media, etc. Whether you get a backlink matters less. The goal is to be a topical authority.
Topical authority is just a fancy way of saying “authority in a given topic/subject”.
3 - What’s your brand known for?
Semantics are important. If you sell vitamins – and your brand appears near phrases like “sport performance”, “gym booster” or “best vitamins for athletes" – AI learns to connect you with those topics.
This makes affiliate and influencer marketing mandatory, not an option.
Get your brand ranked on Google & AI Overviews
We are at this point where most businesses are still confused about what to do with their SEO. This is an opportunity. To get ahead of your competitors and stand out.
That’s why we’ve launched Searchable – a 14-day SEO sprint, for you to work on your SEO together with us. By the end of the sprint, you’ll have a solid SEO plan and published pages/content - ready to show up on AI Overviews.
We start 29th Oct.